Whether it’s economic, cultural, political, religious, ideological, whatever, what are some ideas that you believe in? I think friendly (very important!!) discussion of these could be good as to understand the views of others. Pluralism and the acceptance of many beliefs is generally a good thing.
As long as you don’t believe in implausible conspiracy theories or say anything that is listed on the rules of most Lemmy communities and instances (in which case, don’t say it), I think the opinions of others should be respected!
Please don’t devolve this into a hot political argument, holy war, or similar. It ends badly for world powers (all of them), and it will end badly here with no winning sides. Friendly debate is ok as long as you don’t go nuts, make sure you give good supporting arguments with evidence!
“Paying it forward” is fundamentally the most important weapon we have against the oligarchy, and simply refusing to participate in the endless cycle of new technology.
A long time ago, I kind of stumbled into a habit of “paying my hardware forward”. It started because it was simply a pain in the ass to try to sell something on ebay because your first ten offers are scam artists.
So when I upgraded a drawing tablet that I was using, I had a friend of a friend that was looking to try digital drawing and said “Here you go. The only thing I ask is that when you upgrade, or when you’re done with it, give it forward to someone else who could make use of it.”
Later, the same thing happened again with a camera stabilizer. I had bought one that it turned out was too lightweight for my DSLR. So I had to buy a heavier weight one. Meanwhile, a friend’s son was a budding filmmaker just using his cell phone to make stupid movies with his friends and I said “Hey…he’ll like this. The only thing I ask is when HE upgrades, or whatever, he passes it forward to another person”
Even something as simple as a dog ramp I bought for my aging dog. After he passed, it hung around in my shed until a friend of mine’s dog needed an operation and couldn’t do stairs. When her dog recovered she asked if I wanted it back and I said, no…just pass it forward.
I’ve done it with spare monitors. Old laptops that someone has needed for school, etc…
So what started as me just being too impatient to deal with ebay became something that literally makes me feel good knowing that I’m helping someone out, or even better, supporting another person’s artistic passion.
I really admire your habit of paying it forward. It reminded me of a belief I hold: instead of paying for everything, you can try to create a kind of exchange circle with the people around you.
Person A does something for Person B, Person B helps Person C, and eventually it all finds its way back to Person A. Everyone benefits without directly paying for each individual service, it fosters a sense of community and mutual support and there’s an added bonus: no one pays taxes.
For example, when I help someone move, I simply tell them, “Just do something similar for someone else, and one day it will come back to me.” Maybe that means someone helps change the tires on my car—or something entirely different.