Is there any part of this argument that does not also apply to college students? This is a genuine question, not intended as a gotcha. We allow 18 year olds to vote although they are subjected to many of the same pressures and inexperiences.
alanine96
joined 1 year ago
Do you live in the US? If so, I strongly suggest looking for literature (any literature) by people from the indigenous community who stewarded the land you live on. Even if not strictly "political", it'll give you a wider perspective on the history of your local community. This will be easier in some regions than others, though!
I also like weird cars. Old cars, used cars. Just because it's a useful object, as many in the thread have pointed out, doesn't mean it's not a special useful object. It takes me and my wife and our dogs on many road trips.
What makes a car special to me are the modifications we put into it to make it OURS. My grandmother-in-law has completely removed the back seats for her minivan and installed blankets and carpet there instead so her dog is more comfortable. I love that. It's shaped around her and her life.
The people who voted for these politicians are by and large not the demographics being fucked over by those policies. I also used to feel like the right response was to laugh at these states, and being reminded that people who didn't want these policies are still suffering from them didn't really convince me of anything--after all, collectively, isn't that the community they're choosing to live in?
What changed my mind about that is realizing the harm is disproportionately distributed. Disenfranchised people are LESS likely to vote republican but MORE likely to suffer the effects of republican government. So when "they get what they voted for", it's really, "the poor get what the rich voted for", and that doesn't make me happy to laugh at at all.
Great idea for a post. It's summer for me and getting quite hot. I think I will try to go to the farmer's market in my town tomorrow, even if I don't buy anything.
Thanks for all the info, very thoughtful and detailed!
Thanks for the advice. I didn't know community councils existed, and now I'm excited to attend their next meeting!
In this case the best idea is probably to make an account on beehaw and a separate account on other servers, and just keep the two separate. Beehaw by policy doesn't plan on federating with all servers at all times, particularly very large ones, so you may have to shift to thinking of it as another site you're on that happens to interface with your other Lemmy instances, vs. part of your main Lemmy experience. It's explicitly trying to be separate, so seeing everything at once is inherently difficult.
I've done this as well, and am enjoying separating these parts of my experience and breaking away from the idea of seeing everything at all at once. It gives some intentionality to my internet experience that I felt I was lacking on Reddit and Twitter.
This is a great answer, perhaps the first that really clicks with me. However, it still doesn't address the question of what those harm reductionist strategies are. I am not asking you to do the work to list them, but pointing out that this still doesn't address the question of "how" -- just gives a place to look.
No, but I used to be far more derisive of religion than I am now. My wife is Christian and speaks about how she finds God in the woods, the lakes, and the natural world around her, and I have come to view God less as a specific person or all-knowing entity and more as an embodied collection of feelings and thoughts that people have regarding justice, truth, and love. This helps me reconcile many kinds of spiritual beliefs with my own understanding of the universe as garnered by mathematical processes and the Earth as it is shaped by human hands.
I'm very curious to hear about the attempts you're referencing in your second paragraph!
Went this morning and picked up a lot of things, including beef raised about 30 miles from here and some various greens. Thanks for the inspiration!