How do you act without despair, when you’re too realistic to genuinely hope or think your actions will have an effect?  One route is Absurdism, which is a more specific philosophy than you might be aware, and is probably not for everyone.  However, it did help one person survive a hate movement of thousands, so could be worth looking into, if you’re curious.  It was, after all, born from resistance to the nazi occupation of France.  Unfortunately relevant once again today, and has been for a while.

Another way is to focus on your actions that do have an effect.  Yeah, they won’t save the world, won’t individually defeat the monstrosity of this movement, but your actions could save other people, could save yourself.  That matters.  You don’t have to be the world’s buffest antifa kickboxer to carve some good out of a grim world.

First up, do things you enjoy, that also move your mind.  Reading, listening to or creating music, making art, writing, playing video games.  Doesn’t matter as long as you take a little care to do it in a reasonably balanced way – don’t let it round a corner to becoming unhealthy.  Hard to imagine how it could happen with some of those items, but somebody would figure out how, lol.  Second, do the things you don’t want to do, but will be glad to see done, like washing your dishes and take out the trash.  Just do what you can to be OK.

Something I forgot to mention in the inaugural post of this expanded thesis is that my real reason for doing this is my growing awareness of people in my life and in my readership who are physically hurt by stress, sadness, anger.  The rest of this blog network, especially Pharyngula, is apiece with the deathscroll vibe of the leftosphere at large.  That isn’t healthy for anyone, but for a significant subset of people, it’s extremely harmful.  For you more than anyone, self-care, buddy.

If you’re doing well enough, see what you can do for others.  This can include animals and plants in your life, or if you got the sauce, people.  For my part, at the moment, these posts are as much as I can manage.  The feedback I’ve been getting tells me it’s a good thing.  I will get to the end of my supply sometime next week, but I will have done something worthwhile for a minute.

Water the cats, feed the plants, give to medical fundraisers, give to charities, talk to lonely people, try to soothe people who are worried or upset – whether it’s about politics or not.  Careful with helping people that it doesn’t blow up on you, of course.  Never know when a guy you smiled at in the Starbutts will turn into a stalker.  But take the risks you feel comfortable with.

When it comes to politics, the best thing you can do is help people overcome the hurdles that rethugs put between the righteous and a voting booth.  It’s relevant even now, with the next elections a ways off.  In part, because people who were successfully kept from voting this time might still be struggling to get registered.  I know this is true – I spoke with a very old Native American woman from Arizona that was facing some inscrutable bullshit from that state just the week before the election.

I don’t know what the wisdom is, with fighting the ratfucking dirtbag “leftists” that discourage people from voting.  I know a lot of them are foreign – a weirdly large amount of them from Brazil and Argentina, the next largest contingent from Eastern Europe – which puts them out of reach of the ol’ sockarooni.  If the answer to bad speech is more speech (dubious), then you can just reach out and touch people you know, people who are non-voters, and encourage them to get it together.  That is itself a serious challenge, because you won’t win ’em over with condescension or screaming, but goddamn is that tempting.

People like me might be well-qualified for that task, on a good day.  When I interviewed for my current job, I cited my experience helping poor people with communication difficulties in customer service at muffuckin’ walmart.  With the shit I have to do at my current job, I feel like my ass could get nominated for sainthood by now, so I’m probably doing something right.  Maybe take a job in social services?  If they’re hiring and you have serious fucking neurotypical sauce.

I don’t have a rousing endpoint for this.  I’ll just reiterate the thesis.  You can do things, and even little things matter.  More grandiose things can come if you’ve got the strength, and that may be at some undefined time in the future.  But if all you’re doing is cleaning your goldfish’s bowl, thank you.  You’re also cleaning the inside of your skull.  Heal.  and then go kick some fucking ass.

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Oh yeah, I’d meant to mention my Hellstar Reminism philosophy.  Maybe another time.