schmorp

I’m a woman in her forties and maybe my perspective helps. What I’ve noticed about myself as I am approaching menopause is this: I won’t tolerate stuff that I don’t want. No compromise anymore. My body just won’t allow that I be in a place I don’t want to be in, with people I don’t want to be with, in conditions I don’t control … so I’m probably not a very nice person anymore in the way I used to be - but at same time feeling powerfully aligned with what I really want for myself, and walking out of situations that don’t serve me.

As women are still raised to please and support others many of us tend to wear ourselves out in caring for other people and their opinion, and when that falls away with menopause the results can be very painful for the person themselves and their families. This change in me killed my relationship, and I do feel very sorry how it all went down, but I was literally physically unable to stay and remain in this ‘wife’ situation that I tend to almost automatically create for myself when with a partner.

And for your situation as a partner: No, you never have to put up with your partner criticizing you all day and dumping their rotten mood onto you. That’s not acceptable for any reason.

Why should the homeless have no right to organize? It’s funny that the only places with (rough but efficient) functioning self-organization I could find so far were among the homeless and the small folk. Those with stuff left to protect are too much up their own arse to want to play well with others.

Also, the plans to get off the street are real, most of the time. Every kindness you show is a seed that one day will point towards the right direction.

I’ve been hanging out with the homeless as a kid, and lived on the streets for a few months as a young adult, travelling and panhandling. I met many very kind, and often very damaged people. They are on the streets because it’s for a variety of reasons the only option they can manage, not because they enjoy scamming you out of a few coins and do nothing all day.

If you are concerned about your money look at the suit wearing people, most of it ends up with them.

Improve your local community in other ways. Or give in other ways. Not sure what would apply in your local community - I live in rural Western Europe and that’s very different from what you describe. People here set up donation boxes, swap shops, create food banks, organize markets, create safe spaces for minority groups, community gardens … mostly volunteering time. Not sure you are in the position to do this? Sorry things are so heartbreaking. I hope we all figure this out soon.

How did you like Georgia? I keep beong obsessed by it (because music).

How did you address your trauma? What methods did you find worked?

trying to catch trains, trying to find the correct room at university …

I would take diagnosis around Neurodiversity with a grain of salt. I suspect both conditions might be the same brain differences presenting differently, and I don’t think science has really gotten to the ground of this yet.

Society is collapsing as we speak and my best case scenario is this one because I do whatever i can to create a soft landing spot for me and my local community.

Yes, and also closeness changes with time. It has been like this in my family. I’ve felt more close to one or the other of my parents over the years depending on what I was doing but I don’t remember having a problem with it. That said, my parents made sure to treat us both equally as kids, and if they felt closer to one of us they didn’t let it show.

Do your friends have a website? I’m always curious to find good ideas to steal for other communities!

Haha insane, I swear this popped into my head out of nowhere yesterday.

Well not entirely nowhere, but I work with plant dyes. So far I’ve only dyed wool, but I suddenly had the idea to create some T-shirt printing process with what grows around here. A dye bath and ink are rather different things though, so I’d be curious for ideas how to turn plant pigment into ink, or where to look?

I’ve never even seen normal silkscreen printing done, but vaguely understand the idea. I’d try different fabrics stapled to a wooden frame as sieve, and maybe use wax to cover the non-print areas?

For a non natural method - could 3D printing be interesting for making sieves?

And what is an emulsion?

What do we really know about animal and plant communication? They might very well be talking to each other. Don’t be too quick to assume that as a human you would even know how other consciousnesses, let alone ways of communication, could work.

People who work closely with animals seem to lose their ‘human smart, monke stupid’ attitude relatively quickly, and those who study non-human consciousness deeply seem to make one groundbreaking discovery after the other these days.

We have to stop gatekeeping knowledge and start listening.

That would lead into philosophical discussions as to what knowledge means. I do see that we have the tendency of assuming others have less agency or are less aware of their actions than us. We do that as individuals and as a species, so I tend to be careful. I also wish I had useful food cravings, mine don’t tend to be too healthy.

Goats know. Sheep know. Equines know. If I make sure the farm animals have access to different flora around the pastures they won’t get ill. It’s nice following the animals around and finding out what they eat, and other ways they use plants. The more time I spend with animals the more I think it’s us humans being the dumb ones.

On that note, watching what great apes do in their natural habitat might teach us a few things about plants.

c/iamverysmart c/iamaclosetfascist

I snorted, slightly ashamed of myself

oh no you just reminded me

Ever since I’ve accepted that dystopia is already here, and there’s nothing to avoid it, but we can do everything in our power to create something better. I’m not as afraid, I’m not feeling as powerless as I used to. I’ve learned to seek good council, that helps. Got over wanting to feel or appear important and now rather want to do important work.

How? Got divorced from someone who could not handle their anxiety well, also my child grew up to spend more time with their friends, and so all I was used to disappeared. I had time and opportunity (or was forced) to re-evaluate my life choices - because the unhealthy imbalance in my former relationship mirrored the unsettling imbalance of the world in crisis in some eerie way. It was as if I was shown the workings of abuse and then forced to apply my learning onto the world and my position in it. I went through months of doubt and confusion. With support of my wonderful bf who I met on the way I managed to come out a better and more happy person on the other side, it was a very wild ride.

This or similar seems to have happened to a lot of people recently.

no you can’t

Nobody, I think this is an insane question.

So many different people had small impacts on humanity, most of it somewhat regional. Most of the heroes I could think of in Western countries will have had a very limited impact on Eastern history, and vice versa. Also, I am very sure nobody had only positive impact.

Another problem: not everybody will rate a certain impact equally as positive.

I’d suggest to remove focus and attention from god- or hero-like figures and shift it towards improvements won by community action.