Hey, everyone. So I sat down to write something about this horrific discussion of domestic violence on The Spearhead – which some of the Man Boobz commentariat have already started discussing here – and, well, I just couldn’t do it.
I need to step back a bit from this blog for a little while to clear my head and maintain my sanity. So I’m going to take a bit of a break – maybe just a few days, maybe a week – and post nothing but interesting videos and other things having nothing whatsoever to do with misogyny or the manosphere. You all, of course, can treat this any any other thread as a totally open thread to discuss whatever you want, including the regular Man Boobz topics of misogyny and general MRA shitlordery.
I’m going to start off with the dance number that first got me hooked on Bollywood music some years ago. This is from the 1998 film Dil Se, a drama about love and terrorism. But in Bollywood, even serious dramas have dance numbers, and Dil Se’s dance numbers are gorgeous and a little surreal.
The music from the film is by A.R. Rahman, a prolific and popular Bollywood music director best known in the US for doing the music for Slumdog Millionaire.
And yes, that is Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan dancing on top of a moving train without any safety harness or stunt double or CGI trickery. (Well, there are a couple of brief bits where a double might have been used.) Enjoy!
Lol, sorry for the delay, I was emailing the not-an-ex more specific wtf I do not want directions. For one I’m that horrified by the idea of being stuck in a brain dead shell, soul issues aside, it’s a waste of resources (see, I am an organ donor, and if I’m not using them, please let someone else). For two, pharm student with a solid et of medical knowledge, if anyone’s going to get why I want things…yeah…and ze possesses an amazing ability to be objective even when the scientific inquiry is personal (treating my self injury wounds as any other injury was so strange, I was so embarrassed and ze was cracking jokes and debating if I needed gauze…weird, awesome…)
Ok, on topic! (Lol, on “topic”)
Finite resources? We’ll find a way around that! Tech will be available to everyone since resources are infinite! People mostly reproduce to pass on genetics and we’ll be sciencing faster than evolution can work, making that obsolete. (Look, I don’t particularly want kids, but that’s clearly bullshit on about three levels)
It’ll be available to everyone cuz it’s just healthcare and that should be available to everyone…at the US/”first world” level…even if they reject it…because if they understood they’d accept it…
*head explodes over the colonialism, Angelo-centrism, patronizing, and just general motherfucking idiocy*
I wouldn’t blame you at all for this – often I read these posts and I’m left speechless at how *insert unidentifiable noise of disgust here* people can be. Have fun with a break!
@ Integral
It may also depend on how willing the management is to risk alienating fans of the “someday I will marry oppa/cutie pie and zie will love me forever and omg how dare zie kiss someone else” variety. Some of those kids can be scary.
I did find a video with a kiss in it, though! Still an oddly chaste kiss, given that the video stars with a close-up shot of one of the guys naked in the shower (for which all the viewers who are attracted to men say – thanks, director!). But yeah, if you’re going to open a video that way you’d think they might have opted for something a bit racier.
Actual things actually in my inbox — every death is a premature death. Death is not inevitable.
This is beyond pointless.
I had to go to bed because I was nodding off at the computer! It was lovely, it’s so nice to be able to sleep (chronic insomniac here).
Argenti, I fear you’re just going to have to back off and wait for real life to catch up to this dude (if it ever does – I’ve met senior citizens who haven’t learned jack-all in their lives). Frankly, it sounds like you’re banging your head against a brick wall.
I can kind of see where he’s getting this type of fail-logic, but in terms of real life and actual consequences and a smidgen of empathy, it doesn’t make sense.
Even if we just take death from violence versus death from natural causes: violence has a bigger fall-out in terms of emotional damage and consumption of resources than heart disease. And urgh, it makes me – and I’m not known for much in the way of sentimentalism – uncomfortable to look at it that way. But I’d rather see my mother die of heart disease than be shot by a mugger, even if she died instantly. If she died of heart disease, me, my brother and all our friends would be sad, but not traumatized by it. If she was shot, I’d be angry and sad, my brother and all our friends would be angry and sad, there’d be a police investigation, it would probably be on the news and people who didn’t even know my mom would be angry and sad and frightened, they’d be worried that there was some asshole out there who might kill more people…
Dying is important and natural, and I’m not just talking about consumption of resources and the natural limitations on the body. I think in the Western world at least, we’ve cultivated an obsession with preventing death at all costs that has made death, even those from natural causes, far more traumatic than it needs to be, both for the person who is dying and for their friends and family.
I love my kitties, each and every one of them. Due to my own personal issues with emotions, I probably love my cats more than I love most of the people in my life. But because I love them, my concern is for their physical and emotional well-being, not mine. And that includes letting them die when it’s time for them to die; helping them to die when their quality of life has degenerated past the point of the possibility of improvement; accepting the realistic limits of their lifespans; mourning them, and then going on to love other cats.
I see no reason why the same should not apply to humans.
Going way, way back to the first post in the thread…
The gif of a kitten sleeping on your shoulder, cuddling your neck? OMG. My one cat used to do that.
The other gif of the cat getting super into getting petted? OMG. My other car does that. Allatime.
Cloudiah. YOU HAVE MAGIC MIND-READING SKILLZ.
On Transhumanism and uploads; I just read a book. A really, really good book. Charlie Stross. Accelerando. It starts with ‘well, okay, if you can upload… then…’
And blows my mind. Because if you can run out copies, what happens to them? Are they you? What paperwork goes with this? Can you run out as many copies as possible and crowdsource a problem to yourself? What happens when you lose connection to humanity because you’re in a box? (going back to the Pratchett thread about seeing people as things) And aren’t you a thing, now? Being just a program running on a computer?
And just keeps going, and going, and going, and WOW.
@Argenti Aertheri
Gah on the preventing suicide w/ forced drugging. I mean, I don’t really have any amazingly thought out opinions on suicide, but it seems like if you want someone not to kill themselves you’d be much much much better giving them support and making them feel loved than… that.
re: transhumanism stuff
I can sort of understand where your jerk-ish friend is coming from, since I’ve got issues of ‘ohmigoddon’twannadie’ to, but those are mostly worse when my depressions acting up, since it’s like, ‘wait but this life sucks give me another’*. But the rest of it is just blah. (Actually all of it is blah, I just need to sort out my feelings on death…)
*fun time story. when I was first losing faith in god I was *also* terrified by eternity forever, since my brain just explodes around death, especially since the church (at least our church) had that funny things where one of the big no-no sins was turning your back on god or w/e. It’s like, I’m a decent person, I’m just not feeling it for him… :/ eh, church issues
sorry if this was a derail :/
@Argenti
I also practically fell asleep at the Kindle. It was apparently the night for it.
I think forced druggjng also requires a faith in both drugs working and human beings not lying that neither deserves. Personally, if I were forced to take drugs, I either be screaming about side effects (both felt and possible, but not happening) or thanking everyone for all the help and for making me all better now so that I could go home and stop taking them. Every single category of bipolar meds has been a failure for me and not just on the “they don’t fucking work very well as treatment” front. The daily anxiety attacks from Abilify are actually the best side effects of the lot. My reaction to antidepressants (which ime is all you get at a mental hospital and so would certainly get at some places if being FORCIBLY DRUGGED, even if you strongly suspect you have bipolar, because suicide = depression and they really aren’t set up to evaluate everyone well) is more suicidal thinking. So, basically, forcibly drugging would make suicide more likely for me. Fail at medicine.
Although, I am seconding The Kittehs’ that he is a hopeless case until life teaches him more things.
@cloudiah (but thanks howardbann1ster for reminding me)
I shared those gifs with a friend who was having a bad day and she said they helped. Thank you!
Marie – since the religious people keep telling me all about how god loves me and wants the best for me and blah blah blah, but will strike me down or send me to hell or whatever if I don’t proclaim my faith and bow down and worship, despite “not feeling it” (and seriously, you can’t force faith. Wouldn’t faking it be even worse than being upfront about how you really feel, at least in the eyes of this god they keep going on about?), I like to tell them that if their god really is so fantastic, if zie does exist, then zie will understand why I feel the way I do, that I can’t help feeling the way I do, and will give me credit for being honest with myself and others, and living my life the best way I can, as I see fit to live it. And if their god doesn’t, then zie is not a god I want to believe in and I don’t feel zie would deserve my faith or worship.
Wow, that turned into a really long sentence. I hope it makes sense. This is actually something I feel very strongly about.
I don’t want to die, either. But I have to accept that it’s going to happen someday – to me and to everyone I know, unless something really extraordinary happens within my lifetime. And the odds on something that extraordinary and life-changing happening within my lifetime, if it ever happens, are not certain enough to depend on.
@Some Gal – that’s horrendous. So many people, including doctors, who should know better, act like medication is some magic bullet that will fix everything, and if the meds don’t work the way they’re supposed to, then there must be something wrong with you (general you as well as specific you).
My youngest brother is bipolar. He was diagnosed before he was 10 years old, but many doctors even now don’t believe that children under 18 can be bipolar. He went through so many damn medications, many of which did not work the way they were supposed to. When he was finally prescribed Lithium…the difference was so profound, it was amazing.
But I’ve met people for whom Lithium didn’t work, or it worked for a while and then stopped working, and they had problems with other meds. Personally, I tend to find an adult dose of many meds is too much, weight be damned, but a children’s dose works just fine; or I experience side effects that aren’t mentioned in the literature. A few meds have no effect at all (if one more damn person tries to give me ibuprofen…).
If someone doesn’t want to live, that’s their choice. I’d absolutely recommend therapy and possibly meds, but in the end, if someone is determined to end their life, they’re going to find a way to do it. At least make it possible for them to do it with as little pain and suffering as possible – for themselves and for others.
I saw this on a bumper sticker once: “Quality of Life is more important than Quantity of Life”.
@some gal
I’d probably be faking being better to if I were being forcibly drugged. I actually have done that at one point, when I was sent to, idk what it was some kind of kiddie asylum. I was acting all defiant and not behaving and stuff until one of the older kids told me the best way to get out would be pretend to go along w/ it. When I got out I stopped taking my meds (really wish I remembered what they were for) and my dad was super pissed when he found out. Luckily my mom was understanding. Sorry for the derail, it just reminded me of a bad time in my life :/
@Ellex
Yeah, I’ve never got that thing about them. Luckily for me, I feel like my mom and dad, who were both religious, raised me w/ a more consistent view, where god loves everyone and you only go to hell if your really, really bad, so you’ll see all your atheist friends in heaven or w/e. They also said pets go to heaven, I think cuz I was a little kid and really worried about that. :p But even having people who take a loving god to mean what it logically would, going to church and hearing about how turning your back on god is a big sin and can land you in hell takes a toll.
I know I’m going to die someday, I just have weird feels about it. (Actually probably a sign my anti-depressants are finally working, since I get all ‘stop talking about it!’ when they aren’t, since I can actually talk about it. Still making my mood a little funky but I have to get used to it.)
@ellex24
Ibuprofen works for me, but makes me dizzy and confused. When I finally got a proper prescription-only painkiller, not only was the pain better, but I was clearer-headed, stopped being unable to follow conversations from time to time, and could actually read something (even if there is still a lot if rereading, it is still just an amazing improvement). Drugs are funny and far too many doctors seem to think that if they didn’t hear about it, it isn’t real.
@Marie
It wasn’t a derail. Hugs if you want them. That sounds terrible. At one of the hospitals I was in, they had kids there and I just felt so bad for them. Being stuck away from home can suck so much worse when you are young and there’s the food*! Good for that older kid and good for your mom.
*I don’t mean to minimize all the other stuff, it is just unending hospital food is probably the strongest memory I have. I was just 18-19 at the time and very glad that I just made the cut-off to be with the adults.
Marie – I actually didn’t mean that as harsh as it came out. It’s easy to say “there’s nothing you can do about it, so you might as well just accept it.” Actually doing so is harder and takes a lot of work. But I think that realizing that it’s what you need to do in order to get on with your life actually does help a bit.
What’s that saying? “[insert deity of choice here] grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
The last one is the hard part! But this comes from dealing with my mother, the chronic worrier. I’m always telling her that there’s no point in worrying about things you can’t do anything about.
She still worries.
And I realized I should have said I was agreeing with ellex24 not The Kittehs’ on the point to Argenti. Apologies to everyone!
Also, quick note to one and all–by definition of the original post, there is no such thing here as a de-rail. EVERYTHING is on-topic, so release the Kraken, already!
Furtheratheism:
I think one key element of forging an Asshole Atheist is a fundamentalist Christian upbringing (it’s not always the case, but it does tend to enhance the odds). I grew up Episcopalian, and liberal Episcopal, at that. As a result, I tend to not have much issues with faith-as-a-thing-people-have, so long as it isn’t influencing, say, how they want the world legislated. I’ve known too many good people of faith to regard it as an ‘always bad’.*
But the atheists who come from a more conservative church background? Yeah, when they break away, it’s usually like a rubberband snapping, and all the pent-up hostility becomes part of their new identity. It’s understandable, but often regrettable even so.
*: There is one thing that bothers me about moderate/liberal believers. A great many of them fail to react to offenses by their more conservative brethren. Probably the most extreme example I can think of is the Westboro Baptist Church. Now, obviously, the WBC speaks for very few Christians outside the Fred Phelps clan, and the vast, vast majority of them find him repugnant. But when they first started their protests in the early ’90s, picketing the funerals of (mostly gay) men who died of AIDS, the silence from the larger Christian community was almost deafening. Sure, they’d cluck their tounges and tsk, and if asked directly, would say how horrible it was… but there wasn’t much by way of pushback, or outreach to the families Phelps and Co. were tormenting, either.
It wasn’t until they started protesting the funerals of soldiers who’d died in Iraq and Afghanistan that real, organized resistance came, and then it came not from the churches, but from the Patriot Riders–a group of motorcycle riding veterans who weren’t about to take that crap.
For nearly a decade, the WBC was allowed to get away with spewing its vile, homophobic slurs on national news, and there was no one stepping up to try and get them to stop. That was about the time I stepped away from organized religion–if the churches in America couldn’t be bothered to stop what seemed to me at the time to be obvious blasphemy in the service of hate, what good are they?
Some Gal, I agree anyway, so you were proactively saying what I’d say and now I’m retroactively saying yeah I agree. Crystal clear, that is. 😉
Death for me used to be a fear (pointless, really) of oblivion, but hugely mitigated by “Well, if Louis doesn’t exist, and all my kitties don’t exist, then I don’t want to either.” Eternity did seem scary, but if you remove our earthly notions of time and find you just don’t get bored, if the mindset and perspective is very different, then it’s not relevant either. Those are the sort of glimpses I get from visiting over There. I’m far less concerned about death now, even with the occasional twitch of “am I imagining this” – if I am, well, I’m not gonna know anyway, and if not – whoop! More things to look forward to!
OK, I don’t think this is fair. Everyone hates WBC, but what are we supposed to do about them? (Remember, they want you to try to stop them because they make all their money from fee-speech lawsuits.) And why is it our fault when a group we have no connection to does something we don’t like? That’s like all the MRAs whining about how feminists aren’t doing enough about radfems.
@katz
I think comparing churches to a political movement is unfair. As I understand it (having once been in church and very spiritual, if not religious), a church is a community that is there to worship together and provide support. If the support stops at the membership of the church, then it is a pretty shitty church. Any church in the country would organize to form a counter-protest if the WBC. Pretty much everywhere they go, they encounter one these days, but I mostly hear about them being organized by secular groups. Why wouldn’t a church be involved in protecting their community and standing up for their values in a public way?
(If churches are one of the major organizers of counter-protests, I haven’t heard about it.)
*could not would
If WBC was protesting someone in, or connected to, that church, that would be one thing, but the point is that it’s unreasonable to blame one group for failing to do something about another group that has no connection with them. Just because you happen to think that counter-protesting WBC should be a church’s top priority doesn’t mean that it’s theirs. And anyway that logic can be used to condemn any group because every group is going to have failed to do something about someone that you don’t like.
@katz
If a church has no members of a group targetted by the WBC in their protests, there is either something wrong with the church or it is incredibly small. I am not expecting a living room church to stand up, but a mega church? They could and should be doing something. Of course, a lot of mega churches agree in spirit if not vehemence. Or with the message but not the medium.
I think that churches have a greater calling than most other groups. The premise says that they are more. That they fail to live up to it is why I started disliking churches before I had any idea I would lose my faith.
Some gal, you’re still not grasping the key problem here: Anyone could condemn any group for failing to have the exact same priorities as them. There are all kinds of problems in the world to be addressed and just because you think WBC should be a church’s top priority doesn’t mean that the church is morally failing because they don’t agree.
@katz
I think the problem might be that I think that both the WBC is a major disruption to a community and that the church’s first priority should be protecting their own community -the very community being disrupted. I think they fail if they cannot or will not do that. We are talking about a day or so for each church, not traveling around the country.
@katz
Churches are only just like every other group if there is no god(s).
@some gal
hugs definitely accepted. I’m mostly over it, (don’t know the reason they put me in there, and I don’t think the medicine they gave me was for depression, which finally got diagnosed six months ago) I really don’t remember what it was for :/ I would like to talk to them about it though, cuz I’ve still got some issues w/ it but…idk. I’m mostly just ranting…..
@ellex
you didn’t come across as harsh, I’m just weird about the death subject.