Actually, this is making me understand what conservativism really is perhaps for the first time, and perhaps why they themselves might have a hard time defining what it really is: conservativism is no more than an anachronism... a set of assumptions about social norms which used to be normal, but were made 'conservative' by the social changes precipitated by new technology.

I mean, this is pretty much circular based on the definition of the word conservative. But it seems useful: for example, conservatives have a hard time accepting the social changes that liberals have embraced, to the point that the world "liberal" itself becomes slur reserved for anybody and anything which isn't as conservative as they are. It's for this reason I think that social conservatives like Jordan Peterson seem to always have the same predictable complaints about modernity.

Yup, this nails it on the head.

What's even worse is much of the stuff they believe used to be normal is probably false.

Yeah, I said something like this exactly in a much earlier post on this thread, although it wasn't very well received. We were talking about the difference between right and left. I suggested something like this: by and large, people on the right look to the past (whether real or imagined) when they imagine what the best kind of society is, and people on the left think that there is no historical precedent for the best kind of society, but that human reason is able to devise a more just society than has ever existed before (hence, all leftist ideologies have kind of utopian dimension to them). Obviously, nothing is entirely new and nothing is entirely old: it's impossible to really turn back the clock without introducing innovations, just as revolutionary movements often retain some elements of the regimes ghat they aspired to replace. But I still think this is a good general guideline for the difference between right and left.

Yeah, I guess I'd suggest the cause doesn't have to do with a lack of leisure time, but rather that it's an unintended consequence of certain ideas about sex that were introduced, or came into prominence, in the 60s.

Thinking about this again, it may be that a better way to put this is that conservatives (or the right) think "the given" ought to be the basis of society, while peoole on the left think that the basis of society ought to be a freedom liberated from any kind of imposed constraint (namely, "the given"). That might be a better definition. It captures a wider array of phenomena than my initial definition.

This is a minor point, but I kind of regret using the word leisure there. I think what Reid was getting at more was the dramatic shift that industrial society has caused in how we receive incidental social benefits simply by living in society. So it would not so much be leisure, as in, recreation, that would be needed here, but time spent socially, independent of the influence of industrial society (which, for the most part, seems to mean more isolation). But if the old institutions that created social interactions are going away (how many kids are going to, say, church to socialize, rather than plan Call of Duty on Xbox Live?), how do we even reverse this?

That definition doesn't do a great job of explaining dialectical materialism or Hegel's view of history (which is very intentionally about overcoming the opposition and difference between left and right).

The socialist answer to that question is to create better conditions for workers, of course. Which I think was what Reid was getting at.

Not sure about Hegel or dialectical materialism, lol. I'm the intellectual lightweight in this thread.

Sounds like you're becoming more sympathetic to conservativism, heh.

I don't know if that's what Reid thinks. I asssumed he was making a more materialist argument associated with a critique of capitalism (which isn't necessarily without an ideational component, admittedly) but maybe he should weigh in here.

Sort of, maybe? But to me being conservative means to always want to rant about this stuff, but without any workable solution. I see it more as a recognition that most 'good' changes in society bring about bad ones that might at first be hard to see, until it is too late to correct them.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think on individuals can probably do a lot to reverse the damage that is silently being done to them, simply by people like (perhaps, or hopefully somebody else) Jordan Peterson bringing to their attention that not everything that comes easily or is accepted as normal might be healthy for them down the road.

I mean, it's Saturday afternoon, and I'm sitting in the kitchen with a sandwich, writing this post. Why am I doing this rather than something else? How did I get here?

My God.

It's complicated, but, for Hegel (and Marx) freedom and necessity are two sides of the same coin. Freedom isn't defined as independence from some kind of coercive necessity, nor as the mere submission to it, but as a self-positing of necessity. But for Hegel, that self-positing isn't something that humans do, at least not exactly, (as it is for Kant, where generating laws according to the rational necessity of the categorical imperative is freedom), but something that God does in and through humans, and the result is all of human history, which is the outward manifestation of God's free activity of self-determination.

I can try to put that in non-jargon but i'd have to think about it more heh

You might want to elect to save your health for something else.

lol maybe I'll try it anyway. Or at least explain why he transcends the left/right distinction (at the same time, I think these days many who care and think most about Hegel tend to be conservative, but there's also plenty in his thought that has inspired radical leftist thought. But the opposition of Hegels followers into left-leaning and right-leaning followers is itself very Hegelian, so...)

I mean...

If the social right seriously wants church to be a part of peoples’ lives, to socialize constructively, participate in their communities, and form meaningful long-term relationships with the opposite gender, they should probably stop voting in a bloc with the business right. Among other things it is very hard to go to church when your boss makes you work every Sunday morning.

No like the good reverend says I catfish people using a jimbo profile

Story time!!

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/23/1744321/-Say-goodnight-to-net-neutrality-as-AT-T-just-rolled-out-internet-fast-lanes

Aaaand net neutrality's end is having the exact effect we all thought it would.

Don't indulge him.

Sorry Eversor, looks like I've been shut down!

Awh

Oh god, I'm so high on having my authority respected that I retract my previous recommendation. DISH IT, Spook.

lmao that's amazing

So I downloaded tinder a long time ago after I saw this:

http://i.imgur.com/558U291.jpg

Because I immediately imagined all the fun I could have ****ing with people using some sort of parody profile. I named the profile James and put some pictures of Jim Morrison on there. I was 27 at the time so that worked out great. I was listening to a lot of The Doors at the time and figured that my deep knowledge of Jim's life would provide for some fun times. So, I would swipe right on most people and when I matched, woul djust send them Doors lyrics. Lots of people didn't seem to know what to make of this, or who he was. One guy kept trying to get me to let him suck my dick, and eventually got fed up and said 'I'm not into ****ing sonnets n **** **** off' but I can't figure out why he wasn't using grindr?

Another guy matched with me and before I could send him the lyrics to Backdoor Man he said "Jim, you're dead, what are you doing on Tinder?" We talked for a while and he explained that the first time he saw 'me' when he was 8 he thought 'I' was the most beautiful person in the world and he knew he was gay right away and he was glad he finally got the chance to talk to 'me' since 'I' died about a month after that. It was a really weird intimate experience.

Most people, especially young (18-35) girls don't seem to know who he is and don't reply or don't seem to be able to work out that they are reading poetry or lyrics. However, I've definitely had probably as much sex as I would have had putting the same amount of effort into my own profile, since occasionally someone will get interested in someone who has the commitment to role play as a dead rockstar for months of conversation. Then, they're always pleasantly surprised that I am actually reasonably attractive since you expect a fat neckbeard to be doing this stuff, but are also aware that someone who does this with their free time poses no threat as a serious relationship so now I am long term friends with several of Jim's Tinder girlfriends and found my sex magic partner this way. I can't say that he is too happy about that, since I am stealing all of his women, but he and I are pretty good friends now too when he isn't upset about turning his harem into my harem.

All in all, it's another case of operator error, since I have been able to form meaningful relationships (with a few casual things in there) with multiple people using this tech. Man Jordan Peterson would surely want to have me strung up for this ****. It's almost as if most people are basic, unrefined, and uninteresting and are having sex based only on scary subterranean desires with no consideration for the other person and that is almost certainly a result of too many ****ing people and an over inflated global culture that depletes meaning from all human interactions for people who don't actively fight the entropy.

I've got a solid buzz on so I'm not sure if that is a complete or even readable retelling of these events

People are strange

when you're a stranger

Actually that song is a great description of the sense of alienation gripping many of the scary people on 4chan

"Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down"

Oh Jim, so ahead of your time.

Execute the drug dealers?



https://www.axios.com/exclusive-trump-privately-talks-up-executing-all-big-drug-dealers-1519595170-402cc386-8729-4684-a7ef-a5bf31876afa.html

You also get caned if you spit on the ground, as far as I hear.

um.

Sounds like some **** my dad would say. I guess I know why he voted Trump.

It's also interesting that every line he said there was wrong.

Alright, let's have a real discussion now.

James Damore, the guy fired from Google for his memo, tweeted out recently:



Which leads me to a discussion point. There's an ongoing trend with conservatives, who feel they are persecuted for their views. You can see the kind of sentiment all over conservative media, which sums the view fairly well:



Congruously, evangelicals believe they face more discrimination than Muslims.

I have a few earnest questions about that. One is probably the more inflammatory one. And that is: if you constantly feel pressure by society that your views are wrong and harmful, at what point does it become time to actually question your views? Frankly, I never hear this question asked by conservatives to themselves. The idea seems to be that, if you're a conservative, well that's just you. And you should be able to be that. It's not acceptable to push your boundaries of belief to their limits. Other people should just shut up and accept your views.

Why? Why should liberals be quiet and stop telling conservatives how they feel? Is it possible that conservatism is actually a poor position, with poor reasoning and justifications, and people are trying to point that out? Earnest question, do conservatives admit the possibility that their world view is framed incorrectly?

On the other hand: I've see a repeated pattern in polling. Conservatives feel persecuted. They go on college campuses, and feel their professors might humiliate them. They feel harassed at the workplace. They feel Christianity is persecuted. The other question: is this true? Or is it a kind of hysteria? What if, conservative media is so busy ramping up the alarm bells, shouting messages of trial and tribulation, that maybe conservatives have created a paranoid specter in their mind of a force in American culture that doesn't really exist? I mean, how do you even quantify harassment? It can't be based on just how someone feels: surely, people can have unfounded paranoia, for instance, paranoid schizophrenics can be paranoid about nothing. People can be afraid of many silly things, and often develop anxiety about stuff. What if, the structure of conservative social spheres creates imaginary victim complexes and persecution narratives? How would conservatives even know that?

I mean, really, do conservatives actually question their core assumptions? Plenty of conservatives will, say, tell you what the 2nd amendment means, but how many of them have actually done a study by reading many court cases, by studying scholarly, apolitical texts on the topic? And of those, which did it without the conclusion of their study already fixed in place?

Also: I'm putting down $20 that some Democrat columnist will write a defense of voter ID laws to keep Russians from tampering with our voting equipment.

Do you mean conservative pundits, journalists, etc.?

Yeah, exactly people like that. But the people I think should self-reflect are everyday Republicans.

It seems kind of indisputable that Christianity doesn't play the prominent role in American society that it used to, and that that is a change that is happening more rapidly. Even when George W. Bush was president, liberals would fiercely criticize the Iraq War as a racist attack against brown people and point out that it was antagonizing the Muslim world and making "them" hate us. But they also wouldn't think twice about Bush's description of the US as a "Judeo-Christian" nation. A lot of this "war on Christmas" stuff is baloney, but America is also in transition. It's ethos is changing, and that's destabilizing to a lot of people. I'm sure they have good reasons to feel like their under attack.

Of course conservatives claim they're victims. Everyone does. Victimhood is the basis of political legitimacy in American politics. It's woven into the fabric of American politics.

Okay, I agree Christianity is on the decline, but they key word here is persecution. Christians are still the dominate political and social group in America, and their political views dominate law in many areas. That's not persecution, and comparing themselves to the kinds of stuff that Muslims face is not accurate, to say the least.

It's like when Israelis say they're the victims because so many suffer PTSD from rocket attacks, after they just blew up civilian targets.



That complaint seems off the mark. The thing I'm asking about is whether it's an accurate assertion.

Hahaha. Are you trying to start a fight?