Who’s posting this Israeli propaganda

It’s a constant problem because its a cult that wants to protect its cult members. It finds no issue with indoctrinating kids, to the point where nobody batted an eye when they recently (like, in the past 10 years) decreased the age at which children go through the sacrament of Confirmation. The same sacrament that is meant to affirm your adulthood in the church, where you say, “I may have been told to practice this by my parents before, but now I’m an adult now and choose to practice it of my own volition.”

They do this when children are thirteen years old. Thirteen.

When I was fifteen I did not have the capacity to make this decision for myself. Now I have to live with the fact I’m on a list somewhere as an adult in the church. The Catholic Church is an evil institution that uses trauma for the purpose of coercion.

Hey, no need to apologize! I totally get it.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, even with your cynicism :) I agree, any altruistic behavior fits within this context of evolutionary behavior and is ultimately driven by the need for individuals to survive long enough to reproductive age. To be honest, I’m actually not sure where we disagree. I think, maybe, we are interpreting Kropotkin differently. To continue with the idea about horses – I think the problem with your posit (horses protecting their young) is that it isn’t only the horses who have offspring who form the circle, but also horses who don’t have offspring. This might sound like I’m saying, “See, since even the horses that do not have offspring join the protective ring, we see that altruism occurs in nature,” but as you pointed out, this too is an evolutionarily driven behavior. It’s not necessarily selfish in the eyes of the individual (I don’t think), but it’s an urge, driven by generations and generations of horses who exist on a spectrum from least social (do not participate in the circle) to most social (participate in the circle, and many more social activities), in which those horses that are more socially participative are more likely to reach adulthood and reproduction.

I can’t remember if Kropotkin addresses the violence that happens in the natural world, but I’m pretty sure he reconciles it. I don’t think he outright denies competition in Mutual Aid, even though I can see how you come to that conclusion with that passage. I agree with you, it is easy to look at opposing examples of competition rather than cooperation in the natural world, even among the same species. Especially when it comes down to resource scarcity – then you start seeing less cooperative behavior. I think Kropotkin’s point is not to deny that competition exists, but to push against the idea that that is the only thing that exists. The way I understand it, he was writing in a post-Darwin time, when the scientific community was taking Darwin’s ideas and applying them to society with Social Darwinism – survival of the fittest not only in nature but in social life, as well. So instead of a “noble savage” kinda idea, where Kropotkin is saying “everything in nature is peaches and roses,” he is more saying, “look at all this cooperation in nature that is being ignored by the ‘survival of the fittest’ camp.” Anyways, that’s how I read the book – but it’s not really captured in that single quote.

Funnily enough, your exact example with ants is one Kropotkin uses in Mutual Aid! He basically goes along the evolutionary ladder, from least complex organisms to most (although, beginning with insects I’m pretty sure) and shows the cooperation within various species, not to deny the existence of competition, but to show that it isn’t the only, or even the most, important force in evolution.

I guess my one last point is illustrated like this: if competition for resources were the primary force driving evolution, wouldn’t we see a continuing trend of individuals in a species with more and more physical strength, brutishness, competitive nature, and rejection of cooperation? In other words, wouldn’t we see a phasing out of cooperative behavior in favor of individual antagonisms and competition for resources? Here I’m thinking of my house cats – we’re in the process of introducing them, at the moment, and managing their anxieties about the other. Even though Bella is very territorial, each day she is showing more and more signs of acceptance of Suzie – through cat language of course – slow blinking, flopping on her side, chirping when she walks up to her. If competition where the only, or the most important driver of evolution, I’m not sure we would see this kind of behavior from Bella – I’m not even sure these cat-signs of flopping slow-blinking, chirping, would exist! Of course, they occur with more frequency as she slowly realizes resources are not scarce, that she can coexist with this other cat Suzie, and that she’ll get treats each time she has a positive interaction ;)

Anyways, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’m curious to hear what you think, it’s been fun chatting. I think even if you’re skeptical of Kropotkin from that passage, it’s still worth reading the book in whole. You probably wouldn’t find that you agree with everything, or even most, but at the very least, I think it’d be an interesting insight into how a person thought post-Darwin, pre-WW1.

I think you have some confusion with the word fork. You don’t “fork away” from a lemmy instance – instances are their own thing. You can defederate from them, but that’s not forking. Forking is really only in the context of the code – its when you copy a codebase and change it in whatever way you see fit, so a fork of Lemmy would not be lemmy.

That thread has a couple mentions of forks of Lemmy, like piefed and mbin, but there is so much non-technical conversation that its really not about creating forks of lemmy. I think what you’re trying to say is that people want to decrease their reliance (don’t want to donate to, really) the lemmy devs, who also are the lemmy.ml maintainers, who have pro-CCP views. I mean, you can correct me if I’m wrong there. Really most of that thread is discussion of politics.

But the thing is, you don’t have to support them. You don’t have to donate, and if you’re really upset that they are adding a donate button, you can move to another activitypub platform like piefed or mbin or whatever. I mean, you probably should be doing that since you seem so invested in this issue. It’d definitely be more effective protest – because the lemmy devs aren’t going to be ousted or anything like that. Lemmy is their project. The best thing you can do is move to a fork of lemmy. That’s the whole beauty of open source – if you don’t like it, there is a fork. If there’s no fork, you can fork it yourself (but that’s work).

But there’s not much you can do to influence the direction of lemmy as a codebase, and if the devs wretched political opinions outweigh the usefulness of the platform for you, you should just switch platforms. It’d be a bummer to lose your comment history, your moderator status, or whatever, but why would you care about that stuff if it contributes to something that is owned by some tankies you hate?

Idk, maybe something to think about. There are just a lot of avenues built into open-source software, and into the decentralized nature of the fediverse, that allow you an off-ramp. But sounding the alarm on a yearly donate button won’t influence the direction of lemmy because those two devs are in complete control of the codebase.

Hell, I’m looking at mbin now. kinda enticing…hmmmmmm…lol

Edit: Hmm hold on, it sounds like piefed and mbin are not forks, but were developed independently of lemmy

Yep, lots of people have been wanting to fork.

Hm? You make it sound like the devs are blocking that from happening, and that there’s all this chatter about it, but people cant decide – But that’s not how forking works. There’s no “people want to fork, but they just cant decide how to proceed, or they’re being blocked from doing it, or there’s been all this talk about forking, whatever whatever.” Like usually it’s not an all or nothing, it’s not a thing everyone has to discuss, “we gotta fork and every instance migrate over to this other codebase.” Anyone can just fork it and self host it. I know you didn’t say exactly those words, but it kinda sounds like you don’t really know much about what you’re saying, sorry to say :/ Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, I’m not an open source dev, just an admin. But idk dude, it sounds like you have a misunderstanding about the big picture of open-source development.

The problem is maintenance, as mentioned below, but I guess I’m more curious about the federative implications of forking lemmy and running your own fork – is it feasible? Maybe someone else could answer

Maybe a stupid question, couldn’t someone just fork it and remove this?

I don’t really agree, but I do understand where you’re coming from. I do think you’re right in pointing out that all these behaviors give the individual a more likely chance to survive, but I also think that is exactly Kropotkin’s point. That these social behaviors were naturally selected, the individuals who displayed them were more likely to survive.

But where I disagree is in the fact that the individuals themselves aren’t consciously thinking, “this is what will give me, an individual, the best chance to survive.” You see what I mean? For example, the horses forming a circle around the young to defend from wolves – they’re not thinking, “I need to protect myself.” They have an instinct to protect the young, so the young go in the center. If an adult were purely individualistic, it would enter the circle, itself, right? Or if my neighbors house is on fire, what’s most advantageous for me as an individual is to run away, but I feel compelled to yell for help. Or kittens – wouldn’t they be better off as individuals if they just killed off their siblings, so that they could have a full mouth? But no, being raised with other young kittens allows them to learn to hunt through play, to groom themselves, and to learn socialization tactics and reading body language, which further increases their chances of survival when encountering other cats as adults.

So yeah, you’re totally right in a sense, animals act in these ways because their ancestors passed on the genes that predisposed them to acting this way, and those behaviors make them more likely to survive because they (the behaviors) made their ancestors more likely to survive. See what I’m getting at? Kropotkin’s point is that it is evolutionarily advantageous to engage in social activity and cooperation.

I totally buy it, personally. You ever think about why we blush involuntarily? Or why we feel so wretched when we think we haven’t been accepted socially? Why it feels good to just help someone, or when we wince when we see someone else in pain? We’re social animals, built to socialize. I mean, we all speak a language! We naturally are compelled to talk baby-talk at babies. We touch each other, even in platonic, non sexual ways. These social behaviors are rewarded because they helped us survive, yes, but we don’t think about them as actions we take to increase our chance of survival. We do them because they feel good, because they’re supposed to.

I think learning anything new is like this, yknow? No pain no gain, as they say.

You should check out mutual aid by pyotr kropotkin. Sure, we have several thousand years of history of the carnage of states and individuals. Thing is, humans have existed for over 100,000 years – there is a lot missing about what our “natural” state is. Archaeological and anthropological evidence show that human societies exist on a wide spectrum of peaceful --> violent, stateless --> hierarchical.

Your implication that humans are inherently bad, cruel, competing for resources, etc. is a vestige of theory from Thomas Hobbes, connected to social darwinism, that completely ignores the observed behavior of a vast amount of animal and insect species, wherein individuals aid one another out of no apparent immediate benefit to themselves.

A somewhat famous passage from kropotkin to illustrate:

[…] to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour — whom I often do not know at all — which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy — an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.

This isn’t to endorse primitivism, or Rousseau’s state of nature. I’m not sure I would even say “humans are innately good,” necessarily. Clearly, we have the potential for evil. But the idea that capitalist competition, social darwinism, humans reveling in their own private benefit, greed, and cruelty, is natural, is both played out and nonsensical.

edit: Source https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

Those are fair viewpoints. I’m no marxist-leninist. But I will say, capitalism doesn’t work on large scale either. So why keep it around?

Edit: in other words I think what you say is accurate but doesn’t address the problems I brought up about liberals

Idk I feel like liberals are responsible for enabling people like trump by always trying to maintain the status quo of capitalist growth and the illusion that access to marketplaces = rights. In the case of women, of lgbtq folks, of brown people, etc. I feel like they are half the whole problem. They are also in service to capital, and perpetuate the myth that you can serve your community with integrity while also taking in loads of cash from large organization as a politician

Darktable is a godsend to me for converting film negatives.But I pretty much only use image conversion, RGB curve, then fidget with the exposure and RGB sliders in negadoctor a little more then I’m done. No idea how to do anything else.

Btw for anyone reading this, the original is about a US judge of Mexican heritage who was presiding over the Trump University fraud case.

Trump didn’t actually say this about Pope Francis, as far as we know.

If you’re on the fence about watching this in its entirety, I encourage you to give it a shot. The summary below is totally accurate re: “the argument” (thank you, btw, Mr. Bucket) but it doesn’t really do the video justice. It’s actually funny and entertaining. I was kinda skeptical. I am chronically predisposed to overanalyzing “will this be worth my time?” regarding video essays. Watching it at 2x speed made it quicker and funnier for me. Totally worth it.

No actually you are totally right and I’ve made a big mistake. I thought I remembered him going to the island, but he just met with him a couple times. His reaction was pretty poor, but I don’t think there’s evidence he went to his island. I’ll edit my comment. Thanks for pointing that out.

I consider Understanding Power an essential read, but really soured on Chomsky as a person when he defended his going to Epstein’s island meetings with Epstein. I still think people should read him but not glorify him.

Edit: there is no evidence, as far as I’m aware, Chomsky went to Epstein’s Island. I misremembered.

I’ve really been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance and swapping between my PC and SteamDeck. It runs pretty well on the Deck. Reminds me of how I felt playing Skyrim. Excited to get to the sequel.

“Right-wing anarchists” makes me wanna puke. I think libertarian freestaters is probably a more accurate name.

The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers–in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.

The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due.

Moreover–and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring–the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town possessing bridges, quays, and fine public buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town well paved, lighted with gas, in regular communication with other towns, and itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful.

A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued at thousands of pounds sterling, not because thousands of pounds’ worth of labour have been expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day–a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of the whole French nation.

Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage?

Pyotr Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/conquest/ch6.html

Edit: and another of my fav Kropotkin passages, this time from Mutual Aid:

It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy — an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution

As another has said, strengthen your local ties. In the event of a collapse, we’re all going to be affected in one way or another. I think the biggest thing is fostering a culture of cooperation rather the competition. That means avoid prepping, avoid emptying store shelves, avoid hoarding goods en masse in your basement or shelter.

I think a good first step would be to look for local mutual aid groups. Just Google your town or state + “mutual aid”. These groups are already out there directly servicing those most in need, and are the most ready to spring into action when a disaster strikes (here is some testimony about mutual aid group action during Hurricane Helene)

Oftentimes these groups are open to volunteers or donations and will be active during natural catastrophes, and I’d imagine economic ones as well.