I also thought of that series!

What might be a solution to this problem is to establish a trusted system/program (already hard) that would very comfortably allow you to make these decisions: e.g. you would like to decrease the profits of any company exploiting poor people in Africa (fuck nestle), so you mark that option, and during shopping, scanning a product would instantly flag any which is related to the issue.

There actually is something similar (buycott?), but it is not really used where I live. It probably would have to be very comfortable to use, like actually calculating your budget/spendings, otherwise people wouldn’t use it.

I can't either. I'm only mad at the system, no one has the luxury of choosing not to participate especially the proletariat.

I'm assuming that like me, you are a human being with all the flaws that this entails.

It's easy to lie to ourselves, pretend we're better than that, but history is filled with examples of people like you and me, who did horrific things or allowed horrific things to happen.

I could drink tapwater. Instead I chose to drink coffee from a questionable source.

I could have donated 50 euros to malaria prevention. Instead I bought a new pc game.

I could have eaten rice with lentils. Instead I chose to make myself an absolutely delicious bacon sandwhich.

Again and again, we all make poor and unethical choices. The small donation at christmas or day a week volunteering doesn't do much to tip the scale.

Obviously, it's painful to accept that we're all evil to a certain degree. We like to think we're better than that.

Vanity. It's the Devil's favourite sin.

Imagine if you're standing next to a pond and a kid's drowning. You can choose to save the kid, but instead you choose to eat an ice cream. That's evil, right? Now imagine if dying kid's 2000 miles away, and instead of donating to a charity that could help them, you buy two pc games. How is that not evil too?

If someone let a kid drown in a pod, would it be a valid defense if they said "I saved 9/10 kids drowning in the pond, so I felt like an ice cream"? Of course not. What about if they said "I only have two ice creams a year, the kid had to die."? Also evil.

To be absolutely clear. I am no better than you. In fact, given you say you donate a lot to charity, avoid animal products and drink tap water, it's not unlikely you're a far better human being than I am.

The fact that you choose to not do evil things, shows we can all choose to do less evil. It's just that most of us, even the best of us, still choose to do evil things anyway.

And to be clear, the person who lets one kid drown, is still a better human being than the person who drowns hundreds of kids on a regular basis, but no one ever got a medal for not murdering 99/100 women. Allowing the guys who commit evil get away with it scot free, is also something evil many of us do, often for banal reasons.

We're intelligent beings. We are able to tell right from wrong. We can choose to be good and overcome our nature, we should forgive ourselves when we don't always succeed (because you should be kind to all sentient beings, yourself included), but we also shouldn't lie to ourselves because it feels good.

No offense, but you sound like a pseudo-intellectual weirdo who's spends his free time sniffing his own farts and licking a thesaurus.

Perhaps you consider toning it down a bit and reflect on why you felt the need to write an overly long rambling comment.

Even if everybody unilaterally decided to not buy the next Call of Duty, how exactly does that help reduce suffering?

Are you arguing that 60 billion donated to the right charities wouldn't prevent suffering or save lives?

not buying Cyberpunk 2077 does literally nothing

60 dollars buys a mosquito net or vaccine, potentially saving a life.

If you want an actual path to helping others, channel that monk energy into political activism.

"zero impact unless everybody else also does the same."

"not buying Cyberpunk 2077 does literally nothing."

"there’s no clear and actionable method"

I'm tired. I'm on holiday. There's no point voting anyway, it will have zero impact. There's no point saying anything, unless everyone does the same. There's no point donating 10 bucks. If I say something, I might miss out on that promotion. If I say something, my colleagues or friends might not like me. Don't mind grandpa, he's old. They're family, I'd prefer not to say anything. Etc. etc. etc.

All the little banal excuses we make, to not do anything. To not say anything. To continue sitting at a table with racists and nazis.

Happened in Germany in the 1930s, where good men did nothing and allowed evil to triumph.

Happening now.

And once again, I'm not saying I'm better than that, but we need to keep stop making excuses and be honest with ourselves. It's the only way to become better. Not perfect, but better.

But as I said, vanity. It's hard to shake off. Easier to pretend you're good, do fuck all or next to nothing, then afterwords say "Wir haben es nicht gewusst." like the Germans did after the war.

Being unwilling to accept our own flaws, and our part in allowing evil to prosper, is the problem. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. This is what happened in Germany, when people were indifferent or cynical to the rise of the Nazis. Many weren't true believers, but they allowed it to happen, as Sacha Baron Cohen says.

We allow evil things to happen, because we don't care or for utterly banal reasons, then we pretend we didn't know better. "Wir haben es nicht gewusst!" was the stereotypical defense of Germans after the war, when accused of not having done enough to stop the war. They were unwilling to accept their part in allowing evil to prosper, so they lied to themselves that they didn't know what was happening.

Vanity is a hell of a thing. It's very hard to accept that we're capable of evil. We like very much to think that we're better than that.

But the best way to combat evil in this world, is to accept that we're not inherently good, that we do perpetuate evil or allow others to perpetuate evil on a regular basis, and be self-critical about it so that we avoid doing it as much as possible.

Average game costs 60 dollars. That buys a few vaccines or mosquitoe nets that could save a life. If enough people donate 60 dollars to a political campaign, it can change the outcome of an election.

Looping back to the original quote, this is not that different to Germans in the 1930s. "My little contribution won't have an impact", "it's too hard", "there's no point in me trying" millions said, and Hitler was the result.

The Weimar Republic was famous for decadence and parties. Millions upon millions decided their small contribution wasn't going to change anything, so instead they engaged in small short-term pleasures, and stopped caring about the future.

Not that you shouldn't be able to buy the occasional luxury, but that doesn't mean we should lie ourselves about the simple fact that your money could have reduced suffering and made the world a better. You bought a game because you're a selfish, lazy, and imperfect human being. Once you realise this, you're also less likely to be selfishs as often, and more likely to spend your money/time/effort on making the world a better place.

But vanity and ego are difficult to overcome. For me too, obviously. Humans are kinda shit, but we have the ability to realise we're shit and be better than that at least some of the time.

I think the point was that "first they came for these leftists I didn't care about". But I guess communists is more poignant. From what I saw, he seems to have used different groups depending on who and when he was talking.

This is absolute horse shit. There is a stark difference between the two parties. One has a president in the white house who is about to join the picket line for the UAW strike, who made sure the rail union got what they asked for, who tried to wipe out college debt for millions of Americans (that was fought and blocked by Republicans because...reasons? But let's bail out the next corp or mega bank when they do some shady subprime shit).

Functionally, republicans are doing everything they can to directly or indirectly fuck over wage earners and the Dems, while not perfect by any stretch, are at least attempting meaningful changes. Hell, a few republican states are peeling back child labor laws. They are also torpedoing the education system and running off good teachers.

Name a Democrat run state that's banned books, or passed ridiculous laws for teachers to follow.

It's not even close. And pretending it is causes apathy. Or gives apathy an excuse to grow.

There are politicians, right now, today, that support raising the minimum wage and then tying it to the CPI, expanding Medicare for all, and making college taxpayer funded.

But they don't get enough votes, because...

Yeah, tell that to all of the LGBTQ populace, those who want abortion rights, parents who don't want books banned. No, they are not the same. Yes, democrats do help people. Yes, they do try.

Depends on locality. If it were a federal thing If agree with you.

Also voting is designed to be inaccessible and as inconvenient as possible, and that's legal sadly.