ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
3. Two good quotes by Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve
got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of,
babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
And: “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do
not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your
sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may
disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
Another good quote:
“I. THIS IS NOT A GAME.
II. HERE AND NOW, WE ARE ALIVE.”
You can be kind and fuel it with rage. You can be kind and fuel it with a bitter twist, or you can be kind and fuel your kindness with righteous anger, or you can be kind and fuel it with love or spite or ecstatic joy. And no matter what your fuel is, you still can make kindness happen in the world so that people can warm themselves by it.
Kindness isn’t an emotion, kids. That’s the thing. Kindness is action. Kindness is choosing to take your emotions and channel them towards doing the most good where you can; to choose the targets of your actions carefully; to spread a little joy behind you, when you have a little to spare.
Kindness can mean a gentle word or a shouted imperative. It can be a warm meal or a gentle hug or a clean death. Kindness can manifest in many ways, and not all of them are one hundred percent nice. The kind thing to do may be doing nothing at all.
But kindness is, above all else, an action. We are imperfect humans, and we cannot control our emotions–but we can control what we do as a result. We can control the actions that our emotions and experiences propel us to perform.
The darkness is nothing but the absence of light, you know. It is endless and nihilistic and all enveloping. A lit candle has no hope against it.
But if enough of us light small candles and little matches behind us as we walk through this wide, uncaring universe, we can light up that sky. We can take an empty world and we can fill it with each other.
That’s how we can take the bones of an empty universe and forge a warm hearth fire humanity can use to keep back the night.
But kindness is, above all else, an action. We are imperfect humans, and we cannot control our emotions–but we can control what we do as a result. We can control the actions that our emotions and experiences propel us to perform.
I’m also a fan of Camus:
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
“i am a monument to all your sins” is such a fucking raw line for a villain it’s amazing that it came from halo, a modernish video game, and not some classical text or mythos
classic texts have nothing on the crazy people come up with in modern times tbh
“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me.”
– Joshua Graham, Who Is A Fallout New Vegas NPC, Something Most People Throwing This Quote Around Don’t Realize
“If the world chooses to become my enemy, I will fight like I always have.”
– Shadow the Hedgehog in what is widely considered one of if not the single worst game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise
shortly after william the conquerer came to power he initiated something known as ‘the doomsday book’- he sent envoys to survey his new lands to record the properties he now controlled so they could pay accurate taxes. every acre of field, every mill, livestock, buildings and their relative size- all would be recorded to determine the wealth of each settlement so a percentage could be expected as rent. for an example of what this book meant; the previous king was aware of and collected taxes from about 20 grain mills in england, william’s audit shot that number above 200. you dont know the meaning of ‘pedantic’ untill you start reading about medieval grain mills, theres a church that paved its floor with confiscated ‘illegal’ millstones to ensure that the town had to get its flour from the church’s official mill and one war simply about stealing the same millstone back and fourth for quite a few decades
of course word of these envoys traveled faster then they did, virtually every town they came to had time to claim they had far less taxable wealth then they actually did have by the time the audit arrived. in one of the more over the top cases an entire village pretended to have caught insanity- when the taxmen arrived they saw screaming laughing idiots with underwear on their heads so they left as fast as they could considering at the time insanity was thought to be literally contagious. it would be over five years before anyone tried to audit that town again. its safe to assume a large number of other villages also had sudden cases of strange diseases, mysteriously disappearing cows, or very large shrubberies and haybales shaped like buildings and you dont need to look over that hill either. thats not even touching how many small communities just plain didnt technically exist because they were too small, somewhere weird, or in legal limbo of who owned it
of course when the feudal part of feudalism started moving its gears you found that the local lord of that village was unlikely to divulge the exact amount of rents they could collect to THEIR lord either, knowing that the more they admitted to receiving the more they were expected to hand over. this was not exclusive to england either, the more you learn about feudalism the more you have to ask how all these minor lords out in the boonies kept having the money and soldiers to do all the political intrigue bullshit, the answer is also tax evasion. each village kept claiming it had fewer people living in shittier houses with less land and fewer livestock then they actually had, and each local lord kept claiming they were receiving less rents then they actually took so were also adverse to an accurate audit.
their knowledge of tax loopholes also extended to finding out that clergymen were either exempt from tax or received a far lower rate of tax, so proving you qualified as a clergyman was an endeavor that paid dividends. specifically to prove you were clergy you proved that you could read and write enough Latin to satisfy an official, so you could spend some money to hire someone to tutor you enough Latin to fake it. its estimated that due to this fully ten percent of medieval english households wrote ‘clergy’ on their tax forms.
another and even more extreme example was the peasants revolt of 1381, london was swarmed by the unwashed masses from all sides instigated by an official trying to collect (a lot of) unpaid poll taxes, an angry mob driving a teenaged king Richard II to retreat to a boat in the river, and culminating with 1500 peasants being executed by an emergency militia. this doesn’t sound like a huge success untill you dig into some of the details- peasants from a large number of villages all arrived at london at the same time, leaving dedicated forces specifically to stop ships from acessing london to break the siege, the peasants executed a select number of court officials and started burning paperwork- but systematically only burning the ones detailing who owned plots of land, debt records, and a few criminal records. the peasants who besieged london and scared the king into the river had successfully purged a whole lot of debts and reclaimed a lot of land in one very ballsy and highly coordinated move that relied on them being seen as illiterate dirt farmers with no ulterior motives besides pitchfork mob riot and trying to kiss the queen mother while they touch everything in the tower of london with their grimy hands
found it. this is… this is amazing. I did a BA in Medieval British History and we never, ever, once considered this. Not once. At a major Canadian university.
jfc this changes my entire brain
Any sources on this? I’d like to use them for a paper I’m working on.
okay, ive been INNUNDATED by people asking me this and i dont really have a good way to address all of the questions. partially because thats surprisingly harder then youd expect
firstly- im absurdly over read. im the kind of nutjob that reads this for fun so i have the hurdle of trying to remember which of 200 plus sources im actually drawing from and it doesnt help that asking this makes me doubt sources that i already checked for credibility before i even read them in the first place. i have a LOT of background radiation that ive spent years checking for expiration dates as i keep replacing knowlege, and its hard to dig up the papers (yeah, actual research papers, im that much of a nerd) that im thinking of because their naming/searching system is also crap. theres a dearth of cool shit i read but have no hope of finding again on command
secondly- when you get into ‘history’ fact hunting you repeatedly run into a bibliography issue where you find that your source cites a source that cites a source that itself is dubious, or that you have thirty sources that all cite the same source thats been proven wrong. this is probably the hurdle -you- have to smash through as well, a handy default is to give prefference to any newer source that actively challenges the pre concieved notion- as they had to explain and give reasons as to why previous notions were wrong
with that out of the way there are a few good places to -start- in digging up the decidedly NON whitewashed versions of history. seriously, if you like my rants you probably are in love with the idea that all of human history was full of actual live assholes instead of clean respectable boring statues.
firstly, ‘medieval lives’ by Terry Jones. Terry is your best friend. name sound familliar? yeah, after monty python he became one of the leading historians simply by accepting the possibility that people in the middle ages actually had lives and thus actually started scrutinizing beliefs that had been considered fact for nearly a century. this is the go-to book of his to start with. its entirely possible that this was thought of -because- of monty python putting in the idea that people were just as much twats back then, as you can see from my rant that basically paints half of village elders, knights, and barons as basically being Grunkle Stan wearing wollen hose (probably the most accurate way to think about it, considering a society based on that makes just too much sense)
its divided by chapter based on what class in society you were looking at- peasants, jesters, monks, knights, women; which is super handy because one of the chief problems with historians is they only bother to find out what the king was doing and not the 99.9% rest of the population was up to. supplement this with the documentary version as well, hes also got some very informative information on the crusades (he kind of put out the allegation that king richard had mainly gone on them to follow his bedroom budy the king of france) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_oYlqav7eA
while on the subject of doccumentaries you can also check out basically anything by Mike Loades, particularly his history channel ‘going medieval’ special which keeps going on and off youtube due to third party issues but is exquisite as it deals with all medieval life not just what the royals were up to. seriously follow this guy on facebook, he posts such beautiful historical reenactment photos of any weapon or horse he finds. Mike is predominant because he engages on living recreations of what hes investigating to test it out and gets as many sources of his own as he can- that ‘going medieval’ special includes such things as examining soaps used, common clothing styles, what kind of foods someone with a bit of land might use for a party, agriculture observations, and a forray into falconry that shows how many phrases in the english language are because of danger-birds. Mike is also the author of several books although they chiefly feature warfare logistics- a lot of other bits of medieval life make more sense when you piece together how logistics work, for example i have a separate rant on how the adoption of the english longbow forked up the feudal system and the legend of robin hood is actually a very specific story of exactly how it fell apart screwing over everyone in england, and made france invent french toast in rebuttal (another installment of sounds like i made it up but im not)
he was quite irritated at that stunt archer claiming to have ‘re discovered’ forgotten techniques a full two years after this book was published- also that stunt archer was using a bow of 40 pounds or less draw, whereas any bow for war would have been well over double that, typically between 100 and 150. this dude deserves a knighthood for his absolute gusto
you may notice much of that is -essays-, a lot of people bump into that and mistakenly think theyve come across a dump of someones homework; but keep in mind that college professors (a sizable portion of Tolkein’s work is considered ‘essays’, as well as Douglas Adams, dont assume theyre all stale boring tripe) write a shitload of essays and sometimes they are absolutely glorious in their ability to ask a question nobodys asked before or to connect two things nobody has connected yet (i recommend reading larry nivens ‘man of steel, woman of kleenex’ if you need to injure yourself snorting). i could do some good ones myself if i got over my horrible, horrible mistreatment of commas, airquotes,
parentheses, and reliance on crassly colorful language (though i swear very seldom, i may use a euphemism about an anus from time to time)
another bizzare tip would be to find some (gasp) textbooks. weird, right? this one is beyond ironic as so many of us who have gone to college had to pay for textbooks we barely covered. assuming we even got to take the plastic off of it we typically only got to open 1/3 of the individual chapters for anything and of that only included about 1/6th of that chapter in the course material. well i spent money on those cursed textbooks so damned if i didnt actually read the rest of the chapters and was honestly surprised some of it actually contained information i enjoyed learning amdist all the regurgitated date/name soup. the deal also is ‘this class taught me nothing about india’ but the book had whole chapters on it, class content and book content only lightly overlap. if you dont have spare textbooks laying around dont worry, people are literally throwing them away if theyre over six months old because the institution of college is a broken scam, used bookstores practically use them as carpeting, you can likely find one from within the last 10 years for less then a sandwitch (do avoid any textbooks printed in the 90s or earlier, they have a bad case of citing sources from the 60s or earlier without critical thought)
another great standalone book is ‘lies, damned lies, and history’, i highly recommend even just for fun
anyone still reading after all of this? if folks actually like me ranting im happy to respond and very glad most people have been very polite about asking me where the hell i got all this instead of dissing or being accusatory that im full of shit (im barely half full) and if theres more anyone would want me to engage in rant mode let me know, my inbox is open and im grossly over educated even if its hard to track down where i get it from after eating all these books
I’ve posted blogs in the past that mentioned the term skin hunger, the physical and psychological need for meaningful human touch, and I received an inquiry asking for more information about this phenomenon. So, here you are. Top 5 things you should know about skin hunger.
1. It’s an actual *NEED*
Like the name suggests, skin hunger isn’t a desire, it’s a primal necessity that like food, water, and sleep, humans will hunger, long, and ache for when they need it.
The outcomes of unmet skin hunger have been explored in a number of well-documented (but ethically questionable) research studies. Babies in hospitals, orphanages, and other institutional settings that receive adequate bio care (feeding, bathing, and changing) but are left in cribs for 20+ hours a day and not touched or held, experience lasting neurological changes including shrinking of the volume of gray matter in the brain. Adults deliberately exposed to the common cold virus in a lab are less able to fight off the virus and more likely to experience severe symptoms if they didn’t get many hugs in the two weeks prior to the study.
2. It can be partially satiated through sex, but doesn’t have to be
The intimacy of sexual activity is a method to satisfy skin hunger, but it’s only one method. Skin hunger isn’t about sex and there are dozens of ways to nurture your need and provide it for others that isn’t inherently sexual or romantic. Examples include:
Hand shakes
high fives
hugs
pats/rubs on the back
shoulder squeezes
nose boops
massages
piggy back rides
dancing
holding hands
linking arms
playing footsies
kisses (on the head, hand, cheek, or lips)
cuddling
using a friend’s shoulder as a pillow while watching TV or riding the bus
stroking their hair
tickling
horseplay (pillow fights, play wrestling, etc.)
sitting on laps are all examples.
3. Tons of people aren’t getting their skin hunger needs met for a host of different reasons
Lots of us are skin starved, but some populations that may experience touch deprivation most include:
Tweens and teens: Have you ever noticed that people in this age group are constantly horsing around, shoving, and playfully hitting each other in the arm? In western social norms, 11-17 years old are often considered too old for kissing and snuggling their parents, and too young to be given privacy for kissing and snuggling a boyfriend or girlfriend. My theory is they turn to tackling each other to meet skin hunger needs.
Elderly: Social isolation and extreme loneliness that can occur in later life as spouses, friends, and family die off has had a well documented affect on touch deprivation and overall health outcomes.
Institutionalized: Whether it’s in a prison or a hospital, there’s been some research on the torture-like effects of going days, months, years, or even decades without human touch as a matter of institutional policy.
Men: Those pesky social norms that make cuddling, hugging, and hand-holding “feminine” behaviors and “feminine” behaviors undesirable has left lots of men folk in severe touch isolation.
All of us: Between ever increasing work commutes keeping people alone and away from their loved ones for more hours of the day, social media that does a phenomenal job of connecting us emotionally but can disconnect us physically, this irksome but prevalent cultural myth that conflates touch with sex, concerns about touch and sexual harassment, and an epidemic of deep chronic loneliness, it’s safe to say many/most/all of us might be a bit skin hungry.
4. Skin hunger is related to violence
Observational research has found a number of correlations between touch and aggression. Researchers observed people sitting with their friends or family members in cafes and restaurants in different nations and noticed how many times they touched each other (leaning against them, rubbing their back while talking, putting an arm around their shoulder, etc). Participants in cultures that experience less violence were observed to touch each other much more than cultures with high rates of violence. Among the highest was France with 110 touches in 30 minutes. In the US it was 2 touches in 30 minutes.
The interactions among low-touch cultures were also more aggressive and violent among the peer group, not just within the country at large. For example, a 30 minute observation showed more pushing, hitting, and aggressive verbal communication among the American participants with low rates of meaningful touch.
5. There have been conscious attempts made recently to meet human touch needs
Skin hunger is a relatively new concept, and it’s starting to be seen a public health issue crucial to our well being . As such, active efforts to bridge the touch gap have been started, and include the free hugs campaign, cuddle parties, professional cuddling businesses, senior care facilities offering training for their staff on touch as part of elder care, and hospital volunteer programs to cuddle sick newborns.
Check back next week for another Top 5 Friday!
Dr. Jill McDevitt is a nationally recognized, San Diego based
sexuality educator, speaker, writer, and the resident sexologist at
Swiss Navy. She has a BA in Sexuality, Marriage, and Family, MEd in
Human Sexuality Education, and PhD in Human Sexuality, which means she
is the only known person in the world with all three degrees in sex. It
also means she has the coolest job ever!
Okay but can we use the term “touch starvation” instead, because when you say “skin hunger” my brain immediately leaps to either cannibalism or Buffalo Bill
My Love Storyis pure distilled comfort food from start to finish if you like anime; lionhearted brick shithouse of a dude falls head over heels in love with the sweetest tiniest girl while their gay ace best friend smiles approvingly.
let’s plays for silly soothing games are a godsend; I’ve watched this playthrough ofSamorost 3more times than I can count, and same for Machinarium.
the griffin mcelroy nuzlocke rundeserves a spot on this list despite the fact that watching it four times means i should probably have to register myself somewhere.
nature specials like Planet Earth, the Hunt, and Blue Planet always soothe the hell out of me, and travel shows like Parts Unknown usually accomplish the same thing, especially the Quebec, Senegal, and Leon episodes.
I work in hotels/resorts, and honestly, take the little shampoos and soaps! We throw them away when you leave (we don’t know if you’ve opened them and messed with them or whatever, so for health and safety it all goes in the trash) If you stay at the fancier places or chains, they’ve actually done some bit of thought into the scents for the toiletries, in that if you use them while at home you’ll remember the time you stayed at the hotel and be more likely to return.
Just don’t take the towels or the robes or any of that shit, it’s expensive.
This is true, all soaps, shampoos, and the like are tossed after a guest checks out of the hotel even if it’s clearly unopened because it is considered a health hazard violation in most places if they’re left there. If someone were to somehow get sick from it, a hotel can be shut down. Just take the toiletries, they’re ordered in bulk as is and only cost the hotel a few dollars to order them by the hundreds
And even if you don’t use them, you can donate them to your local homeless shelter or other similar charity and give someone something they could use that would otherwise go to waste.
PLEASE TAKE THE SOAPS. PLEASE DONATE THE SOAPS. It’s one of the biggest requests shelters/supply banks get. You want to make their fucking day? Show up with socks, undies, diapers, and toiletries.
And here I am not taking them to avoid being wasteful.
And here I was not wanting to steal things from the hotels. The more you know.
Reblogging again because I didn’t even think about donating them to charity. I figured they were too small to be useful, but they would be perfect for shelters and the like.
while we’re on the subject! if u are donating things to a shelter that supports women, especially trans women, please also consider going to the dollar store and buying a couple packs of razors! For trans women who are unable to get HRT, being able to shave helps a lot. Also if u can afford it, get a couple packs of the fancy tampons and pads!!!!
What about the packets of coffee and hot chocolate that some hotels have in the rooms? Are those to take or do we leave them?
i’ve known this for decades, since i did something odd back in the 90′s: i asked. so when i stay in hotels i take any still-full toiletries from my room with me, because they’re very handy for road trips and camping.
you can’t take a full size bottle of shampoo camping, after all, that’s ridiculous. mostly you can just rinse the sweat off in the campsite shower and not worry about being a little funky – hell, i used to not even bother cuz i hated the slimy concrete floors and i’d just swim in the lake or whatever – but when you get weird sap in your eyebrow or congealed bacon grease in your leg hair holy crap do you appreciate those tiny soaps and shampoo bottles.
just moving along like everyone else 