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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28330 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Israel is second place in world youth happiness?! Israel is at war. Am I missing something or shouldn't this be hot-take level shocking?

"Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle. If you do not fight, life will never be won."

Israel is at war. Am I missing something or shouldn't this be hot-take level shocking?

Israel is winning a war (insofar as shooting fish in a barrel and tampering with Taiwanese pager shipments constitutes a war); what surprise is it that hot-blooded youngsters rejoice in seeing their enemies driven before them, and hearing the lamentations of their women?

Happiness in general doesn't seem to work the way modern people think it does. From my view, among the best predictors are is a) there are real, serious problems + b) we feel confident to handle them well.

Yes, if there is no challenge one can master it often is just a hedonistic treadmill.

There were a few posts last month on Reddit about American Beauty, the 25 year old Oscar movie with Kevin Spacey, and how weird not only the movie but the past time now feels. Together with Office Space and Fight Club artists struggled to find something to rebel against. Cold War was won, war against terror didn’t start yet, economy was great, racism solved, the environment ostensibly protected, peak oil unknown, feminism a joke, and gayness widely accepted by enlightened centrism. So the only way was to attack the mundane boringness of a secure middle class existence.

This is Lester Burnham‘s House in which he lived in 1999 with a wife and daughter and got deeply unhappy:

https://filmoblivion.com/2019/01/15/american-beauty-1999/

Sept 2024 the U.S. housing deficit has increased according to Zillow to 4.5 million.

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