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This weekly thread will focus on the phrase “The Cruelty Is The Point”, which may take some explanation.
Frequently on Lemmy (and elsewhere), I see the phrase in comment threads. In my experience, it has been referencing any policy that is contrary to a Liberal or Leftist belief that the thread discusses. I have found the phrase when discussing trans issues, housing, taxes, healthcare, abortion, and many more.
This does not mean it doesn’t exist elsewhere, it is simply where I see it since I spend much of my social media time on Lemmy. If your experience differs, please let us know!
Some Starters (and don’t feel you have to speak on all or any of them if you don’t care to):
- Do you believe this? If so, why?
- Is it true / false in some or all scenarios?
- Is it with certain groups or regarding certain things?
- Do you feel that speech like this is conducive to fixing societal issues?
- Is what is considered “kind” always the best course of action?
I generally disagree with the phrase. In some cases, it is true-- any human behavior is true for someone out there, or maybe even a large group of someones-- but generally I think the truth is far more underwhelming: the people who are being cruel simply do not care. They will cause cruelty if it makes their own lives more convenient in the slightest. That being said, for some topics (generally relating to identity politics), the ratio of people who are simply cruel because they want to make other people miserable is higher imo.
I think accurately identifying the nature of peoples’ beliefs and intentions is conducive to helping fix societal issues. In this case, that means identifying intentional cruelty where it truly is, so we can combat it more aggressively in regards to the perpetrators, and identifying indifference where that truly is, so that we can take a smarter/softer approach of changing incentives to discourage the undesirable behavior. If people aren’t actually being cruel on purpose, it’s more effective to make them not want to do the thing with cruel side effects than it is to convince them to change their cruel actions, or even to convince them that they are being cruel in the first place, since it can be unintentional.
No, but I’m not sure how much that’s because actions that are unkind to a small class of abusive people and kind to a large class of victims are often still considered “unkind”. I do think that considering kindness in the approach is useful, and often leads to superior outcomes (ie. providing housing and food to lower crime rates).