Achievement Unlocked
300 Dispatches From Dystopia Subscribers!
This is a milestone post to celebrate 300 subscribers!
Dispatches From Dystopia crossed that venerable threshold late last night, and I’m over the moon about it. I started this publication about two years ago with a desire to share my writing, speak truths about the dystopia, and connect with others who share my love for individual autonomy and the human thriving it engenders.
Three hundred may seem like small beans to some, but to me it’s a great wealth. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you fine people, whether paid or free subscribers. Your comments, your email opens, and the little red hearts you leave on my posts often make my day.
To celebrate, I’m offering a 20% discount on paid subscriptions through May 7!
(NOTE: Paid subscriptions are a little different here than you might be used to. I run a very active productivity group for free-thinkers and anarchists called Extremists Being Awesome. We meet almost every day for deep focus, extreme fellowship, and getting stuff done. Membership in that group is what you get for upgrading, and the price reflects that. I would like to have a lower-priced tier for people who don’t want that much perk, but until Substack gives writers more control over subscription tiers, that’s how it will remain. And almost all of my posts will remain free to read. If you do want to contribute, you can always buy me a coffee.)
For those new to Dispatches, I’d like to use this post as a round-up of some of my favorite pieces I’ve published over the past couple years, so you can get better acquainted.
I wrote this one in the early days of the damnable inflation that has still not let up:
“You care more about the economy than you do about people!” they cry. “We can’t prioritize the economy over lives!”
Here’s the thing the lockdowners haven’t understood up to this point, but that they must come to grips with as reality comes crashing down: The economy is people. The economy is lives.
Inflation is Awesome and Shortages are Your Fault
With price inflation becoming a daily reality around the world, the media wants you to know that everything is fine. More than fine! In fact, as far back as April 2021, journalists have been reporting that there’s nothing to see here. Inflation concerns were overblown, based on scant evidence. It was just conservative scaremongering. Why, there were plen…
And here’s a story from my childhood about freedom and satire:
Toilet Fires, Marilyn Manson, and the Sweet, Sweet Taste of Satire
In the eighth grade, a caper took place in the school bathrooms, involving fire and vast quantities of toilet paper. Understandably, the event caused anxiety among the teachers and administrators, and when schoolpeople are anxious, they are prone to dedicate all of their energies to the Making of Rules. Needless to say, the list of lavatory restrictions …
This one speaks of struggles in property management and clarifying the goodness at the core of your being:
One thing I’ve learned over years—practically a lifetime—of being an “extremist” is that trying to effect change in the outer world is a more or less futile proposition until you begin to effect change on an inner level.
Do the Inner Work (Or, How I Turned a Muddy Mess into a Self-Improvement Project)
How to Be Awesome, continued… This series is a primer for anarchists on how to be awesome. Check out the previous installments: Key 1: Be a Work in Progress. Key 2: Choose Your Own Curriculum in the School of Life Key 3: Practice Radical Self-Honesty
Here’s a piece about how freedom might not be as unobtainable as it sometimes seems:
Dystopia is simply mass-disharmony growing from the sick soil of mass-delusion. We recognize this as the utter and undeniable state of things when we see dystopia in the fictive world. In 1984, Winston Smith begins to see a glimmer of the truth beyond the delusion—that the world is not good, that people are not truly happy or secure (neither Party members or proles), that the power structure is neither honest nor righteous, that Big Brother himself may be the biggest delusion of all. The more he pursues this glimmer of truth the brighter it shines. And yet, by the end, he gives in to delusion because it is ultimately easier than living—and perhaps dying—in truth when everyone and everything around him is slave to the delusion.
Four-Leaf Clovers and Mass Delusion
When I was a kid, I used to search for four-leaf clovers. Always fruitlessly. I knew that they existed—though I had only personally seen one or two in real life, found by others and carefully preserved. I was also conversant in the superstition of my culture, so I knew that to find a four-leaf clover meant great luck, which, in my mind, produced the log…
And finally, in case you fancy a bit of dystopian fiction with your lunch, here’s Chapter One of my novel-in-progress, Technate 2051.
Chapter One: SKIN
The megacity’s skin shimmered and buzzed, casting the forest’s edge in a metallic light. Zappa Dobroshtan shrank back into the shelter of the trees. He had never stood so close to Charlanta’s border. In fact, he felt sure he’d only survived the past quarter century by avoiding it like a plague.
Thank you all again for being here with me. Here’s to many more posts in the stack, more brilliant conversations, and more steps made toward the exit from dystopia.
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-Starr
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