Rookwood

The balance. It ebbs and flows with the cultural landscape of the times. It determines which side prevails.

And just a hunch, I'd say it leans toward the ambivalent center most of the time. But as things get tough, it would become more activated and polarized.

I have a theory of society that is 30-30-30 based around a narcissistic spectrum. 30% of the population at any given time is narcissistic to some extent. They are conceited in their interactions with society.

We live in a time of decline. This is creating stress throughout the population. How people react to this stress shows their true character. The narcissistic leaning people, during these times of stress, look for scapegoats. If we just eliminate these types of people, we can go back to the good times. They are the fascists throughout history. When fascism and mindless violence rises during times of decline, it is due to this latent population, which is always there but only activated by the stress of decline.

The other groups are the 30% who are altruistic and cooperative. They interact with society by seeing what can be built by all and the value of different types of people. They have won the day too throughout history, but a society the averts disaster by coming together and rebuilding is just a society that continued to be successful. They are little noted as they do not bring the great calamities and destruction that get written down in the history books.

The final group are the 30% who are ambivalent. They don't engage with politics in a meaningful way and have little willpower. They see life as a fate to be endured. Whichever way the wind blows, they will follow, or at least, endure it.

The balance determines which side wins. It is influenced by the power structures of the day, the zeitgeist and the strength of propaganda and the leaders of each side. It's fairly clear which side is winning now and I don't see the altruistic side coming to save the day any time soon.

Often times, when altruism does prevail, it is because someone with great courage that is a member of the existing power structure leads their cause. There are no such people at this time. Our power structure has explicitly embraced greed and sociopathy for 50 years now. Everyone who is successful now has been a part of that system and is thoroughly corrupted by it.

In a lot of areas it's virtually non-existent. In my medium size'd city. A bus stop is about 2 miles away and comes every 50 minutes.

Nah, dialectics is a powerful tool for understanding reality.

That doesn't make this acceptable.

Always have been

It didn't used to be as bad as it is today a short while ago. It will continue to be worser for the rest of our lives.

I only use lemmy. I'll need an alternative for Discord soon.

There's nothing special about socialism.

Jesus was definitely not liberal. He was a socially-conservative socialist. Pope Francis is probably a good modern example.

Everyone of them has more muscle than the average man today. They don't have the relatively low body fat most men today have. The strangest thing about them is the barrel chest and swollen gut thing that each of them has going on.

People used to do this weird thing called going outside. Believe it or not, they'd spend most of their waking hours doing this weird habit and they were also typically fully dressed too. It was considered scandalous to be caught outside not fully clothed. So the deadly laser that is our Sun would fry their uncovered face much faster than the skin beneath their clothes.