Read more about it here
Some people, for some reason, consider their day wasted if they don’t make at least one person they perceive as lower on the totem pole than them suffer. And they consider themselves good guys, helpful guys and pillars of their communities. Which is too fucking sad and infuriating to put into words…
I am a doorman for a highrise full of wealthy people. Pretty regularly someone reports a “suspicious” person near the bus stop. Every single time it is just a black person waiting for a bus. No matter how polite and proper they may seem, the wealthy are all scum.
I watched a documentation about police (EU) some months ago. They were called because supposedly there were “foreigners” causing trouble. They arrived and tried to figure out what the deal was but they were very confused. So the “troublemakers” were friendly and cooperative and the old man who called the police wanted the others gone. Police quickly realized who the actual problem was but the guy was having none of it. He even escalated and was even taken into custody if I recall correctly.
Not sure where the hell I was going with this story but your story reminded me of it. Something about suspicion I guess?
I’ve leaned away from being polite using the magic words and rituals of interaction they teach us in elementary school. And think about how upset it makes older generations when the young say things like “no problem.” We do things for others because we want to, and when they show appreciation we let then know we did it out of a shared sense of humanity. And the older folks hate that. They prefer “you’re welcome” because
- That’s what they grew up with as the ritual
- The implied dynamic is “you are welcome to my help” which is very different from “I was happy to help” or “it was the least I could do” or “I did it out of a sense of shared humanity.” They want to have their entitlement to our help affirmed.
So yeah. Don’t be polite for the sake of being polite. Don’t be rude for the sake of being rude. Be kind for the sake of a shared human experience. And tell people who don’t participate in a revolution of empathy they can fuck right off
Well see here’s the kicker. There are words you can find to put into that situation. They don’t have to be good words, complicated, or even particularly useful. The most important thing is to speak out. We tend to be too tolerant and unwilling to place ourselves in the center of attention. Saw it during Covid, see it in most situations. We turn our heads and avert our eyes, subverting the expectation that good people should stand for good reasons.
I’ll say it plainly: Most of us mean well and speak well. We do nothing though.
![[2020] 20 Minutes for a Statue to be in Before a Neighbor Calls the Cops to Investigate.(lemmy.world)](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f90584e7-9158-40cd-8665-94e70998b52e.jpeg){kind=link}
is the implication that Americans might not be the most moral beings in the world that scary?