Impossibility is a kiss away from reality

This post is nearly ten years old and I still think about this, honestly. Luke has no consciousness of the dangers and pressures in Leia’s life when he’s playing with his toy starship; she’s already had to become what he can only vaguely dream of. But she’s also never had to consider “where is tomorrow’s food and water coming from” to anything like the degree that Luke, Owen, and Beru do every day. Luke and Leia both make sure they’re armed when they leave home because their environments are so dangerous, in completely different ways.

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history

This is what's so fucked up about "nothing that requires the labor of others is a human right".

The labor is already being done under capitalism. The laborers are already being underpaid under capitalism.

When you propose removing the greedy profiteers and paying the workers a reasonable wage, people call that "slavery" while they have no problem with the current system.

And he kept doing it. Scene after scene.

He spent the film expecting someone to make a joke about how unserious things were or to break the fourth wall or do some other self referential type thing.

Now, maybe I'm just at that point in my cycle or maybe I'm too delicate in general, but I literally teared up hearing that. Straight up cried a bit. It is so fucking sad that sincerity and genuineness is being bred out of people.

People say all the time 'this generation can't take anything seriously!' and really, is it any wonder? Younger people have been trained out of it. You are no longer encouraged to be genuine or show emotion or be honest. You are actively punished for it. In fact, you are almost guaranteed to suffer for it.

That is so fucked up. I'm sorry to go on a bit of a random ramble rant but it's so fucking gut wrenching to see younger people lose that element of themselves. You can't express your passion without being told you're 'crashing out' or 'cringe'. You have to live in this neutral state of fear of perception, and god forbid anybody step outside of it!

You're told you should only consume and succumb and be ironic and emotionless and cool.

Listen, if you're following me and you're like.... 25 or under, let's say. Please. I beg of you. Do not fall for this rhetoric. Please, for the love of all things, feel. Feel and create and be honest with yourself. Indulge in things that make you happy. Be sincere. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Do not let this hyper-capitalistic, hyper-consumerist, self-centred, individualist culture take that from you.

When I was a teenager, I was bitter and angry and antisocial, I thought I was an awful person. I was just becoming aware of politics and the politics I had? Not good. I was convinced humans were inherently selfish and abusive and manipulative, because I grew up around adults that were selfish and abusive and manipulative, and I had learned to be like them too. I was unable to connect emotionally with other people or with media; I liked to read a lot but my readings tended to be very superficial.

(I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes at people who did media analysis and watching cringe feminist compilations. I lived life as though it was an argument I had to win and I was miserable.)

Then I read Lord of the Rings.

I think it taught me how to be a person.

It showed me a world where people could be good, uncompromisingly good, where connection had value and where you didn't have to turn around, look at the camera, and point how ridiculous the setting was or how pathetic the characters were.

Troubled people existed, of course. Evil people too. But even them, the story argued, deserved compassion. You know what character I saw myself in the most? Gollum/Sméagol. It's not like the narrative is interested in redeeming him, but it makes an effort to humanize him, constantly reminding us that he was like Frodo once. And it reminded me I was a like Frodo once too, a sensitive, nerdy kid that had been reduced to the worst parts of himself due to a mix of life-shattering trauma, cultural conditioning, and resentful disposition.

It restored something in me, is what I mean. The capacity of seeing good in people, of valuing kindness and compassion. It helped me develop pro-social behaviours, kickstarted the process by which my political worldview went from being on the path to reactionary to full-on proud socialist.

It made me care about art, really care about it. Not as mere entertainment but as the life changing experience it is made to be.

"Hey, Gen Z, we're gonna relabel vacations into something else now and tell you how you really should be wary of taking vacation because it might impact your financial future."