Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
User ID: 83
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
14hr ago
EDIT: and as you can see from the responses below, it seems that some prominent posters here seem to think that this is a good thing? Do you understand now why I would pick the woke?
Whether good or bad, it's a thing that had to happen. You can bemoan it or regret it or celebrate it or stand puzzled by it, and still I'd ask you to answer this question: What would you have asked the enemies of the woke to do? Leave academia alone, no matter the degree to which it has been weaponized against them? Come to their senses and realize they're on the wrong side? What else?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
I found Rebecca Ferguson much more attractive in Dune, despite her being over a decade older.
This by a very wide margin. And call me an Ayy-ophile, but I also liked the appearances of Anya Taylor-Joy and...whoever played Margot Fenring. Forgot the name.
Obviously I am racist, but I also just honestly think that Chani in the new Dune movies was a caustic harridan and woke mouthpiece, and from what little I've seen of her actress otherwise, she doesn't appear to be much more likable IRL. With those traits, race doesn't even get to be a factor.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
1d ago
I do own a perfectly modern smartphone and use it, but with the practiced disdain of someone who refuses be beholden to it. I make a point of not using it in human company, and I absolutely will chide anyone who pulls out a phone mid-conversation. I often leave it at home when I go out, so as to travel lighter and not be disturbed. I have every app except the nominal "phone" muted at all times, and even that is muted at night (lest some annoying robo-call wake me).
Humans are tool-users. I just insist on not being abused by my tools, and I try to remain independent of them. Hell, I even regularly spend a few days with my glasses off just to make sure I can function without them. I sometimes go out barefoot to make sure I'm not shoe-dependent. I'll spend a few days without coffee to spite the addiction. And so on. I'm sure this is all just pontless eccentricity and won't ever do me much good, but I grant myself these little things.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
My bad for starting with the analogies, but I'm not going to have us ride them into the sunset.
Let's get back to reality. Leftism dominates in academia and media and leftist ideologies effectively utilize them as central organs for spreading their way of thinking, for recruitment, for drowning out opposing opinions and for legitimizing their own. Do you disagree with this?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Of course, it’s your call whether you trust a word I’m saying. I don’t blame you if not.
Nah, I trust you alright. It's my anecdotes against yours, which means we probably just saw largely different movies on mostly different screens. And as for the overlap, you may well be right. I'll think about it.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
It's probably a downward spiral. Parenting and grandparenting are becoming less rewarding in part because of low fertility, and so fewer people are prepared to make that investment, which further drives down fertility. Or so I might speculate.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Yes, I don't give a damn about whatever stupid ultimately superficial nonsense you can pin on the woke if the other choice is this! Seriously, most of you're examples are quotes and words, it's obnoxious how much you're ignoring actual material impacts.
I'm just a bystander of course, and affected only in so far as both woke culture warring and American scientific achievements spill over the atlantic, but as a right-wing culture warrior, my impression is one of "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.". By politicizing academia and turning into one of the if not the main engine for leftist propagation and legitimacy, no matter who started or drove it, it became a legitimate target in the culture wars. One can lament it from either perspective, but letting the left have it uncontested would have been strategically insane. And if it can't be converted to rightism or dragged into neutrality, then destruction seems like the natural next-best option.
If you keep your cruise missiles or drone factories in a hospital, then complaints about it getting bombed ring somewhat hollow. Yeah the material impacts are a shame, but what did you expect? I'm not surprised about how leftist media have picked apart the church and the military and other former bastions of rightism, and you shouldn't be surprised about how rightists are doing the same to leftist-dominated institutions.
If you want something to be exempt from fighting, to not become a battlefield, to be beneficial to mankind, to be valued and cherished by all, then for God's sake don't let it become the centrepiece of anyone's war machine unless you are that certain of its invulnerability.
That's rough. I wish you good luck.
At least fall isn't far, and your kids are grown out of the most care-intensive ages and (mostly, I suppose?) not into teenage rebellion yet.
Do you have any nearby relatives or friends who might help you out when needed?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Can you speak plainly for the benefit of those few who genuinely don't know what kind of meme you describe there?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Well, getting your throat cut by a woke barber is one way to go out, for sure. Low probability of it happening, of course, it's only a handful who actually try to shoot to ICE agents after all, but consider: You'd probably make it to the Darwin awards, would be the talk of the town on the internet, and give a hell of an ego boost to the then-imprisoned barber.
Or, more realistically, you'd end up with half a haircut and the police escorting you out eventually.
I'm wasn't planning to make any sweeping arguments about history, statistics or science.
But there should be some highly visible issues with equating current considerations RE: parenthood with those people historically had; especially people as far back as the Greeks and Romans. I'm not one to argue that we must go with the times, you'll always find me saying that what was good then is not bad now, but OTOH it's somewhat obvious that some things aren't now like they were then.
- Yes, men could be older and still start families. Sure. But keep in mind that those men were surrounded by children all their lives long, were tightly enmeshed in large intergenerational family structures, and had life arrangements that differed greatly from those concerning the modern-day middle-class. A farmer can just take his kids to work with him. Can an office drone? Can a doctor? Gaius Dohus needn't worry much about arranging child care, but John Doe sure needs to. Furthermore, children back when grew up surrounded by dozens of other children of all ages and all manner of people.
- Men could be older. But what about the women? Were mothers historically in their 30s? Do modern men usually marry women ten years their juniors?
- People in olden times could just have a dozen kids, lose half of them, drag the rest along and consider themselves decently off. Moderns have one kid, maybe two, rarely more, and are both expected to enable and desirous of enabling the best possible childhood for them. There's more of an onus on parents to get those kids right on the first attempt.
- Related to the other points: Children nowadays grow up with their parents, a small cohort of same-age peers in their current instution, a handful of caretakers/teachers, and rarely some additional relatives. This again means that children have to rely on their parents to provide them with a wide range of experiences, to patch up any holes in their practical education, and to effectively guide them through their early lives. Parents are often a modern child's only reliably available social contact, and it's just plain harder to keep up with a kid when you're thirty or forty years its senior.
- Have you seen those little black squares? Have you tasted the sugar in absolutely everything? Have you noticed the lack of grass being touched? Whatever it is that's screwing people up in modernity, modern people are screwed up. ADHD everywhere, everyone is mentally ill or too autistic to engage with other human beings, superstimuli and highly accessible addictions lurk around every corner, you can make it through life with zero merit thanks to ubiquitous welfare...man, I often wish we were actual human beings living in a reasonably normal world, but this is late-stage humanity. Our circumstances are just patently not the same as those of the mediterranean peoples 2500 years ago.
And I'm not saying that we're turning all our kids into walking catastrophes because we're thirty-year old dads. Just that...in my experience and observation, being a younger dad is superior to being an older one. And the historical argument is not enough to convince me of my eyes lying to me.
Also, completely unrelated to the actual topic - I used to enjoy Brett Devereaux, until I saw a video of him arguing with a youtuber called Lantern Jack about I don't even recall what, and Bret Devereaux just ended up being so very nasally, weaselly annoying, pedantic in the worst way, and willfully refusing to even consider his interlocutor's argument or perspective that from that day on I couldn't stomach to read any more of him.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Alright, you know what to do. Go in there, think your most racist and sexist and phobist thoughts but say nothing, get your shave or haircut or whatnot, pay, and then smugly tell them what naughtiness you did right under their noses. Go, brave warrior, and fight the culture war!
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Fair point, but grandparents working full-time up to a set age and then suddenly becoming fully available is not a fixed law of the universe. Grandaprents growing older and less capable is.
What, you too?
Look, I had my first and hitherto only kid when I was 30, and my wife 29. My brother had his first at 23. My wife's sister on the other side had her first at...hell, 17? The consequences of becoming at parent at various ages and what it does to people under different circumstances aren't some abstract, statistical question to me. It's right there. I see how I struggle to live up to my idea of what a parent should do because I lack the health and energy of my younger self, and because I need to walk back a decade of entrenched non-parent habits that would have been a decade of parent habits instead had I become a dad at 20. I see how those other people I mentioned, and others besides, rise to meet the challenge and become more responsible, more practical and more far-sighted thanks to parenthood. I see how bullshit and bad habits evaporate. And I see how young people are just far more up to the task than those who are already beginning to slide into physical and mental decline. Lower neurplasticity, more bad habits, bodies having had more time to pick up various beginnings of decrepitude, the whole social support network being older and less able to help - it's just worse parenting material.
The only things you gain from being an older parent is more material wealth to throw at parenting issues, and additional life experience (but those experiences being those of a non-parent, so not as valuable as otherwise). But those advantages aren't worth much compared to what you're giving up. It's perhaps a little different if parenthood forces you to become a single dad because the mother dies or runs off or collapses into a pile of mental illness, but if you can become a regular (though young!) couple in which the man does the career and the woman takes care of the kids, then starting as early as possible is, in my view, mostly just the better way. And yes, this implies that women having careers is a tremendous waste of time and effort.
Unless, big caveat, there's preexisting mental illness. That just gets worse with kids. Those women are probably better off safely stowed in some office job.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
The wonderful dream of what might have been only becomes a cognitohazard if you wake up, I suppose.
Wise words for the coming generations. Yonder other way lies hell.
Oh wait, we're already there, what with our airtight epistemic bubbles and unrelenting screen addictions. Might as well have people jump into the lotus-eater machine.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
That sucks indeed. Sympathies.
When we just considered having children, the doc told us it wouldn't work out. Just plain not biologically in the cards for her. So we considered one life choice taken away from us, but what can you do, shrug and embrace the irresponsible lifestyle. And then the doc turned out to have been wrong. Life finds a way, it seems. And then, all my wife's fretting and panic nonwithstanding, the pregnancy went off without a major hitch, and we got a fairly healthy kid out of it. And now we are a highly dysfunctional family that barely scrapes by and I don't want to even think about the issues the kid will have in her teenage years.
Children go not to the most deserving, or the best prepared, or the most suitable, or those who most want them. Life isn't fair, and deals out kisses and gut punches almost entirely at random, as far as we mere humans can perceive.
How do you intend to deal with it?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Do you disagree with the premise or with the lack of tact?
Prepare your divorce, both legally and in the practical sense of how you'll take care of your kids when she's not around anymore etc. Maybe you'll get lucky and manage to drag her out of this for good, but if not, or if she relapses, you'll sleep better knowing that Plan B is in place and you needn't stick out a detereorating situation out of uncertainty regarding the alternative.
How is her parenting in these times? How is yours? How old are the kids?
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
One thing that you're missing is the teaching/research split among faculty. At all of the most prestigious schools, research is the priority and teaching only secondary. I've never heard of a faculty member denied tenure for poor teaching at one of these schools; it's always about their research not being good enough.
I just want to second this for anyone else who reads. Even at my provincial German university, this was in full effect.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Yeah, same. The Motte is very comfy.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
2d ago
Here's some salt for your wounds: Mentally stable young people who have children early tend to enjoy immense personal growth (whether they want it or not), and are going to be more energetic and active parents, than those who wait for a good time. You didn't just lose your counterfactual children, you lost a better counterfactual you.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
Some time spent tinkering, but sadly no progress.
Right now I just have a bunch of objects that aren't where I want them to be, aren't behaving like I want them to behave, and I can't seem to get a handle on the why or how. I'm trying different ways of debugging this, but so far I'm not getting a proper grip on it.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
3d ago
As the highly official representative for "this place", I conclusively answer your questions with
- No.
- Possibly to some extent, but in between implications lost in hostile interpretation and and the high probability that the defintions are doctored specifically to serve the argument here, I'd say not enough to allow for an actual yes. The strictly correct answer seems to be "Yes if you want to, else no.".
- 120% word games. I mean, your entire setup here is...weird.
Here's a suggestion: If you want to know what people here think on individualism and meritocracy, then just plain open a discussion about individualism and/or meritocracy. If instead you try to play semantic games with highly controversial public figures in order to attempt getting a blanket statement describing the ideological degeneracy of "most posters" here...I dunno, seems crooked.
But I don't care much about American politics, so I'm probably not the target demographic.
In summary, I just wished you had started a more open-ended discussion instead of laying out bait, no matter how openly you did that.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
4d ago
Honestly, if we had just donated Berlin or, fuck it, all of Germany north-east of and including Berlin to the Jews and considered ourselves quit of any debt after that, sure, fine, that'd have been a good enough deal in retrospect. Better than the near-century of guilt-mongering we had instead. But I doubt it. The propaganda game has taken on a life of its own even as far back as WW1, and Germany was going to be the villain for some time yet no matter what. With the Soviet propaganda and infiltration machine doing its thing during the cold war on top of the earlier propaganda, the WW2 propaganda, the holocaust narrative and the profound jewish self-interest in maintaining Germany as obliged to pay infinite reparations forever, there was no way in hell Germans could have gotten off with paying no matter how high a one-time price. Too many parties did too much to ensure that we would not be left off the hook. And, yeah, okay, I can kinda see their reasons for it too.
But in the end I stand by this: Giving away German clay to no matter who wasn't worth it, because Land - they're not making it anymore. And once you sell, you're never getting it back. And Germany wasn't going to be buying its way out of German Guilt in any event.
I'll gladly betray all mankind past present and future twice over and then some for tall woman with unusual face. That just always gets me.
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