2d ago

Protestation

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/35986695

184 comments

We live in a religious society that promotes a culture of bigotry. Does this mean we shouldn’t blame bigots?
We live in a patriarchal society that doesn’t take violence against women seriously. Does this mean that wife beaters aren’t to blame?
We live in a capitalist society that promotes selfishness and greed. Does this mean we shouldn’t blame selfish people? (Which is most of them.)
We live in a racist society… etc.
You are responsible for your actions and your beliefs. Step one to improving our society is accepting the reality that most humans have a poor (nearly non-existent) relationship with morality. They’re easily swayed by fallacious arguments because they are irrational and stupid. These are empirical facts about human beings that we ignore (with memes like this) at our own peril.
- Blaming individuals is ok of course, but after we’re done we should look what situation gave their lacking personalities power to have any individual impact upon our society. And change that. The blaming of actors is one thing, but there are shitty scripts, too, you know?
- blame is a nearly useless concept
  How about we start fixing the problems instead of pointing fingers
  
  Yes, let’s fix the problem of men beating women by not blaming anyone for beating women. Brilliant plan.
- We should blame religion, patriarchy, racism and capitalism.
  
  Those are perpetuated by the stupidity and gullibility described above.
  
  so what exactly is your solution, magically making people not be gullible?
  you're just perpetuating the idea that there's nothing to be done, you're saying these things so you don't have to think about the uncomfortable reality that things are as they are for a reason, that we can and should be taking action to change the systems that promote misery.
  
  Gullible to believe that we can‘t change anything? Who told you that? Capitalists!
  
  And this right here folks is why nothing will ever change. Because phantasmagorical ideological abstractions get blamed instead of actual features of reality, such as psychopathy, ignorance, greed, selfishness, and so on.
  
  So how have things changed?
  
  Moral progress! It takes a long, long time to convince average people to accept moral claims, such as the badness of slavery. There’s a kind of tipping point when normative facts are FINALLY absorbed into the culture and propagated through non-intellectual means (such as media and social pressure).
  Democracy is actually the best vehicle for moral progress in that respect, as democratic scholars have been pointing out for the last century or so.
  
  Democracy is great. We should really aim for it, instead of giving political power to the wealthy.
- "it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
  
  How dare you say something that requires self-reflection in a meme thread made for ideological-purity testing.
  
  How dare you say something that requires self-reflection in a meme thread made by MAGA-style ideological-purity-testing imbeciles.

184 comments