@georgioz's banner p

georgioz


				

				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 September 05 07:15:35 UTC
Verified Email

				

User ID: 493

georgioz


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 07:15:35 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 493

Verified Email

I'd guess I'd give current odds as 60-40 for Harris, but this is solely because the online American right spending the final days before the election losing its shit over some squirrel seems like losing type behavior.

I think this is disingenuous way to describe the kerfuffle. It is not about a squirrel, it is so much more. The owner was treated as some kind of criminal, waiting for hours while government agencies raided his home as if he was some member of cartel or something. Also the squirrel we are talking about was a mascot of his nonprofit serving 300 other animals, it was quite famous minor social celebrity with many cute videos. There is so much packed into it besides a cute little squirrel getting killed, it is what its killing represents. There is so much you can read into this: the insane level of licensing, the fact that government probably spent thousands of dollars in mandays of agents investigating and killing some "random" squirrel. It is about facelessness of bureaucracy, where even blunders like these cannot be pinpointed and they just go away as if nothing happened

And it is also about media coverage, including comments like yours here. Which is now standard "why do you care so much about X" response. It is easy to throw back - if some stupid squirrel is so unimportant, why did government went so hard after it? You cannot have it both ways, where on one hand it is just some stupid problem, while at the same time it is a problem that requires probably dozens of people investigating it. So which one is it? If I grant you that it was just some stupid squirrel, then the person in charge of the raid should be automatically fired for mishandling public resources on such a stupid thing, right?

I have a little bit different take. It is not that western world is against moralizing, it is just that it changed values that people are judged by. The don't be judgmental schtick was there only as a temporary stopgap in order to protect these alternative moralities while they were weak. Now when they reign, instead of traditional moral values and virtues that people were judged by, you can now easily be judged as committing one of the big 4 "new" istophobic sins: racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. You can add various other moral issues such as being a bigot (you are against these values as interpreted by new religious authorities) or some sort of other enemy: anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and so forth.

What I find interesting is how a lot of the new morality is direct subversion of traditional virtues and promoting related sins instead. Instead of chastity, we promote lust. Instead of humility we literally celebrate pride month. Instead of patience we celebrate righteous wrath of punching Nazis and persecuting bigots. Instead of temperance we literally promote gluttony, celebrate obesity and drug culture. Instead of charity we promote greed by eating the rich and demanding rights without any related responsibilities. Instead of diligence, we excuse sloth ideally enabled by some sort of UBI or by medicalizing it and removing any responsibility for it. Instead of kindness we prefer envy of those who have some kind of privilege and who are in in some mysterious systematic ways responsible for our situation.

I am not the first one to notice, that the new moral regime shapes up to be almost literal subversion of the old system.

As non-US person I consider US presidential election system as mindbogglingly stupid, prone to fraud and unsafe. Ballot harvesting, voting machines, no requirement of any ID in many states, inability to actually count votes for days or weeks, etc. When I raised these questions before, a lot of people mentioned how this is complicated system where states have their own rules and so forth. It does not matter. Your elections are laughable and a mockery of security, it is far beyond anything I have seen in my country of Slovakia or other countries where I follow elections. Also your politicians are unwilling to do anything about it to make elections more safe and trustworthy, while constantly talking about "threat to democracy".

So the steelman of Trump's argument - or argument by any other candidate who loses and raises questions about legitimacy of election - no matter the results, your elections in their current state will always have huge issues with legitimacy and trust no matter who wins.

the Democrat elite may hate him, may despise him, may say that he is a threat to democracy, but I don't think I can remember any time that any of them acted as if he was a threat to one's very psychological foundation. Maybe their power and their close understanding of American politics generally inoculates them against such a reaction.

It is far more sinister. It is public secret, that Hillary Clinton wanted Trump as her opponent, she expected to defeat him easily in 2016. While this strategy backfired, Dems had no problem funneling over $50 million to promote MAGA candidates during 2022 midterms, expecting easier opponents while from the other side of the mouth shouting how they are threat to democracy. There is great deal of cynicism and theater in current politics.

The influence of US media narratives on crime has been especially distorting outside the US.

I find this fascinating, the same is happening in my country of Slovakia. My working theory is that we live in de facto what accounts to US Empire. It is not dissimilar to let's say Roman empire or British empire - you have various naturalized people who feel allegiance to the empire, they adopt the imperial customs and ethos and even ape people in imperial centers of power. It also fosters certain strange allegiances, I am sure upper class of Roman Britain or Egypt felt more in common with Roman elites than local people - not unlike what is happening now.

When it comes to culture, there are obvious things such as racism or sexism etc. However what I find interesting is that people here internalize even completely invalid themes - for instance the boomer vs millenial dichotomy from US. In Slovakia, boomers spent their best productive years during communism or very shady early years after the fall of Eastern Bloc in 1989, with 20%+ unemployment and average salary of $100 a month/$1,200 a year - if you were lucky enough to actually have an average job and the employer was actually paying you on time. Boomers at large do not have any financial property such as stocks or bonds to help in their retirement, because these were not accessible. Whatever they had, they probably lost it to double digit inflation, failing state banks and bankrupted post-communist industry. At best they may own some old commie apartment in some small town where they lived their whole lives. They are wholly dependent on state pension, which averages around 60% of average net wage, many of them have to work various odd jobs to survive. And yet young people are parroting the US talking point of how boomers had it so much better than them, how they hoard wealth, how much harder it is now in current economy etc. It is amazing to see.

All these articles about "cranks" to me are just wordgames. Radical/progressive/woke left believes in their own conspiracy theories, the main one is what I call as universal leftist conspiracy - courtesy of James Lindsay. It is really simple:

There are two groups of people: purple and beige. Purple people have access to some special attribute or property - let's call it purpleness. Purple people use this property to oppress beige group. Purpleness also helps purple group to create and reproduce system of purpleness, which reproduces oppression over to the next generation. Liberation from oppression and true equity will only happen if we dismantle the system of purpleness.

This is the most simple and primitive form of conspiracy theory which you can apply to mainstream ideas that for some reason are not considered as low status conspiracies. Some examples:

  • There are men and women. Men have access to male privilege which they use to oppress women. This system is called patriarchy and women will never be free unless we dismantle it.

  • There are heterosexual people and the rest such as queer people. The former group has ability to define what is normal, they have access to heteronormativity which they use to oppress nonheterosexual people. We will not have true liberation until we will not dismantle it.

  • There are white people and the rest, especially Black people. White people have access to whiteness to oppress other races. There can never be true equality until we will not dismantle white supremacy.

  • There are capitalists and workers. Capitalists have access to capital and they exclude workers from access to it, reproducing the system of capitalism. There can never be true equality unless oppressed workers have access to means of production which is the first step to dismantle capitalism.

These are all the simplest and crudest forms of conspiracy theory which if applied to anything else would be identified as some uncouth theory only stupid people believe in. Except these conspiracies are high status so they are fine to utter even in a good society. This universal conspiracy can also be applied to many other popular leftist systematic conspiracies, just define new groups and systems of oppression be it handicapped people or fat people or tans people or many more. This type of "analysis" is in my opinion absolute farce, people who believe in these things can identify racism and sexism everywhere - from knitting to hiking. Which is the point - once you are woke to this systemic conspiracy thinking, then you will see sexism, racism and white supremacy even if you see somebody throwing a bugger from his car as he waits on a red light.

Naraburns probably said it the best, including how this question of "define woke" is often used as a trolling technique to derail discussion. In fact these rhetorical techniques are often very useful to certain strains of woke, as naraburns said woke stems from so called Critical Theory, which functions best when it is well - criticizing - as opposed to explaining. So using some form of rhetorical judo in discussions is used quite often to have opponents on back foot and in defense, where they are the ones asking questions and criticizing all answers. While at the same time they do not subject their own terms to the same scrutiny.

Two can play the same game of gish gallop: define racism, define systemic racism, define whiteness, define white supremacy, define heteronormativity, define gender etc. We can also play the same game with much older terms such as: define capitalism, define socialism, define communism, define neoliberalism. All of these can and were used as "boogeymen", however they continue to be used and they capture something.

This isn't feminism in any meaningful sense of the word.

I'd agree that it would probably not fit into any of probably dozens of strains of academic feminism. However I think it was Louise Perry or somebody of that thought who half-jokingly defined the practical, Elle style of modern feminism which actually fits:

Feminism is whatever women do.

Women can do X and its opposite and if you criticize anything, then the defense of both simultaneously contradictory positions is feminism. As an example, women can be soldiers and our army will be strengthened by it - which is feminism. But at the same time women should be not compelled or even shamed into military service, or even subject to same physical standards and that is also feminism.

I think there is grain of truth in there, feminism in current day-and-age is mostly a tool of how to prevent any semblance of judgement for whatever behavior women engage in.

In what sense is this a collateral damage? It is not as if the government wants to send an airstrike for military installation and kills an innocent janitor. They are defunding a corrupt organization and money spent are saved. In fact I would say that the DEI and grift is the airstrike in question, it is those corrupt people who in their greed caused people to suffer now.

As an analogy - basically all the companies have some sort of charity pledge to send 1% of the profit from a good you buy to spend on saving poor children in Africa. So if you personally decide no longer to buy that product, are you an evil man who just collaterally damaged kids?

But constantly talking about it on the national stage does not help. It is just virtue signaling. What would help is to win some fucking elections.

This is such an incomprehensive take to me. Pro-life movement had one of the biggest victories recently with repeal of Roe v. Wade, even leftists tacitly admitted that

This decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law. It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court,” President Joe Biden said. But he added: “This is not over.”

As for "winning elections" this to me seems as a strange thing, what do you need to win elections for? Presumably to pursue your preferred policies. If your candidate "wins elections" but then he goes against your deepest held values, does it even make sense to call him your candidate anymore? And it is not such a small number of people - according to Gallup the number of people who say abortions should be illegal under all circumstances ranges from 10%-20% since 1975.

One thing I also noted, is how right and left differs in treating their ideological fringes. Leftist mainstream people have no problem tolerating or celebrating even the most unhinged leftist radicals. Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers can get a cushy job at public University and get praise from Wall Street Journal columnist as a model citizen. Marxist radicals such as Angela Davis can be popular champions of police reform movement no problem. Democrats nurture and take care of their radical fringes, they defend them and propagandize in their favor, and then they use their vigor and energy to replenish their ranks and to push Overton window in favor of their policies. Kamala can have the most insane takes like taxing unrealized capital gains or transitioning children of illegal immigrants for free - and you see the ranks closing and defending her exactly on the grounds of pragmatism: it's only a rhetoric to mobilize more radical voter base, nothing to see here. She is still our joyful momala.

While the right absolutely shits not only on "far fringes" like J6ers, who have nothing on leftist radicals like Kathy Boudin - the mother of Chesa Boudin and professor at Columbia after being released from prison in 2003 - bombing the senate building. That would be absurd, but the right also shits on anybody who is not moderate like pro-life activists. They even shit on people who go against mainstream leftist narrative, it is "moderate" right who will be the first to execute their up-and-coming talent for racism, sexism, being pro-life - exactly like you do now. The rightist moderates completely adopt leftist versions of morality and sins, and push it on fellow rightists, moving the Overton window. It would be absolutely inconceivable, that some right-wing version of Bill Ayers such as some former abortion clinic terrorist would be a chair of charity organization, a university professor at state university and could ever be called as "model citizen" by WSJ or similar media.

So yeah, the right will not win elections with castrated elite, with no semblance of balls or spine, which tone-polices and cancels their own people in accordance to leftist sensibilities. And even if they win, they won't do shit with that victory. Or maybe even worse, they will take their victory and cave to leftist preferences as we saw it in UK with immigration, because supposed conservatives are terrified of being called as racists or booed if they go take their kids from private school/university. Who needs enemies with wussy wankers as allies.

I actually think it is the opposite. President is there to lead and communicate policies of his team toward the public. If his staff members are the writers, president is the actor or comedian delivering the lines and bits. Presidents are supposed to debate, they represent their administration while giving State of the Union, they should represent the state behind closed doors meetings with other world leaders, they should inspire in times of need and be the face of the administration and above all else they should provide legitimacy for the government they represent, as they are the person that people get to vote for as opposed to their PR managers or analysts.

This take that person of POTUS is just unimportant position and that a corpse remotely controlled by unnamed staffers could do as good of a job, and that people really should just vote opaque party machinery and believe in the best is absolutely surreal to me. If the politicians can no longer be bothered to even pretend that they care, the legitimacy of the power is gone. It is incredibly dangerous direction imho.

However, a number of factors make me think that the Philippines would be better off explicitly pivoting towards neutrality.

The question is what do you mean by neutrality. For instance up until recently Finland was neutral, but they spend more money on defense than majority of NATO countries, they have compulsory military service and conscription and warplans that involve turning the whole country into one large military fortress. Being neutral means you have to prepare to face all threats without allies and thus it is much more difficult and costly when it comes to defense spending. Unless you are one of the countries like Switzerland, Austria or Ireland - for which it is easy to be neutral as they are far away from any belligerent country.

But for instance if you are country like Belgium - which was neutral both before WW1 and before WW2 - then neutrality means jack shit when bordering a belligerent neighbor. The only thing neutrality achieved was preventing allies to station their troops there before Germans invaded. This fate of neutral countries was probably main reason why Finland recently decided to join NATO, as neutral Finland could prove to be a soft target for Russia once it wraps its war in Ukraine. With Putin waving old imperial maps when talking to people like Tucker Carlson explaining his Casus Belli, it is is easy to remember that up until 1917 the Grand Duchy of Finland was part of Russian Empire.

Maybe what you meant was something like Philippines becoming vassal of China instead of USA? That could work for preventing war, but it will not work for larger independence and neutrality as it is normally viewed.

I live in EU and I have different take here. EU is increasingly growing irrelevant on global stage. You can look at it from the perspective of GPD, where the share decreased from 31% of World GDP in 1980 to 15% now. Or you can take it through most successful companies in EU where two out of top 5 EU you just have bunch of luxury apparel companies like LVMH and Hermes or old IT companies like SAP or Accenture representing the IT sector with some pharma companies added. Top 15 top EU companies have less value than Apple with 3,6 trillion market cap.

You can look at it from the perspective of security. EU countries cannot do anything for themselves in this front for last 70 years at least. We could not resolve issues in Yugoslavia, we could not resolve issues in Syria or Lebanon and we cannot do shit in Ukraine. The whole EU cannot even produce the same amount of artillery shells as North Korea.

Culturally EU is dead. In the past there were at least some italian spaghetti westerns, some interesting French movies and music. This is now completely overwhelmed by USA. There is basically nothing produced in EU, the culture is thoroughly US based.

Politically, EU countries are weak as well, it is much worse than in other countries. We now basically have permanent unelected bureaucratic structure with zero legitimacy. Our current President of the European Commission - Ursula von der Layen - is career bureaucrat, she was just a party figure in local German politics. She does not represent shit, most people in EU do not even know she exist. She is a dwarf not even compared to people like Trump or Xi Jinping, she is a dwarf compared to Macron and other elected EU leaders. This whole structure is a joke.

When I am thinking about the whole debacle with Trump, it is just another nail in the coffin. Some people in EU may be surprised, but in reality EU countries are not US allies, we are just vassals. If anything I do actually consider this as a "tough love". In a sense it is liberating to see somebody who actually talks to EU leaders as irrelevant dogs as they are instead of getting pets and platitudes from figures like Obama or Biden, while inevitably going into irrelevancy.

It also opens a very interesting conundrum for many people in Europe, who so far thought of themselves as "The West" or some such. This may even continue if some other countries - especially Germany o France elect more nationalistic governments that will try to forge their own path in the world. In a sense the whole Russia narrative is just a red herring. It is the topic of this decade, but there are other heavy-weights: India, China, Turkey or some up-and-coming countries which may have increased importance in upcoming decades such as Nigeria. European countries will have different geopolitical goals even compared to one another - like when Germans were cozying up to Putin for decades despite many warnings from other countries like Poland - until he was suddenly a bad guy. But there will be different goals compared to these other great powers or superpowers.

The right to asylum is not something you can suspend at will. I mean, if you are in the middle of a zombie virus apocalypse, a case might be made, but Poland is very much not on the brink of collapse.

I thought that we are beyond this point already. At least since COVID, everybody knows that rights, including human rights can be suspended at will, sometimes based on unilateral decision of governing bodies for what constitutes a crisis. We now hype everything ranging from climate change through mental health or obesity or anything else as crisis, this is the feature and not a bug. It was actually one of my direct examples to many people during COVID - what prevents government to declare some arbitrary crisis and act with heavy hand?

Also this is nothing new, human rights were undermined constantly. Look at declaration of human rights and let's use Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Waterboarding is widely deemed as torture and yet it was used by CIA in their War on Terror and to my knowledge nobody was punished for it.

Another one is of course article 12

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

This one is dead, governments routinely spy on peoples electronic correspondence and ignore their privacy. And it seems that nobody gives a shit.

Of course Article 14 is also very sketchy:

Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

This is my favorite one when I am talking with progressives who are supposedly staunch defenders of human rights. It is interesting to watch how many people are then using legalese to weasel out of this one.

Asylum is part of Article 14:

Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Again, many people may bog this down into legal battles of who is asylum seeker, if Belarus is not safe country for many such people trying to cross Polish borders etc. Call me cynical, but I do not see how this should be some barrier nobody will cross.

And that's because US foreign policy decisions seemingly being driven not by wider strategic objectives or alliances but by the personal feelings and sentiments of a president upset about if you wear a suit or only say thank you X amount of times and not Y is a terrible way to go about any sort of long term planning.

I think that this is incredibly onesided view of things. I remember that Trump was since 2016 constantly target of ridicule, jabs and insults. I used AI to list some of them, here are examples:

Boris Johnson: The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump

Kevinn Rudd, former Australian prime minister and US Ambassador called Trump "traitor to the West" and the "most destructive president in history."

David Lammy, UK foreign secretary: described Trump as a "tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath".

You can go on with more or less egregious examples from Merkel, Macron, Trudeau and many more. Are these people not supposed to be wise world leaders who are beyond antagonizing their allies with unnecessary insults? Should they not be beyond "personal feelings and sentiments"? And I would even get some spats between diplomats, but it really is something to see when you literally come begging for handouts but lead it with insults? I think a lot of these leaders - especially in Europe - smelled their own farts for too long. They just cannot help themselves as they do the same to their own opposition at home be it Le Pen, Farage, Meloni or politicians from AfD. And of course they have no problem to insult Orban and Georgescu or Fico and dozens of other leaders they need to work with. I find it fascinating how can they be this surprised after spending years antagonizing people they actually need.

Exactly, the world problematic itself has a special meaning at least in Foucaultian analysis, which is also often used in "woke" - you take something and "problematicize" it - analyze it for power relation stemming from ideology. It is very similar to this critical approach, something like:

  • Define woke.
  • Woke is X.
  • Ah, I find your definition problematic. Why are you defining it that way, did you consider that you may hate women and black people?

This can be used for anything. Hiking is problematic and racist. Gyms are sexist nests of manspreading and mansplaining etc.

Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful).

I don't believe you, unless maybe you have a very broad definition of immediately useful. For instance, what use did you have scolding the OP for judging people outside of their "character"?

I openly admit that I am very interested in judging. Judgment is necessary when analyzing all actions or things as good/moral or bad. What I wanted to point out is a very common trope of some people, who lack even basic self awareness and who can with straight face say things such as "unlike all those nasty bigots, I am very open-minded and non-judgmental person". The ask by anybody not to judge, is often just a manipulation technique to normalize and shelter from criticism what they themselves judge as a good thing. With no such treatment offered to what they deem as bad things such as bigotry, which has to be judged and punished harshly.

It's trivially true that the current war in Ukraine could've been avoided had the Kievan Russ welcomed Moscow as liberators and acquiesced to their rule instead of choosing to fight.

It absolutely is not trivially true, in fact it is trivial to prove the opposite. People in Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea welcomed their Moscow liberators in 2014 and ended up being conscripted as cannon fodder for Moscow's new war with Ukraine in 2022. If Ukraine welcomed their liberators in 2022 then who knows, maybe Ukrainians would end up in meat wave assaults against Poland or Baltics in 2025.

Recently there was an article in Czech media loosely titled Russian Border Ends Where it Recieves a Beating. There is large grain of truth in that, not only for Russia but also for other expansive empires.

Him and Trace changed after leaving, kulak changed a lot more but trace did too. There are plenty of alums that are popular on twitter, covfefe anon, cremieuxrecueil (allegedly trannyporn0).

I am a little bit torn on this one. For instance with Trace, I think he is more authentic after leaving his anonymous motte persona, except at least from what I observed he is now more into gay stuff and mormonism - probably stemming more from his personal experience and history. I think he was more interesting in his fictional anonymous personality writing about whatever here on The Motte, when he had to mold himself into The Motte ethos. In a sense rules here are also some sort of algorithm forcing some people into writing style, that may not be natural to them. And they may be better for it.

During WW1 shell crisis in Britain, the government was able to ramp up production from 500,000 shells in first few months of the War (since August-December) to 16 million shells in 1915.

During shell crisis the reasons were similar - UK was missing some key chemicals like acetone, now Europe and to some extent US have shortages of guncotton and other basic materials. By the way during WW1 Dupont was able to produce 500 tons of guncotton a day. We are now two years into a conflict where Western powers know they are draining their munition reserves and they still cannot produce near the volume of munitions that countries were able to produce 100 years ago. In fact US and EU is reliant on guncotton production from China

You may say that it is problem of state orders, but that itself is a problem of state capacity or to better say incapacity. No decision can be straigthtforward and is mired in endless internal battles due to incompetence and other reasons.

You conveniently omit the fact that despite his forgiving nature, Caesar was killed by people he forgave and another destructive Civil War ensued. What happened with Augustus is that he learned his lesson. He was murderous in his purges of hardcore elite - he had no issues with Marc Anthony's murder of Cicero and he ruthlessly persecuted hundreds of senators and other opponents. He also utilized other people like his second in command Agrippa to supposedly "overdo" some of the atrocities, only for Augustus to step in as a merciful one to chastise his supposedly overzealeous pet general while of course building huge temples for him as well.

It is similar to denazification: you need to have a way out for some people, but you also have to ruthlessly crush your main opponents and hang them like dogs in order to provide some incentives to defect. Otherwise you only invite snakes like Brutus to stab you in the back.

Exactly. It would be as if we had an 80ies movie about how bunch of regular and nice kids committed heinous murder inspired by violent action movies while trying to reenact D&D spell in real life. And the whole thing would be promoted by school system as a guide for teachers and parents.

I am not sure if there was anything like that during satanic panic, but it would not surprise me. Wokeness has attracted the usual moral busybodies of yesteryear, I would not be the first one to go with "woke is secular puritanism" angle.

To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?

Not the OP, but I will bite - yes, it is appropriate with possibly the exception of "small". I can judge people especially for things that can be under their control: that they are weak, that they are anorectic, that they lack personal hygiene, that they have bad breath and other things including things like tattoos, piercings, foul language and so forth.

Now I have a question for you: why do you think it is appropriate to judge me for my criteria I judge for? Why should I care for what you judge as judgmental? Are you some ultimate meta-judge, who is going to set the standards of judging for all people? Who elected you into this position?

Even for stoics it is absolutely okay to judge others and especially themselves in accordance with stoic virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. For instance Seneca was very critical of Nero, and Epictetus had no problem judging emperor Domitian for his tyrannical actions.

In fact Stoics would be the first ones to point to fat people as negative example of what happens if one lacks self-control, which is the core basis of the virtue of temperance. I know this, because they actually did condemn gluttony and other excesses of Roman elites.

I am not sure where you came to this idea that stoics are some silent monks never to talk and make judgements. One of they key values of stoicism is courage, which includes courage to tell the truth even in face of tyrants like Caligula who wanted to order Seneca to commit suicide, then let it go given Seneca's poor health.

You have number of adcovates for childlesness: Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Aniston, Helen Mirren and many more. You have people promoting DINK lifestyle, there is large number of feminist journals and magazines promoting childlessness.