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0 pointscess110y ago0 comments

How do you explain the saying 'sharing is caring'? If you're correct and people inherently enjoy the exploitation of others, how could such a saying spontaneously develop and resonate with rather large groups?

And how did the feasts of large religions develop? Things like iftar, where you communally share lots of food with both people you know and strangers, including the impoverished and disadvantaged? There ought to be quite a bit of violence involved to make such practices palatable if you're correct about this.

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Kvakes0y ago

There is a great book called The Dawn of Everything (Graeber and Wengrow) that talks about how cultures like that existed, and we (the Western civilization) decimated them.

cess11OP0y ago

Graeber's Debt has similar themes in some places too.

paganel0y ago

Because that saying originated as a US bourgeois thing, people willing to liberate themselves from really caring for the other (much poorer) people living just besides them in exchange for writing some code. Just look at the streets of San Francisco, for example, not much sharing there.

And before someone mentioning that people like Torvalds and such other open-source luminaries are not technically Americans, they’re Americans in spirit, and by this point they’ve already got either US citizenship or a US green card, not to mention the hefty comps coming via US tech colossuses (either directly or indirectly).

As the original article mentions, the secret to all this tech non-sense is to log out and experience life, while always remembering that Uncle Ted was right.

keybored0y ago

> As the original article mentions, the secret to all this tech non-sense is to log out and experience life, while always remembering that Uncle Ted was right.

That you evoke Uncle Ted shows that this is a half-measure at best.

_Algernon_0y ago

Don't look at what people say, look at what they do. People like feeling virtuous, but rarely act that way unless they stand to gain from it.

i80and0y ago

My experience is that if people are in an environment where helping others is socially encouraged rather than punished, most people want to help even strangers providing no benefit to themselves other than the healthy little dopamine hit. There's exceptions of course, but not enough to actually cause a problem.

Unfortunately I find there's a lot of social pressure (at least in the US) telling people that if they help others they're a rube and a mark, or worse, so help isn't normalized.

_Algernon_0y ago

>My experience is that if people are in an environment where helping others is socially encouraged rather than punished, most people want to help even strangers providing no benefit to themselves other than the healthy little dopamine hit. There's exceptions of course, but not enough to actually cause a problem.

What they stand to gain in that situation is good standing in their peer group which is a personal gain. It's basically personal public relations management.

How often do people truly do something good without standing anything to gain? That is the true measure of innate human tendency to doing good. I'm sure there is some of that, but very little.

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cess11OP0y ago

Why does some states in the US punish generosity towards e.g. unhoused people if that's the case?

It's common for modern states to act violently to suppress empathy and generosity, and it's common to use the school system for the same purpose.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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Kvakes0y ago

There is a great book called The Dawn of Everything (Graeber and Wengrow) that talks about how cultures like that existed, and we (the Western civilization) decimated them.

cess11OP0y ago

Graeber's Debt has similar themes in some places too.

paganel0y ago

As the original article mentions, the secret to all this tech non-sense is to log out and experience life, while always remembering that Uncle Ted was right.

keybored0y ago

> As the original article mentions, the secret to all this tech non-sense is to log out and experience life, while always remembering that Uncle Ted was right.

That you evoke Uncle Ted shows that this is a half-measure at best.

_Algernon_0y ago

Don't look at what people say, look at what they do. People like feeling virtuous, but rarely act that way unless they stand to gain from it.

i80and0y ago

Unfortunately I find there's a lot of social pressure (at least in the US) telling people that if they help others they're a rube and a mark, or worse, so help isn't normalized.

_Algernon_0y ago

What they stand to gain in that situation is good standing in their peer group which is a personal gain. It's basically personal public relations management.

How often do people truly do something good without standing anything to gain? That is the true measure of innate human tendency to doing good. I'm sure there is some of that, but very little.

1 more reply

cess11OP0y ago

Why does some states in the US punish generosity towards e.g. unhoused people if that's the case?

It's common for modern states to act violently to suppress empathy and generosity, and it's common to use the school system for the same purpose.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse