Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Suicidal Teenagers

America is undergoing a massive cultural revolution. Over the past decades feminism has made enormous strides. Women have become empowered; men have become diminished. Mothers spend less time at home and more time at work. The nation has engaged in seemingly endless discussions of the dark side of sexuality: sexual abuse, sexual molestation, child pornography and rape. Add to that the arrival of hookup culture and you know that it was not going to turn out well.

The result: the number of hospitalized suicidal children has tripled. And that is only over the last several years. And as it happened, a significant majority of those are girls. Apparently, all of that liberation has not been working out very well.


A new study shows that there has been an “alarming” increase of suicidal thoughts and attempts in children and teens between the ages of 5 and 17 since research began in 2008. Researchers examined the teens and kids admitted to 32 hospitals around the country, and found that the percentage of those admitted for “suicidality and serious self-harm” has doubled since 2008.

Sixty percent of those admitted in 2008 were girls, whereas by 2015, they made up sixty-six percent. The CDC reports that the rates for girls between the ages of 10 and 14 tripled by 2015, although this new study doesn’t break down stats by age.

Like the epidemic of opioid abuse, this problem deserves serious attention. But, should it be aired in the media and on Netflix? If you are more tuned in than I am, you will have heard about the new television show: 13 Reasons Why.

New York Magazine summarizes the show’s premise:

Why did high-schooler Hannah Baker kill herself? This is the question 13 Reasons Why, the harrowing new Netflix series based on Jay Asher’s popular YA book, sets itself up to answer. “I’m about to tell you the story of my life,” Hannah (Katherine Langford) explains in voice-over in the first episode. “More specifically, why my life ended.” With that, we’re introduced to the show’s elaborate conceit: Before she killed herself, Hannah left behind cassette tapes featuring 13 recordings, each focused on one classmate whose actions — or inaction — pushed her towards her decision. Told from the perspective of resident class nice-guy and Hannah’s former crush Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette), the show jumps between present (as Clay, now the 11th person to receive the tapes, grapples with his own culpability and that of his classmates) and past (the events, large and small, that made Hannah feel her life wasn’t worth living).

I have not seen the show, but why don't the producers know that they are giving children reasons to commit suicide. They must be assuming that they are doing God’s work, but making suicide seem like a reasonable way for a girl to deal with her problems only gives other girls (and boys) ideas. 

For over a century sociologists have been debating whether suicide is contagious, whether multiple suicides in a community are somehow connected. Do children see another child commit suicide and imagine that it is just another lifestyle choice, another option that may seem more appealing than going to school or having to sext or to hook up?

One fears that shows like 13 Reasons Why encourage suicidal behavior in children. In a better world responsible producers would not broadcast them. If the producers imagine that they are leading a national conversation about suicide and that this conversation will naturally reduce the number of suicides they are deluded.

As for the causes of the suicide epidemic, the show rounds up the usual suspects. Social media is high on the list as are peer group pressures. Because if you do not know who to blame, blame the internet. As for how many of these children have mothers who spend enough time with them, I suspect that the show will not address the issue.

Instead, the show’s producer propagandists blame it all on men. Or better, on high school boys. Or best, on toxic masculinity and white male privilege.

New York Magazine reports:

But the message the show really succeeds at conveying has to do with misogyny: how persistent objectification can erode a woman’s self-worth, and the many ways we fail young women by propagating a culture of silence. After Hannah is sexually assaulted at a house party, the school guidance counselor undermines her version of events and encourages her to”‘move on.” The show takes the many buzzwords currently swirling through the zeitgeist of American youth culture — toxic masculinity, rape culture, gas-lighting, cyberbullying, slut-shaming — and shows how they play out in school corridors, perpetrated by an array of complicated teenagers who transcend the usual locker-room archetypes.

Let’s see: we have had nearly five decades of the feminist revolution and toxic masculinity has become an epidemic. What does that tell you?

When Anne-Marie Slaughter resigned her post at the State Department because her teenage son could not deal with her absence, feminists rose up to denounce her… for betraying feminism, for betraying women and for committing a crime against humanity. Not one of them addressed the simple fact that Slaughter was acting as a responsible mother, one whose fourteen year old son had become impossible to control, who had been suspended from school and who had been picked up by the police. Not one of them asked what was best for the child.

Is this all the product of the great American cultural revolution? Remember when we were told that we should be open and honest about sexuality, that we should discuss it all the time with all people in all places? Remember when we were told that high school students would be sexually active, that abstinence makes them neurotic and that we should encourage healthy sexual habits? Remember when we were told that having a national conversation about sexual abuse, sexual molestation and rape, accompanied by grandiose statements of outrage would mitigate these crimes?

How is that all working out? Those of us who grew up in a more repressed epoch did not have these problems. The expectation of having sex at parties in one’s teen years did not exist. The expectation of picking up a girl at a frat party, getting her drunk and having sex… did not exist. Sexting did not exist. Nice girls did not hook up. In truth, nearly no girls hooked up. Fellating fellow high school students in the stairways did not exist. Or, let’s say that it did not exist to anywhere like the extent that it exists today. It appears that all of these new social policies have produced a toxic high school culture. Children are paying the price.

Today’s children do not have stable homes. They do not have mothers who are present. They do not have family dinners. Now, thanks to sex education they are dealing with adult issues when they are not adults. Worse yet, they are dealing with these issues when their brains have not developed the adult capacity for self-control, self-discipline and moral judgment.

Whatever did you expect?

The more you talk about sexual abuse the more children (and to some adults) see it as the norm. But then, some people like to play at sexual abuse. It's their prerogative, but where do you draw the line?

Since the show is clueless about the causes of the epidemic it falls back on the politically correct solution: it blames high school boys and ignores the way  our cultural revolutionaries have produced the problem.  One unmistakable sign of ideology is a failure to take responsibility for the ravages caused by one’s policies… accompanied by a will to shift the blame.

Call it blame shifting, but the tendency to blame boys, to diminish and demean them, to ignore them in favor of girls has created a hostile atmosphere. It has produced an ambient hostility toward girls. For all the talk about girls being strong, they are still vulnerable and weaker than boys. Don't think that boys don't know it. One does not know whether the show explores this issue. One suspects that it does not.

Girls are now a privileged class. And yet, favoring girls over boys might well make boys resentful and even hostile. Christina Hoff Summers declared that the culture had gone to war against boys. It looks like the boys have found a way to fight back. Cultural revolutionaries should not be proud.

19 comments:

  1. That's all very sad about teenage girls, and I wish it were zero, but the bare facts are that boys and men are far more likely to commit suicide (see NIMH data, fig 2, link below). And, in fact, the most at-risk are white men over 45 and Native American men (cared for by the benign ministrations of the US government).

    https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide/index.shtml

    On a related matter, Oregon, among other states (VT, CA, etc), had so many Progressives they passed an assisted suicide law to thin the herd.

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  2. All of Stuart's arguments may be related, but I'm still guessing social media is the biggest factor in the last decade, and it makes sense social media is harsher for girls than boys.

    And with the internet, we can research the best ways of doing things including suicide.

    TW, offers the other perspective, where older men, especially unmarried men are more likely to commit suicide, and also use the most fatal means so they succeed.

    Being prochoice at least on legality and safety, I can also wonder about assisted suicide, if or how it could be done better than doing nothing and forcing suicidal people to keep quiet.

    Probably the best advice I have to someone who is suicide is "Why not wait until tomorrow, maybe something will change for the better?" But of course some feel they have waited years without things getting better, I have no answer to that.

    My own thoughts on suicide as a teen were pretty tame, but as a thought experiment I realized that whatever was hurting me at the moment, considering death instantly puts that into perspective, and other better options will appear. But most of my predicaments were over taking the freedom to say no to others rather than give into "emotional blackmail", even if I didn't know that was what I was working with at the time.

    And for that matter, threats of suicide or self-harm can actually be reverse "emotional blackmail", which are used to gain attention or avoid life in some way, like a "poor me" call, and self-pity is often credible. So there are times we can't just be paralyzed by threats of suicide and help a person better decide how holistic their visions of death really are.

    I recall one story of a man who survived jumping off a high bridge, and only felt certain he didn't want to die the moment he went over the railing. So that sort of "depression" maybe needs "threats" that are large enough to break through.

    So it seems like the best assisted suicide methods are "serious", but also take enough time that a decision can be reverse. And apparently girls are better at these sorts of methods, like cutting wrists, highest pain, lowest danger. That seems sensible.

    And after you survive, doors open because taboo topics no longer have to be silenced.

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  3. "Not one of them addressed the simple fact that Slaughter was acting as a responsible mother, one whose fourteen year old son had become impossible to control, who had been suspended from school and who had been picked up by the police. Not one of them asked what was best for the child." Because the feminists don't care about the child, only that the mother does what THEY want her to.

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  4. Ares..."I recall one story of a man who survived jumping off a high bridge, and only felt certain he didn't want to die the moment he went over the railing. So that sort of "depression" maybe needs "threats" that are large enough to break through."

    See this vividly-written story by the late naval aviator Neptunus Lex:

    https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2016/05/29/fear-of-flying-ii/



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  5. Thanks, David, for the link. Used to read him, and then he died.

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  6. Gee, maybe Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, and Rachel Bloom will be good models for kids.

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  7. Feminism and Consumerism were bound to mess up the world.

    They are against nature and mess up the organic balance of things.

    To understand this, imagine 4 people: 2 men and 2 women.

    Suppose there are 2 well-paying jobs.

    We need to take human nature into consideration: Men will marry women without jobs, but women don't wanna marry men without jobs.

    These are the possible outcomes.

    1. Two men get the jobs. Each can afford to raise a family, and each is willing to marry a woman without a job. So, each marry a woman. So, two men have jobs and they have wives. Everyone gets something. Men have jobs and wives, women have husbands, wives have family. Two incomes support two families.

    2. One man and one woman get the jobs. Each can afford a family. The man with the job marries the woman with the job. In contrast, the man without the job cannot a mind a mate since women don't want men without jobs. So, the woman without the job doesn't marry the man without the job.
    Since the man with the job and woman with the job married, both their incomes serve just one family. Meanwhile, the man without the job has no money and no family. And the woman without the job doesn't want to marry the man with no job, so she has nothing too.
    So, we have all the good stuff in one family and nothing for the other two. Also, since both man and woman work, there is a chance that they will have no kids or just one kid. All that combined income goes to serve very narrow interests. Two get it all, the other two get nothing.

    3. One man and one woman get the jobs. Each can afford a family. The man with the job marries the woman without a job. In contrast, the woman with the job remains unmarried because she doesn't want to marry the man without a job. Under this formulation, three get something while the male without a job get nothing. The man with a job has a wife, the woman without a job, and they can have a family. The woman with a job has money even if no husband. She has no family but she has money to have fun with.
    But the man without a job has no money and no wife. Such a man is destined for White Death.

    4. Two women get the jobs, and that means the two men have no jobs. Since women don't want to marry men without jobs, the women spend all their income on themselves in wild consumerism. They don't want a family with loser men with no jobs. Since the two men got no jobs, they lose status and hope.

    Of the four options, only #1 offers something for everyone.

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  8. #3 isn't so terrible since 3 out of 4 get something.

    #2 is awful because 2 get everything while 2 get nothing. Still, its saving grace is there is formation of at least one family.

    #4 is horrible because 2 get everything but there is no family. All that money is spent on fleeting vanity and hedonism.

    Now, one might hope for a world where 4 people can have 4 good jobs, but the world isn't like that. There is only a limited number of jobs that can support families.

    When women entered the work force in big numbers, they took away lots of good jobs from men. Every woman who got a good job robbed a man not only of a job but of a family. When a man takes a job from a woman, he doesn't take away her chance of having a family since men with jobs will marry women without jobs.
    When women take jobs from men, it leads to men losing their market value as marriage prospects. Women not only take the jobs form men but also the hope of family, the most important thing in life(because people, as life-forms, are created from families and pass down their genes and memory by forming their own families).
    When women have high-paying jobs, their standards go up in the mating game. But since fewer men have good jobs, the 'ideal man' is harder to find. So, women with jobs face a drought in marriageable men. Since they only want to marry a successful man and will not settle for anything less, many women would rather blow all their money on vanity and self-pleasure. So, the income that, in the hands of man, could have supported a family ends up serving the vain piggery of a woman hooked to SEX AND CITY lifestyle.

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  9. How did we end up like this? It's because we forgot the lesson that we are, first and foremost, organisms or life-forms. The role of life-form is to sustain itself. Everyone will die one day and so will his/her loved one, the partner in life. So, how do they 'survive' after death? Through their children who are continuation of their DNA and cultural/personal torchbearers of their forebears memory. That's what Judaism is about, indeed how it got started. It was about remembrance of ancestors by descendants, and it all went back to the Covenant.

    Now, we are more than mere life-forms like animals. We have advanced brains, and we need ideas, values, and culture. Still, all those things only exist in and matter to the living. All the books in the world mean nothing without people to read them, and every person is the product of man and woman(unless we create a Brave New World scenario of clones by the state). We are more than biology, but it begins with and is made possible by biology. Without biology, there is no being.
    And the main source of meaning is in the family since every person was created by father and mother and since every person can only 'live on' after death via the DNA passed down to his/her kids who are also the cultural/personal torchbearers of their parents' lives.

    But for some reason, the cult of individualism made us forget that every individual is a 'continual', merely one link in the long chain of life. He didn't pop out of a book or materialize out of the thin air or come into existence by a musing of someone's mind. Every person is born biologically and become human emotionally.
    Because we are surrounded by books, movies, and fantasy, we seem to think reality can be created via the imagination and 'creativity'. We've replaced creation with creativity. It's no wonder that we've come to accept something like 'gay marriage'. We confuse reality with fantasy, as if the world is created and sustained by wish-fulfilment. We confuse reproductive fact with creative wish. So, if two lesbians want to believe that they 'had a kid' together, we better go along with this charade. If a man says he is a 'woman', we are pressured to comply. If a bunch of freaks wanna hair-split sex into 50 genders, we are supposed to take it seriously as intellectualism and science.

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  10. Also, consumerism divorced pleasure from purpose. Life-forms feel pleasure of food and sex because they must eat to survive and they must have sex to produce new life. But consumerism created technologies that allowed wanton eating and wanton sex for pleasure alone. So, piggery became the New Normal, as with fatso Lena Dunham who gorges on cakes while sitting on the toilet. It's like she has to eat and shi* at the same time. And like an animal, she humps everyone, and she can sustain such behavior because there are contraceptives, pills, and abortion. This kind of porno-propaganda or pornoganda has, in some ways, become America's main cultural message to the world. America is an exceptional country? Or an excessive 'cuntry'?

    Also, the idea of freedom has become nihilistic. It's good to be free, but for what purpose? In the end, we must make use of our freedoms. And in making any decision, we are choosing one freedom and losing all the others. If we choose to study medicine, we don't have free time to study other things. We must commit to medicine. If we study chemistry, there are other stuff we can't study. If we decide to read a book, then we can't read another book. We have only so much time and energy for so much. So, even though we want freedom, every choice 'imprisons' us with one endeavor and locks out all the rest. It's like the scene in SUPERMAN. If Superman is to save one bunch of people, he can't save another bunch of people. He can't do everything. He fails to save Lois Lane and brings her back to life only by cheating.

    https://youtu.be/JpBfR7GT5zE?t=2m43s

    So, we must raise a question about the thing that is more important than freedom. We mus ask, what is the main purpose and meaning of life.
    After all, suppose there's a society where everyone is forced to be a husband or a wife.
    And suppose there is another society where everyone is free and uses his/her freedom to only indulge himself/herself and not have families.
    In the end, isn't the former society better off since it has families and new life? It lives on and sustains itself.
    In contrast, what good is the other society in the long run? Sure, freedom is nice, but if people used their freedom to just indulge themselves, they've left no legacy for the future... like so many hedonistic folks are doing today.

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  11. Now, we want freedom, but we need to use that freedom wisely. But everything in our ideology and culture fills our hearts, minds, eyes, and ears with the wrong lessons and vile temptations. If Lena Dunham, madonna, Emma Sulk, and Ashley Judd are the 'role models' for womenkind, no wonder there are so many problems. Stalinist, Nazi, or even Sharia culture is better for women. After all, the Muslim Order, repressive as it is, lasted for 0ver 1000 yrs. How long can the current West last? In the end, the worth of civilization isn't measured by trending ideas or fashionable values. It is measured by its ability to survive and continue. The current West pontificates about its pride of 'western values', but if those lead to the fall of the West, they were the wrong values.

    Now, I'm not saying that the only choices are between western decadence/excess and Sharia Law. There is something in between. It's like Aldous Huxley in BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED called out his mistake in BRAVE NEW WORLD of offering only two options: the world of neo-primitive brutality and orgy-porgy techo-hedonism.

    We can be both free and find meaning.
    As we are life forms, we are made of families, and we continue through families we create who carry the DNA code, remember their parents/forbears, and preserve the culture/heritage. Family is bio-socialist. Socialism sacrifices the ideal of absolute individual liberty with a system of relations calibrated for the maximum good of society. So, even though taxing the rich at higher rates than others is 'unfair' by libertarian principles, it is deemed necessary since the rich can afford to pay more for the GOOD of society. So, socialism takes into consideration the difference between being rich, being middle income, and being poor. In a similar vein, bio-socialism takes into account that men and women are not mere individuals to be understood by abstract theories. It's not just about individuals and choice. Men and women are biological creatures brought into being by a certain biological process, grow ideally in a sound family environment, and whose legacy is assured by forming families of their and having children. So, family becomes the foremost bio-socialist unit in the formulation of what is best for society. In the aforementioned scenario of 2 men and 2 women in a society with jobs, bio-socialism will favor 2 men getting the jobs since everyone will get something. 2 jobs held by 2 men can support 2 families.

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  12. But the family has come under attack by feminism and other nutjob ideologies. Also, the role of mother has been mocked as 'having babies' as if that is all a woman does: lays babies like a chicken lays eggs. In fact, babies soon grow into children, and creating a child is the process of creating a human with mind, heart, ideas, values, and etc. Every day, millions of new neurons are added to children, and the process of their growth is fascinating. Besides, what is a more rewarding 'thing' for a person to create than another thinking & feeling human being with heart and soul? Besides, all the products and services offered by professions and jobs exist only to serve human beings. So, creating and developing a new human being is the richest experience in life. It's why Michael Corleone says at the beginning of GODFATHER III(though bad movie) that the most precious things in this world are children. No matter how rich Michael is, he will die, and then the ONLY people who will remember and care about him are his survivors, the kids and grandkids. His money and his mansions and cars have no mind, no heart, no nothing. Only life remembers life.
    But in our world, the Ideal is for a guy with good job to marry a woman with a good job(which means one less man with a good job who can afford a family), and since are too busy with work, the raising of the kids is left to PC ideologues(teacher hacks) and the Mammon of Pop Culture that corrupts children from a young age.

    The modern world is great for giving us freedoms that our ancestors didn't have and didn't know how to have. And initially, modern people had both freedom and meaning, a sense of purpose. They were freed from traditional bonds but still morally and culturally informed by those bonds and values. It's like Michael Corleone has freedoms that his forbears didn't in Old Sicily, but having grown up in a culture of family and values, his individuality is shaped by those values. He has freedom but also cultural compass.

    But as the cult of freedom took on a life of its own via ideological arrogance and hedonistic excess, the connection to a sense of purpose was lost.
    Ideology gave people a sense of permanence through ideas when, in fact, ideas only exist in the minds of people, life forms. No people, no ideas. Ideas are nothing without minds to appreciate them, and minds are bio-mass of life-forms.

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  13. If ideology gave people a false sense of permanence via books & arts, entertainment made people feel that the Moment is Forever. Thus, people lose sight of the larger sense of time and history as they've become hooked to pop music or movies that glorify the orgiastic hysterics of the moment. Humans went from organismic to the orgasmic. So, even middle aged men and women still feel like teenagers as they listen to pop music and watch hollywood movies about caped heroes. Or when they play dumb video games.

    We need to find a way to reconnect freedom with meaning and purpose.
    All these pussyhat feminists bitch and whine about 'freedom', as if Trump is going to turn them all into chattel slaves. But in fact, the real problem women face today is lack of meaning and purpose with all their misguided freedoms. They have freedom, but the choices they've made are terrible, not least because our reigning ideology and culture encourages women to act like SEX AND CITY, Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, Emma Sulk, or one of those trashy shallow pseudo-intellectuals who write for NYT or yammer on NPR.

    In a way, the odd alliance of feminists and Muslims suggest at something buried in the feminist psyche. There is something within them that is crying out for meaning, order, purpose, and continuance. Is it any surprise that Lindsey Lohan is leaning toward Islam?

    The history of mankind has offered people four basic choices:

    1. Forcing people to do what is the right thing.

    2. Forcing people to do what is the wrong thing.

    3. Giving people freedom, and people freely doing the wrong thing.

    4. Giving people freedom, and people freely doing the right thing.

    The best of all possible worlds will have most people in #4 mode.
    The worst of all possible worlds will have most people in #3 mode.

    Why is #3 worse than #2? Why is a world where people are forced to do the wrong thing better than one where people freely do the wrong thing?
    Because in the #3 scenario, there is still a political/social power that can make people do the right thing under a new policy. It may be currently forcing people to do the wrong thing, but with a change of course, the system can force the people to do the right thing.
    In contrast in the #3 scenario, the people have the freedom/power to do the wrong thing, and there is no higher power to stop them or correct them. This is why black problem today is worse than black problem during slavery. During slavery, whites forced blacks to be slaves, the wrong thing. And slavery had to end. But since whites still had the power, they could make blacks do the right things with the end of slavery. In contrast, the corrupt and free blacks of today won't listen to anything since they got the Agency and Power. But to do what with their freedom? Turn cities into Detroit and Baltimore. Blacks used their freedom to turn their communities into neo-jungles and bitch,whine, and holler like mad baboons. And since they have all the freedoms and rights under the law, they can just go on acting loutish.
    In contrast, blacks in Cuba are in scenario #2. Cuban Socialism doesn't really work. It is the wrong thing. It keeps blacks doing what is economically backward and inefficient. BUT, the state still has control over the blacks, so if state policy were to change one day for the better, blacks can be pressured to do the right thing under state power. But a lot of American blacks are hopeless. They got the power and freedom and they used it for total lunacy and jungle behavior. And there is no power above them to say NO.

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  14. One might say #1 and #4 have same results and so are equally valid. Whether people are forced to do the right thing OR use their freedom to do the right thing, the end result is people doing the right thing. Still, we want freedom. We don't want to be forced to do stuff by some tyranny.

    Under system #1, even those who want to do the wrong thing have no choice but to do the right thing.
    Under system #4, those with the freedom to do the wrong thing still choose to do the right thing. That is true morality, but increasingly harder to come by these days because of family breakdown, cultural decadence, moral degeneration, and etc. After all, in order for people to freely do the right thing, they must be inculcated with good, sound, and healthy values and outlook and understanding. But just look at the state of PC and Pop Culture. We are raising kids to be self-absorbed tards and snowflakes and loons. Why so many kids get tattoos? They have no sense of time, of tomorrow. They don't think, "yrs will pass and I might look back and find this tattoo really stupid." No, all they care about is the NOW. If they think it's cool NOW, they must get it and just fuc* tomorrow.

    In order for #4 to work, we need a society that promotes culture and values of maturity, sobriety, dignity, and integrity, like what Vito Corleone had(except for the organized crime thing, but then he was pressured into by that no-good Fanucci who was fleecing the neighborhood).
    But if #4 is rendered impossible because our culture creates tons of idiots with PC and junk culture, then the only option is to go back to #1.

    #1 is unpleasant even if it forces people to do the right thing because we want to be free and also, we want people to do the right thing out of moral sense than out of social coercion. Still, #1 is the only option when #4 fails and we slip into a state of #3. The black American community, at this point, can only fix its problems through #1 option. Too many blacks have freely acted to be a total tards and chillun.

    It's funny. Life is a form of energy.
    The modern world has tons of energy made possible by electricity. Look at Earth at night from space, and you can see entire areas lit up by tons of electricity. We see the most lights in Western nations and East Asian nations. So much industrial and recreational energy... and yet, so little life energy, so little energy of reproduction. Modern folks are like moths before an artificial light. They are addicted to the false life of industrial energy that fills them with light, convenience, and entertainment, but they have lost the sense of real energy, that of life itself. Because industrial energy is so powerful, those who huddle around it feel so alive, but it's all an illusion. Watching TV filled with flashing images or playing some roller-coaster video-game may make one feel alive, but it's all illusion. Being around all that industrial energy has sapped modern man of life energy, that of family and creation of new life for legacy.

    In contrast, the dark continent of Africa is having lots of kids and producing lots of life. They lack in industrial energy but they have something far more valuable: life energy.
    And they will eventually move to the modern world with its aging and dying populations who prefer the artificial 'life' of industrial energy over the real energy of life around family and culture.

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  15. Some people say we need to return to Christian values, but I don't know. Christianity is a mixed blessing.
    Christianity is like coal. It offers lots of spiritual heat and moral warmth. But it has to be handled with care with good ventilation. Why? What does coal produce? Carbon Monoxide or CO which is odorless and lethal.
    So, the Church needs good ventilation system. Yes, the Church teaches us to love mankind and be forgiving, and etc. That is a good message to warm the soul. But too much of anything is never any good. And excessive utopian save-the-world sermonizing of Christians can have the effect of CO.
    So, we need to ventilate the Church. Give us the sermon about love and forgiveness but air out too much sanctimoniousness that turns people into holier-than-thou pied-pipers of their race to extinction.
    Also, Christians need to be reminded that Jesus never said the world of man could be saved. He only said that man should try to be good and seek the Lord's grace in the afterlife.

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  16. I was not aware the Unabomber gained access to a laptop and the internet and started contributing here.

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  17. These problems didn't exist at my high school because it was all male. I didn't appreciate it at the time; but I've gotten to appreciate it more the older I get.

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  18. There is something about humanity that we are trying desperately to deny, and the denial narrative isn't working. It's like trying to hold beachballs underwater, or trying to defy gravity. There's freedom in accepting the way things are, and owning them in self and others. We are now busily dedicating energy to denying that males and females are distinct, and meanwhile we've become so bold as to try imposing a duty on others to accept the lie of transgender-ism. The Glowing Box is the delivery mechanism for this kind of emotional roller coaster. The only means we have to save ourselves is to turn it off. Men have opportunity in the virtuous life, and women have the same. It's in our efforts to deny this truth and overcome our animal instincts that we have instead given into them for the sake of pleasure. And then we wonder why we're miserable.

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