aiislove
11mo ago
Also as an aside both men and women are misogynistic, projecting their existential disgust/despair onto woman as the closest to 'life/creation/existence'.
I don't think that both men and women are misogynistic. Rather I think that both men and women are predisposed to hating men due to the essential power structure you outline in paragraph 3 above. If you hate a more powerful person who has power over you, it's righteous and empowering and normal to do so. If you hate someone weaker than you, you are a loser. I am not predisposed to hating women. When I think of my father, I think of him eternally as an adult who subjugated me as a youth, but when I think of my mother I just feel regret for ever having hurt her in any way. Indeed the things I fault my father for are for his weaknesses, not being strong enough, out of this grew my resentment toward him. Toward my mother I would never feel any hatred toward her weakness, to do so would be gruesome, especially as an adult.
As a gay man the only misogyny I can find in myself is a sort of irritation that straight men are attracted to women, but this doesn't really spark a deep seated hatred within me but if anything rather an irritation toward myself that I'm not what a straight man would be attracted to. I'm more predisposed toward hating men and it's downstream of hating myself which I believe all men are predisposed toward. As a young child I was resentful toward women because I imagined they would reject my love but this just made me seek male affection instead, not hate women.
What makes you draw the conclusion that men and women are misogynistic? It's funny that you mention projection in this sentence as I think it's male self-hatred and women's hatred of men that you are projecting onto men and women as misogyny.
aiislove
11mo ago
I have learned so much about gay men through looking at straight men, I believe we are wired broadly the same but with some small points of difference. I offered my perspective because if I can learn things from straight people then perhaps straight people can learn something from my experiences as well. I don't think you can fully understand gay men without understanding straight men and vice versa.
aiislove
11mo ago
i know from experience an extraordinary amount of men are somewhat or very misogynistic
I think it's really a projection of men's inner frustrations with themselves and their situation. They want sex, desperately, and they want it from women. They believe if they were more fit or attractive they'd have an easier chance of getting sex from women. They blame themselves for their lack of sex and try to pin the blame on women because it alleviates them from the pain of pinning the blame on the self. This is not born out of misogyny but self hatred. If the man believed the woman/object of his desire would love him back unconditionally and deservedly, he would have not be acting out in ways perceived as misogynistic. The most confident secure men who are sexually desired by the people around him are not misogynistic because they are comfortable with themselves and have no reason to project their self hatred onto women.
In exploring the self-hate, which I know well also (perhaps it's a universal?), I wonder if it is in fact not gendered in it's sense at all.
I'm not sure how to interpret this, it depends on if you're male or female. I think that all men are self hating. Women can also be self hating but they often grow out of it and find meaning through family and relationships at a younger age than men do. Many men grow to an old age and never escape their self loathing, or it can fluctuate throughout their lives based on their condition and perception of their lives.
aiislove
11mo ago
what's the use of anyone knowing the Truth if Power can't be moved by it?
I have only read a handful of Yarvin's essays so I can't answer any of your questions as an interpretive response to his work. But in my opinion and experience, to answer this question specifically, the use of anyone knowing Truth is so that you can defend yourself against Power and have an advantage over any power that wants to harm you by defining truth in a way that's different from the material underlying Truth. You may not be able to move Power but you can move yourself. The freedom to understand the actual Truth is empowering in the face of Power.
Watching Power assert its own version of Truth over and over for the past few years has been Orwellian and the only solace I've found is in trying to find people spouting a version of Truth that feels more correct to me (like what I find on this forum.)
I'm glad you asked. Here's a few ideas, let me know if any of these are interesting to you and I'll think about writing something out.
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Cultures often seem to develop in ways that echo or react to the cultures right next to them. For example many French cultural traits seem to be resolutely anti-British and many Japanese cultural traits seem to be purposely anti-Chinese.
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"Late capitalism"- I used to roll my eyes at this term but lately it seems extremely apt. Broadly speaking, the powerhouses of the 21st century seem to be on some kind of steep decline while China is ascendant. I don't think China has the demographics or goodwill of the rest of the globe to rival US hegemony so I envision the next few decades will be a steep global decline driven by America's flailing performance in the next 10 years or so, dragging the global economy along with it. The rise of AI will make the situation more uneven and unpredictable, gains will be huge in some sectors and rapid decay will plague other fields. The current condition of Japan was quite shocking to see as someone who first visited about 18 years ago and I see its rapid decline as a canary in the coalmine for a handful of other nations.
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What I learned about power from being gay and single for over three decades while also traveling in different cultures, shoehorning in some vague beliefs about reality and perception and also narcissism and selfishness and being spoiled and privileged and having the luxury of believing an incoherent and untrue version of the world. This is a lot but basically boils down to something like: we are all driven to seek power, but are born powerless and are told not to seek it. Power is given to those who either earn it or steal it from others. Good rulers earn their power through respect and bad rulers earn their power through toxic power games. If we can't be powerful we want to be under the rule of someone we respect. It's degrading to be ruled by those we disrespect. Present day American culture is in such a state of disarray because we have little respect for institutions and each other.
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Something about how we seem to be constantly ruled by a monkey brain view of the world. People are constantly overcomplicating things when the monkey brain understanding of what's going on is usually so much more illuminating than the over-analytical concepts that people are constantly throwing out. This segues into something about the physical underlying material reality of populations and how they are always running the game at the end of the day, even while the media and internet (often using "woke" ideology or otherwise concepts of the ruling class) are doing their best to run interference on the monkey brain.
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Speaking of the above, the material physical differences between population groups and how this affects their interactions and how divorced from this reality we've become in our current age. For example when I am in East Asia, as a large white man I'm often perceived as more threatening than everyone around me. I responded by being deferent and submissive in most situations to respect the people around me. In the Middle East, I'm perceived as more docile and less aggressive than others around me so I respond by being less reserved about my physicality and presence than when I'm in Asia. I think in the US, people have become completely divorced from the reality of group dynamics and people with more dominant/aggressive natures are told by the media that they have no power or money structurally and they don't realize that they have physically literally more power leading to aggression toward weaker populations that is basically an incoherent situation if you took away the messaging of critical theory and the advantages of money and power that afford weak people to be strong in the face of danger.
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The aesthetics of rulers and how it can lead to revolution. Weimar Germany and the Ancient Regime France basically just got too effete and homosexual and led to their being overthrown. Also something something 2010s America.
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Noblesse oblige and mutual respect and the lack of both in American culture
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Why the culture of the rich used to look appealing but increasingly repulses me (Boils down to late 20th century creatives coopting underclass style for decades and then immediately protecting their wealth by disavowing any actual underclass movements that actually emerged ie Trump)
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Men use the physical to protect the ego/mind. Women use the mind to protect the physical. Can also be extrapolated onto most power dynamics? needs to be thought through
Edit to add:
- The cost of labor in rich countries is so high that it makes everything awful. Cost of labor in places like Thailand is so low that food is incredible due to labor intensive practices being used everywhere. I also suspect that less government regulation leads to more competition and innovation in poor countries vs rich ones. I am not an economist so I don't have the skills to address this more broadly but that's my working theory on why Thailand has better food and Turkey has better shopping than many rich countries.
aiislove
11mo ago
I'm interested in the first three. Especially the third. I abhor the postmodern assertion that free will is an illusion on a visceral level and would love to read some discussion here about that.
aiislove
11mo ago
As a capitalist, I want to know what you'd pay for and your consulting rates. Criticism as a demand side problem sounds interesting too. Also hosting an uncensorable site.
aiislove
11mo ago
The economics for small-scale production, and what's going on. A little on the logistics side -- how and why is Etsy pulling 6% of sales fees and eBay 13% compared to PayPal's (already high) 3% -- but more seriously what's going on for the producers. I've got competing models where there's either a) a small industry of people creating cool bespoke stuff for a small but livable be-your-own-boss, b) an ecosystem where the only people actually making a real income are selling shovels and a tiny number of superstars, while most are second-'income'-less-than-min-wage a la writing, or c) both. This might seem trite, but the whole patrons of the arts has been one of the few plausible answers to automating all the things away... but a lot of the plausibility depends on actual existence proofs.
I'm a seller on a handful of sites including Etsy. Etsy takes way more than 6%, it ends up being closer to ebay's 13%. Sellers still sell on these platforms (ebay, etsy) because buyers trust them and most of us don't want to invest the time and money into marketing and managing independent sites that no one will be able to find because google is optimized to give everybody links to ebay and etsy already.
C is correct. There are millions of people selling their products on these platforms who range from teen girls reselling thrift store clothes from their closet and making too little to even report to the IRS, to dudes selling thousands of mass produced products a day and making bank. And everything in between. Personally I abhor working with or for other people which is why I do the "livable be-your-own-boss" thing.
aiislove
11mo ago
For further reading on your gay question I'd recommend Beachy's "Gay Berlin" and Foucault's "The History of Sexuality." From these texts I came away with the impression that "gayness" and "transness" are a sort of modern western invention. I wrote a bit more about it in this thread.
aiislove
11mo ago
I empathize with your sentiment but I think it's a little bit uncharitable, I mean people had a valid right to be afraid of the virus as well. My father was high risk and ended up dying from it, so to paint everyone who freaked out about the virus as a sheeple is slightly insulting, though I realize that for the majority of people they didn't have nearly as much reason to worry. I also wonder if you're living in a blue tribe setting or somewhere outside the US as the response from where I was in a more rural area wasn't nearly as sheeple-y as your post seems to indicate, plenty of people were rolling their eyes the entire time in the small town I was living in
aiislove
11mo ago
Yes, I think you're right, and I think the right response when we see people reacting to things that are completely beyond their realm of understanding is compassion and empathy, not condescension and cynicism.
The fact that modern society is able to keep us from helping less educated people around us through top-down silencing and oppression is really rather sick, I don't necessarily lay the blame on people reacting with cynicism in this thread when they also are met with overwhelming social forces that tried to silence them as well. But on a visceral level it strikes me as ugly when smart people reduce dumber people in this way though I can also see how smarter people are being degraded by the powers at the same time.
aiislove
11mo ago
two layers of washable, microfiber blankets.
No no no no no no no. I hate polyester bedding so much that I refuse to travel without two 100% cotton sheets in my suitcase at all times in case I run into anything with more than 0% polyester. I sweat heavily, polyester against my skin feels like sleeping in a wet ziplock bag to me.
The best bedding I ever encountered was an airbnb in Thailand, where the mattress was very big and solid, with a very taut 100% cotton chambray bedspread and a very taut but high loft duvet with the same fabric as the bedspread on top and that was it. It was incredibly comfortable in the humid climate and hot weather there. The tautness of the whole thing made it very comfortable because it's all the extra wrinkles of fabric that trap heat and moisture and make beds miserable. I'm going to buy myself a bed and bedspread and duvet just like what I slept on once I buy a house.
aiislove
11mo ago
I'm not super familiar with the alt right but I don't know if your characterization is what I'd agree with... Speaking as a white american with lots of red tribe relatives (not alt right, I know, so maybe it's not the same) but basically they're all scared and know they're weak compared with black and brown people (don't know how else to say it), their ideology is not "if you're small and weak suck it up" but rather "I know I'm small and weak and so will try to make myself more able to defend myself and try to stop being as small and weak so I buy guns and defend myself and hopefully become more powerful than minorities even though if we were all naked in the forest my family and I would be fucking screwed"
I'm guessing the alt right operates on this same idea on some level.
aiislove
11mo ago
Is the irony that this proves their point? I don't see the alt right as seeing themselves as weak, if anything they see themselves as victims of more aggressive populations but maybe I'm conflating the alt right with the rural whites I know personally
aiislove
11mo ago
You mentioning self driving cars in contrast to mass shooting just gave me a dystopian vision of a future where you could have as many guns as you wanted but they were all equipped with an AI technology, where every gun would be programmed to identify the target as being an aggressive threat or not before being shot at. Raises many ethical and philosophical questions, might be good for a sci fi story. Has anyone ever gone down this line of thinking before?
I'd be against this technology on broadly libertarian grounds and in fear that the government or someone else could just reprogram the guns to stop working altogether or not work against cops/military personnel, and besides that in the real world we'd have the old regular guns around anyway so all the "bad guys" would have the pre-AI guns or jailbreak the new ones and we'd run into the same problems as before anyway
aiislove
11mo ago
Firstly, I was taken aback by how fair Thai people tend to be. I thought they'd be swarthier, akin to Malaysians or Indonesians, but quite a large fraction could easily pass as Caucasian if not for their facial features. The ones who are really tanned seem to be people who work out under the sun, having skin tones I expect.
This is due to large Chinese immigration (especially in the north) as well as fairer skin being seen as higher class especially among women who generally cover their skin and wear sunscreen to keep from tanning.
Secondly, they're piss poor at speaking English.
I found everyone to speak pretty good english when I was there. It's much easier to get around in Thailand knowing no Thai than it is to get around France knowing no French or Japan knowing no Japanese.
Thailand is really clean. [...] The roads are in great condition
...I can't agree but I've never been to India so my comparisons are mostly with first world countries
But the most perplexing thing is the sheer number of pickup trucks here.
I was surprised by this too, specifically the giant US style trucks
Is there something about the Asian physiognomy that makes it easier for them to pass?
Based on nothing but my own observations, there is less sexual divergence in the phenotypes between East and SE Asian men and women than between men and women in other groups of people.
aiislove
11mo ago
W David Marx is great, I used to read his blog neomarxisme years ago. I didn't realize he had a new book out. Thanks for posting.
aiislove
11mo ago
Dude you are doing this all wrong. You don't need to be super hot or perfect or whatever you're trying to do. You need to be nice to yourself, accept yourself with all the flaws you have, understand that you're doing your best and nobody's perfect, stop comparing yourself to others. Just be happy with who you are. Otherwise you are playing an impossible game that leads only to misery.
Do whatever you have to do to change your mindset, don't do whatever you have to do to chase perfection or charisma or whatever. You sound insufferable because you can't accept the good parts of yourself so if someone admired any of your qualities, you're so hard on yourself that you'll repulse anyone who wants to show affection toward you. This is a horrible way to live, for yourself and for the people around you, so you owe it to yourself and others to get your shit together, show kindness and gratefulness toward yourself and those around you and stop comparing yourself to anyone you think is better off than you. They're probably going through all sorts of horrors that you can't see, just like you are.
aiislove
11mo ago
Which continent do you live on? I've convinced myself that elevator door close buttons only work about 10% of the time in North America and the rest of the world but about 90% of the time in East Asia. Maybe I'm just more inclined to follow rules and expect things to work in East Asia though.
aiislove
11mo ago
I like these. You say we can't prove which parts of accepted history are fiction, but do you have any specific examples you believe are off base?
aiislove
11mo ago
I hate it, it's hideous. It's kind of degrading to look at because he has so much fuck you money that he doesn't even bother to give the rest of us something pretty to look at. I'm guessing the location was exactly what he wanted or something and he has so many things already that he doesn't care about aesthetics. It also pattern matches to the irritating impulse many rich leftist Americans have where they feel so guilty about their money that they think to flaunt it would enrage the proles when in reality, not flaunting it is even worse (a la Marie Antoinette's peasant dresses, many of the people of France in the late 18th century weren't mad that she was a queen flaunting her wealth, they were angry that she dressed like a peasant in her spare time)
aiislove
11mo ago
centraco
What does centraco mean? Central American? I just tried googling it and couldn't find anything, was it a typo?
aiislove
11mo ago
at heart a Karen is someone who demands that entry-level workers acknowledge her as a social superior
The issue is that Karens don't realize themselves as social superiors and see themselves as socially inferior to entry level workers. No one who truly feels themselves above someone else treats them poorly, that's absurd and insane. Karens emerged because the social roles have become so blurred in modern America that no one realizes they are above the minimum wage employee, hence the entire phenomenon of Karens acting ridiculously.
Oprah Winfrey is a total Karen.
I don't know what you are referring to specifically with her but if you perceive her as a Karen in some instance I presume it's because she lacked the grace or perspective to acknowledge her social superiority as well
Can you please expand on this because I find it hard to believe but maybe I'm just too online.
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