[mschuster91]

Well... getting rid of too powerful people by means of executing them has been a staple of societies across all cultures for millennia.

The fact that people openly cheer on re-introducing this, or on those following through with such plans (Luigi), is just showing how fed up wide masses of society are - and Reddit's admins have been hellbent on quenching even verbal forms of dissatisfaction.

The problem is, all that does is keeping pressure bottling up and eventually, if the issues with inequality and absurd amounts of power grabbing aren't dealt with, the explosion will be much harder than if people had a relatively safe way of voicing their dissent.

[lynx97]

Extremism is bad, no matter if it left or right-sided. I have turned away from the left with a huge amount of disgust since I started to realize how hatred is rampant on both sides. Wanting someone dead, and saying so, it a warning sign. Are we supposed to go back to "an eye for an eye"? I for one are happy this "staple" is a thing from the past. Cheering for it coming back is horryfing behaviour.

[Karsteski]

You're lucky we have the luxury of such opinions like yours. With the way the world is going towards extreme financial inequality, and with the US becoming more hostile to other nations, I suspect that opinion will become harder and harder to justify for many people.

[antonvs]

> You're lucky we have the luxury of such opinions like yours.

“Civility” is the first recourse of the privileged.

[immibis]

Extremism is the historical norm. Democracy was created as a nicer alternative to extremism. Everyone prefers democracy to extremism. If democracy is destroyed, we go back to extremism. Simple as.

[mschuster91]

> Wanting someone dead, and saying so, it a warning sign. Are we supposed to go back to "an eye for an eye"? I for one are happy this "staple" is a thing from the past. Cheering for it coming back is horryfing behaviour.

That's my point. When people see no other way out of resolving the exploding wealth and power inequality crisis than violence, it shows that democracy is on the verge of failure.

It's horrifying, agreed, but it happening is completely understandable IMHO given that democratic systems seem to be completely and thoroughly corrupted by big money.

It's no longer a question if open violence erupts, it's a question of when - and Western governments all seem to ignore the issue and show zero intent to actually do something to ease the life of the wide masses. The system is headed straight for collapse.

[db48x]

No, mostly it just reminds us that ordinary people are mostly evil. At best they’re purely self–interested. There’s no dissent there.

There’s a good book called “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” by Christopher Browning which explores this. The Reserve Police Battalions were created by Germany to police captured territory, but they were seen by ordinary Germans as a way to avoid the war and conscription. The members were not Nazis, and almost to a man they joined because it was an honorable way to avoid participating in the evils happening all around them. They were only trained for ordinary honest police work, but in the end many of them were being used to hunt down and murder Jews. They were sent out into forests to comb them for underground shelters. They rounded up Jews and herded them into mass graves.

Almost none of them complained or tried to avoid participating. No one punished them if they didn’t participate. No one coerced them into participating. A few asked for and received transfers, if I recall correctly. The best that can be said about the rest is that many of them are believed not to have actually fired their weapons. Some of them probably went the whole war without actually killing anyone, technically. They were just assigned the job so they did it.

[antonvs]

You’re cherry-picking, generalizing without any basis, and apparently projecting.

[db48x]

If you say so then it must be true.

[antonvs]

The first paragraph of your previous comment states some conclusions that you've assumed.

Your second paragraph gives a single example which is apparently supposed to support that conclusion. That's a definitional example of cherry-picking and hasty generalization.

The projection comes in because it's difficult to see how you would reach those conclusions from the available evidence, unless you're projecting.

[db48x]

No, I didn’t quote all available evidence in an internet comment. I’d never finish, if I did that. Instead I picked one salient but infrequently encountered body of evidence. I recommend reading the book.

And if you want more evidence than that, then I suggest reading about Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments. A little quote:

    Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become
    patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions
    incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively
    few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

I think that if you want yet more evidence then you can probably acquire it yourself. Personally I must sleep.

[danaris]

Anyone who takes the Milgram Experiments or the Stanford Prison Experiment seriously needs their head examining.

[antonvs]

That "quote all available evidence" line is disingenuous. A substantial argument doesn't require that, but you didn't make any argument.

If you're unaware of all the criticism of Milgram's experiments, then you have some studying to do before we can have a meaningful discussion about this.

While you're catching up on the history of social psychology since 1961, you might want to ask yourself why it is that you're so eager to believe that "ordinary people are mostly evil". Do you have a religious background, perhaps? "Original sin" and all that?