fantoozie

I have very little faith that this ship will be turned around. It’s not even the explicit invasions of privacy from facial recognition that are the most damning. Its the hordes of people willingly providing their data through social media. Our culture has embraced the erosion of privacy and autonomy with such enthusiasm it almost feels engineered. In fact, it very well might be. When we let money dictate the stories we tell and who tells them, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that culture becomes yet another tool to entrench the inequality we live in.

Agreed. These jobs are overwhelmingly concentratedin developing nations and pay pathetic wages, too.

There’s a fundamental disconnect between people who live in highly developed nations and their awareness of how much populations from intentionally underdeveloped nations are subsidizing their ability to accrue material wealth. I believe this creates a scenario where the only way to continue maintaining the high living standards the West has known for 50+ years without incurring increasing costs is through the manipulative create of underclasses that allow capital accumulation to occur. Unfortunately now that globalization is out of fashion, many governments are shifting to bringing these underclasses much closer to home, which is adding to the resulting anti-immigrant, xenophobic political discourse we’re now seeing. Population growth could mostly be a flash in the pan, but if countries really do start shutting the door on immigration and have to also contend with collapsing fertility rates you can bet they’re gonna start rationalizing how to strip women’s rights away; have to keep the underclass there to feed the billionaires and scare the workers.

Well, no point in arguing with someone like you. Regardless, as a practicing immunologist I don’t feel the least bit diminished by having the social utility of my work compared to other people; ESPECIALLY if it’s on the arbitrary basis of the amount of time, money, or education it took someone to become “valuable to society.” As for any of my colleagues who do feel that way: grow up; healthcare is a service, and we are service workers.

I agree to disagree. Doctors may have a more immediate and tangible benefit on people’s health and well-being, but providing safe and reliable public transportation to untold amounts of working class people who may rely on you to provide for their families is also a massive positive effect that should not be diminished simply for being less culturally prominent.

Your last post did ask if you should feel personally ashamed for the history of French colonialism so I was responding to that in particular. Maybe you meant it rhetorically but I didn’t perceive it that way so I figured I’d share my thoughts.

I do disagree with your final point, but I can clearly see I have a much different perspective on the West than you, so I won’t dive into that. Ill simply mention that whatever vibe you think you’re getting from these comments may be a good catalyst for you to critically think about how these narratives make you feel and why that is so, since it seems that you’re frustrated over some perceived threat to your belief system. If anyone is arguing in absolutes than I wouldn’t invest much energy into their arguments, but from where I’m looking I don’t see much of that; just people engaging in good-faith discourse about very complex subjects.

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