Bay 12 Games Forum

I'd rather not. The fact that they think they're discussing something intellectual is enough to indict them of being the academic rot prevalent in our times. I don't need to actually engage in inanity in order to call it out when I see it. When my son is drooling on his plastic toys, I don't need to drool on the same plastic toy to tell you that it's childish. There's no reason for me to post in a thread that I find to be distasteful.

Yes, I have a son. I can afford that. I have no debts. I'll probably have two more children, because I can afford that, and because someone has to make up for the population gap that all these broke-ass adult-children won't be filling up with their own off-spring. It's tough, picking up others' slack.

My humble brilliance is shown when I've got a trade, a house, and a purpose in society, and yalls still babbling about heteronormative this and transgenderized that in mom's basement, because being seen as a part of the educated intelligentsia with the 'right' set of beliefs was more important to you than actually having a useful skill and a role to play in society. Such are the wages of hubris.

Beyond that, the academic in me grumbles at the idea that plumbing or masonry could be lumped in with classics or literature, but that's just snootiness.

I bet you flush a toilet more often than you read a book. Maybe the plumber should be insulted that his vital trade might be lumped in with leisure-time recreational activities like reading.

I balk at the idea of "too much education." Why can't colleges teach trades?

I mean, you can't just suddenly say "I'm a plumber!" and have a job. You need knowledge and experience for that, too. Universities can and should provide.

Let's dispense with the notion that universities still educate people. The thread on Cisgender/Transgender in this forum shows that universities long ago forgot how to teach useful philosophy and critical thinking and became a politicized cesspit of inanity and grievance-peddling.

Beside, with universities on the point of bursting, your solution is to take a system that works, the trade schools, and salvage the unwieldy inflated sham of university by forcing trades into the same moribund system. Doesn't work like that. Trades are doing just fine. Uni is screwed.

So is it Walking Dead-lite with a grizzled, culturally safe, pigment lacking protagonist?

What's the deal with you? Are you a racist against whites? The walking dead game had a black protagonist... but why exactly is the skin color so important to you?

So what, exactly, is your point?

Mostly, the point is that this thread got a goodly length before anyone dared to raise one of the major hurdles to all this harmonious living together stuff. People were even saying things like "All that intolerance is fading away" when there are literally riots straining the fabric of multi-cultural society currently happening right now. There's not even an indication that the situation is getting better, let alone has  almost vanished. It was just a bit surreal that a discussion could be so deaf to realities.

So, anyway, yeah, this thread does make me a bit nervous about banning, so I'll engage the cloaking device again.

Averaged across history, yes, they probably do. Christianity being relatively peaceful is a phenomenon of the last few centuries, and probably just due to the fact that christian, whether officially or not, nations have dominated the world for the past two centuries or so.

More twaddle that rationalizes the real matter into oblivion by a concerted effort at mental gymnastics. Suddenly, a discussion about present circumstances travels 400 years into the past in order to avoid confronting obvious current realities. You can't bring yourselves to admit how ludicrous it was for Max to suggest that christianity inspires just as much killing as islam today. Nothing will be accomplished in a thread with others so keen to deceive themselves.

I could have a discussion with you about what sorts of things happened before the crusades, and what the crusades were a response to, but why bother? You weren't being earnest. The "averaging over centuries" argument was just a flimsy smokescreen to avoid examining the modern realities, so it hardly goes anywhere to treat it as a serious argument.

Same with Sheb. If you don't see the difference between a state killing a terrorist (and yeah possibly his family) in a different country where he plots global attacks, and two civilians born in Britain incited to kill the locals in their own country, then the field is not fertile for arguing lucidly and constructively. Your intellect has been ruined by being fed false equivalencies. Your education did a divide-by-zero operation if this is how it trained your mind to operate.

I'm not here to "win" some argument. It can't be done in this environment. The people here believe unflinchingly the way that they do. I'm just here to point out how neutered and hollow this thread is until people begin talking earnestly about the issues that are really in people's minds. After the 45th post of no one mentioning Islamism and the most serious challenges to multi-culturalism, enough was finally enough. The emperor has no clothes. I await more information on Saudi liberalizing trends, btw.

Islam.

I won't participate in a farce of a thread that can't even summon the guts to mention its main worry, but so soon on the heels of Lee Rigby being beheaded with knives on a London street, there's a certain elephant in the room. Nothing can be done with such ineffectual fainted-hearted mush that goes 45 posts with nothing on-point to the real concerns in everyone's minds. I'll just say that...

There are racists/etc who hate others outside of their own group in real life, but they are the crazies. Their attitude is slowly being disparaged and this shows no sign of slowing down (overall).

... This seems naive about most non-westernized cultures and their current trends. Please explain the steps that Saudi Arabia has taken in the past twenty years that led you to this conclusion. Alternatively, you can use Egypt and its glorious revolution as a source for data supporting your assertion.

You are claiming these guys are men's rights activists, but looks like a bunch of butthurt internet personas without any actual political activity in the real world. Activists have political activity. Hence, activists. You give us internet grumblers and set them up as counterparts to real-life activists.

Ah-ha, here we go.

Uh... That's an underwhelming example that appears to be a small internet forum, not an advocacy group for social policy. Next you'll be linking /r9k/ and claiming it as the largest MRA. I could very easily find a web forum of jaded women making hyperbolic and offensive remarks about men.