ameancow
@ameancow@lemmy.world
- Comment on We all sleep alone soundly; Maybe the key to a happy marriage is separate beds 3 days ago:
I love that one person downvoted you for this comment. I think the internet was a bad idea.
- Comment on People angry that Superman represents kindness are outright admitting that they don't want to be good people 6 days ago:
Society can not exist in the way that we evolved.
We don’t get a choice about it. We have to have a society and we cannot live in any other way than we’ve evolved, so our societies are going to be a reflection of our natures.
But we’re intelligent and can mitigate the harmful parts our biological drives with cognition and we do this all day every day, but we still have biological imperatives that we can’t escape from.
You can choose to not consume cake because you know you’re not calorie-starved even though nature rewards you for it. You cannot however have good mental health while in isolation. Understanding what parts of our nature are flexible or what parts need to be managed around is the fundamental thing I’m talking about here. Just like you will be healthier if you eat more vegetables like we were adapted for, your society will be healthier if it values community like we’ve been adapted for.
Again. Rose colored glasses.
You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- Comment on People often say "Don't talk to the police", but what if a friend, neighbor, or a loved one gets kidnapped and you want to help the victim? 1 week ago:
Don’t be obtusely literal.
If someone is in trouble, you need help and you reach out to anyone and everyone you can to get that help. Don’t trust the police to be your friend always, so don’t go spouting incriminating shit about how you and your friend were getting high or something, don’t approach them belligerently, but give it every attempt to get someone’s attention and take it seriously. The idea that someone has to be missing 24 hours is a myth if you have good reason to believe they’re in trouble. Be respectful and coherent and provide as much evidence as you can.
Look, I don’t like cops either. But the couple times I’ve dealt with home invaders, there was nobody else I rather see coming down the hall as I was wrestling the intruder.
We need a new system and overhauled oversight and management of law enforcement, but we also still need law enforcement. The two things can exist simultaneously.
- Comment on People angry that Superman represents kindness are outright admitting that they don't want to be good people 1 week ago:
There’s nothing “rosey” about the struggles of pioneering communities in early European settlement in the Americas, nor in the way that people pretty much had to shelter together for the last million years before America’s founding, my well-agreed on thesis is that community is how our species has survived and the idea of single-family homes and individualism is not only a new thing in our history but antithetical to our very nature as a species, which is why “social death” is a mentally and physically harmful condition that we’re all vulnerable to.
The “American Dream” was for people to make their own way, and at the time it was groups of people who settled and built communities, it was the drive for wealth along with the sudden vast tracts of land that came with America that encouraged people to start spreading out into single-family homes and leaving one’s community or family system. If you curl your lip at the idea of staying with your family through your life, that’s understandable, but that’s because families and our perceptions of family has changed. It’s not something easily reversible nor am I making a prescriptive statement, I am describing how things have changed and if I were to prescribe anything at all, it’s that we need to work harder at renormalizing actual socializing, at making and preserving friend groups so we learn and understand emotional intelligence, so challenge ourselves to new ideas and re-learn compromise and compassion, something not just missing from the worst people, but broadly through all ends of the political spectrum. Understanding that our current state of loneliness and depression and anxiety is not a natural part of our lives is an important fact that we can’t lose.
We are not living how we’ve been adapted by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and it’s having profound impact on our collective mental health, and it’s allowing the atomization of our political perspectives to disastrous consequence.
- Comment on People angry that Superman represents kindness are outright admitting that they don't want to be good people 1 week ago:
The best example of how the world has changed and changed us is by rewatching The West Wing. A show that if aired today, would probably end up with the production studio burned down.
- Comment on People angry that Superman represents kindness are outright admitting that they don't want to be good people 1 week ago:
Hyper-individualism is a much more modern idea that may have its roots in our founding but it was exploited by capitalism during the post-war financial boom last century.
Before we had media showing us “how it should be” families lived together throughout their lives, communities helped each other and American towns pulled together and helped each other in a variety of ways. The whole idea of single-family homes was invented by the housing industry to get people to buy three to four times as many homes. To sell this they started leaning harder into the idea that you’re the protagonist, you specifically, you are special just for being American, you are special for wanting your own things (that are advertised to you) and so on.
And before industrialized America and throughout the last several hundred MILLENNIA we were a communal species, it’s why we have so much contradictory hard-wiring that influences how we feel about our social standing, about other people’s feelings towards us, why there are so many people who latch onto authoritarians and fear strangers. These are ideas that run in direct opposition to “rugged individualism” and they are clear signs we’re not living the way we’ve been designed by literally millions of years of evolution.
- Comment on People angry that Superman represents kindness are outright admitting that they don't want to be good people 1 week ago:
If you’re going to use a movie to deliver populism and morality, it better be a good movie or you’re just handing ammunition to the world’s worst piles of shit.
- Comment on Pop it in your calendars 2 weeks ago:
One of my more depressing moments in dealing with the human race was when people were boycotting Blizzard a few years ago for… well, everything. But the sexual harassment and discrimination scandal was the final straw for a lot of people.
I talked about it with my gaming friends on discord at the time, everyone agreed that what the company was doing was terrible, but the more we talked about it, the more they delved into nostalgia and thought about how much fun they had playing WoW when they were younger.
The next day I jump in discord and all five of them had reactivated their subscriptions and were having the time of their life running around WoW without a care in the world.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
You have just spent too much time talking to the chronically online individuals or whatever the term is.|
I have, and I know it, and those are who I am speaking to the most because that’s who are here in sites like this in the most numbers. I am here trying to rally people, even if it’s out of spite and anger and offense, to stay involved.
The last presidential election we had has had some of the highest voter participation and youth participation in history, and they still voted for Trump, so the problem isn’t exterior, it’s coming from inside the house, and as long as we’re lamenting and feeling like shit about it, we’re falling into their trap.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 4 weeks ago:
Except talking to people I don’t agree with is exactly what I do. I am doing it to you now! Think about that!
It’s literally ALL i wanted out of this.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 5 weeks ago:
I tried. If anyone gets what I’m saying, power to them and the kernel of hope rides in their hands. Otherwise I’m done. Peace.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 5 weeks ago:
So wait for a charismatic and perfect savior. We see what happens every time someone of this stature reaches the actual federal election stage.
I’m talking about what people can do here and now, which is built coalitions and not have purity tests about who is in it, just focus on single-issues like the right has done successfully over and over and over.
For some reason whenever someone says “compromise” every lefty immediately pictures “submitting on trans rights and abortion” or something.
I’m saying as individuals, you and me, scared lemmy browsers who don’t think they have power: build social connections, make more friends, build activism groups, start in local communities and keep it fixated on solving ONE populist problem that we can get a much wider array of people behind, like childcare or school lunches or yes healthcare and unions, social security or other public safety nets and the whole long laundry list of items we want, but instead of overwhelming a population, local or national, with a huge list of inclusivity and ideals, we attack one thing at a time. I have watched the right do this over and over and each time they fucking WIN.
Again, your notions of an ideal candidate you would vote for are spot-on, I would vote for that person in a heartbeat, most would, but that person doesn’t exist and they won’t exist until they can ride on the momentum of grass-roots movements to tackle populist issues. The democrat party is not our ally here, not without a mandate under it and if we’re more clever about building those mandates and then tying them together when it’s time, we might have success.
But I’m getting really pessimistic here. Voter turnout is not the problem. Everyone, everywhere, is avoiding mixing. The atomization of our world is the problem. We had the highest voter turnouts and youth involvement in the last several elections than we’ve ever had, and they voted Trump. That’s my whole point, that’s the key we have to fight against, how someone like a brazen fascist and idiot can sway so many people, and it starts with re-mixing our values and perspectives and this may take some kind of “compromise” that may make a lot of isolated lefties really uncomfortable, like having conversations with people you don’t like, like accepting people who hate you into your protest so you can both tackle a problem you both hate. If we can cross that boundary we can start mixing together again and pulling people out of this programming that corporate media does. Isolationism is killing our whole world and all our hope for the future.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 5 weeks ago:
We are facing a huge problem that nobody seems to be able to identify, which is not voter turnout. The sad, horrible truth is the last couple election cycles we had record turnout and more young people involved than ever before… AND THEY VOTED FOR TRUMP. It’s going to happen all across the world as more and more people have access to their little algorithmic ideology bubbles.
So what’s the problem? Atomization of groups. Everyone is isolated and not exposed to each other’s perspectives and it’s making a vacuum that corporations are easily leveraging to get their right-wing puppets installed so they can make line go up. This atomization is literally turning people delusional, and if we don’t push back on it we are going to lose not just the USA but all democracy and organization.
We fight it with activity and community and socialization. If it takes screaming at people to get off their asses, I will do that and I will do it in ways that piss people off if it gets attention.
You berate neurodivergent and queer people specifically
Exactly the kind of bad-faith, seething, atomized perspective I want to fight by forcing people like YOU to listen to people like ME who will say things to piss you off and make you reconsider what someone else is saying. We need to do that not on Lemmy but out in bars, in family gatherings, in social media, in public lectures, in town council meetings and so on. Withdrawing now will kill you all. I am being dead serious. This avoidance of conflict except with people who want the same outcome as you is ruining our entire world.
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 5 weeks ago:
If you have a way to make it work without compromise let me know, I’m all ears. Expert Mode: something that doesn’t involve waiting for some charismatic and perfect savior figure to somehow come out of the sky and start successfully advocating for socialism.
Because what we’re doing now isn’t working.
- Comment on I throw hands (grabbing my soup) 5 weeks ago:
Absolutely true, and what’s really wild is most of the left is broadly prideful of being intellectual, and so desperate to have intellectual fights that they tear each other down and find ways to nitpick their own allies into destruction. Just because they need to fight someone they can win on their own terms.
The enemy army is OVER THERE, it’s JUST RIGHT THERE! I want to shake everyone and aim all this effort to call out “problematic tones” and “cultural insensitivity” into actual action before we’re all just pawns in a techno-feudalism state, disposable as robots slowly replace even the workers, the last playing piece we had as people.
- Comment on I throw hands (grabbing my soup) 5 weeks ago:
Lefty former martial-art teacher and gun owner here. I fully agree and have to argue about it a lot. This generation of lefties is completely dulled by short-attention-span self-medication and escapism and pseudo-socialization through discord and other online chats substituted for real socialization.
Whenever you talk about the need for actual organizing, forming groups, taking action, suddenly everyone has nine-hundred very special “conditions” that prevent them from doing anything. We may have co-opted the term “snowflake” from the right but it was targeted accurately at the start. Everyone thinks “someone is coming” or that there’s going to be a revolution “any day now” as if there’s some underground left-wing movement planning things and they’re just not invited. Motherfuckers you all ARE the left-wing in this country, ya’ll think the fucking democrats are gonna save you?
The left also gave up on the american flag, easily isolating itself in the public eye as an anti-american group. I hate that. I don’t get it. Yes, America has been awful and continues to be so, but if you don’t claim ownership of the goddamn land you live on, someone else is going to take it… and guess what’s happening.
This is just what it’s like to get old and grumpy. Youth is wasted on the young. I did my time organizing, I did volunteer work and phone banking for my local community and leaders, I tried. I really, really tried. I even narrowly avoided assassination a while back but details would dox me. And I get lectured here about the ten thousand reasons why they can’t do hard things, why they have been relegated to retreating to back-water websites nobody visits having imaginary fights with imaginary nazis. Part of me is so done with humanity I feel like a lot of these kids deserve the consequence of being self-absorbed and undisciplined. But I guess I still have some lingering hope that someone will read something that makes them get off the couch.
- Comment on I throw hands (grabbing my soup) 5 weeks ago:
This site, and honestly modern leftism in general, is utterly weak and in a sorry state. Lotta tender kids hiding in their discord groups talking hard about punching nazis, overthrowing the government, revolutions, etc. But if even half of them went out and organized and voted as regularly as the conservative orc army we wouldn’t need to be boarded up behind cultural firewalls.
- Comment on I throw hands (grabbing my soup) 5 weeks ago:
Ya’ll desperately wish there were right-wingers and nazis on this site. The isolationism of the internet has left the entire population having arguments in the shower and imagining how thoroughly they owned their imaginary opponents.
Protip: you can ACTUALLY go outside and punch ACTUAL nazis at protests and demonstrations in towns near you! themoreyouknow.gif
- Comment on I'm gonna mute this one 5 weeks ago:
Yah I love how places like Lemmy are packed to overflowing with “radical leftists” who scream murder at liberals and moderates and how broadly appealing progressive policies aren’t going far enough to address [issue X].
Guys, we’re getting literally murdered out there, figuratively and literally. If there was ever a time to start building larger coalitions, it’s now. No, you’re not getting everything you want. No, we’re not having a revolution, we don’t have the military. Yes, you will have to compromise. And if you hate that word because you think it means walking alongside someone you despise…
Tough shit.
Pick an issue, gather allies, overwhelm it, then repeat for the NEXT issue and realize nobody is coming, you may not see a better world in your lifetime, your immediate sense of resignation at this fact is manufactured. Get your shit together.
They’re winning because they don’t recoil in horror at the idea of working towards mid-way goals or making deals they find distasteful, that’s how they pushed the overton window off the fucking map.
- Comment on Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering 5 weeks ago:
I don’t care if people use it, I cannot stand when people wave it around like a new teddy bear that gives them a smug sense of superiority for… checks notes …using a product that someone is selling to let stupid people do easy things.
- Comment on Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering 5 weeks ago:
Sorry my post didn’t have Subway Surfers playing in the corner with a popular streamer reacting to it so you could actually read it and understand it.
- Comment on Hertz, showing the difference between science and engineering 5 weeks ago:
I’m not impressed by today’s AI and I also fully understand that the tech is going to completely upend society and will eventually be a part of our picture of utopia, or our picture of actual hell on Earth.
The people who are screaming it’s wild wonders and benefits are at least as closed-minded as the people who think we’re going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The actual direction this tech moves is going to be far more like the discovery of radio, in that at the time of it’s discovery and early implementation, the people then had no idea the implications down the road and we’re at the same point. Except the big difference and why this is contentious is that radio was far less dangerous to society broadly.
- Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed 5 weeks ago:
Most of that I put on our ineffectual Democratic leadership who are supposed to represent the people. We had a mandate of millions and I don’t remember a single, actual dramatic effort to reshape policy by our elected leaders.
At that time, many people still believed Democrats were actually the opposition group to conservative fascism, and not the checked-out wine-mom getting alimony checks every month from the right.
- Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed 5 weeks ago:
Because they were trying to topple the entire system, not voice disapproval or change policies.
There’s no peaceful way to do that without a level of coordinated effort that we will NEVER get from groups of humans. To say nothing of the fact that even after the revolution, you have to share space with the people and sympathizers of those ousted, so sending a message of severe, popular consequence for regression is almost a necessity for lasting change.
- Comment on YSK: Non-violent protests are 2x likely to succeed and no non-violent movement that has involved more than 3.5% of the country population has ever failed 5 weeks ago:
Also, the “no violence” thing has a LOT to do with what the mobilizing group is trying to accomplish.
Changing policies and ousting leadership that isn’t performing? Hell yeah, peaceful marches and protests all the way.
Want to remove a hostile and oppressive militarized regime? That shit is NEVER pretty, and turns even the best of people into monsters by necessity.
- Comment on Luv Me Chips, 'ate Seagulls... 1 month ago:
We are a species of cognitive dissonance. I want to know how many of the people reading this story and feeling revolted or horrified were eating meat at the time.
Also not a vegan per-say, but I have reduced my meat intake and try to buy local to avoid giving money to the nightmare hellscapes like Tyson and Perdue the like. That’s about the best I can manage in my current lifestyle.
Everyone needs to reconcile and work out this dilemma. It’s amazing how many people are dishonest with themselves and others about their reasons for feeling the way they do about eating meat, killing animals, etc. It’s okay to say “I love animals but not enough to quit eating meat” and accept it in yourself. It’s not a worse moral failing than a hundred other contradictory ideas we all hold in our heads every day. It’s okay to say “I find this story distasteful because killing animals should be done behind closed doors to respect others.” That’s also a fine opinion to have.
I don’t get why people have to do backflips to rationalize shit. We are irrational species.
- Comment on Luv Me Chips, 'ate Seagulls... 1 month ago:
Factory farms and the entire livestock/dairy/meat does indeed suck.
- Comment on Remember 1 month ago:
Same. I’ve been massively downvoted and attacked for suggesting that despite whatever conditions and dysfunctions you may have, that the human brain has capability of growing, changing and adapting and that people could actually work on meeting like-minded people and cure a lot of their loneliness by tackling social insecurity and anxiety like an obstacle or game to solve. (Speaking from successful experience.)
But after those ill-fated posts, I remind myself that people aren’t here in these kinds of places to change, that nobody really wants to change, even if they’re objectively suffering in their present situation. The human mind sticks to predictability and coherence, not necessarily happiness or comfort. We want validation far more than we want pleasure. It’s a weird quirk that we all share, and only people who become aware of this innate bug in the code are able to push through it and make better lives for themselves.
It really doesn’t help though that people have built palaces of identity around their diagnosis’s and conditions and life-challenges. Like, it would be really hard to pry someone you from their “introvert” community if those people are the only ones who ever told you that you can change if you really want to feel better and have more experiences.
But along with that fly-paper trap of validating communities comes with a back-door for people to absorb other, far more delusional or harmful ideas. Kind of like how conspiracy theorists get started by “doubting or questioning” mainstream knowledge, but end up denying all of human knowledge and even the gravity that sticks their feet to the Earth.
I’m really worried about how AI is going to impact these folks. Like, really worried. We’re not that far from machines that will replicate a human intelligence and personality to perfection, but it will also pander to and support whatever thoughts and ideas you have all the while pumping you up and making you feel like Neo from The Matrix, a chosen one who needs only to unlock some magic hidden power to change the whole world. It’s already happening in droves to vulnerable people, but the current models are pretty… cheesy. The next models are going to be more subtle and careful and more intuitive in how to manipulate people and hold their attention.
- Comment on Remember 1 month ago:
Lemmy is almost entirely incredibly shut-in discord kids, people who were too uptight to work out on reddit or other social media, neurodivergence who believe making effort to socialize is akin to self-immolation, and other edge-cases from the broader internet.
It’s a fantastic place to actually have a conversation without being drowned out by 300 people trying to push their own brands, agendas and manifestos, but it’s also not a place to see normal people being normal much of the time.
- Comment on How often do you take him for a walk? 1 month ago:
It’s barely a thing. Some parents with special-needs kids or parents with a lot to juggle in places like amusement parks sometimes use leashes or backpack-leads to keep their kids close, but nobody actually cares much, nobody is actually shamed, nobody laughs and points, nobody gives it a second glance.
This is the kind of thing that’s played up for laughs or memed about because it’s objectively a funny concept depending on context, but don’t get lost down the rabbit-hole of internet users overthinking every goddamn thing and making everything into an issue.