this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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If you tell someone “there’s a fire!” with anguish they’ll assume it’s in the building because what moron phrases it like that if it doesn’t directly impact the person you’re speaking to.
This is more im14andthisisdeep material than shouwerthought
Oh, ok, so that's because we're not concerned by this, they're not "us", understood.
(it's not geographical since europeans will be more impacted by deaths in the west than, e.g., in Africa, it's more of a tribal thing)
I also hesitated to post « If you always agree with "the"( only) point of view of mainstream medias, then you should find it weird », because it's different in foreign medias that we never read(, iranian, venezuelan, russian, chinese, zimbabwean, ...), we usually call "foreign medias" those who are still in the west and aligned with our international policies. But i thought that this sentence was even more im14andthisisdeep material than showerthought, do you agree ?
Place is implied. The logical implication would be local to the speakers.
We know the bombing took place elsewhere.
If you were in Afghanistan, and a bombing took place in america, “theres been a bombing” would imply it’s local to afghanistan.
Place is implied. Could be anywhere in the west, if i'm in France it works for the south//north of France, the United Kingdom, America, Australia, or any country i feel like i belong to, that is in my tribe.
But if you say afterwards :
And that place is in the Middle-East, or in Afghanistan, we would say "yeah, of course, like yesterday and probably tomorrow, no need to be surprised"
It's more about an event happening often or not than a geographical positioning. No need to be surprised if it happens frequently, which is perhaps mainly what striked me in the sentence, we grew accustomed to something that shouldn't, while accepting as normal that we(sterners) were/are the ones doing the killing(, and acting as victims when a few of our civilians die by terrorist attacks, without once discussing the cause(s), and even less the possible solutions).
But thanks for wanting to correct me, it's nice to have a chat with other people than from Lemmygrad for once.
do you know how the English language works? The place hasn't been implied at all. And thus it default to local (to you) when there are no further question to clarify.
And what you consider local is the countries you consider yourself belonging to, i.e., the west, ⟳ .
If you're a separatist from southern France you can say "who cares about what's happening in the rest of France ?", there's no need for anguish in your voice. Yet when the twin towers fell, or something similar, french people could say "there's been a bombing there" with as much anguish as it happened in France, i think that you're omitting the term "anguish" too much in this conversation.
For example, you wouldn't say « There's been a bombing in the Middle-East ! », because we(sterners) would say « Yeah. And ? », that was the whole purpose of this thread, yet you focused on the omission of the location.
Dude of course local means local to me and with that I mean my town/city in my country on the continent I live on. Not the West or the East or the North or South. That's a pretty limiting world view you have.
Interesting, so criticising our tribalism makes me the one with a limited world view, how so ?
We care much more about what's happening in countries we're allied with(, whether they're on our continent or not), that sucks, we should help each other and not fight [insert a way too long list of countries here..]
It's not that world peace is difficult, but that our refusal of unity is difficult to overturn, we(sterners) are the f*cking prime wagers of death&destruction, didn't know that ten years ago.
i mean, we are tribal yeah. we care about ourself first, then our family and allies then the rest. Thats simply how organised life works.
You cant possibly care for EVERYONE at the same capacity. I mean you could but then you would be having mental breakdowns all the time and despair.
Its about self-preservation. And if you deny that to yourself... well, good luck in the real world out there, you will need it.
Thanks, because that's how we should behave, not only towards humans but non-humans as well(, and it's easier to care about humans as a whole once you care about non-humans b.t.w.).
citation needed
What i meant in my previous comment didn't took into account the propaganda about other humans being evil, the logic was that once you refuse to kill a non-human it's easier to refuse killing a human, and once you have non-humans it's easier to accept the thought of having human slaves.
And it has to be sincere, i believe non-humans to be better than us, in enough ways for me to sincerely admire them.
But we may indeed still hate other humans because they're evil and we're liberating their population, or ourselves, yet every conflict could have been avoided if both sides agreed to unite in diversity, i don't see an exception to this rule. And we're still nowadays attributing the roles of good//evil instead of seeking solutions to please both sides(, usually because the strongest side, very often the west, refuses to change or make concessions).
It's not that world peace is difficult, but that our refusal of unity is difficult to overturn, we(sterners) are the f*cking prime wagers of death&destruction, didn't know that ten years ago.
It absolutely is. The Human factor is too insurmountable.
That's a topic i love and i don't often have the possibility to see someone not thinking it is possible(, i've never met someone arguing that it is not desirable).
If you pointed at our arrogant/selfish desire to be "on top" of the other, then my answer would be to explain why everyone would gain and be more powerful if we're united, and it must be lonely at the top, with only one culture, if we have friendly countries who are really different in many domains then it's better to be friends with equals, we have to think of infallible measures against treason but that's not impossible.
So we turn humanity into the Borg Collective? Cool cool.
I obviously choose the first option, you'll probably agree with me, but our western leaders somehow prefer the second one, and they're the ones with the power to improve things.
explain how that would work? How can harmony work on a planet wide scale? Not everyone share the same values and even disapprove of others that have other values.
Thanks for asking !
I'll take more time tomorrow to answer in more depth(, even if only for me[, edit : probably not in the end, unless you're willing to have a discussion on this topic, i'd prefer to receive counter-arguments or engage in a conversation before developing this]), but for now i can quickly say that this set of rules/conditions won't be defined by a single person(, much less myself), as i see it it would take at least 25 years to build, and 5 years before the first (theoretical )experimentations. It'd be, after all, one of the most important thing that humanity could do.
This disapproval of other values can easily be solved through propaganda, we naturally aspire to peace and thinking that our side is better than the other doesn't imply we need to wage war against the "inferior ideologies", even for their own good, we should aim to change them only through the proximity of our example(, if they accept such proximity).
An obstacle i can see is our leaders, they'll think that they have to act for more supremacy while they still have time(, or continue with neo-colonialism to prolong it), and may honestly believe that the pax americana is desirable, or at least preferable to the alternative of an "anarchic" world. They won't immediately believe that we could make rules that can't be broken, such that "showing kindess" won't turn up against us in the end.
Among many other goals behind the experimentation of such rules, we'll have to think of every possible way to break these rules/conditions, and devise the most effective counter-measures ever thought of, i don't see any other way. A world army is an example of condition(, ~only used for humanitarian reasons), and has the advantage of pointing out the need to have trust in such set of rules/conditions, including the promise to be allowed as much diversity as possible(, as long as it doesn't break the unity).
The fear of a tyrannical world government forbidding diversity is also a reason for why such set of rules shouldn't be able to be corrupted, such decision shouldn't be taken lightly anyway, 25 years of preparation&testing seems long but may be too short, yet i don't see a better way, and the status quo of states fearing for their security isn't desirable(, i mean, i don't think you realize how many wars&destruction we caused, in the name of our vaguely defined interests or whatever, we could do better if we want to( let go of hegemony)).
If we ever plan to be an interplanetary species then it'd be great to have solved the problem of war without uniformity/hegemony before that.
There're certainly other problems to tackle, do you have one in mind ?
No, you fucking invalid. Your worldview is limited because you don't understand what "local" means.
That was an incredibly long "no".
And your answer wasn't a counter-argument
But in the end, if i'm the only one finding this sentence interesting then there's no point in discussing it, i've lost interest in it as well.
Just that it shouldn't feel more normal when we're bombing than when we're being bombed, i guess that's ~all i aimed to point out, yet we're only surprised when we're on the receiving end, nothing new.
And yet you just keep going!
Stay in your English classes, kiddo.
👍
We get it dude you are racist towards anyone that doesn’t live on the same continent as you or whatever.
Lmao you're trying really hard to make this deep
Yes and no, while i do agree that this is considered normal behaviour, i also long for a world in which we would be able to say "there's a bombing !" with as much anguish whether its in 'the U.S.'/Europe, or in the Middle-East, Africa, etc.
It's not that much normal i think, and more the sign of a current problem.
We are able to do that lmao
Yeah no, we don't , double standard is everywhere. People would be surprised that you're touched as much by something happening in your "tribe" than outside of it.
Just take the massacre currently happening in Palestine if you want the most recent example, some lives are more important to us than others, there's a difference between what we proclaim our values to be and our practice of them.
We could be united in diversity though, instead of hating so many countries
Don't move the goalposts. You didn't say we don't. You said we aren't able. We absolutely are.
You're taking a quirk of language and trying to spin some commentary on human nature out of it.
Fuck off with your pseudo-intelelctual bullshit. All the sentence needs is "in Gaza" and you'll get the response you were looking for. Stop trying to make people hate humanity, thanks.
If your goal is to engender love between "tribes" (stupid fucking word in this age) then stop spreading hate for any reason, even if the reason is that people don't immediately assume "across the world" when you vaguely refer to events.
Oh, i agree then, except in the case of apology of terrorism/enemies.
And indeed Palestine is easy( tell that to our medias and governments though), but i'd be interested if you know of a counter-example to our double standards(, at least once we're interested in a conflict, it's at this moment that we attribute a range of good and evil people, and are disinterested in the fate of the supposedly evil ones).
And the initial thread was more, since it is showerthoughts, that i haven't thought of things that way, it is indeed a true statement, and more because of tribalism than the way language work, but w/e if i was wrong(, and one option doesn't exclude the other anyway).
Why do you keep trying to connect this to the outdated notion of tribes? You seem to have a conclusion planned and are trying to build arguments towards it. That's not how logic works.
Tribes or nationalism, what's the difference except perhaps size ?
I'm just explaining why i saw an interest in this sentence.
And if it's a commentary on human nature, then we're fucked, i like the current meaning of being humane. I know we're capable of the best, we're simply not perfect and must improve, abandoning tribalism/nationalism and helping each other has been asked for millenias and it may happen but i hope it won't be at the cost of our diversity.
Did you hear me championing nationalism?
You're all over the place, dude.
Okay??
I can agree here.
I believe it can happen, without sacrificing diversity.
Then we agree 👍
Fuck no. I don't agree that someone can be assumed selfish and tribalistic for not reading your mind when you vaguely refer to tragedy.
Let me try: there's been a murder! Can you guess where it was??
You're absolutely right, the truthfulness of this sentence doesn't teach us that someone is tribalistic by assuming it happened locally.
It's only my assumption that an answer to "in the Middle-East" would be "Ah ? Ok, i was afraid for a while(, i thought it was on our side)" that made me thought that. I understand that it was received as an unfair accusation yet i included myself in this and found this assumption more interesting by its truthfulness.
As i wrote in the selftext :
In the end, i found this statement more interesting than it ought to be, as if it taught us something. Our actions are tribal/destructive and there's enough proof for this, but this statement isn't one of them.
No “we” don’t, or no you don’t? Seems to me like you just assume everyone is exactly the same kind of bigot as you.
No man, we care much more about deaths in the west than outside of it, e.g. in the u.s.a. instead of Iraq, or Israel instead of Palestine, partly because we divide between supposedly good western civilians and evil terrorists with human shields, tsk.
5.4 million people have died in Congo between 1998 and 2008, wouldn't we have cared much more if they were westerners ? Because i never heard of that before, and the examples aren't lacking, it only depends if they're allies or enemies. And how many die because of our selfish/nationalistic neo-colonialism ?
“We” or you?
Our medias and politicians, i'm from Lemmygrad on my main account if my personal opinion ever mattered.
But we(sterners) have double standards.
I admitted my formulation was poorly written here
If i may, here's an other excerpt from C.Johnstone who's saying that even admitting this double standard between civilians and terrorists isn't enough for us to currently support Israel/westerners :
