How do Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux measure this “need for chaos"? They conducted six surveys, four in the United States, in which they interviewed 5157 participants, and two in Denmark, with 1336. They identified those who are “drawn to chaos” through their affirmative responses to the following statements:
This list of questions is nigh upon useless for determining who is a nihilist. Think about the type of people who might identify with the following statements:
I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over.
Fans of The Walking Dead, The 100, the Fallout video game series, etc have all probably fantasized about a disaster where they are one of the few survivors. I seem to recall that Discovery even had a reality show based around this premise.
I think society should be burned to the ground.
I think this every time I see a news article about a policeman gunning down a minority, a mass shooting, or whenever Donald Trump tweets. I am not actually going to commit acts of arson just because I'm pissed off at the world.
When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking “just let them all burn.”
I think most of our posters in D&D have had this thought recently. In the US, Republicans are actively trying to break our government. Globally, various conservative and fascist movements are doing the same. And many times the parties we think that should represent us, such as the Democrats, fail to do so. Where's my fucking impeachment, Pelosi. Just because I want us to redo our political system so we get away from two-party and first past the post doesn't make me a nihilist. In fact, it's quite the opposite, which I will discuss below.
We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.
This is the same as the previous statement, just worded differently.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
This one is funny, because I do think you're a nihilist or at least have nihilistic tendencies if you identify with this statement. At the same time, I recognize that I and probably most if not all posters here do destroy beautiful things. Look at the video games we play. They are often violent affairs in which we may destroy a beautifully crafted set piece as part of some story. But, again, that doesn't make us a nihilist.
So, what is Nihilism? According to the dictionary, it is:
noun
the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.
I think most of the questions fail to correctly identify nihilism. Being a nihilist would be acting as someone that does whatever, because there are no underlying truths to guide them. This may involve destruction, but it doesn't have to do so. It certainly wouldn't involve rebuilding, because there would be no point to rebuilding. People who want to start over definitely aren't nihilists. For the most part, they are just normal people so frustrated with their inability to change the world around them that they feel the only way they would have a meaningful say in the world is if it was rebuilt from the ground up.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
Internet trolls are not nihilists. They are racists, sexist, homophobes that use nihilism as a cover for their true nature. Plus they’re cowards.
I believe there is no god. No afterlife. We’re a cosmic coincidence. The universe will one day decay into nothing where all things will ultimately be rendered meaningless.
So I’m squeezing as much enjoyment out of what I have as possible. I’ve had an adventure. I’m raising a family in a home. I’m trying to make everyone else’s lives around me as enjoyable as possible and helping when and where I can.
What’s the point of life if you can’t enjoy it make it better for everyone around you? Be one of those miserable assholes that hates themselves as much as others?
No thank you.
Even though you don't believe in a higher power, you still have a value system you believe in.
The idea of enjoying life and not wasting it is coincidental to nihilism.
Nihilism is a bad thing. It is the relief from moral conscience. I do not see the need to require a heightened level of proof that someone is nihilist, as it is not really a badge of honor and shouldn't be treated as such.
Nihilism, the way it applies to me, is the realization that nothing matters in the grand scale, that there is no plan, no fate, no rules imposed upon us.
Which means we are free to be as big pieces of shit, or as great altruists, as we want.
And if we want there to be justice, fairness, or anything else in the world, we will need to make it so.
Nihilism is not a bad thing, or a good thing, it just is whatever we make of it.
Technically nihilism has no inherent morals, so you wouldn’t actually be a nihilist if you had a moral system even if you had nihilistic tendencies (like I do). That’s why I prefer existentialism.
Though I suppose a nihilist could say that definitions are human social constructs and you can call yourself whatever you want cause it doesn’t matter.
Though if you insist on using a human socially agreed constructs to define yourself, then you can’t really be a nihilist and argue the point cause it doesn’t matter, can you?
Again, this is just arguing over the definition of words. Existentialists themselves couldn't agree on what existentialism meant. The whole point of labels is that we communicate something meaningful to each other about what we believe, and I strongly suspect that what most of us believe is that we have morals that we chose ourselves and that these are what is meaningful to us.
A large part of (philosophical) discussion is arguing over the definition of words. It's not just useful for meaningful communication, it is also necessary to build complex arguments. I can not provide you with an argument for nihilism being wrong if we do not agree about the definition of, or what we both mean by, nihilism. For that matter, I can't do that without agreement about the definition of "wrong" either, or "the".
I understand the desire to abandon the argument over definition to move to reaching meaningful agreement. But that move can just as easily obfuscate rather than illuminate communication, and lead to perceiving agreement that is not there.
For example, I do not believe I have "chosen" my morals or that their meaningfulness to me is relevant. And I also do not think that applies to most of us. I believe in the moral system that I do because I believe it to be true. I can't meaningfully have chosen some other system that I did not believe to be true, because my aim is to believe that which is true.
If we can’t move on from debating the definition of the word “nihilism” in the context of the OP, than could someone please suggest an alternative thread title so I can change it and we can move on to the actual topic of discussion?
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
Also existentialists don't agree on what existentialism means because it is a method of inquiry, not a belief system, and it only gives the starting point and nothing else. Obviously there is going to be disagreement over the application and results, just as there is for science.
That doesn't mean defining belief (systems) is meaningless.
Internet trolls are not nihilists. They are racists, sexist, homophobes that use nihilism as a cover for their true nature. Plus they’re cowards.
I believe there is no god. No afterlife. We’re a cosmic coincidence. The universe will one day decay into nothing where all things will ultimately be rendered meaningless.
So I’m squeezing as much enjoyment out of what I have as possible. I’ve had an adventure. I’m raising a family in a home. I’m trying to make everyone else’s lives around me as enjoyable as possible and helping when and where I can.
What’s the point of life if you can’t enjoy it make it better for everyone around you? Be one of those miserable assholes that hates themselves as much as others?
No thank you.
Even though you don't believe in a higher power, you still have a value system you believe in.
The idea of enjoying life and not wasting it is coincidental to nihilism.
Nihilism is a bad thing. It is the relief from moral conscience. I do not see the need to require a heightened level of proof that someone is nihilist, as it is not really a badge of honor and shouldn't be treated as such.
Nihilism, the way it applies to me, is the realization that nothing matters in the grand scale, that there is no plan, no fate, no rules imposed upon us.
Which means we are free to be as big pieces of shit, or as great altruists, as we want.
And if we want there to be justice, fairness, or anything else in the world, we will need to make it so.
Nihilism is not a bad thing, or a good thing, it just is whatever we make of it.
Technically nihilism has no inherent morals, so you wouldn’t actually be a nihilist if you had a moral system even if you had nihilistic tendencies (like I do). That’s why I prefer existentialism.
Though I suppose a nihilist could say that definitions are human social constructs and you can call yourself whatever you want cause it doesn’t matter.
Though if you insist on using a human socially agreed constructs to define yourself, then you can’t really be a nihilist and argue the point cause it doesn’t matter, can you?
Again, this is just arguing over the definition of words. Existentialists themselves couldn't agree on what existentialism meant. The whole point of labels is that we communicate something meaningful to each other about what we believe, and I strongly suspect that what most of us believe is that we have morals that we chose ourselves and that these are what is meaningful to us.
A large part of (philosophical) discussion is arguing over the definition of words. It's not just useful for meaningful communication, it is also necessary to build complex arguments. I can not provide you with an argument for nihilism being wrong if we do not agree about the definition of, or what we both mean by, nihilism. For that matter, I can't do that without agreement about the definition of "wrong" either, or "the".
I understand the desire to abandon the argument over definition to move to reaching meaningful agreement. But that move can just as easily obfuscate rather than illuminate communication, and lead to perceiving agreement that is not there.
For example, I do not believe I have "chosen" my morals or that their meaningfulness to me is relevant. And I also do not think that applies to most of us. I believe in the moral system that I do because I believe it to be true. I can't meaningfully have chosen some other system that I did not believe to be true, because my aim is to believe that which is true.
Okay this is exactly what I'm talking about, because we do not disagree, and yet you picked out a word and have drawn it out into a disagreement that does not exist. The sense in which I use the word choice is in no way different in intention than the way you use the word aim. In the attempt to clarify, we spontaneously generate disagreement where there is none.
I think the underlying risk factor that infects us all is less nihilism than a lack of hope.
Hopelessness. Pessimism that what we care about will never come to pass. Anger that this isn't the same for others we feel aren't as deserving. Those are attributes we all share as modern people.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
What the article is measuring is not nihilism as any decent philosopher or even psychiatrist might try to define or measure it. It's cruelty.
I'm coming to the conclusion that for a significant portion of the population, and I'm not sure how much of it (more than I hope, less than I fear...I hope), their personal Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid has a level below "physiological survival" and that's "being cruel." Before even the interest of their own personal survival, a lot of people just want to watch others suffer. They don't want the world to burn to send it all to nothingness; they want people to burn and they want to laugh as others scream in agony. They would set aside food if they could hurt someone else. They see oppression in terms of taking away their most basic need to make others hurt. You see these farmers choosing to lose their farms over choosing not to be assholes to Hispanic people; you see Brexiters who would rather starve and die in the streets rather than not be racist at non-English.
And the thing is, in a rigidly hierarchical society, these people were kept perfectly content so long as they knew there were levels below them that they could oppress. Because they chose "hurting others" over their own well being, they were fine with being oppressed themselves so long as they could oppress others. The lord of the manor could have them whipped and driven off their lands, but then they'd beat their wives or scream insults at some foreigners and then they were fine and wouldn't fight their lot or revolt.
These "nihilists" are not a revolutionary force. They're heavily reactionary. They just want an Other or few that they can freely harass, hurt, and generally make miserable, and for that Other to be kept in its place so they can be targeted indefinitely without repercussion. That's why they don't lash out at power but always punch down; only after others are debased do they care about maybe improving themselves, but hurting others always comes first. Telling them not to be fucking assholes threatens them to the deepest core of their being. Plenty of white businessowners in the Deep South had productive endeavors so long as they were allowed to be racist, but as soon as desegregation occurred, they shut down their businesses and gave themselves over to penury, because like hell were they going to care about the higher things when the basest motivations were denied to them.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
I have vivid memories of daddy-long-legs from my youth. I liked 'em, but other small children had different reactions. Some freaked out, grossed out or even trying to kill them in their fear/disgust/whatever. And there was always at least one shithead kid who would try to pull all the legs off of them, leaving the poor little things immobile and condemned to slow starvation, and then would laugh at their pointless, wanton cruelty, and then would make fun of me when I was disgusted at the stupid petty meanness at it.
A lot of times they would pull the wings off of other insects too. Occasionally they would get pushback if it was a butterfly, and they'd have tantrums, but other than that they were allowed to be cruel, and usually eventually they would be allowed to be bullies too.
And that's really it for a lot of people. They could get away with hurting something that couldn't hurt them back, so they did.
Something I wonder is that if I'm correct about this, what the hell are we going to do about this? What can we do? Is this just an inbuilt thing, where 1% of the population is full sociopaths and another standard deviation or two are just assholes by nature? Can these little assholes get trained out of it?
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
Internet trolls are not nihilists. They are racists, sexist, homophobes that use nihilism as a cover for their true nature. Plus they’re cowards.
I believe there is no god. No afterlife. We’re a cosmic coincidence. The universe will one day decay into nothing where all things will ultimately be rendered meaningless.
So I’m squeezing as much enjoyment out of what I have as possible. I’ve had an adventure. I’m raising a family in a home. I’m trying to make everyone else’s lives around me as enjoyable as possible and helping when and where I can.
What’s the point of life if you can’t enjoy it make it better for everyone around you? Be one of those miserable assholes that hates themselves as much as others?
No thank you.
Even though you don't believe in a higher power, you still have a value system you believe in.
The idea of enjoying life and not wasting it is coincidental to nihilism.
Nihilism is a bad thing. It is the relief from moral conscience. I do not see the need to require a heightened level of proof that someone is nihilist, as it is not really a badge of honor and shouldn't be treated as such.
Nihilism, the way it applies to me, is the realization that nothing matters in the grand scale, that there is no plan, no fate, no rules imposed upon us.
Which means we are free to be as big pieces of shit, or as great altruists, as we want.
And if we want there to be justice, fairness, or anything else in the world, we will need to make it so.
Nihilism is not a bad thing, or a good thing, it just is whatever we make of it.
Technically nihilism has no inherent morals, so you wouldn’t actually be a nihilist if you had a moral system even if you had nihilistic tendencies (like I do). That’s why I prefer existentialism.
Though I suppose a nihilist could say that definitions are human social constructs and you can call yourself whatever you want cause it doesn’t matter.
Though if you insist on using a human socially agreed constructs to define yourself, then you can’t really be a nihilist and argue the point cause it doesn’t matter, can you?
Again, this is just arguing over the definition of words. Existentialists themselves couldn't agree on what existentialism meant. The whole point of labels is that we communicate something meaningful to each other about what we believe, and I strongly suspect that what most of us believe is that we have morals that we chose ourselves and that these are what is meaningful to us.
A large part of (philosophical) discussion is arguing over the definition of words. It's not just useful for meaningful communication, it is also necessary to build complex arguments. I can not provide you with an argument for nihilism being wrong if we do not agree about the definition of, or what we both mean by, nihilism. For that matter, I can't do that without agreement about the definition of "wrong" either, or "the".
I understand the desire to abandon the argument over definition to move to reaching meaningful agreement. But that move can just as easily obfuscate rather than illuminate communication, and lead to perceiving agreement that is not there.
For example, I do not believe I have "chosen" my morals or that their meaningfulness to me is relevant. And I also do not think that applies to most of us. I believe in the moral system that I do because I believe it to be true. I can't meaningfully have chosen some other system that I did not believe to be true, because my aim is to believe that which is true.
Okay this is exactly what I'm talking about, because we do not disagree, and yet you picked out a word and have drawn it out into a disagreement that does not exist. The sense in which I use the word choice is in no way different in intention than the way you use the word aim. In the attempt to clarify, we spontaneously generate disagreement where there is none.
But that's such an universal aim that it is just weird to call is choice. And, more importantly perhaps, that makes your statement so uninteresting that I don't understand what you are actually trying to do here.
I also suspect that most of us believe that what we believe is true. The interesting discussion is about what is true of "what we believe to be true", and I assumed that that is what everyone was talking about. There is very little point to arguing over whether one should, in an epistemic sense, believe that which is true.
I am not a nihilist because "what I believe to be true" is that there is an objective morality. Other people are nihilists because "what they believe to be true" is that there is no objective morality. Definitions are important in order to discuss whether there is an objective morality or not, because it prevents people from identifying as one side while arguing both.
I don't think this is anything to do with cruelty, other than the admission that many people are capable of being cruel and there is nothing you can do about it.
However, your comments about people being willing to reduce their own circumstances simply to punish others are false. It's a constructed view of history which never happened. People exploited others to build their own fortunes. The poor white middle class is not pushed DOWN by the existence of the patriarchy, it is pushed up. The patriarchy is what allows the oligarchs to take $100 from the pockets of the poorest, give $1 to the white man, and then say, "We are on the same team here, please stop those angry people killing me"
Take away that dollar and the working poor will scream for it back. They PRETEND to be willing to suffer for some grand dream of racism. They are not willing.
"That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
If we can’t move on from debating the definition of the word “nihilism” in the context of the OP, than could someone please suggest an alternative thread title so I can change it and we can move on to the actual topic of discussion?
Well the article calls it political nihilism, which I think is already clearer. The issue here is people that see politics, or the political system as it is, as meaningless. It's not there is no meaning to the world, it's that there is no point in engaging with the political system. The system does not achieve good or even desired goals of voters, it just functions as a way to keep some people paid and occupy the public.
Given that, there is no difference between honestly engaging to achieve your goals and not engaging or trolling or whatever. Nothing actually achieves anything. But for some the trolling and chaos provide entertainment.
I think most of our posters in D&D have had this thought recently. In the US, Republicans are actively trying to break our government. Globally, various conservative and fascist movements are doing the same. And many times the parties we think that should represent us, such as the Democrats, fail to do so. Where's my fucking impeachment, Pelosi. Just because I want us to redo our political system so we get away from two-party and first past the post doesn't make me a nihilist. In fact, it's quite the opposite, which I will discuss below.
I think most of our posters in D&D have had this thought recently. In the US, Republicans are actively trying to break our government. Globally, various conservative and fascist movements are doing the same. And many times the parties we think that should represent us, such as the Democrats, fail to do so. Where's my fucking impeachment, Pelosi. Just because I want us to redo our political system so we get away from two-party and first past the post doesn't make me a nihilist. In fact, it's quite the opposite, which I will discuss below.
First thing that jumped out at me reading through this is that I feel like the study's methodology has a fairly big flaw and it's all wrapped up in question #4:
How do Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux measure this “need for chaos"? They conducted six surveys, four in the United States, in which they interviewed 5157 participants, and two in Denmark, with 1336. They identified those who are “drawn to chaos” through their affirmative responses to the following statements:
I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over.
I think society should be burned to the ground.
When I think about our political and social institutions, I cannot help thinking “just let them all burn.”
We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions, we need to tear them down and start over.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
The rest are all essentially destructive impulses. I wanna see shit blow up. But #4 is different. It's revolutionary. It's not contradictory with the others but I think it's also bringing in a very different impulse then the rest of the answers that doesn't speak to the thing they are studying.
Though I feel, making an assumption here, that removing it will only strengthen the correlation with things like Trump in their results.
What the article is measuring is not nihilism as any decent philosopher or even psychiatrist might try to define or measure it. It's cruelty.
I'm coming to the conclusion that for a significant portion of the population, and I'm not sure how much of it (more than I hope, less than I fear...I hope), their personal Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid has a level below "physiological survival" and that's "being cruel." Before even the interest of their own personal survival, a lot of people just want to watch others suffer. They don't want the world to burn to send it all to nothingness; they want people to burn and they want to laugh as others scream in agony. They would set aside food if they could hurt someone else. They see oppression in terms of taking away their most basic need to make others hurt. You see these farmers choosing to lose their farms over choosing not to be assholes to Hispanic people; you see Brexiters who would rather starve and die in the streets rather than not be racist at non-English.
And the thing is, in a rigidly hierarchical society, these people were kept perfectly content so long as they knew there were levels below them that they could oppress. Because they chose "hurting others" over their own well being, they were fine with being oppressed themselves so long as they could oppress others. The lord of the manor could have them whipped and driven off their lands, but then they'd beat their wives or scream insults at some foreigners and then they were fine and wouldn't fight their lot or revolt.
These "nihilists" are not a revolutionary force. They're heavily reactionary. They just want an Other or few that they can freely harass, hurt, and generally make miserable, and for that Other to be kept in its place so they can be targeted indefinitely without repercussion. That's why they don't lash out at power but always punch down; only after others are debased do they care about maybe improving themselves, but hurting others always comes first. Telling them not to be fucking assholes threatens them to the deepest core of their being. Plenty of white businessowners in the Deep South had productive endeavors so long as they were allowed to be racist, but as soon as desegregation occurred, they shut down their businesses and gave themselves over to penury, because like hell were they going to care about the higher things when the basest motivations were denied to them.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
I have vivid memories of daddy-long-legs from my youth. I liked 'em, but other small children had different reactions. Some freaked out, grossed out or even trying to kill them in their fear/disgust/whatever. And there was always at least one shithead kid who would try to pull all the legs off of them, leaving the poor little things immobile and condemned to slow starvation, and then would laugh at their pointless, wanton cruelty, and then would make fun of me when I was disgusted at the stupid petty meanness at it.
A lot of times they would pull the wings off of other insects too. Occasionally they would get pushback if it was a butterfly, and they'd have tantrums, but other than that they were allowed to be cruel, and usually eventually they would be allowed to be bullies too.
And that's really it for a lot of people. They could get away with hurting something that couldn't hurt them back, so they did.
Something I wonder is that if I'm correct about this, what the hell are we going to do about this? What can we do? Is this just an inbuilt thing, where 1% of the population is full sociopaths and another standard deviation or two are just assholes by nature? Can these little assholes get trained out of it?
I think the actual thrust of the article in the OP is not the discovery that some people just want to watch others suffer, but rather the way in which social media and the internet has connected us has politically empowered those people and their ideas.
Or, basically, yes, we can do something about these people. We used to be better at keeping them in check.
What the article is measuring is not nihilism as any decent philosopher or even psychiatrist might try to define or measure it. It's cruelty.
I'm coming to the conclusion that for a significant portion of the population, and I'm not sure how much of it (more than I hope, less than I fear...I hope), their personal Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid has a level below "physiological survival" and that's "being cruel." Before even the interest of their own personal survival, a lot of people just want to watch others suffer. They don't want the world to burn to send it all to nothingness; they want people to burn and they want to laugh as others scream in agony. They would set aside food if they could hurt someone else. They see oppression in terms of taking away their most basic need to make others hurt. You see these farmers choosing to lose their farms over choosing not to be assholes to Hispanic people; you see Brexiters who would rather starve and die in the streets rather than not be racist at non-English.
And the thing is, in a rigidly hierarchical society, these people were kept perfectly content so long as they knew there were levels below them that they could oppress. Because they chose "hurting others" over their own well being, they were fine with being oppressed themselves so long as they could oppress others. The lord of the manor could have them whipped and driven off their lands, but then they'd beat their wives or scream insults at some foreigners and then they were fine and wouldn't fight their lot or revolt.
These "nihilists" are not a revolutionary force. They're heavily reactionary. They just want an Other or few that they can freely harass, hurt, and generally make miserable, and for that Other to be kept in its place so they can be targeted indefinitely without repercussion. That's why they don't lash out at power but always punch down; only after others are debased do they care about maybe improving themselves, but hurting others always comes first. Telling them not to be fucking assholes threatens them to the deepest core of their being. Plenty of white businessowners in the Deep South had productive endeavors so long as they were allowed to be racist, but as soon as desegregation occurred, they shut down their businesses and gave themselves over to penury, because like hell were they going to care about the higher things when the basest motivations were denied to them.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
I have vivid memories of daddy-long-legs from my youth. I liked 'em, but other small children had different reactions. Some freaked out, grossed out or even trying to kill them in their fear/disgust/whatever. And there was always at least one shithead kid who would try to pull all the legs off of them, leaving the poor little things immobile and condemned to slow starvation, and then would laugh at their pointless, wanton cruelty, and then would make fun of me when I was disgusted at the stupid petty meanness at it.
A lot of times they would pull the wings off of other insects too. Occasionally they would get pushback if it was a butterfly, and they'd have tantrums, but other than that they were allowed to be cruel, and usually eventually they would be allowed to be bullies too.
And that's really it for a lot of people. They could get away with hurting something that couldn't hurt them back, so they did.
Something I wonder is that if I'm correct about this, what the hell are we going to do about this? What can we do? Is this just an inbuilt thing, where 1% of the population is full sociopaths and another standard deviation or two are just assholes by nature? Can these little assholes get trained out of it?
To add to this, I think suffering and how people deal with is a big part. For a certain kind of person, they deal with their suffering, real or imagined, by making others suffer. I think that, in some way, making others suffer validates their own suffering. Or at least, they feel better making others feel as or more shitty.
Instead, I suggest we use the much more precise terms offered by the article itself:
Need for chaos
Chaotic motivation
Extreme discontent
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in the venn diagram between chaotic motivation and cruelty, but they're not synonymous.
A need for chaos is thus conceptualized as a longing for a clean slate or a new beginning. In identifying the predictors of Need for Chaos, we thus need to consider who stands to gain from defending the status quo and who stands to gain from completely wiping out the existing social structures. From this perspective, those who stands to gain from chaos are clearly those without stakes in the present status hierarchy: those who seek but lack status. We therefore predict that chaos-incitement is a strategy of last resort by marginalized status-seekers.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I think that there is definitely an externt to which modern Capitalist Liberal Democracy essentially strips the meaning out of, and commodifies, everything it touches. And people seek meaning so they turn to idealogical paths that reject meaninglessness and say actually some things matter more than anything, one of which is Nationalism/Fascism.
When your future is that of an endless worker just getting through a consumerist life where you have no real influence or control, you're not part of anything, there's no big life project, just work and spend etc, then when someone says "no you matter, you're part of something, have pride, have arrogance," it feels appealing and good. Fascism is cathartic, that's basically exactly what it is, it says it is okay to accept your most base reactionary instincts and wave them as a flag.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
I think that there is definitely an externt to which modern Capitalist Liberal Democracy essentially strips the meaning out of, and commodifies, everything it touches. And people seek meaning so they turn to idealogical paths that reject meaninglessness and say actually some things matter more than anything, one of which is Nationalism/Fascism.
I think you're too focused on capitalism being the sole cause of this, when it's not that simple. Not society or governmental system has a bulletproof history of protecting the vulnerable or has difficulties making its citizens feel empowered. While you're not wrong in where that path leads, this happens to every generation who starts out at the bottom of the pecking order, or weren't properly taunt by the system, like schools and media. The danger is when they grow so detached from society and being powerless they define themselves by it and this makes them vulnerable to various groups who be entrenched in that mindset, since if they ever did learn how to work within the system they'd have trouble maintaining followers. And when people start defining themselves by being outsiders their identity won't allow them to accept other political routes to being plausible since doing so would be revealing that they were wrong the whole time.
When your future is that of an endless worker just getting through a consumerist life where you have no real influence or control, you're not part of anything, there's no big life project, just work and spend etc, then when someone says "no you matter, you're part of something, have pride, have arrogance," it feels appealing and good. Fascism is cathartic, that's basically exactly what it is, it says it is okay to accept your most base reactionary instincts and wave them as a flag.
This isn't strictly being consumerist. It's not like avenues like that weren't closed off like that in feudal societies, for example. I agree the system needs to improve on making support structures to reach those people though the cracks, but it gets really bad when people get to myopic they ignore what the system is offering and that there are people out there who will help them, but they won't be able to solve anything by being contrarians about capitalism. People don't gain influence by doing nothing, and many aren't as powerless as they think. This is where being defined by being contrarian isolates them further and keeps them there.
Instead, I suggest we use the much more precise terms offered by the article itself:
Need for chaos
Chaotic motivation
Extreme discontent
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in the venn diagram between chaotic motivation and cruelty, but they're not synonymous.
A need for chaos is thus conceptualized as a longing for a clean slate or a new beginning. In identifying the predictors of Need for Chaos, we thus need to consider who stands to gain from defending the status quo and who stands to gain from completely wiping out the existing social structures. From this perspective, those who stands to gain from chaos are clearly those without stakes in the present status hierarchy: those who seek but lack status. We therefore predict that chaos-incitement is a strategy of last resort by marginalized status-seekers.
I highly doubt those polled are really looking for chaos. Chaos has a chance to backfire on you.
If one of the questions had the chance for them to not be on top once the chaos was done, I promise you they wouldn’t be for it. They want chaos for the other, not for them.
That’s why they are for cruelty; they want to sow chaos in others while maintaining their comfy position.
They don’t want to burn their part of the world, just everyone else’s.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
I think that there is definitely an externt to which modern Capitalist Liberal Democracy essentially strips the meaning out of, and commodifies, everything it touches. And people seek meaning so they turn to idealogical paths that reject meaninglessness and say actually some things matter more than anything, one of which is Nationalism/Fascism.
I think you're too focused on capitalism being the sole cause of this, when it's not that simple. Not society or governmental system has a bulletproof history of protecting the vulnerable or has difficulties making its citizens feel empowered. While you're not wrong in where that path leads, this happens to every generation who starts out at the bottom of the pecking order, or weren't properly taunt by the system, like schools and media. The danger is when they grow so detached from society and being powerless they define themselves by it and this makes them vulnerable to various groups who be entrenched in that mindset, since if they ever did learn how to work within the system they'd have trouble maintaining followers. And when people start defining themselves by being outsiders their identity won't allow them to accept other political routes to being plausible since doing so would be revealing that they were wrong the whole time.
When your future is that of an endless worker just getting through a consumerist life where you have no real influence or control, you're not part of anything, there's no big life project, just work and spend etc, then when someone says "no you matter, you're part of something, have pride, have arrogance," it feels appealing and good. Fascism is cathartic, that's basically exactly what it is, it says it is okay to accept your most base reactionary instincts and wave them as a flag.
This isn't strictly being consumerist. It's not like avenues like that weren't closed off like that in feudal societies, for example. I agree the system needs to improve on making support structures to reach those people though the cracks, but it gets really bad when people get to myopic they ignore what the system is offering and that there are people out there who will help them, but they won't be able to solve anything by being contrarians about capitalism. People don't gain influence by doing nothing, and many aren't as powerless as they think. This is where being defined by being contrarian isolates them further and keeps them there.
You'll note I said Capitalist Liberal Democracy, which is a political and economic ideology.
Thread has slowed down a bit, but I feel there are still some topics in the OP we haven't really touched on yet.
What role does the entertainment industry have to play in the state of our culture right now? Do we need to look into steering Hollywood et all to slow down with all the cynical and nihilistic comedy out there and maybe force them to be more conscientious of the impact they have on our culture? It cannot be denied that the American entertainment industry has a massive influence on the way our society sees itself. To what level do they need to be held to account for that?
Recent decades have seen a huge overall relaxing of broadcasting standards. Remember when all cartoons had to have an educational component to them? When swearing on TV was a HUGE NONO. Remember "very special episodes"? Are obscenity laws even a thing anymore?
Most would say, and I would agree, that these types of moral mandates being imposed on broadcast television in the past were stifling and onerous, but is it possible now that the pendulum has swung too far the other way?
We all want to believe that every individual is responsible for what they choose to consume in a free society, but let's face it, we don't always consume things that are in our best interest. Does society have a responsibility to police media to protect society from itself? Does that square with our desire for freedom of expression? On a more personal note, how do we deal with the toxic fans in our lives and communities, who seem to willfully take the wrong message from our media (see fans of Fight Club, Rick and Morty, people who think Walter White was awesome). Is it fair to call these factors contributors to our overall feeling of hopelessness and lack of agency?
I think that there is definitely an externt to which modern Capitalist Liberal Democracy essentially strips the meaning out of, and commodifies, everything it touches. And people seek meaning so they turn to idealogical paths that reject meaninglessness and say actually some things matter more than anything, one of which is Nationalism/Fascism.
I think you're too focused on capitalism being the sole cause of this, when it's not that simple. Not society or governmental system has a bulletproof history of protecting the vulnerable or has difficulties making its citizens feel empowered. While you're not wrong in where that path leads, this happens to every generation who starts out at the bottom of the pecking order, or weren't properly taunt by the system, like schools and media. The danger is when they grow so detached from society and being powerless they define themselves by it and this makes them vulnerable to various groups who be entrenched in that mindset, since if they ever did learn how to work within the system they'd have trouble maintaining followers. And when people start defining themselves by being outsiders their identity won't allow them to accept other political routes to being plausible since doing so would be revealing that they were wrong the whole time.
When your future is that of an endless worker just getting through a consumerist life where you have no real influence or control, you're not part of anything, there's no big life project, just work and spend etc, then when someone says "no you matter, you're part of something, have pride, have arrogance," it feels appealing and good. Fascism is cathartic, that's basically exactly what it is, it says it is okay to accept your most base reactionary instincts and wave them as a flag.
This isn't strictly being consumerist. It's not like avenues like that weren't closed off like that in feudal societies, for example. I agree the system needs to improve on making support structures to reach those people though the cracks, but it gets really bad when people get to myopic they ignore what the system is offering and that there are people out there who will help them, but they won't be able to solve anything by being contrarians about capitalism. People don't gain influence by doing nothing, and many aren't as powerless as they think. This is where being defined by being contrarian isolates them further and keeps them there.
You'll note I said Capitalist Liberal Democracy, which is a political and economic ideology.
I don't see how that discounts my post.
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38thDoelets never be stupid againwait lets always be stupid foreverRegistered Userregular
Thread has slowed down a bit, but I feel there are still some topics in the OP we haven't really touched on yet.
What role does the entertainment industry have to play in the state of our culture right now? Do we need to look into steering Hollywood et all to slow down with all the cynical and nihilistic comedy out there and maybe force them to be more conscientious of the impact they have on our culture? It cannot be denied that the American entertainment industry has a massive influence on the way our society sees itself. To what level do they need to be held to account for that?
Recent decades have seen a huge overall relaxing of broadcasting standards. Remember when all cartoons had to have an educational component to them? When swearing on TV was a HUGE NONO. Remember "very special episodes"? Are obscenity laws even a thing anymore?
Most would say, and I would agree, that these types of moral mandates being imposed on broadcast television in the past were stifling and onerous, but is it possible now that the pendulum has swung too far the other way?
We all want to believe that every individual is responsible for what they choose to consume in a free society, but let's face it, we don't always consume things that are in our best interest. Does society have a responsibility to police media to protect society from itself? Does that square with our desire for freedom of expression? On a more personal note, how do we deal with the toxic fans in our lives and communities, who seem to willfully take the wrong message from our media (see fans of Fight Club, Rick and Morty, people who think Walter White was awesome). Is it fair to call these factors contributors to our overall feeling of hopelessness and lack of agency?
I don't see anyone really having the will to regulate anything anymore, so I'm not sure who would steer Hollywood to do anything they don't want to do. I'll be honest I don't remember when cartoons had to be educational. Was that Looney Tunes era, Scooby Doo era, GI JOE/He-Man/Transformers ? Movies/TV are still much more regulated than say Youtube/facebook and therefore not where we should probably be focusing what limited regulatory power and attention we do have. I think those sites have a lot more blame than traditional media for this issue.
Thread has slowed down a bit, but I feel there are still some topics in the OP we haven't really touched on yet.
What role does the entertainment industry have to play in the state of our culture right now? Do we need to look into steering Hollywood et all to slow down with all the cynical and nihilistic comedy out there and maybe force them to be more conscientious of the impact they have on our culture? It cannot be denied that the American entertainment industry has a massive influence on the way our society sees itself. To what level do they need to be held to account for that?
Recent decades have seen a huge overall relaxing of broadcasting standards. Remember when all cartoons had to have an educational component to them? When swearing on TV was a HUGE NONO. Remember "very special episodes"? Are obscenity laws even a thing anymore?
Most would say, and I would agree, that these types of moral mandates being imposed on broadcast television in the past were stifling and onerous, but is it possible now that the pendulum has swung too far the other way?
We all want to believe that every individual is responsible for what they choose to consume in a free society, but let's face it, we don't always consume things that are in our best interest. Does society have a responsibility to police media to protect society from itself? Does that square with our desire for freedom of expression? On a more personal note, how do we deal with the toxic fans in our lives and communities, who seem to willfully take the wrong message from our media (see fans of Fight Club, Rick and Morty, people who think Walter White was awesome). Is it fair to call these factors contributors to our overall feeling of hopelessness and lack of agency?
I don't see anyone really having the will to regulate anything anymore, so I'm not sure who would steer Hollywood to do anything they don't want to do. I'll be honest I don't remember when cartoons had to be educational. Was that Looney Tunes era, Scooby Doo era, GI JOE/He-Man/Transformers ? Movies/TV are still much more regulated than say Youtube/facebook and therefore not where we should probably be focusing what limited regulatory power and attention we do have. I think those sites have a lot more blame than traditional media for this issue.
I think what you're referring to is more to do with civil society and activism than regulation. The drive for educational and informational programming in the 1960s and 1970s (think Schoolhouse Rock and the like) was from a group called Action for Children's Television, which was founded in 1968 and dissolved in 1992. They got the broadcasters to adopt a voluntary code of conduct in 1973 and added some FTC regulations in 1977, which is what (briefly) prevented networks from creating shows aimed solely at selling toys (think your Transformers, G.I. Joes, My Little Ponies, etc). They came fairly close to having some regulatory laws passed in 1978 but they weren't. Under Reagan, the FTC changed their regulations in 1982 to be much more permissive with regard to selling, which brought about the sort of brands outlined above. The first actual regulatory law was the Children's Television Act in 1990.
Thread has slowed down a bit, but I feel there are still some topics in the OP we haven't really touched on yet.
What role does the entertainment industry have to play in the state of our culture right now? Do we need to look into steering Hollywood et all to slow down with all the cynical and nihilistic comedy out there and maybe force them to be more conscientious of the impact they have on our culture? It cannot be denied that the American entertainment industry has a massive influence on the way our society sees itself. To what level do they need to be held to account for that?
Recent decades have seen a huge overall relaxing of broadcasting standards. Remember when all cartoons had to have an educational component to them? When swearing on TV was a HUGE NONO. Remember "very special episodes"? Are obscenity laws even a thing anymore?
Most would say, and I would agree, that these types of moral mandates being imposed on broadcast television in the past were stifling and onerous, but is it possible now that the pendulum has swung too far the other way?
We all want to believe that every individual is responsible for what they choose to consume in a free society, but let's face it, we don't always consume things that are in our best interest. Does society have a responsibility to police media to protect society from itself? Does that square with our desire for freedom of expression? On a more personal note, how do we deal with the toxic fans in our lives and communities, who seem to willfully take the wrong message from our media (see fans of Fight Club, Rick and Morty, people who think Walter White was awesome). Is it fair to call these factors contributors to our overall feeling of hopelessness and lack of agency?
In regards to Rick & Morty I wouldn't be surprised if the next season tried to push back against its toxic fans. Dan Harmon has made it plain he's annoyed by the toxic segment of the fan base, and season three had already tried to make it clearer that Rick's philosophy is garbage by taking him down a peg multiple times (once with Morty sarcastically noting "Rick's point is that nothing matters. That's ALWAYS his point.").
Thread has slowed down a bit, but I feel there are still some topics in the OP we haven't really touched on yet.
What role does the entertainment industry have to play in the state of our culture right now? Do we need to look into steering Hollywood et all to slow down with all the cynical and nihilistic comedy out there and maybe force them to be more conscientious of the impact they have on our culture? It cannot be denied that the American entertainment industry has a massive influence on the way our society sees itself. To what level do they need to be held to account for that?
Recent decades have seen a huge overall relaxing of broadcasting standards. Remember when all cartoons had to have an educational component to them? When swearing on TV was a HUGE NONO. Remember "very special episodes"? Are obscenity laws even a thing anymore?
Most would say, and I would agree, that these types of moral mandates being imposed on broadcast television in the past were stifling and onerous, but is it possible now that the pendulum has swung too far the other way?
We all want to believe that every individual is responsible for what they choose to consume in a free society, but let's face it, we don't always consume things that are in our best interest. Does society have a responsibility to police media to protect society from itself? Does that square with our desire for freedom of expression? On a more personal note, how do we deal with the toxic fans in our lives and communities, who seem to willfully take the wrong message from our media (see fans of Fight Club, Rick and Morty, people who think Walter White was awesome). Is it fair to call these factors contributors to our overall feeling of hopelessness and lack of agency?
I don't see anyone really having the will to regulate anything anymore, so I'm not sure who would steer Hollywood to do anything they don't want to do. I'll be honest I don't remember when cartoons had to be educational. Was that Looney Tunes era, Scooby Doo era, GI JOE/He-Man/Transformers ? Movies/TV are still much more regulated than say Youtube/facebook and therefore not where we should probably be focusing what limited regulatory power and attention we do have. I think those sites have a lot more blame than traditional media for this issue.
To be clear, when I say "entertainment industry" I'm including the Internet in there. I was just using broadcast television as a point of reference to show that we once used to regulate media output to a much greater extent than we do now.
You say no one has "the will to regulate anything anymore"; why do you think that is? It wasn't always the case, what changed, and why can't we dial it back a bit? Or, if we shouldn't, why not? I don't really feel like "because it's too hard" or "because no one wants to" to be very compelling arguments. Is it too hard? Ok, why? What are the obstacles? No one wants to anymore? How come? People used to really care about this shit, for better or worse!
I mean many countries that we view as oppressive regulate the shit out of their Internet (China, multiple Middle Eastern countries). For the record, yes, I consider such measures to be dictatorial, but to say it can't be done is at least false, to a degree.
To keep this from turning into a Free Speech thread (we have one of those), let's try and focus on if there's any measurable way to quantify what, in any, impact, our new, more permissive media landscape might have on our culture, and if there is something to be said about what kind of influence it has on those of us who have lost hope and entertain thoughts of chaos.
Rick and Morty is an easy target because of how toxic their fanbase can be. I myself quite enjoy the show, but can’t stand how toxic some of the fans are. They think because they “get it” that it makes them smart and if you have any criticism of it, then obviously you are not smart because you’d get it if you were.
But the idea of regulating it makes me think of things like the comics code or blaming games or rap for mass shootings. Rick and Morty isn’t what made these people toxic any more than Pepe did, they were already that way and just co-opted it.
I’d say it’s more along the lines of the twitter thread and how not regulating how social media has made it easy for people to be racists, sexist, homophobic, and toxic without social repercussions. That’s what’s driving the sickness, Rick and Morty fans are just a symptom, social media recruitment into extremism and toxic echo chambers is the disease.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
Rick and Morty is popular because we regulate the messages of our media. If you prohibit certain messages, they become excitingly unfamiliar to us and feel like a "breath of fresh air" since they don't really go away from the public consciousness, instead festering in silence.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's luxury, it's free time, it's a lack of meaning. We're raising generations of mediocre men who aren't good at very much, and don't find meaning in anything. They're child emperors. We've always had them, except usually they've been the higher levels of society. As life has gotten easier, there are more men with free time and nothing to do with it.
I don't really know what you do about it, when men are growing up generally without meaning coming from the church or from their country or whatever. It's to do with the structures in capitalism, of course, but it's striking that it's the demographic that does best out of the system, that exhibits this with the greatest regularity.
What the article is measuring is not nihilism as any decent philosopher or even psychiatrist might try to define or measure it. It's cruelty.
I'm coming to the conclusion that for a significant portion of the population, and I'm not sure how much of it (more than I hope, less than I fear...I hope), their personal Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid has a level below "physiological survival" and that's "being cruel." Before even the interest of their own personal survival, a lot of people just want to watch others suffer. They don't want the world to burn to send it all to nothingness; they want people to burn and they want to laugh as others scream in agony. They would set aside food if they could hurt someone else. They see oppression in terms of taking away their most basic need to make others hurt. You see these farmers choosing to lose their farms over choosing not to be assholes to Hispanic people; you see Brexiters who would rather starve and die in the streets rather than not be racist at non-English.
And the thing is, in a rigidly hierarchical society, these people were kept perfectly content so long as they knew there were levels below them that they could oppress. Because they chose "hurting others" over their own well being, they were fine with being oppressed themselves so long as they could oppress others. The lord of the manor could have them whipped and driven off their lands, but then they'd beat their wives or scream insults at some foreigners and then they were fine and wouldn't fight their lot or revolt.
These "nihilists" are not a revolutionary force. They're heavily reactionary. They just want an Other or few that they can freely harass, hurt, and generally make miserable, and for that Other to be kept in its place so they can be targeted indefinitely without repercussion. That's why they don't lash out at power but always punch down; only after others are debased do they care about maybe improving themselves, but hurting others always comes first. Telling them not to be fucking assholes threatens them to the deepest core of their being. Plenty of white businessowners in the Deep South had productive endeavors so long as they were allowed to be racist, but as soon as desegregation occurred, they shut down their businesses and gave themselves over to penury, because like hell were they going to care about the higher things when the basest motivations were denied to them.
Sometimes I just feel like destroying beautiful things.
I have vivid memories of daddy-long-legs from my youth. I liked 'em, but other small children had different reactions. Some freaked out, grossed out or even trying to kill them in their fear/disgust/whatever. And there was always at least one shithead kid who would try to pull all the legs off of them, leaving the poor little things immobile and condemned to slow starvation, and then would laugh at their pointless, wanton cruelty, and then would make fun of me when I was disgusted at the stupid petty meanness at it.
A lot of times they would pull the wings off of other insects too. Occasionally they would get pushback if it was a butterfly, and they'd have tantrums, but other than that they were allowed to be cruel, and usually eventually they would be allowed to be bullies too.
And that's really it for a lot of people. They could get away with hurting something that couldn't hurt them back, so they did.
Something I wonder is that if I'm correct about this, what the hell are we going to do about this? What can we do? Is this just an inbuilt thing, where 1% of the population is full sociopaths and another standard deviation or two are just assholes by nature? Can these little assholes get trained out of it?
To add to this, I think suffering and how people deal with is a big part. For a certain kind of person, they deal with their suffering, real or imagined, by making others suffer. I think that, in some way, making others suffer validates their own suffering. Or at least, they feel better making others feel as or more shitty.
"He is not hurting the people he needs to be hurting" - Trump Supporter, Jan 2019.
It's not even a mystery. They will come right out and tell you that this is their motivation. They want a scapegoat for the things they feel they've lost, and for someone to punish that scapegoat.
The complaint is actually real - wages for working Americans have entirely stagnated over the past 4 decades. The rage, anger and bitterness would, frankly, be entirely justified were it aimed at those actually responsible and not redirected into various -isms and culture-war touchstones. That people are angry should not be a surprise to anyone paying attention. The GOP, or rather a once fringe fraction of it, just got the idea to fully harness that sooner/better than anyone else.
Chaos is entertaining. It's addictive in a way. That's why even Trump's most diehard opponents are so fascinated by what's happening in government now. Not because they want to be informed and do something about it - it's because they're curious. They want to see what happens next, and if it's disastrous then they'll outwardly be upset about it, but really they're more engaged than ever.
People with chaotic motivations are just so frustrated by their lot in life and what they see in the news that they no longer see a path to stability and happiness. So instead they just want things to be as entertaining as possible. They aren't thinking about impact to themselves because the news rarely impacts them in a direct personal way, it's just something they watch/read on the internet for some perverse kind of amusement. I don't agree that these people are necessarily cruel, rather they're selfish and indifferent to the suffering of those affected.
Chaos is entertaining. It's addictive in a way. That's why even Trump's most diehard opponents are so fascinated by what's happening in government now. Not because they want to be informed and do something about it - it's because they're curious. They want to see what happens next, and if it's disastrous then they'll outwardly be upset about it, but really they're more engaged than ever.
People with chaotic motivations are just so frustrated by their lot in life and what they see in the news that they no longer see a path to stability and happiness. So instead they just want things to be as entertaining as possible. They aren't thinking about impact to themselves because the news rarely impacts them in a direct personal way, it's just something they watch/read on the internet for some perverse kind of amusement. I don't agree that these people are necessarily cruel, rather they're selfish and indifferent to the suffering of those affected.
Are they a problem though? Or is it pointless to worry about them? Should we be concerned that there are groups with more malicious intent who seem to be successfully manipulating and mobilizing them to their own, actually cruel, ends?
If they are a problem, what is our role as those people's friends and neighbours? I don't necessarily disagree that these "chaos inciters" aren't necessarily cruel or evil, but rather simply lashing out due to a feeling of hopeless impotence and a search for any type of agency at all. However I still feel that their indifference towards the actual, real-life, consequences of their actions makes them a dangerous tool of the truly cruel and evil. As such, I feel that society has a responsibility to address that.
I always find with these things it's worth reading the paper itself because the articles on it are always some level of hot-take imo. https://psyarxiv.com/6m4ts/
Anyway, there's been a lot of blah-blah-blah late-stage-capitalism talk going on and I'm not really sure the paper actually supports these ideas. It doesn't contradict them, but it's just not what the paper was about. I'm not flush with time today so I might have missed something, but it seems to be basically be a paper saying "Hostile political rumours are not spread mostly by people motivated to push forward one specific partisan actor within the system but instead by those who want to tear the whole system down."
In Test 1, we found that those who are motivated to share hostile political rumours are political activists that operate outside of the democratic system (i.e. violent activists) and not within it(i.e., legal activists). Furthermore, we found that these political activists are promiscuous sharers and are motivated to share rumours that target any elite actors, independently of this actor’s political identity. In Test 2, we found that those who are motivated to share a hostile political rumour do so with the aim of mobilizing the audience against a disliked group and, to fulfill this aim, are perfectly willing to disregard the truth. In Test 3, we identified the core of the psychological syndrome that motivates the sharing of hostile rumours as a “Need for Chaos”, which involves the explicit desire to “burn society to the ground”. Finally, in Test 4, we identified the fuel of the need for chaos: thwarted desires for high status. Those high in Need for Chaos are status-obsessed, yet socially marginalized.
The last bolded part here seeming to be the crux of the discussion going on and I think does not exactly align with the ideas people are throwing around.
The desire for "chaos" was predicted by being "young, less educated and male" and also loneliness and "lower perceived placement on the social ladder". Not however, seemingly with a lack of success with mating.
while people who seek chaos are in general socially marginalized, they are not entirely unsuccessful in the specific social domain of mating. Most likely, this reflects the association between malevolent, exploitive traits and short-term mating success
The basic conclusions here they then reach are that these people aren't trying to push a specific political agenda or just "have fun" but are pursuing a specific agenda of promoting chaos. Also, that fact-checking doesn't work on these people because they know a lot of it's bullshit, they just don't care because it advances their cause to spread it.
They do however note that:
societies of today are facing specific sociopolitical developments that might spur a desire for chaos to a greater extent than in several decades. Thus, rising inequality and rising dissatisfaction with democracy and quality of life taps into the exact processes that Test 4 identified has the key catalysts for a Need for Chaos, simultaneously activating and frustrating status-striving
But this is, as far as I can tell, purely supposition and not something they actually measured in the tests. (ie - they don't establish a connection between inequality or the like and the need for chaos)
Spite voting is mostly a white male phenomenon, which is why a majority of white males vote Republican. It comes from a toxic mix of thwarted expectations, cowardice, shame, and a particular strain of anomie that is unique to the white American male experience.
Honestly, at this point my suggestion to lower mass shootings and online harassment would be legalized prostitution, specially on the Silicon Valley area. Can't be harder than gun control.
I always find with these things it's worth reading the paper itself because the articles on it are always some level of hot-take imo. https://psyarxiv.com/6m4ts/
Anyway, there's been a lot of blah-blah-blah late-stage-capitalism talk going on and I'm not really sure the paper actually supports these ideas. It doesn't contradict them, but it's just not what the paper was about. I'm not flush with time today so I might have missed something, but it seems to be basically be a paper saying "Hostile political rumours are not spread mostly by people motivated to push forward one specific partisan actor within the system but instead by those who want to tear the whole system down."
In Test 1, we found that those who are motivated to share hostile political rumours are political activists that operate outside of the democratic system (i.e. violent activists) and not within it(i.e., legal activists). Furthermore, we found that these political activists are promiscuous sharers and are motivated to share rumours that target any elite actors, independently of this actor’s political identity. In Test 2, we found that those who are motivated to share a hostile political rumour do so with the aim of mobilizing the audience against a disliked group and, to fulfill this aim, are perfectly willing to disregard the truth. In Test 3, we identified the core of the psychological syndrome that motivates the sharing of hostile rumours as a “Need for Chaos”, which involves the explicit desire to “burn society to the ground”. Finally, in Test 4, we identified the fuel of the need for chaos: thwarted desires for high status. Those high in Need for Chaos are status-obsessed, yet socially marginalized.
The last bolded part here seeming to be the crux of the discussion going on and I think does not exactly align with the ideas people are throwing around.
The desire for "chaos" was predicted by being "young, less educated and male" and also loneliness and "lower perceived placement on the social ladder". Not however, seemingly with a lack of success with mating.
while people who seek chaos are in general socially marginalized, they are not entirely unsuccessful in the specific social domain of mating. Most likely, this reflects the association between malevolent, exploitive traits and short-term mating success
The basic conclusions here they then reach are that these people aren't trying to push a specific political agenda or just "have fun" but are pursuing a specific agenda of promoting chaos. Also, that fact-checking doesn't work on these people because they know a lot of it's bullshit, they just don't care because it advances their cause to spread it.
They do however note that:
societies of today are facing specific sociopolitical developments that might spur a desire for chaos to a greater extent than in several decades. Thus, rising inequality and rising dissatisfaction with democracy and quality of life taps into the exact processes that Test 4 identified has the key catalysts for a Need for Chaos, simultaneously activating and frustrating status-striving
But this is, as far as I can tell, purely supposition and not something they actually measured in the tests. (ie - they don't establish a connection between inequality or the like and the need for chaos)
I think what this tells us is that the focus needs to be on stopping those creating inflammatory social media content and maybe also try to specifically target and ban these types of users?
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Chaos is entertaining. It's addictive in a way. That's why even Trump's most diehard opponents are so fascinated by what's happening in government now. Not because they want to be informed and do something about it - it's because they're curious. They want to see what happens next, and if it's disastrous then they'll outwardly be upset about it, but really they're more engaged than ever.
People with chaotic motivations are just so frustrated by their lot in life and what they see in the news that they no longer see a path to stability and happiness. So instead they just want things to be as entertaining as possible. They aren't thinking about impact to themselves because the news rarely impacts them in a direct personal way, it's just something they watch/read on the internet for some perverse kind of amusement. I don't agree that these people are necessarily cruel, rather they're selfish and indifferent to the suffering of those affected.
Are they a problem though? Or is it pointless to worry about them? Should we be concerned that there are groups with more malicious intent who seem to be successfully manipulating and mobilizing them to their own, actually cruel, ends?
If they are a problem, what is our role as those people's friends and neighbours? I don't necessarily disagree that these "chaos inciters" aren't necessarily cruel or evil, but rather simply lashing out due to a feeling of hopeless impotence and a search for any type of agency at all. However I still feel that their indifference towards the actual, real-life, consequences of their actions makes them a dangerous tool of the truly cruel and evil. As such, I feel that society has a responsibility to address that.
They are a problem because they're shitty voters. Most of them aren't even nihilists, but they are sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to really important issues, namely climate change. The more malicious ones that actively spread bad information are also influencing other voters.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
It's more than just a problem of young men. The most reactionary, spiteful, hateful voters are often the elderly, even as they often stand to lose the most from what they're voting for. Like the whole Brexit mess, for instance - the biggest supporters are old people, despite the fact that they will suffer and die from medical shortages before everyone else. The largest demographic of Trump supporters are older as well. Steve King's primary remaining donation base is "retired." And everybody's got stories about old people who are basically hate machines who spend every waking moment trying to make everyone else around them miserable, idle lives spent in nonstop cruelty, who choose hurting others over continuing their own lives. They'll get their caretakers deported and never consider or care that they'll die from festering bedsores until it's too late for them.
If we really want to talk nihilism, we should also talk about people who don't care if the world burns because they won't have to deal with it.
Sometimes it does feel like older people are trying to inflict their displeasure with how younger generations are turning out, by voting in more conservative lawmakers. Like it's crazy to me how long it's been since Roe V Wade and old people still fucking harping on abortion when it affects them the least.
Sometimes it does feel like older people are trying to inflict their displeasure with how younger generations are turning out, by voting in more conservative lawmakers. Like it's crazy to me how long it's been since Roe V Wade and old people still fucking harping on abortion when it affects them the least.
But they’re passing soon! How else will they get to heaven if they don’t save all those babies?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
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This list of questions is nigh upon useless for determining who is a nihilist. Think about the type of people who might identify with the following statements:
Fans of The Walking Dead, The 100, the Fallout video game series, etc have all probably fantasized about a disaster where they are one of the few survivors. I seem to recall that Discovery even had a reality show based around this premise.
I think this every time I see a news article about a policeman gunning down a minority, a mass shooting, or whenever Donald Trump tweets. I am not actually going to commit acts of arson just because I'm pissed off at the world.
I think most of our posters in D&D have had this thought recently. In the US, Republicans are actively trying to break our government. Globally, various conservative and fascist movements are doing the same. And many times the parties we think that should represent us, such as the Democrats, fail to do so. Where's my fucking impeachment, Pelosi. Just because I want us to redo our political system so we get away from two-party and first past the post doesn't make me a nihilist. In fact, it's quite the opposite, which I will discuss below.
This is the same as the previous statement, just worded differently.
This one is funny, because I do think you're a nihilist or at least have nihilistic tendencies if you identify with this statement. At the same time, I recognize that I and probably most if not all posters here do destroy beautiful things. Look at the video games we play. They are often violent affairs in which we may destroy a beautifully crafted set piece as part of some story. But, again, that doesn't make us a nihilist.
So, what is Nihilism? According to the dictionary, it is:
I think most of the questions fail to correctly identify nihilism. Being a nihilist would be acting as someone that does whatever, because there are no underlying truths to guide them. This may involve destruction, but it doesn't have to do so. It certainly wouldn't involve rebuilding, because there would be no point to rebuilding. People who want to start over definitely aren't nihilists. For the most part, they are just normal people so frustrated with their inability to change the world around them that they feel the only way they would have a meaningful say in the world is if it was rebuilt from the ground up.
A large part of (philosophical) discussion is arguing over the definition of words. It's not just useful for meaningful communication, it is also necessary to build complex arguments. I can not provide you with an argument for nihilism being wrong if we do not agree about the definition of, or what we both mean by, nihilism. For that matter, I can't do that without agreement about the definition of "wrong" either, or "the".
I understand the desire to abandon the argument over definition to move to reaching meaningful agreement. But that move can just as easily obfuscate rather than illuminate communication, and lead to perceiving agreement that is not there.
For example, I do not believe I have "chosen" my morals or that their meaningfulness to me is relevant. And I also do not think that applies to most of us. I believe in the moral system that I do because I believe it to be true. I can't meaningfully have chosen some other system that I did not believe to be true, because my aim is to believe that which is true.
That doesn't mean defining belief (systems) is meaningless.
Okay this is exactly what I'm talking about, because we do not disagree, and yet you picked out a word and have drawn it out into a disagreement that does not exist. The sense in which I use the word choice is in no way different in intention than the way you use the word aim. In the attempt to clarify, we spontaneously generate disagreement where there is none.
Hopelessness. Pessimism that what we care about will never come to pass. Anger that this isn't the same for others we feel aren't as deserving. Those are attributes we all share as modern people.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I'm coming to the conclusion that for a significant portion of the population, and I'm not sure how much of it (more than I hope, less than I fear...I hope), their personal Hierarchy of Needs Pyramid has a level below "physiological survival" and that's "being cruel." Before even the interest of their own personal survival, a lot of people just want to watch others suffer. They don't want the world to burn to send it all to nothingness; they want people to burn and they want to laugh as others scream in agony. They would set aside food if they could hurt someone else. They see oppression in terms of taking away their most basic need to make others hurt. You see these farmers choosing to lose their farms over choosing not to be assholes to Hispanic people; you see Brexiters who would rather starve and die in the streets rather than not be racist at non-English.
And the thing is, in a rigidly hierarchical society, these people were kept perfectly content so long as they knew there were levels below them that they could oppress. Because they chose "hurting others" over their own well being, they were fine with being oppressed themselves so long as they could oppress others. The lord of the manor could have them whipped and driven off their lands, but then they'd beat their wives or scream insults at some foreigners and then they were fine and wouldn't fight their lot or revolt.
These "nihilists" are not a revolutionary force. They're heavily reactionary. They just want an Other or few that they can freely harass, hurt, and generally make miserable, and for that Other to be kept in its place so they can be targeted indefinitely without repercussion. That's why they don't lash out at power but always punch down; only after others are debased do they care about maybe improving themselves, but hurting others always comes first. Telling them not to be fucking assholes threatens them to the deepest core of their being. Plenty of white businessowners in the Deep South had productive endeavors so long as they were allowed to be racist, but as soon as desegregation occurred, they shut down their businesses and gave themselves over to penury, because like hell were they going to care about the higher things when the basest motivations were denied to them.
I have vivid memories of daddy-long-legs from my youth. I liked 'em, but other small children had different reactions. Some freaked out, grossed out or even trying to kill them in their fear/disgust/whatever. And there was always at least one shithead kid who would try to pull all the legs off of them, leaving the poor little things immobile and condemned to slow starvation, and then would laugh at their pointless, wanton cruelty, and then would make fun of me when I was disgusted at the stupid petty meanness at it.
A lot of times they would pull the wings off of other insects too. Occasionally they would get pushback if it was a butterfly, and they'd have tantrums, but other than that they were allowed to be cruel, and usually eventually they would be allowed to be bullies too.
And that's really it for a lot of people. They could get away with hurting something that couldn't hurt them back, so they did.
Something I wonder is that if I'm correct about this, what the hell are we going to do about this? What can we do? Is this just an inbuilt thing, where 1% of the population is full sociopaths and another standard deviation or two are just assholes by nature? Can these little assholes get trained out of it?
But that's such an universal aim that it is just weird to call is choice. And, more importantly perhaps, that makes your statement so uninteresting that I don't understand what you are actually trying to do here.
I also suspect that most of us believe that what we believe is true. The interesting discussion is about what is true of "what we believe to be true", and I assumed that that is what everyone was talking about. There is very little point to arguing over whether one should, in an epistemic sense, believe that which is true.
I am not a nihilist because "what I believe to be true" is that there is an objective morality. Other people are nihilists because "what they believe to be true" is that there is no objective morality. Definitions are important in order to discuss whether there is an objective morality or not, because it prevents people from identifying as one side while arguing both.
However, your comments about people being willing to reduce their own circumstances simply to punish others are false. It's a constructed view of history which never happened. People exploited others to build their own fortunes. The poor white middle class is not pushed DOWN by the existence of the patriarchy, it is pushed up. The patriarchy is what allows the oligarchs to take $100 from the pockets of the poorest, give $1 to the white man, and then say, "We are on the same team here, please stop those angry people killing me"
Take away that dollar and the working poor will scream for it back. They PRETEND to be willing to suffer for some grand dream of racism. They are not willing.
Well the article calls it political nihilism, which I think is already clearer. The issue here is people that see politics, or the political system as it is, as meaningless. It's not there is no meaning to the world, it's that there is no point in engaging with the political system. The system does not achieve good or even desired goals of voters, it just functions as a way to keep some people paid and occupy the public.
Given that, there is no difference between honestly engaging to achieve your goals and not engaging or trolling or whatever. Nothing actually achieves anything. But for some the trolling and chaos provide entertainment.
This is a go!
https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/escalation-dems-launch-impeachment-investigation-on-trump-64670789898
I don’t think even the mods are that nihilistic yet.
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The rest are all essentially destructive impulses. I wanna see shit blow up. But #4 is different. It's revolutionary. It's not contradictory with the others but I think it's also bringing in a very different impulse then the rest of the answers that doesn't speak to the thing they are studying.
Though I feel, making an assumption here, that removing it will only strengthen the correlation with things like Trump in their results.
I think the actual thrust of the article in the OP is not the discovery that some people just want to watch others suffer, but rather the way in which social media and the internet has connected us has politically empowered those people and their ideas.
Or, basically, yes, we can do something about these people. We used to be better at keeping them in check.
To add to this, I think suffering and how people deal with is a big part. For a certain kind of person, they deal with their suffering, real or imagined, by making others suffer. I think that, in some way, making others suffer validates their own suffering. Or at least, they feel better making others feel as or more shitty.
Not exactly.
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap in the venn diagram between chaotic motivation and cruelty, but they're not synonymous.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
When your future is that of an endless worker just getting through a consumerist life where you have no real influence or control, you're not part of anything, there's no big life project, just work and spend etc, then when someone says "no you matter, you're part of something, have pride, have arrogance," it feels appealing and good. Fascism is cathartic, that's basically exactly what it is, it says it is okay to accept your most base reactionary instincts and wave them as a flag.
I think you're too focused on capitalism being the sole cause of this, when it's not that simple. Not society or governmental system has a bulletproof history of protecting the vulnerable or has difficulties making its citizens feel empowered. While you're not wrong in where that path leads, this happens to every generation who starts out at the bottom of the pecking order, or weren't properly taunt by the system, like schools and media. The danger is when they grow so detached from society and being powerless they define themselves by it and this makes them vulnerable to various groups who be entrenched in that mindset, since if they ever did learn how to work within the system they'd have trouble maintaining followers. And when people start defining themselves by being outsiders their identity won't allow them to accept other political routes to being plausible since doing so would be revealing that they were wrong the whole time.
This isn't strictly being consumerist. It's not like avenues like that weren't closed off like that in feudal societies, for example. I agree the system needs to improve on making support structures to reach those people though the cracks, but it gets really bad when people get to myopic they ignore what the system is offering and that there are people out there who will help them, but they won't be able to solve anything by being contrarians about capitalism. People don't gain influence by doing nothing, and many aren't as powerless as they think. This is where being defined by being contrarian isolates them further and keeps them there.
I highly doubt those polled are really looking for chaos. Chaos has a chance to backfire on you.
If one of the questions had the chance for them to not be on top once the chaos was done, I promise you they wouldn’t be for it. They want chaos for the other, not for them.
That’s why they are for cruelty; they want to sow chaos in others while maintaining their comfy position.
They don’t want to burn their part of the world, just everyone else’s.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
You'll note I said Capitalist Liberal Democracy, which is a political and economic ideology.
What role does the entertainment industry have to play in the state of our culture right now? Do we need to look into steering Hollywood et all to slow down with all the cynical and nihilistic comedy out there and maybe force them to be more conscientious of the impact they have on our culture? It cannot be denied that the American entertainment industry has a massive influence on the way our society sees itself. To what level do they need to be held to account for that?
Recent decades have seen a huge overall relaxing of broadcasting standards. Remember when all cartoons had to have an educational component to them? When swearing on TV was a HUGE NONO. Remember "very special episodes"? Are obscenity laws even a thing anymore?
Most would say, and I would agree, that these types of moral mandates being imposed on broadcast television in the past were stifling and onerous, but is it possible now that the pendulum has swung too far the other way?
We all want to believe that every individual is responsible for what they choose to consume in a free society, but let's face it, we don't always consume things that are in our best interest. Does society have a responsibility to police media to protect society from itself? Does that square with our desire for freedom of expression? On a more personal note, how do we deal with the toxic fans in our lives and communities, who seem to willfully take the wrong message from our media (see fans of Fight Club, Rick and Morty, people who think Walter White was awesome). Is it fair to call these factors contributors to our overall feeling of hopelessness and lack of agency?
I don't see how that discounts my post.
I don't see anyone really having the will to regulate anything anymore, so I'm not sure who would steer Hollywood to do anything they don't want to do. I'll be honest I don't remember when cartoons had to be educational. Was that Looney Tunes era, Scooby Doo era, GI JOE/He-Man/Transformers ? Movies/TV are still much more regulated than say Youtube/facebook and therefore not where we should probably be focusing what limited regulatory power and attention we do have. I think those sites have a lot more blame than traditional media for this issue.
I think what you're referring to is more to do with civil society and activism than regulation. The drive for educational and informational programming in the 1960s and 1970s (think Schoolhouse Rock and the like) was from a group called Action for Children's Television, which was founded in 1968 and dissolved in 1992. They got the broadcasters to adopt a voluntary code of conduct in 1973 and added some FTC regulations in 1977, which is what (briefly) prevented networks from creating shows aimed solely at selling toys (think your Transformers, G.I. Joes, My Little Ponies, etc). They came fairly close to having some regulatory laws passed in 1978 but they weren't. Under Reagan, the FTC changed their regulations in 1982 to be much more permissive with regard to selling, which brought about the sort of brands outlined above. The first actual regulatory law was the Children's Television Act in 1990.
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In regards to Rick & Morty I wouldn't be surprised if the next season tried to push back against its toxic fans. Dan Harmon has made it plain he's annoyed by the toxic segment of the fan base, and season three had already tried to make it clearer that Rick's philosophy is garbage by taking him down a peg multiple times (once with Morty sarcastically noting "Rick's point is that nothing matters. That's ALWAYS his point.").
To be clear, when I say "entertainment industry" I'm including the Internet in there. I was just using broadcast television as a point of reference to show that we once used to regulate media output to a much greater extent than we do now.
You say no one has "the will to regulate anything anymore"; why do you think that is? It wasn't always the case, what changed, and why can't we dial it back a bit? Or, if we shouldn't, why not? I don't really feel like "because it's too hard" or "because no one wants to" to be very compelling arguments. Is it too hard? Ok, why? What are the obstacles? No one wants to anymore? How come? People used to really care about this shit, for better or worse!
I mean many countries that we view as oppressive regulate the shit out of their Internet (China, multiple Middle Eastern countries). For the record, yes, I consider such measures to be dictatorial, but to say it can't be done is at least false, to a degree.
To keep this from turning into a Free Speech thread (we have one of those), let's try and focus on if there's any measurable way to quantify what, in any, impact, our new, more permissive media landscape might have on our culture, and if there is something to be said about what kind of influence it has on those of us who have lost hope and entertain thoughts of chaos.
But the idea of regulating it makes me think of things like the comics code or blaming games or rap for mass shootings. Rick and Morty isn’t what made these people toxic any more than Pepe did, they were already that way and just co-opted it.
I’d say it’s more along the lines of the twitter thread and how not regulating how social media has made it easy for people to be racists, sexist, homophobic, and toxic without social repercussions. That’s what’s driving the sickness, Rick and Morty fans are just a symptom, social media recruitment into extremism and toxic echo chambers is the disease.
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I don't really know what you do about it, when men are growing up generally without meaning coming from the church or from their country or whatever. It's to do with the structures in capitalism, of course, but it's striking that it's the demographic that does best out of the system, that exhibits this with the greatest regularity.
"He is not hurting the people he needs to be hurting" - Trump Supporter, Jan 2019.
It's not even a mystery. They will come right out and tell you that this is their motivation. They want a scapegoat for the things they feel they've lost, and for someone to punish that scapegoat.
The complaint is actually real - wages for working Americans have entirely stagnated over the past 4 decades. The rage, anger and bitterness would, frankly, be entirely justified were it aimed at those actually responsible and not redirected into various -isms and culture-war touchstones. That people are angry should not be a surprise to anyone paying attention. The GOP, or rather a once fringe fraction of it, just got the idea to fully harness that sooner/better than anyone else.
People with chaotic motivations are just so frustrated by their lot in life and what they see in the news that they no longer see a path to stability and happiness. So instead they just want things to be as entertaining as possible. They aren't thinking about impact to themselves because the news rarely impacts them in a direct personal way, it's just something they watch/read on the internet for some perverse kind of amusement. I don't agree that these people are necessarily cruel, rather they're selfish and indifferent to the suffering of those affected.
Are they a problem though? Or is it pointless to worry about them? Should we be concerned that there are groups with more malicious intent who seem to be successfully manipulating and mobilizing them to their own, actually cruel, ends?
If they are a problem, what is our role as those people's friends and neighbours? I don't necessarily disagree that these "chaos inciters" aren't necessarily cruel or evil, but rather simply lashing out due to a feeling of hopeless impotence and a search for any type of agency at all. However I still feel that their indifference towards the actual, real-life, consequences of their actions makes them a dangerous tool of the truly cruel and evil. As such, I feel that society has a responsibility to address that.
https://psyarxiv.com/6m4ts/
Anyway, there's been a lot of blah-blah-blah late-stage-capitalism talk going on and I'm not really sure the paper actually supports these ideas. It doesn't contradict them, but it's just not what the paper was about. I'm not flush with time today so I might have missed something, but it seems to be basically be a paper saying "Hostile political rumours are not spread mostly by people motivated to push forward one specific partisan actor within the system but instead by those who want to tear the whole system down."
The last bolded part here seeming to be the crux of the discussion going on and I think does not exactly align with the ideas people are throwing around.
The desire for "chaos" was predicted by being "young, less educated and male" and also loneliness and "lower perceived placement on the social ladder". Not however, seemingly with a lack of success with mating.
The basic conclusions here they then reach are that these people aren't trying to push a specific political agenda or just "have fun" but are pursuing a specific agenda of promoting chaos. Also, that fact-checking doesn't work on these people because they know a lot of it's bullshit, they just don't care because it advances their cause to spread it.
They do however note that: But this is, as far as I can tell, purely supposition and not something they actually measured in the tests. (ie - they don't establish a connection between inequality or the like and the need for chaos)
Honestly, at this point my suggestion to lower mass shootings and online harassment would be legalized prostitution, specially on the Silicon Valley area. Can't be harder than gun control.
I think what this tells us is that the focus needs to be on stopping those creating inflammatory social media content and maybe also try to specifically target and ban these types of users?
They are a problem because they're shitty voters. Most of them aren't even nihilists, but they are sticking their heads in the sand when it comes to really important issues, namely climate change. The more malicious ones that actively spread bad information are also influencing other voters.
If we really want to talk nihilism, we should also talk about people who don't care if the world burns because they won't have to deal with it.
But they’re passing soon! How else will they get to heaven if they don’t save all those babies?
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.