![[META] Never change, lemmy.ml](https://i.imgur.com/1pxAyiq.jpg){kind=link}
- cross-posted to:
- meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
For context: The thread was about why people hate Hexbear and Lemmygrad instances
For context: The thread was about why people hate Hexbear and Lemmygrad instances
Having a mentality of sovereignty won’t change much, if only because it doesn’t fix many of the inherent problems with a global human society. A big downside to capitalism and free markets are mortal limitations. We can’t predict the future or understand the full effects of our actions. We estimate based what information we have, but we can often be wrong even if we have good intentions. The externalities of our actions are basically impossible to calculate, and even when we discover them, we possess the ability to suspend our empathy and ignore potential harms.
I’m also not a fan of the assumption that we can’t tell others what to do until we put our own lives in order. Sometimes getting others to do things is essential to changing your own life and improving your own situation. On a personal level, you can set boundaries with toxic people in your life or convince others to leave you alone. On a large scale, you can overthrow an oppressive system or change laws that prevent you from living well. Telling others what they should do is not mutually exclusive to making changes in your own life.
Sovereignty is great and all, but even if widely respected by most, some will not, and those that do must step in to protect it. The way I view it, laws don’t exist for ethically behaving people, they exist because there will always be unethical people, and there’s no way to ensure that any ethical person will always be ethical.
The fundamental reality is that someone who wants to do good can participate in an evil system. Unregulated global capitalism uses child slaves and keeps people in poverty, all while pumping substances into the environment that harm everyone. You might respect the sovereignty of everyone you meet, but anything you buy can be made by manufacturers who don’t respect the sovereignty of people you’ll never meet.
Capitalism is too big for its problems to be solved by individual behaviors without changing our current system. We must change it to actually make a system that respect everyone’s anything, be it sovereignty, human rights, or the ability to live.
Not too big. You just have to have effective individual behaviors. They spread, because they work. Capitalism is currently a leading way of life because it is effective both for individuals and for collectives, at least from a raw, short-term power standpoint.
But that standpoint is a valid and important one. There’s no need to get rid of capitalism, there’s a need to adopt better ideologies, live by them, and gain by them. …which is what I do.
The point of sovereignty isn’t ‘you can’t stop other people from being bad.’ It’s that that kind of thinking (though necessary in a pinch) keeps you from addressing the ways you’re relinquishing power to the existing system on an ongoing basis.
In the end, though, I’m just making conversation, and we’ll both live as we wish. In some senses, we all live by sovereignty anyways. It’s just more effective when you realize it.
Effective individual behaviors rely on empathy and denying short term gratification for long term prudence. Empathy breaks down on large scales for most people, and denying short term exploitation to build a better world is not something even the best of us can reliably do. Good vibes aren’t useless, but they are not enough to make necessary changes.
As far as relinquishing power goes, my eyes are wide open. It’s necessary in theory, but I don’t respect laws that prevent people from living well. I respect the enforcement, but only because I must work to avoid it. I recognize that the only way to stop some bad things is violence, and that all rights must be protected by someone. It’s undeniable that violence, although often avoidable, is necessary to exist. Human made laws and concepts without enforcement will be trampled on and basically don’t matter.
Oh, I’m not saying violence isn’t necessary at times.
But violence is the outflow of the underlying conflict - and that conflict can often be resolved, or won at an earlier stage.
I’m also not saying something stupid like ‘if only people worked together, things would just be better!’ You can never rely on someone, particularly not the world at large, to never do the bad thing (whatever that is).
But the entire issue of empathy breaking down on larger scales is an individual abd collective psychologocal issue, and is precisely the area I’m leveraging.
However, this can’t be leveraged in the direct sense (show more pictures of dead puppies, and say ‘vote for me, I’ll end puppy mills!’ really only goes so far, with an empathically exhausted populace that can’t scale up their presence because they’ve already been emotionally squeezed dry. The actual emotions themselves need to be felt and understood.
The point of power that people don’t generally notice that they are ceding isn’t material. It’s more fundamentally based in their psychology and motives. By the time their consideration gets to a massive scale, they’ve emotionally checked out - and I don’t blame them, there’s a lot to consider, and groups that are linked together with the practical/emotional bond (i.e., that have a ‘real’ bond between the individual and culture) have historically also been very inflexible - though very embued with vitality.
That inflexibility isn’t fundamentally necessary, even though it’s even present in our current ‘culture’, where people are often bound to the culture at large by A) lying to themselves, ‘and if enough people just got together…’ blah blah blah, or B) accepting a lie and ‘facing reality’ saying you have to forego the empathic bond on a large scale.
That said, building a culture where there’s a flexible, practical bond flush with emotive empathy and the energy that comes from that is difficult. But much of cultural knowledge is passed on not by empathy, but by the presence of empathy when a power conflict is won or lost.
At the very least, I have a tool that gives me a lot of control in my own life, and over others who would cause conflicts with me, often enough without direct conflict. But it’s more than a tool to win, it’s a way of re-linking the empathetic mind to others. I think I’ve got the seed of a new culture. …but I’m ok with the fallback of ‘I have a thing that benefits me and me alone,’ though to me that’s clearly the less valuable circumstance.
I suppose that if the world is right, then my mind will change. …and if I am right, the world will change.