As an almost 70 year old man, I have some advice for young men.
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Most of the human body's alleged flaws are actually misunderstood trade-offs.
* We are weak for our height, but only because we're ridiculously tall for our weight.
* Our eyes work poorly at night, but their color fidelity is top-notch. Animals trying to blend into the scenery often won't fool humans.
* We can't outrun a deer, but we can keep chasing it long after it has passed out from heat exhaustion. Our skin isn't made for stopping claws; it's made for heat efficiency.
I guess the moral of this story is that it's silly to lament what you don't have while forgetting what you do have.
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6. The "rugged individualist" loner myth, is just that. Hardly anything gets done by individuals. Even the most individual creative occupations, like painters, sculptors, poets, inventors, writers, hardly EVER do their stuff in isolation. Even the grumpiest fucker, like Newton, collaborated, and ALL the big discoveries and inventions involved a lot of collaboration and exchanges of ideas
Next time some guy wants to sell you on the idea on lonerdom, know for sure it's a scam. It's always a scam
Agreed. Humans didn't grow to 8 billion in number and spread to every single continent on Earth by always going it alone. They did it in groups. Big groups.
Consider, for example, what we did to the smallpox virus. That was an effort made by our ENTIRE SPECIES to wipe out an age-old threat.
We are the humans. Resistance is futile.
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Most of the human body's alleged flaws are actually misunderstood trade-offs.
* We are weak for our height, but only because we're ridiculously tall for our weight.
* Our eyes work poorly at night, but their color fidelity is top-notch. Animals trying to blend into the scenery often won't fool humans.
* We can't outrun a deer, but we can keep chasing it long after it has passed out from heat exhaustion. Our skin isn't made for stopping claws; it's made for heat efficiency.
@argv_minus_one
This is true.We have two physical advantages over most other animals
- heat tolerance
- ability to smell petrichorBut that's it.
We are thin skinned, musculatly weak, and slow, and fhe laughable muscle man trope is in stark contrast to how feeble we are.
Our secret sauce is complex collaboration, not physique.
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@argv_minus_one
This is true.We have two physical advantages over most other animals
- heat tolerance
- ability to smell petrichorBut that's it.
We are thin skinned, musculatly weak, and slow, and fhe laughable muscle man trope is in stark contrast to how feeble we are.
Our secret sauce is complex collaboration, not physique.
Yeah, that too. We may have good color fidelity, but we don't have a monopoly on it. We don't even have a monopoly on high heat efficiency; most insects can keep moving longer than we can. But complex collaboration belongs to us and only a handful of other species.
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5. Physical strength is overrated. The dude with the six-pack, massive biceps, and thickest neck, is still a thin-skinned animal without fangs, scales, stinger, or horns, who couldn't even outrun a crocodile, let alone any of the big cats. An ape half his body mass is more than twice as strong.
Humans are half blind, half deaf, weaklings, and the weediest person wielding a stone-age spear, can put the biggest muscleman in the grave with minimal fuss.
The weakest woman can squeeze a trigger
@screwturn Physical strength for self-defense might be overrated, sure, but consider:
1. lifting heavy things
2. helping people with shit without getting tired
3. muscles are hot as fuck -
@LevZadov @screwturn buddy you are so far out of your depth it is comical.
your "evidence" that some women had high status, because of the things they were buried with, is not proof that women have enjoyed universal equality throughout history. some women were queens, but it would be silly to conclude that all societies with queens were inherently egalitarian. you might as well might conclude that Margaret Thatcher's use of paramilitary death squads in Northern Ireland is a prime example of "girl power" — women who rise to the top of patriarchal societies are usually anti-feminist and see themselves as the exception to the rules they think other women should live under.
and before you go "but but but anarchists" anarchists aren't immune to sexism. there are so many anarchist groups that have fallen apart because men couldn't shut up and do the work. you don't know what you're talking about and you should sit down and listen instead of posting through it.
(1.) I didn’t say that women have enjoyed universal equality throughout history.
(2.) I also didn’t say anarchists are immune to sexism, though we *are* better at fighting it than a lot of cultures.
(3.) Don’t put words in my mouth. It’s rude, it’s dishonest, it’s very bad form.
(4.) It is naive to assume that a person of either gender was a leader and not a common soldier. Common soldiers of any gender are *far* more common than leaders. That’s how it is in their lives, that’s how it is in their graves.
(5.) The Irish death squads were overwhelming male and operated under male command. The Troubles weren’t about fighting sexism. They were about fighting colonialism. Not everyone on earth has the same priorities. Personally, I never got involved in The Troubles except for one scuffle in a bar in SF’s Tenderloin, and I didn’t start it. Not my priority. My first duty is to resist here in the belly of the beast. However, I won’t criticize the Irish paramilitariesI for not doing it my way. I agree with Fredrick Douglass who wrote, "Let every man work for the abolition of slavery in his own way. I would help all and hinder none."
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@screwturn Physical strength for self-defense might be overrated, sure, but consider:
1. lifting heavy things
2. helping people with shit without getting tired
3. muscles are hot as fuck@AVincentInSpace
None of that, although helping people is always goodWith a winch, a jack, hydraulics, the weakest person easily lifts, bends, carries far more than any muscleman, and for longer. Having big muscles is not a thing a young man needs to or should regard as a step into some sort of ubermensch strata. If you desire to be all buff, by all means have at it, but what the body-maxing influencers are selling is bullcrap
Muscles are hotter in the minds of men than in the eyes of women
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(1.) I didn’t say that women have enjoyed universal equality throughout history.
(2.) I also didn’t say anarchists are immune to sexism, though we *are* better at fighting it than a lot of cultures.
(3.) Don’t put words in my mouth. It’s rude, it’s dishonest, it’s very bad form.
(4.) It is naive to assume that a person of either gender was a leader and not a common soldier. Common soldiers of any gender are *far* more common than leaders. That’s how it is in their lives, that’s how it is in their graves.
(5.) The Irish death squads were overwhelming male and operated under male command. The Troubles weren’t about fighting sexism. They were about fighting colonialism. Not everyone on earth has the same priorities. Personally, I never got involved in The Troubles except for one scuffle in a bar in SF’s Tenderloin, and I didn’t start it. Not my priority. My first duty is to resist here in the belly of the beast. However, I won’t criticize the Irish paramilitariesI for not doing it my way. I agree with Fredrick Douglass who wrote, "Let every man work for the abolition of slavery in his own way. I would help all and hinder none."
Are you drunk, Lev?
Because that might explain why you keep misunderstanding what people type.
Again, you don't HAVE to post extraordinarily long, tedious, and banal posts about things you seem not to actually understand.
Rather just STFU for a change
Be kind, be helpful, and post less -
2. Sissyphus was a stupid allegory.
Doing something useless, and especially for which you get no praise, is not as soul destroying as people would have you believe. If you like rolling a rock up a hill and having it roll back down, it's actually huge fucking fun if you just embrace the irony and the fun of rolling a rock, building up a sweat, and then letting that sucker go tumbling down.
Corollary: you don't actually need praise. Just enjoy what you do, and try to do it well
@screwturn my 12 year old self carrying a large block of curb up to the top of a parking garage to throw it off the side -
As an almost 70 year old man, I have some advice for young men.
Please boost this if you think it will help
1. Your voice doesn't need to be heard. In fact, realizing that you don’t HAVE to have an opinion on everything and voice opinions or ideas in meetings or social gatherings, is amazingly liberating. You can actually just shut up, and relieve yourself of all that effort and stress. Let Bob utter his embarrassingly dumb idea, let Shirley have a say. You can just let it be for the most part
@screwturn I feel like you are preaching to the choir. I am a young man and I agree with you and I think any other young man that ended up on Mastodon would probably also agree with you.
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@AVincentInSpace
None of that, although helping people is always goodWith a winch, a jack, hydraulics, the weakest person easily lifts, bends, carries far more than any muscleman, and for longer. Having big muscles is not a thing a young man needs to or should regard as a step into some sort of ubermensch strata. If you desire to be all buff, by all means have at it, but what the body-maxing influencers are selling is bullcrap
Muscles are hotter in the minds of men than in the eyes of women
@screwturn let's just say it's not the eyes of women I'm interested in
i definitely don't think it necessary for a healthy life, and i certainly don't dream of becoming a member of some elite or think that working out will get me anything besides a pretty reflection and the ability to lift stuff, but it's still worth it to me
I've also heard that healthy exercise in one's youth makes moving around easier to continue to do in one's old age
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@screwturn let's just say it's not the eyes of women I'm interested in
i definitely don't think it necessary for a healthy life, and i certainly don't dream of becoming a member of some elite or think that working out will get me anything besides a pretty reflection and the ability to lift stuff, but it's still worth it to me
I've also heard that healthy exercise in one's youth makes moving around easier to continue to do in one's old age
Then more power too you
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