Emerald

Actually, I don't think that Vegans have a radically different philosophy than most people do. Most people like animals and don't want animals to suffer unnecessarily. My guess is that over half of non-Vegans have Vegan values. They just don't live by them, and (as a result) have lots of cognitive dissonance around their consumption of animals and animal products. That was how I was before I went Vegan. And when I went Vegan, the most difficult thing was facing into that cognitive dissonance and becoming conscious of how I'd been living out of alignment with my own values for 27 years. But this is also what's uncomfortable about interacting with a lot of non-Vegans when they suddenly find out that you're Vegan (especially if they suddenly find out you're Vegan when you're eating a meal with them). Here's a scenario that always makes me squirm in my seat... I'll be out at a restaurant with someone who doesn't yet know that I'm Vegan, and I'll tell the server that I'm Vegan so that they don't add non-Vegan ingredients. And then, after the server leaves, the non-Vegan that I'm with will start explaining themselves like they're on trial. And they'll start giving me justifications as to why they're not Vegan... or that how they tried it before and it didn't work for them. But I'm genuinely not judging them. In fact, if someone doesn't have Vegan values and is just like "I'm fine with eating meat and dairy because I genuinely don't care about reducing the suffering of animals." I tend to respect it a bit more because they're being honest with themselves and living in alignment with their values. But because these non-Vegans with Vegan values are judging themselves for living out of alignment with their own values, they'll feel like I'm judging them... when it's just themselves judging them.

This was an interesting read. I hadn't thought of what I was sharing from these angles... but it definitely fits with all the things I'm doing intuitively when attempting to communicate something experiential to someone who hasn't had the same experiences.

There is an issue of over-population that is creating a lot of large scale issues like climate change. And this is a problem that humanity has never faced with before. And if every woman still saw their primary value as reproduction and focused on having a 5-10 babies like women have been made to in generations past to have more farmhands, it would cause the population to expand when it needs to contract in order for humanity to avoid huge global problems. This is why Stage Green movements like Feminism have arisen at this juncture in history in the first place... to offset and balance out old survival adaptations that are now counter-productive... and having a ton of babies is one of them, as is having women's sole life purpose as motherhood and only men in positions of societal influence. Before, it was always man vs Mother Nature. And we needed to be hyper-Masculine as a society to survive against the powerful forces of nature. But now, the Masculine power of our species' societal and technological development matches and threatens to exceed the Feminine power of nature. And we have become cancerous to the planet because of our excessive Masculinity. Because of this, the things we've always done to survive in the past will now backfire because our societal technology . So, women need to gain more societal power beyond motherhood in order for society to adapt as a patriarchal species cannot survive long in a post-industrial world without totally destroying itself. And both male and female leaders must learn to govern in a way that integrates the Feminine. So with what you said, how are we even defining what "value" means in this context? Value isn't static, it changes as our society changes. If value means survival value, then we're much more likely to survive and thrive as a species if we're having fewer babies. If you're looking from a Darwinian perspective, then it's all about adaptations that make us more fit to the enrironment. And that changes as the environment changes. Up until the industrial age, it was evolutionarily advantageous for women to have as many babies as possible and to dedicate all their time to that. Once you get to the industrial age, you have technological changes that enable and even necessitate women to individuate. And with individuation, the toothpaste can't just go back into the tube because there are people who don't understand the macrocosmic societal changes that are happening now.

I think her point was to say that "free sex anytime you want it" isn't much of a benefit from the woman's perspective because it doesn't give us what we're looking for and the emotional payoff is minimally positive or even negative. It's a bit like having a million dollars in Confederate money. It's a lot of money but that currency just isn't worth much from the perspective of the average woman... even though "free sex anytime you want it" is or seems very valuable to a lot of men. And the male fantasy of being lusted after by many women would truthfully be a nightmare if it was actually realized. Women know this because of the lived experience of being lusted over by many men. But most men don't know this because they haven't had the experience of that fantasy coming to fruition. And they generally don't understand how terrible being objectified by a large swath of the population feels. It's a bit like a thirsty man seeing all the women having constant access to copious amounts of water... and that women are always having people try to give water to them even when they don't want it. But what they don't realize is that the vast majority of that water is sea water... and that men and women actually have conferable levels of access to fresh drinkable water. But I've known guys who have had a lot of sex with a lot of women, and I haven't generally found these guys to be particularly attractive. They've mostly been regular average guys. They're mostly just social with both men and women... and they're open to that kind of experience. Like the guys I went to high school and college with that had sex pretty frequently, were of a variety of different levels of attractiveness appearance-wise and personality-wise. But they were all social and had a healthy social circle with male and female friends and acquaintances. So, my thought is that it probably isn't that difficult for a generally social man who can just go out and have a good time to find women to sleep with. Without all the insecurities, hangups, and projections, it's easy to find a woman who will sleep with you... and it's even easier to find a man who will sleep with you.

That's interesting. I'm a little surprised that there are multiple men on this thread that genuinely find this story scary or disturbing. To me, it comes across as the most mundane story. It's just another porn scenario among many others. And I don't really feel disturbed by sexual scenarios unless someone is being victimized and/or forced to do something against their will. What is it about this that creates the feeling of horror?

What I notice is that men are more likely (on average) to clamor for authoritarian governance to tell them what's right and wrong, typically in a very systematic and legalistic way. That's why there are so many men who look up to authoritarian political figures. But I don't think this is part of men's nature per se... at least not mostly. I think men tend to be conditioned by society to tune out from their body, emotions, and instincts. And sensitivity to these internal emotional cues tends to be seen as a threat to a man's Masculinity. So, there is often a numbing to the internal compass in order to come across as more stoic. And so, in lieu of sensitivity to their internal compass (because of the conditioned lack of emotional sensitivity), there is a dearth of self-sovereignty in a sizable percentage of the male population. And in that vacuum of self-sovereignty, there is a search for a perfect external authoritarian figure to make decisions for them. So, an authoritarian strong-man who purports himself as a perfect authority will make men who are disconnected from their emotional compass feel like "Finally, I have found the source of direction and truth." Women, on the other hand, tend to (on average) be more sensitive to their emotions and thus are somewhat more likely to recognize "The emperor has no clothes".

Your profile says you're from France. Do parents still make decisions for their adult children in France?

More doesn't mean better.... but better means better.

She's an adult. So, her dad doesn't have any ability to make decisions for her. And if you had an adult daughter or son, you also wouldn't be able to make decisions for them. And any attempt would backfire. I've worked with people who have adult children who have addictions, and one of the worst things you can do is to try to jump in and rescue them from themselves. You have to let your adult kids live their own life, even if you hate their choices.

Them's fighting words! Jung's work is far superior to Freud's. Freud is just oversimplified and is like "Everything comes back to your relationship with your mother, and your dreams are all about sex." Conversely, Jung is a brilliant mystic and alchemist in a 19th/20th century scientist's clothing. And he (far and away), understood so much more about the workings of the human psyche than any of his contemporaries. Here are some finger puppets one of my best friends (who is also a Jungian enthusiast) got me for my birthday a few years back...

I am still curious who you thought it was. But yes... watch them back through to sense the twinkle of the "element of irreducible rascality" in my eyes.

But it would never actually start a trend because sleeping with a bunch of men isn't interesting to most women. It's very high risk, low reward behavior. And that's especially true if we think about sleeping with a bunch of men in one day. So, all the danger talk is super hyperbolic. It's just another sexual spectacle to add to the mountain of porn that already exists. And all porn is fundamentally mundane. Plus, there are already sex workers. And there always have been. So, there has always been relatively easy access to sex on offer for men since the beginning of humanity. So, she's not really screwing with foundational moral principles that haven't been thoroughly eroded since the days of Moses.

I was kidding with @integral. I figured the person they assumed that it was was a woman. And there's only like 4 women on this forum. So, I was thinking there was a 25% chance that they were thinking it was me making a confession. So, I was going with it, in case I was right. Plus, I'd been commenting on this post before, and they might have seen my name.

Yeah, the math isn't really adding up to me. Like, you could get 100 guys to insert themselves per day and that might be manageable. But if we're assuming a completion that takes 10 minutes per guy, that would be at least 1000 minutes of sex. And that's like 17 hours of sex. By hour four, everything would be on fire... especially if she's (hopefully) using condoms.

You thought I was really letting my freak flag fly, huh?

I'm not saying most adult women are good at doing their make-up. It's definitely a bell curve. But there's a very specific kind of awful way that pre-teen girls do their make-up... and even specific brands depending on the generation. And women often bond over stories of how terribly they used to do their make-up when they were 12 as most girls go through that phase. It's a little bit like how middle school boys in the early 2000s were obsessed with Axe body spray. And so, they always smelled like BO and Axe.

It's because men who are being themselves and doing their own thing come across as normal and interesting... and they come across as more Masculine and appealing when they're not trying to be Masculine and appealing. And that's because men generally don't understand what women are attracted to about them. So, when men TRY to act in a way that's attractive to women, they tend to be less successful than guys who aren't trying. What I mean is that men are often focused on more overt Masculine expressions and end up doing the male equivalent of "overdoing the makeup" with their Masculine performance. Like when I was 11 years old and I had just started wearing make-up, I just had the sense "The more make-up I wear, the prettier I will be." And I was wearing this bright blue eyeshadow up to my eyebrows, bright pink lips, glitter all over my face, and silver blush. Then, when I was 13, I started wearing foundation that was 3 shades darker than me and I'd cake it on. I didn't do a good job at applying make-up at all. This is a common phase that pre-teen girls go through where their make-up is awful. This is what guys who actively try to be appealing to women come across as to me... only in terms of personality instead of appearance. They over-emphasize certain elements of their Masculinity to a clownish degree and then they lose a lot of their natural subtle Masculine expressions that come out when they're just being themselves and not paying attention to women. But men in general (especially young men) don't see what's appealing about their natural Masculinity... and they "cake it on" and try to come across as Masculine. That's what over-focus towards women comes across as. When a man is over-focused on women, it makes them come across as nerdy and desperate if they're inexperienced or playerish and sleazy if they're experienced. Either way, it's not attractive to most women. So when a guy is just being himself and isn't super focused on women, it's actually a bit rare and refreshing. And many women will find that appealing if she senses there's chemistry or compatibility with a particular guy.

That is my assumption that this period of time will be negative enough that people will sour on the right wing. But I disagree with Leo on that criticism. It's just par for the course that a populace that's struggling will come to criticize the status quo and the establishment... and some will polarize left and want to progress into the future towards better times, and some will polarize right to try to resurrect the better times from the past. And you will have tons of criticism of the establishment in all leaner times. And there is no suppressing that reality. That's especially true because the average person doesn't understand the dangers of authoritarianism that can arise when Populism is a false mask worn to cement authoritarian control. If Leo were poorer and felt genuinely trapped by economic circumstances (like so many do), my guess is that he'd be far more of a left wing Populist that he is. It's only the people who are doing okay that can make peace with the current system. It's more of an abstract values-based thing for people who aren't dealing with economic anxiety. But for people who don't see a path forwards towards economic stability (which is the position most people are in), you can't just expect them to feel hunky dory about a system that's full of corruption that's designed to give the majority of the benefits to the ultra wealthy and that gives few social good-based benefits for the amount taken in taxes. And a lot of people are struggling. Little niceties from Democrats saying, "Don't worry. We're better than Trump. Vote for us to avoid Fascism" isn't going to work on a struggling populace (especially an undereducated one) because the struggling populace wants (and needs) change. And because they lack the civic education, they will think "Different is better than better" and they'll vote the most different seemingly anti-establishment candidate on offer... even if that candidate rules economically like a typical establishment Neoliberal and rules morally and socially as a Fascist.

Context matters with genocide. Genocides don't happen to the ethnic group with the greatest amount of power in a given region. It's always a minority group and/or a group with lesser military power... usually both. So, those meanie wokesters (most of whom are white themselves) could be as vicious as they want to be to white men without there being a threat of systematic elimination of white people. It's not nice, of course to be unkind to anyone. But the most that happens in this context is that the occasional old white man could get his feelings hurt. And in rare cases, one-off cases of violence. That's why there's less of a taboo around poking fun of whities like myself. With the threat of genocide, it's the contextual difference between striking a match and striking a match near a bunch of barrels of kerosene. In their first scenario, maybe one individual gets mildly burned by the match. In the second scenario, the entire world goes up in flames.

I'm not being disingenuous. I'm reading it again now. Though I see what you meant that he didn't make a direct comparison (which I missed)... he is using a lot of strongly disapproving language like one would use with a mass murderer or terrorist... and acting as though her having sex with a bunch of guys is so intensely depraved. Like, this is quite strong for the actions he's condemning... is it not? "Of course, she is a profoundly perverse individual, and I refuse to degrade myself - or her - by pretending to feel pity." "This cheap barrier doesn’t safeguard us from her transgression; it invites us in."

There are 10 stages to genocide. And name-calling is a key ingredient in the 1st of the 10 stages (classification). So, if society normalizes name-calling... it's already taken the first step to becoming a genocide. That's why those who are in support of genocide want to convince the populace that everyone's "too sensitive" and "too PC". Those with genocidal intent from the jump knows that part of their first matter of business in mobilizing the relatively non-genocidal populace towards the enemy group is to normalize name-calling... and to frame people who are against it as a bunch of PC woke-scolds who can't take a joke.

You're taking this a bit seriously, no? Why compare a woman having sex with a bunch of guys in one day to a terrorist or mass murderer? And why couch this in such dangerous language? You write about it like she's some kind of Bloody Mary demon going around murdering unsuspecting men when they say her name three times in the bathroom.

Men and women both have historically relied on connection within a social group to meet all of their physiological, safety, and belonging needs. So, what you said about women coalescing for no purpose and men coalescing for purpose has no evolutionary basis. Number one, connection itself is a purpose in its own rite because it is a survival need. Also, women and men have always worked together with other community members to engage in survival-oriented tasks. So, humans have always coalesced together for connection purposes... and for survival purposes. But regardless of whether women and men connect through purpose or not... there is just a lack of outlets for connection period because community connection has been eroded. It's just that because women tend to value connection and love more while men tend to have more utilitarian and individualistic values (and might tend to see connection to be a bunch of purposeless "inane bird chirping"), women end up going out of their way to meet their connection needs more often than men do. So, men tend to be a lot lonelier but don't consciously realize because they've been conditioned to not value connection as much and to value things like independence and self-sufficiency. Before, people didn't need to go out of their way to meet their connection needs. It was just woven right into the social fabric and both men and women could be passive about it and still get that need met. But over the past 20 years or so, things have moved online more and more. And we're in a time where we don't need to be so deeply interdependent on one another to meet our physiological and safety needs. So, the result is that women and men are very lonely... but that men tend to be lonelier because they don't tend to consciously value human connection as much as women do.

Bernie has woken me up to politics. It was either him or Trump. You could credit them both as equal catalysts for progressive awakening. Those are huge positives of the current era that will have ripple effects for generations to come. And I think a lot of people around my age (30s) were woken up by Bernie and his Social Democratic politics. But attacking neoliberalism, centrism, and corporate Democrats is just par for the course. It's just going to happen. The same with Fascism rising. It's just going to happen. When the center of society stops working for the majority of people, you get both leftward and rightward polarization to try to create a new and better reality. That's basically what left and right wing Populism promises... but right wing Populism can only really offer scapegoats to blame instead of offering real positive policy change. But you're not going to ever suppress these political patterns because these are really just broad-scale collective psychological dynamics playing themselves out in a political form. And now is just the time for these forces to come forward. My prediction is that Republicans will shift further to the right... and the Democrats will do the same. And most people will hate it because it will be like putting a second grader back in the first grade. And in four years, things will pendulum swing further into the progressive direction. The main point is that times of regression leads to times of progress... and times of progress lead to times of regression which begets more progress. And so on and so on. It will suck for now, but things certainly won't spend 50 years on the backswing. People will get fed up when the Fascists don't deliver for them.

That's interesting that there was a search for homeostasis. Is there anything that corresponds to that search in real life? And yes, that's what I was thinking. As a teenager and before, I was really polarized into the Masculine with a strong disdain for the Feminine. But I was unaware because I was of the mind that Masculinity and Femininity were purely social constructs. So, I had layers of Stage Red, Blue, and Orange misogyny and anti-Feminine values that had been buried underneath my beliefs about gender neutrality and a very Stage Green kind of Feminist egalitarianism and a Stage Orange Feminist meritocratic sentiment. Then, when I was 20, I had my first medicine journeys and realized that there was more to the Feminine beyond social construct. And I realized how polarized I'd been towards the Masculine. But my polarization to the Masculine benefitted me in certain ways. I was hyper-individualistic and hyper-motivated. And I knew I could do anything if I put my mind to it. And the universe was this giant cut-throat competition, where I had to always be proving myself different than and superior to others to prove that I deserve to exist. And it was very unhealthy. But I was also thriving in certain ways that I haven't since then. I used to be the most motivated person that I know. And I had a really strong resolve and a high tolerance for pain and discomfort. And I was not aware of inequality and assumed everything to be on an even ground. So, I saw almost everyone as being on equal footing with equal abilities. And I would assume all of my victories were purely based on my merit and the fact that I was working harder than everyone else. And my life was chaotic, and I prided myself on being able to succeed in chaos. Then at 20, I experienced so much hardship that I was humbled because I failed so much because of the chaos in my life. And I realized that people really can be totally taken under by chaos. And my victories were no longer so sweet because I could no longer celebrate my victories in innocence because I realized that there's a lot of luck to having the ability to overcome obstacles and that someone will always be more successful under greater levels of duress and chaos. But before, I used to really pride myself on living this underdog story of succeeding in chaos. And there was this searching always to be superior to others in some way. Then, I experienced how a lot of this was mostly just me trying to get away from self-hatred and shame. And all of my motivation was coming from self-hatred. And I experienced unconditional love and realized that that was really what I was looking for. So, I threw away all my hyper-Masculine coping strategies... even the ones that had been helping me survive and thrive. And I haven't really felt on top of life ever since. I've been half-assing it in life and I never quite feel like I'm riding the wave of life. But the discipline and working class "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" values that I used to have remind me so much of the values these right wing famous guys claim to value. And I just don't like the vibe of the whole thing as it reminds me of my teenage self. But I also kind of miss teenage Emerald and her hyper-discipline and will to power. Teenage Emerald would have taken over the world already if she knew what Adult Emerald now understands. So, I think these guys remind me of the values of my teenage self that I repressed at 20. But that I find them disgusting is par for the course because I really threw the baby out with the bathwater... and those guys are the bathwater to me.