The world is so depressing right now. One of the only reasons I am able to get up every day and face it is that I have work with @spritely@social.coop where I think we can do something meaningful and interesting to change it, and bring hope. That and the wonderful people in my life are what keeps me going.
And it's still incredibly hard to get up in the morning.
But I believe we can do better, we can build tools and spaces for a world worth living in.
I have to believe it. I have to, to keep going.
I have said before that my primary life philosophy is an "Ethics of Agency", and I have talked about this before on a podcast episode https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/11-an-ethics-of-agency.html
I'm not interested in "happiness" as much, because I don't want a rat that leans on a lever. The "ethics of agency" thinking is a rough approach modification of utilitarianism that replaces the measurements of "happiness" and "suffering" in Utilitarianism with "agency" and "subjection".
But "subjection" is weighed more heavily.
It's not agency for the individual, it's agency for everyone. The goal is to improve the agency of all. But the purpose is still about agency, so you do care about individuals, in that the entire point is that a person is able to be and define their best selves. So there's a push-pull effect.
It's imperfect, but it's how I think about things. It's just one lens of many, but it's the main one I think about things through, in terms of ethics.
But the real point is that: we should be constructing the best world we can in which people can thrive.
Measurements and metrics can be useful, if taken in aggregate, but we know full well that any metric that is used as a primary goal ends up becoming its own tyrannical destruction of the rest. (And thus, it's not surprising that money as the primary goal ends up being hyperdestructive.)
I don't want to "know who's better". I want to help people be able to be better.
This was an unexpected detour rant for the middle of the day. But it's something I care about. Perhaps I will collect it into a blogpost later.
I guess I will summarize, then leave the thread here...
It's incredibly easy to be full of despair right now. I get it, I feel it too.
Don't let anyone tell you that the people who are doing the best are because they deserve it or are "geniuses".
And also don't let anyone tell you that a group of people who by and large who seem to be suffering and aren't doing as well relative to the metrics of the system is because they're not worthy or have failed themselves.
We have to try to build the best world for each other we can, the best we can.
💜
Christine Lemmer-Webber