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sj_zero | @sj_zero@social.fbxl.net

Author of The Graysonian Ethic (Available on Amazon, pick up a dead tree copy today)

Admin of the FBXL Network including FBXL Search, FBXL Video, FBXL Social, FBXL Lotide, FBXL Translate, and FBXL Maps.

Advocate for freedom and tolerance even if you say things I do not like

Adversary of Fediblock

Accept that I'll probably say something you don't like and I'll give you the same benefit, and maybe we can find some truth about the world.

Ah... Is the Alliteration clever or stupid? Don't answer that, I sort of know the answer already...

I've started to hear rumors that the tide of woke might be turning, and the successes of movies that don't inject politics into stories that don't need them is actually due to a decision made a while back to start turning the ship at companies like Disney.

Of course, you can't turn a battleship like a speedboat, it takes a long time for these things to play out assuming it's even happening, so nobody should expect things to become ok again tomorrow. But I could believe it.

Some people think that companies will be too drawn into the DEI money such as cheap loans to possibly change, but let me ask you a question: As a business, would you rather have loans, or paying customers?

One danger is that slow processes tend to overshoot. The ideal for customers would be a chill agnosticism to politics rather than picking one side or another to any extreme. There's a lot that everyone can agree on so we don't need to focus every second in our escapism over the things we might disagree with.

It used to be that you obviously had friends you disagreed with politically but it wasn't the main focus of life. Two people can have diametrically opposed views on something like transgender washrooms, but if they're talking about the harmonics at the beginning of Roundabout by Yes and bonding over that, it turns out the bathroom habits of 0.1% of the population barely even come up. It's sort of narcissistic for anyone to think that their pet issue has to be brought into every single conversation at all times.

(anxiously reads the nominees to make sure nothing I typically say is on there)

Wait a minute, my posts are usually 15,000 characters long, and none of these are that long. I'm probably okay

Can you imagine if he wins the popular vote?

That'll be really fun.

She can finally answer that question everyone is asking: "What would you do if you were in charge of the border?"

castrateau (ok, that's probably pushing the joke a step too far, but his wife's boyfriend would probably laugh)

Canadians don't vote parties in, they vote parties out. And when you're out, it's usually so hard your grandkids feel it.

In Ontario, the Liberals thought they were going to rule forever. It's been I think 3 elections and they aren't even an official political party yet.

Chairman Xi can't cheat enough to make up that amount of fail.

Sometimes when you have eyes, you just have to drench them in bleach.

The only downside to Trudeau losing the next election in a landslide is that what will all of us do with the trudeau impersonations we've cultivated over the years? All that wasted effort for someone who is likely to die in obscurity after the next election.

Great pickup line, makes 'em weak in the knees every time.

I'm a retard, but I like to effortpost. So if you don't like it just block me because I'm not gonna stop.

Sadly no, but that won't stop me from trying.

My son had some friends over yesterday, and they noticed how many more toys he has compared to them. We aren't so well off, I'm just a blue collar stiff, but he's an only child and there's 4 kids in their family and they aren't as well-off financially. My wife didn't notice them saying it but I did. I brought it up to her afterwards and told her we should have a strategy to deal with it, and so I suggested we say "yes, our son is blessed and that's why he shares his toys and invites his friends over to have fun with all these toys".

I read her the definition of noblesse oblige, the idea that nobles besides having the privilege of power and wealth have an obligation to their subjects to give back including things like putting on social events. Obviously we're not anything like titled nobles, but it's relatively universal that the strong have an obligation to the weak. In the west that phrase is common, but in the East Confucian thought demands a noble do his duty to his subjects to maintain social cohesion. Again, we aren't nobles, but as people slightly better off than our neighbors the concept still makes sense.

Some might think we should tell them it'll fill them with joy and be fun but I don't agree. I think for men, giving them a duty to fulfill actually gives them greater joy than just saying it will give you joy. It gives them a goal, a way to say "you have this duty to fulfill so go out and do so" and when they do it brings deeper fulfillment than just the fun of the thing.

I also tend to think that looking at it through this lens will help reduce the risk of the tragedy of the commons, since that same obligation to others is also an obligation to yourself to maintain what you already have and not let others destroy it. If you don't take care of your blessings, then you won't be able to share them with others. If you let someone else destroy what you have, you also won't be able to share them with anyone else. There's a big difference between communism or socialism and noblesse oblige, the difference between taking and giving, the difference between everyone owning something and somebody owning something.

literally "tfw you lose 11 billion dollars you rightfully stole"

They had that JoJo already.

Some anime base character models off of humans who need nose jobs.

The CCP needs coal. It's fine, the name of the phenomenon is "global climate change (except when carbon is burned in Asia)" but most authors just shorten the phrase for brevity.

Youtuber Whatifalthist has proposed the same sort of thing. If a problem is solvable, then the project has a beginning, a middle, and an end and then the managerial class might have to give up some of their power. It only makes sense then to have problems that will never be solved so they can keep growing in power forever.

I imagine someone saying the words while clapping after each word, lol

We are all links in an infinite chain going backwards to the first single cell amoeba, and in ways that we can't even understand we are connected with all of these bits of alien life that nonetheless are our ancestors, and moving forward into the future that could be equally infinite. Looking at it in this way, it helps you understand how trivial your existence is, like a single Link in a chain is trivial in terms of the whole length, but deeply important in the sense that once the chain breaks it cannot continue. It is sad watching an entire generation talked into cutting their own chain.

Some people might think that the metaphor of a chain doesn't work because we aren't really that connected to the single-celled amoeba that eventually formed a multicellular life and eventually turned into everything else, but there is far more of that single-celled amoeba in us then you might think. There are so many things that are just fundamentally a part of us that we don't even realize is there. Although our ticket to the future is blank and we choose where to go, we are not a blank slate. A child who is never met another human being knows how to be hungry, knows how to be thirsty, knows how to be tired and go to sleep, a child who has never been around another human being has many things that will just happen because it's written into their blood. And that blood itself can tell stories. The sort of creature we are is a symbiosis with a mitochondria, mitochondria that we share with many organisms including single-celled organisms that exist today. There is nothing inherently or uniquely human about the symbiosis going on in every single one of our cells, it is something we inherited from long before we were anything remotely like a human. In ways we can't even see, we are just a link in an immense chain.

Beyond our own chain, in some ways each of us represents a chain of ecosystems. In the same way that we share our bodies with the mitochondria, our bodies contain a microbiome with many organisms that co-evolved with multicellular life, and also became symbiots with us. We continue the chain for ourselves, and at the same time we continue the chains for all of these other organisms that are fundamentally inhuman but a part of us. It goes to show that we aren't just pollutants in the world, we are a part of the world and any decision we make is going to impact the world, and choosing what is worse for humanity is not necessarily choosing what is best for every other species that is not humanity. If we choose to go extinct, I suspect that many of our symbiotes will also go extinct.

Some people are concerned that the chain that they are a part of may be used to bind the innocent, but chains can be used for many purposes. They can be used to bind monsters, they can be used to more ships, they can be used to keep things together that will become destructive if they are unleashed, and unlike an inanimate piece of chain, each link of our chain can subtly help choose what it is used for. As long as the chain continues. Prior to mass-produced chain of the industrialized world, one would not cut a piece of chain without a very good reason, and one would not cut a piece of rope without a very good reason, because once it is cut it is forever cut.

Imagine whispering to each link in the chain, telling it that it is the most important, and that it is morally wrong to expect it to support the chains that come ahead of it, or that it is morally wrong to continue the length of chain. And you convince that link that it is the most important thing in its world, and the chain breaks never to be reattached. The story for that length of chain which began in the primordial ooze ends, those links feeling full of self-righteous pride at the incomparable sin they have committed against all of the other links in that chain.

The people who think that they are doing the world a favor by refusing to continue the chain, perhaps they think that because the chain in the future could be strained, or because they think that the chain by continuing to exist will necessarily be harmful, or perhaps they think that the chain in the past has been used to bind the innocent in such a way that it can never be redeemed and must be cut, but what they don't realize is that when you cut the chain because of the bad you also cut the chain for the good. For those who were so enlightened that they finally understood the damage that the chains had caused as they dragged on the ground in the past, they think that the only answer is to cut the chain. In reality, if you cut every chain that has come to the realization that the past is imperfect and the future uncertain, then all you're going to be left with are chains that believe that their past is perfect and their future certain to be perfect as well. Is that really the future that such people are aiming at? In this way, such enlightened chains break, and they're enlightenment ends with them. it is a small-minded enlightenment but only cares about what they see and not the vast expanse in front of them. It's ironic, wanting to end something so Grand because of the sins of the past and not realizing the sin it commits against the future.

Imagine also what would happen if every chain used to moor ships, every chain used to secure heavy loads, every chain used to restrain a monster were convinced to break itself apart? All that would be left is the chains that bind the innocent.

Some people might look at this and start asking about people who are physically incapable of continuing chain. I have nothing but sympathy for such people because I thought I was going to be one of them. My wife was infertile through most of my marriage, and it wasn't until we were granted a miracle that my son was born and I was given the opportunity to forge a strong link in the chain that will go forward and bring together a better future. Such people who cannot because they are physically incapable they face a tragedy, but they are not facing a moral choice. You cannot choose to do that which you cannot do.

The same could easily be said of people who have failed to form the next Link in the chain. I also have nothing but sympathy for such people, because it was never a sure thing that I was going to get married. I grew up a colossal nerd, and a virgin who hadn't even held a girl's hand for years. A lot of people like me were never able to find a woman to have kids with, and a lot of people unlike me -- a lot of women, wish that they had found a good man but they just couldn't for whatever reason. It's tragedy, but not a moral failing.

I'm sure that there are many other situations where people can't have kids of their own, and that's fine. The specific conversation I'm having here is about people who had every opportunity and chose not to, and act as if their choice is nothing but positive morally. I think it's a lot more complicated than that, and people can talk about how happy they are with their choices, but at the end of the day I don't think it matters how happy that choice makes you.

Further investigating this metaphor of chains in the way that I have is really made me think about other forms of chains, and the fact that many people think that breaking societal or cultural chains necessarily means releasing the innocent, it can also mean releasing monsters, or in the case of a moored ship, it can release the forces of nature. Chains have never been only produced as something to bind the innocent, and if you destroy all chains without regard for their purpose, you are going to unbind everything regardless of whether that was innocent or not, helpful or harmful.

I'm no big city doctor, but I'm pretty sure that the English empire ended and other than scotland, ireland, and Wales England doesn't really do the empire thing anymore.

It's like being an anti-hitler activist in 1947. Thanks bro but your little late

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