Working BLOWS

@BlueVeins when I read about the history of work it makes me wanna blow my brains out. Like...this is NOT how we are meant to live.

Fuck it. Fuck this. Fuck all of it. I want the system to burn down. Covid was not bad enough. We need a new plague.

@Doomflower Infant mortality, illiteracy, hunger, and child marriage are all at all-time lows. Civil rights have been expanding on a grand scale over the course of the past century, and religiosity is on the sharp decline. We must change the system, but we should be mindful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

@Doomflower covid-19 notwithstanding.

@BlueVeins of course you're gonna be reasonable when I am just throwing a tantrum.

I will say while those things are improving but also point out the tide has taken a turn for the worse in the last decade. The united states at least is regressing.

@Doomflower Eh, it's definitely true that the US has regressed, but the path of cultural development isn't a straight shot upward. It's a trendline carrying noise, and that noise will sometimes go upward or downward. But I feel like it's telling that even someone as degenerate as Donald Trump has pretty much given up the issue of same-sex marriage, a question which was still hot and controversial as recently as 2014. I think it's really cool that Republican Presidential candidates and most Congress members can't openly say anymore, that they're just against transgenderism altogether, and instead have to resort to dog-whistling about gender confirmation surgery among 5 year olds.

I know that this is cold comfort in this time and place, with abortion rights on the rocks and serious attacks on LGBT+ people both at once. And it's entirely possible for all the progress we've had to fall through, like what happened with Iran in the '70s. Presumably not to the same extent, but shit like that does happen. But the modern European states got to where they are now by holding course with decent corruption protections and working to accelerate progress through the systems that they had. Even those countries which have revolutions pretty much have to accept that a revolution is only one small step in a decades or centuries long incrementalistic fight.

Sorry for the wall of text and also for the Sun-sized blackpill. I know the way I think can be pretty dark, it's just the only way I can really see.

@BlueVeins i appreciate your thoughtful responses. You're spot on with the Iran comparison. I've been thinking a lot about Persepolis and how almost 50 years later it's still fucked up.

The trend may be improving but that noise isn't inconsequential either. To those of us living through it, we might as well have lost all progress forever.

@Doomflower Aye, I sympathize deeply with those feelings. I ascribe to incrementalism as a political philosophy as reluctantly as humanly possible.