The way fear, anger, hatred, and the resulting division is being used to control populations.

We have more in common with one another than we think. We all do. But our media highlights the things about each other that we fear or hate.

I know plenty of people across the political spectrum. There is a distinct lack of empathy for anyone who doesn’t share specific views or experiences.

Note, I am not trying to “both sides” here, I’m really not. Modern conservatism is dangerous. But it remains in place not only because conservatives are fed fear and hatred about progressives, but also because progressives are fed fear and anger towards conservatives.

I don’t think the original goal here was to control people, I think fear sells. We seek out warnings, they impact our mental state more. News organizations originally realized they could make more money by making their audience afraid.

But there have always been those who capitalize on those fears. And today it means that those who control the channels simply need to keep us afraid of and angry at one another over some wedge issues and they don’t then need to fear anyone coming together to make actual meaningful societal change happen.

I wish we’d all spend a bit more time talking to other people. But that’s becoming more and more rare.

The world’s population is getting significantly sicker and we’re blaming the victims for “lifestyle diseases” as a way of dismissing the problem. But research needs money and time, so there will always be better and stronger evidence for money-making remedies instead of the slow and complex research into why people are increasingly experiencing disease.

We’re hurting ourselves, and each other, and because disabled people are excluded from huge parts of society, we’re also covering up the evidence. It’s only when we’re wounded that the reality is clear, but by then it’s too late - you’re just written off as someone who made bad choices.

When I was young I saw the night sky with the milky way clearly visible. I never got the chance to see it again.

I travelled to the top of a remote mountain free of any light pollution or air pollution. It was a dark night with new moon. The sky was completely clear. I still had good eyesight at that time.

The starry night sky was magnificent and mesmerizing.

That the solutions that benefit all beings are always the best. Even if they require more effort. Also, that there are never just two solutions to any problem. The human experience is not binary, there are infinitely many solutions to all problems.

How stupid we humans are for coming up for all kinds of biases based solely on where other people were born at, more than their parents. Not only country wise, some people can get super defensive against people born 20-30km away within the same country and state.

To a lesser extent, more people should be aware of Dyogenes of Sinope, aka Dyogenes the Cynic’s antics. A man that “saw through” society’s bullshit and was willing to live and act according to what he preached: owning nothing, living in poverty, giving no fucks to societal norms of the time and being truly honest to everyone in their faces, behaving “like a dog”, kynos, which is the root of the word cynic.

Ghosts

Following a reaction to being put under for surgery, I see way more colors than I used to. When I look at a rainbow, I can see more bands of color than normal.

Down side? Bright light is physically painful. When I woke up from surgery I had to beg to be put in a dark room.

I think others see this but not enough: the slow collapse of Liberal democracy.

A rot has set in and people in politics and government no longer believe in liberal democracy. If you read history you find impassioned fighting for liberty, freedom and equality.

Now we have quasi democracies, with erosions of freedoms, rights and even dumbing down of access to news coverage and knowledge. Countries like the USA and UK that were leading lights in liberal democracy have fallen back into more authoritarian regimes. Countries in continental Europe that were bastions of liberal democracy also seem to losing their way. Big corporations and a wealthy elite are working against the interests of Liberal democracy and we’re letting them do it.

Authoritarianism is the scourge of our age - being pushed by China and Russia and taking hold in India, the middle east, Africa and increasingly in the west.

It’s depressing to see the rot.

That you’re worth it. The universe doesn’t make mistakes. Your current you is perfect and perfection does evolve and the You in every moment going forward is perfect. That the you in the past is perfect. You can never be more than you are right this moment which is perfect. Allow yourself and others than same space and the love for life flourishes.

that we don’t have freedom (in the us specifically here) there is a party that is pretty well known for it’s “individualistic, and freedom centric approach”

I call bullshit though. Have you seen how much red tape surrounds everything? How much shit you have to get through in order to simply, do something. You want to build a house? Just wait until you find out about how many different possible ways that can be different. You want to run a business? Well you better believe that shits a mess also. Taxes? Simple? There are numerous variants. Federal, state, sales, property, estate, etc…

You want to do something trivial and supported by ALL of society? Even that is arguably more difficult than it should be. You can genuinely talk to people who have actual degrees in business (or at the very least, work in business) about business, and they will not be able to understand a single word you say. Because you aren’t speaking the way that they speak, which is quite ironic considering how business is supposed to work.

You wanna go outside? You are probably being surveilled, and the likelihood of you ending up in the hands of law enforcement controlled AI recognition software is above 0.

Having been a linux user for 4 going on 5 years now. It’s honestly kind of appalling, how much bureaucracy that everything has these days.

How much damage suburbs strodes and massive footprint drive up box stores actually do. The amount of materials and ecological flattening needed so that everyone can have their own yard with a patch of shit grass. All the concrete reflecting heat into the atmosphere and causing temperature instability, the damage to the water and carbon locking systems we all need to survive because so many people can’t stand being around people outside their own isolated family units or need to find a place to park their car. We need affordable city and high density village housing and flip the script on housing costs heavily incentivizing moving out of suburban areas.

We need more trains and buses but more than that we need design where our land use is treated as an actual resource that requires harm reduction policies instead of just “unused” land because “unused” land is what is keeping the planet alive and if we don’t start reclaiming it we are gunna be in massive trouble.

Which dynamics (political, economical, privacy-wise) will lead to a less enjoyable future for all of us.

I work in the field of mental health, specifically mostly in the area of recovery mentorship.

This is an area that is effectively dominated by women.

I wish women could see how that within the realm of healing, they have constructed their own systems of power where men are oppressed, abused, belittled, and prevented from accessing those services without standing up to / enduring that level of hatred.

In short, once the oppressed have the guns, they become the oppressors.

Having spent too much time in OS security, I wish people building today’s products could realize and internalize just how their project is a house of cards built on top of a house of cards, security-speaking. We’ve normalized a seriously insane amount if sketchy shit that the critique of a modern product core to many linux OS distributions was seen as just old people ranting … and the shady shit continued.

One day we’re going to run into a series of deep-seated security exploits that will blow our mind and cause a chernobyl of damage, and we may not even link it to a particular weak link among SO MANY weak links; but that’s what we’re looking at. And the fact that we’re ignoring common-sense, best-practice rules to develop core apps is leaving a hole in the proverbial fence that we’re ignoring as well.

God help us.

How gamer culture is heavily based around the ability to have an accessible and more real-feeling power fantasy in your imagination to fill in for a lack of power in real life, and the damage this is doing to our societies.

Games allow you to feel like you’re very good at something. You used to have to earn that feeling in some way, but no longer. Now it’s purchasable for $40.