An essential question: Who does this benefit?

One of the first questions to ask when you’ve uncovered an ideology is, “who does this benefit?” Let’s take the example from the linked post, that of activism as the only correct way to be an engaged citizen. Who would have an interest in perpetuating the activist model of constant engagement with the news, contacting legislators, attending protests, and voting? The following comes to mind: News organizations and social media companies have a direct, obvious, and well-documented stake in keeping your attention on their firehose of content.

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Activism is an ideology

Whenever you bump into an idea that people seem to accept without knowing why and, in fact, bristle when it is questioned, you have uncovered ideology. Ideology is not always bad, but it is always worth investigating. Among American liberals today, there is a certain idea of what it means to be politically engaged: constant engagement with the news (reading news, watching news, doom-scrolling social media1), contacting legislators, attending protests, and voting (this latter takes on the quality of a sacrament and to question its efficacy is heresy).

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Dark Green Religion

Introductory note: The following is an edited transcript of a video I posted in the early days of the pandemic. (You know, those days when we had no idea what would happen next so we started making YouTube videos in order to distract ourselves. Also, having watched it now two years later, it’s clear I have no future as a YouTuber.) The video discusses the book Dark Green Religion by Bron Taylor.

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Looky what I got today. I believe it’s a Royal Empress. Once the ribbon arrives I can start clacking out all sorts of words.

It’s as if people respond better to a welcoming - as opposed to punitive - environment: “New York City Libraries End Late Fees, and the Treasures Roll In”. I think something similar is going on with two local Humane Society locations. One is perpetually struggling while the other has people stopping in just for the hell of it. The employees at the former are notoriously grouchy, charge fees for everything, and their location has all the charm of a medieval dungeon; the latter has a friendly staff and an open, airy, bright place where you can interact with the animals.

What counts as success in the climate change crisis?

At 20:30 in this video, Charles Eisenstein talks about something that has also nagged me. He says that one of the problems with climate change discourse is the way it has been framed as a matter of survival. The point he is making is that survival isn’t our ultimate purpose. Not least because we’re all going to die. Our purpose, he says, is to live in service to and in gratitude for the gift of life.

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I've kept a very inconsistent journal since 2006, beginning with my first Father's Day. I wish I had written more consistently, but I still managed to get a lot down.

After reading this post by Patrick Rhone (others have also talked about this but I can’t find it right now), I decided that I needed to print whatever I really wanted to keep. So I collected my journals, a few social media posts, and some other miscellaneous writing into roughly equal documents. Then I printed them and created four saddle-stitched books. I’ve left them in a pretty rough-and-ready state because I like the DIY look.

Wrapping up Spring Break

After a couple of intentionally uneventful days midweek, we hit some of our favorites local spots on Friday. On Saturday, we went to the Van Gogh digital projection exhibit at Newfield’s. It’s impressive technology and definitely a unique museum experience. Worth doing once, anyway. We also walked around much of the rest of the museum. As with the digital projection, you can tell they’re trying to do something different by mixing together eras and geographical regions and leaving places for people to write down their reactions.

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Spring Break, thus far

This week has been Spring Break, which is why I haven’t posted much. We front-loaded the week with travel because the weather was predicted to be (and has turned out to be) pretty dismal. On Sunday we visited Madison, Indiana and, briefly, Clifty Falls State Park. Madison is a great little town with plenty of historic homes (like the Lanier Mansion), cool shops, and a riverfront park. Here I am along with two other guys with strollers waiting outside the shops.

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David Cain:

One financial lesson they should teach in school is that most of the things we buy have to be paid for twice.

There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale.

But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.