East Germany is a complex subject. A lot of money has gone into projects to help it catch up after the reunification since Russia completely gutted it, but not much of that money made it anywhere. The population feels left behind and unheard. They’re being treated as lesser through little fault of their own. Pretty easy breeding ground for scape goating.
Plus it’s the exact same playbook as the US when it comes to “iMmIgRaNtS!!!”. Logic and reason has long left and there’s really no way to reel in conspiracy nuts once they’ve gone off the rails. Germany is only a few years behind the US.
How would you even prevent this? The ideas spread by messenger and social media and infect people without critical thinking skills - which is most. Chat control is obviously the wrong approach, but what is the right one? How do you convince clanma who doesn’t trust anything anymore that the WhatsApp stats are made up and government statistics are actually trustworthy and backed by data?
Switzerland has an average turnout of 35% while Germany’s last big election was almost 90% iirc. Apathy is strong and it’s another threat to democracy.
Throw in mandatory voting and we might get somewhere. Make it no longer be a battle for turnout by emotional manipulation but a battle for votes by actual policy content. Australia made their transition a formal study.
But yes, more involvement of the populace in politics might be a good step.
I worry becuase so many places seem only a few years behind the us and that these right wing things have both been internal and abroad so there is so much cross pollination. I have had a hard time believing people could be so illogical actually. Maybe it was my social circle but its not like everyone in my friends circle was especially smart. I think though that I held the position of the smart guy and people tended to go with me. It was only in school that I had strong debate experiences. More so with my college friends where I was not the only smart guy. Thing is I remember seeing graffiti in college bathrooms. Yeah it was in the high school ones but it was like. This is college. But you know its not like everyone is a stem major. After college I worked at a contract engineering firm. Pretty much everyone was engineers. Once again grafitti. I mean im not talking some profound grafitti. Im talking penises and such. Then there was the phd guy working at a national lab who was like running a neo nazi group. ugh. so even people who learned math and logic in a field can’t seem to apply it outside of their field. its nuts.
The reich mindset does the same things to a person’s eyes as the abrehamic religions. In either situation, the person has surrendered themselves to the love of torture and abuse, for a chance at survival in a situation their mind at one point considered beyond absolute terror.
This switch is a long understood weakness in human cognition. I assume it evolved as a last-ditch survival tactic. If you’re suffering unimaginably, but you are given any way out, or you see a way out, your mind unhooks from its normal cognition and excepts the cause of that suffering from every output except “permanent fawn”.
Nothing can break a mind from this state but itself.
Both the abrahamic trifecta, and fascists of all types use this technique to turn their figureheads into the target of “permanent fawn”. It is a position above all loved ones including parents and children. It is even above “self” if you can get the person to associate with a “higher self”, like a post-death self or living in-group of people.
Once this has been done, they can do anything they want and their followers will make up their own reasons for following.
You cannot break a person from this. The peak of terror is already occupied in the followers mind. They can imagine nothing worse than betraying the source of their original terror, the one they are looped into fawning.
This is a hard-coded part of the human psyche. It cannot be removed, only “patched”. The only solution is to occupy this space in a person’s mind with something beneficial or benign, before anything else.
Whatever you choose for that position will hold complete power over the person. It will have to be something that no single person can stand in for, or usurp. And no matter what, it will involve scaring the shit out of people when they are kids. That’s how religion manages this through eternal torture, and fascism through an abusive parent.
It doesn’t have to be a needless scare. For example, after this current apocalypse you can just simply tell kids about the hundreds of millions of dead, and a destroyed planet, show them pictures and videos of the robots turning the air in a city into a mist. It’ll be something they need to know about anyway, and avoid at all costs. The scar will have a noble purpose.
Now, what to bind that terror in service to? Something that will finally put a stop to the insanity that has plagued us since the cities began? That’s what we should be focusing on.
People want to have a good life, no matter their critical thinking levels. If your government tries to fuck you and practically only works for lobbyists they will happily jump on any bandwagon praising to be the holy god.
You have state media which is mostly balanced, possibly a little left, and then private conglomerates that love discord, so mostly right leaning and inflammatory. Anything Springer Verlag is garbage, for example. Not as bad as the US with Fox.
But it is much harder. You have to go out and socialize, in person.
Plus most people don’t want to talk politics.
At least in the U.S, it is considered a somewhat rude or inappropriate conversation topic in casual conversations.
Like religion.
Some people still do it and sometimes it just comes up. But generally it’s seen as pushy. Or trying to start an argument.
But talking politics to friends and family is usually considered fine. Depends on the family members. So I do keep up these conversations with friends and some family members, when I can. Remind them that you can only trust what you hear from real people.
The internet would have you believe the majority of Americans are maga. When it’s actually only 30%.
More like 22%, minor correction. Only about 22% of eligible voters voted for Trump. That’s actually less than 20% of the people who live in the USA when you count all the people who can’t vote for one reason or another.
Please, stop protecting them and repeating this nonsense. The West German mark and the East German mark were converted at a 1:1 rate right after the Wende. People in the GDR were not all living in Plattenbauten. Many had their own houses, and many others left for southern Germany and Switzerland instead of staying and helping to rebuild the country.
Since then, billions of euros have been transferred from West Germany to East Germany. I remember very well people in the East having two cars and renovating their houses. I had far relatives there, so I saw it myself. Meanwhile, parts of the West, especially the Ruhr area, were struggling heavily, with municipalities accumulating huge debts that they are still dealing with today.
And now they want to tell the West, which has spent decades financing and rebuilding this part of the country, what it should do?
You know what? It might have been better for West Germany if reunification had never happened and East Germany had simply been sold to Russia - at least it seems that’s also their wish.
That’s the exact mindset that got us here. Dismissing and invalidating their feelings. The West struggling doesn’t invalidate their struggle. Russia completely gutted anything industrial, literally taking apart all machinery and moving it to Russia. There was nothing to build on and companies didn’t move there, either. So despite the common struggle, the East wasn’t really able to build any lasting base industry-wise.
disagree with you. I’ve seen and met enough East Germans to have a very different perspective. From my experience, there is often very little empathy - especially towards people of different skin colours or sexual orientations. There is a reason why parts of eastern Germany are sometimes referred to as Dunkeldeutschland.
Did they ever thank West Germans for the help? NEVER. If anything, it’s been the opposite: demanding more and more. And again, telling West Germans what they have to do. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, something many East Germans seem not to understand.
If you feel so strongly about it, I suggest you pay back the Solidaritätsbeitrag, which has amounted to billions over the years.
Ah yes the helping hand from the west. Buying company inventories and closing them afterwards. Mass unemployment. Integration without the ability to influence the legal foundations of their new state. Those ungrateful east germans who could not build their own industry! And all that comes from the ones that build generational wealth from billions of nazi money. Adidas, VW, Bayer, Allianz, Krupp.
I believe the money is part of the issue, and you expecting thanks is telling. Also, “the hand that feeds you” is the exact “lesser human” rhetoric I meant.
If the populace never felt the effect of the money, it might as well never have existed. The West is angry for sending it and the East is angry for not receiving it. Whoever pockets it gladly stands by and watches the East and West fight each other.
I don’t think the Soli is the right tool for the job. The money is just part of the regular budget and not bound to East Germany. Build universities or invest in faculties, infrastructure, etc. and make the region worth investing in from an economic standpoint and the rest will follow, none of which we’re doing.
East Germany is a complex subject. A lot of money has gone into projects to help it catch up after the reunification since Russia completely gutted it, but not much of that money made it anywhere. The population feels left behind and unheard. They’re being treated as lesser through little fault of their own. Pretty easy breeding ground for scape goating.
Plus it’s the exact same playbook as the US when it comes to “iMmIgRaNtS!!!”. Logic and reason has long left and there’s really no way to reel in conspiracy nuts once they’ve gone off the rails. Germany is only a few years behind the US.
How would you even prevent this? The ideas spread by messenger and social media and infect people without critical thinking skills - which is most. Chat control is obviously the wrong approach, but what is the right one? How do you convince clanma who doesn’t trust anything anymore that the WhatsApp stats are made up and government statistics are actually trustworthy and backed by data?
direct democracy, where people can protest on specific, relevant initiatives rather than in elections
Switzerland has an average turnout of 35% while Germany’s last big election was almost 90% iirc. Apathy is strong and it’s another threat to democracy.
Throw in mandatory voting and we might get somewhere. Make it no longer be a battle for turnout by emotional manipulation but a battle for votes by actual policy content. Australia made their transition a formal study.
But yes, more involvement of the populace in politics might be a good step.
Culture, education and ensuring everyone’s in at least the 2nd lower tier of Marslow’s pyramid.
For starters.
I worry becuase so many places seem only a few years behind the us and that these right wing things have both been internal and abroad so there is so much cross pollination. I have had a hard time believing people could be so illogical actually. Maybe it was my social circle but its not like everyone in my friends circle was especially smart. I think though that I held the position of the smart guy and people tended to go with me. It was only in school that I had strong debate experiences. More so with my college friends where I was not the only smart guy. Thing is I remember seeing graffiti in college bathrooms. Yeah it was in the high school ones but it was like. This is college. But you know its not like everyone is a stem major. After college I worked at a contract engineering firm. Pretty much everyone was engineers. Once again grafitti. I mean im not talking some profound grafitti. Im talking penises and such. Then there was the phd guy working at a national lab who was like running a neo nazi group. ugh. so even people who learned math and logic in a field can’t seem to apply it outside of their field. its nuts.
Why would STEM students be less likely to engage in bathroom graffiti than anyone else?
because its illogical. You are not properly taking care of a public good and creating cost that will lower your quality of life.
You don’t convince her.
The reich mindset does the same things to a person’s eyes as the abrehamic religions. In either situation, the person has surrendered themselves to the love of torture and abuse, for a chance at survival in a situation their mind at one point considered beyond absolute terror.
This switch is a long understood weakness in human cognition. I assume it evolved as a last-ditch survival tactic. If you’re suffering unimaginably, but you are given any way out, or you see a way out, your mind unhooks from its normal cognition and excepts the cause of that suffering from every output except “permanent fawn”.
Nothing can break a mind from this state but itself.
Both the abrahamic trifecta, and fascists of all types use this technique to turn their figureheads into the target of “permanent fawn”. It is a position above all loved ones including parents and children. It is even above “self” if you can get the person to associate with a “higher self”, like a post-death self or living in-group of people.
Once this has been done, they can do anything they want and their followers will make up their own reasons for following.
You cannot break a person from this. The peak of terror is already occupied in the followers mind. They can imagine nothing worse than betraying the source of their original terror, the one they are looped into fawning.
This is a hard-coded part of the human psyche. It cannot be removed, only “patched”. The only solution is to occupy this space in a person’s mind with something beneficial or benign, before anything else.
Whatever you choose for that position will hold complete power over the person. It will have to be something that no single person can stand in for, or usurp. And no matter what, it will involve scaring the shit out of people when they are kids. That’s how religion manages this through eternal torture, and fascism through an abusive parent.
It doesn’t have to be a needless scare. For example, after this current apocalypse you can just simply tell kids about the hundreds of millions of dead, and a destroyed planet, show them pictures and videos of the robots turning the air in a city into a mist. It’ll be something they need to know about anyway, and avoid at all costs. The scar will have a noble purpose.
Now, what to bind that terror in service to? Something that will finally put a stop to the insanity that has plagued us since the cities began? That’s what we should be focusing on.
People want to have a good life, no matter their critical thinking levels. If your government tries to fuck you and practically only works for lobbyists they will happily jump on any bandwagon praising to be the holy god.
What’s the media landscape like in Germany?
You have state media which is mostly balanced, possibly a little left, and then private conglomerates that love discord, so mostly right leaning and inflammatory. Anything Springer Verlag is garbage, for example. Not as bad as the US with Fox.
The only place to fight it is off the internet.
But it is much harder. You have to go out and socialize, in person.
Plus most people don’t want to talk politics. At least in the U.S, it is considered a somewhat rude or inappropriate conversation topic in casual conversations.
Like religion.
Some people still do it and sometimes it just comes up. But generally it’s seen as pushy. Or trying to start an argument.
But talking politics to friends and family is usually considered fine. Depends on the family members. So I do keep up these conversations with friends and some family members, when I can. Remind them that you can only trust what you hear from real people.
The internet would have you believe the majority of Americans are maga. When it’s actually only 30%.
More like 22%, minor correction. Only about 22% of eligible voters voted for Trump. That’s actually less than 20% of the people who live in the USA when you count all the people who can’t vote for one reason or another.
Please, stop protecting them and repeating this nonsense. The West German mark and the East German mark were converted at a 1:1 rate right after the Wende. People in the GDR were not all living in Plattenbauten. Many had their own houses, and many others left for southern Germany and Switzerland instead of staying and helping to rebuild the country.
Since then, billions of euros have been transferred from West Germany to East Germany. I remember very well people in the East having two cars and renovating their houses. I had far relatives there, so I saw it myself. Meanwhile, parts of the West, especially the Ruhr area, were struggling heavily, with municipalities accumulating huge debts that they are still dealing with today.
And now they want to tell the West, which has spent decades financing and rebuilding this part of the country, what it should do?
You know what? It might have been better for West Germany if reunification had never happened and East Germany had simply been sold to Russia - at least it seems that’s also their wish.
That’s the exact mindset that got us here. Dismissing and invalidating their feelings. The West struggling doesn’t invalidate their struggle. Russia completely gutted anything industrial, literally taking apart all machinery and moving it to Russia. There was nothing to build on and companies didn’t move there, either. So despite the common struggle, the East wasn’t really able to build any lasting base industry-wise.
disagree with you. I’ve seen and met enough East Germans to have a very different perspective. From my experience, there is often very little empathy - especially towards people of different skin colours or sexual orientations. There is a reason why parts of eastern Germany are sometimes referred to as Dunkeldeutschland.
Did they ever thank West Germans for the help? NEVER. If anything, it’s been the opposite: demanding more and more. And again, telling West Germans what they have to do. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, something many East Germans seem not to understand.
If you feel so strongly about it, I suggest you pay back the Solidaritätsbeitrag, which has amounted to billions over the years.
Ah yes the helping hand from the west. Buying company inventories and closing them afterwards. Mass unemployment. Integration without the ability to influence the legal foundations of their new state. Those ungrateful east germans who could not build their own industry! And all that comes from the ones that build generational wealth from billions of nazi money. Adidas, VW, Bayer, Allianz, Krupp.
Me, too, most recently a coworker from Gera.
I believe the money is part of the issue, and you expecting thanks is telling. Also, “the hand that feeds you” is the exact “lesser human” rhetoric I meant.
If the populace never felt the effect of the money, it might as well never have existed. The West is angry for sending it and the East is angry for not receiving it. Whoever pockets it gladly stands by and watches the East and West fight each other.
I don’t think the Soli is the right tool for the job. The money is just part of the regular budget and not bound to East Germany. Build universities or invest in faculties, infrastructure, etc. and make the region worth investing in from an economic standpoint and the rest will follow, none of which we’re doing.