Kevin Larsen 📚#success #twittermigration #twitterexodus #Mastodon #inspiration
"Imagine if we measured success by the amount of safety that people felt in our presence."
Christie Dudley@kevlarsen I find this meme quite disturbing for two reasons.
First, I frequently call people to question their values and what they thought they trusted. I make people feel less safe by calling what they felt was safe into question.
Second, racists make other racists feel safe by keeping those "colored folks" in their place.
Neither of these is what we're after.
@longobord The best way to explain it is in a world where success is defined by amount of safety overall, racists would be made to feel *unsafe* in order for them to change their behavior, to show racists disfavor and consequences for not allowing others to be safe.
@kevlarsen That is completely orthogonal to the success=made to feel safe model.
People feel unsafe when they are faced with things that they do not know how to respond to. It would be the most bland, unchallenging, homogenous world you could possibly imagine.
@longobord I had to look up orthogonal and it said something about right angles. Anyway, there would be varieties and shades of success and racists would be less successful in life by definition of success=amount of safety and people wouldn't want to be around them.
@kevlarsen Orthogonal means that it is neither parallel or perpendicular and doesn't really have anything to do with anything.
What it sounds like you're really saying is that you haven't considered that most racists and homophobes and the like are like that because they fear people who are different from themselves, which is a fundamental tenet of all those -isms.
@kevlarsen We already live in a world where we capitalize on a sense of security. The entire trademark system and corporate "goodwill" are based on generating a sense of security and confidence. Such a system is what we already have.
@longobord To an extent, yes. Some days, like right about now, it doesn't seem that way.
@kevlarsen That's why so many people will say it will settle itself out without intervention.
@longobord I disagree with them, even though I know what they're talking about. Corporate profit is *more* important than safety and global warming and things like that, and that is what the original post is about, that if safety were more important than profit, it would be an extremely different world we would live in.
@kevlarsen Except corporate profits RELY on safety, as much as they rely on producing at the lowest price. As such, they are more than happy to press known false claims so you continue to FEEL SAFE with regards to what they do cheaply.
They try real hard to make people feel safe, even when they're not. That is very much part of the problem.
@longobord That's an excellent point. We rely on corporate ads and corporate media that tell us we're safe when they can't be relied on to tell us the whole truth since "shading the truth" will help their bottom line. I suppose anything can be 'hacked' to get a different result than intended.
@kevlarsen People have believed they were safer than ever before, and even more afraid than they ever have been. But what they're afraid of does not track at all to what's unsafe.
@longobord I have a book about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature that we indeed are safer from violence, AND at the same time since we have technology where we see more injustice and suffering in the world and therefore have more real anxiety about the world. So after you explained this part, I understand how you think this all is disturbing because it goes down a road of 'perception management', a disturbing topic all on its own.
@kevlarsen "Safe" really is a perception term... What is dangerous and what is fine depends a lot on where you're willing to look.