monkeylampstop
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User ID: 1123
monkeylampstop
3d ago
That doesn't account for things getting worse. If gender issues are getting worse while traditional values are receding then there must be some other variable.
monkeylampstop
6d ago
Well I think I mean categorization in a different way than what you describe. I'm aware of what you're talking about but I am thinking of the way progressives tend to isolate problems into categories and define immoral antagonists for each. Gender issues are cause by patriarchy, race issues by whiteness, economy issues by capitalists, etc.
They don't consider that (1) good intentions or moral behavior (defined by them) can have negative consequences and that (2) bad things can happen because of things outside the category that they have defined them in. That is, the idea that men were hurt because we sold jobs overseas doesn't make sense to them, because it's a gender issue with an economic cause. It must really have been the patriarchy at the root of the issue, because that's the only thing that can cause gender issues, since the patriarchy is the antagonist of the gender category.
monkeylampstop
6d ago
I think the hidden logic for these types of claims look like this:
- Traditional values are unfair to women and morally wrong
- Progressive values are fair to women and men and morally correct
- Problems in the world are caused by moral failings relating to the "category" of the problem
- Therefore the cause of a problem in the "category" of gender must be the result of the strength of immoral values regarding gender in the world.
- Because traditional values are in recession and things are getting worse, there must be a secret conspiratorial strength to the traditionalist values, and this is the patriarchy.
This is why patriarchy is hard to define. It can't just be the traditionalist trappings that have managed to remain, because it is something that needs to be in power right now manipulating society.
So I'd argue that rather agreeing with that the patriarchy exists, instead argue that it is a tool used to avoid the reality that traditionalist values can't possibly be the engine causing the problems of the western world today because it is just too weak.
monkeylampstop
6d ago
This just reads to me as generically how people act. Self reflection is rare across the board. Getting all of your experiences validated and listened to is rare too. All of us go through life trying to open up to people, even those we are close to, and often being disappointed with the results. Those that get super upset by this are usually codependent and can't hold their own beliefs steadily without others validating them.
It goes to show that with the arrival of therapy culture and BLM, the white progressive is no better than they were 10 years ago. Validation only goes so far, and too much demand for it breeds codependency.
monkeylampstop
24d ago
look them in the eyes, ask short open ended questions, have a concerned, serious expression on your face, help them move towards a conclusion that they feel like they can move forward with, and thank them for opening up with you.
monkeylampstop
25d ago
I think they would see it as either that, or avoiding providing ammunition to already abusive parents. But from that point of view they might as well keep grades secret because abusive parents can be triggered by those too.
I think that mode lines up more with the common cultural meme which is to basically assume abuse until proven otherwise along certain power differentials. The "raised by narcissists" worldview that looks at this on the parent-child angle hasn't really gone mainstream but I think is guiding a lot of the left-wing agenda around kids under the surface.
monkeylampstop
30d ago
I'd be curious to hear what makes you see this kind of mental health divide because I don't think it's so clear.
For example while Jussie Smollet was an opportunist, he did not seem clear eyed to me, like something was really wrong with him to try that. And I feel like that example can be applied pretty broadly to people who do and do not benefit from wokeness. People with personality disorders will manipulate those around them for status and gain, while being completely not "clear-eyed". Isn't that kind of model more plausible, where everyone is crazy? In that sense it's kind of a codependency across victimization lines.
monkeylampstop
1mo ago
As an atheist, I know that it's possible for dwelling to end up like that, but I don't think it's the only possible result. The key for me is to actually read what other people have said and done, really dig into history and philosophy, and there are endless interesting threads to follow. By contrast I feel like the religious tend (not always) to be in a sort of cloistered existence where they don't really engage with the world and literature in a way that doesn't reassure them of their own faith. That existence seems much paler compared to the richness of being open to all sorts of opinions and experiences. Rather than cancel each other out I think the diverse and contradictory experiences of the world add up to something fascinating, there's just no easy answers and the meaning is harder won, but more real in my opinion than the womb-like experience of the devout.
monkeylampstop
1mo ago
I think this is buying the propaganda a bit. Feminists would love if that were true, but I think it's a more complex story on how that happened.
monkeylampstop
1mo ago
Any specific sources that expand on this? I'm curious to hear more from this angle.
monkeylampstop
1mo ago
I think Guliani definitely played it wrong. The underlooked angle is that because Guliani played his hand in the most opportunistic way, after years of being kicked in the shins by Trump the establishment felt no ethical need to be straight on it. That's just what can happen when you play hardball after making a ton of enemies.
If they had it early and didn't leak it I would assume that they were just biased to do nothing if they generally wanted Trump to lose, especially since the other moderates weren't that strong of candidates.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
The reason many flawed people don't change is because the people in their lives enable them, which is to say don't properly judge them for who they are. I think that being better judges of people creates an environment that catalyzes people to change for the better.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
I was thinking along these lines in regard to anxiety, which is a targeted vector. What it is targeting seems to at its core be imagined events happening or not happening. And I imagine this to be a core emotion in which these other negative emotions are used to "manage" it to various degrees of success.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
He interacted with the other apostles but only a apparently few times and mostly seemed to be doing his own thing with the gentiles, and they eventually seemed to be very conflicted with him over retaining Jewish law etc. I think a lot of that gets papered over in the bible to make Paul look more broadly accepted and integrated them. But just looking at the history, the whole Jewish movement in Christianity got wiped out with the persecution of Jews in Rome, and all that appears left from the original Jesus movement is the Q source and the book of James, neither of which back Paul's claims of the heavenly Jesus or heavenly apocalypse.
Which is to say, all that's left from the original Jesus movement is certain moral teachings and miracles. If that's all Christianity was I could actually see myself engaging with it as a way of integrating with a positive moral community. But the heavenly Christ mythology which every Christian is expected to believe all comes from the one guy (and the direct followers of his school of thought) who never met Jesus in real life, and there's no way I'll ever be able to buy that.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
Well he was "alone" in that he continually claims he received the vision alone, it was a direct experience with Christ that he didn't share with anyone else. I don't know why I remembered it as a cave, I may have just be confused on that.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
The hardest part about Christianity is that all of the evidence points to a Pharisee who never met Jesus exploiting his death and fashionable Jewish apocalypticism onto disaffected Romans which he felt compelled to do after hallucinating that he saw the heavenly Jesus alone in a cave somewhere. Do I believe his hallucination was a secret revelation given to him by the heavenly body of Jesus himself? No.
If a miracle happens somewhere, you've piqued my interest and I'd be curious to follow up on it. If it turns out the miracle was a rumor spread by a guy who saw it in a hallucinatory vision, I move on pretty quickly.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
Recently I saw an old friend and some of his buddies that were all very left leaning and weren't aware I've shifted right. Occasionally some "white people" remarks came up that put me off, though it was nice to allow myself to actually feel put off rather than pile on with it like I used to.
But I actually did enjoy doing the tricky thing of finding agreement on more right-wing ideas while still presenting as leftist.
The best example that came up with my friends was me saying how much I like Biden because he forgave my student loans. I make enough money that this is totally ridiculous, but it's true, and it's a fun way to kind of present the absurdity of a policy I don't like, without harshly committing to any real position out loud.
By doing this I don't feel fake, it's more like, I'm saying what I believe in a crafty way, and if you really want to know what I think I'll tell you. But if these people don't poke and prod, which they won't because people just talk about themselves, then I can just drop hints as long as I'm clever about it. And the archetype of the clever right-winger can actually be very attractive or interesting to the leftist. Just watch this Bill Buckley interview with Betty Friedan: https://youtube.com/watch?v=E7BJyQmqo_Q
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
I don't think your point applies to the debate set up in the parent comments. If 1 is true, whether or not 2 is, then equity is not appropriate. Proving 1 to be true is sufficient to reject equity. 2 is still taken to be true under a colorblind ethos, which basically maps to <yes 1 culture> <no 1 biology>, and which Kendi is against.
I see self-loathing as less central than self-pity right now. I think the basic definition of "feeling sorrow for someone's misfortunes" is what I mean by pity. So to fit my example, some bad memory trigger makes me anxious, I pity myself to cope with the pain (feel sorrow about the past, about what it means about me as a person, etc.), a critical feeling enters judging me of not being worth pity, and I turn that around and say, oh, what a misfortunate situation it is that I should feel shame from pitying myself , and from there you have that recursive cycle. And that is potentially one of many strategies to sustain the pity, self-loathing can enter as another strategy, etc.
It seems like what has worked for me lately is a very strong belief that I will not benefit from striving to pity myself, which would short-circuit this process if I am right that this is what's happening. It may be that others can pity themselves healthily, or I might regain the ability to do so. But I believe it's possible that because I used it so reliably as a coping mechanism, I developed a unhealthy dependency on it that it is best to quit.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
That kind of effect was also very prevalent in my own experience and is something I'm still very on guard for. In brief, I currently see it as a powerful way of accomplishing the goal of being pitiable. If that is my goal, then it's a powerful, recursive move to pity myself, and then use that as an example of how pitiable I am. I think the counter-move is to be vigilant about recognizing when I have that goal, and have a strong will to discard that goal as it comes up. But that's just in brief, I think there is a lot I could write to expand my ideas on this.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
Yeah that's what my foreboding final line was supposed to hint towards. Personally I was exposed to a lot of silliness online and in culture and I feel like I grew up, if a little later than I should have. I have a hard time judging which way it will go with the next generation.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
I think the "tiktokification of text" is a pretty major downside. Twitter has the capability of being used in a highbrow manner. Instagram was the same way, until they almost destroyed it, and now it's in an uneasy middle-state.
I think ultimately serious, normal adults are not interested in wading through a mixture of adolescent snark and not-subtle, vapid, hail-corporate-adjacent self promotion to actually exchange ideas. I feel like there is still a huge opportunity for substack notes to be "hey we are the serious place" but their app sucks.
Maybe gen z just takes the whole internet and destroys everything good about it. Not sure at this point.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
It does sounds like we have different experiences of depression. I might call mine more neurotic or distressed than what you've described. I appreciate your reply because it's making me think I'd probably rephrase my original post to add a few more qualifiers. It might reinforce my thought that depression is an analysis of a set of behaviors over time rather than a direct emotional experience. I revisited the depression symptoms list and it seems to me that a really wide range of causes could result in a subset of those symptoms.
I feel like my cause is very much a cultural learned behavior resulting out of a kind of toxic shame mindset, which I think is common, and I feel like I see it in a lot of depression communities, but it makes sense that it wouldn't be universal.
monkeylampstop
2mo ago
I would imagine that yes, there are a lot of strategies that different people could find more or less effective. I would like to go deeply into the strategy of having a solid belief system that makes doing those 2 things fairly automatic. And this doesn't have to mean fooling yourself, if you buy the premise that depression is a delusional state, where you are spending your precious time on Earth moping unnecessarily out of confusion.
So I'm going to go into what that process looked like for me, which was somewhat accidental. It's funny though, I know red-pilled can mean a lot of things, but just going through the left wing disillusionment after so long just felt such a powerful deprogramming, and was such an important part of the process for me.
That was an interesting article, and I think some of my thoughts could translate well into that way of thinking. That said I am a very non-visual thinker, and that may be giving me trouble with really accepting that lens. I read the article on that site about rejecting-not-accepting and did find a lot of that to be relatable.
That things are getting better is not a view internalized by feminists or the left, Pinker is not popular in those circles, and to believe that is basically to be naive. The whole point of "woke" was to wake people up to the idea that that kind of belief is for the privileged and not based in reality.
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