As per usual, Trump is being demonized for anything he does, while Obama always got a pass.

Happy_Killbot

@We_are_accountable Video is unavailable. Did it get taken down?

Ampersand

The Obama administration declared it a public health emergency on April 26, 2009 when there were only 20 cases, 0 deaths and 6 weeks before it was even declared a pandemic by the WHO (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/04/facebook-posts/president-obama-declared-h1n1-public-health-emerge/ & https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/who/).

Please don't buy into facebook messages someone sends you without even performing basic due diligence to check is it's a blatant lie.

AlofRI

It's hard to not demonize a person who acts like a demon. I consider all authoritarian leaders "demons". John Trump want SO badly to "be like Vlad", to be like MbS, to be like one of the worlds ACTUAL demons (as opposed to being a "viable" one ;-). We all know that sometimes we get what we ask for. 

We_are_accountable

@We_are_accountable

We_are_accountable

@Happy_Killbot

Try this one. I don't know why the other one did not work.

We_are_accountable

@Ampersand

There is a huge difference between declaing a public health emergency and a national emergency!

I just listened to a health official stating how important it is to have a national emergency that would help speed up all preventitive innitiatives.

You are repeating the talking points from the left as they always try to defend their pathetic double standards and hypocrisy.

Ampersand

@We_are_accountable

So your first claim being a lie doesn't matter because of some health care official allegedly made a statement that you can offer no proof of or reasoning for, but I'm the one in the wrong for not instantly believing your nonsense? Nah.

Happy_Killbot

@We_are_accountable I am failing to see how this video provides any evidence to your point, it is just Obama telling the people to remain calm and carry on because we are doing everything they can, in short all the things a president should be saying to ease the people.

What is Trump saying?


If you have read anything about emotional intelligence, you will see how that is... not the best thing to say... or even close...

While it is technically true, (partially at least) it does very little to give people a "warm and fuzzy feeling" about the future. He is basically saying you should not worry because the numbers are so low.

you have kids, I don't know how old they are, but I will assume that they will be learning to drive soon.

If one of your kids was anxious about learning to drive, would you say to them: "Don't worry, there are only about 16,000 accidents per day and  only 90 people die in car accidents per day, out of millions of drivers. Think about that!" ?

Of course not! What kind of anti-social monster would say something like this to their kids? Even though this is all true, it does nothing to make the prospect of a car crash any less serious or any less dangerous. People are really bad with statistics and probabilities, which is why gambling exists. People ignore the low odds, and do everything they can to avoid the worst outcome it's just human nature.

The reality is the stock market is crashing, and a lot of places are shut down. There is even a chance that Trump has contracted Covid-19 himself. 
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-all-the-times-trump-was-potentially-exposed-covid-19-2020-3

Trump is a business man, but the thing is, viruses don't talk business and can't be negotiated with.

CYDdharta

Ampersand said:

@We_are_accountable

So your first claim being a lie doesn't matter because of some health care official allegedly made a statement that you can offer no proof of or reasoning for, but I'm the one in the wrong for not instantly believing your nonsense? Nah.

@We_are_accountable 's OP is entirely correct, and is backed up by the source YOU posted.  0bama didn't declare H1N1 a national emergency until the end of October, months after it had been declared a pandemic and had killed over a thousand of Americans.

https://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/24/h1n1.obama/index.html

Happy_Killbot

@CYDdharta
Obama declared a H1N1 a public health emergency on April 26, 2009 when only 20 people were infected and there were no deaths.

This was before the WHO declared it to be a pandemic on June 11. Provided this is to be expected because the virus started in Mexico and quickly spread to the US.

By the time H1N1 wa declared a national emergency, there was already a vaccine developed and being distributed and millions of people had already contracted the virus.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/04/facebook-posts/president-obama-declared-h1n1-public-health-emerge/

Needless to say, it is never a bad idea to question the actions of our leaders, especially if they have a history of ignoring or not engaging with those who criticize them. Right now Covid-19 has no vaccine and we are struggling to make tests available. The nature of covid-19 makes it so that it can take over a weeks just to know if someone is infected without the test, so getting them out is of vital importance.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that Trump has already contracted the virus, and he has been dangerously close to people who have latter been confirmed to have the virus. For people aged 70 -79, there is an 8% death rate. What do you suppose 8 out of 100 potential futures look like, should the unspeakable become a reality?

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

This is actually one of those cases when Trump made (initially) more sense than most other people. Statistics is important in order to be able to develop priorities. People who are afraid of everything that can be presented as dangerous are going to be severely handicapped in life. Again, regarding driving, many people (I even know some in person) have driving phobia and refuse to ever get behind the wheel, because of the slim chance of dying or becoming severely handicapped as a result of a car crash.

Given how negligible the symptoms seem to be in the vast majority of the population, chances are a lot of those people, including on this website, screaming about how dangerous this virus is have already contracted it and developed immunity.

People are afraid of everything these days. Afraid of asking a woman out for a date out of a slim chance of being accused of sexual harassment... Afraid of leaving their kids alone on the playground for 5 minutes out of a slim chance that a stranger walks up to them and tricks them into following them, selling them in sexual slavery afterwards... Afraid of shaking hands with strangers out of a slim chance of contracting some virus or other disease...
This is exactly the time when people should say, "Calm down already and grow some spine. Take a deep breath, look at statistics and realise that this is just another scare with no foundation behind it." Enough with coddling people to the point where they cannot handle someone wearing a Chinese costume on a Halloween. I choose to keep my head tall, analyse risks rationally and not be afraid of something just because many other people do - and I respect everyone who makes the same choice.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar

I don't think you understand what I am saying,

This is the reality:


If you don't take not of people's emotional sensibilities, you will suffer 10 times worse than if you are afraid of everything.

This has nothing to do with being afraid, this has to do with how you make people feel. If someone is anxious, no amount of statistics or telling them to "calm down and grow a spine" is going to make them comfortable. What would be better is to tell them that they are strong and independent, so as to instill the confidence necessary to get through it.

Everything you just said is so wrong I actually can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, you don't actually think the execution here is a good means of doing things right?

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Which is why my idea here is to deal with the core of the issue: with those sensibilities. This market plunging would not have occurred in the first place if the culture of coddling was not cultivated on such a wide scale. I am not saying that Trump is necessarily the right person to push against this (his inspirational speaking skills leave a lot to be desired), but as president he can, at least, make his point clear that panics over statistically insignificant things are not the right way to react to things - which he did early on, before taking the opposing stance became more convenient politically.

You are talking about the short-term strategy: "Let us cater to people's sensibilities and respond in a way that minimises their impact and makes them feel better". This is the strategy that got us to this point where people are scared of everything. I am talking about the long-term strategy: cause temporary discomfort in people necessary for them to grow and mature psychologically, and in the future the problem will go away, at least, partially.

Wrong? Perhaps, but this approach worked for me and everyone I know. Combining logical, cold analytical approach with challenging oneself regularly psychologically provides a steady growth and makes you into a person able to take risks and succeed. This is the kind of people I want to see in this society, and this is the kind of people that founded it in the first place.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I still don't think you grasp what I am saying, Trump's statement in that Tweet Caused panic because it is emotionally insensitive and goes against the average person's inability to understand statistics.

This isn't about a culture of coddling, this is about human nature and psychology.

It isn't about the content, it's about the method. The human brain is hardwired to not do statistics right, no one cares that if our numbers of cases are similar to China's that we should only see about 2 hundred thousand cases, what they care about is is it possible that I will get the virus? Before running to the store to buy all the toilet paper and purell they can get.

Compare what Obama said to what Trump said and you can see the disparity in emotional sensitivity. Obama's words instill confidence and trust. He speaks as a leader, he puts people at ease.

Trump's words on the other hand, can at best make people who would already be smart enough to make a rational decision slightly more informed, or in other words, it is only good for the types of people who don't need Trump's words.

There is a reason that intelligence correlates with job success, but not with career success. Emotional intelligence on the other hand, does.

Consider this story:

A young man working at a fast-food joint is standing at the grill, a little distraught. The store owner, who sometimes inspects the establishment is walking by, and notices he is feeling down. He asks in a stereotypical cheery voice, how the young man is doing. He responds: "Oh, I have been having some mixed feelings lately. My grandmother is in critical condition in the hospital, she was taken off life support and will probably die soon. On the other hand, I just scored an interview for my dream job, so I am hopeful that I will get that position"
The owner smiles, before asking: "how old is your grandmother?"
"She is 83" replies the young man.
"Oh, well 83 is fairly old, about average actually. I guess she had a good run" Before walking away to talk to the manager.

I have the following questions to ask:

1. Is it relevant that the young man's grandmother is about average life expectancy?
2. What do you think the young man at the start of the story is feeling?
3. What do you think the young man at the end of the story is feeling?
4. If you were the owner, would you find it appropriate to say something like this?
5. If you were the manager who overheard the conversation, what would you say to the owner?

Plaffelvohfen

MayCaesar said:

@Happy_Killbot

Which is why my idea here is to deal with the core of the issue: with those sensibilities. This market plunging would not have occurred in the first place if the culture of coddling was not cultivated on such a wide scale. I am not saying that Trump is necessarily the right person to push against this (his inspirational speaking skills leave a lot to be desired), but as president he can, at least, make his point clear that panics over statistically insignificant things are not the right way to react to things - which he did early on, before taking the opposing stance became more convenient politically.

You are talking about the short-term strategy: "Let us cater to people's sensibilities and respond in a way that minimises their impact and makes them feel better". This is the strategy that got us to this point where people are scared of everything. I am talking about the long-term strategy: cause temporary discomfort in people necessary for them to grow and mature psychologically, and in the future the problem will go away, at least, partially.

Wrong? Perhaps, but this approach worked for me and everyone I know. Combining logical, cold analytical approach with challenging oneself regularly psychologically provides a steady growth and makes you into a person able to take risks and succeed. This is the kind of people I want to see in this society, and this is the kind of people that founded it in the first place.

The problem you may have here is in assuming everyone is as rational as you perceive yourself to be. Humans are fundamentally beings of chaos, emotional and irrational yet capable of some measure of rationality most of the times.  

You usually argue against any form of coercion yet here you don't seem to mind coercing people out of their natural emotional state... Just because you, yourself, can (or just choose to) apply logical and cold analytical approach to problems doesn't imply others are capable or willing, of the same... 

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

I fail to see any evidence that one Trump's tweet has caused any amount of panic; for that matter, Trump is known to make insensitive tweets virtually every day, and it is now that people suddenly start panicking? Regardless, the panic is not warranted, and people only have themselves to blame for engaging in it.

I do not know; my brain does statistics well enough to know that in this case I have nothing to worry about. I do not think my brain is fundamentally different from other people's brains, it is just that I choose to not be driven by untamed emotions and employ reason instead. Nobody is prevented from doing the same.

Obama may have been more sensitive towards people with untamed emotions, but it is also quite likely that him being more sensitive dealt more damage in the long run: it is not healthy for people to get accustomed to being coddled and calmed by others every time they encounter some psychological obstacle. People should be encouraged to learn to deal with those obstacles on their own. And while in general I am all for being sensitive, I think in the modern Western society it has gone way too far - and it is time to tame the beast with shock therapy.

Your story conflates response to valid emotional distress with response to something statistically insignificant. Obviously a 83 year old woman in critical condition has a significant chance of dying, and statistical citation here is misplaced: it does not matter how well the woman has done so far, considering that statistically right now she is in real danger.
It would be quite different from the customer breaking into tears over his wife's, say, one cough, and the owner saying, "Buddy, your wife is going to be okay; one cough is just one cough."


@Plaffelvohfen ;

The fact that many people are not very rational does not mean they should not be held up to some rationality standard. Overreacting to every minor thing is not healthy in any way.
If people are not rational, then they should be reminded of the value of rationality. I am not rational in many regards, just like anyone else, but I do not allow myself to use it as an excuse to let my emotions run wild.

What does "coercing people out of their natural emotional state" mean? This is not how coercion works. You cannot coerce someone into something by just telling them that their fears are unwarranted. Coercion is not any attempt to influence people's thoughts and actions, otherwise we would have to classify absolutely any human interaction as coercion, rendering the term obsolete.

That said, I do not support, say, emotionally abusing people. I do support, however, educating people and helping them grow, and there are many ways of doing that. Overprotective treatment is not the greatest approach here.
There is another extreme, when all you do is tell people to toughen up and stop crying - that does not work either.
Both aspects are important, and in this particular case the overprotective treatment one is the one that has gotten out of control.

I would not do what Trump did, with one lazy tweet. I would give a calm public speech, laying out basic facts about statistics and proper response to them. Trump did not (cannot?) do it, but there are people who can, and their general silence is quite unfortunate.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar No, people have been panicking over trump's tweet's for years now, but in this case it is the reality that there is nothing he can do and he isn't going to try that has people worried.

This isn't just people with untamed emotions, knowing that the commander in chief doesn't give a flying F*** is a dangerous position to be in. You still seem to think this is about being coddled, but it isn't it is about much deeper human psychology, which is why I asked the question you didn't answer about the story.

However I can infer from your response that while you recognize that the statistically true bit of information regarding age isn't logically relevant, you fail to see that it is not only irrelevant but it is in itself a memetic hazard. Saying this to someone is both emotionally and psychologically damaging, especially to someone who is in a critical emotional state.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

But Trump is not the only person in this country able to do something. For that matter, again, I would question whether something needs to be done at all. Perhaps a better reaction from Trump could be, "There is nothing to worry about right now, guys, but we are monitoring the situation and ready to act in case it is needed. Here is what we will do if the situation becomes dangerous..."

Imagine a different scenario: NASA scientists calculate that with the probability of 0.00001% a giant meteorite will hit the Earth over the next 100 years and wipe us out. People start panicking. Should the president start taking unprecedented measures to try to prevent it from happening, or should he openly state that this is not a matter to be concerned over, considering that there are far more dangerous things? I would prefer the latter response.

If you want to ask me a more specific question, such as, "When should you respond coldly and with facts, and when should you focus on being sensitive?", then I do not know a general answer, and I think that it should be decided on the case-by-case basis. But in case when statistically the problem is blown out of proportion, I believe that a cold logical response should come first. Then you can calm people down and give them hugs, but you should make it clear first that their concern is not warranted - not in a way of "You are so , how can you worry about it?", but in a way of, "Your emotions are getting the better of you. Let us look at the facts together, shall we? I am trying to help you." Not all people respond well to such approach, but a strong society should be willing to take it well.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I still don't think you are quite grasping what I am trying to say, it isn't really about the facts, because the human brain just doesn't process them.

I don't know how to explain this to you except to say that when the person that people look to for guidance and protection tells you he doesn't care to do anything about the problem, that people feel lost, isolated, and abandoned.

If you are asking "When would it important to be cold and logical, and when should you be emotionally sensitive?" I'm sorry but there is just nothing I can do to help you. It is of vital importance, both in daily life and especially in statecraft to understand people's emotions and react accordingly.

Even the approach you suggest is a completely dreadful way of going about it, if you tell someone their emotions are getting the better of them, the first thing they will think is that there emotions are not getting in the way. If there is someone who is very anxious over anything, the best possible thing you can do isn't to tell them the facts, it is to tell them that they are going to be all right, and if they push back, you have to tell them what they already feel. You have to make them think they are being listened to. If you are speaking with authority, you need to make them believe they are safe by telling everyone that action is being taken, even if action is not warranted.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Feeling lost, isolated and abandoned is not the end of the world. Such feelings, in fact, are necessary for psychological growth.

I understand very well your point, and I disagree with the assumption that the right way to react is necessarily the way that makes people feel better at the end. Sometimes hard words are necessary, especially when people's emotions are based on gross misinterpretation of the situation.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is one of the most popular and effective ways to treat phobias, and it consists exactly of taking a cold and rational approach and challenging one's emotions and the thoughts behind them. CBT does not have to be used alone, but it is very effective and has a lot of uses in cases when people's reactions do not match the gravity of the situation.
Telling people cold facts does not mean discarding their emotions, it means giving a proper context to them. It is not like I am saying, "I do not care about your feelings; here are the facts". I am saying the opposite: "I understand how you feel, and I am here with you. Now, let us examine the facts together and see if these feelings cannot be transformed into something more empowering."

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Well you can disagree all you want, but the stock market disagrees with you. When a leader effectively says that he isn't going to do anything, it incites panic on a mass scale.

The fact remains that people can't just wake up and suddenly be cold rational thinkers, not only is this not possible, it flies in the face of neurology. The amygdala and the pre-frontal cortex are in constant communication when making decisions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20331363

This implies that emotions play a heavy role in decision making, in fact this is he truth. If someone was completely emotionally detached, they could understand that for example, Covid-19 isn't that lethal, but they could not figure out to do or not to do anything from that.

In the case of corona virus, people's actions 100% match what we should expect them to feel as a result of the in chief effectively telling the whole country we can eat dirt. It wouldn't matter if the virus had killed 1 person or 10,000, people will react more or less the same if they are told by their leaders that they intend to do nothing.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

The stock market reaction illustrates the exact problem I am talking about. And to resolve this problem, we might need to go through a bumpy period of panics and stock market crashes. It could be better than keeping feeding the beast, so people's threshold for panicking lowers further and further.

Of course rational thinking does not come suddenly in one day. It is a gradual process, and the earlier it starts, the better.

With regards to emotions being important in decision-making and, perhaps, even strongly desirable - no question here. However, emotions can also be misguided and have a strongly negative effect. When emotions are aligned with reason and personal goals, then the maximal efficiency of the decision-making process is achieved. That, in turn, requires a lot of work, hard and somewhat painful work. Which is why I called it "shock therapy": I think the problem of oversensitivity and overreaction in the First World has gotten out of hand and pretty radical measures are required to tend to it. Trump is not even being that radical about it; he is the president, after all, and does not go too far. There are people like Yiannopoulos who intentionally say provocative and nasty stuff; that is a wave from Diogenes of Sinope of the past, who did just that in order to promote stoicism.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar How exactly do you intend to lower people's threshold for emotional response? You would have to lobotomize everyone to get the results you desire and the end result would be empty husks devoid of any capability to determine what ought to be done.

What you don't seem to understand is that the decisions that lead to this most recent stock market crash are based entirely on rational decisions. If you don't pull your money out of the stock market, you risk losing it if the market crashes. If you do, then you cause the crash. This was in no way an emotional over reaction.

I once again can't tell if what you are saying is supposed to be considered sarcastic or not, because you have to see how F***ed up what you are suggesting is. Emotions only have a "negative" effect because people do and say F***ed up s***, like, I don't know, "lets use shock therapy to desensitize people so they agree to our way of thinking". It is far easier and more effective for people to learn how to effectively manage their own emotions and the emotions of others, and that is particularly critical for our leaders, who so many people look to for guidance and justice.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

By challenging them emotionally an saying things someone believes to be true, but that are not considered "sensitive", obviously. Not exactly a novel concept, going back millennia.

Whether to pull your money out of the stock market or not is a rational decision, but people overreacting and causing the stock market to plunge is not.

I am not saying that we should desensitise people out of the blue; I am only saying it in the context of the current situation, when people overreact to virtually anything, including the virus that is less likely to harm them than crossing a road on the way to a grocery store. I am not sure what is so wrong with it; the idea that having low resistance to irrational emotions is very harmful to one's life is one of the central ideas in psychology, without which the whole science would have little purpose.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Care to explain what is irrational about individual actors pulling their money out of the stock market to avoid a crash, which is caused by the individuals pulling their money out of the market?

If this is true, then it implies that a sum of rational decisions can be irrational, which has all kinds of bonkers implications.

I think we are just talking past each other on the matter of leaders causing emotional distress. This is why I think that no human action is ever truly rational, even if superficially it might seem that way. Covid-19 is way scarier than crossing the road, it is an unseen, fast-spreading disease that infects people before they even know they are sick. Anyone could have it right now. You could have it right now, and you wouldn't even know. There is a chance you could die in two weeks, and the president has more or less said they are not going to do a lot about it.

Does your retirement fund mean a whole lot if you won't get a chance to use it?

Does your grandchildren know you love them?

Are public spaces safe to walk through?

Will the government protect me and the people and try to limit spread?

Do I have enough toilet paper?

These are the questions going through the minds of the average US consumer, and the actions taken in each scenario have logical outcomes. You could be the most emotionally stable person on the planet (excluding psychopaths of course) and still make the choices that lead to the downfall we are seeing now. What we are seeing right now is not the result of people having low resistance to irrational emotions, it is the result of the interconnections of emotion and decision making by what many would describe as rational people. Failure of any leader to properly account for this sensibility leads to catastrophe. At any given time, it will always be less effort for the leaders and public speakers to account for this and make the appropriate changes then for any peoples, group or society to change their way of thinking.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

It is irrational that the society reacts in the way that causes the stock market to crash in the first place. Also, think about this: if nobody pulled out their money from the stock market, it would not crash. Something to think about (not saying that that is how I individually would behave; I am talking about the societal trends here).

Rationality is a big subject in itself. I am just making a simple statement that partaking in panicking over something that is statistically insignificant is easily avoidable and is not useful in any way.

Leaders that choose the path of the least resistance are not the ones I want to be led by. I want to be led by people who know what they want in life and who take daring action involving risks, but promising large rewards. If all we are going to do is go down the current, then why do we need leaders at all?

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Did you hear that Trump secured cargo shipments from countries with known cases?

Not pulling money out of the stock market stops being a possibility when the dumba$$ in chief literally and directly shut down trade!

How are people supposed to make money if they can't trade for all the cheap consumer goods they need to profit?

All things considered, the stock market crash is the result of Trump's actions. Even if everyone kept their money in the stock market, it still would have lost value due to companies failing because they can't move products.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

I was talking about Trump's initial response, where he said that there is no reason to worry about anything. His recent response is a different matter and the exact overreaction I was talking about.

For that matter, the way to prevent the government from taking such actions is to not give it so much power in the first place. Giving it a lot of power and then wondering why it misuses it - that is pretty irrational.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar While I would agree that xenophobia isn't going to help because the virus is already here, I think you undervalue the psychological effects of having a leader. Most people don't know what to do or what to think. The way they decide is by looking to their leader for the social cues they need to make their choice. (with the notable exception of people with autism).

Even from his initial response we can see a reaction that was driven by it. The power of a leader doesn't rest in the institutions or tangible assets, but in the trust of the people and their willingness to follow them.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Then that is something they need to snap out of. Putting their fates into the hands of one person, let alone such an unpredictable person, is a poor strategy.

I have never needed leaders to tell me what to do, and neither should others. A leader is valuable when one has a particular goal and wants to achieve it in a group with maximum efficiency, but a leader is not necessarily very useful when one has to confront their inner demons.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar That isn't something we can change easily, and it is unclear if we would want to. The thing is, we evolved as a hierarchical species. Many primates and other mammals live like this and have fore millions of years, humans are not an exception.

Without a leader, we would have no idea of knowing what is and is not acceptable. We would not know justice from injustice. While it is good that most people are free, it is wrong to assume that we would all act in any kind of similar way unless we have an anchor point to compare our actions to.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Deciding what is moral and what is not based on what the leader thinks is a really-really bad idea, one history has proven impractical many times.

Leaders have their uses, but people should realise that ultimately they are the masters of their lives, and expecting the leader to solve all their problems is going to lead to a huge disappointment.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar Subconsciously, that is how people think, most people don't even know they do it.

Think back to high school, and imagine that the nerdy kid made a suggestion, like lets go play basketball. No one will listen. Now imagine the popular kid makes the exact same suggestion. Everyone listens. That is just how humans work, we look to those who are at the top of the social hierarchy to make choices.

In fact, I don't think there is a single thing about our culture that doesn't revolve around this principal.

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

While that is true, that should not be used as an excuse: such an approach bears high costs. People can get over it.

This is the type of arguments I heard a lot back in Russia, when people explained why it is impossible to change the system for the better: "That is just our culture. You cannot change us." Well, other countries somehow changed, so why cannot you? I do not buy it that there are some psychological limitations we can never get over.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar I'm not about to think we should go around and start lobotomizing everyone, and frankly I don't know why we would want to. There is nothing wrong with having leaders, what is wrong is having just one leader. Ideally, 1 in every 100-150 people should be a leader because that works very well with human psychology. Not everyone is cut out to take charge of their lives, and need some form of social structure to function. Complete individualism would never work, because it give too much of an advantage to those that are truly exceptional while covertly punishing those who are not.

TKDB

@We_are_accountable

Obama got many passes, because some of the news media were afraid of being ridiculed by his Liberal followers, or constituents.

No one was going to risk being boycotted by those that he campaigned to, to get elected.

Being that his followers, or constituents, didn't want their meal ticket, or free hand out provider, being "messed" with.

And apparently, here comes Biden, and you begin to wonder, if he might get those same privileges that Obama got while he was the President? 

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

No, but I think people should be told that if they do not take their lives in their own hands, then they will always be a slave to someone else's will. It is great to have role models and gurus you respect, but making your psychology strongly dependant on everything they say? That is a path to a psychological nightmare.

My well-being is almost completely independent on anything anyone (with the exception of my closest relatives and friends) says, which gives me a massive advantage compared to many other people. It does not mean there are no leaders who I respect and listen to, but if those leaders say something I dislike and/or disagree with, I will just shrug and move on; nobody is perfect.
Trump saying something insensitive on Twitter certainly has 0 effect on me.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar If people took individualism seriously, why would they listen to someone telling them to take their lives into their own hands?

Doesn't the fact that that is possible kind of violate the idea, since they would need an authority figure to tell them to do that in the first place?

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

Because that is literally the central message of individualism. Individualism does not mean "Do not listen to anyone", it means "Do not become too dependent on anyone".

But you are right; people do not really need authority figures. They should listen to the message and analyse it critically, not listen to the person and swallow everything they say.

Happy_Killbot

@MayCaesar And if they analyze the message and decide that it is only rational to listen to authority?

MayCaesar

@Happy_Killbot

If that is their conclusion, then so be it. The important thing is that they have thought about it and analysed it, so their decision to listen to authority is based on logic and not unfiltered emotions; that is already a progress.

JGXdebatePRO

the reason trump is demonised is because he is a racist prejudge.

JGXdebatePRO

Says it all.

JGXdebatePRO

the reason trump is demonised is because he is a racist prejudge.

CYDdharta

JGXdebatePRO said:

the reason trump is demonised is because he is a racist prejudge.

LOL

CYDdharta

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CYDdharta

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CYDdharta

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CYDdharta

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CYDdharta

Apologies for multiple posts