tressiemc - Just go read her stuff! It's all sorts of amazing!

What has been known to actually happen, however, is that power makes allowances for power and the powerless continue to not be beneficiaries. It is not that I do not trust power. I trust power to be what it is. What I do not trust is that power will be what it has never been.

The Atlantic Article, Trickle Down Feminism, and my Twitter Mentions. God Help Us All



Just because it's digitally-mediated doesn't mean it isn't real.

"I was part of the WELL almost from the very beginning. The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link was founded in the spring of 1985 - before Mark Zuckerberg's first birthday. I joined in August of that first year.

I can't remember how many WELL parties, chili cook-offs, trips to the circus, and other events - somewhat repellingy called "fleshmeets" at the time - I attended. My baby daughter and my 80-year-old mother joined me on many of those occasions. I danced at three weddings of WELLbeings, as we called ourselves, attended four funerals, brought food and companionship to the bedside of a dying WELLbeing on one occasion. WELL people babysat for my daughter, and I watched their children.

Don't tell me that "real communities" can't happen online."

What the WELL's Rise and Fall Tell Us About Online Community

I want to shout this stuff at people who claim that the only true home I've ever had wasn't / isn't 'real'.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
via online.wsj.com