I got hit by a large SUV doing between 30mph and 40mph a few years ago. I can’t tell you why or how, but I had a split second to twist and plant my hands on the hood and jump so I went up instead of under. Went into the windshield (broke it) and then got launched when she slammed on the brakes. It put my radius and ulna into my hands, my back into my guts, and knocked my brain so hard I gave the emergency crew a phone number that belonged to a girlfriend I’d broken up with almost 20yrs prior. Took me a year to be able to write again, not just physically. I’d start putting words to paper and end up with gibberish because between my brain and my hand it didn’t connect. Had to leave post-it notes around the house as a check list- did you eat, bathe, brush your teeth, feed the dogs, piss? My ability to sleep was wrecked, no circadian rythym. I don’t entirely believe in fate, but how the fuck that didn’t kill or cripple me boggles my mind (what’s left of it) daily.

For me it would really depend on the context.

I had an abusive mother and self-harmed, a lot. By my teenage years I was bouncing back and forth between self-harm and realizing I was not insane, my mom was an abuser, and starting to find adults and peers who would listen to me and recognize it. I also discovered I could channel my feelings through writing and art, that catharsis of expressing my feelings in a healthy was rather than just turning them back on myself.

As an adult, is it worth noting when a young person starts expressing themselves like that; absolutely. Shit’s rough, it can get overwhelming, and a lot of young people cut their journey short intentionally or recklessly trying to deal with it. Sometimes it’s just a young person piercing the veil and figuring out the world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and venting their disillusion. Other times it’s hopelessness. As an adult I’d like to think I could figure out which it is; commiserate with a youth about the bullshit but have the wisdom to know when to know when to intervene.

We all know he got hospitalized this weekend. I’m expecting a press conference to announce he died Friday but miraculously came back this morning. His fanbase will eat it up.

Validating that I was being abused. Everybody else either didn’t want to talk about it, told me I was the problem, or justified it. I had become self-destructive because I didn’t know what I was. Was I crazy? I was pretty sure i was the victim, but maybe I had brought it on myself. Maybe it was in my head. Maybe what was happening was normal and my expectations were off. Being told what was happening was indeed what I thought was going on and to build a support network to get out was life-changing. I mean, I’m still a fucking mess, but less of one. Probably need to fix my sleep schedule.

Username checks out.

See, there it is! You still care enough that when your pride is poked you’ll take action and defend yourself. You’re not entirely apathetic. Dare I say… there’s hope for you yet?

IDK. You did seem to recognize that you were getting shamed, so either you took a shot in the dark and were right or you read it. But, I’d rather type bullshit than sit at home like a chickenshit.

No, you’re apathetic, I assume you can’t be troubled to read.

Single use and flushable.

I down to see the mutants, the zombies, the hot rod racing war bands, the increasingly intelligent apes. But if it just ends up being cancer and eating rats… meh, I’ll bail.

The shaming is for the self-awareness that you are know of the problem, have the ability to act, but chose not to care and do nothing. Nature doesn’t care about hope. As far as we know humans are the only animals with a concept of “hope” because we deeply understand that our actions have consequences, good and bad/short term and long term, excel at pattern recognition, keep detailed histories, can plan for the future, and can build or destroy to such an extreme we’ve changed the climate of the planet itself. We know our personal nature has a very ugly side like selfishness, hate, greed, lust, and that we often treat each other like commodities or barriers to our own success. Hope is the mentality that comes from being self-aware of our own limitations and is how we convince ourselves we can do something, personally or collectively, when everything says “it’s not possible”. There’s a fine line between that and bashing one’s head against a wall trying to get a different result out of the same wrong method, but innovation is what made us succeed. Hope isn’t a bad thing, but you don’t need it to attempt to do anything since hope does nothing but make yourself feel better about your odds of success when the struggle is real. Lacking hope doesn’t make you helpless, just unhelpful.

A better chance is relative to the action taken and the ability of the person taking it. If I watch a house burn from across the street I have a better chance of not getting burned than if I go in to try and help someone escape. If I go in to help someone escape I have a better chance of helping them than if I stood outside and watched. Now the best chance they have is if the fire department is there, as they have the skill and equipment to do it the safest, but sometimes you have to make a choice and do the best with what you’ve got.

In Trump’s America, I have a great chance of avoiding the worst of his policies because I’m a cis white dude. If I embraced it there’s a good chance I can get ahead. If I continue to loudly express my opposition to it there’s a good chance I’ll get arrested/assaulted/killed.

Not every action needs to be monumental, nor does it all require risk. It takes next to no effort and poses minimal risk for me to pick a worm up off the concrete and toss it into the dirt. The worm’s got a better chance at living, even though whether it does or does not has no affect on affect me, the world, or the universe in any meaningful way. Nobody will ever know what I did, the worm doesn’t understand, and if I didn’t do something the only consequence would be pondering “why didn’t I help when doing so cost me nothing?”

I ain’t here to convince you because apathy is a choice of selfish convenience. You’d take action (or I guess if you’re really invested in apathy, die) if outside forces threatened you, but you’ve got to will yourself to do it on behalf of others.

America is only in a decline because you choose to see it as declining. Conservatives saw the progress that was being made as the decline of their version of “how it should be”, proposed an entire Project book of solutions, and have rapidly stopped the decline of their way of life at the expense of everyone not in their camp (well, a lot of them are fucked by it but they never thought it would happen to them).

Sometimes progress is revolutionary and rapid, sometimes it’s tunneling through bedrock with your fingernails. You might not see the other side in your lifetime, but what you achieved makes the job of the person who comes after you that much easier. Right now conservatives are filling every hole we’ve ever started tunneling- from women’s right, to minority rights, to civil rights regardless of what race/gender/or orientation you are- with concrete and they’re not going to stop until they erase what we have done.

There’s a lot of things that happen in the world that neither you or I have the power to change. But every day you chose to let something you could affect be trampled unchallenged, your apathy is their gain. Conservatives banded together despite their differences and showed they were willing to commit violence to get their change, and they empowered the most selfish among them to be their figurehead. I really don’t know what left-wing Americans want, their own super-lib version of Trump that will use authority to make all their dreams come true, or to sit around and be well-meaning victims who blame a decline on the inability to find a dictator of their own. You have agency, go use it even if it’s not going stop every wrong currently happening.

This encapsulates why it’s so hard to get the majority of Americans to care. The cycle of war, price increases, dwindling quality of life, crumbling infrastructure, growing wealth inequality, racism, misogyny, bigotry; it’s all normalized over decades. Americans don’t get shocked by anything unless it happens directly to them. And not “oh gas prices are up again, that sucks”, but “a cop gunned down my child”. Without having to suffer personally a lot of us will continue to abide the suffering of others and act like being made aware of it is an affront to our right to blissful ignorance.

Haywire. Musically they might not hit me as deep and profound as say, Bad Religion. But for live show intensity… Fuck, it’s like the 90s again. A sweaty crush of humanity getting their eardrums blown while someone back-flipping off the balcony knocks their teeth out. Fun for all ages!

Trump has never been much for requiring consent, especially when spreading herpes.

This was my dilemma. I’m one person with a couple of dogs, I don’t need much interior, but I wanted land to cultivate both as a hobby and for the reward. I settled on a mid-century single wide on a decent lot, and bonus, it had mature trees. I can’t walk to downtown, but I can walk to the grocery store and bike to a bus stop to get to downtown. I do have to Lyft home because our buses quit early, but I’m often intoxicated so that’s safer anyway. The real perk of this is that the neighborhood is older, and while there’s some derelict places who don’t care (junk cars, weeds, dilapidation), it’s nice because no one fucking cares. It’s a mix of people like me turning their smaller, older homes into little bungalows and cottages, backyard chickens and gardens, plus some random peacocks that roam. We trade seeds, put bins of free veggies alongside the road, nod and chitchat. A lot of the US does have the space to create living environments like this, but it’s marketed the idea the house has to take up the whole lot and that landscaping other than perfectly manicured, wrong climate, water-sucking grass is a sin. I do wish our bus system was better, and side roads that encouraged walking/biking were better, but how we live in the communities we have shouldn’t be just dense but walkable or mega-subdivision it takes half an hour to drive out of. We can find ways to balance land use and social desires.