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intersex-ionality:
alarajrogers:
findingfeather:
I’m putting this over here rather than on the thread: https://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/187301803839/just-a-zuki-star-anise-donna-dot-paella
I’m on mobile and it’s really being a PITA about hyperlinking, so forgive me on this one. But I’m putting this over here in part because that thread is already getting long, but also because the point here has wider application.
Because even when you look at what’s discussed, and you recognize that the majority of the people in the pyramid scheme are fucked over and supposedly only a small percent are getting rewards …
… but then you look at how that small percent experience the universe …
… you realize that for the most part the super-rich and powerful are also actually miserable, most of the time. It’s one of the hideous fucking ironies of the whole thing: the top of the wealth class actually have similar rates of pathology, addiction, suicide, mental illness, abuse, neglect, failed relationships and general just Fucked Upness, as those facing the most challenges in the world.
This is not to say you should pity the poor fuckers: that’s not what I’m talking about. My point is more that the actual meaning of “money can’t buy happiness” is on this end, not on the “you should be able to be happy when you can’t get the necessities of life”: that’s obviously bullshit.
But what isn’t is that extreme wealth and privilege are, ironically, not correlated with happiness. Or even basic mental health.
Ditto every other kind of privilege. And this seems absolute madness, until one realizes one very central, very important thing about human society and human existence:
Systems do not actually have to benefit anyone to survive. They just have to self-perpetuate.
A system can literally harm all its members but as long as it manages to perpetuate itself, it will survive. And in fact some of the most resilient systems of thought and belief are actually inherently guaranteed to make their holders miserable and unhealthy and that very fact means that they will get passed on.
Like, well. Toxic masculinity.
It’s one of the biggest emotional challenges, I find, of figuring out how to fix any of these things. Surely, you think, as you’re looking at (for example) the ways in which ablism fucks you over (fucks me over) those goddamn people who fit in the “acceptable” box, the “able” box, the “mentally well” box, surely - given how attached to it they are, given how much time they spend attacking me and mine for its sake - surely it must be rewarding them! Somehow! Materially! Continually!
It isn’t. At most there is a very small, very short-term brain-chemical reward from being an enforcer of social norms. Now, that’s very powerful - of such things are life-destroying gambling addictions made - but it’s not actually, materially, very….well, useful.
And that’s because the only requirement of a system of belief, of understanding, of approaching the world, the only thing it needs to actually keep existing? Is the ability to get people to sign on, and pass it on.
It doesn’t need to actually benefit anyone. Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
Some of the most ardent supporters of all kinds of shit - of homophobia, of toxic masculinity, of white supremacy, of classist bullshit, pick your poison - who are supposedly among the people it purports to uplift, are actually among those most damaged by it, because it doesn’t need to actually help them at all: it just needs their buy-in.
And there doesn’t need to be a mastermind. There doesn’t need to be someone who’s secretly driving it all with a master-plan to do … something. In the same way that we don’t end up with physiological traits - body-traits, things about our physical being - because of some guiding hand, but because for some reason on a species-wide scale they self-perpetuate? Same thing with our behavioural systems.
Nobody has to win; the system just has to self-perpetuate. And an aspect that many systems use to self-perpetuate is in fact making absolutely damn sure that nobody, nobody caught in the system is ever actually satisfied. Actually content.
Because then they’ll get out there and push the system more.
Now, I don’t think that’s “destiny”. I don’t think that’s an irreparable aspect that we’re just trapped dealing with forever: after all, that’s also more or less how viruses and other infectious diseases reproduce, and we’re learning how to stall, slow, and in some cases even eradicate those. We are learning how to make that kind of behaviour (making people metaphorically suffer until they metaphorically spew the contagion out where someone else catches it) unrewarding as a survival strategy.
But I think realizing this aspect is actually hella useful to getting there. I think it’s useful to let it inform strategies and temper how we work so that it’s potentially more effective in getting these toxic, poison systems of belief and behaviour out of us.
[nb: now, in any human interaction, there are in fact system within systems: obviously people on a small scale use the systems I mention above for smaller-scale goals all the time. And yeah, I’m including things like “getting to be president of the USA” in “smaller scale goals” here because compared even with the history of humankind this is a tiny, temporary sliver of time. But if you look at even the Cheeto’s life, and that of his family, it takes barely a scratch at the surface to see this deep, ugly misery, insecurity, gnawing terror of impermanence, and bitter/resentful anger all the time - and yet they “should” be blissfully happy, being at the top of the heap. The system doesn’t actually reward them, insomuch as “reward” means “end up not suffering”. It just plays on their fear and their greed and their envy and their resentment to drive them to amass useless piles of money and power they’re unsuited for, to the MASSIVE MASSIVE detriment of EVERYONE ELSE - and they AREN’T EVEN HAPPY.
That’s the point here. That’s what I mean by “systems don’t actually have to fully benefit anyone.”
I am reminded of a story about George W. Bush, how when he was 7, his beloved little sister, who was 3, died of an illness. From his perspective she disappeared and never came back. His parents went golfing.
I don’t feel sorry for W – he participated in the destruction of my country as much as Reagan and his dad did, and there are enormous quantities of blood on his hands – but I feel sorry for the little boy he once was, whose parents were so disconnected from emotion, they didn’t acknowledge that their son needed to grieve for his dead sister, regardless of whether they were cold enough to shove their feelings about her in a box and bury them.
Some of the super-rich may be happy. The ones who got there through doing something they truly love, maybe. Bezos and Musk reportedly have terrible marriages and/or divorces, but Bill Gates as far as I know is genuinely devoted to his wife and is enjoying his life of philanthropy after building one of the most powerful and influential software companies on the planet. But I strongly suspect that most of them, especially the ones who got there because it was handed to them on a platter, are absolutely miserable.
Personally, I’d like to be as wealthy as, say, the Obamas. Two professional highly paid incomes and money from writing books? Financial security and the freedom to travel at will? Sign me up for that! But more wealth than that, I don’t see how you live with yourself, with what you need to do to yourself and to other people to achieve it.
You live with it by repressing anything negative you feel, until you end up repressing everything you feel.
It’s wildly unhealthy. I’ve a friend who worked as a therapist for the ultra-rich in the 90s. Most of them have so fundamentally lost touch with their own emotions–let alone the emotions of anyone else–that they live in a state of permanent dissociation.
If they weren’t the most powerful people in society, we would call that complex PTSD as a result of severe and sustained childhood trauma.
But they are the most powerful in society, so we all just kind of call it normal. Or, at best, we call it monstrous and inhuman, without recognizing the fundamental humanity that caused them to move down this path of exploitation, violence, and repression.
Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
intersex-ionality:
alarajrogers:
findingfeather:
I’m putting this over here rather than on the thread: https://star-anise.tumblr.com/post/187301803839/just-a-zuki-star-anise-donna-dot-paella
I’m on mobile and it’s really being a PITA about hyperlinking, so forgive me on this one. But I’m putting this over here in part because that thread is already getting long, but also because the point here has wider application.
Because even when you look at what’s discussed, and you recognize that the majority of the people in the pyramid scheme are fucked over and supposedly only a small percent are getting rewards …
… but then you look at how that small percent experience the universe …
… you realize that for the most part the super-rich and powerful are also actually miserable, most of the time. It’s one of the hideous fucking ironies of the whole thing: the top of the wealth class actually have similar rates of pathology, addiction, suicide, mental illness, abuse, neglect, failed relationships and general just Fucked Upness, as those facing the most challenges in the world.
This is not to say you should pity the poor fuckers: that’s not what I’m talking about. My point is more that the actual meaning of “money can’t buy happiness” is on this end, not on the “you should be able to be happy when you can’t get the necessities of life”: that’s obviously bullshit.
But what isn’t is that extreme wealth and privilege are, ironically, not correlated with happiness. Or even basic mental health.
Ditto every other kind of privilege. And this seems absolute madness, until one realizes one very central, very important thing about human society and human existence:
Systems do not actually have to benefit anyone to survive. They just have to self-perpetuate.
A system can literally harm all its members but as long as it manages to perpetuate itself, it will survive. And in fact some of the most resilient systems of thought and belief are actually inherently guaranteed to make their holders miserable and unhealthy and that very fact means that they will get passed on.
Like, well. Toxic masculinity.
It’s one of the biggest emotional challenges, I find, of figuring out how to fix any of these things. Surely, you think, as you’re looking at (for example) the ways in which ablism fucks you over (fucks me over) those goddamn people who fit in the “acceptable” box, the “able” box, the “mentally well” box, surely - given how attached to it they are, given how much time they spend attacking me and mine for its sake - surely it must be rewarding them! Somehow! Materially! Continually!
It isn’t. At most there is a very small, very short-term brain-chemical reward from being an enforcer of social norms. Now, that’s very powerful - of such things are life-destroying gambling addictions made - but it’s not actually, materially, very….well, useful.
And that’s because the only requirement of a system of belief, of understanding, of approaching the world, the only thing it needs to actually keep existing? Is the ability to get people to sign on, and pass it on.
It doesn’t need to actually benefit anyone. Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
Some of the most ardent supporters of all kinds of shit - of homophobia, of toxic masculinity, of white supremacy, of classist bullshit, pick your poison - who are supposedly among the people it purports to uplift, are actually among those most damaged by it, because it doesn’t need to actually help them at all: it just needs their buy-in.
And there doesn’t need to be a mastermind. There doesn’t need to be someone who’s secretly driving it all with a master-plan to do … something. In the same way that we don’t end up with physiological traits - body-traits, things about our physical being - because of some guiding hand, but because for some reason on a species-wide scale they self-perpetuate? Same thing with our behavioural systems.
Nobody has to win; the system just has to self-perpetuate. And an aspect that many systems use to self-perpetuate is in fact making absolutely damn sure that nobody, nobody caught in the system is ever actually satisfied. Actually content.
Because then they’ll get out there and push the system more.
Now, I don’t think that’s “destiny”. I don’t think that’s an irreparable aspect that we’re just trapped dealing with forever: after all, that’s also more or less how viruses and other infectious diseases reproduce, and we’re learning how to stall, slow, and in some cases even eradicate those. We are learning how to make that kind of behaviour (making people metaphorically suffer until they metaphorically spew the contagion out where someone else catches it) unrewarding as a survival strategy.
But I think realizing this aspect is actually hella useful to getting there. I think it’s useful to let it inform strategies and temper how we work so that it’s potentially more effective in getting these toxic, poison systems of belief and behaviour out of us.
[nb: now, in any human interaction, there are in fact system within systems: obviously people on a small scale use the systems I mention above for smaller-scale goals all the time. And yeah, I’m including things like “getting to be president of the USA” in “smaller scale goals” here because compared even with the history of humankind this is a tiny, temporary sliver of time. But if you look at even the Cheeto’s life, and that of his family, it takes barely a scratch at the surface to see this deep, ugly misery, insecurity, gnawing terror of impermanence, and bitter/resentful anger all the time - and yet they “should” be blissfully happy, being at the top of the heap. The system doesn’t actually reward them, insomuch as “reward” means “end up not suffering”. It just plays on their fear and their greed and their envy and their resentment to drive them to amass useless piles of money and power they’re unsuited for, to the MASSIVE MASSIVE detriment of EVERYONE ELSE - and they AREN’T EVEN HAPPY.
That’s the point here. That’s what I mean by “systems don’t actually have to fully benefit anyone.”
I am reminded of a story about George W. Bush, how when he was 7, his beloved little sister, who was 3, died of an illness. From his perspective she disappeared and never came back. His parents went golfing.
I don’t feel sorry for W – he participated in the destruction of my country as much as Reagan and his dad did, and there are enormous quantities of blood on his hands – but I feel sorry for the little boy he once was, whose parents were so disconnected from emotion, they didn’t acknowledge that their son needed to grieve for his dead sister, regardless of whether they were cold enough to shove their feelings about her in a box and bury them.
Some of the super-rich may be happy. The ones who got there through doing something they truly love, maybe. Bezos and Musk reportedly have terrible marriages and/or divorces, but Bill Gates as far as I know is genuinely devoted to his wife and is enjoying his life of philanthropy after building one of the most powerful and influential software companies on the planet. But I strongly suspect that most of them, especially the ones who got there because it was handed to them on a platter, are absolutely miserable.
Personally, I’d like to be as wealthy as, say, the Obamas. Two professional highly paid incomes and money from writing books? Financial security and the freedom to travel at will? Sign me up for that! But more wealth than that, I don’t see how you live with yourself, with what you need to do to yourself and to other people to achieve it.
You live with it by repressing anything negative you feel, until you end up repressing everything you feel.
It’s wildly unhealthy. I’ve a friend who worked as a therapist for the ultra-rich in the 90s. Most of them have so fundamentally lost touch with their own emotions–let alone the emotions of anyone else–that they live in a state of permanent dissociation.
If they weren’t the most powerful people in society, we would call that complex PTSD as a result of severe and sustained childhood trauma.
But they are the most powerful in society, so we all just kind of call it normal. Or, at best, we call it monstrous and inhuman, without recognizing the fundamental humanity that caused them to move down this path of exploitation, violence, and repression.
Systems just need to self-replicate and self-perpetuate, they don’t need to do anything else.
