Newbie has some questions / Am I a sub?

[Liberia]

@Liberia

I’ve been noticing your replies across the threads. You’re not just commenting… you’re weaving insight into every conversation.

What you’re doing here, turning subtle self-doubts and curiosities into real, reflective dialogue is rare. This thread? It won’t just fade. I’ve got a feeling many will come back to it months or even years from now… because truth always echoes.

flameinthesoul, once again thank you for your kind comment. Although I somehow doubt that the views of a Northern hippie about literature from the 19th century are that interesting for most people and hope that I am not an annoyance to the others, I really enjoy it.

At first I was super embarrassed to even post here, then I got some pms that shocked me, but the answers in the forum were so nice and supportive and friendly that I prolonged and fought my own shyness. Now I have met three super interesting people, I phoned, even videocalled, sent and received short stories had hour long conversations about everything and feel friendship developing where I'd never expected it. Someone said to me: Others get dicpics on FB, you get sunrises from the kinkforum. But it is true and the reason why I will definately stay on here and try to be a more active part in this community, because I have met great people that I can not wait to see offline and that are so interesting, open, friendly, non-judgy and share their wisdom with me. I can not recall when I felt that I could express myself so completely honest and recognize, see, accept people so completely honest as they are and want to perform, express themselves.

In the last weeks I have read new books, watched an old movie, we as we were, since it was recommanded to me because apparently one was reminded of Katie and listened to new music. Now I want to stay open and I am happy about every comment, reply and tactful message and try to reply to everything.

It is a joy and may be an usual place, but who cares about normalcy, right?

So thank you very much for this post and your other kind reply, all these things contributed to me staying and fighting my own shyness.



Kind regards and lovely day

L.

 

[flameinsidesoul]

flameinthesoul, once again thank you for your kind comment. Although I somehow doubt that the views of a Northern hippie about literature from the 19th century are that interesting for most people and hope that I am not an annoyance to the others, I really enjoy it.

At first I was super embarrassed to even post here, then I got some pms that shocked me, but the answers in the forum were so nice and supportive and friendly that I prolonged and fought my own shyness. Now I have met three super interesting people, I phoned, even videocalled, sent and received short stories had hour long conversations about everything and feel friendship developing where I'd never expected it. Someone said to me: Others get dicpics on FB, you get sunrises from the kinkforum. But it is true and the reason why I will definately stay on here and try to be a more active part in this community, because I have met great people that I can not wait to see offline and that are so interesting, open, friendly, non-judgy and share their wisdom with me. I can not recall when I felt that I could express myself so completely honest and recognize, see, accept people so completely honest as they are and want to perform, express themselves.

In the last weeks I have read new books, watched an old movie, we as we were, since it was recommanded to me because apparently one was reminded of Katie and listened to new music. Now I want to stay open and I am happy about every comment, reply and tactful message and try to reply to everything.

It is a joy and may be an usual place, but who cares about normalcy, right?

So thank you very much for this post and your other kind reply, all these things contributed to me staying and fighting my own shyness.



Kind regards and lovely day

L.

What you just shared? That’s exactly why this space matters. Not because it’s perfect, or polished, or even “normal” but because it gives people like you the chance to arrive fully… with curiosity, soul, and a little fear wrapped in fire.

You’ve moved from hesitation to full-hearted presence in doing so, you’ve made space for others to step out of their own shadows.

You say you were afraid no one would care about your thoughts on 19th-century literature? I’d argue that the world is starving for voices that care deeply about anything and speak without filters. Especially when wrapped in the strange tenderness of a kink forum.

Sunrises from the kink forum…That line needs to be framed. Tattooed. Quoted.

Keep writing. Keep responding most of all keep being you. Because when you speak, even softly, it echoes in ways you may not see.

You’ve already become part of the soul of this place, I’ll be right here when your next post lights up my screen.

 

[Liberia]

Thank you again, you yourself seem to be a kind soul.

I've avoided some paperwork for FOUR MONTHS , so I can not answer as I'd like to.

Just this: for anyone reading this, who may be afraid, shy, scared or just really lonely and sad. You can write me, I'll listen.

Now, I really have to fight my battle with this paperwork, the real sadism is bureaucracy!

Lovely day to you.

 

[MasterDarcy]

Sadly, I

Firstly, you are a great pen pal, I really enjoy this.


But secondly I need to clear something up. Dark romance vs. romance: I think we have a huge misunderstanding. I do not prefer romance or light romance and I think we may not even agree on the terms on definitions. When I am using romance and romantic I am not meaning anything light-hearted or concerning love, I would, for an example, never call Austen's books romantic. Romantic means a specific literary, political, youth movement as a result of enlightment and industrialization. People wanted to get back to nature, the natural, saw the feeling, emotion, sentiment, the primal and natural urges as the only thing valid, wanted to break the chains of reason, rationality and self-restraint, which they saw as alienating and being against their ideal of human nature. Marie Antoinette with her fake natural garden, where the maids had to clean the sheep everytime her majesty wanted to milk them is a great example.

As you may have grasped by now: I am not a huge fan intellectually on the hand, although I know that it comes forth and back in waves and I am also a total contradiction, because Beatnik literature with it's passionate rebellion is of course one form of romantic, but also the whole hippie movement is one big romantic movement. Back to nature, against the rigid rules of society, listen to your emotions, dance barefoot in the grass yada-yada, you know, so although I have a critique I am also part of it, since I am definately a hippie at heart, a hippie and a punk at the same time.

But although I was just now, as your fellow countrymen would may delicately put it, "taking the piss" this was also an earnest, honest movement of young people wanting to overcome alienation, feeling a certain fakeness of society, who had a serious longing for something they imagined as the real. Dark romantic followed in that, has a morbidity, often flirts heavily with death, vampires, drugs (opium in the day), scenes in the midnight at the burial ground or in the catacombs.

The idea of love has not that much to do with it, if we look at the changing definitions of love throughout the centuries. Austen was in no way a romantic, for her love follows out of shared responsibilities, mutual understanding and respect, shared and reasonable economic circumstances etc. For a romantic the feeling alone is the ruler and everything else is fake societal pretense, one has to fight against it and break free. Anglophone and french romantics are less political reactionary and have a great literary quality, northern european romantics are a bit more dangerous. Maybe you could enjoy Novalis hymns about the night, which he wrote while lunging in the catacombs after he lost his very young sweetheart.

Heine started as a romantic as has written some quite famous romantic poems, but then critized the movement for it's idolizing of death among other things and became in the German speaking world the last of the movement and "ended" in a way, he wrote some great parodies, I will cite one for you:

My own sweet love, when you are dead
English translation © Hal Draper
My own sweet love, when you are dead
And the grave’s dark shadows face you,
I shall go down to your earthy bed
And cherish and embrace you.

I kiss you, clasp you wildly athrob,
You cold, unmoving, white-eyed!
I tremble, I thrill, I softly sob –
I become a corpse at your side.

The dead stand up as midnight booms,
They dance with airy grace;
We two remain within our tombs,
I lie in your embrace.

The dead stand up, the Judgment Day
Calls forth the damned and the blest;
We two sleep undisturbed for ay
And lie in love and rest.

Translations by Hal Draper published by Oxford University Press and Suhrkamp/Insel Verlag (1984)

https://oxfordsong.org/song/mein-süßes-lieb-wenn-du-im-grab

Now, you have to keep in mind that it's a great parody. He could only do it so well, because he was a romantic in his youth himself. I am looking forward to some great poem of Poe if you want to share.


Concerning misanthropy: Why despise humanity? What is humanity? Are people not raised to be rude and crude and what has that to do with humanity as a whole? Is not something like Catal Hüyük a great example of what humans can achieve and how great everything could be?


Kind regards

L.

Firstly, you are a great pen pal, I really enjoy this.


But secondly I need to clear something up. Dark romance vs. romance: I think we have a huge misunderstanding. I do not prefer romance or light romance and I think we may not even agree on the terms on definitions. When I am using romance and romantic I am not meaning anything light-hearted or concerning love, I would, for an example, never call Austen's books romantic. Romantic means a specific literary, political, youth movement as a result of enlightment and industrialization. People wanted to get back to nature, the natural, saw the feeling, emotion, sentiment, the primal and natural urges as the only thing valid, wanted to break the chains of reason, rationality and self-restraint, which they saw as alienating and being against their ideal of human nature. Marie Antoinette with her fake natural garden, where the maids had to clean the sheep everytime her majesty wanted to milk them is a great example.

As you may have grasped by now: I am not a huge fan intellectually on the hand, although I know that it comes forth and back in waves and I am also a total contradiction, because Beatnik literature with it's passionate rebellion is of course one form of romantic, but also the whole hippie movement is one big romantic movement. Back to nature, against the rigid rules of society, listen to your emotions, dance barefoot in the grass yada-yada, you know, so although I have a critique I am also part of it, since I am definately a hippie at heart, a hippie and a punk at the same time.

But although I was just now, as your fellow countrymen would may delicately put it, "taking the piss" this was also an earnest, honest movement of young people wanting to overcome alienation, feeling a certain fakeness of society, who had a serious longing for something they imagined as the real. Dark romantic followed in that, has a morbidity, often flirts heavily with death, vampires, drugs (opium in the day), scenes in the midnight at the burial ground or in the catacombs.

The idea of love has not that much to do with it, if we look at the changing definitions of love throughout the centuries. Austen was in no way a romantic, for her love follows out of shared responsibilities, mutual understanding and respect, shared and reasonable economic circumstances etc. For a romantic the feeling alone is the ruler and everything else is fake societal pretense, one has to fight against it and break free. Anglophone and french romantics are less political reactionary and have a great literary quality, northern european romantics are a bit more dangerous. Maybe you could enjoy Novalis hymns about the night, which he wrote while lunging in the catacombs after he lost his very young sweetheart.

Apparently, there's a 10k word limit on messages so I'll break this into three:

Thank you. I don't log in all that often, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Ah. I understand and I completely agree. I think it's more of a "lost in translation" thing. You did elude to the fact that English isn't your first language. For example, when you noted that you were a "Femme" in your circle of friends, I assumed you meant that you were the feminine one, but I don't think that's what you meant as you went on to explain that you do some manual work, etc.

Well, the words "love" and "romance" have always been nuanced words that are often misinterpreted. Take the "romantic poets," such as Keats, Shelley and Wilde, Byron, etc.

People take the "romantic" and assume that the "Big 6" (the collective name of the 6 most popular poets in the English romantic movement) were preening, fawning-lovelorn fops. It's a fallacy. The "romantic movement" was focussed on nature, emotion, imagination, and individualism.

 

[MasterDarcy]

My own sweet love, when you are dead
English translation © Hal Draper
My own sweet love, when you are dead
And the grave’s dark shadows face you,
I shall go down to your earthy bed
And cherish and embrace you.

I kiss you, clasp you wildly athrob,
You cold, unmoving, white-eyed!
I tremble, I thrill, I softly sob –
I become a corpse at your side.

The dead stand up as midnight booms,
They dance with airy grace;
We two remain within our tombs,
I lie in your embrace.

The dead stand up, the Judgment Day
Calls forth the damned and the blest;
We two sleep undisturbed for ay
And lie in love and rest.

Translations by Hal Draper published by Oxford University Press and Suhrkamp/Insel Verlag (1984)

https://oxfordsong.org/song/mein-süßes-lieb-wenn-du-im-grab

Now, you have to keep in mind that it's a great parody. He could only do it so well, because he was a romantic in his youth himself. I am looking forward to some great poem of Poe if you want to share.

As per your request, I'll post a poem by Poe. I read it first as a child and was instantly smitten:

The Raven:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!

 

[MasterDarcy]

Concerning misanthropy: Why despise humanity? What is humanity? Are people not raised to be rude and crude and what has that to do with humanity as a whole? Is not something like Catal Hüyük a great example of what humans can achieve and how great everything could be?


Kind regards

L.

Why despise humanity? Where do I start:

More than 370 million girls and women alive today – or 1 in 8 – experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18, according to UNICEF.

Eight people own the same wealth as 3.6 billion people.

There are millions on men, women and children dying with drought and starvation and a lack of basic necessities, whilst there are people who own super yacht who live like kings and queens.

Russia are trying to wipe Ukraine from the map by bombing the crap out of them. Same with Israel and USA vs Iran.

In the middle east, you can be sentenced to death if you're gay. If a woman is single, and she's raped, she'll get stoned.

Salem Witch Trials and all the hundreds and thousands of cases of mass hysteria and man's inhumanity to man.

Global warming. The polar ice caps melting. The decimation of forests and pollution of the season and the pandemic of littering.

Humans continue to drain the Earth of it's natural resources out of sheer greed and short-termism.

Humans are warming and polluting the seas.

Humans have driven at least 881 animal species to extinction since around 1500.

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970,

In its billions of years, the Earth has reset dozens of times. Once humans are gone (possibly as the result of Nuclear war) there will be nothing to reset.

Planet Earth and nature is beautiful and captivating.

Human beings are a plague on Earth. The quicker they're rendered extinct, the more chance Earth has of recovery and survival

 

[Liberia]

Apparently, there's a 10k word limit on messages so I'll break this into three:

Thank you. I don't log in all that often, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Ah. I understand and I completely agree. I think it's more of a "lost in translation" thing. You did elude to the fact that English isn't your first language. For example, when you noted that you were a "Femme" in your circle of friends, I assumed you meant that you were the feminine one, but I don't think that's what you meant as you went on to explain that you do some manual work, etc.

Well, the words "love" and "romance" have always been nuanced words that are often misinterpreted. Take the "romantic poets," such as Keats, Shelley and Wilde, Byron, etc.

People take the "romantic" and assume that the "Big 6" (the collective name of the 6 most popular poets in the English romantic movement) were preening, fawning-lovelorn fops. It's a fallacy. The "romantic movement" was focussed on nature, emotion, imagination, and individualism.

I actually meant that I am the feminine one and then explained what I do. So if I am the FEMININE one, what does that mean about my bubble?

 

[Liberia]

Concerning everything else:

It is late and I need to exercise and clean a mess that my puberty driven goddaughter has made, will write probably 10 pages Tuesday.

 

[MasterDarcy]

I actually meant that I am the feminine one and then explained what I do. So if I am the FEMININE one, what does that mean about my bubble?

Well, you explained that you "fix furniture, lift everything, repair stuff, have never ever worn anything pink or glitter and do not even believe in the concepts of feminity."

That doesn't exactly scream "Feminine"

 

[MasterDarcy]

Concerning everything else:

It is late and I need to exercise and clean a mess that my puberty driven goddaughter has made, will write probably 10 pages Tuesday.

Lol

You really don't have to. We've pretty much exhausted this and knowing me I'll end up writing a 100k word reply and I won't get anything done.

Plus I think we're spamming your thread.

I have enjoyed the conversation. Hopefully I've made you, or a member of the audience, a misanthrope.

 

[Liberia]

Well, you explained that you "fix furniture, lift everything, repair stuff, have never ever worn anything pink or glitter and do not even believe in the concepts of feminity."

That doesn't exactly scream "Feminine"

And now imagine my bubble. That was the joke. This is how I wanted to contrast my bubble and the rest of mainstream culture.

I sometimes wear skirts, do not shave my head, but still have curls and have some characterics some may call feminine, big hugger and dancer, the complete opposite of you in terms of cheeriness, if I may boldly state so.

 

[Liberia]

Lol

You really don't have to. We've pretty much exhausted this and knowing me I'll end up writing a 100k word reply and I won't get anything done.

Plus I think we're spamming your thread.

I have enjoyed the conversation. Hopefully I've made you, or a member of the audience, a misanthrope.

I am politely disagreeing and want to argue for progressive politics of course.

 

[MasterDarcy]

And now imagine my bubble. That was the joke. This is how I wanted to contrast my bubble and the rest of mainstream culture.

I sometimes wear skirts, do not shave my head, but still have curls and have some characterics some may call feminine, big hugger and dancer, the complete opposite of you in terms of cheeriness, if I may boldly state so.

Ah. It went over my head. Another lost in translation moment.

Lol. Yeah. Not a big hugger or a dancer. Yikes.

 

[MasterDarcy]

I am politely disagreeing and want to argue for progressive politics of course.

Lol. Of course you do

 

[Liberia]

Ah. It went over my head. Another lost in translation moment.

Lol. Yeah. Not a big hugger or a dancer. Yikes.

Shocking, I know!

 

[MasterDarcy]

Shocking, I know!

I know. I know.

I come across as totally tactile and a world class hugger...

Plus, I have as much rhythm as a drunk cat.

 

[Liberia]

I know. I know.

I come across as totally tactile and a world class hugger...

Plus, I have as much rhythm as a drunk cat.

In my life I have:
Danced barefoot in the grass in a hippie style
Raved spontanousely in another state
Did some hard pogo on punk concerts
Mashed at hiphop concerts
Danced all night to live Jazz, Blues or Mod, the last one is my favorite I think

Also:
Hugged:
- People
- Dogs
- Tree
- Myself

Called people sweetie/love/hun:
- everybody including the profs at uni

Called 70 year old man "young man!" and advised him to use the bike lane, he apologized and did as he was told.

Been called:
- sunshine, sunny, sweetheart, frightening, a young McGonagall, blessed with a temper.

So, yeah, I think you are just a wee bit more cheery than I am, just a tiny wee bit.

 

[Liberia]

Why despise humanity? Where do I start:

More than 370 million girls and women alive today – or 1 in 8 – experienced rape or sexual assault before the age of 18, according to UNICEF.

Eight people own the same wealth as 3.6 billion people.

There are millions on men, women and children dying with drought and starvation and a lack of basic necessities, whilst there are people who own super yacht who live like kings and queens.

Russia are trying to wipe Ukraine from the map by bombing the crap out of them. Same with Israel and USA vs Iran.

In the middle east, you can be sentenced to death if you're gay. If a woman is single, and she's raped, she'll get stoned.

Salem Witch Trials and all the hundreds and thousands of cases of mass hysteria and man's inhumanity to man.

Global warming. The polar ice caps melting. The decimation of forests and pollution of the season and the pandemic of littering.

Humans continue to drain the Earth of it's natural resources out of sheer greed and short-termism.

Humans are warming and polluting the seas.

Humans have driven at least 881 animal species to extinction since around 1500.

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970,

In its billions of years, the Earth has reset dozens of times. Once humans are gone (possibly as the result of Nuclear war) there will be nothing to reset.

Planet Earth and nature is beautiful and captivating.

Human beings are a plague on Earth. The quicker they're rendered extinct, the more chance Earth has of recovery and survival

My dear M. Darcy,

everything you just mentioned is a very clear argument for better politics, not the destruction of whole humankind, it ain't necessarily so!

Women and girls are raped, violated and abused because of patriarchal structures, which are deeply interwoven with economics, religion and other cultural factors. It was Vere Gordon Childe, a famous aussie-brit archeologist, who as one of the first examined the neolithic age, he also coined the term neolithic revolution, and found that gender differences were minor, men and women did the same work and ate the same food. Progressive gender analysis has argued for over 200 years now that the oppression of girls and women stems from economic circumstances, men want to control a womans sexuality, because of private ownership of vast resources, a class society and the battle of inheritance.

Why it is horrible but changable that "Eight people own the same wealth as 3.6 billion people" does not need explanation, yes? You are Scottish, you know how successfuly the labor movement fought and how your very own Umbridge destroyed a culture that was build for over 200 years.

I think, we do not even disagree in the problem analysis, but in the answer to that.
Circumstances have structual reasons and are made by humans, unknowingly reproduced most of the time and they can be changed. The greatest success of neoliberalism was to make people feel as though they do not have any agency, power and that nothing can ever be changed.

There is no history, no future, only ever managing crisis, telling people that there is no alternative and hedonist escapism, " I am trying not to think about it."
"Yet this turn from belief to aesthetics, from engagement to spectator ship, is held to be one of the virtues of capitalist realism. In claiming, as Badiou puts it, to have ‘delivered us from the “fatal abstractions” inspired by the “ideologies of the past”', capitalist realism presents itself as a shield protecting us from the perils posed by belief itself. The attitude of ironic distance proper to postmodern capitalism is supposed to immunize us against the seductions of fanaticism. Lowering our expectations, we are told, is a small price to pay for being protected from terror and totalitarianism. ‘We live in a contradiction,' Badiou has observed:

a brutal state of affairs, profoundly inegalitarian - where all existence is evaluated in terms of money alone - is presented to us as ideal. To justify their conservatism, the partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful. So instead, they have decided to say that all the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect Goodness. But we're lucky that we don't live in a condition of Evil. Our democracy is not perfect. But it's better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc.

The ‘realism' here is analogous to the deflationary perspective of a depressive who believes that any positive state, any hope, is a dangerous illusion. (M. DARCY - WINK WINK)

when it actually arrives, capitalism brings with it a massive desacralization of culture. It is a system which is no longer governed by any transcendent Law; on the contrary, it dismantles all such codes, only to re-install them on an ad hoc basis. The limits of capitalism are not fixed by fiat, but defined (and redefined) pragmatically and improvisationally. This makes capitalism very much like the Thing in John Carpenter's film of the same name: a monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact. Capital, Deleuze and Guattari says, is a ‘motley painting of everything that ever was'; a strange hybrid of the ultra-modern and the archaic. In the years since Deleuze and Guattari wrote the two volumes of their Capitalism And Schizophrenia, it has seemed as if the deterritorializing impulses of capitalism have been confined to finance, leaving culture presided over by the forces of reterritorialization.

This malaise, the feeling that there is nothing new, is itself nothing new of course. We find ourselves at the notorious ‘end of history' trumpeted by Francis Fukuyama after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fukuyama's thesis that history has climaxed with liberal capitalism may have been widely derided, but it is accepted, even assumed, at the level of the cultural unconscious. It should be remembered, though, that even when Fukuyama advanced it, the idea that history had reached a ‘terminal beach' was not merely triumphalist. Fukuyama warned that his radiant city would be haunted, but he thought its specters would be Nietzschean rather than Marxian. Some of Nietzsche's most prescient pages are those in which he describes the ‘oversaturation of an age with history'. ‘It leads an age into a dangerous mood of irony in regard to itself, he wrote in Untimely Meditations, ‘and subsequently into the even more dangerous mood of cynicism', in which ‘cosmopolitan fingering', a detached spectatorialism, replaces engagement and involvement. This is the condition of Nietzsche's Last Man, who has seen everything, but is decadently enfeebled precisely by this excess of (self) awareness."

https://archive.org/details/capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative/page/n11/mode/2up

Organizing for change is possible, it will take time, go down Moses was the hymn of the civil rights movement, mythical they took 40 years through the dessert and it will take longer to profoundly change things, but it can be done.
History is made by humans, people make their own history, destiny and form their structures, they just do not know this and are powerless and cynic, they need to organize.

As a great british poet said:
It's not made by great man

Please watch the video, some beautiful images.

Kind regards

L.

 

[Liberia]

Global warming. The polar ice caps melting. The decimation of forests and pollution of the season and the pandemic of littering.

Humans continue to drain the Earth of it's natural resources out of sheer greed and short-termism.

Humans are warming and polluting the seas.

Humans have driven at least 881 animal species to extinction since around 1500.

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970,

In its billions of years, the Earth has reset dozens of times. Once humans are gone (possibly as the result of Nuclear war) there will be nothing to reset.

Planet Earth and nature is beautiful and captivating.

Not everyone is equally responsible for climate crisis, leading enterprises knew about it and kept it a secret. It has to do with a structure of profit, they make a huge amount of money.

"One of the world's largest oil companies accurately forecast how climate change would cause global temperature to rise as long ago as the 1970s, researchers claim.
ExxonMobil's private research predicted how burning fossil fuels would warm the planet but the company publicly denied the link, they suggest.
The academics analysed data in the company's internal documents.
ExxonMobil denied the allegations.
"This issue has come up several times in recent years and, in each case, our answer is the same: those who talk about how "Exxon Knew" are wrong in their conclusions," the company told BBC News.
Corporations including ExxonMobil have made billions from selling fossil fuels that release emissions that scientists, governments and the UN say cause global warming.
The findings suggest that ExxonMobil's predictions were often more accurate than even world-leading Nasa scientists.
"It really underscores the stark hypocrisy of ExxonMobil leadership, who knew that their own scientists were doing this very high quality modelling work and had access to that privileged information while telling the rest of us that climate models were bunk," Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, told BBC News.
The findings are a "smoking gun", suggests co-author Geoffrey Supran, associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami.
"Our analysis allows us for the first time to actually put a number on what Exxon knew, which is that the burning of their fossil fuel products was going to heat the planet by about 0.2C of warming every decade," he said."

https://exxonknew.org/

So, the problem is that there is an actual material benefit for people to worsen the climate crisis, lie about it, corrupt politicians to suppress climate laws and not humanity as a whole. What can a poor mother of two little kids, who works a hard job and has no good public transport do about the fact that she needs a car to drive the kids to childcare, do the weekly shopping and so one? Not everyone has the same responsibility, I am sure you agree.

‘Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife,
and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the
question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was
formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold.
A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent
certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent positive audacity; 100 per cent
will make it ready to trample on all human Jaws; 300 per cent, and there is
not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the
chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit,
it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply
proved all that is here stated’
(Capital, Vol I., note 250, lol)


https://archive.org/details/capital-vol.-1-penguin/page/5/mode/2up

To leave here also on a little lighter note than a footnote from capital, lol, another great quote from a great poet:
"Who the fuck makes those missiles?"
Bet, it's not your uncle Bob.

 

[Liberia]

I think this is a rather good example of class structures, racism, religious propaganda and upbringing, real paranoia and other social factors and a wonderful example for socio-psycho-economic analysis instead of a mistanthropic conclusion.
What I find missing in your arguments are people, who resist and there were people in Salem trying to stop the madness and people trying to rehabilitate the victims. I think a general hate of humankind could be some form of cynism and escapism, "I do not want to know, everything is horrible", although there are always choices to be made.
I will leave you with my favorite movie about Salem, Sartre edited some of it, it has the most beautiful french actors and is written after Millers play, hopefully for someone to enjoy:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050997/

If you have not watched it: Do it by all means, it is so much better than later versions.

Salem Witch Trials and all the hundreds and thousands of cases of mass hysteria and man's inhumanity to man.