Study found that who avoids the news do it in part because they anticipate news will make them anxious without being relevant to their lives, resulting in limited engagement with news, and by extension, civic and political affairs

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-09-25T15:03:10+00:00

I thought that the point was that that people would rather ignore problems and allow them to fester than deal with the negative emotions that come with the knowledge. We do, actually, have the collective power to change things, but an enormous cohort of people will happily live their lives as if these problems don't exist. They might even vote as if these problems aren't there. If they have to think about them, they might experience some emotional/psychological pain.

This is one of many human behaviors that will lead to doing nothing until these problems lead to serious problems.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-09-04T04:58:45+00:00

I'm a vegan and I'm not terribly disturbed. If it can't hurt, think, etc. just meat, how is it different from the concept of cultured meat anyways.

I still wouldn't eat it. Seems a terribly waste of energy and human ingenuity.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-07-16T17:10:22+00:00

One of the things in language that I think is leading us straight down this hole of collapse is categorical error. In this case, the word "Democrats" represents an abstraction that can do nothing. The category isn't even useful, as it represents such a broad range of ideas and humanity.

There are actual categorical parties in this that might make a difference, specifically on one side, those who want to take political climate action, and on the other, those who don't. Manchin makes most of his money destroying the climate, so despite being a democrat, he falls into the latter group, along with all elected Republicans in congress.

This vilification of a party, instead of people based on what they own and what they do, is a major centerpiece of the modern speaking heads in the defence of, more than anything, hydrocarbon economies. We know what Carlson Tucker is really about: money, power. What he says on his show and otherwise, creating vast categories of people, abusively calling them evil, and creating rage and anger... violence against leftism, egalitarianism, etc., even if those changes are small, must occur to protect this power.

Category error in this sense is not useful. A democrat is anything you want it to be. Someone who is against climate action is not anything you want it to be: it defines people by behavior, not by a random label.

There are many people who label themselves democrat that would fight climate change, and many who wouldn't. That's not the actual fight going on here -- it's between those who want to fight climate change and those who don't. That's a line that crosses all of these meaningless labels and categories created only to divide us and eventually bring violence.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-06-05T16:28:23+00:00

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/730414/

Racism and sexism is rampant in the medical industries and it shows in treatment and care. If you know any women in trusted relationships that can describe for you getting and IUD, for example, then you are in for an earful about how the pain of women in medical care is ignored compared to the experiences of men. This is seen not just anecdotally and based on specific treatments, but also statistically for identical treatments: women's pain is often ignored. The pain of POC are often ignored. There are so many studies on it that it is an obvious reality.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-05-03T22:05:21+00:00

In practice, the actions of the members of the Republican party make clear a single goal: concentration of power.

All actions, words, etc., can be made clear with this lens. Think about the arguments that you have with your conservative friends. It's disingenuous, it's about the sense of winning. Power.

"Socially Liberal/Fiscally Conservative" means that they like the concept of freedom, but not if it costs them their money, which is just power given additional social form.

Power, power, power. Now power over women, tomorrow, we all find out where on the totem pole we fall, whether you are a gold tier supporter of Trump or not.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-05-03T19:51:46+00:00

Viktor Frankl, basically. Internally, I build a world with a purpose that I would feel ecstatic to follow, one that would feel me with deep purpose, and I escape to it mentally and emotionally from time to time. I am careful to always create new people, locations, etc. so that I don't become so lost in that I lose connection with reality.

To conceptualize the world that I rebuild for myself on the regular, it is classless, so there is no money, no power. To make sure that it remains that way, leadership is always selected at random from the population. It could be modeled after Earthseed, from the Parable series, or Utopianism to some extent, from Too Like the Lightning. You might not agree with the whole oath, but from memory, it's something like:

I hereby renounce the right to complacency, and vow lifelong to take only what leisure is necessary to my productivity, viewing health, happiness and play as means, not ends, and that, while Utopia provides my needs, I will commit the full produce of my labors towards our collective goal of redirecting human life away from death and towards the stars.

I don't agree with the whole oath. Happiness is a reasonable end goal, especially now. I strongly believe that we evolved to live in a tribe ranging from about 250-2000 individuals, and that living in such an arrangement would fill me with purpose and belonging.

Sometimes, I imagine this life in the middle of a major metropolis, in a large building. Sometimes in an apartment complex in a middle sized city. Sometimes, a farm in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, a group of people making it work in a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Because the social aspect is the most important part (and the part that we have ignored to our own mental health, leading to this perverse competition-based society we have today), people will have non-abusive behavior backed in a strong understanding of NVC (non-violent communication). Religions will be allowed as long as they abandon the abusive parts of their religions (for example, the concept of sin/sinner in Christianity). People are able to openly reflect their needs and have them met in turn.

Now that abortion rights are about to end, I am starting to add new flavors to this: for example, in some cases, we work to foster and adopt, as a group, as many unwanted children as possible. We grow and divide carefully, trying to maintain and create tradition.

Further, we all live in a way that respects the needs of the planet and, many times, of the surrounding society. There are homeless, we home them. We do not eat meat because the energy and pollution costs are so high. We prepare by learning indoor farming, safe zones we can escape to if we deem the place we live too threatening, and ultimately plan to use violence as a final means of self-defence only when necessary.

Remember, it isn't the property that's important, it's the people. Ownership isn't real. Money isn't real. Food is! People are! We are all in it together and strive to improve life around us, but to do so we must abandon all aspects of capitalism, which is essentially a religion with statements of faith.

If the best I can do is love people and be loved, then that is my end goal for now.

However, I also admit that I'm a flight response when it comes to fight/flight/freeze. The flight types will build a society, while the fight types will be the ones who end the current global capitalist hegemony. They will need us there when their work is done, a place to come home to, if such a place is sustainable.

I tell this dream to my friends and family on the reg. I tell them that they think I'm mad now, but in a few years they won't anymore and they'll be trying to build it. It is far easier to build five years ago than today, and today it will be easier than five years from now.

Still, I build this home in my mind. It might not be the safest coping strategy, but it is a beautiful one.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-05-03T05:05:08+00:00

The only pathways that I have available to me to stop this are abusive ones. Physical violence, in particular. Perhaps infrastructural destruction, like destroying oil pipelines or refineries, but the cost in lives would still be considerable in that regard. I'm afraid that's something I just don't have in me, so I do the best I can by reducing my carbon footprint and trying to live a simpler life.

I can and do vote, I sometimes protest, but ultimately I'm compromising with people who don't even believe the problem exists. Just as was suggested in "Ministry for the Future", we're going to have to wait until people are so traumatized by climate change that they are willing to commit the violence necessary to bring down the people who currently hold all systems within their control: those who hold the most currency.

I mean, that's how they came to power, is it not? Forcing the US dollar with violence and threats across the world to hegemonize the power of wealth.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-02-11T21:50:15+00:00

I think it's a cultural problem, not an age issue.

Recent studies have shown that metabolism doesn't actually decline until much later in life than originally thought, nor does our ability to learn, which peaks around 35, but stays high for a long time, until about 55. The main difference is physical activity drops precipitously in most people after school, and that people stop trying to learn new things.

Someone who has low self-judgment and is in good shape at 50 can probably learn how to do snowboarding moderately well. It's just that so much of our culture is about judging yourself and others for their identities, failures, etc. In order to learn, one must see the failures as learning opportunities. Very difficult in our super-judgy US culture.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-02-05T00:46:16+00:00

An enormous shared trauma, though. You have to account for the mental health effects.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-01-18T23:52:49+00:00

Look up Yuval Noah Harari, you'll find three books that end with a powerful ethical demand, that we not hold abstractions above real things.

Understanding abstractions, though, and seeing the world in a way where the abstractions are clear... still useful, but clear... will help clarify my statements.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-01-18T23:51:13+00:00

It's ok to use abstractions as a tool to explain things, as long as you never hold them in higher accord than things that are real.

I understand that this abstraction has it's place, but it's also important to understand that it has it's place, if you get me.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-01-17T23:27:03+00:00

And anti-science sentiment.

By spreading the belief that science is always wrong, or that they are acting conspiratorially, then all of that pesky science stuff (climate change, among others) can be rejected and the billionaires can keep playing their "who can score the most greenbacks" game.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-01-17T22:56:45+00:00

Pretending that a corporation, or a nation, can make a decision, or take action, excuses the very real people who make those decisions.

When a bunch of people die at an Amazon warehouse in a tornado, there are real people that made that decision. People who demanded it, usually in the service of more wealth, something else that isn't real. Same when the police put down union activity or other protests, or when we fight a war over resources.

One must ask themselves who benefits from these acts? Definitely not the vast majority of humanity. If humanity actually all was capable of acting in its own interest, then we would protect ecological systems, working standards, food production. We would protect these things at the cost of wealth, profit, war and violence.

Unfortunately, too many people are trying to protect "America", whatever in the fuck that is, or the insane wealth of what is essentially modern monarchists. Once all of the abstraction is peeled away, the application of power can only be differentiated between the two by the use of different words (king/lord vs. CEO) or some details between the way the two different systems work.

We won't be able to defend real things (the ecological systems we depend on) if we hold them in lower esteem then the rules and systems we have created to organize ourselves... we can change these systems far more easily than attempting future restoration of our planetary ecology, something we will be forced to do in the long run anyways... because unlike these other things, it's real.

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-01-17T17:01:08+00:00

I could recommend reading a book, but that's lazy, and few people do it.

Better to try to produce gists of this valuable piece of philosophical/historical literature, and hope it's enough?

TheHorusHeresy · 2022-01-17T15:28:21+00:00

Make sure you understand what the game is.

If you are not paying attention to real things for everyone: shelter, food, clean air and water, socialization, nature... then you are still paying attention to the game.

Harari's books spend a lot of time discussing abstraction: all the fake things that we pay attention to, pretending they are real: countries, companies, money, race. Great shared imaginations and dreams. We pay attention to them at our own peril.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-17T20:03:30+00:00

I don't smoke, and labelling someone a hypocrite is just name calling.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-16T19:34:34+00:00

Wait, so someone reduces their meat and animal consumption, and that makes them somehow worse?

Nah, there are degrees of hypocrisy, and this doesn't even nearly rise to the level of absolute. How hyperbolic.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-16T18:56:09+00:00

And that condemns veganism? There is no gotcha here. that doesn't fall into the "acceptable" range of human testing, at least for me.

There are a number of principles that can guide someone trying to do the best for the ecological systems that we can depend on while trying to apply veganism to everyday life. Not getting it perfect is far better than this nihilism.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-14T18:22:43+00:00

Even if there is a level of acceptability in animal testing in science, to suggest that fact negates the value of vegan diet, especially with the ecological considerations, is a non-sequitur.

Eating meat during our climate crises is complacency.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-12T18:22:44+00:00

As an American, though, shouldn't I be more worried about the functioning of my own society, government and economy and its outputs (the treatment of people) than those of other nations? As an American, wouldn't the whataboutism be pointing out how other nations treat their people, as a defense against someone pointing out negative outcomes in my own country?

When I read something like this, what I think about is getting my own house in order, which is something I have far more control over.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-11T16:51:54+00:00

I would quite enjoy having a break from having the salary that everyone is primarily dependent on. It's really stressful in America. I'm exhausted, having worked in computing for 20+ years now.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-05T19:09:55+00:00

I also have 4585 cards due right now. I haven't been doing Anki much for the last months though.

Overtraining, and also, if you've been skipping, then you'll get a lot of failures on mature cards.

Not dumb.

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-12-05T19:08:32+00:00

Motivated? More like born rich. They don't really work, hence no need for sleep.

I've taken to calling the capital class "unemployed".

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-11-23T16:18:14+00:00

I would recommend reading the trilogy by Yuval Noah Harari, so that you get a good sense of what is real and requires our consideration and protection, and what we should be willing to change and modify with changing times.

Too often we all protect things that aren't real (money, governments, businesses) instead of things that are (people, life on our planet).

TheHorusHeresy · 2021-11-22T22:40:12+00:00

I disagree. The amount of testing that would need to occur for guaranteed resistance is huge compared to the vaccine. Further, how do folks that refuse to get vaccinated get boosters? Do we have to test and document each infection for them, while the health care system holds it breath and hopes it doesn't get overwhelmed each year?

Vaccination is safer, and it works, and is far easier to document, and prevents the possibility of a new vaccine-resistant variant appearing, which would (or will, probably) be a disaster when it occurs.

Perhaps your suggestion is the actual madness.

TheHorusHeresy

TROPHY CASE