identity politics are destroying the democratic party

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

The Titanic might be an apt metaphor.

The white mans' hubris gets her cleaved in twain, so they lock the poor (fellas and broads) in the boiler room, and save the rich ladies... for honor.

[Speaker to Animals]

The Titanic might be an apt metaphor.

The white mans' hubris gets her cleaved in twain, so they lock the poor (fellas and broads) in the boiler room, and save the rich ladies... for honor.

But that's exactly why they did it. The immigrants below were mostly illiterate and of very little utilitarian value to society. The rule in place was based on a biological imperative that really no longer exists for us today.

What's more, in thirty to forty years, unless women suddenly start to carry their own water so to speak, it will be the men educated in STEM fields we cannot afford to risk.

I am not saying we'd want to be treated like entitled princesses either. More likely, that fake traditionalism and pseudo-chivalry will become a thing of thhe past.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Sure. We all know how much value aristocrats add to society. Hiring guards to protect the royal jewels is good make-work.

[Speaker to Animals]

Sure. We all know how much value aristocrats add to society. Hiring guards to protect the royal jewels is good make-work.

In the Victorian era?? They added quite a lot, actually, and a lot of the people onboard were engineers and business types. That was a huge loss for society back then.

But, again, the calculus that led to "women and children first" no longer applies to a technological society, even if our evolutionary psychology demands it.

[Okeefenokee]

Sure. We all know how much value aristocrats add to society. Hiring guards to protect the royal jewels is good make-work.

This sort of attitude is way too common. Newton wasn't a pauper. Einstein wasn't a day laborer. Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie started poor, but they didn't stay there, and the changes they made to the world happened when they were on top of life, not when they were in the gutter.

This notion that the world is made up of daydreaming millionaires doing nothing more than tickling their fannies on the day couch with all their money they don't know how to spend, and the rest of us, and that it's the folks buying the big gulps and scratch offs who are responsible for everything we have in the modern era, is fucking dumb.

[Alexander PhiAlipson]

Sure. We all know how much value aristocrats add to society. Hiring guards to protect the royal jewels is good make-work.

In the Victorian era?? They added quite a lot, actually, and a lot of the people onboard were engineers and business types. That was a huge loss for society back then.

But, again, the calculus that led to "women and children first" no longer applies to a technological society, even if our evolutionary psychology demands it.

Women and children first wasn't a thing--women and children can't row.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Sure. We all know how much value aristocrats add to society. Hiring guards to protect the royal jewels is good make-work.

This sort of attitude is way too common. Newton wasn't a pauper. Einstein wasn't a day laborer. Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie started poor, but they didn't stay there, and the changes they made to the world happened when they were on top of life, not when they were in the gutter.

This notion that the world is made up of daydreaming millionaires doing nothing more than tickling their fannies on the day couch with all their money they don't know how to spend, and the rest of us, and that it's the folks buying the big gulps and scratch offs who are responsible for everything we have in the modern era, is fucking dumb.

Hey now, I love the aristocracy as much as anyone. Most my favorite things are the result of rich folks blowing cash on vanity projects.

I just doubt we save the rich and eat the poor out of some cockeyed biological disposition towards innate value, or that immigrant laborers, as a group, generated less value than aristocrats back in the before-times.

Now excuse me whilst I collapse upon the chaise lounge, I have the vapors.

[Speaker to Animals]

You just recoil at the notion of looking at it from a stark, utilitarian perspective that nature imposes upon us. Which is normal and good.

But this is how we have to operate in shitty situations. Maybe you need to serve in the armed forces to really get a taste of it nowadays. I don't know.

Most of the time we take women and children out first (like from a huge flood) out of compassion for the father who is just another man and we can relate. None of us would want our wives left behind. That's fucking insane. But in the big picture.. I am not so sure that makes sense. Not anymore.

It's far more likely that the Dad we find in a flooded Houston home is a chemical engineer than his wife. There aren't many of those guys around and they will be vital in the coming years due to peak oil.

Again: I am not advocating that we leave the women for last. I am just saying: the calculus that led to this evolutionary bias to save women no matter what was inverted by technological civilization. I think most women at some level are aware of it and that is what drives most of this animosity and rage.

[Okeefenokee]

You're making sense.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Technological society has disrupted every evolutionary calculus that ever drove us. That is pretty much the whole point.

If we want to start determining a person's value based entirely on what they offer to society, by whatever, essentially arbitrary, metric we decide to calculate that value, then many of us might find we aren't exactly the type society wants around. This is why we have tried to teach ourselves not to think of people like that. It is a lesson that, apparently, needs constant refreshing.