I'm Emily, a VCUarts grad who majored in scientific illustration with a minor in biology. Nice to meet you! See my art.Ask me things.More about me. Tags to block: "emily loses followers" for dumb stuff, "emily reblogs" for reblogs that have nothing to do with me or my friends, and "reply" or "emily replies" for my replies to replies.
This is capitalism’s vast irrationality and inhumanity in action. Markets and The Economy™ matter more to capitalism than the concrete distribution of resources according to tangible human need.
Resources exist in abundance – give them to people. Housing sits empty – give it to people. The rules of the feast table should apply to our economic system – no one gets seconds until everyone has gotten a plate.
We stand at a crossroads in these chaotic times: socialism or barbarism! The ruling class repeatedly chooses the latter. We need to organize and choose the former!
My kink is husbands & wives who are still portrayed as very much in love with each other, because even after years of commitment and kids, they still talk to each other, go on fun random adventures and try new things. No resentment. No portrayal of marriage as a chore. Just actual love.
I have felt very calm lately, despite everything—or perhaps because of it. Normally I spend my days quietly screaming into the void, braced for the worst, haunted by the future, horribly aware of how fragile everything is and how easily it can all fall apart. It’s terribly alienating, sometimes, to have to hold my tongue and pretend otherwise or be dismissed as a panic-stricken alarmist.
But now that we’re actually here—not at the end of the world, but a global crisis that can’t be ignored and which turns society inside out—I feel… normal. It’s as though the rest of the world is tuning into the wavelength that my brain is always operating on, and my anxieties are simply healthy level-headed pragmatism rather than the ravings scribbled on a roadside sandwich board. I feel calm, and my mind seems to be functioning as it should, and while I am no less helpless in the grand scheme of things, this… internal easing feels like a blessing. I can be calm and competent without wasting energy maintaining a facade of illusory normalacy. It’s one foot after another. I don’t know what’s going to happen or how bad it’s going to get, but there’s nothing to do about that but prepare as well as I can and take it as it comes.
Before the coronavirus stories really broke onto people’s consciousness, I was receiving treatment for post-baby-having wobbles. (I segued seamlessly from prenatal to postnatal wobbles, because I’m graceful.) The lovely psychologist came to my house and gently suggested the topic of cognitive behavioral therapy, which I slapped rudely to the floor, because Nobody Is Going To Evidence Me Out Of My Feelings, I Have Too Much Evidence on My Side. The largest single source of my Wobble is that I’ve just had the loveliest little baby you ever met, a baby that I chose to have, in a fit of mad selfish optimism, and their fate is ENTIRELY IN THE HANDS OF FOOLS. This next decade will be monumental in deciding humanity’s future and exactly how much suffering that will involve. And all the fucking fools around me are specifically chosing to make the world worse, and I am quite limited in my ability to stop them. We don’t have to suffer, we could all choose differently, but these fools are slamming their feet onto the gas pedal, gobbling up the world and Being Wrong On the Internet, and actively hurting my baby.
And the future they are ruining, on purpose, rightfully belongs to my objectively excellent baby (and all the other children, of course, but it’s hard not to take it personally.) We are living under existential threat, and the threat is in the heads of other people, and we knew that, but I JUST HAD A TINY BABY.
See, normally you get to simply kill and eat anything that threatens your baby, but you can’t do that to every gremlin running their mouth on Twitter, and there’s no meat on a bot. So instead I’ve just been tense, at levels detectable to the NHS.
Also, the other parents my own age are all, like, casually having 3 kids LiKe iT’S nOtHinG and going on ~*~skiing holidays~*~ or ~*~cruises~*~ AS IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT??? They don’t even care, they haven’t been worrying about climate change, they don’t even believe Brexit will affect them, they’re blissfully unconscious of any responsibilities they have to the future. I bet they don’t even have a stockpile of emergency preparedness supplies for when our FRAGILE ILLUSION OF COMFORT is disrupted by fires and floods and friction at the borders -
“I see,” said the psychologist, looking a little taken aback.
“I’m at 90% tension at all times, and I feel like I honestly have to be,” I told her, “someone has to be alert and everyone else is only at about 10% alertness. I will HAPPILY RELAX when everyone else is at, like, 30%. I’m not unreasonable. If people were just a little more worried across the board - if everyone was doing some of the work of caring about our shared future, if the worry wasn’t the sole work of the anxious and marginalised and the scientists - and, worse, the anxious scientists - I would stop raising all the red flags on your Maternal Mental Health exams. But I’m an anxious scientist. I see the evidence about the icebergs ahead, and nobody else even cares, and I can only steer the boat by popular vote, and now I have TWO tiny children on this ship.”
The psychologist was off sick, and in two weeks the world changed.
Suddenly everyone was at 20% anxiety. Then 30%, and rising. Suddenly everyone has an interest in Our Shared Future. World leaders who gained their platforms by mocking and scorning experts and evidence are now claiming to be led by scientists. Hahahahahaha.
The psychologist, who now had to speak to me on the phone instead of coming to my house, asked how I was.
“I’m honestly rather proud that people have finally woken up to the tremendous importance of having The Big Bag of Rice at all times,” I said chirpily, “and isn’t it rather validating how predictable the panic-buying has been? don’t you appreciate it when your anxieties are proven reasonable? I appreciate that. I just think it’s good to appreciate that. A silver lining to every cloud. It sort of implies that my anxiety wasn’t entirely wasted energy. And do you know? After this? I really think we might have a better take on the future.”
do you ever just get quiet. i mean same body but everything feels a little bit like it’s under snow. the shush of a library. the gentle rhythm of a calm sea. like i’m alright. i’m okay. i just don’t feel like talking.
who would have thought that the solution to homelessness is providing people with housing? 🧐
The solution isn’t 100 % perfect, there’s a lot of people who aren’t technically homeless because they live with other people for free etc. but yeah this does majorly help reduce risks for vulnerable people.
Here’s the big thing about it that might scandalize Americans even more so than the idea of free housing: you don’t have to do anything to “deserve it.” Most countries use what’s called “the staircase model” – you start by being in shelter, then maybe a halfway house, then permanent housing. You can “move up” by going through rehab or getting a job or accessing other services. The idea is that housing is something you get as a reward for good behavior, not something you get by right.
But with the housing first model, you get the house first, and then deal with everything else. It’s a lot easier to stop using drugs and alcohol when you have other ways to pass the time and aren’t under constant stress. It’s a lot easier to get a job when you have an address to put on your applications. It’s a lot easier to treat mental illness when you’re in a safe place that doesn’t add to your fear and pain. But if your mentality is that housing is something only the morally pure and socially acceptable deserve, and the only way to get it is for people to jump through hoops to prove their goodness, then of course you’re going to hate this model.
