3 ms·

A part of me wishes all these dossiers would become public. If everyone's skeletons were out of the closet, we wouldn't care about skeletons so much.

• adventured 13y ago
  I think most people would proceed to focus on everybody else's skeletons in a shallow judgmental fashion and continue to ignore their own flaws exactly as they do today. The net effect would be to put our rotting culture's worst aspects on steroids. What would occur is mass ostracizing and general social chaos from imploded relationships (friends, lovers, family). There would be shocking and boring skeletons, it would become a giant cultural witch hunt, pleasure would be taken in socially mocking and assaulting people with the most outrageous or abnormal skeletons. We live in a bankrupt culture that worships tabloids, gossip and low value entertainment (low value everything in fact, including food, just so long as it distracts for a moment). I see no reason to think people would suddenly change the way they go about the world: the averages for what is considered scandalous behavior would simply shift and there would be a new unlimited supply of people to be socially assaulted. Why just look at my boring skeletons compared to that guy! My scandal is nowhere near as bad as hers!
  • bashinator 13y ago
    C.f. congress has a <20% approval rating, but everybody likes their own congresscritter.
• w_t_payne 13y ago
  Yup. I am fed up with the lies we all tell to ourselves - all the BS that we smother ourselves in:- all for appearance's sake. If we could admit to ourselves (and to each other) how crap we (as human beings) really are, then we might actually stand a chance of fixing ourselves - and maybe also make a start on all of the obviously broken systems in the world. Only we cannot - we dare not point out our flaws or criticize the systems that govern and control the world:- because that would be "weird". The emperor is stark bollock naked, and we need somebody to point it out in such a way that we all take notice.
  • lukifer 13y ago
    I can't help but be fascinated by the web of lies that comprises so much of the social fabric: not only cultural notions like "God cares about your sex life" or "America is the greatest nation", but even fundamentally obvious ideas like "human life has value" or "the truth matters". :P Beliefs, and the deceptions that maintain them, are more properly understood as self-fulfilling prophecies; prescriptive ideas, masquerading as descriptive ideas. I have a serious concern that if we magically evaporated every single lie, and therefore every belief, we would disintegrate back into "nature red in tooth and claw". Our capacity for aspirational imagination and social climbing through deception is as every bit baked into the history of human evolution as our empathy for those like us, or our care for child-rearing. It is, in Stross's term, a wicked problem. "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Vonnegut
    • w_t_payne 13y ago
      Wow. Interesting take on things. I may have to think about this a bit.