welcome to the atrocity archive. this blog is a love letter to those who have come before me—thank you for everything you have taught me. now it’s time to pass on that knowledge.
here you will find posts about my spiritual / religious practice and experiences, my personal opinions on various topics, my devotional artwork, guides on things like divination and ancestor work, book reviews, resource lists, and more. while this blog focuses on subjects relating to indigenous mexican beliefs, folk catholicism, mexican spirituality, herbalism, and traditional medicine, any and all are welcome. all i ask is that you please be mindful of cultural appropriation, and show respect to both me and my teachers.
finally, a huge shout out to my friends who keep me motivated to even try and share these things in this ever chaotic world. in yollotl in omitl!
ABOUT ME
my name is nemiqui (neh-mee-kwee), meaning “to live, to die”. she / it / they. i am both a santa muerte and guadalupe devotee, as well as a bruja and an aspiring curandera. based out of central california with hatred in my heart, my motto is evil and loving it! i've been spreading terror and disgust en mass since 2006—and with your help, i can take that a step further.
CONTACT
you can find me on bearblog or discord at @atrocityarchivist. you can also email me at [email protected]. i welcome all questions about my practice and myself, and am very open to talking further with anyone interested! feel free to reach out at any time. additionally, my asks are always open.
56.1% of indigenous women experience sexual violence
40% of sex trafficking victims are AI/AK native women
i am a survivor. many of my sisters, cousins, and aunts are too. many of them are lost forever, many are still missing. i mourn them every day but especially today.
check in on the indigenous women, girls, and two-spirits in your life. advocate and fight for their safety. today, wear red and show up for them, for us.
fellow survivors i love you and i’m here for you. we aren’t going anywhere
If I learned anything working in dementia/senior care it’s that you really should be sacrificing for your friends and prioritizing companionship over convenience. No matter what, you will die anyway, and someday that may be the only part you remember.
I will not call myself or other people "gooners" or "npcs" or "larpers". i will not call things i dont like "slop". i will not use terms like "-oids". i dont like how common language is slowly becoming more focused on shorthand terms for hate and apathy
Coca leaf reading is a traditional divinatory method of Indigenous healers and spirit intercessors of the Andes. Exclusively orally transmitted within our Nations, such as Aymara, Quechua, Kallawaya, Mochica Nations, among others, it is the most sacred form of divination used by any kind of andean "priesthood". The reader, known as koka watuq or qhawaq (seer) calls on Spirits of Nature to communicate through the leaves, with the Spirit of Kokamama, mother of all Plantkin, as the medium and working partner. For this, we also ask for the permission of all guardians of the pertaining knowledge: protectors of the land, protectors of the inquirer, and many different kinds of ancestral spirits and allies that may be involved in the matter.
The result is a complex divinatory medium that can answer any kind of question, be it matters of the past, present, future, or all at once. It is often used to diagnose and treat spiritual conditions, prescribe solutions, understand lived experiences better, and plan for the future. Payment or compensation for this art is ayni, reciprocity, which traditionally came in the form of other goods and services, but nowadays takes mostly monetary form.
Due to how incredibly difficult it can be, if possible at all, for andean diaspora and other relatives to come across this kind of divination, I am offering it now free of charge for Black, Indigenous relatives and other people of color. My goal, in particular, is to make it accessible for the descendants of andean peoples and all of our relatives, but specially to those who due to migration or forced displacement may have been disconnected from their traditional methods of communication with the unseen, and from access to traditional diviners / workers. It is a service for my community, in deep trust that ayni for this service will find it's way to me through other means.
If you're interested, feel free to send an ask (which may be answered publicly or privately, if specified) or send me a message here or through my Instagram account. My only requirements are that you're an adult (+18), Black, Indigenous, or otherwise a Person of Color, and willing to provide your full name or initials. I reserve the right to turn away a person or question if it is inappropriate, due to content or circumstance, but don't be afraid to message me! In the rare case it happens, I'll let you know if your question needs to be reframed or if it's something we cannot approach at this time and why.
If you reached the end, thank you for reading ♡ I would really appreciate if this is shared to reach those who may benefit from it!
Ethnic Envy: Chapter 1 in a series on Appropriation and Ethnocide in the Witchcraft Community
It is the year of our gods, 2026, and still to this day the modern witchcraft community - though very loud about the subject - relies largely on lists of closed practices, regurgitated factoids, and hardcore policing in order to keep cultural appropriation in check. Why, in a community overwhelmingly dominated by progressives and leftists, is the fight against appropriation ever-raging? To answer this, we will explore the underlying mechanics of appropriation, and uncover a sinister aspect of the history of modern witchcraft.
Culture and Commodity: Understanding Appropriation
Most of us are content to blame racism for the prevalence of appropriation in our midst. And we should by no means downplay its significance in this matter; its existence is one of the reasons cultural appropriation is so dangerous. Racially motivated cultural appropriation perpetuates stereotypes and instils hate and misunderstanding - blackface is the prime example. But, if most appropriation that happened was explicitly racially motivated, there would not nearly be as much appropriation as we see. After all, wearing feather headdresses or sexy qipao halloween costumes has been thoroughly cracked down upon in comparison to the appropriation we still see. It's simply not that acceptable anymore. Most appropriation that occurs isn't explicitly racially motivated, or indeed, motivated at all. From what we see among our peers, most cultural appropriation is accidental, unintentional. So how does that happen?
Turns out, there is a fouler enemy using racism to deflect blame. In her essay, Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance, bell hooks famously wrote:
Within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgment and enjoyment of racial difference. The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.
What I would like to draw special attention to here is this phrase: the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.
Most of us know white supremacy as the explicit belief that white people are better than other races, based in the idea that "races" exist at all (racial theory). But in reality, it goes quite a lot deeper than that. WS has created, and aims to perpetuate, a worldwide social system that regards whiteness as the 'default', and racial features as deviating from that default. This is the 'Otherness' Hooks describes in the above quote. This system is so thoroughly integrated into every aspect of our world, that nobody is free from this bias. You, reader, and me, and everybody we both know, have been conditioned from birth to be able to perceive whiteness, assess it, assimilate into it, and view it as the default way of existing. In order to accomplish this, white supremacy aims to destroy the existing cultures that various white peoples have, to homogenize them under the banner of 'white'. This is why so many white people truly believe that white people have no culture, and also why every time someone says that you should loudly protest.
But keen readers may think back to instances where white supremacists have stolen aspects of certain "white" cultures to justify their actions, like for example the fake Germanic spirituality of historic and contemporary Nazis. And if that was you, I applaud you! You have discovered exactly how this relates to the modern spiritual community.
Desire and Resistance: the History of Modern Witchcraft
What we now know as the modern pagan or witchy community was built on the back of the very first community who were willing to call themselves pagans and witches: Wiccans. I have a longer form post detailing the origins of Wicca and its contribution to white supremacy, but in short, here is what you need to know.
Wicca was created in the 1950s by a con artist named Gerald Gardner. He based this new religion partially off of things he learned from various Western Esotericist groups, and partially off of the pseudoscientific Witch-cult hypothesis. This hypothesis claimed that, rather than it being already marginalized groups who were being persecuted during the European witch trials, it was actually a pan-European pagan religion oriented around fertility magic that had gone underground. Gardner claimed to have met some modern descendants and practitioners of this witch-cult religion, and to have been initiated into their tradition, which he called The Wica. This new movement was supposed to be an ancient, traditionally European religion. Later evolutions of Wicca furthered this agenda, using the Lord/Lady model as a soft-polytheistic way to combine all European paganisms into one, ready-made religion. Homogenization, anyone?
At the time of its creation, Wicca was an almost direct result of the growing resentment toward industrialism and Christianity in colonial Britain. The Victorians yearned for a deviation from what they perceived as the boring, straight-laced Christian culture, their default-ness, their bland means of existing. They craved indigeneity, ethnicity, the perceived 'ancient wisdom' of a fake pagan past - so they sought it by using culture, real or imagined, as a tool for personal satisfaction. And that sense of need, along with the commodification that it causes, has persisted into the modern day. It got more severe in with the advent of the counter-culture movements in the 60s and 70s, which is where we can trace some of the appropriation of Native American spirituality that we can still see today. And then came the internet, and what was originally a fairly structured community of Wiccan and New Age practitioners unintentionally started to mix and mistake ideas and ideologies, as well as import new ones. Today, the modern community of spiritual practitioners is deeply diverse, but conventional witchcraft maintains most of its core features from those early days. Indeed, the very act of calling yourself a witch at all, comes from Wicca. But more importantly, what was once a fringe new-religious movement has turned into one of the west's leading expressions of spirituality. Why? Because the desire for ethnicity has not faded, but only gotten stronger.
So thus armed with information, we return to bell hooks. "Mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgment and enjoyment of racial difference." Mass culture, in this context, is conventional witchcraft. Uncomfortable as it is for us to admit, over the last decades but especially since COVID, "witchcraft" has become a trend. The desire Hooks describes made this ready-made religion an easy way to deviate from the white mainstream, and a lack of resistance meant that those perpetuating this cycle couldn't and wouldn't be held accountable. The process of adopting magic into the mainstream could thus be boosted by extreme commodification, like the new idea that 'intention is everything', or the notion of 'universal substitutes', as well as quick and easy identity labels. All designed to make it as easy to swallow, practice, and make part of your identity as possible.
By being a "witch," by buying into the habit of setting yourself apart as those among the oppressed, the unconventional, the ancient or subversively traditional, one is acknowledging and enjoying the pleasure of racial difference, and perpetuating that idea. The desire to be a witch at all, is the desire to be racial. The desire to shed whiteness and embrace ethnicity. The desire to use Otherness as a spice, to season the dull dish that is what people perceive to be mainstream white culture.
And that is where we find the heart of appropriation in contemporary spiritual spaces. The appropriation we see is not that which is driven by hate or contempt, but ethnic envy. The compulsive draw towards all that which appears, to many, to deviate from what they perceive to be plain whiteness. Modern, conventional witchcraft, is often nothing but the perpetuation of a long-lived imperial tradition of cultural consumption, exoticization, and commodification that finds its roots in white supremacy. The appropriation that we see is not meant to mock, but to use culture and defiance as an escapist tool to satisfy a personal malcontent with the entrapment of a post-industrial, post-colonial world. White people's sense of self, sense of own, inherent culture, has been whipped to shreds by the vice of Christian imperialism and white supremacy. All that is left now for them is to take indigeneity from others and wear it as a costume. Right?
Race, Racialization, and the Cycle of Consumption
Wrong. Perhaps the most dangerous misconception of all, in this discussion, is that cultural appropriation only affects non-white people. It is that implicit notion - that white people have no culture, and therefore cannot be appropriated from, or alternatively that white people do not deserve their cultures to be preserved and therefore cannot be appropriated from - that has allowed this harm and envy to live so long in the first place. Appropriation itself has been racialized, perpetuating the cycle of desperate envy directed at anyone perceived as ethnic. It is no longer just racist ideals of mystique, freedom, and exoticism contained in indigeneity, it is also the fervent envy of the associated sense of home and its protection.
In actuality, the appropriation of various "white" cultures is a massive contributor to the problem. Wicca itself is the main perpetrator in our modern community, it's a case in point when it comes to homogenization. It viciously appropriated from various European (and non-European) cultures, misrepresenting them and stripping them of their identity, to create a false narrative of universal European indigeneity for people to subscribe to. It popularized this idea that European pagan religions are all more or less the same, that you can mix and match deities from various cultures and countries and worship them all the same according to a basic religious framework. It strips these cultures of their identity, their differences, their own inherent ethnicity - instead turning them into an easily commodified identity label. It thus turns the wheel of the cycle: Wicca itself became just another 'white people thing', a bland, mainstream piece of white culture that lacked seasoning and interest. We are seeing the effects currently: Wicca has fallen out of fashion, nobody is willing to self-identify as a Wiccan anymore, instead opting for such things as 'eclectic pagan' which in everything but name is the same thing.
The same thing will eventually happen to eclectic paganism, to witchcraft, to 'paganism' in general, and on and on it will go. The snake will continue to slowly devour its way up its tail for as long as we allow it to. Until we start cracking down on real, actual appropriation and homogenization hard, including when it happens to cultures you deem less ethnic, these "white" cultures will continue to phase out of the limelight as they lose their flavoring and are assimilated into mainstream, white supremacist culture - necessitating replacements, necessitating absorbing more cultures into the mainstream. Anything so the consumption at mach speed can continue.
Knowing that exoticism and the desire to participate in it is often a driving factor in people's unconscious motivation when it comes to magic and spirituality, explains why people keep unintentionally finding new ways to appropriate. Understanding that commodification is how this habit is perpetuated, explains why we want to simplify matters of appropriation down to false dichotomies like "closed" and "open" practices. It's all about how to maintain the appearance of cultural sensitivity, while taking the path of absolute least resistance. Symbolic change is easier than real ones. Staring at a list is easier than considering your personal motives.
Per bell hooks again:
Certainly from the standpoint of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the hope is that desires for the “primitive” or fantasies about the Other can be continually exploited, and that such exploitation will occur in a manner that reinscribes and maintains the status quo.
False Hopes and Good Intentions
I certainly appreciate and acknowledge that people in the community have the very best of intentions. They truly believe, in most cases, that the approach they are taking by heeding lists of "closed practices" and policing other people is how they help, and that accidentally appropriating is all but par for the course when it comes to practicing magic. But we are not fighting an invisible enemy. Like many marginalized communities whose cultures are frequently appropriated have been saying for at least a decade now: "I didn't know" doesn't cut it anymore.
Our community is built on appropriation. Indeed it could be said that our entire community is fundamentally appropriative. Our founding fathers, as well as the very foundations our basic principles and common beliefs rest on, exist because of the appropriation of suffering that was never ours to claim, and cultures that we could not possibly belong to - either because they never existed, or because they did... only a thousand or more years ago. Our community is not about expressing a kind of spirituality that those who join already felt prior to their discovery of the community. If that were the case, theology, cosmology, philosophy and actual real life practice would take center stage. Magic is a trend, religion a token for identity politics. It is for that reason that people struggle to maintain a practice, that people fight for their lives to feel a connection to their supposed beliefs, that people spend more money on books by other practitioners than minutes considering the beliefs of those whose cultures they are invading into. And, indeed, it is for that reason that we simply can't help ourselves when it comes to appropriation.
We are constantly drawn to that which looks exotic to us, because all sense of novelty and individualism has been stripped from "white" cultures. To actually practice paganism, rather than a hyper-individualistic appropriation of it, you have to read archaeology books, historic accounts of folklore, ethnobotany. But nobody does that - including those who write the infotainment books geared toward practitioners. Instead, we appropriate from cultures we perceive as exotic, and when caught, we reframe our appropriations. They're not "chakras," they're energy centers. It's not "smudging," it's saining. Nevermind that "energy" as a modern concept is borrowed from Theosophy, which has its own racist and appropriative roots, and saining is a culturally distinct practice unique to Scotland - but that doesn't matter, because they're white people things. Or to take the example of masked appropriation even further: we may have started mocking the "we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn" nonsense, but the victim complex never left our midst: the "broom closet" as a way to co-opt the suffering of queer people who get no choice in their identity, when the physical expression of individualistic spirituality is absolutely a choice; the undying lie that pagans and witches are a monolith severely oppressed under Christianity, when in reality pagans and witches everywhere are not just free from systemic oppression, but actively contributing to it.
Some grow so hopeless with the entire notion of needing to respect culture that they reject culture altogether, or at least they think they do. Some take the route of trying to create their own traditions altogether, with no pre-established framework to operate off of. They are not free from the draw toward exoticism, quite the contrary: they are more likely to end up appropriating by cherrypicking features of spirituality they see others practice or from their foggy memory. Others attempt to combat appropriation by engaging in homogenization and sanitization. They strip their practice of words that have meaning altogether, thinking that just because they call it a "smoke cleanse" or "deity work" it cannot be cultural and thus cannot be appropriation. They live their lives woefully unaware of the fact that everything people do exists within the sphere of culture.
The point of all of these examples being: good intentions aren't good enough. We may not be able to undo the damage done by the commodification of ancient and indigenous spirituality, but we can shift the tides of social expectation and accountability. It is time to stop mistaking tolerance for progress, and by that token, it is time to stop tolerating the commodification of spirituality. It may have become one, but it should not be a trend. It should not be a way to soothe one's white guilt.
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In the next chapters in this series, I aim to discuss more ways the community perpetuates appropriation, cultural imperialism and racism, such as the closed/open culture dichotomy and other disinformation, as well as how to decolonize your own practice and motivations, how to recognize appropriation and combat it, and the value and role of culture in our lives and our community. When those parts are completed, they will be linked here, as well as in each individual chapter, and eventually a masterpost. I hope to see you in the next one.
Further Reading:
Climenhaga, L. (2012). Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages.
“The Dehumanization and Demonization of the Medieval Jews.” Medieval Antisemitism?, by François Soyer, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds, 2019, pp. 45–66.
Simpson, Jacqueline (1994). Margaret Murray: Who Believed Her, and Why? Folklore, 105:1-2: 89-96.
Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation Into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Capall Bann.
“From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualisation of Cultural Appropriation”. Communication Theory. Richard A. Rogers.
“Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality” Lisa Aldred.
i so often see people say that they have no need for ancestor work within their practice, or that their ancestor work is exclusive to far off ancestors. these statements often come from white practitioners, who dislike the idea of engaging in ancestor work either as a whole, or recent ancestors over fear of those in their family who are historically an oppressive group of people which utilized this to harm others.
ancestor work is not synonymous with ancestor veneration. so much of it is personally working through your families history, to understand your families history. ignoring a big part of that is doing a disservice to both your understanding of your practice as it relates to you as a descendant, and as your ability to be an ally to marginalized people. ancestor work involves unpacking generational trauma, which yes, is passed down in white families even if you had systemic power.
do not be scared to confront and unpack those parts of your families history. to operate within an ancestral practice you must, to be a good ally to others you must, to build a better understanding of your relationship with the world, with the land, you must.
by no means must one venerate ancestors, or even talk to them at all, but to ignore a massive part of your family just because they are bad people (or you fear they are) puts a block in the importance of self understanding which is so important within practice
sometimes I really get particularly irritated by the paranormal "hype" around Appalachia, especially the claim that the land itself is somehow spiritually more dangerous or the implication that magic and spirits from there are more potent. it just feels like repackaged racism and classism all over again. yes, yes, tell me more about how the region famously inhabited by poor people, small-scale farmers and African Americans is sooooo mysterious and dark and powerful and inhabited by dangerous spirits. it doesn't at all sound like... 19th century colonial propaganda about black people and the wrong kind of christians, or anything. just because you think you're saying it with a tone of admiration doesn't mean it's not fucking racist. it's still othering, and for that matter so is your weird glorification of hoodoo and vodou practitioners. confront your internalized racism even when you think it's flattering. fetishization takes away power, it doesn't give it
having institutional access never stops feeling sort of crazy to me because you can literally type in any country and time period and find at least a handful of peer reviewed articles somewhere that discuss a specific aspect of people's lives in depth and at length like "what was considered pop culture in late imperial russia" or "how did the textile trade work in northern mali in the 1600s" or "children's toys in pre-colonial philippines" and it's just sitting there but the majority of people on planet earth aren't allowed to read any of it
I truly do believe that science is not and should not be the enemy of religion. However, I also do not feel like I should always have a scientific explanation for my magic.
Some of the best parts of belief, and experience, is in the belief itself.
A lot of cultures are "open". A lot of traditions are "open". But that does not mean you are welcome there.
Your actions and how you conduct yourself are what make you "welcome" in a tradition. Acting like you can do whatever you want to someone else's home is not what makes you welcome. That makes you an appropriator. A coloniser.
And this is a mistake that many people who are "pagan" make. They just take and they do not ask.
They walk into someone else's open door without asking "What are the rules? Would you like for me to take off my shoes here? What is sacred so I do not disturb it?"
Your mindfulness to learn from an open door is what makes you welcome. Not what you can just take. It's not an invitation for people to be robbed from. Open traditions are doors for you to learn a people and their beliefs. Not to steal to suit your personal agenda.
I'm such a vicious hater of this whole binary notion of "open" and "closed" practices for this reason. Black and white performative leftism truly strikes again. Appropriation is so much more complex than "this I can have and this I can't have," and it is that exact mindset among neopagans and witches that makes it so that appropriation still runs rampant, of open and closed cultures. EVERYTHING in spirituality exists within the context of cultural heritage, within the context of it meaning something to an identity that makes a certain group who they are. There is no practice that you can just take elements from without involving yourself in that culture. There is no practice that you can just take elements from without needing to involve yourself in that culture.
You are not a good anti-colonialist if your approach to deciding what to involve yourself in and how to approach it essentially begins and ends at asking if you can have a hall pass to access that thing.
Witches need to stop using death for social clout.
witches need to stop pretending that death isn't a part of everyone's daily life.
witches need to stop pretending that most of the world doesn't experience far MORE death in their day to day life than witches in the global west.
witches need to stop going around and calling themselves "psychopomps" and "death witches" because they saw a dead body once or twice or have been told they're wise by grieving people or because they stop to pout over roadkill.
witches need to stop using people's and animals' and things' deaths as reasons that they are somehow magically set apart from the rest of practitioners.
witches need to stop claiming that they have a special relationship with death like we do not all have our own complex relationships with mortality and morbidity.
witches who think they have a special relationship with death need to stop profiting off those claims and start working hard to prevent more needless death.
witches need to stop claiming to be "surrounded" or "followed" by death when they live in first world countries and still, clearly, think of death as dark and shocking and taboo.
witches who socially profit off other people's deaths need to start donating to people in need and people who are dying.
witches need to learn when it's time to shut up and be silent about an aspect of their practice to preserve the sacredness of it.
witches need to stop mistaking performing burial rites or envisioning the transition between life and death for being a psychopomp.
witches need to stop contributing to the stigmatization of death while personally profiting off of it and getting clout because they pain't themselves as special.
witches need to stop pretending that "death magic" is somehow more powerful than other magic.
witches need to stop pretending magic isn't inherently related to death even if you don't call yourself a "death witch."
witches need to stop treating death like some arcane, untouchable, unfathomable, distant thing.
witches need to stop treating death as taboo, mysterious, dangerous, and more powerful than other forces.
witches need to accept that "death magic" isn't as dangerous as they make it out to be to look more powerful.
witches need to start acknowledging ALL death including those they cause, like the ones caused by their taxes, like the ones killed for their food, like the ones killed for their clothes.
witches need to acknowledge that ALL things die, not just animals, and consider what that means.
witches need to start acknowledging that not every death or dead thing they see is in need of their help somehow.
witches need to stop treating "death magic" as a badge of special honor.
witches who claim special relationships with death need to accept the value and necessity of lives of others and their own.
witches who claim special relationships with death need to accept that sometimes killing is necessary and consider the ethics of that deeply.
witches need to start giving a fuck about the living.
one thing I particularly dislike about the internet community at large but equally the spiritual community within it, is the constant, ritualized, extreme exclusion of minors. it is very difficult to find social media profiles run by adults that don't condemn, exclude, or outright DNI minors in some capacity. it's weird and it shouldn't be necessary. do you behave in a way that warrants you never wanting to be seen privately communicating with a minor? do you believe all minors are evil or have plans to accuse you of grooming? do you find all minors categorically insufferable and don't want to be anywhere near them? if this is imposed on you by other people, why do you surround yourself with people who audit you on your interactions with children? at best it's weird and cruel, at worst it's creepy, and reads as an admission of guilt before ever you did anything.
this isn't to say you can't want adult-only spaces. I run an 18+ community because I want to be able to safely discuss adult matters without impressionable people around, and because I want adult-oriented discussions at at least a college-education level. but I feel no need to completely shield myself from every minor on the internet like that, and neither should other people. children are not the enemy. children already suffer more nowadays than they maybe ever have before. they are not welcomed anywhere, they are not wanted anywhere, they are left to their digital echo chambers completely away from and condemned by all the adults they are supposed to be sharing communities with. they are surrounded by people discussing the lack of hope for their future, but not welcomed into these discussions nor are their voices ever heard on the subject. can you imagine how much being a kid under 18 in this day and age must suck shit?
children and adolescents NEED to be exposed to and surrounded by adults. they need people to look up to, adult examples to follow, adult discussions to learn from and mold their brains to, and indeed even exposure to things they shouldn't yet be personally engaging with, so they know what to expect from life once adult responsibilities and opportunities hit.
and yes, being around kids of any age can be hard. they can be a pain in the ass, they can be mean or gross or annoying, it can be deeply confronting or worrying, and it is just exhausting. but we owe it to the next generation(s), on a moral level, to not just leave them unmoored and unwanted floating somewhere in the ether. if you hate kids, or don't trust them, or can't stand to be around them, or don't want to be seen near them, i implore you to question why the hell that is. part of the reason why children are so difficult to be around nowadays is because this arbitrary, constructed binary of child-adult has given adults in the global west the opportunity to completely abandon children. we left them to their own devices, excluded them from every discussion and situation we have where we hold each other to standards of decency and improvement, and them acted surprised when children at large became maladapted little jerks.
instead of treating minors as a monolith you have to fear, condemn, or push away, start treating them as people like they are. judge them on a case-by-case basis, like a normal human being. judge them based on their actions, like you would anyone else. hold them to the same standards you hold other adults to, engage in conversation with them like you think of them as people capable of meeting you where you're at, because they are. liberate yourself from delusional stereotyping and dehumanizing of children and start putting some goddamn effort into the future of our planet. leftism and liberation includes them. it should prioritize them. they will be the ones furthering our work.
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