• tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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    11 months ago

    These terms tend to get abused by jerks so much that they start to mean something else. I have seen too many people identifying as “woke” who use bullying as a method of getting their way, lack compassion for anyone who doesn’t share their views, shaming others, and are generally tribalistic.

    Basic human decency would be to see the person behind a political view and understand that they have fears and pains, to be curious about them and try to understand where they’re coming from. And then talk with them from a place of compassion. We’re all a product of our genes and experiences, and everybody is a hero in their own story.

    Elon too, while misguided, wants to do good. But look at how his dad has treated him growing up: called him an idiot his entire life, impregnated his step sister, and emotionally and physically abused him. Plus I’m pretty sure he’s neurodivergent. If anybody wants to get him to see the error of his ways, more abusive language is certainly not going to help. He’s being pushed into a corner and in his mind he sees a world that is increasingly broken by vile people who don’t understand him or his vision for improving the world. I think he believes his own words when he talks about “neutral” politics, but his idea of neutral has been severely skewed. Elon has in fact done a lot of good for the world, but he needs people he trust to keep his feet on the ground. That can’t be achieved by chastising him, but by praising the things he does well and getting him to spend more time among “normal” people and good role models. In the meantime though, to protect the world from powerful broken men, we need regulation to keep them fenced off.

    • ram@bookwormstory.social
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      11 months ago

      Elon too, while misguided, wants to do good

      There’s no reason to believe this.

      But look at how his dad has treated him growing up

      An explanation as to why someone’s a bad person doesn’t make them less bad.

      Plus I’m pretty sure he’s neurodivergent.

      He’s autistic. Most autistic people aren’t narcissistic megalomaniacs, and if they are, they should be called out for it.

      If anybody wants to get him to see the error of his ways, more abusive language is certainly not going to help.

      A moot point, he will not accept anything but the yes men he grew up around and lived the last 52 years being applauded by.

      He’s being pushed into a corner and in his mind he sees a world that is increasingly broken by vile people who don’t understand him or his vision for improving the world.

      I do understand his vision, and the vision is broken and harmful.

      Elon has in fact done a lot of good for the world, but he needs people he trust to keep his feet on the ground.

      He has? Like his racially segregated factories? Or the monkeys he experiments on the brains of?

      That can’t be achieved by chastising him, but by praising the things he does well and getting him to spend more time among “normal” people and good role models

      This is ineffective with people in such a power position.

      In the meantime though, to protect the world from powerful broken men, we need regulation to keep them fenced off.

      Agreed.

      Ultimately, Elon Musk is a genuinely harmful and bad person, who is both uncritically malicious to those who dare criticize him, and is incredibly foolish at every endeavour he involves himself in. “His” successes come as a result of people he hired walling him off in his companies so that he continues to invest in technologies while being blind to any important part of production he might find interesting enough to meddle in.

      Your take on him is one I can empathize with, and I even held myself for a while, but at the end of the day, it’s a benefit of the doubt he expressly does not deserve.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yeah I want to believe everyone including him is actively a moral actor trying to make the best world they can, but I know better. His motivations aren’t subtle. He desperately wants to be admired and seen as cool and smart. That’s fine when handled responsibly, but he isn’t. He left his wife once he became rich. He went on a crusade against trans people when his daughter came out as trans and said she hates billionaires. He’s become 4chan because when he says shitty right wing bullshit they praise him. He’s probably still seeing himself as a bullied nerd getting picked on by people cooler than him, or maybe he sees it as he’s getting his nerds revenge. But either way, it’s clear he’s more concerned with being the underdog hero of his favorite type of story than building a world worth living in.

    • gila@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Bollocks. I don’t believe you have seen too many people identifying as woke. People that hold the beliefs you’re talking about don’t generally identify as woke. You’re talking about attitudes attributed to wokedom entirely by conservatives trying to rile up their base. They’re using moral panic via the culture war to politically destabilise in an environment where they have no policy to bring to the table that anyone wants, and you’ve fallen for it. Go consume some actual leftist content and try to critique it the way you are now in good faith. You won’t be able to.

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        I don’t consume much right-wing content. This is mostly from interacting with people online who identify as left wing/woke, e.g. on Reddit, Twitter and TikTok.

        • gila@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Have you considered that those aren’t the best places to get a good sense of the rational argument behind increased awareness of social inequalities? All the described platforms skew toward younger audiences and ineffective moderation - you were likely talking to literal children trying to come to terms with their inability to reconcile their morality with their environment, especially from areas that skew conservative.

          When I said actual leftist content I meant, pick an example of a person identifying as woke whose view you don’t share, then vet your position by investigating the opposing argument and reflect on whether that person was offering a fair and balanced representation of that argument. If it isn’t, then you can’t attribute their slant to the school of thought they claim to represent solely based on your subjective experience reading comments on social media.