One thing that’s always struck me in my own life has been the contrast between where I grew up and the Bay Area in California.
At least when I was growing up and through young adulthood my local community was very collectivistic. We all knew each other. Attitudes toward one another were very different than how they are here in the Bay. Very few people who weren’t adults did anything without supervision or at least a stamp of approval by some authority figure. You always deferred to those older than you if the matter rang of something potentially serious and you were generally obedient to what you were told out of respect. One of the phrases I remember hearing as a kid that you never wanted to hear from anyone was “… put your house in order, or, we’re going to do it for you…,” and that usually preceded something that was about to go down. The oldest person in the group you always followed and did what they told you when you guys were out. In private you do what your parents tell you. As guys we were taught to love the women close to us and girls were taught to respect the choices and decisions of the men in their lives and do what the men tell you. It wasn’t all rank and file thinking and it didn’t always take but it was a general rule people in the community had an implicit understanding of. Boys still fought with each other here and there. Girls didn’t like being told to go home or do X by their younger brother but they knew they were just looking out for them. Babysitters still did immature and playful things they didn’t tell the local kids parents about that the kids loved. Timmy’s supposed to be in bed by 8:30pm. We stayed up past midnight and made forts in the living room. Timmy’s not supposed to watch that scary movie he desperately wants to see. We watched the scary movie Timmy wasn’t supposed to see. Don’t let Timmy have more than a few sodas. Timmy and I drank the whole box and had to buy more to replace the noticeably missing one in the fridge. But we were generally responsible and we policed each others behavior in the group. There was none of this “you can’t tell me what to do!,” horseshit. You’d end up with some very red ass cheeks if you said something like that. Mothers and grandmothers still washing their sons mouths out with soap is something I can remember. It happened to me when I was very young. We could be very immature and rowdy at times but we knew certain red lines socially you just ‘didn’t’ cross. And there was a loose hierarchy of sorts to things.
There was a general sense of the separation of people by gender. If you were out and about with your friends and someone’s sister or a local girl in your neighborhood happened to join your party, you immediately went to the phone and called their brother/cousin/father/male guardian and told them where you were, that they were with you and you’re hanging out and looking out for them; and you always asked if they had a curfew. You don’t leave suspicion or a lingering sense that you’re messing with someone’s daughter/girlfriend/sister/wife. It wasn’t just the right thing to do but it also cultivated respect from the men in their family. They looked at you as someone they could trust. That’s also something that’s very well known in gang culture which I was also affected by. If one of your boys had to go down ‘that’ side of town, you called up “guy” over there (what they now call “shot callers”) and make sure it’s safe first. Then you go.
When it came to dating people generally met 1 of 3 different ways. Either through peer group, e.g., your brother has a girlfriend who has a friend who has a sister. Or your friend knows so-and-so across the street who knows so-and-so from down the hall at school. They’re going to the movies soon, ask her if she could come along if she has interest in hanging out. Most of the time that type of approach worked. Sometimes it didn’t work out and you didn’t vibe well and they parted amicably. The 2nd way was through church. It was a way for the community to come together of people who otherwise didn’t know each other and have an opportunity to meet and learn about one another. That covered the vast majority of cases. And if they didn’t happen, you usually met later in life through work. But dating by Brownian motion simply wasn’t a thing. It was heavily regulated by religion and peer group. Women weren’t supposed to be too forward with their attitudes and that’s why messages were usually exchanged through a friend as an intermediary. And boys were under constant threat as a way to keep their hormones in check that they not act like a showboating asshole and you always treat them nice and respectfully and get to know their family or there will be hell to pay. With girls you use the carrots, with boys you use the sticks. Harsh discipline happened more often that I thought took place at that time as a young kid, but there were far fewer beatings that took place out of vengeance or retribution because of it.
When it came to jobs networking was always a massive thing and often the best way in. One thing I distinctly remember was if one of your family members or friends put his reputation on the line or vouched for you, there was a ritual that almost ‘all’ of us went through. You were brought into a room and were seriously threatened to overperform and work like ‘hell’ and you ‘never’ make your family or friends look bad. I can remember that happening to me when I first began serious work and I can remember doing it to a couple of others as well several years later. Reputation was a ‘big’ deal. One maxim I remember being taught by an older peer was “if you like your job, you aren’t doing it right then.” I can also remember him telling me “… you’ve heard the phrase “learn the tricks of the trade?” No. Learn the trade…” I can remember getting in trouble working with my father and him telling me, “… do things the correct way, or not at all…” On days I’m not working particularly well and am having a difficult time finding my focus, I can physically hear them in my ear as if they’re standing right next to me. It sometimes even causes me to turn my head and I forget they aren’t there. Work is easy and doing ‘good’ work is hard. Excellence and a sense of accomplishment is its own reward when standing before your results. We were all taught from a very young age to work and work ‘hard’. ‘Very’ hard. I can recall a few instances where beatings actually happened over letting people down.
There were days I can remember we’d get off from school, casually walk through the door of our friend’s house, walk to the refrigerator and drink out of the milk container and talk to their mother sitting on the couch. You do that shit here you’d get knocked out or have the cops called on you. We were like a large extended family though. To this day even 20 years later, I can walk down the street of certain neighborhoods in some cities and when people see me outside they instantly recognize me and know who I am despite being gone for years. Not here though. I’ve had the cops called me on while sitting in my car, less than 30 seconds away from my house because the dipshit neighbor from across the street doesn’t know this face has been living here within eyesight of him for a decade now.
Eating separately inside a house was something I remember we never did. We all sat together as a family in the dining room and ate and enjoyed each other’s company. Too many people today live together as strangers and I hate that intensely. If I had children of my own I wouldn’t allow that in my house.
I had an Assyrian friend growing up with an ailing mother at the time. My friends and I used to go grocery shopping for her as a group so she didn’t have to. We’d come back with all the receipts and money and she’d invite us to stay and she’d make dinner for us all. She was a wonderful woman. We called her Mama Khalood.
If you ever had a disagreement with a friend or spouse about something or they did something you didn’t like in a public venue or social setting, you ‘never’ rebuked them in front of everybody, interrupted them or otherwise embarrassed them. You always addressed it in private, behind closed doors and matters were usually peacefully resolved.
In interpersonal relationships, one thing I was always taught is you never go to bed angry or upset with your girlfriend or wife. You listen to and never talk over them. You begin each and every morning with a deep hug and support each other through their hardships. You ‘never’ yell or raise your voice to them. Ever. And you ‘never’ call them disparaging names, e.g., bitch, whore, dumb ass, slut, etc. It doesn’t matter if you believe it. You ‘never’ call them that. You take note of the things they’re interested in. Literally. ‘Take notes’. Some of my close friends actually have a private notebook of their wives habits and interests that they began when they were still dating. Likes and dislikes. Places they’ve always wanted to go, etc. They surprise them all the time with things during the holidays and to this day have great and stable marriages among those of us who found a spouse.
When the school year was in session, my older sibling would often stay over at their friend’s house for 1, 2, sometimes 3 days that I can remember. They wouldn’t come home. They’d stay there, do homework together, talk, have fun, go do random stuff in the city and hang with the other kids. My mother knew where they were. I wouldn’t see them for a few days, staying at home myself. But they’d spend the night there and then faithfully walk to school with them the following morning, from their house. That stuff wasn’t uncommon.
In the Bay Area, people are much more hyper individualized and mean spirited than I’m used to. There’s very little in the way of manners or social cohesion. People sometimes think I’m rude in my outward behavior, but what people here don’t realize is more than half the things they do every day I find incredibly rude. On a national level that culture is all but dead but it still exists in pockets elsewhere. People sometimes think I’m odd because of those tendencies that were inculcated in me. Why I go out of my way to help others at work for instance. It’s what I was taught. It’s a collectivist attitude. You care for and support your group and your own people. But it’s a very foreign concept in the Bay Area. But if they’d had the experiences I’ve had and were from the little neck of the woods I came from they’d quickly realize that at least out there, ‘they’re’ the ones that aren’t normal. Not me.
Tretiak
27d ago
That section of the site used to be private until recently and you had to register an account to be able to view it. I was banned after the first comment I made and an admin marked it as “spam.” But it occasionally offers up some funny commentary on things.
Tretiak
27d ago
PMs with friends? I am a person very ill fit for the modern internet - one that feels like reacting to everything you are sent is just common modesty. Namaste, etc. ...I started to see downsides to my approach in about the 100th tiktok/insta clip that my friend finds funny and sends me with no caption and no real relation to us per se. Memes of the olden era at least had a certain relatability(?) to them - haha literally me/us, haha funny word, haha [TOPICAL BLUNDER OF OUTGROUP] - whereas now it's mostly ragebait, some other sort of e-celeb slop, or barely comprehensible Jenga towers of irony best encapsulated by a median Max0r video.
God I know this feeling and it resonates so hard. I used to tell one of my cousin’s I occasionally talk to, one primary difference between us and Gen Z is we grew up with the Internet, they grew up on the Internet. I get sent Instagram reels All. The. Time. And it’s the most unbelievably, mindless, boring ass shit you could possibly watch. It’s the human stimulative equivalent of a lab rat getting a hit of cocaine. Because of that, I never watch anything social media related people send to me.
Very few people understand my sense of humor and even of those that do, fewer still are sympathetic to it. I have a very insulting, smart ass, matter of fact tone of engagement that I have to be careful with in ordinary conversation because it turns a lot of people off.
What little engagement I have on the Internet eventually has people thinking I’m an Internet troll because I deliver my intellectual counterpunches with a note of sarcasm; that leads people to believe I’m replying just to get a rise out of others. I’m not. Your position looks ridiculous because it ‘is’ ridiculous. Irony and sarcasm is a huge part of the way I live my life. I have the faculty of humor. I’m not going to repress that. That’s the twist. Back then we didn’t call that being a “troll,” which is a vastly overused term. A “troll” is someone who’s being edgy solely for the sake of getting a rise out of you. People used to describe people like me more accurately as a “flamer,” not a troll. I’m not a troll my dear. I’m an asshole.
Tretiak
27d ago
Nope; not necessarily. We’re supposed to be shockingly different from each other, and we’re supposed to cause friction with each other; that’s nature working as intended. It takes all kinds to make up the world.
Maybe on a species level but certainly not a civilizational level. It’s far easier for human beings to move in and between social spaces lacking diversity friction. It’s simply an unpleasant fact. Too much homogeneity leads to a monoculture. Too much diversity can’t foster cooperation between individuals.
Tretiak
27d ago
However much you hate journalists, you don't hate journalists enough.
The KiwiFarms.st Articles & News section is the best expositor to date of this idea. Frankly it’s a sigh of relief and restores my faith in humanity to some degree. They tear apart the words of propagandists that pathetically go by the title of “journalist,” and it’s refreshing to see.
Tretiak
29d ago
Damn. Sorry for what happened to you.
A while ago my YouTube feed pointed me something interesting. It struck me because I’ve had the same feeling when I look around at others. Most of us are conscripted into a system that grinds down on us by thinking if don’t submit ourselves to that economic cog in the machine, we’re going to be miserable because of it.
I could quit by job right now and drive about two hours to go back home and work in the agriculture business my extended family has a large footprint in, and be very comfortable making a solid 5 figures every month; insulted from all the bs people deal with working for others. I don’t because I’ve got other plans and life goals I want to pursue that I find more fulfilling and meaningful. Maybe I’m just a dumb ass but I think that’s the better overall approach to take with life.
Tretiak
29d ago
They’d be saying the same thing even if they saw it themselves first hand. They’re too committed to their privileged free riding to part with it at the expense of logic or moral consistency.
That’s more or less the premise of Eliezer’s new book. Haven’t read it yet but nobody knows how to do AI alignment, despite continuing technological advancement. An AI moratorium is not going to happen. Even if governments the world over declared as much, you can remain assured behind closed doors they’re still going full speed ahead.
Tretiak
29d ago
Well the founding fathers for instance were very against direct democracy, which is why they favored a constitutional republic as a kind of government by middle man. They originally wanted to limit political participation to land owners or stakeholders in society. I’m not at all against that way of thinking. And I’ve seen variants of it in today’s world. I’ve seen the young take shots at the old over climate change saying you don’t care about the policies you’re enacting because you’ll be dead long before you see the consequences of it. I’ve seen others say you shouldn’t be allowed to run for office unless you’re married with a certain amount of children. Otherwise how are you going to convince me you have a future stake in society?
The thinking was actually a subplot in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. It was the difference he drew between a citizen and a civilian. A citizen was someone who joined the military and fought for their society and earned his right of full benefit and participation in the community. A civilian was someone who didn’t and had no right. It was actually very controversial when the book came out and Heinlein was called a fascist thinker over it. He was the furthest thing from a fascist though. In his own life he was a libertarian socialist and had very anarchistic sympathies.
Prima facia at a first pass a “parasite” in this context is someone who takes and consumes societal resources without contributing back to society. If said person’s net benefit and gain comes at the expenses of producers, defenders or otherwise valuable contributors to civilization, whatever have you, then that person is a parasite.
I’m not at all a fan of welfare the way we practice it, but some kind of unemployment insurance for instance I wouldn’t object to, provided it be kept in check by very stringent regulations.
I actually listened to a podcast very recently of two guys debating people’s right to vote along this exact axis. The argument on one side was that if you’re taking more in resources than you’re contributing back to society, you shouldn’t have the right to vote until that condition changes in economic terms. If a certain cohort of citizens is in favor of massive welfare spending to vote themselves the resources of producing members of society without having to contribute back to it in some proportional sense, your right to vote should thereby be taken away. Was an interesting argument. It’s not without its own problems and the logistics seem nightmarish to me, but I’m palatable to the idea.
People have said for a long time that men and women are held to different standards in this same sense. When men legally become of age as adults, they’re legally bound and obliged to sign up for the draft which can be thought of as a condition to become a voting member of society. Women are under no such obligation, yet receive the right to vote in their own self-interest while having to observe no requirements or sociopolitical demands upon them or their behavior. I’m not sure where I stand on that. There’s a wholly pragmatic reason for keeping women out of combat roles, since no society on Earth can afford to lose large numbers of women. Supporting roles are different however.
Tretiak
2mo ago
If you’re deeply embedded in that cultural narrative, yeah sure it might feel like we are declining culturally. Lots of cultural institutions output have been horrific for the last 10-15 years.
Is that something people really dispute these days? 2025 surely doesn’t seem like the high tide of high cultural achievement to me. I’d encourage people to give me their best vanity pitch for the western world today and among those who’ve answered me thus far, the results haven’t been very encouraging.
Tretiak
2mo ago
What the fuck?
I’ll always remember the hilarious Encyclopedia Dramatica write-up on him and their dredging up of now deleted videos they recovered, of him making legal threats against them and other parties for criticizing his content.
Tretiak
2mo ago
I'm actually curious now to wonder what the societal winds were like when JFK was assassinated. Does anyone know what the political reaction was like on the other side and the media's response to it?
Tretiak
2mo ago
Nybbler is correct that it's not a microaggression. A microaggression is similar to a backhanded compliment - "You're pretty hardworking for a black guy."
I always thought that was flicking someone's nipple. You learn something new everyday.
Cancel culture is nothing but the current iteration of wanting bad things to happen to people you dislike and the people you hate to have no power to do the same to you. One side may have more influence at any given moment, but even the minority will try and fail at it.
I remember Thomas Hobbes made the interesting analogy of how the Leviathan pacifies the worst impulses and instincts in men and how that deceives them into thinking this veil of civility has made man less barbaric than he otherwise is. In reality, it hasn't. The legal code has just become the new battlefield and substitute for one man to conduct warfare against another. Inter-tribal political warfare has never stopped and will likely never not remain an intrinsic feature of human beings.
Even in ideologically purist societies like Communist China, there are massive internal divisions and all manner of factional infighting between different power brokers and their respective spheres of influence. The Jiang Zemin faction and Xi Jinping faction hated one another. The Hu Jintao faction was independent of both. And all these parties try and use the organs of the CCP to gain leverage and assume power over their rivals. To this end cancel culture is nothing new and I fully agree with you. It may be an anathema to how we conduct our politics in the west but even so, it isn't new.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Probably not but at least we validated the stereotype that men are always thinking about Rome.
I'm pretty big into ancient history and consequently Roman history. Good to know there's others here like that.
Nobody said he was incompetent. Like Caesar he was obviously a great man. I admitted from the start that he was wronged and that he could clearly see some of the problems in the constitution as it stood.
Well. Seems we agree then. That's much closer to the conclusion I wanted to emphasize. Not that his reforms weren't quickly reversed after he withdrew into retirement. They obviously were.
A Republican system depends on others buying into it and continually making the choice to restrict their own use of power. This cannot necessarily be achieved by Sulla just hanging around. If anything that increases the chance for the system to collapse into monarchy.
There is a question in here as to whether the Republic at large was just at the end of it's natural lifespan as it was transforming into something that was already beginning to look and feel different. I'm not saying the solution would've been for Sulla to linger around on the sidelines only that it was ultimately concluded more prematurely than it should've been. As far as collapsing into monarchy goes, you could argue Octavian's proscriptions were worse than Sulla's (a controversial statement, but one I've seen people make) but people are more willing to overlook it because it concluded with the Pax Romana, whereas Sulla's ended having enriched his friends and further solidified their positions among a corrupt ruling class.
It went about as well as the realization that the emperor could be made outside of Rome.
Septimius Severus did that. There have been more than a few provincial emperors, albeit that they came at a bad time; being at the tail end of a dying Empire.
But it is what it is. We should also consider that his motives, like Caesar's, were not pure. Both of them did what they did to defend their own dignity and interests. I'm more sympathetic to Caesar, since the risks were so much greater for him. But in both cases it wasn't just concern for the Republic.
I'm also more sympathetic to Caesar by a long shot. With him however, I think his motives ultimately were questionable as to whether he wanted to become king or not. It's not as cut and dry as people think it is.
Tretiak
2mo ago
I actually thought it was that "Goats, Guns and Gold," dude that Peter Lavelle sometimes invites on Crosstalk RT.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Obama was inaugurated in 2009. And Baltimore and Ferguson weighed heavily on the minds of people at the time.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Twitter wouldn’t have moved the needle on Kamala’s shot at office, at least not after the first assassination attempt on Trump. If there was any doubt before then, there certainly was no doubt after it. It was all but guaranteed to him at that point.
Tretiak
2mo ago
… we have half the country that sees riots and murders against people they don't like as a good thing, and they don't like the other half of the country.
Has this ever ‘not’ been a thing though? You can literally find this anywhere.
… the opponents of western liberal democracy have resorted to simply executing people…
In 2023 the US was #3 when it came to the amount of confirmed executions. And while I wouldn’t want to be beaten out by choosing to live in an Islamic theocracy, western democracies have no problems when it comes to executing people. In fact it would probably solve some problems by choosing to execute a few people.
I think you and I will just fundamentally disagree on this. Caesar also ultimately failed at his task of reform and picked the tools of a tyrant to do it. Things didn’t exactly pan out for him either. Sulla wasn’t the guy the Republic needed at the time, but he was the one they got nonetheless. And as I mentioned earlier, I’m not a guy that readily defends Sulla and I don’t like him, but I don’t think this is an appropriate criticism of him.
To my point he was brilliant, to your point he was ruthless. Two things can be true at the same time. His main failure as a reformer came from him not being able to stay in power long enough to cement them. Something that I don't point to as proof of his incompetence or idiocy. At any rate he was a guy who thought the ends justified the means. Plenty of people not his equal thought the same way and yet he stood head and shoulders over many of them. I regard that as quite impressive. The man died peacefully in his own bed.
His first march on Rome was in response to Marius's use of the Tribunate of the Plebs to essentially usurp the authority of the Senate. It's difficult for me to decide whether this move was actually a good or bad one. On one hand the citizens and plebeians of Rome lose a say in the governance of the Empire and therein the ability to protect their self interests. Any few senators who did genuinely care for the welfare of the people would have been hard pressed to help them in an apathetic Senate. On another hand the plebeians were easily manipulated by wild demagogues like Gracchus, Saturnius and Sulpicius who had only self-interest on the agenda.
His proscribing of his political enemies was more testimony to his character, utterly ruthless and unforgiving. (Sulla's epitaph was literally "No better friend, no worse enemy.") In that respect he was greatly feared by both Senate and people and was allowed to retire when he had enacted his laws with very little political opposition.
Tretiak
2mo ago
Sulla wasn't successful at anything other than enriching his cronies and buying enough breathing room to not have to face revenge for his actions.
By what standard of the ancient world are we judging him according to this? That’s practically how ‘all’ these societies were ran back then. By a modern more objective metric, sure, Sulla was as you describe him. If we’re grading him on a curve and placing him in the context and circumstances he lived with, he was pretty ‘good’ for the most part in governing a system where that kind of nepotism and cronyism went by the rule of law 2,000 years ago.
Part of the problem is looking back on this with the benefit of hindsight. I don’t like Sulla as a leader in virtually any capacity, but he was quite effective when it came to running the show and conducting the orchestra of the power brokers he was a part of.
I don’t actually know how I feel surrounding this. When I was growing up it felt like there was much greater decentralization and separation between culture and politics in the strict sense of the word. Politics and religion were the 2 standard notions that families rarely brought up apart from church attendance, and you certainly didn’t bring them up with your friends and neighbors either. Not because you were afraid to. It just wasn’t important to why we associated with each other. Unless things naturally turned in that direction it was just considered in poor taste to broach the topic. We liked one another on a closer and personal level.
I couldn’t tell you who my parents voted for and they voted at every state, federal and local election. But that’s not because I’m apprehensive about telling others. It’s because nobody in our family knew who voted for who and we didn’t discuss it. Politics never got in the way of our family importance.
Thomas Sowell once said “if you have a lot of social control you don’t need a whole lot of government control.” I see that as the counterpoint to the intermix of the personal and the political. We resolved issues on our own. I don’t remember seeing a single instance of teenage pregnancy until gangs swept through our neighborhood and it didn’t impact us personally. Child support and alimony existed politically but weren’t a thing in our community. Marriages were mostly stable and of those that weren’t the husband and wife generally separated but never divorced.
The simple fact is you can’t substitute politics for community and there is no substitute for good judgment. Politics comes in to address these wherever there’s a disintegration and tear in the cultural fabric.
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