• 28 Dec, 2025 *

Setting boundaries via rejecting what threatens us seems to be a primary driver of social cohesion on the internet as well as off it. We often wanna portray our social group(s) as the one(s) that promote the most freedom and/or inclusion, but then we spend most of our time polishing our asterisks and making sure no one has the wrong kind of freedom.

Maybe we have to accept and include our need to reject and exclude as an open and deliberate part of our psyche. Maybe then we can reject what genuinely harms us rather than only what makes us feel reflexively scared or grossed out.

So what do I reject?

I reject other people setting my boundaries for me and expecting that everyone should adopt a singular set of boundaries, then calling this "unity".

I reject social cohesion based on appearance qualities or shared arbitrary behaviours. Culture should be deeper than whether we look similar or act similar. That’s just a clique.

I reject the morality of concentrated wealth. If we make enough, we should all have enough. There is no work that can be done, no invention valuable enough to offset the damage done by not sharing equitably. No work we do or invention we make can offset the lack of sharing equitably. If we don’t share, it’s not a society. It’s a farm.

I reject taking without giving, especially as this relates to the environments that sustain us. We have the capacity for this, but the worst parts of ourselves have been exploited for millenia and now we are here.

I reject the idea that any part of our nervous system’s reflex modes must be wholly suppressed. We need to be able to be able to fight, we need to be able to run, we need to be able to hide, we need to be able to lie. What we need to avoid is misunderstanding the scope and context for these feelings so they damage ourselves and others. Not everything that makes us feel anger is an enemy to destroy. Not everything that makes us feel fear can hurt us. Not everything that disgusts us should be banned.

I reject that the qualities we love in ourselves should be the only ones we don’t suppress. We are whole whether we like it or not, we just ignore it when that fact is terrifying, then we are blind and do the worst things blindly.

I reject the idea that there is a single way to live, to be, to feel, to think that is perfect, attainable, finite, and written down somewhere. There is no such thing as perfection, only abstraction. We have to live with the mess of being part of infinitely complex systems beyond our comprehension. There is so much freedom in this.

I reject the idea that this list should be comprehensive.

I reject taking shit too seriously.

Beyond these, I make a point of trying to accept as much as I am capable of accepting, and if you can’t accept that, I accept that until you make it my problem.