A streamlined Seaboard train on the assembly line, LaGrange, IL
via reddit
Ahh, how beautiful, the power of industry.
(Sometimes.)
Anonymous asked:
argumate answered:
Indeed, but if the reasons given are based on its likely future consequences, then they can be evaluated against the actual experience of places which are already there.
Consequences can take decades to materialize, and past history suggests they often do. But noone has that much patience, so
Sure, but what are the actual bad consequences of gays getting married, assuming one is not religious?
Monogamy is good and provides stability and emotional support even if it’s gay. Marriage generally comes with not being promiscuous, and sexual orientation is, for most people, not malleable, so it’s not like it will increase the number of gays - and the number of gay people is relatively small.
The only thing I can think of that’s a problem is that social progressives won’t be able to use it to signal how #woke they are anymore and they’ll move on to some bullshit that’s actually harmful, like legalizing polygamy (for normies).
Anonymous asked:
silver-and-ivory answered:
Input carefulness and gentleness, get back laughter, beer, and miscellaneous History Facts!
In all seriousness, though, I don’t want to stereotype bros and am not sure what level of irony you’re operating on. Thank you for the ask, however.
That’s an interesting idea. I suppose here it serves a similar purpose as philosophical skepticism; acting as universal acid, it attacks the philosophical justification of the existing system, letting the new movement come in and take power based on no philosophical justification other than “because I have all the guns”.
The next consideration is that believing things (in general) is actually good, and a philosophical universal acid is therefore a bad and noxious thing.
You don’t need Theism to believe in things. Theists are generally the ones who claim that you do, seeing as their belief system works that way.
The other problem is that Atheism is most-likely just plain true. Its prediction - “there will be no divine intervention” - pretty accurately describes the world we all live in. Every instance theists cite is unclear or not sufficiently provable - which is exactly what you would expect from someone whose god isn’t real that has to make excuses for something that’s supposed to be all-powerful.
Worse, the reasoning used is “don’t test God, you have to show faith.” That sets off my internal memetic defense intuitions something fierce.
That’s setting aside how unforgivable the entire Hell thing is. And that’s what really gets me more than the rest of it, seeing as it’s so incongruent with “ultimate perfect good.”
Some conceptions of Ultimate Perfect Good could look pretty fucking alien, but they wouldn’t look like that.
Now usually, I let religious belief slide for what you might call Utilitarian reasons - some people use it to keep themselves out of jail, others to keep themselves alive, there are various charity things, and so on.
Plus farther back there were things like monks copying and preserving texts. Overall, I’d say it’s difficult to determine the net moral impact of religion.
But then we get to things like “we’ll be cheering putting the New Atheists in camps,” and I feel the need to prod back a bit.
(also, worth asking why ~every stable and non-atrocity-generating power structure in history has used religion of some kind as part of its base.)
Now see, I know this must be bullshit, but I’m not enough of a culture warrior to give a firm rebuttal.
However, first you have to consider that most of human history is religious, therefore you’re limited to stuff from, essentially, the 1700s onward, otherwise there’s a massive selection bias.
Then there’s the fact that many of the “religious-based” structures also committed atrocities - unless you selectively handwave away the Divine Right of Kings type stuff.
And then you can count something like America as having committed atrocities and not being religious on the grounds of the founders’ Deism being closer to Atheism than other belief structures were at the time, but then you can’t count it as stable and religiously-rooted in opposition to all those medieval wars of succession.
I strongly suspect there’s going to be strategic equivocation of that kind somewhere in any such argument.
This is where there’s a bait and switch happening.
I’ve seen the anecdotes from people abused under a religious justification. I don’t begrudge these people their bad impressions of religion in general, even thinking they’re mistaken. I also don’t believe for a moment that the real driving force behind major societal-level pushes like this one is actually people who were abused and therefore have an instinctive animus. There aren’t enough of them. And the message behind these societal pushes is not “we must disempower religion because it led to these concrete abuses” (except occasionally, from a very few people, as a motte). It’s some mix of “we must destroy religion for its own sake” and “we will define this perfectly-okay thing as an abuse, then use it as an excuse to tear down religion”.
The people behind this by and large don’t have any such concrete and morally-justifiable motivation for their advocacy. They’re attacking religion for its own sake and/or because it’s in the way of their powermongering. We are called to love our enemies, but it’s with relation to this that I can sympathize with the urge to shove them in camps.
Oh come on, like those instances aren’t supposed to be able to motivate others?
You surely don’t think all anti-Communists are supposed to be those who personally suffered under Communism, do you?
And besides, some of those “perfectly okay things” really aren’t so okay.
you’re too orthogonal to me to be my political opposition
I follow you for weird ms paint comics and the futurist pseudo-history. moar of both pls
Also if I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure the latter ask is what the AnCaps are following for.
“Socialism“ has had a lot of connotations over it’s history and I see all sorts of representations of what it means in fiction and I just saw one that combined both “Brainwashed Soviet Drone stereotype“ with “Trigger-warning SJW stereotype“ and that’s a real WTF moment.
EDIT: And they even kept the labor element where it was a bunch of ex-cons who formed a labor union. I expect the critique of socialism to be that these are contradictory elements, but this is just so weird.
The labor connection is where it really breaks, since actual labor types don’t seem to go in for SJWness from what I’ve seen.
The wannabe revolutionaries in this country these days, who talk about how they want to “smash homophobic islamophobic capitalist patriarchy” do seem to be the SJW types, with lamentations among some of the older, more labor-focused types that this idpol is a form of ideological capture/misdirection by the Capitalists.
you’re too orthogonal to me to be my political opposition
I follow you for weird ms paint comics and the futurist pseudo-history. moar of both pls
Also if I’m being honest, I’m pretty sure the latter ask is what the AnCaps are following for.
I for one like the ms-paint comics.
The year is 2042. Following the election of Elon Musk to the office of Hyperpresident, the Mitigated Chaos blog drops text-primary political content entirely and becomes a slice-of-life webcomic about the relationship of two married lesbian cops and their robotic AI dog, Sgt. Sparkums.
Tumblr wanderers sometimes stumble into the distant archives from a time before they were alive, posting callout posts against the ultra-reactionary politics of the year 2018.
I guess if you find yourself saying “history will judge me harshly for this, but-” there better be a damn good ending to that sentence
History can judge you harshly for something it shouldn’t if the future is stupid, cruel, or alien.
Whig History implies that right-wingers should never, ever concede or give up ground, since they will not be able to reclaim it.
Still, I suppose I can add “accused of being Mencius Moldbug” (though it was very probably a shitpost) to the List, along with “labeled ‘faux Asian nationalist political thinker’,” “suggested should work at a think tank,” and a few other things.
The thing about Neoreaction is that Gnon doesn’t care about you, either, and neither did it care about species throughout history that have gone extinct - and what we want is survival and prosperity for ourselves, not to be subject to outrageous Fortune. And Fnargl? There’s no reason for him not to overwrite your mind with his superior technology or just replace you with a robot.
Neoreaction is not positioned to account for Transhumanism, among other things. As such, it’s a dead end.
Any overlap I have with Neoreactionary thought is largely incidental. I don’t really interact with them, nor read them.
I’m not a dark angel cast out of Gnon’s heaven to dwell among the mortal Liberals and spread the heretical gospels of Dark Enlightenment™. I’m surfing a wave seeking a better future, looking to synthesize a new, upwards axis.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
