Category Archives: Kindness

Monday Musings — 18NOV24

It time to Gird your loins folks. It’s time to do battle and get to work.

I don’t think the next 4 years (hope that’s all it will be) is going to be great for lot of people. In fact if Trump does half of what he’s telegraphed, then it’s going to be really shitty. So get ready to put some hard work into the things you feel are important, and that the elites are going to try to fuck up.

I put some resources in last week’s Musings, and a few more since then. Check them out.

So, I’m handicapped. Can drive myself, don’t leave the house as much as I used to (especially in the cold weather), I’m weak (can barely lift myself out of a chair), all that crap. I can write and make art still. Thank goodness for that. Have all (or most) of my faculties. So I can still read, also. I can’t join protests, making it to meetings is, while not impossible, not practical, unless it’s via Zoom or something. It’s not something I worried about, even a couple of years ago, but there you have it. I do what I can. Around the house I do chores, with lots of rest breaks, I cook, etc. I work in my studio, when I can. Some days motivation is damn nigh nonexistent, others it comes back.

So I do my art, I write this blog. Which I hope can be motivating for you all. I donate money to causes (not much). I Zoom with some people who help me motivate to write the comic I’m working on. I do what I can. You should to.

On that note, I’m an old fart, and there’s an organization for older people who want to make a difference. Read about it:

“Experienced Americans” are the fastest-growing part of the population: 10,000 people a day pass the 60-year mark. That means that there’s no way to make the changes that must be made to protect our planet and society unless we bring our power into play.

We’re used to thinking that humans grow more conservative as they age, perhaps because we have more to protect, or simply because we’re used to things the way they are. But our generations saw enormous positive change early in our lives—the civil rights movement, for instance, or the fight to end massive wars or guarantee the rights of women. And now we fear that the promise of those changes may be dying, as the planet heats and inequality grows.

But as a generation we have unprecedented skills and resources that we can bring to bear. Washington and Wall Street have to listen when we speak, because we vote and because we have a large—maybe an overlarge—share of the country’s assets. And many of us have kids and grandkids and great grandkids: we have, in other words, very real reasons to worry and to work.

Mutual Aid

Mutual Aid as a concept was first broached by Peter Kropotkin in 1902 (although the concept is older than that.) in a book of Essays called Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution is a 1902 collection of anthropological essays by Russian naturalist and anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin. The essays, initially published in the English periodical The Nineteenth Century between 1890 and 1896,[1] explore the role of mutually beneficial cooperation and reciprocity (or “mutual aid“) in the animal kingdom and human societies both past and present. It is an argument against theories of social Darwinism that emphasize competition and survival of the fittest, and against the romantic depictions by writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who thought that cooperation was motivated by universal love. Instead, Kropotkin argues that mutual aid has pragmatic advantages for the survival of human and animal communities and, along with the conscience, has been promoted through natural selection.

Mutual Aid is considered a fundamental text in anarchist communism.[2] It presents a scientific basis for communism as an alternative to the historical materialism of the Marxists. Kropotkin considers the importance of mutual aid for prosperity and survival in the animal kingdom, in indigenous and early European societies, in the medieval free cities (especially through the guilds), and in the late 19th century village, labor movement, and impoverished people. He criticizes the State for destroying historically important mutual aid institutions, particularly through the imposition of private property.

Many biologists[3][4] (including Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of his generation) also consider it an important catalyst in the scientific study of cooperation.[5]

He argued against Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory, and this has become somewhat of a tenet among anarchists.

You can buy a beautiful copy of it here: https://blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/peter-kropotkin/#mutualaid

Get a free copy here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

Or buy it on B&N:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin/1101158703?ean=9780241355336

Also there’s a new book titled Mutual Aid by Dean Spade.

Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable. 
Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.
This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.   
Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.

You can get it wherever fine books are sold. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mutual-aid-peter-kropotkin/1101158703?ean=9780241355336

Here’s him talking about it, and organizing.

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.

Organizing is what mutual aid is about, and it’s easy to do. You can just help your neighbor with a project, that is mutual aid. (The Amish know how to do this.) Start, or contribute to, a community garden, or a community tool share. Small things as well as big things.

Here’s a link to Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, which is helping in the wake of the devastating hurricanes, down south.

I’m going to close this here, I think I’ve given plenty of links to get you started with this. Good luck.

Solidarity not charity.

Monday Musings 11NOV24

Well, its been a week hasn’t it? I wasn’t very happy with the election results, like many of you out there. I’m not a big fan of the orange man (someone called him a yam which I think is funny and somewhat appropriate)and voted for Harris.

Not a big fan of her either, but I wanted the Dems to stay in power because a lot of their agenda aligns with mine (climate, unions, anti-monopolist). That isn’t happening, and it’s time to dig in and do it ourselves, which is pretty much par for the course.

I don’t really expect the government (on either “side”) to do much for us, since both Reps and Dems are in bed with the global elites/big business. Although Biden was definitely making waves in monopoly busting.

So what do we do now? How do we address climate change, union busters, genocide in Gaza, monopolies, etc.?

We need to organize. That means unions need to step up. If your workplace isn’t a union shop, organize one. There are unions for everyone. If you can’t find one join the IWW (wobblies). They are a worldwide grassrootsunion, with a long history, that can help you organize your workplace (even us self employed workers–I belong).

Josh Hill has a nice post about this with several resources at the end. Here (Time to Prepare)

Worried about book bans? Join your school board, and/or the board of your local library. Give to your local library. Also, here’s an organization that organizes country wide. https://www.librariesforthepeople.org/

Climate change is a monster. What do we do about that? Solar and wind power are getting cheaper. Put some solar on your roof, add a windmill somewhere on your property. Buy an EV, car or bike. Bikes are great in cities and small towns. Battery life on vehicles is getting better all the time, and prices are actually coming down. Start a garden, or just grow a few plants if all you have is a patio to grow on. Buy local at farmers markets. Better food, and shorter distances for it to get to you. Invest in a heat pump, electric appliances. You can still grill, don’t be a jackass.

Make sure your utilities are investing in and using alternate sources of energy. Join organizations that are trying to mitigate climate change. Boycott and protest big oil, join, or donate to organizations that do that.

Here’s one https://regeneration.org/

Don’t like the wars we’re involved in join a peace organization. Preferably local. Protest, make sure the politicians know.

Don’t like abortion laws, write your reps, join, or donate to, Planned Parenthood

There is so much more to do. What’s important to you? Find organizations that work on that problem. No organization, build one. Do what you can to the best of your ability.

Make art, write, help a senior.

Speaking of which. Write letters to seniors or others that can’t get out and about. Here’s a couple of sites that ate specifically for that:

https://www.lettersagainstisolation.com

https://www.postcrossing.com

https://loveforourelders.org/letters

Feed people. Join a food bank, volunteer in a soup kitchen, find a chapter of Food not Bombs near you.

Find something you can do. The government isn’t going to help.

It never was.

I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People | HuffPost Latest News

I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.

Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.

I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye.

If I have to pay a little more with each paycheck to ensure my fellow Americans can access health care? SIGN ME UP. Poverty should not be a death sentence in the richest country in the world. If you’re okay with thousands of people dying of treatable diseases just so the wealthiest among us can hoard still more wealth, there is a divide between our worldviews that can never be bridged.

I don’t know how to convince someone how to experience the basic human emotion of empathy. I cannot have one more conversation with someone who is content to see millions of people suffer needlessly in exchange for a tax cut that statistically they’ll never see (do you make anywhere close to the median American salary? Less? Congrats, this tax break is not for you).

I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters.

There are all kinds of practical, self-serving reasons to raise the minimum wage (fairly compensated workers typically do better work), fund public schools (everyone’s safer when the general public can read and use critical thinking), and make sure every American can access health care (outbreaks of preventable diseases being generally undesirable).

But if making sure your fellow citizens can afford to eat, get an education, and go to the doctor isn’t enough of a reason to fund those things, I have nothing left to say to you.

Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society.

Source: I Don’t Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People | HuffPost Latest News

Radical Belonging in an Age of Othering – Grateful.org

This essay invites us to consider whether we are sick from loneliness or from not belonging and how gratefulness offers a remedy.

Source: Radical Belonging in an Age of Othering – Grateful.org

A grateful orientation to life is in opposition to othering. Rather than unifying around exclusions, a practice of grateful living challenges us to seek, observe, and understand (Stop. Look. Go) the many ways in which we are never fully alone, never independent or separate from others. The practice of grateful living helps us address the origin of our societal ailments because it illuminates our interconnectedness by focusing on and acknowledging the details of every lived moment and the network of people required to sustain our lives. This perspective understands that when we lose sight of our inter-relationality we can trust that everything will quickly go sideways, making us sick with fear, greed, violence, exploitation, loneliness, despair, and war. These and other detriments to our well-being fill the enormous cavern where belonging should live and thrive