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ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Gotcha. So would you rank yourself as mostly unhappy, destitute and unwell?

Can you think of anyone in our society who’s doing alright within the confines of a broken system, or do you think that everyone’s existence is inseperable from the context of that existence, even if the means of changing it or it’s impact are outside of their reach? Somewhere in the middle?

I met a guy who helps manage a homeless shelter and food bank. Stand-up guy. Makes ends meet, is doing what he can where he can. Generally happy guy with a family. Pretty twisted right? Or my former coworker who let his gardening hobby get out of hand and ended up running a community garden that retrofitted two houses to donate to families in need.

People exist in their circumstances, but they’re not defined by them. How you react to those circumstances speaks to your character, not that you exist in them.

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h4lf8yte@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

How you react to those circumstances speaks for your character

Being able to ignore the bigger picture because you can change your own privileged surroundings IS the problematic reaction that speaks for your character

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- ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Gotcha, so doing good where you can makes you evil unless you’re mired in torment over things beyond your control? By that metric everyone in the world is evil.
  
  I can’t fathom an ethical system that requires you to be unhappy about things beyond your control once you’ve done the good that you can.
  
  What constitutes “good character” to you? What constitutes “success”?
  
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technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Or my former coworker who let his gardening hobby

The implicit level of privilege here can not go unacknowledged. That’s a fundamental part of the problem regardless of how some individual feels about it.

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- ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You’re not wrong, the guy did have a lot of privilege in his life. He’s well educated, has a demeanor people trust and enough money to have a backyard garden in a house in a not ideal part of town. He opted to use that privilege to get his neighbors to join their backyards together to have a community garden, and then used a city/state program to use their pooled money to buy an empty lot and an unoccupied house to finish the block. Instead of selling the house for profit, they opted to give it to someone in need.
  
  I’m not sure what full story you’re looking for. Dudes a community college astronomy professor who spent some time maintaining billing software.
  
  My point isn’t "oh my God, everyone in the US is a saint!” it’s that the notion that “because the US has fundamental structural problems, anyone who isn’t a miserable failure is inherently evil” is just profoundly misguided.
  Either your definition of success is setup such that it says more about you than other people, or you just fundamentally haven’t encountered many people.
  What’s your definition of “success”? How many Americans do you think are engaged in “evil bullshit”?
  
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