The overall lack of ethics and hypocrisy in society is very difficult to tolerate for me.

[Jeff T]

Most people tend to forget who white Australians really are.

250 years ago England went through a right wing period of politics and as is usually the case it ended up being the poor people who were blamed for all the world’s wrongs. So England rounded up every undesirable they could find and shipped them all off to Australia.

We’re a nation founded by petty criminals and confidence tricksters. Many of our most successful criminals are now called Politicians.

The Sydney Ducks were a powerful crime gang in San Francisco during the gold rush. Maybe they eventually became politicians here as well?

 

[Stuttermabolur]

Metaphorically, it's like having a shellfish allergy, being told you have to go to have a meal with a group of people. Of course they want shellfish, you politely decline the meal, but they insist you must stay and consume shellfish, because not doing so makes them, the group, uncomfortable. So you consume the shellfish and the inevitable happens. You certainly don't enjoy the shellfish.

This reminds me of Spider Jerusalem's slightly more cynical analogy for voting in Transmetropolitan (great series).

Spoiler: Warning: Explicit Laguage

Imagine you're locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks, and unnamable freaks that rape pit bulls for fun; And you ain't allowed out till you vote on what you're going to do tonight.

YOU like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation".

THEY like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns and brand new sexual organs that you did not know existed.

So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to **** you with switchblades.

That's voting. You're welcome.

 

[MildredHubble]

This reminds me of Spider Jerusalem's slightly more cynical analogy for voting in Transmetropolitan (great series).

Spoiler: Warning: Explicit Laguage

Imagine you're locked in a huge underground nightclub filled with sinners, whores, freaks, and unnamable freaks that rape pit bulls for fun; And you ain't allowed out till you vote on what you're going to do tonight.

YOU like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation".

THEY like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns and brand new sexual organs that you did not know existed.

So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to **** you with switchblades.

That's voting. You're welcome.

View attachment 88408

Yikes! That's a nightmarish analogy, but I see the common theme!

I guess it kinda goes back to that Einstein quote that is thrown around occasionally...

"If we judge a fish's intelligence by it's ability to climb a tree, then the fish will live it's life believing it is incredibly stupid."

I guess I could be paraphrasing, but that was the gist.

It's like I'm a swimmer and most other people are tree climbers. Both perfectly suited to their endeavour. But the problem is that the received wisdom is that I and people like me NEED to stop swimming and climb trees. It's rarely the other way around!

 

[Luca]

Without going into any real political detail, the nightmare situation with the midterm elections in my country has further depleted my already dying faith in humanity.

 

[MildredHubble]

Without going into any real political detail, the nightmare situation with the midterm elections in my country has further depleted my already dying faith in humanity.

Living in the UK, I can certainly relate to this feeling :-( I'm starting to wonder if they are putting something in the water!

Actually it wouldn't surprise me since they pollute our rivers and coasts with raw sewage!

 

[Luca]

Actually it wouldn't surprise me since they pollute our rivers and coasts with raw sewage!

That's awful A huge load of sewage was dumped into the harbor last month where I live. Makes me wonder if that still happens regularly because our state government was told to stop doing it back in 2007.

 

[MildredHubble]

That's awful A huge load of sewage was dumped into the harbor last month where I live. Makes me wonder if that still happens regularly because our state government was told to stop doing it back in 2007.

I'm sorry this is happening where you live :-( I think in the UK they could only do it in exceptional circumstances. There was a bit of a scandal about it. Sadly not as big as it should have been though!

Due to Brexit etc, the water companies couldn't process the sewage waste, or at least it wasn't worth their while due to costs. So they asked the government if they could flush the sewage into the rivers and coasts and the government said go for it. :-(

 

[Luca]

I'm sorry this is happening where you live :-( I think in the UK they could only do it in exceptional circumstances. There was a bit of a scandal about it. Sadly not as big as it should have been though!

Due to Brexit etc, the water companies couldn't process the sewage waste, or at least it wasn't worth their while due to costs. So they asked the government if they could flush the sewage into the rivers and coasts and the government said go for it. :-(

This is another reason I have little faith in humanity, people don't realize how much stuff they're doing that is terrible for the environment

 

[Jordy]

I may denounce all I consider to be a crime, I will never justify or excuse it, but I obviously don't lift a finger to fight it either. This means in my heart of hearts, I've chosen myself over others.

Yet if everyone copied that behavior from you the world would be an all-around better place.

I don't need people to be good, just wish they weren't bad.

 

[MildredHubble]

This is another reason I have little faith in humanity, people don't realize how much stuff they're doing that is terrible for the environment

Absolutely! It's quite maddening! There's this YouTube channel called politicsJOE where they were interviewing people who vote for our equivalent of Republicans (The Conservatives).

They asked this one guy if he supported saving the planet, after he basically bragged about all his money and piles of stuff. He just said "No I don't care about saving the planet."

I was wondering where he thinks he will live if the planet ends up resembling Mars???

I imagine though if his house was on fire he would probably insist something be done about it!

 

[MildredHubble]

Just thought we could do with cheering up a bit

 

[Luca]

Absolutely! It's quite maddening! There's this YouTube channel called politicsJOE where they were interviewing people who vote for our equivalent of Republicans (The Conservatives).

They asked this one guy if he supported saving the planet, after he basically bragged about all his money and piles of stuff. He just said "No I don't care about saving the planet."

I was wondering where he thinks he will live if the planet ends up resembling Mars???

I imagine though if his house was on fire he would probably insist something be done about it!

“No I don’t care about saving the planet” is a straightforwardly awful response.

 

[Human Avatar]

I'm from a culture where all forms of cheating, corruption and dishonesty are endemic and massively widespread.

And while I'm certainly no saint and I've had my share of ethical failings in life, I at least really try and improve and I think I have a solid baseline for what's right and I'm somewhat rigid about it.

The issue is that through out my life I've been treated like an alien for it, I've heard some variation of the phrase "You don't seem like you were born here" many times through life. People react with borderline bafflement when I didn't cheat in college even when everyone else did, when I find it unpleasant how almost everyone cheats to their partners (and how matter of fact its treated), how corruption is everyone and you're a sucker if you're constantly looking out for every possible way to screw others for your own benefit.

And these certainly aren't values that were instilled on me by anyone growing up, as everyone around were as decadent as corrupt as anyone else. It's just the way I am, perhaps it's related to my extremely peculiar nature that I speculate to be at least autism adjacent.

And it's not like I'm naïve or anything, it's just I find it so unbearably irrational that a society on the surface constantly preaches all these values but in practice almost everyone eschews them constantly. Because this sure is a very supposedly religious society filled with a whole of preachy people that do all these things all the same. Meanwhile I haven't believed in anything super natural since I was like seven and I still at least try to hold myself to these ideals, because why have them at all then? why don't we all just accept that we're decadent a-holes and just do whatever we want without all the sanctimonious layer?

Of course, the answer to that question is because most humans want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to think they're generally ethical and decent even if in practice they can't be bothered doing the sacrifices that entails. And that cognitive dissonance is just too annoying, so they just ignore it.

And so we end up with these insane societies filled with absurdity, hypocrisy and contradictions so silly and obvious that even a child could plainly see but most act as if its all entirely normal and perfectly natural.

I don't know if it's autism related or just me being me but that sort of blatant, contradictory absurdity just drives me insane and makes being a part of society exceedingly difficult.

I agree with you 100%. These are the same thoughts I have been battling with about society. It gets daunting thinking about it all the time. I have been punished by teachers and adults when I was younger for pointing the same things out ,and asking for a simple explanation-why? When I get frustrated thinking about it I just play piano or guitar . You are not alone on your observations.

 

[MildredHubble]

“No I don’t care about saving the planet” is a straightforwardly awful response.

That was very much my opinion when I heard him say it :-(

 

[Outdated]

@Luca , @MildredHubble

https://www.autismforums.com/threads/integrity-in-politics-or-lack-of-it.40666/post-900399

 

[Outdated]

I guess it kinda goes back to that Einstein quote that is thrown around occasionally...
"If we judge a fish's intelligence by it's ability to climb a tree, then the fish will live it's life believing it is incredibly stupid."

Apparently he also defined insanity as "repeating the same process again and again hoping to achieve a different result".