this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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First of all, everything collectively known about humanity shows our ancestors were largely not violent primitives, but instead they experimented with a wide array of different socials structures for millenia. Not all of them perfect, but violence wasn't a "daily way of life".
But sure socialism won't magically make violence, psychopathy, or bad actors disappear. It won't necessarily bring people closer together. The point is largely about who owns the means of production. But there are also absolutely forms that encourage and reward cooperation in stark contrast to what we have under capitalism.
In fact capitalism loves cooperation. They love monopolies and consolidation because they thrive under internal cooperation. Any attempts to the contrary have failed hilariously.
Cooperation is absolutely, and without doubt, one of humanity's greatest strengths. It baffles me you're trying to argue otherwise. In our current capitalist society, with how isolated we are, it may seem beneficial not to cooperate at another's expense for the immediate advantages it brings you. But its short sighted, in the long term cooperation benefits more people, and it always has.
In the right social structure this would be rewarded and encouraged, and most everyone would be better for it. History shows it, game theory shows it, life on earth shows it, cooperative enterprises show it, and even internally capitalist enterprises show it (but who benefits?)
First of all. Calm down, chill out. Relax.
I didn't once say anything negative about cooperation, I didn't even use that word once. What are you talking about? Why are you building this strawman of cooperation and then dismantling it for me when it has little to do with what I said?
It is a false belief people have that ancient man was overall more altruistic, they weren't. They did not experiment, they engaged with what worked. Cooperation is definitely key to our survival but bigger than that is our ability to weigh risk vs reward and more often than not the more important part of that is risk. Sometimes abandoning an injured ally, allowing the weaker individuals to perish, to abandon the place you call home and other selfish, sociopathic choices were the decision that would lend to one's further survival. Which is probably why we have so much selfishness in our society, not in capitalistic society, but in all societies. It is part of the human condition, people are selfish and rude and protect their feelings more than anything else. Literally most of therapy is people learning to not engage with those knee jerk emotional/mental responses that reinforce these behaviors.
While you can say cooperation was a big part of humanity's success it actually wasn't the big one. The big one was risk vs reward being able to plan and just overall decision making. Which unfortunately psychopaths tend to have the edge over the regular person for, which is why they probably have been routinely successful at survival way back in ancient times and today. Game theory shows us that cheating actually can benefit you especially in the short term and most of human history, for a specific person, is short term. Game theory also shows us it is kind of full of shit, according to game theory the prisoner's dilemma should end in disaster. In practice, it really doesn't work that cleanly. Game theory relies on humans basically being heartless reptiles, which people aren't because they like to cooperate and be liked and engage in kindness and respect.
So I don't really understand the point you're trying to make or why you have an issue with what I said. History is messy, but what is clear is ancient man was not overall altruistic, it wasn't paradise and people/society today is overall completely better.