When it has been demonstrated over and over again, how little they think of anyone beneath them.
In every era, the ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers.
Boot lickers. Just boot lickers. Hoping to become one of them one day.
Because they “earned” or achieved wealth, i.e. worked really hard to become rich
Lemmy is such a weird site. Almost every thread I’ll read the most terrible dehumanizing shit said about working class people for just existing in a conservative U.S. state, but a thread asking why the rich are idolized every negative comment appears to have upvoted responses calling to recognize the humanity in everyone.
Weird.
Hexbear remains winning
They be dragons.
It makes me wonder if some of the dragons written in literature are just an allegory for the ultra wealthy and powerful of their time that were hoarding unimaginable wealth while the huddled masses starved.
This isn’t really a question.
Everyone human is human but psychopathy seems to favor wealth gain. But like woz would be one of the richest people in the world if he had not shared his apple stock with employees. Hes still rich though and a nice guy. His generosity though is why he is a millionaire and not a billionaire.
True.
Wealth filters psychopathy upward and you need to be at least little asshole to succeed in competition, but I think the broader influence is all the shit talk about deadbeats and freeloaders, that in long term dehumanizes the poor and creates notions that wealthy are better breed and there’s nothing wrong, if the unfortunate die in the gutter. If they can’t support themselves, maybe that’s for the best. You can clearly see this shift even in many people that were once considered to be leftists.
Some kind of “Stanford experiment” kind of effect.
I believe that’s because they are the same as them (or would like to be) and would behave the exact same way if they were in their position.
I think it is important to recognise people as people. I’m not making excuses for intentionally malicious wealthy or powerful people – but the wealth or power itself isn’t the whole problem (although the various systems that perpetuate and enable certain wealthy or powerful people are problematic of course), and we shouldn’t give these adults that as an excuse.
They’re wealthy, yes. They’re also human beings who choose to be cruel, callous, selfish, uncaring arseholes.
They’re powerful, yes. They’re also adults who know what they’re doing and consistently make the decision to harm people with their choices.
Netanyahu’s political power wouldn’t be as much of a problem in and of itself if he wasn’t choosing to enact a genocide. Murdoch’s wealth wouldn’t be as much of a problem in and of itself if he didn’t choose to use it to buy media outlets and push right-wing lies to millions.
No excuses for cruelty; the money and power didn’t “corrupt” these people, because we don’t live in a fantasy world where money and power are magic cursed items. These people intentionally decided to be cruel.
I agree mostly, but I think there is something to be said about the detachedness of it all though. Having you and your entire livelihood and ability to sustain your family/empire utterly insulated from the destruction your decisions cause, and in this day and age, even informationally insulated by simply either staying in bubbles or literally paying others to confront the criticism or negative effects you’d be hearing about.
When you willfully destroy any frame of reference that portrays what you’re doing as evil and destructive, or when the system you’re apart of is designed to facilitate that sort of mindset… I realize you mentioned similar points in your comment but I couldn’t help coming from a different direction.
I think that level of pure power and wealth does breed a type of ignorant sociopathy akin to a very young child picking the wings off of a butterfly, on a societal level (a simplification of course).
All this to say that while we don’t live in a fantasy land where money and power are cursed artifacts, I think it’s not helpful to cover for the effects such tools can have when a human being acquires both in nigh-untouchable quantities.
Edit: Not trying to cover for the horrible decisions these people make, and it’s true some people can just be cruel - just trying to float that they were and are human beings born into these systems just like everyone else.
Edit2: Goddamn it I typed all this out just to realize it’s a .world account and therefore they can’t see this. Neat. 😅
Well, they are in fact human. Trying to understand how they got the way they are is the first step to trying to not let more of them happen. That said, the rotten apple is still an apple. But in the end, I am still going to throw it away.
They are not in fact human in the ways that matter. Their organs are compatible.
Those who would commit atrocity use dehumanizing language to justify horrible things. Let’s leave that to the fascist of the world. We don’t have to act as if a person isn’t human to recognize their evil. Humans are capable of great love and great evil. Avoiding dehumanizing someone is not forgiving them for the terrible things they have done. Why do you need to view something as not human to recognize it’s evil? That, honestly worries me. We can serve justice to these terrible people and still call them human.
You should not be downvoted. The super rich are directly responsible of the misery and suffering of billions of people, every day they decide or simply allow people to be killed in a war or live in the street or left to die of hunger or sickness if they can make more money. They are de facto dehumanising themselves. Billionaires are not humans.
Is humanize the word you really mean to use, or do you mean something more like valorize or glorify?
Are you aware of what it means to dehumanize?I’m pretty sure they meant that. There are a lot of people who don’t see rich people as humans anymore. The irony is lost on them.
There are a lot of people who don’t see rich people as humans anymore.
Can you give an example?
Propaganda, trolls, paid shills
Because a person deserves to be considered person whether they think you worth of being so or not.
A faceless, dehumanized enemy will forever be out of reach, unsurpassable in reach and power. A flesh a blood human doing a skin and bone job is replaceable by most any of us because no matter how much power they might have, they are only people.
Why do some people think dehumanizing anyone is fundamentally OK?
There are actual psychopaths and sociopaths. They are humans. They got that way not from Stan Lee’s pen, but by real experiences in our actual world.
Making them a caricature will in no way help with the problem.
Psychopaths and sociopaths who dehumanize others deserve to be dehumanized in return. Why should you owe them something they won’t offer you in return?
I’m perfectly ok with dehumanizing literal flag waving Nazis. I give them no quarter. If a Nazi fell into the train tracks in front of me, I would just walk away.
are you saying all wealthy people are nazis? that’s about the only way that I can see to read that statement (combined with the comment you are responding to)
Indeed, the dehumanizing is always associated with collectivism vs individualism, and thence to collective guilt, and collective punishment.
All done with moral self-justification.
That’s because it’s morally justified to prioritize the needs of many over the needs of a few.
I mean the vast majority of wealthy people are in fact happy and willing collaborators with Nazis because it’s advantageous to their wealth and power
They do not consider or even understand us as humans
vast majority of wealthy people
Honest question: how many Billionaires have you had personal interactions with?
I work for a huge corporation and once in a blue moon I’m on an email thread or God help me an actual meeting with the CxOs. Doesn’t mean I know them in any real sense. But I mean… as well as you know bosses 3 levels up if you have to report on projects once in a while.
I am very politically active in my swing state. Some Billionares have been happy to spend a little face time with me. Doesn’t mean I know them at all – plus, these ones are either directly politicians, or supporters of specific politicians. But I know them as well as you might know the guy at the mall kiosk where you had to get your phone fixed like 4 times in 6 months.
In none of these interactions do I feel like I’m dealing with a different species.
I can’t think of any I’d want to take care of my children. About the only common thread is the type-A high-acheiver type. Which is very common in US corporate management culture across the board.
I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with a few legitimate billionaires but mostly just millionaires
Last one said Mamdani needs to be euthanized for wanting to tax him
To be honest sounds like you don’t know them well enough
Millionaires and billionaires are utterly different cats. Wage earners become millionaires all the time – save, invest wisely, yadda. I know many people in that category.
I know many people who’ve become millionaires and the vast majority are now apathetic collaborators who do not care about anything but their personal pleasure and permanent financial success
Some are still regular people who just have money, a few even do good things, but the vast majority are not like us anymore
There’s a good argument regarding the tolerance paradox, and why it’s ethically and morally justified to not tolerate extreme levels of unethical behaviors.
Tolerance and humanization are not the same thing. Understanding that terrible behaviors are human does not mean we must tolerate them.
There’s a difference between not tolerating and dehumanizing. You don’t need to dehumanize someone that you don’t tolerate the behavior of, and it’s also possible to dehumanize someone but tolerate their behavior.
They’re simply two different things. Slightly related maybe, but distinct.
Tolerance is tangential to humanization. You can be tolerant of a human. You can also be intolerant of a human.
I’ve come to view tolerance not as a default position, but rather as a contract which people are defaulted into, if you’re breaking it by refusing to be bound by it, you’re no longer protected by it either.
What they need isn’t to be caricaturized, it’s to be put on a guillotine.
Human or not doesn’t mean shit: evil is evil.
so if i become wealthy by winning the lottery then i should get my head chopped off? after all wealthy is wealthy and they are all evil. …
that is the dumbest take i’ve seen so far.
just because you get wealthy doesn’t mean you are evil. how this is hard to understand is beyond me. I’m about done with lemmy and this type of thinking. are there evil people? yes. but just doing a blanket statement is just showing a lack of judgement and piss poor logic.
Lol, go ahead and point me to a single example of a lottery winner being cited as one of the oppressive ‘elite’. And if you are able to actually fine one, my answer will be “yes, in fact, that would should have their head in a basket”. Having a mountain of cash dropped on you, vs exploiting a mountain of people to obtain mountains of cash are not the same thing. How this is hard to understand is beyond me.
I’m about done with lemmy and this type of thinking.
Yeah if you’re gonna come here and play damage control for evil people, you’re not gonna have a good time on Lemmy.
Read some of the comments in response to my comment. You will see people are including in lottery winners to this conversation. And no one said lottery winners weren’t part of the conversation. In fact what they were saying is all wealthy people. Let me say that again, all wealthy people.
And those comments sum it up nicely:
TL;DR: Share your wealth or get fucked, parasite
The message here being that it’s not inherently the wealth that’s the problem, but how that wealth is being used. If you land in that situation and immediately become some kind of Scrooge McDuck character: to the guillotine with you!
…but again, lottery winners are not the focus of the whole eat the rich mindset: if that’s an issue you think needs to be tackled, I’d direct your focus instead to lottery systems, not just the lottery winners. Focusing on things like lottery winners is a distraction from the insanely long list of higher priorities like the Musk and Bezos figures of the world. So why even bring it up unless that distraction is your goal?
I’m not necessarily agreeing with the head chopping part on a general basis, but consider this:
If you become wealthy (which is a nebulous term, but w/e) in this system you automatically gain power over the life of other people, while you yourself break free from being forced into laboring for others. You are not going to spend it all on consumables, so you will likely use it to pay other people to do stuff for you, that you either can’t be bothered to do yourself or are not skilled to do yourself. So you’ll be able to live off of the labor of others, less fortunate. You are extracting value from them, maybe even creating some kind of dependency through the power imbalance.
TL;DR: Share your wealth or get fucked, parasite ;)
(and no, extracting value for your personal benefit is not sharing)
E: So, it’s more of: do you have the means to free yourself from labor, while at the same time you exploit the people that don’t have that freedom, then your wealth becomes a problem and through your wealth you do become a problem for the working class.
I’m just going to respond to the tldr.
I’m very small reasonable percentage. But that’s for me to decide what is reasonable. Not anybody else. After that, I’m going to live a better life and yes, I’ll hire people on to do stuff that I don’t want to do or not capable of doing. And I’m going to travel the world and see things that a lot of people can’t do. I don’t have to share beyond that. So I guess I’ll just go get fucked, but hey, you know what I don’t give a shit. As long as a person is sharing a reasonable percentage of their income, that’s good enough. Telling a person to share so much that they can’t afford to pay other people to do the stuff they don’t want to do or aren’t capable of is in my opinion, just stupid. Tell me a person to share so much that they can no longer travel around the world and see nice things and live a better life in my opinion is just stupid.
I think the unfortunate truth is that many non-evil people would be just as evil if given the opportunity. Or to frame it slightly different: I believe that too much money and/or power is what turns most people evil over time.
Have you considered the possibility that only evil people are capable of acquiring that much power and wealth because that much power and wealth is only possible by evil means?
There’s science that backs this, but you don’t get that way without being a piece of shit beforehand.
That level of wealth power privilege does in fact damage your brain, everything precious about humanity drains out through your orders.
Next question is what happened that made one ‘a piece of shit beforehand’.
Yeah. There’s a lot of work to be done there, but once you’re a billionaire, you’re straight up not human anymore
If they would do evil given the chance, that makes them evil. It’s like a poorly forged piece of metal with a crack built in, that holds together until put to the test. The crack was always there.
There’s more angles to it of course - mistakes, temporary dispositions, etc.
From a philosophical perspective, I find it quite difficult to measure a person’s evilness objectively.
Assuming a person is born evil due to their genetic material, is it then actually their fault? Shouldn’t that be considered rather as a medical condition?
Assuming a person is not born evil, but they turned evil due to outer influencing factors (parents, society, economic situation, luck, bad luck…), is it then actually their fault? Or are the outer factors the ones to blame in such a case?
I agree to the ‘the crack was always there’ statement. But personally I think that all of us humans naturally have this crack. Given the right parameters, this crack can heal to a level where it’s barely notable. But under less optimal conditions I guess more or less every human can turn (be turned) into a monster.
In terms of billionaires my opinion is that a) we should implement measures to avoid them in the first place and b) find ways to take away their power.
But other than that I would prefer a way to heal their (often abnormal) crack and try to make them again valuable members of society again. Revenge and punishment (especially death penalty) should never be the focus of corrective measures, no matter the crime or misdemeanour.
It’s nearly universally learned behavior, and it’s just a metric of people’s disposition to act selfishly or malevolently versus selflessly and benevolently.
