Are they who are bad by through misinformation or under-education truly bad? Can they be damned with the same vigor as those who promulgate disinformation and have every reason to know better?
No— condemnation is a useful tool, but only sparingly. It does not make the world a kinder place, but a more embittered and distrustful one.
Just as you are convinced of this world’s end by way of the information air you breathe, the information air they breathe leads some to bigotry. The vast, vast majority of them don’t hate for hating’s sake— they want to do good. That is their aim. Everything they think they know points them toward a particular path to do good. When the information is flawed so are the actions. Garbage in, garbage out.
I think I’ve known enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is also good and would suffice.
The world will end someday, somehow. Nuclear war is a modern flavor, but there’s always been some imminent doom nigh upon the world. Life is fragile, fleeting, and I wonder if an obsession with eschatology is a means of distracting ourselves from a more personal existential crisis.
It’s a peculiar switch to flip in oneself to not fixate on the inevitable. Most problems we run into we solve by thinking about them, so we keep throwing thought on the fire. But there are some problems we cannot think ourselves out of, and in those, the bigger problem becomes our fixation with it. It distracts us; sucks joy away, and obscures the business of living from us. The problem is not the end— that’s a moment— it’s living in that end our whole lives through.
Perhaps the world ends in nuclear holocaust— so what? Anticipating it does nothing to prevent it, and can but make me sad or scared or bitter. Let us, as you say, build our house, bake our bread, and let our garden grow, but seek to do so unfettered by whatever the end might be.
And from our gardens, perhaps we’ll see the complicated panoply of humanity: flawed people who sacrifice for others, foolish people who nonetheless find love, timid hearts all, wanting to do good, and waiting for an invitation to be better.
I think you’ve been chasing the news dragon too long and too hard. Past a point, it doesn’t make you more informed, just… sadder. More given to misanthropy and despair.
We’re here, and we’re not all bad. Most of us want the same things: health, happiness, love, and camaraderie. We want those things for the people we care about— sometimes more than for ourselves.
The vast, vast majority of us are just people. We get caught up in things, and we forget it sometimes, but that’s a people thing too. And so is helping— when tragedy strikes, or those times we create tragedy, people are also the ones running toward the danger and uncertainty to help save those who cannot save themselves.
So long as we are anecdotal, that has not been my experience.
Judgments along observance lines, and people thinking those in some denominations are crazy or lesser, but I haven’t seen it drawn on those lines.
Generally the same kind of a thing you’ll find in any religion, or any fandom for that matter— those who are more observant or more dedicated may say the less observant/dedicated aren’t doing it right; the less observant/more casual may say the more observant/dedicated are crazy.
This is a fundamentally dseems like an argument than in your post, and more or less is just an argument against any sort of progress or innovation. “We got by without ____ for many years, so what benefit could they offer us?”
If communication is intended, then the speaker or writer has a responsibility to make an effort toward being accurately understood. That effort involves using forms, formats, and punctuation that is old and well established, as well as more novel elements of them.
They also say to do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. They say lots of things, many of them contradictory.
I think your advice of intentionally setting aside time is wise, though. I believe that too often we take for granted that things will just happen, and also overestimate the chilling effect of “not being spontaneous”.
It’s the internet. A truly gobsmacking number of people can’t.
We’re riding around in a machine that runs on outrage, and we’re as susceptible to conditioning as any creature. It’s unsurprising to me, particularly as I empathise with the urge to keep being wary and upset.
Ignoring entirely that it’s a tired gag already. I would wager a sizeable amount of the pushback is from people who are just tired of seeing these posts still clustering about their feeds.
When in his almost eighty years on this planet has he ever acted or been treated like a regular citizen? Regardless of what should be, and what should have been, he isn’t normal. He is, by luck, by practice, and by preternatural talent, always evading consequences.
Those he cannot evade, he deflects onto others. So this moment of extraordinary , if his pattern holds, will also be extraordinarily laid upon others. If the GOP doesn’t find a way to remove it for him, and he doesn’t win the presidency, they know they’re in line to be footing the bill. If he does win the presidency, he’ll either evade(saying the president cannot be beholden to such a punishment and serve) or deflect, and through internal graft or external selling of favor, we’ll all end up paying his bill.
This isn’t an argument to feel sorry for him, nor to soften the judgment against him. This is an argument to be wary that he is still the same person he was before the judgment, and is likely to be as conniving as he has always been, if not the more so if he feels cornered by it.
I would recouch the problem as this— does wielding accusations or innuendoes of gayness against the homophobic serve to, in a small way, perpetuate their homophobia?
All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.
That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…
… nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.
We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.