MayorofOysterville
No bio...
User ID: 3800
MayorofOysterville
4d ago
There's an oversupply of adoptable foster kids, but an undersupply of adoptable babies. Most people who want to adopt want a baby.
I feel like they are nutpicking. I live in China and just looking out my window I see plenty of happy people and have hung out with many Chinese enjoying their lives. China does have a lot of grinding jobs. it also has a lot of opportunities to carve out a niche if you can resist social pressure. Rent is cheap which allows young people to go to Yunan and open boutique coffee business and live off of it.
It's not that it's unrealistic it's just it's a very specific profile. I could profile a failing town in rural Virginia, Amazon warehouse workers, and medical residents and paint a pretty grim picture of America. China has a lot of people grinding themselves to the bone and a lot of people enjoying life, these aren't necessarily the richest either.
MayorofOysterville
13d ago
It would be easy enough to just limit wees legalization to edibles. Weed is way to socially acceptable to properly ban. No one wants to see bright young college student Becky sent to the slammer for having a dime bag.
MayorofOysterville
13d ago
If you prohibit weed it creates the wedge issue for tolerating drugs, because something like 60% of US college students smoke at least semi regularly nobody really wants to punish Chad and Stacy for a few bong rips.
MayorofOysterville
13d ago
Yes I do. But a lot of people are then arguing that Gnosticism inherently trends to anti-natalism which I don' think it needs to philosophically and I think the fact that we have incredibly ancient extant Gnostic religions prove it.
MayorofOysterville
14d ago
Most Gnostics don't/didn't believe we were maliciously incarnated by a demiurge. The Cathars did syncretizing the concept of a demiurge with Satan and other aspects of the Catholic church. The Nag Hammadi creation texts and the extant Gnostic religions have a much more complicated cosmology and a concept much closer to original sin in the sense that in some of them the material world becomes irrevocably tainted after the rape of eve but not before. In others the world is created bad as an act of rebellion or irrevocably tainted because it's creation was not authorized by God and Yahweh lacked the authority. In some Yahweh is evil, in some he is simply fallible and overcome by lust or pride. and in some the world is created by other entities. But it's a very broad concept I think we have something like five Gnostic creation myths of which we can read the full texts of.
Anyway Gnosticism is a broad category which is a lot more than Cathars, and I wish people on the internet would say Cathars because most of the common internet use of "Gnosticism" is essentially just referring to them.
MayorofOysterville
14d ago
Which is entirely accurate but a lot of these things are specific the Cathars rather than all Gnostics in general. I don't mean to be too nitpicky but its was one of my pet peeves because the internet in general seems to view all of Gnosticism as just the Cathars when it's a much broader category.
MayorofOysterville
14d ago
Gnosticism, a dualist offshoot of Christianity which held that each of us are immaterial souls who have been cruelly trapped inside our flesh prisons by a wicked deity called the Demiurge: thus, in the act of having children, we are condemning yet another soul to be trapped inside a flesh prison against its will.
This is not inherent to Gnosticism anymore than it is to Christianity. Some sects believed this but not all. It's not conceptually different then believing we are inherently flawed due to original sin in fact it basically is this except they view the sin as being different and invert the garden of Eden story. In different gnostic traditions the original sin is the creation of the world or alternatively the rape of Eve by Yahweh in any case this does not inherently lead to antinatalism or nihilism and the two extant Gnostic religions are not such. Foundationally it's far more about inverting the Garden of Eden story and dualism （though usually more functionally polytheism). Of course just as in Christianity there's a winnowing effect where the antinatalist sects quickly die out.
MayorofOysterville
14d ago
On an unrelated note, I don't think the Gnostics were as a rule always antinatalists, though some of them were.
They weren't and the two existing moder Gnostic religions aren't
MayorofOysterville
14d ago
The Gnostics were anti-sex, in the sense that they believed that a celibate lifestyle was morally superior to the alternatives for everyone, with marriage being a second-best compromise. If taken seriously, this becomes anti-natalist in practice.
The currently existing Gnostics the Yazidis and the Mandaeans are not particularly anit-natilist.
Paul spends a lot of effort in the Epistles trying to convince the early Church that marriage (and marital sex) were okay, suggesting that the uncorrected early Church tended to agree with the Gnostics on this point.
Paul's views were pretty complicated on marriage, he says this in Corinthians 1 chapter 7
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman Verse 2 I wish that all were as I myself am. (That is unmarried and childless) Verse 6 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion. Verses 8 and 9.
Now while he does exhort the married to stay married this is hardly a full throated endorsement given than he says the unmarried should not become married and he wishes everyone be unmarried and childless. There have been plenty of anti-natalist Christian movements based on versus like this just as there have been plenty of anti-natalist gnostic movements. The Gnostic concept isn't inherently anymore anti-natalist then verses like this and the idea of original sin. All Abrahamic religions value the spirit over the flesh.
If Russia attacked them sure. And I doubt those 90% are in the Army now and even so when the first Russian missile hits Berlin that number will change real quick.
MayorofOysterville
20d ago
But didn't invade. Starting a war with dozens of first world militaries would be a horrible idea for Russia they can't even handle Ukraine. The modern fighters in the EU alone would doom Russia's Ukrainian adventure. Not to mention the EU's almost two million active duty soldiers.
"The government we set up collapsed, and we had to leave" is a curious definition of victory.
No we left and then the government collapsed. We could have maintained superiority indefinitely had we wanted to. And I never said the US won the war but the Taliban proves the reverse of your point in the Techieland vs Manistan. debate. The US could even now using all female soldiers trivially drive them from Kabul they have no such ability towards Washington DC.
Belgium has a quarter of the population of Afghanistan, and almost 10% of it is Muslim. Moving it closer would, if anything, work to their disadvantage.
Israel has a tenth the population of Egypt and 20% of it is Muslim and they've wrecked Egypt several times. They also huge percentage of women in their military. The West is the best, and constantly wrecks hyper-masculine hyper-patriarchal Arab and Muslim societies despite our lack of manliness.
MayorofOysterville
21d ago
The US was able to invade and overthrow the Taliban from thousands of miles away and occupy the country for 20 years with trivial causalities. The Taliban has no similar capacities. Yes the corrupt failing regime the US set up immediately collapsed but that's not really relevant the ANA weren't techies or feminists. If you moved Belgium next to the Taliban any war would be laughably one sided in Belgium's favor.
MayorofOysterville
21d ago
In Western countries no one is being sent to die, it's an all volunteer military. And in the US even during the height of the GWOT it remained so. As well that the feminists back then were arguing for allowing women to serve in combat arms units and the traditionalists were against. The vast majority of politicians also don't know what war costs how many of them were ever lower enlisted? Also the causality rates for the entire GWOT terror were a rounding error lower then a single major battle in WW2 or WW1. Also since no Western country is ever going "ban women from making foreign policy" Even medieval kingdoms didn't do that. It seems like then it makes sense based on your logic to demand more women in combat arms not less since then they would have "skin in the game" but realistically the Western political class is so removed from military service anyway I think this argument just doesn't have legs, unless you want to go full Heinlein which is also not going to happen. If you really view this as an unacceptable moral hazard 50 50 combat arms gender ratios are the only feasible way to solve it.
I don't think it is. I don't think hyper aggressive women unaware of the cost of violence is an issue. I think our political class using the military too easily is an issue. But Bush, Obama and Trump II have done plenty of that despite having penises and I have a hard time seeing how a woman could have been worse then Bush in terms of cavalierly using the military.
MayorofOysterville
21d ago
This entirely theoretical though as all the major Western powers don't have a draft and America which has the most powerful military in the world is also all volunteer, so is China btw.
MayorofOysterville
21d ago
Russia isn't going to directly bring the EU in for the same reason the US didn't invade North Vietnam. They fear they'll lose of they bring a major power into the war.
MayorofOysterville
24d ago
And Islam, and the Yazidis and as others have pointed out the Zoroastrians. And then we get into what kind of Christianity anyway since plenty of denominations are mutually exclusive.
MayorofOysterville
24d ago
"yeah but just because you felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, that is more easily explained by [launch into neurochemistry, neurobiology, and psychology explanation]" as their standard of proof.
I've felt the Holy Spirit but I still don't believe. I used to but looking into other faiths it's clear a lot of people have sincere encounters with the divine. I don't think either Sufis or Pentecostals are lying when they felt that but there's legion of mutually exclusive religious experiences.
MayorofOysterville
25d ago
Ukraine also committing suicide, but faster?
Ukraine is being killed, not committing suicide.
MayorofOysterville
25d ago
Yes but it's a lot more flexible and you can run it at your own pace. You could decide you want to be a doctor at 40 do a post-bacc and build an application. If all your med school applications get rejected you can strengthen your application and try again. It's selective but less zero sum because you can always improve and try again.
MayorofOysterville
25d ago
I very much agree with this. Lukewarm believers, or even people who follow no tenants or like one. Don't make any sense to me, but I guess a lot of people treat religion totally different then other beliefs and also view it as something you are rather than a statement of the universe. As someone who was raised a conservative evangelical these views were railed against and I always agreed with that. If this stuff matters it really matters otherwise it's nothing. Episcopalians and the like make no sense to me but I'm happy they exist as someone who likes a secular world. I do view them as kind of useful idiots though.
If you believe, you ought to be acting like you believe. You should be giving away every cent you don't strictly need and praying until you can no longer stay upright, treating your eternal soul with at least the seriousness that most people reserve for their pension contributions.
No you don't that's what I meant when I started this. In most Christian denominations hell is fairly easy to avoid even if you sincerely believe in the premise. In most Evangelical denominations you just make a confession of faith or say the sinners prayer and your saved. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are a little more involved but not that much more. If you sincerely believe in the faith then you think you know the rules so hell shouldn't be an issue. None of the New Testament shows being saved as a particularly hard state to achieve.
MayorofOysterville
25d ago
I guess I meant believers when I was a believer I never had much worry, faith the size of a mustard seed and all that, and my faith was much stronger then that. When I stopped believing well I no longer feared hell. In Thomas' thread a lot of people were saying when they were Christians they were worried about hell. I dunno maybe it's my Protestant upbringing that believing in Jesus and accepting him into your heart was how you got to heaven and since I did that I was never too fussed about the whole thing.
Inspired by the fear the reaper thread, It's always been odd to me that so many Christians and ex-Christians report being scared of hell. It always seemed pretty easy to avoid to me absurdly easy in Protestant's case but even for Catholics and Orthodox you just need to go to a priest.
So why don't you leave? This probably sounds harsher then I mean it too. But I did. Life outside the US can be pretty good you are right. So why not go to a first world country like Singapore that's business friendly, or some cheaper country, you could choose a place like Georgia where most people are Orthodox ot as you say Thailand. Those doing NGO grifts probably make less than you so it'd be a downgrade materially and morally. But leaving? You should seriously consider it the rest of the world is fine for an American willing to work with it. Jump on in the water is fine.
More options
Context Copy link