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oats_son
24m ago
I don't at all disagree with the benefits of genuine belief. I feel I have been robbed of these for myself because I just thought about the issues too much. Are your children doomed to the same bitter realization decades down the line? You're just supposed to hope they're less good at critical thinking than yourself?
2rafa
31m ago
But for all this ridiculousness, these seem to be the only way of maintaining key social technologies including fundamental prosocial memes, at least in the West.
Secular reactionaries can come up with countless legitimate reasons for many aspects of traditional morality, but it seems to mean nothing in the West without “you will go to the fire pit for eternity if you break the rules”.
“Why not have free love?”“Well, actually, you know various studies have shown that things like promiscuity can have deleterious effects on partner bonding with later partners, increasing the risk of blah blah blah…”
Secular justifications for traditional social technology just don’t work with normal people of average and below ability, and even with most above them. Yes it’s stupid, but it’s better for our children to believe it than not.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
46m ago
Zizek's new piece in Compact: Happy Birthday Kant, You Lousy Sadist (paywalled, but you can read the whole thing on reddit here):
Is there a line from Kantian ethics to the Auschwitz killing machine? Are the Nazis’ concentration camps and their mode of killing—as a neutral business—the inherent terminus of the enlightened insistence on the autonomy of reason? Is there some affinity between Kant avec Sade and Fascist torture as portrayed by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film version of 120 Days in Sodom, which transposes the story into the dark days of Mussolini’s Salò republic?
The link between Sade and Kant was first developed by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in the famous Excursion II (“Juliette, or Enlightenment and Morality”) of the Dialectics of Enlightenment. Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s fundamental thesis is that “the work of Marquis de Sade displays the ‘Reason which is not led by another agency,’ that is to say, the bourgeois subject, liberated from a state of not yet being mature.” Some 15 years later, Lacan (unaware of Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s version of the argument) also developed the notion that Sade is the truth of Kant, first in his Seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1958-59), and then in an écrit of 1963.
In typical Zizek fashion, he bounces between multiple different ideas in a rapid fire stream of consciousness style, so there are a lot of different threads here that you could grab and run with. Some of our resident anti-enlightenment posters and Christian posters may find something productive in Adorno and Horkheimer's diagnosis of the ethical situation of modernity:
Sade announced the moment when, with the emergence of bourgeois Enlightenment, pleasure itself lost its sacred-transgressive character and was reduced to a rationalized instrumental activity. That is to say, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, the greatness of Sade was that, on behalf of the full assertion of earthly pleasures, he not only rejected any metaphysical moralism, but also fully acknowledged the price one has to pay for this rejection: the radical intellectualization-instrumentalization-regimentation of sexual activity intended to bring pleasure. Here we encounter the content later baptized by Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive desublimation”: After all the barriers of sublimation, of cultural transformation of sexual activity, are abolished, what we get isn’t raw, brutal, passionate, satisfying animal sex, but on the contrary, a fully regimented, intellectualized activity comparable to a well-planned sporting match.
There is much that could be said about Kant's continuing influence on thought and politics. Putin has expressed admiration for him, for example. But probably the biggest point of interest to a general audience here will be Zizek's remarks on Trump near the end of the essay:
Things are similar with the new rightist populism. The contrast between Trump’s official ideological message (conservative values) and the style of his public performance (saying more or less whatever pops up in his head, insulting others, and violating all rules of good manners) tells a lot about our predicament: What sort of world do we inhibit, in which bombarding the public with indecent vulgarities presents itself as the last barrier to protect us from the triumph of the society in which everything is permitted and old values go down the drain? Trump is not a relic of the old moral-majority conservatism—he is to a much greater degree the caricatural inverted image of postmodern “permissive society” itself, a product of this society’s own antagonisms and inner limitations. [...] Trump’s obscene performances thus express the falsity of his populism: to put it with brutal simplicity, while acting as if he cares for the ordinary people, he promotes big capital.
I view this as one of a series of similar critiques coming out of the left in recent times, all of which center around the curious theme of rightists not acting rightist enough. There's been a growing concern on the left in the last few years that "the positions have switched", to a certain extent. Traits that used to be associated with the left - a general rebelliousness, experimentation with new ideas, a critique of established values and established authority (Covid is a big one here), and, yes, a certain willingness to engage in crass vulgarity from time to time, either as a political act or as simple good-spirited humor - have now become associated with the right. Meanwhile the left has become much more strongly associated with order, morality, and authority than they were in the post-war 20th century.
Reactions from leftists to this alleged reversal have been all over the spectrum: everything from panic ("they're stealing our bit! we have to get a handle on this!"), to Zizek's strategy here of denying the authenticity and veridicality of ostensibly rightist forms of rebellion and protest, to simple avowal ("yes, we are in charge, we are Justice, and that's a good thing actually").
Among commentators who believe this to be an authentic political phenomenon, the standard explanation is usually something like: well of course rightists were all for law and order when they were in charge. But now they're not so in charge anymore, so now they're learning the value of critique and skepticism, of free speech and civil liberties, and so forth. Similarly, leftists were in favor of free speech and questioning authority when it was beneficial to them, but now that their institutional capture is more entrenched, they don't need those things anymore.
But something about this explanation rubs me the wrong way. It paints a purely structural view of the formation of ideologies, and ignores the role of the individual completely; you will hold the views that you must based on your relational position to other political actors while taking into account your rational self interest, and that's that. But it becomes rather boring if you're always just looking for the self interest behind everything. The much more interesting and radical project is to find the abstract ethical commitments hiding behind apparent self interest.
There's always been an authoritarian streak to leftism going back to Marx - it's not something that they just happened to discover after attaining political ascendancy. It's reflected in how they govern their own private institutions, even when they don't have societal power. There was frequently internal strife at the Frankfurt school over this or that theorist not sufficiently holding to the party line. Leftist organizations at least as far back as the 80s were already using the progressive stack at group meetings to make sure that white men spoke last. Marxism itself claims that the end goal of the communist revolution is the dissolution of all antagonisms between individual and collective good - but the individual is right to be nervous about what processes the collective might institute to achieve this utopian vision.
Similarly, I believe in the possibility of a principled libertarianism that wouldn't immediately abandon all of its commitments as soon as it got hold of actual power. It's true that ideology always has to make affordances for reality at some point, but clearly, ideology has some impact on the reality of governance as well: I don't think you could, for example, explain the different political situations in the US and Russia entirely in terms of their different material and sociological conditions, with no reference whatsoever to the beliefs and motivations of the individual people who actually govern those countries.
You don’t need to believe it. You just need your kids to believe it, and religious schooling and so on can accomplish that with at least some degree of efficacy.
Secular society has no competent alternative to religious social engineering. All alternatives so far have failed.
2rafa
58m ago
Monkeys are trained to pick coconuts in Thailand commercially, that’s the central example of monkey labor as far as I know. There have been a few historic examples like the baboon in South Africa trained to be a railroad signalman (albeit one under supervision, apparently). I don’t think we really want large numbers of semi-wild monkeys living near populated places in Western countries; in the countries that do have them labor is usually cheap enough that it might not be worth it for many things.
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
59m ago
WTF is going on in Korea?
Meta: I haven't posted in the CWT in a minute, Life gets in the way. This post is going to be mostly copy pasted content from elsewhere. I will attempt to consolidate some of it here. It's probably going to be a very sparse list compared to all the relevant pieces of context, but I attempt to shed some light and discuss nevertheless.
TLDR: The "Gender War" is a significant aspect of the Korean culture wars. And it seems to be more pronounced in Korea than any other society. I really want to know why. I think this bears studying given gender relations are deteriorating globally, and if Japan is 10 years ahead in neetdom, South Korea is definitely 10 years ahead in whateverthefuck dom this is. Their infamously low birthrate is also an elephant in the room, whilst we have this discussion.
Exhibit A
Page 12, We can see that Koreans most of all nationalities think there is significant tension between men and women. Koreans tend to top the charts for other questions as well, so it might just be the case that the Korean social fabric is especially frayed, or Koreans are just especially neurotic or self-critical.
However, it does seem that the social fabric is fraying like no other on multiple fronts in Korea:
Exhibit B
Just simple web searching. If something is in the air, people are probably talking about it. Or inversely, if people are taking about it, it stinks.
It does seem that the Gender War is becoming more "interesting". Not especially so in Korea however. But try the search term "reddit war $COUNTRY", and lo and behold, you actually get posts about it when you try with COUNTY='Korea'.
Some examples from the first page: https://old.reddit.com/r/Hangukin/comments/1708gpj/can_people_explain_to_me_wtf_is_going_on_with_the/, https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18cnto9/whats_going_on_with_the_gender_conflict_and_it/, https://old.reddit.com/r/korea/comments/18qlyqe/why_does_the_battle_of_sexes_seem_more_pronounced/, https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/19bvpjq/whats_the_deal_with_feminism_and_antifeminism_in/, https://old.reddit.com/r/SingaporeRaw/comments/192yymo/do_you_think_singapore_will_face_a_south_korean/
Exhibit C
"The incel election" Enough said? I don't think there is much other evidence required that this is a significant CW front in Korea.
Youtube video - Gacha Drama and the Korean Gender War (You can disagree with thesis, I'm just linking to show its a thing people are picking up on)
Study - The Gender War and the Rise of Anti-family Sentiments in South Korea (You can disagree with thesis...)
Exhibited D
This is totally comprised of anecdotes, but I buy it.
Some comments from the reddit posts above: Common theme, Korean feminism dials the man-hate up to 11.
Answer: radical feminists are really, really, radical in Korea.
Interesting that you hear about how "young men are turning to right" all the time, but at least based on these, outside of SK the men are fairly stable, yes moving to the right but the graph is not very steep. On the other hand the women seem to be moving to the left at a much steeper incline, but nobody ever talks about this
Women's social media is a different breed of animal. Lab created.
Korea take feminism to ANOTHER level bro...
Being a westerner in Tokyo I've dated three Korean raised women and all three were absolutely, balls to the wall, rabid, men hating psychos who regularly voiced violent fantasies of what they'd like to do to Korean men.
All three were utterly confused when I'd tell them the kind of stuff they were saying wasn't acceptable in any way and would respond with "but you're a westerner, I thought you supported feminism".
Like no, woman, your idea of 'feminism' shouldn't be angrily ranting about cutting off dicks and sodomizing men. You can say three people isn't a large enough sample size to judge something by but I also think it's enough to be suspicious of whatever the hell they're branding feminism as over there.
So what gives? Why did the gender war hit Korea like a truck?
Korea is already on its way to extinction, so at least this won't be a problem for that long, but still, I am really left scratching my head. Are there any historical examples of this ?
One running theory other than the normie, "It's because they work really long hours hurr durr" (which does have a massive nugget of truth to it), is that Korea is especially unfathomably status obsessed. All that exam cramming, all that plastic surgery, it's all indicative.
I point out the above because most countries the gender war is more along the lines of "incel men" vs "feminists". Men are usually the active camp complaining about not getting anything from women, women complain about not getting anything from society, men take the aggressive stance. However, in Korea women are on the offensive as well, this seems unique to me.
True, I was thinking from a more general genealogy family tree prospective but yeah I guess his mother's DNA isn't going to help us at all here!!! I was totally wrong to even mention it and I'm not sure why I did. We really need his or his kids plus a Castro relative.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1hr ago
Without being rude I highly doubt that to be the case. You're not the only one doing X.
If I was a white gentile I’d probably become a tradcath. I have no particular fondness for Catholicism, but I get the impression many tradcaths don’t either, especially when it comes to the Pope, the Vatican and the actual hierarchical structure and institution of the Catholic Church in practice.
As @coffee_enjoyer said, you need to pick some kind of religious narrative, and almost all invented or new age religions fail and have failed. Tight knit traditionalist religious groups have the best chance of being able to preserve functioning communities.
The only viable option is to pick an existing one. That leaves you with various insular forms of Protestantism, like the Mennonites/Amish, but they take few converts and would require an unlikely degree of adaptation to a new life, with Orthodoxy, which is very ethnically tied to some specific groups like Greeks and Russians in the US, or with Catholicism. Mormonism is in rapid decline and is very goofy. Tradcath groups see many converts, many from mainstream Catholicism but sometimes from outside it too.
There may be fundamental issues with Christianity having some kind of inherent leftward drift (I think the evidence is inconclusive) but in the near/medium term this is probably the best option.
I was raised with a fundamentalist view of the Bible. One relative of mine went on to grow even more fundamentalist, veering into hatred of the Jews (a severe misreading, if you ask me, and I thought downright heretical until I looked at the lines he was fixated on), but here's some of my grievances. I don't know my Bible very well, and I frankly hold little regard for it, so I will not read more.
- As I said, young earth creationism is pretty wild, but to my eyes, you pretty much have to believe it, according to my fundamentalist relative, due to Jesus quoting something in the Septuagint regarding it; it is also the basis of the faith (why would we need saving from original sin if there was no Adam and we are no more than slightly more intelligent monkeys). If not, then there's all kinds of questions we can get into: why is the perception of God something that changes with the more we know about the world, instead of something eternal? Why did God write the scripture like that, so that a great portion of believers feel forced to stamp their feet about the world being 6000 years old? Why does my mother insist that the Tower of Babel story is literally true?
- Much of the Old Testament deals with God proving himself to be better than other gods; a good example of this is probably the Book of Job, where God goes along with "The Adversary" to test Job. Christians seem to rethink these verses of being false idols and Satan in all cases, but it seems pretty obvious to me that it's about directly combating competing gods in the old world. There are so many points in the Old Testament where it basically says "sweet, my god is better than yours, that's why he lets me kill you and all your male heirs, and then breed your young girls after you're gone".
- From what I've read, there are so many different words used for hell in the books of the Bible that there isn't any consistent view of them, but the mainstream Christian view is that nonbelievers are thrown into an eternal lake of fire to be tormented forever. But believers in Christ get into heaven. I don't know how far right people can get into the weeds on Septuagint vs Masoretic words for "Hebrew", but never even examine this idea at all. Or maybe they have and I don't know it. But what I have heard is that you have to believe all of the Bible, young earth creationism, not permitting women to teach men or get divorced or other things, laying with men gets you stoned, and crucially, Christ's resurrection, or you go to hell. Knowing my relative's issues with the Catholic Church, it amazes me that God would let the Catholics twist the Bible so hard for so long with no resistance whatsoever. They literally could not read the Bible for centuries and discover what it really said. Wouldn't most of them be damned for their degeneration of the Word?
- It is staggering to me how unfair the requirement that you must believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ to not be damned. People on the ground witnessing the miracles would have had such a huge leg up in their redemption. Atheists killing themselves by jumping from a plane can save themselves mid-flight, whereas someone pulling the trigger of a gun gets no such chance. Because Jesus incarnated in a little spot in the Middle East, huge swathes of the populace have never even heard the name of the creator of the universe. Entire continents of people would be damned due to not even having a chance at receiving the message. Or, alternatively, they are saved due to their ignorance, but then once missionaries come and give them a chance to hear the message, then they're damned. Or maybe you're more like C.S. Lewis and think that being saved or damned comes from after death, whether you can accept Christ then or not. Okay. That doesn't seem very true to the message of the Bible to me, but that would be a little more fair. But even the concept of hell is crazy to me. What kind of justice is this? Infinite pain for a life with finite sin? Even the biggest assholes I know of in real life wouldn't go for that. And if you take the classical view of what gets you damned (disbelief in the redemption), how can you really hold it against someone? They were provided with no direct evidence of such a resurrection, in a world where pain and suffering are quite arbitrary, and any relief comes from men, usually atheist men.
If you take issue with these grievances, let me know, but like I said, the Word of God should probably be more eternal than to vary completely based on cultural attitudes and scientific research. I don't really see much room to wiggle away from these while still staying true to scripture. And God has let humanity's Christians splinter further and further over 2000 years without any further clarification. @FCfromSSC
f3zinker
Its A/B testing all the way down
1hr ago
South East Asia climate fact: They are hot all year round. Even during "winter" the average lows usually don't drop below 18-20C (~68F). It's more of a "wet and hellishly hot" cycle "dry and not that hot".
Singapore's climate is especially stable and lacks variation.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1hr ago
Don't pull the emergency lever on the MRT.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
Can we really not domesticate monkeys and employ them in repetitive labor like collecting fruit and removing trash from beaches? Does the world not yearn for monkey-based saffron plantations?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1hr ago
It looks to me like the main evidence is:
- Justin Trudeau looks very much like Castro did at a similar age, while bearing no resemblance to Trudeau Sr.
- Justin's mother and father were unquestionably sexually adventurous swingers who were legendary for engaging in coitous with their friends. Seperately, Castro was a close friend of theirs, who was likewise extremely sexually adventurous.
- Justin's parents were enjoying a honeymoon in the Caribbean and made a visit to one particular island whose identity they insisted on keeping a secret roughly nine months before Justin's birth.
- Justin's parents subsequently acted like Castro was someone they already knew when they supposedly met him for the first time on a subsequent visit to Cuba.
The first bullet point seems pretty decisive to me.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
There is just too much of the Bible that is objectively false at this point that I don't know how a Mottizen would go about gaining faith.
I think it should go without saying, but obviously people do not share your opinion that many parts of the Bible are objectively false. But without knowing what your specific points are it's hard to really say more.
Bartender_Venator
2hr ago
What concerns me is that a lot of these women hide their issues from a shrink, and only open up to a flirtatious yet good at getting people to talk guy like me.
Yep, that sounds familiar. The Scots have, though, for better or for worse, much less of a culture of hiding dysfunction (I'm sure you've seen the photos of Glasgow nightlife). If you're working for the NHS you're likely to be dealing with serious cases whose immediate and undeniable problems will take up the vast majority of your bandwidth - the cases I touched were generally horror stories and I was just a volunteer. So, uh, at least the neuroses of the genteel are likely to be more of an issue on dating apps than at work.
MaiqTheTrue
Zensunni Wanderer
2hr ago
I think there’s also an aspect of “fashion barber poles”. I think my clearest political example would be something like color-blind politics where the race of the person wasn’t supposed to matter at all. This was the goal in the 1970s and 1980s. A not-racist believed that race didn’t matter. The problem was that “normies” started to buy in to that. Essentially they won. Everyone from Reagan to Bernie Sanders believed in that at the time. So it loses a bit of cred not because of internal problems with the movement, but because if you’re upper class, there’s a certain amount of pressure to not be mistaken for the unwashed masses. And much like fashion, food trends, and media trends, ideological trends follow in a predictable pattern of the aspirational trying to imitate the elite, the normie imitating them, and the elite wanting to separate themselves from the mainstream. Thus the movement changes to things that normies don’t do.
do_something
2hr ago
what are you doing to make the world a better place today?
This is sadly unique enough that I would likely doxx myself. And I prefer to not invent fake equivalent.
(it is at least 98% culture-war free)
do_something
2hr ago
if
As I understand main evidence "it would be great if my enemies would be even worse and lame"
There is just too much of the Bible that is objectively false at this point that I don't know how a Mottizen would go about gaining faith.
I'm your huckleberry.
The popular understanding of Materialism is obviously bogus, and is protected from a rapid descent into absurdity by nothing more than irrational social consensus effects. It is exactly as ridiculous as flat-earth or young-earth creationism, for exactly the same reasons.
Note that the above does not apply to Materialism itself, which is an entirely reasonable position, but is considerably less attractive and persuasive. The difference between the two is that the popular version derives its force from a circular argument about the nature of epistemology, evidence and belief. The popular formulation holds that belief in Materialism is derived strictly from an impartial assessment of the evidence, and also evidence against Materialism can't possibly exist, so if evidence against Materialism appears to exist, it can be discarded without explanation.
Without this circular argument, Materialism is merely another faith-based argument that has retreated into the gaps of unfalsifiability. With this circular argument, of course, Materialism is obviously true by definition, and anyone who disagrees has volunteered for mockery. As long as people don't twig to the circular nature of the argument, the social effect is self-reinforcing. The many legitimate benefits Materialism claims to encourage, by contrast, are in fact equally available to non-Materialists, whose faith generally does not prevent them from designing rockets and microchips in any way.
"Objectively false" is an interesting phrase. I'm not aware of anything in the Bible that is "objectively false". On the other hand, I'm pretty sure everything Freud's theory of psychoanalysis is in fact objectively false, and yet people bought it entirely for a hundred years, and many people believe it to this very day. It seems obvious to me that Determinism is as close to "objectively false" as you can get, and many people here still believe it. It seems to me that belief in "objectively false" things is actually pretty common, and examining the phenomenon can teach you a lot about how human reason actually works and what its limits are.
The short version is that belief is not driven by evidence, but by acts of individual will. All significant beliefs are chosen. This is as "obviously true" as anything can be, but choosing not to believe it makes it easier to choose certain other beliefs that some consider desirable, and so those people generally do that. This is not to say that reality is as we wish it to be, only that our beliefs about reality are under our direct, willful control, and always will be.
curious_straight_ca
2hr ago
But if you think about a 'criminal underclass', are going to see it as a loss of social status?
seeanything
3hr ago
The airport has air conditioning everywhere and the atmosphere is entirely unrepresentative of the outside weather. It is a hot humid hell in summer.
Don't book a cheap hotel at the last minute in Geylang. Bugs crawling on the bed, bizarre bathroom layout, threadbare towels. 0/10 would not recommend.
seeanything
3hr ago
Don't bring Durian to hotel rooms.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
Seems well-written to me.
I can’t say I agree with the stages, necessarily? Especially 1 and 2. “Client ID” describes a phase in some movements, where adoption doesn’t pick up until elites grab the idea. But it doesn’t fit others. Look at Christianity, which didn’t gain elite support until it was firmly established among the periphery. It skips stage 2 entirely, too, since most of its institutions don’t develop until after regional hegemony. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it started from stage 2.
Have you considered a comparison with Scott’s barber pole of fashion?
- Class A adopts signals from a (much) lower Class C
- Class B could imitate those signals, but they’d risk looking like Class C
- Class C sticks to imitating Class B since they have no chance of passing as Class A
- Class K is suitable for use on grease fires
Pretty similar to the g/m/s model, except all the levels have a similar level of awareness. There’s no clueless class existing only to get played by the next step up; instead, each group acts according to its own intuition. But you still get segmented behavior if there’s enough space to distinguish A from C.
So, does this apply to political causes?
I’m going to argue “yes.” Maybe that’s because I’m an inveterate mistake theorist and I don’t like the idea that individuals are driven by class interest. Personal incentives, though? Fair game. I think you can explain a lot of political phenomena as (counter) signaling without giving too much credit to the sociopaths.
I'm very skeptical of the idea that South Korea's birth rate is a product of gender war. It just seems like a miserable place to live, where children are drafted into the rat race as soon as possible, forced into 4 A.M. tuition classes for exams they're going to write a decade later, coming home at 10 PM, then doing it all over again, until you eventually graduate, get a job and can inflict the same rat race on a new kid who has the misfortune to emerge from a South Korean womb. An endless labyrinth of status games that makes the experience of parenthood and childhood uniquely awful, even by the infamously taxing standards of East Asia.
It may be that the miserable nature of the South Korean lifestyle makes dating logistically difficult, and as a consequence men and women develop mutual hostilities simply because they have fewer opportunities to come into intimate contact with each other. But I'm just speculating.
One point of commonality between Korea and the West is that these stories of "gender polarization" are really just about sharp radicalization of women, and the author's need to coach that observation in both-sidesism for political correctness. There's a graph that circulates on Twitter frequently about how Western youth are supposedly polarizing sharply away from each other, with women becoming more left-wing and men becoming more right-wing, and if you actually look at the graph it just shows men becoming mildly more conservative, a change that is barely perceptible, while women are stampeding to the left.
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