I have a second one (and I say this as a 30-something who’s been vegetarian since middle school): if you judge it unethical to eat meat because you think the animals deserve life than you should also find items designed to look or feel like meat unacceptable.
You wouldn’t buy a pseudo human appendage at the meat market because it’s not just the reality that’s important it’s the entire idea that is abhorrent.
The average person shouldn’t be allowed to drive. It’s extremely dangerous and most people are desensitized to it and absolutely don’t take the natural responsibility towards others that comes with having the ability to kill someone with a finger twitch (or a slight lapse in attention) seriously enough. I don’t think it would be allowed if it was just invented this year.
Was curious so did some digging, this article did a write up: “Provisional CDC data show that the number of suicide deaths in 2022 is the highest recorded, exceeding the next closest year (2018) by over 1,000 deaths (Figure 1). When adjusted for population growth and age, the suicide rate has risen by 16% from 2011 to 2022, moving from 12.3 to 14.4 deaths per 100,000 individuals. Looking back further to 1999, there is a substantial 37% increase from a rate of 10.57 per 100,000. Notably, while 2022 had the highest recorded number of suicide deaths, its rate is similar to 2018 (14.5 in 2022 vs. 14.2 in 2018 per 100,000) but higher than the rate in 2020—the year before suicide deaths began to climb again. Increases in the number of suicide deaths follow high levels of mental health symptoms during COVID, rising financial stressors, and longstanding difficulty accessing needed mental health care—particularly for some populations. Total suicide numbers may be undercounted, as some research suggests that suicides may be misclassified as drug overdose deaths since it can be difficult to determine whether drug overdoses are intentional.”
if you try you’ll push yourself into a bad mental space that many therapists make their livelihood off of! I am a big people pleaser so have had issues with over-valuing the opinions of others. One important thing I did to combat this tendency was to come up with a reasonable set of principles for myself so that I didn’t feel like I always had to take what others might think on board (because I’d given myself a reference). Another thing that helped was eliminating anxiety around things I was quite certain one shouldn’t be judged for (in the sense that some things just shouldn’t reflect on your character).
Being worried about having your job taken away and similar is a bit different. I think the things you do to prevent risking this include not voicing “hot takes” except with people you trust and who understand you, avoiding internet arguing, keeping your boundaries up at work, etc. I think most people have a pretty good sense of what ideas might be wildly unpopular in their locale.
As a slight side note, things like tenure (in the US) and anonymous review processes in academia were put in place precisely to ensure that people weren’t blackballed for theorizing things that were unpopular or that would potentially step on the toes of some politician who was threatened by your research. Many things that are popularly supported have and will continue to be wrong, so you need a certain self assurance to fall back on. Preferably your self assurance is supported by logic and reason and not dogmatism—but this entails a fair amount of hard work and study and reflection—you can’t just rely on intuition.
Nazism was quite centralized and therefore easier to target and eliminate. The bureaucratic structure made it easy to find and convict the main players afterwards. The ideology wasn’t totally eliminated, but new laws and such helped tamp it down.
The taliban is much less centralized and on top of that the various governments involved don’t have a lot of incentive to fall into line like Germany (which the US came in and rebuilt with a ton of strings attached so that it wouldn’t lose its German market share).
I think one reason is the news portrayal like others mentioned—though this often goes two-ways—ask a native Californian what they think the South or Midwest are like and you’ll often get some crazy off base responses.
I think another big piece is that CA policies have a disproportionately large impact on everyone else’s policies (they share this characteristic with NY to some extent). CA has the 3rd largest economy in the world and therefore companies often have to adhere to CA policies in order to keep from losing an extremely significant market share. For example, CA committing to no more gas cars by X date immediately made gas vehicles an obsolete product for the manufacturers’ bottom line.
Customer service is probably the easiest entry level remote job to get, but quite soul sucking—especially if they make you use a script. One suggestion I can offer is grant writing if you’re okay at crafting an argument. You can find small local orgs who will let you help write to get some experience then apply for jobs that pay decently.
I like Wells Fargo cause they’re the only ones who will give me quarters for cash without any questions and without needing an account with them. Groceries won’t give them anymore and my own local credit union only lets you get 2 rolls.
Just freecycled an almost new HP printer/scanner because of their ridiculous software locked cartridges that print like 20 pages total. I specified in the listing that the ink was expensive and that it would be best for someone who printed almost never and just wanted a scanner.
(I still eat meat substitutes but if I was being ethically consistent I think I shouldn’t).