See if you make a ton of money, your kids will be better than the poor people, so you've left a better world for your children.
Actual logic and I've seen it play out.
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Correct. To them "empathy" extending beyond friends and family is a rediculous concept. They also don't believe that anyone else could actually fall for caring about other people.
If anyone on Lemmy wants a financial answer to this question, which essentially what it boils down to given the society we're in, I would recommend listening to the latest Weekly Show podcast episode with Jon Stewart interviewing the Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Thaler.
He breaks down this exact mentality in a way that makes a lot of sense.
My very short summary: We hate losing something way more than we enjoy gaining something. That's why governments prefer subsidies. They are perceived as gaining something, while taxes are perceived as losing something. They also talk about nudges versus shoves. Nudging people toward positive behavior works better, especially if you do it in a way that makes people feel like they have agency. But this makes it difficult to change behavior drastically (a shove), which Stewart argues is required with the challenges we're facing because of climate change. Thaler replies that with the kind of people we have in power, allowing for drastic change will not yield the kind of change we need nor want.
I think that's what the conversation boils down to, for all the people who hate watching a long video for what could've been some clean text.
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Just like with most things wrong in North America, you can be right more often than not if you just blame Reagan.
It’s the result of hyper individualism fuelled by neoliberal policies that was spearheaded by Reagan, and I probably need to mention Thatcher as well.
Remember “greed is good”? Well this is the result.
Remember "greed is good"
Gordon Gecko is an asshole.
Dan Olson's recent video on a silly meme that DHS posted and is being picked up by right wing crazies all over the world surfaced something that's been absolutely floating on the top of my mind ever since I saw it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7WqVx9x89s
They show a clip from Werner Herzog's 2007 documentary Encounters at the End of the World (full film), where a little penguin starts inexplicably running away from the herd that's heading to the sea, and running towards some distant mountains instead.
The penguin isn't just like wandering off to see some sick mountains because it's never going to get there. There's no food. There's no shelter. There's no security.
The penguin is going to die.
Immediately before the clip in the full documentary, Herzog asks a penguin expert if penguins can go insane.
So, another thing that's implicit underneath this is the recognition that Trump and his cronies are on a suicide mission. They do not believe in the future. They cannot conceptualize the world surviving the present. And so, theirs is an embrace of pure id, pillaging what future does exist to live out a revenge fantasy for no other reason than because they can. Their only policy is chaos and hatred because, where they're going, they don't need policies. The actual mountains, America the Great and its promised flourishing, don't matter. It can remain a hazy shape on the horizon because no one headed there will live to see it. Their only goal is to take everything else with them on the way out into the ice to die.
Now, maybe that's just cope on my part. I too am human and need to rationalize the world as it exists [to] grapple with the future, but it would go a long way to explaining why modern right-wing propaganda is so grim and nihilistic, reticent to depict any coherent ideal, even an unrealistic, unobtainable one.
Herzog intended for The Penguin to reflect on humanity. Encounters at the End of the World is an unabashedly anthropomorphic film about the stories that people read into nature in order to say something about ourselves.
And, to that end, the United States Department of Homeland Security has looked at this penguin and said, "Yep, that's us. We're doing this for no reason. We have no hope of success. There is no meaning to this. You don't need to ask us why because you've always known why."
The problem is not only that, but that those who want to leave the world better when they die can't seem to agree what "better" means...
Pick up trash you find on the ground. Hold the door open for the person behind you. Say thank you. Apologize and mean it.
It’s not that difficult.
In my opinion (and personal experience), I used to freeze up and not do anything because I felt I couldn’t make a big enough difference — so why bother? Then I had kids, and I realized that everything I do (and don’t do!) is scrutinized and repeated by my children.
My small actions have now been multiplied by 2. Pretty neat if you ask me.
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I think the more fundamental issue, and something we often forget to highlight with these tech bro shitstains, is how many of them are wholly convinced that with enough money they can just live forever.
how many of them are wholly convinced that with enough money they can just live forever.
Sometimes i feel like the entire difference between well-adjusted people and the people you describe in your comment comes down to whether their parents exposed them to enough stories growing up.
Did we not all experience the same fables, nursery rhymes and TV shows that cohesively teach you not to crave immortality and endless power? Not to sacrifice friends for wealth? They must've been getting early-start skiing lessons or practicing horse riding instead.
I learned how to ski before I was 5 and I think I'm an alright person. Not well adjusted by any means, but I try to be nice to everyone.
Just don't blame skiing. Horses, probably.
Wouldn't the vision of immortality make the problem even more immediate for them?
"Oh, Holden Bloodfeast XIII, born 2259 might die at 16 from cancer from the envitonmental catastrophe I'm sowing... Meh." rings different from "my own lust for immortality will be turned into scavenging a wasteland I wrought?"
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Literally had my dad tell me that people only ever voted for themselves
While I can accept that a lot of people do that, the implication that he doesn't vote with at least some thought about his children or wife was a little worrying
Similarly, he's also said that climate change won't affect us in our lifetime. This might be (somewhat) true for him, but for me?
if you are alive Feb 8, 2026, climate change is already impacting you drastically. saying otherwise requires ignorance. and i mean that in the original sense. not just never being shown the evidence. the willful choice to ignore that which is above and in front of you every single day
What I mean when I say he's a little correct is that it's feasible to ignore most of the effects up till now and assume it'll continue as it is currently
It's incredibly ignorant and incorrect, but it's probably not going to get to the point where we all die before he does first
He probably thinks it isn't real, rather than “it is not affecting me right now, but will probably be unmanageable in 20 years”
I've noticed even with parents to children now there is no hope for them. I'm someone who grew up in poverty, and I expect nothing from my parents at all (they have nothing). However, even affluent parents are leaving less to their kids now. Which, I'm actually okay with individually (I worked hard, I'm not going to give you a free ride and spoil you).
What makes me sad is when I see parents holding inheritance as ransom over their children. If you want to live a different life than they approve? Inheritance revoked. You want a different major than they approve of, or don't have the same political views? No inheritance. Only had 1 grandchild instead of 3? No inheritance.
That's such selfish weird behavior in my book. It's not "I earned this, I want to use it for my retirement", it's not "I don't want to spoil you" or to give it to charity, so I don't want to give that impression. It's the "I want to dangle the ladder in front of you before pulling it up". I don't know if I'm describing my feelings well but it bothers me a lot, and I think it's 1000% selfish
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Good adult
Most don't even know how to behave like an adult. Majority of the government behave exactly like children, which makes this situation worse. They rather play pretend adult rather than actually try to be an adult.
They want to leave a world that only their children will control
I recently found out about the Long Now Foundation, glad to see there's someone saying it out loud. We need to go back to thinking about our descendants in order to make a better humanity! We've tried the "more profit now" method for a while now, and I think most people will agree it has proven itself to not be a healthy, sustainable way to manage our lives and planet. I would really love to make a pilgrimage to the 10,000 year clock, seems like an amazing experience... if it wasn't in the US.
I think some of these people cannot conceptualize a world where they aren't in it.
So many people seem to completely believe they aren't going to die someday. I get that it's scary, but the cognitive dissonance is impressive.
Well there is a different view on that. Right wing 'morality' seems to be 'I've got mine, fuck you'. And they really live by that.
Probably they haven't grown up.
Also seem to be the ones most insistent on pushing young people to have children...
How can you have children and not be concerned about the world you're creating for them?
And they call themselves Christians.
With some, that might be the problem. They expect their God to come kill everyone soon anyway (the way there has always been sects of Christians expecting the apocalpyse soon since Christianity was born), so why try to make the world better?
We live in a democracy. Making people vote against their interest and their future and for the benefit of the people in power is what people in power do. But it takes embarrassingly little to buy the votes of the people.
A democracy ideally should have checks against buying voters, not that these are effective maybe anywhere in the world, but I would hate to be a doomer and think this is something that can't be fixed.
Yeah but think about this: more money me
They had lead in gasoline while they were growing up.
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