You are entitled to your feelings

[Sympthsical]

22. There are two rules of human behavior that are oddly elusive for some

1. You cannot tell people they are not experiencing what they are experiencing and expect positive feedback.

We see this with the economy. Costs of living have been rising making people living paycheck to paycheck struggle that much harder. And the response was, "The economy is great. It's misinformation. You're doing amazing, sweetie!" And somehow people thought was a good message to have. Telling people who worry about feeding their families and keeping a roof over the heads that they're hallucinating the problems in front of their eyes.

The choice was empathy or fuck you, and people went with fuck you. And then have the audacity to be surprised when it doesn't go well.

2. You cannot reason people out of what they were never reasoned into.

This is just a universal human thing. Neither Right nor Left, religious nor atheist. People just believe things, and no matter how hard you bang your head against that wall, it's not going to penetrate. Look at the election numbers discussed in recent weeks. Even with hard data - hard, indisputable facts - people just . . . have a feeling. Because it's not a feeling reasoned into. It's purely emotional reaction and instinct.

That's a harder thing to get around. You hope that logic and reason reign, but social media and the MSM are largely geared to trigger emotions, because emotions lead to engagement. The Right doesn't succeed because they have amazing arguments. They soak through because they have sites like Libs of TikTok where it's nonstop "Look and react to this!" Have people ever really looked at social media? 99% of it isn't particularly interesting in the "providing useful information" sense. But the wackiness of human behavior is entertaining as shit. I love watching the crazy, the zealotry, the certitude in ideology, religion, and tribalism. It's fun in a "I cannot believe adults behave like this" sort of way, but it's not necessarily useful. It's purely manipulative.

I think the solution isn't that obvious. We always hear, "We need to teach critical thinking!" Which, yes, that is vital and would be nice. But given technology, culture, and societal tribal organization right now, I think we need a different priority to tackle the issues we face.

We need to teach emotional regulation. You can't begin to bring critical thinking into the picture until we engage the problem that social media are an emotionally dysregulative mess. It's all feelings and reaction overriding logic, reason, and thinking things out rationally.

And good luck with that one. Because it circles around to your main point. We're a "Every feeling I have is valid and I'm entitled to behave as antisocially as I want in response!" Which, woo. You go, I guess. And then we wonder why most people just tap right the fuck out from anything being said.