Truth.
Though, America got by for a long time with that being Russia, and Nazis…
What happened to that
If we need a common enemy for people to get along then society has already failed
Submitted 5 weeks ago by ReanuKeeves@lemm.ee to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
badbrainstorm@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Having the local dictator as the unifying enemy seems to be popular. Just ask anyone from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Yemen.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 5 weeks ago
Well except for all the innocent people swept up in the red scare.
ramble81@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Ironically, we do have a common enemy: The billionaires. Problem is the enemy has managed to brainwash almost half the populace into fighting for them.
biofaust@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
As an ex-biologist, I think this is just down to a choice of words: as a society, you could see Nature as an enemy.
Man, even as an individual, or even a monocellular organism, you could argue that entropy is your enemy.
If an enemy is a useful concept for maximizing potential within your scope of choice, then be it.
KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
This is the underlying plot of plenty of movies. The prevailing solution is to find something other than each other to be our unifying enemy.
Conclusion: Hopefully we get attacked by aliens or something.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Bonus point: now look at how old humanity is. The Greek civilization, the Chinese, the Egypt… literally empires have come and gone, yet humans are just as dumb as thousands of years ago
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
You’ve got it backwards. Society doesn’t work without a looming threat, whether that’s an enemy or the environment.
Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
How so?
Unless your “enemy” is “anything that most people see as a source of suffering/pain/other kind of unpleasantness”, I do not see how your statement can be true. And even then in is still a dumb way to exist
Warl0k3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
We need something in common for people to get along. Enemies are just very easy things to share between groups, but common creeds, ideals, projects are all unifiers of equal power, though they’re not nearly as convenient to find.
DrFistington@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Single dumbest fucking thing I’ve seen all day
intensely_human@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
If society needs to all get along then it has already failed.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Not necessarily a common enemy, but a common cause.
I’ve never seen people come together and work harder than when we were trying to end the Y2K problem. I guess you could call the bug “the enemy”, but it was a little more abstract than that.
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Were you in an industry affected or are you just reminiscing on being in society
Because being in society for y2k was utterly meaningless. We did nothing. We did not come together, we did not work hard. A small handful of dweebs noticed the issue and fixed it.
The USA, with its burgeoning 24 hour news cycle and coming off such hits as oj, princess di, and columbine, recognized they could blow that shit up. So then America wasted 40 billion dollars and a shitload of fear mongering when basically every other country spent almost nothing for essentially the same outcome. Because the outcome was contingent on patches to windows and the Linux kernel, which were obviously going to happen long before 1/1/2000 and regardless of the government because it was a glaring bug that was found
I do ultimately agree with your sentiment though. A common enemy is not necessary and we absolutely can be unified around a cause. The space race obviously had Russia as a villain. The new deal is something that on paper could unify but in practice saw conservative opposition and liberal criticism that it didn’t go far enough. I still think it’s possible though, even if an example is a challenge to think up
jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I was a front line worker during Y2K with 60 software updates across 600 systems from Texas to Guam.
I had to run a color coded Excel sheet to keep it all straight, it was CRAZY.
In my case, because it was the automotive industry, it also all had to be done early because of the '00 model year cars. Like I say, I’ve never seen people work harder.
Even then, there were still problems outside our control:
www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/…/51026660007/
starlinguk@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
And now people are saying climate change is like the Y2K bug and “it will fix itself” 🙄
jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Those people don’t even KNOW about the 2038 bug… ;)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
Fortunately(?) it’s unlikely I’ll live to see that one.