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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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It makes it difficult for me to take it seriously. The demonstrated violence helps a little, but still difficult.

Humanity of all types at all times, creed, race, culture, and ideological persuasion has faced and examined suffering. We have thousand year investigations into what the condition of suffering is, what it means if anything, what we can or should do with it. Yet only now a culture of fat, bored consumers lands on a decadent despair. As we all know, there is nothing sacred, there is no meaning, but we are definitely not related to stupid nihilists. We, good people, are compassionate. We care. We've also done the math. Every discomfort, every ounce of pain, can be refunded by merely removing all sentience.

Don't worry, you don't need to commit suicide or harm anyone else, as one redditor explains:

As for the second bit, it is in each individual's rational SELF interests to die as early as possible. But one's own self interests aren't the only factor which comes into the equation. If those other sentient beings are going to be alive, and you can help them to suffer less by staying alive, then you can alleviate more suffering in the world than you experience and cause. The best possible outcome is that there aren't any sentient organisms to stay around to rescue. But if that isn't on the table as a possibility then one might rationally decide to live for the purpose of preventing the suffering of others.

Yes, it is a moral imperative to stop existing as soon as possible to reduce suffering, but don't forget about your compassion for others in the calculation. You might have other considerations on your utilitarian spreadsheet. We can't just round up all the dolphins to exterminate them. Despite their silly clicking noises and hijinks they suffer quite a lot, but we can't drive them extinct. We definitely don't endorse someone taking our beliefs to their logical ends in the extreme. No, that's very naughty. Bad, very bad indeed.

Sorry for not answering your question. I vote a combination of time to think, access to ideas to think about, and personal mental state. We create a lot of depressed people for various reasons. Give them all girlfriends/boyfriends, compensate them decently for picking and packing oranges 8 hours a day, have them live by the beach or somewhere with lots of sun, and force them to share drinks at the end of the day. Voila! Only the most serious of believers are left.