I've noticed that lemmy as a whole is much more leftist than reddit (outside of political servers of course)
I can't really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by "both" sides of the spectrum. It's just something I find interesting.
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Lemmy started off as much more left-wing, to the extent that it had a hard-coded slur filter that only recently was made something configurable. The choice of .ml has been proposed as being chosen because it represents "Marxist Leninist" (and I don't know if that's true or not), but many of the original instances were highly censored.
That being said, I've been both left and right and presently I'm more right wing, and a lot of the time I write up some big screed in response to something dumb or evil and then just hit "close tab" because when I'm on someone else's instance I want to be a good houseguest and not cause trouble.
Such people have been surrounded by an echo chamber for years and years, they never hear any viewpoints other than what the establishment feeds them, and I don't really want to waste my time fighting against the propaganda power of multiple nation-state coalitions.
(I did make the mistake of accidentally saying what I thought a while back, and now I've got a bunch of smug idiots on my case)
I figure it's only a matter of time until the rest of the fediverse starts to arrive (I've heard through the grapevine some other instances considering starting up their own lemmy instances), and then things will be a lot more balanced.
Such people have been surrounded by an echo chamber for years and years, they never hear any viewpoints other than what the establishment feeds them
Ah yes, the establishment that wants to (checks notes) abolish all governments and class hierarchy. How very establishment of them.
ok to but to be fair, the creator of Lemmy is a tankie. not "anyone I don't like is a tankie" tankie, but "genuinely supports the Soviet Union and CCP" tankie.
Oh yeah, I'm aware. I was more responding with the particular left-wing viewpoints that were fed to me by the establishment.
The establishment wants to:
This can be done by lying to both the left and the right, because that's why they have rooms full of the smartest people on earth crafting narrative framing to let them do the above while pretending they're doing something else, and using overwhelming power to implement their schemes.
You might not like it, but COVID showed exactly what everyone's actual attitudes were. Apparently the left loves bureaucrats, the biggest most authoritarian governments in the history of the world paid for by selling out future generations, and multinational drug companies. Swing and a miss.
Now don't get me wrong, the right is fucked too. Their narrative was the establishment narrative very recently, and even now as views start to change I can already see it that some of the old right-wing establishment types think their "side" is getting a toehold and they stand up and start trying to do the exact same thing just using their narratives. After 9/11 we got to see the exact same bullshit but instead of going after a virus it was going after "terrorism".
Isn't it funny that no matter which "side" you choose, they want to control your life more and spend more money on Government that magically seems to find it into the pockets of the ultra-rich buddies of whoever that part of the establishment happens to be?
Of course, there's an anti-establishment left and an anti-establishment right, and while they might not agree on what the final destination might be, there's a lot of common ground to be found as well (and common attacks from the mass establishment and their pawns on both sides of the aisle)
I don't know where to put this, so I'll just reply to you. Maybe we should trust the German when it comes to these matters. Like when my German professor warned my classmate not to go to school in Florida because it's fascist. Trust the German.
If there's one thing modern history tells us, it's that we should be wary of Germans and Austrians, not that we should trust them.
You have a lot more faith in The Powers That Be than I do. They're not nearly that smart, unified, or forward-thinking.
I'm afraid that having seen what I've seen, the worst thing you can do is underestimate the powers that be. It doesn't matter if they're smart or unified or forward thinking, it's an evolutionary process where the ones who do the right things get more power, and the ones who do anything but don't.
Sure, don't underestimate them, but don't overestimate them either. They're still human, with all of the flaws that that entails. They're also subject to their own information bubbles, which get pretty bad when one is running a large organization.
That's the scariest part about it.
I've been writing a lot lately about the Brahmins in India and the Song dynasty in China, both around the 9th century. The Brahmins were getting their shit pushed in by the Muslims from the northeast, and they thought all they needed to do was keep on building nicer temples and the gods would grant them victory. The Song lost half their empire to the Jin in the north while composing poetry about how much they'd like to win at war, and a common saying of the time was "just as good iron isn't used for nails, good men don't go into the military". In the final days of the western Roman empire, the established powers were fighting in the capital as if nothing was happening just as armies were descending on the city. The Greek Playwright Aristophanes wrote satires speaking of the wars that would ultimately mark the end of Athenian Greece as it was during its peak, and the powers that be watched the plays, laughed, and changed nothing. The kings of Babylon controlled the entirety of the known world of the era. The whims of those kings were so important that they're immortalized in 3 of the largest religions on earth, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Despite that, the dynasties of Babylon were often defeated and replaced, and ultimately Babylon was extinguished from history, its land taken up by new regimes.
So the people entrenched into positions of power are in fact humans, and they are fallible, and so not only does their power grow over time (at least it has consistently for decades), but increasing power does not mean increasing competence (at least not at anything other than acquiring more power).
Figures of legend such as the Roman statesman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus or the first US President George Washington are the center of stories that speak of civic virtue such that they come in and help deal with a crisis, and importantly relinquish power afterwards. It's not easy to have that kind of power and give it up because it's the right thing to do. They're legendary figures because it's uncommon to give up absolute power.
The one thing I'm hopeful for is related to the upcoming population collapse. The baby boomers are the largest generation in history, and they had the millennials, the second largest generation in history. Gen X and the Millennials and the zoomers have historically infinitesimal birth rates, far less than replacement in most of the world. World population projections are showing the world population peaking around 10 billion and then shrinking. In most western countries, that could mean a drop as much of 50% of population. Historically speaking, a growing population increases the size of the pie economically speaking, but having lots of people means the value of each person is less, and so periods of growing population tend to ultimately result in lower quality of life for individuals, which I think we've seen in the past couple generations after the boomers. In the next couple generations as the population falls, the value of individuals will rise, and I think that'll result in power being relinquished by the elites and the establishment and given back to the people, as has happened in previous cycles of the sort. The absolute economy is likely to shrink, but the quality of life for the average person is likely to grow. The incredible power of the individual baby boomers after the population decline of the world wars is one example, but the reduced power or feudalism and the rise of liberalism after the black death is another example.
The past is not the future, and so what will happen hasn't yet been set in stone. While population decline has in the past led to improvements in the common man's lot, we're living in an era where technology allows for unprecedented control over the individual as well. As well, an established elite may take a crisis like population decline as an excuse to take greater control as well. All this means in my view that we need to be working hard to raise up future generations to be people worthy of having individual power and wise enough to reach out for it. "History is written by those who show up"
Anyway, way too much on the topic, but I've been thinking ahead a lot lately.
lmfao