Ain't got two thirds of a shit to spare that those heedlessly intent—on harming myself and loved ones—can more easily ignore what would readily disregard without my help.

My only concern is how my own actions mitigate the incessant resounding drumbeat of dread and despair that those of us paying attention live and breathe every day.

Using #CW is an act of care for those in my communities, even beyond my purview.

Fuck haters and doctrinaires alike if they don't like it.

#CWUpMaskUp

Starting to prune my home timeline.

Removing follows to accounts that willfully refrain from using CW and ALT-text and likewise boost others who also willfully refrain from such.

Want my home timeline to be dedicated to things that are likely to get a boost from me.

Will go doomscrolling through hashtags once or twice a day looking for boostably CW'd posts, but not going to have my home cluttered with content that will never boost to others.

#CWUpMaskUp

I, myself, am still unlearning.

Still learning anew.

(Hence the retroactive application of CW to the posts in this thread.)

#CWUpMaskUp

I mean, I get it.

Toxic habits from the toxic place take time to unlearn.

Unlearning, however, doesn't just happen. One has to actively choose it. Actively choose to learn different.

#CWUpMaskUp

One got boosted on a technicality of being a CW length intro to an article link.

------

Sad really.

For folk who are so up in arms about so many willfully refusing to do a simple things to protect others, themselves willfully refusing to do a simple thing to protect others.

This is much broader than public health. This is about how we choose to relate to one another in society. How we choose to do so during a pandemic is merely an expression of that.

#CWUpMaskUp

Scrolling through followed hashtags, looking for things to boost.

Skipping over posts with no CW.

And skipping...

And skipping...

And skipping...

Oh, here's one! Boost!

And skipping...

And skipping...

And skipping...

And skipping...

#CWUpMaskUp

Blocking folk who spout crap like "people have all the tools" to avoid un-CW'd content.

Not here for one-way masking energy.

#CWUpMaskUp

More on this:

🧵 https://mastodon.social/@beadsland/109323694379483880

#CWUpMaskUp

@clayote You seem to be confusing a warning with passivity.

Nothing about being loud and rude says you can't announce you're arrival. Indeed, that's kinda the point.

Nothing about being loud and rude says you can't give those in your own community a choice about whether to be swept up in the protest or to sit this one out.

Nothing about #CW is about being forgotten. We know full well that no one forgets us when we're wearing a mask.

Like masks, CW stand out.

#CWUpMaskUp

"Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality," continues Pirsig, "that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.…"

If we don't #care for our values, our #ethics, what exactly are we demanding? We who would say #CovidIsNotOver?

#CWUpMaskUp

Gonna close this thread with the following:

"I think that if we are going to reform the world," writes Pirsig, "and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature, which are inevitably dualistic, full of subjects and objects and their relationship to one another; or with programs full of things for other people to do. I think that kind of approach starts it at the end and presumes the end is the beginning."

#CWUpMaskUp

To be clear, there's no universal #ethics. Unlike moralism, ethics can make no claim to being the righteously true path.

Ethics is about taking care of our tools—where our tools include the methods we use to navigate how we make choices in the world.

Care takes a lot more work and attention than moral pronouncements. It's hard work, because it is the work of changing ourselves—first & foremost.

Once termed consciousness-raising, this work is now just called "the work".

#CWUpMaskUp

So, yeah, Eugen is speaking truth when saying there "is definitely no such thing as a consensus on usage of content warnings on the fediverse…by definition there is no single culture on it. Different corners have different expectations and customs.

And yeah, #CW may cut differently for some folk as a matter of #intersectionality.

But this isn't about "different corners" or different lived experience.

This is about #ethics, about the harms that come from a lack of #care.

#CWUpMaskUp

The above is Pirsig's reply to the following query:

"What if the machine is wrong and I feel peaceful about it?"

[Sound familiar?]

"That's self-contradictory," responds Pirsig—before delving into the relationship between #care and knowledge.

#Ethics are tools. If we don't care for our ethics, we aren't going to know when we've gone wrong. The thought'll never occur to us.

So the question before us: What sort of ethics are we seeking?

Feeling peaceful is killing folk.

#CWUpMaskUp

In my introduction #onhere, is the following line:

#abolitionist by way of #STS, #NVC, Pirsig.

That last item there references Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—a book that is, in part, a meditation on the relationship one has to one's tools and the relationship each tool has with the problems it is used to solve.

"If you really don't care you aren't going to know it's wrong. The thought'll never occur to you. The act of pronouncing it wrong's a form of caring."

#CWUpMaskUp

This is a question of #ethics. As in, what sort of ethics shall we embody in our lives and model for others?

With all the talk of mandates—semantics of protections vs. restrictions—this very basic question can get lost.

No matter how much we may wish folk do a thing—how much we may even want to call on state power to make such a thing happen or else educate folk about why it ought to be done…

If our own ethics don't align with that thing…

What exactly are we demanding?

#CWUpMaskUp

When it comes to those of us who have been desperately seeking to move our society toward one that is less #ableist, less #eugenicist, less committed to casting the vulnerable aside and recklessly endangering lives & health for the sake of #normalcy, we know all too well how things are now.

How do we want them to be?

One where folk are willing to do simple things to protect others?

One where refusing to do such simple things continues to be normalized?

It's our choice.

#CWUpMaskUp

Likewise, recent days have seen discussion among Black folk—and BIPOC more generally—concerning the experience of Mastodon as being pretty much consistent with the experience of racism in society generally.

My sense is there are those among such communities who come down on both sides of the #CW question, with compelling arguments for each their respective positions.

Always, such conversations are about the effort to reconcile how things are with how we want them to be.

#CWUpMaskUp

Eugen—the person who first decided to create a FOSS project with a hairy pachyderm with a long proboscis for a mascot—chimed in today on #CW discourse:

"People who are arriving now have as much right to be here and bring their own culture as the ones who came before them."

Sure. Fine.

Except again, those of us seeking to change the #eugenicist culture we find ourselves in…

Have to decide what sort of culture we, ourselves, want to have.

This is bigger than a platform.

#CWUpMaskUp

Do we create a community for those with #LongCovid & those #StillCoviding—on this platform—that includes all those who are in full agreement that #CovidIsNotOver and are just as furious as the rest of us are about a society gone quiet-part-out-loud #eugenicist?

What if some need—from time to time—some relief from all that?

"Just don't log on! You've got filters, so what's the problem?"

"Just stay home! You've got a mask, so what's the problem?"

Can't have it both ways.

#CWUpMaskUp