I’m Just Saying That Maybe It Wouldn’t Have Turned Out Quite As Bad.

oh god you don't even know

Oh man, I'll give you a challenge, but you must pass the Turing Test.

It’s technically true.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

And in time it came to pass that a young man by the name of Outis came of age in that city; and, as with all who lived in that city, he was taken to a secret place where a wise elder showed him a small cold dirty room. And in that room there was a small cold dirty child, naked and hurt and starving, who had never known the least human kindness.

And the wise elder said to Outis, “In our city, everything is good and no one suffers. But it all depends on this child. If the least kindness is shown to him, our city will become like all other cities. There must always be such a child in Omelas.” …

…And Outis said to the elder, “If our city becomes like all other cities, many children will suffer.” And so he became a citizen of Omelas. And Outis led a good and happy and fulfilling life; and the child continued to suffer.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he walked away from Omelas. And Outis led a cold and short and brutish life; and the child continued to suffer.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas became like all other cities; and many children suffered there.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas carried on as it always had; and from that day forth no child suffered there.

…And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas became like all other cities; and many children suffered there.

But Outis, who would leave no child to suffer, worked tirelessly to save each one of them, and to build with his own hands a city in which everyone lived a good and happy and fulfilling life; and so in time it came to pass that the latter days of Omelas were greater than the former. And for ten trillion years Omelas carried on, and no child ever suffered there again.

…And Outis said to the elder, “Nevertheless, this child is my son, and I will not leave him to suffer.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the city of Omelas became like all other cities; and many children suffered there. But Outis did not care, because he valued the well-being of his son over all of them.

…And Outis asked the elder, “Why?” And the elder showed him to a library filled with books. And Outis studied the books for many years. And when he was an old man with a gray beard, Outis went out of the library and returned to the child and took the child out of the room, and in the child’s place he put a stone. And the stone was naked and dirty and cold; and the child Outis took and bathed and cared for. And Omelas carried on as it always had; and from that day forth no child suffered there.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives; except for one child, who suffered so that the city might prosper. And all who lived there knew of this…

…And each citizen of Omelas, having looked into himself and seen that he would stand by while a child suffered in abject misery, found in himself a new willingness to do dark and evil deeds. And in time, all those who lived in Omelas suffered.

…And each citizen of Omelas lived with the gnawing guilt of his complicity, and the abiding terror that his own child would be chosen as the next to suffer. And in time it seemed to them that they could take no joy in any of the glories of Omelas.

…And one night, the child rose up and went out of his room and killed all the people of Omelas in their sleep.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives. And each morning, each citizen of Omelas was taken to a small cold dirty room, and shown a small cold dirty child, and told that the child must suffer so that his day might be filled with all good things.

And all in Omelas agreed that it was better that one child should suffer than many; and none of them ever asked if it was the same child they saw each morning. And after all, one small cold dirty child looks much like another.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives; except for ten thousand children, who suffered so that the city might prosper. And all who lived there knew of this…

…but none of them were ever taken to see the children in person, so none of them ever did anything about it.

…and whenever anyone saw such a child and “shouldn’t we rescue that suffering child?”, the other citizens of Omelas laughed and replied to them, “Naïve fool! Don’t you know that a child must always suffer in Omelas, so that the city may prosper? Otherwise it would become like all other cities, and many children would suffer.”

And everyone nodded wisely and went along with their days; and so ten thousand children continued to suffer where it might have been only one.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

And in time it came to pass that a young man by the name of Outis came of age in that city; and, as with all who lived in that city, he was taken to a secret place where a wise elder showed him a small cold dirty room. And in that room there was a small cold dirty child, naked and hurt and starving, who had never known the least human kindness.

And the wise elder said to Outis, “In our city, everything is good and no one suffers. But it all depends on this child. If the least kindness is shown to him…”

“…the city will continue on as it always has, only your internet will be slightly slower.”

And Outis went back up into the city, and on that day he became a citizen of Omelas; and the child continued to suffer.

“…the best predictions of our scientists suggest that there will be a slight average decrease in various hard-to-measure kinds of happiness, which nevertheless in total adds up to more suffering than this child experiences.”

And Outis said to the elder, “I will have no part in this evil thing.” And he took the child and bathed him and cared for his wounds. And the average happiness increased in some ways and decreased in others, and the net effect might have been negative, but the best results on the matter had p > 0.05, so the scientists of Omelas could not rule out the null hypothesis.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

And in Omelas there was a naked dirty child in a small dirty room; because the child was agoraphobic and was making mudpies.

Once upon a time there was a city called Omelas, where everyone lived good and happy and fulfilling lives.

Very few people told stories about Omelas, but it was a very nice place to live in.

A lot of people use tumblr for a mix of personal posts and fandom/ aesthetic/ whatever else posts. And the funny thing about that is just, followers can just kinda come and go at random. They have no sense of what the continuity is with these personal posts. They’re joining spontaneously in the middle with no context of what the blogger has been blogging about for years. They just saw a a good piece of Gravity Falls fanart in the tag and hit follow. 

From the blog owner’s perspective the personal posts make up one long coherent narrative about what’s been happening in their life, posts building on older posts, updates about changing schools and jobs and houses, personal threads of drama and conflict. Meanwhile unsuspecting Gravity Falls fan hits follow five years into the blog’s existence and the first thing on their dash is Update, part 47, yes my head is still stuck in the fence. good news is i can now reach the garden hose so i have a steady stream of water to lap up. Jonathon has not returned with the butter

there’s a thing that happens in internet apology discourse that i want to address.

‘when someone calls you out, it is your job to immediately apologize. do not defend yourself, apologize.’

this is a reaction to people who say racist/sexist/transphobic/classist/misogynist/etc things, and then instead of examining what they’ve said and trying to take a lesson in self-awareness and humility, get defensive and resort to tone-policing, gaslighting, derailing, good old-fashioned patronizing, or any of a number of other possible rhetorical postures designed to make the injured party sit down and shut up. to that degree, encouraging self-examination as a first instinct is important.

and how this works depends a lot on who receives this discourse, it really does.

HOWEVER.

i see ‘shut up and apologize’ being used as a general, universal rule of thumb, the law of how to engage with being called out.

and i believe that it is also wrong to encourage people to assume that because someone on the internet has told them they are wrong, they must necessarily be wrong, must necessarily owe an apology. it is wrong to preach ‘shut up and apologize’ because call-out culture can very easily function as a form of bullying: by adopting an ostensibly righteous political position and using the terms of what passes for ‘social justice’ discourse, one person can easily set themselves up as an authority in a way that does not give their interlocutor any room to maneuver. the caller-out might be wrong. ‘shut up and apologize’ dismisses that possibility.

'shut up and apologize’ discourages active, continuous critique. kneejerk political correctness stands against engaged thought.

but above all it enables the accuser to disregard their own blindspots. the accuser needn’t be a careful reader. the accuser needn’t consider the multiple axes of power and meaning at work in a given statement.

'shut up’ might be a good first step. do not react immediately. sit with your discomfort for a while. ask yourself why it is uncomfortable. what specifically is this person reacting to in what you’ve said? disregard their tone for just a minute, and ask yourself what the content of what they’ve said conveys about what you might not know or understand, what experiences might not be available to you. take that time for thought, because thought takes time, and because you owe yourself the opportunity to learn something.

but don’t apologize as a first instinct. even if an apology is due (and admittedly, it’s not unlikely that an apology is due), it only matters if you know what you’re apologizing for. i often find myself saying to people, ‘i don’t want you to apologize, i want you to think about this. i want you to not do it again.’ i don’t care about the apology. i care about the thought, the learning.

and it is possible that you do not owe an apology. it is possible that you are being bullied by a call-out artist who is using the framework of ‘social justice’ to leverage some authority for themself. it is possible that they are being just as thoughtless as they are accusing you of being.

accusation and apology are shitty tools for a rhetoric of justice. ‘shut up and apologize’ does not look to me like a path to liberation.

Your D&D class based off of your Hogwarts house

Ravenclaw: Wizard

Gryffindor: Wizard

Hufflepuff: Wizard

Slytherin: Wizard

If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.

Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.

I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.

I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”

I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid - see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours - you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.