going to preface this with, don’t worry about my immediate health or anything. i am not having a psychotic episode of anything like that, i am 100% sober…and…that’s honestly the scariest part for me.

there is a message that finally got through to me, woke me up (wait, motherfucker…is that where “woke” comes from???), something I’v been aware of for a long time now i think, but it got suppressed down for…10 goddamn years… for whatever reason, until now.

now that I’m aware of it, I see it damn near everywhere, almost every majorly acclaimed movie, song, book, poem, fucking everything…

and it’s not like this is some short-term problem either, it’s not going away when trump dies, it’s not even going away if trump dies and the establishment regains control (i have my doubts they can pull this off).

it’s the same goddamn cycle over and over (with slight variations), boom followed by completely deliberate bust, one privacy-overreach followed by another, the same playbook used over and over. and occasionally either end is some random organic act-of-god, which just works to obfuscate the intentional acts.

it’s so large and all encompassing you can’t even be sure which parts are apart of it and which are just…people still asleep just going about their lives.

and now, because this world seems to be ran by a bunch of fucking psychopaths, I’m even more paranoid sober than when I was having a actual mental breakdown

because how the fuck do I trust anyone now?

how do i seperate those that know from those that don’t?

psychopathic assholes from regular assholes?

friend from foe?

hell, how the hell do Ieven confirm that this is real, I know that everyone in my own immediate family is stuck in these little arithmetic bubbles too so i can’t bring it up with them, if i tried they would probably be worried I’m going crazy.

and because of past-me’s mistakes over the years I have no irl friends whatsoever to talk with either, so i guess all I have left is to send this out onto the internet and hope for the best?

  • eightpix@lemmy.world
    36·
    4 days ago

    Welcome to the Internet. Hopefully, I read as a good person. I am not a bot.

    I lived as a young adult through Bush II. 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Halliburton, Blackwater, and loads of corruption. It was tough to trust anything then. The goal was pure profit.

    Apparently, Dubya was the warm-up presidency for this shit.

    First, let me share a clip from Margin Call, 2011.

    As long as the prevailing mode has been capital, there has been speculation. As long as there has been speculation, there have been lying liars who exploit the system.

    The last few pump and dump bubbles he mentioned (1987, 1992, 1997, 2000, and 2008) are all market crashes I can remember. The market is a casino. Crashes since '08 include 2010 (Flash Crash), 2015 (sell-off), 2018 (cryptocrash), 2020 (Covid), 2022 (Ukraine War), and 2025 (tariffs).

    These were once “once in a lifetime” events.

    Second, everything in the world is designed to generate more:

    • self-serving, self-centered, selfish

    • short-term-focused

    • extroverted, charismatic, vain

    • action-oriented

    • thoughtless

    psychopaths and sociopaths. This ethos runs things because of profit motives, monopolies on the exercise of violence, and the development of contemporary morés rooted in exploitation, expropriation, and (deemed) externalities of colonialism. Identifying some humans as “the other” makes much more inhumanity possible.

    So, I’m here to tell you, it’s real alright. What you’re feeling is real. What you’re feeling against is real. We are immersed in it. Algorithms are doing their best to lock it in.

    Finally, what to do and who to trust.

    Establish your own moral center. Decide what matters to you. Find those who are telling the most truth, especially when tested. Demogogues fall apart under examination. Lies fall apart when questioned. The unchallenged authority is no authority at all. Get the receipts; find primary sources as often as possible. Seek those who share at great personal cost.

    For me, it started with Star Trek. Then, hip-hop. Then, journalists I could trust. Even films that challenge prevailing narratives. I read a lot of books from many perspectives.

    20 years later, Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, Henry A. Giroux, Amy Goodman, Arundhati Roy, and Noam Chomsky have never wavered. Films like The Insider, Erin Brockovich, and The Corporation light a fire in me. I’m rewatched David Simon and Barry Levinson’s Homicide: Life on the Street and, hilariously, Murphy Brown.

    Challenge the prevailing narratives. You’re not alone.