lol no kidding. "Wait, that's what this feels like? This sucks! It must be against the rules(when they do it)!"
I might be misreading that, but it looks to me like a conspiracy like "The sun rose today, and now this happened. Clearly there's a connection. Very suspicious."
I mean... of course a political campaign sent fundraising texts?
I mean... of course a political campaign sent fundraising texts?
It really makes you think how important spaces are.
I mean, if you send a text saying you'll "be at my wife", it's bad grammar but it's generally a good thing. Lose one little space, and suddenly you'll "beat my wife".
I was going to say they're totally different things, but really there's no way to beat a wife you aren't going to "be at"...
I mean, if you send a text saying you'll "be at my wife", it's bad grammar but it's generally a good thing. Lose one little space, and suddenly you'll "beat my wife".
I was going to say they're totally different things, but really there's no way to beat a wife you aren't going to "be at"...
These people are so dumb they don't realize that their argument suggests we don't bring in any more Haitians because apparently their presence causes assassination attempts.
The scary part is despite higher interest rates debt has been soaring because households are so badly in distress from the cost of living increases.
Establishment media seems to be predicting a 50 basis point cut to the federal funds rate.
According to the fed and the government things are better than ever before, record low unemployment.
So why cut? If anything if you believe the government lies then interest rates should be shootint way way up! Unemployment being so good, everything's being so fine, you might hold but you certainly wouldn't cut... If you believe what the government and the FED have to say...
So why are they calling for a 50 basis point cut? Could it be that they're just not being entirely honest with us?
According to the fed and the government things are better than ever before, record low unemployment.
So why cut? If anything if you believe the government lies then interest rates should be shootint way way up! Unemployment being so good, everything's being so fine, you might hold but you certainly wouldn't cut... If you believe what the government and the FED have to say...
So why are they calling for a 50 basis point cut? Could it be that they're just not being entirely honest with us?
Whatifalthist has laid out a pretty good case over the years that you are correct to be concerned. The models of Peter turchin predict that there's going to be a major revolution sometime soon, and unfortunately it is often the most extreme factions that win revolutions. It would be one thing if the intellectual petersonians were to win the next century, but it seems much more likely that a much more unreasonable faction will end up taking the reins and all reasonable people should have reason to be concerned. Arguably the French revolution marked the beginning of the modernist period, and even today we are still living with the fallout of the policies of the Jacobins around the world, as well as the Russian Bolsheviks and the Chinese maoists. In a lot of ways, extreme progressives are still trying to achieve some of the societal changes that were already tried back during the French revolution and scaled back because they were just too much.
New eras tend to be reactions to the last, and this era that we're likely concluding right now is the most feminized, the most egalitarian, and the most open in history. For that reason, I would fully expect there to be an incoming era of extreme masculinity, extreme hierarchy and class distinctions, and potentially one of the most closed in history. That our current state of Muslims are part of a reaction to the Muslim Golden age ending and everyone can see what that looks like.
I think it's important overall to have a view of the world that isn't just a reaction to whatever exists today. Yesterday I wrote a pretty long post describing a way of being that in my view is about the only way that we could improve the world on a personal level, and one of the key things about it is that other than my criticism of modern movements as trying to save the world where the individuals participating can't even save themselves, it is rooted in timeless ideas of acting with virtue and following your personal moral compass. In doing so, often you will start to see movements that you did agree with starting to miss their Mark and movements that you didn't agree with saying some things that you can't argue against, and that doesn't mean that you should go flipping between one side or the other but rather that you need to have that moral center within yourself and not rely on society to necessarily provided for you.
New eras tend to be reactions to the last, and this era that we're likely concluding right now is the most feminized, the most egalitarian, and the most open in history. For that reason, I would fully expect there to be an incoming era of extreme masculinity, extreme hierarchy and class distinctions, and potentially one of the most closed in history. That our current state of Muslims are part of a reaction to the Muslim Golden age ending and everyone can see what that looks like.
I think it's important overall to have a view of the world that isn't just a reaction to whatever exists today. Yesterday I wrote a pretty long post describing a way of being that in my view is about the only way that we could improve the world on a personal level, and one of the key things about it is that other than my criticism of modern movements as trying to save the world where the individuals participating can't even save themselves, it is rooted in timeless ideas of acting with virtue and following your personal moral compass. In doing so, often you will start to see movements that you did agree with starting to miss their Mark and movements that you didn't agree with saying some things that you can't argue against, and that doesn't mean that you should go flipping between one side or the other but rather that you need to have that moral center within yourself and not rely on society to necessarily provided for you.
We're all just trying to find the truth here. All of us are occasionally going to use some inflammatory words, myself included, as long as we can pat each other on the back and call each other friends at the end I'm thankful for people who are willing to push back against the things that I say.
You know I didn't include it, but I tend to think that you're probably on the right track there. If Osama bin laden had sons, if they found the events of 9/11 reprehensible then you can't very well hold them responsible for the things that Osama did, but if they cheered for it and say death to America and are planning to do the exact same thing all over again then you can judge them on their own demerits.
Now that being said, there's probably multiple layers here where you can hold them in contempt for the views that they hold and the things that they've personally done but it's not like there's a moral justification to hunt down, kill, and feed little billy bin laden to the sharks because his dad did a 9/11. You judge him for the things that he actually did.
Now that being said, there's probably multiple layers here where you can hold them in contempt for the views that they hold and the things that they've personally done but it's not like there's a moral justification to hunt down, kill, and feed little billy bin laden to the sharks because his dad did a 9/11. You judge him for the things that he actually did.
I'm not concluding anything about your motive, but I am presenting you with one of the outcomes of your train of thought.
It isn't healthy to be attacking a people who have existed somewhere for 400 years as if they just moved in yesterday. Even if you managed to be personally reasonable in using that argument by trying to invoke ancient grievances solely in pursuit of getting people to behave and what you believe to be a more moral way moving forward, it is an argument with inherently unreasonable ends and we need to keep that in mind.
The argument explicitly blames people who haven't done a thing for something their distance ancestors did. It explicitly treats them as the exact same as the people who originally did the thing. It isn't implied, it's right there in the argument. "Why did you migrate then?" They didn't. They live exactly where they were born, and exactly where their parents were born, and exactly where their grandparents were born. But if such an argument is going to explicitly lay the sins of people's ancestors at the feet of people who are alive today, eventually somebody is going to come up with a bright idea of not just using the supposition as a reason to try to be more moral, but instead to actively punish those who the argument says effectively did the thing.
The exact same line of thought is used by racial supremacists to blame people for the crimes of their kin. White supremacists often point at the crime rate among black people and will blame all black people for the crimes of some black people. Some people who want to attack indigenous peoples will greatly point out that human sacrifice particularly of unwilling participants is an abomination to our modern eyes as if those same people were the ones who did it. There are even people who still hold the Japanese people responsible for the atrocities of the Pacific theater of World War II, or the use of tactics like scalping in the American Indian wars, or that not every Muslim is responsible for 9/11.
So I tend to agree that not all black people are responsible for every crime committed by a black person, and I tend to agree that not all indigenous people are responsible for the human sacrifices of 600 years ago, and I tend to agree that currently living Japanese people are not responsible for the atrocities of World War 2, and I tend to agree that not every Muslim is responsible for 9/11, so all that being the case I have to agree that it is not a good practice to blame people who have never migrated for the migrations of their ancient ancestors.
It isn't healthy to be attacking a people who have existed somewhere for 400 years as if they just moved in yesterday. Even if you managed to be personally reasonable in using that argument by trying to invoke ancient grievances solely in pursuit of getting people to behave and what you believe to be a more moral way moving forward, it is an argument with inherently unreasonable ends and we need to keep that in mind.
The argument explicitly blames people who haven't done a thing for something their distance ancestors did. It explicitly treats them as the exact same as the people who originally did the thing. It isn't implied, it's right there in the argument. "Why did you migrate then?" They didn't. They live exactly where they were born, and exactly where their parents were born, and exactly where their grandparents were born. But if such an argument is going to explicitly lay the sins of people's ancestors at the feet of people who are alive today, eventually somebody is going to come up with a bright idea of not just using the supposition as a reason to try to be more moral, but instead to actively punish those who the argument says effectively did the thing.
The exact same line of thought is used by racial supremacists to blame people for the crimes of their kin. White supremacists often point at the crime rate among black people and will blame all black people for the crimes of some black people. Some people who want to attack indigenous peoples will greatly point out that human sacrifice particularly of unwilling participants is an abomination to our modern eyes as if those same people were the ones who did it. There are even people who still hold the Japanese people responsible for the atrocities of the Pacific theater of World War II, or the use of tactics like scalping in the American Indian wars, or that not every Muslim is responsible for 9/11.
So I tend to agree that not all black people are responsible for every crime committed by a black person, and I tend to agree that not all indigenous people are responsible for the human sacrifices of 600 years ago, and I tend to agree that currently living Japanese people are not responsible for the atrocities of World War 2, and I tend to agree that not every Muslim is responsible for 9/11, so all that being the case I have to agree that it is not a good practice to blame people who have never migrated for the migrations of their ancient ancestors.
When do people become native to a land?
The mayflower landed in America in 1620, 400 years ago. If we assume about 4 generations per century, that means some people who migrated from Europe might be in their 16th generation in North America.
If someone who has been in America for 400 years and 16 generations, wouldn't not migrating look like not leaving America? If they moved for example back to England, arguably they'd be much more alien there than in the land of their great great great grandfathers.
There are of course indigenous people who were there longer, but that's a dangerous can of worms to open. Are the Japanese han majority not native to Japan? Are Arab Muslims not native to Pakistan, most of the middle east, or North Africa? Is the UKs royal family not native to England? It seems like only in one example is it acceptable to call someone out for being born in the same place as their great grandparents as if they're invaders.
I think this train of thought really shows how broken the supposed gotcha of "if they don't like migration they shouldn't have migrated to north America" is. If nobody has migrated for 16 generations that argument is kind of moot, isn't it? To move anywhere else would be the first migration in centuries. What are people whose distant ancestors migrated supposed to do? Throw themselves up on their swords for the actions of ancestors 16 generations removed from themselves? Should there be ethnic cleansing of lands with indigenous people to eliminate native populations that aren't as old?
The mayflower landed in America in 1620, 400 years ago. If we assume about 4 generations per century, that means some people who migrated from Europe might be in their 16th generation in North America.
If someone who has been in America for 400 years and 16 generations, wouldn't not migrating look like not leaving America? If they moved for example back to England, arguably they'd be much more alien there than in the land of their great great great grandfathers.
There are of course indigenous people who were there longer, but that's a dangerous can of worms to open. Are the Japanese han majority not native to Japan? Are Arab Muslims not native to Pakistan, most of the middle east, or North Africa? Is the UKs royal family not native to England? It seems like only in one example is it acceptable to call someone out for being born in the same place as their great grandparents as if they're invaders.
I think this train of thought really shows how broken the supposed gotcha of "if they don't like migration they shouldn't have migrated to north America" is. If nobody has migrated for 16 generations that argument is kind of moot, isn't it? To move anywhere else would be the first migration in centuries. What are people whose distant ancestors migrated supposed to do? Throw themselves up on their swords for the actions of ancestors 16 generations removed from themselves? Should there be ethnic cleansing of lands with indigenous people to eliminate native populations that aren't as old?
It seems like a passive aggressive gaslighting way to put it though.
"Nobody to fact check or interrupt" well if you treated both sides the same and maybe fact checked obvious false statements of fact kamala kept on spewing out like a flat earther they'd be more amenable to your interference?
"Nobody to fact check or interrupt" well if you treated both sides the same and maybe fact checked obvious false statements of fact kamala kept on spewing out like a flat earther they'd be more amenable to your interference?
5-10 years ago I would have agreed with you, but I tend to think there's a portion of the fediverse that's totally uninterested in big tech regardless of how big their crappy instance is. If people wanted to be on these sites they'd already be there.
I haven't moved because there's nowhere to move to, desiree. The fact you hate your dad is your problem, not mine.
Who picked this retard?
If he loves migrants so much he can put them all up in his solid gold house next to his solid gold hat.
If he loves migrants so much he can put them all up in his solid gold house next to his solid gold hat.
Considering the other candidate went on TV and said "They're not gonna stop. Beware, this is a movement. They're not gonna stop past election day, and they should not stop" after 6 months of violent riots caused billions of dollars in damage across the country, should that mean neither candidate is allowed to be president?
Because we're literally the biggest threat to all of big tech, FBXL Social is defederated by Meta. On their end.
I think they're afraid I'll lecture them to death?
I think they're afraid I'll lecture them to death?
(I like letting ideas stretch their legs. That's why I run a fediverse instance with 60,000 characters as the post limit and most of my posts are over 7,000 characters)
Assuming that we've moved on from the original subject, there's a line from The Graysonian Ethic ( I swear I dont cite the book in every post, but these are directly applicable ) in the chapter of having grit that goes something like: "My generation is filled with people who want to save the world. The problem is that they cannot even save themselves"
I spent quite a lot of time thinking about it this problem of trying to save the world, and the answer to me is quite simple: you need to start small. Don't try to save the world, try to change your world because you actually can.
First, try to be virtuous in your own life. To model the correct behavior for those around you to see is a lifetime pursuit that should take all of your effort for most regular people. Most people aim at being generally inoffensive, but in my view the goal should be to go to sleep every day trying to be someone you could look in the mirror and be proud of yourself.
The next question might be about "how will you know what good is? Society has so many things to say about that!" But in reality you know what makes you feel impressed, what makes you feel disgusted, so you should use your internal compass to guide you.
It is my belief that when you live virtuously, you do it to do the right thing, but there are ultimately rewards for doing so. The world is hungry for virtuous people, and so if you are virtuous you will find yourself rewarded. That also gives you opportunities to do small local things to make others lives better.
For those who try to act with virtue, they will start off with a small slice where they try to make their immediate surroundings better, and as their little slice of the world gets better they will get further opportunities to increase the size of that slice of the world that they're making better. I've personally witnessed it where a Frontline worker eventually is able to assist in steering a Fortune 500 company in different ways because they have put in the work day after day month after month year after year and build a cache of virtue with which they can move forward. History is written by those who show up, and a lot of people don't really care to show up.
If you live a life you can be proud of, that's where you can start trying to surround yourself with other people who are virtuous. It isn't easy to find virtuous people but they do exist, and you start building a community -- a real local community that can make the local world better.
It isn't easy, but there are good women out there who will exhibit virtue in spite of the government or society. I've been married for 15 years going strong, and most of my married friends are the same.
When you end up as a father yourself you are modeling how to be a good father to your son, and you model what a good man is to your daughter.
You mentioned before that people have kids just to have kids, but most people don't have kids. The replacement birth rate is 2, and throughout most of the industrialised world the actual birth rate is closer to 1. America only has a slightly higher birth rate because they import a lot of people from the developing world, but even then within a generation or two they are at the locals birth rate (and just so that we stay out of the pop-political realm here I am not speaking to this act of importing people from the developing world as good or bad, it's just a statement of fact). This is going to result in population collapses on every continent except for Africa. This means that there's going to be far fewer people, and the people who exist will be the ones from parents who chose to have kids. If those kids are likely to choose the ideology of their parents then it becomes rather important to be a parent and to model proper ideals such that the ideals you would like to see move forward are carried forward.
Some might suggest that this plan I presented starts too small, does too little for too long, takes too long, for a relatively large amount of work. I would counter that statistically speaking no one on earth is in charge. That is, there is one president of the United States every four years out of 8 billion people. If we assume that there's one head of state for every nation, maybe there's 200 heads of state at any given time, and many of them stay in that role for a very long time. Of countries with Republican forms of government, the Republic is formed of a vanishingly small number of people. In that sense, discussions about how the statistically non-existent rulers should rule is fan fiction, since individual players are statistically never going to be in that role. Therefore it is most sensible to make plans based on the things that we are likely to be able to change in our lives rather than things we will never be able to change in our lives. That doesn't mean that we ignore the world around us, far from it. Individuals acting with virtue who understand what is going on in the world can make subtle changes that can eventually result in those big outcomes. For example, in my own country there are typically three parties who have the most power at the Federal level, and the likelihood of anyone other than those three parties making much progress is pretty low. However, in the last election a fringe party got 5% of the vote. Now you might think that 5% is a meaningless number that would have no impact on anything, but in reality it acted as an effective protest to vote for one of the three parties that wasn't doing its job, and there's been a major shake up in that major party now which is now on track to win massively in the next election. This never would have happened if people just did what they were told, they understood the actions they were able to take, and to collectively were able to make an outsized change to the world by doing the things that they could do. (Humorously enough, that one's small political party is now back at 1%)
Another counter-argument to my proposal is that nothing I have proposed will force anyone to change. And when it comes to the way that they live their life on a day-to-day basis you can't force people to change. Even dictators only have so much power over the everyday lives of individual people. Therefore if you want to convince people to do the right thing, you need to show them that doing the right thing is better for them. Once somebody right in front of them is modeling that ideal and living a happier life because of it, that is much more powerful than any law telling men that they need to take care of their families.
In the same way, good men taking an active role in their local space can have an outsized impact on other men bye helping to model ideal behavior.
Now, I keep on talking about ideals but I do want to remind everyone that in small ways and in big ways none of us ever fully meet the mark. Even people who are proud of themselves when they look in the mirror have things that they would like to change for the better, or regrets about things that they did wrong. In this way you need to be careful not to put too much pressure on yourself for the times that you don't hit the mark, and instead just accept that you didn't fully hit the mark today and you're going to try to get a little bit closer tomorrow. It is that striving for greatness that is going to get you to somewhere excellent, not necessarily always attaining it.
I'd like to briefly talk about how this would feel, this little corner of the world where we have hypothetically created virtue around us. The truth is, in order to feel at peace with the world you don't need to change the entire world, you just need to have a good situation right in front of you. There have been a lot of big things in the news lately, but usually I'm reading the news after I just spent 2 hours at the beach with my son, and that really put things in perspective that everything's going to be okay. Being able to create at first a small zone of sanity and virtue and then slowly expanding that zone to encompass more and more of your world results in a much better emotional feeling then a much more trivial but global achievement. To be happy and proud in one's own skin, and in one's own house, and in one's own neighborhood, that is certainly a great start to feeling happy and proud and calm in one's own life in general. It's a great basis for dealing with things outside of your control such as politics in the World at Large.
Assuming that we've moved on from the original subject, there's a line from The Graysonian Ethic ( I swear I dont cite the book in every post, but these are directly applicable ) in the chapter of having grit that goes something like: "My generation is filled with people who want to save the world. The problem is that they cannot even save themselves"
I spent quite a lot of time thinking about it this problem of trying to save the world, and the answer to me is quite simple: you need to start small. Don't try to save the world, try to change your world because you actually can.
First, try to be virtuous in your own life. To model the correct behavior for those around you to see is a lifetime pursuit that should take all of your effort for most regular people. Most people aim at being generally inoffensive, but in my view the goal should be to go to sleep every day trying to be someone you could look in the mirror and be proud of yourself.
The next question might be about "how will you know what good is? Society has so many things to say about that!" But in reality you know what makes you feel impressed, what makes you feel disgusted, so you should use your internal compass to guide you.
It is my belief that when you live virtuously, you do it to do the right thing, but there are ultimately rewards for doing so. The world is hungry for virtuous people, and so if you are virtuous you will find yourself rewarded. That also gives you opportunities to do small local things to make others lives better.
For those who try to act with virtue, they will start off with a small slice where they try to make their immediate surroundings better, and as their little slice of the world gets better they will get further opportunities to increase the size of that slice of the world that they're making better. I've personally witnessed it where a Frontline worker eventually is able to assist in steering a Fortune 500 company in different ways because they have put in the work day after day month after month year after year and build a cache of virtue with which they can move forward. History is written by those who show up, and a lot of people don't really care to show up.
If you live a life you can be proud of, that's where you can start trying to surround yourself with other people who are virtuous. It isn't easy to find virtuous people but they do exist, and you start building a community -- a real local community that can make the local world better.
It isn't easy, but there are good women out there who will exhibit virtue in spite of the government or society. I've been married for 15 years going strong, and most of my married friends are the same.
When you end up as a father yourself you are modeling how to be a good father to your son, and you model what a good man is to your daughter.
You mentioned before that people have kids just to have kids, but most people don't have kids. The replacement birth rate is 2, and throughout most of the industrialised world the actual birth rate is closer to 1. America only has a slightly higher birth rate because they import a lot of people from the developing world, but even then within a generation or two they are at the locals birth rate (and just so that we stay out of the pop-political realm here I am not speaking to this act of importing people from the developing world as good or bad, it's just a statement of fact). This is going to result in population collapses on every continent except for Africa. This means that there's going to be far fewer people, and the people who exist will be the ones from parents who chose to have kids. If those kids are likely to choose the ideology of their parents then it becomes rather important to be a parent and to model proper ideals such that the ideals you would like to see move forward are carried forward.
Some might suggest that this plan I presented starts too small, does too little for too long, takes too long, for a relatively large amount of work. I would counter that statistically speaking no one on earth is in charge. That is, there is one president of the United States every four years out of 8 billion people. If we assume that there's one head of state for every nation, maybe there's 200 heads of state at any given time, and many of them stay in that role for a very long time. Of countries with Republican forms of government, the Republic is formed of a vanishingly small number of people. In that sense, discussions about how the statistically non-existent rulers should rule is fan fiction, since individual players are statistically never going to be in that role. Therefore it is most sensible to make plans based on the things that we are likely to be able to change in our lives rather than things we will never be able to change in our lives. That doesn't mean that we ignore the world around us, far from it. Individuals acting with virtue who understand what is going on in the world can make subtle changes that can eventually result in those big outcomes. For example, in my own country there are typically three parties who have the most power at the Federal level, and the likelihood of anyone other than those three parties making much progress is pretty low. However, in the last election a fringe party got 5% of the vote. Now you might think that 5% is a meaningless number that would have no impact on anything, but in reality it acted as an effective protest to vote for one of the three parties that wasn't doing its job, and there's been a major shake up in that major party now which is now on track to win massively in the next election. This never would have happened if people just did what they were told, they understood the actions they were able to take, and to collectively were able to make an outsized change to the world by doing the things that they could do. (Humorously enough, that one's small political party is now back at 1%)
Another counter-argument to my proposal is that nothing I have proposed will force anyone to change. And when it comes to the way that they live their life on a day-to-day basis you can't force people to change. Even dictators only have so much power over the everyday lives of individual people. Therefore if you want to convince people to do the right thing, you need to show them that doing the right thing is better for them. Once somebody right in front of them is modeling that ideal and living a happier life because of it, that is much more powerful than any law telling men that they need to take care of their families.
In the same way, good men taking an active role in their local space can have an outsized impact on other men bye helping to model ideal behavior.
Now, I keep on talking about ideals but I do want to remind everyone that in small ways and in big ways none of us ever fully meet the mark. Even people who are proud of themselves when they look in the mirror have things that they would like to change for the better, or regrets about things that they did wrong. In this way you need to be careful not to put too much pressure on yourself for the times that you don't hit the mark, and instead just accept that you didn't fully hit the mark today and you're going to try to get a little bit closer tomorrow. It is that striving for greatness that is going to get you to somewhere excellent, not necessarily always attaining it.
I'd like to briefly talk about how this would feel, this little corner of the world where we have hypothetically created virtue around us. The truth is, in order to feel at peace with the world you don't need to change the entire world, you just need to have a good situation right in front of you. There have been a lot of big things in the news lately, but usually I'm reading the news after I just spent 2 hours at the beach with my son, and that really put things in perspective that everything's going to be okay. Being able to create at first a small zone of sanity and virtue and then slowly expanding that zone to encompass more and more of your world results in a much better emotional feeling then a much more trivial but global achievement. To be happy and proud in one's own skin, and in one's own house, and in one's own neighborhood, that is certainly a great start to feeling happy and proud and calm in one's own life in general. It's a great basis for dealing with things outside of your control such as politics in the World at Large.