Ariana Grande
According to all the statistics I linked you to, no, this is fact. If you measure the quality of civilization in terms of how it limits the prevalence of casual violence on the populous (and subtopics like racism, child abuse, spousal abuse, rape, etc) then this is demonstrably the best things have ever been. And I think not getting randomly killed or violently beaten is a reasonable indicator to use, in the sense that any civilization where the inverse is true is not particularly civilized.Leisher wrote:Counselor is stating opinion, not fact your honor.
You have to admit, that is purely opinion. Yes, you could argue all our technological and social advancements, but it's still a matter of opinion unless we were specifically saying "What period of human history is the best in terms of technology?"
I will agree that there are other things that are also important for a truly great civilization, but limiting violence and murder is an important first hurdle that we're still not quite past yet but have been getting better at.
Banning items because they hurt people's feelings isn't good. A porn star and gold digger being an idol of a generation of women probably isn't the best thing ever. The ridiculousness of political correctness is not exactly improving society. The MSM bias dictating elections. Cops being armed like armies. The war on drugs. Illegal immigrants being treated as voters instead of criminals draining our economy. Etc. The list goes on.
First I did say we do have many problems. But I think your priorities are a bit messed up. You seem to put too much weight on what people say and very little importance on what they do. Who gives a fuck if people are whining about PC stuff? Just ignore them, they aren't going to actually kill you over it. If the MSM had that much control there wouldn't be a Republican left in Congress so clearly that's not true. No one has actually made a law against the confederate flag yet, and if they did it would get overturned as unconstitutional. The list goes on.
You are right about cops and the drug war. That's part of the stuff we need to still work on. But neither of these problems is part of some new problem; we've had a drug war for many decades now and there have always been bad cops. The difference is now thanks to the internet we can find out about them and start to fix that problem instead of it getting swept under the rug.
The bottom line is man up and stop getting upset about what assholes say. They're assholes, saying stupid shit is what they do. It's what they've done for all of time, just before the internet you didn't have the opportunity to hear them unless they were famous enough to be on TV. The idiocy is not new just more visible. Stop looking at it if it bothers you that much.
Me I think it's perfectly reasonable to measure the quality of civilization based on what people do instead of what they say. And by those measures we are still going up.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
And before you say something like "when I was a kid we could play outside without fear of being abducted" statistics clearly show that the trend of parents worrying about that is total bullshit. Abductions of children are at an all time low. Let them play outside and don't be a spastic worrying ass about it. (EDIT: Not calling you an ass, this in reference to those parents that act like asses. Just thought this might have come off as a personal attack and wanted to clarify)
But people react with their gut instead of their brains, and now thanks to amber alerts we all know when a child has been abducted. It doesn't matter that it's getting more rare, the fact that we can now see the few that still happen when we couldn't before - except when buying milk - makes people panic and believe it happens more often. When it absolutely does not.
EDIT: Oh, and as for modern role models the old ones weren't any good either. Like I pointed out in the Alamo thread, Sam Houston was a drunkard and David Crockett was all show and no action, but people still looked up to them. History has whitewashed the heroes of yesteryear, but most of them weren't any better than what we have to work with today. Again it comes down to information; the problem isn't that heroes are worse, it's that we know more about them than people did in the past.
Edited By TPRJones on 1436476958
But people react with their gut instead of their brains, and now thanks to amber alerts we all know when a child has been abducted. It doesn't matter that it's getting more rare, the fact that we can now see the few that still happen when we couldn't before - except when buying milk - makes people panic and believe it happens more often. When it absolutely does not.
EDIT: Oh, and as for modern role models the old ones weren't any good either. Like I pointed out in the Alamo thread, Sam Houston was a drunkard and David Crockett was all show and no action, but people still looked up to them. History has whitewashed the heroes of yesteryear, but most of them weren't any better than what we have to work with today. Again it comes down to information; the problem isn't that heroes are worse, it's that we know more about them than people did in the past.
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"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
There is a lot that's better. There's a lot that's trending downwards. We have a culture priding itself on handling diversity with gays and minorities and women and everything else along those lines, but handling a little diversity like Facebook being down and people have a meltdown. How would they do if things really got hard? All the things that are better over the last 50 years are also making us soft. Culture has advanced and fallen back throughout time. I think this next time it starts to get shaky, we're in trouble. We no longer have a good foundation.
In Logan's Run, society was pretty awesome by every standard TPR had mentioned. But the things that made us a species worth preserving was gone.
In Logan's Run, society was pretty awesome by every standard TPR had mentioned. But the things that made us a species worth preserving was gone.
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
Hurricanes have shown me that when real adversity comes, people actually respond. Granted, I haven't seen one in a while, but I think people are fundamentally fine.
The crap you are exposed to is what has changed. People were always whiny little bitches, and whining about Facebook used to be whining about Myspace, or dial-up, or their Walkman, or McDonalds getting your order wrong or whatever. You see more edge cases than you used to. Instead of seeing a few or few hundred people in a day, you can see millions, because someone can forward you some bullshit someone said on the internet at lightspeed.
The crap you are exposed to is what has changed. People were always whiny little bitches, and whining about Facebook used to be whining about Myspace, or dial-up, or their Walkman, or McDonalds getting your order wrong or whatever. You see more edge cases than you used to. Instead of seeing a few or few hundred people in a day, you can see millions, because someone can forward you some bullshit someone said on the internet at lightspeed.
It's not me, it's someone else.
Precisely this.TheCatt wrote:Hurricanes have shown me that when real adversity comes, people actually respond. Granted, I haven't seen one in a while, but I think people are fundamentally fine.
The crap you are exposed to is what has changed. People were always whiny little bitches, and whining about Facebook used to be whining about Myspace, or dial-up, or their Walkman, or McDonalds getting your order wrong or whatever. You see more edge cases than you used to. Instead of seeing a few or few hundred people in a day, you can see millions, because someone can forward you some bullshit someone said on the internet at lightspeed.
We're Back: A Dinosaur's Story
Not really. I mean there's still some raping going on and almost everyone gets murdered at age 30, so by those standards Logan's Run was not awesome. It would quite a bit worse than what we have now.In Logan's Run, society was pretty awesome by every standard TPR had mentioned.
But if we ever do mostly conquer rape and violence and all of that then I would say other priorities start to become more important, like personal freedoms and how the society values advancement and creativity and basic human decency. Those things have value already, of course, and I'd say they're probably also at an all-time high, but I still think not being murdered or raped is more important than everyone being generally polite.
Do people freak out about stupid shit, like Facebook going down? Sure. People have always freaked out about stupid shit, though, so again this is not new. And all in all I'd rather they were freaking out about Facebook being down than freaking out because some black guy married a white girl. But even more importantly that comes back to people saying things rather than people doing things. Why do you care so much what people are saying? Ignore them, they are just stupid people and their words have no value.
Finally are we too soft if things get so bad that we have to live off the land to survive? Maybe, but it doesn't matter. The real problem there is that going back to the old ways would mean we could only support a tiny fraction of our population anyway. Even if we were all hard as nails a good 90% of us would die just because there's no way to support our large population with hunting & gathering, or even basic agriculture. Hell you should be happy that so many people are getting soft because it means if you aren't soft you have a better chance of being in the 10% that might survive.
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"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Hurricanes have shown me that when real adversity comes, people actually respond.
When real adversity comes, pussies fold. Bad-asses respond. Those aren't 0/1 terms, it's a continuous spectrum. Fortunately, being a pussy means you can also be bullied into being useful. One bad-ass can intimidate 100 pussies into doing work. Unfortunately, not every bad-ass is benign. If your society has problems on either front, that hurricane will bury you.
If people responded properly to every crisis, the LA riots wouldn't have happened. Like looters are harder to combat than nature?
I truly don't know what's gonna happen when the lights go out, Carolyn, but I do know, once the dying starts, this little psycho fuck family of ours is gonna rip itself apart.
TPRJones wrote:Ignore them, they are just stupid people and their words have no value.
Seriously?
Stupid people have as much power as their numbers allow and I have to deal with them. And they got a fuck-ton-load of numbers, I admit. On one hand, I'd love to be able to ignore their opinions. On the other hand, those opinions populate Congress and the White House.
Edited By Malcolm on 1436484440
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Fortunately on most issues there's as many stupid people on one side as on the other, so they mostly balance out and become useless. And so they can mostly be safely ignored. Or you could get all worked up about what they are saying, but then that can quickly lead to you becoming equally stupid. I prefer the former.Malcolm wrote:Stupid people have as much power as their numbers allow and I have to deal with them. And they got a fuck-ton-load of numbers, I admit. On one hand, I'd love to be able to ignore their opinions. On the other hand, those opinions populate Congress and the White House.
Admittedly sometimes the balance breaks and we get the ACA or the TSA. But trying to stop the stupid is about as useful as yelling at a hurricane.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
But trying to stop the stupid is about as useful as yelling at a hurricane.
Nah. They need an opposing force since we've decided natural selection is too cruel. I can stand idle against them no more than Chuck Heston can let go of his guns. I don't want to, I'd rather relax and not have to. If you could ignore the idiocy as much as you claim, your flip-off rate in traffic would be less than what you say.
And so they can mostly be safely ignored.
Important word emphasized.
Admittedly sometimes the balance breaks and we get the ACA or the TSA.
Multi-billion dollar mistakes that indirectly cost people lives by sucking up and wasting cash that might otherwise be spent on more worthy endeavours.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
If you could ignore the idiocy as much as you claim, your flip-off rate in traffic would be less than what you say.
Online idiocy I can generally ignore, but idiocy in person must be properly punctuated. Most people seem to approach that the other way around, maybe I'm just miswired.
Multi-billion dollar mistakes that indirectly cost people lives by sucking up and wasting cash that might otherwise be spent on more worthy endeavours.
Agreed. But even so that also is not new. We've been blowing money on stupid stuff since forever. The cost is bigger than before, but that's just inflation. As a percentage of GDP I'd bet the stupid has been pretty constant for the last 100 years.
EDIT: And the pyramids are proof enough that stupid has been a common government expense for quite some time.
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"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
You've got a bit of a quantum attitude with it. "At the polls" is in person enough for me. Online, hah, I don't give a fuck. I'm not talking quite face-to-face, either, though.
I just can't believe that. I saw a noticeable uptick after WWII. I think it's ramping up. I think it's stupidity's natural tendency to climb until some critical mass is reached. More stable things require more stupidity to crack. Here's my theory on that.
The stupids/pussies have an ability to be more public, published, vocal, and visible than ever before. I hate to keep being a tool quoting lyrics, but damned if they don't sum up volumes of my thoughts:
Bad-asses, particularly good ones, aren't always inclined to be as animated and out there. As I said, it's not a 0/1 classification. The substrata that worries me is the militant stupids/pussies. Brutal enough to prefer resolution by force, but puerile enough be completely misguided. They compete with bad-asses for recruitment of the lesser stupids/pussies.
Like with the Confed flag fight.
Like with equal treatment of LGBT (damn that's a unharmonic acronym, they need something better) rights and marriages.
Like with the gun control issue.
Like with the Greek debt dealie.
Like with all the bullshit climate talk.
We very narrowly avoided WWIII on more than a few occasions in the past sixty years. One day, that penny is going to come up bad. Hell, might not even be a "world war." But it'll be something just as destructive.
Edited By Malcolm on 1436489668
As a percentage of GDP I'd bet the stupid has been pretty constant for the last 100 years.
I just can't believe that. I saw a noticeable uptick after WWII. I think it's ramping up. I think it's stupidity's natural tendency to climb until some critical mass is reached. More stable things require more stupidity to crack. Here's my theory on that.
The stupids/pussies have an ability to be more public, published, vocal, and visible than ever before. I hate to keep being a tool quoting lyrics, but damned if they don't sum up volumes of my thoughts:
But real gangsta-ass niggas don't flex much
Cuz real gangsta-ass niggas know they got em
Bad-asses, particularly good ones, aren't always inclined to be as animated and out there. As I said, it's not a 0/1 classification. The substrata that worries me is the militant stupids/pussies. Brutal enough to prefer resolution by force, but puerile enough be completely misguided. They compete with bad-asses for recruitment of the lesser stupids/pussies.
Like with the Confed flag fight.
Like with equal treatment of LGBT (damn that's a unharmonic acronym, they need something better) rights and marriages.
Like with the gun control issue.
Like with the Greek debt dealie.
Like with all the bullshit climate talk.
We very narrowly avoided WWIII on more than a few occasions in the past sixty years. One day, that penny is going to come up bad. Hell, might not even be a "world war." But it'll be something just as destructive.
Edited By Malcolm on 1436489668
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
The prolonged existence of the two completely shitty political choices we have is only further proof of my hypothesis.TPRJones wrote:As long as the polls have a party ticket voting option, stupid is going to be a big part of the process."At the polls" is in person enough for me.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
We've only had the ability to outright blow the shit out of everything for less than 100 years. Tech is catching up. I can only imagine what would have happened if Richard the Lion-Hearted and Saladin had nukes.TPRJones wrote:And the fact that it's been going on for so long yet we still seem to be muddling through as well - or better - than we ever did is proof of mine.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
It's really hard to quantify, but I am more in line with Leisher. We are losing something. Lincoln was called "Honest Abe". Washington had the story of the cherry tree. And while that story itself was made up, the man's virtue was real (which spawned the story). Today what we get is, "well everyone lies about sex".
Hundreds of years ago, 300 Spartans marched to certain death to engage the Persians in battle. Alll knew it was hopeless, but they fought and became legends. Today a woman a woman gets brain cancer and decides it's better to take her own life with an overdose of drugs and we label a quitter as brave and some sort of hero. An actual American hero, Chris Kyle is slammed as an Islamophobe. Our priorities are getting quite fucked. When the shit really hits it, will we even still recognize the values needed to lead? We haven't demonstrated it in some number of elections, so I have my doubts.
Hundreds of years ago, 300 Spartans marched to certain death to engage the Persians in battle. Alll knew it was hopeless, but they fought and became legends. Today a woman a woman gets brain cancer and decides it's better to take her own life with an overdose of drugs and we label a quitter as brave and some sort of hero. An actual American hero, Chris Kyle is slammed as an Islamophobe. Our priorities are getting quite fucked. When the shit really hits it, will we even still recognize the values needed to lead? We haven't demonstrated it in some number of elections, so I have my doubts.
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
Hundreds of years ago, 300 Spartans marched to certain death to engage the Persians in battle.
Bullshit. That was more or less, allegedly, because the Spartan king ordered the rest of the Greeks to beat it the fuck back to Athens while they held off the enemy. A couple city-states not under his control refused his command. The dudes that organized the evacuation of Athens played just as big a part as the ones that took arrows to the face.
The contingent of 700 Thespians, led by their general Demophilus, refused to leave with the other Greeks and committed themselves to the fight. Also present were the 400 Thebans, and probably the helots that had accompanied the Spartans.
700 Thespians, 400 Thebans, 300 Spartans, and their helot slaves, which outnumbered them by at least an order of magnitude. The Spartans contributed the least amount of troops. Probably the largest total volume of testicles, though.
Edited By Malcolm on 1436492339
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."