#but i need to keep my status as a nihility main

[wonboos]

ohhh the eyepatch guy looks like the ice nihility unit from the leaks...

[unclevladscorner]

Letting Go of The Boy Who Lived: Moving on from Harry Potter and Why I wish everyone else would, too.

This is going to be a little bit of a long post. We all know JKR has said- and still says- some pretty horrible things about trans people. While I think that's a good enough reason to no interact with her or her work, that's not my main focus here.

If you don't read this whole thing; and haven't read a Harry Potter book or watched a movie, I'd say don't start. There's better out there. The Magicians goes harder, but has similar themes. There's also A Series of Unfortunate Events and the Percy Jackson books, if your looking for a longer YA series from around the same era.

I discovered Harry Potter at a time of big changes in life. It was the end of my senior year of high school, I'd broken up with an abusive boyfriend and I had nowhere to go on my lunch break anymore.

It was also 2002, and only 8 months after 9/11. The world was changing rapidly around me-literally and figuratively- and I needed a little escape. Before I even graduated, I had read the first three books and I was desperate to read the fourth.

There was a lot to like, at first. As a child who grew up in an abusive and neglectful household, I related to Harry's struggles a lot. The desire to just be a normal kid was something he valued much more than anything else, and being a kid who went to a wizard school was just a fun bonus for him. Harry was just a normal kid besides- he is able to come out of his shell and; for the first time in his life, he is able to enjoy his time at school as he is not really considered strange... except for the fact that he's the Boy Who Lived.

As the books go on, the world were given a peek into begins to lose it's shine. There's chattel slavery of humanoid races pretty early with the house elves, then there's the extremist Pure Blood wizards- many of which follow Voldemort- who'd intimidate, harm and kill children to keep them from receiving and education and mixing with the general wizard population.

As Voldemort is resurrected, things become difficult for our heroes, and fascist wizards take over the Ministry of Magic. Other wizards seems oddly content to either live like nothing is happening, or hide until their Chosen One saves them. Adults become unreliable to a fault; and with herculean effort, Harry and the gang finally defeat the evil Voldemort.

But then... nothing really happens. The world goes right back to the way it was- none of our heroes seem to seek any more justice or reform for any of those they saw hurt or abused once their journey is concluded. Everyone falls into their respective places within society and never seem to question the status quo again.

This course of events says two things to me- That JKR believes Social Justice to be a 'young person thing', and that she probably believes that grassroots efforts cannot effect lasting systemic change.

So, what else is there to do except to get on with it?

There's also the pervasive nihilism that grows stronger as the series goes on. Former allies fall in line with the ruling party; begrudgingly or otherwise, abandoning the young people to their fate. Many witches and wizards won't pick a side, and either pretend nothing is happening or go into hiding. There are only a handful of people willing to fight and many of these rebels are brutally killed or imprisoned.

Defeating Voldemort also does not change the structure of wizard society. It does not change that sentient magical humanoids and those born to magical families without powers are forced into a subclass by the rest of magic wielding society. It doesn't seem to change the fact that there are wizards who believe they should control the whole world, and not just the fates and lives of those within the wizarding community.

As I've gotten older and queerer; and JKR has gotten richer and louder, it's made a body of work riddled with covert and overt racism, homophobia, and weirdly pro-slavery bend harder and harder to like.

At the end of the day, there is just no good reason to invest my money in something that inevitably tells kids and young adults to fall in line after their done protesting and questioning authority.

All done with your fun little Social Justice Adventure? Time to be a Real Adult and stop asking questions!

As a queer and transgender person- literal heroes of my time died fighting intentional misinformation, and purposeful governmental mismanagement of the AIDS pandemic (Big Shout out to Ronald Reagan! The Real Villain of our timeline.) They marched while sick, made art, held 'die ins' in churches and government buildings, sued the government, gathered and distributed reliable information on how to combat AIDS through safer sex and safer drug use practices.

There are too many to list here. Many names no one outside the community has even heard. Many more we don't even know. A made up little boy in a book just isn't as important to me as those often nameless people- people who literally fought and died so that I could be The (Trans)Boy Who Lived.

I will not disrespect the memories of those who came before me by putting money in the pocket of someone who actively hates both them and myself. I will not spend any more time thinking about her or the sad little world she's created.

I'm asking you to do the same.

[aidanrauh]

The Russian Nihilist Counterculture of the 1860s

Nihilism is about embracing contradiction. This is something that I have had to learn how to do in order to keep my brain from exploding. When I was fifteen` I was in love with the world. I was awestruck and ditzy from rainy days spent stepping in puddles and holed up in big sweaters, lunchtime breaks on the brink of delirium and playing videogames with friends, immersion in a thousand worlds worth their weight in soul. It was also the most unhappy I have ever been. I was sleeping between two and six hours a night, each day a cacophony of bright lights and endless noise. I ambled from room to room grasping at inklings of focus, trying not to upset the status quo. It was a difficult thing for me to reconcile. My world revolved around information, everything that I learned seemed to indicate either the end of the world or the meaning of life. Nothing was ever dull. I learned to embrace the contradiction. The source of my love is also the reason I am overwhelmed. 

I coped with this by wearing oversized hoodies, baggy jeans, and peppering them with homemade pins that declared my obsession with the world. The pins contained ironies and obscenities like “nihilist”, “this space intentionally left blank”, and “local whore”. When the world made itself to be too much for me, I responded with minimalism. When the world made itself to be too little, I responded with maximalism, meaning that I was always practicing both at once. I was out there telling everyone that I didn’t care and that I cared more than anything. And both were true at the same time. I made media my life, books, TV, essays, short stories from other centuries. I figured the act of trying to find the answer would be my identity. I liked stories in which the text was so needlessly complicated that doing a surface level reading could be a puzzle in and of itself.

Throughout the 1800s, Russian nobility was in the process of freeing their serfs. This process involved charging the serfs with an absurd debt for the noble’s lost property. The result was a generation of people getting a glimpse at a better world, but who were ultimately still trapped under the heel of poverty. It was under these conditions, inside these complicated young minds, that nihilism was invented. They remind me, almost painfully, of myself. They wore extremely deliberately casual wear, basic black shirts and black overcoats, but they were also littered with symbols that declared their opposition to the authorities of their world. Men grew their hair out, and women cut it short. They decorated themselves with flowers stolen from graveyards. They wore casual clothes that screamed “I don’t care” with a meticulousness that betrayed that they really did. 

A majority of the cultural influence that inspired these nihilists were, ironically, depictions of nihilists in pointedly anti-nihilist fiction. In Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” Bazarov is the best friend of the main character. He rudely declares his nihilist intentions without regard to who he will offend. He insults other’s taste in books. Nonetheless, Bazarov and his friend share philosophical musings and practice a scientifically minded worldview. The Nihilists rejected these kinds of depictions, but channeled them anyway. They were pointedly obsessed with science and reason. At the time, reading glasses were made with blue tinted glass. Nihilists, even and especially those that didn’t need reading glasses, wore blue sunglasses, even at night.

There are basically two ways of framing the world. One posits that the universe is massive, and a person is small. The other posits that the majority of things in the universe are very simple, and humans are the most complicated things in it. Both of these ideas tend to inspire a kind of awe. If allowed to take root in one’s mind, they will fester and feed on the threads of the imagination. One’s empathy and one’s reason will grapple ad infinitum. In order to resolve this conflict, one can either choose to be indifferent or they can embrace contradiction. Empathy and reason. Work and play. Change and pain. All of these contrary ideas are inherent to humanity. One can be ignored in favor of the other for a time, but eventually both must be felt at once. Unignorable, overwhelming, nothing. When two forces of equal and opposite strength meet, they cancel out. They collide. To be a nihilist is to feel the transcendent and impossible beauty of your own life. To be torn apart by it. To be in love with it. To be a contradiction.

Rauh, Aidan. The Russian Nihilist Counterculture of the 1860s. MeatSpace Magazine, 2022

[alexmitas]

Why I’m Just Like Crime & Punishment’s Raskolnikov and so Are You: A Brief Analysis of Dostoevsky’s Most Famous Novel

Just last night I finished Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. After mulling it over for a day (likely not nearly long enough to have substantiated a complete analysis, but with my memory I risk forgetting things if I move on to another book before writing about one that I’ve just finished), I’ve decided to get some of my thoughts down. Firstly, I will say that I am struck. While I’m clearly neither the first nor last person to be amazed by this novel, a work as significant as this one still deserves its praise where it’s due. People will often preface praise based on their interpretation of a creative endeavor by stating that its imperfection is obvious, even though that it’s also the best-est or their favorite, or one of the best-est or their favorite creative works that they have ever encountered, or something of the sort. I won’t be so bold to as to make that statement. That’s because, without a doubt, this was a perfect novel. After all, if something is so close to approaching a spade, by all reasonable measures, and only becomes better and better, and more and more like a spade, with age, then why not call it a spade?

Since the beginning I had a certain kind of resonance with Raskolnikov, the novel’s main character. But just as you can’t fully judge a story unless you consider it as a single, coherent piece (that is, until you have read from beginning to end), so too did I not understand the reason for my resonance with Raskolnikov until I finished reading his full tale. He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s intelligent: check, check, check; these things all apply to me, at least to some minor degree - that much was obvious from the very beginning - but while this superficial resonance was my first impression upon dining, it paled in comparison to the impression I had after the final bite of desert; to say nothing of the pleasant after dinner conversation among friends, the latter of which, of course, I use as a metaphor for the epilogue[1]. Every flaw I see in Raskolnikov, I also see in myself; for every action he takes, I can imagine a world in which I could be drawn down a path that would lead me to make the very same decisions, and to take the very same actions. I don’t know what could possibly be a better model than that for a main character.

Perhaps Raskolnikov’s biggest flaw is his overinflated ego, which is hardly out of the ordinary for someone his age, and isn’t entirely unjustified - as I said, he has three of the most promising traits one could hope for: intelligence, youth, and good-looks – but which does, in his case, lead him down an ideological rabbit hole of naivete, a hole which he creates for himself by dropping out of school, refusing work when it’s offered to him, and letting his resentment for the world grow as he lives off of a handful of meager sums sent to him by his mother and sister as a debt ridden fool in a poor Russian city during the eighteen-hundreds. This ideological thinking, which we shall not confuse with illogical thinking, for it is very much logical, brings Raskolnikov to the thought that, yes, it would in fact be a good idea to murder and rob the wealthy old pawnbroker whom is commonly considered amongst his peers as a mean-ol’ crone, holder of many a promissory note, rumored to have left her wealth to the building of a statue in her image through her will, rather than to her own children, whilst also being a generally unsightly and disagreeable woman, and, having done this, could aim to put her money to a more just cause, perhaps distributing it to others, or perhaps using it to further his own career which he would certainly payback in the form of greater value to society later on. And it isn’t such a crazy sounding idea, is it? After all, what is but one crime if the outcome provides a much greater net good? I’ve known many people, including myself, who’ve had thoughts not so unlike this one, and I suspect you are no different, dear reader. So having rationalized this to himself, Raskolnikov goes through with it, and thereby provides us a story of his Crime, which occupies only about one-fifth of the length of the novel, and his Punishment, which nearly occupies the novel’s entirety; with these proportions themselves giving us an idea of the many-fold burden of consequences for actions, as well as foreshadowing what is to come. And this rationalization runs deep. It isn’t until later, that we learn of truer reasons for Raskolnikov’s action, beginning with the discovery of an article he was able to have published while still enrolled in school, and ending with a true confession of his deepest motives to Sonya, to be discussed later.

This article that he wrote sometime before the crime, “On Crime,” reveals deeper rationale for his decision to commit the murder: and that is that he does it as a way to become something more than he is; to break down the cultural and religious structures around him, and more than that to supersede them; to rise above his fellow man as a type of “superman” or Napoleon, as he puts it, becoming someone who is able to “step over” the line which divides who is ordinary and who is great, a line that’s substance consists of rules for the hoi polloi only; ultimately inferring this idea – which, from what I understand was prevalent in Russia during the mid 1800’s – that the best way to view the world is through the lens of nihilism, which employs utilitarianism – the tenet which proposes that actions should be considered just insofar as they help the greatest number of people overall, and where acts of evil may be balanced properly, without the need for consequence, in the face of equal or greater acts of righteousness, especially if that person can prove themselves of some sort of higher value – as a central axiom. Pulling back to a macroscopic view of the novel, this sense that Dostoevsky had to instill within his characters arguments for what at the time was – and still in some sense very well are – contemporary issues, and eternal ideological and philosophical battlegrounds, rather than thrusting his own opinions through the narrator, is something I found to be brilliant and endearing, not only for the sake of keeping the author’s own bias more subdued than would otherwise be the case, but also just as a means to see what happens; to let the characters in the story have the fight, leaving both author and reader alike to extrapolate what hypotheses or conclusions they may as a consequence. In this regard, other characters – including Raskolnikov’s friend, Razumikhin, and state magistrate, Porfiry Petrovich – have the chance to debate with the nihilistic ideology of Raskolnikov after interacting with “On Crime.” This provides depth to contemporary discourse, without reeking of contrivance, and also allows us to see Raskolnikov argue for himself also, even though what he, ‘himself’, stands for is ultimately not clear; not for the reader but also seemingly not for Raskolnikov, as even after deciding to commit the crime, Raskolnikov’s opinion on whether or not it was a just event osculates frequently throughout the novel. It is this osculation, in fact, which constitutes most of Raskolnikov’s early punishment and suffering, as even though it appears as if Raskolnikov has managed to get away with the crime in the domain of the broader world[2], his conscious will not allow such an event to be swept under the rug, or even allow Raskolnikov to continue to live his life unhindered by spiritual corruption, mental destabilization, or physical trauma – all three of which plague him constantly both during his initial contemplations and later fulfillment of the crime. Ultimately, these ideological battles and inward rationalizations do not provide Raskolnikov with the accurate prognostication needed to foretell the outcome of his own state of being after committing such an act; and thereby lies Raskolnikov’s fatal flaw, derived from his arrogance and naivete, where he is left blinded by an ideology which never fulfills its promise of return. Oh, but if only he had a predilection for listening to the great prognosticator within him, his conscious, which, despite his waking thoughts, was calling out to him in the form of dreams.

In what is one of several dream sequences observed by characters in the novel, Raskolnikov dreams himself a young spectator, holding the hand of his father, as the two of them watch a group of misfit boys pile into a carriage. The carriage master, no more than a youthful fool, whips a single mare solely responsible for pulling the carriage. Overburdened and unable to do more than struggle forward at a pathetic pace, the mare whimpers and suffers visibly as the cruel and drunken carriage master orders it to trudge on, whipping it forcefully, all the while calling for any and everyone around the town to pile into the carriage. Laughing and screaming hysterically, the carriage master turns brutal task master when he begins to beat the mare repeatedly after with much effort the beast finally collapses to the ground in exhaustion. Horrifically, a handful of other people from the crowd and the carriage find their own whips and join in on the beating of the poor mare until it finally dies. Young Raskolnikov, having witnessed this event in its entirety, rushes to the mare after its brutal death, kisses it, then turns to the carriage master brandishing his fists before he is stopped by his father. This is the reader’s first warning of the brutality to come, and had Raskolnikov payed heed to what his conscious was trying to communicate to him in his dream, he may have noticed, as we as readers do, that the reaction the young Raskolnikov had to the barbaric murder of the mare very much predicted what Raskolnikov’s ultimate reaction to his then theoretical crime would be – regret; and, therefore, repentance. A second dream of Raskolnikov’s, which very much enforces this idea, pits Raskolnikov in the act of once again murdering Alyona, except this time, when he strikes her atop the head with the same axe, she simply brandishes a smile and laughs uncontrollably instead of falling over dead. This all but confirms Raskolnikov’s suspicions to himself, as his subconscious relays his foolish inadequacy, as a man who thought that he could elevate himself above others by “stepping over” the moral boundaries all of his societal peers abide by (and for good reason). Again, through this tendency that he has to stubbornly ignore his conscious, I find Raskolnikov eminently relatable, to some degree, and it is no wonder: it is a rare individual who finds obeying their conscious to be anything but onerous (then again, perhaps this is only most common in individuals who are still relatively young and naïve, a trait which I share with Raskolnikov, but one in which you may not, dear reader; but I digress). Of course, just because a task is onerous, does not mean that it is impossible. The characters which have been placed around Raskolnikov, and specifically the ones which serve as foils to his character, provide examples of contrast with individuals who at the very least are able to combat the compelling desire that we all have to ignore our consciouses. The three most blatant examples of foils for Raskolnikov are his sister, Dunya, his best friend, Razumikhin, and his eventual wife, Sonya Marmeladov.

The first example of this contrast apparent to the reader is in the character Razumikhin. Razumikhin is also a student living within the same city as Raskolnikov. Unlike Raskolnikov, however, he has not bailed out of university for financial necessity nor wanton of a grand ideological narrative. There is also no reason to believe he has more financial support than Raskolnikov, as he also appears to be poor with no hint of endowment, instead supporting himself through the meager-paying work of translating for a small publisher. And while Razumikhin is even more naïve than Raskolnikov – having never once suspected Raskolnikov of so much as a dash of malevolence – he lacks the same venomous arrogance, whilst showing no signs of lower intelligence. Dunya, Raskolnikov’s sister, provides another example of similar contrast. This is because, as his sister, and, again, with no reason to believe that she is any more or less intelligent or attractive than her brother, Dunya comes from the same upbringing, whilst holds no apparent resentment towards the world around her. Even when she is given the choice to harm someone else – when she finds herself on the side of a gun pointing at a man who has locked her inside of a room against her will (arguably giving her a modicum of a reason to kill another, depending on one’s own stance on morality) – she is unable to do it, instead casting her tool with which to do so aside and letting fate take care of the rest[3]. Lastly, and this may be the most apparent example, presenting what may be Raskolnikov’s true foil, we have dearest Sonya, stepdaughter of the Marmeladovs. Sonya, who in the face of two useless parents, takes it upon herself to prostitute herself so that her family, including three young siblings, may eat, makes Raskolnikov look privileged and morally woeful in comparison. Recognizing this himself, Raskolnikov does his best to look out for Sonya, in what is perhaps his most genuine form of empathy. Despite this – or perhaps, in fact, in spite of this; for early on Raskolnikov identifies Sonya as the sole individual whom may be able to help him redeem himself – Raskolnikov obsessively pushes Sonya to read a verse from the bible involving the story of Lazarus, as a redemption for himself, but also for Sonya, projecting as he does his misdeeds unto her and equating his murderous acts with her soiling of her sexuality for the sake of providing for her family. The story of Lazarus is a story which promises resurrection of the individual as Jesus Christ resurrected Lazarus from the dead. In this way, Raskolnikov probes, a part of him reaching out ever fervently for the means of the rebirth of his soul, despite his hitherto forthright determination to escape his guilt and conviction, looking for proof of Sonya’s moral purity, which he already suspects, despite his accusations, to which she responds by admitting herself a sinner, asking God for forgiveness, and later by bestowing upon Raskolnikov one of her two precious necklace and crosses. And it is in a kindred vein to these three examples of contrast in which the final contrast is made in small part by every character in the novel; for in some sense this novel represents the journey of one man as he isolates himself from a community he loathes to subordinate himself to; of a man who wishes to supersede his place in the world and become a “superman”; of a man who places his individual ideology above the morality of his peers; and it is in this way that the ordinary character, subservient to religion, provides contrast for the atheist who mocks them, not with critique, but with arrogance.

…

…And that ought to be enough for now.

TLDR: 10/10 would recommend.

Thanks for reading,

- Alex      

[1] The epilogue, from what I’ve observed from others’ critiques, seems to be controversial in that some believe the novel stands alone better without it. It is not until the epilogue – well into the sentence of punishment by the state for his crimes – that Raskolnikov finally gives up his idea that, essentially, ‘the only thing he did wrong was improperly rob the old lady and to then fall emotionally and mentally apart afterwards’; where, too, he finally gives up his last bit of arrogance and outward loathing for the world and his circumstances, and accepts responsibility for his actions, likely brought on by the outwardly visible sacrifices made by his then wife, Sonya, who he looks to for repentance. However, critics argue that without the epilogue, we would simply be left to assume on our own that Raskolnikov finally gave in to repentance when the novel ended with his confession, and that that would be preferable to what is otherwise a heavy-handed ending, condensed as it is compared to the rest of the novel. This would make sense and likely be fitting enough of an ending. However, in defense of the epilogue, without it, a reader’s main takeaway from the story might be only, ‘do not underestimate how much opposing your conscious will degenerate your soul,’ while with the epilogue, the takeaway is more likely to also include something along the lines of, ‘beware denigrating religion and the multitude of cultures which it has produced, for without the ability to hold yourself accountable for your own deeds and also to be redeemed, there is nothing standing between you and self-destruction and misery, to say nothing of the destruction and misery of those around you,’ which of course is realized by the death of Raskolnikov’s mother as well as the sickening of himself and his wife, as a consequence of his refusal to actually accept his punishment and repent even after his confession (which without acceptance of responsibility is still only a selfish act), outlined in the two chapters proceeding the end of the novel. So if I’d had the genius necessary to write this story, I’d also have looked to include an epilogue to ensure that the totality of my characters’ lessons would also be realized by the reader, for whatever that’s worth.  

[2] While Raskolnikov does seem to commit the crime of murder and robbery without getting caught, this does not mean that things go according to plan; in fact, far from it: while Raskolnikov manages to murder Alyona, he very poorly robs her – leaving behind a large bundle of cash she had under her bed, which he missed due to his state of unanticipated frenzy. He also ends up killing Alyona’s younger sister, Lizaveta, when she arrives immediately following the murder, in an act of pure self-perseverance, which just goes to show: when you take the fate of the world into your own hands, when you ‘step over’ the boundaries that your culture (or God; whichever) has deemed should not be crossed – when you arrogantly and naively take the fabric and truth of the universe into your own hands – you do not know what it is you are doing; you do not know what the consequences of your actions will be. It isn’t made clear the degree to which the killing of Lizaveta changed the outcome for Raskolnikov’s soul. Perhaps committing one crime constitutes the same moral weight as committing two crimes simultaneously, but also perhaps it was everything; the one factor unaccounted for which destroyed his evaluation of just outcomes and, having done so, his resolve.

[3] Here is a specific instance in which Dostoevsky’s propensity to pit ideas against each other in the form of characters playing out their practicalities in a real-world context comes to bear. This specific battle, represented by the juxtaposition of the aforementioned scene with Raskolnikov’s murdering of the two women, pits morality against ideology, while leaving a clear winner: for it is one which leads to the eradication of two lives and the degradation of more than one soul, and it is another which leads to the absolution of a dangerous conflict. These two specifically – morality and ideology – clash frequently during the novel’s entirety, with morality often taking its microcosmic form of religion.

[a-queer-seminarian]

Anon from before. Yeah, sorry I probably was kinda weirded out. I like a lot of your content usually. But I'm afraid of death and also several people I love a lot are dead so while I understand on a logical standpoint people going "Who cares about the afterlife? Here and now's all that matters." I very much hope that there is an afterlife because I hope all good is preserved. Not that I won't do good while I'm alive but that I hope there's a soft place for all of us at the end as well.

cw death discussion

Ah, the text limits aren't helping me make sense. I get that things suck and that privileged people have used religion to make excuses for the status quo but at the same time focusing on the hopelessness part feels, idk, like you've only missed nihilism by a hair. I have no idea if that makes any sense.

Ah, sorry for the spam, I keep thinking I haven't explained my point well and then I worry I've offended you perhaps by trying to. I'm glad if you get some peace from the things you read, even if they don't quite resonate with me. And I hope for all of us that there are brighter days ahead, if that's alright. :)

_______________

You haven’t offended me at all, anon! I deeply appreciate your insight. It’s clear from your comments that in posting these disconnected quotes I am misrepresenting De La Torre’s point, so I’m grateful you’ve offered me this feedback and a chance to clarify.

One big thing i should clarify is: just because i post quotes doesn’t mean i fully agree with everything the author’s said -- i post them primarily as food for thought, a place for me to keep track of concepts i personally want to keep pondering, with the added aim of potentially fueling conversation like the one you and i are having now!

Like, for me, if De La Torre is saying that hope is never useful (which I’m not sure he is trying to say), then I disagree with him. I am with you that hope is not always an “opiate of the masses” -- when hope is imposed upon oppressed persons by the oppressors, or used by privileged persons to quiet their discomfort about how marginalized persons are suffering, it is; but when someone who is oppressed chooses to hope against hope in a way that fuels their struggle...that’s a powerful hope, I think.

I’m pretty sure that De La Torre takes a....what’s the word....a hyperbolic stance in much of his book? Like, he’s being intentionally provocative, and he’s talking about worst-case-scenario hope because he’s focused on urgency, on inciting action immediately.

De La Torre, if i am reading him right, is very against nihilism, if nihilism means “everything’s hopeless so nothing matters” -- that, in his opinion, is not “hopelessness” as he defines it, but despair, which is useless if not harmful. He’s very much “even if things are hopeless, we must make meaning.”

He’s also against the nihilism of “nothing matters here and now because all will be well in heaven” as well as the meaning-making of “suffering today is neutral or good actually, because at the End of Things it’ll all be shown to have been a part of the path to heaven.” He prefers the meaning-making of “We have to make life here and now matter because larger forces (oppressive systems) strip oppressed lives of their meaning and dignity; let’s fight that even if we probably can’t win.”

________

The primary aim of Embracing Hopelessness is not to comfort the afflicted but to disturb the comfortable -- if it’s not speaking to you, then you’re not De La Torre’s main audience. Instead, you sound like someone who -- on the subject of death and grief, at least -- is in need of comfort. And I stand with you in hoping that there will be an ultimate restoration of all that is good!

You might find some of my posts on my other blog’s #heaven tag more uplifting than the stuff I’m posting on this blog -- for instance, this post discussing anxiety around death as well as the continuation of things we love on earth in heaven; or my poem “heaven is home to quick green things.”

If looking forward to an afterlife where you are reunited with your lost loved ones, where goodness is restored and justice prevails, keeps you nourished for the journey in the here-and-now, then that’s a good hope! Hold onto it, and let it fuel you for fighting for goodness and justice now. <3

[deepstheeskimo]

I hope all the red squirrels die of COVID

Forget potential NHS breaches and the economy facing the fate of hibernating hedgehogs that settled down in their pile of leaves but forgot to set an alarm for early November, COVID-19 now has us all arguing about bits of tin.

When Black Lives Matter and its usual two sides of debate rolled around yet again, I did not bother posting anything on my Instagram or Twitter. I saw it as boring and bandwagoning. Whenever we have these debates, two sides of usual suspects come out and repeat the same old arguments with nobody being persuaded to change sides and everyone going home with much the same opinions.

I am a staunch supporter of BLM and racial equality. As a middle class, comp-ed, countryside-raised, heterosexual, white boy, I spent a long old time at university educating myself on the history of colonialism, the civil rights movement and traditions of BAME activism since ‘Britain outlawed slavery’ in 1833. Self-education makes you a more rounded, better person.

When everyone posted black squares on Instagram and merrily hash-tagged, it actually angered me. Well done, cheers for noticing the rest of the world. It only took you being furloughed during a pandemic to ‘clap for our NHS’ and to behave in a personable way to supermarket staff, to eventually spare a thought about mental health and finally - after pausing to wheezily bend double and applaud your profession as the real heroes in all this, your eyes have fallen on centuries of structural racism. Anyone want some academic essays on Angola? Thought not. Pat yourselves on the back anyway, I’ll be back in a sec.

Spurred on by another round of phoney interest, the real activists are now looking to press for some actual change and turns out that the way to make Gary ‘n’ Sandra really squeal is to blow a raspberry at their sainted bits of tin. Going for the Cenotaph always gets the debate in the press but picking something visual that dads on Facebook can’t moralise about is a much better way of keeping it there. So, we end up with Robert Baden-Powell being 24 hour protected by some furloughed painter and decorator in a pop up tent. Bloke clearly just drank too much poster paint in primary school and his wife was fed up with his horrible sexism cluttering up the kitchen for the last twelve weeks. “But the boys dewn the yard larff” he protests.

People were on the news openly and happily offering to fight those that would vandalise the statue. Well bring it on pal, I’ll have a war of words. Here are some of his from 1933: it "augers well for the future of Italy” to see that Benito Mussolini had turned scouting into a nationalist youth. 100 years on from ‘Britain outlawing slavery’ but the nation’s elite had yet to get past fascism.

In 1939 your man’s diary was praising Mein Kampf as "a wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc.” Either help me move Robert a few feet closer to his precious Brownsea Island or I’m throwing you in after that bigoted old goat. Oh and, you might have agreed about the aforementioned virtue signallers that only care when they choose. Well if it has taken ‘they’re getting rid of moi statyew’ for you to finally give a fuck about civil rights and Britain’s colonial past then you are hardly better.

Part time Timothy Dalton impersonator and full time MP for Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood has been doing the Zoom media rounds today spouting off a manicured line about how statues need protecting because “we cannot hold historical figures to ‘21st Century standards’”. Ok, sure. It is fairer he agrees, to hold them to the standard of the day in which they were erected. Poole’s statue of Baden-Powell was erected in 2008. Tobias somehow has a majority of over 8,000.

At this point Danny and Stacie have looked away from Instagram and towards the most dystopian part of Snapchat – the ‘news’ section. They are aghast. “They’re banning Little Britain? Oh no, Come Fly With Me too?!”. Where will they get their crass racial stereotypes from now? Soon they calm down and it’s back to subconscious circling of the wagons “What’s next, Chinese Alan off Gavin and Stacey? HA HA HAH”. Twitter’s Tory Boys spin the yarn that this is “comparable to censure” which yes is true in the very loosest sense that both are indeed things. Comparable in the same way are nihilism and toast.

Best idea of the day has come from Mark Howell, an Independent Councillor on Poole’s Council and its Deputy Leader. He pushed for a Museum of Scouting to be built nearby to celebrate the movement and attract tourism. Great plan. Let’s take the statue in there as the main attraction. He can even look out a window at his precious island as I rampage around in combat chamo stomping on red squirrels like how Jonny Kingdom terrorises Dartmoor.

Seriously though, the Museum is a good idea and would help the local economy. Big market too, which will have grown following the news story. Just make sure to include a section of the tour for information on RBP’s dark side too, complete with a couple of donation boxes for some charitable causes.

Deeps

[forsetti]

On Progressive Politics: Wants, Needs, Racism, and Social Justice

For a good portion of my life, I believed racism was overt actions like the KKK burning down black churches and lynching people.  It was someone saying, “nigger” with animosity and disdain.  It was separate drinking fountains and signs that declared, “Whites Only.” Sure there were still racists in America, but they were a small and dying group.  I was wrong.  Very, very, wrong.  There are lots of reasons why I was wrong.  I was wrong because I grew up in the bubble of a small town in Southeastern Idaho and was never exposed to the full spectrum of racism.  I was wrong because the real history of racism in America has been intentionally hidden and denied.  However, the main reason I was wrong is that as a white male, I have benefited the most America’s long history of racism and willingly or not, I had been part of the problem. As someone who has prided himself on being a staunch progressive and defender of equality and justice, the realization of my own ignorance and culpability in America’s racism has been a very humbling and painful process.  The depth and breadth of the problem are also very overwhelming and depressing.  My attitude about the problem constantly fluctuates from white-hot anger to existential nihilism.  I either want to take to the streets in protest or drink myself numb.  There are times when I think something can and should be done.  At other times, I think the problem is too ingrained in our culture for anything to change because there are too many ignorant and apathetic white people who keep breeding and passing their idiot traits down to a new generation of would-be racists. Adding to my feelings of hopelessness, there are too many “well-meaning” white people who don’t want to rock the white supremacist boat because deep down they enjoy the benefits of racism.

Because of how entrenched racism is in America, because of how long it has been going on, because of how reluctant even the most well-meaning whites are to real change, I have no suggestions on how to adequately address the problem and can’t even begin to comprehend how to make amends for the three-plus centuries of damage done by racism.  While I might not know what to do to correct the problem, I sure as fuck know what not to do to aggravate it.  The lessons I’ve learned the past few years may be few in number, but they have completely altered how I, a fifty-eight-year-old white man, views the world.

This new view as made me hypersensitive to anything that caters to the status quo.  Conservative politics has been built on catering to the notion of white supremacy since the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.  I expect nothing less from them and am never surprised by anything they do or say, even Donald Trump who is just being more open and honest about the conservative strategy than most.  Since I am not a conservative and do not give a rat’s ass about what they do/don’t do because I have zero expectations they’ll ever change or listen to reason, I won’t address them, their attitudes or policies. It is progressives who I (reluctantly) rest my hopes on.

There is a very disturbing trend among some progressives when it comes to how people of color vote.  In 2008 progressives who supported Hillary often denigrated anyone of color who voted/supported Barack Obama. Their support was written off as not being thoughtful.  I hear a lot of progressives claim that POC voted for Obama not because they thought he was a good candidate or the best choice, but merely for the fact he is black.  Eight years later, that same attitude flipped from Hillary supporters to her opponents but with regard to gender not race.  It was complete bullshit in 2008 and it was complete bullshit in 2016.

In 2016 Hillary has won a large majority of black and Hispanic votes. Bernie did much better with white men.  These facts don’t mean anything by themselves.  They do, however, have significant meaning when you look at the strategies and words of the candidates and, more importantly, the beliefs of the minority voters.  I believe the latter is a direct reflection of the former.

If your spoken strategy is to “bring white working-class voters back to the Democratic Party,” you are not only on a fool’s errand, but you are also going to alienate minority voters.  When your supporters are condescending to minorities when they vote for your opponent, you are on the wrong side of this issue. I see a lot of the white, male, Democratic candidates this time around making this same mistake.  It really doesn’t matter if this is being done on purpose or out of ignorance.  The only things that really matters are how it is perceived and what will it do to address the problem of this strategy's underlying racism.

Going after the white working class vote is a really bad strategy for a number of reasons.  This group has largely already been voting for Republicans who have fed their fears and white supremacy for decades.  In fact, no Democratic presidential candidate has won the white vote since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. This isn't a coincidence.  White voters are not going to suddenly listen to reason or be willing to admit their economic decline is a direct result of their own voting patterns.  However, the real problem with this approach is it continues the long history of being concerned more about the situation of whites than minorities.  Even with many white working class people stagnating economically, they are still infinitely in a better economic state than minorities.  Putting your main focus on the group that needs the least help is politically tone deaf if you are progressive.   Another reason this strategy is a really bad idea is it completely ignores the demographic trends of the Democratic Party.  White voters are becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the voting pie.  Putting them as your main emphasis on winning an election is just plain stupid.  Even if you do win, you’ve sown negative seeds with the largest growing part of your base which will have repercussions down the road.  Demographically, progressives have the advantage against conservatives,  why on earth would you do anything to damage this and give conservatives an opening to gain traction with minorities or alienate them to where they don't vote?  This doesn’t mean you should ignore white voters.  It means you don’t make them the focal point of your campaign.  It also means you don’t sell your ideas to minorities as “they’ll also benefit,” but you sell your ideas to whites that “everyone benefits.”  

One of the main things I have learned the past few years is to really listen to the people who need the most help, who will suffer the most if the right policies are not enacted, who has the most to lose if the right people aren’t elected.  There are a lot of groups this applies to, but one really stands out; black women.  It was black women who helped elect President Obama in 2008.  They definitely were the major force behind his reelection in 2012 when a lot of white progressives stayed home.  While a President Romney and a GOP controlled Congress might have had negative consequences for white progressives, it would have decimated black households who are holding on by a thread.  Every positive thing President Obama did was a direct result of black women voting for him en masse.

Blacks and other minorities are focused on the bottom two levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  Whites progressives are focused on the top two. White progressives, as a group, are not worried about whether they’ll have food to eat, shelter, security…  They are focused on feeling good about their job, their self-esteem, being respected for who they believe they are (superior)…  Morally and from a progressive political point-of-view, one of these takes priority over the other.  What I see far too often from white progressive politicians is a supply-side approach to justice, equality, opportunities.  If whites are helped, the benefits will trickle down to minorities.  Supply-side economics is complete bullshit.  Supply-side anything is complete bullshit.  If you are pushing a top-down political agenda, you are not progressive. It doesn’t matter what your intentions, how deeply you believe it, how long you’ve been advocating it…  You are either helping those who need the most help first and foremost or you are not.  There are no linguistic or argumentative gymnastics that can change this reality.  The people at the bottom of the hierarchy know this and can see through bullshit because they deal with it each and every day.  

I’m not saying certain aspects of Bernie’s or any of the other white, male candidate's agenda would not help those at the bottom of the hierarchy a lot, they would.  What I am saying is making your focus bringing back white working-class voters to the Democratic Party and trying to sell it as “it will help minorities too” is completely misguided.   I’ve listened intently to Bernie since he decided to run.  This is exactly what he says and how he tries to sell it.  It is why almost all of his events are in college towns that are predominately white.  It is why he has focused his campaign heavily in states that have a high percentage of whites. Whether intentional or not, the attitudes behind are picked up by his supporters.  When I see and hear his supporters and spokespeople say derogatory things about minority voters who supported Hillary, I see it as a reflection of the campaign’s attitudes and strategies.  When Hillary won Southern states because of the black vote and they talk about her “winning the Confederacy” and “winning red states that won’t matter in the general election,” I hear the dog whistles of progressives.   It isn’t KKK racism, but it is racism nevertheless.   When Joe Biden or Mayor Pete constantly talk about the pain and suffering of white, rural Americans, I hear these same dog whistles. It doesn't matter if they are intentional or not. Their impact is the same. What they are signaling to minorities is their vote isn't a priority. What they are signaling to white voters is their votes are. This is both strategically and morally wrong. The more and harder white Democratic candidates chase after white votes, the more it sends a message to their staunchest, most loyal, most in need of their help the base they are second-class voters.

In 2016 I heard a lot of Bernie supporters say, “black voters just don’t know what they are doing,” or “if black voters REALLY understood Bernie’s policies, they’d vote for him.”  The white supremacist condescension of this is thick and telling.  I’m pretty sure black voters know exactly what they want from a candidate and who will best help them.  They were pretty clear, it isn’t Bernie Sanders.  White progressives don’t need to agree with this, but they have to respect it.  When they don’t, they are nothing but racist-lite whether they realize it or not, whether they admit it or not.  White progressives need to stop telling minorities what is best for them. I’m not saying minorities didn't have issues with Hillary and her campaign.  They did.  However, when it came time to pull the lever in the voting booth, they overwhelmingly choose her over Bernie by a considerable margin.  Minority voters saw the candidates and to Bernie they said, to quote from “A Knight’s Tale,” “You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found absolutely wanting.”  

My view in 2016 of the Democratic Party and the two major candidates for president was formed over a lot of time and thought.  It has been helped along by a couple of different sources as well as the most influential work on social ethics I’ve ever read.  The two outside sources that had the greatest influence in pushing me to a better understanding of the issues could not be more different.  One is a black woman on Twitter, Propane Jane, the other is a reformed white conservative blogger, John Cole.   Propane Jane is a psychiatrist from Houston Texas who, when she isn’t writing books goes on twitter rants that are so precise, brutally honest, and insightful about racism in America, I’m often stunned how 140 characters can have so much impact.  She has no time for bullshit or sugarcoating.  Every once in a while she will say something that at first blush seems completely wrong and my defenses go up.  But, if I put my defense mechanism away and am honest about the tweet, she’s completely right.  Her tweet storms are so legendary, they are often storified by others.  Here is one from January that gets to the heart of the problem with the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders’ campaign with regard to their base: John Cole at “Balloon Juice,” started blogging in 2002 shortly after 9/11.  He was a die-hard conservative.  The actions of the Bush administration in Iraq, Abu Gharib, and the Terri Schiavo case pushed him to take a hard look at his belief in conservatism.  His blog went from being a go-to site for staunch conservatives to a mainstay for progressives.  Earlier this month he wrote an article titled: “I’ve Kind of Made My Decision,” that addresses his take on the Democratic primary and why he is supporting Hillary.  When I read it, I said to myself, “This is exactly how I feel and why.”  He lays out a number of reasons he is supporting Hillary over Bernie, but the one that stood out to me was the one where he admits that since the 2008 campaign, he has been exposed to more voices of women and POC and it has made him reevaluate how he views politics. “In my opinion as a white single male with a degree of financial stability, beyond agita and heartburn, I have very little at stake in this election. I’m not going to be drafted, my insurance won’t be lost if ACA is repealed, I won’t have to worry about losing my ability to get pap smears or mammograms or basic health services if PP is closed down, I won’t have to worry about feeding my children, I won’t have to worry about the right to control my body, I won’t have to worry about getting shot in the street for walking while white or be found dead in a jail cell after failing to signal a lane change. These are not and will not be a concern for me, ever. “ In other words, his concerns for himself fall in the top levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the concerns of many women and POC fall in the bottom levels.  To put it another way, his problems are first world, white people problems that, when looked at in comparison to others seem trivial and shallow.  This is where he and Propane Jane intersect.  While John is pointed out how the outcome of the election really won’t impact him because of his station in life, Jane laid bare the lives of those who don’t enjoy that station.    Many white progressives are not as self-reflective as John.  They don’t see they are arguing for and from their own privilege.  Pointing out their lack of self-awareness and politics of privileged self-interest is Jane’s specialty.  While privileged white progressives are pissed bankers weren’t jailed because of the financial crisis, black families are worried about whether or not their child will be shot by the police, whether their unarmed teenager will be gunned down in the street, whether the rigged justice system will take their father away, whether or not their state government will give its wealthiest citizens more tax cuts while cutting social safety net programs, how to avoid being arrested or fined by a police force that uses the poor and disadvantaged to fund their department…

All of this is a perfect example of philosopher John Rawls’ “Difference Principle.”  Rawls in his seminal work, “A Theory of Justice” laid out an ethical framework for social justice.  One of the main tenets is his “Difference Principle.”  In a nutshell, the Difference Principle  says, “a law/rule/policy in society is only justified if it helps those disadvantaged as much or more than those advantaged.”  For example, a tax cut would be just and fair if those at the bottom of the economic ladder are helped by it as much or more than those at the top.  Any law/rule/policy that improved the position of the advantaged more than or at the expense of the disadvantaged would be unfair, unjust.  

When it comes to ethics, I am a devout Rawlsian.  “A Theory of Justice” is my ethical bible.  When I apply it to the ideas and policy proposals of the current Democratic candidates for president, Hillary’s lined up more with Rawls than Bernie.  It isn’t that Bernie’s or Joe's or Mayor Pete's ideas are not good or don’t have merit.  Many do.  However, their views operate from a top-down approach and this is the direct opposite of Rawls.  I’m not saying Hillary’s ideas were perfect Rawlsian, they were not.  However, more of her ideas operate from a bottom-up approach.  This is what John Cole was getting at in his article.  This is what Propane Jane gets at constantly with her tweets. Like it or not, there are two and only two major political parties in America.  Currently, one of these two is batshit crazy.  It appeals to and actively recruits angry, white, racist, misogynist, ignorant males.  The other party, faults and all, has a very large base of the most disadvantaged in society.  The reason I am a proud liberal and vote for Democratic candidates is that it is in the best position to help those who need it the most.  As a fifty-eight-year-old white man, I have enjoyed many benefits for the mere facts I am white and male.  Often, these benefits have come at the expense of people not like me.  I can’t change what has happened, but I can change what does happen.  I can and will push and vote for people and policies that improve the situations, opportunities, and lives of those who were not born with this privilege.  In so doing, I have two choices: I can either take an approach that I know what’s best for those less fortunate; Or, I can listen to the people who have the most to lose, the most skin in the political game.  If I opt for the first choice, I am perpetuating my white privilege.  I am no better than any white progressive who tells POC voters they don’t know what they are doing.  If I choose the second option, the consequence is not supporting Democratic candidates who are hell-bent on chasing the elusive white voter. I listened to every possible argument for Bernie and against Hillary in 2016, I am currently listening to every argument for Bernie/Joe/Pete versus Elizabeth/Kamala/Amy...  When push comes to shove, every single one of these arguments takes a backseat to the social justice and ethical argument I’ve discussed.  The future of the Democratic Party is with minorities.  The social justice argument belongs to them, not white middle-aged men or white college students.  The latter are important and their needs should be taken into consideration, but not in front or at the expense of the former.  I believe in equality, justice, and fairness with no qualifications, no asterisks that somewhere in really small fine print says, “people of color, women, gays, etc. need not apply” or “are separate but equal” or any other bullshit.  I can’t support any party or candidate whose main focus is white working class men, especially those who have voted against their own self-interest for decades because they don’t want “those people” to get something they don’t believe they deserve.  Fuck them.  They made their choices based largely on racism and bigotry.  They had choices and options and fucked them up.  Minorities and women, for the most part, have had neither.  It’s about damn time they did.  It’s about damn time we start listening to them.

[alicezan-ncgred]

Bleeding Red

Preface: I’ve been bitching around the bush of this long enough. So, I’ve been really silent on a bunch of stuff that’s been eating me alive which has made me both inactive and unproductive. I’m going to get straight to the point, starting off with the TL:DR from my post on my main blog. Context: An anon asked me if I was alright because I hadn’t updated in a while.

TL:DR You probably didn’t ask this to hear about all the bad shit of my life so here’s the short of it. No, I’m not doing fine. I will try get next weeks post out on time and I’ll work on making up on the lost posts. Updates will return regularly, ‘ite.

Time for the thick and thin of it.

Insecurity and being shafted: I’m stoic, even at my worst I won’t say anything. I’ll push through regardless of my current condition and since I’ve gone years like this, it’s not hard for me to do. In my real life situation, I’m currently in a place of social isolation. This has lead to a somewhat near reliance on Tumblr to be my social outlet. This present many issues.

The main one is that I’m quite the isolationist. This has only been reinforced by many interactions throughout the entirely of my life. Because of this, I can’t say I’ve ever had anything really more than two friends at a time. While in a way this has helped me express myself so well through writing, it’s come at the cost of social skill. I don’t talk to anyone.

With this kind of issue you could easily imagine that the THREE PEOPLE (four now, but very limited) to ever directly talk ended up in a way shafting me. The first blocked and disconnected with me without warning or reason. At this point we’ve been talking to each for about a month and we hit it off very well and then one day, silence. Never heard from them again. That fucked me up hard when I finally realized what happened.

The second person left during the Tumblr P**n Purge. We were talking about how to contact each other on other platforms and then they stopped responding. I had already given contact to other platforms of which they pinged me in any way. Another person that I trusted massively on here just abandoned me and I’m still hurting from that. Wasn’t fair at all.

Then the third person was someone that I been following for a while. This person is actually the reason that I’ve been putting this off for so long. I don’t want them to see this post but they will. I got an ask from them that ultimately turned out to be misinformation. I said I wasn’t mad but I was. I was so fucking angry about it and I’m still kinda mad, but I didn’t want problems. I still don’t. I just didn’t want them to worry about it. This will come back later.

I try my best to be as inoffensive as possible. The problem with that is that much of the things I believe or enjoy are highly divisive. Hell, even my own identity can be seen as offence. I’m bisexual, non-binary (I’m currently still questioning this. I might actually be gender fluid but in the overall scheme, that’s worse than being non-binary), and nonreligious. I’m in a very religious area so you I’m still “in the closet” about much of this IRL. I though it would better online but with how much people are saying bisexuality doesn’t exist, or that non-binary isn’t a valid gender (or that being gender fluid make you insane and you should be locked up) and all the hate people who say they are this are getting, the very community that’s supposed to accept me, HATES me. I had a bi pride flag icon last year during Pride Month. I never doing that ever again. It was terrible.

I’m trying my best to come out of my shell like I said I would when I made this blog but it seems I’m just crawling further into it. People I think I can trust keep setting me up to fall, people I know in real life won’t ever accept my existence if they knew who I really was, and my own mental health problem and self loathing are eating me alive. But that isn’t the total of it.

Crumbling Pillar: I’ve always ended up in the position where things were thrown onto me. In which no one wanted to do, I was stuck with. Because of this not only do I have a severe distaste being around my family (beyond everything mentioned before hand) but I grew to have a negative out look on everything. This effect is still quite obvious in my writings, especially my poems. Out of the 14 poems on my poem blog @washed-soul​, only one has a happy meaning.

The one happy poem was called dreams. Under a metaphor it talks about how a demon kept me trapped in a dark space. I start to get better and nearly break free before I have a negative relapse back to my old ways. The poems ends with the demon putting a end to itself leaving the nightmare in which it was keeping me in to slowly fade away, letting one crack of light peeking through to become a window to a door until one day I walk free. When writing this poem, I never thought I would find myself rebuilding the nightmare but that’s where I am.

I’m done with holding things together that other people have placed onto me. Because of this, issues have began showing in my private life. Issues that should’ve been solved decades ago are only now being addressed. This change in the status quo of my life has caused many issues in my productive and mood. Between everything else I’m too tired to do anything.

Is that a reason, is that an excuse. No it isn’t but it’s the best thing I got as a reason. I’m doing my damnedest to do the best I can but of course, when it comes to the thing that matter I just fall short. Big fucking whopha my intelligence and capability does me if I can’t use it for anything that means a damn.

Meaningless Triviality: I’m a very emotional person. I’m very strongly bound to my emotions and if everything above hasn’t given it away, my emotions are very negative prone. But it just doesn’t stop there, it goes back into my memories. I can only honestly place 3 happy memories for certain that aren’t either A) a dream or B) me escaping reality through my mind. Besides that, almost all my memories are negative. 

People like to throw around the word Nihilist to describe themselves because today's culture is very, god while I hate to use this word, edgy. For those who don’t know a Nihilist is someone who views the world as being completely  meaningless and reject all religious and moral principles. I very truly struggle with this outlook of life. It’s a daily for me to berate myself saying “just kill yourself” or “I want to die” or just shutting down and crumpling up while say “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over again. Hell, I did that while writing this. 

I take things very hard, even the slightest transgression. I’m so used to trying to make things perfect and because people have the image that I’m the smart one, the mature one, the capable one, I’m left with the over hanging expectation of excellence. Almost no room for margin of error or being human. Since I’m the silent type, I put up no challenge and work to meet it. Only time I get any praise for anything too. 

I guess as a little self promotion to my main blog, for those that have read the very first few updates of my main blog @the-truth-behind-redacted, or read Defiance’s character sheet, while The Machine and Defiance are separate character, they both share the name Machine. That in part is a reflect of said above expectation. How ravenous and inhuman it can be all under the guise of something human. Those characters are the two sides to the same coin. 

Remember how I said I try to be un-problematical and how I try to avoid any potential conflict. In the first segment I told on how I lied about my feelings just so another person didn’t have to worry over something that honestly, in hindsight, wasn’t even really a big deal. But I also said how it consumed me in anger. I just don’t want to bother anyone over anything. It’s part of the reason why I am writing this post, as some way of a self enforced rehab program to get better. 

This absolute consumption of negative emotion has pushed me into a non human state before. I hit a point of absolute mental exhaustion and in such a self enforced bubble of actual hatred I became completely apathetic. I felt numb to everything. I watched and heard of terrible things happening to people, and felt nothing. I watched people lives crumble before them leaving them nowhere to go and LAUGHED. “Just another worthless pathetic worm on this rotting carcass of a planet being hit with the hard reality that life doesn’t care for them. What whimsical pathetic bullshit they deluded themselves with to think otherwise.” This isn’t an exaggeration on how I thought, this is what I actually thought. Which brings me too.

The Mandatory Sob Story: Roll your eyes everyone and get the tiny violin. I guess in order for everyone to exactly understand the place I’m coming from when it comes to mental health I’ll have to detail my experiences. I have a long standing history with mental illness. I have professionally diagnosed OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, and visual and auditory hallucinations. I take 600 mg of Seroquel a day as well as Amitriptyline when needed. I’m also still currently in therapy to deal with said OCD, Bipolarism, Anxiety, Chronic Depression, the visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as Suicidal thoughts, and my Nihilism. There’s a reason to why I’m so god damn familiar with mental illness and treatment plans.  

OCD and Bipolarism run in my family on my fathers side. My Father’s Father had them, my Sister has them, my brother most likely has them (however he refuses to see a doctor because he uses said possible mental illnesses as a get out of jail free card. He doesn’t want to be treated and he has FUCKING ADMITTED IT), my father has them, and I have them. I, however, have the misfortune of having it real bad. I said yes to well over half of all the total symptoms when I was being tested (I don’t remember exact numbers but I remember there being three pages worth of common symptoms) which was very worrying to the doctor. I was currently in an inpatient hospitalization program at the time for both suicidal thoughts and actions, and severe depression. 

On that, my graze in with suicide. Before I went into my first inpatient program I was contemplating suicide. I was sat in front of a mirror with a bottle of over the counter medication. It was an unopened bottle of ibuprofen, 1000 200mg tables. What I planed to do was down the whole bottle with benadryl and die in my sleep. I had the small box of benadryl got from the Kroger pharmacy and a hand full of ibuprofen poured out looking directly into the mirror. My suicide note was sitting on the desk on my room with an online copy on my laptop open.

I sat there for an hour in the dead of midnight complicating my life. I had lost all hope in the world, filled with hatred, anger, pain, and despair. I had no god or after life to look forward too, part way hoping that a Hell existed for me to burn in. I hated myself that much. I was close to taking the first handful before before I caught a glimpse of my own eyes in the mirror. In what was in a weird sudden epiphany I realized that I truly did become what I hated but not for any reason I told myself. I became the very bastion of negativity I sought to fight and rid of in what little friends I did have. That was what set off my path to recovery in spite of the medical system. I guess if people care I’ll make a separate post on that. 

Before I move on, I feel I should explain my history with the visual and auditory hallucinations. It should be no surprise that with everything else above, I also had extreme paranoia that led to me having very bad insomnia. Insomnia is, just like most other medical disorders like Depression, Self-harm, Anxiety, OCD,  Bipolarism, is romanticized to hell. Insomnia isn’t having one nights bad sleep where you got 5 hours of sleep instead of 8.

You know what Insomnia is? insomnia is being physical incapable of sleeping despite not sleeping in 2 to 3 day while your body suffers massive agony brought on by this. Muscle spasms and seizing, difficulty breathing, your eyes feeling like fire ants are eating them, and of course visual and auditory hallucinations. Now I already had issues with visual and auditory hallucinations even when I could get sleep regularly but the combined effects of my OCD and Bipolarism made this perfect condition of Insomnia, Anxiety, Paranoia, with the already added in disposition to hallucinations and I felt like I was actually losing my mind. 

My hallucinations presented themselves in three forms. Disassociation of reality, night terrors, or alterations of reality. Disassociation of reality often were complete black out moments. I would lose any perceived connect to reality and enter an episode of my mind. I can’t remember what they actually were but I do remember what it felt like. Cold sweats, anxiety to point where if I didn’t lock up I would vomit, actual physical pain, mind numbing fear, and intense fatigue. 

The second were night terrors often in the form of horrific “things.” I do remember these and most of them were as best as I could describe, forms of things that were vaguely human and formations of industrial machinery. The most vivid one I remember was of a long lengthy apparition that was for the most part human but many locations of it’s impossible physiology were rebar beams and mechanical sockets. It began when I was about to fall asleep and it was next to my window. The thing was making week groaning and gasping sounds before it violently slammed against my window breaking it then letting out a horrific howl that I can’t describe as it tossed itself out followed shorty after with the sound of bones breaking against the dirt. 

Now that might not seem so bad, exspecally with everything that is in horror movies or games now, but keep in mind that was fucking real to me. It was as real as the clicking of the keys of my keyboard as I’m writing this. As real as the chair I’m sitting in and as real as the wall in front of me. As far as my mind was concerned that thing, what ever it was, actually existed. It took me physical touching my window to make sure it wasn’t actually broken and checking outside to see if there wasn’t a body there. This isn’t the type of thing I talk about lightly. 

Finally there is the alteration of reality. This is very simply but it’s something that fucked with me hard. For very little meaning or warning, I would have trouble interpreting the world around me. My hearing and sight would be warped and there wasn’t any real way to tell what I was hearing or seeing was real or not until the episode was over. The way I got through these was the ultimate fake it till you make it. Obviously, very often I failed and this created issue in my schooling. 

Ending Message: I’ve been in a very bad state for a while now and as it is now, no signs of getting better. I also strongly believe my medications are being to fail me which I’ve been telling my doctor and therapist for over a year now but nothing’s been done. Mainly it’s my Depression but insomnia episodes are beginning and my own paranoia been on the rise. It’s gotten to the point where I can’t even look at a creepy image or thumbnail without having a very bad episode. 

I’ve managed to eat something today which was nice but my body is cramping hard. And to possible stave of a possible comment, I’m biologically male. Like I said I’m not in the best head space, or living for that matter. If this gets better, only time will tell. 

[ackbang]

i posted a couple of months back on facebook a status that mentioned how my life has turned into a fanfic written by a 13 year old. it’s a story that has become completely unfamiliar with my personal narrative and has completely ditched any kind of association with canon.

i snubbed my first boyfriend for doing this. his friends had gone off to college in the big cities--came back with experiences with drugs and drinking and smoking. he couldn’t participate in events without getting drunk anymore. he took up smoking cigars. i wondered what had changed. i couldn’t understand. i resented him.

then i ended up in a hotel with a strangers’ cock in my hand two months ago, and i wondered how i ended up there. and i wondered why it didn’t feel uncomfortable to be naked and unsatisfied. how the small talk after was an annoyance, and how him contacting me after to say sorry felt fake. and how amazing it feels to just uninstall an app and just never even have to be concerned about how he’s doing at all.

i try too hard to make things work. i connect to people too quickly. because of it, i had always thought of myself incapable of doing something like that. but it happened. do i regret it? not at all. i surprised myself.

i was the dare poster child. i got into fights with my friends for drinking and doing drunks. now i’ve drunk myself crazy out of sadness, and seen just how easy it could be to turn alcoholic if i let myself. because sometimes, dealing with feelings is too exhausting. sometimes it just feels nice to sleep easily.

i’ve always been so afraid. it’s made me say “no” a lot. as my world view converges to a plane of actual nihilism, and how my jokes of lack of self preservation become alarmingly true, i’m saying “yes” a lot more. attempting to move to another country, a tattoo, strip club, drinking. it’ll get longer as i keep being affirmative. i’ll keep becoming an abstraction of myself until either i hit a wall so hard that it smacks me back into place, or i just lose myself entirely.

this year has been rough, and if you’ve been following me through it, i appreciate you sticking around and reading these long posts. i’m not exactly the person i was even a year ago, and granted we all change over time, but i do feel like i have turned into a poor representation of myself to the point that i almost feel like a fake. 

it was hard to admit to myself that i was depressed--that for the first time ever my friends around me were pushing me to get help, when i know that i have been in much deeper and darker places in the past. i did get help for awhile, and plan on resuming it in a couple of months with a better understanding of where i am. the main realizations of this year were:

all of my struggles to try to figure out my sexuality have actually been extremely detrimental to my mental health

i crush extremely easy because any kind of reciprocated kindness crosses my emotional wires

i self sabotage myself constantly, especially in relationships

i want to be good to and for people, which in turn makes me feel undeserving of anything as i know i can never achieve a greatness the person deserves

happiness is a concept and never a truth

there’s simple answers to these. many “i deserve happiness” and “i only need to be myself”, but that’s easier said than done of course. if you are my friend, i hope you know that i care about you deeply, that i really only want to be good to you, and i’m so, so sorry that more often than not i am not. i’m trying to become a good person, which seems counter to my actions lately. where i’m flipping into this bizzaro personality of a person i never thought could be good. maybe i’m just acting out on the thought--that if i’m garbage then i should just act like it too. i’m not sure.

either way, you are all too good to me, and i love you very much. i felt like i wanted this to sound a bit more eloquent and story like, but that just kinda fucked itself to shit i guess.

[usesforviennasausage]

Bunny reviews: The Good  Place

Using “fun” television as escapism usually doesn’t work on me because my anxious little rat brain simply cannot stop running in circles. The shows I do tend to like – Bojack Horseman, The Americans, Fleabag – are about coping with self-loathing, or terrible things happening to a family in a fucked-up world, or grief. I can’t just put on Broad City or The Office or whatever because, sorry, for lack of better phrasing, it’s all so stupid. You want me to pay attention to a witty line of dialogue about nothing, spoken by someone I don’t care about, in a world where nothing truly bad ever happens? (Incidentally, this is also how I feel about yas-kween liberal politics.) When…[gestures at everything]?? Yeah, okay.

The Good Place is the only feel-good sitcom I’ve watched that accepts the debilitatingly awful terms of reality and does something with it. It’s by no means a perfect show – some jokes land flat, sometimes it tries too hard, sometimes I really hate a character who’s given way too much screentime (Brett). But its brilliance lies in the simplicity of its fundamental inquiry: what would happen if everything about our world was still the way it is, but we tried to help each other… be better? How can humans help each other grow?

It’s also frequently hilarious. It points out little absurdities about human customs, like this bit about karaoke:

And it makes humor out of the insanity of our world, because what else can you do but laugh:

In another episode, Eleanor tells someone:

“In America, everyone does whatever they want, society did break down, it’s terrible, and it’s great! You only look out for number one, scream at whoever disagrees with you, there are no bees because they all died, and if you need surgery you just beg for money on the internet.”

You’re laughing because everything’s so abjectly terrible. You’re laughing with the kind of manic desperation reserved for the part of your brain that can no longer emotionally cope with how nightmarish reality has become. Everyone knows this. How else can we cope?

But underneath the humor, the frivolity of its sitcom status, the silly puns, there’s a lot more -- an appraisal of moral philosophy and the meaning of being alive. All of the characters are trying to learn how to become better people -- what that looks like, what that means. There’s an (especially funny) episode in Season 3 in which Chidi -- a philosophy professor, a bundle of neuroses, whose life revolves around ethics -- receives incontrovertible proof that nothing matters. He wanders around a park brokenly. He eats canned chili with marshmallow Peeps and tells his students that everything he ever taught them was “hot, stinky cat dooky,” before going on a gloriously deranged rant about nihilism. 

By the end of the episode, all six main characters have to come to terms with the inescapable fate of being damned for all eternity, and soldier on with grace. They help each other. There’s no justice, the world is broken, there’s nothing they can do to fix it -- but “why not try?” says Eleanor to Michael. “It’s better than not trying, right?” They look into the abyss, and discover kindness.  

It’s so corny. It’s so earnest. It asks, who could we be, if we cared more about being better? What if it were enough to try? 

I loved The Good Place. I think it was a show capable of altering its audience for the better. I wish I could have the experience of binging it now, in these times, when so little else is capable of keeping my mind off all of the terrible things that are happening. We’re about to sit and bear witness to the entire spectrum of human experience -- the grief and the anger, the pain and the hope, the humor in shared suffering -- and honestly, that’s exactly what the show was all about. 

[jtrahan]

[Meta] The Better Pirates of the Caribbean Project

(Contains some SPOILERS for Dead Men Tell No Tales).

So you’re making a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and you’d like it to be about Will Turner’s son, because you worked at Disney when they were selling Orlando Bloom posters like hotcakes and you want to be able to afford enough cocaine to get you through producing that live-action Dumbo remake. Here’s how you do it: 

Will is cursed to remain on the Dutchman forever (or at least until he finds someone willing to take his place, but never mind that, maybe we’ll get there in a few sequels). His duty is to ferry the souls of those who died at sea to wherever they’re going next, and as long as he keeps up with this duty he and his crew will be free of the sub-curse that turned Davy Jones and co into monsters (presumably you know this already because you actually watched At World’s End at some point). This is what he’s been doing for the past twenty years. I imagine him poking tangled souls free of coral reefs, drawing them up in nets, sailing on glowing rivers of souls that wind through the world between worlds. Hell, if you want, open up the movie with a big battle sequence and then have the Dutchman show up in the aftermath, with Will giving a comforting version of Davy Jones’ “Do you fear death” speech from Dead Man’s Chest. (Orlando Bloom’s acting is a potential problem, but hey, this is a big franchise for you. You can afford to coach him back into the swing of things). 

Now, having Will the Third (I saw Dead Men Tell No Tales twice and still cannot remember his real name) be obsessed with finding his father is a good angle, so you can keep the broad strokes there. But in this case the conflict is that hanging out in the realms of the dead will kill the living pretty quickly, and Will wants his son to actually live his life rather than obsessing over death, so he sends him away. It’s a bitter moment for both of them. Will the Third never really gets over it. (What is Elizabeth doing during all this, you might ask? It’s a good question, and the answer is fuck you, you wanted to make a movie about their kid and now you’ll have to deal with the consequences. Maybe hire Keira Knightley to do some voiceover about how he’s a troubled kid and she doesn’t know how to reach him, if you think that’s necessary. Either you or she are apparently not willing to commit to more than thirty seconds or so of screentime, so we’re working with limited resources here).

Will the Third grows up both feeling rejected by his father and wanting to get back to him. And the way to get to get back to him, of course, is to die. So Will the Third runs away to sea, signs on to the riskiest voyages, keeps sticking his neck out into horribly dangerous situations. He always survives, because of course he does, which is very frustrating for him. So he keeps escalating the situation. 

He becomes a pirate.

Now, one dramatic title screen later, we’re into the main plot of the movie. Young Captain Henry Turner (that’s his real name, I’ve just remembered) is faced with a situation in which he has to cross the line into doing something truly villainous, which he is conflicted about, because obviously he has a good soul deep down. Purely off the top of my head: maybe his actions cause an entire town to be captured by a much nastier crew of pirates. He has to try to make this right, maybe initially for selfish reasons (one of the townspeople has some kind of thing he needs, perhaps. Hey, maybe if you’re really wedded to the idea of dragging Jack’s compass back into the story for very questionable reasons, have one of the captured townsfolk steal it before they’re taken away. Henry will then need to go chase down the Big Bad to get it back, which will give you an excuse for some conflict). As the story goes on he’ll shift from selfishness to selflessness, probably with some big dramatic scene where he abandons his goals to do the right thing instead. His arc will be from nihilism and an obsession with death to hope and a desire to live life fully while still alive. This will be the theme of your movie. I think it could probably use one of those.

We have to get Jack in here too, and I think it’s best to do it early. He’ll be around during this initial conflict and once again find himself reluctantly teaming up with Young Turner because of Reasons. I imagine him being delighted but also slightly dismayed that Henry has turned out to be a baddie. Jack has zero inclination to be an angel-on-the-shoulder sort of figure, but at the same time this isn’t how things are supposed to be--he’s supposed to be the morally ambiguous one, with Turner as the straight-laced ally; and so, very (VERY) reluctantly, he finds himself trying to encourage Henry to be more heroic, if only because he feels really strange about the situation and wants to return things to the status quo so he can get back to betraying everybody again.

Then, for the rest of the movie, a whole bunch of other shit happens. Tradition dictates that yo need a supernatural crew at some point. The bald witch from the version of Dead Men Tell No Tales you actually made was kinda neat, so recycle that idea into a crew of sea witches (goes well with the idea of pirates as people who don’t fit in anywhere else). Make them allies of the good guys if you want to spice things up (you really need to bring in a new good-guy crew either way). Or have the Big Bad be going to sacrifice their captives in order to gain powers, and give them some temporary version of those powers for the big finale. Make the villain a woman while you’re at it; you haven’t done that yet. Give Henry a love interest (maybe another pirate, to help differentiate from the original trilogy?) The important things are Henry’s journey from nihilism to hope, and Jack’s reluctant embrace of a heroic role that he intends to abandon as soon as possible (which has always been a huge part of what makes Jack interesting). 

And, at the end, after Henry has been terribly wounded thanks to his inevitable heroic turn, have a guilt-stricken Will show up and offer to take him to the afterlife. And have Henry decide to accept the pain and live instead, because he only has one life, and he’s finally realized that he wants to make the most of it.

I think that’s a way to do it. I think that’s a way to have a decent thematic arc that’s consistent with the rest of the series, while also making a movie that very much mirrors the structure of the first one, while ALSO keeping it from being a total retread. I think it could work. 

Or, alternatively, you could spend $230 million to make Dead Men Tell No Tales instead.