[CuckooTuli]

This thread is everything I love about G.net. I wish more of my IRL friends thought like you guys.

Which makes me think, really. Most of them are on the same page, but think I take certain things "too far/too seriously" (a recent example would be a Facebook argument in which people were making LOL-ful conversation about the hilarity of dwarf-tossing and how they should be dressed up like little gnomes and jesters, that had me fucking raging and staring crazily at the monitor with one eye by the end. What depressed me most was that every single one of the people involved would have come down on a comparably racist or homophobic comment like a tonne of bricks. Yet because they don't know any dwarves or disabled folk, it's totally cool to dehumanise them, just as long as it's COMPLETELY HILARIOUS).

I guess it feeds back to Ashley's rant (which was just beautiful, btw). It genuinely does not compute for many that the people outside of their narrow experience are REAL PEOPLE, with lives and thoughts and feelings as sensitive as their own. The whole "well you live in a first world country so why are you so pissed off?" basically suggests you're an idiot for not simply thinking "rather them than me" then forgetting all about it and going off to revel in your good fortune.

The whole 'legal = moral' mindset is a huge enabler here: for instance, my dad, who had enough money to take his pension and go full expat to avoid getting taxed UK rates on it, genuinely believes himself morally superior to those who avoid tax illegally. You cannot convince him that the only difference between him & them is more money, because what's he's done is legal, and in his mind, that's all there is to it. Somewhat like those people AshleyO is talking about, there's an unconscious assumption at play here - that 'if that's what the law says then it must be that way for a reason'. Few people would admit to believing this, yet it's an attitude that defenders of the status quo betray again and again, in my experience.

The thing that really gets me down isn't so much the system itself. Brutal and horrifying as it often is, I can understand that those at the top are benefitting from it; OF COURSE they don't want it to change. I get that. I might abhor it, but I get it. It isn't even the thoughtless complicity of many IN the system, that mixes blind self-interest with casual lack of empathy. Most of all, it's the fact that you can fucking EXPLAIN to otherwise intelligent, caring people about X issue and why their take on it is dehumanising and shitty towards others, and have them turn round and argue that you're taking shit too seriously for getting genuinely angry about something that doesn't affect you personally.