• SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
    3415·
    1 year ago

    I live in the post communist part of the EU and I’m very happy that wokeness and the culture war haven’t arrived here yet. Everybody here still follows good faithed common sense, which is a refreshing change from the UK and Germany (both of which I have spent time in), where it is a topic of conversation. Yet not at the cost of LGBT rights, which are legally in step with the West.

    • cam_i_am@lemmy.world
      381·
      1 year ago

      Genuine question which I promise I am asking in good faith: what do you think “wokeness” is?

      • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
        189·
        1 year ago

        Oh sure! In the UK it was stuff like the use (and expectation) of pronouns. Or institutions taking steps to be ‘LGBT-friendly’ and making sure they tell you about it. Sometimes it felt almost forced and I just got tired of it as a topic.
        I too want these people to feel comfortable, but as long as the legislation is there and people try to be friendly (just like they would be to anyone else), the rest just feels like an overreaction to me.

        • cam_i_am@lemmy.world
          321·
          1 year ago

          Honestly I think the vast majority of people on the left would agree with most of what you said. A lot of the corporate rainbow flag waving is pretty performative and cringe.

          The whole pronoun thing is pretty simple really, just don’t say “he” to someone who says “I’m a she”. That’s really all there is to it. 99% of the the time you can tell whether someone is a he or a she. Sometimes it’s not obvious, or you might get it wrong. As long as the other person can say “hey I’m a he actually” and you respond with “Oh my bad bro”, then you are all good.

          I know there are some people out there who try to make the pronoun thing into some huge deal but that’s really all it is. I know plenty of trans people and non-binary people and they’re all chill, they just don’t want to be called by the wrong thing. And honestly, neither do I!

          • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
            7·
            1 year ago

            Exactly. I think the most natural way to deal with this is on a person-by-person basis (just like with any other issue of identity), where you just ask if your unsure (which I’ve also done before), just like with anything else. No need for an institutional framework around it.

          • glad_cat@lemmy.sdf.org
            5·
            1 year ago

            I’ve never met anyone who introduced themselves with pronouns, only the first name. In which country is it a common thing?

            • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
              4·
              1 year ago

              I did meet a few people where I couldn’t guess what gender they were, but they introduced themselves along with their pronouns (which was helpful). Sometimes I was in groups where the gender-obvious introduced themselves with their pronouns too though which felt excessive

              • cam_i_am@lemmy.world
                5·
                1 year ago

                I think people do that sometimes in order to make the one trans or androgenous person not feel like “the odd one out” bc they’re the only one who has the give their pronouns.

                So I get why people do it but I agree it can be a bit awkward. I don’t do it myself but I don’t have any problem with people who do.

        • redballooon
          121·
          1 year ago

          Having observed the culture war in the US for a while, my take is that the problem here is not wokeness per se, that is just as simple as cam_i_am stated. The problem with the culture war is that the conservatives pick a fight over every little step towards progressive legistator. They’ll fight tooth and nail so that LGBT+ people do NOT have place in society. And these people, while being a minority, still add up to a significant part of the population, maybe around 10-15%.

          And at that part, the woke people have no choice but to fight back, IF they want to have a place in society.

          I have no idea about where in the “post communist part of the EU” you could be. But if you’re in Hungary or Poland, there is no culture war, because the suppression is absolute.

          • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
            2·
            1 year ago

            Hmm that’s true, I suppose constant sabotage of LGBT legislation would explain why the movement would be so vocal.

            It doesn’t really explain the UK though because I don’t think there’s too much opposition to queerness in society there, even among conservatives. It’s possible that culture war rhetoric was imported from the US space as a political tool, because when I lived there previously in 2017, saying pronouns was not a thing yet.

            Otherwise I live in the Czech Republic where although people have quite an egalitarian attitude towards sexuality (so the laws are quite relaxed) the culture itself is still relatively conservative. It just really isn’t a topic here though

    • disconnectikacio@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      Im living in post communist part too… or not so post communist it seem lately. The culture war is here, the old commies call themselves right wing nationalist christians, and rebuilding the commie system, saying everybody who is not with them is enemy, commie, and liberal homosexual, pedophile…

    • Trekman10@sh.itjust.works
      265·
      1 year ago

      Neurodivergent people everywhere appreciated how it made them go to being 5 bucks at a gas station instead of 20 + shipping

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
        55·
        1 year ago

        I never said I hated them. They’re just absolutely useless is all. Ball bearings and other rotary bearings actually serve a purpose. Hell, even Lego blocks tend to serve more of a purpose than fidget spinners.

        Literally amongst humanity’s most useless contraptions.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
          92·
          1 year ago

          But what is purpose? Video games serve no purpose, flavoured drinks serve no purpose, pets serve no purpose… Unless entertainment and distraction is a purpose, in which case fidget spinners have a purpose too.

          • over_clox@lemmy.world
            48·
            1 year ago

            Video games challenge the mind, flavored drinks might at least contain some essential minerals (like Gatorade), dogs warn and/or protect against intruders, cats chase away and/or eat rats, and even pet fish can be used to filter hydroponic gardening water.

            What’s ya point? Fidget spinners are totally useless.

  • Call me Lenny/LeniEnglish
    75·
    1 year ago

    The craze for self-driving cars, especially if the current machine trend is anything to go by. Two issues with it I can’t help but understand is that driving needs a human factor and that if the freedom of being in the driver seat wasn’t an issue, we’d be significantly closer to desiring a system of long distance personal rails instead of cars. I’m all for metasystemic road reform.

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
      43·
      1 year ago

      Building that amount of steel infrastructure really isn’t as easy as you trainbrain idealists seem to think, we really shouldn’t destroy the planets climate just to make a huge grid of expensive to maintain tracks when there are far better options - such as fleet managed self driving cars.

      If course trains are great for medium length journeys on high volume routes, commuting for example but they’re not a one size fits all solution

      • Call me Lenny/LeniEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Both options are pretty destructive to the environment (though I was thinking more monorail-esque than trains), but roads and cars I would think do more negatives, from the road construction to the CO2 to the car accidents. And it might not even be rails that are the best option, I just know our traffic system is horrendous.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          1 year ago

          We need mixed mode integrated transport networks, trains and trams are great in many situations but they’re not ideal everywhere. Current car culture is pretty terrible but self driving electric cars have huge efficiency advantages over other means of transport especially when fleet managed.

          I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to rely on buses and they have a lot of downsides, one thing interesting is the bus Island and bus desert effect - buses end up pointing to corporate shopping areas where retail rents go up because there’s more foot traffic, nice little independent shops get priced out and relocate to areas where no one can go because there’s no buses… of course you’ll say just have more buses but the logistics get really messy, you need everyone to be going to the same places or you’re running empty buses. Trains are even harder to determine routes for because you either need it to be able to handle 100% of use cases or to also have a road network.

          We absolutely need more rapid mass transit like trains, self drive fleet managed electric cars could make that possible even in rural areas