not to mention all the troll bots. If you are arguing online, theres a good chance its just a bot/
I know it’s scary
Also it’s often highly subjective what even is “good”. That’s the root cause of a lot of problems in the first place. Subjective instincts that are considered an objective ethics.
It’s a nice thought. Absurd, but nice.
Does it matter that most people are good if most people in power aren’t, and they have an army of similar-minded people following their orders?
See I hard coped the “Believe that most people are good” thing, and then I saw numerical data that proves that most people (in the USA), in fact, not only want me to die; but hate most people not like them enough to support a sleazy dictator wanna-be and support a fascist regime, just to destroy the lives of other people who they see as “competition” or “lesser” or “undesirables”.
How I wish that was true.
I’m with you. I mean, its probably the bubble I live in, but I’m so tired of trying to talk to my friends and family about all of this but I’m dismissed as being paranoid or they tell me that Biden was just as bad or frankly most often just some dismissive joke in response.
I’m guessing about as many people care about this as there are who support all of it. The remaining 40-50% is just checked out and thinks this is just politics as usual. That’s my impression anyway.
Oooh, and here I thought the GOP was a bunch of Nazis fucking children. Guess it’s just the algorithm fucking children and opening concentration camps.
We get it, you disagree with OP. Have you considered your comment may come across as a level of unhinged and impotent rhetoric that only moreso proves OP’s point? I hope you find peace soon, and I absolutely relate with your distaste of the current atrocities✌️
So are they atrocities or not? Because you seem awfully chill about the whole thing, like they’re mild inconveniences that aren’t actively ruining millions of lives
hope you find peace soon, and I absolutely relate with your distaste of the current atrocities✌️
There’s nothing outside the text. Whatever you’re reading into this is strictly your fantasy. I’m not denying we’re in a nightmare, I’m just old and stuck protecting the few that depend on me.
So which is it? Are these atrocities happening, or is it just the algorithm pushing that narrative? You can’t have it both ways (it’s real, btw).
You Republicans never cease to make me laugh.
The pubbers are baseless as all hell now–what makes you think I’m one of em homeboy?
Believe that most people are good.
I’d love to if they didn’t show their ass IRL as often as online.
I used to believe people were good, but over the years I’ve just seen worse and worse behavior from the general public to the point that the only way I could possibly believe most people were fundamentally good would be to reject reality.
Yeah, talk to enough conservatives IRL and you’ll know this is bullshit.
Selfish, evil human beings. Whether they realize it or not.
Except for the elites, I think it’s more constructive to think of them as brainwashed by an ancient meme; potentially redeemable.
Emphasis on ‘potentially’. Don’t waste too much time on them, some of them get off on watching you uselessly spend your time and energy and sanity on them. Brainwashing doesn’t work like it does in comic books. These are people who were already willing to and capable of rationalizing putting kids into cages and the ‘brainwashing’ just gave them an easy explanation.
It’s like a person who has committed rape. Even if they come out later as an anti-rape activist and they’re publicly remorseful and they do a lot of work to make up for the harm they caused you still aren’t gonna leave them alone with your sister.
Which ironically I believe is the problem with Lemmy too. I tend to browse unfiltered/all/top 6 hours (with the exception of .ml) and the amount of doom and gloom on here either depresses me or makes me angry with everything being reported.
I find I have to step away or switch to highly curated stuff that doesn’t have a drop of real world events in it.
Come hang out with us at [email protected] and [email protected] there is only joy there
You browse lemmy for 6 hours per day? (⚆ᗝ⚆)
There’s a certain amount of catharsis in commiseration. Not all the negativity is due to algorithmic curation; a decent amount is legit sadness/anger at the way things are going in the world. Which is valid, imho. But I also understand that it requires some serious hand-curating to get only positive information. Reddit is a lot harder in that regard, as well.
This, more than anything, is why I stick to the Fediverse. There’s some negativity here, but it’s organic, and generally not being conjured out of thin air to get me to buy shit.
When I log on to FB to check my DM’s, it’s very obvious what the algo is doing, and I can’t be bothered to indulge it.
Can I get some data on the “most people are good” bit?
@[email protected] @[email protected]
@[email protected]I can’t help but recall of two quotes: one from Rousseau who said “Humans are born good but society corrupts them”, and another from Hobbes who said “Humans are a wolf to humans”. While it seems like both thinkers couldn’t agree with each other because both statements look different, the logical implications from Rousseau inevitably leads to that of Hobbes. I’ll try to explain my point below.
When Rousseau says “society corrupts good humans”, he implies the existence of not-good humans because, as we know, society is made out of people (not just Soylent Green). Rousseau implies that the not-good humans were once good until they got corrupted by earlier not-good humans, which were corrupted by even earlier not-good humans… somewhere, non-goodness was born. Causality requires that a non-goodness stemmed from some kind of “patient zero of evilness”.
Now, religions would be tempted to think of this “patient zero” as something supernatural: Shaitan, Iblis, Angra Mainyu… It’s not exactly wrong (as archetypal representation), but it’s not accurate either: it’s not something too otherworldly, it’s right in front of us or, should I say, inside us.
Take Derren Brown’s “The Push” (a documentary about social compliance and conformity): before the auction gala where (spoiler)the person was cluelessly played by a hidden script to push someone from a rooftop, commiting murder to (in their mind) save themself(/spoiler), Derren conducted a “selection process” where the candidates would answer a test: unbeknownst to them, the test was beyond a questionnaire, it was evaluating who would keep standing up and sitting whenever a bell rang. They weren’t told to do so: they were, instead, socially pressured to do it, because all the other candidates were doing it. It’s the “monkey see, monkey do”.
Those who didn’t watch The Push (watch it, it’s illuminating) might ask: if the candidates weren’t told to do it (switch between sitting and standing whenever a bell rings), how did the behavior emerge? The behavior was initially seeded by actors, people who initially acted on it. Then things got funnier: one by one, actors were removed and fresh, clueless candidates were added, until no actors were in the room, yet the behavior continued. It was carried among “generations” (batches of candidates).
There was no devil behind this behavior. One could argue “Derren Brown was the devil behind the scenes, conducting a social experiment”, but something motivated those actors (e.g. money), just like something motivated the hypothetical “first evil human” to be evil, except… something also motivated clueless candidates to imitate it, just like something motivated the “Rousseau’s good humans” to spread societal corruption.
It’s not a devil: it’s humans, it’s us. We’re born with this wolf inside, and it just takes a “push” for it to howl. It’s inherent to us because it’s inherent to Nature.
Humans are situational. That’s what makes them interesting and worthwhile. Anything that is the same in every situation has no heart.
I tend to think that you really see what people are made of in a tight spot. In a nice situation, everyone finds it easy to be kind. But even those who rise to a challenge and show true heart only do so when they really believe it is an option. That is the point of having hope.
When it comes to people you meet each day (friends, colleagues, schoolmates, …), are there people among them you’d call ‘genuinely evil’? Is it a majority of them?
Daily reminder that 30% of people would vote to bring back chattel slavery if it was convenient.
Yes, but only for foreigners and non whites. Who don’t matter obviously
Honestly? Yeah, it’s well over a majority. I wouldn’t call them ‘purely evil’, but ‘genuinely evil’ is pretty much the norm in society. People just tend to compartmentalize their evil.
I feel like this is projection. How tf do you know “well over a majority” of people are compartmentalizing “evil”, in a way so good that we can’t detect it, but somehow you know this to be true and we should trust you? Why? How? What makes you special in knowing this? I’m sorry if I’m coming off rude, I just don’t understand how people can say this with such confidence when they haven’t asked “well over a majority” of humans. 😛
In my personal experience, 95+% of people are, at the end of the day, pretty selfish. I don’t mean that they need to be saints, but almost everyone does not want to make small sacrifices to make the world a better place.
I’m talking about people that don’t want to eat less meat or try to consume less, or maybe just give the benefit of the doubt to the other side.
In 2024 35% of eligible voters didn’t vote and 32% voted for Trump. That’s not a perfect measure, but it’s about as much of a case as can be made. I’m also far less inclined to move any of those 67% over to the “good” side than to move any of the 32% that voted for Harris to the bad side.
In 2024 35% of eligible voters didn’t vote and 32% voted for Trump. That’s not a perfect measure, but it’s about as much of a case as can be made. I’m also far less inclined to move any of those 67% over to the “good” side than to move any of the 32% that voted for Harris to the bad side.
It feels so weird to pass by incredible filth on a daily basis, but then get taken aback by a worldview. You must have been through a lot, wish I could help somehow.
Go outside and start counting all the absolutely unnecessary gas guzzling SUVs. Walk your neighborhood with a trash bag and see what you collect. Ask yourself how many people you know are aware of the prison industrial complex, or would even care if they did know. How many people want subsidized housing in their neighborhoods to address homelessness? How many want some of the funding for their school districts to go to school districts in less fortunate neighborhoods? If there is a local home in obvious disrepair, how many people will gossip or complain to the municipality compared to how many will ask the neighbor if they need help?
Most people are nice. That’s not the same as not being evil. Not being evil takes work.
Holy shit dude how do you dupli-post 10 times
Go outside and start counting all the absolutely unnecessary gas guzzling SUVs. Walk your neighborhood with a trash bag and see what you collect. Ask yourself how many people you know are aware of the prison industrial complex, or would even care if they did know. How many people want subsidized housing in their neighborhoods to address homelessness? How many want some of the funding for their school districts to go to school districts in less fortunate neighborhoods? If there is a local home in obvious disrepair, how many people will gossip or complain to the municipality compared to how many will ask the neighbor if they need help?
Most people are nice. That’s not the same as not being evil. Not being evil takes work.
Everyone I’m close to knows about the prison industrial complex because we talk to each other. That’s how a few of us found out, by knowing people who are activated enough to look into these things and spread the word. As to the rest, I could hit you with a list of things and say “approach the world with intent to confirm this bias” and it would amount to the same thing.
Not being part of the problem takes work, it’s true, but wisdom is in knowing people are highly situational, neither inherently good or bad but often entirely unequipped for the world we’ve created or the heights we’ve grasped. We’re beings of brilliance and kindness but also complacency and disaster. Not evil, but we create many evil situations by accident and shortsightedness.
Everyone I’m close to knows about the prison industrial complex because we talk to each other.
Maybe we live in different neighborhoods. Most of my neighbors are fine with locking “those people” up, and don’t much care what happens to them beyond that. How do you account for the vast majority of eligible voters either not showing up or voting for Trump?
Not being part of the problem takes work,
So we’re on the same page there.
wisdom is in knowing people are highly situational, neither inherently good or bad
If it takes work to not be part of the problem than aren’t people inherently “bad” until they do the work? Anyways, I didn’t introduce that dialectic to this conversation. Of course throwing everyone into two buckets is inherently going to miss a lot of depth.
Go outside and start counting all the absolutely unnecessary gas guzzling SUVs. Walk your neighborhood with a trash bag and see what you collect. Ask yourself how many people you know are aware of the prison industrial complex, or would even care if they did know. How many people want subsidized housing in their neighborhoods to address homelessness? How many want some of the funding for their school districts to go to school districts in less fortunate neighborhoods? If there is a local home in obvious disrepair, how many people will gossip or complain to the municipality compared to how many will ask the neighbor if they need help?
Most people are nice. That’s not the same as not being evil. Not being evil takes work. If most people were good, the world would look a lot different.
pass by incredible filth on a daily basis
Can you be more specific? What is this referring to?
I tend to cruise /all
It seems as though you somehow made it less specific lol
https://lemmy.world/?dataType=Post&listingType=All&sort=New
An insane mess
Go outside and start counting all the absolutely unnecessary gas guzzling SUVs. Walk your neighborhood with a trash bag and see what you collect. Ask yourself how many people you know are aware of the prison industrial complex, or would even care if they did know. How many people want subsidized housing in their neighborhoods to address homelessness? How many want some of the funding for their school districts to go to school districts in less fortunate neighborhoods? If there is a local home in obvious disrepair, how many people will gossip or complain to the municipality compared to how many will ask the neighbor if they need help?
Most people are nice. That’s not the same as not being evil. Not being evil takes work.
There’s not a lot of difference between the average german citizen in 1940 and the average westerner today.
Feels almost like a non sequitur, even if not untrue. I know enough history to know that evil is banal, but that chiefly refers to people who stay silent, choose comfort over justice, and follow unethical orders. It’s taking things a ways further to say most people are mostly evil, don’t you think?
Comes down to your definition of evil, really. And how comfortable you are calling the majority of people evil - if you aren’t, obviously you’ll jump through a few extra hoops to keep that worldview intact.
Are you only here to sneer? At least do so interestingly.
I reject the premise. The term “Evil” is meaningless.
Here’s my counter: most people are idiots
That doesn’t make them good. Being stupid is a rather limited excuse in the face of such great evils we have today.
No, Simu. You are detached from reality. Stop trying to humanize POS Nazi garbage. Stop trying to reintegrate them. I will NEVER forgive
Most people are incoherent and parochial. That’s not ‘good’, but it’s certainly not what you see online.
I do very much recommend talking to people. The conversations can be amazing if you hold a straight face.
People are coherent in my experience but parochial is a fair descriptor. Many can talk your ear off about the shiny object they bought, the minutia of the statistics of their team’s star player, or the resort they recently visited while having little to no awareness of broader concepts. Some are completely aloof to concepts that don’t involve them.
Whether they’re good people… That depends on how you set the standard. I believe that a fairly self absorbed person can still be a good person but there are many who would disagree with that.
I wouldn’t say most are good or bad.
But seriously talk to someone at a cafe or bus stop about politics, philosophy, or science. It gets goofy fast.
70 million people voted for Trump twice. They cheer at ICE kidnappings, call racists saints, and such. The reality is that a lot less people are actually good (meaning they care genuinely about the well being of others) than this post makes it seem.
