this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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Systems are not the sum of the individual actors who participate in them. Systems can influence and even control individuals back. Therefore, individual flaws in character or intellect are necessary, but not adequate to explain why systems are flawed.
Consider the future imagined in the movie "Idiocracy 2005". Society is collapsing because people are dumb. This is the explanation for all problems in that society. Capitalism, Resource extraction, environmental degradation, political corruption, and a rather authoritarian government are all blameless. The implication is that capitalism an authoritarianism are good if we could just be smart about it.
This is a big difference between left and right thinking. Republicans argue problems can be solved by reforming individuals; the police are good, there are just a few bad apples. Or that the right individual, at the helm of a system, can clean up all the issues with strength and resolve. This is the central pitch for supporting Trump.
An odd thing to say, as the saying is that "A few bad apples spoil the whole crop". I think they're trying to say that that "The police is an overall force for good because the isolated cases do not dictate the whole". The saying is the exact opposite.