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Some light genocide
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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I think the true centrist would be the least likely to genocide. Right and left both imply an attachment towards one arbitrary end of the spectrum. Center implies you're willing to entertain ideas from both sides, because realistically the truth almost always lies in the middle of the extremes.
The end state of these ideals is two sides who have nothing alike wanting the other gone, and the others going, "woah wait guys, you're both a little right, let's chat instead of murder." Centrism isn't just not being able to pick a side or take conviction, it's about wanting to synthesize all relevant information into a worldview that is a bit more aligned with reality.
Why does the left have an arbitrary attachment in your opinion? Why is it wrong just because it's "extreme"? I don't find that a very appealing argument. And why cannot an "extreme" position be aligned with reality?
What if the status quo is an "extreme" or absurd position? What if wealth inequality and private ownership, where people earn power just from owning things, is extreme?
Remember, democracy used to be a radical and extreme position. People thought that giving a vote to everyone was completely absurd. Do you think that's too extreme? What about letting women vote? What about abolishing slavery? What about saying that black people are not worse than white people? What about saying monarchism should have been abolished? What about abolishing feudalism and serfdom? What about labor laws and mandating that workers cannot be forced to work more than 8 hours a day?
All of these position were extreme once upon a time.
I didn't say that all views on one side or the other were extreme. Or that disengage from the status quo is extreme. I simply said that attaching yourself to a specific ideology (left, right, center, etc) and being unable to take in information from the other sides, tends to lead one towards extremism.
For the record, most of my personal views are haaaaaard left. I just HATE the rhetoric of "anyone entertaining a more-right idea than mine is at worst insane, and at best unable to pick a side."
As I said in another comment, everyone has an ideology, you may just not be aware of it.
And as I said in another comment, in reply to you saying the same thing, you're right, I have ideologies, but I don't hold them as absolute truths.
so you think earth is a semi-sphere?
Clever. No, that's a matter of hard science. Not much room for interpretation there. But anything that's a matter of subjective opinion, yeah, it's almost always somewhere towards the center of the extremes.
so:
the question of should it be legal to sell meth to children, the answer is yes under some conditions?
the answer to "the Jewish question" is, 3million?
how about enfranchisement? half the population? what half?
how about slavery? that was literally solved somewhere towards the center of the two extremes, and it caused a civil war.
civil rights? well, Jim-crow was a nice centrist position.
etc...
Centrism is rarely the correct answer
Centrism doesn't mean you're taking a median view of the population. It means you're not blindly following a left or right approach, and even more so as it approaches extreme ends of the spectrum. It means you're listening to all relevant data to the issue at hand, and forming it into one coherent opinion, usually somewhere right of extreme left, and left of extreme right.
There are ALWAYS pros and cons to everything, even 'obvious' things like abolishing slavery. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous and damages your own point for the sake of being a bit more emotionally comfortable. I prefer to eschew labels, left, right, center, alt, or otherwise because it allows me to more easily assimilate information that I might otherwise disregard because "eww it's RIGHT leaning".
To be clear, I fall pretty far left on most topics, but not because I'm a lefty. I fall there because it makes the most sense after hearing all of the information.
so you agree that it is just support whatever is the most self-serving, understandable that centrists tend to fall in for heavily conservative far right shit, because if your stance isn't based on any moral system it's possible to rob men of rights and freedom.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at. I think any belief system is based on some kind of moral system, but moral systems themselves aren't based on much that's tangible. You can use any justification you want to rob people of rights, and all systems of politics and morality must do this inherently.
The point I'm making is, a lot of people get attached to being "left" or "right", and being entrenched in one or the other (or centrism, honestly) only serves to allow yourself to ignore things you don't want to hear from the others, and turn the others into somehow less-than.
A perfect example of the less-than I'm talking about, you use a lot of language that implies right and center people are somehow morally less than left people. This isn't true, they have a different perspective and different set of priorities that lead them to different outcomes. Same thing if I was talking to a right leaning person about a lefty. The truth, or at least the thing that will benefit the MOST people is somewhere between those two. They're both looking at it, from different directions, so it looks different.
Wtf are you talking about. On the Left, we hate killing. We're completely opposed to it. We don't entertain the idea. Centrists who might allow some killing are not the least likely to genocide. The Left wants no unnecessary deaths.
Huh, that's strange. There was a left-leaning fellow I responded to yesterday who said:
"So then you're saying that liberals and leftists CAN publicly call for the roundup, imprisonment, and execution of all Republicans who push fake news in online and broadcast media?"
Sounds like they were very much in favor of some killing.
Attachment to an ideology is breeding grounds for contempt. Look at all of the leftists on social media lately calling for genocide of either Palestinians or Israel. As soon as you get so mired in labels, ideologies, etc you run the risk of becoming radicalized and unable to see the "other" as people. The central view is "both of these sides have done some abhorrent shit, let's figure out how we can do better without an all out war." The extremes are "Palestine wrong" and "Israel wrong".
For the record, most of my personal beliefs lean pretty left of center. I still don't identify as left, right, or even really center, because labels will only get in the way of truly expressing your beliefs. I just hate the "centrists like riding the fence. Centrists are cowards" kind of rhetoric you see everywhere.
Everyone has an ideology. You may just not be aware of it.
Sure. I have a ton of ideologies, too. I'm also not obsessively attached to them and am willing to entertain opinions contrary to my ideologies. I don't immediately throw them into a "you're bad and wrong" box because my ideologies are perfect and infallible.
And why do you assume leftists are different?
I don't, necessarily. I assume people who think left is the only way, and there's no room for a center or right are different.
What of the reason that hypothetical person thinks that is because they have looked at most positions and the left is what makes the most sense in the big picture?
I don't think I have ever seen a position on the right that I agreed with personally, and even when it comes to the left/center stuff.. there's a ton of disagreement within the left. It's very much not a unified thing.
Look at anarchists and authoritarian leftists, for example, sure they're both left, but about as different as they can get. And then within each "major" ideology you got tons of splinters and disagreements and smaller stuff. From Anarcho communism to market socialism to Anarcho syndicalism, to Democratic socialism, and so on.
At some point you have to think about what people really mean with the left/right divide.
I encourage you to keep picking stances based on the individual issue, instead of towing a party line. And know what? That may always align with the "left" and that's great for you. The issue is if "left" is used as a shorthand for "good," even if it's been that way consistently in the past.
I, too, am almost universally left leaning on most issues, but there are some (arbitrary gun laws, for instance) that the left just doesn't make sense on. Same with a lot of the more 'woke' aspects. Blindly following the leftist ideology means I accept those. I do not, and consequently the left doesn't accept me sometimes because of that. Thus, I don't identify with that term. Not labeling myself allows me to reform my beliefs without anywhere NEAR slas much cognitive dissonance, rather than being metaphorically shackled by a certain in group's beliefs.
Edit: towing? Toeing? Toe ring? Idk man.
Can you elaborate on the gun laws and woke stuff? With gun laws you'll find to see that leftists very much do not have a unified position on it lol.
Sure thing, though I'd prefer not to get TOO into a splinter discussion.
Arbitrary banning of guns based on random characteristics just doesn't work. Gun violence is a people problem, not a tool problem. We'll do much more to curb gun violence if we address the things that are causing it, instead of just removing the tool. So things like socioeconomic disparity, mental health, bigotry, etc. there are some gun control laws I'm for (voluntary buybacks, mandatory classes, mental health screening, mandatory registry) and a lot I'm against (bans based on arbitrary features like caliber, look, magazine capacity - realistically anything that isn't concealability related, as that's the biggest factor on gun violence.)
The too-woke thing, this one is a bit more fringe I think. I have less nuanced of a position on it, but it's mostly around the concept of cancel culture. The idea that it can be so easy for some innocuous thing said or done in the past to come up, and that can cause you immense social harm even if you've shown you don't align with that statement/action any longer.
That, and a sense of overcorrection with regards to mens role in society, where in certain circles it can feel very much like being a man is just bad. I recognize that both of those are kinda niche, mostly online-only though.
Edit:and again, it's not about a specific topic or anything. I don't choose to identify with ANY political labels, left right center or alt, I think holding too strongly to the label is just going to make it harder for you to shift when some new information becomes relevant.