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Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

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Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#671

Post by farmaway »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #650
farmaway wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but pretty much all of them agree with the idea that everyone should be entitled to basic decency. This is begging the question. Disagreement over what "basic decency" means is the heart of the LGBTIAP+ debate, just like disagreement over when life begins and what that means is at the heart of the abortion issue. Some think "basic decency" means transitioning schoolchildren behind their parents' backs, providing the…

> Disagreement over what "basic decency" means is the heart of the LGBTIAP+ debate, Okay, let's put it another way. Pretty much all of them agreed with me about the entitlement to basic decency. From this, I conclude that my views about basic decency probably aren't all that controversial, after all. This disagreement exists online, and in the press. I haven't seen it in the real world. If "the heart of the […] debat…

The President of the United States of America:

https://nypost.com/2022/10/24/biden-calls-curbs-on-treatment...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-transgender-youth-state...

I have family and friends in K-12 education. If you question LGBTQIAP+ or fail to affirm a kids' gender self-identification, you are out of a job. Wesley Yang has covered this topic extensively, and is a good one to follow on Twitter:

https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/i-needed-love-i-needed-sup...

https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/i-felt-like-she-was-settin...

https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/the-dangerous-overreach-of...

>I currently lean towards the "radical autonomy" end of the spectrum, in case you haven't picked up on that

I believe you. That approach endangers children, has no scientific basis, and will be stopped in the courts. Kids do not have the capacity to make permanent, life-altering decisions about fertility or sexuality. They do not and cannot understand the implications and consequences of their actions. Responsible adults must safeguard them into adulthood.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#672

Post by nextlevelwizard »

jacooper wrote: post #77
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have non-standard opinions anymore. All opinions are now politics. If I say I like guns people instantly categorize me as Right-Wing-Nut or Alt-Right-Nut. If you express any kind of differing opinion publicly you will be associated with everything and anything the person hates. There are differing opinions, but those need to be kept private for fear of retaliation.

100% Wait what? You adopt some right wing ideas and some leftist ideas? You are "modernist"?, you are just a right/left winger!!!(depending on their enemy)/s

Don’t know why you are downvoted. It is common to be called a “fence sitter” if you aren’t completely aligned with views of one of the US parties.

Like everyone says I like to form my own opinions, but sometimes life is just simpler when I don’t voice those opinions publicly. Most of the time whatever shit storm was brewing is already forgotten by lunchtime anyway.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#673

Post by tonfreed »

koprulusector wrote: post #560
narrator wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down. Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we hav…

The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…

Spoken like a true 1960s establishment thinker.

Put yourself in the shoes of a WW2 veteran in the 60s. He sees his children get sucked into drug culture and protesting against the military that just 20 years ago saved the Pacific from tyranny. You turn on the news and see them making a nuisance of themselves in the streets. They're ungroomed, ugly, and do weird sex stuff.

You ask yourself where you went wrong raising them and lament the collapse of society and death of American values.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#674

Post by jjk166 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #558
jjk166 wrote: post #484

If you only consume mainstream media then you may personally live in a society which lacks a counterculture. You strike up a conversation with the girl picking mushrooms in the middle of nowhere or you go to an underground death metal concert or spend a bit of time on 4chan and you'll find countercultures alive and well that you're just not part of. If you think a sense of sameness pervades the creative world then yo…

> If you think a sense of sameness pervades the creative world then you must be looking at a woefully tiny portion of the creative world. It has never been easier to be weird nor easier to find weirdness. Covered in the 14: "Alternative voices exist-in fact, they are everywhere--but are rarely heard, and their cultural impact is negligible."

Not at all. The weird stuff is well heard and has a large cultural impact. You'll have no problem finding countless examples of weird things that have been viewed and interacted with by hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Compare that to say a punk band in the 80s that may have only had a few thousand people ever see it perform, or even the entire hippie movement which was only about half a million people at its peak.

Yeah, these things are still smaller and less impactful than the mainstream culture, but that's what it means to be a counterculture.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#675

Post by sjducb »

koprulusector wrote: post #560
narrator wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down. Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we hav…

The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…

You can easily make the same case about 4 Chan.

4 Chan is rooted in things that are objectively good: free thought, satire and not taking anything too seriously.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#676

Post by runarberg »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #602
runarberg wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but for counter culture, I think the artifacts are kind of important, as it communicates your involvement inside that culture. It is kind of hard to imagine punk without the music, the cloths, the hairstyles, the graffiti, etc. Sure it is also hard to imagine punk without the Anarchy, but if you think of early punks, with their heavy drinking and male dominant behavior, and compare it to modern punk which tho…

Sure, monarchists literally have the monarchy, prison abolitionists have a wide variety of songs/books/icons, etc. I don't understand what you're trying to differentiate.

First of all, I’d like to make a distinction between monarchists and royalists. Monarchists is a political group with certain believes around the structure of the government. Royalists on the other hand is a cultural group that enjoys certain events.

If you look at the cultural artifacts of royalists you’ll find they enjoy and attend events around, for example royal weddings, they gather in forums where they share gossip around, e.g. the Romanovs. It doesn’t matter if they like to keep Putin as president, or if they would like to re-inaugurate the Romanovs as tsars, as political believes are orthogonal to the culture (although I do admit it would be kind of weird to find an anarchist royalist). To that extent I think of royalists more like Eurovision fans.

Likewise if you look at the quintessential prison abolitionist Angela Davis. Now describe her speech, her hairstyle, her public events, etc. You’ll find many prison abolitionists that don’t share any of it, however if you’ll look for people that share these cultural artifacts, you’ll find a bunch of radicals. Radicals is exactly the cultural group which I would ascribe Angela Davis as belonging to.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#677

Post by Perceval »

koprulusector wrote: post #560
narrator wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you know 4chan is the counterculture is every time someone releases a new generative art tool, 4chan figures out a way to do stuff with it that makes the creators have to restrict and/or shut it down. Like in the 1960s how the mainstream culture would whisper under their breath and point in shock and horror at hippies and try to get them banned from various public venues, and send mobs to beat them up, we hav…

The hippies were shit on during the sixties because of politics and the Vietnam war. The hippies were a big part of the anti war movement. The simplest and quickest way to shutting the movement down was to criminalize its constituents, like hippies, or civil rights activists, through tactics like draconian drug laws and a drug war. The hippies were rooted in things that were objectively good: peace, love, self discov…

> homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels

This is the counter-culture. The dominant culture opposes all of these things and makes obligatory the celebration of the opposite values. 4chan being one of the few lightly-restricted free speech zones allows for culture generation that would be censored anywhere else. Counter-culture is supposed to be edgy, just like jazz and rock were edgy, greasers/rockabilly were edgy, beatniks were edgy, hippies were edgy, disco was edgy, punks were edgy, LGBTQ was edgy, and so on. Every one of them were described by dismissive epithets just like the string you put together about how awful and contrary to decency they were.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#678

Post by throwaway894345 »

leshow wrote: post #594
throwaway894345 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police budgets are up, but policing is down, killings by police are way down, and consequentially violent crime is way, way up. Protesters didn’t get everything, but they got a lot of what they asked for (reduction in policing, basically) and they seem content (no more major protests or riots since the precipitous drop in policing following the Floyd protests). It seems hard to argue that there haven’t been disruptiv…

This is such a misunderstanding of the current situation. The demands were varied, but common ask was _not_ just a reduction in policing paired with a ballooning police budget. Ironically, the "defund" movement ended up causing an even more reactionary movement such that police actually got more funding. Protesters wanted to re-allocate resources away from the police towards other services, so that cops are not the f…

Society did not get abruptly and dramatically unequal between 2013 and 2015 nor between 2019 and 2020. Socioeconomics doesn’t predict these crime surges.

Richard Rosenfeld speaking to The Guardian: “The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson Effect”

Vox reporting on Travis Campbell’s research: “Campbell’s research indicates that these protests correlate with a 10% increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests”.

Harvard’s Roland Fryer and Tanaya Devi found that prominent BLM protests were associated with 900 excess homicides in the 5 cities they examined and 34k excess felonies. They report that the leading hypothesis is a change in policing activity, and the cities they studied had precipitous drops in the quantity of police-civilian interactions following the protests.

These are professional criminologists and economists—I doubt they’re being “silly” as you suggest.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#679

Post by zirgs »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #372
zirgs wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people are still against gay marriage in the USA. In many states it was legalised against the wishes of the majority. And it can be made illegal again. Just like abortions.

The public opinion numbers on this topic have changed drastically over the last two decades. It's an increasingly minority opinion. In 2004 it was 2:1 against same sex marriage. By 2022 it's 6:4 in favor. It's probably outdated to consider opposition to same sex marriage a majority opinion in much of the US. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/11/15/about-six-i...

In some states that's not a minority opinion. And the court decision also was kinda flimsy - 5:4 instead of 8:1 or something like that. That 5:4 can become 4:5 in the future. And just like abortions - gay marriage can become illegal in some states again.

Re: Do we live in a society without a counterculture?

#680

Post by dotconnector »

The purpose of 'counterculture' is an outlet for dissatisfaction, allowing the neo-colonial system to continue operating smoothly. Preferably getting the dissatisfied to buy things and serve their function among the colonized.

The only true counterculture would be about changing the circumstances enabling the neo-colonial system, and this is the fear of the neo-colonialists and their enablers who benefit from status-quo. Everything else is window-dressing, distraction, and detours, made up to look like change.

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