While I wholeheartedly agree that no child should ever go hungry and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here), if you call people subhuman, we can't be friends, nor acquaintances.
Subhuman is a rather severe (and incredibly reductionist) judgement. Sure, being anti-free lunch for children is morally objectionable… but they’ve failed to probe that line of reasoning. They’ve encountered a bug, but instead of debugging it, they’ve closed their IDE and walked away.
Sometimes an honest conversation—with carefully placed, introspective questions—can be revealing to all parties. When we use our tongues to learn about others and build them up rather than tear them down, we’re actively making the world a better place. When we resist the tendency to judge others, we’re actively bettering ourselves.
This, and there’s something all-too human about ignoring or even basking in the suffering of others, including children. Pretending it’s somehow less than human to be on that side of things feels a bit head-in-sand.
A certain amount of ignoring human suffering is positively required to exist in the modern world, otherwise it would be an impossible-to-defend-against exploit to walk up to happy people in the first world and say “ten thousand children die every day from lack of access to clean water”, because then you would permanently alter or ruin their life.
FWIW this is true on Earth today.
It is required to turn a blind eye to slavery and oppression and hunger and thirst and preventable death and disease otherwise it would be impossible to have any semblance of a happy life in the good parts of the world, because the scale of preventable human suffering is both epic and, thus far, neverending.
> ... and school lunches should be free (from a EU country, this isn’t even a thing here)
I'm from another EU country (the Netherlands). Primary schools do not provide any lunch or other food whatsoever, secondary schools might have a canteen selling some snacks or low quality fast food. But everyone is basically expected to bring their own or go out/home for lunch.
Yes, we had the same system when I went to school in a (relatively low-income) expat (Indian) school in the Middle East. But nowhere was a child expected to leave the break hungry - I saw firsthand a teacher ruthlessly scolded by the grade supervisor (who was a GOAT all-round) because she found a student still eating after she had arrived at the class, and sent him to stand outside as punishment.
Another time, a teacher paid for a student's meal because he lost the change he was given by his parents to buy food from the canteen.
And another time, the school canteen just giving away free food at the end of the day to whoever wanted it, because there was no point in them keeping it around.
It's honestly unbelievable that a first world country would let its children go without lunch because even third world countries do not let that happen. I have seen schools in rural Africa that don't let their children starve - in fact, giving a midday meal (and some to take home afterwards) is a way to ensure school attendance.
No one is starving in the netherlands. There's a difference between offering a canteen but charging for it with some able and some not able to pay, and a general expectation that all bring food from home. Many Dutch, German, etc companies will also not have canteens but rather people bring a sandwich or last night's leftovers from home. The standard warm meal is the evening meal.
Also read the book "Superschool" about what was one of the worst schools in one of the poorest areas of the Netherlands, where there were loads of kids going to school hungry, dirty, and without basics like a coat.
Sorry, your throwaway remark just rubbed me up the wrong way. The Netherlands is not the socialist utopia that some people make it out to be, we just have bike lanes, sorta-legal weed and superior bread / cheese.
I wasn't talking about the Netherlands per se, but wanted to pinpoint that alternatives exist in places other than the US, which ensure that no kid starves. In fact, my comment was an add-on to yours, as we followed the same system as you guys do in NL.
He's absolutely right. As someone whose society suffered very heavy losses from the Nazis, this is the first thing that came to my mind when I read the root comment. It's like posting swastikas online and then dismissing concerned replies because "it's a Buddhist sign, what are you on about?"
I am glad to read this. (I am the originally - bit snarky - commenter about your use of the word, and do indeed live in Germany) .. my snap reaction my not have been worded the best it could have been :)
Except in this case the victims (the hungry children) are not the ones being labeled that. Also the word subhuman is in the dictionary (I checked Webster's) with zero reference to the war.
And "n*gro" is the Spanish, non-slur word for "black" but yet we can't use it because US people dislike it. Slavery and such. Cultural sensitivity goes both ways.
> And "n*gro" is the Spanish, non-slur word for "black" but yet we can't use it because US people dislike it. Slavery and such. Cultural sensitivity goes both ways.
Webster's dictionary:
plural Negroes
1 dated, often offensive : a person of Black African ancestry
2 dated, often offensive : a member of a group of people formerly considered to constitute a race (see race entry 1 sense 1a) of humans having African ancestry and classified according to physical traits (such as dark skin pigmentation)
Note the "offensive" warnings. Now let's see subhuman:
: less than human: such as
a: failing to attain the level (as of morality or intelligence) associated with normal human beings b: unsuitable to or unfit for human beings
subhuman living conditions c: of or relating to a taxonomic group lower than that of humans; the subhuman primates
In the case of subhuman, Webster's dictionary does not give any warning. And there is no reference to any wars.
Don't try to make people say things they are not saying.
In this case the intended meaning was clearly:
"failing to attain the level (as of morality) associated with normal human beings"
Like you, probably, I got a very systemizing brain and had trouble understanding this for decades. What the dictionaries say about the words does not matter - what is offensive to other people does not follow any system, but their feelings. And that means its arbitrary and you have probably no chance to know it ahead of time.
I agree. There is something less evolved about their sense of humility.
One day it's someone else who can't afford lunch, another day it may well be you or your kids. In a rational society, where we all unanimously acknowledge the fragility of our respective positions, I believe even the most simple rational human would agree that the basic needs to live must be met for all.
I feel those who take an opposing view are often blind to their own vulnerabilities and misunderstandings.
this is ridiculous. I'm a socialist and I believe that people should have far more of life's necessities provided to them by the state; I think supermarkets should be nationalised; I think water and electricity should be free up to a limit. on the other hand, this "people disagree with me about something sensitive so they're unevolved and/or subhuman" lark is childish as fuck and completely hypocritical
people think things for a reason, and it's rarely because they're sociopaths or they're unevolved or they're stupid, and assuming that it is lazy and uncritical
No, there, at least in the USA, a large amount of very dumb people. They also tend to be quite sadistic as well, thinking 'those people' deserve the sadism and torment.
This percolates through our whole society, one case of which is this scholastic food 'debt'.
And also, during some of Biden's years, there was a few years of free school lunches. And was also summarily cancelled. Even democrats have this pervasive 'those people don't deserve X'.
you're proving my point. people think these things because, as you say, they're instilled in the American national mentality. it makes sense to think that's wrong, it makes sense to think people should think for themselves and try to engage their empathy circuits for people not in their immediate family, but it's taking it a million steps too far to say they're subhuman or unevolved, and it's not helping anything anyway. perhaps it was too far to say that it's rarely because they're stupid though
A less evolved sense of humility (as I originally put it) does not equate to stupid. They are far from stupid - they are ruthless consumers of every scrap of advantage they can get, including the best education, food, clothes to name but a few things. They believe they deserve that advantage.
In fact, they see the person who can't afford lunch as stupid - after all, an intelligent person should at least be able to get lunch - it's so easy! What they don't realise is how much each person is impacted by their own starting position in life (which, I believe to be random), and how that in turn impacts where they are now.
Many "privileged" people lack empathy, because they believe the tables can never turn. They don't even want to entertain the thought. They believe their privilege is a birthright. In some cases, they are probably correct; they will enjoy privilege for their entire lives. But in exceptional circumstances, they will be caught out, and their opinion will undoubtedly change.
So, it's not stupidity, it is willful ignorance. History is full of such examples, some more chilling and devastating than others.
I feel like you're not actually replying to the things I said. I added that they may be stupid as an afterthought given that I value challenging societal norms highly as a signal of intelligence. the main points were elsewhere
How so? You said my comment was ridiculous because I was implying stupidity or a lack of evolution in the general sense, but my comment concerned the evolution of their humility, not their evolution in general. My last comment simply clarified that.
