new thing i learned just now: in like 400 AD there was a monk named simeon stylites who used to live in a one room cell with a window but too many people kept bugging him for religious advice, so he climbed to the top of a pillar and shackled himself to it until he died 37 years later.
this became a cool new trend to the point where there were enough pillar monks of varying viewpoints that they would scream at each other all day
Yeah but you’re a citizen, you exist in a society, in a wider world, and part of that is having a duty of being informed. Avoiding the news makes you vulnerable to disinformation and propaganda. It’s also extremely privileged to be able to treat “the news” as something optional; those are people’s lives, and yeah, maybe we can’t solve it, but we have duty to bear witness and remember.
I’m sorry, but being informed is part of being a grown up.
huh? Listen, being informed is good, I try to be, but there’s a difference between “I am aware of things around me” and “I am exposing myself to terrible things all time because I have to”. Suffering isn’t noble, and if we want to make a kind world, the first place we have to start with is ourselves. Feeling like shit is not activism, it is not your noble duty, and I can guarantee feeling terrible actively hinders any real work you’re trying to do.
To tack onto this- for folks who can hyperfixate or are prone to pretty severe anxiety, it’s also extremely damaging to say “you have to be dialed into the news at all times, no matter how terrible, no matter how powerless you individually are, or you’re going to fall to The Propaganda”
Because for one- no, no you’re not. But for two, one of the biggest, one of the most necessary means of controlling and living with that sort of anxiety or (speaking personally) dealing with post-traumatic stress is managing your exposure to things that can be upsetting, things that can drive that stress way up. If anxiety can render you wholly unable to function and you’re exposing yourself to a machine made to keep you engaged 24/7 with it (and its advertising) by amplifying every Bad Thing it can find (which, sorry, no matter the source, this is how a lot of news works, it’s still a business,) you’re not going to ‘bear witness,’ you’re going to drive yourself into an early and preventable grave, helping nobody, especially yourself.
“Focus on the things you can do in your immediate surroundings” isn’t just advice, it’s a survival mantra for people like me.
I was thinking about this kind of thing the other day, regarding something from an Ethics in Engineering class I took some time ago. It’s the concept of externalities and how people on different parts of the political (economic and social) spectrum handle it. Here’s my anecdote:
Three people stuck in a garage.
One is scared about how bad it would be to turn on the car, another is saying it’d be easy enough to get the smell out once the car is off, and the third is revving the gas to make the other two mad.
Two die mad, one dies happy.
For every person out there worrying about how other people are making the world worse, there’s one that doesn’t know and another thatdoesn’t care. So instead of trying to interact with people or things acting in bad faith and shortening your lifespan, focus on the things that actually help and make you happy. Being scared and shouting at someone through a closed window who enjoys your misery isn’t going to make anything better.
Just do good and be good, that’s it. If you can make a difference, cool. If you can’t, that’s okay.
I’m Christian and respect the order of creation as God intended it but I’m not gonna lie if I could take a massive vat of agar and grow an alive shopping mall made out of red blood and meat and feed it living human bodies to make it expand larger with more shops and amenities, Without hesitation, Without question I would do exactly that
It is 1880s America, you are about to spawn as a Historically Significant White Guy. Choose a class:
TROUBLEMAKING FRONTIER PREACHER
Special Power: Good Christian. Your vague adherence to American protestantism will ensure that law enforcement does not bother you whatsoever.
Victory condition: Fuck enough of your followers wives to start an inbred theofascist micronation.
MANICALLY AMBITIOUS CON ARTIST
Special Power: Basic Literacy. You’re poor, but you know how to read. They’ll never expect it. You may forge literally any document and it will be believed 100% of the time.
Victory Condition: Steal enough money to fuck off to Latin America. A Spanish speaking nation might as well be the moon to your debtors.
EUROPEAN NOBLE FAILSON
Special Power: Colonial Wealth. Your funny accent, foppish dress, and noble title, will make any American think you are totally good to buy it on credit.
Victory Condition: Become the boytoy to the wife of some borderline-gangster politician and save up enough political capital to run for office and get addicted to opium.
DOOMED FRONTIER EXPLORER
Special Power:How The Fuck Are You Alive. Your freakish diet of pork, whiskey, and maple syrup, makes you entirely immune to all physical injury and disease. Somehow.
Victory Condition: You have one mission, and one mission only. You need to piss off some completely friendly natives. You need to piss them off so bad they leave your stupid ass to starve in a food forest they’ve been cultivating for literally thousands of years.
PUNKITT this is as much a reminder to self to do proper art of this when I have the spoons and no upcoming trip to worry about, yadda yadda, but I’ve been brainstorming a Susan Taxpayer fan OC which I’m just calling
“The Night Shift”
I think it’s some manner of Vague Creature of undefined yet certainly inhuman species that you only really see in the corners of the office late at night, the only clear thing on its form being glowing red eyes and a janitorial uniform. Nobody has ever spoken more than a few words to it or seen it clearly, but my god does it make the bathrooms sparkle
….this may be inspired by my own experiences in custodial work, ahaha
NO WAY THIS ONES SO FUN….i may have to incorporate something like that if i get the chance and youre coolw ith it……