LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
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User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Not the greatest example, because the reason Mayella comes onto Tom Robinson is because she's lonely, neglected and abused by her family, her father in particular. It's heavily implied that the reason she throws him under the bus is because of severe social pressure she's under, particularly from her abuse father. You're meant to have at least some sympathy for the position Mayella is in. At the end of the day, it's still meant to be her father Bob Ewell, as the major villain, thematically representing the evil patriarchal white supremacy that is being criticized in To Kill a Mockingbird.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I'm not claiming Australian democracy is perfect, nor that there is nothing to criticise in the conduct of the Australian government in recent years (there is plenty to criticise in American democracy yet people still believe in the ideal). But I do think that Parliament House does reflect Australian political values that I value - including egalitarianism (in the general, not modern left sense), the 'fair go' for all.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr 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.
The sad part is that XCOM had a great lore justification for dynamic difficulty.
Terra Invicta also kinda has an explanation but it's not great. Just to do spoilers for the alien motivation, which you won't discover the entirety off in every faction's playthough. Spoiler:
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
As I said in another thread, the most robust concise definition I've seen is from Sylvia Walby in Theorising Patriarchy (1989): "a series of social structures, and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women."
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
1yr ago
Would you say a similar dynamic about the ideology feeding the narcissism of ill-adjusted women was at play historically? How about signalling opportunities for elite men?
For the most part, yes. The suffragette movement (i.e. all pre-interwar feminism) was always an elite movement, made up exclusively of high class, wealthy women. The suffragettes weren't advocating for universal suffrage, but rather extending the right to vote from wealthy men to wealthy men and women.
It's hard to say say whether it involved signalling opportunities for elite men. The main issue with this idea is that the suffragette movement was (despite contemporary historical revisionism on the subject) largely unpopular for much of its existence, especially among women. Men were generally more in favour of women's suffrage than women were themselves. Here is a link if you want to know more about this topic. So as a purely political signal, elite men supporting women's suffrage wouldn't be that effective, at least until the early 20th century, but even then women's suffrage wasn't that popular when it actually passed either. You might argue that that the success women's suffrage was mere historical fluke caused by the mass killing of young men in the First World War which provided strong pressures for women to be involved in political affairs. The vast majority of states only passed women's suffrage after WW1, those that did it earlier were mostly limited to extremely sparsely populated basically colonial states or territories that probably had different reasons for doing so. And often when women's suffrage was passed, it was initially limited land-owning women, such as in the UK. It's also not like there was never any instance of women voting prior to the 19th/20th century either, there are numerous instances throughout history where women could and did vote.
In my opinion, what is more likely is that elite men were doing what men do best, and listening to the complaints of women and jumping to solve the issue and accommodate them. As I pointed out earlier, men are predisposed to such behaviour as protectors and providers.
how do you respond to a very common tactic among feminists, which is to say "you only disagree with me because you haven't read Y, if you read X you would understand, you need to educate yourself about what feminism actually means".
This question is basically about rhetoric and how to win a debate/online argument. I'm not sure I have the best advice here. But some general things I've picked up:
First, remember you're arguing more to convince other readers (the audience) than you are necessarily are to convince your debate opponent. There's a good chance your debate opponent is a committed ideologue and you're not going to convince them no matter what you say. But if you make convincing arguments other readers may be convinced. Generally speaking, if you have provided credible sources and quotes from figures, and your opponent responds with some variation of 'well they're not MY preferred sources', it doesn't look good for them.
Second, most feminists you meet online (and even in person for that matter) are going to be woefully underinformed about their own topic. Part of the reason they are so dead set on their one specific source is because it's probably the only thing they have read, or was assigned reading on their gender studies subject. In particular is bell hooks. Seriously, probably three-quarters of the time the only source online feminists use is bell hooks, the prominent intersectional feminist. She's the one that always gets recommended for those who "don't understand feminism." You can pre-empt them by quoting (to refute) hooks yourself. Storming the motte before they even have a chance to occupy it.
Third, as much as this is a logical fallacy (we're talking about rhetoric here, your debate opponent is probably not acting in good faith), but just appeal to authority. Hopefully you do it in a clever and crafty way. To be slightly less fallacious, you can appeal to the relative prominence they have and therefore their outsized influence on the feminist movement as a whole, e.g. "it doesn't matter what you or some obscure minor feminist thinker no one cares about, I'm referring to the feminist who hold senior professorships at major colleges, or have written the foundational texts that are taught everywhere, or are senior members of prominent feminist organisations and advocacy groups." Essentially just name drop all the prominent, influential feminists, their importance and their positions. It's really hard for your opponent to not look silly when you're talking about Millet, Walby and hooks and they're talking about Feminist McNobody.
except maybe for Philippa Foot
Funny you should say that, because she's not a feminist academic I would say!
If you fully absorb what people like John Locke claimed about moral ontology, the idea of keeping women in a subservient disenfranchised status is unsupportable.
Except the idea that women existed in a state of subservient disenfranchisement is a both a normative and descriptive claim made by feminism. If you ask the anti-suffragettes, (who were mostly women and generally more popular than the suffragettes until at least the end of the 19th century), they certainly didn't believe that was the case (the anti-suffragette movement has been subjected to historical revisionism that strawmans their position). The more interesting question is why did this narrative about the supposed historic subjugation of women by men become the dominant one? Especially as I think the narrative is false, despite it being now being accepted as fact due to decades of feminist rhetoric and feminist 'scholarship'.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I think the idea not to criticise feminism too broadly is purely necessary for optics, or strategic reasons as you put it. As might be obvious, I've spent a not-insignificant amount of time reading both feminist history and theory. I'm not convinced the level of granularity you're suggesting is justified on the actual philosophical level. To repeat myself, it's perfectly reasonable to make broad criticisms of Marxism, which includes the granularity of all its derivatives, because it's the same core philosophy/ideology. But I must concede I may be just as vulnerable to outgroup homogeneity bias as anyone else, even though I don't think it refutes my arguments here.
I will say that I do very much agree with the general point of your original comment, my criticisms is more levelled at you describing this this is only a contemporary issue. What you were describing has always existed in feminism, at least as far back as 1848.
Are American political and social institutions really that liberal if Trump became president?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
providing for their families, but also by caring for them emotionally. By being a strong, stable presence, but also by showing vulnerability. By teaching their sons and daughters to honor women — and by demonstrating that behavior themselves.
Was the article edited after publishing? I can't find this quote in the article. I was going to write a comment criticising the article but I would rather make sure we're all on the same page with the article first.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
9mo ago
This response made me laugh so hard (in agreement).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
They say great minds think alike.
(I didn't see your comment until after I made mine)
This anti-colonial argument often underpinned by a willful ignorance of how basic economics works.
Even where the Europeans (I am talking about 18-20th century Asian and African colonialism) engaged in basic resource extraction like mining (and the economies of colonies were generally far more sophisticated in reality than one might think) it still results in substainal economic development for the locals. Europeans had to build massive amounts of infrastructive to support these economic activities, to say nothing of the associated colonial administration like hospitals, schools and law enforcement. But the most important part is that the local workers were paid for their work and there was wealth flowing to the natives of the colony. The anti-colonial (typically Marxist) persective sees economy activity has necessarily zero-sum. If someone is making money, someone else must be losing money (or having their labour 'stolen'). This is obviously wrong.
Now, were these colonial economic arrangements as fair as they could have been? Maybe not, though once you factor in the expenditures on colonial administration and that colonialism generally speaking a money-losing venture for the Europeans it becomes a lot less clear.
But the counter-factual of no colonialism is that there would have been no economic development at all, and most economic activity that did exist would have continued to be conducted under local slavery (or similar economic structures) which is far less fair than the colonial arrangements.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
I so wish we could even debate the charitable interpretation as you say. But all evidence points to the contrary, we're not even at that point.
Just as one example - the Australian Government's 'National Energy Transformation Partnership' includes an 'initial priority' to "co-design a First Nations Clean Energy Strategy to ensure First Nations people help drive the energy transformation" (whatever that is meant to mean). Literally this stuff is already everywhere. Everything has to have 'First Nations/Indigenous' strategy/plan/consultation no matter how little it has to do with Indigenous issues. This is just going to institutionalise it to the highest degree - constitutionally.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Sorry, but it's one study cherry-picked by the Guardian that just so happens to fit their political bias and serves as good clickbait fodder.
The article even implicitly admits if flirs in the face of most research.
Other studies have measured some financial and health benefits in being married for both men and women on average, which Dolan said could be attributed to higher incomes and emotional support, allowing married people to take risks and seek medical help.
I'm sure it could. Almost sounds like there's benefits to being married.
Also I would add that 'happiness' is a fleeting and imprecise measure in my opinion. I think modern society puts far too much emphasis on hedonia rather than eudaimonia.
This article was amended on 30 May 2019 to remove remarks by Paul Dolan that contained a misunderstanding of an aspect of the American Time Use Survey data.
This doesn't fill me with confidence.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
You're basically just asking what is the "True Church" of Jesus Christ which is a much larger question, and something a non-believer probably isn't qualified to answer as it goes to theology.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
How do men benefit more from marriage and what research are you referring to?
Keeping in mind that men are uniquely screwed over by divorce/family courts and that ~80% of divorces are intiated by women (of the top of my head).
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
My point was more than you might need more modern concepts of justice for prosperity. In other words, as community who still thinks spearing people is a good form of punishment probably isn't receptive to modern ideas and forms of governance
I strongly disagree. This position presupposes that the Russians are/were a siginificant geopolitical threat to American interests, and ignores the decades of prior American foreign policy that led to this postion in the first place i.e. in some sense, the US is just 'solving' a foreign policy crisis it created in the first place.
The first is an issue because Russian geopolitical interests since the crisis of the 90s have been strictly regional, limit to Eastern Europe (and not even all of it), Central Asia and not much else. These are areas of relatively little interest or importance to the US, other than the mostly ideological (but not much else) goal of "democratising" the former Iron Curtain. Even if the idea is to somehow stop the "domino effect" of a resurgent Russia controlling Eastern Europe (a pretty unlikely scenario relying on some questionable assumptions) the reality is that Russia is not capable of excerting global influence even if it were to gain control of much of the former Soviet Union/Russian Empire. It's economy is weak, population dwindling, technology stagnant. It would take many decades of miracles for Russia to ever develop the power and influence to be a serious global player as it once was. The US has spent a lot of time, money, manpower and lives that could be been used elsewherte.
Second, the US has deliberately (or at least intentionally failed to avoid) developing an antagonistic relationship with Russia in the first place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the first place. There was originally a real sense of optimism in the 90s for reconciliation between Russia and the US which was ultimately sabotaged (intentionally or not) by US actions which I have described in a previous comment on the Motte. US economic foreign policy towards Russia in the 90s is partially responsible for the creation of Putin's Russia in the first place. So it can be argued that the US, even if they are enjoying a geopolitical success with Ukraine, mostly just solving a problem they contributed to.
Third, even if Russia is weakened or neutralised by Ukrainian victory (whatever that entails), it's not exactly clear to me that will result in geopolitical success in the long term. The elephant in the room is China. A weakened Russia will almost certainly turn to Chinese patronage for support and protection, which would be a disaster for the US, give that China is that actual global geopolitical rival, not Russia. Even before this war, US antagonism towards Russia caused strange bedfellows as it pushed Russia and China together, two countries who have competing interests in Central Asia and would probably be weakly competing rather than weakly cooperating as they are now. If the concern is that the USA shouldn't cooperate/should be antagonistc to Russia on (liberal democratic) principle, fair enough, though I will point out that's not an issue with other counties and allies, most obviously Saudi Arabia. There are so a lot of actual really bad outcomes that could result from Russian collapse, including but no limited to: the rise of an extremist ideology in Russia, nukes being used (either by current Russia or successor state) the increase of global terrorism, including Islamic terrorism, based in Russian territory.
Lastly, it's not even clear if the US has gained any clear long term economic advantage. Yes, other countries have become more dependent on US gas exports, which is good for US gas industry, but this ignores the huge damage the supply chain and economic disruption has caused to the global economy, including the US (broken window fallacy?). Maybe the US gains a relative economic advantage over China (probably not significantly if at all), even if US citizens have to suffer for it. Increased dependency on US gas might also be short lived, because the lack of cheap Russian gas has renewed efforts in Europe and elsewhere to seek alternative forms of energy, though it remains to be seen how that plays out.
One might say there are six main paths - noble, priest and commoner both as pro- and antirevolutionary
I was had a little mini-debate in my head about whether to say three or six main paths, but I went with three because I don't think pro or antirevolutionary are substantial enough to call them there own complete main paths, not to the same extent of the noble, priest and commoner are, at least. Most of the decisions for which side you land politically are only towards the very end of the game, and it's possible to play both sides until just before the end of the game, albeit with maybe slightly suboptimal outcomes. Basically, they're not "main" paths in that they don't have a long, separate narrative.
I recently saw Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Guy Ritchie's latest film. I had reasonably high expectations going into the film. Not that it would be high art or anything, but I thought it would be a fun action spy film in the vein of Mission: Impossible, with a pretty star studded cast. I left pretty disappointed. The film was incredibly mediocre, although not completely awful. I would say Guy Ritchie has lost his touch, but in hindsight now looking at Guy Ritchie's more recent filmography has been less than stellar. Some spoilers ahead.
The film was more or less trying to follow the formula of a film like Mission: Impossible albeit in a more tongue-in-cheek, more humorous way, but it fell short at basically every hurdle and failed to form anything cohesive. Jason Statham was Jason Statham, more or less doing what you expect, though I felt the film misused Statham, and forced him into the role of playing comedic foil to some of the comic relief characters which doesn't really work. Statham is there to punch people and deliver one-liners, he's not a comedic actor. Aubrey Plaza was awful, playing the primary comedic relief in the film while also being the spy-damsel-seductress while also being the team tech expert. Granted, I don't like her brand of frankly juvenile humour to begin with but this film it felt particularly bad, with her delivering constant sexual innuendos to her male-costars that would never be allowed to fly today if a male actor was delivering it to his female costar. Josh Hartnett's performance as the "fish-out-of-water civilian recruited into spy team" was acceptable, but heavily let down by the mediocre script that did nothing with the character. Cary Elwes plays exposition-man "M" type role and minor comic relief, there's nothing really to say. Basically the only standout performance was Hugh Grant's performance as a sleazy, creepy, yet charismatic British arms dealer (although it's kind of weird how they just make in kind of a good guy in the end unearned). Grant's performance honestly carries much of the film, and his character was just fun to watch on screen, even if the script went nowhere. All other minor roles were unremarkable, except I would say that Bugzy Malone, playing the supporting role as the team's 'henchman' field support or whatever. Not a lot of lines, but he played it well.
It's hard to describe exactly why the film and script failed, but everything just felt off. It felt like I was watching a first draft of a script that somehow actually made it into production. To give one example of how I think the film fails in trying to be a MI like spy film, at the start of the film we get the obligatory "we need to a team to deal with issue" scene to introduce the characters (We need Orson Fortune, he's the best!). Whereas in better films this would cut then to our star at the end of some other mission to introduce his character (like in Mission Impossible, or in Indiana Jones, or Bond or countless other films), instead we just get a scene of Cary Elwes in Jason Statham's hotel room trying to get him to come off holiday early with some not-so-witty banter. That's it. No action scene (talk about misusing Statham!).
There are plot threads that go nowhere - Statham's team has some rivalry with other ops team that goes nowhere and is meaningless - most characters are bland and uninteresting, are poorly introduced and have no character development. For example, Josh Hartnett's character, a Hollywood star who is recruited (blackmailed to join) the team as their "in" to get access to Hugh Grant's character. In better films, Hartnett's character would have a proper character arc, where he's an arrogant and selfish Hollywood star that only cares about himself and his wellbeing, to the end of the film where he becomes a true member of the team and asks when the next mission is. Except... they kind of forget to do that second part, and he just goes back to being the same, goofball Hollywood star except a bit less arrogant. It's what I mean but when I can see the film is trying to follow the formula of action spy films but drops the ball. They even managed mess up the MacGuffin, we don't even know what the MacGuffin actually is until 3/4 through the movie, and even when we do find out it's completely meaningless, the MacGuffin is so MacGuffin to the plot you can basically just substitute any big bad weapon or whatever, I was so uninvested in the plot. Action scenes has very little tension, the protagonists either managed to either easily defeat 30 guys, or lose to 2 guys. There were no really awesome tense scenes like Mission Impossible's cable drop scene, or MI:2's vent drop scene. There were also actual plot holes in the film, where arms dealer Hugh Grant wants to be paid his commission in currency... when it turns out the MacGuffin is a AI that the villains are going to use to crash the global financial system while they have hoarded gold to make themselves rich (Hugh Grant is literally assisting in deal that will wipe out his wealth). The film end quite abruptly. I was expecting some major twist and final fight at the end of the film, but it just never happens. It honestly felt like there was like 10-15 minutes missing from the end of the film.
The last thing to mention (and Culture War related) is that some of the villains in the film are Ukrainian, the film was reportedly reedited after the war broke out in Ukraine to be 'sensitive to current events', just as the film was nearly ready for release. It's hard to know for certain but it's very possible that large parts of the film were butchered because of this, and this new edit ruined much of the film. Still, even if that's true I think the film would still be pretty mediocre regardless.
Did read them and enjoyed it, and kept meaning to make a comment questing some of Gottfried's defintion/analysis of fascism (particularly the lack of acknowledgement of the metaphysical/spiritual elements of fascism) but that required a bit of an effort comment on my part (and also looking up some old sources) so everytime I thought I might have the time and feel like making the effort like 4 days had already past and I didn't feel like replying to an old thread.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
1yr ago
Also, both the official Wikipedia page and most quora questions very carefully forget to mention that shortly after the Shah's 1935 declaration that Persia is "Land of the Aryans", Hitler declared them to be "pure Aryan" in 1936 and forged a close alliance with them.
It was more than that if I recall correctly - the idea for the name change was originally a suggestion by the Nazi ambassador to Persia.
My interpretation is that what is implied is that she really doesn't have that power. Maybe she does in the literal sense, but in the social context she's just victim of her abusive father (who really has the power) and the social environment more generally. We can easily imagine that if Mayella had defended Tom on the stand, she would have been badly beaten if not much worse. She is essentially coerced and doesn't have that power.
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