Greg L
Natasha 
🇪🇺One of the great lessons in life is that we built this.
All of it.
And we choose throughout our days how we will continue or change the world we have built.
We can build differently.
Evie Musselwhite 
@Natasha_Jay Eeyup. I am very much aware this hellhole we live in is of our own creation. :<
Kid Mania@MMusselwhite @Natasha_Jay
"As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have an unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings."
- Thomas Ligotti
"As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have an unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings."
- Thomas Ligotti
Snaprails@Natasha_Jay 🎶 "We didn't start the fire"🎶
With apologies to anyone who now has the same ear worm that I do 🙂
With apologies to anyone who now has the same ear worm that I do 🙂
Kargas@snaprails @Natasha_Jay We (in general) ignored the arsonists pouring kerosene on it.
cuan_knaggs@snaprails @Natasha_Jay but we did build it on rock and roll*
* no, you have an earworm
Michael Gemar
Lyrial@Natasha_Jay Capitalism is relatively young. Here's a good break down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism
Dr. Bruce Simpson@Natasha_Jay As Christopher Hitchens said, power is only what you allow it to be.
ArchiveScribe@Natasha_Jay Tear it all down! Then rebuild it.
clonedhuman@Natasha_Jay A shared imagination of a different world can have a lot of power.
“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
jtonline@Natasha_Jay "Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people" (a dead person, probably)
AndrewThere is a profound tension at the heart of our world.
There is a heartfelt wish to find ways to live in peace with one another; to develop a society in which we are all treated fairly, which encourages us to develop ourselves and each other to the full extent of our potential.
But we see ourselves clinging on to ideas of ourselves as tribalistic; helplessly drawn through our nature into conflict with each other; prone to distraction and escape.
Paddy Duke@Natasha_Jay A while back I wrote a punky song about our tendency, especially when we’re somewhat comfortable, to forget that regular people created this whole deal, good and bad.
When we do that, we only ever come up with ideas that pick ineffectually at the edges of the problems.
Realism
Cover photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash Lyrics: This is it You’ve got the answer Convinced yourself the problem was That no-one’s tried to solve it So you sit Drawing plans for A great, fluorescen
Ivan il Terribile XXXII@Natasha_Jay except for forsaking material belongings to our feline overlords. That one's mandated by the gods.
Alpaca Male@Natasha_Jay This is why I am so angry that the word "conservative" is burned. I would like to be conservative, as in, to conserve and protect what is good in society. Like laws that protect the weak from the strong. Or rights that apply to every human being. All made up, but worth protecting.
Is there maybe a better word for wanting to protect the achievements of society?
ermo | Rune Morling"Modern Social Democracy".
OK, more of a definition than a word, but probably still worth looking up to see if it matches what you are aiming to preserve.
Duke@Natasha_Jay She forgot the most unimportant thing that humans made up: gods. Without us they don't exist.
Chris RealI have begun a campaign to denegrate the phrase "it is what it is", which supports the illusion of a default status quo which it is useless to oppose.
Because it ISN'T 'what it is'. It's what it became. And it CAN be changed.
luca@Natasha_Jay Gods.
Helen LH@Natasha_Jay This is why Sociology should be a core subject in school. Otherwise all this gets taken for granted and we're all doomed.
�i knew it! 365 days a year is so random. why such an odd number when it could be 400.
Bernardo Batista Leão Filho@Natasha_Jay
Life is exactly that—an echo of our own choices. The world around us isn't just something that happens to us, but something we actively shape with every daily brick, whether in our routine, relationships, or thoughts.
Knowing that we built everything up to this point brings huge responsibility, but also a surreal freedom: if the current scenery doesn't please us, the pen is still in our hand to change the script. We can absolutely build it differently!
🦁🦁🦁
Life is exactly that—an echo of our own choices. The world around us isn't just something that happens to us, but something we actively shape with every daily brick, whether in our routine, relationships, or thoughts.
Knowing that we built everything up to this point brings huge responsibility, but also a surreal freedom: if the current scenery doesn't please us, the pen is still in our hand to change the script. We can absolutely build it differently!
🦁🦁🦁
Daniël Franke 
@Natasha_Jay The frustrating part of this that yes, it's totally correct, but we, as a society, just. don't. change. it.
Joe Vinegar@ainmosni @Natasha_Jay ackshuallee... as a society (which society? who? where? when?) we do change a lot, but not at the same time, everywhere, in the same way.
@joe_vinegar @Natasha_Jay fair, although right now it feels like the main change factors are in the wrong direction.
StarkRG@joe_vinegar @ainmosni @Natasha_Jay Human society, especially now that it's very nearly global, acts a lot like a super-organism. It has its own drives and reactions separate from those of the individual humans that make it up. We *can* influence it, because we are thinking entities and it is not, but it has a lot of inertia which means a lot of us have to try really hard to make it budge.
brainwashed by lentils@Natasha_Jay
"eating meat" is another one of those extremely deadly made-up concepts.
"eating meat" is another one of those extremely deadly made-up concepts.
decapitae@Natasha_Jay More 'they' than 'we', but yeah. Time to change the rhetoric to reflect the values of the kind and build the society of the caring by heavily taxing the unkind and uncaring
Έλλεν Εμίλια Ά.ζ.@Natasha_Jay Even more so that many of the things people take for granted were actually build or made up during the last century. "The concrete is still fresh and one can easily leave a mark."
xs4me2Exactly this indeed, we made it all up, and it can be changed if we want to…
AlexanderVI@Natasha_Jay "we" is excruciatingly load-bearing here
peachfrontikr? who tf is this "we" that created all these things that existed long before some of we (apparently the ones not worth considering as humans?) were even born...
Emily Rayne@Natasha_Jay we can burn it down even quicker. dont play with fire kids
Nu Modular@Natasha_Jay This is one of my litanies:
Make #BehavioralScience #CoreEducation, or #BackIntoCaves
Historians accurately claim ignorance, is the ultimate enemy. So why wouldn't the best #education, Behavioral Science, be the greatest solve?
Because ignorance is currently in the majority, and spreading... instead of the increasingly dire necessity, of its opposite.
So at scale, what's the "back into caves" equivalent?.. teach #permaculture alongside Behavioral Science - or, as that "dire" substitute. Because if you don't have the basic tools to survive, instead of the luxury of thrive, then you're deservedly EXTINCT.
@Natasha_Jay We decide entirely ourselves if we want to live in heaven or hell. I'm not entirely convinced about the afterlife so I suggest we create heaven on earth and have a good time while we can.
mmby@Natasha_Jay time to repost this for people interested in a short essay on modern civilization
bouriquet@Natasha_Jay It’s the original “big lie” so that we will work for the system instead of humanity.
The system created many of these things and then decided it wasn’t going to pay for them. Marketing became the way to sell you the lie. Organized religion helped sell it by adding promises of glory and power. “You’re on your own now”...get a job…get a second job…things that existed for the common good became privatized.
We’re coming up on a fork in the road…
The system created many of these things and then decided it wasn’t going to pay for them. Marketing became the way to sell you the lie. Organized religion helped sell it by adding promises of glory and power. “You’re on your own now”...get a job…get a second job…things that existed for the common good became privatized.
We’re coming up on a fork in the road…
Scale TheoryGod is all powerful, knows everything, sees everything, and will fix it all if believed strong enough is also a misconception; so are Santa clause, Easter bunny and leprechauns.
Cults and destruction will always prevail as history has taught us all. Reality isn't good prevails as most of history has been but war and destruction, followed by reconstruction.
We never get it right, and never will until we evolve forward instead of devolution.
Language might be the first step
What the billionaires are doing isn't normal or "just the way it's done." Don't get sucked into the the dark side of humanity.
WesDym@SCALETHEORY This meme ignores the fact that if you find a number painted on the ground, whoever put it there probably did have only one number in mind. And just because doesn't know what they were thinking doesn't convert ignorance into opinion.
@wesdym
It is a lesson about perspective, nothing more. Analyzing it is futile.
It is a lesson about perspective, nothing more. Analyzing it is futile.
@SCALETHEORY Yeah, thinking things through logically is futile.
Okay, thanks, Professor.
@SCALETHEORY Grow up already.
HoubaNext to me I have a poster with the quote from David Graeber
"The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently."
and i made it with a block printing press.
Regendans
Erik Johnson@Natasha_Jay And not only that, the way many of these things we made came about are often absurd, silly, evil, or completely circumstantial, like one person did a thing and then everyone else started doing it too. And the reason they started doing a thing may not even make sense any more, but we’re all just being pulled along with the tide because there hasn’t been a great effort to communicate that you can just swim back to shore.
Humans, man.
Slackbear 
@Natasha_Jay I really don't even understand most of what's in there.
I guess I understand money because it's what I give to humans to get fish and honey easily, but I don't understand why most humans tend to be "bound" to these things that from what I can mostly observe, makes them miserable or upset. School's good I guess. Bill's part of money.
Sure, fully understanding these can be useful as a guide for a "normal human", but idk. Being bound to these things is kinda boring in my opinion.
DavidM_yegWait… what? … the way it *is* isn’t the way it HAS TO BE?
Geoff Berner@Natasha_Jay weird that race didn't come up here. All very true though.
free turtle island 🐢@Natasha_Jay I say we shouldnt even build, we should grow.
Morgan Fletcher@Natasha_Jay (nearly) Everyone alive now will be replaced by new entirely new people in 100 years. Similarly, we have replaced (nearly) all the people from 100 years ago. And yet we follow the patterns we inherited.
@Natasha_Jay ITT: Anonymous people who Know Everything.
craignicol@Natasha_Jay @simon_brooke and mostly by rich white straight men. Which means that in the places not fully controlled by the colonists, there's already people living without that. We don't need to invent new things or imagine better ways, we just need to learn what's out there