I just landed on this thread and choose to respond to you here, OP. I will say you’re my kinda person :) I’m also an ethical business person and came to conclude that federated marketplaces are the future. I put together a community here (https://lemm.ee/c/fedonomy) but never posted anything. I’ve been thinking / working on this for over a year now, more on the incentive/ economic model and setting up a real life business in a very specific niche. I hate typing on the phone and there is too much to type and it’s like 4 am. Please message me.

We let this beast called greed grow unchecked for so long in the shadows and now it has come out in the open, stepping on the throat of democracy, equality, & freedom.

‘Supposed to’ - yeah, we all wish. ‘Reality’ is that you are who you are. If you don’t recognize this primal instinct in yourself, you’ll never understand it in others. To understand the world, all you need is a mirror, and you need to look really deep in it.

The rise of nationalism / individualism world-wide is due to powerful propaganda targeting this exact instinctive behavior of man that tells him that he is superior to his neighbor with the different religion, county of birth, skin color, economic status. There’s a reason propaganda relies on rage, anger, & fear because those emotions evoke your animal instincts, bypassing all rational thinking.

We still possess our primal instincts, we still have fight flight response involuntarily to something new or unknown, we still fall in the us vs them trap, we cheer for our team, our country, our religion, and shit on the other team, other county, other religion. It takes wisdom to rise above labels, but it’s definitely not instinctive.

When you reframe the whole world as a jungle with 8 billion animals, your mantra translates to - don’t get hunted, but it’s okay to hunt, because that is survival instincts.

Nobody is saying your emotions are invalid. Your feelings are very valid. Here’s a hug from me to you to prove the point (I hope it counts, lol). All I’m saying is that anger is instinctive & it clouds our judgement (like we literally can’t process any other thoughts while angry). If you calmly think about it, you instantly reacted and insulted me and other poster above you, you put us both in the ‘other team’, while we were both in your team all along. That my friend is anger leading to more individualism (you alone in your room) over collectivism (same team). That is the exact same weakness that is exploited by those doing the propaganda. And that is why we all need to rise over it.

I feel the mad in you, I sincerely do, but when the whole ocean is moving in a certain way due to underlying currents, it is incorrect to place the blame on any individual droplet, for none of them individually are responsible for it or have the power to control or alter it. Understand that the droplets themselves are moving because of the said currents. The best you can do is accept reality and plan your course ahead. The mad only burns you from inside without solving any problem.

PS: to everyone commenting below me, now mad at me -

1. everyone is accountable for their individual actions and I’m not absolving anyone of their individual responsibilities.
2. I’m not telling you that you shouldn’t feel the mad, rather that I get the mad that you feel. I’m just as mad as you.
3. After being mad at all your friends and family for say about a decade, you come to realize that most of them are simple minds susceptible to propaganda, and that propaganda works, and that it works because it appeals to the human instinct of individualism (incorrectly overriding collectivism) using tools like fear and anger. We need to rise over our own anger and other instincts to see all this so we can better move forward.

these ‘trolls’ are just regular users.

Umm, every human is a regular user. Every regular user comes with these defaults - 1) instinct to react, and 2) defend their worldview. It takes patience and mental effort to not instinctively react, but rather shut up & ponder & reflect. 49 out of 50 want to win the debate but only 1 out of 50 wants to solve the problem.

And I will bet this is the exact way organic growth mostly happens for social media platforms. PS: I do the same

Yes, understanding oneself and what we really control is part of understanding nature. Understanding trauma and stress are part of understanding & accepting nature.

Anger is our inability to understand or accept the true nature of things.

The answer is that the Proletarian state, one dominated by the Proletariat and not the Bourgeoisie, gradually wrests from the Bourgeoisie its Capital with respect to the degree that it has developed.

How does one get a Proletarin state? It seems that any state would be susceptible to corruption & greed? It’s what we have everywhere in the world.

This quarter’s top line might not be looking great, so gotta improve the bottom line to impress the Wall Street analysts.