if you want to be the exception then go be one. the exceptions are ordinary people who refused to accept an ordinary outcome and then behaved accordingly for years, in rooms nobody entered, on mornings nobody remembers, long past the point anyone was watching.
I’m convinced that creativity is the elixir of life, not ambition. not productivity. but simple act of making. the devotion to beauty. the refusal to go numb.
In order to become a better person, you must first realize how horrible you really are. Not in the dramatic sense, but in the quiet ways you sabotage yourself, repeat unhealthy patterns, hurt people who care about you, or tolerate what wounds you. You cannot grow if you keep pretending you're innocent in the story you've created.
lead tampon in me while i eat my listeria meat & cyclospora riddle veggies and wash it all down with microplastic water. afterwards, i inhale wildfire smoke and listen to the serene sounds of the data center built across the street. there’s a flock cam too recording it all
You reduce crime by eliminating poverty. You reduce crime with universal healthcare, public housing, livable wages, and free college. You reduce violence by creating happy, healthy communities that aren’t constantly fighting over basic needs and material resources.
you must believe you are special and then go so hard, for so long, with such violent refusal to accept any other ending, that reality itself starts running out of ways to tell you no. you must wage a war daily against the ordinary outcome, until the belief you invented out of nothing in a room by yourself has been hammered into the world so many times that it stops being a claim and becomes reality.
I honestly hate that we've normalized the idea that all opinions are valid. I think we should get back to telling people that they are ill informed & ignorant
If you are born into a family with financial security l actually think dedicating your life to actively trying to help people is probably the best you could do.
Growing up hearing “Wikipedia isn't a valid source” and then entering a workplace where people say “just ask ChatGPT” is a surprisingly strange timeline
Unpopular opinion: I believe the goal of a society SHOULD be to secure the happiness and highest quality of life possible for its citizens NOT to endlessly generate capital for the ownership class at the expense of everyone else.
If you want to become a better thinker, study subjects that demand logic. Computer science, economics, philosophy, mathematics, statistics, engineering.