gement | More hope, please.

So, California has declared discriminatory marriage policies based on sexual orientation unconstitutional.

You could have learned this from a number of other journals on my friends list, or probably by walking outside. It's not why I'm posting.

I'm posting because this feels like a bit of a sole bright spot lately. I've been researching history. A lot of history. A lot of how people have treated each other. And the more I read, the more I think I shouldn't bother writing anymore.

I don't even have to go looking for it. When I see themes from my writing in the news, I can't help but look, and see the parallels. I'm not going to link, because I don't feel like making the car-wreck fascination as easy for my friends as it was for me. But in the last month I've seen...

A definition of "picquet" (picket) which was not the definition I was looking for, but was an old punishment for junior officers(!) in the military. Control of information in North Korea. The logistics and political theory of modern hostage exchange. An article in the P-I on the psychological effects of solitary confinement in our current prison system. An LJ entry where someone wrote down her second-hand Holocaust survivor story, one she has not seen elsewhere in the public media on the topic, involving the Auschwitz brothels (public record says the women were not Jewish, and does not mention the adjoining boys' brothel at all).

Today I did a little math and adjusted my mental understanding of a British pound during the Regency period to be more like $1000 (I had been thinking of it as $100). Doing the math about what people were living on led me around to calculations on what people are living on now.

I can't take this anymore. At least my vampires have an excuse. And they usually pay for what they take. Because, well, hell, they can afford to.

Sorry to go all emo here, but...

How do we stand it? As humans, how do we stand what we do to each other?

Can I please have some more links like the marriage news? I need to understand why we keep going right now.

Edit: I would also appreciate links to the bright spots of history, times and places where women have owned property and had more than decorative authority, where different cultures have mingled without bigotry in polite society, where people have carved out corners of sexual freedom, where those above have served those down below (to borrow a line). Where people have been decent to each other, and found joy.