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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#291

Post by dragonwriter »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #250
ineedasername wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years That's a bit of a myth, thrown around a lot but not quite true. It has existed in some form, but by no means remained changeless. The doctrine is substantially similar but then we can say the same thing about Judaism. Here, we're really talking about the organization, which has many issues: -The East-West schism in 1054 tore the Catholic Church i…

I did stipulate until Vatican II , and my point is rather how little the preceding millenium of reformations and Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church. It undeniably had some impact, like the reformation created a need for educating priests to be able to actually argue their case. But the shape of the organization was largely the same through all of this.

> I did stipulate until Vatican II, and my point is rather how little the preceding millenium of reformations and Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church

Clearly, that was your point. It's just completely wrong given things like the Gregorian Reform.

You'd have a better argument that the Catholic Church has been largely unchanged in the nearly 1000 years since the Gregorian reform (or, even better, the 700+ years after the series of reforms starting there and running through the 13th century councils) than the 1600 years between Constantine and Vatican II. It’d still be making the qualifier “largely” do an unreasonable amount of work, though.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#292

Post by daviross »

jaqalopes wrote: post #7

I think some things are falling apart but not everything. If you had the foresight/luck/guidance to get into a stable white collar career, find a partner, and buy a house before 2022 I think you're on "the train". This train is currently pulling away from a burning station containing everyone else who hasn't done those things yet. It's still possible to escape the station by running down the tracks but at this point…

This is a good way of putting it. Having graduated high school in 2008, it's felt my entire adult life like I've been reaching for brass rings just within reach (for me), barely clinging on, but still doing better than so many people who weren't even in position to do that.

We'll see about 'stable', there's some work I need to do if I want this to be sustainable/not something I'm at risk at crashing down from, but I've made it on the train while feeling the flames lapping at my neck.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#293

Post by oktroomer »

4ggr0 wrote: post #228
throwaway602ee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this comment. It's so exhausting hearing constant anti-trans rhetoric from all sorts of places that any support at all is nice to see. I am so tired of being a scapegoat and it's becoming terrifying because it doesn't seem to be slowing down. If anything, it seems like the world is becoming less tolerant. I frequently wonder where I can move -- if anywhere -- where my existence will not be questioned re…

Yeah, the thing which bothers me the most is that people don't even try to educate themselves. What do you think my reaction was, when I first heard of trans-people as a young teenager? Of course I laughed a bit and wondered why people think that genders are fictional and why a man would ever be able to be a woman. But with time I got more curious, educated myself, thought about it, and I think I understand it pretty…

No post body was provided.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#294

Post by kderbyma »

4ggr0 wrote: post #91
qwertyuiop_ wrote: post #59

Quoted post unavailable.

So for you Trans-People are a sign that the end is near? If that's your biggest worry I'd really like to be in your situation.

what is your biggest worry for society? Also...what does society mean to you, and would you consider in the context of your reply that there may be different perspectives and possibly multiple societies simultaneously so perhaps clarifying your scope of society and it's impacts.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#295

Post by epicureanideal »

ozzythecat wrote: post #222
ravenstine wrote: post #111

Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…

I think there’s something more fundamental going on in the US. First, I’d want to say that we as humans love to simplify complex things. There are large macroeconomic trends at play that are boring or hard to explain, and it’s easier to blame immigrants, social media, or blame because that gives us an outlet to make sense out of complexity. For politicians, depending on their political leanings, it gives them a way t…

> They want a standard of living that requires competitiveness globally, but in this country, we no longer want to work for it.

That’s not what I see at all. Most working people in the current generation are working more hours, at more skilled jobs, with more education than their parents, and yet the lifestyle they can afford (aside from tech gadgets) is worse and less secure than their parents.

I’m pessimistic about more young people studying subjects that are not useful, but I think in general this generation has gotten a bad (financial) deal in comparison.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#296

Post by bluGill »

blauditore wrote: post #251
TimPC wrote: post #211

I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…

> They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from them at any one time. This doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme though. Even if population size is stable, if people on average work longer than they are retired, they have to pay less than they receive, all things equal. A problem here has been that people get increasingly older, so they spend a larger percentage of their life being retired, maki…

> The most obvious solution to this is raising the age of retirement, but that's always politically difficult and somehow seen as cruel.

There is another problem: many people go into decline as they get older. My company retires some people at 40 with a full pension because most people physically cannot do the job anymore (I'm not sure if they are able to do much else after that). Airpline pilots are required to retire at 60 (I don't remember the exact age) because we are sure none are very far into mental decline even though a few could work for 30 more years.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#297

Post by ElevenLathe »

TimPC wrote: post #265
blauditore wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from them at any one time. This doesn't need to be a ponzi scheme though. Even if population size is stable, if people on average work longer than they are retired, they have to pay less than they receive, all things equal. A problem here has been that people get increasingly older, so they spend a larger percentage of their life being retired, maki…

The ponzi part of it is that current payers pay for current retirees. If the pension worked on a forced investment model where you paid into your own retirement and the money was invested for you that would be different. It would even be viable to say the money from those who died prematurely would be distributed to other users and it's possible to have the system generate more overall money for retirees than just wh…

Pensions paid directly by current workers are not really so different from pensions paid out of investments. The thing that one "owns" in most of today's public equities is not physical capital (plants and equipment) but the "nexus of contracts" that allows you to make money from other peoples' labor. In other words, you are still living on backs of the working generation, same as Social Security or similar schemes.

Until we invent self-replicating physical capital (i.e. a Santa Claus machine that can make other Santa Claus machines), this will always be true.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#298

Post by mojzu »

swearwolf wrote: post #227
ajross wrote: post #179

[flagged]

A lot of people on the left (socialists, not Democrats) are also very distrustful of the media and Silicon Valley.

Generally for different reasons though in my (anecdotal) experience

The left thinks silicon valley/social media has taken too light of a touch dealing with hate speech, racism, conspiracy theories, etc. and has enabled more radical/loony/violent people to increase their reach and support

The right thinks silicon valley/social media has been taking moderation too far and that their speech is being censored or their audience artificially limited to prevent them from reaching more people

These statements are probably a bit too generalised, but it does remind me of how many people in the UK see the BBC (the left says it's too conservative, the right say it's too liberal)

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#299

Post by mbg721 »

SubuSS wrote: post #268
macintux wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d just be happy if we could agree on basic facts. I don’t expect everyone to agree on the right way to solve a problem, but it seems increasingly difficult to even come to a common understanding of what’s true and what’s not.

What if the facts or basic-ness of them are disputed? You can see this clearly in pro-choice/life debate for example. One side is saying it is murder and the other side is saying everything from it is not a murder to society doesn’t support the born kids, so this should be allowed. What are the ‘basic facts’ here?

What ends up happening in that case is that people disagree in defining "What is a human?". That's not about facts, it's about values and conclusions. That becomes uncomfortable very quickly, because we've seen what happens when a society excludes some people from their definition of humanity.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#300

Post by RubberMullet »

ravenstine wrote: post #111

Everything is not falling apart, though certain institutions may be falling apart. In America, there's definitely been a breakdown of belief in its own institutions. Far more people are skeptical of things like journalism and Silicon Valley; it really wasn't that long ago that the former was constantly salivating over the latter, but now it's more of an openly vulture-carrion relationship because that caters to publi…

What concerns me more than the collapse of many of our intuitions is the fact that the Neocons have emerged from the rubble. Regardless of party or political leanings there was a time when Neocons were universally reviled. Watching people like Bill Kristol, David Frum, and The Lincoln Project get so much press and attention makes my blood boil. Heck, they even brought out Dick Cheney(!!!) for the J6 anniversary.
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