Doesn't sound like a massive loss, friend. People grow apart, even if they are your blood relatives. The family you choose is far more important, especially if your family gets angry and even writes you off at your lack of equivalent suffering. Americans are so weird about suffering being a positive, "character building" experience for its own sake.

I'm jealous of you btw, you did what I was too chickenshit to do and you reached the promised land.

Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing capitalists (not to be confused with the capitalism sycophant, self-hating peasants that don't hold significant capital and never will but call themselves capitalists) despise more than actual competition.

The goal of unchecked, unregulated capitalism is to end capitalism, ie competition.

That's why entire industries merge into a single entity to create a monopoly, as the regulators the oligarchs captured decades ago that were supposed to prevent such anticompetitive behaviors sit back passively with their rubber stamps.

It was always a lie by the capitalists to pawn off accountability for their insatiable greed driven decision to continue to terraform our only planet to be hostile towards human life for short term profit.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-people-are-blamed-for-climate-change

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

No amount of peasants separating cans and bottles or using cloth diapers would have changed the temperature of today, that was just a way to shift blame from the perpetrator with the bully pulpit to powerless individuals like us.

Should we recycle and consume a lot less? Of course, but never forget, that empty, purpose sapping, depression/anxiety causing consumer lifestyle isn't simply a choice we get to make, it is pushed on us all day every day at every level both through culture and through mass media the oligarchs fully own and through scholastic indoctrination through policy manipulation as the oligarchs own our politicians. We are raised from the cradle to conflate consumption with meaning. We are taught as children that a thriving consumer economy helps everyone when it really only helps a tiny sliver of the population at everyone else's expense.

The capitalists, not the self-hating peasant capitalism sycophants, the people that hold significant capital, will continue to blame their victims, even when they have to retreat to the luxury bunker compounds they've been building in places like new Zealand to protect themselves exclusively from the damage they've knowingly inflicted on the human race.

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-inside-luxury-bunkers-ultra-rich-prepare-for-doomsday-2022-9#tech-billionaires-are-building-luxury-doomsday-bunkers-according-to-a-tell-all-book-by-douglas-rushkoff-1

And watch, their descendants will emerge a generation or 2 later, fully believing they were the ones who were wronged, expecting to lead the remnants of humanity once again. We'll be dumb enough to let the sociopath's progeny do it, too. I've yet to see my species collectively declare that enough's fucking enough when the capital hoarders fuck us all over.

I don't think the people profiting significantly from the current economy tend to dwell on the negative effects their actions have on other human beings, especially human beings below them on the socioeconomic ladder, as that tends to be the sole metric by which capitalists, the ones with significant capital not their self-hating peasant sycophants, weigh human life.

Economic success tends to come from sociopathic behaviors, how much you are willing to exploit others to disproportionately benefit yourself. We reward such manipulation leaps and bounds beyond any form of actual, prosocial labor.

A rapist likely wouldn't agree rape is wrong.

A serial killer likely wouldn't agree murder is wrong.

A capitalist likely wouldn't agree, at least if they were being honest about how they conduct themselves professionally, that exploitation or insatiable greed is wrong.

I take no offense to being called a communist, even though I'm a socialist. I have a great deal of pity for the sycophants of capitalism, though, cheering their own exploitation and oppression as their masters terraform the planet to be hostile towards human life in the name of quarterly profit expectations.

Your family will be burning from the global oligarch's fine work, and you'll be blaming the invisible communists and socialists that countries like the US used military means to decimate through global destabilization the world over to further capitalist interests. The capitalists won, are fully in charge, and have captured their own regulatory bodies in most of the world. This is the world of capitalists own making. They run the show, we are living in what the capitalists would consider their utopia, where they live like modern Pharoahs as most of the species subsists to further enrich them.

We crossed that threshold years ago, man made climate alteration is a runaway train of multigenerational suffering at best, and possibly the end of human civilization for ages at worst. Have fun cursing the dirty commies when you're thirsty with no recourse 🤣

Not the descendants that accepted and kept their family's blood money without a second thought. The moment you, as an autonomous adult, choose to accept the power and wealth reaped through human misery, you accept the legacy of blood that came with it.

Anyone can walk away from blood money, or use ALL that blood money solely to provide restitution to the populations exploitated to obtain it. It doesn't happen though, because human beings as a rule are the fucking worst. Most people, the fuckees, fantasize about becoming the oligarch fuckers, instead of dreaming of ending their oppression and restructuring society to prohibit amoral levels of wealth/power accumulation. Most humans, given power/wealth, would use their own suffering as an excuse to propagate more suffering.

Meh, lets not.

In my experience, older people have to make conscious effort to maintain critical thinking and reasoning and not start lazily regurgitating settled, memorized opinions they've come rely on as absolutes, intead of allowing those beliefs to be subject to fresh challenges from novel perspectives that may change those opinions. Many do make that effort, and many do not. To paraphrase my favorite fictional character, if you refuse to change your mind, then you will die stupid.

Individuals are individuals of course though. I'm of the opinion that, on an individual basis, beyond the age of around 12, age is an extremely poor metric to estimate someone's intellect, wisdom, and insight. I'm in my mid 30s and have a master's degree in psychology with a 3.9 GPA. I recognize that there are 18 year olds that dwarf me intellectually, and more commonly 80 year olds who've lived lives devoid of reflection, who will die defending their long dead pappy's narrative about how the world works with anger rather than reason, solely because that's what they were told to believe. I have pity for that type, but very little patience.

These social issues vasculate by design to keep the peasants of every color at each other's throats.

The only real war is class war, too bad our owners propagandized us from birth to refuse to fight that particular war.

Now by all means, carry on fighting over the social wedges that are largely caused or exacerbated by our rigged capitalist dystopia.

Just don't be late for work, my fellow capital batteries.

peers inside

Oof, Billionaire dust, don't breath this.

To me its tragic that the smartest human to exist in living memory had his societal, socialist worldview swept under the rug by the capitalist pigs. We acknowledge he laid the groundwork for our understanding of physical reality itself, but sure lets pretend he didn't know what he was talking about with regard to improving our relatively simple by comparison exploitative inter-monkey social systems.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Albert_Einstein

We're all going to be foolish from time to time in life, and I sure know I'd sincerely appreciate a kind hand when it's my turn.

It depends on your net worth. I see Americans wish death on homeless people for lowering property values and insisting they did it to themselves. I see Americans telling student loan debtors who committed the crime of buying the lie and improving themselves being laughed at for their struggles.

Meanwhile a wealthy person can go to a fancy rehab for years of acting like a belligerent, intoxicated asshole, be called brave for it, and have their job with massive salary waiting for them after it all.

Second chances (and third, and fourth...) are for capital holders. Poor people half to walk a tightrope from birth and be both lucky and perfect to improve their station, with plenty of people ready to scold them for trying the moment they fall.

My Daily Reminder that this is a gold plated dystopia.