• Ferk@lemmy.mlEnglish
    111·
    2 years 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.mlEnglish
      11·
      2 years 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.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 years 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?