at the risk of being cringe with everything going on — this week, the last six months, the past five years — i keep thinking about that one quote from the great gatsby
“they were careless people…they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
🕊 Inequality not only creates poverty (which is a passive form of violence), it pushes punishment over prevention, fear over reason, and consumption over community.
MLK dreamed of a moral economy that measures society by how well the poorest are doing.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” - Matt 25:40
Until we address this chronic issue, we can innovate endlessly and still fail to live together.
It’s important to not force your human morals onto non-human nature, like “this creature, since it disgusts me, is bad” or “this creature, since it has behaviors I interpret as sweet and heartwarming, is good”
But if you study nature whether in life or in profession, nature will make you feel disgusted and uncomfortable, it’s not necessary to act as if those feelings don’t exist within you, because they are part of your encounter with the otherness of nature, and contain sensitivities that can be sharpened into their own ingredient to knowledge and awareness
Coexisting with discomforting parts of the reality of Nature without trying to resolve them into a moral or aesthetic framework you are happy with, reflects maturity
It is no good to “redeem” a hated animal if the redemption is another false idea of the animal as innocent and good. This implies that a creature’s “goodness” is a valid reason it deserves existence. It is also no good to treat a beloved animal with hatred to make things fair.
A good example is with dolphins and sharks, dolphins were seen as good and cute and almost human, whereas sharks were seen as bloodthirsty killers, and this has cost the lives of sharks while dolphins are given more sympathy, so some people have tried to turn it around, portraying sharks as gentle and good while pointing out that dolphins can be violent and rape other dolphins.
A lot of dolphin behaviors are certainly upsetting, definitely it makes sense to be upset that an animal can engage in what appears like cruelty, but human morality isn’t made to apply to non- humans, and a particular behavior is not the entire reality of what a whole species is like. Dolphins also engage in behaviors that humans judge as friendly, compassionate, altruistic, curious and playful
Think of a particular dog or cat and the variety of complex behaviors they are capable of—an entire species, made of individuals with their own complexity, must be far more complex. All of your emotional responses to dolphins are recognizing the immense complexity of these animals and how they are both like and unlike you, which is important to think about to expand your understanding of the universe
Fitting a creature to a flat framework for your own comfort or internal resolution is a disrespect to the creature. Certainly with sharks, everyone should know the facts about them rather than sensationalistic misinformation—shark attacks are rare, humans are not a preferred food for sharks, and most shark bites are exploratory investigations of a strange object or animal rather than feeding upon a selected prey item, however this doesn’t mean sharks are “good” by human standards and it certainly doesn’t mean sharks are “safe.”
Seeing a video of an enormous Great White swimming placidly I feel that her presence is not just breathtakingly beautiful, but awesome—in the more archaic sense of something that inspires awe, something so great and powerful it could destroy your fragile human life without malicious intent. Likewise with any shark, it is respectful to recognize that they can be dangerous, it is disrespectful to think of them as ocean puppies and try to touch them and grab them.
Fear, disgust, anger—each is an instinct that functions to protect you and is reactive towards potential or perceived threats. Your brain allows you to evaluate things that cause these responses and choose how to act.
All parts of this whole are important because the natural world contains actual threats but knowledge and intentional behavior are important to protecting yourself.
For example, once when I found a tick crawling on my clothing, I felt disgusted and startled, which is appropriate, but my instinctive reaction was to immediately flick the tick off, flinging it onto the floor or furniture nearby where I no longer knew where it was. In this way my response didn’t actually protect me but instead increased the level of risk
There are plenty of other examples—if someone sees a venomous snake they might think it is important to kill it, but trying to kill the snake is much more dangerous than leaving it alone, since the snake will try to defend itself. Spraying pesticides to kill bugs can unbalance the ecosystem causing more harmful pests than you started with because the natural predators are also killed. Using poisons to kill mice and rats will also poison their natural predators. Killing coyotes just causes them to disperse and reproduce at a higher rate, and killing wolves causes overpopulation of prey, which causes disease to proliferate and forests to be stripped bare of saplings that could grow up and regenerate the forest…
…And it also works the opposite way with human responses of affection, love and sociability: humans often may feel that they want to make an animal their friend, but often it would be cruel to take that animal into a human house and treat it as a pet. White-tailed deer may seem cute and sympathetic but hunting some of them is important for the health of the ecosystem, and trying to make them tame puts the deer and the humans in danger. Domestic cats are our friends but they are also invasive species in much of the world, destroying populations of birds, mammals and amphibians.
Domestic cats aren’t serial killers or murderers either, they are just predatory animals that instinctively hunt and kill prey.
It is hard for facts about animals to be propagated while those facts must be presented as reasons the animal deserves to live or deserves to die. Virginia opossums are important to their ecosystem and deserve to exist. They also don’t actually eat ticks, that came from a very flawed and sloppy scientific study that was contradicted by later studies, and sadly the reason this misinformation got so far is that it was “proof” that opossums are valuable and shouldn’t be killed for no reason.
Wolves are keystone species and vital to their ecosystems, but it’s not true that they never attack humans, there have been a small handful of wolf attacks on humans, it’s very few and wolves generally avoid humans but they’re not “safe.” They shouldn’t have to be “safe” to deserve to live.
Fact is, most animals can harm a human if they feel threatened or end up in an unlucky situation! Most animals can spread disease one way or another! We have to live with this, we have to learn and use strategies to keep ourselves safe, we can’t just sterilize the world of animals because of a possibility that an animal could hurt someone, any more than we can cut down every tree because trees fall on people sometimes.
No one likes hearing that there’s no way to for-sure eliminate all possibility of ticks from your yard, you just have to take precautions against them, but it’s true! Just like there’s an inherent possibility a wasp could sting you, an inherent possibility a snake could bite you, an inherent possibility a mountain lion could eat your livestock, but you can dramatically lower your risk of these things by knowing how to coexist with these animals.
‘lazy people don’t feel guilty about not doing anything’ is insane to me and I have been trying to make my brain believe it for a long time, it shocked me to my core when I first heard it
An important corollary to “if you were faking your mental illness, you could stop whenever you wanted.”
saying this because i’ve literally been subjected to panopticons and moral saw traps and had my every action examined and monitored my whole life and i just want to relax for once
“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
— Vincent Van Gogh
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth
something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in
the beginning.”
its actually crazy how much local art events and other potentially interesting stuff i completely miss out on just because the orgs all post on instagram and facebook only. two standouts among the worst fucking platforms in the world with the most egregious ui and slop saturation, so dogshit that id be unable to use them regularly even if i wanted to. stop it you all. get on tumblr or something
even orgs and collectives that used to have proper websites of their own now just put all their updates on fb and ig. stop! stop it! youre making me feel like an old geezer! ok well old geezers nowadays are very much on facebook… an ancient geezer. youre making me feel like A Ancient Woman
I want so badly to go to art events but Where and When?! Just put it on the website! Can we have a community calendar? Something? Anything?
THIS! There are so many cool events I learn about after the fact because there’s no place to find information! The same thing with indie designers and jewelers! GIVE ME A NEWSLETTER I CAN SUBSCRIBE TO FOR UPDATES.
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“ Piotr Stachiewicz (Polish, 1858 - 1938) - from his series Regina Caeli [Queen of Heavens]; Mary with a Spindle
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