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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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So anyway, I was discussing the great replacement theory with a far-righter earlier, and I said that immigration had little to no effect on native birthrates, citing Japan and Korea as examples.

That pointed to a far more likely culprit, education as a whole (not just women’s). South Korea and Japan can’t seem to stop "investing in the future" by making their and their kids’ lives hell. Naturally, to escape the vicious cycle, they end up abolishing the future.

Isn’t it weird that a prominent justification for making money in our society is ‘sending my kids to college’? Anyone who refuses to do so is shamed with accusations of selfishness and not wanting their kids to succeed. They then choose the alternative path where kids aren’t even in the picture, so they’re free to be selfish in peace. We’re copenhagen ethics-ing humanity into slow painless extinction.

Trads like to assign the blame to female education, but most of the arguments apply to men as well. People are wasting 5-15 years of their lives on a very expensive vacation, at best, when they could be having kids. We want them to make that important decision early, and nothing sobers a young man quicker than staring decades of drudgery in the face.

It’s time to abandon our rosy view of Education as just an intolerable burden on the living. The unborn are its primary victims. Your children cry out: “Mum! Dad! Why do you let my Evil Professor keep me here? Why can’t I liiive? “

Say No To School. Choose Life.

Meritocracy is unsustainable. The idea that one could skip competing in life and get a low paying job and have kids ignores the fact that you would likely end up with an unattractive partner. A master's degree and a senior dev title at a respectable firm combined with the apartment that is barely affordable with that salary greatly increases one's attractiveness on the dating market. Getting a job at a hardware store and living in something affordable with that income would be the equivalent to a shadowban on tinder. You aren't getting an iq 120 woman with a beautiful body and high general factor of personality if your life is mediocre.

In traditional societies, people didn't have to worry about competing to the same degree. If your father farmed you farmed, if your dad was a blacksmith you became a blacksmith. Instead, we spend 20 years fighting a zero-sum game for who can post the most travel photos in tropical countries, get the most educational prestige, get an attractive apartment etc. If you can't get into a good college, you can get a master's degree. If you didn't get the top job after graduating, you can become a middle manager at a mediocre firm and outrank the junior at a good one. By trading time for status in a zero-sum game, people are incentivized to push life ahead of them and not settle.

Eating disorders are a lot rarer in traditional societies. Lip fillers, overtly sexualized social media and obsession over appearance are having a ruinous influence on women's mental health. Instead of marrying one of the guys next door, they are either going to absurd lengths to compete or having poor self-esteem for not looking like a tiktok model. Instead of giving people a place in the world and treating with them respect for filling the role that place fulfills, we have a race in which we judge people's worth and moral value on their place in it.

A master's degree and a senior dev title at a respectable firm combined with the apartment that is barely affordable with that salary greatly increases one's attractiveness on the dating market.

Fascinating assertion. How many bay area tech wives have you met?

If they were working at gamestop how would their dating life be?

Anecdotally? Not as bad as you might think.

My first Serious Girlfriend was a cute goth chick who was working the pretzel stand at the local mall while I was working at the video store across the way.