TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
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User ID: 2854
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
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo 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
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo 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
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo 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.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
If you grant the assumption "civilization will almost certainly collapse with bodies piling up in the streets within fifteen years"
Glad we agree that it would be an absolutely insane thing to assume, but if I actually had reason to believe that I'd plan accordingly, and still have children. It's happened many times before and probably will many times again.
I'd also have the kid who's (allegedly) going to die within fifteen years, though that gets back to moral foundations that I don't expect to share in common with most here.
To get me to shy away from having kids, I'd need to be convinced, and I mean really convinced, that there is little chance of saving them from fates worse than death. Getting hoovered up by Cthulhu for example, or forced into some kind of AI-run entertainment/nutrition pods where they have no opportunity to learn about nature or real history and instead have their minds' semiotic webs wrecked by bombardment with false impressions.
If an asteroid were definitely going to hit the earth in 18 months we'd still have another kid and cherish our time with him or her.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
Thanks for the clarification. That made it easy to flag you as "Too retarded to be worth interacting with in the future" though I'm not one for blocks, myself.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
In my personal experience, white leftists often have an enormous guilt trip when it comes to black teens and are eager to 'do the right thing' even at general societal expense to give more chances and demonstrate how morally virtuous we are. I went to at least one primarily-black school and what I found there was that teachers would do almost anything to overlook black behavior and avoid disciplining blacks. Partly due to the incentives to not look racist, but partly because they seemed to have an attitude of "It's not really their fault, it's culture, and the legacy of white racism", etc.
I have seen this in schools, in the legal system, and even in personal life where someone assaulted by, or stolen from by, blacks has wanted to appear nonchalant about it because getting upset would be a bad look. "They needed it more" etc. so now it's an opportunity, if not obligation, to signal economic and social status by being above the situation. This is a surprisingly-common tendency.
I think it's probably indicative of some kind of deep pathology that the details of the physical, mechanical angle was immediately imagined to be the only thing I could possibly be having trouble understanding, with zero consideration of everything else involved in sex.
It's simple, right? Benis and Bagina. What's not to understand, kid?
How about "How is this going to affect your self-image, relationships to family and community, and ultimately your (notional) future marriage?" I was very aware of all that in play, plus much more, and no, I didn't understand it. Nor frankly was I quite willing to believe that this married woman and friend of my family was trying to have sex with me, and had to overcome a very high threshold of giving her the benefit of the doubt, which was also kind of awful.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
How did you manage to conclude that I didn't know what intercourse was? There are dimensions to sex vastly more complicated than tab A into slot B. There are personal, social, spiritual considerations and learning to navigate those isn't simple. Especially when it's your mom's friend who's pushing you.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
I strongly suspect that their race also had something to do with the kid gloves.
Yeah, the "we didn't have kids because it's bad for the environment and anyway now we get to spend all our time and money flying around the world (which is terrible for the environment)" couple is fairly iconic at this point.
My understanding is that in fact they simply don't see themselves as the inheritors and stewards of a way of life that is worthy of perpetuation. This is easily-attributable to any number of facets of the leftist memeplex. Tangentially, they don't feel that they owe anyone anything and have no problem squandering the accumulated blessings of their ancestors for one big party before they 'go out clean' and end their lines forever.
It's interesting to observe. Doesn't bother me until it's someone I know.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
One of the only things I know about my children's future is that they will die, and that it will probably be ugly. I'm a lot more concerned with the meaningfulness of their lives.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
Idk, it doesn't make sense intuitively that much, causing you discomfort by unwanted advances doesn't mean they deserve to go to prison for years.
Talk about moving goalposts. We're not talking about causing discomfort by making unwanted advances, we're talking about sex, and some of us are still backward enough to think that's a big deal.
I was an attractive youth and got some attention from pretty, relatively-young female teachers, but nothing over the line even given the much wider latitude afforded by society at the time. This was gratifying and is especially so in retrospect as I understand it better, whereas in the moment I didn't really know how to interpret anything and wasn't sure.
But when I was 16 I did babysit for a while for a military wife whose husband was often away, and she came on to me pretty strong. She'd touch me a lot and suggest that maybe sometime she could get another babysitter and the two of us could hang out. That kind of thing. Again, I wasn't fully sure about what was happening, and had the sense I should probably tell my parents about it, but chose not to. I didn't feel threatened, even though it was weird, and maybe a little exciting. She was very cute and probably about 28.
In retrospect it bothers me more. I am very glad she didn't push harder. I'm pretty sure I'd have refused, and probably gotten out okay, but it would have been severely traumatizing. And if I'd gone along with it, that would have been worse. Talk about life regrets! I care a lot about my sexual integrity and have never slept with anyone but my prior and current wife. I'm physically sick at the thought of that being taken from me when I was, mentally and spiritually, very much still a child who didn't exactly understand what was going on. And that's beside the damage to her family, and the community more generally if it were discovered, which I can only suppose it would have been eventually.
Perhaps in other cultures, where the rules of human engagement are spelled out clearly and boys are prepared for such things by 16, there could be room for older women pushing them into it. But having been close to something like that myself, I have no sympathy for the ones who do it in our culture.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
I'm pretty omnipilled on women but I'd still like to know what you're implying here.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
I think I'm probably at 70%. Yeah it's just a problem and it pays to develop a keen instinct to return anything you're not sure about as soon as possible. If it looks good you'll know. If you're not sure you'll end up regretting keeping it probably nine times out of ten.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
19 year old
Actually this explains a lot.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
I thought it was fantastic the first time, but have never been able to re-read it and I have no idea why. But I've read A Deepness In the Sky twice and loved it both times.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
Thanks, saved me a read. I've never been very happy with Vonnegut. Increasingly kind of confused as to how he attained the status he has.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
Currently reading:
- Desolation Island Patrick O'Brian
- The Monastery of the Damned Nicholas Tobias
- Interwar Articles Ernst Junger
- The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865 Mark Peterson
- High Output Management Andrew S. Grove
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
Another comment because hey why not:
"Cogito ergo sum" has always struck me as too generous. We can grant that something exists which (for the moment) believes itself to be ourselves, but that's not necessarily the same thing as our concepts of ourselves. I have been penguins, and so on, in my dreams.
Being is, and this conscious experience is the only access we have to it -- but as you say, that's a far cry from this thing I call 'me' existing in any meaningful sense. And that's before we get to questions about our memories, capacity for reason, or ability to observe ourselves.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
@reo's comment made a good start and I just want to jump in and echo that "The Self Has Value" is doing a phenomenal amount of work for what amounts to a stipulation. It begs any number of absolutely vital questions, not least the validity of the concept of 'value' which at least needs to be defined before serving as such a critical building-block.
Really, I don't think I can comment on what follows that part without knowing what you mean by 'value'. And, cards on the table, I suspect that I'm gonna have problems with your definition.
That said I'd like to commend you for coming here and putting your thoughts out to the world for vetting. I think you've probably come to the right place, though I'm not sure the particular people who could serve you best will see this thread.
TitaniumButterfly
Blank and pitiless as the sun
1mo ago
individual consciousness is part of the Universal Consciousness (like Advaita Vedanta)
FWIW this is close to my understanding as an Orthodox Christian as well, what with God being the seat of all consciousness. Our temporal existence is the ultimately-successful process of uniting with Him, though our perception of that is locally-limited for our protection (expulsion from the garden because in our current state the full perception of God would destroy us). David Bentley Hart, certainly one of the most prominent contemporary Orthodox thinkers, says fairly often that modern Christian understanding isn't Vedantic enough and we should be looking further into it. More and more I find myself quietly convinced of panpsychism.
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.
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