I recommend the mental exercise of reminding yourself several times a day that you are not a free citizen of a free society (if you don't already)
Pay attention to every method of control you encounter just to keep yourself in the right headspace.
When you see a "security" camera, flag it as "surveillance" in your mind.
Take note of the "public" spaces that are privatized, the fact that nothing around us belongs to us.
Make little mental notes about the things you notice.
We must learn to see past the facade of decency, order, & normalcy to the violence underneath.
You're so used to it all, you probably don't see it most of the time.
So start practicing.
Look around you & ask "what is wrong with this picture?"
Notice the little indignities & absurdities.
Take offense when you have to sign a TOS full of bullshit just to participate in some aspect of society.
Be annoyed by the ubiquity of advertising. Experience revulsion at having consumerism pushed in your face.
I don't mean that you should dwell in negativity all the time. Just work on developing your ability to recognize things for what they are rather than participating in the everyday normalization of oppression.
Think like a free person, not a cog in the machine. Think like a rebel.
Get your head in the game & think like you are at war with a powerful enemy, because you are. Notice the enemy's tactics. Learn to spot their camouflage.
Look at pieces of the oppression-machine & ask yourself, "what could I do to break that?"
It may sometimes feel like a silly cosplay to think of yourself as a rebel or revolutionary, but if you belittle yourself & your small acts of resistance in that way, you will likely not get very far.
If you tell yourself you're not really in the revolution at all, then you're probably never going to get the courage to "join up" for real like you might think you should.
Don't wait to get started. Take baby steps. Get your mind free. Learn to be comfortable with disobedience.
The war is already on.
You may not know which big actions you may be called on to participate in, but you should not be thinking of yourself as on the sidelines. The battlefront is everywhere, including inside your own mind.
Don't fucking count yourself out before you've even gotten started. You are a spy, an infiltrator, a seditious rabble-rouser, & a saboteur. Look at the world through those eyes.
It's not a bad thing to look around you & think about "someday" either.
Someday you may want to do something, & you'll be glad you gave it some thought.
For instance, someday you may want to do something about the Flock cameras in your area. Even if you don't do anything now, it surely doesn't hurt to imagine what *someone* could do "someday".
If you have thought about what you could do about some feature or tool of oppression in your own neighborhood "someday", you may find that when the time is right, you already know what you want to do & how.
Just sayin'.
One feature of moments of civil unrest is that a lot of people quietly take it on themselves to do some useful little thing to fuck with the oppressors.
It seems likely to me that a lot of those people are doing things they have at least *thought* about doing before, & then when the right moment arrived, they seized an opportunity.
So think about the opportunities you might seize. Thinking is free.
Mentally rehearsing for scenarios you want to be prepared for is good.
If you want to be able to act in a moment of crisis, your best plan is to have already thought things through a few times. The more mental rehearsal you have done, the easier it is to follow emergency procedures.
So prep your mind for the scenarios you expect to find yourself in & for the things you want to do.
They don't have a way to police thoughtcrimes yet, so the space inside your head is all yours.
@burnoutqueen @artemis Don't discount the armchair activities. I've resigned myself to my illnesses now that even posting online has become difficult.
If our slacktivism (across decades at this point) wasn't effective, then they wouldn't have taken over and suppressed our venues (across those same decades). For instance, I just saw a video about how Reddit in the 10s shut down a severely abusive troubled teen facility that journalists and activists had worked hard and failed to shut down since the 1970s. That's exactly why the internet commons have been taken over or shut down.
I've decided that this is a perfectly fine lane to have picked all those years ago. It suited my abilities, changed minds (including my own), and laid important groundwork for what's to come.
I'm definitely thinking of how I can be more effective IRL. But this here is important work, too.
@burnoutqueen
Hi, this probably isn't what you mean, but I do this work most days. It involves the kind of work artemis is doing here, naming resentments, talking about all the anti-flock/surveillance work happening around the country and mentioning that people doing that work are learning that they are qualified to lead in a way the political leaders aren't, etc.
It is extremely satisfying.
Artemis
Jacqueline
Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸
slow learner deep feeler🦋🌿❤️🔥
Jonah Gibberish