It’s Sad How Much Of What Is Taught In School Is Useless To Over 99% Of The Population.

Consider the following thought experiment. There is a life form that is incapable of suffering or pleasure or any form of thought or consciousness. You know this for certain. In fact, you know absolutely everything there is to know about it. It exists in an isolated system, i.e. its existence or lack thereof has no effect on anything else, it's not tied to any external ecosystem, etc. You could say the only exception to this is you the observer, but the only interaction you can have (besides knowing everything about it) is you can decide at any moment that it instantly stops existing (kill it, if you want to put it that way). Killing it does not cause any suffering of any form, not even to "you" (or whoever is making this decision). Does this life form have intrinsic value?

I guess this can be considered a proxy for asking the moral valence of killing in itself.

this is something nobody realizes, and yet it's the most devastating truth of human existence.

Once you start using a term to describe how you feel about something instead of what it is, then you've done nothing but make the term useless.

Also PILGRIMS PASS MENTION HECK YEAH

As a person who is conservative politically (I'm assuming) what do you make of all of these GOP people making Nazis salutes? (Musk now Bannon). Are right wing news outlets reporting this??? Sorry if this is out of left field, but you're the only person on Tumblr that I know is not left-wing and I'm curious of your opinion.

I'm fairly conservative, and I do have some options.

I've actually interacted with real NeoNazis.

I need you to comprehend- the guys I dealt with would have killed me if they thought they could have gotten away with it. They were not happy I was there, but I had a gun, spare mag, And a guy with a Roland special who wanted to kill them almost as much as they wanted to kill me.

Unless you have faced that level of genuine malice, it's not something that's easy to wrap your head around. I did not think you could literally feel someone's killing intent until I looked in one of their eyes.

People are far, far, too casual with calling people Nazis. Stop watering it down.

THANK YOU SOMEONE FINALLY SAID THIS. it's all fearmongering and reductionist to say that every problematic politician is "literally just like hitler." What makes it even worse is that we've taken the story and actions of a very real human being who very much did exist, and have blown him up into a cartoon villain within the collective consciousness of our society. Hitler is dead, and his party died with him. Treating him like some antichrist or end-all-catch all of evil only serves to blind us to actual evil that goes on in front of us every day.

It's Time to Put Hitler to Bed

Over the last 20 years it's become increasingly common when talking about western politics to try and tie the political opposition to Hitler. It goes beyond Godwin's Law at this point, because it's no longer just in internet phenomenon. It happens in real life. In real conversations and real debates. All sides do it. No issue is safe. And it's beyond ridiculous at this point. It needs to stop.

So let's just stop talking about Hitler altogether when it comes to western politics.

He's dead. He's gone. His ideology died with him. Yes, you read that right. National Socialism is dead. It was a very specific ideology with goals and aims beyond being racist and hating Jews. Nowhere on Earth is there a serious National Socialist party with any political power or any chance at gaining any. Modern day neo-nazis are nothing more than edgelord racists desperately trying to grab some of the "shine" Hitler has with other idiots for themselves. They're awful. They're racist. They should grow the fuck up. But they aren't nazis. They aren't storming government buildings and they aren't winning political office. Most of them aren't even committing crimes. They're just sitting online or in a basement somewhere snort-laughing like Bevis and Butthead while they whisper "k*ke" and "n*gger" to each other and post pictures of ovens with captions like "where the Jews go". How basic and boring. They are beyond lame, and it's long past time we stop bigging these people up like they're some huge existential threat to humanity itself. They're not. They're just pathetic losers who have no power over anyone, not even themselves.

Does this mean we should forget the Holocaust? No. Of course not. We should always remember what Hitler did. But if we don't take the right lessons from that dark era in human history, then we might as well forget it because misremembering, on purpose or by accident, is just as bad as forgetting.

Hitler was an evil man who did evil things. He is a cautionary tale to never let rhetoric overwhelm your better nature. He is a warning of what happens when you give into hate out of fear or anger. But that's it. He does not influence anyone with power. Not in the west. No one in the west is actually trying to be like Hitler. And as evil as Hitler was, not everything he did was automatically evil just because he did it. And that right there is the main problem with the modern trend of accusing everyone you don't like of being Hitler. Hitler did a lot of things. He woke up. He ate breakfast. He fell in love. He breathed air. He got dressed. He gave speeches. He liked art. He was a human being. I don't say this to downplay the evil things he did or to try and create sympathy for him. But surely you can easily see how literally every single person on Earth has something in common with Hitler just by virtue of also being a human being, yes?

Hitler was also a politician. Which means that, yeah, every politician is going to have a position that's at least similar to something Hitler proposed or enacted in his political career. His views and platforms ranged far and contain things that are both left and right wing. Things which, in the hands of someone other than Hitler, most likely would not have led to the Holocaust. Because the Holocaust is an evil that was unique to Hitler. He baked genocide into his ideology, then codified and streamlined it after gaining power. His was a cold and inhumane calculation that only the Aryan race as he defined it was worthy of life. That every other race, everyone who didn't fit his idea of purity, must be killed to preserve his Master Race. There have been other genocides before and since, but none quite as industrialized and far reaching. And, in the west at least, there is no one with any power who wants to reenact anything that even comes close to the Holocaust. Not even that politician you really hate. Not even that activist group that promotes that awful ideology.

All accusations of being Hitler, or like Hitler, do is muddy the already opaque waters of modern western political discourse. And people are so bored with Hitler comparisons. He doesn't evoke the same emotional reaction he did even 20 years ago because, by this point, everyone even remotely active in western politics or political commentary knows someone who has been accused of being Hitler or a nazi, if they aren't that person themselves. It's become little more than the (supposedly) adult version of "I know you are but what am I?" It's meaningless, it's dumb, and everyone needs to stop doing it.

Stop making posts about how so and so is just like Hitler. Stop re-tweeting/blogging/posting them. Stop bringing Hitler's name into discourse at all. Stop arguing about whether or not National Socialism is right or left wing. Stop pretending that superficial similarities to Hitler or one of Hitler's policies is absolute proof that an ideological opponent is evil.

you know you're finished worldbuilding when you consciously realize that you're avoiding writing the actual story, AND you know that you literally have nothing to do *but* write the story.

I feel like normies think of tumblr as the fanart and aesthetic and gifset website but real tumblrinas know that our most culturally significant output and our lifeblood is the humble text post

unironically the best kinds of people to encounter working customer service

One of the baristas at a nearby Starbucks makes me lose my mind every time I’m there by saying things that are not outside the spectrum of normal human words but are just slightly off-the-wall.

Barista: Welcome to Starbucks, home of delicious, what deliciousness can I put in motion for you today?

Customer: … Can I get a trenta pink drink please?

Barista: Go big or go home, we here at Starbucks appreciate your commitment, what else can I get started for you?

***

Customer: Nitro cold brew with shots of espresso please.

Barista: Brave of you to commit to staying awake for three days, anything else today?

***

Barista: *slams open drive-thru window* HI HOW ARE YOU?

Customer: …I’m pretty good.

Barista: Are you ready to be even better? Because you’re about to be. *hands them their coffee* 

***

Barista, realizing that a drink was made wrong: *slams open window* SO how do you feel about surprises?

Customer: ….they’re okay.

Barista: Great because I’m about to give you one.

***

Barista: You have two drinks so I am going to hand you two straws which means, FANTASTIC news, these straws double as drumsticks. / You have one drink so I am going to hand you one straw and, promise not to tell anyone, this straw doubles as a magic wand.

***

Barista: Here are those cake pops, I plucked them fresh from the tree myself.

***

Barista: *slams open window, holding drink* Amazing, fantastic, delicious, you are a very lucky man/woman!

***

Barista, realizing drink is being delayed or remade: Looks like it’s gonna be just one minute so they have time to put the extra love in.

***

Barista: I’ll be with you in one hot second. *beat* WOW that second sure was hot!

Anyway she has a few dozen catchphrases she rotates approriately and it’s both distracting and fantastic to listen.

can someone please be proud of me like fuck I’m trying

I am imploring everyone who sees this to read the notes. Probably the funniest stuff I've read today.

I have a political thought experiment that I would like to share with you all that I call "Persuading the serial killer," which is really just about how you'd persuade someone who exists outside of your moral framework.

This is inspired by the fact that I watch too much true crime, but the thought experiment goes like this: If you were faced with a serial killer trying to kill you or someone else, how would you convince them not to? Serial killers do not conform to common morals like "killing is wrong," so arguing "You shouldn't kill me because killing is immoral!" is not going to help you. They don't recognize your moral system as real or valuable, so you cannot use it to persuade them. I, personally, would argue like so: "I have a very regular schedule, and people have already noticed that I'm missing. My mother and I talk almost constantly. She alone is probably already panicking that I'm gone and has called the police. I also have serious medical issues on record, so they won't wait the regular 24 hrs to start searching for me. You have a chance to get away now, but not if you spend time murdering me and hiding my body." Straight practical reasons why doing what they want to do will bring about something they absolutely don't want, i.e. if you waste time on murdering me, a high-priorty missing person, you'll get caught and never kill again.

The way this applies to politics is that you're gonna encounter people who do not completely overlap with your morals - probably not serial killers though. Like most Republicans and most Democrats would agree that unprovoked homicide is wrong and bad. No one is trying to pass a bill to get murder blanket-legalized. But obviously, conservatives have different moral views on things like abortion.

You cannot argue with a conservative that abortion isn't wrong. Your opinion that life does not begin at conception or that the right to choose should be in the pregnant person's hands no matter what exists outside of their moral framework just like "murder is wrong" exists outside the moral framework of a serial killer. So if I'm trying to argue against abortion legislation with someone I know is anti-abortion, I argue that abortion laws don't reduce abortions or abortion-related deaths. That the real way to reduce abortions is to make birth control over-the-counter and available to teenagers without parental permission like in the U.K. That if they think that is bad because it "promotes" premarital sex, they need to choose which is worse to them: teenagers having sex or abortions happening because teenagers are still going to have sex. That more support networks for pregnant people who want to keep the pregnancy but worry about their ability to financially support the child would do more good, and that there are several run by churches (but not enough, perhaps they should start one at their church)! That anti-abortion organizations in Europe who crusade against abortion in these ways are more successful at reducing abortion than any country with laws on the books to stop it.

You can apply this with a lot of things, but in short, when arguing with someone with different political views or morals that are mutually exclusive with yours, it's a bad bet to appeal to "but that's wrong! but that's bad! but that's immoral!" Jump straight to the practicalities, i.e. "That won't get you what you want, and here's why," not "You shouldn't want this." This won't always work (ex: you might run through all those abortion arguments, not satisfy the conservative you're arguing with, and in the process figure out that they really just want to legally punish people for premarital sex and don't actually care about abortion). However, leaving your morals out of an argument is your best bet at getting through to another person who may not share them.

*Updated to remove use of the term "psychopath" because I'm told that's an outdated concept.