Squirtl The Squirtle

any/all | mid 20s | exvangelical | atheist | unitarian universalist | actually autistic

[squirtlthesquirtle]

One thing that people that have never been poor don't understand is that escaping poverty takes more than simply getting a new job. I'm a gig worker and just landed a sweet $40-$60/hr gig with a software company, but the pay is weekly and I've been living on daily cashouts for years. A paycheck next week doesn't buy me groceries today. I have to keep doing doordash/instacart for significantly less money until I have enough saved up to survive a week without income. What if this was a standard office job with regular hours? I wouldn't be able to take it because I would starve before my first paycheck. Poverty isn't just from lack of opportunity, it's also from lack of a safety net.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

You can’t Abstain your way to a Better World.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

The Burger still gets made, even if you go Vegan. If you don’t buy it, it just winds up in the trash. If you want to do something meaningful about waste, you need legislation: It must become a crime to waste food in those ways.

If you care about Animal Cruelty in Factory Farms, you need to get legislation passed. It must become a crime to mistreat animals in those ways, and when malfeasances occurs, the onus of responsibility for those crimes must fall upon wealthy shoulders. That, also, requires legislation. It requires regulations, and regulators.

The largest source of Microplastics is wear and tear on automobile tires. It doesn’t matter what brand of shampoo you buy. It doesn’t matter which company you support with your dollar. The issue of Public Transit is too large-scale to be handled at anything less than the municipal level.

It’s not enough to just not participate in society

If you want the world to Change, you must leverage the mechanisms of political power.

You need Government.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

STOP PROPOSING INDIVIDUAL SOLUTIONS TO COLLECTIVE PROBLEMS

[squirtlthesquirtle]

Whenever I see an unreasonably hot take on here I assume the OP is 14 and move on. Fourteen is the age when you're just barely mature enough neurologically to understand adult problems but lack the education and life experience to prioritize and respond to them. I get it; I was a 14 year old on Tumblr once too.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

If you're comfortable accusing anyone of faking disability, you're not a real ally to disabled people

[teaboot]

One time when I was a kid a group of girls and I had to treat another student for hypothermia by ourselves because she had so many invisible health issues that the adults we asked for help didn't believe us. The student in question was actively hallucinating. When I finally ran for help the people I grabbed were slow as shit to respond, casually joking about how "dramatic" the person in question was.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

Sincerely, truly, from the bottom of my heart- as someone who isn't physically disabled but hears this shit all the time- fuck off

[squirtlthesquirtle]

I've been hesitant to talk about suicidal ideation, even on a pseudonymous platform like Tumblr, due to a deep-seated fear of institutionalization. But after struggling with it off and on my entire life, I've gained a lot of insight on it that I feel deserves sharing. The most important thing I've realized is that nearly every time I felt that way is when I had an unmet emotional/social need, e.g. I felt abandoned or neglected in some way or that I was isolated from my peers.

Growing up in a hustle culture with a Protestant work ethic, I learned to deprioritize my emotional and social needs. I didn't see them on the same level as physical needs, so they often fell by the wayside. Now I've come to understand that my life literally depends on my well-being. I was vulnerable to suicidal thoughts because I was vulnerable socially. I need connection and belonging like I need food and water, because humans are social animals that survive by sticking together.

[squirtlthesquirtle]

Having a developmental disability with a "high IQ" is a unique circle of Hell. Even medical and education professionals assume I don't need help. I'm autistic with both verbal shutdowns and selective/situational mutism. I communicate in eloquent, grammatically sound sentences whenever possible, but when my brain gets too overwhelmed I lose my ability to communicate. I struggle to advocate for myself in most situations. I'm just good enough at masking that most people don't pick up on my speech issues, so I end up not getting my needs met because I can't express that I need help and no one notices.

It would be a lot easier if receiving accommodations and accommodating myself felt safe. I grew up undiagnosed in a family that deeply cares about appearances. I was told that I would be put in a "special school" if I didn't start speaking at school before kindergarten. It didn't take a genius to figure out that that is supposed to be shameful. I learned to hide my symptoms but they never went away. I never received any kind of occupational therapy or aid or anything. I was just expected to figure it out alone. I didn't even have a 504 plan until high school (like an IEP but can't do nearly as much).

Now as an adult I still feel like I must handle everything alone. If I should overcome debilitating speech issues alone, why should I expect help with anything else? It's a feedback loop. The less help I receive, the less help I can advocate for. The shame makes using accommodations feel impossible sometimes. I have an AAC app that I rarely use because I'm so embarrassed about needing it. I wish I was more comfortable with single word or grammatically "incorrect" phrases just so I could get something out when my speaking abilities are waning. It feels like my family's judgement is emanating from everyone and everywhere.

My entire life I've been (metaphorically) banging my head against the wall just to survive. On the outside, it looks like I'm just doing what everyone else is doing, albeit poorly. No one sees how much I struggle just to keep drifting. It's so difficult to talk about it with people in real life because I don't trust others to be understanding. The worst part is that when people who do try to understand they'll ask me what I need, and I can't answer them because I don't know. I've never received proper help before. I can't ask for something that I don't know is available.

[squirtlthesquirtle]

I think the reason evangelicals in particular have trouble admitting when they're in the wrong is because their belief system actively discourages it. If you believe that the mistakes you make are sins, and sin could send you to Hell, then it is simply a lot more comforting to believe that you are in the right. To the fundamentalists, morality isn't just about being a good person, it's also about staying in God's good graces. Admitting you did something wrong means admitting you angered God. The thought of not always being a good person is scary to most people, but when Hell is on the table it becomes a real existential threat. Ironically, being the jackass that just won't say they're sorry feels a lot safer than owning up to what you did, at least in the moment.

It's similar to how spanking kids makes behavioral problems worse. The kid doesn't learn to not do the bad thing, they learn to not get caught. When accountability means harsh judgement and disproportionate punishment, why wouldn't you avoid it at all costs? When you're raised this way, you learn to hide your mistakes, which means you never learn how to deal with them. It discourages seeking help because seeking help is an admission of guilt. But the more you dig in, the harder the reckoning will be when you're finally forced to face the music.

Sunday school constantly reminded me to be infinitely forgiving, but what wasn't taught was how to actually make amends when you messed up. If I had asked, I probably would've been lectured on not doing the bad thing in the first place instead of given actual advice. I spent most of my life desperately trying to be perfect so I wouldn't have to figure it out. Inevitably, as people do, I've made some major mistakes that required a major apology. I had to learn on my own how to navigate that. I learned to verbalize to the person I hurt that what I did was inexcusably wrong and why and that I don't demand or expect forgiveness. It turns out that people are generally a lot more forgiving when you do that.

I see this a lot in my own dad. Getting an apology from him feels like pulling teeth, and his sorry always misses the actual reason why I'm upset. He'll be very loud about his perspective until the very moment it becomes clear that it's undeniably wrong, when he'll fall completely silent. I've spent my whole life noticing this pattern and resisting the urge to fall into it myself. I've even been told I go too far in the other direction. I have to actively try not to qualify everything I say with "but that's just my opinion." Apparently it makes me sound unsure of myself. I think I'm just so used to being gaslit about random things that I'm terrified I'll accidentally do it to someone else.

[squirtlthesquirtle]

New idea: anti-lent. Pick up a new vice for 40 days

[squirtlthesquirtle]

I wish religious trauma was better understood. Imagine spending your entire life in an insular community that teaches you that the outside world is not to be trusted. Most people outside are either brainwashed or actively trying to sabotage you into eternal conscious punishment. The only people you can trust are those on the inside. Doing your own research is dangerous because any outside source will try to manipulate you. Everyone else is indoctrinating their children against you. Who are you going to believe, the community that's supported you your entire life or the big scary outside world?

And then you find the courage to do your own research. You learn the true history and nature of your faith. If you talk about it with someone on the inside they will actively try to stop you from continuing. Lean not on your own understanding! The only escape is to quietly dig your own way out. If you are caught you will be dragged kicking and screaming further in.

When you finally do get out, you are completely on your own. You can no longer rely on that community. Everyone you've ever known, everyone you looked up to, everyone you've ever confided in is part of the system that oppressed you. You are now alone.

On top of that, your entire worldview has been crushed. You no longer have a worldview, and if you don't immediately start building a new one from scratch you will be susceptible to falling for similar snake oil. Your identity is gone. Who even are you now? Every little thing that makes a person a person has been stripped from you.

You will never relate to your family the same way again. Your shared understanding of reality is gone. Your shared culture is gone. All that is left is the reminder of what you left behind. Your options are to go along to get along and keep pretending to be something you're not, or to be open and risk losing them forever. Even if they don't outright reject you, they will never look at you the same way again.

Even when you think you've escaped, you still see the religious billboards scattered across the highway and the zealots with their "end is near" signs on the sidewalk. There's a fundamentalist church on every street. You are a permanent outsider in your own community. One in every three people you interact with would try to recruit you back if they knew what you are. There is no peace. There is no connection. If you don't actively search for your own counterculture you will spend the rest of your life in isolation.

And then the people that put you in this position have the gall to act like you're the problem. You are the dangerous one that wants to corrupt the kids and send everyone to Hell. Even being around you is perceived as an existential threat. You start to feel the same way about them. Now you have religious trauma. And I barely even mentioned the end-times theology.

[calvinists-and-hobbesians]

can someone please explain it to me like i'm five what's up with Christians who don't believe in biblical inerrancy or infallibility??? How can you believe anything the Bible says?? Why do you believe in even 1% of it?? If the words and understanding of the bible are not above your own reasoning and you do not trust them over your own reasoning, what makes you different from an atheist or deist that happens to have a special interest in the bible? I really hope this doesn't come off as rude or provocative it's just that I was raised by fundamentalists so it just boggles my mind completely

[9q3]

So as an exchristian raised in a non-fundamental church, it’s kind of hard to describe it. Basically they teach us “whatever is good in the bible, is godly. whatever is not good in the bible, is either human error (as humans wrote the bible) or is just a metaphor” and the way you can tell whats good and whats not is in the dark and it’s up to everyones individual interpretation so yeah there’s a ton of disagreement. The bible writers didn’t exactly leave christians with a guide of whats a metaphor and whats to be taken literally so it’s a ‘just follow your heart’ scenario except everyone interprets the bible differently. Hence why a lot of exchristians criticise christians ‘picking and choosing which parts of the bible they follow’. Christians will say that their god will guide a person’s heart to know whats meant to be literal and godly. But knowing how many different denominations and how many awful christians there are, it feels like their god is choosing only a very small amount of people to guide out of the billions of christians that ask their god to change their hearts. And that sounds even worse because it means their god would be ignoring most of the people asking to be saved and changed. Or it’s apart of their god’s plans that some people are created to be doomed from the start, which I have heard from some theists. And if that’s the case then more people should be anti-theist

[calvinists-and-hobbesians]

the cognitive dissonance is crazier than I thought

[winged-thinged]

^that is absolutely how it plays out among many Christians, especially at the lay/diocesan level.

At the academic theolgian level, there are Biblical scholars who are trained in translation and literary analysis and hermeneutics, who employ the same methods that historians and anthropologists and scholars of ancient literature use to determine what was meant by a passage, what group of people produced it, what their cultural context was, and apply different lenses of interpretation to draw out meaning from the stories. Just like how Shakespeare scholars might not agree on the meaning of every line, but generally can take a pretty good guess at what was meant to be a dick joke. They generally view the Bible as an "inspired" text, as in, a collection of stories written by humans who were in relationship with and being guided by God, though the meaning was filtered through their own understanding and time and place in history. They generally see the Bible as intended to transmit some combination of real events and metaphorical lessons (what proportion of each they feel it falls into varries).

However, yes, you're right, while these methods take into account a lot of the figurative language and cultural differences, they still don't do much of anything to reveal which parts of the Bible are "human error" and which parts are "really" divine. In practice that comes down to each individual interpreter's personal convictions and values and starting points, which lenses they choose to apply to the text, what meaning they're looking for. It turns into a game of, I feel this in my heart to be true, so I'm going to look in the text and find evidence to construct my argument as to why the text supports me. And honestly, a lot of people are pretty close to the end of the spectrum where they're basically a deist, but they identify as a Christian because they belong to a Christian church, and choose to take inspiration from the Bible just because the church that they belong to says that the Bible is from God and therefore it's the best. And a lot just carve out one or two things they take literally (usually Jesus's life and death and resurrection), not because they have a logical reason to treat those things differently, but because their church authority says it happened like that and they want to remain faithful.

The further you travel from Biblical inerrancy, imo, the more interpretive work you have to do to get to your preferred set of meanings, and the more it calls into question, why use this document as a source of meaning at all if it's so misleading? Couldn't God, who is supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing, do better? But for a lot of people, the answer to "why use the Bible?" has a lot less to do with logical reasoning and a lot more to do with emotional ties, like being raised in a Christian community and wanting to maintain belonging, and fear of facing hell or social consequences for deconverting.

[squirtlthesquirtle]

I grew up fundamentalist evangelical and deconstructed in high school. I never actually read the entire thing cover to cover until a couple of years ago and it just hits different as an adult that doesn't have to interpret every part of it literally or make it fit my worldview. Along the way I developed a special interest in religious texts in general (and ended up reading a lot of different scriptures from a lot of different faiths and traditions).

When I read it now, it's very obviously a product of its time to me; I think the reason most people (or at least most Christians) have trouble viewing it that way (besides the emotional/cultural aspects) is that most people have never read any other ancient texts. You've probably heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh, but have you actually read it (ok maybe you have, because this website is for nerds, so hopefully you get my point)? The Iliad? Any of the Pali canon? Odds are you've never had to analyze a millennia-old text outside of Bible study.

Also the average American reading level is around 8th grade at best, so I really don't expect the average person to be able to interpret scripture through multiple academic lenses. That's not a skill everyone needs to have. That's why people listen to pastors that have done all of this work for them at a seminary. The problem is not every denomination requires their leaders to go to seminary and not every seminary graduate actually uses these skills after graduation.

[homunculus-argument]

I know it's useless to ruminate, but I've been thinking about the way I was raised, and the indirect ways I was taught that the rules and standards are different for me and for other people.

I was taught to never judge anyone, but also that I should not embarrass my family by acting or appearing any way that people would judge. I was taught that it was rude of me to talk on and on about things that are boring, but also that it was rude of me to not listen attentively when someone else was talking on and on about things that bore me. That people were allowed to take their anger out on me, but that I was not allowed to be angry at anyone or anything. That everyone's feelings are vaild and their actions are understandable, except for mine of course.

If they ever heard me say this, my family would argue "nobody ever explicitly said that to you, word-for-word, at your face, so therefore none of this is true", but they did, indirectly and inadvertently, teach me that I must always be nice, patient, polite, understanding, and good to people, but that it's preposterous of me to expect anyone else to treat me as nicely as I'm expected to treat them.

I was taught what is, and what is not, the appropriate way to treat other people, and to unconsciously understand that I don't really count as "people".

[squirtlthesquirtle]

Obsessing over Swiss and her kittens

[phroge777]

the world has a silliness deficiency and i wish to change that

[cheznna06]