The Dreamwidth Account

(In response to: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/16/belittling-the-canberra-convoy-protesters-will-just-push-ostracised-people-further-into-their-bunkers)

I read this article, and I thought "gee, it's nice Simon Copland is able to feel some sympathy for the various protesters out there." But I rather disagree with his premise that "We must seek to understand and address their feelings".

Mr Copland talks about these protesters having formed an "intimate public" group as part of the camp and the protest, and yeah, I can understand that. Heck, I've been part of "intimate public" groups myself - I've gone to science fiction and fantasy conventions, and I've camped out at the Canberra show-grounds myself as part of the National Folk Festival. So I can sympathise with the protesters feeling disappointed, even despairing, when the event breaks up, and they have to go home, resume their everyday life, and deal with being an ordinary part of society again, after a few days (or weeks) of being something extra-ordinary. It's a bit of a let-down, and it's not the most enjoyable situation to be in.

But I think while we're busy looking so hard at the humanity of these protesters, we need to also pay attention to the thing which has united them together. This isn't just a gathering of people who have got together to celebrate a relatively harmless hobby (like folk music, or enjoyment of a genre of entertainment). This is a group of people who got together in defence of an ideology of "liberation" which rests very solidly on the idea that their personal freedom to perform certain activities over-rides the right of anyone else in the country to enjoy a safe, healthy life.

The people in this convoy who "lost friends over [their] views" lost those friends, almost certainly, because of their ideological stance.

Their ideological stance, in a lot of cases, involves effectively telling a lot of other people that they are dispensable. That they are not as human as the holders of this particular stance, and therefore do not merit the same level of consideration. For example, as an autistic person, I'm not considered by many anti-vaccination thinkers to be as human as they are - my existence, to them, is something to be feared, to be dreaded, and something that should not be. To a lot of anti-vaxxers, I am a monster, and I belong dead.

Forgive me for disagreeing with them on that one.

For the sovereign citizens, and the other extreme glibertarians in the crowd, there is nobody on the planet who is as human as they are, and they are fighting hard for their right not to be bound by the dictates of wider society. Mind you, when you stop and talk to a lot of them, you find out what they're actually fighting for (once you strip out the rhetoric, and boil things down to their core notions) is that they should share in the benefits of society (things like infrastructure, services and so on) but not have to deal with any of the costs of society. There's a reason a lot of billionaires in the USA describe themselves as "libertarians", after all. To these people, as a person who has relied on social security to survive at times, and who is going to be looking for support from the NDIS in order to be able to live a slightly fuller (and healthier) life than I do at present, I am anathema. Again, I belong dead, because I am a "parasite" who needs a bit of help from other people in order to be able to contribute fully to society (like a lot of people with disabilities).

Again, I disagree with them as well.

The neo-Nazis in the crowd think I should be dead because I'm a person with a disability (and even more so because I'm a white woman who has reached the end of her reproductive life and not bred good little white children for the nation). Of course, I'm part of a very long list of people they think belong dead, starting with the indigenous owners of this continent, and moving on from there covering things like "people who aren't white enough", "people who aren't Christian", "people who aren't Australian enough", right the way along to "people who don't entirely agree with their every thought".

Do I need to say I disagree with their point of view? Or can we take this as read?

Now, I agree with Mr Copland that it's good these people found a sense of community in their convoy. Community is a human thing, a thing everyone who is human wants and needs to be part of. But let's not lose sight of the fact that these people, this community, want to deny a lot of other people the opportunity to be part of any community at all (much less theirs). There are the immunocompromised and people with "pre-existing conditions" (by which, apparently, the health authorities mean "anyone in less than 100% health, both physical and psychological") who currently aren't able to take part in community events, because it isn't safe for them to risk infection - and let's note this group skews strongly toward those who are on lower incomes, those who are in rural areas rather than urban areas, those who are indigenous, those who are disabled and so on. There are the elderly, who are both vulnerable to things like COVID due to issues of age-related physical and mental deterioration, and also vulnerable because their living systems mean they're unable to move away from sources of potential exposure. The same applies to persons with disability who are living in supported accommodation.

I'm sure a lot of us can talk about people who very literally haven't left their houses if they could possibly avoid it since the pandemic started spreading back in February 2020, simply because they don't want to risk their lives. I'm sure there's a lot of us who fall into that group ourselves.

According to these protesters, we deserve to die, so long as they can carry on acting as though the bad things in the world won't touch them. While the protesters are "expressing genuinely held feelings", as per Mr Copland, I'm sure Mr Copland can also understand that quite frankly, if these people want me to meet them half-way, then they have to start by acknowledging my genuinely held feeling that I am as human as they are, possessed of the same essential humanity, and stop upholding ideologies which say I'm expendable. I'm more than happy to form a community with any of the protesters. Whether they can say the same about me is on them. But I'm more than happy to meet them half-way. It's just the half-way point where I'm prepared to meet them is one where they recognise I don't deserve to die simply because of who I am. If they have a lot of travelling to do to get there, then that is on them, not on me.

It's been a long couple of years. I'm starting on my third year in my job, and I'm realising I need to be willing to take care of myself. As per the statement circulating on Tumblr, I need to schedule time for maintenance, or it will be scheduled for me (my body and brain are both being very clear on this). Between the autism and the RSI, I am starting to realise I can't just barrel forward through life throwing myself at things until I collapse - it isn't a sustainable strategy any more (not that it ever was in the first place).

So I'm being a lot more definite about my downtime - making sure it is actually down time, rather than spending the time being just as busy as I would be at work, only in other directions. I'm spending a bit of time and effort on treating myself - giving myself nice things, rather than living the rather Spartan lifestyle I've become accustomed to through being on unemployment benefits. This doesn't mean I'm heading straight for the consumerist life - not by any means (I mean, first I'd have to figure out a way to be able to cope with the sensory overload of heading in to the average shopping mall, which hasn't happened). But it does mean I'm doing things like buying a few flavours of tea I liked from the sampler pack I was given by my Secret Santa at work (must get around to putting up the reviews), and taking the time to have some nice tea at home rather than rushing through everything.

I've started writing regularly again - the plan is to do at least 100 words a day on one of two projects. I figure 100 words a day isn't too much to aim for, because even on a low brain day, I can manage to string a drabble's worth of words together - even if it's just outlining, plotting, scribbling down background notes or whatever. I'm happier when I'm writing regularly, so I may as well make time in my day to do this. Plus the 100 words add up over time, and get me closer to actually completing some of these projects I've started but then paused on.

I've re-started the "three things that went right" practice again, after another bout of the miseries (again, I need to schedule maintenance, or my brain will schedule it for me), and I may just sit down and write up a list of all the positive things in my life at present (not so much "counting my blessings" as just reminding my brain they exist).

At present, the aim is just getting these few things solidified - get used to actually using my down-time as down-time, rather than "searching for things to do so I don't stop moving" time; keep treating myself kindly wherever possible; keep up the daily writing practices; and keep up the "what went right" notifications. Maybe once these are settled habits, I'll look into things like actually finding a new GP (my current one isn't the greatest fit for me); finding a new psychologist (I need to do this, but I don't have the spoons at present); and getting a bit further with the NDIS paperwork to get myself support that way.

(Yes, I do need support in day-to-day living, despite outwardly having things sufficiently "together" to be able to handle working four days a week).

Reply to: https://theconversation.com/no-twitter-is-not-censoring-donald-trump-free-speech-is-not-guaranteed-if-it-harms-others-153092

I find it remarkable how many conservative figures are right behind the power of the Free Market and the rights of private property holders to do whatever they fancy with their private property... right up to the point where it bites them (or someone they identify with closely, like Mr Trump) in the backside. Mr Trump has not been silenced by having his Twitter account access cut off - or rather, he has only been as silenced as someone who has full access to the White House press office, and to every single major media organisation in the USA, can possibly be.

He also hasn't been censored in the least. Censorship involves government action to block certain types of speech, images, concepts and so forth, from the public view. The various Australian government bans on various types of media (such as certain genres of manga, certain types of pornography and so forth) are censorship. Twitter choosing to ban a person from having an account on their service is not censorship, because no government action is involved. Twitter is a privately owned corporate entity. It is NOT a part of the US public infrastructure. As such, the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which starts with the words "Congress shall make no law ..." (being very clear about which entity it binds) does not actually apply. Twitter, as a corporate body, is allowed to make whatever rules it fancies regarding which speech is appropriate on their service, and which users are allowed and disallowed, and they're allowed to be exactly as arbitrary and petty about it as their user base will tolerate.

As someone on the political left (I think of it as being part of the evidence-and-reality-based caucus), I have heard every single one of the arguments about why Twitter is allowed to kick people off if they choose from conservative speakers, usually defending Twitter's choice to disallow speech from people of colour, transgender people, people with disabilities, women, people who aren't ethnically "white" and so on, simply because someone got under the skin of a bigot. Heck, look at the history of various journalists getting kicked out of their jobs, booted from social media and so on, because they dispute the nature, popular history, or value of ANZAC day, for example, or argue about the whole "Change the Date" thing from the side of Indigenous Australians. It is thoroughly amusing, in a rather jaded and cynical fashion, to watch all these conservative thinkers rushing around clutching their pearls about "censorship" and collapsing on their fainting couches, simply because for once, the boot is on the other leg.

Content note: deals with fandom discourse; "You" throughout this screed is very much used in the general plural, rather than the individual specific. This came about as a response to a long thread on Twitter; I'm moving it here because I think Dreamwidth (and blogging in general) is a bit more suited to long-form thought and discussion than Twitter will ever be.

( Essay under the fold )

[Eddy Jokovich; ‏ eddyjokovich: The #Insiders panel asking “what will be the LNP agenda over the next three years”. I shouldn’t have to tell you this but aren’t these questions meant to be asked before the election? #auspol ]

What annoys me about this tweet is twofold.

Firstly, there's the whole point that firstly, the press were supposed to be scrutinising the various parties policy offerings (ALL the offerings of ALL the parties, guys, not just the big two) and providing the public with coverage of all of these. They were supposed to be doing this before the election. So clearly the Australian press have fallen down on the job, or they were lazy and didn't do their job, or they weren't trained properly and didn't know this was their job, or they were being actively prevented from doing their job. Any and all of these may apply, and all of them are horrifying to think about.

Secondly, there's the subsidiary point that we AS VOTERS were supposed to be looking into this OURSELVES. We shouldn't be relying on the press to spoon feed us everything in carefully measured sound-bites. We should, instead, be doing things like, oh, going to the various websites of the various political parties and reading their policy statements for ourselves. We should not be wholly reliant on the media to pre-digest these announcements for us. We should, instead, be doing some of our own damn legwork.

That a government was re-elected with absolutely NO policy information given, with every single question on policy matters turned aside as being "part of the Canberra bubble" or "it's all in the budget"; with ministers being missing in actions, with candidates doing their best impersonations of the invisible man or invisible woman; and with their only damn point being "look how terrible the opposition are"... this is a failure on two counts. Firstly, it is a failure of the press, who are supposed to be the public's advocates and watchdogs in such matters. Secondly, it is a failure of the electorate, because we have failed our democratic duty to ourselves.

The second is the more crucial failure, especially in this era of press consolidation and near-monopoly press control by the Murdoch media. We, as citizens in a democracy, have a responsibility to ourselves to be educated voters. To take the time to have a look at the various parties on offer, to learn what they stand for, to figure out whether we agree with this or not. Otherwise, we are failing ourselves, and we make ourselves into easy targets for the sort of exploitative, populist politics which delights in a divided electorate, and which chooses to divide and rule, pitting people one against the other. We owe it to ourselves; we owe it to each other; to create a country where we can all have a fair go. We didn't do this. We failed as citizens.

We failed.

Now, the poor, the disabled, the sick, the elderly on the pension, the parents, the children who can't yet vote, the rural populations, the indigenous population, the recent migrants, the detainees in foreign lands, and everyone else who isn't earning over $200,000 per annum in this country are going to be paying the price for our failure. They'll be paying the price in reduced services, in more punitive welfare conditions, in increased prices for those services which remain, and in decreasing quality of service as well. They'll be paying the price in discrimination, in stigma, in negative coverage in the press, and in all the various little ways they've already been paying for the past six years.

We failed them. We failed ourselves. Now what are we going to do about it?

The kids are back in school. I wound up catching the bus back from the city which was apparently the first bus home for a lot of them. Which meant I wound up having to say "excuse me" about twelve times to get from my seat (first row past the wheelchair seating) to the front door of the bus so I could get off the bus.

As a tip to any school-kid in Perth who is wearing a huge private-school-issue backpack on public transport: TAKE YOUR FUCKING BAG OFF YOUR FUCKING BACK WHEN YOU GET ON THE FUCKING BUS, YOU LITTLE SHITS.

Seriously, if you take your bag off your back, and put it on the floor between your feet, you will be a much smaller target for people who have to dodge around you. And that way, if you have to turn in one direction or another, you will NOT be hitting some poor unassuming person who just happens to have to catch public transport home between 3pm and 5pm with your overstuffed schoolbag every single damn time you do it.

(If I wind up having to head home at the same time tomorrow - unlikely, but you never know your luck - I will probably decide to spend an extra hour or so in the city, just so I can miss the schoolies hour. Because while evening peak hour is probably No Fun Whatsoever, it's still mostly going to contain adults, who have at least learned they can put their bags on the floor from time to time. Also, most adults on the bus aren't talking nineteen to the dozen about just about everything)

Because it's That Time Of The Year (the anniversary of The Day Everything Went Pear-Shaped Back In 2001) and a lot of people, whether they're aware of it or not, are probably feeling niggly, bad-tempered, and finding their brains are finding them a lot of things to get miserable about for some reason, I figure I'll do a short post of Unicorn Chasers - the sorts of things on the internet that can cheer you up.

My current one is the series Under The Wing of A Nibel Dragon by Gothams_Only_Wolf over on AO3. This is a gorgeous series which is set approximately 15 years before the start of standard Final Fantasy VII canon, where an 11 year old Sephiroth gets what is turning out to be the best fix-it in the history of the fandom. It contains a five-year-old Cloud Strife who is as cute as a button, a Vincent Valentine who wakes up fifteen years early, and a lot of other characters, some new, some recognisable.

Waiting for the Great Leap Forward is another thing I've been using to deal with my current case of the crankies. Mostly for the line about "Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell at the first hurdle" - this is a wonderful song about what it feels like to be down here at the sharp end of life, rather than up at the top where the decisions are made. Billy Bragg gets it, I think.

I will also recommend Scandinavia and the World which is a beautiful comic by Humon, full of mostly kind-hearted humour about the ways that various countries are perceived to behave, both internally and externally. Humon is a Dane, who has lived in England for a while, and a lot of the comics focus on the interplay between Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, but there's also visits by a lot of other nations as well.

So, what does everyone else use as a unicorn chaser? Share some links in the comments!

So I've realised I'm in the middle of a rather nasty anhedonic episode, which means I'm not particularly feeling any motivation to do anything, which means I'm not doing things unless I absolutely have to at present, because they're things I've built so solidly into my daily routines that I feel worse if I don't do them than if I do.

( Teal deer below the fold )

So yeah. Things aren't as good as they could be. But they're better than they would have been twenty years ago, so I suppose that's something...

Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'll go back to neg-stimming on Tumblr, because apparently this is my brain's preferred form of self-immolation this week.


[1] I have a two hour exclusion period on my medication for my thyroid, which means for two hours after I've taken it (and for two hours before, technically) I'm not allowed to have dairy products, calcium supplements, iron supplements or anything else which might bind to the thyroxine receptors.
[2] The end of this period is the end of the medication exclusion period, when I can technically fit in breakfast if I'm able to contemplate the idea of food.

A lot of people are probably feeling numb, flattened and despairing today in the aftermath of the US election. In other words, you're feeling much the same way I often feel for no reason whatsoever. So in the interest of being able to get through the whole mess, and pull yourselves out the other side, and deal with the rest of the world rather than hiding in a bunker panicking for the next few months, I offer the following tips.

1) Acknowledge what you're feeling is genuine. Don't tell yourself you're "over-reacting" or "being over-dramatic" or "being silly". Especially, don't try to tell yourself that you're "fine" (unless you actually mean, "freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional" when you say that). What you're feeling is what you're genuinely feeling, and it's something which deserves to be acknowledged. Don't try to make yourself feel happier or better. Just accept you're feeling bad, and you're allowed to feel bad.

2) Start treating your emotional self the way you'd treat a six-year-old who was feeling the same way. If you need cuddles or hugs, try and get those from friends and family members. If you need to huddle in a blanket with a stuffed animal, do that. If you want to eat chocolate, eat chocolate. Soothe your inner child, in tangible, physical ways. Physical comfort builds mental comfort. Our minds are linked to our bodies. If our minds are in turmoil, comforting the body can help ease this. So eat comfort food (the best comfort food is hot, milky and sweet, because that taps back into our first memories of being comforted and soothed as babies), wear comfortable clothes and favourite colours, and keep at a comfortable temperature for the environment (cool if it's warm out, warm if it's cold out).

3) Acknowledge that emotions require energy. If you're feeling a lot of things, you're going to be more tired, and you're going to need more sleep. So, see whether you can re-arrange your sleep schedule such that you're going to bed earlier, and sleeping a bit longer. Try to avoid pushing yourself intellectually in your time off - now would be a good time for things like colouring in, or playing solitaire or listening to music, or other recreations which don't require you to be doing much thinking. Re-read favourite books (the ones which are sort of like chewing gum for the mind - the ones where you can just sit back and let the story flow over you and not have to think for a bit).

4) If you're feeling constantly anxious, panicking over things, start asking yourself these questions:

• What am I actually worried about? Write down a list, if you feel the need - often one of the underlying "anxiety" processes is a worry that you've forgotten something important that you were worrying about. Writing a list of worries helps defuse that one. Writing a list also helps pin down what you're worried about
• Are these things I'm worried about things which are certain to happen (for example, "the sun is certain to rise tomorrow"), things which are probably going to happen ("the sun will rise in the east"), or is something which is technically possible, but not necessarily feasible ("the sun will rise in the north")? Put more energy into dealing with the things which are certain, or probable. Things which are only possible aren't worth worrying about until they ascend the ladder of probability.
• What can I do about this problem right now, right this minute? It is likely the answer will be "nothing". If you are unable to do something about the problem, then worrying about it isn't going to help anyone. Least of all yourself. Start intervening actively in your worry loops, and diverting your thoughts elsewhere.

Intervening in worry loops is a skill - which means it can be learned, and it will improve over time. What it involves is three things: recognising you're stuck in a loop, stopping the loop, and changing the mental subject. Recognising you're stuck in a loop starts by recognising you're anxious in the first place - and again, the questions above can help there: start at "what am I worried about?". Does the same subject come up repeatedly? In that case, you're stuck in a loop. Stopping the loop involves catching yourself in the worry, and quite literally choosing not to pursue it - and the easiest way to do this is by changing the mental subject. I've found things like multiplication tables useful for me when I'm trying to do this - start at 1x1 and work up to 20x20, and if I make a mistake, I have to go back to 1x1 again and start over. Or play "FizzBuzz" with yourself (count from 1 to as high as you go, replacing every number divisible by 5 with "fizz" and every number divisible by 7 with "buzz" - again, make a mistake and you have to start over).

Oh, and while you're anxious, accept you're not going to be 100% on the intellectual side. You have the anxiety sitting there occupying mental cycles, and this is going to affect your mental processing speed in the same way having an anti-virus program performing a scan affects the performance of a computer. Things are going to be slowed down, and take a bit longer to run. Be kind to yourself while this is happening - brains are much harder to reboot than computers.

5) If you find you're really sunk into a negative frame of mind, unable to see any positives in life, I offer the following tip which has worked for me. Get a notebook. Into that notebook, each day, write three things which went right. Note the phrasing there: it's "things which went right" as opposed to "things which went wrong". At present, you're probably going to have problems with things like "positive" or "good" or "happy" - it's impossible to spot those things when the emotions are right off the radar. But when you're feeling like this, trust me, you can spot everything which is going wrong in your life - and that makes it easier, in turn, to spot the things which aren't. Doesn't have to be a big thing - a hot drink on a cold day, or even the thought of not having to be outside in rotten weather is enough. But you have to find three things each day which went right, and write them down in the notebook.

Please note: this isn't going to perform an instant transformation on your mood. It isn't supposed to perform an instant transformation on your mood. What it is intended to do is perform a gradual transformation and build the habit of not looking on the dark side all the time.

In conclusion, I will leave you with this truth: believe me, you CAN get through this bad spell of mental weather. What you're experiencing now, in the aftermath of a terrible shock in world events, is what a lot of mentally ill people live with on a constant basis. Yes, the real world events are terrible. But you cannot let these real world events rule you to the extent that you give up living, give up hoping, give up working toward change. What I've offered here is a collection of coping tips which worked for me to allow me to do this. I'm hoping they'll work for other people as well.