• ameancow@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    29 days ago

    I would say largest problem with leftist spaces is a little more challenging to identify; it’s that leftists are broadly intellectuals or at least identify as intellectual because of effort they put into honoring nuance. And the primary opponent of leftists are conservatives, and they are proudly not intellectual and view people who use the lens of intellectualism and nuance as weak or elitist.

    Because it’s incredibly difficult to have any kind of meaningful intellectual debate with your opponents, we have all retreated to our safe-spaces and online bubbles, our discord groups and algorithm-driven feeds. We don’t even walk in the same environments or view the same media anymore,

    So in order for people on the left to feel any kind of satisfaction and feel like their mental strength actually has a use, they find someone else who is ostensibly on the left and attack something that person said or did which they feel does not represent their own leftist values.

    Our eternal, infernal infighting problem is because we have an army of head-warriors who have no heads to butt against. Even if there were people on the right willing to have intellectual debates, they’re not even in the same talking-space anymore. The only place you can go to have debates are contentious battleground where nobody is even arguing in good faith and just screaming their talking points for audience upvotes. So leftists, being humans, take the easy path and turn on each other to feel like they’re making any progress or are involved at all in making things better.

    On the right it’s much easier to feel like you’re part of the movement or doing something for your group, all you have to do is buy a gun or stockpile trumpcoins and canned food or harass someone or get drunk and scream about minorities. It’s mindless and pointless but it feels like action. And sadly, more and more people are being turned away by this kind of mental effort and emotional labor of “doing the right thing” so they’re getting sucked in by the mindless orcs who have more fun and have easier victory conditions.

    • someguy3@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      29 days ago

      it’s that leftists are broadly intellectuals

      I used to think this. Then everyone came out about how Kamala didn’t get them excited, aka appeal to their emotions. When I pointed this out and that they weren’t thinking logically and instead relying on emotions they frankly agreed, saying something something not a robot. And there were proud of it.

      • ameancow@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        28 days ago

        I agree, even the notion that the left is more “intellectual” is surface-level only, you can just as easily be someone who thinks but uses those thoughts to validate feelings over shared reality. We do a very bad job broadly of understanding or recognizing our own cognitive biases and dissonances, and the left is just as stupid as the right about a great many things. This isn’t to take the position of the enlightened centrist, but instead the need to remind people that this isn’t WWE, and we’re not actually choosing sides, we’re trying to uphold values and principles that others happen to share. We want good outcomes for everyone, not specific outcomes for specific people.

        Even if we solved all our issues tomorrow and removed the republican leadership from politics entirely, we would still have to share a country with them the next day, and how rapidly would we become the thing we hate as we work to punish them or ignore them until they reach a breaking point? We are doomed to repeat history over and over because we cannot separate ourselves from our survival instincts and feelings, and we have fantastic brains that will spin narratives to justify our feelings about anything, from the most mundane decisions about lunch, to genocide.

      • naught101@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        29 days ago

        Is being an intellectual mutually exclusive with having emotions? Because as far as I know all people have emotions…

              • naught101@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                28 days ago

                🤷

                Modern psychology and neuroscience agrees with me. Eg. https://neurosciencenews.com/emotion-reason-decision-making-25803/

                Or have a read of Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow if you want something a bit deeper.

                The human brain is packed full of inescapable cognitive biases, many of which relate to emotions. They occur just as much for you as for me, and ignoring them or denying them just makes the problem worse.

                • someguy3@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  28 days ago

                  emotions, as demonstrated in his wine tasting study

                  Lololololololol. Whatever you’re trying to say it’s based on wine tasting. Lolololololol.

                  My last message to you is: go ahead and cry during old yeller. When it comes to politics, think.

            • XM34@feddit.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              29 days ago

              I don’t do it to a point of being a complicit in electing Hitler 2.0. Which shouldn’t be abhigh bar. But here we are!

    • ipitco@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      29 days ago

      it’s that leftists are broadly intellectuals or at least identify as intellectual because of effort they put into honoring nuance

      Nah. It’s just that they believe they are better and have huge confirmation bias. You’re not with them? You’re an enemy and should be banned because you’re a troll.

      Can’t we just fucking have a place where everyone is free to speak? Circlejerks are cringe