ShiverMeTimbers

The golden rule appears in many religions in different ways, but can be summed up as "treat others how you want to be treated". However, I've seen it misused in some extreme ways in the past. What's the most out-of-left-field way you've seen it used?

James Harrison, who held the world record for the highest number of blood donations, has died at 88 years old.

His blood had a rare property that gave it the power to help babies with certain diseases. Two and a half million people owe their lives to him.

I don't know if he saved my life, but seeing that he passed away, my first reaction is to ask "what would he have wanted us to do in return?"

If he is the reason 0.05% of the world is alive today, it shouldn't be outside the realm of things to imbue some kind of authority in him.

After a lot of looking, some point out that based on his character and interactions, his last wishes seem to be to be kind, trusting, understanding, and forgiving if there is even the smallest reason to be. But I'm wondering if anyone here has any knowledge I don't.

I'm not religious in the slightest, but my god, if there's a Heaven, I hope he's sitting right next to Jesus.

I am putting this up on behalf of someone else (I was asked so nobody would get in trouble for bumping while this thread is pinned). This is going to get thread-gamey. Here is how this works. Each person will comment with a feeling. You can go as intricate as you'd like in terms of details, and see if anyone relates. People who relate must reply "+1" to the initial comment, and maybe detail it even more from their perspective or try to explain the feeling for example. Those who don't relate must reply with "-1".

You can look in the replies for examples. There's another thread on another site that serves as the inspiration to this as well, if that helps to provide a basis for how this works.

I do not immediately judge those who are unlike me, but I am a part of the childfree crowd (and to an enormous extent promote adoption over childbirth, which is in no way atypical among childfree people), and the topic of being childfree showed up in the most unexpected conversation today.

So... I'm not going to go into specifics since many of them are already overblown topics, but I'll start off by summarizing and saying a lot of people hold a "neutral people are as guilty as the wrongdoers" viewpoint. A kind of Edmund Burke or Anakin Skywalker way of thinking that has been used when it comes to neutrality in promoting world leaders, not helping human lives, etc. I saw two people debate about this, and one of them brought up the question "how do you feel about people who don't adopt?"

"I don't judge them, it's not even that common. Why do you ask?"

"Visualize a bunch of children. Some are on the streets and some are in foster care centers. They suffer and suffer, and they look out onto the streets to see parents who willingly chose to go through the pain of childbirth to use their bodies to spend and convert a bunch of inanimate atoms into an entity that will be using more of our air and needs to eat [rather than going the painless route of adopting a child that is already in existence and needs a home]. Then they look at other people who don't want to give birth and have birth children but still look in indifference at all the suffering parentless children. Around half of adults on Earth are currently childless, and yet around a fifth of children are in broken homes or are parentless. It is the closest thing to willfully being evil that the majority of humans come to. I'm sure most of the people obsessing over insurance for example are going to opt for no children or for birth children."

That last part resonated with me. I'm testing this out because I'm interested in this as a mental exercise. What's your view on people who don't adopt, including yourself if you can justify it?

I miss malls. I miss the dynamic nature of them. I miss exploring them. I miss seeing all the things that people could buy. I miss the atmosphere. I miss the fountain you throw your pennies in. I miss meeting so many different people. I miss the escalators. I miss the joy of going into the mall pet shop and seeing the animals warm up to you. I miss sitting at the food courts, eating my weirdly quality pizza and taking in the ambiance. Hell, I miss getting lost in malls.

One of the things that feels like a stab in the heart as an aspiring parent is I will never be able to take my kids to the mall and have them experience the same experience. I look at malls now and want to cry. Look at me, a commie crying over a pillar of capitalism. That's how much of a friend malls were to me, yet nobody I know will say they relate.

I've been interested to ask this after seeing so much happen in this community. How would you define a troll? The modlogs show many communities have rules against "trolling" but what is actually going on that makes it register with people.

I'm making an instance of my own and wanted to know. The last time I was on here, there was a drama about a mod which was based on another drama about the same mod, and this in turn was based on another drama about the same mod, which itself was based on a drama about that mod. That's a revelation with many implications I never see mentioned, that these are all connected (why isn't anyone mentioning this). I know this person, I know it's slander against her. Everyone called her a troll though for defending herself, which a few argue is in the same way a lot of people don't see issue with outright releasing private information.

I am a community owner and am on hiatus from helping out in another instance. I wanted everyone to know the person making the claims about her has been vetted and given the boot at least once, while the mod has been vetted and cleared of all suspicions, especially with it coming out now the people involved have compromised their agenda. I see he has gone on Shitter (linking to it only because XCancel is a mess and doesn't have a "sort by user replies" category system, which is an enormous oversight, and because this is someone who was praised on here with a hundred upvotes) to mass-slander-campaign against the person, as that's the sole bulk of their reply history. In a way, he even makes us look bad. These people are obsessed enough I understand the motives behind a previous question here that caused a lot of raised eyebrows. And that's not a troll? Is Shitter suddenly okay to reference again, considering the indifference with them? I'm eager to make it okay in my instance if it is.

When talking to other people and bringing up sources, it's common for them to say "I don't like that website" or "it's not trustworthy". On Lemmy, this is most commonly said about Reddit, where you will be questioned if you use it as a source of knowledge or show off something you did there. Wikipedia is another one.

However, the other day, me and a friend noticed something. The most discredited websites all correspond to the most neutral websites. Minus its overt traditionalism, Reddit is pretty neutral and doesn't promote a specific leaning. Wikipedia is another one, as the whole point of Wikipedia was that it could be a source of knowledge made by the people and for the people. Recently ChatGPT became something a lot of people consult, and nowadays you get a lot of ridicule for mentioning things like asking it for advice or going to it to check on something. Quora is a fourth example, in fact it currently has a "spammy" reputation that I don't see the inspiration for. I don't know, this all seems too big a coincidence in our world.

Do these websites (and other ones) really inspire being looked down upon as much as the people around you claim, and which ones do you have the most and least amount of issue with? And why?