Turns out siding with the resistance in a movie doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t have the potential to have your family tracked and killed by the state. It doesn’t have the potential for you to end up even worse off than you already are.
A lot of people side with their own resistances in the real world, but there’s a reason all of the resistance fighters in the movies are beaten-down, destitute people. They’ve got nothing to lose. We’ve still got our bread and circuses, so we don’t have the fight.
It’s often even simpler than that. Most people are really, really bad at predicting consequences and rarely even worry about known potential consequences if their emotions are in play. People will jeopardize their whole family routinely to scream their political passions, and this is for one reason only: they have connected with the storyline.
People who watch movies and go out and wave flags and go to protests often have one thing in common, which is they have emotionally connected with the struggle. The conservative right in America is very, very good at publishing a super-simple and well-integrated storyline into politics so that’s why we have the same people who dressed up to watch Wrestlemania and denied that it was scripted, now running around the US countryside in new costumes, waving new flags.
The people who are protesting genocide and authoritarianism and discrimination are the people who have a personal connection with the story, they have followed this from the beginning and know what’s at stake. The people on the other side have no connection and are letting a more entertaining noise guide their feelings. It’s our sad human nature, that to mobilize we need a selfish motivation to get anything done and all 8-billion of us will just sit on our fucking hands doing fuck-all while the world literally burns around us before we will make a stand, the whole while looking at everyone around us for a cue how to act and what to do.
I don’t like blaming us humans too much. I do it too but fo real a lot is being asked of a species that are evolutionarily, literally the same dirty monkeys who stumbled out of caves. Nothing has changed in our guts. We are all “unfrozen caveman lawyer”.
We like to think we’re smart, but that’s not our strength. It’s our communication, our ability to combine strengths and abilities to shore up individual weaknesses. This, our greatest strength, has been co-opted by interests who have spent a great deal of time learning how to manipulate opinions.
Years and years of advertising data go into think tanks who then spend their whole work day trying to figure out how to push our buttons to get is where they want. These bullshit artists are paid to do this, why would we poor dirty homo sapiens have a chance?
It’s not our fault, this is what society looks and sounds like when every level of discourse has been co-opted by a rich fuck who bought the only bullhorn.
a lot is being asked of a species that are evolutionarily
Oh I fully agree, we’re trying to process a world of instantaneous communication, rapid transportation, industry and production and complex political lines drawn between 8 billion people… with a brain designed for surviving the ice age. This is why we’re all having so many mental health problems, this is why suicide is a climbing epidemic. Our brains are trying to help us survive a world that it has no tools inherent to it to navigate.
Ice age brain has no idea how to handle having access to billions of different voices at once, it will naturally retreat to what feels most safe and makes most sense, no matter if it’s connected to reality or not, because the brain doesn’t want a logical, sensible world, it wants a story that connects how you feel to what’s going on around you. The story doesn’t even have to make sense, just slap some wrestlemania villains and heroes into the mix and we have crack cocaine to the brain’s desire to simplify the world around us.
But I have to blame us because we’re the only thing that can save us. No help is coming. AI or aliens or Jesus are not going to appear suddenly and guide our whole species to a better place. We HAVE to start taking responsibility for our world, or what will be left of it in the coming decades.
The conservative right in America is very, very good at publishing a super-simple and well-integrated storyline into politics
One thing those not-on-the-right in America are bad at doing is crafting a narrative. People want to vote for better, but the not-on-the-right only seems to offer the status quo. (Honestly, it’s a global phenomenon. See France’s snap elections for the latest iteration.) I feel that if they offered a vision of the future that people could get behind other than “Office Space for everyone, everywhere, forever” there would be a lot more enthusiasm.
Conservatives have a very convenient narrative they can use: The Hayes’ Coded Turner Classic Movie America is the “Great Again” they’re trying to make America. They can just point to the highly sanitized and glorified days of the 80’s and earlier as a tangible goal.
If the not-on-the-right could offer a clear, coherent vision of a future where people don’t feel like they’re getting ripped off I think they’d do better in elections globally.
so that’s why we have the same people who dressed up to watch Wrestlemania and denied that it was scripted, now running around the US countryside in new costumes, waving new flags.
but the not-on-the-right only seems to offer the status quo.
Liberalism by definition is the political stance that any problems can be addressed using existing systems and power structures. Our nation has been run predominantly liberal for a very long time, and that’s why it’s so hard to get anything done. People like the status quo, even if they can imagine something better, nobody wants to change things if they’re even moderately comfortable.
That’s not what the definition of liberalism is at all.
Liberalism is a political and social philosophy that believes in individual rights, equality, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. Liberals do support revolutions when the system that is being overthrown is illiberal, such as a monarchy or dictatorship.
Liberals simply don’t support the Marxist idea of a “permanent revolution.” Revolution always gets a lot of people killed, so they should be few and far between. Furthermore, revolutions - especially idealogical revolutions - run a very high risk of being coopted by brutal opportunists who cynically exploit the idealistic revolutionaries to gain or retain permanent dictatorial power for themselves.
Right now, there’s no guarantee that a revolution would result in something better. History shows there’s a very good chance that revolution will kill a lot of people and lead to something much worse.
Furthermore, our current system has a successful track record for slow yet steady improvement. But it’s always two steps forward, one step back - at best. Sometimes there is backsliding more than one step. But history shows that the current system can be used to move forward again… So there’s no reason to throw it all away, risking a much worse replacement.
I like V for Vendetta but i cannot watch the end of the movie where the crowd just walks through the police without thinking “never in a million years would it go down that way”. I do know it gets a bit visually metaphorical there at the end but scoff!! Scoff i say!
Turns out siding with the resistance in a movie doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t have the potential to have your family tracked and killed by the state. It doesn’t have the potential for you to end up even worse off than you already are.
A lot of people side with their own resistances in the real world, but there’s a reason all of the resistance fighters in the movies are beaten-down, destitute people. They’ve got nothing to lose. We’ve still got our bread and circuses, so we don’t have the fight.
It’s often even simpler than that. Most people are really, really bad at predicting consequences and rarely even worry about known potential consequences if their emotions are in play. People will jeopardize their whole family routinely to scream their political passions, and this is for one reason only: they have connected with the storyline.
People who watch movies and go out and wave flags and go to protests often have one thing in common, which is they have emotionally connected with the struggle. The conservative right in America is very, very good at publishing a super-simple and well-integrated storyline into politics so that’s why we have the same people who dressed up to watch Wrestlemania and denied that it was scripted, now running around the US countryside in new costumes, waving new flags.
The people who are protesting genocide and authoritarianism and discrimination are the people who have a personal connection with the story, they have followed this from the beginning and know what’s at stake. The people on the other side have no connection and are letting a more entertaining noise guide their feelings. It’s our sad human nature, that to mobilize we need a selfish motivation to get anything done and all 8-billion of us will just sit on our fucking hands doing fuck-all while the world literally burns around us before we will make a stand, the whole while looking at everyone around us for a cue how to act and what to do.
I don’t like blaming us humans too much. I do it too but fo real a lot is being asked of a species that are evolutionarily, literally the same dirty monkeys who stumbled out of caves. Nothing has changed in our guts. We are all “unfrozen caveman lawyer”.
We like to think we’re smart, but that’s not our strength. It’s our communication, our ability to combine strengths and abilities to shore up individual weaknesses. This, our greatest strength, has been co-opted by interests who have spent a great deal of time learning how to manipulate opinions.
Years and years of advertising data go into think tanks who then spend their whole work day trying to figure out how to push our buttons to get is where they want. These bullshit artists are paid to do this, why would we poor dirty homo sapiens have a chance?
It’s not our fault, this is what society looks and sounds like when every level of discourse has been co-opted by a rich fuck who bought the only bullhorn.
Oh I fully agree, we’re trying to process a world of instantaneous communication, rapid transportation, industry and production and complex political lines drawn between 8 billion people… with a brain designed for surviving the ice age. This is why we’re all having so many mental health problems, this is why suicide is a climbing epidemic. Our brains are trying to help us survive a world that it has no tools inherent to it to navigate.
Ice age brain has no idea how to handle having access to billions of different voices at once, it will naturally retreat to what feels most safe and makes most sense, no matter if it’s connected to reality or not, because the brain doesn’t want a logical, sensible world, it wants a story that connects how you feel to what’s going on around you. The story doesn’t even have to make sense, just slap some wrestlemania villains and heroes into the mix and we have crack cocaine to the brain’s desire to simplify the world around us.
But I have to blame us because we’re the only thing that can save us. No help is coming. AI or aliens or Jesus are not going to appear suddenly and guide our whole species to a better place. We HAVE to start taking responsibility for our world, or what will be left of it in the coming decades.
One thing those not-on-the-right in America are bad at doing is crafting a narrative. People want to vote for better, but the not-on-the-right only seems to offer the status quo. (Honestly, it’s a global phenomenon. See France’s snap elections for the latest iteration.) I feel that if they offered a vision of the future that people could get behind other than “Office Space for everyone, everywhere, forever” there would be a lot more enthusiasm.
Conservatives have a very convenient narrative they can use: The Hayes’ Coded Turner Classic Movie America is the “Great Again” they’re trying to make America. They can just point to the highly sanitized and glorified days of the 80’s and earlier as a tangible goal.
If the not-on-the-right could offer a clear, coherent vision of a future where people don’t feel like they’re getting ripped off I think they’d do better in elections globally.
Liberalism by definition is the political stance that any problems can be addressed using existing systems and power structures. Our nation has been run predominantly liberal for a very long time, and that’s why it’s so hard to get anything done. People like the status quo, even if they can imagine something better, nobody wants to change things if they’re even moderately comfortable.
That’s not what the definition of liberalism is at all.
Liberalism is a political and social philosophy that believes in individual rights, equality, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. Liberals do support revolutions when the system that is being overthrown is illiberal, such as a monarchy or dictatorship.
Liberals simply don’t support the Marxist idea of a “permanent revolution.” Revolution always gets a lot of people killed, so they should be few and far between. Furthermore, revolutions - especially idealogical revolutions - run a very high risk of being coopted by brutal opportunists who cynically exploit the idealistic revolutionaries to gain or retain permanent dictatorial power for themselves.
Right now, there’s no guarantee that a revolution would result in something better. History shows there’s a very good chance that revolution will kill a lot of people and lead to something much worse.
Furthermore, our current system has a successful track record for slow yet steady improvement. But it’s always two steps forward, one step back - at best. Sometimes there is backsliding more than one step. But history shows that the current system can be used to move forward again… So there’s no reason to throw it all away, risking a much worse replacement.
Good write up. Thanks for that. Very well said.
Thank you.
I like V for Vendetta but i cannot watch the end of the movie where the crowd just walks through the police without thinking “never in a million years would it go down that way”. I do know it gets a bit visually metaphorical there at the end but scoff!! Scoff i say!