I do not recognize tension or any form of prioritization between the individual and the community. I reject it. Life without interdependence is not a life worth living, and our inner voices that white people tell us is so individualistic are the voices of our relationships and communities, slung like riotous garlands across time and space, that tell us how best to relate to and contribute to those in community with us.
There was an interesting comment to this 2p that got cut off, found here: https://soc.punktrash.club/objects/bdc86c85-e804-46b5-8ad0-e2b671784c80 The first part of the comment stated that the flower metaphor doesn't really work because flowers don't need morality. With all respect to @Milouchkna , someone I hold in high regard, maybe humans don't need morality either. With this imagery, I want to shake up the grip moral obligation has on us by imagining ourselves as beholden not to morality but to our own and others' flourishing. My thoughts and acts increasingly revolve around serving and learning life in its weirdly woven wonders, not ideas of right or wrong.
@ljwrites yes. This.
@Milouchkna ooh, those sound interesting 👀
@Milouchkna I love that phrase, co lean! Yeah, so much of morality-based help is about the ~duty~ to help ~those less fortunate~, and who wants to be an obligation or a charity case? It's objectifying and condescending. If it becomes instead about wanting people to thrive because one recognizes the interdependent relationships between them, it becomes about mutual strategizing and pooling different strengths for common survival and flourishing.
and i regretted my re-draft on second thought <_<(i'm so keeping that one in mind now)
@Milouchkna OOPS I replied to the earlier draft of this post in a weird space-time slip lmao. I was replying to your original draft, then suddenly it blanked out and started loading. I assumed the instance/internet was weird and left for a while to come back and resume my reply--without reading whether your post had changed omg. In retrospect it must have been because you were deleting and redrafting. A fortunate mistake I guess!
Thank you for this.
@ljwrites To quote my blog post from three years ago: "I spent years exploring the concept of freedom in my stories, and no matter how I looked at it, one conclusion imposed itself every time: there is no freedom without belonging. If you don't belong anywhere, that doesn't make you free, but adrift. Conversely, if you belong where you are, are you really a prisoner? It's not like you'd leave even if the door was wide open." -- https://felix.plesoianu.ro/blog/freedom-and-responsibility-in-software.html
@ljwrites this is the best way I've ever heard my feelings about community written
@arcade thank you! <3
And no, "community" does not mean you must stay in places and with people that stifle and poison you. A flower is not morally obligated to bloom in hostile soil and neither are you. There can be no true togetherness where you are not wanted in your fullness. You can stay locked in dreaming seed to survive until the winds of life and luck cup you in their wild and supple hands to drop you on better ground. May you there explode into bloom.