• Hegar@fedia.io
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    5 days ago

    There’s a lot of neuroscience showing that social power suppresses empathy in the brain. Status, privilege, wealth, etc. make almost everyone less able to consider the pain of others.

    Most of us can be reasonable with people we know. But the socially powerful are making most of the important higher-scale decisions, and they are neurologically the least capable of making good decisions on behalf of others.

    Or that’s how i see the problem.

    • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Well that makes the problem even more blatantly obvious…the problem is social hierarchy. It’s impossible to have equality and hierarchy simultaneously…they are mutually exclusive.

      They (the ruling classes) are vastly outnumbered, yet they manage to gain control over the masses below them, such that we must support them or the whole thing crumbles.

      They’ve got the supporting class believing that we need them…but really that couldn’t be further from the truth.

      The problem is, though, as soon as one ruler is gone, another replaces them, and that one is equally corrupt. And the cycle repeats.

      But conversely, I don’t see how a non-hierarchal society could function, because that implies there must be some sort of order, mediation, and enforcement, which automatically means that some people will have authority over others, no matter how you slice it.