8 ms·
We are a society whose culture has become unmoored from the values that built it.
by unnamed76ri 1y ago
We are a society whose culture has become unmoored from the values that built it.
- nickthegreek 1y agoHave we? The culture and values that built this country are stained in blood, violence, and subjugation. I feel we are actually losing the enlightenment that came afterwards and regressing back.
- unnamed76ri 1y agoThe things you listed have always been with us, sure. What we’ve lost is the ability to see objective truth. And maybe people celebrated senseless killing in the past too and we just didn’t have access to their sick mentality before the internet.
- sporkxrocket 1y agoMobs of white people (including children) used to gather around the town square to hang black people. They would literally have picnics while doing it. I feel like the majority of our population is historically illiterate. On the scale of senseless killings, this doesn't even rank.
- Whoppertime 1y agoIt wasn't just black people being lynched. The largest single mass lynching in American history was of Italians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings
- sporkxrocket 1y agoLouisiana has a dark history. > An estimated 62–153 black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre
- edm0nd 1y ago[flagged]
- queenkjuul 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 1y agoJamelle Bouie wrote a piece about this, published this morning. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/opinion/lincoln-schmitt-trump-vance-citizenship.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/opinion/lincoln-schmitt-t...
- nis0s 1y agoThis is the kind of rhetoric which seriously undermines the history of American philosophical thought. The things you mentioned are found in the history of every nation. It's important to keep track of what should be improved, while also acknowledging what worked well and why.
- mike_d 1y ago[flagged]
- tomrod 1y ago> Fascism has never in history been stopped by scholars. It is uncomfortable to directly acknowledge "what worked well." Your comment maps precisely to: we've had zero network intrusions, why are we paying these cybersecurity professionals? So much fascism and authoritarianism was blocked since WW2 because scholars called it out early. Guess what scholars called out in the US in 2016, but most politicians put party over country? "We scaled back our cybersecurity professionals and saved a ton of budget! On an unrelated note, do we have data breach insurance?" There is certainly room to punch fascists in the face when hostilities are hot. We can't start there and remain a tolerant society dealing with the paradox of tolerance. The first steps are shunning and ceasing support, isolating the infected into appropriately deprived states of resource loss, and not political violence. There is a great case study in Daryl Davis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
- mike_d 1y agoI agree that civil debate and cooler heads deterred and delayed fascism in many cases. I was referring specifically to when it has taken hold and needs to be stopped. An apt comparison would be instituting mandatory cybersecurity training for employees as a direct response to a breach. That is a great step to take post-cleanup but does basically nothing to address the issue at hand.
- halico_chops 1y ago[flagged]
- AlexandrB 1y agoLike every other country and ethnic group on earth. I don't understand what's so notable about American history in this regard.
- komali2 1y agoWell only a couple countries participated in the creation of the Atlantic slave trade, and very few in history have engaged in chattel slavery to the scale the USA did.
- throwaway48476 1y agoSlavery in the USA was but a tiny fraction of contemporary slavery not to mention historical slavery.
- komali2 1y agoPer capita you are wrong. The Atlantic slave trade enslaved 12 million people. An astounding volume of unique and unnecessary misery and evil.
- throwaway48476 1y agoStatistically, a drop in the bucket.
- AlexandrB 1y agoSeems like a very Americentric perspective. There's still plenty of chattel slavery out there right now[1]. In that respect, the idea that the US is uniquely bad is like the "evil twin" version of American exceptionalism[2]. [1] https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2025/8/7/widespread-chattel-slavery-in-mauritania-a-wake-up-call-for-corporate-due-diligencenbsp https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2025/8/7/widesprea... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_exceptionalism
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- mcs5280 1y agoValues don't make stonks go up
- dmix 1y agoQuite the opposite There would be no functional stock market without strong values and trust in them
- mcbobgorge 1y agoThe Enlightenment directly led to violent revolutions in the US and France. Political violence has never not been a part of political society in some capacity. What is effective is not always what is right, and violence is often effective (not in this case, in my opinion).
- Quarrelsome 1y ago> and violence is often effective (not in this case, in my opinion). Depending on your interpretation of "effective" I'm not sure I entirely agree. Political campaigners on both side of the political spectrum have a lot of respect for Charlie Kirk and his ability to raise funds and make a difference in his political activism. From what I've heard, the stuff he did on camera was actually the weaker part of his skill set, its his off-camera work that the GOP will sorely miss.
- clint 1y agoThis reads as if you've literally never consumed anything about Western history
- LeafItAlone 1y ago>We are a society whose culture has become unmoored from the values that built it. What society are you referring to? And what values? I’m trying to gauge if you’ve looked in a history book ever.
- gosub100 1y ago[flagged]
- queenkjuul 1y ago[flagged]
- trimethylpurine 1y agoI think GP means in film, media, and by proxy, education. The items you listed fluctuate rapidly by popular vote. These others aren't governed by democracy, but by the economic advantage of the wealthy few who control them.
- dttze 1y agoThe people with the power and wealth aren't far left.
- trimethylpurine 1y agoIn film? I think they are. Netflix Disney YouTube Apple Amazon I think they are more generally too; tech is a very large sector. But that's tangential.
- queenkjuul 1y agoNot one thing you mentioned is far left by any description.
- trimethylpurine 1y agoLiterally all of them are. Netflix has Obama making films. Co founders funding Gavin Newsom's campaigns. Even CNBC a left leaning news source, classifies Netflix as among the most liberal. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-ranked-by-employee-donations.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/most-liberal-tech-companies-... Disney is not left leaning? Obviously the rest of the humans sharing the planet with you think they are: https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/is-disney-moving-away-from-its-liberal-agenda.html https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/is-disney-moving-aw... I won't bother continuing, because this is boring at this point, but at least you could search before responding.
- Chilko 1y agoAs an outside observer of US culture I disagree, the normalisation and glorification of violence has always seemed to be a distinctly American value to me.
- tomrod 1y agoMany of those values were not coherent nor beneficial. Slavery, patriarchy, indentured servitude, excessive religiosity, monarchy, rejection of other cultures, all these seem to be good things to leave in the rearview mirror.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dinkumthinkum 1y agoSlavery was in the culture for thousands of years. In fact, it is that culture that is the only culture that ended the practice of slavery (largely, it does still exist in places where allegedly never did).