Good luck!!

Yay ^⁠_⁠^ this sounds exciting!! And it seems you've got the right attitude!

Whenever I start feeling this way, I remind myself that people who lived under brutal empires in the past probably also felt the same way. But those empires eventually crumbled, the people started the long journey of healing, and eventually the future was bright again. I very much want a good future, but that future has to be fought for, and part of that means rooting out defeatist thoughts.

I'm a fan of the "revolutionary suicide" concept (by this I mean the original meaning of the phrase as coined by Huey Newton, before it was hijacked by the Jonestown cult). Revolutionary suicide, in its original form, was the idea that it is better to die on your feet than on your knees; that it is better to die resisting the forces that would drive me to self murder, rather than by giving in to them. This is one of the things that keeps me going. If the fascists want me dead, they will have to come and kill me themselves. I won't do it for them.

No matter how bleak things may be, we can't give up hope. Because there is always hope, as long as people are willing to resist.

Yeah.. whenever I try to think about it too much I get into such an... idek, not an existential spiral, just, emptiness. So I try not to think about it too much haha. I'm sure this is great coping

I get you. I'm fully on "what's the next good thing I can do" mode and that's all that's getting me through. I've got my little lifeboat tho so I'll be okay, who knows tho.

Oh absolutely. I am an abhorrent prude and kissing is nasty enough even when people DO floss

i don't mean to humblebrag but i have gotten at least two people to start flossing regularly

That’s ok; it didn’t come across as humble at all ;)

That said, does it make sense when I say this just strengthens my current inclination against deep kissing?

i tell people who ask for the ol "tongue in throat" thing that i can tell if they didn't floss

i don't mean to humblebrag but i have gotten at least two people to start flossing regularly

i hope you'll only use your powers for good

yes!

huh... didn't know people could move their tongues that far back. mine can only go as far as almost to my uvula before it starts to pull at the bottom too much

yay good

but can you pick your nose with your tongue from the outside?

our holy father, hallo be thy name, may holly's tummy blight turn into a tummy bright n happy time. awomen

i had previously read roche's other papers because i was interested in the link between language and nationalism. i speak hakka so originally i was reading work on hakka ethnonationalism. i haven't done any tertiary schooling but i've been interested in national identity formation since high school so this is just a thing i read for leisure. i often find that because i haven't done the foundational readings in an academic context that things go over my head and i have to read slowly but i find the challenge fun?

i didn't expect a reply or for you to read either article closely!! so it's fine!! thank you for your consideration!!!!

Yeah ;( All of my connections outside the USA have some degree of stakes in here (beyond the usual influence the US has worldwide). I'm already in on the "humanity is one organism on the earth, individuals are illusions and borders are lies" thing, but the only non (us) americans I know who talk about local politics are Canadians, which is already pretty heavily intertwined with US politics. I liked to think of myself as a global thinking person, but I've been looking increasingly local, and thinking more and more exclusively about US politics (and the politics of other nuclear-armed nations).

Regarding the first article:

tldr: I read the first article and took away about as much as a non-anthropologist might take away from an anthropology academia paper. I end this section asking how you found this article / how this article ended up on your reading docket?

I do very much appreciate the articles. I've been hungry for Brainy Readings after leaving academia, but there are few forums on the internet where such things are discussed that aren't also LessWrong-likes. I have to admit that I've only read the first one through so far

I started to write something of a book report for the first article that I've had to pare down a lot. Tbh, at first I didn't think I was the target the audience for the first article. The abstract felt like an impenetrable wall (and, at least in my field, that was supposed to be the easy part), but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the rest of the article was the simple thesis, elaborated thoroughly, with a hefty contextualization in an academia I am not part of.

I had some prior background which helped contextualized the sections pertaining to language oppression in the US, Canada and China. I internalized some of those facts but otherwise it felt like too much for me to chew.

But most of what I cut out from the first and second drafts of this reply is "I can't appreciate this entirley". (I know this comment is already so comically long that I had to cut it into sections, but it was way longer!) The field is a bit too distant for me, some terms or ideas are a bit too abstract for me (is it really appropriate to label this academic article 'militant'? Is racism really inherent to any state? These are the ideas which need more elaboration for me to agree with.). It feels like liters of information flowing into my brain which only has room for a pint.

I'm curious, what got this article on your reading docket? When I was in undergrad and grad school, I usually read articles as part of an assignment, or research, or for a presentation for student organizations. Without a question to answer, or deliverable to produce, I felt my reading was directionless.

Regarding the second article, and more of a reply to you:

So I haven't read the second article through yet, and I have a separate 300 words on that already. But I really regret not reading this one first. I feel like I've internalized a lot more from this article (which I've read for only ~10 minutes so far, compared to the ~90 on the first article).

But it's been about 100 hours (I'm sorry it took so long, and I'm sorry I didn't even finish the second article yet!) But yes you did indeed make sense! I'm sorry it took me so long to reply.

Anyways, I am going to read that second paper eventually (probably in the next 50 hours)

Maybe if we did not treat the entire subject as a taboo it would be easier to talk about.

Then we need to stop imprisoning (“hospitalizing”) everyone who comes forward admitting they are suicidal.

Suicide and suicidal ideation is a legitimate response to a lot of traumas, and criminalizing this response just stops people from even talking about it until it has gone into a full blown crisis. There should be voluntary help to anyone who needs it, but if someone really wants to die that is their choice. Taking away someone’s autonomy, taking away their fundamental right to decide what to do with their own body - that’s not helping. It’s an abomination - and most people instinctively avoid it.

(sorry for being late to reply, i'm still reading the first paper, i just wanted to send you an acknowledgement at the ~50h mark lol. i'll be back here)

Difficult post.

Super interesting comment to me, thank you for sharing, oolong

I remember Aaron.

i don't have a recommendation beyond having connections outside america that would then spur you to decenter the usa then doing the whole we are human and connected and have a shared struggle thingy. like there's no point in joking about learning about american politics against my will, i have loved ones there and my local politicians get inspired by their us counterparts all the time.

god ok. so. the paper i read isn't even focused on the act of self-immolation itself but rather how language oppression is linked to death. in the context of necropolitics, the ways in which a government controls how people die (extreme simplification)(the 'killing' of a language and its deleterious effect on the speakers being above's thesis), ccp state surveillance removes typical avenues for protest such that people find themselves disappeared, jailed and/or extrajudically killed and their message erased, which is where self-immolation comes in as an act arresting enough to defy that. see here also. there's more to be explored in whether you see the act as violent or non-violent re buddhism and the ethics of its reproduction in how we (whether inside or outside of tibet/china) report on it and talk about its effectiveness.

not to crying emoji now but i'm not prepared to write an essay on this because i definitely haven't done all the reading and always feel lacking when asked to write. i hope i am making sense

Yeah, that's entirely fair. I'm sorry about being Americentric but I also don't know how I would be less so from my positionality. I can only post from the sum of what I know, which has been poured into my brain inside America.

I don't mean to ask for an essay but I'm also not firm in my stance and want to know more? I think suicides to send a message are still probably usually a waste of the rest of a life. But I want to know more about your viewpoint in general (or at least the paper you mentioned? I know only a tiny bit about Tibet and the general history of Chinese imperialism, and even less about Tibetan self-immolation.) (And it's not unthinkable to me that censorship and repression could be so strong that self-immolation is the only way at all to spread a message, especially when so many people are doing it. But I don't know enough to go the rest of the way and imagine anything specific about the impact it would have.)

(I also am eager to discuss suicide in general and I appreciate this thread a lot so I hope my first comment doesn't monopolize this whole thread lol)

yeah, i'm only the normal level of mad about the americentrism rn (more peeved). necessarily as someone outside the us and in asian spaces, the majority of suicides in protest i know have been related to tibet.

Oops, I edited out my asterisk; so * there is good reason to speculate Aaron Bushnell might have been trans, people who knew Bushnell said otherwise. It's touchy, so I'll just quote Bushnell's name and use proper nouns.