Vivat Libertas

"Respect your elders and betters!" I hear some cry - well, not any more. I doubt anyone says that these days. It's a sign of the times, you know, those damn dissolute youth taking over our language so now we have no vocabulary any more... ...Anyway, where was I? Oh, apparently saying that you should respect people older than you because they're better than you - or at least, this is what I'm told quite frequently. I'm young, and people like to use that as an excuse to lord it over me and discount my opinions - and, if you'll pardon my not-so-bad language (since quite a lot of grey-haired folks also like to use the tone argument ), that's a steaming pile of bullshit. I view all who are sentient and sapient as my equals. It is perhaps the fairest way - doing otherwise creates a hierarchy which robs some of their rights and is therefore wrong. I consequently have little patience for people who decide that they are superior to me. However, I do my best

I've been doing my own thinking for far longer than I care to remember, and one of the things I've been thinking about quite a lot recently is hierarchy and authority - and the conclusion I've come to is that I oppose it. OK, once you get over that heart attack (seriously, see a doctor for that), stop yelling "ANARCHIST!" at your computer screen (you'll get a sore throat and while I toy with anarchy, I have my issues with it) and clear your brain of all those prejudices (that last one might take a while...), I'm going to explain my reasons to you. Done? Good. If not, take a deep breath and count to ten. If that doesn't help, count to ten squared, then ten cubed, then ten to the power of four... ...If nothing else, it'll keep you busy. Anyway, I oppose hierarchy and authority - lording it over people - because it means that some people end up with their autonomy taken away from them, while others don't. It exploits people, and in a l

I have always been a dreamer. Ever since I was a child, I've preferred my dreams to the cold, ugly, boring and cruel "real world". Retreating into my thoughts saved me for a while, I suppose - it made me happy when I couldn't find happiness anywhere else - but it also undid me, I suppose, since I couldn't really deal with my reality; perhaps I expected too much from it. There was also the small matter of me conflating academic success and happiness, working my arse off for a happy future while neglecting the present. After fucking up ending my life (yes, it was a big event) I had to learn quite a lot of lessons about just what life meant to me, namely that it was more than just sitting and working and doing the same things over and over again. I started reaching out to people more. I started thinking more. I looked at the dreams I had put aside and resolved to make them a reality. They made my life worth living at least - more than any duties could have done.

The title means something like "while we live, let us live" - or, more roughly translated, "while we're alive, let's really live". Obviously, you can tell that this is going to be a post I should, by all rights, regret making - but I'll make it anyway. Not because I'm stupid; not because I don't understand the consequences of my actions (seriously, what harm can come of a little personal blog post?); not because I'm immoral. It's because I want to have a little fun and honesty in a life of duty and lies, and right now I couldn't give a flying fuck about a sense of sacrificing my present for my future; if I do that all my life, what do I end up with? A life wasted on things that brought me no joy, that's what, and no time left to do something that makes me be glad to be alive. I am in my prime now. I am your equal because I am no more and deserve no less. I am strong, young, sharp. I will not be held back by a failing, rotting s

Yay for long titles! Right, I really must stop being so happy; it's a little disturbing considering I'm supposed to be a cynical, misanthropic sourpuss (who now has a spring in her step and a great big goofy smile on her face...). I must also really start being logical and practical and...ah fuck it, all this logic and practicality still works, just not quite as you'd expect it to. I must confess I have fallen into the habit of saying and thinking "When the revolution comes...", a habit that I once swore I'd never have. This has less to do with me being against revolution (I used to think it was going too far, but now I quite happily advocate that world revolution should hurry the fuck up and get here) and more to do with me thinking that the revolution was not certain to come. It is a view I still hold today. I have heard anti-capitalists talking about how capitalism must inevitably collapse - and logically, they'd be right. Capitalism eats itself.

All right. I get the feeling that this is going to be quite quick and unpolished, but I'll run with it. First off, this article does a very good job of explaining just why you'll find radicals wanting to combat liberalism, and I suggest you should read it if you're even in the slightest bit interested or confused. Secondly, it provided the final push for me to blog (yay! Well, yay for me - I need more discipline). Thirdly, that was not a good thing. I think violence is the very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very...You get the point, don't you? It's the last resort of last resorts, and even then I wouldn't use it without much deliberation beforehand. This has nothing to do with me being "soft" or having a secret, passionate, blazing desire to prop up the capitalist system (I have advocated full-out revolution, quite possibly involving shovels, so many times I've lost count, and also articulated my reasoning behind that too ma

This is going to be quite a quick and unpolished post, I think, because I'm trying to do a lot of things at the same time. First off, for those who don't know, ISF refers to the Ian Somerhalder Foundation , which aims to positively impact the planet and the creatures on it. Second off, there are quite a lot of ISF people on Twitter...and when I say quite a lot I mean there are over a thousand, if not more (educated guessing for the most part). Third off, @BastetAsshurISF  has come up with #ISFTopicSunday , where on the first Sunday of each month, starting at 12pm GMT, we get together to discuss a topic - this month's subject is how to target animal rights issues to be central in political policy, and this is the first Topic Sunday. Sadly there aren't that many people - far less than I expected - and surely more should have been able to make it. I personally think it needs more publicity, and...well...this post is about trying to get that publicity, and about my good

I use capitalism as an example, because I find it easiest to deal with as an anti-capitalist. However, it could apply to anything. "There is no alternative." Being young and ignorant, I thought this phrase lay languishing in the Thatcher era where it belonged...Apparently not. Or are people who write for the Torygraph just stuck in the Eighties? Quite a lot of people will claim that there's no alternative to capitalism/money/"representative" "democracy"/whatever, usually citing the USSR or something, or talking about how, essentially, capitalism gives us shiny stuff and of course that totally outweighs the exploitation and oppression of billions of people across the globe, including us. Now, I have a rather sensitive bullshit-detector, and I call bullshit on this one. Not because the USSR was a paradise. Not because we've found a perfect solution. Not because my bullshit-detector's malfunctioning. It's because denying the existence