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Yes, if more people listened to socialists we would be able to fix most of the problems in the world today.
depends on your circumstances
I do: eat the rich
Today was boring. Called friends which said they were bussy.
No, but maybe we can muddle along together.
The people who come after us will also feel like they have no idea what to do, but my hope is that we might be able to make their struggle a little easier for them. They won’t necessarily realise the impact of our work; it’ll form the mostly invisible, foundational assumptions that they build their own perspectives on top of, but that’s okay. The point of it all is to facilitate them being able to see further than we are able to — to see *more" than we can right now.
It may not feel like it when we’re in the thick of it, but this is what progress is.
Are you saying that future people will study us for what NOT to do?
Yes, but there are good examples too. Despite being chronically demoralised at the state of the world, I am literally only alive because there’s so many things that give me hope. It’s not the kind of hope that necessarily counters the dread I feel at all the awfulness, but rather something that stands alongside it, despite everything.
As a random example, I went to the Netherlands recently, and I was jazzed at the freedom conferred to me by the solid bike infrastructure. Being disabled, I’m more reliant on my car than most people, and I never feel so disabled as when I’m having to spend half an hour driving through a city when the walking route can be twice as fast. Riding a bike through Rotterdam felt so liberating, especially when I cycled to a shop that was due to close soon. I remember thinking “this must be what able bodies in a city people feel like — to be able to go somewhere free of the constraints of their car”
When I returned to the UK, it was pretty depressing to see how rubbish our bicycle infrastructure is in general. Though there are many smart and passionate people pushing for changes to civil infrastructure to facilitate pedestrian and cycling transit in cities, there’s so much inertia and fragmented implementation that it’s pretty depressing.
Recently, however, I visited a friend in Preston. Like many UK cities, the bike infrastructure was far from universal, but what I did see was really cool. Distinct bike lanes that are wholly separated from the road, just like the experts are always pushing for! Road markings and traffic signals that require car users to yield to cyclists. This stuck out to me especially because I was reading recently about how Preston city council has been doing a thing called “community wealth building”, which involves an investment strategy that prioritises local growth and infrastructure. So like, if there’s a new housing development that is being bid for, then local businesses and contractors would get priority on that. This strategy was, in large part, a response to the chronic underfunding of local authorities, which disproportionately affects the North of England, and other socioeconomically deprived areas. It’s only small, but it makes me hopeful because this is a concretely good idea that’s being implemented. It might not work out entirely as hoped, and even the best solutions to problems will inevitably present us with new problems, but that’s great — that’s how we learn!
That’s one example of my hope at a larger, systemic level, but I also find my resolve bolstered by countless good things at the personal or community level. Seeing how a local community activism group navigates complex governance problems and draws on past experience is another thing that makes me hopeful. A personal example is that I have faced so much strife due to the system letting me down, but when I have most been struggling, the kindness and solidarity of the people around me have helped immensely. Sometimes this kindness comes from people who are struggling just as much as me. Acts of individual kindness aren’t enough to fix a broken system, but they’re powerful in a different way, especially because they exist in spite of all the incentives towards being a selfish asshole that capitalism provides.
Our history is fixed, but the history of the future is still being written — by us. People who come after us will have countless examples of “what not to do”, but what keeps me going is the desire to give them as many examples of “what is good to do” as possible.
Maybe it’ll come to you after a coffee break.
Squirrels don’t struggle with stuff like this.
Just ask Perri
How would we ever know?
Be here now, man
having a genuine existential crisis about this, tbh. I’ve never really thought about the fact that we’re passengers on a ship run by narcissistic morons and there’s little we can do to influence the boat. I’m struggling to accept that all I can do is make my seat and neighbors area a little nicer.
I was going to edit my original comment to add this on, but that wouldn’t have notified you, so here’s an additional comment.
I was just reading Alyssa Battistoni’s book “Freedom Beyond the Free Gift” and there was a line that reminded me of you, and my response to you because of how effectively it distilled my entire thesis into one, guiding question.
“What must we do to make freedom possible on a damaged planet?”
What helps me a bit is to think about what the world would look like in the years after a widespread societal collapse. Many of the things we rely on and take for granted today would no longer be available, so we’d have to do a lot of rebuilding of societal systems
But the crucial part is that if humanity ends up in that scenario, then the last thing we should do is try to rebuild society to be as it was before. After all, our current system is what is currently wrecking the world. That means we need to do what we can to proactively consider (and where relevant, implement) systems designed for a better world.
In all likelihood, I won’t be one of the people who would be rebuilding in that scenario (chronic health stuff means I’d be dead before I got to that point), but there’s still power in building new stuff. My hope is that if(/when) everything blows up, then maybe the things that I have helped build will end up as useful pieces for the people who come after to salvage.
Technofascists can hide away in their bunkers and network states when everything blows up, because I earnestly believe that the rest of us will stand a far better chance at surviving, even if we have far fewer resources than the billionaires. They fundamentally do not understand humanity, so all their silly plans for their “afterwards” are even more doomed to failure than our current, groaning structures.
No matter what happens in the coming years, there will always be an “afterwards”. Time will keep ticking forward no matter what. I reckon that even in the super bad outcomes, humanity will continue to exist in some form, even if in drastically diminished numbers. However, I don’t know that for certain. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because I’ll never know what comes after me. If humans do end up being eradicated, then I suppose nothing I do matters. However, because I can’t know if that will be the case, all I can do is operate under the assumption that humans will continue to exist when I no longer do. Consequently, I feel that my ethical duty is to do everything I possibly can to give those hypothetical people the opportunity to salvage some useful tools and building blocks from the wreckage of our collapsed society.
The neat thing is that this work is still useful in a world where things don’t collapse disastrously. The question of “what would we need to thrive?” will be just as relevant in the event that we are able to avert a full on societal collapse. I find it useful to look back on the history that my life is built upon; whilst there’s so much awful stuff that has direct throughlines to the awful problems we face today, there are also so many powerful acts of resistance and activism that help me build a template for what I feel we should strive for today. I imagine that the people who come after me will look back on us in a similar way. All I can strive for is to build little pockets of goodness that will help them in the same way that I draw strength of historical resistance.
Maybe it won’t be enough, but that’s okay, because I don’t need to ask the question of “how much is enough?”, because that’s not answerable now, or ever. Thus I am forced to set that dread aside and just focus on what I can do to help.
Covid gave the whole world a chance to try something different. The only changes I’m aware of from that were regressions.
COVID was the catalyst for Amsterdam exploring ideas from Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics. It’s only a small example, but I find it powerful to see examples of alternative economic frameworks that prioritise sustainability actually being implemented.
Another example is that when I was at university, disabled students activist groups were constantly battling to get the university to implement basic reasonable adjustments, such as recording lectures so disabled students who couldn’t attend in person wouldn’t miss out. The university was a big, old one, so there was a lot of silly inertia. While I was there, it was often necessary for the university’s Disability Support Department to employ people to go into lectures and physically be there to record lectures. It was tremendously silly and wasteful, and even then, some lecturers would refuse to be recorded, even after having been told by the university that they had to.
For obvious reasons, that all changed during COVID, when everything was done remotely. It was quite frustrating to see things implemented so easily, because it highlighted how needless all of the previous battles had been. However, now that things have gone back to being fully in person, those changes made during COVID have persisted for the students who need them. Lectures and other learning materials are now more readily available to students with accessibility needs, because the social and technical infrastructure now exists in a widespread way.
Progress isn’t linear, and it certainly doesn’t happen all at once. I only know about the remote learning thing because I used to be a part of disabled students groups at that university, and because I am friends with someone working in public policy in Amsterdam. We hear so much about how the world is going to shit, and that’s not wrong, but there’s also so much good work being done beneath our notice, everywhere and all the time. There are likely things in closer proximity to your life where you’re either already a part of building something good, or you could be. I know it’s hard to muster the energy to try to change things when the world is so demoralising, but it is possible to build positive things that can make the future a bit better. These things don’t erase the awfulness that’s going on, but neither do those awful things erase our achievements.
that is a- strange way to describe a global pandemic
most people were stuck at homes worrying about their income or health
of course there was going to be regression, the world was frozen, events stopped, some places had heavy restrictions on leaving home to go anywhere, thousands were dying every day - not exactly a situation that nurtures progress or positive growth in a society
Lo unico que se
Es que no se nadaI’ve been chewing on electrical cords but im not sure if its the right thing
I actually do! You… just have to try!
As said in the wise 1984 piece : “Bisogna provare! Provare, provare…” https://video.benetou.fr/w/mASpXHWjFyx7MMWzgbUg4e (from “Non Ci Resta Che Piangere”)
God i wish
I do the Watusi
How about creating a movement? Groups are stupid. So elect some leaders, let them organise some intelligence gathering to figure out what to do and then act on it.
