Ask Lemmy

Because sensationalism creates ad revenue. So the news you receive from any side of any story is going to try and make you as angry/scared as possible so you’re more apt to share it and spread the word- they then use the page bits and time spent on their sites to generate more ad revenue.

Stay away from tankie, far-left, liberal, democratic, conservative, republican, and MAGA-affiliated sites. They’re guaranteed to not be honest with you. Instead, stick with independent and unbiased sources like Reuters and Associated Press.

Unpopular opinion, but in the west particularly, folk have mistaken writing on the internet for action.

Tweeting resistance rather than performing it.

A lapse into inaction framed as radical rest and self care.

Online they are fierce warriors of justice, offline they go to work in Starbucks, use their apple devices to talk to their families and enjoy the treadmill of streaming services.

And this isn't to blame them. This is the point of consumerist capitalism. To trap you in a gilded cage.

You are more informed in how shitty the world have always been.

Also the decades from the 90s to the 10s were probably a small golden age that has already ended.

My opinion on this generally boils down to that the system has been set up to reward evil/antisocial behavior, and this part of the system is so entrenched and well established and organized that it has not been effectively and completely toppled or eradicated in so long, it has been able to consolidate power and resources to a point where very few extremely evil people are personally in charge of so much of what happens that it seeps into everything. Actually "seeps" is the wrong word, it's injected into everything. It's like has been said many times in recent memory, the cruelty is the point.

For a simplified example, evil executives reward evil behavior by their managers, who in turn punish their employees, who lose control of so much of their lives to these companies and managers that they end up hurting their families and friends out of confusion and anger and other complex emotional reactions, and harm is perpetuated in every area of life.

It's self sustaining, and even worse it replicates itself. In some ways I think of these systems as viruses. Also as cults. We all buy in to some degree.

My theory is "shallow thinking" and "busy-ness". We are prone to mental and expedient shortcuts which seem benign at the small scale in which we interact, but when aggregated become something terrible... and on the exceedingly rare chance that we might hear an actual solution, it either sounds so foreign to us that we cannot consider it, or so hopeless a fight that the super-majority of people do not push back.

Consider how slippery the slope is for even one aspect (diffuse responsibility):

• Alice needs help
• Bob sees that Alice needs help
• Bob excuses himself from being the one to help (not prepared, wasn't expecting, other obligations, could be a trap, others are better suited to help, the government ought to help)
• Bob excuses himself from being the one to get help (I don't have the number handy, someone else will call, she probably already called someone for help)

Conceptually, this is fine if it is ONLY "Bob", but the deceptive part is how finite the procedural gap is between Bob being one person and it literally being everyone.... thus Alice gets no help.

All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

Because the return of massive wealth disparity - similar to having kings again - has allowed those with money and power to bend the world in the direction of some form of dictatorship, whether it be fascism, oligarchy, whatever…. The New Kings are carving up society and want to increase control and profit, and an authoritarian governance is the way to do it. Just like how they treat their corporations. They are dictators, the little people are disposable production units to feed their machine.

The common version of the phrase...

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

The actual version of the phrase...

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

A ruling class of ultra wealthy lording over the vast majority of people being left with crumbs is a common sign that an empire is in decline. With the US having more global influence than any previous empire the whole world will be feeling the effects in one way or another.

Too much internet.

I saw on Mastodon someone say something kinda like this: good people don't feel the need to dominate others.

Evil isn't "winning" as much as it is "on top." If you look around, talk to your neighbours and such, you'll see that good and reasonable people are everywhere; good is the overwhelming majority.

That being said, positions of power are chased and coveted by those obsessed with power, and those aren't good people. Good people need to take charge, but it's

in a way

against their nature to do so.

We are entering a major transition period, with many technological changes happening to disrupt the existing economy. One of the most important is the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

For hundreds of years, the energy economy has been a system where certain countries and companies controlled the locations on earth where fossil fuels are located, and had the technology to process the fuels. Fossil fuels by their nature require the user to buy "feedstock" as they go. The countries and companies that control fossil fuel production profit from this system and are some of the wealthiest groups in the world.

Renewable energy systems, such as solar, wind and batteries, require an upfront payment for the equipment. The cost of equipment for renewable energy is dropping every year. They can be located almost everywhere. There is no ongoing feedstock payment. Renewables break the fossil fuel industry model, and some of the wealthiest people in the world are scrambling to control governments to somehow retain their income flow. Currently their strategy is to delay implementation of renewables, but eventually they will try to create monopolies where they control the source of power and charge the customer about the same as they are paying now, with the utilities benefitting from the low cost of renewable power.

This is only one of the transitions happening at this time. There are many major disruptions coming from implementing AI in the economy, from electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles. There are probably many more transitions that no one is predicting or even imagining at this time. You can expect things to be crazy for a decade or more as these technologies change the way our economy, infrastructure and society is shaped.

Because good times create weak people. Weak people create difficult times. Difficult times create good people. Good people create good times.

I think we're ushering into the era of weak people creating difficult times, after having good times for a while.

progress naturally brings democracy, and progress is slowing down worldwide.

It feels that way, because it kind of is winning a bunch of battles. Whether it's "winning the war" is much more up for interpretation - the past was seriously shit going just a few generations back, and it will take a lot of backwards progress until we get anywhere comparable.

Okay, so why is it happening? When it comes to democratic backsliding specifically, the first reflex everyone had was to blame social media bubbles for causing runaway political polarisation, but it turns out breaking those bubbles actually increases radicalisation, so that's not it. Another theory I've heard is that in a democracy, the weakening of a political party inevitably creates space for extremists to take control. There definitely was some building dissatisfaction with the status-quo right before the trouble began, I could feel it, and in the case of the US specifically winning a party is nearly as good as winning the country.

It's also worth considering this has happened before. Since the French revolution itself the path to liberalism has been two steps forward, one step back. I don't know what causes it exactly, but the dip we're in is big - comparable to the one before WWII.

Even evil people are winning. Why?

That's yet another separate question, which I struggle with too. One notable bad person isn't even smart-evil.

It's been shown in studies that narcissists achieve more conventional success and social status, despite the fact they pretty much ruin everything and everyone they touch. It's a real thing. Bad actors are given far more leeway than would be game-theoretically rational for us to give.

It's a global far right power grab fueled by money from Russia using weaponized disinformation. It's been going on for decades at a smaller scale before Facebook, etc, even existed. It's also fueled by conservative dark money groups funded by conservative billionaires. You should read the book Dark Money, I highly recommend it.

Even the antivax stuff is from Russia and it way predates the big platforms. It was started in the crunchy mom communities on Livejournal, where they first experimented with seeing if westerners would glom on to weird mommy trends like not using shampoo, nursing your kids to ridiculous ages, "unassisted birth", which is where people deliver babies without any medical care at all, "unschooling", etc. That took off in a big way and then they began with the antivax stuff, and used Livejournal as a tool of Russian government propaganda.

Then they started funding white supremacist groups, and the groups like the yellow vests, Moms for Liberty, etc. Really recommend learning about dark money and Russian weaponized disinformation.

There's a season for everything, even for evil, but it won't last forever.

Evil people control almost all sources of information

Evil has always dominated. Look into history and... yea

Monarchies ruled the world, religions brainwash people, witchhunts, wars, famine, and slavery, all the evils was 10 times as bad. We are living in the most peaceful time in history (well... aside from the Climate Change 🙃)

Social media, and mass communications make everything seem worse than it actually is.

Babylon rots from the inside. Corrupt systems cannot last forever.

Perhaps, because by now enough people feel a real impact on their life and fear for the ruling classes is not there anymore?

Just a few examples from direct, personal experience (I am German, so what I enumerate has a German/Euro perspective):

• Constitutional state? Does not matter, as long as powerful/influential people can literally buy laws or prevent even discussion of laws in the parliament
  • Easy way to figure out who is favored by one law, is to check who has to prove something and how hard it is to prove
  • Best part about this is, people in power can always point out to the law and that 'we' agreed upon that law
• Systematic discrimination against the worker class/people not owning things: Thing about laws, taxes, ....
• Every media has an agenda and is propaganda (In the west, propaganda means mostly being selective about the information presented and how to build the narrative. Only idiots in the west will outright lie about things. It also means, who gets to talk in the media, where to position news (headlines ore somewhere else) etc. Media are owned by rich people or the state owned media are controlled by people with strong affinity to political parties
• Corruption on all but the lowest levels, especially in the government (In Germany corruption on the lowest level is uncommon und has a high penalty, but go up the level a little bit and 'you scratch my back and I scratch yours')
• Nepotism on all but the lowest levels (Worked in many different companies and the bigger the company the worse it gets. Working class kid does not get an intern position although it would technically be the best choice? No worries, some kid with the right parents and no clue will have that opportunity.
• No feedback loops: In Germany, we have professional politics which have extremely good conditions for their pension, whose children do not visit public schools and who have private health care decide, what in their opinion is appropriate for most of the people in the country concerning this things...
• No real political influence: We just had the clown-show of voting. Guess what, I can only vote between Nazis and non-Nazis. Can I vote for more taxes for the rich, a sane economic agenda which not benefits the rich, and full military support for the Ukraine? Sorry, I am out of luck. Of course I am free to build my own party. Let's see how successful that is without massive investment of money and good connections to the ruling classes to get positive media coverage.

Before the eastern block fell apart, at least in Europe/Germany, there was always the fear of the ruling class to experience another (French)revolution. Since this fear is gone, they literally have nothing to fear...

Is it possible to change anything about the situation? I am more than cynical by now:

• Most everyone is struggling to keep their level of wealth/position in society, so the middle class fights hard to be a little bit better of then the lower class, don't even mention the upper middle class, which fights with nails and teeth for every little advantage and privilege they have
• The higher you go in hierarchies, the more sycophants you'll discover, which don't mind selling out other humans for status/privileges, and there are even true believers, so brainwashed by neoliberal agenda, that they will fight for the privileges of rich folk they will never belong to
• There is no way to organize enough people in real life to force any political change (especially not with an aging population)
• The ruling class figured out for a long time in western world, that instead of fighting facts/the truth, they just have to generate more bullshit, discussions, alternative narratives and lean back, because people will discuss and not agree
• Nearly all change to the status quo is opposed and fought by some group, which benefits from the status quo
• Neoliberal propaganda and views are so ubiquitous and pervasive in our media, stories, etc., that a lot of people cannot even think about alternatives any more.

That's just for the western world, let's not start about the dictatorships/regimes supported by western governments with money, weapons and knowledge, where things are even more shitty.

The information age of the internet grew too fast before humans could get an actual sense of the repercussions, and it was just a matter of time for the greedy people in power all over the world to use it to their advantage.

Have you ever cheated at a game, cut corners on work or purposefully did something unfair to get better from it yourself?

Yeah it's much easier to win without any pesky ethics or a strong moral compass.

Good folks have been struggling uphill since the Ancient Greeks as long as there are folks trying to win with a different rule book.

It's very simple: human emotion. When something upsets the status quo, people get scared, angry and desperate. They turn to whatever solution they think will fix things.

In the case of nations, that becomes right-wing politics. Many factors in the recent past have caused distress and fear. People are afraid of losing what they have, they don't like the uncertainty. They lack the education and critical-thinking skills to choose the best course of action, instead they choose the most reassuring course of action.

In 1930s Germany, support for extremist political parties (not just the NSDAP) surged due to the desperate times they were experiencing. Germany underwent a period of hyperinflation, which was followed shortly after by the stock market crash of 1929. They were already in poor shape, both economically and emotionally, due to the punishments meted out by the Versailles treaty.

Things became very bad for the Germans, and they turned to the looneys who offered a solution. A similar scenario is playing out in several countries around the world, especially the US. COVID really upset a lot of people, none more so than the overly emotional and uneducated. They felt attacked and vulnerable, and they were already deluded by years of misinformation. They turn to politicians like Trump, because he appeals directly to their emotions. He makes them feel safe, largely by scapegoating groups who aren't actually a threat (sound familiar?).

People don't check if what they're hearing is true, they care most about having their fears assuaged. This is why we've seen a resurgence of right-wing extremism globally.

I blame the success of neoliberalism (perhaps confusingly, a distinctly conservative project driven by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher). Ever-widening wealth gaps and focus on individual responsibility for solving problems seems to have created an environment where people will jump on just about any bandwagon that tells them they're inherently better than others. Unfortunately, evil will keep winning as long as there's enough support (or indifference) for evil to keep winning.

Why does it feel like evil is winning globally?

Propaganda works.

We are now innundated with it. And the answer is not "anti-propaganda" although sometimes that helps a little.

The answer is everyone needs to learn how media works; How words and images and sounds form the world.

And to do that requires the help of media corporations.

Because capitalism. Capitalism is basically a philosophy that postulates that people are greedy and selfish, so it makes a society based on greediness and selfishness. It's a self-realizing prophecy if you ask me.

Because history is cyclical, and at all times some forces are on the losing side of it. Back in the days when the left was more powerful, the right complained about winning evil. Now it's the other way around.

Note: this is not a "both sides" argument, I am left.