semi_sentient

will this year be a year in which we leap, as a collective?

I find it’s important to allow yourself to be vulnerable to a moderate degree, to give people the chance to expose themselves as a giver or taker.

What a miserable SOB

its face is so smol

its eyes are keen

meow meow meow meow

evergreen

The cynic in me believes that the purpose of these investigations isn’t to uncover wrongdoings to punish, but to uncover wrongdoings to hold over their heads, in order to control.

Wait - I’m out of the loop. What the heck happened at Walmart?

Just out of frame: Three Doors Down

Yeah, I agree - unions and representative collective bargaining is the best shot that most of us have to effect any meaningful, positive change, and I hope that our willingness and ability to unionize only increases. Unions seem to be trending upward these days, at least relative to the past couple of decades, but they also seem to largely operate in an employment-centric capacity.

When it comes to environmental concerns, though, it really does feel fruitless. I’m not saying that giving up is the answer - just that it’s important to acknowledge and accept when the situation feels futile, and continue to try regardless, especially in light of our collective fates at the end of the road. In the US, at least, corporate influencers have had so much time to set things up in their favor - through the courts, legislature, and minds of the people - that it feels like we’re fish caught in their net.

Representative democracy is our best bet for effecting positive change on that front too, but our current conundrum is that many of our representatives have stopped representing us in meaningful ways, often paying lip service while they get paid through Super PACs and amenities. The best way to change that, short of violence (in which the outcome is, at best, mutually assured destruction of both government and populace) is, again, voting together, at the same time, and in the same direction.

I still hope for a better future, and I will do what is in my power to try and realize that future. I just hope that there are enough of us trying, at the same time, and in the same direction.

Maybe it works like caterpillar goop in the cocoon. It’s goop, and not exactly a caterpillar anymore, but experiments have shown that there’s at least some persistence of being, even after the former caterpillar-goop has become a butterfly. E.g. If you train a caterpillar to react to a specific stimuli with a negative response, the resultant butterfly will respond to the same stimuli in the same way that the caterpillar did.

It’s like that scene in Finding Nemo, where the fish are caught in the net. None of the fish want to die, but the net is going to keep pulling them to their death regardless of their collective desires. Subverting that fate requires that every single fish pull together, at the same time, and in the same direction, which, outside of an animated movie, isn’t going to happen.

Changing the system requires us to vote together, at the same time, and in the same direction, which, outside of an animated movie, isn’t going to happen.

Apathy is just the state of those that have tired themselves out trying to make up for the fact that not everyone is going to be pulling at the same time, and in the same direction. If no matter how hard you pull, the net is going to keep pulling you in whichever direction its operators desire, pulling is a futile endeavor, and apathy will eventually be all you have left.

Egg

..her?

First they banned Uncle Roger, and now they’re coming after Chef Wang Gang :(