“A new viral term promoting slow living has taken China’s cyberspace by storm, and authorities are moving quickly to stamp it out.
Tangping (躺平), or “lying down flat” is a counter-culture philosophy championing minimalism and anti-consumerism.
The “lying down flatist” believes that people are more than mere extensions of capital. The “lying down flatist” is in open rebellion against the hard-working, credit-hungry, striving existence promoted from the top down in China.
The idea originated from a short post, “Lying down flat signifies justice”, published on a mainland Chinese forum, Baidu Tieba, in April.”
Given that China(the gov’t)’s Imperialism (and its relationship to US/EU Imperialism & Finance) is literally a huge driving factor in Capitalism and literally destroying many countries in Africa and other continents, lying down is, indeed, literally justice.
“I haven’t been working for two years, I have just been hanging around and I don’t find it a problem. Pressure mainly comes from comparisons with your own peers and the conventional values of the older generation. These pressures keep popping up…Messages about “fertility” are pressed upon you by an “invisible organism”. But, we don’t have to abide by these (norms). I can live like Diogenes and sleep inside a wooden bucket, enjoying sunshine. I can live like Heraclitus in a cave, thinking about the “logos”. Since this piece of land had never had a school of thought that upholds human subjectivity, I can develop one on my own. Lying down flat is my philosophical movement. Only through lying down flat can humans stand at the center of the universe.“
Godspeed to ppl everywhere opting out of being used as tools of destruction by greedy assholes
i hope people read this and realize that chinese people arent just the helpless drones that western propaganda have made them out to be. unlike what people who so staunchly think that chinese people are just sheep who obey out of fear believe, chinese people are indeed politically aware and participate in activism by protesting against their capitalist government (emphasis on the capitalist, just in case anyone’s understanding of china is still stuck in the cold war era)
once again, the people all over the world have more in common with each other than they do to their governments. realizing this is an important step in building global solidarity in the fight against imperialism and capitalism. continuing to operate under the idea that asians are somehow less capable of critical thinking and political awareness will only undermine these efforts
How would anarchists stop the systemic and cultural oppression of disabled people, many of whom depend on governmental safety nets and money/supplies etc to survive and not be abused and to literally be allowed to exist? Like, what’s the anarchist version of the ACA and the ADA?
The short answer is mutual aid. A lot of mutual aid networks existed prior to the pandemic, but they’ve become more widespread recently - and a current example of what you’re talking about, ime, is people buying & delivering groceries and supplies for disabled neighbors. Unfortunately, under current US law, anarchists actually have trouble providing more direct aid to legally disabled people - because to maintain their disabled status and government aid, they’re prevented from ever having more than $2,000 in savings or checking accounts, making it very difficult to provide direct financial assistance. I know a lot of mutual aid funds for disabled (and otherwise marginalized) people get around this by allowing people to apply for a specific dollar amount, but again…it’s largely a matter of the law hurting as much as, or more than, it helps.
A hypothetical anarchist society would like…probably not have money, but include provisions for disabled folks in their constitution & make accomodations for their participation in governance. The goal is to build a society that is free from unjust hierarchies & can provide for everyone’s needs, and the needs of disabled people are included in that.
It would also be much easier for disabled folks to figure out work they are not just capable of doing, but could thrive doing, in a society where labor isn’t coerced via capital - to use myself as an example, my ADHD means I thrive in outdoor rec & outdoor, but most of the current jobs in those fields that exist year-round and pay a living wage are either impossibly competitive or require a level of administrative workload my brain Cannot Handle. If my basic needs were provided for, I could offer my skills way more readily (instead of using them in a patchwork of maaaaaaaybe 2-3 months of low-pay labor a year & unpaid “volunteer” labor for events).
I guess the issue I have with anarchism as the solution to the problem of helping the disabled and other low income groups, is that wouldn’t it be more helpful to just get rid of the legislation that hurts, rather than throwing the whole government away.
I absolutely don’t mean any disrespect here, I was there not long ago too - but the problem with liberalism is that it’s based on just wishing really hard and debating with people and hoping that you can change enough minds to win an election and maybe (if your representatives actually go through with their promises and listen to their constituents, and if they aren’t roadblocked by the opposition) implementing a few changes that will stick around until the next guy gets elected and immediately tries to repeal them. On the individual level, all you can do is vote every couple years and argue with people who are already receiving constant media blasts telling them the exact opposite of what you are - and even if you do get them to vote, the rules are already so thoroughly rigged against you that you might still lose even with 3 million more votes
As we’ve been saying all throughout this thread, anarchists are more focused on getting out there and solving problems on their own. When you vote, you’re hoping for a small chance to maybe create a better life for disabled people a few years down the road if you win - but when you do mutual aid, you’re getting groceries to disabled people right now. And all we need to do is keep building up those programs until, one day, they can replace the state entirely
Capitalism will never offer a life of dignity to those who don’t generate it enough profits. We’ll always have a second-class life, dependent on conditional and unreliable assistance behind miles of red tape, if we’re even allowed to survive at all. The ruling class is constantly fighting to make disabled people like us more miserable, more precarious, less of a “burden” - the only reason they don’t succeed is because people fight back, not in the voting booth but directly
Taking care of the sick and disabled is human nature, and has been as long as we‘ve been humans. It’s only through the institutions of competition, isolation, and selfishness that that instinct is partially suppressed. But we can build a world where neighbors help each other just because they care about each other and there’s plenty to go around, where your opportunity to live a good life isn’t reliant to your productivity
i made this with the image ai generator today with the prompt “sims 1 satan’s hell”. i also generated an image from the prompt “pissing on ronald reagan’s grave” but it was less successful
this was the reagan grave piss prompt result. i hate the humanoid figures in it but the toilets superimposed on the grave are great
Nooo, we aren’t living through a new red scare at all
WASHINGTON — Officials in a little-known security unit within the Commerce Department conducted unauthorized surveillance and investigations into the agency’s employees that targeted people of Chinese and Middle Eastern descent, Senate investigators said in a new report.
The report, informed by more than two dozen whistle-blowers and released this week by Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Commerce Committee, concluded that the Investigations and Threat Management Service functioned for more than a decade as “a rogue, unaccountable police force,” opening thousands of unauthorized investigations into department employees, often for specious reasons.
The unit, an internal security office inside the Commerce Department, became fixated on rooting out foreign espionage, according to the report, resorting to searching employees’ email accounts for certain phrases in Chinese and flagging “ethnic surnames” for background checks through secure intelligence databases. In some cases, its agents would covertly search employees’ offices wearing face masks and gloves, sometimes picking locks to gain entry.
If you’re not familiar with all the functions of the Commerce Department, it houses things like the National Institute of Standards (NIST), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and a number of other national scientific organizations that form a backbone of government science and technical decision making. Apparently their internal security became so afraid that their Chinese employees were out to steal American science that they just started breaking into people’s offices and emails with no warrants and no oversight, out of some paranoid intellectual property revanchism.
