Sex is fun

As if that's an excuse. If you're comfortable doing something irresponsible and probably damaging to the future well-being of both yourself and your relationships, you're acting in a moronic manner.

due to altruistic endeavors

Hardly; where do you think drugs would be without intellectual property rights?

what

It simply isn't on the cards at the moment; the worst we have seen in recent history is Rwanda, Darfur, Saddam Hussein and the current campaign by ISIS against the Yazidi people. But these don't even touch what we've seen before.

The world is stagnant right now.

This is simply false. A cross-sectional analysis of the world, indeed, leads both of us to conclude that it is dire. And there are, of course, worrying trends across the world which we ought to keep an eye on: cultural dissonance in immigrant populations in Europe, the rise of blood-and-soil nationalist movements, our current economic malaise, the rise of terrorism and institutional degeneration in Western countries.

However, the overall trend over past decades has been one of rather incredible progress. Medical technology is improving and deaths both due to crime and war have declined significantly; genocide on an industrial scale is not a cause for concern; absolute poverty has halved in the past two decades; there is a great re-convergence of wealth between the Westerners and the Resterners; the populations of countries in the Middle East are growing tired of authoritarianism and are demanding political and civic freedoms; countries which were once fundamentalist-ruled hellholes like Afghanistan are doing significantly better et cetera, et cetera.

The trend of the human race in recent history is overwhelmingly positive if you care about the minimisation of suffering. Is it a perfect trend? No. Do we live in an agreeable world? No. The world is horrible, violent, intolerant place full of suffering, misery and death. It's just less horrible than it was in the past. By no reasonable definition can the current human condition be considered "stagnant".

Quote from: M8A-ORD on December 30, 2015, 07:35:47 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on December 30, 2015, 03:45:35 PM

i want nothing--and everyone else should be the same exact way

So society can stagnate? If asceticism had taken hold early in our history, we would have an absolutely awful quality of life. Desire is the psychological driver behind prosperity and the development of human well-being.

what is this logic

focusing all your efforts on the collective rather than your individual self -> stagnation
being a productive and helpful human being -> societal stagnation

what

put down the ben and jerry's

Except the only examples of prosperity we have seen emerge in all of human history are the societies which have managed to establish institutions around individualistic desire (you yourself argued with Challenger that no action is truly altruistic, in the sense of having no component of self-gratification). It's pretty much the entire reason the West began taking off in 1500 while China--with it's vast, monolithic but nevertheless meritocratic State--remained relatively stagnant.

The point is women need to respect themselves more and stop spreading their legs for every dog of a man that lists after them.

I completely agree, despite my promiscuity with similarly promiscuous women. I'm a hypocrite, but fuck it.

I truly believe women's role, first and foremost, is to be homemakers and mothers. I don't really care if women want to pursue careers, it's their choice and a lot of them are really good at it. A lot of feminists add a nice little disclaimer to what htey say "Well if women want ot be housewives that's fine". can you imagine the backlash if a disney movie portrayed a housewife as a strong, admirable role model and then flashed a message at the end saying "if women want careers, that's fine though". It would be nuclear.

I guess I just have conservative vies about gender roles, but fundamentally the breakdown of the family is one of the most worrying social trends in our society. I can't remember the year, but about 20pc of british kids said the thing they want most for christmas is a father.

Men need to stop being deadbeats and women need to stop fucking deadbeats.

Quote from: DAS THE HALLS on December 30, 2015, 05:58:26 PM

look down on deez nuts

'cause you look up to mine

what pineablle

KEEP BRITAIN BRITISH

IF IT ENT WHITE IT ENT RIGHT

DOWN WITH COMMIE CORBYN

BETTER RED THAN DEAD

yes i've been drinking

Even if that was the case, it is better than them shooting up a movie theater or school.

I didn't imply otherwise.

I agree with the OP.

^ Pretty much this.

Promiscuity doesn't make people happier, and on the whole a woman's prior promiscuity is a good indicator of how successful her marriage will ultimately be. And, if we're being honest, strong marriages are pretty good for society. It's also irresponsible, especially if done without a condom.

That said, I don't particularly hold promiscuity against people. I think it's a net negative for society, but I can't say I judge those who fuck around. I am pretty promiscuous, partly because I'm impulsive and partly because I indulge my degenerate hedonism. So, I'm not one to hold it against others.

Why was the Caribbean considered as jewels when North America was a thousand times bigger with a million times the resources?

It was where the money was; the British didn't have time to expand their operations in North America before the colonists revolted and established the independent republic we all know and love today. It's important to note that, both for the Spanish and British, what had originally been adventuring in the New World for gold and silver quickly turned into a long-run agricultural plan. High hopes were had for North America; Michael Drayton, a contemporary, called it a paradise, while John Smith (yes, that John Smith) thought it held the key for Britain's imperial future. The risks, however, were considerable: the first real settlement, Roanoke, was abandoned in 1586 due to trouble with the natives. Even Jamestown, the first successful British colony in North America by 1609, had a survival rate of around 50pc.

Tobacco is an intensive crop, and the British learned they could grow this around 1612. It ruins the soil within seven years, and while this encouraged a westward spread of settlement, the desire for the Crown to induce emigration to North America meant that no monopoly could be established over North American trade as had been done with corporations like the East India Company, who could control the supply of their good in order to maintain the price and thus the value of the exports to Continental Europe. After all, most of the goods imported to Britain from the colonies were simply exported again to countries like France. This meant that the supply of tobacco increased between 1619 and 1639 to 1.5 million lbs per annum, which led to a price slump from three shillings per lb to just threepence. This was partly due to the ease of growing it, and partly due to the Virginia Company's way of attracting new settlers: significant land, for negligible rent.

The reason Brits kept emigrating to North America was partly spiritual and partly economic. Many Calvinists and Congregationalists decided to flee England after James I decided to uphold Elizabeth's structure of the Anglican Church, which was essentially Lutheran in nature. This was also somewhat encouraged by the government, in order to combat the Popish empire of the Spanish in the region. However, most emigrants to North America were simply responding to their material needs; the Virginia Company advertised heavily, and when the East Anglian textiles industry suffered a depression, it made North America a more attractive opportunity--even if you had to work as indentured labour. The fisheries off Newfoundland and New England also proved incredibly lucrative for Atlantic fishermen.

So, why was the West Indies and Jamaica considered the Jewels of the Empire, prior to the American Revolution? Profit. In 1773, imports from Jamaica were worth five times as much from North America. By 1775, sugar counted for a fifth of the value of all imports to Britain, and were worth five times as much as tobacco. This was due to the explosion of the first consumer economy in the world at the beginning of the 18th Century, with textiles and jewels being in high demand from India and sugar being in high demand from the Caribbean. Tobacco simply never took hold in the way sugar did, and any food production taking place in North America was thought of mainly as being the supply of food that Caribbean monoculture couldn't produce to be self-sufficient. After the Seven Years' War, given the option of either expanding further into North America or retaining the French sugar-producing colony of Guadeloupe, Britain chose the latter. It was simply worth more.

Britain didn't really have an empire until the 1650s, and even then it only consisted of Jamaica, some territory in India and five plantations in North America. The Spanish and Portugese had been in South, Central and North America since the late 1400s and already had a well-established presence there.

The British did indeed have an interest in Central and South America; the Empire essentially began with privateers harassing Spanish ships and fortresses and looting their gold in the name of the Crown. Sir Walter Raleigh even led an expedition to find El Dorado in the early 1600s, which ended with his execution after his son Wat attacked the Spanish despite James I & VI expressly forbidding such an act.

By the time the British got into North America properly, they had an established presence in India which they were fighting over with both the fractured Indian government and the French as well as West Africa which allowed a lucrative slave trade. Really, North America was a secondary concern; Jamaica and the West Indies were considered the jewels of the Empire, as well as the exploding tea trade from India circa 1700. Our  main interest in America, at the time, was tobacco. Easy to grow, lots of land to attract settlers and indentured labour--as well as slaves--and a native population on the decline due to the introduction of disease.

Source: Niall Ferguson's Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World.

How is it the worst year?

The previous ones had much more scientific/technological achievements, and it felt like Charlie Hebdo--the event which basically defined the start of the year--was just a footnote. No real reference to the Paris attacks in November, despite their huge impact, and nothing about IS from what I could see.

Obviously my own political views and personal priorities factor into this, but it felt like they chose to go down the path of a progressive political message rather than reflecting on the huge things which have occurred this year all around the world. Especially with the reference to Black Lives Matter and the "How can we overcome prejudice" search, which is controversial by anybody's standards. . . Not that they should strive to be non-controversial, but it seemed more like pandering than a thoughtful consideration.

The speech by Jenner was a beautiful touch, though, and it fit very well.

EDIT: Also, they only included one person who died this year. Last year's had at least three. Also, nothing about Queen Elizabeth becoming the longest-reigning British monarch, so fuck 'em.

Easily the worst Year in Search video so far.

take a typical example of biblical isolation -- monks, the priesthood, nuns, etc. --  and you see wellsprings of charity, sacrifice, peace, and scholarship.

Hadn't even considered that.

I think that extends to Islam, as well. So what a hypothetical tribe would do with the Bible, or the Quran, doesn't really matter.

Do you not think Islam and its scripture/theology has a greater propensity to foster violence than other religions?

Quote from: Нестор Іванович Махно on December 29, 2015, 01:49:06 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on December 29, 2015, 01:36:20 AM

I'm sorta conservative but not Far-right

A practicing Christian really has no choice but to be somewhat conservative by today's standards.

This simply isn't true. The vast majority of Christians I'm close to are much more liberal than just about anyone on this site.

I have to question the degree to which they can accurately be called Christians. Sure, they might believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ and a deity--maybe even one that is personal. They probably believe that Jesus was also resurrected.

We hold Islam and the Qur'an to account for its obvious proclivity in fostering violence. I consider myself to be a cultural Christian, in the sense that it's almost impossible to disentangle many of the historical values of Christendom which persist in modern, secular Western culture. And many other Christians, particularly Anglicans, take a similarly nominal view towards the faith. I also can't understand the dissonance between believing both the Old and New Testaments, while claiming Jesus essentially supersedes or revised the former.

No doubt the modern, less aggressive, version of Christianity is superior to the old one. And a modern, less aggressive, version of Islam would be superior to the current one. Yet we criticise Islam on the basis of certain scriptural flaws being honestly and directly implemented by fundamentalists. If we left a tribe with nothing but the Qur'an, and came back to something like ISIS we really oughtn't be surprised. Similarly, if we gave nothing but the Bible to a tribe we oughtn't be surprised if we came back to find something approaching the Westboro Baptist Church.

Certainly the Bible has some structural advantages over the Qur'an; it's longer, has (as I see it) greater room to impose your own moral proclivities on it by choosing better passages to adhere to and--at least in the NT--less obviously barbaric. Would you be surprised if a tribe with nothing but the Bible for guidance turned out to be a society like an oversized WBC, or some other fundamentalist application?