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We truly have a lot of work to do — under the shadow of an unprecedented, almost inconceivable capacity for destruction. I'm deeply frustrated with the white-male-shame complex because the human project can't afford this many people removing themselves from the game to navel-gaze
It took me a long while to understand why POC were oftentimes dismissive and even cruel to white people who presented themselves in the vestments of self-flagellation, but it shouldn't have; I'd also seen this myself as a woman in a world coming to terms with rape being a thing
It's because self-flagellation is inward-pointing and ultimately self-serving. No vulnerable person ever wanted or needed to take up arms alongside a person who had fully commited to hobbling themselves with shame.
We needed and still need you to show up open-hearted and strong. We needed and still need strong hands willing to pull us upward. Performative feebleness does nothing for us, any of us
I, for one, never needed anyone to make Concerned Face while asking me to recount being cat-called or groped. The Ceremony of Concern doesn't build the world I want to bring children into
What the world needs is more competence, people unflinchingly transforming themselves into modern craftsmen, chasing the bleeding edge, building infrastructure *and* better toys, wasting very little computational power on pontification about skin tone and dangly bits.
When a child asks "what are humans good for besides destroying the planet?" the first layer of tragedy is the evident self-loathing; the second is that Desecrator status is a subclass of Consumer. "Take less" is the message ruling the day when "create more" is what's needed.
The biggest problem with shame culture isn't that it makes people feel bad, it's that it's anti-generative. We have got to stop issuing social currency to people who can cut a pie in fashionable proportions but couldn't bake another one to save their lives.
