The tragedy of humanity is that we know we can be better than non-sapient animals responding out of emotional, knee-jerk survival instinct that is necessary in the wild but destructive in civilization. We have sparks, inklings, we can see the higher path, the path where our sapience has created the ability/technology to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and even facilitate self-actualization for EVERYONE.
It’s right there, some even do it on a small scale, very rarely humanity makes a step in that direction before taking a step back.
But most of the time, that inkling is extinguished. Our higher, sapient, empathetic mind still not quite evolved enough to overcome our lower brain that sees everyone else as competition and a threat that can only be defeated, ensuring individual survival, by hoarding moooooaaaar than them, and keeping them away.
Juuuuuuust barely smart enough to split the atom with concerted team effort, but still so dominated by our base, animalistic impulses that we did it explicitly to first and foremost make big boomie boom rival monkey tribe.
It’s not so much human nature as it is capitalism. The small scale mutual aid gets scaled back because the group runs out of money, the helpfulness shrugged off because individuals barely have enough to care for themselves, and austerity makes politicians as well as political citizens more concerned about cost than helping people.
It’s not so much human nature as it is capitalism.
That’s why the USSR never built nukes.
Yes, heavy militarization was one of the USSR’s biggest mistakes.
You’re both right, but capitalism is an expression of human nature. That was the original argument for it, in fact; the “invisible hand” referred to self-interest, an aspect of human nature.
It is at once both the unique strength and tragic weakness of the economic system and humanity alike.
Wait is this a respond to the map meme?
I’m liking this meme back and forth lemmy has going!
I think it’s even in the comments of the map memes, isn’t it? I saw it before for sure
It is.
I went on a little rant about my coworkers being racist because they would rather immigrants “go back to where you came from” than help them understand the English language better.
SomeoneOP posted this in reply.Yep, I was inspired by your comment and my past experiences to make this meme.
If you can speak more than one language, that’s really impressive to me. I speak English and beginner Spanish and I’m so timid I hardly even try to speak Spanish because I don’t want to sound like an idiot.
Approximately 60% of the world is at least bilingual, just as a heads up.
It’s less common to be monolingual than bilingual.
And there are places in the world where people expect you to be at least trilingual even.
Man, I’ve tried to get decent at Spanish, and utterly fail, even with friends that speak it as a first language helping me.
There’s no way in hell I can think of anyone using English poorly as a second language as anything other than a peer. And they’ll likely get better at English while I still suck with Spanish.
Besides, I know too damn many people with English as a first language that are horrible with it.
Anyone even trying to use another language is a great thing to me. Our ability as humans to bridge the gap between selves with language is a powerful and beautiful thing, so someone attempting to bridge that gap further is just as beautiful, no matter how well they do it. It makes me happy when I run into someone making that kind of effort, and I can take the time to help them do what they want, or joust have a human interaction.
Plus, I’ve never, ever run into a situation where just trying to help someone navigate an English speaking majority didn’t end up with both of us smiling and at least a little better off than we were before. I wish I had the ability to learn new languages quickly and fluently. I just keep failing at it lol.
When I was younger, I genuinely wanted to study linguistics for a while. It was running into the difficulty with gaining fluency in Spanish that made me rethink that.
So, fuck hating on someone that’s putting in the effort. I have mad respect for that.
Speaking my language in any other accent than the most ghetto one possibe
Speaking my language in the most ghetto one possible. Sounding like a drug dealer.
Yep, 100%. I know my accent in spanish is ugly.
