• Ferk@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    You can grow potatoes for political reasons too. Everything a human being does might be politically motivated, but that doesn’t mean potatoes are political.

    Anyone can take that same software, that was created as a particular political statement, and use it for the completelly opposite political reasons to make a completelly different political statement. Just the same way as many have used songs in contexts that are completelly politically opposite to what the original author of the song intended.

    In the end, the only thing that’s political is the goal/purpose/motivation of an action, not the result of the action. No piece of software/hardware/thing is political when you dettach the artist from the art and just see it for what it is, regardless of what the author might have wanted you to see it as.

    • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      historically speaking, when you consider its domestication by indigenous people in South America, its appropriation by Spanish colonizers, its resistance to looting by marauding armies compared to grain crops, and the freaking Irish potato famine, I think it becomes quite clear that the potato is a politically relevant crop and could reasonably be considered political.

      • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        The existance of potatoes in western diet might be politically motivated (just like every food, not just potatoes), but that’s not the same as saying that potatoes are political.

        Also, even if the potato had never been involved in any of that and had been always peacefully and respectfully used… wouldn’t that history also be political? Why would violent conflict be more of a “political” thing, when non-violence is as much of a political movement?

          • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            EVERY food meets that same criteria. So of course the bar is not high under that categorization.

            The problem is that calling a physical object “political” just because it can be placed in a political framework makes no sense, because then everything is “political” at that point, thus making the term pretty meaningless.

            It would be like saying “potatos are emotional” just because it’s possible for someone somewhere to get emotional about a potato.

            What’s political are human opinions, intentions and actions. Not a chunk of metal, nor the root of a plant.

            • bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml
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              1 year ago

              Would you seriously say that food is NOT political? With famines being a major driver of social unrest and mass death? With government power being highly linked from ancient times to the distribution and taxation of grain crops? With its impacts on public health and chronic diseases? With the many land reforms throughout history? With the freaking Food and Drug Administration and the Farm Bill and the US Department of Agriculture and the presidential candidates at the Iowa State Fair eating corn dogs as rustically as they can muster? With the existence of the vegan movement? I could easily go on but I think it’s pretty clear that you at the very least picked a bad example of something that’s not political.

              • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Lol. There is no example that isn’t political by your criteria. Can you give me one?

                  • Ferk@lemmy.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    Not in food and not anywhere. Can you give me one or can you not?

                    And you seem to assume that something is more political when it causes unrest… as if the lack of unrest was making things less political. Are you confusing “political” with “cause of human conflict”?

                    Even rocks have political repercusions, not only historically (I wonder if humans would even exist without Earth being a rocky planet), but also being necessary today for the survival of people across all social classes since we continue to rely on it for a lot of our structure, creation of tools in tribes and processes in our industries. And it’s not without conflict between classes either, with quarries being worked on by the lower classes for the benefit of the rich.