why this exists
Everything I lived, said, or wrote — everything I loved — I considered communication1
Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?2
i often think about how fascinating it is that everything just works, despite the deep instability of society and the world in general, everywhere. nobody understands the whole system. everything is made up of parts that get smaller and smaller, in volume and in function, and someone has to make sure all of them are doing their job, efficiently. a lot of it runs on trust, habit, and assumptions we sometimes can’t even explain, but that’s just how things are.
a system is constantly in a metastable state. on the surface, everything functions. a map with all the correct borders and country names shows a society that holds itself together enough to live another day. but as we get closer to the microscopic level, to what a certain society actually contains, the most common elements are the conflicts between progressivism and conservatism, which are polar opposites of the same spectrum. in a purely stable system, such differences would cause total collapse. in an unstable one, society would be in permanent chaos. a metastable society is full of potential for chaos and tension. it shifts between being on the brink of total collapse one week and seeming fully in place the next.
sometimes this tension becomes too much. a system this loaded with potential eventually reaches a point where it can no longer hold everything together. there is so much surplus with nowhere to go, and in a system that shifts between stability and instability, letting that tension out can only mean radical instability: catastrophic war.
i’ve lived my whole life in a place where the system is in a purely unstable state. having lived in a place where people from more fortunate places would often say “i can’t imagine how people are living there,” and being asked “isn’t it a desert or a warzone there?” every time i meet someone, i have often felt conflicted. the content i’m exposed to in my digital life is radically different from the actual world i wake up in every day.
this conflict is mostly about the instability that exists everywhere in this world, and how much pure chance plays a role in someone’s life from the moment they’re born, or even before. where you are born can shape how much you ultimately amount to and the direction your life takes. and it doesn’t stop at the place of birth. it continues into the family you are born into. it works like a numbered list: first your place of birth, then your parents, your gender, your skin color, and then branching into all the small, varied ways we differ from one another. each layer shapes your life to a different degree, and together they decide the kind of oppression and struggle you will face.
so in a way, i wanted to leave a mark somewhere, one that will hopefully stay. someday someone may stumble upon it and dive into how those people live, how they think, and the difficulties they face. at the very least, it can be an opportunity to reflect on the privileges some people have without noticing them. everyone is privileged in one way or another, but it’s hard to trace who has the flat-out, rock-bottom living conditions. and that was the long answer. the shorter, more honest one is: why not?
after all, you don’t meet a trans girl from iraq every day. this is one of the things i want to document, from a legal, religious, and medical standpoint, and from my own lived experience.
The question, therefore, is not whether the status of women, or those on the bottom, is better or worse, but the type of organization from which that status results3