I was listening to the System of a Down Album Toxicity again and the song Deer Dance had this lyric in it, and I had to share.

You can’t be neutral right now, you have to fight back however you can.

Give the album a listen if you haven’t, it’s a banger and is still relevent to this day 24 years after it’s release.

Image description: Pictured is Serj Tankian known as part of the band ‘System of a Down’, singing into a microphone and the text “You can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train”

  • @[email protected]English
    15•3 days ago

    Reminds me of the Rush song with the lyric: “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

    • GormadtOPEnglish
      4•3 days ago

      For those curious it’s the song Freewill by Rush

      Another banger

  • @[email protected]English
    4•3 days ago

    I love this album but never particularly liked that quote or the supposed meaning behind.

    If you’re on the train you’re either for it or against it. No one on the train is neutral. They either boarded willingly or were boarded against their will. I don’t think anyone just finds themselves on the train.

    It’s true, of course, that being neutral is accepting the status quo, and that neutrality helps the oppressor and not the oppressed, but I don’t think this quote really conveys that.

    • @FrozengyroEnglish
      9•3 days ago

      It’s a metaphor, doesn’t need to make perfect sense. Our train is the world we live in, you’re on it no matter what you do.

  • @[email protected]English
    3•3 days ago

    I always thought this line was meant sarcastically. Reflecting the kind of rhetoric that George W Bush pushed at the time; ‘either you’re with us or you’re against us’

  • @lathEnglish
    2•3 days ago

    I can decouple a wagon or two for a while though.