That’s a phrase I live my life by to be honest lol
Comment on Is it me or is everyone in hexbear insane?
OpenStars@discuss.online 2 months agoYou catch more flies with honey than vinegar indeed:-).
Asafum@feddit.nl 2 months ago
OpenStars@discuss.online 2 months ago
It is a good one. I mean, there are definitely situations where being not-nice is required, e.g. police dealing with a shooting spree in-progress that shows no sign of abating on its own, but as a whole, I do think society would progress much more smoothly if people were to live by that. (and by “that” I mean logic as a whole, of which this is only one tiny piece:-P)
TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
This generalization does not hold. Sometimes vinegar is better at “catching” these “flies”. For examples being nice to a fascist gives the impression that they are acceptable and have valuable opinions. If you treat them with the contempt they deserve, you more correctly communicate your sentiment and model it for others. This also applies to a person you are talking to directly. If you try to, for example, politely debate genocide as if it is not generally understood to be the worst and most serious crime to be avoided at all costs, you feed into the idea that is not so bad, it is a chip to be wagered just like any other political “compromise” when being “pragmatic”. I have yet to see anyone win over to actually changing their mind and doing something about Gaza because someone validated their logic on supporting Biden buy I have seen people make a complete about-face when presented with the harsh realities.
More realistically, the people who are complacent are the majority in this space and do not like to feel challenged or guilty (even though they are wrong and complicit). Rather than become consistent by actually opposing genocide or otherwise becoming informed on the topics in question, they find an environment full of half-truth excuses that tells them they don’t need to actually change what they are doing and can actually somehow the genociders without supporting genocide.
What they need is not honey. Honey is plentiful and they still do not drink it. But some vinegar may wake them up, give them a chance to self-criticize.