Nicht der Held, den wir verdienen, aber der Held, den wir brauchen!
Besonders auf der Autobahn gilt zudem: Vor mir alles Schnecken, hinter mir alles Raser!!1!
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Funny! But which pride flag is that now?
Bah, such soft sci-fi/modern fantasy drivel!
I'm honored if my ramblings inspired or entertained you!
A link back to this post and comment section would be great, to provide context. Apart from that, please feel free to edit the incoherent wall of text as you see fit, in good faith. Maybe DM me a link to your blog post if you get to it, I'd be interested in your take!
For the longest time, I could have written out these thoughts of yours almost verbatim myself. I hear you, and I believe I know that pain very well.
I've recently clawed my way out of that mindset, mostly. A total, unrelated stranger on the Internet now suggests you try the same, for your own mental health and The Greater Good™ alike. I'll share my own story instead of preaching to the choir, with the faint hope of giving faint hope that there at least exists a way out of this mental mess you're in.
I was almost afraid of being thought of as naïve, considered it a weakness to not show. Cynicism was my shield. Nevertheless I always went and still go out of my way to be a "good guy", in the most inconsequential ways. Don't picture the ranting, vitriolic uncle here nobody wants to be with in the same room, I kept this negativity pretty much to myself and only let it out in controlled drips of sarcastic jokes. I, too, was convinced that humanity surely is doomed, if only for it's insufferable ignorance, and by extension do whatever I can to support those precious few who I deemed as "not lost" in all the ways I could. Voluntary extinction of humans seemed like a pretty swell concept, overall.
I did organize convention security of Eurofurence for more than a decade, going from ~150 to thousands of attendees. All staff are unpaid volunteers. I just recently realized how the "staff side" of the convention is a practical, well-working example of a practically anarchistic collective organisation (yes, security, too) managing a metric shit-ton of complex stuff just for a few thousand fellow furry queers to have fun for a week, and paying €1000+ and PTO for the privilege to boot. You may rightly assume I have seen a fair shit of crazy stuff, first hand, but violence, hate, or even just ignorance? I can count those on one paw, over all these years combined. Even trouble with "outsiders" in Berlin Mitte clashing with the colorful crowd was very limited and ultimately civil.
It took me this long to reflect how this personal experience is NOT a glitch in the Matrix, but actually the "resting state" of human consciousness. People are, in an exceeding majority, "good". I cannot ignore a decade of first-hand (anecdotal, granted) experience and further tell the lie of "people are ignorant, assholes, or both". They are not. People are however, broken. Like me. Possibly, like you. By "truths" about "reality as it is", colported by profiteers of misery or other broken souls trying to dilute their pain by finding, nay, creating company to normalize their struggle and feel a tiny bit better. Not out of spite or hate, mind you, but to soothe themselves and survive in a world that is perceived as harsh, uncaring, and downright belligerent. Which it is, for many out there. But it is not "the world" we are up against— the hedgehogs dozing off in the pile of autumn leaves didn't raise your rent last week. Neither did your neighbor, or the Mexican lady three cities over making ends meet. Why can't "they" see that and do something? Likely the same reason why I can't do a lot of things, I lack the energy. Instead of being on the streets or organizing a local repair cafe, I'm typing a stream of consciousness into the void on the Internet. Whoop-de-doh! I'm such a revolutionary! Welp, there's the sarcasm again. :)
If you're wondering how to pay for your damn food, shelter, and medicine tomorrow all day, every day, you literally cannot concern yourself with a long-term solution. You are eternally stuck in stopping the bleeding, and cannot focus on the guy stabbing you over and over again. It is too late, you'd bleed out if you shift focus now.
"You keep them dumb, I'll keep them poor." said the King to the Pope. And then propagandize this status quo as the only way to survive, with no alternative, and your survival is constantly at risk from... well... whatever threat we can conjure up.
So. If one agrees, at least roughly, with this (gesticulated wildly) being our shared reality, we have also established that people are, by a large margin, victims in need of help, but afraid to ask for it. This is why I follow the guideline of unconditionally offering help in whatever way I can.
There is no shortage of need for any kind of assistance or help in the world. It's a seller's market for positivity and aid out there, and it's up to you to set the price as low as you can.
No effort in that direction is ever "wasted", as some want you to believe. For every beneficial action you take, no matter how tiny, is a SHITLOAD of eager and needing recipients. Plucking the candy wrapper from the ground? Pointless, right? Surely inconsequential. Not when scaled up by the thousands. Smile at people, just because you are going to interact with them, and set the vibe. It's ridiculous how many people are visibly starved for a sliver of positive, human interaction, particularly in retail jobs, for obvious reasons.
Once I began actively looking for the effects of my "inconsequential" actions, I realized that the opposite is true. The act of giving freely, unconditionally, and convincingly is the only way to reach those in need who are convinced they don't deserve anything, or nothing would help them, anyway. It's difficult to target aid, hence the 'obvious" pointlessness of it all, but an indiscriminate shotgun approach definitely, eventually hits some of the good people, you just won't notice it right away. For them, however, any bit of empowerment is very real and sorely needed. Do not underestimate the power of decentralized action, it isn't limited to Lemmy. :)
If you stop anyone's bleeding for a moment, they may muster up the energy and focus one day, to give the stabby guy a little push. And take a figurative breather, for the first time in years. And then use that new-found strength to maybe, eventually, throw a punch.
I decided to be a part of that avalanche, from my very privileged position, instead of betraying myself and what I desire to be, in order to feel "normal" and be part of a "normal society" that doesn't actually exist in the callous form so many claim it to "just be". Fuck 'em if someone considers me naïve for believing in the possibility of creating a net positive with my life, even if we're on a doomed ride into oblivion. At least enjoy the view, then, you've got nothing to lose but your prejudice.
Okay, I'm done, this is getting ridiculous.
TL;DR: Don't give up, so many more people are "good", every action has consequences, even if unseen.
your* At least be consistent.
misérable en place
In filenames? AMATEURS! Use obscure Unicode in your passphrases for maximum security. Ctrl-Shift-U, enter arbitrary code point, bam! 🦊 Works even better with a Compose key and a nice, chonky
.XComposefile to throw some gr∑∑k letters around, for instance, like some confused script kiddie. :)On topic: There are multiple variants of spaces in Unicode. You're welcome, and now go and create something utterly deranged with that information.
ITT: whooosh
More essential IT skills to add to your resume:
- preserving the environment
- killing zombies
- managing real-time executions
- manual flushing of pipes
- handling mixed signals
ich_iel @feddit.org ich🔑⌨️iel
Oof. This short thread made me feel really old. Allow me, I've been waiting for this for decades:
When I was young, we only had HTML4 with a ton of nested tables and animated GIFs, if you're lucky! None of those fancy
<div>s or CSS of yours! If you wanted "dynamic content", you used SSI or questionable executables in yourcgi-bin! Centering content was a proper, manly challenge! And don't forget the "Optimized for IE 3.0!" 88x31 badge below the huge, blinking, centered(!) UNDER CONSTRUCTION image!THAT's peak web design for you, everything else is just rainbow sprinkles!!1!