Post a controversial opinion

Even struggling people today have material comforts that couldn't be dreamed of 100 years ago, so direness of life is relative.

yeah but for the wider polis the world's been pretty much straight downhill since the 70s. dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program, bowie stops making good records

xpost but whatever

in the scheme of human existence, americans born in the 70s (of which i am one) are #blessed. that doesn't mean they're happy tho, nor does it explain why i should care what y'all get up to when i'm outie

thomp: i agree there are some things that have been not so sweet since the 1970s, but you gotta put it in perspective, and something like the stagnation in US real median wages is nothing relative to the apocalyptic predictions of people in the 70's

otm signed someone also born in the 70s who is largely #blessed and leads a pretty amazing life by external measures

also like, yeah wages were flat for a while in one big country, but like, we also have the internet now. we didn't even have VHS in the 70's. or like, just barely.

i realise bringing up the internet on a board of self-loathing internet addicts is not the best argument and anticipate your pithy remarks. it's still rocked our standard of living

idk mane i thought the metric here 'is life worth living by some absolute metric, and does it have the prospect of becoming more so'. i agree that post-millenial enforced leisure is better than trying to work out what parts of an irradiated cockroach are safe to eat or whatever would have been

yes the metric is about a metric. metrics 4 lyfe

that doesn't mean they're happy tho

serious question: do you guys really have the impression everyone is unhappy? i really don't feel that way, about like just about anyone i know with very few exceptions

the best reason not to have kids are selfish reasons. i feel bad for anyone dumb enough to convince themselves not to have kids for perceived altruistic reasons

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

Even struggling people today have material comforts that couldn't be dreamed of 100 years ago, so direness of life is relative.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 8:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

life's anxieties and pain really expand to meet their demand -- there are so many ways we've expanded in ways of reaching out to others and creating community and support, but until you meet a certain threshold of comfort, your personal stresses will echo those of the aggrieved people of the past -- even if they didn't have indoor plumbing

it sucks to think that human misery is relative, but it is. ppl born whenever might have it sweet as far as economics and social attitudes but we're on a continuum where we inherit attitudes and fears from those around us.

idk growing up in the 70s might be nice until your dad who was a vietnam vet was erratic and mostly absent made for a weird home experience

a bunch of recent weird activity in my area made me realize again how many people around my age are either veterans or peers of veterans who fell into some really heavy drug shit

'is life worth living by some absolute metric, and does it have the prospect of becoming more so'

Life is meaningless and death is inevitable. But there's fun to be had in the meantime.

Re external/material comforts: I am a diabetic. So was my father. When I think about what he went through as a diabetic child in the 1940s and 1950s, there is no way I wouldn't want to be the age I am, with the drugs and technology available to me.

i feel bad for anyone dumb enough to convince themselves not to have kids for perceived altruistic reasons

idk I have a few coworkers who adopted because of their genetic conditions that were highly inheritable. kids? pretty good. not wanting to have their kids deal with shit that makes their life difficult? fair.

wait what how did you misconstrue that to make me against adoption, my sisters are adopted i love adoption someone adopt me

feel like that still counts as 'having kids'!! haha xp

many x-posts - Everyone? No, of course not. That said, I do think that I know a lot more unhappy people than I do happy people, yeah.

Jean Stapleton was hot

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:06 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man last time i spent a summer working in a factory pretty much everyone there moaned about life under late capitalism, albeit not in those terms

fair, it's raising kids but those are kids who are already here! it's not "does the world need a kid", it's "do I want to raise a kid in this world"

idk the typical ilxor is also like a caricature of leftist intellectual who moan about life under late capitalism. most people don't think about that shit, and depending on what your kid majors in neither will they. u know?

― flopson

This. God.

I have friends who worked in plastics factories or candy factories in their hometowns before later moving to where I am, and have siblings who live in those areas. fwiw they have strong amounts of Trump support there, so idk, human misery

My boss is a Trump supporter. Has one of those red hats on a shelf behind him in his office. But he has never seemed particularly miserable or rage-filled; in fact he's quite happy, laughing and smiling all the time, and we get along great.

Imagining ppl itt like, blowing their fringe out of their eyes, like, yknow, capitalism man yknow, life sucks, man

wtf even is this thread now btw

what your kid majors in

basically in the US getting a college degree is inferior to a lot of other trade programs unless you have a specific field you're aiming for

which isn't necessarily bad, but I feel like the most clued-in people to this in my area are kids of immigrants, and they are doing pretty great! and that comes with its own political and social understanding that a wite kid like myself had to learn

dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program

1) how many people are even aware that these two things happened? if you walked up to people on the street and asked them "has the liberal consensus ended" maybe 25% of them would know what you were talking about and say yes?

2) conservatives and non-anti-capitalists exist, so maybe half of those 25% cheer the former and are actively happy about it. maybe 1% of people are anti-capitalist? so 99% are cool with the latter. so you've got 6.25% of people who wish the liberal consensus hadn't ended, and 0.25% who are sad that capitalism hasn't ended

3) how many, among these 6 and 0.25 percent, feel actively sad about that, like to the extent that they are bummed out about it on a day to day?

xxp place to talk about the feels without cluttering up one of the current events threads imho

I'm not attracted to men with fringes over their eyes

*controversial opinion*

you wanna risk being that person?

you can discuss happiness now or throughout history etc etc but if this is yr baseline reason to have children then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

life is generally good, you have to take yr lumps, some ppl weren't built for that because they think harsh reality is for others

it helps if you're from a people of grievances, darragh

idk man last time i spent a summer working in a factory pretty much everyone there moaned about life under late capitalism, albeit not in those terms

― thwomp (thomp), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:15 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can definitely imagine that life is shitty for people who work in factories in england, but the % of people who work in factories in the UK must be approaching zero fast, so that's good, no?

I consider myself a beneficiary of what Freud termed "normal human unhappiness." I don't really believe in "happiness" as a persistent state of living, but I feel like my life is worth living.

many x-posts - Everyone? No, of course not. That said, I do think that I know a lot more unhappy people than I do happy people, yeah.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:13 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:-(

Flopson otm mookie otm

I come from a fuckin *family* of grievance mh but idk that having access to the entire misery of the internet means that life day to day ain't always gettin better like buddy holly was still around and narrating it

you can discuss happiness now or throughout history etc etc but if this is yr baseline reason to have children then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

― mookieproof, Wednesday, December 2, 2015 10:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's not my baseline reason to not have kids, it's my attempt at a persuasive argument to the idiot who wouldn't have kids for the fear of the opposite happening

:)

Should clarify I just don't want kids cos fuckem

lol

i can definitely imagine that life is shitty for people who work in factories in england, but the % of people who work in factories in the UK must be approaching zero fast, so that's good, no?

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:21 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk man ime factory people have it better than retail ppl and call center ppl

idk the party line was always "everything is great, get with the program" in life and I really thought I wasn't allowed to have my own problems, I'm sorry for throwing that back out at the world

i think that was a pretty common narrative at that time

also i think darragh is probably good with kids

But what's that mean thomp?

it's my attempt at a persuasive argument to the idiot who wouldn't have kids for the fear of the opposite happening

ah, then you are arguing with no one in this thread. cool

I'm great with kids cos I never have to worry about the consequences its absolutely ideal tbh

i heard darragh loves cats too

tbf mookie I may have thrown that out as a light slap at ecodoommongers earlier itt

to be clear i'm not really arguing the 'so don't have kids' bit, i am just enjoying inhabiting the apparently both niche and cliche view that life rn is not all that great

dismantling of the liberal consensus, capitalism retrenches the lines of global exploitation that were meant to be vanishing with the colonial program

1) how many people are even aware that these two things happened? if you walked up to people on the street and asked them "has the liberal consensus ended" maybe 25% of them would know what you were talking about and say yes?

2) conservatives and non-anti-capitalists exist, so maybe half of those 25% cheer the former and are actively happy about it. maybe 1% of people are anti-capitalist? so 99% are cool with the latter. so you've got 6.25% of people who wish the liberal consensus hadn't ended, and 0.25% who are sad that capitalism hasn't ended

3) how many, among these 6 and 0.25 percent, feel actively sad about that, like to the extent that they are bummed out about it on a day to day?

― flopson, Thursday, December 3, 2015 3:20 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

idk if i can be bothered with yr math here but for a whole minute i thought yr '3' was relating to the third item in my trifecta viz bowie and i was like man idk how many ppl are bummed that there aren't more bowie records as good as 'station to station' but there really should be

I don't like cats or kids so fuck me

ok here's my deal: have kids, if the world they are born into is an apocalyptic hellscape you can give them to me free of charge and they will join my death cult