https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
Infodump ahh meme
I agreed up until the “or else” caveat at the end. Many people simply do not have the energy to be curious or proactive at any particular time. That needs to be okay, otherwise the end destination is alienating a lot of people who might agree with a cause.
We need a word for people who are either willfully ignorant or just ‘too tired for politics’. Like it’s nearly the majority of people I find, but they’re so used to being the default idk if they ever consider other options
Kinda like how the word ‘cis’ pisses people off because it makes them realize their state of being (like all states of being) is neither eternal nor predestined.
I almost want to call them ‘muggles’ just to spit in Rowling’s face, but she really doesn’t need the free advertising
I think this applies to doomers as well. Why would they argue with anyone that there’s nothing that can be done? Why pull anyone into your pit of dispair?
I’ll help pull you out if you first stop resisting.
It’s a demoralization propaganda tactic to effectively blunt any issue. People have internalized the idea that they can do nothing on an individual level. Like habits that form out of persistent actions, people have been demoralized into giving up completely. It’s some sort of ego trap. Where the presumption is that an individual is supposed Superman saving the world, but of course they aren’t. Nobody is. So why bother at all. That’s not the point. It’s about the the population as a whole determining the norm. Everyone is convinced it’s pointless and hopeless. That sets the tone. The issue is dead in the water. Any issue can be killed this way. It’s extremely effective. People fall for it every time.
That’s where climate change is right now. That’s where wealth inequality is right now. People have listened to social media. They’ve internalized the quote repetitions. The demoralization mantras they saw on social media.
Your adversaries can handle words on social media. It’s meaningless to them. It has no effect on their daily lifestyle or their bank accounts. Throwing words into the cloud. Somebody else’s computer. Those servers are owned by your very adversaries. You’re throwing your comments into a meaningless suggestion box. In all likelihood the quote repetitions were seeded by them.
Everyone is convinced that “the rich” consist of a few billionaires named Musk, Bezos, or Zuckerberg. This blinds people from seeing local issues. Like crony politicians or localized inequality issues. Ones where they actually have more of a voice. One where they can actually effect change.
There’s no more blatant manifestation than when reddit (happens on lemmy too) bleeds their hearts over those posts about some rich asshole. Those carbon copy posts about how hard it is to be making techbro level money while “struggling” to live in the most wealthy cities in the world. Who gives a shit. Why does everyone have sympathy for those rich people at all. Everyone crazy? These people are part of the problem. They are the rich too. They are the source of issues that affect you locally. The guillotines are for them as much as Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg. They’re out of touch rich people who have dragged you all into their reality where they’re victims too. How convenient for them to have a few billionaire scapegoats that are untouchable. Whereas the average working class person can actually effect change on a local level.
People have given up on climate change because they’re convinced the one or two people must stop flying private jets then the problem will be solved. It’s quote repetitions. Fed to them from social media. “If those jerks can fly private jets, then why can’t I consume as much as I want myself. I’ll use all the plastic bags and straws that I want.” It’s not about the bags or the straws. It’s about the collective demoralization. The propaganda is so effective.
There’s like two kinds of proposals, and whichever kind you make you get criticized. You make a big proposal, people say “Well yeah but how does that work on the ground?” You make an on-the-ground proposal, and people say “Well how does that scale to the whole thing?” Alright fine, then let’s just die!
Agreed we are
‘be curious or you’re blocked’
womp womp
Because people are fucking stupid, i deal with this shit at work everyday nothing to do with global politics or whatever. Sometimes our vendors fuck things up for us, so therefore there’s no point in us getting more organized at work – literally how my supervisors think.
Perfect is the enemy of good (or good enough).
Or slightly less terrible
I was once explaining the upsides of UBI and someone replied “no, this would fix too many issues with capitalism, this would delay the revolution!” Like… Dude.
I always think of this post whenever I hear someone dead-set on nothing less than massive, systemic change.
I’ve reached a point where I think if both the left and right tell you are wrong, you might just as well have arrived at the correct idea (usually, not always).
True that. Do I agree modern society has gone crazy in many fundamental ways? Hell yeah. Will I reject an opportunity to do something small that will affect only a handful of lives for just a few days based solely on that? Nope
Haha I kind of see both your points, it kind of does the liberal thing of extending the umbrella of protection from exploitation while pushing exploitation farther to the sidelines. The worst case outcome is that you now have more defenders of the status quo, because they’ve got it good. Meanwhile the entire economy is still based on war and exploitation, especially of poor workers in other countries.
But then maybe if us workers here had some more breathing room (perhaps not the best choice of words…) we might also have more capacity for solidarity with those exploited workers. Who knows, but it would remedy a lot of immediate problems here anyway.
And all the trials have been very positive, so I’m inclined to give it a shot yeah.
Yeah I’ve had this kind of discussions with right wing folk. We were discussing socialist policies, which I was in favor of and they were against. They were pointing out there were people abusing current socialist policies and getting a free handout, so all of those policies should be cut to prevent the freeloaders from freeloading. I argued that any kind of policy, no matter what the policy is, is going to be abused by a small fraction of the population. It’s not possible to create something without loopholes and people exploiting them. We should try to prevent it in the design, but in the end we should accept that’s going to happen and instead focus on if the policy is also actually helping the people it was designed for.
Nothing is perfect, problems won’t be fully solved and / or new problems will be created. That isn’t failure, it’s life.
current capitalist approaches are being exploited RIGHT NOW to consolidate wealth and power (see: kushner buying the lakers, ellison buying warner bros and thats just los angeles alone). i’d much rather have a handful of everyman freeloaders than concentrated greed.
But the rich abusing policies so they get pure bail out socialism is fine. Just dont want a poor brown person to have it heavens no.
Also systems designed to prevent exploits require resources. For example checking that people getting unemployment benefits are actually unemployed is actually work. It is often cheaper to be imperfect, just because those checks are so expensive.
The easiest way to avoid freeloaders and abusers is to make services available to anyone who wants them. Then the only abuse is trying to count one person as multiple people to get an unfair amount of benefits which isn’t even possible for things like universal healthcare.
I see way too much of this on the internet, here on Lemmy included. Thanks for posting this. I have this thought a lot but haven’t see this good of a way to put it before.
Its state sponsored propaganda using companies as proxies to bypass those pesky human rights laws and is vastly on the Republican side but you do have aipac dems and similar issues in other first world countries.
The rise of right wing extremist politicians and the world also going to shit is no coincidence.
They’ll also tell you things such as “don’t trust the government” while also being the party in control. It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
I love the ‘no true scot’ part here.
I generally agree but not across the board. Bandaid solutions, half-assing things, etc often leads to worse problems down the road than you had to begin with.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. If you wait until you feel great and have all the time in the world to ever go to the gym you might work out 1-2 days a year. If you wake up late and are tired but commit to at least going out and walking down the street and back at lunch and you do the latter more often then you’ll be way ahead of the former situation. Maybe different strokes for different folks. Perfectionism ruins a lot of dreams and ambitions of people that would accomplish a whole lot more if they just stopped overthinking about it and learned to leave well enough alone. Just ask any former ‘gifted and talented’ student.
Yeah but at some point you have to try knowing you’ll fail so you can make a better attempt next time. A lot of people are just sitting at like zero level of organization and refuse to even start trying ever.
What a person should do is pretty contingent on their agency… If someone doesn’t have leverage to organise a systemic solution, they should absolutely apply a bandaid solution. Ideally while keeping half an eye on the possibility of a better solution in the long run, but yeah… Depends on context and capacity.
I think the OOP describes situation where you did your best to chip at the big problem, but it wasn’t enough.
Half-assing is when you could act more, but you didn’t.
The difference is effort and intention.
Im saving this in high hopes that I will remember it when I could send it to somebody, butt (&titties): I have observed that older posts seize to exist after some time on lemmy (I’m saving it to my device)
