• ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 hours ago

    This rhetoric is what is known as accelerationism. It’s the idea that things have to get worse in order for them to get better. The United States not existing would mean the collapse of a society that supports about 340 million people. Letting the US burn to the ground is not useful, because it doesn’t help any of the people living here.

    The truth is that things get better when people learn from their mistakes and the bad things that happen to them. They then use that knowledge to make things better. There’s no bottom to how bad things can get. Things can always get worse. And they will get worse unless we work to make them better.

    Anyone can be tempted by the idea that they can make things better by letting them burn. But letting everything burn is how to harm the most people possible. In order to help anyone, we need to start leveraging power for each other. That means giving up on moral victories and analyzing strategies using utility instead of moral reasoning. edit: typo

    • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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      2 hours ago

      It’s not accelerationism at all! It’s fatalism.

      Accelerationism is, “It has to get worse before it can get better.”

      My point here is, “The system that only allows for getting worse will never get better.”