• blarghly@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    I have to say, this is just such an in-the-weeds moral stance that it crosses the boundary of reasonableness. Honestly, it’s this sort of thing that drove me away from left wing styles of thinking a while ago.

    The impact you make on the world in any of your possible actions with regard to Harry Potter is miniscule. Like, truly, utterly insignificant. Are you going to organize an anti-potter boycott? Participate in a protest? Harass the actors in an online trolling movement? Throw eggs at JK Rawling’s house? Great! Go do all those things! Actively participate in changing the world for the better! These actions might actually lead to real change.

    But denying yourself pleasures in the name of moral purity accomplishes nothing. If all you do is sit at home and think to yourself “I wanna watch the new Harry Potter thing, but I can’t, because then I’m a bad person.” (or in this case, "I wanna talk to my friends about the new Harry Potter thing I pirated, but I can’t, because then I’m a bad person) then you are accomplishing literally nothing except making yourself miserable. Again, if you are going to actually do something, then go do it! But if you don’t have the time or energy or interest or social battery to actually do something, then shaming yourself or others into not doing things is actively counterproductive. Go take a road trip without calculating if the pleasure you will derive is worth the carbon footprint! Eat an ice cream cone without feeling bad about the the suffering of the factory farmed cow it came from! Get one of those good-paying jobs in oil and gas or defence and make some goddamned money! You are simply not important enough for any of these actions to have any actual real-world impact. The only thing that happens is that you convince yourself that if you ever enjoy anything, then you are a bad person. You train yourself to constantly be looking for the ways in which life’s simple pleasures are destroying the world, so you can feel bad about them.

    Just stop it. Be happy. Do whatever you need to do to chill out and enjoy your life and gain some sense of contentedness and security. And then go out and make the world a better place by actually doing something. Hyper-anxious, shame-ridden, depressed know-it-alls rarely create effective social change because no one wants to hang out with them. No one see them and thinks “yeah, that’s what I want my life to look like.”

    In order to lead by example you have to show a path to a better world. Not a cell.

    • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net
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      13 hours ago

      Don’t confuse that mentality for left-wing thinking. It is an entirely liberal, center-right reactionary mentality to be overly concerned about optics and moral purity.

      What you have said is actual left-wing thinking. You have essentially described the point of “no ethical consumption under capitalism”. That if people really care about this, then they need to actually do something about it instead of just shaming others for indulging on simple creature comforts.

      Guarantee that the people bitching about others enjoying HP media also go home to suck down a bottle of Coke which directly funds militant anti-labor hit squads in South America to prevent their bottling plants from unionizing. Or maybe they are a Pepsi person, where their purchase has helped fund the exploitation of prisoners who are forced for pennies an hour to make their cans. Or any other of the myriad of things under our current economic structure that funnels wealth into the hands of the elite who seek to oppress the working class.

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        You are hardly the arbiter of what is left wing thinking. Fuck ethics im going to concern myself with my own needs is apolitical. Its neither Left nor right.

        • Doc_Crankenstein@slrpnk.net
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          10 hours ago

          I mean, you’re more than welcome to stay politically ignorant. I’m not an arbiter, but I am just describing facts.

          Also, what they said was absolutely not 'fuck ethics I’m going to concern myself with my own needs"

          Nice bad faith misrepresentation of what they said.

          • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            Also most people’s actions are on the overall ALL small. Most people make no big ripples. Telling them to either change the world or do nothing is telling them to do nothing.

            Ethics are a habit if you can’t give up a tv show what can you do exactly

          • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            Ethics isn’t just big things it’s little things as well. I don’t matter I shouldn’t need to do anything just isn’t Left or right wing it is an apolitical thought. Claiming that because you hold yourself to be left-wing and you thought it and thus it is left wing thinking is just flat out wrong. Please explain exactly how Im wrong. Explain how your position is left wing

    • Diurnambule@jlai.lu
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      18 hours ago

      Just pirate it and don’t speak about it. Win win. No monkey for the bigot and you get your pleasure.

      • blarghly@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        Congratulations. You successfully managed to both not engage with my point in any meaningful way, and also provided a solution I already deflated in the comment you are responding to.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Instead of not enjoying something why not enjoy something else there is finite time and far more to enjoy than you shall ever find time.

      What of value would be lost?

      If being a POS takes half of your income potential away people will be less likely to behave so and others will think it less acceptable.

      Dismissing the aggregate effect of small effects is dismissing most actual effects. Its ahistorical.