this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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That's not on the people though, but the system. What has been said in this thread - that US citizens ain't as bad as they're being thought of - can be applied to literally anyone, anywhere. Having a background of abuse and having learned of the botched Stanford Prison nonsense as well as the Tongan Castaways, I came to believe that we are indeed inherently good as long as we're properly cared for, i.e. no existential fears or neglect. It's hard not to immediately point out awful shit being done, but once you look into the people conducting it you can always find either a cause for their individual worldview to be so corrupted or a systemic cause making them believe to act morally correct. That, or the responsibility is put on someone else freeing them from any of it - as can be seen with the Stanford Prison Experiment, where the guards were acting kind and humane until being instructed by the Professor to not be; who held both responsibility and authority, fucking the whole shit up. This was only discovered around 2015. Nobody looked closer back then as the original believe of "human bad, human needs to be controlled" was initially confirmed, something culturally engraved and pushed by books and movies like "Lord of the Flies".
Causing existential fear by putting everything you need behind a paywall - even down to something as fundamental as water in many cases - and enshrining unethical behaviour into law and an economical system created with the expectation of humans being inherently greedy, selfish and only held back by fear… the only reason why a society like that remains stable IS that people ain't inherently bad despite everything. Same for other countries.
Probably one reason why religion is so alluring to many, another US thing that can turn out to become a problem (like right now, christo-fascism is a thing). The desire for good, and to be good in a world that, in a believe of fellow humans being bad and selfish, we keep making worse unnecessarily.
So yeah, we the people of this world are fine. It's the US system that weirds me the fuck out.
I'm not familiar with Tongan Castaways but will have to give it a look. I felt similarly abused by the revelations of the Stanford Prison Experiment - my understanding of the experiment (pre reveal) did shape, to some degree, my understanding of humanity.
As I've gotten older and times have gotten more fraught, it's become clearer and clearer that most people are fundamentally pretty decent, pretty "meh" at knowing what's important to focus on (or even likely or possible to be accurate), and - critically - most of us are very vulnerable to fear-based manipulation. Those three traits are not as discordant as they seem.
Unrelatedly, I find it odd but endearing that you seem to use "ain't" kinda routinely, as a German, lol. Even lotsa Americans don't. That's not a veiled accusation, btw, you seem genuine to me and I simply wonder how you came by it. Sharing things is great, for my part as much as I love odd beers and experimentation, y'all's Reinheitsgebot has improved my life in a non-trivial way, hahaha
Wait, isn't "ain't" commonly used? If there is some "undertone" to it of being not genuine please tell me, I would never know otherwise. 😅
"Ain't" is fairly regional in the US, and also kind of a class indicator. Class is not quite right but it's close. In general you find it used a lot more frequently in the south, and also generally in lower income populations. It's also less common among folks for whom English is their 2nd (+) language.
If you like it, keep using it! Language should feel good.
Edit: missed your "please tell me" part - it does stick out a bit the way you use it. It's a very casual and informal word, almost to the point of being crass, and it doesn't normally get used in the kinds of eloquent writing you do.
Oh yes, the US system is based more and more on “crabs in a bucket”. I mean, it’s always kinda been like that, but now it’s industrialized. Get yours, get famous, fuck everyone else.