I agree, but what else would you call being forced into a facility you can't leave? Especially if the pigs brought you there. The way people in crisis are handled in this country is appalling.

I have been in several mental health crises that I should have been in involuntarily hospitalized for, but was too afraid to ask for help because I would rather die than lose what little freedom I have. So I might be biased (and very bitter).

I mean to be fair if you were involuntarily hospitalized, you actually were a prisoner.

I've been through a few hurricanes and a couple tornados. I could see where some folks (like the landed gentry or people with families) might be afraid of them and the damage they can wreak, but personally I find them exhilarating.

Stepping out into 70 mile an hour winds and 3 feet of rain or watching a tornado rip apart buildings is humbling. No matter how strong we build our walls, the raw power of nature can still tear them down.

Honey, I haven't worked in two years because of mental illness and I haven't had insurance in three. I'm trans and live in Texas as well so Trump's election feels a lot like a death sentence and I've already lost most of my old friends and family to bigotry. Just since the election I have had four strangers clock me and yell slurs, one guy even followed me 40 miles and finally gave up when I stopped at the police station near where I am staying. I am so afraid that I get physically sick whenever I leave the house. If I didn't have family who could take me in and support me while I try to put my life back together I would be homeless, or more likely dead.

You're right, I don't live in fear of losing those things because I have already lost them. From the other side of those fears, you can lose everything and life still goes on, I promise.

Sounds like the local wildlife might have been dining on exotic fare.

Are you familiar with Project Semicolon? It's an anti-suicide thing and they use the semicolon because it is unnecessary and using it is a choice by the author that there sentence could end, but they have chosen to continue. Your top level comment has very similar vibes to some of the things that the group advocates.

The founder did eventually decide to end their story and they kind of faded out, but the message is a good one.

I agree with you about the power accepting your own mortality grants. All human stories end in death, pretending there is any other option is delusional.

Dolphins and elephants don't write dissertations because they can't hold pens and don't have the same values as humans. Just because an animal does not behave like a human, does not mean it's less intelligent. I've never written a dissertation and I bet you haven't either. They don't shit where they eat in the wild, in captivity they do, but so would you or I if we were in jail. No other animal has all of the markers of intelligence we have defined, but many of them are close or equivalent to humans in one or more of those aspects.

But more than that, we don't know how other creatures think and view the world. The blue whale, for example has a brain twice the size of a human's, they have language (and individuals have names), social structures, and regularly set thier own interests aside for thier pod. They may not write dissertations, but they do engage in creative activities recreationally (singing).

Respectfully, that is not the simplest explanation, the shortest perhaps, but there is no evidence I am aware of that would even suggest that as an explanation. It also has the baked in assumption that humans are conscious on purpose. Intention implies some kind of intelligent hand guiding things, but nothing changes about the world if you accept a creator exists or doesn't. All the evidence science has been able to collect though suggests natural processes and pseudo-random chance are why the world is the way it is.

I make no assumptions about the kind of god or creator you offer beyond what you've said about it. I used examples from history to point out that many people have dreamed up many gods, few of which are good. To me that brings into question your premise that your god must be the avatar of selflessness. If anything an inactive god who allows so much suffering to exist in the world is the opposite of that.

If it helps, humans are really really really really really bad at predicting the future. We don't know what's going to happen until it does and even then knowing how that changes what comes after is still unknowable.

For example many of the promises Agent Orange made on the campaign trail would have disastrous consequences for everyone, which might be enough to shift the balance back by the midterms.

Look, I am as heartbroken as anyone that the two crazies that tried, missed (or never got a shot off). But that's something else. If you're not trolling, you should probably talk to a mental health professional about those feelings.

Touching grass. It's important to remember that the entire world isn't online and the world isn't as dire as all of us chronically online doomers would have you believe. Things are chaotic-shift-in-the-status-quo bad, not civilization-ending bad.

The wheel turns, right now it's in a muddy rut and the people on the bottom (sexually active women, people of colors, and the queer community) are drowning, but all the little people on the outer edge are eventually in the dirt. Fuck the world, fuck the country, the people you have personal relationships with are the only thing that matters because all we have is each other.

Personally I have been trying to be more proactive, which has helped me have a sense of agency amidst the chaos. Everything I own fits in my car in case I need to leave quickly because of a climate disaster or the legalization of hunting trans people. I haven't bought a new thing (used, diy, or do without only) since lockdown because it's significantly cheaper and makes me feel like I'm doing my part to fight final form capitalism. I've also been exploring alternate ways to support myself and live that are more sustainable.

Hunter S. Thompson carried a revolver on him for most of his adult life for that exact reason.

... He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too—and Peacocks ...

— Some friend of Thompson's after his death whose name I forget and am too lazy to look up (I have the quote unattributed in my notes on Thompson). But it's quoted on Thompson's Wikipedia if you're not as lazy, lol.

But humans aren't the only animals capable of selflessness. Most mammals have instinctive drives that encourage risky behavior in some circumstances (a momma bear defending her cubs from predators, for example). Some types of insects (like ants and bees) will sacrifice their own lives in defense of their community.

Just because humans are the most advanced intelligence (debatable) we are aware of doesn't make them special. Some of the other intelligent animals on earth, like crows, primates, octopuses, dolphins, and whales all demonstrate human-like intelligence in one or more areas. Gorillas and bonobos can be taught language, crows use tools, octopuses are better problem solvers than most people, whales and dolphins have naturally developed their own proto-languages. All of those creatures demonstrate behavior that suggests they have some form of consciousness (though probably not as advanced as humans, except maybe the octopus). Much of our study of the animal kingdom has been from an anthropocentric perspective, but in the last 20 years or so science has been leaving that behind because the more we learn the less merit it has.

Existing to suffer discounts most of the human experience. If there was a logically grounded reason for consciousness a simpler explanation, based on the other animals we have to study, is that consciousness is a useful trait for social animals and provides a significant advantage for survival.

It's also not reasonable to assume that a hypothetical god must be selfless. Almost all gods humans have worshiped have demanded sacrifice in one form or another. The Abrahamic God (which I am most familiar with) for example demands faith, love, and adherence to a code of conduct or be tortured for the remainder of existence with no possibility of forgiveness. Infinite punishment for finite infractions is not selfless, it is capricious and evil.

Suffering, be it physical or emotional pain, is the way our automatic systems (like breathing or the cardiovascular system) communicate with the decision making part of our brains. Almost all macroscopic creatures have some form of this behavior.

This is the most accurate map of the united states ever created.

Also no one in America takes people from States with a direction in the name (Like South Dakota, or Northern California) seriously. Get your own name or get lost.

Oh darling, if I had real money, I would use it to sow chaos and undermine the world's financial markets.

But most of all, if I have to live in this bullsh!t cyberpunk reality, we might as well have shadowrunners/Edgerunners/mercs. So I'd recruit as many paramilitary mercenaries as I could find and set them on the task of sabotaging critical corporate infrastructure, kidnapping any oligarchs we could find vulnerabilities for, and doing brazen, overt terrorism kind of stuff.

The idea being if I can cause enough chaos perhaps the people of the world might finally have enough and force change for the ultra wealthy.

We just made Quentin up, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean stories like his aren’t potentially happening everywhere, constantly. Good journalism is about finding those stories, even when they don’t exist. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, endangering trans people is the lodestar that shapes our coverage. Frankly, if our work isn’t putting trans people further at risk of trauma and violence, we consider it a failure.

As a trans person I really appreciate the existential dread and emotional violence of the quality reporting at the Onion. It's a shame they can't solely cover how awful and despicable we all are.

Just the other day I was at an elementary library passing out copies of Fucking Trans Women to any male presenting children wearing jerseys or religious symbols. After words I went to a women's restroom to find victims to groom and assault.

Someone needs to hold us accountable and I am grateful the Onion has taken up the mantle.

I read your entire post several times before responding. You made a number of factual claims that have no basis in reality, such as humans being the only animals capable of self sacrifice and rich people all being corrupt and obese.

I focused my rebuttal on the points that I did because, those were the aspects of your essay that seemed worth discussing because it felt more productive to give you concrete arguements than going point for point refuting your argument.

Your fundamental premise (to the best of my ability to determine) seems to be that human suffering is somehow special because we can choose it and somehow that supports an argument for a creator or god.

It was called NationState. Basically you had your own little country to manage

SCP-50091 is boyardee class anomaly located in [data expunged]. The object is a 300cm hole in the ground of [data expunged] and contains a seeming endless amount of [redacted] soup.

Pfft, everyone knows the cool kids use Lynx.

Huh, weird. The menfolk have had kind of a loneliness problem for about 15 years...