Thread by @Capehartican

I'm tired.

I'm tired and I'm ready to either die or make a fucking change. Thread.

All of the systems we’ve built for ourselves are now our enemies: healthcare, government, technology, corporations, money... (1/18)

...even nature has declared war on us. Our own safety nets are eroded away and we inch our way along a tightrope that is hundreds of years old and on fire at both ends. What do we have left?

Only each other. (2/18)

I used to hate people, but now I realize that's not how we fix all this. So how do we? First, we have to understand, on every single level of our consciousness, that All We Have Left Is Each Other. (3/18)

Everything else—all those systems-- is bullshit. Useless at best. Discard them. Next, we replace them with the social contract we've lost sight of. The good news is that this is simple when stated. There are only two rules:

1) Don't be a dick.
2) Help each other. (4/18)

We must change the foundations of our society from a predatory economy to an empathic one, with trust as the main from of government and currency. Relearn how to trust each other and ourselves. (5/18)

Easier said than done, because trust takes courage. You have to trust the people around you, and you have to make yourself worthy of others' trust. How do you do that? See the short list above. (6/18)

Easier said than done, I know. I can elaborate on this, and I probably will in another thread, or, hell, DM me and we'll talk, but right now I just need to get this all out. (7/18)

Part of the new social contract must also be the willingness to reject people who won’t buy in after attempts at convincing (Nazis and Trumpians). They have to go somewhere else. Otherwise, they'll poison the system and we'll be back where we fucking started. (8/18)

This is part of the checks and balances necessary in this kind of social contract.

If that sounds like government, good. It should. (9/18)

Governments & social contracts have two facets: privilege & duty. We've gotten really good at taking advantage of privilege & we have utterly forgotten our duties. You cannot have one without the other. That's partly how you get the shitstorm we're in now. (10/18)

What are these duties? See the short list above.

My release from misanthropy has allowed me to understand that this, really, is the whole of it. I'll paraphrase the meat of an essay on death that I'm still editing but posted anyway. (11/18) pillowfort.social/posts/721564

In the essay, I ask the question why, if we treat our dead with a sacrosanct reverence that demands no reciprocity, can't we treat the living the same way? (12/18)

"I realize I’ll never get an answer that satisfies me, because the answer I want isn’t in words. It’s in the transformation of our society into one that values the dead as our ancestors once did: a personal expression of the circle of death and rebirth..." (13/18)

"...that describes the sublimely complex but indescribably beautiful simplicity of life on this planet. It’s also in the transformation of our society into one that values the living as an even more joyous expression of this same cycle..." (14/18)

"...and one that teaches its denizens accordingly. Whether one believes life is a god-given miracle, a cosmic coin-flip, or an inevitability of an intelligent universe yearning to express its pinnacle doesn’t fucking matter." (15/18)

"No matter why you think you’ve been put on this planet, the point of us is simply to be alive. To do our part to keep the wheel of life turning. Specifically, to nourish life. In whatever way each of us finds best..." (16/18)

"...To value each other, and all life around us, as equally beautiful, equally tiny, equally fragile and equally indomitable... This is the lone, heavy, necessary truth: Everything else is bullshit. The only thing that matters is helping each other." (17/18)

I'm tired. I'm tired of the bullshit. Arent you?

At the risk of diluting the potency of the ending, @threadreaderapp unroll please and thank you