now is the time of raisins @wasabipesto - Tumblr Blog

twocubes

i think my problem might be that i learned what a joke was from statements marked "joke" in math textbooks

cheesenames

mildly shocked i have yet to see a vader writhing in lava compilation set to hot to go

cheesenames

do you see the (incredibly tasteless) vision

o-craven-canto

The sloppy orthography in this text I have to transcribe makes me [sic]

dryad-knifeplay

Knight who cools off from the stress of battle by page regressing

shinolavolume1-deactivated20240

theres too much fuckin shit on me

orchidsound

Turkey’s Bitlis @ragipsoylu

infertilityidol

woahhhh a floor beef clover it must be my yucky day

memorycycle

i think elephants should arrange in a circle and point theire trunks at the center and start building energy

iftadwascool

sandmandaddy69

transgenderer

So there's an octavia butler short story, the book of Martha, where God gives an author (closely patterned on butler herself, but possibly intentionally less creative) infinite(?) power to remake the world, to fix humanity and/or its problems before we destroy ourselves. After considering a variety of options (it's possible she's only allowed to modify human nature? But the story never stares that. Maybe she's just not good at considering all her options) she just gives everyone extremely pleasurable dreams. So they're less ambitious I guess. And in general have nicer lives

Anyway this story has stuck with me in two ways. The first: so, assume you're not just gonna like. Give humanity infinite resources or whatever. How do you make a utopia? Well to me the answer seems obvious, based on my experience of my own psyche. The human mind needs more affection. It's too easy for annoyance or some petty issue to overwhelm affection. And then we are cruel and selfish and all this stuff. Like. Idk, I feel like I've experienced moments of clear-eyed saintlihood. My brain produces that...outlook/emotion/whatever. But it won't stick there, of course. But it feels like it wouldn't be too far a jump to just get the human brain to stick there more easily. Still let us access other states, for variety. Give us some sense of others freedom or whatver, so our care for each other doesn't make us all busy bodies. But like. It would only take the tugging of a few chemical strings to fix human nature. A little less rage, a little more philia.

This is of course an important piece of evidence that if there is a god he doesn't love us. He could have made us full of lovingkindness. He could have made us not want to hurt and humiliate each other. But he didn't. Because all that nastiness helps us succeed in the social games that increase our mating frequency, or selectiveness, or whatever, presumably, and so selective descent with modification doomed us all forever. Or, God is real but cares about something else. Maybe beauty. Maybe he feels the glory of war is worth it.

But the second thing, is noticing which parts of our world feel like a Martha has already been there. I was looking at the sky on the train home today (hmabhrg! There was a William Blake exhibition), admiring it, and I was struck again by how...excessive, superfluous, overflowing, decadent, additional it is. The sky could just be a simple blue, fading evenly to black. Clouds could always be blobby and indistinct. We could all be congenital shortsighted, so they were always blurry. But instead they're just this part of the world, detached from all the specifics of earthly life, that is achingly beautiful, most nights! Sunsets are so beautiful it's cliche, it's boring! That feels like a gift from a Martha. Someone a bit uncreative trying to fix the world in a way that doesn't shake it up too much