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The owners use their captured public education and for profit media to turn us on one another and make us monsters.
They tell us avarice/greed, a well known character deficit and social blight for thousands of years is instead virtuous rational self-interest.
They force us to compete against one another rather than cooperate with one another as the basis of our economy, when an economy is meant to be a lowly tool of society for the explicit use of maximizing the efficient, equitable distribution of goods and services for the benefit of the citizens of the society. Our tail wags the dog. We are slaves to economic growth/metastasis we as a society do not benefit from.
The problem is that the sociopaths, mentally ill people literally incapable of empathy, something most humans have a strong need to exercise, that are among us quickly game society using their mental deficit as an advantage to take more than they need and manipulate others into elevating them, then manipulate those below them into fighting one another perpetually to stay on top.
Humans are social creatures. We’ve been conditioned to act as monsters, condemning our fellow humans literally dying in our streets of exposure and capital defense force brutality as “lowering our property values.”
This isn’t natural. It’s why our nation’s mental health is basically its own apocalypse of mass depression, anxiety, and never ending trauma. We are strongly discouraged from supporting one another, as we’re supposed to do the impossible, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, then claim we did it alone. That’s the American delusion. 🇺🇸
This really resonates with me. You are an excellent writer.
The part about empathy is so real. A lack of empathy is a real advantage in today’s world, unfortunately. I think empathy should be one of the most important values a society should strive for, and we decided to make a society that rewards sociopathy instead.
Thank you, sincerely.
I know my comment history is basically the same points rehashed over and over as applied to the symptoms of the day we’re experiencing, but it helps me feel like I’m holding onto sanity in an insane society to describe the core rot as I see it, and I appreciate your kind words.
The Washington Post still has the article up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.html
And here’s the science article that prompted it:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1210789and here’s an old archive.org copy of it before the Washington Post started blocking the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140114012833/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.htmlnow make the rats comprehend fascism.
Would be an interesting study if that was possible.
Another run of this experiment found rats free those with the same fur color faster or more readily
huh, that’s definitely an interesting paper to write.
A lot of animals are better at solving “prisoners dilemma” situations than us. Most animals would rather work together for the greater good but I guess they haven’t heard of capitalism.
heathens!
I wonder if there is a more mutualist economic system. Oh wait!
… which isn’t news to me.
For a time it seemed that everybody wanted to shit on animals as being way inferior to humans in every way, including lacking empathy emotion feelings and stuff.
But that was always wrong. Who has ever worked with animals be it horses dogs or farm animals knows they have a soul. Well, but also a lot of them are just evil bastards.
Rats live like 2 years.
In two years, they learn how to be better to each other than a large part of the human race.
I think of it in another way: What these rats display is the natural behavior.
These rats live two years, so they don’t have time to learn otherwise. Human greed is a learned behavior, and it takes a lot of time to learn that.
Sounds like greed needs to have some cognitive feedback.
Greed is a pattern which is adopted to our current competitive environment, where everything is directed at progress and hard work. Really, humans often work 40 hours a week or more, which is significantly more time than wild animals spend to gather food. (I don’t have a source for this unfortunately, but if i remember correctly it’s maybe 2-3 hours a day.)
If a rat has a better developed sense of empathy than you do, then you’ve probably made some seriously awful life choices somewhere along the line.
the phrase “the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive - which is alot to expect of a rat”…
it clearly isn’t “alot to expect” if it’s automatic normal behavior for their species. It actually implies it’s the normal for a rat. It just isn’t normal for those humans.
I think it means “chocolate chips are precious to rats” by that - ie that it is a big sacrifice.
You don’t see them fuckng each other over for a goddamn percentage!
Empathy is the new intelligence.
What does this mean
Almost every creature that lives in a harsh environment understands about looking out for your buddies. The next day, it might be you snapped into the trap. Allies are a precious thing. A lot of people prominent in our society have forgotten, but the rats have not, nor many of the people, either.
Remember this when they start deporting your neighbors next year.
mutual aid: a factor of evolution
rb>c
Today you, tomorrow me.
You made me a little nostalgic, reminding me of when reddit was good. Right around that timeframe was the last days of when it was a human place.
https://aroundincircles.net/tales-from-a-dishonest-used-car-dealership-stories/
Yeah, I sometimes miss Tales From Tech Support. There were some damn good stories in there. The car dealership ones were some of the best.
I like how it started with “lol the car ID has the wrong number of digits” and keeps evolving to the point of sawing cars in half, the car that runs on recycled grease, pure madness.
Well, every social creature. There are plenty of species that don’t give a fuck.
Perhaps most mammals and birds understand empathy, but plenty of animals in classes like reptiles, insects, amphibians, don’t exert almost any empathy as humans understand it.
Yeah, without empathy our current society would never have had existed, sadly greed is often more powerful once basic needs and safety are met.
I’m always mildly concerned about how shocked people are about animals being conscious beings with feelings. Do people really think we are mentally that different from other animals with brains?
I’m more concerned that people believe it’s rare, in both humans and the animal kingdom
Predators will share territory if there’s enough to go around, even forming close relationships across species, sometimes even raising their young together
Empathy is the natural state, unless there’s enough scarcity. Humans are naturally generous, unless we’re raised in an environment of eternal artificial scarcity…
All those rich bastards that are not generous at all must have been raised in a lot of artificial scarcity then. Really artificial since most of them grew up well to do as well.
Unironically, yes. Daddy’s approval, respect from their peers, relationships based on you and not your money, even basic self respect- they’re raised chasing money to fill the hole, to see it as the value of a person, of themselves
The ones that aren’t cursed with this artificial scarcity? They quietly live their lives however they like, they’re not trying to nickel and dime their way for more. You don’t hear about them much, because why would a mentally healthy person put themselves through that for no reward? Any of them could buy a nice house (or a dozen), pretend to be upper middle class, and live whatever kind of life they want. They could live out of 5 Star hotels and be waited on hand and foot. They could buy their way into fame as an actor or a musician
It always strikes me as absurd - we’re destroying the planet, and none of us are happy - not even the billionaires benefiting from it. Their family lives are a mess, they’re hated (or idolized for things they’re not), and especially now, they probably live in fear of being targeted walking down the street
They spend all their damn lives not even fully comprehending they’re not living in scarcity, because the only resources they’ve ever been taught to focus on are those which are inherently scarce - competing for attention, fame, social status, etc.
Predators will share territory if there’s enough to go around, even forming close relationships across species, sometimes even raising their young together
Some predators(and scavengers) have special move “Recruit!”, which allows them to invite members of another guild(species) into their party.
To be fair, with academic types running experiments like this, the question is usually more along the lines of “At what point does instinct become empathy as we would recognize it?”, and depending on how high the criteria is set for empathy there, the level of premeditation may be geniunely surprising in some animals.
Yes, they really do.
Yes
Yes, they do. And Christian types often believe that we have “souls” and animals do not.
The rats don’t live in a system that exacerbates and encourages the worst excesses of the worst people. The rats that don’t help are our billionaires.
Yeah, pick any two humans and put them in a similar situation, and I truly believe that you’ll see similar empathy 99.9% of time time. But that fucking 0.1%, they’re ruthless and they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior.
they’re rewarded handsomely for that behavior
It’s more just that they aren’t punished for it. They don’t have the empathy to give a shit, and thus will do things regular people won’t. If society doesn’t punish them for being a piece of shit, then there’s no downside to being a piece of shit for them, only upsides from taking advantage of situations others won’t.
A lot harder to punish when you can start making the laws as well. Society won’t just reward them sometimes they will let them write what everyone else should do as well.
This is why you have to introduce the concepts of mimics or demons that have access to change shape. Otherwise the party always frees the chained up maiden in the dungeon without asking any questions. Alternatively, if there is a rogue, you don’t have to worry. They’ll try their best to convince the others that they’ll get xp for stabbing the prisoner.
deleted by creator
You might be curious to find that in many animal species studied, from pack animals down to ants, there is always a large percentage that contribute nothing and are a net-drain on the larger life-structure or colony. Humans and all other forms of life seem to share this commonality.
And yet the groups survive anyway. So does it really matter?
You don’t gotta out yourself like that bud
Rats are more compassionate than insurance companies CEOs.
Cordyceps is more compassionate than insurance company CEOs.
CEOs of publicly traded companies doesn’t have the option to show empathy, they are there to maximize the company value for the shareholders.
Going against that would be a crime.
This is not an excuse for not doing it, this is an explanation of a faulty system.
Insurance companies should not have shareholders.
And not a “that was a bad business move and we’re going to vote to fire you” crime, but an actual white collar prison crime.
It is against US law to prioritize customers (remember, in matters like health insurance, food, and housing, “customers” means literally everyone. you cannot opt out and you must be a customer to live) over shareholders.
Although the term “shareholder fraud” is mostly about CEOs themselves stealing from their shareholders for their personal piggy banks, there are plenty of lawsuits from shareholders claiming the company and/or CEO made decisions that didn’t directly generate value for shareholders or didn’t generate the maximum value it theoretically could have.
Capitalism wants us to believe that it’s the only stable solution, because it comes close to the natural order, and that in nature there is only selfish behaviour, eat or get eaten, homo homini lupus and so on. The truth is, this supposed natural state is completely made up and animals and human beings naturally behave much more selflessly than what is expected from us under capitalism.
Thing is, even the phrase homo homini lupus predates capitalism significantly, and the sentiment dates back to before even the phrase. ‘Naturally behave’ is a very questionable phrase.
We have the ability to be better and build better societies than we currently have under capitalism. I just don’t think an appeal to a state of nature is useful or accurate.
I think there is definitely a line from early modern natural state theory to today’s justification of capitalism, although the argument has somehow reversed itself.
Actual natural behaviour is not even important, since we abandoned that some time ago, and it probably isn’t desirable to go back. Its just easier to sell an ideology when you disguise it as natural order.
I’d say it’s more of an easy to make justification than a real argument. History is incredibly long and full of varied situations in which creatures have survived in many different ways, so it can be mined for examples to support almost anything and claim it to be “natural”.
People didn’t wait for formal capitalism to be assholes.
i did
