When it has been demonstrated over and over again, how little they think of anyone beneath them.
Because, for all of the awfulness they bring to the rest of us, they are human.
Humans who the other humans desperately need to be stripped of their wealth and power, and for whom the doing of which might offer them some small chance to save themselves from the yawning void of more more moremoremoremoremoremore
Yeah we humanize them because it’s important to remember that essentially anyone that ends up in their position will behave similarly. They aren’t demons, they’re humans. We should stop putting people in their position.
This. As soon as we treat them as “only monsters,” we start to think that “regular humans” aren’t capable of monstrous things.
Because they are human. What is the difficulty here? They’re not reptilians or space aliens or inter-dimensional beings. It’s in all of us.
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We cannot understand class behavior by examining individual morality. Viewing the capital owning class as a collection of mustache twirling villains is not a useful framing. Rather, we should look at them as the human personification of capital itself. Their social being, their entire material condition, is defined by the accumulation of private profit and the protection of property relations that enforce their dominance.
Their inability to relate is not a personal failing but a direct result of their objective position in the capitalist mode of production. They live in a world insulated from the precarity of rent, medical debt, and wage slavery that defines life for the working majority. Their consciousness is shaped by them being insulated from the problems regular people experience. Therefore, critique of their lack of empathy is a liberal dead end because it mistakes a systemic outcome for a personal choice.
The focus must be the capitalist system itself, which necessarily produces the inequality and the divide between the capitalists and the workers. The fundamental contradiction between the socialized nature of production and the private appropriation of wealth is the core issue. The solution is to dismantle the economic base that creates them as a class and move towards a system where the means of production are socially owned, abolishing the very material conditions that breed alienation and disparity.
It’s important to remember that the actions of the working class are primarily derived from their class interests, not because individuals are dicks. Humanizing even shitty individuals is an important part of persuading people away from thinking in terms of individual people and more about the dialectics of class.
Why do the working glass poor vote Trump
because trump appeals to them. the democrats don’t, and tend to shit all over them as being unworthy pathetic losers for not having college degrees and high paying office jobs.
Can you give us an example of Democrats shitting on people for not having college degrees and high paying jobs? I’m asking because can certainly quote wealthy Republicans shitting on people for being poor, through their words and actions, but I’m not sure I’ve seen a Democrat just up and insult someone for not having an office job.
Hillary was probably the worse:
I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product… So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again’, was looking backwards,
Obama:
Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
John Kerry:
You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq
These are slip ups, if you search for coded ways they describe their opponents, you can find a lot more “low information” and “uneducated” examples.
Remember Joe the plumber? He was a reaction to republican voters feeling unrepresented as blue collar workers.
This kind of class contempt absolutely isn’t unique to Democrats, but their obsession with courting higher educated voters has branded their contempt for those who aren’t.
Thanks for answering. I could see how people would read into these quotes as looking down on people without college degrees, but I feel like they would come off like that if you were already looking for it. These seem pretty mild compared to the loathing Republicans have for educated people and Trump saying that smart people don’t like him.
I’m not really convinced that Democrats “shit all over” people for being uneducated the way that was described, especially since I’m seeing it now directly from Trump.
I understand that it’s the long-standing sentiment of the Republican base too think that way, but it also seems like these people are bitter about not getting to go to college. So someone told them that the Democrats look down on them for not going and the Republicans say that it’s ok and boom, you have someone voting red forever. It’s ironic that they are voting for the party trying to gut the thing they initially wanted, and hating the party that (at least provides lip service) for making education easier for everyone to get.
Because the aforementioned billionaires, and previously multi-millionaires, have been spending untold billions over a period of nearly a century to keep them trapped in a propaganda bubble.
Because they’re fucking stupid.
Most of the voters who vote Republican are usually rural. They’re the people out in the middle of bumfuck no where, with their farms, their farm animals and what little family they have. And all that they can afford are things like dial-up internet. So they’re completely out of touch with more ‘civilized’ people who’re in towns and cities.
And even so, there are people who are completely nuanced and naive to what is before them even with better access to information. They can’t and won’t challenge their intellect, they won’t question information as to what’s infront of them. Nothing. Just deliberately clueless and oblivious.
Some.people priase Hitler.
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That was 90+ years ago. Those people aren’t praising Hitler today because they’re dead.
There are people around the world, who’ve never even been to Germany, praising Hitler.
It’s because they’re fascists.I’m pretty sure you’re trolling but, Hitler took advantage of a weakened Germany after everything in WW1. When someone is weak, that’s what you do. He was an opportunist, a cunning one at that. Nothing he did was bold or bright, things just fell into place after little to no effort on his part.
And Hitler did not make Germany a superpower. He only had maybe 3 or 4 good years of a run before whatever so-called “brilliance” he had on the field of war, ran right out and plummeted Germany’s reputation and impression on the globe with it.
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Yeah you’re trolling.
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Say what you will about Hitler— he made the trains run on time.
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Hey not to ruin your fun but did you know Hitler embroiled Germany in an unwinnable war and ordered a few million people be executed, as well?
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Except he didn’t. His plan to ‘rebuild the economy’ was military conquest. He stole enough from ‘undesirable’ German citizens to get the government liquid again, reneged on all the war debts that were keeping the German economy depressed (I’ll give him that much), then kiboshed all the social and economic programs he’d platformed on to go all-in on one titanic military push.
They simply did not build the infrastructure for a sustained war. And they certainly didn’t build the infrastructure for a functional economy.
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Holy shit hahaha did you really just link me an article that agrees with me? Bro mortgaged 70% of what was left of the German economy to hit Vegas and bet it all on lebensraum, only to discover that invading farmland destroys the farmland. He couldn’t even keep his shit running with slave labor, lmao.
Never learn how to read, bud. This was precious.
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This is an idiotic post. Yes, they are human. Yes they may make bad decisions, but so do poor people. They just don’t make enough to matter.
People are brainwashed. They have been for generations. And only very few even like to admit that they are brainwashed. I was too… Luckily I woke up, and became both woke and able to think critically…
At what point is someone wealthy using gapminder levels of income where level 1 is earning $2 a day, level 2 is $8, level 3 $32, etcetera?
And at what point is a person in power?
Is Zelensky in power? Xi Jinping?
Greta Thunberg? John Oliver? JT Chapman? Karl Marx? The admin of this site?The OP made a distinction between wealth and power. Your question salad conflating the two, even if wealth does grant power, is muddying the original question with “What is the definition of ‘is’?” It isn’t meaningful.
What the fuck does any of that rambling have to do with the question?
i mean, we can easily define it as some multiple of the poverty level.
and in fact in the USA economy it’s pretty easy, if you are in the top 10% currently your wealth will grow and the economy is great for you. if you are in the bottom 90% your economic fortunes are stagnating or declining. the top 10% of income earners is 150K+. once you start making over 100K you are more or less doing very well.
Because they get paid to do so.
Hot take, we should deliberately dehumanize rich people.
they’re just subs that are into bdsm
Financial domination
I’m aphantasic. Until people started really talking about how they “see” things in their heads, I assumed it was all just a figure of speech. Flashbacks, thought bubbles, daydreams in media… I assumed that was all just, you know, an easy way to get the information across. Now I know you freaks actually see stuff and the mind’s eye isn’t some convenient turn of phrase. Weirdos!
In a similar vein, I have empathy. It is difficult for me to intuitively understand the perspective of someone who doesn’t have any. As an example, it’s hard for me to understand a person who’s exploiting children a la Epstein. And in truth, I don’t want to understand them, either. Even knowing how many of them are the way they are… if I had a little less introspection, I’d probably just default to “they’re just like us.”
I am not sure it is really about Capitalism but the broader human Centralization whatever its political or economic system. We Centralize and someone has to be at the top as that is our nature and those at the top exploit as power corrupts. This is wired into us a species and it has brought us a long way for better and for worse.
that isn’t what empthy is.
epstein has empathy. it was just for donald trump and his friends and family. most people only have empathy for their immediate family and friends. that’s normal. it’s the scope and target of the empathy you have issue with.
Hm. I think that if you don’t have empathy for more than your own immediate friends and family, you don’t have empathy. You have concern over how other people’s pain directly impacts you. That’s egoism, not empathy.
Plus, Epstein considered all the rest of them targets too, just a different type.
right, so it’s only empathy if i’m upset about people who i will never meet who i have no connection to and have no interest in… and why would ever empathize with such theoretical people?
or are you saying empathy is purely a theretical construct totally devoid of my immediate real world experience? hence i can’t have empathy for my friend who just had to put down his cat, because he is my friend! i can only have empathy for who… people starving in africa?
most people only have empathy for their immediate family and friends. that’s normal.
Speak for yourself.
Numerous reasons.
Lots of people don’t want anyone to disturb the system…”upend the apple cart” as it were. A known, even if shitty, is still better than the unknown. Like people pining for lives under the rule of some harsh autocrat. Even if your neighbor disappeared one night thanks to the State Police, it was better than worrying about the less-harsh policing that lets kids get away with graffiti-ing everything or the petty theft you’re always hearing about.
Also, if they come for the rich people, they’ll come for you. If they tax the rich, they’ll tax you. If you support the rich, people will remember that, and they’ll come for you.
Maybe a little of the “I could be rich someday” idea too, so they support obscene wealth with the idea they could somehow also be rich no matter how minuscule the chance. The irony being the wealthy are the ones supporting barriers preventing you from even achieving financial security, forget ever being wealthy.
bingo.
easy to see in russia. in the 90s russia was democratic and free… but in economic collapse and choas. a lot of people quickly wanted to go back to soviet stability and the subsequent oppression and Putin capitalized on that and he’s popular because he vastly improved the russian economy, despite cracking down on freedom.
people value stability and predictability. life is optimistic when you have a clear vision and path to achieve your goals. it is miserable when there isn’t a clear path to your goals.
Absolutely. And that also applies to some immigrants from harsh dictatorships. I worked with a pro-trump Russian. He liked trump specifically because he wanted someone to “crack skulls” and all that. (This was during the BLM protests.) He wanted the police state to shut up everything inconvenient to his way of thought.
Why do some people think dehumanizing anyone is fundamentally OK?
There are actual psychopaths and sociopaths. They are humans. They got that way not from Stan Lee’s pen, but by real experiences in our actual world.
Making them a caricature will in no way help with the problem.
I’m perfectly ok with dehumanizing literal flag waving Nazis. I give them no quarter. If a Nazi fell into the train tracks in front of me, I would just walk away.
They’re human, and should be destroyed mercilessly by any means necessary. There’s no contradiction in recognizing the humanity of people who will unfortunately need to be killed to stop them killing the rest of us indiscriminately.
Dehumanization is pointless, and leads to dangerous misanalysis (like underestimating them). Honestly, it’s also just a cowardly coping mechanism to avoid the harsh realities behind the idealistic moral frameworks we’re brought up with.
are you saying all wealthy people are nazis? that’s about the only way that I can see to read that statement (combined with the comment you are responding to)
I mean the vast majority of wealthy people are in fact happy and willing collaborators with Nazis because it’s advantageous to their wealth and power
They do not consider or even understand us as humans
vast majority of wealthy people
Honest question: how many Billionaires have you had personal interactions with?
I work for a huge corporation and once in a blue moon I’m on an email thread or God help me an actual meeting with the CxOs. Doesn’t mean I know them in any real sense. But I mean… as well as you know bosses 3 levels up if you have to report on projects once in a while.
I am very politically active in my swing state. Some Billionares have been happy to spend a little face time with me. Doesn’t mean I know them at all – plus, these ones are either directly politicians, or supporters of specific politicians. But I know them as well as you might know the guy at the mall kiosk where you had to get your phone fixed like 4 times in 6 months.
In none of these interactions do I feel like I’m dealing with a different species.
I can’t think of any I’d want to take care of my children. About the only common thread is the type-A high-acheiver type. Which is very common in US corporate management culture across the board.
I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with a few legitimate billionaires but mostly just millionaires
Last one said Mamdani needs to be euthanized for wanting to tax him
To be honest sounds like you don’t know them well enough
I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with a few legitimate billionaires
Unless you come from wealth yourself, I sincerely doubt this. Unless you think working at a corporation owned by a billionaire counts or something.
You underestimate the odds of encountering one in their own territory. There are only a few metropolitan areas in America where most wealthy people live and if you live/work long enough in one and get to know enough people you eventually have some chance encounters
Millionaires and billionaires are utterly different cats. Wage earners become millionaires all the time – save, invest wisely, yadda. I know many people in that category.
I know many people who’ve become millionaires and the vast majority are now apathetic collaborators who do not care about anything but their personal pleasure and permanent financial success
Some are still regular people who just have money, a few even do good things, but the vast majority are not like us anymore
Indeed, the dehumanizing is always associated with collectivism vs individualism, and thence to collective guilt, and collective punishment.
All done with moral self-justification.
That’s because it’s morally justified to prioritize the needs of many over the needs of a few.
What are you talking about?
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The comment they are responding to says “Why do some people think dehumanizing anyone is fundamentally OK?” [I agree btw]
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They reply with an extreme example of “anyone”: literal flag-waving Nazis.
At no point are “all wealthy people” mentioned in that statement.
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Isn’t dehumanizing kind of the whole Nazi thing?
Dehumanising and giving no quarter are different things.
There’s a good argument regarding the tolerance paradox, and why it’s ethically and morally justified to not tolerate extreme levels of unethical behaviors.
There’s a difference between not tolerating and dehumanizing. You don’t need to dehumanize someone that you don’t tolerate the behavior of, and it’s also possible to dehumanize someone but tolerate their behavior.
They’re simply two different things. Slightly related maybe, but distinct.
I’ve come to view tolerance not as a default position, but rather as a contract which people are defaulted into, if you’re breaking it by refusing to be bound by it, you’re no longer protected by it either.
Tolerance and humanization are not the same thing. Understanding that terrible behaviors are human does not mean we must tolerate them.
What they need isn’t to be caricaturized, it’s to be put on a guillotine.
Human or not doesn’t mean shit: evil is evil.
so if i become wealthy by winning the lottery then i should get my head chopped off? after all wealthy is wealthy and they are all evil. …
that is the dumbest take i’ve seen so far.
just because you get wealthy doesn’t mean you are evil. how this is hard to understand is beyond me. I’m about done with lemmy and this type of thinking. are there evil people? yes. but just doing a blanket statement is just showing a lack of judgement and piss poor logic.
Lol, go ahead and point me to a single example of a lottery winner being cited as one of the oppressive ‘elite’. And if you are able to actually fine one, my answer will be “yes, in fact, that would should have their head in a basket”. Having a mountain of cash dropped on you, vs exploiting a mountain of people to obtain mountains of cash are not the same thing. How this is hard to understand is beyond me.
I’m about done with lemmy and this type of thinking.
Yeah if you’re gonna come here and play damage control for evil people, you’re not gonna have a good time on Lemmy.
Read some of the comments in response to my comment. You will see people are including in lottery winners to this conversation. And no one said lottery winners weren’t part of the conversation. In fact what they were saying is all wealthy people. Let me say that again, all wealthy people.
And those comments sum it up nicely:
TL;DR: Share your wealth or get fucked, parasite
The message here being that it’s not inherently the wealth that’s the problem, but how that wealth is being used. If you land in that situation and immediately become some kind of Scrooge McDuck character: to the guillotine with you!
…but again, lottery winners are not the focus of the whole eat the rich mindset: if that’s an issue you think needs to be tackled, I’d direct your focus instead to lottery systems, not just the lottery winners. Focusing on things like lottery winners is a distraction from the insanely long list of higher priorities like the Musk and Bezos figures of the world. So why even bring it up unless that distraction is your goal?
I’m not necessarily agreeing with the head chopping part on a general basis, but consider this:
If you become wealthy (which is a nebulous term, but w/e) in this system you automatically gain power over the life of other people, while you yourself break free from being forced into laboring for others. You are not going to spend it all on consumables, so you will likely use it to pay other people to do stuff for you, that you either can’t be bothered to do yourself or are not skilled to do yourself. So you’ll be able to live off of the labor of others, less fortunate. You are extracting value from them, maybe even creating some kind of dependency through the power imbalance.
TL;DR: Share your wealth or get fucked, parasite ;)
(and no, extracting value for your personal benefit is not sharing)
E: So, it’s more of: do you have the means to free yourself from labor, while at the same time you exploit the people that don’t have that freedom, then your wealth becomes a problem and through your wealth you do become a problem for the working class.
I’m just going to respond to the tldr.
I’m very small reasonable percentage. But that’s for me to decide what is reasonable. Not anybody else. After that, I’m going to live a better life and yes, I’ll hire people on to do stuff that I don’t want to do or not capable of doing. And I’m going to travel the world and see things that a lot of people can’t do. I don’t have to share beyond that. So I guess I’ll just go get fucked, but hey, you know what I don’t give a shit. As long as a person is sharing a reasonable percentage of their income, that’s good enough. Telling a person to share so much that they can’t afford to pay other people to do the stuff they don’t want to do or aren’t capable of is in my opinion, just stupid. Tell me a person to share so much that they can no longer travel around the world and see nice things and live a better life in my opinion is just stupid.
Also be cognizant that in that scenario you would have benefitted greatly from a system which does immense harm to a subset of the population by exploiting addiction.
Psychopaths and sociopaths who dehumanize others deserve to be dehumanized in return. Why should you owe them something they won’t offer you in return?
Yes, but it makes us feel better about ourselves.
/s but also not.
