this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
10 points (91.7% liked)
Actual Discussion
272 readers
1 users here now
Are you tired of going into controversial threads and having people not discuss things, circlejerking, or using emotional responses in place of logic? Us too.
Welcome to Actual Discussion!
DO:
- Be civil. This doesn't mean you shouldn't challenge people, just don't be a dick.
- Upvote interesting or well-articulated points, even if you may not agree.
- Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source.
- Be willing to be wrong and append your initial post to show a changed view.
- Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
- Feel free to be a "Devil's Advocate". You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points.
- Discuss hot-button issues.
- Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn't super fun to read or discuss.
DO NOT:
- Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
- Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them.
- Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
- Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion.
- Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new information is surfaced on the topic.
- Strawman.
- Expect that personal experience or morals are a substitute for proof.
- Exaggerate. Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.
- Copy an entire article in your post body. It's just messy. Link to it and maybe summarize if needed.
For more casual conversation instead of competitive ranked conversation, try: !casualconversation@lemm.ee
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I like the point about people being too tired - as much as that might have felt like a side point I think there may be something there - one thing I noticed in Japan is that when I did something nice that was not culturally required people would not only be really happy but actually surprised.
Japan is not only overworked to death, but also very strict on manners and social rules, so you're often required to pretend to be nice to someone and to follow your duty to others to the point that people start to lose the concept of doing nice things spontaneously.
As the vice grips tighten around the working and middle class, I think what you're describing has also been happening in the West not only since Corona but gradually over the last several decades. People concerned primarily with survival have less room to be kind. (That said, it means more when they are).
The way I'd put this in technical terms is "What percentage of your disposable income is going towards helping others?" $50 for someone making minimum wage is probably more than $1 million coming from a billionaire.
Right, so I think you could push it even further than what I said. Maybe something more qualitative like "What are you willing to give up to help others?"
That said you can also go too far the other way and say that a very rich person who does or doesn't give away things hadn't really giving up much, but we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good. (And practically speaking it's going to have almost as good of an outcome if they gave to the point of diminishing their well-being).
Your angle here is actually getting really close to Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality. (Personally I stop a little short of where he's at, but I think your position more closely resembles his).