God dammit I did this just for a pun but now I’m imagining this whole backstory where a wounded female goblin flees from some battle and winds up on the edges of the Shire and she’s gonna jump some Hobbit dude named Blinko Tumbrush but Blinko’s so unfailingly polite that his first reaction on seeing someone in a rough situation is to invite them in to dinner and gobbo chick is just like “… uh… ‘kay.”
And then she has dinner and it’s the best thing she’s ever eaten and even her little green brain is able to put together “If I knife this guy so I can take his stuff he can’t cook more of this” so when he asks her to stay the night she’s just like “Fuck yeah breakfast”.
And all the other Hobbits in the area are staring at this new arrival who starts begrudgingly working in the garden (she can pull out the weeds they’d normally have to hitch livestock to) and they’re all thinking “Uhhhhh that’s a fucking Goblin there, chief” except if they actually acknowledge that she’s a goblin then it’s a huge to-do and a lot of excitement and possibly there would be adventure involved in chasing her off. So they just sort of silently, collectively decide they’re going to ignore it and all go “Oh, Blinko finally found himself a lady, how nice, she must be one of the Glumbrushes from over the far side of West Farthing, I always did hear they were on the homely side, not much hair on their feet you know.”
And eventually in due time along comes Korbo Tumbrush and decently cute Hobbit baby but the biggest fucking ears you ever saw on a Hobbit and he’s a bit green and everyone is thinking “That’s a fucking half-Goblin you’ve got there, chief, you fucked a fucking Goblin, you made a baby with a damn Goblin my guy” but this would be an immensely rude thing to say to someone so they’re just like “Oh how nice, Blinko, he looks just like you, has those Glumbrush eyes though.”
And Korbo the Goblit grows up a proper little man in his waistcoat and pipe and every so often someone visits from a different part of the shire and sees this plump green dude with massive flappy pointed ears and they start to open their mouth only for a local to leap right in and go “HAHA YES THAT IS KORBO TUMBRUSH A VERY UPRIGHT HOBBIT WE ALL LOVE KORBO HE’S GLUMBRUSH ON HIS MOTHER’S SIDE (WE THINK) THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!” and the visitor just starts nodding along emphatically because this is clearly something that is Not Spoken Of.
I fuckin love it
I. I have to know …
Does Korbo know!? Like is the Gobit aware his momma is a goblin? Or does he just grow up like
“yup us Glumbrushes sure do look different”
He leaves home on an adventure and stumbles n a hoard of goblins marches right up like
“how do ya do fellow hobbits? You know I’m half Glumbrush myself”
Alright, so, Korbo got in a fight once.
Once.
The Tumbrushes are, as a family trade, purveyors of fine pieces of wood. Not of large amounts of lumber, for which Hobbits don’t have a particular lot of call save occasionally, but rather of particularly nice pieces suitable for the making of fine window trimmings, floors, or the occasional carved bit of artwork to be given at a fancy event. Obviously for this one doesn’t go cutting down any tree willy-nilly, and Korbo had spent most of the day out and about looking for suitable trees.
(Korbo also personally assisted in cutting them down, being rather well known as on the strong side for a Hobbit, wink wink, nudge nudge.)
Having put in a genuine hard day’s work and rather pleased with himself, Korbo retired to the local bar to have a few beers and a smoke and to partake in good company, all of whom had gotten so used to pretending there was nothing odd about him that it was almost as if there was genuinely nothing odd about him.
Until along comes Humdil Thumbletoe.
Now the Thumbletoes were what was known in the Shire as “experts on genealogy”. This might sound like quite a good thing when you consider how well-versed most Hobbits are in their family lines, until you consider that most Hobbits are already well-versed in their family lines. A Hobbit being thoroughly knowledgeable of their family tree is not much to be remarked upon, so when it is remarked upon it is more to mean that the Hobbits in question are such tremendous mooches that they have had to dive far more deeply into their bloodlines looking for more relatives to leech off of than any Hobbit would generally consider polite.
Humdil was fairly brawny as Hobbits go, which was about all you could say for him. In fact Humdil had realized that was really all that could be said for him and had become a bit of a bully. And so it was he entered the bar that night with a very put-upon third cousin twice removed (by marriage) and caught sight of Korbo for the first time.
“Why, look at that one!” he bellowed, guffawing. “He’s so ugly his mother had to have been a Goblin, ey!”
The whole bar goes quiet. Aside from the obvious abominable rudeness of this, Humdil has said the thing that is never supposed to be said, and is clearly too stupid to realize he’s right. All heads slowly turn to Korbo.
Now, it is well known that Korbo has inherited his father’s tendency to never give a single solitary hairy-toed fuck about anything. He has currently been in the running to be at least the second most chill dude to ever be born in the Shire. And indeed, right now he’s still looking perfectly calm, puffing on his pipe. He sets the pipe aside, finishes off the last of his beer, and stands up.
“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”
Now Hobbits are mostly a peaceable lot, not given to wars or fighting for any old thing, but a bit of fisticuffs outside the bar is hardly unheard of. Mostly everyone is kind of nervous about this because they’re still not sure how Korbo is reacting to this whole Goblin thing. So someone takes Korbo’s jacket and Humdil’s third cousin twice removed (by marriage) grudgingly takes his, and the two square off.
Now, Humdil was a big Hobbit, it was true, but there were a few things that, being a moron who didn’t realize he was right, and who had never been outside the Shire or seen a Goblin anyway, he could not possibly know.
For one, Goblins have long, spindly arms, giving them a surprisingly good reach for their size… not abominably long, certainly not in the case of a half-Goblin, and certainly not above being concealed by the cut of a well-tailored shirt. Second, they are compact, wiry creatures, with dense muscle over their otherwise lanky forms, and given to that a Hobbit’s already greater mass and the anchoring benefit of large, wide feet, well.
The moment Humdil stepped forward and started to swing, Korbo’s fist shot out like one of Gandalf’s better rockets and struck him directly in the nose. His flight was also, for some weeks after, compared to one of Gandalf’s rockets, though not quite as far and the explosion at the end was mostly him laying on the ground cursing wetly due to all the blood streaming from his nose.
Korbo apologizes profusely to all and sundry for the disturbance, collected his jacket, and goes home. Honey is out picking mushrooms (still being of the more nocturnal persuasion after all these years), but Blinko’s sitting by the fire reading a book. Korbo sees that there’s a newspaper (full of lots of extremely important things like how the pipeweed was growing and which barrels of beer were going to be uncasked that month), so picks it up and sits down to read.
“Evening, Da.”
“Evening, son. Pleasant evening out?”
“Oh, fine. Save for I broke Humdil Thumbletoes’s nose for him.”
“Hm, hm, I see. Why did you feel the need to do that?”
“Well, he called Ma a Goblin, you see.”
Blinko slowly lowers his book, and slowly raises his head. Looks at Korbo for long moments. Raises one eyebrow a little.
“Son. You know full well your mother is a Goblin.”
“Well, yes, but he didn’t know that, and he said it as an insult anyway so it being true or not doesn’t really matter that much, does it?“
“Hm, hm. I suppose that’s true at the end of the day, isn’t it?”
Blinko goes back to reading his book. Korbo continues reading the paper.
“You could have stabbed him,” Blinko eventually notes.
“Aye, could have stabbed him,” Korbo agrees easily enough. “But it’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”
“True, true, probably would have been a bit of a mess in the road, not very thoughtful to the community,” Blinko allows.
And that was the end of it.
I love all of this so much. Also-
“Sir, we’ll be needing to step outside.”
The power. I set down my drink after that one.
Oddly enough, one might expect Korbo to have trouble finding a lady hobbit. He’s not given to being as plump as his fellows, and his feet are a bit small, and he’s rather, well, tall for a hobbit, isn’t he. And green. Always looks a bit like he’s eaten something that didn’t agree with him.
But he runs into Hilda Greebrook one day in town, and she’s lost her favorite pipe, which is of course a tragedy of the highest order. It’s not unheard of for a lady to smoke, but it isn’t particularly encouraged, either, and so the general reaction is “you poor dear, perhaps it’ll turn up, hadn’t you best be getting home for luncheon?”
Korbo, however, stops to help her look for the pipe, and when it’s nowhere to be found he offers to make her another just like it, if she can tell him what precisely made it so special that it was a favorite, for after all a favorite must be distinguishable by something.
Unfortunately the thing that distinguishes it is that she got it from Gandalf and it’s quite unlike most pipes in the Shire, so recreating it is quite the task. But Korbo sets himself to it anyway, working a bit each night and handing it to Hilda daily to see if it feels quite right, and six months later he’s done it—recreated a pipe that came from the world of men, or perhaps elves, but certainly not that of hobbits.
Hilda for her part discovers Korbo quite likes to read, and though he’s from a reasonably well-to-do family—for hobbits are always in need of new toys and fancy party decorations after all—can’t get his hands on books fast enough to satisfy himself, and, well, her da’s a transcriber, someone’s got to write out the papers after all, and she’s got access to practically every book in the Shire, and ways to make copies besides.
At first people think it’s odd, a hobbit who can’t see asking to borrow books, but then they find out Korbo is involved and asking questions could lead to excitement and so they absolutely do not ask and simply offer up their histories and books of poetry and hobbit folklore (for even without want for excitement there are things it’s good to remember, and things every hobbit child should know so they, too, can grow up properly plump and staying well away from adventure), and resign themselves to never seeing their books again.
And then they find that far from their books quite disappearing, they return in fine form—albeit usually in a timeframe rather too long to be polite—but oddly quite a lot seem to have tiny bits of wood shavings in, although one wouldn’t expect it in a hobbit home? And THEN Hoptus Redbranch finds Korbo one day in his workshop, he’s just stopped by for the wood to repair a door after an unfortunate incident with attempting to remove a colony of bees and rather too much smoke for the moving of bees, and Korbo is simply. Pressing small pieces of hot iron into a very thin piece of wood, making small triangle patterns like no hobbit decoration Hoptus has ever seen, and he’s quite frequently checking into a book on his left that turns out to be one of Hoptus’ own books, and very carefully turning the pages with a cloth so as to not get oil from the hot iron all over the pages—
—and THEN, not long after the news of Korbo’s strange woodburning activities have spread across most of the Shire (and caused no small amount of consternation, because goblins are clever but so often the things they make are cruel and the cause of ever so much unpleasantness), Hilda is seen in her own garden with Korbo with a stack of these thin pieces of wood all carefully hinged together, running her fingers over carefully sanded and varnished pieces and feeling the triangles and recitingahobbittale.
For all those months of strangely disappeared books, Korbo has been translating Westron into an alphabet that can be read with one’s fingers, and making Hilda books, and teaching her to read them.
Nobody is entirely surprised, after about three years, when the two of them vanish for a few months, and come back quite married.
Within a few generations, this is absolutely going to be a thing Not Worth Remarking Upon. So when a young hobbit finds themselves accidentally ripping the knobs off doors when they’re cross, their parents will sigh and the elder hobbits in the village will remark that ‘that’ll be the Glumbrush in ‘im coming through, I told you his ears were a little bigger than his siblings, didn’t I?’ much the same as they always did on Bilbo and Frodo’s Took relations and the resulting hankering for adventure.
Were anyone from the outside to visit the Shire, they’d find a small colony of goblins thoroughly intermarried and also avoiding the usual goblin tendencies towards stabbing, so long as no one is so gauche as to insult them for being goblins.
(Sooner or later, one very flustered hobbit is going to accidentally do the same thing with an orc.)
The Tumbrushes, as with all Hobbits, were quite proud of their work, and rightly so. Their works are fine, of the highest quality, and they fetch the appropriate price for their labors, making them quite well-to-do. In the Shire, wealth breeds respect, of course, and so the Tumbrushes are quite well respected.
And yet there’s a difference between “well to do” and “scandalously wealthy.”
So when, when Blinko Tumbrush recieved a letter inviting them to the Baggins residence for tea, he of course brought his wife and son along.
Now, Korbo had crossed paths with Bilbo Baggins a time or two in the market, never for much longer than the time required for Polite Conversation, and so wasn’t expecting much. Sure, everyone knew Bilbo was odd, and were willing to talk about it, since Bilbo made no effort to hide his adventures and had, on numerous occasions, commented on visiting the elves or poking around the mountains, but they were in the Shire, no adventure in sight, and so this should be a normal, proper visit between client and craftsman.
And then Bilbo opened the door, pipe in hand, took the three of them in, and said, quite out of nowhere, “Ah, Shoebiter clan.”
Honey Tumbrush, late of the Shoebiter clan of the Misty Mountains, smiled with all her teeth and replied “Dragon thief!”
Bilbo guffawed and waved them inside, offering them hospitality in the goblin tongue, with the guarantee of safety and threat of violence that implied. They had arrived in time for second breakfast, and didn’t leave until past dinner, having hammered out a contract and shared many a story.
Blinko Tumbrush had only one thing to say as he walked home, arm in arm with his wife and son trailing behind. “He’s an odd fellow, that Bilbo, but nice enough. Yes, nice enough indeed.”
I love them
Gets better and better every time I see it
What was removed?! Which guidelines did it violate? This post was complete last time I saw it.
Here’s my art that apparently was too much for tumblr!
I’d probably have rebageled anyway, but because of the Tumblr content removal, I *HAD* to…
Readers, make sure you have all your favourite Ao3 fics downloaded.
Writers, make sure you have copies of all the fics you have posted on Ao3.
I don’t want to be alarming, but things could get really bad really fast. OTW shared this today on Twitter, and I’m a bit worried about it 😅
Ao3 is a non-profit organisation. If they have to start paying taxes, I have no idea what will happen.
I’d like to remind everybody that this isn’t just about A03 or civil rights organizations. This could be applied to any 501 organization. That includes churches, schools, museums and library support organizations. All sorts of support organizations like soup kitchens or places like goodwill. Those are all non-profit organizations and they all have a 501 status. This is a threat to every civil organization we have that is meant to help the public.
So please contact your representatives. Please look this up on Twitter and click the link so you can call your representatives and voice against this. Because there’s a hell of a lot more at stake with a bill like this than just ao3. People’s lives could be at risk.
The House will vote THIS WEEK to determine whether the incoming Trump administration will have the power to shut down non-profit organizations with no due process.
Congress has already tried to fast-track this legislation once and failed because of the onslaught of calls to their offices. We can’t let them do this quietly. Congress giving Trump the power to crush dissent and target organizations fighting for justice is a betrayal. Tell your representatives to vote NO on this dangerous bill!
Shoutout to the two coworkers today who casually announced that they were voting for Trump, then asked me who I was voting for. I told them “I did early voting, and I voted for the candidate who isn’t going to make it harder for me to exist as a trans person” and both of these women had to awkwardly try and assure me that it wasn’t personal, and it’s not like they hated Harris or anything, they actually do like some things about her, and they definitely don’t hate me, of course not, it’s just that, you know, well, it’s like, well, you know, it’s just, like, and no matter how many times they tried to pass the shovel off to me, I just let them hold onto it
What. (and I mean this from the bottom of my enraged heart) the FUCK
Sadly, a lot of my co-workers are under-informed Trump supporters.
You know the kind, they just have a very surface level understanding of him as a candidate or person. They don’t really care about the actual concepts of policies he’s suggesting or the overt racism/sexism/everythingism he flaunts. They’ve just decided there’s something they like about him that makes him worthy of their vote and they choose to ignore anything they don’t like.
Not indoctrinated, just poorly informed. Not brainwashed, just kind of uncaring. Not part of the cult, just following it from the sidelines.
A conversation I had with one of these women today:
“Jonah, do you know how a tariff works?”
“In, like, very broad, general terms, yes. Why? Do you need it explained?”
“I was reading something yesterday about it, and I’m not sure if it was right. The article was saying we pay it?”
“Yes, that’s how a tariff works. It’s a tax on imported goods.”
“Okay, but that’s a good thing, right?”
“If you’re trying to discourage foreign trade, yeah. Or pull in more money for the government.”
“But how do we pay for it?”
“Uh. We don’t pay for it directly. The company that imports pays the tariff, and then they usually raise the prices on their own shit to make up for the loss.”
“But that’s going to make shit more expensive. Tariffs are supposed to make shit cheaper.”
“They’re not. They’re supposed to make imported shit more expensive. They’re supposed to discourage imports.”
“I don’t understand this. This was gonna help the economy.”
“Well, it might help some parts of the economy, but I don’t think you’re involved in any of them, so you may not see any of the benefits of the tariffs.”
“Okay so. I thought China was supposed to pay them.”
“Remember during his first term, when there was all that talk about a big, beautiful wall that Mexico was gonna–”
“Okay, look–”
“No no, hear me out. Remember how there was going to be a big beautiful wall that Mexico was going to pay for? China is going to pay the tariffs in the same way that Mexico paid for the border wall.”
OP, I don’t know how you managed to keep a straight face when letting them figure out they fucked up. I avoided someone today who’s an immigrant but anti-immigrant because I knew I’d have no chill.
The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle that the USPS ordered is legit the most fucked up thing you’ll ever see in your life.
Whoever did this should be hurt
NO YOU ARE ALL WRONG THIS IS INCREDIBLE
You’re telling me the mail service is handing you this highly accessible Akira Toriyama-esque piece of gold and you’re spitting in their faces?!?!
Not only that, they have more cargo space for mail, have a larger front front windshield so they’ll be able to see better as they drive, and they’re electric!
Plus, you know how old the previous trucks were? Half of em didn’t have A/C.
I’m glad they’re investing in the postal service, especially considering they’ve been trying to nerf it for years now and pushing us to use private delivery companies that are worse and for-profit.
In fact I want MORE cars that look like this! I hope every car in the future looks like this!
Why hate on this lil guy when Tesla is right there to hate on? My poor lil guy ;(
Ok, like.
*they designed it for the extremes, not the averages.*
How do they keep making later and later stages of late-capitalism
through innovative, synergistic solutions that align strategic stakeholders along key performance indicators
fun fact: there are quite a few academics and scholars nowadays who argue that we are no longer in the late stages of capitalism, but in fact the early stages of something completely different. david graeber puts it thus:
Any number of names have been coined to describe the new dispensation, from the “democratization of finance” to the “financialization of everyday life.” Outside the United States, it came to be known as “neoliberalism.” As an ideology, it meant that not just the market, but capitalism (I must continually remind the reader that these are not the same thing) became the organizing principle of almost everything. We were all to think of ourselves as tiny corporations, organized around that same relationship of investor and executive: between the cold, calculating math of the banker, and the warrior who, indebted, has abandoned any sense of personal honor and turned himself into a kind of disgraced machine.
varoufakis calls this new era “technofeudalism”, and in his book of the same name he describes it this way:
So, what is my hypothesis? It is that capitalism is now dead, in the sense that its dynamics no longer govern our economies. In that role it has been replaced by something fundamentally different, which I call technofeudalism. At the heart of my thesis is an irony that may sound confusing at first but which I hope to show makes perfect sense: the thing that has killed capitalism is … capital itself. Not capital as we have known it since the dawn of the industrial era, but a new form of capital, a mutation of it that has arisen in the last two decades, so much more powerful than its predecessor that like a stupid, overzealous virus it has killed off its host. […] Markets, the medium of capitalism, have been replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets, and are better understood as fiefdoms. And profit, the engine of capitalism, has been replaced with its feudal predecessor: rent. Specifically, it is a form of rent that must be paid for access to those platforms and to the cloud more broadly. I call it cloud-rent.
As a result, real power today resides not with the owners of traditional capital, such as machinery, buildings, railway and phone networks, industrial robots. They continue to extract profits from workers, from waged labour, but they are not in charge as they once were. As we shall see, they have become vassals in relation to a new class of feudal overlord, the owners of cloud capital. As for the rest of us, we have returned to our former status as serfs, contributing to the wealth and power of the new ruling class with our unpaid labour – in addition to the waged labour we perform, when we get the chance.
so, to put it another way: perhaps we are no longer in the later stages of capitalism, a system whose defining feature is that power belongs to those who own the means of production and can therefore profit off the labor of people they hire to work their machines and factories - but rather in the early stages of an entirely new hegemony, characterized by the fact that power is largely held by feudal overlords who have claimed dominion over specific segments of daily life through technology.
for example, under varoufakis’ view, platforms like Amazon or Etsy aren’t really markets in the traditional capitalist sense; they’re more akin to fiefdoms, where everyone who wants to participate must do so subject to the whims and desires of the overlord, who takes a cut of everything and carefully controls what people are allowed to buy, sell, or even be shown. these corporations don’t just make money by taking a cut of a worker’s paid labor; they make money by charging rent for any activity that takes place within their domain. sure, your employer siphons off some of the profits you generate when you work your job - but both you and your employer are also constantly paying rent, paying tribute, to Amazon Web Services to be able to host a website, to Google for advertising, to PayPal every time you make a transfer with a surcharge… thus these companies are primarily characterized by their ownership of specific domains of everyday life, rather than by their ability to profit from what their workers sell and produce.
this is obviously not the only way to understand our current economic and political climate, just one particular lens through which to view it, but. food for thought!
I took a class earlier this year for my MA in Communications and Technology that called it “platform capitalism.” One of the texts was the book Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek, which is available to read for free here.
One thing that I’d like to add to this discussion is the fact that these platforms rarely only have one function. The service being offered to the consumer is often the secondary function of a platform. The primary function relates to data. Facebook’s secondary function is as a social networking site; its primary function is as an advertising platform using the data it collects about its users. Mobile games track your search history. Amazon makes most of its money as a cloud platform, not as a marketplace. Micro-transactions are definitely a thing, as is the platform taking a percentage of any sale it facilitates, but the real rent consumers are paying is with their own information. This information isn’t just used to show you bespoke advertisements, either. It can get into the hands of political parties, law enforcement, and other groups you’d rather not know about you. This is something I’ve heard called “surveillance capitalism.”
Platforms need regulation, but not the way people usually think. It’s not about racist tweets that users post, it’s about what information platforms track about those tweets and what they do with that information.
“you can’t just call everybody a fascist, that’s not how you get people to listen to you.”
Did you know ‘the right to comfort’ is one of the 14 pillars of white supremacy?
Lmao I cannot tell you how many times I’ve brought that concept up to fury and purposeful misunderstanding. It’s like “you’re literally doing it right now. You’re contributing to white supremacy as we speak by refusing to sacrifice [what is usually temporary] comfort to learn or accept something”
This feels like an odd blend of 10s and 20s leftish politics.
The call for ruthless self-examination clashes with the idea that lines in the sand have long since been drawn and everybody on the other side is a Hitlerite.
I don’t think those beliefs clash at all. I also think they oppose the ideas of white supremacy, specifically the Right to Comfort, Perfectionism, and Either/Or thinking
Antidote: understand that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning; don’t take everything personally
Antidote: develop a culture of appreciation develop a learning organization, where it’s expected that everyone makes mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning.
Antidote: when people use 'either/or’ language, push for more than two alternatives; when people simplify complex issues, encourage deeper analysis with urgent decisions, make sure people have time to think creatively.
I understand not everyone made the active choice to be a fascist (blame schools or propaganda or w/e), but if presented with the opportunity to choose something else and they decline because that’s what’s more comfortable then that’s on them.
I’m placing responsibility for their choices on them personally. I’m not putting that responsibility on the collective they belonged to (racists/fascists/white supremacists) nor on others to teach them (like me) because both of those would be scapegoats for what is ultimately THEIR personal beliefs and choices (which is literally a bullet point for the Right to Comfort.)
Because individually I do think it’s possible to correct someone who’s being harmful and give them the opportunity to do better next time. And it’s entirely possible (and common) that they listen and change even if they’re defensive at first. Most people are genuinely just hurting and too politically/racially illiterate to know who/what system is actually blame. Providing them some literacy usually helps ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Like some people in the tags have said “if I’m called out then I examine my behavior cuz I don’t wanna be racist”
A lot of people don’t want to be racist and those people will change if you call them out. Like I said, not everyone made the intentional choice to be a bigot.
That said, those ignorant people need to be separated from the bigots that DO want to be racist and wont change and may even start harming you if you call them out.
Likewise, it’s the larger collective that I believe is beyond saving. An actual fascist has learned and knows their politics and made the active choice to support and act on those beliefs. With those people, there is no amount of communication that will change their minds. They believe in it. They truly fundamentally believe whites are superior. There is no talking with that type and doing so is harmful as it’s likely they’ll try to convert you and pull you to their side if not straight up assault you.
Real, legitimate fascists ARE a lost cause. Fascists as a collective are absolutely beyond communicating with and have chosen which side of the line to stand on.
And so if I’m taking the time to sit here and explain all this then it’s because it’s my due diligence to figure out what camp you’re in for my own sake, for my safety, labor, time, and boundaries. I don’t want to talk to fascists or give them a platform ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also here are the other pillars:
Copying this out for ease:
Perfectionism
Little appreciation expressed for others’ work
Criticism more common
Criticism of person or their work in their absence even more common
Mistakes seen as personal failings
ANTIDOTES: Develop a culture of appreciation; develop a learning organization, where it’s expected that everyone makes mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning
Sense of Urgency
Continued sense of little time that undermines inclusivity, and/or democratic and thoughtful decision-making
This sacrifices potential allies in favor of quick or highly visible results
Reinforced by funding proposals that promise (and funders that expect) too much for too little
ANTIDOTES: Realistic workplans; leadership that understands that things take longer than anyone expects; discuss and plan for what it means to set goals of inclusivity and diversity, particularly in terms of time; write realistic funding proposals
Defensiveness
Organization and energy focused on preventing abuse and protecting those in power
Criticism of those with power viewed as inappropriate
Difficult to raise new or challenging ideas
Energy devoted to avoiding hurt feelings and working around defensive people
ANTIDOTES: Understand how defensiveness is linked to fear (of losing power, face, comfort, privilege); name defensiveness as a problem when it is one
Quantity Over Quality
Measurable things are most valued
Little value attached to process
Discomfort with emotion and feelings
ANTIDOTES: Include process goals in planning; develop a values statement about how work will be done in the organization; develop methods for measuring process; recognize when you need to get off the agenda to address people’s feelings and underlying concerns
Worship of the Written Word
Those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, even in orgs where ability to relate to others is key
The org doesn’t value other ways in which information gets shared
ANTIDOTES: Analyze other ways people get and share information; come up with alternative ways to document what is happening; work to recognize the contributions and skills that every person brings to the organization; make sure anything written can be clearly understood (is jargon-free)
Only One Right Way
Belief there is one right way to do things and that people will learn and adopt it
When they do not, then something is wrong with them
ANTIDOTES: Accept that there are many ways to get to the same goal; notice and name behavior when folks/groups push “one right way”; acknowledge you have a lot to learn from community partners’ way of doing; be willing to adapt; never assume you/the organization knows what’s best for others
Paternalism
Decision-making clear to those with power; unclear to those without it
Those with power feel capable of making decisions for and in the interests of those without power
Those with power don’t view as important or necessary understanding the views/experience of those for whom they decide
ANTIDOTES: Ensure transparency about decision-making; include people affected by decisions in the process
Either/Or Thinking
Things are either/or, good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us
No sense that things can be both/and
Results in oversimplifying complex things
Increases sense of urgency that we must do this or that, without time to consider a middle way
ANTIDOTES: When people use 'either/or’ language, push for more than two alternatives; when people simplify complex issues, encourage deeper analysis; with urgent decisions, make sure people have time to think creatively
Power Hoarding
Little value around sharing power
Those with power feel threatened when change is suggested & experience this as a judgement of them
They also assume they have everyone’s best interests at heart, and that those wanting change are ill-informed, emotional, or inexperienced
ANTIDOTES: Include power-sharing in your org’s values statement; discuss that good leaders develop the power and skills of others; understand that change is inevitable and that challenges to leadership can be productive and healthy
Fear of Open Conflict
People in power try to ignore or run from conflict
When someone raises an “issue,” response is to blame that person rather than look at the issue
Emphasis on being polite, so raising difficult issues is being impolite, rude, or out-of-line
ANTIDOTES: Role play ways to handle conflict before it happens; distinguish between politeness and raising hard issues; once a conflict is resolved, reflect on how it was resolved and/or might have been handled differently
Individualism
Little experience or comfort working as part of a team
People feel responsible for solving problems alone
Accountability goes up and down, not sideways to peers or those whom the organization serves
Desire for individual recognition and credit
Competition valued over collaboration
ANTIDOTES: Include teamwork in your org values statement; make sure that credit is given to all those who participate in an effort, not just the leaders; practice group (not individual) accountability; use meetings to solve problems, not just report activities
I’m the Only One
Connected to individualism, the belief that if something is going to get done right, I have to do it
Little or no ability to delegate work to others
ANTIDOTES: Evaluate people based on their ability to delegate to others; evaluate people based on their ability to work as part of a team to accomplish shared goals
Progress is Bigger, More
Observed in systems of accountability and success measurement
Progress is an org that expands (adds staff, projects, etc.) or serves more people (regardless of quality of service)
Gives no value, not even negative value, to the costs of this so-called progress
ANTIDOTES: Ask how actions today will affect people seven generations from now; ensure that any cost/benefit analysis includes all costs, not just financial ones; ask those you work with and for to evaluate your/org performance
Objectivity
Belief that objectivity is possible
That emotions should not play a role in decision-making or group processes
Requiring people to think in a linear fashion and ignoring those who think in other ways
Impatience with any thinking that does not appear logical
ANTIDOTES: Realize that everybody’s perspective is shaped by their worldview; realize this means you, too; push yourself to sit with discomfort when people express themselves in ways unfamiliar to you; assume that everybody has a valid point and your job is to understand it
Right to Comfort
Belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort
Scapegoating those who cause discomfort
Equating individual acts of unfairness against white people with systemic racism that targets people of color
ANTIDOTES: Understand that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning; don’t take everything so personally
My douchey coworker started a story by being like, “You know Mr. Beast?”
And honest to god, I don’t, but I suspect if this coworker likes him then I wouldn’t care for him. I had the unparalleled pleasure of going, “The moldy cheese guy?”
That was the only thing I knew associated with the name.
Fully derailed him. He was absolutely baffled and stopped to google the moldy cheese scandal. So thank you tumblr, for sharing about the moldy cheese so I didn’t have to listen to that anecdote.
the concept and idea of “you can always start trying to be a better person” is extremely important to me both in media and irl and i continue to be deeply deeply disturbed by the trend on this site pushing that these ideas in media are bad writing or even morally reprehensible
because theyd rather someone stay terrible or just straight up die than become a better person
from a compassionate point of view it’s deeply distressing and from a pragmatic point of view it’s outright frustrating
it’s fucked up.
What is the most important step a man can take?
The next.
I think part of the pushback about this is the idea that, to “redeem” bad people, their victims must first forgive them for unforgivable acts.
This is false. No one is obligated to forgive you. You can learn from your mistakes and become the best, kindest person on earth, and the
people you’ve hurt still won’t forgive you, and you’ll have to accept that. And that doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to grow. Because we aren’t just “pure” or “sinful”, we’re complex.
