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Comment on By letting the capitalistic class write the laws we let them dictate the morality of the country.
confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Of course crime is a social construct. No examples are necessary. What else could it be?
WoodlandAlliance@lemm.ee 10 months ago
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I really don’t understand this. It’s all imaginary. Well, maybe not all of it, since the other sapient species definitely exhibit the abilities to communicate with each other and form extremely long lasting societies that contain their own forms of crime and punishment, but money, and status built on the hoarding of resources would be punished by every other sapient species, and yet somehow these psychopaths have managed to trick the majority of humanity into believing their delusion that artificially created tokens are worth more than society or life.
I don’t get it. I’m 43 and I just don’t get it.
flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It’s cos you’re only 43, bro.
I’m 44 and it all makes sense now…
100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 10 months ago
Think about them as a cultural cancer or a parasite.
gmtom@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If crime is a social construct struct then how come we have laws of nature and laws of physics. What do you think happens when you break a law?
Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 10 months ago
The gravity police are always bringing me down.
confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Obviously, you change the law to match reality :P Thanks for the giggle.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Ask Chimpanzees, Orcas, Elephants, or many other advanced natural societies that have evolved over the last few million years. They absolutely have a definition of crimes that they will punish if their members engage in those behaviors. Shunning would be the least brutal of their punishments. Capital punishment is far more prevalent.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Those are still socially constructed among those species!
WhyDoesntThisThingWork@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Which is why it’s dumb to try to negate a thing like crime by saying it’s a social construct. The language we are using to talk about it being a social construct is a social construct. Literally YOU are a social construct, but here you are, worried about “wage theft” which is also a social construct. So do things being a social construct matter or not because if not, lets stop trying to negate anything we don’t like by calling it a social construct, and if so lets apply it evenly and take it to it’s logical conclusion. I would say “reject society, embrace monkee” but rejection, society, embracement, and monkee are all social constructs.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Who is trying to “negate” anything??? I am SO fucking sick of people misunderstanding social constructs. Literally EVERY TIME it’s mentioned, someone assumes that a thing being a social construct means we should erase it. That’s NOT what we’re saying. Jesus fucking christ learn the shit you’re complaining about before you complain about it.
I’m sorry this comment is far more rude than my previous one but I just woke up and haven’t drank my patience juice yet
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The point of saying that something is a social construct is to show that it isn’t some immutable requirement of nature. It’s something we decided to do, and most importantly, decide to do differently if we all just pulled our heads out of our asses. It’s the reply to people who say “it’s always been that way” and look at you like you are crazy for suggesting we do something different.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I think the broader point is that, if crime is a social construct, it’s not natural and unchanging, we can redefine what crime is. Change what’s punished and how.
Ambiorickx@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s not a social construct, it’s a legal concept
kurwa@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Which is a social construct?
WhyDoesntThisThingWork@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Calling things a social construct is a social construct. Leave LSD to the adults please.
kurwa@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I think this was an attempt at a joke?
geissi@feddit.de 10 months ago
The law is also a social construct.
dustyData@lemmy.world 10 months ago
People tend to forget that social constructs are very very real things that can have major material impacts on our lives. Those who don’t understand this use “it’s just a social construct” to dismiss the importance of certain concepts or abstract ideas. But most of human’s reality is made out of social constructs.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
For another very clear example, money is a social construct. But people live and die by the hands of it.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 10 months ago
These constructs are often based on something concrete at their core, as well.
Money, or currency in general, is a social construct that was built on top of the basic idea of trade or exchange. Reciprocity is a very basic behavior found in all kinds of animals, especially us primates.
Likewise, social constructs like “crime” tend to be tied to ethics, another social construct, but that too can be tied back to some basic ideas like harm, which, again, is something animals often form their social norms around.
So, yes, “social constructs”, but that doesn’t in anyway mean society invents wholesale out of cloth.
Daft_ish@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t know if you completely understand the criticism. Social constructs aren’t decided entirely by laws of physics meaning they a malleable. No one is arguing social constructs aren’t real but only that they can be changed if society would let them. Especially if we all collectively agree they are wrong and unjust.
panda_paddle@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Holy shit that was a great explanation.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Money is made up but the suffering the lack of it causes is very, very real.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The suffering isn’t because of a lack of money, though. It’s because of a lack of means to secure the things you need. You would not suffer from a lack of money in a world where everything was free.
The social construct is the idea of currency: a physical (or digital) representation of value for the purpose of trading, but it has no inherent purpose or meaning if you remove it from the society that constructed it.
But what that money represents is a resource. All beings on earth need resources. Whether it’s money to pay for medicine or berries to eat in the forest or water to drink in the desert, everyone has resources they need and must manage for survival. The social construct are the layers of abstraction added between you and how you secure the resource. With no social constructs, you gotta go hunt your dinner. With them, you can buy it.
confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yep! Like gender. It may be a social construct but obviously that social construct is very important.
The only reason I can think of to remind people that something is a social construct is to help them remember change is possible and entirely within our control as a society.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Your last sentence is 100% the point. None of the consequences or limitations or expectations created by our legal system are founded on some fundamental, unchangeable, thing. They’re all just what we’ve agreed on, and we can change that agreement
confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Amen!
Aceticon@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The very real use of Force - sometimes of the deadly kind - of this specific “social construct” should make it painfully clear it has real - often life changing - consequences, to even the greatest of fools, but apparently it doesn’t.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The point of saying that something is a social construct isn’t to say that it doesn’t matter, it is to show that it isn’t some immutable requirement of nature. It’s something we decided to do, and most importantly, could decide to do differently if we all just pulled our heads out of our asses. It’s the reply to people who say “it’s always been that way” and look at you like you are crazy for suggesting we do something different.
Ookami38@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Precisely. The point of the post is to remind us that it’s a social construct, not a law of nature, and thus can be changed.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 10 months ago
A) they are literally imaginary, but agreed upon.
B) why are you following the imaginings and rules that were created out of thin air by sociopaths and psychopaths
C) why do we continue to ignore the societies set up by the other sapient species? They are millions of years older than us, and the basic rules of their societies took us till the 19th century to understand as basic principles.