Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
User ID: 83
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
5mo ago
Welcome to Culture War, where you can choose between fighting to the detriment of everyone and surrendering for the benefit of your enemies and the detriment of your own.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
6mo ago
Is today's malaise just downstream of being unwilling to commit to things? The birthrate crisis, the military recruitment crisis- moderners just not wanting to burn their bridges and have no recourse but to see their commitment through?
Yes. Yes it is. I 100% believe this and have vaguely gestured at it before. It's what I observe IRL all the time, every day, in almost every interaction with young-ish urban-ish people. A complete inability to commit to a task, a schedule, a version of the truth, an agreement, a responsibility, a shared model of the world, or even eye contact.
No idea why though. What went wrong?
My point at this point, which I think is quite clear, is that ownership is essentially and definitionally the right to deprive others. That's it. I don't like that. In fact, I detest it with passion and rage. I hate it. So, I want an alternative.
This is ass-backwards.
The definition your chatbot put out may serve your position, but it's clearly not standard and obviously not how ownership normally works. Which is this: Ownership is the right to not be deprived. I.e., the opposite of what you posit.
Do I deprive you of my car? Does my mother-in-law deprive you of the vegetables she grows in her garden? Does my landlord deprive me of the apartment I rent? Do I deprive my employer of the wages I earn? Does a customer deprive a store of the products he buys? Does a hunter-gatherer in a jungle at the other end of the world deprive me of some berries and a squirrel? Do you deprive me of the device you use to post here?
You can argue that any of those statements are true, or come up with some other semantic acrobatics, but in the end it's transparently extremely motivated reasoning.
I normally advise any would-be revolutionary to first understand why the world works the way it does before they waste everyone's time by implementing some half-cocked utopia that's made of fairy dust and ignorance. But posts like this are the opposite of understanding. It's wilful nonsense.
There can be arguments for alternate economic systems, but positing a useless definition of ownership isn't making any of them.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
5mo ago
@SkookumTree succeeding at the Hock, obviously.
You've already got about a million replies, so I suspect there's nothing substantial I can still add to it all. If you even want to read any more!
So here goes. I'm a half-jewish German who strongly identifies as German and effectively not at all as Jewish beyond having some family members who do strongly identify as Jewish. By what German public schooling has taught me was Nazi Racial Science, I fully qualify as a Jew to be reomved, though. My Jewish ancestors managed to flee the Nazis as well as the Soviets unharmed, so I can't claim any tragic family history on that end, though it's entirely possible that they lost many friends that I never heard of. From the German side, I know of many who died in the war, much to the family's detriment.
Politically I'm somewhat all over the place, but cluster strongly with the right-wingers. And my position on WW2, the entire Nazi era and the Holocaust is - it doesn't matter. The epistemic wells have been poisoned. There are no more productive discussions to be had. Anyone except the most autistic historians, the most unfettered reparation-seekers and the most combative wokists will gain more by burying the entire period of history than by rooting around in it. "Never forget" is a terrible approach, in my opinion, and the opposite of what should be done. The consequence of forgetting it will be dropping a ton of poisonous baggage and become a lot more agile, for everyone involved. The consequence will not be the second coming of the NSDAP. And if Jews want to prevent future attempts at Jewish genocide, then IMO they should keep a weather eye on the Muslim world, as I suppose Israel already does, rather than alienate their actual or potential allies by constantly insisting on their historical guilt. I do admit it seems to have worked well enough for a time, and I cannot fault the realpolitik here, but as far as Jewish-German relations go it'll be an own-goal when teaching the Germans to hate themselves results in the islamification of Germany.
And I'll also sing along with the chorus of "please don't go, we want you here, we need people like you!".
This place is, to me, like a martial arts club. You go in, you find someone to spar with, and by the end of the day you learned something about your weaknesses and bad habits. And that just plain does not work when there's nobody around who's willing to expose and exploit those actual weaknesses. "One crow will not claw out another's eye", goes the German saying. When everyone here more or less agrees on their respective world views, there's just not much of value going on. One Witch will not knock out the other even when they're wide open, either because we subconciously don't want that weakness to be exploited (mirror neurons being a bitch) or because we genuinely aren't even aware of it.
The reverse of this is, of course, that any one contrarian to the consensus here will get pummelled. It's like going from boxing to BJJ and all of a sudden everyone's sweating all over you on the ground. It's admittedly disgusting, but if you endure it you will come out a much better-rounded fighter than you were before. Refuse to engage in grappling, and you'll never make it in MMA. I'm probably overstretching this metaphor. But on the other hand, if we here are a BJJ gym...then you can teach us a thing or two about striking. But either way, it requires that we get down and dirty with each other, and there will be complaints about faces getting punched and joints getting locked either way. To de-metaphor it: There will be downvotes and false reports and specious arguments and trolling and all that you might complain of.
So when people here advocate for tossing the jews into the ocean and blame them for all their country's failings - I'd exaggerate if I said I can emphasize; there are too many people here who are on "my side", as it were, and who go too easy on me. Maybe they just recognize that I'm just a midwit and not worth going 100% on. But that's exactly what ought to happen. I want you to stand up to me and tell me why I'm wrong. I most likely am. Who isn't? But I'd rather have that pointed out to me in an online textual sparring setting than by embarassing myself IRL. The alternative to that is simply going with the IRL consensus, but who comes to The Motte with that intention? Who here would not rather learn to be more effective as a contrarian?
I hope you stay.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1mo ago
No.
To some extent, when dealing with the topic of whoring, we must embrace the monstrous, one way or another. Here are our options:
- Tell the kids that whores are disrespectable they will ruin their lives if they whore themselves out, be it for money or attention, because they will be considered at least damaged goods if not somewhat subhuman by most people anywhere and ever. Also tell men with low sexual market value to shut up and stop complaining, they're not getting any and that's final. The shaming is ubiquitous and relentless.
- Tell the kids that whores may fulfill an important function, that their work is valuable and necessary to keep low-status men satisfied, but god damn if you become one you'll be disinherited and booted out of the house because whoring is still disrespectable and it's the lesser humanoids who should do it, not real people! The shaming is somewhat more limited, but still strictly in effect.
- Tell the kids that everything is permitted, you can do no wrong, fuck anything that moves, there are no consequences. They subsequently ruin their lives and cannot comprehend how this cruel world does not support them in their brave life choices. You don't shame, but others will do it for you, because not everyone lives in the anti-shame bubble.
- Tell the kids to do their whoring in style and with discretion, pragmatically and as befits mid- to high-status people. Do it by disguising it as serial monogamy, or "dating", or just do it in private and make sure none of it ever becomes public knowledge. Or just do it in the classic form of medium- to long-term monogamy, they wouldn't be the first trophy wives. You don't shame for the behavior itself, but for a lack of adroitness in engaging in it.
- You somehow brainwash / reeducate / social engineer all of humanity so they buy into the sexual liberation meme and fuck without a care. Abolish all categories of infames. Restructure the world so that nobody can ever do shamefully wrong because everything is right. Shame on you if you actually believe this to be viable.
- Abolish the deeply-ingrained, natural and timeless practice of shaming people and instead skip right ahead to capital punishment and damnatio memoriae, for whore as well as client. Nuke the entire institution from orbit. There is no shame when the would-be shamed party ceases to exist.
- Do it like most western societies do it at present, by mostly just looking the other way and pretending not to see anything. There is no shame when...hey, wait, why are you plastering your whoring all over social media!?
I'm sorry. I can't take the topic entirely seriously when it leads with one of the the least deserving examples possible. Aella, an ostensibly intelligent woman who decided to build her entire name and reputation on doing things that humanity at large considers shameful is surprised when large parts of humanity would rather shame her than praise her.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
5mo ago
Whenever I hear an argument along the lines of "We have to engage in leftist policy X, or else terrible thing Y that right-wingers fear will happen!", I reach for my tired disappointment.
Be honest with me now: you don't want to provide aid to the people of the Global South to prevent radical cultists; you want to provide aid to the people of the Global South because you think it's the right thing to do, and Osama 2.0 is a convenient argument you came up with.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
25d ago
Is there an actual justification for this anywhere or is this just "women can do no wrong" crystallizing into law?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1mo ago
Random thoughts: This is a return to normal. The 20th century saw an excessive standardization of all work as office or factory work, i.e., external workplace work where employed and salaried workers work under direct supervision. Employers now realize that this needn't be universally enforced. You can in fact just hire people to do their job, let them handle the details, and judge them based on their effective output. It may take some bossware to make it function for jobs that rely more on putting-in-hours than on getting-things-done, but that's a fairly minor hurdle.
What was once the craftsman's workshop adjacent to his living quarters, the farmer living on his farm, the daytaler sleeping right next to tomorrow's task, is now the employee working from home. It's a revival of an older and universal theme that was briefly obscured by some of the excessive outgrowths of the industrial revolution.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1mo ago
No offense, but can the mods please just blanket ban any post that builds an argument based on LLM output?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3mo ago
become legal because you do it really fast.
Exactly this has been the modus operandi of immigration advocates and migrants themselves. I don't want to be rude, but man, your side (assumption mine) smashed the defect button so hard on that issue, I'm having a hard time not laughing out loud at your complaint.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
4mo ago
I've always had a sense that "stop illegal immigration" is the bailey while "stop all immigration" is the motte.
Yes it is.
Mostly ignoring the American context, I think it's important to be explicit about this so that nobody gets any funny ideas about calling the job done when illegal immigration is finally consider not-actually-OK again. Mass immigration is a problem in and of itself, illegal or not, and arguing that the problem is merely the legality of it just invites pro-immigration actors to game the system by changing or subverting the laws.
Trying to play cute motte-and-bailey-games by tactically condemning illegal immigration because you think it an easier target when what you really mean is to condemn mass immigration or even any kind of immigration just sets you up for failure further down the line.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1mo ago
Here in rural Germany, being a volunteer firefighter is very high-status, and provides excellent networking. And that is on top of, well, getting to play firefighter.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1mo ago
Why not both? She rapidly solved a local problem and may have had some adverse effects on the commons. She's practical and pragmatic but also a liar and a thief. Fuck, but don't marry. Possibly kill if you're some avatar of zero-tolerance law and order.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3mo ago
I'd better stop here. I've been noticing misandry against men in Western culture for quite sometime, but now it looks like boys are targets too, which makes me a bit upset.
In addition to @DiscourseMagnus' reply, consider the following: What is an attack on men if not an attack on boys? For what else should boys aspire and expect to be?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
5mo ago
Isn't it a bit early for a triumph?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
29d ago
In addition to what all the others wrote, and keeping in mind that leftists are an increasingly rare but still essential resource on the motte, why not leave?
You can enjoy living in a bubble where you're right and everyone around you is right, everyone agrees on everything and there needn't be any controversial debates in which, god forbid, there might not be one side that is clearly correct and another side that falls in line after being shown the obvious truth. Instead, if your American bubbles are anything like our German bubbles, you and the well-aligned people around you who already know what is right and what is wrong can heap fire and brimstone on the outgroup with impunity. Not, mind you, that discourse on the motte is always better than that. But it'll feel good. It'll feel good to be right, and among other right-thinking people, and to hate the wrong-thinkers together. You can bond over your shared hatred, and if that ever gets boring, have a little purity spiral and ostracize some of your former own who didn't stand sufficiently far on the right side of history. And when you're done hating, you can go back to educating those around you, teaching them the latest and greatest in sociopolitical innovation.
Leftists do this. Rightists do this. Apolitical people who stumble into political bubbles and just try to fit in do this. Why shouldn't you do it too?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
5mo ago
Here's my view: Doomerism overestimates the speed, globality and uniformity of collapse, and underestimates the ability of individuals and economies to adapt.
Proof: Every prediction of doom ever compared to the actual outcome.
Of course this will be true until it isn't, but so far it doesn't look to me like we'll be relieved of the burden of having to live in this grotesque dystopian hellscape (thanks @naraburns) anytime soon.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
6mo ago
I don't really believe that gravity can just be beaten. I'm pretty sure this is a hoax, psy-op, misunderstanding or such.
And with that said - why can't those mystery drones just use boring old rotors, jets or rocket thrusters to fly? What exactly makes people believe in some fantastical negation of gravity here?
And yes, this is me asking for a spoonfeed because I don't want to wade through a million words of crazy talk.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
25d ago
Not sure. This seems like a fairly evident instance of moderating the post and not the poster. Hadad's was rule-compliant even if it was bad, whereas Chris' contained a personal attack and thus broke a rule even if it correctly identified Hadad's post as bad. Pretty much just like Amadan's modpost said. If this actually encourages Hadad (and/or others) to post more screeds and discourages Chris (and/or others) from arguing against them, then...well, that's not good either, of course, but it's by no means certain that that will even be the effect. Whereas ignoring the rules to play favorites with this or that poster just throws the foundations of the motte out of the window, which is certain to have negative consequences for everyone.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3mo ago
Why are "Status Quo", "Status Quo from the next town over" and "Hyperbole" the only viable options?
IMO the appalling part is that they made Henry AND Hans bisexual. Both the main characters who so far hadn't shown any gay inclinations suddenly become open to anything? Yeah no.
realistic RPG with no fantasy elements
> Hit points
> Magic potions
> There are no children
> Cutting through plate armor
> Crouching makes you quieter
> Near-fatal wounds heal within minutes
> Horses are motorcycles that don't need fuel
> Everyone sits around on their asses waiting for you to come by and solve their problems
> You are an absolute nobody who can become absurdly skilled and rich and respected in the span of a few days
It's a perfectly conventional fantasy RPG with a few "realism" elements.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3mo ago
The 20% who voted for the AfD, the 28.5% who voted for the CDU given its campaign promises, and the 4% who voted FDP...
I'm not saying that these are the people and others are not. I'm also not saying that the CDU traded poorly on Realpolitik. I'm saying that the CDU is extremely brazen in how it goes back on its promises, and that this gives credence to the far-right's usual accusations that no matter which establishment party you vote for, you're getting the same policies either way.
Related to @IGI-111 's post: https://www.themotte.org/post/1754/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/310065?context=8#context.
This is why I've always thought "party switch" arguments to be sophomoric. Politics is about coalitions. Any glance at any country's political history would tell you that political positions are driven by the expediencies of retaining a coalition that can maintain power, and literally nothing else.
After the recent federal elections, the victorious conservative CDU are looking to give themselves financial leeway by undoing the the so-called "debt brake", written into the constitution, which strictly limits how much debt the government can build up to balance its budget. In order to do so, they called upon the old parliament to quickly push through a slew of constitutional changes including the relaxation of the debt rules. In order to collect the required two-thirds majority, the CDU has given the Greens a constitutional commitment to climate neutrality by 2045.
In order to govern, the CDU aims to form a coalition with the Social-Democrats. And those have now announced their demand: Unconditionally legalize abortion. A trifle compared to what the greens got, who will not even be part of the coalition.
During the election the CDU played the part of the culture-warriors standing up for conservative Germans. They broke taboos to demand a crackdown on immigration, painted the Greens as agents of deindustrialization and poverty, and made a stand on balancing the budget without further debt. But that was then, and now it's time to jettison the drama in favor of getting along with everyone except the nationalist AfD who, I remind you, received the second-largest share of votes.
This is pretty much telling the stupid neo-nazi tinfoil hats that yes, they were right, the establishment is entirely willing to conspire against the people, democracy is a sham and the constitution is a worthless piece of paper.
Looking forward to a great four years.
I don't think so. Rather the opposite really - true believer leftists are very secure in their belief of the correctness of their ideas, to the point where experiments are in fact immoral, since people will end up suffering from the wrong solutions, and unnecessary because the good leftists already know the correct solutions.
Does this sound boo-outgroup? I'm serious, as an ex-leftist who spent decades in a leftist bubble and still lives next door to it. Experimentation may seem like a golden compromise to someone with enough epistemic humility, but epistemic humility is completely absent from the water the left swims in. They know. They know what the problems and the solutions are, and experimentation can only be worse than doing the obviously correct thing.
There's also a practical, political reason not to allow this - they have long-marched through most institutions; why ever give up now?
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