Natasha Tori Maru

I lean into this. Much more pragmatic take. Stripped down of inflated hype and dreams.

I use duckduckgo, startpage and kagi (paid though). I used to use Brave but it's been turd lately. Not sure what changed there.

Do I? Or do I have my own truth? If you haven't noticed, across our dialogue, and all dialogue with others on this forum, you rarely ask questions about others worldview to try to understand in earnest. Let alone mine. You simply never drop frame and insist on your own. Again and again. And again. And again and again. And that's fine, you can do that if you will. Because you won't ever abandon your worldview in earnest open enquiry, to really try to understand someone else's, you misunderstand others. And this is why you don't understand Ralston. You demonstrate it with almost every statement you make. You also ask others to teach you about Ralston through their own lens of interpretation. Further removing you from understanding him. My suggestion is, if you really want to participate in a real teardown of Ralston - you're going to have to batten down the hatches and read his books.

Respect. I must be shit 🥹

No worries ! Thank you for the support

It is part of the story he tells himself

Yep. Also he HEAVILY advocates for the need and (current gap) for strong male role models men can get behind. The role of "fathers" is really important. He doesn't advocate for returning to a previous system, or trying to change others. I like how he is more focussed on how men can cultivate integrity and worth through changing themselves and not blaming external factors. I think it is a self empowering message to run against the hopeless nihilism much of the younger generations are faced with in current culture. He emphasises how a lot of male suicide is punctuated common narratives around feeling "useless" and worthless. Pointing toward males having a deep need to provide value for their themselves as a natural manifestation of masculinity - and not because they are forced to be value providers by external incentive structures (that's not to deny there aren't significant external incentives at force, more that this is actually a positive masculine trait that produces positive self worth when fertilised). Less 'society needs to fix this' and more recovering male agency, meaning & competence. This is too simple and falls into the reductionist trap. He says alcohol is one potential way to assist with socialization but its a mechanism to loosen up - and there are others. You've also twisted his message of cultivating purpose and value into straight making money - he never claims this is the only way to actualise as a man. This is just your stripped down interpretation.

Okay Jan, go tell someone on the street they are dumb and see what sort of reaction you get. Nice mental gymnastics to justify doing whatever the hell you please. Not discussing this any further. You know the rules - do it again and test them at your peril.

I agree with this - it's a loaded term. When it's thrown around in debates like this, additional work has to go into stripping it of meaning that users bring, AND THEN reconstruct what others mean by the term. You double your work having to educate and redefine it. I don't ever refer to societies structures in a gendered way.

I agree. It reads like dead perfection of human prose. Like a simulacrum of a human mind's thoughts. It sticks from a mile away. I question a lot of its uses in general - is it enhancing our active participation in life - or is it removing us to be more of a 'witness' or 'observer'? We are devolving into spectator chimps of our lives, rather than chimps engaged and involved with the chimping

The internet has degraded in quality. Flood the zone with shit. Misinformation and disinformation is too widespread. Vetting is becoming harder and harder. I've been on the internet heavily since mid-90s when DIALix existed in Australia. It's been a slow boil. Reddit is actually foul. The group think there is really pervasive. And I swear to GOD LLM's are vomiting up consensus from that cesspool

Porn can be addictive. There is no arguing around this.

🫪🫪🫪🫪 Hur de dur 😃

@Willy Phallicus peace, dude. Don't let this scramble the eggs. It's just an online conversation.

Just don't be rude. It's not hard.