Asklemmy

When I meet someone who doesn't care, I work twice as hard to fix things.

I mean, I care, but what can I do about it? There isn't a CEO I can shoot to make it stop, nor can I make voting day get here any sooner. All I can do is stamp out ignorance when I see it.

I care, you care, and many of us here on lemmy care. We should work on how to coordinate ourselves together rather than try to change minds.

I've tried, a lot, to change minds. I started with the most difficult person, and recently a new hire at work is kinda centrist-left and I tried to convince him. No matter whether it's a nazi you're talking to (ahem.. the first one) or a liberal, minds can only change themselves. They have to want it, you cannot hack their brain and override it.

I gave up, because even the people who are closest to me politically seem to move further to the right when faced with uncomfortable reality. They don't engage with icky thoughts like "What if police killed an innocent man?". They rationalize it to keep their comfort zone intact. "Well, if they just followed police instructions..." blissfully unaware of many cases like Daniel Shaver.

You point to an example that breaks their rationalization, and they will diminish it. "Oh that cop made a mistake". Point to many examples and they suddenly got to go wash their hair. People's psyche protects them from stress.

And that is the default mindset in this society. Avoidance of discomfort and inconvenience. Fear of the unknown. They want their life to be neat and happy and to all make sense. They don't appreciate it when someone tries to take that away from them.

Do you think there's something about people like us that makes us more accepting of challenging our own worldviews? I have some thoughts but I've written enough.

I think people tend to have a very narrow view of what goes on around them. And frankly, I don't think that's really a bad thing. Everyone does it. It's just a fact of life. But we have to account for it. Talking about big-picture issues doesn't work when people are focused their narrow view of the world. Even if they agree with the issue, they won't be riled up and take action. I think there's 2 takeaways to this:

First, regarding talking to the people around you: narrow your focus. Focus on things that affect them directly, or frame things in a way such that they interpret it in a way that affects them. Don't talk about concentration camps, talk about Trump retroactively rescinding birthright citizenship and how that might affect their lives (especially effective if that person happens to be an ethnic minority or is in a relationship with one). When talking about anti-immigration policies, focus on ICE arresting American citizens because they didn't look American enough. You don't have to convince people of everything, you just have to convince people of enough that they feel personally concerned.

Second, regarding yourself: it's easy to think that all Americans are similar to the people that you're with. Society is a bell curve. You don't need to shift the entire bell curve to the left to exact change. You just need to stretch it out leftward - pull the left leaning people more to the left. Trump didn't win by convincing leftists to be right-leaning, he won by convincing the right-leaning moderates into shifting right. Consider the audience and pick arguments that would be most effective against that particular audience. Be more direct toward more left-leaning people. Republican? Sow seeds of suspicion toward Trump. Moderate? Make them fear for their way of life. Left-leaning moderate? Maybe we should punish the rich. Leftist? Hell yeah socialism baby

You mean the US is building MORE concentration camps

Lots of good answers here already. I'll just add that Jon Stewart recently did a great segment that touches on this. Basically, he says if everything the government does is "OmG nAzIz FaScIsTz TrAiToRz!!!" then people who aren't already paying attention will continue tuning it out. I forget at which time in the video he gets to this point, but honestly the whole 20-minute video is worth a watch.

You can stop using stupid shit like "cishet white" for starters. Statistically, most people who do not care will be cishet white. Those who care, will also mostly be cishet white. With this type of exclusionary discourse bordering on racism, no one will ever listen to you because from the start, you already sound like you have nothing important to say. There's three types of people in the US: Slaves working 2 and 3 jobs to make ends meet, middle class being pit against the slaves by the third group, the capital. By using exclusionary discourse, assimilated from bougie fake activism, you're promoting infighting within the classes that should be hunting the capital like animals, the French way!

Edit: your country has sacrificed countless children to never eschew the right to bear arms. Well, stop bitching online to make yourself feel good and use them.

The first thing I would ask is, have you made any attempts to really understand what motivates them and why they believe as they do? Given your flippant dismissal of their belief systems, I suspect you have just mentally bucketed them and, instead of really trying to understand them, you fall back on your per-conceived notions of what you think they believe. Without that understanding, you will never be able to "make people care", because you are not treating them as fully formed people with their own beliefs and priorities. You expect that, if you just yell at them loudly enough, they will come around. They won't and, if anything, they will just dig their heels in further. To them, you're this guy:

Not everyone has the same priorities you do. What you see as "the most important thing in the world" may fall much further down the list for someone else. They may not even see it in the same framing you do. Maybe they do care about your thing, but they have their own "most important thing" and if your thing and their thing are in contention, they are going to pick their thing. This is part of the reason we have politics in the first place, once you start dealing with other people and trying to decide what and how things should be prioritized and run, you are going to run into differing beliefs and priorities. It's why most government polices generally suck and don't get everything done. Because those policies are the result of compromise between people with different and often competing priorities. And yes, it may be that some of those other priorities come from bad information, though more often they will come from radically different base beliefs. And not understanding what those beliefs actually are means that you will not have any sort of basis for convincing them of anything.

Changing peoples' minds is hard. But, it starts from a place of understanding people and not dismissing their beliefs. Step back from your outrage for a moment and try to really get in their heads. You may not agree with their position, but you need to understand how they got there before you have any chance of getting them out of it. And, maybe you can't. It may just be that they have some foundational beliefs which are completely at odds with what you want to convince them of. But, if you know and understand that, it becomes much easier to walk away from the situation and not waste time and energy on a hopeless fight. And while it feels good to yell at people, that basically never works and only serves to push them further away.

You have more control over your attitude than over politics, or other peoples' opinions. Don't exhaust yourself and don't strain your relationships uselessly. They want to bring you down and push you out. I usually reject stoicism, but this is a good time to be stoic and keep your energy reserves, and your attitude, fresh.

Lecturing others anonymously online isn't exactly caring either.

I wish I knew. People keep telling me to "organize" and "strike". Like yeah a Walmart full of 60yo conservative white people is going to strike over this, fucking idiot.

I think a better question is, how do we make our elected representatives care? (The answer, of course, is by not electing a**holes, but that's not going to happen until people really start to suffer).

Don't waste your energy on people who won't listen.

Look for people, places and groups that support your own beliefs.

If you can't find those people at work, then just be nice to them but not too close. Them in your free time, use your energy to support those people and groups you believe in.

Don't waste your time on those who won't listen.

Suburban white trash thinks they won't get hurt by this lol

They think they are on "the team"

But George Carlin called decades ago... There is a club and these idiots are too stupid to figure out they are not in it.

Do you want people to care or do you want to lecture people who don't agree with you. People like to give lectures on politics, but no one listens to them. If you want people to care you have to care about them.

As someone in a similar environment, there are others who care. It just isn't worth the risk to my job & professional relationships to talk about. Most people who don't care I won't sway anyways and anyone who does care doesn't need to talk to me. So, for the betterment of my family, I stay quiet at work. Outside of work though I'll talk to my friends & anyone who will listen about the risks of the current regime.

If you are trying to make them care or discuss it at work then that is where you are failing.

Very few people want to or are willing to discuss politics at work. Many will report it as harassing behavior and you run the risk of getting fired.

You need to talk to them outside of work.

People won't care until negative things start effecting them. Even at that point, many will still deny negative things are happening or they will put the blame somewhere else. This is why I believe things are going to have to get bad, really bad, before they can turn around. The biggest thing to go bad would be the economy. An economy so bad would be hard to deny and live with. Unfortunately, the more money you have, the longer you can "deal with" a bad economy, and still think everything is okay.

What would you like for them to do? Have they discussed how they vote with you? Or how they spend their money? Maybe they just don't want to talk about it at work?

I spend a good amount of energy trying to explain the merits of Marxism-Leninism and Leftism in general on Lemmy (and IRL, though that's much trickier). Ultimately, you can't make someone care. You can't convince people of something they choose not to want to believe, either, no matter how much evidence you throw at them. Roderic Day wrote a great article titled Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" that perfectly encapsulates this process. People license themselves to believe whatever it is that they believe benefits themselves, regardless of evidence or empathy.

What you can do, however, is explain the merits of that which you believe in, and this is far more effective with people already targeted by the current system. Those closest to the edge, those radicalized by their conditions but not yet organized or versed in theory, are the perfect people to talk to. The effort required to gain an ally in that sense is far less than someone who is convinced that the system is fine, but just needs a little tweaking. Building strength through organization helps legitimize your positions and expands the circle, so to speak, by moving the "line of radicalization" further. Person A, who believes the system is fine but needs tweaks, goes from comfortably mainstream into the new line of radicalization, one step away from working to supplant the system, when those who were radicalized near them organize.

Further still, as conditions deteriorate, more people are impacted and more people are radicalized. This is both good and bad, bad in the sense that more are affected by the evils in society to a greater degree, but with the good being further chance of organization.

Just my 2 cents as someone who has spoken with many different people about Marxism.

How do you make people care before it's too late?

none of my co-workers care

You can't force another to care. We can educate them with facts and reason while trusting them to make their own choices. And, that isn't done in a workplace, instead one on one in presence of a human relationship.

But, if you insist, then there's always a way. Read the Bible as part of a Bible study to develop a nuanced understanding of its message. Relate that message to social democrat, socialist, communist, and anarchist ideology. Determine the relevant Bible passages useful in the specific situations you encounter with specific Christians, then memorize those passages. Then, in full context of Bible and situation, in the moment, quote the passage. Finally, shut up and wait.