Thread by @TheRealHoarse

The last line of this is the one I’ve been thinking about.

The encounter left a couple marks. They didn’t register as anything other than an unintended effect of someone’s personal crisis.

The worst parts of this country seem to have lost all empathy…

1)

https://twitter.com/therealhoarse/status/1655640411635871747

Large portions of the population have entirely lost even basic humanity.

They don’t see other people as people first. They see strangers as threats; and see any even perceived trespass as a crime committed against them.

2/

It’s like “Stand Your Ground” run amok.

It’s as if people have been cultured to think they are entitled to live free of any other humans upsetting them in any way.

It’s hyper-narcissistic. And hyper-narcissism is borderline sociopathic.

3/

We keep reading about someone with a gun opening fire on someone who accidentally knocked on the wrong door or drove up the wrong driveway or tried to get in the wrong car at a gas station.

There’s something fucked up going on where some humans are dehumanizing strangers.

4/

There’s a certain amount of xenophobia that comes from a community being completely isolated from all others.

Remote tribes isolated from all of civilization in untraveled areas don’t know what to make of arriving interlopers.

This ain’t that.

5/

This is a growing personal narcissism and antagonism towards any other human who in any way even seems to be infringing on the narcissist’s little bubble:

Their space; what they believe to be their rights; how they think their communities should work; etc..

6/

It seems like a spiraling cultural radicalization.

A rapidly diminishing connection to the social fabric of people, community, and country.

I think the worst thing about it IMHO, is that it isn’t limited to the people glued to Fox News.

7/

It seems to be seeping outward from those nurtured-to-be-angry-and-afraid types to taint even the larger population that isn’t political at all.

It seems to be becoming just widely cultural to be selfish, aggrieved, and entitled to respond to any slight however one wants.

8/

I’ve had a persistent thought about Americans’ deteriorating sense of empathy: people are losing their imagination.

People are getting worse and worse at imagining what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes.

9/

Now, though, I don’t think it is just a failure to be able to imagine what it is like to be the other person.

I think it is a cultured belief that caring about only oneself is perfectly fine and one’s right… and therefore, anything that gets in the way of that is a crime.

10/

It seems to be creating a culture where people are narcissists who see anyone inconvenient to what they want as criminally trespassing upon them.

They therefore, upon any slight, se themselves as victims; and then feel entitled to entirely disregard even the law in responding.

That kind of narcissism is poisonous beyond description.

All of histories greatest atrocities began not with a despot ordering violence but by ordinary people coming to see the eventual victims as less human and then deserving.

We’re heading in a bad direction.

12/

The debates over single incidents on New York City train platforms matter.

Responding loudly and publicly matters. In fact, it probably matters more than focusing on overall politics.

We are in a fight over whether society should operate around a basic shared humanity.

13/

Without our constant vigorous effort to insist that it must, it simply won’t.

And if we ever allow that to fully happen, if history is any guide, immeasurably horrible things will be done to the vulnerable before the pendulum swings back only afterwards.

14/

I got a little scraped up.

Justice - the restorative kind - the kind that satisfies the ‘victim’ - wouldn’t be for the other person to be prosecuted; it would be for society to not see crisis as criminal.

I don’t think people are fighting hard enough for that. Me included.

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