There is magic in the mundane

wowwww im so good at short and snappy titles /s

I'm not someone who is wealthy, though I'm certainly not as poor as I was when I started this account like 6 years ago when I was 16. Still, I am always battling between choosing the cheaper option and choosing what I know is good for me.

Often, I choose the cheaper option even if I can afford the better option because I have a lot of poverty shame I work through, and I am very careful with what little money I have because I'm so worried about the future. It's all very unstable right now.

To combat this, I have been trying to find an in-between of making sustainable, ethical swaps that feel like a safe amount of money for me. Because I'm poor. We're all working class people trying to make it. Especially as we head into more turbulent times, I find myself going back to old remedies I made when I was a teenager with no money, and now I'm just jazzing them up a bit.

I know that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. But with what little money I do have, I try to give it back to my community or use it to make my life easier and more enriching, especially since I love to make things. Spending alone won't take down these mega-corporations, but conscious decisions greatly impact your neighborhood around you.

I live in an urban environment, so my money impacts the grocery stores in my neighborhood, my refill stores, my library, local farmers, and my local used bookstores as much as I can manage. Again, not because I think I can take down Unilever or something without some serious force, but because I want to make decisions that benefit me and keep these people in my community around, housed and OK. I think it's important for me to be person-first about certain things like this now that I have the means to. it's something I'm working on in therapy

After work

humans are the moms

compared to other species on earth, humans have a really outsized "protect baby" instinct. you give a human a thing and tell them it's actually a baby thing and many humans will suddenly develop a complete and total aversion to harming it, even if it's like, a writhing mass of slimy tentacles in no way reminiscent of human infants

cats domesticated us by figuring out that they could leave their kittens with us when they went out hunting and come back and probably still have the same number as before they left. there is a decent chance that wolves did the same thing

word gets around the less parenting-inclined species and they're just like, are you doing a long haul space voyage? going to have to lay some eggs in the course of the trip? take a few humans with you. yeah they'll just start training the young and keeping from them climbing into the machinery themselves you don't even have to find specialists. I know a guy who budded unexpectedly on a freight hauler halfway through a four year trip, and not only did the humans not eat his spawn, they set up this thing called "babysitting" where they'd take turns monitoring its survival and helping to teach it basic skills

By which I actually DON’T mean that the average white would call me a nigger to my face outside the lofty confines of a reasonably anonymous account or an anon ask in my inbox. They find themselves too vulnerable and me far too scary for that in most situations. And after all, they’re a GOOD person, who has evolved past racism! In fact, I bet they’re fixing their mouths to say that I’m ACTUALLY racist towards whites, no matter how well spoken I may be (and then to slap on anon to call me a spearchucker, pedophile, and whatever else they can reach for to make themselves feel better).

No, the average white finds themselves beyond such base defoulments of their mouths such as “the n word”, such things that leave them open to the potential of losing jobs, social standing, a few teeth if they get punched out, and more (if caught in 4k, anyway). And yet,

The average white is racist.

The average white will avert their eyes and walk faster as cops harass us, the average white gets uncomfortable when we don’t know our place, the average white would’ve voted for Obama a third time, the average white ignores resumes with “ethnic” names, the average white gets the same jobs with a high school degree as a Black person does with a master’s, the average white just thinks that Black woman was being a bit aggressive, the average white person just thought that group of Black kids were thugs scoping out their neighborhood, the average white votes against ending slavery in California, the average white is very concerned about the Black jogger caught on camera looking around an open construction site, the average white actually votes overwhelmingly Republican, the average white says they aren’t racist because they haven’t called anyone a nigger since they were 12, the average white just thinks that Black trans woman dressed to go out might’ve been a prostitute soliciting in their neighborhood, the average white trans person just thinks that Black trans woman might be a danger to her siblings, the average white doesn’t know why only one Black person attended this 30 person meeting in a 50% Black city, the average white is attending a very very sad vigil for us while making sure to intimidate the Black girl they hate who showed up, the average white is very offended that you brought up Emmett Till because they’re an antiracist from Mississippi, the average white isnt sure about the details but reblogged the third harassment campaign this week like their grandmama took picnics at lynchings, the average white thinks the police serve a needed function in society beyond “slave catcher”, the average white thinks they’re one of the GOOD ones who might’ve done a bad thing here and there, the average white thinks they don’t benefit from the structures of white supremacy that have subsumed the world and are choking the life out of everyone else,

The average white is REAL fucking racist and too terrified of what that means for them to do jack shit about it. Too scared of the ostracization, the potential loss of even a fraction of privilege, the fear of experiencing even a modicum of what the rest of us go through if they betray white solidarity, white supremacy.

The “teachable moment” is to get off your ass and start doing shit. If you can’t be the new John Brown, fucking copwatch, read abolitionist/womanist/transfeminist literature and figure out how to apply it to STOP JOINING FUCKING DIGITAL LYNCH MOBS YOU FREAKS, do you have any idea how much WE could do if we didn’t have to deal with you LITERALLY CONSTANTLY doxxing us, harassing us, trying to SWAT us, driving us to literal insanity? Fuck, sending a racialized disabled and/or trans person other than me $10-$20 to eat a real meal or get meds is more praxis than like 90% of what y’all do.

And no most of y’all ain’t any lower on the list than white benefit, don’t play now.