The recent attack in Sydney is another reminder of just how society is falling ever-deeper into a chasm of darkness. These events have been happening all over the world for some time now, but they are spreading and becoming far more common. There are many reasons for it, but ultimately, I believe it comes down to the degradation of individuals themselves. The average person is devolving, becoming more extreme in opinion and less in control of emotion, whilst also being driven by the need for attention by feeling part of something to fill the void in their lives.
More and more, we resemble our darkest sides.
Laws don't keep people in check.
What keeps the majority of people in check, are the norms of the community and social desire to be part of the group. Now that social dysfunction driven by community breakdown is so prevalent, there is less holding people in place. Not only that, due to the way we have conditioned ourselves on polarised content that has not only made us more extremist in view, we have also bought into a more individualistic approach, where satisfying our desires is the priority. And coupled with an incentivised victimhood culture where we have been encouraged to all be victims of something, someone, or some group - we feel justified to retaliate, no matter how unjustified it would have been earlier.
It is easy to blame religion or culture, but I think that what it all comes down to is that we have made our "identity" the most important thing. And no matter what labels that happens to include, each of them comes with adversarial positions, meaning that we have opposing identities. And the more we fight for our own, the more the opposition will fight for theirs, until it becomes attack. Fighting over religion, or borders, or language, or skin colour, or background, or whatever - always comes to violence, because people have been told to be proud of "who they are" even if they are proud over something they had no choice in, not had any hand in developing.
"I'm a proud Christian."
Really? Because according to the bible, Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall". Pride is strongly condemned in the bible and is the first of the deadly sins. Proud white/black person? So you chose your colour? You chose your parents? Are you a fool? Proud of your nationality? What? Did you choose where you were born?
When pride is wounded, it leads to revenge. Because when we put our identity, our ego, as the representation of ourselves, it is able to be hurt without ever coming into any personal risk. An attack on the Jews, the Muslims, the whites, the blacks, the gays, the women, the men.... every attack becomes an attack on everyone who identifies themselves as part of that group. And that means, the attacks are endless. And then, once we get our ego hurt, especially when we are as emotionally instable and personally insecure as we are today, we react, we want revenge. We don't want balance, we don't want equality - we want others to suffer like we have. We want to create more victims.
And the thing is, that while you can disagree because you would never do that, it is irrelevant for you as an individual. Because within your many identity groups lay a spectrum of people, and if there was a normal distribution of something like "Probability of violence", some percentage of them are at the extremes of low likelihood, and high likelihood. And as we consume more polarised media that generates outrage for clicks, the distribution skews, pushing more people into the higher probability range. And once some of them act upon their extremist views, it skews the distributions again, and again
... and again...
It is a collective race to the fucking bottom.
Rather than disconnecting from each other, which has been the major shift in culture over the last few decades, what we should be doing is detaching from our identities. Especially the ones that we had zero control over. We need to kill the pride we have in arbitrary traits and instead built self-worth on who we are in terms of our behaviours, and the value we bring to our world, our family, our community, and humanity as a whole.
Calculate the value people bring to humanity today, and most people won't have much to be proud of. Instead, most of us should be fucking ashamed of ourselves.
But we don't have to be, because when we subscribe ourselves to an identity group, we can feel special just for being in the group. We don't need to do anything, because in the group there will be some people who do something decent, so we can claim personal glory by association from them, and when the other people in the group do something shitty, we can say, "I am not like that. I'm like the good one."
Identity as we use it today is a fucking sickness, no different to the worst of any religion that has ever been. It is a driving force for violence, because it is always divisive, always looking to create boundaries, and most of those boundaries don't even exist in reality. They are fantasies of the mind, dreamed up and protected by an ego that is looking to preserve its imaginary self, even as it strangles the host it lives within.
I can almost guarantee that the majority of people reading this might understand it at some kind of surface level, but will never take the journey to understand it at the core. Most will never pull apart and examine what identity is, because their own fantasy, their own ego will stop them, because understanding means losing the self that a person has come to believe is who they are. People feel that if they lose their known identity, they become lost. But the reality is,
It is the only way to find who we are.
If we are our actions, and all we are doing is repeating some tradition that we have been taught to do, with beliefs drummed into us, and feelings that react to anything that threatens what we have accepted as truth without exploration, what are we? But if we shed all of that shit, release the labels and programming, we can start to live the examined life, the one worth living. And if everyone did that, there would be no need for identity violence, because all of the egos will have disappeared, all the insecurities washed away.
There would be no need for revenge, for there would be no attack.
But we won't.
We are unlikely to ever be an enlightened species, because we are too attached to what we know, and believe what we know is correct. Even when we find out incrementally that what we know was wrong, our ego protects itself by making excuses as to why it didn't know better, and why past actions were justified. At what point does the ego forgive?
It doesn't. It carries damage forever, and wears it with pride.
I should know better than to be disappointed in humanity, especially since it is consistently meeting my expectations. I know we have better in us and potential to do great things, beautiful things. But we are unlikely to. Because the mean of the distribution curve we rest on is skewed toward personal satisfaction, instead of collective growth.
Are you proud of us?
I am not.
Taraz
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It's interesting to see the response to something like this when it happens outside of the US. I think people get so used to it being an American thing and there is this added shock when it happens somewhere else. I would hope that might make people realize it's an important issue for everyone.
It is no different for me other than my sister living in Sydney. My responses to all of them are the same line.
What is interesting is the police were pretty unprepared apparently, so just imagine if they had assault rifles instead of bolt action and shotguns.
It is definitely important for everyone. It is going to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future.
I've seen some information about the police response, but I haven't been able to determine if it is factual or not. I kind of just take it a base level if I don't know for sure. There's just so much misinformation out there.
This is precisely what the attention economy is costing us: a system that constantly feeds us extremist content, cult-mindset and fear, knowing that anger holds attention longer than empathy. In this cycle, it is crucial to remember that an extremist is an extremist irrespective of gender, race or religion. When we do the labelling, we do not heal; we multiply hatred and deepen it further, resulting in isolation.
Humanity has been in disarray for a long tim. We no longer ask the simplest, most human questions: How are you? Have you eaten? How have you been feeling these days? Instead, we pass judgments endlessly, mistaking assumptions fed to us by algorithm or even News. In doing so, we slowly lose the language of compassion.
Another troubling consequence is the loss of responsibility at an individual level. By reducing people to labels and groups, we stop addressing personal accountability and mental well-being. We search for enemies instead of asking what kind of society breeds such alienation, loneliness and rage in the first place.
We need to relearn that we all are humans. Until then, we will keep confronting the shadows of who we are, without ever addressing what created them in the first place.
And, special thanks to the warmongers: Russia-Ukraine; Gaza-Israel, everyone now thinks that we are living in a lawless societt like a bunch of animals. Before fixing the core issue - terrorism and everything related to it, let us first fight over shi*ty nationalism, or so-called religious responsibility. There maybe tons of differences in every religion; however, each imposes the same basic, fundamental rights.
The algorithms drive it. And even if not active on social media, so many are that the views become prevalent in society.
And we always label something we can be the enemy of. Those of different religions we blame their religion. Those of the same religion, we blame their family or country culture. Lots of blame, very little reflection on why.
Absolutely. We have been pushing empathy instead. People feel empathetic to what they know. Compassion is understanding enough to help, even when we don't know.
It is the anger of the internet. People are not people, they are words on a screen.
And those rights do not require a religion to uphold. Good people don't require a religion. Bad people can have a religion. Good and bad aren't found in the labels, they are in the behaviours of the individual.
I totally agree with you on this... I'm not sure if people have more divisive views than ever (they very well might, especially served to them over social media) but we can definitely say that intolerant views are being expressed far more openly than I've ever experienced before.
There is a silver lining though, that incredible footage of the unarmed man tackling one of the gunman and wrestling his gun off him gives us all a symbol of courage and hopefully a reminder to us all that any of us can save lives of strangers. Maybe this becomes an example to impressionable young men who could potentially be drawn into acts of violence by the intolerant.
I didn't know you had a sister in Sydney, I'm very glad your family there is okay.
It is like people are emboldened to be the biggest dicks they can be.
The guy that stepped in made an incredible choice. As I told my brother, I am not sure I would do the same in the situation, but would like to think I would. Would only ever know at that point, which is not a situation I hope to be in.
I think it is high time we redefine what it is to be a man. I feel that it wasn't that long ago (when I was young) that a man was considered a defender of women, not an attacker against. If a man saw a woman in trouble, he would step in, even at personal risk. Now, people seem to walk by, not wanting to get involved. Part of it comes down to the increase in violence though, as stepping in is more likely to be met with extreme violence, rather than a punch-up. Men should be incentivised to be builders in a community, not a destructive force.
Im totally shocked and deeply upset by this. it is. not. ok. The rights of anyone to take lives like this... I do not have the words. I simply don't. We are Brisbane, not sydney, but i certainly have friends there. Some are super close and all inside today. In a sick and twisted way... their actions have created sympathy for their "enemy" rather than doing them any favours. And in saying this i am not declaring sides, mearly stating facts.
Ironically this morning my Daily painting (as i paint a small painting everyday where i can) is a Beach scene bathed in red/orange light. seems ironically fitting. Am currently writing the post for it, but struggling with what to write about the massacre as i simply don't have the correct words.
Normal, isn't it? Look at Israel and Gaza now. People were horrified at the initial attacks, but now they are horrified by the response.
My sister is in Sydney, but thankfully not at Bondi today.
The more we disconnect from each other and polarise, the more violence keeps spreading.
its a hard mix, either you stand up and declare and fight and you become part of the problem, or you stand down, don't declare and ironically become part of the problem.
violence with violence doesn't work... same way guns to stop guns doesn't work in the US. Gun violence is almost unheard of here in Aus... My kids have never even seen one. ever. other than in a museum or on tv. in fact,i am 43 and i have never seen one other than a museum, or holsted to a police hip, or historical replicas. My husband did some farm work and went pig shooting... but i don't think he has seen a real one outside of that either... Now there are too many people in Bondi that can not say the same.
for shame humanity.. for shame.
Gun violence, or any kind of weapon violence is impossible to stop, when the people want to be violent. I am glad Australia (and Finland) have strict laws on guns and who can own. But look at the dicks with machetes in the street, the home invasions - what has happened to people, to children?
Interestingly, there's over a million firearms licenses here in Australia, including my own, and most of those licenses have multiple firearms of many different varieties on it including my own and, like you say, gun violence of this nature is almost unheard of...and then there's religion and the way it makes people want to kill each other simply for not being the same religion. Wankers, the lot of them. All the while, millions of guns are used by hundreds of thousands of Australians and there seems to be little to no issues comparatively speaking. You probably have multiple guns/licensed firearm owners on your street and don't even know it.
dont disagree there. i know people that have them... just have never seen any (other than historic ones). Anyone that really want s to kill someone doesnt need a gun... bare hands or a hand screw driver will do the grim trick.
Yep, I was at the pub on Saturday night for my end of year work dinner and had a steak (bloody good one) and the steak knife they gave me could have done some damage.
As it turned out, it did do some damage, but just to the steak I ate.
As you say, anything is a weapon, such as the vehicle used to mow people down in Nice a few years back.
Sad that religion is often the root cause of such hatred.
I do my best. I can't worry about what is outside my sphere of control, so I neither take pride in that nor feel shame.
Doing one's best is all anyone can do. But at the same time, those blokes shooting were also doing their best as they saw it in that moment. Given a slightly different lead in, perhaps their best would have been better.
The bloke who reportedly tackled and disarmed one of the shooters did the best he could, and pretty damn good at that.
Yep, indeed. Got shot twice for his efforts and is in hospital, but did a good job. I'd have shot the cunt in the abdomen with his own weapon though...but that's just me.
Stress seems to bring out the best and worst in us.
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STOPI wish more individuals would understood that real strength comes from being united instead of divided. Perhaps, then we could face the darker parts of ourselves together.
Most of the extremism we see is all coming from one religion which tells us all we need to know and unfortunately this is going to get far worse before people stand up to this. I will not attend Christmas markets or gatherings when travelling over seas and even avoided major centers. My problem is I cannot keep to myself and ignore something if it is wrong and that scares me more. The world has changed and it is more divided than ever due to the all inclusive ideology that is supposed to work and benefit everyone. The truth is it never works like everyone thinks it does.
I have lived around hatred and extreme views all my life living in Africa and it is tiring to see on a daily basis. Whether it is racism or extremist views due to religious beliefs things are deteriorating and governments are in many cases to blame for making it worse.