I channel the despair, anger and misery into working on solutions to help marginalized peoples. I don't have all the answers to the world's problems, and I can't solve it all, but I can show the people who might have the answers that there is someone in their corner who supports them in their efforts. Even if those people haven't been born yet, demonstrating the power of empathy and collaboration sets them up to choose constructive paths. If I give up on them, then it becomes much easier and more likely that they will choose the same anti-social self-interested motives that are destroying us all. But, if they are going to be able to make that choice at all, they need to be in a position where they aren't in survival mode all the time.
We're all just organisms who exist for a brief flash of time on a galactic scale, ultimately this is all meaningless. But as someone who identifies as a bit of an existentialist, I make my meaning. You can too.
It also enables me to leave the weed for wind-down time, mostly. Depends on how badly my health is doing, and it's pretty variable.
It's a meme designed to express dissatisfaction with income equality and the desire to fix it. What isn't clear to me is what qualifies as "rich". Because a US based entry-level fast food worker is at the 50th percentile of richest people in the world by income, after accounting for cost of living and other regional inequality.
It's also pretty clear from studies that everyone in the top 30% of the richest in the world will need to give up a lot of our privileges if we're going to address climate change, and I don't think people realise how rich they actually are. https://wid.world/income-comparator/ uses some of the latest research to help you find out, it's definitely worth a look.
How is it victim blaming to try to define the scope? Most of the demographic who visit lemmy wouldn't consider fast food workers to be rich, and I certainly don't, but by income they are literally at the halfway point globally. To the billions of people who are below even the 25th percentile, they may well consider a US fast food worker rich. The extreme poverty that exists in this world is a very well hidden atrocity, but the perspectives of those people still matter to me and still should be taken into account.
I'm using the original definition of the word meme: "a unit of cultural information spread by imitation". Meme as a word doesn't imply that it's a comedic image macro on the internet, but I appreciate that the more modern slang usage might have made that confusing for you.
To an extent, it's completely understandable. To have a significant proportion of the richest people in the world struggle to pay all their bills or afford medical care is a really hard concept to reconcile. And if you're someone who has never been exposed to a sizable group of people who don't have a reliable source of clean water or the most basic of staple foods, it's very easy to not realise how privileged you might be - even if you're really genuinely struggling compared to everyone around you.
To me it highlights that the problem is much deeper than wealth inequality, even though that's a huge symptom. But that's another topic altogether.
Thanks for understanding where I was coming from though!
I just think a lot of the people who are keen for "eat the rich", especially in its more violent forms, may not realise they're on the menu themselves when the issue is looked at from a global all-of-humanity perspective. And, I encourage people to really think about who and what is included or excluded in the definitions of "rich", what level of variation is acceptable to them, and what a sustainable living situation even looks like for the world's population if we had total equality. They're all very hard questions that I don't have an answer to either.
I have now been banned from cat@lemmy.world :( I haven't attempted to post or comment today anywhere except now. I've only liked posts today, so that narrows down the actions required to trigger the problem. I liked 4 posts over the last 24 hours in that community.
Hope that helps someone narrow down replication steps for the problem.
A Texas appeals court has thrown out a five-year prison sentence for Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who was sentenced for trying to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election that was rejected....
Now, however, 11,279 coordinates obtained by WIRED show not only a flood of traffic to Epstein’s island property—nearly a decade after his conviction as a sex offender—but also point to as many as 166 locations throughout the US where Near Intelligence infers that visitors to Little St. James likely lived and worked. The...
No documented leadership hierarchy or organisation structure when there's more than maybe 10 people working there. If you have to waste your time fighting out who everyone is and you can't do it in a single meeting where everyone can introduce themselves, then the place is too big to not document roles and responsibilities officially. It leads to closed circles of people who hold the necessary historical knowledge to get anything done.
Spoken like someone who is certain that they won't be the first to suffer and die.
Accelerationism leads to a bunch of good people dying, when we need all hands on deck to fix this broken mess. Especially the people who have the most experience with making something work from almost nothing, and experience in being part of a community. Accelerationism also only keeps around those who are willing to exploit others to get ahead. And then humanity starts the next dark age with neo-feudal warlords and the people who survived as their pawns.
Humans don't even have collectively long enough memory to not repeat the evils of the Holocaust within living memory of its victims, let alone maintain any theoretical level of post-collapse enlightenment. Good thing I'll be one of the first to die!
Good people are indeed dying now, which begs the question of why we would double down on it with accelerationism in the hope that the remaining humans have a change of heart somewhere along the way. That's the stuff of movie plot lines, not reality.
Some form of radical change is necessary, definitely. But doing more of the current system isn't going to lead to better outcomes. It leads to the same outcome, just faster.
What else do we have? There have been multiple revolutions and regime changes in human history of varying success and violence. We could learn from some of those what makes a revolution more helpful or harmful and attempt to replicate that. It's worth a shot before we just accept the sacrifice of society's most vulnerable in the hopes it somehow increases empathy among those who were always fine with those people suffering.
I don't consider a TV producer insulting a (obviously terrible) politician to be news, but I do enjoy this particular insult. It's nicely crafted. It's a pity he continues to use Twitter.
For sure, but insults are just (nicely crafted in this case) words, and unless the insulter is in a certain position, they ultimately don't affect much. It's not like Simon's statement is going to change Baltimore policy or shipping or things for the citizens, or Greene's actions. And it's not like Greene will be able to make funding decisions about Baltimore or declare war on the city.
Like, I enjoy some dramatic shit-slinging, but I wish "news" were more about objective things happening than someone expressing an opinion on social media that doesn't have any obvious real consequences for anyone.
I finally gave in and watched it after multiple independent recommendations from people who had strong educated opinions on quality nuanced literature and media. The last series sort of declined a bit, but overall I was in no way disappointed. It was exceptionally well done, and importantly for me, not too watered down with tired tropes, stereotyped single dimensional characters, painfully predictable plots and neatly tidied moral threads.
I mean, there were definitely some, but, it's TV. It holds up extremely well even with age.
Go with the standard politician non-answer: "to spend more time with family". I have no idea if German politicians give the same stock response though!
The world's population is getting significantly sicker and we're blaming the victims for "lifestyle diseases" as a way of dismissing the problem. But research needs money and time, so there will always be better and stronger evidence for money-making remedies instead of the slow and complex research into why people are increasingly experiencing disease.
We're hurting ourselves, and each other, and because disabled people are excluded from huge parts of society, we're also covering up the evidence. It's only when we're wounded that the reality is clear, but by then it's too late - you're just written off as someone who made bad choices.
My feed is filled with bad news, which is my fault for using the fediverse as a news feed, but it made me wonder: Which organisations, groups or individual people in the world are doing the most good for our world? I'm particularly interested in those who manage to do good on a larger impact scale (quantity or quality), but if...
Ehhhh, I'm going to have to disagree on this. She's obviously better than her ex-husband, but when you have that much money, the amount of interest/dividends it generates would likely offset her tax-deductible donations.
Also, if she has US$36.2 billion and has donated US$3.8 billion in 9 months, that would be like someone who has $100,000 donating $10500. Except you can't generate much money from interest on $100,000. The average person donating 10.5% of their assets is praise-worthy, but there are millions of people who do that without CNN articles praising their philanthropy.
I'm looking for the people who are really helping, not dodging taxes and generating publicity for themselves.
It wasn't actually to help me feel better, I was hoping to offset some of the doom that is very widely covered by providing some much-needed attention for the people who are putting in real effort. I also hoped to learn about new people who I could support, because they don't receive coverage from their public relations spokespeople putting out media releases that are pasted into articles by journalists.
Criticism of your suggestion is not an attack on you. I'm sorry that you felt it necessary to try to insult me for expressing a difference of opinion, and I hope your day improves.
Oh it's less a fixation and more an interest in scale of impact. There's a lot of people out there who talk a big game but when you look at the results, they're clearly underwhelming. Edit: or worse, they're self-serving publicity not designed at all to do good. The blood donor in this thread is a great example of oversized impact, but that's difficult to replicate. It does give good food for thought in terms of things to look for that could use more support.
The multidimensionality is why I didn't provide any opening suggestions; I didn't want to guide the answers. This was so that I might find some dimensions I had not previously considered, and I was curious about what metrics others use to measure "good" in the first place. Unfortunately Elon Musk as always proved to be a topic that generates more opinions.
Thanks for the support though. Honestly, there are a huge number of good choices already, more than I could ever dedicate enough to. I'm hopeful there are some gems out there that have potential to really offset some the vast quantity of suffering the world has to offer, this was just a small experiment in looking outside my own bubble of experience for them.
How to deal with living in a world with no future without being high 24/7?
Been high nonstop for years. I realize it’s bad for my health. But at least being high feels good....
What does 'eat the rich' mean to you?
So I really am the cancer on this platform
Noticed I got banned by the admins from lemmy.world shower thoughts yesterday. The admins have an interesting reason though....
Crystal Mason: Texas woman sentenced to five years over voting error acquitted (www.theguardian.com)
A Texas appeals court has thrown out a five-year prison sentence for Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who was sentenced for trying to cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election that was rejected....
Jeffrey Epstein's Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker (www.wired.com)
Now, however, 11,279 coordinates obtained by WIRED show not only a flood of traffic to Epstein’s island property—nearly a decade after his conviction as a sex offender—but also point to as many as 166 locations throughout the US where Near Intelligence infers that visitors to Little St. James likely lived and worked. The...
What gives away that your new workplace is cliquey?
We compared the finances of 30-year-olds now, to 30-year-olds 30 years ago (www.abc.net.au)
I’m sure this whole article comes as a shock to nobody, but it’s nice to see it recognised like this.
‘The Wire’ Creator David Simon Rips Into Baltimore Bridge Conspiracists, Calls Marjorie Taylor Greene A “Complete Submoronic Pratfall Of A Human Being’ (deadline.com)
Help me formulate the dullest response to colleagues when they goad me into telling them why I quit
This happens in Germany....
What do you see that you wish others saw?
Hey (lemmy.world)
Bandit
Who is doing the most good in the world, and how?
My feed is filled with bad news, which is my fault for using the fediverse as a news feed, but it made me wonder: Which organisations, groups or individual people in the world are doing the most good for our world? I'm particularly interested in those who manage to do good on a larger impact scale (quantity or quality), but if...
Winter curled on my lap (i.imgur.com)
Playground bullies do prosper – and go on to earn more in middle age (www.theguardian.com)
Five-decade UK study finds that aggression at school leads to better-paying jobs, while those with emotional instability went on to earn less...