Choose The Left

an atheist ghost. they refuse to move on to the afterlife on the grounds that the afterlife does not and should not exist

they only respond to ouija board summonings in order to lecture people for participating in non-evidence-based belief systems

exorcisms dont work cause they dont believe in them.

“yeah sure I could ‘go into the light’ as you so eloquently put it, but let’s be analytical about this. worst-case scenario, the afterlife is real and I get cast into some version of Hell for being a nonbeliever. slightly better-case scenario, it’s a reincarnation-based afterlife, which means I end up having to do the whole Existence thing all over again, which frankly seems like a huge roll of the dice. enormously risky, given the low quality of life many people experience, and that’s setting aside philosophical issues of identity, e.g. without the memories and experiences that shaped me, would I even still technically exist as a version of myself I could identify? reincarnation aside, let’s bear in mind there’s no actual evidence there’s even a so-called ‘afterlife’ waiting on the other side–for all we know, my consciousness will just dissolve into nonexistence. again, huge roll of the dice. and even in the best-case scenario? wherein I somehow pass an Arbitrary Morality Test I didn’t sign up for and get accepted into some sort of magical Heaven or whatever? well. consider it from my point of view. all of a sudden I’d be a member of a strange and unfamiliar society, subject to a completely new set of rules and regulations that I probably don’t get a say in. Is ‘Heaven’ a democracy? will I still have access to free will? will I have meaningful choices regarding lifestyle and occupation? what do the holy books say about that, huh? I could be forced to spend a literal eternity worshiping a deity who has made some extremely questionable and problematic decisions regarding the universe. I’m not signing up for that! how is that any better than my current situation? listen buddy, I spent 80 years living in a capitalist hellhole before death Itself finally freed me from all the obligations and restrictions of modern existence. I don’t work, I don’t pay rent or taxes, I just wander from place to place keeping my own schedule, doing my own thing, beholden to neither laws nor peer pressure. as purgatories go, that’s a pretty sweet deal! and what guarantee do I have that any damned afterlife is going to be more tolerable than my current not-existence, huh? none! none whatsoever. skeptic? damn right I’m skeptic! not to mention this whole Heaven-and-Hell dichotomy seems extremely manipulative if not outright abusive, as moral systems go. that’s no way to parent a species! nope. just, nope. this whole religious afterlife nonsense sounds like a whole lot of unnecessary stress and risk. I’m perfectly comfortable staying right where I am, thanks ever so, so you can tell your exorcist to write that out in latin and shove it up his ass”

“the power of christ compels ME?” bitch just because YOU choose to subscribe to a oppressively christian-centric world view doesn’t mean I have to dedicate my afterlife to following the rules of your false gods. if you’re so desperate to get smoke blown up your ass i’m happy to help you shove that thurible way on up there

There's a recurring online tendency to aestheticize consensus itself. The imagined future village is full of emotionally compatible people who enjoy communal gardening, conflict resolution circles, acoustic folk music, mutual aid potlucks, and repairing bicycles together at sunset. Which is nice for the people who genuinely enjoy that lifestyle. But plenty of humans are solitary, prickly, obsessive, urban, nocturnal, sensory-seeking, technologically attached, contrarian, novelty-seeking, private, or just plain difficult. Those people do not evaporate after the revolution. They do not get Left Behind while you are Raptured into the Utopia. They become your neighbors.

it’s actually quite easy to take over a small local government group if you really want to, bc if you volunteer consistently people will just put you in charge of whatever. I’m now one of like three people at a nature preserve making official decisions about trails, events, putting in a prairie, and designing a series of illustrations for a storybook trail etc., and it’s just because last summer I started coming over once a week to help the naturalist out for a couple hours. Mine now. you too can steal an organization and shape it to your will 🫵

Two of my friends and I have taken over the local guild that runs a large portion of charity events in our town. We’re changing bylaws and setting new policies and coordinating with other groups. All we did was volunteer, and they practically strongarmed us into accepting the president, vice president (me) and treasurer positions. VOLUNTEER, KIDS. YOU TOO CAN LET THE SMALLEST AMOUNT OF POWER GO TO YOUR HEADS.

co-sign. Decisions are made by the people who show up.

so many people don't understand how abelist it is to kill your brother with a rock

You know, rivers catching on fire used to be a regular occurrence.

Boring, even. Mundane. People just accepted that rivers had oil slicks floating on them that could be lit by somebody throwing their cigarette in the wrong place. Cities had regular protocols in place on what to do when the river caught on fire.

The modern environmentalism movement wasn’t just started by hippies you know. Regular people cared about this stuff because their rivers caught on fire and existing near farms gave them cancer and by the 1970s they weren’t even seeing that much economic benefit from it.

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day

Times like these I remember that Malcolm X quote about healing and how it requires acknowledging the knife is there. Things like "this isn't who we are" and "this is un-American" and "what are we? [insert another country]??" reveal a deep seated denial of American history and state-sponsored domestic terror that I'm just not gonna entertain anymore from leftists over the age of twenty.

It’s crazy that countries on the edge of the Sahara desert are reversing desertification by just digging half circles

Ooooh, Mr. Sawadoga innovated the traditional zai method by adding manure and other biological matter to the holes! This put nutrients in the soil as well as helping even more with water retention and attracted termites whose tunnels helped loosen the compacted earth, all of which supported plant-growth like no zai before! Which increased water-retention even further! Oh excellent, excellent work!

“can’t believe women fought to work!! i don’t wanna work!!” women have Been Working they fought to get Paid you know that right ?

Fought to get paid, fought to get acknowledged, fought to get control over their own careers.