Ask Lemmy

A little bit of 'Be Kind' with a twist of 'Kill billionaires'

Be excellent to each other.

Inaction is still an action. Not improving the world around you is a choice to accept it. You need to choose your battles, of course, but choose none and I will judge you accordingly.

"Paying it forward" is fundamentally the most important weapon we have against the oligarchy, and simply refusing to participate in the endless cycle of new technology.

A long time ago, I kind of stumbled into a habit of "paying my hardware forward". It started because it was simply a pain in the ass to try to sell something on ebay because your first ten offers are scam artists.

So when I upgraded a drawing tablet that I was using, I had a friend of a friend that was looking to try digital drawing and said "Here you go. The only thing I ask is that when you upgrade, or when you're done with it, give it forward to someone else who could make use of it."

Later, the same thing happened again with a camera stabilizer. I had bought one that it turned out was too lightweight for my DSLR. So I had to buy a heavier weight one. Meanwhile, a friend's son was a budding filmmaker just using his cell phone to make stupid movies with his friends and I said "Hey...he'll like this. The only thing I ask is when HE upgrades, or whatever, he passes it forward to another person"

Even something as simple as a dog ramp I bought for my aging dog. After he passed, it hung around in my shed until a friend of mine's dog needed an operation and couldn't do stairs. When her dog recovered she asked if I wanted it back and I said, no...just pass it forward.

I've done it with spare monitors. Old laptops that someone has needed for school, etc...

So what started as me just being too impatient to deal with ebay became something that literally makes me feel good knowing that I'm helping someone out, or even better, supporting another person's artistic passion.

I have recently comes to term with my faith. I grew up missionary Baptist and it wasn’t charismatic or anything but even as a kid it kindof feels ridiculous and I started to just try to take the moral lessons and that’s all. Science and astrophysics have always interested me at a hobbiest level but it wasn’t until recently the way it all works it quite beautiful. I am fully atheist but it’s all so ridiculous I would accept a God somehow started this all, but not really. Explore approachable science books, podcasts, and YouTube videos (and other federated stuff, if it exists). It is so fucking miraculous we exist in this vast empty void that (at the same time) is unimaginably large. Our planet and life is a miracle. Even if microbes exist out there, the fact we got to the point of “reason” is crazy! Any tip of quantum physics rules one way or the other and the universe is something else entirely. The way atoms come together and how we use them today is a species is miraculous. Humanity could really do anything if we were convicted enough. The whole “we are made of star stuff” is also quite deep when you go through the whole cycle with it. We are quite literally the universe somehow scraping itself together through energy, time, and space to culminate (for now) in some piece of itself that can question itself and move indepdently, reason, etc. Dope. If there is any reason to be good to one another is that we are soooo special. All life. And this planet! Hippy status activated. I don’t know if this changes my behavior but it can be some good feelings to pocket for rainy days.

I think that we should call # a hash, not hashtag. Hashtags are social media tags with a hash in beginning, the character itself is not a hashtag.

Unionism.Bosses will always try to screw you over, but the workers united will never be defeated.

One of my biggest beliefs came from Star Trek : IDIC, or Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. The idea that one homogeneous whole is not only undesirable but simply wrong has shaped damn near everything about me. It may seem sad, but the science fiction I consumed as a kid shaped the person I am today

You know how dog people say there's no bad dogs, only bad owners? Same thing with kids. It's way more nuanced than that. It's true up to a certain point. After having a giant boom of babies in my life recently, nothing has changed my thinking more than watching a blank slate of a human being be morphed into whatever the parents molded that child into. Sometimes it's rough.

I used to feel like I had this all figured out, then I got older. All I know for certain is that I'm not often certain these days.

I'm an apatheist, if God exists, they made the universe how it is. If they don't exist, the universe just is how it is. All we can truly know is what we experience while we're alive. So the unanswerable and unsolvable question of God or God's will isn't worth debating. Just do your best, try not to hurt other people, and find what peace and joy you can while you can.

We are the adults in the room. If God exists, they don't interfere with their creation in ways we can observe. Laws and moral codes only have the power we give them. If we don't hold people to them they're worthless. There's no provable divine wrath, so it's up to us to make things just.

Everyone understands this on some level, but it scares the snot out of some folks. The idea that every individual human is in some part responsible for the fate of the species is just too damn BIG. Everyone rationalizes and fantasizes this away to some degree, much to our detriment.

Randoml stuff:

There's nothing shameful about an ordinary life.

Organized religion is rarely done right. Most often, it's simply a way for people who fear being unexceptional to feel better about themselves. Far too often, it's about control.

If you want people to join your movement, temper your moralizing with practical demonstrations of how it's in their own interests.

Helping people support themselves wins more goodwill and loyalty than charity.

Garbage men, utility workers, health care, and teachers do far more for your quality of life and the success of the nation than police and military and we should treat them like it.

A progressive and inclusive civic-mindeness is what seems to be missing in so many areas of our lives. Be proud of your community and work to improve it.

So, so many problems are solved by letting go of the idea that we must be productive members of society and just giving people homes and food.

Offline and analog skills have real value in the present, not just in the apocalypse. Learn them, share them, and teach them for their own sake.

Literacy is the life's blood of human progress. The measure of how great we are is our wisdom, not our technology.

Violence should never be necessary, but some people will force your hand. What you do at that time is up to you. But you should try your best to prepare for it ahead of time.

Most people would rather cooperate & help than compete & hoard

It's fine to change your mind. The world is to be understood through the lens of power and money, but that doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. Assume good intentions. We're all hypocrites to a certain extent and it's okay. Be kind to yourself. You're never too old to learn. Being right all the time gets you nowhere. It takes time to get good. Adopt a thankful mindset, even if you don't believe in a higher power. Never give up. Say 'yes' more often. It's your life and you're in the driver's seat. Live and let live. Worry less. Kämpfen bis zum Verrecken.

I wanted to write something but let's say basically star trek. 😂

One value that really shapes most of my other beliefs is that my moral system should be internally consistent. It’s caused me to try to consciously rethink all of my beliefs and values, and discard or refine any that are inconsistent and add others that were missing.

I don’t really think I’ll ever get to a point of all my beliefs being conscious ones and all my values being objective, that’s not really my aim (or even realistic imo), but it’s changed a lot about how I act and view right and wrong and it’s a process I don’t plan on ever stopping.

Kindness, curiosity and a firm belief in treating everyone like they are actual real human beings who can do what they want. It's important to ask people why they do things.

Anarchist with a small 'a' (that is, never going to be vegan, and I've had a managerial position [no, I don't think anarchism means no leaders but I do feel gross about taking part in the paramilitary office structure, and how much I loved the money and status and power]).

The controversial one is ’if you have disposable income, your day-to-day problems won't be real problems'. Most problems are not real problems because money addresses them. Existential, emotional difficulty? Great! You can afford to go to therapy whilst still not suffering any real day to day problems because you have the money 👍.

I'm also fed up of weird consumerist attitudes around 'if I dont get to do everything I want, I'm struggling for money 🥺 I'm poor'

That needs to go fucking yesterday.

the flippancy you find especially across threads on political news across the fediverse is awful because it drives people away without accomplishing things other than virtue signaling

Politics: practicality before ideology. My (your) favourite ideology has flaws. Policies that are effective should be enacted, policies that are ineffective should not, regardless of being left or right.

Religion: Don't care.

I believe that the human race is stupid, egotistical, irrational and self centred. Yet it is still able to create beauty, still able to show sacrifice, kindness.

I believe the world will only truly be lost when I (from my personal POV) stop believing in it. Until then, my corner of the world will be kept as clean as possible. To quote Charlie Chaplin “as long as dictators die, humanity will be free”

The first thing I remember learning in philosophy 101 is the principle of charity, which has been eternally useful during discussion:

1. Assume the other person has something worth saying
2. Questions of meaning come before questions of truth

I believe there are fundamentally only 2 types of people:

1. People who were slapped too much as children.

2. People who were not slapped enough.

I came up with it so clearly I was not slapped enough.