this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
1716 points (96.5% liked)

Memes

45608 readers
656 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

If lemmy.world finds this, please tell my starving children that I love them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Humans are really good at empathizing. But we are also really good at delineating between in and out groups. It was crucial to protect your tribe over every other human. We now have a massive problem of entire countries or even the world being the "in-group" since we have enough resources for everyone to survive.

But those people wanting power are really good at exploiting that group mentality to cause groups to form in people's minds. Then they use that delineation to withdrawn empathy from those new out groups. And when those delineations aren't coherent among actual groups, it causes a lot of divisions that can be exploited.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

The average poor Republican would starve to make sure a "Welfare Queen" or "Tweeker" didn't get a free meal.