11-21-2019, 11:39 PM
Most are individual troubles. Personal. People want to be agreed with about why they are the way they are, and they get with other people, and they agree to each other's resentments, so they don't have to be eaten up with uncertainty and self-doubt and boil with hatred all alone. You get enough people, two is enough, but groups are easier to mass than ever, and the great bogies have formed as cheap pops for all in the group: the rich, the police, the political group, the religion, the historical atrocity. The easiest way to connect with someone is through sharing the passion of their hatreds. People don't get as jealous over their hatreds as they do their loves. To be angry alone is to be a bitter, pathetic loser. To be angry in a group, even about the same things as the lone person, is to be virtuous, because each is a lone person being doled virtue currency from the mob.
What infuriates most people is the virtuous frame people throw over their self-righteousness. Shooting a cop because you don't like the way he looks is one thing, shooting him as a heroic act of social justice is the stance people find annoying.
When two people are together, it's hard not to fall into degrading others in order to look better yourself. A whole network of people together doing it, organized and monetized and publicized both villainized and heroicized, and you have one group of bullies versus another functioning as a social forum. Anyone of us can get drawn into it at any moment. That's how dangerous is the zombie bite.
What infuriates most people is the virtuous frame people throw over their self-righteousness. Shooting a cop because you don't like the way he looks is one thing, shooting him as a heroic act of social justice is the stance people find annoying.
When two people are together, it's hard not to fall into degrading others in order to look better yourself. A whole network of people together doing it, organized and monetized and publicized both villainized and heroicized, and you have one group of bullies versus another functioning as a social forum. Anyone of us can get drawn into it at any moment. That's how dangerous is the zombie bite.