NeitherStyle9

You need therapy. That's what the rest of the world does when we're mentally ill to the point its difficult for us to work. Most of us don't have the privilege of not working and staying in our rooms for 10 years just because our jobs feel pointless or we have an existential crisis.

Lol this is a dumb comment.

This is your thought process:

1. Racism exists.
2. Someone who has probably experienced racism writes a book/article about racism being bad and makes some money from it.
3. You (u/Dummyforapollo): "racism isn't the problem! People who write about it are!"

Are you saying that you should only fight against bad things if you never receive compensation? People need money to live, it's not bad if they fight something bad and make the money they need to live while doing so.

How do Hikikomori's survive? Do they usually have jobs they can work from home on or do they live off family or the government? Outside of the a few big cities in the US, it would be pretty much impossible to be a Hikikomori so I'm curious how this is even possible. (You would also have to be lucky enough to either have a job you can always work from home on or just have some income stream that let's you do this.)

This is kind of a slippery slope way of thinking. The question is: are citizens responsible for what their country does a) if they live in democratic country or b) in general, because people always have the option to resist.

To answer the first question, I would say yes, but only to a certain extent. If democratic elements are present in a country, the people have a duty to vote, participate, and be informed. This almost never happens.

In the US, there are so many factors working against the power of the people: corporate lobbying, a failing education system, stagnant wages, skyrocketing medical costs.

Now some of these things exist as a result of voters. But some things are structural. It's hard for the working class and even the middle class to stay involved because we are so busy trying to stay alive.

Of course, sacrifice is sometimes necessary to resist power. But does a lack of sacrifice on your part make you a bad person or responsible for what your government does? For example, in WW2 some people hid Jews and others did not, while still being against the Nazis. Where the latter bad people? More importantly, what about Jews themselves: some Jews resisted (like in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) and others did not. Are the Jews who just fled or hid or tried to stay alive bad people?

That brings me to the second question: are you responsible for what your country does (regardless of the government) if you are not actively resisting? I lean towards no on this question, because of the ramifications of accepting it as true. If you accept that people are always responsible if they are not actively resisting, you have to accept they can be punished. So many horrible things then become ok. Car bombings? Justified. Bombing Dresden? Justified. Nuking Japan? Justified.

If you accept this as true, you enter a zero sum game where you are forever trying to weight just how bad something a country has done is, and then using that to justify violence. That is literally what supporters of US involvement in the middle east do. They think since Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden did bad things in the middle east it justifies our intervention.

America has done many horrible things. Imo, the only war we should have been in since the Civil War was WW2. Everything else was imperialist, pointless, or worst of all, serving corporate interests.

But if we are truly going to argue that the people are 100% responsible either because the US is democratic or because all people have a responsibility to revolt, you take us right back to square one. There is not a single country, region, or tribe that hasn't done horrible things to another group of people. Arguing for collective responsibility means everyone deserves judgment.

It's not about stigma. It's about privilege. I'm not a fan of our commercial, capitalist, consumer oriented world, but I have to work and be a part of it because I don't have the privilege of staying at home for 10 years.

There are millions of people who try to live ethical lives in rejection of capitalist consumerism but they do it by trying to give back, or build community, or help others.... Not by locking themselves in an apartment.