There’s a podcast called The Dream with many many episodes about how and why people get sucked into Multi-Level Marketing schemes when there’s like a 98% chance that they will actually lose money. It’s always more than money. First and saddest is the loss of the person’s social network. It’s houses and their kids’ college funds. It’s all horrific. But, there’s an episode in the bonuses -the 4th one for the curious- where the hosts interview a mental heath clinician who’s specialty is getting people out of cults or controlling relationships. I can’t recommend it enough. He briefly explains the psychological reasons a person would completely suspend their reason and observations about what is happening to them in order to belong to a destructive group.
He also goes into how he helps them get their personal identity back in line with their own best interests in mind. That sounds maybe self centered, but when I say best interests, it starts with survival. I was kind of shocked at the podcast where M goes through the gun stats. Jesus. Anyway, if the big question is how to inspire empathy in a person who has completely suspended it in order to be a part of a deadly ideology, like the type of white identity Metzle targets, I don’t think the problem is a lack of empathy, I think it’s a problem of personhood. A suspension of personhood in the name of a group that person feels is more important and cult-y. A group that intentionally harms rather than supports its members. Capitalism?
Also, it sounds like it takes a team of professionals plus caring people in that person’s life to address one, single, person at a time over long periods of time to thoroughly, permanently inspire that level of change, and that feels hopeless. I think if we want to tackle the issue at all, it starts with gigantic strides of empathy from the people who are concerned. From us.
The end except the dinosaur song is going to stick forever. I love it. Goodnight.
that dinosaur song is the song of the decade as far as i'm concerned.
wondering if these white people who would rather die than see others (read non-whites) receive the same opportunities for treatment are also influenced by the constant brainwashing of capitalism / consumerism in that they would rather die than see themselves as "failures" for not being able to provide for themselves.
Living in California, the answer I came up with for why supposedly liberal Californians as well as economically precarious Californians viscerally hate the poor and homeless in a way I've never seen anywhere else in the country (lifelong coastal however, YMMV in the Heartland), oppose any public goods that might help homeless specifically because they might be used *by* them, and consider any use of existing public goods by the poor and homeless as those same people 'abusing' them...
Is that they were born into a society created shaped and maintained for almost 100 years by the kind of hyper-reactionary robber barons who inspired all those Marlow novels (or 'Chinatown'), capital F fascist farm owners who beat and murdered wobblies and chicano activists and southern klansmen imported for cheap labor during the war years. That society places zero value on any human qualities or activities than the making, spending, and displaying of wealth (and really only by whites).
And if you're liberal that smug self satisfaction doesn't square with a state with an unbelievably forgiving climate freezing more homeless to death than New York, and if you're poor, well, subconsciously you're aware you have maybe two rent payments banked and only a few months worth of good will among the friends you could even ask to couchsurf. You've almost GOT to hate those people, believe they have it coming, that they're lazy, dirty, criminal and deserve their lot and whatever you and the cops and Nextdoor can come up to intensify that lot for them. Otherwise, it's possible that you and everyone you know are complicit in a massive hypocrisy, or that you and everyone you know are one stretch of joblessness away from getting pulped like all those other people.
Anyway, not like other places are much better, but the distance between the local's image of themselves in Cali and their actual behavior is lightyears wider than it is in, say, Philly or Boston or other similarly blue-but-racist spots in the East. And god help you if you notice this about Cali out loud to an actual Californian. At least on the East Coast, bitching about home is a sport.
Furthermore and as addendum, I can't see beabadoobee's name without getting the following stuck in my head for an hour, so if Luke's gonna keep mentioning her, you're all on the hook:
There’s a podcast called The Dream with many many episodes about how and why people get sucked into Multi-Level Marketing schemes when there’s like a 98% chance that they will actually lose money. It’s always more than money. First and saddest is the loss of the person’s social network. It’s houses and their kids’ college funds. It’s all horrific. But, there’s an episode in the bonuses -the 4th one for the curious- where the hosts interview a mental heath clinician who’s specialty is getting people out of cults or controlling relationships. I can’t recommend it enough. He briefly explains the psychological reasons a person would completely suspend their reason and observations about what is happening to them in order to belong to a destructive group.
He also goes into how he helps them get their personal identity back in line with their own best interests in mind. That sounds maybe self centered, but when I say best interests, it starts with survival. I was kind of shocked at the podcast where M goes through the gun stats. Jesus. Anyway, if the big question is how to inspire empathy in a person who has completely suspended it in order to be a part of a deadly ideology, like the type of white identity Metzle targets, I don’t think the problem is a lack of empathy, I think it’s a problem of personhood. A suspension of personhood in the name of a group that person feels is more important and cult-y. A group that intentionally harms rather than supports its members. Capitalism?
Also, it sounds like it takes a team of professionals plus caring people in that person’s life to address one, single, person at a time over long periods of time to thoroughly, permanently inspire that level of change, and that feels hopeless. I think if we want to tackle the issue at all, it starts with gigantic strides of empathy from the people who are concerned. From us.
The end except the dinosaur song is going to stick forever. I love it. Goodnight.
Oh that sounds interesting! Yeah I think it's just so overwhelming when you think about how to help people come back. Much like the Fox News parents.
that dinosaur song is the song of the decade as far as i'm concerned.
wondering if these white people who would rather die than see others (read non-whites) receive the same opportunities for treatment are also influenced by the constant brainwashing of capitalism / consumerism in that they would rather die than see themselves as "failures" for not being able to provide for themselves.
Living in California, the answer I came up with for why supposedly liberal Californians as well as economically precarious Californians viscerally hate the poor and homeless in a way I've never seen anywhere else in the country (lifelong coastal however, YMMV in the Heartland), oppose any public goods that might help homeless specifically because they might be used *by* them, and consider any use of existing public goods by the poor and homeless as those same people 'abusing' them...
Is that they were born into a society created shaped and maintained for almost 100 years by the kind of hyper-reactionary robber barons who inspired all those Marlow novels (or 'Chinatown'), capital F fascist farm owners who beat and murdered wobblies and chicano activists and southern klansmen imported for cheap labor during the war years. That society places zero value on any human qualities or activities than the making, spending, and displaying of wealth (and really only by whites).
And if you're liberal that smug self satisfaction doesn't square with a state with an unbelievably forgiving climate freezing more homeless to death than New York, and if you're poor, well, subconsciously you're aware you have maybe two rent payments banked and only a few months worth of good will among the friends you could even ask to couchsurf. You've almost GOT to hate those people, believe they have it coming, that they're lazy, dirty, criminal and deserve their lot and whatever you and the cops and Nextdoor can come up to intensify that lot for them. Otherwise, it's possible that you and everyone you know are complicit in a massive hypocrisy, or that you and everyone you know are one stretch of joblessness away from getting pulped like all those other people.
Anyway, not like other places are much better, but the distance between the local's image of themselves in Cali and their actual behavior is lightyears wider than it is in, say, Philly or Boston or other similarly blue-but-racist spots in the East. And god help you if you notice this about Cali out loud to an actual Californian. At least on the East Coast, bitching about home is a sport.
Furthermore and as addendum, I can't see beabadoobee's name without getting the following stuck in my head for an hour, so if Luke's gonna keep mentioning her, you're all on the hook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvGJoNkOiI0
Yeah that probably has a lot to do with it too.