Most people just want a good life. If we stopped seeing each other as the enemies the world could be better.
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I don’t see MAGA people as the enemy because they want to pay less in taxes. I see them as the enemy because they don’t think my kids should exist in society and are actively passing legislation to make it so.
Delete this shit take.
Most people seem to want others not to have a good life, ignoring or disregarding the effects that might have on themselves.
Many if not most would sacrifice their own wellbeing if that guarantees that “the right people” will also suffer. They see the world as a zero sum game, and can’t conceive the possibility of having a good life if others aren’t having a bad one.
Most people suck, often to the point of being monstrous by any decent definition.
most
Source?
I’m pushing back on this viewpoint wherever I’m seeing it. Humans are certainly flawed in a lot of ways, especially in how easy it can be to mislead us, but this cynical worldview that most people are actively wanting others to hurt is not based in reality. Honestly it sounds like me when I was in the depths of depression.
I think we have a major problem with how we share and consume news. Stories are shared as screen-capped headlines that emphasize the Bad thing that happened, and even if you find the original article, it’s stuffed with ads that make you not want to bother. Random one-off bad/stupid things that one person did somewhere far away are reported as world news without statistics and context.
The result? Increasing cynicism. The good, uplifting stories rarely come through. People begin to base their worldview and how they interact with other people on this “fact” that most people suck. This culminates in them becoming the thing that they think everyone is - they go through life scared of or angry at other people by default.
It isn’t an inevitability. Maybe I’m wrong, but believing in people is a much better existence, even when they occasionally let me down.
It’s by design. Divide and conquer has been the playbook since they (anti-labor think tanks like the Progressive Policy Institute and others that seek to keep labor infighting) started studying group psychology.
Cant tell if you are pro FPTP or against FPTP 🤔
Very against it.
Yea you mentioned divide and conquer then put images of the parliament with and without FPTP. Its easily misinterpreted to say that proportional representation is somehow “divide and conquer”.
Huh? I showed how a simple change to US and UK election laws can topple the two party system overnight.
Literally, if there are only two private parties run by private organizations of rich people, they merely have to divide us and conquer us. We are being puppeteered by a bunch of corporations that use identity politics to keep the poor fighting amongst themselves and people SLURP THAT SHIT UP BECAUSE THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM CODIFIES IT INTO EVERY DECISION.
Feudalism with a few more steps.
Interesting point, though and I can see what you mean.
You make this argument and it immediately falls apart because people revert to “Well they want to do this, this, and this, so they actually are an enemy”
You see it here in these very comments. If you are different from the “normal” you will eventually be hated, regardless of whoever is in power. It is human nature. It has not changed, it will not change.
People, families, tribes, nations have risen to power and subsequently lost power. It’s cyclical and will continue until we are inevitably wiped out by ourselves or the universe.
Yeah, but also people have very different ideas of what good life is, and what stops them from having it.
The major difference is money. We should be banding together against the rich, but instead we distract ourselves with what we look like, what we sound like, where we come from, what team (sports, town, city, state, country, …) we support, which sex we have, and a bunch of other things that divide us.
I only see people as an enemy if they’ve declared themselves as such. I’m not gonna make the first move, life is too short to make enemies with everyone I meet. That said, if you’ve got a swastika tattooed on your forehead then I’m gonna take that as a declaration that you’re my enemy.
Idk one side wants to enslave, murder, and rape. The other does not.
Let’s just be friends as they take away my rights and everyone I love rights away, we shouldn’t be enemies as they hunt down and murder someone for “existing”
Maybe we shouldn’t be friends with the enemy and fight against the regime?
This is one of the was Nazis came into power, by manipulating the mass thinking “oh we should all be friends” and now look what happened.
-a trans non-binary disabled person
There aren’t only two sides to every issue. Thinking like that is limiting.
Regardless of how many sides there are, it is an undeniable fact that plenty of people (in the USA in particular, apparently, a majority of the voters) choose to be in (a) side(s) that want(s) to enslave, murder, and rape.
And many others choose to be in (a) side(s) that enable(s) the previous one(s).
No civilised society should accept any of those sides, or those that choose them.
It seems that way because of the two party system brought upon by how votes are counted and winners chosen (winner takes all). If you watch jubilee, you’ll see just how fragmented both parties are (good example of pro and anti trump republicans). Forcing people to choose between one or the other has led to the USA becoming very black and white.
Idk one side wants to enslave, murder, and rape. The other does not.
Seeing people hold this kind of views is fucking depressing.
this view
The truth?
solidarity means solidarity. other working class people are not your enemy (re: 1984). the all or nothing mindset accomplishes nothing besides closing your mind off to the plights and perspectives of others.
-also trans and disabled
Idk one side wants to enslave, murder, and rape. The other does not.
Advocating for OP, that’s the learnt way they see how they can become comfortable.
Amen.
What the people who want to control us don’t want us to realize is that you have a lot more in common with the Chinese/Russian/Ukrainian/Mexican/Indian working class… Factory worker/programmer/hard-working house wife… Then you do with your own political leaders and billionaires. People with servants who don’t ever worry about bills. (Biden, Trump, Harris, Vance, Elon, Gates, Bezos, etc)… Don’t look at the foreigners as different and the enemy… Look at the Rich and the Politicians (who want us to blame the foreigners)
No war but class war.
This is true, but some of us are actually very different. That’s not always a bad thing, either.
I have been struggling with this lately. I am staunchly anti violence and anti war, and yet, I am conflicted on how far I truly would be willing to go to cull classism, fascism, racism, transphobia , homophobia, misogyny, and pedophilia from the world.
These things are abhorrent to me, and I wonder how much of my humanity I’d be willing to sacrifice in exchange for even one of these to no longer being in existence amongst the ranks of humanity.
How much good does pacifism give to the world in promoting the better angels of our nature? How much harm does it do when those same principles allow the worst among us to march down our roads and drag away our loved ones in the night?
Two scenes from media I consume have lately continually resurfaced in my mind. One is this scene from Vinland Saga, where the main character’s father confronts him when he finds his sword. The father is about to go off to war, and somberly asks his son who he wants to kill with his father’s sword. This culminates with the father, who again, is about to go off to war, emphatically declaring to his son that he has no enemies, that there is no such thing as enemies.
The other is this scene from Star Wars Andor, in which a high level spy of a burgeoning Rebellion is asked by a compatriot (who wishes to quit fighting the Empire due to possibly being found out), asks what he sacrifices for the fight against the Empire. The monologue he delivers is chilling, acknowledging he sacrifices all things that make him human, he becomes like his enemy in order to defeat them. When he reflects on the question, and asks, “So what do I sacrifice? Everything!”
That…is what I believe I will have to give up in order for there to be a sunrise for the people I love tomorrow. I’ll have to give up my humanity, everything. And I am afraid. I am selfish. I don’t want to. But I don’t know any other way.
The feelings that scene stir up in me resonate because that is how I feel when I think on the fascist cancer that has once again metastasized in America. Having no enemies… if only. Truly. Having enemies robs me of my humanity, because in fighting them I must bury my humanity. And I know that once I do that, there’s no going back. There will be no redemption.
The thing I am struggling with is… am I the one who makes them my enemies? Or are they? And if the only thing we can agree on is that we are enemies…then what choice do we have when they come for me and those I claim as my kin?
i just wanted to say that what you wrote here is beautiful and it helps me clarify my thoughts. ♥️
cull classism, fascism, racism, transphobia , homophobia, misogyny, and pedophilia from the world
One of these is not like the others.
No. Some people want to control other people because of their various sky daddies or a simple greed. And those are the ones fucking up your life. Everyone else could more or less get along, but fanatics, billionaires and other people hungry for control of others are actively make sure we don’t.
fanatics
Half of Lemmy users included in that group
Paradox of tolerance
Some are fascists. Some are not. That’s a pretty big distinction.
I’m not sure that’s true. One side has empathy. The other does not. I don’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t have empathy.
They see the world as a zero sum game. They can’t imagine being happy unless someone else is unhappy.
The world is not binary like that. Your side is not all good and the other side is not all bad.
I didn’t say they were “all bad.” I said they lacked empathy and I wasn’t interested in being friends with them.
Conservative and progressive brains are different.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-liberal-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/And one of those differences is empathy. https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/18/1/nsad029/7175525
One side has empathy. The other does not.
You generalized as if everyone on the left has empathy and no one on the right does. That’s simply not true. Group differences like this are often larger within the group than between them. While it might be true that, on average, people on the right are less empathetic than those on the left, it’s neither fair nor accurate to imply that one side has empathy and the other doesn’t.
Eh. Fits with what I see in politics, the folks voting for right winger, and my own experiences conversing with them IRL. I see no issue with making that assumption and then being pleasantly surprised the odd time it isn’t true.
Maybe it’s a North America thing, tho. It’s quite possible that the euro flavor of right wing is a more empathetic group.
Ive been down both sides of the indoctrination rabbit hole both the alt left and the alt right pipelines lead to the same place.
Ya, I’m not talking about extremists. I’m talking about just normal everyday people.
One would need empathy to see it that way ;)
Empathy is something that can be learned like any ability, it isn’t always a binary you have it or you don’t.
I kind of see your point there. My hope though is that maybe people could gain more empathy for each other by understanding that we are all human and I hope that one day people can understand each other’s struggles.
