I don’t live in the us so I can’t comment on any change that has been or not been.

I do know that privilege itself obscures experience. Compassion and empathy are built on experience. Therefore expecting someone who is privileged to have compassion or empathy to those without the same privilige is unrealistic. They have to be shown, or brought to a point where they can align their experience with others.

exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.

…there’s your problem.

Why would they care? At worst they’re unaffected. At best they’re benefitting. What is their impetus for change?

Yeah that’s kinda the point.

Yeah no. Performance, reliability, uptime are huge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning

It is toxic

Not sure what degrees of toxicity are measured in,like is there a Richter scale of toxicity

I tried to think of a witty measurement but it’s late and I’ve had a hard day so I’m going to bed instead.

Diffuse can be used as a verb meaning “to spread out” or an adjective meaning “not concentrated.” It is often confused with defuse, which can only be a verb. The original meaning of defuse was “to take the fuse off a bomb,” but the word now usually means “to make less dangerous or tense.”

Yes.

When you look for things to be angry about, when you look for things to be resentful about, you find them.

When you look for things to be satisfied with, when you look for things to be grateful for, you find them.

I found the opposite. I have achieved far, far more through practising gratitude, knowing my values and moving towards them rather than being pressure and goal oriented.

I went for a walk this morning, in a park near my house. It was cold and grey, so.i was grateful for my gloves and for the solitude. How good is it that I can go for a walk, in a park near my house? Hear birds, breathe air see trees, smell the frost? How good that there are parks, and birds, and it’s safe, and I can walk. I want to keep doing it. I’m grateful for that.

Like I said, gratitude is hard.

It is hard to have gratitude when there is inequality

It is hard to have gratitude when competition is encouraged and enshrined by people who benefit from it

It is hard to have gratitude when the constructs in which we live seem unjust

It is hard to wake up and look around and find something to be grateful for

It is hard to be grateful when all you can see is what you don’t have

Being genuinely appreciative of what you do have leads to a quieter mind and a happier life. We have one life.

It comes across as some stupid bullshit, I know. But the resentment and frustration aren’t useful. Clarity of mind and purpose is, and is more sustainable than passion and anger.

My 2c.

I live in Australia

The homicide rate here is 0.86 deaths per 100k people per year

Of those, approx 66% are male.

The suicide rate is 12.3 deaths per 100k per year.

Of those, 75% are male.

The statistics are similar in most Western countries.

Pause for a second and think about the last time that you heard that mentioned either in casual conversation or in the news media.

It is not spoken about.

https://www.jamesmollison.com/where-children-sleep

We are privileged. Gratitude is hard.

Aw thank you, I feel seen.

Pretty sure he’s talking about pineapple on pizza

Baby mama drama - tale as old as time.

Man, I miss Jerry Springer.

Ishmael v Isaac. Got it.

Memory’s a bit sketchy but yeah sounds about right

It gives an insight as to the nature, location and odor of many gigs

Man wait till you meet Charlie

Younger than 45

Oh OK that actually makes sense.

45 year olds and above are digital immigrants. In short, they had an off-line childhood and an online adulthood. They have different speech and writing patterns to you because they learnt and communicated in a different way to you.

Assuming you’re under 45, this won’t make sense, because you’ve never experienced a world which doesn’t have this sort of interaction. You’re a digital native, digital tech has always been there.

In twenty years time, children born or educated after the advent of chat gpt will have the same problem understanding you. The way you write, post and interact will seem clunky and old fashioned. It’s already happening - we’re having to adapt the way we interact, in order to be able to ‘be understood’ by AI.

The wonderful thing about humanity, tho, is that we do adapt and adopt! Consider this - everyone over the age of 50 had to learn something completely new to them in order to be able to communicate with you via email, sms or messaging app. They used to just talk, or write letters. Sharing media was a physical act. Yet here they are using the same texh as you. Awesome.

I spent a bit of time going through your post history to get an understanding of your background

In short I think your life experiences mean you’ve lost all trust in men. Not just your direct experiences but what you’ve observed in others.

As a result you enter each interaction assuming the worst. Every male social worker you engage with will confirm this pattern because that’s what you’re looking for. The - ah fuck here we go again - feeling.

For them, and I don’t expect you to have empathy for them, this is what they live - the outcomes of other mens behaviours. But - they were there and they tried. That is something.

You have changed quite a lot of your original post.