MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
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User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
4hr ago
I think it’s a feature of our ideas about legitimacy. Since our idea of legitimate government is democracy and consent of the governed, the people who want to govern must “launder” their ideas into the culture, and thus it becomes imperative to capture any institution that imparts ideas to the public (which is, to be blunt, all of culture). Then you can firehose out your agenda in every way the cathedral can get a message out, and eventually, unless you are an extreme contrarian or opt out of most of mainstream society, you’re very likely to get caught up in the zeitgeist of the media culture you saturate in.
I consider it late-stage democracy. Democracy cannot function unless the public goes along with good ideas. Which means that you can’t just let the public form their own organic culture or community which is likely to have the wrong sorts of ideas. Instead the elites have to make the culture over to their tastes and if you can’t take over the institution, it must be discredited or destroyed.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11hr ago
Less tyrannical cartels, more people able to say what they want and go home to their families (with careers, money, opportunity, safety, and audiences)...I can defend these by linking them to other axioms, but ultimately they just seem right to me. I think celebrities should express their politics (including neutrality), for authenticity, and moreso because they can: it widens the Overton Window as they avoid life-ruining consequences. Even Kanye and his edgy schizo-manifestations, which I (unsuprisingly) strongly disagree with, but don't hate and even sort of appreciate for some odd reason. Yes my thinking is flawed, but look, his "cancellation" gave him the Streisand effect and today he performs where even Macklemore cannot, so what is flawless?
I’m personally opposed for several reasons.
First of all, once partisan politics invades a space, it becomes the primary point of that space. That’s what happened to Hollywood and music. You are almost required to have the “right” opinions on various topics to gain access to an audience. Not a liberal or even not outspoken enough about your liberalism — you are cut off from a lot of mainstream culture making. That means that you cannot be neutral or even ignore the topics. The same tends to happen even in amateur culture spaces. Once the topic of politics is discussed, the forum will become mostly political and will develop a strong political orthodoxy even if dissent is tolerated. Even here, the main topic of conversation is political discussion, and we have a pretty strong consensus of political conservatism. Not that other ideas are not discussed or there aren’t people who disagree on that consensus, but they’re generally heretics.
Second, it tends to destroy the art in question. It means that instead of creating an authentic, true to life story or song. It must serve the purpose of the person’s political ideology. An atheistic socialist writing a character who is not like them cannot help but make them in some way loathe some. Yesteryear was about a conservative Christian rancher who ends up completely off grid, but every conservative and every Christian in that story (except for a gay friendly pastor mentioned at the end) was a hypocritical, mean, loathe some character, they never really seemed to believe in God as areal living faith, and the same is true of “the manosphere “ and a conservative presidential campaign. The upshot is that the liberal and feminist author just couldn’t create believable Christian or conservative characters.
Third, it tends to turn those art forms and venues into partisan places. It’s no longer a place for everyone, instead the project tends to welcome orthodox people and shun heretics. If you’re a conservative Jew forced to listen to every musician scream about the Palestinian Genocide, you obviously are not feeling all that welcome. Nor are Christians or conservatives forced to listen as those same people scream about liberal causes like abortion. This leads to self-segregation where people tend to curate their music and other art to types of art that’s at least not hostile to them. This reduces places where all people can share a bit of culture. I can still attend most sporting events without feeling like the venue and the players are hostile to me as a fairly conservative Christian. I don’t see that as much in art and music.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2d ago
I suppose you’d think of it as midwestern evangelical Christian culture. Country culture, the kind of thing you’d find if you visited a small midwestern or southern town of about 20K people.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
Reddit was never a real shining city on a hill. They first became popular because of subreddits like “jailbait” which were full of porn. Reddit thus had a problem of wanting to become mainstream, but having a rather large contingent of degenerate users who they didn’t want to get rid of immediately (because their value was based on number of users). That’s what lead to all the ad-hoc “solutions” to arseholes acting like arseholes online — removing owners and mods, banning subreddits and quarantines (which, funnily enough gave an ad free version of Reddit to bad subs), and then blocking. It’s a weird amalgam because a site that became big because of young men looking for porn can’t just ban them and go back to being a small site. It would have no value. Instead the goal was to get Redditors to behave and sweep the bad stuff under the rug.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
I think media saturation is a big part of this. It’s almost impossible to get to the “real you” when you are soaking in content. There are no real folk traditions because most of the sources of those traditions have long been outsourced to businesses and the rights to the products they create are owned by big companies practically forever. But the old organic version is dead. We don’t have the older traditions of singing old folk songs or telling folk tales or inventing games. It’s all products for sale. I’d be shocked if any Americans knew old folk stories like Paul Bunyan or Robin Hood or King Arthur. They probably don’t know any songs that aren’t pop songs either. All we have is corporate culture. It’s plastic and fake.
But then there’s another part to this. Americans move around quite a bit. We change jobs, change cities, and change regions quite a bit. And if you’re always uprooting yourself, you end up in the introductory phase of living. You are always introducing yourself to everyone around you, always trying to be impressive enough to fit in or be worth getting to know. You aren’t Jack Jackson who’s lived in the same village as his father and his father’s father as far back as anyone can remember. You aren’t doing the same thing your ancestors did. You’re Jack the new guy in the office, just moved into town. Maybe you’ll stick around a few years before you switch jobs again. Without a root you can’t really relax into being yourself. You’re in a sense always in tryouts for the team. You can’t let up like the veteran players who have been there forever.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
My doomed r fear is less about some weird AI wakes up and decides to kill us and more “people who want to do bad things can do those bad things much better with AGI at their side.” Human evil and ambition are boundless. Give a guy who wants to conquer the world for the Flying Speghetti Monster an AGI with an IQ in the hundred thousand range and it’s kind of over.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
We aren’t trying. We don’t insist that immigrants learn English or anything at all about American culture. We don’t insist that they adapt to WASP ideals. For example, if we were to insist on Muslim assimilation, we would ban the hijab and other forms of Muslim dress. We would not allow for Muslim prayer times or build foot washes in public places to assist Muslims in praying. If we were insisting on Hispanic assimilation, then there wouldn’t be barios where several generations of Latinos have lived and barely any of them understand English.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
I agree with Yarvin on this one. For the most part, the steering wheel has been disconnected for most of my adult life. It’s not a question of being not receptive, the data rarely makes it to the wheels. In fact, I can point to half a dozen issues from abortion to trans issues to data center construction (locally) in which I know of literally no one of the government’s side, yet year over year, we move in the progressive direction. Cthulhu swims left, and there’s no way to actually get what you want.
I almost don’t see the point in trying. Like I know the outcome, why bother to spend the effort knowing that no matter who I vote for, the girls in my community will be showering in the same locker room as any young man who says he feels like a woman? Or that despite Festus voting down a data center, recalling the members of the city council in favor of the data center, and showing up in force to oppose the data center, to the point that people are being arrested at the city council meetings, the center is still being approved and there’s nothing to be done about it. Why should I bother?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
We used to insist on assimilation. That was why Greeks are now okay. I don’t know about the race angle, I don’t put much stock in that, but we have absolutely stopped even trying to assimilate all of these immigrants into Amerikaner culture. In 1900, leaving your homeland meant to give up all of that and become American. To give up dress and language and hygiene standards and traditions and to eventually absorb American culture— our language, culture, food, religion, sports, games, music, and so on. Now, it’s actually seen as a bad thing that a third generation Chinese or Nigerian kid acts mostly like an American. That they no longer speak the language or play the games or listen to the music. In fact, fashionable Americans were often insistent on practicing and celebrating those other cultures. They race to bring up pagan Hindu holidays, or Muslim holidays, or Indian, Korean or Japanese music. It’s partly that technology allows this. In 1950, you could not get those kinds of things in America.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
I don’t blame them. I think the over-emphasis on mental health is a disaster. It’s basically a strong dose of learned helplessness applied globally. I find my issues and quirks to be much easier to deal with and fix when I think of them as just a normal brain that does X sometimes (for me, mostly anxiety) and that the thoughts are not reality. When it’s just that you somehow picked up a false narrative of reality and that you can unlearn it, you can work around it. But modern “mental health” narratives do the opposite and turn temporary issues into permanent ones and make living with it harder.
It also, for those inclined, serve as an excellent excuse for doing all kinds of shitty things to people. You have trauma so you get to treat people like crap. You get to demand special privileges. You get to cut your family out because of some mental health issue. And the claim can be used to avoid responsibility for crimes committed if you can cry mental health to a jury.
The disturbing thing about this case is that a lot of what she did seemed so calculated to making an insanity plea after the fact.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
3d ago
Paintball is exactly an opponent resisting being shot fwiw
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
5d ago
People survive falls from that high often enough. It’s doesn’t usually result in death, and doesn’t even always result in paralysis. It’s seems to assume a lot that a person who was a nurse and knows how to actually kill herself is just not doing that well, especially given that a lot of common household chemicals could easily be fatal. Heck, I’d be willing to bet an OD of the right drugs in the average medicine cabinet would be pretty lethal, especially in combination.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
5d ago
It’s no so much that such “dangerous techniques don’t exist or could not in theory be pulled off. But if your “training” for a finger snap is never actually done full speed against an actual resisting opponent, you will not snap the fingers. And worse, you’ll probably end up doing something stupid in the attempt that puts you in danger or prevents your escape. Worse yet, the mistaken belief that I know how to defend myself means im much more likely to get into danger either through complacency (not leaving a bad situation quickly enough), or poor awareness (not noticing the danger until they’re ready to attack) or going to places that are known to be dangerous (bars in inner cities at 3am).
In your case, the wicked right hook is probably your best bet bet because you’ve spent the time and energy learning how to tag someone full force while they are actively working to prevent that. You are very likely to be able to right hook someone in an unorthodox place on their body, but that’s not a different technique, it’s a different application of a technique you’ve trained for hours a week.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8d ago
I don’t think anyone is saying that a punch isn’t just a punch. The problem is the training techniques used. If I learn to punch from a boxer, I will learn to punch against a physical target, I will very quickly be sparring full power against a moving opponent who is blocking and punching back. In most Karate dojos, you never punch another person full power until you have at least 3-6 months of training. Most training will be choreographed dances, punching the air, and performing very light single moves against an opponent who is told to block in a certain way and than punch back.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8d ago
Totally agree. Unless you’re in fairly regular training and hard full resistance sparring alongside a fairly heavy training program, you’ll be more likely to get into trouble with “self defense” than to get out of it. Not because the arts are bad, but because they cannot cover things that are likely to happen (weapons, especially guns, multiple attackers, obstacles, fighting on concrete), and because again most people don’t train seriously enough to pull off their moves in an emergency situation against a fully prepared opponent. It mostly leads (especially for women) to people not being weary enough to avoid sketchy situations and not being aware enough to notice that Theres danger around. Women are probably better off knowing less because if they start thinking they know self defense, they’ll be more likely to stay out too late, or go to bad neighborhoods, or get too drunk in public. Then they end up in a situation where they’re alone trying to defend themselves from a guy who has 120 pounds on them using a technique they practiced one time at the YMCA in a class taught by a black belt guy who hasn’t been in tournaments in 5 years and has never been in an actual fight. It will obviously fail, and the woman will be pretty much screwed at that point.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8d ago
I mean it depends on the long term effects. If people see things getting better, if they see less crime in their neighborhood, more hiring and better pay, fewer immigrants doing hit and runs, and more housing made available, they’ll probably ignore the media in favor of their own eyes.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8d ago
SAHP is not just marriage, it’s a parent forgoing income to raise their children. This imposes a cost, and depending on the career path possibly a significant one.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9d ago
Even then I think it needs to be tighter. Im firmly in favor of “first safe harbor” as a legal principle here. If you’re in danger, you are free to go to the nearest safe country to seek asylum. If you’re a Palestinian fleeing Gaza, you can go to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt. You are not getting in to Europe or North America on an asylum claim because at that point you’ve crossed over half the globe in search of a rich country to live in. It’s crazy to me.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9d ago
I think the theatrics help, actually. For the left, it’s about demoralizing them. Showing them that they’re not going to get anything from throwing tantrums and that we aren’t impressed with No Kings rallies with little bouncy houses. It’s about getting the immigrants to understand that liberals cannot stop this and the conservatives don’t care about optics. And it shows the conservatives that immigration enforcement is actually happening, and will continue with no regard for whatever hostage puppy the left or the media put in front of them. The message is: we are serious and it will happen regardless of what anyone thinks about it.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9d ago
It’s a bit wordy, but I agree with the main thrust of his arguments. It’s just that I don’t think it’s just morality though. The idea of any kind of Truth as something that you are supposed to believe even in circles where it absolutely matters is pretty much gone. You don’t have to take any certain position on the origin of the universe, even in fairly conservative Christian circles. Creeds and formularies are barely taught. There are essentially maybe 3 groups that still insist on fundamental principles and creeds and concepts as a fundamental for belief: Islam, TLM Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. Other than that, it’s kind of a free market of ideas. If you read back into history, when the culture was still Christian at its root, you’d have all kinds of arguments about the right way to be a Christian. Not the preferred way. I remember reading a book called “The Great controversy” in which the author— who was Adventist, I believe — spent the entire book arguing that all other Christians were wrong and in danger of hell for not keeping the Sabbath. This wasn’t a statement of “well, I think, but im not going to say everyone else is. Wrong.” It was YOU ARE WRONG AND IF YOU DON’T CHANGE YOU ARE OUTSIDE OF THE FAITH. you can find other similar arguments made in the late Christian Western world where belief in evolution or denial of the Trinity or infant baptism were major, important beliefs that were required of the flock more or less.
I agree with the Benedict Option author. Most of the people who consider themselves Christian are Theraputic Deists, and they would have been considered heretics in most earlier eras. It’s denial by not caring in some sense. The reason you don’t care about the truth claims in many cases is that you don’t really believe in the exclusivity of the religion you claim.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9d ago
I think democracy is more about dodging responsibility than anything else.
Take a kingdom. King Arthur is king of the British. If he makes a decision, then it’s his decision and he and he alone is responsible for the outcomes. If he decides to invade France, he lives with the consequences positive or negative. And we know where to find him if he makes enough poor decisions. The buck stops in Camelot, and nowhere else. As such, and especially since he intends to pass down his kingdom to Arthur Jr., he has every reason to take these decisions seriously. And that would include dealing with corrupt officials.
Take a democracy. Everyone votes, and thus whatever decision comes from the people. Not the government they elect to make the decisions, the people. And thus the name of the game is to promise everything to get elected and then blame the people for the fallout. You voted for war with Iran, so if it’s going badly and wasting money and nobody can afford gas, that’s your fault, not the government. The government is only doing what you told it to. It’s not to blame that you’re stupid. And anyway, most of the people in the government will be retired before anything really bad comes from their incompetence.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
9d ago
I think the de Christianization of the west has made a lot of that stuff more acceptable to the general public. Although I don’t think I’d call our current zeitgeist repaganizing simply because I think our age at current is more nihilistic than pagan. Pagans while they were a bunch of vaguely indo European religious cults had some define beliefs about the world and definite notions of morality, anthropology, ecology, and metaphysics. Norse pagans had definite ideas about what being a good heathen meant. Romans had different, but equally strong ideas about the universe, the gods, morality, and so on. We have no ideas like that. We don’t have much of a conception about metaphysics, and the answers to most questions about morality tend to be “eh, believe whatever you want. The only universal evil is calling what someone wants to believe or do evil..”
Of course things like astrology would come back in those circumstances.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
10d ago
I think up to a certain point length is good. You simply cannot convey a cogent and interesting idea in a post under probably 2-3 paragraphs. It takes that long to develop an idea. Beyond that, less is usually more. Yarvin can be summarized in a couple of paragraphs. Making the point in 20 pages instead mostly ends up being wordy meandering that can be cut without much loss and in many cases removing the fluff improves the piece.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11d ago
I mean other than all the times it’s happened (see acceptance of homosexuality, abortion, and wokeness) it doesn’t work that way. You can take almost any cultural form of degeneration and you can plot it out. In 1940, love songs featured the idea of marriage, in 1950, it was puppy love, and by 2026 “love” is jettisoned from the songs in favor of nearly pornographic descriptions of sex acts. Violence is also much more common and much more graphic and depraved than we would have seen in the mid century. If you dropped your 25 year old grandmother fresh from 1959 or 1949 she’d be shocked by how far we’d fallen culturally and morally.
I agree with that, but I’m more thinking about cultural organs as well. Things like religion, particularly organized religion, the family, education, clubs, etc. are potentially points of resistance. I see this as a weak point of the Benedict option. Unless you’re living in a commune owned by a church and have no cell phones and filtered internet, the chances of keeping your community intact and fairly pure are small. Zoning laws, school testing requirements, nondiscrimination laws, and so on will conspire to force you to conform, and entryism will be tried.
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