I think I may start posting these on the last day of the month I’m covering, rather than the first day of the next month. Seems more appropriate, since it’s still July.
I fell for this too, and learned too late that I had been scammed. All throughout the 1990s up to the 2008 market crash they hammered into our heads “get a college degree, you’ll be rich and be able to pay off that $100,000 student loan debt in no time”. And now that most degrees are worthless the reaction is “haha, you dumbass, you should’ve gone to trade school”. What’s going to happen to the next generation when everybody goes to trade school? That will be worthless too. This is how they keep people trapped in crappy jobs or get people to sign up for the military. Debt is a form of social control. Keep people desperate. I’ve ranted about this in detail before on the blog, but this meme just reminded me of it.
If this many people ever actually read my blog.
Haaaa well…. I don’t think I’m going to do a big anti-capitalist rant this time around. Maybe a small one. I mean what else can I say that I haven’t already said? I am content with being obscure. Perhaps I should be glad to have a small audience, wouldn’t want to be targeted by the CIA or something. My grandfather did enough time as a political prisoner in Stalin’s Soviet Union. It’s something of a family tradition to be discontent with the country one lives in. He struggled against a different brand of authoritarianism than I, but it was authoritarianism nonetheless. America has its own gulags.
Anyway, my most conservative relatives have probably all either blocked me or unfollowed me by now. The gory and profane webcomics probably don’t help that either.
Am I an Old Soul?
I believe in souls and reincarnation, but at the same time I am open to the possibility that I’m totally wrong and it’s all wishful thinking and there’s nothing after death. I believe it in the way a scientist might “believe” a hypothesis before they test it out. It doesn’t run counter to my observed reality, as it’s largely unfalsifiable. Now Wicca, with its belief in karma coming back in threes and such, runs counter to my observed reality, because I see people get away with all manner horrible atrocities all the time without any repercussions, so while I do still like and even believe some aspects of the religion, I do not follow it. If karma exists maybe you have to feel guilty first for it to happen.
I couldn’t say how many past lives I’ve had, if indeed it isn’t all just some fantasy I’ve concocted, but I do feel like I’ve done this all before, more than once. I’ve had flashbacks, and I’ve done past life regression hypnosis. Let’s see how many of these apply to me.
1. I do miss being more ignorant, because now that I understand the world better I’m depressed. The truth hurts. Having critical thinking skills means I can probe into other people’s minds who I have a disagreement with and figure out why they think that way, and if it makes more sense than what I believed I can change my mind. Everyone has a different perception of reality, like seeing a mountain from a different angle. So they have different versions of the truth. People are also often manipulated into believing lies, because lies are more comfortable than the truth. We’re all just like brains in jars, receiving signals that tell us about the reality around us. The signals can’t always be trusted.
2. As I was talking about before, I’ve always been anti-authoritarian. Just have a look at my old schedule planner and assignments from back in school that I blogged about recently. In seeing the bigger picture I’ve begun to question everything, and see most social norms as arbitrary and meaningless. I still have to abide by many of them, I’m not going to go running down the street naked for instance, but I also think it is absurd that we aren’t allowed to do so if we want.
3. I’ve always been creative. I love storytelling. It’s one of the only things I’m really good at, not that society values this skill.
4. This is the one I’m not completely on board with as I don’t see what believing in a God has to do with being an older soul, then again, I’m not really an atheist. Neither am I a monotheist either. A pantheist with pagan leanings, I suppose. I see modern mainstream atheism as an understandable reaction to centuries of dogma by the Abrahamic religions, however in an active disbelief and a rejection of all spirituality, they have a blind spot. Christianity took away the belief that there was anything particularly special about the Sun, the Moon, other things that pagan religions around the globe almost universally revered; they took all that spirituality and put it in one God. The Sun for instance became just another inanimate object; a ball of gas, not the source of all life. Modern atheism, in rejecting the one God, lost all of this. Polytheism can be another way to interpret reality by personifying real concepts; I don’t take it exactly literally, but it is another way through which to interpret the universe. I believe in a celestial consciousness, the Sun gave us life and must itself be alive, our souls and our life force are a fragment of the Sun’s energy. The universe itself could be a brain cell in a larger creature. Quantum theory is beginning to tear down the walls between science and spirituality, so perhaps this brand of atheism is merely a passing phase in Western philosophy. If you look at Eastern philosophy, they don’t have this problem with materialism.
5. My beliefs are always developing as I learn more and more. I wouldn’t say I’m just now “waking up”, or perhaps I’ve been waking up for the last fifteen years or so.
So, maybe I’m an old soul. Then again this graphic seems designed to make the reader want to pat themselves on the back for being better than most people. I don’t want to be self-congratulatory. It’s important to note that being an old soul doesn’t make you superior to anyone. There’s no such thing as superior and inferior except in the human mind. There are advantages to being a new soul too. For one thing, it’s less depressing.
Oh no, those satanic liberals are indoctrinating children to…save the whales!
“Oh no, my child is going to step outside the strict religious bubble I’ve put them in and think for themselves!” When I first saw this one I couldn’t tell if it was saying this was a good thing or not, but the clues crop up the longer you look at it. “Atheist” Lawrence Krauss, ha. I guess we should all have our beliefs before our first names. That “Save the Whales” sticker though. Did the bible ever say that saving whales was wrong? And the “Love your Mother” sticker with Earth on it. I guess according to the bible you’re supposed to hate the Earth. It’s all bollocks. Schools really are indoctrinating children, just not the way these whackjobs think. They’re indoctrinating students with obedience so they will be effective workers or soldiers for the wealthy class. Wedge issues like the ones the conservatives complain about are there to keep the working class at each others throats and not at their real oppressors. This is especially obvious with issues the bible doesn’t actually say much about, like homosexuality and abortion. It was all concocted by the ruling class as manufactured outrage.
There should be a Godwin’s Law for oppression/genocide comparisons.
I’m tired of this comparison. It gets so overused. What was unique about the Holocaust was not so much the scale or the brutality, but the fact that there was any sort of punishment for it at the end. I can’t think of another genocide in all of history that was ever properly punished. I guess that’s why this comparison always gets trotted out whenever someone needs to compare historical trauma to something. You can’t point at another country that committed genocide and say “what if they were still proud of it?” Because they all are, except Germany. Or if they’re not proud they’re completely ignorant of it. It’s also the only genocide laymen really know about, any other genocide gets barely glossed over in school, because the US uses it to distract from their own crimes.
Let me tell you a little story about a country named Turkey. Where this sort of thing actually happens. Those of you playing my blog’s drinking game can take a shot because I’m talking about this again. In Turkey they have statues and street names dedicated to Talaat Pasha and Sultan Abdul Hamid, who together are responsible for genocides against millions of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians. And they either deny the genocides happened or are actually proud of it, with few exceptions. These days Turkey’s lackey Azerbaijan is working hard to finish the job. The genocide never really ended. A genocide that is denied never ends. It’s been put on pause a few times, and happens more slowly and gradually, whenever the international community is distracted enough.
Anyway, because I understand this, I don’t have to imagine how a Black person must feel seeing confederate statues and stupid Trumpster hicks being proud of their “heritage”. Nor do I have to imagine how Native Americans feel about Mt. Rushmore and the like. Although I don’t actually live in Turkey and have to experience this kind of oppression every day, I can put myself in their shoes. I guess the comparison works for blissfully ignorant American white people, for whom the Holocaust is the only genocide they’ve ever heard of. But only because it’s the only time a genocide was ever punished. So as much as I wish people would use a different example, there really is no other example, sadly.
The Problem of Evil
I guess I’m picking on religion in this post. I always thought the Epicurean paradox was a pretty sound argument against monotheism, as interpreted by Abrahamic religions. Especially where it disproves both the “free will” argument and the “God is testing you” argument, which are the go-to excuses Christians have when confronted with the problem of the existence of evil, or bad things happening to good people. I have but one bone to pick with it, and that is the premise, which assumes that objective evil exists at all and isn’t just an arbitrary human invention. I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here since I’m not a Christian (God’s Advocate, I guess), but who’s to say what God considers evil, if he were to exist? Maybe he’s okay with all the injustice of the world, because only we see it as injustice. Maybe he views us the way we view bacteria and one-celled organisms. But then again, the point of this exercise doesn’t seem to be to actually disprove God’s existence, just to disprove that he’s all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving. At least one of the three must be missing, if we assume evil exists as an objective concept. I may have my own morals, but I don’t think that they’re objective.
I quite prefer the outlook of ancient Egyptian religion, where the main binary is not good vs evil, but order vs chaos, with the goal not to defeat chaos but to come to a balance between order and chaos; because not all chaos is “bad”, and some chaos is even needed. It’s not so black and white, you see. Even the God Set, a God of Chaos who is often misinterpreted by modern observers under Christianity’s influence as a Satan-like figure, isn’t all bad, and has an important role to play in the universe by defeating the chaos serpent every night and protecting the Sun God Ra so that he may rise again. It’s a more nuanced view on reality.
Facebook’s war on extremism.
Another They Live meme. One if my favorite formats. The thought police are at it again. I haven’t gotten one of these notices yet. From what I’ve heard they’re going after both leftists and extreme conservatives. I guess Facebook doesn’t think I’m extreme enough. I feel so left out. How sad. I’m on the lower left corner of the political compass. What more do I have to do? I’m probably just not influential enough. Which they help by burying all my posts. I often wonder if Facebook has me shadow-banned. It’s only ever the same five or six people who leave reactions on my posts. I get further in groups sometimes, but only when I’m sharing something from another Facebook account, not when I’m sharing my blog or comic. Do I really want to raise the ire of the ruling class, though?
These notices are rather alarming, though. Say the government starts cracking down on any ideology they don’t like, and using Facebook as a way to target people. If you think they’re only going to go after the alt-right, think again.
Anyway, I’m not snitching on anybody. Screw that.
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
“Choose Your Hard”, gee thanks, I’m cured and I’m a millionaire now.
Okay, finally, here’s one that really makes my blood boil. The kind of post I started this blog series for. I forgot to save another post I saw with “choose your hard” but it was saying something like you can choose to work hard and be rich or not try and be poor. “Have you tried not being poor?” Utter idiocy. Not everyone can make these choices. Let’s have a look at some of these.
Marriage and divorce; okay maybe that is something you might have a choice in, sometimes, but not in every culture or circumstance. A woman might get stoned to death for leaving their husband in some parts of the world. Or maybe they have to worry about their psychotic and abusive partner attacking or killing them if they try to leave. Maybe they’re using the kids as blackmail and saying they’re going to take the kids away if there’s a divorce. There’s all sorts of reasons this doesn’t apply to everyone. “Staying in an abusive relationship is hard. Getting stoned to death is hard. Choose your hard.”
That obesity one is such utter bullshit. Some people are genetically predisposed to obesity and can’t lose the weight. Healthy food is expensive, some people who are poor don’t have a choice in what they get to eat, so become obese (ever been to a free food pantry?). Some people are disabled and can’t exercise. Some people don’t mind being obese anyway. You might as well say “Having cancer is hard. Staying healthy is hard. Choose your hard.”
Capitalism is designed to put you in debt, hardly anyone in this country isn’t in some kind of debt. What are you supposed to do when you’re out of food, spent your money on rent and bills, and your next paycheck isn’t coming for several days? Oh I know, “get a better job, budget better, blah blah blah”, says someone who has never been poor. How about an unexpected but astronomical medical bill that your insurance won’t cover, if you even have insurance? Even just a ride in an ambulance will put you in automatic debt. What should one do, just don’t ever get injured or sick? My entire generation was tricked into getting student loan debt thinking our degrees would get us anywhere, and weren’t taught anything about being financially responsible in school (on purpose no doubt). I chose the wrong hard, obviously. You could have your home destroyed in a natural disaster, have a relative unexpectedly die and have to pay for a funeral or cremation, get laid off from your job suddenly, there’s infinite ways to end up in debt that no amount of financial discipline will save you from. Just fuck you, whoever wrote this. Piss off.
And the last one, communication. That one’s so broad I don’t really know what they mean. But okay. If someone has a mental disability that prevents them from being good at communicating, can they just decide to be good at communicating? No. This is one of the lesser sins of this post I guess, but it’s still bollocks in a way.
This was written by the same type of person who would tell someone with depression caused by genetics and chemical balances in the brain to just cheer up and get over it. The “lift yourself up by the bootstraps” type of person. Some smug asshole who has never struggled in their life, probably lives in a fancy home their mommy and daddy bought them, no mortgage or rent. The type of person who when they hear the grievances of African-Americans would say “we freed your ancestors and lifted segregation, what more do you want? Must be your choice to be poor.” Even though after slavery they had to start at rock bottom and were deliberately kept poor during segregation, and have been unable to build any generational wealth (and in today’s financial climate building generational wealth from nothing is basically impossible). This is the type of person who doesn’t believe privilege exists. Choose your hard, my ass. Here’s one for whoever wrote this. “Getting my boot up your ass for making stupid victim-blaming arguments is hard. Keeping your mouth shut is hard. Choose your hard.”
Anyway, that’s the blog. Felt cathartic writing that last one out. Maybe I’ll encounter more ridiculous posts in August.
No comments:
Post a Comment