Bigotry as a tool for muting the outspoken - a creeping malaise on ATS?

I just witnessed a prime example of a glorious missed opportunity for ATS to shine.

There's a dude who has set up some kind of campaign against Goldman Sachs and other banks of their type, and ATS member BurnTheShips composed a thread on the story a long time ago.
As a result of his efforts, he was poised to be a significant threat to the Financial Sector fatcats, and had set up a step-by-step mode of campaigning in an effective way against offending banks.

ATS could have lent him some excellent support and the movement for coordinated change in banking industry could have gained some power and momentum.

Simply because the man behind the blog was a practising Christian, who drew inspiration from the story of David and Goliath, a couple of users waltzed into the thread and started trashing it without seemingly even having the time to read past the first statement in the guy's interview transcript.


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This action on the part of those ATSers had the effect of knocking collective interest away from the story, presumably because people thought the guy was a right-wing fundie trying to save people for Jesus (as opposed to what he was actually doing - he was trying to regain and secure the Financial Rights of the People)


My post in the other thread:

People have lost the ability to discern between general relevance of some fact about a man's conclusions, and the usually irrelevant philosophies that he adheres to, in terms of them being somehow indicative of the credibility of this and all conclusions that he will ever reach..

How did we get to this stage, even on ATS..? We as a rational and sentient species are seriously compromised in terms of overall credibility.

Are there any advanced races out there, looking down on us? From a far-off galaxy, a trillion light years away through deep space? From some other dimension, or maybe from the future ('virtual-reality' history lessons)..?
If so, they must think we're primitive, gullible, collectively/ individually prone to emotional instability, herd-mentality oriented, and just generally ignorant.

They may feel sorry for us, that we're controlled by a handful of sadistic and powerful overlords - or they may mock our 'lemming-like' societal instinct, to kill and be killed... They would point out that their conclusions are evidenced by the frequency of massive, coordinated and loosely moderated attempts to kill each other off.

I suppose it's the voyeuristic equivalent of us humans spending time observing a group of chimpanzees, flinging crap around, blissfully unaware that a colony of strange crocodiles sneaks around their group, attacking them at random, psychologically abusing certain among the group for research/ fun and sowing the seeds of division (keeping the numbers of primates manageable, and making sure they never spend enough time working together to figure out that there's some nasty reptilians in the shadows).

Our genetic, primate nature is to fear "the other." It is also to follow an alpha of some sort, even if the "alpha" is less a man or group than a belief system. These biologically driven impulses played an important part in our primitive survival. They are becoming counterproductive at this stage of our story on Earth.I hope we are at a point in our species' evolution where we actually evolve ourselves out of these early, primate developments. But it doesn't happen overnight. The problem is that the adversities we are beginning to face are requiring us to evolve that quickly. Hope we can make it before some other force does it for us, likely in a more violent and less pleasant way.
Great post, btw.

I've said this a bunch in a lot of different places: "Stupid" is the majority... even here on ATS.
A large portion of ATS members have an utterly dumb habit of insta-posting based of their feelings about the first sentence of a thread instead of reading through it all and contemplating things logically. "Stupid" is the majority, and because its the majority, its the norm. Because its the norm, the people that are "stupid" don't even realize it and are arrogant in their stupidity. Sarah Palin is a shining example of this.

Edit: A good movie to watch about this is Idiocracy... its an over-the top take on modern America where you have a Stupid majority that mocks a more intelligent, thinking minority. I have friends that think I'm weird for not watching crap like Jersey Shore... I'm weird for not watching a group of stupid people do stupid, irrelevant things....go figure.

so sad

I sometimes wonder
how many shills would disappear
from ATS if a revolution occurred
and their paychecks were cut-off ???

Anybody wanna take a guess ??

I'd say we'd lose 50% or more
of the membership.

Just think how nice it would be
to actually post a topic without
it getting misdirected and derailed
by professional bloggers with an
agenda.

Basically, it is a covert means
of gov censorship of your free speech !!!

I see what you are saying, FITO. Even trying to be personally on guard against falling into the same trap, I sometimes find myself doing it too.

Thanks for a well thought out & superbly written OP, I hope it is widely read. S&F.

Please try not to also mention that these people speaking out against the abuse of banks are also spouting off saying that these people deserve to die....

Saying they will vote from the rooftops with guns.... those people are already dead... and dont deserve a voice. Also i would never get advice about logic from a religious idiot.

reply to post by FlyInTheOintment

"Simply because the man behind the blog was a practising Christian, who drew inspiration from the story of David and Goliath, a couple of users waltzed into the thread and started trashing it without seemingly even having the time to read past the first statement in the guy's interview transcript."



I am not a religious person, I believe there was something supernaturally devine about Jesus, and that many people -- need -- their religious beliefs for several reasons involving community, morals, comfort toward the unknown which follows death, a life map to raise their kids by, longheld tradition, reverence, etc.
And on ATS here, it often looks like every other new thread is an athiest attack against religion, mainly, Christianity. Man, it's relentless, and constant. Sometimes quite vicious. Very aggressive. Do those tactics make me consider their view? NO. Quite the opposite. Actually. Just so they know.

Originally posted by louieprima
Our genetic, primate nature is to fear "the other." It is also to follow an alpha of some sort, even if the "alpha" is less a man or group than a belief system. These biologically driven impulses played an important part in our primitive survival. They are becoming counterproductive at this stage of our story on Earth.I hope we are at a point in our species' evolution where we actually evolve ourselves out of these early, primate developments. But it doesn't happen overnight. The problem is that the adversities we are beginning to face are requiring us to evolve that quickly. Hope we can make it before some other force does it for us, likely in a more violent and less pleasant way.
Great post, btw.

excellent point

i would add that the "Neanderthal" in all of us plays a big part also.

most humans have Neanderthal DNA......it seems the more ya got, the stronger your incessant paranoia and persecution complexs are .....

both ways !