In any case I guess I'm just a fundamentally mediocre person who wish they could do something for the people they care about, but has no idea how to nor the capability to do it.

最近我读到的最好地捕捉到了那种疯狂的是Vandana Singh的短篇小说The Woman who Thought She was a Planet。泥土，传统，家庭，面子，飞向外太空。但与我想捕捉的那种又略微不同。仿佛两者来自相邻的两个时空。

Yea imo one of the worst consequences of being dominated by authoritarian + nationalist politics for so long is that it becomes a habit, which is hard to shake off even among those who recognize things have to change. It's why "dissidents" tend to fall back to nationalism and it makes me very sad

Def both for me lol

this is too relatable... I feel like with most of the people I encounter, they either turn into really close friends or I just never got to talk to them again. I could never maintain those "informal" friendship. I had a really hard time in university because of this.

I agree, but I guess my point is that the ability to think and empathize is something that can be either stifled or cultivated by society. For the last few centuries it has been deliberately stifled. If we want positive changes to happen, we have to put in the work to cultivate it.

4/4 which is also why I think blaming it on "human nature" is kinda counterproductive and akin to giving up to those already in power. At least for me, I want to do what I can do to reclaim the terms of resistance. It might ultimately be futile, but I feel like giving up will make me truly despair.

3/x which opens them up to malicious manipulation by those in power. The real question imo is WHO gets to define the content of those terms. And when the power to definition is so susceptible to the influence of money and authority rn, I don't exactly blame the common people for being misled.

2/x even if there is some "inherent" flaws to humanity, it kinda misses the point, which is that "principles" are often very vague. Like for example, when people say "women's rights", what exactly are the rights? People often have an intuitive idea of what they are, but they are hard to articulate -

1/x (sorry for the yap lol) I feel like it's a bit more nuanced than that. I'm quite skeptical about any claims to "human nature" because humans across space and time have shown to be extremely diverse and malleable to what their society encourages them to be. In any case even if -

This also once again reminds me of Fanon's warning on the limits of revolutionary struggles based on nationalism. Why things often change surprisingly little after supposedly era-defining "revolutions" is something that needs to be thought through more