11 Comments

I just want to know if Dave is a Marxist.

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I think you're missing the point of anime, which is surprising because you put a lot of time into this post.

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Hi Dave! Good stuff. My only complaint would be to please make someone read it through for you to correct those few spelling mistakes. The quality of the spelling doesn't reach the quality of the content, that should be fixed. Best Regards.

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Jan 16, 2022·edited Jan 16, 2022

I've had my share of interactions with zoomers as a "proto-zoomer" of sorts myself, in the context of Western European culture. I think they're not necessarily all doomers. Some embrace woke ideology as conformity to what they see as the dominant way of living, especially stemming from the dehumanizing behaviour they experience in social media interactions.

Some actually try to make sense of what's happening, and maybe not having knowledge of how things were before gives them a fresh, if darker, perspective. They are more cynical, earlier than who came before.

Any story about revolutionizing culture and identity will sound hollow and lifeless sooner or later, because some of them see that it has been attempted before and it brought the cultural wasteland we all live in today. It's not a surefire way of getting the red pill, sure, but it helps question what's all the fuss about. In a sense, woke culture even prevents them from having fun with "no consequences", so even the examples of the dissolute and edonistic lifestyle of the Gen X-Y teenage years can't work in this world.

As for the accessibility of what comes before, of the values of tradition and cultural works of yesteryear, you hit the nail on the head. In a sense it's all about providing a way to engage youth in questioning their beliefs and knowledge of culture by providing an interactive, social way through the internet, possibly some open platforms were sharing and discussion are encouraged and there is very little chance of creating a self-absorbing echo chamber that only caters to select few who sort of start their own little "cargo cult" of cultural knowledge instead of fostering individual discovery of traditional values. A good example could be YouTube in its best days, which can work as a gateway to more active research.

In the end, if we believe in free will and the individual, we sort of know that the only way to get people, young in particular, to question their worldview in conscience, is to provide ways to engage with this process that both cater to their means of engaging with reality, and make them question if the same means really provide all the answers. If you can't water down the message, at least give them the bit they require to spark curiosity in their minds and connect that message with their personal experience.

Very, very generic self-reflection, I know. Damn, do I feel like a boomer sometimes.

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Very nice stuff. I greatly appreciate any youtube "video essayist" who provides transcripts. Takes balls to believe your ideas can stand on their own without the hypnotic power of monotonous speech and meaningless visuals. And they do! Good job.

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A bit random, but you might be interested in this talk between Destiny and a random viewer, https://youtu.be/NKyijtUERqk

They go into a lot of ideas you've talked about and Destiny seemed very open to the critique.

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Great write-up Dave. Something else to consider, which I'm surprised you didn't touch upon here, is how some societal trends quite literally "die out" across generations due chiefly to declines in reproduction that comes with them. I believe you talked about a similar point before in regards to how atheism always faces generational "resets" because atheists have such fewer children than Christians. I do think that while generations can't red-pill themselves, they might blue-pill so hard that their principles and ideals die along with them.

Have a wonderful start to 2022.

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