#Society

[max1461]

I have the following Grand Theory of the Twenty-First Century that I would like to put forth. I don't know if it's true, but sometimes I think it's true.

Many of you will have heard of the Flynn effect. This is the observed effect that average performance on IQ tests has gone up since these tests started being administered. On a first glance, it appears that people all over the world have gotten measurably smarter in the past 100 years.

There are a variety of proposed explanations for this. Probably better childhood nutrition and the like has something to do with it. But another proposed explanation is this: IQ tests are known to be trainable. You can practice and get better at them. And you can practice the sorts of tasks that show up on an IQ and get better at those sorts of tasks, which might be why (IIRC?) standardized education seems to improve IQ scores. What sorts of tasks are on an IQ test? Abstract thinking tasks. Tasks related to abstract pattern recognition.

It has been proposed that people today live their lives in a world much more governed by these sorts of abstract tasks. We interface with bureaucracy and paperwork, we manipulate strange little symbols on a computer screen, we internalize the various abstractions we are (explicitly and implicitly) taught in school in order to receive the best grade. Where children 100 years ago were taught by their environment to do physical, concrete things, children today are taught by their environment to engage with abstract systems. And success at engagement with abstract systems is what determines success in life, which was much less true 100 years ago.

There are ways in which I think this is a good thing. Abstract systems have both many uses and many joys, which mathematicians have regaled us with since Euclid, and I think it's a good thing if people are more prepared to engage with abstraction these days. But it's probably not wholly a good thing. After all, there is also much utility and many joys in the physical and concrete, and I suspect that today we live in a world which prepares people markedly less well to succeed at the concrete. This is particularly troubling since many concrete activities make up the very most fundamental bedrock of the human condition (as it has hitherto existed).

In-person social relationships are of a concrete character. Leaving your house and doing shit is of a concrete character. Making and fixing things with your hands is concrete. Fucking is concrete.

I think it is possible, and potentially explanatory of some of the malaise I see among my peers, that we have grown up in a world which has taught us to shuffle symbols instead of to do things. People will blame this on their political opponents, leftists will attribute it to capitalism and rightists will attribute it to this or that form of effeminate progressive ideology, but (at the risk of being immediately dismissed by certain people) I want to suggest that, insofar as this is true at all, it might simply be best understood a consequence of industrial society itself. Abstract tasks simply get more useful and more in demand the greater the complexity of society grows and the more technology expands into our lives.

I don't want to present this sociological theory with too much confidence, and I am certainly not claiming we should burn down all the factories and go live in the woods or whatever. I'm just saying, uh... maybe this is something that's going on. I sometimes look around and think "this definitely might be something that's going on." And if it is going on, we should think about what its implications are.

#society

[exhaled-spirals]

« This is a book about [...] why the early part of this century was such a monstrous time to be famous and female. It’s about how the concept of privacy came undone and why that was a catastrophe for women. [...] Those of us who came of age around the millennium lived through Britney’s descent from virginal schoolgirl to public disgrace, through Paris’s sex tape, through Lindsay’s partying. We lived through Aaliyah’s death (and the peculiar coyness around her relationship with the man who publicly groomed her), through Janet’s humiliation in Nipplegate, through Amy’s destruction by the addictions she romanticized in her music. [...]

When I say we "lived through" these things, I don't mean merely that they happened while we were alive. Nor do I mean they were somehow ordeals that we, the public, had to suffer. (Whatever suffering there was, it belonged to the women this book is about.) What I mean is that the stories of these women, as told by the tabloid press and celebrity blogs, became vehicles through which we made sense of our own existence. For the public, tearing these women to pieces was both a social activity and a form of divination. In the entrails of their reputations, we hunted for clues about what a woman ought to be, and this has always been one of the functions of celebrity women. »

— Sarah Ditum, Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s

#quote #sarah ditum #celebrity #women #society #english

[philosophybits]

Civilization does not lie in a greater or lesser degree of refinement, but in an awareness shared by a whole people. And this awareness is never refined. It is even quite simple and straightforward.

Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1942

#philosophy #quotes #Albert Camus #Notebooks 1935 1942 #civilization #morality #society #norms #law

[join-great-national]

#i want to be weightless #daphne rosen #katherine pierce #abbey lee kershaw #nightmare on elm street #magyar #Marie Madore #nov 5th #migos #society

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk and the Third Place

Let's talk about third places. It is a topic that has been brought up in a lot of Solarpunk and leftwing places have brought up during the last few months. Andrewism has made a video on it for example. And given that during the last few weeks I actually made a lot of use of third places, I thought I also could talk a bit more about it.

See, I have spoken about this: Due to my roommate just being very hard to live with right now, I kinda fled my home. (Which yes, is due to her mental health, but that does not make it any better for me.) And basically I just looked into: Where the hell could I spend my time?

And then I remembered the thing that I did throughout my youth: Hang out at gaming stores and, well, play games. I did that a lot for so long, given it is often a place for nerds to gather. And yeah, what can I say? It still works.

Heck, I found even someone who plays Digimon Cards with me.

But of course we do know - again it has been discussed a lot - that in recent times a lot of third places have either been erased, or the way we live have stopped the third places to work the way they used to work like this.

Let's quickly go over what a third place is: A third place is a place where you can hang out and get to know people. A place distinct from the place you live and the place you work in (or school, for students). Stuff like a park, a café, a library... things like that. Places that encourage you to interact with new people and start conversations.

Recently those places have been destroyed a lot. Partly because a lot of them have become hard to afford (especially on a regular basis), partly because they have become shut down, and partly because our culture actually does no longer encourage interacting with strangers.

And, I mean. Yeah. Parks are counted among third places, but honestly, I cannot remember that I actually interacted with a stranger in a park. If a stranger talks to me, I am afraid they are a creep. And if I see someone I think I could get along with, I do not dare to talk to them.

The fact that most of us run around glued to our electric devices (I am counting myself there as well) does not help this fact, right? If I am sitting in a café, I am usually working on my laptop, which will make it less likely that folks interact with me. And, of course, my autistic self will also not do that in turn.

Solarpunk both as a genre and a vision for the future is very much build around the idea of community and working together as a community. And for that we need third places in Solarpunk futures. Places that are easily accessible and that people can just go to to talk to people.

But more than that, Solarpunk also needs a society and social rules that actually allow for folks to interact with each other, talk to each other and ask each other for help and stuff.

Sure, there also need to be safe and silent spaces for people with needs like that (including autistic folks like me). And really... Frankly, I would not know how to talk with someone outside a nerd context, lol.

#solarpunk #lunarpunk #third places #community #community building #cooperation #hang out #parks #society #we live in a society #social life

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

If you claim to care about mental health and wanting other people to care about their mental health too, then maybe don't say "get therapy" or "seek help" as an insult

#psa #society #mental health

[indeedgoodman]

#art #humanity #kindness #people being people #society #human beings #faith in humanity #india #cleaning #life hacks #tips #how to #love #life #hope #feeling #emotions #existence #reality #real life

[zebulontheplanet]

Just a reminder that people who still live with their parents as adults deserve respect and for you to stop being ableist. There are multiple reasons someone could still live with their parents! From invisible to visible disabilities, finance issues, and more!

Stop using the “well they’re gonna turn into a creep living in their parents basement” punchline! It’s disgusting. STOP. BEING. ABLEIST. STOP. FORGETTING. THE. POOR.

#autism #zebrambles #actually autism #actually autistic #visible disability #invisible disability #neuordiversity #neurodivergent #physical disability #financial issues #society #ableism #tw ableist language #tw ableism #Zebplanet

[tygerland]

Marsha P. Johnson, co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, at a gay rights demonstration in Albany, New York, March 14, 1971. Photo by Diana Davies.

#1970s #community #people #blm #culture #street #society #queer #trans #pride #gender #activism #black history #lgbtqia #humanity #queer history #marsha p johnson #70s #transgender #politics #counterculture #🌈

[animescreencolle]

#bocchi the rock! #bocchi the rock #work #scary #society

[max1461]

I don't think pointing at the grifters in order to discredit a set of ideas is ever very intellectually productive. There are of course rather a lot of Robin DiAngelo style "woke"/progressive/etc. grifters in academia, and there are rather a lot of supplement-hawking right-wing manosphere (etc.) grifters online (sorry, I don't have specific examples), and I don't think this really says anything in particular about the left or the right. Grifters gonna grift. Where there's money to be made or prestige to be gained, people with less than savory motives and less than sound ideas are going to chase after them. That's just how the world is. I don't look very sympathetically on attempts to make this "mean" something politically.

The reality is, no matter what sorts of things you believe, once enough people agree with you you will began to find no shortage of hucksters, idiots, and combinations of both loudly proclaiming to be on your side. That's the human condition.

#society

[zenosanalytic]

You know how bullshit rent is? Elon Musk hasn't paid rent on Twitter's main offices in, like, 6 months, and has Twitter been evicted? Of course not. Apparently, when you're rich or a company, you can just tell your landlords to fuck off and the gov won't do shit to you.

#zA Writes #Elon Musk #Twitter #Rent #Capitalism #Society #Impunity #zA's Inveterate Politicism #cantankerous posts

[correctopinionhaver]

society if good thing i like had happened instead of bad thing i don't like

#memes #futurism #society #top

[classycookiexo]

#society #honestly #leave me alone #contribute

[nostalgicish]

say “yeah this book was so good it changed my life” and no one bats an eye

say “yeah this fan fic was so good it changed my life” and society goes wild

#SOCIETY #i am cringe but i am free #ao3 #cringe culture isn’t dead #but i wish it was #yeah this is abt klance again idc #klance #voltron

[classichorrorblog]

10 Body Horror Films To Consider For October/Halloween

#Horror #Horroredit #Body Horror #Basket Case #Eraserhead #The Fly #Possession #Re-Animator #Slither #Society #Tetsuo: The Iron Man #The Thing #Videodrome #CHB #10 Movies To Consider #I am not saying that these are the best or that they are my favorites. #Just 10 movies that I think are worth watching for the season.