How is kindness a bad thing? I thought that was universally agreed to be a good message to have in a piece of media. I guess the excuse is they don’t want media to have messages at all but like, how would you even have a movie where the hero has no values that they stand for?
Billionaires like Peter Thiel have thought long and hard about why they can’t get everything they want. He has effectively said that his own policies would be so unpopular that nobody would ever vote for them, but that he has found the internet to be an effective tool to sway populations.
So what about us makes the world so good that they can’t fulfil their darkest desires? Social cohesion, knowledge and empathy.
What have himself, Muskrat et all have inundated us with over the last few years is their “antidote” to that: stranger danger, disinformation and “empathy is weakness”. It’s the playbook of the billionaire psychopath and people don’t realise they are dancing to their tune.
Interesting point! I’ve recently started thinking about the core message of Christ. It’s been misused and abused for millennia, but at its core it literally is “treat people like you would want them to treat you”.
But if everyone thought that way, where would the support for war come from? How can we justify monstrous behavior for profit without figuring out ways to make the victims seem like different people than we are? Horrible people who deserve the violence!
People have this ability to take the most constructive, beneficial and altruistic ideas and bend them to create victims and justify violence.
This shit has been happening since the first person used a thunderclap to elicit a sacrifice. The new church is social media, and the new congregation is worldwide.
Matthew 22:36-40 New International Version 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Word
Cause Americans are obsessed with Rugged Individualism.
If you are in trouble, you don’t accept help, much less ask for it. You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and turn your fortunes around with grit and determination using nothing more than the loose change in your pocket.
Thats how anyone that needs help became nothing more than social parasites leeching off the rugged individualistic success of their betters.
Thats why Americans, on the whole, have all but erased empathy and good will towards others.
Its why 1/3rd of the country actively votes for weak, pathetic fascists who poorly playact as strongmen. Its why 1/3rd of the country didnt bother voting, because they have no problem with fasciatic strongmen punishing the weak and the other.
The New Religion of the American Orthodoxy is basically “Fuck you, Got Mine”.
Hyper-individualism is a much more modern idea that may have its roots in our founding but it was exploited by capitalism during the post-war financial boom last century.
Before we had media showing us “how it should be” families lived together throughout their lives, communities helped each other and American towns pulled together and helped each other in a variety of ways. The whole idea of single-family homes was invented by the housing industry to get people to buy three to four times as many homes. To sell this they started leaning harder into the idea that you’re the protagonist, you specifically, you are special just for being American, you are special for wanting your own things (that are advertised to you) and so on.
And before industrialized America and throughout the last several hundred MILLENNIA we were a communal species, it’s why we have so much contradictory hard-wiring that influences how we feel about our social standing, about other people’s feelings towards us, why there are so many people who latch onto authoritarians and fear strangers. These are ideas that run in direct opposition to “rugged individualism” and they are clear signs we’re not living the way we’ve been designed by literally millions of years of evolution.
Capitalism has pried apart the very fabric of our species and weaponized it.
You’re reciting history through rose colored glasses. The whole American dream has been to come here get some land of your own and go do your own thing.
There’s nothing “rosey” about the struggles of pioneering communities in early European settlement in the Americas, nor in the way that people pretty much had to shelter together for the last million years before America’s founding, my well-agreed on thesis is that community is how our species has survived and the idea of single-family homes and individualism is not only a new thing in our history but antithetical to our very nature as a species, which is why “social death” is a mentally and physically harmful condition that we’re all vulnerable to.
The “American Dream” was for people to make their own way, and at the time it was groups of people who settled and built communities, it was the drive for wealth along with the sudden vast tracts of land that came with America that encouraged people to start spreading out into single-family homes and leaving one’s community or family system. If you curl your lip at the idea of staying with your family through your life, that’s understandable, but that’s because families and our perceptions of family has changed. It’s not something easily reversible nor am I making a prescriptive statement, I am describing how things have changed and if I were to prescribe anything at all, it’s that we need to work harder at renormalizing actual socializing, at making and preserving friend groups so we learn and understand emotional intelligence, so challenge ourselves to new ideas and re-learn compromise and compassion, something not just missing from the worst people, but broadly through all ends of the political spectrum. Understanding that our current state of loneliness and depression and anxiety is not a natural part of our lives is an important fact that we can’t lose.
We are not living how we’ve been adapted by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and it’s having profound impact on our collective mental health, and it’s allowing the atomization of our political perspectives to disastrous consequence.
I have a theory of society that is 30-30-30 based around a narcissistic spectrum. 30% of the population at any given time is narcissistic to some extent. They are conceited in their interactions with society.
We live in a time of decline. This is creating stress throughout the population. How people react to this stress shows their true character. The narcissistic leaning people, during these times of stress, look for scapegoats. If we just eliminate these types of people, we can go back to the good times. They are the fascists throughout history. When fascism and mindless violence rises during times of decline, it is due to this latent population, which is always there but only activated by the stress of decline.
The other groups are the 30% who are altruistic and cooperative. They interact with society by seeing what can be built by all and the value of different types of people. They have won the day too throughout history, but a society the averts disaster by coming together and rebuilding is just a society that continued to be successful. They are little noted as they do not bring the great calamities and destruction that get written down in the history books.
The final group are the 30% who are ambivalent. They don’t engage with politics in a meaningful way and have little willpower. They see life as a fate to be endured. Whichever way the wind blows, they will follow, or at least, endure it.
The balance determines which side wins. It is influenced by the power structures of the day, the zeitgeist and the strength of propaganda and the leaders of each side. It’s fairly clear which side is winning now and I don’t see the altruistic side coming to save the day any time soon.
Often times, when altruism does prevail, it is because someone with great courage that is a member of the existing power structure leads their cause. There are no such people at this time. Our power structure has explicitly embraced greed and sociopathy for 50 years now. Everyone who is successful now has been a part of that system and is thoroughly corrupted by it.
Good theory but the math is off, 30+30+30 only adds up to 90. What about the other 10%?
The balance. It ebbs and flows with the cultural landscape of the times. It determines which side prevails.
And just a hunch, I’d say it leans toward the ambivalent center most of the time. But as things get tough, it would become more activated and polarized.
Yeah, it’s amazing how many people think admitting to being an asshole is a flex.
It seems like Superman is the hero we deserve to fight this fascist trash sitting in the White House and beyond.
We need more of these positive representations, and god I’m so glad that almost every hateful right-winger cannot be creative with something other than hate.
This movie gives me hope, but I cannot speak for you.
we all think we deserve superman, but we only deserve freiza.
I haven’t seen the new Superman yet. I’m going on Tuesday cause that’s the cheap day where I live. I’m looking forward to it though. I found Captain America 4 cathartic, watching Captain America beat up an angry president. I think Superman will also be cathartic with what’s going on in America
For all the right wingers who think woke, pro immigrant superman is a new concept, reminder that this is a poster from the 1950s
Interestingly enough zero black people depicted, or any other races but white - just one dude with a dark orange complexion like the Mango Mussolini.
from this article:
Another story from 1953 called “People are People” has a Black youngster holding off an escaped lion until Superman can capture the animal. The owner of the circus the lion has escaped from wants to congratulate a white boy for his (nonexistent) heroism until Superman points out that the heroic young man was Black, and that the circus owner only wanted to congratulate the white boy because he was prejudiced.
Ethnicities. “Race” is a shit expression.
But it’s three syllables shorter! That’s like 75% of the syllables. Won’t you think of the savings?
Agreed, but ‘ethnicity’ means something else, closer to ‘national origin’ mentioned on the poster. All the white people pictured may well be of different ethnicities, for example. ‘Ancestries’, perhaps? ‘Different skin color’?
Colour palette.
Yeah you got the crux of the problem here! Let‘s correct people that are saying the same with a bit of arrogance to have a dopamine kick and then let’s make a fight about this so we are pushing the other person away
God why everything has to be so divisive these days?!
Interesting article about the history of ‘socialist superman’ during the depression and the ideological evolution.
this is what those people want.
Their religion / tribal cult only wants to use the United States, forget about “Truth, Justice and the American way”, they want US soldiers to pay with their blood.
Why batman is the worst superhero, just another billionaire…
Ironman is another billionaire.
At least he invents his own stuff unlike batman.
Hollywood whitewashing billionaires…
We won’t see a poor superhero anytime soon
Spiderman was just some orphaned kid from Queens.
and look how they made him a lackey for Ironman in Marvel universe!
IronHeart. I don’t know if Riri is dirt poor but her needing money to build tech is a major plot point.
And Republicans got mad and said it was disrespectful to Tony to acknowledge he needed money to build his tech.
Wasn’t she just an incredibly horrible person though? I haven’t seen it.
Kidness is woke. And you know, woke is bad because reasons.
I like the Nathan Fillion comment during some red carpet interview when the interviewer was trying to egg him into saying something that would get rage clicks from one side or the other of the current political trash fire.
“its just a movie guys”
Superman was not a brooding edge lord until Snyder’s take outside of specific story runs, and it is obvious that a lot of people don’t know that.
Captain Hammer best superhero, who’s with me on this
I so want a sequel to the sing along blog.
Dr Horrible has become obsessed with reviving Penny by turning back time. He doesn’t care how many people need to die, because he believes he can “fix” things. But the risk of time travel is the destruction of the universe…
Captain Hammer, now knowing what pain is, has two choices, grow and overcome the pain, or continue to hide away…
And Penny. The multiple zombies, and clones, and computer simulations of Penny that were never “right”. Well, she too has her parts to play.
That plot was already made by marvel, almost to a T
love it, but it won’t happen.
Dr Horrible was released 17 years ago.
Yeah it’s really wild
They don’t have a movie but they have a show. Homelander is the perfect ‘hero’ for these people. Only even the dullest dullard in the magat pile fails to recognize the character is evil but they never consider they are the baddies. Edit: fixed spell check.
Highlander? I am not making the connection.
I fixed it. It was supposed to be Homelander.
There can be only one!
(I don’t get it either. Maybe they’re thinking of The Boys, with the character Homelander?)
They confirmed it was an error and indeed meant homelander—you were right. They corrected it. FYI.
Highlander being a hero for the conservatives is an interesting thought experiment though hahaha
If we’re giving them all claymores and letting them have at it it seems okay to me.
Conservatives are still mad that Superman fought the kkk.
Which is admitting they side with the kkk, isn’t it
Well, yeah. They aren’t exactly trying to hide their white supremacist tendencies anymore.
If Superman were real, he 100% would have melted a lot of those racist fucks.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading “Superman Smashes the Klan.” An all-timer, based on a radio story from 1946, which was honestly its own kind of ballsy.
