When it has been demonstrated over and over again, how little they think of anyone beneath them.
In every era, the ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers.
Boot lickers. Just boot lickers. Hoping to become one of them one day.
Because they “earned” or achieved wealth, i.e. worked really hard to become rich
Lemmy is such a weird site. Almost every thread I’ll read the most terrible dehumanizing shit said about working class people for just existing in a conservative U.S. state, but a thread asking why the rich are idolized every negative comment appears to have upvoted responses calling to recognize the humanity in everyone.
Weird.
Hexbear remains winning
They be dragons.
It makes me wonder if some of the dragons written in literature are just an allegory for the ultra wealthy and powerful of their time that were hoarding unimaginable wealth while the huddled masses starved.
This isn’t really a question.
Everyone human is human but psychopathy seems to favor wealth gain. But like woz would be one of the richest people in the world if he had not shared his apple stock with employees. Hes still rich though and a nice guy. His generosity though is why he is a millionaire and not a billionaire.
True.
Wealth filters psychopathy upward and you need to be at least little asshole to succeed in competition, but I think the broader influence is all the shit talk about deadbeats and freeloaders, that in long term dehumanizes the poor and creates notions that wealthy are better breed and there’s nothing wrong, if the unfortunate die in the gutter. If they can’t support themselves, maybe that’s for the best. You can clearly see this shift even in many people that were once considered to be leftists.
Some kind of “Stanford experiment” kind of effect.
I believe that’s because they are the same as them (or would like to be) and would behave the exact same way if they were in their position.
I think it is important to recognise people as people. I’m not making excuses for intentionally malicious wealthy or powerful people – but the wealth or power itself isn’t the whole problem (although the various systems that perpetuate and enable certain wealthy or powerful people are problematic of course), and we shouldn’t give these adults that as an excuse.
They’re wealthy, yes. They’re also human beings who choose to be cruel, callous, selfish, uncaring arseholes.
They’re powerful, yes. They’re also adults who know what they’re doing and consistently make the decision to harm people with their choices.
Netanyahu’s political power wouldn’t be as much of a problem in and of itself if he wasn’t choosing to enact a genocide. Murdoch’s wealth wouldn’t be as much of a problem in and of itself if he didn’t choose to use it to buy media outlets and push right-wing lies to millions.
No excuses for cruelty; the money and power didn’t “corrupt” these people, because we don’t live in a fantasy world where money and power are magic cursed items. These people intentionally decided to be cruel.
Well, they are in fact human. Trying to understand how they got the way they are is the first step to trying to not let more of them happen. That said, the rotten apple is still an apple. But in the end, I am still going to throw it away.
They are not in fact human in the ways that matter. Their organs are compatible.
Those who would commit atrocity use dehumanizing language to justify horrible things. Let’s leave that to the fascist of the world. We don’t have to act as if a person isn’t human to recognize their evil. Humans are capable of great love and great evil. Avoiding dehumanizing someone is not forgiving them for the terrible things they have done. Why do you need to view something as not human to recognize it’s evil? That, honestly worries me. We can serve justice to these terrible people and still call them human.
Is humanize the word you really mean to use, or do you mean something more like valorize or glorify?
Are you aware of what it means to dehumanize?I’m pretty sure they meant that. There are a lot of people who don’t see rich people as humans anymore. The irony is lost on them.
There are a lot of people who don’t see rich people as humans anymore.
Can you give an example?
Propaganda, trolls, paid shills
Because a person deserves to be considered person whether they think you worth of being so or not.
A faceless, dehumanized enemy will forever be out of reach, unsurpassable in reach and power. A flesh a blood human doing a skin and bone job is replaceable by most any of us because no matter how much power they might have, they are only people.
I think the unfortunate truth is that many non-evil people would be just as evil if given the opportunity. Or to frame it slightly different: I believe that too much money and/or power is what turns most people evil over time.
Have you considered the possibility that only evil people are capable of acquiring that much power and wealth because that much power and wealth is only possible by evil means?
There’s science that backs this, but you don’t get that way without being a piece of shit beforehand.
That level of wealth power privilege does in fact damage your brain, everything precious about humanity drains out through your orders.
Next question is what happened that made one ‘a piece of shit beforehand’.
Yeah. There’s a lot of work to be done there, but once you’re a billionaire, you’re straight up not human anymore
If they would do evil given the chance, that makes them evil. It’s like a poorly forged piece of metal with a crack built in, that holds together until put to the test. The crack was always there.
There’s more angles to it of course - mistakes, temporary dispositions, the average of all behavior, etc.
From a philosophical perspective, I find it quite difficult to measure a person’s evilness objectively.
Assuming a person is born evil due to their genetic material, is it then actually their fault? Shouldn’t that be considered rather as a medical condition?
Assuming a person is not born evil, but they turned evil due to outer influencing factors (parents, society, economic situation, luck, bad luck…), is it then actually their fault? Or are the outer factors the ones to blame in such a case?
I agree to the ‘the crack was always there’ statement. But personally I think that all of us humans naturally have this crack. Given the right parameters, this crack can heal to a level where it’s barely notable. But under less optimal conditions I guess more or less every human can turn (be turned) into a monster.
In terms of billionaires my opinion is that a) we should implement measures to avoid them in the first place and b) find ways to take away their power.
But other than that I would prefer a way to heal their (often abnormal) crack and try to make them again valuable members of society again. Revenge and punishment (especially death penalty) should never be the focus of corrective measures, no matter the crime or misdemeanour.
It’s nearly universally learned behavior, and it’s just a metric of people’s disposition to act selfishly or malevolently versus selflessly and benevolently.
Stockholm syndrome
