Why do some people think dehumanizing anyone is fundamentally OK?

There are actual psychopaths and sociopaths. They are humans. They got that way not from Stan Lee's pen, but by real experiences in our actual world.

Making them a caricature will in no way help with the problem.

Well, they are in fact human. Trying to understand how they got the way they are is the first step to trying to not let more of them happen. That said, the rotten apple is still an apple. But in the end, I am still going to throw it away.

Is humanize the word you really mean to use, or do you mean something more like valorize or glorify?
Are you aware of what it means to dehumanize?

Lemmy is such a weird site. Almost every thread I’ll read the most terrible dehumanizing shit said about working class people for just existing in a conservative U.S. state, but a thread asking why the rich are idolized every negative comment appears to have upvoted responses calling to recognize the humanity in everyone.

Weird.

They are human.

Humans are just like that.

They are as human as anyone else. We should be cognizant of that. They are human beings within a human system. Move beyond anger and hate, and ask what must be done to end suffering and injustice.

For all the quips about guillotines, the first fix needs to be removing their excess wealth, not their heads.

In every era, the ideas that rule are the ideas of the rulers.

I think the unfortunate truth is that many non-evil people would be just as evil if given the opportunity. Or to frame it slightly different: I believe that too much money and/or power is what turns most people evil over time.

Because, for all of the awfulness they bring to the rest of us, they are human.

Humans who the other humans desperately need to be stripped of their wealth and power, and for whom the doing of which might offer them some small chance to save themselves from the yawning void of more more moremoremoremoremoremore

I think most people are incapable of understanding just how much damage the rich do to the working class on a regular basis.

The rich kill more people every year, through business and political decisions, than any terrorist group or military. Often by being the puppet masters of those terrorist groups and militaries.

The rich are humans, that's just fact. However, people need to wake the fuck up and see the richest and most powerful in the world fundamentally lack humanity. They are fundamentally isolated from human beings through their wealth and influence.

We cannot understand class behavior by examining individual morality. Viewing the capital owning class as a collection of mustache twirling villains is not a useful framing. Rather, we should look at them as the human personification of capital itself. Their social being, their entire material condition, is defined by the accumulation of private profit and the protection of property relations that enforce their dominance.

Their inability to relate is not a personal failing but a direct result of their objective position in the capitalist mode of production. They live in a world insulated from the precarity of rent, medical debt, and wage slavery that defines life for the working majority. Their consciousness is shaped by them being insulated from the problems regular people experience. Therefore, critique of their lack of empathy is a liberal dead end because it mistakes a systemic outcome for a personal choice.

The focus must be the capitalist system itself, which necessarily produces the inequality and the divide between the capitalists and the workers. The fundamental contradiction between the socialized nature of production and the private appropriation of wealth is the core issue. The solution is to dismantle the economic base that creates them as a class and move towards a system where the means of production are socially owned, abolishing the very material conditions that breed alienation and disparity.

• they want to be them
• brainwashed workers
• ignorance

Take your pick theres no end to the reasons. There will always be an endless supply of bootlickers and hate.

Because they are human. What is the difficulty here? They're not reptilians or space aliens or inter-dimensional beings. It's in all of us.

Humans will anthromorphize anything

Boot lickers. Just boot lickers. Hoping to become one of them one day.

Everyone human is human but psychopathy seems to favor wealth gain. But like woz would be one of the richest people in the world if he had not shared his apple stock with employees. Hes still rich though and a nice guy. His generosity though is why he is a millionaire and not a billionaire.

Because a lot of people aren't paying attention to when their unethical behavior is demonstrated repeatedly, and they just assume billionaires are just like the rest of us.

Because we are surrounded by the media that the rich owns that propagandizes us to put the rich on a pedestal.

To try to understand someone is not the same as respecting them. One can try to understand one's enemy to better fight them.

I think it is important to recognise people as people. I'm not making excuses for intentionally malicious wealthy or powerful people -- but the wealth or power itself isn't the whole problem (although the various systems that perpetuate and enable certain wealthy or powerful people are problematic of course), and we shouldn't give these adults that as an excuse.

They're wealthy, yes. They're also human beings who choose to be cruel, callous, selfish, uncaring arseholes.

They're powerful, yes. They're also adults who know what they're doing and consistently make the decision to harm people with their choices.

Netanyahu's political power wouldn't be as much of a problem in and of itself if he wasn't choosing to enact a genocide. Murdoch's wealth wouldn't be as much of a problem in and of itself if he didn't choose to use it to buy media outlets and push right-wing lies to millions.

No excuses for cruelty; the money and power didn't "corrupt" these people, because we don't live in a fantasy world where money and power are magic cursed items. These people intentionally decided to be cruel.

Because a person deserves to be considered person whether they think you worth of being so or not.

A faceless, dehumanized enemy will forever be out of reach, unsurpassable in reach and power. A flesh a blood human doing a skin and bone job is replaceable by most any of us because no matter how much power they might have, they are only people.

Why do the working glass poor vote Trump

I think it's increasingly easier to feel empathy for a killer the more steps there are between them and the trigger. I personally find it much more jarring when someone can just fully turn off empathy when given context. A lot of the time what you're talking about goes hand-in-hand with dehumanizing the impoverished, that's the one I can't fathom.

It's important to remember that the actions of the working class are primarily derived from their class interests, not because individuals are dicks. Humanizing even shitty individuals is an important part of persuading people away from thinking in terms of individual people and more about the dialectics of class.

Some.people priase Hitler.

I believe that's because they are the same as them (or would like to be) and would behave the exact same way if they were in their position.

Maybe bc they are human?

They're trained to.

This is an idiotic post. Yes, they are human. Yes they may make bad decisions, but so do poor people. They just don't make enough to matter.

The rich people are almost all psychopaths and probably got that way because of the way wealth warps people's minds.

https://youtu.be/IP2EKTCngiM

They be dragons.

It makes me wonder if some of the dragons written in literature are just an allegory for the ultra wealthy and powerful of their time that were hoarding unimaginable wealth while the huddled masses starved.

Because they "earned" or achieved wealth, i.e. worked really hard to become rich

From personal experience from people that I know who love to defend the wealthy they believe that if we defend the wealthy and give them everything that they want eventually thry will give us something back as well and we will enjoy a better life. Somehow?

People are brainwashed. They have been for generations. And only very few even like to admit that they are brainwashed. I was too... Luckily I woke up, and became both woke and able to think critically...

They are human. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that, while also reiterating that they basically shouldn’t be in that state.

Also, I think it’s important to draw a line between the “rich” (well-off working professionals like researchers, doctors, small entrepreneurs), and people with more wealth than many sovereign nations put together.

There are lots of poor narcissists too...

I'm aphantasic. Until people started really talking about how they "see" things in their heads, I assumed it was all just a figure of speech. Flashbacks, thought bubbles, daydreams in media... I assumed that was all just, you know, an easy way to get the information across. Now I know you freaks actually see stuff and the mind's eye isn't some convenient turn of phrase. Weirdos!

In a similar vein, I have empathy. It is difficult for me to intuitively understand the perspective of someone who doesn't have any. As an example, it's hard for me to understand a person who's exploiting children a la Epstein. And in truth, I don't want to understand them, either. Even knowing how many of them are the way they are... if I had a little less introspection, I'd probably just default to "they're just like us."

Numerous reasons.

Lots of people don’t want anyone to disturb the system…”upend the apple cart” as it were. A known, even if shitty, is still better than the unknown. Like people pining for lives under the rule of some harsh autocrat. Even if your neighbor disappeared one night thanks to the State Police, it was better than worrying about the less-harsh policing that lets kids get away with graffiti-ing everything or the petty theft you’re always hearing about.

Also, if they come for the rich people, they’ll come for you. If they tax the rich, they’ll tax you. If you support the rich, people will remember that, and they’ll come for you.

Maybe a little of the “I could be rich someday” idea too, so they support obscene wealth with the idea they could somehow also be rich no matter how minuscule the chance. The irony being the wealthy are the ones supporting barriers preventing you from even achieving financial security, forget ever being wealthy.

At what point is someone wealthy using gapminder levels of income where level 1 is earning $2 a day, level 2 is $8, level 3 $32, etcetera?

And at what point is a person in power?

Is Zelensky in power? Xi Jinping?
Greta Thunberg? John Oliver? JT Chapman? Karl Marx? The admin of this site?

Because they get paid to do so.

Because they’re cucks

This isn't really a question.

they're just subs that are into bdsm

Maybe because they think one day they will be rich, so obviously rich people are still people.

But they will never be poor, because poor people aren't people.

Hot take, we should deliberately dehumanize rich people.

Some people are wealthy because they provide a valuable, well-paid skill (neurosurgeons, for example). Some people are in positions of power because they sincerely want to make their communities a better place.

Don't get me wrong, it's probably more likely to get there through sociopathic greed. But that doesn't mean they are all horrible people.

Are you talking about specific wealthy, powerful people?

Stockholm syndrome

Propaganda, trolls, paid shills

Because I bet I have done more good in life and helped more people with my moneyz than you ever did with your mighty pen and mouth.

You know that narcissistic asswipes that will eradicate all societies in the long run, can be poor too? And richer can be nice? Admittedly, the dark triad (or tetrad) is very beneficial in capitalism, but not mandatory.