this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Having made that connection, how does it feel about the criticisms we have toward our previous generation? I say this being born in the late 80s, so my folks are from this generation, although I can say at least 50% of them somehow escaped the associated issues, which to me I wonder if there's some genetic predispotion, and widespread, to exposure to lead causing essentially cognitive disabilities.
Anyway, if you buy into this (and I do), were essentially chastising this generation for fucking our shit up, knowing full well they have intellectual disabilities. And I have no idea what their OG knew about lead exposure, or when we learned about its effects on the majority of the population, so I'm not trying to point fingers at the moment.
But we essentially have a generation of mentally handicapped people, who because of their handicap have terrible reasoning skills, and me and you and our generation point our fingers at them and say you're fucking our shit up. It's like that Mitch Hedberg joke, Dammit Otto, you're an alcoholic: dammit Otto, you have lupus.
Just rambling. Perhaps I had a little exposure myself. I just don't want to assume the worst in people, that they're knowingly fucking our shit up. They just don't know better.
Your philosophical dilemma is valid, but I would point out that pointing fingers is the best choice we have in this matter. Say, indeed, the ones fucking shit up do have intellectual disabilities, they still continue doing it. Reprimanding them for it is perhaps society's way of trying to get them to stop. Sort of like in the case of a child I guess - children being considered in this argument as having not enough understanding of the consequences of their actions. Equate, if you will, 'goddamn it Billy, stop running in the street' to 'goddamnit grandma, stop voting for idiots'.
The problem then is that Billy may listen, but grandma is set in her ways and has the notion that age brings wisdom regardless, so she's less inclined to listen to what the equivalent of Billy for her has to say.
I see no alternatives for this (that is to say, an attempt to correct erroneous behaviour) in the context of the aspirations of modern society.
As a thought experiment, in the most extreme case, what would we do? Test everyone for lead and remove, for example, the right to vote across a certain threshold? That doesn't take into account the baseline intellectual ability of individual (which can vary across a population) and the degree to which said discovered lead levels would affect them. It's entirely possible that a lead-laden 'smart' brain still has more capability than a pure but idiotic one. Not sure how we'd ever assess that. Not to mention the system would be exploited as soon as possible to channel power.
We could of course, stop pointing fingers and forgive them, for they know not what they do, and it'd probably have about the same effect.
The only answer I keep coming to is this country will tear itself apart. We've got groups of people who refuse to accept empirical evidence for things that don't affect them personally; imagine when you say hey, we scienced you and you're dumb because of your exposures to A, B, and C.
So yeah, I have so little hope, and I try to look at things on a more micro scale. I can't inherit the problems of thousands of miles away, especially when there are some problems here that I can deal with, and hopefully make my and my family's lives better. And then I can just hope everyone else everywhere is thinking the same way. And maybe we are. Maybe my generation will pull ourselves up by our proverbial bootstraps as soon as the generation before us is done stepping on our heads. But then I think that's too hopeful of me.
I think you're on the right track with focusing on the local things you can change. And keeping hope alive is important! I mean, I may not have a choice in being fucked and miserable later, so if I can avoid that now, then that's great.
I liked Spider's point about means testing for voting. It wouldn't work, although it does seem like it would be a step forward. We can't even means test our politicians which has seemed necessary more and more recently... those pesky legalities, lol.
I saw that Mr. Roger's quote "look to the helpers" recently on here and that keeps bouncing back in my head when I get negative thoughts. I know it's not completely sustainable, but I keep seeing the impact of positivity on my life and the people around me, which is a nice change from the norm.