marjaerwin | Entries tagged with humanity

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/03/greenpeace-activists-arctic-sunrise?commentpage=2

I’m stunned, and a bit triggered, by how many people here are complaining about so-called self-righteousness, and celebrating Russian prisons, and their speculations about what will happen to these activists in those prisons. I get the impression from the latter that they enjoy other people’s suffering, and from the former that they resent anyone who doesn’t enjoy the same things.

So now I'm seeing condemnations of Snowden and of whistleblowing based on condemnations of conscience. It's unthinkable, but it's right here: http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/24891461

Would we be human without our consciences?

It's what drives us to try to do the right thing and try to understand what is the right thing. One cannot oppose moral reasoning to conscience, because moral reasoning is rooted in conscience. It's one of the things that makes moral reasoning different from moralization and sophistry.

One thing about surviving trauma is that you can get a little wiser about the world. Another thing about surviving trauma is that you can get broken.

That feeling of constant vulnerability? That sense that you need to get away from the danger and find safety, and that knowledge that you can't get away from the danger and there is no safety and there is no truly safe space? It's true. It's true and most people flinch away because they know they can't function if they know this truth. But some of us don't get to flinch away. And we can't function any more. Not unless we change the world and change its truths. Not unless we change the world so there is safe space.

... I am at a loss for words. I have already been beaten by the militarists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/15023947

I don't know how many more planes need to be slammed into buildings for the reality sink into a pacifist's head. American-born extremist are treasonous.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/15024115

I agree with you that humans live and die. Unfortunately the American Civil Liberty Union wants to upset this balance by being in favor of traitors living.

I wonder how many millions more people will die in how many destructive conflicts before the racist-nationalists realize they are destroying humanity.

He's decided that as a pacifist, I must be an extremist, and as an American-born pacifist, I must be some sort of blood traitor. Because I reject militarist values of blood, land, oaths, orders, and war, and he accepts these values, he declares that I am a traitor, and I must die.

He's not threatening me in person, of course, just the millions of other human beings who wish to live human lives.

She is being charged with doing what any humyn being should have done, in her place, and may face life imprisonment or execution for doing the right thing.

But so many people are saying she should be shot, and some are saying she shouldn't even be considered humyn, and that she should be shot and her supporters - all of us - should be shot.

And that's the nature of war and empire. It involves dehumanizing the other, and it involves dehumanizing one's self to serve the empire. I hate ideologies of national/racial loyalty, military loyalty, and oaths. All these things encourage us-and-them and despise our common humanity, and that's what war-mongers use these things for.

Ni aiþos, nih harjos, nih reiks, nih kaisar!

No.

There is no moral common ground with those who think that subordination and supremacy are good, for these are evil. There is no moral common ground with those who think morality means obedience to some pseudo-legitimate authoritae. There is no moral common ground with those who think morality means loyalty to one's country or one's skin-privilege. There is no moral common ground with those who think that patriotism, nationalism, war and slaughter - for all these are different names for the same evil - are good, for these are evil. There is no moral common ground with those who think they are better because they were born of noble blood or born on Amerikkkan soil. There is no moral common ground with those who think that retribution, punishment, revenge are good, for these are evil. There is no moral common ground for those who think that good means loyalty to kings, loyalty to countries, loyalty to oaths, loyalty to EVIL.

When people choose evil and call it good - when people blindly do so, and believe that the evil is indeed good, and denounce those who call it out for the evil it is - I wonder, what room is left for persuasion.

I hope that the good yet cries out from within them: The recognition that we are to love ourselves, to treat others as our equals, and loving ourselves, to love others. The recognition that oppression is wrong, that murder is wrong, and then the realisation that it is just as wrong when the state does it, to realise that the state is no good but is another evil...

Some of my best friends are Aspies. I know full well they have the same capacity for empathy as any other human being. When supposed experts like Baron-Cohen claim that autistic folks are incapable of empathy, the supposed experts reveal that they themselves are unwilling to extend empathy to those different from themselves.

Our society is run by neurotypicals for neurotypicals, and treats neurominorities as perpetual outsiders. It judges people by eye contact, facial expression, and tone of voice. It excludes those of us who find eye contact stressful or facial expressions unreadable, and it dehumanizes us to justify that exclusion.

Our society is run by people who regard neurodiversity as disease, and wish to find ways to prevent it. But it is the diversity of minds and the diversity of perspectives which makes society most creative, most dynamic, most driven to overcome its injustices and find greater justice. And makes society most free for the remainder. If you abolish autism, you are abolishing your own empathy for autistics, and you will make life hell for those on the edge of autism.

I am angry here. You should be angry too.

http://www.autismandempathy.com/?p=9

http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=3833

Yes.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/24-1

Driving Straight Into Catastrophe

by Julio Godoy

PARIS - Despite repeated warnings by environmental and climate experts that reduction of fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is fundamental to forestalling global warming, disaster appears imminent. According to the latest statistics, unprecedented climate change has Earth hurtling down a path of catastrophic proportions.

Why. The. Fuck. do people keep letting this get worse?

Why. The. Fuck. does the state persecute environmentalists while subsidizing environmental destruction - where the profits go to the few and the costs go to all?

It's mind-blowingly stupid. An effective parasite has the sense to preserve its host. But the ruling class does not show any interest in preserving the people or the earth we all live on.

The state will not take one step to preserve the environment, humanity, and itself, but it will devote resources to make sure no one else acts. The state, as an institution, appears capable of paranoia, but not of forethought.

What. The. Fuck. is to be done?

Of course it's impossible to avoid it in this non-society. Of course the state cannot permit safe spaces where it could not violate people.

And that's one of reasons it's so painful to deal with it. Every time I try to get some basic document sorted out - to get my birth certificate to replace the one the passport office lost three years ago - I am at the mercy of the bureaucracy. If they say no, like they did the last time I tried to get my birth certificate, then I'm screwed. If they mail it to the wrong address, then I'm screwed; they don't always send things to the same address I put down. If they give me incorrect or contradictory instructions, then I'm screwed. If they ask for false information, then I'm liable; if their definitions differ from reality, or two different institutions use different definitions of the same thing, things get very dangerous for people on that margin.

Every time I deal with bureaucracy I feel scared, and helpless, and nauseous, for hours afterward. And when you consider violent bureaucracies - the military, police, courts, immigration controls, etc. - I'm surprised that the people who deal with them don't just end it. Life is good, but is a life of constant, intense pain and fear and vulnerability, good?

Be human. Smash vulnerability.

It shames me to see the comments calling for torture, and which say "Let hope he is getting hot pokers up his arse every night before he tries to go to bed." or which brag about bullying those who oppose this violence.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/un-probing-bradley-manning-detention_n_800461.html

I sometimes forget that the commenters are not monsters, they are just people trying to act like monsters. In some ways, that is scarier. In others - humanity is our nature, and trying to be something inhuman must be even harder and even more painful than trying to be someone else.

If some of you believe people should be imprisoned, let alone tortured or executed, for revealing war crimes... then there are not enough words to describe your support for evil and your hatred of humanity.

Humanity is better than nationalism.

Right action is better than obeying orders.

I don't know what else to say. Debating with those who support war, war crimes, and the coverups thereof is as futile as debating with those who call for the execution of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people, or who support witch-burnings.

Some of the replies to this article make me want to puke:

http://www.bilerico.com/2010/12/gay_soldier_being_tortured_in_prison.php

Also, Kevin Carson has a good essay on the authoritarians:

http://c4ss.org/content/5419?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+c4ss+%28Center+for+a+Stateless+Society%29

Of course, Amazon was responding to politicians' threats.

But someone has to stand firm here. Everything is on the line.

A free internet, a rigidly censored one, or a shutdown?

The political establishment is unwilling to tolerate a free internet, and unable to censor it. I suspect they will shut the internet down within the next 10 years.

A society of privacy or one of secrecy?

Privacy and secrecy are not the same thing. Privacy is a matter of individual/cooperative freedom, including freedom from surveillance, and including the freedom to organize for mutual aid. Of course, the state cannot legitimately claim anything, but in particular the state cannot claim the right to violate individual/cooperate freedom or claim those freedoms for itself.

The state has no privacy rights.

The state has secrecy.

That secrecy is the power of the state to conspire against the people, against the people across its borders, and against the people it considers undesirables, "illegals," defectives, "Untermenschen," and other classes it chooses to target. That secrecy is the power of the state to conceal its crimes: war, torture, prison rape, and the rest.

I don't believe that the technologies exist to create an impervious totalitarianism.

But the ruling class seems determined to try to maintain their place by any means possible, while they destroy the world around them. They may bring humanity into darkness. During the Cold War they developed second strike capabilities which had no purpose but to bring humanity into darkness. They may do this more slowly yet less deliberately, exhausting the oil supplies on which mass agriculture depends, shooting refugees at the border as the system collapses, and watching the ecosystem collapse and the people die off...

In hundreds or thousands of years, humanity might begin to rebuild. But the world will have been impoverished.

1. Anti-immigrant laws are anti-human.

2. Anti-immigrant laws are also racist.

3. Therefore anti-immigrant slurs are racial slurs.

4. And, in any case, calling people "illegals," "defectives," "undesirables," or "Untermenschen" is dehumanizing and paves the way for murder.

(I think that's why the anti-immigrant movement uses those terms; many of them want murder, many of them want genocide. Certainly all too many of them are members of neo-Nazi organizations or have close ties with such.)

When men consider how they should treat other men, it is moral philosophy. When womyn consider how we should treat other womyn, it is feminism. It has taken feminism to separate the were-centered moral philosophies from the human-centered ones. It will take feminism-in-practice to discover the full potential of feminism-in-theory.

What do I look for in feminism-in-practice? (besides, of course, my beloved V.?)

I honestly don't know, but I'd suggest, for starters:

Womyn's freedom-in-equality, that is a social relationship of mutual respect, mutual cooperation, self-directedness and self-realization.

Womyn's completeness, recognizing that womyn are not the matching halves of men, but are whole among ourselves.

Womyn's space, that is a community defined by womyn's needs and contributions.

Womyn's originality, that is the rediscovery of our identity and potential as womyn.

P.S. Most of these are inclusive of men as well as womyn. Womyn's equality certainly has to encompass men as well as womyn; we will fail to treat ourselves rightly if we come to treat men wrongly. Womyn's completeness is just as important. It requires a strong push-back and heterosexism and against subversivism. I think that creating gynocentric spaces can help to encourage womyn's completeness. I think that once we defeat misogyny as well as patriarchy, then we can create spaces which are for all humans at once. In any case, the perception that we are incomplete on our own encourages many of the attempts of men and of other womyn to deny us individual control of our own bodies. I would point to the recurring argument that, among hetero people, husbands should be able to deny their wives access to birth control or abortion.

Supporting borders means having armed guards keep lovers apart. It's not right. It's just plain cruel. It wrong to let loyalties to countries, or in other issues, loyalties to parties or churches or any other institutions come before love, or hope, or humanity. If your politics or your religion lead you into doing evil, then you're doing it wrong!

For two dykes to discover integrity as ourselves, and seek equality with ourselves. So why are so many self-described radical feminists so hostile to us?