I've been saying America has to choose to be better... we have to decide this brutality isn't what we want. And that's a deeply unpopular stance because people want it to be easy, better messaging or the right candidate, and not wholesale cultural change because that's "hard"...
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...and wholesale cultural change is hard, but if there were an easier path, we would have taken it. Instead, we're taking the path where we learn the hard way why you don't elect felons who rape women (and girls), why you don't allow billionaires to exist...
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...why you don't worship wealth and guns and say empathy is for losers. We can be better than that — we have often been better than that. And I have an enduring faith that we are rediscovering how to be better than that because freedom is a pure idea. (to quote Nemik)🙂
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@susankayequinn I remember watching a documentary about Nazism indoctrination. One of the things drilled in was that empathy & compassion are weaknesses.
@PhoenixSerenity and you HAVE to drill that in, because as much as some folks like to insist that everyone is intrinsically terrible, we are not. People are intrinsically socially animals for whom cooperation is literally our superpower... and that relies on empathy and compassion to work. It takes a lot to destroy that in us.
@susankayequinn @PhoenixSerenity this! This is so important.
We - as a species - are the most cooperative beings in the world. Our ability to cooperate brought us to the moon and back.
I always think about the terrible amount of work armies put in new recruits to turn them into potential murderers. We don't want to hurt each other. Quite the opposite - we crave love and solidarity
@enbypirate @susankayequinn @PhoenixSerenity The big question is, how to address people to bring out these good values in them and make them band together to regain a fair balance. Our economic systems reward the ruthless, those who are in power now. Those who are cruel to gain profits, those who use their ellbows.
They do not reward fairness, a social attitude.
But we need to change these systemes urgently. #SolarPunk
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@susankayequinn @PhoenixSerenity Not everyone is intrinsicly bad, but some people are. Much as I think we'd agree that the best way to move forward is to build a system where that's not dominated by such a conclusion, too many aren't willing to accept that it has negative impacts.
@jhaas @PhoenixSerenity
we absolutely need to have ways to keep people who are broken and dangerous from harming others.
A really good way to do that is to NOT elect them to office, glorify them, excuse their behavior, etc... which is the world we have today.
"Some people are bad, let's put this Bad Guy in charge!" is like literally what passes for logic in a system built on the "people are inherently bad and must be controlled" philosophy.
I'm willing to try something new.
@susankayequinn I've been studying deeper into background & mindsets of women who volunteered to join fascists & become inhumane. I feel a need to try to understand how/why they became so evil & cruel towards other human beings.