The final way is within you.

Genderqueer Trans Femme; Buddhist; anarchist. I like to journal, make visual art and music, and books [which I'm trying to post about more]. Utterly unremarkable person, really.

[killapunk]

is tesco feeling ok 

[daggers-drawn]

This is like a lazily rendered level from a ps1 game.

[heehoo-snek]

every hoohoohahah hahahoo

[modbox]

and every time we kiss I swear I could fly

[byjove]

no piece of teen media has ever accurately depicted the quiet psychological warfare of bullying. bullies on TV are always dumb brutes and not the evil geniuses of emotional manipulation that they are in real life. being given a wedgie and having your lunch money stolen is nothing in comparison to a classmate quietly creating a taboo against speaking to you that they intend to enforce against all the other kids. it’s nothing like continuous cutting comments from people you thought were being nice to you. that way that the work of one kid can make you feel like every person on earth silently hates you and that you are dirty, disgusting, worthless, creepy and useless. that you can have friends but many of them will not speak to you at school for fear of the social consequences on their end. how that damage lasts in any social setting for the rest of your life

[byjove]

you can’t even “tell a trusted adult” because you cannot begin to articulate the thousands of small transgressions you’ve experienced building to the horror of knowing your peers would like you dead. they don’t have to say it or hurt you physically. they have other ways of letting you know they’d prefer if you were worn fuel

[fierycavalier]

[catholickedd]

the worst part is kindness as cruelty - the saying hi, the asking about your day, just talking to you and the joke is that anyone would ever want to talk to you and be interested in your life. it’s sickening and dehumanizing.

[pulpchamber]

It's wild that Buddhism is even classed as a religion in the Western view, then frantically hedged with the truth that it's religious for religious Buddhists, when the Buddha himself is recorded as having really gone out of his way to say essentially: can't tell ya, not relevant to my teachings, all I can say is if Gods are beings they're also subject to samsara.

The Dharma, at least as I read it, neither elevates nor denies any religious belief. So religious and secular Buddhists are both in aren't-but-can relationships with the possibility of becoming dogmatic and causing harm. Secular AND religious Buddhists justify departing from aspects of the Dhamma based on their dominant set of beliefs - there are still

It's still a half-formed idea for me, but I think it's odd that Buddhism in America has a LOT more presence and influence as a tool of secular humanists who *really* don't care about the whole dharma, namely the ethical and social implications. Christian theologians, ministers, ethicists, activists, and philosophers who happened to be Christians, have been profoundly influenced by contact with the Dharma. It's extremely recent compared to the age of Buddhism's synthesis into religion Asia or ancient Eurasia, but Western theological and ethical thought is shot through with Buddhist ideas that often go unacknowledged because colonizers treat all non-Western things, however valuable, as junk they found on the ground somewhere and got from nobody. Thomas Merton, Walter Brueggman, multiple Popes at this point ffs, have all read and studied at least some Dhamma in the development of their theological thinking. Drives me up a wall how often that gets wholesale ignored by people who think their first prerogative is being an asshole to Christians instead of directly targeting and distinguishing the Christofascists as the problem.

[innerchildabortionclinic]

the obsession with avoiding spoilers (to an UNREASONABLE extent) pisses me off so much. if somethings been out for years you Cannot be complaining about spoilers

[pulpchamber]

To me it's the implication that plot [and if we're being honest: participatory fandom] gets implicitly valued over close reading a lot. I habitually don't watch new TV or read super hyped up books, usually kinda waiting UNTIL I have sufficient spoilers to have strong indicators that it will be worth reading closely -- I also recently started keeping lists of things that friends recommend me, because it's so alien to me that I would just take someone's word for it about any piece of fiction. I spent long enough studying English lit in college to know even [hell, especially] professors and experts often communicate TERRIBLY about the actual relevant factors to what a text/story is actually gonna feel like when I read it. The publishing/TV industries and hype machine around them is perhaps the worst segment of all at this, because those organs will intentionally miscommunicate to absurd, devilish degrees.

So there's always this vague conflict for me around not wanting to be rude to people, but also thinking it's legitimately daft and anti-intellectual that we, like...expect everyone to behave in a way that functionally precludes close readings of media unless it gets a rabid fan base who strongly resist the flow of new releases. The only possible forms of commentary become culture war hit pieces and lore videos to fall asleep to.

[xenosagaepisodeone]

right wing handwringing over birth rates has always unsubtly been a combination of wanting more white babies/wanting control over women, so it's bothersome that the popular response to that is just pointing out the cost of living. "we Would be having more kids if you guys made some positive changes to society" and such. pronatalist sentiment is becoming so much more explicit that I don't think many self-styled progressives are ready to reconcile with the fact that many women simply do not want to have children. we already see how women are demonized for refusing to undertake the thankless burdens of their mother and grandmother's generations lol, I can't imagine how full abdication from child rearing will come across to some people.

I can't even see "we Would be having kids" as a strategic approach to get conservatives to consider advocating for a higher quality of life considering that they truly could not care less if you, specifically, are poor. it's true that more couples would have kids if it was cheaper, but that will not be enough for these types until women's subservience is codified. even now, they consider the lack of child rearing in today's insane society to be a matter of selfishness. they view themselves as completely different animals than you. they have and will continue to advocate for more advantages for people of their specific backgrounds and income brackets to reinforce this lol.

[communistkenobi]

I think this rhetoric also ignores that the right wing want the inverse for Black and brown people - this logic of “raise living standards and we’ll have more kids” is a white perspective that ignores white supremacist medical violence, forced abortions, forced sterilisation, mass deportations, mass incarceration, police murder, imperial aggression, and forced removal of children from families as institutional programs of population control (Canadian residential schools, for example, were built for this exact purpose).

Increasing white birth rates is only one half of the equation for the right wing, and this raising-living-standards rhetoric fails to address this completely. Even in the outlandish scenario where the right wing accepts this logic and institutes robust welfare programs, do people think the state will offer these things to black, brown, and indigenous people? In any scenario where this happens it would just be Aryan UBI

[luxcanaryfox]

See, this has been bothering me kinda the whole time. Yes, people will be more likely to have kids if social conditions improve, but i think that many women, and people in general, are simply deeply considering the overall seriousness of parenthood. I was diagnised with ovarian failure at 19, and was promptly advised to have my eggs harvested and preserved before i lose them all. But i declined, because even then, i knew i had no intention to be a parent. I already have so many hobbies that i live for; and i have a pretty low social bandwidth already, and a child- especially a young one- requires almost non-stop attention. I know that i would be extremely distressed to be forced to put a hold on everything i love and know, even if only until the kid goes to school, and have my life upturned so i can raise and keep alive a tiny human that is totally dependent on me. I do not tolerate poor sleep, or interruptions to my routine and alone time, or the thought of having my body change due to pregnancy and childbirth. I can absolutely see myself quickly developing post-partum depression or even psychosis, potentially putting myself and/or the baby in danger. I am of the opinion that you should not have a child just because your family or society at large expects it; do it because you truly want to, because you want to see your child grow and thrive into their own person, and will love them unconditionally.

Some politicians in my state just lobbied to restrict abortion access. They thankfully failed, but it was still deeply unnerving, and makes me more grateful for my ovarian failure.

Meanwhile, as was pointed out, black and non white women are still often experiencing poor maternal care, discrimination and lack of support.

Nobody should be pregnant if they don't want to be. And those who do want to be pregnant deserve all the support in the world, so they have the chance be the best parent they can be whilst continuing to do whatever else they love.

Yes, a better economy might encourage more young couples to start families. But let's not disregard the fact that many people just don't want to be parents, and that should be completely fine and allowed.

[pulpchamber]

I think it also really matters to emphasize that this conundrum is why humanism and social justice are absolutely vital to humanity's future. Because when society tells you that you should have kids, and should want to for personal reasons, it is objectively wrong. Ecologically speaking, birth rates need to fall -- but also, and more importantly, that CANNOT happen without the defeat of virtually all distinctions of race, caste, nationality, disability, etc. etc.: the world is set up in the absolute WORST way, culturally and economically, to make the smartest possible choice for our descendants without that being hijacked and sabotaged by people who instead want to do genocides and develop technics of totalitarian biopower.

Eliminating all forms of hierarchy without ceding ground to those who want to simply re-name hierarchical thinking; developing a robust Humanist Universalism that might lead us to reject an economy of mass murder in favor of a care economy -- those will decide whether our ancestors have lives of backbreaking labor and violence out in space somewhere, basically a dull, listless version of Warhammer 40K, or change how we organize our labor to care for our worn out, injured planet and family. The old hat argument that Malthus was wrong because technology will help us find better uses for resources and produce to meet demand? Yeah... honestly kinda sounds like an argument for the Warhammer 40K future to me.

In the long term and the big picture, we NEED to be reorienting basically all of society around care and personal dignity, thinking far enough ahead that we seriously try to imagine how future generations will live, and take it seriously that anything less than a strong culture of universal dignity, and a total abolition of existing exploitation and violence....will inevitably crash that whole thing into the wall.

[fuj0sheep]

(shaking my head) no no no this wont do at all

[cryptotheism]

Labor theory of value stipulates that a cursed object must be worth more than the same non-cursed item.

[handweavers]

people like the idea that there is an identity they can claim that will absolve them of the responsibility to examine their beliefs and actions and adjust them accordingly to better align with their values and desired outcomes but there isn't, we all have to practice humility and do the work regardless

[bluesky-out-of-context]

[codex-entry]

This is what every other article in Of The Devil reads like.

[the-haiku-bot]

This is what every

other article in Of

The Devil reads like.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[cowboyhatesithere]

250 years and most native tribal groups continue to not be federally recognized. Embarrassing!

[cowboyhatesithere]

Hey so a small thing that literally everyone who sees this is capable of is correcting any “used to” statements about native people in this country.

“Native people used to live in this National Park” No. They still do.

“Native people used to tell these stories-” No. They still do.

“Native people used to use this plant as a natural remedy-” No. They still do.

Better yet, familiarize yourself with the tribes local to you. Odds are, they do not yet have federal recognition. You can still read the stories they have to share, you can share their ongoing battle for recognition with others, you can sign petitions and spread the word to others to do so as well. But do something.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Just a reminder that the Chinook Indian Nation was one of the very few tribes to be recognized and then have that recognition rescinded. They've been fighting to regain recognition ever since, and you can find out more about how to help them no matter where you are at ChinookJustice.org.

[the-habitat-ring]

70+ tribes have lost their federal recognition since the 1800s for various reasons that mostly boil down to treaties and policies that prioritized termination of tribes and “integration into American society.” Many tribes are also unrecognized as separate from a larger tribe, meaning they can access benefits by enrolling in the recognized tribe but by doing so weaken the chance of their own tribe ever gaining recognition because the government only recognizes one tribal affiliation per person (also screwing over the many people with ancestors in multiple tribes). And since they have no support, they struggle to continue as a community to practice their traditions and consistent community, which is a (hard to prove) requirement for regaining that recognition

Find and learn about the people near you. My closest tribe is one of those that lost their federal recognition thanks to legal nonsense. I regularly hear people around here calling them “pretendians” while at the same time they’re barred from many activities like educating others at schools and public events due to their lack of recognition. Yeah, there are people out there faking things, but there are also many people who have been fighting for recognition for decades, and with a little looking and listening it’s not hard to learn the difference

[oneheadtoanother]

[cheese-wiz-for-bones]

Rewatching Criminal Minds reminds you that it was the demonize any illness the writers hear about show. Disorders such as ASPD and BPD were the major ones, mostly because society already demonized them to that extent, but the show really found a way to write a story to get the general public to also fear people with Trichotillomania, there was an episode where it was a just a guy with self harm addiction, they then hit it out of the ballpark when they made a killer out of a woman with PCOS. It really just was a "fear your neighbor" kind of show.

[pulpchamber]

It's deeply regressive that people seem to perceive artists as a class based on the fact that they do art -- a fairly universal human activity that a lot more people would do without existing labor systems making it a vocation of privilege -- rather than the stochastic secondary effects of, like...us being overwhelmingly more likely to SEE art from affluent and privileged people who have extremely weird perspectives because they had the privilege to do and publish their art.

[sofuton]

[pulpchamber]

John Darnielle becomes a lot less impressive when you're aware that The Mountain Goats formula for success is basically just making very apolitical folk punk. Just sorta gesture at radical themes through literary portraiture: NPR loves that shit; you'll do very well in life if you're an ok writer. Like...sure, it's deep writing, but sometimes depth is for hiding shit that could be the starting point for a deeper thematic treatment, but instead has to live in the interminable chasm between personal interpretation and collective social change.

[pulpchamber]

Defiance, Ohio wrote a song about this:

https://youtu.be/It9gqDQNX6s?is=pG54x2Ctfw_mJoBQ

[auramgold]

a lot of people assume psychosis hallucinations are super intense all-consuming horror movie shit like the memes about the hat man or always horrible debilitating things that make you dangerous to be around

but in my experience 95% of my hallucinations are getting spooked by very clearly hearing someone knocking on my door or calling my name from another room or hearing footsteps walking behind me which are "just" my brain recreating the horror of an abusive childhood

i *have* gotten the "bugs crawling all over me" hallucination once or twice though and yeah that one is exactly as terrible horrible as it sounds AUGH

[auramgold]

(not trying to put you on blast specifically, you're just a good example to jump off of)

media and pop culture hypes up psychosis a lot as The Worst That Can Happen out of sanism, so even when you try and filter that cultural bias out you still assume it's based on something

when, no, psychosis is actually very simple: it's just hyperactive pattern matching. it's your brain's signal-to-noise ratio being off balance, it's seeing images in random static. it's not always this special uniquely big thing, it's in fact quite mundane a lot of the time.

no one is immune to psychosis, it's not purely the realm of the insane. anyone is one bad night of sleep or one bad case of food poisoning or one bad fever away from being just like me on my worst days.

and this, indeed, is why solidarity with the insane is so important: you, yes you too, are just one bad day from joining us, and no perceptions of being a "temporarily embarrassed sane person" will save you from the oppression of the psychiatric institution.

[celtib]

a ‘hot minute’ can be both a very short period of time, and a very long one. however, a hot minute in the past (“It's been a hot minute since I've seen you!”) is most often a long duration, while a hot minute in the future (“I'll be with you in a hot minute!”) is most often a short duration. this suggests some very strange things about the temperature of time.