Good old fashioned tribalism.
this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
85 points (92.1% liked)
Ask Lemmy
31983 readers
1229 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Every other answer on this thread boils down to tribalism.
Any and every form of dehumanization.
Any and every form of bigotry.
Any and every form of supremacy.
Any and every form of authoritarianism.
Every single person from the homeless guy at the on-ramp to TACO himself is an ordinary human. Some humans are born into extraordinary circumstances, some humans accomplish extraordinary feats, but we are all human. Humans are not born hating other humans. Hate is taught and encouraged and ingrained so that it may be passed on.
Universal Basic Income is a bandaid on a system couched in one of the ugliest human motivations; greed. I chose my name for that reason; Universal Basic Justice. Justice must be the base motivation; not 'eye for an eye' or 'frontier justice,' but the belief in treating others as you want to be treated; the belief in the powers of forgiveness, responsibility and growth; and the power of compassionate care dedicated to help those that are willing to learn and grow.
If and only if all those fail should a human be separated from society in a humane way that prevents their flaws from harming others.
Death Row is not justice. Guillotines are not justice. Systemic violence is not justice. No government nor individual should be empowered to decide who is worthy of justice, of forgiveness, of growth. Of life.
Every human is fallible. Every human deserves the opportunity to recognize their mistakes as well as the opportunity to learn, grow, and make reparations for those mistakes.
I don't see these changes happening in my lifetime. At this point, I'm not sure we humans have enough lifetimes left to achieve these goals.
What I am sure of is the danger and violence incumbent within any ideology willing to look down at another human being.
Individualism.
It has led to a massive amount of duplication of human effort. We could all live massively improved lives if we acted as a community organization instead of a bunch of individual little fuckers whose opinions matter.
You should see what happens when you try force the people of an natural individualistic bend into community organization. Undermining, diversion and later, violence.
Right. Underscoring that individualism is a highly sinister force.
Religion, because they all believe that they are the only ones who are right, and everyone else needs to believe what they believe, or else something bad will come of it.
"Us vs them" mentality.
Ableism. As disability advocate Imani Barbarin says, if bigotry is the goal, ableism and eugenics are the toolkit. If you look at the history of any form of systemic bigotry, the justification for human atrocities almost always boils down to “well these people can’t contribute to society, so they don’t deserve to be a part of it.”
Not an ideology but I say extremisms, of all kind. Not only religious and political, those are obvious, but also day to day habits.
Well, Islam is definitely up there - and you only need to look at the Middle East for evidence. What makes it particularly dangerous, in my view, is the doctrine itself - especially the parts concerning treatment of women, martyrdom and hatred of infidels.
As someone who escaped Islam - 100%. Unlike other religions that take original texts as interpretations Islam takes the original texts as literal words of God and is essentially stuck. It's a dead religion that exists only through force.
Yeah, my understanding is that the interpretation of the Qur’an and Hadiths doesn’t allow for the same kind of flexibility or reform that the Bible does, for example. Of course, that doesn’t mean someone can’t practice a non-fundamentalist version of Islam - and many do - but it’s much harder to justify when you're going against what’s considered the literal word of God.
American Exceptionalism.
gestures broadly
Any religion. It makes people think of themselves as superior to other groups. It doesn't even matter which religion. They're all bad.
It ends in either replacing humans with AGI or massive atrocities in an attempt to achieve it.
And there are people in positions of real power who believe in this stuff and act on it.
Andreessen posted a manifesto where he said that deliberately delaying AGI is basically mass murder and should be treated as such.
I too, think this is a really dangerous one that hasn't quite pinged on most peoples' radar yet because it's so niche, but like you said, when people with power and influence can actually act on it, they have the capacity to cause a lot of harm over what would normally just be fringe philosophies.
Its not necessarily an ideology but all the worst ideologies have at root a lack of empathy and active methods to extinguish any trace of it. So lack of empathy or the violent suppression of it root and stem
Great, now we have metaideologies.
I go deep
I've been warning that the average American lacks empathy for YEARS. Conservatives seemingly lack the ability to feel empathy at all, which is why Musk "warns" that empathy is dangerous.
Look where we are now 🙃
Any ideology may be dangerous. People who are convinced they're tuned into a privileged view on reality may be willing to kill others to protect it. Human history is full of proofs of that.
"On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology." — Kenneth Clark
Ignorance.
It's practiced by many, in alignment with arrogance. Many different flags, cloths, creeds and livelihoods depend on it.
I'd say it isn't an ideology, but way too many people take pride on being ignorant. so it ends up being one
Any, all and each one of them. The moment you stop looking at how things are, you are finished and set right on the course of bringing unjustified pain and suffering
Look out for number one. Selfishness is at the root of most dangers to humanity.
This mentality and reinforced culture is a big reason inhuman corporate ideals and customs have festered throughout our society like a fungal infection.
It's so difficult to organize because plenty of fellow workers will simply be passive and complacent with whatever increasingly bad lot they're given, or worse, will be straight up class traitors looking to be rewarded by ruthless masters.
Neoliberalism. The belief that owners of corporations should be able to do whatever the fuck they want, because corporations always create the best outcome possible for society.
The result is stuff like the US Opioid Crisis. Purdue Pharma knew that opioid pharmaceuticals were extremely addictive. For decades, they lied and said it was not addictive. In private, they laughed about their victims.
They bribed doctors and dentists to overprescribe it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html
https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/
They also paid think-tanks to defend them and aggressively challenged negative media coverage:
The tobacco companies used the same techniques before western governments cracked down on them.
In the 90s, they tried to prevent governments from acting by bribing politicians:
An NPR review of McConnell's relationship with the tobacco industry over the decades has found that McConnell repeatedly cast doubt on the health consequences of smoking, repeated industry talking points word-for-word, attacked federal regulators at the industry's request and opposed bipartisan tobacco regulations going back decades.
Soon after McConnell won a U.S. Senate seat, he was invited to the Tobacco Institute's boardroom to give a speech in January 1985. The documents also reveal that McConnell and his Senate office frequently accepted gifts from tobacco industry lobbyists
The gifts included tickets to NFL and NBA games, a production of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment, a Ringo Starr concert, "top-quality brandy," and what McConnell called a "beautiful ham."
When McConnell has sought re-election, tobacco company employees and PACs have typically donated to McConnell more than to any other member of Congress, according to data from the Center For Responsive Politics. Since 1989, he has received at least $650,000
One of the most striking episodes revealed in the tobacco industry documents came in October 1998. Just a few months earlier, McConnell helped defeat major tobacco legislation championed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The McCain bill would have ratified and strengthened the proposed settlement between the tobacco industry and attorneys general from most of the states. It would have also allowed FDA regulation of nicotine and penalized companies that failed to reduce teen smoking.
McConnell, who had repeatedly clashed with McCain over campaign finance legislation, helped lead the opposition. "We know, of course, that only 2% of smokers are teenagers," McConnell said.
(In fact, nearly 90% of all smokers begin before they turn 18 years old.)
"That to me is the most egregious incident that I have seen about the appearance of corruption since I have been a member of the United States Senate," McCain later said of McConnell
In many countries, tobacco corporations are still using mafia methods:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/big-tobacco-dirty-war-africa-market
For neoliberals, the corporations should decide what is acceptable or not. If there is a profitable market for something, then it means it should be legal. Period. They don't give a shit about selling addictive poison to kids, destroying the environment or underpaying workers. Corporate profits are their religion.
Neoliberals believe citizens or lawmakers should never try to fix injustice, because corporations can't create injustice. And if they want to be involved and threaten corporate profits, you have to punch them in the nose.
In 1951, Jacobo Árbenz was democratically elected President of Guatemala. He wanted to tax rich banana companies and ensure they didn't own all the land. So the United Fruit Company lobbied the CIA to overthrow him. Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, accepted immediately. His brother, wealthy businessman John Foster Dulles, was chairman of United Fruits International. So the President Árbenz was violently overthrowed. At least 9000 people were killed.
That's extreme neoliberalism.
Neither is this about an ideology per se nor is this quote my own - but I've read this somewhere -
"The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."
- Robert Swan (British explorer and environmental activist)
view more: next ›