#slacktivist

[entanglingbriars]

Me and my partner have been rocked by the "Christian theology is an attempt to find places where the Sermon on the Mount doesn’t apply" quote you shared the other day. It's come up so often in conversation both irl and online. However, I've been trying to find this quote to no avail. You wouldn't be willing to take a second pass and see if you can find it, would you? Please?

The exact quote is way better than my paraphrase, unsurprisingly:

"In my most cynical moments, I sometimes think that the whole structure of Christian theology seems like an elaborate ruse to escape the unambiguous obligations set forth in the Sermon on the Mount."

Fred Clark, July 31, 2009

[raccoonlake]

One of my favourite social media feminist canned replies to someone pointing out the patriarchy isn't singularly beneficial to men (and is not a straight forward 'Oppressor-Victim' dichotomy) is: "And who set that system up?"

It's implications out the gate are "men are the only creatures capable of agency" which is hilarious. Secondly, the implication that women for the last 300,000 are so helpless that the patriarchy 'just happened' despite it being bad for themselves and lots of men. Even after the collasping of many societies, women just simply have less cultural impact than crops, cattle and dogs and couldn't stop it.

Like, I get these people have 0 education in gender studies and are parroting a trendy reply to avoid critical thought, but the fact that the statement is legitimately so misogynistic feels like some Terry Prachet contrived irony. Is it not less insane to believe women also contribute and uphold it?!

My true favourite is how often this is a white women replying to a black man. Because he'll always rightfully say "your female ancestors also set up this white supremacist patriarchy that opresses me and my ancestors," and then she'll say something wokely racist or a "gotcha" about Africa. Or (the funniest one:) try to imply white women, who owned slaves, were in fact just as oppressed as enslaved black people, who were slaves.

[lost-technology]

Explaining Vash Outside the Fandom!

So, today on another forum I mentioned Vash the Stampede. I mentioned him by way of "I don't ask myself WWJD? so much anymore as WWVtSD?" and explained "Vash the Stampede." I said "If anyone is unfamiliar with this name, go ahead and ask and I can fangirl all over you, but be warned, you will be reading all day." I got a taker. And then another taker who is a person on the forum who is straight up not having a good time right now and needs some distraction I feel - to read someone's dumb fangirling over a fandom they aren't in yet. So... I wrote up an essay explaining Vash the Stampede in Word and pasted it in shifts on the blog: (uck, looks like I'm gonna have to post this in shifts, too. Dumb tumblr!

*Flashes my fangirl license*  You asked about Vash the Stampede?  *Raises eyebrows.*  Big mistake.  You shall be here all day!  Vash is the protagonist of Trigun, an anime / manga by Yashiro Nightow.  Well, the manga is by him and there are two different animes to date, one originally airing in 1998 before the completion of the manga (and it gained the idea enough popularity that Nightow was able to continue the manga and purposefully took a different track to keep the story fresh.  Because he had to switch publishers the continuing story was titled Trigun Maximum).  As of 2023 there has been a reboot of the anime, Trigun Stampede, done in a cell-shaded CGI style that takes more cues from the manga.  It has done its own story elements, too, most notably having the City of July as a part of the story, making it almost a prequel, since the City of July is past tense in the other media.  A second set / continuation / completion of it is set for a future release date and as of yesterday, the “final phase” of the new anime will be titled Trigun Stargaze. Additionally, there was a feature-movie made in 2011 based solely upon the first anime titled Badlands Rumble, which is kind of the black sheep of the fandom (personally I enjoy it, find it very funny).  So, anyway, Vash is a tall blonde man with a Bart Simpson hairdo and a long red coat who lives on a desert planet with 10X the guns of ‘Murica.  There are two suns and five moons.  It’s a scavenger world where people barely eek out a living using a form of lost technology known as “Plants” – which are these energy and materials production entities housed in giant lightbulbs (or something more like tanks in Stampede).  No one knows how to create Plants anymore and few know how to maintain them, so everything is slowly dying (except, of course, the native sandworms.  Yep, there’s something Dune-like going on).  People live a half sci-fi half Old West existence and things are, again, very violent.  It’s a world where you have higher chances of making it out better as a bandit than a farmer.    Vash is a pacifist.  He is also an outlaw with Sixty-Billion-Double Dollars ($$) on his head because he has been shown to be capable of incredible destructive power.  Now, most of this comes accidentally from trying to weasel out of tough situations and people after him getting themselves hurt, but somehow towns fall apart.  Except for the City of July (or Jul-Ai in Stampede), which he did wipe out.  Under circumstances not of his own making or will, but the normal citizens of the planet don’t know that.  That was around 24 years ago in the first anime and in the manga.  July exists as of the beginning of Stampede.    Early on in the manga’s story, an insurance company that gets a lot of damage claims regarding damage he supposedly caused declares him a “Human Act of God” so as to avoid payouts.  He is assigned a pair of insurance agents, Milly Thompson and Meryl Stryfe, to follow him around to attempt to mitigate the damage he might cause.  In the anime, it is the same, except that his bounty is not removed for some reason.  (In the manga, the government removes his bounty per his “Act of God” status).  He is also known as the Humanoid Typhon, putting him in the same category as a destructive storm.  Vash-damage is thereafter treated in the same like as hurricane damage!  Honestly, this is one of the most creative things I have seen of any media – having the local superhero / super-cryptid followed by INSURANCE AGENTS. (I am fond of characterizing Trigun as “If Mayhem from the Allstate commercials was followed around by Flo from the Progressive commercials”).  (To Be Continued in Reblog-posts)

[com3150project]

[prolifeproliberty]

Unity At Last: Klansman And Rich Liberal Activist Join In Celebration As Black Neighborhood Burns Down

U.S.—We finally have some healing and unity in our nation as a Klansman and a rich liberal activist were seen cheering together as a b

[strangersmakedigitalcommunities]

Week 9: Political engagement and activism

The rise of social media and online activism has often been a two edged sword. While many agree that a more connected society can actively engage voters and activists to form together on key issues it also played part in the rise of click- activism or slacktivism. Resulting in a lot of online noise and discourse but little real world action. 

Slacktivism is used to describe an individual who will gladly like, post or share content related to causes but is less or sometimes completely unlikely to translate that action into meaningful participation offline. Think of ‘the bloke down at the pub’ who will complain loudly and to anyone who will listen about how “Canberra is full of crooks and nothing is run properly” yet who on election day is mysteriously absent from a polling station. Is the rise of online political engagement having any effect at all? Many think not.

However recent studies and discussions have made strides in actually disproving this theory. In fact many have come to see the value in online activism as it often impacts a wide range of activities deemed important for political citizenship , such as news consumption, discursive engagement, and community formation  (Dennis 2019). So it appears that someone clicking like on an issue they care about is perhaps just the stepping stone for their future involvement.

Furthermore “On Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times” makes a case for including a wider variety of art based messaging as well as real world protests in addition to online activism as the way to initiate greater change. 

In order to enact the greatest amount of change it appears that while online activism is instrumental in getting people together and educated it is but one factor in what needs to be viewed as a more holistic method in political engagement. 

It starts with a click but perhaps grows into a lot more. 

REFERENCES

Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K. (2019) On Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times: An Introduction. In: Alvarez N., Lauzon C., Zaiontz K. (eds) Sustainable Tools for Precarious Times. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Dennis J. (2019) #stopslacktivism: Why Clicks, Likes, and Shares Matter. In: Beyond Slacktivism. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

[wetwareproblem]

@hedwig-dordt That post was long and already on my blog repeatedly and this is a new thread of discussion, so new post.

I think it's a little more complicated than "heart in the right place" or "active malice" (though there's some of both on the fringes).

The bulk of the anti community is comprised of Bad Jackies.

[imathers]

The article removed from Forbes, “Why White Evangelicalism Is So Cruel”

You will know a tree by its fruit.

Generation after generation, Southern pastors adapted their theology to thrive under a terrorist state. Principled critics were exiled or murdered, leaving voices of dissent few and scattered. Southern Christianity evolved in strange directions under ever-increasing isolation. Preachers learned to tailor their message to protect themselves. If all you knew about Christianity came from a close reading of the New Testament, you’d expect that Christians would be hostile to wealth, emphatic in protection of justice, sympathetic to the point of personal pain toward the sick, persecuted and the migrant, and almost socialist in their economic practices. None of these consistent Christian themes served the interests of slave owners, so pastors could either abandon them, obscure them, or flee.

What developed in the South was a theology carefully tailored to meet the needs of a slave state. Biblical emphasis on social justice was rendered miraculously invisible. A book constructed around the central metaphor of slaves finding their freedom was reinterpreted. Messages which might have questioned the inherent superiority of the white race, constrained the authority of property owners, or inspired some interest in the poor or less fortunate could not be taught from a pulpit. Any Christian suggestion of social justice was carefully and safely relegated to “the sweet by and by” where all would be made right at no cost to white worshippers. In the forge of slavery and Jim Crow, a Christian message of courage, love, compassion, and service to others was burned away.

(found via this post)