The more I watch people talk about disasters, the more I think a lot of people mentally divide the world into Disaster Places and Normal Places and believe that they (wise, pragmatic, likable) have chosen to live in a Normal Place. This means that disasters that happen to them are bizarre and unfair exceptions, while disasters that happen to others are unfortunately what they get for their careless choices. This is a bad mindset. https://mstdn.social/@kissane/110504283096767652
@vruba This this this. Have been thinking about this a lot. Sorry if my current moaning about the air quality comes off as that mindset.
@litherland Absolutely not. I think moaning about it is a totally correct response.
@vruba Yesterday I read a long thread about "livers" and "diers" in the context of COVID and a statement Trump made. It's the supremacist mindset, yeah?
@sgillies Really feels like it. “You deserve bad things but I don’t” with more steps.
@vruba yes! Same is true of so many topics: health (“my illness is bad luck, yours is bad choices”), parenting, etc etc
@vruba I think this is an especially true model within classes of disaster. If I (in Holland) experienced a flood I am expect my reaction to be “week, we had that coming” but when my city is seemingly-overrun by climate refugees, I might think “wait, I though I’d moved into the Safe Zone of Privilege™”
@vruba obviously I, as a smarter-than-everyone-else and preternaturally-self-aware progressive would not actually think such a thing! But I might.
(Just for the avoidance of doubt, I think disasters are in fact bizarre and unfair exceptions wherever they happen. That is pretty much the definition of a disaster. Thinking that is not the bad.)