It brings me some comfort seeing how clear and easy to understand language is being used against these angry people.

They are being forced to explain their behaviour instead of arguing the specifics of words. It’s subtle but effective in my opion.

I am really enjoying this.

I just assume it’s code for “sword fighting.”

I’ve had the opportunity to live in Australia and had a chance to learn of the indigenous people there. Their stories and history. I made an effort to learn a bit more about how life was like before colonialists. Or at least what we were able to learn about life before colonialism as a lot of that information is filtered through colonialist eyes.

When I returned home to Canada, I was able to unpack all that I learned from the treatment of Australian indigenous people and apply that perspective to the Canadian Indigenous people. Honouring the land doesn’t simply mean how we treat our food or living sustainably. It includes the nature bound history and stories that communities have created and shared as it moved forward in history. A story of a volcano that was so destructive could live on for many human generations to come as it becomes a crucial story of the peoples that lived in that area. Breaking away from modern perspectives on human histories is difficult because there’s so much nuance that never gets recorded.

I don’t know how fair it is to compare pre-colonialist indigenous people’s behaviour to post colonialism. There are a lot of factors and skewed perspectives that need to be understood before I could talk more on that. From what I have learned, I also don’t think it’s fair to judge indigenous people’s behaviours to new technologies that was introduced after the arrival of Europeans. I feel it’s somewhere on the level of blaming children for the problems of today when it’s always been the adults who exploited and crafted everything there is today. I don’t believe the indigenous people’s ignorance to their own genocide should be their blame. This is just my perspective on things and I still have lots to learn regarding indigenous people and their history. I can always be wrong.

I also feel you quoted me unfairly. Later in that same paragraph I try to express that pre-colonialist life would not be easy, that it would be short and harsher and full of it’s own unique challenges. I’d prefer a short and intense life with daily struggles compared to a long, drawn out existence maintaining complex machines and worrying about the future. But that’s just me.

I remember when cottagecore first came into my worldview. By this time, it seemed to have already been an established aesthetic.

It gave off the same vibes as minimalism to me. A white washed, mass marketed solution for a busy world wanting simplicity. Commodified to show how simple a person can be. Another form of perversion and exploitation of simplicity by capitalism. Just like anything capitalism touches, it sucked every bit of meaning, soul and passion out of the concept of simplicity to sell more soulless junk.

I do agree that behind the aesthetics is a real yearning for simplicity. Technology is abstract and complex. For every bit of technology we add in our lives, it’s yet another layer of abstraction and complexity ontop countless more layers of abstraction and complexity. To me it feels like I am maintaining maintenance for abstract and complex ideas that I barely understand.

If this sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person talking in circles then you are beginning to understand why I feel so insane. I hate it.

I often fantasize about what life would have been like as a pre-colonialist indigenous person. Living in a way that honoured nature instead of controlling it. Observing and learning from nature. A closer connection to plants, animals and everything that lives. I don’t mean to romanticize this way of life. It has it’s challenges and limitations. It would be a harsher and possibly shorter life. I would give up all the modern technology for fewer simple tools, a smaller local community and a closer connection to the land and the life it offers. I want my story of a short, intense and meaningful life to shown on my skin through the scars and tattoos I have collected throughout it.

I feel both minimalism and cottagecore both offer modern approaches to simplicity and fail to properly address the disconnect between modern living and nature. Even before being perverted by capitalism. I’d prefer moving forward a combination of modern understanding and indigenous land practices. Reconnecting with community and nature.

I want people to feel joy the same joy I felt after I created a healthy, living pile of soil for my veggies to grow in. I’ve felt more satisfaction from that than fron any object I’ve ever bought.

It’s much easier to understand that shorter, milder winters means you can make people be even more productive. Now winter can’t slow down that road widening project.

I’m a guy. Over the past couple years I’ve become quite close with two women online who are both younger than me. One is 15 years younger than me while the other is 6 years younger.

I actually met the younger one through a former male work friend who met her first through a Minecraft server he used to host. He bought her a game that was on sale and the 3 of us played together. After my work friend went to bed, she and I talked a bit afterwords.

It was quite clear to me that she liked getting to know people and I entertained her conversation. At some point in the conversation, she casually brought up her current mental health state and it was at that point I knew she was someone I wanted to continue talking with.

At that time, I was struggling hard with my own mental health and my attempts at finding a support group that suited me wasn’t working. In that short time, she proved to be brutally self aware, honest and empathetic. She treated me as a person and allowed me to express myself honestly without judgement. At the time, I was working in the trades surrounded by men and I was only treated with judgement as a failure as a man. Even my close relationships with other women at the time was the same, I was a failure of a man.

Having this one person in the world treat me like a person meant so much to me. She allowed me to talk without judgement, allowed me to approach my problems my own way without judgement or unsolicited advice, and allowed me to be me without criticism or judgement. These are all things I craved at the time so returned all these actions to her as well. I learned a lot about mental health through her and and how she spoke of her friends.

Over the next year, we sort of became our own mental health support group and made ourselves available to each other because we wanted to and as a result became close friends.

A year later she approached me with a situation that made me incredibly angry and upset me for a couple weeks. She revealed to me that my work friend had been trying to sext with her and was making her feel uncomfortable. A man who was 15 years older than her, who met her when she was approximately 13 years old when she joined that minecraft server who she used to think of him as a mentor. A man who is married and has two adorable little girls himself in an amazing house with a huge chunk of property. I confronted him and then stopped talking to him. He sickens me. While she may have been of legal age at the time he tried to sext with her, he absolutely destroyed any trust she had in him. I have good reason to believe he’s made attempts with other women behind his amazing wife’s back and I can no longer stand to look or talk to him.

Even with all that her and I had been through, it still felt super strange to me being close friends with someone 15 years younger than me. But she provided me with fresh takes on mental health and I was able to provide a perspective based on experience that can only be understood through that additional 15 years of being alive.

I did go and meet her in her home country. As a thank you to her, I bought us matching tattoos. We were able to talk face to face and it was a very comfortable and easy going experience. By the end of my trip, I told her that she is my new sister (my actual sister barely remembers I exist) and she was quite happy with that.

The feeling of strangeness from this particular relationship has faded significantly now but still sort of lingers in the back of my mind. I think that’s more of result of the north American mindset. There is a lack of intergenerational community in modern north American life that negatively affects how people treat and view relationships with older/younger people. Learning goes both ways and I absolutely value the perspectives and views coming from younger people.

In a more just world, intergenerational relationships would be normal and boring. In it’s current form (from a north American perspective) it’s open to abuse through a power imbalance and that seems to inadvertently bring up feelings of guilt or shame in those who stumble across such relations.

For me, letting time pass and allowing those feelings of guilt and shame to dissipate leaving a normal, boring and safe friendship with someone who is younger than me.

Unfortunately, I’m still cautious talking about her to other people who I feel are judgemental. Especially men. The overwhelming majority of men in my life would assume our relationship is sexual. It’s easier to simply not talk about her so I can avoid fending off those gross accusations. Fortunately, my other friend who is 6 years younger is super understanding and awesome. I can talk about my younger friend with her and not feel uncomfortable about it. In that sense, I feel quite lucky to know both these people.