macrocarpa

our parents felt the same thing

Your dad simultaneously saw you as the baby who slept securely in his arms, the child he saw through junior school, the teen who he tried to help steer past his own mistakes and the adult he wistfully spoke of with pride

Imagine how good he must feel to know that you remember him this way.

i guess this is where the differences in “common” knowledge comes in…

There are multiple countries where left wing politics is associated with anti semitism. It might seem weird but it’s true. Start with the UK - there is a Wikipedia page on it. I’m not going to share a heap of further context as I’d invite you to read and review yourself and come to your own conclusions, much as I have.

I would also encourage spending as much time reading accounts of world war I, and the conditions before and after the war, as you have on wwii. It helps to understand what left and right wing have meant over long periods of time, and the clumping / allegiances that comes with these alignments, which persist into the modern world without really being visible under the glossy label.

Hate speech per UN definition - any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor.

Through the above - there is a lot of pejorative and discriminatory language levelled by both left and right wing posters on social media. Lemmy is rife with it to the point that I don’t feel comfortable in some groups. The social media company formerly known as Twitter is similarly awkward but from another angle. However, it takes multiple viewpoints to form ones own.

More broadly and as a very specific example, I think it might help if you do a careful examination of the way that many on the left describe what is occurring in the gaza strip, specifically attributing qualities to the entirety of Israel and Judaism.

ETA Fwiw I consider myself left of centre and I live in a country whose baseline is more left wing than the US.

I’m really happy you commented this. “normal” reflects norms.

Part of any generational attitude divide is the base conditions aka norms. When a change / progress is made, it sets those norms.

It’s normal for my generation that people wear seat belts and don’t smoke in pubs, that women have extensive varied careers and dads don’t beat their kids. It wasn’t for the generation before me.

It’s not normal for men of my generation to talk openly and confidently about their sexuality and mental health. Yet that seems to be normal for some of the younger generations, and I envy that.

I find that the easiest way to tap into the generational norms is to listen to comedy. It often represents the edge of what is considered acceptable, because comedy does play with that edge.

It’s amusing to see the pitchforks come out for comedians where they’re judged for edgy content from 25 years ago and society has moved on a bit. Amusing because most of this judgement seems to happen online, and thus is a permanent record, so in 25 years time we’ll have a bunch of embarrassed mid 40s people trying to explain their cruelty to an unsympathetic younger generation. “you weren’t there, man! You don’t understand!”

Propoganda, hate speech - interesting as these labels are equally applied by both sides to describe the other.

This comment has given me far more food for thought than the first skim.

Yes, you’re correct. There is more.

Being content with being part of the crowd and being comfortable with your own identity in a way that you don’t need externalise it, because ultimately the validation that you receive can only come from you, because it won’t come from anywhere else. Someone else will claim the credit anyway.

Being comfortable not being noticed.

Just getting on with it. Work, life, pleasure, marriage, parenthood, careers, it’s probably not going to get any better, it’s probably going to be blamed on you anyway, just get on with it and hope no-one asks too many questions.

Find a nice quiet spot out of the wind for a snooze, knock off work at 4pm, quiet life with no surprises etc.

I have a solution for the gun violence problem in schools. Print simple steps on common causes and solutions to the underlying social and mental contributors. Put these up in every door, hallway and classroom in every schools. Then these poor misguided kids would have troubleshooting.

Mate thank you, I’ve been thinking this for a while too.

No single generation has exclusivity on being manipulated.

The boomers had ‘the man’, millenials and gen z have the algorithm. Which is still the man but more efficient.