It sounds like you're in the medical profession and know your stuff. I wanted to respond to this comment though because it makes perfect sense from the medical industries point of view. I understand why it would be common sense to classify such behavior as an illness, and I understand why that is the standard perspective, but I think chingalera's point, and one I agree with on several levels, was that it might not be (an illness).

You (I'm assuming) belong to an institution that has the authority on the definition, so today we live with the perspective that people with different forms of mental process have a disability because that "illness" does not allow them to function painlessly within modern society. It's a disruptive abnormality that needs attention and proactive care to correct.

Now, you could also very easily make the point that modern society is the construct, the abnormal element, and similar to what other people are saying already, the mental illness is a coping mechanism, or an "evolution", or a side effect of being conformed to this way of life that very, possibly, maybe, is not healthy or a natural state of existence for our current arrangement of biological systems.

Without getting into a multitude of specifics, when I look at it that way and all the issues we have in our lives, the Human Condition's complete lack of forward progress despite our civil growth, and also consider the fact that I, you, and everyone we know, spend the vast majority of their waking life dedicated to actions that other people tell us we must undertake under penalty of violence or imprisonment, I don't think it's an illness.

I agree that it's very unhealthy to live in that state, but I think it is strongly disputable between the cause manifesting itself internally to the individual, or within the environment they inhabit.

This is infuriating to watch because most of the examples of 'female supremacy' are legitimate examples of the evils done by substandard philosophy.

Anyone can find a dozen or so atrocities committed in the name of practically any ideological movement, which in themselves do nothing whatsoever to discredit its core ideals.

Feminism is not the pursuit of female supremacy, don't be retarded, although I suppose we do have to throw in the asterisk that there are those who call themselves feminists and fantasize about exactly that. Neither is feminism the simple pursuit of sex equality, but likewise a lot of dummies who haven't thought about it properly call themselves feminists for that reason. We don't need a grand theoretical framework to explain the idea that neither sex, or particularly the male sex, should dominate the other; that's, like, obvious. That's called basic rationality.

What feminism is, actually, is a confused and overblown patchwork ideology supported by mostly well-meaning but misguided morons in conjunction with a smaller number of loud-mouthed bigots. This is also a fairly accurate description of a lot of the backlash against feminism.

I chose to interpret this video as a somewhat exaggerated counterpoint to mainstream thought on sex politics, an example of devil's advocacy rather than the wholly sincere rant of a delusional. Whether that's true or not, it is the best way to watch it.
It will be interesting to compare its reception to this video on more or less the same theme.

I do consider myself to be oppressed by feminism; not as a man, which I'm not - I am a genderless mind - but as a rationalist. In reality, we are the most sorely persecuted sector of modern society.

@alcom

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

There is always an appeal to authority, either to God or to men. There are either objective moral values which are imposed by God, or morality is relative and determined by men. If morality is relative then there is no good or evil, and what is considered good today may be evil tomorrow. If it isn't absolutely wrong to murder indiscriminately, for instance, then if enough people agreed that it was right, it would be. Yet, this does not cohere with reality because we all know that murdering indiscriminately is absolutely wrong. The true test of a worldview is its coherence to reality and atheism is incoherent with our experience, whereas Christian theism describes it perfectly.

If you feel the videos provide a valid refutation, could you articulate the argument that they are using so we can discuss them here?

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

The idea of agape love is a Christian idea, and agape love is unconditional love. You do not get agape love out of natural selection because it is sacrificial and sacrificing your well being or your life has a very negative impact on your chance to survive and pass on your genes. However, Christ provided the perfect example of agape love by sacrificing His life not only for His friends and family, but for people who hate and despise Him. In the natural sense, since Jesus failed to pass on His genes His traits should be selected out of the gene pool. Christ demonstrated a higher love that transcends the worldly idea of love. Often when the world speaks of love, it is speaking of eros love, which is love based on physical attraction, or philial love, which is brotherly love. The world knows very little of agape love outside of Christ. Christ taught agape love as the universal duty of men towards God:

Luke 6:27 "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
Luke 6:28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Luke 6:29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.
Luke 6:30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Luke 6:31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
Luke 6:32 "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
Luke 6:33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.
Luke 6:34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
Luke 6:35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Luke 6:36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Some people, like Richard Dawkins, see infanticide as being the greatest utility. Some believe that to save the planet around 70 percent of the population must be exterminated. Green thought is to value the health of the planet above individual lives; to basically say that human lives are expendable to preserve the collective. This is why abortion is not questionable to many who hold these ideals; because human life isn't that valuable to them. I see many who have green thoughts contrast human beings to cattle or cockroaches. Utility is an insufficient moral standard because it is in the eye of the beholder.

In regards to the Levitical laws, those were given to the Jews and not the world, and for that time and place. God made a covenant with the Jewish people which they agreed to follow. The covenant God made with the world through Christ is different than the Mosaic law, and it makes those older laws irrelevant. If you would like to understand why God would give laws regarding slavery, or homosexuality, I can elucidate further.

In regards to your paraphrasing of Deuteronomy 23:13-14, this is really a classic example of how the scripture can be made to look like it is saying one thing, when it is actually saying something completely different. Did you read this scripture? It does not say that:

Deuteronomy 23:13 And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement.

Deuteronomy 23:14 Because the LORD your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

Gods home on Earth was in the tabernacle, and because God dwelled with His people, He exorted them to keep the camp holy out of reverence for Him.

The rules that God gave for cleanliness were 2500 years ahead of their time:

"In the Bible greater stress was placed upon prevention of disease than was given to the treatment of bodily ailments, and in this no race of people, before or since, has left us such a wealth of LAWS RELATIVE TO HYGIENE AND SANITATION as the Hebrews. These important laws, coming down through the ages, are still used to a marked degree in every country in the world sufficiently enlightened to observe them. One has but to read the book of Leviticus carefully and thoughtfully to conclude that the admonitions of Moses contained therein are, in fact, the groundwork of most of today's sanitary laws. As one closes the book, he must, regardless of his spiritual leanings, feel that the wisdom therein expressed regarding the rules to protect health are superior to any which then existed in the world and that to this day they have been little improved upon" (Magic, Myth and Medicine, Atkinson, p. 20). Dr. D. T. Atkinson

What's interesting about that is that Moses was trained in the knowledge of the Egyptians, the most advanced civilization in the world at that time. Yet you will not find even a shred of it in the bible. Their understanding of medicine at that time led to them doing things like rubbing feces into wounds; ie, it was completely primitive in comparison to the commands that God gave to Moses about cleanliness. Moses didn't know about germs but God did.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_Ancient_Greece

I hear you shinyblurry, but I feel that your argument meanders back to the original appeal to authority that most believers resort to when justifying their positions. I also find that the related video links provided by TheGenk provide a valid refutation of the idea that God is The One who put values of good and evil inside each of us.

In my mind, Zacharias' incoherence with the atheist's ability to love and live morally is influenced by his own understanding of the source of moral truth. Because he defines the origin of pure love as Jesus' sacrifice on behalf of mankind, it is unfathomable to him that love could be found as a result of human survival/selection based of traits of cooperation, peace and mutual benefits of our social structure. His logic is therefore coloured and his mind is closed to certain ideas and possibilities.

Indeed, moral foundations can and must change with the times. As our understanding of empathy, personal freedoms and the greater good of mankind develops with our societal and cultural evolution, so too must our standards of morality. This is most evident when concepts such as slavery and revenge (an eye for an eye) are seen as commonplace and acceptable throughout old scripture where modern society has evolved a greater understanding of the need for equality and basic human rights and policing and corrections as a measure of deterrence and rehabilitation for those individuals that stray from the path of greatest utility.

This is why slavery is no more, why racism is in decline and why eventually gay rights and green thought will be universal and our struggle to stifle the rights of gays and exploit the planet's resources to the point of our own self-extinction simply will be seen by future historians as sheer ignorance. Leviticus still pops up when people try to brand gays as deviant, even though most it is itself incoherent by today's standards. Remember that "defecating within the camp was unacceptable lest God step in it while walking in the evening." Well, today we just call that sewage management.

Paedophilia will never emerge as acceptable because it violates our basic understanding of human rights and the acceptable age of sexual consent. I know this is a common warning about the "slippery slope of a Godless definition of morality," but it's really a red herring. Do you honestly think society would someday deem that it carries a benefit to society? I just can't see it happening.

Exactly - political correctness has little, if anything to do with it (and I don't think @radx actually meant otherwise in his/her title). It's a joke, it's funny because it's well scripted and well acted and that's timeless.

It seems there are many people saying political correctness has gone too far (and IMHO sometimes it does) while others say modern society is too liberal and decency has gone out the window (and IMHO sometimes it has). On the whole, we are now allowed, to a point, to express ourselves but are no longer allowed to call people of a different race insulting names, for example.

It's not perfect, but I think we're in a much better place now than, say, 60 years ago when women weren't allowed to wear short skirts but you could bar black people from entering your business.

When I hear the phrase "it's political correctness gone mad", I hear "now when I'm a bigoted asshole, someone will call me out on it".

Stewart Lee sums my feelings up pretty well (edit: damn, the video's dead).

First, I agree that the NRA is totally nuts. Let's get that right out of the way.

During gun rights discussions on Videosift, I often hear "this isn't the wild west anymore", that gun ownership is no longer justified in modern society. Given that, when NO was reduced to something resembling a post-apocalypse movie, with burglars and looters a constant threat, and with authorities overwhelmed, isn't that exactly the time when people ought to have a way to protect themselves?

Confiscating guns at a time like this is no different than suspending habeas corpus for terror suspects or ignoring freedom of speech because people are critical of the government: that's what those rights are there for.

I've wondered before if this sort of thing isn't a generational divide. Did your cohort become so used to arguing with your parents, who were actually sexist and racist and homophobic, while feeling you had to pay such careful attention to your own attitudes and vocabulary to avoid becoming like them; that you're not equipped to understand your children, for whom all that nonsense is so far behind and beneath them they don't bother to trammel themselves in the same way, when they try to explain why calling something 'gay' isn't a symptom of an underlying prejudice?
Nobody cares about that any more. None of the smart people anyway, who are themselves the most viciously oppressed and under-represented group in modern society.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the decline of gendered nouns and pronouns in general. It's such a bizarrely inappropriate way of communicating, the equivalent of appending "(...and by the way I'm talking about a male here)" to so many words that don't call for that detail.

Your two example sentences honestly, HONESTLY read exactly the same to me. This ought to be welcome news to you. It means the war is over, you can climb out of the trenches into the sunny world of a post-feminist future.

I'm running your experiment in a casual way, though as has been mentioned already those words come up too infrequently and in the wrong contexts to get much out of it so far. I'm afraid you'll be disappointed or assume bad faith if we report an underwhelming experience, but if we find these words as harmless as we say we do then that's all we can report.
Your 'radical' version is unsound because it involves projecting a specific attitude directly in to the experiment. Of course you'll find chauvinism - you put it there.

What do you think is the #1 reason 'girl' as a synonym for 'woman' is in more common usage than 'boy' for 'man'?

>> ^bareboards2:

I was reading Dan Savage's column yesterday (love that man, every bit of his potty mouthed being). The first sentence in one letter asking for advice was this:
"I'm a man who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great girl."
So if we do the experiment, the sentence now becomes:
"I'm a boy who just got out of a two-year relationship with a great woman."
gorillaman Stormsinger SevenFingers, do you honestly experience those two sentences exactly the same way? Are they conveying the same information?
Or are you startled by the experimental sentence? Is a different story being told about the relationship of these two people? Who has maturity? Who has, excuse me for using a charged word, more power? And with that power, do they have more responsibility?
Storm, you said you would be willing to do this experiment ... have you noticed any word situations like this yet? Gorilla, you never answered my question, so I am taking it that you are declining the experiment?

>> ^L0cky:
There really is only one major criticism and that's the amount of death and injury caused by firearms, which is backed up by statistical research rather than media hyperbole.
If you're a 25 year old US citizen you're almost as likely to die by gunshot as you are by a vehicular accident.

OK, we can all stop right there. After that statement, you have shown how delusional you really are and anything you say can't be trusted. That "statistic" is flat out untrue, and it must have hurt pulling that out of your ass. Here are the death statistics for 25 year old US citizens from the CDC from 1999-2010:

Motor Vehicle Accident = 22%
Homicide by Firearm = 12%
Accident by Firearm = 0.4%

As I said in my other post, the pages can't be linked to, but you can use the search at the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention & Control and look it up yourself.

>> ^L0cky:
You may or may not agree with the justification (I, like you, agree - the world is an inherently dangerous place) but vehicles do bring obvious benefits to society in many ways.

I agree, vehicles are beneficial to society, but they are also the leading cause of accidental death. Most of those deaths are caused by people improperly using their vehicles. You advocate taking guns away from all citizens, so in your perfect world only police and the military would have them. Would you also like to remove personal vehicle ownership for all citizens and only allow travel to be by government operated mass transit? It would certainly save a lot of lives.

Guns have played a beneficial role in modern society. Lots of free societies have come from its citizens taking up arms against their oppressive governments. You could argue that we no longer need guns in free societies, but you can also argue that without access to guns, what is to stop the government from becoming oppressive to its people again.

@enoch let me see, charity = helping people (preferably) in need. Disaster relief = helping people in need (due to some disaster). Help me understand why I can't compare the two.

@dgandhi did FEMA do such an amazing job after Katrina that I don't know about? Because there's a very long article on Wikipedia detailing all the criticisms, somebody should remove it.

Government is not wasteful just for being large, it's wasteful for being a monopoly. It's so easy to conceive of the evils of a single corporation becoming a monopoly, but when it comes to government, the issue strangely never comes up.

I understand that's most likely because we can't avoid government being a monopoly, it's the nature of the beast, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it smaller.

You bring up good points about division of labor. What about competition, does that matter in modern society or will that also be overlooked?

If we use this $35B figure, which is allegedly what government needs to do disaster relief work poorly, can't we bring it down by subtracting all the money wasted, or will the private corporations have to operate at the same level of exorbitance?

Does it have to be a single gigantic institution, why can't smaller organizations be triggered in unison by a big disaster?

Also, why does it have to be entirely non-profit, what about the insurance business, doesn't it revolve around risk management and dealing with unlikely events like disasters?

Yes, we pay for a disaster relief infrastructure, but we don't have a choice in the matter, and that knowledge is what makes FEMA a disaster. In our moment of most dire need, we can only count on FEMA and nothing else. They abuse their privilege by being wasteful and inefficient.

Governments are not the only organizations capable of preparing and dealing with disasters, and they're very far from being the best at it.

"NSFW for language."

Welcome to modern society. Here's a video of someone actually getting shot but careful, he uses some naughty language.

>> ^Truckchase:

@ 9:06:
<NitPick>People thing Federal Reserve Issued currency is real money too. It's not any more real than bitcoin; it's just the belief that makes it real. </NitPick>
Other than that, great vid. I'm still working up the guts to ditch FB. It makes me miserable seeing all the surface level BS people's lives are becoming, yet I have a hard time deleting my acct. .... neeeed ... more .... willpower.
Edit: I'm a bit surprised at the reaction here. I guess I'm in the minority (of the vocal) on VS. It would be interesting to see people's reaction to this based on age. I'm old enough to not be "old" (I'd like to think) but to have seen a substantial part of my adult life with and without facebook, and on the whole I think real friendships sustain more harm from these tools than good. The base notion of FB creates an incentive for people to view their own life the the prism of mass consumption which I think really does change behavior in a generally bad way.
That said, I'm not blaming it for the downfall of modern society or anything, just asserting it's a net-negative. If more people deleted their accounts I'm confident we'd be better off overall, and I'm trying to work up the courage to take the lead on that.


The reaction is more to his self righteous, overly inflated, far reaching, conspiratorial nature more so than the 'core' message. If it'd been a video which had a light hearted feel, and pointed out the reams of posts from friends that are just entries into competitions or playing the apps or that sort of crap (of which I've ended up completely blocking people because about 90% of some people's post are just that crap), and that maybe not posting what your dreams were about each night... or you know, just common etiquette, it may have done really well, and probably been posted by people on facebook as a non direct way of telling others 'um, you're being sort of dicks on this thing'.

But no, he tried to insinuate he knows all, and that anyone using facebook is a mindless sheep, and that there is no good to come from it.

Well he can go back to his conspiracy bullshit on his websites and youtube videos and continue to think he knows better than everyone.

And die unhappy having changed nothing.

@ 9:06:

<NitPick>People thing Federal Reserve Issued currency is real money too. It's not any more real than bitcoin; it's just the belief that makes it real. </NitPick>

Other than that, great vid. I'm still working up the guts to ditch FB. It makes me miserable seeing all the surface level BS people's lives are becoming, yet I have a hard time deleting my acct. .... neeeed ... more .... willpower.

Edit: I'm a bit surprised at the reaction here. I guess I'm in the minority (of the vocal) on VS. It would be interesting to see people's reaction to this based on age. I'm old enough to not be "old" (I'd like to think) but to have seen a substantial part of my adult life with and without facebook, and on the whole I think real friendships sustain more harm from these tools than good. The base notion of FB creates an incentive for people to view their own life the the prism of mass consumption which I think really does change behavior in a generally bad way.

That said, I'm not blaming it for the downfall of modern society or anything, just asserting it's a net-negative. If more people deleted their accounts I'm confident we'd be better off overall, and I'm trying to work up the courage to take the lead on that.

I'm surprised I've never heard of Barnays, it seems he's had a huge influence on modern society. But then again he predicted I wouldn't. In his 1928 book Propaganda he wrote:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612464

>> ^PalmliX:

Hey thanks for your response Enzo!
If I had a Teddy Bear, then wouldn't I be justified in believing it's real because I could sense it with all 5 of my senses? As would anyone else I handed it to?
Or are you suggesting that I couldn't detect this bear with any of my senses, but I still believed it was real? Then I think most people would probably call me mentally ill. Myself included.
I also find the idea of ganging up with other people who share a belief (even if it's completely in contrast to your own) against those without any belief, a little scary.
Is it is far better to have ANY belief, no matter how ridiculous, unfounded, or even dangerous, than no belief? And should we really team up with other believers and "go against" those who make no such claims? Personally I would call this type of behavior mob/herd mentality or gang warfare, tribalism. An us or them mentality. I find this idea in a modern society a little frightening.
Your closing question "The non-believer is the real threat, ask yourself why." It's a difficult question to answer for a "non-believer" such as myself. Non-believer in the sense that so far, no one person's claim about the existence of an invisible Teddy Bear... has convinced me enough to worry and loose sleep at night.
I don't see how someone who doesn't believe in some variation of an unprovable belief is more of a threat than someone who does. Wouldn't it just be one less thing to fight about? i.e. if no one believed in Teddy Bears then there wouldn't be an issue in the first place? Because no one would even be talking about it?
I'm interested to hear your answer!
- Adam

The teddy bear belief I put represents the belief in the supernatural. There are people who simply don't believe in supernatural things at all. No ghosts, no spirit world, no voodoo, mind reading, water divining, astrology, and yes, even gods. This is the one step you need to consider.

When you say "I don't see how someone who doesn't believe in some variation of an unprovable belief is more of a threat than someone who does.", you're admitting that the belief in question doesn't exist. It's unprovable because it's a product of the mind and is limited to the mind, otherwise there would be a way for science to detect it. It can be incredibly real for the believer, but it doesn't exist in the real world, (therefore unprovable), and doesn't effect anyone who doesn't believe it. The non-believer is the only threat because the belief is dependent on more minds that believe, that's the only way the belief can propagate. This is why religion pushes faith and belief above all else.

The benefits of not believing in the supernatural are endless. For me personally, it's that the phrase "Why me?" has lost all meaning. Just consider how much anxiety and guilt you have for things like, "am i on the right path?", "am I being punished for something?", "what's god trying to tell me?", "is that a sign or just coincidence?". All that goes away. It's liberating like you wouldn't believe.