how does one live through a genocide?
well i cooped up and am very depressed and was/am playing video games all the time
“beautiful soul” but less resolute
a hedonistic skeptic of livable future, verging on nihilism but can’t prove it through suicide.
how does one organize against power one does not trust?
game theory for good
TNS example – administration promised to not call the police on students, but then they did anyway. if one have not trusted them, perhaps there could have been more protection; such as, not letting international students or black and brown students or trans and queer students to camp the night before escalation.
but one cannot completely distrust the opposition; if one did not trust the opposition a bit, camping and sitting in would not be the method unless one is objectively or intersubjectively powerless.
so if one does not trust some grander promises of the opposition, then one needs to categorize one’s demands and safety into perhaps two categories, especially safety. essential safety items, or bottom-line safety items are those that should not be trusted to the opposition by their promise or agreements, verbal or written. one should devise one’s own strategies in light of potential breaches, like promise-to-not-call-police but then do it anyway.
bottom-line safety items, such as risk of international students deportation and secondary violence in jail – organizer should prepare own plan regardless of opposition comment and attitude about it. assume the worst and if better happens great. if worst happens no problem. our more vulnerable is protected.
what other bottom-line items are there?
what are non-bottom-line safety items that can be trusted with the opposition (in exchange of opposition demands) during protests?
similarly, bottom-line demands cannot be dealt with by promises or delayed by committee election and so on methods of obfuscation.
if the goal is divestment, then direct evidence of divestment is necessary before encampments are called off. even the continual authority or power to prevent such investment is also necessary (if there is change in investment strategy, student-, faculty-organizers or leaders have to be involved for approval, or if investment is outsourced to third-party, contract language should be clear of what is of limit and what is not invest-worthy)
in this case the reestablishment of advisory committee on investment responsibility is completely lacking. such concede is not concede at all. just smoke screen to confuse organization
what are other bottom-line demands? if the statement contained a conditional of “if fail to provide future audit of investment, then students and faculty have the right to protest on campus without administrative, legal, other forms of sanctions from the university admin.”
what demands are not bottom-line? renaming of halls or taking down of photos, etc, for example, might not be as important to stress upon and can be exchanged for other 己方 concedes
back the question of how to live through a genocide – i was looking at bodega while i was walking and thought that all the food, logistics, shipping networks in the us and many other places in the world. theyare still very much business-as-usual during this genocide.
it was less so during covid and that created a lot of problems such as child labor because inspectors are probably not thought of (by the structural system) as essential as meat packers themselves. so meat packers can be children for the factory and business owners because they have the interest to do so.
in this light of protecting children and other venerable populations, labor practice inspectors are just as essential, because (1) we say we value life especially children lives more than profit (2) we cannot trust business owners who find capital accumulation more valuable.
this system of our interconnection cannot solely survive on trust. especially not with business owners whose very interests is the opposite of the the protecting and the flourishing of all and especially the vulnerable.
but this system of specialization and interconnection have to rely on trust of others of some kind, and hence all the parts of the system are essential. we authorize others to control a part of our own life so that we specialize in something else that they entrust us with. (romantic way of putting it) plumbers are essential as grocery workers as farmers as inspectors and so on.
in this light a genocide is a collective decision that this part is not necessary or even relevant. blood is on everyone’s hand.
(so are the bullshit jobs, so called) but the non-essentiality of work and non-essentiality of life have very different meanings.
a system of self-sufficiency, on the other hand, does not build on trust or this blending and exchanging and authorizing of others into our own lives. (i wonder if nyc bodega development is influenced by racism and zoning laws – their existence in someway makes every neighborhood more self-resilient than a bigger supermarket at a centralized location. if the distribution of supermarket is correlated with race then the existence of bodegas have a political meaning.)
china cutting itself off from the western supplychain – mutual distrust of each other.
the individuality of self-sustainability has its own problems. nothing will compel it with responsibilities and duties if no interrelation is actual. where would the relation of duties even come from? they can always shrug and leave. china is looking for that unaccounability. municipal lingo would call this wanting to stand above the law but alas no international law so no rule of law yet.
this trust system of mutual authorizing of aspects of lives and the system of economic exchange for profit are completely at odds with each other. they run on different logics and their co-existence makes the former system virtually impossible to maintain, because trust has no re-enforcement nor does it need verification and inspections. the latter needs all of them because it has to see individuals as egoistic and always at odds with each other.
one end of the odds is wanting to grow up safe and making friends and live a life with some self-made meanings. the other end is money money money money money and all the money can buy. we all see the appeal of the former but most of us will probably pick the latter if we can.
Glaucon and Adeimantus’ problem with the reputation of justice/just man and injustice/unjust man. we really haven’t move the needle a bit, huh?
gacha game economy vs real world economy
gacha game without cash involvement – starts to become a rather interesting model of need based economy. in order to keep participation, this economy cannot be too stringent, because otherwise people won’t play.
they also often comes with a small lack that some cash involvement can overcome as a way to incentivize spending, but that’s another issue. gacha games could approximate a need based economy regardless.
it is still too simplistic – because gacha game goals are usually simple, perhaps real world complexity and the diversity of human development and interests will make the system very complicated too. but the principle is here.
but life doesn’t have to be that complicated? just good stories and friends
cash ideal in gacha – presumed to be infinite, promise of infinite power, and the promise to get there quick
cash reality – for most people injection is non-sustainable, destructive, and finite
nature/resources ideal in capitalism – presumed to be infinite, promise of infinite power, and the promise for infinite progress to be quicker
nature in reality – injection is non-sustainable, destructive and finite
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