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So I have this theory that life tries to put things in order at one end of the pendulum swing, and at the other it fucking just goes wrecking ball. And while these energies are always at play in all systems, they’re also evident over longer timeframes. Zeitgeist shit. Our culture (popular/socioeconomic/business) has been in a putting together swing for twenty thirty or so years and I think we’re into the backlash. Fuck your spreadsheet, it’s time to remember what being an animal swinging an axe feels like And go from there
Oct 21, 2024
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We love looking backwards to try to get in touch with ourselves, our history, traditional ways of doing things. I think this is a noble pursuit but the pace of cycling through eras in the trend cycle for example has grown increasingly rapid to the point that it feels like we’re endlessly regurgitating everything all at once, without context.
Rediscovering the past can look like going back to pre-industrial ways of living which is a beautiful thing to strive toward. In a lot of ways, we’ve also abandoned a lot of traditional ways of doing things in favor of methods that are easier, faster, and simpler, not necessarily better.
On the other hand, one of the three essential elements to fascism identified by Jason Stanley is invoking a mythic past to manufacture nostalgia for a more traditional, patriarchal, and racially pure past, which is I think what we’re seeing with a lot of people who romanticize 1950s Americana as some kind of utopian traditional society.
Carl Sagan said:
“In general, human societies are not innovative. They are hierarchical and ritualistic. Suggestions for change are greeted with suspicion: they imply an unpleasant future variation in ritual and hierarchy: an exchange of one set of rituals for another, or perhaps for a less structured society with fewer rituals. And yet there are times when societies must change.”
“As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.”
So I think we need forward-thinking transformational change, though it may not be as comfortable as nostalgia…
Jan 15, 2025
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This question has been in the back of my mind for the past few years because when we talk about “getting free“ we have to acknowledge that the bounds of the society we’ve created aren’t free at all. Getting free means breaking from oppressive power structures, having the freedom to collaborate with others without pretense of capital, the freedom to imagine new systems of governance for ourselves with the ability to change with consensus and the ability for us as a peoples to live in the commons (that is this world) as good stewards to ourselves and nature~
I won’t get into it too much but I highly recommend folks read David Graeber and David Wengrow‘s ’How to Change the Course of Human History’ or any of the video essays by @Andrewism🌿 to get a better idea of what I’m talking about ✌🏾
Apr 19, 2024
We (Americans) do not see it because there's been nothing else to see, but specificity of American misogyny is both blatant and fascinating when examined in such a well mapped way. This is a forgotten feminist classic of the 90s.
If you want to see how the same patterns and cycles of backlash have been and are still playing out, read this book. If you read one single chapter of this book every month, each month you’d have so many more things to think about and research. Densely relevant.
Excerpt in comments.
Jul 5, 2024
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it's like a24 you can read
Feb 1, 2024
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Manifest your light. Fuck the money vision shit. Let it come yeah, I’m not saying be an anarchist or whatev, I still work a job and have a career and mouths to feed blah blah, but see past the grip money has on our dreams
Jan 17, 2025
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These girls in front of me in line at Tartine have been talking about their dogs’ anal glands for ten minutes I wanna die
Oct 26, 2024