I’d like to start a series seeking viewpoints from across the political spectrum in general discussions about modern society and where everyone stands on what is not working, what is working, and where we see things going in the future.
Please answer in good-faith and if you don’t consider yourself conservative or “to the right”, please reserve top-level discussion for those folks so it reaches the “right” folks haha.
Please don’t downvote respectful content that is merely contrary to your political sensibillities, lets have actual discourse and learn more about each other and our respective viewpoints.
Will be doing other sides soon but lets start with this and see where it takes us.
Multiple conflicting definitions for “Conservative”, for 1 thing…
WHEN you tolerate the:
- moneyarchists
- legalists
- class-position worshippers / monarchists
- authority-worshippers
to claim that they define conservatism,
& us who’re committed to conserving
- G-D given LivingValidity
- G-D given LivingWorth
- G-D given LivingPotential
- G-D offered LivingOpportunity
… people are therefore defined to be not “conservative”…
then the framing has been highjacked.
Integrity-conservatives are conservatives.
LivingPotential conservatives are conservatives, who’re interested in competent education for all, instead of accommodating the obliteration of LivingPotential through shit “education”…
LivingOpportunity conservatives are conservatives, who want wastefulness-of-LivingOpportunity to be eradicated, so that we can be inhabiting it, instead of allowint it to be eradicated/wasted…
etc.
I’d begin with the correct qualification of the version of “conservative” that a person is claiming.
Corrupt privilege-conservatives ought be called such, & not let get-away-with claiming that the’re the rightful definers of “conservative”.
This should go for all “conservative” & “liberal” identifications:
Let people claim whatever variant they want, and then enforce accountability through matching their actual-behavior against their claims, with indestructible public accountability.
_ /\ _
Theres no set conservative meaning. At this point, its anyone who disagrees with the left. Trying to make it into one big group is almost futile.
“Conservative”, “right”, “left”, are meaningless, political relevative terms we should stop using. Instead, we should just describe our values on a select major view points, including power, economy, and social structure.
While I agree and disagree with you, I don’t think the terms will stop being used anytime soon.
People like putting themselves into groups based on shared ideas and values. While the terms still allow people to do that, they will be used.
Hi there, I’d like to share my viewpoint.
(let me say up first that I’m not a conservative, not in the US, but still try to give good-faith understandings)
So I think a major pain point for conservatives in the US is that the traditional lifestyle (being a farmer, traditional family, …) are harder to uptain today than they were in the past.
Another issue is that conservatives don’t like that their children are being taught non-conservatives viewpoints in schools. Consider: how would you like it if your children are required to go to school by law, but then the schools don’t teach them “your” way of life, but a totally different one. It makes you angry.
People demonize both sides of the political spectrum. But the left is absolutely has this issue a lot more making conservatives out to be the most comically evil people.
Have you seen Alex Jones? You are on Lemmy, so you’re going to find a lot more demonisation of the right on here, than say Truth Social. Go over there and you’ll find plenty of posts about lefties eating babies and Biden draining the blood of the young to sustain his life
Man I wish the right would demonize us for our political positions instead. That would be so much less stressful.
Well, we’ve become so tolerant, we’ve forgotten that somethings are just not good, and it’s become taboo to talk about certain things.
Certain ideologies are just not compatible with western culture, specifically those who condone raping women and murdering lgbtq people. Ideologies are not races or ethnicity, they are not inherent to you like race is. Nazis are an ideology, so why give other ideologies a pass?
Furthermore, immigration hurts the average worker. A person born into a poorer country will usually work for less than a person born into a richer country. Immigrants are basically scabs, cheap abusable labor, and that’s why we let in millions into western countries.
Canadians can’t buy a house, the UK can’t get a doctors appointment, Germany elected the nazis in, Italy came close to electing fascists, Sweden is the rape capitol of Europe, and America is close to electing Trump again, wages are down every where, purchasing power is down, everything is fucked.
We’ve let in so many in the name of tolerance it causes problems that we aren’t even allowed to discuss, and it’s destroying our countries.
Certain ideologies are just not compatible with western culture, specifically those who condone raping women and murdering lgbtq people. Ideologies are not races or ethnicity, they are not inherent to you like race is. Nazis are an ideology, so why give other ideologies a pass?
I don’t think anyone is giving them a pass?
Furthermore, immigration hurts the average worker. A person born into a poorer country will usually work for less than a person born into a richer country. Immigrants are basically scabs, cheap abusable labor, and that’s why we let in millions into western countries.
Just not true, according to the data we have, a vast majority of workers are better off with immigration.
The only group which is hurt by it is people without high school diploma, which is bad, but the increased productivity and tax revenue could also easily be used to help those people.
Canadians can’t buy a house, the UK can’t get a doctors appointment.
How are these things caused by tolerance? The first one is a runaway unregulated housing market, and the second one is caused by austerity.
Sweden is the rape capitol of Europe
Just not true due to a huge variety of factors I am too lazy to explain right now.
America is close to electing Trump again, wages are down every where, purchasing power is down, everything is fucked.
Again, how is this caused by being tolerant of minorities?
We’ve let in so many in the name of tolerance it causes problems that we aren’t even allowed to discuss, and it’s destroying our countries.
“When I said that gay people are driving the wages down at Thanksgiving my family looked at me weird.”
I don’t think anyone is giving them a pass?
In France the left has the following explanation most of the time: “he doesn’t have our cultural reference and doesn’t know it’s bad,” or “he’s psychologically disturbed and therefore not his fault so no prison.”
“he doesn’t have our cultural reference and doesn’t know it’s bad,”
I guess I’ve seen people say this? But it’s not really the common way of thinking in most progressive spaces. Can’t really say for France specifically though, I guess.
“he’s psychologically disturbed and therefore not his fault so no prison.”
In these cases people are usually put on involuntary psych holds, and reassessed over time, as far as I know?
Either way, not really getting off scott-free.
I don’t think anyone is giving them a pass?
Theyre giving them a pass to enter the country.
Sounds less like immigration hurts and more that lack of proper support networks and lack of regulation of capitalism is causing problems.
What’s the point of having a “free market” if you only want it free in the one way you prefer, and refuse to allow any other?
The invisible hand of the market is not all powerful, which is why regulation and safeguards are needed for a “free” market to function. Anti-monopoly laws, labor laws, etc. I lean libertarian, but do not embrace 100% laissez-faire economics. Immigration falls under this same framework.
The West has eliminated their manufacturing and blue collar base by outsourcing it overseas, which hurt large swaths of the working class. Outsourcing labor by importing labor from overseas to do the job cheaper here has similar results. See the agricultural sector in the US for this example. Everyone always says that the reason immigrants are needed is because Americans don’t want to do those jobs, but leave out “for the wages paid”.
Some regulation is needed, and we have had wholesale failure of meaningful regulation and complete regulatory capture by the oligarchy which started under Reagan and snowballed out of control since. Proper support networks and social safety nets have also failed, for the same reasons. Unrestricted immigration does not solve these issues, and with these holes in place does indeed hurt.
Things that aren’t a problem when everything is healthy and working as intended can definitely hurt when things aren’t healthy. Obviously the “health issues” need to be addressed to actually fix the problem, but ignoring symptoms while doing so doesn’t help.
Do you know what a union is? How about strikes and scabs? Immigrants are effectively scabs that dont know any better.
I agree with most points except immigration since the workers compete in the same global economy except corporation get to pick the workers and laws ala cart while workers get stuck where they are born with huge hurdles to change that.
Their entire point is about immigration.
They went out of there way to say “not race or ethnicity” so I guess I feel that should separate out normal immigration rhetoric in my mind.
If taken in good faith
It was all immigration. Sone ideologies should not immigrate.
Oh I guess the fact that ideology is not innate and change change just makes that a mitigatable issue to me.
Do you really that the majority of them are going to just forget their ideologies?
It depends on how the immigration process works. Assimilation is a very real thing
Certain ideologies are just not compatible with western culture, specifically those who condone raping women and murdering lgbtq people.
I hear this argument a decent amount, but have never heard it actually expressed - only held up as a straw man argument on immigration issues.
None of us wants shitheads around. Some of us just want to give everyone a chance to prove whether they’re a shithead or not, before deciding whether they can immigrate.
There’s a flip side to this too. First world countries that are completely opposed to immigration are starting to see a significant population decline which will come with a whole host of other problems.
And in the US at least it’s actually extremely difficult to immigrate through legal means. You have to be a qualified professional and generally have to be sponsored by an employer to get a green card, or have family members that are citizens. The main issue is people that abuse loop holes to get into the country without going through the immigration process. And I agree, that’s a problem that needs to be solved. It really does a disservice to the hard working immigrants that work their ass off to become US citizens/permanent residents the legal way.
You are correct, as quality of life increases overall fertility rates decrease. That does need to be solved, and immigration is part of that solution. Unlimited/unregulated immigration is not.
Difficulty with legal immigration is generally the case for almost every first world country, the US is not abnormal or exclusive there. I do not meet qualifications to immigrate to Canada, or anywhere in Europe right now even as a tech sector worker, except possibly by having family history through my ancestors. I am not arguing that US immigration policy needs a lot of work, but it’s not fair how much the US gets singled out for it as if it’s the outlier here.
But why does a fertility-rate decrease “need to be solved”? Obviously if it’s in absolute free fall that’s going to cause short-term problems, but the underlying reality is that our planet is overstressed with 8 billion humans and counting. Personally I just do not get this anxiety about fertility rates, it seems so disconnected from reality.
It only needs to be solved if the country is going to survive, so if that doesn’t matter then it doesn’t. There will be knock on results from that, because countries usually fall a grade or two when they fail, and with decreased affluence the number of children will increase again.
The reality is that if you do not have at least a replacement rate, retirement and social safety nets will fail as they become overwhelmed which leads to social unrest and upheaval. Immigration can help, but this comes with its own trade-offs. 8 billion people is also nowhere near an overstressor for the planet if fossil fuels and pollutants can be curbed, and even dropping the numbers of humans substantially will not help with unfettered greed continues to drive dirty industrialization
quality of life increases overall fertility rates decrease
Look at Elon Musk, Boris Johnson, or a whole host of incredibly wealthy people with stupid amounts of children. Quality of life increase is also linked to higher economic power. This is linked to higher human capital investments, meaning that it’s now disproportionately more expensive to raise a child to be successful in the new economy with the higher quality of life. Quality of life increase generally correlates to life being disproportionately more expensive.
Solve the cost of raising children and you solve fertility rates
First world countries that are completely opposed to immigration are starting to see a significant population decline which will come with a whole host of other problems.
I think the benefits, like less enviromental impact, outweigh the problems of lower population.
You’re not going to find these kind of conservatives on Lemmy.
You’d be surprised
Please answer in good-faith
Lol, good luck with that.
You do realize that you are not answering in good faith, nor providing anything to this thread with this comment? You’re being one of the people you’re complaining about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“calling me out is just as bad as my bad faith arguments”
-literally you.
Get fucked you piece of garbage
I consider myself a centrist libertarian but I often feel like the most conservative one in the room around here. I think America needs electoral reform to allow more viable parties - having no viable alternatives is terrible for voters and leaves them few options if lunatics take over their party. It’s too easy for special interests (mostly industry groups) to use the government to obtain special benefits or protection from competition for themselves, with the costs widely spread across society, making it difficult to organize opposition to them. This should be someone’s (or a handful of someones’) job! An ombudsman or small panel of them, something like that. The government should not be paying off or guaranteeing student loans when people decide to study things that don’t lead to careers. If someone wants to get a grad degree in rich people’s hobbies or political activism that’s their first amendment right but it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars. We need at least a plan to allocate limited resources including but not limited to road capacity, ideally with markets. Everyone sitting in traffic and suffering is not a good solution.
Can you define conservative?
I am right-leaning and voted republican until Obama. My beliefs haven’t changed, but as the tea party took over, the parties shifted, and now my vote is typically for a conservative democrat, as the republican party strays farther and farther right.
Hey congratulations you just discovered what an Overton window is.
I’d say something to embarrass you further, but your comment history makes that unnecessary.
Idk if anyone can define conservative at this point.
If I was being generous I would define conservatives as people who are in favour of less regulation, less social support systems, more privatization, anti-legalization/decriminalization of drugs.
We should probably include abortion and immigration as well. The problem I see is, 30 years ago conservatism was a big tent, and it’s devolved to “my way or the highway.” Party capture through first-past-the-post has allowed that to stick. “I don’t like that” has replaced “can we afford that.”
I was called “extremely right wing” the other day by a tankie, so I guess I can technically answer:
- Politicians pushing regressive legislation and talking points, instead of just letting people be who they are
- Conservatives who have no interest in conserving anything
- Extreme and growing wealth gaps
- Money in politics
- They never renewed Firefly
- They renewed Star Wars
- Fascists allowed to walk around unpunched
…yeah, as you can probably guess, I don’t exactly consider myself a conservative. You need to define what you consider centrist in this context.
Can I say I’m a single issue voter on Firefly?
Honestly, based on the stories I’ve heard about Joss Whedon, I’m not too sad about Firefly anymore.
Edit: I’m surprised this comment is so controversial, given how Joss made one of the writers on Firefly cry twice during a meeting and thought it was funny.
The truth is that nobody ever really cared about anyone else, but social norms kept people in line and slow communications made it hard to organize. The internet taught everyone that they’re always right, and it’s ok to argue about anything and everything with as mich vitriol as one could muster. It also allowed the worst among us to organize and communicate easily. COVID showed us how much people truly don’t give a shit about almost everything until it’s truly a disaster for them personally.
The truth is that nobody ever really cared about anyone else
That is not true. I care about people. Please don’t make overly generalizations like that. It’s not fair.
We have a duty to limit oppression of people whereever they maybe. “Culture” is no excuse to justify it. The “sovereignty” of a tin pot dictator doesn’t justify it. War is worse then hell, because hell doesn’t have innocents in it to suffer. It is the last option after all else has failed, but it is an option and better than allowing liberty to be snuffed out.
Lemmy’s loudest seem to believe me thinking the “democratic” part of “democratic socialism” is pretty important makes me a conservative. So here’s my “manifesto” for what needs to change in this country, not even to fix our problems but to give us the tools we’ll need to finally finish cleaning up this inherited mess that’s been made in this land for over 400 years now.
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Abolish the independent executive, inherently the body will become a parasitic leach upon the powers and responsibilities of the legislature until we get Caesar types running for the office just for the immunity to prosecution. Rome reserved that much power entrusted to a single person for ABSOLUTE EMERGENCIES for a reason, and the only two men in US history I think have ever actually needed that level of power were Lincoln and FDR.
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Delegate the responsibilities of government to a vastly expanded parliamentary house
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Delegate the responsibilities of state to a vastly expanded senate (still equal number of senators it’s just now you elect a handful at a time every two years instead of one every two or four)
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Multi-Seat STAR voting to fill the house and senate, every election will see every voting district/state send a delegation which roughly reflects the political cross section in each district and state, even Wyoming would send at least one democrat, and that fact that everyone would have at least one senator or representative who they feel validates their issues and concerns and hears their position will I think let a significant amount of steam off the building frustrations people have with their government. Plus these vastly expanded bodies will naturally end up being host to more people who previously had been kept out of the halls of power, more accessibility in terms of women, PoC, and Queer folks getting into office sure, but also, people who aren’t any of those things, but who also have been kept out of the discussion because they’re too poor to meaningfully challenge the established incumbents. It’ll also make lobbying WAAAY harder since you have to spread a massive amount of dough to make any differences at such a grand scale.
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Replace the current circuit system of the federal court with a sortitionate system that draws the judges randomly from across the entire pool of federal judges to try cases with federal jurisdiction. Court stacking and jurisdiction shopping both are too easy at present and both wildly undermine the idea of blind justice, so let the lawyers focus on putting a case together that can win in front of any judge instead of just choosing the judge that’ll say yes to them.
Again, none of this will fix all our problems, it won’t fix anything except our inability to get out of our own way when trying to solve the problems we face as a country, but goddamn is even that much desperately needed in this land made for you and me.
Wrong post mate. You’re very far from conservative. And you know it.
It was a joke about the very far tilted overton window is on this network, but genuinely I don’t believe someone who truly is that fabled principalled conservative we keep hearing about would find any objection to my points.
Giving the Senate the president’s power of Veto and expanding it by itself is a significant investment into the powers of the states in opposition to the powers of the populace as a whole.
Turning supreme court cases into sortitioned bench trials all but nullifies the direct impact of court packing, significantly curbing the inclination towards appointing activist judges.
Expanding the house by as much as I imagine all but guarantees that conservative voices that have traditionally gone unheard will at least have easy access to at least one representative who they can feel confident is going to listen to their concerns.
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American society is too individualistic and needs a greater focus on family, including multigenerational households.
Is this a conservative view? I am in the US and here they are more about individualism and bootstraps.
But yes. I would like a broader definition of family but think people living with other people are almost always better off than people living alone. So much better off. More hands make lighter work, and economy of scale.
It is a conservative view, but not the only conservative view. Different people try to go serve different things.
Need less work hours and more third places.
I want more pubs, working men’s clubs, sports teams, hobby clubs etc.
The biggest problem by far in my opinion is the “political correctness” and the one-sided discussions. Everyone just wants to circle jerk in their own bubble. Be it left or be it right. Both have the same problem and both keep banning the other and escaping to new social media bubbles in the process (e.g., truth-social).
Lemmy tends to be rather left-wing, at least most mods are. I tend to be a bit more right. I’m not racist, not against lgbtq and not insulting anyone personally. Yet, whenever it’s about politics, I have to be very careful how I voice my opinion because the moment I’m disagreeing with any of the mods on the slightest, most irrelevant neuance, I’m being banned or the comment deleted. Everyone is just immediately judgy if you don’t say it exactly as you mean it. This is really hard and annoying for me as a non-native speaker. This has not always been like this eventhough my views haven’t changed at all. It’s getting more extreme recently and I’m getting tired of it almost to the point of leaving Lemmy. We’re seing new social medias like truth-social form for that exact reason. And this kills the internet and it kills political discourse!
The solution: hear EVERYONE out. EVERYONE. Only remove obvious bots and propandists from certain countries from the equation. You can easily filter these two out by just looking at their profile history. You’re allowed to downvote (that’s what the button is for). You can reply. If you feel insulted, tell them or insult back. Don’t be a man-baby and bitch about everything you disagree and stand your ground! If you don’t want anyone to radicalize, this is the only solution. We need every spectrum here. Everyone except for the bots!
Lemmy in particular seems to have a high percentage of reasonable people. As in people who can be reasoned with, but might just be stuck in a ideological rabbit hole. I’ve found that by dropping hostility and acknowledging common ground I can quickly turn an argument into a productive discussion, where both sides learn something. This happens with people who are on the left or right of myself. So it’d be shame to overly ban one side and lose that.
It equally must suck for the mods, because I’ve seen some very very vitriolic comments here, again, on both sides. Removing these comments helps cool people’s heads, but unequal enforcement may be an issue. I’m also generally against censorship, I just absolutely hate the platform when some stupid toxic divisive topic/meme gets posted everywhere for like a month. I really don’t know where I stand on removing comments or banning people, seems like a fine line to walk
Yeah, the question “when to ban something” is indeed a tricky one.
I propose that all good-faith arguments must be allowed, no matter whether they advocate for sovjet communism (so called tankies) or ultra-liberal capitalism or what.ever.
The only reason to ban something is if it’s personally insulting (e.g. non-sarcastic name-calling) or having the direct intention to hurt someone.
I very much agree with you that people need to grow thicker skin and learn to listen. This entire ban thing is causing pillarization and polarization in society. Unless that tide turns, I see that ending in a civil war, all will lose.
However, that thicker skin goes for both sides. Whenever I’m in a more conservative area of the net, I quite quickly get banned for having the wrong opinions. I’m sure the left side started this easybanning but the right side has caught up there.
Also what is not helping is tht the conservative part of US politics has been taken over by actual extremists, in large part helped by polarizing “news” sources like Fox and oan and the such. These sources have shit to do with news and merely exist to rile their base and make people more resentful of “the left” or whatever that it supposed to be.
Now you have trump in there as well, he just had a nice public talk with a guy who wants to stone gays to death… What am I even supposed to do with THAT?
How is anyone supposed to have a normal conversation anymore when everyone immediately jumps to extremes?
Yeah, jumping to extremes is indeed a problem for serious, honest discussions.
IMO there’s just too much money that “news” sources make by being polarizing. They know it increases their view-counts. And to them, that’s all that matters.
I think we need neutral, neutrally-financed news sources. Question is just, how do we organize that?
What is your opinion about “woke”?
I’m hearing this everywhere but honestly I have no idea what that actually means. I’m from Europe.
I’m from Europe
This makes sense because you imply that political correctness is bad. But in the US a disturbing pattern has emerged that the racists and bigots complain that when they’re called out for their views, it’s because of too much “political correctness’”. It’s hard to fight for someone’s right to speak and engage with equal weight when all they’re doing is spewing hateful bigotry.
I’ve seen this mentality quite a lot online, and amongst a few of my friends, and I strongly disagree. One of the best things about the Internet is that anyone is free to create their own space and treat it however they want. The Fediverse is a natural extension of that idea, allowing anyone to make their own website and federate it into the larger community. But the community should be allowed to reject people. I wouldn’t tolerate someone who walked into my house and started arguing with me.
The community will naturally form spaces that are open to discussion, but I don’t think that should be forced. If the larger community agrees that there should be no outside discussion and you disagree with that, find a different community or make your own. Not all spaces are meant for everyone and that should be fine.
I recognize that larger communities build traction, but that can be disrupted (see Reddit / Lemmy & Twitter / Mastodon). I don’t think people will radicalize just because they push out people who they don’t want in their online spaces, especially since the Internet is so widely connected through federation, screenshots, link sharing, and even telling stories.
I don’t want to say that you’re not allowed to have your opinions and feel displeasure with the way Lemmy is moving, but I do want you to know that you can create your own community, either through your own hosted server or through a server that shares your worldview. The Fediverse is larger than lemmy.world and it’s up to you to find a place that you feel comfortable and accepted.
The community will naturally form spaces that are open to discussion.
I wouldn’t tolerate someone who walked into my house and started arguing with me.
These two things are inherently contrary.
The way Lemmy is built, with treads and text based, it should be a forum where people discuss different topics. The problem is, it’s not. Everyone just wants to circle-jerk but says they are open for discussion. But they are not. People go the way of least resistance and nobody wants to truely argue.
This is the way it is right now and I don’t see how it will change in the future unless people start accepting some level of toxicity and get out of their comforty zone.
That is my opinion at least. I’m glad I’m not banned for this yet. And I’m glad that people respond and upvote and downvote. I actually enjoy getting the downvotes too because it means people read it and reflect on it. This is the way it should be. Talk, be heard, vote, respond, accept.
You can have multiple spaces in a community. Some for discussion, some not for discussion. You can also have different communities, some that allow discussion and some that don’t. To expand on the house analogy, if someone walked into a Star Wars themed bar with a shirt reading “Star Trek is the superior sci-fi show” and people got mad and tried to force the Star Trek to leave, they would be justified. That example is overly dramatic, but there are spaces online and offline where people want to enjoy or discuss a thing and should not have to be subjected to people who disagree with them. If some wants discussion, they can create a new space and advertise that space as friendly and open to discussion.
This post is a perfect example of being a space open to discussion. The OP wanted discussion and so people come in with that mindset. But if the OP said “What’s everyone favorite fruit?” and someone commented saying “I hate fruit”, that comment would not be appropriate for the post. It would be off topic and inflammatory and likely be cleaned up (removed) by a moderator. I know people believe that moderators can overreach, but those spaces belong to the moderators. If you don’t like how they police a community, find or make a new community.
I don’t think we should have to accept toxic behavior or content on facilitate discussions.
Perhaps the problem is that many folks are quick to label anything they don’t immediately understand or agree with as toxic, and if that’s what you mean I agree we need less of that.
That’s what I mean.
Sometimes people say somewhat radical things that aren’t meant to be toxic but come off as toxic. If we could just replace all of that biased political hate in the discussions with curiosity for the other’s opinion, then the internet would be such a great place.
I suppose I’m conservative according to lemmy, (I’m also not great at internet arguments, but do like conversation, so let’s keep this nice.) Also, I’m not an expert, but I’d like to get the ball rolling here.
In my opinion, I think modern society is just more disrespectful. Social media makes the “shock and awe” approach the way to go to get views and get heard. Everyone is just pursuing their own “mic drop” moment. There’s just so much noise.
So to get heard and stand out you have to get more extreme and entrench in your own views.
So how do we fix it?
In my mind, respect comes from better parenting. More time off from work for people does not necessarily mean more time with their own kids, but it certainly can’t hurt. So maybe a reduction in the normal working week from 40 hours to maybe 35 would make a difference.
I’m not sure how we could make incentives to have people be better parents.
It’s a fair point. I don’t know if I could say I put all the blame on bad parenting, but I do think absence of parents (or, maybe, absence of parental attention) is definitely a thing that stunts kids emotionally for a number of reasons (including overexposure to social media).
I think the incentive to be a better parent is already there for most people; humans are pretty well hardwired to want to look after our offspring. But it’s being drowned out by multiple other incentives to spend time elsewhere, or risk falling into trouble - financial, social, whatever. It’s going to take more than an hour off from work a day to ease the incredible anxiety we’re filled with to focus on working more/harder.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I have all the answers either, but I think it’s going to take a multi-pronged approach.
So what do you make of my experience? For background, I used to live in an apartment in an otherwise-wealthy and desirable neighborhood, and worked at a grocery store. Within several blocks of me, there were three different well-to-do families that adopted daughters as infants from troubled backgrounds, probably with drug-abusing birth mothers.
One daughter worked at the same store I did. She regularly called in, or otherwise didn’t show up for work. Her diet was atrocious, she was always fighting with certain other employees, and eventually got fired for swiping her employee badge to get the discount for any cute guy who’d talk to her. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, or the most ambitious. Her sisters, though, were star students, and went on to attend Ivy League schools, and got high-powered jobs.
The 19-year-old daughter of another family moved into the apartment across the hall from me. Her parents paid the rent, because she would fight with her mother constantly at home. She couldn’t keep a job, even at the co-op across the street (absenteeism, again). She kept a string of pets that she couldn’t take care of, eventually a rabbit that she tortured by leaving alone for several days at a time while she was staying with her 50-something boyfriend. One time, she met a homeless man, and let him move into the apartment she wasn’t using (without informing our landlord). While she lived there, I had a chronic problem with small flies in my apartment, no matter how much I cleaned. When my landlord finally evicted her, he threw out the refrigerator, because it was caked and crawling with maggots. (The flies went away.)
The daughter of a third family, a friend of my landlord, got involved with a troubled young man, another student at her school. They hatched a scheme whereby he’d rob her parents, but the robbery went wrong. He shot them and left their bodies by the side of the road in a nearby wooded area. Same deal as the first family, though, her siblings were well-behaved, and good students.
These particular kids were problem children, although raised in exactly the same environment as their siblings, by the same parents. They had love, wealth, good schools, close involvement in their lives, lots of activities, medical needs attended to, et cetera, et cetera. What more could any of these couples possibly have done? In contrast, most people who have abusive, neglectful parents turn out to be responsible citizens, despite their emotional turmoil. Bottom line, I don’t buy the “bad parenting” explanation. There are way too many holes in it. What would better parenting look like, exactly?
Wouldn’t surprise me if they have loads of children and fuck up the next generation and thr cycle repeats. Forced sterilisation would be a great idea if it wasn’t such a terrible idea.
I honestly think unless humanity can diversify into different ideologies we are doomed.
