The Shit-Stirring Thread.

[snowyowl]

Thank you. Your flattery is much appreciated.

You seem a lot more experienced and world-wise than me. I'm barely out of adolescence, I don't have any kids or anything. I've not been through much in the way of hardship, or at least nothing worse than five months unemployed living with my parents. So maybe I'll come closer to your worldview as I get less naïve. Regardless, I don't hold your misanthropy against you. As long as you don't hate one demographic over others, or take it into your hands to cause human extinction yourself, it's not doing anyone any harm and it frankly seems a lot more sensible than my vague it's-all-meaningless-but-we'll-work-it-out-somehow existentialism.

Seeing as how many (I'd say most) religious parents definitely keep their children from exploring other religions and teach them the faith-based morality systems that come with whatever religion, I'd consider the concept generally negative.

Hm. I wonder if this is the sort of thing we can measure statistically. My parents and church raised me Protestant, but they encouraged questions and critical thought. Even the pastor didn't mind too much when I left, though he gave me a couple of Christian apologetics books to read in the hope that I'd reconsider. Granted, it's an exceptional church.

I am saying, that helping someone live, who will continue to suffer until they die, is not charity. To me, it's downright evil. Lots of homeless people exist who will never function, or at least not without dramatic psychological help and possibly medication. Feeding them is not a good thing, it's prolonging their suffering.

I've met different homeless people from you. Some of them are "just passing through", after they lost their money in some failed gamble (literal or metaphorical), and get back in the working world within a year. They're barely out of normal society. Some of them are from Third World countries, smuggled here without passport or visa or work permit and forced to beg money for their paymasters. Those I don't give money to; it doesn't solve their problem. And some are long-term homeless, but they still function, and seem happy enough if they can afford three small meals per day.

Yeah, there's a few drunks and druggies in the mix too. I just want to say that, in spite of stereotypes, most of the homeless could be rescued. Although I don't have the guts or the money to do it myself. Maybe I'm a hypocrite like that.

Question about misanthropy: Do you think that, over an average human life, the pain outweighs the pleasure? And that there's no way that this will ever be reversed? Because under those assumptions, the extinction of humanity seems like the best bet.

[RyukaTana]

Hm. I wonder if this is the sort of thing we can measure statistically. My parents and church raised me Protestant, but they encouraged questions and critical thought. Even the pastor didn't mind too much when I left, though he gave me a couple of Christian apologetics books to read in the hope that I'd reconsider. Granted, it's an exceptional church.

Again, I don't begrudge these sorts of people. Humans are ultimately all flawed, even if I feel Christianity is a result of that, if all one finds in religion is a sense of comfort, good for them. I believe in a higher power as well, I just don't put a name or ideology to it.

People that follow the teaching of Christ, are generally following a good man. I just disagree on his heritage is all.

Don't evangelize/proselytize, don't force your morality onto others (especially children), and don't do bigoted things in the name of your religion, and we're good (that's all 'general you').

I've met different homeless people from you. Some of them are "just passing through", after they lost their money in some failed gamble (literal or metaphorical), and get back in the working world within a year. They're barely out of normal society. Some of them are from Third World countries, smuggled here without passport or visa or work permit and forced to beg money for their paymasters. Those I don't give money to; it doesn't solve their problem. And some are long-term homeless, but they still function, and seem happy enough if they can afford three small meals per day.

Well, I'd put the kind of people who aren't homeless more than a year in an entirely different category than those that do so most of their lives (at least past a certain point). The latter group is split further still, and as I said, some just need real help, not just food or money, but to be given a real chance.

This leads well into why I am a misanthrope. As a society, definitely in America, probably worldwide, we could support every human being alive if we were so inclined. Even under practical systems that exist to compensate for general human corruption and stupidity, we could help and support most of humankind, and live in a generally better world. Instead we live in a world where a infinitesimal portion of the population holds not just individually more than every other individual, but collectively more than every other individual combined.

We see this as acceptable, despite all the harm that comes from small portions of the population hoarding power and resources. Somehow, it's more important what celebrities do, which religion one follows, or whether or not a person has sex in a way that is vaguely objectionable (but not necessarily, or not at all, harmful) to many people.

I'm a misanthrope because right this moment, I literally cannot form into words a short summary of all that is wrong with humans. I can't even begin, there are so many, so far apart, and such constant destructive tendencies in our species, that I can never approach even a broad swath of them without thousands of words and hours of my time. There are just too many problems, too much wrong, too much stupidity for me to broach it. The best I can do is try to get across that I have pretty much never had a conversation about a major facet of human existence where I didn't dramatically disagree with the way we approach it.

I'd bet that if you fired off a hundred topics, short of utilizing very innocuous ideas (like how we approach breadmaking or something), you might find 1 or 2, where I didn't have a strong dissenting opinion about some facet of the way it is approached by most of humanity.

[Fifth]

Some years ago, Ryan North did some comic about a machine that could predict people's death. This spawned two anthologies of short stories, the "Machine of Death" series, where a number of authors got to ply with the possible effects of such a radical shift in society.

So I had an idea for another sci-fi world where a bunch of different authors could play around with an interesting "What If?" question.

After long years of experimentation, scientists discover the chemical roots of sexuality and gender identity. With this knowledge, a pharmaceutical company creates a series of injectable compounds that change a person's sexuality or gender identity. These are dependent on what the "end state" is - ie, they can move a person up or down the Kinsey scale, or turn sexual attraction on and off, or change a person's gender identity from "male" to "female," though non-binary genders would be more complicated?

So what do you think? Would you like to read or write stories with this concept?

[Godric]

After long years of experimentation, scientists discover the chemical roots of sexuality and gender identity. With this knowledge, a pharmaceutical company creates a series of injectable compounds that change a person's sexuality or gender identity. These are dependent on what the "end state" is - ie, they can move a person up or down the Kinsey scale, or turn sexual attraction on and off, or change a person's gender identity from "male" to "female," though non-binary genders would be more complicated?

So what do you think? Would you like to read or write stories with this concept?

At a gut reaction I'd say no, I wouldn't like to read stories about that. Honestly I find the idea abhorrent.

What was so fascinating about the Machine of Death stories, was that it was an examination on how the human race deals with the concept of inevitability. All it did was give you information, possibly private information and certainly confronting, but it was simply a word (or words) on a bit of paper, and the stories were built on how humanity reacted to those slips of paper.

What you're talking about is discovering a way to drastically and invasively change a person's very identity, and the potential for it to happen against their will. It would certainly change the way people would think about sexual and gender identity, but I can think of very few ways that it could turn out well.

I realize it's only a concept for stories, but I honestly cringed when I read it. It's so charged with negativity from the get go, implying that any particular sexuality/gender identity could be wrong, "but we've got a pill for that." It feels like a breeding pool for bigotry and discrimination, and I understand that can make for a deep story, but it just sounds really really wrong.

[RyukaTana]

So because a concept is bad, there's no precedent to write good stories based on it? Post-apocalyptic fiction has no value? Holocaust fiction? Full Metal Jacket? Attack on Titan? Game of Thrones? A Modest Proposal?

Those are all stories based on awful things. There are a lot of good stories that start with something abhorrent, that's often the point. I'm not suggesting you're unaware of that, Merle, your post suggests you are, but that you're stuck on a 'gut reaction'. Those kinds of 'gut reactions' have forced a lot of censorship in the past, though.

I'm not saying there's a strong concept in there, but if we're denying the concept, there should be a better reason. I'd agree that it would be very hard to write that story from a place that is interesting and has a worthwhile message, and if that's what you're getting at, I can empathize.

[MaggiedesHiboux]

Okay-here's my biggest problem.
Something I've seen multiple times on this thread is "Christians believe X" or "The Christian viewpoint is Y."
This stopped being a valid statement sometime around when the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodoxists split off-if not before then.
"Christianity" is not one big monolithic set of beliefs. To the best of my understanding, to be a Christian, you believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Full stop. Do you believe this? Yes? Then you are a Christian. Anything else is optional.
Now, this could easily be compared to the difference Tailsteak put out in the comic about the difference between "homosexual" (attracted to your own gender and only your own gender) and "gay" (fabulousness). There are other things that are associated with Christianity, like almost everything in the Old Testament. More tangentially, things like "no sex before marriage" and "don't get an abortion".
I, myself, am a Christian. And I have never believed that anyone who wasn't was going to hell.
Also, I think the concept that gametes have souls is fairly ludicrous. But that's not the point.
It honestly disturbs me that people think the damnation of all nonbelievers is a major Christian tenet. And the idea that this only holds true if they've heard the gospel...
If anyone who hasn't heard about Jesus is saved, and anyone who hasn't is damned, why did God send Jesus in the first place?
Personally? With the full acknowledgement that I am capable of being wrong?
The message is secondary. It's the sacrifice that's important.
Just because you don't know Jesus died for you, doesn't mean his sacrifice doesn't cover you. If your beliefs do matter, what's important isn't saying "oh hey Jesus exists" it's admitting that you have done wrong and wanting to be forgiven. If you're apologizing to, say, Thor, for the fact that you hurt someone, you are still apologizing.
I'm a Christian and I-and every other Christian I've personally met and discussed the issue with-do not believe the Buddhists and Wiccans are damned.

[Nepene]

Yeah. In terms of heaven and hell, there's not many passages, it's somewhat open to interpretation exactly what happens in heaven and hell.

http://blogs.christianpost.com/engaging ... vey-10916/

And belief in hell is not a majority belief among Christians, belief in eternal torment is uncommon among Christians.

I'd probably go along with the hell is the place for people who willfully seperate themselves from god point of view. If you don't like god then it would be a bit immoral to force you to go to heaven and worship god. The bible expects you to experience anguish from being seperated from god after though. Those who accept god's grace get to enjoy his presence and mentally grow, enjoy various benefits. Those who don't get pushed away from the bad aura of it all and experience anguish at what they have lost.

[Tem]

Abortion - All the crap about feminism or religion just muddies the waters. The abortion controversy is about one question and one question only: how we define a human being. Answering this question is important for other reasons: as medical science advances, we are only going to see more and more cases that blur the lines of personhood - brains in varying states of disrepair, bodies with transplanted or artificial brain tissue, humans with augmented genes, animals with "uplifted" brains.... to say nothing of AI. Nailing down a concrete definition of personhood would only help.

Feminism = The opinion that women are human.

If women are human, it follows that you cannot deny women human rights such as bodily autonomy. You would not force a man to donate a kidney for a child who might otherwise die, even if he had caused said child to lose both kidneys, but yet you think it right to force women to donate their whole bodies to a being that may or may not become a child in the future?

You cannot limit the right to abortion to women who have been raped. It takes months to prove that rape has taken place, if it can be proven at all. And then you have not only made the process of abortion much more complicated and dangerous for the woman, you have also added the ethical problem that the embryo may, by then, be able to feel pain.

Feminism doesn't muddy the waters, it is the answer to your question how to define a human being. Women are human beings. That is the only answer you need.

[snowyowl]

All the crap about feminism [...] just muddies the waters.

I happen to agree here. We all know that women are humans, with human rights. That's not in question - or if it is, I'm on the feminist side.

What's in question is: Is the embryo human? Because if they're human, they have a right to life, even if they're causing suffering to other people (e.g. their mother). You don't kill a child just because their mother doesn't want them, do you?

On the other hand, if the embryo is not human, then it's little more than a cancerous growth and should be removed if that's what its mother wants. It's part of her body.

And if the embryo is only "a little bit human", then at what stage of development does the embryo's right to live outweigh the mother's right to her own body?

(pronouns are fun)

you have also added the ethical problem that the embryo may, by then, be able to feel pain.

Ah, so it has a right to live when it can feel pain? OK, if that's what you're saying, then that seems reasonable enough to me.

[Nepene]

Feminism = The opinion that women are human.

If women are human, it follows that you cannot deny women human rights such as bodily autonomy. You would not force a man to donate a kidney for a child who might otherwise die, even if he had caused said child to lose both kidneys, but yet you think it right to force women to donate their whole bodies to a being that may or may not become a child in the future?

Yeah, we don't really follow this principle unless it's convineant to us. We all have a right to bodily autonomy, unless you take drugs, maybe have too much sugar or salt, unless you're in the army, unless you're trans, unless you want a surgery that the government doesn't approve of or some drug, you often can't get vasectomies unless your partner approves as a man, we regularly block freedom for pedophiles in certain areas. Bodily automony is a nice idea that we routinely violate when we have some reason to.