Idiocracy (2006)

[SunlitZelkova]

6 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Zoomers were raised in environment exposing them to the most horrific things imaginable. When did we ever have whole generations involved in sharing videos of brutal murders and violent, sickest forms of pornography? When did we have generations of children in constant danger of getting their life ruined by online abuse on social networks? They say the wrong thing, they wear something wrong? Before you had classmates laughing at them, now you have danger of becoming the laughing stock of the planet. I do not envy them. It's an insane amount of stress and peer pressure that has led them into unprecedented conformity.

I know you replied to DDE but as a Gen Z guy I just feel obliged to respond. The entire population of Gen Z, or a majority of it, has not been involved in sharing videos of brutal murders, nor violent pornography. You are zeroing in on the most fringe parts of society, and then a fraction of that fringe, and then extrapolating that to two and half billion people.

6 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Teachers from all over the world are noticing a decline in students' attention span, empathy and motoric skills. This is not made up stuff. This already started to be noticed in the 90s, but grew to serious proportions in the next decades.

The generation X are parents of younger generation Y and Z. Millenials (generation Y) are making a much worse thing with alphas. And why did this happen? I don't know, but it is a recognized problem. I've got friends who work in education in EU and they are experiencing increasing work related stress because of how violent and entitled children are rising in numbers. Some have even quit jobs they loved and thought were their calling. Same story around EU countries, same story in USA, Canada, ...

Children have always been hard to control. Indeed, you are correct about such trends. My aunt is a kindergarten teacher here in the US and has said her classes in recent years have been the worst she remembers.

But what does this have to do with these people as adults? If you looked at the youth history of any wide subset of people, especially from their first decade of life, everything they do is probably going to make you say "this generation is going to destroy the world." Indeed, there are records of people dating back thousands of years saying such things (or rather, writing about them). But they always turned out fine.

Older generations are always complaining about younger ones, but it doesn't have to do with reality. It's just a way of looking at the world and nothing more. It has no relation to how things actually are.

7 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Computer literacy is VITAL in today's world. I am not going to defend this statement. It is basically axiomatic. Current state of affairs is already creating problems at workplaces and it's just laughable. I repeat, these are averages. I am not generalizing. Behaviours and properties of average people have changed for the worse.

That's true, but tending to use a smartphone instead of a PC, not knowing the "official" method of touch typing, and not knowing what a website is has nothing to do with computer literacy. You're wanting people who will spend their day filling out forms and replying to emails to carry a burden that should be the IT guy's.

7 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Regarding drugs, drug problem is not the same as before. For many generations we had drunkards as a fairly constant variable. Things have changed. Cannabis used to be a rebelious thing. Huge amounts of alcohol and ethanol poisoning have been a norm for quite some time, they are not even seen as rebelious anymore. What cannabis used to be, now are cocaine and synthetic drugs. For the past decade or so, serious hard drugs which have viciously bad consequences on neuroplastic brains became a normal party property. Proof? One of the most horrific proofs are increasing concentrations of cocaine's, metamphetamine's and metabolites of other hard drugs in sewage waters of average towns/cities. We can't hide urine and feces and they speak a story of increasingly poisoned population.

Yes, but none of what you have written indicates this is a specific problem with Gen Z. Higher levels of drugs in sewage systems don't indicate what age group is using them.

Studies in the US, Canada and Europe do indicate that the majority of cocaine users are young adults (as of 2025 "young adult" exclusively refers to Gen Z). However, this only applies to the US, Canada, and Western-ish Europe. Furthermore, just because the majority of cocaine users are from Gen Z does not mean that Gen Z itself has a drug problem. We are still talking about a tiny fraction of the two and half billion Gen Z people who walk the Earth. Gen Z is also not the only age group to comprise hard drug users. This youth heavy drug use is also not prevalent in other countries.

This has less to do with "Gen Z" and likely more to do with the very specific societal conditions in countries where such a trend can be found. The whole of Gen Z is not inherently more interested in drugs than any past generation.

7 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Things are changing. This practice is not sustainable because we will have so many problems with psychotic individuals in the future. What will this do to the public health? What will it do to democracies which depend on the majority being sufficiently rational?

To be honest, I don't really see where your fears are coming from. For one thing, "psychotic" individuals, which I assume is the term you are using to refer to people with schizophrenia or bouts of psychosis, or other mental health issues, don't tend to be a nuisance to society and instead are far more likely to harm themselves. At worst, the developed world's already high suicide rates will get higher, but we aren't going to be dealing with an increase in crime because of "psychotic" people. The majority reason for any increase in crime is probably going to fall on healthy people making bad decisions.

Quite frankly, if a society is already in a state where more people are using hard drugs than before, its public health is not in a good state to begin with. Instead of dreading over the future state of public health, why not get out there and work with organizations that are trying to solve the existing public health problem using data and hands-on response? Because the vibe I get from your posts is that "These people need to stop doing these things." Emphasis on the period, too. That's not how a drug problem is resolved. Drug use can be reduced but it requires civil society and government working together, not expecting the users to suck it up and quit their bad behavior, especially when the users in question are young people. Guess who makes up that civil society and government that has the responsibility and sole power to create a solution? Gen X and Millenials for the most part (with boomers thrown in too of course).

People do not just wake up one day and decide to use drugs, except in very rare cases. The conditions they live in drive them to do that. And the young people, who do not hold positions of power and have no control over the world they are in, are not to blame for their actions if the world is in a certain way that then drives them to commit those actions. It is the older folk who for reasons unknown are still regarded as wise and solely worthy of power despite that distant, ancient trope having long since been shown to be not that great as a universal measure of qualification for leadership.

One last thing... (Again, it was in the reply to DDE but as a Gen Z guy I feel inclined to reply)

7 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

Mythical PC illiteracy? Oh, you clearly work with talented ones.

"Gen Z" consists of individual human beings, with different abilities and proficiencies in those abilites. It is not, in fact, a model of android produced by the Rosen Association.

When I argue that Gen Z is not degenerate and unintelligent, I am not saying they are superhuman specimens of perfection, I'm saying they are normal people. There are people that will be thought of as dumb and there are people that will be thought of as clever.

If the Gen Z people around you seem horrendously unintelligent, aside from extrapolating your own personal experience to billions of people, why not consider other options? Maybe the education in your specific district is low quality? Maybe the profession you work in where you encounter Gen Z has just begun to attract less than competent individuals? Maybe your standards are unrealistically high for an entire generation of human beings? Maybe you are just tending to remember bad experiences with young people more than good ones? And expanding on that last point, maybe people are only interesting in trying to figure out problems to the extent that they are ignoring everything good about Gen Z?

Generations are really just a way of positioning a species temporally. In extraordinary cases, you might be able to assign physical traits to them (Japanese people born since the 1990s are notably taller than Japanese people in say, the 1920s) but they can't actually be used to categorize behavior. Because especially among humans, behavior is a wildly varying thing that for the most part has nothing to do with a person's physical state.

[FleshJeb]

@SunlitZelkova My responses include:

• CLEARLY, they've solved the lead paint problem that plagued earlier generations.
• OK, OK, we'll let you sit at the adults' table for the holidays.
• Jesus kid, can I (a GenX) adopt you?

Damn fine argument, sir. I'm deducting 0.5 style points for apologizing for butting in. My sixth grade teacher once told me, "Never apologize for your work." As I've gotten older, it's become a deeper and more layered sentiment than I initially thought.

[lajoswinkler]

On 2/18/2025 at 1:40 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

I know you replied to DDE but as a Gen Z guy I just feel obliged to respond. The entire population of Gen Z, or a majority of it, has not been involved in sharing videos of brutal murders, nor violent pornography. You are zeroing in on the most fringe parts of society, and then a fraction of that fringe, and then extrapolating that to two and half billion people.

Children have always been hard to control. Indeed, you are correct about such trends. My aunt is a kindergarten teacher here in the US and has said her classes in recent years have been the worst she remembers.

But what does this have to do with these people as adults? If you looked at the youth history of any wide subset of people, especially from their first decade of life, everything they do is probably going to make you say "this generation is going to destroy the world." Indeed, there are records of people dating back thousands of years saying such things (or rather, writing about them). But they always turned out fine.

Older generations are always complaining about younger ones, but it doesn't have to do with reality. It's just a way of looking at the world and nothing more. It has no relation to how things actually are.

That's true, but tending to use a smartphone instead of a PC, not knowing the "official" method of touch typing, and not knowing what a website is has nothing to do with computer literacy. You're wanting people who will spend their day filling out forms and replying to emails to carry a burden that should be the IT guy's.

Yes, but none of what you have written indicates this is a specific problem with Gen Z. Higher levels of drugs in sewage systems don't indicate what age group is using them.

Studies in the US, Canada and Europe do indicate that the majority of cocaine users are young adults (as of 2025 "young adult" exclusively refers to Gen Z). However, this only applies to the US, Canada, and Western-ish Europe. Furthermore, just because the majority of cocaine users are from Gen Z does not mean that Gen Z itself has a drug problem. We are still talking about a tiny fraction of the two and half billion Gen Z people who walk the Earth. Gen Z is also not the only age group to comprise hard drug users. This youth heavy drug use is also not prevalent in other countries.

This has less to do with "Gen Z" and likely more to do with the very specific societal conditions in countries where such a trend can be found. The whole of Gen Z is not inherently more interested in drugs than any past generation.

To be honest, I don't really see where your fears are coming from. For one thing, "psychotic" individuals, which I assume is the term you are using to refer to people with schizophrenia or bouts of psychosis, or other mental health issues, don't tend to be a nuisance to society and instead are far more likely to harm themselves. At worst, the developed world's already high suicide rates will get higher, but we aren't going to be dealing with an increase in crime because of "psychotic" people. The majority reason for any increase in crime is probably going to fall on healthy people making bad decisions.

Quite frankly, if a society is already in a state where more people are using hard drugs than before, its public health is not in a good state to begin with. Instead of dreading over the future state of public health, why not get out there and work with organizations that are trying to solve the existing public health problem using data and hands-on response? Because the vibe I get from your posts is that "These people need to stop doing these things." Emphasis on the period, too. That's not how a drug problem is resolved. Drug use can be reduced but it requires civil society and government working together, not expecting the users to suck it up and quit their bad behavior, especially when the users in question are young people. Guess who makes up that civil society and government that has the responsibility and sole power to create a solution? Gen X and Millenials for the most part (with boomers thrown in too of course).

People do not just wake up one day and decide to use drugs, except in very rare cases. The conditions they live in drive them to do that. And the young people, who do not hold positions of power and have no control over the world they are in, are not to blame for their actions if the world is in a certain way that then drives them to commit those actions. It is the older folk who for reasons unknown are still regarded as wise and solely worthy of power despite that distant, ancient trope having long since been shown to be not that great as a universal measure of qualification for leadership.

One last thing... (Again, it was in the reply to DDE but as a Gen Z guy I feel inclined to reply)

"Gen Z" consists of individual human beings, with different abilities and proficiencies in those abilites. It is not, in fact, a model of android produced by the Rosen Association.

When I argue that Gen Z is not degenerate and unintelligent, I am not saying they are superhuman specimens of perfection, I'm saying they are normal people. There are people that will be thought of as dumb and there are people that will be thought of as clever.

If the Gen Z people around you seem horrendously unintelligent, aside from extrapolating your own personal experience to billions of people, why not consider other options? Maybe the education in your specific district is low quality? Maybe the profession you work in where you encounter Gen Z has just begun to attract less than competent individuals? Maybe your standards are unrealistically high for an entire generation of human beings? Maybe you are just tending to remember bad experiences with young people more than good ones? And expanding on that last point, maybe people are only interesting in trying to figure out problems to the extent that they are ignoring everything good about Gen Z?

Generations are really just a way of positioning a species temporally. In extraordinary cases, you might be able to assign physical traits to them (Japanese people born since the 1990s are notably taller than Japanese people in say, the 1920s) but they can't actually be used to categorize behavior. Because especially among humans, behavior is a wildly varying thing that for the most part has nothing to do with a person's physical state.

Amount of text here is spiralling out of control so I'll be brief.

I am not extrapolating to whole population on Earth because the generation Z does not apply to everyone. The division to these generations is primarily an American thing, and as years go by, through globalization and domination of US popular culture, it went on to be Western thing, as well. Now it's bleeding outwards, but it is still not majority of population of the planet.

"Baby boomers", for example, do not apply to many countries outside USA. For example Germany, France, United Kingdom, they simply don't apply. These countries had great economical and population losses after World war two, and it took a long time to repair themselves. USA, on the other hand, reaped the benefits of engorged military-industrial complex, boosted its economy through developments made by captured German scientists, engineers and technitians, and all that yielded an expansion of the population, a baby boom. Crashing in the following decades was to be expected because infinite growth is not sustainable.

Millenials (generation Y) already applied to youth of most of Eastern bloc and European nonaligned countries. Generation Z applied to even more, but again, not the whole planet.

Inside this Western-influenced world, there are clear signs of trouble. Lack of empathy and turning towards right authoritarianism, all fueled by artificial rage induced by Google (Youtube) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Twitter (X), and other companies, is a fact of life. Environment has changed. Dopamine delivered by machine learning tuned to greed is the main drug and it affects humans in their formative years. Grave changes do exist.

(Let me just clarify that just because there are these problems, does not mean I am promoting ideas of "original, uncorrupted and better" ideals coming from the Kremlinland and its associates.)

 

 

[SunlitZelkova]

On 2/23/2025 at 6:18 AM, lajoswinkler said:

Inside this Western-influenced world, there are clear signs of trouble. Lack of empathy and turning towards right authoritarianism, all fueled by artificial rage induced by Google (Youtube) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Twitter (X), and other companies, is a fact of life. Environment has changed. Dopamine delivered by machine learning tuned to greed is the main drug and it affects humans in their formative years. Grave changes do exist.

That has very little to do with Gen Z though, who make up 20% of people in the US including non-adults and could not swing an election.

I won't go into politics but I would like to note that "dopamine delivered by machine tuned to greed" just sounds like the natural evolution of the American attitude to business since the 1920s and has nothing to do with the Internet or any single company. People with malign intent do not come out of nowhere.

I think the whole phenomena is more natural and "normal" than people think.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I'm Gen X and I teach Gen Z. 

The kids are alright. 

The screaming polarization of Millennials and Boomers (both within the individual groups and between the polar opposites of each group with the other) is annoying. 

It's like being a guest at dinner when a family fued breaks out.  Each participant in the fued wants to cozy up to us while pointing out their opponents are insane. 

[AlamoVampire]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

pointing out their opponents are insane. 

Except in some cases <glances around> the opposition makes it screamingly obvious to all but their “side” that they are in fact insane. Sad but true. Just gotta know where to look.

091903082025

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

Except in some cases <glances around> the opposition makes it screamingly obvious to all but their “side” that they are in fact insane. Sad but true. Just gotta know where to look.

091903082025

The extremes of both sides are idiots.

Also - I might remind folks, that while history doesn't always repeat it does quite often rhyme.  We've been through this kind of thing before.  We will muddle through again.

[snip]

Edited March 8 by Vanamonde

[Vanamonde]

Avoid politics, please. 

[lajoswinkler]

16 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Avoid politics, please. 

How is that possible on a political topic? 

[AlamoVampire]

5 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

How is that possible on a political topic? 

Because euphemisms, metaphors, allusions, and various other synonyms exist? Its a way to aerodynamically pass over the subject, describe it, mock it, and discuss it whilst not directly poking it. 080803092025

[DDE]

20 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The extremes of both sides are idiots.

Fixed.

[Nuke]

dont assume a person is an idiot just because you disagree with them. that is a very good way to lose.

[FleshJeb]

On 3/9/2025 at 6:57 AM, DDE said:

Fixed.

Not fixed. It's a fallacy to assume that the status quo is de facto correct (or incorrect, for that matter).

It's also incorrect to assume that the status quo is unchanging--One of the tactics of the "extremist" is to shift the definition of "normal," and so the opinions of reflexive moderate are always at the mercy of the tides of popular opinion:

Quote

 

". . .In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy. . ."

--Milton Sanford Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45

 

So you're left being forced to examine the context of that extremism--The what, why, and how of what the extremist wants. It's hard work; it requires thought and reflection; it requires considering whether you may have been wrong.

Since this was written in 1963, and it's required reading in many American schools, I trust it's not too "political." See page 4, middle 3 paragraphs.

https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf

[lajoswinkler]

On 3/9/2025 at 2:08 PM, AlamoVampire said:

Because euphemisms, metaphors, allusions, and various other synonyms exist? Its a way to aerodynamically pass over the subject, describe it, mock it, and discuss it whilst not directly poking it. 080803092025

Oh, you mean act like average Americans, thinking that different words change the point? LOL

[AlamoVampire]

20 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

Oh, you mean act like average Americans, thinking that different words change the point? LOL

Quite the opposite. Using different words to convey the same point actually. Its a rules grey area. Id much rather be direct and to the point rather than go around the block to make it. However given just how fast it can go from a well intentioned peaceful discussion to a rabid fist fight so to speak, it is wiser to slightly blur the point and stay within the rules. But you seem to think im as dumb as half the country or am i reading you wrong? 112003122025

Edited March 12 by AlamoVampire

[ColdJ]

On 2/25/2025 at 9:04 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

That has very little to do with Gen Z though, who make up 20% of people in the US including non-adults and could not swing an election.

I won't go into politics but I would like to note that "dopamine delivered by machine tuned to greed" just sounds like the natural evolution of the American attitude to business since the 1920s and has nothing to do with the Internet or any single company. People with malign intent do not come out of nowhere.

I think the whole phenomena is more natural and "normal" than people think.

Let us do away with the idea of a specific letter generation for a moment.

All through history humans who reach a certain age wish to rebel against what they consider to be authority while being very easily manipulated by those who play to their egos.

Also, practically every invention ever created can in some way be weaponised by humans. We are scary in our ability to do so.

So I am old enough to know the world before the internet. The things we could be exposed to were limited and required effort to see. There were plenty of things that were wrong but you weren't exposed to it through the stroke of a key. People didn't walk around staring at their hand all the time. Young children were more likely to get physically hurt through playing outside than mentally scarred by cyber bullying. There were no Chat Rooms to talk about and shame people. A stranger could only be a danger in person. You could leave a child in their bedroom without fear that someone was grooming them and getting them to take pictures of themselves. You didn't have social media platforms with algorithms designed to direct them to extreme views.

Saying it is a natural evolution of attitudes created long before the internet does not make it ok.

The internet is a tool but it has been weaponised by those who wish to push extreme views or tap into the youth market to sell product.

People can be easily exposed to sexual acts that promote sex as a transaction with no emotion. In reality, no matter how much you may get convinced it is just a physical act. Emotion will be affected.

The letter designation of a generation does not matter. What they are exposed to does.

5% of a population can easily swing a result, especially when it is close.

"People with malign intent do not come out of nowhere."

No, they have always been here, but now they can enter your house without leaving a room on the other side of the world.

 

[Lisias]

On 3/8/2025 at 9:56 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The screaming polarization of Millennials and Boomers (both within the individual groups and between the polar opposites of each group with the other) is annoying. 

My parents were baby boomers. My son is Millennial.

And, boy, the stereotypes fit them to the perfection.

I will decline to further comment on these specific subjects due Forum rules (believe me, I'm a living History Book about local politics) to keep things simple.

On these decades of survivorship between these two essentially antagonistic stereotypes, I had concluded that - unsurprisingly- this is all by design. Not by a mastermind villain, but by our collective need to try to reduce the World to the length of our arms.

And Manhood created God according to their own image and their likeness.

As well their sons.

[SunlitZelkova]

On 3/12/2025 at 12:24 PM, ColdJ said:

So I am old enough to know the world before the internet. The things we could be exposed to were limited and required effort to see. There were plenty of things that were wrong but you weren't exposed to it through the stroke of a key. People didn't walk around staring at their hand all the time. Young children were more likely to get physically hurt through playing outside than mentally scarred by cyber bullying. There were no Chat Rooms to talk about and shame people. A stranger could only be a danger in person. You could leave a child in their bedroom without fear that someone was grooming them and getting them to take pictures of themselves. You didn't have social media platforms with algorithms designed to direct them to extreme views.

Saying it is a natural evolution of attitudes created long before the internet does not make it ok.

The internet is a tool but it has been weaponised by those who wish to push extreme views or tap into the youth market to sell product.

Yes, it isn't okay, but it isn't some abnormal aberration. It's just a continuation of something that was already part of life. If there is a loathing to be had, it is at a certain human behavior, not technology.

As much as there are flashy headlines about the dangers of the Internet, and you've listed many of them, I don't understand why those instances in particular are problematic.

It is like when people say "the development of weapons has gone too far, a single bomb can destroy a city." This purely my personal view but... I don't think that things were fine and dandy when a single slash of a sword could kill one person. The effect is the same but multiplied by millions. If a million individuals dying is bad then any individual dying at all should be bad. Not just trying to decide on an arbitrary number of "I feel icky when this number of people die, but I can get by with this number of people dying."

If children getting endangered and others getting bullied is a problem, the solution isn't to pine for going back to a time when it only happened to small number of them (which is what I assume all this "if only there was no Internet" sentiment is about). It is for no one to get hurt anymore.

If one is to believe that that is a fantastic notion and can never be achieved, then there is no real problem present because the issue isn't whether people are getting hurt, but rather what the arbitrary "limit" of how many people can get hurt is.

I really don't think it has been weaponized either. Was the printing press "weaponized" when advertising was created? Is the human voice a "weapon" when a door-to-door salesman shows up? I feel that pushes the definition of weapon.

On 3/12/2025 at 12:24 PM, ColdJ said:

"People with malign intent do not come out of nowhere."

No, they have always been here, but now they can enter your house without leaving a room on the other side of the world.

This is also a personal view.

I'm not trying to be that guy in the meme about centrists who says "I can't tell the difference between you" but I see the supposed good guys treating the bad guys like some sort of unthinking, cancerous mass and I can't help but think that is exactly how the bad guys think about the (supposed) good guys.

I'm not saying their views are identical. They can vary wildly and can be defined against each other. But the tactics of the good guys and the bad guys look identical to me.

"One man's malign actor is another man's responsible party" or something I guess.

[DDE]

28 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

I'm not trying to be that guy in the meme about centrists who says "I can't tell the difference between you" but I see the supposed good guys treating the bad guys like some sort of unthinking, cancerous mass and I can't help but think that is exactly how the bad guys think about the (supposed) good guys.

As someone who is or has interacted with many a bad guy, I can testify that this is a fact. This is achieved through a variable combination of three factors:

1. Trying to reduce all opposing views to the expression of a common evil as part of some grand political theory
2. Ascribing a common individual mastermind to all your opposition
3. On a more villainous note, believing that you transcend "the traditional political spectre" (e.g. the Third Position in 1930s Germany, the Fourth Political System in 2000s Russia) and/or that your opponents are just suckers while you've transcended the very notion of rules

Examples can be provided upon request, but I'm gonna need banhammer insurance

[Lisias]

17 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

It is for no one to get hurt anymore.

I agree on principle, but disagree in practice: anyone willing to hurt someone should be in line to get hurt instead.

Granted, we need to agree in what would configure "hurt" at first place - we need to establish a threshold, otherwise we will quickly fallback to the Hammurabi Code those best and only virtue is being better than nothing....

 

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

 I feel that pushes the definition of weapon.

I agree. If everything is a weapon, then nothing is.

However.... Everything is a tool, including a voice - as well an axe. An axe that cuts wood is a tool, but the same axe can kill a human and now it's a weapon. So a weapon, by definition, is only a tool - a tool used to hurt/kill someone.

So we can define a weapon as a tool used to hurt (or ultimately to kill) someone.

And, so, we need to define (and agree with such definition) about that threshold I mentioned above.

 

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

This is also a personal view.

I'm not trying to be that guy in the meme about centrists who says "I can't tell the difference between you" but I see the supposed good guys treating the bad guys like some sort of unthinking, cancerous mass and I can't help but think that is exactly how the bad guys think about the (supposed) good guys.

And things can be even messy: I can guarantee you that some of the worst persons I ever met think I AM THE BAD GUY because I had hurt them (or at very least, hindered their lives) somehow. And since I don't have the slightest remorse (au contraire, I would do it again if the same situation would rise), they still think very ill of me. Have them a point?

Again... We are back to finding an agreement about that threshold I mentioned at the start of this post.

 

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

"One man's malign actor is another man's responsible party" or something I guess.

I have strong Catholic backgrounds (besides not feeling like one most of the time). So I like this one more very much: “The greatest saints have been men with more than a normal capacity for  evil, and the most vicious men have sometimes narrowly evaded sanctity.”

But, still... "Every Saint have a past; every Sinner has a future" is also pretty good - except that I would say "almost every Sinner" instead.

 

17 hours ago, DDE said:

Examples can be provided upon request, but I'm gonna need banhammer insurance

Or delisting insurance...

[Fizzlebop Smith]

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

I agree on principle, but disagree in practice: anyone willing to hurt someone should be in line to get hurt instead.

Granted, we need to agree in what would configure "hurt" at first place - we need to establish a threshold, otherwise we will quickly fallback to the Hammurabi Code those best and only virtue is being better than nothing....

 

I agree. If everything is a weapon, then nothing is.

However.... Everything is a tool, including a voice - as well an axe. An axe that cuts wood is a tool, but the same axe can kill a human and now it's a weapon. So a weapon, by definition, is only a tool - a tool used to hurt/kill someone.

So we can define a weapon as a tool used to hurt (or ultimately to kill) someone.

And, so, we need to define (and agree with such definition) about that threshold I mentioned above.

 

And things can be even messy: I can guarantee you that some of the worst persons I ever met think I AM THE BAD GUY because I had hurt them (or at very least, hindered their lives) somehow. And since I don't have the slightest remorse (au contraire, I would do it again if the same situation would rise), they still think very ill of me. Have them a point?

Again... We are back to finding an agreement about that threshold I mentioned at the start of this post.

 

I have strong Catholic backgrounds (besides not feeling like one most of the time). So I like this one more very much: “The greatest saints have been men with more than a normal capacity for  evil, and the most vicious men have sometimes narrowly evaded sanctity.”

But, still... "Every Saint have a past; every Sinner has a future" is also pretty good - except that I would say "almost every Sinner" instead.

 

Or delisting insurance...

Ah the joys of subjective experience and paradox.

If everything is a weapon.. then everything IS and no amount of argument can change that.

Everything IS not a weapon and therefore there is no need. Take a single strand of hair or the color purple.

There are many potentially fun and engaging conversations to explore here. Too many, so lets delve into the nature of *bad guys*

Someone that grows up incredibly isolated may take grievance or find pain in something that a world person is inured to. 

Personal experience therefore supercedes. We each have to do what is morally required of us even a IF another is harmed. 

I was raided deeply Baptist and though it doesn't come with as much inherent guilt within the dogma.. it replaces what it lacks with evangelical fear of fire and brimstone. 

I had a hard time with guilt, but learned sometimes there is no right answer, and other time the right answer maybe wrong.

The famous Koan of the "Muddy Road" empashisis this well.

To do bad, is to do something we *feel* is wrong and sometimes there are instances where this is right. 

The nature of being human is to live with ourselves and our actions. This requires a level introspection.

If the actions you take can be evaluated as more beneficial than not / you have been true to your own rational understanding of what is right..  then you are *trying to be good*

The goal is to be better. 

This incredibly long winded and verbose rant is to say some people are bad, but no one is good. There are those that try harder than others to be so.

Edited March 17 by Fizzlebop Smith

[ColdJ]

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

It's just a continuation of something that was already part of life. If there is a loathing to be had, it is at a certain human behavior, not technology.

It is always human behaviour, but we are providing them with better tools to do more harm in a shorter period.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

I don't understand why those instances in particular are problematic.

You loose people you love to it, you might see why. Again, more harm with less effort.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

I don't think that things were fine and dandy when a single slash of a sword could kill one person.

They weren't. Murder is always Evil. But now someone can turn a young kid into a weapon, who then can  get hold of a semi-automatic rifle and kill 20 other kids, all while the groomer sits back smiling and untouched in another country.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

If a million individuals dying is bad then any individual dying at all should be bad.

It is bad. Anybody who thinks it is ok to kill someone for some arbitary reason, like race, religon or country is bad.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

If children getting endangered and others getting bullied is a problem, the solution isn't to pine for going back to a time when it only happened to small number of them (which is what I assume all this "if only there was no Internet" sentiment is about).

It is not pineing for some previous age. I remember people getting bashed just because they didn't fit the majority mold. Don't want to go back to that. The no internet sentiment is about taking away the toolset that makes it so easy. Say everybody had a button in their home, that if pushed, would randomly kill 1000 people. Most wouldn't push it (I hope) but there are those that would. We all have access to the same tools, but if any person can use it to cause mass harm, then arguing it's benefits is just being selfish.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

It is for no one to get hurt anymore.

This requires societal change. We were slowly working towards it in some parts of the world. But we are constantly exposed to violence promoted as sport through instant media. There is a big movement to stop violence against women in my country, but no one is saying "Let's teach kids as they grow that violence of any sort is not good." When you only pick specific violence as bad, then you have no hope of sweeping change. Add to that powerful individuals who seem intent on taking us back to times in history when we were at our most biggoted, and it makes it even harder.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

f one is to believe that that is a fantastic notion and can never be achieved, then there is no real problem present because the issue isn't whether people are getting hurt, but rather what the arbitrary "limit" of how many people can get hurt is.

Of course it is a problem. Just because a bad person or group finds a way to justify violence. Doesn't mean that good people should stop trying to turn society away from from the notion that killing to serve an agender is bad.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

I really don't think it has been weaponized either. Was the printing press "weaponized" when advertising was created? Is the human voice a "weapon" when a door-to-door salesman shows up? I feel that pushes the definition of weapon.

Of course they were. Look up propaganda drops in the Vietnamese war. As to the voice, one of the most dangerous weapons available to human beings. Voices start wars, voices convince masses to keep wars going. World war 1 was the catalyst to start World war 2. The resentment of the populace over the reparations in the treaty of Versailles, was fanned up using words to start WW2.

On 3/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, SunlitZelkova said:

One man's malign actor is another man's responsible party" or something I guess.

To this we need to speak briefly to my view of what makes something Evil.

To me, Evil is when you premeditately set out to harm or kill for selfish reasons.

Example: You have something I want, I kill you so that I can have it instead.

I know it can get confused because finding those in power who don't have a personal agenda and so make up excuses is hard.

If you have to kill, then it should only be to stop a greater amount of people from being killed.

I don't want to justify killing, but in this gray world, sadly there are those who refuse to stop unless you kill them.

21 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Everything IS not a weapon and therefore there is no need. Take a single strand of hair or the color purple.

Sadly humans have worked out ways to kill you with a single strand of hair and the colour purple. If you put your mind to it I bet you can tell me how.

 

21 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

We each have to do what is morally required of us even a IF another is harmed. 

Actually it is "Ethically required of us." Morals are a different thing.

Ethics are the generally agreed on rules or guidelines of the culture we are brought up in. So if your ethics say that you can only regain honour through revenge, then you are conditioned to believe that you are justified in killing someone to regain honour, because your ethics tell you that is the right thing to do.

Morals are more a general feeling of what is right vs is what is wrong. Ethics can influence this but don't have to.

A person with good morals might say. " I would not want this to happen to me, so I will not do it to someone else."

21 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

To do bad, is to do something we *feel* is wrong and sometimes there are instances where this is right. 

The nature of being human is to live with ourselves and our actions. This requires a level introspection.

If the actions you take can be evaluated as more beneficial than not / you have been true to your own rational understanding of what is right..  then you are *trying to be good*

That is a good way of putting it.

Edited March 18 by ColdJ

[ColdJ]

21 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

but no one is good.

Of course there are good people. They may not be the majority of the world population, but they are there.

You don't have to be a so called Saint, that never makes mistakes. You just need to help others and treat them well whenever the situation arises.

Simply helping up someone who falls down in front of you, without a second thought, qualifies. It is actually quite easy to be a good person. Being bad actually requies effort.

[AlamoVampire]

22 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

some people are bad, but no one is good.

Some will be tempted to say there are good people and bad people. I say its not a dichotomy. As with EVERYTHING it is a spectrum. A person is neither good OR bad. We are inherently BOTH. It is how we live, how we behave, how we treat those who are vulnerable (children, elderly, and the disabled), and to draw what honestly is a longer list short how we treat animals. Its the net good and net harm we leave in our wake.

A guy by the name of Scott Clifton gives us the best scale by which we can OBJECTIVELY judge our actions: 

“A particular action or choice is moral or right when it somehow promotes happiness, well-being or health or it somehow minimizes unnecessary harm or suffering or it does both. 

A particular action or choice is immoral or wrong when it somehow diminishes happiness, well-being or health or it somehow causes harm or suffering or again it does both.”

Take what he said and view what is happening right now in the world and weigh what you see on this scale. Take away from this YOUR view on which “side” you think is right vs wrong. Delete Left. Delete Right. Focus ONLY on the HUMANS that are affected by the actions that are taken by those in power. The objective CONSEQUENCES of those actions. Once you objectively weigh it. Then judge yourself. 
 

115903182025

[SunlitZelkova]

2 hours ago, ColdJ said:

You loose people you love to it, you might see why. Again, more harm with less effort.

I don't need to lose people I love to it because other people are already losing, and have lost people they love to it. I don't rank the importance of lives based on how close they are to me.

I am not saying they "aren't problematic" because they are somehow a sort of "soft" or "not that bad" event, but rather because the general attitude of cultures and individuals in the present day dictates that violence and death itself isn't that bad. This attitude is basically equivalent to toddlers trying to pick out identical toys, clothing or whatever and whining because "they don't like that one" and "they want that one."

Under such a way of thinking, compassion isn't a universal value, it serves an end. Think about the Challenger disaster. Compassion would dictate the O-ring issue would have been raised and the launch would have been cancelled, but ignoring it served an end whereas having compassion for the lives of the astronauts would serve no end other than compassion itself. The launch just had to happen that day, with those boosters.

If compassion is superficial in that way, it won't achieve anything. It just becomes a buzzword to use as ammunition while trying to force someone else to force the party in question to change their behavior.

2 hours ago, ColdJ said:

It is bad. Anybody who thinks it is ok to kill someone for some arbitary reason, like race, religon or country is bad.

Okay, but I feel this statement is somewhat confusing because...

2 hours ago, ColdJ said:

If you have to kill, then it should only be to stop a greater amount of people from being killed.

I don't want to justify killing, but in this gray world, sadly there are those who refuse to stop unless you kill them.

This is an arbitrary reason.

It may not seem like that, because the Anglosphere/Eurosphere (which I assume is the culture you live in and are influenced by) is heavily dominated by concepts like salvation and damnation, as well as judgement, but it is not rational ("rational" is the word Google has given me for the opposite of arbitrary, so when I use it it is in opposition to arbitrariness) to kill a small number to stop a larger number from being killed.

This reasoning is based on a number of subjective notions, such as:

• Only individuals who behave in a certain way are worthy of life
• Someone has a right to judge whether others ought to live
• Individuals are only present or exist when physically alive
• A minority does not have a right to impose on a majority
• Otherwise negative actions can be excused if they serve a greater good
• A minority can be expensed for the benefit of a majority
• An individual who is killed has no future

In contrast, subjective notions in the Sinosphere (from prior to the 1800s when Asia began adopting European cultural practices) tend to lend a hand to no killing at all, and even forgiveness of those who kill in large numbers. Not from individuals, but rather with a recognition that individuals are individuals and are at the hands of a variety of factors. There is no set law of how an individual must behave (Ten Commandments style) but rather a myriad of options, some yielding positive benefits and some yielding negative ones, all relative and depending on what the individual desires to achieve. Concepts of death support this as well. In some conceptions, life is not to be thought of as so weighty and death not as so final, because one's life is one of many experiences they will go through in a (basically) eternal existence. In others, life is cherished but death is not feared, for fear of death only harms one's life to a degree tantamount to death itself.

Obviously people in the Sinosphere, both before and after the adoption of European cultural practices, do still try to find ways to justify killing, but...

A close examination of any rationalization for killing will find that it is actually totally arbitrary.

It is thus that I tend to find the impassioned cries of people to "stop the violence" untruthful and deceptive. It is about redirecting the violence away from an (arbitrarily) innocent group and on to the group that (arbitrarily) really deserves it.

That's not to say that anyone who makes those kinds of statements (including you) is bad or wrong. It's okay to do that kind of thing. And, to be honest, realistically there is no alternative. So it is not some evil action.

But it is an action. And actions have consequences. No human action is in total antithesis to another.

I guess what I am trying to convey is that personally, I disagree with the notion that people "have" to kill. Or that any killing can be justified.

While I was at university in Hiroshima, my dorm was just a one minute walk away from, quite literally, an atomic bombed elementary school. Considering I had lived the rest of my life in the United States, which has seen little to no war on its soil, that kind of thing changed me.

I just can't bring myself to say "That elementary school had to be atomic bombed so that millions of other Americans and Japanese could live." Especially after seeing photos of the children who attended it a year prior to the bombing.

And it makes me very sad to see people blaming violence or unfortunate events on "idiots," "sociopaths," or even "evil" as is basically the theme of this thread. When the bombs have fallen and the guns have silenced, people tend to wonder "How could this have happened?"

And when they do that kind of blaming, they just start repeating the same actions that caused "this" to happen in the first place. And so it continues. 

I will note however it is saddening only within the human, subjective context of life and death (brought about by time and space).