Ways To Live In Direct Opposition To Capitalism

Ways to Live in Direct Opposition to Capitalism

I am by no means an expert in any of these things I’m gonna talk about, so keep that in mind! I am just making a compilation of things I know of that we can do to lessen the stranglehold the capitalist lifestyle has on us while enriching our lives, our surroundings, and the lives of others. Please add anything I miss or correct anything I may be getting wrong! Anyway here goes!

Use what you have, fix what’s you can, make what you can, accept from others, thrift what you can, and finally purchase as a last resort.

This is advice I have seen float around here a couple of times that can apply to a lot of things including clothing, furniture, food, and more besides. It’s meant to be done roughly in that order as it applies to what you’re wanting/needing/doing. It’s about preventing waste, promoting self-capability, having a heightened reliance on your community, and consciously rejecting the ingrained habit many of us have to just purchase things or services.

Here’s where you can read about growing an indoor garden!

Here’s where you can read about sewing things yourself!

Here’s an online site for giving and receiving items for free!

Here is where you can find a local Mutual Aid to get things from, learn skills from, give do, volunteer for, etc. (in the U.S.)

Be politically active! (from a U.S. perspective)

Vote for every election. Know your representatives and those who will be competing in the next election. Vote without ignorance and without falling for unfounded claims. While operating within the system that actively oppresses us will not bring about the future we want, it can serve as damage control (preventing worse candidates from taking office) and it can potentially create a national atmosphere more open to change.

Here’s a good article about getting more involved in the U.S. political process.

Here’s a site that will show you how to register to vote, when and where elections are held, and more!

Here’s good advice on finding protests in your city!

Here’s some readings on unionizing! It’s your legal right to unionize!

Here’s a more user friendly site for learning about unions!

Be active within your community!

Developing strong, motivated, capable, knowledgeable, and inclusive communities is the ultimate way to combat the relentless and bleak present and future. When you’ve worked on the things above and have gotten good at it (or even if you haven’t gotten good at it yet), start spreading what you know and what you can do with others!

Give your neighbors, coworkers, and friends some of the vegetables you’ve grown.

Invite your community members to volunteer events.

Talk to folks about how to vote, when you’re doing it, etc.

Take part in Mutual Aids to teach what you’ve learned or whatever you may be an expert in! Invite neighbors, friends, and coworkers when you take part in the Mutual Aid!

Accept your community. Take them for who and what they are. Discrimination is the enemy of cooperation. You have much more in common with everyone in your community than a single billionaire or corporation. We’re all passengers on this spaceship earth.

Do it one step at a time!

Obviously we can’t do all of these things at once. Do what you can when you can, and you’ll start to notice real change in your life!

Our online communities where we talk about our visions and hopes are fantastic, but they have little impact if we don’t actually get up and do the real work that change requires.

Want to be better, and keep hope for the future!

Harbor and nourish that desire to be a better person and to be the change you want to see in the world. You need to be hungry for a better future if you plan to make it through the rough times when everything feels pointless and without hope. Reach out to others when you’re down, and be someone others can lean on when their lives get hard.

That’s it! Please interact with this, spread it to others, and add your own thoughts and ideas! It’s important that we do the real work to get the change we crave!

More Posts from Foggedupforsaken and Others

foggedupforsaken

7 months ago

(via thatfoodiejess)

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foggedupforsaken

7 months ago

digital drawing of v1 and v2 from ultrakill, scratchy lineart over a blood red background. It is intentionally ambiguous who is who. They stand face-to-face, gently holding each other by the chin, the arm, the hip. They look into each other's eyes.

the next image in the sequence. One of the figures rests its chin on the other's forehead, eye half-lidded, as its wires are pulled from their abdomen. It is also missing some of the plating on its upper arm. It digs its fingers into the space between the others' wings, pulling their plates apart in retaliation.

The final image of the sequence. Both figures are now visibly scuffed and dented. The figure who had its abdomen exposed in the previous panel now lays supine on the floor, its lower half completely missing and replaced with a mess of organs and wires spilling out. It faces the camera with a pained expression on its face. Above it, the other robot kneels menacingly as it steps on its arm and rends the wires from its abdomen, staring intently at the broken figure beneath it.

You weren't raised to love tender x

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foggedupforsaken

7 months ago

burning text gif maker

heart locket gif maker

minecraft advancement maker

minecraft logo font text generator w/assorted textures and pride flags

windows error message maker (win1.0-win11)

FromSoftware image macro generator (elden ring Noun Verbed text)

image to 3d effect gif

vaporwave image generator

microsoft wordart maker (REALLY annoying to use on mobile)

you're welcome

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foggedupforsaken

1 year ago

tbh i think the funniest phenomena that's been happening in the last couple years is "youtuber, having gone too deep into the research hole, has been made an investigative journalist against their will"

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foggedupforsaken

2 years ago

09/22/2022

I made my apple galette. I was going to make the butternut squash soup, but my sister told me that nobody would want to eat it. I thought this would be fine, and I could just make it for myself--we're all adults, after all--and then my mom told me that all of the food I make is strange and odd anyways.

To be clear, the "strange and odd" food is... miso soup, soft boiled eggs over rice, lamb chops, homemade pita and hummus... essentially, anything that isn't meat and potatoes--and even then, only beef and chicken. All of this is very funny coming from the woman who doesn't know what sugar is.

Anyways. The galette was lovely. The chicken and rice soup was also quite nice. It wasn't what I wanted, but I'll make the soup tomorrow. Anyone that has a problem with it can make their own food. Besides--I have someone who will be more than happy to eat something other than meat and potatoes.

I got to talk to Jonathan, even if only for a couple of minutes. They were able to go out and do things in the light for a little bit, but were headed back to bed. I told them to rest, and that I would send them food if they so wished.

With the rain rolling in, my body feels like it's on the verge of collapsing. My joints are all stiff and brittle. I'm going to take a shower, and hope that the warm water soothes my bones. Jonathan said we could talk later. I hope they fall back asleep and don't call--they need the rest--but I miss them so dearly. I think I will leave my parents' house soon.

Solarpunk, realism, dystopia: a rant

Page 1 of comic. The uppermost caption states: "I like realistic Solarpunk. I think it's the best kind, actually!" Under it is a horizontal space filled with doodles: someone exiting a tool library, a girl holding a mended sock, a chama group is pooling donations, a woman browses Wikipedia, a volunteer is filling a bowl with free soup.
"By realistic I mean grounded. Something that we could imagine happening in our real world. No magic (a drawing of a girl with fire powers), no supernatural elements unless you know what you're doing (a talking cat), no cure-all tech (a man is claiming a tiny piece of tech is going to solve everything).
The artist appears. "I feel that way because of my answer to this question: what is Solarpunk for?"

Page 2. "Well, let's see...Solarpunk isn't just an aesthetic, it's an emerging genre and artistic movement." The statement is accompanied by mandala-like drawing of several hands drawing the Solarpunk symbol.
Then there's a dualistic drawing: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk next to each other. In the Cyberpunk drawing, a man is holding a gun, and in the other he is unloading soil from a big bag into a garden bed. Three tiny people are floating next to the Solarpunk man, imagining what tasty stuff can grow from that soil.
The caption reads: "Solarpunk is also sort of CyberPunk's counterpart. While Cyberpunk concerns itself with wrecking bad old systems, Solarpunk is about building new, better ones. SolarPunk's creation was very intentional - it's for letting us imagine a tomorrow that's not a fucking shitshow."
In the corner, the artist points at a box labeled "future" and asks "If it's alive, what do you reckon it looks like?"

Page 3. "And that tomorrow part is important! When it comes to technology, we can stop climate change and achieve a sustainable world right now." A whole section next to this text is filled with various sustainable technologies: perma- and polyculture, wind turbines, vernacular architecture, reforestation, libraries of everything, trains, trams, bikes, solar panels, habitat restoration, degrowth etc.
"We don't need to wait until a fancy piece of tech comes along and fixes everything." There's a rendition of that meme where people are huddling together to discuss something. A contraption called "carbon sucker 9000 appears". The group gives it a thumbs up and continues discussing their own stuff like minimizing plane travel.

"What we need is large cultural and societal change. But most people struggle to imagine anything but dystopia."
In a frame nearby, a rich guy gleefully puts his foot on a pair of scales, favoring a bag of money over the planet. However, just out of frame is a group of people with tools, ready to take the planet back.

"Solarpunk is for filling that blank space! And a grounded, though not unambitious, approach makes it feel more achievable to the average person."

Page 4. "If we can imagine absolute Cyberpunk dystopia with ease but not the opposite, it's because we don't have enough popular stories yet which would showcase that believable alternative." A lady is reading a Solarpunk book. She exclaims: "So you're telling me people can just do stuff without a monetary incentive or the risk of hunger and homelessness? Movie number 3752 about robots enslaving humanity was much more realistic!"
"The hard part for Solarpunks is imagining what the culture and structure of this new society would look like. How would it operate?" Drawing: the author sits gloomily at a desk, mumbling "I wish I could try out this hobby but the tools are so expensive, and I don't even know if it'll be a long-term interest or not...". But then they have an epiphany. "Wait, I could literally just go to the library!"
"How does this new world think? And what do we change about ourselves to get closer to it?" The final doodle is of a man stating we must ensure economic growth until the end of time, though the woman next to him retorts: "You and what endless planetary resources?" She then suggests that we instead produce what's necessary and give it to those who need it.

Page 5. "I find that thinking about the way we do particular things now, and then trying to restructure them in a solarpunk way helps a lot (if said things are worth keeping in the first place). Like, how would (insert thing) work if we gave a damn about its environmental and societal consequences? What are the large and small effects of it?"
Then there's three sections, each dealing with a different issue.
First, "What does free access to information and the dissolution of copyright and patents help achieve?" Drawing: a lady is reading - quote "literally any book or study" - on an e-reader. In her arm she has an implant, a glucose monitor that is free to both obtain and maintain.
Second, "How does library culture affect societal attitudes? How are people with compulsive hoarding treated? What assumptions exist in such a world?" Drawing: two girls are chatting. One says she has like 20 borrowings lying around at home, and at that the other covers her mouth with her hands. "Girl, what? Return them immediately!"
Lastly, "How are people with so-called shitty though important jobs get treated when money isn't a factor anymore?" Drawing: a man announces to his partner that he feels like janitor-ing for a bit. The partner sees no problem in it.

6th and final page. "If you want more ideas to think about, check out the Solarpunk Prompts podcast." There's a link to it in the post below.
"Things need not be perfect, they just have to be better on the whole." Then there's another horizontal spread. On the left, a person is asking another to fix their phone. The second one seems impressed by how old the model is. The first person says they've had it since they were 15. On the right, a young girl is asking her dad if it's true that "water was forbidden" in the past. He looks a little dazed, saying "well, sort of?" and thinking "oh boy, it's time for the talk". In the middle is a city landscape with lots of fruit trees, a bike lane, a tramline. People are chatting, a kid is drawing on the pavement, someone sits on a bench, a bird nibbles on an apple.

"Just because something is hard to imagine doesn't mean it's impossible. Unless it's magic. Magic is pretty impossible. Anyway...Go forth! Imagine shit! Lest the doomerism fungus consume us!"
End of comic.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone out there 🌸

You can find the Prompts podcast here, I drew some of the covers :D Also check out this digital library full of Creative Commons Solarpunk art (neither of these are sponsored).

🦗Somewhat shameful plug🦗

I would highly appreciate if you threw me a couple bucks on Buy Me a Coffee or bought a commission, my money number is only getting smaller these days 😔🤙

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foggedupforsaken

11 months ago

While cleaning out my room I found a paper that my therapist gave me some time ago to deal with obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Sorry the paper is a little crinkled and stained, but I figured I’d post it in hopes that it will help someone like it helped me.

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foggedupforsaken

1 year ago

shepherds of haven oc template — download

aight so soh has a death-grip on my brain currently, so here’s an oc template for all ur brightburner-making needs. the only fonts you’ll need are playfair display (black) and arial. doesn’t come with any psd colouring so do what you want with it. uhhh you’ll need to know how to use clipping masks, and i guess how to mess around with shapes, but that’s rly it. tag me if u use it pls i wanna see everyone’s ocs !!!!!!!!!!

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foggedupforsaken

2 months ago

#hey does anyone know what the deal was with the claims that Friday the 13th and Easter are actually pagan feminist fertility holidays #that were appropriated by the patriarchy/Catholic church? #because I feel like I'm going crazy seeing cnn quote that tumblr post from years ago #like which one came first (bc I can't find that post) and how true are those claims

@assclarinet Wh... what do you mean CNN is quoting tumblr posts. What.

Anyway. These claims go around constantly and they are just as sourceless as anything else in that post.

And as it is Easter Season, let's address them:

Was Easter actually a pagan feminist fertility holiday appropriated by the Catholic Church?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

Easter is the theological core of Christianity. There is no Christianity without Easter. Easter is the holiest day of the Christian calendar, because it is the theological crux of the entire religion: that Jesus died, and then three days later he rose from the dead, his sacrifice having redeemed the world of sin and his resurrection ushering in a new age. Easter is a very Christian thing.

That's not typically what people who say this mean, though. They don't mean the Christian holy day of Jesus's resurrection Easter Sunday, they mean the hegemonic spring holiday in the culturally-Christian world that is pseudo-secularized Easter.

Was placing the central element of Christianity in the spring a way of co-opting pagan spring fertility festivals? No. It's fairly central to the Last Supper-crucifixion-resurrection narrative that it happened at Passover. The Gospels pretty well agree on this part, though there's conflict in the scholarship of whether the Last Supper was a Passover meal proper or happened a day before. (The seder as it is understood today wasn’t performed the same way back then, so it wasn’t properly a seder, either.) In early Christianity, the association of Easter with Passover was theologically significant--Jesus was (and is) called the Paschal lamb, equating Jesus's sacrifice with the sacrifice/slaughter of a lamb for the deliverance of the people from death. The timing of Easter is one of the few Christian holy days calculated based on the logic of the Jewish luni-solar calendar. It's not the same exact calendar, and they don't always directly coincide, but it's the same basis.

Early Christianity grew out of Judaism, and its relationship to Judaism, its self-view as the culmination of Judaism, remained significant to figures like Paul who have defined Christian thought and Church organization ever since. (Here’s a standard view on this presented from a Jewish perspective.) (This is a super interesting perspective from a Congregationalist Christian theologian with a keen interest on the Jewish roots of early Christianity.) (Here’s also a really interesting interview with provocative Jewish philosopher Daniel Boyarin about it.) Christianity and Judaism probably started really developing in different directions sometime after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, with the next few centuries seeing the rise of Rabbinic Judaism as well as the influx of pagan gentiles adopting Christianity and bringing their theological and philosophical backgrounds into it.

The upshot is: Easter is in the spring because Passover is in the spring.

Does the name "Easter" come from Ostara or Ishtar? No. These are the etymologies I see proposed to say, see! "Easter" steals the name of a pagan fertility goddess! And that's a super English-centric way of looking at the world. In most European languages (and let's be real, when people talk about Christianity stealing pagan holidays, they usually are thinking about, like, Celts), the name of Easter comes from the Latin "Pascha" which was adopted from the Greek "Pascha" which, wow, sounds an awful lot like Pesach, the Hebrew name of Passover. Because Easter was associated with Passover. Even in English, the formal, liturgical word for "pertaining to Easter" is "Paschal". So only in Germanic languages like German and English does the name of Easter come from non-Paschal origins.

Also there is no connection to Ishtar.

The etymology of "Easter" is super obscure, though.

Well, there was an Eostre, right? And the Easter bunny tradition was stolen from the pre-Christian Germanic pagan festivals for Eostre or Ostara? Ehhhhh. Dubious. This Library of Congress folklore blog post by a folklorist who has studied Middle English has a lot of well-cited information suggesting that most "received wisdom" about the pagan festivals or Eostre/Ostara that featured a hare derive from the Brothers Grimm in the 1800s. Jakob Grimm cites a single source for the evidence of a goddess Eostre, an 8th century Christian monk's writing.

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her/its name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Definitely possible, even likely, there was some syncretism in the celebration activities there, but it's hard to prove what, and to what extent.

Grimm is the one who postulates the existence of Ostara based on this, using the methods of historical linguistics to derive a cognate with the old German oster-month. Note that the Grimms were 1) linguists as well as folklorists, and the idea of Ostara appears to come from linguistic hypothesis moreso than actual gathered folklore, and 2) very invested in nation-building through their folklore project. No other sources for Eostre or Ostara exist, though modern linguists have hypothesized a connection to the Vedic Ushas and Greek Eos as Indo-European dawn-goddesses. (Also hence the word "east.") So Eostre and Ostara may certainly have existed as Germanic goddesses/personifications of the dawn, but probably not fertility. And the month around April, as the return of spring, was associated with the dawn goddess. If so, Eostre gave her name to Eosturmonath ("Eostre-month"), which is when Easter fell (see above re: the timing of Passover), and so Eoastremonath became Easter-month became Easter. "Easter" then likely derives from the name of the month, not the goddess directly.

The story of Ostara and a hare was, as best I can tell, invented in the 1800s during a time of renewed interest in European paganism as, again, nation-building projects.

Hares, eggs/chicks, and flowers are all perennial symbols of spring and new life in Europe, so it wouldn't be surprising if older celebrations in springtime used them, and those got transferred onto Easter celebrations because, hey, spring, dawn, sunrise out of the night, new birth, resurrection, new life, it all kinda goes together. But it wasn't a holiday that was "appropriated by the patriarchy/Catholic Church,"; at most it was traditional spring festivities transferred onto the new spring festivity. This happened a lot.

As for the second question...

Was Friday the 13th a pagan fertility holiday and that's why it's been made unlucky now?

Short answer: No.

Long answer:

No one really agrees on why Friday the 13th is unlucky, but it probably also comes from Christianity. Friday is the unlucky day because it's the day that Jesus was crucified. 13 is the unlucky number because that's the number of people at the Last Supper. I've also seen several people online reference that Loki was the 13th guest at the feast where he caused the death of Baldr, but I can't find an actual source for that, and it feels very Christianity-influenced. The most influential records of old Norse/Icelandic mythology were written down in the 1200s, well after Christianity was the primary religion of the region, and Christian influences on Norse mythology as we know it now cannot be wholly discounted. So I'm somewhat skeptical Loki is the origin, either.

But also, and this is where I get more into personal hypothesizing, 12 is a very strong and auspicious number in a lot of cultures. There are (typically, approximately) 12 full moons in a year, so lots and lots of calendars split the year into 12 months. 12 is a good number for timekeeping and subdividing: Ancient Egyptians were the ones to develop 12-hour days/nights, and Mesopotamians the ones to split time into units of 60. There were twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples, twelve Olympians, twelve labors of Hercules, twelve constellations in the Greek zodiac and twelve years in the Chinese zodiac cycle. English has unique number-names up to twelve before we start going three-ten, four-ten, etc. We like twelves! Particularly in cultures influenced by the Mediterranean sphere. So I can imagine prime thirteen is ungainly, awkward... unlucky.

(Also, the idea of splitting the week into a cycle of 7 days originates from Judaism in the Biblical book of Genesis, continuing into Christianity and Islam from the same origin. The whole concept of "Friday" is inextricable from Abrahamic religions.)

There's no evidence it was ever a sacred pagan day for sex or anything like that. It just wasn't.

Tags

fascinating to go through later and read the sources

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foggedupforsaken

2 years ago

11/12/2022

I can't remember the last time I thought for myself. Isn't that odd?

I mean... the parts of me that are inhuman...

I don't know what to say right now.

I am realizing that I want to be human. I am thinking about how to pull these parts out of me. And, unfortunately, I am having to come to terms with the fact that not all of them have been created and implanted by cruel masters.

I haven't kept up with this blog because I'm ashamed--both by how much I have to say, and how little I have to say.

I haven't left my home. I haven't taken the road. I've grown more and more sickly and frail. My life is miserable.

I'm realizing why I don't want to go home to Jonathan.

It's because right now, I have space of my own to think. I can live in my own head. I have a family, even if they're cruel, even if I don't want to be around them. I have places to go every day. I have people that check in on me, talk to me. And yes, yes, I have Jonathan, and I love them.

But when I leave, I will have only Jonathan.

And, sometimes, Jonathan isn't good.

Sometimes, Jonathan does things that make me feel small. They're inconsiderate, and they're inattentive, and they throw fits when things don't go their way, or when they can't get what they want, and they can't function on their own.

This is not to say that Jonathan is cruel, or bad, or evil, or that I don't love them.

But I don't think I can go home to them while I'm still broken. I've been spending so long trying to just go out on my own, without thinking of the consequences, without trying to fix myself first.

I don't need to be fixed completely. But I need to know what I want. I need to think about the kind of person I want to be. I need to decide what I want for my life.

So, I'm going to make a list. Jonathan is going to be out with... what did I call him? Julian? They'll be out with Julian for a few days. I'm going to take that time to decide what I really want.

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