In this case, I’m referring to the notion that we all make minor sacrifices in our daily interactions in service of a “greater good” for everyone.
“Following the rules” would be a simplified version of what I’m talking about, I suppose. But also keeping an awareness/attitude about "How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment? “Common courtesy”, “situational awareness”, etc…
I don’t know that it’s a “new” phenomenon by any means, I just seem to have an increasing (subjective) awareness of it’s decline of late.
Generally speaking, consideration for others is inversely proportional to the desperation of a given community. Think about how hard people have to work these days and still can’t afford a decent place to live and food to eat. It makes perfect sense that someone who feels that the system is keeping them down, and wearing them to the bone won’t be conscientious of how their actions will affect others. That mixed with Western ideals of extreme individualism, and a political climate that promotes divisiveness, it’s truly a wonder that anyone has any consideration at all for their fellow countrymen.
Is it not true that struggling groups of people form the strongest communities?
It seems to go either way, depending on all the little local variables. Strong communities, or dog-eat-dog.
Also, you can have situations where if you “conform”, you’re protected by the growing-together, but if something makes you different, that community comes after you, out of fear that you being different will bring even more hardship down on everyone’s head.
My social group is made up of basically goths, queers, nerdy weirdos who grew up in fundamentally conservative and religious towns and families, and are (now as adults) generally very supportive and chill with differences–but we got a hell of a lot of bullying from our natal families/cultures growing up. Based on individual personalities, there’s honestly little reason we were rejected…we don’t go out committing crimes, or bully, or be mean. But the differences we do have seem to scare or make our families feel ashamed of us–so, rejection. And so we lose the protection that the community offers others.
I recognize communities supporting each other is important–but the bit where perfectly good people who are kind and smart and aren’t committing crimes are just thrown on the curb like trash because we don’t believe in religion like others do, or because we ask questions when things don’t make sense…I struggle with that bit, for obvious reasons.
Usually, but that’s what the fierce individualism, and divisiveness prevents.
Yeah but it’s often in contrast to that which causes it. When everyone feels fucked by society they don’t feel a strong community with society as a whole.
Yes and no and also the people being “rude” or “not following the rules” see the people they are offending as not in their community, as they feel their community has been shrunken or destroyed
Yeah, desperation in a community does seem to break down a lot of social niceties, make people meaner, smaller, crueler. So focused on surviving personally that there’s no effort left to give to help anyone else or make things better for everyone.
(An aside below–but it’s related to survival turning people selfish and cruel.)
I follow Kamilkazani on Twitter. He’s a historian of Tatar descent (a minority in Russia), and I think did most of his scholarly studies on China and Chinese history originally, but when the Ukrainian war started, he did a lot of threads about Russia, and how we got here today from a historical standpoint.
He’s been very eye-opening for me, sort of demystifying what happened, and more importantly, laying out the historical and CULTURAL reasons behind it happening. Like, there’s cause and effect, even if it’s not the sort of cause and effect that I’m familiar with in my own country and culture. (His thread alone on “salt” is really astute.)
He looks at things from a very pragmatic historical background, and had a long thread that was the first thing that adequately explained to me why Russia was doing/saying the things it did, things that seemed quite bizarre if you’re looking at it from an American cultural lens.
Part of it is that there’s (and I’m paraphrasing my understanding–you guys should go back and read his threads for the original as I might have misinterpreted) an exaggerated individualism, far beyond what Americans do, in Russian culture.
Like, there’s a lot of “me and mine got ours, so you’re on your own”, or things like “sure, that guy is lying, but it’s MY guy lying so it’s ok.” Hyper-focused on the individual and their family and their local in-groups. And probably an artifact of how brutal the government has been for centuries.
And that “sheer struggle to survive turning people cruel, petty, and mean” has sort of been circling around my head, over and over.
It doesn’t need centuries. Just look at the nineties in Russia and you can easily see how someone would decide to not care about the greater good.
God damn you’ve verbalized so many things I’ve had in my head but haven’t had words for.
My spouse and I talk about this often. A very obvious example is how rude (and recklessly dangerous) people are while driving. And myriad minor things out in public in general. No sense of community and a complete lack of consideration for others is the new normal. It got worse during and after the pandemic.
It really has gotten worse since the pandemic, and I see it retry much every time I’m out. Earlier today I was out walking with my dog and kid. At one point we needed to cross the street at a four way stop. However, three cars in a row didn’t even slow down for their stop sign. It’s dangerous out there
Big time on the pandemic front! I made the insane move to travel to Norway during the pandemic and (being a born-and-raised Idahoan) I was SHOCKED and delighted to see 99% of people there wearing their masks at all time. The sense of community is so powerfully present there, it was a big wakeup call, seeing just how shitty people are to each other here.
I think people really only started noticing it during and after the pandemic.
I have always hated people’s lack of consideration. I have always been very aware of it and it has always stayed the same (at least since the 27 years I am here).
Yes, driving, parking–all manner of auto-related behavior are prime examples of this. But I would add that pedestrians are not faultless. Can’t count the number of times I’ve had to wait for a young, healthy pedestrian just taking. their. time. in the crosswalk while a bunch of us are waiting to complete a turn, for example. I always double-time it in a crosswalk–it’s not only courteous–it diminishes the likelihood of me getting run down by someone looking at their phone while they’re driving.
I hear you but is really that big of a deal? Out of all the many challenges in life, slow pedestrians affects maybe like 15-25 seconds of my day at most lol. Who cares if they trot or stroll?
This is the whole point of the post. Everyone should have an intrinsic desire to get out of each other’s way, be courteous, be thoughtful of other’s time, etc. The flip side is we ask our neighbors to be patient as we do our best in our day, and may have things slowing US down.
So the 1-2 punch is: be courteous to avoid bothering others, and be patient to understand that others are trying their best.
If everyone genuinely tries on both those topics, everyone feels pretty good about their public interactions.
When you work at a college you’d be amazed at how much time that takes up. Or kids just darting into the middle of a four way stop intersection on skateboards, or skating down the yellow line in the middle of the road. Or stepping out in front of a car without looking because they’re heads are bent down looking at their phones (which also happens when they almost walk right into you on campus). Or the people who rev their engines and drive as fast as possible through parking garages to see how many car alarms they can set off. I saw that twice just last semester. Or every single day dodging the people who drive on the wrong side of the road in parking lots and garages because apparently they really need those lines to tell them what side to be on. Living in a major city is even worse. And it doesn’t matter if the person deliberately runs out in front of you, it’ll be your fault because you’re the one in the car. At least in my state. Yeah, I’d say pedestrians are a great example.
Lol yeah I mean college pedestrians are the worst pedestrians by far, but that’s part of working at a college from my experience (as student and faculty).
In a larger sense, you’re right of course–but it’s another one of the “death by a thousand cuts” that I encounter every day…
Have you considered that it feels like this because of how you look at it? I used to feel like you do, aggravated at something that shouldn’t be aggravating. It took a lot to realize that these little things are just that. Little.
I’m sorry, but when I’m walking 2 miles to the nearest store, I’ll adopt a steady pace. When it’s my turn to go at the intersection, I’ll take the time I need to go through.
All these impatient drivers are sitting in their air-conditioned car anyway, I’m not breaking a sweat just so they can save a few seconds.
So what you’re saying is that you don’t care about others people’s time or convenience. Which then raises the question, why should others care about yours?
This attitude is the breakdown of the social contract being discussed right now lol
I guess it could be construed that way, but there’s a fairness element to it, too. I have waited for my turn, I’d like my time to be respected, especially by people who will be less inconvenienced than me. They will most likely make it to their destination way before me, too… Which only makes their impatience more frustrating.
I can’t say I e ever been impatient at someone crossing the street. Unless they were purposely being spiteful, they should be able to go at their own speed. Then again, my street has a lot of elderly, so I know they can’t always speed walk
Actually, one of my most embarrassing cringe moments …. A jackass van driver parked diagonally across our street , blocking the whole thing. I imagine he thought it was a quiet street and he could get the van door slightly closer for his pickup. Effing rude as hell and there was no reason for it. So I was pissed off and using my horn to try to get him to move his effing vehicle ….,until I saw him go to the house and try to rush the disabled person he was picking up. Now I look like the asshole. Although I have to say he never did that again
So when ur a pedestrian cars should behave like you want them to and when youre the driver pedestrians should behave the way you want them to. Nice.
You’re sitting down and they are walking, you can wait
Our communities have been destroyed by this cult of hyper-individualism.
The balance between society and the individual has been tilted wildly to the individual. Everyone is an island now.
So much for “it takes a village”
Villages now available from Amazon, financed through affirm, for low, monthly prices!
Location dependent, but I would say it has always been like this. It’s just more visible when everyone can film it and comment on incidents globally.
I never expected 20 years ago to be seeing multiple pictures of people parking across 4 spaces in other countries, but here we are.
It’s not a cult if everyone believes in it
You have to be willfully ignorant to think thats true
No, in order to believe that’s true I have to believe that the definition of “cult” is “a small religion”
The shopping cart test for a community. Or seeing trash on the ground in public places, tells you alot about a area.
The golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Culture is learned from your peer group. Feeling a investmemt in your environment and a sense of ownership in it’s condition change behavior. “This is our public park, so I won’t littler”, vs “This is their public park so I don’t have to clean up”.
I just want to live in a nice world, so I treat my world nice. Even when nobody is looking.
The shopping cart test for a community. […] Culture is learned from your peer group.
Perfect example… Germany universally has this deposit system for their shopping carts but bypassed the handling and inserting of a coin into the cart at the height of covid.
Since then I have barely seen any reversal there. People still return their carts although they don’t need to get their coin back where the system is still disabled. Or they just conveniently forget to use the system and still bring their carts back without locking them there where the system is operational again.
The actual deposit was basically only needed for the learning phase. After this it just works automatically.
As a former retail worker, I always slightly disagreed with the shopping cart test.
Going outside to get the carts meant going out of range of the radio system that they had all us techs and sales people hooked up to. So in my mind I was like: " fuck up them carts all you want, I’ll go outside, get some exercise, and some fucking peace of mind."
No excuse to leave the carts in everyone’s way and make parking difficult.
I was also a former retail worker, but I guess my experience differed slightly from yours.
My primary responsibility was not getting the carts. I had a lot of other things that I was responsible for throughout my working day that had to get done. But when we needed to get the carts, I would often be the one asked to go.
When people left the carts all over the place like animals, it made my job take longer. And that meant I had more to catch up on back in the store once I finished. Not to mention, being out in the hot sun, or the rain, or the snow was not my definition of a fun time, so I typically wanted to be done with it as quickly as possible.
People would just toss their carts into empty spaces or onto foliage dividers, even making eye contact with me and smiling as they proudly sauntered back to their soccer mom SUVs, as if they somehow believed they were giving me the gift of job security. Sometimes they also confused “shopping cart” for “trash can”. I hated those people. I honestly wished death on some of them. I still can’t stand people like that today and I make every effort to not be one of them now.
Years ago a buddy of mine worked at one of the big chain stores. He would always talk about how much he loved to be sent on cart retrieval, for the reasons you mention.
Interesting, I’ve always put my cart back with the thought that someone won’t have to work as much if I do
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When considering the golden rule, it can help to recall many ‘others’ would prefer folks not ‘do unto them’ in the same way… or, frankly, at all.
I don’t know, but I just spent two days at an amusement park, so I’m in the sort of mood where I hate all people everywhere.
Like why the fuck are you just standing in the middle of a walkway? No, your group of 20 can’t jump the line to catch up with the one 6 year old who’s been alone for an hour. And double fuck everyone in the wave pool.
Family of 5 walks out of a busy door, takes two steps, stops to discuss their plans. There are literally a hundred people around coming and going. And that’s where you stop?
Happens on the daily in the city.
No one anywhere “cares” about anyone else. Don’t like it, deal. Or better yet keep quiet and leave me the fuck alone. Mentality of 95% of this world it seems.
My favorite version of the large-group-stops-in-the-worst-spot is when they do that at the top (or bottom) of ESCALATORS. 🤦♂️
I have been known to spread my elbows wide and then barrel straight through these groups to make space for the escalator riders behind me.
With a quick “oh hey, sorry. I wasn’t expecting someone to stop here.”
I feel a lot of this is just obliviousness. People are so sucked into what they are doing they don’t notice anyone around them.
It’s the reason shopping at Walmart can be so frustrating for me. People pause and stop at random spots (and I don’t mean to get items).
An amusement park seems like the perfect hellscape to make me detest the world. That’s a great reminder of a place to avoid.
This comment gave me anxiety and reminded me precisely why I started vacationing to very quiet places
I just went to two amusement parks in Japan this week (Universal and Disney). It’s a different world here. People form orderly queues. They wait their turn. They don’t make noise. We all say thank you at the end of an interaction.
I see 20 metre single-file queues for escalators. Back home it’s a chaotic meat funnel.
Paying taxes is one way of doing this, and man, people are really hellbent on trying to avoid that.
People are more inclined to pay taxes when they think it’s actually going to something. Check out socialist Nordic counties, where many people proudly pay the high tax
If your gov is corrupt then yeah, why would you want to pay taxes
taxes get higher and nothing changes, then great ideas come up like lotteries to help fund the school but somehow the schools are falling apart because they have no funding still
I was a beneficiary of an inheritance. I learned that my tax rate would be that of my state (higher) rather than family members in another state. A relative framed it as a negative. I said that I was happy that the taxes I’d pay would go into my community and not theirs. It’s like a foreign concept that taxes are good and provide infrastructure that we depend upon daily.
I think if wages were higher people would have less problem parting with some of their income. But when living expenses are so close to net income it’s tough.
Its trickle-down tax evasion. When I see our politicians avoiding paying millions in taxes and getting away with it, I wonder why should I contribute. I see Apple, Amazon and the tech companies who make a fortune in my country get away with sending the profits to the Cayman islands. All the super markets having a zero-tax liability, so more of the burden falls onto me, I figure maybe I should get an accountant who can help me too.
Yep! And any examples of countries to have high tax rates but spend well are outright ignored. So annoying!
Probably cause the US doesn’t spend the money well.
The US spends money in awful ways. But these people don’t mention better ways to spend it. Only that their taxes are too damned high. they have no problem with billionaires paying a far lower percentage than they do…
Seeing as how the vast majority of the population is not billionaires, in part you’d think a lot of people would prefer to spend the money on their own basic needs, mortgages, etc.
I’m not sure what your point is, but to reiterate, mine is that people are selfish and I think that’s a bad thing. I can’t tell if you think it’s a good thing or what.
Well, if you have a population packed with people (call it 50%, 70%, whatever) who are basically scraping by, it’s unreasonable to accuse them of being selfish for wanting to keep their hard-earned money while they’re scraping by. Particularly when there’s anything money’s being spent on by the government which is lower priority than people’s basic shelter, food, medicine, etc.
We should absolutely call them out on being hypocrites. These are people who vote against their own interests and against anyone’s interest who isn’t a billionaire. They do not care about the waste until it’s spent, ironically, helping poor people. But if a Republican wastes trillions on war or even raises their taxes, they’re as quiet as a mouse.
I wish it were as simple as you say. Republicans would never make into office again. But you’re entirely wrong about that simplicity
The same people don’t wash their hands after the toilet.
This!! Taxes make a society run, and it’s like we’re born to hate them in the US! Insane
Remember, the catalyzing moment that started the American experiment was a bunch of colonists rioting to eschew their duty to pay taxes. Right or wrong, avoiding taxes is at the core of American ideals. Modern American oligarchs are upholding the ancient tradition. The colonists rioted and destroyed some tea, modern day do-nothing billionaires buy politicians and destroy entire countries to avoid taxes.
You are kind of leaving out the whole “without representation” portion of tax avoidance.
More like being taxed on anything and everything, including paper (the Stamp Tax 1765 - a massive issue at the time), while having no one to be their voice. Taxes mostly to help fund wartime and reconstruction that didn’t involve the colonies.
It wasn’t an anti tax movement. It was movement to stop being bilked for everything while having no legal say in the matter.
When you can barely afford to pay rent and you see a third of your cheque disappear to “deductions” while the Prime Minister gets 350k a year for life. you start to get a bit resentful.
I know taxes are fees for services, but I couldn’t afford to use many of those services.
Paradoxically, the poor pay taxes more often, and those with significantly more income are the ones bitching about taxes.
I’m from the U.S. most of the services I actually Can use are funded by state taxes. My federal taxes go partially to good things, but when looking at the discretionary budget, which excludes entitlements to which people have directly paid and which the government is obligated to pay out, the vast majority of my federal tax dollars go to oppressing people in foreign countries, and then those weapons are given to police departments to oppress people locally.
This is a good example.
I have a friend who is constantly complaining about having to pay taxes. One of these days I’m going to break and say that his complaining is essentially him shitting on my profession, a public librarian, and that he doesn’t respect what I do and how I contribute to society.
Houston is decommissioning libraries and turning them into detention centers.
You are spot on. God damn I hate this timeline.
I guarantee you that he would tell you that the community would come together and pay for the library if taxes didn’t. Because they say that about roads and fire departments too.
I don’t know if it’s actually real but I feel like since Corona and the Lockdowns many people are even nastier than before.
I’m looking forward to research on that.
I’ve an impression that “people are even nastier than before” has been a result of Trump era politics which reveled in nastiness — which itself appeared to be a pushback from nasty people about Obama being president. Basically its been a growing divide and was made a lot worse when such a prominent political group doubled down on divisiveness as a tribal identity.
I think it predated covid, which certainly made things worse, but I don’t really know what the cause was.
I’d agree that it started pre-covid. Trumpers really were/are vile and despicable. Their leader was pure garbage during covid which brought out even more outrageous reaction against science and those who tried to do the right thing.
My husband and I discuss this regularly. The loss of the social contract.
It is so sad to see so many people respond with “not my responsibility.” Why isn’t it? If you want to be a part of society then it is your responsibility. Part of being “civilized” is the strongest helping the weakest and most vulnerable. Our truest measure as humans is how we treat those who need the most.
Bringing other people up to a dignified level increases your value, not decreases. It doesn’t take away from you to let others have dignity and respect.
A great deal of people don’t view society as theirs. When someone stands outside the system, what is there to lose or care about? Personally, I believe i see your larger point, but many people don’t consider the social and responsibility this way.
Unfortunately, there are lots of situations in life where being a piece of shit gets you rewards.
That person cutting you off in traffic, grabbing the last item on the shelf when you were there first, cutting in line, cheating on their taxes, stealing the job you were in line to get, along with the infinite examples of this in the business and political world.
The vast vast majority of assholes never face real consequences, and those consequences rarely outweigh the benefits they’ve enjoyed from being an asshole.
I think about the “zero consequences” thing a lot. I help run the local farmers’ market, and recently our city has stepped up parking enforcement. (As a “rule-follower”, I celebrated the change.) Our customers are howling at the parking tickets they’re getting. They come to the market Info Booth to complain to us–as if it were our responsibility somehow.
Yeah there is a reason why stories or videos or movies showcasing justice are so popular. It’s because very rarely in your life do you see real justice.
You need those movies and videos to show you the good guys winning because most times in life the bad guy wins.
Holy shit this is so true.
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For example, many people consider homeless or unemployed people barely anything more than “parasites” or “leeches” because they supposedly don’t uphold their part in the social contract
Just gonna hit back on this and say most people probably consider the total utter degeneracy and petty/violent crimes they witness the local homeless population commiting as them not upholding the social contract. Here in my city they’re shitting on a busy sidewalk in broad daylight, or blatantly stealing packages or openly assaulting women. Endlessly harassing people on our public transit and making it a nightmare to use.
I made that sound bad, I’m sure there’s plenty that likely aren’t acting this way. I’m sure I’m only seeing the worst of the worst. Their lives have undoubtedly been rough and I can only imagine what happened to them as a child to lead them to where they are as an adult. They’re regularly looked down upon and we gutted our mental health institutions long ago. Heroin and fentanyl are omnipresent.
But to imply that most people view them as not upholding the contract because they don’t have a job is probably incorrect. We’re at a time where empathy is at its highest concerning systemic/collective issues. But if we’re not careful this also leads us to ignore and excuse away individuals who are blatantly in the wrong and have the least empathy towards others because we’ve blinded ourselves to be unable to see the trees in the forest. Just because your life sucks doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to abuse others to make yourself feel better.
I agree this is a problem but I don’t think it’s more often than not.
I don’t know that I’d call it ‘apparent’.
My interactions with people in my life are, by and large, very decent. Social media amplifies the bad actors and makes the problematic things seem more widespread than they are, but in fact, it’s just an algorithm grabbing the same content you’ve had your eyeballs on consistently and feeding you more of it. That creates the illusion that the problem you’re hearing about is worse than it may be.
I will say, though, that I’ve become more of a fan of massive retaliation when I do run into people who lack basic politeness. If I’m in the gym and someone’s playing music on speakerphone, I will work out near them and turn on the loudest metal track in my playlist at full volume. I keep a stick of gel deodorant in my car to use on the door handles of people who park rudely, and if someone is speaking to another person rudely in my presence I always say something. I try not to answer rudeness for rudeness to a person’s face, because just asking “Why would you speak to someone that way?” is usually more effective for defusing people than escalating aggression. (But you get my drift)
Wow the idea of just asking questions to prompt empathy is really appealing to me.
I’ve found it to be a pretty good tactic, myself. When people are angry they’re not really thinking things through, and a neutral third party interrupting that off-the-rails thought process can help them consider what they’re doing.
The hero we don’t deserve but need. Continue your deeds.
I also like to politely remember people that they accidentally dropped something when they litter
Unfortunately getting told to have dropped something seems to cause spontaneous deafness in a lot of people… 😞
I have been known to helpfully retrieve it for them with a “here you go, you dropped this.”
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As an American: “How will my choices affect the people around me in this moment?” Is almost comical to see.
Most
assholesof my fellow Americans think “That nosey sonofabitch needs to get out of my way! I want to light fireworks off at 4am how dare he say I shouldn’t! FREEDUMB!”I used to live behind a gas station. 3am and almost every shithead going get gas had their subwoofers set to “shatter windows a mile away”
Yeah I feel you. Americans think that they’re allowed to park their dodge ram on a sidewalk because it feels “unsafe” to park on a suburban street 20 feet away. God forbid their chance of being sideswiped is non-zero, because who cares about pedestrians or disabled folks.
I say this as an American. A lot of us are bonkers-selfish.
Personal liberty is so misunderstood and abused in this country. This is a fantastic post. I think everyone needs to refresh their understanding of personal responsibility within this system we’ve arranged for ourselves. Radical freedumb only works for so long.
Those fuckers that blast music out their windows are a scourge to society. Seriously, fuck them!
What genre of music do you find is most commonly blasted out of windows?
I’ll tell you what I haven’t heard: Brandenburg Concerto #3, or any other Classical music for that matter! No, it’s always something grating, angry, and awful to listen to.
For me its less of a contract and more of a built-in instinct. I feel physically ill if I think I unfairly annoy or hindering someone. I dont get why others feel like its only a contract, one which they can break if they want to. But they can and I have accepted it. So I dont despair, they are only human (and so am I).
This sounds like a description of empathy, which, as far as I know, cannot be taught, unfortunately.
This comment resonates with me. We should proclaim the good treatment of others as rightful, not an expectation to follow for anyone else’s benefit. Spread Mudita, it’s a contagious feeling.
TIL Muditā is a dharmic concept of joy, referring particularly to an especially sympathetic or vicarious joy, or the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being.
The social contract is simply a more formal explanation and exploration of exactly what you just described. It is sort of the bridge between basic human behavior and a codified set of rules governing society. The golden rule is great and all but it is actually really difficult to codify that in black and white legislation. There’s been tons of speculation about it over the centuries. Guys like Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke for example; and then their work heavily influenced the american founders like Jefferson, Monroe, Madison, and other political titans like them.
Everyone in this thread is ignoring all of the invisible things we do everyday as part of the social contract:
-Every time someone stops at a red light
-Every time we accept a piece of paper and in return render some service or surrender some treasure
-Every person waiting in line everywhere
-Every person who pays taxes
-Every time we go to the grocery store and just take it for granted that there will be food at the grocery store
I get it some a-hole cut you off in traffic. But we rely on our social contract to literally stay alive. It is a miracle and the pinnacle of human achievement. Maybe just say thank you?
