Institutions 🙄

Book of TREE 2.23

On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced the thing we already know: Meta exists to make money and preserve its own influence.

This is just one example of an institution created by people for people making ongoing choices to harm people. (If you want to be gloomified, here are eight more from a couple years ago when the first version of this post went out.) The people who seem to be harmed the most are the ones who don’t fit the mould of what is chosen to be acceptable. I’m writing to you about this because non-mould-fitters also happen to make up a large proportion of FFOREST folk.

Institutions crush people who don’t fit or are inconvenient. It’s always been this way. But also, it seems like we are at a part of history’s cycle where our institutions are so stiff and geriatric and obsessed with self-preservation that they are consuming and crushing people at a higher rate than usual. It seems like ‘normal’ people who have been good at squishing themselves into the mould are feeling the pain that the ‘weirdos’ feel all the time.

I’m using the word ‘seems’ because I don’t have hard evidence. I’m writing about things I’ve experienced and heard.

So what’s the uplifting point here? Where is the beautiful insight to bounce you out of bed and into a glorious Thursday of joy?

I’ll have a go…

• If things are feeling extra broken to you, it’s not just you. You’re not alone.

• Institutions promise you the most horrific consequences if you remove yourself from their control. Sometimes they are correct. Sometimes the consequences are there but they aren’t horrific at all. Sometimes the institutions are flat out lying. You can figure out which are which, especially if you get some help from the outside.

• Institutions are failing and will continue to fail, not all at once, not apocalyptically, here and there, sometimes partially. This will affect the way you live. What can you do to be ready for it?

• Inside or out of an institution, Relationships matter. More than anything else. Work on those.

• You are a human, living and working as part of the life of this planet. This means the things you already do matter. The odds are that the things you do matter in the direction of goodness.

• If you need to, have a cry or a rant about the state of the world, then get back to mattering in the direction of goodness, you beautiful glorious FFOREST human.

• You are surrounded by goodness. Remember to look around and see it.

Some Doja Cat today, I think.

Keep finding the good
Jeff