• Most outrageous / unbelievable lies
  • Most offensive / dangerous lies
  • Most “adult meant it as genuine advice but it’s laughably out of touch” lies
  • Lies you wish you still believed
  • Lies you took as truth and didn’t question it until you were way too old
  • eightpix@lemmy.world
    55·
    1 day ago

    • That the rapture was imminent.

    • That being black means you have to try twice as hard to get half as far.

    • That “success” comes from hard work.

    • That heaven is a real place.

    • That we live in the best of all possible worlds.

    Responses, in order:

    We made it past the ones I heard about in 1988, 1992, 1996, 1997, 1999, 1 January 2000, and the infamous 21 Decmber 2012. It seems that predicting “the end of the world” isn’t best left to zealots. However, climate modelling seems to be fairly accurate so far…

    Being black (myself) has resulted in my trying twice as hard. I haven’t yet made it half as far. Racism, in point of fact, sets EVERYONE back. Dismantling racism, and every other bigotry besides, gets us to the starting line.

    Success — under a sustainable, humanistic, virtue-seeking, equitable rubric — eludes everyone who believes in its attainment within an explotative, supremacist, advantage-imbalanced, wealth-dominated system. There is no point at all in seeking success when drowning is the result of failure. Survival is sufficient for most. Some degree of comfort is luxury. Success, neutral buoyancy or flight beyond the trappings of this capitalist ocean, is a gate-kept and forcibly protected status. As it always has been. Desire for an echelon beyond survival, a measure of “success”, depends on building connections to the gate-keepers or building new gates to keep; not “hard work.”

    Well, hell is real. We keep making it more real and with newer manifestations. Witness Gaza. Every warscape from Ukraine to Iran to South Sudan to Yemen. Every austerity measure. Every policy that disproportionately protects wealth and punctuates poverty. Heaven, on the other hand, is a vanishingly narrow set of possibilities. Basking in the glory of this world, and the universe writ large, could be real. But, again, hellscapes are more profitable.

    Time travel, whether by quantum tunnelling or in a phone booth or DeLorean with a flux-capacitor, might permit us to test out possible worlds. Without time travel, or some multiversal panopticon, we are stuck with a singular perspective. We can only try to predict what will work and we can only reason from past patterns. This world, we cannot deny, serves few and harms many. Its progress is, by no means, absolute. Yet, general human behaviour progresses as though and other system yields an increase in chaos and suffering. It is difficult to see how. Modest, incremental change is capable of vast improvements in living conditions. Many corners of the planet choose care in place of villainy during an emergency. Protect the weak, organize resources, exercise patience, build back better. It is time we realize this is the start of a long emergency. Longer, by far, than Covid-19.

    • NotAnOtter@lemmus.orgOPEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      Over a decade on the internet and I still don’t know what to do when I agree with someone’s general point but disagree with their logic in support of that point.

        • NotAnOtter@lemmus.orgOPEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          I broadly agree with their sentiment but

          • I basically agree with this one. I don’t agree with climate change being a rapture but I believe this point isn’t meant literally.
          • The whole point on race is poorly argued. First, the original claim is just a figure of speech it is not meant to be a prescription. Their argument that it’s a lie doesn’t make any sense since they DO agree that black people have to work harder which is the speakers point. So they are essentially just failing to understand a metaphor. Also it’s weird to make a single point that both says “Things are so much harder for black people” and also “this affects all races”, they kinda just don’t fit together rhetorically even if logically it’s consistent. Also “get’s us to the starting line” uuuuuuuh we’re well past the starting line, racism aside. Racism and other prejudices feel like a consequence of being after the starting line, not before it.
          • Idk what to say, success exists. It’s possible to be successful even in a “explotative, supremacist, advantage-imbalanced, wealth-dominated system”. I see their point about it being a shallow success but they go too far by claiming “there is no point at all”. Also contradict themselves by saying there is no point but also you should desire for more. I acknlowedge that life is not fair and your circumstances of birth dictate the majority of your life but I also believe aiming up is really the only rational conclusion. If you don’t work towards some definition of success (which can be defined another time) then what’s the point of life?
          • They don’t really refute heaven existing, just assert that hell also does. As a metaphor in isolation it works but when the lead in is “Heaven is a lie”, the rebuttle looks more like a literal claim. And gaza isn’t literally hell. They reject the claim but the staple heaven & hell onto the real earth and it just doesn’t work as an argument IMO.
          • I’m not touching that whole “quantum tunneling” thing… Call that one ‘the one that doesn’t fit’ I guess.