She's entering her mid-20s and isn't sure it's worth wasting her time on dating.
I have listened to many such claims from men and women. In the end, majority of those cases were just excuses. The thing is, that these people are not having problem with dating or finding a partner. They have problems with any relationships, period. A normal social life works with Dunbar number where you have 1-2 intimate friends, 5 very good and reliable friends that help you, 15 friends that invite you for birthdays etc, 50 or so members of your tribe - people with whom you can create groups when necessary, who vouch for you in a new job or who will group with you if you meet them on vacation. The rest are at least good colleagues or contacts that will let's say write you a linkedin review if asked. However the way you develop this network is the other way around, you meet people and then move them closer to more intimate circles. You do not hookup and spread your legs to randos from internet every other day like a lottery. Life partner will not fall on your head from the sky, you don't order him from dating app according to your excel checklist - it requires constant work cultivating social network and relationships.
Most often people who whine about how hard dating is have problem with any relationships. I know literal loners who do not know anybody with whom to go out for a beer or who would invite them for birthday party. Heck, they often do not even think to call their own mothers for months. They are socially inept, they have anxieties even thinking about calling a call center. No wonder that these hermits cannot find any dates. Who would want to go to such an empty and parched social circle - and more importantly where would they meet them? Ordering doordash for her permanent homeoffice? Just look at reddit and nonstop threads of thing like "how to meet people"? What the heck? You are 30 years old and do not know how to meet people and make acquaintances or friends? This is something that 5 years old do naturally on playground, what is next - asking how to wipe your ass and wash you hands? It is depressing.
If your daughter had healthy social circle, then for sure some of her friends would either be male, or her female friends would have their own brothers or their boyfriend's friends she could naturally meet during social occasions such as birthday parties or any other activity. This social circle serves for vetting via gossip as well as matchmakers of potential mates in similar social and cultural milieu. If she was competent in social situations, it would be no trouble to find somebody interesting to have relationship with. But most likely she is incompetent, just guessing from her stance that dating is "waste of time". What a stupid thing to say - every social interaction has potential to develop into friendship or even dating and romantic relationship. It is opposite of wasting time.
georgioz
3hr ago
All of this is so silly to me. The answer is women's education reduces women's fertility, and there's no real way around this problem. Women, when given the choice, do not choose children, and so by allowing them to support themselves and choose whether to have kids, they choose not to.
This is loading the question. I was thinking about it a lot and to me one of the major factor is that the whole society is built around women. Women are huge net negatives when it comes to direct welfare costs, they draw more than they pay in taxes. Moreover, women employment is largely in state or semi-state professions like teachers or bureocrats or bullshit jobs. Thirdly, women are using the whole state apparatus in their favor, I would not be the first one to note that in a sense women married state. Just name a government policy and it disproportionally benefits women: progressive taxation, public healthcare, welfare, public employment or even other things like military draft etc.
So in my eyes it is not a simple natural "choice", the whole environment is built so that women do not have any duties and do not shoulder any burden of society - they do not even reproduce. The choice of "hey, here is free stuff and no responsibility" is an artificially created one. They get stuff for themselves and then renege on any responsibility or duty. Just slash government spending to let's say 5% GDP and watch how women fall in line and start to actually plan and work for their security. Suddenly having family and social ties suddenly becomes more important.
All of this is so silly to me. The answer is women's education reduces women's fertility, and there's no real way around this problem.
Incorrect. Israel is interesting opposite case. They have large urban population, educated women and everything. And even secular population has TFR above 2. Education is important, but there are other things as well. Also there are logical things, for instance education may work indirectly - not indoctrination or that it educates women not to have children. In fact fertility has famous U shape as low income uneducated women have more children than middle class women, but upper class women rebound in around $100k and cross toward 2.1 TFR at income of around $200k. So there may be a different issue and indirect effects. As women spend the most fertile years at school and then they work to wipe out debt, they are not reproducing until after late 20ies early 30ies. Then they usually have smaller families as they spent 10 fertile years on school and work. Who knows, maybe there can be a system where women have children first and they will have something like GI bill when they will get free education if they have two or three children or some such. Like KaiserBauch mentioned, it is a complex problem.
georgioz
4hr ago
I also think we should reduce emissions (and I care about various environmental concerns), but most of your argument hinges on us in the EU having a significant impact, which we don't. From a short check, we're currently at around 6-8% depending on how exactly you count. We can go net-zero and it will literally not even reduce emissions by a tenth. We also increasingly have less international sway. All of this goes doubly for germany specifically, which I consider the worst offender in this regard. So adaption is mandatory, reduction is a nice-to-have bonus.
Agreed. The 2 degrees change budget is around 1,000 gigatonnes of CO2 and even if we froze the situation globally as we are now (just stopping increases) - the global spending would reach this budget it in 25.7 years. If EU magically went net zero tomorrow, the global budget will be spent in 27.4 years. So at best the EU will delay the inevitable for around a year. The whole thing is impossible to solve. Even the COVID lockdown measures decreased the global CO2 emissions by around 17%, when everybody was at home. Even if we had these lockdowns perpetually, it would delay the 2 degree budget spending by around 3 years.
People underestimate the scale that is needed, nonexistent technologies necessary etc. The only thing that makes sense now is to just adapt either personally, in community or nationally.
I think the most important part of the rankings is to provide solid criteria for selection. I am not that good with songwriting, but I can use Mike Duncan's criteria for greatest Roman emperors until official fall of the Western Empire. He named three criteria: what cards were they dealt with - a self-made man like Caesar or Augustus and specifically Aurelian are ranked higher than emperors who had great starting point - like let's say Titus or Antonius Pius. Second criteria was his impact on the empire, which is combination of longevity and reforms done. Augustus is absolute beast in this criterion, Aurelian is a sprinter as he did amazing stuff during his short reign. And last criterion was how they handled the succession. This absolutely tanks Marcus Aurelius as 1/10 in this category as despite his supposed stoic rationality, allowed his retarded degenerate son Commodus on the throne, who then promptly destroyed the empire.
The same here with music. For instance the OP has disdain for rap, which is fair given the structural difference between rap and other music. Rap lyrics are built into the loop, rock and other genres use chord progression and melodies meant to be sung. On the other hand rap lyrics have denser linguistics space, rappers like Aesop Rock or GZA have famously large vocabularies densely packed across their songs, especially compared to linguistically more simple pop songs. Of course then there is also a tension that OP recognizes - are we going for artistic merit or are we going for popularity, maybe one criterion or even a requirement can be how many songs written by a specific songwriter hit top 10 charts or some such. Are we valuing mastery over one genre or are we going for versatility of working with many different artists? Are we discounting writing for famous artists who are guaranteed to be successful over actually making unknown talent break through with a hit written by that songwriter? Are we valuing just pure success at the time in terms of awards, copies sold at the time vs cultural longevity, impact and universality of the lyrics for songs that maybe started as obscure or hated, and which are now universally famous? Just think "We Are the World" vs "Hallelujah" or something like that, with the former being song of the year and 8th best selling song in history, the latter never receiving any award and selling less copies - although spread over years.
In a sense true value of these discussions is not necessarily the actual list, but the surrounding discussion of what criteria to use, how to analyze success and if there are some outliers. You may have almost infinite lists depending on what criteria you use, which is the fun part of the game playing with the topic.
georgioz
1d ago
On the one hand we are bombarded with platitudes about how the good life consists of being free to be yourself, i.e. the postmodern ethic of self-actualization.
This was never the case. If you decided to be gun loving religious republican, you were never celebrated for your unique identity. As usual, it was word game since start where the only legitimate identity is the progressive one, every other identity is unauthentic, performative and driven by false consciousness and internalized isms and phobias such racism, misogyny and whatnot. As James Lindsay said, activists share your vocabulary but not your dictionary. It goes with all other words including the words I used, but also words like ally, representation, violence, inclusion or even democracy and myriads of other words.
So, let's start with some of the most obvious differences. Climate change is a truly global problem in the sense that it's literally impossible to fix locally. This is the reason why the EU/german-style Energiewende is so insanely myopic and short-sighted; Even if it worked relatively fine on its own merits (i.e. reducing emissions to near-zero with minimal damage to the economy) AND if everyone on the entire globe did the same, it still requires adaptions to the already-changed climate. Instead it not only is sold as an alternative to adaption, the rest of the world isn't doing the same anyway, and of course it isn't working well on its own merits, either.
I think that both problems are global and local at the same time. Climate Change can be adapted to locally or even individually - just move to a place less impacted by it. Countries can adapt to different climates, hundreds of millions of people in Middle-East, India and Southeast Asia already live in environments with prolonged wet-bulb situation of deadly heat+humidity. And they adapted and survive. The same with demographic crisis, you can move, you can create your own community and move over to self-sustaining or community system when the social situation inevitably collapses and autarky will rule the day.
Both of these also have unpredictable global impact such as migration, wars etc. But guess what also has unpredictable impact: migration, wars and plagues and the rest of it. We had two world wars even without Climate Change - although arguably both were brought about by demographic boom and relative adjustment of power of various countries. The same goes for current issues - for instance since end of WW2 the population of Africa increased seven fold from 200 million to 1.6 billion. This by itself causes strain on resources, there are much more severe issues than just climate change. Even regular environmental mismanagement and resource scarcity can create destabilization and huge issues.
I agree with KaiserBauch, there is not much to do other than to adapt. But this is not something new - imagine being born lets say in Austria in 1895. You had bad luck, your life saw such unpredictable changes and so much misery but also wonders that was impossible to prepare. The best you could do is to cultivate skills, social networks and self-sufficient mindset that could carry you and your family over in unpredictable situation when everything around you broke down and you could relay only on yourself, your friends&family and your ability to bribe and navigate the situation.
I think that the issue is of a different kind, something James Lindsay refers to as "woke right". It means that ideologically it actually agrees with left narratives, it only turns them on their head. Patriarchy oppresses women? Yes and it is a good thing, be a chad like Tate and deal with the hoes and their white knights like rabble they are. Radical feminists rave about beauty hierarchies and pretty privilege? Fat activists talk about how fat people are oppressed? That is true, be beautiful and openly sneer and mog all the ugly degenerates, objectify everybody.
This woke right shit is literal heresy to leftwing activism, it can accept all the premises and just declares "and it is good". Hierarchies are not unjust, they are natural. Systems of oppression should not be dismantled, you should strive to play the game and be on top. It is woke version of satanism, that is why it actually cuts more deeply - mostly because the leftwing ideology actually gives them ammo, they agree that all these things bring privilege. Leftists just assume that people will intuitively say that having privilege is bad, and that people will automatically cheer for the underdog - without actually explaining why. It is actually a big weakness, Lindsay likened it to vampire ideology: you have to invite it to have power of guilt and shame over you. If you make yourself immune to it and openly laugh at it and if you are able to live through cancellations and struggle sessions, you are beyond their reach. It has no longer any power over you.
Leftwing activists are much more likely subject to be subverted into these movements as they are primed to the language, these movements are more dangerous to them than let's say libertarians or neoliberals etc.
I think it is a standard tactics of ideological defense in depth, where arguments are used as soldiers. You can have simultaneous and contradictionary propaganda aimed at different parts of the population. In modern information environment, you have simultaneous message for different audiences. Maybe you know the "narcissistic prayer" meme:
- That didn't happen
- And if it did, it wasn't that bad
- And if it was, that's not a big deal.
- And if it is, that's not my fault.
- And if it was, I didn't mean it.
- And if I did, you deserved it.
You have a message for everybody. Loyalist can be in denial in order to prevent infohazard and keep ideological purity - everything that was said by opponents is Conspiracy Theory, just focus on our message. Moderates and apologists can be equipped with minimization arguments, which can even be linked to one another, just to flood the infospace and make truth hard to discern. And the last message can be aimed at radicals and fanatics in order to generate more of the things that supposedly did not happen - with plausible deniability generated by moderates.
In a sense it is a brilliant information warfare strategy.
More generally: it’s important for everyone to contribute and compromise for society, the problem is when people asking/enforcing don’t evenly contribute and compromise themselves. I think growing lack of effort and honor within the working class should and would be fixed by seeing more effort and honor from their leaders.
I think that this is feature and not a bug. For instance it is legally and financially high-risk situation to hire random bum to get him mow your lawn for cash. This simple interaction is covered by literally thousands of pages of regulation. You have tax liability, you have premises liability, you have equipment liability, you have environmental liability and million of other things. The system is designed that such a simple and age old interaction is basically impossible.
This is the litmus test of how tyrannical the government is. It basically forces local bum to begging, as he is incapable of getting regular job, not to even talk about being able to do the paperwork necessary to be a small business operator. And you as a customer cannot profit from this opportunity and you are forced to contract companies who have to finance all that regulation. Large corporation can utilize economy of scale, their operations can afford regulation compliance, which only incentivize them to lobby for more. Alternatively you just do it yourself, which in this tax and regulation environment seems to be more and more attractive, incentivizing autarkic economies.
On an intuitive level, the modern society especially in the west is absolutely unfree under pretext of safety.
Not necessarily. There is often implicit understanding that after school you have to develop your carrier. Why study law or medicine when you then go straight toward part-time work and childcare? You will have gap in your CV and your opportunity may be lost forever as your social network moves on. It is a trap of school, carrier, maybe some real estate and material security. It is not only after 30 where some women feel secure to search for relationships, while others select to be childless to pursue their career more - it is not as if the treadmill stops after 5 or 10 years.
This is inherently male behavior, with huge caveat that men historically did that in families. Men could work 12 hours a day while their wife was at home with kids even when husband was 20. For women it is possible only if childless or with immense pressure and/or external help. The reverse situation where high powered attorney returns to work at 26 with her toddlers at home with her husband is exceptionally rare. It is not how things work, men and women are not interchangeable.
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