basic self protection can look extreme if you don’t understand the threat it’s defending against.
a medical professional recently remarked on the spikes on my wheelchair. so i said they are to prevent people from grabbing me. then i had to clarify that yes, that does happen, with alarming regularity. and people become affronted and sometimes even violent when you tell them not to do this. he was shocked.
to him, and to many people who see me in public, the line of spikes on the back of my wheelchair probably looks extreme, if they don’t think it’s part of some punk aesthetic or whatever.
so perhaps before you judge someone’s mode of self protection, as long as they aren’t causing harm, it is worth considering they might be defending themselves against a threat you have no idea about.
And just because a truly disturbing number of people don’t understand this - pushing a wheelchair user without permission is as freaky and horrible as it would be if someone came and physically moved your legs for you.
Sun Tzu is so fucking funny to me because for his time he was legitimately a brilliant tactician but a bunch of his insight is shit like “if you think you might lose, avoid doing that”, “being outnumbered is bad generally”, and “consider lying.”
My personal favourite is his lengthy lecture on the subject of Supplies Being Very Important I Cannot Stress Enough The Importance Of Protecting Your Supply Lines But Also Supply Lines Are Expensive As Shit So Steal The Enemy’s Supplies At Every Opportunity.
One of the more important things to consider about any historical work is the audience it was published for. The Art Of War was aimed at fancy nobles high on philosophy with little practical military experience who were nonetheless leading armies.
Sun Tzu, after desperatly trying to explain extremely basic logic to a bunch of upper-class twits, basically sat down and wrote the most elaborate “As per my last email” ever
we can’t forgive student loans because it’s an insult to people who worked so hard to pay off their student loans. we can’t invent the smallpox vaccine because it’s an insult to people who died of smallpox. we can’t invent the printing press because it’s an insult to monks who copied every single book by hand. caveman grog can’t invent the wheel because it’s an insult to caveman ugg who had to carry his things everywhere
If you live completely alone here’s your friendly reminder to step outside for a bit before the worse part of the existential dread starts to set in again.
You know the one. The layer underneath the regular existential dread that you only get to access if you don’t leave your apartment for three days.
Go to a coffee shop or walk your dog or something.
I’m obviously calling myself out here but seriously dude at least buy a soda from the 7/11 or something.
Talk to yourself out loud. Play your music out loud. Laugh out loud when the chance arises. That feeling when you haven’t used your voice for a while, or the silence that comes from a lack of human voices is a one-stop ticket to The Dread.
