Submitted 3 weeks ago by muxika@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
I hear these comments for not wanting to help people, and it feels like we’re worshipping individuality to the detriment of community, which is necessary for survival.
It’s by design.
The spread of the superhero (Übermenschen) to ubiquity in pop culture, especially Hollywood, the punishing and assumption of evil within destitute people, the indoctrination of children (pledge of allegiance et al), the selective curricula that largely keep the general education from showing the populace of the US that their country is more closely related to a self styled African dictatorship than a modern social democracy. Usanians frequently utter “it’s not personal, it’s business”. That is the hallmark of declining hegemon and roughly translates to “fuck you, got mine”.
it’s not personal, it’s business
This mentality is such an ingrained part of corporate culture, and our culture has been centered around corporate life since around when Reagan came into office. The top suggestions for how to survive in this USA culture is to cut off empathy. What’s worse is I think a lot of people have. There’s an air of cruelty to every aspect of this society, from politics to police to medical to social media. Everyone wants a break from the reality of their shitty life, and many are willing to step on others for the hope of an opportunity.
roughly translates to “fuck you, got mine”.
In the US you much more frequently hear it the other way around: “I got mine, now you fuck off.” Until they “get theirs” they maintain the pretense of sociability.
The spread of the superhero (Übermenschen) to ubiquity in pop culture, especially Hollywood
You mean, like Superman (1938), Flash Gordon (1936), Captain Marvel (1941), etc.?
Except in those days they were considered cheap entertainment and they certainly didn’t dominate cultural output the way they do now. There was also a difference of treatment. The ubermenschen is not just about explicit super heroes, it’s more about the shift toward heroes with a destiny so manifest, and plot armor so thick, that they are morally justified in doing anything. The John Wick style “fuck you i’ll shoot up a night club cause some guy shanked my dog” which is written to feel entirely justified to the audience. And he’s right cause he wins in the end, just like the 80s action guy who’s totally justified in crashing dozens of cars during rush hour cause he kills the one bad guy in the end. It’s pretty distinct from comics culture which was actually pretty moralistic, at least that’s how i understand it.
MAGA conservatives are literally unable to feel empathy. There have been scientific studies showing the connection between the brain structures that feel empathy and political alignment
It’s not innate…
Innately humans are just animals. It takes effort to get people on the same page that cooperating is usually best
But we stopped teaching kids that in school 20 years ago.
That’s the sad truth about it. It’s not that the right corrupted a generation, just that between them an the neoliberals, no one wanted to help them. They both wanted brain dead tribalism because that’s what their mutual donors want
It honestly shouldn’t be that hard for everyone to follow the string back to "no child left behind’ but I remember pointing out this would happen 30 years ago, and I thought it was obvious back then too.
Animals work together very easily and frequently actually, same and different species, even things called symbiotic relationships. That argument is proving your point wrong and indicating that most hatred is indoctrination.
And they’re socialized for that too…
Take a social animal, raise it in isolation, and it will be almost impossible for it to integrate in a group after released as an adult…
You’ve never seen any of the videos of wildlife rehab hiding the fact that they’re human from an animal?
At least since the 60s/70s, it’s not new.
Wasn’t there segregation before the 70s? So it seems like a default state for USA since forever.
“Hate thy neighbor skin color”
You’re referring to the 1560s/70s, right?
Seriously, though, stripping away empathy has always been a tactic throughout history used by the greedy and selfish to get their way.
These values are cyclical in history. Mostly they persist until the system breaks down and then there is a surge of solidarity which sets things back on the path until people start thinking all their advantages came from their own ability and then the cycle repeats.
The early 1900’s was fairly communal but the great war and the 1920’s was filled with this sentiment of individuality until the depression crashed it out and then there was a split - a combo of Union efforts, reinvestment in government systems and extreme solidarity out of nessesity in the US/UK and the same time toxic individuality caused a canabalization of society in fascist areas of Europe. The World War created more extreme communal solidarity. In the areas where there was union resistance and communal solidarity legislation to keep businesses in check was installed and that gave way to pushback from business interest. As solidarity continued there was more general prosperity and you started seeing marginalized communities start to speak up. Racial communities, disability communities, queer communities - those who had been denied the comfort everyone else was taking for granted popped up and fought like hell for empathy and some made bigger wins than others…but then you start seeing the push back. Austerity gospel via Regan and Thatcher “there is no society just individuals and families” and all those safeguards and solidarity that were put in place to solve the crash of the 30’s started to be undone and slandered as “too much overreach”.
Looking at the UK if you go back even further you see this cycle repeat work backwards and you see it. Victorian workhouse systems replacing the welfare state and then being discarded as cruel. The Georgian fight for the poor law and charity and the industrial revolution’s runaway excess of the rich that fed people into the meat grinder of labour and erroded poor law to force compliance.
Empathy’s time will come again but apparently we need to be reminded by virtue of horror what the cost of this kind of inviduality is.
the cost of this kind of inviduality is.
The thing is, it’s a rare individual who “benefits” from the direction we are continuing to move in. Unless they’re a bunch of sadists who like watching the rest of the world suffer while they insulate themselves with security forces, that they can’t really trust, because where do you get the people to maintain the security?
A society where the richest can walk down High Street in London without a thought to “personal security” is better for the people at the top, too. Unless they’re sadists.
Ignore. Empathy is hot.
They’re sure trying their best.
I have no empathy nor sympathy left for the right. I would like for them all to bleed out through their eyeballs.
The extreme left are fucking irritating, constantly going on about virtue signalling bullshit that nobody cares about while the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet.
The extreme right want genocide though, it’s not really the same thing…
both left and right extremists virtue signal and would gladly genocide you.
After watching Israel slaughter tens of thousands of our children while Biden lied and covered for them and have them everything they wanted, i have no empathy nor sympathy left for anyone who isn’t ready for a revolution and calls enthusiastic support for genocide “the lesser evil”.
They’re all Nazis, both sides, and I have zero respect left for anyone who only cares about them and theirs and their life domestically. I have no empathy for anyone who lives in and benefits from the imperial core and doesn’t have empathy for the victims of the empire.
I don’t have sympathy and empathy left for them. When a dear friend told me his mother died, I tried so hard to find an emotion, and I just remembered all the lost children he refused to speak up for and came up empty. Fuck you and your dead mother, I thought as I said I’m sorry for your loss.
Biden is a conservative
So how do you feel watching Trump do worse in full view?
Independence can be weaponized to make people fight each other.
So can collectivism be used to manipulate people to sacrifice “for the common good”, like making you “fight for our country”.
Me vs Us
Us vs Them
Both can be problematic.
But who’s the us and who’s the them? And why would a distinction necessarily force us to commit murder?!
If you decide on anything superficial (race and tribe, for instance), the bonds will be easily broken and the people will be easily manipulated. If you pick something like character and ideology, you can have a wider circle (these things are more flexible) and if you dislike the out group it is for actual reasons like a major moral disagreement and not the amount of melanin.
This is largely an American problem, although it is spreading due to global media.
I blame it largely on Calvinism and the prosperity gospel:
“Good things come to good people” -> “If good things didn’t come to you, you’re not a good person” -> “Poor people are poor because they are bad people, and we should not help them” -> “It’s okay to help billionaires, they wouldn’t be rich if they weren’t good people”
A lot of poor people have this view in the US, which you would think would make them reconsider it, but they solve this with mental gymnastics: They and their in-group are good people, so obviously it’s okay to help them and the good things are coming any second. Another reason not to tax rich people, they’ll be one soon!
This is also true in Hinduism and Buddhism, it’s just always been convienient for rulers to convince peasents of this
right wing propaganda via news, shows and movies is very effectivive. its always seperating “in groups” against outgroups"aka poors, lgbtq+, homeless, drug addicts, prostitutes, vs a moral white guy that is always above average. or sometimes they show those wierd racist kinks, like white guy going after asian women.
Just as Conservatives have wanted. This isn’t new. This was the default. Empathy was an exemption started in the 60’s.
Yes. We have become a nation of de facto sovereign citizens. The average American thinks of nothing past the crummy job, the soul breaking commute, the mortgage, and another Ben Franklin for the third star on the fourth stripe on little Ayngylynn’s tae kwon do white belt. Frank Freeway and Susie Soccermom are too wrapped up in themselves to care what kind of people we are.
Back in 1997, my sociology professor said the US would become the meanest society in history. And OMFFSM, I see it everywhere. There’s no more sense of community or even common courtesy. Hurt the other guy or get hurt. Violence over small things will soon be commonplace and inescapable. We will all have to be armed, much as we may hate it. This is all by design.
OMFFSM
What is this acronym
Oh my fucking god, where their god is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Is not about eliminating empathy. That party is a side effect of carpet bombing anything the left values. It’s just another “makes libs cry”
These are age old comments, I heard all of them from a very young age. It’s been there the whole time.
And it’s been working. For a long time.
First they made you fear someone, then they told you they lived down the street.
Debatable how deliberate that was, but it’s certainly not not what they wanted…
It’s been like that for a while (how did they get stomach chattle slavery, or the native genocide, or murdering brown people around the globe like Nam?), it’s the reason the rest of the world is very wary of Americans even if they don’t come in tanks and jets. Even Western Europeans are wary of Americans at this point, and they’re basically the same community!
I think that Roman Catholicism and offshoots (not the message of Jesus, but the unholy creation of the empire) are partly to blame, primarily the disinfo of Paul, the fed, with his “faith without works” and “you’ll be saved if you become a man worshipping polytheist!”. Ideology is very malleable, so we can do something about it, but Nietzsche already pointed to the struggle like 200 years ago and a solution proposed by the locals with local ideological tools hasn’t been found yet. Islam is the path forward for the West (and the rest of the world), but ofc you hate to hear it, even if it would offer an ideological framework based on the belief in God and objective morality (you gotta act right to save yourself, more or less Jesus’ message for everyone who’s actually read the Sermon of the Mount, for instance)… don’t forget that that gut reaction has been fostered by the powers that be in the same way that it was for the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the natives, the Africans, and now the Mexicans and Chinese. Maybe there’s something there, huh?
Replacing godheads and debating minute dogmatic differences between colonizer/authoritarian religions is not going to change things for the better. We’ve been doing that for millennia.
Emphasizing historical learning and perspectives from the breadth of the world as well as modern civic humanist principles in our communities sounds a lot more effective to me than replacing one fictitious narcissistic sky daddy with another. Go peddle your ancient brainrot elsewhere.
I really don’t think “we” have, certainly the West hasn’t (with even the term “sky daddy” showing the clear anthropomorphic nature of God in the Western man’s mind, because amoral paganism never left it was just superficially transformed…). The vast majority of people won’t hold themselves accountable when the pleasures of this world are too enticing if they don’t feel like they’ll be unavoidably held accountable by a higher power. With discernment, integrity, selflessness and a clear heart it’s possible to do so to a certain/great extent, but these traits are secondary in the West, where overpowering violence, trickery and the capacity to acquire goods and satisfy yourself are paramount. But whatever, I guess we’ll see.
Islam is the path forward for the West (and the rest of the world)
… wut.
If anything, Atheism is the way forward.
Atheism is no way, it’s intellectually lazy, and cowardly fence-sitting that leads to/reinforces hedonistic nihilism and moral relativism. Atheism is the way like suicide is, and mostly something fall into by default, or emotional pain, or the need to feel unwatched and unaccountable so one can do nonsense, not some sort of “transcendental wisdom” that Europe came up with, lol. Even for Nietzsche, this is a tragedy (because he’s not a dummy!) without precedent, and something that needs to be corrected ASAP. If God is dead in the West, something needs to fill the God-shaped hole. Ideally, it’s God, but evidently it hasn’t been for ages (if some form of righteous monotheism even “trickled down” from Roman Catholicism to begin with!) and the results in their societies (amoral and selfish “get the bag” mentality, sexual depravity that’s applauded and openly talked about and taken as virtue/lightly, people living by inertia and for pleasure because they have no purpose nor do they even care to think about it, the “loneliness epidemic”, etc etc.) are very noticeable.
Islam is the path forward for the West (and the rest of the world)
Yeah no
“I hate insert group of people”
everybody!
The new “hyperindividualism” trend is sad to look into too.
From my own observations it appears that empathy is rapidly being worn away by hatred. Its hard to empathize with things that go contrary to one’s ideas of correctness
Some of that is dumbfuckism. Constitutional republics are democracies, for example.
Some of those sentiments have always existed & come across as though you were born yesterday.
While socialism is a broad term, communism usually refers to communist states, which are authoritarian regimes that even in theory reject universal individual rights/liberties. Non-authoritarian socialism is something else.
People have a duty to beneficence. However, plenty of people lazily toss empathy around as an argument from outrage fallacy instead of bothering to build a more credible & persuasive argument. Listeners get sick of that fast & don’t mind if you think of them as monsters: they certainly don’t care about your poorly argued opinions.
So, that could be deprogramming or it could be ineffective discussion breakdowns. I don’t think empathy requires programming. I’d think its rejection require reprogramming.
I hate the the fact that if I tell my views to people, ML’s automaticaly call me a conservative, and conservatives call me a stalin-supporter.
That’s what I get for having nuanced views lmao.
I used to say I’m a libertarian socialist, which means that I liked arguing semantics about what I believe online all day
Annoyed to report: successful and long standing communes/communities seem to all be highly selective, at least initially.
If you’ve got good examples that contradict this, please share.
Of course they are, they’re full and doing great lol
I might be starting one soon with mostly family… It’s a long shot, but I’d interview you then the time comes if you want. No promises
Yay more experiments! I’m interested in what you’re modeling the structure and system based on.
I feel like examples that prove it using some standard definitions are a prerequisite to that conversation.
Without standard definitions such as selection method/criterium and controlling for variables such as external factors your basically asking me to refute apples with oranges.
Selective: there is either a process which rejects a nontrivial number of applicants (in a way which is not random; the output distribution is different from the applicant population), or there is no open system to join the commune at all (and the initial members are again very much not typical).
Long-standing: a continuous group has existed with the same name for more than, let’s say, 25 years. Ideally in a similar place and with similar policies, but I’m flexible.
Commune/community: a democratically run sharing of resources and container of social connections. They must have things held in common, to which any productive member contributes and any needy member can draw from. The things must be controlled according to the groups intent. Participation in this process should be high. A significant portion of social life of most members should stay within the community.
Successful: a vibe, but not killing too many members and improving the quality of life for members seem like good minimums.
Definitions are meant to be broad here, because I would like to hear about your oranges. Close examples that miss:
Most governments (not communal or not democratic)
Most churches (quite selective, required beliefs for example)
Our president is a felon rapist pedophile.
That’s absolutely going to have an influence on young, impressionable minds.
The president is…well, used to be…a person that, among other things, acted as a role model. Now kids are going to be looking to that role model and seeing a felon rapist pedophile that reached the top of our societal structure and they’re going to emulate.
Our society was already sick. Now it’s terminal.
The idea that the president used to act as a role model is so bizarre to me as a Swede. We’ve had prominent political figures that have had very good reputations, but I can’t imagine anyone considering a politician as a role model. They’re just people that, hopefully, are doing their job. Wanting to emulate a politician, like a prime minister, or a president, just feels scarily like hero worship. Very culty.
Remember when we used to say someone is “acting Presidential”, back then it didn’t mean tweeting a bunch of derogatory things and grabbing women.
Just had this discussions on Christmas. Jesuses teachings are pretty explicit that followers are supposed to be charitable and compassionate and give freely and help those they can. Talking to some conservative Christian about it they said they were finding it very hard not to be cynical and see every case of charity as just fraud.
To the point where not imprisoning people for trying to move somewhere for work is something they really consider charity.
It’s a sharp contradiction to me
“Back in the day” a lot more people went to church on a regular basis. They also beat their children on a regular basis, and a much larger percentage of those children grew up to perpetrate violence, domestic and otherwise, in their adult lives.
The core teachings of Jesus, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, and the rest are good. People standing in the pulpit saying whatever it takes to fill the pews and get donations… less good on average. Theory is easier than putting that theory into faithful practice.
OK instead of looking at it that way, think about how you feel about other people and what other people mean to you.
If someone new is born, does that mean you have a new resource, or a new competition for resources?
Back in the day, a new person meant a extra paid of hands, not just another mouth to feed.
If I died tomorrow, would you care in any material way? I’m not talking about your subjective, passing emotions, I’m talking about if you would feel my loss materially. Would anything be different about your life?
I would. Even just the comment you left here impact my world in a positive way. You probally work too (visable or invisible labor). Your existence, your voice creates space for others.
But that is in sharp contrast to have been told people are just wicked and evil all day and that people just take from the deserving and give nothing back.
I actually do work in a sensitive hospital enviroment in a field which benefits others.
I was able to work full time because so many people in my industry died during covid. I probably wouldn’t have a steady paycheck if it weren’t for the deaths of thousands of people. I just couldn’t get my foot in the door. This goes for all industires. The job market has been terrible and way too competitive for my entire adult life. For me to own a home, thousands more would need to also die. Please do not retaliate against me for informing you of this. It’s not my fault, my doing, or my preference.
USA culture has always been this way.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Communal action and solidarity are essential for providing benefits to individuals.
You may ask your boss to raise your pay, likely to be rejected, or you can join a union and demand a much higher pay and better working conditions.
You may do your best to add small niceties to shared spaces, or you can unite with your neighbors and make the community thrive.
You may stand alone against injustice, only to be moved when convenient. Or you can walk the streets together, making your shared concerns heard.
Neither of it is actually much ideologically tied, and it can go in any direction. But the point is, collective action is best when addressing issues many people face individually.
Building a culture of self-made individualism is a deliberate attempt to remove the levers of power granted by collective action, and to make it easier to crush dissent on the way to build an authoritarian dystopia.
That’s not to say collective action cannot be abused to make a very ugly society - fascism is one example - but that the best results are achieved when the individuals retain their own views, but are willing to cooperate over the shared issues.
you assume it’s biconditional. it’s not.
you can ask your boss for a raise, and get fired. for a lot of people there is no option for a union. and the smart move is to apply for another job that offers you better wages.
Yes.
Trump voting farmers “12b bailout is not enough!”
reddig33@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Evangelical leaders are certainly trying.
pbs.org/…/is-empathy-a-sin-some-conservative-chri…