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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

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How healthy and productive is it to adopt the mental framework that the world, along with all of its problems, is simply nature, and so is amoral and immutable, which means we should expend no energy trying to change it, and should instead focus on making sense of as much as we can while adapting to the reality as it is?

I consider myself psychologically even-keeled and don't doomscroll, but unless you actively try to avoid information, nasty stuff inevitably seeps through. For instance, I saw in the last 24 hours a surveillance video of someone carjacking a poor helpless woman at the gas station, and another who wrote that they know of a backyard puppy breeder who has four bitches constantly getting pregnant and living in filth just to cheaply breed and sell puppies for some absurd sum. I think the normal reaction is to feel a combination of anger and sadness. But rationally, that emotional response seems pointless. It's easy to point to greater suffering in quantity and magnitude in Ukraine or Niger, and I'm not sure what's the point of thinking about that either.

I realized that it would be much simpler to frame everything as nature and natural. Crying over a mouse being gobbled up by an owl seems as pointless as doing the same for a fly being caught by a Venus flytrap or a blueberry being decomposed by fungi. These things just happen. I'm not super familiar with zen or its equivalent. Is what I'm describing part of some ancient philosophy or religion?

At any rate, I plan to remind myself of this whenever I feel any emotion the next time I see a headline that some DA dropped charges against repeat criminals or some author pulled her novel because some nobody complained that she was culturally appropriating an oppressed minority group. Nothing to see here--it's all part of nature. Understand how it works, make sure you're not the mouse/fly/blueberry, and move on happily with your own life.

As others said, it is basic premise of stoicism and its teachings on locus of control.

I find it especially useful to avoid certain manipulations - including those asking money from you, like EA. As a pragmatic observation, my internal spidey sense now lights up as spoon as I hear “we” as in “we humanity”. We should stop climate change, racism and if we are at it why not also hunger, all murder and pineaple pizza?

I think saying “not my problem” and even “fuck you, I wont do what you tell me” is perfectly fine stance for random ask by some stranger, especially online.

You wouldn’t save a drowning child if you were walking by one?

Should I save a drowning child in such a situation? Is it better for a child to die than to develop a strong social bond to a pedophile with all the risks that entails? Or should I save them and stoically endure the eventual "Stay away from my kid, creep!" or just plain "Thanks, now gtfo.", content in the knowledge that I did "the right thing" even while everyone thinks I just did it to get in the kid's pants? Why shouldn't I just say "not my problem" and keep walking?

If my kid was drowning, I couldn't care less if they were saved by a pedophile or Mother Teresa. They could give CPR while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock and I'd still rather my kid live than not.

They could give CPR while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock and I'd still rather my kid live than not.

Does this mean the calculus changes if they were giving CPR while slapping your child in the face with an erect cock?

It might, but I'd wager that just makes the kid wake up faster!

Sure, and once the euphoria of realizing your kid isn't going to die wears off, you'll be a good parent and start worrying about the next set of risks facing them--namely me. Hence the "Thanks, now gtfo." Helping kids almost always ends up being a net negative for my mental health, to which your response would almost certainly be "not my problem".

EDIT: Also, on a more humorous note, is it even physically possible to give CPR to a person "while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock"? The flexibility required seems inhuman to me...

Well, SMH only said a cock, not your cock...

Look, I'm unusually sympathetic to pedophiles, especially when Wokists try to extend that category to men who want to sleep with big breasted 16 year olds, which is almost universal in distribution and a fact of life for the majority of human existence. The only reason most men don't state they want to do that is fear of social disapproval.

I really see it as as the same kind of paraphilia as say, homosexuality, it's just that it's politically easier for one side to get what they want without the rest of society murdering them. If people want to consume artificial CP that doesn't hurt real kids, I literally don't give a fuck, especially since it likely has the opposite effect that critics claim of increasing the propensity to commit physical crimes to fulfill their lust.

If a pedophile saved my child, I'd be grateful, and assuming they didn't have a track record of arrests, not even care particularly about future interactions.

Now, you're a pedophile and I'm not, so I won't argue too hard about what kind of difficultly you face in being accepted by society. It's certainly much worse in the West, where there's no end of people slobbering at the mouth to put a bullet in your head for the crime of existing and not being able to change your brain, regardless of whether you act on it.

Still, I think you're wrong in that it's clear to me that almost every parent on their planet would rather have their child saved by a pedo/Hitler or even Pedo-Hitler rather than allowed to drown to death.

Also, on a more humorous note, is it even physically possible to give CPR to a person "while slapping them in the face with a flaccid cock"? The flexibility required seems inhuman to me...

If you're not too intent on the mouth to mouth rescue breaths, then you can do it while crouching above their head and facing their feet. Not recommended of course, and not in the ALS or BLS guidelines, but I'm sure someone can pull it off, and likely already has in a porno haha

I agree that almost every parent on the planet would prefer to have their child saved than not. I don't know that that preference implies I should try to save them though. I've never saved a kid's life before, but I have been an important figure in one's life and have seen first-hand how quickly people go from thankful to "never contact us again" when they find out, no matter how innocent your intentions or how careful you were to avoid even the hint of sexual behavior. That hurts, a lot, and I now find it hard to feel motivated to risk going through that again for the benefit of people who in all likelihood have nothing but disgust for me. The younger, less bitter me had the will to be somewhat altruistic, but that seems to be fading as I get older.

Saving a kid from drowning is not typically an ongoing relationship (unless the kid is very incident-prone I guess) which seems to be a big difference?

I believe the basic CPR training hasn't included rescue breaths in a while. Specifically they are nice to have, but continuing compressions is more useful in non-professional (read: watched training a year ago, no hands on experience) contexts.

I believe the basic CPR training hasn't included rescue breaths in a while. Specifically they are nice to have, but continuing compressions is more useful in non-professional (read: watched training a year ago, no hands on experience) contexts.

This recommendation is focused on adults as they are far more likely to have cardiac arrest due to a non-aphyxial cause. If you found an adult lying on the street, without a pulse it would be likely that they had taken a breath moments ago and still had oxygen in their blood stream and performing chest compressions can help circulate that oxygen. However, the majority of pediatric cardiac arrests have an asphyxial cause, therefore it is still recommended to do rescue breathes to introduce oxygen back into the bloodstream. In the case of drowning, where the person is likely to be hypoxic it would be recommended to do rescue breaths to introduce oxygen back into the bloodstream.

There is also the "team" version, where IIRC the "breath" person has a lot of time on his, um -- hands?