When your movie is about Cats is so bad the original writer buys a DOG
I think truly the most valuable lesson I ever learned came from the miniseries chernobyl. Specifically the line "every lie incurrs a debt on reality"
At first it felt a bit like wishful thinking, like that old adage of the arc of the universe being long but bending towards justice, or like crime doesn't pay, or the power of love.
But then I realized what it really meant. And I realize that it Is true.
Because the thing is no matter for how long you may try to make things work by the power of image and glamour alone, eventually real life consequences make themselves be felt wether you believe in them or not.
And this is why I tend to become skeptic of this postmodern idea that the world runs on narratives and that whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Because at the end of the day, beneath the narratives, reality is still there. Base, material, objective physical reality. Waiting. And there will reach a point that whatever map you try to paint will just not match the territory, and the More you try to ignore it the worse it will be when that happens.
So no, stories don't define the world, what is is not determined by what we perceive, if everyone believes a lie it is still a lie, still not true, still something useless when it comes to actually living in reality. Reality will always always always assert it self, and a lot of times it will be in the form of death tolls
I notice what (I think) you are talking about in a lot of people’s political thinking. Americans, for the most part, enjoy such stability, and at the same time society has become so heavily atomized that there is no firm grip in most people on what I might call “political reality.”
Many if not most people in my country take it as a given that “the system is rigged”; that “elites” run everything and do so from an unassailable position (except, in some people’s minds, in the event of violent revolution); and that there is absolutely nothing that they themselves, as insignificant ordinary people, can do to effect meaningful change.
That’s all bologna! It’s devastatingly wrong, and ironically (and not coincidentally) it actually becomes a self-reinforcing prophecy, and is therefore a mindset that rich people and their agents, and increasingly the political right, as well as the usual revolutionary quarters of the left, all deliberately and intentionally foment, because it actually does damage our free society.
I think a lot of people just didn’t get good exposure when they were younger to the many diversities and nuances of the world. Or maybe they just don’t have good minds for this stuff and sound political thinking is harder than we give it credit for. And almost certainly people don’t get outside enough, don’t check what they’re told in electronic spaces against the real world often enough.
I’ve seen what individual people can do in their homes, businesses, and communities to effect major change. To give a very superficial example, I’ve seen deeply consequential elections settled by only a handful of votes after multiple recounts. To give a more profound example, I’ve seen people change the circumstances of their lives through persistent application and the requisite dice rolls of good luck—dice rolls which, by the way, don’t go against us so intrinsically that we can reasonably call luck a predominantly antagonistic force. Luck on average functions more like a complicating force, or an accelerant of existing trends, or sometimes both at once.
You don’t have to look hard to see how much power people hold in their potential. And I’m not even talking about power in my sense of the word, which is much broader; I’m purely talking about the conventional sense of politico-economic power. Other forms of power merely amplify this point all the more. At the same time, there is no such thing as the unassailable master who has more money than God and thinks ten moves ahead on the chessboard. Power structures are both inevitable and yet inevitably high-maintenance, unwieldy, and unstable.
The truth of reality always governs all that which it governs. And though humans can and do build and maintain elaborate structures to minimize or insulate against reality, as you say there will always be accountability to reality. Reality—our material world—is the base layer upon which all else exists. Right-wingers and conspiracy theorists may continue to deny the gravity of something like COVID, but that didn’t stop COVID from killing hundreds of thousands of them needlessly in the US alone.
Controlling the narrative is power. In fact it would be hard for me to overstate how powerful it is. But the cynical implication of this fact—the premise that the rest of us are powerless, and that the human world is vastly and irreparably screwed up—is false. And its own debt to reality is paid in installments every time people live their truths and wield what personal power they may. Be it for good or for ill...
My absolute dream is to open a mexican restaurant in Germany called NachoPop with the worst guacamole on the goddamn planet
when i’m on my period my vagina is like the 2000 general election…all that Bush and Gore
calling the cops on someone else in america for drug use is the most comically evil action i can think of that you can still admit to in public and (unfortunately) not be shunned/exiled/physically attacked for. you're very explicitly saying that your sheltered discomfort with seeing someone do drugs is worth ruining that person's entire life over (even though you could get the same effect by just continuing to walk past the drug user until you never see them again). 18th century dauphin mindset. "papá! papá! i espied that peasant over yonder partaking of a snuffbox! throw him in the dungeon, lest my delicate morals be corrupted any further!" kill yourself perhaps
not the coquettes literally reinventing nazi phrenology on tiktok
Yeah just a heads up. If you start judging people by bodyshape in any way I'll kick you right in the teeth. Have fun describing someone's face shape as inferior when your jaw is gone
vampireapologist-archive-deacti
This review for a dog life jacket is sending me
its true that romance amd friendship will not solve everything but. objectively speaking its very hard to get sad when you can say 'lets go get cake tomorrow okay' and someone will go get cake with you. like there is some good at least. you know
got cornflakes for fried chicken & the back of the box has its own recipe. easy as pie. "rinse chicken tenders with cold water and coat with crushed kelloggs corn flakes cereal." and then cook. no binding agent. no seasoning. nothing but a pile of flavorless chicken with a side of the extra-dried-out cornflakes that fell off it. serve warm with your favorite dipping sauce. doesnt even say serve hot. Serve Warm. wouldnt wanna get too wild with it. truly this is the spirit of cornflakes
