Agreed! I get this with my Unitarian Universalist church community. UUs don’t require anyone to believe a certain scripture, but we have a shared set of principles, like valuing democracy, science, and nature. The community aspect and music program are great by themselves, and our minister’s sermons have been a great source of motivation to keep fighting for what we believe in.
Depends on your demographics a bit. Dictatorships like to scapegoat ethnic minorities or other out groups (see Pinochet’s, Mao’s, Pol Pot’s, etc extermination of scientists and educators) for society’s problems. These groups of people tend to experience much greater intensity of oppression under dictatorships than already present in the US. This tends to change culture on a fundamental level because most people actively try to fit in with the in group to avoid becoming a target themselves.
While present to some degree in our current system, another core characteristic of dictatorships is that self enrichment for those in power is the primary driving factor for decision making. Dictators don’t need to pay lip service to making decisions for the greater good. You see this especially prominently in dictatorships in developing countries with valuable resources… The dictators and their close friends take all of the wealth from resource extraction for themselves and everyone else lives in extreme poverty. Yes we have wealth inequality already, but it would be accelerated even more. You could see even highly skilled professionals having a hard time making ends meet (or in jail for being too smart and having “ideas”), and even more homelessness, potentially even wide scale famine.
In terms of geopolitics… Our relationship with allies would become about how the relationship personally benefits those in power.
I have a desk job. The combination of a rowing machine and sit-stand desk has been a game changer for my spine health
Plastic production is also one of the dirtiest industries in terms of air and water pollution… I doubt China has strong enough environmental standards
While I agree there are issues with capitalism. I disagree this was capitalism working as intended. If it were, the better/more innovative technology (green/cheap energy) would have surpassed the worse technology (dirty energy reliant on continued investment and extraction) because as we are finally seeing, there is more money to be made with green energy than fossil fuels. Suppression of green energy took active anti-capitalist anti-competitive efforts to preserve the edge of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel companies knew about global warming since at least the 1970s. Those companies have used their enormous wealth to reverse trends towards public transit (e.g. Los Angeles used to have street cars…), halt the green energy transition until very recently, and spread misinformation and buy politicians.
My Hyundai Ioniq 5 has ample physical buttons on the center console, steering wheel, and door, and a physical door handle that Teslas lack. Sure there is a touch screen (smaller than industry average), but I don’t frequently use it, the buttons outside the screen are enough.
We have some similar tastes. I think you’ll like:
Borns
Florence and the Machine
Lorde’s 2021 album Solar Power
Spoon
Billy Raffoul
Hozier
Bishop Briggs
Hear me out, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church for the music and sense of community. There is no shared theology among UUs, only a set of shared values. UU services vary a lot by the specific congregation. Ours has had services on celebrating gender identities, promoting social justice, mourning global conflicts, and fighting climate change. Sometimes relevant theology from a variety of world religions is incorporated into services, but there is no expectation to be a believer and there are many atheist members in my church. The rest of the time we have potlucks, play board games, do community service projects, etc.
Agreed, a lot of the time I’m in need of a super charger, there’s a line to use it. The demand is there and it’s not like EV owners can easily switch back to gas