Daaaaaaaaayuuuuuuuuuuuuum! Das mah $*%@# right there!

That question is separate from not choosing to identify one way or the other.

Are you claiming people choose all of their subjective opinions and views? Or just gender? Is what you're saying that you could right now choose to be the opposite gender - not just act like that, claim to identify as that gender, take that social role, but actually believe that that is who you are? What about your subjective views on politics, can you just choose to believe in any extremist movements beliefs - and, again, not just that you could physically write their beliefs on your keyboard, but can you right now choose to truly believe in any extremists' claims? — BlueBanana

Yeah, I guess. If I believe something, I believe in it. Still don't know what you're trying to say, frankly.

Doesn't follow. Everything I listed is subjective. Self identity in general is subjective but you don't choose it. — BlueBanana

I've not followed anything you've said so far. If gender is subjective, then it is decided upon by the subject - i.e., the person. If a person, thus, decides that they are this gender over another, they have then chosen what their gender is.

Gender is subjective, therefore people choose their gender.

questino — andrewk

:rofl:

Wouldn't you agree that sex is biological and gender is sociocultural? — BlueBanana

Biological sex is objective, gender is subjective.

It's similar to personality. You can't make the decision to be someone else than you are = you can't change your gender. — BlueBanana

You're still completing missing the distinction between sex and gender. Whatevs.

Person's gender can change but no one can change their gender out of their free will. — BlueBanana

What?

Actually, that's true! :O Where are the 50-50% female coal miners? — Agustino

There's actually quite a high percentage of female coal miners, especially in the Appalachian US. This is more to do with the availability of jobs, however. Given a wider selection of careers, coal mining women would likely not mine coal in as high a number as they do now.

And since I should probably contribute more to this thread, I'll say this: the error many people make when considering gender equality is failing to recognize the role that equity plays in the "conversation." If there are a hundred coal miners in West Virginian town X, and 70 of them are men, 30 of them women, the disproportional or unequal number of workers does not mean that there exists an inequity in the workplace. The failure to consider equity in relation to equality is what, in my opinion, has spawned such systems as affirmative action, for example.

One can change their gender, but not their sex. The person who goes to extreme lengths to change their body do so for a number of reasons, but one's sex is locked in and won't ever change. In light of this, the modern contention has been the growing emphasis on gender rather than sex in determining the degree of maleness or femaleness in a person. Doing so creates its own set of problems, but at the same time, I take no issue with calling a transgender person by their preferred pronouns, say, but they are still biologically a man, woman, or intersex.

It's not whether they are proficient at it, its whether they are interested in it. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

I think this sums up a large part of the problem. The request for equality appears to only go as far as it is concerned with the high paying jobs (managerial positions, government positions etc).

There isnt much argument or incentive to get women to do, as you rightly point out, low paid hard physical labour positions. — Mr Phil O'Sophy

Bingo, :up: :up: :up:

I'm not sure if this is the sort of response you were going for, but...

"I watched the sea last Sunday as well. Everything was dark grey, but on the horizon the day was beginning to break. It was still very early and yet a skylark was already singing. And the nightingales in the gardens by the sea. In the distance, the light of the lighthouse, the guard-ship, &c.

That same night I looked out of the window of my room at the roofs of the houses you can see from there, and at the tops of the elms, dark against the night sky. Above the roofs, a single star, but a beautiful, big, friendly one. And I thought of us all and I thought of my own years gone by and of our home, and these words and this sentiment sprang to my mind, 'Keep me from being a son who brings shame, give me Thy blessing, not because I deserve it but for my Mother's sake. Thou art Love, cover all things. without Thy constant blessing we shall succeed in nothing." Vincent van Gogh.

The above excerpt is from Vincent's letters, written to his brother. If you've not heard of them or read them, I suggest you do. Frankly, van Gogh is one of my favorite writers and thinkers, even though he is obviously most known for his paintings.

What's wrong is influencing students while using dishonest arguments, faux facts, summing illusory enemies, and adding fuel to the 'culture war' flames, under the guise of "self-help" psychology. — Maw

<I disagree with JBP, therefore he's the antichrist>

Within 2 years, as Peterson's target audience graduates college and enters the work force, he'll become passé and fad into obscurity, and some other epigone takes his place. — Maw

<faults a university professor for resonating with young people>

:ok:

Still waiting for Dr Peterson to come out with a written statement of his claims. It's hard to take claims seriously enough to bother spending the time listening to them if the claimant is not prepared to put them in writing. Especially when their day job is centred around putting ideas in writing in clear, cogent form. — andrewk

A written statement? Shit, when's his sentencing?

These comments are killing my brain cells. — Maw

Indeed, so could you please stop? Thanks. :hearts:

I wonder why people keep associating Marxism with atheism, when Marxism is a supernatural belief system, start to finish. The fact Marxism bans other religions, doesn't mean it itself is not a religion. Islam bans Hinduism, for example, but who would argue Islam is thus not a religion?

Marx claimed that capitalism, socialism, and communism, all had pre-ordained historical roles to fulfill. How is that not a supernatural belief? Marx claimed that there was such a thing as a commodity's "value," which differed from its price and could not be empirically verified and measured. How is that not a supernatural belief?

Marxism is a religion, and an entirely supernatural one at that. — LD Saunders

By "alive" I meant "an independently living being". At 4 or 5 months, the fetus isn't an independently living being. A 100 pound person is 100 pounds of living tissue; any single pound of their tissue, removed from the body, ceases to live because it can't live on it's own, cut off from the rest of the body. At 4 or 5 months, the fetus is in the same situation, not able to live on its own (to breathe, for instance, or swallow, excrete, etc).

I agree, consciousness isn't a requirement for "aliveness". — Bitter Crank

I'm not so sure. Perhaps we're talking past each other, but a fetus and you/me both need the same things in order to live. We're both dependent upon food, oxygen, water, etc. The difference, however, is how the requirements of life are taken in. For the fetus, it's through the mother. For you and me, it's through the greater world. The principle that roots both cases, though, is that both of us aren't absolutely self-sufficient. So, the fetus depends on the same things that you and I do, even though the means of that dependence are manifested in different ways.

Some anti-abortion groups suggest that the process of abortion (before 24 weeks) would be painful for the fetus. That's why I brought up pain. — Bitter Crank

And some "pro-choice" people assert that the human fetus isn't human. *shrug* You're gonna get at best questionable opinions if you dig deep enough.

Whether pain in any situation would be a determining factor in the morality of an action would, for me, depend on the severity and duration of the pain. — Bitter Crank

I'd agree I think, but I still take issue with the killing of a life. I don't care if it's an ant or a human fetus. Killing something ought to give someone great pause. Abortion, I have found, has become such a routine and thoughtless action that I think we've lost sight of what is actually going on. Anecdotally, for some of my childhood I grew up in South Florida and I used to be appalled and distraught when a kid would kick an ant hill and scatter the ants and destroy their home. Why the fuck would they do that? Even now, I try not to kill little living things unless they're fucking with me. I ran over a bird once when driving and I was pissed off the rest of the day. Aborting a human fetus is as repulsive to me as the examples I just mentioned, and I think it's wrong, whether necessary or not, to kill any living thing.

Also, I've heard the argument that abortion is actually self-defense - that the "mother" is defending herself against the intruding fetus. What do you think of that madness? I dunno, the lengths people go to justify themselves when I think they know they've fucked up and did wrong...

Well, Buxtebudd, how common do you think abortions are? It would appear that they are at a 45 year low. This from the Guttmacher Institute: — Bitter Crank

It's still too common, in my opinion.

That is why the pill, IUDs, diaphragms, and condoms are called contraception. — Bitter Crank

Yes, I realize that, but contraceptives are still termed as birth control, even though that's not really what they are. In other words, mental illness suggests an illness of the mind, even though what really is sick is the brain. Yet, we still use mental illness as the terminology. I'm okay with that, but my point was to expose what really is going on beneath the labeling.

Abortion ends the pregnancy, disrupts the tissue, ends the fetus. A fetus is live tissue, but at say 18 weeks, it isn't anywhere close to being "alive". — Bitter Crank

A living thing isn't "alive"? Dafuq? I'm sure you mean to suggest that being "alive" means being conscious, but biologically speaking, that's not what constitutes being alive. I am a living thing just as a tree is. Do we possess different qualities of being alive? Sure, but differing qualities doesn't make a tree more or less alive than I am.

I suppose you are opposed to "the morning after pill"--like Plan B, which buzz-bombs the egg with birth-control hormones like levonorgestrel. levonorgestrel may prevent the ovary from releasing the egg, may prevent sperm from fertilizing the egg, or prevent the egg from digging in for the duration, some, or all of the above. The morning after pill actually works for a couple of mornings after, but not much longer than that. — Bitter Crank

No. Have you not carefully read what I have written here in this thread? Morning after pills control conception. Abortion controls birth.

24 weeks is the earliest that enough of the nervous system is present for a fetus to actually register pain. — Bitter Crank

I've not really stated my moral position on abortion, but for what it's worth, I don't consider pain the most important determining factor in the morality or immorality of an action.

As I said previously, a very humane and practical approach. — T Clark

Thank you for the kind words, grandpa. Wait, heyheyheyheyhey, don't kick me off your knee! :cry: :snicker:

If you want to stop abortion, do what works, not what makes you feel good. — T Clark

Technically the most effective "birth" control is not having sex in the first place. But of course people will have sex, protected or no, which is why I do support non-abortion methods of birth control, such that prevent conception, which is really what birth control is. Abortion, rather than blocking conception, blocks birth. That is, something that blocks conception keeps a life from being made, whereas abortion keeps a life made from living. The former I find no issue with, the latter I'm personally opposed to.

So I'm for conception control, I guess, but not post-conception birth control. Once that life is goin, and you don't want it, you dun already fucked up. If you want to compound your mistake and vacuum cleaner it out as Thorongil funnily worded it, then fine. Just don't make me get the blood on my hands for helping to pay for it.

The state is a subjective imitation of an objective reality. And because a state is made up of individuals, appeals to objective morality fall away because one must first pass through the lens of the subjective nature of the state. If one wants to outlaw every thought-to-be immoral action, then the state is not merely imitating an objective moral reality but attempting to be that reality. I also find that eating animal flesh is immoral, but recognize that such an immoral act is sometimes necessary, thus outlawing it is both unreasonable and wrong, as the state doesn't exist as a moral agent - a judge of absolute morality. At best, it does what it can, but it won't ever be that which is imitates.

I might add that you are usually someone who on this forum talks of trade-offs and compromise - well, do you not admit to needing to make compromises and trade-offs with regard to what is or is not acceptable in civilized society or will you bludgeon anyone who disagrees with your appeals to absolute morality? For me the compromise I am willing to make is to champion pro-life and cautious attitudes with regard to sex and procreation, as well as being against publicly funded abortions. And while I get to clamor for these views in the public square, I realize that I'm not going to get everything that I want, which is why I'm willing to allow for privately performed abortions in most cases.

I think that most instances of abortion ought to be legal, but not publicly funded. I see no reason for the state to interfere with the carrying out of abortion if the human life in the womb is not given a social security number and considered a citizen until after they've been born. Although the state does make value judgments, I wouldn't say that the state makes ethical choices, seeing as the state is neither self conscious nor an individual. Because of this, I don't think the state, being the governor of society that it is, has the justification to outlaw abortion unless unborn human life is considered the same as the born human life. Not seeing an unborn human life, however, being treated by the state exactly the same as those who are already born and operating in society. The priority, from the state's perspective, is those born, not unborn. In other words, the state ought not care about a human life until it is born, which is when the state then has the jurisdiction over the life because it has become a part of that which the state must serve and protect - its citizenry.

That said, I find abortion morally reprehensible and revolting on about every level. The most abortion can ever be is a necessary evil, an evil I don't want my tax dollars funding, by the way. In the end I think it'll be more worthwhile if society addresses the underlying problem of promiscuous sex so that abortions are not as appallingly common as they are now. Abortion being used not as an emergency procedure but a form of birth control is what requires cultural and societal pressure.

Tell that to the Manchester bomber, he could not find a gun because they are forbidden in England. — Sir2u

Although charle's usually a dumbass, he said harder, not impossible. Finding an instance of mass murder that doesn't involve semi-automatic rifles doesn't make the regulation of semi-automatic rifles a moot endeavor.

Anyone who claims that guns like this are not the equivalent of war weapons and accuses those who claim they are of "fear-mongering" and "peddling falsehoods" is either deliberately lying or willfully ignorant. — Baden

The fundamental issue at play here is whether one has a right to self defense and the right to defend oneself how they want to. Certainly one does have a right to self defense - a right to bear arms - but I don't think that one has free reign on how they do so. The "don't take mah guns awee" crowd don't seem to realize that they can't "defend themselves" with lots of things already. You can't play with Uranium or VX, hell I remember in high school how many hoops and loops my chemistry teacher had to go through just to get some simple chemicals for us. The "fear-mongering" is rather on the part of those who think that others are out to neuter them and make them unsafe, which isn't the intention of anyone I don't think.

Spot on, I think :up:

humanity as a group. — T Clark

Christ save us...

Needless? Reproduction is one of the primary criteria for being alive. — T Clark

Wait, what? My being alive depends on my ability to reproduce?

Antinatalism is already a word, so it doesn't really matter if it's in a dictionary or not. I'm an antiprocreationist, but I don't need that to be in a dictionary. *shrug*

The path that leads toward a safer America involves compromise. If we want more targeted prevention, then we'll have to relinquish some of our privacy. If we want better policing, then we'll need to treat our police forces with trust and respect and an understanding of why they do what they do. If we think that the private ownership of semi-automatic firearms ought to be illegal, then we're gonna have to keep safe those many thousands, even millions, of law-abiding American citizens who depend on such firearms to protect themselves. If we want to target the illegal proliferation of firearms, then we've gotta address the profit-mongering gun manufacturers without threatening politicians who are taking bribes.

I could go on, but all of these and more are trade-offs that the US population must consider, otherwise we'll continue to flounder in mass murders and gang violence. If it were easy to solve this issue it would have been done so long ago. That it hasn't is down to the unwillingness of those in society to recognize that they've signed a social contract, which entails the giving up of certain degrees of freedom so that the whole of society can move forward and not regress into a Hobbesian-like state of nature. But, in the classically American way of wanting everything immediately and forever, I can't be too surprised at the unwillingness of people to give up what, in all reality, they must.

Every picture in this thread is hideous.

Except for Crank's profile pic, of course.

Representative Democracy — Maw

But this elects misogynists and racists and other foul creatures, :’(

we humans, in our current knowledge, don't know enough to make a concrete, science-based conclusion on the existence or nonexistance of a God. — Starthrower

Doubtful we ever will if God is defined as supernatural.

Unless we lose humanity and become a hyperdimensional being, we cannot prove or disprove a God. — Starthrower

But you can prove that we can't prove or disprove his existence? To disprove something one must have knowledge of that thing, no? Do you, then, have knowledge of God?

You aren't seriously suggesting that left sociologists and political scientists have ignored poverty or consider it a "micro-culture" or an exclusively minority experience? — Maw

Not quite, only that they've largely ignored what matters most which is the human condition, not the white, black, tan condition.

I think you are largely misrepresenting the idea of privilege in this case. Just as a first point, you take aim at "leftist sociologists and political scientists", and it seems to me that such people (especially sociologists) are precisely in the business of analyzing society at a broader level for its properties, tendencies, distributions of various kinds, and so on. Comparing that, as you repeatedly did, to a personal example of your own (which doesn't reflect the tendencies in, say, American society as a whole) is just a poor comparison. — MindForged

I said that there was a great deal of ignoring going on, which I stand by. I didn't say that there was no micro analysis of poverty and the like.

As for the validity of my anecdotal evidence, I only shared a fraction of my thoughts, which ended up being a rather long ramble. I don't pretend that my experience is set in stone, but having lived a life, they're antithetical to the accusatory and mean spirited derision that I think underpins ideas like white privilege in the academic world.

People who make use of the concept of privilege don't argue that people of some specified privileged class don't face issues, or that particular members of that class don't have bad circumstances (even bad circumstances rooted in their (broadly) advantageous class membership). Rather, they're pointing out a general advantage and preference society gives to certain members, even before they could have ever demonstrated their superior competency or whatever (think: job offer preferences depending on perceived ethnicity or race of the applicants name, for example) — MindForged

This is a description of privilege, plain and simple. White privilege is the assumption that there exists some monopoly on power by white males in particular and that their dealings in the world are first and foremost because of their skin color and genitalia. Are there other factors? Yes. But the genesis of power seen through the lens of the concept of white privilege is skin color and sex. My use of anecdote was my attempt at being more human in my dealing with an often inhuman and vague position, showing that whiteness or maleness is not always the mover of suffering or achievement.

Peterson's argument — MindForged

I didn't really get far into his video, to be honest. My comment was more left field than a reply to the OP. Besides, Peterson tends to sound like Kermit the Frog, so I can't listen to him for very long.

If anything, postmodernism is simply nihilism fitted to the 20th and 21st centuries.

I don't mean to pick on just you here with my rambling, Crankus, but what bothers me the most about the idea of white privilege, and indeed privilege in itself, is the tendency of those who believe in it to focus almost entirely on macro examples. Leftist sociologists and political scientists will gaze at the ratios of men and women in political power throughout history, the degree to which white skinned males sit atop the social pyramid, or how much economic power is dominated by the same sorts of people, thus concluding that it is one's maleness, or whiteness, or their "Europeanness" that supplies them their power - their privilege. This characterization is one I'm not fond of, and for as much as modern academia is obsessed with culture and all that may emanate from it, there seems a great deal of ignoring going on with regard to "micro culture." What I mean by that is this: I went to a 95% black elementary school when I lived in South Carolina. I was only one of two white students in my class of about a hundred or so and I found it mightily difficult to translate my life living in Florida to this new one in the deep, deep American South. In the beginning my family was certainly more well off economically than the rest of my black classmates, but as years went by that stopped being the case as my family fell apart in more ways than one.

So, where was our white privilege then? Why didn't our whiteness or my father's maleness save us from bankruptcy, the inability to pay bills, me going to bed hungry, my being bullied for being being shy and not from there? Where was my father's white privilege when he himself grew up in relative squalor, when he went to bed hungry, when he had to degrade himself to such a pitiable level just to get the simplest of jobs? When I was a little white boy among an army of black classmates I didn't feel welcome, I didn't feel like my skin color or my genitalia did me any favors. But, what did do me wonders? My willingness to be kind, to be loving and compassionate, to be patient with those who hurt me. That was my attitude from the beginning and that's what I credit as being the catalyst for me fitting in. It wasn't the color of my skin or whether I was a male.

I suppose the basic truth I'm getting at is that correlation mustn't always entail causation. It isn't as simple as, "Oh, that guy is white, he must be privileged." If anything, my whiteness and maleness has become an immense detriment to me and my future, just as it was to my parents. I've seen black slums, white slums, Latino slums, whites doing good and bad, blacks doing good and bad, everyone doing good and bad. Does ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation play a part in one's treatment in the world? Of fucking course it does. But is that all there is when looking into a person's life and how they got to where they are? Absolutely not. To me, one's gender, skin color, whatever are among the least compelling aspects of a person when I meet them and begin to know them. I'd much rather know where they've lived, what they like to do for fun, what their thoughts on morality are, if they're religious, what their thinking is about truth, what they think about peanut butter on waffles, and so on and so forth. That's how I treated my classmates in South Carolina and it's how I treat people around me now and I do so not because I'm white or that I've got a cock and balls - it's because I strive to be a more moral person every day. If people want to view me and what I've accomplished through some intensely cynical and envious lens like many leftist folks do, so be it. I can't stop them. If that view keeps me out of a job, fine. It won't stop me, being the white male that I am, just as rejection and prejudice of the same kind didn't stop a black male like Frederick Douglas.

You'll get an even cooler beard.

Yes that is true. I'm just rather upset that no one did anything about China's invasion in the first place in 1950. — René Descartes

Because it would have certainly sparked outright war with China and the USSR. And the Korean War that happened a year after Tibet's fall was in many ways a reaction to Communist aggression, so you could safely argue that "we" did do something about China's territorial expansion, but in Korea, and through the UN, not by ourselves.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, everyone took a stand against them. — René Descartes

Why was that?

When Russia invaded Afghanistan during the Cold War, everyone opposed them. — René Descartes

Not directly, though. Reagan's administration arming the Taliban wasn't direct military intervention in the region and against the USSR.

But the USA and China always seem to be able to get away with invading a country. — René Descartes

How does this follow from what you've been saying?

Tibet is too geographically important for China to let it go. It circumvents Afghanistan and Myanmar, providing more or less direct access to India and Pakistan. The economic potential of the region is a big reason why China took over the region to begin with, as well, and I just can't see China letting Tibet go unless they ensure certain infrastructural guarantees, such as being able to keep trade and supply lines as they are.

I'd also say that Russia is similar to China in its desire for being able to "see" the world completely, without having to look through other countries' borders. China being flanked by deserts and mountainous tundra in the west makes it an east-leaning country, just as Russia is a west-leaning country, in terms of economic output, population, infrastructure, etc. This means that countries like China and Russia will exploit areas that are in their way and that can be taken over. Certainly the rest of the world ought to defend areas like Tibet, or in Russia's case parts of Ukraine like the Crimea, but unless there's enough support for the defense of these places, China and Russia will continue to push their boundaries.

One of you guys mentioned the dwindling interest in Tibetan independence, and I'd say that's the most obvious reason for why no body really gives two hoots about the Tibets, Crimeas, Abkhazias, Kurdistans, etc. of the world. It's disappointing to me, actually, as I think the world would probably be a more globally interconnected and supportive place were there more countries based on the unique cultural phenomena that exist across the continents instead of more conglomerated countries where benign cultures and practices get subsumed, or at worst, destroyed completely.

What's 'success' then? — Pseudonym

Make money, fuck bitches.

This popped up on my feed this morning.