Sorry to answer a rhetorical question but I think it begins with education and empathy.
We don’t care about a cartoon, but if Pepe was a real person, then it’s a lot harder to just say erase them. And we are essentially seeing that with fascists and immigrants.
If problems actually exist it would be easier to discard the people causing those problems, than to challenge ourselves by confirming that the perceived problem is actually happening, to them rehabilitate the person causing the problems, and then forgive them for their trespasses. Because this requires risk, effort, and a developed sense of community, not tribalism.
It’s not easy to allow people who did “bad things” to walk around your friends, neighbours, family etc, once someone does something that is felt to be across a line. But we can if we learn enough. we can if we care enough.
That’s a tall order when the world is in a state of everything sucks, and is getting suckier all the time, we are all having our ability to spend resources, be it time, material, or money, to help those that need it, and also just doing anything that isn’t just trying to take care of ourselves.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that when you have the time and means to help a complete stranger, and choose to do so, it makes the world a better place. It makes it harder to build that hate towards strangers or just people that we don’t agree with.
But religion and the reigns of power have been in it a lot longer than anyone reading this comment have been alive, and is why building momentum is so necessary to change anything because it has to start pushing against those long held and abused powers, very hard to be a 1 person movement with enough juice to get things done. Possible but incredibly unlikely
It’s easier to erase than to fix
There is this whole whitewashing propaganda thing, like in a two wrongs and a rights, or visa versa.
Like, how do you even begin?
Sorry to answer a rhetorical question but I think it begins with education and empathy.
We don’t care about a cartoon, but if Pepe was a real person, then it’s a lot harder to just say erase them. And we are essentially seeing that with fascists and immigrants.
If problems actually exist it would be easier to discard the people causing those problems, than to challenge ourselves by confirming that the perceived problem is actually happening, to them rehabilitate the person causing the problems, and then forgive them for their trespasses. Because this requires risk, effort, and a developed sense of community, not tribalism.
It’s not easy to allow people who did “bad things” to walk around your friends, neighbours, family etc, once someone does something that is felt to be across a line. But we can if we learn enough. we can if we care enough.
That’s a tall order when the world is in a state of everything sucks, and is getting suckier all the time, we are all having our ability to spend resources, be it time, material, or money, to help those that need it, and also just doing anything that isn’t just trying to take care of ourselves.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that when you have the time and means to help a complete stranger, and choose to do so, it makes the world a better place. It makes it harder to build that hate towards strangers or just people that we don’t agree with.
But religion and the reigns of power have been in it a lot longer than anyone reading this comment have been alive, and is why building momentum is so necessary to change anything because it has to start pushing against those long held and abused powers, very hard to be a 1 person movement with enough juice to get things done. Possible but incredibly unlikely