rekabis

I have a tube-based distribution system from the second-floor window that I started using during COVID to keep my distance from those plague incubators that came calling, and just never stopped using it.

I live in a moderately cold climate, and Halloween evening nearly always drops to around -5℃ to 5℃. So it’s much nicer to just sit in a cushy armchair by the window with a warm blanket over my legs and drop candy through the tube. A surprising amount of adults, teens, and tweens are tickled pink by that system, although a lot of little kids need a surprising amount of direction to get their candy.

And yes, I always drop either two pieces or - for those in dark hoods and carrying scythes - full-sized snickers.

To me, it is a balance of both.

Life is definitely what happens to you. That alone is strikingly important, as much of it is not stuff you have any control over. You are quite literally a victim of most of life.

However, how you react to what you can control is also critical in dealing with it, in that you can identify things you can very much directly affect in some way.

Stoicism includes the ability and skills to tell the difference between the two, coping with the former as best as possible (to retain your mental health), and actively strategizing on how to deal with the latter as effectively as possible in order to minimize any negative outcome or maximize positive outcomes.

“Kill all men” - Lauded, celebrated, even encouraged.

“Kill all women” - Misogyny and hatred of the highest order.

In a fair and equitable society, you cannot have both. Either both are lauded and celebrated, or both are examples of gender bigotry and hate that should be widely repulsive and actively shamed.

The fact that the two above exist in society, exactly as I have characterized them, demonstrates the massive, pervasive, cancerous, and corrosive anti-male gender bigotry that has already infested our society at all levels.

Sure, a tiny percentage of men are still “at the top”. Whoop-de-doo. Are we to judge and persecute the lower 98% by the status of the top 2%?

And sure, a tiny percentage of men still behave badly. Again: whoop-de-doo. Are we to judge and persecute the vast majority of well-behaving men, and treat them as if THEY were behaving in the exact same way, based on that vocal minority?

This is how you push men away, to isolate and to alienate them.

You cannot treat all men as a monolith of evil, responsible for everything and anything that ills not just women, but society as a whole. You cannot punish men for every perceived benefit of “teh patriarchy”, especially when those men (most under 40) no longer receive any benefit whatsoever from said patriarchal structures. You cannot provide benefits and help and services to exclusively women, locking out male sufferers of those same systems, especially when women are no longer the majority of sufferers under those structures. You cannot give lopsided advantages to women, artificially raising them above men, in systems that are supposed to be merit-based or performance-based.

Otherwise, why call it “equality”, when it clearly isn’t in any way, shape, or form?

Look at both sides in the same light, with each as deserving the same rights and protections and responsibilities as the other, and the rightward-shift of men becomes blatantly reasonable and obviously expectant. Because the alt-right is the only group which is “giving” men anything to hope for, even though it is nothing more than empty promises and snake-oil salesmanship; a bait-and-switch meant to use men as pawns in a class war (Parasite Class vs working class) that will ultimately hurt them far more than help.

Final note: I have absolutely no problem with the vast majority of the things female supremacists are demanding. My problem is that they are wanting only women to benefit from these things, and are doing their best to deny men the same benefits at every turn. Which is why I take deep offense at anyone calling me a “feminist” -- to me, that is a slur, an anti-male pejorative. I am an egalitarianist, first and foremost. Equality of outcome and equality of opportunities is the foundation of where I stand. And I will call out hypocrisies and inequalities where and when I see them.

The Parasite Class. That’s what happened. These are people for whom any amount of wealth will never be enough. So they extract it out of the working class by cramming down wages, making all aspects of life precarious, and raising prices.

We all suffer and the 0.1% accumulare more wealth than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes.

North Korea calls itself socialist

They also call themselves democratic.

Are they? Would you call their system democratic? No?

Why one and not the other?

It’s not laziness.

Most people are too resource poor, too time poor, and too exhausted from being violently forced to be profitable to someone else, to have the headspace to do what you suggest.

You can indeed spend every waking moment optimizing your life, but then you would be just one person among tens of thousands who could be successful doing that. 99.999% of people would utterly burn out trying to achieve the same. They don’t have the underlying intergenerational wealth that would give them the ability to do so, or don’t have the free time to do so, or have too high of a cognitive load just putting one foot in front of the other to do so. Vanishingly few people are “just too lazy” to do so, and of those who are, they are the ones who can monetarily afford to be lazy.

It’s why poverty is fiendishly expensive, and why it is almost impossible to escape poverty

OMG, like North Korea isn't bad, it's just the US that "doesn't like them".

You’re linking North Korea to the conversation about communism, when that alone is a fatal error: NK is equally as much communistic as they are democratic. As in, not in the least.

There has never been any kind of a long-term (5+ years) communist country on the planet. Prior power structures have always stepped in to decapitate communism in favour of a violently autocratic dictatorship much like a monarchy. What remained of communism was only ever kept as a thin veneer of legitimacy, much like a rotting Edgar suit.

religious beliefs aren’t considered mental illness

You’re right — it’s actually brain damage and cognitive impairment.

In a fair and equitable world, communities like this would not exist, because these people would not have that wealth.

All extreme wealth has been stolen from the working class. That’s the only way it can be obtained.

I don't consider that causing harm.
but I still don't give moral consideration to plants in either case.

So you are species bigot, and a hypocrite for refusing to take the ideology to it’s logical conclusion.

Cool beans.