• 0 Posts
  • 121 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: October 9th, 2023
  • GiveMemes@jlai.lutoTechnology@beehaw.org•The Antiquity to Alt-Right Pipeline
    6·
    8 months ago

    Are you suggesting that architectural styles are not based on interactions with different peoples and that the type of architecture, for example, from 200-500CE is not going to vary greatly in different regions such as East Asia and Europe? And that those peoples with individual cultures and ideas about architecture won’t ever interact with their neighbors, creating cross-cultural styles? That these cultures will never interact and reach a quorum on specific styles of buildings, especially when brought together through larger institutions such as religion?

  • GiveMemes@jlai.lutoTechnology@beehaw.org•The burning of the Library of Alexandria for fandoms
    7·
    8 months ago

    From a content creator’s standpoint, sure. The issue is that when the end user doesn’t have a shiny new thing they’re interested in in front of them every 30 or so seconds they just log off and stop using the service. Why use mastodon if bluesky/threads/whatever shows them, generally, more of what they want to see and less of what they don’t?

    Most people are using social media as a way to veg out and unwind these days. They don’t really care if somebody is able to game the system, just that they see more that lets them veg out (or alternatively makes them angry, driving increased engagement).

    I agree that this is generally bad, but trying to sidestep it completely like Mastodon is is just going to result in a network that never hits the critical mass necessary to start exponential growth.

  • GiveMemes@jlai.lutoMemes@lemmy.ml•Every time
    11·
    9 months ago

    What do you mean by human nature changing with Mode of Production? We have quantitative psychological data for a reason, and many of the fundamentals haven’t changed since long before the industrial revolution, with many people still ascribing to classical Greek and Roman philosophies or philosophies first found in the Vedic Texts or Dead Sea Scrolls. Clearly then, if these philosophies are still so valuable to modern man, man’s psyche cannot have changed significantly, even over such a vast amount of time and even vaster amounts of lifestyle change. I understand that when there is less competition for resources that people tend to be more generous, but that is always true regardless of the mode of production. A surplus is a surplus is a surplus, but when a large portion of the population becomes poor/impoverished, regardless of the state of the elite, that is when tribalistic tendencies most arise. I often see ideas that the elite somehow controls the narrative, which may very well be true today, but was much less so true in the early-mid 20th century.

    What we had in Germany was a portion of the population that was predispositioned towards hatred/tribalism/xenophobia/whatever. These are the people that supported and voted for Hitler. Without them, Hitler doesn’t have any chance of coming to power. By and large, these people were not bourgeois nor petit-bourgeois, but proletariat, often poor and uneducated. This is the most vulnerable psychological state to the type of culture war that Hitler waged, just as Trump does now, or Netanyahu. These ideas aren’t simply implanted into people, but come as a result of hardships. When people are doing poorly, they are more likely to form small groups and turn on the whole. That is a constant throughout history, as it is generally more sustainable to be in a small group, even if it forgoes other luxuries.

    To be sure there is often class collaborationism, but to say that is always how fascism arises is ridiculous. For example, Toussaint and Dessalines would return the freed slaves to forced plantation labor. Plantations the generals (and later king for Dessalines) now owned as a result of the war. Another example would be Modhi in India, where there’s no real threat of class consciousness because of the historical prevalence of racism/casteism. Similarly, there’s no communist threat to Netanyahu’s government currently genociding Gazan Palestinians.

    If we’re taking a more historical definition of fascism rather than my more casual usage that’s fine, but I’m gonna need to brush up on specific examples bc this is not entirely my area of expertise.

  • GiveMemes@jlai.lutoMemes@lemmy.ml•Every time
    11·
    9 months ago

    You’re strawmanning my argument. I never said anything about human nature. I said that tribalism, as a psychological principle, is inherent to humanity.

    Here is an article which details some studies supporting this concept from a pop-sci website:

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-reboot/202307/the-neuroscience-of-tribalism

    Also, for somebody apparently on the side of historical evidence you seem to be ignoring the mountains of genocides and racially-based conflicts throughout our species’ history.

    I’m not saying racism is good. I’m saying that every time we see fascists come to power they have roughly a third of the population that supports them… is that just a coincidence or could there be a reason that the data is the same every time? I posit the reason that the data is the same every time is due, at least in large part, to human psychology.

    Besides that, let’s take this outside the concept of liberalism and capitalism, as race-based conflicts and genocides have occurred long before the creation of capitalist or liberal systems, which are truly an advent of the modern era.