Schoolism in fact looked really interesting out of those on-demand art course platforms because there's a lot of Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks and other western entertainment veterans. However, it breaks my heart that they're paywalling it and not offering a monthly subscription to enjoy all these stuff.

Aaron Blaise, Disney veteran, at least is the one who loves doing very cheap offers and he does it quite often. I bless him and he's a good person to do that.

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I'm trying to consciously break it, but this time of year is especially hard. I love gift-giving—I truly do—but there is this pull towards useless crap from corporate sources.

You know, "here, have an action figure. It's just more plastic trash enriching a soulless corporation, but it's related to a character you love, so doesn't it feel like it expresses your identity?"

I hate it. I want this cancer out of me.

I've always agreed with the sentiment "buying more won't make you happy", & to a certain degree I've lived that way, but ...I also have habits & ways of thinking that suggest maybe I don't always believe it

I've never had much spending cash, so I've always tempered my expectations to what I can afford. I don't really envy luxury cars or whatever because that's just out of my reach & I will not allow myself to be miserable about it.

That's great, but that's not the same as being free of it.

Like, I've definitely gotten easily caught up in collecting things that I feel reflect my identity in some way, related to something I like. I purchase objects to show people who I am & to make myself feel like that person.

Gross.

Now, I do love delightful objects: a mug, a print, what the fuck ever. I'm not going to stop loving them. I am going to stop picking up random corporate crap though. If I'm selecting important objects in my life, I want them to really mean something.

And when you let go of the impulse towards instantaneous consumption, one of the interesting things is that the "expensive" things created by actual humans may become slightly more "affordable".

I mean human-made things, especially including useful things. Why buy some crappy mass-manufactured thing if you are able to find something crafted by someone? Why buy some extra object to make your life seem special if the useful things in your life already carry meaning?

I like pretty things. I like interesting things. That's pretty damn human, & I don't think it's bad. But the pleasure we feel over the artifacts of our life is so, so exploitable. We can be induced to trade things we value for things we don't by novelty, by cheapness, by availability.

I'm pretty sure the Luddites were right, & the Industrial Revolution was largely a mistake. Some capacity for mass production can be useful, but mostly...what has it done for us?

What does mass availability of bad quality shit sold by the people who hoard all the resources & the means of production fucking do for humanity?

Are we happier because some of us can acquire so many useless & soulless things at the cost of our own humanity?

And it is only some of us too.

I have enough comfort in my life to be exploited for whatever slice of what I get from my labor remains after survival. It's not much, but it's enough to gobble up if there are enough people

Yet it comes at the cost of environmental devastation, horrible exploitation & abuse, & even fucking genocide for other people. So that some of us can collect a bunch of garbage made by no one in particular for the sole purpose of selling for more than it cost to make.

So yeah, I think consumerism is one of the great evils afflicting the world.

It's certainly a poison I am trying to flush out of my veins.

I just want to be done making the things I purchase part of my identity. I want to be done with soothing myself with novelty. I want to be done with impulsively acquiring things for no fucking reason. I want to get free & clear of this. I want to achieve consumption sobriety.

This year has been a good start. Next year will be even better.

I think the thing we most mean by "late stage capitalism" is capitalism at its most bare & obvious.

People have been manipulated—in many cases basically willingly manipulated (comfort & convenience & not thinking about their real cost is so fucking appealing)—by promises which have simply failed to come true. Have failed spectacularly.

Yes, we "should have known", because this robbery, this exploitation has been out in the open for so long. But people like comfort.

It's no longer comfortable.

We are at a moment of possible change. I feel sure of it.

I do not know what we can do with this, how far we can go, but I do believe there is a tipping point, & we are nearly there.

This shit just doesn't work like it used to. It was always a grift, a long con, but the thing about long cons? Eventually they go on too long. You can't prop up the rotten structure forever. Something will give.

It's not inevitable that things get better, but the opportunity exists.

I'm not trying to predict the future, but I am trying to read the present, & I really do feel the world shifting under my feet. We don't live in the 90s anymore. Or the 2000s. The world I knew once is not the world I know now.

It's dark in some ways. It's really dark. I sure wish that—for instance—more people would have listened in the 80s, one of the times when consumerism experienced new life & just fucking exploded. Things were fucking dark enough then.

On the other hand, people aren't comfortable with the state of things in quite the same way they were then, & that's a bright spot, in my mind.

Things feel different. Things are different. Exactly what happens from here is unknown, but it is not "the same world it has always been". That's not how things work. And in every upheaval, there is opportunity.

Something I do not discount is my own awakening & the awakening of others on a similar path to mine.

You can feel unique & alone as you wake up from the comfortable slumber of ignorance. You try to shake others awake & they just won't budge.

Well, except the ones who do. Maybe they only turn in their sleep, but maybe they start to open their eyes. I'm one of them. So are you. So are so many others.

Casting off the bonds of cultish, religious extremism felt lonely to me, but if you look around, you find out you are not alone, not by a long shot.

You & I don't stand outside the stream of history. We are moved by our surroundings, affected by the same things other people are. We are not lonely watchers standing outside of everything. The currents reached us too, & they brought us here.

Who fucking knows what else could happen or who else could awake? Some people I thought would slumber forever are shaking off their grogginess & looking around.

The changes we see in ourselves are not only in us.

Maybe it doesn't seem like enough, but tides are changing. Who can say where people may wash up next?

Somebody—many, many, many somebodies, actually—woke me up. I was not anywhere near able to understand things the way I do now. I was deep in a cult. I was fucking brainwashed.

But somehow I'm here today. Some of that was me. Some of that is about the person I specifically choose to be. But I didn't get here by myself. I was moved, I was brought along, I was *changed*.