ziphi renata @ziphi@vulpine.club

The part where it gets really difficult is when harmful ideologies are put into practice. And the actions associated with an ideology are often inseparable from the ideology itself, since people tend to act according to their beliefs.

At that point, fighting it simply as a set of ideas often fails to mitigate harmful effects. Though I'm not qualified to speak on how best to approach that, since my usual favor of lenience and forgiveness falls short when others beside myself are at risk.

It's very important to remember that, politically, we fight ideologies and not people.

The way to stop an ideology is not to war against the people. Negative reinforcement can be useful, but only if there is also enough incentive for them to leave their in-group and learn about other ideas.

This isn't to say that fighting against harmful ideologies shouldn't be done or that ideologies which marginalize people are justifiable.

But people have arrived at those ideologies due to the information they have received and the environment around them. As they get more embedded in those ideologies, it can be harder to change them. However, constant negative reinforcement will only cause them to retreat to where they receive no outside information and no incentive to change.

Selfishness is also not what it usually appears to be. Self-interest is universal. Sometimes that interest is not living in a world that is marginalizing other people. Sometimes it's protecting a group of similar people.

This can be manipulated through fear and ignorance (for example, white males who never understood what it's like to be outside that group claiming they're being attacked), but typically people think they are protecting more than just themselves.

Political opinions may be misinformed, and they may be extreme (depending on one's perspective), but that does not make them "crazy." Usually, people have reasons for their beliefs.

I've met people whose beliefs I find to be extremely harmful and motivated so much be fear or anger or ignorance (ignorance here is relative - it's very easy not to know the struggles of outgroups, which can lead to marginalization), but they all arrived at their ideologies through a long process.

I think I'm going to start immediately ignoring anybody who states the reasons their opposition has for believing what they do. Especially if that reason is stated in one or two sentences only.

That usually only enforces tribal groups, without actually providing any insight into people's mindsets or working to change anyone's mind.

And usually the reasons given are as simple as "crazy" or "evil" or "selfish."

On a slightly related note, I'm all out of glycoproteins. Oops.

I have studied all of biology ~ well, enough to get a degree ~ and I declare that my golgi apparati have no cis ends. I have a trans golgi apparatus and an extra trans golgi apparatus.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Mood dropped precipitously.
I think I'll go do some art or something to keep occupied, rather than staring at the computer, absorbing information and stress.

Also, not nearly enough of my books are about animals.

Okay, today, I need a nice stimulus to keep myself in a decent mood. I’m thinking a good book would be nice. Now to decide which of the ones I’ve had lying around would be nice:

Richard Adams’ Watership Down;
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass;
Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park;
Wu Ch’êng-ên’s Journey to the West;
Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books

I’ve started so many but never finished them.

I've got twenty-five bucks and a cracker.
Do you think it's enough to get us there?

There was some character development in the dream though: my phone needed to be charged.

I dreamed I was in the passenger seat of a car on a road trip, looking at an online road map. Then we stopped at a restaurant with a cool fountain with a fox statue, and while there I was hesitant to talk to people I didn’t know.

Other than the cool statue, it was a heckin’ boring dream. Could do that any day. I need to hire some better writers for these things.

I just saw someone who said that "LGBTQ is a sign of the end times."

I can't wait to take part in the complete destruction of the world. I've always wanted to be an evil villain. Thanks for considering me so important, random internet stranger!

Original art is by Akira Himekawa.