What’s the point of marriage if it’s going to go to shit anyway?

[KittyGremlin]

I have a large family. Happy marriages are very rare.

Sad!

 

[Meth Until Death]

Infidelity should be illegal and a punishable offence. My mother was a cheating whore and ruined her marriage and my father.
Absolutely get fucked @Hellbound Hellhound, you sound like a disengenious, slimy cunt who doesn't want to get busted for being a filthy, morally bankrupt adulterer

 

[KittyGremlin]

Infidelity should be illegal and a punishable offence. My mother was a cheating whore and ruined her marriage and my father.
Absolutely get fucked @Hellbound Hellhound, you sound like a disengenious, slimy cunt who doesn't want to get busted for being a filthy, morally bankrupt adulterer

MATI?

 

[Meth Until Death]

MATI?

Yeah nah, I was telling fibs. I was made by a Koori mixing Winnie Blues, VB and Vegimite in a 44 galleon drum with a didgeridoo
Lol
Lmao

 

[Flavius Claudius Julianus]

My two cents:

Most people, men and women, of any ethnicity or background, marry because it's 'just something you do' eventually. I can find examples of this from fellow coworkers, friends, and acquaintances over the last few years.

You might have some guy you know, John, who has been in a relationship for five years. He's comfortable, and probably not mega satisfied; but he's also too lazy to change shit, and eventually decides to get married - either through the desires of the woman he's with, or through a series of pressures from family, society, etc. He gets married, and soon becomes miserable.

John gets everything he fucking deserves, as he walked into a major commitment with no more consideration dispensed than wiping his ass.

As much as a lolcow Stefan Molyneux is, he's right in that the divorce statistics only tell you one thing: people are retarded, and make bad decisions.

If you have two people of similar values, who consider the future, mutual goals, selected one another intelligently based upon past behaviour, and believe the nuclear family to be necessary for the stable raising of children - that statistic falls massively, and any subsequent divorce proceedings will be instigated beyond the usual 'dissatisfaction.'

That said, I'm more in than out where it concerns marriage - certainly to any western woman. The only reason I'd do it is to raise children in a stable environment, not to 'confirm my love' or any other such uwu bullshit.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I think marriage is what God - or love if you don't believe - intended.

But on this dystopian earth of hell, it may be best to not get married.

Just like it also may not be a good idea to bring kids onto this earth.

7 For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.

8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I.

 

[JosephStalin]

There are many marriages which are happy and last a lifetime. When I was in high school in a rural area, eons ago, after high school graduation you'd see a lot of weddings. These people married straight out of high school and started their lives on the farm. They'd have kids, etc, but rarely traveled far from home. The vast majority of these people stayed married until death.
,
Not all marriages go that way, obviously. Lots of reasons why. Every marriage is functional in some ways and dysfunctional in other ways, just like every marriage is happy in some ways and unhappy in others. Things will come up. Money can be a real marriage-killer. The primary breadwinner cannot or will not hold a steady job, placing hardship not just on the couple but on the kids. Or there are debt issues, for various reasons. Or money is poorly managed. All can put strain on the marriage. People will stray and cheat.

Believe people marry because they have hope for the future, that they will be happier together than apart. Works sometimes, for life. Works sometimes, for varying lengths of time. Same reason people often have kids , because they have hope for the future.

Piece of advice - don't have kids until you've been married several years. Normally, after a few years of marriage the couple is used to each other's quirks, and one or both are reasonably settled in their jobs/careers. When you bring kids into an environment where things are unstable you do them no good. Believe every child should be able to grow up without constant fear and worry about what's going on at home. They should never need to worry if there will be a roof over their heads, food on the table, water/electricity being shut off, etc. Build a good foundation for the kids to grow.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

The simplest answer is that they could have just decided to not have a state-recognized marriage in the first place, but chose to submit their marriage to the interests of the state, which usually involves keeping stable and growing family units.

You appear to fail to understand the consequences and implications of the state issuing marriage licenses, facilitating divorces, and drafting laws around marriage as they recognize it, or the consequences of opting into this system. You certainly fail to understand the consequences inherent to someone giving you money or lessening your debt ostensibly free of charge (there is no such thing).

If you want to argue that the state shouldn't be involved in the institution at all, then we need to have that conversation, because we are not starting from there-- we are starting from a position where the state is already involved in the marriage and has investment in the institution, and are therefore talking about how it uses leverage we already grant it by opting into their system.

I would have no problem with the state being less involved in defining marriage, although I'm hesitant to suggest that marriage should enjoy no legal recognition, since there are many benefits which come with being married which may not be so easily guaranteed without it. If someone is taken to hospital in a critical condition, for instance, the fact that they're married can guarantee that their spouse gets a place by their bedside, and for many couples, things like that are very important.

The fundamental difference between us, I think, is that I believe the institution of marriage should exist to empower couples, whereas you seem to think it should exist to constrain them. I have no interest in trying to regulate other people's behavior if it is none of my business, and I certainly reject the paternalistic notion that the state should seek to do so.

Read that again-- that's arguably less than 13.5% of marriages that fit the "sufficiently meek" bill you were describing earlier.

I think the figure you're looking for is 12.5% (assuming that 50% or less of couples who divorce due to domestic violence are not reciprocal cases). Either way, that's still an eighth of people who file for divorce, and in a country like the United States, that's a lot of people.

That explanation flatly assumes that there could never be anything particularly wrong with a given society even if it's "sufficiently advanced", or that there's no problem with the providence of said material conditions in and of themselves that would contribute to the breeding of said mental disturbances.

It assumes no such thing. Plenty of societies have problems which are fairly unique to them, irrespective of their wealth, but there is nevertheless clearly a strong correlation between poverty and dysfunction.

What metric are you using? I'm using the very definition of the term "civilization":

And "more enlightened" than what? Again, Mesopotamia was certainly more advanced than the hunter-gatherer arrangements prior to it.

I like the way that you conveniently cropped that screen capture to omit the first definition that comes up:

Shall we zoom in on that?

I don't believe for one moment that you don't know what it means to be considered civilized. If you wish to feign cultural relativism and pretend not to know how to possibly gauge such a thing, then so be it, but nothing I've read from you so far suggests to me that this is your genuine view, and it certainly isn't mine.

Infidelity should be illegal and a punishable offence. My mother was a cheating whore and ruined her marriage and my father.
Absolutely get fucked @Hellbound Hellhound, you sound like a disengenious, slimy cunt who doesn't want to get busted for being a filthy, morally bankrupt adulterer

I have been completely open with all of my partners that I am not interested in monogamy. Perhaps instead of blaming me for your parent's mistakes, you should seek to learn from them and recognize that the key to any moral relationship is honesty.

 

[Wright]

not interested in monogamy

this nigga lol

 

[Bibendum]

My personal theory is that, much like the rest of American society has degenerated, so has much of the stock of people pursuing relationships. Marriage takes commitment, it takes sacrifice, it takes forgiveness; it can be really difficult at times, but tough shit. Many people now either don't think through what it means to be together for an extended period (which btw is way longer than it ever was in the past, with life expectancies what they are now), they rush into things either because of the honeymoon phase clouding their brains or "because it's what you're supposed to to," they try to fix bad relationships by marrying/having kids, or they have fairytale ideas of romance that don't allow for conflict, transgressions, and forgiveness.

You need to find someone that shares your values, someone who can push you to achieve your goals, someone who willingly shoulders responsibility when you can't, someone with self-awareness and the capacity for reflection, someone who will suffer bad circumstances by your side without scolding or finger-pointing, someone who will forgive your transgressions because they know their commitment is more important than temporary slights.

If you yourself don't truly possess any of these qualities, don't pursue lifetime commitments. If you do (well eventually, you're 19 ffs), it's entirely possible you can find someone similar and make a happy life. And even if your marriage ends, if the parties involved aren't retards, the divorce doesn't have to be acrimonious hell.

Spoiler

PL: No one on either side of my decently large family is divorced. The relationships span 10-65yrs and counting. These aren't perfect people, but they have happy marriages because they committed and meant it. And I'm sure as hell not ruining this increasingly rare tradition.

 

[draggs]

stop listening to dumb boomers who instead of owning up that they've played a part in their messed up marriage decide that it's best to talk shit about the whole institution even though there are plenty of happily married people.

There's also plenty of couples who bicker constantly but would recoil in horror at the idea of divorce. Bickering is not necessarily a sign that there is no love or connection in the relationship.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

I would have no problem with the state being less involved in defining marriage, although I'm hesitant to suggest that marriage should enjoy no legal recognition, since there are many benefits which come with being married which may not be so easily guaranteed without it.

What of it? There's a price to pay for everything, and it's up to you to justify the cost or reject the transaction.

The fundamental difference between us, I think, is that I believe the institution of marriage should exist to empower couples, whereas you seem to think it should exist to constrain them.

Firstly, you pose a false dichotomy by splitting the reality into two wholes and then setting them up against each other-- the state does both. It's why, for example, you've never needed your spouse's cooperation to file a fault divorce-- beyond the regular constraints of civil and criminal codes, the institution of marriage burdens those who subject themselves to it with certain expectations (which are really the expectations of those who typically enter the institution in the first place) such as fidelity. In return, it lightens the burden on those couples in particular ways (such as tax breaks) so that haven't merely combined their present and future assets and liabilities and are better able to have fulfilling marriages where they can do things like have children-- something that ideally makes both the state and the couple happy.

Secondly, while you describe the value of your viewpoint ("the state should empower couples"), you make my stance out to be constraint for the sake of constraint, when this entire time, I've been focused on the welfare of society as a whole. Ideally, a married couple should have children (most do), and the state is interested in this outcome-- which is why married couples receive tax breaks and why they receive more privileges when they have more children.

Of course, if the state already involves itself and has that kind of investment, then it's worth assuming that the state also has an interest in said children being productive members of society that are-- at bare minimum-- perpetuators of society and further sources of tax revenue, which means that they're interested in their environments not setting them up for failure, which they do when the homes break from divorce. It would be in the best interest of the state, then, to not facilitate such breakdowns any more than needed (such as, for example, when the foundational trust upon which a marriage is built is broken, or when the life of a spouse and/or the lives of their children are at risk)-- anymore, and you promote the necrosis of society, since a community is ultimately a collection of family units.

Well, this would naturally be understood to follow and actions would be made according to it. But, ultimately, we get the government we (a people that are becoming more detached from the concept of give-and-take even as "our betters" do not) deserve. Alas.

If someone is taken to hospital in a critical condition, for instance, the fact that they're married can guarantee that their spouse gets a place by their bedside, and for many couples, things like that are very important.

Insist on individuals making a short list of trusted individuals. Don't need a marriage license for that.

I think the figure you're looking for is 12.5% (assuming that 50% or less of couples who divorce due to domestic violence are not reciprocal cases).

Sure.

Either way, that's still an eighth of people who file for divorce, and in a country like the United States, that's a lot of people.

Exactly. An eighth. In a system where protections for battered spouses never stopped existing.

I like the way that you conveniently cropped that screen capture to omit the first definition that comes up:

I don't believe for one moment that you don't know what it means to be considered civilized.

I chose the definition that didn't rely on relativities and gave concrete criteria. I find the definition you chose very poor in a serious conversation (which is why I didn't use it or even acknowledge it) because the implication of it is that we never reach civilization for as long as humanity exists and time flows, since

1) we continue to advance by some collection of metrics, meaning that-- at best-- the definition of "civilized" changes over time, and
2) with your preferred definition, somebody needs to make the case for what's considered "civilized" or not, which also means that you have to make the case for why it has to be you that gets to define it.

Functionally, you're assuming that I automatically agree with your sense of civilization, even though it doesn't adhere to concrete criteria unmoored from presentism and a mythical/morally loaded notion of two-dimensional linear progress. I find many cultures that are not my own lacking in many regards, and I would even call them "bad" if I felt there was enough wrong with them, but I wouldn't altogether assert that they are not civilizations-- such approach isn't cultural relativism.

 

[Meth Until Death]

Yeah nah, I was telling fibs. I was made by a Koori mixing Winnie Blues, VB and Vegimite in a 44 galleon drum with a didgeridoo
Lol
Lmao

I have been completely open with all of my partners that I am not interested in monogamy. Perhaps instead of blaming me for your parent's mistakes, you should seek to learn from them and recognize that the key to any moral relationship is honesty.

"Not interested in monogamy"
"Moral relationship"
"Honesty"
Mate you better start sharing whatever you're smokin', cos it must be some pretty good shit. Christ alive.
Also consider this; the cultures and civilizations that have endured and dominate all others are the ones that practice monogamy.

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

What of it? There's a price to pay for everything, and it's up to you to justify the cost or reject the transaction.

Except we're not talking about the inherent cost of something here; we're talking about additional burdens which need not exist. There is absolutely no logistical reason why the state must impose the kinds of legal constraints and stipulations upon the institution of marriage that you clearly want them to; you are simply of the belief that they should.

Firstly, you pose a false dichotomy by splitting the reality into two wholes and then setting them up against each other-- the state does both. It's why, for example, you've never needed your spouse's cooperation to file a fault divorce-- beyond the regular constraints of civil and criminal codes, the institution of marriage burdens those who subject themselves to it with certain expectations (which are really the expectations of those who typically enter the institution in the first place) such as fidelity. In return, it lightens the burden on those couples in particular ways (such as tax breaks) so that haven't merely combined their present and future assets and liabilities and are better able to have fulfilling marriages where they can do things like have children-- something that ideally makes both the state and the couple happy.

Secondly, while you describe the value of your viewpoint ("the state should empower couples"), you make my stance out to be constraint for the sake of constraint, when this entire time, I've been focused on the welfare of society as a whole. Ideally, a married couple should have children (most do), and the state is interested in this outcome-- which is why married couples receive tax breaks and why they receive more privileges when they have more children.

Of course, if the state already involves itself and has that kind of investment, then it's worth assuming that the state also has an interest in said children being productive members of society that are-- at bare minimum-- perpetuators of society and further sources of tax revenue, which means that they're interested in their environments not setting them up for failure, which they do when the homes break from divorce. It would be in the best interest of the state, then, to not facilitate such breakdowns any more than needed (such as, for example, when the foundational trust upon which a marriage is built is broken, or when the life of a spouse and/or the lives of their children are at risk)-- anymore, and you promote the necrosis of society, since a community is ultimately a collection of family units.

Well, this would naturally be understood to follow and actions would be made according to it. But, ultimately, we get the government we (a people that are becoming more detached from the concept of give-and-take even as "our betters" do not) deserve. Alas.

You say that I presented you with a false dichotomy, yet here you present me with a longwinded tautology of what I've basically already said, only without appearing to realize it. I never accused you of arguing in favor of "constraint for the sake of constraint", either; I understand entirely your reasoning for why you think that marriage should come with the legal constraints you serve as an apologist for, and for the reasons I have already given, I reject this reasoning.

The dichotomy here is very real: I believe that the state (and by extension, any laws it creates) should exist to serve the interests of the individual, whereas you clearly believe that the individual should exist to serve the interests of the state. Swapping the word "state" for "society" or "community" doesn't make your argument any less servile or paternalistic; especially when you describe society as essentially a mere tax farm for the government. Call me idealistic, but I think that society should aspire to more than that.

I chose the definition that didn't rely on relativities and gave concrete criteria. I find the definition you chose very poor in a serious conversation (which is why I didn't use it or even acknowledge it) because the implication of it is that we never reach civilization for as long as humanity exists and time flows, since

1) we continue to advance by some collection of metrics, meaning that-- at best-- the definition of "civilized" changes over time, and
2) with your preferred definition, somebody needs to make the case for what's considered "civilized" or not, which also means that you have to make the case for why it has to be you that gets to define it.

Functionally, you're assuming that I automatically agree with your sense of civilization, even though it doesn't adhere to concrete criteria unmoored from presentism and a mythical/morally loaded notion of two-dimensional linear progress. I find many cultures that are not my own lacking in many regards, and I would even call them "bad" if I felt there was enough wrong with them, but I wouldn't altogether assert that they are not civilizations-- such approach isn't cultural relativism.

You chose a definition which wasn't applicable to what I clearly meant, which makes you a weasel. To recap: I used the word "civilized"; you then presented me with one definition for the word "civilization" (a different, though tangentially related word); I then showed you that the definition I was using still applies, and now you're attempting to evade the argument by pretending that the definition I was using wasn't central to what I was talking about. How tiresome.

I have very little patience for semantic distractions such as this. If you wish to pretend that progress is illusory, then that is up to you, but around the world, people are voting with their feet, and they're not flocking to move to countries which most people would regard as uncivilized.

I also reject the implication that it is somehow simplistic to view progress as having a linear quality, because the historical evidence clearly shows that it does. For example: how many post-industrial societies practice human sacrifice? How many wealthy, highly educated countries with the wherewithal to devote a considerable amount of time and resources to a discipline such as criminology end up coming to the conclusion that the death penalty and mass incarceration are an effective and just response to crime? How many societies become more deeply conservative and parochial as they become more wealthy and educated? The answer is not many.

"Not interested in monogamy"
"Moral relationship"
"Honesty"
Mate you better start sharing whatever you're smokin', cos it must be some pretty good shit. Christ alive.
Also consider this; the cultures and civilizations that have endured and dominate all others are the ones that practice monogamy.

The cultures and civilizations which dominate are also socially liberal, which doesn't really support the argument you're trying to make.

 

[Zero Day Defense]

There is absolutely no logistical reason why the state must impose the kinds of legal constraints and stipulations upon the institution of marriage that you clearly want them to; you are simply of the belief that they should.

...for the reasons that I explained.

Either you're playing loose with words (but understand that I'm at bare minimum making a case for why legal constraints should exist (again)), or you're genuinely arguing that I want constraint for its own sake. Except that you're also saying that you aren't saying that I want constraint for its own sake... even if that claim is debatable at best.

You say that I presented you with a false dichotomy, yet here you present me with a longwinded tautology of what I've basically already said, only without appearing to realize it.

You're failing to make up your mind as to whether I simply have a belief of how things ought to be without any logistical support, or whether I've said "basically what you've said"-- which wouldn't even be possible. Whereas I reject a dichotomy of "empowerment" versus "constraint" and recognize the institution as doing both for certain ends, you explicitly uphold that dichotomy and favor "empowerment" over "constraint" while rejecting the notion that there should be constraints in the first place.

The dichotomy here is very real: I believe that the state (and by extension, any laws it creates) should exist to serve the interests of the individual, whereas you clearly believe that the individual should exist to serve the interests of the state. Swapping the word "state" for "society" or "community" doesn't make your argument any less servile or paternalistic

One of the bases of my argument is that the state should serve the needs of the people in the first place, ideally being constructed by and for the people rather than being some completely distant authoritarian entity-- it turns out I also assert that society needs to as much as possible not suffer necrosis in the form of broken homes.

This much is made certain when I say stuff like this:

It's why, for example, you've never needed your spouse's cooperation to file a fault divorce-- beyond the regular constraints of civil and criminal codes, the institution of marriage burdens those who subject themselves to it with certain expectations (which are really the expectations of those who typically enter the institution in the first place)

so, you're flat out wrong when you suggest that I'm hot-swapping "state" with "community" or "society".

especially when you describe society as essentially a mere tax farm for the government.

Ignoring that you just accused me of swapping the word "state" with words such as "community" or "society" as a means of equation in order to cover up the supposed paternalism of my stance, and ignoring that the conversation doesn't demand that I exhaustively list out what the state wants out of the society it cultivates and presides over, I actually did describe state interests beyond tax revenues in the supposed "longwinded tautology" you lambasted. Even more baffling, I made it a point to establish "source of tax revenue" as a baseline-- that is, if nothing else, the government wants tax revenue, and even if it did not give half a damn about the people, because it at least wants productive people in order to take money from, it has an investment in the creation of stable families.

To recap: I used the word "civilized"; you then presented me with one definition for the word "civilization" (a different, though tangentially related word)

It's not "tangentially related", it's directly related. If I ask Google to define "civilized", I get a definition of "civilized" but I get an associated Wikipedia synopsis for "civilization". I could have provided the definition of "civilized", and I would still be able to make the same point that I was making before. Why? Because your problem is that you already have an idea of what "more advanced" is without the awareness to understand that your case is worthless because you're arguing in relativities that would actually make it so that there's no such thing as "civilized society" in present time. After all, "more advanced" is a purely relative term that, by itself, points to a hypothetical and nebulous concept that currently isn't realized-- unless that's your point, and you didn't elaborate well enough on some underlying philosophy of yours.

Either way, I have to introduce the meaning of "civilization" in order to provide the dry land you didn't bring for this tangent, as you accuse me of being a weasel for pointing out that your argument is malformed in the first place while still suggesting a way you can better make it. And if you have such low tolerance for semantic discussions, don't argue nonsense like the idea that the term "civilized" is only tangentially related to the term "civilization".

I also reject the implication that it is somehow simplistic to view progress as having a linear quality, because the historical evidence clearly shows that it does.

No, the narrative to which your perspective adheres informs you that it does. The trajectory of society is necessarily multidimensional in and of itself because it has numerous qualities that arguably improve or worsen either according to relations of varying clarity or completely independent of each other. The notion that progress is linear is the product of a narrative adopted by someone without enough self-awareness to admit that they're only particularly concerned with or even understand a subset of matters that they monitor for improvement or worsening.

For example: how many post-industrial societies practice human sacrifice? How many wealthy, highly educated countries with the wherewithal to devote a considerable amount of time and resources to a discipline such as criminology end up coming to the conclusion that the death penalty and mass incarceration are an effective and just response to crime? How many societies become more deeply conservative and parochial as they become more wealthy and educated? The answer is not many.

Way to repudiate your point after several exchanges of paragraphs.

Civilized societies attempt to identify the social causes of crime, and work to provide people with opportunities that will steer them away from it.

...except when they don't, or when they kind of do but still practice "mass incarceration" and capital punishment.

 

[Adolphin]

Modern society has created social, economic, and moral pressures which can make marriage unsustainable. In the past, arranged marriages or at least something involving the negotiation of the parents, while not glamorous, usually created stable marriages. It should be noted that arranged marriages were more prominent among the elite and the wealthy, but even ordinary couples had to seek the permission of their parents to marry. Also, the social domination of men made women unlikely to pursue a divorce in case of dissatisfaction (especially since divorce could be socially damning). Generally, people made compromises to sustain their marriages. Marriage was viewed as a social and religious duty and was not something to be broken over lust. Modern society is too chaotic, unpredictable, and fast-moving to allow such relations to prosper. Finally, there is this delusion of eternal romantic love, which leads to people have grossly unrealistic expectations of each other. They think that everything will happen by itself, but they ignore the essence. Like all social relations, marriage is something that requires careful cultivation and care to flourish.

 

[Meth Until Death]

The cultures and civilizations which dominate are also socially liberal, which doesn't really support the argument you're trying to make.

Mankind's history didn't start eighty years ago. Consider two hundred thousand years of evolution, the constants and who are the winners and losers of history. Try to be more succinct and to the point instead of vomiting word spaghetti.
The foundation of society is the family unit and you're a broken degenerate who is too afraid of commitment, lmao

 

[Hellbound Hellhound]

...for the reasons that I explained.

Either you're playing loose with words (but understand that I'm at bare minimum making a case for why legal constraints should exist (again)), or you're genuinely arguing that I want constraint for its own sake. Except that you're also saying that you aren't saying that I want constraint for its own sake... even if that claim is debatable at best.

It's pretty clear that you want constraints to be placed upon individuals within a marriage for the purported benefit they would bring to society as a whole, and I have said that I reject this reasoning because I don't believe it is the state's responsibility (or their right) to try to manage people's lives for them. I believe that acts like adultary are personal indiscretions which ought to be sorted out between the individuals involved, whereas you seem to believe that the government (and by extension, the law) should have some investment in the process. In what way is my characterization of your view here inaccurate?

You're failing to make up your mind as to whether I simply have a belief of how things ought to be without any logistical support, or whether I've said "basically what you've said"-- which wouldn't even be possible. Whereas I reject a dichotomy of "empowerment" versus "constraint" and recognize the institution as doing both for certain ends, you explicitly uphold that dichotomy and favor "empowerment" over "constraint" while rejecting the notion that there should be constraints in the first place.

I'm not failing to make up my mind; I've been very clear about where I think we disagree, and you appear to agree with my assessment of our differences right here. The reason you don't see a dichotomy between constraint and empowerment is because you believe that a relationship built on constraint can still be empowering; whereas I reject that notion because I believe that all adult relationships should be voluntary from their foundation. Whether or not two opposing concepts can exist together is irrelevant to the question of whether or not they have to, and the fact remains that empowerment and constraint are undeniably opposing ideas.

One of the bases of my argument is that the state should serve the needs of the people in the first place, ideally being constructed by and for the people rather than being some completely distant authoritarian entity-- it turns out I also assert that society needs to as much as possible not suffer necrosis in the form of broken homes.

This much is made certain when I say stuff like this:


so, you're flat out wrong when you suggest that I'm hot-swapping "state" with "community" or "society".

If the state is by the people and for the people, and isn't some distant, authoritarian entity, then how is it not an extension of society? Is it really any less authoritarian if the restrictions imposed upon private behavior by community pressure alone are just as stifling to individual freedom in practice as the restrictions imposed by the state? Is there not often a significant relationship between these two kinds of restrictions in most cases?

Ignoring that you just accused me of swapping the word "state" with words such as "community" or "society" as a means of equation in order to cover up the supposed paternalism of my stance, and ignoring that the conversation doesn't demand that I exhaustively list out what the state wants out of the society it cultivates and presides over, I actually did describe state interests beyond tax revenues in the supposed "longwinded tautology" you lambasted. Even more baffling, I made it a point to establish "source of tax revenue" as a baseline-- that is, if nothing else, the government wants tax revenue, and even if it did not give half a damn about the people, because it at least wants productive people in order to take money from, it has an investment in the creation of stable families.

The paternalism of your stance is evidenced by the way that you framed the issue from the perspective of the state's interests, which no one who believed in the primacy of individual rights would do. The state's interests are irrelevant if the purpose of the state is to serve the people.

It's not "tangentially related", it's directly related. If I ask Google to define "civilized", I get a definition of "civilized" but I get an associated Wikipedia synopsis for "civilization". I could have provided the definition of "civilized", and I would still be able to make the same point that I was making before. Why? Because your problem is that you already have an idea of what "more advanced" is without the awareness to understand that your case is worthless because you're arguing in relativities that would actually make it so that there's no such thing as "civilized society" in present time. After all, "more advanced" is a purely relative term that, by itself, points to a hypothetical and nebulous concept that currently isn't realized-- unless that's your point, and you didn't elaborate well enough on some underlying philosophy of yours.

Either way, I have to introduce the meaning of "civilization" in order to provide the dry land you didn't bring for this tangent, as you accuse me of being a weasel for pointing out that your argument is malformed in the first place while still suggesting a way you can better make it. And if you have such low tolerance for semantic discussions, don't argue nonsense like the idea that the term "civilized" is only tangentially related to the term "civilization".

The fact that a concept can be somewhat relative doesn't make it unsound. Strength is relative, but that doesn't mean that we can't say an Olympic weightlifter is stronger than a couch potato. To pretend otherwise is simply nominalist obscurantism which adds nothing to the discussion. By the same token, knowledge is relative; for example: Stephen Hawking was a lot more knowledgeable about physics than Isaac Newton ever was, but that doesn't in any way diminish Newton's immense contributions to human knowledge, nor how incredibly knowledgeable he was within the context of the time he lived.

I mention knowledge here deliberately, because I would argue that knowledge lays the groundwork for civilization. Neither the agricultural revolution nor the industrial revolution happened by accident; they happened because people gained a level of knowledge about the world which allowed them to significantly alter the way we lived, and I see no reason why this phenomenon of increased knowledge altering human realities doesn't apply just as strongly to social attitudes as it does to technological processes.

There are many cultural practices which were once commonplace (like slavery, mutilation as a punishment for crime, femicide, human sacrifice, etc) which are now almost universally condemned as barbaric, and most thinking people have no problem intuitively understanding that our attitude towards these practices changed as we became more civilized.

No, the narrative to which your perspective adheres informs you that it does. The trajectory of society is necessarily multidimensional in and of itself because it has numerous qualities that arguably improve or worsen either according to relations of varying clarity or completely independent of each other. The notion that progress is linear is the product of a narrative adopted by someone without enough self-awareness to admit that they're only particularly concerned with or even understand a subset of matters that they monitor for improvement or worsening.

The narrative to which I ascribe is informed by empirical evidence, and if your view of history lacks such a narrative, it might be because you haven't noticed certain historical patterns. I have no problem admitting that social evolution isn't entirely linear, but to focus on this fact rather than the observable trends which exist in spite of it is, in my view, to miss the forest for the trees.

...except when they don't, or when they kind of do but still practice "mass incarceration" and capital punishment.

The fact that certain practices remain in place in countries which are otherwise civilized doesn't automatically make the practices themselves civilized. Social inertia is a thing, and the fact that you chose to include the word "still" in reference to these practices indicates to me that a part of you may intuitively recognize this. A toddler may still be very attached to their pacifier, but the expectation is that they will one day grow out of it. Similarly, countries like the United States may still have a morbid attachment to the barbarity of capital punishment, but that doesn't mean that it can't also evolve beyond it.

Mankind's history didn't start eighty years ago.

My point didn't start being true eighty years ago. The Roman Empire was a liberal and open society by the standards of it's time, as was the Abbasid Caliphate during the it's Golden Age, as have the various European powers been since the Enlightenment. The history of human civilization shows us that societies become parochial and conservative when they're in economic, political, and cultural decline.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

I think there should be infidelity laws, because the alternative is my soon-to-be-ex-wife accidentally falling down a flight.
Or, I could sue her for wasting years of my time.

No promiscuous vagina is gonna fuck around on my dime without some form of retribution.

 

[totallyrandomusername]

...alimony...

Biggest fucking racket ever conceived of by some kike shyster.