I experience Lemmy as a reflection of many of the problems in the world; there seems to be little effort to understand and respect different viewpoints. Instead of being curious about opinions one disagrees with, the community often feels almost aggressive. People end up in their own trenches. What about trying to be more open and curious about our differences instead?
Apparently we believe in freedom of speech—so long as the speech is something we agree with…
Discussion about anything spiritual. Mention the word and people automatically assume that you’re an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian ready to host a sermon about how much God hates homosexuals.
As an atheist and a Bible-reading dude (as well as a few other ‘spirituality’ books, among many other types of books), the hate towards anything spirituality-related and religious around here was one of those things I almost immediately noticed after joining, it’s even worse regarding anything Christian. The worst for me was not that hate, it is the fact that almost all of it rely on nothing but a desire to do like the others. And very rarely on actual knowledge of what is being hated.
It is one of those things that made me question if I should stay, if the Fediverse was a place one could really expect to have enriching discussions, or merely the exact opposite of those corporate-owned social media platforms that are populated by right-winged haters: collectively-owned social media populated by left-winged haters. Hate is a poor choice. It doesn’t matter what one hates.
The one thing that made stay is that, thx to the tools available, it’s also very easy to filter out most of that hatred and to suddenly realize that, hidden under that now gone noise, there are indeed quite a few persons wanting to have civilized conversations and that are able to not hate on anyone they disagree with. Not a large crowd, but enough to make it worthwhile to stay and from time to time have an interesting discussion.
That option to filter out the hate, even if it’s not perfect, makes the Fediverse quite unique, imho.
Oh no… People disagree with my opinion. I’m being oppressed.
Thanks for proving my point I guess.
Yes. If your point is that you want to have an opinion and not be teased or disagreed with, that is not a thing you can have. At least, I can’t imagine how that’d work.
There’s a world of difference between disagreeing with someone and mocking them. Especially if the mockery is based on a complete misrepresentation of what is being said.
Sure. And boy do I wish humans didn’t do that all the time. But they do. And so to expect otherwise seems silly to me.
Maybe I’m just more jaded than I should be.
Not saying if you should or should not be jaded but I would ask you: please, please don’t give into the jadedness.
I do understand the impulse and I used to be that way myself. But it’s something that eats at you more than it helps you. Online you can always step away from the strife and in the offline world you can find truly good and caring people who do listen to reason. I realize it might be easy for me to say but I really don’t want to see any more people turn to hopelessness and cynicism. It only helps people who would add more misery to the world.
I’m not the best person to say this and it’ll sound weird on this platform but I do mean it with all my heart. I hope you can find enough good in your life to protect it without despair.
Yeah. The anti-theism thing here is wild.
I usually just assume they are into healing crystals or yoga, but that’s my own bias.
People here love ot hate on bigotry, but are totally blind to their perpetuation of it themselves. Because when they massively overgeneralize anyone who is remotely religions or spiritual based on a tiny extremist minority… it’s good! It’s fighting injustice and bigotry! But if other people do it, it’s bad and evil, and wrong!
Hehe, the funny thing is that on me, your assumption would actually more correct than the fundie Christian assumption.
Very specific yoga philosophy, and “healing” crystals in the sense that I’m fine with people saying that looking at pretty rocks makes them feel better. Wouldn’t generalize that into a cancer cure though.