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27-08-2015 @Dick O'Brick, I think your point about Angelina Jolie is spot on, I was just saying something similar the other day, using Jolie as an example. Our capitalist society survives on population growth, without growth the uber rich wouldn't have cheap labor. As soon as any celebrity with any clout espouses a hardcore philosophy that goes against that they will be black listed, no matter who they are. I remember Ashley Judd saying that people shouldn't have biological kids until all the orphans in the world were adopted and there was a big uproar over that. Her career isn't what it once was. I'm sure there are other factors, but that definitely didn't help her. How many celebrities that are very vocal about a cause/philosophy that goes against the oligarchy are there? None that I know of.--- > Edited 27-08-2015 02:25:37 |
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27-08-2015 Kirk, you received vindication and I received poetic justice in relation to my quip about your editing. If you look at my last post I had to muck about with it four times before it became the perfection you are now privileged to behold.You said: quote:
Marriage between consenting sea mammals and humans, perhaps soon??? Well, they've already begun proselytising to us: quote:
I have mixed feelings about it, but I will say that if there was an Easy Button for eliminating human beings all in one silent and painless flash, I would probably push it, rather than see millions more endure more suffering at the hands of others. As extreme as it is to hold such an opinion, I would too. I must make it perfectly clear here that for me it would have to be a 100% guaranteed solution that would erradicate ALL life, instantly and painlessly in one fell swoop, otherwise I don't think there is any way it could be justified. Don't misconstrue this as me saying I'd push the nuclear switch or anything so horrible, crude and ineffective. A commenter on this blog in the past asked Rina's views on 'promortalism', i.e. killing other people! I must admit that when I read this person's question I gave the same kind of, "WTF?!", that I'm sure most 'civilians' (lol) give us when they hear about antinatalism for the first time. I don't know if you saw this or not, but the guy or girl who brought it up asked something like, "if the person's death could be carried out instantly and painlessly, and they had no friends or family who would be adversely affected by their demise, would it still be a morally reprehensible thing to do?" From memory, Rina countered with something about personal autonomy being breached and I agreed with her point. I still do... on the individual level. To repeat what I said a moment ago, I'd only be prepared to contemplate this scary idea only if I were granted godlike powers or a technological equivalent, whereby I could instantaneously blink out all sentient life - my own included, naturally. Feel free to back away slowly and dial the police. quote:
Alone with Irina in an elevator for a few hours, we'd probably come up with a solution to implement AN across the planet Is that what you'd do? I was implying having sex with her. Lol ... and the timeframe would be a few minutes, not hours. Ha ha ha. quote:
Ultimately, the world's social experience can change rather quickly, especially now with incredible global information exchange. I do agree with you on this score. quote:
I think it is very possible that religion will die out as a vestige of the past I *hope* you're right, but still don't share your view. quote:
allowing clearer compassionate thinking, the empowerment of women and more control over their own bodies, and more thoughtful men in a culture that doesn't condone the degradation of women I am all for that, but human nature being what it is, I can't help but see in new wave feminism a case of the oppressed wishing to become the oppressors. quote:
When I attended school bullying was common, many of the students had rifles in their vehicles on campus and this was permitted Now that IS a difference in our respective cultures. When I was at school you'd get detention if you brought a water pistol with you. quote:
And maybe if Irina was agreeable and would have me, and after we had solved the problem of existence, and all things to be handled responsibly, we could work the animal nature side of things if we pleased! Noooooooooooo!!!!! I saw her fiiiiiiiiirst!!!!! Irina, tell hiiiiiiiiim!!!!!! Addendum for Katerina: It's really funny that you brought up Ashley Judd and what she had said when asked about if she would ever have kids of her own, because before I decided to use Jolie in my example, this very speech of Judd's was the first thing that I'd thought about. I ended up going with Jolie rather than Judd due to the fact that the latter has been out of the public eye for quite some time. I don't know if, like you said, it is because she gave voice to an unpopular opinion or if it's simply because she crossed the big four-o and we all know that in Hollywood that's the death knell for most leading actresses. |
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27-08-2015 I think the button pushing is an interesting one, because in one sense it starts to violate one person's autonomy to prevent them from violating another person's autonomy! That to me rings a little like self-defense on the behalf of another, which I am generally in favor of.And I do mean *all* human beings in a flash, not the destruction of the planet or whatever, just all people, the worst and most destructive predator on the planet, who has the power to stop himself from committing so much oppression but doesn't. This is just New Zealand, but there are other countries in Europe and around the world with the same trends... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Religious_affiliation_in_New_Zealand_1991-2013_-_bar_chart.svg And in Japan, for the wrong reasons, but yet… http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/17/national/social-issues/young-single-japanese-less-keen-children/#.Vd598EtMPGs And *never* in my life did I expect anything but teen girls with babies being coddled and praised with a that's life type attitude, when this show aired! Seriously, this exposed millions of people to the idea that it was OK to consider not breeding, really! I think the effects of this one season of a show (not that I am fan of the show in general) will show up about 10-20 years from now. A quote: True Detective But there's a chilling darkness lurking in the overall narrative. McConaughey's character, Detective Coehle, embraces (though, arguably, doesn't quite embody) philosophical pessimism, maintaining that human consciousness is nothing more than a tragic mistake. The show also raises themes of antinatalism, a philosophical view asserting birth and reproduction as irresponsible. Antinatalism views reproduction as a negative action humans have the moral the responsibility to avoid, both due to the intrinsic suffering and pain involved with being alive and the depletion of our world's resources due to overpopulation. The ideas are bleak and hard to swallow, but they're also thought-provoking and uncharted territory for a popular television series. - See more at: http://www.geekrex.com/2014/02/five-ways-true-detective-is-changing.html#sthash.2jiWZzu5.dpuf |
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27-08-2015 As far as actresses go, Dreyfus got about 10 more years than many… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpsI8mWKmg |
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27-08-2015 @Kirk- In case you havent seen True Detective's end, SPOILER ALERTRust claims he saw his dead daughter and now believes in something "magical" out there. The producers copped out and it will probably always be that way in mainstream media. Edit: I wrote a bunch more junk but there was an error so fuck it. LOL I should really start copying what I write before I hit post --- > Edited 27-08-2015 09:16:08 --- > Edited 27-08-2015 09:17:10 |
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27-08-2015
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And I do mean *all* human beings in a flash, not the destruction of the planet or whatever, just all people, the worst and most destructive predator on the planet, who has the power to stop himself from committing so much oppression but doesn't. It's interesting that in your vision you seemingly only desire to remove human beings from the equation. When I talk about the 'magic button', my intention would be to take out every living thing, not just people. When you consider the amount of carnage going on in nature and how good old evolution has made it so that everything devours everything else - oftentimes eaten alive no less - I don't understand how you can limit your utopia to a planet that is merely devoid of homo sapiens. You're not alone though, towards the end of Jim Crawford's book he gives a perfunctory acknowledgement to the fact that human departure wouldn't put an end to animal suffering, but it is not something he spends much time on. I don't know if this was an oversight, a constraint from the publishers, or if he just doesn't care as much about non-human agony. For me it is of equal, if not more, importance than human pain, because quite frankly I like animals more than most people. I've linked to this post by 'Antibullshitman' in the past, but I think it is important enough and pertinent to what we're discussing that I can paste it once again: http://antibullshitman.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/vhemt-is-worse-than-humancentric.html Antibullshitman (ABM from this point on) is the absolute king of absurdly long blog posts. Next to him, you and I Kirk are like Trappist monks who have taken a vow of silence. Thankfully this is one of his shorter offerings. I encourage you to read it because I'd like to hear your take on it. All too often, and quite understandably, we focus on our own species when talking about AN. Yes, we sometimes bring up animal suffering as well (as Rina alluded to in her comment about veganism), but usually it is an afterthought or added to give more punch to our central, human-centric, argument. Rarely is it pushed into the same prominent position as our own predicament and yet if we are true to the essence of our stated cause then we should indeed give it equal footing and consideration. If you agree with me on this then what is your take on ABM's argument, i.e. that had we (humans) gone extinct, then our absence would most likely have caused an avalanche of increase in over all worldwide sentience and ergo suffering? He goes on to make the perverse but nonetheless true point that if our primary goal is consequationalism then we should in fact be ENCOURAGING procreation as a means to hasten the demise of other species! If we take the Genesis account of eating the forbidden fruit as a metaphor for mankind's 'fall into knowledge', then I find myself in wholehearted agreement, for the mental knots and ethical conundrums thinking beings are capable of entwining themselves in are pretty much endless. Ignorance is bliss indeed. Regarding your two links, I never said that there weren't pockets here and there where religion and/or procreation was on the demise. There are undoubtedly people who are waking up. However, I'm talking about cumulatively, i.e. the planet as a whole. To quote from an earlier comment of Irina's in response to you: quote:
Europe, for example, is already dying out, it doesn't reproduce at the rate sufficient to repopulate itself. It's the finger in the dam story - for every hole you plug up, two more pop open. This is the real tragedy and I don't see education working sufficiently fast enough to stem the tide. Keep in mind the other horrible irony of our collective predicament: the people best suited to educate are the ones 'leaving Omelas'. We're not breeding, so our (and I say this as modestly as I can) 'greater understanding' goes with us, whereas on the other side of the story, the brainless fuck machines with pneumatic hips are splatting out their open mouthed, oafish offspring faster than a malfunctioning tennis ball machine on overdrive. What happens when all the smarties are gone and the dumb-dumbs are left? THIS is why I'm pessimistic of AN's chance of success and why I said I think war, pestilence or a big ass space rock is how I see the eventual end occurring. You posited the question: "what happens if we are able to leave the planet someday?" This is indeed worrisome to contemplate, but I personally don't give it much credence. At the exponential way our global population is growing coupled with (paraphrasing Sam Harris here) the possibility that some devout nation acquires apocalyptic technology, I can't see us surviving long enough for Star Trek to happen - a rather sick 'every cloud has a silver lining'. As for your quote about True Detective, I've never actually got around to watching the show. If you read ABM's post in my link above then you'll see his take on it. Lastly, I feel for you, Katerina. I've started writing my drivel in Notepad and copy/pasting it over, just in case Rinkypoop's comments section erases it. Between you and me, I'm sure she designed it this way on purpose just so that she could cause us to You know how cruel she is. Only joking, no violence please. |
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27-08-2015
Happy to seee you guys ae havin a conversation here on your own, even with this beta commenting system lol. The worst is yet to come though, I'm working on those cookies))) and i don't mean the baked ones. The ones to store the authorization and skip logging in every time. My math teacher would've been surprised to learn I'm doing programming, she always failed to understand how someone could be so inattentive so frequently. She'd say, Irina, you're following the right logic everywhere but why does your "+" suddenly changes to "-" n the middle of the equation and the "4" becomes "6"? Idunno, that's just the way I work lol. Probably to make people suffer while maintaining my innocence |
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27-08-2015 Whew! I thought for a second I'd scared you away with all my talk about octopus babies. |
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27-08-2015 @Dick Yup, she's pure evil. She must be stopped! @Irina "Probably to make people suffer while maintaining my innocence" That's not very negative utilitarian of you. Are you turning to the dark side? Next you'll be telling us you want 7 kids! jk I had the same problem in math, I understood the equation but I'd make stupid little mistakes like that. There were some test where I'd literally get every problem wrong because of little errors. Anyways, what I was going to say to Dick before the comments fucked me.... Alicia Silverstone comes to mind. It seems to me her career went downhill after she started babbling about veganism, (while she was still young) and she's not even that hardcore about it. Maybe it's just a coincidence. She has a vegan product line but it's nowhere near as popular as other celebrity endorsed crap. As an aside, I need to quit posting here. I've got a fuckton of work to do and I'm just procrastinating. Irina, you may have to ban me lol jk.... sorta Addendum- It did the same thing to me this time, just so you know, said my email address is listed as spam. Luckily I copied my message to notepad like a sensible person, this time. --- > Edited 27-08-2015 21:35:45 |
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28-08-2015
Addendum- It did the same thing to me this time, just so you know, said my email address is listed as spam. Luckily I copied my message to notepad like a sensible person, this time. See? I was already trying to ban you to let you get back to work, but here you are using a notepad!)) It has become my habit to ctrl+A and ctrl+C my text before submitting any form with a textarea. It's just 2 moves of the left nad and it prevents from losing a coupe of minutes of typing. Because even without any bugs the internet can suddenly go down or the website might go offline for a second (hosting troubles). |
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27-08-2015 I can try to take a look at some of the links you posted, but I think I already understand the point of view. And Japan and New Zealand and Europe aren't isolated pockets of activity!Firstly, ultimately, if I could, I would just undo the entire pointless universe to take care of the problem. Now maybe there are an unlimited number of universes, I don't know. And there probably isn't an inside and outside the universe, so really our minds have trouble handling what the universe really is, anyway. So to keep things simple and conceivable and do-able, I limit myself to just having everyone not be able to or choosing to not procreate and let people fade off the planet. I do know animals suffer, it is obvious. They have feelings, thoughts, and more. But I think even the more advanced ones has a lesser understanding of their predicament on a day-to-day basis, and as a result suffer less angst for the future. Dolphins, primates, octopi maybe, definitely there are animals that see ahead, how far we really don't know for sure yet. But for mosquitoes, roaches, crabs, trees maybe, I think the moment to moment is paramount. But I would have no problem preventing millions of cows and pigs and chickens from the horrible life of the slaughterhouse, and if all animals had to go to do it, so be it. And the day-to-day prey constantly looking for food and predator constantly looking for prey seems pretty stupid, really, and of course painfully cruel if you have ever seen a starving horse or wolf. Life is the disease, it's that simple. Even if someone has all the money and health they desire, having to fill the days while everything slips away with distractions such as videos, food, sports, sex, etc. is suffering, it is all just marking time with diversions. Even the responsibility of boredom is suffering. And that is the best case. At some point things will go awry, and then blindness, cancer, old age, pain, dysfunction, and more will interrupt the waiting game and press hard. And as we mentioned at the start of this conversation, there are people that suffer horribly from situations of poverty, ill health, mental retardation, depression, etc. their entire lives and that would be OK *if they chose it!*. But someone chooses for us, and that violation is for me the line that just should not be crossed, and yet all of life requires it. I believe, because of what I have seen and studied in my life, that AN to its conclusion is a possibility, a real possibility. Yes, there are religious forces of ignorance on the move in the Middle East and across the globe, but there are also equivalent forces that encourage AN, and who is to say that ignorance will win? |
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28-08-2015
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I can try to take a look at some of the links you posted Lazy, lazy! I only posted the one link. That said, ABM's posts do not make for light reading, so on the one hand I can't blame you for skipping it; on the other though, I consider him to be probably the most intensely analytical antinatalist out there and would recommend you read his stuff sometime. quote:
Firstly, ultimately, if I could, I would just undo the entire pointless universe to take care of the problem. Now maybe there are an unlimited number of universes, I don't know. And there probably isn't an inside and outside the universe, so really our minds have trouble handling what the universe really is, anyway. Like the Queen of Kiev said to you on the fun determinism via free will topic, it's possible to conjecture till the cows come home about other worlds and dimensions. There may be infinite, ahem, 'Dicks' out there - some of them weird, some of them wonky, some of them blue and tiny (lol), but I really don't give a damn about the 'what could be'... even if they are other versions of ME and therefore effing fantastic by definition. I care about what I actually know exists here on THIS planet. quote:
I do know animals suffer, it is obvious. They have feelings, thoughts, and more. But I think even the more advanced ones has a lesser understanding of their predicament on a day-to-day basis, and as a result suffer less angst for the future. Dolphins, primates, octopi maybe, definitely there are animals that see ahead, how far we really don't know for sure yet. But for mosquitoes, roaches, crabs, trees maybe, I think the moment to moment is paramount. Of course! If taken purely from a psychological standpoint then without a doubt, human beings suffer more than any other creature. My dog isn't aware he's going to the vet later today for a booster injection and so isn't losing any sleep over it. He won't be happy when he's there, but once we leave and go to the park he'll be fine again. He's not going to develop a neurosis about having to go back again in another six months. Prey animals out in the wild are constantly on the outlook for danger, but this is preprogrammed instinct rather than any kind of phobia. Similarly, past-their-best predators are not worrying about the possibility of starving to death, (or like me), worrying about Texans making moves on Ukrainians. But..... Whether it be predominantly physical or not, all of them still suffer, experience great pain and die. I consider myself a sentiocentric antinatalist (as per ABM's definitions) and therefore don't differentiate between, or give priority to, one species over another. Suffering is suffering is suffering. My single wish is for it to end. Wholly. quote:
I believe, because of what I have seen and studied in my life, that AN to its conclusion is a possibility, a real possibility. Yes, there are religious forces of ignorance on the move in the Middle East and across the globe, but there are also equivalent forces that encourage AN, and who is to say that ignorance will win? I hope you're right my friend, I hope you're right. |
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29-08-2015 @Dick & Kirk I disagree about animals feeling less pain than humans. I'd say animals feel as much pain as humans, if not more, for the very reasons you two listed. Animals can't bullshit themselves out of pain like humans can. They can't tell themselves sure my leg hurts right now but I'll take some tylenol and it'll be better in 30 minutes. For them, a moment of pain might as well be an eternity. And yeah the anxiety over being prey to another animal is an instinct but that doesn't mean they aren't suffering for it. Our sex drive is a base instinct and, even with all our intelligence, most humans still agonize over it.My old cat actually did develop a neurosis about going to the vet after she had surgery on her cheek and every time she had to go to the vet after that she freaked. Sometimes the vet had to sedate her. Before the surgery she was calm as could be at the vet. Ok, back to work for me, no more posting! |
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29-08-2015
Animals can't bullshit themselves out of pain like humans can. They can't tell themselves sure my leg hurts right now but I'll take some tylenol and it'll be better in 30 minutes. For them, a moment of pain might as well be an eternity. I've thought about this too. But then I also thought they don't have a concept of eternity or not. So it's not like they would be thinking to themselves "oh this is gonna last forever" and feel even worse. And then, pleasure must be more pleasurable for them too, right? If they're all in the moment and not suspecting it would end. Oh well, we'll probably never know. But at least animals seem to be spared one agony of realizing own morality and fearing death and wondering what's the purpose of this whole existence... Anyway, here's the cat in blissful serenity, you might have seen on my Facebook pags: Ok, back to work for me, no more posting! Nooooo! |
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29-08-2015 He Irinia, some nice Dostoyevsky quotes here. In my attempt to better grasp and understand the human condition , I became pretty much a Dostoyevsky-addict. So far I have read most of his works, “Notes from the Underground” is still one of my favourites. Almost every page contains some genius quotable lines. This makes even want to learn Russian, just to be able to read the original texts @Dick quote:
When I talk about the 'magic button', my intention would be to take out every living thing, not just people. When you consider the amount of carnage going on in nature and how good old evolution has made it so that everything devours everything else - oftentimes eaten alive no less - I don't understand how you can limit your utopia to a planet that is merely devoid of homo sapiens. Since such a magic button does exit (sorry to bother you with reality) and AN will not reach any significant following (despite Kirks wishful thinking) where does this leave us now? Are we doomed to endless moral philosophizing and armchair-whining? So is all of this just another human and cosmic-salvation-fantasy then? Is it noble or idiotic to attach to such a salvation-fantasy? Yes I think its idiotic… quote:
Suffering is suffering is suffering. My single wish is for it to end. Wholly. Won't happen. sorry. reality is a bitch..i know. --- > Edited 29-08-2015 04:53:15 |
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