March 2 - 9 of Swords

The nine of swords represented by the Tavistock Institute of Human relations. A mountain between a sun and moon features a fortress with a dome shaped top. The mountain is surrounded by events leading to the founding of the institute. Below, a cloud has the words "the social engagement of social sciences" on it. Beneath this is an ouroboros whose spiked reach out to all the local and international clients of the institute.

Following on from the feelings of overload and burden yesterday, this card represents nightmares and anxiety about the future.

Appropriately it's represented here by The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, a UK governmental body established in 1946 that acted regionally, nationally, and internationally for “the social engagement of social sciences” or more bluntly, using theoretical methods to “change behavior in groups and civilian populations.”

Obviously the name Tavistock brings to mind the overbearing interference of the UK government in constantly trying to block any sort of trans care, or only dispensing it as a last resort after you’ve gone through years of waiting around and a thorough psychiatric probing. A population where everyone just conformed to the two standard cis gender roles would indeed be much easier to control, so to a “Labour” government obsessed with means testing, pathologizing and cutting benefits, it’s of course desirable to treat “normality” as a virtue and any difference as disease to eliminate.

I could talk about so many things, the awful CBT and soft conversion therapy I’ve personally received in the UK, how state surveillance and punishment disproportionately targets autistic people, how even punitive and inadequate psychological care is too hard to access, how outcomes are measured in “productivity” rather than happiness. A tendency that is not technic in the big machines or internet enabled devices way, but has infested every aspect of life as much as people fear tiktok attention spans have; people I want to ally with constantly crowing “just be normal” or getting sucked down a health and fitness grifthole.

An exhausting and sad card. I’ll be honest, I almost put it back when I pulled it lol. But obviously a big part of contemporary technological thought nevertheless.