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112/28/2018
2
3See you soon. In a good way. No, not like that.
4Your words are too valuable to throw away.
5
6======================
712/19/2018
8
9r/KiA is running a campaign to get Cumtown kicked off Patreon
10
11Betrayed by gamers, who saw that coming
12They targeted PewDiePie! PewDiePie!
13
14we shall climb to the sky and devour the Gods, and the last sound anyone will hear is "wellll ackshually..."
15They targeted PewDiePie! PewDiePie!
16
17pewdiepie vs vox media
18We wanted flying cars, cybernetics, and immersive VR worlds
19We got Tinder, a gameshow president, and the racist gamer dueling the condescending news network
20I love the future, it's better than any dream I dreamed it could be
21I’m an atheist, and very skeptical of religion, and magic themes, please, enlighten me
22
23No problem glad you found it useful. ? I started meditating with the book "the Mind Illuninated" by John Yates, it's a good book because it combines western understandings/terminology of the mind with useful practice, so it's a great place for beginners who need concrete instruction
24[SERIOUS POST] i know we're all here to sneer but i think the SJWs have finally gone too far
25
26Honestly I wish they would go back and re-read the chapter "in the Cathedral" wherein they draw the name for their conspirators.
27The section describes a parable of a man who comes to a gate, wishing to pass through on his way to Law. The gatekeeper however says "not right now". The man pleads, begs, tries to bribe the keeper, tries to reason with him, but the gatekeeper insists that he cannot let the man through as per his instructions from his superiors on the other side of the gate.
28For years the man tries to pass through and is rebuked time and again. Eventually the man sets up outside the gate, living their full time, constantly inquiring about when he can pass through the gate, but still it's never the right time.
29Finally, at the end of his life, the man lies down, surrendered, ready to die. In his last moments he looks at the gatekeeper, stone-faced as ever, and asks "who is this gate for? Who could pass through?"
30"This gate was for you. You were the only one who could have passed through. But now your time has passed" says the gatekeeper, shutting the door as the old man dies.
31What are we to take from this? What I took is that the nature of this type of power is predicated on the consistent, willing participation of those whom feel victimized by it. The only thing between the old man and the gate is the gate keeper, and the gate keeper is only there to keep the old man from passing through the gate, and the gate only exists as a trap for the old man.
32The dreaded "SJWs" live on the same power, whether they are real or not. This is not news in spite of outrage, it's news because of outrage. The changes to this show are noteworthy specifically because conservative pearl clutchers have set up the "media" as the arbitrator of culture; the media tells you what is culture, and your option is to demand to be recognized or to complain about recognition, I.e the pass through the gate.
33But this power only happens because the ssc user chooses to listen. If nobody told him the Tank Engine cast was getting woke, would he know? Would he care? The problem exists wholly inside the ssc user, who allows himself to be told which pieces of info are important and politically relevant. He hands his agency over to another party who tells him what culture is, rather than deciding so for himself.
34The solution to all those users complaining in the other thread is simple: don't like the direction the show is going? Turn off the television. Problem solved. But that would require walking away from the gate and living life on your own terms, or to pass through the gate, gatekeeper be damned. Much easier to stay tuned in and let others tell you how to think, tell you whether the culture belongs to you.
35And protip for all these folks, the media will never tell you the culture belongs to you. That's the magic trick, that's why they produce it and you consume it. Turn it off, it's your only hope, less you plan to spend the rest of your life staring through the window of a party you'll never enter.
36Nietzsche and Critical Theory
37
38Yeah Heidegger was the first name that sprung to mind here
39The New Left and its connections with the roots of Neoliberal Capitalism
40
41There's already a subset of Instagram that does this
42I’m an atheist, and very skeptical of religion, and magic themes, please, enlighten me
43
44Tbh you don't need to get deep into the occult to overcome skepticism. You can do that just by looking into your own knowledge base and trying to articulate why you believe what you believe.
45Is that air you're breathing? How do you know that? The Matrix may have come out in 1999, but the idea for the film goes back much, much farther, to Plato at least, and represents a core impasse in Western thought: how do we know things? What is real?
46Epistemology and phenomenology, and their grandfather metaphysics, these are the areas of the canon looking at that question. How familiar are you with them? Are they water-tight? Or are there gaps? Can you name any of the people asking these questions?
47Most people in Western society, atheists especially, are wholly ignorant of this line of questioning, because they assume the relationship between scientific discovery and truth is 1:1. They've never studied empiricism itself, they just enjoy the fruit of it. So maybe start there. Magic is neat but the real mindscrew happens when you start to look into the history of what "normal" people take for granted. Like this:
48I think people are greedy and that's why we have religion, to keep them in line
49But in Christianity, it's more important to accept Christ than to behave morally. Works alone are not enough to gain everlasting life. Even in the Old Testament faith was always more important than following the rules or playing well with others, as repeated time and again: the binding of Isaac, Elijah in Kings 1, David, not to mention Job which explicitly states humans are nothing in God's eyes or Ecclaistairies which declares that nothing matters except faith alone. Nowhere in the Christian holy text does it say social order is important, if anything the message repeated throughout (including by Christ) is that social disorder is fine and even necessary if God is not being worshipped properly, up to and including killing large numbers of people.
50How well do you know the text? Ecclaistaries and Job especially, as well as Kings 1 and 2 severely challenges the idea that Christianity is a social good in the way you have said it is. And yet it has out-lived competitors, why? And why today to do we associate Christianity with social control?
51I don't want this world to be boring
52This world is the most interesting place you will ever be. What is boring is atomized, consumer society that mandates every action must be transactional and measurably beneficial to the actor. I'll leave it to you to decide if empiricism is polluting the market or if the market created empiricism, the difference doesn't matter.
53Your approach to this question is symptomatic of that illness: "accolades, my life is boring, please convince me that it's not." Nobody can do this because it sounds like you live a boring life, and you believe if you "get" something from the external world your life will be more interesting. What you don't realize yet is that you are the external world, or perhaps the external world is you, the jury is out. Either way, there is no "get" that can solve this problem, because the problem comes not from a lack but from abundance; boredom is what happens when the ego is placated entirely and has nothing left to reach for but desire itself. This is why boredom and consumerism go hand in hand; "if I just get that thing, I'll finally feel comfortable!" endlessly repeated. The issue is we have too many things already, we have lost the ability to distinguish desire from activity, work from play, making from buying, being from doing. Modern life is defined by two things: abundance of goods, services, places to go, stuff to do, tasks to complete on one hand, and a deep existential, society wide boredom and anxiety on the other. This is not a coincidence, they're two sides of the same coin, which is a civilization defined around placating the ego at the cost of all else. And the defining feature of ego is it hates change, and so a deep faith that all that is is dead atoms is cultivated and mis-named skepticism. What could be less changing than a dead universe populated by beings who only exist to horde things before they become dead things themselves? You're a living soul who thinks it's trapped in a graveyard, no duh you're bored.
54If you want to be less bored, you need to inject focus into the world around you, and one does that by simplifying. One day of serious study is worth a decade of absent-minded dabbling, and one hour of serious meditation is worth a year of study. A good place to start is by working you way backwards into understanding how the world got to this moment in the first place, wherein you can go a whole month and the only interesting thing that happens if you have left-over mass produced dip. Humans didn't evolve with crab dip and fridges, yet you have it all the same. Why? And how?
55Start there. Imo occcultism is something any serious seeker will inevitably get exposed to. There's just too many weird coincidences, too many questions without answers, too many things happening behind closed doors. The hard part is cultivating a mindset and lifestyle that lets you see the patterns, ask the questions, or look through the keyholes.
56Or to paraphrase some hippy wisdom, you don't find enlightenment, you lose yourself. Try that.
57Or find a hobby. I hear that works too.
58Have any of you experienced these dangers? If so, how did you recover? Did you continue practicing or did you seek help and stop practicing? real answers please.
59
60What is a watcher?
61the real victims of liberal democracy are white people in america
62
63R/ssc: liberal democracy is fragile and must be protected
64Also r/ssc: anybody advocating for leftwing at any level is the devil and must be stopped at all costs
65Also r/ssc: its bad when rightwing authoritarians are not given the keys to the city
66Also r/ssc: only the smart should run society, we need to test voters to make sure they're smart enough to contribute
67robin hanson with some entirely hypothetical ethical questions
68
69"Movement"
70(serious) what is this subreddit’s critique of intersectionality?
71
72Well I don't think I can speak for this subreddit because I really only get down with like 1/3 of the stuff posted here and butt heads with other users constantly, I'm really only here because there are perspectives and stories here that the rest of the left misses. That said,
73I think intersectionality as it's taught in a 101 class is a pretty solid descriptive term and is useful to understanding how politics hit different people differently, and isn't bad. For example, if somebody is poor and disabled, they're going to face a different set of problems (socially, politically, materially) than somebody who is rich and disabled, or who is poor and able-bodied. This isn't that out-there of an idea and seems obvious when one thinks about it, and even could be argued from first principles ("to each according to their need, from each according their ability etc).
74The issue I take is that, at least as it is practiced broadly on the internet (and in the leftwing subculture) is that there is no distinction made between identities as essential traits of individuals, and identities as descriptions of interpersonal social structures. Currently the discourse shamelessly alternates between these two images of identity, when it's convenient for the person staking a claim. So for example, when I see the benefits of my white privilege, that's actually the mechanism of a deep-reaching social structure at play. However, when I'm denied access to said system (due to my class or whatever) I'm still a beneficiary because whiteness is located in my biological heritage and proceeds material conditions. So depending on who I am, combating "white supremacy" might mean structural change, but it also might mean just discriminating towards white people, depending on the context. This incoherence at the object level leads to organizational breakdown when it comes time to decide how to organize and articulate demands.
75This motion is at play throughout the discourse:
76When a woman does something feminine and beneficial, that's her acting out her essential nature as a feminine being (ex leaning in or whatever). When her femininity is received in a negative way however, that's the patriarchy curtailing her potential and subjugating her unfairly. So do we want a movement that empowers femininity, or one that breaks down gender categories?
77When a national group does something regressive or hateful, that's their culture and it would be wrong to pass judgement. However, when another nation discriminates against them on those grounds, the discriminating nation is arbitrarily erecting barriers and "we're all one species". So do we want a movement advocating for a federation of independent nations, or do we want universal human rights?
78When a racial minority leans into their cultural identification and rejects mainstream culture, they're protecting their cultural essence against outside interlopers. However, when they are treated differently along said lines, they're victims of an unjust social segregation permeating throughout society. So do we want a movement that protects racial differences and cultures, or one that shoots for full integration?
79And so on. For what it's worth, you also see the same motion in the "oppressor" classes (I mentioned white privilege above but you could make the same argument for male privilege etc). Essentially the issue is that the conversation landed on "the person is political" but then never decided what that really means; is the "personal" an essential essence of an individual's being, or is it the systemic output of social structures? Currently the left shrugs at this question or simply says "both" and allows individuals to decide when identity is essential and when it's structural, whichever is convenient in the moment.
80This back-and-forth motion is imo what completely undermines intersectionality because it creates space for cynical or ignorant actors to work the system to their advantage, which is what we see time and time again in conversations around intersectionality; in theory it works with "to each according..." but in practice its this constant retreating motion of internal minority groups making demands on the grounds that they have insight into the social structure of the problem (reasonable or not) and then declaring them mandatory due to the essential nature of their personal political struggle.
81I'll give an example of this motion in action: the never-ending discussion about "who gets to speak". Imagine, if you would, a situation wherein a non-white person at a meeting of socialists is demanding to speak due to their unique insight on the struggle as a non-white person. We have three possibilities:
821. Identity is essential. Being of an oppressed class is just what you are and follows you in all contexts, and can only be known by those going through it. If this is the case, then the non-white person can never really communicate their experience to the white socialists, so if their needs are different then the group splinters.
832. Identity is socially constructed, so there is no reason we can't also construct a language to "translate" the experience, ergo their claim to speak solely on their race is not a full argument (which isn't to say they shouldn't be allowed to speak, just that their voice as a person of color doesn't offer an insight that another may also have had).
843. It's both, ergo they can claim simultaneously that what they're saying is a description of a social construct relevant to everyone and their essence as somebody in that construct makes their perspective more accurate that somebody at a different point in the construct.
85What happens is option 3, which is where the retreating motion enters the picture; there's always somebody "more" oppressed in the structure, ergo they have more of a right to lead the dialogue. The actual scope of opinions being given precedent shrinks to represent a smaller and smaller minority of people, until the movement loses mass marketability and is absorbed into sub-culture politics.
86And that's basically whats happening on the left right now. Nobody can talk about class, something that affects literally everybody, because any attempt to center the conversation there is immediately hijacked by this retreating identity discussion. Instead what you get is hyper-minority groups dictating everything.
87Edit:
88I also think it's worth saying that the loudest pushers of this stuff are all upper-middle class who lack a consistent, material-political platform, either because they're young idealists or because they are big-tent careerists who pay their bills by going where the money is. The people I've met IRL who were the most into this stuff were universally cynical social climbers who would use any tool on their belt to get where they want, including tearing down other leftys who were in their way (or just for the clout). For them, their identity was just another reason for people to listen to them or stop talking, as the situation demanded. Most went on to get nice middle-class jobs and reproduce the structure from above, even as they pay lip-service to fighting injustice incrementally. That has severely coloured my perspective on this type of politics because social climbers imo are part of the problem the left exists to dismantle.
89The Dream.
90
91There is literally 0 support in Canada for a merger with the US.
92"look at how magical they all are"
93
94This is the output of believing politics is serious business but never actually feeling material need.
95"look at how magical they all are"
96
97We're a society of voyuers. Dude doesn't want to be funny or engage in a funny community, just to quietly watch a funny community from the sidelines. Bizarre
98Cursed DSA Timeline
99
100The dirtbag left will always have a home in our hearts
101Is anyone else the token 'non-woke' friend among a circle of idpolers?
102
103Is the issue the politics or the fact that they're shitty friends to you?
104Chapo got baited into circle jerking in favor of a homelessness idpoller (gutter punk anarchist lifestyle)
105
106Right I forgot life was all about work and productivity. Anybody who doesn't work is a class traitor ? And here I was thinking a selling point of leftism is decreasing the amount of time people spend working
107What is your opinion on porn?
108
109Idk man I don't think questioning blind consumption of something is reactionary. There's a huge industry and lobby devoted to letting this stuff flow with 0 restrictions, in any other industry that would bring scrutiny, but in porn it's above reproach? Nah
110What is your opinion on porn?
111
112Idk man I find I watch more porn when I'm having more sex, vs when I'm in a dry spell my libido drops in general.
113Chapo got baited into circle jerking in favor of a homelessness idpoller (gutter punk anarchist lifestyle)
114
115This is a dumb post. Being a gutterpunk or whatever is fine and probably way less destructive than most jobs
116Chapo got baited into circle jerking in favor of a homelessness idpoller (gutter punk anarchist lifestyle)
117
118So?
119People who hate Diane but like Bojack/Mr. PB/PC/Todd....why?
120
121Do you use Reddit in a time machine?
122SSC asking the important questions: why won't women give us a step by step plan to have sex with them
123
124Implying he's not just jerking himself with this post
125SSC asking the important questions: why won't women give us a step by step plan to have sex with them
126
127Real Vampire hours
128SSC asking the important questions: why won't women give us a step by step plan to have sex with them
129
130The wheel always turns
131I started monitoring PUA and PUA-adjacent communities in 2012. Back then, there was a lot of women offering free dating advice for men, in both SJW and non-SJW streams.
132The problem was the PUA followers didn't want to hear it, because it usually went against ideas they had already accepted as fact. These women were dismissed, the line being "hey if you want to catch a fish, do you ask the fish or the fisherman?" Ie if you want to learn game, you need to learn from a man who has succeeded, not his mark.
133Well, as far as I can tell this was a success, because the only voices left for dating advice for men are other men, which has warped the dialogue beyond measure. Now the opportunity is to re-inject feminine perspectives. Looks like we've come full circle.
134The wheel always turns
135Woke tech worker gets deliberately upset about about collisions in acronym-space
136
137Think of the kind of person who would get into STEM 10-15 years ago. It's not really a sector known for selecting people who have been socialized well. If you hang around STEM-heavy parts of Reddit you'll see funny trends like people thinking teamwork is a super power or people "discovering" the idea of charity. Is it any wonder their take on politics is also braindead?
138ok, sure...
139
140Yup well said. It really is a massive waste of resources especially when you consider that the amount and types of meat your typical American eats is actually unhealthy for them too. So not only do we waste resources producing the stuff, we then pay again down the line to treat diet-related illnesses people get from eating too much fried chicken or whoppers. All around just a massively wasteful system
141ok, sure...
142
143Yeah it's so great how anti-consumerism has been totally abandoned. People think they're going to take on the geopolitical order but they don't even have the discipline to skip bacon with breakfast
144ok, sure...
145
146The argument is that the resource input for meat is something like 10x higher than for vegetarian alternatives. Creating 1lb of beef requires large amounts of feed and water, which all has to be drawn from somewhere. That means more land usage, more energy wasted farming, more transportation, more fertilizer etc.
147Basically, you can grow food and eat it directly, or you can grow food and give to livestock and then eat them. Do it that way takes way more resources as now you are farming huge amounts of food for the animals. Globally, the majority of food grown today is used for feed for animals which are then eaten. Its a huge waste of resources.
148Deadspin "speaks for the Establishment" like Pravda for the Soviet Union by virtue of "being part of a Moldbuggian cathedral"
149
150It was widely understood that the moment wealthy, white LGs got what they wanted (marriage, respectability) many of them would happily abandon the left and switch over to the conservative movements that do a much better job protecting the privileges of all the other key components of their identity (wealthy, white and male). It didn't really matter. Leftists and liberals fought for gay rights anyways.
151Wow almost like the left fights from first principles and sees freedom as more than a team sport. How stupid are we folks?
152Also lol at thinking deadspin has any influence at all
153Another absolutely terrible cw post, but at least some people in the thread are arguing with it
154
155Eh I can't even be mad; when you have a generation of people who have learned history from watching YouTube, this is the result.
156Modern Love: “What happened was this: 15 years ago, I woke up in the night, nudged him awake and said, “I need your permission to have an affair.””
157
158NYT
159cool
160?
161This is awful
162
163Your average queer working group in DSA has two gay men, three lipstick lesbians, four trans folks, five political lesbians, six pansexuals, and seven straight guys who got their ass eaten once and are riding that shit out for all it's worth
164And a patridge in a pear treeeeeee
165Happy holidays ?
166"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
167
168Sorry you found out like this ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
169Recent study in behavioral/development economics observes that the more that women have equal opportunities, the more they differ from men in their preferences.
170
171a rogue's gallery, each more ghoullish than the last
172Abdul_Alhazred2018AD produces a convincing list of all the character traits possessed by a typical Nice Guy
173
174Oh sorry let me try again;
175I'm sorry somebody fucked you over and this has now structured the way you move through life. Is there anything I can do to help? Delete my post perhaps?
176"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
177
178But the question is, is legbeard dating failure to do what I've pointed out above or something else? In my experience legbeards tend to be very full of personality and identity, and they struggle more on issues of compatibility.
179That said, if the internet is anything to go off of, the pool of legbeards is significantly smaller than the pool of Nice Guys
180Abdul_Alhazred2018AD produces a convincing list of all the character traits possessed by a typical Nice Guy
181
182lmao have you ever heard of the concept of context? My op is me profiling a specific type of (very prolific) user that likes to rant and rave on r/ssc about how it's bullshit that they don't live and work in Mad Men among other stupid ass complaints. That's it. Though now I wish I had
183bulleted list
184It's not the same thing. Pointing out that some men lack useable identities and this hurts them in dating is not the same as putting all men into a binary system between those who fuck and those who suck, and declaring those who suck to be the suckers. Not everything is binary and just because I'm critiquing men does not mean I buy into whatever package you (or anyone else in this thread) is attempting to hoist onto me. I swear to God this is why I only post serious stuff in a subreddit with less than 2k people, anything slightly more nuanced that "(enemy) is bad" is immediately dog piled by people trying to trim my work into a shape that fits their agenda. I'm describing a particular type of person, as I've encountered, in real life and online, and what I think their problem is. Don't like it? Don't read. Or did you really come into a thread titled "user describes nice guy" thinking you would enjoy the content?
185My life
186I don't care. People fuck each over all the time, that's how the world works. You think you're the only person with problems? You think I've never been fucked over by women?
187I get my experiences immediately dismissed
188Kind of like what you're doing to me in this thread? Your insight is unique and original and must be said, my insight is liberal bullshit that doesn't understand anything, that's how it works right?
189I’m interested in what people in this subreddit think of this article on”Sad Radicals”
190
191I mean I'll openly state I'm skeptical of anything that comes out of Quillette. That said,
192A sucker is born every minute right? All I got out of this article is that the author is hopelessly niave. Any community defined in opposition to something is going to attract cranks, whether that is a cult, a vanguard cell, or a subreddit. Leftwing thinking and activism is not a subculture and those who keep trying to make it a subculture are clearly doing it in service of their own psychological needs, not with any desire to actually change the status quo. This is immediately obvious to anybody who spends some time on the left and realizes that these subculturalists who lose the ability to talk to "normies" are anti-thetical to any broad-based movement.
193That said, this author is being just as delusional in their pivot back to the center (or wherever). Specifically here:
194Radicals should take stock of the progress liberal democracies have made. As Steven Pinker points out in The Better Angels of Our Nature, nobody in the West has an argument for wife-beating or denying women the vote anymore. Infant mortality rates have cratered, and extreme poverty rates are falling precipitously. With trends like these and more, liberal capitalism appears less like the arch-nemesis of humanity, and more like a miracle machine. It could even be improved by the compassion and devotion of former radicals. It is worth noting that this progress does not mean that exploitation and oppression have been solved; but it does mean that our current society is the only one to have made significant inroads against them.
195I mean all this passage tells us is that this writer has 0 familiarity with the core texts of anarchism and other radical philosophies. Marx himself basically says the same thing, and the core of his argument is that this "miracle machine" is internally unstable and will break on a long enough timeline, a prediction that has come true over and over. If the author seriously believes this (I'm not convinced this isn't a cynical piece) then they really are just some rube bouncing from idea to idea that sounds good, not actually absorbing what they read and building on it. It's like people forget the core of critical thought is critique, taking what you hear with salt and trying to identify the weak points.
196Most of all, radicals should learn to abandon false truths. The only way to escape dogmatism is to resist the calcification and sanctification of values, and to learn from the wisdom of different perspectives. As Haidt argues, there are grains of truth in opposing political positions. Radicals do themselves a disservice by seeing the world of thought outside the radical monoculture as tainted with reaction and evil. There is a rich diversity of thought awaiting them if they would only open their minds to it.One of the achievements of liberalism has been a norm of free speech wherein individuals can both share and consume that spectrum of thought. Every new and challenging school of thought I discovered after anarchism rocked my worldview, as somebody who formerly thought that wisdom could only be found through “the struggle” or in esoteric French theory. Even if opposing views are not assimilated, the ability to contend with them on the intellectual field instead of silencing them is a sign of a seeker of the truth, not a guardian.
197There is diverse thought. But there's also a lot of dogshit. The mark of wisdom is being able to find the notes in the noise, not the ability to swallow indiscriminately. The author has undermined their radical position, but in its place is an empty liberalism where everything under the sun can be considered, which is equally as naive as unilaterally believing in one ideology.
198Also, my suspension of disbelief is being stretched to the max here. This person is a "radical" and the full extent of their politicization was Foucault and "esoteric French theory", but they find the basic tenants of liberalism (like freedom of thought) revolutionary? I find that extremely hard to believe. Can a person even make sense of Discipline and Punishment without at least a primer on classic liberalism and the structuralist critiques that follow it? Or is this person just talking clean out their ass? Or were they so young they heard "have you ever noticed school and prison resemble each other?" and was like "hell yeah baby, this is my philosophy, fuk school"? Either way I'm not hyper impressed.
199Getting buried under one doctrine is bad. But don't push so far back against the problems of radicalism that you lose the ability to criticize at all. Radical movements exist because there are real, severe gaps in the status quo, and people in those gaps are unlikely to take it lying down. Subculturalism wont change that, but empty appeals to seeing both sides are just as naive.
200"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
201
202Nah iirc that book is some bunk pseudo-psa stuff, which is the flip side of the same coin. The pipeline from nice guy-> PUA is a waterslide, because they both suffer from the same problem, lack of stable identity.
203"There's absolutely no reason to take [witnesses and video evidence] at face value, especially because it is an allegation in the class of "social justice complaint" which has an historically low likelihood of truth.
204
205I agree with this user, it's preposterous that a drunk white undergrad would do something racist and sexually aggressive. As somebody who was an undergrad myself, I definitely didn't see shit like this play out all the time at frat houses, campus bars, clubs...
206How can you know what's going on in the world when you never leave your room ?
207"There's absolutely no reason to take [witnesses and video evidence] at face value, especially because it is an allegation in the class of "social justice complaint" which has an historically low likelihood of truth.
208
209anglo America built the modern world
210There you have it folks, blame WASPs for the fact that you have to work 364 days a year in order to afford food and shelter. Thanks England!
211Sneerquence #14 | Decrypting the Alt-Right: How to Recognize a F@scist, by ContraPoints
212
213Any discussion of political economy is going to be context specific, not universal. These people are better off than 90% of the world, but they're worse off than their parents, and getting worse year over year. That's enough to spark a reaction, even though in the curve of history they're doing fine.
214"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
215
216I think a lot of the readers who aren't regulars in this community do not realize that I am profiling a very specific type of user who makes very specific arguments on r/ssc. This is by no means supposed to be a full exploration of this topic.
217Glen Beck is good because he talks about artificial intelligence risk
218
219I do miss old Glen Beck tho, having a screaming crazy guy on TV yell about the immigrants eating babies or whatever back in the mid 2000s, he was ahead of his time
220Abdul_Alhazred2018AD produces a convincing list of all the character traits possessed by a typical Nice Guy
221
222If I wanted to say beta I would have said beta. I didn't because there are no alphas and betas, that's a classification system that obscures what's really at play in dating. Anyone can be a beta under the right circumstance.
223I don’t know why, but I read this and immediately knew it was fake and written by a man. Am I crazy, or do you get a similar impression?
224
225what it is about this story
226It's too perfect, which leads me to believe Op isn't telling the whole truth. I find it hard to believe that there was 0 prior indication that this is how the person would respond.
227Sex work twitter continue plight of being among the most malignantly evil people on earth. Y’alls
228
229Why do people think Twitter is an appropriate medium for long form essays? Start a blog people
230Abdul_Alhazred2018AD produces a convincing list of all the character traits possessed by a typical Nice Guy
231
232The vast majority of stuff on sc is from the CW threads, which generate the most heat and the least light.
233"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
234
235by your own admission
236Where did I say that?
237"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
238
239True, but To my knowledge only one half has made an identity out of it
240"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
241
242Sure I agree completely. But the complaint on places like r/niceguys as articulated by said nice guys is that they can't find a partner. The above is why. I'm not saying these are desirable traits or that women are incapable of having them, I'm saying that the archetype of "nice guy who can't get laid" can't get laid for these reasons, which is a problem unique to men because as you yourself point out, there are plenty of low self-esteem men who would sleep with a woman who fits the above description.
243"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
244
245Sure but the difference is that those women have partners. As an approach to dating it can work. I don't think it's good but it is distinct from the situation Nice Guys find themselves in, wherein they can't even get off the ground.
246"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
247
248No. This is a problem unique to men in our current moment. Women have their own list of issues and problems in dating but being a Nice GuyTM is explicitly a male phenomenon.
249Abdul_Alhazred2018AD produces a convincing list of all the character traits possessed by a typical Nice Guy
250
251its specifically a subreddit where people make fun of the bug-eyed shit that occasionally gets posted on r/slatestarcodex, which was formerly a subreddit based around rational discussion of the blog by the same name but overtime has become a haven for far-right users that are too smart to be posting on T _ D. Most of the users on sneerclub are left-wing posters who used to use SSC but eventually got sick of the culture and migrated. It's been compared to the r/bad____ series of subreddits and shares a userbase
252Sneerquence #14 | Decrypting the Alt-Right: How to Recognize a F@scist, by ContraPoints
253
254This is good but it missed the mark a bit.
255Contra is describing mostly (Neo) Nazism, particular form of fascism that, at least at this stage, attempts to operate as a vanguard movement; Nazis have a specific dogma that they believe describes the bend of history, and they claim to speak for the mass of whites across America who are being crushed under said bend. They attempt to mobilize support and agitate politically in order to increase race consciousness and bring certain topics onto the agenda. The long-term goal is to create space in the discourse for their ideology, and to re-introduce their image of history and socio-economics, which is radically different than anything the (mainstream) discourse has seen in almost 100 years (I can go further into this topic if people are interested).
256Nazism however is still a niche ideology serving a niche crowd, for a few reasons:
257Nazis race science (as opposed to more common race science like the shit Murray is peddling) is still too ahistorical and occult-oriented to gain traction in the educated classes
258Vanguardism in general is often looked down on in America; direct action has been mostly abandoned due to a mix of over-policing protests (pioneered for use against the left) and a hyper-focus on the electoral cycle and consumable political media
259WWII patriotism is still very strong
260Nazis have been used as boogeymen and video game villains for decades, so the "serious" side of the ideology has been pushed to the extreme fringe.
261Contra's video is good for IDing Nazis and nazi-adjacent fascist movements (like /pol/). But it misses the much larger threat, which is the sweeping tide of fascism that seems to be eating America alive. Somebody can go their whole life never having heard the word "Aryan" and can still go to the ballet box and vote fascist, because the movement isn't contained in just the vanguard fascist cells anymore. People will unironically describe themselves as freedom-loving patriots in one sentence, and then support extra-judicial internment camps in the next. The Nazis, for all the faults, know what they are, because they're following an ideology. But your typical fascist today has no idea, even as they do it; watch the videos that came from Charlottesville, wherein teenagers are crying on camera because they didn't want to be identified with nazism. Or look at the thread from earlier this week, wherein a "rationalist" bravely argued that it was necessary for that guy to run those people over. Does that user see himself as a nazi? Probably not. But he's definitely a fascist, even if he doesn't realize.
262I think we have a lot more to worry about the "everydayness" of fascism. Most people you meet aren't nazis. But I think a lot of people are okay with fascism or are already fascists themselves. When the status quo fails and popular resentment has nowhere to go, it can be harnessed by individuals who are only interested in maximizing their power. Rather than fixing the problems of the status quo, the resentment is harnessed and channeled towards acceptable targets: outsiders, internal enemies, "degenerates", etc.
263That's basically the state America is in right now. The current situation didn't just happen, it's the output of decades worth of decisions both internally and abroad, that have now brought us here. However, there are a huge contingent of people that either don't know, don't care, or don't want to recognize their own position in this moment, so they externalize the agency onto others. For example, in SSC, how much of our current political moment is a result of unchecked financial markets? The developed world has been hit with crisis after crisis since the 1980s, and broadly the standard of living has stagnated and even fallen for most people. Do the free market guys at SSC recognize their own participation in this? Nope. So how do they get around the contradiction? Blame an exterior party: immigrants, the Chinese, black people, gays, women, beta men, communists, whoever. It's not that capitalism failed, it's that ackshually, black people are just genetically stupid, and by forcing us to hire them, the SJWs have derailed our perfect system. If only we were to get rid of the SJWs and start hiring white guys, things would work again.
264That's the basic maneuver of fascism. The resentment, embarrassment, and anger created by socio-economic stagnation and political malpractice is congealed into a violent xenophobia aimed both externally and internally, which is then capitalized on by political leaders who declare "yes, I will get rid of the people who did this to you, put me in charge". These leaders use whatever is possible to keep tensions high: stoking nationalism, stoking racism, propaganda, rallies, anything available. This creates a feedback loop that sustains the movement until it either breaks due to internal mismanagement or it gains real power and begins shifting the political landscape.
265Look at the rise of Trump. Who supported that guy? Middle class white people who did everything right and are still feeling the pinch, hard-knock rural and rustbelt people who have been completely abandoned by Washington, tech bros and other cultural elites who resent having to participate in civil society, war veterans who feel they were left to die by their government, and Christian death-cultists who literally think Trump saved them from the end times. What do all these people have in common? A deep resentment of external groups who they perceive as meddling, and a deep desire to get revenge. Doesn't even matter what "right" means; "Make America Great Again" is an empty vessel that any Trump supporter can load their expectations into; after the "problem" is solved it'll be a new Eden. They don't need to know what it will actually look like because they have already abandoned critical thought (how will Trump turn things around? "gonna bring back jobs", like it's that simple) and personal responsibility for their choices.
266You see this same motion on SSC. I actually think very few of them are Nazis. But a lot of them are fascist or show the symptoms: abandoning critical thought, abandoning nuance, taking on a death-cult mentality, a deep resentment towards out-groups, feeling besieged, etc. Basically, wherever you see the collapse of complicated and historical understandings of the status quo into a simple narrative of "us vs the enemy", fascism can't be far behind. It's strongest in their discussion of the "Cathedral", an externalized personification of their own guilt complex around turning their back on liberal-enlightenment values. Any attempt to articulate social justice a historically-contingent movement that grew in response to the conservative retrenchment that occurred after 9/11 is laughed at, while describing social justice as a bunch of insane psychopathic power-mongers out to destroy the west is upvoted and taken seriously.
267And I'd like to point out that this isn't happening on one side. You see the same retreat into xenophobia and fatalism on the political left and radical center. Part of fascism is the loss of a single narrative; everything becomes a muddled mess and it becomes hard to tell fact from fiction, history from story, because with the abdication of responsibility, so too goes critical thought. That's where we're at right now; the political right is going all in on the nationalism, but the political center is also having their own bout of fascism: Russian paranoia, sex-negative crusades, making demands on organizations like the CIA to act extrajudicially, re-stigmatization of mental illness, etc. On the left, you see people retreating into vanguardism, focusing on race-baiting rhetoric, or adopting fatalist positions and seeking martyrdom, or writing off huge contingents of people as irredeemable. None of the above can combat the MAGA contingent; if anything, it's actually beneficial to them, with us taking up the role of the dreaded other they need to destroy. We're all infected.
268What people don't understand is that the political "spectrum" is not a spectrum at all. We spend so much time talking about left and right that we forget that it's a model, and a bad one at that. Functionally politics is a shared dream; we all have access to some information and collectively we create the next chapter as a emergent property of millions of people acting in concert. The rise of fascism, as a movement, is a current, an infection of this shared dream with epistemological assumptions about how individuals should interact with our institutions: helplessness, xenophobia, abdication of personal responsibility, identification with myths, black/white thinking, nihilism. That's where we are, and its only going to get worse as we go deeper in.
269Fascism destroys nuance, destoys critical thought, and demands that you pass the buck; nothing is ever your problem under fascism, it's either somebody else's problem or somebody else's fault. The solution? Use the state to remove the trouble makers. Once they're all gone and only the good guys are left, history is done, and we can all enjoy a new day.
270Ontario bill would open up Greenbelt, activists warn
271
272Well what is your solution then? At the closest point, the greenbelt is a good 40-50km away from the urban core. During rush, that takes an hour to cross assuming no collision, perfect weather etc. And that's the closest point; trying to get in from somewhere further afield (like Uxbridge) would take a lot longer. People may not want to live in Condos but they literally can't spend 4h+ in their car commuting everyday, which is what would be the case if we were to keep expanding suburbia. So we have two options:
2731. Develop the land we already have that is currently being used in the stupidest way possible: single-detached housing units being traded as investments.
2742. Massively improve our transportation infrastructure at a huge cost to the province in order to facilitate more commuters, who otherwise would be too far away to get to their jobs in a reasonable amount of time.
275Those are the only two ways forward. I don't want my tax dollars going to facilitate more suburban commuters, to the benefit of people who are getting rich by owning the right piece of land. Yes condos suck but the reality for us actually in Toronto is we already live in expensive, high-density housing; building up is the best way to cut down cost and make the best use of the land.
276Also,
277this is Canada not China or Japan
278Well maybe we should start thinking like China or Japan. Toronto is the 4th biggest city on the continent. We have millions of people all trying to live in the same space. There are hard time limits of how big a sprawl can get and stay cohesive, and Toronto does not have the infrastructure to sprawl much further. Look at the other major cities on the continent: Mexico city and New York, both built like an Asian city with hyper density, and LA, built from the ground-up with cars in mind. Toronto has neither. Is Ford going to pay for the massive infrastructure improvements more sprawl would need? I doubt it, which is why we need to make the land we have more dense.
279Ontario bill would open up Greenbelt, activists warn
280
281If you have any experience living in the GTA, Toronto is already fucked for commuting. On a perfect day, it can take 1h + to reach any location downtown from the suburbs and vice versa. Not only is this bad for the air quality, it also means regular people who work in Toronto waste huge amounts of time and money in traffic.
282Developing the green belt will make this problem worse. You think commuting is bad now, wait until suburbia doubles in size. Getting in and out of the city will be some people's fulltime jobs.
283We need to make Toronto denser, not wider. The problem is that huge amount of prime real estate (specifically East York, North York, and parts of Scarborough) is wasted on detached 1-2 story houses that can hold a max of 15-20 people, often significantly less. That land should be developed into condo and apartments, or at least do that before we expand suburbia again.
284The life sentence given to the neo-Nazi who drove into Charlottesville crowd is a blow to freedom of assembly
285
286One problem I've encountered with the online right is that they can be blind to their own groupthink. They will (accurately) observe that many liberals live in an information bubble. The part they don't say out loud is that they believe that if people are shook out of the bubble, they'll naturally gravitate to the right, because to them, the right isn't a position, it's just "common sense". So they constantly try to "red pill" liberals out of their bubble.
287Where it goes wrong is they don't realize there's no guarantee that redpilling somebody will automatically bring them to the right. It seems just as likely that somebody "waking up" to their position in a bubble will swing left, or swing to a third position.
288The Chads of /r/ssc explain how a top earning camgirl is aykshually an ugly bitch
289
290Yeah but I like drugs and like women who show their body online. What say you to that? Ya'll focus way to much on policing people's private lives
291I just saw r/drama linked to r/slatestarcodex and called them "Nazi Nerds"
292
293Who let you in? Shoo
294The life sentence given to the neo-Nazi who drove into Charlottesville crowd is a blow to freedom of assembly
295
296Ugh we live in a wild time, where people trust the narrative over what they can see with their own two eyes. Watch the video, you see dude pick up speed and clear open ground before ramming people. How is that not intentional? The only debate should be between 1st and 2nd (ie did he go to the rally looking for an opportunity or did he snap?), not whether or not he did it at all ffs
297SSC insists ackshually men are better drivers than women despite all evidence to the contrary
298
299Men are from Mars women are from Venus etc
300Thank you Notch, very cool!
301
302Lmao you know exactly which types of "scientists" I'm talking about. Here's some enlightenment values: humanism, freedom, social progress. None of which are compatible with race science. People like you, who try to blur the line between useful research and racist trash, are part of the problem.
303Get your head out of your ass.
304Thank you Notch, very cool!
305
306Things change. I have 0 sympathy for people that advocate against basic human rights, even if it's from a scientific basis.
307Thank you Notch, very cool!
308
309No, they don't. That side of the isle would continue to be racist even if tomorrow it was determined that IQ didn't even exist at all. The smarter among them may pay lip service to "science" as it serves their interests but that's not the base their racist views are built on, which is why they can outright ignore the mountain of evidence on racist contradicting them.
310Don't do their work for them. They don't care about the link between race and anything, all proofs are just a means to an end for these types
311"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
312
313Everybody knows the universities are run by neomarxist post-modernists, so no
314Thank you Notch, very cool!
315
316fear for their lives
317I wish
318Thank you Notch, very cool!
319
320"...Two soylent-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved saying the N word"
321"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
322
323Yeah that's true, which is why I enjoy doing it, it's fun to build narratives from noise.
324But what is pathology anyway? It's not like women in the workplace are going away, this avoidance tactic is somewhere between a toddler throwing a tantrum and a teenager threatening to run away from home. The real mystery is how users can think this is a good idea and not one that immediately makes everyone around them think a screw has come loose. Then again maybe corporate dudes willingly outing themselves as potential rapists by refusing to work with female colleagues is the kind of low-key victory #metoo made possible. I certainly sleep better knowing there's a movement of men out there desperate trying to cover their ass and loudly announcing they're doing it, takes a lot of the guess work out of it
325Thank you Notch, very cool!
326
327Thanks bot, glad somebody is looking out
328"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
329
330We're talking about users who's complaint is that there aren't enough masculine spaces. I'm pointing out that they actually have the issue inside out; they think they want a return to male chauvinism, when in actuallity they themselves are the ones avoiding it, because they are casually aware that they themselves are outside of it. This "argument" about the encroachment of feminism is the internal process that allows them to fantasize about one thing while living another.
331I don't care about roller derby or any other examples of gender non-essentialism, because that's not what we're talking about. Maybe I should have been more clear and and clarified that I'm talking about this specific type of user, not men in general, and this specific type of user often makes the argument that traditional male spaces are disappearing; my point is that no they are not, what's happening is that the spaces that are not coded male have changed their composition.
332Do you criticize rollergirls for...
333Better question, why do all feminists point to the same stable of examples? You don't need to look at roller derby to see the expansion of non-traditional gender roles, if you live in North America you can probably find it in your own home or workplace. That's how this whole conversation got started; dudes like the OP enjoy the benefits of gender desegregation but are reluctant to give up the benefits of male chauvinism; as we saw with Damore and #metoo that's not going to work. The last step for most of these guys is to get them to understand that they're wrong for trying to hold onto it, that they never had it to begin with, which is why they work at Google and not the barbershop. I've said it before and I'll say it again; this conservative world a lot of ssc posters want to return to is straight up fantasy, and most of them would absolutely hate it if it actually happened, because a place like ssc is only possible in a liberal world order; they would be marginalized pretty quickly if conservativism went mainstream.
334Thank you Notch, very cool!
335
336The proof is in whenever this stuff gets published (ex: Charles Murray). The powers that be mostly ignore it, the mass media says "fuck off", the usual circle of rightwing grifters make their rounds and get paid, and the great unwashed continues to go about life completely oblivious to all this shit, because nobody wants to read your 600 page book on why black people are stupid; either you already agree with the premise in which case the book is a bludgeon, or you don't believe in the premise in which case you call it pseudoscience and go back to watching the game.
337These dudes love the conspiracy angle because it shields them from the truth, which is that they've wasted huge chunks of their life fighting windmills. The only converts this shit wins is dumbasses and even then, 95% of those dumbasses could have been just as easily swayed with racist Pepe memes which takes 1/100th the effort and reaches 10x more people. They need the conspiracy, because the reality is Murray's book dropped, a handful of bubble-people read it and gasped, and then the world went on, because nobody gives a shit about the link between race and IQ on either side of the isle, it's only Internet weirdos who've convinced themselves that there is some rational basis to their (obviously libidinal) belief system that actually think this "conversation" could have any measurable affect.
338I mean look at this shit. It's fucking Notch, who's lifeswork is making a viral video game played by children, and being a racist tweeter, and that's it. He needs this shit to be a conspiracy because then he gets to play pretend and act like he's fight for truth and justice when he's really just sitting in his home reading the comments of other people with the same Quixotic sickness he has.
339Say what you will about sneer club but at least we don't make any pretentions here as to what we're doing, I know this is a waste of my time and I don't care because it's all wasted time anyway. When will these guys get with the program? I bet 95% of the shit we sneer at would disappear if these users just stopped trying to control everything and just enjoyed the ride
340"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
341
342Eh I mean some are assholes, some aren't, that's almost an irrelevant point.
343The issue with Nice GuysTM is that they aren't really anything. What is the defining trait of a Nice Guy, the trait that makes them stand out from the pack? From what I've seen, the following is your typical Nice Guy:
344Insecure in their sense of self; Nice Guys have fluid identities that they can reshape as part of courtship. They think this increases their compatibility but it actually signals that no version of themselves their targets see is the "real" them; they're undefined, which scans as fake.
345Masculine identifying, but at the bottom of the pecking order; they will enforce male chauvinism, but don't actually possess any of the benefits; they're the type of guy to insist a women dress modestly, because deep down they know they couldn't defend her from an attacker.
346Lifestyle defined by a consumption pattern; everything about an Nice Guy's social/personal life is bought off the shelf. They're only as "fun" as what they're currently consuming. They haven't learned how to create fun independently, which makes intimacy boring.
347No boundaries/Push-over; Related to being insecure, Nice Guys will let people (especially women) walk all over them. This signals that they are unable to distinguish good from bad in a way that would allow a mutually beneficial relationship to develop; Nice Guys exist on the same continuum as enablers or absent parents.
348No independent values; Nice Guys derive their valueset from a shallow reading of tradition, or they wholesale rip off the values of others. They practice "chivalry" without a concept of honour, or they derive their first principles from movie quotes that sound smart. They've never had their values put to the test, so they can't seperate out good advice and deep philosophy from pop psychology or fake woke shit.
349Personna is pop-culture derivative; without a fixed sense of self, Disney swoops in to provide a working model. Nice Guys debate whether it's more effective to emulate Bruce Wayne or the Joker, as if either character relates to their life beyond broad strokes. It's the male equivalent of consulting the stars for every little thing
350Sexually inexperienced; and I'm not just talking about giving head. Intimacy, body language, non-verbal cues, "the mood", this is all foreign to these guys. They're speaking when they should be using ASL; no wonder the message doesn't get through.
351Lost youth; Nice Guys always seem a bit anachronistic, either a step too far a head, or with one foot in the past. They have trouble staying in the moment because they don't identify with themselves as they are, but rather as they should be, at some undisclosed moment in time.
352Combine it all together and you have your typical Nice Guy. They bomb at dating because they don't actually have a fixed identity, or at least, they don't have one they're comfortable enough to show the world. As a result, their attempts to date fail in two ways: either they come off as sycophantic by constantly contorting their image into what they think their mark wants, or they come off as boring by only offering off-the-wrack identities that represent mass culture personified. It fails because dating is a game of distinction; you show who you are, and they show who they are, and if both likes what they see, you move closer. What do Nice Guys have to show when it comes time to put their cards down? Nothing, which is why Nice Guy courtship is this winding thing of trying to imply what they want while maintaining plausible deniability; they know that if they just come out and say what they want they will crash and burn, so they try to win via erosion what they can't get via outright proposal. With neither the confidence to outright make a pass nor the authenticity to signal who they are and attract somebody that way, their only move is to find somebody and whittle them down. This doesn't work because no relationship can ever be founded on one partner settling.
353That's why they fail in a nutshell. It's not even that they're assholes. Assholes, for all their problems, are at least something: thrilling, dangerous, dramatic, hyper-masculine, etc. It's not everybody's cup of tea but I can see how somebody would be into it.
354But what are Nice Guys? Nice, okay, but what else? Is there anything about them that distinguishes them as people? If all you can say in your defends is that you exist and that you can change to suit your partner's needs, why would they choose you over somebody who is funny/sweet/handsome/sporty/fun/etc? You need to be somebody before you can give yourself to somebody else. That's what these dudes don't get
355Thank you Notch, very cool!
356
357I love the phrasing on this one; "if we were allowed..." like yeah man there's a huge conspiracy to suppress these dumbass opinions. Nobody cares
358"Male spaces are fundamentally illegitimate[...]It's not OK to have a male space, because men are the villains in the war of the sexes."
359
360Eh this whole thing reminds me of a TLP article where he examines Scott Adam's claim that if it wasn't for civilization tampering down his aggressive alpha-maleness, he'd be forcing himself on every attractive woman he crossed paths with. Alone observes that we shouldn't take the bait and argue his conclusion (whether #notallmen) but rather we should recognize the fantastic element: Adams wants it to be true that it's "society's" fault he can't get laid, because the alternative is that he's just the kind of dude who is a millionaire and is still sexually frustrated. By constructing this elaborate narrative that socialization is tampering down the "natural" order of things wherein wildmen take what they want, he's able to externalize his sense of inadequacy over him inability to find satisfaction. "It's not that I'm unfuckable, it's that these goddamn feminists won't let me be a man!"
361I think the same process is at work for these types, this loud minority of dudes constantly lamenting the disappearance of male spaces. They want that to be the case, because that story saves them from confronting their alienation from their own masculinity.
362Male spaces aren't disappearing. Football teams, Xbox Live chat, fantasy leagues, hobby shops, mma gyms, dive bars, after-hours clubs, Home Depot, breweries, competitive robotics, metal shows, golf courses, Reddit, barbershops, you're buddy's unfinished basement, strip clubs frat houses, and this is just off the top of my head. All of the above are either literally all male or are so aggressively male that they're functionally masculine spaces. There's no shortage of places where a man can go and be masculine, up to and including misogyny. Go to any club serving drinks for less than 10$ and tell me you aren't seeing masculinity on display.
363But I doubt that's what these people have in mind when they complain. Are these guys signing up in droves for MMA or frats? I've been to many dive bars, I've never met somebody at one who wanted to talk about IQ and programming. So where are they?
364What they really mean is that they lament the fact that the spaces they are in are not masculine. Their complaint isn't that they got kicked out of the local dive for telling a woman she had a nice ass, the complaint is that James Damore got fired for publishing a public manifesto about how Google is dumb for hiring women. They don't want to go to masculine spaces, they want to stay in their a-gendered corporate spaces but without having to be empathetic to the women there. That's the complaint.
365"There's no masculine spaces" translates into "the spaces I live in are feminine" ie "I'm not actually very manly". That's the root of their issue; they want to identify as masculine (which they associate with power) but their actual lived experience is agendered, because they're upper-middle class professionals and the corporate world realized ages ago that you can make more money by selling to both halves of the population. They need this structure to be true because it allows them to avoid the much harsher reality, which is that many of them would be as alienated as any woman were they to join a fantasy league, pick up golf, or head to the barbershop; they're too far from masculinity to pull it off so they need to justify why they only move in the sterilized corporate world.
366Bloomberg article is the gift that keeps on giving
367
368Fellas, don't you just hate it when you're trying to have a private conversation with a woman and you accidentally do something incriminating?
369Bloomberg article is the gift that keeps on giving
370
371I googled "no girls allowed" and chose the best hit
372Bloomberg article is the gift that keeps on giving
373
374Your move, feminists
375December 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
376
377Could be a jurisdiction issue, up here (Canada) the opioid crisis gets a decent amount of air time and public health dollars.
378That said, I think part of the issue with opioids is that they aren't "sexy"; opioid addiction is very boring television and happens mostly behind closed doors, to relatively "normal" (read: not "thug") people who don't really have many other options.
379What's the long term solution to opioid addiction really? Yes shorterm things like safe injection sites, free overdose kits, and court-ordered rehab seems to be making a dent. But then what?
380One TLP article, he makes the point that most people on welfare aren't necessarily disabled in the literal meaning of the word, but they're just unstable enough to be unable to keep up with the demands of the economy; yeah they can work just fine, but no employer wants to hire somebody who'll need to take 4 days off a month to go to family court, or will get their third DUI 6 months in, or will blow off a shift to sit through a panic attack, or etc. As the economy improves, more people fall into this grey zone wherein they're not so bad off that they can be actively managed by the state, but they're still too messy to really get into the private sector in any useful capacity. Our solution for these people is to put them on welfare and kick the can down the road.
381I think opioid addicts are facing a similar problem. Yeah sure you can get clean, but unless you're in the 1% of addicts, you're probably not moving into that nice 6 figure salary anytime soon. Especially for the older addicts, people past 30, they will have a near impossible time heading back into "normal" society. Which firms are lining up to hire recovered addicts for meaningful, challenging work? I imagine most of these people get clean, just to continue working at Walmart or whatever.
382That's the uphill battle, or at least part of it, when it comes to marketing this problem. Immediate, life saving measures seem popular, or at least popular enough. But a long term solution? No clue how to get there
383What's the deal with Tumblr banning all NSFW content as of this month?
384
385Lmao Loli fans are pissed you called them out
386"I can't trust myself not to harass women, so I'll just discriminate against them instead"
387
388Don't worry, new panoptic technologies will resolve this problem
389silicon valley feminism was a mistake
390
391What? Where did I say having no partner is bad? It's called being single and is the normal condition of most people, not a medical ailment.
392A sex robot is an object, designed to trick your brain into thinking it's not an object. You still have no partner. It's still a fantasy. This is like saying TV sitcoms are a good substitute for having real friends, because they fool the brain into thinking other people are in the room. Its not, it's an object emitting light and sound, that's it, there's no "other" in it, no human.
393No one is forcing you to do anything, and I'm sorry you have all those problems. But that doesn't make sex robots and people interchangeable, nor does it change the fact that people are forming emotional and sexual attachments to objects, which I am extremely skeptical about as a healthy outlet for these feelings. Obviously we need hard data here but the small amount of data on these topics I've seen indicates that these relationships are not healthy for the human. Maybe science will prove me wrong but till then I think we should be cautious about rolling out this technology.
394why don't you go talk to an incels yourself
395In my experience, because most incels aren't actually interested in changing and don't want to hear what I have to say, and I don't waste my time on users that just want somebody to be mad at. Granted my entire experience with them is in "why do Normies do X" threads, with me as the 'Normie'
396As for why they should be socialized more, well they openly threaten to kill people and some actually go through with it. Not really conducive to a civil society
397silicon valley feminism was a mistake
398
399I mean drugs are bad though too, we probably shouldn't be encouraging people to do more drugs either. Public health campaigns focus on both harm reduction and addiction counselling which seems to decrease usage rates.
400another one bites the dust
401
402Well this is an interesting line of attack. A few comments:
403First, in that post originally I was articulating to another user why I am (justifiably) skeptical about arguments for the economic status quo on a macroscopic scale. This is divorced from my actually economic situation, which is mostly stable due to the fact that I'm pretty crafty and am not above any kind of work. I mean if you want to do a 1:1 comparison, I'd be very curious to see where I fall vs the average SSC user: I was top of my class in highschool, kept a 3.9 in university, and I've been paying my own rent and food since I was 18. The reality is there is only so much you can do when you start in a shitty public school in the middle of nowhere, and what I found over time is that the killer isn't that working is too hard, it's that people aren't starting from the same block and trying to play catch-up burns you out. I'm in my mid 20s now and even if I had spent every minute from age 15 onwards working (which is neither realistic nor what I wanted) I still wouldn't be caught up to some of my "peers" because of advantages they had: family connections, gifted programs, living rent free, etc. None of that was an option for me and over time those difference wear you down. When you have been working wage slave jobs for 10+ years just to get passed on for people who've been "working" as a copy edittor at mom's magazine, it's difficult not to get frustrated.
404But that said, that also doesn't mean I just rolled over and said fuck it. I'm still very much a participant in the economy, possibly more so than some of my critics; how many power users at ssc are NEETs? My post was more about my loss of faith in the idea that this marathon is going anywhere; if I'm to take it that our society is just naturally unequal, as both SSC and my own life have told me, then why the hell wouldn't I advocate for a politics that aims to level the playing field? I'm tired man, tired of working 4x harder than the guy next to me, tired of pretending to be something I'm not, tired of being cut off from my people and my customs. And as a result I'm at a point where middle class shaming tactics about how I should just work harder or whatever just don't really resonate with me. I've worked as hard as I could and I burnt out, that doesn't mean I'm going to lay down and die, just that I'm going to look for a third way.
405It's not a 1:1 comparison. Even in the world of work I see plenty of people on ssc talking about how easy it all should be; I'd like to see how they handle the situation I came up in. You're going through my old posts, look up the one where I talk about SSC users larping as conservatives, place yourself in my shoes and try to tell me these smart ass tech bros would be where they are if they started where I did. Hell I was going to study computer science at a major university but then changed my major to polisci in my senior year because a) the teacher that taught the 1 programming class in my highschool was a massive ass and chucked a chair at my head and the whole incident turned me off it and b) I became politically aware and wanted to understand more clearly why my home region, which was once the industrial capital of the world, was a major shithole now, with the hope of one day going back and helping those people. Would the average 16yo SSC user stuck with programing in that situation? I didn't even know any programmers until I was in university. I'm not crying sour grapes, just pointing out that it's not a 1:1 comparison.
406But, the nature of the sub is they get to tell me that it is what it is, that I have no right to want a better deal. Well, if that's the case, then I'm going to throw it right back at them: why are you nerds so bad at socializing? For a group obsessed with meritocracy, they sure do complain a lot about how it's bullshit that their inability to engage other humans seems to gatekeep a lot of their world. I don't have sympathy to spare for people that want to live in a cutthroat world; you reap what you sow.
407Second, and this is something I'm 99% sure I've talked about before, I'm not a 'natural' either. I was horribly socially awkward from age 10-20. I had to learn everything and I still struggle. All the stuff ssc wants to write off as impossible or massively unfair for men, especially dating, is something that I myself struggled with for years until I got the hang of it. Yes, today I have the kind of sex life I wanted, and I'm sure if a user saw me operating at a bar or a party they might assume I had it all figured out. What they don't see is the years of pain, embarassment, rejection, and isolation I went through trying to figure all that stuff out.
408And for those who are taking that approach, I salut them, but that isn't who I targeted this post at. What I came across most frequently in ssc is three types of posters:
409"Dating is rigged against men, the solution is to go back to patriarchy, but also all women should still fuck on the third date". Just pure power fantasy with no actionable parts, because it's a non-sensical demand.
410"I was totally lost in dating until I met my spouse, thank God I'm out of the dating world". Good for them but imo unrealistic. Romance is a process, not a contract. They better have something good worked out with their partner or else they're just fooling themselves.
411"I was helpless until I took the redpill / studied game / learned this one neat trick." These dudes are screwed, their whole epistemic base is wrong, I wrote a long post about it I can dig up if wanted.
412Either way, the common thread is that they want things to change, but they don't want to do anything to change things. By their own logic the world doesn't work like that. I'm speaking from the perspective of somebody who did learn this, but it was only after I gave up everything, and I mean everything: literally nothing about my life today is something I had since before 2012. Are all these dudes ready to go that far? Only time will tell, but judging by the way they approach their problem on ssc, which seems to be "my life is great except for this one small pain point", indicates that they aren't quite ready. These problems are all entangled and it's very hard to work out one without working on another; for example, is it a surprise they have trouble meeting women when they work in a very male-dominated field? How many women do they interact with in a day really?
413Also, this is why I'm not worried about my personal work situation, because whenever I hit a dead end I just go back to start and start ripping up pieces until I find a way forward. That doesn't change the structural issues facing my generation. And while we're talking structural, one of the reasons this generation is the loneliest ever is because it's very risk adverse; at least anecdotally, I know too many people who when given the choice between living poor but independent vs living well with their parents, they stay home. They won't even consider a mild drop in their standard of living in exchange for independence. These problems feed each other; people are lonelier because they take less risks on strangers, and they take less risk on strangers because our social fabric is weakening. I don't think we should encourage socialization patterns that intensify this, and giving ssc a pass here is doing exactly that.
414silicon valley feminism was a mistake
415
416How is it authoritarian? Anti-authoritarianism doesn't mean just letting anything fly for any reason. Anti-authoritarianism without a focus on the social is what we have now, wherein individuals are "free" to exist as socially isolated, silo'd atoms. This technology will deepen that trend rather than alieve it; why would an incels participate in society or re-socialize when they can simply lock up themselves in their home with a sexbot?
417silicon valley feminism was a mistake
418
419Sorry I assumed this conversation was only Talking about the real dolls given that the op is about robot consent, obvious a blow up piece of plastic can't communicate
420silicon valley feminism was a mistake
421
422Uh what? What do you base that claim on? I think people would find a sex doll much more disturbing
423silicon valley feminism was a mistake
424
425Idk I think there is more going on with sex dolls than them just being sex toys. A more comparable comparison to a dildo is a fleshlight
426silicon valley feminism was a mistake
427
428It's weird you're getting downvotes. If you take materialism seriously and genuinely believe people's outlooks and outcomes are at least somewhat determined by their material conditions, then the popularization of life-like sex dolls, which seems to be the goals of this subculture, should raise your eyebrow. Certainly no materialist would disagree that an abundance or dearth of telecoms tech, automotive tech etc has a major impact on how people interact with the world, but somehow a simulacrum of a person used explicitly to placate somebody's sexuality is just harmless fun? I don't buy it.
429It's clear from their own press that these people aren't just using a sex doll as a masturbation aid, most of them seem to expect their doll to replace a domestic life with another human. The comparison to dildos/flashlights is false because as far as I know, there is no big move to make dildos/flashlights life-like, capable of communication etc. vs the goal with sex dolls seems to be to make a "real" woman except without the free-will, emotional independence etc. A sex doll is more comparable to a Waifu body pillow than a fleshlight, and I don't think anybody would consider a Waifu to be a healthy psychological process.
430I don't think living with a simulacra of a real person is psychologically healthy, both for the individual and for the down-stream effects on society wherein this choice is available at a mass scale; we already talk a lot about the effect spectacle and hyper-normalization is having on our society, do we really want to provide machines that allow people to substitute the challenges of a real relationship with a simulacra of the "perfect" woman?
431And also I don't buy this line that this is a good solution to incels and the like. The question should be why does our society turn out so many of these lost souls, not which ways we can utilize technology to plaster over their existence.
432silicon valley feminism was a mistake
433
434Two wrongs don't make a right
435Harry Potter identity politics are now a thing.
436
437I mean Spielberg is hardly an auteur himself, if he had been pinched to direct at that time (early-mid 2000's) it would have been an over-produced cash grab still
438Has Scott ever addressed in a reasonable manner why his fan club is full of reactionaries and alt-righters?
439
440Wouldn't you?
441Have we gone too far?
442
443Your post is useless and an obvious attempt at wasting people's time. Shoo
444Has Scott ever addressed in a reasonable manner why his fan club is full of reactionaries and alt-righters?
445
446Idk everytime Scott starts drunk posting its hyper reactionary conspiracies and other trash like that. So I think deep down he agrees with most of it
447Have we gone too far?
448
449No, next question
450Interesting article on the obesity crisis. While the author proposes some solid socdem policies to abate the crisis, they consider fat stigma more serious than the obesity itself
451
452It doesn't.
453I used to work for a tobacco company, and the people making decision there thought that the decline in smoking is caused by 2 factors:
4541) Perpetually rising costs. The issue isn't that tobacco is taxed high, it's that the price keeps raising a lot faster than the CPI. Smokers are some of the most consistent customers of any product, with a significant portion (I'd say over 1/3) literally making the exact same purchase everyday, as part of a ritual (i.e. wake up, go to get gas, get pack of smokes, head to work, every single day). Even a small price increase (say, 15c) is noticed right away and people start complaining. When you raise the price 15c every 6 months for 4 years on end, people are led to think that it's getting too expensive and they cut back, or move to illegal/quasi-legal substitute products (vaporizers, illegal/bootleg cigarettes, dip, nicotine gum, etc) that are more affordable, which looks the same as quitting on paper.
4552) Young people aren't starting. The biggest gain for public health has been that young people aren't starting. Most older smokers are more likely to die than quit, but they aren't being replaced by a new crop of people for two reasons:
456Public health campaigns aimed at school-age children dissuade many people from starting due to health risks. By getting them before the experimental stage, they're more likely to treat it like a real drug and thereby stop (or slow) consumption before they reach an addiction stage, if they ever start.
457Regulating where people can smoke. No smoking in doors, no smoking on patios (where I live), rules around smoking in the car, etc. People are less exposed to smoking and the link between smoking and drinking (at the bars etc) has been regulated to the point of severance. Less people are "social smokers" as a result, which is where most people get into smoking.
458Neither really has to do with shame or stigma. The reality is that once somebody is an addict, no amount of shame will get them to quit; they either quit when the negatives (health damage, cost etc) hits a breaking point, or they die. The decrease is about emphasizing those features while simultaneously breaking the youth culture around smoking. Speaking anecdotally as a smoker, I've never seen somebody quit due to shame alone.
459I am an open minded skeptic, can someone point to some good evidence?
460
461I mean 99% of what you read is bullshit, in this forum and elsewhere. The best solution is to learn by doing. Even low-level meditation can get you some pretty weird results, start there at least
462another one bites the dust
463
464Man Trannyporno is amazing, its wild how they manage to find a constant stream of heterodox takes that are also simultaneously as terrible as possible, a true talent
465‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’
466
467Your last paragraph is beautiful
468But yeah I agree. All I could think reading it was "you've been galivanting around the world for 15 years and have nothing to show for it?" Like damn I'd hope if you spend that much time "out" of the system you at least discover a religion or generate enough content for a memoir or get really good at guitar or something. The vibe I got from this piece is that she keeps moving around just to be the same person; if nothing else, if she's resigned to dead-end work, she should be moving into a dead end job she can find tolerable right? Otherwise why bother switching jobs?
469Interesting article on the obesity crisis. While the author proposes some solid socdem policies to abate the crisis, they consider fat stigma more serious than the obesity itself
470
471Also, why is there a massive abundance of shit-quality food being marketed directly to children?
472another one bites the dust
473
474I mean sure I have no issue with all that.
475The flip side of it though is that if you're a grown adult who struggles severely with social interaction, and you can't figure out why, that's a red flag in my book. I'm not talking about ssc users who have a spectrum disorder and it makes their life harder. I'm talking about ssc users who are completely lost in the modern world and conclude that the real problem is "feminists", "leftists" or whoever else. When a user can unironically tell me that they were totally helpless in dating until they discovered r/theredpill, which is "actually quite rational if you think about it", what they're really telling me is that they suck as people. That's what I'm getting at here.
476Socialism or Genocide
477
478Idk I think you got some of this backwards. My experience of irl leftwing spaces is that there is a lot of violent energy that is just narrowly sublimated by a discourse of respectability and anti-masculinity. I think if push came to shove people would drop the anti-gun, language policing and other shit pretty quickly. Don't buy into the rightwing narrative that the left are all soyboys who would fold instantly under pressure, it's part of their larger "the enemy is everywhere/the enemy is weak" brainscrew that they use to plug the gaps in their worldview. My experience, in meatspace at least, is that people are pissed and are just waiting for things to come to a head, for good or bad.
479The real issue is that educating the "mass" has been completely abandoned. Mass media is wholly controlled by elite interests, the education system is a joke, and the unions have been put on the rope, so there's low class consciousness among everybody except the narrow strip of people who are both university educated in a relevant field and economically dissatisfied. The rest of the mass is scooped up by consumerism and rendered inert, which keeps them far away from these issues. That's what we need to figure out how to break, if we're going to mobilize more people. 50k people in DSA is great but more people went to see Infinity Wars on opening night. As long as that is the only interaction with the culture people have, we'll be fighting uphill in the rain.
480I think a 4Chan troll got hired by Huffington Post
481
482Honestly looking into how HuffPo came to be is a great way to convince yourself large-scale psy-ops exist.
483The page is founded in 2005 by Arianna Huffington, conservative who went "liberal" in the late 90s in an attempt to win an elected position in Cali, and Andrew Breitbart, yes, that Breitbart, among a few other people.
484Fast forward 6 years and HuffPo is turning out ridiculous ass content which is then lampooned on places like Breitbart. It's like the page is designed to make people think the left is retarded. Now if you'll excuse the tinfoil hat, is it a coincidence that a conservative and a former conservative started an extremely-online news source that makes the left look braindead, especially when one of them went on to start a news page that specifically lampoons that shit? Who knows ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
485Rationalist is concerned with the most vulnerable people in society. Minorities or trans people? Nope. Porn stars.
486
487Idk man porn stars are a pretty vulnerable group tho
488another one bites the dust
489
490Hey I'm all for understanding and removing barriers for people with autism. That said, I also don't know what advice can be given to an autistic person regarding social skills that doesn't include some kind of strategic approach they can deploy. That's not me blaming them or saying their lazy or it's their fault, that's me being realistic; if you're autistic and really struggle with social situations, what're you to do? Unless you plan to start every interaction by announcing "I'm autistic", most people you interact with aren't going to know, they're just going to think your social skills are bad. If you have a way around this problem I'm all ears.
491And unfortunately way too many people at ssc use the fact that autism exists as a shield to justify outright ghoulish behaviour. Don't know what to tell you there but they do. As for the rest, plenty of people there are not autistic and are just shitty people, and my post was mostly aimed at that
492unproductive breeders ownd
493
494Dworkin the writer who offers a pretty useful critique of this phenominon. Seperate the idea from the author
495Can someone please help me find my favorite sneer?
496
497Tell her to get out now, there's nothing down here but elderitch horror
498Why are Rationalists so obsessed with religion and its so called benefits even if they don't believe in it?
499
500They never really got rid of religion. Most are running basic Christian epistemology but with the spooky shit cut out and replaced with a Scientism. As they hit the limits of science as a truth-delivering mechanism, they pivot. Most are somewhere in the pivot motion, which takes time.
501Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
502
503Yeah I mean you may notice I gave a serious reply to the users that engaged my post seriously, even though they disagreed with me.
504Meanwhile you said that we can't trust the mentally ill to take class seriously (which makes no sense given the mentally ill are massively overrepresented at the bottom) and then compared me to an anti-Vaxxer for suggesting there is a link between our material conditions and mental health, which is a view supported by many contemporary Marxists to the point where it can be found in fuckin Jacobin. It's hardly a stretch but don't let that get in the way of you already knowing everything.
505Why would I want to talk to you more about this? I get nothing out of it. But by all means throw clapping emojis at me, anybody who disagrees with you is an SJW clearly, you got it alllll figured out ?￰ﾟﾘﾂ
506Also, this is why idpol sucks. They've jargonized basic interactions. I don't want to spend time writing a big thing not because I don't want to spend the "emotional labor" or "educate" you. I don't want to spend the time because you seem unpleasant and writing big things just to have a hostile party rip into them does nothing for me. You seem shitty and this conversation has made my day sligtly worse, why would I invest serious effort in continuing this?
507Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
508
509Start with Mark Fischer and work your way up. Not gonna waste time on a user that's already made up their mind
510another one bites the dust
511
512Yup that's the vibe I always got too.
513Note: use screenshots whenever possible. Don't make people here click on links just to view some shitpost.
514
515I love how you can just slap "ism" on any word and make it a thing ? But you're right politics is super serious business, best we don't lighten the mood, might make it a place people want to spend time
516Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
517
518Whatever dude, do some research before you start talking about people being "anti science", you don't know shit
519another one bites the dust
520
521I think people on the right forget that the people on the left have a long memory. It's hard to win people back over, especially when you're massively wrong. Scott backed the wrong horse a few too many times and it's probably screwed his credibility
522another one bites the dust
523
524I think people on the right forget that the people on the left have a long memory. It's hard to win people back over, especially when you're massively wrong. Scott backed the wrong horse a few too many times and it's probably screwed his credibility
525"So you're saying that doctors should inform a spouse if the other has AIDS. What about cuckoldry?"
526
527Well for those who do. For the rest hypothetical
528[Vintage at this point] A really good writeup of Zizek facing off against radlib nonsense.
529
530Something only idiots believe lmao
531Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
532
533Well if that's what the other user meant they have a funny way of saying. I never said you said those things, I was explaining why I said the other user's take was bad.
534I also don't think it's purely socially caused but I also don't think it's purely biologically caused, which seems to be the general direction the discourse is trending. Where I live any attempt to make daily life less stressful has been abandoned in favour of the pharmaceutical approach.
535I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't agree with discourses that try to manage the mentally ill with kids-gloves. The discourse is so underdeveloped and people only seem interested in medicating away the problem when, at least in my view, a huge part of the problem is that we seem to have set up society in a way that is driving people insane. And I'm talking about really basic shit here too, like the established research link between sleep deprivation and depression; the medical approach is to say "sleep more" but how the fuck is that possible when you work 60h+ a week? This is the kind of thing a leftwing movement could capitalize on if we stop treating mental illness as a personal failing rather than what it is, which is an illness, ie caused by external factors. When people kept dying of dsyenteria we created sanitation, now people are dying from suicide and our solution is to...manage their symptoms and send them back to work. It's an incomplete solution, and this is before we even talk about how fucked trying to navigate the therapy system is.
536Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
537
538Well I'm glad it worked for you but based on my experiences with the system I'm skeptical at best.
539And CBT is only evidence based in the broadest way possible, it's long term success is weak. Psychoanalysis has flaws as well but it's still used in other parts of the world as part of a wide treatment program, nowhere have I said it's the only solution on the table.
540What I'm saying here is based on what I've seen first hand. I don't know what else to say except that if is skepticism is inaccurate and harmful then what the fuck should I make of what I went through? I did CBT for 2 years straight and at the end I had my case moved to a new doctor because I tried to kill myself anyway, all that therapy did fucking nothing. What did work for me was psychoanalysis and saying "fuck it" and dropping out of therapy, dropping out of my job, dropping out of everything and doing things my way. I'm way happier now, way less depressed, way less suicidal even though every crank I talk to tries to talk me back into the rat race because that's what a "normal" person would do, and since I don't want to do it, there must be something wrong with me that needs fixing. ?
541I'm glad psychiatry worked for you. For me, it made my life shittier.
542Edit: and that's just my experience. I have literally never met somebody irl who had a positive experience with the mental health system. Neutral maybe but never positive.
543another one bites the dust
544
545They also can't conceive of the idea that people may want different things.
546You see this with race all the time. In one thread, it's about how there is an essential link between race and IQ. In the next thread they'll talk about how work should be a perfect meritocracy. They don't come out and say it, that part is done in the mind: "I'm not a racist, I'm just hiring the smartest candidates! It's not my fault whites are smarter ?"
547The problem for these rightwing positions (this faux populism) has always been that people will only compromise so far. Black America will never accept a deal or bargain that lists them as essentially inferior to white Americans and treats them accordingly, which is why American history is the history of riots, slave revolts, internal wars, etc. What people like this don't get is that you can't have both a stable society, and a deeply segregated one; as long as there is a limited amount of resources that has to be split somehow between the two sides, there will be conflict between them. The solution is to end racism but that would also necessitate the dominant side (read: whites, specifically middle class and up) to give up some of their stuff to the dominated side (specially lower-class black people and other embattled minorities).
548They will never square that circle, wherein they both have social stability and white domination. But they still need to maintain that their image of the world is correct, I.e they need to justify the instability in a way that doesn't reveal the poisonous influence of white supremacy. How?
549The solution, for SSC, is language games. It's not that the facts are wrong (ie black Americans are not essentially different from white Americans), it's that we disagree on how to interpret the facts; conflict is just a by-product of language interpretation, not the nature of what is being interpreted. If only people could understand what these facts are actually saying (which is that a segregated society is correct) then there would be no conflict. We just need to get the language right, which is why PC is bad, because it shames us for telling it like it is. And if you disagree, it's because you don't understand the language yourself.
550That's the basic manoeuvre Scott and his followers pull all the time, and not just on topics of race. Consider You're Still Crying Wolf, which basically posits that anybody who is concerned about Trump has just read the situation wrong. The idea that maybe people just have different needs and concerns than him never enters the picture, either a) because he's so self centered he can't picture ways in which Trump would be bad for somebody or b) because that would require admitting his conservative worldview is not conducive to social stability but rather just benefits him and his personally, ie that his interest in conservativism is political, not rational.
551Rinse and repeat for economics (constantly trying to "educate" people on how actually, capitalism is good for everyone, no exceptions) gender (women don't really know what they want) religion (the problem with the religious is they just don't understand science) etc etc. It's all just language games for these folks, which is why they're bewildered when you can't badger a lefty into arguing for their position on their terms; they don't realize nobody on the left will "rationally" arrive at a conclusion that will also fck themselves over, which is ultimately what they want to happen.
552another one bites the dust
553
554lmao
555User: No matter how much effort I put in, nobody seems to be actually engaging my points or even reading what I say, this is a waste of my time
556Response: another example of a lefty who can't win an argument
557another one bites the dust
558
559This was good, especially that piece at the end about NpC, spicy ?
560But really one could have stopped right here:
561I consider myself to be a fairly reasonable person. Generally, I get along with people pretty well. I have friends and acquaintances from a fairly wide spread of socioeconomic backgrounds and political beliefs. I certainly don't have a track record of making enemies in my personal life.
562That's all you really need to know about why this guy left SSC. I burned out about a month ago but long before that I knew things were awry, why?
563For a normal adult, socializing shouldn't be too difficult. If you're over 22, dating, making friends, work etc shouldn't be an indecepherable problem for you; you may have a pipeline problem (ie There aren't enough new people in my vacinity, I don't have enough time to date, I travel too much to put down roots, etc) but not a signaling problem (Ie I can't read body language, I don't know how to initiate conversation, I'm bad at expressing sexual interest, etc). By your 20s you should either have this shit locked down, or you should have some strong strategies in place to get around problems unique to you (for example, I have some friends who are autistic, they work twice as hard at being social because they know thy struggle with it).
564In SSC it's the opposite. Most users are totally lost in all this; dating, friendship, socializing, many will openly admit to struggling hard with all of it and/or having 0 clue how to do it. This is why they're so obsessed with HR culture and workplace ettiquete; many have social skills so underdeveloped that they genuinely don't know how to act around others or read a room, and it's a threat to their livelihood.
565Really when I realized that, that's all I needed to know about SSC. People who are generally well adjusted do not do well on that forum, because their experience is radically different from that of the power users there, and the power users set the tone. The politics is down stream from this: everything has to be perpetually contexualized and recontextualized because the users are themselves mostly cut off from the larger dialogue happening around them, which is why the can conflate a few whiny teenagers saying "kill whitey" over a deep-fried image of Peter Griffin with an Einsatzgruppen unit. Or going in the other direction, they can look at some Bernie Bros going "hey fuck anybody who doesn't want free health care" and some Proud Boys going "hey let's beat the shit out of some people" and be like damn, I can't tell these two apart.
566Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
567
568nobody is suggesting mentally ill people shouldn't get involved in activism if they are stable enough to handle the rigours of it
569Honestly it's gotten to the point that I'd really rather anyone who considers a mental illness to be a defining (much less the first mentioned) identity for themselves just step back, take a seat, and let others do the work. ... I'd say at least 9 out of 10 of the real troublemakers in DSA and other orgs are either autistic or live in a daze of multiple untreated mental illnesses. The other 1 out of 10 are white people who are terrified of
570That is literally exactly what the users is saying. He's saying first that DSA would be better off if people who identify with having a mental illness sat down and shut up, and then goes on to say that at least 90% of "troublemakers" in the DSA are mentally ill or autistic. I don't know how you could read his post and reach the conclusion that this user thinks mentally ill people aren't the problem. Not to mention calling the DSA a hugbox for "tolerating" these people is lame. "Rah rah real activism is when people are hardasses to each other!" ? Totally, great pitch for a socialist org in America, the country where people feel personally wronged when somebody fucks up their McFlurry.
571It's a bad take. Why?
572Functionally "mental health" in America is just a form of mass social control. Most people who are "mentally ill" are suffering from capitalist alienation, demoralization, or anxiety grounded in real concerns about the future. Psychoanalysis has been mostly abandoned in clinical practise in favour of CBT and psychiatry, due to industry lobbying and the sticky fact that it's hard to engage in psychoanalysis without eventually turning the lens on society. Mental health treatment, as it currently exists, is about teaching people to cope with their situation, that's it.
573Now obviously there are layers to this shit but unilaterally saying "anyone with a mental illness needs to sit down" only streams these people back into the world of psychiatry, where at best they are neutralized and quietly re-integrated back into the economic order as a happy little worker, and at worst they are institutionalized and exposed to some very barbaric practices. Either way, they're not really meaningfully treated, they just have the edges rounded off so that they can fit back into capitalist society. And this isn't a bug, this is a feature: part of the diagnosis criteria for depression, anxiety etc is that you feel these symptoms to such a degree that it disrupts your life. If you go through everyday feeling depressed, but you still show up to work, that's fine under the DSM. It only becomes a clinical case when you're so depressed you can't work, and you're cured when your life gets back to "normal", ie you accept your shitty job/life/etc or at least learn to pretend.
574Now obviously none of this is to say mental illness doesn't exist or that people should suffer, I don't believe that. But I do think that these people could contribute in meaningful ways, as a third alternative between the choice of "being sick and get excluded from productive society" and "blending back in and shutting up". That's one of the insights of psychoanalysis, that people need to do something valuable in order to feel fulfilled. DSA could be a place where people can be involved, do meaningful work, and help build a better society.
575Now that doesn't mean these people should be give priority or that their voices should carry more weight, I think the "ally" model is just as stupid and OP's attempt to used her illness as a shield is pathetic (and suspect; in my experience, those of us who are like this try to hide it, not flaunt it) but unilaterally writing mentally ill people off and telling them to shut up is a massive overreaction and imo counter productive to what a socialist org could be
576Gender Dysphoria, Trauma, and Online Misinformation
577
578What I got out of this is that many journalists aren't even reading the stuff they respond to. Keep that in mind when you read how Sanders (or Marx or whoever) can't solve problems
579Caucasian academics: "Professor Brown has been attacked as a racist and a white supremacist, these accusations are calumnies...[she] has argued fiercely against the invasion of social justice warriors into the field of medieval studies, where they make specious claims about the medieval past."
580
581At this point liberal is "somebody I don't like"
582[Vintage at this point] A really good writeup of Zizek facing off against radlib nonsense.
583
584Yeah I know the playbook, where I get lost is the part where these people think it would work on Zizek, a dude already on record taking a shit on the playbook. Like these people did enough research on him to find him doing the thing, but not enough to realize nobody gives a shit? I don't get it
585[Vintage at this point] A really good writeup of Zizek facing off against radlib nonsense.
586
587I mean sure by why do they think this would make them look valuable? That's the part I don't get
588[Vintage at this point] A really good writeup of Zizek facing off against radlib nonsense.
589
590Every now and then a video will crop up of somebody trying to catch Chomsky on some obscure issue
591Right-wing faction of the DSA: "Philly DSA is a chapter dominated and governed by a white supremacist framework that minimizes the role of marginalized identities in oppression from capitalism and as such disempowers the role of such identities in our socialist liberation."
592
593This is a bad take.
594Rant: Idpol and its tedious need to back people into no-win situations
595
596Yeah this is good but it goes a lot deeper.
597I don't think many of these people are ready to seriously ask what will need to change in order to create a meaningful social justice (in the original sense of the term). I mean if we take the current climate predictions as correct, things we need to radically change if we're going to avert the worst of it. Consumerism will need to go, long-distance traveling will probably need to go, animal agriculture, our current texhnology model, etc. Are most of these people ready to let go of all that?
598TLP Flashback #14: "We Are All Mercantilists Now"
599
600Well I for one welcome the return of ridiculous state-sponsored money-making schemes.
601"the word "racism" is bound up in a particular network of associations that skews pseudo-scientific, 19th and 20th century,materialist,and European. If...we thought about "white ethnic anti-outgroup violence" and"black ethnic anti-outgroup violence," the amount of evidence available to us increases"
602
603Americans have more readily available images of white racism because that is the dominant form of racism in America and has informed their history, education and pop culture since the beginning of European settlement, so it's considerably more visible than other forms of racism.
604It's not a mystery and this user's whole point seems to be that it's wrong that people focus on the racism that's closest to home? Perhaps that's true; certainly there's something to be said about the forgotten forms of white racism, like the brutal English occupation of India or the various illegal actions of the French or Canadian commando and intelligence units throughout the last 80 years. But that's something most Americans don't much care about I imagine, so we talk about the racism they see every day
605Caucasian academics: "Professor Brown has been attacked as a racist and a white supremacist, these accusations are calumnies...[she] has argued fiercely against the invasion of social justice warriors into the field of medieval studies, where they make specious claims about the medieval past."
606
607The real mindfuck is that there are people still stabbing and fighting over Milo
608Anna Khachiyan and Angela Nagle need to start posting here on a regular basis.
609
610Yeah I agree that this angle is the best shot for the left as a mass, the issue is the gatekeeping that occurs at this space, online and in meatspace. I mean in my country getting the socialist party to pivot back toward universalism will be an extremely uphill battle, as would be building a new party. Not that it's not worth doing but thinking of ways to get around these gate keepers or neutralize their influence will be key, that's part of why I read here even though there's a lot of bad faith posters (we see you you fascists you're not fooling anyone), because the few users tht are genuinely interested in fixing things contribute good ideas
611As for the sub, yeah this is a time bomb. All subs of this nature are, either we'll get colonized by identarians (Ie what happened to Chapo) or we'll get sick with irony poisoning and this sub will actually pivot into strasserism or something equally as stupid. This just seems to be the nature of how subreddits work, I've never seen a political sub survive 10k+ users without seeing extreme drops in quality and/or dogmatism setting in, or both.
612But that's okay. Criticism isn't supposed to last forever, it's context specific. My suggestion is take what you can get now and when it starts to go to shit abandon ship, bringing the lessons forward with you. That's really all these discourses are good for, the real game is still in meatspace, this should always be only supplemental.
613Anna Khachiyan and Angela Nagle need to start posting here on a regular basis.
614
615We'll see, we'll see. Part of it seems to be an issue with scaling. I don't know if I have any solutions but step one at least seems to be pointing it out
616This week in "the Left tries to engage with actual workers"
617
618Not if people like Picketty are correct
619[Vintage at this point] A really good writeup of Zizek facing off against radlib nonsense.
620
621It's so weird to me that small unknown people will try to go after people like zizek or Chomsky. It's like watching a scrawny teenager pick a fight with a black belt. Like do these types really think they're going to catch a guy like Zizek with his (metaphorical) pants down? The dude has been fending off critics from all directions for longer than most of these types have been alive, but they're going to be the one to take him down with 2 min on an open mic?
622Note: use screenshots whenever possible. Don't make people here click on links just to view some shitpost.
623
624Show yourself coward! I will never screencap my content!
625Love to mansplain economics
626
627Some people are so anti idpol that they forget that intersections do actually exist and can be articulated for the greater good
628Anna Khachiyan and Angela Nagle need to start posting here on a regular basis.
629
630Chapo is good if you take it for what it is: a handful of very online leftwing Brooklynn pundits. It's entertainment, O'Reilley or Maher but for a different audience. That's not bad, but it should be weighted accordingly.
631I don't have an opinion on Red Scare, really they just seem like some art hoes riding the wake created by Chapo and Cumtown, not anything serious.
632Amber at least has been doing this shit for a while, not just as a writer but also as an organizer, so I'll give her credit there. That said she's pretty realistic about the impact she has and the instability of her position, I think she's got the best "socialism is not subculture" view of the bunch so I think she's alright.
633As for the rest, Nagle, Reed, whoever, meh. Writers come and go, some are good, most have one hit and then blunder their way into obscurity. The issue I see is that too many people here take it as a personal mission to defend individual writers against all criticism or whatever. That's not really how discourse works, ideas and voices that are adding are remembered, if Nagle is as good as people here want to pretend she is then she doesn't need us dogpiling her critics.
634But this is just natural. Kill All Normies was good; as somebody who was extremely leftwing online, engaging in a lot of the monitoring and raiding of rightwing spaces that went on back then, I'd say the book is mostly correct about the alt-right. If somebody wants to understand this (incredibly niche) slice of history, I'll probably recommend them that book, even knowing that I don't really care for Nagle on a lot of other things. That's how an idea should be played with; this need to demandlifelong purity from everyone on the left, and it's antithesis need to defend every shitty thing a person has ever said no matter how bad because you like something they did once, is a waste of time and adds nothing.
635My theory for why this keeps happening on the left is because we don't actually have any serious positive analytic available to articulate our position. We're at a point on the left where the base has been shattered so thoroughly that all that is left is either well-networked groups of middle-class people performing "advocacy" that is functionally just asking the powers-that-be to recognize and acknowledge an identity and change social regulation accordingly, or hyper-small hyper-left cells that functionally are niche subcultures and interact with society as such, who are incapable of compromise or mobilizing even modest numbers of "regular" people.
636With these two groups comprising the "left", and the big intra-left debate boiling down to "do I sell out and become and HR manager at my local bank?", we really don't have much to offer average people except for individually popular policies like Medicare for All. There is no way a slogan like "Make America Great Again" could have come out of the current left, even though we're supposed to be the party of dreamers and visionaries. In this dearth of a positive dream and analysis, conservative forms of social organization fill the gap, specifically hero worship, which is where we are now with figures like Nagle: she writes one decent book and a legion of stans follows her, declaring "she's good" and dogpiling her critics, because they themselves have nothing to really believe in and so they throw in with a voice that tells them what they already believe.
637You see the same thing with the Chapo boys. Their little cult of personality has developed nicely, despite their best efforts to cull it, and we're reaching the end result of that: people endless jerking back and forth about which Chapo is the "best" Chapo. Who cares? How is this functionally different than a bunch of tumblr teens debating which cast member of Friends is the most problematic?
638And this has always been a problem for the left in times of retreat. Look at the constant efforts to rehab figures like Stalin, huge waste of time and #1 indicator that the person you're talking to is a subculturalist, because even if Stalin was 100% correct that brand is totally screwed in the west and it will take a new episteme before rehabbing him with Normies will be realistic. An affirmative socialism would just be to say "I don't care about Stalin, the world was a different place back then, we have need right now and are in class war right now, and we can solve that by redistributing capital, here's how" or something of that nature. But because we're on the back foot, we're forced into these long and winding confessionals, like a school child trying to explain to the teacher why the dog ate the homework. Same thing happens with these little socialist cargo cults that spring up around figures like Nagle: time and energy is devoted to trying to save the author, rather than to articulating our own desires or networking with new comers.
639I like this sub, been quietly watching it since it was incepted. But if we can't get this shit under control the discourse here is going to go to hell within 5k new subs, guaranteed. Hero worship, excommunicating and debating which current micro celebrity is the best is subcultural. It's not useful and just raises the barrier of entry for Normies, which is what some people want anyway so hey ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
640who really understood the second story of narcissus ?
641
642Mm gotcha, thanks for the clarity
643Anna Khachiyan and Angela Nagle need to start posting here on a regular basis.
644
645The hero worship on this sub sucks
646reminder: bernie actually opposes open borders, him calling it a koch brothers proposal wasn't a gaffe
647
648Yeah actually networking with exploited workers is hard, it's much better if everybody sits around and circle jerks each other about what the right policy should be
649Love to mansplain economics
650
651Also, health inequality is a woman's issue. Women are way more likely to wind up in low pay work or find themselves in situations where their own economic survival is dependent on somebody else, and globally they make up the lion's share of precarious workers.
652Chapo Trap House - Identity Politics
653
654Is there anyone one the left that's seriously opposed to BLM as a concept and anti-incarceration movement? (Excluding leftcoms and other dreamers like that). The second user you're quoting seems to be attacking windmills
655Nagle went on Tucker Carlson
656
657You either die woke or live long enough to see yourself become problematic
658Jokes aside this is why it's important to not get too attached to leaders and personalities. Evaluate ideas and programs and trust nobody. Nagle is shit whatever, that doesn't retroactively make every single thing she's ever said bad. Think for yourself
659The Nagle-take to end all Nagle-takes ?￰ﾟﾔﾥ?
660
661I feel like living in a developed country without universal healthcare slowly breaks your brain, because porting this argument to any other g7 nation is impossible
662Edit: just saw his bio says Canada. Now I'm even more confused
663This week in "the Left tries to engage with actual workers"
664
665Honestly the sooner we eject the idea that socialism is a moral good the better. It's a bad argument. We should be socialist because capitalism is a broken, unstable system that can't sustain humanity in the long term. The moral benefit of ending exploitation is nice but the real meat of it is that this system, as a political economy, can't reproduce society perpetually. As cringey as it is to call Marxism a science I do think their is some validity in pulling it back towards arguments for objective benefit rather than moral obligation. Capitalists are by nature amoral (or at least morally stunted) so arguing to their better nature misses the point
666who really understood the second story of narcissus ?
667
668Yeah but what even is real? That's the problem, it's not as though the solution is to just look away from the mirror, the whole world around us is as false as our own narcisstic obsession. It's not like if you look away you're embraced into the world of authenticity, you just find yourself in a world of other's also gazing at their own reflection.
669In many ways I think TLP eventually crashed up against Braudrillard. I mean he spends years writing about how everyone is a narcissist and then he gets doxxed. I'm of the opinion that his online writing was indicative of his real thoughts, given that it was anonymous and he had no reason to self-censor or lie. Yet when his real identity was tethered to his online one, he killed the blog, presumably to protect his livelihood and professional reputation.
670So what's the real TLP? Clearly the simulacrum he uses to live his everyday life is not what he actually thinks, given that a collision between the blog and his body could cause him serious problems. And if the blog is what he really thinks, then what is the thing running around practising psychiatry in Philly?
671None of this shit is real. The narcisstic identity is fake but the identities we wear to get through a regular work day are just as fake, perhaps moreso. That's the problem we're up against, there's nothing to wake up into
672who really understood the second story of narcissus ?
673
674when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you
675I always found this one funny.
676If you read BGaE, there's a section halfway through where N stops his analysis to throw out little one-line truisms and half-baked ideas, no larger than a sentence or two. This is where this quote comes from; it's literally a pithy, throw-away quote Neitzche sandwhiched between observations like
677Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, women's play is mediocre
678Or
679One is punished best for one's virtues.
680But for some reason this quote stuck because it sounds wise and anything can be read into it. Weight it accordingly.
681Got Downvoted for posting the news of death of a Trans women and ICE
682
683Rationalists: we are the enlightenned center
684Also rationalists: bring back hanging
685"So you're saying that doctors should inform a spouse if the other has AIDS. What about cuckoldry?"
686
687gigantic persecuted nerd complex
688I mean these guys will openly admit they don't fuck. They probably worry a lot about how to keep their partners interested
689"So you're saying that doctors should inform a spouse if the other has AIDS. What about cuckoldry?"
690
691My favourite part about the right is how obsessed they are with getting cucked. I don't think their intention was to reveal a deep insecurity around whether their women actuallly like them/find them sexy/want to fuck them but here it is. Truly great
692/r/ssc gets to the root of the problem of American Conservatism: they’re too scared to say they want to secure the existence of their people and a future for white children.
693
694Read between the lines
695"Socialism is white American men having trade unions and the more white American men have trade unions the socialister it is"
696
697Is rainbow-Face a term yet? Cause if not you might have just coined it
698For all that we sneer at Yudkowsky, I've gotta give him credit for this.
699
700Take the W's where you can get em boys and girls, I'll never sneer at somebody recognizing nuance even if they're doing it to be a smart ass
701Beyonce is worse than Harry Potter on the "things fake woke Liberals worship" scale.
702
703Somebody has been reading Baudrillard
704/r/neoliberal tackles the incel question
705
706But it's not and we should hesistate to cast everything as a market interaction. That's alienation creeping upwards.
707the Arpwel of Catholicism emerges
708
709Didn't christ tell his followers to abandon their material wealth and give it all to the poor?
710Iraq wasn't actually that bad and if you say otherwise you are reinforcing BAME discrimination
711
712Stepping back from idpol, imagine still engaging in Iraq apologia in 2018, probably the biggest single crime of the 21st century (so far). Like you have to be an empty shell to take this angle
713"Socialism is white American men having trade unions and the more white American men have trade unions the socialister it is"
714
715Well it just blows me away how fucking braindead this shit is, on so many different levels.
716Like in that thread there is a dude who posts a 5 paragraph explanation for how he likes the show even though he disagrees with the "ableism". When I think "liberation movement", I definitely think about having to engage in long-ass struggle sessions with literally any fucking random person who challenges me, less I get my scarlet letter. When in the real world the only sane response is "yeah I'm an adult, I'll listen to whatever the hell I want, I don't care if you don't agree with me listening to some leftwing pundits you don't like." Whole thing feels like a high-school clique, which makes sense given the average maturity most of these people hold.
717And it doesn't even do anything. Who is hurt by the word retard? I mean seriously, it's not like if we ban that word people will suddenly think higher of people with mental disabilities. Rather, they'll continue to look down on them and just not express it to their face. If we woke up tomorrow and that word was gone, what would be different for these people? Would they be better off in any measurable way? Economically, socially, politically, anything? Or would they continue to be treated like they are now? The whole thing just reeks of middle-class squeemishness, wherein it makes them personally uncomfortable to see people get insulted, so they try to eradicate the symptom rather than the cause. That way, when they go through a day without hearing it, they can think things are "better" even as we continue to treat mentally disabled people as half citizens.
718In the original chapo thread somebody is comparing it to the N word as a successful example of language policing. Except that people still use the N word all the time, and not just black people; I can't count the number of white people, from all classes, that throw that word around casually. People talk about how it's "dehumanizing" so the scolding is justified but out in the real world, the only thing I've ever seen work regarding getting white people to stop using that word is them getting their ass beat when they said it in the wrong room. Do these people support that? I doubt it, because violence, real violence that is, scares them too. This language policing stuff doesn't do shit, just puts it behind closed doors and pursed lips, which in middle-classdom is the same thing because these people don't have identities outside of their public-corporate one, so whatever happens among friends is totally alien to them. And then even a step further, guess what, it's a bad word, what has changed? Are black Americans better off in any measurable way? Last I checked, as a class, they're still getting fucked six ways from sunday, but thank God internet busy-bodies can now claim they're "doing" something because they've "banned"(re: gotten removed from middle class professional settings) an offensive word that was just immediately replaced by euphemisms anyway. Yeah O'Reilly would never say the N word, he'd just complain about "thug gangsters" and what not, as if black Americans don't know what he's really wanting to say. What a fucking joke, come down to Detroit Michigan and this isn't even a conversation, because anybody who's from that area knows that a) you don't say that shit, not because it's rude, but because real ass people will respond the way all blue collar people respond to a direct insult, which is to stand up for themselves, and b) that word is not the biggest issue facing people in that city. But thank God for these busy bodies who have the time in their day to claim banning this word as a victory for their cause, because they're so removed from the black community that they needed to be specially instructed by a PhD why it's bad to say it, because they've never actually seen the consequences of what happens when you insult the wrong person. Pathetic.
719What kills me the most is the annoying ass social workers that crop up in these threads. "Oh I work with people with mental disabilities and I wish people would stop saying it." Damn, savior complex much? I see this the most with "mental health professionals" advocating for changing the language and other window dressing, pretending to speak for people like me, fuck em all.
720So exhausted of being on this ineffectual and pathetic left. This shit is going nowhere. Look at the numbers, this sub as 2k people, Chapo has 40k and even that few people in one place is too many for the busy-bodies to leave it alone, they have to come in and stir shit up, telling people what they can and can't do, meanwhile fuck all gets done regarding the a) actual fascists b) unchecked business interests and c) war machine. This stuff is going nowhere fast, I mean Mark Fishcer was bullied to death for suggesting that maybe the left could be something people actually want to be a part of rather than a giant scold by rich, educated douchebags who think they're revolutionary heros because they got a teenager fired for calling a woman a bitch online. These people can't even measure the status quo, let alone articulate an alternative, and I'm supposed to look to them to save us from the screaming psychos? I guess this is how people become nihilists, they try to live out their ideals...
721And I'm pissed because the dirtbag left was supposed to be different, marked by the fact that it was leftwing politics for regular, shitty people with regular shitty opinions and regular, shitty priorities. There was a stretch of time where it really felt like we were turning a new leaf and this shit could be opened up to people who don't have a MA in sociology and don't work in an HR department at a global company. Now we're back on the same page, where posting a fucking "gritty" meme is revolutionary, we have 200+ comment struggle sessions over whether calling Ted Cruz a bumbling retard is a dogwhistle for eugenics, and whether you prefer dick or vag is the #1 defining feature of your life, identity and politics. We're going backwards.
722Sorry for raving at you, random person, just needed to get it out. It burns because I've slowly watched the dirtbag left get captured and absorbed into this meta-left structure that seems to exist only to tamper populist energy, keep class off the agenda, stoke racial tension and beat down anybody trying to articulate something better than more plodding technocracy and an ever-expanding rulebook about how a "progressive" is supposed to live every little second of their little life. These people are all micromanagers, with no power, so they use whatever voice they have to try and manage the actions of people around them, it's fucking pathetic. Bring anarchism back to the left goddamn, not everybody needs to be controlled or managed, just pointed in the same direction. It's like these people have all these fancy degrees but they've somehow never come across the idea of epistemology and political orientation, so they spend endless time trying to tell everybody how to behave. People are self-orienting, give them positive things to pursue and they will pursue it. Fuck
723In which we are not even really trying
724
725"People today are way too pampared-"
726Okay, agree so far
727"they should work harder for less"
728aaaaand you lost me again
729"Socialism is white American men having trade unions and the more white American men have trade unions the socialister it is"
730
731Man that thread could be it's own post. Like this guy:
732I used to browse tumblrinaction back in 2014 when I was a budding reactionary, and almost all the justifications I see from people in that thread are basically identical to the ones people would pull out on tia to defend using words like f****t. I know CTH has a lot of brocialists, but this is still infuriating to me.
733"Four years ago I was active in one of the biggest alt-right recruiting grounds, which makes me an expert on how the these people are reactionaries."
734Like dude, you've been with the left for less than an election cycle, shut up. Chapo has so many problems but I don't think these people realize what a breath of fresh air it is to have a voice that does more than just self-flagellate and called things "problematic" endlessly.
735Unlike this user I was on the left in 2014, like I've been my whole life, and the mood was what I imagine a inquisition show-trial must have looked like, this endless loop of people going "sweety, "id$ot" was used to define people with an IQ between 80-85 in the 1810s, so you're clearly ableist for calling Neo-Nazi skull scientists id$ots, we all know using a slur means you are dehumanizing the target group, so sorry not sorry hun, I won't engage with somebody who wants to exterminate the disabled, thats the facts ya'll." and nothing got done because every discussion about the nature of the problem, which is that we're losing, had to progress at a snails pace lest the whole thing get derailed when somebody expressed any idea or emotion slightly more edged or complicated than a 4th grader's worldview.
736And then along comes Chapo, who goes "yeah Mitch McConell looks like a turtle and he can suck my curved dick for what he said in the senate last week" and its like holy shit, this is a message a normal ass person could actually get behind.
737And now it looks like we're sliding back into it. Exiting the Vampire's Castle will never not be relevant
738edit: lmao down thread:
739.....why do you love it? It’s a sub for mildly progressive, aggressively white socdems who pretend that they’re revolutionaries or something. The vast majority of them really don’t care about the struggles of marginalized folks in this country, they just wanna get their lil chuckles from CTH and Cumtown. They would just as easily be fascists if that ideology happened to cater to their weird, pathetic senses of humor.
740Progressivism is when you're a hard ass; the more serious you are, the more progressive you are.
741"The second law of the Vampires’ Castle is: make thought and action appear very, very difficult. There must be no lightness, and certainly no humour. Humour isn’t serious, by definition, right? Thought is hard work, for people with posh voices and furrowed brows. Where there is confidence, introduce scepticism. Say: don’t be hasty, we have to think more deeply about this. Remember: having convictions is oppressive, and might lead to gulags"
742daily reminder that gritty is good as heck,, and if u disagree your a binch
743
744I too enjoy leftwing content that in indistinguishable from marketing campaigns. I love when my favourite branded characters join the StruggleTM. I can't wait to show my support by posting about my new favourite mascot, GrittyTM !
745*sigh*
746
747Which is dumb because at best porn is kind of a sleezy industry that treats its workers as disposable. Go even one level below AAA porn and stuff gets straight up scary
748Chapo's Matt Christman with a good take on IDpol
749
750It's okay if people like things. He's a successful entertainer, nobody thinks he's a burnout because he enjoys gaming. Grow up
751Chapo's Matt Christman with a good take on IDpol
752
753He's the only Chapo that actually uses electoral analysis before making electoral predictions. Kicking him off would weaken the show. Not everyone has to agree on everything
754Chapo's Matt Christman with a good take on IDpol
755
756As a gamer-American, Felix has already chosen a side
757"We might even allow ancient practices like oaths of fealty, letting parents commit their kids to particular life choices, and letting people sell themselves into slavery."
758
759"The deeper we go, the more society comes to resemble a feudal state"
760can anyone actually explain what the point of this op-ed is?
761
762Meh, let people do what they want, it's none of my business if somebody wants to transition
763Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
764
765Thanks for sharing your experience. I see you repping left shit all the time so respect there.
766All I really want to comment on is this:
767Hey, from that perspective, the notion that the President would be a lifelong scam-artist... makes almost a kind of twisted, malign sense.
768In many ways the 2016 election was a good day for me.
769Not because I support Trump; I think he's a psycho and as a Canadian, I knew right away that shit was about to get hairy. There's a saying in our country; when American coughs, Canada gets a cold, and watching our southern neighbors elect a reality TV star signaled to me that things were about to get a lot worse for both our countries.
770Yet I couldn't help but laugh and be happy, why?
771I predicted Trump would win about 2 months before the election. Specifically, I called it after the first debate. I was so confident that I put my prediction on my personal Facebook, and even called how he would win (grabbing the rust belt and holding the line on swing states). I was called paranoid. My closest friends told me I was wrong, that I'd gone a bridge too far.
772But I'm a political scientist Goddammit, I have that BA, I went to every class, I learned the fucking stats, I read Anderson, I read Marx twice, I've watched all the documentaries, this is my thing. I traded part of my soul for that degree. Against the advice of my family, my friends, my therapist, everybody, I stuck that shit out. Why? Because I knew there was something to know, there was a method in the madness, and I figured that if I kept reading, kept searching, kept digging, I would find the method, or at least find the shadow of the method.
773For one cold minute, I found it. When everybody, the left, the right, the center, the markets, the bookies, the tech bros, the columnists, they identarians, the nazis, the channners, the talking heads, the chinese, the Europeans, the comedians, goddamn Trump himself, when everybody was preparing for him to lose and for four more years of status quo, I said "Trump will win".
774Me and Micheal Moore, that was my company. Nobody in my personal life believed me. Nobody in the discourse agreed, except a few renegade voices outside the bubble.
775And then it happened. I called it.
776I wish I had bet money, if I live again that's the only thing I'll change.
777It was a good fucking day. Why? Because I was right.
778My whole life, people have been telling me I'm wrong. In the discourse, it's because I'm bitter, I'm cynical, I'm uneducated, I'm brainwashed, I'm a dumb country hick, I'm an ignorant soyboy (truly I'm both). In my personal life, I'm paranoid, I'm anxious, I think too big, I worry too much, I hold grudges too long, I can't get with the program. Wrong wrong wrong. Until I was right, and it was everyone else who was wrong.
779I don't have a solid method. I identify with the left but I'm also it;s biggest critic. I don't identify with any leftwing thinker, though I loot from them all. My "theory" is a mess of ideas I've glued together in a vain attempt to articulate what I think. I'm as likely to quote Neitzche as Adorno, and love nothing more than tethering those poor fuckers together. I don't even know how I knew Trump would win; more than anything, I think it's because his message seemed like it would reach my dad as much as it would not; growing up in the (Canadian) rustbelt, you learn certain ticks: "NAFTA", corrupt politicians, illegals. To this day, as much as I hate it, I still remember that debate clear as day, still remember Trump's talking points, even as I disagreed with them. You can say he's wrong, but you couldn't say he is bad at brand building.
780What was that election for me? It was a moment confirmation that I'm not crazy, that maybe it's everybody else who's wrong, even if they're just wrong once in a blue moon. It was a day when that fucked up version of the world I've been living in finally came to reality, the day when nobody could tell me I'm too out there.
781That's the silver lining to me. A formative moment for me was Occupy Wall street. I was a teenager, too far from any meaningful action, but thanks to the internet I was able to watch it unfold. I remember at Occupy Oakland, there was a video of millions of people marching, asking for a better deal, even if they weren't sure what that deal was. And then the cops came in, with tanks, with guns, with gas. They shot canisters into the crowd. One hit a guy, a former marine, and split his skull wide open. In the earlier days of web 2.0, this was all broadcast, the censors were looser. It was brutal. I think he survived, that's what the wiki says but who the fuck knows.
782I was terrified. Here was somebody who wants what I want, and this is what they got. I tried to complain, to tell people, but nobody cared; the closest I got to a real response was my Mom telling me not to post opinions on the web because they listen (turned out true a few years later, thanks Snowden), my Uncle telling me that he was almost killed by the mob when he was a labor activist, and an English teacher secretly giving me a small Chomsky pamphlet about where Occupy went wrong. Here I am, a kid myself, horrified about what can happen to people for expressing what they think, and nobody cared.
783Well, they all care now. Now it's Trump's America. Now the fascists are at the gates, and nobody, whether the New York Times or your next door neighbor, can ignore that things are happening. Even the most optimistic, status-quo commenters spill countless ink blots reassuring their readers that actually, it's all good. But it's not. Hysteria runs the news. The left is in a civil war. The right is traveling uncharted territory. We're at the front end of a climate crisis that is destroying everything. There is no end in sight for even our small problems, let alone the global ones, so people blindly put their faith in tech-utopians and hope they can get to mars before the water rises of the fires catch up to them. It's bedlam, and whatever semblance of "normality" we had even 4 or 5 years ago, let alone 10 years ago or earlier, is gone.
784Sometimes I go back and watch films from the 90s. My favorite is American Beauty, because I feel that it truly captures how far we've fallen in only 25 years or so (including production time). In this film, Kevin Spacey is sad, because although he has a wife, a beautiful daughter, a house he owns, a nice car and a good, serious job, he doesn't feel fulfilled. The conflict of the film flows as Spacey quasi-intentionally demolishes his own life, and it's supposed to be a commentary on how the suburban culture of the 90s, the one I came up in, is built on faulty premises that can't survive.
785Well, they were right, beyond their wildest dreams; that lifestyle is gone, if not literally than in spirit. What they got wrong is that they didn't anticipate that what came next would really suck. That's the problem with satire; it doesn't age well.
786What's the silver lining of Trump, for me? His win indicates that I was right all along. It turns out that maybe, if only for a minute, we lived in my world. All the bitterness, the cynicism, the other bad qualities, for one moment they were vindicated. And to that, I say:
787Hey, from that perspective, the notion that the President would be a lifelong scam-artist... makes almost a kind of twisted, malign sense.
788Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 05, 2018
789
790This is straight g
791Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
792
793The issue you are running into is that "socialism" is both the name of a set of loosely linked socio-economic policies, and the term broadly given to an epistemology centered around material analysis stretched through history. Most leftwing people move between the two seemlessly because the programmatic side is always in service of the historical mission.
794Or put differently, it's both.
795For example, Modern life is alienating, as a pre-requisite of industrial production. This condition is one of the key vectors of political instability, and so it's in society's best interest to reduce alienation over time. There is a lot of ways to do this but one way is to "loosen the chains" as you put it, i.e. pursue smaller reforms like minimum wage increases in the short term. In any moment in time a society has a range of policy options that are feasible (ie the Overton window) and an effective socialist is one that advocates for the policy choices that will service the larger historical-material mission.
796It's both, the radical and the practical, happening concurrently. The big debates on the left are how radical the practical should be, and how practical the radical should be, but the overal structure, of a epistemology arguing a progression through history via policy choices in the moment, is what binds the left together, even for those among us who don't recognie that this is what is happening.
797It's fuzzy because I'm shooting from the hip. If you want it to be clearer check out Marx' writings on alienation or Kapital.
798all children of the state
799Who says this? I've never heard this before except in satire
800Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
801
802Third possibility: both radical politics and deep dissatisfaction with life are caused by a third factor.
803I've been into socialist politics since I was 16. I was never "indoctrinated" or anything like that, I just was always interested in the political (I started reading the news at age 8 or so) and when I finally found socialism I was like "oh yeah this is my shit" because it just seemed so obvious to me; common ownership, everybody works, everybody eats, democratic business decision making, cross-community solidarity, anti-racism, etc. Discovering the left was like discovering a second language; I knew what I wanted to say, I just didn't know how to say it.
804On the flip side, what's always felt arbitrary and wrong to me is the status quo. Even as a teenager, flipping burgers, the divisions in my workplace felt arbitrary. The fact that my boss had unlimited downwards authority, just by virtue of being the boss, felt arbitrary; sure he may have known more than I did, but we had some women there who had been working at McDonalds their whole life. Perhaps my boss's boss, who'd never flipped a burger, knew more about tax law or whatever, but there is no way he knew more about how to run a restaraunt than these ladies, but since he was the boss he gets to call the shots.
805And I see this everywhere. My Grandma is the smartest woman I know, and she takes orders from dipshit 25yo English BAs who don't know fuck, because they have degrees and went to teachers college and she dropped out of highschool to become a cook and raise 3 kids, even though in the long run Grandma, with nothing, raised 3 responsible adults while most "educated" teachers can't get the kids to stop sniffing glue long enough to learn subtraction. In any rational society Grandma would be the teacher and these spoiled middle class dipshits would be kept far away from school, but we live in a society where "higher education" (really a bought-and-paid for title) arbitrarily means more than actual wisdom and experience.
806My whole world looks like this. Everywhere I go, I see structures and rule systems that appear totally arbitrary. People with billions because their great-great-great-grandfather happened to build his cabin over oil. People paying 1/2 their monthly income to somebody who maybe once a year sprays the place for bugs. People losing their livelihood because a spreadsheet in an office 2000km away declared a guy who owns a "share", something he himself bought just to flip, would get 0.0001% more value on said share, value that in itself only exists in the bank's computer. And this is before we talk about issues of race, gender, war, and all the other stuff usually affiliated with the left.
807Like I said, the left always seemed intuitively correct to me. There are flaws and hiccups but the general thrust is on the right track, and when I discovered it ages ago it was less a "aha" and more of a "oh duh". The part that kills me is that apparently, I'm in a minority, seeing as how my "side" has failed in North America. The part that confuses the hell out of me is that there are people that can wake up every day, look at the state of our society, and think it is good. That's where I get lost, because from where I'm standing we are so far from where we should be.
808I've also been sad for most of my life, but it got worse in highschool. Not for political reasons, but because for most of my life I've felt that I'm more or less trapped in a world I don't want to be in, personally that is; family never really understood me, I was bullied a bit as a middle schooler, struggled with girls throughout highschool, never fit in as a college kid, career trouble now. Even if we scrape away all the political my life still isn't really one I want to live, and I feel shitty all the time as a result. I found over time it's pointless to complain though because "that's just the way it is", ie I don't know how to fix you, stop whining.
809So I don't think one caused the other. It's not like I got into politics and then became bitter. It's not like I was bitter and I came to think the political is the answer.
810It's that both sides of it, the public and the private, are intertwined. Personally, my life is sad. Publically, I think the world is not right. Both grew concurrently.
811So what's the purple pill? Maybe that the status quo doesn't actually service everyone. I think the mistake people in the middle assume is that their epistemological base is universal. Buts it's not. The machinations of the mind of a "normal" person genuinely confuses me; I have no idea how you can be content with our economic system, just like I have no idea how you can engage in small talk without thinking "oh boy I hope I'm not fucking this up". These people are a genuine mystery to me because the stuff I consider obvious they consider "radical" and the stuff I consider insane they tell me is just the normal order of the world.
812I think people are just different. Radical politics is the public expression of people who find themselves outside a standard deviation or two, and vice versa.
813Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
814
815Just to add, as somebody who used to contribute here a lot and had many "top weekly comments" (both on this account and my last one), who eventually wound up on sneer club,
816The "all feminist are satan prove me wrong" threads are exhausting but that's not what did me in. What eventually killed this board for me is that there are way too many users with extremely strong opinions about topics, who refuse to even spend 5 minutes looking into the topic itself.
817I see this in the never-ending "capitalism vs socialism" debate, wherein suggesting there are any flaws in capitalism at all is immediately met with 3 or 4 users either a) demanding you articulate a full socialist platform that would solve all those issues, or b) they just flat out go "no you're wrong, according to (study) capitalism is actually great!"
818With a) it's annoying because nobody has articulated a perfectly functional alternative to capitalism. That doesn't mean capitalism is beyond reproach or flawless
819For b), most of these stats are common talking points that are presented without further critique and really don't stand up to further scrutiny. For example, I always see people go "well capitalism has reduced global poverty!" What does that even mean? Thinking about that stat for more than a few minutes raises many questions, and not just because the engine behind that stat is communist China. What is poverty, really? If a person goes from subsistence farming where they make 0$/a, to working in a sweatshop where they make 100$/a, on paper they are richer. But are they actually better off? Would you prefer to go from farmer in the commons to urban sweatshop worker for 100$/a? Most of these stats work like this; good on paper but contextualized they become a lot muddier, because there's no concensus on the metrics used. To paraphrase a famous quote, you can't hug your kids with GDP.
820Answering these questions here or there isn't really a problem. But when I see the same users hitting me with these same arguments literally everytime I criticize capitalism even lightly, even when I'm addressing another leftist user or offering a critique as explanation to a question raised, I become suspicious. The consistency, combined with the fact that it's often done in a derailing way (ie I'll complaining about how alienating modern life is and somebody will chime in that capitalism has made us richer than we would be if we were 12th C peasants, which although true in aggregate, is not necessarily true individually and has nothing to do with alienation) eventually lead me to believe that most users aren't actually interested in talking about leftwing ideas around the economy and are mostly using their talking points to silence the conversation by getting users to waste their time explaining introductory critiques and ideas, or waste their time "arguing" against statistics that make good sound bites but don't tell us much about human life.
821Especially given that I can articulate pretty clearly both a libertarian and classic liberal argument for capitalism, the total blindspot users seem to draw on social democracy, socialism etc is extremely disencouraging, especially when it seems to be the same handful of users trying to "argue" every mention of socialism or derail every leftwing conversation here. And this is before we even talk about downvotes, I'll put a ton of work into something just to see it get downvoted in seconds.
822And then one pops over to a place like sneerclub where I can make advanced leftwing observations and critiques and not only have users add valuable input, but also get unvoted generously, and I'm gone. Why would I waste my time here when so many users clearly aren't interested?
823Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
824
825Idk this feels like an inappropriate attempt to graft an American political perspective on Canadian cultural issues.
826The government has had a hand in mandating and regulating Canadian cultural content in media since the 60s. The CBC is funded by the government directly and manages to avoided getting sucked into a partisan shitstorm. We also have really strong conservative news outlets with reach and public support. I really don't see this become the bias apocalypse people want it to be
827TLP gets a shoutout in this interview with "outsider artist" and writer Peter Schranz
828
829Yeah this is most observable in popular culture. Most music/TV/etc is straight garbage but if you point it out you're called a hipster and written off
830*sigh*
831
832As somebody who loves to smoke and jerk off, no, they're two completely different itches. Point taken tho
833But...I thought neoliberals liked immigration?
834
835Idk think the Nagle thing showed how little imagination a lot of leftists have. Migration is good but that's small fish compared to a pan-national socialism, which is what we actually need
836*sigh*
837
838I mean this is lowkey something that doesn't get enough disenfectant. Porn is a massive industry and yet nobody (except nofap weirdos) seem even remotely interested in investigating how they spend that money. The only above board lobbying I've seen is pro net-neutrality but other than that what do they do with it?
839Anarchist hangs out on 4chan, develops the uncomfortable suspicion that idpol might be stupid, runs to r/@ begging to be plugged back into the Matrix
840
841Ancaps are by far the stupidest thing capitalism has produced
842Egoism is mostly a gag that got out of hand and wasn't taken seriously even in its own day, also Stirnir is a terrible writer and deserved to get lampooned by M&E, and most of what egotists are on about was articulated much better by the nihilists who came after.
843Both are dumbass ideologies although egoism is slightly less dumb because the idea of a Geist is good and there are very specfic situations where egoism may have made sense, such as in the early days of New World piracy, and even that's a stretch. Ancapism truly is a retarded AstroTurfed ideology though and is only good for allowing teenagers to accidentally doxx their age so that the adults in the room know to downvote and move on
844i got noticed by virgil bc of my reply to his nagle tweet, guess ive been dunked
845
846Skim some of the piece I linked. Where we're going we won't need nation states ? and leftists who find themselves outside the wall, ie the places where "no borders" politics will play out, need to be ready for that.
847i got noticed by virgil bc of my reply to his nagle tweet, guess ive been dunked
848
849Or, if you live in the shittier parts of the world, no borders is already a reality that either exists or is on the horizon and should be planned for accordingly.
850“In Defense of Call-out Culture” aka the worst article ever written.
851
852Rightwing in the old sense; he support a return to aristocracy and elitism in the classic sense
853From the mouths of Vampires
854
855Oh true I misunderstood you. I got nothing
856r/slatestarcodex doesn't like the Media and thinks they all lie (shocking, I know)
857
858Nope, correcting it now
859Nary a cumboy will be spared in the coming revolution
860
861Fascism is like a disease. If you get exposed to it and don't immediately wash your hands, it's only a matter of time before you're a nazi. I've never heard of material analysis or psychoanalysis.
862r/slatestarcodex doesn't like the Media and thinks they all lie (shocking, I know)
863
864Lmao at this guy throwing pro-business rhetoric back at them, gotta love when they eat their own.
865Anyway, yeah this is by far one of the weirdest hills I've seen a skirmish on, religious fanatics killed an American journalist, the president went on record saying "hey that's the cost of doing business" and people are pissed at...the media for covering it? ?￰ﾟﾤﾔ?
866Also sick to death of people blatantly using TLP terminology without know what they're talking about and promoting ideals TLP himself would have hated, such as unironically calling the media the (((enemy of the people))). This is not a "narcissistic wound", this is a business decision: the story gained traction because people hate the Saudis, hate intelligence agencies generally and salivate over stories of barbarism in the Middle East. That's why they covered it when it broke, and Trump's insane decision to break kayfabe and go "yeah well Saudis buy our guns so who cares?" is a gaffe that will sell, so they sold it.
867I feel like much of SSC is what happens when you're smart enough to grasp macroecononics and political economy but too sheltered to have ever had a reason to question the assumptions underwriting those fields, so you get a legion of guys who are shocked when the media behaves as a class, or when people do shitty selfish things in general, because they've never had a reason to suspect that the world is more complex that individual, morally upstanding actors acting rationally on objective information. The media isn't a malicious entity, it's a class representing specific class interests, populated by people from said class, most of whom rarely give a shit about foreign relations because very few people from the upper middle class give a shit about foreign relations period. They rarely get it right and it doesn't matter because who's going to hold their feet to the flame when they get it wrong? No conspiracy, just stupidity factored by common interest is enough to explain this one.
868Oh snap!
869
870Speak for yourself, none of my shit is branded
871Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
872
873Hahahahahahaha this is great.
874Reminder that if you are against open borders you are consigning millions of people in the third world to death consequence of impending climate doom
875
876https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/comments/9z3sn6/reminder_that_if_you_are_against_open_borders_you/
877There is no "left case" against open borders, just racism.
878482 upvotes
879Idk when somebody who has spent most of their career attacking the right writes an essay about how the current state of immigration politics benefits global capital at the expense of migrants and domestic workers, and is then dogpiled by thousands of people calling her a nazbol, many of whom were college liberals 3 years ago and are still in their "baby's first radicalization" stage, it's hard to take it seriously.
880I mean honestly people none of you find it a little suspicious that this is the same line mainstream democrats, Silicon Valley lizard people, "woke" Wall Street bros and dozens of other establishment types are running with? Nobody finds it strange that we've transition into a finance/service economy and now there is huge institutional support for globally mobile workforce, being promoted by the same organizations that designed and enacted the neocolonial process that's been in play since the 50s? Anytime our interests line up with those promoted by an organization like the World Bank my radar starts dinging, because historically liberal-approved interactions with developing countries have been harmful to them and tend to create situations that can fuck the domestic left. Yes we all want to help workers abroad and combat racism, but that doesn't mean we should let our brains fall out, not even 10 years ago union workers and black bloc in my country were getting gassed and arrested for protesting a g20 summit, now we're running the g20 playbook for global integration? That sound is the sound of my inner alarm going off. Or do you seriously think we can open borders and not immediately watch the left get crushed via wage depression, gentrification, union busting and housing crises?
881I'm all for solidarity with people from the global south. I'm hyper skeptical of the idea that forcing them all to move, either via concentrating all active capital in the global North or by sinking their countries under polar meltwater, is the best way to help these people. From the article it looks like Nagle takes the same angle, so I guess that means I'm racist now?
882and do nothing else
883Yeah the thing you notice with leftwing politics, when you've been doing it for a while, is stuff that is pro establishment tends to go through easy, while stuff that is anti-establishment tends to go through a lot harder. Yes I'd love a 360 degree plan where we fix housing, raise wages, open borders and unionize everybody. Problem is, some of that is going to take a lot more effort to make happen. What I'm concerned will happen is we will present these demands, the establishment will go "hey open borders is a great idea!" And do it, the rest of the stuff will get thrown in the bin and what we'll be left with is wide open borders and nothing else to make that feasible. In a way that's already what happened, with free-trade in the 90s, and what we're seeing now is a fascist backlash, because it turns out if you blow open the economy and do nothing else, average people get fucked and turn to anybody who promises to fix it. And what's funny is the unions fought hard against that shit because they (correctly) predicted it would fuck them over and drive people to the right, which it did. But hey, gotta love those racist unions right? Which they were literally called for that stance btw.
884Also, and I re-iterate, global migration is not the only solution on the table. This may be hard for some people to grasp but most people don't want to spend their entire life chasing global capital around in order to eat. We should be focusing our efforts on making places like Mexico better places to live, not on shipping as many Mexicans North as possible. Improving migration will always be secondary to stopping the colonial processes that make it necessary. People should be allowed to go where they want but how much of a choice is it when a handful of countries have a living significantly higher than the rest? The agenda item is an international labor movement, not socialism for the north and landlessness for the south.
885And as a last thought, this attitude that people who question open borders are condemning people in developing nations to death via climate change, all I have to say to that is who do people think can afford to move? If people on the left are serious about abandoning huge swathes of land to climate change, and it looks like many are, what they're really saying is they're okay with the global poor drowning while POC upper and middle classes come serve us fast food and drive our uber. Not a good look.
886Reminder that if you are against open borders you are consigning millions of people in the third world to death consequence of impending climate doom
887
888Lmao gotta love the absolutely state of international socialist discourse. It's like we've totally abandoned the idea that there are policy directions we could take today that could make the developing world a place people actually want to live in. It's sad as fuck that the horizon of possibilities is "open the border so people can flee the hellscape we're creating in the global south" and any discussion of alternative ideas or takes is just racism I guess ?
889Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
890
891I mean based on the way the left circles I roll in react to nagles extremely light criticism, it seems the issue goes beyond just liberals being liberal. I mean people have been calling Nagle a strasserite for this piece
892You're correct that there are leftwing critiques of the neoliberal geopolitical order. The issue is that the left as a movement in America right now is split between people who are serious about restructuring global power relations and people who mostly want to keep things the same but with better healthcare and more red paint. This is itself a result of the middle getting BTFO'd and people who would have been a liberal 10 years ago rebranding to the left because that's where the energy is. These people are not very serious about creating international justice and socialism because doing so would mean giving up consumer culture and probably a lot of other things they take for granted, and it shows in the way they approach these issues, which boils down to asking the powers-that-be for more concessions and attention.
893This Nagle piece struck a nerve for that reason. We're never going to build socialism, here or anywhere, if the labor model continues to be "uproot your whole life to follow capital." That's part of how we even got into this mess if you buy into leftist history (primitive accumulation). Migration, both internal domestic and international, guts communities, both at home where people lose their brightest and hardest workers and the social network that serves as a natural buoy against naked exploitation, and at the destination wherein competition and gentrification splits up working-class strongholds and hands workplace power to employers. Liberal (ideological) migrants to the left can't accept these as issues undermining our work because that would require acknowledging that most of them are beneficiaries of this status quo, either literally as capital owners or subtly as "cosmopolitan" white collar workers.
894I'm all for the free movement of people. If somebody truly thinks they would have a better life in a different locale go for it. But the liberal model necessitates people move to follow where the work is; failure to move means you get left behind in one of the many rapidly destabilizing zones that make up much of Sub-Saharan Africa, central and South America, the American Midwest, rural China, Central Asia, and Australia. And this issue is only going to become more severe as climate change drives state control out of these regions and concentrates resources on the "developed" parts of the world, I.e megacities where precarious work, entrenched racism and social atomization disrupt leftwing activism. With this as the status quo many people are going to be left behind and socialism will continue to be hundreds of silo'd domestic projects rather than one international coalition, and the current "left" apprehension to actually discuss this issue or challenge the liberal notion that people are expected to travel their whole lives and also feel solidarity is ridiculous. What is the point of fighting for a higher wage today when tomorrow I expect to cross a border and get a raise that way? Why should I support local infrastructure projects when 90% of my income goes home to support my family 2 time zones away? Why should I risk my job starting a union when the only thing I have any real connection to inside 500km is my employer? Why should I build racial solidarity when I myself am not a national and don't benefit from welfare in the country I live and work in? These are some of the challenges a global market on labor creates, and from where I'm standing the only answer much of the left has is that solidarity is morally good. I agree, but that is not enough to win.
895I mean look at Nagle's suggestions in this article. She suggests going after employers that knowling exploit migrant workers, both as a moral good and because it damages the domestic market. A serious labor movement would be all for this, because migrant labor being exploited as a cheap, quasi-slave, infitinitely replinishable workforce hurts domestic workers, domestic labor in the home country, and the migrants themselves. A serious international labor movement would be all for stringing up these employers, ideally through a pan-national agricultural union, something large enough to take on free trade regimes like NAFTa and force all signatory countries to provide equitable levels of compensation for agriculture work. Instead, we have a bunch of urban, educated "leftists" calling Nagle a strasserite, as if anybody outside of the extremely online arm-chair political scientist/revolutionary demographic even knows who Strasser was or what he stood for.
896It's insanely ridiculous.
897Edit: and thank you to all you pro-capital folks who took the time out of your day to tell me what I really want is a society that capitalisms harder. Not sure how you got that out of these two posts aimed explicitly at the few leftists left in this sub but hey I bet if we keep beating that dead horse it'll wake up any day now, people get involved with the left because we just haven't really thought about how great capitalism is, so I'm glad you guys have time to remind us. Unfortunately I don't have time to answer your criticisms directly because I need to go to my shitty job where I spend my whole life grinding so that I can have a place to sleep, but I'm sure you can imagine the ways in which I'm skeptical of the status quo and critical of "solutions" that argue we do what we're already doing, but with less oversight, less accountability and less democratic control.
898Also shout out to the guy who says that the fall of the Soviet Union reduced GHG. I suppose massive declines in standard of living are good! Now if only we could somehow wean the west off consumerism, maybe we could actually solve this crisis...
899Either the greatest or worst thread in the history of /r/slatestarcodex
900
901I wish the left was actually as strong as these people think it is. We can't even win a living wage
902why
903
904I think the issue is best understood as one of code switching.
905I'm from a blue collar small community and people throw the R and F words around without thought, including those who are actually disabled and those who are actually gay. It just don't really register as something notably offensive, in the same way insults like "jackass" are rude to call somebody but not really a deeply offensive term.
906This is in stark contrast to the white collar world I've accidentally worked my way into, where saying the r word could lead to a visit from HR or saying the F word could cost me my job. So over time I've had to learn a degree of code switching, not just in the usage of those words but in the entire way I talk and communicate. For example, at home, I might say:
907I can't believe this orange fuck is president, man people are retarded
908While in a white collar setting, I'd express the same thought as:
909I'm disappointed that Americans couldn't look past their own biases and elected a leader as bad as Trump
910You do the switch because how it'll be received; if you want to be heard you need to speak the language.
911Where this falls apart is on a place like Twitter, where people from different backgrounds crash into each other at light speed.
912Somebody from a blue collar background with a self-made audience uses the r word, and gets pushed off the platform as a result. People speaking the blue language interpret this as class war and an intrusion from higher class assholes enforcing their respectability norms. People speaking the white language interpret this as a defence of the defenceless. Everybody gets pissed and solidarity is weakened.
913Edit: also, as somebody who has been enagging with this shit for like a decade now I'm extremely skeptical about the narrative that this is about just being a decent person. These campaigns to fuck up somebody's life because they said the wrong thing do nothing to advance our collective class interests. All they do is ensure that the ability to decide what constitutes legit discourse and what is an unwelcome intrusion is centered firmly in the hands of people who have the most time to pay attention to this stuff, that being univeristy and grad students, legacy media personalities, and self-appointed "activists". I've seen little reason to believe these campaigns go anywhere, do anything valuable or even hit the right people. If anything, they seem to come from the psyche of people who don't want to win and want the left to remain an embattled minority, because were mass energy ever to come back to the left their voices would be small and marginal by comparison. We saw this happen in 2016 when the finger-wagging left was mostly left in the dust by the Sanders coalition, which scared the shit out of them because it was a popular front that they couldn't control.
914Exiting the Vampire Castle is and always will be a key reading for people on the left who are serious about changing things rather than just dictating and accumulating social capital for themselves. Yes throwing the R word around is rude. Know what else is rude? Banning a person on your own team because they used a word you don't like. How does that help the left? Hell, how does that help people with mental disabilities? Are they better off now that a niche leftwing podcaster is banned from Twitter? How does this help in any way? When blue collar people look at this, in the age of Trump, will they see a serious political movement that can challenge a political right openly calling for violence, or will they see a bunch of sheltered adult teenagers tattling to big tech for using bad words?
915Not every activist is a Saint, and we should make distinctions between people who need to be called-in and those that should be called-out. Part of the reason we can't get anywhere is because of this class of "leftists" who have nothing better to do but eat their own
916Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 19, 2018
917
918As a lefty;
919Immigration is the future, as it has been since the discovery of North America. The question is what kind of immigration do we aim for?
920The liberal model of immigration is just colonial exploitation retooled for a modern economy; while 200 years ago luxury commodities and raw material were the main imperial imports, today they are highly skilled technical labor and extremely cheap unskilled labor, which is concurrent with our shift from an industrial economy to an information/finance economy. This retrenches class divisions and heightens racial division within the working class.
921Where the left has dropped the ball is that we have failed to articulate an alternative model. In Lenin's day, the imperialism model described how empires ran their colonies without leaning on liberal economics or realist realpolitik. In the post war period, anti-colonial movements articulated the racial-class angle of colonialism and levelled severe critiques at the "three worlds" model, and even created an alternative to American- and Russian-led neoimperialism, I.e. Thirdworldism.
922The game has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union. The process of re-integrating soviet bloc and third world states into the global capitalist order has been clicking along at full speed, as evidenced by the cascading effect of the American housing collapse. What the left hasn't done is articulate how this actually works and what an alternative could be; anti-globalism criticism has mostly be assumed by the nationalist right and as a result, the left has swallowed the neoliberal line which denies any criticism of this model as racist and xenophobic, even as this model actually destabalizes developing countries and creates a new underclass of hyper-exploited POC workers. Much anti-immigration criticism is racist, but it's also very racist to treat entire countries as call centers, tomatoe-pickers, garbage dumps or sweatshop workers on the justification that paying their people pennies on the dollar is marginally better than leaving them to die in squalor, especially when the organizations pushing free movement of capital and labor (such as the IMF and its descendants, or the American inteligencs community) are also the organizations that helped strip-mine the soviet bloc in the 90s and gut thirdworldism in the 70s, among other crimes. That the left never stops to ask why we have a massive global underclass that is willing to travel thousands of kilometres to make a few dollars an hour is a huge blindspot.
923A real leftwing plan on this would work on three fronts:
9241) mobilize immigrant labor in developed countries and integrate their needs into the larger movement
9252) reassert international worker solidarity and fight for initiatives that improve conditions in developing countries so that people don't need to immigrate.
9263) revive an internationalist movement that seeks to fight global capital across borders, akin to the original model adopted by socialists before Lenin's era. Any reform is pointless if capital can move freely and workers can't
927That the left seems to take it as a given that we won't be able to save most of the global south from climate crises, and that mass immigration is their best shot, is deeply disturbing, not only because that will destabilize the north, but also because it pretty much guarantees the poor of the world will be the ones who pay the tab for the world's carbon producing countries.
928Instead twitter thinks anybody who questions liberal assumptions about migration being awesome all the time is a strasserite. Classic
929Florida: felons who have served their time get to vote again. Rationalists: "white men better prepare for the worst".
930
931Prison reform literally looks like the opening sequence of Django Unchained
932/u/EndTimesRadio does a great job of explaining "why they're voting against their own interests"
933
934Yeah I mean if we're playing the hypothetical game, hypothetically the democrats could have ran a much better platform in 2016 that actually appealed the coalition that won them 2012 and 2008, rather than running a status-quo campaign that failed to bring voters to the polls. Or better yet, hypothetically the democrats could have done more to entrench their position in the 90s, and wouldn't be fighting such an uphill battle now. Or they could have hypothetically...
935Politics doesn't run on hypotheticals. Saying "well Clinton was better than a hypothetical Republican administration" doesn't mean much to me because I don't support Republicans. My issue with Clinton isn't that she is worse than a Republican, it's that a) what she's known for are things I don't like, b) she doesn't go far enough on the things I do like and c) she has collaborated with Republicans at some extremely critical moments, which has created extremely negative outcomes.
936The thrust of the rest of your post seems to be that it doesn't matter that Clinton was on the wrong side of these issues because hey stuff was fucked anyway. Well, even if that's true, that doesn't absolve her of her responsibility for participating and it doesn't generate any desire in me to go and elect her and let her fuck stuff up more. What Clinton appologists can't seem to understand is that when the choice is between a rock and a hard place, people don't vote for the rock, they just don't vote at all. People need leaders they can rally behind, they don't want technocrats with ugly records and no principles.
937Yes a hypothetical Republican government would be worse. That isn't an inspiring argument for why I, as a rustbelter, should vote for Clinton. That's an argument for why I shouldn't vote at all; if I'm getting fucked either way, why should I waste my weekend?
938As for your study on NAFTA, yes the overall effect was modest on the US economy. The effects were not spread evenly around the country. It is true Detroit was already in decline but choosing to blow open manufacturing continued what was started in the 1980s and was finished in 2008. It's never just one thing, that doesn't mean that this one thing is outside the field of criticism. NAFTA was not the only thing that killed Detroit but the attitude American policy makers seem to have about the rust belt is that, since it's in decline, it's a-ok to do whatever they want to screw it further, if it means they make a buck somewhere else in the economy. This election is where we saw that attitude crash against the rocks.
939Libya isn't a hill to die on, it's a mountain in a chain that includes Iraq, arguably the dumbest war since Vietnam. No amount of pandering can wash that blood off Clinton's hands for supporting that.
940But really the part I find most offensive about your post is the implication that any criticism of Clinton is just successful Republican propaganda. The democrats are going to continue to lose as long as they plug their ears and refuse to clean the skeletons out of their closet. I'm a Canadian, my interest in this issue is mostly speculative, and I vote for the social democrat party in my country, something most of you people would describe as "radical" because we don't believe healthcare should be means-tested or whatever. I have 0 skin in this game and am looking at it as an outsider and a foreigner, reading my own country's coverage of your issues, and I've still concluded Clinton sucks, because she does: as a social democrat, I can say firmly that she has been on the wrong side of many key issues, and her pivot to the "woke" left in the last election is a paper-thin attempt at pandering that is insulting to those of us who actually fight for progress and human rights.
941But nope, I'm just a dumb dupe who fell for Republican propaganda in the...CBC? Whoops. This is why you guys lose. It's not identity politics, it's not that all Americans are racist, it's not even your broken political system, it's because you guys refuse to take criticism and would rather try to resurrect an extremely unpopular politician with 30 years of bad decisions following her vs actually support candidates that can change things. And look at the result: she was beat by a fucking gameshow host. No amount of rehabbing her record will cover that smear. And now the rest of us have to suffer for that hubris.
942'It's done': Ford says gender identity debate will not go forward - CityNews Toronto
943
944Don't just blame the rural areas. Suburbia went hard conservative. These people are your neighbors if you live in the GTA
9452020 Democrats go all-in on 'identity politics'
946
947I think you dropped these: ((()))
948/u/EndTimesRadio does a great job of explaining "why they're voting against their own interests"
949
950Yeah idk man. I'm from the Canadian side of the rust belt and I wouldn't have voted for Clinton with a gun to my head, I'd have been one of those people who voted dem on all down-ballot and left the president blank.
951Clinton was the second least popular presidential candidate of my lifetime, beat out only by Trump. Thats not an accident, it's because she has her name attached to some of the most destabalizing policies of the last 30 years, such as the 90s crime bill, the wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, and NAFTA to name a few. Throw guilt around all you want but there is no way I'd vote for a politician that signed NAFTA and the crime bill, two policies that gutted Detroit and all but guaranteed me and people like me would have to move hundreds of miles to find decent work, a condition that is still a fact of life in the Detroit area almost 30 years later with no end in sight. The fact that we were all supposed to give Clinton a pass because she "earned it" and she payed lip service to leftwing ideas (most of which had to be dragged out of her by Sanders) is a slap on the face. People aren't stupid, we don't forget, nobody is excited to vote for somebody who fucked them for decades because she's woke now or whatever, especially when her "turn" is clearly just her pandering for votes.
952That Democrats are pissed that they expected people to just fall in line while running a candidate that had a direct hand in making their lives significantly harder blows my mind. It'd be like expecting New Yorkers to vote for Godzilla because the Republican candidate was King Chidorra and Godzilla pledged to stop him.
953What do you think people on the coasts don’t understand about people who live in the middle of America?
954
955The short answer, speaking as a Canadian, is that Americans are very susceptible to grifts and get-rich-quick schemes. Look at Trump's rhetoric: "I'm not a politician, I'm a businessman, I'm an outsider like you, I'll fight for you, vote for me and I'll bring back the good jobs and take down the people you don't like."
956To outsiders this is obviously stupid; the line between business and politics in America is paper thin, Trump himself is a known actor with an amoral record as a businessman, and materially no government intervention can turn back the clock to a time when coal made economic sense in a developed nation.
957But America has one of the worst education systems in the developed world, structured class consciousness has been almost entirely extinguished among workers, the barrier between politics and entertainment has been corroded and a mythology around businessmen as geniuses (Musk or Jobs are two examples) has been steadily cultivated as a justification for plutocracy.
958The result is a mass of Americans who, despite evidence to the contrary, will believe Trump is "one of them" because he speaks their language, appeals to their biases and dunks on the people they hate. It's a grift, which is why things like Trumpgret exist; people slowly realize they've been taken for a ride, again. But at the time of the grift they don't realize they're getting played, because the things that are taken for granted in other developed liberal democracies (entrenched critical education, established class consciousness, silo'd political processes and materialist analysis of economics) are much much weaker in America. This is also why conspiracy theories play such a major role in American life; without a critical eye and a structural explanation for social outcomes, the gap is filled by heresay, crackpot theories, paranoia and snake oil.
959And this has precedent. In the 2000s the game was appealing to religious values and xenophobia, but the program was disasterous wars and economic devastation. In the 80s it was appealing to common sense and family values while busting unions and normalizing corruption. (Some) Americans will fall for the grift everytime so long as the grifter appeals to their predjudices and promises to give them what they want.
960What do you think people on the coasts don’t understand about people who live in the middle of America?
961
962Also, something not mentioned, it's Clinton. Who is middle America can trust her after her decades-long record of supporting legislation that gutted middle America?
963Number of witches rises dramatically across U.S. as millennials reject Christianity
964
965Always down for more alt girls
966“I’m concerned that seeing two male cartoon horses holding hands might, in some subtle way as yet unknown to science, increase the chance of my child someday leading a lifestyle that some believe is statistically associated with elevated rates of negative life outcomes.”
967
968Parenting is hard
969“I’m concerned that seeing two male cartoon horses holding hands might, in some subtle way as yet unknown to science, increase the chance of my child someday leading a lifestyle that some believe is statistically associated with elevated rates of negative life outcomes.”
970
971Really a keyhole moment, revealing that he doesn't see much of a difference between male sexual desire and aggression.
972Commenter calls HBD "junk science", SSC is having none of it
973
974More recruits for us
975Commenter calls HBD "junk science", SSC is having none of it
976
977Lmao at this guy
978This article has been discussed here many, many times. This is what led to the month long HBD ban. Vox cherry picking scientists that fit their narrative proves nothing. I can cherry pick a Quilette rebuttal if I want. Here is a pretty unbiased source on HBD and the differences between populations published by the NYT.
979When Vox cites counter examples, that's cherry picking, but when we 'disprove' modern sociology with the research of one rightwing crank, that's just good ol' science ?
980Twitter thread of smarmy reply guys getting mad that the ACLU defends the rights of college student survivors of sexual assault
981
982I love the implication that families with sons will pull donations. It's like even trying to get your kids to do the right thing is beyond the pale
983Scott Alexander starts an article with a socialist meme, immediately interprets it exactly wrong
984
985The advantage of EA is that those who engage in it don't have to relinquish any control.
986They love Bill Gates, because he's a benevolent billionaire; he gets to decide his level of participation, rather than being forced to play nice with others, which is what the left is actually asking for. It's about control; who decides how resources are spent, not what they're actually spent on
987Scott Alexander starts an article with a socialist meme, immediately interprets it exactly wrong
988
989Even the cathedral isn't really systemic tho. The way it's prrsented it sounds like a bunch of people pooling their influence in order to enforce social norms that benefit them personally. The cathedral isn't supporting social justice (or whatever) because it's for the benefit of society at large
990How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
991
992I mean there is your problem in one sentence: you have a goal and you're not doing anything to achieve it, and seemingly don't want to do anything to achieve it
993Wound Collectors: Who are they and how they impact on all of us
994
995Yeah this is some bunk science. Look at his examples and you'll see how wide of a net he is casting.
996Hitler for example, in his book, documents every specific instance he was personally wronged by the individual actions of individual communists and Jews, and uses them as proof that there is a Jewish conspiracy that not only destroyed Europe and Germany, but also kept him from getting accepted into art school. He's probably closest to the definition given at the top:
997Wound collecting is the conscious and systematic collection and preservation of transgressions, violations, social wrongs, grievances, injustice, unfair treatment, or slights of self and others, for the purpose of nourishing, fortifying, or justifying a malignant ideology, furthering hatred, satisfying a pathology, or for exacting revenge.
998But some of his other examples make no sense:
999Ted Kazinsky, according to his manifesto, was attempting to undo technological progress, which he believed was destabalizing society. He was arguing against one specific trend in society, not making a list of perceived slights for which he was fighting back against.
1000Jim Jones was a narcissist and meglomaniac, the tabs he kept on those around him was a means of enacting social control, not as a running list of wrongs needing revenge
1001Dorner believed he had been specifically, critically wronged by one particular institution and was seeking direct revenge. There's little evidence to suggest he had been compiling an ever-expanding list of slights and his killings were extremely targeted.
1002With a definition and example list this wide, this term is basically useless. Anybody who has been wronged and doesn't react by turning the other cheek can be captured by this definition as it is presented here. This is just pop psychology that can be used to justify cutting off and ignoring people that air grievances, which is why this author is able to say
1003This can be anyone from a spouse, to a terrorist, to a mass killer.
1004unironically, as if your wife being upset that you called her fat is in the same category as Hitler writing a 500 page essay on how he was personally wronged by an international Jewish conspiracy from age 5 onwards.
1005How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1006
1007What do I want? I want to have a life either with some meaning that I will feel is worthy of my struggle or to be in a situation where in my life Joy >> suffering.
1008How does killing yourself get you this?
1009Scott Alexander starts an article with a socialist meme, immediately interprets it exactly wrong
1010
1011Nah why would he bother? The point is to shift the conversation into an individual analysis. We can argue the conclusions (there is or isn't a moral obligation for individuals to consume better) but we must accept his premise (consumerism is an issue of individual choice).
1012Scott's not dumb. He has to know that when people say that phrase they're making a criticism of capitalist production processes. But Scott is also a capitalist, or at least a capitalist apologist. Arguing from a premise that systemic changes to production is possible undermines his principles, so he makes sure to select a premise that disallows that argument from being articulated.
1013The reason it fails here is because this is an egregiously bad example of malpractice, because that meme is instantly intelligible to anybody who thinks about global production for more than 2 minutes.
1014Scott Alexander starts an article with a socialist meme, immediately interprets it exactly wrong
1015
1016People who think the individual is the biggest unit of analysis will always reject systemic approaches to problem solving. Scott is incapable of conceiving of an alternative to mass consumerism and so "there is no ethical consumption" comes to mean "everyone is personally ethically wrong for consuming".
1017Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 12, 2018
1018
1019This is not communism tho. Rich people giving money to charity has nothing to do with workers owning productive capital
1020How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1021
1022You're only looking at Sisyphus as he climbs. Sisyphus' moment of happiness comes with the triumph, when the bolder rolls back down the hill: despite everything, he is still able to rise to the God's challenge: the bolder falls not because he is weak, but because the universe has conspired against him. He feels suffering, yes, but it is the suffering of a man unjustly punished, not the suffering of a man who is too weak to overcome his obstacles. Sisyphus is happy because he knows that, were it not for the God's cruelty, he would have finished rolling the boulder long ago.
1023I took the opposite reading from Camus. It's explicitly because existence is hell that one shouldn't kill themself. The defining feature of humanity is that we're the only creature that is burdened with self awareness, and as such we're the only creature that is asked this question. The essence of humanity is that, despite suffering, despite our hellish surroundings, we can choose, wholly of free will, to keep going, to push back, to face life. The constant choice to continue to do so is what makes us who we are, both as a species and as individuals.
1024Suicide is not a way to escape suffering. The hellish external world carries on, and a person's departure from it just adds more suffering to the mix. Suicide is the elimination of your ability to choose, to act, to participate in the struggle. That's really what you're giving up, not your pain, but your autonomy.
1025As others have pointed out, what do you actually want? You haven't really articulated a vision of what you want life to be, you've just told us what you have and how much you want to rid yourself of it.
1026And also, calling a brain just circuitry is like calling a painting just oil. The mind is more than the sum of its parts, which is why attempts to collapse psychology into psychiatry continually fail despite being a trillion dollar industry; try as they may, they can't seem to reign the mind in just by tweaking the wires
1027So it turns out Scott unironically buys into the Neo-Reactionary conspiracy theory of "The Cathedral" 110%.
1028
1029A lot of what all this stuff is is what happens when people recognize there are system-wide problems but are not exposed to meaningful historical analysis. People on ssc are constantly "discovering" leftwing concepts and attributing them to their own mechanism
1030What the hell even is this?
1031
1032Yup. Any sub under 30k attracts these types, and the smaller you go the higher the density
1033What the hell even is this?
1034
1035It's not just them, you see this everywhere at this level of depth on the web, social isolation and schizoid behaviour seem to be a common co-symptom with being extremely online
1036Simple Thermo
1037
1038That would lowkey be a great class though, that movie is solid
1039R/SSC discusses the Red Pill: Richard Feynman edition
1040
1041red pill is like a fart that just wont air out. Fucking 6 years ago I encountered it and thought "well this is strange but these guys will disappear soon.." and here I am, 2018, goddamn
1042Don't you love this guy?
1043
1044exile
1045To where? Its like these people don't think at all about the how part of their plans
1046What the hell even is this?
1047
1048ngl I forgot about the B plot where the siblings take over the planet via posting and was like "what does this have to do with genocide?"
1049What the hell even is this?
1050
1051It's 100% possible these forums are the only social interaction some users get. Getting pushed out or abandoning the forum could be the end of all social interaction for them, and that could drive anyone crazy.
1052How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1053
1054Well Idk if you could call it a proper binge but after I got fired last year I basically spent the following 2 months getting drunk almost everyday (probably 5-6 times a week) and taking whatever other drugs I could get, which turned out to be a mix of psychedelics, m and cocaine, probably getting high on one of those at least once a week, sometimes more often depending on how I was able to source it (I'd really fallen out of the hard drug shit the year prior due to the influence of my ex so getting a hold of the stuff wasn't super easy).
1055The only thing I really remember from that period of my life was that I became convinced ghosts and other supernatural shit is real, I read an insane amount (probably knocking out about 100-200 pages of political theory/philosophy/theology a day), I flirted with the idea of being Christian and I lost a lot of friends when I told them I was going to move to China and then later neglected to tell them that I had decided not to move. Oh and I got super into meditating which I still do today. Honestly being unemployed and wasted all the time is actually very boring, most of the "action" is internal. I guess I also used this period of my life to clear some of the bad blood with my family, which was positive.
1056I'd like to say I saw people get wrecked but actually that didn't really happen, my closest friends were an alcoholic and a heavy cocaine user so really it was me trying to keep up with them, I did see a friend of mine melt her brain on m though, to the point where she not only swore of all stimulants, but also quit drinking, quit opiods and genuinely went sober, which she still is over a year later, that was a trip. Otherwise though I'd say I stayed mostly intact, minus the psychic attrition that happens when you spend long periods of time wasted and alone and unemployed.
1057In terms of most bang for your buck it really depends on what you're trying to do. Personally I had some very enlightening experiences on acid and m, and some very frightening (of the wake-up call variety) experiences on mushrooms. But trying to use any drug to kick-start change or grow or whatever is a waste of time, because that's not really what they do. At best they can be a reset button but the real work comes after the trip.
1058Eventually though I had to move on, and how that happened was I got offered a job that would necessitate traveling around Canada for a month straight. A few weeks before departure I decided to sober up, partially because I fell and smashed my face and it scared the shit out of me and partially because I did mushrooms with strangers and spent the whole night riding a bike around the city tripping balls, mushrooms can be a rude-ass drug if you take too many in a bad place which is what I did, only upside of that trip is that it helped me realize what was missing in my life, which is that at the time I didn't really have a home, just a house where I sleep. So I took the job and made some mad money and cleared my head a bit, which would have been great if it wasn't for the annoying ass people I was working with, but that's another story for another post...
1059What's a woman?
1060
1061Ooh sorry don't know how to do that, kinda how I wound up here really
1062A new recruit to the phyg trepidatiously posits the same essay that's run occasionally on LessWrong for the last ten years: why are all you people so bad at things in the real world?
1063
1064So? It amuses me greatly that people live their whole lives like that, so I'm gonna laugh when I see it.
1065So it turns out Scott unironically buys into the Neo-Reactionary conspiracy theory of "The Cathedral" 110%.
1066
1067Sounds like he's just describing class politics
1068What's a woman?
1069
1070what's a woman?
1071Pretty sure it was Laban that said "a woman's psychology is a dark continent"
1072Episode 263 - Who Defines the Definers? (11/15/18)
1073
1074Around minute 49 Amber goes on a long bit about the need for a publically owned media
1075Isn't that what this is? Huge sub count, all listener funded. Grassroots radio. Feels good ?
1076A new recruit to the phyg trepidatiously posits the same essay that's run occasionally on LessWrong for the last ten years: why are all you people so bad at things in the real world?
1077
1078And they also don't need the same type of dork telling them their felt alienation is just totally naturally and it's a-ok that we live in a culture where people are functionally treated like NpCs. The delivery mechanism is shit because it came from the right but the idea is not, alienation and mass culture is real and it's one of the poisons destroying the world
1079A new recruit to the phyg trepidatiously posits the same essay that's run occasionally on LessWrong for the last ten years: why are all you people so bad at things in the real world?
1080
1081Well here's the thread that drove me from the board: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9sabky/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_october_29/e8rl7su/?context=3
1082Wherein a user told me that somebody has to die so the argument between fascism and not-fascism just boils down to articulating why your side shouldn't be the one to die and that arguing for policy where we actually try not to kill people is utopian. So there's an example
1083CW poster worries that SSC "is reaching a place where the law of the land is that no leftist belief is ever legitimate or authentic" and asks everyone to stop demonizing leftists. SSC responds predictably.
1084
1085I think you missed the point of my post.
1086To start with, I'm talking about the experience of being a rural conservative because that's what I know; I grew up in that culture, still have links to it, and as a result it's clear as day to me that your typically SSC poster has 0 idea what it's actually like to live in a socially conservative culture. Calling a spade a spade is not bad, don't get so wrapped up in fighting for identities that you elevate shitty people; the reality is rural conservativism is not noble, it's some shit, and just because these people are hard-strung does not mean they get a pass. The core of my post is that the environments SSC'ers role in are explicitly not conservative in a social, grassroots sense, and this warps their image of what it feels like to live in those cultures; it's not this fun, fulfilling jaunt through community, it's a fucking bitter-ass time that most SSCers would come to hate because they (somehow) have come to believe that intelligence is respected in conservative environments.
1087But this is obvious just looking at the way they carry themselves and talk about issues. Your typical urban conservative like Scott is from a liberal capitalist background, including the prep school they went to, which was likely socially liberal even if it cost thousands to get in. My point was that there really aren't many rightwing spaces that represent a true grassroots conservatism, at least at the level these people play at; sure they may have conservatives but these people are conservatives in defense of their tax rates, not in service of any larger desire to turn back the social clock, which is why whenever one of them is investigated a little bit, you see the same liberal 'vices' as their outwardly liberal peers: sex scandals, drug abuse, divorce, etc. These people are conservative in name only and it shows in the nature of the blog itself; only in San Francisco, gentrified, cutting edge of neoliberal capitalism, historic home of the American gay rights movement, could social conservatism be pitched as a radical, edgy philosophy. Drive 100m out of the city and HBD goes from a controversial take to "just good ol' common sense, now pass me that beer, boy".
1088These people aren't avoiding conservatives in their prep schools, they are the conservatives in the preps schools, and they became that way because they were weird, socially isolated nerds that took up an angsty opposition political position opposite of the kids they went to class with, whom would go on to write about doing Ketamine in Vice or designing the next line of Gucci belts or whatever it is rich kids do to find self fulfilment. They will openly speak to this; ask any of them about their highschool experience and you get a line about how they were surrounded by liberals, which is where their insane conspiracy theory about a liberal take-over comes from, itself laughable to anybody from anywhere but these urban cores and their surrounding (rich) suburbs. Only somebody from that background could read a piece like "You're Still Crying Wolf" and think it's a clever take. For those of us from the rest of the country, we deal with truly conservative psychos on a daily basis; we know the wolves are already in the pen. But SSC will continue to deny it because they don't realize they themselves live in the liberal bubble they despise openly, which is how you can get stupid takes like our libertarian friend above, who somehow thinks the real issue is just that people aren't listening to each other. It's like they can't fathom that both the left and right from outside of these tech-bubbles truly despises them, not because they are wrong, but because what enables them to exist at all is the same force that has completely gutted middle America.
1089Pointing all this out is not classist, it's an honest mapping of how this shit lands. The group in our society that is actually promoting social conservativism is working class folks, because they're desperately trying to hold onto whatever piece of the pie they had before Scott's predecessors demolished the economy via neoliberal reforms. If you're from one of these places, you either land on a soft social conservativism, or a hard revisionary socialism, but never in this middle-of-the-road centrist or economic libertarianism, because we've seen what that looks like, and it looks like more of what has been dismantling working class communities since the 1980s. This is ignored by the denizens of SSC because when they think social conservativism, they think of this, not this, even though if you sit down and map out who supports which policies, you find way more conservatives and socialists are "normal" people, and it's the hyper-teched out cyberbrains of SSC that form the minority of views in North America.
1090Why does rural America turn out so many Marxists? Because those of us from it have actually see what conservativism looks like and we know it's not the answer. Why are all these tech bros so quick to jump on board with fascism and racism? Because they're the angsty kids of the liberal bubble and they have no idea what hard social conservativism feels like. That's what I'm getting at, and if it makes me a classist to point that out them I am classist. Though tbh I don't think shitty rural conservatives should get a pass on their behaviour because of their class position, these are the people we need to win over, the sickos in silicon valley are a drop in the bucket compared to the class potential that social conservatives represent.
1091How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1092
1093Don't knock it till you try it
1094How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1095
1096Most people hate their jobs. Most people also hate their life. Seems like a likely outcome if you spend about 1/3 of your life doing a task you don't actually want to do.
1097Maybe fixed is the wrong word, I meant more "stable", something you can take with you for years on end.
1098you need something else
1099Why? There is only one endpoint, and thats death. That's where this all leads. You can set goals and targets but even if you achieve them, you're just stuck setting more goals. What's the solution? Challenge the premise. Does life need direction? Do you need to achieve something, have an endpoint, "go" somewhere? Why? Why shouldn't Sisyphus be happy? He's absolved of the need to set his own goals, the same reef you're crashing against.
1100Idk I see a lot of miserable people constantly reaching for the next thing. You're on the other side of that; "I did all this stuff and I still feel unhappy". Could it be that there is no correlation between getting things and feeling good? What is hunger really?
1101transitory phase
1102I agree. Based on my own experiences with the paranormal, I definitely believe in an afterlife. Based on those same experiences, I also strongly believe the afterlife is somewhere you don't want to go.
1103How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1104
1105No idea why you're getting downvoted
1106How can I cope with an unhappy life of pessimistic nihilism (Request for advice)
1107
1108I make 500k
1109Yeah but do you like your job?
1110Otherwise idk man just sounds like you're describing a life. You keep trying to grab more things to fill the gap in your soul, without realizing that all these things are the gap.
1111You've told us about your job, your travels, how you can get everything you need. But you haven't really said much about you. It sounds like you don't really have a fixed identity to serve as a Lode Star. Without that you're depending on other people to tell you what you need to do to feel happy.
1112This isn't a mistake btw, our whole culture is geared to produce this outcome because people who get high paying jobs, go on expensive vacations, and generally chase happiness are great for the economy.
1113You've read a lot. Here's two more: Job and Ecclastiaries. "Happiness" as an end point are somewhat new inventions
1114What (if any) subjects would you like to have seen Alone write about if he was still going?
1115
1116Yeah the whole thing reminds me of Adorno's bit on how recreation has been colonized by the forces of production. For TLP, it makes me think of his bit on how we accept the premises and argue the conclusion, and the premise seems to be that ones natural state is being "on", ie in production, and the debate is how much time off is acceptable in service of mental health? Also as I pointed out down thread it concerns me deeply to watch middle class people medicalize their personal time or selfish impulses rather than just being like "yeah I want to chill for five hours, fuck you for questioning it"
1117CW poster worries that SSC "is reaching a place where the law of the land is that no leftist belief is ever legitimate or authentic" and asks everyone to stop demonizing leftists. SSC responds predictably.
1118
1119Do you think working class people are above bullying?
1120What (if any) subjects would you like to have seen Alone write about if he was still going?
1121
1122Not quite, I'd put it as self improvement but with a mental health circle jerk twist. Picture like a middle class woman, in a tub drinking red, reading Jane Austen and describing it as "me time", but for millenials instead of people in the 90s
1123CW poster worries that SSC "is reaching a place where the law of the land is that no leftist belief is ever legitimate or authentic" and asks everyone to stop demonizing leftists. SSC responds predictably.
1124
1125Who Goes Nazi, a classic if I've ever read one
1126Did critical theory really radically change academia?
1127
1128Yeah but I don't think they're really looking at history from a materialist lens, I think they just want liberal technocracy with red paint and Kalashnikovs.
1129Marx is hot right now, because for people who don't actually read Marx is the class guy. I think most academics who call themselves Marxists aren't really applying a Marxist or post-Marxist epistemology to their analysis, so they casually say "gender/race/class" despite class being nothing like gender or race (and for that matter, gender and race are also hyper different, but that's liberalism for ya) and then since they're talking about class, they're talking about Marx right?
1130This is how you get incredibly retarded takes like fine art's master's students lecturing poor white factory workers about the means of production and so on
1131A new recruit to the phyg trepidatiously posits the same essay that's run occasionally on LessWrong for the last ten years: why are all you people so bad at things in the real world?
1132
1133I really don't have anything against polygamists per say, people can date however it's not my business. That said, I also think some people are attracted to polygamy because it allows them to avoid liability for low emotional intelligence or selfish behaviour
1134A new recruit to the phyg trepidatiously posits the same essay that's run occasionally on LessWrong for the last ten years: why are all you people so bad at things in the real world?
1135
1136Idk I liked the NpC meme, it's a shame the right got ahold of it first because in the right hands it could have been a powerful critique against capitalist monoculture. Instead now we're stuck defending the fact that our culture is only allowed to sustain 3 different movies a year
1137What (if any) subjects would you like to have seen Alone write about if he was still going?
1138
1139I think he would question why basic, normal selfish impulses (like taking a day off work, taking a bath to relax, eating a piece of candy, cutting off people that treat you poorly, etc) are being medicalized.
1140What (if any) subjects would you like to have seen Alone write about if he was still going?
1141
1142It's a social media trend that sprung up a few years ago, about doing things that are nominally good for mental health (like taking a break from working) and repackaging them as empowering and essential actions done in the defence of one's wellbeing. Then internet idiots got ahold of it and it morphed again into "anything I do for myself for any reason is me practicing self care" with that really saccharine tone a lot of internet mental health junk is sold with
1143CW poster worries that SSC "is reaching a place where the law of the land is that no leftist belief is ever legitimate or authentic" and asks everyone to stop demonizing leftists. SSC responds predictably.
1144
1145Honestly, as somebody who grew up rural as fck, most people on ssc are cosplaying as conservatives. I think those who stan for shit like HBd or eugenics would be terrified if they saw what it looks like "in practice" or if they had any experience actually living in a white supremacist culture, to start with because autists would not survive in a genuinely euegenist culture; an eugenics that gained mass momentum would be selecting for Tom Brady's, not computer geeks. The only reason they support that stuff is because they are so insolated from mainstream society that they don't have to consider the consequences of normalized racism etc. Same with all that survival of the fittest/meritocracy shit, they would fucking hate it if the playing field was truly levelled and there wasn't a whole system keeping the dirty masses away from them, and it shows whenever they talk about their struggles dating, one of the few areas wherein raw merit can't be beat down with systemic advantage.
1146That's why I mock them at least. I'm from the conservative culture they wish they understood, and I know they would hate it, because they would have spent their developmental years getting shoved in a locker and called a faggot, not learning to code in the gifted program or whatever. The proof is in the fact that they crowd around the (nicer) parts of the Bay Area or NYC or the gentrified cores of the Midwest and bitch about liberal culture, knowing full well that if they really want to live in a culture that acknowledges racial IQ differences Jim Bob's shack is only a few hours away, but of course they don't move to the hollers or the meth deserts or whatever because those people hate their guts more than liberals, who just see them as misguided geeks. Your typical ssc poster would have been eaten alive if they had come up in a truly conservative location, and it shows in the way they approach issues: either they're outright fascists which is where smart conservatives wind up, or they're doing this weak ass "well both sides have merit thing" which would get their ass beat in the real world. In a conservative culture, there is no both sides, you're either a faggot or you're not, and you better be ready to physically fight if somebody calls you a faggot when you express your smart opinion. That's reality of growing up in a truly conservative culture and most ssc'ers would hate having to keep their mouth shut not because they are wrong, but because they are small.
1147As for why the left is correct, well, the nice thing about universal programming is that it protects the rich and the poor alike. What libertarians and your collaborators can never figure out is that the left isn't your enemy and social democracy isn't stealing from you, it's the sane members of the mass protecting you from the Jim Bob's and Jamal's of the world who don't give a flying fuck how smart you are because they are strong and you are weak, and if there wasn't a system between you and them they would just take what you have, merit or not. People like yourself want the benefit of society and socialization but you don't want to play ball and you don't want to help pay for it, that's not how this works.
1148Edit: if you want to know what it feels like to be a smart guy in a truly conservative environment, watch Day of the Dead
1149A new recruit to the phyg trepidatiously posits the same essay that's run occasionally on LessWrong for the last ten years: why are all you people so bad at things in the real world?
1150
1151Idk the vibe I get from a lot of these types is like the movie Nightcrawler; on paper their positions are clear and articulated and "correct" but there is a coldness to much of it that hints to a lack of empathy beneath the surface.
1152In my experience it isn't hard to talk a rationalist into arguing for organized slaughter so long as you play their language game, at no point does some empathy shine through and they go "wait no I don't want a lot of people to die just because it's 'correct'" let alone "hmm maybe I'm wrong if this is the conclusion I reached?" As long as it's argued correctly, most users (at least that I've dealt with) don't actually care about the bodies that would have to be piled up.
1153This low empathy is most visible when users talk about their approach to dating and gender relations, which for normal people is just an empathy game, which is why they seem completely lost at basic dating that isn't purely transactional. Imo why there is a hyper prevalence of both contract-style polygamous and hyper-traditional daters, but few that can handle more common, more ambiguous forms of dating like hook-up culture or "seeing" somebody. Basically if the terms of the trade aren't laid out clearly at launch, they struggle, because they have difficulty feeling out their partner's attitude toward them.
1154What do you think is the psychological mechanism behind Adam pretending to not know things?
1155
1156Fuck didn't realize so many psychologists listen to this podcast
1157What do you think is the psychological mechanism behind Adam pretending to not know things?
1158
1159Yeah really people here are so retarded they'll listen to dozens of episodes and think it's a accident that the third host of the show is on the show. They keep him around because he pisses with the people who take this shit seriously + he's good to riff off. In any comedy with more than one comic you need a straight man to set up the punchlines, this is comedy 101
1160What do you think is the psychological mechanism behind Adam pretending to not know things?
1161
1162Yeah man people trying to keep leftwing shit as an edgy subculture aren't actually serious about winning politically, until boring middle class suburbanites get onboard nothing will change in that realm.
1163Sometimes edgy shit does impact (ex: Malcolm X) but if that's all the "movement" is about it's going to stay on the edge and never win anything worth winning, which is probably what a lot of these people want anyway, as pointed out by the cum boys too many people on the left blame neoliberalism for the fact that they're insufferable losers, which wouldn't change even in full communism, so keeping the left as a subculture gives them a place to go and be lame together
1164What (if any) subjects would you like to have seen Alone write about if he was still going?
1165
1166I'd love to hear his take on two things:
11671. The "controversy" when that conservative baker didn't want to bake a cake for a gay couple and it went to court
11682. Self care culture, particularly how it's evolved from 2015-2017
1169Any objections?
1170
1171Oh well this ain't my usual area. Weird because strasserism is literally identity politics. Oh well can't expect the left to not punch left amirite?
1172TLP Flashback #13: "Why No Progress Will Ever Be Made In Psychiatry"
1173
1174This reminds me a lot of reading Foucault and his histories of madness and mad houses. When you dig backwards and try to track the development and "trends" in the mental health industry one's faith in its ability to operate is undermined pretty quickly. And then there are the success rates. Anecdotally, I've seen as many people get "better" (ie learn to self-manage symptoms) as get significantly worse during treatment. It's hard not to be cynical about the whole venture.
1175test meme dont upvote
1176
1177Jokes on him I only have an undergrad
1178Stan Lee Dead at 95
1179
1180(((Me))) too
1181Local DSA chapter has started using the "progressive stack" at our meetings
1182
1183To be fair hearing a plutocrat with insider info on how to make socialism happen would be a unique and useful perspective
1184Then and now. Problematic!
1185
1186I love when somebody with 10+ years of activist experience is asked for her resume. Really screams socialist
1187Did critical theory really radically change academia?
1188
1189Read Adorno and then take a cultural studies class and you'll see it in action.
1190Most critical theorists were either literal Marxists, post-Marxists (I.e they followed marx but believed the conditions had changed enough to warrant revision of historical materialism) or were Marxist-adjacent.
1191Today, all that side of critical theory has been mostly stripped from the field of study. People read Culture Industries but won't touch Minima Moralia even though it is way more relevant to the political moment, because it's been "disproven" I.e psychoanalysis and Marxism fell out of favour in the US because psychiatry and idpol are much more compatible with neoliberal economics. The irony of course is that the only voices globally that seem to have an answer to this right-wing surge are psychoanalysts and socialists but hey that's academia for you, head right up the ass when it comes to actually taking a historically-relevant position.
1192Stan Lee Dead at 95
1193
1194Ah yes the famous Jewish name, "Lieber" ?￰ﾟﾤﾔ?￰ﾟﾤﾔ?
1195Stan Lee Dead at 95
1196
1197Haha oh god I love the unironic antisemites here stay banging you beautiful retards
1198Comrade wrestles with the difficult moral considerations of having a kid.
1199
1200No black woman would sleep with a dude this concerned with being woke. It screams guilt.
1201Any objections?
1202
1203Nah strasserism sucks, national borders just allow capital to flee jurisdictions where even mild socialist reforms win. The only solution is a pan-national socialist movement that can out maneuvere capital
1204What do people here make of the 'Grievance Studies' hoax?
1205
1206does it say something meaningful about academia?
1207Yes but not in the way everyone wants it to.
1208Anybody who gets out of the orbit of the upper-middle class realizes pretty quickly that academics are not very smart. Sure some of them are truly brilliant but for every wizard in the ivory tower you have a couple dozen hobbits, and most of them ain't Frodo. The reason for this is because memorizing and regurgitating archaic information doesn't necessarily make you smart, it just makes you read; the smartness comes from the ability to draw connections between data which academia self-selects against past the undergrad level (how many thesis' are written on hyper-obscure topics that only maybe a dozen people globally will care about? Does it really take a genius to translate a cuneiform tablet or write 30k words on a 20-page passage of Being and Time?)
1209Anybody who has spent some time in the real world has come to the same conclusions, which is that most academics have their heads in a cloud. The idea that you could catch a few out with a bullshit article isn't a surprise, it's just dunking on people who live their whole life asleep at the wheel. This hoax could have been pulled off by a disgruntled undergrad, but there is 0 doubt in my mind a disgruntled salesman or marketer could pull off this hoax on a scale 10x larger.
1210But this shouldn't be a surprise, only middle class dipshits take academia seriously, because they need to buy into the myth that something seperates them from the unwashed masses, and since biology or divine right are out, "merit" is that justification.
1211Where this goes wrong for the alt right is that this works in both directions. Their "smart" guys are part of the same system, fall into the same traps, and make the same mistakes, they just don't notice because they, like the liberals they make fun of, are also ideologically stupid
1212Local DSA chapter has started using the "progressive stack" at our meetings
1213
1214Lmao anybody who knows what a "progressive stack" is is class blind, guaranteed
1215Stan Lee Dead at 95
1216
1217Check out this galaxy brain
1218Stan Lee Dead at 95
1219
1220Ah yes the famous Jewish name, "Lee"
1221Alicorn is mostly known for being responsible for the polyamory/rationalism link and HPMOR-themed Twilight fanfiction (yes really), however she also support the eugenic extermination of trans people.
1222
1223"Whoops haha this happens sometimes haha don't forget to donate haha"
1224Imagine unironically believing that The Economist has a communist bias
1225
1226When you're so far to the right everything leftward looks red
1227What exact is the surprise of the Kinder surprise egg?
1228
1229Yes good note
1230Pentagon calls southern border deployment an ‘expensive waste’
1231
1232Yeah well what do those liberals at the 'checks notes' Pentagon know about national security?!
1233What are the limits of self-awareness? (a naked plea for advice)
1234
1235Am I just broken?
1236What is brokenness? Is there a proper way to live a life? I don't buy into the idea that a person can be broken, it's a mechanistic view of humans that implies a fall from grace or a corruption. Human life is cyclical by nature; you're as much of a product of your death as you are of your birth, that we spend our lives hurtling towards one (literally but also in the degradation and mutilation that we live with) is not an abberation.
1237It's fucked you have a bad family background and I'm sorry that happened to you. But that alone doesn't define you anymore than the summed good things that have happened to you. That you identify with the bad as an essential quality is a choice you in 2018 are engaging with, not as a necessary respeonse to the existence of the bad itself.
1238And you will never understand your trauma, that's part of what makes it traumatic. The world is a fucked up place, all you can really do is keep falling forward.
1239how do I meet people like you
1240You just have. Or do you mean in meatspace? You don't want to meet me in meatspace. I lose the status of the big other if we meet in meatspace. In meatspace you see who I am, how I live, which of my problems match yours and which don't. On here, I am just a disembodied voice, so you can write whatever narrative helps you swallow the medicine. Perhaps I'm a recovered drug addict, or a third world slum dweller, or a doctor of psychiatry.
1241We could be friends. But as your friend all I could really do is tell you to keep on trucking, and tell you you can come smash beers with me if it makes you feel less alone. That's really what I do for my friends in meatspace because I have no clue how to help them untangle their lives, outside of offering really obvious advice ("I hate my job" "so get another one?"). If that's something you're okay with we could be friends. But I don't have any profound advice really, just my own story, and it's not even really a good one.
1242how do you find brain sex
1243If you live in North America you are running a script that says that you are supposed to keep your head down and not draw too much attention to yourself, except in very specific socially accepted ways, such as through brand identification. As a result people who think deeply are mostly indistinguishable from people who think shallowly, because most interactions are geared towards the lowest common denominator.
1244Obviously this is a problem if your aim is to get head (ba-dun tssh)
1245The solution is signalling; developing non- and semi-verbal cues that indicate to other people how you really feel without breaking too far from what is socially accepted. Learn how to do that and then you can be 100% real with people, and then those playing the same game will pick it up and things go from there.
1246How I do it is through gallows humour, because I'm morbid but witty enough to make it work. People that are normal thing I'm just being funny while other cynics clue in to the reality of what I think. So that's one way, if you can figure out comedic timing you can really say whatever you want to whoever you want.
1247The other way is sometimes you just gotta speak truth. This is the rocket launcher in my arsenal but a well timed, well-delivered idea can totally alter the direction of a conversation and establish clearly for everybody who you are with 0 room for pushback. The trick is you need enough confidence, clout and timing to pull it off. But if it works, whooo boy does it work.
1248That's what I do. Obviously what works for you will be different because you are not me. But if you think about how communication works (study communications models a bit) and then apply it to what you want to say, that may help
1249What are the limits of self-awareness? (a naked plea for advice)
1250
1251I don't t mean literal sex. He needs intimacy, ie meaningful spiritual connection with another human
1252What exact is the surprise of the Kinder surprise egg?
1253
1254He's using it mostly as a metaphor;
1255The toy is the aspirational fantasy one fulfils when they engage in the consumer cycle; by going through the ritual of buying the candy and finding the "surprise" the feeling of desire is fulfilled via anticipation realized. The chocolate is the actual material object that the desire is wielded in service of; you think you're buying a surprise but really you're buying chocolate, because a surprise is an intangible internal thing that is temporarily externalized in the chocolate
1256You can see the same pattern in any branded good. A pair of nikes are really just rubber and plastic, but we don't buy them for their actual value as a show, we buy them in order to fulfil a larger desire; to be cool, display wealth, fit in etc, none of which are qualities in the material good itself
1257Been a minute since I’ve listened to an episode, and let me tell ya
1258
1259It's comedy, having a straight man to riff off is part of the gag
1260Hmmmm
1261
1262Why does every young republican look like a 45yo man with a mortgage or a school shooter tho? You do have some hot women tho, too bad they're retarded
1263Chapos are being pushed out of their sub because it’s becoming an anti irony zone and they’re turning r/cumtown into a harry potter fan forum where it’s cool to be smart
1264
1265Honestly, coming as an old school Chapo user that watched it go from 10k subs to what it is now,
1266I think the left makes people retarded. Especially the younger ones don't know how to contextualize anything so they're constantly in a state of apocalyptic mania. That combines with the fact that is an in-ward facing subculture that attracts some really weird and disconnected people and you get Chapo, a place where everyone is screaming about dumb shit and talking a big game about how they're gonna storm the White House or whatever, while most of them are too twisted with mental disorders to even leave their mom's house. No irony can survive in that environment which is why around 25k subs the whole culture changed and everything got stupid as fuck
1267How Do I Get My White Son to Stop Saying the N-Word?
1268
1269Damn how did you know
1270Are Elfs White?
1271
1272This guy gets it
1273Chapo Trap House?
1274
1275is it always like that?
1276Unfortunately no. Maybe in the old days
1277Are Elfs White?
1278
1279Dark elves bro
1280How to Andre
1281
1282Did this for a year, got fired, but because I threatenned to a blow a whistle a month before getting "let go" they payed me like 30k to leave. 10/10 would recommend
1283How Do I Get My White Son to Stop Saying the N-Word?
1284
1285Natural selection man
1286Cumtown Police Department
1287
1288Shouldn'ta dropped that hard r
1289Why a 9.4% swing hasn't been a landslide
1290
1291These people aren't stupid, they know capitalism is done for, same as us. Their goal is to make sure they're still on the top of the pile when the shit hits the fan
1292The last 24 hours really illustrate how fucked the left is.
1293
1294This should be put in a museum, truly captures the zeitgeist
1295What are the limits of self-awareness? (a naked plea for advice)
1296
1297Underrated answer
1298What are the limits of self-awareness? (a naked plea for advice)
1299
1300This is rock solid
1301What are the limits of self-awareness? (a naked plea for advice)
1302
1303First off don't bother reading zizek, his movies and lectures are more than enough unless you think Lacan is the answer, which it sounds like you don't,
1304For the rest,
1305I don't know man. Therapists are middle class and solve middle class problems, that's the nature of the game. If you're stressed from introspection the obvious solution is to turn the lens around and look outwards. How well do you really know the world around you? Start there
1306Edit: also you're asking a room full of crazy people how to not be crazy. You're not going to get the right answers here, because anybody in this deep is a little off. Fish where the fish are if you want useable advice. Let me put on my normie cap; what is the most normie answer I can think of to this post?
1307"Bro you need to get laid". Which is terrible advice and yet perhaps it's not too far from the truth. Your brain needs to get laid, I.e. you need connection. Only way to connect is to present yourself honestly, and only way to do that is if you're honest with yourself. I read some of your replies; NEETdom, boring IT job, reading the same "deep" thinkers as everyone else; is your case really that special? I've read Hegel too, so has everyone here, and I even understood chunks of it. Are we so different, you and I? Are we so different that I can't get you? I too love analysis, I'm neurotic, I did therapy, but I don't feel crippled by inaction like you do. What seperates me from you?
1308Here's some zizek for you: "99% of people are boring idiots". You're a smart guy, what're the odds you're in the 1%? Or is it more likely that you really are as small as you're concerned you are? And if you are, what then? Start from there, that you're just a dude, and the rest should follow through.
1309But what do I know, I'm just another weirdo...
1310Caravan is completely gone from the news cycle. What a surprise!
1311
1312Why would the press core be ashamed? They're all on the same team. Red psychos report it to whip up the base, blue psychos report on the red psychos to whip up their base, everyone wins
1313The worst job in the world.
1314
1315Man some times you just want some tittys in your face with 0 effort...
1316There is No Rock Bottom
1317
13182 in my immediate family and another 4 or 5 as friends.
1319Alcoholics can be dishonest and shitty. But are they more dishonest or shitty than your typical social climber? In my experience no, typically they are much more straight forward, because they're fucking drunks and that makes them predictable
1320Friendly Cointelpro Reminder
1321
1322Yeah really, people here who rave about hell world need to pick up a book, politics is a game of glaciers, there is no way we would turn the country around in 2 years (or even 4, sorry folks trumps gonna win again, incumbents almost always do). What seperates the posers from the serious lefties are the ones who are ready to stick it out for decades
1323Does it anger you that wealthy people are prepping for collapse? Why or why not?
1324
1325A scorpion and a frog are sitting on a riverbank.
1326"Can you take me across?" Asks the scorpion.
1327"No way, you'll sting me and I'll drown!" Replies the frog.
1328"But if I sting you, I'll drown too, so you're safe, I won't sting you."
1329The frog thinks it over, and then agrees to take the scorpion across. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog, paralyzing him.
1330"Why have you done this?" The frog cries as they start to sink.
1331"It's in my nature."
1332Do I begrudge the rich for being what they are? No. To be rich in this society you're either born into it and never knew any better, or you're a cold-blooded social climber. You can't expect a rich man to look out for others, because if they did, they would not be rich. Rich preppers are just the latest iteration of this phenominon: rather than using their vast resources to lobby the government, develop green tech or help the global poor, they spend it on rocket ships and underground domes so that when it hits the fan they can leave the rest of us to drown.
1333A leopard can't change its spots, and the rich can't feel empathy in any socially useful capacity. Hating them for this defect is like hating a scorpion for stinging you; a better solution is to avoid getting stung.
1334Barbara Lee for Speaker
1335
1336Bottom panel: "war crimes time like a boss"
1337Looking for those that have reached acceptance.
1338
1339When did you begin realize the the seriousness of the situation?
1340Really the occupy Wall Street episode was really when I realized things weren't going to improve in North America. Not because of the protests themselves but because the response from law enforcement was insane; people getting tear gassed, people getting clubbed, over a bunch of hippies in tents banging drums. Specifically I remember seeing footage out of Oakland of a former marine getting nearly killed when a tear gas canister smashed him in the face. That was really the moment I realized that the powers that be would rather everybody die vs change course even a little. Factor in the nature of the economy and the ecological crises and there you go.
1341How long did it take for you to reach some kind of acceptance?
1342Maybe 6 years? It really happened about 6 months into the Trump presidency, mostly because finally it was like mainstream media had caught up to my worldview but it was too little too late. I saw a viral video of Trump choke slamming CNN (it was a recut of his WWE days), with CNN freaking out about how this was an "attack" on media, and realized how fucking ridiculous all this shit is, how all these talking heads live on another planet and the whole thing is just a song and dance to keep people looking at the screen rather than the exits. Started laughing that day and really haven't stopped since.
1343What did you go through in between?
1344Lots of stuff that I'm not very proud of. Turns out living like you're at war with the world makes you a shitty person. Whoops.
1345Have you discussed what you believe with family or friends? If so, what was their reaction? If not, why not?
1346Yeah, they mostly see things the same way, mostly because I'm too abbraisive to make friends with people that can't handle thinking about the future and society. My family is from the rust belt so they've known from jump what's possible and how far down a "society" can sink.
1347can you describe what acceptance means for you?
1348Learning to love the bomb ?
1349what do you plan on doing until the collapse?
1350I'm tryna fuck
1351November, regional collapse thread
1352
1353Dude his flair is "fuck communism". Obviously this guy is a fash sympathizer or at least a dumbass liberal with his head in the sand. You're wasting your time.
1354November, regional collapse thread
1355
1356It's not virtue signalling to point out that some are hoarding wealth at the expense of the rest of us.
1357November, regional collapse thread
1358
1359Look at the situation in Syria for an estimate
1360u/DavidFoxxxy unleashes a sobering rant about the banal slide into collapse and dystopia.
1361
1362Yeah they won't arrest you for wrongthink, but they might kick in the door and shoot your dog if you choose to smoke a naturally occurring herb in your own home, or if you're streaming a video game and a viewer across the country calls in a bomb threat on your 2 bed apartment, or if you threaten a famous person on Twitter.
1363Americans must be one of the most propagandized people in the world. You could have a cop literally follow you around with a gun to the back of your head and you wouldn't call it a police state because you can't see the bullet.
1364November, regional collapse thread
1365
1366working under a culture of oppressive positivity that silences any resentment or negativity by the sheer weight of enforced self-censorship.
1367In a nut shell what makes modern "middle-class" life so unbearable; even the glimmer of doubt will get you singled out
1368What is happening in the comment section for this video?
1369
1370Internet tough guys
1371Fighting sexism in the workplace actually hurts women
1372
1373Broke: reimbursing executives for trips to the strip club
1374Woke: giving corporate subsidies directly to strippers
1375The most rational ballot: only voting for white candidates.
1376
1377implying all leaders aren't corrupt
137812 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote
1379
1380I take it you are referring to the occasions where Congress is dominated by the 'other' party?
1381Yeah man that's one way it happens. The real problem with American politics is that to get anything done you need all three: house, senate, president. This is very hard to hang onto for more than a 2 year stretch and even then can be disrupted when a fuckhead like Ted Cruz decides to throw his own team under this bus in order to pander to his base, such as during the 2014 shutdown. It's just not a system that allows for active governance and so issues that need attention at constantly kicked down the road, or offloaded onto the state or even municipal level. I'd also point out that this is a feature, not a bug.
1382In Canada functionally we have one body. Our senate does basically nothing and is appointed, and our "executive" is a ceremonial level. So all legislating happens in the lower house, and the burueacracy is headed by a cabinet drawn from the lower house. When a party wins in Canada (with some exceptions) they can really pass whatever they want for at least 4 years, no gridlock and none of this "well we tried but the DEMOCRATZ wouldn't let us govern, vote Republican!" bullshit, our leadership runs, governs mostly unimpaired (there are exceptions but is not the norm) and then must defend its own record come election time.
1383relieving
1384Well a lot of this identarian shit isn't really leftwing, a lot of it turns on race and gender essentialism. Typically you can figure out who is serious vs who is cosplaying by asking them to drill it down to policy. If they start talking about universal programs, organizing workers or whatever else, they're serious and just race/gender conscious. If they spout off some bullshit or wholesale ignore the economic they're probably just middle-class dipshits larping struggle
1385Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 05, 2018
1386
1387Lmao pointing out that the other armchair sociologists in this thread aren't following sub etiquette isn't a gotcha unless you think it's appropriate for people to dunk on a concept they can't even articulate or source. Or do you consider "random teenagers on tumblr" the strongest version of a concept?
1388But sure get pedantic with me, really highlights how committed you are to a serious discussion of this topic. McIntosh's piece is clearly about white people and the white experience and her core points about what white privilege is holds with or without the context of black America, even if every black American disappeared tomorrow her points would still be an accurate description of the white experience.
1389The section you are quoting is her relaying the process by which she came to ask the question about what it is to be white in America, so your little "gotcha" at me is really just you picking at the back story and ignoring the meat of the essay itself, which is answering said question. So if you want to get pedantic there it is, you're questioning my familiarity with the material meanwhile you yourself are decontextualizing quotes from it in an attempt to tear down my point rather than engage with the material itself.
1390The sad part is that The Invsible Knapsack actually is a shitty article that can be critiqued pretty heavily from the left or right but I doubt you or many other users here are ready for a serious conversation about where it goes wrong judging by this response.
1391Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 05, 2018
1392
1393Been a while since I read it ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ Larger point still stands tho, which is that most people engaging with this Op aren't actually engaging with the material
1394Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 05, 2018
1395
1396Tbh this is a good example of why engaging with narratives without an accompanying critique of power is pointless. How has the conversation around race progressed in America? Where does HBD even come from, and where does discussions of white privilege come from? Answer those questions and you'll get a more clear idea of why HBD is a fun, legitimate scientific discussion while white privilege is a direct attack on the white community, according to some posters here
1397Edit: also, this thread is a good example of people talking about shit they have done 0 research on. McIntosh's essay doesn't even mention non-white people in any capacity, it's solely about her experience as white person reflecting on what it's like to be white. I see one guy talking about policy, one dude talking about feminism, one guy talking about nazis, communists and the french revolution, one guy talking about the scientific method, and one guy talking about Asians. Oh and a few talking about Jews for some reason.
1398Clearly nobody here is talking about the strongest possible argument for the idea, which continues to be McIntosh's essay that coined the term, which is focused on white people in white cultures, not Jews, Asians, women, communists or whatever else. Clearly many of the users replying to you have not even done the bare basics of researching the term and idea, let alone engaging with it's best iteration. Which I think constitutes a break in etiquette in these parts. But whatever
1399There is No Rock Bottom
1400
1401Eh I doubt everybody has these issues, I have yet to see any evidence for that except empty to appeals like "you never know what somebody has gone through" which is true but cuts both ways. I actually do think most people, at least in North America, live mostly bland and empty lives. I also don't think that's a bad thing; somebody needs to do all the boring shit that makes our lives possible (like organizing the supply lines) and it won't make it more meaningful work if they believe deep down that it's a manichean struggle between them and the universe.
1402I think we shouldn't look down on people like that because our internal lives are complicated and hostile. If somebody is truly content watching netflix and commuting everyday and hugging their kids, who am I to tell them they're wrong? That certainly sounds more in line with the Tao or the Knight of Faith than me, blown out on cocaine at 9am, asking my friends why nobody gives a shit about philosophy, or whether or not they think the American government will collapse, or why my ex never called me back (jk I know that one already) or why my Mom drinks so much, or the millions of other questions I'll never have a satisfactory answer for.
1403All you can do is trust your gut, and you should, because your "gut" is really the summation of your entire experience so-far + pre-conscious programming in the animal part of your brain. Going with the gut means falling into the "natural" rhythm of things that underwrites the world around us. Do that and you'll go where you need to, but be careful because often where we want to go and where we need to aren't really the same thing. Somebody has to scrub the toilets at the Ritz-Carlton, if that's where the universe puts you are you ready to accept that role? And if not, what is the alternative?
1404I wish I had more for you but I broke from the role I was ordained to have a long time ago and since then have mostly been drifting through life, widening my horizons as far as they'll go. Personally I love it but it's made me cold because when your whole life is just one long jaunt through the unknown, there's really no point in getting hung up on the particulars or worrying too much when people enter and exit your life, and people are all we really have. All I can really say is that as a seeker, there's no panacea. No matter how deep you go you'll keep returning to the cosmic joke, which is that the cause of all the stuff that happens in your life is you, and what "you" is is the summation of all the stuff that happens in your life. Even now, it's so ridiculous that I'm laughing just typing that out but hey that's why it's called the cosmic joke, because it's hilarious. My only regret is that it took me years to uncover such a simple, obvious truth, but you gotta walk before you can run I guess. And even if somebody had sat down in front of me at age 15 and explained it I wouldn't have understood anyway, I still don't really...
140512 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote
1406
1407P2
1408So what does this all mean? Well, I said at the top that I only vote for one party, because there's only one (serious) party in Canada that represents my interests. That would be the NDP, why?
1409The short answer is because I'm from one of those post-industrial areas and I've seen first-hand what unchecked free trade can do to an economy, and it's not pretty. The story is that in the 80s and 90s, the liberal leadership decided to blow open our industrial base to trade with Mexico and America and this totally gutted huge sectors of our economy. Other sectors did benefit but the gains went mostly to the top; great time to be a financial investor, terrible time to be a factory line worker. Guess what my family comes from?
1410It's rough. 40 years ago a man could finish high school, get a job at one of these industrial plants, and support a whole family on it. Further, thanks to the unions, which used to be some of the biggest in the world, these people could leverage serious power at the ballet box and make sure that working people were getting their share of the pie. Obviously nothing is perfect but fast forward to today and these people don't even have a voice, they got fucked over by the liberal party hard and the conservatives mostly use them as useful idiots by whipping up fear of immigrants and then ramming through even more austerity once they're in power. Both parties are really only interested in helping out the rich and maintaining social cohesion, there is very little interest in either party to meaningfully give back some of the power that common workers lost when the neoliberal consensus arose on this continent.
1411Growing up, my first major-city experience was Detroit Michigan, which looks like a fucking bomb went off. It's truly sad to see given that Lake Erie used to be the economic powerhouse of the midwest, and now it's just McJobs, opioids and crumbling infrastructure. I recognize that the left isn't perfect but at least they tried to push back, vs the Liberal party who was totally okay with demolishing that whole area in exchange for making Toronto and New York rich. And these issues are still on the agenda; my brother is a line worker right now; when that factory (already hobbling along) is closed in the next downturn, who's going to finance retraining him for a more "modern" job? When my parent's retirement savings takes a shit, and their house becomes valueless because there's no economy left there, who's going to bail them out? These people are not economists, they're blue collar folk, you shouldn't need a PhD in political theory to be able to plan for the future, but that seems to be the way the liberal and conservative party treats Canadians. You didn't have the foresight to learn how to program nano-bots 20 years before that was a thing? Well, too bad, enjoy being out of work as the economy "restructures" and try not to get addicted to pills in the meantime.
1412I have so many problems with the NDP that it'd take a third post to list them all. But at the end of the day they're the only serious party that even gives a remote fuck about any of this stuff; they call out the liberals for their bullshit, they support plans that will equalize the economy, they fight for unions and they've been supporting progressive social policy long before it was politically expedient to (cough Trudeau molested somebody, look it up, cough). And maybe more important than all that is that they are actually trying to keep economic structural issues on the agenda, as opposed to the other two parties which mostly take Thatcher's "there is no alternative" line on how to best structure the Canadian economy on a macroscale. My home region still consistently votes NDP and the reason is because these old union guys don't forget, they know shit was better before the neoliberals decide to gut the domestic economy and re-focus on pimping out our natural resources and steering everyone into the finance and service sectors.
1413That's why I support them. I've talked to liberals and conservatives and the consensus is that people like my brother, if he gets laid off, that's his problem, even as workers like him have helped make them rich. They don't really believe in the same idea of community that I was raised in. People on the left however, despite their many flaws, get it. You can't have a society where good, honest workers are treated as expendable and expect that society to stay good and honest.
1414This is also why I have a difficult time with the "identarian" left. My leftism is socialist first. A lot of the "new" left are really just the rebellious children of middle-class families living out their hippy dreams and they sell out by the time they reach 35. They don't really have any serious policy prescriptions and are focused more on language policing the poor, which is why they have been shamelessly absorbed into the liberal party. The real future for the left lies in meat-and-potatoe economics, because that's what cuts across these identarian divides. I may have nothing in common with a poor black American in terms of our "lived experience". But I know we both need housing, jobs, healthcare, etc. That's what can bring us together, regardless of whether we "get" each other. Community members, not "allies".
141512 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote
1416
1417I'm not American, I'm Canadian, I just follow their politics because whatever happens down there tends to make ripples up here. I'll give you a quick primer on Canadian politics and then explain why I vote how I do.
1418Canada is a 2-tier parliamentary system. The feds deal with mostly foreign issues, trade issues, and a few other things, while the provinces handle most "domestic" issues like healthcare. There is some variation between the provinces (most notably with Quebec) but broadly the political map in Canada looks like this:
1419Liberals: Our liberal party is the party that typically wins federally and often provincially due to their ability to navigate the French/English divide, their positioning on social issues, their deep roots in the bureaucracy and their popularity with the business community. Really Canada is run by the liberal party, with conservatives governing here or there mostly as an insurgent win. Provincially, their support wains as you head Westward but they are very successful in Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. Ideologically they are a "big tent" party and typically do whatever they think will win them votes, although once governing they tend to bend neoliberal, especially when dealing with the Americans.
1420Conservatives: Currently the conservatives are a bit of an unnatural formation. Originally they were Tory conservatives similar to what the English have but in the 1980s there was a neoliberal revolt in the party that basically took it over in the late 90s, which is what led them to govern for most of the 2000s up until 2015. Since then, the movement has been a bit shaky with a lot of people getting swept up in American-style populism, such as the Ontario conservatives who elected their own populist leader this year. The federal party leader is generally weak and some suspect that if he fails in 2019 the party may splinter back into it's constituent parts, which currently is a mix of hawks, neoliberals business folks, rightwing populists, Torys and religious traditionalists.
1421New Democrats (NDP): Basically your social democrat party in Canada. Very popular with young people, urbanites, and people in BC. Mixed popularity everywhere else though with a few key strongholds, typically in former industrial areas. Really the NDP is two factions: the "old" left composed of whats left of Canadian unions (who all unilaterally support NDP) and the "new" left of SJWs, hipsters, academics, and the various "ism" movements: anti-racism, feminism, etc.
1422Green: Newest party, leftwing(ish), generally thought of well but hasn't been able to get off the ground due to mismanagement, FPTP voting and a lack of usable personalities. Really only in the discussion because they siphon thousands of votes from pretty much every left or center riding, skewing the results.
1423Quebec nationalists/seperatists: the movement that just wont die, the X factor in Quebec and federal politics, typically knifes the liberals and skews their social policy, not really at play anywhere else in the country
1424Right-wing populist parties: basically the prairie and Atlantic provinces have semi-successful rightwing populist parties that knife their conservative parties from the right and may eventually overtake them if things stay the course. Worth pointing out that our last prime minister started as a right-wing insurgency against the conservatives in Alberta. Anyway,
1425So that's kind of what the country looks like. The issue at the federal level that gets the most play is our economic relationship with the United States which continues to account for something like 60% of our trade. After that comes security and other foreign relations, and resource extraction, and then environmental regulation and migration. Domestically it looks a lot like the States: culture war, budgeting, housing crises, racism, opioids, income inequality, sustainability, etc. I'd say the major difference between us in the States is a few things:
1426Different type of racism: America is a very segregated country, historically and today. Like America, Canada has a huge non-white population; the difference is most of our non-whites either came here as immigrants (i.e. not as slaves) or are indigenous. As a result the demographics of the country are that the major economic centers (Toronto etc) are actually white-minority, or rapidly approaching it, while the rural parts of the country and small cities are almost all white. The majority of the people that move here are economically well off and educated so you don't see the same effects of institutionalized poverty; typically immigrants assimilate pretty quickly although the constant inflow of them skews the culture conservative. The exception here is the indigenous people who are arguably treated as bad if not worse than black people in America, who make up a minority in most parts of the country but then a hard majority in a few spots, typically far away from the major cities. The end result is a very harsh but quiet race tension that flares up once a year or so when a story breaks about an indigenous women getting raped by a white cop or whatever the issue of the day is. Most racial issues focus on immigration though, not black-white or hispanic-white conflict.
1427Healthcare and social programming: I honestly don't know how poor Americans survive. We have universal healthcare here, more generous social programming and an entrenched culture of people going "don't fuck with that"; even our neoliberals won't touch the healthcare thing, or at least, won't do it out in the open. Makes things less intense at the middle-to-bottom layers of society here.
1428Weak religious right: We don't have a "bible belt" or any crazy shit like that, there is a religious right but they are marginal so issues like abortion, gay marriage etc is mostly kept off the agenda. Even in the conservative rural parts of the country these are mostly considered non-issues and have been for a long time (for example, Trailer Park Boys, a show about rednecks, had an openly gay character as early as 2003 and this was considered a non-issue even then).
1429More stable government: We don't do the "separation of powers" stuff Americans do. In Canada, the Prime Minister (functionally our leader) is made up of the party that wins the most seats in the legislature; our legislature is also our executive. With FPTP voting the results get skewed hard so whoever wins an election tends to win and get the majority they to govern. Further, judges are appointed and the bureaucracy has an extremely strong union so they don't get shoved around much. Further our bill of rights was added as a constitutional amendment so anything that goes against the general liberal order tends to get killed in court anyway. Overall the result of all this is that Canadian governance tends to be a lot more stable and doesn't often get stuck in gridlocks like the Americans.
1430Gonna post a P2 below
1431There is No Rock Bottom
1432
1433Yeah I mean I don't think all this is a bad thing. OP is a unique case because it sounds like his severe alcoholism will kill him but broadly speaking I think alcoholics are mostly fine people, certainly more honest than your typical 9-5 yuppie. I think hanging out at the mean is boring because your entire experience is structured and filtered; nothing really challenging every comes through and so the part of the person that enjoys struggle and exploration begins to atrophy.
1434The thing that keeps me on this path is twofold. First, you're right about it being about how you were raised; I grew up a bit redneck and so I've always been a bit alienated from the mean; my experience growing up really doesn't reflect the "normal" experience of people in the middle-class mass and I feel that divide whenever they start raving about the dumb hicks. Second, there are other people like this out there. They're hard to detect because most people typically play along because you gotta but they do exist and finding them is one of the most rewarding things. It is possible to have friends that are intellectually interesting and into the same shit as you are.
1435Does everybody feel these conflicts? I'm not sure but my gut says no. I think the majority of people are followers and thanks to dislocated power loci (as per Foucault and his contemporaries) it's possible to have a whole system of just followers running everything. There's no real need for a leader so a conservative (not politically) economic system can run everything without the need for a creative or risk-taking leader at the top marshalling things.
1436There is No Rock Bottom
1437
1438?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ it's all the same anyway. There's no right way to live a life.
143912 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote
1440
1441Well I have a BA in political science and I've never had an issue voting because there's really only one party in my country looking out for people like me so that makes it simple
1442There is No Rock Bottom
1443
1444That's a part of it but you're missing the sunk cost side.
1445A unique danger for seekers is mission creep. The further "down" (or side ways or whatever) they go, the more they learn, and the more their curiosity is piqued. Problem is that over time, this also increases their alienation; the further you get from the mean, the more the mean appears as a boring or undifferentiated mass, because the mean is always constructed for the lowest common denominator.
1446Eventually the seeker reaches a point where they are so far from the mean that they're faced with a choice: turn back or discover things that will seriously challenge their ability to regress to the mean and "plug in" to polite society.
1447I think a lot of people who hit that point rip right by it without a second thought. At that point they're digging down wholly for the sake of doing it, consequence be damned, with 0 intention of ever surfacing again.
1448There is No Rock Bottom
1449
1450Yeah alcoholism is a wild ride, like stepping in a fucking time machine.
1451But this guy is wrong about rock bottom. It's not a place which is why he can't find it. It's a threshold. It's that moment that a huge piece of what you were before your descent is destroyed completely. That's the rock bottom moment. There's many possible rock bottoms because a normal person has a lot of themself to destroy.
1452AutisticThinker is back and now claiming to be Chinese
1453
1454Thank God somebody is finally talking about liberating the Chinese from their own government, definitely the right position as a Chinese nationalist, probably has nothing to do with an American-centric worldview
1455SSC On Asian Women.
1456
1457If you're in the Toronto area dm me
1458SSC On Asian Women.
1459
1460Eh I used to find it funny, because I love gallows humour and the idea that at any moment my life could be ended when the weird smelly kid from your tenth grade math class decided he wasn't going to "take it" anymore so he comes blazing into your local Denny's and shoots up the place because his 6th grade crush waits tables there, and you take two shots to the chest while pouring more creamer into your 2$ coffee and make the evening news, like damn if that isn't the most ridiculous fucking thing possible and yet it's the world I live, Revenge of the Nerds but rated R staring the kids from Superbad and legally purchased 12 gauge shotguns, goddamn you gotta laugh, and for a while I did, that sweet mix of unchecked nerd rage and genuinely terrifying psychosis really made for some absurdist art, like a black mirror episode but better because people are actually getting blown away and that's a terror you get to live with. I work in an educational institute currently, we have done training on what to do if there is a shooter, that's my life now and I always got a kick out of how twisted that is, perfect example of how anything can be the new normal.
1461But now all the incels are too ashamed of their shameful "philosophy" so they just hide in the bottom of the Internet and occasionally crawl up to write never-ending scrawls about how those submissive Chinese would totally fuck them, never mind there's already millions of Asians in North America and they hate these weirdos as much if not more than the white women because at this point if an incel tried this shit on a white woman, the type who's being dealing with this her whole life, she'd probably roast him to death and they know that so they put their hopes in the orient because what else is there? Just Denny's and they're too beat down to even do that. "I took to the blackpill and now I see everything!" Bullshit man, you took the bitchpill, unplug your computer and go outside or something goddamn
1462You hate to see it really. That rare mix of absolute misery, ossified impotency, and manhood stripped of all content but aesthetics. Truly the bottom
1463SSC On Asian Women.
1464
1465"I'm [brand]" which is all this stuff functionally is for these types.
1466Anyone have any insight into this phenomenon of affordable clothing with luxury aesthetics and luxury clothing with working class aesthetics?
1467
1468Good parallel
1469Uh... is it just me or are there suddenly are a lot of bots here?
1470
1471It's strange that you draw this line between "philosophy" (which seems to mean debate to you? You haven't defined it clearly) and "literary review", but you've ignored the points where they intersect; hermeneutics, aesthetics, discourse. It's doubly strange given how so many of the titans of the canon were just responding to and critiquing the documents left behind by others; the Greeks, the Christians, whoever, huge swathes of foundational western philosophy is functionally just somebody reviewing and critiquing the classics.
1472I just don't really see the distinction as clear-cut.
1473Uh... is it just me or are there suddenly are a lot of bots here?
1474
1475Most of social media, including Reddit, works off an influencer model wherein a handful of users generate the majority of influential content. Niche subs tend to be spots where more committed leftists chill so swing this place and the conversation will trickle out to larger leftwing subs
1476Sex strike before midterms?
1477
1478Some users here seem to think critical theory is reactionary for some reason
1479Democrats Aren’t Moving Left. They’re Returning to Their Roots.
1480
1481Because it is word salad with 0 supporting evidence.
1482u/rosa_roja uses real world examples of transgender children and adults to defend parents allowing their teen children to take hormone blockers.
1483
1484everything I don't like is the work of my political enemies
1485I want that Kool-Aide
1486SSC On Asian Women.
1487
1488Incel shit isn't even funny anymore it just makes me sad.
1489Here's an article about books; let's talk about British demographics (always white)
1490
1491No way man this is a great opportunity to scoop out whatever culture is left in these kids and turn them wholly over to the consumer cycle
1492/s
1493"Bruce . . . deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it’s not who you are underneath . . . it’s what you do that defines you." Rachel in Batman Begins...
1494
1495Man was made in God's image, and the seminal moment of his development was when he discovered knowledge of good and evil, i.e. he learned discernment.
1496TLP can be read in many different ways, this is true, but the further from base the harder it is to justify said reading. OP's reading is a stretch given it implies the audience is brain dead automatons, which TLP never quite does anywhere in the blog, so why would he here?
1497Also cool your jets, dude was an anonymous blogger not a prophet, if this is what passes as scripture in 2018 then the west really is going down the drains...
1498November 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
1499
1500Weird one I guess, I've definitely thought about doing something like this tho so I can't condemn the guy
1501"Bruce . . . deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it’s not who you are underneath . . . it’s what you do that defines you." Rachel in Batman Begins...
1502
1503Your point about Sarah Jeong is good
1504But I think you are miss understanding what TLP means when he says "if you're reading it it's for you". That doesn't mean "if you respond to this it's working", it's more a commentary on how every piece of writing is written for an audience and by virtue of being the reader, that means that you are the intended audience. It has nothing to say about how the audience reacts; certainly writing something imflamatory and then seeing people get fired up is not a revelation, that just means the writer succeeded in reaching his audience, not that what he has to say is any good. Typing "kill yourself faggot" is also something written 'for you', that doesn't make it a valuable contribution
1505"Bruce . . . deep down you may still be that same great kid you used to be. But it’s not who you are underneath . . . it’s what you do that defines you." Rachel in Batman Begins...
1506
1507Is the Joker our role model?
1508We live in a society ?￰ﾟﾤﾔ
1509Jokes aside, no.
1510Nolan is a deeply conservative filmmaker and his is reflected in his interpretation of batman, a hero himself who represents the legacy of an older, uncorruptable moral order. If Gotham is the nihilistic moment the west has been trapped in since the First World War, Batman is the Don Quixote of his era, dressing up in armour and desperately attempting to fight back against those who he has perceived as the corrupters. Why does Gotham never improve, despite batman's best efforts? Because you can't punch crime into non-existence. Like Quixote, lost in time, batman too is using a rigid moral code in a world that calls for fluidity. And so his crusade goes nowhere.
1511Why does batman have one rule? The better question is why does batman have two? Rule 1; I cannot kill intentionally (99% sure blowing up cars with the batmobile kills people but that's another discussion) and 2; I must always be batman; I cannot quit this mission. Why? If he was simply driven by a desire for revenge, he would have quit after he brought Joe Cool to justice. But he doesn't, because the identity of "batman" is how he structures his world and his own personality; all of his failings (as a son, as a lover, as a friend, as a public figure) is devoured by the role of batman; it's okay that he can't love Rachel, because that's not really Bruce who's letting her down, they're both victims of the batman personna. He has to be a knight because the alternative is just being a plutocrat in the world's biggest shithole, a role that is so defunct of meaning that it's never even considered.
1512In Nolan's cannon, the joker is batman without rules. They both have the same goal: dismantle the nightmare that is life in Gotham city. But while Batman, tethered to the past, cannot achieve this goal (his success means the end of the batman), Joker does succeed explicitly because he's embraced the nihilism and built on it. Joker is effective because he operates without constraint, not limited by a consistent identity.
1513In Nolan's mind this is bad, because Nolan is Quixotic in his own outlook, holding out for a moral political order that has been lost in time. So Joker is the villain that is defeated, but not before undermining Batman's quest and forcing him to face his own uselessness in the form of 2 Face.
1514Joker is not really TLP. He's not really anything, because Nolan is unable to imagine a moral or political order that transcends traditional morality. In his world, Batman untethered from justice is unintelligent chaos, a manic figure who changes moment by moment and only exists to burn it all down. The Joker is the void Batman stares into whenever he puts on the suit, because Nolan is incapable of articulating a new ethic. This blindness is made explicit in Dark Knight Rises when the villains are stupid as fuck, batman fights a generic and faceless populist uprising, and they "save" the city by liberating it from its own people, the same people batman has spent years beating the shit out off. The bomb plot line exists in that movie because without it, you're basically watching the French Revolution from the monarchist perspective, which is too much of a stretch even for modern American film goers, who still cling to the spirit of 1776, at least in name if not in action. Neither character is TLP's ideal, one is a charicature of Nihilism written by somebody that sees nihilism as bad, and the other is a quixotic figure. Given TLP is nihilist, I doubt he would be impressed with either.
1515The real übermensch in the batman series is not Batman nor Joker, it's Ras Al Ghul, the only character able to assert their own moral vision and (almost) see it realized.
1516Are there non-vain reasons to socialize?
1517
1518Socializing makes me happy, that's why I do it. If you find socializing to not be worth it then don't do it
1519"And for the record, I'm on the left. Please don't shitpost."
1520
1521I love when right wingers point to pride as some kind of highly transgressive festival. It's literally just gay people being out in the open
1522"And for the record, I'm on the left. Please don't shitpost."
1523
1524Meh just tell them most sociological departments are full of ideologues
1525November 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
1526
1527What is an American take on Heidegger? What seperates it from European interpretations?
1528Well, at least they're honest about it now
1529
1530This one is a double whammy because now they're accepting the idea of dog whistiling but accusing us of doing it while the president is on TV talking about the (((globalists)))
1531"Everybody hates people who go to pride parades, even gay rights activists!" - Rat King
1532
1533Idk pride is probably one of the safest, coporatized, mainstream things a person can do in North America in 2018
1534Well, at least they're honest about it now
1535
1536God I wish
1537Well, at least they're honest about it now
1538
1539Ahaha oh god listing chapotraphouse as the leftwing stormfront
1540November 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
1541
1542Any Heideggerians in this b? Just read Being and Time and I've been slowly working through a lecture series by Hubert Dreyfus on the stuff, I find it fascinating
1543November 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
1544
1545Not that I know of but I'm also interested in this topic. Allegedly meditation alone is enough to treat even severe pain so there may be something there as well
1546In which OP grieves that therapists are not rational nor empirical enough to treat him
1547
1548I feel like people forget that therapy only works if the subject is also participating. A therapist will never out smart you because they see you for 1h/week (or whatever frequency) vs you see yourself 24/7
1549Trump brands media 'true enemy of the people' just days after pipe bomb sent to CNN offices
1550
1551The pendulum swings, why?
1552The (western) global geopolitical order has been mostly one way since the 1980s, with something of a concensus in the west on what constitutes good governance and good economics. Yeah the various parties tinker here or there, but nobody was seriously contesting the basic assumptions underwriting the system.
1553But like every concensus, this one was established to solve problems, mainly the economic and political crises of the 1970s. These solutions are not perfect, they're built on context-dependent assumptions, and although they saw resounding success in the 80s and 90s, the flaws began to creep in, first in the early 2000s and then unmistakably in the 2008-2014 period. The flaws are baked into the solutions; the finance economy that pulled the west out of economic deadlock in the 70s was the same system that crashed the economy 40 years later, not by accident, but by running as planned.
1554Those in charge at the time were blinded by the success of the program, so they buried their heads in the sand. But the failures can't be ignored, and what we're seeing now is a backlash as groups across the west use this moment to advance a new agenda which they believe will solve the current slate of problems. They're winning because they have vitally and a vision of the future, while the establishment is run mostly by complacent architects and their ignorant children, who have lost the ability to articulate why their position is correct.
1555Further proof of this is this wave has missed places that weren't part of the old consensus, such as Iran, most of Africa, China, Russia, SE Asia (minus Indonesia), and so on.
1556We'll continue to see forces on the right and left fight for new agendas until some kind of concensus is established. The 2020's will be an extremely tumultuous decade, buckle in.
1557Smh... ? death and taxes aren’t the only things that are guaranteed
1558
1559If there was property I could afford I would. Thanks to speculation tho even the cheap spots in my city are clocking in at 600k+
1560Smh... ? death and taxes aren’t the only things that are guaranteed
1561
1562Lmao what is this thread the fucking landlord association meeting?
1563Everybody hates landlords, none of you provide something that couldn't be done directly by the tenant (paying mortgage, paying somebody to do repairs, etc). The only reason you exist is because your or one of your ancestors bought well located property you didn't need to house your own family, and now you sponge off somebody else's family.
1564That's the service you provide: owning valuable property. That's it. Get over yourselves.
1565Smh... ? death and taxes aren’t the only things that are guaranteed
1566
1567Well none of my landlords have created any of the houses I've lived in yet they still get rent, riddle me that
1568/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1569
1570This is all really good but I'm still skeptical that our solution is technologic. There is a big part of me that thinks the technology is the problem, or at least a significant part of it, as it exists currently.
1571Modern Marxists are dinosaurs, but not in the way you mean. Most people who call themselves Marxists today have more in common with religious reactionaries than anything meaningfully socialist, and it shows in the way they organize their movement: they venerate a lost age, elevate individuals for their martyrdom, and are perpetually calling for a return to form. The actual material analysis, the part of Marx that was worth saving, has been lost in this retreat to myth-making and hero worship. When people valorize a figure like Lenin, all I see is the abandonment of Marx' project, which was about capturing history itself and bringing it into a general philosophy. Even the name, Marxism, is itself a misnomer; it should be called what he called it: historical materialism.
1572I don't think more technology, or even better technology, can do that either, because the process of capital production is inherently atomizing. The sickness at the center of all this is alienation; the process by which individuals are cut off from themselves (as pieces of time) in service of the production of capital. When an individual produces, they are functionally converting time into an object, and alienation is the result of that time then being appropriated as capital stock, rather than used as a consumable object. That's the core of Marx, everything trickles out from there.
1573The reason Marx advocated for organization was that only through organization would there have been a massed power large enough to reclaim control of the capital and close the gap opened by capital production. But I'm not convinced that even that could work at this point. Seemingly in 2018 one of the core problems with technology is that although it helps us connect better than ever, this connection can still only be deployed in service of perpetual atomization; telecoms so we can work from home, cars so we can live dozens of kilometers away from anything of note, the media-industrial complex so that we can replace authentic interaction with voyeurism and psuedoactivity. In Marx' day the prescription was obvious because there was one clear class interjecting themselves into the capital production cycle, and so he falsely believed removing this class would solve the problem.
1574But it looks like he was wrong. The soviets (or the Chinese) certainly seem to be smashing up against the same issues we are, which is that industrial society tends toward totalitarianism. We have that now, the totalitarianism of a society wholly mobilized to increase the global capital stock at all costs; human life, human time, the environment, our sanity, our sense of decency and dignity, all of these are up for grabs if it means a +1.2% growth each cycle. And even questioning this process of perpetual capital stock growth will see you pushed far to the fringes of the system; the only debate left is whether we try to meter this process through green technology or if we go full Blade Runner. To quote Mark Fisher (rip), it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
1575What is capital? An object in the production process, either raw resources, currency, or tools. And what is a tool, really? Our problem is that in this moment we only understand tools as capital stock, not as extensions of a human conscious, which is what they truly are. Aside from the continentalists, I know of nobody trying to liberate the tool from it's position as capital stock. I'm extremely skeptical that more tools in their current form will help us socialize our way out of this problem. Our tools are how we got backed into this corner in the first place.
1576Also, we are not even close to the bottom of this pit. The model of the industrial world is truly the machine, a series of unique parts, each with it's own purpose, each completely useless unless in concert with the others. This is also how we organize our social interactions; workers, managers, departments. Alienation, again, this time in the form of biopower and hyper-specialization. A worker in the modern professional class trains for that position for almost 25 years. And then they spend another 10 years signalling loyalty, building up a reputation, and generally getting "broken in". They spend almost as long training and preparing to be a productive consumer, which is the gasoline that makes the machine go. By the time they're in a position of institutional influence, whatever revolutionary spirit was in them has been crushed.
1577Breaking that programming should be the first priority, and not in the way neoliberals want to break it, wherein the atomized worker becomes truly interchangeable: geographically lost, technologically in perpetual retraining, and spiritually dead. We need to break this programming in a way that encourages people to become generalists again, to push back against alienation, if not at the object-level, then at least at the level of how production occurs. Bring back the renaissance man.
1578I've been trying to make it big in the big city for 6 years, and I'm about done my tenure, leaving here within a few months for a smaller arena and then to who knows where. I'm leaving because I am sick to death of the nightmare that is trying to live in a big city, and I'd rather take my chances "outside the walls" than watch my spirit drip out, drop by drop. We're at our most communal when we cook together, when we sleep together, and when we have days where we do nothing together. We're at our most alienated at a work party. That should tell you all you need to know about where the problem is.
1579What I've concluded after 6 years is that the future for the left is something like solar punk, deploying high-tech in concert with our natural surroundings, not for growth, but for suspension and eventual (natural) de-population. We need to take the concept of a tool and rip it away from the concept of capital stock production; tools need to be returned to their proper place as extensions of human consciousness, rather than exploitable external objects that individuals use to harness other's time. That is the way out of alienation, and probably the only way to save the planet. The alternative is Blade Runner.
1580Can we do this with existing telecoms technology? Maybe. But before that must come good old-fashioned legal action. Before 2008 the internet held revolutionary potential. Centralizing the majority of traffic onto a handful of privately owned websites was a terrible decision, both practically (look what's happening in America) and as part of the larger revolutionary mission. The only way to break this hold now is to either destroy the whole thing or to leverage state power to shatter these monopolies. So I think that is a good place to start. Otherwise anything we cook up on the side will be equivalent to Zion beside the Matrix. As it exists right now, telecoms is a mix of a telescreen and soma, an amazing tool that keeps people more atomized than ever. Breaking that spell should be priority number 1 for the left, at least in the developed world.
1581/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1582
1583I don't think it's a where so much as a how. Broadly, we can group most interactions on a scale of structured to unstructured. A legal proceeding is a highly structured interaction, while a casual conversation between old friends is a low-structured interaction. A wedding may be something in the middle, for example.
1584What I think has happened is that since the 1990s, North America has been steadily moving dating in a more structured direction. "Casual" and "chance" encounters are a lot lower, while the barriers for engagement seem to be much higher, at least compared to how the gen xer's and boomers I know describe dating in their own time. The way in which dating is supposed to work is more structured than ever.
1585I don't think I have any hard data here but the change seems to be a more general in-elasticity in who dates who; there's the obvious ones like class divisions but also the "soft" ones like cultural differences; since so much cultural clout is about being into the "right" stuff, people don't really interact with others outside their own ever-shrinking circles. Compare that to Tinder which is basically the "randomize all" setting of who you get paired with
1586/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1587
1588Yeah I literally laughed out loud when I read that reply, I just pulled those names out of my ass so it amuses me greatly that u/BurnAllCommies is a real user
1589"They will scorch the Earth before they let a white man sleep with a white woman on tv again." - witcher sub.
1590
1591Better call Saul, protagonist and female lead are fucking, and both white, and it's even set in New (((Mexico)))
159212 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote
1593
1594Man where do they find these people?
1595Voting in America is mostly a false choice, that's why nobody gives a shit. Republicans suck hard but anybody who pays attention for more than 2 weeks notices how the democrats collab more often than they push back. It's a one party system with two coats of paint, so of course people won't be motivated to get involved.
1596Also, shout out to the guy who read Machaivelli and decided politics is just too complicated for his galaxy brain. Dude is either the biggest narcissist or the most honest man alive, I can't decide which
1597/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1598
1599Well this has been fun but I think if I keep jerking I'll rip my dick off
1600I'm sick of NPR liberals asking "What about all the jobs lost if ICE is abolished???"
1601
1602Never bothered liberals when it was about automating the factories...
1603/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1604
1605Leftism is when women avoid you like the plague but it's okay but that's just biology
1606Bojack Horseman is Chapo-aligned and I will die on this hill
1607
1608All respect to burress of course
1609Bojack Horseman is Chapo-aligned and I will die on this hill
1610
1611Bojack is a male-targeted show that has a feminist character that is right more often than she's wrong, and they called out Cosby a good year before it was cool. Really all you need to know about where BJH falls in the conversation.
1612/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1613
1614Tbh I was shooting from the hip so take it with salt but,
1615Talking to gen Xers and Boomers about dating culture has been strange because according to the ones I know, everybody used to be a lot more promiscuous. I think this is reflected in the film of the era and a lot of macro studies about how millenials have less sex than their gen x and boomer ancestors.
1616From where I'm standing, this seems mostly true, because there isn't really a place that I know of for young people to meet for casual sex that isn't also high-pressure. The exception is tinder and its clones, which have mostly absorbed the whole field. People shit talk it as sleezy or whatever but in my experience it's loudest critics would also never go to a bar, have a one night stand and so on.
1617Basically what used to apparently be part of the general culture for our parents and grandparents is now mostly an online subculture, while the rest of our generation is either going steady (iirc the number of lifetime partners has gone down, I.e. People pair up early in life and stick with their partner for a very long time) or are just wholesale not fucking at all (incels, workaholics, and so on).
1618If tinder and all that goes where will people go for low-pressure dating? I've yet to see a real replacement aside from just drawing on their existing social networks, which is not really dating in the sense it meant in generations past.
1619/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1620
1621Well thanks! Here I spend the whole day ripping into people and vice versa, just to wrap it up with probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me on Reddit.
1622I do like the idea of pursuing a larger audience, not quite sure where to start. Perhaps that's a project I'll take up in a month or so when my shitty job slows down a bit.
1623community
1624Honestly I have no idea. It's a problem I've been hacking at for about 2 years now, and although I've had a lot of ideas I've yet to land on one that I think really constitutes a solution. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them.
1625Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1626
1627Here:
1628https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_02_2018/e1nwj34/?context=3&sort=best
1629It's from my last account which I nuked around September
1630Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1631
1632Here:
1633https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8vhj05/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_02_2018/e1nwj34/?context=3&sort=best
1634It's from my last account which I nuked around September
1635Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1636
1637Look at this point you're just talking past me. I'm not sure what to tell somebody who thinks that literally every policy possible will have death tolls down stream, and that also the only way to save yourself is to spend who knows how much time articulating why you don't want to die and how policies that openly advocate for killing you are bad on universal grounds, because ya know somebody's gotta die, best make sure it's the other guy. I still believe in responsible government and the idea that the policy process can make ethical decisions without common people having to perpetually defend their right to live, but that's only possible if you live in a civic culture that places value on human life and encourages thoughtful government, which is clearly not what you live under if you sincerely believe all policy is is different groups trying to make sure the other guy is left holding the turd when the bill gets signed.
1638If this all is really how you see the policy process then I really have nothing left to say to you, except perhaps good luck.
1639She's right
1640
1641"The mobile infrantry made me the man I am today!"!
1642/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1643
1644He's actually worse than that, I think TLP would have torn HC to shreds. HC is functionally the image of TLP's schizoid
1645Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1646
1647I don't believe that at all. It is possible to pass a policy that won't kill anyone, and it is certainly possible to not pass any policies that actively and directly kill people intentionally, such as the decision to move to a white ethnostate. If you're thinking about a policy and people are coming out of the woodwork saying "this will kill me, directly" then that's probably a sign that it is not a moral policy to pass. Do you have any evidence to suggest literally every policy will kill? Because if not then that is just a low-empathy justification for passing policy that doesn't consider everyone.
1648Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1649
1650you're talking about literally killing me. I don't have to put together a coherent argument against it further than that; I win"
1651Okay let's stop and think for a minute. Let's say for the sake of argument we live in a society made up of citizens with equal and unalienable rights. How does this sentence make any sense in a society where each citizen has a right to life? "Nobody will take you seriously if your argument is that your opponent's policy will kill you". What? That's the core reason why you should be taken seriously, assuming both parties value human life.
1652This is all in the context of somebody proposing a fascist program. If somebody goes "I want a white ethnostate" and a user replies "that will literally kill me", that is a coherent argument if the user replying is not white. What more needs to be said?
1653Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1654
1655That's almost what I'm saying. Given the example that brought that statement out of me, which was whether or not fascism is implemented, how much of a participation is required? I have 0 reason to believe white nationalism or fascism would be good in any way, and I have a lot of reason to believe it would get a lot of people killed, including those I care about. So far the only arguments I've heard in favour of fascism is about "saving" the white race from voluntary race mixing, which I don't think is a problem. So I don't really see why I should have to debate every fascist I cross paths with given that their theory boils down to "it bothers me that my nation has to play nice with others". What am I missing here really? I don't think fascists have justified why their program should be adapted. As far as I can tell they seem to revel in the idea of removing people they don't like, so I also think they are arguing from a position of moral bankruptcy. Why should I take their ideas seriously at all?
1656And once again this is always how these conversations go. I say "yeah I think fascism will get me and others killed, and I think those advocating it are irresponsible" and then users come out of the woodwork to go "bro you can't just say that and expect people to sympathize with your position, you need to make a case for why fascism is bad" as though it's a mystery why somebody on the left may be skeptical of a program that aims to create an ethnostate and destroy the left. We're back at square one, where I'm being told me simply going "hey I don't like this program because I think it will probably get a lot of my friends killed" is not enough of an explanation for why I think it's bad ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ Apparently it's all good if plenty are killed so long as the ends are justified right? As you say, how many people need to suffer to save some lives right?
1657It's cold. It's the perspective of somebody who doesn't mind bodies as long as they're stacked up among the outgroup. That's what freaks me out about it, we're not even trying to build policy where everyone gets to live, oh well...
1658/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1659
1660I use continental philosophy to analyze everything. It's part of why my life is such a mess. I'd be happy to do more content like this if there is an audience tbh
1661Edit: also I took this approach because HC is clearly writing from nihilism himself.
1662Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1663
1664Right but now you're arguing my position. I started this by saying I think people have a moral obligation to chose the policy position that won't get people killed (or if I concede ground, will minimize the number killed). Is that not what you are now saying? Be less wrong?
1665Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1666
1667Meh idk now, like 3 different users just told me literally every single policy choice gets people killed, so if that's the case then why not head to the extremes? Oh policy, how it be when it do
1668Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1669
1670Lmao and who are you to say who lives and dies? How much suffering is worth avoiding your death? How much lost opportunity?
1671Some problems are trolley problems. Many aren't trolley problems, but we make them out to be when people with power use it to absolve themselves of their own ethical responsibilities. Many more problems are not trolley problems at all. Unilaterally saying everything is morally ambiguous is just as shortsited as saying nothing is, and I don't think it is wrong to ask users, nominally rational ones, to take some moral responsibility for the positions they argue.
1672Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1673
1674Well it's great you're above believing in something because you care about the wellbeing of others
1675Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1676
1677Funny thing with skin is that you can't take it off. I come here in my free time cause I like Some of the content that is posted and it makes me feel good when I post something and people like it. Constantly getting dogpiled by people who clearly could care either way doesn't make me want to play harder, it makes me want to stick to my own kind.
1678Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1679
1680poor
1681Hopefully not
1682mentally ill
1683Probably, if genes play any role.
1684I'll let you in on a secret about mental health. Not everybody labeled "mentally ill" wants to be "neurotypical" or whatever the term for normal people is. From where I'm standing, my mental Health is as much of who I am as my sense of humor, my irritability and my desire to sleep in. The only reason I know I'm mentally ill is because a professional has told me so and because clearly something is wrong with me given how everyone else seems to just get it vs I struggle extremely to do the stuff "normal" people are supposed to do.
1685But I don't want to be "cured", or at least, I don't want that cure administered by the same "healthy" people who have made my life hard for the last decade. I don't want them tooling around in my head, I don't want them fucking around in my genes, because from where I'm standing, I'm doing alright, I'm just trapped in a sick world and very few people seem to have the ability to see it for what it is, like the movie "They Live". The last thing I want is some organization hundreds of times my size deciding to "fix" me.
1686This is really why I hate the eugenic discussion. I'm a human being goddamnit, but just because I've tried to kill myself I'm suddenly a broken model, just another protect for faceless scientists to fix, or at least prevent the reproduction of. Of course nobody ever turns the lens around and asks why so many people in North America are sick like this, why the incident rate for suicide and mental illness is going up. Nah it's all in the genes right? It couldn't be that the world is crazy...
1687Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1688
1689Nah idk man feels pretty low on empathy to advocate for policies you know will get people killed, on the grounds that those people didn't adequately convince you they deserve to live or whatever. That seems extremely cold blooded to me actually.
1690Obviously people should be able to articulate why they deserve to live, and I hope everyone does so at every chance, but I also think everyone has an ethical responsibility to try and ensure they support positions that lead to as little death as possible. Asking users here to do that bare-minimum check is not an extreme ask, it's the basis of civil society.
1691Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1692
1693Never said it was out of bounds, I said the way these conversations evolve show that most users are very low empathy. It's one thing to put forward a position and receive critique. It's another thing to put forward and position and get dog piled by 5-10 users, half of whom imply I want a genocide or whatever when I suggest that the status quo isn't working for everyone. Same thing happens along lines of race, wherein even suggesting that maybe race isn't a cut-and-dry hard science to a dog pile. Even more obscure topics (like eugenics) leads right into big confrontations like this, where already I've had 4 users basically ask me how I can oppose eugenics, even though in my first post I literally just said that I oppose them because I would have been a victim. I don't understand how else I can say that? Or do people need me to argue to them why they should care if there policy preference would have fucked me over directly? Like how am I supposed to do that?
1694Empathic conversations can exist on the internet, but that is rarely what happens here. The overall approach to communication here is users (especially on the left) are assumed to be wrong unless proven otherwise. When the topics are things like the basic humanity of certain types of people, the overall tone then of the subreddit is that certain types of people need to justify why they exist at all before they can say their piece. And if you complain at any time people accuse you of being irrational.
1695/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1696
1697This is gonna be a scattershot but,
1698Basically the issue I came across with HC is that he's got a critical eye but he has a hard time turning the lens around and looking at himself. Shame and Society is a good post but what's missing is the "why is this bad" statement. The unstated assumption of the piece is that western culture is going down the drain but I don't think HC makes a particulrily compelling case for why that's bad.
1699He spends most of the piece complaining about hipster and woke culture, and I think his complaints are good but his targets are meh. Similarily he spends a lot of time complaining about hookup culture which is hilarious and impossible to read as anything but the sour-grape griping of a man who was told he would smash in college and instead became blog famous among some of the biggest nerds on the political scene, which is already a huge nerd fest to begin with.
1700Overall the whole thing just reeks of the type of over-domesticated middle class mind who is sharp enough to realize that mainstream culture is 100% full of shit, but not sharp enough to dig themself out of the nihilist spiral. What everybody forgets about Neitchze and his disciples is that Neitchze is an epistemology, not an ontology, and the ontological version of nihilism (Heidegger and so on) is actually way less edgy and way more friendly to a happy and normal life. HC has basically critiqued himself into a pit that he can't climb out of, which is why he's taking indiscriminate shots at everyone; he dunks on Girls and Bojack Horseman in the same post, despite the fact that those shows are not even close in quality, or he goes bananas over tinder hoes, even though tinder is probably one of the last true holdouts of a meaningful dating culture in the west.
1701The whole post is just a blast of critique with no direction and no conclusion, which is why it turns into a call to arms at the end. But a call for what? Burn it all down, sure, but then what? HC certainly doesn't know, because it's clear he's totally rejecting culture, but he isn't quite there yet in rising above it. So he's just lost in the wilderness, and it shows.
1702What he is missing is that the crisis he is terrified about is the culture. That's the hidden kernel at the bottom of the pit. "These hoes ain't loyal" because imagine if they were? Is HC ready to marry the next woman he sleeps with? Ditto with television; of course Girls sucks, nothing lasts on TV because young writers are cheaper and old writers see their fingers move off the pulse. This is the economy in action: nothing is built to last because if it were, we'd all be out of jobs. That's what HC is missing; he thinks he's critiquing a bug, when he's actually describing a feature; nothing is stable or transcendent because we aren't stable and transcendent, we live our lives in a constant state of flux and confusion. The core of nihilism is to stop trying to define who you are and rather start focusing on what you do, because what you do is who you are (Heidegger again).
1703So who is HC? He's a guy who watches Girls and complains about Tinder, just like every other man in his age category. And that's why he's miserable, just like everyone else.
1704He's a smart guy. But being smart alone can't save you from nihilism. He needs to spend time clearing his head and returning to a baseline. Otherwise he'll just stay in this maze of critiques that go nowhere and say nothing of any real value. There's bigger fish than 21yo women saying "choke me daddy" ironically.
1705It's a good read though, I do recommend it.
1706/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1707
1708That's how I know you're woke, hit that bong my dude
1709Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1710
1711It's not a tactic. There are some political issues that are personal, and removing that aspect is only possible from a low-empathy position.
1712For example, occasional topic in these parts, eugenics. There is no way to implement eugenics without also limiting the ability of some to reproduce. Often it's argued as "we should pay the poor/mentally ill to get sterilized". Well, I'm poor and mentally ill, and so was mom, so it's personal. There's no version of that line of thought that isn't personal because if it existed, I probably wouldn't have been born. So I'm not sure how I'm supposed to have a indifferent political discussion on the validity of the topic when the core of my argument is "this is bad because I enjoy being alive" which is something some feel I need to justify.
1713That's why I say there is a lack of empathy. I don't know how you can look at a policy position and be like "yeah well you gotta crack some eggs to make an omelette". Of course if I just outright say what I really think about eugenics, which is that it's a ghoulish pseudoscience used to keep the boot down on the mentally ill, I get told I'm acting irrational. When it's us advocating for our position, it's "rhetoric" and we need to play all these little word games to make sure the message actually gets through. But when they do it, it's just speculation and any asinine shit can be advocated for ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️. Eventually people get sick of having to explain to other people that they have a soul. The right feels like it's a tactic because the right has stated repeatedly it's okay with hanging people out to dry so long as they themselves are protected. What's a guy to do?
1714Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1715
1716I'd have to look, maybe I'll send it later when I'm at an actual computer
1717Where should I start with TLP?
1718
1719Really the whole blog is about Neitchze, just never explicitly. Who does the last man go to when he is sick? The last psychiatrist.
1720Start at the beginning. Or just pick any random point and drop in
1721TLP Flashback #12: "How Not To Meet Women"
1722
1723Love the No Exit comparison, great parallel I didn't pick up on the last time I read it.
1724The whole thing reminds me of a blog post I read ages ago, analyzing a scene from Sex and the City. Iirc, Sarah Jessica Parker's character is having a bad day; her heel broke, she got caught in the rain without an umbrella, she's late to work, the barista fucked up her latte, etc.
1725So she's huddling under an awning waiting for the rain to break when suddenly a random (handsom) stranger also takes cover under the awning, cause he also forgot his umbrella. Now in SatS the whole show is narrated by SJP and at this point she stops and asks herself "could all of this had been fate? All these things leading me to this moment, to find myself coincidentally beside Mr Right on this bad day?"
1726And The person writing the blog looking at this episode is like, holy fuck imagine how stressful and neurotic you'd have to be to go through life like that. Like you'd need to put on make-up to go to the grocery store to buy frozen pizza on the off chance that the stars align and you meet the man of your dreams in line at the self-checkout. Only somebody totally deluded could live like that, which is the types you meet in those places.
1727Tinder, CMB and similar apps take a ton of the thinking out of dating. But even before that there was designated places to meet somebody. I think the failure a lot of dudes are saddled with is the walk through life like SJP, and as a result they live a half life at best, never really in the moment, always trying to realize a fantasy that isn't coming, and even if it came they would be terrified to see it realized. L'enflame c'est l'autre
1728/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1729
1730Leftism is when you support things that maintain the current class structure, but you're also okay with means-tested charity, as opposed to literally feeding the poor into a wood chipper
1731/u/Impassionata (one of the few left-wingers still posting in CW threads), finally calls it quits with a rant about how HBD is nonsense and the subreddit is increasingly comprised of fascists.
1732
1733Leftism is when you smoke weed. The more weed you smoke, the more left you are
1734Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1735
1736Sure and at this point we've reached an unsustainable level of growth, that's my whole point. Our "steady state" would require something like 5x the number of earths we have iirc.
1737Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1738
1739Oh yeah happens to me all the time, I even threw together a reading list a few months ago to try and combat the total lack of basic knowledge that's how rough it is
1740Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1741
1742how might you improve it
1743Honestly I have no idea. Part of me definitely thinks at this point it can't really be saved. I'm not exactly foaming at the mouth like Imp is but I'm basically on the same page as them.
1744The outright fascists that post here aren't really the problem, they're just the symptom, so removing them won't make a difference.
1745The real problem is that this community seems to attract low-empathy users who have very little skin in the game of the policies they debate. They can take up extreme positions (like white nationalism) just theorectically, while those of us on the other side often would be personally harmed if they win.
1746For example a user down thread (up thread?) mentioned he likes this community because it's one of the only places he can watch Marxists and fascists go at it. To me that's the whole problem in one sentence; for this user this is all hypothetical, the market place of ideas and so on. For me, if the fascists in my country win some of my friends are probably going to a camp and/or killed for being degenerate gays. It really isn't a marketplace of ideas for a lot of us out here and by insisting this community follow that logic, we're basically just asking those who care the most to argue for their right to continue
1747Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1748
1749Is vs ought. I'm talking about how things are. You're probably right but that doesn't change the fact that it is what it is
1750Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1751
1752If you're not engaging in the content of a position you're not really engaging in it at all.
1753Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1754
1755Yeah that's a habit I need to get into
1756Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1757
1758Idk man the rest of the solar system doesn't look very habitable. Crops can be quite fickle and will have a difficult time with global warming. Any kind of space-agriculture will be insanely expensive.
1759Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1760
1761I fail to see how that would solve the problem?
1762Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1763
1764Basic economics? If you go through a production cycle and your business has not grown, you are losing capital. The only exception is if you break even in a 0-inflation environment, which does not exist anywhere as far as I know
1765Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1766
1767https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9sabky/comment/e8q0eqo
1768My full response
1769Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1770
1771Classic going after the particulars to ignore the larger point. Here let me help it along:
1772People here are obsessed with IQ. I'm not sure why but my pet theory is because the typical user in this community is smart, but socially stunted, and they (falsely) believe that being smart makes up for their fledgling social skills. They like IQ because it is a metric they can point to when discussing why actually, their viewpoint should be prioritized over others, which is a very relevant battle for them given that in meatspace nobody really cares about raw intelligence unless it is paired with the social skills needed to translate it. (This of course explains the never ending series of posts like "should people with high IQ be made president? This study says so!", straight projection).
1773This conjunction of high-IQ but low socialization makes users here highly suggestible, if content is structured in a way that sounds smart. This makes them easy marks for dogshit science, pseudoscience, grand theories strung together by weak evidence, and perhaps worst of all, theories that casually bridge the is/ought divide.
1774The apex of this is the obsession with race science, which is upheld by a never-ending series of little studies on the topic 'casually' put forward by users with an obvious agenda. But, since this community is "smart", the norm is to allow this stuff endless room to proliferate, because everybody assumes they're too smart to fall for "bad" science. Any criticism of this weird tendancy is quickly shut down with a series of thought-terminating cliches, the most common of which is that critics just can't handle talking about the 'real' shit, as if any of this is real for most users, which it isn't, for most it's all hypothetical. Impassionista's mistake was assuming people debating race here actually wanted a solution, when for many users, it's clearly a thought experiment and white nationalism is just as valid as something that maybe implies black people have a soul or whatever.
1775Impassionista's big sticking point was race, because (s)he was not white. My big sticking point is class. If I had a dime for everytime I saw a user on here who clearly has never had any encounter with the lower classes, I would be rich. And yet every week, like clockwork, I get told I am a fool for believing in things like economic equity. What's a guy to do, especially when u/BurnAllCommies is waiting in the wings with a "study" that shows that ackshually, the reason people live paycheck to paycheck is because they haven't sold all their organs yet. Of course, this is corroborated with another "study" posted by u/SkullShape88 that shows that actually, there may be reason to believe that poor people don't actually want a fixed address anyway.
1776Of course point all this out and ten users sweep in to go:
1777well actually we're pretty good at recognizing grand theories, just goes to show you're not arguing in good faith, why can't leftists handle criticism
1778As if that has any impact on my larger point at all. But it's much easier to argue the particulars than the larger point, just like it's much easier to yell "boo outgroup" than it is to clean your own house.
1779But spend a few months here and it all becomes clear. A user will post in a nice guy thread spouting off insane shit about how women want to be treated or how he personally has trouble dating. He'll then go on, two threads later, to talk about the link between IQ and leadership and how STEM people, like himself, should run everything. As if in meatspace I would ever trust somebody to lead me who can't even get a woman in his bed, something most people figure out as teenagers, something most women are happy to do if you treat them right. Smart person no doubt, but lacking the spark that makes them sociable, which is the core of empathy. We see all that, we can draw the connections, and the connection is that just because you're smart, doesn't mean you get how the world works. That's what Impassionista was on about, and his point is valid. You'll have users here talk about how whites and Asians just happen to be the smartest races, and then defend Trump, a senile old white man, beloved by millions of white people in America in the same breath. Well if Trump can convince that many white Americans he's anything more than a rich douche, are whites really that smart?
1780Or to put it in DnD terms: too many users here equate intelligence with wisdom. They're not the same thing and it shows.
1781Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1782
1783Capitalism is premised on perpetual growth. This is an unsustainable trajectory for society. As long as we have an economic model that requires year-over-year growth the environmental issue will not be resolved.
1784Nevermind
1785Lots of different groups have policy proposals. But nothing serious will get done in this direction until we as a society are able to acknowledge the problem. The current American production-consumption model is not sustainable. Any policy solution will need to start from that premise.
1786Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
1787
1788Nah we don't. That user clearly looks down on drug users and women who sleep around. To which I say good, stay the fuck away, more for me. I'm all for helping men who want to be helped, but I'm not putting any effort in to guys who think they're too good for it. I mean the drug thing sure, it's not for everyone. But the sex on the first date thing? What's the issue? I'm sick to death of thirsty dudes who think they're above it or their dick is made of gold or whatever. Pick one.
1789Or to put it another way, I don't want to help those that won't help themselves here. I made this post (and hundreds like it) because I myself was a nice guy who eventually adopted the casual sexual lifestyle I knew I could have, and I did it without a) becoming a misogynist redpill weirdo and b) locking down the first girl that I clicked with. I make posts like these because everywhere I go I see dudes saying that there is no alternative to red pill, either you're a red pill or you're married. I found the third way, and now I'm trying to spread the love so that people who are like I was can move forward without getting sucked into any of these weird internet mousetraps, or so that they don't become like most of the married men I know who gripe endlessly about how it sucks they can only fuck one woman. That's why I posted this. So to have a user Come along and act like he's better than my lifestyle, all I can really say is well so? It's clearly not for you if you read all that and the take away was "yeah all I'm hearing is a guy in 2018 has to do drugs and fuck on the first date, thank god im married" ... totally man, good for you, go away...
1790Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1791
1792Idk feels like you're prioritizing form over content.
1793Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1794
1795Also left;
1796It's high. This forum is pretty hostile to leftwing perspectives but not from a place of good faith. Many users here treat leftwing posters like we are retarded, brainwashed, or like we've never thought about our own positions even once. For example, last week I had a user lecture me on extremely basic, high-school level talking points about free markets, in response to a post I made about the boom-bust cycle. It's not just the reply that annoyed me, it's also the fact that it was delivered with a tone that implied I had literally never considered economics before. I think this constant retort of people throwing out bush-league shit, combined with the insane self assurance it's delivered with an the upvote spread that is clearly partisan, burns out most leftys on this forum
1797Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1798
1799?￰ﾟﾘﾂ this is great. I mean tonally it's a huge whine but in terms of points it's a great roast of this community.
1800Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 29, 2018
1801
1802I think you get mostly unhelpful answers with this one because western society has backed itself into a corner regarding the environment.
1803Yes it's true that if everybody made some changes to their lifestyle (going vegetarian, switching to cycling, limiting their flight time, and consuming less overall) this issue would be resolved. The problem is that between here and there is the most sophisticated production arrangement every arranged, and everyone from Jeff Bezos to the lowly sweatshop worker has a very strong incentive not to fuck with their own role in that system.
1804For example, vegetarianism. I've been vegetarian for 3 years now. What I've concluded in that time is that if everybody made the switch tonight, the dining and agriculture sectors in my country would probably collapse, because 95% of the food available is meat or meat-based. Sure it's a possible transition if we continue to have this 0.5% transition rate but at that speed we will be dead as fuck before we are vegetarian.
1805And I think most people know this intuitively. They realize that to actually live carbon neutral would mean severely changing their lives. No more steak dinners. No more Air Jordan's. No more suburbia. And given that most people can barely resist simple marketing gimmicks, yeah of course they're going to feel defeated
1806Strasserism and the anti-idpol left are not compatible.
1807
1808Yeah this is true, the myth in North America is that fascism was slain in WWII and that's just not true, fascism in various forms continues to play a major role in Latin, African and European politics
1809Chapo Trap House: Traitors to the Revolution
1810
1811Bio: film MA at Columbia
1812What trick is being played here?
1813
1814Not quite, tho that's a piece of it
181522 year old programmer is getting it
1816
1817Nah fuck that drop out of professional work. I've been trying to crack this nut for years and all I've learned is that trying to clear the class hurdle will drive you fucking mad. Take the skills and knowledge you have back to your community and make it a better place
181822 year old programmer is getting it
1819
1820This is like saying bankers have a great opportunity to change the system because they control global capital flows.
1821Programmers are well paid because the system selects for people who will pay the game. OP is in for a rude ass awakening
1822Please just read this so I don't have to suffer alone
1823
1824Mein fuhrer, I can valk!
1825October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
1826
1827Maybe? What's a full and emotionally vibrant life?
1828The NPC meme is a reminder that you're not the protagonist of the movie
1829
1830Nah drilling it down to a team dialogue is too simple it just re-iterates the same thought pattern, just grafted onto a new classification system.
1831The issue with this meme is in the way an individual approaches these questions. This, shitty as it is (i do think Trump is a racist but that's another topic), is the core of the NpC/PC distinction. A PC asks questions, an NPC gives answers. The assumptions underlying the NPC view (red or blue) are not challenged by the NPC, because they aren't asking questions, they are repeating answers. These problems are solvable in their epistemology and solving them is a priority.
1832This is why NPC thought is always structured as "if we just get rid of (Trump, SJWs, racism, Jews, misogyny, feminazis) society will finally begin to fix itself!" Or, in a another direction, "if I just buy this house, watch the new marvel film, get that promotion, I'll be happy!" They see life as a solvable algorithm rather than a stretch of time or a series of phenominon.
1833The reason it struck a cord is because it highlighted the artificiality of these desires. As somebody else said, there is nothing radical about watching Late Night talk shows; there's also nothing radical about reading the best seller Peterson. People assume that their engagement with the algorithm is solving the problem; the meme points out that the algorithm is the problem, that the same process that created Trump is the process that created John Stewart.
1834It struck a nerve because people don't like to think about their own alienation. Adults really fall into two categories in my experience: people who have never had an issue with the status quo, and people who had an issue but sublimated it. This meme attacks both at the same time by equating them; those who never dig deeper than the surface feel called out for their superficiality; those who went deeper and turned back get called out for their hypocrisy.
1835Maybe the meme is dehumanizing, probably. Certainly the basement mutants that haunt 4chan took it as justification for their own twisted desires. But the core of the meme, pointing out the superficial level of engagement most people have with the media-production complex, is 100% valid. I mean this shit is basically Adorno weaponizes against an audience that has trouble remembering news headlines older than 3 weeks. Writing it off as lazy tribalism is just falling into another pre-packaged "rebuttal" that doesn't actual engage with the substance of the meme at all.
1836What killed the meme is that rightwingers got ahold of it and interpreted it to me "lol libs are stupid" which is totally npc in itself. Like all good things, it got fucking stupid the second stupid people got ahold of it
1837Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 22, 2018
1838
1839My favourite thing about the post-Clinton world is watching liberals stumble dick first into Marxist talking points. This is one of those moments. Of course this "news" is immediately obvious to those of us from the working class, so no surprise here.
1840Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 22, 2018
1841
1842According to the article the vast majority of people in politics have never had a working class job at any point in their life.
1843The average member of Congress spent less than 2 percent of his or her entire pre-congressional career doing the kinds of jobs most Americans go to every day
1844It's not that workers are meriting their way up to white collar work and beyond, most of the political class started in white collar work. 2% of a 40 year career is about 9 months, with many doing less than even that. No way did they all merit their way up and out in a <9 month hustle at McDonalds or whatever. Maybe one or two of them were the best waiter ever right out of highschool and immediately used that to pivot into white collar work but all of them? I don't think so. What's more likely is they were streamed into the white collar world from an earlier age and that's where they got their start.
1845"Today my client was excited to push the elevator buttons on the way to her first deportation hearing."
1846
1847Straight fascist rhetoric hours whomst up
1848Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 22, 2018
1849
1850Yeah man when I think "reigning in capitalisms worst excesses" I definitely think Nimby lobbying, guild-style liscencing schemes, the corrupt FDA and the kinds of people that call the cops on a man selling cigarettes. That's exactly the kind of conversation I think is missing from the discussion. Those certainly aren't common talking points that get trotted out constantly.
1851Whatever dude. You have your perspective, sounds like you've committed to it, I'm not interested in wasting more time hearing about how if we just capitalist harder things will resolve themselves. None of what you've mentioned has anything to do with the boom bust cycle, because in western history there's only been one serious pro-capitalist attempt to reign that cycle in and it was abandoned as a project when the bean counters got squeamish about inflation, which we got anyway so hey. Your decision to focus on the FDA regulating baby food or cities decisions not to develop favelas, both small game compared to the lives destroyed everytime there is a financial bubble, really says all I need to know about your priorities in this thread. Don't @ me
1852Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1853
1854This is all true, but Ford is not a POC and he's not broke. It's not a good look for a man in his position
1855Also lowkey I think POc get too much of a pass on this one. There is a learning curve that comes with moving out (either alone or with roomates) and I think many POC would be better equipped if their parents encouraged them to move out sooner, especially given that often the pressure to remain comes not from an economic imperative but from a cultural conservativism around sexuality (ie most Indian, Chinese etc women I know are not allowed to move out until they get married). I understand there is a different culture and blah blah blah but this attitude is one of the subtle ways conservativism and anti-feminism is entrenched in our community, and it's weird that there is little to no scrutiny here
1856Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1857
1858Yeah can't complain about that, it is good
1859Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1860
1861It's okay. Still kind of hyper dependent on a few risky industries though. Also lots of stabbings.
1862Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1863
1864Dude was from York region, which truly is small dick county, which is why there is so many BMWs there
1865Also for real I have never understood BMW and similar "cheaper" luxury cars. Like real expensive shit like Lamborginis make sense to me I suppose because they're truly a 1% vehicle but with BMW it's like, what's the point? All you're really saying is that you're some upper-middle manager at a major firm who somehow still thinks a woman will fuck you if you have a "sick" ride, which you don't, you have a BMW. Nobody thinks you're hot shit. Diddo for Audi and similar stuff. Then again I'm not a car guy so maybe some of the nuance is lost on me
1866Slavoj Žižek - Surveillance and whistleblowers [Full lecture]
1867
1868I would have to check, I will reply later
1869Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 22, 2018
1870
1871And you're doing the typical thing of setting your goal posts in a position where any kick is a field goal. Yes capitalism is better than lots of alternatives. That doesn't place it above criticism.
1872These discussions go nowhere, not because there isn't enough data, or because there isn't a set standard of what constitutes a capitalist country, or because the critics of the world can't articulate a new superior economic system on the spot.
1873They go nowhere because people like yourself lack the ability to think constructively.
1874OP asks whether or not capitalism can resolve its own issues. I choose a simple example, the boom bust cycle, and point out that it seems this is a problem capitalism can't resolve itself, given that we've had these cycles for as long as we've had capitalism. Now we can argue about the severity of the busts but even the mildest busts means real people have their real life fucked up. This is a problem capitalism has yet to figure out a solution for, and so perhaps it's time we consider other options rather than repeating the same cycle and hoping there is a different outcome.
1875And then you come along and dismiss it as a non issue because I, some random dude, don't have a pre-packaged global economic model ready to go. Well guess what, this stuff may not be an issue to you but I'm from the rust belt and I've seen first-hand the down stream effects of a bust, and it's not pretty. It looks like people living in their cars, teenagers on drugs, old people being abandoned when their kids move cross-country to find work, graffiti on everything, shuttered houses and people going from middle-class to poor in a 6 month stretch. None of this is speculative to me and pointing out that this is a problem in the system is not some speculative point, its a real complaint about the fact that many of us are directly affected by this.
1876And yet these conversations still happen, where even suggesting that maybe this is an issue that should be addressed in some capacity is met with somebody like you coming along and pointing out that compared to (starving country) capitalism is actually great!
1877Well, you're right. I'd rather try to weather the occasional economic meltdown than try to survive in a place like Venezuela. So you got me there, bravo, you win. Now can we please talk about the reality that capitalism is not a magical alchemy that unilaterally serves everyone equally? Or do I have to continue to pay homage to blind platitudes that mean nothing to me functionally because I'm already living paycheck to paycheck anyway? Wowee, there hasn't been a famine in two of the richest countries in the world since the 1700s, that's fantastic, except its not the 1700s, it's the 2000s and I don't know how my family will survive the next downturn given my Dad's poor health, my brother's fragile employment and my own mental illness. When is capitalism going to innovate a solution for all that?
1878This is the part where you inject a little lecture about personal responsibility, moving to a different city or learning to code. Of course, when things are up, it's the fault of this great economic chain we all ride. It's only when things are down that I'm actually the master of my destiny. Well I've been working my entire life and I'm no closer to the finish line than the day I turned 14 and got my first (legal) job. But hey who am I to judge how the system works, maybe I'm just fated for annihilation and this whole thing has been an exercise in futility because my genetics are screwed or I breathed too much fertilizer as a child, who knows. Then again, if that's the case then why not throw in with the socialists, yeah we'd burn it all down but it'd be a hell of a party, and if I'm screwed anyway...
1879Like I said, I'm glad capitalism is working great for you. It's not for me. I don't have any data points, I don't have any statistics, all I have is the reality that my life is getting worse year over year and as far as I can tell this is how the program is supposed to work, people like yourself keep telling me over and over that actually, this is the best possible world. Well that's great, but life in the best possible world isn't a currency my landlord accepts. So for Christ sake can we please have a discussion about how to improve this situation and stabilize it a bit, rather than just immediately answering every single criticize of capitalism with "but dude, would you rather starve in one of those socialist countries?" As if nobody over here ever starves, as if there isn't people living on the street right outside my front door.
1880Really my first reply was short because I was 99% sure I didn't want to get involved at all, because any discussion about a better world is ruthlessly criticized and attacked in this forum and the world at large. I appreciate you calling me a utopian for pointing out that the system could be improved a bit. Like I said, these conversations are never constructive so I have no idea why I bother
1881Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 22, 2018
1882
1883Glad you're enjoying your time. Wasn't there food riots across the developing world about 5 years ago when the price of corn went up? Or are we only looking at the richest strata of the richest countries? When the global markets take a shit I'm sure the good people of Jamaica or India don't notice
1884Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1885
1886That'd be nice, maybe I can get a job near my family too
1887Slavoj Žižek - Surveillance and whistleblowers [Full lecture]
1888
1889Check that time stamp he refers to a specific oscAr-winning movie but he doesn't give the name
1890Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1891
1892Hamilton is lowkey the most underrated city in Ontario. You guys keep it real. Last time I was there one of the dudes I was partying with was so drunk he openly admitted to everytone that he has an abnormally small dick, and since then that's been a benchmark for me: if your party isn't so lit that small dick dudes start owning it then don't invite me.
1893TLP Flashback #11: "Will You Ever Be Happy?"
1894
1895What fascinates me about this board is how much people read their own politics into TLP. I read him and see it as a call for social progress and critique, not a step removed from the dreaded "cultural Marxists" many on the right often mislabel critical theorists. Then I log on on here and see people arguing how TLP would be happy to watch the modern left getting swept away, the shock of Trump and so on. Truly bizarre
1896Slavoj Žižek - Surveillance and whistleblowers [Full lecture]
1897
1898At around 1:11 he mentions a documentary, does anybody know which one his referring to?
1899Donald Trump just embraced nationalism. Yes, really.
1900
1901You mean the Chinese, Russian and Iranian troops?
1902Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 22, 2018
1903
19041. Not without a mediating force. The crises that constantly happen in capitalism are essentially moloch reigning.
19052. I don't know. I'm inclined to say no because every attempt to do so has been met with extreme hostility
1906The NPC meme is a reminder that you're not the protagonist of the movie
1907
1908That's exactly correct. It stuck because it struck a nerve. The real question why people people reacted to this juvenile shit so strongly
1909The NPC meme is a reminder that you're not the protagonist of the movie
1910
1911"I would never join a club that was willing to have me as a member"
1912What trick is being played here?
1913
1914"What does the author want to be true?"
1915In this case, that if people just pull together with their neighbors, politics will resolve itself.
1916Look at the prescriptions; he asks if services are delivered at a neighbourhood level or if they're "coming" from above. He's actually advocating that the state offload its responsibilities onto "community members", I.e. NGOs. The "neighbourhood" is not a political unit with political representation, it's only a geographic destination for social programming. A receiver, not a player.
1917What is a neighbourhood in a modern city anyway? My current building alone has more people than my hometown did, there is literally tens of thousands of people living within a 5 block radius of the closet I call home. Are we in league because we're geographically close? I doubt it
1918Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1919
1920Yeah man that's my plan too, I hoping to be out of here within 2 years. It is insane how far down the shit this province has gone
1921Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1922
1923He deserves to choke on a donut
1924Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1925
1926Drake is sad because he likes 14yo girls. Look it up
1927Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1928
1929Honestly big question but right now Ontario is a perfect Fucking storm for this bullshit.
1930First you have 15+ years of this unchallenged neoliberal onslaught that gutted everywhere not directly attached to Lake Ontario, so for almost 2 decades there has been this steady stream of people flooding into Toronto because it's the only place with any jobs left. Whoever is left becomes resentful because they're making fuck all living off a Walmart salary while rich Toronto liberals raise taxes perpetually just to squander it on shit like the 407 or hydro which are projects the fucking province built and paid for and then FUCKING SOLD to private investors, which somehow was not immediately cause for a fucking criminal investigation, like talk about the biggest fucking corruption heist in Canadian history, and it just happened without any consequence because the rich fucks that run Toronto love liberal leaders because they make them rich and protect their Fucking investments.
1931Then you have this hyper-conservative suburb culture of nimby dipshits, rich Asshole commuters and conservative immigrants who forgot to leave their judgements back home, and all three band together to fuck over Toronto proper because they hate the idea of people actually living their fucking lives and not giving a shit that Richard, Lisa or Kumar don't approve of them liking men or banging heroin or whatever, like they drive down the streets of Toronto on their way to their cushy office jobs and are physically disgusted that they encounter the odd junkie or punk, they're terrified and they take revenge at the ballot box which is why Toronto is insanely over policed and perpetually having it's culture gutted by assholes who fuck it all up, which is why despite being a city of 3m we have no real culture except pretending to be New York in American films and fucking Drake, anything more edgy than Headlines is immediately shamed or attacked by these conservative fucks who do everything in their power to ensure Toronto is quiet, car-friendly and well-zoned, with no crowds not endorsed by TD bank and no events not charging 25$ cover, and even that they aren't happy with because gasp they saw a gay couple kiss at pride and they couldn't believe how PRIDE could be so vulgar in front of children, better bitch to the sponsor. Who is also TD. Fuck you TD.
1932Then you have the fact that Toronto itself has become a meat grinder, basic survival is extremely hard because a huge pool of people is competing for a tiny pool of jobs, most of which go to the good ol' boys (and girls) who are already plugged in, and whoever doesn't get through the gate is left to fight to the death over the handful of reasonably priced apartments, most of which are getting torn down and replaced with luxury condos that are just tax shelters for hyperich douchebags the world over. So whatever leftwing base could exist in Toronto has been decimated, each year a huge section of supporters are scooped up and dumped into the conservative suburbs and the wilderness beyond, where there is no representation at all, like we can barely maintain a leftwing city council in the (allegedly) gayest, most progressive, most racially diverse city on the continent, that's how fucking pulverized the base is here, like even our tankies get along with the rest of the left because there just isn't enough room for us to fight amongst ourselves, our antifa is literally like 15 dudes in a Maoist cell, that's it, once again, in the allegedly progressive heart of Eastern Canada. Oh and race tensions are high and continue to be high, nobody trusts anybody, so good luck organizing anything. Which is probably why if you've ever been to a protest in Toronto it's the same 200 "woke" students repeating chants, anything more sophisticated just can't get off the ground because there is no ground to launch from.
1933And then lastly you have the X factor, the man himself, the fat fuck, the failson, the man who lives with his fucking mother, Doug Ford, "man of the people", this dick. Popular city councillor due to his (and his dead brother, rest in shit) ability to bitch about the liberals, talk down to people and generally be the dumb man's idea of what a leader is, total cam whore and stupid as fuck. The Conservative party shits the bed when their dickhead leader Brown gets caught with his hand's unconsentually down somebody's pants, they throw a special election and momma's boy runs. Immediately our alt-right, our Facebook dad's, our screaming loonatics and whoever else falls in line, though not withour a lotta corruption to stack the deck. This fuck stick comes in and promises to gut the liberals and make beer 1$, and he wins doing it because of everything I mentioned above + Ford was so unspecific that you could write whatever you wanted to believe into his platform. He was somehow going to fix the budget without increasing taxes or cutting jobs, the dude is a magician and people came to see the show.
1934And that's where Ontario is now. Liberal mismanagement, old fashion shitty conservativism, a dead left and a protofascist in the right place at the right time, with a constituency just dumb enough to buy it. So now, rather than being a world leader in green tech, we're gutting that sector. Now, sex Ed is being walked back to the 1998 curriculum. Now minimum wage and public hiring is frozen. Now protests against mystics like Peterson are banned. Now the Toronto city council has been literally halved, outright gerrymandering and nobody has the balls to even say it. Oh and tax cuts of course, can't forget the tax cuts.
1935And beer still costs minimum of 5$. So through all this bullshit it's just as expensive for me to tranquilize myself. That's what going on in Ontario.
1936Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1937
1938In many ways we are worse than the US because we cover it all up and try to act like we don't do stupid shit. At least in the states it's all out in the open
1939Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1940
1941I've had the pleasure of meeting some of those people in a non-confrontational settings. I assure you they are about as psycho as you would expect.
1942Also the "leftists" in this city disgust me. It's like every shitty stereotype actualized. Makes it hard to take them seriously
1943Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1944
1945It is man. And honestly the politics is just the tip of it. It's totally normal to clock 60h+ workweeks just to survive in the GTA. I don't know what the fuck people are trying to prove but it's insane the lengths a young person needs to go to survive here. No wonder everybody with a brain or a soul leaves Toronto the second they can
1946Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1947
1948This guy reads
1949Edit: which is good. Keep doing it. Take your tv and throw it off a height.
1950Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1951
1952Yup Toronto politics is straight retarded when it comes to housing. Ontario at large is dumb as fuck too. Honestly I can't stand this province, it's like a political blackhole
1953Episode 256 - Ass, Grass or Sasse (10/22/18)
1954
1955Good episode, hard one tho too
1956News from Ontario: we just had our municipal elections. The left lost ground across the board, Toronto kept it's shitty asskissser conservative mayor, although the neofascist psycho candidate grabbed third place (out of 14 candidates), surprising nobody because people have lost their fucking minds up here.
1957Between this and last summer's defeat, wherein this stupid ass province elected a bumbling idiot for his promises to gut the public sector, rollback education 20 years, perpetually wear a shit eating grin and eat everything in sight, it's been a shitty year for the Canadian left.
1958This episode resonated because it feels like there isn't really much left to the left these days. "Surrender". It's hard to not just do that, just accept that we're under the tread at this point, just let the machine roll over us. "Just go back to sleep" as Matt puts it.
1959And yet there's an itch I just can't scratch. Amber was on fire this episode, not just for comments but also for ideas; around 48:00 she talks about retirement in a community, aging with dignity. The idea that a retiree could be anything but shoved into a shoebox apartment and left to die is practically a radical position and yet I can't think of a better vision.
1960And really who is offering visions anymore? I can't think of anybody actually offering an image of what the future could be, even our dumbass premier and the psycho neofascists can only describe how they're going to destroy; destroy welfare, destroy the PC police, destroy refugees, destroy regulation, destroy alternative families, alternative lifestyles, alternative ideas. And our liberals can only talk about how they will destroy the right, how they'll valiantly maintain the status quo that is slowly destroying us.
1961Maybe that's why I'm still on the left, despite my total disillusionment, despite my general disgust with other leftists, despite the fact that I'm sick with nihilism, despite Debord and Adorno, despite my total alienation from my family politically, despite the exhaustion of watching my friend's become conservative right before my eyes, despite the perpetual arguing and debating, despite the fact that we keep fucking losing, I'm still on the left because at least we have a conception of time, that through all the bullshit our position still has one eye on the future and one on the past, that we're still trying to make sense of it all rather than just saying "fuck it" and voting for a fat fuck because he promises he'll fuck up the other team, like this is some kind of sick game we play while waiting for the end rather than a chance to actually improve things.
1962And that's really what it's about. We can still change.
1963I listen to "we live in the zone now" probably once every six months. 2 years later and this mess shows no sign of stopping. I'm genuinely afraid of the future, not just for my country but for myself personally. Having somewhere where I can go and hear friendly voices helps, because everybody I know in meat space has mostly given up, switched sides, or been pushed to the bottom of the bucket.
1964I'm probably heading that way too. But if I'm screwed at least I can go down knowing there are other people out there like me, even if we're spread thin. It does help, which is why I still listen to this podcast. It makes me feel less alone.
1965Article I wrote - "Left-Leaning Activism and Media is Ineffective at Advancing Political Causes" discussion/feedback/comments welcome
1966
1967True but there is a difference between a call-in and a call-out. Down thread I did a whole breakdown of why OP is lost, and did it without attitude. Like if this was a fascist or a concern troll then yeah by all means fuck them. But based on the article it sounds like dude is just a liberal. These are the people we want to convert (well, some of them, the mass of people that don't participate is the real prize but that's another discussion)
1968Article I wrote - "Left-Leaning Activism and Media is Ineffective at Advancing Political Causes" discussion/feedback/comments welcome
1969
1970hey man we all start somewhere dude, nobody is born with a copy of Debord in their hands
1971Article I wrote - "Left-Leaning Activism and Media is Ineffective at Advancing Political Causes" discussion/feedback/comments welcome
1972
1973On section 1,
1974This whole section is built on the assumption that a protest will directly create change. I don't think anybody actually believes that. Really there is two schools of thought when it comes to protests:
1975Pluralist: Protests are an opportunity for like-minded people to network with more serious activists. The protest won't change anything per-say but it registers dissent and connects people to existing political networks. These people are then given further work in relative fields and eventually form a voting block come election time, which then creates further systemic change.
1976Radical/Marxist/Anarchist: Protests are a mass register of discontent and if the crowd can be properly directed in the moment they can escalate into a radical political solution such as a general strike, and expropriation, or even a whole-sale revolt. The energy of a protest is an opportunity for radical politicos to wield grass-roots support and make lasting change for the good.
1977Both of these approaches fail in America, for different reasons. In the radical tradition, protests go nowhere because there is no real radical perception of what a superior system would look like. Most radical groups in America venerate dead forms (USSR, "C"ommunism, obscure anarcho-communes, etc) and are lost in a politics of hero worship and posturing, due to the poverty of their own position. These groups can't utilize the energy of a protest because their rhetoric is too obscure, too incorrect and too backward-facing to captivate the general imagination, so it goes nowhere. Black-bloc actions tend to fall into this category for example, because your typical 35yo middle manager doesn't understand why Starbucks is a problem, let alone has any desire to burn one down.
1978The pluralist tradition fails because the "leftwing"' political network in America is a leftwing network in name only. The democratic party leadership is pro-business, pro-war and pro-status quo, so they devote an insane amount of time towards punching left and preventing leftwing ideas from gaining a foothold in the party. Individual activists (such as those in BLM or the infamous Berniecrats) spend huge amount of time networking people, just for that momentum to get sucked up and destroyed when it comes time to translate it into political action.
1979The end result is that there is a series of protests that go nowhere. People come out, they scream, they chant, they talk about fighting, but it goes nowhere, because the network that could take that energy and turn it into an institution is actively suppressed by the existing institutions and nobody outside the party is able to articulate an alternative. Now repeat that for 40 years or so and you hit the point we are at now, where very few protesting can even articulate a systemic demand, let alone organize into something that could make it happen within the "leftwing" party in America (and certainly not the ballet box).
1980On section 2,
1981These shows are entertainment. They are not fundamentally different from the Apprentice. They carry no political weight and can change nothing. Baudrillard is the name here.
1982On section 3,
1983The right is coming up on the same contradiction every fascist movement ever has crashed against, which is that despite total political and cultural control, the constituents still feel political humiliated and the problems that brought them to power have not been solved (and can't be solved, because to solve them would be to end the core contradictions that structure our society, which can't occur because they are the contradictions that sustain the movement as well). This contradiction between the political victory and the continuation of politics itself has to be resolved, so the fascists project their own failure onto external figures, particularly political opponents and ethnic out groups.
1984This projection will continue to intensify for as long as the situation becomes more dire; the GOP is going to become more harsh, not less, until something "breaks" and this contradiction is resolved. My money is on a war but really anything can happen so hey
1985Suggestion: end old Culture War thread on Friday, start new one on Saturday
1986
1987And here I thought the whole point was to give you something better to do than work
1988Reading Adorno
1989
1990Love me some Adorno. If you like his stuff you should check Minima Moralia, it's essentially a post-mortem for WWII and an epitaph for modernity, amazing book and had a huge influence on my way of thinking
1991Article I wrote - "Left-Leaning Activism and Media is Ineffective at Advancing Political Causes" discussion/feedback/comments welcome
1992
1993I care deeply about this topic but I've maxed out my medium reads, can we get a mirror? I'd love to offer feedback
1994Does automation affect Marx's account of machinery as "dead" until human labor-power gets involved?
1995
1996These are good questions and tbh I'm not entirely sure.
1997In Marx he distinguishes between use value and market value. Use value is how I described it above; the utility an object provides an individual when it's used. Market value is the value of an object in terms of what it can be exchanged for. Unlike use value, which is fixed by the nature of the object, market value fluctuates based on who is buying and selling, how many items are in the market and so on.
1998Something to keep in mind is that time (as labor) also has both a use value and a market value. So the activities you describes maybe could be considered productive, not because they are adding value to the object sold, but because they are using individuals time to engage in activity that leads to a sale.
1999Honestly I would need to review Kapital to offer a more clear explanation
2000Something small that bugs me about season 5, Why does Bojack seem to be caught off guard when he slides into addiction in season 5? He was already doing heroin with Sarah Lynn in season 4, surely he would know what he was getting himself into.
2001
2002I think part of being an addict is that there is a weird layering of thought-terminating cliches. Iirc at one point hollyhock asks him if he is "really in that much pain" and he replies "I have been in pain my whole life", ie he knows he's absuing the drugs but he's already justified it in his head
2003Can a Zizek-certified dialectician please explain to me why this image and the fact it got to the front page infuriates me so much?
2004
2005You zee, schniff, here we have an exzample of ideology breaksching down in face of ze real. Ze capitalist ideology maintainz that ze worker must work to earn money to fulfill his dezire, and zis schniff ish a moral imperatiff, zat the reward for hard work ish suczesh, perzonal fulfilment, a promozion and so on and so on. When ze homelesch man getsch more money begging zan a regular job would pay him, ze contradiczion between what ze ideology sesh and ze real, which ish zat income and moral ztanding hash no conneczion, ish revealed. To maintain ze ideology, ze believer must seek to remove ze upzetting element, in zis case ze ability of the homelesch man to panhandle, asch for donazions and so on.
2006Does automation affect Marx's account of machinery as "dead" until human labor-power gets involved?
2007
2008Subsequently, the rest of the laborers who are replaced by automation are re-purposed to some sort of sales position or a within a hierarchy where the bottom level is just someone who is designed to sell you something. Everyone still gets paid. But I do suspect that is unsustainable as well, though I don't quite see it right away. Sounds inflationary to me. Like the surplus value has to sustain all those sales people and their respective hierarchies.
2009In Marx, value is not equivalent with currency. "Value" is a aspect of individual's time, and when those individuals use that time to create a usable material object (i.e. production) the value is stored in the object, which is then released when another individual uses that object for it's intended purpose. This process of storing is broadly described as "production".
2010Actions that don't actually store value in an object are not adding value to the economy as a result. Actions that simply involve moving money around are non-productive activities. A classic example is a landlord; the landlord's "job", even though it earns them money, is not productive, because they are not actually storing any value when they do their task (see note at bottom).
2011The vast majority of sales actions fall into this category. In order for the capitalist to make any money, the commodities being produced must be sold and paying somebody to do so is not actually inputting value into itself. Consider a hatchet: once it hits the store shelf, it's ready to be used. No matter how good of a salesperson the salesman is, the sale itself won't make it a superior (in terms of usability) hatchet.
2012As a result, increasing sales staff in a firm eats up more value (in terms of overhead) but doesn't actually increase production. The amount of value the company can add to the economy remains the same. So, when the cycle of pressures I mentioned above makes another pass, these individuals can be cut from the company in order to increase efficiency. We're seeing the next leap forward in this with the replacement of cashier with these, an example of number 1. above.
2013What I'm getting at is simply converting the whole workforce (or even a big share of it) to the sales department (or similar work such as adding redundant managers, creative projects that go nowhere, etc. Basically if it looks like Office Space) isn't a long-term solution to this cycle. They may take home more dollars temporarily but unless they themselves invest it in productive activity, that value is lost when it's used (i.e. eaten, put into goods that depreciate, etc).
2014I mostly agree with the rest of your post, which is correct.
2015Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2016
2017It sounds like you are making a lot of assumptions. I live in Ontario, I've met the parents around here (I have a job that works with highschool students), I don't think it's that unlikely there are parents like this. I just wish they would make themselves visible
2018Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2019
2020I'd say that's likely, which is part of why I'm curious.
2021Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2022
2023do you have any proof of this?
2024Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2025
2026Who are these parents in favour of a ban? I wish we could know more about them
2027NO MUGGLES BEYOND THIS POINT
2028
2029Spielberg
2030art
2031?
2032Stop The Presses: Shocking poll on American political values confirms what literally NOBODY suspected : The "Wokest" are rich, over-educated mayos!
2033
2034Lmao basement dwellers calling other people sperg's cause they got bills to pay
2035The German Ideology: Why does Marx claim that the contradiction between productive forces and social relations is the condition for the contradiction between ideology and social relations?
2036
2037Can you share the passage you are referring to?
2038How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2039
2040People don't reincarnate with memories of past lives
2041Does automation affect Marx's account of machinery as "dead" until human labor-power gets involved?
2042
2043Marx theory assumes capitalists are attempting to Maximize profit. The examples you cite could be a way out of the problem except the remaining capitalists are incentivized to break any packs or abuse any monopoly as doing so will increase their profits.
2044The taking the shit part occurs when everyday people's purchasing power dips below a sustainable level; in the question for great profits progressively more people are pushed out of the economy (automated out or have their hours cut). This means a smaller and smaller of pool of people to sell a larger and larger pool of goods too. Eventually you reach a point wherein there is more goods in market than possible buyers, at which point the capitalist is screwed as they're stuck holding the excess commodoties. They start cutting hours and liquidating capital to make the difference up and the whole economy shrinks.
2045How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2046
2047So you're worried about a problem that doesn't even apply to you
2048How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2049
2050Do you have kids?
2051How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2052
2053You won't. Inside 3 generations your line (if it survives) will be barely recognizable. And besides, who cares, your personally, your geist will be gone to next place anyway, it won't be your problem
2054WHY the NPC Meme CRASHED TWITTER #OrangeManBad
2055
2056WHY this VIDEO tells me the LIBS were TOTALLY OWNED by a GRAPHIC cause im SMART. #ImNotAnNPC
2057How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2058
2059I want it on record that I'm pro-sexual Revolution, the current system works great for me personally, I generally oppose a handmaiden's tale situation
2060That said, infind the concern about genetics so misplaced because the effects are so down wind it's almost guaranteed you will be dead. So why worry?
2061Does automation affect Marx's account of machinery as "dead" until human labor-power gets involved?
2062
2063Profit is perpetually falling due to three factors (if I remember correctly; been a while since I read Kapital):
20641. Technology improves the production process, meaning a need to perpetually re-invest into superior production facilities. These don't make the capitalist more profitable, they just keep her in the game since if she doesn't upgrade her competitors will out-produce her and send her to ruin
20652. If all technology is equal, capitalists are stuck competing on price. This happens on two key ways. The first is to scale up production; rather than making 100 products/Manhour they now must make 200 or 300, basically getting more value / dollar or labor invested. Problem now is that they need to sell more products; while they are getting more value out of their man hours, they have to sell significantly more products to break even. This drives down prices, increasing the need for more efficient production, leading to:
20663. Improving efficiency. Cutting hours, automating further, mechanizing the process more, tightening supply lines, etc. Basically trimming the operation makes it more profitable while keeping sales levels the same.
2067This cycle keeps repeating as each capitalist who does one of these three things forces his neighbor to follow suit. This cycle causes profitability to shrink until the capitalist is driven out, and that keeps occurring until the majority of capital is concentrated into a handful of hands, at which point the economy takes a shit when hyper-concentrated capital leads to a consumer purchasing power crises. Capital is spread back into the market as companies fail and the whole cycle starts over
2068How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2069
2070That's the spirit
2071How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2072
2073Wait wait wait, are you suggesting we communize pussy? I'm lost
2074How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2075
2076You'll do that regardless. At least this way you get to make witty quips
2077How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2078
2079with that said
2080It's too late for that man. If you're reading it it's for you, and you're here, so you can't be a last man. Your only path now is to unplug from the web and move to the mountains and speak in riddles and start a merry band of stereotypes that also double as a critique of the civic society of the era.
2081Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2082
2083I said I was familiar but didn't really look often. I did not get the job.
2084How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2085
2086I hope I'm still in the running, I want that title
2087How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2088
2089what is the connection
2090Have you read any of TLP at all? He devotes post after post after post on the link between narcisstic injury and rage.
2091How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2092
2093Yo what is with all the ssc nerds in this thread today? Terminology, linking the blog, "in-group/out-group", seriously?
2094Keep it in your own sub people. This sub takes a completely different epistemological bend from what Scott is on. It is extremely doubtful Alone would have approved of how Scott approaches problems, especially his attachment to centrist posturing.
2095You wanna play fine but come up with something more interesting than just writing this off as tribal politics or whatever.
2096How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2097
2098Why not?
2099How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2100
2101A bad trip is not a black pill anymore than a good trip is a blue pill. All a psychedelic can do is dismantle the illusions you use to deceive yourself in daily life. If somebody is getting black pilled on a bad trip, it's because their psyche (esp. unconscious) is a mess.
2102How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2103
2104Ãœbermensch is an epistemological angle, not a genetic output. Alone goes after the generic line of reasoning multiple times in his blog and continually hits the same point, which is that the hyperfocus on genetics is just another way for last men to justify wallowing in their narcissism
2105How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2106
2107Eh I'm not convinced a 6 figure salary is best. Better than bitter poverty? Sure. Better than a cool 35k/a? Not sure. The psychic mutilation people seem to go through to be eligible for that 6 figures scares the shit out of me; like yeah you can make 135k but only if you cut out a piece of your soul
2108Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2109
2110Finally policy I can support
2111Woman hates on childless couples at Disney World, while complaining about the exhaustion and terribleness of having children at Disney World.
2112
2113I mean this person is nuts but also grown ass adults going to Disneyland w/o kids is weird as shit too. Grow the fuck up
2114Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2115
2116Oh shit you schooled me, I suppose I must be an NPC then ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
2117How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2118
2119Yes. I too love living in zombie culture. When I see a new marvel movie, I say "yes!". When I see a new rightwing meme, I say "no!"
2120Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2121
2122Why not?
2123Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2124
2125Not liberal
2126Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2127
2128I am a nihilist-existentialist. I'm perpetually in the process of breaking down and rebuilding my own assumptions and interpretations. I probably qualify as schizoid.
2129I'm making a demand for rigour a) because I'm bored and b) because I believe this is the only way out of being an NPC
2130Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2131
2132Sorry are you accusing me or the other guy of Bulverism?
2133This conversation started as a discussion about NPc epistemology, and then got derailed by somebody trying to argue about whether or not my example of somebody else's example of NPC thinking is actually a case in which the right is correct about the facts of the case, which I said from the start is not what I was getting at and I just chose that as an example because it is a good example re: NPC thinking, and I've been trying to walk that user back to the core of My point since but he insists on debating whether he is "right" about this case which is totally irrelevant in my larger point.
2134Normally I would use a leftwing example because the right wingers in these threads are massively blind to their own epistemological assumptions but because the NpC meme is only argued from The right, that's all I had to work with. ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ Come up with a leftwing example of NpC-free thought and I'll argue the same.
2135Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2136
2137I have (a) frame,
2138Boom, stop right there, this is the whole crux of my argument thus far. Why? Why frame this news at all?
2139A. and B. are questions already within your frame. This is a big deal because of the way in which you have framed the case. This demonstrates a pitfall in progressivism because of the way in which you have framed the case. I'm asking, why?
2140Thus far you have repeated the same argument: the nature of this case makes it worth interpreting. I'm asking what if the exact opposite is true? What if your interpretation is what makes this worthy of being a case? Make that inversion and you're much closer to escaping NPC mindset than any analysis of this case can ever do for you
2141How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2142
2143No but I wish it had been
2144Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2145
2146You're still trying to pull me into an argument about the merit of this particular case, which I am not talking about. I am talking about the structure of how you came to believe this case is worth discussing. You (or rather who you have chosen to pull your data from) has framed this as a special case because it fits their perspective. You are now repeating this frame in an attempt to get me to adopt it. Why? Why is your frame correct, but a police-corruption or a feminist sex-trafficking frame is not?
2147With the exact same facts (a group of conservative men groomed and raped a girl, police did nothing) I could make an argument for an anarcho-feminist state. What makes you confident your culture-war anti-left anti-Muslim frame is the correct one?
2148Or is that just what you've been told? Up thread you repeat endlessly the left doesn't care about this, as reported by rightwing sources. Are you sure you're not an NPC? Is that air you're breathing?
2149How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2150
2151It is a simulation. Read Baudrillard.
2152How the Frankfurt School presciently wrote of the danger of the "Frankfurt School", and other ironies
2153
2154I think the dunking on the meta-move only works because of a very selective reading of the Frankfurt school. Adorno devoted huge amounts of his time to arguing the case that these "alt" groups (counter cultures, rebellions etc) were themselves part of the system. "Something is provided for all so none may escape". Actually reading Adorno (minima moralia especially) is actually a lot more bleak than this meme, because this meme at least implies there's still players left. Adorno's point was nope, the whole thing is over, we're all robots now.
21554chan is not underground. It's probably the third most culturally-relevant English speaking forum in the world, after Twitter and Reddit. It's the home of the internet right. It's ideas have percolated into mainstream language. Arguing that people who subscribe to their worldview are hitting on a deeper truth is a stretch given how visible they are.
2156That said yeah interesting meme and does hit on something the crit theorists were onto. Too bad crit theory is hated by everybody, the right and middle hates it generally and the left hates it when it's turned on them. It was probably our best shot at getting out of this sinkhole.
2157Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2158
2159What I'm getting at is that the decision to prioritize this particular instance of whack shit over any other, unless you are directly effected by it, is the result of a mediated logic train. The deep concern over this issue and constant on-going outrage about it is more indicative of the rising prevalence of a schizoid worldview (due to internet-led oversocialization) than any merit particular to this issue, especially for non-Europeans.
2160What I'm saying is it's all good to follow issues and have a view, but unless it effects you personally you should have the perspective of a cool analysist. Getting over-identified with the case, warranted or not, is the start of the "NPC" syndrome or whatever you want to call it
2161Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2162
2163Maybe heading for the esoteric but,
2164Historically violence in the colonies has created a more violent culture at home. The great European genocides of the 20th century looked to the 19th century genocides in Africa and America as case studies.
2165Now I'm nobody special, just your typical first world citizen, with little power relative to anything. So when then hyper-rich and hyper-powerful start talking about how there's too many poor people, my spider sense starts getting agitated. I'm all for promoting safe sex and economic development. But when the conversation between people way above me in the decision hierarchy turns to conversation about controlling the shape of the population I get squeamish.
2166Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2167
2168I'd take it with a grain of salt. These are the same outfits that were slamming Sanders for being a bro. They punch left all the time and warren is a popular leftish politician
2169Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2170
2171Almost. More like, the context in which you get offered a job is a different context from which you perform the job
2172Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2173
2174I mean u/tylmin beat me to the punch but I can't tell if you're just willfully ignoring my point or if you genuinely can't tell that you're engaging in the same canned-thinking as your detractors, to the point wherein a pretty famous psychoanalysist already drew up a critique of people engaging in arguments with the structure you are using. Like hopefully you see the irony?
2175Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2176
2177Oh I understand the meme. What I'm saying is that a lot of people who see themselves as player characters or whatever are they themselves getting sucked into information flows without further critical analysis about how they arrived at those conclusions, I.e. they're making the same mistake as the so-called NPCs, just with a different stable of authority figures/pop culture/news media. Instead of Facebook comments and Fox News telling them how it is, it's /pol/ and Breitbart, but the structure is the same.
2178We'll stick with the gang rape stories because it's a good example. The truth of these stories is irrelevant; if anything I'm inclined to believe that it's all true given the prevalence of sex trafficking in Europe in general + the patriarchial cultural norms in Muslim societies.
2179But that is all beside the point. I'm not talking about people directly effected by this, either victims or their immediate family members trying to "get them back" as you claim. Even if every single story is true, that is still an incredibly small fraction out of the total number of people who are talking about this "issue" as something bigger than what it is, which is a crime story.
2180And for that pool, the other 95% of people who care about this, the Americans who care about this and are using it to draw larger conclusions about the world, the /pol/ users who foam at the mouth over this and use it as an example of how normal people just can't think critically, for that significantly larger pool of people, this very much is a case of psycho-sexual anxiety.
2181To paraphrase zizek, even if every single case is true and there is some kind of conspiracy, the hyper focus on it is still a sign of a neurosis. A psychologically healthy response to stories like these is to recognize the world is a sad, fucked up place, where sex trafficking happens, and either to do something to change it (I.e. Get involved, become a social worker etc) or to move on. Focusing, going over and over, using it as a base on which to build a world view, especially for those not personally involved, is a neurotic response, not evidence that they "get it". Everybody knows whack shit happens, so what? Doesn't make the right wing worldview correct
2182Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2183
2184As I do I think masculinity and femininity are naturally occurring? Now it depends on what you mean by those two terms. How they're generally understood in a western context in 2018, no.
2185Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2186
2187I went for a job interview at one of the major banks in my country 4 months ago and the interviewer unironically asked me if I use 4chan. Take from that what you will
2188Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2189
2190I have mixed feelings on this meme. On one hand, there is something to it. But I don't think it's really an original idea; Marx made the same observation early in his career, or going back further, you have Plato expressing concerns about oversocialization.
2191and I can't help feel but the people who are throwing this meme around the most are just deeper in the matrix, or stuck in a new one. I saw a 4chan thread the other day where the user was claiming that if you don't believe in alleged Muslim rape gangs in London, you're an NPC. As if that isn't a psycho-sexual anxiety already shared by millions of right-wingers. What makes him so sure he isn't an NPC too, just of a different stripe?
2192And what's really ironic is this line of argument is itself already out there; as early as the 1940s you had figured like Adorno pointing out that under mass society, even the counter-culturals would get swept up in what we are now calling NPC.
2193There really isn't anything new under the sun. And the intense attachment to this meme, to me, says less about a critic of culture and more about the deepening schizoid-nature of your typical Chan user. The real crisis isn't the NpCs, it's the fact that being functionally a schizoid is going mainstream
2194Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2195
2196do they exist, or are they merely socially constructed?
2197Yes
2198The so-called "social constructs" are existent, real things. They're considered constructed in the same way a building is considered constructed, I.e. not a naturally occurring phenominon. But that doesn't mean they aren't real. Tbh this is why I've moved away from the term construct and prefer the term Geist
2199You matter.
2200
2201?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ just sick to death of people Reddit going "get a better job". Like yeah no shit? How many doctors do they think a modern economy can sustain? Somebody has to clean the floors and cook the food, we can't all work in Silicon Valley.
2202What the line is really saying is try to get a better job. And if you fail, then you are justified in your poverty.
2203You matter.
2204
2205You're banging your head against the wall. Anybody who thinks it's okay and sustainable to have a massive precarious underclass is either such a narcissist that they can't imagine a world not built for their convenience, or such a psychopath that they're okay with human society going to shit so long as they get their latte before they clock in. Most are a mix of both. Save your effort because these people didn't logic themselves into these positions, so you can't logic them out. Unless they experience it for themselves they'll keep lying to themselves and pretend that Janet at the local Mcdonalds is just a happy-go-lucky student and not a 34yo woman with 2 kids desperately trying to keep her daughters from fucking up the same way she did, which is why she doesn't have time to learn Python or whatever. Until they see it themselves they won't get it so don't waste your energy, take that effort and use it to mobilize the (significantly larger) pool of precarious workers who don't vote.
2206The only way these people will change is if we force them to. I've worked both sides of the isle, professional work and shit-tier fast food, and I assure you the people born with a white collar on will not change without a legal compulsion, which is why things like labor law even exist at all. Start there and maybe one day they will grow a soul, but it's pointless to wait for it to happen organically because these people only look inwards, they have no sense of a bigger picture. Arguing they do the right thing free of prompting is like arguing with a plant to make it grow.
2207You matter.
2208
2209wow, you are the first person in the history of reddit to post this...all those lost years of job hunting and grinding away in shitty jobs, if only it had occurred to me to get a better job...thank you kind stranger, I'd gild you but I need the 2$ to survive my dickensian poverty which I finally have a way out of....god bless you...
2210From r/insanepeopleonfacebook
2211
2212didn't this start as a 4chan psyop? I vaguely remember seeing something like that somewhere
2213Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2214
2215I mean damn don't take it personally
2216Texas Purges Thousands Of Voters To Help Ted Cruz Win Re-Election
2217
2218Follow the vote totals. Plenty of DNC members collab or look the other way when push comes to shove. First ray of popular support in a decade was Sanders and they killed that in the crib so that Clinton, neoliberal architect and war monger, could have her moment in the sun. They're not your friends
2219/u/Demonweed's beautiful and succinct explanation of why the responsibility for preventing catastrophic climate change relies on much more than the actions of the common citizen
2220
2221At least in my country, the "personal responsibility" narrative is being used by conservatives to surpress taxing carbon, so there is one connection
2222Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2223
2224So?
2225Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2226
2227I literally chose her as an example of somebody who is fucked up to the point where B would never cross paths with her, as an extreme example of my larger point. I'm not sure how this is unclear. It's clear you did not read my link
2228Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2229
2230CBT is something you have to do for it to work. It's lame but it is effective if you commit to it
2231Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2232
2233You missed my point, please see here:
2234https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9o9uo4/comment/e7u1r64
2235Also don't dunk on trashy girls, to each their own, imo if a girl isn't at least a little like K I become extremely skeptical because to me that indicates they have no understanding of how the world "really" works
2236Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2237
2238Yes it is. CBT can fix this if you can afford it. If not, the free way to internalize your locus is to take more responsibility for your actions and state of mind, and try to reinforce that until you genuinely believe it.
2239Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2240
2241To be fair this runs way deeper than NA. Neitzche was making this same warning before his death
2242Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2243
2244and attitude
2245Can you elaborate on this?
2246Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2247
2248We need a secular church is maybe what I'm leaning towards here.
2249Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2250
2251Aren't you looking at it backwards though? Was the issue you were unattractive or was the issue she had a boyfriend? Unless she is polygamous or the type to cheat, that strikes me as a situation where no, there wasn't actually an opportunity to develop intimacy along those lines.
2252I'm not denying attractiveness plays a roll (I wrote a whole post last week about the roll it plays) but I also don't think it is the only factor, or even the key one
2253Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2254
2255The quickest answer I have, from what I know about B, is that he doesn't realize context is an issue. He believes there is something personally wrong with him. Or to put it in Scott's terms, he's already a radicalized nice guy.
2256Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2257
2258Does the bleakness go anywhere or is he just bleak to be bleak?
2259Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2260
2261Hmm see and I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as a sensible liberal so I can't help you much in interpreting the way they view the world. No war but class war rah rah etc
2262Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2263
2264I mean this also works tbh, though not for the reasons often assumed.
2265Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2266
2267Well I'm some random dude, send me money and I'd be happy to do a study.
2268Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2269
2270"How come Henry the Wife Beater can get five women and I can't even get a kiss?" are not putting Henry into context.
2271You just summarized my entire post in one sentence. I agree entirely
2272Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2273
2274I'm honestly not sure what a liberal version of this could look like. My mind goes to a (romanticized) image of something like Woodstock. I've also heard communes of various non-cult types tend to have very open sexual cultures. The rave scene and festival scene have elements of this. Modern hip-hop scenes as well. Certain sub-sets of leftwing activism too. The various gay villages around the world offer a comparable example as well. Problem is all these things tend to spring up, get flooded with external influences that aren't interested in maintaining the culture, and then collapse. They lack permanence.
2275Also a conservative version isn't bad on it's own. That's how people back home do it, and it works, Christians (at least where I'm from) continue to have more stable relationships than secular people. You will never succeed in bringing that to a macroscale however plus conservationism comes with it's own problems around sexuality.
2276Houellebecq
2277Who dat? I'm extremely skeptical of market interpretations, I'll tell you that upfront.
2278Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2279
2280No! Just the opposite is my point.
2281My point is exactly that they aren't compatible; that even though B is a really good dude he not only would never get with that girl and never want to, but never even have the opportunity to ask that question. They will never cross paths, because they are on two different trajectories.
2282My point is that the nice guy phenomenon is that failure of intersection, extrapolated to the person's whole life, as stated here:
2283But to get to that moment, I had to first go through all that, which is something B (who is always squeemish about any of this trashy shit) would never do; so the context required for his good qualities to be visible would never actually occur between him and K. Now take that problem and extrapolate that to all corners of his life (he has almost all male friends, he is a manager at his job so everybody is off limits, he's out of school, his hobbies are all isolationist stuff like making art) and you begin to get an idea of why, despite being a good and good-looking dude, he hasn't been intimate with somebody in 7 years.
2284B's issue is not that he is too nice or that he is ugly, its that the way his lifestyle is currently set up streams him away from any opportunity to showcase that to women he may be interested in (not K obviously, I'm just using her as an example of a person he would never cross paths with).
2285This lack of context between him and potentials is the root of his problem. I'm just using an extreme example where this is no context whatsoever to draw out the distinction
2286Also as an aside,
2287I hope your point here is not that in 2018 men who want to find a partner need to engage in stimulant binges with girls who need to fuck on a first date,
2288Don't knock it till you try it
2289Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2290
2291NK is some straight shit but in the context of what it is, it is still something else. I'd like to see a country like Honduras go through a civil war and then face down the states for 60 years, I imagine it'd look the same if not worse. Also, no rebut to the rest of my post so hey
2292Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2293
2294I'm saying, is her podcast indicative of a larger trend, or is her podcast her show-casing her own personal hangups?
2295Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2296
2297I want to read what responses she is referring to before I go any further.
2298Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2299
2300p2
2301The answer is really simple. Sitting there, buzzing, I realized in a flash that B would never be in this environment, period. Here is a moment wherein this woman is feeling trustful enough to tell us about her romantic feelings, and all it took was X grams of Y substance and 10 hours sitting in a trap house to get there. I like B, but B would shit his pants in that situation. Or to word it differently, B would not be able to keep up with this woman long enough for any kind of intimacy to develop. They're simply moving at two different speeds, with two completely different expectations of what a relationship could be and how it develops. Her image of a relationship launch is you meet, you go for some beers (and other stuff) and you probably have sex that night, and you go from there. B would not have the courage to go for that, she would think he's not interested, they become friends, and we all know where the cycle goes from there. Or going in the other direction, B's image of a relationship launch is probably a nice steak dinner; I think he would be disgusted by the idea of hanging in her ratchet apartment and getting high, even though I think that past that their individual neuroses (both co-dependent romantics) would match up in a sustainable way, except they'll never be involved in each other's lives enough for that to happen.
2302And I think that is really the core of this phenomenon, which both Scott and the people he is criticizing missed: what a nice guy is defining as their key feature(s), and what actually translate into romantic interest, are just not always, or even often, correlated, not because women actually prefer douchebags, but because the context within which these features are displayed is radically different. K was looking at me (and the other dude in the room) as "nice, good looking guys", as she outright stated: we were actually nice guys in her mind because we could hang out with her, get high with her, listen to her problems, and not be raging assholes about it. But to get to that moment, I had to first go through all that, which is something B (who is always squeemish about any of this trashy shit) would never do; so the context required for his good qualities to be visible would never actually occur between him and K. Now take that problem and extrapolate that to all corners of his life (he has almost all male friends, he is a manager at his job so everybody is off limits, he's out of school, his hobbies are all isolationist stuff like making art) and you begin to get an idea of why, despite being a good and good-looking dude, he hasn't been intimate with somebody in 7 years.
2303And I think that is the key piece everybody has missed. In Scott's example, Dan isn't getting ahead as a good worker because he's stuck in a context where being a good worker alone just isn't that relevant (i.e. a job market wherein connections are everything). Sure if you are a bad (and I mean bad) worker your connections will come to think of you as an idiot and maybe stall your career, but their realization of that is only possible because you already have the network of connections that you're working from within. Dan can't even get through the door, so it doesn't matter how hard he works because nobody will see it. Similarly, young Scott is asking why Henry can get married 5 times while Scott is a kissless virgin; it never occurs to Scott to ask where in the fuck Henry is meeting 5 women who are okay with marrying a domestic abuser.
2304Or to think about it in another (and in my mind hyper-relevant way), think about the dating process as a language. If two people know a little bit of each other's language, they can slowly work out the rest. But if there are two people with 0 common language and 0 common cultural context, they will have an extremely difficult time getting a message through (i.e. image reading just Japanese text, with no knowledge of Japanese and no pictures to accompany it, and nobody to explain it. No matter how hard you look at those symbols, they will be jibberish). That is the spot a pre-radicalized nice guy is in; he has attributes that may make him an attractive partner, but he completely lacks a context in which he can exhibit those attributes in a way that can be received and understood by the other person, so the message goes unheard (or is misinterpreted).
2305From this position we can then solve the nice-guy phenomenon in a way that is neither dismissive nor leans on what Scott has called "radicalization" (i.e. getting into programs that advocate a-social behavior, i.e. "women like assholes, fine I'll be an asshole" which only works because it emboldens these dudes to be more forward). One thing that jumped out to me from the red pill thread last week is the staggering number of people who claim to have been 18+ and had zero experience with sexuality and dating. To me this was shocking, because in my high school, there was intense social pressure (from parents, from friends, from community members) to meet woman and date. I'm also from what I realize to be an atypical rural community where male chauvinism is the norm. But the solution for the future will be to create spaces like this that allow men to have shared context with women they might be interested in without leaning on the shitty aspects of male chauvinism (i.e. "bro you didn't fuck that chick? You're a huge pussy!"). This will nip the nice-guy problem in the bud and allow nice dudes to both be nice and develop a socialization strategy that allows them to show-case their best qualities, before they wind up like my friend B and find themselves left in the dust.
2306I have no idea how to do that but it's a direction at least, one that attacks the root of the issue.
2307Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2308
2309Another day another thread right? Over the weekend I had some experiences that got me thinking about the Nice Guy phenomenon, specifically in relation to my position on TRP which I spent a lot of time over the last to weeks defining, refining, and defending here. Specifically, I feel like something I've been trying to map out for a while now finally clicked. Also, this will be an anecdote-led thread so if you're not down for that downvote and move on please.
2310So we all know the cyber-feminist position on Nice Guys: they're not actually nice and once you scrape off the surface you realize they suck. Scott has a nice post called radicalizing the romanceless that I think does a solid job of critiquing this position. But I also think Scott's position sneaks through because the original position isn't really a position but a lazily put together justification for responding to men like this this this this this this this etc. with derision and disgust, which I think is fine within the micro context of those interactions because you really can't rationalize with somebody who is one or two rejections away from popping off, and even if you can it's not really random people's responsibility to correct these dudes when they do pop. So really I see Scott's perspective on this issue as an incomplete rebuttle because he's not addressing the core of the issue either, which is that there is a class of men out there who can't get anywhere in dating and are totally lost, which is the fertile soil that eventually becomes radicalized. Even if I agree with Scott's claim that feminism is the force seeding said soil (I don't but it's irrelevant to my point) there is still the question of how this phenomenon even emerges at all. Or to word it as a problem to be solved, what actually is a pre-radical nice guy? If we want a solution, we need to get to the root of the problem.
2311The irony is Scott accidentally stumbles onto this question in his own analogy, but then breezes right past it to make his significantly less useful point of nice-guy radicalization:
2312I recently had a patient, a black guy from the worst part of Detroit, let’s call him Dan, who was telling me of his woes....And he was getting a little philosophical about it, and he asked: why haven’t things worked out for me? I’m hard-working, I’ve never missed a day of work until now, I’ve always given a hundred and ten percent. And meanwhile, **I see all these rich white guys who kind of coast through school, coast into college, end up with 9 – 4 desk jobs working for a friend of their father’s with excellent salaries and benefits, and if they need to miss a couple of days of work, whether it’s for a hospitalization or just to go on a cruise, nobody questions it one way or the other. I’m a harder worker than they are, he said so how is that fair? ... like most of the people I deal with at my job, there’s no good answer except maybe restructuring society from the ground up, so I gave him some platitudes about how it’s not his fault, told him about all the social services available to him, and gave him a pill to treat a biochemical condition almost completely orthogonal to his real problem.
2313To parse it a bit, the cause has already been identified, just not articulated in a clear way: the reason Dan isn't getting ahead in comparison to these other people is because what he is bringing to the table (hard work) is not what actually gets a person ahead, at least in the world of rich white men who are handed easy jobs. Or again, further down:
2314When I was younger – and I mean from teeanger hood all the way until about three years ago – I was a ‘nice guy’. And I said the same thing as every other nice guy, which is “I am a nice guy, how come girls don’t like me?” It does not mean “I am nice in some important cosmic sense, therefore I am entitled to sex with whomever I want.” It means: “I am a nicer guy than Henry. (a man who beat and cheated on 5 women)” ... Or to spell it out very carefully, Henry clearly has no trouble attracting partners. ... Meanwhile, here I was, twenty-five years old, never been on a date in my life, every time I ask someone out I get laughed at, I’m constantly teased and mocked for being a virgin and a nerd whom no one could ever love, starting to develop a serious neurosis about it.
2315What separates Henry from Scott? Niceness perhaps. But what does that mean? Scott is a "nice guy", pre-radicalized, in the dating world. What does that mean, relative to Henry, a man who has been married and beats women yet has no problem getting to that point?
2316Lets switch gears for a minute.
2317I have a friend named B. B is a great dude; kind, caring, college-educated, would give you the shirt off his back. B has a normal life: okay job, normal number of friends for a man his age, loving 2-parent background, normal childhood. There's only one problem: B hasn't been laid in 7 years, and the last time he got laid was also the first time he ever got laid. According to him, he has not even kissed a woman since his university freshman year. Why? As far as I know he is a heterosexual man, he certainly bitches and moans non-stop about his situation, perhaps to his detriment. If he's not in "nice guy" territory (as linked above) already, he's getting there fast. Where is B going wrong?
2318I have another friend, K. Last weekend me and K and a third friend spent all friday night and most of Saturday drinking and doing boatloads of stimulants. As any of you have done stimulants know, things get weird when you're on a multi-hour stimulant binge. So as the hours roll by the conversation gets stranger and stranger, and eventually we start talking about K's ex, S. Now S is a real piece of shit: abusive, poor understand of consent, drug addict, mra, gets dangerously violent, brags about his weapons, currently losing a court case, etc. Just bad news. And here we are, almost a year after the break up, and K is going on and on about how S messed her up, how hard it's been without him, how she misses him, how she hates him, etc. Not that into him, but also not over him.
2319Now the thing you gotta keep in mind about K is that she has had a hard life: her family is a mess, she's been around shitty and abusive people for most of her life, she does a lot of drugs, and she's been poor for most of it (though she's making bank now). I like to think I have an interesting life but I can't hold a candle to this poor woman. And it's clear from this conversation she doesn't want to have her life further fucked up by another S, but she is also lonely as shit and wants somebody who will try to reach her on her level, which S did because he also has a fucked up life.
2320And while we were sitting there high as fuck I got thinking; could B ever date K? And immediately after I thought about it, the answer I came to was no. Why?
2321It's not that K is a prude, she's not; I've known her to have sex with a lot of guys, including many that are way uglier than B. It's not that she's too good for B; if anything, B would probably be a really good influence on her life, a point of stability and kindness in a world of shitty people. It's not even that B wouldn't do it; she's more than attractive enough and is definitely good enough for him (he likes to save people). So why not?
2322p2 link
2323Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2324
2325Yeah preach. It's weird that this issue gets so much light on the internet and yet I have never had this problem in real life despite being (allegedly) above average in my number of partners (according to the stats people were throwing around in the red pill debate we had two weeks ago, which I'm doubting heavily for a similar reason).
2326Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2327
2328My sense is that a man who "play by the rules," in her world, is a man who protects her from her contradictory and destructive relationship to sex.
2329So is the problem with consent or is the problem that this particular individual is lost in their own sexuality? Be careful extrapolating broad questions from single data points
2330Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2331
2332I think that line is more of a gag than a broad statement about American society.
2333Diane's arc in season 4 is that her marriage is crumbling at an alarming rate. It was already rocky in season 3 but in season 4 it degrades to a point where her and MPB (spouse) are actively trying to sabotage each other. A running thread in their marriage is that MPB doesn't take Diane's political perspectives seriously, so when she discovers she likes guns, she takes it and runs with it as a fuck you to him, because his political campaign is pro gun-control.
2334The conclusion of the episode is a absurd gag that allows them to close the gun control thread without seriously upsetting the balance of power in the show; iirc Diane literally says "as if they would pass a constitutional amendment to ban guns" and then it does a hard cut to just that happening with her looking shocked, with only a throw away line about "wow Diane you actually got sensible gun control passed" or something to that effect. It's not really a big statement just a cynical gag about Diane's feminist politics blowing up in her face, again. The real meat of the episode is between her and MPB.
2335The point being the show threads the line between absurd humour and seriously plots constantly. If anything the political "statement" in that episode is that guns areempowering, that's what makes them dangerous: any random person can pick up a gun and blow away their enemies, even relatively "weak" women like Diane.
2336I wouldn't read that show so literally.
2337Edit: also as somebody else pointed out, the episode was heavily influenced by what happened when the black panthers started open Carry. So it's not as absurd as you're making it.
2338Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2339
2340Maybe I'm missing something because I've only read summaries of the book but to me this sounds like "author writes firey partisan book, complains when she gets burned as a partisan"
2341Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2342
2343The USSR, which turned a collapsing fuedal empire into the first space-faring nation in 2 generations (while also winning WWII and weathering the Great Depression), China which turned a feudal society into an economic powerhouse competing with the world's biggest economy in 2 generations, Cuba which continues to outrank its neighbors on HDI rankings despite a decades-long embargo by the world's biggest economy, and NK, a geographically isolated and resource-poor country that neverless survived a civil war+ decades of conflict with the strongest military in history.
2344I'm not a fan of all the shitty things communism has done but in the perspective of western history you can't just write it off as a failed historical abberation.
2345Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2346
2347Calling a position childish is not an argument.
2348Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 15, 2018
2349
2350That's because the manifesto was intended for an audience with low education in political economy. It was never to be an academic document but rather a summation of the socialist position and a call to action for the working class to take power. If you want something more meaty you need to read Kapital which was written for an educated audience
2351The schlemiel's stolen enjoyment: Christine Blasey Ford and the new fantasy of America
2352
2353the real mystery is how you can read TLP and still get bent out of shape over a total stranger snarking at you on the internet. Will somebody ever solve that? We'll never know ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ If this is how you react to anonymous snark I'd love to see your meltdown when your personna is challenged in the real world.
2354The schlemiel's stolen enjoyment: Christine Blasey Ford and the new fantasy of America
2355
2356You're the one who asked for a higher quality contribution, which I supplied when asked. I was content to snark at your snark and leave it be.
2357Edit: and yes it can all apply to me, nowhere have I claimed otherwise
2358The schlemiel's stolen enjoyment: Christine Blasey Ford and the new fantasy of America
2359
2360I wrote it to write it. Reddit is one of the only places I can go to express myself and this board is one of the only boards that has consistently interesting content, because I have a boring life and live 90% of it online and I feel totally alienated for normal forums.
2361And who's pretending here? I didn't even read your handle, I'm not trying to troll you personally or whatever, just sarcastically pointing out a low-quality contribution. If you hadn't brought it up I would have had no clue you were the same user I was fucking with a few weeks ago, which was also over a low-quality contribution. If you want real conversation then why not do that instead? "Here come the snowflakes" is the kind of opening shot I expect on a 2k comment front page thread about the dreaded SJDubyas, not a small 2k user board like this. You're setting the tone, I'm just responding
2362Sorry if my perspective is too cynical for you or whatever. You don't need to engage. But I am a cynic and I'm not about to change how I express that
2363Edit: and also, so far you've devoted two whole comments to my one line mocking you, and are still annoyed about an interaction that happened weeks ago. Salty much? Further proof for the thesis that people who call others snowflakes are projecting...
2364The schlemiel's stolen enjoyment: Christine Blasey Ford and the new fantasy of America
2365
2366Is that not what you're doing anyway?
2367And I'll save you the guess work, I am a negative unpleasant person. That's how I came to be here.
2368Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2369
2370What you're describing is a particular form of having an externalized locus of control. You have low self esteem and cannot self-validate, so you externalize that need to others and hope they will "choose" you, which would then provide validation.
2371The schlemiel's stolen enjoyment: Christine Blasey Ford and the new fantasy of America
2372
2373Lmao don't hate on me for being the person I am, especially if you're going to preempt criticism to this post and your agreement with it by an empty warning about the boogeyman.
2374But you want some serious content, here:
2375That was the crime.
2376Was it though? Remind me, why do I care about this case again?
2377I mean seriously, don't women get sexually assaulted all the time? It's common knowledge frat houses are hotbeds for assault, right? Sure it's tragic that Ford was (allegedly) assaulted, but then again, it's tragic my friend ___ was assaulted too, that doesn't mean she gets a timeslot on national television. Instead she just gets a prescription for SSRIs and douchebags like me casually using her trauma as an example when arguing with random strangers on some obscure message board.
2378Why does the nation care about Ford, while not even her own mother cares about ____? Because Ford was assaulted by supreme court justice Kavanaugh. This guy isn't some random sick fuck, this guy has power. The supreme court is supposed to stand for something. Take your pick: justice, rule of law, good governance, balanced powers, impartiality.
2379It's not that we think that the world is free from sexual predators, we all know it's not. It's not even that we think the world does have predators but their a small class of socially isolated sickos; sure they exist too but anybody who has been to a frat house, club or bar can see openly there are some guys who are predatory who are either a) kept in check by their responsible friends or b) encouraged by their irresponsible friends, which is why every guy knows that every woman knows to watch her drink.
2380Call it patriarchy if you want, I don't care, but the battle isn't "do these people exist", the battle is what is the appropriate way to deal with these guys? Everybody knows sexual assault is a problem, the debate today is how we solve it, where the burden of vigilance lies, what to do with these guys who do this shit and those that enable them.
2381The Supreme Court, arbitrator of justice, now has one of those guys on it. So what happens?
2382For the right, they need to maintain legitimacy. If people start to realize that the supreme court is run by regular people, they may start to ask why they should give a shit what they say. Sure, the judges may be "normal" but certainly the institution is more than the sum of its parts right?
2383For the left, certainly the country would never let an alleged rapist on the supreme court, right? We're better than that right?
2384The answer to those questions, on both fronts, is no. The supreme court is just a bunch of dudes with institutional power, nothing more, nothing less. It turns out you don't need a sense of justice, decorum, or even basic morality to get on the court. For those who have been listening, this should come as no surprise, but for those just tuning in, you now have a choice: do I acknowledge that the world is just people, or do I buy back into the myth that the universe has a divine sense of justice that conforms exactly to my personal biases?
2385On the other side of the isle, it turns out the GOP is just a bunch of dudes with institutional power, nothing more, nothing less. It turns out you don't need a sense of justice, decorum, or even basic morality to vote for an alleged rapist. For those who have been listening, this should come as no surprise, but for those just tuning in, you now have a choice: do I acknowledge the world is just people, or do I buy back into the myth that the universe has a divine sense of justice that conforms exactly to my personal biases?
2386And since this is r/TLP, guess what the majority of people chose? Starts with a N and ends with arcissism.
2387So nothing has changed. People who were predisposed to believe Ford continue to believe the GOP is horrifically corrupt, as if that has ever stopped or even slowed a political movement. For those predisposed to disbelieve Ford, they will continue to believe there is a shadow leftwing conspiracy trying to bring down the country. Everybody gets angry, nothing changes, lots of heat and little light is produced.
2388So what was the crime? How did Kavanaugh wrong society?
2389Kavanaugh's crime wasn't that he stole Ford's enjoyment. That may be how he personally wronged her but that certainly wasn't why it received coverage and a national "debate". Kavanaugh's crime was being the kind of person where this "debate" was possible, and also having the balls to attempt to rise to the level of supreme court justice knowing full well he is one of those guys.
2390He broke, or perhaps was pushed through, the barrier between the supreme court and the guy (allegedly) spiking girl's drinks at your local bar. His nomination stripped away the kayfabe of institutional legitimacy and revealed that, yes, deep down it is about power, that for all their noise and activity these politicians are no different than the drunken frat boys everybody else hates to deal with, with the same intellect, same dumb opinions and same shady backstories.
2391That was the crime, that's why the system focused on this (and only this) for weeks, because framing it as a crime Kavanaugh committed against Ford allows both sides of the debate to ignore the truth, which is that there is no crime, just power. This had to become a trial, regardless of outcome, because the alternative was for this to not be a trial, just a regular nomination, which might indicate that America is one of those countries. After all, we have rule of law, right? America would never elect a shady douchebag to supreme court just so that they can be sure that they will be able to ram through a RvW appeal, right?
2392And now that the trial is over, we all get to go back to our sides unscathed. GOP gets to maintain its legitimacy among it's constituents, liberals get to continue seeing the GOP as the problem, and nobody asks why we even have 10 people arbitrating moral decisions for 300+million people, half of whom don't even vote. Everybody wins, and all we had to do was demolish a few women in the process, not a bad deal.
2393Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2394
2395I grew up in a middle class home, in a rural setting where poverty is the norm, in Canada. I went to public school. Feminism was viewed as a thing that some people do, not the norm.
2396Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2397
2398The thrust of your position, and PUA in general, is wrong in some key assumptions, ID'd here:
2399It is similar to looking up common interview questions and preparing practice answers before going to an interview.
2400It recognizes that women aren’t all the same but many have similar “blueprints”.
2401That is human nature, everyone wants an easy solution to their problems. However, I think you’re overlooking something. PUAs already tried conventional advice before requesting a better solution. They are the victim of a failed system, many are willing to improve themselves if only someone would give them clear instructions. In PUA they always say go out and try stuff for yourself and report back. Many of them are highly motived, not lazy like you are implying.
2402In your first sentence you argue against AWALT. Yet you are arguing that all men should use a model that emulates a “natural” model.
2403What is dating, really? What does it mean to date, meeting women, get laid, start relationships and so on?
2404The blueprint perspective assumes that dating is something one is supposed to "figure out"; it's a challenge to overcome, not dissimilar to a puzzle or a particularly complex job interview. To succeed, a man just needs to figure out the right series of (metaphorical) levers to pull, in which order, and then they can pass through and enjoy the fruit of their effort. This is what I'll call the systemic approach to dating. All PUA is based on this framework, wherein success is a factor of successfully accomplishing certain tasks: getting into good shape, sculpting an interesting persona, learning how to read body language, etc.
2405Systemic dating can have some success, as PUAs love to point out. But it isn't successful 100% of the time, or even 50% of the time. Why? Because the success in systemic dating is a coincidental byproduct of simply being more available and putting more effort in in general. The actual "system" developed by PUA has little to no effect, but it appears effective because people who get into PUA are typically starting from nothing and simply getting out there and talking to women is already putting them leaps ahead of their previous approach, which is why the core demographics of PUA are: teenage nerds, socially awkward/alienated 20 somethings, and recently divorced single men, all three demographics that are unlikely to actually go out and try without some kind of prompting. But strip away the effect of simply being out in the field and taking shots and PUA becomes spotty at best; even hardened practitioners will admit that it takes a lot of practice and users need to be ready to talk to hundreds, maybe thousands of women, which is a net much larger than your typical natural will cast throughout his life. Why?
2406My theory is that the systemic model is just wrong, period. I elucidated on it an alternative model here. But basically I propose a more robust model is a distinctionmodel, where success depends on how well two individuals are able to match compatibilities and minimize reasons to avoid each other. Rather than being an arena wherein there is a system of levers to pull in order to succeed, this model argues that success is the result of two unique individuals interacting, wherein the way in which their individual attributes, good and bad, interact determines the outcome. This model is more robust because it not only explains PUA success (PUAs think they're learning how to get girls, but they're actually self-streaming towards a particular kind of woman that is compatible with the type of man that gets into PUA) but it also explains naturals, atypical pairings, non-hetero pairings and "low-value" pairings such as abusive relationships.
2407This framework offers an alternative approach to how to improve dating outcomes. In a distinction model, dating succeeds when individual's compatibility significantly outweighs their incompatibility. So a "strategy" then comes forward in three phases:
24081) the individual needs to have a clear, honest self-assessment about who they are and how they behave. This is the biggest barrier I see in young guys who want to get into a relationship but can't: they are being dishonest with themselves about who they are. For example, if you are a stereotypical neckbeard, you are not going to be dating a gym cardio-bunny, because the compatibilities are low and the incompatibilities are high. Recognizing where you actually stand needs to be step one, because then you can have an honest conversation with yourself and decide on whether or not you are happy with who you are as a person. And if you're not happy with who you are as a person, independent of dating, you should change. So-called "self development", not in service of getting laid, but in service of your own spiritual health. If you are happy with who you are, then the second stage of the strategy comes into play:
24092) The happy and self-assured individual needs to think about the venues, locations, hobbies etc that somebody like them would be found at. If you're into music, you need to start going to shows where your favorite bands are playing. If you're into table top gaming, you need to get your ass to a Gamesworkshop. If you're into cocaine, you need to head to a trap house, Etc etc. This is where I see a lot of PUAs and young nerds fucking up; they go to the club to larp as a club guy, which puts them at a disadvantage because most of the other guys at the club would be there anyway because that's their natural environment; it'd be like if a guy who had never read a comic in his life tried to meet women at comicon. Yes it's possible but you're not playing your odds. Once you figure out where people would expect a person like you to be is, you move to step three
24103) Go there and do the thing. If its nerdy shit, get nerdy. If it's bar shit, get wasted. Whatever your niche is, do it, and do it to the max. Think about it like networking; you want to meet other people into the same thing, you want to talk to people that can geek out with you, etc. Keep doing this until you've built up a solid network of people. If you talk to a girl and she seems nice, don't be afraid to ask for her number. Odds are, since you know who you are and you've put yourself in a position wherein people who would want to be around a person like you is, she would be happy to get to know you better, if she is looking. If she's not, you're fucked anyway, so don't sweat it. Follow up in a few days, set up a coffee date or something like that, spend time together getting to know each other. If she's attracted to you she'll want to be alone with you, spend time with you etc. If she's not, you're not getting date 2 anyway so once again, why worry? Biggest mistake I see awkward guys making is a) going to places and not talking to anybody because they are shy and b) being impatient and trying to make everything happen right away. Avoid these two traps and let it grow organically. Don't try to put the square peg in the round hole, no matter how tempting.
2411And that's all there is to it. The hard part is knowing yourself, because most men, especially psychologically stunted men, don't like themselves and/or are lying to themselves about who they are and where they fall in the world. But that will be a problem that follows them everywhere, not just in the dating world.
2412For young guys, this is where the experiential part comes in. There is no way to know yourself until you have a self, and the only way to build a self is to go out and experiment with the world. This is why dudes who spent their entire adolescence glued to a screen almost always find PUA and TRP in their late teens/early 20s; they simply don't have much of a self to work with and so they "need" somebody to tell them how to get ahead in dating, because they don't have enough material to work with when determining what they are and who they might click with. The PUA comes along and says "do this and it will work" and hands them a bunch of tactics, which they take and run with because they have nothing else to wok with.
2413This is also why systemic models advocating approaching as many people as possible; with little to no direction on who to approach, these individuals can only go at it as a pure numbers game, trying as many times as possible until something strikes, with a focus on contorting yourself to fit her "blueprint". With my model, you should be a lot more targeted, with a focus on disqualifying people. Up thread I suggested a "normal" ratio for success:failure should be about 1:5, i.e. for every 5 women you hit on, 1 should actually be going somewhere. A lot of users expressed surprise over this and claimed it's unrealistic, but I don't think so, because in a distinction model you're already using your own identity to per-eliminate incompatible women; you're avoiding the "I talked to 100 women and only 1 talked back" problem by ensuring that out of the women you do talk to, there is already a high likelihood they'd be interested in you as well based on the context in which you meet them. But, once again, this only works with a well-defined self; if your entire identity is "I like CS:GO" you don't have any context to work with, so you can't discriminate much, and so you end up wasting time on people you have no shot at.
2414And that's the value of experience. It builds character. The dating success comes after. And that's what a lot of people don't get about dating; they want to date but they are functionally teenagers with no real identity, so they attempt to gamify the experience and hope that tactics can make up the difference. This is putting the cart before the horse.
2415Quick question about coming down from cocaine
2416
2417So just a follow up, I took one over the counter and it worked, no side affects or anything. Also don't have access to xans
2418Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2419
2420Your teenage years were saturated with feminism? What kind of situation did you come up in?
2421Quick question about coming down from cocaine
2422
2423It didn't feel too speedy, maybe a little. c'est la via
2424The Weasel and the Scorpion
2425
2426Something I saw in ssc once was a post about a study on the link between IQ and sexuality or something, and the top comment was an individual lamenting how this was just another example of them seeking out and finding bias-affirming content that would only serve to entrench their schizoid personality and pull them further away from mainstream society, to no discernible gain.
2427That's how I felt ready this story. The original parable of the scorpion and the frog is a solid allegory. What is this remix supposed to be saying exactly? The same thing but filtered through the warped cybermind of your typical /r9k/ user?
2428OP, what made you post this here? What do you think it brings to the conversation?
2429Quick question about coming down from cocaine
2430
2431I was just gonna grab one over the counter
2432Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2433
2434hahahaha oh God just straight up propaganda reels from the people that run all three wings of government, hell yes.
2435Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2436
2437Also a big fan;
2438The show works because it has a consistent voice, which gives it room to make the kind of gags it does. For example, in the most reason season, the sex-robot-turned-CEO was a solid gag, because it was used to poke fun at the nature of #metoo from a perspective of somebody on the inside, and because it was juxtaposed with the much more series #metoo plotline BoJack himself was riding.
2439The question is could a revamped Office strike the right tone?
2440Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2441
2442That is not what the Overton Window means.
2443If all political views can be put on a spectrum (left-right, compass, more complicated etc) then the Overton Window is a range of ideas on the spectrum that enough people in a political body find palatable that it is generally tolerated in the "mainstream" political discourse.
2444Individuals who find their politics inside the window may believe those outside the window to be wrong, but that is a function of their personal politics, not the window it self, which shifts with the general attitude of the polity, and can change shape as well (in times of consensus the window is narrow, in times of strife it is wide).
2445More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
2446Those who oppose the carbon tax should reveal their plans to save the planet
2447
2448Doing all this, climate change still happening, instructions unclear
2449Those who oppose the carbon tax should reveal their plans to save the planet
2450
2451One of the issues with environmental change is that the carbon we are dumping into the atmosphere is an externality; it's not accounted for when individuals and businesses make plans, and so the true cost to the economic system is hidden. By taxing it, we bring it back onto the ledger.
2452Or to put it in simple terms, the "cost" of carbon gets paid, either upfront in the form of a tax or downstream in the form of a climate-change induced hurricane, flood etc. Carbon tax lets us capture the cost up front as a nation and invest it how we choose, while letting pollution go unpaid means when the damage does occur later, we have to drain other pools of money to fix it.
2453Anon tells his fantasy
2454
2455You already know the answer
2456October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2457
2458I don't buy into the myth of activity and action for action's sake, nor do I buy into the idea that it is important to pick any random goal to add structure to life. This is one of the key spots I disagree with TLP. The logic of picking an action solely because you need to move is the logic of an animal in a trap, not a man in the throes of freedom.
2459Obviously I don't think people should waste away in ennui either, the choice paralysis im describing is less to do with goal setting and identity and more to do with the collapse of distinction between possible goals and possible identities.
2460Even TLP falls into this: "you have too much freedom, pick a goal, impose limits!" As if all goals and all limits, and for that matter, all freedoms, bare equal weight. "The time has come to be the one thing you've always wanted to be" is great advice for people who've always wanted to be something and have never done it. For the rest of us, it's a call to growth for growth's sake, I.e. Cancer.
2461I'm not speaking from the perspective of somebody waiting to start. I'm speaking from the perspective of somebody who had a goal, limited my options in the extreme to see it through, and am now on the other side, triumphant. TLP's advice here is great for the legion of people sitting in inactivity, too afraid to start. But it isn't useful for those of us already thrown into the violence of action and counter-action. And that's what I'm contemplating in my above post; we can choose any goal. But what do you do when you reach it? The superego demands we choose another goal, some new task to scramble towards. But why? Are we not back at square one? If the point of goal selection is to induce activity and build identity, and you keep going through this cycle, the result is a fragmented identity wherein your are constantly reinventing yourself for new tasks to keep you distracted from the oppressive freedom baring down on you.
2462Isn't this the midlife crisis? The realization at 48 that one is over the hill, that all that scrambling was for nought, that all it did was close doors? That's why you buy the sports car and start smoking weed again, because your decision to get a real job and start a family meant you could never really be the lady killer playboy you thought you were but goddamn if you won't try to make up for lost time. And for what? The real sick part is if you had done it the other way, you'd still be at 49 going "damn I wish I had a son I could tell some of these stories to."
2463What if there was a third way? Why does eastern religion continue to be popular on the fringes of respectable western thought? Why is there this intersection between psychedelia, psychiatry, Jesus and the hyper-rich? What is freedom, really? I don't think the solution is to turn away from freedom, the solution is to embrace it wholesale, and I mean truly embrace it: nihilism, existentialism and the Tao wholesale. These are post modern times, we should live like post modern men. And step one of that is to give up the fight for a solid direction and recognize that we really are just pulled through life by forces we can't quite control or understand. Battling for a fixed identity is like trying to drop anchor in a hurricane.
2464This Dostoevsky quote made me laugh right out loud because it's a perfect description of a lot of people today. But then I thought about it and realized how not funny that is.
2465
2466This is interesting analysis, thanks
2467Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2468
2469Most normal guys are not approaching, period, because they have had it drilled in their head since age 4 that approaching does not work and that women don't like that kind of attention, or rather, they do, but not from guys like them. Clearing that mental hurdle is the biggest factor. 1:5 is not a ludicrous number for a guy who is confident, healthy and playing in his league, I.e going to the right venues, talking to the right kind of girl, etc
2470Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2471
2472TRP claims to offer a scientifically based method for pickup. If it were truly a science and not a pseudoscience users should be seeing way more hits. 1:50 is indistinguishable from random chance
2473Trump suggests the climate may actually be 'fabulous' after ominous UN report on looming disaster
2474
2475You're getting snarky answers because a lot of people that dunk on Christianity don't know anything about it and are too lazy to do a bit of research. I'm not a Christian but I've been casually studying it for about a year now, and here is my best shot at an explanation:
2476So you have God, which is a divine conscious being that can do basically anything, but isn't really tethered to what we understand as morality, although it has a strong sense of justice, I.e. If you break it's rules it will punish you, which the book constantly compares to how a parent may get harsh with their child if they want them to become a functional adult. It's also worth saying that Good and Evil, as we understand it, is different in the Bible, wherein Good means "following God" and Evil means "disobeying God'". Maybe another key detail is that in the Bible it appears time only moves in one direction; God is very reluctant to undo something once it has happened and only does it a few times, and usually they're small things like bringing an individual back from the dead, which is small game on a global scale. The Heaven/Hell distinction is set up so that people can't escape justice through death; if you're evil and you die, you still face punishment for being evil.
2477Anyway so the story starts and God creates humans to be just like him, with two differences: first, humans die, and second, humans don't have knowledge, which the bible defines as distinguishing between Good (Living in accordance with God's laws) and evil (living in rebellion of Gods laws). Knowledge and immortality exists in the world but God forbids humans from having them. The first thing the new humans do is use their free will to disobey God and discover knowledge, which sets humanity up for failure, because now these humans and all their descendants are aware of evil and have the capacity to choose to disobey God and live in evil. This is the "original sin" and sets up the conflict for the rest of the book, because everytime humans are doing well they begin to experience pride, doubt God's law, and turn away from God's, which then eventually destroys them since God is the only force that can protect them from their enemies and the environment.
2478And that's basically what happens for most of the first part: human society rises, becomes corrupt with pride, and the God steps in to correct them and put them back on the path, typically violently. After doing this a bunch of times God becomes increasingly frustrated so he selects one clan (Israelites) and says "okay, you're my chosen people, I'm going to elevate you above all others as an example and lead you to prosperity, if you follow my rules". He frees them from slavery and literally leads them as a physical entity for a while (described as a storm during the day and a pillar of fire at night), delivers the Ten Commandments and sets up Israel as an anarchic religious state following God's law.
2479This eventually fails though because the Israelis can't get along with each other so they eventually demand a government, so God steps down, appoints a human king, and introduces the prophet system, wherein he says he won't get involved directly but he will pass down instructions to individual humans, and it will be up to everyone else to decide if they want to believe.
2480This also fails, Israel becomes corrupt in like 2 generations and God gets so pissed he scraps the whole project, scatters the Israelis to the four winds and opens up the holy land to foreign invasion, basically setting the stage for Jesus to come in later.
2481Now here is where I get shaky on details, if anybody feels the need to jump in go for it.
2482But basically the problem this whole time is that people seem to be inherently corrupt due to original sin. The initial sin created a cascade of sins that keep leading humanity to choose to kill each other. God keeps trying all this different stuff to get humanity back on track but it's not working, because whenever he succeeds and stops the bleeding people's knowledge of evil fills them with pride and they start disobeying again. This is causing a real problem because almost everybody is being punished, either on earth or in hell, which is something God doesn't really want but he also can't let evil just slide.
2483So he comes up with a plan: man is the son of God, and God symbolizes that by incarnating himself as a man, I.e. Christ. Christ comes to earth as a prophet, spreading the word of God, telling people how they should live what rules to follow, etc.
2484Eventually this filters up to evil people, who immediately persecute Christ. But this is part of the plan. God, as Christ, allows himself to be punished and killed. Since he himself is sin free and only followed God's laws, he is being unjustly punished. In order to keep the divine balance of justice, Christ needs a sin to be punished for, so he claims himself as a sacrifice for the sins of everybody, living and dead, freeing them of original sin. Basically to "balance" the book the only man to have ever lived sin free allows himself to be tortured and killed, a punishment he receives on behalf of all the sinners. He then dies, comes back, tells everybody they're free of original sin, makes a few more predictions and then leaves.
2485So the score after Christ is that the original conflict set up when Adam and Eve sinned is solved; this sin that has followed man through the ages in resolved when a sinless human pays for it, which is in accordance with God's law (you're allowed to sacrifice sinless beings like animals to cleanse yourself of a sin). After Christ, all previous sins are solved and the only sins in the system are new ones people after Christ choose to introduce; the original imbalance has been restored. The only price a normal person has to pay to take part in this sacrifice is to believe whole-heartedly that Christ did all this and that you're sin free; if you believe him, you're forgiven for what you've done and avoid any further punishment because he already took the beating for you.
2486Where revelations comes in is that God is still up there, keeping track. He knows people haven't stopped doing evil, and there's also non-human entities on earth like the devil that are Fucking stuff up. So he's going to send Christ back one more time, as a general, to start the final war against evil. Whoever believed Christ the first time and took the deal will be scooped up and spared, while the rest will be left behind to try and survive the planet-destroying war between Christ and his enemies.
2487That's the idea at least.
2488This Dostoevsky quote made me laugh right out loud because it's a perfect description of a lot of people today. But then I thought about it and realized how not funny that is.
2489
2490first
2491One of the big achievements of C&P is that the narration is a blend of first and third person perspective, as the narration is told in third person but is constantly articulating the inner world of the characters, particularily of Raskalnikov but occasionally others as well. This is a big innovation from early novels which were either always told in first person or were purely descriptive third person narratives of events. The barrier between what is "omnescent" and what is essentially a disembodied but subjective description of what the characters are thinking/feeling/seeing (which is not truly third person) is fluid and breaks down constantly throughout the story.
2492To be blunt I'm not sure which section this is, it's been a while since I've read it, what I recall about this character is that he was universally loathed by the "good" characters so if we take that the narration is a blend of an objective narrator and a subjective narrator, it makes sense to describe this guy as a worm or whatever, because that's what he's genuinely perceived as by those sympathetic to Raskalnikov.
2493second
2494Yes that is the point of the story, his movement from unrepentant murderer to somebody ready for redemption. Sympathy and even empthy are fair game, but identification? To which:
2495that doesn't mean they are WRONG
2496What? Even if we put aside that the underground man and Raskalnikov are nearly perfect examples of the type of person Peterson rallies against, I find it totally baseless to argue they're ultimately correct in their worldviews. The core theme of both books is that their worldviews are wrong and they suffer terribly for it: Raskalnikov is driven insane with guilt and the Underground Man is cut off from society at large. This isn't a factor of them abusing truth, it's an output of them having an incorrect worldview that drives them away from others and towards hatred of their fellow people.
2497If you think both of their perspectives are right, why? Iirc Raskalnikov's embarrassment over his own poverty has driven him to the point of insanity, wherein he believes he's justified in killing a defenceless old woman in order to fund his way out of his situation. He justifies this by arguing that he is ultimately a "great man" in history, which is pure narcissistic delusion. In what moral system except raw nihilism is this considered acceptable? Similarily, the Underground Man has outright rejected the call of humanism and utilitarianism, not because he has a superior system but because he's consciously just saying "fuck you" out of spite of the world around him. Neither of these figures are correct, they're inconsistent paper philosophies that don't hold up under any scrutiny, but that's the point: these two books are examples of Dostoyevsky exploring the dark side of the human psyche.
2498If you seriously believe Raskalnikov of the Underground Man are ultimately correct you need to explain why, because that isn't what the author himself was getting at nor is it a commonly accepted position.
2499semyonovitch is the shadow
2500Yeah that's the point of his character. He is the embodiment of everything Raskalnikov dislikes about himself, which is why he is treated so harshly by the narrator.
2501we have no reason to believe the narrator is unreliable
2502The whole story is using a semi reliable narrator. As I pointed out in my post, is the murdered woman really rat like? Or is that just how she is perceived? Fugue states, disorientation, paranoia, these all constantly warp the story as it progresses and makes mountains out of molehills, such as in the interrogation scene. An unreliable narrator doesn't have to be something like Fight Club where it's super overt and in your face
2503Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2504
2505Is it ridiculous? That's basically Alex Jones' position summarized, minus the lizard people.
2506This was written in good faith in the sense that I am consistently lost by the conservative narrative that the left is both an existential threat to American life and an easily defeated force.
2507This Dostoevsky quote made me laugh right out loud because it's a perfect description of a lot of people today. But then I thought about it and realized how not funny that is.
2508
2509Iirc the narration of C&P is told from a semi-first person perspective wherein Rasknikov's perspective is constantly bleeding through the narrative: the city is described as a vile and disgusting place, most people (minus his sister, best friend, and eventual girlfriend) are described as sick and pathetic freaks, etc, which is all evocative of his mental state and total detachment from Christian idealism and society at large. For example, iirc the women he kills are described as a rat and cattle respectively, because he has completely dehumanized them as stupid beasts that can be used in his progress towards greatness.
2510If you're identifying with Rasknikov's descriptions of the world around him, that's not really a good sign. It's like identifying with the Underground Man, a pathetic and alienated figure who some individuals lionize as an anti-hero because they themselves are pathetic and alienated.
2511Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2512
2513It was more of a general comment on the republican trope of "we would crush in a civil war"
2514Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2515
2516Yeah I mean it's fashionable to hate on the democrats. This is the same group of people that are constantly ringing their hands about democrat demands for people to respect gender and race issues and/or not do/say overtly racist/sexist things. Even though I think Hilary should just go away, she does have a point, which is that for the so-called left (I hate using that word for the democrats because they are a leftwing party in name only) letting the right set the tone for the debate and attempting to reach a middle ground has failed atrociously, and people on the right still won't stop fighting because they won't be happy until every single American institution, from the president down to daytime cooking shows, is hard right.
2517Unfortunately I'm afraid it may be too little too late but at least democrats are starting to acknowledge that they need to actually fight back if they want to win. Why was Sanders so popular? Because he has a spine, something the majority of "establishment" democrats simply cannot understand, or at least, couldn't at the time. Personally, as a lefty, I welcome a harder democrat party that will stop fucking around and start playing like lives hang in the balance, which they so.
2518I wouldn't worry about what critics think about this because they want the left to lose. Either explicitly, because they are conservatives and believe America would be better off if we turned the clock back 80 years (don't ask too many questions about the how part) or implicitly because they are "blue tribe" I.e they're upper-middle class liberals who will be protected no matter what happens and have lived their whole life on respectability, so they're squeamish about being affiliated with a party that may say devisive things or piss somebody off. They haven't clued in yet that the right doesn't give a flying fuck about "libtards" and actively despises them and wishes ill for them, so they continue to go to bat to advocate appeasement, falsely believing if they make enough concessions the political right will respect them, and the window shifts and shifts and shifts. Fuck that, it isn't working, at least this is something else.
2519Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2520
2521The rightwing mindset on how a second civil war would play out always confuses me. Somehow conservatives can simultaneously believe that most American cities are filled to the brim with hardened black criminal gangs who hate white people, the countryside is overrun with cartel-related illegal immigrants, and the universities are Marxist hotbeds run by antifa, and the whole thing is connected together by hyper-rich capitalists like Soros, Clinton etc who have international support to crush the right. They believe all this, yet simultaneously believe any shooting war would be a breeze for the right because some of the military rank may turn and some of the country folk have small arms and have been larping as soldiers.
2522I think in a real shooting war it wouldn't be as easy as the right likes to think. The Midwest has food yes but the coasts have the capacity to import what they would lose. After that advantage, the right has nothing; the manufacturing base is overseas, the resources for manufacturing is overseas, the majority of energy resources are imported, and most importantly, the population of rightwingers isn't the healthiest bunch. After the first wave of true believers are killed, what then? Gonna give a gun to some dope-addicted kid and send him to battle, good luck.
2523Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2524
2525Dude haven't you heard, neo-nazis and conspiracy theorists having a hard time finding global sites that will host their content literally means the left controls the entirety of society. Just don't hope for single payer, wage increases, expropriation or literally anything associated with leftwing thinkers, activists or goals. When you support the status quo against far-right lunatics, that's called being leftwing, whether you are Mark Zuckerburg or Goldman Sachs.
2526Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2527
2528Hi, can you tell those blue tribe bankers to put their money where their mouth is an advocate for greater wealth redistribution then?
2529On Abusive Relationships ('The Heart is a Cannibal')
2530
2531Sounds like you have survivors guilt and are using a needlessly complicated picture of love to justify the bad things that have happened to you, and that your yourself have done in response
2532October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2533
2534Except that happened anyway. Iirc public polling indicates most (~60%) people believe Kavanaugh is guilty and that this is a corrupt nomination process
2535October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2536
2537Strange article, I agree with the underlying argument but that description of what is happening under totalitarianism is a very week understanding of the phenominon. The author would be better off if they studied deeper in that direction.
2538Otherwise yeah you're mostly correct, I think perhaps I'm talking about the perception of a mutable identity, rather than the actual process and mechanism of pulling the trigger and doing it. But it is possible, even if it is a bit harder than what they sell you.
2539The why is irrelevant. In my experience people who follow this path are typically running from something: a bad home, a bad environment, mistakes, other people, maybe just themselves. But really one can do it for any reason. I wish more people would tbh.
2540October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2541
2542I'm not into the idea of the republicans controlling the Supreme Court for the next X years, especially given that they spent months and months blocking Obama from doing his job just to ram through some dude at the first opportunity. Even if you ignore Ford, the fact that they pushed this through with little oversight is discouraging
2543October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2544
2545I liked this piece thanks for sharing
2546What sucks about suicidality is that everyone is also so sterile about it. Most people in advanced countries live cradle-to-grave on a preset track, which isn't terrible but isn't really growing either. I think some of the appeal of a suicide is that it's one of those non-network permutations; if the order of the day is Adorno's "something is provided for all so none may escape", then suicide is the asterisk on the word 'none', which is why the system seems so uniquely bad at detecting and preventing these acts.
2547But what really sucks is I don't think most people want to really die, but when infront of them is "die or give up" it's a hard sell. Certainly if you're somebody like this guy, alienated, isolated, no trajectory, it's difficult to take the experts seriously. I think this author is right in pointing out that the initial act of stealing the plane was a cry for help, and it's only once he's up there it develops into the real thing. And the reason is because he was hoping his desperate act would elicit some kind of human response but instead he got the same things he's probably been getting his whole life: professional concern, demands for acting reasonably, etc, all delivered with the same emotional concern of an distant therapist or an attentative accountant. Between returning to the fold of that and going down in glory, what's not to like?
2548I almost wonder what would happen if instead of suicide, there was a place for these people to just go. Some big ranch land where you can just grow crops, live in bunk houses and hangout. Don't kill yourself, but still drop out and abandon the demands of the modern skullfuck that is mainstream society, in a way that will stream you towards people who feel like you do. Maybe it's not ideal but I don't really know what else to suggest for these lost people, one line that stands out from this article is that psychiatry is more a cover-up than a real medicine, just a way to treat symptoms or legitimize pulling people back into a society they likely hate. So what else is there? At least with this idea you get outside a bit and maybe make some friends...
2549Certainly when I was suicidal it wasn't the idea of life as is that was killing me, it was the idea of life as it looked from where I was standing: working for peanuts in perpetuity, doing a pointless task you don't like for people you don't like, providing a service you don't believe in, while being casually aware that at any moment your shoebox-size life could come crashing down because you said the wrong thing to the wrong coworker, with the monotony broken by weekly parties where people you don't care about talk about how excited they are to be in a culture that feels wholly plastic, the red solo cup of social contexts, all while ripping your brain out with substances and pointless sex with women twice as fucked as you, just to wake up on Monday and start the whole fucking thing over, and the only thing you get excited about is new cartoons on tv, the only thing you laugh at is watching idiots like the president get their head stuck in a bucket, and you want to just take it all back but your family is crumbling faster than you are so go back to what? In that situation, you just gonna keep grinding, or you gonna start thinking about how sweet it would be to just slip away, not even die but just go, just steal the company car and head for somewhere else, but then you remember people are the same everywhere, this zombie culture is everywhere, or rather, this zombie culture is inside you and the infection is full blown, so where would you even go? Even if you found Eden you'd just be the serpent coming to pollute it, that's all you know how to do anyway. And then suddenly the razor ain't looking too lonely ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
2550Of course say any of this outloud and the system goes haywire, jumps into overdrive to correct you, get you back on track, etc. But as long as you keep smiling, keep kissing ass at work and keep showing up to your weekly bender, nobody even notices. Professional distance is the order of the day.
2551Why I am such a great lover
2552
2553why is he telling us this
2554Narcissism is about narrative construction. This is "his side" of the story. The aim here is to soften his shame felt over his failed relationship. The guru character is something he can point to as objectively worse than himself, that also embodies how he himself wishes to be perceived; not as somebody who was used (the Hegel reference) but as a lover that's simply too good at love to be tied down to any one person.
2555The mountain story is pretty savage; imagine dragging a woman half way across the world just to tell her you cheated on her twice, and not only does she forgive you but she stays with you in paradise, not to mention this probably isn't the first time yet she still flew out there.
2556And then you have OP, who says his girl laughed in his face when he tried to tell her what's what. That's the power differential
2557Why I am such a great lover
2558
2559Best 1 sentence summary of Hegel I've ever read
2560October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2561
2562Who cares they were going to ram him through and now they have, surprising nobody.
2563October 2018 Miscellaneous Thread
2564
2565Yeah but the real struggle is not choosing to stop making the same choice, the struggle is asking which choice is it that I wish to make?
2566It is easy to just drop what you're doing and do something else, when that something else is visibly appealing. But when it's not so, or when the choices are too indistinct? Then decision paralysis sets in. For example, I wish to move by the end of the year. Theoretically I can move anywhere in the world, based on my savings + my citizenship. Realistically, the fact that that is true disaudes me from moving at all, because the totality of options is so wide; sure a move appeals but no one particular place seems more desirable than another, so how do I choose? Just throw a dart at a map?
2567I think the sickness of our age is a sort of choice paralysis. You can "be" anybody, and you can change identities pretty quickly; maybe a year retraining, a wardrobe change, a location change, and you're a new person. The result is the post modern condition, total chaos, wherein whatever narrative was supposed to temper your life is blended into an incoherent mess, with no direction and no sense of history or context. Is it any wonder narcissism rises? Yes, the identity the narcissist constructs is just as false but by perpetually trying to realize it, they at least enjoy the security of a fixed identity, one that isn't easily shredded in the face of the infinity of indistinguishable choices.
2568These Citadels of Power
2569
2570Oh I never said it was a long term plan. It's called opportunism, which is all you really have in a city of 3m+
2571But yeah cities are fucked, it's one of the defining features of our time. That said, it's not like the countryside is open for business either. I'm from the country, there is very little to go around, though these days that seems to be eveywhere
2572Why is love all about overcoming other people?
2573
2574The laziest answer is because no conflict = no story.
2575A less lazy answer is that "love" (whatever that is) is almost always a temporary feeling felt by two people passing by each other in the grand scheme of their lives. You want that feeling to last but the same invisible chain that brought you to that moment is soon pulling you away from it. Narcissists interpret this as "the universe is conspiring to keep us apart!"
2576Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2577
2578It's strange that you argue that this is an issue that occurs when liberal democracy fails, when to me it seems that a version of that is clearly playing out in the liberal democratic capitalist countries at this moment.
2579Take that blurb and replace "party" with "corporate culture" and you could be describing any Fortune 500: internal feifdoms, loyalty over ability, nepotism, group think. In many jobs, even expressing doubt or disagreement the "wrong" way can hobble you or earn you a reputation, and pushing back on a direct order (no matter how stupid) will get you fired without recourse. New entrants are expected to "pay their dues" to senior members, participation is supposed to be apolitical, and employees are expected to devote large chunks of their personal time to work. Failure to keep up with any of this means the axe.
2580Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2581
2582Yeah this is what it actually is, people battle on culture because the left is so shattered that there is no idea how to even begin to go after a real victory. Look at what happened to Occupy, huge mass action that went nowhere because the left has been completely gutted and has no idea how to utilize whatever energy people do have
2583Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 08, 2018
2584
2585Stuff like this is why it's too bad Dworkin got sidelined. She has whole books pointing out this trend and analysizing why it happens and everybody just ignores her or writes her off as a loon because a lot of her work doesn't fit neartly into a pink-and-cuddly liberal feminism
2586How can I think in a less SSC way?
2587
2588I found the sweet spot is to try out a lot of normie shit and then access what is genuinely fun vs what is just a trend, fad or addiction.
2589Sen. Collins’ vote on Kavanaugh triggers calls to boycott Maine
2590
2591"Collapsing" with all three branches of federal government, just shy of 2/3 state governments, military and police support, untold numbers of municipal offices, judges, sharifs and so on...
2592Never forget the writers who were saying Clinton had a 95% chance of winning are now boasting about a blue wave. Don't buy the hype
2593Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2594
2595Except that that isn't how they use AWALT. AWALT is used as a thought-terminating cliche to discourage analysis that moves away from the party line. Yes somebody may say AWALT regarding the idea that you need to work harder to bed a rich woman, but they're just as likely to use it to explain to a user how his spouse may cheat on him, or how if he tells her he loves her first she'll respect him less.
2596And from a strategy angle, this mindset really just limits your playing field and keeps you from shaking things up.
2597It's strange to me how often I hear guys say "yeah I don't want to go out and see what happens because I don't want to harass somebody" while simultaneously holding TRP views, a place all about breezing through women's mental blocks and seducing them. Stuff like overcoming LMR could literally be harassment in the right jurisdiction but a TRP user will be like "yeah they gave me great advice, if I was trying it on my own I'd be lost and might assault somebody!"
2598But those feminists who told you women don't exist to practise on are correct. The sentiment I'm getting at is that you want an approach to dating that is personalized and individualized, not an algorithm. Each "encounter" should be playing out like a fresh experience, and the "practise" if you want to call it that is more about learning about yourself than learning the right button combo to get laid.
2599Like what I hate about TRP and PuA is that it is ultimately the gameification of sexuality. "Come here, learn how to Unlock this achievement!" The idea of having a unique relationship with the people in your life, and actually starting those relationships organically from shared interest and a desire for companionship, seems foreign to a lot of this stuff. Instead it's all "learn how to spin plates! Learn the best pickup-line to break the ice! Get in better shape to attract a mate!", no individuation, just cold grinding for that trophy.
2600I guess what I don't get about this conversation, having read those last three paragraphs, is it sounds like you maybe just don't want it? Like if the question is "what will get you on that bike", we're really not talking about dating strategy anymore are we, we're talking about why bother at all?
2601Like for me, I feel like I hit 13, my hormones when ape shit, and it became my number 1 goal to get laid, which eventually I achieved 4 years later at the tail end of a gruelling highschool experience. I would have loved to knock that shit out sooner but it took me that long to get my head out of my ass, but the goal never left my field of view even when I was the furthest from getting it.
2602So with me, that's my "getting on the bike story", I felt biologically compelled to get started and try to figure that shit out. So I don't really understand how you can say you we're convinced to try until you read TRP? Like what is it about TRP that made it this potent motivating force for you? Was it just that they actually told you you could do it? It really doesn't make sense to me that you would feel unmotivated to give a shit about dating, until you stumbled into some obscure Internet forum and then BAM time to start
2603/u/sint0xicateme explains the Paradox of Tolerance and how the alt-right are using centrists as "useful idiots" against the left
2604
2605Antifa is a communist movement, that's why I brought them up, or at least, the antifa in my city are mostly Maoists. That said, communism has mixed popularity worldwide, iirc the communist party is the second most popular party in Russia right now. You're painting with too broad of a brush.
2606As for action, I'm not convinced the best strategy for combating nazism is to do nothing and help them get their voice at. Charlotte collapsed partially because there was leftwing resistance on the ground giving them a hard time.
2607Like I really don't get your angle, seems to be "oh they're not a big problem ergo it's all good" as if having a small continent of nazis is just whatever. Your position should be "no nazis", because we as a society already know nazism is some stupid shit
2608Who Paid?
2609
2610Needs more posturing.
2611/u/sint0xicateme explains the Paradox of Tolerance and how the alt-right are using centrists as "useful idiots" against the left
2612
2613I mean if you sit down and actually read what nazis have written about their own movement, what they have declared as their objectives, the foundational texts they point to as essential to understanding what they think, or even just their own comments on their own boards about what they think about day-to-day events, it's clear to that violence is a key feature, as a means of rectifying political issues, advancing civilization, and even self expression.
2614For example, Richard Spencer, maybe the most visible nazi alive, has been advocating for a white ethnostate. Given that there are millions of visible non-whites in america, how would Spencer achieve this? His answer is "incentives", but what happens when a non-white person decides they don't want to move?
2615Well, we turn to history, and we see every attempt to create an ethnostate out of a multi-racial state requires huge, forced, violent population transfers. That will be the inevitable result of any serious attempt to enact nazi philosophy in America in 2018.
2616And to be clear, this isn't speculation, this is something they openly claim. Jump into any white power board and read about the necessity of expelling all Latinos, disenfranchising Jews, ghettoizing black people. They know that this is what it will lead to, because that's the foundation of the philosophy: groups of people exist and are biologically distinct, western civilization is a biological output of white (specifically aryan) genetic superiority, so the preservation of civilization means the removal and protection of aryan blood from "foreign" contamination. This is core theory that goes back to Mein Kampff at least, possibly earlier.
2617With that as your base, there is only two ways forward: one, fight to ensure the triumph of aryan genetics over all others. Two, head to space. I don't see many rocket ships being made, so here we are.
26181)
2619We could start by calling people who openly advocate for nazi ideas nazis, I think that'd be a good first step.
26202)
2621Despite what the liberal press would have you believe, communists are not psychopaths. Nobody wants to kill anybody, nor does anyone want to start some kind of civil war. Communists have concrete goals that are built in response to the real political conditions of the time, and in 2018 killing random no-name right-wingers will do little to advance the larger struggle, so why do it? People like to assume the left is full of raving violent madmen rather than rational actors because it helps advance their own position, not because it is a reflection of what's happening.
2622We don't care if somebody is a nazi so long as they keep it to themselves and stop advocating for their views in the political process. The majority of today's "nazis" are internet nerds with 0 experience in the real world, and will give up the moment they face and counter-pressure, which is what we have seen time and again since Trump's election. The alt-right had impact and maybe changed the conversation but when it came time to mobilize material power, it folded like a house of cards, partially because the message is niche and partially because the left isn't made up of NeETs ironically being political but rather real activists with real networks, objectives and ideas.
2623In my country today, the social democrats are ready to govern and is the official opposition, while the right-wing/alt right guys are running mostly on star power and can barely articulate their own ideas beyond broad appeals to "change". That's the difference.
2624/u/sint0xicateme explains the Paradox of Tolerance and how the alt-right are using centrists as "useful idiots" against the left
2625
2626radical centrist
2627who did more to stop fascism
2628If you truly cared about an unbalanced view you'd know it was communists that bled the most during the war, did the most fighting, and demolished the biggest share of the German war machine.
2629/u/sint0xicateme explains the Paradox of Tolerance and how the alt-right are using centrists as "useful idiots" against the left
2630
2631Nazism is inherently violent. Your argument is essentially "guns don't kill people, people kill people"
2632Who Paid?
2633
2634As much as a sympathize with this thread, this is literally just a string of lefty buzzwords strung together
2635Edit: for the record I'm a socialist, doesn't mean I think it's useful to just say random shit, like connecting MlK to the NoI, at best they were contemporaries, but the alliance is a historical stretch (iirc Malcolm criticized figures like MLK a lot for being too passive/willing to put up with white people bullshit)
2636These Citadels of Power
2637
2638Haven't read much of TLP, but damn do I love the discussions that are possible here.
2639Read all of it. I'm not joking. Maybe a few of the early articles where he compares the effectiveness of different prescriptions are skippable but the rest is not.
2640Zizek
2641He made that statement after the 2013 riots in London, I'd say he still considers it relevant. Otherwise I'd say you're taking a somewhat shortsighted view of what a riot is and the interplay between technology and riots. Technology isn't preventing riots (as per RP1) it's the cause of riots: people today, when they riot, are stealing the things they otherwise can't get access to. What goes first in a riot? Televisions. Not booze, not food, televisions. Why? Because replacing your set every 5 years is not affordable for everybody, and society will be damned if it doesn't remind you every 25 minutes. It's the same issue as people complaining about the morbidly obese, as if there isn't a Popeyes on every corner and a billboard on every building. The real sickos are the ones that aren't obese, the select few seemingly impervious to the culture around them. There is a trillion-dollar marketing machine asking every day "what the hell is wrong with these people, why won't they buy this bucket of chicken?" Good luck, Jimmy-the-Falafel-Guy with the GED, you're going to need it if you want to outsmart that machine before you die from cardiac arrest.
2642Back on Zizek, the paradigm today is not "placate yourself with enjoyment", this is what RP1 got wrong. Today's paradigm is "you must enjoy". Asking for a new television every 5 years is not only acceptable, it's probably a package deal with Popeye's endless bucket for 3.99$, and system will do everything in it's power to make you feel subhuman if you don't supersize that and eat it on the car ride home. Asking for a better job or expanding your worldview through education? Boring! Wouldn't it be better to sit back and spend your $10/h on chicken rather than saving for a liberal arts degree that will get you nothing? What did Plato every do for anybody anyway?
2643The pendulum swings. The world, like fried chicken itself, is surprisingly unfulfilling, all fat and no substance, packed full of flavor that you'll just shit out later. People feel it. So they grab for something else, and what is there? Education, work, stability, homes. Notice the things people feel they need to be placated are all synonymous with adulthood: higher knowledge, home ownership, responsibility, jobs that require you to be in bed by 9. Why? Because the world of enjoyment is the world of childhood: junk food, video games, minimum wage, staying up late. People know something is wrong when they are 27 and still getting disgusting diarrhea from eating too much candy at the movie theater, especially when they live in a shoebox and have to fuck reaaaal quiet in case the roommates hear (and by roommates, I mean parents).
2644But does the economy need more adults? Economic forecasts say: no. We need more consumers. We make a lot but nobody wants to buy all this plastic shit except man-children, and even they're just doing it so they can shill it on youtube later. We're literally burying ourselves in this stuff we don't need, and we still can't sell it fast enough: Hollywood is going down the shit, the flagship brands are struggling (save for the gilded few), brick-and-mortar is closing at record rates, textile prices are falling, cars and mattresses are always on sale, and this never-ending nerd moment of plastic toys, plastic trophies, plastic people just keeps swallowing everything up, like a black hole. Seemingly the only thing getting more expensive is food and land, hopefully we don't need that at some point.
2645And thus, tension. Tension between people who waste their money on plastic shit, to the detriment of everyone around them. Tension inside people who are physically adults and mentally teenagers. Tension among those on the outside, playing playstation 3's and quietly waiting for the new playstation to hit Kajiji. The nervous tension of those that use stimulants to keep up with the whole mess, or those who use depressants to escape it. Tension tension everywhere, how do we alleviate?
2646Bring back adulthood! Give people shitty boring jobs again. Get them working. That's the way out, let people grow up. But that can't happen until getting educated is something that's realistically attainable. The secret of our economy is not that education is junk, its that it's too slow. A bachelors today is what a high school diploma was 40 years ago. You're not even in the market if you don't have some post-secondary, because our world is complicated as hell now and one needs to be brought up to speed before we can trust them to do anything useful. People don't like feeling like they need to pay to play however, so we're back to the tension.
2647But that is unlikely because, once again, who's going to win? Viacom-Haliburton-Trader Joes'-Skynet-Vice-Time Warner-Oreo and their marketing department, saturated with the sickest weirdos the marketing world has ever seen, or Joe-the-Falafel-Guy and his GED? Damn do I love fried chicken.
2648So bring back riots. What is a child without a tantrum? I think that's where we're headed anyway, and I for one welcome the opportunity to loot my local H&M. I'm wearing the same sweater I had in high school, can't afford to replace it, how's that for symbolism?
2649There's lots of space left for those who want to play different games
2650It's all one game, you're just on a different tile, don't get complacent because you can't see the fire on the other side of the hill
2651Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2652
2653P2
2654If I would guess you are probably good looking, above a 7, and you probably have done something that gives social value proof already, without doing it for dating specifically.
2655I mean this is why I don't play the value game. I don't know what I am on the 1-10 scale. I don't know what the girl I'm with is on the 1-10 scale. I don't think I could even rate the girls I've been with, against each other, on a 1-10 scale. Like if you sat me down and said "okay compare the last two girls you slept with, which was better on a scale of 1-10?" I don't think I could give you a straight answer. I guess I like the one I'm with now more because she's cool to smoke weed with and fuck around with but that last one scratched my fetish itch in a way I didn't know I needed it scratched, and suspect I may never have it scratched again like that. She was also annoying as fuck though. So which do I rank higher? Do I say my current because I enjoy getting blown while watching X Files more than listening to somebody prattle on about Hamilton? Or do I say my previous because she surprised me in ways I didn't know I could be surprised? I can't give you a straight answer, because there isn't one. They're both just people. I don't rank them against each other, I enjoy the time we've had and thank God I'm able to do so.
2656But what I find more interesting about this reply is the assumption that I'm a) attractive and b) socially validated. Whether or not that is true is out for the jury, though I certainly don't feel attractive and I'm socially retarded so hey. What's more interesting is that, in me saying I don't think TRP describes the world, you automatically assume I'm very attractive and socially successful. This is redpill thinking offering you easy resistance to the possibility that it's not a good worldview: any one who disagrees with TRP must be a natural or successful or whatever. The implicit assumption of that however is that anybody who agrees with TRP must be unattractive and a loser. Good vibes, really helps the confidence side of things. The alternative theory of course is I'm just a regular guy and it's TRP that has the warped perspective.
2657I'll tell you this much about my "number" and you can decide the rest: 7 years ago I was convinced I was going to die a virgin, to the point where I was casually browsing r/incels (the original) and contemplating suicide. Now, not only am I more confident than ever, but I did it without ever buying wholesale into TRP wholesale and only a mild flirtation with PuA, which ended in catastrophic failure (to the point where it actually severely hurt my social life). That was in 2013, and I haven't fucked with the stuff since, even though immediately after I went through a 2 year dry spell because I didn't know how to get laid without leaning on PuA/TRP thinking. Even then, I stuck to my guns and tried to do it my way, a third way between the "nice guy" I was in highschool and the shitty guy I was when I was into TRP and PuA shit. It takes time, it takes concentrated effort, and it takes a sincere desire to develop into the potential you know you have. I'm nothing special, the only thing I did that I don't see people on TRP doing is that I never trusted anybody but myself, online or off. That's my only secret. If you live like that for years on end you will become confident, because your refusal to trust other people means you will take on a ton of responsibility and hard lessons yourself. I'm not sure if a psychologist would recommend it but it worked for me.
2658The hard part is playing without a net. TRP is a net. Being a "nice guy" is a net. People live with these fall-back positions so that when they fail, they can blame something else: sexual market value, women, other men, their own appearance, their wallet, their attitude, society, feminism, their intellect, whatever. These nets are what keep is from our true potential, because they allow us to offload the responsibility for our failures, and therefore the damage never scars into confidence. Don't live like this if you want to grow.
2659Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2660
2661I reject that "value" is the key metric on which dating is decided. I think the argument for value only makes sense if you stretch the definition so wide that it stops making sense. For example, value makes sense when talking about why a woman may find a millionaire attractive. But what could be the argument from value for figures like drug addicts, alcoholics or abusers, all types of people who are relatively low value in our society but still seem to have sex and date with relative ease? The only answer is that "value" is pretty flexible and depends on what she believes to be valuable, but if that's the argument, at that point it's so flexible that it isn't really describing anything at all. If both a millionaire and a deadbeat alcoholic can be considered "valuable" then you aren't really describing value by any objective metric.
2662I propose an alternative model: dating is decided on compatibility factored by intention, divided by distinction, or (C*I)/D.
2663Compatibility describes the contextual, social and psychological factors that allow two people's lives to fit together. Social value is one potential piece of this metric but it's not the only one, and the metric itself is more of a matrix than a range; somebody could hypothetically be both high on sexual confidence and high on shyness at the same time. One the low end of this metric you have things like geographic proximity, sexual orientation, base aesthetic appeal, etc. At the high end you have things like similar up-bringing, compatible psychology, similar life goals, etc. Basically these are the things about a person that pulls you to them, even if they aren't valuable. For example, I know drug usage is bad for a person's psychological stability but, as a drug user myself, I actually prefer dating other drug users because it saves me dozens of awkward encounters. On a social value scale, they're actually lower than what I could be dating, but on my person compatibility scale, they're higher.
2664Intention describes the desire each individual has in the particular moment. Basically, even if she's the perfect one, if you're not in the place to date, it's not going to happen. Conversely, if you're going out to fuck and you don't care who or how, their actual compatibility isn't going to matter much to you.
2665Distinction is the reasons not to date somebody, ranging from objective (she is extremely socially awkward) to "baggage" (she has the same name as my ex). Like compatibility, this is not a range but a matrix, encompassing a variety of traits, memories and hangups. To re-iterate, this can be about value, but it doesn't have to be; a billionaire may distinct against the poor, not because he thinks they are beneath him, but because he's concerned they wont have much in common or he's nervous about gold diggers.
2666When you factor them together you get imo a pretty robust model of how attraction actually works in the brain: an individual encounters somebody, and they decide what to do based on how compatible they are vs how many things about them drive them away. When two people both score each other high on compatibility, something happens.
2667Obviously this is an extremely simplified model and doesn't account for everything (such as information discrepancies or first impressions) but I think as a basic structure, it is functional and works as an alternative to TRP's "everything is about value" model. This model can explain non-valued pairings (such as abusers) without getting too "woo" about how it's actually working, and it can offer a sense of direction for how to approach dating: your strategy is either a) look for somebody with similar compatibility with you or b) try to detect another person's distinction issues and work on them or downplay them. It's a more reactive model that allows for flexibility and nuance in dating, and it avoids a lot of the nasty implications of the value model (such as that everyone is replaceable; the odds of finding two people with the same (ci)d spread is pretty low). This is an actionable base and is honestly pretty close to how I approach dating: meet people, find out what they are like, decide how to act. No need to make a value assessment *and I don't take it personally when somebody else decides they aren't interested in me, because I don't see it as a reflection on my own value.
2668Some other stuff:
2669Even the line about the 'what if I asked to kiss you' has a structure and framework underneath it. It is not a direct, demand like for next level. If the answer is 'would say no', there is no social capital lost, the answer could be 'well, i didn't actually want to, just wondering what your response would be'. It's not a committment. Just light.
2670I think you're fooling yourself with this line of reasoning. If you ask somebody "what if I asked to kiss you" they know what you're implying. The social capital is still up for grabs. The only reason the line works at all is because the implication is clear (you want to kiss them); if they say no, they're not saying no to your literal question but rather the spirit of the question, and even if you walk it back your intent was still clear. This logic may work in a courtroom but not with social capital, which operates in the word of the spirit. Just own it dude.
2671While 'having confidence', what is the framework for that? What does that even mean? Where is the structure of how it works, from a man's point of view?
2672To me, confidence is what is left over after you lose a piece of your younger self in an ordeal. When you exert yourself physically, the muscle tears, and the resulting repairs make it stronger. Similarly, if you damage your skin, a harder scar tissue forms in the spot. Confidence is that process happening to you internally: you went through something that damaged you in some way, and when it healed, it healed stronger.
2673In the world of dating this means three things: One, eating shit with rejections until that part of your soul is so scarred you don't notice anymore. Two, succeeding beyond your wildest dreams, which then leads to the realization that there is no "end" to all this shit, the day after the best sex of your life you wake up and go to work like everybody else, that all this struggling was for naught existentially. Three, going through some non-dating related ordeal that translates, such as surviving adolescence. The end result of all three is that your life keeps going, the piece of you that was damaged is left behind, and a cool, calm, responsibility is left in it's place.
2674That's what confidence is. The knowledge that you have previously overcome a similar task and weren't annihilated in the process. So how does one build confidence? Go out and eat lots of shit, keep eating until you develop the taste for it. That's how I did it at least.
2675P2 below
2676These Citadels of Power
2677
2678We're witnessing the violent death of consumer culture. Even if I agree with your core perspective I also enjoy being able to wake up and not fear for my life and safety, which is something that most can't say in cities that saw consumer-culture hollowed out by downsizing. The world of post-bureaucracy and post-economic equalization looks like 6 mile, Detroit Michigan, not a zen Buddhist retreat. Asking people to quietly accept downsizing is going against a lifetime of culture programming, akin to asking them to cut out their third eye.
2679And ironically this is happening because people like Bezo's predecessors pushed this culture as a way to maximize profitability. Figures like Phil Night pushed consumer-brand-as-identity to its limit, and the end of that wave is a culture of people gunning each other down in the street over starter jackets and high tops. Of course Night is just one name in a long list of people that lead us this way but lead they did, so I don't feel any sympathy when they begin to feel the pinch. The old Marxist maxim "capitalism is its own gravedigger" is not just a snarky line, it points out the real contradiction between maximizing wealth concentration in fewer and fewer hands, while also mandating perpetually increasing participation in the consumer cycle (both subsistence and luxury). That tension has to give at some point, and when it does people are pissed, rationally or not.
2680Education is a microcosm of this tension. Most education is just learning how to follow orders and play policy, as you point out. But going without almost always guarantees that the prospect will have a life wallowing in poverty, because the majority of people are not Bill Gates, in either aptitude or opportunity. The archetype of the self-made man in America, if we're talking averages, is the crack dealer, not the tech start-up. Education is babysitting, but failing out means that window becomes a slit, so of course parents will fight tooth-and-nail to ensure their kids have access to whatever little education is available. On one side, an economy that needs progressively fewer and fewer people "educated" in the traditional sense. On the other side, an underclass of people going nowhere fast, trying to save their kids from the same fate. In the middle? tension.
2681After all, isn't a riot just the realization of the reality at hand? All pretence of property and propriety is stripped away as people take what they think they need and burn the rest, this perpetual tension realized and acted out in real time (Zizek btw though I wish I had come up with this). That's the future we're looking at, a world wherein resources are concentrated in fewer hands, and more people feel they deserve a bigger slice. Those two things can't happen at the same time, so what is the way forward?
2682Option 1: let nature run its course and see who survives
2683Option 2: spread it around and keep everybody placated
2684I'm a fan of option 2 myself, though if it comes to it I'm ready to survive option 1. Are you?
2685One of the shortcomings of this board is that too many users take the observations Alone made about how a person should act and falsely assume that that will magically happen on the macroscale if we snark enough. The trend is that narcisssism is increasing, not the other way around, which is why this sub has <5k visitors and r/nicegirls is clocking >100k despite being significantly younger and shittier. It's fair game to point out how stupid this is but it doesn't change the fact that it is and all of our analysis should keep that in view. Yes people are dumb idiots, education is a waste and the real money makers are a small minority. That's why we should spread the wealth, because your typical person isn't going to think "hmm do my kids really need school? Have they earned it?" They're going to think "I'd kill anyone who tried to hold my kid back from being a Harvard grad!" whether or not that means anything outside their head. That's the reality we need to keep in view when discussing how wealth is distributed, because (as pointed out by Alone) a narcissist will kill their own family and burn their house down before they admit they are a nobody. That's what we're up against, and getting people out of that state is a long, slow, process.
2686"It's dangerous to wake somebody up past a certain age"
2687Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2688
2689I'd say those are the core basic but not necessarily always. Some women like dangerous men, dating guys out of their circle, etc
2690Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2691
2692I'm avoiding specificity because you are asking me to give a generic formula for something that doesn't scale well to that level.
2693Sexual attractiveness is in the eye of the beholder. The woman is the one that determines if you are or are not sexually attractive to her. There are things you can do to try and stack the deck in your favor but unless you have a specific woman in mind and can describe her to me, my formula will not be helpful.
2694For example, the girl I'm with right now is into guys who are confident, funny, sarcastic, sexually assertive, like smoking weed/doing drugs, into spooky shit, can speak confidently on things like film and are "woke" on feminism, and sets clear boundaries, plus some other stuff I'm sure that I haven't picked up on yet. I don't hit all those boxes but I hit enough that she clearly wanted a second, third, fourth etc date. The girl I was with before her liked guys who were a bit more meek, silly, sexually passive, sober, confident, not super into fitness, tattooed, "woke" but critical of feminism, and willing to put up with her crazy ass. This one too, I didn't hit all the boxes, but the boxes I did hit were different than my current girl.
2695So what would my general advice be? What advise would I offer somebody trying to be attractive to both? Be confident but meek, sarcastic but silly, sober but into drugs, assertive but passive, tattooed but clear skinned, for and against feminism, boundaried but willing to put up with shit etc. Do you see the problem? What they find attractive is different because they are two different people, which is probably why I changed significantly in between being with each.
2696You can go to general advice but the end result is you just get a generic, non-helpful list, something like:
2697Be "fit" which can mean anything from skinny-fat to Pitt in Fight Club to pop-punk bassist to Arnold in his prime
2698Be "funny", which can mean anything from silly to goofy to snarky to sassy to bro-humor
2699Be "confident", which can mean anything from tortured artist to George Clooney to frat boy to dad jokes
2700Be "social", which can be anything from life-of-the-party to workaholic to stoner bro to book-club
2701Be "Assertive", which can mean anything from swiping right to buying her steak to kissing her first to whatever
2702And so on. And I'd point out that this is a feature, not a bug, because the whole point of dating is to form a relationship with somebody, and relationships are formed on shared understanding, shared chemistry and shared information. If you take TRP to it's logical conclusion, you become the aesthetically ideal guy, which functionally means you're perfectly generic; you're the lowest-common-denominator of the dating world, somewhat appealing to everybody but with no particular quirks or chemistries that differentiate you from the mass. It's like when you see a robot put together the "ideal" face based on a sample of hundreds of people rating attractiveness, and the output is something that is somewhat attractive but ultimately generic and forgettable.
2703The only reason this logic holds intact is because TRP defacto assumes all women are interchangeable (AWALT) and therefore you only need to appeal to an aesthetic ideal, not anything specific.
2704I'm not avoiding the specifics, you are asking for a generic formula on how to attract all women, which is what you're getting, because anything that applies to 50% of the population will be hopelessly generic. If you want specifics on how to attract a woman, you need to give me a specific woman that you wish to attract, and then I can give you specific ideas on how to do so.
2705why are they
2706This is too complex for the scope of this conversation but the core of it is an intersection between individual psychology, group sociology and mass culture.
2707Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2708
2709It's not woo though.
2710I'm kind of at the end of the line with this thread because I'm running out of angles to approach it. I think what I'm trying to get at is that there is a limited capacity for success with TRP, but it definitely is not the only or the best way to approach this stuff. It's an algorithmic approach to dating that obscures the underlying structures of what is actually happening during courtship. Your case is an exception because you deployed a pick-up line and then married her, which is not exactly the typical trajectory most relationships go on, even on TRP itself which claims to teach how to have many women, not one specific one.
2711The TRP retort is "there's no other way" but that line you yourself used could have come out of a 2000s era sitcom, it's absurd to assume TRP offered you something you couldn't have gotten elsewhere. What it really gave you was the self confidence to actually try a canned 00s-esque pickup line, when if you had just seen that on Jersey Shore or whatever you would have just said "psh yeah right" and moved on. Somewhere in TRP, the structure there gave you enough confidence (disregard?) to actually try something like this, how woo is that?
2712I honestly don't think the "alternative" advice is woo, I think it's built on assumptions that apparently most of the people who get into TRP have not heard before. But that doesn't retro-actively validate tRP, it just highlights the dearth of clear direction for men. The assumption that almost everyone who has replied to me in this thread is giving is that because TRP offers something, no matter how skewed or incorrect or non-replicatable, it's better than the status quo. Where else in the world does advice work like this? Apply that logic anywhere else and one is attacked.
2713For example, last week there was a thread about how most of psyhcology is in a replication crisis. Should we be defending psych on the grounds of "well, yeah a lot of it is bullshit but it's better than nothing?" That sounds like flawed thinking to me. Except imagine if psychology was 20% useful and 80% actively harmful, not just benign or inaccurate. That's the spot TRP is in as of the last time I looked (tried to check it yesterday and apparently it's private?)
2714I agree that doing nothing is a bad approach to dating. I don't agree that the supperior alternative is to engage in TRP, a very particular worldview that is riddled with inaccuracies, especially when the "good" advice is just re-skinned classic self help, while the bad advice is coming out of left field and is epistemologically warped. That's what I'm getting at in this thread, and so far I've had to re-state it like a dozen times because the reply seems to be "yeah but what else you got?"
2715we all know its true
2716
2717S/o to chicks that like to bang chicks, most slept on group in society
2718we all know its true
2719
2720cabal of horny dudes
2721Gotta ask do you talk like this irl? Or are you just a wizard online?
2722we all know its true
2723
2724Think of all the sluts you know, and then remember that a slut is a woman that will fuck anyone but you. There is your answer.
2725What have you been reading? (24th September 2018)
2726
2727I'm also reading B&T. Thoughts?
2728we all know its true
2729
2730You should probably start a fight and torpedo the relationship just to be safe
2731we all know its true
2732
2733I've seen girls who are just one of the guys. I've seen girls who are just fucking all the guys. Anybody here going "this isn't me", don't worry, we know.
2734These Citadels of Power
2735
2736This is such a cynical take. There is mountains of research indicating things like education and access to resources does make a difference in a person's life. Obviously it's not the only factor but it does count
2737The Weasel and the Scorpion
2738
2739Good joke, everybody laughs, roll on the snare drum, curtains...
2740Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2741
2742No, you got talking to your wife because you had some canned lines you go throw down in place of an organic conversation prompt. The rest was all you buddy, well you and her. Also both lines are PuA pop psych, not TRP originals, and I think the number guessing game can be traced back even further.
2743Not to be a dick but this is the cargo cult mindset I'm referring to. "These lines got me my wife!" Yeah man, it all comes from those pickup lines you used at the bar (or tinder or whatever), everything proceeding it and following it was secondary to that moment you recounted the spell correctly. I am 99% positive you could have walked up to her and said anything with the same level of confidence and you'd be here today, though feel free to ask her and let us know.
2744Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2745
2746I'm not trying to strawman, I'm articulating their position summarized as I remember it. If you want to lay out how they actually articulate the psychodynamics of women go for it because iirc AWALT and similar doctrines make it pretty clear that women will react instinctively for the same prompts every time.
2747Further, just because you were unable to find a better alternative does not validate this option, all it does is highlight that there is a pipeline problem when it comes to reaching these people.
2748For the better base, ive been a firm believer of a personal-experiential model. Young men in your position shouldn't be going online to TRP, they should be going out to a bar/hobby/etc and flailing until something clicks. The benefit of this approach is that your eventual "model" will be hypera-personalized and therefore more effective. It is strange to me that so many people claim that they would be absolutely lost without TRP, and when the whole point of dating is to experiment and learn what you do and don't like. If somebody is an absolute amateur (as some have claimed in this thread) and needs to be told directly introductory info, I question how much life experience they have in general? That's the real barrier to overcome towards romantic success, not knowing the ins and outs of body language or whatever.
2749To me, TRP is symptomatic of a larger issue, which is that many men today seem to have stunted psycho-development. They hit 20-25 and are missing key pieces such as how to be sexual without being aggressive, how to connect with somebody of the opposite sexual intimately, how to take responsibility their own life, or how to socialize freely. TRP is (poorly) filling a gap left by a missed adolescence, one that would be better filled by raw, unfiltered experience. I myself was into TRP years ago and then I spent some time in the so-called "real world" and now TRP feels laughable, because I've just had too many experiences that contradict it (in particular, you do not need to be in good shape, have a job, or really show any value at all and girls will still fuck you if you know what to do).
2750A lot of TRP users just skip past the growing pains part and want somebody else to lay down a clear, concise path for them, which imo is another symptom of psychological immaturity. The process is the journey, not a result of The journey. Even if we ignore other sources (I talked about that up thread) I still think TRP is missing the point because it is processing something most people do not engage with as a process, to the detriment of those who do so.
2751Most people develop their "natural" approach to dating organically in highschool and college, built from experience. This has two advantages: one, it comes loaded with metis regarding what you actually are and two it builds confidence, a key piece of the puzzle. Obviously not everyone has these experiences but I believe even when somebody gets to adulthood it's still a better route to try and learn via experience rather than to adopt a structured framework like TRP, because you are then losing the metis aspect, which is why TRPs advice is so generic.
2752And while we're on the topic I have trouble taking people who take this approach seriously. Play without training wheels folks, not everything needs to be parcelled and wrapped up in a neat package. Anecdotally, somebody up thread said the median lifetime partner count for men is sitting around 5. I went from a virgin to nearly doubling that number in 6 years, it's totally doable and you don't need a method, just old-fashion trial and error, and it's from that position that I can say with confidence a lot of the stuff TRP offers is weak and will come to hold you back eventually, especially the more esoteric shit like AWALT. Honestly I can't think of a doctrine that will retard your progress more than AWALT
2753Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2754
2755In a broad stroke, I would say attractiveness is the qualities, attitudes and behaviours that makes an individual a sexual candidate for a member of the opposite sex.
2756Really my issue with TRP in this direction is that they are taking too limited of a view on what attractiveness is or could be. A lot of things TRP argues to be essentially (like being in good physical shape) can be worked around if you know how to do so. But that's knowledge you can't from TRP because it would contradict their larger theory
27571 year without drinking
2758
2759When I was drinking a 6 pack a day I'd eat 1 stick of broccoli, 2 eggs and 2 pieces of toast and that's it. You just don't get that hungry when you're drinking a lot
2760NAFTA Megathread
2761
2762Honestly we need to divest from the American economy. Having all our eggs in one basket, especially when that basket is significantly bigger than us, is asking to get jerked around.
2763United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2764
2765Lmao okay whatever dude. I'm spreading misinformation by quoting CBC directly, I'm delusional because after a year of negotiating all we got was a concession from Mexico, and I'm 14 for suggesting a country that elected a reality TV star might be in trouble. You're lost the plot, no clue why you're stanning for American interests in r/Canada. Don't @ me
2766NAFTA Megathread
2767
2768We're just digging ourselves in deeper so that they can come around and demand more next time. This isn't a solution, it's offloading the cost onto our children
2769NAFTA Megathread
2770
2771I think what makes this troubling is how overt it is. Sure the US can withdraw for any reason, but they also felt the need to include this particular provision. It's a warning.
2772NAFTA Megathread
2773
2774It's not geography. There have been long periods of lukewarm and even antagonistic relationships between us and them. The current state of things is the result of policy decisions chosen beginning in the 1980s. Our economies were not this integrated before that period.
2775Yes geography plays a role but no country is geography alone. We are choosing this level of integration. And tbh I'd gladly pay higher taxes if it meant we weren't tethered to the geopolitical decisions the US makes.
2776NAFTA Megathread
2777
2778Yeah this is the part people aren't getting. Sunset in 16 years, which means another round of negotiations and another round of concessions. Even if you believe this was "the best deal possible" all we've really done is offload our problems to future Canadians.
2779NAFTA Megathread
2780
2781Jesus christ thank you, I've been reading replies on other threads and feeling like I'm taking crazy pills for being the only one upset by all this
2782Canada, U.S. have reached a NAFTA deal, senior Canadian source says
2783
2784Ugh I hate this logic, it's the mindset of somebody slowly peeling off a bandaide. All we've done here today is reassured American law makers that they can re-write the rules everytime it's expedient for them. In 16 years when the sunset kicks in (if this even lasts that long), we'll have another round of negotiations where we agree to import shitty cannabis or sub-grade American beef in exchange for only tariffing our auto a little.
2785He's a bully, but he gets away with it because other countries capitulate and appease when they should be drawing lines and networking.
2786Canada, U.S. have reached a NAFTA deal, senior Canadian source says
2787
2788Liberal press is running full steam, you know shit's out of whack when I'm reading CBC beside NatPost to get an accurate reflection of where we got screwed (card carrying NDP for those who want to play the partisan game)
2789United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2790
2791"incredibly minor"
2792However, the USMCA includes language that requires signatories to give notice if they plan to negotiate a free trade deal with a “non-market country,” and to allow the other two signatories at least a month to review any agreement before it is signed. It explicitly states that if one of the signatories enters into such an agreement, the other two have the right to withdraw from the USMCA with six months’ notice. ... The use of the phrase “non-market country” seems a clear reference to China.
2793https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/astonishing-clause-in-new-deal-suggests-trump-wants-leverage-over-canada-china-trade-talks-experts
2794Canada is also expected to sign on to this new NAFTA without any reassurances that the U.S. will lift its so-called "section 232" tariffs on steel and aluminum imports
2795https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4844623?__twitter_impression=true
2796The USMCA will bring Canada's copyright terms in line with those in the U.S
2797One of Canada's key objectives for the renegotiation of NAFTA was to open subnational (state and municipal) procurement in the U.S., so Canadian businesses could compete for more government contracts....The Americans would concede no such win to Canada in this negotiation
2798The chicken concession appears to more than double the market access the U.S. negotiated in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP):
2799Another goal of Canada's negotiating team was to modernize the list of professions currently eligible for the special class of temporary work visas created under NAFTA known as TN (Trade National) visas...It appears that list isn't changing
2800Canada is not free to block access to foreign digital content, nor could it require a foreign content creator to pay into a government program from which it does not benefit.
2801The intellectual property chapter includes an extension of the length of time new biologic drugs will be protected from generic drug competition — up two years, from Canada's previously agreed-upon eight years, to 10 years of exclusivity....But down the road, Canadians will pay more for biologic drugs. It's a problem future governments will face in about a decade
2802https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-usmca-key-changes-1.4845239
2803Dude we got fucked, their businesses got more protection and ours are now exposed to cheaper, subsidized competitors. On top of that now we have to report to daddy every time we talk to China. Even putting aside the economics of it, this is an incredibly stupid geopolitical position to be in given America is now ramping up for a possible military rivalry against China. We got fucked, that's the long and short of it, and for what? A status quo with a rapidly deteriorating neighbor and access to Amazon wishlists.
2804I've been reading your replies throughout this thread, and your core push seems to be "it wasn't that bad and even if it was, it's okay because this is the best we could have hoped for." You sound like a battered wife justifying why it's okay when he yells. Expecting our leaders to stand up for us internationally is what we pay them for. Instead they set the precedent that yup, you can fuck with Canada whenever you want and we'll take it. Great look, good signal to send to future trading partners and competitors. In 16 years when this gets renegotiated, we'll be offered an even shittier deal and we'll probably sign that too, cause it looks like we left our balls back in the 20th century.
2805United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2806
2807Then why include it?
2808United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2809
2810It's not nothing. What he's leaving out:
2811However, the USMCA includes language that requires signatories to give notice if they plan to negotiate a free trade deal with a “non-market country,” and to allow the other two signatories at least a month to review any agreement before it is signed. It explicitly states that if one of the signatories enters into such an agreement, the other two have the right to withdraw from the USMCA with six months’ notice.
2812https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/astonishing-clause-in-new-deal-suggests-trump-wants-leverage-over-canada-china-trade-talks-experts
2813We negotiate a deal with China America doesn't like and it gets to walk from the USMCA entirely. It's not just nothing.
2814United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2815
2816Yeah you're leaving out that when we do so, they have the option to leave the USMCA within 6 months if they object to the terms of the proposed deal.
2817United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2818
2819no man u dont get it, now i can order 150$ of stuff of amazon now so it all werkd out
2820/s
2821United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2822
2823Yeah man it's an idiot childish position to be annoyed when your country gets run over by another one...
2824United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Megathread 2.0
2825
2826please dont give them any ideas I cant take much more
2827Canada, U.S. have reached a NAFTA deal, senior Canadian source says
2828
2829Yeah here is the big picture: our economy is critically tethered to a neighbor that is in rapid decline and changes policy directions every 2 years. If you think things will be going "back to normal" in 2020 you are wrong, Trump is just the most visible portion of a deep institutional decay in that country. Sure, Trudeau saved some jobs but the trade off is now every American administration after Trump will know that we can be bullied into taking sub-par trade agreements whenever they want. Today its dairy, what will it be tomorrow? The next time the world corn prices drops, can we expect president Oprah and VP Skeletor to come knocking, demanding we buy their excess corn? What about oil, something America is producing a lot of these days, can we expect them to try and cut into that? Biofuel, green tech, beef, electronics, software, the list goes on and on and on, and now the precedent is "oh don't worry, if the world economy ever shifts we can just force Canada to accept our excess shit". We're being treated like we're Jamaica or something here, it's degrading and will catch up to us in the long run, as these agreements have the world over. America needs to fix its economy, not try to offload excess shit onto us, especially if they then go on to tariff our goods. That's a one-sided relationship, not a trade deal, but then again, that's what they voted Trump for right? To set us and everyone else straight. This is the political reality, so why are we partnering with these assholes?
2830The big picture is right we are riding a bull in a china shop. Our livelihood is dependent a country where 50% of the population revere a dementia-striken reality TV star as the savior of western civilization. If we don't untether now they will drag us down with them when it all falls apart. Already they are ramping up their trade war with China (stupid) and planning for possible military conflicts with China and Russia, and we're going to get sucked in if we stay. But our visionary leadership chose appeasement, so instead of ripping the band-aide off, we get to watch it become infected and disgusting, more so than it already is. That's your "big picture" for you.
2831Also, America isn't the only country buying cars anymore. Demand for cars in China, SE Asia, India and parts of Africa is huge. We don't need to sell to these people who clearly aren't interested in buying from us and seem to enjoy fucking with us. Trump had been in office for like one week and his senior staff were already talking about taking us for a ride in NAFTA negotiations and now, 2 years later, they got what they wanted. Great leadership, really proud of Canada right now. Next time though I hope they tell us to lube up first
2832Canada, U.S. have reached a NAFTA deal, senior Canadian source says
2833
2834Holy fuck people here are pushovers, and this is coming from an NDP supporter. "Well even if it's not perfect I'm glad the Trudeau government was able to reach and agreement despite Trump & friends being so difficult!" Yikes.
2835Yeah wait for the down-river effects to take place, looks like we got little to nothing while the Americans got to keep their industrial tariffs and crack a few of our nuts they've been working on for years. So glad our government was able to appease Trump though, Canadian meekness wins the day.
2836Also shout out to the geniuses going "you don't win at economics! That's the wrong mindset!" Really? Cause that's how the Americans went into this "negotiation", and it looks like they got what they wanted so ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
2837Canada, U.S. have reached a NAFTA deal, senior Canadian source says
2838
2839Well even just from the CBC article looks like we gave way on diary and got nothing on auto/steel tariffs
2840Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2841
2842It's equally not like a trial though despite efforts to frame it as such
2843Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2844
2845Somebody else said it's strange that post-metoo, sexual assault has become partisan.
2846It's weird that you're conflating accusations of him being a rapist with judges who's biggest issues are they're anti-immigration or anti-rvw, both pretty mainstream positions.
2847Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2848
2849What? Democrats can't even get people to show up to vote against a guy who openly said he likes grabbing women, But you think that if the GOP doesn't support this judge, it's all over and Dems will just be able to slander everything? What kind of slippery slope assumption is all this?
2850What kind of strategy is this? Go full tilt on every battle, worth it or not? That's not strategy it's recklessness. Your view only makes sense if you assume everyday democrat supporters are mad lunatics frothing at the mouth, that believe everything they're told and can't form independent judgements. Well, that or you're defecto admitting every candidate is a provably corrupt piece of shit. I'm unsure which.
2851Either way I'm reporting this reply because you're waging culture war
2852Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2853
2854Look maybe there is something about this process I don't know from a legal standpoint but do they even need full-throated democrat support? I thought the whole arguing against Kavanaugh was that this is a smear job that is turning public support against their nomination choice, so Republicans are afraid to act. That wouldn't be relevant if you had a different candidate (like a woman) because mobilizing popular support for RvW is much harder than mobilizing popular support against an alleged rapist. Do people really believe the democrats could rally massive public opposition to a clean-record conservative woman? And if they can't, then who cares? Headlines would be "democrats bitch and moan at SC hearings".
2855My understanding of the situation is this: republicans have this Guy and want to put him in, but they're afraid to pull the trigger cause he might be a rapist and everybody people would be pissed. The conservative position is he's not a rapist, this is just the democrats whipping up the common people to try and intimidate the republicans. In my mind, the simple solution is just to drop this guy and pick somebody else who can't be slandered the same way, like a woman or some other dude or whatever, and then the Dems will have no recourse because the public will be happy they "defeated" Kavanaugh. Where am I going wrong here? I really don't understand why it's so important that this specific guy gets in; surely the GOP has dozens of other judges who could do it as well? Instead they're digging in to protect this one guy who's record is questionable. Why? I don't get it.
2856As a non-American looking in, it looks like your country's politics have become so wrapped up in this culture war thinking that you guys can't even run the war side of the equation. The blue tribe says Kavanaugh is bad, so it's an existential priority to push him through, lest the blue tribe take this mole hill. In reality it doesn't matter who gets through, as long as he GOP does it before midterms which are right around the corner. Instead they're digging in for a battle and wasting time over what? Some guy? Let him go, push through somebody else while the Blue tribe is congratulating itself on taking down another pervert, and you got the SC. It'd be worth losing 100 republican judges to take the Supreme Court, but instead people want to go to bat defending this one particular judge, I just don't get it.
2857And people are seriously downvoting me, in the culture war thread, for suggesting the GOP think about this strategically. Somebody down thread is saying that this is a line in the sand and that if the GOP drops Kavanaugh, the democrats will run everything. What? As far as I know the democrats have nothing except this very specific accusation that is sustained by public support, a support that is only as strong as it is because it's such a tall accusation. Get somebody in their who can't be accused like that and the support whithers away, why am I the only one who sees that? It's like people are so blinded by partisanship they can't even stop and think about what the GOP, as a party with a platform and long-term goals, they can only see the immediate battle line in front of them and since blue tribe is shit talking their boy today, it's all hands on deck to defend him.
2858I just don't get it. This might be the moment American politics loses me. I've always worked on the assumption that where idealism and morality fails, there goes real politik, but this situation can't even be explained along those lines. I truly just don't understand why this one particular guy is so valuable to the GOP that they're willing to waste valuable time on a fucking Supreme Court seat to defend his reputation. It makes 0 sense in the face of their long-term goals, and yet here they are, digging the trenches. I do not understand.
2859Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2860
2861Idk man I'd say knowing somebody is a potential rapist is pretty relevant to deciding to elect them to the Supreme Court
2862Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2863
2864?￢ﾀﾍ♂️ real politik is all that's left. Clear moral decisions haven't been a central part of GOP strategy for years, why start now?
2865Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2866
2867Well you and I just disagree entirely which is refreshing, so I'll let you have this one
2868Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2869
2870The whole walk-back would be for the credit of the general public, who would then turn on the dems, and then the news cycle would move on to whatever racist shit Kanye is saying these days. Iirc the democrats don't have any systemic mechanism to slow this down which is why they're focusing on spectacle so hard. Flip public opinion and that's gone
2871Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2872
2873I'm talking in the moment though, not spread out. Once every few years is solid. But all at once?. These tactics are effective when spread out. How would they fair in the span of a 1 month period? Can you imagine how burned out the average person would be if there was a 1 month fan-fair of republicans nominating and democrats accusing and then republicans nominating again?
2874Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2875
2876I've heard this narrative before and I sympathize with it to an extent. But I still think that, although it's good that you are not as naive, that doesn't mean TRP is good as it is or holds much value.
2877As I said to the other user, the big issue with TRP is that it's a faulty base from which to learn. As novice such as your self would be better-served learning from a base that doesn't bring so much baggage with it, because that baggage will retard your capacity for further growth. Observing women like men who are attractive is good! Arguing that women like attractive men because they are instinctive animals who only recognize status is not just incorrect, its actually counter-productive; if women are just instinctively driven, understanding them further is pointless right? Sure, for a total novice this is maybe enough to work with but as time goes on and people become more complex (and that will always happen because people's complexity is a factor of experience X time) just depending on attractiveness alone will show progressively diminishing returns. Obviously it will never be fully irrelevant from the discussion, but as time goes on it becomes just one of many factors informing the perception of a person.
2878But those insights only work if you recognize that women are thinking about all this at the same level of complexity as men. If you're operating on the assumption that women are just instinct-driven animals with little capacity for higher thought, this sort of "deeper" 'game' (which is really just the bro-word for empathy factored by likeability) will be cut off from you. That's what makes TRP bad, it gives you a broken base to work with.
2879Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2880
2881I find that unlikely. Sustained media attention is unlikely (people are already getting sick of this story) and #metoo is approaching the end of it's lifecycle. Beyond that, this tactic is a solid first shot but the conspiracy nuts will get ahold of it if it's used more than 3 times in a row. First guy a pervert, sure. They're all perverts? That's a much harder sell to the common man. Unless the GOP list is literally 5 people I don't see why they can't just out-list the opposition on this one.
2882And to re-iterate, this is the supreme court. It'd be worth ruining 100 judges if they can get one of their guys into the spot.
2883Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2884
2885Except when is this next time, that's the piece of the puzzle I don't see? Republicans are going to pick somebody, there's no way to keep up this media goat-rodeo for the next 6 years. #Metoo is already running out of steam, in 2 months this kind of thing will be met with a yawn. Capitulate, cut a deal wherein you push somebody else through in exchange for hanging Kavanaugh, and then who gives a shit because the next SC nom will be years from now and by then most of the stuff they want (like overturning R v W) they will have.
2886Like I get the idea that they're worried about this being the new normal but come on, they're going to war over a mole hill when they could have the whole battlefield just by retreating a little and going around.
2887Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2888
2889So you think it's a forest for the trees situation? Feels like they're going to bat for this guy when they could have it all just taking the court with someone else.
2890Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2891
2892I don't have any hard answer for you. This isn't bush league shit, this is the supreme court of the most powerful country in the west. It's a discussion operating at the level of power-politics, not process. Which is why I'm surprised, because I guess I assumed the people with power would step in and try to direct it, rather than open the floor to culture war
2893Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2894
2895It's a fallacy that I assumed my reader would consider the context of what we're talking about? For what it's worth when I said "it's too bad this is being thought of as a trial" I didn't mean "a run-of-the-mill trial with a public defender where they throw the book at him" although that too would have changed my point
2896Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2897
2898I think maybe you are misunderstanding my larger point.
2899TRP does have some good advice, although it's "good advice" is extremely introductory and has been done elsewhere better, specifically in the world of self-help and through specific online forums. TRP is not the only place to get useful introductory advice; much of their stuff is ripped from body-building forums, 90's and 00's self help, and genre classics like How to Win Friends and Influence People. I firmly believe that a total novice would see faster results just by reading one of those "overview" Cracked.com type articles that list empty advice ("be likeable! eat right! be confident!") and then going to subject-specific sources (like r/fitness or the self help section at the local bookstore) for the "how" part under each heading. The only advantage TRP has over this approach is that it has everything in one place(ish) but that advantage is massively outweighed by their flawed teaching method, which I will detail below. The only way you can make the case that TRP's competitors are not passing the bar is if you limit yourself to male-centric "very online" blogosphere type content, and that's only because the only real players on that field are TRP and /fit/. When you widen the scope to include the larger world of self-help and larger topic-specific forums, TRP loses its competitive advantage pretty quickly.
2900Also, even with their "very detailed" advice, TRP still has a horrible success rate. It's been a while since I looked but when I used to care more it would not be rare to see comments like "Success! After 6 months of TRP, I got my first kiss! This stuff really works!" Six month turnaround on a kiss? Or, you get posts like "Well, I talked to 25 women this month, and even had sex with one!" Once again, what? A 25:1 attempt to success ratio is terrible for a typical adult, hell it's terrible for a typical teenager. I get that these are supposed to be total novices so any success is good but with numbers like that, these posters are shooting in the dark. I've met guys who literally everywoman they pursue is a hit. I've known even pretty normal guys, with 0 "training" outside of basic socialization and confidence, who's approach:hit ratio sits at around say 5:1. Those are numbers that indicate something is working. But these guys who are 25:1 using TRP, that's just statistical noise, not proof that TRP is offering superior advice to noobs. Sure maybe there are some dudes on TRP who are getting to that 5:1 range or higher but a) that seems to necessitate 1+ years of continue work, which imo disqualifies them as a novice and b) there is enough guys doing the 25:1 "success" post that it does reflect badly on the sub.
2901But that's just a counter point to your post. What am I really getting at? Why is TRP bad advice, even for beginners who need clear instruction?
2902What is a cargo cult really? Cargo Cults were a phenomenon on the Asian pacific where low-development island tribes would imitate the practices of the industrial nations that came to their island during the war. They superstitiously believed that if they replicated the conditions the Americans created (such as building runways, operating (abandoned) radios in a specific series of steps, or imitating air-traffic signals) planes would come out of the sky and deliver cargo to them. Obviously this didn't work, but the cults couldn't figure out why, because they lacked the requisite epistemological base to understand how industrial technology works. We know a runway is a system, coordinated between hundreds of people, that causes the planes to come and go, and the runway itself is just the physical object they land on. The cultists, from their low-information position, could only see the runway, so they make the leap that if there's a runway somewhere, planes just appear, like magic. They had a broken causality chain due to low information.
2903My position is that TRP is bad advice because it gets you thinking about dating the same way a cargo cultist thinks about an airstrip, which is to say, it focuses on replicating the observed process while completely failing to understand why that process works. This leads to an unreliable system that strikes sometimes and fails other times, with no clear way to figure out why an approach works on some women and not others. The gymnastics done to get around this fact is quite the sight but it usually boils down to either a) the TRP user didn't really do it the right way, better try again or b) women are flighty and unpredictable (then why have a system at all? who knows). Both are classic cult responses to failed magic (we didn't do the ritual right and God works in mysterious ways, respectively). This then creates a bigger problem down the line, because once out of a novice stage the TRP user will be seeing semi-consistent results but will be unable to determine why his method works, which will lead to a jaded and disillusioned attitude.
2904I'll stick with the gaming metaphor. Let's talk League of Legends, because it's one I'm familiar with. Telling a noob "learn map control" is not helpful. But that's not why noobs are bad. Noobs, in that game, are bad because they play it like a shooter: get as many kills as possible, regardless of the cost. That works in COD but in LoL that approach to game play will cost you the game everytime, because completing certain tasks and surviving engagements scales you faster than dying for kills. So the true first lesson a noob needs to learn to win is "game-wide objectives are more important to victory than kills", and then "don't die unless it's in service of a larger game-wide objective". This is a huge mental leap for most noobs, especially those coming from games where the only game-wide objective is to out-kill the other team. From this changed perspective, then advice like "map control" becomes useful because it flows out: if you control certain key points on the map, you're less likely to die, you're more likely to get game-wide objectives before the other team, you're better able to protect teammates, etc etc. If you jump straight to map control but miss the first true lesson, you wind up in a situation where your team has good map control but they use it just to set ambushes with no eye on the larger game-wide objectives. Sure this can get you far but after a point it actually stops your progress as a player, because your fundamentals are shit: sure you can do great ambushes but a team with an actual map strategy will run a train on you everytime, because they're doing more with the map than just hunting for kills.
2905Basically every skill works like this, as an interplay between tactics and fundamentals. In football, it's important to tackle, but it's also important to know who you're tackling, why, and how that will win you the game; if players only focused on the play directly in front of them, they'd never move up the field. When painting, it's important to know how to make a brush stroke or paint an object, but the fundamentals of composition, medium selection, perspective and layering is what separates a painter from a guy with a brush. When making a speech, tone of voice is important, but so is social context, crowd selection, speech structure, etc.
2906This is also why some people hit a wall when developing a skill. Often they start on a good tactic but with poor fundamentals; when they max out that tactic progress stops because they don't realize what they're even doing wrong, because their entire practice to this point has been built on a shoddy foundation so there is nowhere more to build up from.
2907This, combined with the cargo cult issue, is what TRP is. TRP users see other men having sexual and romantic success, which they wish to emulate. However, they don't understand why those guys have the success they do; they can see it, but they don't understand the underlying process, because they lack the inter-personal skills necessary to do it themselves. So they try to mimic the tactics, and fill in the causality chain with their own pseudo-scientific explanations for how that chain moves. The end result is that noobs to TRP at first see quick improvements as they pick up the introductory stuff, but overtime they become jaded or disillusioned when their progress stalls or they go through a string of bad relationships. By that point however they're too deep into the "theory" to figure out why they're going wrong, so they just conclude that it's all bullshit, i.e.e the so-called blackpill. They start on a base that is no good and this limits their progress; they get better and better at replicating the process a "natural" uses but they can't adapt the authenticity naturals enjoy because they're actually working on two completely separate epistemological foundations. The "natural" is working from a base of empathy and a localized loci of power, while the TRP is working from a base of competition and an externalized loci of power. Both are good at getting laid, but only the natural can see results without "trying". For TRP, the act is always on, because their fundamentals are built on broken logic and they are compensating with hyper-tuned tactics.
2908That's what makes it bad advice. Total noobs are given useful tactics but their fundamentals are not tended to (and arguably made worse). The end result is a group of people that can replicate the form of a sexually successful male but only with perpetual effort. Given most people get involved with this shit because they feel dissatisfied with the way their romantic life has developed, this can hardly be called a success; they went from being alone to being a chameleon.
2909Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2910
2911Isn't a big conservative position that nobody is entitled to work? Snark aside, it's not like he either gets into the SC or goes on the street. He's already a judge and even if that falls through there would be plenty of private sector opportunity for him. It's just weird to me that the GOP is going balls deep defending this hill when there is no clear political gain. Why not just hang out Kavanaugh, grab the next name on the list and push him through? Is this really the cleanest possible candidate they have?
2912Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2913
2914I mean sure, which just raises more questions, which I lay out here
2915Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2916
2917Never said an ordinary job interview.
2918I haven't been following this one too closely because I'm from another country and don't care too much about the particular ways America chooses to screw itself. That said, this is how it looks from the outside:
2919The GOP blocked Obama from filling this seat as hard as they could, so they knew from jump that when Trump won it would be their turn to pick. I'm assuming lists must have been made, though perhaps that is too big of an assumption for the current admin. Meanwhile, we have this extended cultural moment where sex perverts from all layers of spectacle are getting dragged out in the media, some justifiably so, some questionably so, and some just caught in the heat of the hysteria.
2920Enter this nomination. We have this dude who has a mostly clean record but people don't know much about him, hardly a household name. As they line up to nominate, accusations of him being a sex pervert start rolling in, including somebody wholesale agreeing to testify about a rape he did.
2921You're the GOP leadership. What do you do?
2922Here's what I would do: I would go back to the list, grab one of the dozens of names on it, and tell him, guess what buddy, you're going to be on the Supreme Court. I'd hang Kavanaugh out to dry (that's politics baby) and put this new guy in. The GOP gets to look like the good guy defending traditional values and justice, and the liberals will be so happy they took down another sex pervert that nobody will care about the new guy, especially if his record is clean of sex pervert stuff and only includes the typical crimes associated with these types of people like corruption or whatever. Everybody wins, the GOP gets to look good and get their Supreme Court nom.
2923That would be how to approach it as a business, as a group of people thinking about the best way to advance their interests. Instead, this is what has happened (that I've heard):
2924When the allegations came out, there was a mixed reaction, some people saying "hey come now, who didn't rape a chick in college, boys will be boys right?", some out-right denying it, and also a bizarre conspiracy of mistaken identity. The leadership has dug in and seems to want to push a trial angle, the idea being that they'll kill Ford on cross examination, which will probably happen given most people can't remember what they did last weekend let alone what happened at a college party 20+ years ago (I certainly barely remember college and I'm still in my 20s). Even if they win and discredit Ford, why? Nobody in the Liberal camp will believe them, Kavanaugh will look suspect at best and the image of the Supreme Court will be further tainted. It's bad optics that, from where I'm standing, seems like pointless partisan posturing that will just undermine liberal faith in the court (more than it already has), which seems counter productive to the GOP's long term goal of governing. Why die on this hill? Here's the possible answers I can come up with:
2925There's some double jeopardy shit in the American legal process that I'm unaware of, where a nomination has to go through or else something bad happens.
2926They don't have anybody else and/or Kavanaugh is the cleanest guy they got on the list and if they can't get him through, they won't be able to get through with anyone else. Not a good look.
2927They intentionally want to piss with liberals, stir up drama and so on for some reason that isn't clear to me (maybe it helps the base? Who the fuck knows. Iirc #metoo has somewhat bipartisan support), and/or they are looking for a fight
2928There is no strategy and the GOP leadership looks like this
2929moloch is at the wheel and has decided now is a good time as any to break #metoo
2930Either way I can't think of a clear reason why they wouldn't just hang Kavanaugh and move ahead with somebody else. Seems like it'd be an easy political victory and might even take some liberal Thunder. Instead they've dug in to fight because...?
2931Why the Diane hate?
2932
2933Yeah totally.
2934Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2935
2936It's really unfortunate people are conceptualizing this as a trial, when it should be conceptualized as a job interview. I think if it was thought of like that Kavanaugh would have been laughed out of the room weeks ago
2937Edit: well the replies to this have been illuminating, if only because so many people are engaging in the behaviour that seems absurd to me, i.e going to bat for Kavanaugh like the fate of the republic rests on the reputation of this one random man nobody cared about 6 weeks ago. I still think the realpolitik solution is to just hang him out and then push someone else through when the media moves on, but apparently holding this line in the sand is a super important position for people who don't like the democrats...for some reason...
2938Edit 2: some trends I've noticed as I read more replies:
2939Some people seem to be equating "accused rapist" with other rightwing positions like anti-immigration or anti Roe v Wade as a reason why the GOP can't nominate somebody else. Make of this what you will
2940Others genuinely believe that if the GOP concedes here, it's over for he GOP as the democrats can just magically slander anyone at any time and see the same result. Life in a contextless world I suppose.
2941This is looking like the event that breaks my ability to process American politics. I obviously don't care for Kavanaugh on idealist or moral grounds. But in my brain, where idealism fails real politik occurs. I still cannot process this decision to fight for this particular guy even on real politik grounds, given how high the stakes are and how personally irrelevant Kavanaugh is to obtaining them, and yet people are seriously arguing the GOP risk the opportunity to lock up the SC (midterms are right around the corner) so that they can defend this dude's personal reputation against the evil democrats. To reiterate: they are risking the opportunity to secure the SUPREME COURT to defend the reputation of an individual judge, on partisan lines. I just don't fucking get it. I'm totally lost, I don't understand the thought process at all, I don't understand why it's so important to win this guy when it seems like it would be so easy to just drop him and throw somebody without a tainted public image else in the spot.
2942If somebody could explain to me why this is the best option, from a real politik view, without assuming that the democrats can magically smear anybody at any time with any bullsht and it'll stick, I'd greatly appreciate it
2943Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2944
2945It's really unfortunate people are conceptualizing this as a trial, when it should be conceptualized as a job interview. I think if it was thought of like that Kavanaugh would have been laughed out of the room weeks ago
2946Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2947
2948This is exactly what I'm saying. I expanded a bit in my other reply
2949Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2950
2951Sure but being right about a thing or two doesn't validate a full worldview and social framework, which is what TRP claims to be (its right there in the name). The original cargo cults were right about a few things too: planes really did come when the radios were operated correctly, and the supplies they dropped were really valuable. That doesn't mean that I should become a cargo cultist if I want planes to come and give me supplies.
2952And also, as somebody who has been examining this community since 2012, man am I sick of the low bar TRP is given when it comes to their advice that works. The way people talk about TRP, you'd think they were offering super good advice. Then you read it and the core of the "good" advice is: be assertive, take care of yourself, don't dress like a slob, take social interaction seriously and try to be likeable. This is hardly groundbreaking advice. I find it bizarre so many users (especially the older ones) think it's a revelation to discover women care about your appearance or that you need to actually leave your house to meet people.
2953The psychology of a TRP user always perplexes me. Simple self-help filtered through some intense misogyny and misanthropy. It's too bad there is no way to see what people are like pre-TRP because I'd love to know what kind of person needs that much filtering to take advice like "don't eat like shit" and "women can be people shitty too" as a revelation that only makes sense in the context of a macro-theory about human evolution, inter-male sexual competition and a collapsing patriarchial order.
2954It's like "yeah I couldn't motivate myself to lift weights until I realized that all of life is a competition to pass on my genes, and women are basically animals running on instinct, so my only hope of filling my biological imperative was if I'm able to trigger their evolutionary desire to mate with a male who is able to physically dominate others. Of course competition today is so fierce due to the sexual revolution that it really wasn't enough for me to just meet women, I need to devote my entire persona towards this competition and think up complex strategies to advance forward, one of which is maximizing my physical appearance, so that's why I hit the gym 5x a week".
2955Meanwhile a normal person is like "yeah I hit the gym because I like the way I look and feel when I do."
2956Their attitude to it all really brings out the neuroticism, wherein they can only engage in normal adult behaviour (like socializing, taking care of their body, having sex) if it's in service of this larger goal of advancing their genetic line, in competition with other men doing the same.
2957That's the issue with TRP. Some of the advice is solid. The lens used to detect that advice ranges from neurotic to exploitative.
2958Anon destroys his coworker
2959
2960Lotta sensitive bald dudes in this thread lmao
2961Culture War Roundup for the Week of October 01, 2018
2962
2963if you want to change TRP...
2964People have been trying this for almost a decade now, and it doesn't work, because TRP is not an evidence-based community. TRP runs on a conspiratorial view of sex and dating so advice that runs counter-narrative is rejected as blue pilled. Even basic ideas of consistency are rejected on that sub. For example, a user will approach 50 women, succeed with one, and call it proof that TRP works. From the perspective of "I did nothing v I did something" sure it's a superior system but 1/50 hits is abysmally low as a system, not really distinguishable from random chance. People point stuff like this out over and over and believers just reject them as beta males who secretly like having their balls stepped on or whatever.
2965I think TRP is something we're going to see a lot more of, the Internet-based cargo cult. TRP sees men doing something they want to do (pick up easily) and so they copy them, falsely believing that if they reproduce the action, they will get the same outcome. This is then supported by cherry-picked science and a modified language that mystifies what it is they're actually saying. But the basic cargo-culture is there, which is why so much emphasis is placed on things like lifting; there is no TRP guide to being an alternatively attractive, because TRP itself doesn't really understand how it works, just how it looks when it works.
2966As for quarantine, does Reddit have a responsibility to promote the various communities that crop up on it's website? It's not like they're banned, they just aren't showing up in search or on the front page. Give most TRP recruitment is word-of-mouth, is this a huge change of pace? It's strange to me that in the internet era freedom of speech has come to mean "unlimited right to mass promotion"
2967Why the Diane hate?
2968
2969You just did what I described people doing in my post...?
2970Why the Diane hate?
2971
2972You get people pointing out sexism when the constant complaint for the character is "she's not acting the way I expect her to, therefore I hate her!"
2973Last year for example people bitched endless about how much of a meany mean mean Diane is for rejecting MPBs big gesture. The series repeatedly explained why that would fail but that's past the point because why the fuck does it make sense for us, as 3rd party observers, to pass judgement and get pissed off with Diane for reacting how she does? When BJ or MPB makes decisions we don't want him to we do, do we go on about much we don't like him? But with Diane a very vocal segment of the fan base can't seem deal with something more complicated than "I don't like her because she can't see that MPB is a good guy and she said mean things to Bojack"
2974It just comes off as ridiculous that the same type of complaint is constantly aimed at Diane and unfortunately, given the core of it seems to be "I don't like that she doesn't placate the male characters" yeah you're going to get accusations of sexism. Even the core of your complaint is "it's not fair she confronted Bojack about the shady thing he did" even though a) BJ has told her repeatedly he wants that level of friendship and b) she writes for him. If he's going to get #metoo'd she needs to know.
2975There seems to be a vocal segment of the fan base that wants Diane to just sit back and shut up, because she complains too much, get tied up in political scraps, expects more from MPB and tries to hold BJ accountable for his shit. They seem to think she would be better if she just rolled over and let the world tell her how to feel about her love life, politics and personal friendships, an expectation none of the other characters have. That's why other people are calling sexism.
2976As for the rest,
2977PC gets a pass because she's the only character in the show willing to mom BJ, to the point where she literally calls him out for it in season 4. Notice how as their relationship has progressed in a more professional direction, people are already quietly complaining that PC "manipulates" Bj for expecting him to show up at his job and do the shit she pays him to do?
2978Wanda and Charlotte/Penny are both romanticized away as unfortunate victims of BJ. Wanda hasn't been in the show for 3 seasons and nobody cares, because she only exists to be an object for BJ to bounce off. Similarly Charlotte/Penny are basically just names invoked to stir the pot and give and object for BJ to focus on when he fetishizes his own sadness. Neither are full people, which is the role they occupy in BJs mind, which is why when shit starts to go down he instantly tries to pull these people back in; it's like he has trouble understanding they hate him.
2979Why the Diane hate?
2980
2981Skylar is a particularily absurd one. People seriously complained about her not supporting Walt.
2982Imagine your pregnant and have a teenage so with a disability and your husband chooses to say fuck it and become an industrial-scale meth cook. Especially when his rich friend offered to pay for his cancer treatment anyway. How is skylar the bad guy
2983Why the Diane hate?
2984
2985Me irl
2986For Rick & Morty, the insufferable fans think they're Rick but are probably more like Jerry. For Bojack, the insufferable fans think they're Bojack but are probably more like Tracy and Stuart.
2987
2988Yeah I definitely fall on the Tracey spectrum
2989Somebody told me that people don't like Mr Peanutbutter
2990
2991I don't like dislike him as a character in a show but I feel like If I met him in real life I wouldn't like him much
2992Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
2993
2994What view do you want changed
2995How would one tackle feelings of shame, anxiety, and "dirtiness" related to productivity / job-seeking / social fulfillment? Has TLP written anything close to this topic?
2996
2997I don't necessarily think there is an evopsych explanation. Do humans living in tribal societies feel shame in the way industrialized humans do? We need an anthropologist here.
2998I think the simplest answer for why shame is a barrier is because by definition, any change is also change in context. Nobody exists independent of social obligation networks, so when you make big changes in your life, you're also warping (or destroying potentially) your network. Odds are that if you are a normal person, there are people in your network that don't want or need a changed context, and so you feel bad for bucking their expectations. Thus shame.
2999Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
3000
3001Interesting read I guess although a bit of a retread on stuff he's already said. It is neat to see him threading his psychoanalysis with existing neuroscience on the topic.
3002Also
3003A somewhat simplified example: Let’s imagine the same experiment with two pictures shown to a subject fully immersed in ideology, a beautiful villa and a group of starving miserable workers; from the accompanying cards, he selects a fat rich man (inhabiting the villa) and a group of aggressive policemen (whose task is to squash the workers’ eventual desperate protest). His “left brain interpreter” doesn’t see the striking workers, so how does it account for the aggressive policemen? By confabulating a link such as: “Policemen are needed to protect the villa with the rich man from robbers who break the law.”
3004This right here is the real insight into the machinations of ideology. The implication that we don't "fill the gaps" in an incomplete data test but rather wholesale do not see competing data points is troubling to say the least. Then again that is the point of ideology: a fully functional symbolic system that takes the uninterpretable real and makes it intelligible.
3005Also, as an aside, I find it interesting when neuroscientists come to support ideas that have been articulated by philosophers/psychoanalysists for a long ass time. That section you quoted, for example, goes back at least to Lacan, arguably much much earlier (certainly Hegel could fit into that schematic).
3006Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
3007
3008What kind of discussion were you hoping to produce with this? I'm a big fan of the ziz
3009[real] drunk asfuck and i dont care
3010
3011I vibe with this
3012When is a movie less than the sum of it's parts?
3013
3014Les mis is a good example. I feel that you can drop into any moment in that movie and have a great sequence, but the length of the film and repetition of themes and tropes makes the overall watch a bit of a drag
3015"Seeing" random scenes while meditating?
3016
3017Whew long practice. But okay thanks for the tip
3018Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3019
3020I appreciate this comment. Gave me something to think about.
3021Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3022
3023I agree. I'm pro drug, pro sex work and passive on heresy. Pro heretic though.
3024The reality is that everyone will fight for themselves. If somebody has no access to the system, they're not going to roll over. Drugs is a perfect example; we make drugs illegal, and then there is this underground economy that is getting people killed over drugs. But what did people think would happen? Criminal model failed, so what else we got?
3025I would argue a similar process happens all across society. Income is something people compete over, that's economics 101. So obvious when wealth inequality rises people will get dissatisfied. That gets channeled to the political process. When that stalls out (such as over the last decade) what happens? The big question.
3026"Seeing" random scenes while meditating?
3027
3028Thank you!
3029Ideology Is the Original Augmented Reality
3030
3031Okay, I will maybe give a more detailed breakdown later. I appreciate what you're saying.
3032Ideology Is the Original Augmented Reality
3033
3034Never claimed to be.
3035Ideology Is the Original Augmented Reality
3036
3037You're clearly insane.
3038Ideology Is the Original Augmented Reality
3039
3040your real name
3041It's not. Google it.
3042As for the rest, what? You claim education is a universal human value. I give an example of different cultures that have believed the opposite, ergo it can't be a universal value. You call me a child abuser? What the fuck?
3043Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
3044
3045Often people throw around "anti-identarian" idea but make space for white-identarian/white-nationalist/white-supremacist arguments or worldviews. Such as the mentioned 14 words post
3046Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
3047
3048This article is something I wanted to like because it was approaching useful insight into the zeitgeist, and then the author chickened out and retreated into biological determinism which only obscures the issue and buries his lead into stereotypes and appeals to archetypes. But that first section is good. So close, yet so far.
3049One thing that I have come to find exasperating is the wholesale abandonment of post modernist and post-structuralist thought. The red tribe wholesale rejects it, as a (((foriegn))) conspiracy or as a bunch of babbling nonsense, while the blue-tribe rips out bits and pieces to make a Frankenstein monster supported by theory ("so gender is a construct? That means I can identify as a man or woman!" if that's all you got out of it, you are braindead).
3050This author, in his first section, is approaching a useful Pomo analysis of what is happening. That line about a progressive culture trapped in the 60s, imitating a revolution long won, could be straight out of Baudrillard. The idea of a cookie-cutter political culture that can't articulate new demands and new problems is Debord. And the connection between radicals growing up and getting jobs, and an institutionalized progressivism, is a quick extrapolation from Foucault.
3051People who like to sound smart say "the map is not the territory" but what does that actually mean? Answering that question is the key to solving this conundrum, the seeming prevalence of traditionalism in both tribes. Imagine a map, so detailed, so large, and so to scale, that it perfectly captures the image of the territory it is mapping. Even in this situation, the territory continues to be a seperate entity, distinct from the map. The map is just a depiction of the territory, and the territory continues to exist even if the map ceases to be.
3052That's one part of the moment we're in. Our political languages (ideologies) have evolved to a point wherein we are able to articulate entire worlds; liberalism is a self-contained worldview, so is American conservativism. There is no issue in the American political landscape that cannot be articulated from liberal first principles. That doesn't mean liberalism is the reality. Same for conservativism. The "territory", the actual power dynamics underwriting the population, exist independent of the ideology used to articulate them. When you engage with liberalism or conservativism, you're still fighting over the make-up of the map, not the territory.
3053This was one of Baudrillard's insights, except for him the issue goes even deeper because now we are at a point where we have maps for territories that never existed, which he called simulacra (a simulation without an original). "Pumpkin spice", which is really cinamon and and allspice, is a physical simulacrum. But they also exist in the realm of language and ideology; what is the white working class really? Is there truly a common power-thread between Appalachian coal-miners, rural White farmers, and Now-retired former auto workers? Or is that label a politically expedient place holder for a hypothetical voter that only exists in the discourse but can't quite be found in reality?
3054These are just some of the questions raised when we look at the question of why are there so many traditionalists. As per Foucault, the movement from monarchist tradition-> liberal freedom has always been suspect (ex, the invention of the modern prison, built on discipline rather than retribution, coincides with the "liberation" of the French Revolution, which also saw the invention of the guillotine as a "more efficient" way of dishing out capital punishment). Isn't it possible that the progressive movements of the 60s survived, not because they changed the culture, but because they were already compatible with the culture? On paper feminism and civil rights meant more liberties, but in practice they've meant more complicated networks of control and surveillance at a national, communal and household level; and while this isn't a bad thing it does challenge the assumed connection between progress and individuated freedom. Seemingly the mechanism is working in the other direction, putting individuals in their place, fixing the stage positions, ensuring the show runs smoothly. There's already quiet rumbles on the left that liberal identity politics don't liberate, they fix racialized positions; white people as the benevolent and reluctant leaders, black people as the perpetual outsider being welcomed to the party, certainly Fanon felt justified in his anger at the reluctant and distant "welcome" he received by the establishment that lauded his work...
3055Why the 60s? What is it about that decade that has marked our political discourse? To answer that is to ask what discourse is, how language functions, how we learn politics, where we learn it, through which mediums. We find ourselves in a moment where we are lost in our own language, lost in networks of obligation, lost in our historical direction. We need a new map. Hell we need to first found out if our existing map references any existing territory at all. I think that's what a lot of Pomo thinkers were trying to articulate, and in exchange for their insight, they have been misquoted into irrelevance and/or despised as evil agitators.
3056And that's the direction I hoped this post would go. Instead it went the opposite direction: red/blue tribe affiliations are actually just biologically determined, so it's pointless to try and advocate a new politic in either direction. I'm sure if you plucked any random person out of America and followed their genetic line back, you'd find their great X 25 grandfather had the same views on scientific progress, homosexuality and race politics. Never mind you can find massive political differences inside 3 generations in America, as declining union participation, changing attitudes on interracial marraige, and falling church participation show. It's all biological folks, nothing to see here.
3057Sigh, so close, so far
3058Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
3059
3060This could be copypasta lmao
3061But yes this is correct for the most part and describes everytime I've found myself in a game of CaH. What I find especially funny in that game is that each session has an invisible line; drone strike joke may get a laugh, but that necrophelia gag? Not even a groan, just a grimace from the person who has to read it. Half the fun of playing that game, at least if you're the kind of person that finds dank memes and 4chan shit funny, is trying to find that invisible line in the group you're with. It's a good litmus test for "how normie are these normies"
3062As for why it skews blue and actual transgression skews red, that's just the cultural moment. Give it a few years and the pendulum will swing back the other way.
3063Ideology Is the Original Augmented Reality
3064
3065What? Where are you pulling this from?
3066Materialism matters yeah but the idea that education is a core human material need is ideology, born out of the enlightenment and sustained by modern liberal political interests. Older texts don't mention education as a key value and many advocate against it (such as Ecclaistaires or Proverbs, both of which directly argue that education corrupts the soul). So hardly universal.
3067Don't shoot from the hip dude it's a bad look.
3068Is there a difference between structural sexism, systemic sexism, and institutional sexism
3069
3070I would say yes.
3071Institutional sexism occurs at the level of individual organiations or institutions. Systemic sexism is an emergent property of a variety of sexist institutions interacting, or an accidental by-product of two non-sexist institutions interacting. Structural sexism is a descriptive term that describes a particular form of sexism, as opposed to direct or individual sexism.
3072Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3073
3074So I studied a bit of communications (postgrad) and this is a question that came up a lot.
3075At this point in time, we really have two types of corporations: businesses that compete on image, and businesses that compete on comodities (I'll spare you the lecture on how this came to be).
3076Businesses that compete on commodities are your classic business; think an actor like Imperial Oil, Sony Electronics, or Philip Morris. The core selling feature is the perceived value of the actual product, vs it's cost. People choose Esso (one of Imperial's brands) because it's cheaper than the competitor, while being of equivalent quality.
3077Businesses that compete on image don't run that model. These businesses have products that are mostly equivalent in cost and quality. So rather than compete on the product itself, they compete on the perception surrounding the product. A teenager doesn't buys Jordan's because he thinks they are significantly superior basketball shoes, he buys them because he wants to be associated with a particular lifestyle that Nike's marketing department has associated with owning Jordan's. Nike, Starbucks, and Apple are examples of these types of businesses, which I'll call IB's for short.
3078Now the thing with IBs is they compete on image, which means they need to build one. Building a public image, stated simply, is about balancing two poles: market and reputation. On one hand, the IB needs to reach it's target demographic and introduce them to their product, over and over so that they keep buying and "upgrading" their own image (how many pairs of Jordan's do sneaker heads buy?) At the other pole, the IB needs to maintain an effective reputation: people in the market need to believethat the image they're buying into is what it says it is, even after they've already made the purchase; owning Jordans is a lifestyle that people advertise everytime they wear the shoe.
3079Where these two poles intersect is the Twitter mob. Building a reputation is a long, slow process, while marketing is a quick, constantly pressure. Damage to the reputation, even minor, can disrupt the marketing effort for a long time, potentially even permanently. Since Twitter gives even small complaints a voice, it's extremely easy for reputations to become damaged. If this happens, the target demo becomes aware quickly (due to the nature of Twitter) and future marketing efforts (for new products) are disrupted when people stop buying. This can create a viscious cycle that could even sink the company.
3080For example, the Canadian coffee chain Tim Hortons found itself in hot water earlier this year when a union broke a story about a franchisee ripping off employees. The target demo was already somewhat dissatisfied with the product and this hit to the reputation was the final straw; Tim's stock took a shit, their business ranking fell 40 points, and their sales went down and still haven't recovered. All because of one tweet that happened to hit that sweet intersection between market ("Boycott Tims!") and reputation ("they're shit anyway! McDonalds is better!")
3081The result of this is that IB's are extremely conservative with the online reputation. Current practise in business school is to advise extreme caution and own up to and rectify any issues, no matter how small, because you never know which issue can blow up and hurt your target demo loyalty. And so random nobodies have a lot of power, because IBs will do whatever they can to prevent that one bad hit.
3082You don't see this happening with businesses that sell on commodity. Everybody hates Exxon and yet we still buy there, because they have the best price of oil. Businesses like that don't worry about this issue as much, which is why Twitter activism has little effect on them (including sweatshops, resources extraction, Monsanto, nestle and so on)
3083Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3084
3085As an aside, this is where the continuing popularity of post-modernism comes from. Side steps the "which civ" question without caving for western chauvinism
3086Toxic men trying to enforce their sense of masculinity on me -- what I learned about asking for relationship help online
3087
3088Idk if I buy the line that her having sex before your date is bad, that she's done you wrong and so on. I also don't buy the line that you're a-okay and everyone is just a misogynist hater trying to drag you down.
3089What I will say is that the internet is a post-modern white hole. Whatever you want, it will spit out in spades. You, the receiver, get to pick your own narrative, decide what is true and what is false. Pick wisely. I'd take everything with salt.
3090Anon is in love
3091
3092It's honestly better that way. Get burned, apply liquor until the memory is too fuzzy to make out. For example, after 2 years of university, I'd dranken myself so retarded that I had completely forgot highsxhool. Feels good
3093A pick up a artists take on wild man mode
3094
3095Okay this is going to be a shotgun blast of analysis, not just on this post but on the PuA and Redpill mindset in general. For the sake of simplicity I'll assume this guy is legit and practical concerns (like that walking up to a woman and saying "hey wanna fuck" will probably get you slapped) aren't at play, I.e he truly believes this method, which, at least on paper, is superior to playing games and giving the run around, if only because it's more time efficient. The reality is that even if it does work, this method is totally useless to 99% of people that haunt a place like TRP.
3096The relevant TLP reading is the one where he asks the question, "how did that teenager know he could bully Louis and face no repercussions?" Summarized, in an episode of Louis, the protagonist makes an over-the-shoulder comment to a group of roudy teenagers and their leader threatens to kick his ass, making him beg them not to kick his ass. For the middle-aged protagonist, this is extremely emasculating and torpedoes his date. The question Alone asks is, how did the teenagers know Louis would take it lying down? The answer is because everybody can see, just by looking at him, that Louis has never been in a fight, that he's the kind of guy that has gone through his whole life so far with his head down, and is definitely not the kind of guy that would fight a teenager in a restaraunt over an insult. The only person deluded about what kind of man he is is Louis, which happens in two steps: Louis is a) is arrogant enough to make an over-the-shoulder comment and assume he won't have to back it up with action and b) Louis is so attached to his amicable (re: submissive) identity that once action is required, he can't figure any way out of the situation but to capitulate and be emasculated. The only "solution" for Louis was to never get involved in the first place, because from the moment the interaction starts, it's clear to everybody Louis is not bold (or crazy) enough to back-up his initial comment, and so he revealed as the push-over he really is.
3097This is basically why this advice can't work for TRP. By virtue of being on red pill, they are tacitly aware of the fact that they aren't the kind of guys who can walk up to a total stranger, say "wanna fuck?" And see results. If their lives worked like that, they wouldn't need TRP to structure their worldview.
3098But why can't they? After all, I agree with OP; honesty is the best policy and does save one time and effort. So why can't a PuA simply "be honest" about what they want?
3099Well, what do they want? Don't look at what they say, look at what they do. What they do is fetishize the approach. The TRP fantasy isn't sex (that is seemingly a finish line that gets comparatively little of their analytical focus), the TRP fantasy is the conquest of sex: their actually productivity is aimed towards managing the process of moving towards sex.
3100And that's why this approach will fail. Because simply walking up to a woman and saying "hey you look great, want to grab a drink and spend the night?" Is too simple. There's no conquest, no control, just a hard ask followed by her answer. TRP users can't deploy this method because they don't want a simple yes based on an on-the-spot assessment, they want a silver-bullet algorithm that will spit out a yes every single time.
3101It's important with TRP to remember that the narrative is part-and-parcel with the strategy. TRP users aren't just guys trying to get laid, they're former losers who woke upto the truth about sexuality. The story of overcoming their former "delusions" and learning how to truly "get" women is just as important as the actual strategy itself, so any strategy that doesn't reinforce this narrative (that there is a secret truth that must be uncovered) is incompatible with TRP's structure. Even this advice, which boils down to "be yourself and shoot your shot" has to be heavily filtered through the lens of "no man this activates her respect for you and shows your status" because just saying it without qualifying will be derided as the same unhelpful advice TRP is allegedly running from...
3102Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 24, 2018
3103
3104I mean the real irony is pitchfork trying to position itself as culturally relevant, that ship sailed long ago...
3105Eminem has always been an outsider and there have been people complaining about him since day 1, both from the "true" hip-hop scene and from the middle class critique world. I think the biggest barrier to enjoying his music is people are always trying to make him fit into a box he doesn't belong in.
3106Daryl Davis the blues musician who has deradicalized over 200 far right extremists just by talking
3107
3108Man this thread is a mess:
3109Yes, talking to radicalized people and walking them back to sanity is good. Know what that's called? Social work. Who in this thread is ready to pay more taxes to fund a national de-radicalization program? Davis can't talk to them all folks, and no freelance hobby effort will ever be able to out-pace the rate at which they recruit. When will people get serious about this issue and put their money where it belongs? Anything less is just jerking yourself off.
3110Lol at people complaining about the conflation of the KKK with the far right. If the rest of the world conflates your side of the spectrum with white supremacists, the sane reaction would be to re-examine your side. Note how nobody ever conflates the far left, jihadis, or other radicalized positions with the KKK and white supremacy? Also don't @ me about historical context, we're not talking about Alabama in 1896, we're talking about the US as it is today, in 2018.
3111Interested in pornography, especially its relationship with celebrity culture and the spectacle
3112
3113We have to preserve our precious bodily fluids!
3114Say it louder for the women in the back
3115
3116As a white guy post but;
3117Isn't this just a thing across the board? Number 1 thing I've noticed about dating is that it gets easier as my clout increases. When I was young (say 16) I couldn't get women to text me back, now at 24 the same type of girl will clear her schedule for me. It's like being somewhat made (whatever that means in your context) is a huge boon vs starting from nothing
3118[Serious] Redditors who felt like they would never ever find a romantic partner and then did: what advice would you give to those who feel the same way now?
3119
3120They just did
3121[Serious] Redditors who felt like they would never ever find a romantic partner and then did: what advice would you give to those who feel the same way now?
3122
3123No idea why you're getting downvoted this advice is the real gold.
3124Want to know how to succeed in dating? Go to your local retirement community, find an old married couple, ask them how they did it. Translate their answer into your context and you're there
3125TLP articles writing themselves these days
3126
3127Now this is the kind of content that keeps me coming back to this board
3128TLP articles writing themselves these days
3129
3130When I have something worth posting, I post
3131TLP articles writing themselves these days
3132
3133Man what oare you even talking about?
3134We have 3 covers on a limited run of a second-rate magazine and you're taking this to be the epitaph for American society? This isn't deconstruction, it's hardly even a circle jerk, one step removed from r/iam14andthisisdeep
3135Here's my direct question to you:
3136The only truly American thing about these pictures is that 2/3 of the people pictured are morbidly obese. And the fact that all of them are women. I guess featuring a transgender or gay man would've been too on the nose
3137Why should I give a fuck about this at all? What is the "grand statement" you think the editor of Time is making by the choice to feature these women on their piece about how shitty the school system is? What is your thesis?
3138And you're right, this sub is a masoleum, I don't see how it could be anything more when the kind of "content" that survives here is people posting pictures of magazine covers going "THIS" like you can just rip something away from it's context and the analysis follows itself. TLP never thought he was above articulating his position, the snark was always the gravy, never the meat. This sub seems to have missed that
3139TLP articles writing themselves these days
3140
3141I made the "whatever this guy is smoking" line because I was smoking and I'm hardly original when I'm blazed.
3142What I'm more curious about is two things. First, the OP is hardly biting critique, it was l approached with some lazy sarcasm yet now I'm catching salt for doing the same? I don't care either way but you must recognize the irony.
3143Second, yeah obviously Time is going to sell a narrative about teachers being victims. It's a feel-good story about mis-matched priorities because the type of parent that reads Time wants the best for their kids and for America (tm) regardless of what a teacher actually is or does. Which part of this is the shock? If you were a parent, would you make a case for teachers being kept in the same spot? Competition for resources assures each parent wants the best possible teacher, and unfortunately teachers bitching about things like "wages" or "debt" implies your precious child is not getting the best possible thing. This is obvious to everyone.
3144The real question is what wavelength is this discussion on really? Yeah sexism, racism, rah rah, why am I reading about it in r/TLP? If I'm reading it it's for me, and the medium is the message right? The only other place I saw this was r/LsC, where it was posted unironically as straight propaganda. Here it's posted as propaganda too, although with the added layer of "being in the know" and "critique" which turns more on assumptions (is every detail really on purpose? I've met plenty of editors and they are all stupid as hell) and more antagonism.
3145Is this what the machine wants? Which machine? The failing liberal press? Or just "society" as if we can summarize the hyper-complex machinations of the zeitgeist into one 7 letter word. Does anybody even read Time? What does it say about this community that this is the content that gains traction here? As if a magazine that is publically derided as childish (Family Guy, of all actors, made that joke like a decade ago) has any clout at all...but no man it's all about the victim complex man...
3146TLP articles writing themselves these days
3147
3148It's true, Americans are fat, I'm glad you pointed it out. I'm curious as to why you felt the need to point it out?
3149Highschool walkout protesting the sex ed curriculum rollback in Stratford
3150
3151Oh brother we passed that point a long time ago. Also there is nothing enlightened about the middle, pick a side
3152TLP articles writing themselves these days
3153
3154Man pass whatever your smoking, comparing a woman with 2 jobs and donating plasma to a failson who turned down a job offer to continue mooching off his folks...
3155TLP articles writing themselves these days
3156
3157I'll have whatever this guy is taking
3158TLP articles writing themselves these days
3159
3160must be your first day here
3161Why on earth would you post this to FB?
3162
3163Advertising isn't just about attracting new customers, it can also be about maintaining your brand (ex: Coke)
3164Why on earth would you post this to FB?
3165
3166why
3167Advertising. Can't get any if you don't put yourself out there
3168What are the chances of Pickles getting emotionally hurt by the end?
3169
3170I'm on the fence about manipulative, mostly because it's a question of intent. Was PB trying to do something romantic and fucked it up (as he claimed)? Then not manipulative. Could PB tell which way the wind was blowing (it's said throughout the season the only time they interact is when they're hate fucking, and then underground happens) and was trying a hail-marry to save the relationship? Then yeah you're entering manipulative territory.
3171Why overbearing:
3172The thing you gotta understand about Diane is that it was drilled into her head as a child, repeatedly, that she's on her own. Outsider in her own family, bullied in school, alone. Part of her defence mechanism was to create a private space in her mind that is just hers, a place where she can go and the problems of the real world don't exist anymore. This is also the well she draws her writing from.
3173The belle room is a room in that space. She knows she's not sleeping beauty but when she's stressed she can retreat to that private fantasy and pretend. That's what she tries to articulate to MPB when they're half way to Hawaii. It's safe to assume this is information she has never told anybody, or at least a select few.
3174And then MPb takes this information and attempts to actualize it in a move to invite her into "their" home. Two problems. First, fantasy never translates perfectly into reality, this is just a psychological fact and attempting to make that leap is likely to be horrifying, not enticing (see note at bottom). But second, PB is intruding on her private fantasy, a space she's carried with her her entire life, to try and rectify some of the bad blood that sprung up over the last year of their marraige.
3175I'd consider that an intrusion, especially given that he did this behind her back as a grand gesture, which he (should) already know she doesn't like (as established in season 1). That's what makes it overbearing.
3176The running problem in their relationship is that a) Diane has no agency (season 3 e 4) and b) MPB never listens and tries to run the relationship as a one man show. The belle room moment is those two problems crashing together at the worst possible moment: without consulting Diane, MPB makes a huge decision about what she would like in the new house, at it goes bad.
3177Note: easiest example here is video games. I enjoy call of duty, yet I imagine joining the marines and actually getting shot at is not nearly as fun
3178People who hate Diane but like Bojack/Mr. PB/PC/Todd....why?
3179
3180I've been on this forum (different handles) since season 1, and this is what I have noticed:
3181People here have always disliked Diane. The most common complaint is that she is a "whiny feminist" or some variation of that. The reality is many viewers who are sympathetic to BJ don't extend the same credit to Diane, because she is a woman and because she doesn't take up a mother role (PC) or romantic interest role (the show intentionally went out of its way to make it clear she would not be getting with BJ). For some viewers, if she isn't either of those things, she's just taking up space, and this is articulated in their never-ending complaints when she does things or stands up for herself.
3182It's also Reddit. We're a big sub and not insulated from the larger culture on this site, take it for what it is
3183Diane’s “Controversial” Casting
3184
3185Seems like a nit-pick on a show where 60% of the cast are animals
3186[S5] Line delivery that stands out to you?
3187
3188Honestly most of MPb lines from philbert I felt were really nailed. There's a line in e11, quick throw away line, where MPB is strangingly BJs (tv) wife and Bj says "what are you doing?" And MPb goes "what you're too chicken-shit to do!" And even though it's the smallest line I felt it was delivered so perfectly. It's almost too bad MPb is a light character because I'd love to see more serious lines with him.
3189In the Intro, the camera follows BoJack while his life just plays out behind him. The only thing that BoJack controls is his drinking.
3190
3191Me irl
3192The four Chads of the Apocalypse
3193
3194Best comment
3195The four Chads of the Apocalypse
3196
3197Somehow inspiring and terrible at the same time
3198The four Chads of the Apocalypse
3199
3200Hmm no it you should switch war and death
3201The four Chads of the Apocalypse
3202
3203Sounds like he recorded it on the rockband mic
3204So, what was the point of Judah ?
3205
3206Me irl
3207So, what was the point of Judah ?
3208
3209Not everything has a point, that's a reoccurring theme in the show. Sometimes people's lives intersect and then disentangle for no reason
3210Bojack Kills?
3211
3212Bojack is the enabler though. From s1: "yeah I'm more of a before rehab friend". The opening section of s3e12 makes one thing clear: any real relationship between BJ and SL is dead, which is why the only time they see each other is when BJ is going on a bender.
3213SL's sobriety may have been bullshit but that doesn't mean it's all good that BJ was the catalyst to breaking it
3214As for Diane, nobody knows what happened between BJ and SL but BJ. To the outside observer, it looks like SL was sober, then BJ hung out with her, then she overdosed on dope. Can't blame Diane for knowing what she knows
3215What are the chances of Pickles getting emotionally hurt by the end?
3216
3217My take on pickles:
3218I'll start by saying I'm a big Diane Stan. And one reason I stan for Diane is because, imo, MPB was a shitty husband. Maybe not terrible but it was clear to me from season 1 on that their relationship was screwed, not because MPb is a bad dude but because as a partner, MPb is terrible at listening, thinking about others, etc.
3219A lot of people don't see that. Just like there is a certain subset of people that identify with BJ and therefore make excuses for his shitty behaviour, so too is there people that appologize for MPb. This hit a zenith with people defending the Belle room, a gesture that imo was overbearing boardering on manipulative. There was no way that would stick and yet, people threw shade at Diane for having a very reasonable reaction (seriously, put yourself in her shoes).
3220As the show gets more meta, Thiccles (sorry can't get that gag out of my head, which ever of you said that first thanks) is gonna be be a slap in the face for MPb fans. Already we see him making the same mistakes as he made with Diane, except worse because he also has Diane beside him, telling him where he's fucking it up. That was the point of the Halloween episode: four times in a row, MPb has made the same mistake, and each time he's totally clueless as to why this keeps happening.
3221Unpopular opinion but I don't like Emily and hope Todd doesn't settle for her
3222
3223In Todd's defence, Todd also knows Bojack extremely well and knows that having sex with him is typically a bad time (not to mention he has herpes). That doesn't make it 100% okay but if I had a friend as greasy as BJ and he slept with my highschool best friend I'd be a bit pissed too
3224Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3225
3226Sorry who are you actually referencing? Iirc the article that originally put this argument forward (called the violinist or something like that) actually did clearly indicate that
3227Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3228
3229Iirc the whole point of this line of attack is that yes, you are killing, but that doesn't matter because there are situations in modern society where killing is okay, such as "pulling the plug" on somebody with a terminal illness. Iirc that is stated almost verbatim in the original piece arguing this position. So I don't think you've really broken new ground here
3230Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3231
3232Iirc the idea of class consciousness came later, after the LP term was in use, and anybody (from proles to kings) can lack class consciousness. I'd have to go grab my copy of the manifesto but I'm 99% sure LP refers to the criminal class / terminally poor unemployed
3233Shadow People
3234
3235How did you wife respond?
3236What do you think dreams are?
3237
3238You should check out Jung maybe
3239Imo dreams are your subconscious communicating to you and organizing itself. The source of dream insight is parts of your mind bringing forgotten or incomplete ideas, themes etc to conscious use
3240Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3241
3242Dear God, save me from stats lectures by people who can't see the forest for the trees. As I said in my OP and re-iterated in my reply, the entire thrust of this post is that the trust people have in the traditional authorities has been shattered. One of the causes of this breach (which I hammered repeatedly in my follow-up) is that people misuse statistics to obscure issues, rather than as a means of clarifying them. In response you've just thrown a pile of stats at me (which can be easily questioned) and then accused me of ignoring numbers I don't agree with. As I pointed out already, it's pretty rude to just assume I have no idea what I'm talking about and/or that I haven't been looking at the same stats for years on end, just because I've reached a conclusion you don't agree with. Tbh I think people who are shaky in their own position like to assume it's their opponent's first day on the internet, and if only you show me the right stat my view will change. Hate to break it to you man but I've been studying this stuff for years, even got a degree in it (political science BA) and I assure you, one or two uninterprerted labor board stats are not going to change my perspective, especially since after throwing a few questions off-the-cuff about the utility of said stats, you've accused me of curating my views and cherry-picking my data. You're definitely not showing my viewpoint any good faith, seeming to believe that I've based it off of nothing.
3243I could go through and build a nice data-heavy post outlining my core views but what would be the point? You've already built in a failsafe, accusing me of cherry picking, anything I come back with you can bat away as invalid or misinterpreted, so why waste my time? I mean you're not even arguing my post or the follow up, why should I waste time compiling research for a another one?
3244But beyond that, and this is where the trust comes in, food gets more expensive every year but average wage stays about the same. You can have the most beautiful statistics array every conceived but if it can't explain the basic things like that, which I can see just by entering the world, nobody is going to trust it. THAT is what I am trying to articulate, that is where the frustration comes in, that is why the trust is broken for many people. They hear on the news there was a recovery, and then they step outside and trip over a heroin junky. I'm not even arguing whether a millenial is poorer now than he was a decade ago, I'm arguing that what is said in the news does not line up with what people are experiencing. In the political sphere, this is the car going over the cliff: liberal politics crashed the economy, and now liberals are shocked and appalled that nobody wants to get back in their car. It's like they assumed everyone would just forget they were driving when we went over that cliff.
3245Why do you think the Trump crowd has fallen so hard into conspiratorial thinking? One reason is because all the "real" news they're fed don't actually line up with what they see everyday in their lives. Obama goes on the news and says "yup there was a recovery" and people in suburban Ohio go "where?" Because their lives are worse than before.
3246That's what I'm trying to articulate here. I'm not trying to debate the validity of the stats I'm working with (though to be fair, so far you have yet to present me anything that seriously challenges the validity of my world view, despite the condescension you've presented it with). I'm trying to point out that the basic, fundamental trustunderlying these discussions is broken, because so many bad actors have misused and abused information, or outright lied. When that happens, people stop listening and start looking out their window, and here's what I see: everything is more expensive, everything is smaller, wages stay the same, and nobody except leftwing candidates will even acknowledge the fact that basic things (such as housing) are getting further out of reach each year. That's what I'm trying to say, that's where this political swing is coming from.
3247Do you know? Probably not. I'm willing to bet you mostly know what someone else has curated for you. And guess what they're trying to do?
3248Is that not what you're doing? Why should I trust you?
32493 million workers in 2017
3250Now run the same numbers from The 2005-2018 period. Or the 1995-2018 period. Also, 1/10 millenial workers wanting full time and being unable to find it is hardly a bragging point, especially given this is only working millennials, not even counting unemployed
325114% greater
3252How much has housing, food, healthcare, and education gone up in the same period? If year over year my cost of living growth outpaces my income growth, I'm getting poorer.
3253Tareted solutions are not something I hear often
3254Perhaps because you aren't listening?
3255Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3256
3257This will break eventually. In many ways it's already starting. Somebody else pointed out that the de-facto social contract for the last 80 years has been that access to a middle class lifestyle should be easy enough that there would always be a large enough contingent of people in it (or approaching it) to defend the private property rights that sustain it. The break down of this means the return to two openly antagonistic classes, which is what we have now.
3258Also not to be a dick but you are also misusing lumpenproletariat. The LP is what we today would consider the "criminal" class: the homeless, criminals/gang members, people on permanent welfare, etc
3259Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3260
3261Ah okay I kinda thought you were being toung in cheek but wasn't quite sure
3262Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3263
3264Dude this is dead on, couldn't have said it better myself
3265Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3266
3267Curious line of attack
3268what does worse off mean
3269For me, it means the basic things I'm expected to do by "the system" (establish a home, reproduce) are less accessible to me than tommy parents. By that metric, yes I am worse off; there is a 0% chance I will be starting a family within the next 5 years, while my parents were able to start one at my age. I think this is a fair metric because the need to create more people does not change over generations; technology or not, raising a kid continues to be a key milestone throughout history. And by that metric we are worse off.
3270Sure it's neat I can text somebody 3 time zones away and get a quick response. I would trade that for the level of financial stability needed to raise a family though. Don't fall for the bells and whistles.
3271debt
3272It's true for everyone I've met who did university. Stats could clarify. I'd also point out that in some job markets, you don't technically need a degree but trying to get ahead without one is a joke. This one may be variable depending on your location.
327370%
3274Your approach here obscures the issue. Yes I would rather be paying 70% of my income to rent vs being a Russian serf in 1730 (although I imagine if I was a Russian serf I wouldn't be that in to paying taxes to the Tsar either).
3275My beef is with the specific individuals who are alive today who did what they could to steer the ship in this direction. For example, the total lack of political will to implement some controls on the financial sector (we got Dodd-Frank, already weak and repealed anyway) after the collapse. We know this is an industry that can't regulate itself, yet our leaders also refuse to regulate it effectively. When the next crisis inevitably happens, it won't be the fault of "history", it'll be the fault of particular individuals who chose not to do their job and protect common people. That's the frustration I am articulating: the current leadership has made decisions that have shattered their credibility, so they shouldn't be surprised when people don't trust them.
3276Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3277
3278I'm going to need to read that study to decide what to think, that said,
3279As I already pointed out I've already moved once for work, and I'm pretty young. Most likely I will have to move again this year. I don't think it is absurd to say that it is undesirable to need to uproot your entire life every few years to chase work, especially when that chasing is not a guaranteed upgrade.
3280Yes the economy is in transition. Thats my point, and that's why socialism will continue to attract people: workers are expecting to bare the brunt of this transition and perpetually contort their life to do so. People don't like this and having leadership that throws up their hands and says "hey that's what it is" without doing anything to smooth through the transition will not be popular. I'm not saying the government should hold ones hand but damn it's like they're doing everything they can to speed the process up. As I already mentioned, I'm originally from the rust belt. Were people there ready to move? Who cares, here comes the free trade train chooooo choooooo! Hopefully all these middle-aged auto workers are ready to retrain and move across the continent to fight people half their age for work.
3281And then they all vote Trump. Whooops.
3282I'm not opposed to moving for work. I'm opposed to moving for work significantly every 3-5 years which seems to be the new normal (certainly describes my circles). People complain about the atomization of society, well, this is one of the ways that it happens: when you move every couple years, you become rootless, not particularily attached to any place or community. This then has down-stream effects when we have "communities" made up of people with nothing in common and no steak in the survival of the community, because they all assume they'll be moving on in 3 to 5 years anyway.
3283You're correct in observing that previous generations took this mostly lying down. The result is a generation of people with no connection to their neighbors. I don't want that to be what happens to me, which is why I'm pushing for some kind of reform now.
3284Also, as an aside, these conversations always assume the places recieving workers want them. I'm in a city now that's supposed to be good for work, and everything is a closed network. You can't even get a job at the pita place without knowing the owner's cousin Abdul. Come here for work, get ready to spend tons of time networking just to stay here, because nobody actually cares about your credentials and only kinda cares about your experience. It's not as simple as "just move to where the jobs are" as if every other person isn't thinking the exact same thing
3285Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3286
3287This guy gets it
3288Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3289
3290orry to seem confrontational, but it seems like a lot of this conversation revolves around, "people told us if we did X then we'd be ok and THEY LIED!" Life is unfair. Don't get back in the car. Don't believe the hype. And definitely don't raise your kids the way you were raised. Be angry and rage,but beware also self-righteousness.
3291That's what I'm doing, and I get called by everybody an entitled whiner for doing it ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
3292As for the rest of the post, summarized its "hey my life is shit too". Doesn't that piss you off? That the horizon of your expectation is "it's all shit"? I'm sorry but I don't want to have to take care of a kid on just 35k, why is it bad for me to say that?
3293Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3294
3295Why not both?
3296I like programming. I'm okay at math. I'm not convinced I can out math a whiz kid from Bangladesh at such a high level that I'm worth the wage differential. I'm also not convinced that having an entire economy of programmers is really the long-term solution we need, if those programmers are going to continue to fight over the small pie of liquid capital available.
3297I never claimed to be the smartest guy, but I also think that one shouldn't have to be in the top 10% of intelligence to have a shot at a decent life.
3298Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3299
3300I love when I make a post complaining about a macroscopic trend and then somebody comes along exhibiting the exact behavior I'm describing.
3301To start with, right out the gate that statistic shows that at least half of the people in the sample were making less than 42,000 a year. How low can one go before they feel the pinch? Beyond that, the statistic you give is looking specifically at full time workers, which ignores the fact that this is an era known for part-time, contract, freelance and other precarious jobs. Further as others have pointed out down thread, compared to previous generations at the same point, millennials are worse off, despite being better educated and more geographically mobile. It also ignores the fact that those numbers are pre-tax. Really there is a dozen different ways one can slice up that statistic, not that it really matters because at the end of the day, you've decided based on a few statistics you've selected that, actually no, it's everyone else who is wrong.
3302And that's what it is right? So why argue?
3303I love the way these conversations develop. You claim that people like me are cherry-picking a narrative that is "ego-serving" (whatever that's supposed to mean?) and therefore our complaints are invalid. It never occurs to you that the people who have the most to lose are the ones pushing your narrative, that perhaps the people running the whole thing might have an incentive to keep saying "everything is all good", to push their own narrative about what is an isn't working. The idea that a bunch of politically-outside people (from both sides of the spectrum) may push a narrative to sell their position is obvious to you, but somehow you also believe that the center, with millions of dollars on the line and political power to lose, would only offer a clear, unbiased view of whats going on. Howabouts did you come by that statistic anyway? Are you an avid reader of labor bureau press releases? Or was it curated to you? Or did you go hunting for it? I love SSC, we talk endlessly about how machines curate biased info to us, how the current administration is openly corrupt and lies all the time, how the previous administration massaged stats throughout the crisis, yet when somebody puts all this together, they get told to put their tinfoil hat back on....
3304No you're probably right, it's just because we're whiny egotistical millennials that just don't know how to balance a checkbook. Pay no attention to the bi-partisan revolt happening, I'm sure it's a coincidence that people from the left and right, aligned in no way, both decided to say fuck it at about the same time. Pay no attention to the fact that people are starting families later and smaller, if at all. Pay no attention to the fact that to even get that 42,000 one needs to take on 20k+ in debt, like some pyramid scheme bullshit. Pay no attention to what is happening right outside your door: people in the streets, heroin everywhere, tent cities, collapsing infrastructure, open corruption, living space gets smaller every year, price of food keeps going up but wages stay the same.... It's all just a narrative, nothing is real. When I get my paycheck and 70% of it goes to cost of living, that's just the narrative confusing me. When the only place I could get a job is a place where 70% of my income goes to cost of living, that's just the narrative confusing me. The system knows better than what I can see with my own two eyes.
3305When my parents were my age, they got married. Two years later they bought a house together. Know how much a down payment on a house would cost me today? It's all a narrative though, I'm just serving my ego, if only I budgeted harder, if only I ate less, if only I commuted further for work, if only I...
3306Life isn't easy when you live in an expensive area, I'm sorry, I really am. It must suck only having a few dollars sitting around to spend on yourself. But you get what you pay for. It must be a fun place to live. I sure hope so, or you're getting ripped off.
3307Actually, it's none of the above, I'm here because my home region was decimated by the decision to outsource manufacturing to Mexico and Asia, and robots. Thanks, system! Now I get to live in the closest jobs hub to my home, only a short 5 hours away. And thanks to some savvy networking, I'm actually paying a good 300$ under market rent right now, not that it matters. Maybe this is the year I finally give up and move into a trailer park...
3308I started this post by saying what I love. Know what I hate? The total absence of dignity from these discussions. Complain about the status quo, and I'm stuck defending the possibility that, yes, my ability to perceive the world around me is functioning, that perhaps I've read the same statistics as you and don't agree with your interpretation. Why is this line of interrogation never thrown at the people who support the status quo? "Jeez, the median income is only $42,000? Is that really enough for an average American to get by?"
3309But hey that's why I don't engage like this much anymore, because people who support the status quo don't want to listen, they just want to tell you you're wrong. And that's okay, because people who feel locked out of a system don't disappear, they build their own system. I'm not the only person feeling this crunch, there are millions of us, and we are reaching a point where our combined voices can't be ignored.
3310Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3311
3312This is true, although a good starting point would be to stop trying to ram through policies that are widely unpopular
3313Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3314
3315Dude does not understand what lumpen proletariat means. Anyway,
3316I think this author missed the mark. The issue is not that millennials have too high expectations, the issue is that the trust between your typical liberal arts millennial and the "system" is completely shattered. I'd point out the system is experiencing the same pressure from the fly-over people of Trump country, which to me indicates the issue is not just with liberal arts majors thinking too highly of their worth.
3317I'm a liberal arts millenial. If I could describe my perspective on the millennial political-economic experience, it would go something like this: imagine you're in the backseat of a car. The driver is doing 90 and keeps assuring you "don't worry, I know where we're going!" There's a cliff in front of you, and you keep screaming to hit the breaks or at least turn, but the driver just speeds up, reassuring you this is the right path. As you go over the cliff, the driver jumps out, pulls a parachute and floats away, while you plummet to a wreck. When you finally pull yourself from the rubble, the same driver pulls up in a brand new luxury car and says "hey get in, I'll take you where you need to go!" You turn them down, so they begin berating you, telling you you don't deserve to get where you want to go, that you're lazy, that it was your fault you went off the cliff, etc
3318Would you get back in that car?
3319That's basically my experience with the political economy. I was told for years college was the way to go. Then, a bunch of people crashed the economy and rode golden parachutes down, while me and everyone else went down in flames. Now, those same people (sometimes literally, sometimes their protégés) are telling me to continue to support them? "This time will be different baby", yeah I've heard that before ?.
3320The issue is there is no trust. This guy suggests everyone retrain into programing. Why? So I can be part of the bust that happens in 10 years when there is 5+ programmers per job? These projections are made by the same people that 10 years ago were suggesting law and finance. Whoops.
3321And all this alone wouldn't be too bad if there was some kind of reconciliation process. But the opposite is what is actually happening. Occupy Wall Street, for its flaws, did mobilize thousands of people, and yet it was ignored because those thousands of people couldn't simultaneously articulate a new, technocratically feasible approach to the economy. How broken is the political system when everyday people need to be policy experts for their voice to be heard? The story should have been "thousands march to protest the broken economy" yet somehow it got twisted into "this collection of students, unemployed people, and hippies couldn't clearly articulate a new national economic policy so their protest is just a pointless exercise in whining." Here's a question, why is it the elected representatives can't come up with a solution? Isn't that why we pay them? To handle the policy shit that everyday people don't have the time or energy or knowledge to do? Then again, when it's public knowledge many legislatures aren't even reading what they sign, is it any surprise nobody has an answer for this problem?
3322Then you gotta factor in that there isn't much lower for people to go. I'm a millenial success story, by which I mean I have a room, I've paid off most of my debt and I have a job (for now). My "living large" is spending 30$ a week on a meal and some booze, and another $20 on some pot. I've never been on a vacation and everything I own can fit in a van. Compared to other people in my age range, I'm living large, given that most of my peers live in their parent's basement and/or are 20k+ in debt. How much further can people downsize? For me, I have three places to cut expenses: deprive myself of the little joy I get spending 50$ a week on myself, eat less food overall and call it a diet, or move to a cheaper location and start the long hike of rebuilding my social network. When I get told to "lower my expectations" I'm stuck asking which expectation is too high? That a tiny fraction of my income should be spent on myself (rather than going immediately to rent and bills), that I should have food on my plate, or that I should be able to live where I have some semblance of community? And to reiterate, I'm doing well compared to most of my peers.
3323Combine all this together and you have the rise of socialism in the west. Nobody trusts the liberal leadership anymore, because their leadership has brought us to this moment, and because they continue to pass the buck on creating a solution, no matter how tight things get, even as others get their golden parachute. If you lock people out of the system, they don't disappear, they just build their own system. That's what's happening right now. Socialists are winning accross America because, despite all the flaws with socialism, they at least acknowledge that there is a problem and pay lip service to introducing a solution, which is 10x better than this treadmill of "so we tanked the economy and got rich doing it, sorry, here's a 5%-off coupon you can use when you pay us to retrain again."
3324And to reiterate, I want to point out this is happening on both sides. Part of Trumps appeal was that he was not afraid to point out that many pieces of the liberal consensus (like NAFTA) was a raw deal for many Americans. Is Trump bringing back coal, probably not, but who cares because when was the last time any presidential candidate gave a shit about Appalachia, outside of lazy appeals to guns or whatever? People notice. To quote one of the hosts of Chapo trap house, "at least Trump acknowledges there is a fucking problem"
3325Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3326
3327The biggest barrier I know is that there really isn't a low-pressure environment to meet people in.
3328Maybe part of the problem too is the Balkanization of sex from other types of interaction. The general attitude I've encountered (in both sexes) is that if you at an event for one thing, you're not open to meeting a potential partner, and when you do want to meet somebody, you head straight to tinder rather than trying to leverage your existing social networks
3329CMV: Not all incels are bad and the propaganda against the them is terrible
3330
3331Is that sarcasm or?
3332Grizzly Man (2005) Werner Herzog's chronicle of the life and death of environmentalist and bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell who spent nearly thirteen years living with grizzly bears in Katmai National Park and Reserve in Alaska. [1:26:24]
3333
3334Herzog's commentary is what makes this movie amazing. Insight without being overbearing or obvious
3335What exactly is a woman that a man is not?
3336
3337Zizek has a book that addresses this question, "the metastasis of enjoyment". Iirc one of this insights was that the quest to remove the "woman" from the question of male-female sexual relationships is actually pretty hostile; the movement should be in the opposite direction, attempting to understand why a secondary category exists and what that actually means. In that direction, psychoanalysis is basically empty or at least severely undeveloped; Lacan calls the psychology of women "a dark continent" in that it is mostly unknown to psychoanalysis.
3338Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3339
3340I mean it's not a perfect analogy, I was drawing attention more to the idea of doing something and then having people you don't care about imposing on it.
3341Also imo makeup as expression is part of the full outfit
3342Somewhat accurate
3343
3344Not from a redditor
3345CMV: Not all incels are bad and the propaganda against the them is terrible
3346
3347The problem with incels is that you have two groups: one is kids (under 20) who are just awkward and geeky and rather than do something, have decided to sulk. I think most of these people will be fine and this post is not about them.
3348The other group is the over 20's, and especially the over 25s. If you are 25+ and still incel, there is something wrong. Even if you're not misogynist, even if you treat women well, something still isn't adding up. Why?
3349Well, why is this incredibly basic thing that 99% of the population has no problem with so hard for the incel? That's the question. What is it about the way they approach women that keeps them in this spot? Sure as a kid maybe they are clueless but as a fully-formed adult? They should have something figured out. The fact that they don't, to me, screams psychological undevelopment, a thesis corroborated by the incel narrative that they almost always had extremely atypical teen and early adult years. Until that is fixed they will be different from other adults around them, and it will be reflected in their romantic success.
3350Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 17, 2018
3351
3352Maybe a parallel I can draw
3353I have a lot of tattoos that are pretty visible, yet as the total number of tattoos I have has increased, I've actually become more meek and tend to dress more conservatively. Why?
3354On one level I think that they do make me more attractive (and if tinder is any indication, they do). But they also come with a pre-loaded set of assumptions, when all my stuff is visible people automatically assume certain things about me and feel emboldened to tell me; I'll have total strangers stop me in the street to comment on my appearance or tell me how they "totally want" a tattoo but they just aren't "ready to commit to it for life!" (Which after the 100th time, begins to sound like "oh I could never be as reckless as you").
3355Did I get tattooed for other people? Maybe in some abstract sense, where I have an idealized image of the kind of woman I would be into and we could be inked up together, and truthfully that is sweet when it happens (and ironically, women with lots of tattoos rarely if ever comment on mine). But I certainly didn't get tattooed specifically for the benefit of Becky, the random white chick at my job who low-key thinks I'm a radical because I've done Coke before, nor did I get tattooed for Jim, the old fuck who lives next door and thinks the year is 1974. And yet, both of those people seem to believe that because I look a particular way, I want to hear their opinions on how I look, and would get very pissed if I said "fuck off, I didn't get this for you."
3356I imagine this is what it must be like to be a woman with make-up, except this happens every day and if she doesn't wear it she gets shit on that too. I
3357Why Alt-Right "Intellectuals" See the Frankfurt School as Competitors
3358
3359You're the first person in this thread to call you a nazi...
3360I'm not trying to destroy anything. I like democracy and liberals are fine by me (if a bit shortsighted). Don't confuse critique with hostility, the whole benefit of critical theory is that it identifies ways western society can move forward without just collapsing into fascism and chaos. If you were familiar with the content (for example, Adorno has a whole book basically asking "so fascism happened, what now?"), this would be clear to you. We offer a route out of the contradictions that nearly destroyed the west in the 20th century, the political right offers nostalgia.
3361I don't care about your views on Heidegger or Christianity. Christianity has been collapsing since the enlightenment, good luck getting that genie back in the bottle. What I'm more curious about is what inclines you to come to a subreddit you know you aren't going to like just to but heads? Don't you have something better to do with your time?
3362Any thoughts on the Kaepernick Nike ad campaign?
3363
3364Where I would draw the line between "idpol" and critical race or intersectional feminism is that idpol, as practiced, is strictly a middle-class movement. True intersectionality was supposed to be a cross-class analysis but a certain subset of people have mostly cut the class understanding out of the picture. What is left is a warped version of all three, where class is mostly invisible (or worst, argued as just) or sidelined in older leftwing movements, feminism is degraded into a discussion on middle-class sexual ethics, and critical race theory is degraded into focusing on biological essentialism. This warping occurs because in the horizon of middle-class politics, the only distinctions between white people and people of color is their race, the only difference between men and women is their sexuality and so on. Society under this world view becomes flat, because there is no clear way to tether these groups to history, aside from broad appeals to their historical trajectory, which in itself is only capable of articulating history as a never-ending story of us vs them; the history of race becomes the history of whites, the history of gender becomes the history of men, etc. What's missing is the mechanism of power, i.e. the material realm, commodities, production, consumption and so on.
3365Obviously class is not the "glue" or anything like that but at the same time, I think the frustration many are feeling with how this has developed is that discussions around the "hierarchies" in society feel skewed by a (small, vocal) group of people that are very vocal about having their particular intersectional class grievances addressed, while simultaneously ignoring or suppressing the complaints of others.
3366Any thoughts on the Kaepernick Nike ad campaign?
3367
3368The sweatshop one is interesting because it's actually just a further escalation of the same trend. Woke middle class consumers (i.e Nike's demo) will take this gesture as brave and use it as an opportunity to differentiate themself from the bad whites meanwhile truly woke people will use their own knowledge of how bad Nike is to boost their own social standing and/or to draw barriers around their communities ("if Nike truly cared they would donate to [group]! They're just using the black struggle to sell shoes!"), gates which need to stay up in order for Nike to continue cashing in on selling black culture to white suburbanites
3369Why Alt-Right "Intellectuals" See the Frankfurt School as Competitors
3370
3371It's a folkish way of looking at society.
3372as if a bunch of crit theorists wouldn't immediately pick up on that
3373Anon speaks the truth
3374
3375Like aside from this comment section ?
3376Anon speaks the truth
3377
3378If you don't pay taxes, your political opinions are worth very little
3379What does he effectivly mean by this?
3380
3381zizek confirmed incel
3382Does zizek want or not want action?
3383
3384I think what you're missing is that Zizek implies the left fails because I never takes a moment to stop and think.
3385For example, consider the 2016 Democrat defeat. Within 24h of the announcement everybody, from Maoist cells to Democrat party elites had put out a statement, placing blame where they thought it belonged and raising calls-to-action on behalf of what they saw as the next step; Trump wasn't even in the white house and already 2 separate movements (grass-roots antifa and liberal elite "resistance") organized to "fight back" against the ascendant political right.
3386Well, where are we now, 2 years later? Antifa became a scapegoat justifying increasingly fascist policing measures and a soft wave of red terror aimed at Universities and liberal-sympathetic mass media. Antifa was successful in driving members of the so-called "alt right" off the streets but internet weirdos and college-aged racists never had much power anyway, so I'd say it's a Pyrrhic victory, especially if the left lost the universities in the process. The elite resistance puttered out and went nowhere, with a democratic party in disarray still and unsure of which direction to head or which policies to stand behind; figures like Cortez or Sanders remain personally popular but so do figures like the Obamas; what's lacking is a clear articulation of how the Democrat coalition (in itself made up of dozens of competing factions) can actually a) govern and b) answer coalition demands. It's worth pointing out that 10 years ago, the last time the democrats had a majority, even then they were too fractioned to pass anything but the most lukewarm policies. Add in the bad blood from the Clinton/Sanders spat and you're left with an American "left" that is running a "resistance" with no clear direction, no identifiable alternative and no real strategy beyond symbolic victories; deeper issues like state governments, local/municipal governments, low level courts, etc remain firmly in Republican hands, to the point where whole parts of the country are considered lost causes.
3387What could have been done differently? I think this is where Zizek comes in. The 2016 loss was not only a major defeat, it was also a blindside; the majority of politicos did not project a Trump win and did not understand how Clinton could lose so hard. That would have been the time for the left to step back, and have a dialogue about itself. To start, the top brass in the democrats should have been fired or at least sidelined hard, and at the grassroots level, a more clear dialogue about what the left actually is and what it needs could have helped. I think about my own experience on the left as a grassroots organizer and one thing that stands out to me is that the left is very out of touch with the wider community; there are particular individuals that have a lot of direct contact with other members of the left but these interactions are very segregated from the general public. Or as I put it back in 2016, yeah Antifa is great at punching nazis but where is the antifa soup kitchen, library, legal defense fund, prison outreach?
3388What does the left offer, really? It's hard to say. The grassroots level functions somewhere between a cult, a club, a gang, and a base for networking/hustling for your next job. The top level functions somewhere between a corporation, a country club, and a mafia ring. None of these things are very appealing to the general public, and beyond that none of these things are capable of articulating challenges people face in their day-to-day lives. A full stop and re-analysis of what actually needs to change would take the left to new places.
3389Women provoking men by putting on makeup on the train and then disavowing it
3390
3391I have to completely disagree with you. To start with because that Zizek quote is specifically speaking to seduction and courtship, not to aggregate relationships between women and men as classes. You're taking an instance where Zizek is talking about the action and reaction of two specific individuals in a specific context, and extending it to any potential interaction between any two people who carry these two specific class attributes.
3392Or to quote TLP, "a slut is a woman that will have sex with anyone except you." The mistake the man on the train is making is the assumption that the woman is putting on make-up for his particular benefit (or in opposition to his benefit, i.e. she cares so little what he thinks that she won't even "get ready" before entering 'his' space). The reality is that the man doesn't even exist for the woman, he's simply background noise, indistinguishable from any other random object in public. Only by causing a fuss and forcing himself into her field of perception does he even exist for her at all. At least in anglo countries, this is a breach of cultural etiquette, as general one is supposed to mind their own business when interacting with strangers.
3393So is this a narcissistic complaint? I would say yes. Imposing on a stranger's commute, for no reason other that to affirm that you exist in their field of view, is narcissistic posturing.
3394This doesn't preclude the possibility of a woman putting on make up for somebody else's benefit, but this is obvious if one spends 5 minutes in reality; women wear make up for a variety of reasons, from appearing more sexually attractive to expressing particular emotions of mental states, just like any other action a person (of either sex) takes to modify their physical appearance. The mistake is in assuming that when you see a woman engage in this behavior, she's doing it for you particularly, rather than for somebody else or in service of an abstract notion (such as beauty); or to quote my mom, "the world doesn't revolve around you".
3395What ideas have you read from TLP that were helpful?
3396
3397ah but what do you want to be true in writing this?
3398You know this season showed me that Diane is really tragic in a way.
3399
3400Diane is also tragic in the old sense of the term, in that she made one mistake a long time ago and is now continuing to suffer the consequences (up to and including destruction).
3401One thing that stood out to me about Diane for this season is how much Bojack imposes himself on her life. We see this pattern occurring repeatedly throughout the season: Diane has a boundary (such as her therapist) and when she asks Bojack to respect that boundary, he blows right past it. This culminates in their big fight in e10 that even includes him physically restraining her when she tries to eject herself from the conversation. What makes this difficult is that this pattern actually slows down her progress towards self improvement; she leaves the show because of BJ, despite the fact that her writing is what made it good and (as BJ himself says) could allow her message to reach more people. Being in BJ's orbit also slows down her progress on her divorce, because it keeps her constantly in MPB's range.
3402The tragedy of all this is that this all tracks back to season 1, when Diane took the contract to ghost write for BJ because she was a big fan. At the time she didn't realize she would be getting wound up so tightly in Bojacks life, and yet here she is; she got married to MPB of BJ, she torpedoed her career because of BJ, and now she's dragging his ass into rehab. It all just goes down hill...
3403Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 03, 2018
3404
3405Idk man back when I was depressed I got told this at work all the time, by coworkers, my boss, customers even, etc. I can see how frustrating it is because I was not happy, I was actually extremely down, but all everybody cared about is how I looked to them; it's not like I can say to my boss "working here makes me want to die". It always made me feel like people didn't care what happened to me so long as I pretend that I'm all good when I'm near them. Like my image exists in their world, rather than as the face of an independent existence.
3406Its alienating. Having people policing your body language is alienating, the kind of thing that when it happens on the street I immediately respond with "fuck off an mind your own business". I suppose the difference between me and a woman is most dudes will go ballistic if a woman tells them to fuck off
3407Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 03, 2018
3408
3409This post is a good example of how model selection can determine the conclusions of an argument.
3410Perhaps social change isn't a balancing act, it's a discourse. Different groups each compete for their own interests and the outcome of these interactions is culture
3411BoJack Horseman - Season 5 Discussion
3412
3413I feel like Gina was intentionally cast down. The whole point of her character is that she is considerably less famous that BJ and that this is her big break; the shiftiness of the situation is that getting that big break means paying dues and taking shit from creeps and shitty people higher up the food chain, which is a theme re-iterated throughout the season. It starts early, with Flip casually saying that now that BJ has done a nude scene, it'll be easier to get Gina to do one next time. By the end, BJ literally chokes Gina and her only option is to just push through it because a scandal would nuke her career.
3414It's worth pointing out that Gina is in many ways the anti-Diane. Diane is a lot like Gina; a small-time talented nobody in her 30s who happens to get her big break when she crosses paths with BJ. But unlike Gina, everytime Diane comes to these gates she tries to push back and the result is that her career is damaged; she's a brilliant writer who makes clickbait because everybody in Hollywoo has already decided she's just a whiny feminist and will only offer her gigs that fit in with that.
3415In defense of Diane
3416
3417People have been hating on Diane since the pilot. They don't like her character because she is adjacent to Bojack but doesn't always facilitate him and doesn't always prioritize his emotions. PC, who's defining characteristic is that she stands by Bj and puts out his fires is loved by this sub. Coincidence?
3418BoJack Horseman - 5x11 "The Showstopper" - Episode Discussion
3419
3420If there is one running theme in this show (even this episode) it's that BJ constantly torpedoes himself. If it hadn't been pills it would have been something else. In the first episode we see he has gotten his drinking down to 1/7th of a fifth a day. By the time Hollyhock visits he's back up to a full fifth a day. That is all him, has nothing to do with the pills (if anything mixing pills and alcohol is dangerous) and it's no secret 99% of bojack's problems are exacerbated by him being drunk.
3421"It's you. Fuck, what else is there to say?"
3422BoJack Horseman - 5x08 "Mr. Peanutbutter's Boos" - Episode Discussion
3423
3424Around 15m mark you can see the celebrity stealing club looting BJs house
3425I was publically humiliated last night and feel like shit
3426
3427thanks!
3428I was publically humiliated last night and feel like shit
3429
3430Any recomendations? Most of the confession/vent subs are full of racists and that's not the kind of responses I'm looking for
3431What prompted you to join this sub?
3432
3433Honestly,
3434The cumtown episode where they shit on the "stop making fun of incels" Chapo thread. I had been drifting away from Chapo for a while but then that bit just hit me like a truck, felt like I'd been in a fever dream and suddenly woke up.
3435When the Toronto van attack happened last summer everyone and their dog was going on and on about how sad it was and how we need to help these deranged men and blah. The cumtown comes around and is like "no if you're an adult Virgin you're a loser and there is something wrong with you." And I was like thank fucking God somebody said it, feels like I've been in crazy town.
3436Holy Shit Cumtown is destroying the brains of a generation
3437
3438I listen to Eminem cause I'm white trash
3439Best Highschool Bit
3440
3441Go outside
3442Best Highschool Bit
3443
3444What a legend
3445Holy Shit Cumtown is destroying the brains of a generation
3446
3447https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kAAlEoLRuTA
3448Holy Shit Cumtown is destroying the brains of a generation
3449
3450The secret to beating depression is to pretend you're happy, for so long you forget you're pretending.
3451And if that fails get wrecked on psychedelics and cheap booze until you're so retarded depression hits the back burner
3452Holy Shit Cumtown is destroying the brains of a generation
3453
3454This is the dumbest shit I have ever read
3455Holy Shit Cumtown is destroying the brains of a generation
3456
3457Ding ding ding
3458Richard Branson believes the key to success is a three-day workweek. With today's cutting-edge technology, he believes there is no reason people can't work less hours and be equally — if not more — effective.
3459
3460This is about where I'm at. I love Toronto but goddamn if they don't make it as hard as possible to live a life here
3461On education, skills, and layered ceilings
3462
3463Interesting post but it doesn't factor in scalability. Yes the current system creates mediocrity, because the vast majority of people need to be mediocre; for every math genius we can sustain, there are thousands of "normal" people doing mundane tasks like trucking, farming, pressing buttons in a factory, writing copy for ads, and so on. People who do need mastery (such as a astrophysicist) can choose pretty early on (9th grade typically) to begin focusing in that direction, and has the potential to be a master by the time they hit 30. The rest can flow through into their general-knowledge jobs.
3464Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3465
3466Is that that different from society at large though? Obviously in the wide open class compounds but at the same time racial lines both matter and are constantly ignored.
3467Maybe what I'm saying is that when you encounter somebody, race plays a role. I think about the people I know who are not white (I'm white) and race is both relevant and irrelevant to our relationships. It's a hard dynamic to describe but for example, me and a close Indian friend can go from busting each other's balls on racial lines, to bitching about racist movements, to talking about which colour of chick fucks best, to talking about how race is irrelevant and it really is about connection. We're of the same class, same sex, same sexuality, yet we both recognize that we are not of the same race and we are follow travelers who approach problems the same way. To me, that's your X factor, the piece that doesn't fit into any other analysis so must be phenominon; everything is the same, yet this one avenue of analysis (race) reveals a whole series of differences: family structure, taste in women, diet, view on alcohol, career expectations, holidays...
3468Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3469
3470Fascinating letter. Really does illustrate the connection between class and anti-racist struggle, not just for that quote but even just the angle the letter itself takes (congratulating Lincoln for defeating the confederacy). I find it interesting that he tethers together the declaration of 1776, the French Revolution, and the fight against slavery; really articulates what he saw as a combined struggle against an antiquated order. That quote is interesting both for its hyperbole and it's ability to fit into what encompasses it; the idea of the struggle between classes as a holy war is a powerful allegory that has played a big role in soviet-era propaganda. Good dissection of this idea comes from Zizek if you're interest in a modern leftist interpretation of this.
3471For the Irish and Russian serfs, they shared many commonalities with slaves. A common rightwing point is that the Irish were enslaved/discriminated against, which although is maybe not the most politically correct line of attack, does contain a kernel of truth; as indentured slaves, they were forced to work and did not enjoy full rights. Further, iirc, Russian serfs were functionally slaves until the mid 1800s, which had both economic factors (such as a stunted industrialization) and social factors (check out older Russian lit like Tolstoy; War and Peace, set in 1812, depicts a completely different culture than what was happening further west, like Dumas' stuff, at roughly the same time). Obviously not a perfect reference but imo makes sense in context.
3472Been a while since I've read Kapital but iirc the comparisons there seem rhetorical. Tbh need to go back to it.
3473Anyway yeah thanks for providing sources, figured I'd trade you some commentary :D
3474Will someone get married?
3475
3476The real protip is in the comments
3477u/MaximumEffort433 Explains Why He Became an Atheist
3478
3479Somebody else chose to do that to her is the obvious extrapolation, not that she chose to be made a victim
3480Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3481
3482Yeah this is the real insight here. Double irony because this is what members of the Frankfurt school (Adorno in particular) were warning about
3483Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3484
3485Sources? That doesn't sound like M&E
3486Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 10, 2018
3487
3488This is similar to a conversation I had the other day on the same topic, which reached the opposite conclusion.
3489The race/class connection is important but I also feel that it leaves a lot out. Off the top of my head, in prison race is pretty important even though (theoretically) there is only one class. Obviously prison is not representative of society at large but it does represent a point of departure from the race/class narrative
3490That final sentence tho
3491
3492I mean I'm not Christian either, I'm just a guy who decided to bite the bullet and see what all the hype is about. A lot of the discussion around God and free will (at least on Reddit) seems to suffer from the same flaw imo: people take a secular understanding of the universe and trying to fit God into it. I don't think many users realize that Christianity isn't just a moral system, it's a fully-fleshed out epistemology operating on fundamentally different base assumptions. Stuff like "God is cruel" is not even wrong in Christianity, it's irrelevant because a) the cruelty in the world is almost always people choosing to harm other people and b) God is the only force powerful enough to save people from each other.
3493That final sentence tho
3494
3495"In his image" includes free will and higher reasoning, you can't have free will without consequence or else it isn't free will, just the illusion of choice.
3496Also it's worth mentioning that man was set in a perfect, suffering-free world and he chose to disobey God's ordered system, a decision which created the cascade of consequences that brought evil into the world. God has intevened on multiple occasions to try and set things back in order and everytime people choose to mess it up again (Soddom & Gamorrah, the flood, contacting Abraham, freeing the Israelites in Egypt, and so on) and each time there is a correction everyone complains about meddling. This is why God stopped performing direct miracles and instead introduced the prophet system, so that common people couldn't complain that God was uncaring or meddling too much, now he just tells them what's gonna happen and they choose to obey or not, which was a compromise he reached with the Israelites when they were in open rebellion against him after conqueoring modern-day Israel/Palestine.
3497This argument that god is omnipotent is essentially saying God should remove the part of the human that makes them human, I.e the capacity to actively choose and make decisions. Arguing God use his omnipotence to remove evil is asking God to put humans on the level of animals, operating purely on reaction to stimulus. A core theme of the bible is that the bad stuff that happens happens because evil seems to be a natural outcome of higher reasoning (which is why the tree with the forbidden fruit is the tree of knowedge; learning to think = learning the possibility of evil choices). People have to choose to do good.
3498That final sentence tho
3499
3500What is cruelty then? To return to the cockroach metaphor, if you're stuck on a ship with a limited amount of food and find a cockroach infestation, is it cruel to exterminate the roaches? Failure to act will destroy your food supply. Successful action will mean annihilating a group of beings that are acting in their nature and not only don't understand but can't understand why you do what you do.
3501Picture the relationship between man and god in those terms and you're getting closer to what the Bible preaches. The only consistent narrative in the Old Testament is that a failure to follow God will get you killed, almost always by other non-believers. Is it cruel for God to place humans on earth together and let them do as they choose? Perhaps, although throughout the story God tells people what they need to do to avoid the sword and they ignore him, and then suffer ?￢ﾀﾍ♂️
3502That final sentence tho
3503
3504Not even. He's beyond cruelty. You're still using human terms to articulate the morality of something above/beyond morality
3505Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 03, 2018
3506
3507I don't have any studies or anything, just my direct observation as somebody who grew up in a small town (population <10,000) and then moved to a cosmopolitan city center (population >3m and growing). For the record I don't think it's just urban/rural, more about how a community works. What I've observed is that dating seems to be affected by some key factors:
3508cumulative social capital: how networked are people? How much social sway do they hold on their network? Who do they know and how?
3509community turnover: how many new comers are in a community? How many people leave each year? What is the typical "stay" in a community?
3510Chance: how often are people meeting new people? In what contexts? How many "new" interactions does a person have a day?
3511In small communities, social capital is high while turnover and chance are low. "Everybody knows everybody" so dating is about accessing your existing networks and maintaining a good reputation. Once you're in a relationship you're incentivized to stick with it; the odds of meeting somebody new is pretty low when you're single, so if you exhaust all options early on you can find yourself in a spot where you have no options and no way of finding new options. These factors incentivize settling: people get in a relationship that is "good enough", and feel social pressure not to rock the boat. Compound that with low information about sexual health + a young dating culture (people are serious about marrying their highschool partner) and you get a pretty high marraige/birth rate.
3512Large communities have the opposite problems. Social capital is weak but turnover and chance are high. Dating strategy has less to do with accessing existing networks and more to do with follow leads, taking chances, and widening one's network as much as possible. Because turnover is high and social capital is low, individuals are incentivized to keep looking for a better partner; people can continue to date around indefinitely without running out of new partners, and there is little (if any) social stigma about dating outside your existing network or breaking up with somebody in your network. Add in a high cost of life, access to contraceptives and a hyper-focus on "careers" that will necessitate aloofness and you get people waiting to marry and have kids.
3513Ultimately maybe harder is the wrong word. I wouldn't say it's harder to date in the city, I'd say that dating in the city has been casualized. It is still possible to have serious long-term relationships, but navigating to that point is more of a challenge.
3514That final sentence tho
3515
3516I think you're mis-understanding what worship is as per the bible. The idea is that everything depends on God and your only hope of survival is to offer him favour. Worship is less to do with saying you like God and more akin to a lord/peasant relationship, but to the maximum. Under Christian doctrine choosing to not worship is essentially inviting death and destruction into your home, which worshiping might prevent it
3517CMV: I think the ending to 1984 would have been far more poignant if Winston and Julia hadn’t been killed.
3518
3519I think Orwell's point is that by the time brainwashing is over, they are dead and their physical death at the end is just the realizarion of their mental state. Iirc, the last passage is pretty ambiguous and can be taken literally (Winston was shot) or as a metaphor ("he loved big brother"= whatever part of Winston was Winston is now gone)
3520Internal monologue, self-talk, "inner speech" -- is this phenomenon culture-specific? Does its prevalence tell us something about the way we live?
3521
3522Just one more piece in the pile of pieces that justifies social alienation on the fringes. People who are maladjusted will use this to justify their sociopathic behaviour, regardless of it's validity
3523That final sentence tho
3524
3525Except this line of argument is addressed directly in the bible, specifically Job. Not the exact same case but the underlying question, "why does God let bad things happen to good people/people who don't deserve it?"
3526The answer, according to God himself in Job, is that we (individually) don't matter. The relationship between God and man is like the relationship between man and a cockroach: man may take interest in individual cockroaches or groups of them, but the roach is never more than an insect completely at our mercy. That's how God sees man: small, powerless creatures that he can do what he pleases with, and does.
3527Then the question is "why worship him?" And the answer, as per the Bible, is that you have no choice. Humanity is balanced on a knife edge and the only thing between us and annihilation is the benevolence and grace of God.
3528That's the situation as per the bible. Not that that makes it okay but that's what your opposition believes.
3529Culture War Roundup for the Week of September 03, 2018
3530
3531The issue with your angle is that it doesn't account for non-western nations with falling birth rates, such as Russia, South Korea or Japan. Certainly Korean or Japanese women are running a different cultural script than American or Australian women, yet the birthdate falls anyway. IMO focusing on individual preference obscures the macrosocial trends that causes this phenominon worldwide. The biggest factors:
3532Moving away from an agricultural economy: this is the biggest culprit worldwide and accounts of a variety of cases. Modern economies incentivize family units where parents have time to commute and work at a third location away from home, using advanced skills. In exchange, per-capita income is much higher. What this means for child rearing is smaller families; people have one kid, and invest a ton of resources into them (childcare and then education) rather than having many kids raised simultaneously.
3533Effective medicine: children die less today, so there is less pressure to "get started". A family can start pretty late (parents in their 40s) with less concern because it's likely they'll "get it right" on the first child; there's no need to have 4+ children knowing only 2 would make it.
3534Urbanization: despite popular belief, high-density communities are harder to date in. Why this is is beyond the scope of this post but as we move towards a situation where 90%+ are in cities, we can expect the family construction process to slow down.
3535People are starting life later: 80 years ago a highschool education was a luxury. Now, it's the absolute bare minimum. People are still functionally teenagers well into their 20s, so they are starting families later