What's on your mind?

[Dead1]

9 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

The trick is to feel superior to all the other tribes (including your own) and feel genuinely sorry for everyone else, while treating them with respect, despite their lameness. It's not that hard to do when all your basic needs are met. 

Though that's not just westerners with their great white saviour tropes (eg Avatar .  Russians have it with their Ruski Mir/third Rome/Pan Slavism, the Chinese have it (originates from All Under Heaven concepts of the various Empires), Arabs & Muslims have it, Indian Hindus have it (as exemplified by current PM Modi).

Even where I am from Croatians and Serbs both have concepts of cultural superiority over the other one.

11 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Why is all this going against the grain, and eschewing tradition and indoctrination ok and socially acceptable now when it wasn't ever socially acceptable before for thousands of years?

I studied this a bit at university.  Western concepts of individualism basically go back to Martin Luther and Protestantism. 

Martin Luther basically promoted individual faith which was a separation from the collective faith as espoused by the Roman Catholic Church.

This ended up promoting things such as literacy (to read the Bible), and then morphed into other concepts such as individual responsibility to attain success.

Of course all these still didn't create individualism as we know it and the Protestants were still collectivist for most part right up to late 19th century and sometimes up to WWII.  

But it did set into motion philosophical changes in the core of society that percolated and evolve and then snowballed in the 20th century and especially after WWII.

 

Note that other societies are still collectivist even if they are nominally part of west eg Japan and South Korea.  Germans still have some elements of collectivism in their psyche too which was exploited by Hitler and then used to rebuild the country into a modern democracy after WW2.  

But in the English speaking world, hyper individualism has emerged courtesy of business looking for new markets (started in 1950s) and the impact of 1960s counter culture movement.  Eg before 1950s there were no teenagers as a distinct class.  That was pretty much invented by business who saw a new market in the young people in the then increasingly affluent middle class America.

 

----

 

By the way Martin Luther would be horrified at the modern world.  He was very much against individualism, an avid anti-Semite and still believed in the supremacy of religion.

He was in many ways closer to ISIS than modern westerners - he wanted the church to go back to more fundamentalist ways that emphasised faith over the material world.  Of course how people perceived his writings especially after he died was a different matter entirely. 

[Dead1]

Just had the most strangest epiphany.

I've been working with doctors for 13 years now and it dawns to me that I don't think of them as human.  Nurses, admins, aides, attendants, social workers, OTs, psychologists etc yes, but doctors no.

 

They're all so socially awkward, often fake and never seem to be able to have a normal casual conversation.  Even their mannerisms and body language are strange and awkward.  Doesn't matter what gender or cultural background, they're all the same.  There's a kind of sliminess to them.

Basically they're kind of like aliens..  

 

[Thatguy]

 

8 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Basically they're kind of like aliens.. 

 

Of course, you are mainly dealing with psychiatrists I guess.

[AlSymerz]

I ran a farm with a doctor for several years but it only took me 3 months to figure out he wasn't human and failed to have human thoughts. But then again I also saw many of his patients at the clinic and I defy anyone to remain human when you've got to deal with those people every day.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

40 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Of course, you are mainly dealing with psychiatrists I guess.

My dad always said most psychiatrists go into that field to help themselves figure out why they're crazy. Makes sense they'd be a bunch of socially awkward weirdos.

[Dead1]

56 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

 

 

Of course, you are mainly dealing with psychiatrists I guess.

Yes.  But I have also noticed my GPs and the specialists I periodically go to are similar.

 

No offence meant.  You seem human enough.🤪

11 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

My dad always said most psychiatrists go into that field to help themselves figure out why they're crazy. Makes sense they'd be a bunch of socially awkward weirdos.

I am actually convinced psychiatry is for doctors who don't want to see patients.

I kid you not, our worst examples are 2 clients a day being 2 too many and then a second one seeing only 2 clients per week for $2500 a day.

 

But they all try to weasle out of work.  Some of the stuff they do is unethical and sometimes dangerous for clients.

But they protect themselves so there is nothing that can be done 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

No posts from Father Alabaster since Feb 20. No posts from Navy since Feb 18. I wonder what's going on? Have they eloped maybe?

[Thatguy]

Ed - fucking - Sheeran - the man devoid of groove/soul/call it what you will, played to 100,000 people then more than 100,000 the night after in Melbourne just now. My daughter - who torments me with Ed - fucking - Sheeran at every opportunity was over for dinner tonight and she and the wife went on about this and about how more than 200,000 people couldn't be wrong and that maybe my taste in music was just wrong.

Of course I told then that they and the other 200,000 were the one who were wrong, but that didn't change their minds. Then I quoted Frank Zappa - 'Americans hate music, but they love the garni-de-jour' and the same for Australians. That did me no good either.

So be it. I am still right. Metal heads are a tiny minority and I am grateful that music I love is being produced by men and women who will never have the commercial success of Ed - fucking -Sheeran, but they do it anyway because they love it.

I am right about the evil of the golden point in Rugby League too and so many other things but I'll stop whining now.

Goodnight.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

3 hours ago, Thatguy said:

Ed - fucking - Sheeran - the man devoid of groove/soul/call it what you will, played to 100,000 people then more than 100,000 the night after in Melbourne just now. My daughter - who torments me with Ed - fucking - Sheeran at every opportunity was over for dinner tonight and she and the wife went on about this and about how more than 200,000 people couldn't be wrong and that maybe my taste in music was just wrong.

Of course I told then that they and the other 200,000 were the one who were wrong, but that didn't change their minds. Then I quoted Frank Zappa - 'Americans hate music, but they love the garni-de-jour' and the same for Australians. That did me no good either.

So be it. I am still right. Metal heads are a tiny minority and I am grateful that music I love is being produced by men and women who will never have the commercial success of Ed - fucking -Sheeran, but they do it anyway because they love it.

I am right about the evil of the golden point in Rugby League too and so many other things but I'll stop whining now.

Goodnight.

I thought you said you raised them to be good people? I honestly have no idea what Ed - fucking - Sheeran's music sounds like, I only know that he has red hair and seems to find himself as the butt of a lot of internet jokes about how does fugly old redhead Ed - fucking- Sheehan manage to pull so many chicks (that'd be Shielas for you Ozzies) and get so much nookie when we can't, just because he sings some shitty whiney songs. I could probably live just fine without ever actually hearing him though. 

Of course those two women at your table and the 200,000 screaming idiots in Sydney & Melbourne were wrong and we're right Doc, that goes without saying. Or well at least I'm right anyway, not so sure about your Krallice and hipster post-black and other ambient and avant-garde microtonal weirdness, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on some of the rest of your choices and stand with you against the evils of mainstream pop music. We grey bearded metalhead over 60 seniors have gotta stick together even if your idea of what's good differs significantly from mine. I guess now I'll have to go look up what "garni de jour" means, although I already know the de jour part and I think I can figure out the garni close enough from the context. 

I've never seen anyone take an opening day overtime loss so hard before. Chin up Doc, I'm sure your Eels will win a game or two sooner or later, maybe they can even get a W on the board by beating the Sharks next Friday if you're lucky.

[AlSymerz]

If it makes you feel better Doc keep in mind that Melbourne managed to upset a large dose of those Ed Sheeran fans by completely fucking up the automatic ticket system. Of course it could have been that those fans were not very smart and helped the fuck up happen but it was a little amusing to see thousands of people not able to enter the concert initially. The only thing that would have been more amusing was if it had been raining at the time.

[Thatguy]

5 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

get so much nookie when we can't, just because he sings some shitty whiney songs

I actually don't care about how much nookie he gets. He looks as unappealing as he sounds but fame and money will get the most unappealing of men as much sex as they want and maybe he is a nice person. Good luck to him.

I can just about bear some of the modern pop music my daughter likes when it has some degree of groove. Ed-fucking-Sheeran grooves like a wooden box on wooden legs. That is, not at all. I can bear a whine if the beat makes me move. Walking away quickly doesn't count.

Anyway I'm preaching to the converted here. We all already knew that mainstream taste sucks and that 90% of everything is shit. I wasn't angry about any of this, just quietly head shaking. We have always enjoyed vigorous dinner table debate.
 

[AlSymerz]

I don't think you've given Ed a fair go. I think you should spend the entire week locked in your man cave listening to nothing but Ed.

[Thatguy]

17 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

I don't think you've given Ed a fair go. I think you should spend the entire week locked in your man cave listening to nothing but Ed.

I will if you will.

[AlSymerz]

See that's not a challenge for me, because I can happily be subjected to any sort of music for prolonged lengths of time.

[Dead1]

Having a 10 year old daughter, I can tell you Ed Sheeran's not the worst thing they can be listening to.  There are also all those female pop starletts like Olivia Rodrigo singing exclusively about breakups - as if that means something to a 10 year old!

 

Wife and kid saw Ed Sheeran and loved it.  Wife reckons it was perhaps the best concert she ever went to (and she's been to quite a few including metal ones).

[Thatguy]

51 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Wife and kid saw Ed Sheeran and loved it.  Wife reckons it was perhaps the best concert she ever went to (and she's been to quite a few including metal ones).

sigh

[AlSymerz]

A sigh of jealousy I do believe!

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

I thought the days of religious nutjobs randomly doorknocking folks died with the rise of social media. Apparently not though because I had one not 15mins ago. Telling them I wasn’t interested didn’t get them to leave, telling them I’m blind, so I can’t read their stupid pamphlet didn’t get them to leave, but telling them I didn’t need a close relationship with God because I was already in a committed polyamorous one with Satan and Cthulhu sure did.

[AlSymerz]

Even out in the boonies we get bible bashers visiting every six months or so.

Around here telling them you're blind would just see them pull out a braille version of their crap. But mentioning the word Satan is sure fire way of switching them into convert mode and never getting rid of them. The only thing they love more than finding a fellow worshipper is finding someone they think they can convert.

I've had the fuckers stand next to me while I've been fixing a boundary fence just talking and talking for what seemed like hours (but probably wasn't). Even as log trucks zoomed past barely missing their badly parked car on the side of the road they were unphased.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Well it’s a rarity here, but implying I get down with the devil and a squid dragon saw them flee quick smart.

[AlSymerz]

Bible bashers in the city of churches a rarity? There is something wrong with that. Next time I see the ones around here I'm going to suggest they get their group and move to SA where there is an untapped resource of people waiting to be converted.

[RelentlessOblivion]

you’ve got it all wrong mate, it’s because we are the city of churches they aren’t out, figure okay you probably believe most of the city are devotees of the sky fairly already.

[AlSymerz]

There was a church for sale in Melbourne this weekend, it went for $10M from memory. I'd love to own a church, especially one that big.

[DeathMetalBangers]

2 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

I thought the days of religious nutjobs randomly doorknocking folks died with the rise of social media. Apparently not though because I had one not 15mins ago. Telling them I wasn’t interested didn’t get them to leave, telling them I’m blind, so I can’t read their stupid pamphlet didn’t get them to leave, but telling them I didn’t need a close relationship with God because I was already in a committed polyamorous one with Satan and Cthulhu sure did.

If I see em walking up my drive way, I strip down to my underwear real quick before I answer the door. They get out of here quick. Then give em a “hail Satan” as they leaving. You’ll never see em again. 

[Thatguy]

1 hour ago, DeathMetalBangers said:

If I see em walking up my drive way, I strip down to my underwear real quick before I answer the door. They get out of here quick. Then give em a “hail Satan” as they leaving. You’ll never see em again. 

I haven't seen any for years, but the quickest I got rid of a pair was when I answered the door with just a towel wrapped around me and told them that everyone in the household were revolutionary communists.