The Quiet, Bookish Recluse [who Seems Lonely But At Least They Have Their Pidgeons And Plants On The

“The stars, like dust, encircle me In living mists of light; And all of space I seem to see In one vast burst of sight.”

—

Isaac Asimov

There is something so beautiful about reaching out to the monstrous with intent to touch it gently. To risk the sharp teeth and the lethal claws, to defy fear and revulsion, and choose to be delicate with something that can be, and often is, incredibly brutal.

Our system is broken.  It is cruel.  It is dehumanizing, degrading, and it’s vile nature is so, so unnecessary.

We need universal healthcare today in America.  We needed it 40 years ago.  It’s cheaper, it’s simpler, it’s more efficient, it’s more effective and it is so, so, so much less cruel than what we have.

Additional sources/references:

Universal Healthcare Cost in America would be cheaper by trillions of dollars

The US has worse life expectancies than socialized healthcare countries

We have worse generalized healthcare results

We have the most expensive care

Our system is so cruel and unique that doctors from other countries literally can’t believe what happens here

I can’t tell you where or how to activate to help solve this.  There are politicians, groups, and activists pushing for this in so many ways.  I can tell you when, though.

Now.

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

Self Improvement Masterpost

Time Management

Waking up earlier

Stop staying up all night

Wasting too much time on a certain website?

Top 10 Reasons for Lost Time

29 Time Wasting Activites

General Time Management Guide

Creating an effective schedule for your day

How to stop being late to things

Easy to prepare healthy recipes

Make time for your hobbies!!

Making School Suck Less

Prioritization

…what if everything is a priority?

Studying methods

Strategies for students with ADHD

Strategies for students with learning disabilities

AVOIDING BAD PROFESSORS

Dealing with difficult professors

Preparing for competitive exams

Quick and healthy snacks that are good for focus

Finding cheap textbooks

Relationships and Sex

How to tell if someone genuinely likes you

Why relationships fail

Putting yourself first when you need to

Eight differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships

Know the difference in protective and possesive

10 things to know before you start being sexually active

Maintaining a long lasting HEALTHY sex life

Considering a friends w/ benefits relationship? read this!

Money Management

Are you spending too much money on ____?

10 Tips on Saving Money

Steps to take in starting a budget

Mobile apps for budgeting!

Buying a car

Tips for buying a house

…and apartment

25 Wastes of money

Even savvy savers make these mistakes

Getting / Keeping a Job

Interviewing etiquette

Creating a resume

Starting your career before you start your career

Workplace etiquette

Shitty boss?

Waking up with a hangover…

Getting ahead in the workplace

Physical Health (Diet and Exercise)

General Men’s Health website

General Women’s Health website

Gym Etiquette

Micro changes for macro results at the gym

7 foods to help trim belly fat

How many calories should you be consuming?

No gym? Try these at home work outs

Great diets for men

Great diets for women

Miscellaneous (Better you…)

Stop forgetting things

Stop cursing

Keep your car stocked

Stop smoking

Deal with the police responsibly

Love yourself

Know when to shut up (This is from a Christian outlook btw but it would probably still help)

Stop talking shit about people

Let me know if any links stop working, even if this only helps one person in a small way it was worth the effort i put into finding good sources! - Keaton

Unreleased Star Wars: Episode IX – Duel of the Fates Concept Art

chucks got a lot of transphobes riled up today so i should probably add: there are infinite genders including no gender at all and no matter how much devils seethe and cry and gnash their teeth this will not change. thats just scientific fact SORRY DEVILS im a doctor