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I got grilled by my friends for buying a homeless person food a few months ago.

Capitalism has turned us into monsters.

You can literally find neolithic nomadic hunter-gatherers with healed femoral fractures. That means people transported and cared for them for months while they would have been basically incapable of moving themselves as they healed. People have gone to great lengths to help others in need, even in incredibly difficult situations that involves lugging infirm people for miles across rugged terrain

this is not only capitalism too, but othering as well - which of course capitalism is reliant on. That's why they make propaganda to divide us. When we see someone's otherness, we lose sight of their personhood, and it inhibits us. It's harder to make their struggle our own.

The parable of the Good Samaritan does address this phenomenon and I tend to judge the Christianity of those who profess that faith when they miss the point.

The Samaritan isn’t good just because he helps when others do not. The Samaritan is doing the sacred work of god by risking his own safety to rescue the injured man! The Samaritan values another life above his own, and in Christian ethics, this is an act of love and human fraternity.

The reason that the priest and the other traveller justify ignoring the man is they fear falling victim to the same bandits. It’s not that they lacked the ability to help a man it’s that they lacked the spirit and morals to RISK SOMETHING.

I am not Christian but I do think they got something right, here. Sin isn’t just doing bad things, it’s also refusing to do the right thing because it’s hard or it’s risky even though you have the means.

That kind of thinking ends up at conclusions that mesh well with what Engels called Social Murder

Clearly these are not new ideas but what is new is the capitalism-riddled iteration of it we are currently experiencing.

I hate that whenever a stranger talks to me I can guarantee they're not being friendly but are asking for money. I'd be more inclined to give if there were instances where this is not the case.

I quit working for tech companies to work for homelessness orgs in my city. Just starting at a new one today as a community organizer. Pay is shit but its much more rewarding.

its easier for the rich to justify killing when we are taught that we only have to care about ourselves.

ice steals your neighbors whole family but you are supposed to still go to work the next day like thats a normal thing feels bad man

I roll my eyes so hard when someone says socialism wouldn't work because of "human nature". How would we have ever survived as a species if we didn't have a communal instinct? As a kid you learn to share and it's easy to understand, the competitive nature of capitalist society beats it out of us. It's the saddest part of our profit-driven culture to me, that we are forced to be opposed to each other so we can survive when there is enough wealth on earth for everyone to not just be fed but be immensely comfortable if the resources were distributed properly.

I think American culture is a shining example of humanity that's unfortunately too naive in it's belief in some inherit goodness.

No you sometimes need the people's stick against all the corruption and evil. Which is understandably scary, authority is always scary there's a certain risk of misuse of power (also evident in the same USA), but idk I guess maybe there need a century of humiliation and lawlessness, that makes people go" "We need laws and a way to enforce them democratically." Like it's very easy to blame all the issues on an evil all powerful entity so maybe it does have to be crushed, for people to realize that was not the source of literally all the problems.

like ironically it shuts down capitalism too.

: “You want a job? Sorry, but I like to keep to myself, no job for you! Giving jobs is too much finger lifting for me!”

How is work supposed to be done if the people we’re counting on to find work for people to do don’t even want to do that?

Einstein spoke in one of his essays about how capitalism is what breeds competitiveness and greed which goes against human nature. It was not always like this and it’s only going to get worse as capitalism continues to decay.

Just as capitalism remakes us, so too will socialism. The restoration of humanity's full cooperative nature is one of the benefits of transitioning to communism, and in this way communism "rhymes" with early communalism, forming the negation of the negation in the process of dialectical development.

in the good news it's not permanent