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Nov. 7th, 2024 05:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormThinking a lot about "American Exceptionalism" lately, though I think a lot of us in the western world have it. I did some hobby creep to history podcasts recently, looking for information on pottery and housing, and instead what I got was a ton of genocide, either attempted or successful. It turns up in what seems like the unlikeliest places too. People have shown unexpected kindness and caring, sure, but also are pretty happy to either directly kill, stand by while others kill, or disease/starve etc whoever they consider to be a danger, or the other. This is normal human behaviour.
And we've just had a Trump re-election, and folks are sad and shocked. Which... is that exceptionalism, right? How could us good people in the good countries do this thing that humans have been doing all through history? Even when I tried my hardest to stop it by blocking everyone on the internet who mentioned it, holding them in contempt and telling them they were dumb, and by voting occasionally?
These behaviours are a part of humanity just as much as anything else is. And this is not to say I want humans to do these behaviours. It is to say that understanding the need they fill, and filling the need in other ways, is a really important part of a society that doesn't have these behaviours. If you don't want people pooping on the street you need public toilets.
But it feels like public goods, things for everyone, are going to be in short supply for a good while. *We* help *us*, and *we* don't help *them*, and when *they* have a problem instead of helping them their pain will teach them that they were bad and wrong and they'll come to our side.
Except, of course, that people need to save face. The number of states that elected Trump but also put abortion protection into place reminds me of how much people need to save face, to feel like they're good people. There was a Canadian study where a huge majority of us called ourselves Christian even though we'd never been to church, never prayed, and didn't believe in a god. These belief sets come up as a mental shorthand for being a good person, and we all feel we're good people, so we accept the belief set.
I'm especially thinking about it because of how much I've realized in the last couple months that a bunch of the world really actively wants me to die. The disability application process is not manageable for folks with cognitive issues, and it's set up to have big gaps in funding, so you have to be able to manage for a really long time with no income while doing some very challenging work. If I die during this part, or become someone else's problem, like because I have a spouse who can support me, they don't have to pay out, so that's their business model.
I have some friends who go through the paperwork with me and who give me money, literally keeping me alive through the process, but make no mistake: I'm into my bonus time. I don't have a rich family with a home I could go live in without an income. The homeless shelters here have a 12-hour policy: you need to leave them everyday at 8am and come back at 8pm, but at 8am I often can't move my body, especially if I've slept/rested less than 14 hours straight, or did too much activity or had too many emotions the day previous.
We accept that. We might think it's unfortunate, but we accept it, as we accept the economically-motivated deaths of people who make our phones and clothes and food and all that. It's not a priority to change. Put on your own oxygen mask first, they say, and everyone does.
I think we all are intellectually aware of this on some level, but it lands a little different when you're into personal bonus time because of it: when there's a line that says "this is where I should be dead".
It also lands a little different when people stand up and overturn that, folks around you are willing to give you sips from their own oxygen mask. There is, probably, a finite amount of oxygen after all.
Anyhow, people consider this election to be a historic moment. It's true we memorialize what happened in Germany but it's happened over and over, so many times, and we don't like to think about it. It may well be erased by history too, by whoever comes next -- or used as a prop in their story of their own exceptionalism, how Americans elected this one person but we, whoever the we is that comes next, we are a better society and would never do that, unlike those folks over there.
People are helping me live to see how the story unfolds. I'm happy about that.
I've always wanted to see what happens next.
So far I've always helped where I can. I can't afford postage to send seeds away this spring so I'll have to figure out another way.
And we've just had a Trump re-election, and folks are sad and shocked. Which... is that exceptionalism, right? How could us good people in the good countries do this thing that humans have been doing all through history? Even when I tried my hardest to stop it by blocking everyone on the internet who mentioned it, holding them in contempt and telling them they were dumb, and by voting occasionally?
These behaviours are a part of humanity just as much as anything else is. And this is not to say I want humans to do these behaviours. It is to say that understanding the need they fill, and filling the need in other ways, is a really important part of a society that doesn't have these behaviours. If you don't want people pooping on the street you need public toilets.
But it feels like public goods, things for everyone, are going to be in short supply for a good while. *We* help *us*, and *we* don't help *them*, and when *they* have a problem instead of helping them their pain will teach them that they were bad and wrong and they'll come to our side.
Except, of course, that people need to save face. The number of states that elected Trump but also put abortion protection into place reminds me of how much people need to save face, to feel like they're good people. There was a Canadian study where a huge majority of us called ourselves Christian even though we'd never been to church, never prayed, and didn't believe in a god. These belief sets come up as a mental shorthand for being a good person, and we all feel we're good people, so we accept the belief set.
I'm especially thinking about it because of how much I've realized in the last couple months that a bunch of the world really actively wants me to die. The disability application process is not manageable for folks with cognitive issues, and it's set up to have big gaps in funding, so you have to be able to manage for a really long time with no income while doing some very challenging work. If I die during this part, or become someone else's problem, like because I have a spouse who can support me, they don't have to pay out, so that's their business model.
I have some friends who go through the paperwork with me and who give me money, literally keeping me alive through the process, but make no mistake: I'm into my bonus time. I don't have a rich family with a home I could go live in without an income. The homeless shelters here have a 12-hour policy: you need to leave them everyday at 8am and come back at 8pm, but at 8am I often can't move my body, especially if I've slept/rested less than 14 hours straight, or did too much activity or had too many emotions the day previous.
We accept that. We might think it's unfortunate, but we accept it, as we accept the economically-motivated deaths of people who make our phones and clothes and food and all that. It's not a priority to change. Put on your own oxygen mask first, they say, and everyone does.
I think we all are intellectually aware of this on some level, but it lands a little different when you're into personal bonus time because of it: when there's a line that says "this is where I should be dead".
It also lands a little different when people stand up and overturn that, folks around you are willing to give you sips from their own oxygen mask. There is, probably, a finite amount of oxygen after all.
Anyhow, people consider this election to be a historic moment. It's true we memorialize what happened in Germany but it's happened over and over, so many times, and we don't like to think about it. It may well be erased by history too, by whoever comes next -- or used as a prop in their story of their own exceptionalism, how Americans elected this one person but we, whoever the we is that comes next, we are a better society and would never do that, unlike those folks over there.
People are helping me live to see how the story unfolds. I'm happy about that.
I've always wanted to see what happens next.
So far I've always helped where I can. I can't afford postage to send seeds away this spring so I'll have to figure out another way.
