Do we live in a society without a counterculture? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:36 PM UTC

n0tth3dro1ds wrote: post #57

ArnoVW wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of counterculture is that it 'counters'. I.e. it inherently searches to change or influence the dominant culture. Your examples do show that we are (thankfully) not a monoculture. But they place themselves outside of our culture, instead trying to influence. A good example of counter culture is BLM, Extinction Rebellion or Occupy Wallstreet. Only thing: those are movements, not cultures. And they are…

>BLM >LGBT >counter culture Endlessly supported by literally every news outlet, major tech company, big 5 sports league, F1000, university, and at least half of the political class. You’re not counter to any major institution, lmao. You’re not the resistance

"Supported" in only the very thinnest sense. The Raytheon Pride flags are generally considered to be extremely "virtue signalling" even within the community; at best this means "we'll allow you to work here and prevent people using slurs openly in the office", not "we'll stop donating to politicians and parties pushing anti-trans legislation or increased police budgets".

The Tyre Nichols incident response shows some improvements, but those responsible have not yet been charged, and because US police are so fragmented it will be a very long time before standards are raised nationally.

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

#242

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:37 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #198

z3c0 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what you're describing is exactly where "counterculture" flips over to "culture". It may have been counterculture at one point, but once it's grabbed up by the mainstream canon, it is no longer counterculture. This is an important element of "cool", which is essentially the ebb-and-flow of ideas between counterculture and mainstream culture.

Pretty sure BLM was a media darling from the moment it was discovered. Maybe I have a weird media bubble, but the content I saw was endlessly pro-BLM (even contortions such as the memorable CNN reporter wearing a gas mask against a burning Kenosha with the caption “fiery but mostly peaceful protests”) for most of the last decade. I can’t think of a way that BLM was ever counter-cultural.

> I can’t think of a way that BLM was ever counter-cultural.

Fighting the police is about as counter as you can get.

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

#243

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #216

cfltlayoffs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a superficial understanding of "support". They make their logo rainbow for a month. None of the groups you mentioned support police abolition, prison abolition, for instance. Police budgets still go up. Homeless encampments still get bulldozed. Black people are still killed by police. Capitalists have co-opted the least disruptive demands of advocates in an attempt to draw attention away from the actual…

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…

> killings by police are way down

[citation needed]

> consequentially violent crime is way, way up.

You're claiming that the US, unlike the rest of the civilized world, can't address crime without having death squads summarily execute people for trivial or imagined offences every other week?

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

#244

Post by machina_ex_deus » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

GalenErso wrote: post #225

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, so I am right that this is counter culture? I said this and it triggered you to jump and respond with fact checks and whatever. https://web.archive.org/web/20060212064058/https://www.merri... Can also show you that the dominant medical narrative around vaccines was that they provide immunity (except in the case of immune compromised individuals). To this day I'm actually astonished watching the entire medical co…

> The definition of vaccine (provides immunity) "That technical coarseness might help explain why several historical vaccines have been assumed to be sterilizing. With measles, for instance, scientists initially lacked the tests needed to show them otherwise" (from the Atlantic article) > recession (two quarters of contraction), "Is Recession Staring Us Down? Already Upon Us? Here’s Why It’s Hard to Say. The U.S. may…

Thanks for citing all those mainstream media news. Too bad I don't shape my perception of reality on their nonsense. They are literally just other humans. You have no common sense firewall or consistency if you allow these people to reprogram you. You're just proving my point that these deconstruction of language and values come from the media.

Get some common sense anti virus for your brain. You're being fed bad training input to get the desired output. The desired output is having a dumb society of wage slaves who get to choose between two options and think they are free.

Society of people where you can keep suggesting terrible "choices" to people like self genital mutilation (the real choice being self-acceptance), killing fetuses (the real choice was making the fetus in the first place), and picking between two equally corrupt parties, or losing your job and taking a worthless vaccine. And those sheep in that society will reprogram themselves to only act on the choices presented and never think for themselves.

Society where the only non-binary choice you get to make, is quite ironically, "your gender", which is literally the most binary non-choice you're ever given. But of course the maximum false choices presented will be where you don't really have a choice at all.

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

#245

Post by jrochkind1 » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #224

jrochkind1 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your argument is wrong in several ways, but even accepting it hypothetically -- equality of far too many murders by the police is not actually what anyone is looking for.

It’s certainly not what I’m looking for, but BLM was obviously about purported racial inequality with respect to police killings or else Daniel Shaver, Tony Timpa, Justine Damond, etc would be among the Names that we’re told to Say.

So it's not monolithic, I've definitely been at "BLM"-y protests against police violence where non-Black victims were mentioned.

As far as actual policy changes we might want to advocate for or support, does it make any difference? I guess it would mean that "diversity training" for cops is not the way to go -- I agree and I think most BLM organizers would too (the ones I know anyway do). Instead ways that increase police accountability or limit police interactions are the way to go, which I again think would be agreeable.

I think the level of violence and aggression that police enact on certain communities would probably not be tolerated if it affected people with more political power -- they target people with less political power, which has racial components in the USA is why race matters, but is not exclusively "black and white", sure.

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

#246

Post by goodpoint » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:49 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #144

viraptor wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the colour of your logo on a certain date is not really "supporting". Corps gonna corp and if changing the logo and publishing some nice post brings more money, they'll do it. (While donating to Republicans at the same time)

If signalling support for X is good publicity then X is mainstream regardless of intentions.

Not for a second.

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

#247

Post by Mezzie » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

Pigalowda wrote: post #237

Mezzie wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering lately if it's down to the lack of agency on the part of average people. Like I see that America is in decline and has a decent chance of falling apart in my lifetime (I'm 34), but what exactly am I going to do about it? Nobody in charge cares, they're too busy fiddling. If you can't stop the decline and have to live it, why not try to enjoy what you have while you have it?

I’m 37 so we’re pretty much the same cohort. And I’ve also reached that conclusion - I get out of the city and ski and hike, spend time with SO, etc. I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to. However, my daily commutes through seattle runs me right into the Pioneer square station and I swear it’s like something from “t…

> I won’t be dragged into the bullshit doomerism and constant shifting existential crises that online and west coasters seem to be addicted to.

The thing that's interesting about this is that human beings in acute distress are less adept at planning ahead and being creative. Which means that people in the doom cycle can't start building new institutions to challenge the old ones that are decaying and pillaging. The perverse incentives that got us to this point are also disincentivizing fixing the problems.

I don't even want to think about what Pioneer Square is like now. It was sketchy when I lived in Seattle and that was 10 years ago. I agree that even with some healthy distance/putting on your own oxygen mask first, it's very demoralizing. My trust in people is much lower than it used to be.

I'm not sure rural or suburban areas are much better. Most of the malignancy just happens in private.

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

#248

Post by Stranger43 » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:50 PM UTC

The counterculture of the day is the MAGA movement they have their own reality and is begging for a fight, until someone shows up to give them one and is basically an text book example on an co-dependent counterculture that cannot exist without the mainstream culture existing as something to counter.

I know it's kind of tipping the debate on the head to suggest that the counterculture is not the "future left" but the "3rd way right" but there is nothing in the mechanics of mainstream to counterculture that suggest that the challenge to the mainstream have to come from the traditional left.

And like the Hippies of the(mostly post civil rights movement) counterculture the maga trumpets are only tangentially linked to any concrete actionable goals as it's about a return to the past that never was without any real clear idea of what that's supposed to look like only that they personally will be bigshots once it happens.

What is however increasingly clear is that the traditional left have been hunted into extinction by both the radical centrist mainstream and the right-wing counterculture as neither of those movement's have any real appetite for the old optimistic "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" values of the enlightenment, but prefers stability through authority as a response to an world they mostly don't understand.

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

#249

Post by zirgs » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

AmericanChopper wrote: post #150

zirgs wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other countries it's still kinda "edgy". Yeah - gay pride is allowed and my bank changed its app icon to include rainbow colours. There also are no "LGBT propaganda" laws so gay-friendly pop culture is allowed. (Like movies depicting same sex families) But at the same time gay marriages and civil unions are both illegal. Adoption for gay couples is illegal too. Even if they are performed abroad. The state still tr…

The article (and my comments, and I believe the comments I was replying to) are referring to the United States.

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.

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

#250

Post by gbN025tt2Z1E2E4 » Wed, Feb 01, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

defrost wrote: post #193

gbN025tt2Z1E2E4 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's a simple equation from a societal health perspective. As things are currently, society is well below the minimum and ideal birth replacement rates (scarily low in fact). So from that perspective, promotion of homosexuality runs directly counter to what is best for society as a whole versus what is currently seen as best for any one individual.

> society is well below the minimum and ideal birth replacement rates (scarily low in fact). The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, Your opinion and the actual growth rates do not seem to be in agreement.

> Your opinion and the actual growth rates do not seem to be in agreement.

Believe me or not, it makes no difference to me. I know I'm right.

Even the resident HN golden boy Elon Musk has been very outspoken recently about his significant concerns regarding the forthcoming population collapse. So it's happening whether you want to acknowledge it or not.