2016 US elections was a ridiculously sobering moment for realizing that we had not progressed nearly to the extent that I nievely thought.
This one rings home pretty hard. I’ve definitely viewed the people around me differently since then. And especially since covid as well.
Agreed, Covid ties or is a close runner up for me as well in terms of people showing their true colors.
2016 and the following four years were eyeing opening on just how far away from even okay a majority of the US is.
Yeah but it was the election that was the "event". At the time i thought it must have been an aberration, it was during the following years I realised it was a symptom of the real problem.
Up until that point, I was a naive centrist that thought sane liberalism would win out. That election single-handedly destroyed that view and slammed me hard to the left.
You're probably in the real center now, my understanding is American center is to the right, and their left is actually closer to center
The US Democrats are center right in many aspects yeah.
I should probably clarify that it slammed me firmly in the Bernie camp, but I've drifted even further to the left (broadly libertarian/anarcho-socialism) since then
I'm slightly left of centre, but I am now voting quite far left to try counter the right swing we are most likely going to have with this next election.
I'm not even from the US and honestly it was a sobering moment for me as well. I realised how people like Hitler get into power. Before 2016 I knew it was possible like cognitively but Trump being elected made it feel real in a way it never had before.
Same for my country (Hungary). For the first time almost all off the opposition parties agreed to merge into eachother, then the chosen opposition president almost became the old corrupt guy's wife (old people voted for them), then the Ukraine már happened where everyone knew Orbán made a ton of contracts with Putin, LITERALLY disses Zelensky but never mentions Putin's name and Orbán won with a record 2/3 again.
Hungarian people literally can't remember about 1956, it seems.
I have thought a lot about the "How do background characters tell if they're in a story?" thing a lot since.
The day the alternate timeline stopped being a meme. The day "we're in too damned interesting times to this not be the end of humanity" became a reality.
If the world burns, whatever. We have had it coming.
COVID-19. People simply refused to do the absolute minimum to stop the spread of the virus. At least in my community, everyone was still socializing with friends and family (without a mask, of course), going out to eat, taking part in recreational activities with other people. Something as simple as "stay away from other people until we get this under control" was too hard for the American public. It certain changed my view of the people around me.
Same, it really bumped up my pessimism regarding people
Actions > Talk. They were telling you their true views. People rarely say the quiet part(their views) out loud so it is valuable to be able to translate their actions into their true views.
When you know how others truly feel, it allows you to decide who is worth listening to. Not to say you shouldn't listen to people with different views, but instead decide whether they are telling you their beliefs or telling you what they think you want to hear(BSing you) and use that rate how trustworthy they are on the topic.
Haha I remember a talking head saying at the start that this could bring humanity closer together and I sat laughing in my couch for a minute
For me it definitely highlighted how many people in American society think they are the main character and fuck everyone else.
Welcome to *The ME Show! *
Starring: Me!
Co-starring: (fuck) you!
The 2008 bank bailouts. Watching our government spend nearly a trillion dollars to bail out some unelected bankers who made some bad decisions and were "too big to fail (true)". Watching them spend that money on bonuses for their execs, while none of them went to jail. Watching the social response to that (occupy) and then watching a coordinated federal crackdown of those protests across the country. And then watching bailouts happen again and again since then. Meanwhile in Iceland, they overthrew their government over it. The global financial system has deeply rooted flaws, and bailouts are an inevitability in it. We will inevitably, every so often, make another huge wealth transfer like that because so longs as lending exists, particularly private lending, and all banks are interconnected so that if one fails they all fail, there will always be bank runs and bailouts. Even the most well-intentioned bank cannot hedge against all risks and market shocks. And the government will just turn on the money printer every time it happens while you watch your hard-earned money lose its value.
GWB publicly condoning torture.
I grew up during the tail end of the cold war. Torture was something the Soviets did. We were better than that.
And sure, I knew the CIA did stuff like that under the table, but it was never OK.
It's what got me interested in politics, and why I feel that we shouldn't try to hide the bad things we've done when we teach history. Knowing what we're capable of is necessary to keep ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past.
we 'shouldn’t' try to hide the bad things we’ve done when we teach history
The keyword here is shouldn't. Most people don't do lots of things they should.
Not out of malice but simply laziness, it is a lot easier to just default to the norm and go on. Try comparing what should get done in politics(campaign promises) to what actually gets done in washington. In short what should happen and what actually happens are two different things in a lot of areas.
I mean this is a pretty big one for most people, but march 2020 COVID lockdowns. My family and I were bunkered down like the family in the movie Signs, just trying to figure out what was going on and keeping each other safe.
It was a bizarre time. I remember going to the supermarket - it felt like an apocalypse with boxes of stock being torn open by shoppers instead of unpacked by staff. Stuff all over the floors. People pushing / pulling multiple trolleys.
It made me realise how close we are to chaos.
Covid made me realise just how much we live in different versions of reality and how harmful that is during a crisis that requires everyone to be on the same page. At the beginning of the lockdowns I joked about how some people would rather die than comply with basic public health practices....and then it actually fucking happened in real life. Not only that but they took down other people with them. Not such a funny joke anymore.
I was an essential worker who had zero time off and the empty streets at all hours were nuts. I am back at a normal job now where people did lock down, and everyone had a mass experience that I did not.
Snowden file leaks lead me down the path to privacy and to reading books like Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Lead me down the path to degoogling and linux and now decentralized services like Lemmy.
It seems like every week some article comes out with big tech abusing their rights. This week was Philips hue and last week or so it was a mom getting 2 years in jail because Facebook gave up information about her giving abortion pills to her daughter.
I am using all these foss services myself and making my friends and family use them and be aware of these events. It's a slow car crash and if people are apathetic and say "I have nothing to hide" and eventually "I have nothing to say", soon we'll be stripped of more rights until it's too late.
“The cells of death row are filled with guys who had nothing to hide.” - Kenneth Eade
I might not have been a raging, bleeding-heart, anti-capitalist liberal had Trump not gotten elected in November 2016. Until then I might have considered myself apolitical with no strong political ambitions. Seeing the post-election riots/protests opened up the world to me, his election wasn't a stupid joke but an injustice on all the people Trump essentially campaigned on fucking over.
Another crazy moment was the second time I got high on weed. I was super panicked at first, but when I went to bed, all of a sudden abstract art made sense to me as I had visions and felt a connection to their work even if I didn't know their name. That high had residual effects the next day and I had felt changed somehow.
Sorry but "anti capitalist liberal"? But liberalism is capitalism
it's amazing how many people think "liberal" = "leftist"
We can blame America for that
yea I had the same reaction. In the US I think it bears a different meaning, they equate liberal with the left. Even though it hardly makes sense, it's the usage
Yes, as others have pointed out I'm discussing from the North American political perspective (Ontario, Canada).
Got it 👍
Covid. I used to think people were basically good and caring, trying to do the right thing. I also used to think that everyone besides me was better at dealing with stress.
Turned out my life really is so bad that a global pandemic actually reduced my stress level. And when other people are stressed, they use that as an excuse to treat everyone else abominably. People are fundamentally selfish and self-centered. Kindness is at best a veneer for the vast majority.
Kindness is at best a veneer for the vast majority.
I admire your clarity of thought here.
The pandemic did reduce my stress level temporarily by getting me away from people pleasing behavior but it also made me feel kinda jaded about people for a while.
I like your username. How did you come up with it if you don't mind sharing?
Thanks!
I really love analogies. People make fun of me for it, and I don't even mind. I used to have friends play a game where one would name a random object, and another a random intangible and I'd have to come up with an analogy to explain the latter using the former.
All that follows is simply an opinion. Take everything with a grain of salt. Feel free to discuss.
Human are social creatures and relationships is a basic human need. Where I am from, the government enforced a curfew and stopped people from having relationships with their loved one. Stories of people dying alone or women giving birth alone.
When basic needs aren't met, we revert to survival instincts and try to meet these needs. To me, that explains why people that were seemingly caring turned out to be dicks when their needs weren't met.
Shitty people were going to be shitty anyways.
For people that need less social interactions, it feels like it's fucking bonkers how people were getting desperate for social interactions and throwing caution to the wind. It felt like they were crazy.
Just like an hungry man in front of a plentiful buffet, these people tasted social interactions and told themselves never again!
It was a short time in history where less social people were better off than the rest. After covid brought a lot of tension because social persons clawed back at what was acquired by the less social people.
And to me, that explains a lot of what we saw and see right now.
And again, shitty people are gonna be shitty people regardless of the situation, so that observation doesn't apply to them.
My needs have never been met. Never. Yet I have managed to not be a dick for decades.
I assure you that to someone else, you've been a dick without you knowing.
We judge ourselves by our intentions and the others by their actions. So it's easy to point at everyone around being a dick without realising that in that moment, that person isn't necessarily thinking that they are a dick.
And again, some people are really shitty people regardless of the situation. So it doesn't apply to them.
I'm not taking about accidental or unconscious dickery. I'm talking about deliberately being an ass because you feel you have a right to it.
Do you think that the context matters then? Covid or not, these people are gonna be ass.
If you think that people were fundamentally bad and hiding behind a facade until covid, then I am not sure what there is to discuss.
I am not sure what you are trying to convey here.
Yes. I think people were fundamentally selfish and self-centered, and the minute they felt inconvenienced, they took it as an excuse to be assholes.
Before Covid, they didn't feel the same pressure, so used kindness as social grease to benefit themselves. Covid proved that the average person's kindness is less a character trait than a cost/benefit analysis.
I’m absolutely on Analogy’s side, as well.
I agree with Analogy's take on this. I don't think it's based on 'needs'. Selfish people are, and have always been selfish regardless of the situation. Stress does exacerbate it of course. And it's unfortunately the case that we live in a world that doesn't reward kindness. But despite this there are a lot of people that are kind because they want to be, because it's rewarding for it's own sake.
I think where we disagree is that people were merely inconvenienced. Social relationships are a basic human need and there is a lot of ongoing research on the effects of social isolation caused by Covid.
And with that said, I don't think I can change your mind on the covid situation.
I hope that you can find people that can and will meet your needs.
Let me offer a counterexample. I was in NYC on 9/11. I saw the first tower burning and I saw the second plane hit. I watched incredulously when they fell.
The entire city froze. It was the first and only time NYC went silent. No cars, no construction, no one yelling. There has to have been at least 5000 people packed into a large crowd outside of Penn station, but no one was shoving or yelling for them to open the doors.
NY actually stated like that for a while. It was surreal - it felt like a dream. But the city really did come together. People were more kind and helpful to strangers. They were more aware of their neighbors and their needs. People were handing out food and blankets on the streets, trying to get through the massive disruption. I saw no rioting, no crime surge despite the fact that emergency services were completely tied up.
Yes. People react differently to acute vs. chronic stress. I've seen it time and again. People are happy to help if it's short-term. Then they get the feel-goods. But if there's nothing in it for them, if they feel inconvenienced by ongoing suffering, charity dries up like tears in the Sahara. Very few are willing to be kind even when they don't get to feel like a hero doing it.
COVID. Really never understood before how little of a shit the U.S. government has for its people. But they straight up let us fucking die while telling teenagers they needed to get back to work for minimum wage so they could get their shit Mcdildos and mochafuckaccinos and add gold spinning rims to their yachts. I can't wait until these old fucks start dying off, I don't care what political leanings they claim to have, we need a fuckin overhaul.
Even more so I was shocked at how little care a lot of people have for others in general.
Oh don't worry, their kids will take their place.
9/11
Bush v Gore
GWB re-election (despite war, recession, etc.)
Trump election
COVID
All chipped away at notions of stability, fairness, and sanity.
Still have hope, but tend not to believe the hype so much.
Ohh, the lockdowns showed me how all of you motherfuckers really are. It was VERY enlightening.
The number of service workers who got physically assaulted or even killed for telling people to wear masks was pretty telling.
It really is interesting isn't it?
A lot of people are shitheels
A lot of people are ornery
A lot of people don't think for themselves
A lot of people are susceptible to conspiracy
A lot of people are followers by nature
I could go on and on.
The lockdown showed me how all of company owners really are. It wasn't very enlightening, but everything was confirmed.
Except me
Being treated for cancer in hospital (in remission now, thank you) during COVID lockdowns gave me lots of time to reflect on my life. Realised that probably I was the asshole all these years; and also came to the realisation that I’m autistic and socially awkward. Reading David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs helped me to understand all the corporate games and garbage that I’d been part of for most of my career.
When I think about my life, it’s divided into pre-cancer diagnosis, selfish workaholic and part of corporate life; and post-cancer remission, unemployed, living off my savings, kinder to the people and the world, but unable to find a job that resonates with the new me.
I'll throw one out for COVID, but not just the lockdowns or the immediate work changes. It was more about how the deaths kept happening. And happening. And happening. Yet people still failed to take it seriously, even to the point of rebelling against seemingly common-sense safeguards like vaccines, masking, and staying the fuck home.
In the US, we lived through about 4 years of shenanigans and bullshit and lies from an incompetent federal government leading up to the pandemic. But surely that wouldn't fly for long. You can lie about the number of people at a rally (because who the fuck cares), you can apparently lie about where a hurricane is projected to go (because it's jUsT a PrOjEcTiOn or something), but surely you can't bullshit your way out of a pandemic. Hospitals at capacity. Bodies piling up. Loved ones lost. Visible, real, tangible impacts of poor leadership and poor decisionmaking.
But, turns out you can. Even in the most dire of circumstances, you can still convince people that reality isn't real. Or even if it is, it doesn't really matter and it's not their problem. And there are enough people out there who will buy into that message that it will ruin things for everyone else.
Edit: To the original point of the question... I guess I had a little more faith in humanity before all that happened. More faith that real-world consequences would win out against rhetorical bullshit and tribalism.
reality isn’t real
It is worth keeping in mind Hanlon's Razor with this. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect." They are running on emotions and accepting being wrong hurts so they simply don't accept their emotions.
I knew it as "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.". I think it fits better here, too, when in the face of actual death, people still ignore common sense. Screw neglect, that's pure, unadulterated, 100% organic, fresh as the driven snow stupidity.
I prefer this fuller version
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect, ignorance or incompetence.
Stupidity implies it is something that cannot be changed. Usually their behavior could be changed but it is just a hard task to change their behavior that requires the person in question to be willing to change.
For me it was when I was watching Soul with some friends and eventually came to some emotional realizations. I realized that I only had a superficial understanding of how to communicate. I could discuss ideas in the abstract, but I had trouble with expressing myself emotionally and personally because I was always conditioned to repress how I feel. I guess like 22 in the movie I only saw myself as a casual observer. It took a couple rewatches for me to process the difficult emotions I was feeling into something I could explain but when I did it really helped my overall mental outlook on life.
In retrospect, was probably the Battle of Seattle in 1999. Not that I wasn't aware of the issues before, but that really ripped off the mask to show me that the U.S. is fundamentally rotten at its core: The police are not the good guys, they don't serve and protect, they are there to visit violence on the enemies of capital. And if innocent people in their homes or going to work get caught up and harmed, fuck 'em, they're not wealthy enough to matter. The media will flat-out lie to maintain the good-cops-vs.-evil-protesters narrative. Our leaders will eagerly sell out American citizens to the interests of global capital, with only lip service to democratic traditions. And Americans are too disengaged to really question any of it.
For me, it provided the keys to understanding the events since, from Bush v. Gore to today. At least now the rot has become so obvious that the younger generations are forced to notice.
Never heard of the Battle of Seattle. What was it about?
It was the result of anti-World Trade Organization protests organized at the group's gathering in Seattle in 1999. Basically, the police see protesters axiomatically as bad, so they showed up in riot gear and started a riot. The media reported it as violent protestors, despite some of the people who just lived nearby and were trying to get to and from work getting caught up, kettled, teargassed, and beaten alongside protesters. I wasn't there, but the Internet had become a thing, and IndyMedia.org had lots of first-person coverage. It was the same pattern we've seen ever since cell phones with cameras have become ubiquitous: The video shows that the cops get violent and then lie about it.
Not how I view the world, but how I view USA and "citizens of the free world".
In 2016 my girlfriend and I visited New York - for me, first time visiting USA. I had a co-worker who lived in USA for most of her childhood, so I asked her if she had some advice for me to get along with people I met on my way.
"Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans".
I thought that to be rude as I had "talked" with many Americans on Reddit and sure, there were idiots, but that didn't define a person from USA for me.
We arrived in New York and took a cab to the hotel. The driver asked us "So, is Donald Trump making headlines in Europe?" (This was during the 2016 election).
I laughed and told him "Yeah, can you believe people will vote on such a moron"...
Oh no I didn't... He was furious, as Donald Trump was the Saviour of USA and he was singlehandedly going to "clean up the swamp" or whatever his catchphrase was.. and then he said one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
"90% of Muslims are terrorists and if you don't kill them, they will kill you"..
I know not all Americans are this dumb, but I learned my lesson.... Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans.
It can be applied elsewhere too. Whenever politics come up, it's wise to initally talk about it in a neutral state.
Well, yes, but where I'm from the topic "Donald Trump" is not a political one, it's more of a "will you look at that shit show".
A lot has changed since 2016 and I will most definitely approach every subject in a neutral state, as I feel like more and more people are getting more stupid by the hour.
Ahh I see, then I'm part of the dummy ones it seems.
Indeed a lot has changed since 2016, but maybe people were always this stupid, although your comment indicates that you're pretty experienced in life already, so maybe you're right. I'm only 22.
Talk about current issues and potential solutions rather than ideologies or politicians.
Hmm an even better approach.
My London cabby also loved Trump. For some reason he just assumed I would be a fan since I'm from the US.
Maybe cab drivers are all just fucking morons?
And siphoning insane cash amounts from drunk people. XD
My old boss was once asked by a NY taxi driver "So what language do you all speak over there in England?"
He said French.
The whole "the world will end in 2012" hysteria back then. It was my first glimpse into conspiracy theories, which I've spent a lot of time learning about ever since. It made me realize that nothing is ever too idiotic to not have an alarming number of people fall for it. It's why I wasn't surprised by the rise of the Q-movement or the resistance against the absolute bare minimum of COVID measures because of microchips in vaccines etc. All of that were just yet additional "of course people believe that shit"-moments for me.
Like Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black "A person is smart - people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals."
I haven't been surprised by how stupid people can be in a long time.
Actually, how did the 2012 thing became such a viral trend? Literally even news sites aired it SEVERAL times here, and I already thought that's it was a dumb conteo story. (I was 11 then)
As someone who was in his late teens then, I don't think many people really seriously believed that the world was going to end in 2012. It was more of a running joke. I remember that a few days before the 21st of December, someone posted on a forum for students of the university I was then attending that exam results were going to be posted on the 21st; someone else responded "oh, so for some who took this course the world will actually end on that day".
It was the end of a ~5,000 year cycle in a mayan calendar or something.
Trump winning getting carried by the EVs made me a bitter, jaded, hopeless husk. I lost faith in the republic, in america, in people, in common sense...
I don't know if I ever truly recovered.
Come to think of it, i've lived through at least two instances where the direct opposition of the public's will have lead to death, suffering, and the collapse of represenative democracy: Bush v Gore, and the Trump Presidency. Odd how that's a common trend.
What's EVs?
I think he meant Electoral College.
Unless 2016 saw the release of the 'Tesla-Force 1'
Electoral votes
I think the closest is when i discovered Not Just Bikes, that unlocked the whole "people are affected by how their environment is designed" thing in my brain and since then i've just kept on down that road and now i'm a turbosocialist who thinks 95% of cars should be immediately scrapped.
You took the orange pill 🟠 we are brothers.
people are affected by how their environment is designed
If you really want a brainfuck apply this to your content consumption habits. Negative environment = discourage use. Positive environment = encourage it. Unfortunately anything designed to be addictive(like facebook) can be a negative environment, even if it makes you temporarily happy because of dopamine if you misuse it.
I stumbled onto the same idea through Podcast Your undivided attention produced by humanetech.
The word should is subjective. Anytime you see it understand that that idea is just their opinion. And people have lots of bad opinions.
The left wing party of Australian federal politics decided that treating refugees inhumanly was acceptable.
That moment changed how I view politics and how I view people. It made me realise just how irrelevant empathy for others was in most public and political discourse. It made me more cynical about "the system", changed the way I voted, and transformed the face of my own advocacy to put empathy for others at the forefront.
Yeah, I spent a few years raging about this also.
Basically in the 2013 election the Australian voting public decided that they preferred treating refugees inhumanely rather than the alternatives.
It sucks, and yes it changed the way I see the world, but I don't really see that as Labor's fault, or the Greens. There are so many important issues that I want them to advocate for, that clinging to the moral high ground over an issue which is (according to voting populace) closed and resolved would seem like a waste.
Your last paragraph, and realising that that is how most people think is part of why it was such a profound moment for me.
Ignoring human rights abuses does not make them closed and resolved. Nor do I care for any other issues they're advocating for if the price is ongoing erasure of basic human rights.
Once computers went online. It was fascinating to experience in real time.
It's kind of shit now though.
Losing everything. My family wasn't rich but it was well off, and in my young stupidity I thought we deserved to live better than others did because we worked hard (had a family business).
Turns out hard work means almost jack shit. I mean, I'm good now because I have very marketable skills and I do work hard at a job not many want to do, but it takes me around the world and I can tell you, fucking everything in life depends on luck, starting from where you are born.
This is the biggest difference between myself and my brother.
My dad is fairly well off having run a company for decades at this point and I knew I didn't want to lean on that. So I went on my own career path.
My brother decided to join the family company. Over the past 20 years he was gifted 50 percent of the company as a bonus. He didn't understand that he's only in that situation because the owner was his dad. He's never understood how big of a safety net the two of us had growing up. He genuinely thinks that his hard work is the sole reason for his position in life and that anybody that's willing to work as hard as he did (and he did, I won't deny it) would be on a similar situation as himself.
The luck factor is also called opportunity. People succeed financially because they had some opportunity arise that enabled the success to be a possibility. Be it a random chance that they were given a job interview, that their dad owns a company they can start at, or they happened to grow up in an area with good education options they could lean on to develop skills, or just a serious safety-net.
I had option 2 and 4, but used option 3 to eventually get option 1. I'm mostly unsatisfied with the world because I wish everybody had option 3 and 4 to start with regardless of family.
I can tell you, fucking everything in life depends on luck, starting from where you are born.
Now my friend, you are wiser than ever before!
It's called "Ecclesiastes 9:11"
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
starting from where you are born
This, too... how you are born dictates how (routes) to get to the riches. (Thats why some connections are useless) still; luck will find you wherever and whoever you are, its up to you to grab it firm.
The war in Afghanistan (I was a kid but this was one of the tipping points that sent me down a hard leftist path).
GWB… just collectively. Freezing when told the towers were hit; lying about WMDs so he could start an illegal war.
Watching Obama get elected and then turning out to be a fucking fraud that built the drone program and carried on the US legacy of being the worldwide terrorist organization.
A big one though was watching the police continue to terrorize the Black community over and over. Years ago on Facebook I had a couple of old high school friends that argued with me that you should do whatever a cop tells you. My response was to tell them how utterly fucking idiotic that was and that cops will violate your rights if it means they don’t have to do any paperwork. They’ll illegally search your vehicle (like they did mine one time), harass you (like they did to my friends and I when we were skateboarding), and if you’re Black, they’ll shoot you in the back if you run.
Needless to say, I am not friends with either of them anymore. I think that’s when I really started to solidify who I was and have rejected absolutely everything that America is and does on the world stage. I’ve become known as the white guy that hates cops. I’ve worked with Black revolutionary groups, activist groups, written articles and tons of thoughts on police violence in America, and have marched against the police on multiple occasions. Hell, the police have surveilled me for who knows how long a few years ago, and I know people that have been under surveillance by the FBI. As an aside, you’d be amazed at the lengths this country will go to to keep eyes on peace activists.
Everything America does as a collective has brought me to the conclusion that we are in a failed state, capitalism-in-decay freefall that I’m afraid we will never recover from. We no longer innovate; we continue to loot other countries; we are all a captive audience hitched to whatever whims the capitalists and other ghouls want.
I’ve been laid off, had companies fuck me over for money and control, harassed by cops (all the way back to when I was 15 in the 90s), tracked by my own government for having a voice… there is nothing anyone can say that will convince me that the United States isn’t the enemy of the world and it’s citizens are nothing more than a disposable capitalist resource.
I hate to be a downer but my view of this country is a product of what it has done to both its own people and people around the world. I feel like a prisoner in the US.
Dubya and his crew were something else, weren’t they? I knew right from the get-go that the whole Iraq thing was a lie. It was just so obvious from their demeanor and body language, and the talking points they chose. Their goofy “evidence,” and the way they got offended when questioned about it. Like, how did everybody not see that?
I dropped everything in my twenties to look after a dying family member.
Thought my family would support me when all was said and done. I left a very promising career to do this.
Everyone just kind of went their seperate ways and I almost ended up homeless. While my dad immediately found another woman, took all his money and fucked off.
I'm just starting to recover almost a decade later.
I was in high school and the teacher (who said that if you make racist remarks in her class, she'll kick you out of the course) decided to show a comedy show where the journalist went to a Chinese night market and show people they have roast insects, animal penises and shit like that to eat.
For 2 days i got mocked/asked in a belittle tone why my ''people eat those stuff''
You would think that it was just young people being stupid and ask stupid shit. 2020, covid hits and Canada decided to go WFH, my manager decided to say: ''wow those mesures seem dragonian, but you (refering to me), you are used to it consider you come from China''
This reminds me of an old friend I had at work.
She was in HR and looking to hire a new employee and she complained to me about how all the people applying weren't from the country and they weren't capable of doing the job because they didn't know how to behave...
At the end of her small rant I guess she realized I was one of those "outsiders" and then she said "oh but you're one of the good ones!"
An immigrant's acceptance is always conditional and you shouldn't show dissent towards the white master. This is why most of the gen 2 asian immigrants are all apolitical or outright anti-country of origin and has a mostly white friend circle
I started to understand what "institutional racism" means when george zimmerman was acquitted
As a non American, i always thought that Zimmerman’s was also a perfect demonstration of why the whole gun culture thing is inherently fucked/dangerous. When it’s ok for a guy to be walking around with a rifle for the purposes of community safety or whatever, of course people are going to be killed, that’s what guns are for.
Apart from the racism angle (which I don’t intend to diminish), it seems to me a natural consequence of gun rights that at some point a murderer will be acquired because the killing was just part of their second amendment rights.
what bothers me the most about the case is that conservatives often say one of the reasons they should have guns is "what if I'm out at night and someone starts following me, I have the right to have some way to defend myself" which, sure, I get it. but if you look at the details and evidence, trayvon was unarmed, and more or less keeping to himself, until george, who was armed, started following him. maybe it's true that trayvon attacked first (there's no hard evidence indicating this, only testimony from george), but would it be so unreasonable after being followed by some random stranger with a gun at night? why is it not seen as a case of trayvon defending his life using whatever means available in the moment? after all, defending yourself from potentially harmful strangers is so important to them that they believe it warrants having access to lethal weapons (which again, I don't really disagree with, I just think you need people need to be held responsible with how they use that, but I guess chuds are willing to make exceptions...)
but would it be so unreasonable after being followed by some random stranger with a gun at night?
Yea, that's the thing about a gun, the escalation it causes is through the roof ... it's fatal, at a distance ... with that threat you both having nothing left to lose and also, in just about everyone's case, no experience in managing the emotions of that situation so of course you're going to react in some way that might be surprising, unpredictable or even arguably irrational. Merely carrying a gun, and posing the threat of immediate death, is an assault in itself.
For me, it wasn't a global event, but a personal one. I had a conversation on reddit with a Texan piano teacher who had the fantasy of murdering and eating people. Her view was that if it was OK to kill any sentient beings, as there was no legitimate reason to draw a line between farmed animals and people. She argued her point well, and I couldn't come up with a counterargument that didn't also imply we shouldn't eat animals.
It was a bizzare conversation, but it made me really reconsider my personal morals, and totally changed the path of my life.
So did you become a vegan or a cannibal?
Yes.
He loves carrot cake. The only problem is, Rob Schneider...is a carrot!
pretty trivial counterpoint though: there are plenty of sentient animals that aren't even remotely sapient, and animals like chickens frankly rather deserve to be eaten as they are quite terrible creatures who will blithely peck their flockmates to a slow and miserable death.
Chickens tend to get along OK if you don't cram them in where they have no room to move. They actually make for quite affectionate companions if socialized properly. Nurture plays a huge role in animal behavior as well, and usually animals (including humans) simply tend to lash out when their needs aren't being met.
If you spend some time looking into modern animal cognition research, you'll notice the line around sapience is a very blurry one, with many animals routinely demonstrating that they are capable of complex spatial reasoning, theory of mind, and other traits we used to think only humans were capable of.
Also, you'll find plenty of humans are quite terrible creatures as well. That doesn't mean we can treat them indiscriminately. The capacity to suffer only requires sentience.
Anyways, I didn't come here to argue. Just to share my experience.
It's funny that people can't see this point, sometimes even when told to their faces.
Logically, putting belief aside, you are either okay with some sort of cannibalism, murder and rape, or you should turn vegan.
Go touch eat grass.
I know that it was meant as an insult but it was pretty funny XD
That's a bit extreme, murder an cannibalism I can understand the connection with, but rape? I might be missing something but I'm pretty sure nobody forces intercourse on animals destined for consumption.
As for murder and cannibalism, there have been historical instances where that was the case when they ran out of food (low-hanging fruit). I would wager that given a grave enough scenario, people will be grilling up Neighbour Bob to stay alive. Zombie apocalypse time might just mean long pork's on the menu.
Look, extreme situations are not our day to day. i wouldn't judge someone who murdered in self defense for example.
As for rape, did you ever think about how we have so many cows, chickens, pigs, etc?
If you want to eat a cow today you need to murder her, but if you want to eat a cow tomorrow too, you first need to breed her, and nobody is waiting for nature so they either make a bull rape them or more commonly, they jack a bull off, take the semen and insert it into the female cow (not in a pleasent way, not that there is one)
So yeah, rape is an even bigger part than murder in the meat industry.
Losing my best friend / business partner. He died in March. A lot of things stopped making sense after that.
I'm deeply sorry for your loss.
Thanks. Didn't want to go into details.
You never have to.
2016 elections and then covid. Now nazis rising to power again.
It reinforced all my feelings about what was important in this world and simultaneously made very clear we are actually living in an age of sliding back, not of Progress. I was already very interested in politics by that point but with just about the knowledge to grab the weight but no proper explanation this summer half of 2016 felt like falling into chaos and uncertainty 3 times. In retrospect the outer two likely had much more influence on my life thereafter, but the middle one was the more jarring to watch unfold at the time.
Tripping too hard on mushrooms. I realized that the mind is powerful, and under the right conditions, can show you and make you believe that reality is absolutely anything. And I mean anything. You could be anywhere, anyone, become an inanimate object, have your world become pure geometry and sensation, completely lose sense of the scale and passage of time. There are almost no limits.
Yep, it’s they key lesson of psychedelics: reality is an illusion, never underestimate the power of the mind and how much it lives literally in its own world. Be mindful of biases and prejudices corrupting the very notion of truth, be sympathetic to those with mental health issues and trauma and be mindful of just how ubiquitous a problem mental health is and how important working on yourself is.
Four years under The Idiot destroyed any assertion that conservatives are trying to be reasonable. It's all just a word game to these people. And they think it's all anyone's doing, because they think that's all there is.
The most damning evidence for this is when right-wing bastards of the highest order get booted out for not playing the game. Mitt Romney was the fucker who wanted to "double Guantanamo." He's also now called a RINO, and he's running away with his tail between his legs, because he acted like we kept fucking imagining "real Republicans" were supposed to. He asked what happened to all the talking points he ran on... because he believed that garbage. Nah, Mittens: it was ad-hoc justifications then, and it's ad-hoc justifications now. (And he still voted to absolve The Idiot on most counts, the useless bastard.)
Witnessing a downtown metro area go dead silent, years of ecological damage reversed and folding at home accidentally out computing the world's fastest supercomputer in the first 2 weeks of 2020 lock downs and all it took was giving 10 days PTO to all non-essential workers (I was essential btw but yes I'll fucking survive Starbucks being closed one fortnight a year)
Surely, people will see this as worthwhile and positive tradition and we'll collectively decide to avoid commuting for 2 weeks every March; taking PTO if offered or job hopping at the new market rate created if not, right... Right...?
we’ll collectively decide
We don't decide. We are coerced. When money is involved the CEOs decide and try to coerce us into their preferred decision.
Absolutely no idea why you're getting downvoted. CEOs browsing Lemmy?
If I had to guess, it is probably due to the natural resistance that people have towards the idea that they are being manipulated. Also some people have a hard-on for pleasing those that society preaches are better than them. Re: Musk fanboys
Yes, good possibilities. I see you've struck a chord, because you're already being downvoted again. I see I was downvoted too. lol
Idk, I don't have scoring on so I don't really worry about such things. :)
I got glasses. That definitely changed the way I saw things. Everything suddenly became more focused.
When I was a child I had a neighbor who was a mentally challenged adult woman. I learned how cruel life can be. I didn't understand why some have it worst than others. But I also learn to appreciate and be grateful for what I have.
9/11.
I didn’t think much about the dangers of religion and “faith” in general until then.
And with that, do you mean rather the fundamentalists crashing into the towers or the hawks starting two wars?
Porque no los dos?
2020 george floyd protests
even during protests about police brutality they did even more police brutality
it's never going to stop. the system has too many meaningless pressure valves that they've convinced people are actually valuable [writing a letter to a local official, voting (depending what state), clever chants during protests, etc]
Covid, and specifically the response, lack of response, and rollback of response, to covid, worldwide. So much unnecessary death for treats.
Defining moment of a generation, in the way that 9/11 was for the one before it. I don't even think we'll really understand the impact for another couple decades - and just like with other major events the ruling class will learn the wrong lesson entirely from it, probably something like "we should never lock down for any disease ever".
Russia's invasion of Ukraine made me realize the fundamental wisdom of the saying "Speak softly and carry a big stick".
I already knew we'd collapse before COVID, but seeing the reaction to COVID made me realize how absurdly stupid the average person is
Like at least with racism, you could tentatively argue that a mayo indirectly benefits from it. But the COVID brainworms is reminiscent of AI bots. Calling them cattle would be generous
The coup in Bolivia shook me of any demsoc liberalism I still had in me and made me understand that a worker’s movement can only be defended with force
Less profound, but it destroyed my remaining lingering faith in any mainstream media sources and confirmed The Guardian had completed it's transition from a bunch of socialists in the 70s to a neoliberal establishment mouthpiece today.
The war in Iraq. It was bullshit and everyone knew it was bullshit, but it happened because politicians forced it through. 9/11 was a horrific disaster but the war in Iraq that followed left me completely jaded.
Finally seeing sense and not believing religion anymore changed everything.
And oddly enough, it all started because of an X-Men movie.
> Wade Wilson appears with CGI tape over his mouth
"... no loving god would allow this."
That is pretty cruel.
But Deadpool has nothing to do with it. xD
Well now I need to know how the movie triggered it! And which scene!
I'm answering in another reply in this thread. But it wasn't even the movie, it was the trailer.
Which I guess was a specific movie scene now that I type it. But yeah I'm working on this answer in another reply already.
I would love to hear the train from x men to atheism
"it was then, when Storm mused the effects of lighting on a humble toad, that I realised there was no god..."
It was probably X-Men 3. A loving God wouldn't have allowed X-Men 3.
It was Apocalypse.
I'm relieved to hear it. No one should have to see X-Men 3. /s
Joking aside, I see your update in your other comment. Pretty cool. I'm always fond of movies that expand my world view.
It was X-Men Apocalypse.
I was working in a call center at the time, and there were tvs around the room on mute with closed captions that we could look at in between being on a call. I actually didn't work in a department that took calls at the time, so I would watch entire shows like this sometimes.
Anyway, the trailer for this movie came on during a commercial break, and there was one scene (I forget the exact quote- I might have to check YouTube for it now, but you'll see it if you look it up) that was taking about the four horsemen, and mentioned that Christianity wasn't the first to use that metaphor, but that it has been used by a bunch of religions and people groups before.
So that threw me for a loop and made me start wondering. And once I figured out that one thing I always heard specifically about the belief was wrong, it made me wonder what else was wrong.
So once I stopped taking everything for granted as just being true because "the Bible says it is" and started looking at it honestly, it quickly turned into realizing that it was all bullshit. As soon as you stop assuming it's all completely true no matter what the evidence said, and actually take reality into account (for anyone that didn't grow up as a believer this sounds totally insane, but that's really how it be), a lot of things snap into focus.
I had a roommate I completely disagreed with at the time, but I started taking him a lot more seriously after that. Turns out he wasn't crazy, I was.
And that's the short version. I don't recall enough specifics to really make a long version, but you get the idea.
I can't pin it down to just one, but holy shit school shootings and the way we've responded to them completely broke whatever part of me thought that our society was still capable of doing things. They keep upping the ante with how horrifying they are too - the high water mark currently is Uvalde, and I think that the next one that shocks the nation will involve the cops (or a "good guy with a gun") gunning down multiple kids or parents while trying to "help" and our collective response will still be to do nothing.
The damn toilet paper crisis
Finding out in primary school that other kids weren't poor and had all the shit they wanted while we sometimes had issues getting food.
The run up to the start of the war in Iraq. Anyone who was paying attention knew that Afghanistan was already a disaster, a complete failure for everyone but arms dealers, and everyone also knew that the gwb regime was completely full of shit. Massive rallies worldwide saying no, yet they did it anyway. Fucking murderous assholes.
The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
-Condi Rice
This was said by the National Security Advisor of the USA, the only country in the world that used nuclear weapons ... on civilian cities ... twice ... for no militarily objective reason.
Watching that shit unfold really got me into politics. Being disillusioned with Obama's 8 years got me into real political economic theory though.
And then afterwards she went on to become an exec at... Dropbox? Like wtf.
The Obama presidency and how all flavors of western media acted like it was taking the US down a radical leftist path.
That week recently when there were floods in every country except where there were fires in every country. That was wild.
I stopped watching the 24/7 need channels. It cut out so much fear and paranoia that those channels thrive on.
Probably being on welfare for an extended period of time. It kinda beat the techno-libertarian out of me.
Most of my big internal changes were done through years of struggling in communities and therapy though
The state murdering Fred Hampton.
When two friends and me got punched on the street by robbers, i look in all directions now.
Going through spine surgery at a relatively very young age, and all the suffering beforehand. Revealed just how fake the world is and just how superficial a lot of things are.
GamerGate destroyed my confidence that the mainstream media tended to get things right and pick the right side. That doesn't mean it is always wrong, but it is not always right either.
What do you mean by this? I don't have much knowledge on the subject, but it seems like it had led to a bunch of social media village idiots (you know those YouTubers like the quartering) saying that "wokeness is killing videogames" and review bombing any game with a gay character in it.
I only observed it, didn't participate in it; but if one side of a dispute is young freedom-loving technology-savvy nerds from the Internet (i.e. people like me) and the other authoritarian feminists with beliefs I thought didn't exist anymore, and the media portrays the latter as victims and the former as villains, then something is terribly wrong. Some stupidity and bad behavior definitely came from both sides of that, but the media did not get it right, probably because there are relatively few nerds in the media.
“Authoritarian feminists”
Authoritarianism is when women exist and don’t want to be treated like shit.
How they can be authoritarian with no power, I suppose that will never be answered.
"authoritarian feminists"
Please eat shit and die, thank you! It would be appreciated.
I will reiterate: the unethetical review the whole thing was about DOES NOT EXIST. Kotaku never did the thing these frauds keep screeching about. There was no inciting incident. They made it the fuck up.
The supreme court ending any ballot recount and investigation into corruption in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Gore won that one by a hair and Bush only took office because Florida threw out ballots to steal the election and the supreme court rubber stamped it. Any and all optimism I had for democracy in the US died that day and it's weird to me that we just sort of shrugged and ignored it.
I was too young to vote but I remember asking my dad if we were going to get into a civil war. "Democrats don't have the guts"
Unironically since I live in the imperial core and am from an ex-socialist country, but not old enough to have experienced it. It was the Trump v. Clinton elections where I saw what lib brain does to people.
Does it have to be an event in our lifetime (and not a historical event we learned about)?
If some historic event changed your life so much, we probably also like to read about it.
An oil change place completely draining my car out of oil and not putting a single drop in. This eventually caused my car to overheat and the engine ended up blowing up. After this I've come to realize that there are some truly evil people who will try to sabotage your life without even knowing a single thing about you. Pretty much don't blindly trust anybody even authoritative professionals like doctors, mechanics, law enforcement, etc..
When it took two separate doctors to get my partner diagnosed for MS so she could get medication for it as it attacked her eye. I knew I could never trust another one.
Its interesting how much of the comments focus on negativity.
For me it was mediation that solved a lot of my anxiety and changed my view of the world, along with a bit of stoic philosophy. Thats not really an event by itself but it was an event for me to discover mindfulness.
I agree, the responses are fascinating. I wonder if it's because we start out with a sheltered view of the world and once out from the protection of childhood shelter, we are exposed to the brutal truth of the world?
The death of my father. Before that i was always busy taking care of someone else. Now i'm much more thinking of what i need and want from life.
the whole kerfluffle about the stupid wizard game. folks like me actively dying while some stupid people with nothing better to do think that it's worth any fighting whatsoever. it's a damn game, who cares.
Huh
They're talking about the Hogwarts game
Seeing Racism brought back to life in 2008…
I'm going to guess you're American, is it that the election of Obama to the presidency caused all the closet racists to lose all sense? Or something else.
2016 US elections was a ridiculously sobering moment for realizing that we had not progressed nearly to the extent that I nievely thought.
This one rings home pretty hard. I’ve definitely viewed the people around me differently since then. And especially since covid as well.
Agreed, Covid ties or is a close runner up for me as well in terms of people showing their true colors.
2016 and the following four years were eyeing opening on just how far away from even okay a majority of the US is.
Yeah but it was the election that was the "event". At the time i thought it must have been an aberration, it was during the following years I realised it was a symptom of the real problem.
Up until that point, I was a naive centrist that thought sane liberalism would win out. That election single-handedly destroyed that view and slammed me hard to the left.
You're probably in the real center now, my understanding is American center is to the right, and their left is actually closer to center
The US Democrats are center right in many aspects yeah.
I should probably clarify that it slammed me firmly in the Bernie camp, but I've drifted even further to the left (broadly libertarian/anarcho-socialism) since then
I'm slightly left of centre, but I am now voting quite far left to try counter the right swing we are most likely going to have with this next election.
I'm not even from the US and honestly it was a sobering moment for me as well. I realised how people like Hitler get into power. Before 2016 I knew it was possible like cognitively but Trump being elected made it feel real in a way it never had before.
Same for my country (Hungary). For the first time almost all off the opposition parties agreed to merge into eachother, then the chosen opposition president almost became the old corrupt guy's wife (old people voted for them), then the Ukraine már happened where everyone knew Orbán made a ton of contracts with Putin, LITERALLY disses Zelensky but never mentions Putin's name and Orbán won with a record 2/3 again.
Hungarian people literally can't remember about 1956, it seems.
I have thought a lot about the "How do background characters tell if they're in a story?" thing a lot since.
The day the alternate timeline stopped being a meme. The day "we're in too damned interesting times to this not be the end of humanity" became a reality.
If the world burns, whatever. We have had it coming.
COVID-19. People simply refused to do the absolute minimum to stop the spread of the virus. At least in my community, everyone was still socializing with friends and family (without a mask, of course), going out to eat, taking part in recreational activities with other people. Something as simple as "stay away from other people until we get this under control" was too hard for the American public. It certain changed my view of the people around me.
Same, it really bumped up my pessimism regarding people
Actions > Talk. They were telling you their true views. People rarely say the quiet part(their views) out loud so it is valuable to be able to translate their actions into their true views.
When you know how others truly feel, it allows you to decide who is worth listening to. Not to say you shouldn't listen to people with different views, but instead decide whether they are telling you their beliefs or telling you what they think you want to hear(BSing you) and use that rate how trustworthy they are on the topic.
Haha I remember a talking head saying at the start that this could bring humanity closer together and I sat laughing in my couch for a minute
For me it definitely highlighted how many people in American society think they are the main character and fuck everyone else.
The 2008 bank bailouts. Watching our government spend nearly a trillion dollars to bail out some unelected bankers who made some bad decisions and were "too big to fail (true)". Watching them spend that money on bonuses for their execs, while none of them went to jail. Watching the social response to that (occupy) and then watching a coordinated federal crackdown of those protests across the country. And then watching bailouts happen again and again since then. Meanwhile in Iceland, they overthrew their government over it. The global financial system has deeply rooted flaws, and bailouts are an inevitability in it. We will inevitably, every so often, make another huge wealth transfer like that because so longs as lending exists, particularly private lending, and all banks are interconnected so that if one fails they all fail, there will always be bank runs and bailouts. Even the most well-intentioned bank cannot hedge against all risks and market shocks. And the government will just turn on the money printer every time it happens while you watch your hard-earned money lose its value.
GWB publicly condoning torture.
I grew up during the tail end of the cold war. Torture was something the Soviets did. We were better than that.
And sure, I knew the CIA did stuff like that under the table, but it was never OK.
It's what got me interested in politics, and why I feel that we shouldn't try to hide the bad things we've done when we teach history. Knowing what we're capable of is necessary to keep ourselves from repeating the mistakes of the past.
The keyword here is shouldn't. Most people don't do lots of things they should.
Not out of malice but simply laziness, it is a lot easier to just default to the norm and go on. Try comparing what should get done in politics(campaign promises) to what actually gets done in washington. In short what should happen and what actually happens are two different things in a lot of areas.
I mean this is a pretty big one for most people, but march 2020 COVID lockdowns. My family and I were bunkered down like the family in the movie Signs, just trying to figure out what was going on and keeping each other safe.
It was a bizarre time. I remember going to the supermarket - it felt like an apocalypse with boxes of stock being torn open by shoppers instead of unpacked by staff. Stuff all over the floors. People pushing / pulling multiple trolleys.
It made me realise how close we are to chaos.
Covid made me realise just how much we live in different versions of reality and how harmful that is during a crisis that requires everyone to be on the same page. At the beginning of the lockdowns I joked about how some people would rather die than comply with basic public health practices....and then it actually fucking happened in real life. Not only that but they took down other people with them. Not such a funny joke anymore.
I was an essential worker who had zero time off and the empty streets at all hours were nuts. I am back at a normal job now where people did lock down, and everyone had a mass experience that I did not.
Snowden file leaks lead me down the path to privacy and to reading books like Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Lead me down the path to degoogling and linux and now decentralized services like Lemmy.
It seems like every week some article comes out with big tech abusing their rights. This week was Philips hue and last week or so it was a mom getting 2 years in jail because Facebook gave up information about her giving abortion pills to her daughter.
I am using all these foss services myself and making my friends and family use them and be aware of these events. It's a slow car crash and if people are apathetic and say "I have nothing to hide" and eventually "I have nothing to say", soon we'll be stripped of more rights until it's too late.
“The cells of death row are filled with guys who had nothing to hide.” - Kenneth Eade
Snowden trully opened the world's eyes bruv...
This sealed the deal for me and went FOSS
Microsoft using "off-shore" dns, like a druglord or something got me pretty annoyed, swallowed the linux pill whole! Bash scripting and all
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
sealed the deal
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I might not have been a raging, bleeding-heart, anti-capitalist liberal had Trump not gotten elected in November 2016. Until then I might have considered myself apolitical with no strong political ambitions. Seeing the post-election riots/protests opened up the world to me, his election wasn't a stupid joke but an injustice on all the people Trump essentially campaigned on fucking over.
Another crazy moment was the second time I got high on weed. I was super panicked at first, but when I went to bed, all of a sudden abstract art made sense to me as I had visions and felt a connection to their work even if I didn't know their name. That high had residual effects the next day and I had felt changed somehow.
Sorry but "anti capitalist liberal"? But liberalism is capitalism
it's amazing how many people think "liberal" = "leftist"
We can blame America for that
yea I had the same reaction. In the US I think it bears a different meaning, they equate liberal with the left. Even though it hardly makes sense, it's the usage
Yes, as others have pointed out I'm discussing from the North American political perspective (Ontario, Canada).
Got it 👍
Covid. I used to think people were basically good and caring, trying to do the right thing. I also used to think that everyone besides me was better at dealing with stress.
Turned out my life really is so bad that a global pandemic actually reduced my stress level. And when other people are stressed, they use that as an excuse to treat everyone else abominably. People are fundamentally selfish and self-centered. Kindness is at best a veneer for the vast majority.
I admire your clarity of thought here.
The pandemic did reduce my stress level temporarily by getting me away from people pleasing behavior but it also made me feel kinda jaded about people for a while.
I like your username. How did you come up with it if you don't mind sharing?
Thanks!
I really love analogies. People make fun of me for it, and I don't even mind. I used to have friends play a game where one would name a random object, and another a random intangible and I'd have to come up with an analogy to explain the latter using the former.
All that follows is simply an opinion. Take everything with a grain of salt. Feel free to discuss.
Human are social creatures and relationships is a basic human need. Where I am from, the government enforced a curfew and stopped people from having relationships with their loved one. Stories of people dying alone or women giving birth alone.
When basic needs aren't met, we revert to survival instincts and try to meet these needs. To me, that explains why people that were seemingly caring turned out to be dicks when their needs weren't met.
Shitty people were going to be shitty anyways.
For people that need less social interactions, it feels like it's fucking bonkers how people were getting desperate for social interactions and throwing caution to the wind. It felt like they were crazy.
Just like an hungry man in front of a plentiful buffet, these people tasted social interactions and told themselves never again!
It was a short time in history where less social people were better off than the rest. After covid brought a lot of tension because social persons clawed back at what was acquired by the less social people.
And to me, that explains a lot of what we saw and see right now.
And again, shitty people are gonna be shitty people regardless of the situation, so that observation doesn't apply to them.
My needs have never been met. Never. Yet I have managed to not be a dick for decades.
I assure you that to someone else, you've been a dick without you knowing.
We judge ourselves by our intentions and the others by their actions. So it's easy to point at everyone around being a dick without realising that in that moment, that person isn't necessarily thinking that they are a dick.
And again, some people are really shitty people regardless of the situation. So it doesn't apply to them.
I'm not taking about accidental or unconscious dickery. I'm talking about deliberately being an ass because you feel you have a right to it.
Do you think that the context matters then? Covid or not, these people are gonna be ass.
If you think that people were fundamentally bad and hiding behind a facade until covid, then I am not sure what there is to discuss.
I am not sure what you are trying to convey here.
Yes. I think people were fundamentally selfish and self-centered, and the minute they felt inconvenienced, they took it as an excuse to be assholes.
Before Covid, they didn't feel the same pressure, so used kindness as social grease to benefit themselves. Covid proved that the average person's kindness is less a character trait than a cost/benefit analysis.
I’m absolutely on Analogy’s side, as well.
I agree with Analogy's take on this. I don't think it's based on 'needs'. Selfish people are, and have always been selfish regardless of the situation. Stress does exacerbate it of course. And it's unfortunately the case that we live in a world that doesn't reward kindness. But despite this there are a lot of people that are kind because they want to be, because it's rewarding for it's own sake.
I think where we disagree is that people were merely inconvenienced. Social relationships are a basic human need and there is a lot of ongoing research on the effects of social isolation caused by Covid.
And with that said, I don't think I can change your mind on the covid situation.
I hope that you can find people that can and will meet your needs.
Let me offer a counterexample. I was in NYC on 9/11. I saw the first tower burning and I saw the second plane hit. I watched incredulously when they fell.
The entire city froze. It was the first and only time NYC went silent. No cars, no construction, no one yelling. There has to have been at least 5000 people packed into a large crowd outside of Penn station, but no one was shoving or yelling for them to open the doors.
NY actually stated like that for a while. It was surreal - it felt like a dream. But the city really did come together. People were more kind and helpful to strangers. They were more aware of their neighbors and their needs. People were handing out food and blankets on the streets, trying to get through the massive disruption. I saw no rioting, no crime surge despite the fact that emergency services were completely tied up.
Yes. People react differently to acute vs. chronic stress. I've seen it time and again. People are happy to help if it's short-term. Then they get the feel-goods. But if there's nothing in it for them, if they feel inconvenienced by ongoing suffering, charity dries up like tears in the Sahara. Very few are willing to be kind even when they don't get to feel like a hero doing it.
COVID. Really never understood before how little of a shit the U.S. government has for its people. But they straight up let us fucking die while telling teenagers they needed to get back to work for minimum wage so they could get their shit Mcdildos and mochafuckaccinos and add gold spinning rims to their yachts. I can't wait until these old fucks start dying off, I don't care what political leanings they claim to have, we need a fuckin overhaul.
Even more so I was shocked at how little care a lot of people have for others in general.
Oh don't worry, their kids will take their place.
All chipped away at notions of stability, fairness, and sanity.
Still have hope, but tend not to believe the hype so much.
Ohh, the lockdowns showed me how all of you motherfuckers really are. It was VERY enlightening.
The number of service workers who got physically assaulted or even killed for telling people to wear masks was pretty telling.
It really is interesting isn't it?
A lot of people are shitheels
A lot of people are ornery
A lot of people don't think for themselves
A lot of people are susceptible to conspiracy
A lot of people are followers by nature
I could go on and on.
The lockdown showed me how all of company owners really are. It wasn't very enlightening, but everything was confirmed.
Except me
Being treated for cancer in hospital (in remission now, thank you) during COVID lockdowns gave me lots of time to reflect on my life. Realised that probably I was the asshole all these years; and also came to the realisation that I’m autistic and socially awkward. Reading David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs helped me to understand all the corporate games and garbage that I’d been part of for most of my career.
When I think about my life, it’s divided into pre-cancer diagnosis, selfish workaholic and part of corporate life; and post-cancer remission, unemployed, living off my savings, kinder to the people and the world, but unable to find a job that resonates with the new me.
I'll throw one out for COVID, but not just the lockdowns or the immediate work changes. It was more about how the deaths kept happening. And happening. And happening. Yet people still failed to take it seriously, even to the point of rebelling against seemingly common-sense safeguards like vaccines, masking, and staying the fuck home.
In the US, we lived through about 4 years of shenanigans and bullshit and lies from an incompetent federal government leading up to the pandemic. But surely that wouldn't fly for long. You can lie about the number of people at a rally (because who the fuck cares), you can apparently lie about where a hurricane is projected to go (because it's jUsT a PrOjEcTiOn or something), but surely you can't bullshit your way out of a pandemic. Hospitals at capacity. Bodies piling up. Loved ones lost. Visible, real, tangible impacts of poor leadership and poor decisionmaking.
But, turns out you can. Even in the most dire of circumstances, you can still convince people that reality isn't real. Or even if it is, it doesn't really matter and it's not their problem. And there are enough people out there who will buy into that message that it will ruin things for everyone else.
Edit: To the original point of the question... I guess I had a little more faith in humanity before all that happened. More faith that real-world consequences would win out against rhetorical bullshit and tribalism.
It is worth keeping in mind Hanlon's Razor with this. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by neglect." They are running on emotions and accepting being wrong hurts so they simply don't accept their emotions.
I knew it as "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.". I think it fits better here, too, when in the face of actual death, people still ignore common sense. Screw neglect, that's pure, unadulterated, 100% organic, fresh as the driven snow stupidity.
I prefer this fuller version
Stupidity implies it is something that cannot be changed. Usually their behavior could be changed but it is just a hard task to change their behavior that requires the person in question to be willing to change.
For me it was when I was watching Soul with some friends and eventually came to some emotional realizations. I realized that I only had a superficial understanding of how to communicate. I could discuss ideas in the abstract, but I had trouble with expressing myself emotionally and personally because I was always conditioned to repress how I feel. I guess like 22 in the movie I only saw myself as a casual observer. It took a couple rewatches for me to process the difficult emotions I was feeling into something I could explain but when I did it really helped my overall mental outlook on life.
In retrospect, was probably the Battle of Seattle in 1999. Not that I wasn't aware of the issues before, but that really ripped off the mask to show me that the U.S. is fundamentally rotten at its core: The police are not the good guys, they don't serve and protect, they are there to visit violence on the enemies of capital. And if innocent people in their homes or going to work get caught up and harmed, fuck 'em, they're not wealthy enough to matter. The media will flat-out lie to maintain the good-cops-vs.-evil-protesters narrative. Our leaders will eagerly sell out American citizens to the interests of global capital, with only lip service to democratic traditions. And Americans are too disengaged to really question any of it.
For me, it provided the keys to understanding the events since, from Bush v. Gore to today. At least now the rot has become so obvious that the younger generations are forced to notice.
Never heard of the Battle of Seattle. What was it about?
It was the result of anti-World Trade Organization protests organized at the group's gathering in Seattle in 1999. Basically, the police see protesters axiomatically as bad, so they showed up in riot gear and started a riot. The media reported it as violent protestors, despite some of the people who just lived nearby and were trying to get to and from work getting caught up, kettled, teargassed, and beaten alongside protesters. I wasn't there, but the Internet had become a thing, and IndyMedia.org had lots of first-person coverage. It was the same pattern we've seen ever since cell phones with cameras have become ubiquitous: The video shows that the cops get violent and then lie about it.
Not how I view the world, but how I view USA and "citizens of the free world".
In 2016 my girlfriend and I visited New York - for me, first time visiting USA. I had a co-worker who lived in USA for most of her childhood, so I asked her if she had some advice for me to get along with people I met on my way.
"Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans".
I thought that to be rude as I had "talked" with many Americans on Reddit and sure, there were idiots, but that didn't define a person from USA for me.
We arrived in New York and took a cab to the hotel. The driver asked us "So, is Donald Trump making headlines in Europe?" (This was during the 2016 election).
I laughed and told him "Yeah, can you believe people will vote on such a moron"...
Oh no I didn't... He was furious, as Donald Trump was the Saviour of USA and he was singlehandedly going to "clean up the swamp" or whatever his catchphrase was.. and then he said one of the stupidest things I have ever heard.
"90% of Muslims are terrorists and if you don't kill them, they will kill you"..
I know not all Americans are this dumb, but I learned my lesson.... Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans.
It can be applied elsewhere too. Whenever politics come up, it's wise to initally talk about it in a neutral state.
Well, yes, but where I'm from the topic "Donald Trump" is not a political one, it's more of a "will you look at that shit show".
A lot has changed since 2016 and I will most definitely approach every subject in a neutral state, as I feel like more and more people are getting more stupid by the hour.
Ahh I see, then I'm part of the dummy ones it seems.
Indeed a lot has changed since 2016, but maybe people were always this stupid, although your comment indicates that you're pretty experienced in life already, so maybe you're right. I'm only 22.
Talk about current issues and potential solutions rather than ideologies or politicians.
Hmm an even better approach.
My London cabby also loved Trump. For some reason he just assumed I would be a fan since I'm from the US.
Maybe cab drivers are all just fucking morons?
And siphoning insane cash amounts from drunk people. XD
My old boss was once asked by a NY taxi driver "So what language do you all speak over there in England?"
He said French.
The whole "the world will end in 2012" hysteria back then. It was my first glimpse into conspiracy theories, which I've spent a lot of time learning about ever since. It made me realize that nothing is ever too idiotic to not have an alarming number of people fall for it. It's why I wasn't surprised by the rise of the Q-movement or the resistance against the absolute bare minimum of COVID measures because of microchips in vaccines etc. All of that were just yet additional "of course people believe that shit"-moments for me.
Like Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black "A person is smart - people are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals."
I haven't been surprised by how stupid people can be in a long time.
Actually, how did the 2012 thing became such a viral trend? Literally even news sites aired it SEVERAL times here, and I already thought that's it was a dumb conteo story. (I was 11 then)
As someone who was in his late teens then, I don't think many people really seriously believed that the world was going to end in 2012. It was more of a running joke. I remember that a few days before the 21st of December, someone posted on a forum for students of the university I was then attending that exam results were going to be posted on the 21st; someone else responded "oh, so for some who took this course the world will actually end on that day".
It was the end of a ~5,000 year cycle in a mayan calendar or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon
Trump
winninggetting carried by the EVs made me a bitter, jaded, hopeless husk. I lost faith in the republic, in america, in people, in common sense...I don't know if I ever truly recovered.
Come to think of it, i've lived through at least two instances where the direct opposition of the public's will have lead to death, suffering, and the collapse of represenative democracy: Bush v Gore, and the Trump Presidency. Odd how that's a common trend.
What's EVs?
I think he meant Electoral College. Unless 2016 saw the release of the 'Tesla-Force 1'
Electoral votes
I think the closest is when i discovered Not Just Bikes, that unlocked the whole "people are affected by how their environment is designed" thing in my brain and since then i've just kept on down that road and now i'm a turbosocialist who thinks 95% of cars should be immediately scrapped.
You took the orange pill 🟠 we are brothers.
If you really want a brainfuck apply this to your content consumption habits. Negative environment = discourage use. Positive environment = encourage it. Unfortunately anything designed to be addictive(like facebook) can be a negative environment, even if it makes you temporarily happy because of dopamine if you misuse it.
I stumbled onto the same idea through Podcast Your undivided attention produced by humanetech.
The word should is subjective. Anytime you see it understand that that idea is just their opinion. And people have lots of bad opinions.
The left wing party of Australian federal politics decided that treating refugees inhumanly was acceptable.
That moment changed how I view politics and how I view people. It made me realise just how irrelevant empathy for others was in most public and political discourse. It made me more cynical about "the system", changed the way I voted, and transformed the face of my own advocacy to put empathy for others at the forefront.
Yeah, I spent a few years raging about this also.
Basically in the 2013 election the Australian voting public decided that they preferred treating refugees inhumanely rather than the alternatives.
It sucks, and yes it changed the way I see the world, but I don't really see that as Labor's fault, or the Greens. There are so many important issues that I want them to advocate for, that clinging to the moral high ground over an issue which is (according to voting populace) closed and resolved would seem like a waste.
Your last paragraph, and realising that that is how most people think is part of why it was such a profound moment for me.
Ignoring human rights abuses does not make them closed and resolved. Nor do I care for any other issues they're advocating for if the price is ongoing erasure of basic human rights.
Once computers went online. It was fascinating to experience in real time.
It's kind of shit now though.
Losing everything. My family wasn't rich but it was well off, and in my young stupidity I thought we deserved to live better than others did because we worked hard (had a family business).
Turns out hard work means almost jack shit. I mean, I'm good now because I have very marketable skills and I do work hard at a job not many want to do, but it takes me around the world and I can tell you, fucking everything in life depends on luck, starting from where you are born.
This is the biggest difference between myself and my brother.
My dad is fairly well off having run a company for decades at this point and I knew I didn't want to lean on that. So I went on my own career path.
My brother decided to join the family company. Over the past 20 years he was gifted 50 percent of the company as a bonus. He didn't understand that he's only in that situation because the owner was his dad. He's never understood how big of a safety net the two of us had growing up. He genuinely thinks that his hard work is the sole reason for his position in life and that anybody that's willing to work as hard as he did (and he did, I won't deny it) would be on a similar situation as himself.
The luck factor is also called opportunity. People succeed financially because they had some opportunity arise that enabled the success to be a possibility. Be it a random chance that they were given a job interview, that their dad owns a company they can start at, or they happened to grow up in an area with good education options they could lean on to develop skills, or just a serious safety-net.
I had option 2 and 4, but used option 3 to eventually get option 1. I'm mostly unsatisfied with the world because I wish everybody had option 3 and 4 to start with regardless of family.
Now my friend, you are wiser than ever before!
It's called "Ecclesiastes 9:11"
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
This, too... how you are born dictates how (routes) to get to the riches. (Thats why some connections are useless) still; luck will find you wherever and whoever you are, its up to you to grab it firm.
For me it was an array of events.
The war in Afghanistan (I was a kid but this was one of the tipping points that sent me down a hard leftist path).
GWB… just collectively. Freezing when told the towers were hit; lying about WMDs so he could start an illegal war.
Watching Obama get elected and then turning out to be a fucking fraud that built the drone program and carried on the US legacy of being the worldwide terrorist organization.
A big one though was watching the police continue to terrorize the Black community over and over. Years ago on Facebook I had a couple of old high school friends that argued with me that you should do whatever a cop tells you. My response was to tell them how utterly fucking idiotic that was and that cops will violate your rights if it means they don’t have to do any paperwork. They’ll illegally search your vehicle (like they did mine one time), harass you (like they did to my friends and I when we were skateboarding), and if you’re Black, they’ll shoot you in the back if you run.
Needless to say, I am not friends with either of them anymore. I think that’s when I really started to solidify who I was and have rejected absolutely everything that America is and does on the world stage. I’ve become known as the white guy that hates cops. I’ve worked with Black revolutionary groups, activist groups, written articles and tons of thoughts on police violence in America, and have marched against the police on multiple occasions. Hell, the police have surveilled me for who knows how long a few years ago, and I know people that have been under surveillance by the FBI. As an aside, you’d be amazed at the lengths this country will go to to keep eyes on peace activists.
Everything America does as a collective has brought me to the conclusion that we are in a failed state, capitalism-in-decay freefall that I’m afraid we will never recover from. We no longer innovate; we continue to loot other countries; we are all a captive audience hitched to whatever whims the capitalists and other ghouls want.
I’ve been laid off, had companies fuck me over for money and control, harassed by cops (all the way back to when I was 15 in the 90s), tracked by my own government for having a voice… there is nothing anyone can say that will convince me that the United States isn’t the enemy of the world and it’s citizens are nothing more than a disposable capitalist resource.
I hate to be a downer but my view of this country is a product of what it has done to both its own people and people around the world. I feel like a prisoner in the US.
Dubya and his crew were something else, weren’t they? I knew right from the get-go that the whole Iraq thing was a lie. It was just so obvious from their demeanor and body language, and the talking points they chose. Their goofy “evidence,” and the way they got offended when questioned about it. Like, how did everybody not see that?
I dropped everything in my twenties to look after a dying family member.
Thought my family would support me when all was said and done. I left a very promising career to do this.
Everyone just kind of went their seperate ways and I almost ended up homeless. While my dad immediately found another woman, took all his money and fucked off.
I'm just starting to recover almost a decade later.
I'm kind these days, I think. But I'm not nice.
2008 Beijing olympics.
I was in high school and the teacher (who said that if you make racist remarks in her class, she'll kick you out of the course) decided to show a comedy show where the journalist went to a Chinese night market and show people they have roast insects, animal penises and shit like that to eat.
For 2 days i got mocked/asked in a belittle tone why my ''people eat those stuff''
You would think that it was just young people being stupid and ask stupid shit. 2020, covid hits and Canada decided to go WFH, my manager decided to say: ''wow those mesures seem dragonian, but you (refering to me), you are used to it consider you come from China''
This reminds me of an old friend I had at work.
She was in HR and looking to hire a new employee and she complained to me about how all the people applying weren't from the country and they weren't capable of doing the job because they didn't know how to behave...
At the end of her small rant I guess she realized I was one of those "outsiders" and then she said "oh but you're one of the good ones!"
An immigrant's acceptance is always conditional and you shouldn't show dissent towards the white master. This is why most of the gen 2 asian immigrants are all apolitical or outright anti-country of origin and has a mostly white friend circle
I started to understand what "institutional racism" means when george zimmerman was acquitted
As a non American, i always thought that Zimmerman’s was also a perfect demonstration of why the whole gun culture thing is inherently fucked/dangerous. When it’s ok for a guy to be walking around with a rifle for the purposes of community safety or whatever, of course people are going to be killed, that’s what guns are for.
Apart from the racism angle (which I don’t intend to diminish), it seems to me a natural consequence of gun rights that at some point a murderer will be acquired because the killing was just part of their second amendment rights.
what bothers me the most about the case is that conservatives often say one of the reasons they should have guns is "what if I'm out at night and someone starts following me, I have the right to have some way to defend myself" which, sure, I get it. but if you look at the details and evidence, trayvon was unarmed, and more or less keeping to himself, until george, who was armed, started following him. maybe it's true that trayvon attacked first (there's no hard evidence indicating this, only testimony from george), but would it be so unreasonable after being followed by some random stranger with a gun at night? why is it not seen as a case of trayvon defending his life using whatever means available in the moment? after all, defending yourself from potentially harmful strangers is so important to them that they believe it warrants having access to lethal weapons (which again, I don't really disagree with, I just think you need people need to be held responsible with how they use that, but I guess chuds are willing to make exceptions...)
Yea, that's the thing about a gun, the escalation it causes is through the roof ... it's fatal, at a distance ... with that threat you both having nothing left to lose and also, in just about everyone's case, no experience in managing the emotions of that situation so of course you're going to react in some way that might be surprising, unpredictable or even arguably irrational. Merely carrying a gun, and posing the threat of immediate death, is an assault in itself.
For me, it wasn't a global event, but a personal one. I had a conversation on reddit with a Texan piano teacher who had the fantasy of murdering and eating people. Her view was that if it was OK to kill any sentient beings, as there was no legitimate reason to draw a line between farmed animals and people. She argued her point well, and I couldn't come up with a counterargument that didn't also imply we shouldn't eat animals.
It was a bizzare conversation, but it made me really reconsider my personal morals, and totally changed the path of my life.
So did you become a vegan or a cannibal?
Yes.
He loves carrot cake. The only problem is, Rob Schneider...is a carrot!
pretty trivial counterpoint though: there are plenty of sentient animals that aren't even remotely sapient, and animals like chickens frankly rather deserve to be eaten as they are quite terrible creatures who will blithely peck their flockmates to a slow and miserable death.
Chickens tend to get along OK if you don't cram them in where they have no room to move. They actually make for quite affectionate companions if socialized properly. Nurture plays a huge role in animal behavior as well, and usually animals (including humans) simply tend to lash out when their needs aren't being met.
If you spend some time looking into modern animal cognition research, you'll notice the line around sapience is a very blurry one, with many animals routinely demonstrating that they are capable of complex spatial reasoning, theory of mind, and other traits we used to think only humans were capable of.
Also, you'll find plenty of humans are quite terrible creatures as well. That doesn't mean we can treat them indiscriminately. The capacity to suffer only requires sentience.
Anyways, I didn't come here to argue. Just to share my experience.
It's funny that people can't see this point, sometimes even when told to their faces. Logically, putting belief aside, you are either okay with some sort of cannibalism, murder and rape, or you should turn vegan.
Go
toucheat grass.I know that it was meant as an insult but it was pretty funny XD
That's a bit extreme, murder an cannibalism I can understand the connection with, but rape? I might be missing something but I'm pretty sure nobody forces intercourse on animals destined for consumption.
As for murder and cannibalism, there have been historical instances where that was the case when they ran out of food (low-hanging fruit). I would wager that given a grave enough scenario, people will be grilling up Neighbour Bob to stay alive. Zombie apocalypse time might just mean long pork's on the menu.
Look, extreme situations are not our day to day. i wouldn't judge someone who murdered in self defense for example.
As for rape, did you ever think about how we have so many cows, chickens, pigs, etc?
If you want to eat a cow today you need to murder her, but if you want to eat a cow tomorrow too, you first need to breed her, and nobody is waiting for nature so they either make a bull rape them or more commonly, they jack a bull off, take the semen and insert it into the female cow (not in a pleasent way, not that there is one)
So yeah, rape is an even bigger part than murder in the meat industry.
Losing my best friend / business partner. He died in March. A lot of things stopped making sense after that.
I'm deeply sorry for your loss.
Thanks. Didn't want to go into details.
You never have to.
2016 elections and then covid. Now nazis rising to power again.
Ditto.
2016 Brexit referendum -> Turkish coup-> trump presidential win
It reinforced all my feelings about what was important in this world and simultaneously made very clear we are actually living in an age of sliding back, not of Progress. I was already very interested in politics by that point but with just about the knowledge to grab the weight but no proper explanation this summer half of 2016 felt like falling into chaos and uncertainty 3 times. In retrospect the outer two likely had much more influence on my life thereafter, but the middle one was the more jarring to watch unfold at the time.
Tripping too hard on mushrooms. I realized that the mind is powerful, and under the right conditions, can show you and make you believe that reality is absolutely anything. And I mean anything. You could be anywhere, anyone, become an inanimate object, have your world become pure geometry and sensation, completely lose sense of the scale and passage of time. There are almost no limits.
Yep, it’s they key lesson of psychedelics: reality is an illusion, never underestimate the power of the mind and how much it lives literally in its own world. Be mindful of biases and prejudices corrupting the very notion of truth, be sympathetic to those with mental health issues and trauma and be mindful of just how ubiquitous a problem mental health is and how important working on yourself is.
Four years under The Idiot destroyed any assertion that conservatives are trying to be reasonable. It's all just a word game to these people. And they think it's all anyone's doing, because they think that's all there is.
The most damning evidence for this is when right-wing bastards of the highest order get booted out for not playing the game. Mitt Romney was the fucker who wanted to "double Guantanamo." He's also now called a RINO, and he's running away with his tail between his legs, because he acted like we kept fucking imagining "real Republicans" were supposed to. He asked what happened to all the talking points he ran on... because he believed that garbage. Nah, Mittens: it was ad-hoc justifications then, and it's ad-hoc justifications now. (And he still voted to absolve The Idiot on most counts, the useless bastard.)
Witnessing a downtown metro area go dead silent, years of ecological damage reversed and folding at home accidentally out computing the world's fastest supercomputer in the first 2 weeks of 2020 lock downs and all it took was giving 10 days PTO to all non-essential workers (I was essential btw but yes I'll fucking survive Starbucks being closed one fortnight a year)
Surely, people will see this as worthwhile and positive tradition and we'll collectively decide to avoid commuting for 2 weeks every March; taking PTO if offered or job hopping at the new market rate created if not, right... Right...?
We don't decide. We are coerced. When money is involved the CEOs decide and try to coerce us into their preferred decision.
Absolutely no idea why you're getting downvoted. CEOs browsing Lemmy?
If I had to guess, it is probably due to the natural resistance that people have towards the idea that they are being manipulated. Also some people have a hard-on for pleasing those that society preaches are better than them. Re: Musk fanboys
Yes, good possibilities. I see you've struck a chord, because you're already being downvoted again. I see I was downvoted too. lol
Idk, I don't have scoring on so I don't really worry about such things. :)
I got glasses. That definitely changed the way I saw things. Everything suddenly became more focused.
When I was a child I had a neighbor who was a mentally challenged adult woman. I learned how cruel life can be. I didn't understand why some have it worst than others. But I also learn to appreciate and be grateful for what I have.
9/11.
I didn’t think much about the dangers of religion and “faith” in general until then.
And with that, do you mean rather the fundamentalists crashing into the towers or the hawks starting two wars?
Porque no los dos?
2020 george floyd protests
even during protests about police brutality they did even more police brutality
it's never going to stop. the system has too many meaningless pressure valves that they've convinced people are actually valuable [writing a letter to a local official, voting (depending what state), clever chants during protests, etc]
Covid, and specifically the response, lack of response, and rollback of response, to covid, worldwide. So much unnecessary death for treats.
Defining moment of a generation, in the way that 9/11 was for the one before it. I don't even think we'll really understand the impact for another couple decades - and just like with other major events the ruling class will learn the wrong lesson entirely from it, probably something like "we should never lock down for any disease ever".
Russia's invasion of Ukraine made me realize the fundamental wisdom of the saying "Speak softly and carry a big stick".
I already knew we'd collapse before COVID, but seeing the reaction to COVID made me realize how absurdly stupid the average person is
Like at least with racism, you could tentatively argue that a mayo indirectly benefits from it. But the COVID brainworms is reminiscent of AI bots. Calling them cattle would be generous
The coup in Bolivia shook me of any demsoc liberalism I still had in me and made me understand that a worker’s movement can only be defended with force
Less profound, but it destroyed my remaining lingering faith in any mainstream media sources and confirmed The Guardian had completed it's transition from a bunch of socialists in the 70s to a neoliberal establishment mouthpiece today.
The war in Iraq. It was bullshit and everyone knew it was bullshit, but it happened because politicians forced it through. 9/11 was a horrific disaster but the war in Iraq that followed left me completely jaded.
Finally seeing sense and not believing religion anymore changed everything.
And oddly enough, it all started because of an X-Men movie.
> Wade Wilson appears with CGI tape over his mouth
"... no loving god would allow this."
That is pretty cruel.
But Deadpool has nothing to do with it. xD
Well now I need to know how the movie triggered it! And which scene!
I'm answering in another reply in this thread. But it wasn't even the movie, it was the trailer.
Which I guess was a specific movie scene now that I type it. But yeah I'm working on this answer in another reply already.
I'll try to edit this with a link to that reply.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/3738384
I would love to hear the train from x men to atheism
"it was then, when Storm mused the effects of lighting on a humble toad, that I realised there was no god..."
It was probably X-Men 3. A loving God wouldn't have allowed X-Men 3.
It was Apocalypse.
I'm relieved to hear it. No one should have to see
X-Men 3. /sJoking aside, I see your update in your other comment. Pretty cool. I'm always fond of movies that expand my world view.
It was X-Men Apocalypse.
I was working in a call center at the time, and there were tvs around the room on mute with closed captions that we could look at in between being on a call. I actually didn't work in a department that took calls at the time, so I would watch entire shows like this sometimes.
Anyway, the trailer for this movie came on during a commercial break, and there was one scene (I forget the exact quote- I might have to check YouTube for it now, but you'll see it if you look it up) that was taking about the four horsemen, and mentioned that Christianity wasn't the first to use that metaphor, but that it has been used by a bunch of religions and people groups before.
So that threw me for a loop and made me start wondering. And once I figured out that one thing I always heard specifically about the belief was wrong, it made me wonder what else was wrong.
So once I stopped taking everything for granted as just being true because "the Bible says it is" and started looking at it honestly, it quickly turned into realizing that it was all bullshit. As soon as you stop assuming it's all completely true no matter what the evidence said, and actually take reality into account (for anyone that didn't grow up as a believer this sounds totally insane, but that's really how it be), a lot of things snap into focus.
I had a roommate I completely disagreed with at the time, but I started taking him a lot more seriously after that. Turns out he wasn't crazy, I was.
And that's the short version. I don't recall enough specifics to really make a long version, but you get the idea.
Edit- typos
Also The line was from this trailer, about 1:20 in
I can't pin it down to just one, but holy shit school shootings and the way we've responded to them completely broke whatever part of me thought that our society was still capable of doing things. They keep upping the ante with how horrifying they are too - the high water mark currently is Uvalde, and I think that the next one that shocks the nation will involve the cops (or a "good guy with a gun") gunning down multiple kids or parents while trying to "help" and our collective response will still be to do nothing.
The damn toilet paper crisis
Finding out in primary school that other kids weren't poor and had all the shit they wanted while we sometimes had issues getting food.
The run up to the start of the war in Iraq. Anyone who was paying attention knew that Afghanistan was already a disaster, a complete failure for everyone but arms dealers, and everyone also knew that the gwb regime was completely full of shit. Massive rallies worldwide saying no, yet they did it anyway. Fucking murderous assholes.
-Condi Rice
This was said by the National Security Advisor of the USA, the only country in the world that used nuclear weapons ... on civilian cities ... twice ... for no militarily objective reason.
Watching that shit unfold really got me into politics. Being disillusioned with Obama's 8 years got me into real political economic theory though.
And then afterwards she went on to become an exec at... Dropbox? Like wtf.
The Obama presidency and how all flavors of western media acted like it was taking the US down a radical leftist path.
That week recently when there were floods in every country except where there were fires in every country. That was wild.
I stopped watching the 24/7 need channels. It cut out so much fear and paranoia that those channels thrive on.
Probably being on welfare for an extended period of time. It kinda beat the techno-libertarian out of me.
Most of my big internal changes were done through years of struggling in communities and therapy though
The state murdering Fred Hampton.
When two friends and me got punched on the street by robbers, i look in all directions now.
Going through spine surgery at a relatively very young age, and all the suffering beforehand. Revealed just how fake the world is and just how superficial a lot of things are.
GamerGate destroyed my confidence that the mainstream media tended to get things right and pick the right side. That doesn't mean it is always wrong, but it is not always right either.
What do you mean by this? I don't have much knowledge on the subject, but it seems like it had led to a bunch of social media village idiots (you know those YouTubers like the quartering) saying that "wokeness is killing videogames" and review bombing any game with a gay character in it.
I only observed it, didn't participate in it; but if one side of a dispute is young freedom-loving technology-savvy nerds from the Internet (i.e. people like me) and the other authoritarian feminists with beliefs I thought didn't exist anymore, and the media portrays the latter as victims and the former as villains, then something is terribly wrong. Some stupidity and bad behavior definitely came from both sides of that, but the media did not get it right, probably because there are relatively few nerds in the media.
“Authoritarian feminists”
Authoritarianism is when women exist and don’t want to be treated like shit.
How they can be authoritarian with no power, I suppose that will never be answered.
"authoritarian feminists"
Please eat shit and die, thank you! It would be appreciated.
GamerGate was an alt-right propaganda operation from the very start, and the victims had receipts the entire time. There were approximately two weeks between the initial libelous accusations - about a review that did not even exist - and the targets revealing they were in the channels where this fraud was planned. And it turns out that doesn't matter! The liars can just keep doubling down, and some people will never catch on.
I will reiterate: the unethetical review the whole thing was about DOES NOT EXIST. Kotaku never did the thing these frauds keep screeching about. There was no inciting incident. They made it the fuck up.
The supreme court ending any ballot recount and investigation into corruption in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Gore won that one by a hair and Bush only took office because Florida threw out ballots to steal the election and the supreme court rubber stamped it. Any and all optimism I had for democracy in the US died that day and it's weird to me that we just sort of shrugged and ignored it.
I was too young to vote but I remember asking my dad if we were going to get into a civil war. "Democrats don't have the guts"
Unironically since I live in the imperial core and am from an ex-socialist country, but not old enough to have experienced it. It was the Trump v. Clinton elections where I saw what lib brain does to people.
Does it have to be an event in our lifetime (and not a historical event we learned about)?
If some historic event changed your life so much, we probably also like to read about it.
An oil change place completely draining my car out of oil and not putting a single drop in. This eventually caused my car to overheat and the engine ended up blowing up. After this I've come to realize that there are some truly evil people who will try to sabotage your life without even knowing a single thing about you. Pretty much don't blindly trust anybody even authoritative professionals like doctors, mechanics, law enforcement, etc..
When it took two separate doctors to get my partner diagnosed for MS so she could get medication for it as it attacked her eye. I knew I could never trust another one.
Its interesting how much of the comments focus on negativity.
For me it was mediation that solved a lot of my anxiety and changed my view of the world, along with a bit of stoic philosophy. Thats not really an event by itself but it was an event for me to discover mindfulness.
I agree, the responses are fascinating. I wonder if it's because we start out with a sheltered view of the world and once out from the protection of childhood shelter, we are exposed to the brutal truth of the world?
The death of my father. Before that i was always busy taking care of someone else. Now i'm much more thinking of what i need and want from life.
the whole kerfluffle about the stupid wizard game. folks like me actively dying while some stupid people with nothing better to do think that it's worth any fighting whatsoever. it's a damn game, who cares.
Huh
They're talking about the Hogwarts game
Seeing Racism brought back to life in 2008…
I'm going to guess you're American, is it that the election of Obama to the presidency caused all the closet racists to lose all sense? Or something else.