[dijit]

I can’t recall things my ancestors experienced. Even when they tell me: just like I will have a difficult time conveying how it felt to live during COVID (the uncertainty, the different countries behaving the way they thought best, why Sweden didn’t lock down and Italy did- the death of it) and why anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers are a thing.

Just like explaining how nobody could see the 2008 financial crisis, just like explaining to my children (or great grandchildren, remember that its many generations removed for me and you)- how it felt to fly by air before 9/11.

How can you explain it, you would reach for lossy comparisons like coach travel (will coaches even be a thing? not like they are today, not like they were in 1980 already)

This intellectual dishonesty is maddeningly stupid or an expertly crafted troll, neither are making me think you are engaging seriously.

[streetfighter64]

> This intellectual dishonesty is maddeningly stupid or an expertly crafted troll, neither are making me think you are engaging seriously.

Well, I could say the same about refusing to even imagine what life was like 100 years ago. It seems simply absurd to me to not be capable of imagining a simple hypothetical scenario. Most people are capable of answering hypotheticals such as "if you got a million dollars, what would you do?" or "if you lived in the USA, would you vote for Trump?"

[dijit]

How can you know? Its quite literally impossible, psychologists believe you can hold approximately 8 competing facts in your head at once, and we are mentally scarred with spoilers, every decision is known and has been talked about to death.

My great grandfather was 17, had to flee Poland (never to return), fought for a brigade in exile in Scotland against the Nazis.

He was also the most racist man I know, prejudiced against people from the next town over in his adoptive home.

He eventually forgot his own native language some time after marrying a woman born in scotland to a predominantly irish migrant family.

So, clearly not a nazi, clearly in support of some kind of migration- but his whole thing is that he made painful efforts to be a great guest in his home, but he never put down his prejudicial mindset. How can this be?

I don’t really know what thats like, even the simple warmth of being able to Video call my mum at a moments notice gives such a significant respite to the crippling loneliness you experience living in another country, its enough salve to keep you going. I can call anyone on earth, summon practically any facet of known human history in seconds, calculate complex mathematics and I have barely felt hunger, scarcity, famine or displacement in my life.

I have his perspective, as barely digestible as it is, and his is one perspective among millions- people who never saw a car until they were already on the other side of a continent- people for whom a job was a lifelong affair, who had tiny close-knit and isolated communities that were forced open by famine or war.

Man, I understand the details, but I can’t put myself in his shoes, theres too many variables and too many perspectives.

And, even though this man fought Nazi’s and assuredly killed people: he did so not knowing about the atrocities being committed- this fact came out very late into the war by his word.

It matters a lot because we can judge easily in hindsight, and because we won.

I’m not a nazi, I don’t agree with their philosophy in hindsight, but lets take the Bolsheviks- who slaughtered people too, who’s values I sort of still believe in.

Would I have been part of the coup in Russia during that time? Would you? How could you fucking know?!?

[streetfighter64]

> Would I have been part of the coup in Russia during that time?

Well, let's just think logically. Do I today have the time, energy and inclination to be a part of a group of radicals plotting a coup? No. If I lived in Russia in the early 1900s would I have had that? No.

Sure, it's possible to say that if "I" lived then I would have had an entirely different childhood, but that's not how hypothetical scenarios work. What would the concept of "I" even mean? Would I have to account for different genes as well? Would I have to account for "me" being an entirely different person? You quickly get into a meaningless philosophical conundrum where nothing means anything and the only thing you can know is "cogito ergo sum" .

[dijit]

You might find that energy if the alternative is starvation, pestilince and war because a weak king was living in luxury.

You will never know, because you are ignorant to that situation, which is totally fine. Understanding your own ignorance is not a weakness, its a strength- it allows you to be open enough understand other peoples convictions and what confluence of actions may motivated them.

However you’re having a hard time with me specifically because you believe that because you are on the “right side” (an in-group bias more than actual convictions) today, that those values and motivations have always been the right side despite the benefits and biases of hindsight.

Every bigoted person in history genuinely believes they are right, they are righteous - and if only they could push the world to understanding or force people to live by those values, that it would be a better place.

To be clear, I am calling you ignorant and bigoted, because you claim to understand the value system of a person born in the 18th century while uou exist based on a comfortable, peaceful, plentiful life never knowing their environment, conditions, familial ties, how they thought about the world outside, technology or even their own tribal assertions.

Pure. fucking. ignorance.

[streetfighter64]

Funny. Every bigoted person in history drank water too. Every non-bigoted person also believes they are right. Tell me, who would do something they believe is wrong?

I have no idea where you're getting that I'm trying to "force others to live according to those values" or whatever. Seems like you're fighting your own windmills rater than me. Chill out with the name calling and swearing, you're really just coming of as a bit deranged.

[dijit]

Honestly mate, I'm just tired.

I tried to explain that even people living contemporary lives can be completely out of touch with one another (it's why rich people become so unrelatable that we get memes about "how much can a banana cost, like $10") and so imagining what life was like 100 years ago, or 100 years from now, is for all intents and purposes impossible. You went off about understanding individual single differences, which totally misses the point: it's the confluence of those differences in their totality that constitutes an environment, and environments shape opinion.

I wasn't alive before Hitler. I can't imagine what it's like to not have a figure like him in my history, along with the collective lessons we took from two world wars. As a consequence of those wars, European war to me may as well be as far removed as the US civil war or the English Wars of the Roses, except for one thing: I got to speak to someone who lived it, briefly.

My brain can't really picture Europe at war (I've seen movies, but even modern combat movies aren't accurate and sell 1% of the reality). I've only ever seen peace, the longest peace Western Europe has known. That's my entire reality, and it's as different from my ancestors' as theirs was from anyone's before them: a completely different understanding of history and what that might mean next, and totally different access to information and to opposing ideas from people as far away as the other side of the planet. Fog of the future.. right? https://youtu.be/NVGuFdX5guE?t=166 Everything is obvious in hindsight.

Being called a nazi sympathiser for admitting I can't know this (by people who are certain they do) is what I find hard. If you're resolute that you're right, and that you needn't consider the totality of a situation before assuming someone's motives, then you can look coldly at what you believe and judge people on that one aspect alone.

It's a closed loop. If the challenging arguments are the ones you won't engage with, you'll never meet one that moves you.

I'd rather ask myself "what if I'm wrong" and see whether I can attack my own position... maybe the other person has context I don't, or paints a different picture with the same facts. That's usually the more interesting conversation.

Anyway. I'm sorry I called you names. I was trying to shame you into seeing it, which was never going to work and was wrong of me regardless.