Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity;
but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
- Mark Twain
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I think I've identified the reason I get so worked up about anarchism in relation to labor rights and safety in particular.
Three years ago I watched my coworker almost die when a piece of machinery we were moving unsafely fell on him. It missed his head by an inch and snapped his leg in half instead. It took months of recovery and multiple surgeries for him to walk again and he will be disabled for the rest of his life. And it didn't happen because of Capitalism or profit motive or because our evil bosses were forcing us to work unsafely. It happened because he'd done similar things a hundred times before and it had always been fine, and because I didn't know enough to clock just how dangerous what we were doing was, and just because of some plain shitty luck. Mentally it fucked me up for months in ways I didn't recognize until well after the fact.
And the thing is, almost every construction worker can tell you about the time they saw a fatal or near-fatal accident. An apprentice younger than me had a heart attack and was out of work for over a year after shocking himself on a live circuit. The woman who runs our apprenticeship program has a husband who had his arm blown off in an arc flash incident. One of my teachers had a coworker die after getting hung up on a live circuit and he wasn't found until the end of the day.
Construction is one of the single most dangerous industries to work in, and I believe this is why rates of drug and alcohol abuse and suicide are sky-high in the industry. I think many construction workers are low-key traumatized by knowing constantly that they could die or be permanently disabled due to a very simple mistake or oversight. It is simply inherently unsafe when you are working with live electricity, power tools, heights, thousands of pounds of machinery, cranes, etc. And so yes, I do believe that safety protocols and the ability to enforce them are absolutely necessary to preventing a massive amount of death. The number of worker deaths in the US has been slashed by 60% since OSHA was instated.
And so to get online and have someone who has never set foot on a jobsite in their life condescendingly explain to me that actually, we don't need OSHA or the ability to enforce safety standards because in a perfect world everyone will just suddenly start working perfectly safely, and I'm just too stupid or brainwashed to realize that The Real Villain Is Capitalism, and if we just get rid of that it will somehow also get rid of the inherent safety issues involved in the entire construction industry - well it turns out it pisses me off a little bit!
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Minho gets angry when he gets scared
Newt and Alby tried to ease him out of that for years, but living every waking moment in the Maze, that instinctual conversion from terror to fury kept him alive. Kept him moving.
In the Safe Haven, though. With no Grievers or closing Doors? Minho's biggest fear becomes Thomas.
...he could lose him so easily...
Thomas can't seem to convince him that he isn't in the Maze anymore.
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Honestly something to keep in mind about all the polls where nobody did anything (sex, drugs, etc.) in high school is that I went to the mall last week and there were signs everywhere saying that people under 18 couldn’t be in the mall without a responsible adult 21 or older. Also, one time in 2012, I got “carded” for looking under 18 (I was 22) and seeing Les Miserables in a movie theater at like ten at night because of a curfew or whatever. And obviously teens can and do break the rules, but (a) the consequences seem so dire now (and did when I was still a kid) and (b) if you’re already struggling to hang out in any kind of physical third space, I get how you might just throw up your hands at the prospect of actually getting high or having sex.
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Time to share another of my favorite Christian poems with you all. It’s a martyrdom poem by Varlam Shalamov, a victim of the Soviet gulags and also the writer of Kolyma Tales. A few favorite stanza are written out here; the entire poem is typed out below. It’s a little on the long end, but entirely worth it.
“Avvakum in Pustozyorsk” by Varlam Shalamov
The walls of my church
are the ribs of my heart;
it seems life and I
are soon bound to part
.
My cross now rises,
traced with two fingers.
In Pustozyorsk it blazes;
its blaze will linger.
.
I’m glorified everywhere,
vilified, branded;
I have already become
the stuff of legend.
.
I was, people say,
full of anger and spite;
I suffered, I died
for the ancient rite.
.
But this popular verdict
is ugly nonsense;
I hear and reject
the implied censure.
.
The rite is nothing—
neither wrong nor right;
a rite is a trifle
in God’s sight.
.
But they attacked our faith
in the ways of the past,
in all we’d learned as children
and taken to heart.
.
In their holy garments,
in their grand hats,
with a cold crucifix
in their cold hands,
.
in thrall to a terror
clutching their souls,
they drag us to jails
and herd us to scaffolds.
.
We don’t mind about the doctrine
books and their age;
we don’t debate virtues
of fetters and chains.
.
Our dispute is of freedom,
and the right to breathe—
about the Lord’s will
to bind as he please.
.
The healers of souls
chastised our bodies;
while they schemed and plotted,
we ran to the forests.
.
Despite their decrees,
we hurled our words
out of the lion’s mouth
and into the world.
.
We called for just vengeance
against their sins;
along with the Lord,
we sang poems and hymns.
.
The words of the Lord
were claps of thunder.
The Church endures;
it will never go under.
.
And I, unyielding,
reading the Psalter,
was brought to the gates
of the Andronikov Monastery.
.
I was young;
I endured every pain:
hunger, beatings,
interrogations.
.
A winged angel
shut the eyes of the guard,
brought me cabbage soup,
and a hunk of bread.
.
I crossed the threshold—
and I walked free.
Embracing my Exile,
I walked to the east.
.
I held services
by the Amur River,
where I barely survived
the winds and blizzards.
.
They branded my cheeks
with brands of frost;
by a mountain stream
they tore out my nostrils.
.
But the path to the Lord
goes from jail to jail;
the path to the Lord
never changes.
.
And all too few,
since Jesus’s days,
have proved able to bear
God’s all-seeing gaze.
.
Nastasia, Nastasia,
do not despair;
true joy often wears
a garment of tears.
.
Whatever temptations
may beat in your heart,
whatever torments
may rip you apart,
.
walk on in peace,
through a thousand troubles
and fear not the serpent
that bites at your ankles—
.
though not from Eden
has this snake crawled;
it is an envoy of evil
from Satan’s hand.
.
Here, birdsong
is unknown;
here one learns the patience
and the wisdom of stone.
.
I have seen no color
except lingonberry
in fourteen years
spent as a prisoner.
.
But this is not madness,
nor a waking nightmare;
it is my soul’s fortress,
its will and freedom.
.
And now they are leading me
far away in fetters;
my yoke is easy
and my burden grows lighter.
.
My track is swept clean
and dusted with silver;
I’m climbing to heaven
on wings of fire.
.
Through cold and hunger,
through grief and fear
towards God, like a dove,
I will rise from the pyre.
.
O far-away Russia—
I give you my vow
to return to the sky
forgiving my foe.
.
May I be reviled,
and burned at the stake;
may my ashes be cast
on the mountain wind.
.
There is no fate sweeter,
no better end,
than to knock, as ash,
at the door of the human heart.
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