Eternal Cyclicality

*** The Lounge ***

"Thanks, Dusa. We'll catch up again, soon." ~Megaera, to Dusa

Fam.

via @ninjahijabimuse​

1. Promise everything.

2. Piss off everyone.

3. Deliver nothing.

When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.

There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.

But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.

You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.

It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”

The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.

We really need to start asking where this purity bullshit came from. I’m not  Christian and was not raised Christian but there has been a lot evidence that much of gold star activism and purity culture originated in of evangelical youth movements and then infiltrated progressive left-wing and center-left politics when those youth left their churches but failed to leave behind the black-n-white puritanical “you’re going to hell if you stray one inch from the righteous path” style of thinking they were taught.

I distinctly remember some conversations I had in the late 00s and very early 2010s with long time social justice activists who were baffled and disturbed by the new crop of youth activists who were practicing something that was decidedly NOT social justice despite stealing that phrase from us.

In the decade and a half that has passed since then, all of this gold-star activism and purity culture has done exactly what I predicted back then: empowered the far-right while sowing division everywhere.

Fucks the cup up and ruins it forever

Gets glass everywhere

Breaks the glass incorrigibly

Cuts you through several potential vectors

Is the guy chill and just needs a comfy place to sleep? Will he just leave if I ask nicely or at least help pay rent and tidy up? Or is he planning to wear my skin as a suit? If yes do we have to fight to the death?

What type of cockroaches? German? Not ideal, super hard to get rid of. Smoky brown? Kinda chill, mostly wanna be outside, maybe I have a moisture problem. Madagascan hissing? Slightly concerned about where they came from but excited about my 1000 new pets.

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flashover has a 100% fatality rate

for those that don't know, flashover is the point where the trapped heat at the ceiling of the room is sufficiently high that all fine sooty particulate matter that makes up smoke will instantly combust

when that happens, the heat of it combusting makes everything else in the building combust in a rapid domino like effect, like the chain reaction happens in less than a second & *everything* flashes into combustion which *includes you*

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.