this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
78 points (100.0% liked)
Chat
7498 readers
4 users here now
Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's your justifcation for dismissing and avoiding them.
In truth, nothing is just hate.
Hate and resentment don't just happen in a vacuum. They come from fear and insecurity.
But it's easier to dismiss, than acknowledge their humanity, empathize and work with them on their concerns.
And what is that fear and insecurity based on? Certainly not reality.
The fear and insecurity is based on reality, in that it often stems from massive inequalities and injustices. The problem is that it's directed at the wrong people.
For example, around where I live, a lot of conservative beliefs are centred around a fear of immigrants, and it's along the lines of "there's not enough housing for the people already here, so we should stop letting other people in". The lack of housing in this area is genuinely at crisis point, and the fear and insecurity arising from that is very much based on something real.
Where the right and the left differ is on who they blame for this. Those with conservative beliefs blame their non-English neighbours. Those with more progressive beliefs blame government decisions that have resulted in too little house building and too many wealthy people buying houses not to live in, but to visit for two weeks a year or to let out on AirBNB.
And which of those two views is based on reality?
I think people can have multiple views in their head at once. Since I come from the sciences it reminds me of the quantum physics analogy. In quantum theory you make a state concrete by projecting the state onto a representation. There are many choices each a different way of measuring the system or understanding the dynamics. Some are more useful and less confusing then others when trying to answer a specific question but they are all valid. Where you get to human issues is what conclusions you try to draw based on your analysis of course and that is open for debate.
Rejecting someone else's reality is an important skill for establishing boundaries, but it's also critical to remember that it's still real to them.
While this is, by most measures, objectively the best era to live in for humanity, the orphan grinding machines are still grinding along. There's plenty to fear.
There's certainly plenty to fear but none the stuff those people choose to fear because of their wilful ingnorance is actually real..