Kenneth Russell
wslackTerry Pratchett was wise
(edited to add complete text from the image as alt text)
heine@wslack from which book is this?
Nick@Nickiquote @wslack thanks!
ArneBab@wslack Yes, Terry Pratchett disguised deep analysis of society as "mere funny fantasy".
Octorine
Stoneface Vimes@wslack yes. Nobody wants to face the damning truth.
Dgar
kauerWe And They
- Rudyard Kipling
Father, Mother, and Me,
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But would you believe it?
They look upon We
As only a sort of They!
We eat port and beef
With cow-horn-handled knives,
They who gobble Their rice off a loaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
While They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!
We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un-.
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea,
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that,
They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!
We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!)
They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!
All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!)
Looking on We
As only a sort of They!
Toni 
Jaddyalt-text to above pic:
this.
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It
was much better to imagine men in some smoky room
somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and
power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to
this sort of image, because if you didn't then you
might have to face the fact that bad things happened
because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the
dog and told their children bedtime stories, were
capable of then going out and doing horrible things to
other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame
it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that
They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was
anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me?
After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never
thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks
of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us.
It's Them that do the bad things.“
Terry Pratchett, Jingo, pp. 205f
Neil@wslack oh yes! It is so much easier to blame others rather than seeing what you can do differently.
#terrypratchett was indeed a very wise man!
Casting yourself as the eternal victim leaves you up a certain creek without a certain rowing instrument. Grab the paddle, take control of where you go.
10%/90% rule: 10% is 💩 happens, 90% is what you do about it.
Shadow@neil_h I'm not sure that's the point of the passage. This is about who does the wrongs and who can do wrongs. All of us can harm others.
People can be victims of history/disease/accident etc AND take control with what they have. Those aren't contradictions.
@wslack no, of course they're not contradictions.
However, too often people blame "Them" for a situation and continue to complain without doing anything.
I have a friend who continually complains about her spouse's disinterest in her and their children. But never does anything even to try and change herself or the situation.
My conclusion: her satisfaction at being the victim is greater than her distress.
My reaction: I change the subject as soon as she gets started. My canoe, my paddle.
@wslack but thanks to you, as well.
Got me thinking.
And that's possibly part of the point of the passage.
Volker
sbi@wslack Karel Stojka: "It was not Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, or whatever the others were called, who had me dragged away and beaten. No, it was the cobbler, the neighbor, the old man, the milkman, the postman, who were given a uniform, an armband and a cap on their head, and then they were the master race."
@sbi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Thought_They_Were_Free illustrates this well with interviews of people right after WWII
Icarosity@wslack I just saw this on Tumblr this week too. He saw so much.
your_huckleberry@wslack but Mastodon keeps telling me that everything that's wrong is because of the Billionaires?
The OwlChemistThe error is, most certainly, the mindset that blame can be placed on just one person/entity/group.
They absolutely do plot behind cigars and brandy. They bastardize every good system we create for common good. They undermine the collective will.
Billionaires should not exist. They do Very Bad Things to exist. They are rightly due Their blame, for sure. But we own blame as well, for we have yet to eat them.
@owlchemist @your_huckleberry I would respectfully still say you are generalizing. There are different ways to make a lot of money and founding a company that becomes quite valuable gets it done, even if the holder of the equity has done no scheming and has little liquid money (and sometimes their companies are worth that much even while running at a loss).
I would grant that all billionaires are subject to poor incentives to use their money in harmful ways, but that doesn't make someone inherently bad.
DB Schwein@wslack @owlchemist @your_huckleberry
There is no way to legitimately make a billion dollars. No company is legitimately worth a billion dollars, they're made that way by manipulation of the stock market. When you look under the covers (or into the books) there is abuse of the workers, tax evasion, buying off gov't officials, etc.
There shouldn't be billionaires because there is no way to legitimately make a billion dollars.
@deirdrebeth @wslack @your_huckleberry Every billionaire is a Dangerous policy failure that pairs well with white whine.
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱@your_huckleberry @wslack No. Mastodon has never told you that... Some people *on* Mastondon may have told you that. Just remember that all generalisations are wrong, including this one!
Claude@bytebro billionaires are bad people. I don't give a damn about any rationalization you use to not make a généralisation out of them but they are bad. They exploit other people's work, who they pay below a living wage. They speculate on food market prices. They privatize water sources. They have the collective power to get the ressources of the world more equally distributed but they don't. They are bad. @your_huckleberry @wslack
@switch I'm fine with Bill Gates being a billionaire. Microsoft average salary is $126k. I don't even work for Microsoft, but I earn a living wage, because many years ago I became a Microsoft Certified Professional. Nobody is stealing my labor. If I wanted to I could go out on my own, as a consultant. I don't want that, it's too much stress. For that matter, if I wanted to be a communist, I could. It's not illegal. There are lots of worker owned companies or communes I could join.
@your_huckleberry average salary doesn't mean anything if the person cleaning the bathroom is earning minimum wage.
@switch I don't think people are bad because they didn't solve every problem for every person they ever had contact with, or for the world entire.
Toilet cleaners at Microsoft make $21/hr. I suppose you could argue that $21/hr is what minimum wage should be if it had risen to keep pace with the overall economy.
@your_huckleberry being a billionaire is morally wrong.
AdeptVeritatisIt is already in the text: "No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them."
Yes, conversations here on Mastodon with people, looking at themselves and not at others, are VERY rare.
But be the one, who is not joining them. Don't talk about those people. Don't ask such kind of questions.
Talk about patterns, you think you recognized.
Explain ideas.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Eleanor Roosevelt
Be the one, discussing ideas.
Yesterday I was commenting on an event. I immediately had "average" replies. - My fault! Should not have started at all. Or talk about the idea behind it.
lj·rk@wslack More complete picture description/text:
Photograph of two paragraphs from Terry Pratchett's Jingo. The text reads:
And *then *he realized why he was thinking like this.
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. *No one *ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
@ljrk Thank you! I had no idea this would be spread so widely and will amend the alt text.
raptor 
@wslack @buherator also: the root of any conspiracy theory is the will to believe that someone, somewhere is competent at what they do 🤷
NIST Standard Reference Boy"And then he realized why he was thinking like this.
"It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy.
"You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them."
"It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."
@bright_helpings Edited in alt text; thank you!
Bill Minarik@wslack Pogo, Earth Day 1971, by Walt Kelly (The Ohio State University Libraries).
#EarthDay #Pogo #Environment
#EarthDay #Pogo #Environment
Von Xylofon@wslack Hans, are we the baddies?
Laura G, Sassy 70’s@wslack what book is Pratchett’s passage from? It’s awesome!
dasgrueneblatt@wslack #alttext4you "And then he realized why he was thinking like this.
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things."
@dasgrueneblatt fixed, thank you!
Primo@wslack this hits so hard.
Jack Jackson@wslack GNU Terry Pratchett
Liminal Fiction@wslack Yes. Yes he was.
Matěj Cepl 🇪🇺 🇨🇿 🇺🇦@wslack All of us who lived under the Communism remembers this very well: Them are Us! And it is the most sobering and humbling discovery I’ve made.
@mcepl What advice would you have from your own experience?
1. Be very decisive in rejecting evil in our lives. It is very easy to slide from being Us to being Them. Something like the baptism renewal vows: “Do you reject Satan, all his works, and all his empty promises?”
2. Be very careful in judging others. Everybody has their own story, and yes some people are truly evil and they did it for horrible reasons, but many did not. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” (Solzhenitsyn)
Paul H 🏴🇪🇺
Leipoa ocellata@wslack
He was.
I'm still trying to figure out a way to sneak him into my school's curriculum.
#gnuterrypratchett
He was.
I'm still trying to figure out a way to sneak him into my school's curriculum.
#gnuterrypratchett
Esme Ciredutemps