World Enough For Me

Father: “We can’t, we have medical issues.”

⚪️ man

⚪️ woman

🔘 person with adhd

and i am seeking:

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This!!!

On some level y’all get that the far right extremists are good at recruiting and radicalizing, but generally speaking The Left curses at and attacks people who are trying to ask questions, constantly reiterates that its people’s own responsibility to be informed, repeats the exact kinds of propaganda right wing media spews out because they think the concept of Christians being oppressed or whatever is funny, encases all their discussions in jargon that is impossible to understand without context, refuses to define the jargon even as right-wing media “educates” them about its Real Meaning, and spreads the idea that having a discussion with anyone right of center morally taints you. A part of me is screaming internally every second I’m online because of this. If you think of this as a cultural and ideological battle of sorts, the Right is actively recruiting soldiers while the Left is busy chasing anyone who doesn’t already have military training, a uniform, and weapons away from their recruitment office (which is boarded up with signs saying that anyone who asks where they can join will be forcibly removed from the premises) with baseball bats.

Like we can debate “performing emotional labor” until the sun burns out and probably some good points will be made but at some point it’s gonna be either emotional labor or living under a fascist dictatorship because all the people it wasn’t our job to educate went out and finally educated themselves, just like we wanted them to, using their free Google...

...which showed them how to find nazis that would happily answer all of their questions, without cursing or implying that they should already know everything, and lots of free, non-paywalled, easy to read and jargonless articles about how it’s a minority’s fault that things suck.

The Right weaponizes our unwillingness to educate. When we scoff at a person that doesn’t understand what “white privilege” means, there are comforting voices that will be there to tell them that the Leftists are just people who have never suffered or hurt a day in their lives, that speak of “white privilege” because of their bitter hatred of anyone with differing opinions than they have. That person will return to the familiar narrative that the Left is filled with violent, hateful, destructive people that are both incapable of understanding their needs and struggles and completely indifferent to them. THIS IS HOW THEY WORK. The confrontational attitudes and confusing language are used as essential tools by the Right.

“I shouldn’t have to explain what privilege is!” we say.

“They respond that way because what they really mean is that they think no white person has really struggled or suffered,” other voices say. “They don’t care about you because you’re white. Isn’t that what real racism is?”

And that narrative makes sense to them because no, they don’t know what real racism is, because anyone who asks questions about what racism is is “sealioning,” and anyone who googles racism is probably met with the dictionary definition, and anyone who says “but this is what the dictionary definition of racism is?” is assumed to be acting in bad faith and probably cursed at.

I am not asking marginalized people to constantly be available to answer questions about their traumas and shit. I don’t want people to go through that. But as someone who’s extensively seen the inside of the group that elected trump, I am BEGGING people to understand what I’m saying and be as frightened of its implications as it deserves.

Most people on the left can't actually offer that. They are too far removed from the actual philosophical justification of their views. Too willfully unable to put themselves into the perspective of the right. Too uncritical of the left's ideas. You can't lead people who don't already mostly agree to your perspectives from that position.

To be fair, some of the left's progress in the culture has been due to reliance on the mechanisms of offendedness, outrage, and ostracism. But the success this achieves is hollow. It gets you disagreement becoming resentfully hidden rather than disagreement becoming agreement.

There was a time when this "get offended and ostracize" strategy was more common among the right. Sociological pendulums and all that. It is a strategy you do when you have the power to shut people up and the privilege to get away with being an ass about it.

(Contrary to the Abridged Lefty Theory for Children most people get from Tumblr or Twitter or wherever, power and privilege are not the same across a society - power and privilege constantly change depending on where you are and who you are with, both in meatspace and online.)

I really think the misunderstanding is partly because of “white privilege” being defined apart from the context of what privilege is. Because people on the right don’t really consciously think of the world as consisting of systems of oppression. So even the best attempt to define “white privilege” is going to fall a little short.

I had to learn this—to check myself a bit, and realize that I sounded super condescending when I talked about privilege to people who were first generation college students and abuse survivors or who had grown up poor or who had been in the foster system, et cetera.

Here’s where I think you’d start—start a discussion about fairness. Because fairness isn’t a loaded word in the same way that “privilege” is. Privilege is often seen as very presumptive just because people don’t really know what you mean by that. The first question is, “Well, does the world treat people and judge people fairly, or are there ways in which it’s unfair?”

And it’s very hard not to see that the world is unfair. A person who is born rich has a lot of advantages over someone who is born poor. Someone who has loving, supportive parents has a better chance at being brought up in a way where they can succeed than someone who never had good parental figures. Metaphors about privilege don’t get through to these people because they don’t explain why they apply to the real world. A metaphor about a fence or running a race is just a metaphor. Talk to them (if you’re comfortable with it) about times when you have experienced unfair treatment, or get them to share their own experiences.

The problem you will run into is that people will not see these things as systemic, because the idea of systemic injustice is probably kind of foreign to them. They get really tripped up on the idea that someone can participate in an unjust system without themselves doing unjust things because they already read everything related to these discussions as aggressive and blamey. They probably don’t see examples of racism or sexism as a fundamentally ingrained part of society—they’re the actions of individuals who are wrong, yes, but people tend to see them as isolated incidents.

So provide examples. Lots of examples. Don’t just talk about one axis of oppression (and don’t say axis of oppression because they don’t really know what that means). DO NOT, by any means, assume they have the historical context for these things...because they don’t. American public school history education is propaganda. Have reliable sources on hand for the history of racism and sexism and other prejudices in America because people usually don’t know there has been, for example, really any legal/institutional aspect to racism since the 60’s. American history textbooks stop talking about racism with MLK. Talk about the history. Talk so much about the history. Almost everything I know that convinced me racism was still a real and important threat ingrained into our society I had to research outside of textbooks.

Talk about how the assholes that anyone could identify as racist don’t just “end up” racist. Why are they racist? Maybe they grew up hearing that kind of stuff as a kid. Well, racism being basically normal in a whole group or community is an example of something bigger than individual choices that causes racism. “A person is this way because their parents raised them like that” is the simplest and most accessible way to introduce the idea of actions and beliefs being part of a system.

Assuming that “rapists are monsters” means not blaming parents, schools, and the media for teaching boys that “a man’s got needs and it’s a woman’s job to provide sex!” It means pretending that there’s no way we could discourage rape in the future, no way to teach young men not to become rapists.

It also dodges the question of whether some of them could be redeemed, whether they could learn to understand what they did wrong and not do it in the future. But even if you don’t care about criminals’ redemption possibilities, you should care about creating a society that produces fewer criminals.

The first is that it isolates victims and keeps them from being believed. “My best friend has been accused of rape? Well, the accuser must be lying, because rapists are horrible monsters and my friend is a wonderful person, therefore they can’t be a rapist.”

you go to the well to get some water, and here’s Miriam’s boy, staring at the sky, completely still. his expression is unreadable. you hazard a hello and ask how he’s doing, and he slowly, unblinkingly, lowers his gaze on you (he’s 8 and is missing his frontal teeth, not that this is making you any less uncomfortable) and says “I cannot speak of the state of my being, Nathan son of Saul, my brother, but rejoice for the water you shall take today will be as pure as the soul of the children of Heaven”

*sees J boy, 8 yo, staring at you from across the street*

kid JC, coming home at twilight, a single white dove following him and chirping with weirdly human-like precision:

 moth̫́er,̦͌ ̮̉i h͙̉av͔̽e ͓͗b̘̃r̞̓o̮͘u̲̒gh̟͒t̺́ you a do̗͐ṽ͙e̢͘ ͈̾m͒͢a͈̽dē̝ ỏ̘f ͈̓c̆͜l͔̂aỷ͇ aṋ̑d̳̿ g͢͞i̹̾fted̖͡ ̻͐it ͓͂w̖̿it̎͜h t̥̃h͙͒e ̨̒m̧̂i̡̍ŗ͒â̫cḷ̔è̤ ̛̻of̞̅ l̘̈i̛̦fè̳

Miriam: ! that’s my little boy :) now let’s go get ready for dinner :) 

her husband Yosef, a carpenter who only marginally got signed up for this: 

to make the smoke detector noise every time someone makes toast

to make gross eating noises at us when he wants us to share our food

to announce that he is about to poop just about every time he poops

to demand payment in the form of peanuts for every instance of good behavior

Cities - go near water!  freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there.  Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.

for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end.  rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat

mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains!  mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey).  a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half.  These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks

Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact.  think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies

forests - depends on how warm the area might be.  coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too

If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower).  if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)

You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)

and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains

Though, for fantasy, you can make the world operate on entirely different principles:

With that done, the actual topic of city placement can be covered by videos like this:

Or

Once you have your places, if you want help naming them in realistic ways, this video can help:

This one is on architecture, which is definitely a subset of cities:

But for a more relevant practical guide on making settlements realistic:

Here’s a quick guide for making demographics:

Your neighbors got into a loud spat a few weeks ago and without fear or hesitation, called a domestic assistance number. A counselor arrived and was able to talk the couple down and suggest solutions for their disagreement. No one was hurt, the kids participated in the discussion, and it's been quiet ever since.

Your friend has been struggling with addiction and you fear they might be a danger to themselves or others. You call a substance abuse specialist and they talk you through ways to help your friend get treatment. They offer to send an agent out to speak with your friend directly and provide information on harm reduction centers in your area.

Black and brown people are no longer being exploited through tickets and fines to pay for police. Trust is slowly being fostered in the community.

Teachers are being paid a living wage and students are being given more time, attention, and education. Books are up to date and classrooms are optimized to keep up with technology.

Trump is out of office.

It’s been a very long time since the name of a murdered black person was used as a hashtag.

Casual racism is no longer tolerated. The KKK has been classified as a terrorist organization. The Confederate flag isnt flown and has been removed from any official state flags or insignias. Most Confederate monuments have been taken down and placed in storage or museums.

You trust the investigation force to deal with crime the same way you trust firefighters to put out fires.

That's what 'defund the police' looks like. What we've seen in the last few weeks shows how overreaching and power-drunk many officers are. We asked too much of them and then called them heroes despite evidence to the contrary. We let them think that they could get away with anything, including murder. Its time for change.