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You don’t simply stop “doing the right thing” just because you’re not “winning.”
I got the original meme but I don’t understand this. Can someone ELI5?
Are they suggesting that its sad that “you” would think people only deserve food water and shelter?
It could because its very US centric.
A lot of people in the US argue that the poor don’t deserve anything, any lack of money is a moral failing, and they don’t deserve any kind of help.
They have that attitude because capitalism has gaslit them into believing the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” lie to justify their position that someone who is thirsty should be allowed to die of thirst, someone who is hungry should be allowed to die of hunger, and someone homeless should be allowed to die of exposure.
The person in the meme is arguing against those people, saying all humans actually do all deserve food, water, and shelter. All things US conservatives would happily deny someone who was suffering. The cruelty is the point.
I hope this helps!
Oh wow okay. Arguing against a point I didn’t know needed arguing against. Thanks.
That is indeed sad as fuck. And as someone disabled to the point I’m unable to work, also scary as fuck.
And as someone disabled to the point I’m unable to work, also scary as fuck.
My partner is disabled as well, so yeah, for real, I hear you. It’s fucked and scary as hell. Technically I am, too, I guess, because I have cancer, but I’m in the US so people really don’t give a fuck because I’m in my 40’s and don’t sufficiently look like I have cancer, so I’m expected to just keep working… It’s super fun having to hide it in job interviews so I’m not straight rejected because they’ll think I’ll miss too much work so they just won’t fucking hire me, and fat chance I can ever prove such discrimination…
A lot of people in the US argue that the poor don’t deserve anything, any lack of money is a moral failing, and they don’t deserve any kind of help.
A bit of a reduction. It’s not that being poor is a moral failing, but there is a mindset that if you don’t have a job, it’s your fault, and that if you have a job but are still poor, you’re probably wasting money on drugs or something. It’s not so much “they’re poor because they’re a bad person so I shouldn’t help them” as “if I help them then they won’t help themselves.” Which is an easy position to hold if you don’t consider how little the low-hanging jobs can pay, how much rent costs, how much food costs when you can’t home-cook it, and how hard it is to get a job when you don’t have a number, address, shower, or clean clothes.
And then there’s a second group that thinks “Well, we have systems in place. There are homeless shelters somewhere, so they should be going there instead of begging on the streets.” And they can be right, but you should probably do some research on said homeless shelters before you take that stance, in case it’s too far away to walk, understaffed/underfunded, or poorly managed.
It’s easy to think the poor don’t need your help if you don’t think on it too much, and to be fair, not everyone has the bandwidth and energy to be thinking on that. But at the end of the day, we have poor people, so those with means should be doing what they can to help.
and to be fair, not everyone has the bandwidth and energy to be thinking on that
Incredibly astute and also incredibly sad because it’s a very purposeful design of our society to have everyone so broken and tired by our world that they simply don’t have the energy to recognize that other people are suffering as well. I am constantly trying to remind myself that everyone around me is struggling as hard as I am, and it’s not anyone’s fault they don’t have all the time in the world for me. How could they?? They’re hanging by a thread just like I am!
Which is part of why I say “The cruelty is the point.” You’re very correct that I was being reductive, but there’s definitely a class (mostly the capitalist class, people who actually have capital.) of people for whom it simply boils down to a desire for power for the sake of power. An enjoyment of expressing power over others, and making them squirm. Those are the people who are designing society to be this way, to break every worker so badly they cannot stand up for one another. They smirk knowing we’re so broken we can’t stand up to save ourselves. They simply get off on hurting others.
We failed to prevent climate change, but it can get a lot worse. It is a bit like claiming we should stop build houses, because we have not prevented homelessness.
Climate change is not a binary. It might be too late for the best case scenario but we can still make it much less bad.
Bro stop posting leaked footage from Dune: Messiah
Aged Paul looks much more attractive
that’s a really gutsy thing to say
Never gonna give you up Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around And desert you.
Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna tell a liiiiie And hurt you
We’ve known each other… for so long…
The actual climate scientists have been increasingly saying their models show there’s no point to even trying while capitalism still exists, and get continuously worse every time they add recent data to the model,
…but I support, commend, and unironically respect your commitment OP. One person can absolutely make a difference to their local ecosystem assuming they have enough money and land.
Okay well then where’s the problem? If there’s no point in trying to fight climate change while capitalism exists, then end capitalism. I don’t understand where we disagree.
Oh shit, I forgot I have this magical capitalism destroying sword laying around. Let me just cut capitalism in half real quick (the long way so it’s harder to put back together) and then we can get back to eating all the pets like Marx intended.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin
Is it like the magical feudalism destroying sword?
It’s very much like that. Few have the strength to wield it and they are often derided as psychopaths by their peers and those in power
You are utterly powerless to stop this, even at your most self actualized, mobile, and focused you are fundamentally incapable of changing what needs to be changed.
There really isn’t hope, people who think there is unfortunately don’t understand how the universe works. Your attitude towards the end is irrelevant ( unfortunately ) and we are surely on our way towards extinction.
You are utterly powerless to stop this, even at your most self actualized, mobile, and focused you are fundamentally incapable of changing what needs to be changed.
This is flat out wrong.
You’re missing the point, because your scale is off. I’m not trying to change the planet. I’m trying to change my city and neighborhood. I’m not trying to hold back the tides. I’m trying to teach the next generation the resiliency to survive a long road to something better.
Those goals are totally in my reach. I can’t save billions, but I can definitely save dozens. Perhaps hundreds over the next century. And if enough of us do that, collectively we CAN save billions.
We don’t have a century, we barely have decades, your scale is off, and honestly I don’t want to be right, it would be amazing to be wrong about this, but I feel like I know with absolute certainty that we’ve really just got a few decades max before the planet is unrecognizable in significant ways you are probably thinking won’t happen until centuries.
It’ll be too hot for roads, solar panels, and conventional air flight much sooner than people realize. The first springs that trees fail to reproduce will honestly probably not be noticed, it won’t happen everywhere, all at once, but eventually the lifecycle of much of the plant life will be so misaligned that you’ll see the failures of entire areas of plant life, but by that point too, you’ll probably be more aware of how silent it is outside except for cars.
We’re already at the point that localized heatwaves are killing a huge, like unimaginably huge amount of land animals, and ocean acidification is preventing shelled creatures from forming or maintaining shells, all while coral reefs bleach, and fish die off due to changes in oxygenation.
I wish this sobering reality wasn’t happening right now, but it is.
people who think there is unfortunately don’t understand how the universe works.
But you do? Right.
I am absolutely insinuating that yes, when it comes to the biosphere and climate change the situation is irreversible and catastrophic and the level of certainty I have is unshakeable.
This is what I think of when the optimists still think they can save humanity from its own greedy, short sighted, self-destructive nature as the world literally begins to burn by our own hands after a century of warning:
We’re monkeys that are just smart enough to develop technologies we are still too bone dead stupid to wield responsibly. Unless we accidentally create a benevolent, hyperintelligent AGI in our pursuit of yet another tool for manipulation and greed that saves us from our own nature, extremely unlikely, this only ends one way. We are who we are and the tools we’ve fashioned have become dangerous enough to crush us under the weight of their capability, without one iota of temperance aka “maybe growth/metastasis should stop being our only goal” by anyone in power.
And somewhat ironically, the “our species can still turn it around! live in hope!” types are the same ones deadset against revolution to force those living large off destroying the planet to stop in a physical way. Something something cake, something something eat it too. This ain’t a movie, for humanity to have a future, we’d need to starve this and the next couple generations and tear down the polluting supply chains to live with nature again (like all those humans that did live with nature until they were genocided so someone with a flag could steal the resources under their feet) and bring our species down from the overpopulation cancer we’ve become, but we won’t entertain the reality that we can’t support 8 billion people sustainably, we made a dire mistake attempting to, and the species needs to drastically, painfully downsize to have any future at all. So we will burn in the Earth’s fever until homeostasis is restored.
“It’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.”
-Albert Einstein
But by all means, keep trying to eat that cotton candy. I just hope it makes you happy doing it so it isn’t entirely without a point.
The fact that you think the only solution is an AI that you think will in any way work to make things better and not just be ignored is really telling of who you are and your tech absolutist nature.
I got raped by my mother as a kid and I don’t think I have the disdain for people like you do.
And tech isn’t necessarily a better option. Very clearly not helping this world right now and that search for god in a machine is as much the same as the people you look down upon for searching for god in the sky.
Things won’t stay the same forever. It doesn’t necessarily mean it is gonna get immediately better and it’s gonna happen (with lots of ups and downs) however reality happens, but fate is for those who don’t act.
And right now, what we have is the present.
Try living in it. It’s happening whether or not you hate it.And somewhat ironically, the “our species can still turn it around! live in hope!” types are the same ones deadset against revolution to force those living large off destroying the planet to stop in a physical way.
I feel like it’s the other way around. I feel like it’s my people who are out there getting arrested and making fossil fuel execs upgrade their security detail, and it’s the doomers who seem to complain endlessly about how much they hate the taste of shoe leather while somehow spending the most time down there.
Hey, before I accepted there was no hope, I was pushing for such things. I’m far from special in that. Inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist.
And if there were a serious movement that was advocating doing more than peacefully protesting a cow statue on Wall Street as the planet and species enemies laughed out their windows above them, I’ll be there with bells on, as I imagine most current doomers would.
But the sun will sooner set in the east, and doing such things alone is just suicide with extra steps and just as helpful.
Honestly everything you’re saying is effectively the most realistic understanding. I promise things are worse than most realize, and even worse, we’re past the tipping point and have been for a long time too.
Being positive is utterly meaningless, and even worse it’s harmful - don’t prioritize your mental health over the reality because the prevents the selective pressure for change.
You must understand this is really that critical. We’re already in for a far worse future than most understand, the question now is, well, do we do anything about it, and we won’t until pretty much everyone understands how serious this is, and freaks out the requisite amount for change.
