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GNR for Sunday, June 18 2023. "Love is the most important thing" [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-18
Don’t worry Missy. Not a peep.
Empathy vs Fear
The fear of being duped is ubiquitous, but excessive scepticism makes it harder to trust one another and cooperate
In 2007, three experimental psychologists, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, coined the word ‘sugrophobia’, which would translate to something like a ‘fear of sucking’. The researchers – Kathleen Vohs, Roy Baumeister and Jason Chin – were looking to name the familiar and specific dread that people experience when they get the inkling that they’re ‘being a sucker’ – that someone is taking advantage of them, partly thanks to their own decisions. The idea that psychologists would study suckers academically seems almost ridiculous at first. But, once you start to look for it, it becomes clear that sugrophobia is not only real, it is a veritable epidemic. Its influence extends from the choices we make as individuals to the society-wide narratives that sow distrust and discrimination. The number of ‘sucker’ synonyms alone suggests a cultural obsession: pawn, dupe, chump, fool, stooge, loser, mark, and so on. Public debates about a wide range of social policies and technological advances feature inchoate fears about who’s going to be swindled next. Will ChatGPT help students cheat unwitting teachers? Is remote work popular since the COVID-19 pandemic because employees can slack off more easily? Does forgiving student-loan debt let ‘slacker baristas’ exploit hardworking taxpayers, as one US politician suggested?
We (at least most of us) are naturally wired for empathy. Helping others with no expectation of a reward is the most gratifying thing I have ever done. I feel sorry for those who are so terrified of being scammed that they won’t try to help someone else in need. I have been suckered a few times but that doesn’t come close to cancelling out the pleasure I have gotten.
The sociopaths running the Republican Party don’t think this way. They have always laughed at us bleeding heart liberals because they only get pleasure from winning. The real suckers are the ordinary people who have bought into this attitude because they have been told it is smarter to screw the unfortunate losers than help them.
These millionaires want to tax the rich, and they're lobbying working-class voters
[O]nce everyone's seated with a plate of chicken and green beans, Patriotic Millionaires founder Payne opens her PowerPoint to make her case. "So 71% of Americans think the economy is rigged against them," she says, standing before a big screen. "We've got news for them, they're right." Payne clicks through charts and graphs that she says explain the frustration many in this room are feeling. Upward mobility? It's down. CEO pay? It's gone way up, from 20 times worker pay in the 1960s to, on average, hundreds times more today. And yet, in some years major corporations essentially paid no taxes. In another graph, a squiggly line for worker productivity climbs and climbs over recent decades, while the line for wages looks almost flat. "Where do you think all that extra productivity, the profits from all that productivity, is going?" Payne asks. There's a murmur of responses. "That's exactly right," she says. "It's going straight into the pockets of the rich."
The Patriotic Millionaires would prefer to live in a society where they had less money but weren’t surrounded by poor people. Empathy beats fear and greed any day.
There are terrific musicians on YouTube that people have never heard of. A young Korean one woman band covering 1960s hard rock standards- why not?
Who Builds The Internet? Meet Wikipedia's Architects
Within the expansive digital corridors of Wikipedia, there exists a dedicated community of editors who dedicate themselves to curating, expanding, and refining the wealth of information available to the world. These editors, driven by a shared passion for knowledge and armed with a commitment to information, play an instrumental role in shaping the internet landscape we navigate each day. Their tireless efforts are the building blocks upon which the internet's foundations rest, with Wikipedia standing tall as a testament to their ingenuity and collective wisdom.
Why do these people spend so much time and energy working on this enormous project? Contributing their knowledge for free is its own reward. I imagine they are much happier and more fulfilled than the editors who used to work for the big encyclopedia companies.
Telling Truth to Power
Americonned
Contrary to 40+ years and counting of “trickle down” narrative, the reality is that the gap between the 1% and everyone else (let’s say the bottom 90%) has never been wider. It’s become a chasm, and the charts below tell the story... Spoiler Alert: There has been no trickle-down, and in fact, the opposite has occurred: The wealthy and ultra-wealthy have captured more and more of the pie, leaving less for everyone beneath them, carving out the middle class in the process. When Barry was tapped – and subsequently tapped me (note: @TBPInvictus) – to get involved in a documentary project that sought to shine a light on the perniciousness and unsustainability of wealth and income inequality, I jumped at the chance. The result is the award-winning Americonned.
Better Living Through Chemistry
In college I had the opportunity to observe the effects of various recreational drugs. I developed a great respect for the power of hallucinogens. Maybe they can be used to break down toxic thought patterns in people who have bought into hate and fear.
How a dose of MDMA transformed a white supremacist
In February 2020, Harriet de Wit, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural science at the University of Chicago, was running an experiment on whether the drug MDMA increased the pleasantness of social touch in healthy volunteers. The day was proceeding like any other Tuesday when Mike Bremmer, de Wit's research assistant, appeared at her office door with a concerned look on his face. The latest participant in the double-blind trial, a man named Brendan, had filled out a standard questionnaire at the end. Strangely, at the very bottom of the form, Brendan had written in bold letters: "This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue. Google my name. I now know what I need to do." Seeing this cryptic message, both Bremmer and de Wit were worried. "We really have to look into this," de Wit said. They googled Brendan's name, and up popped a disturbing revelation: until just a couple of months before, Brendan had been the leader of the US Midwest faction of Identity Evropa, a notorious white nationalist group rebranded in 2019 as the American Identity Movement. Two months earlier, activists at Chicago Antifascist Action had exposed Brendan's identity, and he had lost his job. De Wit was now very worried. She'd just given a drug to a disgraced white supremacist, she realised, and had apparently inspired him to do who knows what out in the world. "Go ask him what he means by 'I now know what I need to do,'" she instructed Bremmer. "If it's a matter of him picking up an automatic rifle or something, we have to intervene." A murderous spree turned out to be the opposite of what Brendan had in mind. As he clarified to Bremmer, love is what he had just realised he had to do. “Love is the most important thing," he told the baffled research assistant. "Nothing matters without love."
Thanks for the title quote, Brendan! Good luck with your deconversion.
MDMA does not seem to be able to magically rid people of prejudice, bigotry, or hate on its own. But some researchers have begun to wonder if it could be an effective tool for pushing people who are already somehow primed to reconsider their ideology toward a new way of seeing things. While MDMA cannot fix societal-level drivers of prejudice and disconnection, on an individual basis it can make a difference. In certain cases, the drug may even be able to help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us.
I don’t think this is going to work with the sociopaths at the top, of course. For people who have been sucked into the cult it might offer a way out.
How To Report Good News. How CNN Does It.
Record 401(k) Participation at Vanguard Plans
Vanguard is out with its annual deep dive into what its 5 million 401k participants are up to. The firm’s release of How America Saves is chock full of data and charts showing how 401k savings have reached all-time highs at Vanguard; I expect other large plan managers like Fidelity and Schwab to be at or near similar levels.
Employers are offering better plans and better advice. More employees are taking advantage.
UPDATE: June 15, 2023 4:35pm No, no, no, no, NO! CNN shows us exactly how any financial media should NOT cover this report: “The average balance in employer-sponsored savings plans last year was $112,572, well below the $141,542 recorded in 2021.”
… completely ignoring the different market conditions in 2021 and 2023.
Cool Science Break
Evidence of 1-Billion-Year-Old ‘Lost World’ of Microbes Discovered beneath Australian Outback
Rocks hundreds of metres beneath the Australian Outback have yielded clues to a lost world of primitive microbes that once populated the world’s oceans and might have eventually given rise to modern plants and animals. Analysis of fat-like molecules isolated from the rocks suggests that they were made by a previously undiscovered, ancient population of organisms called eukaryotes, the group of living things whose cells typically contain a nucleus and other internal compartments. The molecules are 1.6 billion years old and hint that eukaryotes were abundant and widespread much longer ago than earlier biochemical evidence had suggested.
I am amazed at what clues to the past scientists have been able to find in ancient rocks.
Public Service Announcement
DHfromKY made this comment in Saturday's GNR:
Once again, I'll remind you all that there are elections this year where Republicans need to lose, and Democrats could use help in making them lose. It would help if Brainwrap's links for those elections were included in some of the "what you can do" lists, and not just for whatever support that might send to Democrats running in those elections. It would help those of us in those states feel not just supported, but seen. The links: Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi Virginia legislature New Jersey legislature
Repetition is good.
Last Saturday night edit: Here is a diary about a great state House candidate in Virginia.
From a DK’s own Crashing Vor:
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