h. Play

Dear future,

I don’t know what to say but it feels like there’s something noticeable happening right now. A moment in history.

The blend of old problems, new technology, current algorithms. Everyone and everything dissociates constantly.

I think it’s the oscillation; it’s way too powerful. One second you are slammed to the left, laughing on the floor at a meme or a moment in a show. The next one you are slammed to the right watching war footage from 30 minutes ago,  while NBA and pandemic scores float above it all. Social media is all kind of batshit crazy.

It’s really way wild right now.

Having an absolute uh, blast.

It’s a good summary of the past 40 years in feminism, with an emphasis on the 2010s, which is great.

In the quest to the answer for a better world between women and men, Amia Shrinivasan asks good questions and covers it all. I’m trying to write about answers here.

First of all, I think it’s important to understand that the systems in place ruining our lives are not going to be cut off clean; we need to think about them as fading out, as hard and as fast as we work on them to be part of the past. So it’s fluctuating and moving. Regressing and expanding.

The assumption that we can flip a switch in society by passing laws and calling it a day, is an illusion. Or that we can convince people profiting from those systems. Not happening either.

Second, I think it’s fundamental that we acknowledge that by default, women and men are the same, require the same care, love, respect, discipline and so forth, to be good human beings and stay that way. Women and men created what we have. There is no domination or submission at the individual level, unless it’s a game between adults, which is then not reality: it is a sandboxed game.

TL;DR: Systems are moving slowly and are hard to predict; individuals, —straight/LGBTQ+— are the same basic atoms, requiring the same basic needs and are quite predictable. Therefore,

Sex Ed and porn

As Amia writes about it, obviously we need better sex education and yes, porn is and will be around. What can we do? Be as honest as possible. One way would be to ensure teenagers have safe sex so that their brains can move on. The weird abstinence happening in porn-fueled America for folks 15-30 is so destructive. For sex not to be special, it needs to be treated as such. If sex is simply part of life, why not treat it like it is? Masturbation (still so taboo for women in the public sphere!) should be taught like a necessity, just like brushing your teeth. Encouraging young men to understand that sex is teamwork —a lot of listening— would do wonder. I know plenty of young men know all that but then, peer-pressure from older ideologies and stuff. Be you, bro. Sex is public health, but also a private act. You don’t have to brag about it or make it a list of things that needs to be done. Relax, and work on your skills. Sex is awesome and nothing at the same time. It is a paradox.

On porn, we adults could suggest teenagers to watch amateur acts, to make them more accustomed to what real sex is. To separate theater and reality. To push them to use their imagination, too. Imagination is still super powerful because it stimulates desire, real, personal desire. Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore in kids minds these days.

Solution: UBI. This way teenagers know –as well as adults- that they will not jeopardize their future by exploring intimacy. They might have sex early which would avoid the resentment, loneliness and subscribing-to-wrong ideas phases, especially for young men. Which would be dramatically great.

Sex

Amia writes: “Sex is no longer morally problematic or unproblematic: it is instead merely wanted or unwanted. In this sense, the norms of sex are like the norms of capitalist free exchange.”

I truly disagree here. if sex is wanted, it is simply a union. There’s no commerce in intimacy. It is not a transaction like capitalist free exchange. Which is by the way, not free: it is interested. “Free” exchange in capitalist terms really means “getting as much as you can for the least effort”. It’s min-max to oblivion. Yeah, that’s an atrocious mindset for relationships. We can see that in dating apps Reddit subs: people, mostly men, treat sex like a goddamn stock investment. It’s horrible.

It’s fundamental to not treat sex as a transactional commodity. Yes, it happens in our capitalist and very unfair society, but it certainly shouldn’t be normalized, nor needs to be reprimanded. For women and men to feel liberated about this, we need to treat sex as anything but a transaction. Because when we do, we create markets, competition, cheating, resentment, abuse and so forth. Which kill women in a myriad of ways.

Solution: UBI so that everyone lives their lives without using sex as a capitalistic mechanism to achieve higher status, not even a little bit.

Masculinity

If today’s masculinity is about big numbers, —bodies, money— then it is a rather weak and dumb concept. Masculinity is the ability to be the best man you can be, to me. That is, it is a very broad concept, depending on context and culture. But it always rests on solid foundations: be good, be efficient, always learn.

Since the 2010s though, it seems like many men feel like learning to unlearn stuff is anti-men or something. Being able to change your mind on a crucial topic means you’re “giving up”? On what, your bruised feelings? There’s so much war narratives in men circles. Zero sum logic. We really need to step away from this, but mfs enjoy those stories.

Solution: UBI so that all men chill at home, learning and doing better, without the stress of bragging rights that no one cares about, really.

Marriage

How in *checks notes* 2022 we still use it as a stick to measure one’s relationship achievement makes me shake my head. But for taxes purposes, vague religious nostalgia of simpler times and the desire to treat yourself with a wedding, marriages are still a thing. Which so often creates imbalance in relationships, punishing women and men. Because the entire society and state are involved in it, the consequences are pretty big when shit hits the fan.

Solution: UBI so that people get into unions like marriage without a heavy chip on their shoulder. Also, a new social contract between people, like in France, would allow Americans to be in relationship with a contract that allows fairness when it comes down to assets, shared items and will, which is what really matters.

 

So yeah, an absolute necessity for better men and women relationships is for all of us to decouple the risks associated to partnering up with someone. UBI is the best tool to create personal and collective agency! We need to significantly decrease our collective anxiety towards intimacy and relationships. It’s easy to do, in a way: we just need to be pragmatic and give society ways for its individuals to move around, without being stuck by some stupid historic and politic fact, irrelevant to how we live in the current moment and even more for the future. Especially when sex is, for the most part, an intimate, private thing.

We are not free yet. But we know how to be.

“While driving on the grounds of the city’s premier tennis club, the visiting Americans spotted a young boy on a roadside court practicing his serves and volleys with a handmade wooden paddle. Impressed by the boy’s strength and athleticism, Arthur inquired about his identity. Coincidentally, the boy had written him a letter three weeks earlier, hoping that he might meet the American star during his visit.

The “little brown skinned kid” as Arthur described him, turned out to be eleven-year-old Yannick Noah.”

OMG. Yannick Noah has been so important for myself and black people in France, it makes my eyes blurry just to think of the extraordinary situation here:

Arthur Ashe was discovered by a black man who was a fan of tennis –in Virginia, in the 40s- and got him to summer camps. Yannick Noah, who reached #3 worldwide as a single tennis player, was discovered by Arthur (who paid travelling expenses for Yannick to go to France from Cameroon).

The colossal power of representation and change often owe their own lives to a SINGLE person, who is simply dedicated, consistent and persistent.

Those three black men, Dr J the tennis fan, Arthur and Yannick the tennis players, silently inspired millions of black men, across multiple generations and across the world.

It is flawed: thinking that you can be safe and appreciated as a black man, only if you are one of the best at what you do, is not necessarily the most uplifting lie. But that will do. It starts the engine. It’s pumping hope in the tank. It’s giving strength.

And then figuratively or literally or both, we run as hard as we can. One hundred.

Dear future,

This morning at the grocery store, this man had his mask under his nose.

I wanted to beat the shit out of him with his lame skateboard right outside on the parking lot, with no warning.

Not even trying to teach anything, just pure anger coated with efficiency.

Anytime UBI comes in a conversation, people immediately jump on the obvious and very basic “but what if” while they have never really questioned the way things work. First “what if” answered on HN.

“> nobody has to work

That’s generally not the expectation. The expectation is that there’s more than enough wealth to allow for everyone to have a baseline of income to meet their most basic needs. You want to buy a house, buy a car, travel, eat at fancy restaurants, buy expensive things, you still have to work. But if you want to quit your job and find another one you don’t need to fear starvation or eviction because you are without income for a few months.”

EXACTLY. It’s so interesting that people have the hardest time to visualize a new social contract, model that is fairer. It seems like most people really think that they “built” their social status out of thin air, working, without this thing called luck, the most random factor that no one controls.

Most people don’t realize that if a secretary of Education’s family owns 10 yachts, that hundreds of millions of dollars disappear in scams every day, that means we really do have the wealth to do much better.

It’s just not distributed properly. UBI in part solves that.

“How does UBI work if everyone just decided not to work anymore?”

No one will decide not to work anymore! And if they do, here’s what usually happens:

It’s something most Americans don’t know because social safety nets barely exist here. But most Europeans know that: you cannot live without a purpose, which is usually acquired through effort and positive feedback. Which is basically, work. I concur with the 3-month mark, as I hit it in France. After three months of doing nothing while all bills are being paid no problem, you begin to see the depression pit. Our brains can only take so many video games and alcohol binges. Then they want more. Because YOLO.

It’s human nature to feel good by doing something useful. It’s just that with UBI, you won’t have to work 3 jobs and pray that you get your money in time to keep your roof above your head.

Does that make sense?

“But what about all the low skilled jobs? No one will do them!”

If I was getting UBI, I’d go fix potholes in “my” street. Paint my older neighbor’s porch. If I don’t feel like it, I wouldn’t do that today, but next week. I’d teach kids how to play bass and I don’t know, tons of useful, social, technical, productive work by millions of people would be done with UBI. Instead, I’m on the grind like millions of others. Fighting each other instead of collaborating.

Yes, UBI and technology would erode classism like a mf. Which I think, would be great for all of us.

Most people play the devil’s advocate about UBI because they’re absolutely scared about the fact that they gave their entire faith to the Capitalism spin-wheel, which, because it’s a system, doesn’t give a fuck about them, even when they’re doing well. Pretty sure God doesn’t give a damn about their bank account either. Instead of being happy to be above others, they should strive to have a world where no one lives on the sidewalk so that they can stop bitching about hobos, and just go on with their lives. Just more socially efficient.

UBI will drive inflation!

We’re about to hit $7 gas like, next week lol. Inflation is right here, right now. The Feds have injected trillions of dollars in a couple years, which probably triggered the inflation we currently have. But, if those trillions had been distributed equally and efficiently, that inflation wouldn’t matter. Nobody would really care. Inflation is a problem in the way we use capitalism right now.

If we modify the system, inflation becomes a non issue. Just like student loans that can’t possibly be paid off anyway. Just cancel those, it was a scam.

Look, if we can collectively spend 30 years building a telescope and send it a million kilometers away in space EXACTLY where we wanted it to be floating at, in a SINGLE attempt, we sure can provide money on bank accounts to millions of people every month. That’s probably a lot easier. Let’s go.

I see that everywhere these days. Dead embedded players all over the internet.

I posted a link to Amber Mark’s Bandcamp a WEEK ago. It’s already dead, as if I had made it all up.

Google Search is terrible and has been terrible for years.

The internet is suffering and glitching.