Comment on Unified Theory of American Reality

• erin@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Intelligent, compassionate, and a vessel for the author’s racist worldview.

  Don’t mind me. I hate that book, and I hate that it’s taught in every school as if it has anything important to say. We’ve run the Lord of the Flies experiment, both accidentally and very intentionally. Every time, we’ve demonstrated that humans are better than that, and the author’s beliefs about human nature were both very incorrect and very racist.

  I still resent being forced to debate my classmates about whether human nature was intrinsically “good” or “evil,” directly after reading that book, even though it was 25 years ago. I was the lone voice on the side of “good,” for lack of a “good and evil are subjective terms, but nonetheless humans are empathetic and this book is horseshit” team. I got dogpiled by 20 some other students for about 45 minutes. Fuck you Ms. Brown, and fuck you William Golding. That book has nothing important to say other than exposing its author’s racist insecurities.

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  • dbtng@eviltoast.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I think its good that you had to read something you didn’t agree with in school. Look what its done for you.

    Get over high school. Soon enough, you won’t remember Ms. Brown’s name.

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  • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    but “good” and “evil” are human constructs meaning they can’t be intrinsic? That teacher was a idiot.

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  • KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Stanford Prison Experiment. Slavery. Lynch mobs. Segregationists. Anti-Feminists. Prison-Industrial Complex. The majority of the country voting for the leader passing out signs that said “MASS DEPORTATIONS”. Maybe there’s some inherent cruelty to the mainland USA. Maybe there’s still too much lead particles in the air. As someone who has never left the mainland, I’ve seen overwhelming evidence to the “non-empathetic” side. Or, perhaps, the majority of people are passive, and cruelty is most capable of spurring people to action.

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    • SaraTonin@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The Stanford Prison Experiment was a sham.

      The broader point, though, is that the scenario of The Lord of the Flies has actually happened. We’ve had a small group of kids trapped on an island for an extended period of time and what happened is that they built a peaceful and harmonious society, which included spending time and resources caring for one of their number who broke their leg.

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      • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        In hindsight it’s kind of surprising that people wouldn’t expect most of the kids to work together to help eachother survive because that’s why we have cities, towns, villages, etc…

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    • erin@piefed.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The majority certainly doesn’t choose the active misery of others, and on the scale of the Lord of the Flies setting, humans have consistently shown collaboration and mutual aid. We’ve documented many instances of stranded groups, and even some people that volunteered to be stuck on a raft together for months, and they always choose to work together, despite their differences. Capitalism, fascism, and radical individualism/nationalism are the root of the societal scale evils, because they’re ideologies that propagate in the hands of the few that are willing to benefit at the cost of the many. Humans have not always lived under capitalism.

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    • Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      usa is the whole world

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      • KelvarCherry@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        It’s the same people throughout. The post is about the USA.

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