#kindness is absolute

[straynoahide]

feelings are always okay. but feelings are not actions.

celebratory protocols, political actions, rituals, habits, etc, have a deeper significance and impact than just 'feelings', dances in the spur of the moment, etc. ritualized actions teach something. you know in everyone of these "innocent celebrations" there will always appear a darker side of human nature -not coincidentally- with comments that involve, say, dehumanizing children or wishing for awful things on people caught in a cross-fire (like wishing people don't recover from disease or starve, which i just called out in the last week)

if one has to get political and cultural, then careful promoting because one can drown out the other, and politics of radical kindness are extremely different from politics of resentment.

also, bear in mind 'relief' and 'celebration' are very different things. relief means you are free from harm. celebration implies harming others, and not reducing their ability to harm you (or ending it) is what has actually uplifted you: it makes harm a zero-sum game, where the more others are harmed, the safer you become, no matter what other preventative or rehabilitative measures are taken.

it is easy to see why the extreme of this devolves into chauvinism and in the case of judaism, kahanism and theocratic excess (in the case of western culture, christofascism / white nationalism; in the case of islamic culture, radical islamism and jihadism).

ultimately this is about what kind of philosophy of justice we want to promote within civilizations and within a common human framework of international rights to prevent crimes against humanity: do we pursue the path of retribution or the path of restoration? do we let go or build a better humanity? despair or hope?

the premodern world had no ability for human beings to attempt to have a justice system because there was just no state with an independent judicial branch. therefore, the first step was stopping blood feuds with retributive justice and making that into law.

"an eye for an eye" - existent in plenty of ancient near eastern cultures and religions - was the lesser evil at the time. what was before an eye for an eye was, if someone wrongs me, i wrong them a thousandfold. an eye for an eye *and not more* was the first step to limit the unhinged destruction of retributive, righteous anger. it was also the end to classism, because a crime was not answered the same depending on social class or freedom status.

an eye for an eye however is not what most of us think as justice in the XXI century, no matter our country or culture. because 'an eye for an eye' included laws like, "you kill my daughter so i kill your daughter". it could be unfair and make innocent pay for the guilty (this extends to "your nation wronged mine so i will wrong it").

nowadays we can do better in the sense we can pre-establish the RULE OF LAW, one of the principles of liberal democracy won in blood through the violent waves of secularization that disestablished the national churches in europe and replaced divine and religious ideals of justice in traditional culture, from innovations and the same separation of powers that exists in the american constitution.

rule of law means also that justice is not retribution, it is restitution. when something is taken for the victim, something has to be given back. this is the idea behind reparations, for instance. the victim does not have to take it, it has to be given to them by the common framework of society -whether that is national or international-. the victim, actually, is freed from having to take responsibility for righting the wrongs that befall them, ideally, because that would place the burden on many people who do not have the capacity. it is about them, not about the guilty, a SURVIVOR-centric, humanist perspective, that doesn't allow victimhood to define existences.

i personally believe in restorative and not punitive justice. because punitive justice does not restore. restoration implies two very hard things though, one, acknowledging that just choosing to remove people from humanity is not an option because we all share something universal, that "all wars all civil wars": that very humanity, and that it can not be lost or erased no matter the justification. this can have religious significance (HaShem is King of the Universe, Creator of All), but ultimately is a humanist idea too and is the only possible way to frame universal human rights besides imposing religion or exalting one nation over another.

the second thing that is very hard is abandoning punitivism and the hallmark erasure of human dignity, of taking the divine place, in capital punishment. punitivism is not a feeling, it is actions and culture. when we promote celebrating death of another as our own victory, we have to de-program that common idea that we are all human and that all wars are civil wars. punitivism only thrives when we re-signify death and harm to the "other" as good. instead, we have to rise to the framework where we are in a place where we can restore, like a father that arbitrates between two children, and i believe that with our current ability and the future ability of humanity, this is indeed what G*d wants. everything will get better when everything is not made worse than it already is.

no matter how you do it, things like death penalty, torturing criminals, anti-criminal/anti-enemy sadism, etc, will at one point cultivate something that reduces your own humanity and will make you turn a blind eye when your "own" people, cuture or demographic starts exhibiting the signs of dehumanizing others.

There is no duality in rejecting cruelty. With the exception of life-and-death situations (which do happen when fighting terrorism), If we can keep someone alive and work towards their betterment, then that is the divine will and moral choice with no exception. There is nothing good in extrajudicial killings, lynchings, anti-criminal sadism or death penalty. That is the divine echo, our best nature still unachieved: to heal ourselves by healing others, hope for and aim for the restoration of all things, hallow life and health, no matter how painful or how against our instincts it is.

All killing is fratricide and worthy of mourning: something is lost that had value, the central value of creation, human life. No one has ever killed without halving their humanity.

I feel like there are two truths, that we rightly celebrated when Pharaoh’s army were drowned, and that at the same time G-d was heartbroken that their creation was drowning—and neither response is wrong.

Both are entirely valid and normal responses to have to the death of evil men (who nevertheless were still people), and you just kinda gotta live with that complexity. like, you can’t expect people not to grieve the death of any part of G-d’s creation, but you also can’t expect people not to sing when their persecutors are gone.

I think G-d made us to feel both, and they made some of us to feel one more than the other, and that’s okay.

[anarchopuppy]

I, a hearing person who likes subtitles just as a preference, shouldn't have to read a subtitle that's obvious nonsense, go back a couple seconds, and listen again in order to figure out what's going on. An accessibility feature should not be the most half-assed part of a professionally made production. Scripted media has absolutely no excuse for not having subtitles or having subtitles that aren't perfectly verbatim. Professional captioning services should be ashamed of the shoddy work that they put out. Captions should be treated as a part of the production, just like filming, editing, audio balancing, etc - and anything that releases with missing or bad captions should be seen as unfinished

[smoolio]

Vengeance Saga has me acting up

[hinamie]

I'll give them shelter like you've done for me

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[stuckinapril]

noticed a dip in posts about palestine on my dash, so i think it deserves to be said again: palestine is not a trend. caring about genocide is not a trend. there are still reports about humanitarian aid trucks intentionally blocked off from gaza, meaning so many fucking gazans, a big portion of them children, are just bleeding out with no help. it just came out recently that israelis disguised as women and medics infiltrated a west bank hospital, at which point they killed 3 palestinians (whom they claim were militants. right). these people are living day to day without even the most basic utilities. anyone who claims to have “activism fatigue” needs to question why they’re so severely lacking in the most basic forms of compassion. you don’t get to just grow bored of talking about palestine. please never stop calling attention to the genocide happening full force in front of us.

[deecotan]

yapper x listener in every universe

[noodles-and-tea]

This trope would be so funny for them

[egophiliac]

bring your son to work day

[lucabyte]

monologue

[mountainshroom]

Tried using watercolours :) not too proud but im learning slowly

[keferon]

Guys. Guys they’re miners. They’re tiny cogless miners. Guys

I blacked out and filled the whole three canvases with sketches of them being itty bitty goobers. Figured Imma show you some haha

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] I've made posts before about Talia/Dick co-parenting Damian moments (will never happen but let me dream) and this came to me in a vision. Took me ages to finish for some reason 😭 and then even longer to post

[heynhay]

mercy, are you still with me?

[from where the apple falls by europa_report]

[afterartist]

IVE DONE IT!! (not exactly sure what it is in this situation but it sure is done)

Rumble n Frenzy would bully screamer any chance they get

Soundwave on the other hand needs payed vacation because that man has to put up with so much crap

[stuckinapril]

I love Tumblr because nothing matters here truly. There are no influencers. Having followers doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a site where people post their sporadic thoughts and rb pretty pictures. Anyone who thinks any of this matters is woefully missing the point