site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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?