My principal source for this post will be the modern classic of comparative politics, Patterns of Democracy (2nd edition) by Arend Lijphart (rhymes with pipe-heart), published in 2012.
Although I will be writing from an American perspective, Lijphart's book is not about the United States. Instead, it provides a zoomed-out view of 36 democracies during the period from 1945 to 2010. Why 36? These are the countries that were democratic for at least 20 years leading up to 2010 and have a population of at least a quarter million. You can see the full list here.
Before getting into the details of American democracy, I'll need to explain Lijphart's approach to classifying democracies in general.

Majoritarian vs. Consensus: two contrasting approaches to democracy

In Lijphart’s view, the fundamental dilemma of democracy can be summed up by one question: who should the government be responsive to when the people are in disagreement? One answer is the majority of the people, or quite often in practice, a plurality of the people. This is the crux of the majoritarian model of democracy. In contrast, as Lijphart describes it,

[The consensus model of democracy] accepts majority rule only as a minimum requirement. ...Its rules and institutions are aimed at broad participation in government and broad agreement on the policies that the government should pursue. ...the consensus model tries to share, disperse, and limit power in a variety of ways. A closely related difference is that the majoritarian model of democracy is exclusive, competitive, and adversarial, whereas the consensus model is characterized by inclusiveness, bargaining, and compromise.

As Lijphart argues, the consensus model is the fundamentally more democratic approach, because the majoritarian model, by definition, excludes large portions of the population from a seat at the table of government, particularly minorities of all types.
In fact, in sufficiently diverse societies, such as those with stark ethnic, religious, racial or other cleavages, majoritarianism can be not only undemocratic but also downright dangerous, as minorities may find themselves permanently denied access to power, leading to political instability. An example is Northern Ireland with its Protestant majority and Catholic minority. Protestants formed all of the governments for 50 years from 1921 onwards, leading to mass Catholic protests in the 1960’s and a violent civil war.
Traditionally, there is assumed to be a trade-off between the two models: while consensus democracy is more inclusive and democratic, it is considered to be less decisive and generally less effective at policy making, in part because of the relatively slow process of consensus building and the shorter shelf-life of coalition cabinets
Majoritarianism and its associated two-party system have also been argued to have other advantages, such as presenting voters with a clear choice between two contrasting alternatives and providing a moderating influence due to the strong incentive to woo moderates away from the opposing party. Note the contradiction in these arguments: if the two parties are strongly incentivized to woo moderates from the center, then the parties will become increasingly similar, making the supposedly clear choice between them less meaningful.
By the end of the book, Lijphart comes to the conclusion that there are no significant disadvantages to the consensus model. According to his analysis, consensus democracy is both more democratic and more effective at policy-making. He also finds that consensus democracies tend to be “kinder, gentler” nations: by better protecting the environment, putting fewer of their citizens in prison, and providing more economic assistance to their own citizens and to developing nations. I will discuss Lijphart’s conclusions in more depth later on.

Joint-power and Divided-power: two complementary approaches to consensus democracy

Going a step deeper, Lijphart describes two complementary approaches to building a consensus democracy (or a majoritarian democracy, if the antithesis of each approach is used). The first, the joint-power approach, seeks to broadly share power within institutions. Examples of joint-party institutions include multiparty (as opposed to two-party) systems, proportional representation, and multiparty coalition cabinets.
The second approach, the divided-power approach, seeks to diffuse power across separate institutions, in a system of checks and balances. Examples include separate central and regional governments (federalism), bicameral legislatures, activist constitutional courts with the power of judicial review, and independent central banks.
Note that these two approaches are complementary, not mutually exclusive. A democracy can embrace both joint-power and divided-power approaches, reject both, or embrace one while rejecting the other. As such, every democracy can be roughly divided into one of 4 quadrants. Here is a table displaying a prototypical democracy from each quadrant.

	joint-power	non-joint-power
non-divided-power	Israel	UK
divided-power	Switzerland	USA

There are shades of gray between the two extremes of either approach. For some examples, take a look at this scatter plot showing where each of the 36 democracies fall along the two dimensions (in Lijphart’s lingo, divided-power is synonymous with federal-unitary, and joint-power is synonymous with executive-parties). I’ve highlighted the four prototypical democracies from the table above, and as you can see, even they do not adhere perfectly to the extreme ends of either dimension.
The USA is quite lonely in its quadrant, with only Canada, Argentina, and Australia acting as close neighbors. Canada in fact is a slightly better example of the non-joint-power approach, with its more dominant single party cabinets in contrast with the USA's executive-legislative balance, while the USA is a better example of divided-power with its uniquely strong federalism.
I will argue later that many of the weaknesses of American government are due in part to the rejection of the joint-power approach. These include our adversarial, hyperpartisan two-party system, the failure to adequately represent minorities of all types in government, persistent executive-legislative and House-Senate deadlock, and institutional whiplash following transfers of power between the parties. I will also argue that the USA’s embrace of divided-power is a major source of institutional strength, with some exceptions where I believe the approach has been taken too far or misused.

Non-Joint-Power in the USA

Presidential vs Parliamentary Systems

Americans who don’t keep up with international politics would probably be surprised to learn that outside of North and South America, the vast majority of democracies don’t have presidents, they have parliamentary systems. In Lijphart’s sample of 36 sufficiently large and long-lived democracies, only 6 are presidential: the United States, France, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, and South Korea. Let’s review the 3 crucial differences between parliamentary and presidential systems:

1. In parliamentary systems, the head of government (usually called the prime minister) is selected by the legislature, while presidents are popularly elected, either by direct vote, or in the case of the United States, by an electoral college (in fact, the USA is the only remaining country to use an electoral college).
2. Prime ministers remain in office until they either resign or are forced to resign by a legislative vote, while presidents remain in office for a set period of time and can only be removed under extraordinary circumstances.
3. Parliamentary systems have a collegial executive, meaning that executive power is shared by a group of people, while in presidential systems power is held by a single person. In terms of the majoritarian-consensus contrast, it doesn’t get any more majoritarian than concentrating all executive power into a single individual elected by a majority.

Depending on the country, prime ministers can vary in their influence over the cabinet, from preeminence (the UK) to an equal-among-equals (the Swiss “presidency” which annually rotates among a 7 member executive council). However, in general, major decisions in parliamentary systems are made by the cabinet as a whole, while presidents can make major decisions alone, even against the will of the entire cabinet, who are essentially glorified advisers to the president.
One might think that a consensus parliamentary system, with its collegial and relatively short-lived coalition cabinets, would be less decisive and more ineffective at policy making, a common notion which Lijphart convincingly argues against. Part of his argument is based on empirical data on quality of governance, the other part is based on the observation that even in countries with very short-lived cabinets such as the former Fourth French Republic, government ministers generally have a much longer tenure than the cabinets they are a part of, while day-to-day administration continues largely uninterrupted during cabinet shakeups.
Majoritarian systems like those in the United States actually have the bigger claim to inconsistent policy-making than consensus parliamentary systems with short-lived coalition cabinets. While cabinets may frequently be replaced, their makeup in terms of the proportion of each party in the cabinet changes to a relatively small degree, while in majoritarian systems like the USA or the UK the drastic swings in power from one party to another can cause chaotic policy whiplash.
For a recent example, think of the failure of the United States to maintain consistent foreign policy, with President Trump unilaterally withdrawing from multiple international agreements that had been painstakingly negotiated by the Obama administration only a few years earlier. Dealing with long-term problems and maintaining a coherent strategy under these circumstances is very difficult, if not impossible.
In theory there could be hybrids of parliamentary and presidential systems, but in practice it almost never happens, with the one exception in Lijphart’s 36 democracies being Switzerland with its Federal Council elected to a fixed four-year term by Parliament, and no option of being dismissed by a legislative vote.
Lijphart classifies the possible hybrids into six distinct categories, summarized concisely by this table. My personal favorite is Hybrid III, in which the president is selected by the legislature for a fixed term. The United States very nearly was a Hybrid III until the Constitutional Convention changed course at the last minute and chose the electoral college system instead. Interestingly, if the electoral college fails to produce a majority for any candidate, then Hybrid III is the next step, with a contingent election taking place in the House of Representatives.
The Framers feared that the president would be dominated by the legislature, and so the electoral college was yet another way to ensure executive independence. In practice, the executive has gradually encroached on the legislature’s power, in what is seen by some as a tendency towards authoritarianism, while the electoral college itself was an almost immediate failure. The electors were intended to be free agents, voting on their conscience without external pressure, but it wasn’t long before party politics set in and electors were sworn to vote for a particular party’s candidate ahead of time.
Perhaps even worse, states began to award all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote, because statewide majorities had a strong incentive to award all of their electors to their favored candidate. Once a couple of states had done it, the others had to follow suit, or else their majority’s favored candidate would face a disadvantage.
Winner-take-all for each state’s electors was not the intended outcome, but rather the dominant strategy (in game theory terms) of a system in which each state is allowed to choose the method of selecting its own electors. A major negative consequence, as we are well aware today, is that presidential candidates have a strongly reduced incentive to strive for the votes of citizens who live in the roughly two-thirds of states that have solid partisan majorities (i.e. the non-swing-states).

Executive-legislative Balance

In some presidential systems, such as France, the president is dominant, with the legislature in a subordinate role, while in the USA the doctrine of separation of powers has provided for relative balance between the president and the legislature, an unusual state of affairs in non-joint-power democracies with their typically dominant executives. While this has been a positive in that it limits the damage done by feckless presidents, it has also introduced a recurring issue of legislative deadlock when the presidency and either the House or Senate are controlled by different parties.
For example, if Democrats fail to win both Senate seats in the upcoming Georgia runoffs, then Biden will likely be unable to pass any part of his legislative agenda despite having won a convincing nationwide election, an all-too-common situation in which the president is incentivized to legislate unilaterally via executive order.
One solution proposed by the bipartisan Committee on the Constitutional System in 1987 was to allow either the president or Congress to resolve deadlock by calling for new elections for both the presidency and for Congress, an experiment which was actually tried by Israel in 1996, though the system was reverted in 2003. In contrast, many parliamentary systems have procedures in place to resolve deadlock between the cabinet and the legislature, or in the case of bicameral legislative systems, between the upper and lower houses.
One example is Australia’s double dissolution procedure, which is triggered when the upper house persistently fails to pass legislation already passed by the lower house, potentially dissolving both houses and triggering new elections. In Australia this level of deadlock is considered a crisis occurring on average once every couple of decades, while in the United States it is just another Tuesday.

Monarchy… not so bad?

Just as an interesting aside, it was surprising to me that almost half of Lijphart’s 36 democracies are constitutional monarchies, including such diverse countries as Barbados, Belgium, Jamaica, Japan, Spain, and Sweden. Equally surprising was that this is largely considered a good thing (with caveats), even by political scientists. As an American I have always assumed that monarchies within a democracy are harmless at best, dangerous at worst, but in Lijphart’s words “[a monarchy] provides a head of state who is an apolitical and impartial symbol of unity.”
The two exceptions are when the monarch becomes a divisive force, as King Leopold III did in postwar Belgium before abdicating in 1951. The other pitfall occurs when the monarch has real political power, a clear violation of democratic principles, the most frequent example being the power to appoint the prime minister, which can become quite consequential when parliament is unable to reach an agreement.
Lijphart also dispels the widespread but mistaken notion that presidentialism is incompatible with monarchy. Presidents are typically both head of state and head of government, but there is no reason a president could not be head of government with a monarch as head of state. Amusingly, Lijphart also observes that this view, though incorrect, has “saved” several democratizing countries with monarchs from adopting presidential systems (for example 1970’s Spain).
Should the United States have been a constitutional monarchy? Though the idea of American royalty was understandably repugnant to the Founding Fathers, perhaps a powerless monarch, a sort of national mascot, might not have been such a bad thing after all, especially now with Americans being so deeply divided. Then again, the American King (or Queen) might have inevitably become a divisive force, as even our flag has become a partisan symbol in recent times.

Electoral Systems

The majoritarian non-joint-power approach is characterized by single-member districts with the winner determined by plurality or majority, while the consensus approach is characterized by multi-member districts with proportional representation (PR). Electoral systems are an extremely important factor, but not the only one, determining the number of effective political parties.
Most of us are familiar with the single-member district plurality/majority approach used in the United States, also known as first-past-the-post, but PR is not as widely known among Americans so I'll briefly explain it by way of example. Suppose that in lieu of having a single representative for each House district, we instead had 10 representatives per district, but each citizen still got only a single vote, and that vote was for a party rather than for a particular candidate. If 20% of the vote were for the Socialist Party, then 2 of the 10 representatives would be socialists (drawn from a Socialist Party list), and so on.
In the above example the party representation in the House would be roughly proportional to the votes, in contrast to the USA’s elections (mostly by plurality) where the votes for losing candidates are essentially discarded and those citizens receive no representation in government. It’s easy to see why PR is widely considered to be more democratic.
In diverse countries, majority/plurality elections are especially problematic because minorities are unlikely to have any representation in the legislature unless they form a majority in at least one district. Some diverse countries have attempted to solve this problem indirectly by setting aside districts for minority representation, such as the Maori districts in New Zealand, the “untouchable” districts in India, and “affirmatively” gerrymandered districts in the United States for Black and Native American representation, though in some cases the constitutionality of those districts has been called into question.
Considering the difficulty that racial minorities have had in achieving representation in the United States, it's not unreasonable to say that single-member districts are an important aspect of institutional racism. Unfortunately, electoral systems are very difficult to change, and most democracies have stuck with their original choices, the one notable exception being New Zealand's transition to PR in the 1990's after the dominant two parties essentially tricked themselves into offering a referendum on PR, which unexpectedly passed despite opposition from both parties.
Predictably, PR is often met with hostility from successful politicians in majority/plurality countries. In 1993, Bill Clinton commented that PR is “anti-democratic” and “very difficult to defend” while withdrawing his nomination for Lani Guinier as Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights. Guinier, a woman of color, had previously advocated a PR approach for city government elections in order to provide Black voters with enhanced representation.

District Magnitude

District magnitude, defined as the number of representatives per district, is a very important determinant of proportionality. In PR systems, the larger the district magnitude, the more proportional the outcome. To achieve maximum proportionality the size of the district would need to be the entire nation.
Fortunately, it is possible to maximize proportionality while still maintaining the advantages of regional representation by using a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system, as Germany and New Zealand do. In those countries, each voter gets two votes, one for their local single-member district candidate, and another for the political party of their choice. Roughly half of the seats in the legislature go to the single-member districts, and the rest are assigned to each party so that the overall result is proportional to the party vote. This system would be well-suited to a large country like the United States with a strong need for regional representation, and where multi-member districts large enough to achieve proportionality would result in an oversized legislature.
In contrast, the larger the district magnitude in majority/plurality systems, the more disproportional the results will be, which is why very few plurality countries still use multi-member districts. The exceptions are Mauritius’ legislature with it's three-member districts, and the United States’ electoral college with its absurdly large statewide districts, also known as winner-take-all.

Other Factors Affecting the Number of Parties

I mentioned that there are other factors besides the electoral system which influence the number of parties. Presidential systems strongly discourage smaller parties, because only the largest parties have a chance of winning the presidency, an extremely important political prize. This can suppress small parties even in presidential systems which have PR elections for the legislature, such as Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Argentina. The effect is even stronger when legislative elections are held at the same time as the presidential election, as many are in the USA.
Another major factor are the various state laws in the United States which have a tendency to suppress small parties. And yet another is our primary elections which give a strong incentive for dissenting candidates to try their hand at winning nomination to a major party instead of forming their own party.
A factor which does not have a strong effect on the number of parties, contrary to popular belief, is ranked choice voting (also known as instant-runoff or the alternative vote). RCV and other similar systems may have positive effects such as reducing the candidate spoiler effect and eliminating the necessity of choosing the “lesser evil” candidate, but ultimately, if there is only a single winner decided by plurality/minority, then only the most popular parties are likely to prevail. As an example, Australia has used RCV for over a century, but still has very nearly a two-party system.

Our Two-and-a-half Party System

Pure two-party systems are extremely rare. Australia, pre-1996 New Zealand, and the UK come very close, with Malta being perhaps the best modern example. In Lijphart’s view the United States is better labeled as a “two-and-a-half” party system, as the Democratic party often acts as two parties in Congress, separated into the more conservative southern faction and the northern liberals. That might sound unusual, but factionalized parties are not too uncommon the world over, including the conservative Liberal Democrats in Japan, the Congress Party of India (which has since become less divided), and the Italian Christian Democrats before their dissolution in the early 1990’s.

Divided-power in the USA

To keep the length of this post reasonable, I'll leave the explanation of divided-power to part 2, where I'll discuss the USA’s uniquely strong approach to federalism and bicameralism, its extremely rigid constitution, the independence of the central bank, and the paradoxical nature of the Supreme Court. I’ll finish up by explaining Lijphart’s conclusions on the overall effectiveness of majoritarian vs. consensus democracy, and then give my thoughts on the future of democratic institutional reform in the United States.

This is the situation, and I don't believe the core of any one of these points is really deniable when taking in the totality of the situation.

1. Destiny said some stupid shit that had a HIGH chance of getting himself in trouble with Twitch--if he had taken a split-second to word it differently, he would have saved himself a lot of trouble.
2. What Destiny said was technically against TOS. It was also stupid, irresponsible, and wrong.
3. Signal boosting the clip was irresponsible. The degree of this is debatable, but I think it's fair to say that the likelihood of someone with malicious intent utilizing that against Destiny was always high, given who he is, what they were discussing, the current political climate, etc. I'm willing to believe there was no harm intended, and while it may have had a hand in what happened (to whatever degree) I would not say that posting that clip was the reason Twitch acted--what was said was inflammatory enough that anyone could have taken action against Destiny.
4. Posting in chat about reporting (or was it mass reporting?) for TOS violations was irresponsible, especially from very influential people. Coming from someone with incredible sway over the community means whatever is said it legitimized by magnitudes. It may have been said in jest (I'm fully willing to admit), but it was not a good look. For my part, I didn't read them as jokes as they were being made during the stream. At best, it's horrible optics. I have seen these individuals state that they didn't know what would happen, that they didn't want Destiny departnered, and this wasn't the intention. Given that, I honestly don't know what one could possibly have expected to happen for REPORTING A VIOLATION OF TOS to a notoriously tos-strict company. Certainly, the expectation could not have been for something good to happen, and it was obviously not going to be a slap on the wrist. I am not stating these individuals actually DID report it, just that they went on at some length about doing so, which may have inspired others very young, very impressionable individuals within the community to do so. As stated in Point 2, Destiny's comments WERE against TOS whether he meant it or was just saying it in a moment of rage. What he said was so bad that I actually wouldn't be surprised to learn down the line that no one reported him, but that Twitch simply picked up on it because of the seriousness of the situation. However...
5. Getting him departnered helps no one but the far right. It may, in fact, push some of his audience in that direction (this the first thought that popped in my head when I heard the news).
6. Vaush is not personally responsible for what happened. Certain individuals within his community, some with high levels of influence, had some hand in boosting and possibly escalating the situation (the degree can certainly be debated). That does not mean they are, in the end, the one who should be held accountable, considering Destiny was the one who called for far right (largely Nazi) militias to mass-murder protesters, regardless if he was sincere or hyperbolic. ADDENDUM: Destiny technically called for rednecks to "mow down" rioters and looters, not necessarily protesters, but I don't believe the distinction is significant enough to really matter in the grand scheme, considering the people who hear this and use this and advocate for this are, almost exclusively, the fascist-types who consider rioters, protesters, and anyone left-of-center synonymous with one another.
7. Vaush (and any public figure) is responsible for the community they cultivate to an extent, because one cannot babysit tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of individuals constantly, especially in the heat of the moment. If someone is going to post a tweet, we cannot expect Vaush to be able to stop that from happening. We can only expect he cultivates an overarching sentiment, like a herd immunity of sorts.
8. HOWEVER: Broadly, Vaush's community does not like Destiny. A significant portion hates him with the same vitriol that tankies and Nazis have, as evidenced by the general sentiment is at any given time--that people were "accepting" of him immediately after the duo debate means nothing in the grand scheme of things. (I do believe there are plenty closeted tankies and tankie-lites here, though I will be charitable and say they are in the minority, though this is peripheral). Of course, this is an unscientific sentiment, but I have never witnessed a broad "liking" of Destiny, and have witnessed plenty of broad bad faith and outright contempt expressed and spread toward him.* Looking back on the Xan-Destiny convo, this was one point Xan did poorly on, but I do believe his position is simply biased by his own feelings toward Destiny and probably the core of community members he interacts with who presumably also like him.
9. Destiny's community is incredibly uncharitable toward Vaush.
10. Vaush's community is incredibly uncharitable toward Destiny.
11. Vaush's community doesn't "owe" it to Destiny to like him.
12. Destiny's community doesn't "owe" it to Vaush to like him, though given the public nature of Vaush's good faith expressed toward Destiny, it would look better for them to put more effort toward meeting him halfway. As well, Destiny has stated he's done a lot to try to help Vaush, but because much of this seems to have been behind the scenes, and the most we tend to see publicly of Destiny's "good faith" toward Vaush is just him saying off-handedly that Vaush knows what he's talking about. Given this, I'd argue Destiny's community has more "reason" to try to be amicable to Vaush, since Vaush's good faith has been so public and explicit.
13. It is unreasonable for Destiny to expect Vaush to be able to stop every single person within his community from doing anything negative toward Destiny. He does more than enough to make people hate him on his own.
14. It is unreasonable (and really creepy) for Destiny to think that Vaush should be able to influence people to the point of making them like him. He can make every argument possible (and I believe he has, both publicly and I'm willing to bet privately), and, in the end, it's still up to the other person to believe what they will believe.
15. Destiny is clearly more in the wrong, and is clearly more responsible for what happened. In fact, he is either mostly or solely responsible for it, considering the nature of his statements and the circumstances surrounding them. I'd argue that Vaush wasn't in the wrong at all during this recent drama and probably isn't responsible in any way--certainly not meaningfully enough to be considered at fault.
16. That said: Vaush's community, just as Destiny's community, has not conducted itself in a respectable manner, though I would say Vaush's community has behaved somewhat better than Destiny's overall. The bad actors within Vaush's community have been especially bad, though.
17. If you think Destiny is far right, alt-right, a fascist, etc., you're a fucking idiot.
18. Best case scenario for you parasocial cultist dipshits who put all your worth in online figures for some dumb reason, Vaushstiny is on indefinite hiatus (we call this the Mindhunter Holding Pattern).**

​
*To try to bridge some of the gaping contradictions between points 7 and 8: I have witnessed plenty of examples (yes, anecdotally, but the range of these exchanges makes me consider them valid) where a good enough number of people within Vaush's community have advocated for positions that would basically have rich people lined up in the street and shot with no trial if given the opportunity. Some have literally argued for this, hence my reference to closet tankies who aren't so closeted. I equate this to being roughly the same as the slew of reactionaries who end up in Destiny's community. I do believe that Destiny, with his incredibly emotionally driven takes on "all lefties" (and I'm not a socialist, so this isn't me crying because I'm being attacked) is responsible for attracting those types to him, even though he doesn't personally hold their reactionary positions. The same applies to Vaush, who I believe is responsible for attracting the larpy revolutionary closet tankies because of his not-a-dog-whistle "in Minecraft" advocacy for certain types of political violence (this is my LARGEST personal contention with Vaush, but that's another topic), though he would never advocate for extra judicial executions...let's call it mass murder, because that's what it is. Looking at it from a distance, they are responsible for these people being attracted to their communities, even though they are not responsible for every individual action that is taken by these people. This is where the question of "responsibility" is most complex and interesting, and admittedly subjective.
**Half-joking. Also wanted to make a Twin Peaks "black lodge" cliffhanger reference, but almost everyone here wasn't alive when that was originally on, so I doubted enough would get it.
EDIT: put an addendum on POINT 6, since it could be seen as misrepresenting Destiny's wording.

The further I get from being mentally in the harder it's getting for me to remember the new speak that JWs employ. I decided to document everything I can remember and figured I would make it public in case anyone else can contribute or make use of this.
I really want this to be as accurate as possible. So please call me out if I am making any assumptions, if anything is incorrect, outdated, or misrepresented and I will change it. I want someone who has never heard of JWs before to be able to use this as a reference to understand what they're saying.
New words and phrases:

• Anointed - Exactly 144,000 people will be faithful enough to go to heaven when they die, they are called the anointed. They are hand selected by Jesus. "Can you believe Sister Smith is one of the anointed?"
  
• Babylon the Great - Synonym False Religion. All religions that are not JWs, especially other Christian religions. Can also refer to practices deemed pagan. "I used to be Catholic, then I got out of Babylon the Great."
  
• Bad Association - Negative connotation. Anyone who is not a JW, or is a JW but does not live up to your standards of spirituality. People you should not befriend or spend time with. "We used to invite Jimmy over for pizza nights, but based on the movies he watches he's bad association."
  
• Bethel - Usually the world headquarters in New York, sometimes a branch office in a specific place. "We are visiting Bethel this weekend, then going to Canada Bethel next weekend."
  
• Bethelite - Someone who volunteers for Bethel. Either physically at a branch office or over the internet. "I cannot wait to hear the Bethelite's talk."
  
• Branch Office - Local headquarters of JWs assigned to specific countries. "We wrote a letter to the brothers in the Mexico branch office."
  
• Brazen Conduct - Anything done disrepectfully, against the recommendation of the Elders, causing someone to stumble, or having a bad attitude. Practically, a catch-all term. "We asked her to wear more modest clothing, but she didn't listen. Now we must take action due to her brazen conduct."
  
• Call - Synonymous with Return Visit. A person visited again and again by a specific publisher. Typically with the goal of starting a Bible study. "I have three calls to make today." or "I reported 5 return visits last month."
  
• Circuit - A group of congregations in a geographic area overseen by a Circuit Overseer.
  
• Circuit Assembly - A twice yearly meeting that is larger than a regular meeting and smaller than a convention. All congregations in a circuit attend. Typically one or two days long and hosted by the Circuit Overseer. Baptisms happen at assemblies and conventions. "This year's circuit assembly program was exactly what I needed to hear."
  
• Circuit Overseer - Abbreviated CO, The man assigned to oversee a group of congregations for three years, called Circuit Work. Reports to the Governing Body. "The CO is visiting us this week."
  
• Coordinator of The Body of Elders - Or just Coordinator formerly Presiding Overseer. The Elder who oversees the entire congregation. He is not supposed to have any special authority above regular Elders, and instead is in an administrative role. "I heard your brother was appointed Coordinator of your congregation."
  
• Conscience Matter - A decision not clearly outlined in the scriptures, up to the individual to decide the best course. While no decision is considered wrong, conscience matters often determine if someone is exemplary or not, and therefore if they can have privileges. "I would love to grow a bread, and I know it's a conscience matter, but I want to be an MS someday so I am not growing one."
  
• Disfellowship - Synonymous with Disassociate for all practical purposes. Someone who has either left JWs or was kicked out by the Elders. All JWs are supposed to shun this person as punishment. "It's sad that Sister Smith was disfellowshipped, I wonder what she did wrong?"
  
• District Overseer - Abbreviated DO. No longer in use, formerly oversaw a group of circuits and COs.
  
• Do Not Call - A person or household that should not be contacted while in service. "Skip house 327, they're do not calls."
  
• Elder - One of the men selected to oversee a congregation. Any individual is not considered a leader, however the group as a whole lead the congregation. "If you have doubts about your faith you should talk to an Elder."
  
• Elder Body - The group of Elders who lead a congregation and follow the COs instructions. "The Elder Body is responsible to maintain the cleanliness of the congregation."
  
• Faithful Slave, The - Currently refers to the Governing Body exclusively. Formerly meant all anointed people. "The Faithful Slave directs Jehovah's organization."
  
• Family Head - (1)The man in charge of the family, especially their spirituality. Typically the fathehusband of the family. "Family heads are tasked with making good decisions for their family." (2) Sometimes called Spiritual Head of The Family, this can apply to a baptized son or, in cases when no men are in the family, the baptized mother. In charge of the family's spirituality. *"Since my dad is not a JW, my mom studies with us as our spiritual head."
  
• Family Worship - Replaced one meeting at the Kingdom Hall weekly. Intended for the Family Head to have a Bible Study with his family. "I can't go to the movie, we have our Family Worship on Tuesday nights."
  
• Fornication - Any sexual contact outside of a heterosexual marriage, sometimes includes oral or anal sex within a marriage. Considered a serious sin. "The World doesn't have the same morals we do when it comes to fornication."
  
• Field Service - Synonymous with Service and Door to door work. A specific form of ministry when a group of JWs visit everyone in an assigned territory. "We always go in service on Saturday mornings."
  
• Gilead - School for JW missionaries. "My best friend was just accepted into Gilead"
  
• Great Crowd - Everyone who survives the Great Tribulation and Armageddon and enters the paradise without dying. "Armageddon sounds scary but I want to be a part of the great crowd."
  
• Great Tribulation, The - Prior to Armageddon but after all false religions are destroyed. the Tribulation will be a very difficult time on earth and governments will try to destroy Jehovah's Witnesses. "We need to be ready for the Great Tribulation by always obeying the Faithful Slave today."
  
• Group Overseer - An Elder who works with a specific group of JWs, especially in the ministry. "Our group overseer wants to work with us today."
  
• Governing Body, The - Established in the 70s as the ruling body for JWs. Considered the only spokesperson of Jehovah God today. "The brothers of the governing body are tasked with providing spiritual food by Jehovah."
  
• Helper - A man in charge of a department at Bethel, reports to the Governing Body.
  
• Judicial Committee - 3 to 5 Elders who meet with a person accused of a serious sin. They decide if the sin happened, if the sinner is repentant. They also determine what, if any, punishment is warranted including disfellowshipping. "I am meeting with a Judicial Committee to discuss the time I watched porn."
  
• Kingdom Hall - Equivalent to a church. Local meeting place of Jehovah's Witnesses. Does not include the congregations that meet there. Buildings are built, maintained, and sold as directed by the branch office. "It is exciting that we are combining two Kingdom Halls into one on the other side of town."
  
• Last Days Starting in 1914 onward, a short amount of time before Armageddon arrives. People will increasingly abandon God and good morals during this time. "Did you see the latest school shooting? These are certainly the last days."
  
• Ministerial Servant Abbreviated MS. Has some authority in the congregation but less than an Elder. Often viewed as a stepping stone to becoming an Elder and a good goal for young men. "As soon as I am out of high school I want to be a Ministerial Servant."
  
• Need Greater Places where JW presence is low are called Where the Need is Greater. Someone who temporarily travels to one of these places to participate in the ministry is called a need greater. "I have a week of vacation from work, so we are going to where the need is greater."
  
• New Light - A changed doctrine or policy. "Jehovah constantly provides new light for us to learn about."
  
• New World Translation - The official JW translation of the Bible. Written anonymously and differs from other translations. Considered the most accurate translation by JWs. "You can learn the truth from a KJV, but the NWT has God's name put back in it."
  
• Older One - An elderly person, typically a long time JW.
  
• Other Sheep - Anyone who has the Earthly Hope. Meaning they are not going to heaven after they die, but will go to the paradise earth. "I would love to go to heaven but I am one of the other sheep."
  
• Personal Study - Recommended studying of JW materials in free time. Can including reading magazines, watching videos, or reading the Bible and other books. "After talking to Brother Sanchez I realized I need to step up my personal study."
  
• Reinstated - No longer disfellowshipped. JWs are no longer required to shun. "Brother Kowalski has been reinstated."
  
• Region Formerly District, a group of circuits.
  
• Regional Convention Formerly District Convention an annual three day long meeting, usually held in a stadium. All congregations from a region are expected to attend their assigned convention. Each year's program has a specific theme. "My favorite part about the conventions are the dramas!"
  
• School for Kingdom Evangelizes - Formerly Bible School for Christian Brothers and Ministerial Training School. A special school for publishers who want to do more for Jehovah's Witnesses. After attending this school they are assigned, often to a remote congregation or, if male, as a Circuit Overseer. "My goal is to attend School for Single Brothers when I can, so I am staying single."
  
• Serious Sin - An action that that is forbidden to JWs and can get you disfellowshipped. They are broadly defined and include fornication, non-neutrality, and brazen conduct. "He felt compelled to confess his serious sin to the Elders."
  
• Service Overseer The Elder who organizes the ministry in a congregation, also collects everyone's hours monthly and sends them to the branch office. "Make sure to turn your service time into the service overseer today."
  
• Service Year - September - August. The time during which a Pioneer must meet their hour quota.
  
• Society, The - No longer in use. (1)The entire organization of Jehovah's Witnesses. "The Society takes care of its members." (2) The Watchtower Bible Tract Society, the corporation originally founded that became Jehovah's Witnesses.
  
• Spiritual Weakness - Someone who is not considered a good JW is spiritually weak. Usually blamed on a lack of personal study. "We need to encourage spiritually weak ones."
  
• System of things Synonym Old System or Wicked Old System. The time we live in now, including all human history. Everything between the Garden of Eden and the New System. "I can't wait for this old system to be gone."
  
• Paradise - (1) "The paradise." Synonymous with The New System and The New World. JW version of heaven on earth. Everlasting life and pet tigers. The reward for nearly all loyal JWs. "Jehovah will give his servants everlasting life in the paradise earth." (2) "A paradise" The Garden of Eden, "Adam and Eve lived in a paradise."
  
• Pioneer - (1)Regular Pioneer. A JW who commits to spend the majority of their time in the ministry annually. Considered a significant privilege. (2) Auxiliary Pioneer. a JW who who commits monthly to spend a specific number of hours in the ministry. "I am using my spring break to pioneer this month."
  
• Prison Witnessing - Meetings held inside of prisons to convert prisoners.
  
• Publisher - A baptized JW who is active in the ministry. "Our Hall has 100 publishers."
  
• Scarlet Colored Beast - Specifically The United Nations. Will attempt to destroy all religion then Jehovah's Witnesses in particular. "It is only a matter of time until the scarlet beast turns on us."
  
• Spiritual Food - Sometimes "spiritual Food at the proper time" (1) Guidance from Jehovah that must be regularly reviewed to stay faithful as a Christian. (2) The publications, videos, and talks from JWs. "The meetings are designed to provide us with spiritual food at the proper time."
  
• Theocratic Ministry School - Sometimes just The School. A weekly meeting. Bible readings, short talks, and demonstrations are assigned to JWs to prepare. Most parts handled by men. " I want to participate in the school but I am too afraid."
  
• Truth, The - Jehovah's Witness doctrine or organization. "I was so unhappy before I found the truth."
  
• Unbaptized Publisher - Someone who has not yet been baptized, but is considered a JW and is allowed to participate in the ministry. A step toward getting baptized. "My Bible study just became a publisher and want to get baptized this summer."
  
• Unbelieving Mate - A spouse of a JW who is not a JW. Typically applied to men. "Wendy's husband is unbelieving."
  
• Unevenly Yoked - Typically applied to marriage. JWs shouldn't marry or otherwise "yoke" themselves to weaker JWs or non-JWs. "You may be lonely, but if you marry a non believer you will be unhappy from being a unevenly yoked."
  
• Universal Sovereignty - The issues that Satan raised in the garden of Eden and the book of Job, namely that Jehovah is not fit to rule. Is answered by remaining faithful as a Jehovah's Witnesses no matter what. "We must always obey Jehovah so that we can answer the question of universal sovereignty."
  
• Young One Depending on context, either a child, teenager, or young adult. Sometimes all of them. 'This program is aimed at our young ones."
  

Redefined words and phrases:

• Apostate - (1) People who spread lies and misinformation about JWs. (2) Any information from non-JW sources, all of which is considered to be untruthful. "Be careful reading news articles on the internet, you may be stumbled by apostate lies."
  
• Armageddon - Impending event that will kill all non-JWs on the planet. Possibly some will be spared and some JWs will be killed. Viewed as a good thing. "I cannot wait for Armegeddon to happen."
  
• Baptism - Declaring your loyalty to Jehovah's Organization, then getting dunked fully under water by an Elder. Indicates you are a Jehovah's Witnesses forever and can be called Brother or Sister. Typically must be around 10 or older to get baptized. "I am so happy that your little sister got baptized that weekend."
  
• Bible Study - Studying a JW publication. Some publications are meant for non-members studying in their home with JWs, others are meant for members and are studied in Kingdom Halls. "The Bible Teach book shows us what the Bible really means."
  
• Brother - (1) Baptized male JW. (2) All JWs, usually "The Brothers". "We love all of the brothers very much."
  
• Christian - (1) Any religion that involves Jesus. (2) Sometimes First Century Christians* refers to the original Christians who, supposedly, worshiped the exact same way JWs do today. "We can see evidence for the Governing Body in the way First Century Christians handled matters."
  
• Christendom - All Christian religions that are not JWs. Has a negative connotation. "All of Christendom's churches are misleading people under Satan's influence."
  
• Clean - Sometimes Cleanliness. (1)Physically clean and uncluttered, tidy. A requirement to be a JW. (2) Sometimes Spiritual Cleanliness. Only observe the "pure" teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses and avoiding any teachings from other religions or organizations. "Don't become unclean by participating in holidays or holding political opinions."
  
• Dating - Deciding if you will marry a specific individual or not. "I really want to get married so Chelsea and I are dating."
  
• Dedication - Required prior to baptism. Privately dedicate your life to Jehovah in prayer.
  
• Drama - Outdated. An audio recording played at a convention with people on the stage acting along with it.
  
• Evolution - An attempt by Satan to discredit Jehovah. An erroneous conclusion based on the adaptability of life. Considered to be completely unsupported by evidence. "We know Jehovah created the animals and gave them the ability to adapt, but humans are special."
  
• Exemplary - Someone who appears to represent the ideal Jehovah's Witness and qualifies for privileges. "I wouldn't talk to Johnny, he's not exemplary and his attitude could rub off on you."
  
• Faith - A conviction based on careful research of evidence. "We do not have blind faith, we have faith that we have the truth."
  
• Fear of God - A healthy fear of displeasing God.
  
• Generation - Sometimes Overlapping Generation. A group of people and anyone born while people from the group are alive. "The 1914 generation will see Armageddon."
  
• God's Kingdom - A government established in heaven in 1914 with Jesus as king. Will rule on earth for 1,000 years after Armageddon.
  
• Inactive - A publisher who has not gotten any hours in the ministry in the last 6 months. "We should talk to Sister Diane, she's been inactive for a while."
  
• Interested - A person who is curious about JWs but is not a member and may not have an official Bible Study yet. "My co-worker is interested so I invited him to the meeting."
  
• Irregular - A publisher who has not gotten any hours in the ministry in one or more of the previous 6 months. "I wonder why Brother Klien has been irregular recently?"
  
• Jehovah - The common English translation of YHWH, the name of God the Father. Not part of a trinity and never refers to Jesus.
  
• Headship - A scriptural principal referring to the subservience of women to men, and men to Jesus. Women can only teach in front of other women and must wear a head covering while doing so, never in front of baptized men. "I had to pray before service this meeting because no brother were out, so I wore a handkerchief as a head covering to respect headship."
  
• Letter Writing - A form of ministry where letters are written and sent to people.
  
• Love - (1) The good feeling you get when you do everything Jehovah wants. Absent when you are doing something wrong. "I felt so guilty when I was missing meetings, but when I am here I can feel Jehovah's love." (2) Affection toward other people, expressed correctly. "We love our son, so we are shunning him until he comes back to Jehovah." (3) Agape Love Literally loving the unlovable. Applied as blanket love given to all fellow JWs. "We send our greetings along with agape love for the brothers."
  
• Marked - Someone who is not follow the Elder's instructions, but is not sinning enough to be disfellowshipped. For example, dating or marrying a non-JW. The person is shunned outside of the Kingdom Hall, but their name is not directly mentioned. "Someone is dating a nonbeliever. That person is marked."
  
• Meditation - Thinking deeply about Bible topics, recommended after reading the Bible. "I had to really meditate on this week's Bible reading to understand it."
  
• Meeting - Equivalent to a church service. A program typically held in a Kingdom Hall as directed by the branch office. "I never miss meetings, they are too important."
  
• Ministry - Synonymous with Witnessing. Recruiting people to be JWs, often under the guise of "Bible education" or "helping with life's troubles". "I went in the ministry with brother Johnson today."
  
• Modest - Sometimes Modesty. (1) Clothing that is neither tight nor revealing, usually applied to women. "That blouse is too low cut to be modest. (2) Not taking credit for personal success. "When complimented on his talk, Brother Smith modestly gave the credit to Jehovah."
  
• Organization, The - Generally, the religious and corporate entity overseen by the Governing Body known as Jehovah's Witnesses.
  
• Political - Considered a serious sin in the form of Violating Christian Neutrality or just Neutrality. Politics includes joining a political party, voting, or having specific opinions on governments. Does not include paying taxes. "Why would anyone put trust in the politics of this world?"
  
• Principles - Unwritten rules that the Bible implies and must be followed, especially if one wants to be considered exemplary. "After meditating on the principles of how Jehovah views violence, I gave up video games and sold my PS4."
  
• Privileges of Service - Or just Privileges. Anything during a meeting other than sitting and listening. Includes hold microphones, reading the Bible, ministry, and giving talks. Most are only available to men. Can be revoked if for any reason you are no longer exemplary. "I am trying to reach out for more privileges in the congregation."
  
• Reach Out - Putting yourself in a position where you can receive more privileges. Expected of men. However reaching out too far is considered presumptuous. "I show up to each meeting 20 minutes early because I am reaching out."
  
• Reproof - After confession a sin to the Elders they may take away all privileges and make a note in your file. You are reproved either for a specific time or until the Elders decide otherwise. (1)Private reproof. Only the Elders know you were reproved. (2)Public Reproof. Your name is announced publicly as being reproved.
  
• Sister - A baptized JW woman. "You should find a nice sister to marry."
  
• Stumbled - (1)Being so offended you leave JWs. (2)Being at fault due to offending someone else, can be for any reason. "You should wear a longer skirt or you could stumble some of the brothers."
  
• Talk - Similar to a sermon. A specific outline to be delivered by a brother at a Kingdom Hall, Assembly, or Convention.
  
• Theocratic - Related to God's Kingdom or his organization on Earth. "We do well to focus on theocratic matters."
  
• World, The - Any organization that is not JWs. "Satan controls the world."
  
• Worldly - Anyone who has never been a JW. "Wordly people do not know the joy of serving Jehovah."
  

I've taken this article from this website . Let me know what you guys think of it after reading it completely. I see this article get mentioned by muslims all over the net, and I'd be glad if someone were to refute or respond to some parts, especially the "narrow view on time" and "aishas lived experiences" parts.
Article starts from here.
Abstract
In recent years, few criticisms of Islam have taken the spotlight as much as condemnations of the Prophet’s marriage to Aisha. Muslims are accused of following the example of a man who had inappropriate relations with a 9-year-old girl. As a result, this has led many to doubt their faith and the moral compass it provides. However, this criticism is based on fallacious reasoning. When reviewing the available evidence, we not only find that early marriage was normal in many early societies, it also made moral sense given their circumstances. Throughout human history, populations had to adapt to their physical and social environments while optimizing their ethical judgments accordingly—much as we do today. This paper elucidates the flawed nature of accusations of the Prophet’s alleged immorality as well as how Islam teaches us to adapt the message of the Qur’an to changing circumstances.

Introduction

In 2014 the Pew Research Center estimated that roughly 57,800 minors (i.e., individuals under 18) were legally married in the United States. Of those marriages, 55% were between an underage girl and an adult man.[1] And while these numbers vary across the nation, in some states the rates are much higher. This includes California, which has recently been entangled in a legal drama over whether an age limit for marriage with parental consent should be established. Influential organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have been hostile to any proposed changes by legislatures and have thus far been successful in removing any amendments that would place restrictions on juveniles being able to marry with parental agreement. In other words, California currently considers child marriage permissible as long as the child’s parents agree.[2] Likewise, France is currently debating whether or not it should establish an age of consent. The country has had no set legal age up to this point, which has led to a significant number of acquittals for men accused of raping a minor (as young as and even younger than the age of 11).[3] These cases are odd given the United States’ and France’s apparent support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and its subsequent agreements, including the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registrations of Marriage (1964), which stipulates that:
Parties to the present Convention shall take legislative action to specify a minimum age for marriage. No marriage shall be legally entered into by any person under this age, except where a competent authority has granted a dispensation as to age, for serious reasons, in the interest of the intending spouses.[4]
This is especially disconcerting, considering the ways in which children are exploited and abused by these practices in the contemporary period. Young girls are the most vulnerable to the consequences of early marriage, which not only limits their social, educational, and economic opportunities but exposes them to health risks due to early pregnancy along with psychological and emotional trauma.[5] How can a society opposed to the exploitation of children allow such practices to exist? And what sort of message is being conveyed through the legal support of such a practice? In an age of the ever-growing phenomenon of child sex trafficking and pornography on the internet, this is especially concerning. For example, just this year, German law enforcement uncovered an online child pornography ring with a membership of nearly 90,000 users. Only a handful of them have actually been arrested.[6]
Given this reality, it is unsurprising that the well-being and protection of children continues to be one of our greatest concerns, as well as a very sensitive topic. However, while concerns and sensitivities are undoubtedly warranted, they can sometimes lead us to make rash judgments about past communities—judgments outside the realm of established scientific fact and reason. This is no better exemplified than in what might be considered the most popular criticism of Islam today: the marriage of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and Aisha.

A Narrow View of Time

It’s impossible these days to look for information on Islam without being bombarded by warnings about the “dangers” of the religion. Whether the topic is about how Islam supposedly promotes terrorism or how a minority population seeks world domination by deceiving people through halal meat and curry, faux experts from around the world spare no effort in demonizing a faith spanning 14 centuries and around 1.6 billion followers. However, the easiest way to do this is by appealing to the protective instincts of parents everywhere through presenting Islamic sources detailing the age of the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ youngest wife on the day of their marriage:
Narrated by Aisha: The Prophet ﷺ married me when I was six years old and consummated our marriage when I was nine years old. Then I remained with him for nine years (i.e., until his death).[7]
This narration has triggered both indignation and doubt about the moral integrity of the Islamic faith. How could an adult man—declared a moral exemplar among his followers—marry a child? Such questions have resulted in people either dismissing Islamic primary sources as inauthentic or condemning Islamic morals altogether as barbaric. Some Muslims have become so traumatized by the moral implications of these traditions that they’ve argued that the hadiths about Aisha’s age are spurious and have offered in their stead convoluted rationalizations that she was far older when she married (i.e., 18 years of age).[8]
While such reactions seem valid in the context of our 21st-century, Western experiences, they make little sense when discussing the circumstances of people who lived more than a millennium ago. It is far easier to condemn 7th-century desert nomads as “barbarians” than for us to comprehend that our moral judgments are as much a function of our environment as the judgments of our ancestors.
Realizing this means recognizing how often we succumb to a fallacious form of reasoning known as presentism—an anachronistic misinterpretation of history based on present-day circumstances that did not exist in the past.[9] This is a very common mistake made by historians and laypersons alike. However, complex issues almost never come with such easy answers, no matter how high our expectations may be. More often than not, historical realities take time and effort to understand. This is especially the case when we allow for false ideas to become popular sentiment, forcing us to wade through pre-existing biases. This struggle has come to be referred as Brandolini’s Law, named after Alberto Brandolini, an Italian computer programmer who invented the now famous maxim: “The amount of energy needed to refute [nonsense] is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.”[10]
That said, moral judgments can still be made about past people and events. Murder is still murder, theft is still theft, and rape is still rape, no matter the time or place. But how we judge situations of murder, theft, and rape depends on the contexts in which they were committed. For instance, it’s one thing to read about how a historical figure killed another person, but it’s another to know that they did so due to dire need or just cause (e.g., self-defense, war, corporal punishment, etc.). And determining those contexts isn’t always easy, especially when they are so dissimilar to our own. In other words, when studying history, things aren’t always as they appear.
Likewise, when we examine the scientific evidence regarding human development, maturity, and marriage in the past, what we find is a context that not only dispels the moral outrage regarding the marriage between the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and Aisha, but also allows us to appreciate our ancestors for their struggles; for without them we would not be having this discussion today.

Aisha’s Lived Experience

The story of human development has gone through many phases. Empires have risen and fallen, plagues have burned through entire populations, droughts have starved generations, and natural disasters have buried the most advanced metropolises—a testimony to the fragility of human civilization. Yet, despite all of these trials and tribulations, we are still here, struggling and adapting to the ever-changing conditions of our existence. How we were able to get to this point is a long and complex tale spanning millennia, but one of many reasons may be related to the flexibility of our reproductive capabilities. The ways in which our ancestors have defined childhood, maturity, and marriage have been diverse and quite different from contemporary Western definitions.
Those who hold to the notion that we are morally superior to our ancestors attribute this dissimilarity to historical societies’ ignorance about physical and psychosocial maturity or nefarious intentions to abuse and take advantage of children. However, it is an extraordinary and unsubstantiated accusation that most of our ancestors were unaware of how to care for their own children, were not concerned about their children’s well-being, had ill intentions, or suffered from a worldwide mental disorder (i.e., pedophilia)—this accusation is easily contradicted by scientific and historical evidence. While it may seem impossible to us that a nine-year-old could be capable of anything other than going to school and engaging in play, this is only because we mistakenly assume that children’s circumstances and capabilities have remained static throughout history.
For example, today we expect our children to go through several years of primary and secondary education, and at least four years of university to provide them with economic and social opportunities. And this is a perfectly rational expectation, given an average global life expectancy of over 70 years[11] along with the increasing complexities of the global world. However, no such conditions existed 1400 years ago. While people in the past sometimes did reach older ages, this was not the norm. Case in point, the average life expectancy for a working-class Roman citizen in late antiquity was roughly around 35 to 40 years—if they lived past infancy.[12] Skeletal remains reveal that prior to death, most laborers suffered from chronic arthritis, fractures, displacements, and even bone cancer. This was due to their very poor diets—primarily stale bread, rotted grains, and little protein—and harsh working conditions.[13] And if they didn’t die from their work, they still had to contend with war, disease, and famine.
The female half of society didn’t have it any easier. The average life expectancy of women was between 34.5-37.5 years if they managed to live past infancy.[14] Due to high rates of infant mortality, women had to endure 5 to 7 full-term pregnancies just to keep the population stable.[15] Couple this with high maternal mortality during childbirth—due to iron deficiency resulting from a combination of continuous pregnancies and poor diet—and you have an extremely fragile situation. Given these high mortality rates, it made sense to begin procreating as early as possible.[16] In more affluent families, marrying young also guaranteed the maintenance and acquisition of wealth, securing the future of the family inheritance through a kind of business merger.[17] Likewise, political elites took advantage of early marriage to establish alliances between opponents; an expedient alternative to war. This is why the average age of marriage for young girls in ancient Rome was around 14/15, with the legal minimum being 12.[18] Even so, the Romans didn’t consider the age of marriage synonymous with the age of consent for sexual relations, which could be as young as seven.[19]
Thus, working-class children who were fortunate enough to survive infancy had only a little over two decades left to establish the next generation, with nearly half of them losing a parent by the age of 15.[20] This was especially the case for young girls, who at the onset of puberty were expected to transition from childhood directly into adulthood. In other words, there were no family vacations, no recesses, no girl scouts, no school field trips, no sweet sixteen, no prom, no graduation, no air-conditioned movie theatres, no gluten-free meals at overstocked supermarkets, no advanced healthcare facilities, no vaccines, no running water, and subsequently far fewer guarantees that one would survive to see the next morning. And if this was the situation for common people in the most advanced civilization at the time, what more could we possibly expect from desert-dwelling Arabs? Although there is little to no data on Arab marriage practices in late antiquity, given a lack of written records,[21] we do have sufficient documentation of other Semitic cultures during this time. For example, historian Amram Tropper notes the realities of Jewish youth—especially females—in late antiquity:
Most men would have married sufficiently late that we would no longer consider them to have been children, yet many women (particularly in Babylonia) married so young that today we would consider them to have been girls, not women. The goal of maximizing fertility in particular must have lowered the age at first marriage and the price of this goal is the early, we might say premature, end of girlhood. For many girls, adolescence was not a time for fun, education, experimentation or professional training, rather it was a time when one was already expected to assume the full responsibilities of a mature woman, as wife and mother.[22]
The rationale behind maximizing fertility was really something no one could argue against considering the likelihood of young women not living long enough to see their first child reach maturity. When looking into history, we tend to forget many of these notable challenges of our ancestors’ lives and take our own advantages for granted. If you knew that you probably wouldn’t live beyond your 30s, most of your children would die in infancy, and the only education you would receive would be for one of a handful of jobs consisting of hard labor, wouldn’t your plans for life change dramatically? Of course they would. Not only that, but such circumstances would also force you to make moral decisions that you thought you would never need to make; decisions that, in hindsight, were necessary and morally appropriate. This is precisely why bioarchaeologists like Mary Lewis have warned against anachronistic thinking when discussing the subject of childhood and maturity in the past:
No matter what period we are examining, childhood is more than a biological age, but a series of social and cultural events and experiences that make up a child’s life…The time at which these transitions take place varies from one culture to another, and has a bearing on the level of interaction children have with their environment, their exposure to disease and trauma, and their contribution to the economic status of their family and society. The Western view of childhood, where children do not commit violence and are asexual, has been challenged by studies of children that show them learning to use weapons or being depicted in sexual poses…What is clear is that we cannot simply transpose our view of childhood directly onto the past.[23]
Because presentism is such a pervasive fallacy, even scientists themselves have been prone to the error, often mistaking biological age with psychosocial fitness. In this respect, bioarchaeologists Sian Halcrow and Nancy Tayles have elucidated some of the obstacles facing research on human development in the past. In their investigations, they found that contemporary Western anachronisms often obstruct more objective analyses of the data:
Much of the tension in the investigation of age in the past arises from the assumption that we can link “biological” to “social” age…distinctions between the categories, particularly “child” cf. “adult,” are the product of the current limitations of osteological methods for age estimation in adults, and that using biological developmental standards for ageing results in the construction of artificial divisions of social and mental development between these categories…Also, in contrast to modern Western society where social age is closely linked to chronological age, in many “traditional” societies, stages of maturation are acknowledged in defining age…These stages take into account not only the chronological age but also the skills, personality and capacities of the individual.[24]
Perhaps the most relevant example of how presentism negatively affects our understanding of the past can be seen in contemporary moral judgments regarding the Prophet’s youngest wife Aisha (ra). The idea that her marriage was contracted at the age of six and ultimately consummated by nine is seen as an affront by most people. However, when considering the aforementioned evidences, it shouldn’t be so difficult to understand why this practice was perfectly acceptable at the time. Aisha (ra) was merely following in the footsteps of so many girls before her who had reached puberty and were ready to start their adult lives. She herself states that she had reached maturity prior to her marriage:
Narrated Aisha (ra): I had seen my parents following Islam since I attained the age of reason [i.e., puberty]. Not a day passed, but the Prophet ﷺ visited us, both in the mornings and evenings.[25]
What this hadith states is clear if one is aware of the context surrounding it. Aisha (ra) was born in 614 CE and was the daughter of the Prophet’s closest companion, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq—a wealthy merchant who was among the first Muslims and who would eventually become the first caliph. Thus, she lived a rather privileged life in comparison to other children around her. However, in 622 CE, after suffering years of religious persecution at the hands of the pagans in Mecca, she and her family decided to migrate to a safe haven in the neighboring city of Medina. Upon their arrival, Aisha’s (ra) parents set up a temporary residence where she eventually came down with a fever (possibly due to being weakened by the long and arduous journey prior).[26] It was around this same time that the Prophet ﷺ was visiting them “both in the mornings and evenings,” and when she began to notice her parent’s outward expression of faith. Shortly thereafter, Aisha (ra) would consummate her marriage with the Prophet ﷺ and move into his household, completing the marriage contract as a full-fledged woman.[27]
The fact that she was nine years of age when she reached puberty should not be surprising, especially given recent studies that have found that the onset of puberty has fluctuated dramatically throughout history. Case in point, while it would have been normal for a young girl to start puberty at around 14 years of age during the Western Industrial Revolution (18th–19th C.), in the 21st century some girls start puberty as early as six.[28] The reasons for these fluctuations are still largely undetermined, although they have been connected to variances in genetics, nutrition, stress, and even the over-sexualization of Western societies.[29]
However, one may rightfully retort that just because a young girl has begun the process of physically maturing, this does not necessitate that she therefore possesses an adult mentality; to suggest otherwise would be considered absurd by contemporary standards. And that’s a very appropriate conclusion to come to considering that, even by today’s standards, we don’t necessarily regard legally acknowledged adults as independent and functioning members of society; they still need time to learn and experience the world before being considered cognitively and emotionally mature. There’s a reason that 18-year-olds still largely rely on their parents for economic support, despite the law defining them as ‘mature.’
That said, our ancestors faced very different circumstances to which they had to adapt—circumstances that determined their physical and psychosocial fitness. In this regard, endocrinologists Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson have emphatically stated that the mismatch between biological and psychosocial maturation is a relatively recent phenomenon:
For the first time in our evolutionary history, biological puberty in females significantly precedes, rather than being matched to, the age of successful functioning as an adult. This mismatch between the age of biological and psychosocial maturation constitutes a fundamental issue for modern society. Our social structures have been developed in the expectation of longer childhood, prolonged education and training, and later reproductive competence. This emerging mismatch creates fundamental pressures on contemporary adolescents and on how they live in society.[30]
So, while it is certainly true that the onset of puberty does not make someone an adult today, this same judgment does not apply to people of the past. By indulging in presentism, we disregard the facts of how our ancestors were forced to live just to survive. Furthermore, we open ourselves to intellectual embarrassment by misinterpreting history.
The most obvious manifestation of this fallacy can be seen when examining contemporary interpretations of some notable hadiths on the life of Aisha (ra). For example, many anti-Islam websites love to quote the following narration when arguing that Aisha (ra) was not mature enough to be married:
Narrated Aisha (ra): I used to play with dolls in the presence of the Prophet ﷺ, and my girlfriends also used to play with me. When Allah’s Apostle ﷺ used to enter (my dwelling place) they used to hide themselves, but the Prophet ﷺ would call them to join and play with me. [The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for Aisha (ra) at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty].[31]
Many people assume that since Aisha (ra) was playing with dolls, she must have still been a child at the time of this narration. Prior to addressing the implication that playing with dolls equates to lacking maturity, what is immediately noticeable about this hadith is the statement in brackets (i.e., “…a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty”). However, there is a glaring problem with the way this hadith is presented. For those thinking this a clear affirmation that she was a child, the fact of the matter is that the last statement is nowhere to be found in the hadith itself; rather, it is an addition from a hadith commentary called Fath al-Bari fi Sharh Sahih Bukhari, authored by the famous hadith scholar Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (d. 1449 CE). This is important to note because it’s not made apparent in the hadith itself. The fact that some translators of the hadith have decided to include this is also telling. For what reason did they put this commentary in the hadith? And why would Ibn Hajar claim that Aisha (ra) hadn’t reached puberty? In order to answer these questions, we need only refer to Al-Asqalani himself:
I [Ibn Hajar] say: To say with certainty, [that she was not yet at the age of puberty] is questionable, though it might possibly be so. This, because A’isha (ra) was a 14-year-old girl at the time of the Battle of Khaybar—either exactly 14 years old, or having just passed her 14th year, or approaching it. As for her age at the time of the Battle of Tabook, she had by then definitely reached the age of puberty. Therefore, the strongest view is that of those who said: “It was in Khaybar” [i.e., when she was not yet at the age of puberty], and made reconciliation [between the apparent contradictory rulings of the permissibility of dolls in particular and the prohibition of images in general]…[32]
This explanation by Ibn Hajar reveals a number of important points which run contrary to the initial impressions of the hadith. The first and most obvious issue with Ibn Hajar’s commentary is that he admits that Aisha (ra) was at least 14 years of age at the time this narration takes place, putting her well above the average age of the onset of puberty in the Near East during late antiquity (and even by today’s standards). This is most likely why Ibn Hajar felt his own conclusion was questionable. Despite his own doubts, however, he suggests she must have not reached puberty due to reasons completely unrelated to her actual biological or psychosocial maturity: it helped him to reconcile an apparent contradiction in her behavior with the legal prohibition of adults playing with dolls. However, what makes Ibn Hajar’s opinion even more tenuous is that his view was countered by other master scholars of hadith and Islamic jurisprudence, such as Imam al-Bayhaqi (d. 1066), who claimed that the prohibition was only declared after the events narrated in the hadith in question.[33] That aside, it was not uncommon for young women in the past to own and even play with dolls, as these objects would be among the very few possessions they had prior to marriage. Commenting on the interpretation of toys and similar objects from past societies and cultures, anthropologist Laurie Wilkie notes:
Highly valued toys and childhood objects can be curated well into adulthood and passed on to subsequent generations of children; therefore, artefacts found in the archaeological record may not adequately reflect the full range of material culture used and cherished by the users.[34]
However, many of these realities escape the mindset affected by presentism, placing one in the position of making inappropriate moral judgments about our ancestors and their lived experiences. The fact that just a cursory analysis of the aforementioned narration so easily exposes the erroneous assumptions about Aisha’s (ra) lack of maturity should be evidence enough of the fallaciousness of this form of reasoning. That said, even if one were to admit to the complexities of childhood and development over time, these realities appear to allude to moral relativism—the idea that moral principles are only valid given their specific time, place, or culture. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

An Exemplar in a Changing World

Not only has our perspective on history been skewed by the fallacy of presentism, but so has our understanding of morality. Today, many people seem to think that morality is absolute and that this implies that the circumstances in which moral decisions are made have remained static. However, this is false. But to claim the opposite extreme—that morality is relative—is also false. As in all complex problems, black-and-white conclusions tend to miss the mark. The reality is that one can validly hold unchanging moral principles while still believing in historically contingent moral dilemmas. In other words, there can be, and are, correct and incorrect choices for every conceivable moral issue, regardless of varying circumstances.
For example, when considering an immoral act like murder, or taking the life of a person unjustly, what constitutes murder depends entirely on the circumstances in which the killing took place. Was the person killed accidentally? Was it an act of self-defense? Or was it because of malicious intent? These are general questions that can be answered and judged in the same manner, regardless of time or place. However, the details are what make things interesting.
Imagine that you’ve been chosen to serve on a jury for a murder trial. Both the prosecutor and defense attorneys present their evidence, eyewitness testimonies, potential motives, criminal histories, etc. However, after hours of deliberation, you’re still confused. Then, suddenly, the prosecution presents a forensic DNA analysis that conclusively shows that the accused was not only at the scene of the murder (contrary to his alibi) but that the blood of the victim was found on his clothing. Guilty as charged.
Now, let’s take a similar murder trial, but from 1984—prior to the development of DNA profiling. In this instance, would it be morally unjustified for you or anyone else to declare the accused ‘guilty’ without the use of forensic evidence? Would it be reasonable to condemn the jurors, despite them not having access to such technology? According to those enchanted by presentism, every murder trial prior to 1984 must be immoral, despite people doing their best to safeguard society and implement justice with the options they had available.
A perhaps more relevant example can be found in contemporary age-of-consent laws across the world. Anyone younger than a legally stipulated minimum age is generally regarded as too incompetent or too vulnerable to consent to sexual or emotional relationships. Subsequently, adults who engage in sexual relations with minors are declared to be pedophiles or child molesters. However, if we recall the aforementioned evidences showcasing the vast differences in development and maturity over time, it would be utterly illogical to apply the parameters of legal consent today to past societies. Not only were our ancestors more prepared to consent to such relationships at younger ages, but their circumstances limited who they could conceivably consent to; lower lifespans and harsher environments didn’t give people many options—once one reached puberty, it was time to be an adult. In other words, our ancestors’ views on what constituted maturity were not tied to chronological age, but to other signs of development and competence.
To make this point more persuasive, we need only attempt another thought experiment. Let us imagine that we have a time machine (as in the film Back to the Future). With an understanding of morality firmly rooted in presentism, you assume that all you need to do is apply contemporary laws to the past so as to solve all our ancestors’ problems and improve the future. With this righteous intention in mind, you get into your DeLorean and go back 1400 years to the Arabian Peninsula. After you arrive, you manage to convince the natives of your moral superiority as they marvel at your powers to traverse time and space. As a result, these simple desert dwellers make you their leader and adopt your laws, patiently waiting until the age of 18 to be considered adults (to work, use transport, marry, raise a family, go to war, and take on other major responsibilities). All starts off well in your newly formed utopia of heightened moral consciousness. However, as the years go by, you notice that your newly enlightened population has begun to dwindle at an extremely fast pace. Puzzled by this, you investigate.
What you find is startling: not only has the average age at death remained intact but so have all the other trappings of late antiquity. Contrary to the native’s former laws and customs—when puberty was the mark of adulthood—you now have middle-aged “children” doing nothing but consuming the hard-earned resources of their elders and giving nothing back to society. Not only that, but you’ve forced these youth into a situation where they now only have an average of 17 years remaining to get married and raise families—most inevitably dying before their own children have reached legal majority.
This subsequently leads to a disproportionate ratio of minors to adults, leaving future generations in the hands of individuals legally incapable of performing basic societal tasks. In summary, the ultimate outcome of your social experiment would be a civilization paralyzed by its own laws and a population bound to become extinct through natural causes or a hostile takeover from neighboring tribes who had the sense to conscript their male members at earlier ages.
You may realize at this point that the judicial and cultural structures of the past weren’t necessarily the problem, but rather the conditions in which those customs manifested themselves. However, it’s too late—your claim to moral superiority has destroyed a once-flourishing society and the entire course of history has been altered as a result. Future generations have ceased to exist and you may have now even put your own existence in jeopardy.
Thankfully, you’re still alive and this is just a hypothetical scenario born from awesome 1980s pop science fiction. But it helps to illustrate that historical laws and customs were not always necessarily on the wrong side of the moral spectrum. What we need to understand is that many moral choices and customs of the past were merely a function of the circumstances people faced. Therefore, it is not fair to consider ourselves morally superior to our ancestors when we aren’t forced to make the decisions they had to make. Likewise, it wouldn’t be fair if our descendants judged us in the same light without regard for our own circumstances. In summary, presentism ultimately negates the past and undermines any and all reasonable moral judgments.
However, Islam neither negates the past nor undermines moral judgment, because intrinsic to the faith are concepts which manage to simultaneously support absolute moral principles and historically contingent circumstances. The first and most important of these is the idea that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is a perfect moral exemplar (uswatun hasana) for all times, places, and cultures. In other words, every statement or action the Prophet ﷺ ever performed is considered to have been the most appropriate response to the dilemmas he faced during his time and a standard from which we can learn and which we can apply to analogous situations in the future. This theological view not only implies that no one could have behaved better nor ever will, but also that there is an absolute moral standard that can be understood and followed, regardless of historically contingent circumstances. This is no less exemplified in Islamic jurisprudence itself (fiqh); a sophisticated legal tradition with a flexible methodology that adapts to changing circumstances.
(I can't continue the rest because reddit says 40k words is the max,but you guys can go to the link above to read the rest).

Hello GRE friends!
I recently took the GRE and made a "Testing Experience" post about it and had promised to make a future post discussing my ~1.5 ish month study plan and the tips & tricks that worked for me. I'd originally been planning to make this post after I got my official scores (including my AWA), but I've since gotten a ton of DMs from people asking about resources I used to study for each section, so I thought I'd make this post now rather than later in lieu of responding to everyone individually (sorry if I haven't gotten back to you..!), with the caveat that I'm going to piecemeal this in 2 parts (part 1 being AWA and Verbal, and part 2 being Quant) and may update this post after receiving my official AWA scores.
Fair warning that these will be rather lengthy posts (probably especially Part 2, as I spent the bulk of my efforts on Quant).
With that, let's begin! (Warning: some of what follows may devolve into a rant on certain study resources. Disclaimer: I'm not a tutor / teacher / expert by ANY means, so update your posteriors commensurately!)

Background & Priors

I explain my background and motivation in my very first post on this subreddit, so I'll skip the majority of that in the interest of time/space. The key parameters here are:

• I took the exam the first weekend of Feb. This was my second time taking the GRE. On my first take ~1.2-1.5 years ago, I got a 170 Verbal (missed 0) / 161 Quant (missed so many I stopped looking lol) / 5.0 AWA
• I was aiming to replicate my 170 from before but, at the end of the day, I was honestly going to be happy with anything 162+ (which roughly corresponds to a 90th percentile, iirc). Resultantly, I did not spend as much time / effort on practicing for the Verbal sections; that said, I still think I may have something to offer to the discussion in terms of my approaches to different Verbal problem types and my thoughts / review of the study materials out there (i.e. which ones I felt were good practice for the real deal).
• Targeting a 5.0+ in the AWA, so not being quite as ambitious here as a lot of y'all. :)
• Disclaimer: I'm going to be writing with the assumption that you're aiming for a 167+ (~98 percentile) in Verbal and already have a baseline of at least high 150s / ~160 give or take. While I think many of my sentiments towards study materials hold regardless of what baseline you're coming from, my advice for usage of materials and tips/tricks may not be as pertinent if you're looking to break into the 160s. Thus, please take all my advice with a large grain of salt depending on where you are, personally, in the study process.

Review of Study Materials & Study Tips

AWA

Besides practicing the Argument and Issue task every time I took a practice exam, the only preparation I did was watch u/gregmat's videos, in which he live-responds to Argument and Issue tasks while documenting his thought process and strategies. It's pretty freaking awesome—would highly recommend. I think I was pretty clueless as to how to approach the Argument task especially, and his videos literally took me from "scared of the Argument task and running out of time" to "it's actually kind of fun to pick apart an argument rife with unwarranted assumptions." So HUGE shoutout to u/gregmat—THANK YOU!!!!
Takeaway: u/gregmat rocks!!!

Verbal

Between my first and second takes of the GRE, I tried out quite a lot of different materials, across several test prep companies. Here are my thoughts on them all (in relative descending order of usefulness):

1. ETS Verbal Materials

• I own both the Official Guide to the GRE (includes Verbal and Quant) and the Official Verbal Reasoning Practice Questions book (although I didn't acquire the latter book until after my first take, meaning that it's TOTALLY possible to get a 170 without it.. And quite frankly, I only completed the SE part of the latter book this second time around because I wanted to gauge / remember the difficulty level of the vocabulary).
• How I used this resource: I bought the Official Guide to the GRE primarily for the 2 additional practice tests at the end of the book. I completed the first of the 2 practice tests.
• Takeaway: I mention this in the practice test scores section, but I personally found the ETS materials to be harder than the real GRE, on both occasions of taking it (especially in terms of RC and SE; TC is very very close, imo). Nevertheless, these are by far the most similar / accurate.

1. Magoosh vocab flashcards

• This was the ONLY vocabulary-building resource I used. I used no other wordlists, and truth be told, I didn't even go through half of the "Advanced" decks they have.
• How I used this resource: Around New Year's, I went quickly through all the "Basic" and "Common" decks and made sure I knew everything in there (I spent maybe 3 hours across 2 days doing this review). Then, I moved onto the "Advanced" decks. There are a total of 7 "Advanced" decks, of which I fully went through the first 3 (did this in a single sitting ~3 hours). By the 4th "Advanced" deck, I'd say you're going to start hitting the point of diminishing marginal returns. The benefit from the few additional words I might've learned from these decks (IV onwards) is significantly outweighed by the marginal time and mental real estate it would cost me to retain them. So I stopped and never looked at them again. I figured I'd retain what I did, and I didn't want to get bogged down on vocabulary, because from my first take, I felt that vocabulary was the LEAST essential to doing well for me.
• HUGE CAVEAT: DO NOT USE THE DEFINITIONS GIVEN IN THE MAGOOSH DECKLIST. I may be overreacting but I find that they often don't include the real nuance / connotations of the word in their definitions, only surface-level meanings. I'd recommend, for each word you don't know, looking it up in dictionary.com or something and looking up example sentences as well, as opposed to just blindly memorizing Magoosh's half-baked definitions. I also feel that sometimes they downright CONFUSE connotations. See this example of a Magoosh article on confusing words: for the purposes of the GRE, "Gregarious v. Garrulous" shouldn't even be compared. The former is nearly ALWAYS positively connoted, while "garrulous" carries, BY DEFINITION, a negative connotation. The fact that they would even perceive these two words to be close / synonyms and NOT EXPLAIN THE CLEAR DIFFERENCE in an article meant to clarify confusing words, is just baffling to me. The GRE would never ask you to select these two as synonyms because they're not, and hence NOT confusing. To suggest that they're confusing / similar is to stir true confusion, imo.
• Takeaway: This may be a highly unpopular sentiment, but I honestly don't believe vocabulary knowledge is the difference between a low 160s score vs. a 170 (see my practice test scores takeaway for more on why I feel this way). The difference, in my opinion, is in familiarity with "second-order usage"—both in RC and especially in SE (I'd also argue that the hardest TC questions are "logic" questions NOT "vocab" questions). What I mean by that is really having a feel for the connotations and contexts in which a certain word is being used is FAR more important, in my experience, than cramming in a few more surface-level definitions (or, god forbid, memorizing roots—I really think memorizing roots to try to be able to "guess" at meanings of words you don't know is a pure waste of time...but to each his own). So my advice here kind of boils down to the "80-20" rule: I believe that 20% of the "usual suspect" words on the GRE pull 80% of the total weight in terms of words you end up seeing / relying on truly knowing (okay the real ratio might be closer to 65-35 but you get the idea), so I'd recommend focusing on "fewer" words but knowing them better—depth over breadth, quality over quantity.
  • To that end, when reviewing / learning vocabulary, I think it's a useful exercise to review them by "word pairs" (or tuples, etc.)—both so that you don't mix up positive/negative connotations and/or meanings, and because it's good practice for the SE parts of the Verbal. :)
    • A couple examples of word-pairings that I always like to keep top-of-mind (again, not hard words, but words that I feel like are GRE/SAT "usual suspects"): laconic-terse-taciturn-reticent (note slight differences in contextual usage and how laconic and terse are more similar than laconic and reticent), garrulous-loquacious, judicious-prudent-provident (note how prudent and provident are more similar because both are typically used to describe plans for the future, whereas judicious doesn't necessarily carry that implication), etc. this kind of thought process is how I'd probably recommend trying to file away words / their implied meanings.
  • In this vein, there's a "2-degrees of separation" rule that I apply in SE cases when I'm unsure between a few likely choices. More on this in the final section.

Quite frankly everything else is kind of really, really subpar both as a reliable barometer of study progress and as a proxy for the real thing (so the ranking is kind of meaningless here on out, but here are my thoughts anyway):

1. Manhattan

• RC book: I used this the first time I took the GRE and I think it helped acquaint me with the format of the test / questions asked, and considering this was one of the few Verbal resources I used the first time around, I won't not recommend it.. It's not great, but I also don't think it's the plague. If you use this, just know that you're studying for Manhattan's version of the GRE and learning Manhattan's logic / close reading strategies by drilling these problems, and Manhattan's way of thinking is inherently different from ETS's; that said, if you need practice with exposure to a wide swath of topics that you'd only ever find on a standardized test (in my case, science writing is the bane of my existence.. one more paragraph about molecules in craters on the moon, I swear..), then it's not the worst resource, and if you're already in the mid-160s range, I don't think this will hurt you irreparably, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement.
• Online practice tests: To be honest, used these for more Math practice and kind of winged the Verbal sections knowing I'd probably do badly on them but also not caring because they're not at all representative of the real test, alas.
  • I will say that I felt that the Manhattan passages were longer than the real thing, so maybe this is good exercise for your eyeballs..lol really reaching here
• Warning: PLEASE AVOID MANHATTAN TC QUESTIONS. I consider TC to be one of my strengths and doing Manhattan TC questions made me worse at TC because their TC questions are founded on "do you know XYZ words" whereas the real test focuses on "logic." Case in point that I keep harping on but only because I really believe in this: on the real GRE, the "hardest problems" are three-blank TC questions that don't grill you on vocab knowledge but instead focus on convoluted sentence logic to test whether you understand what the sentence is trying to imply. It's not even a matter of not being able to correctly do Manhattan TC questions; I can do them just fine. The problem lies in the fact that Manhattan TC questions make you complacent about sentence complexity and don't challenge you in the way the real test does.
• Takeaway: I'm a HUGE fan of Manhattan's Math materials, so this was a massive bummer.

1. Magoosh

• I had a premium subscription in order to get more Quant practice in. This time around, I only did Magoosh Verbal as part of a full-length "practice test," i.e. I did not do separate drilling for the Verbal section.
• Warning: Avoid Magoosh RC (and honestly Magoosh anything Verbal-wise)
• Takeaway: Avoid. I find so much of the Magoosh Verbal to be downright nonsensical. I literally do not understand how they come up with the questions / answers they do and still believe their material is even remotely similar to the real thing.. It's jarringly different, especially their RC, and I found myself internally arguing with their answers, which fixate on very silly things and often miss the main point of passages (that is, of the passages that even had a point to them..). For reference, as an example of how poor a predictor Magoosh Verbal is, the first time I took the exam, I did all of their Verbal practice questions (stubbornly refusing to give into their style) and they predicted my Verbal range to be something along the lines of 158-162.. I ended up getting a 170.

Verbal Practice Test Scores

• Magoosh 1 (5 sections, experimental math section, did not do AWA): 164 (It's only this high because I practically forced myself to select stupid answers even if I disagreed.. Had I not, probably would've been closer to 160)
• Manhattan 3 (1 essay, VQVQ): 165 (I literally never score this high on Manhattan because their questions include so many ridiculous words that ETS would never, ever use lol)
• Manhattan 4 (2 essays, VQVQ): 161
• ETS free online 1: 169
• ETS free online 2: 166
• ETS paper 1: 170
• Takeaway: As you can see, I did better on the ETS materials' Verbal sections, and quite frankly, If you're in the 160s range, I wouldn't worry about the Manhattan / Magoosh scores at all if you're taking those practice tests, because they're NOTHING like the real thing... In my opinion, the real GRE Verbal section is similar to ETS online #1 in difficulty level (and easier than ETS online #2), if not easier. Per my experience BOTH TIMES, the real thing is WAYYYY "easier" (in terms of demands on vocabulary) than any practice materials.

Tips & Tricks for Verbal

Reminder of disclaimer: these are my own random tips & tricks that worked for me, but of course I'm neither a GRE tutor nor teacher of any kind, so use at your own peril. :)
Sentence Equivalence (i.e. choose 2 words that best complete the sentence and yield similar meanings, aka find synonyms that make the sentence make sense)

• General approach:
  • Before seeing the answer choices, try to come up with the best single-choice word to fit in the blank. Then look for that word + a synonym. This works ~90% of the time.
  • If that fails, eliminate all words that have no synonym. Among the remaining words, apply "2-degrees of separation" rule.
• Hard problems (i.e. the 10%):
  • When even eliminating choices doesn't quite get you down to the 2 answers I need, I apply what I'm going to call the "2-degrees of separation" rule when dealing with sentences with multiple seemingly "correct" answers. The basic idea is to compare pairs of potential answers, and for each pair of words, to try to find a 3rd word (that is NOT one of the answer choices) that sits between the two potential synonyms and "connects" them. For example, suppose you're left with the following choices after eliminating some obviously incorrect ones: "canny," "resourceful," "sagacious," "tactful." In the context of a sentence describing someone as a self-made industry titan thanks to their being _____ in navigating business connections or something—all three are rather tempting choices. For someone to be self-made, it's likely the case that they're all 4 of these words and more..! But given that our goal is to find 2 synonyms, I would apply the "2-degrees of separation" and try out pairs of words as follows:
    • (word A, word B): Is there some word that I'd be happy choosing as a synonym of "word A" that I would also be satisfied with as a synonym for "word B"? The one that comes to mind immediately is (canny, sagacious) can be joined together by "shrewd" or "astute." Thus, this would be the correct pair, as they are better-choice synonyms (and incidentally, if the context of the sentence is business success, "canny" would probably be the best single-choice word, so I'd feel really good about choosing "canny" + the other word that is closest in meaning, as demonstrated by our being able to insert "shrewd" in between "canny" and "sagacious").
    • I find this strategy to be most useful when dealing with questions in which the answers don't strike me as perfect synonyms. I tend to struggle to find an apt 2nd word after finding the best single-choice word (as opposed to the flip-side problem of not being able to eliminate enough words), so this helps me connect the dots between words. One example of this that I remember coming across: I remember reading the sentence (about the argument in a work of literary writing or something) and immediately thinking "cursory" would be the perfect fit. That was indeed an answer choice; however, the other choices were things like "fleeting," "perfunctory," etc. None of which really felt like the perfect fit. Although they both imply speed, to use "fleeting" to describe an argument felt really awkward.. (fleeting-transient-ephemeral I associate with forces of nature / things beyond human control. E.g. fleeting beauty of flowers, ephemerality of youth, etc., as if there's almost a wistfulness / nostalgia to the word itself), and I feel that "perfunctory" holds a connotation of doing something quickly out of duty / indifference to that duty, which didn't entirely fit the bill in my opinion. BUT applying the "2-degrees of separation" idea, I felt that "hasty" was a word that I could live with thinking of as synonyms to each of the word: (cursory, hasty), (hasty, perfunctory).
• Takeaway: ime, the correct answer pair will always have a third word that sits between, and connects, the two.

Reading Comprehension

• Potentially hot take: RC isn't about reading comprehension; it's about answer-choice comprehension. RC questions are hard because the answer choices are nuanced / difficult to understand, NOT because the passage itself is hard. Therefore, to minimize errors, spend more time reading the answer choices and less time reading the passages, ceteris paribus.
  • Hear me out on this: If you're in the low-160s range already, there probably isn't a single passage that you read but did not understand. You get the main point, you generally know what's going on, and you probably even have a few nice takeaways of your own—e.g. if you had to write an essay about the author's attitudes towards X scholar's theories about Y person's artwork, you could totally do that. BUT, imo, the GRE isn't really testing you on how much of the passage you understood (when you're at a 163 aiming for a 168, i.e. we're talking those "hard RC questions", which I feel like you only really see 2-3 of on test day, ime, but they're important to get right if you want a near-perfect score); it's testing you on how well you understand different interpretations of the passage. I.e. how well you can make sense of "other people" (as proxied by the various answer choices) trying to understand and / or misinterpreting the nuance of the passage.
  • Strategy: Given that, my general approach is to read the passage as quickly as I can (but still in an immersive way so that I remember the gist of main points / counterarguments, etc. and can quickly reference which paragraph they're in when I need to recall points), with the goal of never needing to reread it again (ofc I may end up rereading it, but the attitude is there). Then, I really, really take my time with the answer choices. I read each answer choice and ask myself the following:
    • What part of this answer choice is wrong?
    • If I can pinpoint which part of the answer choice's statement is wrong, then I ask (and this is crucial): Why would someone mistakenly believe this answer choice to be right? Where in the passage were they led astray? Pay especial attention to specific wording in the answer choice. In my experience, I feel that the GRE plays "by extension" tricks in the hardest RC questions, meaning they'll make a nearly correct statement, but it is about "the XXX of YYY" rather than about "YYY" itself, e.g. "Author A refutes the construction of the argument of Author B because of (insert correct interpretation)"; HOWEVER, Author A is actually refuting the argument itself, and NOT its construction; this may be particularly tempting when Authors A and B arrive at different conclusions using similar but different methodologies, and hence reminiscent yet contrasting "constructions."
  • When / if I'm stuck between 2 answer choices that both seem imperfect but also not horrendous, I use a "regret minimization" tactic: I think about which answer I'd regret not standing behind more were I to choose the other answer and find out that I was wrong. This trick is more a purely psychological tactic to get me to mark this question and move on.
• Beyond that, if you have a lot of time before your exam, and even if you have only a few weeks, READ READ READ lots of high-quality journals and books—things like The Economist and The New Yorker are fantastic training for the social science, arts and history passages you'll encounter, and often far more nuanced.
• Takeaway: I believe the nuance / difficulty of RC lies in the answer choices, not the passage itself.

Text Completion

• I have the least helpful advice for this section, aside from reiterating my belief that the hardest questions in this section (i.e., "three-blank sentences") are difficult because sentence logic is difficult and sometimes the correct answer choices will add a layer of nuance to the entirety of the sentence, so it's your job to pick out what that nuance is beforehand.
• General approach: Make note of words that portend a shift / change that will occur in the following clause (i.e. not the clause in which this word is attached to), e.g. "while," "although," "despite," but also things like "having" or "given" when used as a sentence starter. For example, "Having ____, the woman was unwarrantedly uncertain of a ______ result, indeed despite ______".
  • This is just a simple, random example I completely made up to illustrate a point (GRE does a WAY better job of coming up with examples, but bear with my contrived example), but the idea is that I would try to abstract away from the content of the sentence and use "first blank" "third blank" etc. as placeholders to think through and rephrase the sentence (especially to get rid of double negatives, etc.) so as to understand the blanks' relation to one another. For example, here the logic (of course also depends on what choices you're given to choose from) could plausibly be that the woman should feel more certain about a (second blank) type of result because the thing in the (first blank) happened and may be supported by something in the (third blank).
    • E.g. completed sentence: Having done her due diligence, the woman was unwarrantedly uncertain of a propitious outcome, indeed despite all evidence in her favor.
• Takeaway: I believe the hardest TC questions on the GRE are testing sentence logic more so than vocabulary knowledge.

That's all!

I'm sure there's stuff I forgot to cover, but this is already far too long of a post. Comment / DM me if you have comments / criticisms / concerns! Thank you all for being an awesome community throughout this GRE journey, and good luck to all of you in the throes of studying!!

I hurried out of the alley and found the human standing next to a waiting taxi. He nodded in my direction as he saw me running.
"I was wondering who was to be my minder," he said incidentally, "I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't that silent fellow standing next to the body."
With that he turned to face the driver.
"Pauper's Cemetery," he said, "And take Overland Road not the Wheelwright Highway."
He then climbed inside the carriage and looked back at me.
"Well come along," he said, "I imagine you will be expected to file a report on tonight's activities."
I climbed in. Like most cabs, this one had two bench seats facing opposite one another. He elected to sit in the one facing rearward and thus I was able to sit facing the front of the carriage. Now that we were seated, he was closer to my own height and I found I was considerably less intimidated by him than I had been upon first catching sight of him. He still had a slightly odd look about him and the air still seemed a bit heavy in his presence, but that feeling of impending doom had been removed.
As I sat down he reached into a pocket of his waistcoat and withdrew a brass watch. He eyed it for a moment and then glanced in my direction. He pocketed it and nodded to himself.
"You have questions," he said as he settled into his seat and clasped his hands before his face as if in deep thought. Or, perhaps, he just did not know what to do with them.
"Pardon?" I asked.
He sighed.
"Let us begin again," he said slowly, "Clearly Captain Greenway did not warn you of my appearance nor my impending arrival. You were not alerted to the details of the case nor, from the sounds of it, were you permitted to do a thorough investigation of your own. I know you have questions. We will be in this carriage for some time. Now would be an appropriate time to ask them."
Questions? I had so many. What sort of magic was it that he had just performed? What was a Hand of Glory? How did he know Greenway and Ambergold? How was he able to just . . . shut them up like that? How was he able to know about things he could not see?
Instead, I blurted out something shamefully ignorant.
"You're supposed to be dead!" I said.
He raised an eyebrow.
"That is not a question," he observed, "Nor is it a particularly well worded threat. Would you, perhaps, like to try again?"
"I mean," I stammered, "You're not Folk!"
He rocked his head from side to side.
"Still not a question," he said, "But I will accept it as a statement of fact."
"You're an Oath-Breaker! A warlock! A human!"
"Yes, well, you should not use the three as synonyms for one another," he said, only gently rebuking me, "The terms oath-breaker and warlock, I suppose, are similar. However, as neither one is entirely accurate nor are they considered entirely complimentary, perhaps we should just stick with 'human?'"
I realized, belatedly, that I had insulted him. Except, he did not seem to be insulted. More amused than anything else. I realized suddenly that I had been, in fact, babbling like an awestruck child. He was giving me license to collect myself and so I took a moment before asking my next question.
"But it is true that you can lie?" I asked at last.
"Well, all the Folk can lie," he said, "But if you mean can I lie without harming myself? That's true as far as physical health. Social and mental tolls are collected, of course."
"But how?" I persisted, "How can you avoid the Wasting? I've read that humans are immune to it, but now why."
He sighed again.
"My own fault he said," he said, sounding more as if he were discussing the matter with himself rather than me, "I invited her to ask whatever she liked. I didn't specify she couldn't start out with advanced thaumic theory."
Before I could reply, he launched into a rather, well, unusual lecture.
"My name is Harlan Sloan," he said formally and then paused to look at me. When I didn't react, he added "That's my actual name."
Now, I found myself retreating into my seat. I glanced at the doors of the carriage and then out the windows to the side. We were still moving. I was in a moving carriage with no escape and this madman had just told me his real name!
"Calm yourself," he said quickly. I ignored him. It was too much. I just met the man and he was already sharing . . . sharing that! I couldn't! It was madness to even think!
"I am telling you because it is a trifle," he added, "Humans tell there real names all the time. Real name. Not True Name."
Something he said there seemed to penetrate my panic. I came enough to my senses to realize I was hyperventilating and clutching the seat to either side as if that would somehow protect me. During the entire exchange, however, Harlan himself had barely moved.
I calmed down and, with a sudden inspiration, reached down into myself and gripped my Talent. I had his name, now, so could I bind to it? I tried a very simple spell. One that required no runescripting or other amplification measures. A simple location spell. Nothing more advanced than a "near me far from me" sort of feeling. I grabbed my own power and reached out. There was nothing to latch onto.
I opened my eyes and found him watching me. He must have seen something in my face because he nodded at me as if answering some unspoken question.
"That's how," he said, "Humans don't have a True Name."
I found myself rejecting his words immediately. It was just a warlock lie, right? Even inanimate objects had True Names. The rocks, the trees, and even the moons above had True Names. How could a creature exist and not have one? Yet, as I tried probing at him I found I could detect nothing. No geist. No presence. It was as if the man were just a collection of shadows sitting across from me.
"I don't understand," I admitted. He shrugged.
"To be perfectly frank, nor do I," he said, "All I know is that in all my studies, that seems to be the answer. All practitioners of the art, no matter what they call their particular discipline, are just binding spiritual elements. Either to themselves or to each other. They create links from the geists for all things and that spiritual connection translates over to a physical connection in our world. Your connection to all these things is made from the binding you are born with between the Geist of the world and its bindings to all other things. Your spiritual binding is tied to the True Name. Humans, don't have one."
"So you don't feel a connection to the Geist at all?" I asked.
He shook his head.
"I'm afraid not," he said, "Humans feel . . . isolated at all times. We can see with our eyes. Touch with our hands. Hear, taste, and smell. But we can't pull on a connection that ties us to everything and everyone else."
"That sounds . . . lonely and sad," I said before I could stop myself. He chuckled.
"Well, I've never known life in any other way. Perhaps that is blessing enough."
He smiled at me and a bizarre thought occurred to me. Of all the people in world, the man sitting across from me was someone I could give my True Name to recklessly. I had never told anyone my name. Like most people, a public name was given to me in early childhood. The rules for how names are assigned are never formally declared. It is just that, eventually, some euphemism for you eventually sticks. In my case, my father said I would grind his patience like a whetstone to a blade. Redblock, or so I have been told, was the child who played with the red block. Our public names are a meaningless collection of sounds. They had no special bindings to us and could be built, reshaped, or discarded with ease. If I understood this human correctly, his entire species used all names like this.
What a tremendous power it must be to never have no secret one must guard so jealously! To be free to tell one and all the name that is uniquely your own.
"I apologize for my behaviour," I suddenly said, "I should have listened to your explanation more thoroughly before assuming."
He shrugged.
"I understand," he said, "From what I have been told, telling your True Name is something only done as an act of true faith and devotion between lovers. It is a declaration that you give the other person ultimate power over you. However, in my case, all I have given you is something you can shout at the top of your lungs in a crowded room and still hope to gain my attention."
He held his hands up and made a strange tossing motion as if signifying his helplessness.
"I did not even realize that True Names were even a real thing until I came here," he said.
I blinked in surprise.
"So, you are not from here?" I asked, "You come from someplace else?"
"Yes," he said with a nod, "You are correct that, in this world at least, humans went extinct a long time ago. Elsewhere, though? Well, the word 'thriving' is probably the most apt description. You know those legends of the world of light before the Diaspora?"
"Yes," I said and then felt myself start, "You mean to say you are from the Light World?"
"Earth," he said, "It is called Earth."
"Earth?" I asked, "As in soil?"
He frowned at that.
"I hadn't realized I said that in Low Elf," he apologized, "In my language it is called . . . actually, never mind. Yes, apparently we are not a very creative people."
I found myself smiling at that. How could I not? Now that we were away from Greenway and Ambergold I saw that much of his earlier sense of cool arrogance was an act put upon for their benefit and theirs alone. As we were riding along, I found the man across from me relaxing more and more into . . . well, I was not entirely certain, truth be told. An intelligent man still, but one with a warm humor and a quick smile. He had seemed almost like a clockwork automaton at times while we were in the alley. But now? He sounded as if he would be someone I might not mind spending an evening chatting with by the fire.
What was that? Where had such thoughts come from? I was allowing my curiosity to affect me. I mentally gave us a bit more distances and reminded myself to compose myself and ask questions in a more professional manner.
"How did you come to find yourself in this world, then?" I asked in a far more sober tone.
His eyes flashed and I knew that he noticed the change in my demeanor. I chastised myself as soon as he did. Of course he did. I was trying to fool a man who just demonstrated he reconstruct the events of a crime well after it happened. What chance did I have at disguising my thoughts as I was having them?
Still, he allowed the matter to pass and chose to answer my question directly.
"That," he said with a distracted look, "Is a question we will have to table for the moment. I will answer, it is just that the story is a bit, well, complicated and it requires a bit of background. A background I fear we do not have sufficient time to discuss."
I felt myself deflate slightly. His words sounded reasonable but, at the same time, I found myself feeling as if I had been scolded. He had promised to answer questions and he had offered hints of proof of another world. Proof that the legends I had heard as a child were true. How could I not pursue this line of questioning?
Because, a tiny voice in my head reminded me, someone has died.
That snapped me back to where I was.
"That thing you just did," I said at last, "Where you could see the events from the crime so clearly?"
"Hah!" he laughed.
I frowned.
"Something amuses you?" I asked slowly.
"I don't see the crime," he explained, "That was just a trick. A bit of deceit with a lot of theater."
"I am afraid I do not understand," I confessed.
He leaned back in his chair and angled his face upwards as if he were fascinated with the ceiling.
"A few winters ago I was homeless," he explained, "It is hard finding someone who is willing to hire you long term once people find out you are the monster they grew up to fear. As such, I lost many jobs in a short period of time and I was often without funds. So, on one particularly chilly evening, I decided the best way to get a warm bed for the night as well as a decent meal was to have myself arrested. So, I committed a very minor crime that should only keep me in jail for a few nights and before being released."
I wanted to tell him that I did not understand the relevance of this story, but I did not. For reasons I cannot explain, I found myself intrigued.
"What crime was that?" I asked.
"I broke the window of a temple," he explained, "Ever notice some of the laws here have disproportionate consequences? Most Folk are stubbornly areligious. Not necessarily atheistic, just no time for religion. If they do follow one, it is something like the Devotees or the Circle Way. No real emphasis on an afterlife, but a lot of philosophy on how we should live the current life. Still, a few Folk do practice something like a religion and, for some historical reason or another, we have entire categories of blasphemy laws. So, while a broken window is normally considered an act of vandalism and is settled by paying a fine, if the building is some sort of temple the act is considered blasphemous and requires a jail sentence as a punitive measure in addition to the fine.."
He rocked his head forward to meet my gaze once more.
"I was very selective of which temple I attacked," he said, "I waited for a particularly cold day, picked up a rock, and tossed it through the last remaining window of the Temple of the Red Throat."
I frowned. Temple of the Red Throat?
That religion was dissolved two score and ten years ago. The religion itself was little more than a transient faction of a different religion - the Enlightened Palm if I remember correctly - that had momentarily splintered due to a disagreement over succession of its leader. They had later reconciled their differences and merged together once more. But, for six years, they had occupied a building just off the docks and declared it a temple for their fleeting religion. It had remained for more than a twice score of years and then had been demolished to build a new warehouse. Calling the building a temple was a stretch. Breaking the window would hardly even be considered vandalism as there was little material value what was left of the structure after the rest had crumbled away due to rot and ruin.
It was then that I understood. The actual property damage would never be pursued. The owner of the land had no interest in maintaining the building in a damage free state. The window would not be left intact anyway. So, those charges would be dropped almost immediately. But blasphemy was pursued as a separate offense and the punishment for it would be applied regardless of what was decided on the actual criminal matter. He would be arrested just on blasphemy. He could not be held any longer than the law specified nor fined again as all that was taken care of by the pursuit of the criminal manner. Temple law was only looking to improve the soul.
He could go to jail and walk out with a clean record as the matter would not be pursued criminally. He did not harm anyone physically or materially. It was a brilliant move and I said as much.
"Yes, well, unfortunately Captain Greenway agreed with you," Harlan explained, "He thought it was a bit too brilliant, in fact, and wanted to know how I had such a keen grasp of the law."
Now that he mentioned it . . .
"How did you?" I asked.
He sighed in annoyance.
"You have to understand," he said as he glanced out the window as if afraid to meet my gaze, "In my world, fiction is not uncommon. Not lies, but stories we tell ourselves for the purposes of entertainment. Not to deceive. One sort of story that is very popular is what we called a 'mystery.' My father loved mysteries and any sort of mystery out there he would read or watch. Detective stories, suspense, and even police procedural dramas. None of which, by the way, are easy to explain in terms you would be familiar with. I tried with Captain Greenway and failed. Instead, what he took from this is that I have been exposed to hundreds of mock crimes. Hypothetical criminal activity that has been foiled and the manner in which it was achieved. To his way of thinking, this made me the greatest criminal expert on your world."
"I take it you disagree?"
"Mercy save us, woman," Harlan said, "I did say they were stories, not plausible stories. Some were better than others, but many required the audience to suspend disbelief."
I was now confused. Was he arguing for his expertise or against it? If he could spot flaws in the methodology employed, didn't that also imply he knew the correct way to achieve the desired results?
I wanted to ask more, but he resumed speaking on his own.
"The captain has been trying to get Ambergold to hire me on as a 'consultant' on a criminal investigation ever since that day," Harlan added, "He didn't even know what the term consultant meant as the idea never caught on in this world, but once I explained it to him he adopted it readily enough. Ambergold always thought the actual Watch should solve crimes and I cannot say I disagree. Today was the first time his position was swayed."
He rubbed the temples of his skull with the first two fingers on each hand and continued.
"Remember when I said the person was cut open from the groin with an upwards stroke?" he asked.
I nodded my agreement.
"I made that up," he explained, "I have no way of knowing which way he sliced or anything like that. I just saw a few jagged bits that seemed to branch more upwards than down. Maybe they were made by the knife slipping. Maybe they happened when the maniac broke the chest apart and everything tore. I have no way of knowing. But it sounds good and it can't really be proved or disproved."
"So, you're saying you are a fraud?" I asked, confusion only growing. Humans could lie. They were immune to the Wasting, yes. But he didn't. I know he didn't because what he showed us was true. What he predicted came to pass over and over again.
"Not entirely," he said slowly, "More . . . just theatrical. I make a lot of educated guesses about what I see. The tendency is people later will remember what I got right more than what I got wrong. So, study the scene. Make some plausible inferences. Grab on to what you can and keep revising as you go along as you creep closer and closer to the truth."
"But you lie," I persisted, "You feign confidence when you have none."
As soon as I said the words I realized I made a mistake. I don't know how I knew, but something about the man's demeanor warned me that he would be lenient in a great many things. But do not question his pride.As if to prove my words true, his eyes which had previously been wandering hither and yon suddenly locked with my own. The temperature in our carriage felt as if it was dropping and that unusual sense that I was drowning came back full force.
"Listen to me, Constable," he said slowly. He got my title wrong but I could not even find the breath to correct him on the matter. I was gasping as those green eyes burned their way into my skull like twin daggers.
"I don't care what your little Name Oaths might lead you to believe," he went on, "No one has a monopoly on the truth. All an oath proves is that the person speaking believes he or she is telling the truth. It is a test of intention, not validity. All of us feign more confidence than we have. You do not know if the sky will come crashing down upon you upon the morn nor do you know with absolute certainty that your parents loved you. Every moment of every day is a giant mystery that we only can perceive the barest hint of at any given heartbeat. We're all lost and we are all making things up as we go along and pretending we know what we are doing. Do not fault me for crimes you grant yourself the luxury of committing."
With that, his eyes flicked away and I could breathe again. Warmth and life seeped back into my numbed limbs and I found myself once more wishing I could flee this carriage that seemed far too small to contain both of us.
"But, yes," he said in a much more jovial tone, "I guess I do mix fact and fiction in judicious amounts of both. Not to worry. The lies will grow more scarce as we have more truth to use as a foundation."
I could not speak and so I simply nodded.
The human glanced out the window and frowned. I heard him mutter something that sounded derogatory towards cab drivers and then he looked back at me once more.
"We will be at the cemetery soon," he said, "You may want to ask your last questions now. It may be some time before we have time to partition out time for more."
What else should I ask?
"Is it true," I said, voice slightly raspy, "That humans are a jinx?"
He grinned.
"Concerned for your safety, I see," he said, "A reasonable fear. Well, in this case the legends are true and false. While it is true that my proximity and more so my touch has some adverse effects on magic as a whole."
He held up his gloved hands.
"Unfortunately," he added, "The results can often be both energetic and exothermic."
"Pardon?"
He sighed.
"Magic tends to fail if I get too close to it," he said, "In cases of particularly intricate magic if I come in contact with it, it tends to - well - explode. Did you notice the oil lamps at the crime scene?"
I nodded.
"Greenway let me get too close to a runelight once," he explained, "It did not go well. I'm afraid he lost some curls on that magnificent beard of his."
I thought back to the events of the night. During the time of the investigation, Harlan had actually touched very little. He had Redblock or myself move items or the lights around. It was almost as if he was afraid to touch anything.
Then again, if objects had a tendency to detonate at my slightest touch I might be overly cautious as well. It can be difficult at times to determine which objects have and have not been enchanted. Architects, for example, are now to hide runes in out of the way locations to add strength or durability to a building. Charms can be applied to make things shinier or to smell sweeter. To this man, the entire city would be like walking through a field of thunderclap bombs.
"You have time for one more question," Harlan prompted, "Make it a good one."
I was about to ask him why we were going to the Pauper's Cemetery, a question I had been meaning to ask for some time, but instead I blurted out one I hadn't realized I had been pondering.
"What is a Hand of Glory?" I asked.
He clapped his hands excitedly.
"Excellent!" he said, face positively beaming with delight, "You were paying attention! What is a Hand of Glory, indeed!"
He then leaned closer to me and spoke in a near whisper - almost as if he were inviting me to some sort of arcane conspiracy - all while allowing his eyes to flick about as if searching for eavesdropping spies.
"A Hand of Glory," he said, voice low and throaty, "Is a candle formed from the severed left hand of an executed murder with a lock of the murder's hair used to form the wicks for each finger. The preparation of the candle requires some very, well, special and hard to come by ingredients. The fat of the hand must be prepared with appropriate rituals but, if done correctly, the hand becomes the ultimate thief's tool."
He then held up the the five fingers of his left hand and wiggled them at me for emphasis.
"Light the first finger for light," he said as if reciting from a passage, "Light the second for dark. The third finger shall bring transgression. The fourth shall bring stillness. From the fifth shall come unity."
He lowered his hand and shrugged.
"Old books often go in for the dramatic," he offered by way of explanation, "But what it means is that if you light the first finger you get a light to see by that can penetrate any gloom. No matter how dark it is, you see everything. The second finger is for cloaking. If you light it, then no one can see you. The problem with that one is you can't see out of the darkness. The third finger will open any lock it shines upon. The fourth will paralyze someone that has the light fall upon them.To use them in combination, however, you have to light all five including the thumb. Even if all you really want is to have the first two."
I blinked as his words sunk in.
"You mean that if a thief found a Hand he would be able to move freely through any house, unlock any door, freeze people helpless in place, and none would be able to see him?"
"Yes and no," he said as he held up his hand and made a side to side motion, "Like most magic, there is a cost with using the Hand and that cost is time. For reasons regarding certain rather nasty bindings that take place during the ritual, once the Hand is created the efficacy of each finger starts to degrade. The fourth finger fades quickly. When the Hand is a few hours old that enchantment fades to little more than a feeling of resistance. Within a day that finger does nothing at all but must still be lit to use the other three. Within a fortnight the middle finger has more trouble with locks. Within a month it won't open them at all. Only the first two can be used over and over again for a year or more. Then one day the second finger stops working. Then you have a thief standing out in the open with a flaming, smoking mummified hand and he has to do a lot of fancy talking if he wants to get out of that one. Now - given what I have told you - what does that tell us about this crime?"
"That the ripper is insane!" I blurted out, "He made a candle out of a severed hand. How does one even come up with such an idea?"
"Focus, please," Harlan begged of me, "What does it tell you?"
I thought about it for a moment.
"Well," I said at last, "I can see why you believed he would have used the candle shop to fashion his Hand. So I now see why you were so sure the murderer had been there and had most likely killed the owner. He would need to use the facilities to make the candle would not want to risk being disturbed . . . but-"
"Yes?"
"If he was going to kill the shop owner anyway, why bother killing this man?" I asked aloud.
"Go on," he prompted. Suddenly, bits that had seemed unconnected and ambiguous before started sliding together.
"That's why you said it was not random and this man was targeted," I concluded, "He must have somehow known when and where our victim would be in that alley. Possibly followed him and discovered it. He may have even just taken advantage of the shop as a convenience. But he wanted this man for some reason. It wasn't just any body he needed. He needed to kill this particular man. More, we know that the victim must have been fairly routine with his visits and our killer was familiar enough with them to plan ahead of time. He wanted the candle to have maximum impact and completely freeze our man in his tracks."
"Good," Harlan said, "You are a very quick study. What else does this tell you? Think about the Hand itself."
I blinked.
"What do you mean, 'what else?'" I asked, "I don't know anything else about the Hand."
"You know of one of the ingredients," he countered.
I was going to tell him that I hardly see how an executed murderer's hand was entirely relevant but then I suddenly did.
The city rarely performs executions these days, but when it does it knows that the brutality of the event in of itself is noteworthy. It lends itself to a certain fame and notoriety to those who have committed the most heinous of deeds. A reward in death to those who committed the gravest of evil. So, our High Counselors have taken steps to neutralize that fame.
Once a person is convicted and sentenced to death, all mention of this person's name is struck from all public records. The person becomes a ghost in documentation. Then hanging is then held in secret. The body buried anonymously. The city does all it can to make certain this person is forgotten in public record while the victims names live on.
And what does our city do with those who die with no friends or family or with no name? It buries them in-
"The Pauper's Cemetery," I said aloud.
"You have it," he agreed.
I did indeed. All the little logical leaps and twists that his mind had taken in an instant looked so obvious in retrospect. So why did I need his help to show me the way?
"But," I said, "I don't understand."
"Understand what?" he asked.
"Why go to the Pauper's Cemetery?" I asked, "I mean, yes, I understand that he must have gone here for the murderer's hand, but what do you hope to learn?"
His smile faltered. I had missed something. Something he thought was obvious.
"The bodies are buried anonymously," he reminded me, "Not even the gravediggers themselves can tell you who the body belongs to."
"Yes and-" I said testily and then paused.
"Wait," I said, "How does the murderer know which body to dig up?"
"An excellent question," he said with the barest of nods. The carriage chose that moment to slow to a stop. "One," he added, "I very much hope to find an answer for."
I followed him as he exited the carriage.