#these tags have meandered beyond the point but ultimately i'm just trying to say that it's never ever over until you give up

[andromeda3116]

had a lengthy conversation with a coworker yesterday, and she's sort of the... not-insane kind of conservative. the sort that's lived like this her whole life and seen only the bad sides, heard and taken to heart only the bad-faith interpretations of everything. and in that environment, yes, i can see the appeal of libertarianism, of withdrawing, of "burn it all down" and she is intelligent and thoughtful enough that i feel it's worth having these conversations with her, that i might actually be able to have an impact.

and i think i made headway! i told her about people tens of thousands of years ago making toys for their kids that look like the ones we make today, about how cave paintings come alive in firelight, about a healed femur from thousands and thousands of years ago proving that humans have always cared and helped one another, and yes, of course some people are awful, but they do not define us. and i think i made her think about it when she said that she believes we should allocate money to communities to better help one another and i was like "how is that not a government?" and she paused and then said "it's just that it's gotten too big, it's the bureaucracy that's killing us" and like. i can see that. i think there are ways to solve that problem, but it's not a fundamentally flawed belief. (again, sane. intelligent, educated, willing to consider alternate points of view.)

and i think that a lot of this... madness of the modern world is rooted in fear and despair and isolation and the sense that we've become completely disconnected from ourselves and our history, and we need to remember that this is not true. or -- it's only true if we choose to make it true, if we let it be true.

this does not have to be our legacy. this rage, this despair, this does not have to destroy us.