this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Political Memes

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[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 16 hours ago

Part of the problem is plague, as in infectious disease. This factor drove us to evolve into preferring small separate tribes over big ones. Once your brain can't keep track of all the neighborhood, it starts wanting to categorize folks into groups, and separate us from them.

In fact, all of civilization is in defiance of some base instincts, in which we presume people of different color, who speak different languages, who have different cultures or worship different gods, all are indicators that they are dangerous.

In the time before livestock (from which we caught bunches of infectious diseases, died a lot and developed immunities), a mutant influenza was deadly and strangers were dangerous. And this is seen as empires explored new worlds, exposed indigenous peoples to their array of diseases and wiped them out.

As a note, since germ theory, we replaced segregation with robust communal disease control. And even then, movements rise up to distrust vaccines, masking, social distancing and even washing hands. The same shit that happened during the COVID-19 epidemic also happened during the Spanish Flu epidemic.

So we never really had time to evolve to meet the expanding size of civilization, and had to fake it. In small groups there's just not much political power to consolidate, but by the time we're making villages and cities, we start seeing classes beyond tribesman and chieftain.

What is curious is that we've proven that political power and advantage saps away empathy and respect for your fellow human, so any time there is a significant power differential, the working class feels expendable according to the working class. (They aren't, and some elites will preserve awareness of this, but it's difficult to be a billionaire and still respect wits and education when vibes are so easy.)

It doesn't help that the ownership class conspires among its own to preserve power within its group (all the while, individually contriving to seize the power of their peer for themselves -- avarice is brutal), so anytime we see in history an attempt to create a socialist democracy, capitalist interests act to sabotage the effort, including killing the organizers and sending in military force to seize power and install a puppet junta.

So yes, we really are bad at this, and are not merely going to drive ourselves to near extinction, but are also killing off most of the species across earth.

[–] AnalogRegression@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago

A vast chasam exists between those that destroy and those that create. Unfortunately, the destroyers, having no limits (moral limits etc) become the "natural" rulers of this world. Ours is an upside down world. The more malevolent and destructive the more powerful these entities become.

They see us as sheep, hence the "Flock" surveillance system. The United States of America has always been an experiment, "The Great Experiment". Hollywood casts it's spells of unwarranted pride upon the masses, shepherding us into an all encompassing belief system built upon lies and deceptions. Through the Videodrome, depictions of violence unlocked the viewers mind for the Master Control Program's invasive programming.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 50 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Pretty sure most of the medicine were done by us in the last 100/150 years

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 day ago

True...but...

A lot of medicines are fully natural things that we've learned how to cultivate or synthesize with remarkable accuracy. Look at Aspirin/Salicylic acid (sourced from certain bark, iirc). Or Penicillin.

Insulin is another great example, something we've learned how to extract from pigs.

And now tons of medicines are biologic. We are finding all sorts of stuff in nature that we can borrow and make it grow inside of domesticated plants or animals.

When you get right down to it, everything we make came from the earth. Hell the phone I'm typing this on is really just a chunk of smart sand.

[–] shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 2 points 19 hours ago

True if we're mainly focusing on pharmaceuticals and devices but theres more to medicine than that.

[–] musubibreakfast@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Maybe we can find a way to have both? Science, research, health care and technical innovation don't need to go hand in hand with capitalism.

[–] BooBees@fedinsfw.app 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Well that’s not how you get endless record quarterly profit margins, silly

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 3 points 23 hours ago

Pretty sure medicine always existed and it's only gotten a lot better in the last 100/150 years

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

Yes, losing half your children before they became teens used to be normal.

In addition, there were a lot of trees, fruit and water. But, the majority of the fruit wasn't something humans could eat. It was simply there so that the plant could reproduce.

It took millennia of cultivation to get nice, juicy fruit like we have today. Even just a hundred years ago, a sweet orange was a rare treat.

For most of history, just getting enough calories every day was a challenge. The whole reason why debt, feudalism, war, etc. exist is that life was hard and sometimes people were willing to kill or die for the chance at something better.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

We weren't gifted anything. And any species will expand to consume all the available resources. We're just better at it than all the previous ones. The challenge now is to find an equilibrium, which is a totally new concept in the history of evolution on earth. The jury is very much out on this one.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 23 hours ago

Yeah its a mystery

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 11 points 23 hours ago (8 children)

Humans didn't invent war.

War and murder surrounds us, everywhere, from micro to macro, as we feed on each other to live.

It's a Murder Planet

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago

Apathetic bloody planet. I’ve no sympathy at all.

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[–] darkmarx@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (8 children)

Humans invented war? Tell that to ants, birds, bees, wasps, wolves, and millions of other animals. We just happen to be very good at it. If there's one thing to be said about humans, it's that we are ridiculously good at killing things.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

I remember this was a thing in Larry Niven's "Known Space" sci-fi universe. Humans had become super peaceful because we were too good at war. The way it was achieved however was to have everyone medically pacified, except for a handful of selected people for their insight...

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[–] ChilledPeppers@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 18 hours ago

It is almost like society is complex

[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Only when the last tree has died and the last river poisoned and the last fish caught will we realize we cannot eat money.

Cree Native American proverb

[–] 5ha99y@lemmus.org 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

First of all, we are a product of it. We also demand nutrition, like any other animal. We work by the same principles like any other animal. We just have a large neocortex, which allows us to solve complex problems, which other animals cannot. We use this to our advantage like any other animal would do. I am not saying that it is the right thing we are doing but we grew out of primitivism and have much more complex problems at hand now, which mainly need us to reject our tribal behaviour and move past it. Many of these large problems are due to our tribalism. Why should we care about the world? We care about our loved ones only. Why should I give money to people I do not know? I would rather give it to my close ones. Everything else is a potential threat. Our tribalism doesn't function properly at this scale and we have to move past it somehow, while it is deeply natural for us to behave like this and it's at small scale also beneficial and not harmful to others.

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[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I hate takes that condemn the whole of humanity for the evil of a powerful handful. That's basically conservative ideology.

[–] KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

If history teaches us one thing, it's that there's no shortage of horrible people.

[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

I've always felt the primary takeaway from a broad history education is the nature of power and how it's misallocation corrupts people. If your main takeaway from history is that "There were a lot of bad people" then I think you're missing out on a lot of critical nuance.

[–] KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

If we were inherently good, that wouldn't happen

[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 4 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (2 children)

First, nobody claimed that we're inherently good either. Second, you definitely don't know that for sure and wouldn't be able to prove it if you had to. Third, the apparent need of some to reduce our conception of humanity to either good or evil is a loaded premise that is damaging and derailing to a more meaningful and useful understanding of humanity and should probably be unpacked on it's own elsewhere.

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[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (4 children)

It's religious nonsense, we're all sinners.

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[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] Sonotsugipaa@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Didn't you hear?
Screenshots of body temperature takes from Twitter technically count as Memes according to some definitions, these are what we'll have to consume for the foreseeable future

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] RisingSwell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Capatilism was mentioned

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

I can believe it.

Our species has repeatedly and reliably demonstrated its innate awfulness for the entirety of our history. If there is a way to exploit and be shitty to one another, we'll not only commit it, but we'll legalize it, normalize it, and pretend that not doing it is the weird thing.

[–] Vandals_handle@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Indigenous peoples worldwide learned how to exist sustainably and some have done so for thousands of years. Not a universal human issue although some societies do be that way.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 5 points 18 hours ago

To an extent, yes, but they also did all of the awful things the other societies did too, including slavery, killing people over religion, and war among others.

[–] bagsy@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Humans just happen to be at the top of the food chain at this point in time. littereraly millions of other creatures have held the title before us, and millions more will after us. Circle of life an all that.

[–] aceshigh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don’t really see how this is important. Earth will heal once humans destroy themselves/their environment. Theoretically we should be trying to save earth for the next generation, but leaders think short term…. The next 3 months.

Earth will heal once humans destroy themselves/their environment

Depends on how ambitious we get with our fuckery. We could potentially create cascading environmental collapses that are bad enough to where we lose a huge chunk of biodiversity. Life will most likely continue on in some form, but it may never recover to be as complex and diverse as it is now.

[–] skooma_king@piefed.social 5 points 1 day ago

It’s because of the mosquitoes

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