True. When I was young I thought why don’t we use the military domestically. Yeah it doesn’t work.
It actually works really well, if your goal is fascism.
I think 12 may be too high. Most kids I’ve knew who acted like that were like 6.
I think you’re underestimating 12-year olds here.
Yeah I was thinking this sound alike my 4 year old
The group I play D&D with has three 12-year olds in it and I would put any of those kids in charge of this country over any of the current administration and those kids are morons.
i mean, i would put the liz truss cabbage in charge of the american government at this point
Makes too much sense. Is this guy CIA?
Since 2012 twelve year olds controlled the memes, also when an explosion of boomers joined social media. We’ve been letting the kids parents the adults for 13 years now.
the worst kind of 12yo is the one who want to change the world for the better but they’re fucking stupid so their well intensions end up serving the bad guys and screwing everybody else. the story of ukrainian NGOs - literally did the dirty job for oligarch and stayed in denial until the stink became biohazard.
the worst kind of 12yo is the one who want to change the world for the better
Ah, so you’ve never met one of those kids that just likes torturing animals for fun
I actually haven’t met these kinds of folks until later in life when I moved out to another city. I knew about this shit - Dnipropetrovsk maniacs was media shitshow and stuff but i had no folks like that in my immediate circle while growing up.
This concept could be an entire Lemmy community.
c/YeahButYoure12
build it. i will join.
When I was 12 I wanted to send the worst criminals to live in prisons in Somalia so that Somolies could have jobs and we would never have to see criminals…
And now there is a literal version of that idea from a 12 year old
Twelve year-old attitude, 2 year-old selfishness.
The worst part is: yes! Tons of studies come to that conclusion. Be it reading comprehension, lead poisoning, or the active dismantling of the US education system for the last eight decades, it’s all part of the same picture. But what can you do about it if the group of preteens is self governing and won’t see the problem?
This L take is something a 12yo would come up with…
To all those thinking this take is interesting or relevant: you are 12.
It’s a nation filled to the brim with children trapped in adult bodies.
This is not an opinion because I’m perpetually online. I go outside and they’re there too. Literally everywhere.
I was a shut-in before the 2024 Election. I figured social spaces there were somewhat immature because the mature people would have jobs and real life involvement. Then I started going outside, and I lost all hope. I’m too stupid for people to be this dumb. (Though I’ll admit, social media, algorithmic content, and the AI products probably made people dumber.)
It’s actually worse outside, which is why I am terminally online.
We already have a word for that phenomena, it’s called fascism
I don’t think I’ve ever read a description or definition of fascism where the population being immature is a thing.
What do you mean?
Everything I don’t like is fascism, the more I don’t like it the more fascism-er it is
The elements of fascism could be construed as a childish/immature perception of reality, where the performance/aesthetics of maturity (particularly as perceived by chauvinistic men) is paramount. The examples listed in this post speak to uniformed (i.e childish) views on power, masculinity, and justice. These topics, among others, are sticking points of every flavor of fascism.
I’m not necessarily saying that this means the american population is immature, but our current fascist regime utilizes these tropes (among other elements of american culture) in their rhetoric, propaganda, and policy decisions to influence the population in pursuit of fascist ends. Seeing fascism as immature/childish certainly has validity, but I think the OP fails to fully capture our current political context with this lens. It would be better to see the state of american politics through the perspective of a failing proto-fascist empire metastasizing into a full fledged fascist regime, informed and shaped by its own reactionary propaganda, of which a large amount appears childish upon first glance.
This lines up with what I’ve been shouting into the void whenever I read a news article. “Where are the fucking adults?!”
You just made me remember that book that came out in his first term reassuring everyone that there were “adults in the room” protecting us from certain doom.
What a crock of shit that turned out to be.
Eh, I think that his 2nd term kind of helps validate that view of his 1st. Because he was a political newbie, he allowed those around him to help make staffing decisions, so you got mostly run of the mill Republicans. Terrible, certainly, but not sycophants. That’s all out the window this time. Key positions are filled based solely on either fealty to the mad king or ✨campaign contributions✨ (bribes). Anyone who dares speak out gets the axe, and at least for now it’s a metaphorical one.
Second term has been so much worse than the first in that regard. I was just telling my co worker the other day that it’s funny how Trump’s first term, and especially his first year, was just him firing tons of people that he appointed, and in his second term he’s hardly fired anybody. It really sends the signal just how much Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants, yes-men, and puffers this time around.
I think that’s part of the reason why the moron feels emboldened to say and do some truthfully horrifying shit.
when you reach the milestone of adulthood and take a peek behind the veil of responsibility…
… maybe Larry Niven was right in Ringworld, Humanity’s only defining trait is not our intelligence, our compassion, or our strength of will, but simply the luck of the few.
Now that I think about it, the situation in the US really does play out like an unconscionable large version of Lord of the Flies.
This is pretty spot on.
Ralph was just trying to help organize and make everyone’s lives better. He was ignored and his life was threatened.
Simon, the insightful one, was trying to get people to see reason to quell their mania. He was murdered.
Piggy, the intelligent and compassionate one, was murdered.
Intelligent, compassionate, and a vessel for the author’s racist worldview.
Don’t mind me. I hate that book, and I hate that it’s taught in every school as if it has anything important to say. We’ve run the Lord of the Flies experiment, both accidentally and very intentionally. Every time, we’ve demonstrated that humans are better than that, and the author’s beliefs about human nature were both very incorrect and very racist.
I still resent being forced to debate my classmates about whether human nature was intrinsically “good” or “evil,” directly after reading that book, even though it was 25 years ago. I was the lone voice on the side of “good,” for lack of a “good and evil are subjective terms, but nonetheless humans are empathetic and this book is horseshit” team. I got dogpiled by 20 some other students for about 45 minutes. Fuck you Ms. Brown, and fuck you William Golding. That book has nothing important to say other than exposing its author’s racist insecurities.
Where in the book does it reveal racism?
When Piggy drops racial slurs in reference to the barbaric behavior of the other boys. Essentially, “We’re white! We’re better than this. Stop acting like [slur].”
Oh dang, I just read this book for the first time and did not catch that. I wonder if it was removed from my version… 🤔
I think its good that you had to read something you didn’t agree with in school. Look what its done for you.
Get over high school. Soon enough, you won’t remember Ms. Brown’s name.
My problem is not with reading something I disagree with, it’s how it is taught. It was not taught in a way to demonstrate bias, and the author’s views were never even discussed. There was nearly no critical discussion about the validity of the book’s message, it was taken at face value. That’s not teaching.
And its long in the past, my friend. But the more you reveal, the more foundational the experience sounds for you.
Step back. Look again. It helped make you who you are.Well, I’m glad you have a such a broad picture of my psychology from a one off Internet comment about an event that I hadn’t thought about in years. It didn’t make me who I am, the people I chose to spend time with and the excellent teachers that taught me did. Encouraging a lopsided debate about a topic where even discussing the racist bias isn’t allowed is not something that teacher did to help teach or form me.
You brought it up, friend. And you were pretty emphatic about it. Read what you wrote.
Seems good to me. Nurturing experiences are great, but conflict is frequently formative.
Stanford Prison Experiment. Slavery. Lynch mobs. Segregationists. Anti-Feminists. Prison-Industrial Complex. The majority of the country voting for the leader passing out signs that said “MASS DEPORTATIONS”. Maybe there’s some inherent cruelty to the mainland USA. Maybe there’s still too much lead particles in the air. As someone who has never left the mainland, I’ve seen overwhelming evidence to the “non-empathetic” side. Or, perhaps, the majority of people are passive, and cruelty is most capable of spurring people to action.
Stanford prison experiment was manipulative, it was not real science - look it up. The rest of the bad things you talk about are very real and an evidence of the evil side of humanity. That doesn’t mean there’s no good side, though.
I prefer to take a more The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street approach to the worst acts of humanity, is not that it comes from a place of evil, but instead a place of fear that a very small handful have used to manipulate those who wouldn’t commit these acts otherwise.
Just looked it up. I now see the guards were told to abuse the prisoners. Thank you for informing me. I was unaware.
The majority certainly doesn’t choose the active misery of others, and on the scale of the Lord of the Flies setting, humans have consistently shown collaboration and mutual aid. We’ve documented many instances of stranded groups, and even some people that volunteered to be stuck on a raft together for months, and they always choose to work together, despite their differences. Capitalism, fascism, and radical individualism/nationalism are the root of the societal scale evils, because they’re ideologies that propagate in the hands of the few that are willing to benefit at the cost of the many. Humans have not always lived under capitalism.
It’s possible that despite a “good” nature, humans still have a few, but very fatal flaws that cause them to keep electing the worst people. This is a key problem that makes every other characteristic irrevelanr.
I’ve always appreciated Douglas Adam’s take on this:
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Welp, vote for me! I can’t do worse!
The average person’s attitude is if they aren’t family, they are tools. It’s literaly ingrained in our culture.
“Mind your own business”, “It’s a dog eats dog world” etc.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a sham.
The broader point, though, is that the scenario of The Lord of the Flies has actually happened. We’ve had a small group of kids trapped on an island for an extended period of time and what happened is that they built a peaceful and harmonious society, which included spending time and resources caring for one of their number who broke their leg.
The island? Planet earth.
😁
In hindsight it’s kind of surprising that people wouldn’t expect most of the kids to work together to help eachother survive because that’s why humans created cities, towns, villages, etc… -well before education was universal.
usa is the whole world
It’s the same people throughout. The post is about the USA.
but “good” and “evil” are human constructs meaning they can’t be intrinsic to humans? That teacher was an idiot.
[edit] There is some irony in a teacher encouraging a whole class to gang up on one student regarding a subject related to lord of the flies, though.
I think humanity is really slowly being replaced by LLMs.
Presentation and simple, but stupid and wrong ideas, are preferred over actually researching and understanding situations, isolating the underlying issues and working on ways to resolve or at least lessen them.
Just like LLMs, fewer and fewer people seems to care about a deeper understanding, and more about if the stream of words look ‘good’.
