# Depressing politics of Germany

**URL:** https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/depressing-politics-of-germany/86155
**Category:** Current Events
**Created:** [September 1, 2026, 11:52am UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/depressing-politics-of-germany/86155 "2026-09-01T11:52:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 471

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### Author: ![Peter\_Kropotkin](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Peter\_Kropotkin](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/u/Peter_Kropotkin)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2026, 3:45pm UTC](https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/depressing-politics-of-germany/86155/471 "2026-10-05T15:45:27Z")

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MrAuthoritariana;

Okay, everything is a social construct, now what? Your entire life and existence is filled with social constructs.

Why are some social constructs better than others? Sounds like you’re just picking and choosing.

K: and what is more human than ''picking and choosing?" the  
very nature of being human is ‘‘picking and choosing’’ our identities…  
and some of those identities are outside of our choice… I am white,  
it isn’t a question for me to choose the color of my skin, that has  
already been determined for me, and I can’t pick and choose  
the various ailments I suffer from, hearing loss for example,  
but there are choices to be made… I can choose my sex today,  
I can choose to be kind to others, even to being able to choose  
my nationality… these things are part of the social construct  
of human existence… and should I choose differently, I can  
make the choice of identifying as a woman, I can dress and  
be the best woman I can be… but I don’t identify that way…  
but sexual identity is one area we can make choices because  
it is a social construct… but Kropotkin, how can you say that?  
the very fact that over time, our own history has shown us  
that at different times, men and women have played vastly  
different roles and behaved very differently…  
that shows us that even ‘‘set’’ roles are not acted upon the  
same way… and that is kinda the point of our having  
a social construct, we can change, adapt, remove or include  
aspects of who we are… thus picking and choosing is  
an inherent and very valuable part of being human…  
Choice is what separates us from being animals…  
to say, men can only be men and women can only be women,  
that removes, eliminates choices… removes what makes us human…

Much of 20th century philosophy revolved around our choices,  
Sartre said that ‘‘Man is condemned to be free’’…  
and before that, Keirkegaard said that ‘‘we must make a leap  
of faith’’ that leap, that is a choice… the idea of  
having a ‘‘social construct’’ is really one of, what choices  
are we going to make… collectively and individually…  
and the idea of a ‘‘social construct’’ allows us to make these  
choices… so, yes, picking and choosing is an integral aspect  
of being human… and that is only possible within a social  
construct idea of being human…

Kropotkin

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