filamentosmovimentos

"When an organism experiences perturbation in the environment, allostatic responses are mobilized in order to provide stability through intervention. In many cases, this includes the activation of the "stress response".
(...)
Engineering defines stress as a measure of the internal forces acting within a deformable body - an apt definition when considered in the context of the "bend but nor break" metaphor of resilience... 
In Selye's interpretation, stress was the result of an organism's failed attempts to appropriately cope with a physical challenge.
Perturbations, if left unchecked, can lead to *extended vulnerability, decreased fitness, disease, or even death."

in "Resilience and vulnerability: a neurobiological perspective"

by Ilia N. Karatsoeos and Bruce S. McEwen
* added by Catarina

"Our power of acting or force of existing is increased or diminished in a continuous manner, on a continuous line, and this is what we call affectus, it's what we call existing. 
(...) Spinoza will engender all the passions, in their details, on the basis of two fundamental affects: joy as an increase in the power of acting, sadness as a diminution or destruction of the power of acting. 
(...) This conception will allow Spinoza to become aware of a quite fundamental moral and political problem: how does it happen that people who have power [pouvoir], in whatever domain, need to affect us in a sad way? 
And Spinoza says, in the Theological-Political Treatise, that this is a profound point of connection between the despot and the priest —they both need the sadness (guilt, debt) of their subjects. Inspiring sad passions is necessary for the exercise of power. (...) In sadness one is wretched. It's for this reason that the powers-that-be [pouvoirs] need subjects to be sad. Agony has never been a cultural game of intelligence or vivacity."


Deleuze "on Spinoza"

coreographer Micheline Torres
photography by Manuel Vason