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"...seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them." This, 100x times over. The cultural

"...seems to be leading to a fractured partisan nation where everyone hates anyone who even slightly disagrees with them." This, 100x times over. The cultural toll of 'conformity' sounds bad until you realize it's a construct enabling everyone to 'play nice' in the general sense and work towards a greater good, collectively. We are losing that conformity. The average US citizen person is socially crippled by their outrage. Nothing else matters. If you have doubt in yourself, get back in that echo chamber that probably made you into what you are and reassure yourself. It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose. In today's US, if you want to be heard, it's more about how emotionally outraged you are, not how good your ideas actually are. The more dire you can make the outrage, the better. Come up with a sound bite for your movement, catchier the better. Misrepresent anything your oppositions says, retire objective and reasonable critical thinking to 'dinosaur thinking'. Then, convince people your group/movement/lifestyle has been marginalized. Then, if your subject agrees with you, make sure they're at least as outraged as you. Use any guilt that they have to steer them current or future causes. Next, if they won't comply, publicly shame and label opposition so that you can associate them with bad things/people/events. When you dont get what you want, attack the process, call them bigots, etc. Rinse and repeat until you get what you want. As our "cultural tolls" are avoided or erode, the more divided we become as a people. The more divided we are, the more we are seen as individuals. Everyone becomes marginalized when everyone is an individual. The more divided we are, the less we hold open doors and the more we slam that door in their face, because you know... they're a bigot or whatever, so you dont have to feel guilty for hurting that evil person.

Capricorn2481 1y ago
> It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose You are operating under a model that every view of the world is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion. That is not where we are as a country. People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact. I'm a white man. I am polite to my friends and family, and I am good at getting people to share what they really think. I have family all over the country. They talk a lot like you in public, decrying a vague sense of union we used to have in a fictional time of American history. But they whisper a different tune to me in private. I have heard some absolutely vile beliefs from people who used to bounce me on their knee. I don't speak to them anymore. Not because I'm in an echo chamber, but because I cannot reconcile or stomach the things I know about them. My extended family believes others should bleed so they don't have to scuff, and I believe this reflects a large portion of the country. You have it completely backwards. It's not that we are so angry with each other that we can't establish a cultural toll, it's that much of the country never wanted to pay this toll, and that's what makes the rest of us angry. We cannot live collectively without sacrifice, but many refuse to. The many debates regarding this article is evidence of that.
- lucideng 1y ago
  > "... it's that much of the country never wanted to pay this toll, and that's what makes the rest of us angry." Thats a good observation. I wouldn't say I had it completely backwards, after thinking on it, I still feel that many people can't/won't get past their anger and that prevents them from paying into the toll. You didn't specify why they don't want to pay into the toll and anger/resentment could be part of that. > "People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact." Does that fact make you angry? Emotional? I suspect you are passionate about the issue. Wouldn't your feelings towards your loved ones and the harm done to them galvanize your stance and give you a sense of conviction? If so, why aren't you doing more to help them, don't you care? Why are you on hacker news talking to some rando instead picketing for your cause, raising awareness and funding? Apologies, I was being intentionally abrasive, trying to make the point that it is relatively easy to fan the flames of someone's passion into outrage. One can be supportive and encouraging about it and push you towards that conviction/outrage, but it takes more time. If one were to be an ass about it, I bet a dollar your conviction/outrage would be near instant and an order of magnitude greater. Passion is healthy. Outrage is not. With passion, you are happy with yourself and your effort, perhaps a "live to fight another day" mentality. When you slip into outrage, you are never happy until YOU get what YOU want. So, if given the choice to feed a group of people, but some of them hurt your loved ones, what do you do? What if it's their kids? Do you feed the people you hate? Weigh the options? Figure out the percentages? Try to heal? Find a way to exclude the offenders? Or do you just bail completely? Do they have to be near death before you'd offer help? I gander the result depends how outraged you are. My point is that the more outraged you are, the more morality and validity go out the window, and less likely you are to donate to a school to pay off lunches because you might be doing something to benefit someone you disagree with. The "vague sense of union" we had was the social tolls that we paid. Like universal praise for donating school lunches. But in today's world, you'll be criticized for donating to the wrong school because there wasn't X, Y or Z. You'll be shamed, maybe doxxed, hated and maybe even physically assaulted. All because an outraged group or person felt like something was taken from them. So, my model of the world isn't that every view "is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion", it's an awareness that emotions greatly affect people's judgement around validity and morality, for better or worse, and that needs to be accounted for.

Capricorn2481 1y ago

> It used to be ok to disagree, have intelligent debate, vote on it, and lose You are operating under a model that every view of the world is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion. That is not where we are as a country. People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact. I'm a white man. I am polite to my friends and family, and I am good at getting people to share what they really think. I have family all over the country. They talk a lot like you in public, decrying a vague sense of union we used to have in a fictional time of American history. But they whisper a different tune to me in private. I have heard some absolutely vile beliefs from people who used to bounce me on their knee. I don't speak to them anymore. Not because I'm in an echo chamber, but because I cannot reconcile or stomach the things I know about them. My extended family believes others should bleed so they don't have to scuff, and I believe this reflects a large portion of the country. You have it completely backwards. It's not that we are so angry with each other that we can't establish a cultural toll, it's that much of the country never wanted to pay this toll, and that's what makes the rest of us angry. We cannot live collectively without sacrifice, but many refuse to. The many debates regarding this article is evidence of that.

lucideng 1y ago
> "... it's that much of the country never wanted to pay this toll, and that's what makes the rest of us angry." Thats a good observation. I wouldn't say I had it completely backwards, after thinking on it, I still feel that many people can't/won't get past their anger and that prevents them from paying into the toll. You didn't specify why they don't want to pay into the toll and anger/resentment could be part of that. > "People have made decisions to actively harm people I love, and they cheer it on to my face. This is not an emotion, it's a fact." Does that fact make you angry? Emotional? I suspect you are passionate about the issue. Wouldn't your feelings towards your loved ones and the harm done to them galvanize your stance and give you a sense of conviction? If so, why aren't you doing more to help them, don't you care? Why are you on hacker news talking to some rando instead picketing for your cause, raising awareness and funding? Apologies, I was being intentionally abrasive, trying to make the point that it is relatively easy to fan the flames of someone's passion into outrage. One can be supportive and encouraging about it and push you towards that conviction/outrage, but it takes more time. If one were to be an ass about it, I bet a dollar your conviction/outrage would be near instant and an order of magnitude greater. Passion is healthy. Outrage is not. With passion, you are happy with yourself and your effort, perhaps a "live to fight another day" mentality. When you slip into outrage, you are never happy until YOU get what YOU want. So, if given the choice to feed a group of people, but some of them hurt your loved ones, what do you do? What if it's their kids? Do you feed the people you hate? Weigh the options? Figure out the percentages? Try to heal? Find a way to exclude the offenders? Or do you just bail completely? Do they have to be near death before you'd offer help? I gander the result depends how outraged you are. My point is that the more outraged you are, the more morality and validity go out the window, and less likely you are to donate to a school to pay off lunches because you might be doing something to benefit someone you disagree with. The "vague sense of union" we had was the social tolls that we paid. Like universal praise for donating school lunches. But in today's world, you'll be criticized for donating to the wrong school because there wasn't X, Y or Z. You'll be shamed, maybe doxxed, hated and maybe even physically assaulted. All because an outraged group or person felt like something was taken from them. So, my model of the world isn't that every view "is equally valid, moral, and unworthy of emotion", it's an awareness that emotions greatly affect people's judgement around validity and morality, for better or worse, and that needs to be accounted for.