sanity_is_maddening

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deleted by creator

I want to add that some of us went through this over here…

https://vger.app/profile/piefed.social/c/europe@feddit.org/comments/1069662

Thank you for the correction and the very good news in just one go.

And I apologise if I misrepresented the Australian national identity in the process. That wasn’t my intention. And it’s always good to know that this brand of populism is unpopular in some countries.

No, you’re not wrong. Someone else has also corrected me.

Apparently Dutton even lost his sit.

So, good news on that front at least.

I missed that one. Thank you for sharing it. The fact that they have the “wellness” as a spin is the really fucked up part. So…“Wellness camps” is how they’re going to sell the same thing like the “los indeseados” in Cuba. At least Fidel was honest in naming the nonsense he unleashed, I guess.

Is this a warning? I hope most of you have spotted this sooner than this article seems to have, because this has been going on for quite a while.

There’s even been articles uncovering far right groups financing influencers and youtubers as a way to sever through culture.

And I keep saying that “Gamergate” was the true opening of that avenue into the mainstream almost a decade and a half ago. That was the time to spot it. By the time that “kermit the frog impersonator” and the “no chin alpha” showed up on the public radar, the problem was already unfolding wide and around for a while.

And I have a suspicion that what started Gamergate was just some good old sport trolling that then turned into… well… the opening of the gates of hell.

Obviously that I have no way to confirm this.

But I still have some fun imagining those who were indeed just trolling for some dumb fun back then, now aged with their scruffy beard and hair greying, holding their knees in a fetal position muttering to themselves “What did I do?”- and yes, it’s kind of fucked that I find that funny.

But I also keep saying the same thing over and over…

This is not just an American problem. This is everywhere.

If you disagree, I suggest you take a stroll through Europe…

You can start with Portugal, and the ridiculousness with the party Chega and its circus of followers, moving next to Spain with Vox and their own clown show, then France and don’t tell me you haven’t even heard of Marine Le Pen. Just take a look up from there to Britain with good old Brexit and the tumour Nigel Farage with the cancer that is Reform. What about Italy? Anyone thinking that Georgia Meloni snuck up on Europe must’ve been in a coma during the Berlusconi years, because the orange blob as president is just a terrible American remake of that Italian classic. And Germany, did it elude anyone the fact that AFD scored the second place in the elections and is even polling in first now, apparently? I could keep going, but we should stop before we get to the Balkans, right?

“Well, that’s just Europe and the U.S. then.”

What about Australia, with Peter Dutton and the crazy brand of fascism they have going down under? Or Canada and what the hell is even Pierre Polievre who was all set to win? Yes, these two did lose but not by much and the type of fuel they ran on is still there to burn.

This is a problem that is everywhere. And what creates this madness is that there are grifters who are willing to say whatever it takes, that take problems that affect almost everyone except the elite class, but then single their message across to a particular subset of the public which is too uneducated to understand the rest of the conversation that everyone is trying to have. And because the indignation is something that so many others can join in on when there’s so much to feel angry towards, the menace spreads wider as a result of a compromise to meet the end they desire.

But this second wave of rage that joins in has the logic that if there’s things that need fixing in one’s household, the best is to burn the house down, apparently.

And the really sad part is none of this is new.

Socrates thought that elections were too important to be handed to a general public which was too ignorant to understand its functioning or its true value. And who was it that believed that there was a need for a lie to “deceive” the population into doing the decent thing? I can’t remember which of them said that. (If you do, please do tell) But that was what many found religion to be the method to accomplish it. As ludicrous as that might sound.

It’s just the same loop of the revolt of the idiots. “My pain is truer than yours” type of nonsense.

On and on.

But if anyone knows how to make the arrogant humble and the idiot know their idiocy, please do tell.

Because you would’ve made the greatest discovery in human history that would break this seemingly never-ending loop.

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I can’t speak for every place on earth, but where I live in the south of Portugal, that is very much the problem. And affordable long term rent has been destroyed in all of Europe by Airbnb and similar initiatives. And no, this is not a scapegoat theory. All you have to do is access housing registrations and match against citizenship registered to addresses in the same area and then you start to see the problem. There’s a lot more houses than people that have their permanent address registered to the same area. So then the problem can’t be housing in itself. When one starts to look closer we start to notice a lot of titles to the same people and the same last names as we all would expect. The house to person ratio is quite disproportionate in its distribution. I can tell you that this has been exposed time and time again over time, but since 2008 that it has indeed gotten worse and more so exponentially every year since then.

The problem in just simply building more housing is that the same thing will happen to those new homes. They’ll just be absorbed into this same phenomenon of asset flipping and market speculation in which even rent, not just owning property reaches prices beyond what locals can afford with long term rent even becoming entirely unavailable due to Airbnb and other initiatives alike.

That’s why the governments have to intervene. Especially at a local level. But if a rewiring of the general population doesn’t occur, it will just be lobbied back to the same as before. As it has happened. Because what is simply enforced is not learned. And this is what you are referring to when you speak to the public aversion to government intervention. If not understood and learned, what is then witnessed is the same rope pull of do and undo between governmental administrations, that wears off and alienates the public.

But yes, sometimes the problem in itself can be an increase of population density that exploded beyond the local availability of houses. And then new housing development is required or people will have to choose (more like forced without an option) to relocate.

That is why I said “the problem is not a lack of housing in itself necessarily”. In which I meant it as not always the source of the problem. I didn’t say the lack of housing in itself is NEVER the problem.

There are many contributors to this issue.

Environmental changes and war are also intertwined as they both lead to resource depletion, and become part of the same feedback loop that plays a part in the whole of the Metacrisis. In which both will cause mass migrations. And mass migrations will always cause a disparity between demand and availability in housing, which leads to more inflation and more conflicts over resources, which in turn leads to more mass migrations and on and on and on… This is “systems thinking” and the general public has not caught up to the descent we’re in yet. Or is in denial and refusing to engage in the face of its enormity.

Most problems that are detected by most people are real and feeding into one another. What I said is true and what you said is true and anyone who doubts that is possible is not engaging with the complexity of the world as it is.

I keep saying for a while that Precision Fermentation is the future. Because if it isn’t, that probably means there isn’t one.

Using the lowest trophic level possible to grow our sustenance directly is the only way to ensure the least destruction possible. Which ensures the most environmental and ethical efficacy. As there should never be anything to distinguish between them in the first place.

What?? Pretty soon you’re gonna be suggesting that there are better ways to transport people around than cars and that we could build better public transportation infrastructure with the tax payers money so that the same tax payers can afford mobility for a lot less while saving time in getting around and polluting a lot less the atmosphere that allows them to breath!

What’s this? Do you want to make sense? We wouldn’t want to start making sense now, would we?

…

Jokes aside now, when it comes to housing, the problem is not a lack of housing in itself necessarily. The crucial part of the problem resides in property hoarding by the wealthy and upper middle-class as long term investments in the form of assets to flip, all while they still obtain revenue in renting them to the highest bidder. Airbnb and similar initiatives destroyed affordable rent all around the world. This to say, that a lot of people in the unprivileged categories didn’t also mind screwing their peers to get ahead. This is what the capitalist system does. It re-enforces sociopathic behaviour in people through them valuing the monetary tokens more than the lives of those around them and the very world in which they have to inhabit. This is what Elizabeth Magie tried to explain the world when she created “The Landlord’s Game”. It has been explained and demonstrated as a predicted model for a very long time. And we all lose in the end. Always.

Saying that the government needs to interfere and create measures to prevent the furthering of this crisis is incomplete without acknowledgement of the required rewiring of the general public to stave off the centuries old social conditioning of appealing to the worst in human condition.

The default setting of a common citizen is not to contribute to a life shared by all that live around them and in turn benefit from the same efforts from others. It is instead to try and survive them all and and not needing the slightest from them. Which is never true, never possible but nevertheless the reason why we are always in this mess. And the reason why we all lose, and even those who lose the least, they still have to inhabit a world that would be better if this wasn’t true.

Individuality also explains the housing crisis in the sense that more and more people have the desire to live alone. And therefore more houses are required. Which in a world like the one we have, that desire is perfectly understandable but in itself also a reinforcement of the loop that causes it.

It’s a mess.

I don’t like making generalisations…

But…

I agree.

There is absolutely an observable correlation there. And mentioning exceptions will only prove the rule.

Yup. It does, doesn’t it?

I know people with a lot of money to their name who buy second hand just to get around, and people with not much that end up with barely a cent to spare because they’re paying a loan to own a car they couldn’t really afford. Go figure.

“It takes a special type of person”- as you said.

Also, my comment wasn’t a dig at people for liking or enjoying cars at all. It’s about specific ones and how they’re being driven around… we see them around right?

It’s the same with motorcycles to.

The problem is never the vehicles themselves, obviously, it’s the idiots that get drawn to them and ruin what others might enjoy in them as well.

Thank you for pointing that out to me because I really missed that.

That does make blurring the license plate hilariously futile. Well, unless people need to go get their ears checked or cleaned like me.

Thanks again. You gave me something to laugh and something to worry about.

Cheers.

Why is it always the kind of person you think it’s gonna be? I mean, always. One can match the level of inconsiderable idiocy from car models alone.

Imagine knowing you’re wrong and persist and insist this much in continuing to do the wrong thing in front of everyone, so that everyone can behold the thing that everyone knows that is wrong for you to be doing, and you still continue to do the wrong thing that you know that everyone knows that you know that is wrong to do. No? Hurts your brain, doesn’t it?

Now… Why is his license plate blurred in the video? Does this level of inconsiderate behaviour deserve that level of consideration in return?

I’m not sure if the OP is trying to expose this article as an idiotic thing or not, but I can’t take this nothingness of an article seriously.

I’m 40 and I’m sure that I “gave” this supposed “stare” to both older and younger people several times this month alone. And we’re barely past midway through it.

Yes, it is smug and rude and most of the times uncalled for. But I don’t remember a time when this wasn’t around. I’ve given this look and received it since I’m able to remember existing. It’s not a generational feature, it’s not even a cultural one, as I’ve met people from all ages and places that do this my whole life.

And it’s not that the young are more rude, is that everyone is more rude now.

We all know that social exchanges took a turn for the worst since algorithmic social media really started to take off circa 2010, and it only got worse when everyone got locked with it as their only form of social exchange during covid lockdowns. This is not a GenZ problem, nor a U.S. problem, this is a problem for most people in most places now.

Blaming this on the young when they had no saying in establishing this mess and when they were obviously never in charge of any decisions that led us here is the typical nonsense to expect from the most idiotic reasoning of the establishment and legacy media.

“Oh, you know who we should blame for the shitty world we have? The people who were never in charge of anything and never had any saying in a single thing whatsoever. That’s who!!”

I’ve witnessed this nonsense too many times my entire life and I don’t know how people fall for something so easy to recognize as inconceivable. And not with just the youth. It’s always stupid to assign blame to the people with the least available agency in the room, or in the world.

And I hope you all catch it and stop it everytime someone is trying this nonsense in front of you.

This article deserves the very “stare” that is trying to attribute to GenZ. If they do indeed do it more than others, articles like this only re-enforce that they should keep doing it. Because it very much earns that reaction.

While I do share your deep frustration regarding how the attention scale tips a lot more for the frivolous in the face of calamity, I have to say the way you are commenting is just a good example of how to not communicate with others in behalf of a cause.

You could harness the enthusiasm of people for this cause and redirect their attention to other issues, by claiming that this is a good example in how we can indeed fight back against the many injustices that are reigned over us.

If you instead intend to belittle people into it, you’ll get nothing but what you are getting here, which is… well, you can see for yourself.

Not to mention that you might be successful in demotivating people even further.

I try to raise as much attention as I can to Permaculture and syntropy or the syntropic method, and try to promote movements such as Degrowth, Veganism, Zero Waste and I never shut up about Precision Fermentation. But there’s a reason why I don’t call myself an Environmentalist, a Vegan or a Zerowaster and so on… even though in practice I technically do practice all these things - well, not all, not Precision Fermentation because I don’t have the money or infrastructure to do it, otherwise I would, and that is why I probably can’t shut up about it. But I don’t use distinguishing labeling to describe myself that may generate a sense of otherness to others. There’s literally nothing different about me because I do or practice any single one of these things or all of them. Any person can choose to do any of them or all of them at any point, and the only obstacle might be that they didn’t have the knowledge as to how or they didn’t or don’t have time and support to learn it.

When fighting for the environment or fighting fascism (It’s literally the same fight against the capital influence that dictates these conditions because of the few that want to thrive at the cost of everything else), it needs to start with making people feel less alone in the face of it all, and then reaffirming their sense of belief that any difference that they can make is a difference worth making.

You’re doing quite the opposite here. And believe me when I tell you this. Because I am on your side. Even your feeling of anger and resentment is one I share when seeing the apathy and complacency in the people around me everyday. I just learned my lesson that the pessimistic attitude and outbursts got me nothing but alienation. And from time to time I still need someone to do the same for me as what I am doing here for you now, someone needs to snap me out of all the rage and loathing because it accomplishes exactly the opposite of what I want to happen in the world.

I apologise if my very long message feels condescending, or if it makes you feel like telling me to go fuck myself. If it does, remember this… I’m on your side. I really am.

Notice that my comment was meant as a compliment to him. And a dig to myself for not allowing the belief that this might just be a decent person. That was the joke. That we are almost all conditioned to have a pavlovian level of reaction towards politicians, in which they speak and we doubt them immediately.

I know two people that are members of political parties and they are genuinely two of the most decent people I know. But at the same time, they are not raising ranks within their respective parties. Which are also not the biggest parties to begin with. I don’t doubt that there are decent people that are trying to be decent politicians. I just think that the capital influence and its respective interests don’t usually allow these decent ones to reach actual positions of power and they even get actively placated as a result of their integrity hindering the consolidation of that very same capital influence.

What’s this?? A politician in a position of power taking a stand on a principle with integrity?? Especially these days?

How did he sneak in?

They’re usually not allowed in the establishment.

Hmm… Suddenly I can’t trust him anymore. That’s how fucked I am with the political class. Like, immediately it just pops “what’s his angle besides some PR glow?” - that’s where my mind goes instantly.

It’s exhausting…

I understand your tempered position. I really do.

But allow me to go on a bit of a rant here…

All the big tech companies in Silicon Valley have aways been heavily subsidised by the U.S. government without the U.S. taxpayers having any stakeholders’ position afterwards. These should have always been partially within the public owned infrastructure given how they were funded by the public. Amazon is probably the most ridiculous case in the world in how long they weren’t profitable and remained subsidised by the government to even be able to exist.

So, in regards if FOSS should be tax funded… yes. Because of the very reason I just mentioned. All big tech was and still is tax funded. With them taking even more money from people as costumers after already having taken money from them as taxpayers. While also just selling everyone entirely as a profile to get ad revenue from or as a surveilled citizen to serve on a platter to whichever government they want to influence further. This is insanely corrupt as a system. It should’ve not been allowed to even establish itself.

I think everyone who supports FOSS and open protocols is very aware of the pitfalls and uphill struggles to implement them against the current system. But I find that the general apathy and the further complacency of the general public is the true paramount adversity.

When you say “this is me being a realist”, it is you accepting the reality that was imposed onto you by the people who are benefitting from its’ imposition. Even more than the typical manufactured consent of capitalism, this is enforced submission to those rejecting the manufactured consent. Because from the rest of your comment, and the fact that you are here on Lemmy, you clearly do not consent to this reality, but you’ve accepted it as an inevitability. Which it isn’t, as we are not in the grounds of that reality having this exchange right now.

Taxpayers should fund FOSS and open protocol software because it protects them long term. One quick example would be how to this day nobody can close protocols on email and how anyone can create their email and host the server if they so desire. It obviously requires skill and knowledge, but if one has them, nobody can prevent them from doing it for themselves or even others if they so desire. This is an absolute insurance that the system can’t dictate one’s individual terms.

And while the Fediverse may be very small in comparison to the general establishment, it is large enough as proof to present anyone who doubts that there is a way to get back to the true promise of the internet and that we can indeed get back our sovereignty from the conglomerates that destroyed that promise.

And the political winds can change in whatever direction they may, it doesn’t matter, as it can’t and won’t destroy the resiliency of the concept. I just joined piefed.social after the Lemm.ee shutdown, and it doesn’t matter because this is a resilient concept. And that is also the reason it cannot be contained or controlled by anyone over anyone.

Sorry for the very long reply. I hope I wasn’t as annoying to you as I feel I am being. If so, I apologise even more.

Cheers.