captainjonnitkessler:
The second you start talking about some mysterious “they” that are controlling society in some fashion, you are engaging in dangerous conspiratorial thinking even if you’re being woke about it. “They” did not institute the 40 hour work week specifically so you would be too tired to revolt. “They” did not invent the sleek minimalist aesthetic in order to crush the spirit of art in the common people. “They” are not pushing mediocre media into the mainstream in order to poison people’s critical thinking skills.
Your best case scenario after that is you talk to someone who actually knows what the fuck they’re talking about and you get embarrassed because you can’t answer basic questions about your own ideology because you never learned anything past “the ruling class/capitalists/politicians are making things bad and if we got rid of them the bad things would all go away!”
Your worst case scenario is obviously the woo-to-fascist pipeline and you end up believing Jews are poisoning American food supplies with GMOs in order to turn us all into beta cucks, so like … maybe just stop blaming “them” before you fall down that route.
Obligatory round of disclaimers: Yes, sometimes people do bad things. Be specific about exactly who is doing what instead of ascribing it to some vague group of shadowy elites. Yes, sometimes things in society are bad. Learn to identify the root causes of complex social issues instead of assuming that they’re actually extremely simple to fix and we’re just not doing it because of some vague group of shadowy elites. Yes, minimalism isn’t for everyone. Learn that some people don’t share your tastes and get the fuck over it for the love of god.
Also, before you blame a vague “they” for a contemporary social norm or law or policy you think is bad, look up what the norm was before it. What did it replace?
“They created the 40-hour workweek to –”
QUERY: What was the average working-class person’s weekly workload before the 40-hour workweek was standardized?
“They created credit scores to –”
QUERY: How did banks determine who was and wasn’t worthy of a loan before credit scores?
“They promote bad media to –”
QUERY: What was the average working-class person’s entertainment before this era of “bad” media?
“They invented schools to crush children’s creativity and –”
QUERY: What was the average working-class child’s daily life like before universal public schooling?
To be clear. Before someone accuses me of pissing on the poor.
I AM NOT SAYING “Stop opposing current social practices because Things Used To Be Worse, stop complaining about a 40 hour workweek because great-grandpa worked 90 hours a week uphill both ways in the snow –”
We should advocate a shorter workweek, actually! We should advocate abolishing credit scores, actually! We should advocate non-authoritarian schooling, actually!
But we should do it from a place of informed historical perspective that doesn’t quickly become romanticizing the past and perpetuating the idea that Things Were Great Until They Took Over.
