16 Comments
Oct 8Liked by Lidija P Nagulov

Excellent. Very well expressed analysis of why we can view other people's (and animals, too) suffering as inconsequential. Also an interesting point about your son.

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Apparently it’s really easy for us to make hierarchies and assign value based on those… you know, like lobsters 😅

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Oct 8Liked by Lidija P Nagulov

So I’m accused of “othering” lobsters by refusing to kill and eat them because of their genetic proximity to roaches?

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Hahaha no, that was a stab at Jordan Peterson. If you don’t know about his lobster theory you are honestly better off.

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Oct 8Liked by Lidija P Nagulov

I’m SO well off and planning to stay that way.

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author

Wise!!! ❤️

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My country of Denmark locked down for covid19 to prolong the lives of about 20K geriatrics for a few months, at a cost of an estimated 80 billion USD. It helped. We did well. We also tested better than anyone. And we could afford it.

You know what we could also have done with that money? Saved 21 million people from malaria via givewell.org — predominantly children.

This was not considered. You see, those people were born and live outside our borders. Their worth is less than ours by several orders of magnitude.

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That’s it exactly. The question ‘why do you CARE so much?!?’ drives me into apoplectic fits. The amount of needless misery we could alleviate if we cared just a fraction more is mindblowing. But instead we send bombs to Israel. I can’t make it make sense.

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Oct 9Liked by Lidija P Nagulov

The trend of zombie movies has been concerning for me, they all look like dehumanizations practice to be applied to marginal people later.

Imagine my lack of surprise when the new rage bait storylines include calling drug addicted and homeless people zombies.

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Yes this is spot on. It’s the same type of presentation, right? Emaciated hungry figures reaching for a scrap of what you have. There was a great treatise on how zombies and vampires were sort of meant to represent communists and capitalists respectively, and it doesn’t track 100% but it is certainly extremely interesting to see which story archetypes rise in which era, and to wonder why is that particular thing a sublimation of our current collective fears.

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Nobody ever appreciates how the fictional villains at least have a plan!

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Right? But seriously, when someone reframed Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze as fighting to stop climate change and protect biodiversity (which, like, objectively are their stated goals) and Batman basically fights them with the power of Being A Billionaire and not having to abide by the same laws as regular people….. like……….. wait a minute??

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Oct 9Liked by Lidija P Nagulov

Yes the art of sefl deception - all attacks are reframed as self defence.

The story of every nation is how it overcome its enemies , the nation state only defends, it never attacks.

The individual citizens must believe this without question or else they lose their national identity.

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This is it 100%. Why we have to build our national identity on claims of superiority is the only part I will never understand.

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The older you get, the more people’s delusions, insanity, greed, callousness and selfishness become apparent.

I’ve taken to studying irrationality, behavioral psychology cognitive biases, sociology, anthropology, and various sciences in an attempt to stay sane. It helps, but by God, people remain maddening.

A year ago my mind was blown in the biggest way about the biggest imaginable topic. Since then I stopped working and study full-time (and also began blogging about it on substack).

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A great breakdown of how the system conditions us to view others and gets us to support their justification for waging war against those particular 'enemy countries'.

And you're absolutely right on how the US establishment and military influence Hollywood movies' scripts. In those movies, the evil forces with their destructive plans are never the US or Western states and their militaries.

We need to challenge our previously-held notions that we've been conditioned with about these 'Other Places'.

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