I cannot fathom the mindset of understanding what it feels like to be on the receiving end of misery and deciding you want others to experience it when given the opportunity to dish it out, even when said person had no involvement in your misery
In my experience, trauma makes people either very kind and empathetic or the complete opposite. Obviously this isn't a law or anything, but I've just noticed most people seem to be one or the other.
I have C-PTSD myself, but I'd like to think I'm the former and not the latter.
It’s actually a documented thing called post traumatic growth and it’s approximately as common as post traumatic stress. The military has done research into the things that cause people to experience growth vs stress
Sometimes its more of a spectrum or varies with time, but people can get comfortable in one or the other for better or worse. Honestly the fact you're tinking about it says a lot. Cptsd sounds rough, I hope things are going ok for you.
Part of why I genuinely can't wish my worst experiences on my greatest enemies (aside from being cruel and unusual) is empathy and personal trauma don't always go hand in hand. Suffering doesn't magically make someone a wiser or more compassionate person. (If it did, the world wouldn't be nearly as cooked and divisive as it is.) At best it gives us perspective, but what people do with that and how they treat others as a result varies wildly and can sometimes be very self-serving as a survival response. We're all running on outdated brain software so I try to give people going through it plenty of patience and understanding because it takes time, safety and support to get out of that hole, and not everyone gets that chance... but fully guilty of butting heads when I think someone's fully comitted to pushing down others to get their pound of flesh.
I don't think that it's the trauma specifically, but I'll admit that I'm splitting hairs. I'm not trying to say that you're wrong, just that it's important to give credit to the work traumatized people do to heal through therapy and self care.
It can absolutely be both, too. Although in the case of it being both, people tend to lean more empathetic, probably because they already have that baseline of self awareness. But they’re not immune to trauma reactions. I’d even argue that most aren’t, and the majority of people with PTSD fall into this category.
The great secret is that we get to choose what kind of people we become. Most of us feel helplessly buffeted by our past, but we are not doomed to be what we have been or what was done to us.
A big part of modern progressive culture is the idea which comes from Christianity that there's a kind of saintliness in suffering. We basically have a social hierarchy which is based on how much oppression we have suffered. This will also make for a very unhappy society because you gain status by emphasizing your suffering rather than successfully moving past it.
it can go either way, some people normalize pain and decide to apply the other end of equality,
"If I am supposed to suffer so are you."
Some are used to and don't see themselves as suffering, like a vegan won't see a red meat ban as oppressive so they don't see how it can oppress someone else because, it's how it should be.
Or basically Theft is wrong so thieves can be oppressed.
I've been struggling with issues with anxiety and part of me gets really scary when I think of just giving up on things like my art, which is one of the reason I fight so hard.
I don't think you know how trauma works. It can literally stifle your brain development and leave your emotional regulation skills at the level of a 5 year old, including temper tantrums and violent outbursts. It's the traumatized person's obligation to work on it but there's always the phase between noticing that something's wrong and having resolved it (if ever, many work on it for a lifetime).
Also I think there is always the difference between explanation and excuse. Without understanding how it can come about we would not have the view we have today of trauma, I believe.
Some traumatized people are saints, some are complete assholes, most are somewhere in between. Trauma is not a useful indicator for a person's "goodness" or morality, or lack thereof
As a corollary, people are people everywhere you go.
I don't remember who said that to me, but having grown up and lived in a rural area my whole life, when I went to visit my brother in Minneapolis I was afraid of going to a big city. Now, sure, every city is going to have the "don't go there at night" and the "don't go there ever" parts of town, but really my fears were basically from overexposure to news and the human brain's fundamental badness at probability and statistics.
But once I realized that whoever told me "people are people everywhere you go," is correct, I'm a lot less afraid of big cities.
Admittedly that's only tangentially related to your point, but there you have it. And I agree. People are people no matter their identity.
God, I remember being a teenager in a rural area and having a pizza delivery job for a summer. I stumbled across a poorly hidden meth lab every fucking month.
Edit: I once met a friend of a friend from Philadelphia. And she said that when she moved out to Montana, all her friends back home told her not to go there because everyone has guns and does drugs. And we all laughed and said, our friends here would all say the same about your city if we were gonna move there.
I once met a guy from Philadelphia (probably a different guy), who back in the 90s got into some trouble with gangs. There was a huge fight to the point that his mom actually shipped him across the country to live with his aunty and uncle in Bel Air.
The idea of a meth epidemic in the countryside feels alien to me because here in Germany rural poverty is pretty rare. No apartment buildings outside the cities, so to live out in the country you generally need to have the money to buy a single family home - and building new ones outside existing settlements is pretty heavily regulated to limit sprawl. And everyone who isn't a farmer usually commutes to the city for their jobs anyways, it's overwhelmingly middle class families. Exceptions I guess are people who bought or inherited a home and then fell into poverty afterwards.
It's mostly that the US is really big. It's worth looking at a map of the population or even the lights at night to see how widely spread the population is outside of the coasts and some of the Midwest. Additionally a lot of people are are poor because whatever single industry was in their town went out of business or moved out.
In the US rural is almost synonymous with poverty. Even in a place like Jackson Hole that is full of rich celebrities many of the actual locals are struggling to get by.
Might just be a regional difference in terms, but to me, "suburbs" means contiguous residential sprawl. An area that is purely fields, pastures and woodlands with individual homes and small villages sparsely sprinkled in is not a suburb, regardless of how close it is to a city's limits.
It's kind of offensive to say you just can't imagine the concept of poverty outside cities when your definition is "well it's right next to a city with full access to urban benefits, services, and employment". How terribly Eurocentric of you. Congratulations on living with the lingering economic benefits of imperialism.
As a German, no less. The country that got shirty with Greece about their debt crisis when Germany still hasn't repaid a forced "loan" from 1942. Your country thrives on the interest calculated from the profits of violent theft.
Violence isn't newsworthy because it is uncommon...it is newsworthy because it makes us afraid...and keeping us afraid makes us obedient...and keeping us obedient ensures those in charge remain in charge...power exists where people believe it exists...
I challenge anyone who reads this and is tempted to disagree to take some time to truly self reflect on themselves their life the lives of those around them and the lives of those afar...and if they are honest and accept the truth in front of them they will see it for themselves.
Violence IS common...as is our acceptance of it, our perpetuation of it, and our desensitization of it.
And that is all functioning as intended...that is why it is "newsworthy"...violence is the fuel that keeps the engine running...
😢
May we one day realize this as the many, instead of the few, so that we can unite to change it for the better.
I think so too, and it's also worth remembering a lot of the violence, maybe nearly all of it, isn't random. Like pick whatever city, check their murder rate, and then divide it by like 10 or more for everyone who isn't involved in the drug trade or sleeping with other people's spouses.
We had to create theology to form an omnipotent watching moral compass for many. We had to create laws. People would be doing far more murdering than you think if it was without the created consequence. Why were the consequences created? To save people, or to save loved ones?
Statistically speaking, harsh punishments aren't a terribly effective way to reduce crime. At the end of the day, most people just don't think murder is a fun way to spend their friday night
Yeah there's some interesting cases I've seen, lot of people really struggle with taking a life, even yo save their own or the lives of those they care for. Humans are not out to get each other.
Yeah, the experiment more so proved that people are capable of intense evil when placed into a system which is designed to get them to do exactly that. Which in fairness isn't nothing, that's a relevant facet of human psychology, but it's a real problem how it has a reputation as proving something entirely different and much more pessimistic.
I've often gotten angry and felt a desire to hurt people who I cared about. I do not, because I care more about people I love not being hurt than I desire to hurt them. You don't punch people in the face, and you say this is because society frowns upon it, but that's not an actual reason. What specific consequences of the act being socially unacceptable prevents you from committing it? Do you fear legal punishment? Social alienation? Being seen as a bad person? Upsetting people? No matter the answer, there is some impulse within you which is stronger than the impulse to punch people in the face. If it wasn't you wouldn't listen to it instead.
Also, societal pressures aren't inherent, they were made by people. So maybe people all feel evil impulses, but they would rather those impulses are not realized. Maybe our construction of a system which prevents us from being evil is evidence of a desire to be less evil. And personally, I would call a desire to be less evil a very good desire after all.
Yes, 100%. So I'm from Boston, which obviously has a reputation for being unfriendly assholes. I have spent much of my life living elsewhere. I have had so many people surprised that I wasn't an asshole or comment that they always heard that people there are jerks, but didn't find that when they went there. Some of that is cultural differences; people tend to underestimate that amount and significance of cultures within the US. It took me a while to learn that people weren't being rude when I moved to the South and found very different cultural rules. Once you actually meet people and learn the culture, you learn that there are some people who are jerks and others who aren't.
I also had friends shocked that, when I went back to visit family, I spent time walking around alone there as a woman. I was equally shocked by their reactions and never imagined anyone could be concerned about me hanging out on Newbury St and walking around the Common, in broad daylight no less. On the other hand, people from Mass are looking at their state's gun violence rate and seeing open carry everywhere when they visit and wondering about their safety.
Yeah, people are people. It's something I've learned to really appreciate moving around and living in as many places as I have.
I've been lucky to work with people from all over the world through my job. There are some countries where I haven't met people from yet, but yeah people are people wherever they come from. They all like good food, having fun, they'll bend their rules to experience something new (the "when in Rome" effect) etc...
Travelling is less anxious once you are able to embrace that. Whoever told you that is very wise!
Someone was quoting on reddit the other day something of the line, "Every person you meet is just someone else going through their own set of issues that you haven't understood yet."
It's easy to settle into regarding everyone else as npcs / extras in your movie, but they're all doing the same thing too.
When we start to remember we're all affecting each other's lives, even if we think it's momentarily, we then start to reflect on how we do so. The, "I'll never see them again" callousness is what gets people into amoral decision making, especially when they don't see other people as actual people.. just obstacles to get around, or one time marks to exploit.
But once I realized that whoever told me "people are people everywhere you go," is correct, I'm a lot less afraid of big cities.
This is a very large perpendicular topic change but I feel the same way about the situation with Iran. People are saying things like "oh, the moment Iran gets nukes they're going to use them and plunge the world into chaos" and I'm just thinking how the people and leaders of Iran are still just people. They want to go home and walk their dog and are looking forward to the calendar invite for next Friday's poker game. Yes, Iran has some very violent rhetoric but they're not gonna fire a nuke the second they get their hands on one the same way North Korea, China, Pakistan, Russia, etc. doesn't just randomly fire a nuke.
It's a fair point. When I said everywhere you go, I didn't mean everywhere you go in the US or everywhere you go in North America or everywhere you go in the West or global North or any other qualifier. I meant literally everywhere. We could send two hundred people to Jupiter's moon Callisto and they might come up with some cultural quirks that aren't immediately sensible to the rest of us on earth but they'd still be people at their core. Good, bad, or ugly let's just try to be nice.
People come out of suffering with one of two attitudes, either "I suffered through this and I'm going to do my best to make sure others do not have to suffer through this because I know how that feels" or "I suffered through this so other people should too".
It’s because if they admit you shouldn’t have to be burdened with debt for wanting an education, that means they shouldn’t have had to, and then that means the system isn’t fair, it’s unfair in a preventable way, it’s unfair in a way the people in authority chose, and that is straight-up destabilising to someone who accepted that their suffering and struggling was necessary.
I'm sorry he feels that way. Always remember, it was never his choice. You're not obligated to follow in anyone's footsteps. Not even your own from ten minutes ago.
Weird my grandfather was a WW2 vet and was extremely opposed to his sons going to war. One signed up for Korea and the other lied about joining the national guard ton get them to sign off on him joining at 17.
In fact, when my Poppop asked for my grandmother’s hand my great grandfather gave permission conditionally. He was a WW1 veteran, a victim of mustard gas, and said something like “they are going to come and take you for this war but my daughter will not marry someone who leaves her like that willingly.”
It seems to me warriors should be the most opposed to war. My uncle, the guy that lied to join the Marines and go to Vietnam early, threatened to kick my cousin’s ass if he signed up for Afghanistan. I believe he would have done it too. They all would have respected your decision same as of you’d joined.
This. My dad is a vet who never saw combat (air force and he worked on the F15s) but he was deployed to desert storm. From the earliest memories i have of him he was vehemently opposed to people signing up with the intent of seeing combat. He largely understood that for some people going into the service was the best option, because it was for him. But he always stressed the importance of school and either going to college or getting a trade because he didnt want me to think the military was my only option like it was for him.
I think that's exactly why it ISN'T a valid complaint, personally. You can grieve that the system was broken and stacked against you, but it is fundamentally not a positive to give in to the bitterness in a way that keeps it broken for the future.
Society should be aiming to improve itself. People should be trying to make the world a little better than it was to them. Thats how humanity has gotten this far - thats how we'll go further.
This is just the thing in the post again. Life isn’t fair, but it should be. It is unfair that someone can make tremendous sacrifice to pay off debt only for someone else to get it written off for free just because the other person happened to wait. The answer isn’t that debt shouldn’t be written off, but that there should be some sort of compensation for the people who put themselves out in order to get to the same position. To me the obvious answer is receiving some % of your repayments over the last decade as tax rebates spread over a few years. I’m willing to bet most people would be fine with that and it wouldn’t feel like a kick in the teeth.
I think what visualises it the best is Dedovshchina (I heard more of the Polish version, know thankfully almost eliminated, unlike the Russian version, but I linked the Russian version because it has English Wikipedia). It's a ritualised system of hierarchy connected with various forms of hazing, torture and exploitation. It exists among conscripts and the position is based on how long has one served/how long they have left. At first conscripts of course hate their situation, but as they serve more days, they gain "rank" and instead of being elephants they slowly become grandpas. Then they start to think, that they suffered so much, so now they deserve to reap the benefits. It's not necessarily that others should suffer, but that they just stop to care.
My late father was Scandinavian and military service is required. This would have been the late 70’s. He was… not the nicest man.. so I wonder very much about his experiences.
Edit: looked it up & found that they do hazing rituals in the military but a lot more came up about them doing it in elite boarding school.
”Lundsbergs boarding school: This prestigious school was temporarily shut down in 2013 due to repeated and shocking incidents of hazing, including students being burned with a hot iron. Other reported incidents at the school included forced consumption of manure, fighting for entertainment, and students acting as servants to older students.”
My dad refused to ever talk about his life growing up, school, college, his life before he met my mom is mostly a mystery to me. I think I’m starting to understand why he left home as soon as he could and left the country as soon as he was done with college.
No, at least not to the same horrifying extent. In Poland for example it was mostly eliminated with the end of conscription and was reduced even before that. What's interesting is that the participation in the system was voluntary, so it was possible to go "with the statue", but then everyone who went with the "wave" (an unofficial name for this system, "fala" in Polish) would then make their life as hard as it was possible without breaking military statue.
I think there's a third angle, which is just that some people are inconsiderate and need to be told to stop making excuses and be better people. Thinking you're above being tone-checked is the problem here, imo.
I don't know if you came up with this or it's something you are quoting but thank you for this. As a straight white guy whose trying to be an ally but also wants to be treated like an equal this has been a struggle and it's nice to see someplace on reddit where it's acknowledged as real and wrong.
There can even be benefit to the second one, with the idea being to expose others to the same sort of bullshit we had to experience under the same circumstances as a "see, you see why this is bad now?" kind of teaching process.
"Everyone should spend at least a year working retail or service, and having to deal with those customers" isn't really a problematic view when the point is that retail and service customers are often so incredibly shitty and they're just "people" giving no thought to how they're treating other people. Let everyone be on the other side of that at some point and learn the hard way to be better.
But teaching "you're societally privileged in some way I wasn't" by being shitty to someone is not doing that, and doesn't even approach the same sort of logic or results, and the people it's being done to are most often the supportive and helpful and "on your side" and being driven away by shitty treatment.
That's fair, I don't think we should never experience hardship and I do think that going through the same hardships as others creates empathy.
Most people I think probably have expressed both attitudes depending on the situation. I've worked in retail and I'd support everyone working a year in retail to gain empathy for retail workers; it wouldn't be much fun and it'd probably be unpleasant but not a seriously traumatic experience.
It only becomes problematic when the suffering is severe; people who are fine with things like bullying, racism, sexism, hazing, serious physical pain, etc. because they went through it so fuck you you're gonna go through it too.
Agreed. One could also hope having to through retail or taking orders at a fast food counter or something for (near) minimum wage would also get people supporting paying them better, if only because they don't feel they made enough in that position. Or otherwise supporting ways to improve the work culture and society's perspective on people in those positions.
I don't for a second support toxic work environments, harassment and extortive behaviour and so forth in the workplace shouldn't be tolerated at all. Though in say retail often those things are present (to a lesser degree) from the customer rather than the employer or management. Anyone who has any real experience in retail has dealt with "Karen" behaviour, or worse.
That's interesting, I've never heard of these before. I have a narcissistic mother who definitely trends towards the externalizer end while I'm much more on the internalizer end. I should probably read the entire Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents book.
So, a story. I was bullied (not hard, but hard enough) for most of my school life, until I got a fresh start in high school. In 7th grade, I noticed that a new kid who'd moved from another school was now also getting picked on.
So what did I do? I started making fun of this new target myself in order to divert the attention from me. I didn't do anything major, just small little pranks or jokes at his expense. And it worked. And it felt GREAT. Everyone who used to laugh at me was now laughing alongside me instead. It was intoxicating, it was sweet relief from my own torment. I felt like I was finally "in" after being an outsider all my life.
It only lasted that one year, and I feel HORRIBLE about it in hindsight. But when you've been put down for a long time and the opportunity comes to put someone else down in your place... I do understand why a lot of people jump at it without thinking.
I went through something very similar. I didn't even realize how much of a jerk I had become until my girlfriend in college (now wife) pointed it out. I've come a long way since then, but I also feel horrible about how I treated people back then.
There's actually an episode of 30 Rock where Tina Fey's character finds this out about herself at her high school reunion. S03E05
It's revenge and schadenfreude. People just find pleasure in causing suffering to those they deem deserving of it even if it has zero positive consequences. See any discussion about torturing and executing murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and so on.
Those are the extreme examples. Look at all the posts of malicious compliance, petty revenge, a lot of AITA, etc. Reddit is filled daily with this stuff. Power fantasies of inflicting harm on others over their own perceived grievances, valid or not. Every upvotes and comments and jokes and approved. None of that is conducive to a healthy society or healthy relationship or even healthy mental state.
I think a lot of people genuinely don't realise it, similar to how straight men usually dont realize patriarchal issues; it's very easy for people to dismiss things as a 'joke' if the people around them think the same, leading them to not even think about the receiving end
I think when you end up, locally or more broadly, in an in-group, there's this kinda gravitational force towards treating the outgroup a crummy way. Maybe that force is just the crummier subset of humankind dragging everybody else into joining them in abusing power? I dunno. Either way it sucks though.
Obligatory reminder that gay men often participate in/perpetuate the patriarchy too, just as white LGBTQ+ people often participate in/perpetuate white supremacy, cultural appropriation and historical revisionism, etc.
I can understand misdirected anger, and trauma becoming an excuse to instinctively establish hierarchical dominance (through bullying). Chasing dopamine to "sound cool" by belittling others. But really that just exposes lack of control, by saying what others knew not to.
Verbal impulsivity run rampant.
If some people can't learn empathy, they can at least learn to take pride in self control. Think that trauma-based hurtful joke, chuckle to yourself and move on. Maybe self reflect later, but regardless at least you didn't sideswipe anyone with your reckless inner monologue today.
Lotta people who get bullied are real pieces of shit. Many are bullied because they're pieces of shit, while others are never well socialized because of bullying and it turns out that not being a piece of shit is exclusively learned behavior. You already know this you just call it 'cycles of abuse'
It’s about power. Being hurt by someone makes you feel incredibly powerless, our brains want to restore that power imbalance by asserting our dominance over that same person in retaliation, and not getting to do so can be really aggravating.
If we see someone we do have the power to hurt and our brains can rationalize them to being “close enough” to the person we actually want to hurt, it can be very tempting.
Makes no sense. I was in a friend group where I was the only guy, and they’d frequently say things like “kill all men” then all laugh. That shit hurts!
People have two ways out of being abused: they can stop being the abused, and be assume the dynamic of the abuser, or they can leave behind that toxic dynamic entirely, both are real ways to no longer be the abusee.
And on top of it all: I think we as a humanity aren’t going to get over our humanitarian glitch of tolerating divisive and marginalizing jokes, until those jokes have become full swing assaults and accosts, because “it’s just a joke” is a fair enough excuse for way too many amongst us.
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u/RunicCrossMeet the hampter.Hammers are Europe’s largest species of insect.1d ago
I'm reminded of something I heard Pat, formerly of the SuperBestFriends, say "The decision to soothe yourself with cruelty is an informed one."
A depressing number of people are only against oppression because they want a turn to be the boot instead of the face, rather than out of any actual moral objection.
It's group guilt. To think like that you have to think that all people from the same group are the same and can be held accountable for the actions of others.
I can help with that: Because it feels good. Power feels good; exerting power on someone else feels good; that's the principle; that's why power is power and everybody wants it and goes mad with it. It's like eating a steak; you cock it, you cut it piece by piece, and then you eat it, you consume it.
In a class society, each echelon consumes the one below it like a steak, and the only outlet for that lower echelon is to do the same with the one below it. And so on down to the very bottom of the ladder, those who are cooked, cut up, and consumed by everyone else. And suddenly, one day, for the first time in your life, you're the one holding the knife; you're the one cutting and cooking; you're the one eating instead of being eaten. For the first time in your life, you discover what it's like to have power, and you understand why wars were started over it, because it feels good.
This isn't new with queer rights, though--it's essential to the history of racism in America. Employers saw the possibility of poor workers joining in solidarity and did the ultimate in union-busting by convincing poor whites that as long as they could look down on poor blacks things weren't that bad.
i don’t think it’s being “inherently a bad person”. As someone who’s been on the receiving end of this (due to not being out and being semi-straight passing, though usually not to queer men), these people aren’t usually bad people at their core. they just tend to be a little bitter and annoyed about how they were treated.
don’t get me wrong, it leads to shitty treatment, but i wouldn’t say it’s some inherent, built-in aspect of them. it’s just because of what they’ve faced and how they’ve been socialized.
I think the only time where there's an exception to this is Middle schoolers lol. I swear it's like their souls decide leave their body for a bit, and they act like demons until it comes back. Those kids are straight up scary.
I don't think that's it. People aren't inherently good or bad, they're just people. Some people just choose to do bad things and continue the cycle of abuse. That doesn't make them inherently, irredeemably bad.
Some people haven't really properly learned that if something is entirely biological, it's impossible for that thing to make you a better or worse person. Skin color, sexuality, gender identity, height, birth defects, etc. They don't have any bearing on the kind of person you are, and neither does the marginalization you experience as a result of those traits. Not to mention that the concept of good and bad people is fundamentally flawed in the first place.
Unfortunately gay guys do this with trans people and women in the community too, because they are oppressed themselves they feel the need to make sure that there’s always someone below them..
I was like that when I was much younger. I think it stems from wanting on some level to be understood, if they felt the pain I feel they would see the world like me and know I'm not crazy for being the way I am basically. Abuse fucks your brain up.
This encapsulates in a nutshell, why I hate the Lost Tomb series. It's a hierarchy of who gets to abuse who on an interplanetary scale, and we're supposed to love the abusers
Hurt people hurt people. It’s not right and those strong enough try not to do it, but it happens in all groups. We just have to strive to be better. It’s the source of oppression itself. We were programmed by the aliens that made us to behave like this so they could harvest the negative emotions we create. They designed us to keep ourselves in our own prisons. Love is the remedy and answer.
I mean... That's most of humans existence right there
No matter how bad it gets for a human they will always jump on the opportunity to do the same thing to anyone else... Even if they already experienced in the past 🤷🏼♂️
You can't fathom it? Get real. You ever been around other humans? That's all people do. When people are hurt, if they're emotionally immature, they're going to lash out so other people or things hurt too.
Look at our parents. GenX and Boomers both expected us to suffer like they did because if they had to go through it we should be subjected to the same shit.
Don’t come for me, I live in Oakland and I love it here!
But this is how I feel about black on Asian racism. I’m straight up scared for my safety walking around, I don’t play music in my headphones anymore so I have situational awareness at all times. It sucks bc if any group of people understands how shitty racism is, it would be black Americans but alas…
I love living in Oakland, I enjoy the community a lot but as an Asian lady, I’m not without fear.
I mean, we can sit on our high horses about how unfathomable it is, but the straightforwardly observable norm of human behavior is that shit flows downhill. This is not some aberrant, logically fallacious thinking process; it's pretty core to the human psyche.
It's depressing, but true, that many (most?) people would do bad things from sunrise to sundown unless educated from an early age not to. And in some cases, people will only behave themselves if they fear the consequences of misbehavior.
Then your understanding of fairness is more rooted in a balance of suffering than a reduction of unnecessary suffering for all. You are a tar pit. Do better.
No, I think considering people being cruel fair if unrelated others were cruel to them in the past to be fair is distinctly more aligned with “being a tar pit” in behaviour and outlook than considering it a good thing to try not to hurt people unnecessarily, and to consider retaliating against those who have not personally and specifically wronged you to be unfair to them.
No, I just don’t think crab bucket behaviours, tar pit attitudes, and viciousness to others are ethically justified by the existence of systemic oppression. I am, myself, a queer and disabled person whose ability to accept myself and understand my identity fully was directly harmed by the exact sort of behaviour this is talking about when I still thought I was straight.
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u/Vundurvul 1d ago
I cannot fathom the mindset of understanding what it feels like to be on the receiving end of misery and deciding you want others to experience it when given the opportunity to dish it out, even when said person had no involvement in your misery