Evangelical leaders are certainly trying.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/is-empathy-a-sin-some-conservative-christians-argue-it-can-be
It's not innate...
Innately humans are just animals. It takes effort to get people on the same page that cooperating is usually best
But we stopped teaching kids that in school 20 years ago.
That's the sad truth about it. It's not that the right corrupted a generation, just that between them an the neoliberals, no one wanted to help them. They both wanted brain dead tribalism because that's what their mutual donors want
It honestly shouldn't be that hard for everyone to follow the string back to "no child left behind' but I remember pointing out this would happen 30 years ago, and I thought it was obvious back then too.
They're sure trying their best.
At least since the 60s/70s, it's not new.
First they made you fear someone, then they told you they lived down the street.
Debatable how deliberate that was, but it's certainly not not what they wanted...
Annoyed to report: successful and long standing communes/communities seem to all be highly selective, at least initially.
If you've got good examples that contradict this, please share.
Of course they are, they're full and doing great lol
I might be starting one soon with mostly family... It's a long shot, but I'd interview you then the time comes if you want. No promises
I feel like examples that prove it using some standard definitions are a prerequisite to that conversation.
Without standard definitions such as selection method/criterium and controlling for variables such as external factors your basically asking me to refute apples with oranges.
It's by design.
The spread of the superhero (Übermenschen) to ubiquity in pop culture, especially Hollywood, the punishing and assumption of evil within destitute people, the indoctrination of children (pledge of allegiance et al), the selective curricula that largely keep the general education from showing the populace of the US that their country is more closely related to a self styled African dictatorship than a modern social democracy. Usanians frequently utter "it's not personal, it's business". That is the hallmark of declining hegemon and roughly translates to "fuck you, got mine".
MAGA conservatives are literally unable to feel empathy. There have been scientific studies showing the connection between the brain structures that feel empathy and political leaning
It is our duty to encourage empathy in others, otherwise waves arms
Very, because it is politically advantageous.
Independence can be weaponized to make people fight each other.
So can collectivism be used to manipulate people to sacrifice "for the common good", like for example, forcing you to be in the military to "fight for our country" in foreign wars.
Me vs Us
Us vs Them
Both can be problematic.
"I hate insert group of people"
Ignore. Empathy is hot.
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.
OK instead of looking at it that way, think about how you feel about other people and what other people mean to you.
If someone new is born, does that mean you have a new resource, or a new competition for resources?
Back in the day, a new person meant a extra paid of hands, not just another mouth to feed.
If I died tomorrow, would you care in any material way? I'm not talking about your subjective, passing emotions, I'm talking about if you would feel my loss materially. Would anything be different about your life?
Yes.
It's been like that for a while (how did they get stomach chattle slavery, or the native genocide, or murdering brown people around the globe like Nam?), it's the reason the rest of the world is very wary of Americans even if they don't come in tanks and jets. Even Western Europeans are wary of Americans at this point, and they're basically the same community!
I think that Roman Catholicism and offshoots (not the message of Jesus, but the unholy creation of the empire) are partly to blame, primarily the disinfo of Paul, the fed, with his "faith without works" and "you'll be saved if you become a man worshipping polytheist!". Ideology is very malleable, so we can do something about it, but Nietzsche already pointed to the struggle like 200 years ago and a solution proposed by the locals with local ideological tools hasn't been found yet. Islam is the path forward for the West (and the rest of the world), but ofc you hate to hear it, even if it would offer an ideological framework based on the belief in God and objective morality (you gotta act right to save yourself, more or less Jesus' message for everyone who's actually read the Sermon of the Mount, for instance)... don't forget that that gut reaction has been fostered by the powers that be in the same way that it was for the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the natives, the Africans, and now the Mexicans and Chinese. Maybe there's something there, huh?
Replacing godheads and debating minute dogmatic differences between colonizer/authoritarian religions is not going to change things for the better. We've been doing that for millennia.
Emphasizing historical learning and perspectives from the breadth of the world as well as modern civic humanist principles in our communities sounds a lot more effective to me than replacing one fictitious narcissistic sky daddy with another. Go peddle your ancient brainrot elsewhere.
I really don't think "we" have, certainly the West hasn't (with even the term "sky daddy" showing the clear anthropomorphic nature of God in the Western man's mind, because amoral paganism/polytheism never left, it was just superficially transformed...). The vast majority of people won't hold themselves accountable when the pleasures of this world are too enticing if they don't feel like they'll be unavoidably held accountable by a higher power. With discernment, integrity, selflessness and a clear heart it's possible to do so to a certain/great extent, but these traits are secondary in the West, where overpowering violence, trickery and the capacity to acquire goods and satisfy yourself are paramount. But whatever, I guess we'll see.
I personally think people who do things because they fear retribution from sky daddy are the weakest of minds easily exploited by propaganda. Religious thought leads to malleable minds easily exploitable by religious leaders.
Religion is not the source of our social bounds and morality rather a parasite of control left over from ancient times. A vestigial organ that no longer has a use in the face of science but lives on in the body regardless.
Religion is not the source of our social bounds and morality rather a parasite of control left over from ancient times.
Not the person you're replying to, but I'm an atheist or an agnostic and even I'm not so sure about that.
When given the idea that there is no retribution or reprocussion for their actions, many people become nihilistic and act terribly.
I agree that it's weak to need a "sky daddy" to act properly, but many people are weak.
When given the idea that there is no retribution or reprocussion for their actions, many people become nihilistic and act terribly.
This is what you call a sociopath. If you need fear of eternal retribution in order to not do awful things, then you're just a piece of shit.
There is good scientific evidence that people do not think about the consequences of their actions before they commit to them.
Criminals don't think of the punishment they will receive by society but suddenly a far removed sky daddy will convince them not to rob a store? This is not how any of this works.
Morality is developed by our social bounds, otherwise every agnostic or atheist would be wildly out of control.
People are mentally weak because of religion, not despite it. It is the antithesis to critical thinking. The lack of critical thought is why our society is so easy to control.
I have seen this play out countless times in my life where people realize how fucked up their religion was once they have left it.
As their eyes open and they realize that they were being controlled by their religious leaders who abused them, they have to wrestle with the life that was stolen from them.
I am even to the point now where I no longer believe certain people need religion anymore. They need community and a sense of belonging and religious leaders like to highjack that basic need for their own selfish interests.
I am even to the point now where I no longer believe certain people need religion anymore. They need community and a sense of belonging and religious leaders like to highjack that basic need for their own selfish interests.
I think I agree with basically everything you've said here and especially this conclusion. The problem is that for many the only type of these things they can find is couched in religion. As a child-free atheist, I basically have no sense of belonging nor a community.
In addition, some people's only exposure to even the very concept of morality or ethics comes through religion.
You have a community here which is probably more real and fulfilling than going to a church service. Here we are having a discussion you would never get in a typical church. We are both thinking together, discussing, without any authority to tell us otherwise.
Our sense of right and wrong simply don't come from religion. It initially comes from our familial bounds but is reinforced through our many interactions with our social groups.
You can see this in gangsters that believe in God, but also will deal drugs and shoot each other. Their morality is determined by their social group, not their belief in religion.
As I said. I used to believe like you that religion is needed by some people, but I have begun to doubt this premise.
Islam is the path forward for the West (and the rest of the world)
... wut.
If anything, Atheism is the way forward.
Atheism is no way, it's intellectually lazy, and cowardly fence-sitting that leads to/reinforces hedonistic nihilism and moral relativism. It's just noticeably more internally consistent than Roman Catholicism and its trinitarian offshoots, but that's like never dating again because your middle school boyfriend was mean... Atheism is the way like suicide is, and mostly something fall into by default, or emotional pain, or the need to feel unwatched and unaccountable so one can do nonsense, not some sort of "transcendental wisdom" that Europe came up with, lol. Even for Nietzsche, this is a tragedy (because he's not a dummy!) without precedent, and something that needs to be corrected ASAP. If God is dead in the West, something needs to fill the God-shaped hole. Ideally, it's God, but evidently it hasn't been for ages (if some form of righteous monotheism even "trickled down" from Roman Catholicism to begin with!) and the results in their societies (amoral and selfish "get the bag" mentality, sexual depravity that's applauded and openly talked about and taken as virtue/lightly, people living by inertia and for pleasure because they have no purpose nor do they even care to think about it, the "loneliness epidemic", etc etc.) are very noticeable.
I think believing things without evidence is intellectually lazy. Atheism is the default position. I only believe in one less god than you.
What is the "evidence" behind moral stances?
For me it's at least partially based on mutual aid, something that we also see in nature. Helping other people helps me (and the entire species as a whole).
That said, I'm not sure why you're so convinced that morals need to be based on anything. I have empathy, that means I don't want harm to come to others. It's really that simple.
Of course you do, you were made that way, we all were! Religion/belief in a set of principles in an axiomatic, non debatable way just provide good guidance, a handrail in case your eyes get too big and, idk, you end up president of the free world and Raytheon wants to bribe you and you want a new yacht so you push for war in a far away land. Our nature can only go so far, for the rest of the time you will need a code and something to keep you accountable to it that's bigger and outside of yourself, and Abrahamic monotheism helps us do that.
You're right, only nonreligious people have done bad things. Do you really want to go down that route? Religion is responsible for more death and destruction than any other force in human history. Tell me about how it wasn't used to justify chattal slavery. Tell me how countless religious leaders have been systematically raping children since at least the middle ages.
Shitty people are shitty people.
Further, I actually find it kind of offensive what you're implying here about my morality.
Were the words of the prophets used to justify chattle slavery? How? Or do you mean they say "oh btw God wants us to murder and pillage over there so we're just gonna do that" regardless of any religious moral teaching already put in place? "Thou shall not kill" is pretty simple and straightforward, ngl. And raping kids when you're not even supposed to lust over women besides your wife? And we haven't even gotten to Jesus, nvm Muhammad! And the one European religious American (meaning they actually read their book and internalised it), cause there's always one just to prove to their community that there's a better way forward even if they don't listen to him, was judged and executed by his peers because he opposed all of that shit. He wasn't a rebranded pagan like what we've had in the West since the beginning of Roman Catholicism but an actual follower of Jesus, his name was John Brown!
Yes, shitty people are shitty people, and they'll use whatever excuse to justify themselves and trick others. But righteous monotheists/otherwise religious (?) wouldn't, they'd be shitty for a moment in lapse in judgement and then feel like shit cause they actually care about not being villains and about the destiny of their souls. Just because many so-called religious figures, specially in the West but worldwide ofc, committed atrocities and then blatantly lied about their beliefs doesn't mean the actual beliefs they didn't hold are invalid! That just means that once again, because you will judge people on their words (and the natives knew some of y'all are forked tongued individuals, so how don't you know that about your own community?!) and not their deeds ("by their fruits you will recognise them"), you got swindled. Do you believe Trump when he says he wants to help his fellow Americans or mentions God here and there? Lol
Were the words of the prophets used to justify chattle slavery? How?
Are you for real? I honestly stopped reading here. You REALLY need to read up on your own religion. Wow.
Yes. We have become a nation of de facto sovereign citizens. The average American thinks of nothing past the crummy job, the soul breaking commute, the mortgage, and another Ben Franklin for the third star on the fourth stripe on little Ayngylynn's tae kwon do white belt. Frank Freeway and Susie Soccermom are too wrapped up in themselves to care what kind of people we are.
Back in 1997, my sociology professor said the US would become the meanest society in history. And OMFFSM, I see it everywhere. There's no more sense of community or even common courtesy. Hurt the other guy or get hurt. Violence over small things will soon be commonplace and inescapable. We will all have to be armed, much as we may hate it. This is all by design.
OMFFSM
What is this acronym
Oh my fucking god, where their god is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Just as Conservatives have wanted. This isn't new. This was the default. Empathy was an exception started in the 60's.
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.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.