Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.
Linux users: I too might be one at heart:-). Maybe? Though I do so love my Macā¦ it has such a pwetty candy shell - and it is even more POSIX compliant than Linux! :-P
Thoughts v. Actions: Our rights are steadily being taken away, though more often we simply given them away. I mentioned Mac vs. Linux so perhaps that is a good example: iOS is horrible, having everything locked down and not able to connect to your own device to do anything with it. Then again, Android is becoming increasingly like that as well, ever since Google got its hooks in. And yet, it is possible to administer your own device, even if it gets harder & harder over time. Mac OSX isnāt so bad, for a computer that you control, but iOS is, therefore that is where I draw the line.
For cars, what if like a police-person demanded access to your vehicle, and if their company override did not work, they could confiscate the car? Do you āownā your own vehicle? Worst of all, you have to pay the full price as if you did, so you do not even get the benefits of leasing - like if a hurricane destroyed it, who loses out - you or the company that leased it to you? (I donāt even know, does leasing work that way!?:-P) - and yet you depend on āleasingā the software, in perpetuity. So one day, if someone gets the bright idea that āgoing greenā means not doing anything at all to actually work towards saving the planet, but instead everyone has to buy Musk-brand EVs (others have not been pre-approved so do not qualify), then at that point yeah Iād consider jailbreaking a car. Though the risk could be that you could lose the whole vehicle - Might may not Make Right, but it sure can be a powerful jackboot to come down upon your neck, if it so chooses. So like everything else, it would be a cost-benefit tradeoff.:-|
I donāt know if good & evil are human conventions - I mean obviously to some extent, definitely the part about what we āacceptā is - but also, most people innately seem to feel certain things, so by virtue of being ānaturalā, are those things that are in-grained and inherent in us (and also other animals as well) the Truth, that we need to discover and obey b/c that is what will generate maximal Happiness for us?
To clarify, I am not āpushingā for the death of democracy. I am worried sick that it is coming, regardless of my wishes either way. I do not control the Maga-hat-Repubs, nor the corporate-stooge-Democrats either, and it looks like both sides are in agreement that e.g. the bottom HALF of all of Americans āshouldā only have 2% of the entire wealth of this country. I did not make that figure up btwā¦ (article 1, from 5 years ago, and updated article 2). Why that is relevant is that no matter who wins the next election, the āAmerican Dreamā (white picket fence, ability to afford a child, 2.3 dogs or whatever) has already died, at least for the simple majority of citizenry.
Perfection & mistakes: setting aside a God or even a rung further down to a mere Creator, if we had a perfect āFatherā or āPresidentā or some such, or even ābossā at work, then would they not allow us to make our own mistakes, as part of thier being perfect? How else could we possibly learn? How else could we possibly be happy, if we were all robots will no free will, or more precisely not even the illusion of thus? On the other hand, sheeple gonna sheep, and thatās all there is to it: for many, what religion (or politics, or anything at all) āmeansā is that some book said it, hence it MUST be true - they donāt bother to figure it out, or even to search for proper interpretations. B/c they are stupidā¦ and we have to come to terms with that - they just do not have capacity to evaluate such things, therefore they do not. Especially a parent/couple spending all of their time raising kids. I find that irl I have much more in common with people of all religions who are thinkers, than I do with people who may just so happen to believe similar word-sounds as myself, but who donāt have the faintest idea what those concepts even mean. Hehe, Jesus Himself agrees: ābe ye either hot or cold, but for fucks sake, at least care about it one way or the other you f-ing plebes!?ā (hehe, I may have modified that slightly:-D)
You are an awesome person and I love hearing how you think:-).
Yeah I might be one too. I really want to use Linux and Iāve tried it many times but I have had issues with it every single time. Now I only use Linux as a print server for my 3D printer, itās amazing for that.
I loved iOS back in the day, IF it was jailbroken but after the iPhone 4 I switched to Android and never looked back. I currently despise my Android phone though. I hate what Samsung has done with their flavour of Android. It feels SO invasive. Currently looking at Pixel phones so I can use GrapheneOS.
For cars, what if like a police-person demanded access to your vehicle, and if their company override did not work, they could confiscate the car?
I wouldnāt be surprised if one day things devolved that far but being the ODD-type person I am, that would just make me want to jailbreak it even more.
To me, leasing the operating system that your car runs on basically means you donāt own your car and that is a major turn off. Automatic updates, having features one day and not having them the next, etc.
who loses out - you or the company that leased it to you? (I donāt even know, does leasing work that way!?:-P)
Bahah I really have no clue, I have never leased a car. Always bought used and I donāt see that changing anytime soon.
I donāt care about repercussions all that much, Iād rather deal with them if/when they come than stop myself from doing things just because Iām scared something may happen. Of course that depends on the situation but if weāre talking about modifying a device that you bought and paid for then I will do what I want, as long as Iām not endangering anyone. If Iām costing a multi-billion dollar corporation a couple dollars than thatās just something Iād be proud of.
I donāt know if good & evil are human conventions - I mean obviously to some extent, definitely the part about what we āacceptā is
I mean, I donāt know either but yeah, I meant more like what we accept. I guess the way I see it is like, what if in the future, the only humans that are left to reproduce are the ones with psychopathic traits? They might have a whole other definition of what is good and what is bad/evil. I guess I donāt really know what goes on in the mind of a psychopath either so that hypothetical is probably not worth much hahah. Some animals do things that would seem absolutely evil to us, but would they think of it that way? I guess we donāt really know what they think about today or if they even think at all but whatever hahah.
are those things that are in-grained and inherent in us (and also other animals as well) the Truth, that we need to discover and obey b/c that is what will generate maximal Happiness for us?
It could very well be. Weāve evolved as a social species so it is in our best interest that everybody around us is happy and healthy. When things/people from outside our society threatens our health and happiness, we can commit great evils like it was nothing at all.
To clarify, I am not āpushingā for the death of democracy
Oh I wasnāt saying that you yourself actually were but more like, IF you were, Iād totally understand and respect it. Canāt blame anyone for being sick of this shit. You canāt get mad at a river for flowing where it does.
it looks like both sides are in agreement that e.g. the bottom HALF of all of Americans āshouldā only have 2% of the entire wealth of this country.
Yeah well that is a huge problem, but I doubt that most of the voters think that. Thatās all the corruption. We donāt have a real choice anymore and itās going to take a lot to change that. Iām all for eating the ultra-wealthy. People will eventually realize that theyāre actually in an American Nightmare, wake up and demand their power back, at least I hope so. At that point, maybe the ruling class will loosen the leash a bit, or maybe theyāll kill us all or just leave the continent and let the vultures come pick at our dying carcasses, who knows.
then would they not allow us to make our own mistakes, as part of thier being perfect?
Well, maybe perfection includes accepting that mistakes are a part of getting to perfection. I guess it depends on how far we take āperfectionā but if we were all born āperfectā for the world we are in, would we know how to deal with things that are unpredictable? Then again, absolute perfection could take away all the things that are unpredictable. I dunno, this whole line of thinking is breaking my brain at the moment hahah.
they donāt bother to figure it out, or even to search for proper interpretations. B/c they are stupidā¦ and we have to come to terms with that - they just do not have capacity to evaluate such things, therefore they do not.
Well, some might not. Some were just indoctrinated so heavily from a young age that they canāt even conceive that their religion is not the Truth. I wouldnāt say theyāre all stupid, but they certainly donāt waste time questioning these things like we do and Iām not sure thatās 100% a bad thing. For me itās a bad thing because I enjoy thinking about these things and I do not want to blindly believe what a thousands of years old book is telling me about the nature of our existence. If I ended up at the same conclusion as my āAssigned Religion At Birthā, I wouldnāt be mad about wasting all that time thinking about it because thatās the game I decided to play and I didnāt want to just read the walkthrough.
Of course thereās always gonna be people who only have the capacity to repeat the things that were said to them. Those are the dangerous ones, the ones who are ripe for use and abuse. It is our responsibility to take care of them.
I find that irl I have much more in common with people of all religions who are thinkers, than I do with people who may just so happen to believe similar word-sounds as myself, but who donāt have the faintest idea what those concepts even mean.
Absolutely. I find I have much more in common with a religious thinker than I do with 99% of the people youād find in Atheist communities even though you could easily think itād be the opposite.
ābe ye either hot or cold, but for fucks sake, at least care about it one way or the other you f-ing plebes!?ā
100% my favorite passage!
You are an awesome person and I love hearing how you think:-).
Linux: I love the logic, the precision, the customizabilityā¦ but I also like it when things werk, which it often has major issues with. Then again, I use Linux at my job on a daily basis, and even on my Unix Mac OSX I use things like the CLI and gVim, so I enjoy having that stability at home. Especially when I need to use a laptop - I need to be able to do things like connect to someone elseās wifi without having to install package dependencies first.
I bought an Apple phone once, expecting to eventually jailbreak it. But they took that capability away, so when it died I switched back to Android and will never even consider going back. Now, I too have a Samsung S22+ - and it is the only phone I have ever had that I outright despise. Tbf, I consider that my own fault for not selling my soul to them - yes it is on them for asking such, but I knew who they were, and decided to roll the dice on them anyway. I really miss the days when flagship killers existed, like the most famous one of all time OnePlus 7 (before the co-founder left the company when they announced their new direction to use the ColorOS used on all those cheap Huawei phones), and before that the Nexus line. I might try a Fairphone next, maybe? Or just a cheap dumbphone even - āsmartā ones are more like āsmartassā these days:-(. Pixels would be great - especially if you want to replace the OS - but I hardly use my camera as it is, and the specs otherwise are not great unless you spend much more, and there seems no longer to be a way to turn that around and get a āhigh-end phone with a cheap-ass cameraā.
I thought - though I couldnāt readily point to any and I could be wrong - that studies have shown that children seem to have some kind of innate sense of āright vs. wrongā? Like if you walk up and take their candy away from them, they scream āhey, thatās not fair!ā, like that would have a chance of working (and why wouldnāt it? but if the scene changed and these were gorillas instead of humans, then wouldnāt that have a possibility of getting yourself literally killed, for daring to challenge the larger apes, as an object lesson of power and āknow your placeā?). So, at least at the early stages, Might vs. Right may be in opposition to that kind of preschool/kindergarten level of morality? And then everything after that is modified by societal pressures - like spoiled children are āspoiledā by teaching them that their wants & needs matter more to their parents than the wants & needs of others. Like maybe they go out to eat and the kid of wealthy parents sees the servants jump at every whim of the master, and by implication the child as well - not understanding yet that they are being paid+tipped to do so - and internalize that sense of āI am a higher being than those sort areā.
So if morality changes in the future - as it 100% definitely will - it seems doubtful that the Nature side of it would be altered much, in a short period of time (in the evolutionary/geological timescale sense), and rather that the Nurture side would teach them differently. At which point I hope that they will be taught what works rather than what does not. In that sense, I like how the Bible - the collected wisdom of the ages - and basically every other revered tome like it from all religions across the globe acts to preserve what has been learned. e.g. adultery is bad (hurt feelings leading to all manner of problems), and unless under highly constrained circumstances, murder due to hot-headed feelings in the moment is bad, and stealing from someone is bad (it gets dicey when a rich fuck decides āthis is mine nowā - is it really stealing to simply take back what is yours? so having mentioned it, I will now promptly ignore it henceforth:-D), and so on. To the extent that these laws may capture something innate inside of us all, then it is good for us to have learned them. Perhaps in the future - or even now already - we can separate out the āreligionā parts from what is truly good. As Jesus Himself offered: ābe thou not dicks to one another, and instead be most excellent to one another, my dudesā.
And this is why I am turning more to religious thoughts lately, though it could be any alternative to politics - non- or not-for-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or extremely rarely even inside of those, like the Mr. Rogers character was a MOST EXCELLENT human being, both on- and off-camera (and too Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek). Anyway the goal is: how can we help people, even when the major trend of that river of society is trying to bend away from that goal (taking away peopleās livelihoods, making them work for literally DECADES to pay back student loans that are corruptly administered - i.e. a form of literal, actual, irl āslaveryā if you will)? Occasionally I see a story that gives me hope (e.g. this one where he tries to fight against the trend), but they do seem to be coming much more rarely than in the past.:-| In any case, I need to create my own to attach meaning to in the more local sense of my own cares & wants & needs:-).
One problem with trying to define āperfectionā is the age-old adage of what does the word āgoodā even mean? In the engineering sense, it means āgood for somethingā, like a spoon is good for eating one type of, more liquidy, foodstuffs, whereas a knife is good for an entirely different and while not totally at least partially nonoverlapping set of foodstuffs, and then a knife is quite a bit different still from either (and as that movie Wall-E perfectly illustrates: sporks have their own whole thing going on!:-P). If you wanted to eat a soup, either a fork or a knife - or chopsticks, etc. - would not be āgoodā. And framed in that manner, we already immediately see that this is a whole non-starter, b/c paper > rock > scissors > ā¦, which invalidates the logical chain of transitory thinking that if A leads to B and B leads to C, then surely A must lead to C as well, right? (nope! b/c otherwise, paper would beat scissors too) So the best we could ever hope for is to say that item A is good for some particular purpose, not good in any kind of objective, overall sense. At which pointā¦ how would āperfectionā have a chance there of being tied to something in the objective world, if even āgoodā does not? Hence it remains subjective, unless we switch the meaning to some kind of objective standard - as in ālacking nothingā i.e. has all components of set X as defined byā¦
Humans, really all mammals, then have this whole wonderful thing where we are not perfect, and that adaptability to change is what has gotten us this far, even when dinosaurs and cockroaches and fishes and such - as measured by length of evolutionary time - were much more of a āsuccessā. They were much more āattunedā to their specific circumstances, i.e. a highly defined set of parameters, whereas we are not, and therefore we are the only species that has even a ghost of a chance of possibly outlasting even our planet Earth instead (that we could create ourselves I mean - ofc whatever animals and such we took with us could go as well).
āAssigned Religion At Birthā -> I love that phrase, Imma have to steal it now!:-P I have already changed mine several times, and I absolutely see no reason to stick with things merely b/c they are old. Tbf, it does have some demonstrated value, but for those of us who can do better, we donāt need that - e.g. whenever we see the hypocrisy (e.g. priest āon the takeāā¦ or much worse), we can simply nope out and move on to greener pastures.
I would argue that sheeple - precisely like zombies - are not all that dangerous, at least individually, though en mass they constitute a real force to be reconed with. Even there, the necromancer behind them (if present) controlling that force is the REAL danger, b/c even if they lose every single one of those sheeple-tools, they can still come at you with new ones (money gives them power). George Romeroās Night of the Living Dead had several perfect examples, where like there were zero zombies present inside of a locked room, but then one of the living people died, and after that there was one zombie present. So it is not āthe zombiesā that were the chief danger, it was that space radiation or whatever in that case, that could continue to make more zombies. And in other genres like Resident Evil, the zombies were at the extreme low end of the spectrum of danger, which the company hid behind and continued to make MANY more, even more highly dangerous thingies and stuff and junk. And irl, Putin himself is no sheeple. Even if he were stripped of Fox News, and the entire nation of Russia, he still is iirc the literal top number 1 wealthiest person alive on the planet, plus his store of secrets that he could use to blackmail all the most powerful people, would make him (or whoever inherits all of that) quite a dangerous adversary indeed - entirely independent of unthinking Americans voting for conservative politicians. Especially if he also controls the liberal politicians too:-(.
I hope I am not straining your brain too awfully much - I trust you to say no though and slow down your responses, i.e. to take care of yourself first!
I need to be able to do things like connect to someone elseās wifi without having to install package dependencies first.
Yeah exactly, and it has happened to me way too many times where I install something, like system updates, only to reboot to find that my GUI doesnāt work anymore. I do not have time for this.
Now, I too have a Samsung S22+ - and it is the only phone I have ever had that I outright despise.
RIGHT?! Thatās the same one I have. Itās the WORSE phone Iāve ever had the displeasure of owning. I bought it because I thought the camera would be the best out of what was available at the time but it is TERRIBLE. I miss my old Huawei P20 Pro. Say what you want about the CCP but that phone was BY FAR the best phone Iāve ever had. I still use it every day as a camera but it has no SIM anymore.
Fairphone is definitely interesting. Until thereās a whole new revolutionary mobile device that comes out, thereās really no reason to go for flagships anymore, they donāt offer anything new anymore, so why not go for something like the Fairphone. I feel like the Apple Vision Pro is the closest thing weāve seen since the first iPhones. Of course itās way too big and cumbersome for now but nothing else has given me that feeling in my gut since I first laid my hands on the iPhone.
Like if you walk up and take their candy away from them, they scream āhey, thatās not fair!ā
Not saying youāre wrong at all here but, a lot of that could very well come from nurture and also youāre literally taking something away from them it could be more about personally losing something than it not being fair. Would they react the same way had they not yet been taught the concept of fairness and just seen someone take candy from another child?
So if morality changes in the future - as it 100% definitely will - it seems doubtful that the Nature side of it would be altered much, in a short period of time (in the evolutionary/geological timescale sense), and rather that the Nurture side would teach them differently.
Yeah probably not. Nobody likes to be hurt (Unlessā¦) and that is not about to change.
As Jesus Himself offered: ābe thou not dicks to one another, and instead be most excellent to one another, my dudesā.
š š š š š
And this is why I am turning more to religious thoughts lately
That is pretty much exactly why I am doing so as well. It just makes sense.
Anyway the goal is: how can we help people, even when the major trend of that river of society is trying to bend away from that goal
This has been my biggest revelation of my life. I canāt exactly explain it in words, but my answer to the question āHow can we help people?ā is to just help people. Thereās always someone who needs help, no matter how big or small their problem might be. It feels to me like a lot of us have no sense of community anymore, at least outside of the internet. We need to rebuild this. Personally Iāve been doing it by changing the way I talk to people. I no longer just ask people āHey how are youā as a meaningless greeting, I changed it to āHow are you doing TODAYā to try and get a real answer out of them. Then if I can see an opening I will ask if thereās anything I can help them with. I also try to smile at everyone I lock eyes with, at least when my mental state is good enough for it. I really dislike looking people in the eyes in the first place so it takes a lot out of me.
I used to judge people based on the way they look a lot because you can kiiinda tell when someone is gonna be āconservativeā or whatever, itās a defense mechanism for me because I do not feel safe anywhere these days. However, by doing that, Iām doing exactly the same thing that people Iād call bigots would do. Judging someone on appearances. Sometimes Iām afraid that by doing so and letting my guard down, I might end up getting hurt. However, if I keep acting like random people are my enemy, I am perpetuating a cycle that must end.
Occasionally I see a story that gives me hope (e.g. this one where he tries to fight against the trend), but they do seem to be coming much more rarely than in the past.
I feel like thatās just because those stories donāt sell as well and/or they get immediately buried by ragebait.
I have to end this one here. I am so exhausted I can barely read, I keep catching myself re-reading the last sentence I just read hahah. I will be back.
I gave up on iOS entirely - I still love Mac OSX but I hate iOS, especially if I am constrained, b/c of work reasons, to still have to use a Google or Microsoft account. Apple just flat does not care what our needs are, out there irl, only what they want to provide. Now I am aware: if you sell your soul to them (by using exclusively their products), then they do take extremely good care of you. So long as you never even so much as dare to dream of venturing outside of their walled gardenā¦ you will be fine. But I just cannot live that way:-(. So I put up with the mess of Android, b/c it is still far better than the 1984-style āsecurityā that iOS offers imho:-P.
Then again, I desperately do want a fairly stable daily driver, not an adventurous linux āexperimentā:-D.
it could be more about personally losing something than it not being fair.
Oh yeah 100% agree there - all of humanity, and most especially children, use justification rather than purely logical reasoning.
my answer to the question āHow can we help people?ā is to just help people.
NO, I very much disagree, at least in my own sense. Then again, you did mention that it may not be phrased well, and your actual actions I 100% agree with soā¦ there is that:-P. In general I think that such selfless act tend (even if not fully guaranteed) to be the better way, as in you help yourself and them at the same time - subject to your capacity ofc. A big issue there that I have agonized over in my mind is trans children. Since we know that younger humans use ājustificationā rather than pure ālogicā, is it really helpful then to allow them access to surgeries that are not designed for that, not well-tested, and have an enormous failure rate (isnāt it like 50%?), where they can become crippled for life? Then again, I have no skin in that game really, and while I am mostly an ally in the sense that I think like ādare to be differentā is a good thing, still I do wonder if those children are being taken advantage of by predatory doctors who are pushing expensive surgeries (like $100k USD a pop!), more than acting to help them be who they truly are. And some I believe truly are, but how do we know the difference b/t when it is helpful vs. harmful, and isnāt that related to age, or at least some measure of emotional maturity? I have read (on Reddit) in trans forums that even older trans people (who I trust more than myself to be cognizent of the issues involved?) are themselves against allowing literal children to go through that. To clarify, in case I am sounding āconservativeā here myself (dErP), I am talking solely about children here, whatever that cutoff might be, like 15-18 or some such, and the goal is how to help them, not how to tell them what they can or cannot do (maybe the surgery could be allowed but not like federally approved for safety, or worse yet have some label attached to it, like those warnings on cigarettes? Anyway, I donāt mean to go deep into that issue per se, but rather to use it as an exemplar: āHow can we help people?ā, for me, requires some knowledge as to what, exactly, that is.
But ofc I am probably over-thinking it.:-D And yet even in doing so, I am offering my love to society in terms of trying to find that ācorrectā path. Not that I would tell much of anyone, so I donāt even know why really myself, except that it is in me to do so.
Anyway, when the answer seems more simple I just go for it - like I like to tip well, even putting in a dollar when I pick up food where no server is involved so it is not usual, and even if that could be 10-20% of the order cost. Those workers deserve their wages, and I need to be generous and that is one way to help support people who really are needing, wanting, and deserving of it!:-)
I feel like thatās just because those stories donāt sell as well and/or they get immediately buried by ragebait.
Sighā¦ yeah, everything seems to come back to money. Thereās probably a morality/philosophy point in there somehow, like it tends to reflect what we value the most, as a society. Truth isnāt something we really care about, nor children, and for the most part we (the USA I mean) mostly care about healthcare when there are expensive drugs available for purchase, not so much at any other time.:-(
I applaud your efforts to remain open to experiences, possibilities, and loving one another - stay awesome gurl!:-D
I donāt have much time today but I have to touch on the trans children part of your post.
Sorry youāve agonized over that, because it just doesnāt happen. Nobody wants children to have gender reassignment surgeries but that point has been used to attack transgender rights and healthcare over and over again and itās not even a real thing. Nobody is actually getting them because it makes absolutely no sense to do it. You canāt do a surgeries like that on a body that is still growing, it will 100% turn out completely botched. The only surgery that could maybe make any sense on a minor may be the removal of breast tissue on transmasc people but that would only be required IF the child hasnāt been put on puberty blockers in time AND is experiencing major distress because of it. Everything else can wait. Hell, a large number of, if not most, trans people will never even get a single surgery. Hormone Replacement Therapy alone is very often enough and it is completely safe.
If it has happened, it was 100% done by a quack surgeon who needs to have their license removed. Literally nobody is going to argue against that except maybe for bad actors/astroturfers or perhaps actually insane people. Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see, please. You donāt even have to believe me but donāt go repeating that shit because it is extremely harmful.
It absolutely infuriates me because people keep repeating that as if it happens and it is being used to deny trans care to children, which is not surgeries but puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty in case the patient is not certain about their gender identity and it is 100% reversible. What isnāt reversible is going through the āwrong pubertyā and kids are now being forced to go through that in many states. Not only does going through the wrong puberty actually CREATES the need for more surgeries in the future, it is traumatic. Puberty is already really hard to go through once (Even worse if itās the wrong one), imagine having to do it twice. Iāve done it, would not recommend if it can be avoided. Especially later in life when the mental anguish, mood swings and everything else that comes with going through puberty are really not āacceptable behavioursā anymore because then youāre an adult, you have way more responsibilities on your hands and by then people have forgotten exactly how crazy puberty was so they canāt even relate in any way. It is very alienating.
Also I donāt remember much of what I typed yesterday, I was basically half asleep but I should make it clear that what I meant by helping is only what I need to do and have been doing personally. Itās going to be different for everyone but for me the number one thing to do right now is to try and heal the divide between people on different spectrums and it is something that I actually have some kind of power over. I believe we really ought to stop wasting time and energy on things we have absolutely no power over as individuals and concentrate on getting people back together. Since Iām trans, well, I feel like itās my responsibility now to forget about the divide and to be kind to everyone, even the ones who may not have kind thoughts about me so that we may have a chance to actually talk and find understanding. How are we supposed to tell people how things actually are for us if nobody even listens to us in the first place.
Thatās from my point of view and something that only really applies to trans people as we have been thrust into this position we never wanted to be in, but Iām sure we all have something āsimpleā we can do to start taking baby steps towards regaining our power as people. To me, everything else is counterproductive and only serves to create more divide as we are completely unable to find common ground anywhere. How are we to make big societal and political changes without it getting bloody if we canāt agree on or even discuss the stupidest little things.
The saddest part is that in reality we all want the same thing but āTheyā have us fighting about manufactured issues and differences that donāt actually matter at all.
Thank you for helping put my mind at ease:-). Sadly, I think there are quack doctors, especially in the USA, but as you say the entire issue is so super-charged b/c on the other side you have things like those literally torture camps where they electroshock little children, often leading to their actual death. I think multiple of the latter have been created and directed over by someone who a decade or two later in life came out as gay themselves, and one or perhaps two even killed themselves - i.e. they hated themselves, b/c of their pseudo-religious bullshit treating Christianity not as ālove one anotherā but rather as ādo as I sayā aka Might Equals Right and Conformity Is All. So then hurting the children sprung forth from their own mental illness, but in the process they created a panic among parents who wanted to ābeat out the gayā from their children, who they ended up killing instead:-(.
The parallels between those stories and the anti-vax movement are profound: each relates to ignorance, and each results in a huge risk and often death to the most innocent among us:-(. And THAT is why I keep saying that I am losing hope for democracy: why should ācitizensā have a say, in such INORDINANTLY COMPLEX matters, that require specialist knowledge, especially when there is (often Russian-derived, intentional) misinformation polluting the whole topic?! Except how else could be done - the State (e.g. China) decides, and everyone just has to follow its lead? Which brings us back to: the only solution forward would be to ensure that people receive a basic edumacashiun, so that we are better prepared to deal with such attacks on our system(s), even as we try to move forward into the future. But Christofascists on the one side, and corporate-backed liberals on the other, do seem a daunting pair of adversaries.
How are we supposed to tell people how things actually are for us if nobody even listens to us in the first place.
Amen, sistah! That is the really odd thing I find about most aspects of life - like āEvangelicalā Christianity in particular, isnāt the goal there to āsaveā people, so then why go extremely out of your way to alienate them, via letās say passing anti-abortion laws? All that on top of the fact that the Bible not only never says that Christians are meant to regulate non-Christians, but in fact it says the polar opposite of that! Christians are to judge āChristiansā - e.g. when a priest diddles a child, THAT is something that should be judged! And also, Christians are specifically never ever to judge ānon-Christiansā, who have been granted freedom to live however they wish. The only grace I can manage to come up with for people who think like that - even though it included me for many of my early years - is that sheeple arenāt known for their ability to perform acts of higher thought. They are vulnerable. As are we all, just differently, is all.:-|
That said, there really is a line there, and that is when you step up to take away the rights of other people - properly warn them, yeah, maybe go so far as to require an extra consent form or some such, but when you actively prevent someone from doing as they please, that generates resentment. How the hell are people supposed to āevangelizeā to someone who has just e.g. been tortured, perhaps to literal death? (successfully anyway) It makes them a hypocrite.
The saddest part is that in reality we all want the same thing but āTheyā have us fighting about manufactured issues and differences that donāt actually matter at all.
I agree so hard I canāt even throw in a nice phrase here about it, maybe Iāll just say āgulpā. Among well-meaning individuals, we can discuss ANYTHING at all, no matter how difficult, and if thereās something we donāt quite āgetā, we can look it up. Maybe put our money where our mouths are and hire an expert to explain it to us. But we can get it done. However, among people who are not well-meaning, we can discuss NOTHING, b/c every single topic is merely being used as another avenue to preach their belief at someone, not merely virtue-signalling b/c they actually do mean it (sometimes), but still not all the way over to the other side in terms of being actually authentic. They must be quite lonely I imagine, and not comfortable in their own skin/heads, to need to resort to borrowing the actual thoughts of others rather than stare bravely at their own, following wherever they may lead. Take pity on them, but donāt let them be in charge!
It is not my place to tell you what to do, but I do hope that you get a chance to rest before replying to me - as much as I enjoy hearing from you, I want you to be happy even more:-).
Linux users: I too might be one at heart:-). Maybe? Though I do so love my Macā¦ it has such a pwetty candy shell - and it is even more POSIX compliant than Linux! :-P
Thoughts v. Actions: Our rights are steadily being taken away, though more often we simply given them away. I mentioned Mac vs. Linux so perhaps that is a good example: iOS is horrible, having everything locked down and not able to connect to your own device to do anything with it. Then again, Android is becoming increasingly like that as well, ever since Google got its hooks in. And yet, it is possible to administer your own device, even if it gets harder & harder over time. Mac OSX isnāt so bad, for a computer that you control, but iOS is, therefore that is where I draw the line.
For cars, what if like a police-person demanded access to your vehicle, and if their company override did not work, they could confiscate the car? Do you āownā your own vehicle? Worst of all, you have to pay the full price as if you did, so you do not even get the benefits of leasing - like if a hurricane destroyed it, who loses out - you or the company that leased it to you? (I donāt even know, does leasing work that way!?:-P) - and yet you depend on āleasingā the software, in perpetuity. So one day, if someone gets the bright idea that āgoing greenā means not doing anything at all to actually work towards saving the planet, but instead everyone has to buy Musk-brand EVs (others have not been pre-approved so do not qualify), then at that point yeah Iād consider jailbreaking a car. Though the risk could be that you could lose the whole vehicle - Might may not Make Right, but it sure can be a powerful jackboot to come down upon your neck, if it so chooses. So like everything else, it would be a cost-benefit tradeoff.:-|
I donāt know if good & evil are human conventions - I mean obviously to some extent, definitely the part about what we āacceptā is - but also, most people innately seem to feel certain things, so by virtue of being ānaturalā, are those things that are in-grained and inherent in us (and also other animals as well) the Truth, that we need to discover and obey b/c that is what will generate maximal Happiness for us?
To clarify, I am not āpushingā for the death of democracy. I am worried sick that it is coming, regardless of my wishes either way. I do not control the Maga-hat-Repubs, nor the corporate-stooge-Democrats either, and it looks like both sides are in agreement that e.g. the bottom HALF of all of Americans āshouldā only have 2% of the entire wealth of this country. I did not make that figure up btwā¦ (article 1, from 5 years ago, and updated article 2). Why that is relevant is that no matter who wins the next election, the āAmerican Dreamā (white picket fence, ability to afford a child, 2.3 dogs or whatever) has already died, at least for the simple majority of citizenry.
Perfection & mistakes: setting aside a God or even a rung further down to a mere Creator, if we had a perfect āFatherā or āPresidentā or some such, or even ābossā at work, then would they not allow us to make our own mistakes, as part of thier being perfect? How else could we possibly learn? How else could we possibly be happy, if we were all robots will no free will, or more precisely not even the illusion of thus? On the other hand, sheeple gonna sheep, and thatās all there is to it: for many, what religion (or politics, or anything at all) āmeansā is that some book said it, hence it MUST be true - they donāt bother to figure it out, or even to search for proper interpretations. B/c they are stupidā¦ and we have to come to terms with that - they just do not have capacity to evaluate such things, therefore they do not. Especially a parent/couple spending all of their time raising kids. I find that irl I have much more in common with people of all religions who are thinkers, than I do with people who may just so happen to believe similar word-sounds as myself, but who donāt have the faintest idea what those concepts even mean. Hehe, Jesus Himself agrees: ābe ye either hot or cold, but for fucks sake, at least care about it one way or the other you f-ing plebes!?ā (hehe, I may have modified that slightly:-D)
You are an awesome person and I love hearing how you think:-).
Yeah I might be one too. I really want to use Linux and Iāve tried it many times but I have had issues with it every single time. Now I only use Linux as a print server for my 3D printer, itās amazing for that.
I loved iOS back in the day, IF it was jailbroken but after the iPhone 4 I switched to Android and never looked back. I currently despise my Android phone though. I hate what Samsung has done with their flavour of Android. It feels SO invasive. Currently looking at Pixel phones so I can use GrapheneOS.
I wouldnāt be surprised if one day things devolved that far but being the ODD-type person I am, that would just make me want to jailbreak it even more.
To me, leasing the operating system that your car runs on basically means you donāt own your car and that is a major turn off. Automatic updates, having features one day and not having them the next, etc.
Bahah I really have no clue, I have never leased a car. Always bought used and I donāt see that changing anytime soon.
I donāt care about repercussions all that much, Iād rather deal with them if/when they come than stop myself from doing things just because Iām scared something may happen. Of course that depends on the situation but if weāre talking about modifying a device that you bought and paid for then I will do what I want, as long as Iām not endangering anyone. If Iām costing a multi-billion dollar corporation a couple dollars than thatās just something Iād be proud of.
I mean, I donāt know either but yeah, I meant more like what we accept. I guess the way I see it is like, what if in the future, the only humans that are left to reproduce are the ones with psychopathic traits? They might have a whole other definition of what is good and what is bad/evil. I guess I donāt really know what goes on in the mind of a psychopath either so that hypothetical is probably not worth much hahah. Some animals do things that would seem absolutely evil to us, but would they think of it that way? I guess we donāt really know what they think about today or if they even think at all but whatever hahah.
It could very well be. Weāve evolved as a social species so it is in our best interest that everybody around us is happy and healthy. When things/people from outside our society threatens our health and happiness, we can commit great evils like it was nothing at all.
Oh I wasnāt saying that you yourself actually were but more like, IF you were, Iād totally understand and respect it. Canāt blame anyone for being sick of this shit. You canāt get mad at a river for flowing where it does.
Yeah well that is a huge problem, but I doubt that most of the voters think that. Thatās all the corruption. We donāt have a real choice anymore and itās going to take a lot to change that. Iām all for eating the ultra-wealthy. People will eventually realize that theyāre actually in an American Nightmare, wake up and demand their power back, at least I hope so. At that point, maybe the ruling class will loosen the leash a bit, or maybe theyāll kill us all or just leave the continent and let the vultures come pick at our dying carcasses, who knows.
Well, maybe perfection includes accepting that mistakes are a part of getting to perfection. I guess it depends on how far we take āperfectionā but if we were all born āperfectā for the world we are in, would we know how to deal with things that are unpredictable? Then again, absolute perfection could take away all the things that are unpredictable. I dunno, this whole line of thinking is breaking my brain at the moment hahah.
Well, some might not. Some were just indoctrinated so heavily from a young age that they canāt even conceive that their religion is not the Truth. I wouldnāt say theyāre all stupid, but they certainly donāt waste time questioning these things like we do and Iām not sure thatās 100% a bad thing. For me itās a bad thing because I enjoy thinking about these things and I do not want to blindly believe what a thousands of years old book is telling me about the nature of our existence. If I ended up at the same conclusion as my āAssigned Religion At Birthā, I wouldnāt be mad about wasting all that time thinking about it because thatās the game I decided to play and I didnāt want to just read the walkthrough.
Of course thereās always gonna be people who only have the capacity to repeat the things that were said to them. Those are the dangerous ones, the ones who are ripe for use and abuse. It is our responsibility to take care of them.
Absolutely. I find I have much more in common with a religious thinker than I do with 99% of the people youād find in Atheist communities even though you could easily think itād be the opposite.
100% my favorite passage!
It is reciprocal.
Linux: I love the logic, the precision, the customizabilityā¦ but I also like it when things werk, which it often has major issues with. Then again, I use Linux at my job on a daily basis, and even on my Unix Mac OSX I use things like the CLI and gVim, so I enjoy having that stability at home. Especially when I need to use a laptop - I need to be able to do things like connect to someone elseās wifi without having to install package dependencies first.
I bought an Apple phone once, expecting to eventually jailbreak it. But they took that capability away, so when it died I switched back to Android and will never even consider going back. Now, I too have a Samsung S22+ - and it is the only phone I have ever had that I outright despise. Tbf, I consider that my own fault for not selling my soul to them - yes it is on them for asking such, but I knew who they were, and decided to roll the dice on them anyway. I really miss the days when flagship killers existed, like the most famous one of all time OnePlus 7 (before the co-founder left the company when they announced their new direction to use the ColorOS used on all those cheap Huawei phones), and before that the Nexus line. I might try a Fairphone next, maybe? Or just a cheap dumbphone even - āsmartā ones are more like āsmartassā these days:-(. Pixels would be great - especially if you want to replace the OS - but I hardly use my camera as it is, and the specs otherwise are not great unless you spend much more, and there seems no longer to be a way to turn that around and get a āhigh-end phone with a cheap-ass cameraā.
I thought - though I couldnāt readily point to any and I could be wrong - that studies have shown that children seem to have some kind of innate sense of āright vs. wrongā? Like if you walk up and take their candy away from them, they scream āhey, thatās not fair!ā, like that would have a chance of working (and why wouldnāt it? but if the scene changed and these were gorillas instead of humans, then wouldnāt that have a possibility of getting yourself literally killed, for daring to challenge the larger apes, as an object lesson of power and āknow your placeā?). So, at least at the early stages, Might vs. Right may be in opposition to that kind of preschool/kindergarten level of morality? And then everything after that is modified by societal pressures - like spoiled children are āspoiledā by teaching them that their wants & needs matter more to their parents than the wants & needs of others. Like maybe they go out to eat and the kid of wealthy parents sees the servants jump at every whim of the master, and by implication the child as well - not understanding yet that they are being paid+tipped to do so - and internalize that sense of āI am a higher being than those sort areā.
So if morality changes in the future - as it 100% definitely will - it seems doubtful that the Nature side of it would be altered much, in a short period of time (in the evolutionary/geological timescale sense), and rather that the Nurture side would teach them differently. At which point I hope that they will be taught what works rather than what does not. In that sense, I like how the Bible - the collected wisdom of the ages - and basically every other revered tome like it from all religions across the globe acts to preserve what has been learned. e.g. adultery is bad (hurt feelings leading to all manner of problems), and unless under highly constrained circumstances, murder due to hot-headed feelings in the moment is bad, and stealing from someone is bad (it gets dicey when a rich fuck decides āthis is mine nowā - is it really stealing to simply take back what is yours? so having mentioned it, I will now promptly ignore it henceforth:-D), and so on. To the extent that these laws may capture something innate inside of us all, then it is good for us to have learned them. Perhaps in the future - or even now already - we can separate out the āreligionā parts from what is truly good. As Jesus Himself offered: ābe thou not dicks to one another, and instead be most excellent to one another, my dudesā.
And this is why I am turning more to religious thoughts lately, though it could be any alternative to politics - non- or not-for-profits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), or extremely rarely even inside of those, like the Mr. Rogers character was a MOST EXCELLENT human being, both on- and off-camera (and too Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek). Anyway the goal is: how can we help people, even when the major trend of that river of society is trying to bend away from that goal (taking away peopleās livelihoods, making them work for literally DECADES to pay back student loans that are corruptly administered - i.e. a form of literal, actual, irl āslaveryā if you will)? Occasionally I see a story that gives me hope (e.g. this one where he tries to fight against the trend), but they do seem to be coming much more rarely than in the past.:-| In any case, I need to create my own to attach meaning to in the more local sense of my own cares & wants & needs:-).
One problem with trying to define āperfectionā is the age-old adage of what does the word āgoodā even mean? In the engineering sense, it means āgood for somethingā, like a spoon is good for eating one type of, more liquidy, foodstuffs, whereas a knife is good for an entirely different and while not totally at least partially nonoverlapping set of foodstuffs, and then a knife is quite a bit different still from either (and as that movie Wall-E perfectly illustrates: sporks have their own whole thing going on!:-P). If you wanted to eat a soup, either a fork or a knife - or chopsticks, etc. - would not be āgoodā. And framed in that manner, we already immediately see that this is a whole non-starter, b/c paper > rock > scissors > ā¦, which invalidates the logical chain of transitory thinking that if A leads to B and B leads to C, then surely A must lead to C as well, right? (nope! b/c otherwise, paper would beat scissors too) So the best we could ever hope for is to say that item A is good for some particular purpose, not good in any kind of objective, overall sense. At which pointā¦ how would āperfectionā have a chance there of being tied to something in the objective world, if even āgoodā does not? Hence it remains subjective, unless we switch the meaning to some kind of objective standard - as in ālacking nothingā i.e. has all components of set X as defined byā¦
Humans, really all mammals, then have this whole wonderful thing where we are not perfect, and that adaptability to change is what has gotten us this far, even when dinosaurs and cockroaches and fishes and such - as measured by length of evolutionary time - were much more of a āsuccessā. They were much more āattunedā to their specific circumstances, i.e. a highly defined set of parameters, whereas we are not, and therefore we are the only species that has even a ghost of a chance of possibly outlasting even our planet Earth instead (that we could create ourselves I mean - ofc whatever animals and such we took with us could go as well).
āAssigned Religion At Birthā -> I love that phrase, Imma have to steal it now!:-P I have already changed mine several times, and I absolutely see no reason to stick with things merely b/c they are old. Tbf, it does have some demonstrated value, but for those of us who can do better, we donāt need that - e.g. whenever we see the hypocrisy (e.g. priest āon the takeāā¦ or much worse), we can simply nope out and move on to greener pastures.
I would argue that sheeple - precisely like zombies - are not all that dangerous, at least individually, though en mass they constitute a real force to be reconed with. Even there, the necromancer behind them (if present) controlling that force is the REAL danger, b/c even if they lose every single one of those sheeple-tools, they can still come at you with new ones (money gives them power). George Romeroās Night of the Living Dead had several perfect examples, where like there were zero zombies present inside of a locked room, but then one of the living people died, and after that there was one zombie present. So it is not āthe zombiesā that were the chief danger, it was that space radiation or whatever in that case, that could continue to make more zombies. And in other genres like Resident Evil, the zombies were at the extreme low end of the spectrum of danger, which the company hid behind and continued to make MANY more, even more highly dangerous thingies and stuff and junk. And irl, Putin himself is no sheeple. Even if he were stripped of Fox News, and the entire nation of Russia, he still is iirc the literal top number 1 wealthiest person alive on the planet, plus his store of secrets that he could use to blackmail all the most powerful people, would make him (or whoever inherits all of that) quite a dangerous adversary indeed - entirely independent of unthinking Americans voting for conservative politicians. Especially if he also controls the liberal politicians too:-(.
I hope I am not straining your brain too awfully much - I trust you to say no though and slow down your responses, i.e. to take care of yourself first!
Yeah exactly, and it has happened to me way too many times where I install something, like system updates, only to reboot to find that my GUI doesnāt work anymore. I do not have time for this.
RIGHT?! Thatās the same one I have. Itās the WORSE phone Iāve ever had the displeasure of owning. I bought it because I thought the camera would be the best out of what was available at the time but it is TERRIBLE. I miss my old Huawei P20 Pro. Say what you want about the CCP but that phone was BY FAR the best phone Iāve ever had. I still use it every day as a camera but it has no SIM anymore.
Fairphone is definitely interesting. Until thereās a whole new revolutionary mobile device that comes out, thereās really no reason to go for flagships anymore, they donāt offer anything new anymore, so why not go for something like the Fairphone. I feel like the Apple Vision Pro is the closest thing weāve seen since the first iPhones. Of course itās way too big and cumbersome for now but nothing else has given me that feeling in my gut since I first laid my hands on the iPhone.
Not saying youāre wrong at all here but, a lot of that could very well come from nurture and also youāre literally taking something away from them it could be more about personally losing something than it not being fair. Would they react the same way had they not yet been taught the concept of fairness and just seen someone take candy from another child?
Yeah probably not. Nobody likes to be hurt (Unlessā¦) and that is not about to change.
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That is pretty much exactly why I am doing so as well. It just makes sense.
This has been my biggest revelation of my life. I canāt exactly explain it in words, but my answer to the question āHow can we help people?ā is to just help people. Thereās always someone who needs help, no matter how big or small their problem might be. It feels to me like a lot of us have no sense of community anymore, at least outside of the internet. We need to rebuild this. Personally Iāve been doing it by changing the way I talk to people. I no longer just ask people āHey how are youā as a meaningless greeting, I changed it to āHow are you doing TODAYā to try and get a real answer out of them. Then if I can see an opening I will ask if thereās anything I can help them with. I also try to smile at everyone I lock eyes with, at least when my mental state is good enough for it. I really dislike looking people in the eyes in the first place so it takes a lot out of me.
I used to judge people based on the way they look a lot because you can kiiinda tell when someone is gonna be āconservativeā or whatever, itās a defense mechanism for me because I do not feel safe anywhere these days. However, by doing that, Iām doing exactly the same thing that people Iād call bigots would do. Judging someone on appearances. Sometimes Iām afraid that by doing so and letting my guard down, I might end up getting hurt. However, if I keep acting like random people are my enemy, I am perpetuating a cycle that must end.
I feel like thatās just because those stories donāt sell as well and/or they get immediately buried by ragebait.
I have to end this one here. I am so exhausted I can barely read, I keep catching myself re-reading the last sentence I just read hahah. I will be back.
I gave up on iOS entirely - I still love Mac OSX but I hate iOS, especially if I am constrained, b/c of work reasons, to still have to use a Google or Microsoft account. Apple just flat does not care what our needs are, out there irl, only what they want to provide. Now I am aware: if you sell your soul to them (by using exclusively their products), then they do take extremely good care of you. So long as you never even so much as dare to dream of venturing outside of their walled gardenā¦ you will be fine. But I just cannot live that way:-(. So I put up with the mess of Android, b/c it is still far better than the 1984-style āsecurityā that iOS offers imho:-P.
Then again, I desperately do want a fairly stable daily driver, not an adventurous linux āexperimentā:-D.
Oh yeah 100% agree there - all of humanity, and most especially children, use justification rather than purely logical reasoning.
NO, I very much disagree, at least in my own sense. Then again, you did mention that it may not be phrased well, and your actual actions I 100% agree with soā¦ there is that:-P. In general I think that such selfless act tend (even if not fully guaranteed) to be the better way, as in you help yourself and them at the same time - subject to your capacity ofc. A big issue there that I have agonized over in my mind is trans children. Since we know that younger humans use ājustificationā rather than pure ālogicā, is it really helpful then to allow them access to surgeries that are not designed for that, not well-tested, and have an enormous failure rate (isnāt it like 50%?), where they can become crippled for life? Then again, I have no skin in that game really, and while I am mostly an ally in the sense that I think like ādare to be differentā is a good thing, still I do wonder if those children are being taken advantage of by predatory doctors who are pushing expensive surgeries (like $100k USD a pop!), more than acting to help them be who they truly are. And some I believe truly are, but how do we know the difference b/t when it is helpful vs. harmful, and isnāt that related to age, or at least some measure of emotional maturity? I have read (on Reddit) in trans forums that even older trans people (who I trust more than myself to be cognizent of the issues involved?) are themselves against allowing literal children to go through that. To clarify, in case I am sounding āconservativeā here myself (dErP), I am talking solely about children here, whatever that cutoff might be, like 15-18 or some such, and the goal is how to help them, not how to tell them what they can or cannot do (maybe the surgery could be allowed but not like federally approved for safety, or worse yet have some label attached to it, like those warnings on cigarettes? Anyway, I donāt mean to go deep into that issue per se, but rather to use it as an exemplar: āHow can we help people?ā, for me, requires some knowledge as to what, exactly, that is.
But ofc I am probably over-thinking it.:-D And yet even in doing so, I am offering my love to society in terms of trying to find that ācorrectā path. Not that I would tell much of anyone, so I donāt even know why really myself, except that it is in me to do so.
Anyway, when the answer seems more simple I just go for it - like I like to tip well, even putting in a dollar when I pick up food where no server is involved so it is not usual, and even if that could be 10-20% of the order cost. Those workers deserve their wages, and I need to be generous and that is one way to help support people who really are needing, wanting, and deserving of it!:-)
Sighā¦ yeah, everything seems to come back to money. Thereās probably a morality/philosophy point in there somehow, like it tends to reflect what we value the most, as a society. Truth isnāt something we really care about, nor children, and for the most part we (the USA I mean) mostly care about healthcare when there are expensive drugs available for purchase, not so much at any other time.:-(
I applaud your efforts to remain open to experiences, possibilities, and loving one another - stay awesome gurl!:-D
I donāt have much time today but I have to touch on the trans children part of your post.
Sorry youāve agonized over that, because it just doesnāt happen. Nobody wants children to have gender reassignment surgeries but that point has been used to attack transgender rights and healthcare over and over again and itās not even a real thing. Nobody is actually getting them because it makes absolutely no sense to do it. You canāt do a surgeries like that on a body that is still growing, it will 100% turn out completely botched. The only surgery that could maybe make any sense on a minor may be the removal of breast tissue on transmasc people but that would only be required IF the child hasnāt been put on puberty blockers in time AND is experiencing major distress because of it. Everything else can wait. Hell, a large number of, if not most, trans people will never even get a single surgery. Hormone Replacement Therapy alone is very often enough and it is completely safe.
If it has happened, it was 100% done by a quack surgeon who needs to have their license removed. Literally nobody is going to argue against that except maybe for bad actors/astroturfers or perhaps actually insane people. Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see, please. You donāt even have to believe me but donāt go repeating that shit because it is extremely harmful.
It absolutely infuriates me because people keep repeating that as if it happens and it is being used to deny trans care to children, which is not surgeries but puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy. Puberty blockers are used to delay puberty in case the patient is not certain about their gender identity and it is 100% reversible. What isnāt reversible is going through the āwrong pubertyā and kids are now being forced to go through that in many states. Not only does going through the wrong puberty actually CREATES the need for more surgeries in the future, it is traumatic. Puberty is already really hard to go through once (Even worse if itās the wrong one), imagine having to do it twice. Iāve done it, would not recommend if it can be avoided. Especially later in life when the mental anguish, mood swings and everything else that comes with going through puberty are really not āacceptable behavioursā anymore because then youāre an adult, you have way more responsibilities on your hands and by then people have forgotten exactly how crazy puberty was so they canāt even relate in any way. It is very alienating.
Also I donāt remember much of what I typed yesterday, I was basically half asleep but I should make it clear that what I meant by helping is only what I need to do and have been doing personally. Itās going to be different for everyone but for me the number one thing to do right now is to try and heal the divide between people on different spectrums and it is something that I actually have some kind of power over. I believe we really ought to stop wasting time and energy on things we have absolutely no power over as individuals and concentrate on getting people back together. Since Iām trans, well, I feel like itās my responsibility now to forget about the divide and to be kind to everyone, even the ones who may not have kind thoughts about me so that we may have a chance to actually talk and find understanding. How are we supposed to tell people how things actually are for us if nobody even listens to us in the first place.
Thatās from my point of view and something that only really applies to trans people as we have been thrust into this position we never wanted to be in, but Iām sure we all have something āsimpleā we can do to start taking baby steps towards regaining our power as people. To me, everything else is counterproductive and only serves to create more divide as we are completely unable to find common ground anywhere. How are we to make big societal and political changes without it getting bloody if we canāt agree on or even discuss the stupidest little things.
The saddest part is that in reality we all want the same thing but āTheyā have us fighting about manufactured issues and differences that donāt actually matter at all.
Thank you for helping put my mind at ease:-). Sadly, I think there are quack doctors, especially in the USA, but as you say the entire issue is so super-charged b/c on the other side you have things like those literally torture camps where they electroshock little children, often leading to their actual death. I think multiple of the latter have been created and directed over by someone who a decade or two later in life came out as gay themselves, and one or perhaps two even killed themselves - i.e. they hated themselves, b/c of their pseudo-religious bullshit treating Christianity not as ālove one anotherā but rather as ādo as I sayā aka Might Equals Right and Conformity Is All. So then hurting the children sprung forth from their own mental illness, but in the process they created a panic among parents who wanted to ābeat out the gayā from their children, who they ended up killing instead:-(.
The parallels between those stories and the anti-vax movement are profound: each relates to ignorance, and each results in a huge risk and often death to the most innocent among us:-(. And THAT is why I keep saying that I am losing hope for democracy: why should ācitizensā have a say, in such INORDINANTLY COMPLEX matters, that require specialist knowledge, especially when there is (often Russian-derived, intentional) misinformation polluting the whole topic?! Except how else could be done - the State (e.g. China) decides, and everyone just has to follow its lead? Which brings us back to: the only solution forward would be to ensure that people receive a basic edumacashiun, so that we are better prepared to deal with such attacks on our system(s), even as we try to move forward into the future. But Christofascists on the one side, and corporate-backed liberals on the other, do seem a daunting pair of adversaries.
Amen, sistah! That is the really odd thing I find about most aspects of life - like āEvangelicalā Christianity in particular, isnāt the goal there to āsaveā people, so then why go extremely out of your way to alienate them, via letās say passing anti-abortion laws? All that on top of the fact that the Bible not only never says that Christians are meant to regulate non-Christians, but in fact it says the polar opposite of that! Christians are to judge āChristiansā - e.g. when a priest diddles a child, THAT is something that should be judged! And also, Christians are specifically never ever to judge ānon-Christiansā, who have been granted freedom to live however they wish. The only grace I can manage to come up with for people who think like that - even though it included me for many of my early years - is that sheeple arenāt known for their ability to perform acts of higher thought. They are vulnerable. As are we all, just differently, is all.:-|
That said, there really is a line there, and that is when you step up to take away the rights of other people - properly warn them, yeah, maybe go so far as to require an extra consent form or some such, but when you actively prevent someone from doing as they please, that generates resentment. How the hell are people supposed to āevangelizeā to someone who has just e.g. been tortured, perhaps to literal death? (successfully anyway) It makes them a hypocrite.
I agree so hard I canāt even throw in a nice phrase here about it, maybe Iāll just say āgulpā. Among well-meaning individuals, we can discuss ANYTHING at all, no matter how difficult, and if thereās something we donāt quite āgetā, we can look it up. Maybe put our money where our mouths are and hire an expert to explain it to us. But we can get it done. However, among people who are not well-meaning, we can discuss NOTHING, b/c every single topic is merely being used as another avenue to preach their belief at someone, not merely virtue-signalling b/c they actually do mean it (sometimes), but still not all the way over to the other side in terms of being actually authentic. They must be quite lonely I imagine, and not comfortable in their own skin/heads, to need to resort to borrowing the actual thoughts of others rather than stare bravely at their own, following wherever they may lead. Take pity on them, but donāt let them be in charge!
It is not my place to tell you what to do, but I do hope that you get a chance to rest before replying to me - as much as I enjoy hearing from you, I want you to be happy even more:-).