What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
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Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
There can be too much political correctness at times.
Related: I believe it's ok, given certain contexts, to speak broadly and crassly to people who expect that. It's ultimately ineffective and therefore bad to come off as an pretenscious arrogant know-it-all, correcting everyone's grammar and word choices and any ignorance they have. I see some students in the labor movement and wonder if they're capable of expressing their knowledge to typical joe worker, without injecting French, German or Russian, or losing their temper at some unintentionally offensive ignorance. We're speaking broadly to regular people, don't alienate them with your academic knowledge.
That doesn't mean never correct crappy things people say, you can and should, but pick your battles. A climate scientist once told me, being correct isn't enough.
A very valuable lesson, and it's very fitting who said it
It's less 'too much pc' and more 'purity politics' imo
There's a great post on tumblr that really fuckin' nailed it:
just a short reminder:
you can post a picture of a gun on facebook, because it is only a harmless picture of a machine that is solely built to kill people. definitely nothing that shouldn't be shown in public
if you do post a picture if an exposed female nipple, banned, because guess what? that's against the policy
I do feel like arguing semantics at almost all times steals some energy from the movement overall
I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don't know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
When you're coming from a position of extreme privilege and you're either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with "lesser people" (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you're being discriminated against.
I think you're missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I'm inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we're getting at. It's also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority -- which while relatable to me, doesn't help make leftism look appealing.
(By "majority" I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
I think the first thing to do is to shift sentiment toward solving the problem of how to make things appealing to centrists and the apolitical. Let's get "I agree -- but that has bad optics so let's focus on something else first" into our lexicon. Once the left is able to be more strategic about this, then I think we'll gain a lot more strides. I have some thoughts about what that might look like, but it's outside the scope of this post.
The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.
I'm not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don't have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.
100% agree. I honestly think that in ~2015, the left's failure to appeal to young white men caused them to turn to the alt right. I think we scared them off with things like "check your privilege" etc., and should have focused more on getting them amped about class warfare.
Agreed 100%. I'm glad we're collectively starting to realize this. It's a bit late, but hopefully it'll still do good.
Well, I posted about this in this topic because I think it's not a perspective that's gained traction. Please help spread the good word..!
I've been thinking of starting some sort of group to help with that goal-- would you be interested? I'm not sure what we could do, but I want to do something, you know? I figure the best impact I can have is to convince other people that I mostly agree with to adopt this approach, which is what I envision the group could help with.
I'm curious
DM me too pls :D
DM me. :)
I think the most insidious part is that the far right feeds on men's anger and negative emotions and just keeps telling them that if they go farther right, if they become more dominant alpha male, it'll make all their negative emotions go away. And then when it doesn't, they just keep pushing right.
As a person in that demographic it’s wild to me that leftism isn’t appealing… we’re supposed to just blame everything on everyone but ourselves I suppose?
The person on my left whispers about equality, and the benefits of social safety nets. The person on my right yells lies that equality means I have to give up things, and that social safety nets will be abused by people who want to steal the fruits of my labor. The person behind me (financially) says nothing, they’re too busy just trying to live. The person ahead of me points to the person behind getting food stamps and screams “how dare they take your taxes” while they quietly steal the actual fruit of my labor.
Any time leftism gets loud enough to get enough attention to appeal to anyone, rightism is already loudly complaining about the noise. If one doesn’t think about it too much, all they’ve heard is negativity about the left and positivity about the right. Call it brainwashing, gaslighting, or indoctrination, but rarely do the facts of both sides come to play. You have to work to find the truth of leftism while also working to ignore the bullshit being screamed from the right.
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70's/80's) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you'd have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You'd also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be 'happy' (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that's what would need to be done. You'd have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you'd have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won't be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can't be exploited, to try and "raise all boats" in society. And you'd have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they're now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you'd have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., "Free Will is a Pain in the Ass".
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
ThiscommentislicensedunderCCBY-NC-SA4.0Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists "coming for the" communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn't effecting their status quo.
That's not true at all. I know Centrists who care about everybody, and want everybody to be safe/happy/successful. They see it as a "floating tide raises all boats" kind of thing.
ThiscommentislicensedunderCCBY-NC-SA4.0But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it's really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than "our system may not be perfect, but it's the best there is"? See Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" for an eloquent condemnation of "moderates".
You'll have to elaborate/defend that statement. I think you're just imposing your own perspective/worldview without facts in evidence.
That would be said by Leftists about a Leftist-bias system, or Rightists about a Rightist-bias system. What you described is not just in the domain of the Centrist. There are many "systems" that groups of humans gather around, and each system may look very different from other systems.
I have not read this, so apologies if I get this wrong, but I will judge this sentence based on the overall message of your comment reply.
Being a moderate does not mean settling for whatever no matter what, no matter how harmful it is. Its about trying to have a consensus that most/all can live with, in how we run our society and how we act towards each other.
For example, if everybody agreed on Leftism, then should the middle of the Leftism population be condemmed (as they would now be the Centrists of Leftism)? Or Centrists of Rightism?
If human history teaches us anything, governing from the fridge/edges never works out well for everybody else.
ThiscommentislicensedunderCCBY-NC-SA4.0You aren't exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. "The Left" commonly answers the second with an idea called 'eternal revolution'. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you'll have on Lemmy today.
https://letterfromjail.com/
I'll take a look.
I think an awful lot of them actually have more leftish values, but they are convinced (and there is a huge self reinforcing bubble of that mentality, between media, politicians, and voters) that only the weakest, most watered down version of that can possibly succeed, politically.
I feel like one obvious answer is "stop being so eager to alienate cis straight white men"
I think this advice is not very actionable as is, and needs more digesting into more specific strategies.
Like, for instance: let's avoid making people feel rejected by the left for having privilege, and instead focus on guiding privileged people so that they can use their privilege to help the cause.
I think a lot of conversation is "men go to therapy" but therapy alone isn't enough? We kind of cast men off of having all the privilege in the world without recognizing that patriarchy hurts them too, and in lots of facets of their lives in a way that just going to a therapist once a week does not help.
Yeah, therapy is not a viable solution for broad societal issues
Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can't be made.
Where in the definition of leftism is it said that leftism is unpopular?
it's manifested in our reality; only the liberal branch of leftism is permitted (particularly in the united states) while the other branches are openly denigrated by moderates and rightists alike and persecuted by our governments and militias.
That's hardly definitional.
This really depends how you define "leftism".
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the population's center' then sure, it can't be a majority.
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the political center' then that doesn't imply it's unpopular, and there's direct electoral evidence of 'left' parties achieving a majority government.
If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren't unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.
How it's possible that the political movement that aim for the benefits of the 99% is unpopular by definition?
Identity politics may be unpopular by definition, but not leftism.
Because the status quo throughout history is an extremely small number of people getting the most benefits by far and everyone else getting screwed, and everyone seeing this as normal. People are used to it, while having everyone on relatively equal footing is new and therefore scary.
Are you active in any socialist parties?
I would like to be, but I just can't figure out how to get involved in my area.
I was going to follow up with a sick zinger but instead I'll just be normal, ha.
It is important to grow the left, to turn it from like 100-1000 people in a given city into 5-10%. I can agree with that motivation, as can the vast majority of socialists. Our aim is revolution, that doesn't happen from just a few reading groups, it has to become more.
The entire country already caters to the demo you mentioned. Everything is ready-made for them. Many orgs are dominated by them, such as the DSA. You should not write off straight white cis guys but they are consistently the hardest to reach because they are dismissive of others' experiences with oppression and have been more shielded from capitalism's worst in their country, but tend to feel very entitled to an opinion about it.
Centrism is the only described characteristic that is a chosen identity and it is a political tendency, if you can call it that. It's a person with no political development whatsoever, they just vaguely cobble together an incoherent mishmash of common liberal and reactionary ideas that they can't really defend but they call themselves an outsider as if that means something regarding someone whose political life can be summed up as, "sometimes votes".
So what would it mean to try to boost efforts to recruit straight white cis dude centrists? Because the first things that would come to mind for me are usually called tailism by socialists and has a long track record of failure in the US in particular, where the US had a gargantuan labor movement that was entirely scuttled by liberal cooption and playing straight white cis dudes off of marginalized groups. There were entire unions that were segregated or disallowed black membership, for example. Those were the easiest to coopt into the red scare and, once they were used to out and isolate socialists, were then easily undermined and shrunk when their anticommunist government came for labor a couple decades later, having no radical core remsining and no material leverage.
IMO the biggest problem is media. They report through a center-right lens and focus on sensationalism. So all people see of the left is the "check your privilege cis white boy" and "anarchists have burned down the entire city" BS lines instead of the vast aid efforts and daily work.
For years I've been hearing "the media has a left bias" though. I guess that's left=democrat party, not left=leftist.
The fox news viewer see CNN as "leftist" and anything further as "The Commies". CNN/MSNBC/whatever "liberal” orgs see themselves as the leading charge of the liberal movement and anything more progressive or actually leftist as "The Commies".
Ehh, can't expect anything short of that sort of bias from corporate media.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
In theory it should have a strong monetary incentive for all but the wealthiest of cis/striaght/white/males. They just don't realize that for some reason.
I can think of a good reason but i'm not sure whether you're willing to buy into it.
people naturally don't think of themselves as individuals. people think of themselves as a group/society.
People recognize that under a republican US government, they're significantly more likely to go to mars and have prosperous offspring. while if they're stuck on earth, a recession and decline is waiting for them. they can't verbalize it and probably aren't even rationally aware of it, but i guess they can feel it with their heart.
of course lots of you folks are gonna immediately chime in and say "nooo i saw a youtube video that explained that it's impossible to live on mars", and honestly, you should reconsider why you're so eager to deny a topic that you've clearly not put in as much effort to think about than the people who actually do care about this project. and also, assuming it does work out; what will you do then? be ashamed of your wrong prediction? because if you're not, that means you don't stand to your prediction, and therefore the prediction is worthless. i'm not sure whether i was too direct about this and somebody perceived it as rude, but i'm tired of this feeling of being stuck. we need to think long-term again.
I'm confused, are you saying that most straight white men are not left... Because they all want to go to mars?
Is this mars thing meant to be an analogy or do you mean people literally think they will have a better life colonizing mars?
It depends on the material conditions. Also there is a reason "centrists" even exist as they are now and appear to you as some kind of constant monolith. Or as Marx did put it "Ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas"
That Trump is neither conservative (in any way) nor cares at all about any traditional Republican values
Trump and MAGA are regressive. They are hell-bent on taking this country back to the first half of the 20th century, in all the worst possible ways.
Most of them don't even know what they want. They're told what to think and simply can't process anything on their own. Argue with one and you'll be hard pressed to find an original thought, just regurgitations of what they've been told by fox news.
Perhaps it would be useful to build up from basics, asking them what issues actually affect their own life, and hopefully avoid all the hyperreality* culture wars of the media.
* https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png
I've noticed this in that they can't think of their own problems. They say "they're teaching kids to be trans in school" but don't talk to their actual kids about what they're actually learning. They say "the inflation makes it impossible to buy groceries!" And they show the groceries with 3 cases of Mt dew because they don't want to think about budgeting. They say "immigrants are taking our jobs" and live in rural Missouri where there's 1 Latino in town. They aren't thinking of problems that actually effect them, they think of the problems fox news tells them to think about.
Huh. Mid 20th century? But that’s when America transitioned to relatively high and progressive income taxes instead of relying on tariffs. It’s also when massive state spending on education lead to a large chunk of Americans being able to care about something other than themselves, a precursor to progressivism in America and the civil rights movement.
If anything, I think Americans appear to want to go back to the Gilded Age, known for its massive inequality, corruption, and excessive-wealth-flaunting.
He recently said something about the 20s and 30s. That's when he considered America great, apparently.
To your second point, I think you're somewhat right about that. However it's a weird mix of traditional Republican values and this new Nationalism. Republicans were traditionally for a small federal government (except military of course)
Abortion is not a moral hazard at all. Most people who might exist don't. The whole "everyone agrees abortion is awful..." shit is obnoxious. I legitimately do not care. I am far more concerned about the lives of actual children. Once we seriously tackle that issue, we can move upstream, and this should be viewed as both incentive and a purity test for those who pretend to care about the "unborn."
I've thought this for a long time. Until every living person has virtually every one of their needs met at virtually all times, abortion isn't even on the table as something to worry about. We have a responsibility for what we have already, not some potential human that has plenty of other ways they would never make it to adulthood.
Agreed.
Couldn't care less about fetuses. I do care about the people carrying fetuses and their quality of life, however.
If they are so pro life I'd expect them to support universal healthcare but they very rarely do.
I am unsure about when it stops being moral to terminate a foetus/baby. I think it's somewhere between 6 and 14 months, but that's just my gut feeling. Some people are astonished that I would even consider that it could be after birth, but it's not like any sudden development occurs at the moment of birth.
I agree with my mom. 25 years is good.
For context she said that when I wasn’t 25 yet.
I agree with the following: If your mother tries to kill you, and dies themselves instead as a result of the conflict, they have no right to complain.
It is always moral if the woman doesn't want the baby. Sometimes you don't even find out you're pregnant until it's 7 weeks or so
While I think this is mostly true, I think there are some potentially problematic "edge cases", for example do you think it would be moral for someone to abort all girls until they eventually have a boy?
I don't like that but I don't think they'd be nice to the girl if it was born either, so maybe it's for the best
Is it moral to kill a 2-year old because the parents no longer want it?
I'm sure that abortion is fine for the first few months. After that, I am unsure either way, but I don't feel strongly enough to wish to see abortion rights curtailed at all. So this is largely academic.
A 2 year old is a baby, an unborn fetus is a fetus, an extension of the parent. It doesn't have thoughts, feelings, communication, and I would always value the parents life over its own.
If you give away a 2 year old you don't really have to do much, but if you want to give away a 7 week old fetus, you still have to carry it to term, deal with discrimation and discomfort, deal with any medical issues that may arise, go through the extremely painful procedure of giving birth.
Just as you cannot be forced to donate your organs after death to help save countless lives, you cannot be forced to go through so much pain and trouble just to give birth to a life that doesn't exist yet.
Let's put aside 7-week old fetuses, as we both agree it's fine to abort those.
I am pretty sure a 3-month-old fetus does not have thoughts or feelings to any significant extent. I am less sure about an 8 month old fetus; a lot of people who are 8 months pregnant do think their fetus has started to develop a personality. Regardless, I don't see any particular leap in thoughts and feelings from just prior to birth compared with just after birth; at least, I don't see why such a leap should occur at the moment of birth.
I don't think being forced to donate organs is a good metaphor -- at least, I don't intrinsically value post-mortem bodily autonomy. A better metaphor I think would be being forced to do something in order for another person to live. Consider a Saharan desert guide on a 1-month tour for some clients. Once the tour begins, it would be morally reprehensible for the guide to abandon the clients to the elements; they must bring the clients out of the desert safely, whether they want to or not. It should be a bright-line case, because the lives of the clients rely on the guide, and the guide got them into this situation.
I don't see 7-week old fetuses as being people; their lives are below my consideration. I do see an 8.5-month baby as being close in moral value to a 2-week old baby -- I don't know what that moral value is, but either killing both is fine, or killing neither is.
The 2 year old can exist separately from their parent. A fetus can't, in most abortion cases.
I don't see how this makes killing a 2-year old worse than killing an 8-month old fetus.
Let's keep separate these two things: the worthiness of the child to live, and the worthiness of the parent to have bodily autonomy. It seems to me that you're making the observation that the 2 year old does not violate the parent's bodily autonomy. Or are you asserting that because the child has independence, it is more intrinsically worthy to live?
You mean other than breathing its own air and no longer being physically connected to its mother's womb? I'd call that pretty significant. I would argue that the moment it breaths its first breath on its own rather than as a part of its mother's uterus, it becomes a murder victim, not an abortion.
I don't really see why breath is special.
Okay, to put it another way:
Once the child is born, it stops being literally a part of its mother and instead becomes an individual.
I suppose to me, one's moral weight is in their mind. If someone has no mind -- such as a brain-dead patient -- then they aren't really a person. Seeing as there's no reason to believe there's an immediate jump in neural development in a baby at the moment of birth, I do not believe it's a special moment for the baby in a moral accounting sense. So I don't think the baby becomes more intrinsically worthy of life at the precise moment it draws its first breath.
(For the parent, of course, it is a special moment, and in particular new options are available outside of the keep-or-abort dichotomy.)
As for being an individual, I don't really see how the child's autonomy is relevant. It's still fully dependent on its parents and society and could not function on its own regardless, so this is a fairly arbitrary step on the road to autonomy.
The problem that i see with that is the following: Assume a child has little neural activity (which, btw, is not true at all; children and newborns often have higher neural activity than grown-ups), but assume for a moment that a child had little neural activity, and therefore would be less worthy of preservation.
Now, somebody who has migraine, or has repeated electrical shocks in their brain, might be in a lot of pain, but has probably more neural activity than you. Would you now consider that since they have more neural activity, they are more worthy of life than you are? And what if you and that other person would be bound to the tracks of a trolley problem? Wouldn't it then be the ethical thing to kill you because you have less neural activity?
I don't mean to say that neural activity ∝moral weight. I am merely asserting that something without neural activity at all (or similar construct) can't be worth anything. This is why a rock has no moral value, and I don't need to treat a rock nicely.
I am less confident -- but still fairly confident -- that consciousness, pain, and so on require at least a couple neurons -- how many, I'm not sure -- but creatures like tiny snails and worms probably aren't worth consideration, or if they are then only very little. Shrimp are complex enough that I cannot say for sure that they aren't equal in value to a human, but my intuition says they still don't have fully-fledged sentience; I could be wrong though.
The strongest evidence that shrimp don't have sentience is anthropic -- if there are trillions of times more shrimp than humans, why am I a human and not a shrimp? Isn't that astoundingly improbable? But anthropic arguments are questionable at best.
It's dependent on a caretaker, but not necessarily on its own mother. Neural development also does take a big step starting at birth because the baby is now receiving stimuli.
This is gonna be a fun thread
Perhaps "not a person" isn't the right way to put it. More like "already passed away." I was being a bit provocative, sorry.
Regarding stimuli -- fair enough, that is a good argument actually. But to me that indicates a "kink" in the graph of their moral worth; it ought to resemble a point where they start gaining moral worth, but not a point where they immediately have it.
Of course, this is all very speculative, vibes-based and handwavey. I don't know how to define someone's moral worth -- which is precisely why I don't see why birth is special to one's moral worth.
It's not about the development of the fetus, it's about the woman's autonomy. So long as it's still inside her, her right to choose takes priority over its right to live, full stop.
Why do you assert this? Based on what moral framework? Is it morally okay to abandon a baby to the elements after birth, in favour of the autonomy of those who would raise it?
I'm not going to engage with you on the topic of a women's right to choose, or the meaning of bodily autonomy. On the off chance you're not a troll, good luck with your research on this very well documented political debate.
Based on the moral frame work that no person has a right to another person's body parts. We don't take organs from people who haven't explicitly said they're organ donors even after death, because that axiom is held so high. If I accidently hit you with my car, I have no legal obligation to donate a kidney to you to save your life.
I agree that axiom does lead to absolute certainty that fetuses can be aborted at any month. I don't agree with the axiom though. If I sign up to, say, share a kidney with somebody to keep them alive for 8 hours in some kind of bizarre medical procedure, I don't believe it's acceptable for me to shrug and change my mind halfway through. See also the metaphor about the Saharan desert guide in the adjacent thread.
I dislike criminalization at all because if a doctor at any point has to consider if they can prove that an abortion was medically necessary in a court of law, I find that to be a violation of their ability to care for their patient.
Fair enough, that's unrelated to morality though. I already don't wish to see abortion criminalized.
If i was aborted I wouldn't care, because I would be aborted.
that doesn't make them right btw. hitler was democratically elected too; the majority isn't always right.
Do they present any actual arguments? That's what would be interesting, because that is something that can be discussed.
As someone who was in a supportive relationship with a transgender person for 3 years and who personally struggles associating with my own gender (masculinity was never my thing lol), I never really got into the stating my gender pronouns.
I get why it's done for the times it matters and can do so in a sensitive space, but I get the sense it's usually done as public compliance (like a cis neolib as an email sig), which can lead to shallow support or worse, resentment. What we ultimately need is more genuine contact with people different from ourselves because that helps reduce "othering" a group.
Oh, but I do tend to default to "they" out of old internet habits. Always disliked the assumption all gamers are men.
That progressive people should prioritize economic equality ahead of social issues.
Y'all don't need to keep adding things to lgbtq or lgbt+. The q or + takes care of everything
I am very very very left wing, BUT I can get really annoyed with a lot of those "on my side" advocating for the most idealist of all idealism, as if it's a contest. Feels like a competition of "who's the bestest and mostest leftist of all". You scare people away and - not justifying it - but I get why some people get upset with "the left" because of this...
That intellectual property, both copyright or patents, doesn't serve its theoretical purpose and just acts as a legal shield for the monopolies of big corporations, at least in our capitalistic system, and it limits the spread of information
In theory, a musician should be protected against abuse of their music. In practice, all musicians need to be on Spotify through one of the few main publishers to make any decent money, and their music will be used for unintended purposes (intended for their contract at least) like AI training
In theory, patents should allow a small company with an idea to sell its progressive product to many big corporations. In practice, one big corporation will either buy the small company or copy the product and have the money to legally support its case against all evidence, lobbying to change laws too. Not to mention that big corporations are the ones that can do enough research to have relevant patents, it's much harder for universities and SMEs, not to mention big corporations can lobby to reduce public funding to R&D programs in universities and for SMEs.
And, last but not least important, access to content, think of politically relevant movies or book, depends on your income. If you are from a poorer country, chances are you cannot enjoy as much information and content as one born in a richer country.
I believe that the stance against nuclear power (specifically, nuclear fission, as opposed to radioisotope power used by spacecraft) by greens undermines the fight to stop global warming, and that many of the purported issues with nuclear power have been solved or were never really issues in the first place.
For instance: the nuclear waste produced by old-gen reactors can be used by newer generations.
the anti-work movement has been a blight on communism
I feel like it has the wrong name. But it is a baby step for many toward anticapitalist ideals.
Work is good, and can be beneficial. Working a job you hate because if you don't you'd starve is awful and should be done away with.
Do you see it as a waste of time or a distraction? I see it as a gateway drug.
The real question is how do they end? My hope is for a national dem and maybe a republican to break off to something like the working families party, something that exists, works at the ground level, but can be boosted by the optics of national politicians drawing attention to it.
Immigration is universally a roaring net positive in all of history ; economically, socially, everything. It's more than disinformation when they spew talking points. It's hate. And most people complicit are just fully ignorant. USA lost their empire due to lack of education. Every other first world nations have their success in lockstep with the level of education they give their kids. A heist of all wealth has been conducted and you are viewing the aftermath. Elon will find your coffers empty. The real treasure, turns out, was the people.
I'm really appreciating how much restraint y'all guys are showing with the downvotes. Thanks everyone.
Stop out-woking one another, it's okay to be right silently in order to bring in fence sitters.
If someone says, "my spirit animal told me late-stage capitalism is evil" welcome them to the club with open arms, focus on how you're alike and trust them to work out their faux pas over time spent among like-minded peers.
Also cultural appropriation ≠ exploitation, we can stop clutching our collective pearls over these faux pas.
I'm far left, but I believe that any citizen should be allowed to own any gun.
I think if we eliminated money, we would just invent it again and call it something else.
I don't like racism against white people or sexism against men. Do I think they're less urgent or worrying than bigotry directed at other groups? Sure. There's less hate against men and whites compared to other groups, and bigotry against them doesn't have the same social or political impact due to current systemic racism and sexism being directed at others. But bigotry is still bigotry, and I don't like bigotry against anyone.
I believe that the vast majority of people are inherently good, and that tribalism and political divisiveness are some of the biggest issues we have to face.
Political differences arise mostly from different values, fears, education (or lack thereof), etc, but most people if you get to know them believe what they do because they believe it is genuinely good. But increasingly politics is focused on vilifying others, instead of trying to understand each other.
It seems like the atmosphere is changing now but I've been saying this for years.
The language of privilege is backwards and counter productive.
I'm mostly an anarchist. But.
I think that there needs to be some degree of authoritarian, arbitrary power. Mostly because I've been in anarchist groups in the past, and when everyone has input into a decision, shit gets bogged down really fast. Not everyone understands a given issue and will be able to make an informed choice, and letting opinionated-and-ignorant people make choices that affect the whole group is... Not good.
The problem is, I don't know how to balance these competing interests, or exactly where authoritarian power should stop. It's easy to say, well, I should get to make choices about myself, but what about when those individual choices end up impacting other people? For instance, I eat meat, and yet I'm also aware that the cattle industry is a significant source of CO2; my choice, in that case, contributes to climate change, which affects everyone. ...And once you start going down that path, it's really easy to arrive at totalitarianism as the solution.
I also don't know how to handle the issue of trade and commerce, and at what point it crosses the line into capitalism.
Mental health focused communities exascerbate their members' issues
Freedom of speech for absolutely everyone, especially people I disagree with and that disagree with me
Religion can be a force for good. For social cohesion and a feeling of belonging. That it often isn't speaks more to the samesuch cultural and emotional rot that has affected literally everything than to religion unto itself.
It actually makes perfect sense for a country to want to limit or tariff importation of goods. This, if done right, can bring industrialisation into the country. You can't have a nation that is all middle-managers, despite the First World's best attempts to become that, it's just fundamentally unsustainable. And while you can have a nation that just produces/exports raw materials, this is ultimately bad for the people in that nation.
Wanting less/more immigration are both perfectly valid positions.
Immigration can provide opportunities to a country but can also cause issues and it's undemocratic and dangerous to demonize either position on the issue.
People should be free to vote outside the two party system secure in the knowledge that their vote will still be counted if their preference didn't win.
::: spoiler Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation :::
That the dense city movement, of building up, instead of out, is ultimately ceding a huge proportion of our lives (our dwelling sizes and layouts, their materiality and designs, how the public space between them looks and feels, their maintenance and upkeep, etc. etc.) to soulless corporations trying to extract every dollar possible from us.
When we build out, people tend to have more say in the design and build of their own home, often being able to fully build it however they want because at a fundamental level a single person or couple can afford the materials it takes to build a home, and after it's built they can afford to pay a local contractor who lives nearby to make modifications to it.
What they don't have, is the up front resources to build a 20 story condo building. So instead they can buy a portion of a building that someone else has already built, which leaves them with no say in what is actually built in the first place. Ongoing possible changes and customizations are very limited by the constraints of the building itself, and the maintenance and repairs have to be farmed out to a nother corporation with the specialty knowledge and service staff to keep building systems running 24/7.
Yes, this is more efficient from an operating standpoint, but it's also more brittle, with less personal ownership, less room for individuality and beautification, and more inherent dependence on larger organizing bodies which always end up being private companies (which usually means people are being exploited).
In addition, when you expand outwards, all the space between the homes is controlled by the municipalities and your elected government, and you end up with pleasant streets and sidewalks, but when you build up with condos, you just have the tiniest dingiest never ending hallways with no soul.
And condos are the instance where you actually at least kind of own your home. In the case of many cities that densify, you end up tearing down or converting relatively dense single family homes into multi apartment units where you again put a landlord in charge, sucking as many resources out of the residents as possible. In the case of larger apartment buildings, you've effectively fully ceded a huge portion of the 'last mile' of municipal responsibilities to private corporations.
Yes, I understand all the grander environmental reasons about why we should densify, and places like Habitat 67 prove that density does not inherently have to be miserable and soulless, however, the act of densifying without changing our home ownership and development systems to be coop or publicly owned, is a huge pressure increasing the corporatization of housing.
In general, I disagree with you. I think the two things you fixated on (souless architecture and rentals) are bad approaches to density, but you will notice that for the most part, this is the form of "density" that places who are notoriously bad at density do. Its what happens when we deliberately regulate ourselves into not allowing other options.
There is a pretty crazy amount of "density" in well bit, low rise structures - though actually I dont personally hate on towers as a concept.
Also, i would like to highlight that a very small portion of people are living in newly built homes, and only a small portion are really able to make meaningful design impact. Most just buy the builder-grade suburban model home. The idea that suburban single family homes are some design panacae is just wrong.
Soullessness and rent-seeking is what happens when housing is controlled by for-profit entities, and once you start building housing as system that is bigger, more expensive, or more complex, then one person / small family / support network can manage, then you inherently need to cede control and responsibility to a larger outside entity, which ends up being a corporation.
Even cities like Boston that have a relatively large amount of mid rise housing still have massive housing costs that suck residents dry because it all ends up being landlord controlled.
I'm no fan of suburbs, but at an inherent level (assuming no crazy HOA), you have far more control of any house that you own over any space in a building that you do. Your average 100 year old suburban home will have far more charm and look far more unique than your average 100 year old apartment unit or condo.
Condos and townhouses also spawned HOAs which are yet another layer of an even pettier form of nosey neighbor government you get to live under.
Get a home outside city limits if you can, then it's just county, state, and federal... Though depending on the city, municipal government isn't as bad as HOA typically.
Abortion is sometimes the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation, and it should never be seen as less than that.
Women should have enough social safety nets that abortion would never even cross their minds.
It is mostly Capitalism with its focus on productivity and selling youth and beauty that pressures women into it, women are "freeing" themselves into Capitalistic slavery.
From: "leftist" privileged cis het white guy, feel free to ignore or bash me
No sane person is going to bash you because you are privileged, cis, het, white, and male. Rather, it is being privileged (etc.) that seems to cause people to say ignorant things. Mind you, I disagree with you about abortion -- if I got pregnant by accident I'd have an abortion in a heartbeat, despite having a safety net. But I appreciate you being brave to share your dissenting view in this thread.
Alternative perspective: any time abortion us criminalized is a problem because in the case of the mother having a medical emergency, it's most ideal for the doctor to care for the patient and the patients needs. Adding any additional consideration of potential legal ramifications is clouding an already difficult situation.
In addition, the way laws are written for "exceptions for the mothers life" are not, and can not ever be utilized effectively. Can it be performed if the patient will die in 7 days? What about in 4? In an hour? What if the doctor says there's a 40% chance of death? What about a 40% chance of survival? Keeping in mind that these percentages are mostly just estimates used by doctors to convey meaning to patients. What if it's just the patient losing their fertility? Or losing a limb?
None of these questions can ever be effectively answered by legislature, because medicine is not so cut and dry, and therefore, any attempt by legislature to regulate abortion is effectively a ban, including for the life of the mother.
I didn't mean criminalize, I want women to have enough social security nets that abortion wouldn't cross their minds, except in the case of risk of death, then it falls under "the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation".
Beginning with a well funded and promoted foster care and adoption systems.
I don't like extreme leftists (they live in a bubble) but they've been right about everything and they are our best chance at resolving economic disparity
I don't really know what constitutes a "political creed," really, so I don't know how to answer.
Humans aren't going to evolve towards intelligence. We're a pretty short-sighted stupid species. We're going to continue to devolve and kill ourselves off, one way or another.
Sometimes people are that rabid they need to be removed from existence
I like the idea that people should be able to choose their representatives based on how they live, rather than where they live.
You sign up as a "gamer," or a "farmer" or a "soccer mom." Whatever you decide for that term. Your representative then wheels and deals and votes for laws that help you.
Any group that had 0.5% of the population willing to sign up would get their voice in the Legislature.
Is this different than proportional representation?
It would be proportional, but instead of your representation being based on your address it's based on a choice you make.
Think of it this way; you're a computer programmer who works from home in Hayseed, Iowa. Everyone lese in your town is a farmer or working in farm related business. Your voice will never be heard by the Congressperson.
Under the new system, your address would be irrelevant. You'd be voting for a computer person who knows exactly what you need.
That's one example. You might want to be part of the 'teachers' or 'gun owners.'
The original idea comes from a novel, "Double Star" by Robert Heinlein. He doesn't provide an actual constitution, but I do think it's a nice idea to play around with.
But the reason it's based on address is because the person you vote for has power over that location. In this system, what would that person have power over?
The idea is briefly mentioned in the book "Double Star" by Robert Heinlein. He doesn't provide an actual constitution.
Governors and mayors would still run the local area, but the national laws would be passed by a legislature composed of people all elected 'at large.'
The Congressmember from Texas has no power in his state. He can't force anyone to do something. They can go to Washington and vote for a law that's enforced by the police.
This sounds very much like the German electoral system, except in the German system your address and your preferred "group" are relevant. You get two votes, one is for a local representative, the other is just for a party (so you could freely vote for the "gamer" party if it existed), and both votes contribute seats to government.
TIL. Thank you.
Yes. You might have a version of it in which every group gets one representative, whether it's "people who have visited Vietnam at least once" with 0.5% of the population or "customer service workers" with 20% of the population
This is exactly the political description described in Ann Palmer's "Terra Ignota." Government by consent, irrespective of geography. People would join with up to one Hive -- some embodied idealist motherly traits like the Cousins, others were strictly about the nationstates of old, like the European Union. It's four volumes, but is an interesting tale of 25th century political science.
Very cool. Thanks, I'd never heard of that book.
Robert Heinlein worked on some real political campaigns back in the day and it shows in his writings.
Another fun political writer is Ross Thomas. He was a WW2 veteran who went from being a Washington reporter to a crime novelist.
"The Fools In Town Are On Our Side" is about a plan to clean up a small Southern city by making it " so corrupt that even the pimps will vote for reform."
"The Porkchoppers" is about a Nixon era Union election. It's all about the nuts and bolts of running a dirty campaign.
Donald Trump isn’t stupid.
There's plenty of evidence that he actually is very stupid, and that he may even have a learning disability. To be honest, once you accept the thought that he may be mildly retarded, you can't unsee it. For example in the recent talk about rare earth minerals, it seems to me that Trump thinks rare earth is actually soil in the way he talks about it and it drives me nuts that the media doesn't point this out:
But he makes up for it politically with great skill in appealing to people's base emotions.
Yeah I'm starting to agree. At the very least, the aggregate of "Trump + his advisors" functions intelligently, which is what matters, and that's scary.
He is far from the first flim-flam snake oil man making it big and performing atrocities in America. You could even look at the founding of the country as a sort of real estate scam gone darkly awry.
I think of him as astoundingly stupid. But he ain't dumb.
Intelligence and stupidity have nothing to do with each other. He can do stupid things out of pride, narcissism, etc., and still be an otherwise intelligent person.
The phrase "we aren't free until we're all free" applies to animals as much as humans, and thinking otherwise is straight up bigotry. That so few extend leftist thought to the rest of the living world is a travesty, if you've managed to come around to leftist thinking then you've absolutely been capable of challenging your pre-conceived biases and this is just another step in that process.
All that said, I'm not one to judge people for not agreeing with this. It took me an exceptionally long time and the right circumstances to finally reassess my reasoning and to realise it was absurdly flawed, hypocritical and informed by propaganda.
You can be Jewish and even support the idea of a Jewish homeland while also being fervently appalled by the actions of the state of Israel (Netanyahu, West Bank settlements, unarmed Palestinians shot/killed, houses being bulldozed, mass displacements).
The invention of money was a blight on our society. Abolishing it immediately is the first step to proper environmental recovery.
What the systems of getting people their food, supplies would look like, I don’t know, but having corporations hoarding wealth and polluting everything needs to stop.
Money can and should be abolished, but the best way to do so is to work towards a fully publicly owned and centrally planned economy and work towards the use of labor vouchers, which are destroyed upon first use. Eliminate production for profit and replace it with production for use.
I see the sentiment that money should be abolished here all the time, but this is the first time I've actually seen a proposed replacement. It's an interesting idea.
It's Marxist, so you can go to Marx for more on that, though he didn't spend much time describing how he thought Communism would function.
If anyone wants do go deep into non-monetary economic systems, I haven't read/listened-to much of their work but economists and computer scientists like Cockshott have researched planned non-money economies.
A summary: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/paul_cockshott_cyber_communism.html
A few related thoughts.
I think it's important to understand that "money" as it exists within markets exists in a manner to be exchanged and accumulated. Labor vouchers are a type of "currency,” but as they can't really be accumulated in the same manner money for exchange can be, may make sense in the far future.
It's mostly a moot point because we lilely won't make it to the level of centralization necessary for such a system in our lifetimes though, and our successors can figure out potentially an even better system.
Idk how we'd get rid of money, but it needs to be done. We're literally the only species on the planet with this concept and we're suffering for it.
Yup. We’re producing the goods, we need the goods, why the hell are we doing this with shareholders and money?
Oh right, cause human time is limited and automation isn’t good enough.
Humanity also just can't coexist peacefully with anything. We ruin everything we touch. Our hubris will be our downfall and I take comfort in the fact that the Earth will heal after we extinct ourselves.
We should try harder to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals, sometimes taxation is necessary and sometimes it's beneficial even if we don't factor in revenue, people will sometimes make decisions that are so bad that we have a moral obligation to intervene in order to protect them from the most disastrous outcomes
This question is difficult to correctly answer, as anyone can define their own political boundaries. They can be wrong about those boundaries and they can define many different ones that are all valid. Is my "political creed" to be a communist? Which subset might that mean? Am I friendly with certain subsets despite disagreeing with them (yes) and if so would they potentially count as the majority? Am I a (de)famed Western leftist or part of a worldwide effort in terms of having a less popular view of a subject?
I would say that among the people with whom I have the most general agreement, my least popular opinion is the potential for imperial core workers to become radicalized and organized for the left. A very large amount of organized resources is constantly poured into efforts to prevent this from happening, including those that reinforce settler, white supremacist, and chauvinist attitudes that permeate our cultures. That means that our struggle is very challenging right now but also means that if those flows are ever cut off or undermined, there will be immense opportunity and we have to be ready to channel the inevitable accompaniment to the conditions (austerity) that got us to that place away from neoliberal fascistic movements.
Basically, there is a common pathway in understanding that goes from hope for revolution from within the imperial core (no successful precedents) to attempts to understand this and explain why it's least likely to happen there. This can lead to a self-defeating cynicism towards all imperial core organizing or to curb vision. But I think it is our duty to continually reformulate as needed to discovery organizable enclaves, to grow with current and upcoming conditions. We owe that to each other.
I think I agree with your unpopular opinion. It might be an unpopular opinion because it's conditionally-expressed, and conditionals are hard to reason about ("I think if X happens then Y would be a good idea" really sounds a lot like "I think Y is a good idea.")
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think "settler" and "colonizer" are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
The settler mindset is taught to basically every American either through school or wider social conditioning. It is an ongoing challenge to left organizing and has to be unlearned so that one can take liberating actions rather than explicitly oppositional settler ones. It is a mixture of white supremacy, colonial chauvinism, national chauvinism and myth-making, and some other reactionary ingredients that many have trouble observing because they are so normalized. And indigenous people can have this same mindset to varying degrees just like a black American can internalize anti-black racism.
The core precepts taught about US history are fundamentally a lie to benefit this mindset. As Marx said, the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. A bit of seemingly harmless Americana like [fruit] picking, a little farmhouse that sells [fruit]-based goods. Well, about 100-200 years ago you can usually bet that land was native. Not much folksy history to draw on. Not much tradition, aside from what was imported and normalized by waves of settlers for which whiteness was invented by ruling class interests to mollify the newly white people and further exploit everyone else. An identity that rationalized the theft of that land, of "settling" it for the imported culture's definition of stewardship, of extraction for [fruit]. The history of that place is told as a "family farm for 7 generations". Its crop is picked by underpaid workers, many of them undocumented: the labor underclass established for the modern settler mindset. Wage slaves and sometimes actual slaves, something considered perfectly normal in the settler mindset. An actual horror and overt injustice often just a few meters away and yet everyone is not up in arms demanding equal treatment. Instead, they respond to the ruling class' demands to blame the marginalized for the bourgeoisie's harms, they call for cruelty and deportation or they call for the status quo in response. Rarely do they call for liberation or equal treatment. The idea of open borders is used by the far far right to ridicule the far right that also wants closed borders. The idea itself is considered absurd by the mainstream settler mindset, as they are told it is absurd because it is against settler interests. "Imagine having to make just as little money as a Spanish-speaking brown person!", they internalize. They pick the [fruit] by the pretty white farmhouse and talk about how nice it would be to own their own place just like this. So long as they eventually own a house - or believe they will - they tend to not organically question the system that benefits them, surrounded by a system that discourages or coopts such thinking.
It is a potent force to overcome and it is why a full socialist education in The West takes so long. So much to unlearn. So many potential pitfalls. So many places where you are basically asking a person to have empathy for others and not interpret this as a form of self-hatred and get all defensive. Because to understand US-based oppression is to hate it. To be revolted. To reject all forms of settler thought as best you can, as you refuse to ever intentionally celebrate genocide or chattel slavery or the crushing of entire nations' simple dreams of sovereignty, food security, intact families, and limbs.
So I basically agree with you, semantically, about the problem that needs to be solved. I just think it's not a good idea to call non-indigenous people "settlers" in general. For one thing, it doesn't fit the literal meaning of the word settler (somebody who comes from away to settle down), since most so-called settlers have never moved to a different country in their whole lives. For two, it causes a knee-jerk reaction to those who are called settlers, which is not conducive to converting centrists to leftists. It's just not productive to call people settlers in most cases. I don't mean to say settler-colonialism isn't a useful concept or doesn't exist -- I just mean specifically that the word "settler" applied to individuals is a bad idea in most cases.
The settler mindset has long outlived the immediate settler colonists that were genociding the natives or otherwise assisting it by stealing land (with extra steps). Nobody who uses the term has that meaning. We are referring to the settler colonial psychology that persists, and particularly its US version that is merged with white supremacy and national chauvinism.
You can also recognize it in other Euro settler colonists like the Afrikaners and "Israelis". They tell the same stories about deserving the land, of doing a better job with it, of blaming the colonized for fighting back or "bringing up the past", they seed conversations with racial supremacist implications and sometimes just overt racism. Are cowboys the good guys? Is it cool to be a cowboy? If you picture a cowboy in your head, are they a white guy? Most cowboys were brown and a substantial minority were black. American settler psychology has in some ways moved beyond those examples, however, as the "settlement" is nearly complete so they can entertain performative actions like cynical land acknowledgements while never supporting Land Back or even just basic material improvements for natice people. They can temporarily "feel bad", but not so bad as to need to actually do anything, because the national genocide doesn't warrant doing even one tangible thing per year.
I have not gotten too deep into the material basis of the settler mindset, but it is also prevalent and the most important. The fundamental fact of free or almost free land (stolen land) led to an economic base premised on it that has been slowly closing up. It acted as a release valve for social pressures that advanced in Europe, it could create profits from essentially nothing and be a carrot dangled in front of the face of generations that told their kids and grandkids that you could just work hard and go be a farmer. Two depressions resulted from the loss of the material basis for this but not the culture, as The New Deal and associated red scare then coincided with the US firmly taking over as prime imperialist, propping up the welfare of white people of settler culture via neocolonial exploitation. Pineapples on tables and virtual guarantees on jobs and cheap houses for a few generations. Not so much for black or brown people.
These are things in living memory. They color all of our experiences, ambitions, cultural references, and attitudes towards one another - and what we think we owe each other (usually nothing per this mindset).
Re: knee jerk reactions, yes of course, it is supposed to be dismissive when you call someone a settler to their face. It is usually an irrefutable fact and they don't know how to deal with it because they don't understand it. Is it always wrong to be dismissive? I think it can carry important emotional content so as to agitate others. Maybe the audience isn't the centrist settler, or is otherwise someone they think it would be a waste of time to try and convert directly. Most of the time they are going to be right about that. A "centrist" sharing their opinion already lacks humility and that's rarely the place a person can improve from.
The overwhelming majority of leftists I know used to be centrists at some point in their lives. Also, I'm really astonished that you openly admit that you use the word "settler" specifically to be antagonizing. I kind of thought that was the bailey, not the motte.
Given that you don't organize, how many leftists do you know? The people I know ran quite the gamut before winding up coherently left.
I don't know why you'd be astonished at the term being used dismissively. Generally it's when someone is being white supremacist, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc. They may not even realize it at first because it's normalized for them, but when they respond negatively to correction well guess who's digging in their heels about being shitty. That's exactly who you don't want to cater to. They will eat up all of your time and fight you the whole time because they have not developed basic humility.
Like, all my friends are leftists. When we talk about politics, they sound like leftists, they say leftist things, and espouse leftist values. My friends are all leftists because my friends' friends are leftists and I make friends with my friends' friends.
Regarding "settler," I think it's a motte-and-bailey tactic you're using. The motte -- the easily defensible position -- is that settler refers to people who are bigoted. The bailey -- the hard to defend position, but which is easily equivocated for the motte -- is that it refers to any non-indigenous person. The reason I see this equivocation is because in my mind, a settler does not stop being a settler simply because they turn into an ally for indigenous people. Settlerdom is a property of a person that depends only on their geographic location and ancestry, not their philosophy. Father Le Jeune is generally regarded as an ally to the linguistic preservation of indigenous languages in the pacific northwest, and he even helped develop a writing system for Chinuk Wawa -- but was he not a settler?
I don't deny that it's a useful verbal weapon against bigots. I would merely like it to be well-understood that a verbal weapon is what it is intended to be.
The animals we create are morally entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection as our own children. Leftists practice tolerance but they're not really willing to go as far as actual compassion, empathy, and mercy. A lot of the things they tolerate, they should not.
I agree, animal rights are important. I am not sure that animals are worth as much as humans morally, but even so, the argument for shrimp welfare is extremely moving. Well worth reading. It's easy to imagine shrimp are undeserving of compassion because they are small, have tiny brains, and have a silly name.
Well, I didn't say all animals, I said the ones we create. When you create an individual, the act places you in that individuals debt. You don't own them, you owe them. We have a duty not to harm all individuals on Earth so far as we can help it, but we have far greater responsibilities to those individuals that we bring into existence. There is no difference, morally, between forcing a child and forcing an animal to exist.
I do find topics like natalism and deathism quite fascinating. I'm not certain you're correct, but I do think what you're saying is very plausible. I lean more utilitarian, so I find it hard to justify the notion of debt to a specific entity -- after all, if you can do right by the entity you create, shouldn't it be equally good to do right by another entity?
Do you agree you have a debt to creatures you fuck into existence with your own genitalia?
Let's keep the language chill if you don't mind.
Yes, assuming such a thing as debt exists. In a different and better world where life is inherently positive, there might not be a debt.
???
If you don't like how I talk, I guess we're done here, because I don't accept your terms. Be reassured at least there was no mal-intent.
Like, fuck.
Basically, I'm saying yes, one owes a debt to their children. I just don't know how to prove that the concept of "debt" exists at all morally. But assuming it does and it behaves like I think it should, then yes.
It seems pretty mind bending to morally rank organisms. By what metric do you estimate humans are more valuable than a random animal?
I believe a person is their brain, and without a brain or equivalent construct, you have no moral weight. This is why I believe it's okay to eat plants. Bacteria, too, are outside of my moral horizon. Foetuses (in the first few weeks at least) similarly are okay to abort.
By brain I don't mean intelligence, just capacity for conscious feeling. I think stupid people are just as capable of feeling pain as smart people, so both are weighted similarly morally to me.
It seems reasonable to assert that a single neural cell is not enough on its own to produce consciousness, or if so then it's hardly any. So animals with trivial neural systems are less worthy than humans too. And so on up to large mammals with developed minds in a gradient. Some animals like elephants and whales might be capable of more feeling than humans, and together with their long lifespan might be worth more QALYs than a human altogether.
I see how that could feel right. It doesn't make sense to me personally though.
Is consciousness different from the ability to experience? If they are different what separates them, and why is consciousness the one that gets moral weight? If they are the same then how do you count feelings? Is it measured in real time or felt time? Do psychedelics that slow time make a person more morally valuable in that moment? If it is real time, then why can you disregard felt time?
What about single celled organisms like stentor
coeruleusroeselii that can learn? Why are they below the bar for consciousness?My intuition for a person's overall moral value is something like the integral of their experiences so far multiplied by their expected future QALYs. This fits my intuition of why it's okay to kill a zygote, and it's also not morally abominable to, say, slightly shorten the lifespan of somebody (especially someone already on the brink of death), or to, erm, put someone out of their misery in some cases.
I'm not terribly moved by single-celled organisms that can "learn." It's not hard to find examples of simple things which most people wouldn't consider "alive," but "learn." For instance, a block of metal can "learn" -- it responds differently based on past stresses. Or "memory foam." You could argue that a river "learns," since it can find its way around obstacles and then double down on that path. Obviously, computers "learn." Here, we mean "learn" to refer to responding differently based on what's happened to it over time, rather than the subjective conscious feeling of gaining experience.
I was most curious to see answers to this section.
I have a few answers I can kinda infer: You likely think consciousness and the ability to experience are the same. You measure those feelings in real time so 1 year is the same for any organism.
More importantly onto the other axis: Did you mean derivative of their experiences so far? (I assume by time) That would give experience rate. Integral by time would get the total. I think you wanted to end with rate*QALYs = moral value. The big question for me is: how do you personally estimate something's experience rate?
Given your previous hierarchy of humans near the top and neurons not making the cut, I assume you belive space has fundamental building blocks that can't be made smaller. Therefore it is possible to compare the amount of possible interaction in each system.
Edit: oh yeah, and at the end of all that I still don't know why brains are different from a steel beam on your moral value equation
Well, I said "integral" in the vague gesture that things can have a greater or lesser amount of experience in a given amount of time. I suppose we are looking at different x axes?
I don't know how to estimate something's experience rate, but my intuition is that every creature whose lifespan is at least one year and is visible to the naked eye has about within a factor of an order of magnitude or two the same experience rate. I think children have a greater experience rate than adults because everything is new to them; as a result, someone's maximal moral value is biased toward the earlier end of their life, like their 20s or 30s.
This is all presupposing that consciousness exists at all. If not, then everything's moral value is 0. If it does, then I feel confident that steel beams don't have consciousness.
I believe consciousness is a primarily intracellular, not intercellular process; though it does seem cells synchronize, even across organisms. I believe every cell thinks, but nerve cells are more specialized. This isn't just what I choose to believe, we have significant and growing evidence that this is the case. And it is clear, many parts of the body think, when you consider the extremely sophisticated tasks it performs without your conscious thought or engaging the brain at all, even though computation and perhaps even reasoning is required.
I took a look at your link. I find it reprehensible, and exactly what I mean when I say the left is incapable of having compassion and mercy. This charity is exactly the sort of thing people use to psychologically enable themselves to continue torturing animals rather than changing their behaviour.
I'm not sure that Bentham's Bullhound is a leftist, he seems rather all over the place. This really isn't the sort of thing I see leftists in favour of animal welfare arguing for generally. Regardless of the specific charity recommended to solve the problem of torturous shrimp deaths, this article makes a compelling case that we must solve the problem somehow.
Are there specific leftist philosophies that imply this? Or is this a bad faith generalisation?
Can you elaborate a bit more? I don't seem to understand what you mean.
You haven't met my parents.
I don't seem to have a political creed anymore.
I believe in honesty and being honourable.
those are just vague values
I believe in doing good, as opposed to bad
you are so brave
I suspect that most people, including those who don't align with any particular political creed, believe in honesty and honour too. So I don't think you answered the question correctly.
Lessee... I suppose my hottest take is that no lives are sacred. I believe that human expansion into more 'wild' domains is a mistake and that national and state parks' availability should be limited (geographically - you may not venture into the Deep Parks). This probably borders on some vaguely eco-fascy beliefs, and I recognize human's inexorable curiousity and desire to explore, but you will never find me mourning a human victim of a wild animal.
As a USian, while I think gun violence is a preventable mass tragedy that unfolds daily here I also think that when minorities, indigenous people, women, queer people or really anybody who isn't a white christian rightwing man talks about wanting to own a gun to protect themselves while living in this country I can't disagree. If you don't understand the very real threat of police violence that you can't resist or stop, and the very real threat of other kinds of violence that police will NOT step in to stop because of who you are, you can't really argue against owning guns in the US to people that have no other choice than to take this kind of thing seriously.
I think handguns should be made much much much more illegal, since the handgun is actually the tool of state violence and oppression, it is the tool of surprise murder and intimidation. On the other hand if you carry a rifle you have to state your capacity for lethal violence, there is no hiding it or revealing it like a powertrip or gotcha card, which isn't to downplay the terror and violence that evil rightwing terrorists have wrought upon the US with assault rifles, but at this point I don't think owning a hunting style rifle or a shotgun as somebody who lives in the US is an unreasonable idea, especially if you have become a convenient political and literal target for the right.
To be clear, the whole stupid idea that owning an ar15 with a 30 roung mag, bumpstock and quick change mags somehow makes you safe to a home defender that breaks into your house at 3am when you pull it out and proceed to shoot 30 rounds erratically in the general direction of something you hear, sending bullets careening through the walls of your neighborhood and more likely killing somebody's kid sleeping in their bedroom than doing anything to make you safer IS pathetic and spits on actual real gun culture.
Also I want to note that people who roleplay as mil-sim types by spending actual thousands of dollars on pseudo-military equipment to live powertrip fantasies are by and large hilariously pathetic, especially because they are usually completely and utterly blind to (or worse directly supportive of) forms of authoritarian violence (state or otherwise). See lots of loser white dudes showing up in 24k worth of weekend warrior dress up GI Joe gear to defend the incredible threat to civil liberties that society expecting people to wear masks during a pandemic represented.... Good job chuds! You saved the day!
The point of concealed carry, in my eyes, is that people don't know you have it and are more wary to start shit in general. Open carry just means they wait till you're asleep to lynch you.
Its still horrifying either way.
I think things become much more chaotic and prone to quickly escalating to lethal applications of violence if there is the constant threat that anybody could be concealed carrying and more importantly that if someone felt the need to carry a firearm that they would likely conceal it.
Bringing a large visible rifle into a situation still escalates the threat of violence, but at least it does it in a clear and unambiguous way. There is no excuse to shoot the teenager dressed in basketball shorts and a wifebeater with absolutely no where to hide a rifle because you saw somebody else nearby with a rifle and you think the unarmed teenager might be concealing one. (There really is almost never an excuse to shoot anybody unless they are holding a gun and aiming it at you, and maybe even not then if you are on the one antagonizing them).
The US is a country where police not unregularly shoot innocent people, often unarmed black men or other minorities, and handwave away any responsibility for the needless violence by suggesting there might have been a handgun...
With a hunting rifle or shotgun there is no ambiguity about your intentions in a space or how you will potentially react to lethal threats of violence. There is no conveniently conflating other innocent and unarmed people with the people holding rifles or shotguns and easily getting away with it. On the other hand there is no surprising people by entering a space under false pretexts about your capacity or intentions around violence with a rifle or shotgun, since carrying a large weapon immediately identifies you as someone carrying a large weapon.
My point is, concealed carry is only effectively a right or privilege if society gives you the permission to arbitrarily carry around the means to end many peoples' lives in your pocket, which is something really only extended willingly and consistently to white, christian conservative men. Carrying around a hunting rifle or a shotgun is a different story.
Look at the way handguns are used in US media, they are treated as status symbols of power and righteosness. Shows and movies constantly rely on the revealing, obtaining and losing of handguns to portray changes in the power of characters (lazy fucking writing but that is another rant...). To US culture the handgun is the ultimate object of empowerment and of personally distributed justice and that says everything you need to know about handguns really.
(also, if you are someone who actually needs to protect yourself with a handgun, you already know who you are, this conversation is irrelevant)
I'm sorry, what? Are there slow change mags?
I'm generally leaning towards progressive or left-wing ideas, but with a few exceptions.
The last point is especially important to me. I grew up in a fairly conservative environment, and it took me a lot of conscious effort to un-learn my prejudices and learn acceptance. But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn't "leftist" enough, it makes me want to distance myself from "leftist" ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
The first point is a fairly common opinion among communists, who understand "DEI" to be a liberal cooption of liberationist language and thought that tokenizes identities and reworks the concepts in favor of exploiters (and was doomed to be shed the moment it was less profitable for exploiters).
It may be beneficial to consider the second point with some nuance that is often neglected in order to agitate. Again with communists, you will find many that hate their country's cops but acknowledge the necessity in a post-revolutionary framework, either in their own visions for their own revolution or in defending the actions taken by their comrades that rapidly discover the need for some form of organized enforcement. One way to think about this is that the police are an arm of the state, and who that state serves via its structures and nature changes how they operate. In OECD countries, cops primarily serve capital. They protect profits based on shop owner complaints, shut down capital-inconvenient demonstrations, etc, and spend little time helping average people. In many capitalist countries, cops are underpaid and openly corrupt, so they do the same things while being more obvious bribes. In countries run by socialists, cops of course still do many cop things, but you will find them spending more of their time on other tasks, there are fewer per capita, and the job of being a cop in capitalist counties has been split into many different jobs that don't involve having a gun or otherwise carrying out the worst actions taken by cops. So, in short, it is entirely coherent to hate your local cops as an arm of capital that will beat you for protesting while not condemning the mere existence of cops in other countries while also understanding that we want to create a society free of them.
For the third point, it really depends on what you mean by accepting. Socialists need to educate people where they are, warts and all, but you also cannot be taillist and morph your work into accepting reactionary positions. That defeats the entire point of rejecting reactionary positions. Patience in explaining is valuable, tacit agreement with racism/xenophobia/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc is counterproductive. In addition, getting dunked on can and does create results. Despite growing up conservative and getting dunked on by those to your left, you now think of yourself as non-conservative. Are you sure none of those dunks ever led you to question your positions?
I can't address the entire reply since it's 3 in the morning, but I just want to point out something.
I'm not a communist. I'm not a socialist, or a Marxist-Leninist. I don't consider myself to be a "leftist" (which I see as an overly broad term), and I'm sure as hell not a centrist. If my views are inconsistent, it's because I don't follow any single doctrine.
Yes, and I didn't label you as any of those things. I sharee that the first two points overlap with some communist ways of thinking, which I view as a positive. I list the third point as food for thought and I was fairly qualified in how I described your politics so as to match what you had said and no more.
There is an option in your settings so you don't see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn't even show you your total upvotes (karma... whatever it's called) by default either. None of these imaginary points matter.
(Lemmy is rad)
Why does disillusionment with the people involved in a movement influence your opinion on the ideals behind the movement?
Should the idea itself be bigger than the people that espouse it? If empathy and compassion are worthy goals, you don't just give up on them because other folk don't display them. If rejecting sexism is a worthy goal, you don't dial up the sexism because some folk think you don't go far enough in rejecting it.
Rationally, it shouldn't; but we're human, so it does.
There is even a rational viewpoint too -- we can synergize if we work together with people who align with us and back a common interest, instead of all independently voicing slightly different political voices. But if other people in that group do something we really dislike, it tempts us to drift away and align with a different and smaller group instead.
Sure, if you fall out with a group, you might end up shifting your views when a new group you join sees things slightly differently. Lots of progressive groups fight and argue with each other over the specifics, and it often gets quite heated. But that's not the same thing as radically shifting your moral compass to point in another direction altogether.
It's more accurate to say that I'm growing disillusioned with the movement as a whole and the people who claim allegiance with it, not its ideals. I support the ideals that I find right and just, and given limited options (votes and such), will support the people who promote those ideals.
So what is the alternative to "downvoting" someone's opinion? You can't support it, obviously, that would be stupid. I just see no other way than "downvoting", saying "well, I see where you're coming from, but your opinion is wrong and doesn't achieve what you want".
Your example is about as spicy as lukewarm water. The responses I got involved the words "bootlicker", "nazi", "fascist", and "chud", various expletives, called into question my mental health and respect for minorities, and listed several examples of why holding those views made me the scum of the earth.
Well yeah, but that doesn't invalidate the "tolerance is a social contract" mentality, it invalidates baseless accusations and extreme hostility. What I said is the actual intended result of the "don't tolerate intolerance" mentality. If that is fine with you, then you don't actually have any issue with the mentality itself, but with the implementation.
I appreciate you keeping it real. It sucks that this community's response to dissenting views is so often hostility. I haven't looked at your comment history so maybe you really are a fascist, I don't know; if so, this doesn't apply. But if not -- I do wish people would think about how to bring people around to their point of view instead of rejecting them.
Hexbear doesn't have downvotes, you are encouraged to reply and actually address the bad comments.
I think downvoting serves to make an opinion less visible, so you should remember that when you are downvoting someone you disagree with, it is serving to make their opinion less visible. Downvoting hostile or dangerous or low-quality comments is good, but downvoting dissenting opinions in general leads to polarization.
I would rather spend time in a community with many different perspectives than just one perspective, which is why I don't downvote people simply because I disagree with them.
Humans aren’t worth it.
Out of curiosity, how do you identify politically?
Anarcho-syndicalist
I think that's neat. I agree about trade unions.
If you don't think humans are worth it, why not be apolitical entirely?
I can recognize a good idea even if I don’t think it’s worth it
I think on the Left we have a "virtuous" cycle/feedback loop that results in increasingly outlandish positions.
Essentially, for most people there's a serotonin feedback when people upvote, applaud, reteeet etc. People, responding to incentives like anyone else shift their online discourse to match.
Similarly, even beyond the positive feedback, on thr Left no one wants to be a white cis male contradicting the feelings, emotions or arguments of a POC or LGBTQ+ person.
The Right doesn't really have this problem as the Far right opinions are generally understood to be reprehensible to most people so those movements have evolved to work on dog whistles etc.
It's a structural issue but one that puts us out of touch with the mainstream (consider defund the police, transgender athletes or immigration until we were getting murdered in the polls and it was too late to do anything.)
Where on "the Left"?
Maybe liberals don't. And I wouldn't consider them to be on the left.
Why would you want to police emotions or feelings of others?
Arguments on the other hand should be based on logic. And as long as you're respectful, one can disagree.
Your attempt at making all these different scenarios look the same, makes me question your position and honesty in this conversation
This is just purely false and inaccurate. There are plenty of people who agree with far right talking points
Edit: why was I not surprised to see that you are one of those "leftist" (read liberal) who is fine with the Palestinian genocide as long as it's your team that carries out the genocide?
THAT is why we have to be careful. Precisely because of fake allies like you, who say they are on your side while condoning a genocide behind your back.
But sure, talk again of "virtuosity tests" and the "Left"...
Ahahaha, "As long as you're respectful one can disagree." And a paragraph later "hey, this guy pointed out trump would be worse for Palestineans that means he is down with genoicde!!!!"
Could you prove my point much harder?
You don't even realize you are further proving my point and you're coming across as even more fake.
I started respectfully, just as at first, you appeared to be "just another leftist with some different opinion". If you knew how to read, you'd have noticed that my change in tone came in the "edit" of my reply.
In reality, you're just another liberal apologists that is fine with genocide... And I am absolutely NOT going to be respectful to Zionists once your true colors are evident.
Your "point" was moot to begin with because you're not leftist. But you are a fake ally, ready to backstab minorities and allow genocides to happen
I have no idea what point you're trying to make other than, I dunno, some crazy shit like everyone who disagrees with you is a Zionist or something?
But I stand by that post, if you voted for a third party, you helped trump. If you're trying to wrap your stupidity around the plight of the Palestineans you either aren't following the news or never really cared about them in the first place.
I get that this is probably the first humanitarian crisis you've seen on social media and pretended to care about but as you grow up, hopefully you'll realize there are sometimes unfortunate restrictions around your choices. While I would have loved a better option than the Dems, the choice was them or trump. If you voted third party, you helped put an administration that is absolutely hostile to them and worse than what would've been the case otherwise.
Sorry if reality sucks but whining about it like a petulant child isn't going to change it or rally others to your cause.
I'm anarchist left, but I do think every human should have the right to defend themself and thereforce should be able to bear arms
I'm not american if anyone's gonna ask
The acab movement has caused more harm than it has salved. Furthering the ideas that there are no good cops means that nobody good will become a cop in the future, furthering the issue
The issue is structural, there are no "good cops" in the same way there are no "good pimps" or "good slave owners."
There were some slave owners who were kind to their slaves, taught them to read, allowed them to have some free time and make a small amount of money.
That doesn't mean that what they were doing was morally acceptable. They still were buying and selling human beings like property.
Policing, especially in the USA is rotten to the core. There are absolutely some cops who are kind people, who become police officers out of a naive belief that they can do good for society as a whole in that profession.
But those people don't usually last long. They either leave after seeing the ugly underbelly, or they become corrupted by the system. The police will always act in the interest of the rich and powerful, or else they get fired. If they are told to break up a protests, they will always comply. If they are told to block a corporate skyscraper so that protesters cannot get into it to stage a sit-in, they will do it, even as ultra wealthy oligarchs stream safely past them to conduct horrifically corrupt dealings that hurt and kill millions of people across the world.
The cop's job is also to go around trying to bust people for crimes. If a cop comes up to you out of the blue and starts up a conversation, 99% of the time they are fishing for information, trying to sus something out. They aren't just trying to be friendly, they are doing their job. In the US at least, the cops are allowed to lie to you in an investigation in order to try to get you to admit guilt. They are allowed and trained to do it, to use all kinds of trickery to manipulate you into a confession, or to get Intel that helps them.
In addition, the examples people frequently cite as good things the cops do would be better done by non-cops. First aid? Suicide intervention? Disaster relief? Theft deterrence? Wellness checks? Those are all things that would be better done by non-cops if we funded and grew those kinds of organizations instead of further militarizing the police.
ACAB has never meant that all cops are evil people, it means that no matter how good of a person a cop is, they will always be empowering a corrupt and evil system.
Why don't we see the same sentiment about paramedics, firefighters, and heck, even soldiers? Because the systems that those folks are a part of don't have the same corrupting effect. Even soldiers are generally looked on much more favorably than cops, even though politically and socially, there is a large amount of overlap. Part of this is propaganda, but another factor is the standards soldiers are held to in the US. They are expected to carry themselves extremely well, and can be severely punished, even jailed for misconduct.
As a personal anecdote, I grew up in both worlds. My dad and several members of my family were both in the military and were cops. I was around both cultures a ton. I've had many bad encounters with police officers over the years, and that's with me knowing all the classic, "always keep your hands visible and comply" stuff that my dad and his cop friends told me.
I've never had a single negative encounter with an on-duty soldier. They've always been extremely respectful and grounded. Like I said, just an anecdote, but interesting to think about. If cops could be fired or even jailed for relatively minor infractions, even have their lives destroyed like soldiers who are dishonorably discharged, ACAB would probably never have became a thing.
What an interesting take...I assume you will be down voted into oblivion, but it is thought provoking all the same. When I was younger I thought police helped people and I probably would have considered being a police officer. Now, I can't imagine who would want to and I immediately question anyone who would. I have to imagine this is causing the people who truly want to help people to avoid the profession.
I know a few people who are police, one being a very close friend who is now retired from being a cop. Not a single one of them is a bad person or cop. The stories I hear from them make me wonder why they would do it, and the universal answer is usually to help people. The best part is that of the six or so people I know counting my friends, they are all quitting because people treat them so badly juat for doing thier job, and they will be replaced with cops who show no compassion. I myself have many stories of cops being understanding and caring and, in turn, being very lenient. When I talk to people with the acab mentality, the police never go easy. It's odd how just treat people how you want to be treated works.
I'm asking this in good faith, but are you/your police friends white? Historically speaking, minorities have been profiled, been more likely to be arrested, and been subject to harsher sentences than white people have. This is no small part to the reason that the ACAB sentiment runs much deeper in minority populations. And I say this as a white man with a mother and brother that work for the police.
Sure they might be good for you, their friend. They might not fell endangered by random dog and shoot it. They might even not beat their partner. But what they will do if encouter person shoplifting food? Someone having a tiny amount of drugs? Or if ordered to beat and/or arrest the protesters, like the students peacefully protesting Gaza genocide? ACAB is not a personal theory, it's systemic. Systemically your good friends are still the armed opression arm of capitalist government and a footsoldiers in the class war against vast majority of society.
You're under the impression that they were my friends first, which aside from one, who was s cop in another city, I was not. Ony after opening a place of business and being vandalized and had things stolen did I get to know some. The ones I did become more familiar with are definitely the kinds of police you want. They use discretion first, try hard to de escalate a situation, and the last thing they want to do is make a bad situation worse for anyone. And per your questions about how they would treat people, the ones I know would help before punish, as per your examples, they'd buy someone a meal or defuse a tough situation.
The way you describe them all as soldiers working against everyone is a tough statement to take simply because when you don't need them, ACAB, but when you do need them, they can't get there soon enough. Sadly, the bad cops everyone sees is all we'll be left with once all the good ones leave because of that sentiment. Then you'll see the "soldiers" you're talking about.
The good ones I was talking about, the ones I know, half have retired early, because no matter how much good they try to do, reasonable they try to be the only rhe thing people see is an enemy. I don't look forward to the day when all we are left with is the bad ones, and it's coming sadly.
In capitalist states, the core mission of the police is to 1) protect the bourgeoisie’s private ownership of the means of production and to 2) discipline the proletariat, cracking heads if necessary. Historically in the US, they began as slave patrols, because slaves were private property, i.e., means of production.
Step 1: proving ACAB wrong
Law enforcement is one of the last careers that still offers a pension, has a union that fights for its members, and is a good source of income without going into massive college debt.
Seems like something the left would be in love with, but systemic issues have demonized the entire profession. I think an influx on left-leaning officers would be great, but like politics- people who would be good at the job stay away from it.
Teen Vogue (I know, right?): Police Unions: What to Know and Why They Don’t Belong in the Labor Movement
The concept of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"
There's no nuance from the left. The left polices itself like the radical right thinks they (the party of law and order) do.
Had a podcaster get dropped by their long time partner because there were lewd text messages sent.
I'm tired of the reactionary bullshit, currently Dawkins and Gaiman are being dropped, and I understand not wanting to associate/support Dawkins' current views, the guy wrote very persuasive works that shouldn't lose value because he lost his empathy.
I still read and enjoy enders game despite knowing what a tool Card turned into, how is it so difficult to separate art from the artist?
I would say there are many, many thick volumes of nuance, with reams of footnotes to evidence supporting it.
But progressive liberals are not going to engage with any of it.
Meanwhile the far-right floats on clouds of self-contradictory nonsense.
This whole comic is comedic gold, but this tiny part is especially funny to me somehow
Dawkins' anti-theist works and his reactionary views are related to one another. As with Hitchens and Sam Harris, their work was poorly researched and was forwarded because their real agendas were based on chauvinist attitudes, particularly against muslims.
Dennett was the only good one and unfortunately he passed away. PZ Myers is less knowm but also didn't bite on the islamophobia bait.
Based on the various accounts, Gaiman is a cruel and explpitative rapist and I find it difficult to appreciate words about charm or love from such a source.
Do you have any other examples of people who should not be rejected by the left? Who was the podcaster?
PS always kill your heroes. Being of the left means doing work and building organizations that (in addition to trying to prevent) withstand the inevitable failures of prominent figures.
I think Lindsay Ellis didn't deserve the hate she got for comparing Raya to The Last Airbender.
I would agree. Both are just a standard Hero's Journey where they build a team and increase their power to then resolve the major conflict. And both use East Asian culture essentially as a fantasy element to entertain a Western audience in a relatively respectful way. Most audience members don't get most of the references because they aren't familiar with the narratives or traditions to which they are referring. They just understand it as "other" and don't see a deeper meaning. In that sense they are both somewhat exploitative, though these examples are very far down on my list of grievances against capitalist entertainment media.
There's no nuance to the left... as compared to the right?
I'm someone who is generally skeptical when accusations of sexual misconduct are made against someone I admire(d), but even I have to admit the case against Gaiman is very strong. I'd say he deserves to be dropped.
It depends on how large the negative impact of the person or organization because of their view is or how much negative impact it would have on me to boycott it. Like I won’t ever buy a Tesla because Musk is doing a lot of harm to people and should not get a single cent from me but I don’t really care the new Linkin Park singer is or was a scientologist. I won’t buy Nestle products and it’s surprisingly easy to do as there are enough alternatives. But as much as I would like to drop Whatsapp because Meta sucks, it’s simply the main communication service here in Germany.
I think you’ve got to draw some lines and stand by them but you don’t need be 100% Jesus either.
If you're paying a rapist for their work and encouraging people to pay the rapist that's helping the rapist. Completely fine by me if you pirate the books and don't tell other people to buy them.
Can you have art without an artist? Can you have an artist without art? No. Art is a human expression. It comes from a person. AI art might be technically accomplished but it only says something when a human is in control of the AI. You can just kind of tune out that aspect of a work of art and try to enjoy it divorced from its act of creation, its context, the artist's intentions, etc, but in doing so you are effectively censoring the art and not engaging with it on its own terms. The artist is an integral part of the work.
Im left leaning on many social issues but pronouns was never a necessary social construct hill we needed to die on.
I think that useless fight got us the full hard swing to the right.
Especially because you shouldn't give a fuck about how people perceive you. You should be whoever you are and not care about labels.
I lean pretty hard left who is also pro death-penalty (IN VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES)
If the case has absolutely been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
All appeals have been exhausted.
Proof is absolutely undeniable.
Guilty party shows no remorse.
Crime is suffiently heinous (mass murder, child killing, serial killers, etc...)
A legitimate psychiatric board has deemed that there is little to no chance at rehabilitation nor does the guilty party show any inclination to want to rehabilitate.
if ALL those things are true, (plus some that I haven't even considered) then I would rather execute them than pay for their living expenses for the rest of their natural life, or worse see them released at the end of their sentance absolutely knowing that they'll do it again.
While I have progressive ideas and believe the Republicans rule with malace, I also strongly believe the democrats rule with incompetence.
I would love to run for president on the party of burn down the two party system and restart from there. Make politics boring again and not some partisan winner take all spectacle. We keep pushing to out 'wing' the 'wing' and it is driving us to some bad extremes.
So yes, I will vote straight ticket Democrat for 99% of the time, but I am also disgusted by the fact anyone is even allowed to do that and people have little party letters by their name. If you didn't research your candidate to at least know their name, then you shouldn't be voting for them.
It is mind-blowing to me that some things are not seen as human rights and are instead seen as political posturing. In Texas we had barbed wire intentionally strung up in the Rio Grande river with the intention to drownd people and it took multiple rounds of court cases to make them take it out. Somehow killing people is acceptable rather than booking, ticketing, and sending back. Politics have now taken a place above literal lives. At the same time, when I express this I have democrats immediately agreeing and adding "just let them in!" Or "just let them stay and we will figure it out" and that is where I stop them and ask, is that what I said? No. Simply that human life is worth more than politics. Again, stringing up barbed wire in a river to intentionally drown people it true malice. But saying let them all in and figure it out later is naive at best, and incompetence at its worst.
Democratic politicians tend to be cynical more than ignorant, friend. They feign incompetence because taking actions is against their larger strategy of holding to whatever the current status quo is or whatever pleases donors (these are usually the same).
We're talking about a group that acts like it can't deliver on basic platform promises because of a parliamentarian they can just fire and replace like the GOP has done reoeatedly and then turns around and breaks plenty of its own rules when a SocDem grandpa (Bernie) gives people some hope for positive change.
The party relishes in scapegoats for inaction because they do not, in actuality, oppose the status quo nor even most of the changes made by e.g. Trump. Their opposition is performative, it is meant to get someone to do that 99% voting for them thing and then call it a day politically. Their main agenda is to say there is no acceptable alternative beyond their controlled neoliberal duopoly.
"Make politics boring again" simply means you have no connection to the immense violences carried out by that status quo, or do not recognize them as such. Tell me, for which period of time was US politics boring? During slavery? Settler colonial genocide of the people who lived here? Jim Crow? Labor fights? Imperial conquests throughout the Americas, Hawaii, The Philippines? Both World Wars? The Great Depression? The Cold War and its many sponsored coups and genocides? The forced unequal exchange for the countries it dominates? The frequent hot wars it begets around the world?
Necessities should be free for all.
Is that unpopular among Anarchists?
I'm a strict leftist, that means, i believe that humans (in fact, all life) are valuable. Yes, you have to say that in these times. Lots of politicians these days seem to disagree with even that.
As a direct consequence, i advocate for UBI (universal basic income). Because the people need to live off something, and it is getting harder by the year to be successful through your own labor. (As numerous articles describe, - i won't link them here, because that would be out of scope - hashtag "working poor").
However, i think the borders must be closed. That affects both goods and migration. If the borders are closed, people stop competing with one another. Just a reminder: "compete" comes from Latin and basically means "fight". People are fighing against one another, and i think that makes a society sick. If the borders close, economy slows down considerably, and people stop competing.
UBI sounds like keeping capitalism on life support after it attempted suicide (again).
I'd give a functional UBI system 4 generations before it's useless much like the minimum wage.
I'd give the revolution in the US zero % chance of success, which one is better?
I'd give revolution a greater chance of success than UBI coming without equal or greater social functions taken away to compensate. Revolution is practically an inevitability, UBI is closer to a dream.
What I find funny is that some days I'll be adamant about how bad UBI would be because of the cost, and the next, I'd be the loudest voice next to yours for its good. I feel it would be super easy to implement. Basically, you'd tax every company for every self checkout machine as if each machine is a person and the salary that would be paid to the person is instead of a machine would be used to fund it. I k ow its poorly worded, but I hope people have enough sense to understand what I mean.
Yeah, there's a lot of technicalities involved. Like, do you tax the companies directly, or rather the billionaires owning the companies?
My proposal so far is: Every person who has citizenship has to pay 3% of their total wealth off as wealth tax annually. Which makes sense because if they invest in stock, that stock likely goes up by more than 3% annually (after adjusting for inflation). So they don't even have to lift a finger to pay off that wealth tax. (Excluding a tax-free amount of $1 million). That would fund surprisingly much. I did some preliminary math, and in germany, such a wealth tax alone would provide every person with citizenship with approximately $120 /month.
Which is just a small support. UBI doesn't necessarily need to jump from 0 to 100%, maybe it's easier to introduce it slowly and then increase the value.
If i may ask: what makes you against UBI on some days?
Supporting UBI is not really a leftist thing. It was promoted by laissez-faire economists as a way to kill the welfare state (universal services) and is still formulated as such by its prominant proponents.
Why do you believe you are leftist rather than simply a fairly mainstream liberal? Liberals have pivoted to being openly in favor of immigration crackdowns in the US over the last few years.
Do people really stop competing with one another if the borders are closed? And if so, how? In my mind, neither open nor closed borders change anything in the amount of competition there is, it just changes the groups involved.
If there's no free trade, you don't try to undercut the prices of your neighbor's factory. You just produce your thing, and that's it.
Wait, which borders are you talking about? The borders of each individuals property? So everyone should be self-sufficient, with no trade happening at all?
no i meant that in a metaphorical sense. no free trade means that there's no "getting ahead" (because you can't flood a foreign market with your cheap products), so people put in less effort.
Yes but which free trade are you talking about? Because if you close borders so trade only happens within one country, then there will still be competition within the country. I.e. your neighbor's factory. That's why I ask which borders you mean exactly... Because usually "close the border" means closing the border of the country to imports/exports of goods/humans of other countries.
Yes but i suspect that competition would be less fierce within the country, for two reasons:
the central government can stand in and regulate that "a factory may only produce a specific amount of goods". such regulation works better on the smaller level, because regulatory oversight is easier to achieve.
i guess that maybe the competition could naturally be less fierce. Consider: you would not want to pick a fight with the neighbour that lives directly next door; because you still have to get along well with him. It's easier to be in fierce competition with somebody who is on the other side of the world, because you will probably never see them again.
That makes sense, but this approach first requires the will to actually regulate in this manner. Because "just" closing the border right now would just keep capitalism unchecked, just within the country. Most people don't even meet their next-door neighbor that often, countries are usually still big enough that I don't think your second point does very much.
Otherwise, it does theoretically sound good. However, I don't think just any country at this point could be entirely self-reliable, some just have an impossible land-to-people ratio that is only possible by importing food from other countries. I don't have that much information about this, though, so might be false, I don't know how much land you need and how the agrarian situation is like for many countries.
Voting is an important tool to help contain fascism in liberal democracies while building serious social movements. (Socialist - but hopefully this isn't actually unpopular with most socialists).
Then we should take great care in how we run our electoral system.
::: spoiler Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
STAR voting
Alternative vote
Ranked Choice voting
Range Voting
Single Transferable Vote
Mixed Member Proportional representation :::
I am progressive as heck, but wow the Republicans fixed the DMV here by running it like a business. Not every part of government is amenable to that (which is where they go wrong) but some departments really can.
Also I am pro choice very much so, but personally wouldn't have, and didn't have, any abortion, I don't like it, find it horrifying. Like, my personal choice was hell no. I understand that the consequences of prohibiting abortion are much, much more damaging than allowing them, and do also think the existing woman has more rights than the potential person so maybe that isn't a political difference.
Leftist here. I think police and prisons should be abolished.
Christianity should be criminalized.
Since engaging in society means indirectly endorsing all of its evils, and even interacting with questionable people is functionally equivalent to platforming them, the only ethical thing to do is to become a self-sufficient hermit. Problem is, there aren't enough terrains on this planet to allot one fully decked farm for each inhabitant...
I'm centrist so I probably believe in something that offends both sides.
My only issue with that is taking from regular people to fund it. Tax solely corporations, many of them view increased profits at any cost as the only objective, which means they have more to spare. If you take it from the people who take all the risk by investing their own money, I don't see that as fair. If I work hard to make a living, invest what I can to improve my life and future that shouldn't be touched by any tax. Where I'm from, we have capital gains tax of something assured, like 55%+. I don't see how that is fair. If I go bust, I don't get a hand out or do over, but if I succeed, I have to fork over more than half...
Strong advocate for people under 25 and over 75 not having the vote.
Why?
The first ones haven't developed their brain fully yet, and the second group shouldn't get to decide the future for the rest since they have so little of it left 😄 I'm also a staunch believer in youth parties forming politics and main parties implementing it
"Your brain is fully developed at 25" is a popular myth based on one paper that didn't even say that. It's just used to take agency away from adults younger than 25.
One counterargument for the over-75 group is that you could argue they also have more accrued wisdom than any other age bracket.
Huh, you're right. It keeps developing until at least 30, so I will have no increase the lower age to 30 than lol. Thanks!
Absolutely but that is not my argument. Can't have a bunch of elders voting against decisive climate action because it interferes with what they are used to. No scorched earth voting here no 😄
I suspect that brains continue developing, at least in some respects, for one's entire life, with diminishing returns as one gets older. 100 years ago it was the general wisdom that an 18-yo can be independent and deserves to vote; while 18-yo's are less independent today, I still feel we shouldn't move away from this Schelling point.
Well I do agree that it would be beneficial for me personally to remove 75+ from the voting bloc, but I have trouble seeing a universal argument in favour of this without appealing to "my values are universally good." Of course, I do believe my values are universally good, but I sort of feel like democracy is meant to be value-agnostic somehow.
I'm going to expect a lot of dislikes for this one...
Neutering/Spaying is animal abuse.
Tariffs on Chinese goods are a good thing. And I honestly see why the next logical step is tariffs on Mexico because Chinese companies are already building in Mexico so they can assemble there and ship across the border and circumvent tarrifs.
I think China manipulates markets and damages the global economy while making consumers feel like they don't need to value the products they buy because they are so cheap. And I don't think we should be letting China off the hook for the Uyghur genocide/gluttony of human rights violations.
Buy local. I wish it was easier to buy American manufactured stuff.
Protests do more harm than good to a cause, especially annoying protests.
Protests are only good if they're annoying. They're meant to be annoying. They're meant to make other people notice, to stop traffic, to cause delays and ideally an economic hit to the city. If nobody felt the protest, how do you expect it to have an effect?
Protests are definitely meant to be noticed, and should also make you think. Ideally they should also be attractive for others to join, allowing the protest to gain momentum. But being annoying (at least to regular people) seems counter productive to that? Sometimes it is unavoidable, but I don't think it should be desired.
Of course being annoying to the body being protested against is definitely desired.
Well that's what I mean by doing more harm than good. People notice, and then say "I hate whatever those people stand for".
(Those kinds of) protests aren't for convincing the average person. The point of a protest is to tell the people in power "there are a lot of us, and you can't afford to ignore us."
Protests aren't always for the "benefit" of nonparticipants, as much as for those taking part. Being surrounded by people with the same concerns as you who are also willing to take some kind of action is very heartening. Not only does it bring joy to people who may otherwise feel powerless or overwhelmed, it presents opportunities for making connections for further organizing.
Without public protests, you may have a lot of individuals that believe they are alone in their outrage. Feeling this, nobody will ever act and so be defeated without ever fighting at all.
The fact that you have to ask means you'd judge people on skin color. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh because if the answer is yes, they're white, you'd attribute it to that but not bother looking any further. They are mostly white, but my friends wife isn't. I know my fair share of people who have had extremely bad interactions, too, and they are white. My brother was pulled out of his car at gun point for making an illegal turn. Do dwb happen sadly, yes, but those are not as frequent as you'd like to believe.
have to ask what?