this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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We have so many houses going unused. We have food and resources for everybody, but we've set up a system that arbitrarily concentrates most of it on a few people! Young children, with no understanding why society is this way, are suffering and dying because they live in a world that collectively agrees to let this happen unnecessarily

Fuck, I'm stoned but you know I'm right

Edit: and the sad thought hits me: the first step is realizing the system doesn't have to be this way, the second step is realizing it isn't going to change, at least not any time soon

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[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 170 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

"Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich,"

As an example of how stupid our global civilization is ... Africa has more than enough wealth and natural resources to produce all the food and water it needs to feed its own people without any outside influence or control. Unfortunately, first world countries have such a stranglehold on African nations and governments that they are forever beholden to foreign aid and manipulation that they will never be able to pay off their debts ... which means African will forever pay first world countries and never be capable of standing on their own.

Also, I've been sober from alcohol and drugs for close to 30 years now .... and I'm perfectly aware of all this and think about this stuff all the time. We don't need mind altering drugs to understand how stupid, greedy and corrupt our world is, has always been and will always be until we destroy ourselves and free this planet of our own stupidity.

[–] bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip 47 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Also, I've been sober from alcohol and drugs for close to 30 years now .... and I'm perfectly aware of all this and think about this stuff all the time. We don't need mind altering drugs to understand how stupid, greedy and corrupt our world is, has always been and will always be until we destroy ourselves and free this planet of our own stupidity.

You have to remember that most people, especially Americans, are brainwashed from birth to believe that the current order of the affairs is the best and only way to operate a society, and that anything else is, ahem, communism, which is the worst possible thing there is. For many, psychedelics has been the most impactful way for an individual to actually think outside the box on a visceral level since their conditioning since birth has been one of "this is the only way to think, so hop on board lest you be cast out of society." It's the entire reason why these substances are illegal, can't have people thinking for themselves out of lockstep with the prescribed mentality.

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[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 19 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Every year capitalists kill 10 million people by withholding food, medicine, and clean water. All because it isn’t profitable to them personally.

[–] klay1@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

10 million in the usa? or where?

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Those are the worldwide numbers for starvation and preventable disease, roughly.

[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 10 points 4 days ago

This. This is the reality and the root cause of a lot of the issues regarding homelessness, starvation and preventable illness in the world.

Aggressive capitalists value money more than anyone's, and everyone's life.

They will let you die to bump their profits a fraction of a percent.

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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

To put in the words of someone I truly hate, someone I deeply despise, someone who used to be part of my friends discord group but is thankfully gone now:

"You can't have winners without there being losers".

This. This is how such people see the world, and in their eyes, perfectly justify inequality.

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[–] yoyoyopo5@lemmy.world 11 points 4 days ago

The less organized and fragmented the populous, the easier it is for the rich to take advantage of us.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 56 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yes. Though capitalism/fascism is the reason, it's not good.

[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)
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[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 44 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Poverty is a necessary component of capitalism. It's not arbitrary, it's calculated.

[–] 30p87@feddit.org 21 points 6 days ago

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 12 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Yes but I'm saying there's no good reason why we use capitalism instead of something better

[–] bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip 18 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Because the people in power benefit from the status quo, and they'll sooner blow up the planet than live in a world where they're not on top.

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[–] bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 18 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I can tell you right now why nothing happens. Because those of us who have housing and a solid life are terrified it will be taken away if others are given what they worked for (I realize this to be false, however it's a very common sentiment among 30-40 year olds who own homes or property of any kind).

So, they keep voting for farther and farther right politicians because the left wants to "take your guns, land, and make you live under communism!" This is a non-exaggerated thought process of how a lot of people think.

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Fuck that i only have a house so i don't have to pay someone else's mortgage.

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[–] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There is a reason, well, at least two reasons. First is greed the second is the greedy ones also enjoy the cruelty.

[–] axx@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago

If not the cruelty they are often convinced (or have convinced themselves) that poverty is deserved, like their opulence is.

Just today there was a post on how most Americans believe poverty is the result of individual choices.

[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 34 points 6 days ago

Actually, it's because of capitalism. It's not a good reason but it is the reason. Everybody knows that we throw away food every single day that could literally feed the whole planet twice over. Everyone knows that we can manage to put everyone under a roof. The billionares sure as hell know this but they want to keep the status quo because they know as long as nobody actually does anything about it, they'll always be the 1% with everything—and so the rat race continues.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 5 days ago

Reality is rather complicated

[–] medem@lemmy.wtf 18 points 5 days ago (3 children)

A quick look at the Wikipedia article The world's billionaires will reveal that billionaires have an estimated aggregate net worth of 16 trillion. That's more than 2,000 dollars for every single human being on this planet. Maybe not as individuals, but as a collective, they literally have the possibility of ending world hunger. And that's only the richest three thousand or so.

[–] EightBitBlood@lemmy.world 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If the world taxed them all only half their wealth (keeping them billionaires) and took the results and invested it in a trust, it could be generating 80 billion a year from only a 1% return. That's enough to solve world hunger every year twice.

The world doesn't have a resource problem. It has a billionaire problem.

[–] EFrances@lemmy.eco.br 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I recommend a good read: Poverty, by America - Matthew Desmond – Princeton (2023)

~~We imagine that their sufferings are one thing and our life another. – Leo Tolstoy

The passage of Proposition 13 inspired a nationwide revolt that led to Reagan’s 1981 cutting spree. It was a white-led revolt. Only 2 groups opposed Proposition 13: public sector employees and African Americans. Massive tax cuts fundamentally reshaped the agendas of the nation’s 2 major political parties and resulted in the rise of private fortunes alongside public poverty. This was a response to white people being ordered to share public goods with Black people. ~~

How to fix?

In the USA:

We just have to stop spending so much on the rich. Support policies that disrupt poverty, not accommodate it. In 2020, the gap separately everyone in America below the poverty line and the poverty line itself amounted to $177 billion. That’s less that 1% of our GDP.

I’m calling for the rich to pay their taxes. Rebalance our social net. Return to a time when America made bigger investments in the general welfare.

“We need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and coopted that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.” - theologian Walter Bruggemann

Make sure all women have access to the best contraception and healthcare, and more pregnancies become intentional and safer. Provide new mothers with paid parental leave and free childcare. A country as wealthy as ours could put our money where our mouth is and support life. But from the poor, we just seem to take and take.~~

Let’s choose businesses that are doing right by their workers and the planet.

Doing the right thing is often highly inconvenient, time-consuming, even costly. That’s the price for our restored humanity.

Prosperity without poverty carries a different feeling. We’d be more free. A nation invested in ending poverty is a nation that is truly committed to freedom.

[–] Hazor@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

The worst part is: the wealthiest few of them could each, individually, if they wanted to, end world hunger permanently with their current wealth. Estimates I've read range $40b per year or something like $250-300b just once to set up sustainable long-term solutions globally.

Musk, Zuckerberg, or Bezos could end hunger globally and permanently. Any one of them, individually, could do it. If the richest 10 billionaires all pitched in a portion, they'd all recoup everything they spent within a couple years at worst. If the richest 100 did, many of them wouldn't even notice the expenditure.

But it would only take 1 of them.

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[–] SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world 29 points 6 days ago

Wait until you hear the true story of the Irish Potato Famine and realize that not only did nobody learn from it, but most of the anglosphere seems to be towards a direct repeat of it at an even wider scale.

SpoilerThe potato blight was a secondary or proximal cause of the mass death and emigration. The primary cause was the system of absentee landlords (arguably an early form of corporatism), ineffective government and racism.

[–] zlatiah@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Everyone else already mentioned this... Methinks the fundamental issue is wealth distribution, so yes it is capitalism. I would say it is a "good" reason as it is a major target for sociology research and politicians, and there are active efforts in some countries to reduce inequality so...

I think I was radicated by this back in second year of college... Professor mentioned something like "The US Midwest has enough production capacity to feed the entire world" when a lot of the crops went to beef production, sweeteners, or just waste

This has been an issue for a while and I think Cory Doctorow mentioned it in one of his blog posts? About the Luddites; they were not anti-technology, but saw how the productivity increases would only benefit the rich and wealthy. I suspect the current AI issue is the same, "robots replacing your job" will be a lot more positive if the replaced worker still makes the same amount via basic income/stipend by the government instead of the money being concentrated into OpenAI or Meta or somewhere

... I've wanted to talk about these for a while

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[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 23 points 6 days ago

I always get annoyed at people jump on all the justifications about how just handing someone a house isn’t enough to set these people’s lives right, and I’m like, “Right. ‘Cause the street will definitely help themselves get back on track. That lack of shelter is an attitude problem.”

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 16 points 6 days ago (2 children)

A punishment for undesireability.

When you're too old, too uneducated, too unattractive, too disabled, too beligerent, or an obstacle to further extraction, you're rendered homeless.

Homelessness is a socially acceptable method of eugenics. A homeless person has no right to property or personhood. They can be abused, imprisoned, and executed without excuse or much effort.

Homelessness is, at its heart, a form of social murder.

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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 14 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The reason is greed, wealth facilitates the accumulation of more wealth.

Significant wealth needs to be taxed asap or the next generation will know nothing but perpetual poverty from birth until death.

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[–] elbiter@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago

Rich want to be richer. Isn't that a good enough reason?

Fuckin' socialists, putting the right of poor children to go to school above the right of billionaires to buy another mega yacht.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 7 points 5 days ago

Reagan pretty much shut down progressivism in the eighties and its only in the new millenium we have seen it come back to a level it could be implemented again. We would be in much better shape if we did not have reaganomics that looked better than it was due to the energy crises no longer being a thing.

[–] null@lemmy.nullspace.lol 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It's because guaranteeing positive rights requires cooperation or coercion. And it turns out we're not great at cooperation.

[–] FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (7 children)

It turns out capitalism actively disincentives cooperation. Cooperation is how humanity became the dominant life form. We’re fucking great at it when we don’t have a bunch of leeches siphoning off our surplus value and using that wealth to turn us against each other.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 days ago

It also requires empathy over group belonging

[–] archchan@lemmy.ml 9 points 6 days ago (3 children)

the second step is realizing it isn't going to change, at least not any time soon

No, I will never have this attitude. I refuse to believe that we couldn't at any moment choose to change our course. The rich and powerful fear it. Believing things won't change, sooner or later, only benefits them and not us. There is no magical right time for change, there's only now.

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[–] Kirp123@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (4 children)

But have you thought about all those CEOs and bilionaires of the world?

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[–] diptchip@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (3 children)

The world is how it is until it doesn't matter. Suffering is only temporary. Enjoy the time that you have. Can't take anything with you.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then explain the tombs of Egyptian Pharoahs?

[–] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They thought you could take it with you. But they were wrong

[–] Corn@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You can't take anything with you, because the British will rob your tomb and take your stuff back to Britain.

[–] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago
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Don't worry, we make up for it by having plenty of bad reasons to keep homelessness and poverty from being solved.

[–] Edgarallenpwn@midwest.social 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yes this is the world. It fucked and we hope to change it. Even thought you were stoned it makes sense. Feel and house people

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[–] IWW4@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago

Homelessness is a dynamic issue that doesn’t just involve available housing and food. I worked with that population for four years and the causes are drug use, mental illness, escaping abuse, poverty lack of access to banking, mail, showers, secure storage.. etc and etc.

I will blow your mind how not having somewhere to store crucial documents and having a secure mailbox can fuck you up.

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