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the anti-woke folk are obsessed with not wanting to feel guilt, and they project it on children as a means of virtue signaling, as in “white kids shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for being white!” but isn’t this the hallmark of the sociopath? inability to empathize and have remorse? how do you look at our jagged, murderous histories giving rise to the jagged murderous present and take only from all that a righteous refusal to empathize with other human beings and feel things?

Pekka Tuominen reshared this.

in reply to malena

malena
malena
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sometimes it feels like colonizers are just people who don’t have cultural systems for processing emotions. people who do not have functional or advanced social technology for coming to terms with tragedy, culpability, shame, or mortality, and so colonizer culture is instead just intricate systems of denial

FoolishOwl reshared this.

in reply to malena

malena
malena
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maybe our culture is sociopathic like toddlers are. colonizer cultures are forever young, forever in infancy, lashing out at cultures of conscience & mature cultures. we’re afraid of people who have evolved (over millenia) languages, ways of being, and social structures that don’t deny but instead embrace the dynamism of humanity, that center joy and kinship. we’re afraid because they show our earth isn’t flat after all, they expose our baby culture of denial as just that: flat and false
in reply to malena

malena
malena
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Idk i just woke up thinking about social pain and its erasure, remembering and forgetting, and the importance of speaking truth and letting the pain of truth break you. how when we are broken by our histories we can choose to heal and how rich healing feels when it is shared with people who don’t look like you or speak your language. old cultures know our job is to fix the world, and that nothing can be fixed unless we first admit its broke

Maggie Maybe reshared this.

in reply to malena

FoolishOwl
FoolishOwl
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My impression is that in imperial cultures, settler colonialism being an aspect of empire in this sense, there's pressure on the ruling class and privileged classes to suppress their feelings, especially where violence and material oppression are concerned.
in reply to FoolishOwl

anubis2814
anubis2814
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@FoolishOwl @malena The psychopath test has been run on politicians before and after elected and they have shown increased levels of psychopathy after they've been in power for a bit. Less ability to use empathy because they have to face so much overwhelming pain and they become numb to it.
@FoolishOwl @malena
in reply to malena

🪨 stone 🪨
🪨 stone 🪨
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nope yep i think you nailed it. oppression’s primary mechanism in propagating itself is brutalizing each successive generation of potential oppressors, wounding them as deeply as possible and killing their empathy so they never question the status quo and do the same thing to the generations after them. but empathy can never totally be erased, even in the colonizer oppressor class, so that little whispering voice drives people absolutely mad.

i think about this constantly, and i’m sure i’ll be processing my own role in that process for the rest of my life even as i do what i can to halt it.

in reply to malena

Princeoflonelymt
Princeoflonelymt
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I agree it's missing that vital piece. Imo though, it's missing intentionally.
in reply to malena

DeepSpace🔺9
DeepSpace🔺9
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Colonizers steal the resources and exploit the people. Their culture is capitalism. Their religion is fascism.
in reply to malena

Steve Moore :toad:
Steve Moore :toad:
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Your questions & musings 👍
The brain's limbic system evolved to protect the individual, to respond to danger. A culture that doesn't promote inclusion, acceptance allows neuropathways triggered by fear towards defensive response to become strengthened in individuals. Deep ingrained fear alters endocrine response & ANS function to a point of psychopathy. Which reinforces the culture, a loop of dysfunction, generational maladaption. We have neuroplasticity, but rewiring ain't easy.
in reply to malena

Durrandon
Durrandon
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I also think it is weird that they assume that white kids will automatically identify with historically white oppressors instead of oppressed people, just because they are white. Why would they feel guilt instead of outrage?
in reply to Durrandon

anubis2814
anubis2814
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@Durrandon @malena I never did, not til i became an adult and realized racism wasn't over yet and I had benefited from it. As a kid it was a clear distinction between them racists and us modern folk.
@malena @Durrandon
in reply to malena

Greg
Greg
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I suspect many of them are deeply ignorant of history and just how murderous colonialism has been but maybe I'm being too generous to them in my interpretation.
Unknown parent

Durrandon
Durrandon
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@anubis2814

Yeah, I think when I first really saw my privellage in a system of ongoing racism, I really only felt guilt over things I personally did and then began to try to correct those. I didn't feel guilty for what I had due to privilege, I felt upset that other people didn't have it too. My parents grew up poor. White privilege allowed them to become middle class, but that wasn't wrong. It was wrong that people of color didn't have the same opportunities.

@anubis2814
in reply to malena

David Nelson
David Nelson
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Seems like a lot of people can’t tell the difference between empathy and guilt. And it’s impossible to be empathetic if you reflexively shut it out to avoid feeling bad.

Same basic problem with talking about privilege. People refuse to acknowledge it because they think it’s about sending them on a guilt trip rather than about understanding how other people’s “normal” differs from their own.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
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