The trope of society praising male promiscuity is largely an invention of the 20th century.
Biblical and Hebrew texts all encourage punishment of both man and woman in instances of adultery.
As a man I don’t like promiscuous men because they’re competition. I don’t want to introduce my female friends to them because they’re not relationship material, and I don’t find them trustworthy as a wingman. Call it jealousy, but I think the same dynamic applies to the other gender.
On the other hand most societies are more tolerant of male promiscuity.
You accept its a feature of the modern west. It goes back to at least early modern times when at the very least it was routine for the aristocracy to keep mistresses. The Romans definitely expected fidelity from wives but not from husbands. Even today Middle Eastern cultures which criminalise female infidelity tolerate it from men. Greater tolerance of male than female infidelity is true of South Asia too.
I know the Christian attitude was that both were equally wrong, but that was, for most cultures, a radical change from the previous attitude and I doubt it was every completely accepted. I do not know what the Old Testament attitude was, but, again, I would ask whether it was really 100% accepted that punishmets should be equal.
300 wives and 700 concubines. His taking of 'foreign wives' who turned him to idols was listed as one of the main reasons God was unhappy with him, indicating what the scribe thought about this.
Tbf, that's a very "modern"-ish way of viewing the idea of "committing".
And there are good reasons for that, of course, but with that thinking, you're always going to be not fully there, which might be harmful in different ways than the ways it tries to protect against.
It's a hard problem to solve, because Humans and interpersonal stuff is hard, but, ideally, one would frontload the friction, so that there is no need to keep an out on hot standby.
Sure in our modern era there are a lot more divorce and it's probably partly because people are less inclined to make efforts to stay in a relationship. But there's also statistically less abuse and domestic violence and that's partly because women by and large have a lot more options than they used to.
I don't think the trade off of having less divorce and more long lasting relationships is worth the increase of domestic violence and abuse so I do believe that people in any relationship should have an out (even if it's not in case of abuse or a breakdown of a relationship but instead for supporting oneself after the death of the only parent bring money home).
That still means that I would teach my kid that the secret behind any successful relationship is to make efforts and that one should not give up at the first problem but you never know what the future might bring and having some way out is always useful
The thing is, assuming you get married as a step toward building your own family, once you have kids, there isn't an out that doesn't involve damaging them for life. Your contingency plan is going to be bad no matter what, and not being present in their lives and putting them in daycare is making a real sacrifice to mitigate a risk that is better mitigated by being discerning in the first place.
Being able to spend all of your time with your family is the freedom to strive for, not a loss of freedom. It is the ultimate form of being your own boss; you are accountable to no one, not even customers/market forces. The loss of freedom is trading your time to accomplish someone else's goals that you're not really invested in while you pay someone for their time to watch your kids who they're not really invested in. And this trade can only really make sense after overhead if you outsource to people who make a decent amount less than you, further decreasing their likelihood to be capable or driven to do a good job.
Then I'm confused by what you're trying to say. Reread it a few times, let me try to state how I understand your argument:
- thinking about having a way out (so not being a stay at home wife for example) is a modern way of thinking about "committing".
- By thinking this way, you're not fully in the relation, so it's harmful to the relationship stability. (which I interpreted as divorce)
ok, I admit the last part, I'm not sure what you mean by front-loading the friction... I just focused on not keeping a hot standby.
Sorry for my confusion, not trying to be difficult here, I really don't get what you mean if not what I originally interpreted it as
No, I wasn't referring to divorce, because divorce is actually a pretty healthy failure mode (or can be, at least). The worse failure modes are the ones where people do not disengage for whatever reason and stay in the situation indefinitely.
What I wanted to get at is that "relationship turning sour" is (usually) nothing one has zero control over.
Because the logical chain proposed was "Things can always turn sour" -> "You always need a way out". Or at least that's how I read it.
So I've put the prerequisite into question there.
My point, in a gist, is that I think it should be possible to greatly reduce the probability of "things turning sour" by doing much much more work upfront (before committing to a situation), and through that, the need for an out could be shrunk.
Probabilities are of course probabilities, but still.
Or, even simpler, I feel like people, generally speaking, could spend more time _actually_ getting to know each other before moving forward; and it would only do them good + they would treat each other better + they'd actually see each other (more).
___
Moving fast and breaking things is everywhere, and it seems to be breaking people too.
=> So the friction of _really_ looking at who a person _actually_ is (which might be unpleasant) might be necessary.
Even though SV would love to have you believe that frictionless existence is desirable.
It is, up until it isn't. And then you're fucked.
But the solution is not to assume that everything is broken, but to build healthy stuff instead.
Oh, now I get it. Thanks. For what it's worth, I agree with you about spending time getting to know each other before moving forward. I just believe that doing that doesn't reduce the necessity of not putting oneself in a situation with no alternatives or way out.
I think it's more than modern companies have, for whatever reason, become extremely scummy. They seem to have no values, ethics, or even regard for their own customers. The only thing that seems to matter to them is squeezing out a few more pennies from people, even if means the likely longer term implosion of their own companies. It's just bizarre to me how many companies, and in different industries, seem to be at war with their own customers.
I hold capitalism with a deep fondness, but I think that's largely because my formative years were in better times. For people who've never known any capitalism except for the mess we currently have? It's quite to see how they can think to themselves that anything must better.
In a poly I would guess people need to feel attached to a group not a single individual, in a sense loving all people in the group almost equally. Mostly, we are not raised that way and culturally it would be unconventional, to say the least.
Loving people equally is impossible. Even poly people have a 'primary' introducing hierarchy and preference.
A group of people sleeping together is not a stable community. It's filled with people who are trying to sleep with other people inside and outside of the group who are vocal about being able to spend time, money, and effort on others for sex. There's nothing binding a group like this together besides sex.
Even normal community activities like volunteering or sports clubs have drama and people who end up hating each other. Add sex in the mix and you've created an explosive dynamic.
I tend to agree. I was describing how I think it could work and how I suppose it worked before. Nowadays, when contact with many people outside of the group is ubiquitous, I think it's next to impossible, but maybe there's people out there that make it work. Good for them, if they found a way.
People who do not depend on relationships simply don't enter into relationships.
For everybody else, there is the normal and perfectly human feelings of jealousy, attachment, fear or loss, and feeling associated with self-confidence.
No. You had a choice. I voted for Harris (who I do not like as a progressive) instead of chaos and destruction, others had the same choice. To not vote out of protest was a vote for this.
Better luck next time. ~2M voters 55+ age out every year. Can we do better? Remains to be seen.
If you’re voting for your wallet, I don’t take offense, simply vote for someone with a plan grounded in reality, and at least some history of success. This is not what has happened.
Right, so if we go back to 2024, the Dems were in charge and things felt sucky, the last time they remember feeling good about their wallet was Trump 1
This is what exit polls told us, this is the track record they were looking at
You have your timelines wrong. Presenting an article as an I told you so does not explain how people were thinking 2 years ago and how that influenced their vote
The last administration left this administration one of the healthiest economies in US history, regardless of consumer sentiment and vibes, this is a fact based on objective economic metrics around unemployment, job growth rates, wage gains, etc.
Exit polls are no longer reliable due to voters lying. If voters were upset with prices, and therefore vote for someone with no plan to improve prices besides "I will fix them" and then does nothing to fix them, well, not much you can do about that. Voters voted, in some combination of economic unsophistication (not knowing "How do prices go down?" but believing anyone who says they could make it happen without a plan) and racism (below citation), for this. This is what they get until next elections. If they experience economic harm due to these outcomes, again, not much you can do about that, we're on rails assuming political and governance system election timelines. But this is how we got here, based on the evidence and data.
Abstract: Due to racial wealth inequality in the U.S.—inequality that benefits White Americans on average—many Americans associate White people with wealth. Yet, many White Americans report feeling like they, personally, are “falling behind.” We conducted a five-wave longitudinal study with a representative quota sample of non-Hispanic, White Americans (N = 506) during the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that White Americans who feel they are falling behind White and Asian Americans, while also being close to being passed by Black and Hispanic Americans, within a perceived tight status hierarchy, reported the most support for DEI bans and Trump, controlling for objective status. Further, White Americans with these status perceptions were most likely to vote for Trump in the 2024 election. We conclude that White Americans’ subjective perceptions of their position in the racial economic hierarchy meaningfully relate to political attitudes and behavior.
The Findings: Using a statistical technique called Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), we identified distinct groups based on where people subjectively ranked themselves and other racial groups on the American status ladder.
* We found a specific group of White Americans (~15% of our sample) who perceived themselves as "tied for last place" with Black Americans.
* Crucially: This group was the most likely to vote for Donald Trump and support bans on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
* Importantly, this effect held true even when we controlled for their actual income, education, age, and gender. In other words, feeling like you are losing status predicted voting behavior more strongly than actually having low status.
I don't disagree with your facts, just that they don't matter to many people when it comes to voting
Those people who voted based on their wallets were looking backwards, not forwards. I believe this is the core flaw in your logic about them selecting the best candidate for their wallet
fyi, why do you find this noteworthy? It is the expected outcome based on my understanding of the trends globally around wealth inequality over more than a decade. That "last place" defines much of rural MAGA, but a lot of them and many more talk about it without race. The elites / oligarchs (though not the words they necessarily use) are more often the cause (maybe as portrayed by the govt and globalists?)
> First, we think it is noteworthy that a very simi-
lar “last place” subjective status profile
emerged at all. This replication, even years
later, suggests that the feeling among some
White Americans that they are “last place,”
even if tied for it, has been a persistent under-
current in U.S. politics
No, DNC picking a bad candidate should be responsible for a D electoral loss, it is not responsible for Trump's electoral win. A lot of people seem to think only the DNC has agency in elections, only they should be responsible for outcomes.
You can blame the DNC for all the badness of Harris (the minimum badness you were able to choose in the election). You can't blame the DNC for all the difference between Kamala and Trump. That was entirely up to you.
I voted for Bernie in the primary, for Hilary; Biden; and Harris in the general elections. At no point did I think to myself "Now is the time to be an idealist about the DNC, right when we're combating fascism"
The DNC is an embarrassment, the two party system is a democratic disaster, but accelerationists? They're evil.
Before LLMs, Google was showing highlights which took crawled content and displayed it on google search results, meaning they’d get less traffic on their site while google stole their content.
It’s unfortunate that google helped kickstart the world wide web but now they’re extracting everything while polluting search results with ads
What’s missing from these conversations are the cost of living.
We’ve financialized the housing market, meaning the very basic needs of shelter now rises in price in accordance to the market. If tech workers make 2x or 3x the median annual salary, it makes housing prices rise for everybody else in the city.
In order to pay a “living wage” employers have to pay enough for their workers to make rent and groceries. In america, one of the highest GDP per capita in the world, the “living wage” is somewhere between 3x to 10x the offshore salary.
If you could house millions of people at the bare minimum cost, if you could provide them food and healthcare at prices that aren’t inflated, then the living wage doesn’t need to be so high.
We talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. What about lowering the minimum costs? That would mean a less stressful life for workers and cheaper labor for employers.
The financialized housing market is only a symptom of the over-regulation (through zoning and permitting) of housing, construction, and real estate in general. This over-regulation is itself a microcosm of the petrification of the majority of the economy.
There are literally thousands of years of sino-korean wars, so its hard to pin that blame on a specific government. Tibet is a more straightforward case of imperial expansionism from China, although it is also a centuries-old one, dating from Qing dynasty (1700s). The border skirmishes with India stem from mutual dissatisfaction with old British imperial border lines, which both governments disagree with.
Now compare that with the USA list. China's list is, to say the least, much more lightweight, straightforward and understandable. I'd go with that list any day, and most of the world would too.
Biblical and Hebrew texts all encourage punishment of both man and woman in instances of adultery.
As a man I don’t like promiscuous men because they’re competition. I don’t want to introduce my female friends to them because they’re not relationship material, and I don’t find them trustworthy as a wingman. Call it jealousy, but I think the same dynamic applies to the other gender.