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Posts

  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    A large amount of people who are stopped from comitting suicide by something won't try again. It's often very much a thing of the moment.

    Which is something we should strive to avoid people doing. Not just through dissuasion but from tackling them so they don't swallow the pills kind of deal. We
    Pony wrote: »
    Corehealer wrote: »
    I also use my beliefs as a religion in my fiction, but I explicitly make it the kind of thing that is not evangelical. So much so that the planet that the religion's female prophet and the bulk of her followers inhabit is outside of the Andromeda Galaxy in the void between galaxies and is neigh on impossible to find unless you have someone or something (like a specific religious text) to guide you there.

    Which I have also found is a hard sell for a religion because it goes against what a religion intrinsically is, belief wise; you want to show others the truth, the way to live. How do you do that if you don't spread the word? It's an interesting theme to explore in art.

    The way I see it, a person doesn't need to believe what I believe to conduct themselves in accordance with the principles I believe important.

    The reason they conducted themselves in such a way is of lesser (if any) importance to me when compared to the consequences of their conduct.

    By skillful means, by a practice in care and concern, a person can come to the same values I come to from a different fundamental ideology and I care not one bit about that

    The consequences matter. The results matter. The means are the means. The means only matter insofar as what becomes of them. This isn't saying throw caution to the wind, that the ends justify the means, but that the drive behind the means matter less than the means themselves, and the means themselves matter less than the result so long as the means and the result are things I think are right.

    So I don't need to "spread the word" of my faith. It's unimportant to anyone but me. However, the values I hold, the results of those beliefs, I think are secular results that people of many religions could arrive at, and do not in and of themselves require a religion at all to arrive at either.

    So, those I spread. Those I extol, even if I don't pull back the curtain and explain to anyone why I believe these things or how I come to believe in them. I think they have enough value on their own to stand under their own light, so I put them out there and people make of them what they do, and that is all they need to know to accept them or not accept them.

    If I have to quote my faith at you, if I have to explain the underpinnings of my religious beliefs and how they led me to this conclusion, in order to persuade you to view the underlying ethic or notion positive? Then I am failing to represent those virtues as the virtues I truly believe they are. I am failing you, and I'm failing myself.

    I don't necessarily apply this same standard to others, but I certainly don't find their arguments as palatable if they crutch about on their faith as an argument in and of itself.

    To me, that smacks of "This is good because I like it" instead of trying to argue an independent merit, and anything a person believes strongly is good both for themselves and others should be able to stand on its own merits.

    what kind of independent merit does those virtues have

    independent from well, reality as it is. Which is there the faith comes in

    I don't see how one can just go, these are good things, now I'll adjust my view of the world to fit that?

    You shouldn't do meth, for example.

    Meth's bad, m'kay.

    I can create what I feel is a pretty persuasive anti-meth argument (it consists largely of Lindsey Lohan pictures) without getting into say

    my religious beliefs regarding drug abuse

    that is unimportant

    My argument to you isn't reliant on it

    the argument has it's own independent merit

    that I have my own reasoning atop that is neither necessary nor important for you to understand

    if I feel you benefit as I benefit from sharing in being anti-meth, I should either be able to make that argument without relying on my faith

    or I shouldn't be making the argument to you at all

    well yeah, but if I earnestly believe that salvation comes through self-destruction, for example, then the argument doesn't have independent merit. Then I should, according to everything I believe to be true, let myself be bricked up inside the monastery wall.

    u can go do that man

    just dont tell me about it or try to get me to join u

    why shouldn't I? Everything about my world-view says to do otherwise is to do you a disservice.

    because it is wrong to operate only at that level

    you need to go one level deeper and say "okay if i didn't hold the religious beliefs i do hold, would the things i am about to tell someone still make sense?"

    if the answer is no then just fuck off until that person expresses interest in your faith

    nothing would make sense then, is what I'm getting at.

    even "don't do meth?"

    Yes. If I didn't have my reasons for why good is good and bad is bad, then nothing would be either.

    most people are pretty comfortable with advising others based on what is likely to make them happy, letting that be 'good' for the purposes of discussion

    Me too. I'm just saying that it doesn't actually logically follow.


    Jacobkosh wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Cinders wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Cinders wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    btw being unironically patriotic is actually p good

    jhRuOA4.jpg

    nationalism and patriotism aren't the same thing

    You're right. One is more connected to cultural context and not national. It's still horrible though and blinds you to the darker aspects of your own culture.

    Only if you blithely overdo it to the point of ignorance

    but really what isn't that true of

    I have been on a cyberpunk kick lately and am rereading Bruce Sterling's stuff

    there is a line in one of his stories that "following anything to its 'logical conclusion' leads to insanity"

    I liked that. it strikes me as true.
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    local news:

    There are long lines at Bergen Airport Flesland.

    "There's just a lot of travellers right now" a spokesman said.

    Fascinating stuff.
    xlh6c3.png
  • CokebotleCokebotle 穴掘りの Registered User regular
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    local news:

    There are long lines at Bergen Airport Flesland.

    "There's just a lot of travellers right now" a spokesman said.

    Fascinating stuff.

    Meanwhile:

    original.jpg

    Cat font.
    工事中
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    A large amount of people who are stopped from comitting suicide by something won't try again. It's often very much a thing of the moment.

    Which is something we should strive to avoid people doing. Not just through dissuasion but from tackling them so they don't swallow the pills kind of deal. We
    Pony wrote: »
    Corehealer wrote: »
    I also use my beliefs as a religion in my fiction, but I explicitly make it the kind of thing that is not evangelical. So much so that the planet that the religion's female prophet and the bulk of her followers inhabit is outside of the Andromeda Galaxy in the void between galaxies and is neigh on impossible to find unless you have someone or something (like a specific religious text) to guide you there.

    Which I have also found is a hard sell for a religion because it goes against what a religion intrinsically is, belief wise; you want to show others the truth, the way to live. How do you do that if you don't spread the word? It's an interesting theme to explore in art.

    The way I see it, a person doesn't need to believe what I believe to conduct themselves in accordance with the principles I believe important.

    The reason they conducted themselves in such a way is of lesser (if any) importance to me when compared to the consequences of their conduct.

    By skillful means, by a practice in care and concern, a person can come to the same values I come to from a different fundamental ideology and I care not one bit about that

    The consequences matter. The results matter. The means are the means. The means only matter insofar as what becomes of them. This isn't saying throw caution to the wind, that the ends justify the means, but that the drive behind the means matter less than the means themselves, and the means themselves matter less than the result so long as the means and the result are things I think are right.

    So I don't need to "spread the word" of my faith. It's unimportant to anyone but me. However, the values I hold, the results of those beliefs, I think are secular results that people of many religions could arrive at, and do not in and of themselves require a religion at all to arrive at either.

    So, those I spread. Those I extol, even if I don't pull back the curtain and explain to anyone why I believe these things or how I come to believe in them. I think they have enough value on their own to stand under their own light, so I put them out there and people make of them what they do, and that is all they need to know to accept them or not accept them.

    If I have to quote my faith at you, if I have to explain the underpinnings of my religious beliefs and how they led me to this conclusion, in order to persuade you to view the underlying ethic or notion positive? Then I am failing to represent those virtues as the virtues I truly believe they are. I am failing you, and I'm failing myself.

    I don't necessarily apply this same standard to others, but I certainly don't find their arguments as palatable if they crutch about on their faith as an argument in and of itself.

    To me, that smacks of "This is good because I like it" instead of trying to argue an independent merit, and anything a person believes strongly is good both for themselves and others should be able to stand on its own merits.

    what kind of independent merit does those virtues have

    independent from well, reality as it is. Which is there the faith comes in

    I don't see how one can just go, these are good things, now I'll adjust my view of the world to fit that?

    You shouldn't do meth, for example.

    Meth's bad, m'kay.

    I can create what I feel is a pretty persuasive anti-meth argument (it consists largely of Lindsey Lohan pictures) without getting into say

    my religious beliefs regarding drug abuse

    that is unimportant

    My argument to you isn't reliant on it

    the argument has it's own independent merit

    that I have my own reasoning atop that is neither necessary nor important for you to understand

    if I feel you benefit as I benefit from sharing in being anti-meth, I should either be able to make that argument without relying on my faith

    or I shouldn't be making the argument to you at all

    well yeah, but if I earnestly believe that salvation comes through self-destruction, for example, then the argument doesn't have independent merit. Then I should, according to everything I believe to be true, let myself be bricked up inside the monastery wall.

    u can go do that man

    just dont tell me about it or try to get me to join u

    why shouldn't I? Everything about my world-view says to do otherwise is to do you a disservice.

    because it is wrong to operate only at that level

    you need to go one level deeper and say "okay if i didn't hold the religious beliefs i do hold, would the things i am about to tell someone still make sense?"

    if the answer is no then just fuck off until that person expresses interest in your faith

    nothing would make sense then, is what I'm getting at.

    even "don't do meth?"

    Yes. If I didn't have my reasons for why good is good and bad is bad, then nothing would be either.

    most people are pretty comfortable with advising others based on what is likely to make them happy, letting that be 'good' for the purposes of discussion

    Me too. I'm just saying that it doesn't actually logically follow.

    but do you agree that there's a more logical basis to advising people based on your assumption that they are interested in being happy and not being unhappy than to advising people based on your sincerely held belief that self-destruction leads to salvation?

    No. Since I genuinely believe that they'll be far worse off if I suggest what will make them happy. If that was the way the world was, it would be an evil act of me not to act then.
    xlh6c3.png
  • simonwolfsimonwolf Registered User regular
    Geth, roll 50d6
    turtlesig.jpg
  • TavTav Registered User regular
    Cokebotle wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    local news:

    There are long lines at Bergen Airport Flesland.

    "There's just a lot of travellers right now" a spokesman said.

    Fascinating stuff.

    Meanwhile:

    [img ]http://img.gawkeras sets.com/img/18n7x92v37qg0jpg/original.jpg[/img]

    Cat font.

    My friends once installed a penis font on my laptop. It was surprisingly legible.
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    A large amount of people who are stopped from comitting suicide by something won't try again. It's often very much a thing of the moment.

    Which is something we should strive to avoid people doing. Not just through dissuasion but from tackling them so they don't swallow the pills kind of deal. We
    Pony wrote: »
    Corehealer wrote: »
    I also use my beliefs as a religion in my fiction, but I explicitly make it the kind of thing that is not evangelical. So much so that the planet that the religion's female prophet and the bulk of her followers inhabit is outside of the Andromeda Galaxy in the void between galaxies and is neigh on impossible to find unless you have someone or something (like a specific religious text) to guide you there.

    Which I have also found is a hard sell for a religion because it goes against what a religion intrinsically is, belief wise; you want to show others the truth, the way to live. How do you do that if you don't spread the word? It's an interesting theme to explore in art.

    The way I see it, a person doesn't need to believe what I believe to conduct themselves in accordance with the principles I believe important.

    The reason they conducted themselves in such a way is of lesser (if any) importance to me when compared to the consequences of their conduct.

    By skillful means, by a practice in care and concern, a person can come to the same values I come to from a different fundamental ideology and I care not one bit about that

    The consequences matter. The results matter. The means are the means. The means only matter insofar as what becomes of them. This isn't saying throw caution to the wind, that the ends justify the means, but that the drive behind the means matter less than the means themselves, and the means themselves matter less than the result so long as the means and the result are things I think are right.

    So I don't need to "spread the word" of my faith. It's unimportant to anyone but me. However, the values I hold, the results of those beliefs, I think are secular results that people of many religions could arrive at, and do not in and of themselves require a religion at all to arrive at either.

    So, those I spread. Those I extol, even if I don't pull back the curtain and explain to anyone why I believe these things or how I come to believe in them. I think they have enough value on their own to stand under their own light, so I put them out there and people make of them what they do, and that is all they need to know to accept them or not accept them.

    If I have to quote my faith at you, if I have to explain the underpinnings of my religious beliefs and how they led me to this conclusion, in order to persuade you to view the underlying ethic or notion positive? Then I am failing to represent those virtues as the virtues I truly believe they are. I am failing you, and I'm failing myself.

    I don't necessarily apply this same standard to others, but I certainly don't find their arguments as palatable if they crutch about on their faith as an argument in and of itself.

    To me, that smacks of "This is good because I like it" instead of trying to argue an independent merit, and anything a person believes strongly is good both for themselves and others should be able to stand on its own merits.

    what kind of independent merit does those virtues have

    independent from well, reality as it is. Which is there the faith comes in

    I don't see how one can just go, these are good things, now I'll adjust my view of the world to fit that?

    You shouldn't do meth, for example.

    Meth's bad, m'kay.

    I can create what I feel is a pretty persuasive anti-meth argument (it consists largely of Lindsey Lohan pictures) without getting into say

    my religious beliefs regarding drug abuse

    that is unimportant

    My argument to you isn't reliant on it

    the argument has it's own independent merit

    that I have my own reasoning atop that is neither necessary nor important for you to understand

    if I feel you benefit as I benefit from sharing in being anti-meth, I should either be able to make that argument without relying on my faith

    or I shouldn't be making the argument to you at all

    well yeah, but if I earnestly believe that salvation comes through self-destruction, for example, then the argument doesn't have independent merit. Then I should, according to everything I believe to be true, let myself be bricked up inside the monastery wall.

    u can go do that man

    just dont tell me about it or try to get me to join u

    why shouldn't I? Everything about my world-view says to do otherwise is to do you a disservice.

    because it is wrong to operate only at that level

    you need to go one level deeper and say "okay if i didn't hold the religious beliefs i do hold, would the things i am about to tell someone still make sense?"

    if the answer is no then just fuck off until that person expresses interest in your faith

    nothing would make sense then, is what I'm getting at.

    even "don't do meth?"

    Yes. If I didn't have my reasons for why good is good and bad is bad, then nothing would be either.

    most people are pretty comfortable with advising others based on what is likely to make them happy, letting that be 'good' for the purposes of discussion

    Me too. I'm just saying that it doesn't actually logically follow.


    Jacobkosh wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Cinders wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    Cinders wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    btw being unironically patriotic is actually p good

    jhRuOA4.jpg

    nationalism and patriotism aren't the same thing

    You're right. One is more connected to cultural context and not national. It's still horrible though and blinds you to the darker aspects of your own culture.

    Only if you blithely overdo it to the point of ignorance

    but really what isn't that true of

    I have been on a cyberpunk kick lately and am rereading Bruce Sterling's stuff

    there is a line in one of his stories that "following anything to its 'logical conclusion' leads to insanity"

    I liked that. it strikes me as true.

    I take what I think is true about the world and follow it to its logical conclusion. That happens to include stuff like "don't do meth" being a statement I can fully support.
    xlh6c3.png
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    if you can't follow it to its logical conclusion there's probably something wrong with your initial assumptions.
    xlh6c3.png
  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies Registered User regular
    well man it's seven minutes to one in the morning

    I am not sure where our central disconnect is here, but i think it's fine to distinguish between a sincerely held religious belief that requires postulates generally considered religious to be supported, and a belief like "doing meth is bad" that only requires postulates like "it's a safe assumption that people want to be happy." I get frustrated and find the conversation reminiscent of Being and being when people won't make that distinction, and I think it's unreasonable to evangelize without discretion or to legislate at all when the subject falls in the first category.

    Anyway, I'm going to bed, be excellent to each other, etc.
    sig.gif
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    like over the years i have had to confront some of the privileges i have in terms of the kind of people i am annoyed by versus the kind of people i don't meaningfully have to deal with

    for example: homophobes. outside of a brief couple spats in high school I've not really had to deal with a lot of egregious, meaningful, upsetting homophobia in my life. this isn't just because i am a hetero-leaning bisexual and thus simply have not had to deal a great deal with the complexities of public affection for another dude without fear, for example. i mean, that's certainly a factor, but it wasn't a very prominent one for me even in the case where the circumstances were such that it applied.

    there's a lot of factors in that privilege. there's the fact that i grew up in a pretty open-minded, non-judgmental homelife that didn't pressure homophobic morality upon me. there's the fact that i grew up in a fairly decently sized, cosmopolitan city in southwestern Ontario. there's the fact that my uncle came out when i was 11, forcing whatever holdouts in my family there might've been on the issue to confront the facts and get over it before i really meaningfully came to understand my own sexuality, so i never really feared reprisal or anything.

    there's the fact that my entire life i've been an aggressive, confrontational, at times outright hostile person with the physical strength and mental capacity to back it up if challenged. that sort of fierceness, that attitude, it's a privilege that for much of my youth i didn't appreciate as such. I didn't appreciate how good I had it in that regard, how I could kiss a guy in public and when he was like "there's all these people here", fail to understand what he was so concerned with. "They could harass us or jump us" he'd say, and I'd flash the kind of grin a sane person shouldn't bbe able to flash, and whisper "let them try", knowing i had a field knife strapped to my calf under my pant leg.

    Walking around with your balls on the outside of your pants like that and feeling comfortable with come what may out of it, that's privilege. It's male privilege, it's a sort of athletic privilege, for lack of a better phrase, it's a white privilege, it's a whole boatload of factors that it took me into my mid-twenties to fully comprehend i had.

    and for a while, it made me feel guilty for years of shrugging incredulously at the concerns and fears of other queers, and it made me better understand the sort of rebuke and animosity i'd face in the queer community for having it so much easier.

    but it is what it is, you can have privilege and not be ashamed of it so long as you're not a prick about it and understand what others don't got versus what you do

    Gelding. I wanna have a conversation. With you about privilege and the meaning of fairness. As well as empathizing with a facet of not being really scared about getting into a fight from a very young age (One of the few things my parents did for me I greatly appreciate was enlist me in Tae Kwon Do when I was 5. Pid dividends when I started getting in real fights in junior high.)

    Was the carrying a weapon a fear of extreme homophobia, or just something you did at the time?
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    I gotta go to bed pretty soon though, and My contacts are out, so forgive a few more typos than usual.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies Registered User regular
    One more try: no matter how sure you are that you're right, if you try and convince me something based on a postulate you know or can reasonably suspect I don't share, without a previous unprompted expression of interest from me in your postulate and the resulting conviction, you're a dick.
    sig.gif
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    well man it's seven minutes to one in the morning

    I am not sure where our central disconnect is here, but i think it's fine to distinguish between a sincerely held religious belief that requires postulates generally considered religious to be supported, and a belief like "doing meth is bad" that only requires postulates like "it's a safe assumption that people want to be happy." I get frustrated and find the conversation reminiscent of Being and being when people won't make that distinction, and I think it's unreasonable to evangelize without discretion or to legislate at all when the subject falls in the first category.

    Anyway, I'm going to bed, be excellent to each other, etc.

    my point is that "doing meth is bad" needs a definition of bad to make sense, and if your definition of bad is, from my perspective, way out of whack, then it's only more whack to arrive at the then faulty conclusion that doing meth is bad.

    Not that it isn't generally very good for the world that people do arrive at the faulty conclusion.
    xlh6c3.png
  • PowerpuppiesPowerpuppies Registered User regular
    i will allow limited exceptions to this rule, based on my mood, if we are conversing alone in a place where alcohol is readily available.
    sig.gif
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    One more try: no matter how sure you are that you're right, if you try and convince me something based on a postulate you know or can reasonably suspect I don't share, without a previous unprompted expression of interest from me in your postulate and the resulting conviction, you're a dick.

    I am not disagreeing with this in the slightest.

    And for a lot of people the desire not to be a dick wins over conviction.
    xlh6c3.png
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    i will allow limited exceptions to this rule, based on my mood, if we are conversing alone in a place where alcohol is readily available.

    alright. Let's give it a shot.

    Crack open a beer and let me tell you all the good things about letting yourself get bricked up in the monastery wall.
    xlh6c3.png
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    i will allow limited exceptions to this rule, based on my mood, if we are conversing alone in a place where alcohol is readily available.

    I really value the friends I can speak my mind with, but I agree going up to strangers and being hostile about their beliefs/unjust values Is no way to really enact change in this day.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    like over the years i have had to confront some of the privileges i have in terms of the kind of people i am annoyed by versus the kind of people i don't meaningfully have to deal with

    for example: homophobes. outside of a brief couple spats in high school I've not really had to deal with a lot of egregious, meaningful, upsetting homophobia in my life. this isn't just because i am a hetero-leaning bisexual and thus simply have not had to deal a great deal with the complexities of public affection for another dude without fear, for example. i mean, that's certainly a factor, but it wasn't a very prominent one for me even in the case where the circumstances were such that it applied.

    there's a lot of factors in that privilege. there's the fact that i grew up in a pretty open-minded, non-judgmental homelife that didn't pressure homophobic morality upon me. there's the fact that i grew up in a fairly decently sized, cosmopolitan city in southwestern Ontario. there's the fact that my uncle came out when i was 11, forcing whatever holdouts in my family there might've been on the issue to confront the facts and get over it before i really meaningfully came to understand my own sexuality, so i never really feared reprisal or anything.

    there's the fact that my entire life i've been an aggressive, confrontational, at times outright hostile person with the physical strength and mental capacity to back it up if challenged. that sort of fierceness, that attitude, it's a privilege that for much of my youth i didn't appreciate as such. I didn't appreciate how good I had it in that regard, how I could kiss a guy in public and when he was like "there's all these people here", fail to understand what he was so concerned with. "They could harass us or jump us" he'd say, and I'd flash the kind of grin a sane person shouldn't bbe able to flash, and whisper "let them try", knowing i had a field knife strapped to my calf under my pant leg.

    Walking around with your balls on the outside of your pants like that and feeling comfortable with come what may out of it, that's privilege. It's male privilege, it's a sort of athletic privilege, for lack of a better phrase, it's a white privilege, it's a whole boatload of factors that it took me into my mid-twenties to fully comprehend i had.

    and for a while, it made me feel guilty for years of shrugging incredulously at the concerns and fears of other queers, and it made me better understand the sort of rebuke and animosity i'd face in the queer community for having it so much easier.

    but it is what it is, you can have privilege and not be ashamed of it so long as you're not a prick about it and understand what others don't got versus what you do

    Gelding. I wanna have a conversation. With you about privilege and the meaning of fairness. As well as empathizing with a facet of not being really scared about getting into a fight from a very young age (One of the few things my parents did for me I greatly appreciate was enlist me in Tae Kwon Do when I was 5. Pid dividends when I started getting in real fights in junior high.)

    Was the carrying a weapon a fear of extreme homophobia, or just something you did at the time?

    Not a fear of extreme homophobia, no. A habit borne of upbringing and lifestyle, really. My father was something of a survivalist and, when I was a child, believer in an upcoming downfall of civilization towards fascistic command by a foreign power (the US or Russia, in most of his conspiracy theories), and despite my best efforts had an impact on my mindset and worldview. In my teenage years, when I was at my most flippant towards potential violence and my most casually disinterested in the threat of violent homophobia, was also a period in my life in which I was a violent criminal and being armed was simply a matter of practicality.

    In the view I had in my teenage years and early adulthood, there were things far scarier that could come at me without warning than a group of buffoons calling me a faggot, so in a way I had a sort of arrogant and almost welcoming attitude towards it.
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    When I was last given a copy of the watchtower they didn't wake me or interrupt my dinner.

    Otherwise I might just have been in a bad enough mood to act offended that they were so easily dissuaded and weren't going to go to any more effort than that to keep me from eternal damnation.
    xlh6c3.png
  • AbdhyiusAbdhyius Registered User regular
    instead we just found that we had some common ground in that neither of us was very worried about doomsday, albeit for entirely different reasons.
    xlh6c3.png
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    Pony wrote: »
    like over the years i have had to confront some of the privileges i have in terms of the kind of people i am annoyed by versus the kind of people i don't meaningfully have to deal with

    for example: homophobes. outside of a brief couple spats in high school I've not really had to deal with a lot of egregious, meaningful, upsetting homophobia in my life. this isn't just because i am a hetero-leaning bisexual and thus simply have not had to deal a great deal with the complexities of public affection for another dude without fear, for example. i mean, that's certainly a factor, but it wasn't a very prominent one for me even in the case where the circumstances were such that it applied.

    there's a lot of factors in that privilege. there's the fact that i grew up in a pretty open-minded, non-judgmental homelife that didn't pressure homophobic morality upon me. there's the fact that i grew up in a fairly decently sized, cosmopolitan city in southwestern Ontario. there's the fact that my uncle came out when i was 11, forcing whatever holdouts in my family there might've been on the issue to confront the facts and get over it before i really meaningfully came to understand my own sexuality, so i never really feared reprisal or anything.

    there's the fact that my entire life i've been an aggressive, confrontational, at times outright hostile person with the physical strength and mental capacity to back it up if challenged. that sort of fierceness, that attitude, it's a privilege that for much of my youth i didn't appreciate as such. I didn't appreciate how good I had it in that regard, how I could kiss a guy in public and when he was like "there's all these people here", fail to understand what he was so concerned with. "They could harass us or jump us" he'd say, and I'd flash the kind of grin a sane person shouldn't bbe able to flash, and whisper "let them try", knowing i had a field knife strapped to my calf under my pant leg.

    Walking around with your balls on the outside of your pants like that and feeling comfortable with come what may out of it, that's privilege. It's male privilege, it's a sort of athletic privilege, for lack of a better phrase, it's a white privilege, it's a whole boatload of factors that it took me into my mid-twenties to fully comprehend i had.

    and for a while, it made me feel guilty for years of shrugging incredulously at the concerns and fears of other queers, and it made me better understand the sort of rebuke and animosity i'd face in the queer community for having it so much easier.

    but it is what it is, you can have privilege and not be ashamed of it so long as you're not a prick about it and understand what others don't got versus what you do

    Gelding. I wanna have a conversation. With you about privilege and the meaning of fairness. As well as empathizing with a facet of not being really scared about getting into a fight from a very young age (One of the few things my parents did for me I greatly appreciate was enlist me in Tae Kwon Do when I was 5. Pid dividends when I started getting in real fights in junior high.)

    Was the carrying a weapon a fear of extreme homophobia, or just something you did at the time?

    Not a fear of extreme homophobia, no. A habit borne of upbringing and lifestyle, really. My father was something of a survivalist and, when I was a child, believer in an upcoming downfall of civilization towards fascistic command by a foreign power (the US or Russia, in most of his conspiracy theories), and despite my best efforts had an impact on my mindset and worldview. In my teenage years, when I was at my most flippant towards potential violence and my most casually disinterested in the threat of violent homophobia, was also a period in my life in which I was a violent criminal and being armed was simply a matter of practicality.

    In the view I had in my teenage years and early adulthood, there were things far scarier that could come at me without warning than a group of buffoons calling me a faggot, so in a way I had a sort of arrogant and almost welcoming attitude towards it.

    Were you who Omar really was based on? ;)
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    essentially there's a response you see here at 2:44 that, unfortunately

    at a period in my life

    i knew all too well

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3E7UkIzt4
  • CokebotleCokebotle 穴掘りの Registered User regular
    Tav wrote: »
    Cokebotle wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    local news:

    There are long lines at Bergen Airport Flesland.

    "There's just a lot of travellers right now" a spokesman said.

    Fascinating stuff.

    Meanwhile:

    [img ]http://img.gawkeras sets.com/img/18n7x92v37qg0jpg/original.jpg[/img]

    Cat font.

    My friends once installed a penis font on my laptop. It was surprisingly legible.

    I didn't know there was such a thing, but I'm honestly not suprised.

    Hm... wish I had thought of that prank back in college >.>
    工事中
  • PodlyPodly RUDEASS TITTIESRegistered User regular
    podly

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9D6w1GzGY

    i should have probably just bat signaled everyone.

    @DasUberEdward I could watch this forever
    follow my music twitter soundcloud tumblr
    biden%20sig.png
  • ShivahnShivahn Registered User regular
    Cokebotle wrote: »
    Tav wrote: »
    Cokebotle wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    local news:

    There are long lines at Bergen Airport Flesland.

    "There's just a lot of travellers right now" a spokesman said.

    Fascinating stuff.

    Meanwhile:

    [img ]http://img.gawkeras sets.com/img/18n7x92v37qg0jpg/original.jpg[/img]

    Cat font.

    My friends once installed a penis font on my laptop. It was surprisingly legible.

    I didn't know there was such a thing, but I'm honestly not suprised.

    Hm... wish I had thought of that prank back in college >.>

    I once set a roommates' browsers' default page to a gay porn shock site.

    He got back and was like "haha, very funny."

    And then switched it back.

    After spring break he came back and said, basically "So you changed my Internet Explorer default page too and my dad uses that computer when it's home."
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    I always like to ask people questions about their values and fairness. Where do hey draw the line? That sorta thing.

    There was something you said about coming to terms with your privilege, and was curious if you could quantify that at all. What things do you feel were unfair, and why so broadly? (Beyond the being a larger more able to defend yourself white male) Do you feel some of the disadvantages you've had in your life balance some of these advantages?
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    there's a sort in life

    who have no reluctance to violence, really

    there are some who lack that reluctance because they understand it's periodic necessity, and while they might be reluctant to find themselves in such situations once they know there's no two ways around it, they accept the reality of the situation and do what they can

    and then there's the sort, out of a personal sickness, go seeking it out and live in it and it's generally indicative of some much larger problems

    i'm on the former side of that nowadays but i've been on the latter, and in either case it's not the sort that all people are and when you are the sort it's in your best interest to understand that for what it is

    not something that makes you better than other folk, but something that does mean you deal with less shit than they do

    it should engender sympathy, not contempt, and awareness of one's own privileges versus those that don't got em
  • STATE OF THE ART ROBOTSTATE OF THE ART ROBOT Registered User regular
    Shivahn wrote: »
    Cokebotle wrote: »
    Tav wrote: »
    Cokebotle wrote: »
    Abdhyius wrote: »
    local news:

    There are long lines at Bergen Airport Flesland.

    "There's just a lot of travellers right now" a spokesman said.

    Fascinating stuff.

    Meanwhile:

    [img ]http://img.gawkeras sets.com/img/18n7x92v37qg0jpg/original.jpg[/img]

    Cat font.

    My friends once installed a penis font on my laptop. It was surprisingly legible.

    I didn't know there was such a thing, but I'm honestly not suprised.

    Hm... wish I had thought of that prank back in college >.>

    I once set a roommates' browsers' default page to a gay porn shock site.

    He got back and was like "haha, very funny."

    And then switched it back.

    After spring break he came back and said, basically "So you changed my Internet Explorer default page too and my dad uses that computer when it's home."

    BOY WAS HIS DAD SHOCKED
  • VariableVariable Stroke Me Lady Fame Registered User regular
    brilliant scene from trainspotting and the single greatest video ever both on the same page
    "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man" - Dr. Johnson
    Sig%20-%20Reggie%20Watts.png
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    Pony wrote: »
    essentially there's a response you see here at 2:44 that, unfortunately

    at a period in my life

    i knew all too well

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3E7UkIzt4

    I love Trainspotting. I think dope dreams/dt dreams are the exception that prove my rule about TV and Film being better without dream sequences.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    Also, the fact that you're more level headed now is gonna make me lobby for you to be called Gelding from now on even more so. They do it to horses that act up on the track or are violent (biters, possessive towards fillys/mares). Too perfect.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • knitdanknitdan Registered User regular
    Do not like videos that are just a few seconds looped for ages.

    Except Joffrey getting slapped.
  • OrganichuOrganichu Registered User regular
    i don't know a whole lot about mental health but when i was a teenager and i liked swinging on just about anyone i enjoyed having power over people. i'm sure that speaks to deeper, maybe traceable things in my psyche at the time but on the surface i am comfortable admitting (though i'm obviously not glad it happened) that i just got off on going 'you can't do what you want to me, what i says go because i can hurt you'.

    i can almost kind of understand psychopaths. a little. not really. maybe.
  • bloodyroarxxbloodyroarxx Registered User regular
    apparently I am not tired, stupid night shift
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    I always like to ask people questions about their values and fairness. Where do hey draw the line? That sorta thing.

    There was something you said about coming to terms with your privilege, and was curious if you could quantify that at all. What things do you feel were unfair, and why so broadly? (Beyond the being a larger more able to defend yourself white male) Do you feel some of the disadvantages you've had in your life balance some of these advantages?

    I feel like seeing it as a balancing act is wrong-headed. To view it as a privilege here is metered out by a hardship there, and vice versa. I think that's the wrong attitude to take.

    I think that attitude leads to "hardship olympics", where you see tumblr communities full of people racing to the bottom of the pile of who has it the hardest, people in progressive and liberal communities denigrating each other based on how many checkboxes they hit that somehow outweigh the fact that they might have it shitty in some parts of their life. People looking at a rape victim and saying "Well at least you're white". Or whatever.

    It's not about that. It's about understanding where you have and where you have-not, and knowing how that impacts you. Knowing how that makes your life different, not necessarily harder or easier, than other peoples. Knowing where they have it easy and you don't, where you got it easy and they don't, it allows you to better understand people and get into their shoes and empathize with them more. I've struggled with empathy my whole life, to the point that I had a psychiatrist once look me in the eye and tell me I was incapable of it, so I've worked to find the methods by which I can understand and empathize with someone else's life and where they're coming from.

    My physicality has been a net gain in my life. It was a net positive. What I used that physicality for at various points in my life is questionable and often highly negative, but those weren't my privilege those were how I abused that privilege.

    I didn't have to be afraid to hug and snuggle up to my partner on a park bench. My partner did! That alarmed the shit out of him. Me? Not so much! Why? Because of that physicality, because I had that privilege. So, I got to live my life in a little less fear than him, a little less concern than him, at least when it came to public displays of affection. I didn't really understand that at the time. I was immature, judgmental, unable to grasp that I was not a par to be reached but rather my own idiosyncratic little nodule.

    Did I have hardships of my own that he didn't? Of course. But the point isn't that some are more privileged than others. The point isn't about the "balance" of it. The point is understanding it, and knowing what it is and isn't. It impacts how you treat people.
  • PonyPony Registered User regular
    MadCaddy wrote: »
    Also, the fact that you're more level headed now is gonna make me lobby for you to be called Gelding from now on even more so. They do it to horses that act up on the track or are violent (biters, possessive towards fillys/mares). Too perfect.

    also i've been surgically sterilized

    so
  • MadCaddyMadCaddy Riksadvokate Registered User regular
    apparently I am not tired, stupid night shift

    Yea, me either, but alas I gotta try and force myself to get some shut eye for some appointments/work I got tomorrow. I still have so much good TV to catch up on, though, and home tech work I wanna do instead... :(

    Meh, sleep time. Good night [chat]. Watch this weeks GoT ASAP. It was awesome.
    League of Legends: SorryNotRly Steam: MMForYourHealth Hero Academy: MadCaddy
  • ronyaronya hmmm over there!Registered User regular
    so I thought this data might be a little seasonal

    I try to deseasonalize it and I get a time series with even more obvious seasonality

    wut
  • EchoEcho Per Aspera Ad Inferi Super Moderator, Moderator mod
This discussion has been closed.