MARRIED OR NOT, YOU SHOULD READ THIS ...
MARRIED OR NOT, YOU SHOULD READ THIS … “When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly,
“Colloquially, the generation in America that grew up in the Great Depression was called The Greatest Generation, it was because they were selfless and they were determined and brave and they took something that was falling apart nationally and worked to build it back into something that was prosperous. I think that our generation gets written off a lot for not being that; we're apathetic and self centered. I think it’s less that and more that we have a couple of years given to us by previous generations to figure out who we are and how we can be great. It doesn’t have to start when we’re 18 or 19. Maybe we have to finish college first, then we need a couple of years to get our heads straight. Now, we have the chance to really do some great things. I think that we can be the greatest generation: we can be great across the board, across the national boundaries, across societal boundaries. I think that we could change the world for better. I don’t think that we could be complacent enough to call another generation the greatest.”
—Dan “Soupy” Campbell
“You know there's something fundamentally wrong with society when our only form of counterculture is based on style rather than principle, when our only form of rebellion is to grow out our hair and join a Christian metal band, or to put stripes in our hair and take a photo from an incredibly convincing angle.”
—Conversation I just had with my mum...
- Me: [reading out tumblr post] why DO artistic people have to take science and maths and science-y people don't have to take music or art? It seems quite unfair.
- Mum: [rolls eyes] well you know...
- Me: No, I don't know.
- Mum: It's just one of those things!
- Me: But-
- Mum: Don't question it. That's just how it is.
- That is the problem with today's society. What are we told to do? We are told not to acknowledge the issue, speak about it, or ask questions. We're effectively told not to try to change anything. Usually my mum is more than willing to engage in conversation, but not on this topic. 'Just get through your exams, don't bother pointing out the flaws in the system'. WE NEED TO CHANGE THIS, YO.
Appearance and self-esteem shame
This is something that I’ve been wanting to post/write about for a really long time, but never got around to it, mostly because I was afraid of what people would say (which is part of the problem) if they said anything at all.
Lately, people have been ranting about how there is a low self-esteem epidemic in America, which is more than likely true. It is a real problem that girls are made to feel like the fat on their body is not beautiful or their asymmetrical facial features somehow make them less attractive than others. It’s a big issue that needs attention. That being said, I’d like to take a minute and talk about the other side of the spectrum.
I’m an attractive girl. I know this. There should be no shame in this. I should feel no hesitation to say out loud, “I really like the way I look.” But somehow, society has twisted this into a serious misinterpretation of being conceited. I am not conceited. There is absolutely nothing wrong with loving my body or the way I look. I refuse to accept that it is alright to tell me that “confidence is key” but then shoot me down and shame me when I say I am beautiful, saying, “you’re so full of it” or “you’re making other girls with low self-esteem feel bad”. I refuse to be held accountable for other people’s views on themselves, because that’s not fair to me or the girls who think poorly of themselves. Everyone is beautiful. I don’t think I am any more beautiful than one girl, but I am beautiful and there should be no shame in stating it proudly. Everyone is beautiful. So why on Earth am I struggling not to feel ashamed of admitting myself a healthy self-esteem? I want to help my friends and family who feel as if they aren’t good enough, but how am I supposed to do that when women aren’t allowed to have good self-esteem?
Ok so I am going to use a metaphor to talk about my thoughts on feminism
I keep seeing people talking about how “Well, they’re a good guy and it’s unfair of women to be afraid of them/treat them with hostility/think they’re going to rape them/etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.”
I’m going to use an example to address this.
I used to have pet rats. I could make loud aggressive noises around my rats. I could wave my arms and jump up and down and just seem generally scary. My rats weren’t afraid, despite the fact that I was physically bigger than they were. The reason for this was because I never hurt them. I never harmed them in any way—they didn’t have reason to be afraid of me.
However, I later adopted a rat who had been through some rough stuff. She was afraid. I had never personally hurt her, but she was still afraid of me because someone had hurt her in the past. Her fear manifested itself as aggression, and I had to wear heavy leather gloves when reaching into the cage because otherwise she would bite viciously. All this seemed terribly unfair to me. I had never hurt this rat, why should she lash out at me? But her past told her that people bigger than her would hurt her, and so she had fear, and that fear was how she survived.
Just because I was a nice person and everyone I knew was a nice person and were all very kind to animals didn’t change a thing. There were people out there who made this rat scared and just because I wasn’t one of them and neither was anyone I knew didn’t make them not exist.
It just made me want to fix the real problem—not the rat’s aggression towards me, but the fact that there was reason she was like this to begin with. And a lot of that problem couldn’t be blamed on one person in particular, but had to do with the fact that animals are valued less by society, and rats even less than most animals, and cruelty to animals is a crime barely seen as a crime.
I hope this made some kind of sense.
I was reading someone’s folk tale at school
There were cats and I felt that it was very meaningful because it addressed many social issues
Like in the story there was segregation by amount of money
Like the cats of the east side were rich and the cats of the west side were poor
And the west side was also called L.A. or Little Africa
In addition there were recreational narcotics (a.k.a. ‘catnapes’)
And the rich-bitch cat took an entire bag of catnip in two snorts on some word-trickery by a poor cat and passed out
So the poor cat got away with a lot of food from her house
But he was still poor and the food ran out later so he had to continue looking for food
So crime doesn’t pay and sometimes it’s really hard to get out of poverty
I just thought that it was very meaningful and reflected on many aspects of modern life
