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16
Chasm / Re: Fatherhood
« on: September 04, 2012, 04:48:41 PM »
If there's only one reply in this thread to which you should pay attention, it is fallot's. He's dropping gems left and right. That being said, I suspect my own reactions to the following would be:
Homosexuality: A perversion. No trace of it will enter my house or my presence. No mention of it, no partners, no lisping, no hairy female armpits or legs, and no dildos. Aside from that, lust is one of the lesser sins, and as such, something to be dealt with by the sinner himself.
Drug abuse: Sloth (escapism) is a much greater sin. Any and all measures necessary to annihilate this behavior would be taken as needed.
Anti-social behavior: Depends on the specific behavior, and the context in which it occurs. Considering the state our culture is in, certain forms of rejection are healthy.
Adopting a value system contrary to your own: We would be at odds, conversationally. But so long as respectful and virtuous behavior was maintained, I don't think this would be an issue at all. Part of life is learning to interact in a civil manner with those who are different from yourself. I have a cousin who converted to Islam after wedding a negro, and now uses her Facebook account to post endless streams of vitriolic, profanity-laden diatribe against everything white, Christian, and American. This includes her own family - in fact, it largely focuses on it, since they respond. Naturally, this is not due to her adopting a contrary value system, but rather to her being a whore for attention. She is a horrible representative of her own professed values; it is not the values themselves that make her so distasteful, but her manner. Then again, perhaps conduct can be said to be a value in and of itself.
Dating an idiot: If it's my son, I would remind him of things I would have already told him beforehand. I would also show signs of disappointment, but not state explicit disapproval. He'd have to make the choice himself of either improving, or learning from his mistake. If it's my daughter, I'd get rid of the guy. Not hard. She'd "hate" me for a little bit, but girls bounce back easy despite making a big fuss initially.
Dating outside of their race: Don't care, if it's the same culture. If we're talking about a Mexican villager or an African immigrant, it depends. Does the outsider want to assimilate? Or do the two of them want to maintain their own cultural identities, separately? If the former, fine. If the latter, all ties would have to be severed - the child is lost anyway. Either their child joins our ways, or mine joins theirs. There's really no way in between if they want their marriage to be true.
Mental illness, or some physical deformity: Their life is going to be difficult enough without their own father making it worse. Agree with fallot.
Listening to Pink Frothy AIDS: Sodomize. Just give the kid what he wants.
Homosexuality: A perversion. No trace of it will enter my house or my presence. No mention of it, no partners, no lisping, no hairy female armpits or legs, and no dildos. Aside from that, lust is one of the lesser sins, and as such, something to be dealt with by the sinner himself.
Drug abuse: Sloth (escapism) is a much greater sin. Any and all measures necessary to annihilate this behavior would be taken as needed.
Anti-social behavior: Depends on the specific behavior, and the context in which it occurs. Considering the state our culture is in, certain forms of rejection are healthy.
Adopting a value system contrary to your own: We would be at odds, conversationally. But so long as respectful and virtuous behavior was maintained, I don't think this would be an issue at all. Part of life is learning to interact in a civil manner with those who are different from yourself. I have a cousin who converted to Islam after wedding a negro, and now uses her Facebook account to post endless streams of vitriolic, profanity-laden diatribe against everything white, Christian, and American. This includes her own family - in fact, it largely focuses on it, since they respond. Naturally, this is not due to her adopting a contrary value system, but rather to her being a whore for attention. She is a horrible representative of her own professed values; it is not the values themselves that make her so distasteful, but her manner. Then again, perhaps conduct can be said to be a value in and of itself.
Dating an idiot: If it's my son, I would remind him of things I would have already told him beforehand. I would also show signs of disappointment, but not state explicit disapproval. He'd have to make the choice himself of either improving, or learning from his mistake. If it's my daughter, I'd get rid of the guy. Not hard. She'd "hate" me for a little bit, but girls bounce back easy despite making a big fuss initially.
Dating outside of their race: Don't care, if it's the same culture. If we're talking about a Mexican villager or an African immigrant, it depends. Does the outsider want to assimilate? Or do the two of them want to maintain their own cultural identities, separately? If the former, fine. If the latter, all ties would have to be severed - the child is lost anyway. Either their child joins our ways, or mine joins theirs. There's really no way in between if they want their marriage to be true.
Mental illness, or some physical deformity: Their life is going to be difficult enough without their own father making it worse. Agree with fallot.
Listening to Pink Frothy AIDS: Sodomize. Just give the kid what he wants.
17
Chasm / Re: Chick-fil-A faces nationwide boycott for intolerance of black metal supergroup
« on: August 04, 2012, 11:37:12 PM »Bleh. I suppose if you like it, then eat it. I went to one in Virginia, wasn't impressed at all.Maybe it's the peanut oil that you dislike? I developed a taste for the stuff while living in Africa.
Nothing against some southern fried chicken though, that stuff's fantastic.
18
Chasm / Re: Chick-fil-A faces nationwide boycott for intolerance of black metal supergroup
« on: August 04, 2012, 02:37:02 PM »
Wouldn't be the first time carpetbagging yankees screwed up something good.
19
Chasm / Re: Chick-fil-A faces nationwide boycott for intolerance of black metal supergroup
« on: August 03, 2012, 01:02:07 PM »Their food sucks ass. That should be the main reason to boycott them, not because they oppose some gay marriage laws.Guess I love the taste of ass.
20
Chasm / Re: Love songs
« on: July 20, 2012, 10:04:21 PM »
MERCYFUL FATE "Melissa"
Come on, people.
Come on, people.
21
Metal / Re: War metal
« on: July 20, 2012, 10:01:13 PM »
The album that Canada's REVENGE just released is very good. MARTIRE also just released their first LP on the same label, NWN.
22
Chasm / Re: Keep Making Me Rich, Fatty
« on: July 15, 2012, 08:53:45 PM »
Or, for the sake of being more accurate:
1
---
"Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?"
"Because it's wrong."
At this point, the first person will usually reply to me as you indicated in your own post, questioning my validity as an arbiter of social mores. I.e., "WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE?" In my experience, though it does not then usually devolve into ad hominem and emotional appeals - more often than not, it stops being a conversation about the right to harm oneself and becomes one about the validity of subjective vs. objective values. I consider this a positive development.
2
---
"Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?"
"Because they're not just hurting themselves."
This can continue in one of two ways. The first is the route you took - using data. Mostly economic, in your case. You could also use data in a personal way, say, by pointing out that obese people who have children are going to cause all sorts of health problems in that child, both through genetics and upbringing. But it's still data. The second route one could take is to say that they're harming everyone around them, not in a quantifiable way, but simply by downgrading society overall. We could say the same about someone who goes for weeks with without a shower; he's only hurting himself, after all. In fact, he's hurting himself FAR less than the fatties. But he would get ostracized nonetheless - because he's GROSS. And because nobody wants to live in a nation of walking, greasy, sweaty fecal matter, that ostracization continues. If you think about it, the only real reason for this is because the smell would be unpleasant. Kind of like the sight of landwhales is unpleasant.
3
---
"Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?"
"Does everyone have a right to hurt themselves?"
I've only ever mentioned this counter as an aside. It changes the discussion into one about suicide pretty quick. I don't like going in that direction simply because the whole concept of rights is, to me, bullshit. Although my position on this particular matter would still say that suicide is wrong, for various reasons - it just gets too complex too quickly, and we lose sight of the original argument.
1
---
"Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?"
"Because it's wrong."
At this point, the first person will usually reply to me as you indicated in your own post, questioning my validity as an arbiter of social mores. I.e., "WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE?" In my experience, though it does not then usually devolve into ad hominem and emotional appeals - more often than not, it stops being a conversation about the right to harm oneself and becomes one about the validity of subjective vs. objective values. I consider this a positive development.
2
---
"Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?"
"Because they're not just hurting themselves."
This can continue in one of two ways. The first is the route you took - using data. Mostly economic, in your case. You could also use data in a personal way, say, by pointing out that obese people who have children are going to cause all sorts of health problems in that child, both through genetics and upbringing. But it's still data. The second route one could take is to say that they're harming everyone around them, not in a quantifiable way, but simply by downgrading society overall. We could say the same about someone who goes for weeks with without a shower; he's only hurting himself, after all. In fact, he's hurting himself FAR less than the fatties. But he would get ostracized nonetheless - because he's GROSS. And because nobody wants to live in a nation of walking, greasy, sweaty fecal matter, that ostracization continues. If you think about it, the only real reason for this is because the smell would be unpleasant. Kind of like the sight of landwhales is unpleasant.
3
---
"Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?"
"Does everyone have a right to hurt themselves?"
I've only ever mentioned this counter as an aside. It changes the discussion into one about suicide pretty quick. I don't like going in that direction simply because the whole concept of rights is, to me, bullshit. Although my position on this particular matter would still say that suicide is wrong, for various reasons - it just gets too complex too quickly, and we lose sight of the original argument.
23
Chasm / Re: Keep Making Me Rich, Fatty
« on: July 15, 2012, 08:31:00 PM »Why does it matter if they only hurt themselves?You can ignore literally every other argument these people make. The one quoted is the one overriding thought behind everything disgusting in our society. "It's not like he's hurting anyone, so it doesn't bother me." Or, "I'm not hurting anybody, so what do you care?"
If you want to change the way someone sees an issue in which this attitude informs their opinion, you need to change the attitude. Addressing the issue will be fruitless, even if using logic, statistics, and science - as you have seen. This is because the issue itself is irrelevant; it is surface veneer, mere canvas upon which the currently-popular philosophy of "whatever" can be brought into vivid form and tint.
Which is why you hear variations of the same argument as a justification for all sorts of behaviors. Ask various individuals, as each question applies: Why do you eat so much? Why do you pursue promiscuity? Why do you use foul language? Why do you watch television? Why do you spend so much money on pointless things? In most cases, these individuals will not be slaves to gluttony, lust, wrath, sloth, or greed. I have yet to know someone personally who engages in such activities out of an active, overarching emphasis in their desire for them. They do not do these things because they "need" to. In almost all cases, people do these things not only because they want to, but also because they believe there is no reason to NOT do whatever they wish to do. Unless it hurts someone else. Obviously.
Point being, they are not hopelessly lost causes. They are not sinners for the sake of sinning. But they have been taught to assign no value to the concept of goodness as its own good. We populate a world in which goodness only matters when it prevents evil from befalling others; when we allow evil to befall us, no sin has been committed. This is a direct inversion of the original concepts of good and evil from which our current paradigm has emerged. It used to be that sin, evil, darkness, and death were creeping inevitabilities that stalked mankind endlessly, and had to be resisted actively, at every opportune moment, lest they consume him entirely. Now evil is thought to exist only when actively pursued, in the form of harming others.
In my experience, the discussion usually continues as such from the point you left it off:
"I'm not hurting anyone, so what's the problem?"
"You're hurting yourself."
"Who cares? That's MY choice if I want to do that. I'm an adult. I don't want to live forever. Etc. etc." (here, ironically, the tone often becomes childish and petulant)
There was a very long time during which this last statement would have been considered an admission of sin. Today it is considered... nothing. Just the way it is.
It doesn't matter how empirically wrong someone may be on an issue, Humanicide, or how definitively you can demonstrate their wrongness, because nobody forms their opinions on matters based on cold, hard data. Opinions are formed based on our innate values, and influenced by data. If you really want to change someone's opinion, that entails changing their whole way of thinking. Going into statistical data for insurance premiums (for example) will do nothing. You must show them that the way they see the world is wrong. And to do this you must first show them how the world really is - otherwise, they have no illuminated spots against which to compare their blind ones.
24
Chasm / Re: Quitting Smoking
« on: July 08, 2012, 03:24:02 PM »The caveat is you don't want to focus/obsess about it.This is absolutely the main thing. The physical side of quitting is quite easy, really. Nicotine only stays in your system for five days at the longest. It's the behavioral habit, though, that makes you return. The pleasure gained from the act, the responding to triggers. Jim's advice seems good to me as well, primarily because it involves being so fully active that it denies one's mind the opportunity to fantasize - this is actually a good way to resolve a lot of mood/behavior issues in one's life. The only real problem with that approach, at least for me, is that if you take it easy even for just a moment, it becomes a lot harder to get back into the rhythm. Maintaining the rhythm is easy.
25
Metal / Re: Das Perfekte Album
« on: July 06, 2012, 04:30:44 AM »
I like Inquisition. Their last album was pretty damn good. The first one is worth a mention as well. All the stuff in between... meh. Decent. The band has never been A-grade, but never made anything shitty either.
26
Metal / Re: Das Perfekte Album
« on: July 03, 2012, 04:31:21 PM »
I considered Averse Sefira, The Chasm, and Manilla Road as well. All exist within the upper echelon of metal, but none within the incomparably uppermost tier. The Chasm had a couple of mediocre releases, so did Manilla Road(plus one AWFUL album that shouldn't have really been released under the band's name in the first place). It is true that all three maintained quality (overall) throughout their careers, though.
Immolation is squarely in the crap zone by now. Third Gorguts starts getting goofy, fourth is junk. I haven't listened to anything but snippets from Bolt Thrower after ...For Victory either, but it doesn't seem worth much; like WAAGH said, great up until then. There are innumerable death metal bands that followed this course; the question is which bands both a) had many releases and b) never deviated. That disqualifies Bathory, Slayer, Mercyful Fate, Asphyx, Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Massacra, Pestilence, Candlemass, Burzum, Enslaved, and countless others. Same goes for Darkthrone, by the way, who are specifically interesting because their descent was so gradual - everything up to Transilvanian Hunger was excellent, Panzerfaust was pretty good, and then the next couple of albums were OK... and then...
Although I did just remember another band that might be worth including: Skepticism.
Immolation is squarely in the crap zone by now. Third Gorguts starts getting goofy, fourth is junk. I haven't listened to anything but snippets from Bolt Thrower after ...For Victory either, but it doesn't seem worth much; like WAAGH said, great up until then. There are innumerable death metal bands that followed this course; the question is which bands both a) had many releases and b) never deviated. That disqualifies Bathory, Slayer, Mercyful Fate, Asphyx, Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Massacra, Pestilence, Candlemass, Burzum, Enslaved, and countless others. Same goes for Darkthrone, by the way, who are specifically interesting because their descent was so gradual - everything up to Transilvanian Hunger was excellent, Panzerfaust was pretty good, and then the next couple of albums were OK... and then...
Although I did just remember another band that might be worth including: Skepticism.
27
Metal / Re: Das Perfekte Album
« on: July 02, 2012, 05:04:13 PM »
Agreed that Summoning, Graveland, and Ildjarn are pretty much it. The only addition that comes to my mind is Beherit - although they barely have three LP's, all of them but HV1.whatever are excellent, and they're spread out over a long (albeit interrupted) career. Strange that no death metal bands come to mind.
28
Metal / Re: Autechre
« on: July 01, 2012, 06:38:04 PM »
Humanicide, I've yet to hear a bad Autechre release. They've made a few that are only average or decent, but they're the exception. That being said, I'd recommend the following as their best, listed chronologically:
Anti [EP]
Amber
Tri Repetae
untitled LP a.k.a. "LP5" (my personal vote for being the single best release)
Confield
Gantz Graf [EP]
Quaristice
And the following as being very good as well:
Anvil Vapre [EP]
Envane [EP]
Chiastic Slide
Cichlisuite [EP]
Oversteps
And almost all the other releases being worth hearing - good, not great.
Anti [EP]
Amber
Tri Repetae
untitled LP a.k.a. "LP5" (my personal vote for being the single best release)
Confield
Gantz Graf [EP]
Quaristice
And the following as being very good as well:
Anvil Vapre [EP]
Envane [EP]
Chiastic Slide
Cichlisuite [EP]
Oversteps
And almost all the other releases being worth hearing - good, not great.
29
Metal / Re: Dead Can Dance "Anastasis"
« on: June 30, 2012, 02:19:08 AM »,,,I think the aesthetic feels more streamlined and hook-driven/populist at times(ie. Children of the Sun feeling almost like a Broadway tune at times, bouncy beat in Agape).I agree with this. Even so, it's a good album, although it has definitely weak moments. Better than Spiritchaser, and maybe Into the Labyrinth.
30
Chasm / Re: Quebec student protests
« on: June 18, 2012, 04:15:52 AM »Instead, why not phase out these benefits and provide free education instead? The difference is between investing in people when they're old and investing in people when they're young.The most obvious problem with this model is that young people can die, move away, or become drug addicts before the investment put into them pays off. Old people have put in their time, and the "investment" put into them is really more of a payment for work already performed.