# What goes up must come down
[cw: uspol]
yet my feet don't touch the ground~ ...yeah, I'm not even sure how the hell to
feel about Sonic anymore. He should just be an anime character. That would solve
a lot, imo. Preferably in an anime that isn't Sonic X.
Totally not the point, though. Point is that everything out of my control that
can go wrong is currently going wrong. The condensed list:
- Dow Jones Industrial Average crashes 2,000 points!
- Coronavirus is a thing that is probably going to hurt a lot of people
- Trump, as usual, is incompetent as all hell
- Bernie's on pretty thin ice here (ps vote for Bernie)
- The people at Somnolescent are actually transphobic dweebs
- The continued existence of student debt, medical debt, homelessness, personal
fears about my career and college and such, etc. etc. etc.
So yeah. "We can make it, if we all stick together", "together we are stronger",
like thanks Sonic Heroes OST now tell the rest of the world that. "Together we
can overcome all the odds," blah blah you get it. Literally the entire moral of
Sonic Heroes. And tons of other things I grew up on too. So why, for god's sake,
do we abandon the idea of "sharing is caring" when we graduate from preschool?!
Hot take time: I really don't care about the economy. People say billionaires
are worth the money they're worth because the create ewalth and their invest-
ments help the economy. I see it all as just a pointless abstraction on top of
what really matters. The whole Bernie Sanders approach of just *giving people
what they need by pooling our resources* makes sense. A lot more sense than this
current system of "hah hah I have everything you need to live but we won't let
you have it until you prove yourself". In large part because marginalized pop-
ulations like LGBT or women or POC may *never* be allowed to "prove themselves"
Also, another hot take: unregulated capitalism is a very, very bad thing and
anyone who says otherwise is lying directly to your face. We have child labor
laws for a reason. We have emergency exits because otherwise we get crap like
the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. We have public firefighters because the
alternative creates unnecessary risk.
I figure, eventually, I should get off my butt, stop complaining, and actually
do things. The Democratic Socialists of America has a chapter in the city I live
in, so yeah, I might just join them. Hell, so does the IWW. I like the anarcho-
syndicalist idea of liberating the workers by empowering them. Together we're
stronger, etc etc. Maybe I'll be a member of that and participate in direct
action stuff. I do have to make sure to limit myself though, because I as a
person can only do so much in a day. I slammed into that limit last semester
without *any* extra-curricular clubs or anything, so I don't want to over-burden
myself while I'm supposed to be recovering from that. But also it feels idiotic
of me to sit back and complain about the world when I could actually DO THINGS.
And actually joining an org would push me to actually, well, DO THINGS instead
of just supposing about the if and the when. There's also the concern that the
IWW is a shell of it's former self, nowhere near as powerful as it *was*, but I
kinda want to change that? I really agree with their points and goals more than
the DemSocs, although the DemSocs are a larger group. Decisions, decisions...
Personally, my ideal society is one where we just do the things that need to be
done, go home, and enjoy our lives and/or see if we can't make things better.
"Risk" shouldn't be a thing, by-and-large. You should be able to live in what-
ever community you want to in whatever part of the world you want to and so long
as you chip in your fair part you should be set for life. We don't have to live
at the breakneck speed we're living at where everything is do-or-die. We should
be able to mentally afford a relaxing three day train ride across the country.
We shouldn't have to deal with abstract, intangble concepts like dollars or
stocks or deductibles or debt. If something can't be done, it should be because
it *can't be done*, not because of magic numbers that you frankly don't have
that much control over.
Blaaaaah. Politics. I should probably try and pull myself away from this train-
wreck for a little bit for my own sake.
Oh yeah, also, the Somnolescent thing. They're a web community, a lot like Park
City. In fact, I'll shamelessly admit that they were a big inspiration for this.
I like their (public domain!) manifesto. I vibe with it. I like what they all
make. I vibe with their aesthetic. The problem, and yeah I'm just gonna call
them out because they did first, is that they're really not great people. I'm
really happy that mari's grown and improved as a person. That's great. But also,
you post blog posts about how you hate being asked the [t-slur] question because
it defies facts and logic and reason and science (it doesn't, just fyi) and when
you post about how you think all asexual people are faking it (ace person here,
they aren't) and you have the *audacity* to insult and demean people from my
community. Look, I want to like you. I really do. I don't want to get involved
in an internet catfight. But if you're going to insult my friends (and I'm not
just talking about that group blog post, fyi), I'm going to put my foot down.
(I won't comment on any other somnol members as I really don't know much about
them. That said, dotcomboom has some neat stuff, like AutoSite and W2Krepo.)
I think I'm letting things get to me too much lately. I should try and relax
some...
EDIT FROM A FEW HOURS LATER:
I guess this sounds a bit scary out of context. Like, oh no, Viz is falling into
the pit of radicalization. How awful. And yeah, I'm a little concerned about
that. But also, like, what's really my ideology here? "People should get along
and have rights"? I don't think that's harmful. It's not like I'm falling into
the alt-right stuff. I'm okay being challenged with my beliefs... but also I've
slowly just kinda ran out of patience with all the bigotry and the suffering.
I'm watching this YT video right now: https://youtu.be/P55t6eryY3g. It's about
how people fall into the alt-right. Am I being radicalized into the left?
...honestly, yeah. Yeah. Would me a year ago have unironically said "anarcho-
communism seems good"? Probably not. I'm still not 100% *sold* on it, but I'll
at least say that Bernie's stuff seems good, unions seem nice, etc. I want to
help people. I don't want to hurt anyone. This feels like the best path to that.
(Well, more specifically, like anarcho-pacifism? I need to do more research,
probably.) But reading tomes of old philosophy isn't very enjoyable, imo.
I hope I don't go too far with this. I don't want to alientate myself from the
world because of my beliefs... It's probably not good that I don't socialize
much outside the internet, and that this Park City thing is like my primary
friend group. They're not bad people, not by a longshot. And I have coworkers
and I've still been (kinda half-assedly, really) trying that dating app. I'm...
overthinking this again.
gemini://park-city.club:1965/~invis/phlog/017-what-goes-up-must-come-down.txt