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Are we deprogramming empathy in the US?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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These values are cyclical in history. Mostly they persist until the system breaks down and then there is a surge of solidarity which sets things back on the path until people start thinking all their advantages came from their own ability and then the cycle repeats.
The early 1900's was fairly communal but the great war and the 1920's was filled with this sentiment of individuality until the depression crashed it out and then there was a split - a combo of Union efforts, reinvestment in government systems and extreme solidarity out of nessesity in the US/UK and the same time toxic individuality caused a canabalization of society in fascist areas of Europe. The World War created more extreme communal solidarity. In the areas where there was union resistance and communal solidarity legislation to keep businesses in check was installed and that gave way to pushback from business interest. As solidarity continued there was more general prosperity and you started seeing marginalized communities start to speak up. Racial communities, disability communities, queer communities - those who had been denied the comfort everyone else was taking for granted popped up and fought like hell for empathy and some made bigger wins than others...but then you start seeing the push back. Austerity gospel via Regan and Thatcher "there is no society just individuals and families" and all those safeguards and solidarity that were put in place to solve the crash of the 30's started to be undone and slandered as "too much overreach".
Looking at the UK if you go back even further you see this cycle repeat work backwards and you see it. Victorian workhouse systems replacing the welfare state and then being discarded as cruel. The Georgian fight for the poor law and charity and the industrial revolution's runaway excess of the rich that fed people into the meat grinder of labour and erroded poor law to force compliance.
Empathy's time will come again but apparently we need to be reminded by virtue of horror what the cost of this kind of inviduality is.