Ask Lemmy

"Us vs them" mentality.

Religion, because they all believe that they are the only ones who are right, and everyone else needs to believe what they believe, or else something bad will come of it.

Good old fashioned tribalism.

American Exceptionalism.

gestures broadly

Well, Islam is definitely up there - and you only need to look at the Middle East for evidence. What makes it particularly dangerous, in my view, is the doctrine itself - especially the parts concerning treatment of women, martyrdom and hatred of infidels.

Any and every form of dehumanization.

Any and every form of bigotry.

Any and every form of supremacy.

Any and every form of authoritarianism.

Every single person from the homeless guy at the on-ramp to TACO himself is an ordinary human. Some humans are born into extraordinary circumstances, some humans accomplish extraordinary feats, but we are all human. Humans are not born hating other humans. Hate is taught and encouraged and ingrained so that it may be passed on.

Universal Basic Income is a bandaid on a system couched in one of the ugliest human motivations; greed. I chose my name for that reason; Universal Basic Justice. Justice must be the base motivation; not 'eye for an eye' or 'frontier justice,' but the belief in treating others as you want to be treated; the belief in the powers of forgiveness, responsibility and growth; and the power of compassionate care dedicated to help those that are willing to learn and grow.

If and only if all those fail should a human be separated from society in a humane way that prevents their flaws from harming others.

Death Row is not justice. Guillotines are not justice. Systemic violence is not justice. No government nor individual should be empowered to decide who is worthy of justice, of forgiveness, of growth. Of life.

Every human is fallible. Every human deserves the opportunity to recognize their mistakes as well as the opportunity to learn, grow, and make reparations for those mistakes.

I don't see these changes happening in my lifetime. At this point, I'm not sure we humans have enough lifetimes left to achieve these goals.

What I am sure of is the danger and violence incumbent within any ideology willing to look down at another human being.

Individualism.

It has led to a massive amount of duplication of human effort. We could all live massively improved lives if we acted as a community organization instead of a bunch of individual little fuckers whose opinions matter.

Ableism. As disability advocate Imani Barbarin says, if bigotry is the goal, ableism and eugenics are the toolkit. If you look at the history of any form of systemic bigotry, the justification for human atrocities almost always boils down to “well these people can’t contribute to society, so they don’t deserve to be a part of it.”

Not an ideology but I say extremisms, of all kind. Not only religious and political, those are obvious, but also day to day habits.

Isaac Asimov famously said, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”.

The idea that any idea is worth listening to because someone believes in it.

Show me the proof.

Neoliberalism. The belief that owners of corporations should be able to do whatever the fuck they want, because corporations always create the best outcome possible for society.

The result is stuff like the US Opioid Crisis. Purdue Pharma knew that opioid pharmaceuticals were extremely addictive. For decades, they lied and said it was not addictive. In private, they laughed about their victims.

They bribed doctors and dentists to overprescribe it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxycontin.html

https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

They also paid think-tanks to defend them and aggressively challenged negative media coverage:

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-purdue-pharma-media-playbook-how-it-planted-the-opioid-anti-story

The tobacco companies used the same techniques before western governments cracked down on them.

In the 90s, they tried to prevent governments from acting by bribing politicians:

An NPR review of McConnell's relationship with the tobacco industry over the decades has found that McConnell repeatedly cast doubt on the health consequences of smoking, repeated industry talking points word-for-word, attacked federal regulators at the industry's request and opposed bipartisan tobacco regulations going back decades.

Soon after McConnell won a U.S. Senate seat, he was invited to the Tobacco Institute's boardroom to give a speech in January 1985. The documents also reveal that McConnell and his Senate office frequently accepted gifts from tobacco industry lobbyists

The gifts included tickets to NFL and NBA games, a production of Dostoevsky's Crime And Punishment, a Ringo Starr concert, "top-quality brandy," and what McConnell called a "beautiful ham."

When McConnell has sought re-election, tobacco company employees and PACs have typically donated to McConnell more than to any other member of Congress, according to data from the Center For Responsive Politics. Since 1989, he has received at least $650,000

One of the most striking episodes revealed in the tobacco industry documents came in October 1998. Just a few months earlier, McConnell helped defeat major tobacco legislation championed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The McCain bill would have ratified and strengthened the proposed settlement between the tobacco industry and attorneys general from most of the states. It would have also allowed FDA regulation of nicotine and penalized companies that failed to reduce teen smoking.

McConnell, who had repeatedly clashed with McCain over campaign finance legislation, helped lead the opposition. "We know, of course, that only 2% of smokers are teenagers," McConnell said.

(In fact, nearly 90% of all smokers begin before they turn 18 years old.)

"That to me is the most egregious incident that I have seen about the appearance of corruption since I have been a member of the United States Senate," McCain later said of McConnell

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/17/730496066/tobaccos-special-friend-what-internal-documents-say-about-mitch-mcconnell

In many countries, tobacco corporations are still using mafia methods:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/12/big-tobacco-dirty-war-africa-market

For neoliberals, the corporations should decide what is acceptable or not. If there is a profitable market for something, then it means it should be legal. Period. They don't give a shit about selling addictive poison to kids, destroying the environment or underpaying workers. Corporate profits are their religion.

Neoliberals believe citizens or lawmakers should never try to fix injustice, because corporations can't create injustice. And if they want to be involved and threaten corporate profits, you have to punch them in the nose.

In 1951, Jacobo Árbenz was democratically elected President of Guatemala. He wanted to tax rich banana companies and ensure they didn't own all the land. So the United Fruit Company lobbied the CIA to overthrow him. Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, accepted immediately. His brother, wealthy businessman John Foster Dulles, was chairman of United Fruits International. So the President Árbenz was violently overthrowed. At least 9000 people were killed.

That's extreme neoliberalism.

Religion

Capitalism is well on its way to making the planet uninhabitable so Imma have to go with that.

Any religion. It makes people think of themselves as superior to other groups. It doesn't even matter which religion. They're all bad.

Its not necessarily an ideology but all the worst ideologies have at root a lack of empathy and active methods to extinguish any trace of it. So lack of empathy or the violent suppression of it root and stem

Greed.

Religion has been said, but religion is always just the excuse for justifying greed

Belief that some unfalsafiable deity is behind you, and therefore any of your actions are righteous is incredibly dangerous, because there's no accountability. How many atrocities are justified by religion, and the belief that justice will be done in the next life?

Religion is used to justify things like the fascist movement currently sweeping through the US, abhorrent regimes in the middle-east, and the subjugation of people (particularly women) everywhere

Of course, religion is the justification, but the real objective is to gather more wealth and power

From the mega-churches in the US, to the Vatican, to the mullah in a village somewhere in the world, it's all about having more

Fascism. It makes people loose their humanity. Fascists endure anything as long as people outside their group are suffering.

Nazism seem to be the worst since it's an awful mix of nationalism, imperialism, totalitarianism, state racism, eugenics.

A nazi state basically invades its neighbors and genocide their inhabitants based on race, community or health condition.

So far, only the Third Reich applied it, leading to World War II and the Holocaust, but Japan applied some similar behavior in Asia during WWII.

Bonus point: it doesn't even oppose capitalism, so rich people can still greed.

TESCREAL

It ends in either replacing humans with AGI or massive atrocities in an attempt to achieve it.

And there are people in positions of real power who believe in this stuff and act on it.

Andreessen posted a manifesto where he said that deliberately delaying AGI is basically mass murder and should be treated as such.