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A opinion that is at least unpopular with certain political ideologies;
The reason why the anti-geek crowd and the anti-sexuality movement failed in the USA is they act extremely embarrassing here.

A example of this is that today I had a incident with someone that initially I was about ready to call the cops but by the end of it I couldn't stop laughing to the point I was having trouble breathing.

Someone that I had considered a acquittance, I'm not talking to them anymore, was over for a late thanksgiving. Basically what happened was I left out one of my anime tiddy pvc figures and she started getting mad; I made the dumbass mistake of saying "It's my apartment I'll do whatever the hell I want". She picked up my figure and threw it against the wall, $250 figure, nothing happened. It is one of those not cheap figures. She picked it up and threw it against the wall again, nothing, picked it up and started smacking it against the wall and instead broke the wall and cause she was getting laughed at walked off saying "I taught you a less you degenerate"

"What does this have to do with the anti-sexuality movement?"
How the anti-sexuality movement thinks they act, "I pontificate that if you extrapolate the cosine variant of the electronic circuitry that proves that porn is damaging"
How the anti-sexuality movement acts in the USA, "You're taking potential spouses away from me! starts shaking and hollering Porn is taking away men from me! fat rolls in neck jiggling If it wasn't for porn I'd be living in a mansion with a spouse that is a CEO of a company!"

Elsewhere in the world the anti-sexuality movement might be less cringe inducing, but here in the USA the anti-sexuality movement is full of dumbasses that think they "deserve" millionaire spouses and that porn is the reason why they can't find a astronaut nfl quarterback CEO of a fortune 500 company.

So, I thought I'd bring in some of Richard Stallman's unpolular/controversial opinions since this is a debate thread and some of them can make for valuable banter

"For necrophilia, it might be necessary to ask the next of kin for permission if the decedent's will did not authorize it. Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia"

"Hundreds of thousands of babies are born every day. While the whole phenomenon is menacing, one of them by itself is not newsworthy. Nor is it a difficult achievement -- even some fish can do it. (Now, if you were a seahorse, it would be more interesting, since it would be the male that gave birth.) …These birth announcements also spread the myth that having a baby is something to be proud of, which fuels natalist pressure, which leads to pollution, extinction of wildlife, poverty, and ultimately mass starvation."

"Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings."

"Spiritually and transracially I identify as Japanese."

and Hear I thought you were some big 'leftism is 100% bad. we need to go back to the medieval ages because serfdom, nepotism & theocracy was totally better for everyone' guy. what's this bullshit about being 'transracial'?

Well you see, I may have been assigned a blond blue-eyed gaijin at birth, but I actually belong to Yamato people, a descendant of mighty samurai. If Kami-sama wills it, I will one day return to the land of my ancestors. I'm planning my race transition right now, going to start coloring my hair black and wearing dark contact lenses. I'm not quite sure how to make my eyes permanently squinty yet, I can't keep holding my eyelids all the time. But once I figure this out I will totally become Japanese. Banzai.

Unfortunately, transracial people face serious oppression right now, even from progressive circles. You can google, for example, Rachel Dolezal, an African-American social justice campaigner who was assigned White at birth. It was uncommon before but people are starting to become more open about this.

go back to the medieval ages

Well, once I finish my transition I'll be ready to serve my daimyō faithfully.

@Clownfish and YourHigherBrainFunctions

Well thanks for telling me guys, I had no idea whatsoever that South Korea was some kind of feminist heaven. Any idea how that happened? Makes so sense to me.

Memosiki is basically a living poe's law when talking politics on this site. Until you figure out most of his positions boil down to being a hard right-winger and anti-US on most things but Trump (from what I've seen), it's pretty difficult to tell that his extreme leftwing posts are fake when comparing to his actual extreme beliefs.

also ey, sorry about my combatitiveness about the korea stuff. I was just frustrated at how difficult it was to research south korean politics, like at all. It does seem the feminists there are pretty bad.

I couldn't even find what the national assembly was in the years where the shutdown law was passed, south korean politics was just super obscure on the english web.

Basically what documents1 said. Memosiki is the shitposter extraordinaire, just do not take what he says too seriously and your mental health will be fine.

@Chrollo Lucilfer
Looked him up a little bit. If you ask me, he sounds like a closet misanthrope/fedora who rationalises too much.

@documents1 Long post incoming
South Korea is very hard to look into because all the information presented about the nation are screened by the its Orwellian government and the fact that most of them keep to themselves whether it is of the said reason or just them being culturally insular is yet unknown. Most of the information I got are from the anecdotes from those who fled there and were in my school back when I was a student, Asians dankweb in the late '00s. Hell, we even had an Asian version of WE WUZ KANG for mocking South Korean ultra-nationalists for claiming Korean was Egyptian and builders of Mesopotamia civilisations there and that China and Japan stole their culture (try google Kyuktooki), recently it make 4chan/8chan looks like a baby so most avoid it now, too dangerous to tread and that shit is not even an anonymous imageboard.

Look into the open history of South Korea enough. Like I said, PM committed suicide, PM assassinated, PM got caught taking bribes, etc. And most recently, President (they changed horse mid stream) got caught in cahoots with the maniacal cult. Mandatory military draft due to their beef with North Korea. Many took measures to avoid it, deliberate accidents, injury, drug abuse, fled the country, etc. Part of the reason why most youths want out.

There is this one bit of anecdotal story I have heard from my times on those dankweb. Take it with a grain of salt.

A person who claimed to be a former Korean politician said that "South Korea is a test lab for implementing experimental policies by the shadowy investors from U.S., that is why the radical feminists here, and radical, but less radical feminists than here there. That constant flux in the nations politics are also the results of it." There was more but this is all I can remember clearly for now.

About gaming in South Korea. You will notice that South Korea has their own servers and services for games because government cracks down on video gaming hard back in 2012. If you create a game, which the government standards it can be tabletop or a board game, game mods, RPGmaker, etc. You have to get it rated by the government, and it costs lots of money to do so and you have to pay annual tax for your game. This kills Korean game development scene and community. Lots of un-rated games were illegalised and also causing a shitstorm for PSN and XBL users because MS and Sony are not willing to comply, they reached a compromised later though but many accounts and games were lost.

Steam was their next target. They put pressure on Steam hard to get un-rated games from the store and to remove Korean language support from un-rated games because the Korean language itself is copyrighted by the Korean government.

Tidbits: If you browses Skyrim mods a plenty. You may see some Korean mods and modders spell Korea as Corea because "C" comes before "J" as in Japan. Ultra-nationalism also runs rampant there, it was in their education curriculum. Some took the meme seriously and became ultra-nationalist while most just go along to not get into trouble.

In 2014, video game is considered one of the four evil of the society along with alcohol, gambling, and drugs. So they proposed anti-addiction law. Which basically mean government can take 5% of your income from any of the said industry to prevent addiction.

To answer your question @documents1 about why you cannot find records of national assembly about laws being passed. Words say that they can propose a law and bring it into full-effect in one day. Some said they hold meeting at 3AM in the morning with like 2-3 person and just LARP the assembly and pass the law because absence = abstinence from voting. But 3AM thing is from the grapevine so again, take it with a grain of salt.

Speaking about South Korea about its less than savoury elements on the internet is very scary. It is like posting on the Shadownet in Shadowrun universe. They do not exactly have an internet defence force, but ultra-nationalists are around everywhere doing rounds. Not every Koreans are that, or even know the inners of their nation. They are people just like us, but their government and mega-corporates supporting the nation are really scary.

@Clownfish

thanks for the long post friend, though to clarify I just meant what political parties were in the national assembly at all during the shutdown law. I didn't even think of shadiness of voting within the assembly and whatnot.

English wikipedia basically couldn't provide a list of politicians in south korea's national assembly in 2008. No one had made the article at all. And I had to dig a bit to find out even the winning political parties then. It's more evidence that the english-speaking world doesn't care about unrelated country politics than anything.

@memcki
"Any idea how that happened? Makes so sense to me"
Well for starters the last prime minister was a cultist.

You know: now that I think of it there's a very good reason why the definition of what is considered a cult and what is considered a minor religion are. Like a cult is a group like scientology who chase down members trying to escape with attack dogs. In the west we're starting to see new minor religions and such pop up and old once thought dead religions come back, but they're not classified as cults.

Like a minor religion is something where you can do shit like make hippie communes and such.
A cult is a group that if you say "Eh; I'm just not feeling it" they'll kill you.

December is approaching and I want to this say this. I seriously hope nobody here go fucking apeshit at people saying Merry Christmas and getting triggered all over it like some dickweeds or tumblrites.

Not everyone celebrates New Year, people still saying Happy New Year and wish them happiness and joy. Same with Christmas. So people should seriously stop being so pissy about someone wishing them joy and happiness.

I do not want any fucking coffee cup controversy or Christmas market shutdown this year or some far left yelling saying that Christmas is racist, sexist, religiously inclusive, offensive, or any kind of those bollocks ever again.

For heavens sake. It is a day which people can both give and receive all around the world, in the winter we people share warmth and happiness. One day that people can forget all the horribleness of the world and smile, and some asshats wants to ruin it for other people over some political agenda. Secular government, not secular society where people are not allowed religion related celebrations, dipshits. Literal bloody Grinches.

I honestly don't really see people get triggered by Merry Christmas? The story typically goes that people are triggered by people saying "happy holidays" instead of merry christmas. At least in the US, the typical controversy here is companies saying "happy holidays" and not specifying christmas, and people on the right-wing having a backlash to the "war on christmas" and criticizing the company for not saying it's christmas. There's no grassroots christmas hate movement as far as I know, christmas is still loved by everyone, it's more grassroots pro-christianity vs companies trying to be inclusive to maximize buyers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_controversies#Retailer_controversies

@documents1
I have stories of people saying Merry Christmas back in the west (especially Europe) getting weird looks and inadvertently created social tension for it. Maybe they were with the wrong crowd (radical progressives) back then?

Anyhow, I find reason for it is kind of pointless virtue signalling. Happy Holiday for being more inclusive and for more diversity and stuffs instead of Merry Christmas because "Christmas" is offensive (some actually believe this). The reason behind it is what triggers the right to come out afaik to counter their opponents bollocks.

Then from that point, both sides double down on their bollocks. But most people still say Merry Christmas because they do not have their head up their arses, so the most visible troublemakers becomes the left.

To be honest. I think most people did not give a damn about Happy Holiday or Christmas, but when the radical progressives took it with the said reason and the companies kowtowing to it by removing Christmas imageries and celebration that is akin to traditions. That is when most people go fucking nuts. On one side, you have literal grinches who went beyond and wanted Christmas out forever, on the other side you have Saint Nick toting shotgun saying Merry Christmas.

I pray to heavens above that there will be no Christmas controversies this year like school cancelling Christmas party because of bullshit reasons like it is offensive to people of other religion again.

Disclaimer: still going on with the american perspective, I have no clue about how christmas is treated in Europe. If ya know more about that Clownfish, feel free to correct my perspective on this issue.

honestly, i dun think companies not saying christmas has much to do with liberalism. It's just marketing, if you call your christmas trees "holiday trees", maybe the jewish guy and other non-christians on the edge might buy it. And on a national scale, that's a lot of money to be made. I'm not a fan of that sorta commercializing of the holiday but it's a reality rn, companies don't take sides unless there's money to be made.

In addition, the stats suggest it is mostly something that upsets conservatives, at least in the US. It seems to me more that it's a backlash to secularism rather than people being offended at Christmas. Though for the most part it's not really anyone worth listening to that cares, only the most extreme liberals and conservatives really have passion on the issue, as the stats also state.

http://www.nola.com/holidays/index.ssf/2016/12/happy_holidays_offends_conserv.html

Question 1: What is your documentation for the statement that: the "main driving force behind" the numbers used to show either Christianity or Islam is more popular, is "population increase/decrease?" You are correct, I believe though I don't have any documentation for it, that both religions are growing in Africa and that the population of Africa is growing.

Question 2: What is your documentation for the statement that the African population is "almost completely Christian or Muslim?" I suspect that there might be a good deal of animist still left. In addition, unfortunately it is often assumed that a "Muslim" nation means that the entire nation is Muslim rather than there being a small to medium presence of other religions AND that everyone who claims (often for political reasons) to be this or that religion does so not out of a belief in the tenants of that religion but out of tradition or (political or social) necessity. It is my experience, admittedly not a scientific survey, that most people claim a religion but act as materialists.

Question 3: What is your documentation for the statement that: "if it wasn't for their adherents" having a lot of children, "they'd be in decline?"

One of the characteristics of good discussion is that one knows the source of his or her beliefs and basis them on verifiable evidence. Hopefully you have the documentation for your beliefs and can supply them.

AJ

I think dogs owners should be required to train and socialize their dogs. You are 100% responsible for this animal's well being and behavior in public. The least you can do is make sure your dog isn't a liability with other people. Vets, groomers, dog walkers, and all other people that aren't the owner can be seriously hurt by untrained dogs. It's not hard to train, it's not expensive, and it benefits everyone in the long run.

Socialization though, while can be tricky, especially if the dog is a rescue with history. But, again. Other dogs can, and have been affected by poor interactions with other dogs and this new attitude by some owners of just refusing training, half-assing training, or poor methods have led to things like most dogs getting muzzles on at vet's offices even if there is no bite history, owners fearing other dogs on walks because they are not sure how socialized the other dog is, and dogs being put into shelters and rescues by their owners because the dog is untrained and aggressive.

@ajqrtz smith

Based on your tone, I imagine you're more saying that stuff about sources to inform him on how to debate instead of a desire for the sources. That said, religion statistics by pew research center are some of the most comprehensive and well-presented statistics I've ever seen, so I'm actually gonna share them for the debate.

If you want to debate on religious demographics of the whole world, these 3 pages are your best friend:

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/

http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/

There's a lot more good stuff for worldwide, US, and other region/country statistics on religion on the site there as well.

Higherbrainfunctions got some most things right, but some some things wrong.

The first link shows that religious increase in christians and muslims is mostly by birth by 2 orders of magnitude. The world would likely be a very different place if religious switching came close to that number.

You'll find in the last link, under the folk religion section, that only 3.3% of sub-saharan africa consider themselves to practice a traditional african religion, and only 3.2% claim to be unaffiliated. this leaves a sub-saharan africa that is largely christian and muslim. That said, do note there's a chance their variety of religion is affected a lot by folk religions, as a unique form of christianity/islam. As you can imagine, north africa stats portray a region that is overwhelmingly islamic with some christians. And I don't think we need a source for the well-known statistic about how fast africa's population is growing, we've probably all seen statistics about it 3 times before.

In the 2nd link, there's a fertility rate on each religion and the world. Christianity and Islam are indeed the only ones outpacing the world fertility rate. Though Christianity isn't outpacing it by a large margin. Ofc, this is ignoring subdivisions within the religion, so it's possible that some subdivisions are outpacing others a lot in fertility.

One thing he's decisively wrong about is that Islam wouldn't be increasing if it wasn't for population growth. This is true for christianity, more people switch out of christianity than switch in, both the first and second link reveal that christianity is losing people to religious switching and that the vast majority of people switching to unaffiliated in the entire world come from Christians. But muslims actually gain more people from religious switching than they lose, as revealed by those same links.

There's a sense to that being true even if you believe that being unaffiliated is more appealing than islam for people, because islam forbids apostasy as a terrible sin. As a result, most muslim countries have severe laws against it, and for someone born into Islam, it would be a mental struggle to justify apostasy to themselves if they become frustrated with Islam.

Oh, talking about dogs, nice.

1) All dog breeds that could potentially pose a threat should not be allowed in cities.
2) All dog breeds that were bred specifically for fighting and aggression should be forbidden from reproducing and so made extinct over time.

@Chrollo Lucilfer

Well I believe Robert is a massive edgelord. Or maybe not. I just find the whole "childfree" thing super creepy.

Since you all are talking about dogs: I personally disagree with wanting pure breed dogs. The reason being is that dogs are starting to have so little genetic variety between the breeds that it's starting to be a serious problem. If you do love animals you shouldn't do something that will give them serious health problems.

On the one hand I dislike whenever governments get involved in stuff like that, but on the other hand puppy farms are abhorrent.

honestly I'm just a 'casual puppy lover'[and no I don't mean bestiality], I own 2 dogs myself. frankly aside from people who do dog shows I don't think we should fucking require dogs to have eugenics on em'. I kinda see it as animal cruelty considering it's 'man's best friend'. maybe have at least some get spayed/neutered so they don't have puppies all the fucking time but fuck it's kinda sick what we do to our puppers. and I'm not even a massive enviornmentalist

@YourHigherBrainFunctions

That's one of those odd opinions where it's not technically unpopular in the sense that there's a large opposition, but most people choose not to acknowledge the problem. If you have a political opinion on pure breed dogs, it's almost never on the side of breeders, but most people choose to ignore the reality of the issue. At the very least, don't get dogs that have health issues from breeders instead of rescue. Nothing wrong with caring for them while they're still around, but we should select for healthiness in breeding.

I've been sad to see people are ignoring this same thing with munchkin cats recently. The condition is essentially dwarfism for cats, and has some similar problems as humans such as being born with lordosis. Though munchkin breeders argue that the health issues are the same as all cats, like lordosis is the same rate as others, there's still the fact that they can't do many normal cat things like jumping, and walk in ways that aren't completely natural for cats. Intentionally breeding cats to be limited in their capabilities because it's cute seems cruel.

(In regards to the U.S.A., not sure of this is an issue on othet countries) Stand for the national anthem. You may have your own reasons to refuse and sit and your actions may be protected by the first amendment, but all I see is someone disrespecting the country they live in, the people who live in it, and the men and women who put their lives on the line for what they believe is right. So be a respectful person and stand when the song that represents your country starts to play.

When someone of higher authority tells you to do something, you fucking do it. If you refuse, you'll only make the situation worse for you. I hate it when people act fake in front of authority figures and then say "fuck you I do what I want" behind their backs and proceed to break the rules. The rules are there for a reason, so follow them and everything will be alright, otherwise you'll only make everyone's lives harder.

And I laugh at all the people screaming "fuck the police" because I know that they'll be calling for the police's help when their asses get caught up in some messed up situation. The cops have to put up with a lot of bullshit everyday trying to protect our sorry asses as well as enforcing the laws and maintaining order, and there are people who have the audacity to say that they're the bad guys of society now just because one bad cop killed someone who did nothing wrong.

@Eris
Lots of people screaming my rights and me, me, me; without any clue of what respect is. I find them borderline sociopathic.

Very unpopular opinion by a lot of people:
Improving the standard of living is more important than reducing income inequality.

If you had to pick one of the two which would you rather have?
1)The standard of living is high and the overwhelming majority of your population has food, a place to live, health care, education, transportation and such BUT income inequality is rampant and individual people are worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
2)Everyone is equal BUT everyone is poor.

What people should do instead is increase people's access to basic necessities.
"But that is reducing income inequality"
Not necessarily; you can have a country with a high standard of living and income inequality. This happens actually quite a bit. You can have a country with low income inequality and everyone be poor.

Tldr; low income inequality and high standard of living are not synonyms. They can both happen at the same time, neither of which happen or one of the two happen. Just cause one happens doesn't automatically mean the other is 100% going to happen.

I should probably stop mentioning how I disagree with opinions in the unpopular opinion thread, but personally I don't hold authority to that regard. Yes, you do need power to keep people under control, I am hardly an anarchist, but pledging blind allegiance seems like a great way to be taken advantage of by authority. If the government is acting in a way you feel is wrong, then yes you should protest. If you feel your country is going far in the wrong direction, you shouldn't be obligate to pledge you'll always support it.

In the civil rights movement, many people peacefully protested in the US in ways that broke the law. Black people weren't allowed to sit-in white stores and restaurants, but they did it repeatedly. Rosa Parks was arrested for her actions, and this is all just the tip of the iceberg of how many segregation and protest laws civil rights activists broke in their attempt to end these unjust laws. Were they supposed to just wait and pray that the white majority would eventually give them rights even if they don't do anything to protest it? No. They were right in defying authority, and history validates them.

Infamously btw, the state governments in the south would abuse minor laws to enforce their ideas. They would use libel laws to charge pro-civil rights journalism outside the south with the most minor of infractions and suppress it.

anyhow, imma stop replying to this thread since I'm just sorta starting arguments with unpopular opinions.

Social media and modern society can get in the way of people's mental clarity, you are constantly bombarded with information about things that are outside of you and the constant web of rather fake socializing can keep you from focusing on aspects of your own life. You can just log out but we are an addicting prone generation I think.

Trying to push your own political agenda or trying to profit off a tragedy is infinite times worse than making jokes about it.

Jokes and drawings making fun of mass shootings were made even when the bodies were still warm. Yeah it's messed but it's nothing compared to what some people pull on twitter like…

"I think my entire family died in the mass shooting I can't get in touch with them oh no."
"I was just kidding. Oh Btw here's a link to my mixtape only $19.99.
or
"Think mass shooting were bad well what you're doing is even worse by eating meat."
or
"Gun sellers are just was responsible for mass shooting as the shooter."
or
"The shooter was influenced by violent video games."
or
" "Religion of Peace" "
or gofundme campaigns where the money doesn't go to the victims.

Don't even get me started on news outlets.

After the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack everyone was sympathetic and were proud they made fun of a group of people that were prone to do something like that. But after Charlie Hebdo made fun of a plane crash that killed hundreds a lot of people were like "Well then I'm glad that terrorist attack happened to them." Gimme a break.

@RedNine

Accidentally posted this in the wrong thread:
Honestly I think the global population in 2100 is probably going to only be about 5 billion.
Something that a lot of the more extreme political groups don’t like talking about is that having lots of children seems to be a survival trait. What I mean by this is that in undeveloped or developing countries in the world the birth rate is much higher than in developed countries.
Well why is that? If your country is grappling with disease or such having more kids ensure your genealogy doesn't die out. It’s a bit of a paradox when you get down to it people are push to have more kids and strap resources when that doesn't make logical sense. In countries that are developed since your kids have a much higher chance of reaching adulthood you need drastically less children to ensure the passing of your genes.

“I don’t understand what is so controversial about this”
Cause some people are fucking assholes that don’t give a shit about their people’s well being and only care about people as numbers. They’re the assholes that intentionally do shit that fucks up their country but because it boosts how much people have kids they think that’s good; like those assholes in certain countries that banned condoms in their country and as a result stds were rampant but because people were popping out babies like a pez dispenser they thought they were the good guys.

As much as I hate people like colin kapernick and self righteous fucks like him, I don't think we should be forced to sing for it, I still stand for it, but I tend to just lipsync.

Just standing is completely fine, in fact that's the least one can do to show respect (unless there is something physically wrong with them that prevents them from standing) in my opinion.

While I agree about people trying to profit off of tragedies, I totally disagree with the notion that people shouldn't "push an agenda" when it comes to tragedies. I'd much rather people talk about problems and how to prevent them then just constantly saying "we can't discuss this because it's too soon." So even if I think someone's solution is ass-backwards I appreciate them trying to do something to fix the issue rather just saying "thoughts and prayers" and waiting for it to happen again.

agreed bonaparte

or do you prefer tchefuncte, never sure on two-word names.

@NO!
I am not always a fan of social media to begin with. Someone made me a facebook account back then and tried to have me used it (because trend and peer pressure). The vainglorious of it and the "society" around it fucked my sanity up like nothing else did (another thing did fucked it harder, a story for another time). So I went cold turkey, removing its app and speed dial from my PC and cellphone. Never to touch it again. It worked.

Feels better than going to therapy and it costs nothing.

@YourHigherBrainFunctions
I think it is less about condom bans or encouraging big families and more about sex education is non-existent there and its people cannot keep it in their fucking pants. Look up third-world countries teenage pregnancies. People of developed countries knows that having children is a huge decision with responsibility; people of the undeveloped countries simply/mostly does not really care.

That is why birth-rate slows down for developed countries, and sub-Sahara Africans keeps popping them out and starve together then have to beg for food and never be filled.

Speaking of which, why we do not encourage and help with their agriculture instead of giving them fish every year? I have heard about this mega-corp Monsanto being a problem in this regard before, anyone got details?

@Clownfish
"Speaking of which, why we do not encourage and help with their agriculture instead of giving them fish every year? I have heard about this mega-corp Monsanto being a problem in this regard before, anyone got details?"
Oh I actually do know about this one: simply put people forget to calculate the amount of money needed to transport food across continents and that in their homes it's more profitable to grow certain food that is sold for a lot of money than to grow food.

It's one of those reasons why communism is bullshit.
I'll simplify here, cause it would take about thirty minutes to fully explain but it's a two fold problem.

The locals can not afford to have food imported.

Subsistence farming is incapable of giving people a high standard of living. What I mean by this is that if your growing food for the sake of feeding yourself how are you making a profit? A couple years ago Niger tried to stop this problem to try and force people to feed their own people… It backfired.

..
..
What people who "fight global hunger" should be doing is instead working on reducing the cost of transportation of goods and non-fossil fuel energy to help mitigate future impact of global warming. The world does make enough food globally; rather the reason why global hunger is a problem is a logistics problem of how do you transport food cheap enough for people to afford?

Honestly with social media I think it's probably going to start declining pretty soon. A lot of companies MASSIVELY over invested in social media and so far they haven't made the money back.

It's kind of hard tracking how many buyouts there were, but I think the last five years we've seen something like $50 billion in buyouts of social media. Tumblr got bought out, Yahoo got bought out, Youtube got bought out, Vine got bought out, etc, etc, etc.

They spent so much money on buying out social media that there genuinely is no way that they can earn a net revenue from it.

@HigherBrainFunction
Yes, I agree. It has to be able to feed itself and made profit to sustain it. Thing is nobody does it yet in Africa. Monsanto was supposed to blame for profiteering off of it.

I disgaree about nations relying on importing food is fine though. Japan can only feed about 30-40% of its population by its own domestic produce and it is a huge problem for them as they have to rely on imports to keep their people fed and a topic for discussion for decades there.

The cradle of civilisation is agriculture, I strongly believe in this.

I don't know whether this opinion is unpopular, I'd guess it is.

I just found out that apparently Jordan Petersen is earning a lot of money through his Patreon and as a result I now suffer from excruciating butthurt. Nothing he says is new, edgy or interesting. Plus he's a major hypocrite.

He's the definition of controlled opposition. The fact that he's earning so much money and fame thanks to it is a testament to how bad everything is.

Antifeminism is one of the internet's most lucrative cashcows at the moment lol

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Do not know who this Jordan person is, but I will assume he is like Milo (and possibly Anita Sarkeesian). An opportunistic sociopath raking in dosh from -begging and never delivering-Patreon spouting things a polarised group of politics soaked brainlets wants to hear.

What an era we live in. People throw money at sociopaths internet fight whose fight only divides people further and further and make people more stupid like a bad reality TV show.

Jordan B Peterson is hardly a sociopath. He's a professor at the University of Toronto , although he as spoken at many other Universities at times. He really is way smarter than most of us put together, and he has reached that point in life he has no fucks left to give.

he has his own web site. Take a look at it and make your own thoughts about him

https://jordanbpeterson.com/

Feminism earned several billion dollars from companies donating to them so it was only a matter of time until people that disagreed with it started earning money; especially with how controversial third wave feminism is.

I will take a look and find some of his speeches to listen to properly. I am very sorry for jumping the gun, as I do not trust Patreon and anyone associating their living with it much. I looked up his YouTube channel and watched his introductory video so far. Still chaffed at the fact that he tries to sell his stuffs, but a man has to make a living I guess.

I am not really keen on western high philosophy with fancy speeches. I am a simple person so fancy words and abstracts evades me. I think his ideas are somewhat similar to Christians philosophy is at very bare bones. I would summarise it as Look to those who walked before, to lead those who walk after. Antithesis of what Marx believe about self-actualisation by defeating authority figure and privilege. This authority can be anything that stands in your way or your belief. An imaginary daemon to be defeated. Why so many far-leftists are very aggressive, against both its core opposition and amongst themselves bickering for social justice and stuffs.

In Japan. There is this concept. Shuhari (守破離). In China it is 地人天 (di ren tian). They are concepts of growth as a person in life and mastery of arts and crafts.

守 Shu – Protect, Follow, Obey – Observe and learn the basic traditions and fundamentals.

破 Ha – Rip, Rend, Tear – Once you ready to understand the traditions fully. You begin to break apart from it as in no more learning crutches. You develop as your own person while also denying yourself.

離 Ri – Separate, Leave – Transcendence. Full understanding of self. True Mastery. No words or technique required; everything is natural.

In laymens terms: Start to learn traditions as it is passed from the forebears faithfully and without deviations to it, repeat and practise and learn discipline. Then as we come closer to understanding the traditions fully, we innovate with deviations from the basic while not overstepping the bounds too much. Finally, we detach from it completely as we complete our mastery. Everything comes naturally as breathing, no techniques, words, or abstracts required. We can do as our heart desires unhindered while not overstepping the boundaries of laws.

地人天 di ren tian (Earth, Man, Heaven) is similar, but wordings are different because of Chinese concept of Heaven and Earth.

I see Marx and Nietzsche as failures and products of decadence because they criticises and strikes out traditions without having full understanding of it. They lack disciplines of self and disdained living in general. Marx never has a proper job, but educated enough to daydream about man made heaven and utopia. Nietzsche failed to correctly criticises the matter he did criticises because he lacked the proper understanding of it. Thus, his work was nothing more than a fever dream of a depressed man trying to cure himself of his pessimism.

Maybe because I am more partial to eastern philosophy because it seems more down to earth and understanding it comes naturally and can be seen in life without resorting to fancy words and abstracts.

If you give him some money on Patreon he'll give you book recommendations which include works as arcane as Animal Farm and even Of Mice and Men! He seems to be aware at some level of the fact that his audience consists of highschool pseudointellectuals.

@Clownfish

I'm not a fan of either of those Western philosophers, but it's very strange that you would criticize them for not understanding tradition when clearly you do not understand their work.

A fair point. I do not have much understandings of their works in full details besides the summarised ones taught in high school. I am of a simple mind.

I do not see any of their legacy doing good though. One killed several people in actual practise because of its disregard of reality at work, another faded and forgotten after it was claimed to inspired fascism afaik aside from overall being depressing and lead to unhealthy attitude and outlook in life, in other words: life is not a rat race. Life is much more simpler than most think, I still think both rationalised too much over it.

Edit: Case in point though. It is unbecoming of me to criticise their work because my lack of understand of their work right? Same with them I think, many noted that their failings comes from their failure to criticise properly of their problem with traditions (got it from my old school textbook though, lol)

@documents1

Thanks for the links to the Pew Charitable Trust studies. They were fun to read. And they were exactly what I requested. Sadly, after reading them, I looked up how the counts were made and found that in most cases they are based upon "self reporting." The problem with that is that if you ask the average person in the US what religion they are over 70% will say, "Christian." But if you ask them what church they attend only 38% of them will have a church membership. Since regular attendance is used as a measure of an active involvement, you would have to say that 1/2 of the "Christians" in the US are not involved Christians. It is the opinion of many scholars that self-reporting of affiliation, religious or otherwise, is fraught with inconsistencies and inaccuracies.

My own research into the subject leads me to believe that the world, in general, is about 10% "faithful" - meaning that the adherents of the faith actually try to enact the tenants of their faith and live by whatever teachings are presented. Most people, (and I've surveyed Christians, Jews, Muslim, Buddhist, Mormons (okay, they consider themselves Christian), Moonies, Atheist - yes, it's a religion, if you want to know why, just ask--, Russian Orthodox, Coptic, and several others) and so forth. By "survey" I mean I've had extensive interviews with more than one or two members and usually attended whatever services I could (not all allow this). In any case, in almost all cases when push comes to shove the believers are materialist. My determination of this is based upon a series of questions, including the very simple: if you are asked to donate to your establishment how do you decide how much actually give?" The answer is almost always: "What I can afford." Which means, I think, "I will give what I can without significantly effecting my current standard of living." Even in places where the amount of giving is prescribed by the laws of the religion few give more than they need and then only if it doesn't hurt there standard of living. In other words, the needs of their religion is secondary to their standard of living. As Sartre said, a persons faith is shown by how the act rather than what they say.

Thus, while I may agree that the numbers posted reflect the self-reporting of people around the world (where, in some places reporting something different than the "right" belief system can get you killed), I don't believe for a moment they are an actual reflection of actual beliefs.

Of course, if I disagree with the method of counting, it stands to reason that since the method of counting is the "standard" method, I cannot really disagree with the conclusions drawn based upon that method. So I won't.

AJ

I don't really see why self-reporting is flawed though, for figuring out what people's religion is.

Religion is inherently based on your view of the world and your identity, not whether you go to church or how devout you are. Measuring that is more a goal of religiosity measures, which is an entirely different statistic. But if you want to just see if someone believes the muhammad was a prophet, or that christ was the son of god… why not just ask if they subscribe to that viewpoint, ask them if they are a christian or a muslim?

In addition, religions are very diverse in how they function. We can't expect to measure folk religions by whether they go to their local folk church, because quite a few don't even have a church equivalent. So I feel fundamentally, you just have to survey how people feel, as otherwise you will run into trouble.

I feel the real flaw with these studies is something else, though I don't think it's enough to detract from its statistics. It's that internal divisions often aren't clearly defined and people agree and disagree within the overarching religion on what part other people are in. Many christians don't consider mormons christians for example, but mormons will tell you they are christians. To solve that problem fairly though, you'd need to do stats on every sect of each religion, and that's just not feasible. On the basis that religion is defined by how people think, all of these could be considered seperate religions with the same foundation, but some people move across the sects and prove it's also a spectrum without clear division.

I'll leave defending Marx to the Marxists, but in regards to Nietzsche I think your characterization of his philosophy may stem from the common misinterpretation of him as nihilistic ("depressing"). He was in fact quite the opposite of a nihilist, and saw nihilism as a threat that Europe would have to grapple with after the decline of institutions like religion.

It's also simply incorrect to say he has "faded" or been "forgotten". He continues to be one of towering figures of philosophy, and his writing has been such an immensely important piece in the rhizome of existential philosophy that virtually every modern philosopher owes something to him.

You are speaking of the Will to Power and the Ubermenschen, correct? What I understand is that he thinks life is something like an Eternal Recurrence. Europe need something to believe in after the "Enlightenment", I believe he thought it was sick and disgusting what Europe have become after it and tries to inject a new mindset to save it.

His rejection of morals, virtues, discarding the good-evil, went after to challenge European traditions after Europe rejected God but still clinging to the morals of Christianity, etc. Of all this and also the fact that he was depressed and it has influenced his works to the point that it conflicts each other (many said makes a fun read though). Some truths in what he said though, up to the point of frightening like WW1 prediction. He was right for both wrong and right reasons.

Still, I do not really see it in real-life though. To me, philosophy can be see in real-life or a way of living in practise, in ones everyday; rather than existing to be discussed only.

Well, speaking about philosophy always is a clusterf-. Heck, I do not think we even have the same idea about what philosophy actually is. Fun talk though.

Still, I do not really see it in real-life though

That's because philosophy has increased its general degree of abstraction over time and is no longer represented by the personal ethics ideas of ancient Europe. Nietzsche isn't a writer that the ordinary person is supposed to read and embrace in his entirety. Like most modern philosophers, his work disseminates into culture and society by influencing its institutions. Everyone living in a European or American society has had their lives shaped in some way by Nietzsche's thinking. It's just not an easily discernible influence.

Also, my hot take of the day is that Eastern philosophy's simplicity is, to a not-insignificant degree, attributable to the fact that it's less developed than Western philosophy.