Yeah, synesthesia counts!

Find a physical activity you enjoy and do it at least three times a week. Either join an organized religion or specifically curate a group of people you do a weekly activity with who will come check on you if you suddenly stop showing up.

I managed to get both these with sport teams. (At least in my area), the local sports competitions are actively looking for players, and if you have skills or enjoy a role others don’t, you can even just volunteer (instead of pay fees) in a few teams before joining one you like. And one foot in the door will likely get you invited to other teams and competitions when someone’s team needs a substitute player (or you can just ask, “Does anyone have a team that play on Thursday nights?”).

In my favorite team, I became de-facto captain of because I showed up most reliably and was the remaining member of the original team as people left and joined. One week I forgot to tell them I would be away for the match due to travel, and the next day I wake up to a couple of check-in messages just to make sure I haven’t vanished or had a bookshelf fall on me. And it’s a reassuring feeling to realize you’re part of a community that cares about each other.

An end result of liberalist idealism. (plus what others have said)

Celebrating on the 24th. It’s not even a long historical tradition in my own family or local culture, we adopted it after my grandparents celebrated a few Christmases with a Central European immigrant family in the neighborhood who start celebrating at midday 24th December and realized it enabled those of us who were married/etc to celebrate the next day with our other families. It’s much more relaxing like that, I’ve heard my friends complain after trying to fit in a breakfast, lunch and dinner at three different Christmas parties in one day to avoid offending anyone.

only a few hundred

Christmas music

There are a couple of songs I like, but honestly a lot of it is junk, which wouldn’t be too bad if they hadn’t already been playing in stalls for half a month.

The Grinch wears a top hat.

Normal is crazy, so it could be either. My shock when 🏴‍☠️ I realized that TV show episodes (not streaming) are generally 22 minutes for a half-hour slot - almost a third of TV is ads.

Large corporate offices often run VPNs in a similar way, anyone with a work-from-home laptop or phone generally has to log into a VPN to get internet/network access.

Simple non-inflammatory option?

People who litter.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve been outside and not seen plastic, cartons and dumped household items that had been tossed aside. This includes hiking and other activities away from cities.

Uh oh!

I’m surprised “propaganda” isn’t in the top spots.

This video on conservative influencers and set building comes to mind.

Or to frame it slightly different: I believe that too much money and/or power is what turns most people evil over time.

What are the mechanics of this?

Instead, I believe the means of acquiring money/power from those who have enough of it creates pressures (say, a newspaper sponsored by Coca-Cola is pressured into not reporting on Coca-Cola’s problems), along with the hyperrealities created by conventional rich lifestyles (mainly associating with other wealthy people, being used to paying people to do work instead of doing it yourself, all that kind of thing) distorting ones worldview and alienating them from most of society and its issues.

Inheritance is an interesting aspect: if my grandfather stole and passed it to my father who passed it to me, I can acquire it by doing nothing.

This is not a counter-argument - it highlights that doing nothing is complicity in injustice.

What are you talking about?

• The comment they are responding to says “Why do some people think dehumanizing anyone is fundamentally OK?” [I agree btw]

• They reply with an extreme example of “anyone”: literal flag-waving Nazis.

At no point are “all wealthy people” mentioned in that statement.

They’re human, and should be destroyed mercilessly by any means necessary. There’s no contradiction in recognizing the humanity of people who will unfortunately need to be killed to stop them killing the rest of us indiscriminately.

Dehumanization is pointless, and leads to dangerous misanalysis (like underestimating them). Honestly, it’s also just a cowardly coping mechanism to avoid the harsh realities behind the idealistic moral frameworks we’re brought up with.

Because everyone here already knows that other recent US presidents like Bush and Trump were horrible. But many people mistakenly believe Obama was a morally good president simply because they’re the best of a bad bunch. It’s important to understand that even Obama presided over large-scale, avoidable atrocities.

The problem I have with it is that we didn’t get rid of kings.

Moreso that we replaced kings with a new form of ownership, and therefore new owners. And, in every era, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas - the idea of the divine right of kings seems to have been replaced with the divine right to profit, and to use “earned” money however one wants, with no regard for society.

I know others have already replied with counterarguments, but as a simple partial counterpoint, the fact that everyone alive are decedents of those who survived the hunter-gatherer stages of their society, for a long long time, is evidence that we’re generally capable of learning to be caring, smart and sane, it’s not some utopian advanced stage beyond our grasp. Prior to our technological developments like food preservation, individualistic societies were not viable.

• The most meaningful reforms, like large-scale climate action, won’t happen until citizens present a credible threat to the owning class’s dominance, making reform the appealing compromise.
• The owning class, at least a large section of it, along with loyal reactionaries will wage violent open war before ceding power leftward. They have the option to decide if a peaceful road forward exists, and historically, then tend to mass murder citizens instead.

What’s your most cynical opinion about the world?

The Earth will, eventually, long after we’re all gone, be incinerated by the sun. If life co-exists elsewhere in the universe, I suspect it will be too distant to have much impact on us nor them. So I believe that humanity will inevitably have no meaningful legacy in the long term. And I also believe there is no objective meaning to existence, it’s just a neat little quirk of chaos.

That doesn’t imply I think nothing is meaningful, it doesn’t take long to notice I care deeply about people and what we do. But, ultimately, meaning is temporary and subjective. (I haven’t explored much of formal philosophy but I’ve heard my perspective aligns with absurdism or existentialism)

edit: I didn’t realize this isn’t actually cynicism (a prudent distrust), but more nihlism (a distrust upon belief in meaning)