Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

As a society we should make it as easy as possible for people to leave bad families in fair and equitable ways.

That is essential to having an egalitarian society. Freedom of association, and also freedom of disassociation.

and it’s legitimately hard to identify who the really bad people are! because everyone has good sides. someone who enacts great violence on some people can also be a saint and saviour to other people. is usually, even. no person is only good or only bad. so where do you draw that line? how much work do you expect people to do to come back from what kind of misstep? how do you help them to figure out what work they need to do?

those are hard fucking questions and they can’t be answered generally speaking. i just want people to be aware that this tendency to burn all bridges at the slightest provocation is not a good one. and doesn’t build stable, kind or empowering communities

like i’m just reading an old shitty pulp novel, and there’s a scene where the protagonist just yells at her boyfriend and insults him for no reason, totally goes off, and then later he shrugs it off like lol you said that.

i imagine someone doing this in some of the communities i’m in, and it would be the end of their being in that community.

i feel like often we react with full defensese when what’s really needed is an eyeroll and a “okay, you’re doing the thing again”

and that’s probably a trauma reaction. because in these communities we’re all traumatised as fuck. so one person snapping at someone or doing a borderline or having a meltdown or being inconsiderate or just making some shitty choices for whatever other reason is instantly DANGER DANGER BAD PERSON

and like, yes, trauma reactions are real, and they do need to be given space. but also encouraging them and holding them up as the Correct and Reasonable strategy results in really toxic communities

you ever think about how in some leftist communities, all it takes for a person to become ostracised is 1 misstep, or a personality that doesn’t quite fit into the group?

meanwhile, actually healthy, strong relationships can recover from immense injuries. having big fights, making shitty mistakes, sometimes even outright hurting each other – these are things that can be fixed if people do the work.

but in many communities that we build, we don’t give people that chance. we don’t have that expectation either. so people either cause great harm without consequence, or they get pushed out, and there’s no in between. the model isn’t “imperfect people doing their best to help each other grow” but it’s some bullshit purity contest where you’re either “in” or “out”.

i don’t think this model is all that great, tbh, maybe we should think of something better

@Schouten_B @McCovican @mathew @RenewedRebecca the attitude of an ethical technology company should be that they provide an unsurprising technology that has their interests at heart - including getting consent from them for features that they might not like. it should not be that the users don't know what they want and it's too complicated to explain things to them

Why mutual aid is better than giving to charity (a few of many reasons):

- your money has the most impact on someone's reality if you give it directly to them. none goes into overheads, processing, payroll, marketing, etc

- real people right now have dire problems that cash can instantly solve

- your community (the place where you belong, not a distant separate place) improves and so your life benefits

- people's lives, when you boil down all the world's problems, are the highest priority