It is a terrifying revelation for a child when they first realize that they’re kind of stupid, but that the people who run this world are even stupider.
Because we refuse to accept, generation after generation, that 30% of the human species is incapable of empathy and more akin to zombies than people. They pass, sure, in small doses, they pass, these creatures with the bodies of men and the souls of insects — subdiagnostically psychopathic, lacking every transcendental virtue that distinguishes people from the lower animals — they are everywhere. They’re the reason we have slavery. They’re the reason every civilization slowly crumbles. They’re very, very easy to find.
Ask questions with obvious moral answers that people don’t feel ashamed to answer incorrectly.
“Should access to abortions before the third trimester be banned?”
”is it good for people to worship their nations?”
”should presidents who violate the law be sent to prison?”
”should children be kept in cages by virtue of their dubious immigration status?”
Tribalism. As resources diminish, we have an instinctive need to defend what we need to keep ourselves and our ‘tribe’ supplied. Driving out ‘others’ means more for ‘us’.
It’s just that some people have a smaller mental group of ‘us’ than others. You see all people in America as ‘us’. They do not. (Unless it’s an ‘other’ they personally know; then they get included in their mental ‘us’ as ‘one of the good ones’.)
Of course there’s also the fact that much of the scarcity is artificially imposed by the uber-rich to get people into this easily exploitable mindset but that’s a separate discussion.
The New Colossus should be what we make kids memorize instead of the pledge of allegiance.
We are so capable of love, why do we support hate…human beings are so, wtf are we?
Well, teenage me would have said the answer is “stupid”.
Then I grew up and realized that I was full of myself and everyone isn’t stupid.
Then the last 10 or so years happened and I now I sorta think teenage me was onto something there.
It is a terrifying revelation for a child when they first realize that they’re kind of stupid, but that the people who run this world are even stupider.
Because we refuse to accept, generation after generation, that 30% of the human species is incapable of empathy and more akin to zombies than people. They pass, sure, in small doses, they pass, these creatures with the bodies of men and the souls of insects — subdiagnostically psychopathic, lacking every transcendental virtue that distinguishes people from the lower animals — they are everywhere. They’re the reason we have slavery. They’re the reason every civilization slowly crumbles. They’re very, very easy to find.
Ask questions with obvious moral answers that people don’t feel ashamed to answer incorrectly.
Etcetera
Tribalism. As resources diminish, we have an instinctive need to defend what we need to keep ourselves and our ‘tribe’ supplied. Driving out ‘others’ means more for ‘us’.
It’s just that some people have a smaller mental group of ‘us’ than others. You see all people in America as ‘us’. They do not. (Unless it’s an ‘other’ they personally know; then they get included in their mental ‘us’ as ‘one of the good ones’.)
Of course there’s also the fact that much of the scarcity is artificially imposed by the uber-rich to get people into this easily exploitable mindset but that’s a separate discussion.