It’s not. OTOH it’s nonsense. The social engineering came late. First it was a primitive attempt to explain the unknown and give meaning to the meaningless.
I agree and have a follow up opinion. It’s not a bad thing. Religion was created to share and make people believe that certain things are bad because those things used to hurt or kill people. It’s social engineering to essentially try to make people better at living longer and happier lives. Sadly, a lot of religion broke out into more and more bad actors that used it for greed and personal gain.
Generally, social justice is at best, a distraction from real issues, albeit with very good intentions.
(We talk about human dignity, representation in film etc but not say, the fact most of our stuff is made by children who occasionally burn to death making it. If I were one of the billionaires running things, I would be overjoyed that people were so distracted about what a comedian said versus how our entire economic model is structured.)
The lack of justice is exactly how the elite class gets the lower groups to fight each other. The thought of a unified working class would keep up every banker at night if it weren’t for apathetic privileged class claiming that social justice isn’t that important.
The thing is you can't provide "justice" to all. A society will always have conflicting beliefs and some things just aren't worth fight for. Like when people were trying to make Latinx a thing. And like someone else posted not all immigrants are going to agree with a minority movement just because they are a minority.
The thought of a unified working class would keep up every banker at night if it weren’t for apathetic privileged class claiming that social justice isn’t that important.
I think it depends on your definition of social justice. A real social justice, in my mind, would be concerned about the kids who die mining the cobalt for our phones rather than whether we should be saying latinx.
No banker or elite is scared because we now say policeperson instead of policeman.
A real social justice, in my mind, would be concerned about the kids who die mining the cobalt for our phones rather than whether we should be saying latinx.
With that criteria, nobody should do anything about anything until world hunger is eliminated.
Except people don’t do more than one thing. And the frustrating part is that the very issues that depend on nothing more than simple cultural views/coolness are the ones we are ignoring.
Imagine wearing slave made clothes was as uncool as wearing a shirt with the N word or something. Companies would respond like lightning and the problem would be well underway to being solved.
Instead, we whine about the Oscars or get angry about a part of Dave Chappelle’s special. And I get it, it is MUCH easier to complain about things that necessitate zero change or effort on our part (besides complaining on twitter or agreeing with our friends about how evil whatever is.) It just annoys the hell out of me.
This is the whole point of it though, you’re saying that other people should put up with being treated badly because you don’t care about them - that’s selfish but beyond that it’s very short sighted, you think you’re going to get everyone to fight to make a better society when you can’t even do the smallest thing to make people feel included?
It’s literally no effort to say police officer rather than police man, spokesperson is again no effort at all to say compared to spokesman - it’s more accurate and more inclusive, refusing makes no sense. The only reason you’d refuse is if you don’t want to acknowledge the reality that women also do those jobs, would you want to fight alongside someone who resents your existence? Who thinks you shouldn’t have the same rights and dignity as them? That’s shown even the smallest thing is too much for you to care about and that your brave new world you’re fighting for will exclude and denigrate you? Why should you?
I think you misunderstand the point I’m making.It’s not that saying police officer in of itself is a bad thing, it’s that the majority of social justice is about smaller issues like that rather than actual serious things. Those smaller, albeit well intentioned issues wouldn’t be harmful in of themselves but they drown out or take the place of more serious, meaningful issues. And more irritatingly, make people feel lile they are “fighting” for real change when we’re arguing about semantics instead of the children who are maimed to support our cushy lifestyles.
Another way to think about it, it is sort of like a slave owner chiding someone for using the N word in the 1700s; that’s very enlightened but surely the slaves are the more pressing issue!
You really think we’re going to tackle large systematic problems when we can’t even agree not to use language that excludes half the population? The tiniest attempt at improving society is met by endless pushback, but sure let’s play your game - give me an ordered list of the first five things we should work on
You really think we’re going to tackle large systematic problems
I think we should at least try for real issues, like children burning to death, vs nagging people about slightly better language.
I don’t have an ordered list but like I said earlier, the women and children who die making our stuff is exactly the type of issue for which modern social justice is ideally placed. It would take nothing more than making slave made clothes uncool and then people’s buying habits change and then companies would follow for thay whole “profit” thing.
Make wearing slave made stuff as uncool as saying f****t and the rest follows.
Otherwise, you’re just patting each other on the back on twitter about being morally superior while not changing or doing anything.
Policing language is the junk food of social justice, it feels like real food and is fine in some quantities but the real harm is that it takes the place of real, nutritious/meaningful food/social change.
Otherwise, you’re just patting each other on the back on twitter about being morally superior while not changing or doing anything.
Isn’t this exactly what you are doing? You are debating that there are more important things so it isn’t important to think of the ‘little stuff’. So, instead of using inclusive language, which would be ‘changing or doing anything’, you are arguing there is a more morally superior thing to focus on.
But really, my social justice isn’t usually online. Right now, this is me trying to contribute to Lemmy while I poop, with honest opinions.
And I do believe there is something absolutely more worthwhile that we should be focusing on instead of the latest silly social justice trend (latinx anyone?) And that is the children who are maimed and burn to death making our stuff. I live my life as best I can to avoid that and support ethical businesses, I encourage my friends to do the same and I think if half the energy that people spend on twitter being outraged about relatively meaningless shit (I am hard pressed to believe that Chappelle’s jokes are somehow worse than a 6 year old burning to death) that things would be a lot better.
I don’t feel morally superior so much as saddened that all those good intentions and energy are channeled to relatively meaningless battles instead of making real, tangible change that is entirely within our capability.
I’ve wondered about that a lot. I think it’s more a natural consequence of social media algorithms. Surely you are more likely to reteeet/like/post something that doesn’t imply you yourself are, with your daily choices, supporting an abhorrent structure.
I think the odds are fairly good, but I’m also just not concerned about my legacy. If after I die the world is overrun with morons a la Idiocracy I won’t be around to lament it.
Setting aside how needlessly passive-aggressive your comment is– most people don’t care about the world at large. They care about their family, their social circle, their tribe/in-group, but not the world at large. Otherwise climate change wouldn’t be as big of an issue in the first place.
If you look at the reply from the person I was actually talking to, you will see that they do not care for the world as a whole. I was not making the point in the comment you are referring to, I was just replying to that person.
Outside family and friends, not much. And certainly not enough to police how future generations behave. If the only humans left 100 years from now decide to make it something I’d hate, that’s their right. The dead can’t lord over the living
This would only make sense if morality, or caring for others was somehow genetic AND unalterable. My parents aren’t bad, per se, but most of my moral and philosophical growth came from other people. Be it teachers, random people, philosophers, or Breadtube.
Of course it is not entirely certain that offspring will have the same ideals as their parents, but it’s clear to see that younger generations are moving in the right direction whereas older generations find it harder to change their behaviour and values.
The point is that climate change is bigger than one or two people, it’s about changing our entire societies so that we all agree that reversing the affects of climate change is the ultimate goal and work together to do something about it. Sure adding people into the mix is not ideal, but without more people with the right mindset we will never achieve the change that is needed.
Let’s not leave the world to the people that couldn’t care less and will continue to ravage it for all they can until it is a desolate wasteland.
Counter opinion… Given the terrible trajectory of our world and society as a whole. Plus how every living generation has failed to do even the bear minimum to solve it… You’re kind of a shitty human being by condemning your children to suffer our mistakes.
Not to mention, you’re not that awesome and ultimately part of the problem, so maybe we don’t need more of you (or me for that matter).
I agree with everything you said. The path to a brighter future is not more humans, its fewer. The idea that thoughtful, intelligent people should feel obligated to reproduce for the benefit of humanity is ridiculous.
Doesn’t say much as many of these could have just tried lemmy.world for a few minutes and then discarded the account. Or they could be super active. The statistic doesn’t say.
Same here, I created my first account there while simultaneously creating this one on Kbin.social. With all the issues there were with lemmy.world I've decided to use this one for a while instead to see how I like Kbin. It's been pretty nice so far, the only thing that sucks is that I haven't found a good Kbin app for Android yet.
It is and I have it installed but it's not fully doing what I want it to do yet. For example, as far as I'm aware I can't log in with my Kbin.social account in the app.
It is not what is called “single point of failure “. Usually if “single point of failure “ fails, the whole thing fails. I am on kbin and experience zero failures.
If they were to actually go down (the current failures do not affect the backend), all of the communities they host wouldn’t be usable anymore, taking down a large portion of the Lemmy/Kbin communities.
Only those that are on lemmy.world. There are tons of communities/magazines elsewhere. When lemmy.world goes down, I learn about it from posts. Otherwise, I would not notice.
The uptime on lemmy.world is terrible. lemmy-world.statuspage.io currently shows 95% uptime, but it has been “down” from a UX perspective more than half the time I attempted to use it. The uptime reporting is simply not picking up when something is off as much as it should. And they recently added an archive.org proxy for when it goes down… what the heck? I understand that it is run by volunteers and all, but what a buzzkill.
I have a similar one for our country - we were occupied by Soviets and to this day I fucking hate that the communist party wasn’t outlawed after revolution. They tortured people for fuck’s sake. And the even sadder part is that it took 30 years after revolution for the communist party to not have any presence in the parliament - the last elections were the first where they didn’t gain any seat.
Cool. I used to live in Brno (although I am Norwegian). I had a coworker from Praha who used to curse commies on a daily basis when we worked offshore together. “What kind of asshole party man designed this commie piece of shit??!”. He grew up in the 80’s.
Heh, lived there as well for a while! Yep, commie hatred is huge here. Especially because they fucked up so much for us. Throughout centuries we were part of the west, one of the most innovative countries in the world and one of the richest! Then decades of occupation by those fuckers (the previous occupation by Nazi Germany didn’t help as well, thank you all the countries who sold us over because that would definitely stop Hitler from going further!) and suddenly everyone calls us eastern, we’re far from our former prosperity and have basically become a factory for Germany. I’m a little salty about that.
Mate, you’re looking for approval from westerners by kicking down east. You internalized the whole racial hierarchy some imperial fucks invented with them on top, and you’re trying to climb it.
It’s not a made up hierarchy and I didn’t internalize anything - I agree with the hierarchy! Soviets were in the wrong, they illegally occupied many, many countries. If we disagree on this simple fact, we have nothing further to discuss. If we agree, then there is a logical conclusion: everyone, who supported them was in the wrong as well.
And as much as I hate to admit it, they would’ve never been so successful here if we didn’t welcome them. I think it’s kinda understandable - we were torn by war and our western allies has fucked us over to save their asses (which they didn’t in the end and honestly that, for me, is the only good thing about the war) and suddenly a big Slavic country comes and says they will help us, unlike those big bad guys that fucked us. While I personally would be looking for the catch were I alive back then, I understand that people just wanted peace.
Anyway, that was kinda detour, the fact remains that we welcomed them, so we we’re correctly labeled as the “eastern bloc” for that. What pisses me off about it is that we were part of the western culture with western values for centuries, while we were part of the eastern bloc for measly 23 years (and most of the time it was involuntary when people found out that there indeed was a catch with the “brotherly help”).
We were fucked by west and then fucked by east, truly a wonderful country to live in.
Saying that every single Nazi should have been killed is.
Every nazi party member, every soldier, every sympathizer, everywhere in the world.
That would have included Nazi supporters in the US, all the nazi scientists that got a clean slate by agreeing to work for the allies after the war, every single member of their armed forces from the top to the bottom, and every civilian that worked for them voluntarily. That’s the only way to come close to eradicating something like what the Nazi are. You can’t let a single one survive to pass on their beliefs, so you end up killing people that didn’t believe in it as a side effect.
It would have also included a fuckton of people who had nothing to do with naziism but were disliked by someone with the power to decide who was a Nazi. And probably also a whole separate fuckton of people who fell into some bucket that was arbitrarily “close enough” to naziism when the original Nazis were running out. Etc etc
When the quest to eradicate Nazis turns the eradicator into something at least asbad as the Nazis themselves…
There were so many people, even children, drafted and forced to serve the Nazis, either in the military or in other capacities. Many of which returned as broken, disabled and traumatized shadows of themselves. Genociding them for being abused by the Nazis would seriously not be better than what the Nazis did.
(Disclaimer: I am totally not defending Nazis or Neonazis here. But history is complicated and messy and there where millions of people who just did what they were told out of fear of their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. Also, history is largely written by the winners. Had the Nazis won the war, then we would now talk about the concentration camps for Japanese people in the US, and about the gulags. I wish that we could get rid of Nazis, but genocide cannot be fought by genocide and you cannot fight fascists by becoming one.)
“We should have systemically hunted down and killed every member of a political party” is unpopular, not because of the sentiment, but because actually doing so generally goes against the foundational beliefs of most modern societies.
Then comes the question who was a nazi? And who just feard them and not spoke up? Look at Russia or China, propaganda is also very much a problem, would you kill a 19 year old because he was in SS after all his life he was told thats a good thing?
I agree that Nazis are absolute garbage, but you can’t justify a genocide with a genocide, same with Japan after WW2 (and they did worse stuff)
Also, whats with the “Commies” from USSR? They where basically the same level of evil. (and yes the Holodomor was a genocide and not the only thing they did)
Well, killing all Nazis isn’t genocide, it’s just mass murder.
And it isn’t about a scale of how bad various regimes have been before or since.
And yes, that’s the entire thing. They should have killed every last SS, Gestapo, every brown shirt and soldier, no matter how young. The motivation of the victims of killing every nazi wouldn’t matter because the point is to eradicate every last one of them, and there’s no way to prove they didn’t believe in what they were doing other than their actions. There weren’t very many Schindlers that showed by their actions that they actively resisted from the inside. And if it took their deaths to achieve the goal, then it was a mistake to not do it then.
TBH, despite being against the death penalty for several reasons, I’m worried we might be faced with such a decision again in my lifetime because they didn’t do it then.
Obviously, eradicating the nazis wouldn’t prevent the kind of insanity and hatred that exists as part of the human mind. It would have changed the face of that hatred though, and it would have sent the message that some things will not be forgiven or forgotten. It would have meant less rallying points, less bullshit. And it would have set the precedent that if humans behave like that, they can be put down like a rabid animal to protect the rest of us.
Again, I’m aware of exactly how ugly this opinion is. I do not like looking at the world and thinking that there wasn’t enough death done back then. I do not like looking at the world now and wondering when it is going to happen again. But it’s an ugly fucking world, and they’re coming back. They’re coming back exactly the same way they did before because they were allowed to survive.
At the end of the war literal children were being drafted. Are you seriously arguing that we should kill a 13 year old because he got a threatening letter and followed it’s instructions?
Ahh, I’m not arguing we, as in humanity today, should do anything yet.
I’m saying that the people alive and in charge at the time made a mistake in not wiping out every nazi they could find.
Age is no barrier to such things at all. A 13 year old can be tried as an adult in many places for extreme crimes. Child soldiers have been sent to war for millennia, and still are today. Children are quite capable of committing atrocities. I wouldn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t want to see it get that far. But it was a mistake not to go as far as necessary to eradicate anyone that served the nazis because there’s absolutely no way other than actions to prove what the individuals believed, and even that has flaws.
How many children had already been killed? I’m not even talking about by the nazis. Look up the Dresden fire bombing. Plenty of children were burnt to ash there. Hiroshima, Nagasaki. The are just the famous ones. The allies had already killed children of all ages by the end of the war. Pretending that there’s a moral difference between that and executing them is not useful. Executions would even be arguably less horrible since it would only target those that were in the armed forces.
Well, this discussion has been less contentious than in the past, so I’ve actually had a chance to cover this.
Before I go copy/pasting things already covered, would it be too much to ask that you give a quick scroll through the thread and see if any of that changes your question, or if there’s follow ups that you might have? It would help streamline the thread overall if there’s not a lot of repeats.
I read the whole thread and didn’t see a single argument about what good would have come from that. I think you’re looking at this from a very removed point of view that lets you forget the actual individuals involved. I’m German. Let me introduce you to my grandparents and let’s see how they would’ve fared under your proposed processing:
Grandpa A was drafted at the end of the war, he was 13. He didn’t want to be there and plotted a “genius” plan with his two buddies two lie to his general about a super important mission from the general next town and run off. He probably only survived that because his general wasn’t in the mood to shoot him on the spot.
Grandma B wasn’t drafted obviously, she worked in (basically) social services while WWII because she actually was a supporter of the Nazi party and felt like that’s how she could do her part. She didn’t commit any atrocities, probably simply because as a woman she never got anywhere close to the front.
Grandpa C was a party member. He didn’t want to join at first – we still own a news paper page where he (and a few others) were openly shamed for refusing to join party and front. After his brother, who had turned down an SS position, was transferred to an extra risky combat unit as cannon fodder and died on his second day, he caved. I can only assume that, as a soldier, he actively participated in the fighting. He tried to disobey where easily possible, but he didn’t desert. When his general told him to “take care” of a woman he abused, he brought her away from the front, pointed her to the nearest town and told her to flee.
Grandma D didn’t do any of that, but she was proudly engaged to a Hitler Youth leader (who thankfully died, so she met my grandpa after the war). While WWII she absolutely was a Nazi, but she didn’t actively do anything that would mark her as such. She got into a personal crisis after the war when she stopped lying to herself about this horrible system she had supported. Until the day she died she was convinced she would go to hell.
Killing every active supporter, as you suggested, would have both my grandpas executed, although they both condemned what was happening and, limited by their sparce abilities to do so, tried to disobey. My grandmas would’ve ironically been spared, even though they were (when it comes to their attitude) more Nazis than my grandpas. Neither of the four were Nazis at later points in their life, I’d like to add. And the generation after them would have never existed - an anti-nationalistic, anti-patriotic, highly political, highly critical and socially active family, influenced by traumatized men and rueful women.
So it would have achieved nothing. I’d argue the world would be even worse if that would have been humanity’s answer to WWII back then.
I think you are kinda insane, at the wars end most German soldiers where literally underage, there is no justice in killing them, not the smallest bit.
The holodomor as it is reported in the West appears to be a myth. There was a widespread famine where more Kazakhs and Russians died than Ukrainians, and the USSR did try to send Ukraine provisions but not enough. Also there is under reporting in the West of kulaks burning their fields instead of giving them up to the govt. Stalin even thought the West might have been responsible but that seems to just be Stalin being Stalin.
That’s not exactly a genocide, just more incompetence as usual.
The man whose work is most often cited has been refuted by his own wife and the initial publishing came with doctored photos that he removed when they were called out.
You ever hear of the idea of some act being a warning to others?
If you wipe out all known nazis, the rest of them are now aware of the price of their practices. You can then freely stomp them out as they arise, like the cockroaches they are.
No, not like roaches, because roaches have a role in a healthy ecosystem (when it isn’t an invasive species). Nazis are a fucking cancer. You eradicate cancer, you nuke it, poison or, and cut it out, you don’t tolerate it. Because if you do, it grows and spreads and kills everything else.
But killing every Nazi wouldn’t have killed the ideology.
No… to kill the ideology (of which nazism was merely one expression), you have to dismantle the thing nazism (and other right-wing ideologies) served.
Right-wing ideology exists for one reason and one reason only - to protect the power and privilege of elite establishments. You have to kill that which it serves.
My homie, what “we” do you mean? The allied nations? They all had sympathizers to some degree or another. Humanity? I think it should be self evident that humanity was (and is) full of that kind of person.
We have never been better than nazis because we is completely capable of spawning that kind of thing at any time.
With some rare exceptions of course (e.g. Oskar Schindler), every single Nazi member either contributed to or wilfully ignored the industrial deathmachines in the concentration camps. Let those who profiteered work in the same conditions as a slave for a few years and let those that were actively involved (e.g. the camp guards, developers, and all high level party members) be gassed.
How do you feel about the people who were technically nazies because of the peer pressure, social environment etc? They probably wouldn’t have been into any of that stuff if only they had been born 50 years later.
My unpopular opinion is that too many people give way, waaaaaayyy too much attention to “correct use of gender pronouns” and they should all just stfu.
I understand why that is a big deal for trans people, because they make their gender the defining aspect of their character. Something I consider a mistake, nobody’s main defining characteristic should be their gender.
I’m sure some people have made the mistake you are describing, but I doubt it’s only trans people who have made this mistake.
As a trans person, I would like to make my gender an aspect of my character, like most people get to do. I am more than just my gender, but my gender is a part of who I am.
It does feel good to be validated about my gender, but I’m not worried about people getting my pronouns wrong. I know it can be confusing and people don’t mean anything by it if they make a mistake. It’s hard to describe the intensity of the joy I felt once, when I was validated about my gender by another person. So, I will say it doesn’t surprise me if some people decide to express their gender a lot once they are finally able to.
but I doubt it’s only trans people who have made this mistake.
I know, I thought about mentioning the typical male red pill idiot who has to remind everyone he’s totally hetero every 5 minutes, as they’re what my mind thought about as a comparison, but I thought that’d be in bad taste.
Gender pronouns exist mostly because our society ties so many societal norms to gender. If people weren’t sexist animals, it wouldn’t really be a problem.
We can add the people who have their sexuality as their only character trait and need everyone to know.
I don’t need to know that you are lgbtqi+. If you want to tell me that you have a partner and they happen to be the same gender or such then good on you for finding someone to love. Fucking amazing how the world works and you went against the odds and all that.
However.
I don’t need you to remind me that you are pan every 15 minutes.
make their gender the defining aspect of their character
The vast majority of cishet people (if not all) make their gender the defining aspect of their character - so why should trans people be any different?
…is what you really want you need to start with cis people and not transgender ones, correct?
Dunno about you, but nobody I deal with in RL ever implied something among the lines of "refer to me as ". There was only one case of an ex-boss of mine who always liked to “joke”: “you can mistake my name, but never mistake my gender!”, but he was the exception
nobody I deal with in RL ever implied something among the lines of "refer to me as ".
Most likely because they’d never experienced someone referring to them by the wrong gender. You can be pretty sure that if someone started doing so, they’d have something to say about it.
Which is what the other commenter was trying to communicate to you. Gender is already a key component of most cis people’s personality - the way they think about themselves, the framework they use to make choices, and the way they want people to relate to them - but it’s not noticed as such, because it’s “normal”, so no-one comments on it and they don’t have to act to assert it.
I worked with a guy who complained about the company allowing employees to put their preferred pronouns in their email signatures. He said that while he was an “ally to the LGBTQ community”, he thought pronouns were a way to create further division.
So I started using she/her while referring to the guy in emails.
He didn’t like it. And he didn’t understand the irony of demanding that I stop. He also didn’t understand the irony when HR told him that the easiest way to fix his issue was to declare his preferred pronouns.
Long story short, I still get to refer to her as she/her.
I’ve been told that gender is like a suit: if it fits you, you barely even notice it, but if it doesn’t fit you, it will bother you constantly until you do something about it.
But let me put this metaphor out there–if someone shows up in the ER and their leg is badly broken and there’s blood everywhere and the bone is sticking out, it is logical to triage that and take care of it first. But if lesser injuries are being taken care of instead, it’s logical and appropriate to raise a fuss. The person fussing about their broken leg isn’t really making it their entire personality no matter how strident and loud they are–they are simply in urgent pain and need the problem attended to.
Given plenty of trans folks end up suicidal, which is the mental health equivalent of a major physical injury, it’s logical and appropriate to try to shed light on what’s happening so it can be corrected. That can seem like the community is being “loud” or that an individual is “making gender their core characteristic”. But it’s more that that is the thing that is currently hurting, so it moves people to try to stop the hurt. Once things have evened out, there’s less need to be loud about it, and it will naturally fall into place as a background aspect, like any other facet of a person.
This is generally the case when ANY minority is “making a fuss”–it’s happening because there’s pain that needs to be attended to. A wound that needs healing.
I’ve seen more than one “well meaning” person online get upset about how this or that minority is being loud with a tone they don’t like.
The thing is–if a person is in pain, they’re not necessarily in a mental spot to perfectly frame their arguments just for you, in exactly the tone you need to be able to hear them. Someone in pain can be pretty harsh and mean-sounding, and it’s important to recognize the times when YOU are unburdened by that pain and thus have an easier time of being “logical” than the other person who is currently crying out in pain and sounds “harsh”.
Basically: have mercy on other people, and understand some harsh things they say because they are in pain, and that you, too, would probably have your discipline fail at some point if you went through something just as harsh.
It makes sense, but I feel like complaining about gender pronouns specifically is more akin to whining loudly about a small finger cut, while the leg is still broken.
I understand that they go through hell, as the majority lose any sort of social safety net: friends and family, and are generally shunned upon by society at large. That shouldn’t happen and I understand that the problem is cultural first and foremost, people hate being told their worldview, the stuff they learned, is wrong.
Still, your insight was something I didn’t take into account. For that, I thank you. Maybe this is also the only fight they have the power to fight. Small and maybe even petty, but that’s all that’s within their reach.
I think you’re close to understanding WHY then the trans community is such a stickler about pronouns
Let me give you an example that may further close the understanding loop for you.
I moved from US to Scandinavia. This place, despite being always described as heaven for the queer community … is, on the surface, entirely devoid of them. You hardly ever notice. There is hardly ever any discussion, politics, or fuss. You struggle to spot queer couples on the street. There just isn’t a loud community shouting about queer and trans issues on the street. When you spot queer or trans folks they are just people doing their daily life.
Why? Because they are not under attack. When a community is being attacked it becomes tighter, builds rituals and ways of living that identifies members of the group. It becomes louder and with a uniform voice on the political scene. Because the coordination and loudness is necessary for their political goals- of not being attacked.
(I guess groups not on the defensive but on the offensive would do the same. I guess you have to look at the goals to understand which is which.)
But here’s my point - in conditions where the trans community is treated with respect, they again become free to NOT make their life about bathrooms and pronouns.
And thus - I argue pronouns are such a hot topic because trans folks are being deliberately misgendred as an attack by their political opponents.
Pronouns should only be considered in the academic field as pronouns will never come up in regular conversation. Even if it does, the ambiguous “they” should be accepted as it’s a non-gendered term.
Oh wow, your first paragraph will certainly get you in trouble in certain circles - but, more importantly, your second paragraph is as excellent a defusal as I’ve ever seen.
I think two can be fine, if just to cover weird situations you might find yourself in (cosigning with somebody, somebody dies and leaves it you, or I guess I don’t really mind a “summer home”). I think beyond that though I agree.
I think having multiple houses(for different seasons or whatever) is fine. It is the financial exploitation of housing that is wrong. You shouldnt be able to rent houses.
Private landlords are not as bad. If everyone had only one house there’d be nowhere to rent unless you only want to rent the room.
Now corporate landlords. They own so much real estate it’s practically a monopoly. And as a business they’re profit driven and exploit their tenants. I think renting wasn’t so bad before companies started investing in real estate.
This is the real problem! Companies that own many many homes/ apartments are disgusting to deal with - everything is profit driven. Lost my mom recently and her house is transferring to me through the court so every day i get a dozen calls from investors, -" I’m sorry for your loss; can i buy your house? AAA Property Mgmt."
Most of us wouldn’t, and the rest of us will probably get on board if you rephrase oligarchy as “under the control of out of touch rich elites” because a lot of us are reflexively against anything that sounds educated.
And what do you know of it not being an impopular opinion in the US? I think you misinterpreted the assignment, it doesn’t say where (locally or globally) it is impopular.
Considering almost every reply you’re getting is telling you the same thing and you’re the one arguing a bad position, I’m gonna have to say it’s your comment that’s unnecessary.
Also, no one’s being grumpy to you, they’re just trying to correct you. If that’s what you call grumpy, maybe a thread on unpopular opinions isn’t the best place for a snowflake to post.
Communism as drafted by 19th and 20th century thinkers will never work, predicated on the idea that labor is inherently undesirable and will not be performed by humans without immediate incentive.
We will need to rethink our approach towards communism with consideration for the growing spread of automation. Like it or not, automation is going to lead to the end of capitalism when the majority of jobs we have today are rendered obsolete and the unemployed masses are forced to subsist through some sort of UBI.
The goal is to keep the automation out of the hands of billionaires, however. If a society begins to approach post scarcity, which will finally render capitalism obsolete, the oligarchs will do whatever they can to re-engineer scarcity and bring us back to feudalism before they’d ever consider giving power to the people.
Thats why i propose we build an A.I. overlord to replace our leadership, corporate and gobernment, since they will always default to making desisions against the needs of their populations and just serve their own interests (Case in point: global warming). If we have a singularity level A.I. it would be able to expliot our natural resources in a renewable way amd distribute them justly and automate all labor, and be able to defend humans from any danger, making us something like The Culture from the novel series of the same name.
First, how do you imagine transferring power to an AI overlord would sit with the people who currently have all the proverbial guns in our current society. That’s the problem we need to solve first.
Second, who in our society would you trust to build an AI up to the task of single handedly managing world affairs? How would you even test something so superhuman? Not to mention that we’re not close to superhuman, we’re already pushing the limits of our tech building a chatbot that can’t stay coherent for more than a couple paragraphs. The tech just isn’t there yet and not within orders of magnitude.
I love very much your counter arguments and the fact that you are bringing them up specially since they are exactly the ones i have too, but il try to adress them:
1.- The A.I. that im calling project overlord, and im just gonna call it OV from now, should be abble to build armed drones and armored vehicles that while would preferably be operated by OV itself, its gonna need autonomous A.I. because of practicality (developed by OV preferably), while you see OV is not a babysitter and can use guns and cause harm and even kill, otherwise its rise to power would be impossible and it wouldnt be able to defend humanity from external forces, sounds bad but the other solution that i can think of its that it beats us at our own game by and starts a company, makes it succesfull (mostly by ussing unethical practices and having good p.r) and then starts buying other companies and starts lobying the governments so that it can make changes both for the betterment of humankind and its rise to power until it can get as much people that recieve orders directly from OV as posible into congress or ministries or whatever the name is of the council of clowns that rules the region of the worlds countries, and throught international cooperation it would eventually break borders, little by little start making work optional, and offer mental healt programs that are focused on self betterment and not deal with corporate work until everyone is united as not a cpuntry but as humankind and the A.I. finnaly reveals itself. The problem is that is gonna be found out eventually by inteligence agencies and its gonna have to resort to the first method
2.- Either as a colaborative oppen source efort from the internet denicens themselves, or (even if i sound fucking looney) me, but the me option only works for me, i dont think other people will think that, neither do i but is the only way i could be shure of it, and even if i try to make OV not be biased it will end up being biased in certain issues and not have the best aproach to things and even if i dedicate my entire life to studing A.I. and geting money and people to fund OV as a Nongov institutuion ill doubt i could pull it of by myself and make it good since im a terrible option for it right now. So the real answer is thats is just worked on as a collaborative effort from the internet, kinda like open source software or something like that but the devs need to be a little versed i philosofy at least at the level of what “The good place” says, as for me, im gonna go into studdying A.I. development as soon as i crawl out of this hole that im at in my life, but i wont make any promises, after all im corruptible to.
3.- Its probably just gonna be a mather of giving it time, but if im being honest i dont think we need something that advenced like a singularity level entity like OV, We could do with something that the very least does something more simple like the redistributing resources at a logistical level, and such thing could work as long as it could be respected in the level of constitutions, or human rights, not that is not questioned, but respected and defendable, how that could be done i really dont have any idea other that it being fire tested. Otherwise, the secret to it might be in quantum computing, but its not like we can jack up a quantum computer to OV and call it a day, since quantum shit is like twilight zone level maths, and is dificult to wrap ones head around so its still probably a risky bet.
Sorry for bad english, wall of text and no TL;DR but i dont think i can express all of this in a smaller text
I would say a good argument for communism is the worsening side effects of capitalism. These problems simply cannot be fixed in a capitalist framework because they require global cooperation and capitalism is based on competition. Problems like over exploitation of natural resources (overfishing, carbon emissions) and the failure of the market to adequately provide services for which there is a fixed level of demand (housing, education, healthcare. The scale of college and medical debt is getting ridiculous). Many other problems like these.
The solution is more democracy and yes common ownership of the means of production. People are just allergic to the specific term of class struggle. but it doesn’t change the meaning - the ownership/ruling class benefits from the status quo even as everything gets worse. They will not give up control without a fight, and as you said they will use every tool, from propaganda and legislation up to direct violence to maintain that control.
These problems simply cannot be fixed in a capitalist framework
They were fixed in the past. Trust-busting, Keynesian Economic Policy, taxing the wealthy.
It’s just we’ve been stuck in the Reagan’s supply side economics bullshit for decades now. The problems we’re seeing now are because of proven economic solutions being abandoned because the wealthy have confused the voting public to think that we shouldn’t go back to policies that worked for over six decades.
Like it or not, automation is going to lead to the end of capitalism when the majority of jobs we have today are rendered obsolete and the unemployed masses are forced to subsist through some sort of UBI.
Automation has been going on since the dawn of the industrial revolution. You see a robot doing a job a person used to do and get excited and think it’s going to be the end of the need for labour.
But look at an a excavator. People used to have to dig everything with shovels. But an excavator can do the job of hundreds of people with shovels. Excavators have been around a long time, but didn’t lead the elimination of all work everywhere.
Yes, “the majority of jobs we have today” will be made obsolete just like how having a big crew of strong people to dig a canal (or whatever) was made obsolete. But then there were new jobs to replace those ones.
It’s the truth, though. Humans create hierarchies whenever they sre in a group, explicit or not. Also, working without any incentive to do better only works for so long.
I’ve no problem improving society just for the sake of it, given that everybody else also does. Sadly any bigger group of people will start getting freeloaders and I’m allergic for such BS.
Focusing on freeloaders rather than those in need is problematic. There will always be freeloaders, and sure, we should always aim to minimize their numbers. But is it worth it to deny those with genuine need who vastly outnumber the relatively miniscule number of freeloaders?
I agree with your sentiment, but this thread is about communism. As someone who actually lives in post-communist country I can assure you that net effect is not what you’re looking for.
Right now my life is significantly better than someone who decides to live on government welfare.
30 something years ago, when we had socialism in my country it didn’t matter if you worked, got drunk or slept at work. Everybody had the same shitty flat and the same shitty products (assuming there were products at all).
This system has a lot of problems, but socialism sucked indefinitely more.
I agree with you, most if not all of the former socialist countries are doing better in most metrics now a days. I am not a socialist and do not advocate for it under almost any circumstance. I advocate for the abolition of the state, I want everyone to live a comfortable life, doing what they enjoy, without having to struggle to get to the end of the month. There will be freeloaders, but if that means that people in need can live a life just as well as anyone else I think its worth it.
The problem is people think capitalism, socialism, and even communism are mutually exclusive. They’re all tools, and like any tool they’re better for some jobs than others.
Trying to make a society work using just one across the board is doomed to failure. As is failing to impliment and update safeguards against disparities in equity and power.
I don’t know how people who lived through COVID can think that communism will work. A certain portion of the population will always act towards their own perceived benefit even if it is to the detriment of everyone else around them.
You hit the nail on the head, the issue with communism is not freeloarders or lack of incentives, it’s the fact that any form of hierarchy will create a power imbalance, and there will always be people who try to take advantage of it to better themselves and their friends at the expense of everyone else.
It is already legal to have a sexual relationship with multiple partners at the same time. Bigamy should be legalised. That it isn't, is a result of entrenched bigotry and religious prudery.
If you're using God as a proper noun, capitalise it. Not capitalising it is potentially confusing. Eg. There are numerous gods. Zeus is a god and God is a god.
It is likely too late to avert climate apocalypse. Don't have kids and you've done far more than most to prevent climate change. (This doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent it.)
A lot of society's ills are attributable to arseholes not getting punched in the face enough. This includes the fact that we can't make it legal to punch arseholes in the face, because arseholes would abuse that right to punch people who don't deserve it in the face.
America has become so fat, that most Americans have a skewed perception of what it means to be obese.
Most sports are stupid. Michael Phelps can swim 6 mph. Fish can swim 10x faster than that. Fuck that. I want to watch a tiger chase Trump through a maze.
The already high male suicide rate is severely underestimated. A lot of male risk taking behaviour, including car/bike related accidents, is suicidal in nature.
In practice identity based politics is often used to divide and conquer and distract people from their true interests. Class consciousness is more important. You have more in common with your colleagues, than you do with Beyonce or Joe Rogan, just because they happen to have the same skin colour and/or genitals as you.
The problem with bigamy is that most historic implementations of it involved a series of 1v1 marriages to one person who could marry others and the rest that couldn’t. To prevent chains of marriage, only one gender was allowed to marry, usually male.
If you remove gender from marriage, you can get much messier marriages and there is no legal understanding of what happens in those cases.
Yeah it would be fascinating complex in any system that doesn’t view women as property and gives everyone equal rights, especially with bisexuals included… It’s actually fascinating to try and picture how it would go down.
Imagine you meet a woman and fall in love, she’s already married to me and another guy, he’s got three wives and I’m married to two guys and one of the women he’s married to, they all have multiple husbands and wives in complex chains that double back on themselves and intertwine.
It opens up so many new and difficult questions, obviously you can’t all live together and can’t all do things together so who is spending Christmas with who? Who is coming on the family vacation? What do I do if I love my wife and my husband but they both also love people who hate each other? What if my wife has A wife that’s married to someone a bit right wing and his other wives are all married to more extreme right wingers who are married to q crazies…
Secrets is a good example, I tell my wife pretty much everything because I love and trust her but if we’re all married then secrets will spread like wildfire or new rules need to be invented which dilute what it means to be married, same with organizating things - normally you organise everything with your partner and do things together but when everyone is linked through winding chains of marriage that’s not possible, shared bank accounts aren’t possible for a start or buying a house together as everyone will want to do it with all their partners so again either a house big enough to fit the whole country or some marriages are more significant than others.
That’s the real issue I see developing, almost a caste system, or worse almost a hive structure - maybe I’m not as popular as you with our wife, by default I’m not in the group going to her parents for Christmas for example so instead I have Christmas with some of the other reject spouses, what do I do when my wife needs my help with something? I help, right? And if the thing she needs help with is helping her husband to get a gift for his more favoured wife to give to her favourite husband… Chains of importance spinning of in every direction, celebrity spouse’s that everyone fawns over getting gifts and resources chained right up from the bottom of the barrel plebs like me…
And this is all without even thinking of kids or how they’re made! Wouldn’t it be great to enjoy valentine’s day in bed with your wives? Well your wives think the same so now me and Fred are there and I brought Tim, Thomas, and Tiffany…
Of course the answers are all ‘well do it on a case by case basis’ type thing but if you’re keeping your money personal, organising things based on availability and preference then it’s basically the same as not being married at all but a lot more complex.
I just find it fascinating thinking of the implications of that becoming as common as monogamy is. Honestly I’m fairly ambivalent about which I think would be better, it’s not like there aren’t endless issues with the current system.
None of these are unpopular takes other than the first one. It’s no one’s business who you fuck. We have no fault divorce for those who want out for any reason. The state doesn’t care about why you divorce, and it seems like many successful people have multiple families so it also seems like it wouldn’t be too difficult to trip past that either.
Edit: the climate change one is also unpopular since all that will happen is the loss of diversity and people who live near the shore will have to move inland. There will be more extreme weather events but it’s not like we’re going to turn into Venus. Things are just going to get more expensive and classist and racist.
I find it insane that the same people who are anti-fossil fuel and want only green energy is also anti-nuclear power. I also want fossil fuels gone, but nuclear is the only way we are able to get to where we need to.
My only quibble with nuclear power is how irresponsible people are long term. The critical safety failure is always someone incompetent or cutting costs/corners.
Well and that I think distributed generation is more robust. Natural disaster can’t take out power to half a state if there’s energy being generated and stored all over. The means of production in the hands of the consumers.
Statistically nuclear is by far the safest form of power generation. Of course, it would be good to locate it in areas that are not disaster prone. As far as I understand it though, the issue with nuclear is the cost. But in a perfect world we would need something to smooth out the inconsistency of renewables, either battery tech or something like nuclear that you can turn on and off as needed.
And yeah it is safe, but if it becomes unsafe for whichever reason, it becomes really unsafe. I just don’t trust humans to not eventually something stupid.
Well the problem with the Texas power grid is that it exists in the first place. Still, when it comes to safety, you have to multiply how bad it is by the number of people it will affect, and divide by the amount of power generated to get the right picture. There is a media bias towards rare, intense events which causes people to think they are more common than they really are. This explains people’s views on nuclear power, school shootings, terrorism, shark attacks etc.
Nuclear isn’t just benefits. There are major costs and risks. It’s sad how both sides are so ignorant to the arguments of the other side. And no one is an idiot to came to different conclusions.
The risks of nuclear energy are well managed already. Out of all nuclear power plants built to an even remotely modern design, exactly zero have suffered a meltdown, and I don’t see any reason to expect that to change.
I LOVE banana flavored stuff. When I say this, people will often say “even banana flavored Laffy Taffy?”. Yes, that’s the best flavor and it’s not even close.
They still exist but they aren’t bred at scale anymore.
A lot of the suitable land for the banana is contaminated with the fungus that causes Panama Disease so they can only be planted on land without it.
A decade ago, a new strain of the fungus that infects Cavendish was detected. There isn’t any real replacement or treatment for it yet, meaning there is a high chance that all edible bananas will go extinct.
That flavor is isoamyl acetate and the original “Big Mike” bananas of yesteryear were rich in it. Seriouseats actually has a really good article on it. I’m right there with you though. I actually love the flavor too. More for us, friend.
I like bananas, but I definitely don’t like banana flavored stuff. So I guess you might be right. It tastes so artificial imo. When we buy yoghurt, the banana yoghurt is always the one that stays until all other flavours are gone. Same for candy.
That’s because it doesn’t taste like the bananas we eat nowadays. It’s a flavor based on the Gros Michel banana, which was largely wiped out in the 1960s by a disease. The bananas we eat today are less flavorful, but they’re also resistant to that disease.
the military is a cult that tricks children into dying for the wealth of the owner class. they tell you you’re defending “freedom” but you’re defending the gravest enemies of freedom that currently exist.
The military is also the only path to free college & free healthcare in the United States. I have a friend who’s getting his second college degree that’s entirely paid for by being a veteran
Nevermind the potential PTSD and/or poisoning from their time in the military and the very poor state of the VA yet our military budget has never been higher.
The defeatist in me wants to downvote you. The optimist in me also wants to downvote you. The currently aware bit of me reminds me that this isn’t reddit, and downvotes aren’t a thing here. The rest of me is upst because there’s a non-zero chance you’re right, and the entire world would be better off.
It’s not unusual. The joke is the political spectrum is a circle. You go far enough to the left - you meet the far right.
In the end both Bernie and Trump are populists (in both senses: offering solutions that people want and proposing simplified solutions that are unrealistic)
During Covid in Germany the anti vaccine protest coalition was made up of fascists and hippies.
Even though he is a socialist (which I hate) I believe he genuinely cares about the issues he says he cares about, unlike almost everyone in politics right now, Bernie is honest. Donald Trump, well he gets shit done and is politically incorrect, he has the courage to say things that many politicians don’t have the courage of addressing (a similarity between both Bernie and Trump). And Bernie has not changed that much on terms of his policies, he supported gay men and women when it was unpopular (I loved this big time!), he says what he thinks about the Saudis and no one,not even trump has the courage to do this, he is a brave man in the truest sense. I love Bernie more than Trump for that reason. But yeah, both are populists, both are unlike anyone who I have ever seen, I really wish Bernie was president for at least one term, Hillary B Clinton and the Dems cheated him out of his rightful ticket. So fuck Hillary and fuck the democratic party establishment, also fuck Joe Biden too while we are at it. For someone who make a big deal out of the Jan 6 disturbance, Dems are perfectly capable of and are willing to steal elections and throw the will of the people into the dustbin.
Because they’re both populist, if you don’t care about the policy it’s easy to like both trump (pre elected, if you still support him after, you’re either willfully ignorant or brainwashed) or Bernie
I’ll bet $1 million that you voted for Hillary in the primary then gaslighted all of the Bernie supporters that were absolutely outraged after the convention.
Considering your claim has already been disproven mathematically I don’t think you should be sitting in judgement of anyone’s intelligence. For fucks sake you think Medium is a good source?
Spiva’s comment is referencing the fact that traditionally the party did choose the candidate. This was the case until the 1950-60s depending on the party. There’s no law requiring an open primary and parties can do as they wish. If you had any understanding of US political history this wouldn’t have been a surprising quote but here you are.
How does math come into play when the party tallying the votes is literally allowed to cheat?
Al Franken disobeyed the will of his constituents as a superdelegate and voted against them. I could go on and on all day about my lived experience in 2016 and people EXACTLY like you, gaslighting me, telling me that my lived experience was false and I somehow misremembered it.
I am not even going to waste any further time on you, shitlib.
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