Oceans Yet to Burn

<various posts>

<bambamramfan discussing lackluster enthusiasm among people for Liberalism vs harder ideologies>

I think part of the challenge here is that Liberalism has to ignore certain truths, which, like the careful balance of an immune system, is okay when an animal is healthy, but becomes a serious problem when it becomes unhealthy.  So yes, there are ideological contradictions, but those only come out when the system is under stress.

Genes matter.  Even just the difference in lactose tolerance can make a difference in some cases (though not much in the developed world), even if the other stuff is heavily confounded and is probably more driven by the environment than by genetics.  

Culture matters.  Not everything that is bad is outside the realm of culture.  FGM is cultural.  Cultural tolerance as a virtue is cultural.

Religion matters.  The content of the instructions in a religion has an effect on the behavior of religious adherents, much like the content of the Communist Manifesto has an effect on the behavior of Communists.

Atomic Individualism is not what humans are “designed” for.  We actually have to live in societies and cannot all hole up into libertarian autarchic fortresses which are immune to changes in the broader society’s culture and ideology.

When the various groups under Liberalism are sufficiently close, this can all be glossed over, and generally is in order to suppress racism, xenophobia, and so on.  The typical example of violence driven by fighting about genes/culture/religion attacks someone who hasn’t done anything personally.

However, the same ideological tools used to suppress this bad behavior also prevent dealing with larger risks that loom on the horizon.  You cannot have someone saying “Liberalism, except for Islam” - though I’ve seen someone say it quietly - even though the rise of various Ethnonationalists and Nationalists in Europe would probably not be happening if Europe had taken this stance.

bambamramfan:

slatestarscratchpad:

nuclearspaceheater:

ozymandias271:

people who are very angry about the phrase “toxic masculinity”: what does the phrase “toxic masculinity” mean to you?

(I would very much appreciate not being super angry/offended in your answer, because the reason I’m confused is that a lot of the times when you guys talk about it I get that you’re really mad but it’s hard to understand why)

Toxic masculinity can be divided into two distinct things:

If you bite a guy and you die, that’s poisonous masculinity.

If a guy bites you and you die, that’s venomous masculinity.

I wouldn’t say I’m very angry, but it annoys me.

I understand it as meaning “being violent, being macho, having an honor culture where you have to avenge slights, being protective/jealous about women, thinking being a sissy is the worst thing in the world, etc”

A small part of my objection is that it can have a bailey of “in various ways that stereotypically-masculine behaviors/norms differ from stereotypically-feminine behaviors/norms, the stereotypically masculine ones are toxic and the stereotypically feminine ones are good.” It seems to me that there are dichotomies like individualism rather than communalism, stoicism rather than emotion, nonconformism rather than conformism, assertiveness rather than submissiveness, dignity rather than not-caring-about-dignity, a feeling of responsibility to protect others versus looking out for yourself - that it would be really easy to map onto toxic masculinity if you wanted. I’m not saying that if I phrase it as “assertiveness rather than submissiveness” anyone would read that phrase and so “oh, that’s bad, it’s toxic masculinity”. I’m saying that in real life there are ambiguous behaviors which, if you’re being assertive when someone else wants you to be submissive, they can round it off to “macho aggressiveness” and accuse you of toxic masculinity, and so have a social superweapon behind them..

But a bigger part is just that the whole phrase seems calculated to maximally offend and marginalize men. Imagine that everyone used the phrase “toxic femininity” to refer to causing drama, being overly emotional, gossiping, being weak, insisting other people take care of you, and other stereotypically feminine-coded bad behaviors - but there was no such phrase as “toxic masculinity” and people would get horribly offended if you tried to invent it. To me this would seem obviously calculated to pathologize women and identify the whole essence of being feminine with extreme versions of negative stereotypes. Well….

I get this, and I can see why the hypocrisy is galling, but actually instead of less context (swapping masculinity for femininity and seeing if we still like the logic), I reach my conclusion by adding more context.

Toxic masculinity really is worse than toxic femininity. Violence is worse than gossip. Like on one hand we have the evil of Abigail from the Crucible, but on the other hand we have… war.

I’m extremely anti-masculine because even as a man I can step back and say “masculinity has caused way, way too many deaths.” Aggression is bad for the self and very bad for the people who get stepped on, and yet it’s a degenerate and dominant strategy in our social and economic model.

Unfortunately, because “acting like a cliche man” is so advantageous, the real risk is an ideology that latches onto to the particulars of “being a man” as the problem and copies the behavior, thinking it can be purified if done by someone else.

So what you get is people harassing men in a confrontational manner, using all the tools of masculine aggression, but thinking it’s not toxic masculinity because it’s done by a woman (or by a group of people including some men, but who say they are doing it on behalf of women.)

And at it’s worse, the phrase “toxic masculinity” seems part of that memeplex, whereby we take the worst behaviors of man-world and legitimize them so long as they are being done by people we are calling not-masculine.

It must be acknowledged the role that straight neurotypical women have in reinforcing these behaviors. If they weren’t successful in the dating scene, if cishet nt women did not flock to currently high status men and shun currently low status men, regardless of how that status was obtained, if fewer of them fled at vulnerability and other feminine-coded behaviors, then the behavior of straight neurotypical men would change in response.

Instead straight men often seem to hold the idea that if they are not strong, if they are not masculine, if they are not successful, they will not be loved.

And realistically we know it isn’t going to happen. The real thing that undermines it will be the total gender meltdown under Transhumanism as millions of men and women flee their roles or carve out new ones more suited to themselves.

If the current attraction model and sexual liberalism are to be kept, then people have to acknowledge the consequences instead of heaping it all on one gender.

So the web history thing is a fishing expedition, but’s a known thing for congress to exempt themselves from things like healthcare laws or insider trading rules or whatever, so it isn’t an entirely ungrounded assumption.

argumate:

mitigatedchaos:

argumate:

the-grey-tribe:

Basically don’t call people “cucks“. Don’t be surprised when people react badly to being called “cucks“. Don’t try to reclaim “cuck“ by telling other people that being cuckolded is a good thing.

multiheaded1793 said: I feel cucked by this post.

the battle will be lost when cuck replaces fag as the generic disparagement term of choice for 15 year old boys.

By the year 2035, it is common slang for “acting against one’s own self-interest”. Puffed up thinkpiece writers write on the virtue of enviro-cuckism and a hundred other causes.

on whatever has replaced Tumblr, debates still rage over whether it’s okay for anyone to use this reclaimed slur, or if you have to be a cuck yourself.

This discussion intensifies following the release of the first cuckbot, which exists solely to raise male status by getting cucked. Female cuckbots for women are soon released. Sales of conventional sex robots dwindle.

argumate:

mitigatedchaos:

argumate:

the-grey-tribe:

Basically don’t call people “cucks“. Don’t be surprised when people react badly to being called “cucks“. Don’t try to reclaim “cuck“ by telling other people that being cuckolded is a good thing.

multiheaded1793 said: I feel cucked by this post.

the battle will be lost when cuck replaces fag as the generic disparagement term of choice for 15 year old boys.

By the year 2035, it is common slang for “acting against one’s own self-interest”. Puffed up thinkpiece writers write on the virtue of enviro-cuckism and a hundred other causes.

on whatever has replaced Tumblr, debates still rage over whether it’s okay for anyone to use this reclaimed slur, or if you have to be a cuck yourself.

This discussion intensifies following the release of the first cuckbot, which exists solely to raise male status by getting cucked. Female cuckbots for women are soon released. Sales of conventional sex robots dwindle.

argumate:

the-grey-tribe:

Basically don’t call people “cucks“. Don’t be surprised when people react badly to being called “cucks“. Don’t try to reclaim “cuck“ by telling other people that being cuckolded is a good thing.

multiheaded1793 said: I feel cucked by this post.

the battle will be lost when cuck replaces fag as the generic disparagement term of choice for 15 year old boys.

By the year 2035, it is common slang for “acting against one’s own self-interest”. Puffed up thinkpiece writers write on the virtue of enviro-cuckism and a hundred other causes.

You call it dumb, but the Mexican government is sending out information about how to get through our immigration system, so clearly they actually are operating on those ideas.  So does the government of China, to a degree.  It’s actually pretty normal.  And as for the institutions, I will never get over the Left’s blind faith that institutions are totally not fragile, you guys, and there is no reason to worry about them.

Not credible.  Sanctuary cities are crypto-open borders and support for open borders generally is growing.  

argumate:

sonatagreen:

hybridzizi:

sonatagreen:

zerofarad:

sonatagreen:

There’s lots of stories about women succeeding at traditionally male things (e.g. Mulan, Legally Blonde) but almost none about men succeeding at traditionally female things. When a woman does male things, it’s “she’s a woman but she’s awesome enough to live up to male standards”, but when a man does female things, it’s treated as a joke at his expense.

We need more stories about “he’s a man but he’s awesome enough to live up to female standards”.

I imagine you don’t count, like, Mrs. Doubtfire?

While I can see how Mrs. Doubtfire is sort of about a man learning to succeed at femininity, I find it deeply unsatisfying for two reasons. First, Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams’s character) only attempts to learn feminine skills in order to pass as a woman. This reinforces the idea that femininity is a female thing. Second, at the end of the movie, I feel that he’s presenting as a more-well-rounded masculine, rather than simply feminine. The message seems to be “it’s okay to cook and clean and spend time with your kids, because it doesn’t compromise your masculinity”. I want a message of “it’s okay to not be masculine”. I’m vaguely reminded of countersignaling; I get the feeling that Daniel Hillard is allowed to have feminine traits because he manages to not let them overshadow his masculinity.

By contrast, consider Kanahe Tomohisa, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica. He’s a stay-at-home husband who wears an apron and takes care of the housework, his build is slim and his demeanor submissive, and this is (at least in the episodes I’ve seen so far) not remarked upon at all or treated as a source of either drama or humor. It’s treated as perfectly normal, natural, ordinary, healthy, unremarkable that he should tend the home and the children while his wife earns the family income as a career businesswoman. The show isn’t really about him, he’s only a supporting character; but he’s the sort of character that would be a natural consequence of the shows I want to see.

I feel like the fact that Elle didn’t compromise her femininity was a big part of Legally Blonde, though. Do the two movies do this differently or am I just completely misunderstanding what you’re saying? (I haven’t actually seen Mrs. Doubtfire. I’m just going off what you say)

I’ve actually only seen a couple of scenes from Legally Blonde, but I got the impression that, while she’s femme in a shoes-and-lipstick kind of way, she’s also characterized as having qualities that are necessary to success specifically in classically male endeavors: proactive, academically gifted, a take-no-shit attitude, etc. She’s undeniably girly, but I don’t think she could be characterized as soft and vulnerable. What I know of Legally Blonde gives me a “women can be strong too” vibe, as opposed to the “it’s okay not to be strong” that I’m looking for.

popular culture cannot bear the sight of a weak man.

Can the median neurotypical cishet woman?

I think that’s a lot of where this really comes from.  That kind of man isn’t really seen as desirable, and that isn’t going to change soon outside of atypical women, which in some ways is fine because we can’t demand they change their preferences, but on the other hand there are a lot of side effects and it isn’t just evil masculinity that’s the cause of them.

rendakuenthusiast:

argumate:

Just make all speech laws global!

Either you can say anything that is allowed in at least one jurisdiction, ie. there are no restrictions at all, or you can’t say anything that is banned in at least one jurisdiction, ie. you can’t say anything whatsoever.

Come and see the contradictions inherent in the system!

Seriously though I’m glad the internet was largely invented by Anglosphere people raised in a cultural tradition of free speech, and particularly Americans, who have a particularly strong cultural tradition of free speech even by the standards of the Anglosphere.

bambamramfan:

isaacsapphire:

collapsedsquid:

mitigatedchaos:

collapsedsquid:

I was doing  semi deep dive into Orion’s Arm after @immanentizingeschatons reminded me of it, and it got me thinking about post-scarcity and politics.

Specifically, I was comparing it to some of the other post-scarcity settings I’ve seen, like Eclipse Phase, Mindjammer, and Nova Praxis.  One thing that all of these have in common is that the politics presented in the game seems off. 

Nova Praxis and Mindjammer to my mind don’t really have political conflict. They try to describe some of the political units, but they seem to be stereotypes masquerading as politics or and otherwise just poorly described.  Eclipse Phase and Orion’s Arm do have political units, but they’re fairly obviously based on the political viewpoints favored in the demographic and seem kind of goofy and impossible because of that.

And it strikes me that to some level this is an impossible problem.  If you think there won’t be real politics in the post-scarcity future, I’m going to very much doubt that. But if you think that you can predict the nature of political conflict in the post-scarcity future, I’m also going to very much doubt that. So, either way, you’re stuck with writing a political scene that’s weird.

But really, can there truly be post-scarcity?  Maybe with magic violating conservation of matter-energy, but without it, someone is going to want to use the mass of your asteroid to build their habitat to replicate their ideology.  

I consider “post-scarcity” as describing when technology has advanced to the point where the common material desires like food, housing, and entertainment of any person are trivially easy to fill.

Then aren’t we there already in some countries?

Indeed. “Post scarcity” more refers to “when people believe there is not a scarcity of stuff.” And as the discourse over the $500,000 New York family shows, it is unrealistic that that would ever happen no matter how many resources our society generates.

The year is 3122. Transhumanity has colonized the entire solar system. The total GDP of mankind and its descendant species long ago exceeded its 2340 high of 14 quadrillion US2016 dollars. A new discourse arises.

PRIVATIZE THE SUN

argumate:

rocketverliden:

The PewDiePie discourse seems to help illuminate two schools of thought regarding the inculcation of extremism and such.

One school of thought, favored by SJ and left-wing people, is that extremism is generative: if left unchecked, it grows.

The other school of thought, favored by less-than-left people, is that extremism is reactive: it is always growing in opposition to perceived overreach/overreaction.

@theaudientvoid @brazenautomaton @thathopeyetlives @argumate Thoughts?

what if elegant abstract general principles are insufficient to describe the full complexity of the world we inhabit

No Argumate, you stupid owl, it works in exactly the way most convenient for my ideology.

*Monitors resulting level of pro-owl extremism in order to test hypothesis.*

crazyeddieme:

fierceawakening:

I am confused by people who dislike rap specifically because it’s not singing when, like, since when is reciting poetry not an ancient human form of art that has pretty much existed forever?

Also there are crap tons of white musicians who growl, scream, or otherwise gargle their lyrics so since when is singing a requirement anyway?

*wanders off to listen to some people gargling words*

like, since when is reciting poetry not an ancient human form of art that has pretty much existed forever? 

yeah, and a lot of us aren’t crazy about that either.  Or maybe that’s just me.

Moi aussi.
私も。