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I don't want a purge where people go around killing and thieving without legal consequences. I'm against violence and destruction. People should only be helpful and constructive towards other people. Period.
We're in 2021 though so these positions make you an evil bigot in modern times. It's rather bizarre.
I have a pet theory that a lot of the failures of democracy that we've seen in the past few decades are less a result of democracy not being a good model of government, but rather we're in the midst of a crisis of information.
I don't think it coincidental that in the developed world at least, the most extreme and resurgent examples of fascism that we've seen originate specifically in Anglophone countries with large tabloid "news" sectors who are making it impossible to conduct democratic government by essentially poisoning the well of information with... *sigh*... fake news. Regardless of how much I've come to hate that term you can source a lot of the problems with 2016, Brexit, Australia's perpetually corrupt government, Canada's shennanigans to the relationship the involved countries have with their news sectors - with the notable exception of New Zealand, which still has a much more moderated media sector where news is generally required to be news.
The other factor is social media and how media illiterate people are when it comes to separating fact from fiction and being led down rabbitholes of radicalization. We simply haven't actualized the regulatory framework to ensure good fact checking the way many countries have with their more traditional media sectors.
I am optimistic that civilization of some sort will survive and exceed ours in terms of technological and social development. I am not optimistic that many of our present political structures will survive that transition; the take I'd side with is that future generations will look back at this period similarly to the Crisis of the Third Century or the Late Middle Ages, or the Reformation. A period of intense upheaval and transition during which an increasingly interlinked society clarified some of its inherent contradictions.
Fuck Hegel.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
Basically the plan of FOX news turning working class people against each other is working way too well. And destroying faith in our institutions is also having a major negative impact.
I do think that civilization will undergo massive changes in the next few decades. I am pessimistic about the short term future, but reasonably optimistic about the long term future. I am sure I'll be around to see the decline - I hope I live long enough to see the resurgence afterwards.
Why on Earth would you ever think I have the least bit of desire to "convert" anyone? I'm perfectly satisfied ensuring they face public scorn and ridicule the moment they reveal themselves, tarnishing their reputation. Same reason I'm not interested in "converting" wifebeaters, and convincing them that smacking their wife around is "wrong"; we don't need their agreement, we just need to ensure they face the consequences (legal, in that case) for their abusive conduct.
Plus, there's a pretty basic mantra when it comes to issues like hatred and bigotry; you can't reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into. Bigotry and hate are, by definition, irrational and unreasonable. There is no talking them out of it. The best we can do is to identify them publicly so that everyone knows to keep them at a social distance.
It's really fuckin' weird when they start asking me why I don't want to be friends with the Klan members sporting swastika tattoos and chanting "WHITE POWER" all the time. Why should I invest a massive effort into trying to "convert" those who don't want to be converted and will resist it every step of the way? It's a waste of my time and effort.
You don't try and convince a rattlesnake not to bite you. You just note where the snake is coiled up and don't go near the snake. Unless you're going in prepped to grab the snake and make sure it's put somewhere it's not a threat to anyone again.
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Also how a solid 80% of Fight Club fans totally miss the point of the movie and book.
If you think it's about how awesome fight clubs are and how awesome Tyler Durden is and how we gotta fight back against the man? Yeah, you're the butt of the joke that Fight Club was telling, and you somehow don't get that it's mocking you.
Last edited by Endus; 2021-07-06 at 08:40 PM.
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That was a big chunk of Plato's criticism of democracy.
Hell, he even nailed the bit with growing wealth gap being the root trigger for the gradual destabilization process.
The Enlightenment idea that the masses when provided with sufficient education and information (free speech&press) will act akin to the Plato's Philosopher King was the modern innovation which would have suggested that Plato was wrong.
Unfortunately now we are experiencing that crisis of information /education you spoke of that is proving that under the right conditions... Plato wasn't wrong.
Now whether the people creating those conditions (like everyone who works at Fox or the Murdochs or whatnot) are aware or not of the monster they are unleashing is a different question.
Except that's not true that the world is "destabilizing" in any significant way. There's been a slight uptick in violence and crime caused by recent events but violence is still much lower than historical rates, and we've been making rapid progress in terms of Covid and the pandemic. That misperception is caused by selective media coverage, more coverage of bad things, and there's a lot of bored first worlders who overdramatize everything.
This. The people who actually have power to enact immediate change are entirely cognizant of the costs of their actions.
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The Gulf of Mexico is literally on fire and the most powerful country in the world elected a reality television star to its highest office.
If that doesn't scream "mandate of heaven is long gone" I don't know what does, rofl.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
The game's not up, yet. Western democracies are ramping up efforts to fight the desinformation battle. And the younger generation will be better equipped to deal with it. The problem is mass availability of information and a lack of a proper filter. This is the modern illiteracy that needs to be dealt with. Children need to learn how to handle virtually unlimited information. Just like people had to learn how to decipher information from a book instead of having someone tell you a story (and alter it unconsciously or consciously to deceive you) back in the 15th century.
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Trump destabilised the world. In a different dimension with a NK leader that was grumpy because his shit that morning felt like rocks, he'd have triggered a nuclear war. A war that NATO would not have joined, because he basically pissed every ally off the US ever had. In that dimension, the US would be smoking ruins right now. The EU is destabilised to some degree because of Brexit, too.
This is not overdramatisation, this is the real world that you apparently refuse to see.
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Eh, the problem is not even fake news as such. I mean, it's there, but even without it, there's just too much information. Most people are not willing (and some would argue not able) to make the effort to assimilate that much information into a coherent and complex picture of the world. This refusal generates demand for simplistic views and this is served by... fake news, I guess.
Selective media coverage?
You mean how the media chose to cover a lynch mob raiding Congress seeking to overthrow a democratically elected government and interrupt the peaceful transition of power on which the survival of our democracy depends on instead of covering what exactly?
Media sensationalism is one thing...
...this was something else.
Reading your stubborn inanities is actually taxing.
It hasn't been helped by media outlets, starting with Fox (on the TV at least) who recognise that getting people worked up and playing to their worst fears is very good for ratings, or in the online sphere, good for engagement and clicks. It isn't necessarily fake news in this case, but spin on actual events designed to create a particular emotional response. There seemed to be an acceleration of this during the Trump years, with more left leaning outlets playing the Fox game (before anyone jumps on my back, I am not saying Trump is good or anything, just an observation on reporting) and from what I gather, doing very well out of it. So instead of watching the news and getting a sense of what is going on in the world, you get different tribes getting a different version of reality, with clear incentives to keep pushing in that direction.
In the UK we have a new "news" channel starting called GB News, very much Fox inspired. The UK TV news has never been as blatantly partisan as the US TV news, this is a response to a problem that didn't exist, the UK has no version of CNN, Channel 4 news has a slight left of centre bias, but it is marginal and has a clear focus on reporting the news as opposed to being activists. They even have a segment called woke watch, not to derail, that term means different things to different people, and I certainly have issues with what some might call woke ideology and its creeping influence on certain cultural institutions, however this is not the answer to it, and makes it seem much worse than it actually is, this is a road that the UK news media didn't and don't need to go down.
None of this is necessarily "fake", it depends on what you define fake news as (and I think there is a debate to be had about that, blatant lies vs heavy editorialising), often reporting on actual events, but spinning it in such a way as to elicit a particular emotional response, that ends up being deeply divisive.