coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
They receive the money and they control the resources. This gives me a funny image in my head of an Italian Roman claiming the Goths aren’t dominant because they only control Rome with Italian norms… yes, but they are the ones who control it and reap wealth from it. Foreign entertainment is the worst trade in existence: Chinese get to grow economically and employ people and in exchange American young men waste their time on addicting entertainment. They get everything of value, cementing their dominance, and we get ephemeral thrills. That sounds pretty dominant to me.
Now, is a Middle Ages fantasy-scape really “our culture”? I’d say no. Americans aren’t very influenced by the culture of the Middle Ages. And the fantasy scene is really a gloss with nothing underneath. Okay, their fantasy architecture has spires of church, but there’s nothing deeper there. Rather than giving us “culture points” it probably reduces how much we ourselves care about our culture. (Imagine a young kid seeing a beautiful church: wow, this looks like Elden Ring!)
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
That makes their dominance more impressive, if they can create an entertainment product that beats the West at its own culture (if we consider the Middle Ages to still be our culture).
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I wonder if there is a way to determine region-specific use. I know that the major video game “content creators” are obsessing over the game at the moment. Right now at 252k viewers on Twitch, with Fortnite at 80k, GTA at 174k (but that’s not for the game per se but roleplaying).
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Chinese entertainment — and to a lesser degree, East Asian entertainment generally — is dominating Western markets. Their products appear to be organically favored by Westerners. The Chinese-made video game Black Myth Wukong was released this week and is now sitting on Steam’s top 10 list for concurrent playercount and user favorability. It sits next to Elden Ring, a Japanese-made video game. The Chinese-designed 2020 Call of Duty Mobile game has made ~4bn lifetime revenue and has 60,000,000 monthly players; a Western-designed Warzone attempted to dethrone it this year and is unanimously considered a failure, losing most of its playerbase in the first month. Genshin Impact and PUBG mobile are other highly popular mobile games led by Chinese studios. Tik Tok is the most used social media company and is a Chinese product. League of Legends (130 million monthly active) is Chinese. Final Fantasy and Lost Ark are the most popular MMORPGs this year, Japanese and Korean respectively. Korean shows are increasingly popular in the West (and have actually slanted Korean tourism in favor of female tourists), and I don’t need to note anime and manga.
What explains this? Wukong in particular appears to be a genuinely loved game, and it makes no overtures to Western culture — it is firmly Chinese in story, music, and art design. IMO there’s likely American propaganda floating around against Chinese entertainment (billions in revenue on the line which compounds), but despite this the products are favored. So I feel safe saying that their products are better. So what has led China, and East Asia generally, to make better entertainment than America and Europe for Western audiences?
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought. And almost needless to say, widespread public gun ownership did nothing to stop NSA domestic surveillance or, long before that, things like the WWI-era Espionage Act. Or, for that matter, slavery.
I’m not persuaded here. There’s a category of intelligent Americans with prior military service who would fertilize Jefferson’s metaphorical tree of liberty, so to speak, yet who are not persuaded that any of the above constitute a legitimate threat. I think the extrapolitical action you’re talking about is more likely the more intelligent you are, rather than less, so the low IQ person who believes that the voting machines literally flubbed vote tallies is the least likely to act on a political ideology. Dying for political ideology requires insanity or extremely low time preference plus prosocial obligation. “Democrats won the election because of ostensibly lax voter laws and the lawsuits about this are still in progress” is not a serious threat. The NSA’s spying is not serious threat for personal liberty in its current form. War-era spying act is not serious (wars are special cases), and attempting to shoot all slave owners is not a serious hypothetical scenario.
I would rather like my in-group (white Christian / Western-Tradition-sympathizers and her allies) to own guns, because I ultimately do not trust power in the hands of other groups and cultures, who have shown themselves to be violent against my group (eg Bolsheviks), whereas my group has shown itself to be pretty welcoming and fair to others.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I’d prefer a random middle class Japanese immigrant than an Eastern European oligarch, though. It’s easy to make money through scamming and bullshitting. Who would want a Bankman-Fraud in their country? That one person can cancel out the work of hundreds of thousands.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
”Serious” phone gaming is popular among poor populations and regions but less common among the middle class+ in America. Caribbean / Central Americans / South Americans play games like PUGB Mobile and CODM which have voice chat, cosmetics, clans, etc. I can confirm this is popular among: expatriat Albanians who all play with each other while living in different countries; Lakotas on reservations; Jamaicans, Guyanese, Trinidadians; Venezuelans; all of the above who have moved to America. There is nothing weird about this to them in the way it would be for a rich white American kid to forego PC gaming and console gaming. Genders are more mixed.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
My bad, “modern orthodox” is Jewish term of art but I forgot that’s not popular knowledge.
Right, but “modern orthodox” (a denomination name) still has a high retention rate (in a sense): 60% remain, but 30% leave to become ultra-orthodox (“Yeshiva Orthodox”), and only 10% leave to a non-orthodox flavor or apostasy. So it’s pretty much a 90% retention rate with a push toward ultra-orthodoxy. I agree that modern orthodox are approximately normal in terms of work, taxes, civic participation etc. They still send their kids to specific schools and camps however.
Teenagers are inherently “rebellious” in the sense that they pursue sex and fun even if an old man tells them not to. I suppose this is rebellious, but really it’s that the old man lacks any authority of significance: control over sex and fun. Terror organizations like ISIL were able to recruit young men precisely because they offered them sex and fun, even though this entailed a swap from one authority (being some Muslim kid in UK with an overworked Dad and a principal you never see) to a far stricter authority (literally a violent extremist religious cult which micromanaged daily routine). The sex came in the way of slaves, and the fun was multifaceted: brotherhood (highly instinctually appealing), war (instinctually fun), explosives (you already know)… but these are the more obvious funs. There’s also the aesthetic and fantastical pleasure associated with the apocalypse. There’s also the ingrained potency of religious language which, in a peculiar sense, places you in the center of the universe by totalizing the importance of your feelings, actions, and identity. All of those are quite seriously fun.
Incel ideology is inherently unsexy and non-fun. I don’t see anything coming from it, pun unintended. The dangerous incels are more likely to become Muslims and the smart incels are more likely to learn how to manipulate women (thus solving the problem) or visiting Southeast Asia. The Hitler Youth sprung out of a hippie-ish hiking and trekking brotherhood by the way, so its origin were very fun. And it took that fun and placed more fun on it, a quasi-religious identity package that is fun to dwell on.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Is there any way to tease apart the retention rate of the ultra-orthodox and modern orthodox in America? There seems like a lot of different possible elements at play:
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Orthodox schooling
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The narratives of the religion versus the action-prescriptions of the religion
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The ethnic homogeneity of most orthodox (Eastern European Ashkenazi)
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Ostracization for defectors
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[Whatever I’m missing]
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I enjoyed this comedian explaining to Tucker Carlson how nice Joe Rogan is in his personal life.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Did some looking at the early church and I’ve come away with a different interpretation
Tertullian addressing Christians in prison who were awaiting martyrdom, encouraged and strengthened them by citing the example of famous suicides including Lucretia, Dido and Cleopatra. Chrysostom and Ambrose both applauded Palagia, a girl of 15 who threw herself off the roof of a house rather than be captured by Roman soldiers. In Antioch, a woman called Domnina and her two daughters drowned themselves to avoid rape, an act which, as in the case of the Jews, was venerated. […] Jerome also approved of suicide for religious reasons and did not condemn austerities which undermine the constitution and which might be regarded as slow suicide. He recounts, with the greatest admiration, the life and death of a young nun named Belsilla who imposed such penalties on herself that she died.
Tertullian is considered the father of western theology and he writes
It would take me too long to enumerate one by one the men who at their own self-impulse have put an end to themselves. As to women, there is a famous case at hand: the violated Lucretia, in the presence of her kinsfolk, plunged the knife into herself, that she might have glory for her chastity. Mucius burned his right hand on an altar, that this deed of his might dwell in fame. The philosophers have been outstripped — for instance Heraclitus, who, smeared with cow dung, burned himself; and Empedocles, who leapt down into the fires of Ætna; and Peregrinus, who not long ago threw himself on the funeral pile. For women even have despised the flames. Dido did so, lest, after the death of a husband very dear to her, she should be compelled to marry again; and so did the wife of Hasdrubal, who, Carthage being on fire, that she might not behold her husband suppliant as Scipio's feet, rushed with her children into the conflagration, in which her native city was destroyed. Regulus, a Roman general, who had been taken prisoner by the Carthaginians, declined to be exchanged for a large number of Carthaginian captives, choosing rather to be given back to the enemy. He was crammed into a sort of chest; and, everywhere pierced by nails driven from the outside, he endured so many crucifixions. Woman has voluntarily sought the wild beasts, and even asps, those serpents worse than bear or bull, which Cleopatra applied to herself, that she might not fall into the hands of her enemy. But the fear of death is not so great as the fear of torture. And so the Athenian courtezan succumbed to the executioner, when, subjected to torture by the tyrant for having taken part in a conspiracy, still making no betrayal of her confederates, she at last bit off her tongue and spat it in the tyrant's face, that he might be convinced of the uselessness of his torments, however long they should be continued. Everybody knows what to this day is the great Lacedæmonian solemnity— the διαμαστύγωσις, or scourging; in which sacred rite the Spartan youths are beaten with scourges before the altar, their parents and kinsmen standing by and exhorting them to stand it bravely out. For it will be always counted more honourable and glorious that the soul rather than the body has given itself to stripes
So at least two major Christian thinkers had an approximately utilitarian view of suicide, namely that is it virtuous when the Good it accomplishes his greater than the bad it effects. And I don’t think it is too hard to defend “utilitarian suicide” from a Christian schema generally. It’s an acknowledgment that we belong to God and that God wishes us to love each other; it’s an act of love to others that we die before we cause immense pain; it acknowledges death; it acknowledges that a virtuous life matters more than clinging to years; and so on.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Slave-owners were the highest class of European Americans, not “every slave-owner descended from the previous highest-class Europeans”. Borderers were not the normative background, not “there was no borderer slaveowner in the South.” Reading carefully is important, yeah. Andrew Jackson amassed slaves after he had already ascended to the upper class of European Americans (his first slave purchased was after he came an attorney with high-status friends, the same year he came protege to founding father William Blount). He ascended to the upper class like, I don’t know, JD Vance. (As today, the highest class is not all descended from the previous highest class, but pass through a rigorous selection filter which requires a high IQ, which gets to the very point of what we are discussing (the genetic quality of the slave-owning class)).
If 70% of southern whites did not own slaves, and if slave ownership was in direct proportion to wealth, then it hardly matters whether (of the remaining, wealthier 30%) many had just 1-2 slaves, as the wealthier families with many slaves means that most slaves worked for the wealthy. Here, do the math: those who held 40+ slaves collectively held 31% of all slaves; 7-39 slaves held 53%; and those who owned less than 7 collectively held just 16% of all slaves. I imagine those who held 1-2, aka the poor (but not as poor as the remaining 70% of white families lol) is much lower, like 2%. So the median slave experience was actually working under a wealthy white who could employ 7+ slaves, and perhaps the median number is as high as 30+!
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I don't think this scenario has ever happened in the history of the world
Think of the Faklands. The British, rightfully, exchanged the lives of British soldiers for an important geopolitical claim. The British, in their minds rightfully, also fought Indian kingdoms and revolts for an important economic claim… were these Indians going to invade Britain?
Conquering powers that aggressively steal land from others typically only pause to consolidate their gains, reshore their power and morale, cooldown international outrage, etc, before continuing to conquer
Falklands is the obvious example, but this is also disproven if you consider the way the Mongols operated. Fighting the mongols always leads to more death, but if you win, you are in an economically more valuable position (less taxes paid). If human lives are the terminal value than it would never be rational to fight off the mongols.
if it becomes known you explicitly have a policy of not fighting back against conquest plenty of other nations will swoop in to exploit this
Falklands is once again the obvious example. There’s an enormous difference between a territorial concession far away and invading the homeland. France would not invade the UK if the UK relinquished the Falklands.
Nobody ever explicitly sends soldiers "to die”
This is an unserious semantic argument. We can predict with 99% accuracy that the some soldiers will die. We choose that they die to secure economic benefit. You haven’t argued against this point: soldiers have died to secure economic resources throughout history, in conflicts over geopolitically important or economically valuable territory, in cases where there is no direct threat of aggression in the mainland.
The fact that your own people die is a horrible tragedy, but the blame for it lies on the enemy for killing them, not on you for sending them in self-defense.
If human lives were the terminal value and there is no added risk to your defense, then the rational position would be to continually secede territory always, regardless of economic cost. We can even draft a hypothetical scenario involving interplanetary war, to make our intuitions clearer. Planet A and Planet B are completely defended and cannot be invaded. B is about to take A’s valuable resources which will leave A poorer. I think almost everyone would say that it’s permissible for A to sacrifice their lives to secure the valuable resources, even though there is no risk of mainland invasion — because we understand that resources increase wellbeing.
This is pretty typical natural rights stuff
Okay so it’s rooted in whim
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
The argument rests on the widespread occurrence of war over purely economic territorial claims. It does not rest on every territorial claim involving purely economic motives.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Have you heard of guano islands? The sugar trade? Colonial possessions? The whole history of European war in the colonial era is mixed with fighting other nations for territorial claims wherein the territory has economic benefit and nothing else. Russia today is preparing for war in the arctic involving its territorial resources, and China over fishing areas.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I find that unlikely as plantation slaves would not be intermixing with poor whites, and a poor white harming a rich white’s property would be a crime.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
When we send a soldier to die in war, for no other reason than that it retains a territorial claim with economic benefit, we are making a transaction of human life for “communal wellbeing”. And this is common in history, including nearly all Catholic countries. A country which considered human life ultimately sacred would give up the territorial claim so that no lives are lost, provided it is a mere territorial claim with no further risk of aggression. But no one would do this. This tells us something important about our values: human life is not the ultimate sacred value, but can be transacted for wellbeing. (Consider also sending humans to work in mines.)
The argument “it is okay to kill bad people” must be rooted in something, not axiomatic. Why is it okay to kill bad people rather than jail them for life? Human life ceases to be sacred when it is a bad person? This isn’t the religious argument whatsoever.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Slave-owners were the highest class of European Americans. Borderers (in Appalachia) were not the normative background of slave-owners who were pedigreed Anglo-Saxons. African Americans derive their white admixture pre-enfranchisement to the most high-performing European Americans, not to the poor borderers.
So there’s an interesting effect on African Americans: they were (as noted above) the most backwards of the most backwards part of the world; they received upper class pedigree white DNA; after emancipation until probably 1990, the white DNA they received would be significantly worse than normal white, because of the taboo.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I don’t think it needs to be seen as an acknowledgement of worthlessness. Instead it would be a noble and heroic “my time has come, I lived my life, now I will end it with dignity”. The choice is not living versus not living so much as living terribly versus finalizing one’s life. If your personality and memory have run out and the rest of your months / years are pain, I’m not sure how much that is living.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
A speedy decapitation is the least barbaric method I can conceive of. Reasonable attached heads may differ. It is quick, relatively painless, and inexpensive. There have already been some higher tech forms of decapitation that developed over the centuries, like the guillotine. I would rather trust a well-designed instrument of physical decapitation than a doctor’s lethal injection that is liable to all sorts of errors. Something also seems wrong to me about filling a human with foreign chemicals before his death. What I find pleasing is relevant because the post considers, essentially, the optimal way to treat death. So what is aesthetically preferable matters. Others will have their own aesthetic preference, but it can’t be ignored completely — how many people are against “dying before SHTF” because of the gross culture surrounding it? The word “euthanasia”, the doctor, the injection, the hospital room… this is so displeasing that it actually biases us against a pretty reasonable argument.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
One solution is different medical insurances available according to your preferred end of life care. Governments can be totally agnostic about the issue and keep away from medical care entirely, or they can run their own optional buy-in government-run healthcare. But if there develops a culture that says “actually we are fine with dying before things go terrible”, then the members of that culture should never be taxed for the costly end of life care of the rest of the population, and they should be allowed to engage in euthanasia as they please (above a certain age) provided there is consent of the member. As for,
very vulnerable population with a lot of people poised to get (or keep) lots of money by convincing that person to choose euthanasia even if it’s not what that person really wants
Perhaps a requirement that they agreed to this eventuality at an earlier healthy date a certain number of years prior. Sort of like a Do Not Resuscitate.
There are many errors here. (1) Making more money and having more resources is universally considered dominance, and it is a dominance most associated with objective measures of national health, so I don’t actually know why you want to focus on “cultural dominance”. (1a) To make a very mottey example, Jews were dominant in the early years of Hollywood and historians would say as much, yet all of their major products fell in line with plainly goyish and Christian / post-Christian sensibilities… this was still to their benefit, as they made lots of money this way and were able to influence things slightly over time. (2) You haven’t argued why cultural dominance is a fruitful lense to look at entertainment products. (2a) We have many examples in history of clearly dominant groups wholecloth appropriating the aesthetic sensibilities of other nations: the Romans to Greeks, the Muslims to the Byzantines (the star-and-crescent was a Byzantine symbol), Germanics to the Romans. (2b) Entertainment products appropriate the surface-level artifacts of culture but not necessarily anything deeper, with Disney the best example: it appropriates Western art, but that’s it, and visual culture is often appropriated from a different group. (3) Appropriating the aesthetic sense of a different culture does not change the substantive kernel of culture, things like an individual’s relationship to work, family, community, values. A deeper analysis of these games would show a thoroughly Asian obsession with skill mastery, objective grading and peer competition and meritocracy, values which are actually absent the European Middle Ages whose focus was emotional [piety, love]. (4) If Western culture were dominant, we should see it in its fruits: its ability to make compelling leisure experiences. Why didn’t a Western company make Wukong or the other products? The power which enables one group to make more money than another group is indeed a cultural power in its rawest sense, especially when that money is made meritocratically, eg a video game that people buy after looking at gameplay. (5) What does the modern West have to do with the Catholic Middle Ages? Even Catholics are very far away from that culture.
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