i can't go to hell - i'm all out of vacation days. i watch space rocks and yell at computers for my day job. probably too old for any of this

 

i think i might be burned out on internet social. it's hard to keep doing it. it's hard to even maintain the amount of attention i'm already giving it

 

i am the cause of most of my own problems

 

furthermore, capitalism must be destroyed

 

birdsona: ?????

 

🌎 Ontario, Canada


webbed site
egrets.ca/

SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

i do not properly know how to express that i don't actually feel hope for the world or think that we can actually do better without just coming off as the kind of doomer shit that almost enjoys wallowing in misery

not that i don't think individuals can do better, but just like, not collectively, and not at the scale that's needed, and not against the sheer inertia of a world hell-bent on devouring itself


SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

The premise is, no matter how unlikely things are to get better, acting as if it's a foregone conclusion will guarantee nothing gets better. The optimism is prefigurative.

@exameter left this comment in reply and i think this gets at why, as bleak as my outlook on this whole era is, i don't really fall in with the doomer or nihilist mindset, and why i specifically called that out by name to try to distance the tone from it - "it's all fucked so why try" is uninteresting and useless

im not sure strategic optimism is exactly how i'd describe how i feel, but there's at least a sort of common baseline there of like, at least trying even if you're pretty sure shit's bad


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in reply to @SomeEgrets's post:

the world isn't hell-bent on it. a tiny fraction of people are hell-bent on it, and they're the ones who get to make decisions in our world. and we know it's not fair, or just, or right. and more and more of us are sick of it every day.

we must act on large scales, starting small and networking to make things work in larger and larger groups. we must act against the forces that would otherwise destroy us. medicine, food, clothing, technology, all of this can be made locally and shipped to places that have lack, instead of being overly centralized like it is today. all of this is possible, but requires organization, some of which is already happening right now.

look at the major union pushes we're seeing nowadays. Starbucks got a CEO to re-visit who stated as his mission to prevent unionization from spreading when there were only 6 unionized SBs. there are now more than 200, nearing 300. he quit again. this didn't happen through only small-scale movements; people are capable of so much more than we tend to give them credit for.

we can do this, and we must. we must because the alternative involves far too much loss to humanity, and the harsher and more immediate that reality is to us, the more impatient people get for something better. the immediate future will not be all rosy, but what comes out the other end of this century can be made way better than where we started.

I've heard the phrase "strategic optimism" used before.

The premise is, no matter how unlikely things are to get better, acting as if it's a foregone conclusion will guarantee nothing gets better. The optimism is prefigurative.

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