I have read a couple stories lately where young people have been caught up in some kind of severe criminal activity and people who have known them have said things like, "They were a good person who fell in with the wrong crowd" and I wonder, is that actually the case or, were they bad people connecting with exactly the kinds of people like themselves - birds of a feather, flock together.
I was also wondering where the limits of this excuse may lay. For example, I have never heard anyone say that Dr Mengele and Joseph Goebbels "were good people who fell in with the wrong crowd". However, were they fundamentally broken as children in a way that led them into performing such atrocities?
If we are able to claim we are victims of our environment who do not have agency to make our own decisions in life as to whether we are fat or thin, rich or poor, happy or sad, good or bad - if we always are able to have an excuse for our behavior and blame society, doesn't this have to be applied to everyone, including those of the past?
While I would like to think that I wouldn't follow suit, if I was raised in an extremist family of some kind, can I really say that I wouldn't follow in the footsteps of me conditioning? After all, I am similar to both my mother and father in various ways and while some of it is genetic it, a lot of it is likely cultural. My father was a pacifist and charitable, probably to a fault, which has likely rubbed off on me also.
I notice that on Hive a lot of the same kinds of people tend to come together and support each other in various ways, whether they are acting in the spirit or against it. I do think that people do tend to flock together with like minds and perhaps on social media, this is even more pronounced when it is in the negative, as there aren't the same physical social restrictions in place that regulate behavior in the real world.
People are probably more likely to "show their true colors" when they believe themselves to be unknown, which is probably why Google datasets are so valuable, as they are able to track real digital consumer behaviors. But, this doesn't mean people who show their face are going to necessarily misrepresent themselves either, because there is a real-world social "checks and balances" that come into play where what is presented runs through the gauntlet of friends and family who know them. The greatest disconnect is between the people who judge without having any direct understanding through relationship. People feel that they know a famous person and how they think because they saw a movie, read an article and retweeted something of theirs on Twitter.
I was talking about this with my wife as I drove her to work this morning and how people end up in various situations that they might not have been in, had they had a different environment. I used the example of the normalization of sites like OnlyFans where people (mostly women I suspect) sell pictures and videos of themselves. These pages are getting promoted in mainstream media as healthy, without seeing that it is a reflection of the disconnection we have created in society, where people are no longer physically connected to the world, but seeking relationships of some kind to fill the void that our own hardwiring as humans creates to bring us together.
What I think is happening is that these kinds of tools are evoking our emotional response to the environment by mimicking the flavor of human connection, but not actually providing the nutrition required, causing us to seek out more food. It is a hijacking of our hardwiring to generate consumption, even though it does not develop a healthy outcome. Fast food is the same, where it mimics real food, but doesn't satisfy the requirements of what we need for a healthy mind or body.
At the end of the day, we can blame the environment for many of our outcomes, but since a large part of our world is now engineered, as consumers we have the ability to improve or degrade the conditions we live in through supply and demand. However, if we do not understand ourselves well enough, we will be subject to manipulation from those who understand us better and are able to build an environment that benefits them. Once this cycle is pushed to the masses and more people support it, society will shift to normalize through social proofing and peer pressure, making it increasingly difficult to break free.
For example of creating the environment, I know a lot of people who complain about not having enough money, yet they have advertising material come to their homes and they subscribe to consumer magazines that essentially say, "what you have isn't good enough, you need this". They end up spending more on stuff than those who do not surround themselves with junk mail. Same for those who are overweight. Keeping low quality food in the kitchen is unlikely to improve things, as the temptation is always there and human willpower is only so strong, and weakens depending on conditions and emotions.
Depressed people consume more, whether it be food, alcohol or products. I suspect that depression and loneliness creates a type of hunger that people try to fill through consumption, to avoid the call of the void and with so much "food" on offer, there is always another filler that doesn't bring satisfaction. Consumer behavior can be driven by leveraging the disconnections we have and providing services with a fee that treat the symptoms, but will never cure the condition.
Many seem to be crowding themselves with goods, services and content that doesn't bring out their best and leads them down a path that they don't want to go. Yet, when they look back, they will blame society on their outcomes, as if they never had a choice in the matter of their lives. As I keep saying, content matters and what we see as content should be evaluated and adjusted by the individual to help us be our best. It is the same in a healthy relationship, where the participants should look to bring out the best in each other. However, when we are disconnected from each other and filling the void with surrogates that do what we want instead of what we need, we end up in an unhealthy relationship with ourselves.
Perhaps, we are all falling in with the "wrong crowd" by consumer choice.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
There's a Polish saying, something in the lines: If you've found yourself among the crows, like them you'll have to crow. It can be understood in few different ways, but I definitely do not agree that you have to croak in this situation. Maybe that's one of the problems that people too often do not realize that they would actually be better of not croaking like everyone around.
That's true, but I also think that one of the surrogate ways to deal with the depression is by falling into many of today's toxic ideologies. Whether it's left or right ideologies, what they have in common is that they usually point to a single thing/group/process which is supposed to be solely responsible for all the evil in the world. Once a depressed, susceptible person start to believe that monocausal explanation of the world, it's easy to make them also believe that getting rid of that single problem will also heal them.
A lot of people's "opinions" are a simple and relatively thoughtless reflection of the opinions they surround themselves with. Most do not have their own thoughts, they replicate those of others. Often, this is done unconsciously.
Oh for sure! It is just another type of food to "nourish the soul". Social movements have replaced religions for many, but they don't even have to have any form of continuity as they bounce from one extreme to the other. It is easy to brainwash the desperate.
!ENGAGE 30
ENGAGEtokens.Interesting as I read this while also pondering about the same topic the other days: how much can we blame the environment? Well I believe that birds of a feather flock together because I had experiences when I thought someone was a poor innocent staying in the wrong crowd. The cases are rare and more common with young people. As adults, we make our choices. And despite our desire to believe that someone is so good so we need to pull them out of the filth, the truth is rather simple: people are the sum of their choices. Whether they admit it or not. Choices can be conscious or not. But I would be cautious if I would hear someone blaming the environment, the parents, the society, the internet etc and not themselves. Who is guilty: the one selling the box of candy or you buying the whole thing?
Depression leads to consumption. I guess this is why nobody insists for emotional education as much as for massive entertainment. Some people don't want to be fixed and healed, they want to be entertained....
This is the issue with supply and demand, people blame supply - when it is demand that drives the value. Don't demand it and it disappears. I think these days, we have created a Pandora's Box of vices to choose from, covering every niche and subset of everything. People get more and more "specialized" and extreme.
Exactly.
!ENGAGE 30
ENGAGEtokens.The environment in which we came from or stay determines a lot of things about us like habits , friends , mindset but we can only blame it for many of the outcomes , not all .
We always have to be mindful of the crowd we move with , some may be having negative influences on us ,one we realise this , we better find a way to fix things out before we face a consequence for it .
Very nice post , I learnt alot!
It is important to have a reference group that aids in self-reflection also. Surround ourselves with a wide variety of quality people, help them as much as they help you.
!ENGAGE 30
ENGAGEtokens.Childhood experiences normally good/bad will reveal themselves later in life, never an excuse but reason to possibly explain warped minds of some!
Interesting to look into different aspects, introspection of oneself is also healthy.
@tipu curate
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I wonder how many "broken" people can be attributed to their upbringing. I think these days, we are encouraging and incentivizing broken people who think adversity is not having a Playstation 5.
!ENGAGE 30
ENGAGEtokens.There is a European proverb that initially humans create the environment, but later the environment dominates humans.
Is Australia's handsome guy @tarazkp unable to adapt to the changing environment in Europe?
I don't know the proverb.
Generally, I am able to adapt pretty well to any environment - it is the benefit of being quite well-rounded in skill and personality.
Yeah, I believe your good talents!
However, I do believe that God determines our destiny. Dear my friend, I pray for your health and good luck.
I believe you will understand my poor English!
You seem to complain about your life a bit and how you are accepted in the world. Is that the destiny God chose for you?
Dear my friend @tarazkp, I agree with you!
I have a dream of wanting to travel abroad a lot like you do. However, I am not achieving my dreams because I have visual impairment.😔
The impairment may not be just visual... JMO
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I really love your post @tarazkp, I grew up in a community smoking weed, dropping out of school and being sexually immoral is a normal thing, so if you don't do this thing they see as abnormal human being, but I was fortunate to have a strong mother who helped in her own way. But for me I choose not to live that type of life, even with the constant pressure around me.
There is this saying " that it is immoral to be moral in an immoral society" but I fought against it.
So there is no excuse for anyone to act wrongly, and am happy we are all gifted with a conscience.
Great post
Mantap
Our fake news media in this country will interview 20 people at the scene of a murder/suicide and find the one friend or neighbor that says what a wonderful person they were and they never seen this coming...
They leave the other 19 interviews in the trash bin of people who spoke the truth of what an drunken belligerent Asshole the murderer was and a blind person could have seen this coming.
I think you are correct. A small percentage of good people go bad. Most already have the darkness in thier hearts.
But what do I know...
My glass is half empty and I am looking for the arshole who drank half.
It Was Full..!