essay discuss where the confusion originated

The Implications and the Effects of Confusion

Introduction.

Confusion is the lack of clarity or rather a state of bewilderment or puzzlement. Sometimes, we find ourselves in a constant state of shock from the moment we wake up to the time we retire to bed at the day’s end. Any undertaking that we engage in requires a thought process.

The uninterrupted completion of a given chronology of thoughts brings about understanding of the issue at hand. Terms, such as train of thought, have been coined to explain the thought process.

A breakage in the thinking process results in confusion. This may happen in an operating theater, in an examination room, in a football match, when reciting a poem or doing other day-to-day activities.

Confusion is not limited only to the thought process. When we fail to observe any defined rules or obligations, we end up into a state of confusion. For instance, the never-ending traffic snarl-up evident in urban cities presents an intriguing picture in this context.

One or two drivers may flaunt traffic rules resulting in mayhem on the roads experienced by everyone travelling. Think of what would happen if the police downed their guns and refused to enforce the law. The society would descend into anarchy without doubt. Evidently, confusion threatens to plague every aspect of existence.

Experiences

Drawing from the experience of the prisoners in the Plato’s allegory of the cave, we see how consciously ignorance gives way to confusion. We even subconsciously build comfort in the ignorance. The truth instills fear in us and wish to avoid it at all cost, often preferring the accustomed ignorance.

On the other hand, even the unpalatable truth quenches ignorance, and the more we partake of it, the more we want. Knowledge is the magic wand to expel confusion. We are in a state of confusion for lack of knowledge. We must stay the course of knowledge to ward off confusion.

In schools, in many occasions, we have encountered difficulties in comprehending course content say in algebra, philosophy and many other disciplines. We are often in a state of confusion, either by skipping a step while solving an algebraic equitation, or unable to decipher the meaning of grammatically complex essays or texts in philosophy.

What we lack is clarity in understanding. There are many steps we have to go through to solve a problem and twist of sentences, which appear to get complicated as we read them, thus they confuse us. There are students who are able to deduce solutions faster than others.

They struggle before they free their minds from confusion. The only way to gain clarity in these situations is to practice more algebraic equations, and read the essays or text several times. The more we repeat these processes, the more we sharpen cognitive abilities of our minds.

It is human to be confused. From Plato’s allegory of the cave, we see how the prisoners who have never seen outside of the cave are intolerant to the returnee who has ascended from the cave. The returnee’s inability to measure shadows as his eyes acclimatize to the dark interior of the cave is taken as a weakness borne of having ascended from the cave.

The cave dwellers threaten death to anyone who tries to lure them from the cave. Most people do not admit that they are confused because it will be seen as a sign of weakness. It is by the fact that we are unaware that we are challenged to find the missing pieces.

As humans, we need to accept the confusion and try to free ourselves from the ignorance. This will only happen if we embrace the truth, accept enlightenment and develop a hunger for knowledge.

It is through the confusion that we get to learn the hidden uncertainties and the unknown. We are able to dig deep to get an understanding of problems. Most scientific discoveries have been made from an act of confusion.

For instance, wondering why an apple falls right back to the ground when it is thrown in the air triggers desire for understanding the mystery. Why does it not remain floating in the air?

People go to school to learn for the same reason; otherwise, we all will be living in a world full of uncertainties and unexplored mystery. There are two options, which lead to an acceptable solution. Accountants calculate using both the options and get the one with a positive impact to an organization.

Considerations are made on the long-term implications and the effect on profitability. Governments have set budgets and funds allocated to different projects, but even so, they do set aside other funds in the reserves in case an emergency arises.

This allows to alter and change plans in the event if the main plan fails. When faced with a disastrous situation, the reserves kept for such circumstances will be fundamental effecting change.

Confusion aids humans to have forethought. Thus, they are able to plan and learn from past events. Ultimately, we may submit to the thesis that confusion threatens to plague every aspect of our existence.

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IvyPanda. (2023, November 23). The Implications and the Effects of Confusion. https://ivypanda.com/essays/confusion/

"The Implications and the Effects of Confusion." IvyPanda , 23 Nov. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/confusion/.

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1. IvyPanda . "The Implications and the Effects of Confusion." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/confusion/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Implications and the Effects of Confusion." November 23, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/confusion/.

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Acknowledge the Truth of Your Confusion: It’s Helpful

Interview framing (Jeremy Bendik-Keymer):

Jeremy:  Mark, I took away (1) from our discussions, that “Getting to know the world begins in confusion.”  Can you qualify or correct that claim?  Can you explain what confusion means to you?  What sort of confusion are we talking about?  How did you come to some such thought?  What place does it have in your life and work?

Mark: I wouldn’t say that “Getting to know the world begins in confusion.” I think knowledge is pretty easy to get: you just have to be acquainted with things, and accept them. To be acquainted with things, all you have to do is confront, passively, what is there. I also don’t think there is a world , some one thing that is everything — I think there is just a multiplicity of things. This point might seem a quibble, but I actually think it’s quite important.

Now regarding confusion, I would say something like “Understanding things begins in confusion” or “Acquiring insight into things begins with confusion , ” where understanding or having insight are more sophisticated epistemic states.  Cats and dogs and babies and small children have plenty of knowledge — I’m not sure, though, that they’re ever confused. Confusion is, I think, a much more advanced cognitive position.

It’s a position that arises not through merely trying to know what a thing is or what it’s like, what qualities it itself has. Rather, confusion arises through trying to see how some thing is related to other things and to understand how those connections might (or ought to) be meaningful to oneself or are meaningful to someone else—and what this complex of relations and meanings reveal about yet other things less obviously related to the one with which you began.

Confusion is, then, different than just not knowing something in particular, it’s much more involved than that. You can get a good sense of what I mean by considering the difference between not knowing what someone said on a particular occasion (“what did they say?”) and knowing exactly what they said but being disconcerted by it (“did they just say what I think they did?!”), trying to square what was said with one’s expectations in that context and the ostensible motivation of the speaker and other associated considerations. Confusion’s an active mental state with a unique phenomenal character — being confused has a distinctive feel. It is, for me, very unpleasant, almost repulsive, in the sense that it defies engagement — it repels reflection — and so is a difficult state to maintain. One can easily — too easily — just turn away from it.

Confusion arises in everyday circumstances for me all the time: watching some interaction between my two young children, hearing some political position a friend holds, seeing something in the news, trying to guide myself on a live map through a warren of streets. But what got me reflecting on confusion in a more serious way is its presence in my professional life. Most of the time that I am really doing philosophy I am deeply confused. Seriously.

When things are going well, when I’m really getting into a project, I spend literally hours a day uncomfortably confused. It is, for me, a so-familiar and crucial part of the process I go through when writing anything of real significance (to me). It’s unpleasant, but worthwhile. Being confused is what leads to novel questions and interesting answers — and resolving confusion is the most satisfying intellectual pleasure I know. It can be exhilarating — that thrill is a large part of why I do philosophy.

Jeremy :  Thanks, Mark.  This is all really interesting, and I hope to come back to some of your assumptions later. Your comment about multiplicity and the world was intriguing.  But for now, I’d like to press on with the discussions we’ve had, since they were so rich. 

The second time we met over Zoom, you led the discussion with some responses to the place of confusion in professional philosophy, especially when working with young career scholars.  Specifically, you were concerned that (2) the profession of philosophy can fail to support confusion.  Can you tell us a little about what you meant by that and why you think that it is true?

Mark :  I had a few things in mind when I said that our profession – not ”discipline” – can fail to support confusion. I have some qualms, relevant here, about how undergrads are introduced to and taught philosophy, but I’ll set those aside to focus on concerns I have regarding the education of grad students.

As is perhaps clear from what I said earlier, I think confusion is a good thing (or it can be). Confusion can lead to incisive questions and, eventually, to answers that provide the basis for original and insightful work. Most likely grad students are frequently confused. Yet they aren’t told that confusion is a thing to appreciate and embrace and exploit . They’re probably told nothing about it. So, they reject it because confusion is such an unpleasant state and because it’s usually associated with novices.

They also probably reject it because it seems incompatible with what they’re experiencing. They’re hearing professors present material that’s been mastered by them . So, even if that material once did confuse those professors, it no longer does. They’re reading papers that even if they are the products of confusion might no longer bear its marks. The grad students that are the most conspicuous are the ones that appear the least confused, the ones who have the most to say in seminars and colloquia.

Since they’re not told anything positive about confusion, I think grad students feel some pressure to deny their confusion or to get rid of it as soon as possible or to hide it, to “fake it until they make it.” I think grad students should be told that confusion is a good thing for the reasons I’ve already given. Confusion is crucial to real learning. They shouldn’t expect it to go away or even hope that it does. If it did, they would be losing something that could be invaluable to us all. I’m confused all the time, and I’ve been devoting myself to philosophy for over 25 years.

Yet even if they wanted to take full advantage of their confusion, and were encouraged to, they can’t really. It takes a lot of time to inhabit and work through confusion. Often, grad students are not afforded that time and urged to take it. They are sometimes pressed to speak when they — justifiably — have nothing to say. They might be pressed to ask certain kinds of question s , pushed to be the first to ask a question in the discussion at a colloquium, where the expectation is that they be critical of what was just presented — to show what’s wrong with it or, more charitably, to say something illuminating in light of what was just presented — instead of being allowed to engage it more openly or obliquely . It would be great if students felt they could say in discussion: “I’m totally confused. I don’t know what to say.” This prompts the response, “What’s confusing you?”. Then one can ask a “naïve”, yet penetrating question like: “What does it mean to say…?” or “Why do you say…?” or “What exactly is the issue here?” or “What is at stake here?” or “Why are you assuming…has anything to do with…?”

Jeremy: This is wonderful. Thanks for saying this, Mark. It’s both humane and philosophical.

Mark: Another thing that inhibits confusion is the immediate pressure that grad students are under, from a number of directions (their peers, some faculty, social media), to publish. They think they have to publish if they’re ever going to get a job.

Maybe this is true. But if you’re not allowed to be confused and to work through the confusion, in the arduous, idiosyncratic way this demands, and you’re pushed to publish, you’re going to publish something that’s not that different from what’s already there, a little twist on something that you — and others — already understand. And that’s probably not going to be very interesting or significant. It’s probably not even going to be very interesting or significant to the person who wrote it. It’s likely not going to fulfill the interests that motivated the student to do philosophy in the first place!

This banishment of confusion in the education of philosophers is detrimental to the profession and to all of us in it. If confusion isn’t regarded as positive, and if you never learn to acquire the pleasures and benefits of working through it, you will recoil from confusion and dismiss its source. However, work that is extraordinary, challenging or unusually profound is going to be confusing.

Jeremy:  Mark, I wonder if we can come back to some things, which I will try to relate through where I point.  From our initial talks over Zoom, I took away (3), that what should be congenial in philosophy is staying with a certain sort of confusion together, and it would be good for philosophical institutions to support just that.  I take this to be a comment about being disciplined when doing philosophy, and I was struck by your distinction between the profession and the discipline of philosophy.  (Was it analogous to my distinction between philosophy and its institutions?  How was it different?)  This led me to want to ask you how being confused is part of being disciplined when doing philosophy.

You may have already spoken to some of that in your previous reply.  But I wonder if there is more to say?  In particular, since this series is about the intra- and inter-personal in philosophy, I wondered about what it is to be personally disciplined to engage with productive confusion in philosophy.  What are the qualities – or more broadly, what are the main phenomenological marks – of how to be disciplined in one’s personal responses when confronting philosophical confusion?

Relating these concerns together, I wonder more basically how philosophical confusion presents itself to a person.  Do you have anything more or less systematic to say about how particularly philosophical confusion appears to someone who is living as a whole person, not simply as a professional?

Mark: When you talk about being ‘disciplined’, do you have in mind a traditional, familiar notion — like, along the lines of exhibiting self-control and firmly maintaining a direction — or do you have something else in mind? A sort of punning notion related to being part of or working within a particular discipline? It’s not clear to me from your comments.

Jeremy: I meant the former but as a feature of the latter.  In other words, to do philosophy takes a certain sort (or certain sorts) of discipline (e.g., consistency with words and thoughts, fidelity to questions, fastidiousness with sources and evidence).  I am wondering about sitting with confusion in this regard and its personal dimensions.

Mark: Ok, got it.

By the discipline of philosophy, I mean the art of thinking critically, the cultivation of that skill that enables one to gain insight into things and to understand them. The profession of philosophy is all the social apparatus that makes it possible for one to make a living practicing the discipline. The former is, at least for me, mostly private and guided by curiosity about some thing(s) or other. The latter is necessarily public and maintained by interests that might have nothing to do with curiosity, insight or understanding. I guess, then, the distinction I’m making is similar to yours.

I really don’t know the extent to which people can be confused together. If you can articulate what’s confusing you — to the point where you can get someone on the same page to think with you — you aren’t deeply confused. It’s that sort of deep confusion — being completely at sea — that I was trying to give voice to. Confusion, of this deep kind, seems like a solitary state to me. So, consequently, I really don’t know the extent to which the profession (or the institutions relevant to the discipline) should try to support interpersonal confusion.

If you want to see past “the box” (the one we are supposed to think outside of) or see what holds the box together — in whatever context — you have to challenge what many take for granted to the point where things look new and confusing. Asking those (difficult) questions and evaluating their answers require a doggedness that’s hard to maintain without discipline. Then, when familiar things look strange — or disappear altogether — you have to be disciplined to withstand and hold the confusion that ensues. Sometimes you need to keep that confusion for a while, if you’re going to work through and benefit from it (by seeing things anew).

Being confused is uncomfortable, even painful, and we have, it seems, a number of different mechanisms to alleviate it in a cheap way (that is, in a way that probably won’t be beneficial), like accepting something that is dubious or deferring to authority or just dismissing what’s confusing to take up something else. Obviously, in some cases, accepting what you’ve always accepted or just letting something go might be the apt course — but satisfying yourself that it is, is what takes time and the discipline to get uncomfortable, going against the grain of how you were thinking or what everyone else is doing. And then going on (and on) in that uncomfortable way.

What prompts confusion initially is thinking that something ought to make sense — be illuminating or clearly valuable — and recognizing that it doesn’t. You have to want things to make sense in order to be confused in the first place, and you need to be piqued when they don’t. That pique has a distinctive feel. One part of being disciplined, with respect to confusion, then, is demanding things make sense. The next part is fighting to see to the bottom of things, staying with them until they make sense — until one understands the relevant things and their putative connections well enough to apprehend that they actually do fit together in the ways they are supposed to. Perhaps the hardest part, and the most important, is not letting yourself stop inquiring until you’re satisfied that things actually do make sense.

This confused inquiry, the inquiry where you’re trying to get things to make sense, also has a distinctive feel — for me it’s of pushing against a wall or trying to see through it — as you struggle to find the right angle or idea or question that will enable you to make sense of what’s confusing you. It’s hard to say more about what it is to make sense , which is obviously a key notion here, because this can differ from person to person and be different in different contexts for the same person. What it is for things to make sense to a metaphysician is different than what it is for things to make sense to someone buying a car or choosing a grad program. When things make sense, they fit together smoothly with a persuasive pull — even if you suspend judgment on that pull or recognize it to be illusory. (And that pull has a distinctive feel, too.) In the end, productive confusion results in things making sense. Once they do, you’re in a position to accept that view of things or to engage meaningfully with it in some other way, say, by challenging it or taking it apart in an instructive way.

I should say that I don’t think there is anything special about philosophical confusion or, in other words, that there is such a thing as distinctly philosophical confusion. I think there is just confusion, the expectation of sense and yet not finding it; it just has different objects in different circumstances. The confusion I experience as a professional philosopher is really no different in feel than the confusion I have when I am not “doing philosophy”, you know, when I’m just living life.

I sometimes get confused when talking to a friend or my wife when things aren’t fitting together in a way that I find satisfying. My wife will have presented all the details she regards as relevant and yet things won’t make sense to me, so I have to stop and ask questions and backtrack and go over things. In some cases, the issue really is not that significant. So this sort of confusion can be very frustrating to people if they are just trying to have a casual conversation or are making what they regard as a quick point. My point here is that the confusion I feel in these situations is just the same as when I am earnestly writing. Sometimes the disciplined response is to just let things go, to leave them jumbled.

This is an installment of  Into Philosophy .

M. Oreste Fiocco

Marcello Fiocco is currently a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy at King's College London. He has a permanent position in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. His work is primarily in metaphysics and epistemology, though he also has interests in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language and meta-ethics. Fiocco is the founder and director of TH!NK, a community outreach program that introduces philosophical thought and discourse to adolescents in public schools.

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Professor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., land of many older nations

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Confucianism.

Confucianism is one of the most influential religious philosophies in the history of China, and it has existed for over 2,500 years. It is concerned with inner virtue, morality, and respect for the community and its values.

Religion, Social Studies, Ancient Civilizations

Confucian Philosopher Mencius

Confucianism is an ancient Chinese belief system, which focuses on the importance of personal ethics and morality. Whether it is only or a philosophy or also a religion is debated.

Photograph by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images, taken from Myths and Legends of China

Confucianism is a philosophy and belief system from ancient China, which laid the foundation for much of Chinese culture. Confucius was a philosopher and teacher who lived from 551 to 479 B.C.E. His thoughts on ethics , good behavior, and moral character were written down by his disciples in several books, the most important being the Lunyu . Confucianism believes in ancestor worship and human-centered virtues for living a peaceful life. The golden rule of Confucianism is “Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you.” There is debate over if Confucianism is a religion. Confucianism is best understood as an ethical guide to life and living with strong character. Yet, Confucianism also began as a revival of an earlier religious tradition. There are no Confucian gods, and Confucius himself is worshipped as a spirit rather than a god. However, there are temples of Confucianism , which are places where important community and civic rituals happen. This debate remains unresolved and many people refer to Confucianism as both a religion and a philosophy. The main idea of Confucianism is the importance of having a good moral character, which can then affect the world around that person through the idea of “cosmic harmony.” If the emperor has moral perfection, his rule will be peaceful and benevolent. Natural disasters and conflict are the result of straying from the ancient teachings. This moral character is achieved through the virtue of ren, or “humanity,” which leads to more virtuous behaviours, such as respect, altruism , and humility. Confucius believed in the importance of education in order to create this virtuous character. He thought that people are essentially good yet may have strayed from the appropriate forms of conduct. Rituals in Confucianism were designed to bring about this respectful attitude and create a sense of community within a group. The idea of “ filial piety ,” or devotion to family, is key to Confucius thought. This devotion can take the form of ancestor worship, submission to parental authority, or the use of family metaphors, such as “son of heaven,” to describe the emperor and his government. The family was the most important group for Confucian ethics , and devotion to family could only strengthen the society surrounding it. While Confucius gave his name to Confucianism , he was not the first person to discuss many of the important concepts in Confucianism . Rather, he can be understood as someone concerned with the preservation of traditional Chinese knowledge from earlier thinkers. After Confucius’ death, several of his disciples compiled his wisdom and carried on his work. The most famous of these disciples were Mencius and Xunzi, both of whom developed Confucian thought further. Confucianism remains one of the most influential philosophies in China. During the Han Dynasty, emperor Wu Di (reigned 141–87 B.C.E.) made Confucianism the official state ideology. During this time, Confucius schools were established to teach Confucian ethics . Confucianism existed alongside Buddhism and Taoism for several centuries as one of the most important Chinese religions. In the Song Dynasty (960–1279 C.E.) the influence from Buddhism and Taoism brought about “Neo- Confucianism ,” which combined ideas from all three religions. However, in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912 C.E.), many scholars looked for a return to the older ideas of Confucianism , prompting a Confucian revival.

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World history

Course: world history   >   unit 3, bubonic plague.

• Key concepts: disease and demography
• Focus on context: disease and demography
• The diffusion of crops and pathogens, including epidemic diseases like the bubonic plague, often occured along trade routes.
• The bubonic plague - named the Black Death by later historians - was caused by the yersinia pestis bacteria, which lived in rodent populations and was spread by fleas that had bitten infected animals.
• Once the plague transferred to animals that were in close contact with humans and to humans themselves, it began to spread along established trade routes.
• It is difficult to measure the exact human cost of the plague due to limited records from the historical period.
• Most historians think that the plague killed somewhere between 30% and 60% of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1351.

Trade and disease

It first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less . . .

From the two said parts of the body this deadly [bubo] soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, then minute and numerous.

Origins of the plague outbreak

The plague spreads, effects of the plague.

• Serfdom began to disappear as peasants had better opportunities to sell their labor.
• High labor costs caused landowners to look for more efficient and profitable ways to use their land and resources, such as increasing livestock production and payments of rent in money, rather than labor.
• High labor costs also caused governments to impose price controls on wages, but these efforts were often unsuccessful and sometimes met with rebellion.
• The fear and confusion caused by the plague sometimes led to violence, in part because of a lack of medical knowledge regarding how the plague spread. Jews, Romani , lepers , and other religious and cultural minorities were sometimes blamed for causing or spreading the plague and became targets of attacks. It should be noted that the plague did not cause these social tensions, but rather created a context that made these tensions stronger and more likely to lead to violence.
• William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 140.
• Bernstein, 140-141.

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Source Confusion is a cognitive bias where an individual’s memory recall becomes inaccurate or conflated due to difficulties in distinguishing the source of information. This psychological phenomenon occurs when a person is unable to correctly attribute a memory or idea to the original source, leading to confusion or misattribution.

1. Source Misattribution: In this subtype, a person mistakenly attributes a memory or idea to an incorrect source. For example, believing a fictional event from a book as a real-life experience.

2. Cryptomnesia: It refers to the unintentional plagiarizing of someone else’s work or idea due to the inability to recall the original source. The individual mistakenly believes the idea is their own creation.

3. Source Monitoring Error: This subtype involves the difficulty in accurately determining the origin or context of a memory. Individuals may recall information but struggle to remember where or when they encountered it.

4. False Fame Effect: Here, a person mistakenly believes that a familiar name or face is associated with fame or celebrity status, even when it is merely due to their exposure in everyday life.

Source confusion can occur due to various reasons, such as:

– Information Overload: When exposed to a large amount of information, it becomes challenging to accurately recall the specific sources associated with each piece of information. For instance, after researching online about a particular topic, it might be challenging to remember which website or article provided a particular piece of information.

– Similarity in Content: When different sources present similar or identical information, it becomes arduous to distinguish the correct source of that information. This can often occur in news reporting, where multiple outlets cover the same story with slight variations in content.

– Emotional Content: Memories associated with strong emotions have a higher probability of source confusion. The emotional weight attached to a memory can overshadow the accurate recollection of its source.

A practical example of source confusion can be seen when individuals share misinformation on social media platforms. Due to the rapid spread of unverified information, people may inadvertently misattribute false claims or news to credible sources.

Source confusion can have several implications:

1. Reliability of Memory: Due to the inaccuracies resulting from source confusion, the reliability and accuracy of memory can be significantly compromised. It becomes difficult to trust our own recollections when the sources are unclear or mixed up.

2. False Information Propagation: Source confusion can contribute to the spread of misinformation or rumors as people mistakenly attribute false claims to reliable sources, leading to the dissemination of inaccurate information.

3. Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement: Cryptomnesia, a subtype of source confusion, can lead to unintentional acts of plagiarism. If individuals unintentionally present someone else’s work as their own, it can result in ethical and legal consequences.

1. Critical Evaluation: It is crucial to critically evaluate the information received, especially in the age of rapidly spreading unverified content. Verifying the credibility of the source before accepting and spreading information can help minimize source confusion.

2. Proper Citation and Referencing: When using or sharing information from various sources, providing proper citations and references can help in maintaining clarity and ensuring accurate attribution.

3. Mindfulness: Being mindful of the sources and context of information can assist in preventing source confusion. Paying attention to where information is encountered can aid in more accurate memory recall.

By understanding the nature of source confusion and being aware of its potential impacts, individuals can take steps to improve their memory recall and minimize the dissemination of inaccurate information.

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I am probably the only person on this planet that can't figure out the significance of Love and the forever lasting happiness that it brings along with the exclusive pain that secretly trumatizes us to the brink of suicide. I try my best to avoid such a complicating topic but love in itself is something no one can ever get a clear understanding off without stress or frustration. There is a very good possibility that i've been completely brainwashed as a result of watching numerous romantic films and consistantly reading novels that are totally Love related. Meg Ryan and Tom Hank films are classic examples of the 'romance' that is persistently reinforcing the romantic fantasy to suggest that imperative power of Love which is totally buried in our forever boring life without the underlying emotion attachment that keeps us alive. But is this a resemblence of our reality? Does love really conquer all? The answers to these questions are sickening invisible and as human beings, we are forever oblivious to this dominant aspect that may or may not title us as the weakest link. Like you and me, every human strives for happiness, the most valuable element of human nature. From my personal observations of people and their romantic encounters, i am more than confident to draw your attention on the very interesting and painful love cycle. Have you ever experienced childhood crushes? There may have been a sweet little girl or boy who caught your attention. As you grow, you realise that that childhood romance wasn't at all a romance story. When you finally reach an age when you think you know everything about love either because you've experienced it in high school or you've witnessed your friend's experiences, you feel more in control of your love life. But for many, love can be a nasty game that acts as an entertainment source or just purely a powerful evil disease that produces contagious anxiety and emotional distress to their lives. These people are usually bias when they speak thoughtfully in regards to love but what they are unaware off is the idea that the reality of love is not a heavenly product that brings forever lasting happiness to our lives. In order to define the true identity of love and defeat it's powerful impact on us, human beings are encouraged to fall in love as many times as...

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Definition of confusion – Learner’s Dictionary

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confusion noun ( NOT UNDERSTAND )

• I think there's been some confusion over the issue .
• There's some confusion over the arrangements .
• Confusion reigns at work at the moment .
• That was what caused the confusion.

confusion noun ( THOUGHT )

Confusion noun ( between similar things ), confusion noun ( situation ).

(Definition of confusion from the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

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confusion (n.)

c. 1300, confusioun , "overthrow, ruin," from Old French confusion "disorder, confusion, shame" (11c.) and directly from Latin confusionem (nominative confusio ) "a mingling, mixing, blending; confusion, disorder," noun of action from past-participle stem of confundere "to pour together," also "to confuse" (see confound ).

Meaning "act of mingling together two or more things or notions properly separate" is from mid-14c. Sense of "a putting to shame, perturbation of the mind" (a sort of mental "overthrow") is from c. 1400 in English, while that of "mental perplexity, state of having indistinct ideas" is from 1590s. Meaning "state of being mixed together," literally or figuratively, "a disorderly mingling" is from late 14c.

Entries linking to confusion

c. 1300, "to condemn, curse," also "to destroy utterly;" from Anglo-French confoundre , Old French confondre (12c.) "crush, ruin, disgrace, throw into disorder," from Latin confundere "to confuse, jumble together, bring into disorder," especially of the mind or senses, "disconcert, perplex," properly "to pour, mingle, or mix together," from assimilated form of com "together" (see con- ) + fundere "to pour" (from nasalized form of PIE root *gheu- "to pour").

From mid-14c. as "to put to shame, disgrace." The figurative sense of "confuse the mind, perplex" emerged in Latin, passed into French and thence to English by late 14c. The Latin past participle confusus , meanwhile, became confused (q.v.). The meaning "treat or regard erroneously as identical" is from 1580s.

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‘The People’s Joker’ and the Perils of Playing With a Studio’s Copyright

Vera Drew used the Batman villain to tell a trans coming-of-age story. When Warner Bros. found out, the filmmaker wasn’t sure what would come next.

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By Eric Grode

Vera Drew never received a cease-and-desist letter. She would like to be very clear on that point.

Drew headed to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, newly acquired passport in hand, just a half-hour after finishing the final (or so she thought) cut of “ The People’s Joker .” The chaotic, crowdsourced movie reframed Batman’s best-known nemesis as a trans coming-of-age tale, and represented a natural evolution for Drew, a Los Angeles-based television editor and writer for alt-comedy fixtures like Megan Amram, Tim & Eric and Sacha Baron Cohen.

“The People’s Joker,” which Drew starred in as well as directed and co-wrote, was one of 10 titles slated for the eminent festival’s Midnight Madness section alongside the likes of “The Blackening” and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.” Each film receives a splashy midnight premiere along with a handful of daytime screenings, most of them for press and potential distributors.

Unless, that is, a filmmaker receives a letter from Warner Bros. Discovery the day before. A letter that is not a cease-and-desist but that does convey the disapproval of a multimedia conglomerate with the rights to the film’s characters — and a huge legal team.

“This letter was actually kind of complimentary, but it expressed their concern that the film infringed on their brand,” Drew said. “I was devastated. I was like, ‘No, I got a passport for this! We hired lawyers!’”

A handful of lawyers had, in fact, advised Drew pro bono as she wrote the script with Bri LeRose. But after Peter Kuplowsky, the Midnight Madness programmer, fell in love with the film (“It was punk and exciting and transgressive and sort of inspiring”) and lobbied hard to include it in the festival, he did set one condition. “We wanted her to have a legal team vet her project,” he said, at which point Drew retained the law firm Donaldson Callif Perez.

A series of negotiations — almost literally 11th-hour negotiations, in light of the scheduled start time — between the festival staff and Warner Bros. Canada resulted in a compromise: The show could go on. Once. At midnight. After that, the first “People’s Joker” TIFF screening would also be the last one. (A Warner Bros. Discovery spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.)

On one level, the scuttled screenings were a blessing to Drew. “Honestly, the press screenings were freaking me out a bit,” she said. “We had a whole festival run planned after that, but I came back and really needed to hit pause and strategize.”

Thus began several months of silence until the film tentatively started poking its head up for a handful of “secret screenings,” then film festivals, buoyed by a #FreeThePeoplesJoker campaign on social media. This skittish limbo will finally come to an end on April 5, a full year and a half after the film’s Toronto unveiling, when the queer-centric distributor Altered Innocence will release “The People’s Joker.”

Frank Jaffe, the owner of Altered Innocence, said he received his own copy of the same not-a-cease-and-desist letter shortly after announcing his company had acquired the film. “I just think they wanted more information,” he said. “They wanted to know the scope of the release.”

That scope is currently at 76 theaters and counting. “There are a lot of queer people in a lot of small communities,” Jaffe said, “and we want to reach as many of them as we can.” He said the company’s small size — he is its sole full-time employee — makes it fairly nimble in terms of scaling up. Or, if Warner Bros. Discovery decides to get involved, scaling way down.

As it stands now, though, audiences outside the film-festival circuit are about to get their first look at a brash, kaleidoscopic riff on the Batman legend that incorporates images and plot lines from seemingly every version of Bruce Wayne and Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. Batman and the Joker.

The most obvious inspiration is “Joker,” Todd Phillips’s 2019 gritty reboot of the character. Drew originally planned to use some of her Covid-necessitated down time from her alt-comedy day jobs — “People weren’t really paying me to add fart sounds to their shows at that point” — re-editing the 2019 film for her own enjoyment.

Along the way, though, she identified various similarities between the Batman story and her own emergence as a trans woman in the often-regressive world of comedy. And other iterations of the Caped Crusader became equally strong lodestars.

“I really love the Joel Schumacher Batmans ,” Drew said, referring to the often-derided 1990s sequels that added nipples to the costumes worn by both Val Kilmer and George Clooney. “They feel like really big, gay, expensive comic-book movies. Queer-coded villains are pretty much my favorite trope, and Joker has always been a really queer character to me.”

And while she said she appreciated what she called “some of the anarcho-leftist messages” in “Joker,” Drew saw the value of questioning the current comic-book monoculture on a more fundamental level.

“I never thought of it as ‘Now it’s the girls’ turn!’” she said of her own effort. “It speaks more to how we have to hear all the time that these films are our modern myths. I think a lot of that is Marvel propaganda.”

The Joker may be the purview of DC Comics, not Marvel, but the fear of running afoul of copyright laws was no less of a concern.

“I kept myself very informed legally in terms of what qualifies as a parody and what fair use really is,” said Drew, referring to the legal doctrine that allows artists to use copyrighted material without permission or consequence depending on the circumstances. The “People’s Joker” poster calls it “A Fair Use Film by Vera Drew.”

Rebecca Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert in fair use, said artistic works find themselves on safer legal ground when they comment on the original material in a transformative way.

“Favored use is critical in that it performs an interpretation,” said Tushnet, who has not seen the film but was willing to discuss it in the abstract. “A parody is the classic example, but it doesn’t have to be funny. If the metaphor that the Joker represents here is a different metaphor, then it might well fall under the category of transformative fair use.”

“Transformative” is an understatement for what Drew and her crew — more than 100 artists collaborated with her virtually during the pandemic, the majority of them trans and/or queer — have done with and to the Batman universe, creating new stop-motion and 2D-animated sequences as well as computer-generated imagery. Drew maintains that they were hardly flying under the radar.

“I kind of assumed it was fine because I hadn’t heard from Warner Bros. the entire time I was making it,” Drew said. “I worked at Adult Swim for a number of years, which is owned by Warner Bros. After every meeting, I would say, ‘Hey, just so you know, I’m working on a Joker parody!’ And everyone was always like, ‘That sounds awesome!’”

Even after Drew felt confident that the bulk of “The People’s Joker” was legally in the clear, one aspect remained worrisome after Altered Innocence acquired the film: its soundtrack, for which Drew had commissioned cover songs and parodies of “Batman”-themed music by the likes of Prince and Seal.

Securing clearances for these versions, however, was another story. “We had a budget, but every music publisher was concerned about not wanting to rock the Warner Bros. boat,” Drew said.

Justin Krol and Quinn Scharber had composed large chunks of the film’s score already, with what Krol described as “nods to different Batman eras.” Drew called them back to steer those spot-on musical cues a little further from the spot.

“Instead of doing a sound-alike,” Krol said of the new material, “we came in from the perspective that we were doing an extension of that world.”

Not even these last-minute soundtrack tweaks were enough to avoid the attention of the keepers of the Batman kingdom. “I felt just the way Vera felt,” Jaffe, the Altered Innocence owner, said of hearing from Warner Bros. Discovery himself. “It is very intimidating to get a letter from a company with a ton of lawyers. ”

Jaffe said he was also mindful of not antagonizing the company when its own “Joker” follow-up, “Joker: Folie à Deux,” was set for an October release.

“Obviously, if ‘Joker 2’ was coming out in April, we probably wouldn’t want to put ours out in April,” he said. “We didn’t want to be aggressive. Everybody should have space to play.”

Drew also wanted to see some space between the two “Joker” openings, if only to avoid any confusion. And she said she was sympathetic to Warner Bros. Discovery and other corporate megaliths.

“I understand why media conglomerates want to protect their brand,” she said. “They’re probably never going to give us their stamp of approval, and I don’t blame them. But at every festival screening, it seemed like some lawyer came up to me and said, ‘Yeah, I think this is fine.’”

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COVID-19 Pandemic

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 11, 2024 | Original: April 25, 2023

The outbreak of the infectious respiratory disease known as COVID-19 triggered one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history. COVID-19 claimed nearly 7 million lives worldwide. In the United States, deaths from COVID-19 exceeded 1.1 million, nearly twice the American death toll from the 1918 flu pandemic . The COVID-19 pandemic also took a heavy toll economically, politically and psychologically, revealing deep divisions in the way that Americans viewed the role of government in a public health crisis, particularly vaccine mandates. While the United States downgraded its “national emergency” status over the pandemic on May 11, 2023, the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will reverberate for decades.

A New Virus Breaks Out in Wuhan, China

In December 2019, the China office of the World Health Organization (WHO) received news of an isolated outbreak of a pneumonia-like virus in the city of Wuhan. The virus caused high fevers and shortness of breath, and the cases seemed connected to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, which was closed by an emergency order on January 1, 2020.

After testing samples of the unknown virus, the WHO identified it as a novel type of coronavirus similar to the deadly SARS virus that swept through Asia from 2002-2004. The WHO named this new strain SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2). The first Chinese victim of SARS-CoV-2 died on January 11, 2020.

Where, exactly, the novel virus originated has been hotly debated. There are two leading theories. One is that the virus jumped from animals to humans, possibly carried by infected animals sold at the Wuhan market in late 2019. A second theory claims the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research lab that was studying coronaviruses. U.S. intelligence agencies maintain that both origin stories are “plausible.”

The First COVID-19 Cases in America

The WHO hoped that the virus outbreak would be contained to Wuhan, but by mid-January 2020, infections were reported in Thailand, Japan and Korea, all from people who had traveled to China.

On January 18, 2020, a 35-year-old man checked into an urgent care center near Seattle, Washington. He had just returned from Wuhan and was experiencing a fever, nausea and vomiting. On January 21, he was identified as the first American infected with SARS-CoV-2.

In reality, dozens of Americans had contracted SARS-CoV-2 weeks earlier, but doctors didn’t think to test for a new type of virus. One of those unknowingly infected patients died on February 6, 2020, but her death wasn’t confirmed as the first American casualty until April 21.

On February 11, 2020, the WHO released a new name for the disease causing the deadly outbreak: Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19. By mid-March 2020, all 50 U.S. states had reported at least one positive case of COVID-19, and nearly all of the new infections were caused by “community spread,” not by people who contracted the disease while traveling abroad. 

At the same time, COVID-19 had spread to 114 countries worldwide, killing more than 4,000 people and infecting hundreds of thousands more. On March 11, the WHO made it official and declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

The World Shuts Down

Pandemics are expected in a globally interconnected world, so emergency plans were in place. In the United States, health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set in motion a national response plan developed for flu pandemics.

State by state and city by city, government officials took emergency measures to encourage “ social distancing ,” one of the many new terms that became part of the COVID-19 vocabulary. Travel was restricted. Schools and churches were closed. With the exception of “essential workers,” all offices and businesses were shuttered. By early April 2020, more than 316 million Americans were under a shelter-in-place or stay-at-home order.

With more than 1,000 deaths and nearly 100,000 cases, it was clear by April 2020 that COVID-19 was highly contagious and virulent. What wasn’t clear, even to public health officials, was how individuals could best protect themselves from COVID-19. In the early weeks of the outbreak, the CDC discouraged people from buying face masks, because officials feared a shortage of masks for doctors and hospital workers.

By April 2020, the CDC revised its recommendations, encouraging people to wear masks in public, to socially distance and to wash hands frequently. President Donald Trump undercut the CDC recommendations by emphasizing that masking was voluntary and vowing not to wear a mask himself. This was just the beginning of the political divisions that hobbled the COVID-19 response in America.

Global Financial Markets Collapse

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with billions of people worldwide out of work, stuck at home, and fretting over shortages of essential items like toilet paper , global financial markets went into a tailspin.

In the United States, share prices on the New York Stock Exchange plummeted so quickly that the exchange had to shut down trading three separate times. The Dow Jones Industrial Average eventually lost 37 percent of its value, and the S&P 500 was down 34 percent.

Business closures and stay-at-home orders gutted the U.S. economy. The unemployment rate skyrocketed, particularly in the service sector (restaurant and other retail workers). By May 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate reached 14.7 percent, the highest jobless rate since the Great Depression . 

All across America, households felt the pinch of lost jobs and lower wages. Food insecurity reached a peak by December 2020 with 30 million American adults—a full 14 percent—reporting that their families didn’t get enough to eat in the past week.

The economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, like its health effects, weren’t experienced equally. Black, Hispanic and Native Americans suffered from unemployment and food insecurity at significantly higher rates than white Americans. 

Congress tried to avoid a complete economic collapse by authorizing a series of COVID-19 relief packages in 2020 and 2021, which included direct stimulus checks for all American families.

The Race for a Vaccine

A new vaccine typically takes 10 to 15 years to develop and test, but the world couldn’t wait that long for a COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Trump administration launched “ Operation Warp Speed ,” a public-private partnership which provided billions of dollars in upfront funding to pharmaceutical companies to rapidly develop vaccines and conduct clinical trials.

The first clinical trial for a COVID-19 vaccine was announced on March 16, 2020, only days after the WHO officially classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. The vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer were the first ever to employ messenger RNA, a breakthrough technology. After large-scale clinical trials, both vaccines were found to be greater than 95 percent effective against infection with COVID-19.

A nurse from New York officially became the first American to receive a COVID-19 vaccine on December 14, 2020. Ten days later, more than 1 million vaccines had been administered, starting with healthcare workers and elderly residents of nursing homes. As the months rolled on, vaccine availability was expanded to all American adults, and then to teenagers and all school-age children.

By the end of the pandemic in early 2023, more than 670 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in the United States at a rate of 203 doses per 100 people. Approximately 80 percent of the U.S. population received at least one COVID-19 shot, but vaccination rates were markedly lower among Black, Hispanic and Native Americans.

COVID-19 Deaths Heaviest Among Elderly and People of Color

In America, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted everyone’s lives, but those who died from the disease were far more likely to be older and people of color.

Of the more than 1.1 million COVID deaths in the United States, 75 percent were individuals who were 65 or older. A full 93 percent of American COVID-19 victims were 50 or older. Throughout the emergence of COVID-19 variants and the vaccine rollouts, older Americans remained the most at-risk for being hospitalized and ultimately dying from the disease.

Black, Hispanic and Native Americans were also at a statistically higher risk of developing life-threatening COVID-19 systems and succumbing to the disease. For example, Black and Hispanic Americans were twice as likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 than white Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic shined light on the health disparities between racial and ethnic groups driven by systemic racism and lower access to healthcare.

Mental health also worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The anxiety of contracting the disease, and the stresses of being unemployed or confined at home, led to unprecedented numbers of Americans reporting feelings of depression and suicidal ideation.

A Time of Social & Political Upheaval

In the United States, the three long years of the COVID-19 pandemic paralleled a time of heightened political contention and social upheaval.

When George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, it sparked nationwide protests against police brutality and energized the Black Lives Matter movement. Because so many Americans were out of work or home from school due to COVID-19 shutdowns, unprecedented numbers of people from all walks of life took to the streets to demand reforms.

Instead of banding together to slow the spread of the disease, Americans became sharply divided along political lines in their opinions of masking requirements, vaccines and social distancing.

By March 2024, in signs that the pandemic was waning, the CDC issued new guidelines for people who were recovering from COVID-19. The agency said those infected with the virus no longer needed to remain isolated for five days after symptoms. And on March 10, 2024, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center stopped collecting data for its highly referenced COVID-19 dashboard.

Still, an estimated 17 percent of U.S. adults reported having experienced symptoms of long COVID, according to the Household Pulse Survey. The medical community is still working to understand the causes behind long COVID, which can afflict a patient for weeks, months or even years.

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“CDC Museum COVID Timeline.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . “Coronavirus: Timeline.” U.S. Department of Defense . “COVID-19 and Related Vaccine Development and Research.” Mayo Clinic . “COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Race/Ethnicity: Current Data and Changes Over Time.” Kaiser Family Foundation . “Number of COVID-19 Deaths in the U.S. by Age.” Statista . “The Pandemic Deepened Fault Lines in American Society.” Scientific American . “Tracking the COVID-19 Economy’s Effects on Food, Housing, and Employment Hardships.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . “U.S. Confirmed Country’s First Case of COVID-19 3 Years Ago.” CNN .

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