How alone we all are, thinking our thoughts, wearing them as our daily skin.
The OldDoughouse
No argument there. As Iâve said before, the wickedest fight I ever saw as a kid was between two girls, 13 or 14 years old. Scratching, eye-gouging, etc⌠This was live or die . And I hear you on Margaret Thatcher - yes, once in a while there will be an aggressive woman, even in politics.
Yet we are talking about people in general, and not in anecdotal or just the âright circumstances.â Men have an evolutionary history and genetics that make us different from women, and we have testosterone, and very often social training that amplifies all the above.
Look at violent crime statistics - men are the ones, women are hardly there.
This better be an accountability-type thread or Iâm gonna get all mad
I canât really face that, Mic. Iâm primarily answerable to being excessive and nutty as far as diet, even when I should be strict keto. Not one to make âOh god I did this todayâŚâ posts, but rest assured that I truly suck at some things. Meanwhile, Iâm always coming up with rationalizations like the one about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks; some half-assed excuse for me not sticking with the program where I know I should.
I think a good definition of maturity is being able to sacrifice current desires for long-term well-being and established goals.
Men are conditioned towards violence, theyâre not naturally inclined towards it. Theyâre taught as boys to suppress their âfeminineâ emotions in order to be âreal men,â theyâre taught that they are owed the world, theyâre forced to be competitive against each other, theyâre taught to devalue women and âbetaâ men. Of course theyâre going to turn into he-man, woman-hating, no-homo dudebros.
Raise a boy in a gender-neutral environment? Might get a different story. Alternatively girls are raised to never fight with their fists, they are taught not to raise their voices, theyâre taught that they are not entitled to their anger, that they should put menâs feelings first, to be the âpeacemakersâ for the sake of the family. Raise a girl to be a warrior tho, and sheâll be as bloodthirsty as a man.
Itâs nurture, not nature. It belittles men and women alike to be like âmen canât help it because testosterone.â
On the whole nature versus nurture debate I came down heavy on the side of nurture, until I had a son.
Now my son is not aggressive and is the sweetest most caring person I know. But he gravitated towards boy stuff from the very beginning. I know he was affected by âourâ culture. But, he was raised without tv, secular homeschooled, as gender neutral as I could. I would say crunchy granola, but I donât believe in granola any more . All I can say, take any little boy to a park and the first they will do is find a stick and pretend that it is a weapon, whether it be a sword or gun.
Not that I donât think nurture isnât extremely important, but I have a bit more respect for nature now.
Just because it is in your nature doesnât mean you donât have control over it. It is in my nature to eat every carb in sight, but I donât (at least not any more).
Oh yes - for sure - the ones whoâve stayed are comfortable, both in their own opinion and in relation to the rest of the world, very much so. The aspect of a âsafety netâ is much smaller in the Nordic countries - much more homogenous populace and workforce, and a significantly higher work ethic - most people really âwith the program,â so to speak, and this helps with the sustainability of the system, and lower amounts of suffering (and would regardless of the economic system at hand).
The U.S. has quite a safety-network, if you will. Social Security for retirement, Medicare and Medicaid for health care, Social Security Disability Insurance program and Supplemental Security Income for disability, Unemployment insurance, Earned Income Tax Credit (pay no tax but still get money from the govât), Child Tax Credit, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Housing Assistance, Home Energy Assistance Plan, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, WIC - food for Women, Infants and Children, Lifeline - support for phones for low-income people, Child Care for low-income families, Job Training, Head Start (for pre-school kids), Child Nutrition - food for kids from low-income householdsâŚ
We also have progressive taxation where below a point, one pays no income tax, and above that point the taxation rates are the lowest for an interval of income, then rising, and the process repeats.
I agree here. I think that system works better, from the countries Iâve visited where thatâs the way it is.
Well, itâs ~26% more, but the effective gain is less, since at the higher figure one/oneâs family wonât qualify for as much free stuff or assistance with other things, and will be paying more of oneâs income in taxes and also a higher percentage of oneâs income in taxes. Maybe $5000 or $6000 net real difference? Hey - no question that it can be important, on an individual level.
(âLiving wageâ - itâs not always so simple that just raising wages makes things better. Minimum wages for large employers went to either $16 or $15 per hour this year in Seattle, Washington, USA, and for 50 forty-hour weeks, that means $32,000 or $30,000 per year. This puts the earner above the Poverty standard and makes them ineligible for a good bit of stuff from the govât. Many are opting for less hours in order to make less money and try and stay eligible.)
And we are talking about a scale that goes from essentially zero to billionaires (one of these years the world will have itâs first trillionaire). In the grand scheme of things that $6650 per year ainât much.
Theyâre not irrelevant - my point is that being âpoorâ in the U.S. frequently means having a standard of living far above most people in the world. Yeah - that being in the top 1% does not directly mean one has it better than 99% of people in the world, because of that cost structure you mention. The fact remains that itâs still better than a vast majority of people on earth.
I listened to an interesting segment on the radio a number of years ago, where the interviewee was a transgender man (born female, transitioned to male) and who was taking exogenous testosterone went into some great depth about the change to his behavior and thoughts under the influence of this very powerful hormone, and how he now understood the turmoil that birth males had to go through during puberty learning to deal with and control it.
I donât remember the full context but he said that he started doing things like giving women the ârape stareâ and thinking constantly about sex, which he found very difficult to deal with at first having formerly been female and not having to deal with those thoughts and behaviors at that level.
Makes you wonder just how much it is the hormones.
I wondered if you would find a couple Bastilles to storm, KC.
Point taken, but it illustrates the relative wealth among the U.S. poor, compared to the world as a whole.
Anecdotal story - in the local area of my employer, a womanâs interview gained some at least transient fame as she complained about only having one TV, while being on welfare. This naturally made many an eye roll. There is a component of truth to the notion that being poor is supposed to suck, and to suck pretty badly - what else will motivate people to try and better themselves?
Alternative question: why do rich people deserve to have a repulsive amount of wealth when they steal wages from their workers and donât provide them a living wage?
Apparently it is a standard clause in the contract they sign with Satan in exchange for their souls.
T does many things to a trans manâs body and will affect his libido as well as other physiological components, especially since their bodies arenât used to it. What it will NOT do, however, is turn him into a rapist. If he made rape-stares at women, then he had those issues before he transitioned.
I donât say they do. I donât think they do. There are definitely some inequalities at work that I think are bad. The rapidly increasing multiple of what CEOs get paid, versus their workers, over the past few decades is part of that, for me.
Yet as always - nobody says that capitalism is perfect or that it will displease nobody. The point remains that while income distribution will in no way necessarily be equal, and in practice that it will always be unequal, the total wealth pool will be much larger under capitalism versus socialism, and that this gives us the âpoorâ in the U.S., for example, who live better than most people on earth.
Meanwhile, the question remains about incentivization for people to get off welfare - how bad does it have to be, how much pain is necessary? For huge numbers of people in the U.S., itâs not to that point yet - they are content to ride the system and to work it as best they can. Yes, that is taking a fairly hard line, there. This is all occurring while the U.S. economic system is on a clearly unsustainable course.
The U.S. is the ârichestâ country in the world? For sure, itâs the largest debtor nation, owing more than anybody else, owing about as much as #2, #3, and #4 put together. Whatever else we talk about, and whatever exact economic system and policies are in effect at the time, this does not end well. Relying on the govât will have exceedingly hard consequences for people, in the end.
I may have used the term incorrectly. It has been 7 or so years since I heard the interview. He was describing the urge to turn around and stare openly at pretty women when they walked by him. Perhaps âopenly oglingâ is a better term?
The type of behavior that adult men usually have in check (unless they are the stereotypical macho assholes).
I think this goes too far, KC. Yes, there is conditioning, but that does not mean that there isnât also natural inclination. Tostesterone really does make a difference. There really is âlittle boyâ behavior, as some have witnessed. My brother, observing his young son taking a piece of metal and hacking at tree branches, weeds, etc., thought that was an inborn thing, and I think heâs right. 21 nieces and nephews here.
Iâd say you often would. But not so different so as to completely negate the inborn differences weâre talking about. Moreover, when we come to male aggression and propensity to engage in violence, war, etc. - all the âIfsâ donât matter - once again, we have people as they are, not as they might be under some of our theories. Itâs not belittling or âsexist,â etc., to observe behavior and correctly note it, regardless of all the exact causes and possible âwhat ifsâ to the contrary, were it a different world.
Surely, our influences come from both, no? Beyond sexual differences, an individualâs genetic makeup can have a huge impact as well.
There is usually some degree of conscious control, yeah. Are men controlling their aggression very well? Maybe they are - then if they werenât the violent crime statistics would be even more lopsided.
Iâm gonna be real, I couldnât care less about alleged widespread welfare fraud or whatever keeps Fox News awake at night. Poor people being driven into the ground in soul-crushing, poor paying jobs and being told they should be grateful that at least theyâre not a Poor in India. Fox News might like me to turn the blame on alleged âwelfare queensâ or whatever, but I know who the real enemies are.
Except things youâre describing as âlittle boyâ behaviors have been seen in girls as well. You guys attribute âaggressionâ to âboy,â and treat that as norm while ignoring evidence when girls exhibit the same behavior or when other little boys donât. Ergo it cannot be said to be an innate behavior of boys.