You played Half Life 2 as a resistance leader and killed like 200 cops in the first act. But when you drive past cops in real life you do nothing. Curious.
Ah yeah that scene in Star Wars where the Empire was minding its own business and then a couple of rebels parachuted in to massacre, abduct and rape civilians by the hundreds.
People side with the version of events they are told
Why is it so hard to grasp? Do you think people are siding with the resistance in the works if they’re presented as the bad guys? Did you side with Scar in Lion King?
Because this is fiction, where there is good and evil, right and wrong, the good people are rewarded and the bad people punished, successful people earned it and the poor deserve it, and complex problems have simple answers. Where every argument only has a pro and a contra.
But we are living in reality, where most things are in shades of grey, and everything is more complex than it appears. People have to make decisions based on partial knowledge, to not get stuck in indecisiveness. Where even the middle ground solution might be wrong. And with so many distractions and propaganda.
Just be kind and understanding to other people with different ideas, the real world is a complex one, and easy to get lost. Sometimes people like to flee into their simple worlds of populism, maybe through talking and listening we can help them find their way again.
Who do we associate with the power being resisted against in reality? Governments? Politicians? Police? Corporations? The ultra wealthy? Religious institutions? One person's "bad guy" is another person's "good guy".
I mean this in all good intentions but a lot of these examples don't really work.
The hunger games is a mess and I do remember the "good" side was also super not cool.
Star wars is even worse since the rebels even after winning things got much worse, so yeah now I cheer for the empire when watching the old movies.
I even back in the day thought the machines had a better point then the humans in the matrix movies.
No one watched Divergent, so who knows?
And in V for Vendetta the whole hook is the story gets you to sympathize with a literal terrorist. Like really a main point of the story is to question authority and not blindly follow like this post expects people to do.
Most if not all of these have one side that is clearly in the wrong. Real life is more complicated. Conflicts are usually gray vs. grey, with both sides having identifiable faults and justifications. But even then, if you spent all your time seeing the world from the perspective of certain designated protagonists you'll likely sympathize with them anyway.
It's you. You're acts are evil. Everyone else. Shit, I live on a miniscule amount as an art and do very well because I'm obscenely lucky and have good people in my life still does it's magick syphoning my act's mana for it's purpose.
They are the best people I've known but they're still evil. What they do they call a job. It's someone else's will and you can carry as much of the right kinds of things to do but none will ever unwrite your actions as anything but literally evil synchronized in servitude.
You want to not be evil? Burn the dollar. There is no need to damage people. Just the Talisman.
Turns out siding with the resistance in a movie doesn't cost anything. It doesn't have the potential to have your family tracked and killed by the state. It doesn't have the potential for you to end up even worse off than you already are.
A lot of people side with their own resistances in the real world, but there's a reason all of the resistance fighters in the movies are beaten-down, destitute people. They've got nothing to lose. We've still got our bread and circuses, so we don't have the fight.
And which side in the real world is the "resistance"? The one that is portrayed by state sponsored media? The one that has a president in the White House? The one that dominates modern culture? If you're a Democrat or a Republican, all of these statements apply to you, and you're not part of the resistance, you're part of the institution.
