Honestly, I don’t think it’s that important or helpful.
If you have conservative friends and feel the desire to try to engage and debate with them, you would be served a lot better by making an actual effort, understanding their positions and giving them all the rope they need. From there, addressing their specific worries and concerns and asking a lot of questions about why they have the concerns and fears they have… and it’s all fears, all the way down. They don’t care about facts, they have strong emotions that they can’t regulate and their brains latch onto any story to explain their feelings. Engage with the feelings and you can change them.
I have changed more hearts and minds than I can remember doing this, it’s not easy but you can change these simple people if you have the patience and energy. Human beings as a group are like locusts, a scourge upon the earth, a fluid that moves to the lowest places. But as individuals? Individual people are largely easy to influence and change, especially conservatives who only hold their positions because of fear of something.
Not saying that it’s not enjoyable and effective to make fun of the chuds with memes, but let’s all be honest that these memes and jokes are here for us to laugh over and feel catharsis from. If we all actually wanted a better world we would be marching in-mass on washington, arms locked with conservatives whom we have talked to and appealed to their emotions enough that they realized that they can be a part of a better group with a better identity. These people are dumber than dirt, you will get further with them with pity than you will with scorn. I know most people aren’t equipped for this, and I was because I was a self-defense teacher, a public speaker and used to debate right-wing people daily. If you’re anxious and/or non-social, don’t get yourself stressed even trying this until you get more experience.
while i don’t ardently agree with all your rhetoric it makes me feel such a sense of solace to see some of these ideas expressed in the wild.
it’s absolutely confounding how even seemingly rational people begin to emotionally seethe when presented with the fact that shitposting and generally bullying people isn’t activism. seems to be a very human thing.
i think a big part of the issue generally is that people think of their intelligence as some sort of absolute and continuous character trait rather than a discrete aspect of your personality; i.e, the idea someone is a “stupid” or “intelligent” person is of itself, a stupid idea lol. sometimes you’re the biggest brain in the room, sometimes you’re an idiot.
i appreciate your focus on the emotional aspect of it because that is certainly the more pertinent part. imo all humans average around the same intellectual capability, sans extreme outliers. it’s more about how people choose to use what is available to them than an actual lacking of mental capabilities. these people are just as rational as anyone else, it just happens that the vast landscape of knowledge itself is full of many pangs and holes that lead to nowhere; they seem stupid because there exists a seemingly logical perspective that causes them to infinitesimally and continually spin around these holes, like a coin in a make-a-wish donation thing. not sure if i’m conveying my rationale very well but i have found that the stuff in the cracks between ideas like this is often where the calculus of the universe hides in life.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s that important or helpful.
If you have conservative friends and feel the desire to try to engage and debate with them, you would be served a lot better by making an actual effort, understanding their positions and giving them all the rope they need. From there, addressing their specific worries and concerns and asking a lot of questions about why they have the concerns and fears they have… and it’s all fears, all the way down. They don’t care about facts, they have strong emotions that they can’t regulate and their brains latch onto any story to explain their feelings. Engage with the feelings and you can change them.
I have changed more hearts and minds than I can remember doing this, it’s not easy but you can change these simple people if you have the patience and energy. Human beings as a group are like locusts, a scourge upon the earth, a fluid that moves to the lowest places. But as individuals? Individual people are largely easy to influence and change, especially conservatives who only hold their positions because of fear of something.
Not saying that it’s not enjoyable and effective to make fun of the chuds with memes, but let’s all be honest that these memes and jokes are here for us to laugh over and feel catharsis from. If we all actually wanted a better world we would be marching in-mass on washington, arms locked with conservatives whom we have talked to and appealed to their emotions enough that they realized that they can be a part of a better group with a better identity. These people are dumber than dirt, you will get further with them with pity than you will with scorn. I know most people aren’t equipped for this, and I was because I was a self-defense teacher, a public speaker and used to debate right-wing people daily. If you’re anxious and/or non-social, don’t get yourself stressed even trying this until you get more experience.
while i don’t ardently agree with all your rhetoric it makes me feel such a sense of solace to see some of these ideas expressed in the wild.
it’s absolutely confounding how even seemingly rational people begin to emotionally seethe when presented with the fact that shitposting and generally bullying people isn’t activism. seems to be a very human thing.
i think a big part of the issue generally is that people think of their intelligence as some sort of absolute and continuous character trait rather than a discrete aspect of your personality; i.e, the idea someone is a “stupid” or “intelligent” person is of itself, a stupid idea lol. sometimes you’re the biggest brain in the room, sometimes you’re an idiot.
i appreciate your focus on the emotional aspect of it because that is certainly the more pertinent part. imo all humans average around the same intellectual capability, sans extreme outliers. it’s more about how people choose to use what is available to them than an actual lacking of mental capabilities. these people are just as rational as anyone else, it just happens that the vast landscape of knowledge itself is full of many pangs and holes that lead to nowhere; they seem stupid because there exists a seemingly logical perspective that causes them to infinitesimally and continually spin around these holes, like a coin in a make-a-wish donation thing. not sure if i’m conveying my rationale very well but i have found that the stuff in the cracks between ideas like this is often where the calculus of the universe hides in life.