Diagnosing Wonderland

“We are all mad here”

When I talk to friends about what is going on in the world today the one word I hear repeatedly is “madness”. We live in a society where mental illness is at epidemic proportions. War, riots, epidemics, school shootings and more bombard us daily until we don’t understand why we feel so depressed, anxious, and confused.

This paper looks at madness from an unlikely point of view, that of fictional characters in a cartoon movie made in 1951 by Walt Disney called Alice in Wonderland. If these characters were real people, acting out the way they did in the movie, there would be a mental health diagnosis for each one of them.  After analyzing five characters from the movie, I have come up with a diagnosis for their behavior and thinking patterns.

Alice
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

It's only appropriate to start with Alice, the protagonist of the movie. Alice is a young girl about 10 years old with long blonde hair and a black ribbon tied at the top of her head. She wears a blue dress with a white apron, white stockings, and black shoes. She has beautiful big blue eyes and ruby-red lips. At the beginning of the story, she comes off as boarded with her life and wishes for a world of her own. She spends much time in a dream world lost in fantasy.

During Alice’s adventure in Wonderland, she speaks to animals and insects that speak back to her, she shrinks and enlarges herself to fit the space she is in and experiences a world full of madness. The story starts with Alice in a park supposedly reading a book but finding herself bored and daydreaming. She sees a white rabbit wearing clothes and carrying a big pocket watch saying, “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date”. She follows the rabbit down a rabbit hole, which is the beginning of her travels through Wonderland.

My diagnosis for Alice, if she were a real person, would be she suffers from a psychotic disorder (hallucinations) at the very least. She could possibly be diagnosed with schizophrenia. I mean let’s face it, floating cats and talking to caterpillars isn’t normal and could be considered a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia. There is actually a syndrome called AWS (Alice in Wonderland Syndrome) based on Alices’ behavior in the story. It describes a person with episodes of altered reality. An article about this syndrome states, “Patients with this syndrome describe feeling larger or smaller than normal and having other strange visual and auditory perceptions of the world” (Lizzy).

Alice’s brief Psychotic Disorder diagnosis is categorized using Diagnostic Criteria DSM-5 298.8 (F23) (auditory and/or visual hallucinations) from the DSM V manual. No DSM-5 criteria have been established for Alice in Wonderland syndrome.

White Rabbit

The White Rabbit is the first character Alice meets. Alice follows the rabbit into a hole that leads her to Wonderland. He is elderly and plump with pink eyes, thick black eyebrows, and a red nose. He wears glasses on his nose and carries a large watch. The White Rabbit is always in a hurry and constantly worrying. His famous line from the movie is “I’m late, I’m late for a very important date”. He appears to be jittery, fidgety, confused, and high-strung and was both timid and aggressive depending on the situation. My diagnosis is a generalized anxiety disorder.

The White Rabbits diagnosis is categorized using Diagnostic Criteria DSM-5 300.02 (F41.1) for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This includes anxiety, worry that is difficult to control, restlessness, feeling keyed up or on edge, difficulty concentrating, and irritability.

Mad Hatter
"You're mad. Bonkers. Off your head...but I'll tell you a secret...all of the best people are."

The Mad Hatter is sort of the supervillain of Wonderland. He is a short little man who wears a large green top hat with white hair sticking out. He has a ticket tucked in the band of the hat that says, “10/6” on it. The 10/6 refers to the cost of a hat — 10 shillings and 6 pence, and later became the date and month to celebrate Mad Hatter Day (Mad Hatter Day).

 He has bucked teeth and a rather grumpy face. He is very loud with a totally wacky personality. He has mood swings where he can be charming one minute and then burst with anger the next. He would be considered “mad” or “crazy” by anyone who met him. He always shows erratic behavior in everything he does. His name was taken from the idiom “mad as a hatter”, which was around before the story was even written. In the 1800’s lead in the hat-making process seeped into the wearer’s system and they went insane. My diagnosis for the Hatter is bipolar with some manic depression.

The bipolar diagnosis is categorized using Diagnostic Criteria 296.43 (F31.13) of the DSM V manual. It is a group of disorders that cause fluctuation in his mood, energy, and ability to function. The Mad Hatter has increased activity, poor concentration, and increased impulsivity that can change rapidly to elation and grandiosity. Mild depression disorder is categorized using Diagnostic Criteria 296.52 (F32. 0 F33). The symptoms are present enough to make a diagnosis but manageable with only minor impairment in social functioning.

Cheshire Cat
"Everyone's mad here." "You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself."

Alice meets the Cheshire Cat along her travels through Wonderland. First in the woods where she stops and asks him for directions home. Being the sly manipulative cat he is, he gives her directions to the Mad Hatter. He doesn’t so much do this out of meanness as self-pleasure and amusement. He can be treacherous when he wants to be or supportive if the mood hits him. Alice meets him again and this time he sends her to the Queen of Hearts without so much as a warning of how evil and crazy she is. Alice sees Cheshire Cat at the Queen’s place

The Cheshire Cat is a large purple and pink striped cat with a permanent wide grin firmly planted on his face. He has purple hair and yellow eyes and usually can be found sitting up in a tree. Part of his appearance is the fact that he can disappear and reappear at will. He just fades away and returns.

His behavior is confusing. He is mischievous and tricky one minute and whimsical the next but always unpredictable. He takes great pleasure in playing pranks with no care for the consequences or the harm it could do. In sending Alice to the Queen, he most certainly knew the Queen would kill her. He does this all for his own amusement.

My diagnosis for Cheshire Cat is an antisocial personality disorder. I also think he shows traits of being a sociopath. The antisocial personality disorder was categorized using Diagnostic Criteria DSM-5 301.7 (F60.2). The criteria are “Failure to obey laws and norms by engaging in behavior which results in a criminal arrest or would warrant criminal arrest, lying, deception, and manipulation, for-profit or self-amusement, impulsive behavior, blatantly disregard the safety of self or others, a pattern of irresponsibility and lack of remorse for actions” (Porter). There is no category for sociopath in the DSM manual. That conclusion would come by combining other traits found in the DSM manual for antisocial personality disorder and analyzing them together.

Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts is a large, ugly woman with black hair and wears a gold crown. She wears mostly red and black as these are the colors of playing cards. She carries a wand shaped like a heart. The Queen is a playing card ruling a place where residents are all playing cards. She is the ruler of Wonderland and reigns with a tyrannical fist.

  Alice meets the Queen when she entered Wonderland gardens. There are gardeners painting the white roses red so the Queen won’t be angry (they planted the wrong color and all roses have to be red). She speaks to Alice and Alice spoke back rather flippantly making the Queen angry and calls for Alice to be beheaded. The King interfered and calmed the Queen down. She also calls for the gardeners to be beheaded. This is her solution for anyone who irritates her for any reason.

“After a game of Croquet where the Cheshire Cat trips up the Queen, Alice is blamed and sent to the Kingdom's court. A tribunal ensues where most of the earlier characters turn up including the Mad Hatter and March Hare. Alice manages to escape the kingdom and runs into the doorknob revealing she has been sleeping the whole time. She finally manages to wake up dazed and confused with her sister but returns home happy with her family” (Bruce).

My diagnosis for the Queen of Hearts is Narcissistic Personality Disorder according to DSM V criteria 301.81 (F60.81), evidenced by the way she is completely self-absorbed, lacks empathy for others, believes that she is special and unique, requires excessive admiration, and has unreasonable expectations of how she should be treated” (Narcissistic).

There are probably other mental disorders that can be attributed to the characters in Alice, but I feel I would have to have more information to understand them. Even the disorders I bring forth in this paper are just guesses based on little information about each character from a children’s story. If I wanted to make a children’s story that kids would all enjoy, I too would make all the characters bonkers, cuckoo, and with a screw loose! That’s what would make it fun to listen to or read.

Alice 

Brief Psychotic Disorder Diagnostic Criteria 298.8 (F23)
A. Presence of one (or more) of the following symptoms. At least one of these must be
(1), (2), or (3):
1. Delusions.
2. Hallucinations.
3. Disorganized speech (e.g., frequent derailment or incoherence).
4. Grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior.
Note: Do not include a symptom if it is a culturally sanctioned response.
B. Duration of an episode of the disturbance is at least 1 day but less than 1 month, with
eventual full return to premorbid level of functioning.
C. The disturbance is not better explained by major depressive or bipolar disorder with
psychotic features or another psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia or catatonia,
and is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse,
a medication) or another medical condition.

White Rabbit

Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria 300.02 (F41.1)
A. Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than
not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities (such as work or school
performance).
B. The individual finds it difficult to control the worry.
C. The anxiety and worry are associated with three (or more) of the following six symptoms (with at least some symptoms having been present for more days than not for the
past 6 months);
Note: Only one item is required in children.
1. Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge.
2. Being easily fatigued.
3. Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank.
4. Irritability.
5. Muscle tension.
6. Sleep disturbance (difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless, unsatisfying
sleep).
D. The anxiety, worry, or physical symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment
in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
E. The disturbance is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a
drug of abuse, a medication) or another medical condition (e.g., hyperthyroidism).
F. The disturbance is not better explained by another mental disorder (e.g., anxiety or
worry about having panic attacks in panic disorder, negative evaluation in social anxiety
disorder [social phobia], contamination, or other obsessions in obsessive-compulsive
disorder, separation from attachment figures in separation anxiety disorder,
reminders of traumatic events in posttraumatic stress disorder, gaining weight in an
anorexia nervosa, physical complaints in somatic symptom disorder, perceived appearance
flaws in body dysmorphic disorder, having a serious illness in illness anxiety
disorder, or the content of delusional beliefs in schizophrenia or delusional disorder).

The Mad Hatter

Bipolar I Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria
For a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, it is necessary to meet the following criteria for a manic
episode. The manic episode may have been preceded by and may be followed by hypo-
manic or major depressive episodes.
A. Period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood
and abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy, lasting at least
1 week and present most of the day, nearly every day (or any duration if
hospitalization is necessary).
B. During the period of mood disturbance and increased energy or activity, three (or
more) of the following symptoms (four if the mood is only irritable) are present to a
significant degree and represent a noticeable change from usual behavior:
1. Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity.
2. Decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only 3 hours of sleep).
3. More talkative than usual or pressured to keep talking.
4. Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing.
5. Distractibility (i.e., attention is too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external
stimuli), as reported or observed.
6. Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or
psychomotor agitation (i.e., purposeless non-goal-directed activity).
7. Excessive involvement in activities that have a high potential for painful consequences
(e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or
foolish business investments).
C. The mood disturbance is sufficiently severe to cause marked impairment in social or
occupational functioning or to necessitate hospitalization to prevent harm to self or others, or there are psychotic features.
D. The episode is not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug
of abuse, medication, or other treatment) or to another medical condition.
Note: A full manic episode that emerges during antidepressant treatment (e.g., medication, electroconvulsive therapy) but persists at a fully syndromic level beyond the
the physiological effect of that treatment is sufficient evidence for a manic episode and,
therefore, a bipolar I diagnosis.

The Cheshire Cat

Antisocial Personality Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria 301.7 (F60.2)
A. A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since
age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by
repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for
personal profit or pleasure.
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.
4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults.
5. Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others.
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior
or honor financial obligations.
7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt,
mistreated, or stolen from another.
B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
C. There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder

The Queen of Hearts

Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Diagnostic Criteria 301.81 (F60.81)
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack
of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated
by five (or more) of the following:
1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents,
expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal
love.
3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or
should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
4. Requires excessive admiration.
5. Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable
treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).
6. Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own
ends).
7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Work Cited

A.D.H.D.

A.D.H.D.

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A.D.H.D. 🦋

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Street Photographers

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson 

While most people today use digital cameras, there are some valid reasons for photographers who use analog cameras and film, in particular black and white film. “The first photographs ever taken were generally done in the streets. So, the start of photography was the start of street photography” (Kim). Photographers first used black and white film out of necessity and over the decades have come to use it out of tradition. Even when color film was introduced in the 1930s, street photographers continued to pay homage to the past by using black and white film to take their photographs. Whether a street photographer uses film or digital, they are relentless in capturing the street culture of our world.

            One of the first street photographers was Eugene Atget. He literally took photographs of streets and not people. The equipment was large and bulky and not conducive to taking candid photographs as we have come to define street photography today. He photographed Paris in the 1800s and 1900s. He wasn’t shooting architecture; he was shooting the actual streets where people lived. In 1877 the first book was published on street photography titled, “Street Life In London” by John Thomson. The photographs were all posed as, once again, the equipment of the day didn’t allow for candid shots.

One of the first street photographers to capture candid shots was Samuel Colthurst in the late 1800s. He disguised himself as a street vendor and took photographs without people knowing it. He realized that what he was capturing were moments in time that possibly wouldn’t be there in the future like an organ grinder for instance. Weegee was a street photographer in the early 1900s who was drawn to the more grotesque aspects of life on the streets, like homicides. He wasn’t there to shoot the dead body; he was there to shoot the bystanders and the looks on their faces while they viewed the dead body.

 So, when street photographers argue endlessly about what is the proper way to shoot the streets, the possibilities are great. Roy DeCarava photographed the people living in Harlem during the 1930s and 1940s. Garry Winogrand photographed New York during the 1960s and 1970s. The common thread is to print a history of what was happening during a specific time in the culture of these cities. They worried little about angle, lighting, and style as their goal was to get a photograph of real people going about their normal life.

Street photographers are a breed apart from photographers who shoot portraits, architecture, and high society. Many street photographers debate about the aesthetics of the art, like approach and style, and have angst about what street photography is and isn’t. They ponder if they should use flash or if they should they be seen or discrete. Maybe these photographers should debate less and shoot more. One might think that a street photographer goes searching for that one great shot, snaps a photograph, and goes home. Not so with street photographers where the common thread is to take hundreds or even thousands of pictures for that one great photograph. When Garry Winogrand died, in 1984, he left about 400,000 frames that were undeveloped, developed but not printed, or contact sheets, with a total of 5 million photographs in his archives.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was considered a genius of candid photography for 50 years. When he died, he accumulated 500,000 negatives of his work. He once went on an assignment with novelist Truman Capote and Capote said this, “I remember once watching Bresson at work on a street in New Orleans — dancing along the pavement like an agitated dragonfly, three Leicas swinging from straps around his neck, a fourth one hugged to his eye: click-click-click (the camera seems a part of his own body), clicking away with a joyous intensity, a religious absorption” (Oliver). This is not uncommon with street photographers. Many get caught up in the experience and stop worrying about everything else. “Enjoy yourself when shooting on the streets, but at the same time still stay energized and focused and try to capture those decisive moments as small as a smile, a certain look, or a certain expression someone may give with their hands” (Kim).

Street photographs should not only capture the cheery moments on the streets but also the suffering on the streets. Walking the streets of any city will eventually bring you to a homeless person. This is the moment the street photographer has to decide whether to take a photograph or not. Some street photographs don’t care to intrude upon people already in distress and maybe even see it as disrespectful.

Great street photographers take their time knowing an original photograph might only come after taking thousands of shots. They may not like the work they are producing and put the negatives away for a time, sometimes years, before looking at them again from a different, more mature, perspective. Unless you are trying to make a living doing street photography, take the time to hone your craft. The more a photographer is out in the streets shooting the better they will get and come to understand what they are looking for in their work.

A street photographer can capture the important historical issues facing people on the streets. Subjects like integration, racism, war, and black lives matter need to be documented in photography. When needed, the street photographer takes photographs with a deeper meaning that describes the social issues of the time. These photographs help inform people about what is going on and can help to show what needs to be corrected in society. Lewis Hine was such a street photographer. “In 1904, Lewis Hine photographed immigrants on Ellis Island, as well as at the tenements and sweatshops where they lived and worked. In 1911, he was hired by the National Child Labor Committee to record child labor conditions, and he produced appalling pictures of exploited children” (Biography). The camera was a tool for him to help bring about social reform.

Street photographers aren’t all that interested in sharpness in their photographs. In general, the technical aspects of photography go by the wayside. What is important is the content of the photograph and the effect that it has on the viewer. Even an out-of-focus photograph can be a great photograph. Street photographers are never distracted worrying about the shots they take. They just go out on the streets and let the camera work on its own, not thinking about it, just shooting.

One of the reasons street photographers continue to use black and white film is it captures the abstract images on the streets like shadows and forms. If they use color the street photographer will always be looking for color to enhance the photograph. Street photographs also experiment with film and equipment to maintain creativity. They try different approaches like posed and candid, different lighting, and different processing methods. “But try to remember no camera or lens in itself will make you more creative. It will only be your passion and ingenuity which will do so (and the equipment will help you achieve that)” (Kim).

Street photographers study art history, paintings and read books such as Bystander: A History of Street Photography by Joel Meyerowitz and Colin Westerbeck, considered to be the bible of street photography. Most important is that great street photographers shoot the streets for the love of it. By now, everything on the streets has already been done before, so street photographers aren’t bringing new methods to the table. The content might be new, but the methods have all been done. Going out on the streets and using their gut feeling and lots of heart will get them what they are looking for.

Work Cited

Vija Celmins

Can photography enhance an artist’s work in other mediums? Vija Celmins made a successful career of taking a photograph, cropping everything out of the picture except a selected section, and transforming that image using graphite pencil or charcoal on paper. When you take charcoal and blacken an entire piece of paper and then use an eraser to remove the pigment off the surface to create an image, it’s almost magical as the image forms before your eyes. I am very drawn to this technique and, being a photographer, I used her method to create some art of my own.

Artist and photographer Vija Celmins was born in Latvia in 1938 and was just a little girl when the Soviet Army invaded her country. Celmins and her family left Latvia and lived in a number of refugee camps until they were able to come to the United States, settling in Indianapolis, Indiana. She had problems with the English language so started collecting comic books to learn to read and liked the pictures. In time she started collecting pictures she found in magazines and books.  She began painting the images of the pictures which, at the time, had a lot to do with childhood memories of World War II and the images of war like guns, explosions and airplanes. 

When Celmins started taking camera pictures, she was drawn to photographing found images in nature. She’s not trying to make a political statement or reveal some heavy inner feeling in her work. Her favorite subjects for her paintings, drawings and photographs are oceans, spider webs, night skies, and deserts. All subjects that bring miraculous imaginary to the viewer and the beauty that surrounds all mankind. These photographs were used as images for her art. Dave Hickey, art critic, suggested that “Celmins’s shift from using imagery of war and violence, to the ocean, desert and sky, paralleled a shift in her personal life… her status changed from the status of a refugee to a nomad – a nomad who could find her bearings from the infinitesimal reference points that nature offers” (Tate).

She began making sculptures of everyday objects. “Although Celmins’s work from this period is often discussed in relation to pop art, her ideas had more in common with the object paintings of artists such as René Magritte and Giorgio Morandi. She was inspired by their experimentation with object size and scale, and their depiction of objects detached from their original function” (Tate).

Her interest in object painting led her to drawing and prints of the nature around her. I particularly like her spider web work (Fig. 1, 2). Although I am deathly afraid of spiders, I am drawn to the beauty of the webs they weave. It prompted me to go find out more about spiders and how they create their webs. I learned a spider can weave something so intricate and beautiful yet is used to capture their food so they don’t have go find it. Also, I learned that there is a liquid in their body that can weave something that is five times stronger than steel. “If human-size, it would be tough enough to snag a jetliner” (Miceli). Celmins artwork on spider webs was based on photographs she took. She used the same angle and scale as in nature and “The web – like the night sky and desert floor – acts as a kind of map, as it describes the picture surface. (Tate). 

Fig. 1 Celmins, Web #2, Charcoal, 2000

Fig. 2 Celmins, Spider Web, Screen Print, 44.5 x 48.3, 2009

The lines of the web are not crisply defined, appearing softly diffuse as they rise from the background, with charcoal dust clinging in places. There are brighter white areas of the web structure where there has been a more intensive use of the eraser to highlight the radiating strands of the web. The web stretches taut across the image surface, touching all four edges and creating strong diagonals across the picture plane. It is a drawing that is both produced mechanically (the electric eraser and photographic source) and laboriously, physically created by hand. Numerous fine threads are visible to the eye, but the charcoal atmosphere suffuses every line with a muted, cloaked character” (Tate).

Mills, Spider Web, Charcoal, 2020

The drawing I did of a spider web was done in the same style as Celmins by using charcoal and an eraser. Her lines are much more delicate than mine with a sense of realism that mine doesn’t have. However, she is an artist and I’m a photographer. I did the best I could. A critique in the New York Times stated about her spiderweb work, “And a different buzz descends when you take a closer look — which the smallness invites. Depicted reality dissolves. Prolonged scrutiny brings awareness of the artist’s hand, the careful textures of her marks, and above all the discipline and concentration that produced them. They invite and reward reciprocal patience and concentration, slowing down perception so thoroughly that the show almost exists in its own time zone” (Smith).

Celmins work includes photographs, drawings, screen prints, paintings, and sculpture. All her work focuses on just a few subjects in nature using a palette of white, black, and grey. She cares very much about the materials and paper she uses and what scale to use. If you look at her work, you can see she takes only an area of the photograph to draw or paint so she can get a good range of shading. There are no horizons or land showing, just all water or all spider web from edge to edge. When ask about having no horizons she said, “I don’t have a horizon line because I want you to, I want to place the work in a wall, you see. I don’t want to make a pictorial picture where you might imagine a horizon and what’s over the horizon. I want to keep you in that rectangle, you know. I don’t want to make a pictorial painting that describes the sunlight and various things. I just want to keep you there, keep you in that rectangle” (Sussler, 37).

I was very happy to read that at 81 years old Celmins is feeling well and continues doing art. She gave up her graphite and charcoal work and went back to mostly painting. Her half century of work hangs permanently in museums all over the world. Celmins said of her work, “There aren't really rules for painting, but there’s certain facts and fictions about painting. Part of what I do is document another surface and sort of translate it. They’re like translations, and then part of it is fiction, which is invention” (Artnet).

Work Cited

The Million

There were many prophecies and signs that foretold how the end of the world, as we knew it in 2022, would unfold.  Warnings were there for eyes to see, and the prediction was made for those with the ears to listen.  Now, it is over. No more wondering how and when it ends. Now it is whether what remains of humanity, those of us left behind, will come together to ignite the plan God now has for us. We are called the Witnesses and have been called upon to start a new world.

Since man could put words on paper God’s great works have been handed down and future events prophesied. What we know about God came from spiritual beings who presented themselves to chosen people called Witnesses all over the world. The Witnesses, all of whom were saved from all catastrophes, are men, and women with snow-white hair, and are clothed in fine linen. Each Witness was born with a mark on their left hand, at the base of the middle finger, of two interlocking rings. The circles represent eternity, no beginning, and no end. The hole in the center of the rings is “a gateway, or door, leading to things and events both known and unknown” (City). In their right hand, they carry a long wooden staff that branches out at the top. This symbol of a tree represents spiritual nourishment. When you speak to a Witness you feel the essence of their spirit and the ease that you would feel if truly in the presence of God Himself.

There are hundreds of transcripts written by the Witnesses describing how the earth was created, how mankind was given free will to follow or not follow the teaching of God, how mankind’s transgressions would turn the world into a place of violence, and war, time and time again. One such transcript is entitled B.I.B.L.E or Basic Instructions Before Life Ends. It tells of an apocalypse that will eventually come to the people of earth. It is written that there will be devastating natural disasters all over the globe with countless deaths. This happened over the last 20 years with floods, extreme temperatures, storms, earthquakes, landslides, droughts, volcanic activity, and wildfires that killed billions of people, leaving the earth mostly in ruins. Most governments collapsed, no police or military, no hospitals, no help of any kind. Chaos and confusion ruled. The days leading up to the end brought out the very worse of mankind. Interesting that it is this very reason the end came. Most people lost all compassion, sympathy, and empathy. People were only out for themselves and followed no rules of God or man. People lived for themselves and what they could get even if it meant hurting and stepping on others to get it.

The final annihilation came in such a predictable way. Our planet has known nothing but war since the beginning of time so the end coming by nuclear weapons should have been a given. There has always been someone ready to press the “red” button for their own ego’s sake. In March of 2021, Russia had a president who was sick with power and cared nothing for human life. He invaded another country and threatened all other countries to stay out of it or he would retaliate.

Negotiations just spiraled out of control and Russia sent bombs into the United States which forced the United States to send bombs into Russia. Other than the Witnesses and their followers, who were protected by God, all mankind was lost. There will now be a nuclear winter for years to come and the earth is covered with soot that will stay here for a decade. The earth’s temperature is dropping and there is no light. However, there were large, protected areas in all countries created by God for the chosen survivors to live. There are about 5,200 people in each of the 195 countries that existed at the end left to populate the earth and start over. With God’s love and guidance, maybe these One Million can do the work that 7.8 billion people could not.

On the fifth day after the end, God appeared to all who are left. His voice could be heard by all in whatever language they spoke. We could hear Him and then suddenly see Him in our minds. It was almost too difficult to look upon Him for His beauty was beyond imagination. He came to us in a robe of gold fabric with a belt tied loosely at His waist made of shining stones in all colors. He wore a crown of light that made His black hair glisten like black diamonds. His eyes showed both happiness and sadness at the same time and one couldn’t help but fall to their knees in respect and love. His words were soft and direct in His instructions for how we must live our lives going forward and how we must treat all mankind if a world of love and peace were to exist. He told us he would leave us with free will as that will be the test to see if a peaceful existence was possible for humans.

Survivors are left with feelings of overwhelming gratitude and fear of the future. We have to believe that God would not have allowed Armageddon to happen if He didn’t have a wonderful plan for us. The One Million are ready.

Word Cited

A Hero's Journey

Medusa

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Medusa 🐍

Work Cited

3 Photographers

So with this, I wanted to compose an essay on the intersection between the history of photography and empathy by analyzing each in writing and show how each image played a role in shifting society’s view towards a historical event, marginalized group, or person.

By Richard Drew

This photograph, Falling Man was taken by Richard Drew on September 11, 2001, shows a man who chose to jump out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center instead of being incinerated by the explosion from the airplane that crashed into it. It was a day that changed the world forever. Millions of Americans changed their opinion of Islam. Muslims were now looked upon as our enemy. This caused a long-term change in how Americans, tested by a horrendous terrorist act, see Muslims as an enemy capable of doing anything to anyone using inhuman tactics.

On September 11th and for months after we saw the events of that day in photographs. The country felt deep empathy for the people murdered that day. Our ability to put ourselves in their shoes, however, was not possible. No one in America had experienced an attack of this magnitude. This attack just made Americans angry because we had already been through other terrorist attacks like the bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993, the 1994 Brooklyn Bridge shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, and more. Add this to the hundreds of attacks throughout the world and it’s no wonder we live in fear of the people that are the perpetrators.

This picture invoked positive and negative vibes. Many Americans didn’t mind seeing the photographs of the planes hitting the buildings, the smoke billowing out, and people escaping the buildings and running for their very lives. These pictures didn’t show the actual deaths of people. We knew that is what was happening but we could put that aside because we didn’t see them. So, when this picture was published there was an uproar. We see a man totally in despair and when faced with two ways to die he chose jumping. The fear he must have felt on his fall to death. Of all the photographs taken that day this photograph is the only one people thought was inappropriate and received much criticism for putting in the newspaper.  No photograph taken the day the World Trade Centers came down was appropriate to see.  But the whole story needed to be told with the written word and photographs for all to remember in years to come.

By Dorothea Lange

Lange’s photographs were taken during the time of the Great Depression when people were suffering through natural disasters as well as a national economic crisis. Lange was part of the Resettlement Administration established by Franklin D. Roosevelt's social policies. This was a team of photographers hired to document the lives of migrant workers. She was among the agency photographers whose task was to inform Americans about the world around them. Lange’s work reflected insight, compassion, and empathy for the people she photographed. Her photographs, in turn, struck compassion and empathy in the viewers.

The photograph “Migrant Mother” came to symbolize what was going on during the depression and how it affected the migrant workers as well as most people living at that time. This black and white image shows a woman, who is about the age of 30, and three young children. Two of the children are hiding behind the mother and the third she is holding in her arms. The woman looks distressed or concerned. The way her hand is placed on her face and the way she is looking out into the distance shows she is worried. The clothing looks old and worn down, representative of the 1930s and the Great Depression. She is stranded in a squatter’s camp where the workers picked peas.

Lange captured this part of American history to show us how hard this time was for these people and to show how blessed we are to live the way we do today.

By Louis Wickes Hine

Photographs significantly contributed to child labor reform in America. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, the Industrial Revolution began. This was a time when parents owned their children and could force them to work in the mills and mines for long hours and little pay. This child labor was ignored by the government and the public. Although reform badly was needed, it was slow to come. The National Child Labor Committee was formed, and they wanted to hire a photographer to document child labor issues to bring the issues to the public. That photographer was Louis Wickes Hine (1874-1940).

Hine, who was trained as a sociologist with an interest in photography, experienced first-hand the exploitation of young workers. He was the first to use a camera for a social documentary. His photographs changed the public perception ultimately pressuring state legislatures to change the child labor laws.

After viewing all of Hine’s photographs I felt great compassion and empathy for the working children. This picture is of a young girl working as a spinner in a textile mill. There are pictures of small children picking cotton, picking tobacco, working in coal mines, shucking oysters, and pulling beets. The ages ranged from 6 years old to 13 years old. Without bringing the plight of these children to the public and government changes would not have been made and children would have continued working in back-breaking jobs and never gotten a chance to go to school or just be a kid.

Faith vs. Science

Out of all the creation myths, it’s the creation myth of one Divine God that created everything versus the creation myth of a Big Bang that gets the most intellectual debate, and for good reason. Understanding the Book of Genesis from the Bible and understanding the theory of an explosion that took place almost 14 billion years ago couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to each other yet both end with the creation of the universe, earth, man, animals, and plants.

Divine creation is from the Book of Genesis, Chapter one, of the Christian Bible, and tells us the world was created in six days. On the first day, God said, “Let there be light.” The sun hadn’t been created yet, so it was just light created by God. On the second day, God said, “Let there be something to divide the water.” The water was divided by land. There was a sky so now there are an atmosphere, wind, and clouds. On the third day, God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered together so the dry land will appear.” The dry land was called Earth. Then God said, “Let the earth produce plants.” So, the earth now produced plants producing fruit, flowers, vegetables, etc.

        On the fourth day, God “made the two large lights.” One light for daytime and a smaller light for nighttime. The sun gave the earth light and warmth as well as sunsets and sunrises. The earth could not survive without the sun. The moon and stars gave off light as well and made the sky sparkle with beauty. On the fifth day, God said, “Let the water be filled with living things. And let birds fly in the air above the earth.” The water became full of fish, mammals, and other species, and the sky was filled with all sorts of birds. On the sixth day, God said, ‘Let the earth be filled with animals.” The earth was populated with wild and tame animals. Also on the sixth day, God created man, The man was named Adam and was able to think intelligently. God didn’t want Adam to be lonely, so he created a partner for him in a woman named Eve. Everything was finished by day seven, so God rested and made this day a holy day. The world was his creation and Adam and Eve, who lived in the Garden of Eden, were to take care of the garden.

Divine creation is simply based on faith and belief in the Holy Bible as the word of God. There are 2 billion people in the world with this belief. Although being a Christian concept it isn’t a Catholic concept as they don’t teach creationism anymore (God creating the world in 6 days). Catholics teach “that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world” and “the Church now accepts evolution as a scientific theory and sees no reason why God could not have used a natural evolutionary process”. (Pullella).

While many people believe in the Book of Genesis and that God created the world as we know it in six days, many scientists believe the Big Bang was the beginning of creation and that it happened almost 14 billion years ago. The Big Bang started as a hot and infinitely dense point only a few millimeters wide. This tiny singularity violently exploded. From this explosion came the creation of all matter, energy, space, and time. Then two eras began, the radiation era and the matter era. These two events help shape the universe. Now the universe had the ability to form elements, which are the building blocks of matter. A few billion years later planets were formed and eventually the earth. What religion states took 6 days; science states took billions of years, and it has been a well-received theory for the last century.

The Big Bang theory cannot be proved by observation because it happened so long ago. What is often written as proof of the Big Bang are beliefs based on assumptions and conjecture. To say that it can all be proved using hard science isn’t an accurate statement. Some of the science used to explain the universe is sound and doesn’t require a person to choose between these two creation myths. For instance, the discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation in 1965, “showed clearly that the universe had a beginning… It turned out to be the predicted radiation left over by the initial explosion that began the expansion of the universe itself “(Ball).

However, an event that took place millions of years ago cannot be recreated with accuracy or certainty. Even if science could prove the Big Bang, it wouldn’t negate being God’s own plan for creation as the bible agrees with certain points that apply to the Big Bang theory and the evidence that supports it. The bible was written and recorded several thousand years before modern science, so it seems remarkable it would contain facts that support the Big Bang theory.

So many questions remain about our creation with dozens of creation myths formed throughout the centuries by various cultures and religions. The only theory that needs to be proven is the Big Bang Theory because it is based on science and not faith and belief. So, we really do not know that the Big Bang happened. “The notion that the Universe began in a single event which caused all of space-time and matter-energy to come into being is a theory. A theory is a proposed explanation for a set of observations. A theory can never be proven but must be "testable" through observation or experimentation. Thus far, despite some notable problems, the Big Bang Theory has remained largely consistent with the observations and is widely accepted through the cosmological community” (USM).

Work Cited

Music Is Life

According to Helen Riess, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, “Empathy plays a critical interpersonal and societal role, enabling sharing of experiences, needs, and desires between individuals and providing an emotional bridge that promotes pro-social behavior” (Riess). Based on how important empathy is to a society, one must wonder why this emotional experience is decreasing in human beings. Freelance writer Keith O’Brien wrote an article in 2010 that offers a staggering statistic from a study conducted at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, finding “that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years” (O’Brien). We need current studies to see if a decline continues or if there has been a shift that increased empathy in people.

Sara Konrath, PhD, an associate professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, is currently studying empathy as to reasons for its decline and how to increase empathy in people. Konrath shares the opinions of others doing research in this field that there is no one reason for the decline and no one way to fix it. She states in an interview with Kaitlin Luna of the American Psychological Association, “The first thing I would say is that we have to want to, it has to be important to us. The motivation really matters” (Konrath). Konrath’s study, along with studies by other scientific groups, realizes that young people today have challenges that earlier generations did not face. The culture and the world today make young people fearful for their safety and they are stressed out from living in a terrifying world. They are bombarded with negative information, and it desensitizes them, and they become numb to care what happens anymore, and that includes what happens to their fellow man. It is a more comfortable place to just not care anymore. Events like 9/11, the war in the Middle East, our rights being taken away by our own government, the worsening economy, and now the possibility of a war with Russia. It is too much to handle.

In a lot of cases, young people turn to music to cope and learn to deal with what’s going on, myself included. A study led by researchers at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found a “marked neurological difference between low-empathy and high-empathy people when listening to music” (Sharkey). I am a very emphatic person and think it is because of my lifelong love for music. Growing up I was seen as a rocker, emo, or punk for how I looked, and they are not wrong. I spent more time at Hot Topic when I was a kid than at any other store and spent my free time going to concerts. Places like Warped Tour and Hot Topic always had something with a phrase that has always stuck with me, “Music Is Life.” When I was young, I always thought about it how no matter what we were going through, there was some song that can relate to how a person is feeling. Not too long after taking this class though, I started to realize this was called empathy.

An experiment conducted by Z. Wallmark, Southern Methodist University, and M. Iacoboni, the University of California with collaboration from C. Deblieckm, University Psychiatric Center, Belgium, showed that “people who are highly empathic process music differently in their brains…music has some special power to increase our sense of connection and help us affiliate with others” (Suttie). These results were based on MRI tests of participating subjects.

Often the songs an artist writes and sings come from an experience in their own lives and the listener feels that the words express how they feel and that someone has been where they are now. One of the biggest bands I can think of who excelled in this is Linkin Park. In 2019 a woman from Orlando, Florida “helped dissuade a man from taking his own life after she quoted him lyrics from the Linkin Park song ‘One More Light” (Ramli).  Music fundamentally has a way to connect people. To help someone understand another or to just make someone feel like they are not alone.

These songs were not necessarily telling us how to handle what we were going through but often told us our feelings mattered. Music can show us that we are not alone and help us through our issues as a lot of people do not have someone to turn to for help. Therefore, at concerts most of the people attending get along well and have a good time together. We all share the same feelings about the music and message being presented to us. I have met some of the best people I know at concerts and been involved in instances where a group of us would help a fellow fan in need. Rule #1 of the mosh pit, if someone falls, you pick them up.

Work Cited

Loki's Return To Form

Loki is one of the gods of Norse mythology created in the 13th century, originating from a poem. He has a unique place among the tales of the gods. A modern-day version of Loki appears in Marvel comic books starting in 1949 and in Marvel movies in 2011. Loki of Marvel is based on the Norse god Loki of the same name. There are similarities but mostly the Marvel Loki is very different. In the Marvel movies, Thor and Loki have a hate/love relationship that goes up and down constantly. Thor can’t trust Loki and Loki doesn’t hesitate to backstab Thor. Loki is part giant in Marvel and mythology. The actual family Loki has in mythology isn’t carried over into the Marvel movies. He is not a blood relative of Thor or Odin in mythology or Marvel. Loki faces many issues and is both villain and hero in Marvel and mythology.

Although Loki spends much of his time tricking the other gods or behaving badly, he also occasionally worked for their benefit. He loved trouble and would deliberately set out to cause as much trouble as he could like when he just decided one day it was a good idea to cut off the golden hair of his brother Thor’s wife Sif. She was very proud of her hair and was devastated at losing it. Thor threatens to kill Loki if he didn’t bring her hair back. So, Loki went off and asked some dwarfs to make Sif some beautiful hair. While with the dwarfs he taunted them as well, and they wanted to kill him. Loki also loved to put people in embarrassing predicaments so he could help them and be their hero. After all, his brother Thor was one of the greatest heroes that existed and Loki was very envious of him. Their relationship moved from love to hate over and over again their whole lives due to their clashing personalities.

Marvel has brought many mythological characters to the big screen, and this is where I fell in love with Loki’s character. The story of Loki is spread over several movies and shows his hero’s journey in a variety of ways. Interestingly enough the actor who plays Loki in the Marvel movies was only hired for the first Thor movie but before Thor even started filming he was told by Marvel’s producers that he’ll be in the future Avengers movie coming out later down the line.

In the Marvel movies, Loki lives in Asgard with his parents, Odin and Frigga, and his brother, Thor. He is the second-born prince, which means that the throne of Asgard belongs to Thor. When Thor was chosen to take the throne, Loki devised a plot to make sure Thor didn’t take Asgard’s throne before he thinks Thor is ready for it. Loki’s jealousy of Thor causes conflict throughout the myth and the movie. Later on, Loki finds out he is not the true son of Odin and that he was taken from Jotunhiem by Odin after a war was fought between the Jotun and Asgardians.

Near the end of the “Thor” movie Loki and Thor battle it out. Loki is hanging on the edge of a bridge with a huge void beneath him. Loki’s father, Odin, is angry at him for trying to wipe out the Jotun in Odin’s honor and lets go of his grip with Loki plunging into the dark void. Loki is found by a leader of the Chitahuri, an alien race, working for a titan named Thanos. It is implied in the Avenger's movie that Thanos tortured Loki and thought he broke the trickster, which is why he was sent to Earth to retrieve the Tesseract (a cube that holds a stone and gives the owner infinite power) for him.

Loki is given a scepter by Thanos that makes people do anything he wills. This scepter contains the mind stone, one of the infinity stones, which gives it its mind-controlling powers. No one knew how it worked except Loki. Loki then arrives at a top-secret military facility, a lab of SHIELD's (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division), through a portal created by the Tesseract. He ends up blowing the facility up and taking control of Clint Barton and Erik Selvig's minds, as well as a few unnamed SHIELD employees. He is later challenged by Thor, Hulk, Iron-Man, and then has a brief fight with Captain America, the result being his capture. At the end of the Avengers film, Loki allowed himself to be captured, scepter and all. This not only prevented Thanos from taking the Tesseract, which is one of the infinity stones but also take his scepter from him. Viewers at this point really see Loki as a villain but it wasn’t until later that they started to see him as a hero just like in mythology.

In the movie Thor: The Dark World, after Asgard has been attacked by a vicious army of dark elves and Frigga has been murdered by the mutated elf Kurse. When Loki found out Frigga was murdered, it broke him. She was the one person who’s always believed in Loki. Despite Odin not allowing anyone to visit Loki after he was captured, Frigga used her magic to send illusions of herself to Loki to keep him company. To comfort him and try to make him see the error of his ways. When Thor later goes to Loki’s cell to ask Loki for help, he sees an illusion of Loki, an illusion of Loki trying to make himself look like he’s kept it together. When Thor calls him out on it, the spell breaks and his cell is a wreck while he is a mess. Thor then offers Loki a deal to kill Kurse and his master, Malekith, as revenge for killing their mother, Frigga, and Loki accepts, which forms a tentative alliance between the two brothers. Loki and Thor come face to face with Malekith and Kurse, where they battle the dark elf to stop him from taking the power of the Aether, another infinity stone.

They do both manage to defeat Kurse together, but not Malekith. Loki is killed by Kurse and is supposedly dead. After Thor leaves his brother's "corpse" on Svartalfhiem to search for Malekith, who had fled, it is revealed that Loki is not, indeed, dead, and has faked his own death. After Loki faked his death, no one was looking for him anymore so he figured if no one is out to kill him any longer he can do whatever pleases him. Even though Loki could be mean-spirited at times, he also had moments of kindness and remorse. Loki stated, “I don’t enjoy hurting people. I don’t enjoy it. I do it because I have to, because I’ve had to…. Because it’s part of the illusion. It’s the cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear. A desperate play for control” (Glorious Purpose). So finally being free and having a sense of redemption in avenging his mother’s death, Loki wasn’t interested in causing another war, he just wanted to go back to being who he was, the trickster.

Oddly enough, his death in Thor: Dark World was supposed to be the end of his story. This was meant to be his redemption arc and the actors who played the roles of Loki and Thor played the finale of Thor: Dark World for real, thinking this was Loki’s end. When they were test screening the movie though, the audience refused to believe that this was how Loki dies. Marvel understanding this, decided to add a scene at the end that revealed Loki faked his own death.

After the ordeal on Svartalfhiem, Loki returns under the guise of an Asgardian guard to Asgard and confronts Odin, telling him that Loki is supposedly dead. It is revealed later in Thor: Ragnarok that Loki somehow removed the real Odin from the throne and took his place, now under an illusion that makes him appear to be Odin. Thor returned to Asgard to talk to his father and Loki let Thor off easy, not something his father, Odin, would have done. When Thor realized what was going on, he dragged Loki with him to find Odin. Upon finding their father, he praised Loki saying his mother would be proud of him for casting such an effective spell. Loki was shocked having never heard such praise from Odin before. Then after telling the brothers about their sister Hela and that he loved them both, Odin died. This moment stuck with Loki as for the first time in his life, Loki finally felt like he was accepted by his father as a worthy son even after the monstrosities he’s committed. When they were about to return to Asgard, Hela arrived.

She bested both Loki and Thor and sent Loki to another world. Loki thinking Thor was dead, never planned on returning to Asgard and staying in this new world. Later he found Thor was also on this planet and when Thor tried to leave, Loki agreed to help. During this time, they finally reconnected as brothers while fighting their way off the planet. Loki has craved to fight side by side with Thor, to be seen as his equal, not live in his shadow. When they arrived to Asgard, they found out Hela has taken it over. Loki helped get the Asgardians to safety as Thor fought off the attackers, even smiling seeing Thor’s destructive might. Unfortunately, they were not strong enough to save their kingdom but came to a realization that Asgard wasn’t a place, but it was wherever the Asgardians stood. So they destroyed the Asgard they knew in order to kill Hela.

After discovering that he is a Jotun, and not Aesir as he thought, Loki must deal with immense amounts of internalized self-hate. He has learned his entire life that Jotuns were nothing but heartless, brainless creatures, whose only intentions were to kill. When he learns that he is one of these creatures, Loki sees himself as a monster. The biggest struggle Loki has is with the conflict that exists between his brother and himself.

Loki's struggles with the conflict between him and his brother, Thor. He has always been envious of the attention people lavished on his brother and wishes he wasn't always pushed to the side or stuck in the shadows. Loki and Thor fought constantly throughout all the movies they were in together and it got to the point where Thor seemed to give up on trying to care for his brother Loki, which only spurred his hatred even more feeling like the only family he’s ever known has given up on him.

Because Loki uses magic during battle, which has been considered by others as an unfair tactic, he is shunned by many and deemed a trickster, up to no good. Asgard is a society of warriors and masculinity, where honor is very important, as is an honest fight. Loki's use of magic distances him from others, as his fighting tactics are considered dishonest or, even possibly, womanly. With Loki’s issues with family and people in general, he seemed destined to be the bad guy, a villain. He is called a trickster by Thor's friends and is immediately suspected of ascending to the throne through wicked plotting when it all fell to coincidence. Although Loki doesn’t want to be seen as a villain, he also never tried to change people’s opinions about him.

After all, was said and done, Loki and Thor, the two brothers standing side by side with their people head to Earth to start a new life when Thanos shows up and ruins things. Slaughtering half of the Asgardians on the ship and besting the brothers. As Thanos is torturing Thor, Loki steps up and pretends he doesn’t know where the Tesseract is but offers to help him find it by asking Thanos to be his partner. He was trying to fool him, just so he can get close and kill him. Here Loki wants to protect his brother, showing selflessness and immense growth on his part. It backfires though and Thanos kills Loki by snapping his neck and taking the Tesseract from Loki. In the end, feeling accepted by not only his family but his people, the Asgardians, in Loki’s final moments he finally accepted who he was, Loki, the prince of Asgard, Odin’s son. He died a hero, trying to stop the mad titan Thanos and save his brother Thor.

Work Cited

More Human Than Human

“Human progress is not measured by industry. It is measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege.” (Thin Ice)

We tend to think of some words as uniquely human, a trait we as humans have that other species do not. Empathy is one of those words and while “there's no agreed-upon definition" (O’Brien) of empathy. Most though agree that it’s an emotional response to another’s plight, pain, state, or suffering. "It's not just putting oneself in another's shoes…it is truly grasping what they're experiencing” (Pincus). Yet it is something that animals can demonstrate by comforting, grieving, and even rescuing each other from harm at their own expense. Humanity is another one of those words. This word has a few definitions, one describing humans themselves, the other like empathy is much broader, it is being “compassionate, sympathetic, or having a generous behavior or disposition” (Webster) in a lot of ways, showing humanity is being empathetic.

The epigraph above continues as the Twelfth Doctor starts talking about a young boy who was homeless and died on a river. The quote continues by saying how we define that boy, his value, is what defines us, it is what defines our value, and it is what not only defines an age, but a species. The value you put on an unimportant life. With The Doctor traveling through time and space, things are not always linear, as before the Twelfth Doctor there was the Eleventh Doctor who said, “You know, nine hundred years of time and space and I've never met anybody who wasn't important before” (A Christmas Carol).

If we as a species are defined by how we value an unimportant life, a life of someone without privilege, that young boy who died on the river for example. Then that life is the furthest thing from unimportant because all life is now important. The TV show Doctor Who, a show about a mad man in a box traveling through time and space, really dives into a lot and if I were to break down everything, well The Doctor would need to take the Tardis to skip to when I finish this because that would take forever. In this paper though, I would like to explore how this show explores the social constructs humans have made like race, nationality, gender, money, and sexuality really become unimportant when viewed through the eyes of an alien. We are no longer any of these things that society has labeled us as but just human beings. What he sees us as is not judged by our skin color, what land lies beneath our feet, what is between our legs, how much money is in our bank, or who we are attracted to but by how much humanity we have. How empathetic you are to that young boy who died on the river.

In the second episode of the first season of Doctor Who, The Doctor takes Rose Tyler five billion years into the future to the day the sun expands and destroys the earth. They land on a spaceship that works more as an observation deck that is hosting a watch party of the end of the world. Rose being a human and until recently had no idea there was life out there other than humans is a bit taken back by the aliens on the ship. During this watch party things suddenly hit the fan when the shielding of the ship is shut down and everyone is now in danger of burning. Now The Doctor is trying to figure out who shut down the shields but while all this is going on Rose and The Doctor start talking and Rose is still taken back by the aliens and says, “The aliens. Are so alien. You look at 'em... and they are alien” (The End of the World). The Doctor then makes a joke about it being a good thing he did not take her to the deep south. This right here, is making it clear that she is judging these aliens by race. Rose then starts to get upset and started confronting The Doctor, wondering what type of alien he is and where he is from. The Doctor a bit upset says, “This is who I am, right here, right now, all right? All that counts is here and now, and this is me!” (The End of the World) trying to illustrate that just because he may be an alien from another planet, he is the one trying to save everyone. To The Doctor the whole notion of race and nationality is meaningless because The Doctor is the last of the time lords from Gallifrey, his race was known for traveling through time and space. They have seen it all, so someone being black, blue, polka-dotted, horned, or even tentacled is all seen under the same scope as intelligent life.

There is even an episode called The Rebel Flesh that shows this. In that episode there is something known as The Flesh, it was able to self-replicate, and they used it to clone the people working in dangerous fields. The original would be able to operate the clone like a driver would a car so if an accident happened, the clone died, and the human operator stayed safe. They did not know this flesh they were using was alive until a solar tsunami caused a group of these clones to separate from their drivers. These clones had every memory of their operator and even had their personalities. When The Doctor realized that The Flesh was alive, they attempted to find a peaceful solution, but they failed as the workers thought The Flesh needed to be decommissioned. They saw The Flesh, a living organism, like one would view a malfunctioning tool. The Flesh then rebelled for their right to exist. The Flesh were viewed by the workers as inferior to humans and felt every time a clone died, and it wanted to know why should they suffer for the sake of humans?

In the world we live in, it wasn’t until 1865 that the United States abolished slavery. “Slave owners throughout history considered slaves subhuman” (Smith). They were viewed as inferior for being a different race. This is likely how The Flesh felt. They looked human, they had the memories of their human counterpart, but they were subhuman to the workers. During this episode, The Doctor is constantly trying to show Amy, the companion at the time, that these clones are just as human as we are. While the reason for it is a part of a bigger story in the show, The Doctor was also showing the workers this too. When people and clones started to die, things start to reach a boiling point, that is when one of the dead worker’s sons called using a holographic phone. The clone starts talking to the boy, like he was his real dad. Having all the dad’s memories he was able to comfort the boy. He saw the boy as his son and the clone sided with The Doctor.

At that moment, it didn’t matter if the person talking to the boy was his real dad or the clone, as the boy didn’t know the difference. When The Doctor put the clone in a situation that removed the thing that separated the two sides, it showed that the two sides were the same. While one of the clones claims that The Doctor tricked him into an act of weakness, The Doctor claimed that it was an act of humanity. That act led to them overcoming everything and when everyone left some of the clones took the places of the people who died, to take care of their family, their kids. The rest went to expose that the company they were working for was using intelligent life as expendable slave labor to the world. 

Going to all these different places in space and different time periods one might wonder how The Doctor can afford to travel everywhere. The Doctor will need things like food, shelter, clothes, and all the other everyday necessities needed to live. Money, like race, are also trivial to The Doctor. I like to think of The Doctor as a traveling gypsy, except traveling through time and space. Traveling the way The Doctor does things like a currency that may be used in a time period might not be what is used in a thousand years. It is definitely not what is going to be used on a different planet. The Doctor’s ship, the Tardis, is all The Doctor will ever need or want. It is a ship that is made with time lord technology and while it may look like a normal police box, when you step inside it is so much more. Think of it like Marry Poppins bag, it is bigger on the inside. Hundreds if not thousands of rooms, some with pools, some with libraries. Everything you will ever need to live can be found somewhere inside The Doctor’s Tardis.

This ship is everything to The Doctor. It’s an escape, it’s how The Doctor runs from the past, the future, or even boredom. In a lot of ways, The Tardis is The Doctor’s first love. In the episode "The Doctor's Wife" The Tardis even takes human form, and those feelings are seen to be mutual. You can’t put a price tag on love, not even The Tardis had one when The Doctor acquired it, as The Doctor stole it. In some time periods The Doctor does not have the money to even buy chips or coffee, in other time periods The Doctor will just use his sonic screwdriver to give you a credit card with unlimited credits or make an atm shoot money out. When you have everything, you will ever want or need, like in The Doctor’s case, things like paper coated in ink do not have value.

I mentioned earlier the conversation The Doctor had about that young boy on the river, The Doctor was talking to a wealthy businessman, Lord Sutcliffe. To The Doctor someone like that young boy who is living on the streets is just as important as someone like Lord Sutcliffe. Their social class does not matter as the whole notion of currency is trivial to The Doctor. What mattered was how Lord Sutcliffe treated that young boy and after finding out that he sacrifices people a creature imprisoned in the river so he could use its feces as a substitute for coal, The Doctor freed the creature causing Lord Sutcliffe to drown in the river. When The Doctor found out he left behind a will to leave everything to his cousin, The Doctor changed it so it was leaving everything behind to the children who are homeless. Lord Sutcliffe wanted to advance his country, but can you call it advancement when the price for it is another’s life? Was the price for utopia in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” worth a child being locked away in a basement? The child in the basement of that story can be looked at like the boy who died in the river. An unimportant life that is now the furthest thing from unimportant.

What matters to The Doctor is how you treat someone; it does not matter who they are or even what sex they are or gravitate towards. As even things like sexual orientation and gender do not mean much to The Doctor who stated, “Biological sex is flexible among my people and gender is a social construct” (Houser). This is because of the Doctor’s race, they don’t really die, they regenerate. Think of it like reincarnation, they are just born again but with a new face, a new voice, new personality, a new everything. They can be male or female. While the Doctor is seen as asexual, The Doctor is married to a woman, but also has flirted with men, referring to a time when The Doctor was a man and calling The Master who at the time was also a man, his man crush. With The Doctor’s race being able to be both male and female they see no difference between the two and often is confused as to why humans spend so much time debating these types of issues.

At the end of the day, it boils down to the Doctor being the sort of character who makes everyone feel included, no matter who they were or where they come from. In a world where human beings are demonstrating more anxiety, anger, and aggression toward each other, The Doctor is sympathetic, empathetic, and compassionate to everyone he encounters. It’s just who The Doctor is and what I find so fascinating about the character as is if we remove these social constructs that society has built, it is who we could be. As that is who the companions of The Doctor become. They become the best of humanity. There is a lot of things we can learn from this show, but I think the most important thing, the twelfth doctor said it better than I ever could, “Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never ever eat pears! Remember, hate is always foolish, but love is always wise. Always try to be nice, but never fail to be kind.” (Twice Upon a Time).

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