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@Wylted
I would not be cut our for it, lol. I would make a much better evil chancellor.
This is why I see BLM as the biggest branding disaster in modern history. If someone really wanted to address shitty cops, they should have started with a slogan which was just 'cops suck', which everyone can get behind. Making it racial from the getgo just makes me think it was likely an astroturfed attempt to cause dissension and maybe even discredit real critics of overreach picked up by an odd melange of earnest but dumb black people and shitty bougie white kids.
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Judges should be locally elected, with much wider ranging powers imo. The biggest problem with our system is that its so centralized. A stronger, local government will always function better for several reasons. The first is that when most important decisions that effect your life (economic regulations, laws concerning basic institutions like marriage, government spending, crime, etc.) are decided on the local level, then you will pay attention to local elections and vote in them. And if a large number of local people are invested in these elections, they will be able to really hold their elected judges accountable for shitty living conditions. Judges themselves aren't really the problem, its judges (and politicians) who are isolated from the real-world fallout of their actions. As G. K. Chesterton put it, 'it's terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hung today'.
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@Wylted
I think that once they lose both pinkies they should be expelled from service and then ritually shunned by society in a way that's similar to India's untouchable caste.
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Mt. Athos is amazing, but if I would retire to another country it would be the Portuguese Azores, probably Pico or São Miguel. Perfect climate, jaw-dropping, rugged beauty, strongly Catholic, and very old-fashioned and decent. The strain of Catholicism there is very pastoral and far more 'mystic' than the more Scholastic interpretation, which is the most appealing side of the Church for me. The people are also very kind and simple. Plus Portuguese is a very beautiful language which I am in the process of learning.
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@Wylted
Killing is a bit far. I think it would be far more humane and practical to remove their pinky finger in public. It would be a mark of shame for the rest of their life, as well as a chastening experience.
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As promised I release a dark secret on New Year's Eve: the most grotesque plans in motion revealed to me by a mole inside Karl Rove's office, regarding what he, Huber, the Utah deep state, and establishment GOP is planning... what Romney thinks he has masterminded. Strap in!
Romney isn't who he seems...he isn't WHAT he seems. His plans in 2012 were grotesque beyond imagining and didn't stop at the White House; this is why he makes bid again. The GOPe and Fed plan to crash economy to let him primary Trump; but he knows this won't work. Romney became Utah senator and together with Utah mafia, Harry Reid and Amazon plans to take over the NSA facility in that state... he has arranged with Huber to release fake info on Trump that can be used by factions in military to declare state of emergency and coup in 2019. After military and intel-agency coup in 2019 (much of internet will be shut down) Romney will be chosen as a "compromise" replacement. Much of what Louise Mensch says is true, or rather what they're planning to do...What they don't realize is WHO Romney is, what he plans....
After taking over in state of emergency Romney will be given 3-6 months by a compliant congress/Supreme Court to rule with near dictatorial powers. This is when he intends to put his grotesque plan, his Great Work in motion. By the use of cybernetic replaceable body parts and advanced nanotechnology that has been kept secret, as well as the latest advances in bio-engineering Romney plans to achieve eternal life; he plans to use a section of the White House to host what he already calls "The Body". Romney's body will become an indefinitely-expanding mass, formed by replaceable parts. He means by this not only to be worshiped as a god, but understands it as the true "End of History" scenario... he sees himself as ultimate Synthesis of Christian theology and modern Technology.
Romney sees this version of himself as "Technology become Flesh" (he reads Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger obsessively) and very literally as the Incarnation at the end of times. His body, self-replicating, expanding mass will be worshiped by throngs of crazed followers who come. He understands himself furthermore as the pinnacle of all thought and all life, synthesis of Greek philosophy and Biblical religion. Certain emissions of this cyborg-body will be given to followers as "Flesh" to replace communion...he will be called The Romney. Total power. The Romney will become a faceless, expanding mass of both human flesh and cybernetic electroid material... he says "I am the Spirit become Flesh at the end of time." I heard him say this myself, he had very casual voice.The Romney will rule with severe and absolute authority.
The imaginings and ambitions of this man are boundless and without any limits... he has designed furthermore convoluted justifications of himself as the pinnacle not only of Christian prophecy but of many other religions. He has referred to himself as The Romney, The Totality. He wants for there to be yearly pilgrimages for the adoration of his "Eternal Body," which as The Romney he means to have a quite literal existence.May the New Year save us from these demonic and grotesque designs.
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I liked Joey as a person, but he was kinda like the one guy in the group that everyone poked fun at, all in good humor (and he had the grace to roll with the punches and crack a joke at his own expense every once in a while).No. It heavily got to him, he was in severe rage and agony at the jokes and was a petulant attention-hog in the hangouts and on-site. You can say I am much the same except Joey lacked assertiveness, meaning he'd have to get revenge by much more subtle, carefully planned means of strategised drama.
RM, this is typical narcissism. You're projecting your own insecurities on to Joey, describing him with the same terms which you use to describe yourself. Along with splitting, this is your most common defense mechanism. In your moral universe, everyone is good or evil, and their position vacillates wildly depending solely on their relationship with you. When you want to sympathize with someone, you describe them as being 'in agony' or 'bullied' even if there is no outward signs of them feeling this way. This insidiously leads to a complete failure of empathy, as you see people as either psychological reflections of yourself or as cardboard antagonists. And it doesn't take much for you to see someone as an enemy. Narcissists aren't evil, they're usually broken in some way, and the grandiose self-perception is a way to avoid addressing the real root of the problem. The issue is that this self-perception is necessarily fragile, and the psychological consequences of letting it collapse are dire to the afflicted individual. They need to believe that they are strong, great, beautiful, successful at any cost, because that is the only ballast keeping them afloat. If they stop believing it for a second, then they need to address the trauma that lead them to escape into self-love in the first place (which is horrifying to them) so any sign of this delusion failing provokes an outlash of 'narcissistic rage'. This can be debilitating, as the afflicted individual becomes obsessed with the smallest slights, not even to themselves, but to an absurdly distorted self-image, and anyone attempting to bring them back to reality, to unravel the fragile ego shell which is suffocating them, is instantly branded as a mortal enemy. This is why you can't form a long-standing, healthy relationship with anyone on this site. It's why you are easy to manipulate. In reality, you just aren't the strongest, the toughest, the greatest, or the most intelligent. In reality, underneath the layers of paranoia and self-obsession, you're just a pretty average guy who is clinging to his vanity, even as it strangles him. Nobody on a website can break you out of this shirt of flame that you've put on, and staying here is just aggravating your condition.
"What could I make of so much suffering? There was no way for me, or for anyone else in the family, to get anything out of it. It was a raw wound for which there was no adequate relief. You had to take it, like an animal. We were in the condition of most of the world, the condition of men without faith in the presence of war, disease, pain, starvation, suffering, plague, bombardment, death. You just had to take it, like a dumb animal.Try to avoid it, if you could. But you must eventually reach the point where you can't avoid it any more. Take it. Try to stupefy yourself if you like, so that it won't hurt so much. But you will always have to take some of it. And it will all devour you in the end.
Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture. This is another of the great perversions by which the devil uses our philosophies to turn our whole nature inside out, and eviscerate all our capacities for good, turning them against ourselves."
- Thomas Merton -
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@coal
Do send me a letter once the foxhunt and customary two hours of foreboding horizon-staring from the ramparts have concluded.
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@Castin
@Logical-Master
If they're the old money, I must be ancient! Back in my day, votebombing was as easy creating a bunch of accounts on your computer and destroying the win ratios of your enemies! And there was nothing to be done about it! =)
Haha, I remember that was a year or so before the point at which I joined and people still talked about it, which was just after the Ancap exodus. In my mind, the 'old blood' DDO people saw that drama play out and were still around after the fallout, because they really defined the culture of the site at its peak activity. Then the forfeit bug happened (Castin, it meant that if anyone forfeited a round the debate bugged out and was stuck in time, never progressing. So if someone forfeited, nobody won and you lost all of your work) and debate just kind of slowly faded out.
Most of my heavy activity was during the clique phase. RM's 'insight' is typically monomaniacal, focusing complete on relevance to him as a person even though he had no real role to play in the sites development since his ban, being mostly a sideshow. I liked Joey as a person, but he was kinda like the one guy in the group that everyone poked fun at, all in good humor (and he had the grace to roll with the punches and crack a joke at his own expense every once in a while). The idea that he was a 'royal' was ludicrous, especially since during his heyday there was no real site 'royalty' aside from a few lingering old members who grew more distant as the debating side of the site died. There were mostly cliques, and constant drama, with most of the cliques dissolving and reforming based on daily happenings. The more solid cliques (like mine) generally had more influence because we stuck together through thick and thin instead of betraying each other (we didn't take the site seriously enough to actually be nasty to each other over some dumb internet drama, lol).
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@Castin
No he joined a year or so after me and I consider myself as being a newcomer compared to most of the DDO blue bloods. The only real old money ddo people on here are thett and coal. Then there are the kiddies who joined like Joey and esocial and Vaarka. Most of the real ddo aristocracy left as the forfeit bug slowly devastated debate, leaving a site which was increasingly more social, with cliques instead of a hierarchy.
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Happy Birthday to our departed Dear Leader, Heavenly Chairman and Pillar of Stability. May he enjoy eternal repose. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f5/f8/3f/f5f83f916760a36685b18dac491b7408.jpg
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@thett3
He doesn't really understand that his whiteness is constructed and oppresses all bodies of color.
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@coal
There's always a Kwinch in the woodwork.
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@Wylted
It's very heteronormative to assume that a woman can't have testicles.
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@SamStevens
I'm personally a big fan of 'Treatment Planning for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: An Individualized, Problem-Solving Approach', and I see that you are too. *brofist*
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@Nd24007
Omg, the family ties of these experts. Of course, I expected bias from the Anglosphere upper classes when it came to this subject, but being the literal descendants of the key players of the conflict? Lol, hilarious. Plus the debate. 'Are you sure it's been 10 minutes?' LOL.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
I think that subsidiarity helps with managing diverse subgroups. What we have now is the worst of all worlds: no political subsidiarity, self-segregation is illegal, no enforced universal culture, and a drive towards ever-increasing diversity. The entirely predictable outcome of this, for anyone with an unclouded mind and two brain cells to rub together, is a violent backlash the likes of which will shatter our society and result in atrocities. I'm still haunted by a historical retelling of Boston's busing policy and the violent, neighborhood-dissolving backlash which followed. Not just white against black, but black against jew and every other ethnic combination. Pretty universally, minorities were tolerated with politeness. One teach, a black women from the West Indies who taught in a white school, testified that nobody had every called her a nigger in all her years of teaching. But as soon as any school reached a point where there was no clear minority, it triggered those deep limbic systems that humans have and jaw-dropping violent, hatred, and resentment came to the forefront. What had been a tapestry of more or less self-contained, content, functioning communities dissolved into a violent, chaotic free-for-all because every community was deprived of its backbone (and all of them, black white and Jewish, fought tooth and nail against it) in pursuit of vapid utopianism.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
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@Castin
Basically ignored. But Max also had a superhuman proclivity for manipulating public opinion, so he pretty much banned people who annoyed him past a certain point and that was that.
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@Castin
Yeah, I think that it would solve most of the problems with ambiguity in moderation. Is someone insulting you in a way that is too much for you? Block them and tell them to stop. If they continue, it's harassment. There's no need for moderation to police around to make sure that everyone is 'playing nice.'
It could be limited by the site users saying to moderation when they overstep 'hey, this isn't banned at all by our terms of service' in a giant drama storm. Get enough traction and Mike, or someone appointed by him to be a sort of gatekeeper, can step in and overturn the decision. Though I imagine oversteps would be rare in any case with a clear, limited ToS.
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Lol, I haven't initiated contact with you once. You just keep crawling back for more, constantly @ing me even though you've blocked me. Some people are gluttons for punishment, I suppose.
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@Castin
A severe truncation. Cut down the number of bannable offenses to seven: multi-accounting, cross thread contamination, call-out threads, threats, doxxing, linking to sexual content, and harassment. Define them cleanly. For example, harassment means to continue to attempt to engage with a member after they have blocked you and asked you to stop contacting them. Cross thread contamination means to bring a preexisting conflict into an unrelated thread. Limit moderation's powers in a real way so that they can't ban people outside of these situations, and make the definition of each violation absolutely clear, so that when they occur there is no wiggle room or forgiveness. Instead of relying on a mod to use their judgement to exercise laissez-faire moderation, make the CoC demand laissez-faire moderation. This way there is a strict, clean line not to cross, instead of a blurry one that people constantly toe. This way the laws ban actions, not intentions. As for post deletion, I think that they should remain for the record, but that they should be greyed out or something to indicate that the user was punished for them (unless they are doxxy of course). But I'm sure that Mike has enough on his plate right now.
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@Castin
It means that I think that the ideal is to hammer out a CoC which describes a set of rules which are widely agreed upon and to enforce the letter of the law from that CoC. Having a CoC which gives moderation overly broad powers and bans absurd things and then relying on moderation to limit the scope of their own enforcement to a level which is tolerable to the community is just much worse on so many levels. I get that you always need to make judgement calls, but the CoC should narrow the grey space to a minimum. Doing do would also reduce criticism of moderation to a minimum, because instead of constantly defending their own judgement they can just point to the CoC. They can't do that now because the CoC isn't enforced, because to do so consistently would suffocate the site. Every time someone is banned (or not banned) moderation is swamped in drama because it's viewed as capricious.
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I realize that you're deluded/dumb enough to genuinely believe that.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
Now THIS I do agree with.Wow, RM agrees with me on something that's blatantly obvious.I finally feel qualified as a person.
Never change Cassie.
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@drafterman
Pretty much this.Moderation of content (vis-a-vis its deletion) shouldn't care about intention.Moderation of users (vis-a-vis banning, restriction of rights) should.
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@Vader
If you ask people why they joined DDO, you'll often find it was because of an interesting debate or discussion. For me, it was that famous JKenyon vs. Danielle debate: (https://www.debate.org/debates/On-balance-capitalism-is-more-humanitarian-than-communism./1/). I hadn't quite seen people write like this before, and I didn't know a thing about debating, but that's what got me onto the site -- quality, thought-provoking content.You find me a single person who came to DDO for the drama, and you'll quickly find out that he/she is a worthless troll.Your right. The sole goal of DART is for intellectuals to combine and discuss things. You don't think with a mixing pot of religions, cultures, political views, etc, we wouldn't have shit on the site. It is part of us humans is to stir drama and be passion. Again, I am not saying "all drama is good". I am saying little drama or stuff that gets the site going will not hurt it in the future. Excessive extreme drama will tear down the site. Some little beef won't harm anyone
That's literally what she said though. You're pretty much on the same page as her, because she wants the site to be predominantly intellectual with some drama and flamewars on the side, not the reverse (which it is currently).
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@Castin
I mock people when I don't think they're worth my time. Not everyone is susceptible to logic and reason. Some people are ideological zealots, of which are never going to consider alternative points of view. It's not my modus operandi to mock and humiliate everyone I encounter (just search for all the threads I've made), but the best tool against zealotry is ridicule.I also match the tone of my interlocutor. If he/she starts flinging insults, I'll match them with interest. No point in bringing logic to a mud-slinging match.But do you think this promotes the kind of intellectual, worthwhile, deep, and drama free discourse you're talking about in your OP? Or the shallow, petty, drama-ridden, drive-by sort of flamewar you also describe.
I think that you really can't have a real thought-provoking, intense discussion with most people on a lot of subjects. Furthermore, I think that people will be unable to rationally discuss subjects which they are passionate about, and so will disproportionately reply to posts which mention that subject. Even in DDO's golden age, you ended up with a lot of dross replies to sift through in any thought-provoking thread because of this somewhat paradoxical behavior. The religion and science forums were the perfect demonstrations of this. The religion forum was full of atheists who knew nothing about religion but spent all of their time discussing it, and the science forum was full of YECs who knew nothing about biology yet insisted on debating it. In those subforums, this minor annoyance metastasized into something truly grotesque, which is why they were largely seen as the 'Elephant Graveyard' of DDO. Eventually there were very few thought provoking religious people in the religion forum because the people who didn't want to have the same tedious discussion with ignorant people ad nauseum left. Likewise, people who actually like biology want to talk about the nuts and bolts of natural history, not debate the same gaggle of uninformed creationists over and over again. The aggregate result of engaging these people is to poison discussion, so the best response once you identify them is the rhetorical equivalent of chasing off a rat with a broom.
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@Mharman
Nonsense, Ligma is only really present in Sugandese populations nowadays.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
I think that this is kind of a function of an inexact CoC and a moribund debate culture. You can have argument with people who hold one of a limited set of canned opinions anywhere online, and it gets tiresome once you realize that they absorbed these opinions through osmosis and then rationalized them post hoc. A red flag for this is people who just don't change their mind, and tick every box on an ideological checklist. Usually these people can't even adequately defend their ideas, and the result is the same boring conversation played out a hundred times. A forum full of people like this is almost like a cave full of automatons, endlessly reenacting the same scripted battles. Intellectual exchange is only ever interesting when someone brings something fresh and original to the table, and defends their ideas not as some totem of identity but as rooted beliefs which they've cultivated through long debate and discussion. I think that you are like that, and I think that the DDO forums were successful because the debate segment of the site attracted people with this sort of mettle. However, people are increasingly afraid to express controversial views online, and if I were a lone internet sojourner with 'heretical' views reading this site's CoC it would set off a whole bunch of warning bells in my head, even though they aren't really enforced in a way that is super oppressive. I would take a look at most of the debates on this site and raise an eyebrow. And if I made a debate of my own and it got accepted by someone who just can't argue competently (a common occurrence) then I would probably say 'screw it'. The CoC is easy to fix, but the debate problem is likely bigger, and more of a problem, because it's an issue of critical mass. The internet environment in which DDO built up an ideologically diverse group of competent debaters simply doesn't exist any more.
Personally, I like the idea that Mike floated a while ago about people being able to form 'private threads' which were invite only, and in which the thread starter acts as a sort of thread mod. It would be really helpful to have a private thread where the membership was curated to include only people who can argue complex topics standing on their own two feet, to create a sort of oasis for people to retreat too when the rest of it becomes too tiresome. These threads could in themselves act as draws, as people might join the site in order to join a given discussion and later start debating. Debate challenges could arise there without certain members either weighing down the discussion or accepting every open debate and then filling the thing with incoherent word vomit.
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@Tejretics
I don’t think it’s the smartest idea to go around diagnosing people you’ve only interacted with on the Internet with specific mental illnesses. If they do have mental health issues, that’s going to be pretty counterproductive; the same if they don’t. Especially given that none of you (that I know of) are psychiatrists or psychologists with expertise in this sort of thing.
Only a bipolar person would write something like this.
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@Imabench
Starts here, get out the popcorn: https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/945?page=1&post_number=13
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@Castin
Once I was a Master Shitposter in the service of Lord Wylted, chief architect of the great final DDO Empire, and the greatest troll of his time. I could not match the genius of Lord Wylted, but what he could envision, I and the Plastics could build. All of that is gone forever. I still retain my cunning, but my hands and eyes fail me, and my memories have long faded. My only consolation is each day to mock the mods who destroyed my race, and condemned me to this bleak existence.
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@Vader
While everyone steps over usOr ignores our troublesA faint smile in distanceWhiter than a fresh pack of golf ballsStraighter than a 180 degree angleA smile so brightThe sun would be jealousThe only person that notices me in the mudHelping me up from life's harsh waysTo give us a hugAnd say it’s okLaugh with usSing with usDance with usMake the world's problems go awayAn angel sent from heavenEyes blue, like ocean waves dancingLong and brown, like one of the craziest water slides
Does Thett3 know that you're publishing poems about them?
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@Castin
Well, the most prevalent examples are things like apparitions, where someone is told to build a church somewhere or found a holy order, and then all the stars seem to align to allow the person to fulfill the task. Perhaps the most famous modern example is Mother Angelica, who built the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Alabama after receiving a vision instructing her to do so. Typically these apparitions appear to people who already have a very strong relationship with God, it doesn't just happen to a random person. After all, if God knows what your disposition is. There would be no point in Him asking you for something that you could not provide. One of Mother Angelica's more memorable quotes is 'Unless we're willing to do the ridiculous, God will not do the miraculous.' When God looks at a person, there is no past or future, only the present, and God sees every potential chain of reaction which that person could possibly take from that moment. He sees not only a person's entire life, but every possible life that they could have. So when he intercedes in such a drastic manner, it is because he understands what the outcome will likely be beforehand. The person is in a sort of 'dead end' branch of the maze of free will where most of the paths lead to one narrow chokepoint. People typically only get to this point through a lifetime of striving to align their own will to the will of God.
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@Castin
Arguments invalidated by your awful judgment in new profile pic.Recommend this thread now be a trial of Resurge's profile pic.
*sigh*
Why are people so uncultured nowadays?
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The Izbo trial wasn't the only one that took place on DDO. 16K was also put on trial for votebombing and won the trial. https://www.debate.org/debates/The-16kadams-Trial/1/
People were a bit salty, but the exact opposite of a mob mentality happened. If anything, the mob mentality was dispelled by the trial system.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
A lower class woman in the 1700s would be mystified by an 1900s banker's wife demanding 'the right to work', as she would live her life working alongside her husband, a partner in his trade. A fisherman's wife would mend nets, clean fish, and keep the books in order. A farmers wife would tend her share gardens and small livestock.Only because she had to. Do you honestly think that should wanted to mend nets, clean fish, and keep the books in order? Have you ever heard someone say, "wow, I'm sure glad I get to spend my life cleaning fish".Unless you think all women wanted to perform menial tasks to support their husbands, what do you think the alternative was if the she wanted more out of her life?
I think that lower class woman gets a lot more fulfillment out of their lives than you give them credit for, precisely because her life is more than her work. It is tied up in community and family. Repairing fishing equipment and preparing fish to be cooked is also a lot more fun and fulfillinh than being a barista, fry cook, or cubicle rat, while also being much more limited in scope. Hell, fishing is literally considered a leisure activity nowadays.
It was only ever rich women who felt 'shackled', and they weren't shackled by the 'patriarchy' at all.Were married women allowed/encouraged to start their own careers, if they didn't want to play second fiddle to their husbands? Did women, traditionally, have the option of not marrying?
Women had the option of becoming nuns or anchoresses, who often became educated and contributed to the larger culture. Just as common men could become monks. Abbesses could even vote in some pre-modern European elections. So yeah, woman absolutely had the option to not marry. In fact, it was considered quite admirable to sacrifice motherhood and sensory distraction for a rich spiritual and intellectual life, and women who did so were honored.
They were shackled by a society which had made consumers out of them, which had robbed them of productive work and replaced it with comfort and large, opulent, and oppressively silent homes.Yes, technology has caused traditional relationships to morph into the far more acidic nuclear family, wherein women are plagued by comfort and boredom. However, again, women were only interested in Agrarian era traditional relationships because they didn't have a choice. Once women do have an option (as we're going to see below), they choose not to uphold traditional relationships.
I don't think that people make good choices, left to themselves. Quite the opposite, really. I think that people generally take the path of least resistance, and that this causes them to suffer in the long run.
For example, in the traditionalist country of India, where traditional values are still held in high esteem, and the women are notably frugal, there has been a sudden surge of divorces initiated by women (and divorce, obviously, is quite non-traditionalist) So, why would this occur? Quote:"In India, this means a growing number of women have become financially independent enough to leave abusive husbands, there's been a decrease in the stigma attached to divorce and there are greater opportunities for extramarital affairs in the more mobile, urbanized and interactive society."Rather than women being shackled by economic circumstances, they are being liberated by economic circumstances. When women aren't forced into traditionalist slavery, as soon the stigma and financial dependence is relaxed (not even abolished), women leave their traditional relationships in droves.Being made "consumers", and these "large, opulent, and oppressively silent homes" have not caused these divorces.
Well, I find a lot of traditional Indian culture to be profoundly diseased, so this probably isn't the best example for me, but I'll bite. What are the long term effects of these divorces? Can single women raise children which are as functional as those raised by a married couple? Will the exodus of woman actually reform the behavior of the men? I don't think that the answer to any of those questions is rosy, and furthermore I think that the availability of divorce perverts incentives by making marriage seem like an arrangement of convenience. Is abuse in marriage bad? Absolutely. But to me the sensible way to tackle that problem is to stigmatize abuse in marriage, not to do away with marriage. I think that the Indian concept of marriage is terrible and has little to do with Christian marriage, so I obviously think that it should be reformed. Look at any map of India that maps abuse rates and you will see that the small state of Goa has drastically lower rates. The Goa states were ruled by Portugal for almost five hundred years, are more deeply Catholic than other areas, and some of the more barbaric Indian practices have been stamped out there.
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@Analgesic.Spectre
I think that the 'shackles of traditional conservatism' are overblown, and have much more to do with the minority perspective of early feminists than with the actual experience of women in that era. A lower class woman in the 1700s would be mystified by an 1900s banker's wife demanding 'the right to work', as she would live her life working alongside her husband, a partner in his trade. A fisherman's wife would mend nets, clean fish, and keep the books in order. A farmers wife would tend her share gardens and small livestock. It was only ever rich women who felt 'shackled', and they weren't shackled by the 'patriarchy' at all. They were shackled by a society which had made consumers out of them, which had robbed them of productive work and replaced it with comfort and large, opulent, and oppressively silent homes. Mainstream feminism was often born out of the boredom of the well-to-do, not the struggle of poor women, because that struggle filled their lives with rich meaning. Just look through the early suffragettes. All of them are from bourgeois or higher social caste. Where poor women did adopt feminism, it was almost always tacked onto some larger material struggle against oppressive industrial labor conditions (which, btw, only came about after the destruction of those 'oppressive' traditional norms).
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@Logical-Master
I volunteer for Defense Attorney
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@Tejretics
I did a lot of reading, not just into Catholicism but into a lot of faiths. Long story short, I had written Christianity off because of mostly Protestant stuff, which I found completely incoherent (from big doctrinal points like sola scriptura and sola fide down to a lot of the smaller theological points and the entire church culture). When I came around to finally studying Catholicism, I found that all of the doctrines knit together a lot more neatly. In readings of history I also started to notice and deconstruct 'black legend' narratives that are so present in English-language histories. A good example of this is the history of witch hunts in Europe, which I read an interesting scholarly study on. When you look at the actual history instead of fairy tales and pop culture, the Catholic church strongly curtailed and discouraged witch hunts, holding since at least Saint Augustine that witches don't present a danger against the Church because they don't possess any power that could injure Her. When the famous anti-witch book Maleus Maleficarum was written by Heinrich Kramer, the church excommunicated him and banned the book. Witch hunts tended to be less intense where the church held power (Italian cities), and more intense in rural areas and those which had adopted Protestantism. But most Westerners go through life with this mental image that the Catholic church was going around throwing every herb woman into a pond, when literally the exact opposite was true.
So once I dispensed with this propagandistic view of the Church I started to read more and more Catholic intellectuals. I was especially moved by the works of Chesterton and Belloc, who I read originally for economic reasons. So that was the intellectual side of it. The faith-based side had more to do with personal experience/encounters with God that don't really make for convincing argumentation, as you can't communicate a profound experience like that in a way which would convince a skeptic. I always go back to Saint Anthony the Great's encounter with the Greek philosophers. It also supports my earlier point about witch hunts and bad historiography, as Saint Anthony, speaking here very early in Christianity's history, explictly states the Church doctrine that witchcraft has no strength before the Cross.
"Antony smiled and said—again through an interpreter—‘Sight itself carries the conviction of these things. But as you prefer to lean upon demonstrative arguments, and as you, having this art, wish us also not to worship God, until after such proof, do you tell first how things in general and specially the recognition of God are accurately known. Is it through demonstrative argument or the working of faith? And which is better, faith which comes through the inworking (of God) or demonstration by arguments?’ And when they answered that faith which comes through the inworking was better and was accurate knowledge, Antony said, ‘You have answered well, for faith arises from disposition of soul, but dialectic from the skill of its inventors. Wherefore to those who have the inworking through faith, demonstrative argument is needless, or even superfluous. For what we know through faith this you attempt to prove through words, and often you are not even able to express what we understand. So the inworking through faith is better and stronger than your professional arguments.’
'We Christians therefore hold the mystery not in the wisdom of Greek arguments, but in the power of faith richly supplied to us by God through Jesus Christ. And to show that this statement is true, behold now, without having learned letters, we believe in God, knowing through His works His providence over all things. And to show that our faith is effective, so now we are supported by faith in Christ, but you by professional logomachies. The portents of the idols among you are being done away, but our faith is extending everywhere. You by your arguments and quibbles have converted none from Christianity to Paganism. We, teaching the faith on Christ, expose your superstition, since all recognise that Christ is God and the Son of God. You by your eloquence do not hinder the teaching of Christ. But we by the mention of Christ crucified put all demons to flight, whom you fear as if they were gods. Where the sign of the Cross is, magic is weak and witchcraft has no strength."
To be honest I'm glad to not be an atheist any more because (in the US especially) atheism has developed into this weird cottage industry of smug intellectual kitsch. I hated telling someone that I was an atheist and then being instantly associated with people whom I have nothing in common with, philosophically. I've always liked some atheist thinkers, such as Hoffer and Santayana, but they don't make em like they used to.
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Imagine not wanting this world to end in nuclear hellfire.
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