LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
I find this interesting in light of an ongoing debate about cthulhu theory: Whether new leftist causes are relatively obvious consequences of general principles that have already been driving the movement for a long time, or have more short-term cynical explanations. I lean towards the former and think this example supports that
A while ago, I had a thought. God granted humanity stewardship over nature. Humans are above nature and have a responsibility towards nature for this reason. But you remove God, and that's all good. Then you only have two logical conclusions. That humans are no better than animals, and that animals are raised to the same status as humans. I think that trend and this article are examples of both of that.
I used the term 'God' generally here. For any metaphysical doctrine that similarly gives special status to humans the argument stays the same. If you adopt a purely materialist or naturalist outlook it's hard not to reach the conclusion that human are no different or better than animals.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
I don’t think the US can be exhausted.
I would just say Iraq and Afghanistan.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
Pretty much anyone who ruffles their feathers gets called a reactionary, or some similar term. Including DeBoer.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
More and more young men are deciding to defect from a combination of pure lust mixed with either anger at the world, rejection of God and/or other religions, rejection from women they can't emotionally process, or all three at the same time.
To be fair, it wasn't men who defected first, men are finally playing catchup after women have been defecting for the last 60 years and men have finally realised that women aren't going to stop defecting. Unfortunately everyone is worse for it.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Why would you assume that because men have some degree of power that necessarily means men would abuse that power against women? Becauss that seems to be what you're implying You're assuming an antagonistic relationship between men and women is the natural state of affairs, which I disagree with. Masculinity on a mass societial level is necessarily pro-social, almost by definiton, or else there wouldn't be a society in the first place.
Additonally, you gloss over the immense social power women have and have always had, and the importance of the female role and how much men (society as a whole) relies on it (relies on it, not unilaterally imposes it). Men are dependent on women as much as women are dependent on men.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
I'm curious. Why do you think Reason justifies doing what we want?
Because it is only Reason that allows us to even ask the question "what do we even want?" or "what is the moral outcome?" in the first place. Reason actually gives humans the capacity to be moral agents and make decisions. As much as I hate to lean on continental philosophy, Reason is what gives us humans (Kantian/Hegelian) autonomy.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
I think they were referring to people like Freddie DeBoer, who is calls himself and is quite clearly a socialist/Marxist, but ruffles a lot of progressive (woke) feathers by criticizing by criticising identity politics. Pretty much anyone that's liked by the subreddit stupidpol.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Yes it was - US trade balance only begins to dramatically decline in the 80s, and then dramatically accelerates in the 90s (i.e. the same time NAFTA comes into effect and China's exports explode in growth). While there was decline and deindustrialisation in some areas and sectors before then, US manufaturing and exports was still relatively healthy in the up to the 80s.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
it's not men who need to be convinced to be married
I agree with you on this point
(the opposite direction was true of married women)
I straight up don't believe this unless you have a source.
Being screwed over by family courts is only relevant if you're having kids with someone
Alimony and asset splits can be and often are brutal to the husband even if no kids are involved. Kids just make it worse.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
Forgive me, but I don't think the war devistating Ukraine and absolutely crippling their country in the hopes that maybe a couple decades from now they join the EU (who knows how the EU is doing in 10 or 20 years anyway) and hopefully get something out it economically is/was the most optimal of all possibilities.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
They could at least set up an independent authority to run the elections. Here in Australia, both the Federal government and each of the State governments have their own Electoral Commission which is an independent agency that explicitly is meant to be non-partisan. In the US, as best as I can tell, elections are run by under a division by each State's Secretary of State, who is a partisan, elected official. A similar thing I always found silly in the US is that how judges are allowed to be members of political parties (even if they're appointed by governments they could at least give some effort to maintain non-partisanship). Same with most election redistricting.
Obviously, you're not going to be able to weed out every partisan or partisan influence from agencies, but the American approach seems to be 'well, we can't completely get rid of partisanship, so why even bother, just go full partisan and hope things balance out'. I have worked in elections in Australia in the past, and honestly when people describe how things are done in the US I am shocked about how mismanaged and partisan the whole thing is, my experience of Australian elections is extremely positive, non-partisanship seems to actually work at least to some extent.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
It still speaks to motivation though - the Americans have been happy to threaten NS2 in the past and does not benefit from its existence.
This argument misses the point that the only way for a population to compete with those orthodox religious groups is to emulate those groups in the ways that are relevant to boosting birth rates.
They don't have to emulate their hyper fertility rates. They simply just needs to main a fertility rate above the replacement rate. In your whole response you also completely ignore the major point that you actually need above a fertility rate above 2.1 for humanity to survive. I'm sure eventually the human population will eventually shrink to a point where civilisation as we know it collapses, and they rise again, but I don't exactly see that as a positive. Or we can hope the robots bail us out, but that might actually cause the extinction of humans one way or another.
The solution to the debt problem is for the government to not spend in a way that accrues debt.
The debt already exists! It was accrued by the earlier, now increasingly childless generations! The national debt of the US is currently $30 trillion. Who is expected to pay off that debt exactly? An increasingly smaller cohort of children, presumably. And god forbid when the Social Security system collapses because less and less people are paying into it while the growing elderly withdraws. And this still doesn't acknowledge the fact that you still need young workers in your society to do stuff like literally, physically. It doesn't matter if you're a retiree with a large amount of savings. If you're like South Korea, you simply won't have enough labour when one young worker has to do enough labour to support the needs of 5 elderly people and themselves. It's unsustainable. In 50 years or so, a lot of old people are going to be fucked. The state based social services will collapse if nothing changes. The only elderly people who will get support will be those who have grandkids who will personally and direct support them.
If everyone stops having kids, there is probably a good reason for that, and having a society full of only elderly people is not their biggest problem.
It's already happening! South Korea's population is going shrink by more than half in a single generation! Is that not concerning to you?
Then wouldn't the solution to this be to spread the message that not having kids causes loneliness later in life.
Yes, please! Except how do you actually propose to implement this solution? Because right now, people, particularly young women are told the exact opposite. What do you think the feminist messaging is, exactly? That their career is way more important than their family. Family is only something to worry about when after you've built your career, it's low priority if it's something to care about at all. The message should be that having a family is fulfilling and full of meaning! Now, if only there was some way to package this messaging in a system of beliefs that is easily absorbed by people... Maybe there is actually some truth in religious traditions and traditional ways of living more generally.
You know, the part of the issue is that there is the assumption, which is largely present in your own comments, that having family is a lesser path, that it's not something worth of admiration or celebration and it's even low status. At best, it's completely value neutral. People can just have a family if they want to I guess, whatever. No, I say. Having a family is a moral and social good. It is literally is the foundation for humanity and society and what makes life worth living. The alternative is hedonistic nihilism which is what I think we're heading towards. Being a mother or (gasp!) housewife is seen as a lesser, oppressive choice than becoming a 9-5 desk slave.
There has been at least one other society in history that has had the same trends, which is late roman society. The reason this is a recent phenomenon is because in the past, religious and cultural pressure prevented people from deciding for themselves whether they want sex to bring about babies for them.
Great, the one example that you managed to list was a society that was just about to collapse. Not exactly a confidence booster.
Also, I hate to do this, but unironically 'we live in a society'. Humans are social creatures by nature. There is no, and never will be some hyper libertine rationalist utopia where people are free from any and all cultural pressures. Society is made up of social institutions, which will always exert social pressures. 'Social pressures' is such a negative way of framing this. It is just as true that people find meaning, purpose and improvement in their social groups and community, which necessarily includes conformity and pressure to conform to that community in order to be part of it. There is social pressure for people to receive an education, is this a bad or oppressive thing? The issue is that 'social pressures' need to be oriented in such a way to produce good, moral and meaningful outcomes.
Of course it has, but I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by feminist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were.
This is a terrible argument. "I don't see the problem, if people were convinced by Fascist ideology, there is probably a good reason they were."
You also bring in a terrible double standard. People being convinced by religion is bad and oppressive, but people being convinced by feminist ideology is good and organic.
I'll leave you with a final question - if our current social paradigm eventually results in the extinction of humanity or at the very least a collapse of civilisation because of the lack of fertility, are you content to let things remain the way they are? Would you be okay with some limits or 'social pressure' on people if it means stopping the collapse?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
I oversimplified for the sake of brevity. I could say something like feminism's goal was to deconstruct the cis-hetero-patriarchy or whatever, the patriarchy still exists (by feminism's own admission), therefore feminism hasn't affected anything. Obviously this is sarcastic.
Did you not read my post? I explicitly reference and quote influential leftist intellectuals and academics who are pro-pedophilia, or as I said, are at least comfortable destroying any distinction that would allow pedophilia to exist. Do you think the quotes I have included are fake?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
What's your point?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Do you mind elaborating on your position? Are you arguing that the 19th century fertility transition being due to men basically just pulling out more ("men's pull out game was stronger")? Assuming for the sake of the argument this is true, why did this occur?
Isn't the social effects of industrialisation in the 19th century a more reason explanation (including mass urbanisation)?
Diamonds suck and are boring. Aesthetically they're really uninteresting, extremely expensive pink diamonds etc not withstanding.Hopefully, (and she sounds like she isn't) your girlfriend isn't the kind of woman who just wants a real big diamond for supeficial reasons cause that's what you're meant to do.
For a yellow gemstone I recommend a yellow sapphire/corundum. They are nearly as hard and wear resistant as diamond, and are only a fraction of the cost, and can be quite beautiful. You can use extra budget to get a really large stone and/or have multiple stones in a nice custom design that symbolises something meaningful to both of you. Maybe even go a multicolour arrangement with different coloured sapphires with a large yellow sapphire in the middle. If you put a lot of thought into coming up with a beautiful custom multigem design, that will just as or more meaningful then shelling out many thousands on a big diamond.
Ultimately, it's up to you, you know your girlfriend best. Don't worry about what other people will think, just get something your girlfriend will love and appreciate (within budget of course!)
I guess where I disagree with most people here is that I don't believe that war with Russia was a certainty and that peaceful scenarios where everyone benefits was possible (that doesn't require Ukrainian submission to Russia), had the last 30 years of foreign policy and geopolitics in Eastern Europe had been handled better. And that pursuing a road to peace asap now is ideal rather than trying to 'destroy Russia'.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
I don't accept the explanations that tie all this to wokeness. There's nothing particularly diverse or marginalized about Ukrainians. Slavs are not around the top of the totem pole. And in fact things like Azov are the polar opposite.
I don't disagree with you, but I do want to play devil's advocate and raise a counterpoint of Israel and Palestine. While Palestinian are marginalized by Israel, Palestinians are mostly what the woke stand against. Mostly Islamic, heavily anti-LGBT. If the woke were purely concerned with this point, they would support Israel which is broadly way more LGBT friendly than Palestine is. But I think the real reason the woke support Palestine is not because they're really concerned proPalestine, who they would see as oppressors in most other circumstances, but really anti-Israel insofar as Israel represents American imperialism/hegemony in the Middle East.
I think there might be a similar thing, where, yes, the woke support for Ukraine is not actually motivated by Ukraine itself as you say, but it is still politically motived by being anti-Russia, with Russia kind of being a woke boogeyman.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2mo ago
Copying an old comment of mine from the old place.
I think a very strong case can be made that the New Left, and its subsequent and related movements in the academic left particularly queer theory, is pro-pedophilia (eventually filtering down to the 'woke' public in watered down form). To be more charitable, it's not that they are pro-pedophile per se, but rather that they have adopted a world view that doesn't make a distinction between pedophilia and non-pedophilia. The aim to is "deconstruct" sex, gender, sexuality, race and so on. Why would one expect them to stop there and not deconstruct adult and child? In many cases, this is what they explicitly want to do. Some might say this is a 'slippery slope' fallacy, but I think Newton's First Law is an appropriate analogy. One might argue it is the logical conclusion of left academic theory (that is, the critical theories prominent in academia).
It's probably best to use some examples.
John Money, a psychologist and sexologist, with a background in pediatrics, active in the 50s and 60s. John Money is notable for being one of, if not the first person to theorize a distinction between sex and gender, and was the academic who introduced the term 'gender identity' and has been highly influential in the development of sex and gender theory. What is less well know about Money is some of his extremely unethical practices, including the infamous case of David Reimer. When Reimer was born, he was subjected to a botched circumcision that destroyed his penis. On the advice of Money, Reimer's parents subjected Reimer to sex change (as a baby) and raised him as a girl. As part of the therapy, he would make Reimer and his twin brother engage in mock sexual activity, including making them strip for 'inspections' and taking photos. Money claimed that these activities were essential for the development of a healthy adult gender and sexual identity. The case of Reimer was long held up as evidence in support of Money's and later ideas of gender identity and the distinction of sex and gender. David Reimer would "de-transition" later in his teens. Both David and his twin brother Brian would commit suicide in their thirties.
In the 1960s to 1990s, influential German psychologist, sexologist and sex educator Hemlut Kentler ran an experiment with government support where he would put young children as foster children with known pedophiles and encourage sexual activity. Kentler had strong tied to left-wing intellectual circles and believed that 'sexual repression' was the key driver of fascist ideology.
Shulamith Firestone, radical feminist and author of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. In the book, she makes four demands for an authentic feminist revolution. Number three is for 'the total integration of women and children into all aspects of larger society' (by this she means the removal of any cultural distinction between men/women and adult/child). Number four is for 'the freedom of all women and children to do whatever they wish to do sexually'.
In 1977, a group of French left or left associated intellectuals signed a petition to the French government asking them abolish the age of consent in France. The signatories include some extremely significant and influential names, including Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean-François Lyotard. I should point out that there is strong evidence is that Michel Foucault was a pedophile, and regularly made trips to Tunisia to abuse young boys there. One has to wonder how this relates to his work in postmodernism.
There's Gayle Rubin's 1984 essay Thinking Sex, considered a foundational text for gay and lesbian studies, gender studies and queer theory. In Thinking Sex, Rubin defends pedophilia (and incest as it happens). It's hard to get a direct quote (you can read the essay yourself) as the language is expectedly obtuse, but it is the logical conclusion of what she is arguing. For example:
It is harder for most people to sympathize with actual boy-lovers. Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boylovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation. Consequently, the police have feasted on them. Local police, the FBI, and watchdog postal inspectors have joined to build a huge apparatus whose sole aim is to wipe out the community of men who love underaged youth. In twenty years or so, when some of the smoke has cleared, it will be much easier to show that these men have been the victims of a savage and undeserved witch hunt.
Rubin, and many academic leftists like and since her, want to deconstruct the concept of childhood innocence, seeing it yet another part of the oppressive system we find ourself in. I should point out, the Motte and Bailey is particularly strong here.
There's of course, Judith Butler, the queer theorist who needs no introduction. What Judith Butler means can be hard to actually decern, but here's a choice quote from her 2004 book 'Undoing Gender':
It is not necessary to figure parent-child incest as a unilateral impingement on the child by the parent, since whatever impingement takes place will also be registered within the sphere of fantasy. In fact, to understand the violation that incest can be—and also to distinguish between those occasions of incest that are violation and those that are not—it is unnecessary to figure the body of the child exclusively as a surface imposed upon from the outside. The fear, of course, is that if it emerges that the child’s desire has been exploited or incited by incest, this will somehow detract from our understanding of parent-child incest as a violation. The reification of the child’s body as passive surface would thus constitute, at a theoretical level, a further deprivation of the child: the deprivation of psychic life.
Which fits into my initial description - it's not that the 'academic left' (or critical left or whatever term you want to use) are pro-pedophile per se, but rather they believe in deconstructing sexual norms in such a way that pedophile becomes a meaningless concept (and one might say, intentionally or unintentionally giving pedophiles free license to operate). These are just examples, but you can find many other academics arguing the same or similar. A large part of it goes back to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization, which basically argues through a Freudian-Marxist synthesis that our natural desires and impulses are suppressed by the capitalist system in order to funnel them into productive work (which no one actually wants to do), and therefore liberation from capitalism but necessarily include the liberation and expression of these desires, with of course, an emphasis on sexual desire.
But surely these are just kooky academics with insane theories that would never actually have any real-world consequences (regardless of how crazy influential they are), right? That normal people (that is, leftists) would never actually implement these kinds of things in a practical manner, right? Well these theories do seem to have effect, least of all in (critical) pedagogy. In particular, sex education does seem to have been affected by these theories, at least in the US. One example is the book 'Gender Queer: A Memoir', the subject of recent controversy, becoming standard in curriculum and libraries for many schools, and is aimed at pre-teens. The book contains extremely graphic (drawn) images, including a blowjob and sex scenes. You can search for the images yourself.
Marxism intends to overthrow capitalism. America is still capitalist. Therefore, Marxism has had no impact on American society.
Feminism intended to make women happy. Women are less happy. Therefore, feminism did not achieve anything or cause any changes on society.
How is your comment not anything other than a post hoc fallacy?
You're not actually refuting the central claim that there is a strong current in contemporary leftist thought (critical theory, post-modernism, queer theory) that is okay with exposing children to sexual material or activities, or at the very least actively want to demolish barriers that prevent that from happening - the distinction between child and adult, the concept of childhood innocence.
The New Atheists thought that by demolishing religion, they would usher in an age of rational utopia. Instead they got new pseudo-religions. The sex/gender abolitionists thought they would usher in a sex (in both means of the term) utopia. Instead we have sexual chaos. The claim of the leftists is quite literally 'free love', to put it in a simple term, not sexlessness you claim the only way you get sexlessness is if you go so deep down the rabbithole where you deconstruct every the very concept of sex doesn't exist - but then sexlessness also doesn't exist.
I would suggest the reason pedophilia hasn't taken off despite it's presence in leftwing thought is that it is so intrinsically and self-evidently evil and disordered that most people can't and won't accept it even when they might accept other elements of the ideology in the abstract.
That being said, it's progressive - literally. Twenty years ago open political support for gay 'marriage' was unthinkable. Ten years ago, transgenderism was still a fringe concept. As disgusting as it is, and as much as people try to discredit the "slippery slope", it's not out of the realm of possibility to assume what the next step might be (if the leftists manage to retain unchecked power indefinitely)
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
To talk about the plagarism allegation specifically:
Such an allegation is a bit rich when Hbomberguy is close friends with Hasan Piker, is who is the king of freebooting and stealing content. But I guess it's okay because in the video Hbomberguy makes one, tiny joke about Hasan where he doesn't even mention him by name and he got permission from Hasan to make the joke beforehand. So I guess that's fair and Hbomberguy is principled in criticising everyone, right.
The whole of "BreadTube" rife with plagarism and stealing content - it's just selective outrage against IH because he's an ideological enemy. At the very least, IH did cite the article and substantially valued added even if he could have done more.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
The analogy between black people and women is a false one. The historical treatment of women was vastly different to that of blacks. The idea of universal, mass oppression of women is a falsehood created by historical revisionism, something I've detailed here and on the old subreddit in the past.
Most women would live relatively happy lives as the wife of some minor Roman noble or merchant in Renassaince (in fact, framing it as 'wife of' basically plays into the framing and ignores the influence and power these women had). It's just that this doesn't match how the liberal and feminist zeitgeist thinks women should live their lives. Would it have sucked to be a poor or peasant woman in the past? Sure, but for much the same reason it would have been for a man.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2yr ago
I can guarantee at some point someone told OP 'just be honest, straightforward and upfront with women and nothing bad will happen, the worst the woman will do is reject you but respect you for being honest.' And he completely understandably took that advice at face value.
I mean, I agree with your point about Putin but I'm not sure why people are insistent or implying that the US has been actively seeking peace in contrast. The foreign policy of the US for the last thirty or so years (at the very least in this region) has be pursing unreleting, antagonistic hegemony.
So sure, maybe the US was not actively seeking war, but at best they weren't really taking efforts to ensure peaceble relations either.
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