I laugh at both but would elevate neither. There are occasionally good examples of real humour and sometimes quite sophisticated humour around the forum but neither of those is it. — Baden

I'm not a prude, far from it. Aristocrat style jokes, tho, which consist of nothing but offensive insalubrities stringed together... There's nothing funny in there. At least dead baby jokes tend to have a punchline. :confused:

In all truth, much of what I have currently read in the Shoutbox are really poor attempts at humor, with a current trend with the posters acting as if they were all animals. That discussion is non-offensive sure, but it's right out of Romper Room. — Hanover

Still a billion times better (and more fresh, too) than your unending Aristocrat jokes.

I will, but tomorrow, its getting awfully early here. Good night.

LOL! No, Keanu.

Obviously, the new humanity still struggles at acting...

thats pushing it, Bateman is physically perfect. Like a new breed of humanity. Like Reeves.

Now thats offensive. Compared to Gilford and Manassian Im basically Brad Pitt.

Ok, perhaps Robert Downey Jr.

Huh. Well, in that case, cry me a river. Had I offended you because of some unknown issue, I would have felt bad. But not to your sensibilities for scumbags. If that is all you want to discuss, feel free to start another thread, entitled The desolate moral landscape of Akanthinos, otherwise my feelings toward incels is fairly otiose to this thread.

:meh:
:worry:
:sad:

Are you ok? You write as if you are tying a knot. If you reread what I wrote, you will perhaps see that I have cast no moral judgement on any poster here, unless perhaps those who have entertained the thought of mass murder out of sexual frustration.

If you feel bad about your relationships with women, thats something that can be discussed, but I dont see why youd want to do it in a thread specifically on incels. Perhaps you dont at all, perhaps there is nothing to discuss. I dont want you to think that I imply anything by this, but you seem to take the subject to heart, and to me it seems a pretty black/white issue. There are a few of those, I guess.

As for my history, thats fairly irrelevant. I am not the arrogant judgemental douche you try to depict in your post. You want to make me pass as a Chad? I am not. This is not me thread-bombing to post GET GUD VIRGIN. I have approached the matter at hand in my initial posts in a critical manner, and only since then have had to justify myself. Sorry to say, but the subject of a potentially violent resentment based subculture is necessarily going to come with its luggage of moral judgements. And it probably should.

You see essential worth in human life. I dont, and Im honest about it, at least. I am not a nihilist, far from it, but a person is what it makes of itself. My cat is worth infinitely more to me than the life of, lets say, someone who would run down 12 people in the street because pornhub just isnt enough.

And no, I didnt assume you were an anti-feminist proto fascist. The *you* was fictional and impersonal. I must admit I didnt think this subject would even be controversial here. In what world do we live in that we have to entertain the sexual-resentment fueled spawn of reddit and 4chan as something that could even only potentially be not-terrible?

Based on the moral quality of that (non)being.

I have no qualms about stating the fact that, once someone has moved past far enough the (admittedly hazy) moral frontier, then I stop caring entirely about their continued existence.

If you harbour resentment and violence for women based on your inability to find a mate, and wished for any form of social remedy to this, which could not possibly happen without a fullscale assault on human rights, I feel it should not be necessary to add, then you are that far removed from normal human decency.

Do you identify yourself as incel ? I otherwise couldnt see why you would feel insulted.

How else qualify the pathos of someone so defined by his sexual failures that he resort to fantasysing about socially enforced monogamy? Its pathetic. Be as uptight as you like, I dont care, and I wont pretend that my perspective on sexuality is better. But dont pretend that society would be better off if we had the mores of caveman.

There are problems with our society in regard to sexual standards of practices. I refered to those problems in my post, but I guess you didnt care about that discussion. These problems have led us to a place where incels may thrive, but incels are not victims in this social dynamic. As I also mentionned, I rather think that they are not men-children, as it is often said, but rather adults who have simply followed the logic of commodification to its nihilistic end. Whats the worth of a property you can never acquire? Nothing. And once you have allowed yourself to think that women are literally worthless because you cant possess them, then Im sure the gun rampage is only but a few step further.

As groups grow, their radical outliers become more numerous. I think the recipe for a violent incel is extreme sensitivity to emotional anguish, a severe lack of self-awareness, and the kind of ideological rhetoric which depicts their place modernity as forever the sexually dispossessed misanthrope with only women and ass-holes to blame. — VagabondSpectre

A French psychologist - I forget which one - once stated that it took 3 generations to create a psychopath (paraphrasing, obviously).

What strikes me about the Jacobite Mag's article is how the relationship that Elliot Rodger idolized was a relationship of commodification. It's the relationship decried by Jean Baudrillard in The System of Objects. Objectification becomes part and engine of individuation, of identity building. The objects desired (women, sexual gratification, the respect of fellow sexually successfull men) are all desired as objects, as status marker, not because of themselves or of their history, but because of what they signify about their owner. That's why they won't purchase sex, because that would only be more confirmation of their status as 'renter' rather than 'proprietor'.

From what is written, there is a form of heavy awareness (but awareness of pathos) in what is expressed. I mean by this that Rodger and Minassian both very well know why and what they want from women. They want what our parents generations wanted by desiring the latest car, the nicest houses and the perfect atomic family. Rodgers and Minissian grew up idolizing successfull males and evaluating their male-ness by their possessions. The only mode of interaction they know is property, and they have been eternally denied this property. What changes, now they aren't afraid to express their desires, even though every normal person cringes at hearing them.

IMHO, this is (in part) the continuation of the prevalence of highly-fictionalised sexual courtship dynamics presented since the end of the 70s. Baby Boomers (my parents) started this dynamic, and as with everything with Boomers, they completely lacked any form of self-awareness. They wanted the trophy wife, the trophy car, the trophy house, but they wanted it because it was the dream. Incels nowadays have the self-awareness to know that there is no dream, if nothing else. But they haven't made the leap to realize that the Boomer model of courtship was also always defective (or, it worked as long as both individuals in the couple were about as shallow as the other).

Clinton is said to believe this is the reason she lost. I don't agree. I think she's political poison. — frank

Well, ask yourself, which incel is ever going to vote for Clinton? I mean, even if Trump came out and directly spoke against incels, he would still be infinitely sexier politically.

when we get highly upset that the Russians tried to interfere in American elections, should we consider that Russia or not, there was something unusual going on with internet interactions. — frank

I apologize, but I don't get the question. Is the phenomena the elections, the elections+fake news, or just the suspicion against Russian State agents.

But surely he realizes that forces monogamy isn't going to happen. So what is he doing? Just being provocative? — frank

Setting up his next book's sales. Or trying to get another big debate/interview set up, this time with Margaret Atwood?

My guess would be, nothing. — Wayfarer

I hope you aren't a pharmacist.

This may be related. If JP is becoming a spokesperson for the Incel community, then we should not be surprised that these idiots are becoming more comfortable with being in the public. That's basically all JP does : normalize the extreme so that it can more easily presented to non-radicals.

Jordan Peterson is an idiot

With such taste in art, it will perhaps not come as a surprise to learn that Peterson, who is married to a woman who is presumably very good at compartmentalising, has some sympathetic thoughts about men who blame their misogyny on women who don’t want to have sex with them.

“Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners, Mr Peterson says, and society needs to work to make sure those men are married. ‘The cure for that is monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges,’ [he says.] Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise, women will only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.

“‘Half the men fail,’ he says, meaning they don’t procreate. ‘And no one cares about the men who fail.’

“I laugh, because it is absurd.

“‘You’re laughing about them,’ he says, giving me a disappointed look. ‘That’s because you’re female.’”

I really really don't get it.

I mean, if you are 25 (or more) and you are extra super salty about not getting laid, isn't there a few other illegal things you could do that could solve the problem, before resorting to violence?

There's a poorly studied psychiatric concept called "Folie en Famille" (or folie a deux) where delusions held by one individual can be imparted to others through close proximity and isolation from outside influence. — VagabondSpectre

Funnily, the history of "Folie a deux" is quite interesting, and relates also to the incel problem. The term was coined by parisian newspapers and psychiatrists, when the courts started using expert opinions on the psychological causes of crimes.

Folie a deux is just another demonstration of the French predilection for low-intensity mysoginy. The explanation of a man's deviant behaviour is ; women, or more accurately, the passion of men for women.

"Cherchez la femme" is another example which came about in the same context.

Or have there always been incels in every culture? — frank

There have always be subperformers in every cultures. The difference nowadays is the existence of a medium which exacerbates our narcissism and which connects to others who are experiencing the same conditions. Despite there being little or no 'incel' community, those pathetic non-beings are able to reinforce their PoV by simply confirming the existence of others who are living the same situation.

My guess is that we also have The Handmaiden's Tale to blame for it. Yeah, 99.999% of people see that as a dystopia, but what about the 00.001% for whom that just described a utopia?

Are you saying that Zeno's argument is sound — Srap Tasmaner

Zeno's argument is mathematically consistent, there is a path from 0.1 to 0.9...n, and if I do walk this path, I will never reach the end of it. But it requires that I walk a very specific path. Most paths are consistently sequential in nature, meaning if you didn't subdivide n+1 by 1/2 by the second step, you have no reason to believe you are going to do so at the last step.

Not much of a barque to carry one's flag, and he appears tainted by Scott. — tim wood

Eh. What? He executed Scott. Actually, he fell under the pressure of my great great great grandfather Ambroise-Didyme Lepine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambroise-Dydime_L%C3%A9pine) who forced Riel to agree to execute Scott. Scott had spent his trial shouting racist insults and death threats at the judge (Riel).

Louis Riel was a proper saint. He did everything to defuse the Red River situation, up until the Reds decided to start burning Metis houses, at which point he agreed they had no choice but to start to kick some asses.

what exactly is the distinctly unjust power structure, and how is it unjust? — tim wood

I guess you have a wide choice here. Royalty, marriage, royal marriages, royal inheritance laws, the colonial dynamic still in place that means that me, a Francophone with a familial history of war against the English, must be subjected to this display of inequity.

Please make clear what the disgusting saturation is. I do agree there can be saturation coverage of some events, but not disgusting. — tim wood

I guess that you don't realize what the English Crown stands for to many people. To me it's the sign of our subjugation. It's the sign of the War Riots, when in 1910 the Canadian army on orders from the British opened fire on Francophone war protesters, something for which the Crown still hasn't apologized. It's the sign of the enemy of the Patriotes. It's the sign of Louis Riel's execution, of my great great grandfather's exile.

So it sounds like all your difficulties are personal in nature. — tim wood

Euh, so, what the fuck does that have to do with anything. So it's not a superstructural systematic issue, so what? Yes, it's a personal issue, which stands for a certain personal-yet-historical point-of-view. Big whoop.

that confusion over the nature of your problems is itself a problem, and you will be a better, happier person if you work on that. — tim wood

Thank you, Jordan Petersen. :vomit:

Besides, if you fail to recognize that Markle's marriage into the royal family is extremely interesting for all kinds of reasons, and that the wedding itself was as well, then you lack historical perspective, and imagination, and empathy. — tim wood

Yes, if I don't care about the most meme'd and internalized social display there is, then I'm a sociopath. How about, if you fail to recognize that Markle's marriage into the royal family is extremely otiose to everything relevant, then you lack historical perspective, imagination, and intelligence? There, fixed it for you.

Ask yourself: How is that you can have an infinite number of distances to cover, but yet still be able to cross the room? — Jeremiah

The answer is sequence. If you ask me to get between 0.1 and 1 and give me a path that goes between 0.1 and 0.999999999999....n, of course I won't ever reach 1.

Under natural circumstances, movement is not measurement. The action of moving from one position in the sequence to the other does not alter the sequence itself, and does not provide a step for subdivision of the furthest point. That's why when I want to reach 1 from 0.1, I get to reach 1 after I've gone through a certain sequence in the serie.

And since infinite series are also sequential, they are no more an obstacle to reaching a specific endpoint.

What have we got? Turbo Pascal? Are you kidding? — Srap Tasmaner

Lucky, most people are stuck in Brainfuck.

There are alternatives, they're called books. Or any number of good and even useful alternatives. If you're being ironic, you got me. If not, then I'm sorry you're alive. — tim wood

There is still an issue with the disgusting saturation of media forms with the celebration of a distinctly unjust power structure.

The conversation would have never got this far without my input. — Jeremiah

In the sense that an obstacle, once removed, makes the road seems so much easier.

This thread :

Person A ask : "Conundrum : What can swallow a man, and be swallowed by him"?
Person B answers : euh, I don't know, a piranah?
Person A replies : You fool, the only answer is "pride".
Person B object : yeah, I mean, classically perhaps, but you asked me a question, and I gave you an answer that fitted the parameters.
Person A : What are you, defective?
repeat

As a Canadian I couldn't possibly care less... — VagabondSpectre

And yet it's our future Monarch we are talking about/aboot.

I guess it's finally time for me to reveal who I truly am *takes off mask* I'm Friedrich Engels/Meghan Markle (value pak). — csalisbury

Now that's a twist I'd pay money for (screw you M N Shyamalan, the Village sucked balls).

but not-liking the royal wedding is also bourgeois escapism. — csalisbury

Them fighting words.

However interested these little puzzles maybe, this one is certainly not worth the time you are losing upon it, and above all doesn't justify your attitude here.

You presented this as a conundrum. By definition, conundrum are hard to answer satisfyingly, possibly impossible. You don't get to pretend you have a clearly obvious answer afterward.

Being Marx.
Being Marx is the best mark of being a great intellectual.
:nerd:

Yet another way to think about it is that the OP asks a meta-level question about an object-level question that is missing... rendering the meta-level question unanswerable. — StreetlightX

This is it.
I'm not so sure this works as a conundrum, since it is literally impossible to answer correctly, but not based on the problem itself, but because of the answers offered as a limited horizon.

A conundrum's difficulty is in it's riddle, in finding a satisfying answer despite difficult conditions.

I don't invest a lot to a response when the opening sentence to the post I am responding to is a hyperbole. — Jeremiah

You are clearly very proficient at finding reasons not to engage others.

You don't have to read my posts, or my threads; that was your choice and in no way did I coerce or force you to do so. — Jeremiah

And yet more content-devoid posts.

If you follow truth it heads your path, you seek to follow it. However, if you follow self then you seek to have truth follow you and you may end up trying on "philosophies" like they are going out of fashion. — Jeremiah

And now you are trying to force-feed us your epistemology

Let's take Object-Oriented Ontology.

OOO is a new "school" (perhaps the term is a bit premature) which is 100% pro-science (what world we live in that this syntagm makes senses!?!), is 100% realist, and yet, claims that 1) philosophy and science are not very closely related, 2) philosophy doesn't produce knowledge and 3) a unified theory of everything could not possibly be a "scientific theory", such as "string theory".

While OOO is very "supportive" of scientific inquiries, it doesn't really interest itself with them, holding rather that despite not having a complete scientific image, we can still develop a working and satisfying ontology on the basis of analogy and metaphor.

The dichotomy you try to present serves no purpose, and doesn't reflect the state of the discipline.

Some see the whole thing as the same path. — Jeremiah

The very definition of intellectual myopia.

I would like to point out that without science these forums would have never existed. Science is an essential tool. — Jeremiah

That you feel the need to point this out, which every single user of the forum knows very well, only lends support to the idea that you are only interested in pointless pontification.

This very thread is a great example of how useless philosophy can be made to appear.

Conundrum ; How is this

Too many modern philosophers too much want to cling to their POV, their subjectivity, their opinions; they want to lay around in the shade of the tree and talk instead of pushing ahead. They don't want to find truth, instead they rather hide away in their minds and in talk.

Anyone who thinks the path of truth does not include a heavy dose of science is kidding themselves. It does not necessarily need to be physics, but it should be some formal science which teaches a person to reason and explore the reality around themselves in a scientific fashion. This also consequently means a deeper understanding of mathematics. — Jeremiah

Not an opinion? You sure as hell haven't proven us that philosophy requires a love of science over a love of opinion. In fact, you've only shared with us your opinion that this is the case.