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What do you do when people don't care? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm dumbstruck as to what to do. The US is building literal concentration camps, and none of my co-workers care at all.

In fairness, I work in healthcare with an almost exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.

Many of them espouse to be Christians, and no one cares at all that the American government is following the exact playbook from Nazi Germany.

What do you do? How do you make people care before it's too late?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

I care, you care, and many of us here on lemmy care. We should work on how to coordinate ourselves together rather than try to change minds.

I've tried, a lot, to change minds. I started with the most difficult person, and recently a new hire at work is kinda centrist-left and I tried to convince him. No matter whether it's a nazi you're talking to (ahem.. the first one) or a liberal, minds can only change themselves. They have to want it, you cannot hack their brain and override it.

I gave up, because even the people who are closest to me politically seem to move further to the right when faced with uncomfortable reality. They don't engage with icky thoughts like "What if police killed an innocent man?". They rationalize it to keep their comfort zone intact. "Well, if they just followed police instructions..." blissfully unaware of many cases like Daniel Shaver.

You point to an example that breaks their rationalization, and they will diminish it. "Oh that cop made a mistake". Point to many examples and they suddenly got to go wash their hair. People's psyche protects them from stress.

And that is the default mindset in this society. Avoidance of discomfort and inconvenience. Fear of the unknown. They want their life to be neat and happy and to all make sense. They don't appreciate it when someone tries to take that away from them.

Do you think there's something about people like us that makes us more accepting of challenging our own worldviews? I have some thoughts but I've written enough.