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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   32008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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Do the suck? Afghanistan chose to kick out the neolibs and preferred this society. Utah doesn’t suck. Saudi Arabia is the least sucky place in the ME besides Israel and half of Israel is the high Iq pop in the world hiding in religious instruction.

The US is probably pushing 200k suicides, drug overdoses, and murders per years. Let’s just say 300 million Americans slightly low or 1 in 1500 people. Over 80 year lifespan it means about 1 in 20 people will die voluntarily. You want to tell me liberalism doesn’t suck and there isn’t something deeply flawed with it?

IMO I probably am not advocating for an actual theocracy but something like earlier America. Something more like Utah with a powerful embedded Church and strong social norms. But that might not be stable.

SA is run entirely on free ground money accessible by technology that could only ever be invented by secular liberals.

The fact that medieval ottoman alchemists were the first to demonstrate a practical means oil drilling/distillation would seem to falsify this claim.

The old ottomans have exactly zero intersection with the current culture of that hellblasted sand pit.

Even so, the claim that secular liberalism is necessary and sufficient for technological achievement has been demonstrated to be false.

Which may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that there's nothing particularly super-inventive about "secular liberals". Even in modern times there's invention in the Islamic world, coming out of Turkey and Iran. And of course many inventions in the current First World were invented by people who were not secular, not liberal, or both.

^ this

Still, they can't really have "secular liberalism" attributed to them.

Afghanistan is a barely functional tribal warzone with a life expectancy a decade lower than the US.

Above replacement fertility beats life expectancy any day of the week.

You are embedding that liberalism is necessary for technology. The key thing for a place like the Saudis is the outperform their peer groups. The roads are better. It’s not like pre-modern liberalism America failed to build things.

I mean the absolute monarchies in the gulf have made notably better decisions than other Islamic nations with enough oil money to subsidize their entire economies.

“It is”

  • ignores history and thinks it’s just started in year 2000

European Civilization is not modern liberalism. European Civ was highly Christian Nationalism.

Also think you are highly underestimating Saudis civil society. But can’t find the source material now.

Non-secular liberalism: got us to the moon, gave us the Internet, and pretty much every other marvel technological marvel you were praising in previous comments.

Secular liberalism: coasted on for a dozen or so years and sent us tumbling down the slippery slope of various critical theories?

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Afghanistan is a barely functional tribal warzone with a life expectancy a decade

That's the thing though none of it's real there all LARPers.

I thought the "with a life expectancy a decade lower" was supposed to be the thing showing how bad things were. Also, is it even a warzone? I thought the Taliban rule is uncontested?

Also every culture and every society that sees real material success has plummeting fertility rates. It would appear that's just the nature of the beast and the west is just ahead of the game.

I think Israel has proven to be more resistant, precisely because of it's religiousness. Even in high-tech below replacement western countries, you do have subgroups that are above replacement, and also they tend to be religious.

In any case, if you're right about it being the nature of the beast, that just means it's the material progress that sucks. All those widgets won't matter when you literally drive yourself into extinction.

Also, is it even a warzone? I thought the Taliban rule is uncontested?

The non-Pashtun ethnic groups restarted their guerilla war against the Pashtun dominated Taliban government even before Kabul fell. The Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara have no love for the Taliban and stomping their resistance out completely is as impossible as stomping out Taliban resistance in Afghanistan.

Even in high-tech below replacement western countries, you do have subgroups that are above replacement, and also they tend to be religious.

Just to note- not only is this true, it’s true almost universally as long as that religion is abrahamaic. Even Ukraine has tracts of land above replacement because of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Dutch Calvinists in holland have been growing as a percent of population since WWII despite the secular government really wishing they would be secular Dutchmen and what seems like a high immigration rate. And in the US it seems like the red tribes high TFR is driven mostly by the more religious end of things.

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