plato85

There's a current vote here in Australia over same sex. There was a pro gay marriage protest with 20,000 in Sydney yesterday. i don't really care about gay marriage one way or another, but I find something very off putting about the protest, and I feel like voting against the protesters. i don't know how to articulate why I'm so strongly against protesters, but in general when there's a large group of zealots I want to stand up for the other side. Am I being completely irrational? Is spite of zealots a good enough reason to vote against gay marriage? The two issues are not strictly related. I suppose I'll have to abstain from voting.

I'm hoping the court system and trained judges isn't as irrational as local government and the general public.

I applied to court and I wrote to them that they are essentially accusing me of ripping them off, and I think they’re going to look quite silly trying to assert that in court. Thanks, I agree rouge. I'll check out Marc Stevens. Anything in particular?

Get off the drugs.

EDIT: Yeah Milo's book is a good laugh. Real easy to read. I read it the whole thing the day it came out. John Taylor Gatto was famous in home schooling circles in 90s. He won teacher of the year awards. He explains in his books that because he was under the radar teaching ghetto kids in Harlem, he got away with disregarding the curriculum, and taught partly based on the elite private boarding school model to think like aristocrats. He talks about how he built up a culture in his classes of kids who actually wanted to learn and how He built up their character and intellect. 'An Evening with John Taylor Gatto' which is a series you can on Youtube or Free podcasts. 'Underground History of American Education' is his best book and there is a free audiobook here.

I wouldn't say it's that the boomers don't care. They have a meek culture of not being politically active, not talking about politics at the dinner table. There's probably no avoiding war, the Sunnis are on a war footing. They'll probably rise up on the streets one day under Erdogans orders one day.

Then the closer the relation the closer their morals are. Society is not divided along ethnic lines, it is divided along conservative/libertarian and Socialist/multicultural lines. And these groups are getting further apart. The point is, how do we bring socialists across to unite society?

Well, naturally we tend to identify with people with similar morals to us. I suspect interests are secondary. A country could be brought together on common morals, or divided into different groups. Morals should be based on truth, evidence, and rationality. Identity should be based on morals, not the other way around. If society was open to argument and debate, and learning, and put our arguments to the test of reason, we'd find we all start to have more in common as all we start to agree with the best moral arguments. if on the contrary people claim that all moral codes are equal and decide it's offensive to challenge someone's outlook, society is divided into multiple identities with not much to bring them together. The identity worth wearing for me is one along my moral line. I identify with honesty, rational, grown up, independent, self reliant, responsible, mature. If people thought of identity in terms of their morals like this, identity politics wouldn't be a thing. Having said that, identitarians are exposing the insanity of the left, and I'm optimistic that identiarians will destroy political correctness.

This is not stricly about socialism, but In Carol Quigley's book The Evolution Of Civilizations, he talks about different cultures mixing together. It's a very interesting book if this is what you're interested. Keep in mind the establishment thought he was one of them. He says that civilisations go through 7 stages, but don't necessarily move forward through these stages, sometimes backwards. Mixture - a new culture mixing with an old culture can be very difficult Gestation - the cultures start to merge and forge a new stronger culture Expansion - Good times, good economy Age of Conflict - war Universal Empire - All enemies defeated world government - Roman empire / Ancient Chinese empire only two examples so far. Good times leads to decay. Decay Invasion He says a unique feature of Western civilisation is that we keep getting to age of conflict and then resetting to expansion, rather than getting universal empire and decay. Thich is how the West became so advanced. This probably meant more in the 50s when he wrote it. It feels like right now we're in all of those stages at once.

I've got a parking fine which I'm considering taking to court which could cost me several hundreds if I lose. The law is vague and I'm not sure how strong my argument is so I need your advice. I consider you guys as good as lawyers. I pulled into a car park, and the parking sign said to pay on a mobile app, "PayStay" and it gave an area code. I downloaded PayStay and paid the correct area, but I switched two letters on my license plate and I didn't notice. I got an $80 ticket. The law I allegedly broke was: "Parking where fees are payable: The driver must (a) pay the fee (if any); and (b) obey any instructions on or with the sign, meter, ticket or ticket-vending machine. Definitions: traffic control device means a traffic sign, road marking, traffic signals, or other device, to direct or warn traffic on, entering or leaving a road; with, for information about the application of a traffic control device, includes accompanying or reasonably associated with the device; I applied for an internal review and the city wrote back "We don’t withdraw fines in these circumstances. Before starting a session, drivers are given multiple opportunities to check that they have entered the correct vehicle registration and zone number. If these details are not accurate, you have not correctly paid for parking and the PayStay session is not valid. We strictly enforce the correct use of PayStay." I'm thinking of taking this to court on the grounds that the instructions within the app are not reasonably with the sign because: 1. The law is vague and obviously wasn't written with a phone app in mind. 2. It is not reasonable to argue that a typo in a phone app is a crime, and there is nothing anywhere in the road rules about making typos. The City claims that my parking was "not valid" even though they acknowledge that they have a record on their system that I've paid. If they know I've paid then I must have obeyed the signs, and the only thing that makes my parking invalid is that they say it is invalid. Is my argument sound enough? Or is it a stronger argument that the app is reasonably with the sign because the sign mentions the app?

I have the same instinct, but if everyone else is using newspeak, using classical definitions leads to confusion and anger. I'm just thinking back to my original post: After I we defined these arguments, he continued arguing with his definition and I continued arguing with my own definition until he called me a Nazi and I ended the conversation. I would have thought since I was the one defending conservatism and he was the one challenging it, he would shift his position somehow. I guess that's the ad hominem fallacy. So there's no point in using someone else's definition, and standing up against deliberate fallacies is what's more important. I have to learn to identify when they're using this kind of argument early.

Adam Curtis' - Century of the Self is all about this stuff and how it has played out in the past. The full documentary series is on youtube.

I'm not sure how talk about identity, it's not something I know much about. It seems to me that progressives put identity above logic and reason. So perhaps the best way to challenge their morals and politics is to challenge their identity. I don't really know how to go about it. I've done a little bit of reading and I've read that Mazlow's hierarchy of needs says that higher level needs are abandoned to meet lower level needs. If someone needs belonging they will join a group and abandon their own thoughts and beliefs and conform to the group. No wonder it doesn't matter how much you argue with these people it doesn't help. No wonder debating, arguing, reasoning doesn't affect these people. It probably has the opposite affect, because they'll see an argument as a personal attack for them being part of their group. Then how do we bring them across to independent reason? 20 years ago everyone was proud to be from our country including immigrants. Now it seems that national identity has been demonised, so there's no moral identity to bind everyone together. Perhaps 'identity crisis' is the best way to describe the post-modern world.

Don't expect reality to return anytime soon. Come the next crash they'll bring in helicopter money / universal basic income. That could keep the system going for another 20 years before John Galt takes over.

I completely agree the clock is ticking, and I haven't found a a successful strategy yet but I'll dedicate my life to finding one. Debating and arguing like adults doesn't seem to help. My latest theory is, in simplest way of putting it the two mainstream outlooks: Enlightenment outlook: Truth > Morals > Politics Postmodern outlook: Identity > Morals > Truth > Politics So discussing politics with someone with different morals that you is a waste of time, you need to address the different morals first. The post moderns see the world as 'us vs them' and their morals are based on their identity. i.e who they think they are. So to bring someone post-modern across to reality, my theory is that we have to first challenge their 'identity', 'us vs them' outlook. I don't know how. I suspect they have assumed a 'group identity', in place of a weak sense of them self and who they are. So challenging their group identity might involve building up their self esteem first. Good luck with your Son. Let me know how you go.