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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
February 5, 2026 at 8:54am February 5, 2026 at 8:54am
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Here's a source I've never linked before, apparently some self-promoter called Michael Ashford:
Not that self-promotion is inherently bad. But check how many times he (yes, I'm assuming gender) pushes his podcast, newsletter, book, etc.
This does not mean the content is bad, either.
Have you ever heard of the term “conflict entrepreneur?”
Until my conversation with Martin Carcasson, I hadn’t heard it.
That's because someone made it up. All words and phrases are made up, of course, just some more recently than others. This particular one isn't catchy or short enough to ever catch on, the way other phrases like "concern troll" have.
I propose "strifemonger."
...the idea is simple: A conflict entrepreneur is someone who makes money and/or generates a large following by intentionally pitting people against each other.
And they have been around since long before the internet.
Unfortunately, conflict entrepreneurship is big business, and it’s scary.
One of those things is opinion.
It’s scary because it’s easy to rile up peoples’ sensitivities and emotions.
You take that back RIGHT NOW!
Perhaps most unsettling, it takes zero experience, financial backing, wisdom, or talent to become a successful conflict entrepreneur.
Eh, I don't know about that. You gotta want to do it, and have some efficacy at it, and what's that besides talent? And you can earn experience along the way.
We see example after example in popular media of people who make their living off of reducing complicated issues into black-and-white binaries, removing nuance from conversation in favor of parroted talking points, and stereotyping the many based off the actions of the few.
This is, I think, the important part.
Think about, for example, kiddy-diddlers. I know you don't want to think about kiddy-diddlers, but I'm making a point here. There's a meme (original sense of the word) going around that drag queens are bad and they shouldn't be around children because they'll diddle them. Whereas, here in reality, the vast, vast majority of kiddy-diddlers who aren't family (happens a lot) are fine, upstanding church or school leaders. And yet if ONE trans person got caught diddling a kid, they'd say it's because they're trans; while the fine, upstanding church or school leaders who diddle kids are "mentally ill" and "don't reflect the values of the group."
In other words, if someone in the in-group does something bad, it's their fault (or we ignore it, as has been the case lately). If someone in the out-group does something bad, it's the entire out-group that's at fault.
To a conflict entrepreneur, your anger and your discontent are their supply. Your desire to withdraw into a tribe and demonize anyone outside of it is the capital a conflict entrepreneur needs to continue to build their empire.
Like I said.
Our anger sustains them. Our frustration feeds them. We're raging all over the internet, and they're sitting there chuckling.
Curious questions stop them in their tracks.
Okay, first of all, no; second, first you'd have to find and identify them.
This process of asking yourself questions, asking questions about others, and asking questions of others is at the heart of the...
...thing he's self-promoting.
As usual, I'm not avoiding talking about something in here just because someone's trying to sell a book. We're mostly writers and readers here, with many interested in selling their books and many more (hopefully) interested in reading them. And I think the basic points here are sound: that strifemongers exist, that they're manipulating people for fun and profit, and there are ways to aikido the hell out of them.
Now if I could just remember this the next time someone posts something deliberately inflammatory. |
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