Izandai

"hello i'm [ingroup] and here's how [ingroup] thinks" usually either barnum statements or assuming one's own experiences to be universal

Is formatted to be as unconvincing to the nonbeliever as possible

I haven't been able to find it again, but it was a wildlife documentary. In my memory it was David Attenborough narrating, but I think that must be a false memory because otherwise I would have been able to find it.

It was about monkey social behaviour, and the scene that The Dunk always reminds me of was a territorial dispute between two troops of howler monkeys.

What howler monkeys do when they have territory to fight over is they sit still in two neighbouring trees and howl at each other. It's called "howling" but to me it sounds more like roaring, like a crowd at a stadium.

"However," said the commentator -- and I mentally hear this in David Attenborough's voice but I'm pretty sure it wasn't -- "it's hard to tell who's winning, since no-one's moving."

And I remember that every time I see performative hostility trotted out as discourse. Every time I see "arguments" designed not to convince but to anger and alienate the opposition whilst garnering a laugh and a high-five from the side that doesn't need convincing. No-one's moving.

And sure, when the opposition are doing that to us, there's not much point in throwing away actual earnest argumentation on their scorn. But there's equally little point in responding in kind. It won't make them change their minds, it won't make them go away, it won't change their behaviour in any way except perhaps to make them double down.

Maybe sometimes the howling helps to rally our own side together; but that's not much use if all we're rallying together to do is to keep howling.

Hating yourself isn’t an apology for bad behavior, it’s just something that makes life worse

Suffering isn’t a virtue, so you can’t cite it as a reason someone is justified or superior

Pleasure isn’t a sin, so you can’t cite it as a reason someone is unjustified or inferior

Just because something took a lot of discipline isn’t a meaningful defense of it

And it beats the absolute hell out of starving to death because of droughts or flooding or crop blight or war or my wife having fucking cancer and being too tired and immunocompromised to work the fields with me.

These assholes never understand how much work -- sweaty, boring, frequently gross work -- is involved with all this. Repairing and maintaining equipment. Feeding and tending animals. Moving literal shit from one location to another, which is surprisingly large percentage of all farm work.

Cutting hay. Raking hay. Fucking baling hay during the hottest days of the year because that's when hay is baled (and when the hay is baled you still have to MOVE IT AGAIN). Being at the mercy of the weather constantly. Ugh. Getting the fUCKING grain burner to work because the rain didn't cooperate and if we don't dry it, it'll rot in the bins before we can sell it.

This poster still wasn't subsistence farming. And the society they're in sure as fuck wasn't. They still had access to all kinds of shit that can't be grown on one family farm, and, crucially, they eventually had a choice. (Eventually, because when you're a kid if your family farms, you farm. Hate everything about it? Too bad.)

That "one acre farmstead" is me laughing in actual mediaeval history: we literally know that isn't enough to reliably feed one person and their animal through the entire off-season. No not even with zucchini (and you'd have to just eat zucchini all the time).

If you're "supplementing" your living then you're not subsistence farming, you just have a vegetable garden.

Subsistence farming is the most lethal, backbreaking, precarious way humanity has ever found of providing for itself.

You may be wondering how I got into this situation. That's good. Keep wondering. If you pay close attention to the rest of this movie and employ your critical thinking skills, you may find that the answer unfolds as it goes along. Sometimes it's good not to know yet, and to wonder. Sometimes that's the entire point.

Is formatted to be as unconvincing to the nonbeliever as possible

Making fun of a group of people that are privileged over you is one thing, but wishing non-cartoonish violence and death on them ("they should fall off a cliff" vs. "they should be wiped out"), wishing sexual violence on them, dehumanising them, claiming that they're less capable of creating art or living meaningful lives, saying that their relationships are inherently shallow and fake - these things are fucked up. I understand venting and saying extreme things when in pain, but when you find yourself regularly posting about wanting certain people tortured and killed, you need to examine that.

I always think of the Rwandan Genocide when it comes to this. Thank you for bringing it up.

In particular, from that second link: