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The color wheel theory of love is an idea created by Canadian psychologist John Alan Lee that describes six styles of love, using several of the Latin and Greek words for love. First introduced in his book Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving (1973), Lee defines three primary, three secondary and nine tertiary love styles, describing them in terms of the traditional color wheel.

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HUMANS ARE UNLIKELY to win the animal kingdom's prize for fastest, strongest or largest, but we are world champions at understanding one another. This interpersonal prowess is fueled, at least in part, by empathy: our tendency to care about and share other people's emotional experiences. Empathy is a cornerstone of human behavior and has long been considered innate. A forthcoming study, however, challenges this assumption by demonstrating that empathy levels have been declining over the past 30 years.

The research, led by Sara H. Konrath of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and published online in August in Personality and Social Psychology Review, found that college students' self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years. To make matters worse, during this same period students' self-reported narcissism has reached new heights, according to research by Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University.

An individual's empathy can be assessed in many ways, but one of the most popular is simply asking people what they think of themselves. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, a well-known questionnaire, taps empathy by asking whether responders agree to statements such as "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me" and "I try to look at everybody's side of a disagreement before I make a decision." People vary a great deal in how empathic they consider themselves. Moreover, research confirms that the people who say they are empathic actually demonstrate empathy in discernible ways, ranging from mimicking others' postures to helping people in need (for example, offering to take notes for a sick fellow student).

Since the creation of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index in 1979, tens of thousands of students have filled out this questionnaire while participating in studies examining everything from neural responses to others' pain to levels of social conservatism. Konrath and her colleagues took advantage of this wealth of data by collating self-reported empathy scores of nearly 14,000 students. She then used a technique known as cross-temporal meta-analysis to measure whether scores have changed over the years. The results were startling: almost 75 percent of students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average student 30 years ago.

What's to Blame?
This information seems to conflict with studies suggesting that empathy is a trait people are born with. For example, in a 2007 study Yale University developmental psychologists found that six-month-old infants demonstrate an affinity for empathic behavior, preferring simple dolls they have seen helping others over visually similar bullies. And investigators at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have shown that even when given no incentive, toddlers help experimenters and share rewards with others. Empathic behavior is not confined to humans or even to primates. In a recent study mice reacted more strongly to painful stimuli when they saw another mouse suffering, suggesting that they "share" the pain of their cage mates.

But the new finding that empathy is on the decline indicates that even when a trait is hardwired, social context can exert a profound effect, changing even our most basic emotional responses. Precisely what is sapping young people of their natural impulse to feel for others remains mysterious, however, because scientists cannot design a study to evaluate changes that occurred in the past. As Twenge puts it, "you can't randomly assign people to a generation."

There are theories, however. Konrath cites the increase in social isolation, which has coincided with the drop in empathy. In the past 30 years Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups-ranging from PTAs to political parties to casual sports teams. Several studies hint that this type of isolation can take a toll on people's attitudes toward others. Steve Duck of the University of Iowa has found that socially isolated, as compared with integrated, individuals evaluate others less generously after interacting with them, and Kenneth J. Rotenberg of Keele University in England has shown that lonely people are more likely to take advantage of others' trust to cheat them in laboratory games.

The types of information we consume have also shifted in recent decades; specifically, Americans have abandoned reading in droves. The number of adults who read literature for pleasure sank below 50 percent for the first time ever in the past 10 years, with the decrease occurring most sharply among college-age adults. And reading may be linked to empathy. In a study published earlier this year psychologist Raymond A. Mar of York University in Toronto and others demonstrated that the number of stories preschoolers read predicts their ability to understand the emotions of others. Mar has also shown that adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic.

Whereas the sources of empathic decline are impossible to pinpoint, the work of Konrath and Twenge demonstrates that the American personality is shifting in an ominous direction. Still, we are not doomed to become a society of self-obsessed loners. Konrath points out that if life choices can drive empathy down, then making different choices could nurture it. "The fact that empathy is declining means that there's more fluidity to it than previously thought," she says. "It means that empathy can change. It can go up."

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What, Me Care? Young Are Less Empathetic

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HUMANS ARE UNLIKELY to win the animal kingdom's prize for fastest, strongest or largest, but we are world champions at understanding one another. This interpersonal prowess is fueled, at least in part, by empathy: our tendency to care about and share other people's emotional experiences.

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Is it lust or is it love? | Terri Orbuch | TEDxOaklandUniversity

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Nurture Vs. Nature/ A mother's battle on trying to still love her son. 

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Nurture Vs. Nature/ A mother's battle on trying to still love her son. 

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2.5 out of 4 stars

Lynne Ramsay is best known for her melancholic Scottish working-class tone poems ( Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar). But for her first film in a decade - and her most mainstream effort - she has chosen to adapt a shocker of novel by Lionel Shriver.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is about a traumatized mother, Eva (Tilda Swinton), before and after her sociopath son perpetrates a high-school atrocity. The book, written as a series of letters from Eva to her absent husband, was book-club catnip, touching on post-Columbine terrors while offering a liberating acknowledgment of anti-maternal feelings.

The movie, written by Ramsay and Rory Kinnear, is an ambitious miscalculation, artful to a fault, with a jigsaw puzzle of flashbacks with conspicuous colour design in the service of an overwrought psychological horror story.

In an early scene we see Eva revelling in the Tomatina tomato-throwing festival in the Spanish town of Bunol, shot from overhead, her red-splattered body being held aloft while she assumes the Crucifixion pose.

Later, she assumes the martyr role, living in a run-down house near the railway tracks amid angry relatives of her son's victims, who splatter her home with red paint while the soundtrack drones old-time work-gang songs.

Sanguine splashes appear in almost every scene of the film, at times absurdly: When Eva stands frozen in front of stacks of tomato soup, there's an odd moment when it seems Andy Warhol must be behind the school killings.

Haunted and lean post-atrocity, Swinton is compelling but miscast, and she sticks out among her boorish American neighbours like a unicorn that has wandered into the cow yard. When she takes a menial job at a small travel agency, the co-workers are dull-eyed, coarse and hostile. (Eva's skewed perspective in the book is treated here as objective reality.) A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman approaches her smiling, but slaps her and utters obscenities. A male co-worker makes a vile proposition.

In the parking lot outside, a teen in a wheelchair calls out her name and - unexpectedly - treats her with kindness, an event more shocking than the insults. Alone, she eats a frittata made from broken eggs, picking out the shards of shell. Oh please.

In happy pre-baby-Kevin days, we see Eva as a bohemian travel writer who lives with her teddy-bear photographer husband Franklin (John C. Reilly) in a Manhattan loft. The baby arrives angry and manipulative, crying incessantly in his exhausted mother's presence, while instantly quiet when Dad picks him up. As if conspiring against her, Dad insists they move to a monster home in the suburbs, to give their little monster room to grow.

As a glowering toddler (Rocky Duer), Kevin can hold his bowel movements at will to defy his mother. He grows into a destructive brat (Jasper Newell) and, finally, a sneeringly boy-band-handsome teen (the excellent Ezra Miller). Lean, with floppy hair and feminine features, Kevin is his mother's angry double. When Eva has an adorable golden daughter, Celia (Ashley Gerasimovich), Kevin sees the new family member as a pawn in his game.

Can you really be a bad mother to the devil? There's not much room for ambiguity here in the grossly disproportionate punishment for Eva's postpartum blues. Her worst weakness seems to be a fondness for wine (red, of course), unless you count her sin of omission, not to mention a massive plot hole left by the writers and director: Why hasn't she taken her profoundly disturbed child to every mental-health-care professional in New York State? Or possibly to an exorcist?
We Need to Talk About Kevin

Directed by Lynne Ramsay

Written by Rory Kinnear and Lynne Ramsay

Starring Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller

Classification: 14A

2.5 stars

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We Need to Talk About Kevin: And also about nature vs. nurture

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2.5 out of 4 stars Lynne Ramsay is best known for her melancholic Scottish working-class tone poems ( Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar). But for her first film in a decade - and her most mainstream effort - she has chosen to adapt a shocker of novel by Lionel Shriver.

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Some people include love for God in their relationships. 

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Some people include love for God in their relationships. 

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This article originally appeared in Sojourners. It was edited for clarity, accuracy, and to add further reading on August 13, 2018.

Today's coffee culture has an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary. Do you want a cappuccino, an espresso, a skinny latte, or maybe an iced caramel macchiato?

Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks.

The ancient Greeks were just as sophisticated in the way they talked about love, recognizing six different varieties. They would have been shocked by our crudeness in using a single word both to whisper "I love you" over a candlelit meal and to casually sign an email "lots of love."

So what were the six loves known to the Greeks? And how can they inspire us to move beyond our current addiction to romantic love, which has 94 percent of young people hoping-but often failing-to find a unique soul mate who can satisfy all their emotional needs?

1. Eros, or sexual passion

The first kind of love was eros, named after the Greek god of fertility, and it represented the idea of sexual passion and desire. But the Greeks didn't always think of it as something positive, as we tend to do today. In fact, eros was viewed as a dangerous, fiery, and irrational form of love that could take hold of you and possess you-an attitude shared by many later spiritual thinkers, such as the Christian writer C. S. Lewis.

Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks. Which is odd, because losing control is precisely what many people now seek in a relationship. Don't we all hope to fall "madly" in love?

2. Philia, or deep friendship

The second variety of love was philia or friendship, which the Greeks valued far more than the base sexuality of eros. Philia concerned the deep comradely friendship that developed between brothers in arms who had fought side by side on the battlefield. It was about showing loyalty to your friends, sacrificing for them, as well as sharing your emotions with them. (Another kind of philia, sometimes called storge, embodied the love between parents and their children.)

We can all ask ourselves how much of this comradely philia we have in our lives. It's an important question in an age when we attempt to amass "friends" on Facebook or "followers" on Twitter-achievements that would have hardly impressed the Greeks.

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3. Ludus, or playful love

While philia could be a matter of great seriousness, there was a third type of love valued by the ancient Greeks, which was playful love. Following the Roman poet Ovid, scholars (such as the philosopher A. C. Grayling) commonly use the Latin word ludus to describe this form of love, which concerns the playful affection between children or casual lovers. We've all had a taste of it in the flirting and teasing in the early stages of a relationship. But we also live out our ludus when we sit around in a bar bantering and laughing with friends, or when we go out dancing.

Dancing with strangers may be the ultimate ludic activity, almost a playful substitute for sex itself. Social norms may frown on this kind of adult frivolity, but a little more ludus might be just what we need to spice up our love lives.

4. Agape, or love for everyone

The fourth love, and perhaps the most radical, was agape or selfless love. This was a love that you extended to all people, whether family members or distant strangers. Agape was later translated into Latin as caritas, which is the origin of our word "charity."

C.S. Lewis referred to it as "gift love," the highest form of Christian love. But it also appears in other religious traditions, such as the idea of mettā or "universal loving kindness" in Theravāda Buddhism.

There is growing evidence that agape is in a dangerous decline in many countries. Empathy levels in the U.S. have declined sharply over the past 40 years, with the steepest fall occurring in the past decade. We urgently need to revive our capacity to care about strangers.

5. Pragma, or longstanding love

The use of the ancient Greek root pragma as a form of love was popularized by the Canadian sociologist John Allen Lee in the 1970s, who described it as a mature, realistic love that is commonly found amongst long-established couples. Pragma is about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance. There is in fact little evidence that the Greeks commonly used this precise term themselves, so it is best thought of as a modern update on the ancient Greek loves.

The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on "falling in love" and need to learn more how to "stand in love." Pragma is precisely about standing in love-making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. With about a third of first marriages in the U.S. ending through divorce or separation in the first 10 years, we should surely think about bringing a serious dose of pragma into our relationships.

6. Philautia, or love of the self

The Greek's sixth variety of love was philautia or self-love. And clever Greeks such as Aristotle realized there were two types. One was an unhealthy variety associated with narcissism, where you became self-obsessed and focused on personal fame and fortune. A healthier version enhanced your wider capacity to love.

The idea was that if you like yourself and feel secure in yourself, you will have plenty of love to give others (as is reflected in the Buddhist-inspired concept of "self-compassion"). Or, as Aristotle put it, "All friendly feelings for others are an extension of a man's feelings for himself."

The ancient Greeks found diverse kinds of love in relationships with a wide range of people-friends, family, spouses, strangers, and even themselves. This contrasts with our typical focus on a single romantic relationship, where we hope to find all the different loves wrapped into a single person or soul mate. The message from the Greeks is to nurture the varieties of love and tap into its many sources. Don't just seek eros, but cultivate philia by spending more time with old friends, or develop ludus by dancing the night away.

Moreover, we should abandon our obsession with perfection. Don't expect your partner to offer you all the varieties of love, all of the time (with the danger that you may toss aside a partner who fails to live up to your desires). Recognize that a relationship may begin with plenty of eros and ludus, then evolve toward embodying more pragma or agape.

The diverse Greek system of loves can also provide consolation. By mapping out the extent to which all six loves are present in your life, you might discover you've got a lot more love than you had ever imagined-even if you feel an absence of a physical lover.

It's time we introduced the six varieties of Greek love into our everyday way of speaking and thinking. If the art of coffee deserves its own sophisticated vocabulary, then why not the art of love?

For a more detailed discussion of the six loves, including a full list of scholarly references, please see Roman Krznaric's book How Should We Live? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life.

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The Ancient Greeks' 6 Words for Love (And Why Knowing Them Can Change Your Life)

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This article originally appeared in Sojourners. It was edited for clarity, accuracy, and to add further reading on August 13, 2018. Today's coffee culture has an incredibly sophisticated vocabulary. Do you want a cappuccino, an espresso, a skinny latte, or maybe an iced caramel macchiato? Eros involved a loss of control that frightened the Greeks.

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What Is Asexuality :: What Is Asexuality?

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Polyamory, anyone can feel that way. (Even celebrities)

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Polyamory, anyone can feel that way. (Even celebrities)

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This is on the playboy website (sorry??) so you won't be able to open it on the school wifi, but it is a very interesting article about polyamory.

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"You want to smoke?" Ezra Miller asks me on the patio of his West Hollywood hotel room, reaching over to hand me his joint as I dry my tears with my hand. The 26-year-old actor, who plays Credence Barebone in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and is one of the film industry's most fascinating rising stars, has been smoking from the impressive joint since my arrival 80 minutes ago. (It is meticulously rolled.) Upon seeing me cry heavily during our conversation, he decides to share the wealth. After a single puff I cough profusely, much to my embarrassment. Ezra Miller smokes some good shit.

This is not how I expected this interview to go. Up until now, I had never cried during a work assignment. But it's unlikely that anyone can predict how an interview with Ezra Miller will go. I wasn't even planning to end up in his room; we were initially scheduled to chat the day before at the photo studio where the star posed for his gender-bending Playboy shoot, complete with Bunny ears, fishnets and size-14 heels, all per his request. When the shoot ran long-after all, it included a sizable break during which he smoked a joint as someone shaved his stubble-his publicist suggested that Miller and I meet up in the morning at the hotel restaurant, and so she made us a reservation for 11:30 a.m.

The next day, Miller spots me waiting just outside of the restaurant and whisks me off to his room. Upon entering, he gives me a quick apology for the untidiness, including an empty plate. (As a former restaurant reservationist myself, this is a good time for me to publicly apologize that neither of us actually canceled our reservation before hightailing it to his room. Sorry, won't happen again.)

I'm trying to find queer beings who understand me as a queer being off the bat, and I feel like I'm married to them 25 lifetimes ago. And then they are in the squad-the polycule.

Miller directs me to his room's patio, where I grab a chair next to an end table that's bare except for a large crystal. He soon follows me outside and immediately hands me a bottle of pine pollen that he encourages me to squeeze into my mouth and hold under my tongue, warning me it will burn. I realize too late that I should have squirted the liquid into my mouth, as Ezra himself does immediately afterward, rather than keeping the dropper in my mouth like a thermometer, which elicits a laugh from him. I notice he didn't bother changing out of yesterday's clothes, including a T-shirt screen-printed with "Avada Kedavra," the worst of the Unforgivable Curses from the Harry Potter universe. The shirt, appropriate attire for a devoted Potterholic such as Miller, features the same triangular-patterned message that will appear in ink on his hands a couple weeks later when he attends the film's U.K. premiere wearing a feathered homage to Harry's pet owl.

Undeniably, this is a moment in time for the energetic, garrulous and highly spiritual Miller, who casually loads his conversations with references to philosophy, history and political theory. (A sample question he asks me, without an obvious impetus: "You ever think about water, dude?" which leads him to a discussion of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree.) He has seen his star ascend wildly following his breakout roles in 2011's We Need to Talk About Kevin and 2012's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and his attention-grabbing, boundary-fluid, red-carpet style has been the subject of numerous recent headlines. For many fans, his wisecracking Flash was the best part of last year's tepidly received superhero-stacked Justice League, and a solo film for his red-suited savior remains in the works-though when we'll actually see it remains a question mark (more on that later).

And so, the Fantastic Beasts films have become his calling card.

"I've never ever quite met anyone like Ezra," David Yates, who directed the final four films in the Harry Potter series and the first two Fantastic Beasts, tells me. Yates praises Miller as "quite simply a sublime actor" who is "universally loved" by his Beasts cohorts. "He brings a good deal of joy with him every time he steps on set. Between takes, he'll either be doing some Mongolian throat singing, practicing chi gung or just having a laugh with the crew." I don't get treated to any throat singing during our time together, but Miller does impersonate Yoda at one point, after he says that he, much like the Jedi Master, doesn't believe in "try."

Sometimes, I don't have sex for a really long time because a lack of sex is as important to me as sex. There's definitely a lot of sexless, lonely time when playing Credence.

There is no shortage of narratives in the media surrounding Crimes of Grindelwal d in the lead-up to the film's November 16th release. Perhaps the buzziest point of discussion focuses on the romantic relationship that the film teases between Jude Law's young Albus Dumbledore and Johnny Depp's Gellert Grindelwald. This follows J.K. Rowling announcing after the conclusion of the Harry Potter book series that Dumbledore is gay. Miller is here for it-and he somehow knew it was coming, even before he actually knew it was coming.

"I definitely started drawing conclusions about [the romance] from the time that we first started working on the first film," says the actor, who personally identifies as queer and sees it as "an umbrella of non-identification." He makes it clear that, like any true Potter devotee, he trusts that Rowling-"Jo," as he calls her-would make the right call, despite fans expressing concerns on social media over the first trailer not addressing Dumbledore's sexual orientation. "Knowing that Jo, with that brilliant mind for the ambiguity of people-morally, in terms of how we classify them on a spectrum from good to evil-I knew that she would be interested in exploring."

Another narrative surrounding the film is Depp's involvement in it-and this is a topic that Miller, who otherwise has no problem (and I mean, absolutely no problem) weighing in thoughtfully and verbosely on anything and everything, seems uncharacteristically stymied by. Amid outcry in late 2017 over Depp's prominent role in the new film, following ex-wife Amber Heard 's allegations of abuse, Rowling defended Depp's involvement, citing the former couple's desire to move forward.

When I ask Miller if Rowling said anything to him about Depp appearing in the film, he replies, "No, none of us were consulted. None of us knew." Miller has an even tougher time answering my follow-up question on whether he was fine about costarring with Depp. "Look, I bring forth my work to this job, and I do the best that I can," he says. After a lengthy pause, Miller continues diplomatically: "I would say that literally every single aspect of my reality, inclusive of a lot of things that are not fine with me, are fine with me. It's amazing how far the banner of all good can extend."

An additional point of focus is the villainous Grindelwald's seeming likeness to Trump, given that the film is set just before World War II and includes the charismatic, oddly coifed wizard imploring his followers to band together against those different from them. For an ardent student of history like Miller, the film's relevance is not lost. "If you're a history fan, you're very worried right now in global politics," he says. "If you like history, you're bugging out because you know which way this goes. And so, the story we're telling in this movie is actually quite universal." He points out that it is "conveniently timed" that the anti-fascism message of the film mirrors today's real-world concerns. "You can tell that something [in our world] is wrong."
Kyle Patrick Alvarez, who directed Miller in 2015's The Stanford Prison Experiment, tells me he "adored" working with the actor. "The nicest thing I can say about him is that I really believe there's no one else like him, both off- and on-camera."

Miller has plenty of thoughts that aren't typical of a Hollywood power player. For one, Miller contemplates death. A lot. How often? "Every day, all the time, that's the samurai way," he says, turning it into a song. "Hello, hello! Yeah, absolutely. In Buddhism, they say to think about it five times a day." When I point out it's appropriate we're meeting on Halloween, given his fascination with magic and the supernatural, he offers, "Maybe the dead will talk to us in this interview. They probably already are."

I've been attacked repeatedly in my life-I've been attacked by fucking bigots, man. Of course I've been in audition situations where sexuality was totally being leveraged.

Miller was born in New Jersey and had a difficult adolescence, which included literal growing pains. "I have weird bones, you know, Ryan?" When I tell him I don't know, he asks with a mischievous smile, "You want to feel them? Are you sure?" He then takes my hand and puts it on his arm, neck and sternum, and indeed, he definitely has some bones in there that doctors can't explain, and which still cause periodic soreness to this day.

He also was bullied due to a severe speech impediment that led his parents to enroll him in speech therapy. He hated those courses so much that he told his family, "I'd rather be broken than having someone trying to fix me all the time." Instead, he conquered his stutter through singing, a development that he credits in part to the occult: "I started singing because this woman, my kindergarten music teacher, did a very particular type of witchcraft, which is something a true artist can do to any child who carries a creative energy. Essentially, you just point your wand-which is your finger-at that child, and you say, 'You are an artist.'"

Kindergarten was a pivotal time for young Ezra. It was the age at which he fell in love with a male classmate, leading him to ask his older sisters if he's gay. Miller, who dropped out of high school at 16, remembers having his first sex dream at the age of four-it involved a witch imprisoning him on a waterspout, an experience he recalls as "tantalizing and delightful."

He later tells me, in reference to discussing the sex dream and his unusual bones, "It's funny when an interview starts, and you suddenly realize the stuff you're going to end up talking about that you've never talked about with anyone." When I ask him if he has an early memory of Playboy, he describes a time in elementary school when he and a boy a couple years his senior-"a friend and also sexual partner"-found a sexy stash of items belonging to the boy's divorced mother: Playboys, the Kama Sutra ("I remember it being very influential"), lingerie. "We would jerk each other off while we interacted with that stuff in various ways, actually," Miller says, quickly smirking self-consciously over how much he just divulged.

Miller, who is attracted to men and women, tears up when he tells me he has experienced a lot of heartbreak. As a result of these failed relationships, he says he has abandoned trying to find his perfect romantic partner, deciding that monogamy isn't for him. Calling himself a "sexual being," he instead finds companionship with a group of sexual partners he refers to as his "polycule," a portmanteau of " polyamorous molecule."

He says this includes people he's known for years, such as the members of his band, Sons of an Illustrious Father, along with new people who are deemed the right fit for the polycule. But if you're looking to join said polycule, be advised that the membership process is selective. "I'm trying to find queer beings who understand me as a queer being off the bat, who I make almost a familial connection with, and I feel like I'm married to them 25 lifetimes ago from the moment we meet," he explains. "And then they are in the squad-the polycule. And I know they're going to love everyone else in the polycule because we're in the polycule, and we love each other so much."

Fittingly for someone who was exposed to the Kama Sutra at a pivotal age, Miller uses tantric terms when discussing the varying role of sex and love in his life. "I have more of an ecstatic practice, but I do take to instatic practices at times, so sometimes, I don't have sex for a really long time because a lack of sex is as important to me as sex," he says. Indeed, this played into his mindset for understanding Credence Barebone, an abused outcast who struggles to make connections. Before Crimes of Grindelwald went into production, Miller took to Europe, where he spent time in isolation, introduced himself to strangers in character and even started stealing-although he says he was quick to return any pilfered cash. "There's definitely a lot of sexless, lonely time when playing Credence. Absolutely-alone, alone, alone, alone, alone."
Miller is a key figure in the Fantastic Beasts saga, but if you only know him for one role, it's likely for Barry Allen, aka the Flash. The odd part about the previous sentence is that Miller, who was cast as the big-screen Flash more than four years ago, still has yet to play the speedster in a stand-alone film, with the entirety of his screen time as the popular DC Comics character coming in the form of two cameos (in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad), plus his ensemble role in Justice League. Disappointing news for Flash fans came with reports that the film is postponing its planned start of production to allow Miller to shoot the third Beasts movie as the superhero project's pieces continue to solidify.

Is he worried that his solo Flash film may never hit the ground running? Sure, he has plenty of worries-chief among them being the future of our planet ("Humanity is completely ruining our Airbnb account by how we're treating Earth," he quips)-but the fate of a Hollywood franchise seems unlikely to ever cause him stress. "Nothing is ever certain in this world, but as certain as things get, we're making a fucking crazy-dope Flash movie," he promises. "It's one of my great life dreams, and just the fact that we're on the way-anyone who knows about Barry Allen knows he may arrive late, very late, but once he gets there, it's all solved. We have to trust."

If I didn't have art, I'd be so fucking dead-so long ago, I'd be dead. I probably would have done it myself.

And what of all those swirling rumors about the film universe potentially switching up members of its cast, namely Henry Cavill's Superman and Ben Affleck's Batman? "When there are these leaks of information-or however people get stuff-it's pretty unreliable," Miller replies cagily.

Miller is proud to be part of what he terms the "Golden Age Part 2 for cinema," particularly because he sees the former Golden Age as one of pyrite. He refers to pre-Time's Up Hollywood as "a racist, sexist, rape-culture mess that we still sort of celebrate," and when I ask about his own experiences, he has a lot to say.

"I've survived abuse for sure, for sure, in a lot of capacities, starting from a pretty young age," he says. "There was a close friend who I had a sexual relationship with who really, really turned on me in a violent way. So that Perks [ of Being a Wallflower] story was pretty close to home for me," he says, referring to his role in the seminal coming-of-age tale of Patrick, who is attacked by the high school football star with whom he is surreptitiously hooking up.

It's at this point, as Miller discusses the abuse he's suffered, that I find myself tearing up.

I'm soon sobbing.

"I've been attacked repeatedly in my life-I've been attacked by fucking bigots, man," he tells me. "Of course I've been in audition situations where sexuality was totally being leveraged. It's really important to acknowledge the diversity of voices who have experienced this shit, and all genders, all capacities, all types of people. Everyone is victim to it. Everyone is a survivor of it."

No. I feel you, baby. I'm crying, too.

He tears up again when I ask how he persevered. "Art is the only thing that I have," he says. "If I didn't have art, I'd be so fucking dead-so long ago, I'd be dead. I probably would have done it myself." He believes in transformative justice and doesn't want any of his attackers behind bars, as he doesn't see prison as making anyone less likely to attack. "The way I see it, I am you, you are me, we dwell in each other, the whole world dwells in you. And anyone can heal the whole world just with parasympathetic magic, using their own body as a cauldron-anyone could do it, just no one has yet. That's why we're all still here 'cause no one's done it yet, so we're just waiting."

When I apologize for getting so emotional, he replies, "No. I feel you, baby. I'm crying, too." After I cough on his joint, he compassionately tells me, "A journalist who can cry when something hits their heart is the one I would like to read the article of, personally." He adds that working as a journalist today is "like signing up for the Spanish Republican Army-you're toast, bro!" This leads to his heartiest laugh of the day.

Eventually, Miller receives a call from his team to let him know he is extremely late for his flight to Alabama for a film event. And just like that, he switches into speedster mode, grabbing a purple carry-on and stuffing it with his limited belongings, the crystal included. Within seconds, he is out the door and hopping in a waiting car, where he says goodbye to me by placing my hands against his head.

Ezra Miller isn't solely changing Hollywood, I think. He just changed the life of one journalist, who suddenly, however fleetingly, no longer feels like toast.

Find Something New close

Playboy interviews director Sebastián Silva about his latest feature, 'Tyrel'

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"You want to smoke?" Ezra Miller asks me on the patio of his West Hollywood hotel room, reaching over to hand me his joint as I dry my tears with my hand.

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Romeo and Juliet Quotes by William Shakespeare

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410 quotes from Romeo and Juliet: 'These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triump die, like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume'

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This link is to the lyrics, their meaning and the song itself.

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The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Love Or Confusion

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Verse] / Is that the stars in the sky, or is it / Rain falling down / Will it burn me if I touch the sun / So big, so round / Would I be truthful, yeah, in / Choosing you as the

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Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it? To learn more about our very real, very physical need for romantic love, Helen Fisher and her research team took MRIs of people in love -- and people who had just been dumped.