• jordanlund@lemmy.world
    16·
    17 days ago

    Not necessarily a common enemy, but a common cause.

    I’ve never seen people come together and work harder than when we were trying to end the Y2K problem. I guess you could call the bug “the enemy”, but it was a little more abstract than that.

    • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipEnglish
      3·
      17 days ago

      Having the local dictator as the unifying enemy seems to be popular. Just ask anyone from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Yemen.

  • ramble81@lemm.ee
    132·
    17 days ago

    Ironically, we do have a common enemy: The billionaires. Problem is the enemy has managed to brainwash almost half the populace into fighting for them.

  • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    8·
    17 days ago

    Crazier idea. Let’s create a fake racial group, and blame all our problems on them! We’ll first manufacture a fake racial group that no real human could be mistaken for. Then we’ll create fake history, fake documentation, maybe even invent an imaginary island they originate from. We’ll run endless fake news stories showing them committing horrible crimes. Etc. Turn the hate machine up to 11.

    It won’t fool the most intelligent, but that’s fine. Everyone who wants someone to hate will have someone to hate. And no one will have to suffer for it.

    • earphone843@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      17 days ago

      The mole people.

      Bonus points, we can direct the idiots to start digging for them, then use the excavations to start building underground. It’ll massively reduce the power need for AC due to global warming, and it would free up a ton of space for solar.

  • biofaust@lemmy.world
    6·
    17 days ago

    As an ex-biologist, I think this is just down to a choice of words: as a society, you could see Nature as an enemy.

    Man, even as an individual, or even a monocellular organism, you could argue that entropy is your enemy.

    If an enemy is a useful concept for maximizing potential within your scope of choice, then be it.

  • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
    4·
    16 days ago

    Bonus point: now look at how old humanity is. The Greek civilization, the Chinese, the Egypt… literally empires have come and gone, yet humans are just as dumb as thousands of years ago

  • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
    2·
    17 days ago

    We need something in common for people to get along. Enemies are just very easy things to share between groups, but common creeds, ideals, projects are all unifiers of equal power (though they’re not nearly as convenient to find…)

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      17 days ago

      You’d think being people would be common enough… life has enough difficulty without us creating more for each other.

      • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
        3·
        17 days ago

        Unfortunately I’ve found that unless they’re given a very definitive common focus, humans are exceedingly prone to spending their free time carefully cataloging their differences.

  • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
    32·
    17 days ago

    You’ve got it backwards. Society doesn’t work without a looming threat, whether that’s an enemy or the environment.

    • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
      2·
      16 days ago

      How so?

      Unless your “enemy” is “anything that most people see as a source of suffering/pain/other kind of unpleasantness”, I do not see how your statement can be true. And even then it is still a dumb way to exist