Scholar

Sure, incestuous abuse does occur but the vast majority is between adults and children under the age of ten, or generally between adults and minors. There is no evidence that relationships between siblings, and especially adult siblings, are disproportionately manipulative and abusive. Right now both siblings are imprisoned if both claim they consent to the relationship, which means the assumed victim is imprisoned as well. The idea that incest laws prevent abuse is just not empirical. Incestuous abuse virtually never happens between adult siblings, and it virtually never happens between siblings who are around the same age (even if both are minors). Genetic arguments only apply to having children, which can be legislated separately. Although, to maintain a stance like that consistently would require us to have a more comprehensive eugenics program that would forbid high risk individuals from having children. Additionally, the genetic risks for siblings are not universal. A subset of siblings (who share the same recessive alleles) will have significant risk, while others might not only slightly elevated risk given their genetics. Meaning, if we wanted to establish a eugenics program, we would probably require individuals to get a genetic test before engaging in procreation while mandating steps that reduce risks to potential offspring or forbid it entirely for specific, high risk cases. No, but progressives are uniquely in a position in which they claim to care about minority issues and the rejection of outdated social and moral norms which cannot be rationally justified. The incest taboo is universal because we have a significant biological drive to be repulsed by it (westermarck effect). The incest taboo itself has no good reason beyond the long term effects inbreeding has on smaller population groups (tribal settings). The genetic argument is simply not rational. The westermarck effect already will prevent incest between siblings from ever being normalized or a wide spread issue. The amount of individuals who would choose to be in such a relationship in a society which accepts consanguinamory would likely not outweigh disabled individuals who decide to breed with fellow disabled individuals (which happens frequently due to such individuals socializing together), or simply random pairings of couples who share the same recessive genes. Most importantly however is that the taboo against incest is simply not justified given that incest does not necessitate inbreeding. We can have a taboo against inbreeding without having a taboo against incest. Individuals can be educated on risks and act accordingly. Another argument against the genetic risk is that not all sibling couples will actually have a significantly elevated risk. The way recessive genes work, it will only be a subset of siblings who have a significantly higher risk of various birth defects, whereas some siblings will have slightly or moderately elevated risks (both siblings must share the same recessive genes for the risk to be substantial). While I would recommend any sibling couple to engage in genetic counseling, it is absurd to stigmatize individuals universally independent of if they want to have children or if their risks are even elevated. Royal families are a bad example because they are an example of forced marriages that happened across multiple generations which significantly increased the chance of multiple recessive genes stacking up. In a free society, individuals are highly unlikely to engage in multi-generational inbreeding. Bigotry is not the primary reason for the icky factor, that is obvious. The icky factor is a result of evolutionary pressures that make us avoid multigenerational inbreeding within the context of small social groups (in which we evolved in). The bigotry however is a direct result of this ickiness. Much like homophobia, our personal feelings of disgust (that exist for evolutionary reasons) is what drives the way we treat individuals who engage in such actions. We imprison and consider morally abhorrent individuals even if they are not capable of having children (due to age or being the same sex), and we treat individuals as monsters even if they do not plan to have children. We also treat them as monsters even if their risks are not that elevated and they take measures to reduce them, like sperm selection IVF and early-pregnancy monitoring. Society at large will simply not be impacted by inbreeding between siblings, not even to the degree it is right no being impacted by individuals procreating who have various genetic disorders or are disabled. We do not even imprison individuals for smoking or drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Yes, coercion is an issue, but it is mostly a function of the social roles individuals play. We generally do not criminalize step-family incest even though step-family members are more likely to sexually abuse you. The vast majority of incestuous abuse is a function of opportunity, meaning predators have an easy time preying on vulnerable family members given they have access to them. Targetting consensual relationships between adults does nothing to prevent such cases, and only drives individuals to pathology as they are driven into social isolation. Remember, if a parent and their child have what appears to be a consensual relationship, both have to fear legal prosecution. But for siblings, especially those around the same age, it is absurd to treat them as invalid because of the potential of coercion, especially once they are adults. It is simply not consistent that we imprison both of them on the basis of potential coercion. This means that we must prove coercion in the first place to identify the perpetrator and protect the victim. The incest taboo makes it less likely for couples to seek out measures that will reduce risks of birth defects, they make it more likely that couples become pathological due to social isolation, and they make it less likely for victims of grooming and abuse to come forward given the profound stigma that comes with such relationships. All of this is basic progressive logic that in any other scenario we would apply the same exact way. But suddenly, when it's incest, we become unnuanced eugenicists who think any potential benefit to such taboos outweighs all the suffering we are inflicting on completely innocent individuals.

While he is a robust thinker, I also think there is a bit of flimsiness in his thinking. He generally goes in the right directions but often times doesn't account for deeper arguments. His stance on incest is similar, he will say that there basically are no rational objections but then maintains a stance that he believes it to be wrong due to being an emotivist (which has obvious counter-argument that he himself seems to have brought up, but doesn't connect quite right). I think it was a bit self-serving from Alex to basically struggle with issues and then almost revert his position. He claimed factory farming is the greatest moral emergency of our time but ever since he ran into these issues he basically didn't talk about it anymore and went back to his atheism thing. I think he finds himself in a difficult situation given he struggles with his health and therefore sought arguments that would allow him to maintain a certain level of convenience without being considered morally wrong. But yes, I think there generally is evidence that even a single individual not consuming animals will have a direct impact on how many animals will be killed/factory farmed throughout their lifetime.

I can't tell it by his language, he seems like someone who is fighting illegal migration. The problem with painting them as racist is that people obviously can see he is not a racist, like Tommy Robinson or whatever his name is. He is a guy who is extremely concerned and fears what is happening. You aren't deflating peoples fears by demonizing everyone who voices their fears, it just turns into more and more conflict, as we have observed over the past decade. The labelling people as racist and fascist thing has been tried and it literally didn't work.

I think this is a bit of a carricature of what racism is in the 21st century. It's not about hatred, it's about genuine fear. Have the maturity to recognize that people aren't evil for no reason. People use social media, they are confronted with one terrible case of a migrant doing something bad after the other, and at some point they build a mental model that makes them scared. This is no different from police violence in the US. Most police interactions go perfectly fine, but because there are so many police interactions, and therefore so many are bound to end in disaster because of incompetency, malice or simply dangerous situations, people develop a completely distorted image of what the police is. Then they call for things like defunding the police, irraitonal policies that do nothing to mitigate anything. You have to realize that today is a time of fear and moral outrage. People are shown the negative effects of various social policies or groups, and their view gets distorted over time. And even when it is not distorted, it becomes defined by fear, which opens the path to hatred.

But then everyone is a fascist, including you, given you support fascism in relation to the animals by participating in systems that perpetuate this fascism. You support Leo after all, and he supports this form of fascism. The question is whether or not it would be effective to communicate this to people, or if most would be hard pressed to take such proposition seriously. They aren't less true than your claims are.

But this is precisely the problem. Think about what is happening here. You said it yourself, Trump does fascists things and then people dismiss it. Genuinely ask yourself, trying to reflect on how other human beings operate: Do you believe that labelling what Trump is doing "fascism" and being adamant about it will change whatever the problem here is? I just don't see how this is a rational response. If people see what Trump is doing and dismiss it, there is something far deeper wrong here that needs remedy that will not be resolved through point to the thing and labelling it fascism. If anything, this will likely cause more resistance in them. I think there is a natural cognitive resistance here because, I think if we are honest, we realize this situation is more scary than it appears to be. The fact that people are this ignorant is profoundly concerning, and the idea that the fascist discussion will do anything to truly help the situation is almost delusional in light of the significance of the problem we are facing. This is a far deeper and more serious issue than the proposed solution is presuming. Calling it what it is does nothing Emerald. This is what has to be realized. Just look at the reaction in here. This is pure desperation in the face of an existential threath. It's like trying to shoot rockets at a planet sized object that is hurling towards the earth. It makes you feel saver, but it's unlikely to do anything to impact the issue at hand.

I don't understand what this means "handle people with kid gloves". This is a serious matter Emerald, it's not a game. In such circumstances we need to have the maturity to do what we believe to be effective, not what makes us feel good. Telling the truth isn't some sort of virtue that at all points must take precedent. But we seem to have empirical disagreements. I believe using terms like fascisms actively makes it less likely that individuals alarms are raised. I think it does the opposite of preventing people from getting sucked into fascism because they begin misidentifying the cause of fascism. The term fascism isn't even really accurate. What we are describing here is something far more fundamental to the human condition, something that was present in communists, fascists, feudalists and even capitalists. Fascism was just one expression of this aspect, and precisely because todays form looks different from historical fascism, it will make people dismiss your critique. They lack the understand to recognize what you are truly referencing. You can't do all of this in an informational environment in which fascists are considered the worst thing that exists. That's just how people perceive fascists. So, before using this lable could ever be effective, you would have to change how people understand fascism in the first place.

Half your country supports Donald Trump, the magnitude of the problem goes beyond just galvanizing your side to vote. But I doubt that using words like fascism is effectie to convince inactive moderates to act against what is happening. The term fascism has sadly been overused by the left in the past decade, like the word racist. Nobody takes it seriously anymore, it simply has no weight to it, people will dismiss you if you apply it even if you are accurate. If the facts of what Donald Trump is doing is not sufficient to get people on your side, calling it fascism will not change that fact.

You are misunderstanding. When I mean "enemy", I mean in particular identifying fascism as a problem and focusing on it as a problem. It's not the problem, it's the symptom. You can advocate calling fascism fascism, but that does literally nothing. It alienates everyone from themselves, from recognizing their own evil, because we have created in culture in which only evil people are nazis. But nobody considers themselves evil, so using fascism as a label literally veils their evil, renders it invisible. If we lived in a society in which everyone recognize the humanity of Adolf Hiter, then calling out fascisms might be effective. But in this world, I don't think it does anything other than further blindness and ignorance. If you were to not muddy the waters, you would be calling every democracy on this planet fascistic, given what every society on this planet does to animals. It dominates entire subgroups of individuals, exterminates them, enslaves them, for the same underlying reasons the fascists did the same to those they considered subhuman, or the communists to those they considered class-traitors. Focusing on fascism is a red herring.

It is muddying the water, because people externalize fascism. Calling it out will do nothing other than give the fascists what they need, which is conflict. You are treating symptom rather than causes. And in this particular case, treating the symptoms worsens the causes. I don't understand why anyone believes that calling out fascism will do anything. If this is the propose solution, then you are lost. In that case, the only way forward is through the darkness.

Making fascism your enemy gives fascism precisely what it needs to fester and grow: Resistance, conflict. Fascism never was your enemy, humanity was. You were too late to recognize it, and now it might be too late to stop it. Most likely, your actions now will serve to accelerate the process rather than prevent it. That is the sad reality.

Americans simply are so ignorant and arrogant, there is no other way to remedy it than through experiencing suffering. You have been maggots swimming in bacon for too long. This is pessimistic, but I truly do not see any other way. The ignorance is not going to just go away by itself. There is a humility that comes from experiencing the horrors of human nature. If you have had no contact with that horror, it is hard to motivate yourself to put in the effort to prevent it.

You are muddying the waters, as I described above. You keep making it about fascism, when it is about humanity.

I wish you could know how misguided this is.

The issue is that people have not learned from the lessons of World War 2. I think the fascist/nazi label as it is employed by americans reveals that they have no understanding of what fascism is or how it emerged. It has been assumed that fascists are these abnormal individuals who radical ideologies who will infect the public with their ideology and radicalize them. It's "them", the "fascists", they are "out there". This externalized view of what fascism is makes it impossible to actually prevent fascism. The key lesson that we were supposed to learn from the holocaust is that, it's not "fascists" who are going to bring the hatred that will be the prerequisite of new authoritarian systems. This label fundamentally veils what fascists are: Normal human beings. This was the lesson, that perfectly normal human beings, perfectly upstanding and otherwise moral individuals, could end up supporting a system that would genocide entire subgroups of humans. By externalizing and conceptualizing this threat to "the rise of fascists", fascism was in fact enabled, impossible to prevent. Why? Because to prevent fascism, you must prevent aspects that exists in all of us from taking hold. It's not about ideology, it's not about "fascists", it's about the average person. When you say "They are fascists", what you in essence have done is give fascism an invisibility cloak. Nobody considers themselves a fascist, and therefore whatever aspect that will give rise to fascism, they will simply reject as being what will allow fascism to take hold. Because they are not fascists, they are just normal humans. When you label the problem "fascism", you make it seem like it requires something special to enable fascism. It requires an ideology, specific political or moral attitudes. In germany, children have always been taught that it was normal human beings, just like them, who caused the holocaust. It wasn't "THE FASCISTS", or "THE IDEOLOGY", it was just normal human beings, with normal human tendencies, who inevitably treaded down the road of darkness. Why is this so essential to understand? Because it makes clear that what enables "fascism" is something that exists within everyone on of us, always. The nazis were not special, they were not evil, they were good people convinced they were doing the right thing. The mental model of fascism as an infectious ideological disease does the precise opposite of preventing it. By framing fascists as evil, no good person will ever consider themselves a fascist. And everyone considers themselves to be good. This is precisely what ENABLES fascism to take hold. Good people who believe that only bad people can lead us down a path of fascism. That fascism is a sickness of the mind, not a part of the average human condition. The model as it is employed right now fuels fascism, it amplifies it. Because you are doing precisely what is required for fascism to be enabled: Making the average person blind to which of their perfectly normal human tendencies will cause the rise of the next path towards darkness. You actively make people blind, making them believe that fascism is external, an exceptional state of human depravity. But it's not, "fascism" is the norm, not the exception. If you doubt that, you merely have to look at what human beings do to animals.

You have to recognize that comparing extreme fringe intellectuals and the most radical elements of the non-liberal left (that liberals do reject anyways), to the mainstream of the right is simply silly. Yes, the fringes on both sides are insane. If you want to compare the radical lefties, compare them to the radical righties, which are literal nazis and ethno-nationalists. That's not the problem, crazy people exist on both sides. The issue is that the rights mainstream is absolutely insane. They are violent, engage in full blown authoritarianism and are calling for civil war, when right wing violence far exceeds left wing violence. You simply can't compare the two, this is 95% a right wing problem.

I am referring to your claim about people who were "working in our school systems". Yes, tankies and communists are radical and support violence. You can find the same on the alt right. But we aren't talking about the most extreme actors on either side, we are talking about the majority of the voters of the given party and their representatives. It's not just the extreme alt right that is violent and radical for the republicans, it's the president of the united states, congressmen and women, judges, maintstream media outlets who are absolutely bonkers pro violence.

Name a few of those individuals.

It's not really a good quote because it demonstrates he misses fundamentally why violence occurs. He and his ilk are framing non-christian leftists as satanic and evil. He in fact is in favor of children viewing public executions. He specifically considers empathy as weakness. You can talk about supposed non violence all day, but if someone believes what someone else does is not only evil but stems from some sort of satanic evil, then this will justify violence against them in the eyes of especially more radicalized and unstable people. Charlie Kirk was a staunch supporter of the most violent president, with the most violent rhetoric in recent US history. Him paying lip service to principles of civility because at the time it specifically served him to do so does not mean the guy was anti-violence. It's like saying Trump was anti-violence because he once uttered the words "Violence is bad.". You can talk about non-violence, but if you truly frame anyone who supports Israel a zionist, and then a zionist someone who supports an ongoing genocide, you will obviously get people who will want to commit violence against such people. Because we celebrate violence as a culture, we celebrate killing nazis, and you in the US especially celebrate things like executions of criminals. This is all part of a culture which you cannot just negate by saying you are pro-civility. If you want to prevent the kind of political violence that is occuring today, it would require a fundamental change in the culture and the way social media platforms operate.

It's probably artifacting from the quick motion.

Nobody is innocent. We live in a society in which there is a subgroup of individuals which is treated as objects, raped, murdered and enslaved by the billions. Even the most progressive individuals not only support but participate directly in that objectification through consuming the tortured corpses of those individuals. Basically nobody is protesting it, everyone is making excuses for it while only giving importance to moral issues that relate to their own ingroup (humans). You should be very careful with your condemnations. There are individuals who, rightfully, view you and every one of your progressive friends as genocidal supremacist barbarians who justify, participate, downplay and do nothing about the greatest moral atrocity in the history of the planet. To the animals, all of you are nazis, genocidal murderers, propagandists, pedophiles (animals are child like beings who are sexually exploited by the billions every year) slave-owners, cannibalists. If you are going to play the moral crusade olympics, I can guarantee that you will not find yourself on top of it. If violence against the likes of Kirk is justified, it is justified against you and 99% of progressives, even those who pay lip service to this issue, and especially those that talk all day about human genocides while turning a blind eye to the the animal holocaust. Ignorance and selfishness exists in all of us, to a far greater degree than you can imagine. Your ignorance of that fact renders you no different from the likes of Kirk. A sense of false moral superiority fueled by irrational moral outrage rather than an effort to improve the world and bring light where darkness has previously been. You are morally depraved, it's part of the human condition. The more you deny it and frame yourself as superior to others, the more evil you are.

Psychedelics can make you more neurotic and less mindful even if they might permanently shift your consciousness towards less egoic engagement. Mindfulness practices remain essential even after exhaustive psychedelic breakthroughs and integration, if one wants to avoid egoic traps and self-deception.

It doesn't matter, people's identities are hijacked. Even the most rational and conscious of us struggle to not be swept away by it. Once fundamental social constructs get eroded, those that relate to civility especially, it might not be possible to regain them in this environment. https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/11/16761016/former-facebook-exec-ripping-apart-society They have been warning us for more than a decade that this would happen, they know exactly why it is happening. Back then it wasn't even half as bad as it is now. And beyond this, you have bad faith state actors that maliciously stoke the flames. It's been only a decade of this, really. Now you have entire generations raised on it, we have simply no idea what this will do to people. You see politics everywhere now. Casual podcasters, gaming channels, everyone is driven to the lowest consciousness drivel there is.

This assumes that there is some sort of agency humans as a collective have in relation to what is going to transpire over the next years and decades. But the reality is that social media is unprecedented. There was no amount of human agency that could have prevented the chaos and totalitarian ideologies that arose due to new information technologies like the printing press or radio. You can't just fix this by telling people to act well. Identities are deliberately hijacked on a scale never seen in history before, driven god knows into what sort of insanity. We have simply no idea what will happen as a result of this. In hindsight, it will seem obvious that it could not possibly have ended any other way. It's MK-Ultra applied to every person who can afford a phone.

Well it's not really related to politics, but it seems like you are using a band-aid solution to overcome a deeper issue that needs resolving. Nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't come with more negatives than positives, but it is a crutch that you should eventually be able to set aside through resolving the trauma.