HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
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User ID: 179
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
If the human race is to survive thousands of more years, there will almost certainly be a tremendous amount of racial mixing anyway.
Why?
Or you speaking strictly cultural terms? Because I can assure you, culturally, that 97% native-born city is very different than it was 100 years ago.
I'm also curious how you're defining "native-born". Are these descendants of revolution-era Americans, or are they mostly late 19/early 20th immigrants? By 1890, 80% (!) of NYC was either foreign-born or children of foreign-born parents. That's at least as dramatic as anything that is happening in modern day Canada.
Yes, American culture was irreversibly changed by mass immigration from continental Europe and Latin America. I just can't do anything about that. Just like our descendants won't be able to do anything about the cultural change caused by immigration over the rest of this century. So let's maybe... not... do that?
And I'm not asking you to reveal where you live, but I don't know of any decently-sized city near a major metro area that is 97% white, but maybe you're also including African Americans in that percentage.
Well, I didn't say white. I said native-born. i.e., not born outside of the United States. But yeah, believe me, it's depressingly hard to find. When I moved to the US this year, I had the entire country to choose from, since I was not moving for a specific job offer or to be with any family. There are literally only 2 cities in the entire country that are >50k population and >90% white (Ankeny, IA and... The Villages, FL). There were countless to choose from just a couple decades ago.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
The most anti immigrant people seem to have had no interactions with immigrants as far as I can tell.
I am anti-immigrant and have had ample interactions with them. They are not just like you and me. If they were, why do they insist on speaking their native language in public? Why do I have to press 1 for English? Why do they wear their old culture's clothing? Why do they congregate in communities with their own instead of assimilating?
I can't imagine immigrating to another country and refusing to speak their language and wear their clothing. I'd be overcome with embarrassment and shame at such a flagrant display of disrespect and hostility to the country that was gracious enough to accept me in.
There are certainly many immigrants that assimilate, but it doesn't take many defectors to change the character of a community.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Only if you believe there's a finite supply of "racial purity" (when did it appear, by the way? The Neanderthals?) and brown immigrants permanently dilute it. Otherwise, it's just cultural change. That is no less reversible than communism.
I do happen to think that races differ on average. But even if they didn't, cultural change is absolutely irreversible. For example, American culture irreversibly changed with the introduction of Irish, German, Italian, and Latin American immigrants. And even if cultural change could be reversed, real people have to live real lives over decades while enduring this change.
It is little consolation to those experiencing the soul-crushing pain of watching their communities deteriorate to be told, "It's okay, you only have to put up with this every single day for a few more decades, because then you'll die. Oh, you have descendants who will outlast you and you care about what your country and community is bequeathing them? Don't worry, the Multicultural New Economic Zone is all they'll ever know. They won't know what could have been. (We'll make sure of it.)"
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
What I find most depressing about this problem is how irreversible it is. Unlike almost all other policy - monetary, taxation, spending, the criminal code, school curricula, you name it - this can't be undone. These immigrants are never, ever going away.
I don't understand how people who are in favor of mass-immigration can just so completely throw caution to the wind. Even with high confidence that mass immigration won't be a problem, if you're wrong, it's game over. The multiculturalism mind virus is unlike any other policy fad in history I can think of in how dangerous it is. Even fucking communism can, in principle, be reversed and healed from. The fact that a policy so potentially suicidal as mass immigration just sails through without meaningful resistance just blows my fucking mind.
I was lucky enough to get out of Canada and move to a decent sized American city, near a major metro, that is 97% native-born. But so many millions of Canadians are stuck and helplessly watching their country and communities decay into a sort of rootless cosmopolitan economic zone - an unimportant physical space that is meaningless but for its capacity to facilitate the existence and economic productivity of equally meaningless and mutually-unintelligible people-tokens like yourself.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
I see. There is much that is understandable and defensible about all that. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my comment asking you somewhat judgmental questions that ultimately aren't my business and probably deserved no polite response, but that I was very curious to hear elaborated!
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Canada already has some streaming, although I agree more would be good.
The streaming that you and I grew up with in Ontario is not a thing anymore, sorry to say.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
How do you bring yourself to stay employed at a place like that? I'd rather work at a gas station than feel like I'm selling my soul by helping my enemies run roughshod over a hobby I love and doing my small part to assist them in their complete takeover of our civilization. I'm especially surprised to hear this coming from you, since one of your common refrains is advocating Reds resist Blues, refuse to compromise, reject the system, deny their institutions legitimacy, etc.
When it comes to politics, it's all,
Then you attempt to primary those Republicans, hammer them mercilessly, make their lives a living hell and drive them from office in disgrace, if possible. If you manage to replace them with an actual Red Tribe champion, that's a win. If the democrats win the seat instead, well, you've replaced someone who was willing to vote with the democrats when it counted with someone who votes with the democrats all the time, but on the other hand you've also shown that efforts to work within the system result in losing to the democrats, which encourages the Red Tribe public to reject the system.
and
Intransigence reduces the likelihood of achieving things through the existing system from a nullity to a nullity, while increasing the likelihood of achieving solutions outside the existing system. That is a positive trade.
and
The game is rigged. There is no benefit to pretending otherwise, and there is no benefit to continue playing. The proper response is to play the actual game according to the actual rules: secure your values at any cost.
But in the tiny sliver of overlap where the culture war actually intersects with your personal life in a way where you finally could conceivably stand up and actually sacrifice something, you're all talk (and not even in person to your coworkers' faces)? Can you forgive an admirer of yours for seeing this as weak, disappointing, and hypocritical?
"Well, my small contribution wouldn't make a difference - they'd just fire me and hire someone who'd acquiesce", you might say. But everyone could say that in every situation where resisting is a possibility. Everyone does say that, which is why Blues keep winning. It's a classic collective action problem.
I'm not trying to shame you. Well, okay, maybe a little. But I am actually genuinely curious whether you conceive of a grander justification for your small participation in the Blues' battle. Are you biding your time? Are you under the impression that the solution is going to be political and thus our personal actions in non-political life aren't actually making things worse?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Or, of course, you're mistaken about how readable and enjoyable people thought these works were in the past.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Huh. The first few stock images that come to mind are a mixed bag. Harold, old white guy. “Why can’t I hold all these limes,” young black guy. “Distracted boyfriend,” three white people, one of whom is male. Maybe those are just dated?
Googling “stock photo” and looking at the first page of results gives a bunch of white people, mostly solo. The first black guy is playing a saxophone—does that count as stereotyping? There are a few Middle Eastern men, a couple Indians, and a single dog.
So I’m not really seeing it.
If you had to search for it, perhaps it's because you're not paying attention when you come across it organically.
Let's try this. I'll go one-by-one to websites from Fortune 500 companies in descending order and see how white or nonwhite the photos of people on their home page are. Sound pretty objective? Alright, let's play.
- Walmart. Black guy.
- Amazon. Bunch of product images. I don't really feel like revealing to the world what Amazon wants me to buy again.
- ExxonMobile. First guy is poorly lit but the face look kind of black to me when zooming in. Either way, the next person is a black woman too, followed by a white man.
- Apple. Black woman (on the watch).
- UnitedHealth Group. Asians.
- CVSHealth. Female is ambiguous, but the guy is nonwhite.
- Berkshire Hathaway. No photos of people.
- Alphabet. No photos of people.
- McKesson. Black woman.
- Chevron. White woman.
- Cencora. White woman. Nonwhites are nonetheless 3 out of 5 of the people whose races are visible on the home page.
- Costco. Two black people.
- Microsoft. Black person. 4 out of 5 of those with visible faces on the home page are nonwhite.
- Cardinal Health. Ambiguous, but I'd say multiracial.
- Cigna. A white male!
- Marathon Petroleum. 2 out of 3 white.
- Phillips 66. 2 out of 3 nonwhite.
- Valero Energy. Some of the people on the boat seem white, but they're distant and backs are turned. First face is black.
- Ford. White guy, followed by ambiguous woman and 4/6 of the remainder being black
- Home Depot. Two black guys, ambiguous woman, white guy
- General Motors. 8 out of 10 nonwhite
- Elevance Health. Black.
- JPMorgan Chase. Hispanic? A majority of the remainder of the homepage are nonwhites.
- Kroger. No photos, but 3 out of 4 of the cartoon characters are nonwhite.
- Centene. Black.
- Verizon. Nonwhite.
- Walgreens Boots Alliance. Well, not exactly a stock photo: they're announcing their new Chief Information Officer, a white guy. The next slide in the auto-rotating display is 5 nonwhite out of 7.
- Fannie Mae. Nonwhite.
- Comcast. 2 out of 3 nonwhite.
- AT&T. Asian, I think?
You get the idea.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
You only say that because you have been saturated in a culture which bases 75% of its popular storytelling on remaking plays and novels from centuries ago. Without Shakespeare we don't have 10 things I hate about you, She's the man, west side story, the lion king, ran, brave new world, and way more than I can list here. Not to mention all of the phrases and sayings and aphorisms we use every day, like it's all Greek to me, love is blind, in such a pickle, heart of gold, cruel to be kind, pound of flesh, and wild goose chases. I mean for goodness sake, we even get for goodness sake from Shakespeare!
So what? Why does anyone need to know where phrases came from or who popularized a particular trope or whatever?
Yeah I'm saying you can't fashion allegory and metaphor out of real people's lives without upsetting people. Well you can for positive things of course, but not negative things. Like, pretend Helmedhorror is your last name. But it turns out the most vicious guard at Auschwitz was a distant relative also named Helmedhorror or some guy named Helmedhorror was a soldier in a war who got scared and ran away, getting his squad killed. Kids are vicious, and they will use that to ruin your school life.
We do teach nonfiction, even if it's not focused on as much as I'd like, and yet I don't have the impression there is an epidemic of kids bullying other kids for sharing a name with a bad person they read about. Since I don't expect there to be a way to resolve this difference in intuition, I'm quite comfortable letting the other readers decide for themselves which of us is most likely correct about this.
They literally always have and always will. At least if they are using old books and plays to do it they can't exclusively jam a bunch of current year bullshit down their students throats, and if some try their students will be able to find smarter and more sensible writing on the subject.
So use old nonfiction books.
I feel like you missed the point of this by skipping the next sentence. You removed all the fiction from the school because it's 'entertainment' and now you are worried they're going to get bored?
No, I'm not worried they're going to get bored. I removed the boring fiction books, remember?
Also please list three works from the past five years that you believe demonstrate the magnificence of our civilisation better than King Lear or A midsummer night's dream.
Who said that a demonstration of the magnificence of our civilization needs to come in the form of fiction?
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
I don’t think my point hinges on it being exactly 8 hours, though.
No, but it does hinge on it being a substantial enough amount of time that parental substitution is required. I don't think schools need to take over duties from parents when parents have possession of the kid for 5/6th of the kid's waking hours.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Assuming school is 8 hours, and sleep is eight hours, it’s about half of a student’s waking hours on weekdays.
a) It's more like 6 hours; b) weekdays aren't all days; c) not all weekdays have school (because of summer and holidays).
I mean... I don't know how you can even contest this. It's all right there on the page I linked. 1000-1080 hours of school (varies by state) divided by waking hours (365*16) = ~1/6 of a student's waking hours are spent in school. Even less than that when you consider that earlier grades are <1000 hours.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
And then there's the Classical allusions: "Achilles' heel," "Trojan horse," "Herculean task," "siren song," etc. So much of our language at least used to be built around what, again, at least used to be a set of common stories and references, such that it can be hard to understand without it
Do you think people need to read the stories to understand the references? I've never read any ancient Greek story and I know what all those references mean. You can explain those references in a paragraph, and sometimes even a sentence.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
I'm not totally unsympathetic to that vision of education, but I think the cultural divisions in the US have gotten so bad that there's no way to structure universal K-12 education in this way that will satisfy a large majority of the population. People understandably don't want their ideological enemies trying to mold their children in these ways. They barely tolerate it when it comes to the putatively value-neutral core curriculum.
I think the only solution in the US for an education system the way you envision it is in the form of separate school systems.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Thankfully my diligent use of ad-block prevents such visual and auditory pollution from entering my sensoria, most of the time.
It's not just ads though, but also stock images, staged photographs for college admission pamphlets, product pictures on Amazon, etc. (you can always quickly identify cheap Chinese imports on Amazon: they're the only ones with product pictures showing white people using the product).
I'm sure you can probably find white people in ads for euthanasia in Canada, at least.
It's increasingly difficult to find any refuge from the daily barrage of reminders that your society is signaling it hates you and is excited for you and your kind to die off.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Culture is what unites us. Our literature and plays and films and songs allow us to communicate with each other through metaphor and allegory, and when people can communicate prosodically they think more alike and don't have to spend all their time explaining in jokes and slang, or adding throat clearing in deference to the people who refuse to participate in the culture.
I totally get that and don't disagree at all. I just don't see how reading plays from 400 years ago or novels from 150 years ago does much for that. We all effortlessly absorb our culture by simply growing up in it and living in it.
You can't do that with non fiction, because people get really upset when you use them or their family as examples, not to mention removed relatives and very common names.
I'm not I understand. You're saying that people would be upset about, say, learning about the Irish potato famine or Newton or the causes of WWI or the invention of the telegram because some students might be related to some of the people involved in these incidents? I'm genuinely not trying to strawman or make you look stupid, I'm just totally lost. Maybe we're talking about different things?
Beyond that, real life doesn't play out like stories, which makes it much harder to work into teachable lessons, fables and parables, and those are the tools with which we teach morality.
Why should a high school teacher be teaching morality? That makes me bristle.
I do see some value for very young kids being taught simple stories, which is why I went out of my way to specify middle and high school.
As for older literature - for starters why do you care what modern readers can understand or are interested in?
Because if students can't understand it and aren't interested in it, it's going to be harder to teach them whatever you're using it to try and teach them (e.g., grammar, reading, metaphors, whatever). Additionally, they're going to have a rather dim view of the magnificence of their own civilization if that tedious and stodgy sludge is what we put in front of them as the supposed crown jewel of it.
Also that last line about snobbery makes me think this is more personal than you are letting on.
Yeah, I harbor quite a bit of resentment for English class, and I don't care who knows it.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Reading fiction critically is an opportunity to consider how others or yourself might act (or ought to act) in ways that are analogous or dis-analogous to various actual situations one may find oneself in.
Except fiction can create scenarios that are extremely unrealistic, including in ways that might not be obvious to a young person. For example, a work of fiction that sanitizes violence and its true brutality might lead someone to be more likely to endorse violence in general. Or, conversely, fiction that depicts bad guys being effortlessly incapacitated might lead people to be less likely to endorse lethal violence when it's actually called for. I think, for example, that Hollywood's aversion to depicting gruesome violence (yes, you read that right) contributes to people having terrible intuitions about police use of force. They see movie heroes shooting people in the leg and think that's something police should be doing instead.
I find this a little confusing. What do you take it to mean to refute an author's take?
The author of a work of non-fiction (say, a textbook) might selectively omit certain other historical facts that would have changed how the reader thinks about a particular fact of history, or they might claim certain information is factual when there's actually some dispute about it among experts, or they might make normative claims that are debatable or use language in clever ways to try to sway the reader to the author's point of view.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Maybe it not being easy to understand is the point? It is a skill to stick with hard, somewhat alien material and learn to interpret it or, more likely, give enough of a bullshit explanation to get by.
We could also have kids decode, by hand, arbitrary sequences of words written in ROT13. The question is, is this more useful than anything else we might have those kids spend that time on?
(Obviously, for Westerners, keeping in touch with the canon of one's civilization can have its own intrinsic value).
This is indeed probably the best argument for literature, but I don't think it's compelling enough. For one thing, I think kids understand and internalize their civilization without formal instruction. It's just "in the water", as it were. But secondly, I suspect much of the Western canon is more likely to turn off any interest a kid might have had in their civilization. These works of fiction tend to be extremely difficult to make any sense of or derive any value from. Some of that is because the metaphors and allusions are completely lost on a child (or in many cases almost any modern person) or there's a reference to something contemporaneous that's long been lost to time. But, frankly, a lot of it is because the language is just sorely outdated and teachers seldom want to "sully" the work by using modern translations. For example, Shakespeare uses "a haggard" to refer to a falcon. Just fucking say "falcon"! But noooo, that's not "poetic" or "authentic" enough.
If anything, subjecting kids to this stuff and telling them this is an iconic and beautiful important part of their civilization is just going to result in kids thinking their civilization must be pretty fucking boring and unimportant. And I care too much about Western civilization to inculcate indifference to it.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Now, you could argue that grammar isn’t all that important, but if it is, I don’t see how you’re going to teach it in history class.
I just want to make sure I understand: you are claiming that you don't understand how one could teach grammar in a history class?
You could teach grammar using any written sentences. You could teach grammar using the comment you just made!
Or take metaphors and figurative language.
Perhaps it would be helpful to use a made-up sentence or short dialogue for the purposes of educating a student about metaphors and figurative language. I guess that technically counts as fiction. But do they really need to read a Shakespeare play or Swift or Lewis? I'll be honest, it seems to me that you really want students to read classic literature and are perhaps reaching for whatever justification is handy. Am I way off?
To push back on that: we force kids to leave their families for like 8 hours a day to go to school. We kindof do need them to teach everything that is good, because the government is forcing their parents not to.
So don't force them.
Also, it's not as many hours as you make it sound. On average, American students spend about 5/6th of their waking hours outside of school.
To say that they're going to take our children away for most of their childhood, and then also restrict them from physical activity, is well past just borderline evil.
Not having gym class is not restricting students from physical activity. Recess is still a thing. I'm not even in principle opposed to having more recess.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
I find this fascinating since my experience was quite opposite. Fiction could make issues clear cut in a way non-fiction almost never could.
Have you considered that perhaps that's a good reason not to use fiction to think about issues? There's a reason issues often aren't clear cut in non-fiction. The world is rarely that neat and simple. Perhaps fiction encourages us to think unrealistically about issues. Perhaps the author has biases or blind spots that mislead/manipulate the reader into thinking one thing or another. While that often happens with non-fiction too, at least the events in question happened and the author's take can in principle be refuted.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
First, I'm not convinced that childhood fitness is that important. I suspect the negative health effects of fitness don't reveal themselves until many decades later, and that fitness habits started in early adulthood should be sufficient to stave off the effects of poor fitness. Yes, childhood obesity is a problem, but I'm not convinced that's due to lack of exercise.
Second, regardless of the benefits, I just don't see how that's the school's job. What's the limiting principle? Should everything that's important and beneficial be done in school? Should schools have classes on healthy eating? Healthy social media usage? General socialization? Driving instruction? Home improvement? Taking care of a baby? Household budgeting and financial prudence? I mean, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if you'd say "yes" to some or all of those if you already think schools should basically be in the business of being parents. I just emphatically disagree. One of the things I always hated most about schools was how fucking patronizing and infantilizing it was.
Finally, once you open the door to the idea that schools should be entrusted as quasi-parents with a broad mandate to do good things for children, you're giving your ideological enemies (whoever they are) license to indoctrinate your kids. They already have too much latitude to do that with reading, writing, and science curriculum, but I certainly don't want to make it any easier for them.
Gym class will be mandatory every year. There is a crisis in how unfit people are today. I recently joined the military. They have drastically reduced requirements, shortening basic training from 13 weeks to 8 weeks, and the weighted march from 13km to 5km. Because people weren’t fit enough to pass. A great many jobs, even today, still require physical fitness, and gym class offers more professional preparement than just about any other possible class other basic literacy. On top of that, being healthy is just healthy, and that’s good for every single person.
I'm going to take the opposite position and insist that schools shouldn't be wasting time on gym at all. I don't think the point of school is to provide children everything that we think is "good". Schools should not be thought of as substitute parents with a broad mandate to produce good student life outcomes in general. Schools should be narrowly focused on basic instruction in reading, writing, math, and science.
I also don't think there's any place for literature in the curricula of any non-elective classes in middle school to high school. Literature is entertainment. It can be used as a vessel to teach reading and writing, but you could just as well do that with nonfiction. So you might as well be teaching them about things that are actually true or things that actually happened. This is doubly the case for older literature (e.g., Shakespeare or anything from the ancient world), which is not something that is easy for modern readers to understand or be interested in. Frankly, I think the emphasis on it borders on snobbery in many cases.
HelmedHorror
Still sane, exile?
1yr ago
Personally I think that Islam is stupid, but I think that communism and fascism are stupid too, and I perceive that banning communists, fascists, and Muslims from immigrating to the US, aside from just grating very strongly against my pro-free-speech attitude, would also open a whole can of worms
Communists are already banned from immigrating to the US.
People who are pro-immigration keep using this bizarre line of argument that essentially amounts to "You think this bad thing is happening now, but it happened in the past, too!" ...As if we must think it was a good thing when it happened in the past? No, it was bad then and it's bad now. Do you get it yet?
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