I didn't watch the video as I can't atm and kinda prefer parsing some things as text.
Politics is a wierd beast I normally avoid, which is kinda a problem in of itself. It's philosophicaly fascinating and clearly, well important kinda undersells it. It's just... So big, and daunting to even try to wade through much less dive in.
Being an aware citizen is practically impossible. Yet the notion of democracy demands you have an educated populis.
At least you have a ways to go before you hit Race Bannon levels of crazy.
Ever since I learned US Government in high school I have had pretty fundamental issues with how our system had become locked into 2 parties being the only true choices. Because as we all know people are always fundementally divided between two, very different and inconsolable factions.
I am a hypocrite, never claimed otherwise. I suspect we all are at one point or another. I try not to judge, which is sorta impossible but it turns into an art of recognizing, accepting, and moving on. This is most important to apply to one's self as well, for we are all trying the best we can from our tiny point of view and experience.
That sounds very lovey dovey, and I do admit to being a hopeless romantic, but accountability is not brushed aside. Regardless of if we like it or not our actions have consequences on the world around us and we do live in society and are thus bound by a sort of laws besides those written on paper. So, while I say we can all be hypocritical it does not excuse the act especially wilfully and deceptively. Ugh, part of the problem with language is to take things as absolutes, but those don't exist we just fool ourselves into thinking they do. It's the same with concepts like "normal" and "perfect"
I am not really sure where I am going with this so I will wrap up and question why I keep responding to you on these as I mostly sense that you are just using this space as an outlet, maybe I am too.
Saw you added to OP... So apparently I am posting again.
It never ceases to sadden me how easily people prioritize short term gains over long term sensibilities. A song I may track down put it well "We must resist the temptation to think only of today, and also plan for tomorrow" Its very possible for us to do this but from businesses to our relationship with the world around us we give into that temptation all the time for terrible reasons, fear, selfishness, or simply so we can pretend things are OK when they are not.
Gender is a very weird topic especially since it relates so closely to how we conceptualize sex and family dynamics. I see the current trans movement very similarly to what I recall of the gay movement as I was growing up. Sexual identity is a very rough topic due to so much stigma and cultural expectations. Religious groups also have a big part of what we have normalized in society due to them largely setting "the rules' for most of history.
I am on a tangent and will just refferance Joseph Cambel as part of what has formed my view on culture. I will also tentatively point to an episode of 'Bill Nye Saves the World' for giving a very good talk about how the sexual spectrum is much more complicated than society accepts.
If you are comfortable with it, I am actually interested in hearing more about your transgender experience. What about "the feminine" do you identity with?
I had a roommate, who I knew as Patrick for several months, one day approach me and tell me he wanted to be called Isabelle and identity as a woman. While I don't have an issue with people being who they want I had a hard time with the idea of transgender specifically. Mostly just due to me having viewed gender as biology rather than identity for the majority of my life. I think what finally helped me break out of that paradigm was realizing that I have a "feminine" approach to many things that has raised an eyebrow or made me feel unusual.
Comes back to the whole false dicotomy thing. Either due to how our minds work or being so indoctrinated to Aristotle style thinking, we tend to view things as separate an opposite that are in fact the same or at least on the same spectrum but different ends. Light and Dark. Hot and Cold. Good and Evil. None exists without their counter-part as they are just different sides to the same underlying concept.
I dont even pretend to understand US politics because apparently it (especially backed up with statistics) doesnt work the same way it works elsewhere. I have sometimes asked about something that for me looks completely different than what statistics say, in the US politics thread, and been pretty much shut down for ???? I mean like i once asked why president X is better for emplyment numbers than president Y when X had reduced the unemployment from 12% to 8% abd Y went down from said 8% to 4% in similar timeframe on similar conditions. My argument was that going down from 12%->8% is certainly statistically easier than 8%->4%, apparently that's not how it is in US for some reason..
From what i have been following, imo the US elections have not really been about future, it has been about past. Last president was "so bad we need anyone but him now". That's just my opinion but at least the two latest elections have been all about that starting from the campaigns.
Laws are a bit more tricky. For example in Finland the government sold the national owned electricity grid to a private company in 2008 for ????? reason. Since then the electricity transfer price has gone up over 100%! Apparently noone saw this coming. What are you gonna do about it? Everyone needs to buy electricity anyways. There is pretty much no law you can apply to it since you cannot control how a private company sets the price on their product. Wanna get on the market and sell at a lower price, you're welcome to build a new electric grid. Maybe you get your money back in like 1000 years
That was just an example of idiotic, short term economics thinking of a government (i am sure that happens a lot in US as well). More of the problem with laws is when politicians try to set up a new law to do something good but it hasn't been thought out too well. Poorer people at least here get housing benefit money from the government. If the government wants to move up the housing benefit for lets say 100eur a month, what happens? Real estate investors transfer that 100e almost directly to the rents because the tenant "doesnt need to actually pay any more than before". What are you gonna do about it, because it is well within the law? EVEN KNOWING THAT, there are actually politicians (and a lot of them) who from time to time entertain this idea. Just for the votes. And some, well a lot of people buy that shit lol.
Same with the laws regarding gay and transgender people. I have a lot of gay friends, or well rather i have a lot of people i know who are gay and i sometimes do (or at least used to) discuss this stuff with them. I dont know many transgender people but from my experience gay people tend to vouch for same stuff trans ppl do. My friend and me once discussed in a bar that the gov should allow you to choose which bathroom you go to in bars based on how you identify your gender. I am not totally ooposed to the idea, i just see many problems with it, so i asked "what if i tomorrow i decide to identify myself as woman and i want to go to women's bathroom?" (because there are always gonna be jerks who would do that just because). Her answer was "it's not the same thing". Well, it's within the law (if that was one), so why would you deny the possibility for some people and allow it to someone else? That's not a decent law, it produces more problems than it does good things. That's the problem i have ran to with most of the things gay/transgender people vouch for. It "helps" like 1% of populations life, but gives the rest 99% a possibility of abusing it, and from that 99% there are always those said jerks who will do that, and then again there is nothing you can do about it. However i am all in for upgrades in some parts of laws about gay/trans marriage and adoption. At least in Finland said people are not treated equally in comparison to straight people on those subjects.
All in all Slam, especially having talked with you face to face a decent amount of time i think we actually agree on a lot of things. I dont think you at least should be misunderstood, and youre definitely a good person. So if you want to talk about something that bothers your mind you can hit me up in discord or whatsapp. I even actually have a bit more time at least this month since i am not working on thursdays and fridays. So please, if anything bothers you, anything you want to talk about send me a message and i am up for talks whenever i can if it helps! I think we're also in a bit similar situation having a partner from basically the other side of the world so i definitely understand at least some of the difficulties that kind of situation might produce.
Thanks both, and yes I’m willing to talk about my youthful escapades in discovering what I was versus what I wanted to be- I’ll just have to collect it. That decision was made a long time ago...
As far as business vs properly caring for the earth and Nature that hasn’t had a chance to catch up with our rampancy yet (which it will- we as a species underestimate nature. I teach at a Zoo, for that zoo, I have access to uncommon knowledge...) Part of what business does is provide the opportunity to improve our stewardship of what impact on nature we have.
Have you noticed how the blue bloods continually enforce compliance on those who can’t, and then turn around and flagrantly disregard the myriad ways they could be helping?
Al Gore = good liar, blue blood Elon Musk = honest chaotic good/neutral rich man George bush = stupid liar neutral blue blood Donald trump = honest evil blue blood Hillary Clinton = evil liar blue blood
Etc. Like the good ones are the people who got rich by hard work, not by being a fucking blue blood. They actually give a shit and say “stop making laws about things you don’t understand” and make Teslas and (try to) bring public transportation- like REAL, GOOD transportation back to LA until the evil blue blood chaotic liar fuckwad Newsom and his ilk drive a force for good out of our state.
Because all those people care about is power. You can see it in how they talk about Feminism. Never talking about equal rights but always talking about powah and who has positions of powah it’s like damn, women have more opportunity than men already to the point I wanted to be one and wished I was one for years, the reason men always rise to the top is biological.
But this stuff is all distraction.
Basically China is doing a better job than us in responding to their bigger pile of dirt than ours because they are regulating their businesses less (more money) and regulating their policy more (using that money with less overall corruption).
When China is as evil as it is and I see that shit, I get really pissed.
@Sexuality and transgender movement: Mostly a counter-movement to how dumb society's perception of masculinity and feminity is. There are things we perceive as feminine or masculine because on average people of one sex do them more and as a result stigmatize the ones that run cross with our expectation in an obvious way. That we are living in a society that broadcasts stereotypes and larger than live figures 24/7 and encourage us all to pretend that we are some weird super-humans on our virtual social media accounts doesn't help. A society where the white lie on your résumé has long become the standard because everyone is lying and you look like a looser if you can't pretend to compete. Because we all need to process more information than we can in depth everyone is blowing up the importance of the information they provide without the repercussions that normally follow.
So people look more than ever for something that truly defines them and makes them special and suddenly there's this "weird" tick that was stigmatized all along. And then people start to think that there are more things they enjoy about things the other sex is allowed to do and they were born in the wrong body. I was born in the wrong body too, I was supposed to be 2m10, naturally muscular and definitely shouldn't have loss of hair.
The conservatives still hate it because it doesn't follow their stereotypes they so desperately need for their world order to make sense, which probably funnels the whole debate. Honestly all of this is so dumb, no offense to anyone, but the only reason this is a problem is because both sides feel entitled to their view of what they and others are supposed to be allowed to do.
@politicians: Power hungry asshats, almost all of them. You don't become one if you aren't. The difference between China and the USA is that in China you can get away with sacrificing millions of your people for "the great leap forward", while in the USA you'd loose your position almost immediately. So the democratic system breeds less catastrophic people and restricts more what they can do openly. But behind the scenes all gloves are off, see the shit the secret services pull on a regular basis. Don't even need to be a conspiracy theorist to see that the only difference between a crime syndicate and the CIA is the scale of operations and that the NSA mistook 1984 for a guide to an ideal society. Also China has a ton of corruption.
@Tim: The only vid I ever saw of this guy was a vid where he 'cited' the guardian that Sweden is a gang-warzone and that his video is going to be surely taken down, but he felt obliged to the truth to get the word out. Sounds familiar?
He was ridiculed by Swedes for it and I saw the vid a year after it's release, so it definitely wasn't taken down. And on a bit further research the lesson learned was that both him as well as the guardian nowadays are full of shit. Just like pretty much any newspaper and youtuber they are only trying to punch out the most over the top headline possible to sell more. See ratification of information above.
@Lindybeige: That man on the other hand has a smart head on his shoulders, but he's mainly talking about taboos and jokes and pretty much any reasonable person I know agrees that there's a time and place for every joke and there's a wrong time and place for every joke.
From what i have been following, imo the US elections have not really been about future, it has been about past. Last president was "so bad we need anyone but him now". That's just my opinion but at least the two latest elections have been all about that starting from the campaigns.
havent read the full post yet but this is fairly accurate imo. Our presidential elections tend to swing back and forth between parties, it's sorta like the population just goes "Hey you had your term(s) now we wanna give the other guys a chance".
That's definitely not always true, Obama ran on a platform that was very much built on hopes for the future.
Still you can probably argue that the average American doesn't vote with their head and instead trend to vote in line with whatever party they feel associated with. Trump, in my opinion, got elected because people buy into the idea that he is a "self made everyman" and due to the rise of twitter and his use of it people saw the chance to elect someone who wasn't a stuffy politician.
That was also an interesting election in the sense that I think many people disliked both Hilary and Trump but felt they had to pick between them.
The bathroom thing is something I have encountered as well in discussing trans rights before. I kinda disagree with the "use whichever you Identify with" idea because using the restroom is kinda more in line with biology than identity and that is an area that will make people uncomfortable even in the best of circumstances. Also the possibility of abuse, as you point out, is probably not worth the small bit of self expression(yea more complicated than that). This is actually a good example of sacrificing a personal freedom in order for society to get along better, in either sense.
On February 09 2021 01:45 Jealous wrote: Why is this in the Mafia section lol? I thought that politics had to be contained to the relevant politics threads, according to site rules...