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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?

#961
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not catholic so please help me out here. These are all reasonable questions. I'll answer as best as I can, but please understand that I'm not any kind of formal authority. > If you cannot use requested pronouns, does your religion also ban you from using nicknames? Is it okay for you to be called User23? I don't know of any Catholic doctrine that says people can't use pseudonyms, nicknames, or even change their…

Is it possible to say nothing about a trans co-workers transition then? If Jessica is now Kevin, what's the difference between that and Jacob going "nah call me Jake"? Is it just that you can't call Kevin he/him pronouns? Can you call Kevin as Kevin?

I'm unwilling by act or omission to knowingly indicate that I believe something that the Church teaches to be false. Thus, it depends on whether or not I'm being asked to participate in a deception, which I will not do. On the other hand, unlikely though it may be, if it's somehow clear that "Kevin" has no intent to deceive and is not deceiving anyone about her sex then I don't have an absolute moral objection to calling her that. This scenario is contrived and unrealistic, but it is largely a matter of prudence. Thus if I did surprisingly find myself in a similar circumstance, my actions would depend on the details.

As another Catholic commenter said, we owe Christian charity to all other human beings, including those affected by gender dysphoria. However, charity doesn't mean being "nice" or "accommodating," but it does require respecting the dignity of the human person. One way to respect that dignity is by not encouraging or condoning disordered behaviors or beliefs. I wouldn't offer a recovering alcoholic a drink, even if it was really great stuff.

That leads to another pragmatic matter. No matter what disordered beliefs or behaviors a person has (and I have my own share), we should want to help that person come to a rightly ordered place. There's really no one size fits all approach to that.

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

#962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I don’t think that anyone will look back with fondness or positivity toward a bunch of closeted homophobic, racist, sexist, emotionally and mentally stunted incels circle jerking themselves into a froth over who’s the edgiest edge lord. If that's your view of 4chan then the whole point of 4chan went over your head. 4chan is about irreverence of and rebellion against the current mainstream culture that if you're non-…

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

#963

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the citation, but legend has it that as CA governor, Reagan was in his limo, and was surrounded by protestors in Berkeley. They were chanting "We are the future!" while pounding on the windows of the car. Reagan got his notepad out, and wrote "If you are the future, I'm selling all my stocks!" on a sheet of paper, and held it up to the window for them to read.

But that makes no sense. Didn't Reagan win due to an outpouring of support from the Boomers who at the time were those young people?

Hahahahah. No. He won b/c he annoyed those people, to the delight of their parents.

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

#964
post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I don't think how widespread a piece of media is has a strong correlation with its impact. Yes, several billion people probably know who Grumpy Cat is. But it doesn't matter . Our awareness of Grumpy Cat doesn't change how we think about the world, how we l…

In the past 10 years, capitalism has become a dirty word to people under 30. Whether you agree or not, that feels like it matters.

As a Gen-Xer, I can assure you capitalism was a dirty word for longer than that.

But that dislike has thus far had zero apparent effect on the complete domination of capitalism and corporatism over the public sphere.

Instead, what we largely see is huge capitalistic corporations draping themselves in an anti-capitalist aesthetic which consumers seem perfectly happy to accept. Every time you go to the store and buy a jar of "homestyle" marinara sauce or order a bo-ho wall hippie-esque wall decoration off Amazon that was made in a factory in China, you are demonstrating anti-capitalist style but profoundly capitalistic values.

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

#965
Here is a thesis/thesis-question: the US has (primarily) one economic dominant culture/model, and resistance to that dominant economic culture/model is what constitutes a more hardcore/impactful/not surface/valuable (?) counter-culture. I'm not a big crypto fan, but I would have said previously before FTX that crypto was maybe our contemporary counter-culture. Unlike the solidarity economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_economy, which I also think is a counter culture, it was more impactful/hyper-generating/getting people thinking, etc. I wish that the solidarity economy was as talked about. I think both the far left and far right (trads and LGBTQIA+) people are kind of counter-cultural in terms of their reaction to different large strains of culture in the US (I don't think there's one culture in this country, anymore, on the social and cultural level). Maybe I'm talking about being revolutionary, and not counter-cultural?

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

#967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexuality seems to not be a choice, but gender expression (which people sort of mentally lump in) can be a choice (obviously gender dysphoria is not a choice, but not all gender expression decisions are made due to the presence of absence of dysphoria).

Expression is a choice, gender or otherwise. Why would one person's expression be any more or less valid than someone else's? Because it's icky?

I don't understand what point you're trying to make / what the relevance of this comment is.

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

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been on the Forefront of my mind for a long time. Without getting too political it seems that many places, California especially, are Waging War against ad hoc labor and small businesses. Individuals are difficult to regulate in comparison to large businesses and individual autonomy comes with the trade-off of less security and protections.

I believe a big chunk of the homelessness today were people who were able to sustain themselves with ad-hoc labor and housing arrangements . Though they’re not comfortable holding down a 9-5 (blue or white collar) , they could pick up an ad-hoc job as needed until their next transition. We’ve replaced a once diverse and diffused economy with a “all or nothing” labor workplace. Either you are “in the system” working f…

Yeah, the other angle is the over-regulation of housing. Ad-hoc workers often lived out of boarding and flop houses, or otherwise simple accommodations.

Just like ad-hoc work has been outlawed to "protect the workers", minimalist shelter has been outlawed to "protect the tenants".

Both of these endeavors provide some benefit to a certain vulnerable groups, but they absolutely cut the legs out from under other even more vulnerable groups.

I can build a decent shack for less $1,000, or a crappy one for $200. To be clear, I wouldnt want to live in it, but it would be a hell of a lot better than living on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, low income housing projects tag in at more than a million per unit, so few get built.

People say it is inhumane to let people live in a shack, small rooms, or flop houses so it should be illegal. However, they balk at the cost of the alternatives and people are simply left out in the street.

A free person can't voluntarily choose to live in a 8x8' shack, but the state can lock you in a 8x8' cell for disobeying.

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

#969
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men. Catholic teaching is that lying is sinful. Practicing the Catholic faith by saying "I'm sorry, but I can't 'use your pronouns' because that would be a lie by falsely saying you're a woman when you can't be" will get you reprimanded or fired at most any major US company.

> Catholic teaching is that men cannot become women and women cannot become men. People (including Catholics) supporting trans rights agree with that. Of course, most of the Catholic heirarchy and supporters of trans rights disagree on who are men and who are women to start with, but, I mean, the former at least should be familiar with the idea of an entity having the observable physical characteistics of one thing b…

This is some very solid casuistry. Father James Martin, S.J. would be proud.

> Of course, most of the Catholic heirarchy and supporters of trans rights disagree on who are men and who are women to start with, but, I mean, the former at least should be familiar with the idea of an entity having the observable physical characteistics of one thing but being something radically different because of its innate essence.

I'd love to know where you found the teaching that God miraculously transubstantiates people into a body of the wrong sex.

> Catholic teaching is that lying consists of objectively false statements told with intent to deceive. (CCC 2482).

My conscience tells me that it's objectively false and if I say it isn't I'm intentionally deceiving. (CCC 1778)

> (1) As Catholic traditionalists and trans rights activists agree, “gender identity” is not the same thing that Catholics see as binary sex. Acknowledging that a persons gender identity is this or that is not a fact claim about the construct of sex, but also

Motte and bailey.

As an aside what Doctor of the Church has anything to say about "gender identity?" Presumably if this is part of tradition one of them must have had something to say on the subject. In fact, where are you finding any Catholic traditionalist who is leaning on 1970s era radical feminist linguistic novelties?[1]

> (2) Preferred pronouns are a distinct (though sometimes correlated) issue to gender identity (people with different gender identity can have the same oreferred pronouns, and vice versa), so even if acknowledging the validity of gender identity waa making a claim about sex, and even if such a claim would be false, respecting preferred pronouns isn’t acknowledging gender identity, its just respecting preferred pronouns.

More equivocating. Everyone knows the confusion is intentional.

> (3) On top of all of the above, the purpose of use of a person's preferred pronouns by a Catholic in a work environment would, presumably, not be convince anyone of some false claim about the subject's sex, and without intent to deceive, it would not be a lie even if its content were an objectively false claim. (Which, for the reasons discussed previously, it is not.)

Then why would he care when I use pronouns appropriate to his sex?

[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gender+identit... https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gender+roles&y...

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

#970
I think it’s just that counterculture almost always becomes the mainstream eventually.

Tattoos, leather jackets and motorcycles used to be cool counterculture. Now they’re trendy.

It does feel like we’ve descended into monoculture.

Though, maybe that’s because those in the counterculture aren’t showing off and are hard to spot, unlike hippies and bikers.

Counterculture is still alive and well I’m sure. Just hidden amongst the noise of our hyper signal to noise ratio reality.

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