Breaking my silences.
When you recognize that someone telling you not to do something to them doesn’t necessarily mean you did something wrong, but simply that they are whole a person with preferences about how they are interacted with, your communication skills and emotional literacy skills are improving.
Just so you know.
Love, light, and butterflies,
Kitty.
Hi friends,
Not caring about how your actions impact others is an ethical issue.
That does not mean that you do not get to live the life that you want to live. It doesn’t even mean you are a bad person honestly.
That simply means that if you are adamantly putting out that you don’t care how other people are affected as long as you get to do what you want to do, then you’re not being ethical.
If you live your best life while causing harm to others and you don’t care, you have an ethical issue happening.
You can or can not choose to sit with yourself and figure out how to manage that ethical issue. That is up to you.
When people have conversations about ethics, they are having discussions about conscious decision making, understanding your relationships with others, and comprehending how we interact as social beings.
Note:
I’d also like to note that while typing this out, the Grammarly editor tried to change this to a synonymous term of moral.
The problem is that ethics and morals are not simply synonyms just because they deal with the same concept.
This is where a lot of people get mixed with these terms. And what I’m about to give you is a very crude explanation of the differences. I invite you to actually take some time to do a little self-study about the differences so that when people are talking about them, you aren’t trying to apply them in the incorrect way that might actually cause harm to yourself.
While these terms address the same concept, they also address the way in which that concept is interacted with.
Ethics is social and society based. Moral is individual and based on your personal perspectives.
Moral can also be applied to large groups such as religious groups, but those groups are only groups because of the concepts in which they apply. They rely on multiple people’s personal perspectives centering around a similar theology/ideology that isn’t necessarily relevant for all people.
Morals don’t even actually address harm reduction in a social group. That is what ethics do.
Also, address the fact that laws are part of the same conceptual ideology as ethics and morals, and they also do not necessarily address harm reduction. Justice activists and people who work with the law (enforcement and advocates) can give you first-hand experience of how their job is not about harm reduction rather than upholding a decision made into law even if it has negative impacts.
Ethics is the only term in this grouping of similar words that actually addresses the individual and social impact of harm reduction.
We should not be promoting the message for people to care less about anything. We should be telling each other to love more and care more. We also need to be willing to develop the skills to have boundaries, uphold those boundaries, and be able to communicate those boundaries.
Not caring doesn’t help anyone, much less yourself.
It teaches you to bottle up the negatives until it becomes too much.
We are stunting our interpersonal development.
Taking space is a boundary.
Ignoring a situation long-term is an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Decide how much space you need.
I hate the term High functioning.
Like every fucking thing that I have is apparently high functioning.
And you know what?
All that means is that I am masking enough to make sure everybody else is comfortable while I’m sitting and wallowing in my misery about how fucked up my brain is and…
… hoping that the next panic attack is my mild enough that my meds work correctly and no one notices I am scared shitless.
… for my next manic episode to be really tiny and short.
… the next PTSD episode that I have does not involve humans who I have contact with.
… that when I have an autistic meltdown everyone doesn’t assume that I was throwing an adult-sized temper tantrum instead of listening to all of the things that I was staying prior to being overwhelmed.
… that my OCD does not run another person out of my life when they realize that like being active in my life involves a lot of ritual and planning because I have shit and everything scares me.
Being high functioning means you don’t see me.
We always see moments of people’s lives in general, but even if you are my person…
you can’t see me.
I was pondering reactionary responses to oppression and the performative nature of people who criticize those who discuss socio-political issues and conduct various tasks of activism when it’s not blowing up on the news and social media. If you think this is necessary now, please keep the same energy you have when big stories have made the news when you hear people speaking about oppressive issues at other times. Y’all love to use your right to an opinion or your preferences to ignore voices and devalue opinions when convenient, and that’s part of the problem.
The other day I was discussing with someone how individualist ideologies are hurting us. That is not to say that being your own person and having your own sense of self and desires outside of family and community is wrong. It’s when your individualism is valued more than the collective needs of all as an essential foundation when it becomes problematic. The whole “this doesn’t affect me, so I don’t know about it” ideology. I mean, yes, this is the reality of most, especially those surviving, but for some of you, it isn’t just survival that has reduced your exposure. It is a choice. It is your choice to ignore the everyday struggle of folks. It is our collective choice to become reactionary rather than proactive in our social support.
Reactionary responses are the result of silencing. Silencing is repetitive and often overshadowed by the feelings and guilt of the non-oppressed. It is ingrained in many of our cultures and social circles. The idea that something is someone’s personal business because we stigmatize it and hide from discomfort.
Please remember that.
Make listening to minorities an everyday thing. Make understanding the flaws in our economic, social, and political systems something that we are ok with because it is necessary to grow as a social system.
Activism is a lot of things. As I have witnessed, activism, at its roots, is helping to bring people back to the foundations of being civilized. We often attribute civilization with colonized beliefs of power and hoarding resources, but being civilized is more than that. You can have the tools or technology available, but if you are not culturally and socially adept as a social system, are you civilized or just technologically advanced.
So, before we condemn activism for what we do not understand and why it disturbs us outside of what we consider extreme circumstances, remember the various ways that activism can exist through advocates, education, and support. This is a general but not an exhaustive list. Some types are more effective in general. Some are more effective situationally. There is no one way, and you are misinformed if you think non-violence is the only way people have won their rights.
xox,
kitty
<p class="has-drop-cap" value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">Community building
Artivism
Communities of practice
Conflict transformation
Cooperative
Cooperative movement
Craftivism
Grassroots
Guerrilla gardening
Transition movement
Lobbying
Media activism
Culture jamming
Hacktivism
Internet activism
Peace activism
Non-violent resistance
Peace camps
Peace vigil
Moral purchasing
Petition
Political campaigning
Propaganda
Guerrilla communication
Protest
Boycott
Demonstration
Direct action
Performance Theater
Protest songs
Sit-in
Strike action
Hunger strike
Revolution Kitty 