Comment on This speaks for itself
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 days agobut the need for something to change is overwhelming for a lot of people
More than that, it’s the need for community.
We are social creatures to the degree that we literally can die without a social identity.
The missing sense of community in the developed world is part of the many reasons so many young men are lonely and don’t know how to talk to girls anymore making them seek out incels and andrew tates, but it also community is supposed to help you feel purpose, identity and belonging. Your community is who (traditionally) helped you find a job, make friends and establish your traditions and ways of thinking.
When you don’t have these things around you, you will seek it out and yep, the right certainly has a open-door policy, they don’t care HOW fucked you are in the head or how ignorant you are, they welcome everyone with open arms, give them a target and reward you when you lie to the enemy and cheat them. This gives a sense of accomplishment and belonging to something greater than yourself. It’s addicting.
We don’t have community anymore, we have unwalkable neighborhoods and delivery services and social media and a general sense of apathy and cynicism that often results in violent pushback against ANY form of genuine emotional expression between peers. Is it any wonder young, dumb, desperately lonely men are reverting to dark-age attitudes?
This has all been designed. A population at odds with each other will never unify and cripple institutions of power with combined effort.
theneverfox@pawb.social 4 days ago
Very, very true. And I mean honestly, the fact we no longer have third spaces and our communities have moved online have given an insane boost to the most extreme voices. Groups based on location and hobbies might lean to one side, but there’s going to be moderating voices
But in a right wing echo chamber, you just have to listen to people attacking others. The left is plenty welcoming, but there’s these people who are just sitting there to attack any perceived bigotry or ideology - like once I got called out for using the wrong pronouns in a new voice chat because I had the wrong name… And it was just this one drunk girl and we just moved on and someone else privately apologized for her, but that injustice just feels terrible
It’s not that left spaces aren’t welcoming, it’s just that it takes one person to make you feel constantly on edge and sour you on anything like it
And it’s not like the right doesn’t do the same - they ban people left and right for perceived purity tests and label you a far left instigator, but pound for pound they need less people because they’re more organized than we are
They have leaders at every level and every checkpoint from general dissatisfaction to rabid Fascism to feed you the next level of hate you need to repeat
We have liberals who hate the left more than they hate fascism and constant infighting between what few communities we do have
We really need to set a set of next step goal posts, like universal healthcare, worker protections, and forcing corporations in line
We need to be able to talk to tankies and just avoid geopolitics, we need vegans to be able to talk about reducing meat consumption instead of all or nothing, we even need to be able to talk to bigots and focus on why they actually agree with our next step goalposts once they understand them
We need to provide a ramp to leftism, even if we have to hold our noses at some of it. We can still have our safe spaces and leftist spaces, but we need to do outreach and give people stepping stones and middle grounds so people can slowly learn, where we’re lazer focused on key subjects and let the rest slide
We also need places where we can organize around issues we all agree on so we can organize and make actual progress, where we don’t talk about end goals, ideals, and values - just on the next step
The truth is, most everyone wants a lot of the same things, and they’d support it if they understood it - we need to be able to teach them issue by issue what we want to do, no matter what baggage they haven’t yet overcome.
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I’m saying this all over Lemmy, I was saying it all over reddit until they banned me with an aggression I never saw from that site’s administration in over 14 years of using it regularly.
Which is that if we wish to save the human species, much less progressivism, we need better stories.
Trump won because he exploited the human need to simplify complex ideas into 2-dimensional narratives that even the most cracked-up yokels in the backwaters of the southern swamps could understand. Instead of the leftist need to educate, to inform, to give people all manner of rights to self-actualization that most people will NEVER exercise, he just plowed through all social decorum and started telling people how to feel and who’s to blame and what they need to do. Simple, direct, effective.
Abhorrent sure, and may yet lead to end of us all, but if you cannot understand the effectiveness of the tactics he used you’re blinded by emotion. Instead of being blinded by feelings, we need to start working together to craft new narratives for the results we actually want. It’s not even that hard to do.
On an interpersonal level, we share more with each other than what separates us. I grew up in the boonies surrounded by the most racist hicks and rednecks you can imagine. I was one of them for a spell until I grew up, but a lot of people never grow up. They’re all scared children who cling to their guns and bibles but when they’re not trying to act boisterous and macho, they want the same things and can be shaped. They don’t actually want harm to come to LGTBQ+ people or people of color. They may be scared of these folks but if you just managed to expose enough of them to the right stories about these people, they would care a lot less. Their hate is largely manufactured because… and I don’t say this lightly, they are fucking dumb.
We need to start accepting people are dumb and need fairy tales and exaggerated WWE wrestling theater productions to keep their interest. We have to stop pretending people care about principles. No, they care about how they feel right now. People don’t care about values, about the constitution, they certainly don’t care about what’s real or not, they just care about how their leadership is making them feel at this moment. The left is TERRIBLE at managing other people’s feelings, but the right doesn’t care, they don’t mind stepping on people’s rights to think for themselves if it spreads the word. Why can’t we do that? Why can’t we start new stories to get the best results? Where is our up and coming generation of inspired grifters who can cold-read a room? We need them, but we need them harnessed for good.
faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Bingo.
I once got somebody to think differently about green energy by harassing the power of patriotism. His initial argument basically boiled down to “new is scary and I don’t see why we need to change anyways”, and I hit him with a “what are you talking about, innovation is what made america great”, and I could see the loading icon spin in his brain.
I’ve also gotten conservative family in on medicare-for-all by pointing out that the military maybe doesn’t have enough healthy citizens to pull from if a crisis happened, and if we’re gonna be serious about national defense, we absolutely need national healthcare.
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Hell yeah! This is exactly what I’m talking about, but what’s holding us back from this process, an act that was once known as “talking to each other” is the sad fact that people don’t talk to each other anymore.
I swear there are people online who act like manipulating people is some kind of dark jedi trick that only the most intellectual sages and evil wizards will ever accomplish, when it’s literally what we do with each other all day long anyway, the simple act of having a conversation is trying to get someone to understand you or feel what you feel. If you can learn how to have a conversation, you can learn how to change people’s minds.
I can explain things to dumb people with patience and an effort to make complex topics understandable and if you can do this AND sound halfway confident, BAM you either got a convert or you’re on your way to starting a cult.