L/nerd

No one’s playing 4D chess but it’s not wise to think people aren’t opportunistic, or might be following in the footsteps of people who came before - remember the US contra affairs? This kind of shit has been happening forever, and truthfully - even without literally funding their national bogeyman, there’s a lot of things one can do to create their own enemy. Have you ever wondered why Hamas hates Israel? I’ll give you a hint - it has to do with powerful people colonizing land.

Land

Israel

Solving our mental health problem won’t prevent billionaires from existing.

Didn’t say it would. I have no idea where you pulled this from.

Making excuses for billionaires isn’t a mental health issue, it’s an intelligence issue.

I alsi wasn’t giving any slack to billionaires. I also have no idea where you pulled this from.

Both of the above statements from you imply you either didn’t read my comment or understand what it said, primarily because they feel like arguments intended for an entirely different comment. Please tell me how I can best rephrase it if I communicated my ideas unclearly at all.

Also, please refer me to the part of the DSM-5 where it lists “sociopath” as a possible diagnosis.

Funnily enough, empathy doesn’t always apply to all other people! Many often learn to only utilize their empathy to gain social advantages by leveraging an understanding of others, or practice selective empathy in that they have functioning, typical, empathy - just only within their bubble. It’s why some of them get uncomfortable when they’re forced to perceive poor people in a more humanizing way - they have empathy, they’re just choosing not utilize it in a way that benefits larger society. I feel I should also point out that a number of people fit the qualifications for being considered low-empathy, but are regarded as leading admirable lives by otherwise choosing to be good to their fellow human beings - James H Fallon comes to mind.

I’m not suggesting solving all our mental health problems will stop billionaires from existing (though in truth, class disparity creating the stressors it does would definitely make stopping billionaires help population mental health), nor am I suggesting that billionaires should get any sort of excuse. I am pointing out how people in abusive class positions (i.e. billionaires) can still be high-empathy people, and how sociopath literally isn’t a diagnosis anymore. I believe you are having a reading comprehension issue.

“Sociopath” isn’t even an official diagnosis anymore, and certain abusable positions also get noted for their tendency to have high-empathy people working in them - the levels of empathy, in the end, only determine the way the abuse comes through. Empathy is a tool like any other, and trying to insist that it’s a thing that can define the goodness of a person is as absurd as any of the other times people have tried to associate a particular feature with some kind of moral position - not to mention how it only ends up harming marginalized demographics. The wealthy and powerful are not going to care if you deem them low-empathy monsters, but some people around you may feel less safe knowing that you associate low-empathy with evil.

Eewooo eewooo, false dichotomy alarm!!!

oh golly, oh joy! i sure do love assigning all of the people i don’t like into the same group of people with a mental disorder, thus perpetuating the artificial class divide of the mentally well versus the mentally ill! surely this will have no unintended consequences on swathes of the population who have that mental disorder or are otherwise considered disordered but are also “functional” enough to blend in with less-marginalized society!

Until I saw thia message, I entirely thought that this post was suggesting using a condom to choke oneself to death.

YES YES ABSOLUTELY. So much of Disco Elysium is about how your past shapes who you are and Cuno is no exception. Like he’s literally still just a kid, and he’s in a town undergoing horrible acts of violence and his parents are barely present in his life! I’m nowhere near done with my first playthrough of the game yet (only just got that first bridge situation figured out) but aaaagh. Every time I interact with Cuno I’m desperately trying to be a tiny figure of support in his life :'^(

“kuno don’ fuckin care” vibes

mold is a biohazard

i like how it implies that his balls act as a safe container for radioactive materials

I mean, that was what mine cost back in like 2014, and I would’ve kept it that way for a while if not for my growing interest in VR, which admittedly had me shelling out another $200 for a GPU in around 2016. It trchnically wasn’t a gaming PC, sure, but it’s kept up pretty well in recent time. I still don’t see myself having to replace any parts for a while now - I’m consistently still able to play current games on medium-high settings, occasionally having to turn things down a bit for games like Darktide.

I mean, technically it referred to itself as an office PC and not a gaming PC, but that’s just pedantics when it works all the same.

While I do believe the other commenter is making a gross simplification of the reasons the average conservative does what they do, there is genuine merit in recognizing the relationship between US Republicans (or conservative movements and groups in general) and facism. The ideological cudgels they use are based in the same foundations, utilize the same rhetoric, and are often intended by their progenators to reach the same end goals. If you are a European, you should have some interest in this - after all, the US of A is not the only country struggling with facist rhetoric being normalized in its culture.