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While I wholeheartedly agree that no child should ever go hungry and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here), if you cal

While I wholeheartedly agree that no child should ever go hungry and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here), if you call people subhuman, we can't be friends, nor acquaintances.

RS-232 1y ago
Subhuman is a rather severe (and incredibly reductionist) judgement. Sure, being anti-free lunch for children is morally objectionable… but they’ve failed to probe that line of reasoning. They’ve encountered a bug, but instead of debugging it, they’ve closed their IDE and walked away. Sometimes an honest conversation—with carefully placed, introspective questions—can be revealing to all parties. When we use our tongues to learn about others and build them up rather than tear them down, we’re actively making the world a better place. When we resist the tendency to judge others, we’re actively bettering ourselves.
- notnaut 1y ago
  This, and there’s something all-too human about ignoring or even basking in the suffering of others, including children. Pretending it’s somehow less than human to be on that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.
  - sneak 1y ago
    A certain amount of ignoring human suffering is positively required to exist in the modern world, otherwise it would be an impossible-to-defend-against exploit to walk up to happy people in the first world and say “ten thousand children die every day from lack of access to clean water”, because then you would permanently alter or ruin their life. FWIW this is true on Earth today. It is required to turn a blind eye to slavery and oppression and hunger and thirst and preventable death and disease otherwise it would be impossible to have any semblance of a happy life in the good parts of the world, because the scale of preventable human suffering is both epic and, thus far, neverending.
amelius 1y ago
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- osrec 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - permo-w 1y ago
    this is ridiculous. I'm a socialist and I believe that people should have far more of life's necessities provided to them by the state; I think supermarkets should be nationalised; I think water and electricity should be free up to a limit. on the other hand, this "people disagree with me about something sensitive so they're unevolved and/or subhuman" lark is childish as fuck and completely hypocritical people think things for a reason, and it's rarely because they're sociopaths or they're unevolved or they're stupid, and assuming that it is lazy and uncritical
    - mystraline 1y ago
      No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well, thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment. This percolates through our whole society, one case of which is this scholastic food 'debt'. And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few years of free school lunches. And was also summarily cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'those people don't deserve X'. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set-end-creating-perfect-storm-high-inflation-rcna33688 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set...
      - permo-w 1y ago
        you're proving my point. people think these things because, as you say, they're instilled in the American national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong, it makes sense to think people should think for themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or unevolved, and it's not helping anything anyway. perhaps it was too far to say that it's rarely because they're stupid though
em500 1y ago
> ... and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here) I'm from another EU country (the Netherlands). Primary schools do not provide any lunch or other food whatsoever, secondary schools might have a canteen selling some snacks or low quality fast food. But everyone is basically expected to bring their own or go out/home for lunch.
- fakedang 1y ago
  Yes, we had the same system when I went to school in a (relatively low-income) expat (Indian) school in the Middle East. But nowhere was a child expected to leave the break hungry - I saw firsthand a teacher ruthlessly scolded by the grade supervisor (who was a GOAT all-round) because she found a student still eating after she had arrived at the class, and sent him to stand outside as punishment. Another time, a teacher paid for a student's meal because he lost the change he was given by his parents to buy food from the canteen. And another time, the school canteen just giving away free food at the end of the day to whoever wanted it, because there was no point in them keeping it around. It's honestly unbelievable that a first world country would let its children go without lunch because even third world countries do not let that happen. I have seen schools in rural Africa that don't let their children starve - in fact, giving a midday meal (and some to take home afterwards) is a way to ensure school attendance.
  - pergadad 1y ago
    No one is starving in the netherlands. There's a difference between offering a canteen but charging for it with some able and some not able to pay, and a general expectation that all bring food from home. Many Dutch, German, etc companies will also not have canteens but rather people bring a sandwich or last night's leftovers from home. The standard warm meal is the evening meal.
    - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
      > No one is starving in the netherlands. This is inaccurate, nearly half a million people struggle to eat enough: https://www.rodekruis.nl/persberichten/450000-mensen-in-verborgen-voedselnood/ https://www.rodekruis.nl/persberichten/450000-mensen-in-verb.... There's food banks, but there's a lot of shame associated with using them; despite that, ~200.000 people a year make use of them: https://voedselbankennederland.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Feiten-en-Cijfers-per-31-12-2023.pdf https://voedselbankennederland.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/09.... Also read the book "Superschool" about what was one of the worst schools in one of the poorest areas of the Netherlands, where there were loads of kids going to school hungry, dirty, and without basics like a coat. Sorry, your throwaway remark just rubbed me up the wrong way. The Netherlands is not the socialist utopia that some people make it out to be, we just have bike lanes, sorta-legal weed and superior bread / cheese.
computerthings 1y ago
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RS-232 1y ago

Subhuman is a rather severe (and incredibly reductionist) judgement. Sure, being anti-free lunch for children is morally objectionable… but they’ve failed to probe that line of reasoning. They’ve encountered a bug, but instead of debugging it, they’ve closed their IDE and walked away. Sometimes an honest conversation—with carefully placed, introspective questions—can be revealing to all parties. When we use our tongues to learn about others and build them up rather than tear them down, we’re actively making the world a better place. When we resist the tendency to judge others, we’re actively bettering ourselves.

notnaut 1y ago
This, and there’s something all-too human about ignoring or even basking in the suffering of others, including children. Pretending it’s somehow less than human to be on that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.
- sneak 1y ago
  A certain amount of ignoring human suffering is positively required to exist in the modern world, otherwise it would be an impossible-to-defend-against exploit to walk up to happy people in the first world and say “ten thousand children die every day from lack of access to clean water”, because then you would permanently alter or ruin their life. FWIW this is true on Earth today. It is required to turn a blind eye to slavery and oppression and hunger and thirst and preventable death and disease otherwise it would be impossible to have any semblance of a happy life in the good parts of the world, because the scale of preventable human suffering is both epic and, thus far, neverending.

amelius 1y ago

[flagged]

osrec 1y ago
[flagged]
- permo-w 1y ago
  this is ridiculous. I'm a socialist and I believe that people should have far more of life's necessities provided to them by the state; I think supermarkets should be nationalised; I think water and electricity should be free up to a limit. on the other hand, this "people disagree with me about something sensitive so they're unevolved and/or subhuman" lark is childish as fuck and completely hypocritical people think things for a reason, and it's rarely because they're sociopaths or they're unevolved or they're stupid, and assuming that it is lazy and uncritical
  - mystraline 1y ago
    No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well, thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment. This percolates through our whole society, one case of which is this scholastic food 'debt'. And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few years of free school lunches. And was also summarily cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'those people don't deserve X'. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set-end-creating-perfect-storm-high-inflation-rcna33688 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/free-school-lunches-set...
    - permo-w 1y ago
      you're proving my point. people think these things because, as you say, they're instilled in the American national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong, it makes sense to think people should think for themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or unevolved, and it's not helping anything anyway. perhaps it was too far to say that it's rarely because they're stupid though

em500 1y ago

> ... and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here) I'm from another EU country (the Netherlands). Primary schools do not provide any lunch or other food whatsoever, secondary schools might have a canteen selling some snacks or low quality fast food. But everyone is basically expected to bring their own or go out/home for lunch.

fakedang 1y ago
Yes, we had the same system when I went to school in a (relatively low-income) expat (Indian) school in the Middle East. But nowhere was a child expected to leave the break hungry - I saw firsthand a teacher ruthlessly scolded by the grade supervisor (who was a GOAT all-round) because she found a student still eating after she had arrived at the class, and sent him to stand outside as punishment. Another time, a teacher paid for a student's meal because he lost the change he was given by his parents to buy food from the canteen. And another time, the school canteen just giving away free food at the end of the day to whoever wanted it, because there was no point in them keeping it around. It's honestly unbelievable that a first world country would let its children go without lunch because even third world countries do not let that happen. I have seen schools in rural Africa that don't let their children starve - in fact, giving a midday meal (and some to take home afterwards) is a way to ensure school attendance.
- pergadad 1y ago
  No one is starving in the netherlands. There's a difference between offering a canteen but charging for it with some able and some not able to pay, and a general expectation that all bring food from home. Many Dutch, German, etc companies will also not have canteens but rather people bring a sandwich or last night's leftovers from home. The standard warm meal is the evening meal.
  - Cthulhu_ 1y ago
    > No one is starving in the netherlands. This is inaccurate, nearly half a million people struggle to eat enough: https://www.rodekruis.nl/persberichten/450000-mensen-in-verborgen-voedselnood/ https://www.rodekruis.nl/persberichten/450000-mensen-in-verb.... There's food banks, but there's a lot of shame associated with using them; despite that, ~200.000 people a year make use of them: https://voedselbankennederland.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Feiten-en-Cijfers-per-31-12-2023.pdf https://voedselbankennederland.nl/wp-content/uploads/2024/09.... Also read the book "Superschool" about what was one of the worst schools in one of the poorest areas of the Netherlands, where there were loads of kids going to school hungry, dirty, and without basics like a coat. Sorry, your throwaway remark just rubbed me up the wrong way. The Netherlands is not the socialist utopia that some people make it out to be, we just have bike lanes, sorta-legal weed and superior bread / cheese.

computerthings 1y ago

[dead]