Working The Museum

Too many leftists are still glorifying work for work's sake. Too many leftists have equated "performing labor" with "moral fortitude."

If your ideal society has no place for people who genuinely, fully, 100% do not want to work, or who can't work, your ideal society is not as ideal as you think. There has to be space for people who don't "contribute," there has to be space for people who don't fulfill some greater "purpose," there has to be space for people who cannot and will not ever be a part of the labor force.

I am a firm believer that laziness does not exist, and if someone is flat-out refusing to do something, there's a good reason for it. That reason could be disability, it could be fear, it could be a lack of education, it could be that they're confused or lost and don't fully understand what they're supposed to do, it could be that they don't have the skills, it could be that they're at their limit and need a break, it could be that the task is uninteresting or not relatable to them and they don't understand why it's necessary, it could be countless other reasons. "They're just lazy" is a cruel assumption that doesn't solve any problems or accomplish any tasks.

But even if I'm wrong, and laziness is real, you can't penalize "laziness" without hitting a lot of disabled or otherwise vulnerable people in the crossfire. You cannot and will not ever create a society in which everyone is a perfect worker. There has to be a way for someone to contribute absolutely nothing to the labor force, but still be taken care of instead of left to needlessly suffer.

Origin decided I couldn't play The Sims Medieval tonight so guess who stayed till 1 am and drew Keyleeth from Vox Machina!

Ursula K. Le Guin

Tuning Out the World

Louis is basically that mom who loves you but loves her abusive husband more. Yeah, she loves you, but not enough to save you. She loves you just enough to keep you there, stuck with someone who hurts you, and someone who doesn’t love you enough to stop it.

The Goddess of the Hunt (and her best boy)

Reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Jack Gilbert called 'Failing and flying'.

"Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph."

I think everyone should remember that : anything worth doing is worth doing badly

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

of course love exists that’s why matt berninger from the national wrote “i wanna hurry home to you, put on a slow dumb show for you, and crack you up" and then “you know i dreamed about you for 29 years before i saw you, i missed you for 29 years”

I am watching the gay pirate show, and I am trying very hard not to let it take over my life, but like Sisyphus, it's a task I attempt knowing I will fail