2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing

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Yeah, I agree. I hate to admit it, but you're right about something catastrophic usually needing to happen before we make very fundamental changes. Just wish we didn't have to rely on that ****, because it leads to almost wishful thinking for a catastrophe.
Nah, pain and suffering is an important part of personal developement. Just ask anyone who went through basic military training. Of course, most living things want to evade pain and suffering, but without it the world would be full of egotistical manchildren who'd aggressively whine about toys, games and other unimportant, childish stuff.
 
Yes, just try to differentiate between the very personal and policy. We need to inflict pain to avoid pain is probably a venue for destruction and inevitably leads to a 'what doesn't kill me makes me stronger' type of mentality (and then 'strongest is best').

Healthy competition and overcoming challenges are an intrinsic part of the life experience. Teens that go through heartbreaks in their adolescence are better equipped to coordinate romanance later on, for example. The very, very important fine line is understanding what a healthy challenge is. Definitely not a needless, purposeless or scarring one, which is what I'm worried people conflate it with.

If the point of society is not harm-reduction (where purposeful, healthy challenges are a postive), then there's no point to society at all.
 
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I'm still not talking about inflicting pain on others. I'm talking about personal development by getting through hardship. Of course, if it's a whole lot of hardship, it might break the person in a bad way (yes, you can get broken in a good way). But without any hardship in one's life, the person can float away from reality. And suffering through some amount of hardship and learning from it, you can gain enough stronk to suffer through a huge amount of hardship that would have otherwise broken you.
 
Ok, the problem is that I don't actually believe in a hard distinction between personal and public. Our personal opinions of how we, or people should conduct themselves becomes a public opinion when generalised. But I understand you meant in a non-interfering with other people type of way.

I hate to get philosophical, but that's entirely dependent on what your perimeters of 'reality' are. Society right now is completely different from 4000 years ago. We are not in danger every day anymore. Our challenges right now are different. We don't have to look a wolf cub in the eyes and snap its neck anymore, because it's not a threat anymore. It would be needless and purposeless to do it now. And you'd be a cruel, mad person to go to the zoo breaking cubs necks.

To what end are you 'learning' to go through your hardships really? It's a coping mechanic that serves to reduce harm. That's all we ever want.

In the future, we may consider giving natural birth as barbaric and dangerous, because we've developed new, less-painful and safer methods of bringing a kid into the world. It's an uncomfortable mind****, which is why every generation it's 'kids these days'.
 
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No, we do mostly the same as back then: obtainig shelter, safety, source of food, having fun. It's just the form of these things that changed, not our stances toward 'em. We still try to evade danger, or destroy the sources of it, just like our less well dressed forefathers did. A wolf cub might not be a threat anymore, but the fear you feel in proximity of a threat is the same. And, for example, through hardship you can learn to accept and control your fear, which can come in handy if you get into a dangerous or threatening situation.
I get it, you want a world without threats. That's never gonna happen. Like, ever. That's what I meant when I talked about floating away from reality. I don't mean it as an insult, but you seem to have a pretty sheltered life, which results in a limited view of things. That's fairly common in rich western countries. That results in things like toursits here gawping like fish in the plastic bag when getting pickpocketed, never imagining before the possibility of it happening, then they get overwhelmed by total panic. Me being pickpocketed early in my life, which was a harship, prepared me for evading and treating such situations later. But someone living his whole life in a pickpocketless world will be devastated by losing some money and personal papers, and will likely be scarred for life from the event. Some suffering in your life is important, because it will prepare you for the more suffering that will inevitably come later. That is, if you don't believe in eternal life spent in absolute happiness.
 
I am privileged piece of ****, for sure. You, given your circumstances, need to rely on a certain paradigm to... reduce harm to yourself. Which is an illustration of that things are relative. Your skillset is going to differ from mine to increasing your personal well-being. I would derive little or no benefit from your skillset and you little or none from mine. However, we're all still working towards the same overarching goal of reducing harm to ourselves or increasing our well-being.

I don't like making sweeping statements, because I think doing so serves almost no purpose if you try to systemize it or actually start looking for solutions. 'Capitalism is a problem, if only we weren't capitalist, we wouldn't have any problems'. I think that's insultingly lazy of addressing the underlying problems (not that you said that in that shape, way or form).

Which is why I try to look at isolated issues/examples. Would it be beneficial or harmful to know how to snap a wolfs neck given our social and practical arrangements? I would say **** no, get the **** out of here with that sociopathic ****. The (psychological) harm you cause or may cause on your kid, or, other people should it happen that once your kid grows up and he grows a liking to turning necks BY FAR outweighs any sort of benefit you can gain from it from 'building charachter'. This is different from tribal times, where such a skillset would have been quintessential for our survival.

Next topic, should we teach our children self-defence? Given that violence still exists in the world, children should know what it is and how to respond to it. We are still in a world where we can physically constraint one and other. However, should it happen, in the future, that we have (through agreement/technology/whatever) eliminated violence in one way or another, then there is probably no purpose to knowing self-defence. Except if you derive personal pleasure from practicing it as a sport on other consenting people maybe.

I don't need to teach my kid how to kill a man anymore. I'd probably needlessly scar him for life if I did.
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I believe in constant improvement to my happiness given our social and practical arrangements (which is why I reject ideologue shizzle). Knowing how to cope with heartbreaks, understanding violence and all the less fun things are an integral part of knowing how to continue to improve my happiness in the world. Studying is no fun, but in the long-term, I'm going to improve my well-being by doing it.
 
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Oh, I'm pretty sure my street-level skillset would be at least somewhat useful in your environment too. For example, I learned to recognize others' intentions towards me, things like if someone's friendliness is honest or it's just a tool used to get something out of me. That would only be useless if there were nothing but honest people in your country. I doubt that.

What the **** is your problem with wolf cubs? I would never hurt one, even if its parents tried to eat me five minutes before. But you probably have dogs over there, right? Once a rotweiler charget at me, and I needed all my aggressive assholeness honed by hardships to not to panic and get my ass chewed on. I faced him and managed to scare him away. If not for the said hardships, there would be a rotweiler bite sized chunk missing of my meat now. And you know what? After the situation and the adrenaline rush went away, I become that guy again who couldn't hurt a wolf cub.

A world without any kind of violence? That's pure daydreaming. And the only way to stop violence is if you know how to stop violence. If there will be a significant amount of people who don't know anything about violence, that will spawn people who will prey on that.

"I don't need to teach my kid how to kill a man anymore. I'd probably needlessly scar him for life if I did."
Okay, that's a really uninformed opinion. First, everyone knows how to kill a man. Practicing it will put that skill under your control, so you won't have to murder someone when it isn't necessary. And the only way I can imagine it scarring the kid if you actually make him kill a man during practice. I taught martial arts for kids for a year, and they all enjoyed it, all took it seriously (if not always the training session, but the concept of the whole thing) and as far as I know, they didn't practice what they learned on unwilling participants. Also they learned some self control and honesty. Those are pretty far from things that scar you.
 
My intention is to maximize my well-being in some way, always. A hunter with the aquired skillset of a farmer without farmable lands is not really increasing his well-being much. A farmer with the skillset of a hunter without game is not very useful, although maybe a little.

Absolute lol, the wolf cub was honestly not aimed at you.

World without violence is a hypothetical/thought experiment. I can throw realistic ones all day, but it takes a bit to think and write.

Practicing how to kill a man is not practicing martial arts, right? We don't teach kids to kill when we teach them martial arts. But hell yea, I agree that we should absolutely teach kids self-defence and when it's appropriate to use it. And that it should always be proportionate and never with the intent to kill, imo.

You don't have to agree, but food for thought, I thought.
 
Practicing how to kill a man is exactly what martial arts is about. I didn't teach 'em how to be nice to their opponent with a stick in hand, I taught them how to cut that ****er down. Without this part martial arts philosophy doesn't function. You have to become a monster, and you learn to control that monster. That's how you become kung fu stronk.
 
C'mon brom you are not going to defend the position that all martial arts is practiced with intent to kill. If someone punches me, does that mean I kill him? What? Because that's what you're saying we teach. Leave violent cathartic logics behind, engage brain.

You can't assume I have no life experience. I'm originally from the most toxic, peacock-ing, strongman-oriented culture. I've been instilled all this 'what doesn't kill you make you stronger' rhetoric forever. I've been put to practice martial arts since I was a kid (was ranked the 2nd kickboxer in my city for a shot while) and I have very real experiences. I've got into fights throughout my adolescence and young adulthood. I was beaten by a group of soldier types on a military holiday in St. Petersburg. I've been to jail, believe it or not. I've had a loaded gun pointed at me blablabla. I don't like invoking this posturing, anecdotal stuff but you can't just assume I don't ****ing know what conflict is or that your experiences are more valuable.

I'm super curious if you can give a satisfactory answer to why I shouldn't toughen up my kid by giving him beatings once in a while given what you've argued so far.

You too have very real experiences that have made you very capable at addressing an unstable environment. However, if you look at any project that has been successful in reducing crime and cultivating communal and caring people, you will find that it starts with teaching kids empathy, putting them through school, offering them opportunities. NOT by spending valuable time and resources toughening them up. You want a just and sustainable society, then you have to work with what actually works.
 
Yes, empathy and learning is very important. It's a very important part of martial arts too, but that doesn't negate that the skills to **** up someone in short order is very important too. It is pretty important in kickbox either, as far as I know. And as I learned a martial art with weapons in it, having the skill to **** up someone else equals having to skill to kill someone, because that's what swords are good for.
No, not all martial arts are there to teach you how the kill."Soft" martial arts like aikido or (proper) tai chi don't emphasise murder much. But even those give you skills to kill someone if you do them right. Same with the fight sports that got so popular lately.
I don't want to kill anyone ever, not even if someone punches me. But having the skill and knowledge how to do it gives me control over myself in problematic situations, so I probably won't stab someone 50 times with a knife just out of fear. Even just the confidence in myself thanks to the trainings was enough to solve bad situations without violence. And the ideals that I learned along with the murder techniques make me want to solve bad situations without violence. So yes, being a violent **** and a peaceful hippie at the same time is a valid thing.

"I'm super curious if you can give a satisfactory answer to why I shouldn't toughen up my kid by giving him beatings once in a while given what you've argued so far."
You shouldn't do that because assholes do such things, and you wouldn't want to be an *******. I'm talking about personal development in body and mind, not telling others how to be.
 
Term 2 for Trump incoming barring any force majeure.

Yeah this is honestly surreal. The Democrats have nominated a demented plagiarist who was an architect of the bill that caused the student loan crisis, has publicly shamed critics of the Iraq War and Bush Doctrine, and has promised to veto Medicare for All. The Dem leaders are talking about raising SALT deduction caps, demanding means testing, and opening the ACA exchanges while Republicans are proposing a limited implementation of universal healthcare and UBI. It's like the whole world has been turned upside down. Combined with the huge upwards wealth transfer that just took place (and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, even from the most progressive politicians out there), I feel like a big political upheaval is on the way in the next decade.
 
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