I think it really comes down to how much faith you have in other people. I know it’s popular to hate and mistrust other people, and I think that’s how the dominant market, social, and political forces like it. I think other people have an unfair rap, and most folks are generally decent, intelligent people who genuinely want to do the right thing. We never would have survived as a species if that wasn’t true, imo, much less built cities of any kind. If you don’t have that faith, I can’t give it to you. As for me, I’ve been around, lived a lot of places, did thirteen years in EMS and seen a lot of folks on their worst day, and I’ve been left with the impression that while the worst actors are the loudest, most people deserve more credit than we give them.
As free speech has become more limited, it seems that relations between different groups has gotten markedly worse. In spite of legal protection against so-called “hate speech”, it seems that hate has increased. I think it’s in part because hate is ugly and so bringing it out into the open is how you show how ugly it is, while hiding it hides how ugly it really is.
One of the death knells of the KKK was a reporter going in and explaining it in detail, which immediately showed that it looked like the scribblings in a notebook of some 14 year old boy with no sense of irony. The group ended up not needing to be banned because it was self-refuting once people understood what they were looking at in its entirety.
I think it really comes down to how much faith you have in other people. I know it’s popular to hate and mistrust other people, and I think that’s how the dominant market, social, and political forces like it. I think other people have an unfair rap, and most folks are generally decent, intelligent people who genuinely want to do the right thing. We never would have survived as a species if that wasn’t true, imo, much less built cities of any kind. If you don’t have that faith, I can’t give it to you. As for me, I’ve been around, lived a lot of places, did thirteen years in EMS and seen a lot of folks on their worst day, and I’ve been left with the impression that while the worst actors are the loudest, most people deserve more credit than we give them.
I tend to agree with you on this point.
As free speech has become more limited, it seems that relations between different groups has gotten markedly worse. In spite of legal protection against so-called “hate speech”, it seems that hate has increased. I think it’s in part because hate is ugly and so bringing it out into the open is how you show how ugly it is, while hiding it hides how ugly it really is.
One of the death knells of the KKK was a reporter going in and explaining it in detail, which immediately showed that it looked like the scribblings in a notebook of some 14 year old boy with no sense of irony. The group ended up not needing to be banned because it was self-refuting once people understood what they were looking at in its entirety.