LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
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User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
As a (non-British) subject of Her Majesty, I have never had any strong feelings towards the monarchy. But I will say this seriously, just this once:
God Save the Queen.
If, charitably and by the literal wording, the point of the Pope's document is to say 'you can bless the individual(s) in a same-sex union, but you are not blessing the union itself', this isn't really anything new and is at best just a clarification on existing practices.
But if this is supposedly not a new postition then why even make such a clarification, when in practice everyone knows it is going to lead to more confusion and misrepresentation. Unless the point is to deliberately introduce ambiguity under the guise of clarification, of course.
Regardless, if living in a same-sex union is a mortal sin, then priests shouldn't be blessing individuals actively, knowingly, publicly and persistently living in mortal sin anyway.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
4mo ago
Easter is the most important Christian holiday. The secular perception that Christmas is more important than Easter is an artifact of secular society widely celebrating (a secular and commericalised version of) Christmas.
Culture War Update on my previous post on Australia's Voice to Parliament.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally released the wording of the question that will be proposed in the referendum as follows:
“A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
Do you approve this proposed alteration?”
He has also release the proposed provisions being added:
Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Parliament is expected to vote on the wording of the referendum question in June.
Some brief comments:
The proposed question is a leading question, by implying that the recognition of the 'First Peoples' necessarily requires the establishment of the Voice. There could easily be two separate questions here:
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One for a constitution recognising Indigenous people in the Australia Constitution, a symbolic gesture, something that has been suggested many times in the past (which I still don't support but is still far less contentious that setting up a new government body).
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One question for the establishment of the Voice itself.
The proposed amended provisions don't actually outline the structure or powers the Voice will have, which is still a major concern of many Australians. Instead, it allows for the Australian Parliament to define it through regular legislation. While this is being touted by Labor as a smart or good or effective way to go about it (perhaps disingeniously) because it allows the Voice to be adjusted with regular legislation, I see this as concerning for two reasons:
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Firstly, in order to pass any legislation in the Senate, Labor needs the support of the Greens. Supposing this referendum does pass, and the Labor government tries to pass the first legislation to establish the Voice, they would need to negotiate with the Greens who have an even more radical and woke conception of what the Voice would be
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Secondly, I can easily see how these provisions can be abused by woke legal activists through the High Court, getting them to extend the Voice through implied powers. The wording 'make make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government' could easily be made to mean any number of things, 'representations' is a pretty malleable word (you could quite sensibly, if disingenuously interpret this to mean they should have representation in the House of Representatives, for example). The ability to 'make representations' being in the Constitution could easily overrule any regular legislation made by judicial activism to give certain de facto powers to the Voice (perhaps this is the point). The other provision is 'relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples', which given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are in fact Australian citizens and are affected by literally everything in Australian politics from taxes to trade, one can easily see how this provision means 'everything'.
I strongly oppose the term 'First Peoples', which would bake a woke/progressive terminology and worldview into the Constitution.
And the thing that perhaps annoys me the most of all this, is when the Voice turns out to be a disaster in one form or another, which I'm nearly certain it will, there will be no way to actually get rid of it, now being constitutionally enshrined. This will be ATSIC 2.0 but there is no actual way to get rid of it and the corruption, even assuming the culture and media is actually conducive to it. There is no way that another referendum will occur in my lifetime to repeal this amendment. This is what annoys me so much, that this is a social 'Tesla valve' (or Cthulhu only swims left, or the slippery slope), if this does pass there is no reversing it. Reversing it would require a mass genuinely reactionary popular sentiment (on the level of Orban at least) to happen in Australia, which won't happen, and even if it did happen would introduce new different problems of its own.
Personally I think you're really underselling how much circumstantial evidence there is against Niemann. Note I'm not saying Niemann is guilty or should be banned or blacklisted but just laying it out. I might get some things wrong, or miss somethings:
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As you already have mentioned, Niemann already has a history of cheating. Niemann also as a reputation of being a huge shit-talker and generally unpleasant player. In my personal opinion, he's exactly the kind of guy you would expect to cheat.
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Carlsen played 4.g3 in his opening, which as I understand it, is something that Carlsen has never played in OTB tournament chess before. The speculation is that Carlsen played such an unusual line specifically to test if Niemann was cheating. In Niemann's defence here, Carlsen played relatively poorly, perhaps as the result of his unfamiliarity with this line.
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Despite Carlsen never playing this line in his career, Niemann claims to have just so happened to prep against that line that very morning.
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Here I have to rely on opinions from GMs and experts, but apparently Niemann's post-match analysis of his own play was complete nonsense and suggests incompetence, getting many things completely wrong. Speculation is that Niemann was just playing engine moves, without actually understanding the position or why the engine is suggesting certain moves.
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As you mentioned, many, many top level players have voiced their suspicions about Niemann's play, and about Niemann generally. Though other have obviously defended him.
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Such a reaction from Carlsen (withdrawing from a tournament) is highly unusual for him, and he generally has good sportsmanship (I know some might contest this). Carlsen has lost to lower rated players than Niemann before and has never had this reaction. Which suggests Carlsen did suspect Niemann of cheating, though Carlsen may obviously be mistaken. To be 100% clear here, Carlsen has made no accusations against Niemann. All he did was withdraw from the tournament, and the chess community has speculated from there. You say he handles losses poorly, which is kind of true, but he never takes it out on his opponents, but on himself.
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As you mention, Niemann's rating has risen at an astronomical speed from 2500-2700 in the last year, near record-breaking as I understand it. But many top level players are suspicious of this and that cheating was involved too.
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Not really evidence, but the idea that you couldn't find some way to bypass the security is laughable.
In all likelihood this will never get proven one way or another. If Niemann did cheat, the most plausible explanation I've heard is Carlsen's prep getting leaked somehow to Niemann (some have tried to argue this doesn't constitute cheating anyway). In my mostly-worthless-very-casual-chess-player opinion it is probably more likely than not Niemann cheated, maybe ~60% confidence. But this doesn't mean Niemann should have his career destroyed on suspicion.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
5mo ago
(Perhaps I'm being rather rose-tinted about journalistic standards in the past and this is all one big "always has been" meme.)
This video essay makes a pretty compelling argument that, yes, in fact the news was (more) unbiased and higher quality in the past and it's not just nostalgia.
Some of the examples are mindblowing. The example of the reporting on the Soviet Union's political affairs is remarkably unbiased and uneditorialised despite it being the literal height of the Cold War.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
This is a leading question because the obvious answer that you want to get ("fuck that dude, you are right to shame him sweetie") is obviously going to conflate people who think OP is wrong because he is not conforming to traditional sexual norms (no casual sex, period), with those who think OP is wrong because he didn't play the game properly (casual sex is fine, OP just went about it the wrong way).
The issue is that if you accept a sexually liberal or libertine culture, OP didn't really do anything morally wrong he just committed a massive faux pas so he doesn't deserved to be permanently ostracised and labelled a dangerous incel. After all, all he did was believe the advice liberal society gave him to be honest and treat women like men.
Most people sympathetic to OP are addressing the fact he is operating in this sexually liberal environment, and judging it on that basis (and finding it hypocritical and treating OP unfairly on its own terms).
This does not mean I think a sexually liberal culture is a good thing. If it were up to me, all these young adults would be pulled away from casual sex. OP would an idiot lecher trying to defile a maiden with premarital sex, and the girl would rightfully scold and shame him for trying to take away her chastity (and I presumably would be the father with a shotgun threatening OP). But that's not the cultural environment this is taking place in, and the girl isn't shaming OP for trying to take her chastity, but for being an incel creep loser.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Frankly, this has been a long time coming and I think very little has been actually lost.
The stark reality of the liberals arts courses in most Western universities/colleges is that they have been in decline in quality for a long time, and very little is actually being taught in them. I say this from both personal experience and from data. Unless you're lucky enough to have gotten a really engaging and intelligent teacher in the arts (needle in the haystack), most students come away from a liberal arts degree with very little (or in the case of ideological brainwashing, have actually been made worse).
The quality of liberal arts graduates and how little they know is frankly quite shocking. They know little to nothing of the classics, they know nothing of the works of important figures from Socrates all they way up until modern thinkers like Dewey. For many students, they think, or are taught there is nothing of intellectual value prior to the 1970s or so. Rawls is as about as far back and sophisticated they go (well, other than Marx of course, though even this is often through an attenuated way).
I'm not completely sure why this is the case, but I think it's some combination of the postmodern intellectual brainrot that continues to infect the academy and credentialism driving everyone to get degrees (which lowers standards).
If anything, I see the drop-off in student numbers for the liberal arts as a positive development, because hopefully that means the students who do remain actually care about things like philosophy, politics and the humanities generally aren't being held back by being in a larger, stupider cohort, and in time actually will remake the liberal arts degree into something respectable again (unlikely, but a man can dream).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Much of that isn't particularly relevant to the narrative being told in LotR. And the feminine archetype doesn't mean she's perfectly good or moral either, that's not what I was talking about. Her desire to to preserve Lothlorien is completely keeping in with her theme of purity, and definitely has aspects of the shadow.
Absolutely, in the context of the narrative of Lord of the Rings, she absolutely does represent femininity. That is not mutually exclusive with other, religious themes.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Kendi isn't defining anti-racism as "being an activist against racism". Being an anti-racist according to Kendi (and CRT in general) essentially means you have to support their CRT ideology and enforce racial equity. If you don't believe in forcing equal racial outcomes in all aspects of society (through necessarily authoritarian if not totalitarian means), you're a racist. It is anti-liberal by nature.
Civilian casualty figures for the invasion of Gaza are on par with other urban assaults by western militaries. You can contrast this with the battles in the Ukraine war, which are a lot a lot worse, and Assad’s reconquests of major Syrian cities, which are also way way worse.
This is not true. The civilian casualities in Gaza are significantly higher than that in Ukraine, the invasion of which by Russia people have been rushing to call genocide, including many people here. For simplicity I will just takes about deaths specifically and not casualities.
As already posted below the OHCHR estimates 9,701 civilian deaths in Ukraine between 24 Feb 2022 and 24 September 2023.
Reliable estimates for Gaza are hard to find but OHCHR estimates the deaths to be over 11,000 between 7 October 2023 and 16 November 2023 (some of whom would not strictly speaking be Gazans as there are also casualities outside of Gaza). So Gaza has roughly the same number of deaths in a month than Ukraine had in a year and a half. More recent numbers from early January suggest this number could be over 22,000 for Gaza. This would put the percentage of Gazans killed somewhere around 1% of the total population.
Now, Gaza is more densely populated and urbanised where the fighting is taking place, but this is also offset by the fact that Ukraine has a much larger population than Gaza and the operations are larger scale.
Regardless, no matter how you cut it, the civilian casualties in Gaza are extremely high and people would not be hesitating to call it genocide if it were any other country.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You have to take anything that the media was reporting on with a huge dump truck pile of salt, if they're not outright lying that is.
The biggest issue with GamerGate was that the people reporting on GamerGate, the media and journalists, especially the videogame related media, was itself the subject of the criticism. The media obviously has a huge, self-interested reason not to accurately report criticism levelled against themselves.
Who watches the watchmen, basically.
My personal experience (Australian) is that those women aren't really seeking a committed relationship either. The key word here is actually 'committed'. Because sure, some of these women might be looking for a relationship, and fewer still even a long-term one, but they are in no way committing or planning to commit to them ('settling down'). They view these relationships as purely transitory, even if they don't articulate it.
To be fair, my experience is specifically talking about middle-to-upper middle class professional working young women (20s). But these are exactly the kind of women driving this social trend. These women aren't looking for commitment or wanting to commit, they are too busy progressing their careers, living a hedonistic lifestyle of partying, casual sex and frivolous spending, or some combination of both. Commitment and ultimately marriage and family is just some abstract thing for to worry about when they're older, after they've established themselves as a strong independant woman. When they hit 30 or even 35, that's when they'll start worrying about commitment. It's something you can postpone indefinitely with no consequences, right? That's if they choose to commit at all. Much time and effort has been spent convincing young women that effectively becoming an spinster is totally fine and even desirable, and won't make them miserable in the long run.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
It's not even 'deep-state'. It's basically just how the EU functions. The European Commission is made up almost entirely of career bureaucrats (who are largely social left-of-centre neoliberal types). The Commissioners themselves are basically unelected appointees from the member states, and while nominally they're subjected to an approval vote from the European Parliament, it's really just rubberstamping.
I recently visited our nation's great capital, Canberra. While I was there, I did some the of typically touristy things. It's not the first time I have been Canberra, though it's hard to tell how much has changed with Canberra and how much has changed with myself and how I perceive things with culture war overtones being imbedded in my mind. But regardless, my perception was that broadly speaking left-wing politics dominates even in what is ostensibly non-partisan, politically neutral public institutions.
Firstly, there was the National Gallery of Australia. Frankly, I think the NGA is a pretty piss-poor gallery overall. It's international and pre-modern (pre-1800) collections is almost laughably bad for what is apparently Australia's highest public gallery. Outside of a couple of notable pieces, such as a couple of Monets and the infamous Blue Poles by Pollock, there is very little of interest. There were a lot of (post)modern pieces which I found atrocious (I probably don't have to go into a rant about why postmodern art sucks here), the worst offender being a piece that was literally just a square canvas planted black. That's it. The lack of a good international and historical collection is at least somewhat understandable because the NGA is a very young gallery by international standards, and (I imagine) it's pretty hard to build up a great collection especially with a relatively small budget. But even compared to other Australian galleries such as the National Gallery of Victoria and especially the American great galleries which I have had the pleasure of visiting- as unfair as the comparison to the Met or the National Gallery of Art might be - the National Gallery of Australia falls short.
The NGA's strength is naturally it's very large and extensive Australian art collection, including artists ranging from Arthur Streeton (and other Australian Impressionists) to Sidney Nolan to more contemporary artists that I or most people couldn't give two shits about. But the Australian collection is where some of the 'woke' influence was most apparent, on the descriptions of the works of art. Every single piece of Australian art had to have its 'indigenous' name of the location prefaced before the actual common name, regardless of how (ir)relevant it is to the actual artwork. So every piece of artwork created in Melbourne was labelled as 'Naarm/Melbourne'. In addition, there would often be huge non-sequiturs at the end of an artwork's description to insert some connection to Indigenous peoples. For example, it would describe the artist's personal history, how they ended up painting that specific painting, etc, only for the last sentences to abruptly talk mention the local Indigenous group and their connection to the area (bonus points if they mention how it was then taken over by English settlers). This also happened to a lesser extent in some of the other landmarks I visited. There is a lot of this general handwringing over Indigenous issues that has become pervasive in Australia and the Anglosphere more broadly. Now, one might argue that the NGA is simply catering to its dominant audience - the leftwing 'intelligentsia' who both dominate in the art world and the kind of person who would bother to visit an art gallery in the first place. But honestly this isn't good enough to me. The NGA is meant to be a national gallery for all Australians, and should be making a conscious effort to make themselves approachable for the general Australian public.
Next, we have Old Parliament House, now home to the Museum of Australian Democracy. It's honestly a pretty interesting museum, more than its name would suggest. However, there is a pretty stark contrast between the newer and rotating exhibits and the older, permanent exhibits. The older exhibits mainly aim to preserve and present Old Parliament House as it was in 1988 when the Australian government moved to (New) Parliament House (it's pretty awesome), and explain how Australian democracy works more generally. It's pretty politically impartial. The newer exhibits have an implicit left-liberal political ideology in their presentation that might be hard for the casual viewer to realise. It's not just being unabashedly pro-Australian democracy which it understandably is. The more charitable explanation is that the Museum is taking an implicitly teleological view of Australian democracy - all the historical events in Australia's political history led up to the political system we have today, and current Australian democracy is good (it's literally the point of the Museum) therefore all those events were necessary if not good (Gillard's 'misogyny speech', gay marriage plebiscite and and historical political protests generally so on are all presented positively and uncritically). This charitable interpretation really falls apart when you consider what is lacking in the exhibitions and what the counterfactual would be. There was no real rightwing political victories presented and definitely not presented positively, such as Abbott's 'Stop the Boats' campaign (Operation Sovereign Borders) which despite its poor reputation was quite popular with the general population and more-or-less remains the basis of both Labor and Liberal's policy towards asylum seekers/refugees/boat people to this day. It's also hard to imagine that if the gay marriage plebiscite had failed, there would be a exhibition celebrating this as a triumph of Australian democracy like there currently is one celebrating its success (ironic given that many pro-gay marriage advocates initially opposed the plebiscite before they got the results). it was occasionally less subtle with its bias, like an exhibit on Australian Prime Ministers ending with 'Who is Next' and showing a drawing a Muslim woman, an Asian woman and an Aboriginal man, and some shibboleths about 'all Australians from all cultural backgrounds'.
Lastly, I'll talk Parliament House itself. Of all the landmarks visited, Parliament House thankfully (and perhaps somewhat ironically) most apolitical (or politically neutral might be more accurate) presentation, other than the obvious stance of Westminster pro-liberal democracy. As an active political institution which contains Members of Parliament and Senators that may actively support or opposite any given political issue, greater care must have been places to present everything as politically neutral. This is probably aided by the fact that the number of public exhibits is relatively small, given that its primary role is actually a working institution and not a museum, and the main draw for the tourist or member of public is going to see the the House and Senate Chambers. Visiting Parliament House did make me realise an interesting statistic, however due to the obligatory 'Women in Parliament' mini-exhibit. Less than one-third of House of Representatives are women, yet over half of the Senate are women. A pretty notable discrepancy, which I would suggest may be caused by the fact Senators are usually selected by intraparty politics (and thus the agenda to promote female politicians) while seats in the House of Representatives are far more competitive.
To end of a positive note, here is where I make declare my love for Australian democracy. Australian Parliament House represents the best of Australian democracy. The architectural design is fantastic, with lots of open space and big sweeping boomerang wings that feel inviting. It open and accessible to the public, and you can pretty wander around much the building (not counting offices) unescorted. It really does feel like there Parliament is there to serve the Australian public. Sorry to bash our American cousins, but in stark contrast when I visited Congress you had to book a tour, and had to be escorted around the entire time. I understand that security may be a bigger concern for you Americans, but the ability to more-or-less freely walk around the most important political body is the prime example of why I love and appreciate Australian democracy.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
The impression I got from playing Disco Elysium was that they are some kind of post-Marxists, or disillusioned Marxists. They are still support the Marxist project, but they see Marxism more like the lesser evil than a grand utopian vision. It's a begrudging kind of support for Marxism.
I always felt that that Disco Elysium was went easiest on its criticism of Marxism of all the ideologies the game critiques and satirises - I thought this even before I knew the background of the developers. Much of the criticism of Marxism within the game itself isn't actually levelled at the philosophy of Marxism, but rather how Marxism is (in)effectively implemented. The union boss is less a critique of Marxist or socialist organising, but more about how self-serving people will abuse the idea of Marxism/socialism to enrich or empower themselves. It occasionally veers dangerously close to 'Marxism doesn't fail people, people fail Marxism' territory. Not to say it the game doesn't have any substantial critique of Marxism, but I definitely felt it was less substantive than some of the other critiques.
they found themselves two large, urbanized, literate, complex, and populous states in the Triple Alliance and Inca.
To nitpick, the Inca were not literate and the Aztec were arguably not literate either. The Inca had no writing system, they were a pre-literate society. They did have the 'Quipu', a system of knots on cords for recordkeeping, but it is a real stretch to call this a writing system. The Aztec did have pictogram/ideogram 'writing' system, but it debated whether this represents a 'true' writing system. It doesn't have seemed to have reached the complexity of late Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese characters (becoming logographic) which also started off as pictograms, for example. It's not clear if there was any 'real' written literature or prose like epics or poems (colonial destruction is an issue), the writing was mostly used for record keeping, they seemed to have a primarily oral tradition. Mayan writing system was a bit more complex however, but does run into much of the same issues.
There is nothing special or amazing about the 'survival' of Christendom in that regard.
I disagree, at least as far as the early history of Christianity is concerned. That fact that (what started as) some tiny Jewish sect managed to survived centuries of persecution from the largest and most powerful empire in history, forming a massive underground network of believers through preaching and genuine belief alone, and managed to convert said prosecuting empire to Christianity is nothing short of remarkable. In some sense the conversion of Rome to Christianity is the promise of Christian redemption manifest on a civilisational scale.
Before someone mentions Manichaeism, I will point out that Manichaeism is partially based on gnostic Christianity, and that Manichaeism/gnosticism clearly lost the theological battle with (now) orthodox Chrsitianity as embodied by Saint Augustine.
There is really nothing compariable with early Christianity. The closest thing is Buddhism, where the blood thirsty and tyrannical Emperor Ashoka who became so distraught about the destruction and violence he had committed in the Kalinga War he had a religious experience and converted to Buddhism and became a pacifist and virtuous (at least as the myth goes), and is responsible for Buddhism becoming a world religion rather than some tiny obscure or dead Hindu sect.
Rationally according to what? Yeah, I get it, they're 'rationally' maximising their economic potential. But who decided that this was a goal worth pursing in the first place? What makes it rational? Because based on the societal outcomes we're now all staring down at, it doesn't seem rational it all. Least (most?) of all because it seems to be making most women actually miserable (and men, but no one gives a shit about them).
I seriously wonder if the rise of 'bullshit jobs' and 'imposter syndrome' is directly and primarily related to the mass entry (and in many cases, favourable entry) of women into the workforce. Mass female participation into the workforce has caused an overwhelming surplus in low-level white collar and clerical work, and necessitated the creation of large amounts of bullshit jobs of no or negative economic value that simply exist to soothe women's egos (and men to a lesser extent). After all, feminism and liberal society told women at large that they should be entering the workforce and become economically self-sufficient (family? who needs that) if at least for their own benefit (because being mutually dependent with your husband is oppression!) . But what do you do if you don't actually really need all those women in the workforce? Even today we see the huge glut of communications and arts graduates dominated by women.
It's also not obvious to me that this arrangement is at all economically optimal on a macro, societal scale. Women being primarily homemakers does have macro economic value, it's just hard to quantify (I wonder if anyone actually has tried to quantify it from an objective, non-feminist-screed 'men are stealing women's labour!' perspective). It's amazing about how parents (single or otherwise) will go to work, only to spend a huge amount of their income to pay someone else to look after their kid... so they can go to work. Childcare and schools are struggling both financially and functionally in large part because they are expected to parent children in place of now busy parents. Wage stagnation may be (partially) caused by in huge influx of labour this is essentially doubling your available labour. To say nothing of the second and third order effects, like from not having a declining fertility rate, children having a more stable upbringing, fostering a better sense of community, mental wellbeing, healthy homecooking etc.
Idiocracy: The Motte Post Adaptation
But seriously:
The main issue with your Tutsi and Hutu example, and the first part of your argument is you completely sidestep liberalism. If you're going to discuss this issue you really need to address liberalism directly at some point. Your argument is predicated on the primacy of the social group collectively. The classical liberal perspective have very little to say about groups or identity, and pretty much exclusively focused on the individual. So what if there are less Tutsis? Ethnic social categories like Tutsi and Hutu are (or rather, wishfully) obsolete under the liberal framework. There is merely the primacy of the individual. You need to rebut liberalism. Why, when we live in a liberal world, should we care about things 'cultural, behavioral, and genetic legacy'. They do nothing for me as an individual, except what utility they can provide me in the here and now, not when I'm dead. The future belongs to those who show up, and who shows up depends on who cares who shows up when you're gone.
Secondly, the people who 'did everything right' actually didn't do everything right. They forgot to have children. You're kind of using 'everything right' here to have two meanings. You're using it to be tongue-in-cheek by using the word 'right' to mean 'everything society told them was right'. Which fair enough, I think people have been deceived into an atomized, individualistic, hedonistic lifestyle that I think is both morally wrong and ultimately unfulfilling. But they also bear some personal responsibility in the path that they have chosen.
But you also seem to be unironically using 'right' to mean actually morally right, because you actually do seem to think they are right by evidence by your distain of those who actually do have children as lessers. They can't have it both ways. Either they're an atomized liberal individual who doesn't care about their 'legacy' or social units other than the self, making your whole point moot, or they do care about those things, so they should and probably will actually have children then. Your complaint seems to be that the educated, liberal, intelligent people aren't having enough kids. In that case your focus should be telling them them to go have kids rather than just complaining about 'fecund privilege' that the 'lessers' are actually doing the right thing by having kids.
Similarly, feminism did not create the concept of patriarchal societies... So, clearly, the concept of patriarchy is not unique to feminism.
I always feel like an broken record saying this, but this entirely depends on what one means by 'patriarchy'. It's a word that's been used, misused and abused to death. Based on what else you said, I understand what you said to mean that 'patriarchy' as the feminists describe has always existed, feminists merely created the descriptive theory (that is, merely described what already existed). Although this is undercut by 'the concept of patriarchy is not unique to feminism', which is true in the strict sense, but the feminist theory of patriarchy, which is what you are describing, is unique to feminism.
The term 'patriarchy' to describe social structures was first used by Max Weber in his posthumously published The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1947), in which he provides an extremely narrow definition of patriarchy, basically describing a system of household organisation and inheritance - almost a synonym for 'patrilineal'. This was purely descriptive, and contains none of the connotations and normative judgements implicit in the feminist definition. The term 'patriarchy' specifically was introduced into the feminist lexicon by Kate Millet in Sexual Politics in 1970, though the general idea if not in name existed in feminism before then.
I disagree with you when you say "feminism did not create the concept of patriarchal societies", because the feminist conception of patriarchy does not and did not exist, and is purely a product of feminist historical revisionism (that is, a myth) constructed to support their political project. To be specific, I am referring to the feminist understanding of the relationship of the sexes as being one of where men oppress women. In other words, that "the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman." I have written extensively about this in the past on the old subreddit and elsewhere, but just to highlight two really quite prominent examples of this myth-making:
We have known for quite a long time that there is gender parity in domestic violence (and rape too for that matter) but this has been suppressed in large part by feminist activism and feminist theory. Many historical claims about domestic violence similarly turn out to myths, for example the oft repeated claim that men used to be able to beat their wives with impunity is a myth, and appears to originate William Blackstone's 18th Century Commentaries on the Laws of England in which he claims (via a unspecified colleague as a source) that men used to be able to do just that - before adding that this had changed under the enlightened reign of Charles II, obviously having a political motivation to describe the pre-Restoration era (and thus Cromwell's rule) as savage and barbarous compared to the present. Decrying how your outgroup treats women poorly to make them look bad and yourself good is a tactic as old as time.
The issue of women's suffrage is far more complicated than as present by feminists or 'common knowledge' generally. It was never an issue of men against women, or men oppressing women. In fact, for much of the history of the suffragette movement, men were actually more progressive on the issue than women themselves were, and the anti-suffragette movement was led by women and was far more popular than the suffragette movement until well into the 20th century. The early suffragettes hilariously often stated that they didn't want women to vote on the issue of their own suffrage for this very reason. The anti-suffragettes had some interesting arguments, and far stronger than the strawmen arguments they are often presented as having. To summarise their arguments extremely briefly (the link provides more detail), they saw their role (as women) in society as unique, distinct and different to that of men, but their role was no less important, influential or yes, powerful as that of men.
The issue of women's suffrage in some sense encapsulates the issue with historical judgements about the relationship between men and women history. The playbook is something like: identify something that we highly value in our present society and ideology (the right to vote), compare the historical society to our present society in this regard (women didn't have the right to vote), then condemn the historical society for failing to live up to our modern morals and sensibilities (women couldn't vote because men were oppressing women - evil). There is very little attempt to address the past on its own terms, that there might be practical and understandable, if not good, reasons for the way the things operated in the past. This is particularly true of the sexes. Women have never been oppressed en masse as described in feminist patriarchy theory. Men and women simply valued different things in the past and had different roles - maleness was highly valued in male roles, and femaleness was highly valued in female roles, one was not necessarily better than the other. The history of the sexes has always been primarily one of cooperation and yes, affection. This obviously comes with the caveat that yes, you can find specific instances of where both women and men have suffered injustices, but this not part of a universal and timeless 'patriarchy'.
The wording (doubtless there are many) I recall is, "a system of gender roles which is harmful to men and women" or some such. Some might say that this definition smuggles in a claim: that gender roles are harmful.
This is not very representative of the feminist definition, at least of the academic kind which forms the basis of patriarchy theory. I'm sure you can find a street feminist to offer such a definition though.
The most robust concise definition of patriarchy I've seen offered by a feminist, which I believe essentialises the concept for feminism as a whole quite well is the one offered by Sylvia Walby in Theorising Patriarchy (1989): "a series of social structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women." This really does encapsulate what feminism, all feminism, means by patriarchy at least at a basic level. Often bits and pieces are tacked onto it later, often to band-aid or cover-up over issues with their theory (e.g. "patriarchy hurts men too"). Walby's work on patriarchy is pretty foundational to feminist academia today, even though in some sense she was just formalising a lot of threads that existed previously.
You see, a man who is motivated by sex is simply not committing rape as a matter of definition.
The radical feminists make no distinction. They see the male sexuality as inherently linked to violence and oppression against women, and therefore basically all sex between a man and a woman is men raping women. Catharine McKinnon's Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: "Pleasure under Patriarchy" (1989):
Male dominance is sexual [in the context of sexuality]. Meaning: men in particular, if not men alone, sexualize hierarchy; gender is one. As much a sexual theory of gender as a gendered theory of sex, this is the theory of sexuality that has grown out of consciousness raising in the women's movement.
Male power takes the social form of what men as a gender want sexually, which centers on power itself, as socially defined. Masculinity is having it; femininity is not having it.
Male sexuality is apparently activated by violence against women and expresses itself in violence against women to a significant extent.
A theory of sexuality becomes feminist to the extent it treats sexuality as a social construct of male power: defined by men, forced on women, and constitutive in the meaning of gender. Such an approach centers feminism on the perspective of the subordination of women to men as it identifies sex-that is, the sexuality of dominance and submission-as crucial, as a fundamental, as on some level definitive, in that process. Feminist theory becomes a project of analyzing that situation in order to face it for what it is, in order to change it.
The major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it.
The later, more contemporary intersectional feminists tempered or moderate this perspective, but ultimately they are cut from the same cloth and you can see the same principles underlying it, even if they're supposedly 'sex-positive' (that is, male sexuality, or male sexuality under patriarchy is linked to the need to dominate, and therefore oppress women). For example, bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody (2000, but still extremely popular in contemporary feminist circles):
Many women and men still consider male sexual performance to be determined solely by whether or not the penis is hard and erections are maintained. This notion of male performance is tied to sexist thinking. While men must let go of the sexist assumption that female sexuality exists to serve and satisfy their needs.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Perhaps this was the tradition at some point, but given that rates of pet ownership and pet spending have increased, while fertility has decreased, it's likely that this tradition becoming irrelevant and is not driving this change.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
10mo ago
Many Islamic empires was overthrown this way. The (Egyptian) Mamluks, the Seljuks, Ghaznavids of the top of my head all orginally gain power as the "barbarian" slave armies of previous Islamic dynasties. Even the Ottoman Empire towards the end of its life was engaged in a power struggle with the Janissaries, which were made up of Slavs who were kidnapped as children.
There are probably other examples.
Everyone believes they are making the world a better place, or at least not make it a worse place, a tiny tiny minority of literally psychotic individuals notwithstanding. No one believes themselves to be the villain of their own story. Progressive actors in this sense are unremarkable. Even those who just like 'dunking' and being hostile to conservatives would have rationalised their own actions. I think many of these people you are talking about truly believe that they are fighting against genuine 'evil'. That doesn't mean they are justified, only terribly mistaken. Unless you're a firm believer in absolute moral relativism I suppose.
What is quite unique about the (Critical) SJ movement is an almost unprecedented degree of black-and-white thinking, which is baked into the ideology. There is no room for compromise or forgiveness, it is totalising. The ideology fosters an extreme lack of self-reflection and introspection (e.g. labelling any one questioning the ideology of 'epistemic pushback'). This has really only been on this scale (not counting cults) by its predecessor ideology, Marxism, and its rival, Fascism. For something like this to emerge from a modern liberal democratic society should be deeply troubling. Even the Crusaders admired Saladin.
The non-SJ people who follow the SJ movement just do so not only because it's the path of least resistance in most cases, but also because the average person thinks very little about why they do the things they do, say the things they say, or believe the things they believe. Most people just take things at face value, something that has been taken advantage of by the SJ movement and fostered by its culture of lack of introspection.
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