#struggles of being kind in a society that rewards cruelness etc etc

[saturnniidae]

Heart for Brains by Roar is soooo Hiccup coded

[againstshame]

I realized that I have some internilized ableism issues. 

I was giving my friend updates about what I got done each day.

I found that difficult not just because I was

Ashamed that I didn't accomplish much,

or even

Ashamed that such little things are considered accomplishments for me,

but because the act of reporting back itself requires acknowledgment that I need extra support. 

For me, that acknowledgment comes with the thoughts/feelings of "Normal people don't need help like this, I'm different, weaker, sick, broken, wrong."

Anything that "Normal people dont have to do" comes with that feeling, so actually doing the thing requires accepting it as fact that I am a bad person. (Bad like low quality not like evil) (Although sometimes the idea follows that if I'm not a cost effective person (value of resourses consumed vs value of output) then the choice to keep consuming resourses is morally unsound)

That's a super cruel way of thinking. How do I convince myself its not true?

There are three ways I deal with this type of thinking, personally.

1. The standards for what types of help are normal to need, how much "value" we ought to produce, etc. are really just ideas that somebody made up. They are not accurate descriptions of reality- it may seem like everybody except you is perfectly Normally Productive and never needs Extra Help, but this is mostly because we don't know that many details about our acquaintances' private lives. Human beings are hugely diversely weird, and the world is full of people who are struggling but getting by through various kinds of "extra support" that they may or may not even think of as extra or unusual.

2. I'm going to quote from The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin here.

“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled into the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward.”

If we actually tried to run society strictly by "cost effectiveness" and expecting people to earn exactly as much as they "cost" society... a lot of people would die and we would stop having a society. It doesn't work.

3. Even if you were going to accept the idea that you're a broken, less-than, substandard human being... Has hating your weakness ever made you any stronger? Because it hasn't for me. It's done the opposite. It's made me less capable of doing things for myself, it's made me less capable of finding ways to cope with problems, it's made me less capable of even thanking people when they help me. The absolute most effective thing I ever did to make myself less of a """burden""" on my friends and family was to stop trying to hide every "broken" thing about myself out of shame.

[princesssarisa]

Assorted thoughts on “Little Women”

 In no particular order.

*I’m glad I waited this long to read the original, unabridged novel. If I had read it as a teen or a preteen, I just might have followed countless girl readers’ example of having a crush on Laurie and being angry that Jo doesn’t marry him. Reading it now, I’m able to see him as the well-rounded, likable yet flawed character he is, not just as a girl’s prize, and realize that while he and Jo have a beautiful friendship, they wouldn’t have worked as a couple. The canon pairings of Jo/Friedrich and Amy/Laurie are the right ones.

*About the controversial issue of the characters’ ambitions... None of the young leads achieve their childhood dreams in the end; Alcott’s intended message was clearly  “We don’t always achieve our dreams, but life can still be happy in ways we never expected.” That’s all well and good. But apart from Meg’s gender-neutral dream of being rich, the characters’ “castles in the air” are all in defiance of their expected gender roles: Jo wants to be a famous author and Amy a famous artist, two fields normally reserved for men, while Laurie wants to be a composer instead of going into his grandfather’s business. And all three of their endings are distinctly more gender-conforming: Jo becomes a schoolmistress, Amy becomes a society lady, both become wives and mothers, and Laurie goes into business “like a man.” I think it’s fair for modern readers to be disappointed by that conformity, even while appreciating the realistic message about childhood dreams. Those feelings aren’t mutually exclusive. For modern audiences, I think the standard adaptational change of Jo publishing her own version of Little Women at the end (instead of 20 years later in the last sequel) is a good change.

*About Jo needing to control her temper... I understand why this annoys some feminists. So often women are expected to suppress all anger and never stand up for themselves. Maybe it is problematic that role model Marmee explicitly never shows her anger, but only purses her lips and leaves the room. But personally, I think it’s presented in a healthy, gender-neutral way. Jo’s anger isn’t a problem because it’s “unseemly” or “unfeminine,��� but because it can lead her to do cruel things to others. The mistake that teaches her the lesson in “Jo Meets Appolyon,” letting Amy skate on the thin ice, isn’t a loud, aggressive act of rage, but a cold, silent act (or rather inaction) of spite. Besides “control your temper” doesn’t mean “never stand up for yourself.” The book has several examples of women calmly yet firmly calling out other people’s bad behavior (most often Laurie’s ^–^) and it’s portrayed as entirely right. And though it’s tempting to be annoyed by Mr. March putting his finger to his lips when he sees his wife starting to get angry, it’s also a nice subversion of gender stereotypes to see a marriage where the husband is gentler by nature than his wife and is a calming influence on her. Stereotypical couples are the other way around.

*As a person on the autism spectrum, I relate strongly to Beth. I fully embrace the headcanon that Beth herself is autistic and that Lizzie Alcott might have been diagnosed as such if she had lived today. So it hurts a little to see other readers call Beth “boring,” “annoying,” a “doormat” and “the worst of the sisters.” Although she is idealized because she was Alcott’s tribute to her dead little sister, she’s not the cardboard cutout of bland feminine virtue she’s so often been stereotyped as being. It’s clear from the start that Beth isn’t “normal,” either by our standards or by past ones. Her crippling shyness isn’t just “sweet Victorian modesty,” but portrayed as a real flaw that she struggles to overcome. She’s been homeschooled because as a child her social anxiety made regular school unbearable for her. She still plays with dolls, believes in Santa Claus and has imaginary friends at age 13. She has no desire to get married, or to have any kind of career, or ever to leave her parents’ house. And because of all this, she clearly has a low opinion of herself: hence she tells Jo that she was never meant to live long, because she would never have been anything but “stupid little Beth, trotting about at home.” But the narrative belies her words. In both of her illnesses, so many people rally around her and reveal how much they love her and how valuable her quiet kindness has been in their lives. Ultimately she dies in peace because she realizes her life hasn’t been worthless after all. With my own social struggles, my tendency to be “younger than my years,” and my own desire to have a quiet life close to my family instead of going out into the big, overwhelming world and doing big, overwhelming things, I find her storyline beautiful, because it gives me hope that my life is just as valuable as anyone else’s.

*I also relate to Jo, as so many readers do. The result is that I’m of two minds of the chapters “Calls” and “Consequences.” On the one hand, there’s no doubt that Jo is at fault in those chapters and does more-or-less deserves to lose the trip to Europe. She’s genuinely, purposefully rude to her aunts and to the other people they visit and she humiliates Amy and harms her social life – at the subsequent fair, the Chesters ban Amy from the art table because Jo insulted them. Plus the only reason why she has to join Amy in the calls in the first place is because she promised she would, so it’s hypocritical of her to whine about it. But on the other hand, I do empathize with Jo. With my own my social difficulties, I relate to her hating formal occasions where she has to dress up, mind her manners, make small talk about topics that don’t interest her with people she dislikes, and always be “agreeable” and “docile.” For Jo and for so many of us, it’s so hard to be that way, yet it’s the mold that all women were expected to stuff themselves into in the 19th century and to an extent still are today. Amy is lucky that she enjoys playing that social game and that it comes naturally to her. So it’s easy to sympathize with Jo’s envy when Amy is chosen to go to Europe, to feel as if Amy is rewarded for her social conformity while Jo is punished for failing to conform, and to feel as if the message is that all girls should conform like Amy. Fortunately, the book as a whole doesn’t send that message: even Amy achieves her ultimate happiness by letting herself be a bit more like Jo and call Laurie out on his laziness and apathy, when back in “Calls” she had argued that a lady should never show disapproval to a man.

*I don’t understand why some commentators think the chapter “On the Shelf” is so horribly sexist. Well, actually, I do. It’s tempting to find fault with John for being “jealous” that Meg is focusing more on their babies than on him and for “neglecting” Meg and spending carefree evenings out while she slaves away with the twins. And for Meg to be told by her mother that this is her own fault for “neglecting her duty to her husband” understandably rankles some feminists. But I honestly don’t think there’s any real problem. Meg genuinely neglects John and overtaxes herself by devoting every waking minute to the twins and letting neither John nor anyone else help her, because she’s afraid that otherwise she’ll be a bad mother. John isn’t jealous of the babies, he understandably feels ignored and useless. Nor (despite what some critics think) does he cheat on Meg, or want to. He just goes to a friend’s house rather than sit alone at home; Meg’s fear that his eye is roving to Mrs. Scott is just a product of her own stress. The resolution is arguably just the opposite of sexist: Meg finally lets John take an equal share of child-rearing duties, lets Hannah babysit often so they can both have time for themselves too, and steps out of her domestic sphere to share talks with John about politics, literature, etc. By the end of the chapter, their marriage is more egalitarian than ever.

*I’d like to read a fanfic where Jo meets Rodolfo from La Bohéme. I wouldn’t ship them, since they’re even more “too much alike” than Jo and Laurie are, but I’d like to see them meet. They’re both lively, passionate, temperamental ENFP writers, whose minds are full of “castles in the air” (they both use that exact phrase), yet whose lives both turn out differently than they had hoped, although Jo’s outcome is much happier. Both also adore a sweet, gentle, sickly young girl (Jo’s sister Beth/Rodolfo’s love interest Mimí) whose death they both regard as the end of their own youth. Furthermore, both of their authors modeled them after themselves. Jo is more down-to-earth than Rodolfo, though, and I’m not sure if they’d be friends or hate each other – Jo would definitely be indignant to learn how Rodolfo emotionally abused and broke up with Mimí because he couldn’t bear to watch her die, when she herself nursed Beth day and night through both of her illnesses and never left her side. But it would be an interesting meeting.

@fairychamber, @thatvermilionflycatcher

[canyousavethefuture]

Combating burnout

Not only it something I’m currently going through, it’s also incredibly common among activists and medical professionals and students in all sorts of fields and grades. To keep fighting for a sustainable future, we need to first take care of ourselves. So combating burnout is very important to sustainability.

Burnout is when you lack the energy required to complete required demands or basic tasks due to feeling exhausted mentally and physically.

What I’ve personally experienced is student burnout, so that’s the focus of this post(even though i failed to prevent my burnout, maybe this can help someone)

Don’t reply on motivation: Motivation is fleeting and it’s cruel and unrealistic to expect yourself to always be motivated to do your work. Self discipline is better to preventing burnout than pure motivation.

Set realistic goals for yourself: Be realistic with what your body can truly handle, not just what is expected of you. You don’t exist to fulfill expectations. some people might be compulsive studiers but excessive studying has actually been shown to lead to fatigue, lower productivity and then eventually, Burnout. This can get tough when there is a quickly approaching deadline, but sometimes you have to accept you’re not going to get everything in on time. You have to find the most important concepts you need to study or the assignments worth the most to your grade.

Break tasks down into small steps: It sounds lazy but I genuinely do this when I make cheesy eggs. Get frying pan. Get oil. Pour oil on pan. Turn on burner. Get eggs. Get small bowl to mix eggs. Crack eggs into bowl. Stir. Pour mixed eggs on pan. Etc. But I have found, that by breaking a big task into small bits, the whole thing seems a lot less daunting. (Even though I’m struggling right now with the energy for even those small tasks)

Rewards yourself for completing tasks: No this isn’t a treat yourself kind of thing, or retail therapy. It can be something like watching a movie you’ve been putting off, starting a tv show that sound neat, or even a special treat like chocolate or ice cream. As long as the reward gives you something to look forward to, it’s working.

Making a routine: It feels weird to write this because i failed this step horribly when the summer semester started and still struggle with it. But having a certain time when you plan to get things done can help you to think of that time as “work-time”. Though remember to schedule breaks and please please eat and drink water when you should. Do not start going “no eating until I finish this” because that can cause unhealthy habits really quickly(trust me). Taking breaks is necessary to you mental and physical well being. Taking regular breaks is super important to avoiding burnout. A break every 20 or 30 minutes is common. Take the time to drink some water, do some stretches, and maybe a snack or if it’s meal time, that.

Self-care: This is the big one. You need to take care of yourself. Despite what capitalism and our work/school culture teaches us, we are not machines. We need good sleep, good food and to keep in touch with friends. Humans are social creatures and it’s very common for us to need social interaction to stay stable. Though I should note, a lot of these things do depend on certain privileges, like access to good food and flexible work hours, internet access for social interactions. But if anything that just points out more ways our society treats us like productivity machines and not flesh and blood. And it feeds into the dehumanization of the poor. If you don’t have access to humane work hours, good food and positive social interaction, it’s treated like a moral failing, which it absolutely isn’t. Even it’s something simple, like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket, listening to music you like, spend time outdoors if it’s safe, please find something that comforts you and be gentle with yourself.

One thing to be aware of, it’s not a moral failure to get burnout. With the kind of hyper productive culture we have, it’s increasingly more common. The 40 hour work week was set into practice before we had computers to do different jobs. And yet our expectations per hour have increased and while we are working even harder, we aren’t living much better or getting paid much better. The whole point of having a society should be to get our basic needs met and to work less, so we can enjoy the time we have with each other and protect those that need it as well as our only planet.

This went off on a little tangent, but even so, burnout is not something to feel guilty over, it happens. It’s awful and until we install lasting change within society (coughs* basic income and free healthcare *cough*) we can only cope with fighting against it and then take care of ourselves if we do hit burnout.

If this helps anyone or at least makes you think, then i’m glad to have written it.