Links: depressing (with bonus link of gorgeous photographs)

[sonia]

First, fantastically gorgeous photographs (although I could do without the flame effects). Olympus and its new gods by Ana Martínez. via firecat.

A couple of Vox articles I'm putting here for future reference.

Life in authoritarian states is mostly boring and tolerable by Thomas Pepinsky, Jan 9, 2017. I would add, boring and tolerable for people with enough privilege, where "enough" can change over time.

The incredibly frustrating reason there’s no Lyme disease vaccine by Brian Resnick, May 30, 2019.

And we also can't have nice things because: we haven't done our homework on coronaviruses, as noted by squirrelitude and siderea, August 17, 2020.

Comments

[sonia]

Thanks for the thoughts. Your second paragraph makes complete sense. And yet. While I don't know enough political theory to argue the point, I believe that resources will probably be distributed more fairly and therefore more people will have a sense of possibility in a democracy than in an authoritarian system. I also think it depends strongly on whom you ask, whether there's a sense of possibility. My body does not believe in benevolent authoritarianism, although my mind easily concedes your point.

[asakiyume]

I don't have enough political theory either! Nor (for which I'm thankful) personal experience. I was so taken with my own idea that I mentioned it to my husband, and he argued that if we were talking about a person's sense of possibility for themself, it also comes down to *personal* differences. So it seems like my notion has a problems.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought that authoritarianism could be benevolent though--I think I was imagining the sense of potential sort of regardless of, or even in spite of, the political structure. Definitely some governments can hinder a sense of opportunity and possibility, but I wasn't thinking that if there *is* a sense of opportunity that that necessarily is because of good actions or intentions on the part of the government. In any case, though, I think my idea had a lot of flaws.

[sonia]

Thanks for the update!