You find life "viscerally" valuable, you find the fruits of your society enjoyable enough that you want to be alive for them. You clearly value your civilization and its continued existence. You just don't care if someone younger gets to or at least gets out before it all goes to hell.
I don't see why this would change anything about the pro-natalist/pro-civilization argument. Is it providing new information? This all seems like the prosecution's case being made for it.
People who benefit from a thing but refuse or are unable to care for its continued existence for whatever reason have always existed - usually people assume they're talking to people prosocial enough to not bite that bullet, invested enough in the common good to not benefit from doing so (what if you were twenty years younger and can't count on croaking before it gets really bad?) and agentic enough that they can impact the outcome if they're convinced. And it is also debatable if you can enjoy that standard of living without a concern for fertility.
The standard of living is good across the developed world, by definition, but there are also clear signs of strain due to the aging population. What if you're the one fucking up the math? Live a little too long, run out of money too soon before you croak? Assuming a safety net that isn't there? Your own logic should drive you to care.
Most people really don't think in thousand or even hundred year timescales. They think about what would stop them and their children from losing out on the sorts of fruits you enjoy and that's enough. Their grandchildren can run the same logic, ad infinitum.
They do this for the same reason police in the US write tickets for people going 45 in a 30 instead of 90 in a 55. It's safer, easier, the person going a measly 45 is more likely to comply, and they just don't give a fuck.
I've also heard theories this is a desperate hail mary to game the stats and have more white people committing "sex offenses" since the current stats are so stubbornly brown
I'm fascinated by the fact that people like Jess Philips have no problem talking about misogyny or condemning the more gender egalitarian Western societies but generally but shy away from specifically targeting minority communities (I don't see how this can fit @TwiceHuman's model: if the point is for high status men and women to tamp down on low status behavior why give low status minorities a pass?). The (apparently correct) assumption is that they're the ones that will take it.
It really does seem like a weird displacement thing where you go after the easy cases. The charitable stance is that they go after both in the background but it's rhetorically easier to not get into migrant/brown crime. I don't know how many people in the UK believe that though.
The example I provided was a picture of women in full niqab. My experience with men from countries where niqab is common is that they are often extremely distressed by the comparatively immodest dress of Western women. Traces of that remain in most Western regimes, too, though usually limited to the exposure of genitals (and sometimes breasts) being treated as legitimately "distressing" to display.
I'm pretty sure there was a post here by a frustrated man who didn't appreciate seeing tight gymwear constantly in public. I can't find it now unfortunately but I believe it was well-received or even AAQC.
So apparently not just a Muslim thing.
Modernity for them often means "the consensus of the last couple of decades". Which is how you often get claims that some relatively new understanding or institution is all that stands between people and barbarism. The laws they ignore presumably are from less civilized times.
Makes sense in that light.
Funny, my impression is that it was a drug driven thing. People being high would explain the repetition, the weird descriptions of physical sensations and how long they go.
And I think that would place them on the far end of consumption habits.
Nerds were wrong to enjoy attractive female characters in their videogames, because misogyny, patriarchy, and oppression of women. But at the same time these nerds were two clicks away from the most graphic hardcore pornography that has ever existed.
You can't do much about porn, it's too low status and ubiquitous. People already think it's low status so trying to make it more so is just a waste of energy . And you can't "improve" it because the rubber really meets the road there. (Same reasons the current backlash to porn is irrelevant if you don't pull a UK. It was rape to feminists in the past, 'cool' or at least accepted at some point, and is now being seen more negatively by feminists. People who consumed did so regardless)
You can however do something about nerds and what they're liking in public. Since sff media became mainstream and arguably took over the box office in the 2010s, people have an incentive and levers to fight those battles.
Tanista
1mo ago
But the black UFC ring girls pass it.
Those are for guys, like Sweeney.
Zendaya clearly isn't unattractive, but she seems to get a lot of admiration from women and red carpet watchers for how she glams up rather than raw sex appeal.
The goblins are allegedly Jewish caricatures. A lot of the bits of evidence that are brought up - like a Star of David on the floor of Gringotts - are either coincidences or issues caused by the adaptation (the location they were filming in had them already).
On the other hand, they do run the banks, hounded at least one person in canon over debts and do have a different understanding of property (anything wrought by goblins is seen as only leased for the lifetime of the wizard who bought it which...you can see how that could lead to misunderstandings) that leads to at least one goblin betraying the team for treasure.
think that part of the backlash is simply because a lot of people started out primed with a disdain for Sweeney, mainly because of the perception that her popularity is driven purely by her looks, namely her curves
The backlash is because she was in proximity to something Republican - a MAGA-themed party for her family - while looking like the stereotypical hot blonde and playing into it.
There's a similar thing where there's a sort of lurking contempt for Chris Pratt a) being overexposed and b) the church he goes to and his mere silence on progressive issues. The fact that the attempted canceling of him failed when his costars circled the wagons makes it worse: a certain sort of person becomes even angrier in this situation. So the whole thing never goes away. They just...wait for the next thing.
This might sound a bit crazy. That's because it is strange, odd behavior. Nothing is new about this of course. The internet is full of such people (one could argue their labour keep parts of it running). Anyone who's modded can tell you about that crazy person that just can't let go of the bit between their teeth. They become incensed that X is wrong online, they make endless sockpuppets, they lie in wait, they make all sorts of tendentious claims as a way to attack people. Left to their own devices, even just a few can change the culture of a place. I suspect they get off on that too: forcing everyone to be hyper-vigilant around whatever they've decided is their issue today. The main difference is that the media and the masses of right-thinking "allies" don't encourage the ones you run into on random forums, unless it serves some interest of theirs.
COVID was a halcyon age for such people and they don't want it to be over.
Tanista
1mo ago
These mistakes are not that hard to correct
This then raises the question of why these mistakes are so pervasive. This is somewhat understandable for the average, random wokie, but why is it also true for the intelligentsia of this movement, who are presumably paid to know how to bring about individualism?
Most 'root causes' that get highlighted by activists are just correlates of criminality (e.g. poverty) not causes.
You'll see someone raise a point that's evidence for "just like that" position and draw completely different conclusions. The funny one usually goes something like "Jamie spent 30 years in and out of juvie and prison for various violent offenses. His dad also went to jail for murder and he was raised by his single mother. Just another example of how interactions with the justice system create an intergenerational spiral".
It never seems to occur to the people most likely to use this stuff.
But it didn't. And once it happens everyone knows it's possible. And now that's the reality both governments have to live in. Just as Israel has to respond if only for domestic reasons, Hamas may also be emboldened.
We're also operating with hindsight about how (in)effective Hezbollah would be here. A situation where Hezbollah is also emboldened while Hamas is still effective and untouched looks significantly more dangerous after Oct. 7.
Do the inherent population and cultural differences between Canada and the US really justify that?
At a quick glance the murder rate is 2.5-3x lower in Canada compared to the US. So a lot of the force of that number is cut down immediately.
I've also seen arguments that legal systems play a role: stronger protections in some domains mean that the US must use incarceration as a relatively blunt tool rather than catching people early.
I think the more likely truth is that the US is well past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to prison capacity
Based on? The post-Floyd loosening of the justice system's grip made things notably worse. It didn't lead to a massive exodus of unfortunate bike couriers caught with a blunt from the jails, instead criminals showed themselves.
Does it really matter that the US is topping the charts? Similarly rich countries are probably going to be less violent and criminal (certainly with the cases listed like Canada and Australia) and poorer and more criminal societies probably have less state capacity.
This of course all went to shit when the Saudis leveraged their stewardship of Mecca and the Aramco money to turbocharge Wahabism. Maintaining local control by exploiting Islam is one thing, actively exporting it is another.
This might simply be inevitable. Progressives have a seemingly totally secular ideology with no holy site but they also often coalesce around a certain set of specific totems and doctrines, even across borders.
The world is too connected now, we simply know too much about one another. Many localized forms of Islam - especially the offshoot religions generally considered heretical - will always be put under pressure by people attempting to make them orthodox because it's so much easier to notice and police now.
I come from a seemingly laid-back Muslim background but even we had the sense that there was such a thing as being more devout and strict and people who went that route were praised. The potential for being forcibly realigned with more conservative versions of Islam was always lurking.
You see similar things with claims that evangelicals essentially invented modern homophobia in African nations. Those countries have just as much access to the latest advances in liberal theory. It's their own judgment that the evangelicals better align with the faith that makes them more attractive, not their money or overwhelming control over the American cultural industry. The other side has that. But it can't change that they feel one case is just stronger
I think Michael C. Cook puts it well in Ancient Religions, Modern Politics (albeit using an extreme example):
My approach likewise diverges from the view that there is no such thing as Islam, just many local Islams. This view is perfectly coherent in principle, and some fragments of reality do indeed help us to imagine what it would be like to live in a world in which it was true. A plausible example of the ever-increasing religious entropy that would characterize such a world may be found among the Muslim Chams of Indo-China, particularly those of Annam, as described by French observers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their pantheon overlapped with that of their neighbors, the Hindu Chams, and included a mother goddess. They had a manuscript of the Bible that told of the creation of the sun god and moon goddess,8 and a central role in one of their rituals was played by a priestess.
This is not to say that they had lost touch with other forms of Islam altogether. They still knew about Allāh; indeed such was their respect for him that they abstained from sex on Mondays, the day of his birth.10 They still recited texts that bore some relationship to the Koran, and while the laity observed only a three-day Ramaḍān, the priests fasted for the full month.
Yet it does not take a card-carrying Wahhābī to feel an element of shock at this picture. We have here an example of a religion that has drifted so far from its origins as to be within sight of exemplifying a teasing idea developed by a philosopher of intellectual history: a tradition that has gradually changed over time to the point that no single element present at the start is still there at the end.
But to think of the Muslim world as nothing but a mosaic of religious traditions like that of the Chams would be very misleading. In the world in which we actually live, such unchecked drift is unlikely to continue indefinitely. A few centuries ago Islam was undoubtedly more polylithic than it is today, but it has never been a heap of rubble -- the centrifugal forces of time and distance are countered by the pull of homogenization.14 Such homogenizing forces were already at work in pre-modern times; more metropolitan forms of Islam have always had the potential to trump local differentiation. Modern conditions have rendered the effect even stronger. The Chams are again a case in point: a French source of 1891 mentions that some years previously three Muslim villages had abruptly abandoned the worship of their Cham gods; this was after a foreign Muslim who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca was passing through and condemned such practices.The pilgrim from Mecca had clearly put the Chams on the spot. But in a world in which there really was no such thing as Islam, just many local Islams, there would have been no spot for him to put them on.
Also, the left has been hijacked by opportunistic arab/islamic in-group pandering.
Yeah, a lot of this discussion is basically delusional in that it treats it as an ideological battle with coherent positions for Westerners to settle. It's tribal for a lot of people. They feel no need to be fair so there's no magic judo trick to be pulled on them. Like any group engaged in competition, they've just learned the rules. That pressing a certain button helps their cause.
If they ever won outright the pretense that it's about oppression as such goes out the window.
Tanista
1mo ago
Given this, the best solution is backing one side to break the stalemate and take over, the quicker tge better.
What does this mean in practice? Where do the Palestinians go?
Tanista
1mo ago
They could, however, be called "Egyptians" with no major disruption to that polity
They have been accepted into other Arab countries. I don't think it went with "no major disruption".
It doesn't matter because they don't actually believe a lack of support alone would suffice.
That's why they call for South Africa style sanctions and boycotts.
The aid point is just the first step, and a way to deflect the charge that they care disproportionately about Israel due to antisemitism. And fair point on that I guess. But it is just the thin end of the wedge.
Yeah, this case seems ridiculous on its face. But then, Trump is a ridiculous figure.
All that needed to happen , anywhere, was for someone else to have picked the "be fucking reasonable" option. Part of the reason I'm so contemptuous of the moralistic line is that people seemed to have gotten drunk on their own Koolaid and made everything worse.
Perhaps after the end of Trump, the USA will be in a position where it can apply for readmission to the human race...
The idea that America's/the Wests standing rises or falls based on how it treats every migrant was a cope to deter critics and act as a self-esteem bolster for migrants themselves.
It clearly seems to have failed to stop the seething (even from totally unrelated migrants an ocean away) so one wonders if it should just be subject to the same critiques as the broader self esteem movement.
There are cases of people making movies with iPhones , so anything is possible. TV has gotten more ambitious and it may have made smaller movies cheaper to make. But VFX-heavy tentpoles seem to be another thing.
There's a ton of talent in this field, including some that are known for being very clear with their vision and so not prone to ballooning budgets. But even for people like Villeneuve who have shown they can work lean or allegedly modestly budgeted MCU flicks we end up ~180-200m. Given inflation that may be a cut but not as large as you'd need.
If anything, the big companies might be able to bully more work out of their contractors than a newcomer would. Victoria Alonso, who was recently booted from Marvel potentially as a scapegoat, was apparently notorious for wringing every bit of labour she could from VFX artists so she could get endless changes before she made a final decision
Tanista
1mo ago
Create a pro-American superhero narrative that gets released to the same theaters that Woke Marvel goes to
This implies that Hollywood (and academia) will be the last to flip because no one else* is going to make $200 million movies regularly. It's just not viable.
You basically have to wait until an AI-driven paradigm shift can let weird nerds like Lucas make non-horror blockbusters for ~$60 million that look world class again.
* Well, maybe barring the Chinese.
If you're an anti-natalist who believes that life is inherently suffering this makes sense.
I'm not really sure why you'd be that bothered about it given your own experience. By your own account life can be very good. Seems like you got a good deal here.
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