THE FLESH CUBES

Center harm, not disgust!

When in doubt (and when not in doubt, just swept by problems bigger than you and assured by someone that they know the answer, so don't think right now, just Do!), center harm.

Focus on what specific harm you're reducing with your actions. Make sure it's tangible and concrete. If your actions are minimizing hypothetical harm at the cost of real, tangible harm on others, 9 out 10 times you're on the wrong fucking side, being weaponized by propaganda.

If a conversation revolves around disgust as a driver for action, you're being radicalized. If a call to action depends on your emotional response, you're being manipulated. I'm sorry, this isn't the 90s anymore, social media has eroded the web of respectability of the pre internet society. The primary axis for misinformation to spread in this day and age is emotional response: half the things you believe are true and share as such are not based on fact, expert opinion or personal research. Social media has conditioned us (all of us! You and me and most dangerously of all, the idiots we put in power) that if something feels true, it probably is.

But do you know for sure it is? Do you think it's true because you have first hand experience or actual time spent on reputable sources learning it to be fact? Or just because it aligns with your worldview and it would be nice for you if it were true?

Are you taking action because you're angry and a group of fellow angry folk invited you to join them? Do you have a plan or is this just catharsis? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions or are you drunk on rage and focused only on the immediate future?

Center harm. Center specific actions and their consequences.

Discomfort is not harm. Disgust is not harm. Hypothetical paranoia is not harm.

The reactionary pipeline is real and your self-image as a progressive is not actually enough to save you from falling down the hole. Radicalization is not hinged on politics alone. Saying you're a leftist is worthless if your thought process and actions themselves are indistinguishable from qanon losers. Conspiratorial thought has literally no politics inherently, and your insistence it does is pure lack of critical thought on display.

Center harm, not feelings, not politics, not group think.

So whats the modern equivalent, right? And I need you to know that my brain jumped through a bunch of options from guns to lasers, then went to modern farm tools, bc, scythe.

And at that point it went: Scythes cut grass, mowing grass, lawnmower doesn't work visually, needs to be a hand tool, could do those really long snips for pruning bushes, but still the wrong vibe since thats a precision tool, not something that hews things down indiscriminately, and it would be much better if it was some kind of pole based tool and ---

There is an ongoing literacy crisis. Teach kids how to read phonetically (other methods produce poor literacy) and introduce them to fun books, both fiction and educational non-fiction.

Teach kids about critical thinking and the scientific method.

You can also introduce kids to edutainment like Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, The Magic Schoolbus, Bill Nye The Science Guy, Beakman's World, etc.

Help kids develop media literacy skills by asking them literary analysis questions about the media they engage with. Even very young children can begin learning literary analysis if the questions are phrased in words they can understand.

Learn and help other people learn information literacy, ie, how to locate and evaluate information.

Learn the red flags of pseudoscience, and educate other people about them.

Educate people and share media on real science and real history, because fascist narratives are full of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. (Miniminuteman, Gutsick Gibbon and Bart D. Ehrman's YouTube channel are great, by the way!)

a lot of people - especially liberals in the US - misunderstand how a boycott actually works. if you have no specific demands and no clear end goal, then it’s not really a boycott. it’s just symbolic. it's more symbolism. it's not effective. it will never be effective. symbolism is not a solution.

even if a massive number of people participated today, literally any single major corporation in the US could easily absorb a single day of financial losses in minutes, not hours. tactics aren’t just about expressing frustration; they exist to impose consequences when your demands aren’t met.

for a boycott or strike to have any meaningful impact, it takes genuine planning and organization because people still need to eat, pay rent, and take care of themselves. that's why Shawn Fain is/was working to organize a general strike in 2028.

what happened here, however, wasn’t in any way a economic disruption; it was yet another feel-good gesture for people who wanted to believe they were taking action without engaging with the actual logistics of making a sustained boycott or strike possible. for something like this to matter, there has to be both mass participation and support systems in place to make sure people can access food, water, housing, and medical care while taking part. a one-day “boycott” didn’t teach anyone how to do that, and most people involved aren’t going to take the next step toward learning, because very few are going to move from skipping shopping for a day to committing to something serious.

in spite of all of this, it does open up a chance to start real conversations. some people shifted their schedules, stocked up ahead of time, or made other small adjustments so they wouldn’t have to buy anything that day. that’s a starting point. so the next question is: if there were a long-term boycott or strike, how would you prepare? what would you do if you got a flat tire? if your food went bad? who could you rely on for support? how would you take care of kids or pets?

and beyond individual survival: what could you contribute to others around you? what local, national, or global structures would need to exist to make this in any way sustainable over a long period of time? how do we start building them?

Boycotts that have end dates are used to build community. Their main goal isn't actually depriving the target of money, that's what "actual" boycotts are for. Small boycotts prepare people for indefinite ones. You said it yourself, people learned stuff from it. A boycott that only ends after the demands are met is less scary after you've done a boycott for just a day, for just a week, for just a month. A large part of the feb 28 blackout was getting people who are new to antifa protesting used to the water. It was for one day and allowed essential spending, it wasn't intimidating. No, it didn't hurt the fascists in a way they could feel, but it helped people new to resisting. I saw people that had never participated in a boycott before participate in this one, which is a great first step. Trump has been making enemies since day one in office, there are a lot of ex trump supporters and centrists newly against him. We know how bad republicans are at boycotts from how they handled bud light and target. The newcomers need practice runs.

Cut fast fashion - buy used, learn to mend and/or make your own clothes, buy fewer clothes less often so you can save up for ethically made quality

Cancel subscriptions - relearn how to pirate media, spend $10/month buying a digital album from a small artist instead of on Spotify, stream on free services since the paid ones make you watch ads anyway

Green your community - there's lots of ways to do this, like seedbombing or joining a community garden or organizing neighborhood trash pickups

Be kind - stop to give directions, check on stopped cars, smile at kids, let people cut you in line, offer to get stuff off the high shelf, hold the door, ask people if they're okay

Intervene - learn bystander intervention techniques and be prepared to use them, even if it feels awkward

Get closer to your food - grow it yourself, can and preserve it, buy from a farmstand, learn where it's from, go fishing, make it from scratch, learn a new ingredient

Use opensource software - try LibreOffice, try Reaper, learn Linux, use a free Photoshop clone. The next time an app tries to force you to pay, look to see if there's an opensource alternative

Make less trash - start a compost, be mindful of packaging, find another use for that plastic, make it a challenge for yourself!

Get involved in local politics - show up at meetings for city council, the zoning commission, the park district, school boards; fight the NIMBYs that always show up and force them to focus on the things impacting the most vulnerable folks in your community

DIY > fashion - shake off the obsession with pristine presentation that you've been taught! Cut your own hair, use homemade cosmetics, exchange mani/pedis with friends, make your own jewelry, duct tape those broken headphones!

Ditch Google - Chromium browsers (which is almost all of them) are now bloated spyware, and Google search sucks now, so why not finally make the jump to Firefox and another search like DuckDuckGo? Or put the Wikipedia app on your phone and look things up there?

Forage - learn about local edible plants and how to safely and sustainably harvest them or go find fruit trees and such accessible to the public.

Volunteer - every week tutoring at the library or once a month at the humane society or twice a year serving food at the soup kitchen, you can find something that matches your availability

Help your neighbors - which means you have to meet them first and find out how you can help (including your unhoused neighbors), like elderly or disabled folks that might need help with yardwork or who that escape artist dog belongs to or whether the police have been hassling people sleeping rough

Fix stuff - the next time something breaks (a small appliance, an electronic, a piece of furniture, etc.), see if you can figure out what's wrong with it, if there are tutorials on fixing it, or if you can order a replacement part from the manufacturer instead of trashing the whole thing

Mix up your transit - find out what's walkable, try biking instead of driving, try public transit and complain to the city if it sucks, take a train instead of a plane, start a carpool at work

Engage in the arts - go see a local play, check out an art gallery or a small museum, buy art from the farmer's market

Go to the library - to check out a book or a movie or a CD, to use the computers or the printer, to find out if they have other weird rentals like a seed library or luggage, to use meeting space, to file your taxes, to take a class, to ask question

Listen local - see what's happening at local music venues or other events where local musicians will be performing, stop for buskers, find a favorite artist, and support them

Buy local - it's less convenient than online shopping or going to a big box store that sells everything, but try buying what you can from small local shops in your area

Become unmarketable - there are a lot of ways you can disrupt your online marketing surveillance, including buying less, using decoy emails, deleting or removing permissions from apps that spy on you, checking your privacy settings, not clicking advertising links, and...

Use cash - go to the bank and take out cash instead of using your credit card or e-payment for everything! It's better on small businesses and it's untraceable

Give what you can - as capitalism churns on, normal shmucks have less and less, so think about what you can give (time, money, skills, space, stuff) and how it will make the most impact

Talk about wages - with your coworkers, with your friends, while unionizing! Stop thinking about wages as a measure of your worth and talk about whether or not the bosses are paying fairly for the labor they receive