ZiaNitori @ZiaNitori@masto.anarch.cc

@exiliaex btw i dont want to discount the idea here that you know some aspect of me better than i know myself, i just wanna share where my head is at on all this atm

@exiliaex how do you liberate people who dont want to be free? who live in a set of circumstances that punish them for trying to be free? i dont think you can fight incentives like that, i think even if it were your life goal to change this state of affairs, the best hope you have is catching the people who fall out of the machine and hoping for a better opportunity in the future to cause the machine to fall apart. i genuinely think "doing communism in your backyard" ie, trying to create a better world in the one that exists is the only way to create people who wont reintegrate into the body of the machine, like a benign tumor with the potential to turn malignant at the right time and even then i'm very pessimistic about the power of it's immune system. to me the appeal of this is not in it's liberatory potential, but the fact that it leaves me in good company. i really want to reiterate, i think this idea that we need to make things right is a very critical piece of social control. heros exist to justify the fantasy of pigs and to get anti state actors to reveal themselves so they can be dealt with and this is how the state exterminates resistance to itself over time. it's just a eugenics project to eliminate all but the most programmable people so the cogs can work together as efficiently as possible. trying to create a space for that difference to survive is my goal because i feel alone when i talk to cogs and i dont want to feel alone

@exiliaex if it were as easy as flipping the switch in a trolley problem to change the current state of affairs i would, but nothing ever works like that. i dont want to rush in to get defeated like every other wannabe hero gets baited into doing. if there is a way to change things it's not going to come from immediately reacting to the situation, leviathan knows how to counter all the reactions it produces. i think that if there's any shot of liberation it's going to come from people who have had enough space from that beast to think with a clearer mind. that being said my life goal isnt the liberation of others, it feels like those desires are mostly a product of media that play into my grosser tendencies to want to fix other people and make them more convenient for me. unlearning that stuff dissipated my revolutionary fervor and has got me more focused on creating my own happiness

@exiliaex i'm not a monolith, but this is what i currently aspire to be to the best of my knowledge even if there are many inconsistencies

@destroy @exiliaex over half of these "allies" are unconsciously trying to steer you and others back into the machine anyway and it's literally not practical to sus out who is legit or not even if you think you have god tier people reading skills. people try to solve a social group like they're trying to pick a lock for the power contained in that community, and the more power it has, the more people will come to pick that lock and they will eventually succeed over time. i dont want to create a locus of power that could attract that kind of attention

@destroy @exiliaex i think it's far too late for fighting and while i'm interested in finding like minded people for company and generally like the idea of creating sanctuary for people, i think the only option is to hide for as long as we can. who knows, maybe leviathan will show some weakness that we can act on before we're exterminated, but at the moment heroics only seem like a thing it uses to make those who oppose it more visible for it to eliminate. i'd rather those who meaningfully oppose it survive and help raise more cool people, if not for a shot of taking it down, for company that's actually worth having

@exiliaex no, i think things are the way they are. coming to know myself and what i want has just put me in conflict with society so i try to use evocative language to express that. seeing where things are likely going and seeing that it leads to the extermination of me or my future kids certainly doesnt feel good but "wrong" doesnt capture that because i just dont think like that. frameworks of wrong and right seem to be predicated on assumptions of agency and i genuinely feel like making choices is illusory. all i can do is hope the predictions i make drive me into a happier life. if when i was in a cage i thought about how wrong it was for me to be in a cage, i might still be in that cage, instead the only thought running through my head was how to escape it. people only think about justice when they feel someone else might hear them and sympathize (consciously or otherwise) and i'm not looking for that

@ja_herre @exiliaex as soon as someone told me you could be punished for a law you werent aware existed i was immediately against law enforcement as a kid

@exiliaex justice is just a word that's invoked when the story hasnt been made "right" it's literally just a product of expectations in social contexts and media. things arent how they ought to be and how they ought to be is based on prior expectations and those prior expectations were set by a deeply reactionary society so the call for justice is always reactionary or invites reactionaries in

@exiliaex to me it's becoming clearer and clearer that the mob is getting more and more reactionary, and just knows how to effectively use people talking against them for content to grow their reach. i'm literally just a lolcow that they use to fabricate strawmen against their positions for them and their followers to jerk themselves off knocking down, and while those interaction net me a few new followers that are capable of thinking or at least dissenting, it feels like my effort is doing nothing but driving engagement, giving more content to the content machine

@DemonMama i think i've been getting pretty lucky with barbs but also i dont tend to send the routes too far. like the timing usually works out that i'm founding my second city around when i get the free trader from pottery and i can just send the trader to that city and then start a trade route with the neighbor i'm trying to forward settle and i just get the most contested tiles (provided i get my settler out first)

@DemonMama tbh any civ with bonuses to scouting is always really good because you can always use that info more effectively than the ai. i've been liking cree a lot too especially because their unique improvements dont tend to get in the way of where i want to place districts, and the early trader plus it being able to expand my borders quick has felt really clutch for forward settling the ai to define my territory. still learning a lot of the systems since i'm really new to civ 6 but i have a billion hours of civ 5 played so some of the skills are translating over

one of the topics that's been ringing around my head since my socdem days is "what causes society to change?" and as of recent it feels like the question is harder and harder to care about as my perspective changes from seeing society less and less as a collection of individuals and more as a machine reproducing itself. when faced with the question, "wont this make things worse?" my response feels like, "doesnt everything just keep getting worse?" more and more i cant seem to care about anything wrt society other than how to help people escape it as much as possible and if it's possible to kill the machine at all. everything else just seems like we're getting in arguments about what should be served for lunch

made the phonecalls finally

@exiliaex pretty!

sleep schedule seems to be more or less on track now