#call me irony-poisoned all you like but people like me far better when i'm being a court jester about it all

[draconicace]

gently patting the shaking chihuahua in my head. you will not reveal your vulnerabilities on a public forum, nor will you kick any hornets' nests. be at peace lil doggy

[tanadrin]

I'm really impressed how you (and cyprinodont) managed to get from a place of typical internet snark to actual discussion. I enjoyed reading your discussion and feel like I learned a bit from both of you. It's nice to be reminded that sometimes being charitable and trying to better understand others' viewpoints and better explain your own actually works. Thanks!

This is kind of a digression, but bear with me:

I’ve been listening to a lot of Trash Future and What a Hell of a Way to Die recently; they’re both lefty podcasts with people who have a fairly different set of life experiences from me, and so pretty interesting on that basis (and also quite funny), but they both self-consciously come from a perspective of what they might call extremely online, irony-poisoned left podcasters. It solidified something that’s been percolating in my thoughts for a little while about how I spend time online and, like, the kind of media I consume and the kind of Twitter accounts I follow, which is that even if I agree with someone 100% (or 99% when they start dissing the idea of nuclear power or space colonization) politically and practically, there’s a kind of snarky, sarcastic, of-course-we’re-right-and-our-opponents-are-ridiculous-villains worldview that’s... not good for me emotionally. That I don’t think is productive in terms of either individual truthseeking or convincing others to your cause or even just maintaining a healthy relationship with the world, the sort of insular, often even toxic instinct to withdraw from things that are frustrating and disappointing and depressing about the world instead of trying to extend empathy and patience to those who feel like your mortal enemies.

But I understand where that urge comes from. Boy, do I understand it. I can’t indict people who feel that way; it’s hard for me even to come to a point of “both sides are bad as each other, because politics is a mindkiller,” because even the snarkiest, angriest, least-empathetic leftist seems to me to have a worldview less conducive to mass immiseration of humanity than the most blithe austerity-supporting neoliberal or the most ardent tradcon. It is often very hard to live in a world where you see things like Tory austerity based on discredited economic theories and concentration camps on the border and US military adventurism and climate change all running amok and destroying the lives of thousands of people, if not killing them outright, and we all have to find a way to live in that world, and get through the day to day.

But that cynicism doesn’t work for me. It’s not motivating. It’s not a balm to the soul. It just sort of... sits there, and curdles. Empathy and patience, especially with people with whom I disagree on far more than nuclear power or space travel, with people on whom I disagree about basic shit like my right to exist in the world as I am, is important to me. Not because it is anything like my default response--my default response is something like “fuck you, go die in a hole”--or because I prize some abstract virtue of “civility” because I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at an impressionable age. But because I don’t see any way to get to the kind of world I want to live in without empathy and patience, because all my political beliefs, no matter how left-wing, spring from a desire to be more empathetic and patient, because kindness, even to the worst of the worst, is the root and foundation of my entire worldview to begin with. And that shit’s hard. And I gotta practice it continually. In fact, I think I’m still pretty bad at it, and if you flip back through this blog you’ll see evidence of that sooner or later. But I’m trying to get better at it, because the world needs more of it.