To_Mandalay
10mo ago
Whether women wanna date men who make less money than them is a totally different question from whether the disappearance of traditionally masculine jobs from the economy contributes to a crisis of masculine identity.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
So if she had said "1/3" surely there would have been no complaining and right-wingers wouldn't have ridden the "THEY CALLED TRUMP SUPPORTERS DEPLORABLES" hobby horse for the next several years.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
You guys do terrorist attacks all the time though. Every couple months one of you ODs on 2016 /pol/ memes and shoots up a synagogue or a mosque or a crowd full of blacks and Mexicans.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
Counterpoint: Say something about someone's mom who is from a traditionalist culture and if you survive the reaction you should reevaluate women not being valued. Mothers and matriarchal figures are highly respected.
Of course women have value in traditional societies. More than livestock. But less than men.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
To claim that modern society has devalued motherhood and femininity, or made them low status, is completely backwards. Motherhood and femininity in general have been devalued for as long as patriarchy has existed, so pretty much the whole of human history. I can't think of any human cultures, let alone any of the big-name European and near-eastern ones that the modern west is descended from, which have not considered the female sphere and female pursuits to be intrinsically lesser than that of men.* The "oh, women aren't inferior to men, they just have different strengths/they're made for different roles" line you hear from conservatives nowadays (what Christians call 'complementarianism') is itself an anti-modernist rearguard action. For the great majority of the history of western civilization, philosophers, theologians, and intellectuals, whether Pagan, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or atheist, have been happy to state that actually, women are just strictly inferior to men. It's the reason you occasionally get figures like Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great who are praised for being essentially men in women's bodies, but you never get men praised for being essentially women in men's bodies.
What happened in more resent centuries isn't that motherhood and womanhood were devalued. Motherhood and womanhood were devalued way back in the primordial past, and only recently have women been allowed to escape such devalued roles at scale.
You can't make motherhood 'prestigious' because motherhood has never been prestigious. Closest thing would just be banning women from doing actually prestigious things.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
Mary is a goddess, it's not really comparable.
To_Mandalay
10mo ago
Because you have a solely material understanding of what is good.
Why shouldn't I? I don't believe honor, glory, virtue, or tradition exist as real transcendentals beyond the human mind, and I place no value on them. They are only fictions whose persistence is simply because they produce a pleasant (and ultimately, physiological and material) sensation in the bodies of those who cling to them, and because they are useful tools to organize society in a way that also produces pleasant (and again, physiological and material) sensations in those same people. This isn't really an argument against liking those fictions, there's no rational argument why someone shouldn't, but there's no rational argument why someone should either, unless they already do. I believe the same thing about fictions from the opposite side of the aisle like freedom, democracy, equality, and tolerance, but you probably agree with me on that.
This is the only charge against the Enlightenment that sticks, and yes it sticks just as well when Marx says it than when Evola says it
I don't think Marx ever made that charge.
The life created by the unrestrained mercantile impulse is inhuman and torrents of blood have already been unleashed to tamper its excesses or realize its promises.
Inhuman meaning what? "The life" by which I imagine you mean the general state of society over the past several centuries was certainly created by humans, what exactly makes it inhuman? Is it just a personal distaste for it?
When Ted complains that the world is crushing the freedom and actualization of the individual, you can decide to call this right wing and oppose this slander of the industrial system because it's not fair on abstract power structures.
I oppose it because I think talk of freedom and actualization is mostly gobbledygook, like the aforementioned honor and equality and tolerance and glory. What Kaczynski is saying when you strip it all away is just "I don't like industrial society because it makes me upset" which is fine, but it doesn't make me upset, so we've reached an impasse, because I can't imagine any argument which would cause me to privilege what makes Ted Ted Kaczynski upset/not upset over what makes me upset/not upset.
Vico is right. And people who dismiss his insight are behaving like creationists who cling to specific dismissals, attempt to refute specifics individually without considering the whole or grasp at epistemological traps to refuse to acknowledge the plain truth because the big picture shatters their own personal intuitions.
Well I've never read Vico and didn't know who he was before you told me. The "Course of Nations" section of The New Science on internet archive is only about fifty pages; can I get away with reading that or do I have to read the whole thing? What specific insights did he have that have yet to be disproven?
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
"Basket of deplorables" was such an anodyne remark. Especially since she hedged it by admitting she was being "grossly generalistic" and then went out of her way to clarify Not All Trump Supporters. And then proceeded to backpedal even further almost immediately and apologize for saying even that much. "Some of my opponent's supporters are bad" is probably near the mildest sentiment a politician running for office can express without total rhetorical capitulation.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
Not sure how long your time horizon is here, but he's pretty easily vindicated on this point.
"More women than men have surviving descendants" is not necessarily the same thing as "more men than women reproduced." This doesn't really matter though, what matters is there's no good evidence in the modern, post-sexual revolution west for a minority of men monopolizing a majority of the women.
What's your empirical evidence to the contrary?
What's the evidence for it? As extensively discussed in the link I provided, it's not backed up by partner counts, it's not backed up by virginity rates, it's not backed up by STD rates.
Their SR was even more libertine than the American one was.
For five years in a handful of big cities, sure.
In Iran you can get executed for adultery, so at least there's a start.
Iran has a TFR of 1.7, is regularly roiled by massive anti-regime protests, and religious affiliation is sharply declining among the nation's youth. Not much of a start.
What 'do' you put your stock in then? You ask me how I rate my life satisfaction in the country I live and I give you an answer, you're telling me I'm an unreliable source on my own happiness?
Even if you take this statistics at face value, the conclusion isn't borne out, which is the point.
Declining demographics
Will be rendered a non-issue by the end of the century at the absolute latest, almost certainly sooner.
lack of family formation
What is the argument for this being a bad thing that doesn't begin with the premise, "family formation is good."
dysfunctional men being raised by single mothers
Is there good evidence for the causal impact of single motherhood on male dysfunction?
sending women off to war
This is a non-issue. Why should I or anyone else care?
bending other important norms to reduce everything to a woman's private advantage
I don't know what you have in mind here, so I can't answer.
If running through and enumerating the long list of problems doesn't suffice in convincing you there's something rotten
So much conservative critique of modernity boils down to waving one's hands and shouting, "look how horrible everything is!" with the listener left to draw the conclusion that things would be less horrible if we were more conservative. When I try to quantify things I usually find that the horrible things are A) much less bad than they're painted to be B) have no causal relation to conservativeness or C) are only horrible if you assume the conclusion that conservatism is good.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
The problem of the White Russians wasn't that the emerging Bolshevik state was strong -- actually it was significantly weaker at the time than any of the countries to which the émigrés went -- it's that it was Bolshevik. The US government was much stronger than the Soviet government, despite being less overbearing.
that fleeing conscription and taxes isn't a common reason for migration throughout history.
The US does not have conscription, while countries with significantly weaker governments like Syria or Ukraine do.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
There are places with weaker and stronger governments on the earth and generally people do not move from places with stronger governments to places with weaker governments.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
Doubt it, the following (calling them racist, sexist, homophobic, islamophobic and implying "some" of them were irredeemable) was just too juicy to pass up.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
I don't believe there was some smaller number she could have used that would have failed to inspire the same reaction her actual comments did. It was just the usage of "Trump supporters" and "deplorables" in the same sentence which made for a great soundbite. About comparable to Mitt Romney's "47%" remark.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
"You guys" meaning the category of right-wingers he wishes would take violent terroristic action, using the specific example of mass-killing prominent antifa figures, a category he presumably identifies with (or else why would he be mad they're not doing terrorism?).
A few replies down he says that Anders Breivik made "a fair effort" so it's fair to say he's pro-mass shooting in principle but takes issue with its practice. Real right-wing terrorism never been tried.
To_Mandalay
10mo ago
There are lots of jobs where physical strength matters, and they're very gendered male.
There are a lot less than there used to be and will probably be even less going forward.
There's differences that show up in the modern age too. Engineering is predominantly male (though not as male as the trades), despite vast effort made to change that. But do men get credit for this? No, we get rhetorically beat up for it.
Yes, there are other sex differences. But upper body strength, and what flows from it like fighting, killing, other feats of physical strength was for a long time the single most important sex difference. It absolutely dwarfs most others, even if you assume all other sex difference are 100% innate. Its shrinkage as a relevant factor in modern society is hugely impactful and probably couldn't be otherwise.
A huge portion of the seething over women having "fake email jobs" and what have you probably comes down to the fact that a huge portion of men also have "fake email jobs" nowadays. You can say "well the majority of cutting edge research in XYZ field is still done by men" or whatever, but that's a tiny proportion of all men so it doesn't really matter for the average person. It used to be the case that a miner or a steelworker or farm laborer could tell himself he was doing a job only a man could do and that was a source of pride and identity for him, though even by the 19th and early 20th century the anxiety about the softening of manhood was already well-advanced, evidenced by all of those intellectuals who argued that regular warfare was necessary to maintain racial/national virility. But nowadays a guy who works as a cashier at wal mart or does some rote office job understands full-well that a woman could do his job just as easily and it probably grates psychologically.
To_Mandalay
11mo ago
Love you too.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
Healthy women have deep-seated, base, mammalian urges to reproduce and nourish healthy offspring. It is hardwired in them to feel pleasure through these behaviors. The bond a mother has with her children and how they give great meaning to her life is a story in every culture in existence.
A significant minority of women likely do not have this instinct or have it in a much weakened form. Through human and pre-human history women really haven't had that much of a choice on whether they bear children or not, so selection for enjoying motherhood is probably not as strong as you might think.
Women are forsaking these genetic behaviors for what reason? For whose benefit?
Cuz they don't feel like it, I guess? Really nobody is forcing women not to have kids. It's not a matter of it being too expensive or anything. You can be flat broke in a western country and your kids will have an infinitely more comfortable existence than those of the peasant woman in 1312 who popped out twelve children. If women really want to have kids, they can, it's not hard.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
If that were true, we would expect traditional societies to be more willing to allow women to suffer and die in place of men, because they have less value.
Not necessarily. Women are valuable because they can give you sons.
"Female infanticide" is it's own phenomenon deserving of a name but not "male infanticide." The wiki article only gives the examples of India, China, and Pakistan, but gender-skewed infanticide was also not uncommon in pre-modern Europe. Not a lot of men in history were going "awwww man, another son?" when their wife popped out the latest kid.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
It is not found in the church fathers. Read what Melito or Origen have to say. Hence, it is not found in traditional or historic Christianity, per my post.
Augustine talks about the corporate conversion of Israel at the end of the age. I don't think it gets much more Church father than Augustine.
When Paul speaks about mysteries they always defy a literal understanding, for instance —
I'm not sure how the following defies a literal understanding. He's just talking about the resurrection and the transformation of believers when Christ returns. It's a "mystery" because it's strange and incomprehensible to the pagans of the time.
I started this comment chain and the comment I was replying to said nothing about conscription or taxes. I think "is there conscription and high taxes" is a bad measure of government strength compared to "does this government face any serious threats to its monopoly on force."
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
I think excluding trans generational mental health data is a bit of a cope for the pro sexual revolution side. It’s a back door way of ignoring data that points to the traditional relationship view.
Looking at the statistics of people seeking treatment for anxiety and depression show people seeking out more treatment today than in 1983 or 1963.
I don't think the data is worthless but I think it's highly problematic for the reasons mentioned. It's extremely hard to control for all of the other potential factors at work.
We know there’s much more divorce now than there was in the past.
I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. If people can dissolve relationships they don't want to be in, I think that's generally a good thing. The alternative to being divorced usually isn't being in a good marriage, but being in a bad one. I'm not convinced the purported terrible effects on children are all that large or relevant net of other factors.
even statistics that show generational problems like school success, family formation, drugs and alcohol as much bigger problems now than in the past.
I'm not sure what you mean by "school success." More people go to school than ever before. Certain test scores have dropped since the 60s (but others haven't), but way more people take tests like the SAT than they did back then. Alcoholism is significantly lower today than it was in the 70s. Druge use appears to be worse, yes.
To_Mandalay
10mo ago
That it is impossible to live without the solutions in the world we have created, and that these solutions require an Empire to maintain, which means we are addicted to structures of control.
I still don't see an issue with this. Controlling nature and human behavior are good things.
There are specific examples of technologies that do not have this problem and empower the individual instead of enslaving him to large organizations.
What are some good technologies and bad technologies, in your view?
Have you ever asked yourself seriously why you prefer one over the other instead of assuming without inquiry that they are equivalent?
In other cases my personal feeling goes the other way. A lot of right-wingers think people only pretend to like modern art for clout but I am an unironic modern art enjoyer. I think this is much cooler and more pleasant to look at that anything Da Vinci, or Caravaggio ever produced.
How familiar are you with Kant and the categorical imperative?
I know the wikipedia definition.
To_Mandalay
10mo ago
This is what Ted denounces, that we made our bed of autism and tooth decay and are decided to invent and sell solutions to the problems we created that only make us less adapted to our environment.
This is a common critique ("We are creating problems which we then have to solve") but I don't really see what the issue with that is. What's wrong with creating new problems and then solving them with new methods?
I don't like that. I think we can have technology without this problem.
I doubt it. I think Marx was right at least that culture and society are largely a reflection of underlying material conditions. The customs and morals that developed in a pastoral society 3000 years ago cannot be freely transplanted onto the 21st century. If they could, it would not last very long. And I doubt there are new moral systems that could be developed to significantly ameliorate the problems of modernity. The only salvation is to hope humanity can technologize itself out of the novel problems it's created for itself by earlier technologizing, and I don't see any problem with that.
I couldn't disagree more. You may as well say there is nothing special or essential about the feeling you get when you are interacting with a great piece of art.
Well, I agree with that too. I don't think there's anything qualitatively different between the enjoyment a person gets from watching Marvel slop #28493 and beholding the Reims Cathedral. And I say that as someone who doesn't like Marvel movies and would probably prefer visiting the Reims Cathedral.
So you are a Kantian of sorts. What is then your stance on Natural Law?
I'm vaguely familiar with both the Lockean kind and the Aristotlean kind from readings in college and a few Catholic apologist books, but I don't recall being convinced by the idea that metaphysical rights or duties of any sort exist.
To_Mandalay
1yr ago
Somebody could easily hold that a homophobic, misogynist, Islamist party ruling Gaza is a preferable to Gaza being wiped off the face of the earth.
This place is right-wing twitter (insert "always has been" meme) but verbose and you're not allowed to call stuff gay or retarded. Accept that and you'll have more fun.
EDIT: Come on guys, you know it's true. Don't shoot the messenger.
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