Comment by sublinear
15 days ago
Eventually, people realize they will never agree and therefore don't have to fight.
They realize the majority of their beliefs already existed before they were born and will continue on after they're dead. They have nothing to add to the conversation while they are too busy fighting. They turn their focus to developing their ideas peacefully and let their subcultures flourish once again.
This isn't the first cycle and won't be the last. The last major cycle was in the 20th century due to broadcast media. I think people sometimes forget how relatively young the internet is.
"Live and let live" is in fundamental tension with "protect the weak." ALL aggressive ideologies act as heroes protecting others from oppression. There is a barely expressible thing that allows people to live in peace with those they disagree with. It is a personality trait, an aesthetic, a mood associated with the best of the Enlightenment but never described by it. Perhaps people need relative silence, a few good books, physical labor, hand-made goods, and slow travel to attain it. I often wonder at how boldly people think they can reduce the enormous, holistic experience of being of a particular time and place and call the effect simply "reason".
i agree with your sentiment, but what you disagree in is crucial here.
there's a class of topics where disagreement means the death and dispair of one side.
hoping to live and let live, with a disagreeing party that doesn't "let live", is a fool's errand.
This is just another 'people should just agree with me' that operates on a meta-level.
I'm not saying "agree to disagree". The question of agreement implies the awareness of a conflict at all.
I'm saying that every time we have new media there are opportunists bugging everyone else that normally wouldn't care. Time and energy are precious. Humanity's default state is, and should be, ignorance and apathy.
If those last two words boil your blood, you gotta take a look at the mirror and reconsider why. You don't have to reply. You don't even have to remember anything I'm writing here. Just let go and be free. That doesn't have to mean you agreed/disagreed with me. You can in fact put the genie back in the bottle by completely abandoning it.