this post was submitted on 07 Apr 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.
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- 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
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Think of a kind of life you think is worthwhile. If there's a system that you know, from experience, supports that kind of life, then it makes sense for you to support that system.
Ontological tautology, yes.
No, it’s not a tautology, it’s a pragmatic principle.
A tautology is a statement that’s true by definition and doesn’t add new meaning (e.g., "A circle is round").
An ontological tautology would be:
A system that supports the kind of life one thinks is worthwhile supports the kind of life one thinks is worthwhile.
That's how I read it, which is why I said that. Appreciate your explanation, it makes sense. ✌️
If you can only support one of two systems, for example: the first you know, from experience, supports a worthwhile life; and the second you expect to support it even more, though without empirical evidence; which should you support?
Which would you support?
Is worthwhile enough, for a life? If worthwhile isn't enough, then, by definition, is it not worthwhile? Is enough the level at which anything more is without merit?
I suppose it does "make sense" to support the first system, even if it also makes sense to support the second system. Yeah, it's tautological (it makes sense to do things that make sense to you), but I think it's still an interesting point to make for the questions it raises!
Which of the systems allows for you to pursue your ideal system - an activity which you would probably add to your definition of a worthwhile life?
Is familiar hell better than unknown heaven?
Fun fact: communism worked great for 65,000 years in Australia, so it's way more thoroughly tested than capitalism. Capitalism started a mass extinction event in only a couple hundred years!
Can you elaborate on the Australia communism thing
I to am curious how many millions or billions lived this way for so many years?
Sure thing. @HubertManne@piefed.social can listen too.
Australia has many First Nations, and I don't know nearly anything about most of them. But they have a lot of commonalities between them. So I'm gonna tell you about the people whose land I live on, and some of what I say is going to be applicable to most of the First Nations across the continent.
Think of the First Nations as like the European Union. A community of mostly cooperating countries. Sure, there was conflict between many, but none of it was like the way white people do war. If you're the ruler of a city with a million people, you can send five thousand men-at-arms to die for you, easy. In Indigenous Australia, your community was your family. The population was small, you personally knew everyone you had any kind of social power over. So the rules of conflict were designed to minimise bloodshed. The Greeks invented the Olympics to settle political differences without violence, Indigenous conflict was much the same. More like sport than war.
Where I live, there was a gift economy. No money, no internal barter. I want you to think of your parents. They gave you food, clothes, a house, for free. When they're old, you'll probably do the same for them. Healthy families have an internal gift economy. Indigenous clans also had an internal gift economy. Take knowledge, for example. In the First Nation where I live, respect comes from great knowledge. Not from hoarding it all, and not from spraying all of it away like a firehose. Respect comes from passing on knowledge to the next generation at a good, controlled rate. From being a responsible custodian of knowledge. That's how Elders are supposed to act. And Elders are the leaders of Indigenous clans and tribes.
People often had to go travel to the land of other clans and tribes. One of the big reasons to do so, is to find love. You can't go having a baby with your cousins, Indigenous Australians didn't survive 65,000 years by doing that. The health of the gene pool is protected by the First Law. At least, that's what it's called where I'm from. The First law dictates who you can marry and have a kid with. There's a system. The systems are somewhat different in different regions, especially the names, but the point is to protect kids from inbreeding so that the community can have strong genes for thousands of years to come. When the white people showed up, the Indigenous people around here were very happy at first, because they brought a lot of new genes with them. If you marry a white person, your babies are gonna have some very robust genes. White people have so many different genes, they don't even have to worry about accidentally inbreeding! They can marry nearly anyone they want!
But I was talking about travel and trade. So Indigenous people went and travelled to the lands of other clans. Here are the rules for doing that: you go the the boundary between the two regions, and there's a campsite. You go the campsite, light a fire, and put wet leaves on it. It makes a lot of smoke, and they see the smoke. Then they light a fire. When you see their smoke, you can go meet them. You go say hi, and you ask them about their family. Always very important to do that, it's part of the First Law. Protects you from accidentally falling in love with someone you can't marry. You give them a gift, and they teach you the song of the route you're travelling. Every path through the outback has a song. The song helps you navigate and it teaches you about the natural resources in the area.
Notice that you give them a gift. It's not a payment. Not a barter like capitalists might assume it would be. The point is to establish a reciprocal relationship. Mutual kindness. Mutual obligation. That's the way the social structures were designed. So even between different clans and tribes, it's a gift economy.
No money. No state. No class. From each according to ability, to each according to need.
This seems kinda fanciful. First nations in america had such deep seated hatred in their conflicts that they allied with the invading colonists to defeat rivals.
I dunno what to tell you, this is what I leaned straight from the First Australians whose families have lived here for 65,000 years, at least according to archaeological evidence. These are educated people, experts in the field. They say there's no record of warfare in this part of the continent before colonisation.
Try naming a war from European oral history. It's easy. The Trojan war. King Arthur's conquests. All that stuff Cú Chulainn was up to. Most of those aren't even factual! But in the oral histories where I'm from, there are no records of any wars, historical or fictional.
Did they hide their past wars? Did the colonisers suppress the war stories? Did the knowledge holders happen to be wiped out by colonisation while a lot of other knowledge survived? I doubt all of these explanations. I think there was just a well designed communist government for a very, very long time. If there were wars around where I live, they're older than the last ice age. Because we have stories from the ice age, but no war stories.
Well you spoke about other first nations but what your saying is only austrailian fist nations. Can you name a european oral history that used stone weapons?
Cain and Abel.
that was quite the loss of life with the level of caualties and all. Its like 25% of the human population was killed in that conflict. That was before folks were to worried about genetic diversity though.
Oh, and here's a fun detail I just remembered. In traditional language where I live, there was no word for "mine". There's a word for it now, the grammar to invent the word is pretty simple. Some people use that word, some people prefer not to, it depends on where you go. But before colonisation, there was no "mine". Everything was "ours". That was the word.
So, if you like communism memes, that one should tickle you.
We had something like this in our philosophy class.
Will you bite the hand that feeds you? Will you stay down on your knees? I have found you can find happiness in slavery
Yes these are Nine Inch Nails lyrics, they slap. Op needs to do a lot more drugs
if you don't find that kind of life worth living, stop supporting the system. if you support a system that enables you to use drugs and listen to really old music, then i guess you find it worth living for.
listen to really old music
Hey! Fuck you for pointing out this song didn't come out within the last decade!
Maybe it's all the drugs (did more than enough, long ago) but I'm genuinely unsure what you're trying to say. It doesn't take a lot of institutional support to get high and listen to music, I get a vague sense you think I'm supporting something and find that hypocritical. Care to elaborate?
No, i'm just saying that you're executing the cycle op is talked about either way. Up to you to do what you want with that.
How would you respond to a system you currently depend on that you recognize needs to change?
That’s for you to answer for yourself.
The original statement is a framework, or a formula like a+b=c. You define what kind of life is "worthwhile" and what the "system" is. You plug in your own values. If a system doesn’t align with the life you want - whether you’re coerced into it or not - you don’t have to support it. The logic is about your agency. If you’re stuck in a system you didn’t choose, the question is: What can you do to change your situation? What kind of a sub-system can you adopt? The statement doesn’t demand loyalty. It’s about recognizing what truly supports the life you want and acting on that - whether that means surrendering, adapting, resisting, or leaving. It’s always about your judgment.
I obviously reject the original framing and was really hoping to hear your answer. That a system supports a life you find worthwhile does not mean it is inherently worth supporting.
That a system supports a life you find worthwhile does not mean it is inherently worth supporting.
That's not the claim made in op. Op makes exactly 0 claims on what kind of life one SHOULD think is worthwhile, or what kind of system SHOULD be. The point is that it's on the reader to figure out for themselves. Again, you input your own values into the framework.
You define what kind of life is worthwhile.
You support a system that you KNOW enables it.
It would NOT make sense to NOT support a system that enables it.
“Don’t be surprised that people still Stan for capitalism”
How many weeds did you inject?
Aliens?
If "Because I said so" was a person.
It makes sense to tolerate it. Not necessarily support it.
Then you're finding it worthwhile to support a system that allows for you to merely tolerate it
Counterargument: it makes sense to support whatever system would create the best life for everyone, rather than just creating good experiences for you while others are forced to struggle and suffer, because you aren't a selfish arsehole.
Another version: it makes sense to support whatever system creates the most good for everyone AND is most stable, because the countless future generations matter far more than you.
it makes sense to support whatever system would create the best life for everyone,
That's your value and you can use OP's formula to act accordingly. But you can't force other people to adopt your values, that would be tyranny (and also kinda impossible). Not that I disagree with you but that's not a counterargument, you're just expressing how YOU would apply the formula OP presented.
Nah...
I know a couple kids that were abandoned by their parents when their cult left the country, because the cult would have faced scrutiny taking all the kids.
Those kids grew up, and started a cult.
It's a "benevolent" cult, and from what I know pretty easy going and actually work thru things...
But all the guys who started it, grew up in a cult. It's what they know, it's normal to them.
They legitimately don't understand why some people freak out about it. And they call it some weird cult-speak term instead of "cult" like that King of the Hill joke. But it's 100% a cult.
Are they hurting anything?
No
But they'd have been a lot better off going to therapy and recommending it to people that need it than starting a cult.
The "system" they knew was cults, and that's not a good system to actually help people.
OP didn't say it was good or bad. Just that it makes sense for them because they thought it was what they like.
What if the system you know doesn't make sense to you?
That's not the question. The question is just if you find it to enable the kind of life you value. If your experience is that a system doesn't do this, don't support it. This isn't that complicated lol
Then OP ought to change the second "to" to "will" to avoid confusion.
That's not what "makes sense" means tho...
If you're out of gas, it "makes sense" to go to a gas station and get gas, that fixes the problem
If your parents beat you, it doesn't "make sense" to beat your own kids because that's what you think a normal home life is. You're still doing something illogical, and it's not fixing anything.
We can understand why past experiences and trauma make someone make the choices they do, but that doesn't mean it "makes sense".
Fuck man, I understand what trump does a lot of the stupid shit he does, that doesn't mean it "makes sense" just that I can follow his illogical reasoning.
Same with those people who started a cult.
The "makes sense" in the op means that from the perspective of the doer, it makes sense. OP is not saying that it's "objectively beneficial to all humans".
It's a description of how people make choices.
Maybe that's how they meant it...
Maybe that's how you interpreted it...
Lots of people also think vaccines cause autism, and when they say it, they mean it. It doesn't mean they're right, it just means they're willing to put effort in defending their erroneous position.
Someone replying over and over till the other person gives up, doesn't mean they're right. Often it just means the other person gave up explaining and likely blocked them.
Makes sense for me to interpret what OP said in that way because I find logic and reading comprehension worthwhile for life.
This guy always blocks everyone that shows him he's wrong about something.
Cult is just a word for small religions. Jesus started a cult and people don't judge him for it anymore.