slashmarks:

tassledown:

anais-ninja-bitch:

“you don’t get a cookie for being a decent human being”

lol, okay, but sometimes you do. like jfc why is it so bad to tell people “good job” especially when you want them to change their behavior and they have made progress towards doing so?

you teach people how to treat you, and i don’t think it’s news that positive reinforcement is a useful tool.

sometimes it’s like we don’t actually want others to do better, we just want to punish and punish and punish until we’re all exactly as miserable.

fuck that. i’m having cookies.

I was journalling recently and that actually came up for me in a sense.

We can of course change ourselves in any way we want to – but that requires not just a desire and a goal, but a pathway to follow.

Fundamentalism and conservatives have really clear, well-defined pathways that are easy to find and access, and everyone wants to herd you down them.

Being a good person should have the same landmarks for where the right way to go is. You have to remind people when they’re on the right path.

Don’t pretend you’re giving them credit for more than they’ve actually achieved, but “Yes this is the right direction!” is important.

I don’t think exactly reproducing the tactics of fundamentalism, which teaches people not to think but to strive for outside approval from authority, is a good idea – but I do think we should recognize that giving people a sense of what they can and should do, and providing social rewards for doing it, are part of why fundamentalists are so successful.

We’re not fundamentalists, because we allow discord, discussion and multiple ideas about what to do; but we can respect people for actually fucking doing it without falling into that trap.