TitaniumButterfly
No bio...
User ID: 2854
TitaniumButterfly
10d ago
The older I get, the more I've come to believe that humans are only mostly monogamous, or rather "serially monogamous".
We don't need to paint all of humanity with the same brush. In fact there's lots of room for individual and group-level variation here, even speaking on a purely instinctual level before nurture comes into it.
TitaniumButterfly
10d ago
I used to have fun asking people if they could think of a few examples of evil priests in fiction. No problem of course; there are many. Then I'd ask if they could think of any non-evil priests in fiction. Crickets.
Over the years a couple of examples have come up, of course, but mainly it's a landslide in the other direction. Particularly for anyone who mainly consumes contemporary media as opposed to reading Chesterton or something.
TitaniumButterfly
11d ago
No, I'm afraid not. I'm unlikely to see it either because I'm just not in the habit of watching TV. I like the idea of watching more TV and have several series I've been meaning to finish, but who has the time?
But thanks, that does sound interesting.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Yeah no, I have a lot of kids and another on the way and no plans to stop for a while yet. I get that part. I'm just hung up on the bit about society, yeah.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Yeah, I'm in a much better area for that sort of thing. Quite the mix of rich and poor. California, really.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Sold it, I hope. Exercise equipment drifts in and out of my home for various reasons but I'm usually able to recoup about as much as I paid for it initially.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Turning the dial converts some of the mass to energy. Warranty void if attempted. User assumes all personal and planetary existential risk.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
To show off to guests, of course. Or to cool off on hot days. Knew a guy out in the desert who'd jump into his pool several times a day over the summer months.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Wait! I want to comment on the cartoon too!
While basically sympathetic to the artist's point, what mainly occurs to me here is that in the first three panels people were living a lifestyle that let them be home with their kids a lot.
Both parents out of the house working, and especially if it's for low wages, is indeed hard. Also lack of family or community around to help with that. Also can't let them play alone outside. Also you're gonna need a bigger car if you want more than two, and those things don't grow on trees. Also also also...
So it's like a system where the handle goes down into some kind of arrangement of plates, you dial in what you want, and those ones engage and become attached? So basically just a convenient way to load and unload plates?
Does it use magnets? :3
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
This seems to suppose that the society in which I find myself -- and perhaps more importantly its leadership -- has incentives which are nearly-aligned with my own, which seems pretty debatable both presently and historically.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
you wouldn't be able to run your electoral hydra scheme without the cooperation of the city/county
So you're saying there's a chance!
I'm having a real fun time trying to figure out how the mass of a dumbbell can be adjusted by turning a dial!
Edit: best I can come up with is some kind of onboard air compressor and storage tank.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Coordinating that and managing the people involved, who would then have standing for adventures like minority shareholder lawsuits, would be much more troublesome.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Thanks, that's mostly what I wanted to know. Still curious though about tradeoffs and where our personal obligations to sacrifice for the society begin and end.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
The avoidance of pain is the central tenet of our societies.
Not sure I'd phrase it quite like this but agreed that it's a major factor. In practice it looks a lot to me like a desire for what amounts to palliative care until death.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
I think it was pretty smart of me to not have sex in high school.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
This seems like a fully-general argument against, uh, laws? I can't think of any that don't come down to what amounts to values. Murder has been legal and even encouraged in plenty of societies, for example, though with certain (values-based) restrictions.
I think that [the modern notion of] consent is a troublesome concept for any number of reasons. Actually more than troublesome; unworkable, even.
The way things actually work in my experience is that sex is something that happens within marriage and marriage must, by its nature, be approved by the community or at least the priest, which is a pretty excellent filtering mechanism.
All the handwringing about consent occurs to me as people having shattered a priceless vase and hurriedly trying to work out hacks for handling the shards without nicking any arteries. But one has only to take a glance at the sheer amount of blood on the floor to realize it's not going well.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
I don't think there's a viable societally-general solution, but my local solution of being part of a religious community where motherhood is high-status seems to be working out fine. Good luck to everyone else, I guess, and hopefully we'll still be here when you're ready to try something other than whatever it is you're doing now.
I was talking about this with a woman a while back (it came up organically) but put my foot in my mouth when I mentioned that female fertility drops off precipitously at about age 35. She was a career woman who was very much hitting her "Oh no I've made a huge mistake" phase and I supposed it would be helpful to give her a nudge in the right direction. Except it turned out she was already 35, which I had totally failed to consider because she was East Asian and looked 28 at the oldest.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
I agree, but am curious as to why you think, as it were, that any of that matters. Why is 'society' a god worth serving? How deep do our sacrificial obligations to it run?
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
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.
Leaving aside the fact that 'original sin' in the sense you seem to mean it is a peculiarly Roman Catholic concept, yeah, there's a huge difference between that and having been maliciously incarnated by a demiurge. Actually I thought for a moment about how to illustrate just how radically-different those two things are but came up blank.
TitaniumButterfly
12d ago
Have you ever felt, in moments where you suspect that things have gone surprisingly well for you all things continued, that you might already be living such a life?
I think about this several times every week, and for the other reasons you mentioned too. If I really look at my life and the world around me, my most compelling conclusion would be that I'm in some kind of ~alien zoo set up to keep me stimulated and challenged but fundamentally still incredibly-blessed. I seem to get stuff everyone wants but hardly anyone has, from my wife to my career to the place I live. Amazing friends and opportunities. Amazing access to intellect and information. Too many great coincidences.
I try to be grateful and have faith in the power responsible, but it's all very confusing.
The main evidence against it is that most of the time everything is still fairly prosaic and I'm generally under enough stress to keep me hustling. But despite many horrible experiences in my past I can't think of any for which I didn't end up grateful in the long run.
Wouldn't be terribly surprised if when I die the hyper-VR rig comes off and the rest of my memories come back and I think "Holy shit that was a rush". If that happens I just hope that the people around me were real too and that we'll still have each other on that higher plane.
Zadok from the Old Testament? Is this one of those "move all the Bibles into the fiction section of the bookstore" things?
Admittedly at first I got him mixed up with Zardoz and was like man I guess I should have finished watching that movie.
More options
Context Copy link