givemerainbowfire

[givemerainbowfire]

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[givemerainbowfire]

me and the boys have a couple of chains wrapped around the sword in the stone hooked up to mikes toyota tundra gonna pull that fucker out like a tooth.

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ubi, universal basic income

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reblog if you're corny and insufferable

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i’m going to burst into tears. such a hauntingly stupid and wonderful phrase to immortalize somewhere. LOOK AT PIttbert!

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Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that gaslight gatekeep girlboss meme, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you think modern feminism has been co-opted by corporations. But what you don’t know is that that meme is not from Instagram, it's not from Twitter, it's not from Tiktok, it’s actually from Tumblr. You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in January 2021, Tumblr user missnumber1111 posted, "today's agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss." And then I think it was a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e, wasn’t it, who reblogged it with an image of the phrase edited over a piece of "Live, Laugh, Love" wall art? And then gaslight gatekeep girlboss showed up in the feeds of eight different Twitter repost accounts. Then it filtered down through Instagram and then trickled on down into some tragic “alt side of Tiktok” where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that meme represents millions of notes and countless Tumblr users and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from Tumblr when, in fact, you’re wearing the meme that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of “stuff.”

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the only censorship we need is the block, mute and filter option because giving others the power to dictate what can and cannot exist in fandom will eventually lead to banning all nsfw works or even slightly but nuanced ‘problematic’ topics. ​I block and move on because I don’t want to see certain things but to erase them completely is a dangerous slope to having things you like be banned eventually.

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tumblr users’ obsession with self-reporting (especially as a weird form of penance) needs to be studied

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110% tax on all income over $200k

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booty shorts that say "I'd rather be in Ankh-Morpork, which is really more of an indictment of the here and now than an endorsement of one's personal safety and happiness in Ankh-Morpork" on the ass in very small font

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I'm not sure I understand your disagreement with the concept of morality. For context to my perspective, I've always considered Good being "what's best for humanity as a whole" and Bad being "detrimental to humanity as a whole". I don't believe in objective morality but I think my definition is about as close as one can get. Could you explain your position more, if you have the time? I'm autistic and very justice-focused, so the idea of not believing in morality at all seems pretty incomprehensible to me, but I want to understand! If you don't believe in morality, why do you fight for marginalized parties? Thank you if you respond, and please have a good day regardless!

Morality attempts to make a claim about what is "best for humanity as a whole" and what is "detrimental to humanity as a whole." But how can it know these things? How can we know? What does it even mean for something to be good for humanity or bad? These are not easily answered questions. It nearly always hinges on both conjecture and some value that we are placing our emphasis on -- we decide what is "good" for humanity because we value body autonomy, and so we declare things the expand body autonomy to be "good," or we believe that life innately has value, and so we support things that preserve and extend life.

Most of us care about a variety of values that frequently come into conflict with one another. For example, body autonomy and the preservation of life often come into conflict. Sometimes one person's wellbeing or freedom requires the death of another person. Sometimes a person's free exercise of body autonomy increases their odds they will die young. At which point do we choose one value over the other? Why do we get to make the choice for somebody else? As an anarchist, one of my primary values is the freedom of myself and other people, and I don't personally think we should get to decide that.

Beyond these philosophical questions, I do not believe in morality because it is very evident to me from years of social psychological study that most humans' actual behavior is not predicted by any kind of moral system. For instance, a lot of moral psychology research finds that people's moral evaluations are not internally consistent -- what they believe to be "good" and "bad" has a lot more to do with their emotions and biases than any understanding of how the world ought to be organized. Even if people say they uphold a value like body autonomy to the utmost, they are usually pretty quick to double-cross that value if something about how that value is being exercised disgusts or discomforts them, or benefits people they do not like. (My original research background was political psychology and attitude change, so this is something I have studied a lot).

Some day I will write a longer piece on this with abundant citations, but in the research generally people make a lot of lofty declarations about what they believe in and how they think the world ought to be, but in practice they make decisions based on a) what is socially normalized to do, b) what is easy/facilitated to do, c) what appeals to them emotionally, and d) what makes sense for a person with their economic and political interests.

For example, a person living in the imperial core who is a self-labeled leftist will talk on and on about how corporate technology is evil and their country is responsible for suffering on a global scale, but they won't actually do anything risky to themselves to demolish that system, because they have a pretty fucking comfortable and privileged life and they dont want to give that up. they might believe in some abstract moral system, but they don't behave in alignment with it, nor does almost anyone in the world. and so what use is believing in morality? is it not better to understand people's motivations as being based on their material circumstances?

Ismatu Gwendolyn has written a lot about this on Substack, more cogently and stirringly than me. They say that they do not have to have morality in order to be a leftist, because they recognize that solidarity with oppressed people across the globe is in their best interests as a Black queer person. Right now, I believe that a sufficiently powerful revolutionary movement would require that a lot of people recognize that they stand to gain from upending the status quo, and that we can't realistically expect huge masses of people to take action that goes against what they perceive to be their best interests. We can say morally that they should all we like, but that won't change the actual patterns of how people behave.

In general, I run into this same frustration over and over again in leftist circles, where people believe that others should be willing to take a desired action simply because that action is good, without any consideration for the fact that people make most of their decisions based on factors other than moral goodness, and might not share their appraisal of what is good, anyway. Rather than making a convincing argument, rather than attempting to understand another person's position or context, rather than trying to incentivize taking the desired action or raise others' political consciousness or offer any concession to them, people just grouse about how their position is right, obviously and transparently right, and then wonder why nobody gets on board with it.

Morality is just not a useful way for understanding the world.

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they are here to sniff

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I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.