LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
No bio...
User ID: 657
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
People constantly conflate gender/sex preferences that are culturally/socially contingent and those that are universal (and thus almost certainly biological in nature).
Some actors obviously do this in bad faith. Like the typical feminist/queer theorist who says 'pink used to to be for boys, blue for girls, now it's the opposite, thus proving all gender preferences are arbitrary and that the idea that women prefer people and men prefer things is also arbitrary and socially contingent!' Gotta love those huge non-sequiturs.
Really, you can seperate gender preferences (including sexual preferences) into three rough catagories - (1) things that are universally/biological, (2) things that are socially determined but are influenced and constrained by biology to some degree and thus are not completely arbitrary, and (3) things that are socially determined and are completely arbitrary.
Men liking things and women liking people is an example of number 1. It is universal and biological, and reflects the biological division of labour.
Most (historically) gendered clothing fits into number 2. Clothing still has to reflect the practical needs of each sex, which is in turn derived from the gender role (which in turn is derived from the biological division of labour). But there is obviously a significant degree of wiggleroom which is culturally contingent. An obvious example is the fact that women wear bras and men don't. This obviously isn't an arbitrary completely socially determined choice. Though the specific designs or styles of bras might be.
Colour preference for genders is an example for number 3. There is generally no compelling reason why certain colours should be assigned to either men and women. This is culturally socially determined (though I suppose someone could try to make an attenuated evo psych argument about how red is biologically masculine cause blood or some shit).
All this basically applies to sexual preferences too.
Sexual attraction to well defined, feminine hips might be an example of number 1.
Sexual attraction certain kinds of modes of behavior (e.g. stoic, dominant nature in men) might be an example of 2.
Certain kinds of decoration, such as tattoos might be an example of 3.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr 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
There is native title in Australia, but if you're referring to actually demolishing buildings and dismantling Australia and giving it 'back' to Indigenous groups, of course not (although who knows in the future...)
If not, how do the activists swallow the enormity of the condescension?
Huge cognitive dissonance I imagine. Or the more hopeful activists/woke true believers might see this as the thin edge of the wedge to actually deconstruct Australian government and society. The naive (small-l in American speak) liberals who parrot this stuff are useful idiots who use it as a mantra or prayer.
Yeah, there's a huge divide between the mostly-genetically-white urban Indigenous and the mostly-genetically-Indigenous Indigenous who live in remote Australia like the Top End. But this divide is rarely acknowledged in practice by either government or civil society, with much of the policies making no real distinction between the two (occasionally you'll see some gesture towards 'remote Indigenous'). Political and social spoils will mostly go towards the urban Indigenous as @Forgotpassword says.
It's actually infuriating because no one wants address the elephant in the room - the main reason that Indigenous life outcomes are so poor is because a significant portion of Indigenous live in remote, 'economically impoverished' communities in the middle of absolutely nowhere that no amount of 'Closing the Gap' initiatives will compensate for. You can't legislate or pay away remoteness, you can't build a major metropolitan centre in the middle of the Australian desert. Anyone who lived in such remote conditions would have their outcomes harmed. And that's not getting into the 'traditional practices' that some groups engage in which might make them incompatible with Western notions of prosperity (i.e. stabbing someone in the thigh with a spear as punishment).
There was also another Indigenous related controversy recently, because an alcohol ban for many Indigenous communities in NT (which was originally implemented with support from Indigenous communities mind you) expired early this year, which was connected to an immediate increase in crime afterwards. After some time by the current Federal Labor government dragging their feet, they eventually agreed to support a more permanent ban on alcohol in the Territory legislature. It's amazing how quickly people will come to support traditional 'law-and-order' approaches to Indigenous issues when push comes to shove.
The short answer is 'we have no idea'. I have to stress that the what exactly the Voice's powers would be or how it would be structured has not been specifically outline. As presented, this will only be decided on after the fact if the referendum succeeds (classic 'voters won't even know what they're voting for' scenario. Despite pushing from the Opposition Leader for the Government to release draft legislation so people actually know what they're voting on in practice, (woke) 'constitutional experts' have come out of the woodwork and been amplified by media about how releasing draft legislation to the public is totally a bad thing because it will just 'confuse' voters and undermine support for the Voice.
All we can say with certainty is that:
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The Voice will be a constitutionally enshrined government body that has some degree of influence over legislation
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The Voice will be made up of Indigenous representatives who were not voted for or appointed (directly or indirectly) by the general Australian public
In practice, it seems like the selection process for the members of the Voice would likely be some combination of appointees from existing Indigenous councils/assemblies/corporations and some elections held specifically by and for Indigenous people in a given area.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
I'm just going off what the census data says. While it's probably true that the numbers have increased at least a little due to grifting/socially incentivised white people claim descent. But my general impression is that it isn't nearly to the same extend than happens in say, Canada. The relationship between Australian society and Indigenous people is slightly different to that in Canada or the US - here in Australia, having a claim of Indigenous member does imply something more concrete about the culture practices you engage in. 'Indigenous' is more a claim of ethnic culture, rather than literal genetic ethnicity in many cases.
Australia’s Voice to Parliament (2/2)
And where does the public stand on this issue? Well public polling seems to indicate that the ‘yes’ has a slight majority, though notably this percentage has been steadily falling over the last year (the Liberal Party strategy working?). Importantly, the people supporting yes (between yes, no and not sure) dropped below 50% recently. In my opinion, much of the support for the Voice in the public is mostly driven by white-guilt-ridden Australians who automatically support any proposal in favour of Indigenous Australians, regardless of practicality or principle. As some critical thought goes into it, the support has dropped. Add in social desirability bias/Shy Tory phenomenon (the gay marriage plebiscite won by a much small margin than was predicted), it seems uncertain if the referendum would pass if it were held tomorrow.
I guess now is a good time to segue to a commentary on the state of Indigenous/woke politics more generally. As you can probably tell, I do not support the Voice on principle, as it is incompatible with liberal and democratic ideals (and even if you aren’t liberal or democratic, then you wouldn’t support it for other philosophical/tribal reasons). It’s also not the first time a body or institution like this has even been tried. Mostly recently there was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission(1990–2005) which more or less basically tried to do what the Voice wants to do, albeit no constitutionally enshrined. The Commission had to be shut down in 2005 after years of corruption (although in fairness, this was partially driven by the final Chairman in particular). The Voice being constitutionally enshrined as well as having the increasing immunity to scrutiny that woke politics will inevitably grant it is just a shitshow waiting to happen even worse that ATSIC.
For Americans, it might be hard to explain just how (pardon my French, but there’s really no other words to adequately express this sentiment) cucked Australia has become on Indigenous representation/recognition/reconciliation or whatever the buzzword is now. Canadian and New Zealand readers will understand (I feels sorry for our Kiwi brothers who have it worse). The analogy I offer you many American readers is like it’s all the black liberationism woke political stuff has become institutionalised in every institution with official statements. The difference between Australian and America here I think is that America has way more variance, the crazy can be crazier, but in Australia this stuff gets institutionalised scarily fast. Literally every meeting, event or document starts now with a ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ which is basically a statement like a mantra or prayer that ‘recognises’ that the area of wherever you are belongs (in some form, the exact words can and do change) to a given Indigenous group. I’m not sure if I’m even being facetious – in Parliament the sitting day starts with an Acknowledgement of Country and then is followed by prayers. Even worse is ‘Welcome to Country’ which is now omni-present at every major event, is performed by an Indigenous person, who basically “invites” (I would say ‘gives permission’) non-Indigenous people onto ‘their land’ and does some shamanistic ritual. Again, I’m not being facetious, one Welcome I had to sit through included the Indigenous representative doing a ritual to invite the ancestors to come and remove the bad spirits from the audience (my God, how is this allowed in government but a Christian blessing would be the scandal of a century). The Acknowledgement and Welcomes are also becoming increasingly radical too, and it’s becoming increasing common to state that ‘Sovereignty was never ceded’. This was amusingly and frustratingly said in one Acknowledgement by a government employee in a very important government building. It’s honestly hard to describe – look up some (recent) examples for yourself. You get increasingly deluded and discriminatory policies too, for example the Minister for Public Service wanting to increase Indigenous representation in the Australian Public Service to 5%, including executive management, despite Indigenous people making up only 3% of the population and most of them live in remote Northern Territory, Queensland or Western Australia. You get government bodies now who must explicitly have an Indigenous representative as part of their board, even if the organisation has nothing particularly to do with Indigenous issues. I could go on.
The tone of Indigenous activism and Australian society's response has also changed over the years, becoming more radical. Increasing 'blood-and-soil' type rhetoric is being adopted by Indigenous activists (and their naïve supporters). Whereas in the past it was common to refer to an Indigenous group being 'custodians' of an area of land (being semi-nomadic peoples who did not have a concept of land ownership prior to the arrival of Westerners), it's now increasingly common to hear language like 'this is [Indigenous group] Country' and the aforementioned 'sovereignty was never ceded', and some more general claims of the unique and unassailable right that that group to the land that the white man could never possess or truly understand. Similarly, Australian society's attitude towards Indigenous practices and knowledge has gone from liberal paternal 'yeah let them do their own thing and maybe humour them' and 'yeah maybe there is some useful tidbits of information we can glean from Indigenous fire management practices once we get past all the superstitious rubbish' to now being 'we must incorporate Indigenous culture and people into literally everything we do and give it privileged attention' and 'Indigenous knowledge and superstitions ways of knowing have some special quality that makes it them literally True and superior to Western™ knowledge, stupid Westerners have been ruining this sacred Country'.
I want to know where the Liberal Party, and conservative politicians more generally, are in all this. This stuff has completely infected government, in addition to all the usual suspects like education and academia. I’m not sure how they allowed to this to happen. Are they just somehow completely ignorant of how un-impartial and politically woke the government bureaucracy has become? Are they grossly incompetent or powerless to do anything? Have they also fallen victim to this in their own ranks, and lack the ability or backbone to purge it from their own party? Or do they also just support it, if less radically so, being naïve small-l liberals buying into the motte-and-bailey? I have no idea, but from my perspective it feels like they have their head in the sand. It’s been discussed here before about how the Republicans seem to be completely unaware about what they’re up against in the US, still acting like it’s 2008. It very much feels the same way here, if not even more so.
Australia’s Voice to Parliament (1/2)
The Voice to Parliament is one of Australia’s largest active culture and political wars, and I think encapsulates the whole macro global culture war on a (relatively) micro scale.
What is the Voice to Parliament? Well, half the problem is that no one seems to know what it is, as we will soon find out. The Voice to Parliament (the Voice) is a proposed government body of some kind intended to consist of and represent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous Australians) enshrined into the Constitution of Australia via referendum. The Voice would have some kind of involvement with the Australian Parliament and the legislative process. The referendum to enshrine the Voice is expected to take place at some point this later this year, and would also enshrine ‘recognition’ of Indigenous Australians in the Australian Constitution. This marks the end of the consensus on what the Voice even is (or would be). Details about what powers the Voice have or how it would function have been incredibly vague and hotly debated.
The Voice is the latest in a long line of attempts to get constitutional recognition (of the special status of) of Indigenous Australians. This is by far the boldest attempt too, attempting include a permanent constitutional body with some legislative power as part of it. The Voice most directly originates from the 2017 ‘Uluru Statement from the Heart’, which keeping in with the theme was/is an attempt to get some kind of unspecified constitutional recognition (and power) for Indigenous people. The Statement directly called for “the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution” and “a Makarrata [Treaty] Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.”
After a bunch of government activity looking into the Voice that is honestly not worth getting into, the National Indigenous Australian Agency published the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process final report in 2021. While this does contain a lot of detail how a potential Voice might work, this is merely a suggestion and is in no sense binding. Mostly charitably (but still concerning), my understanding is that this suggested version of the Voice’s powers would be not dissimilar to the current Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (something I am also sceptical of), which has the authority to review every piece of legislation and legislative instrument and make reports on whether they are ‘compatible with human rights’. The Voice would seeming operate in the same way, except it would be constitutionally enshrined (and therefore virtually impossible to remove in the future), and its member will be made of completely unelected and unrepresentative Indigenous representatives. And I must reiterate, this report is in no way necessarily what the Voice will end up being, and even the report is uncertain what the internal structure of the Voice would look like, offering a number of hypothetical examples.
So what do the major political parties have to say about the Voice? The current Labor (left to centre-left) government, the ones who will be ultimately responsible for putting forward the question and implementing the outcome, obviously support the Voice (or at least their version of it), having previously supported the Uluru Statement and making a referendum on the Voice part of their election promises. But they have been alarmingly sparse on details of what it is exactly they are supporting. The only message they have been clear on is that the Voice won’t have veto powers over Parliament (something that is of genuine concern). Pretty much the only detail is now-Prime Minister Albanese’s draft referendum question he proposed back in 2022 in the lead up to the election “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?” along with some draft words to add to the constitution which are similarly vague.
The Liberal Party (right to centre-right), the major opposition party, has yet to openly state their position on the Voice referendum, instead repeatedly asking for more detail about how the Voice would function before they state their position. While it’s hard to say with certainty, my feeling is that the Liberal Party generally doesn’t want to support the Voice but can’t state that position openly for whatever reason (internal party politics, don’t want to give left-dominated media ammo) and is instead engaging on this (effective?) strategy of ‘asking questions’ to undermine public support for the Voice.
The National Party (right rural based), the minor party in the Liberal-National Coalition, is the only major party to actually outright oppose the Voice, although it should be noted that their stated justification is not anything along the lines opposing it as an undemocratic, illiberal body or the privileged status it would grant Indigenous Australians over other Australians, but rather for being “another layer of bureaucratic tape” and that the Voice “will not advance the primary aim of Closing the Gap [term used to describe the difference in life outcomes between Indigenous Australians and white non-Indigenous Australians] and dealing with the real issues faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.
Then of course, there’s the Greens, Australia’s progressive party. They whole-heartedly support the Voice to the fullest possible extent, and while they are similarly vague as Labor on details, my impression is that they would support the Voice having veto power or similar powers to Parliament. The Greens also support ‘Truth and Treaty’ which is a whole other can of worms I would rather not get into right now (it’s all the highly woke stuff about ‘Truth-Telling’ and ‘Justice’ and give more privileges to Indigenous Australians). The Green’s position is actually really important, because Labor does not currently have a majority in the Senate, and they need Green crossbench support to pass any legislation relevant to the Voice if it reaches the point.
As a slight aside, Senator Lidia Thorpe, an extremely woke Indigenous woman and Indigenous activist whose actions I previously discussed in an old Motte comment recently broke ties with the Greens over the Green’s support for the Voice referendum (and now is fully committed to representing ‘Blak Soverignity’). This is essentially because she believes the Greens are not radical enough, and she refuses to support the Voice while a Treaty doesn’t exist yet. It says a lot about someone when they think the Greens aren’t radical enough.
As part of the referendum process in Australia, the Government is required to provide a brochure/flyer/information explaining the arguments both for and against the given referendum proposal (including related funding and research, essentially the Government is required to provide support/funding to both sides of the referendum). The Labor Government took steps towards removing this requirement through legislation, claiming such a requirement “out of step with today’s electoral laws and does not reflect modern delivery and communications methods.” Many opposing politicians and commentators quite rightly pointed out that this as a pretty blatant and undemocratic attempt to suppress the ‘no’ campaign, counting on left dominated media to overwhelmingly support the ‘yes’ vote. The Labor government ultimately backtracked in the face of criticism. One more thing of note is that in Senate Estimates the Shadow Minister for Education (Liberal) recently raised the issue of schools only promoting the ‘yes’ case and likening it to ‘indoctrination’. Which absolutely is what is happening, I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty there are approximately zero teachers in public schools opening advocating for the ‘no’ vote and plenty openly advocating for the ‘yes’ vote. As far as I can tell, nothing has come of this event as of yet.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
You're generally right, you're also neglecting the part where she was actually the proto-woke's darling for a brief period early on. Does no one remember the whole 'Dumbledore is gay' and 'Hermione is a black girl' meme controversies? After all, Rowling (like all TERFs, if we want to call her that) is a woke heretic, not a heathen.
I think hoax is a perfectly adequate term. There are billions of people in the world, there's a near certainity that there will be someone, somewhere who will vaguely fit the profile of what scenario you wish to conjure up. But the scenario itself is still fictitious, a deliberate choice to misrepresent (and necessarily fabricate) information.
Even if you want to make the 'well, technically there was at least one dude somewhere saying something along those lines, so it's not a hoax' the obvious and immediate counter-argument is that the hoax is not the fact there is that one guy somewhere, but rather the hoax is the deliberate misreprentation of a non-credible threat as a credible threat, in a situation where it's obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence it's a non-credible threat, least of all supposed 'hate crime experts' like the ADL.
On principle, this is not dissimilar to a situation where someone sees a bunch of mischievous teenagers messing about with some paintball guns, this someone knows they're nothing but mischievous teenagers with paintball guns (who might even talk a big game but everyone including the someone knows are harmless), calling the police on them as an active shooter situtation,where people are being shot and 'potentally' killed then literally everyone believes and parrots the caller, up to the top level of government and media, no one does any due diligence investigating because it plays into their political incentives (an active shooter situation is great fodder for gun control politics). Oh, and it turns out the caller is a owner of a private security firm who tends to gets a lot of contracts after something like this occurs. What would you call that situation, if not a hoax?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
But then again, the reason this does feel slightly discomforting is because we are primed to be especially sensitive towards discussions that might be insulting to women.
We had top level comment a few months ago discussing (arguing) that men are degenerate by default. While there was some disagreement and pushback (including from myself), no one really batted an eye at the topic, and is seen as a completely legitimate topic to discuss with no handholding. In stark contrast, any discussion that involves criticism of women and their behaviour, including this week's, is viewed with suspicion by default and is frequently demanded to have higher standard both in quality and decorum (isolated demand for rigor). Even in the Motte we can't escape it. And for what it's worth, I think the quality of discussion on this week's women/gender politics topic was noticeably higher than the one about men being degenerate, though I'm happy to admit I might be biased in this regard.
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.
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.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
This is because of Toxic Masculinity and because The Patriarchy Hurts Men Too.
This part of feminist theory always amuses me. Like apparently men specifically set up society to benefit themselves by oppressing women but I guess men were so shit at it they created a society that also harms themselves so no one really benefits. This is supposed to make sense apparently.
I agree with this advice.
From my own experience, you can mostly disregard the calls for woke signaling as long as you do not do it overtly at all. Do not explicitly disagree with anyone on woke-related issues (it can end REALLY badly if you do, keep your mouth shut and know when to pick your battles), just simply ignore their requests. If it comes to it, feign ignorance but never follow through with their requests. You can just ignore the email telling you to use pronouns and just don't put them in your email. Specifically in my case in Australia, I also avoid putting any 'Acknowledgement of Country' in any of my work as much as I can get away with.
You do have to be careful around true believers, who will notice your lack of participation and will try to ostracize you, and you might not even realize it. It probably heavily depends on your specific context, but just avoid them at all costs.
The plus side of this strategy is that fellow covert conscientious dissenters will likely notice your lack of participation and will hopefully network with you.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Well, Jews and some Asian ethnicities are smarter on average than white people. I, a white person, hold no ill will towards them.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Are the 'Moralists' even a sizable group, and not, say a tiny minority of woke social media obsessed football fan who simply claim to be speaking for a larger group?
I assume the median English football fan is a low to low-middle class man who couldn't give a shit about LGBT issues.
I'm reminded of the English team's halfarsed moral grandstanding with the Qatar World Cup.
Another day, another 'wokeness is in decline' post. People have been making this claim for the last decade.
What always gets me about these articles, including this one by al-Gharbi, is that there is no actual critical analysis of what 'wokeness' actually is (which presumably would aid in such an analysis if it were actually in decline). There is no mention of ideology or the underlying philosophical beliefs. The impression you're left with when reading al-Gharbi's article and many like it, is that wokeness is just a cultural fad that's had it's day in the sun (according to the author). That wokeness really is nothing more that a bunch of 'crazy kids on college campuses who will grow out of it', but somehow the entirely of Anglo and even Western society has become those crazy college kids. But still, it'll just pass like any other cultural fad... right? We'll all just go back to being good liberals at the end of history.
The woke winning a bit less doesn't mean they're not continuing to win. And they don't have to win as much anymore, because in a large sense they've already won. They have dominated almost every instituion that matters - academia and education, government institutions (bureaucracy), corporations, media and more. Even ostensibly 'conservative' institutions like religion and churches are falling victim to wokeness (mostly under the auspices of 'liberation theology'). In some sense, they have succeeded in Marcuse's goal of creating a 'New Sensibility', albeit a couple generations of ideology removed from his work. It's virtually impossible to deinstutionalise the woke in our present circumstances. Sure, some DEI workers got made redundant because of what seems to be for purely economic reasons and not ideological disagreement. But can you actually imagine DEI departments actually being complete axed and being openly criticised for not just being useless, but actively harmful ideological commissars? Here in Australia, I can't imagine someone actually trying to remove the profession of faith that is the 'Acknowledgement of Country' that preceeds every meeting and event in every institution, succeeding and not just being dismissed as a bigot. Why does every website now have an input for your 'pronouns' that are totally 'optional'?Where are the people telling workers they have to take down their LGBT flags they've put up around the office and yes, they do count as political/ideological declarations.
When these institutionalised woke presences are being actively hunted and removed and openly mocked, then yes, I will agree wokeness is in decline.
Bare link posts without any submission statement should be banned honestly.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Even if I thought your ideas did generally provide the correct outcome, you basically just entirely ignore the actual practical implementation of such policies. How are exactly are you going to engage and destroy the liberal memeplex, which already controls most of media and cultural institutions, and win?
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
the falling fertility rate will eventually stabilize to a lower population but a richer one
Until you hit the demographic crisis where you're counting on the labour of one grandchild to sustain four grandparents.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Fertility is a wicked problem, and I'm not sure what you're asking is even possible, as I think the underlying social/cultural issue can't really be solved by a lone conservative head of state/government in an otherwise hostile liberal democratic global culture though executive political action. But I will attempt to answer the question as a thought experiment nonetheless.
Firstly, I'm going to constrain any potential actions to something that is 1) practical 2) politically feasible and 3) sustainable (so it can't just be easily overturned/revoked as so as you're out of office).
It's easier to highlight incorrect or misguided ideas than it is to identify correct ones so I'll do that first. Economic solutions and incentives do not work. This is not to say they don't have any impact (it can slightly increases it), but they are not going to remedy what is a long term social and cultural issue. As I've pointed out before, the fertility rate of the US was higher under the worst period of the Great Depression than it is today.
Specifically, child care support/subsidies is a complete red herring. While I have no hard evidence to support this (it's not something anyone has ever bothered to study), but I strongly suspect child care support might counter-intuitively have negative effect of fertility rate. I believe that child care support actually encourages women who already have children to start or restart working, and thus lower their long term fertility (have one or two kids, go back to work), rather than the often stated goal of encouraging or helping working women to have kids. In other words, child care support is more aimed at getting young mothers to work (and become 'economically productive') rather helping working women become mothers.
Okay, now for policies that improve fertility and are feasible
- An aggressive campaign remove any form of female affirmative action and similar policies, particularly in education and employment.
This is potentially politically feasible because it's theoretically possible by using the liberal ideology against itself. The most obvious example of this is Title XI lawsuits in the USA used by men to stop women-biased policies and affirmative action (though I must say this is an extremely uphill battle). It's sustainable because it exists within the liberal legal framework already. It's not trivial to overturn a Supreme Court ruling. Though this will heavily depend on the given country's political system. Also, while I say it's feasible, that doesn't mean it's easy or likely. Fighting against gamma bias is extremely difficult. Going any further than this (e.g. actively discriminating against women) is completely unfeasible and any suggestions about this are pointless.
An even more aggressive approach would be to somehow take back control of the education system and academia from woke stranglehold, but I'm not even sure how you would go about it, short of burning the whole thing to the ground and rebuilding, but I don't think that's feasible.
- Destroy and disrupt social media as much as possible, especially dating apps.
This is less about improving the fertility rate, but actively halting what I think is a massive compounding factor to its decline. Social media, especially dating apps, are not at all conducive to the formation of traditional family life, no matter how many people say they found the love of their life on Tinder. Social media more generally is also a vector for political and social ideas that are not at all helpful to the goal, to put it lightly.
The most practical way to go about it would probably be to invoke anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws and attempt to break up the social media/tech companies and extremely weaken their networking effects that way. But this would be a huge effort. It could probably would be possible through playing on existing left-liberal fears of social media and tech companies. The best bit is that there is already a push to regulate dating apps to 'protect women' but this mostly just means to put more burden on to men (usually wanting men to have to provide id to sign up to dating apps), because who would actually want to stop the meaningless casual sex? It would be possible to turn this into just straight destroying the dating apps though in the name of protecting women.
- For certain parts of the world, actively promote religious organizations (especially Catholic Church) and weaken the separation of church and state.
This is only feasible certain parts of the world (for example, Latin America and some parts of Eastern Europe), and presents a double edge sword (or even a Faustian bargain if you're so inclined). Weakening the separation of church and state will result in a whole host of other non-fertility related problems, but is a potential strategy for the question being asked. Churches remain some of the only prominent conservative cultural institutions left, so obviously promoting their influence and status would work towards the goal. The big caveat is that even churches are not immune left-liberal cultural take over, and that includes even the Catholic Church. Not sure about long term sustainability.
I might think of some more ideas later.
Ultimately, I think what's needed is a new traditionalist-conservative vision that leads to a new conservative movement, one that isn't tied to right-liberation ideology (thanks America). I have some vague sense about what it might include, and I think it will happen at some point, but I think it's impossible to know it until it happens. I think it will necessarily have to acknowledge and rebuke both all the liberal and post-modern leftist arguments (post-post-modernism?). In essence, something along the lines of 'yes, we have heard all your arguments about how society should be and found them lacking. The stable traditional family and lifestyle remains the contested champion of the basis to build a functioning, just, prosperous society'.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
DEI has always been about pushing an ideology that the DEI workers were "taught" in colleges and subverting the institutions they embed themselves in. (Of course, self interested grifters like operating via a subversive ideology too).
The 'positive press', avoiding discrimination lawsuits (which are now often pursued by other adherents of this ideology, i.e. racketeering), and my personal favourite "'diversity' is a actually good for business productivity, we swear" are just tactics to get corporate executives and naive liberals on board.
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
3yr ago
Start at the beginning and work you way up.
You can't go wrong with Plato's The Republic. It's honestly one of my favourite books, period. It's quite readable and in relatively plain English (depending on your translation) unlike a lot of early modern and modern philosophical texts which can have a lot of jargon. It basically assumes no prior technical understanding of philosophy. It's actually surprisingly funny.
Philosophy-wise, you can find elements of all modern political philosophical schools running through Plato's ideal city state. Liberalism, fascism, socialism. Along with asking some pretty foundational philosophical questions derived from first principles (what is justice? Why should we value it?). Socrates and Plato having the title of father(s) of Western philosophy is well earned.
I would say that would be pretty dysfunctional society that wouldn't be able to operate effectively, most people would be miserable, if it didn't just completely collapse on itself. Men and women would immediately (unconsciously) attempt to reverse that situtation if it weren't held together by powerful social engineering/political force.
If you don't like the hips example (you can socially engineer people to deny their most basic biological instincts), another example is youthfullness being sexually attractive.
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