TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
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User ID: 616
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
What are the conservatives even conserving anymore? We don't really have a way of life to conserve that actually has principles and promotes belief in God. Churches have been hollowed out, the lifestyle of most 'conservatives' in America is nothing but rural poor people indulging in thoughtless moment to moment hedonism.
Conservatism as a project has clearly failed, as far as I'm concerned. The right needs to move away from this idea of conserving a past which is gone, and move towards building virtues and morals in culture that don't exist anymore.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Eh I had been deep into Buddhism but bro there are literally hundreds of terms in languages I don't speak lol. I knew what a lot of them meant back in the day but that stuff has uhhh faded a tad ;)
And yes that sounds like exactly what I experienced. Does that mean I'm like halfway to enlightenment or something?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
It really is, at this point, one man standing against the impending total-internet censorship of the Dissident Right. People were making fun of Musk for overpaying for X, but it's an important lesson, a lesson already known by many, that you can't put a price on memetic control over the collective consciousness.
It truly is amazing how quickly freedom of speech has been utterly abandoned by most of the West.
I'm genuinely curious how this happened. Does anyone have a good model for it? Are we just lazy now, and unprincipled? Do people actually believe that 'hate speech' shouldn't be protected.
I don't know, it's just absurd to me on a very basic level that people think free speech isn't under massive attack.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Thank you for this comment! Really sums up my exact political experience. Although I have been radicalized enough to vote for the right, sadly.
The ballet-dancing around land mines was a perfect metaphor for my experience in these convos. Also
I am annoyed by how weak the Republicans are. Increasingly, 2016 seems to be a flash in the pan. For all their macho posturing, the reality is that today's right-wing is soft, easily bullied, and unstrategic.
YES! It's so incredibly frustrating. The right is so pessimistic and honestly nihilistic for what's supposed to be the party of God and goodness and strength and masculinity. The presented optics are just very different from the reality, it's annoying as heck. I feel like I've been sold a false bill of goods at times.
But as you say, my reading of history meant that after the Covid lockdowns and mass censorship campaigns, I became extremely wary, and have only had my hackles raised more since.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
oh how could I forget @WhiningCoil?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
@Tanista @RandomRanger any ideas/other folks to ping? Help a brother out ;D
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Whew well that's both depressing and reassuring, knowing that there's not much I can do anyway hah.
Thanks again for all the detailed replies my friend.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Hah ty I appreciate it! I had given up a while ago man but, these are my closest friends and they're blowing up the gc with the most ridiculously smug and arrogant BS. I just couldn't let it slide.
Tbh I kind of doubt I'll actually flip them but, it's a matter of pride at this point.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Ahhh I see. Ty for all the explanations.
Saving (or risking) a patient's life in a fugue state on hour 30 of no sleep and not realizing you'd done anything at all until 20 minutes after the fact is fucking horrifying.
Wow this sounds horrific. I can't imagine. No wonder doctors are emotionally repressed and not able to handle healing modalities that incorporate emotions. Brutal. I actually am gaining a lot more sympathy for doctors reading your responses.
Do you have any recommendations for like picking a good time to schedule a surgery for instance, as a patient? Or finding a good/competent doctor?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
@The_Nybbler got any juicy stuff for me? Or know anyone else I could ping for this?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
On a structural level you can probably free up money that can be use to improve healthcare and reduce burden on doctors by targeting various middlemen and administrative horseshit. Fire the front desk staff to pay for an extra useless diversity or infection control administrative and the doctor just adds that job to the list of things they do.
Walk that back, the ratio of clinical to administrative staff is insane and grows worse every year.
Wait but you were saying earlier that it's hard to hire people and doctors need more support because it's expensive. Wouldn't the admin staff help with this??
I'll try not to blather too much but however bad you think it is it's a lot worse. A classic example is the fact that the population of people we've selected to be doctors might be offered the option of working in NYC or getting paid 300k more a year to work 2.5 hours to the northwest and they'll pick the city. Shit's fucked.
Oh trust me I am pretty severely blackpilled on the Western medical institution, although I do admit that modern medicine has miracles aplenty. My mother's life has been saved on three different occasions by relatively recent medical inventions. So I'm grateful.
But I also wasted over $20k in my early twenties trying uselessly to figure out my chronic pain issues with TMJ, sciatica, RSI, and other various health stuff. Was told by multiple doctors I'd need surgery if I ever wanted to use a keyboard and mouse again. I'm pretty close to recovered now but... anyway that's a story for another day lol.
Sidebar: 24+ hour shifts were taken away and then brought back because most people (including residents) thought they were better than the alternative. Which sounds insane and is.
I didn't realize they were taken away! Ugh yeah it's so fucked. I've seen studies on like the efficacy of doctors based on how long they've been on shift and it's terrifying. Going to the hospital seems like such a crapshoot luck of the draw type situation in some respects.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Agreed. What has been worse is seeing my progressive close friends just become so nakedly and smugly political about it.
I've literally seen men I've known and respect for 10 years bragging about how stupid republicans are because they don't like being called 'weird.' It's just.... horrifying.
I was honestly on the fence about voting for Trump, but after seeing the start of this Kamala presidency and the reactions to it among people in my life, I am much more heavily leaning towards him.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Intense argument but well thought out and said. AAQC'ed
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Wow I had no idea the state of medicine was so bad. Jesus.
Unlike most high education/high skill labor you need a lot of 24/7 coverage and physicians are very expensive and in high complexity specialties like surgery you have to do a FUCKING LOT of stuff to become independently proficient in a reasonable number of years
So are you saying that the state of residency is sort of justified by the difficulty of the profession?
How would you do it differently if you had the magic wand of 'fix up the medical training system'?
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
God dang it's just so cool that we have so many smart and accomplished professional folks on here. Thanks for this insight, really interesting stuff.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
I know!! Gah if OpenAI really did secure the monopoly that would've been the darkest timeline. I definitely believe Altman and the rest of that cadre are incredibly corrupt, if not downright evil.
It's heartening to see how much genuine competition there is out there.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Yeah does sound similar. I also did a lot of psychedelics in my past so that certainly influenced me.
Ugh it's so sad what the modern 'spiritual seeker' culture, especially amongst the youth, has turned into. There's so much chaos, so little understanding. People just freebasing the dharma with no guides or learning about a lineage's path. It is truly dangerous.
Tbh I'm amazed more people don't have total psychotic breaks. I've run into a few other people on twitter that have had them which made me realize I've been lucky.
Talked to a guy who had his parents call the cops on him (because they were scared) and he was forcibly put into a mental health institution. They made him take anti-psychotics and drug tested him, the whole nine yards.
He's doing alright now but he told me he barely remembers any of his twenties because he was in such a drugged out haze, and of course he didn't have much professional or social success during that time.
Just such a fucking travesty that we are so spiritually unaware and our culture treats these experiences and understandings in like the exact wrong way.
Also @Bottomless_pit_supervisor I hope you read this and realize that your situation could be much, much worse. If it already is then I'm sorry for you babe.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Ok I've been arguing with progressive friends again about the massive censorship operations the left has been doing the last decade or so. I've seen like compiled links and source on this topic, could anyone send me one?
Especially interested in:
- Hillary email server deletion
- Hunter Biden laptop coverup
- Russian connection accusations of Trump and lack of evidence for them
- Collusion between FBI + big tech to censor covid 'disinfo'
- collusion b/w deep state to censor political 'disinfo'
- any other spicy shit you got
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
2mo ago
Yeah np. I read Spiritual Enlightenment by Jed McKenna and there was a scene where he talks about like a black cloud coming over people when they realize that no belief is ultimately true.
It really struck me deeply - there were other big things going on in my life at the time like I was struggling in my job and my relationship quite a bit - but that just kind of broke me.
For a few days I went around asking my friends and family and partner what the point of life was, how do they deal with the fact of their death, and did and said some really like unhinged things like threatened some people etc.
Luckily I had a really good support network of close ppl and they helped pull me out of it over the course of like a week. But if not for them I easily could've fallen into a much worse place.
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
3mo ago
Hmm I'm skeptical that there's some sort of hard-coded difference that makes it hard to hate women. I have plenty of anger at women, in fact find it much easier to be angry at them than men, and I'm not a "hardcore misogynist."
Different people have different ways of being in the world and relating to emotions. I'm convinced that proportionally, the current rising generation of men will be much more predisposed to hating women, given how anti-male our society currently is.
@FiveHourMarathon what's wrong with it? Personally I think being able to cry more freely can be quite masculine - the Greeks and Romans saw it as a sign of a strong character. (of course it had to be paired with physical strength and oratory skill etc etc)
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