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A Case Study in Structural Oppressions

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Let’s take George Floyd as a case study in what I explained in the previous post. We’ve seen people – large crowds of people – become enraged by George Floyd’s death. I know such people in person, and they are very sincere. They very honestly perceive what happened to Floyd as the height of injustice and an absolute horror.

But why? you’ll ask. He was overdosing before he met with those police officers. He was a violent criminal on heavy drugs. He was committing a crime. He resisted arrest. Yes, it’s sad that he died, as it’s sad when anybody dies, but this is a person who did everything to put himself in a very high-risk situation. Why is it so much more upsetting than the shooting of a 6-year-old boy in Chicago this past Sunday who was sitting peacefully at home with his family? Or the murder of two 15-year-olds also in Chicago over the Labor Day weekend?

George Floyd’s death is so much more upsetting precisely because you are making this argument. You are looking at Floyd and the shot 6-year-old and seeing different things. You are bringing your knowledge and experience into the situation instead of perceiving these two victims as completely identical and as blank slates you aren’t allowed to write on. If you see any difference between what happened to Floyd and an imaginary situation where police grab a baby out of a stroller and murder her on the spot, you have revealed your unforgivable tendency to infringe on the capacity of others fully to control their interactions with the world.

Since it’s impossible to make people perceive others as blank slates, the proponents of the structural oppression theory try to mess with what’s written on the slate. They write insane things on it to confuse you. If you dare to try writing on the slate, the slate will retaliate by writing on you. Thus, George Floyd becomes a role model, punctuality becomes racist, and a blond Argentinean turns into a person of color.

46 responses to “A Case Study in Structural Oppressions”

  1. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Getting worked up about Floyd– as you point out, the completely voluntary level of risk he’d taken on there, it’s a bit like getting emotionally trashed when someone you’ve never met dies climbing Everest (which happens all the time), or reporting in a war zone, or cave diving. It doesn’t happen. Nobody who doesn’t know those hikers really cares about their deaths, because it’s Everest, everybody knows it’s dangerous, and they went to a lot of effort to get there in spite of it. It’s a sad story among many. There aren’t that many guys working in the logging industry these days, countrywide, but still something like 80-150 of them die on the job every year. It’s a risky job. Nobody’s getting their panties in a twist about it.

    Weirdly, people don’t even get that worked up when police accidentally kill someone totally innocent by busting in the wrong door because they didn’t double-check that address first.

    I get what you’re saying, that the cognitive dissonance is being deliberately weaponized– it’s psych warfare. On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand… I think it’s probably simpler than that. It’s just advertising. There’s a certain percentage of people who are very credulous when it comes to video formats, and willingly allow themselves to be programmed by any source they trust (whether that’s CNN or Q– they’re both CIA ops so whatever).

    So if you want to get a slate of legislation passed, influence the outcome of an election, or start a bunch of riots so you can buy up cheap real estate… and you happen to be golf buddies with the right people, it’s easy to make sure that a story like Floyd’s (it could have been any one of bunches of stories, that was just the first one that came along with the right optics) not only gets out nationally, but stays constantly on screens until it performs its appointed job.

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  2. maitreyi1978 Avatar
    maitreyi1978

    I find this idea fascinating. Could you recommend some reading on it please?

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Gosh, thank you! I came up with this completely on my own. This is one of those rare times I have no reading recommendations.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “I came up with this completely on my own”

        Unperson Steve Sailer had a vaguely similar idea years ago with his observation that the point of politically correct terminology is to make people stupid and unable to make rational judgements.

        Let’s take the unpopular minority in Europe – Gypsies… Most people who aren’t Gypsies tend to have a low opinion of them and we can’t have that!
        Rebrand them as Romani / Romany and people will confuse them with Romanians (which does Gypsies more good than it does Romanians) when that starts wearing thin rebrand them as Roma (even more confusing…. plus good!)

        Replay that in all sorts of spheres of life and you have people who don’t understand the world and will be pliable to suck down whatever Soma you have that will help them drift through the day in a haze…..

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I read Sailer on Taki (although I like David Cole more), so it’s possible that something percolated. The phenomenon is there. It’s putting it into words that is necessary.

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          1. cliff arroyo Avatar
            cliff arroyo

            “The phenomenon is there”

            It exists across the political spectrum. I remember in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion how those who had been in favor and who had thought it would transform the entire middle East into secular democracies were starting to realize what a clusterfuck it had turned into…

            One of the most common rationalizations was that the ideals had been real and were attainable but that the US lacked the ‘will’ to achieve its aims and the US needed to strengthen its will in order for Iraq to become the western democracy it was destined to be. It seems insane and stupid when you put into print like that but that’s what they were writing….

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            1. methylethyl Avatar
              methylethyl

              That’s essentially magic, no? Like, I’m gonna will this thing to happen. It’s gonna happen because I have honed my will and drawn up strength from myself and whatever other sources are available, and now: impose my will on the world. But, you know, minus the boring fussy details of military strategy, diplomacy, blah blah blah. I don’t see any difference between this and people working spells and lighting candles to make themselves rich… but not actually going out and looking for opportunities to earn money. Gonna land in my lap because I willed it hard enough, and if the money doesn’t come to me, it’s because my will wasn’t sufficient?

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Remember the 273 thing at my college? It’s still going on. It’s the exact same thinking and it’s kind of scary because it’s like little kids believing in Santa.

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            2. PaulS Avatar
              PaulS

              Xi seems to have a similar belief that the USSR collapsed because they weren’t sufficiently committed to Marxism.
              https://bitterwinter.org/xi-jinping-the-end-of-the-soviet-union-is-too-painful-to-look-back-upon/

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “Remember the 273 thing at my college? ”

    It’s like the entire culture has been stupided down (dumbed down is not nearly strong enough) by people that believe that feelings are real and have the power of changing reality (without any accompanying actions).

    Mass infantilization…. no way can it lead to anything but a series of rolling disasters…..

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  4. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
    Post Alley Crackpot

    Huh … your blog eats comments. I forgot about that.

    Maybe I could type the comment here again?

    No, it’s gone, it’s a moment lost, and although I can remember bits like “stochastic bullshit” being in it, that moment isn’t coming back.

    You don’t get to “roll back” like your mind’s a database when this stuff happens, BTW.

    You may get the opportunity to tug on strings and to poke here and there to get stuff to attach back, but it’s often in a weird spot and occupies a memory you can reference rather than a memory you can use.

    And so: I can read French.

    But I can no longer speak French or write it well.

    My knowledge of it is in the wrong place.

    Recovery as in “rolling back” is less important than being able to function, and so I can look at stuff I’ve written with a total outsider’s view.

    More importantly: you don’t get the time back to go learn something like that again.

    So maybe I’ll improve my knowledge of Tagalog, which I can still speak haltingly and somewhat understand.

    You cannot make yourself miserable by looking at the things you could do, that you once had, and keep beating yourself up for not being able to get back to them.

    But you can make yourself reasonably happy with doing new great things, knowing that these things that were are now part of a different you.

    I had a lot more tension and anger then, but I’ve learned how to channel that into better things, so I don’t stay tense or angry.

    My girlfriend describes it as being “calmer and yet powerfully intense”.

    I think she likes it even if the vibe at first made her nervous.

    Seeing through people’s cleverness without effort is also a superpower, BTW. 🙂

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    1. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
      Post Alley Crackpot

      Also … not an INTJ like you, as it turns out.

      INFJ.

      Seems that all of the NT stuff was just a put-on that I did in order to please people, and now that I’m semi-retired and deemed semi-officially brain fried, I don’t need to do it.

      It also means that I have a previously suppressed laser-sharp ability to lock on to people’s essential conflicts and nature, which also means that I now have this need to be told to shut up because what I can see is too close to the mark, too “touchy-feely”, and so on.

      “Structural oppression” is all about people-pleasing or forcing people into people-pleasing, and so maybe some of this makes sense in that context?

      With any luck. 🙂

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  5. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Been thinking a lot on this, and keep circling back to a different viral cognitive-dissonance video that’s been making the rounds:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewPPnmAsf-s

    The commentary is of course fairly nasty. As a complete package– the original video, plus the commentary accreted onto it, plus the truly bizarre level of circulation it’s gotten. It’s like a case study in fractal cognitive dissonance. The gal in the original vid is not famous or anything, AFAIK. Why do we care about her internet ramblings? Because what she’s saying is completely at odds with her face, her body language, and her defensiveness. She shakes her head the entire time she’s talking. She can’t smile– best she can manage is a sort of painful grimace. If you watch it with the sound off, she could be talking about her chronic neuralgia, not how great her life is.

    So it’s mesmerizing. 2 opposing messages from the same person. And everybody picks up on this… it provokes so much feeling, but very few of the comments seem to be able to parse why. They jump to attacking the woman personally. It’s like– you’re making me feel chaos inside: threat detected: attack something to make the chaos go away! Defend the obvious! Circle the wagons! Fire at anything that moves!

    This one seems to be an accident of the internet– it’s out there. It gets an oversized reaction because it pumps that cognitive dissonance lever like crazy.

    But it’s the same thing that was getting exploited relentlessly by media outlets with the George Floyd thing. Make everybody feel the chaos inside, then point somewhere and say “There! Attack there!” Once you get the internal state, you can give it a target. Like getting the dog all wound up behind the fence, and then poking in a shoe for it to bite.

    The thing is… there’s a solution to this. You don’t have to be yoinked around by your emotions, it’s just that the solution isn’t sexy. Be humble. Love one another. Pray and meditate. Learn to exercise discernment over your thoughts and emotions. If you can do this, you can’t be manipulated with this technique.

    The question is: have people always been this easy to jerk around, or is it a modern phenomenon?

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    1. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
      Post Alley Crackpot

      There used to be comedy routines that would do this.

      Remember Joe Isuzu? (Clarissa won’t, but she can catch up with a few YouTube vids.)

      But that was the joke: “Hi, I’m smarmy, I’m everything you hate about car sales people, and I’m also a professional liar being undermined by my subtitlers.”

      (“For once, he’s telling the truth, we don’t pay him to do that.”)

      A while back Twitter was on the losing end of some hard negotiation with Google over about $1 billion of virtual machine rentals and infrastructure. It was weird having all of these people disappear in a “rate limited” cloud of non-existence, especially given what I was dealing with at the time.

      So I decided I’d put a stop to being manipulated like this and deleted every Twitter link that I’d been following. If it wouldn’t work on Nitter, it wouldn’t work at all, and I added back a few people highly selectively.

      Mostly meme artistes are what’s left, because that’s the future, since so many things we’re dealing with are manufactured chaos and outright lies.

      Joe Isuzu: “You don’t pay me enough to lie like that!”

      (“Oh yes, we do.”)

      I get more useful stuff out of memelords like Sal the Agorist than I do out of the “mainstream media cycle”, especially since I get a laugh out of it.

      What I don’t know about people like this could fill a library, but I know enough watching them work that they love the truth enough that they also love making fun of the lies we’re meant to believe as some unifying force in society, which is presumably meant to be founded on comforting bullshit.

      (“Who are you? You’ve replaced our spokesperson. Stop it!”)

      Never. 🙂

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Hah! My parents raised us without meat and television, so Joe Isuzu is not something I’d encountered before– but now I know! 🙂

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    2. Post Alley Crackpot Avatar
      Post Alley Crackpot

      “… have people always been this easy to jerk around …?”

      Charles Mackay, Gustave le Bon, the list goes on and on and on …

      Edward Bernays! And don’t forget Ivy Lee!

      Mass propaganda as a profession of plotting to “jerk around” people exists in part because of these people, but they were just the ones to notice and to systematise what first became “public relations” and then later the nebulous field of “communications”.

      So it’s always been like this.

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    3. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “what she’s saying is completely at odds with her face, her body language, and her defensiveness”

      I didn’t see it the first time around and only saw it after reading a description by Mary Harrington (twitter.com/moveincircles) so I was primed to see the uncertainty and ‘smiling through tears’ aspect of it though I think I would have picked up on that as well…. because… it’s sooo bleeding obvious that she’s unahppy and really wants a family life but doesn’t know how to get there from here.
      But there aren’t any cultural scripts in the mainstream for her to follow…

      ” question is: have people always been this easy to jerk around, or is it a modern phenomenon?”

      short answer: yeah, it’s not that hard to jerk most people around, especially in a directiokn they want to go already….

      “Edward Bernays”

      IIRC he discovered the key to marketing anything to women in the US was to present it as a challenge to male power (not sure how well this works across different culture).

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        My question when people start going on about how they don’t want marriage or kids is, “is anybody offering?” How many men actually proposed? How many offered to have children together?

        People keep saying it’s a choice but it’s like saying that I don’t choose to be a millionaire. Nobody ever offered, so I just made do with what’s there.

        I have an older friend who’s never been married. When people ask she honestly says, “Nobody proposed”. I respect that a lot more than these dishonest discussions about choice.

        It’s even more true in what concerns children. Was there an actual person who begged you to have his kids? Offered to embark on a kids-rearing project – which will last a lifetime – with you? Were there actual offers that you refused? Because if not, and you “chose” among a single available option, then that’s not much of a choice.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          And it’s the same for people like me. There are whole social media groups called “one and done” where people go on endless rants how they chose to only have one child. And every single time, the person ranting is either too old or too sick to have more children. It’s not a choice, it’s a reality. People think that repeating the word “choice” many times or pretending like they chose whatever it is will magically transform reality. But it doesn’t. It’s just a word.

          We ascribe magical qualities to “choice” and worship it like an idol. Of course, in part, it’s done to control other people’s thoughts. If I say I chose this freely, then people won’t feel sorry for me.

          But we can’t control anybody’s thoughts. People will think whatever they want. Instead of creating these “choice rants”, we should develop boundaries which will make us less dependent on what other people think.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            one and done… it goes both ways.

            I wanted more kids. My kids are great. But the whole process wrecks me physically, I’m over forty now, and all the pregnancy issues just got worse with each kid. GD got harder to control, anemia set in, and each kid, it took me 2.5 years to recover physically from it– and in the meantime I was partially crippled, such that the hernia and prolapse issues made me unable to lift my own kid. Add the nine absolutely brutal months of pregnancy, and that’s 3+ years of my life that I’m only a semi-functional human being, for each kid and I’ve had three. They’re all awesome, but at this point I think I’d be doing them a serious disservice if we tried for another. So no matter how badly I want one… no, we will not be attempting that.

            On the one side, you’ve got the usual middle-class snobs who think nobody should have more than two kids, because then how will you afford braces and piano lessons and college funds and a house with enough bedrooms for nobody to have to share? Do you really want more kids more than you want to cling to your suburban HOA lifestyle? But on the other side, you get judgemental big-family Catholic types (they’re not all Catholic, oddly enough) who think contraception is evil (but still use NFP) and wanna make you guilty about trying not to have more kids…. which is none of their bloody business. I do want more. Are they gonna hire a housemaid and a tutor to take my place for three years while I do that? I’ve had more than one of these conversations with such people now, and it’s so deeply frustrating. I like your big family. Your kids are awesome. Don’t try to make me feel crap about my modest three– I definitely don’t know you well enough to mount a defense based on my medical issues. Hi I just met you, do you want to hear about my uterine prolapse? (no, really, you don’t, but hey, feel free to judge me on incomplete info any time!).

            The only way to win is to not play 😉

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        2. el Avatar
          el

          \ It’s even more true in what concerns children. Was there an actual person who begged you to have his kids?

          Many unmarried Israeli women have children as single mothers, if they don’t marry by 35-40. I know several such women from work, including a Haredi woman, whose religion and never married status didn’t prevent her from becoming a mother to a girl.

          Not having children is / was a choice for those single women you mentioned.

          \ “Nobody proposed”. I respect that a lot more than these dishonest discussions about choice.

          When people use dating websites, they most often don’t continue after the first date.

          The thinking behind the talk about choice may be: “I chose many times not to continue to the second date during years of dating, thus am responsible for being single.”

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            While I am married with kids now, the way I got there was ironically by making complete peace with the idea of not ever getting married. I got comfortable with my own company, figured out that dying single and childless really wasn’t the worst that could happen– I have a large family, I helped out a lot with nieces and nephews, and I was more than capable of supporting myself financially. I could have a good and meaningful life, with a lot of family in it, without having a husband or kids, and I was OK with that. This allowed me to bypass the meat-grinder dating scene, turn down men for first dates when I knew they weren’t up to snuff, and not feel even a little bit bad about rejecting out of hand any men who weren’t religious, didn’t want kids, expected sex before commitment, etc. This meant that when my husband came along, I didn’t have any emotional entanglements or “relationship baggage” to overcome. But you know, if he hadn’t come along, I’d still be OK. I’d just be raising nieces and nephews instead of my own kids.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Me, too! I so get what you are saying. I accepted that I was completely fine being single unless I met exactly the right guy. That helped me calm down and realize what the right guy would be like. And then I finally met him.

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              1. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                Yes! I’m not sure it applies to everyone. Some people seem to like the dating scene.

                But I think there are a lot of us who are completely incompatible with modern ideas of “dating”– I watched my friends doing that, and I knew, with absolute certainty, that I could not do the serial casual relationship thing– sleep with half a dozen men, get moderately traumatized with each breakup, recover, do it all again, until… what? Until you and your current partner get tired of shopping and decide to settle down? What if you get tired of that before he does? What if you missed out on all the actually decent prospects because you were already “in a relationship” that was never gonna be permanent? What if you’re not the sort of person who can maintain the required level of emotional distance in a sexual relationship? What if you have a contraceptive accident and end up having a kid with someone you don’t want to get permanent with (or who doesn’t want to get permanent with you?)– you can kiss your future dating prospects goodbye. Nobody wants to compete for your attention with a high-maintenance kid who isn’t even theirs.

                The thing is, if you’re one of those incompatible people… the dating scene has weeded out all the potential partners who are compatible with you. They aren’t there. So if you try to meet a partner that way, you will only meet unsuitable people. It’s like… back when I was single, my single friends used to try to get me into the dating scene like “you never get out and meet people! You should come clubbing with us!” I mean… me, introverted, deeply religious, and I hate clubs. But you think I’m gonna find a man there? A man who enjoys clubbing? What would I do with him? Stick him on my nicknack shelf? That’s like shopping for groceries at a liquor store!

                Liked by 1 person

          2. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            But do they claim that they chose not to get married and have the children alone? If they do, them they are just as dishonest. If they don’t, I’d be extremely interested in hearing how they explain to themselves that they failed at creating a relationship with an equal but will succeed at one with somebody who’s completely dependent on them. If we were all honest with ourselves, there’d be help for such women, this issue would be studied and strategies of behavior would be suggested. Instead, we kid ourselves that “it’s just a choice” and nothing gets done.

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            1. el Avatar
              el

              If by ” help for such women” and “strategies of behavior,” you mean research and discussions on how to function better as a mother, then I would’ve been all for this. In fact, many married women would benefit too from thinking about this topic.

              \ I’d be extremely interested in hearing how they explain to themselves that they failed at creating a relationship with an equal but will succeed at one with somebody who’s completely dependent on them.

              If one is a good co-worker / teacher / doctor AND a good daughter / sister / niece / etc. , then one doesn’t fail at all kinds of relationships. A relationship with a child is completely different from one with a husband. An average woman expects to be able to love her own children, for instance. A husband is not a blood relative.

              methylethyl told her story of being at peace with remaining childless forever before meeting her husband. You talked of being fine with being single before meeting N (no mention of kids either way). I am sure there are many women, who are now happily married with kids, despite remaining alone for a long time. However, there are also normal women who remain single. Since you are both great mothers now, why wouldn’t you have been such even w/o husbands?

              In addition, the ability to have children disappears with age. If a woman recognizes that for reasons XYZ she remained single at the age of almost 40, she cannot afford to wait more years to find a suitable partner, which only becomes so much harder with age. It’s the choice between remaining childless forever and having a child now. A child doesn’t prevent one from finding a husband later either, w/o stress of “we went to 2nd date, am I sure I want to have his child in 12-24 months time?” One needs to be calm to create this relationship with a man. It takes time.

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              1. methylethyl Avatar
                methylethyl

                A) I’m not a great mother. I’m an adequate mother with great kids and a very calm, supportive spouse.

                B) I absolutely would not be a great mother on my own. Like, the only reason I can manage the stress of adequately raising kids is that I don’t have to work an outside job to support a family, and I have a husband to curb my worst tendencies, when it comes to the kids. I have a horrible temper, and it is essential that when I am overstressed and exhausted and the kids are driving me nuts, and everything’s just a red cloud behind my eyes and I basically just want to hit them… I can hand the baton of responsibility off to my husband, who isn’t overstressed, and can behave reasonably toward them.

                C) Pregnancy and postpartum were very hard on me, just completely knocked the stuffing out, and I was not able to function normally for 3+ years, with each child, on a pure physical level. There were some dark times in there, and had I been doing it all alone… at best, my kid (there would not have been more than one!) would have been neglected. At worst, I would have seriously contemplated suicide. Postpartum depression is a beast. Colic is not something anybody should handle alone. The combination could easily be lethal for mother, child, or both. And there is no way I could have held down a regular job during that time. This doesn’t happen to everyone, but you don’t know if you’ll be the unlucky mom until you try it. I don’t think anybody should attempt it without deeply committed help. It’s an open question whether that help needs to be a husband (and frankly, this is the arena where some husbands prove themselves worthless). Like, if you live with a mom or a sister or someone equally willing to take on parent responsibility that might be good enough. I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be willing to risk it, and for myself, in hindsight, I would not have been even adequate as a mother on my own. That requires a monumental amount of energy, good judgement, and self-control– and I don’t have those.

                Motherhood is great, but don’t fall for the Pinterest version. It’s not real, and we’re not saints.

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                I’m a good mother because I’m old. I would have been terrible as a mother at 25. This is not to say that all young mothers are bad. Most are good. But for myself, I know that the fact that I’m completely calm, don’t but the kid with my neuroses, and don’t want anything from her other than that she’s happy and healthy is because at my age, and having had a lot of loss, I no longer care about little things. I don’t compete with other mothers, I don’t think my kid reflects on my worth as a human being, I don’t care what anybody thinks of me.

                And absolutely, having a great marriage is enormously helpful. I can’t give what the father can give because I’m not a father. A mother and a father have completely different and equally important roles, and nobody can adequately perform both.

                A father performs his role by just being there, weird as it might sound. His role is to inscribe a child into society. Seeing him get up every day, shave, wash his face, go to his job, come home – that by itself has an enormous formative role.

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              3. random reader Avatar
                random reader

                I am also someone who married later in life and did not have children for a while (not by choice). Having thought a lot about it, I believe that child is not something a woman is due, it is not her right, but rather a gift. Yes, having children is one of the greatest joys, but you as a mother are not their owner, they are not your accessory for a happy life. I believe that it would actually be reckless and supremely selfish to purposefully bring a fatherless (or a motherless) child into the world. I do not talk here about single mothers who “accidentally” (whatever that means) became pregnant and are raising their children alone by necessity. I refer here to women who on purpose become pregnant while single with the intention of raising the child alone. Ideally, a child will have both parents, a mother and a father, and a stable family. Yes, not every child gets that and they manage. But to make it so by design is selfish. Sadly, nowadays having a child is being treated like purchasing an accessory.

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      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        It’s a game I play with video sometimes. I’m crap at reading body language like that IRL, and video is not a format that works well for me. My neural processing is just way too slow, so I can only effectively operate on one sensory channel at a time: I can look or I can listen, but I can’t do both together beyond the most rudimentary level. I don’t even listen to the radio while driving. So when presented a video interesting enough to watch at all, I will watch it on mute, and then play it again with sound, but open a new tab so I don’t have to look at it. It lets me do the thing I’m too slow to do in realtime, and look at the visual and auditory info separately, so I can take in more of what’s going on. Sometimes, like in this vid, the mismatch is far more interesting than the titular subject matter of the video.

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        1. cliff arroyo Avatar
          cliff arroyo

          “I will watch it on mute, and then play it again with sound”

          An exercise recommended for improving body language reading skills…
          I recommend something from a soap opera first for several reasons (yes, it’s fake but it’s fake in a way that really helps).
          First watch it a time or two on mute paying attention to facial expressions, people’s positions relative to each other, gestures etc. and guess about what the relationship between the people is and/or what else is going on.
          Then turn the sound on and see how close you were…. first few times can be hit or miss but kept up it helps immensely.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Indeed, when I discovered this, I was really surprised that I could actually read body language. In practically all the autism literature, it is posited that auties can’t read body language because of… permanent unalterable things. Lack of mirror neuron activity. Lack of Theory of Mind. Lack of empathy. But what my video adventures suggest is that it’s none of those things– it’s a much more basic neurological issue with the speed of sensory processing. Slow it down, remove some of the extraneous information, and now I can see it!

            I don’t know if studying it this way will ever translate into skill I can use in realtime– the information overload is difficult to overcome, and I can’t mute people IRL 😉 But perhaps like learning music or a sport, it’s possible to improve speed and accuracy with drill and practice.

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  6. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    …aaand I’ve been kicked to the moderation queue. Perhaps it was mentioning GF and cognitive dissonance together. Keyword detector is feeling some internal chaos.

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  7. el Avatar
    el

    \ Motherhood is great, but don’t fall for the Pinterest version. It’s not real, and we’re not saints.

    I don’t think I fall for it. Don’t have children myself yet, but imagine the first year to be extremely hard. Clarissa, do you know of a good book in Russian / English about the first year?

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      The first three years are extremely hard. And pregnancy is no picnic either.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      The first year was easy for me aside from the recovery from the pregnancy and birth. That part was very hard the first 9 months. Thankfully, I could be at home with my kid during it.

      The hardest time for me was between the time when she became mobile and started speaking well. At that time, they sleep less during the day and you need to be on, present, engaged and attentive 100% of the time. Also, she slept great until 3, and then between 3 and 5 she started coming to visit me at night. After 5, it’s paradise because they already do a lot for themselves.

      Read Winnicott, he’s great.

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  8. el Avatar
    el

    Found some interesting facts about fertility in Israel:

    // Israel puts its money where its pronatalist mouth is — it’s the only country to fully subsidize unlimited in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments for all women until they are 45 or have two children. The policy receives little criticism, despite the expense.
    Israeli women undergo more IVF cycles per capita than in any other country. (It helps that Judaism doesn’t imbue an embryo outside the womb with any personhood, so they skip over any thorny ethical issues that Christians in America and many European countries have to contend with).

    // Non-marital fertility rates remain among the lowest in the OECD, though they are rising, especially among women in their 30s and early 40s. […] As of 2015, about 1 in 6 children born to a mother aged 40 or older in Israel was born to an unmarried mother (as opposed to about 1 in 11 children born to women aged 35-39, and about 1 in 20 children born to women aged 30-34).

    // Share of childless women ages 45-59, 2007-2012 — among Israeli Jews 6.4% (among Israeli Arabs 13.7%)

    // [2019] Fertility in Israel stands at 3.1 children per woman – the highest fertility rate in the OECD, and almost one full child above the next highest fertility countries, Mexico and Turkey. To put Israel’s fertility in historical perspective, among Western countries fertility was last as high as 3.1 in the US toward the end of the baby boom in the mid-1960s, in Italy in 1931, in Germany in 1914, in the UK in 1908, and in France in 1889.

    // The difference in fertility between Israel and other developed countries is disproportionately driven by (a) higher fertility at later ages — 30s into early 40s — and (b) higher fertility among more educated groups.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Isn’t it due more to the Hasidic belief in having very large families?

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        \ Isn’t it due more to the Hasidic belief in having very large families?

        “Present-day Hasidism is a sub-group within Haredi Judaism” — not all Haredi Jews are Hasidic.

        At one site saw this:

        [2022] “The fertility rate of the Haredi population (in Israel) is 6.6, and has been stable for about a decade. The fertility rate of the religious population in Israel is about 3.9 and is in decline; the rate among the secular population in Israel is 2.0 children per woman, and has been in decline for about five years.”

        At another this:

        “The main difference in fertility between Israel and other developed countries does not only stem from the fact that, in Israel, relatively educated families – who make up a large and increasing share of all Israeli families – are having more children than their counterparts in Europe.

        It’s that the difference in fertility between college-educated Israelis and their European counterparts is much greater than the difference between non-educated Israelis and their Europeans counterparts. As a direct result of these fertility patterns, a higher percentage of children in Israel are born to older parents and to more-educated parents (compared to any other OECD country).”

        https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/israels-exceptional-fertility/

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  9. Occasional Reader Avatar
    Occasional Reader

    I find it bizarre to admire the woman who says she never married because “nobody asked”. What a depressing way to view your own life! I agree that “choice rhetoric” is over emphasized in a lot of contemporary discourse. But it is crucial–especially for women– to see ourselves as agents in own own life trajectories.

    Speaking for myself, I met my husband slightly later in life (34 years old). Before he and I met, I was largely single for most of my 20s and early 30s. And I do consider that I was single by choice. Were men banging down my door begging for a relationship? No. But dating just wasn’t a priority for me. I didn’t put myself in situations where I would find a partner or a mate and didn’t really think about it much. When I was 32 or 33 or so, I decided I was ready for a serious commitment and consciously changed my behavior so I was more likely to meet someone. And then I started dating and eventually met the man who became my husband. We don’t have children and, again, I consider that a choice– one we made jointly together after a few serious conversations. And, we took steps to make sure we would not have children. Yes I was a bit older. But women can get pregnant in their mid to late 30s. I’ve known many. And as far as the “one and done” children conversation goes, I’ve known many women–even older women– who resumed birth control after one child. The very act of taking birth control is making a choice.

    We don’t control everything of course. But we make an enormous amount of small and large choices on a daily basis that affects how our lives develop. Acknowledging our agency also helps us appreciate our lives in the moment and not wait to be happy until “the next thing” (marriage, children, promotion) occurs. When I look back on my life so far, I feel happy. I loved my life when I was single, loved it when I was dating, and love it now with my husband. If we had chosen to have children, I’m sure I would feel joyful about the children. But my life is joyful and full of love now too. We aren’t little pieces of flotsam floating about waiting for others to give us direction and purpose. I don’t think it’s healthy to view ourselves as powerless or to wait for life to happen to us..

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I agree with what you say but what I’m suggesting is aimed at people who perceive their situation as a problem. If you are happy, it will never occur to you to start a whole channel endlessly defending what you see as normal. This woman clearly struggles with her reality. And in these situations it helps to look at the issue from a different angle.

      For example, once I start posting videos on how amazing it is to have only one child and list how everything would be bad if I had several, I hope somebody helps me to get out of the loop and see the issue in a different way.

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  10. el Avatar
    el

    Bad news here – and I thought it was far away in America, unrelated to our lives in the Middle East:

    \ A new study by the Taub Center shows that the rate of consumption of opioids (prescription narcotic pain medication) in Israel has hit new highs and Israel is now ranked in first place in the world for opioid consumption. Among the opioids used is fentanyl which is 50 times stronger than heroin.

    The study conducted by Prof. Nadav Davidovitch, Dr. Yannai Kranzler, and Oren Miron presents worrying data on the use of prescription pain medications and their destructive influence. It notes that increased consumption is primarily among the young, healthy individuals, and those who are living in poverty.

    https://www.taubcenter.org.il/en/research/are-israelis-addicted-to-pain-killers/

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      What can I say? It’s very sad. We all know how I feel about opioids.

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      1. PaulS Avatar
        PaulS

        Probably the people who feel strongest about opioids are the Chinese. In the 19th century, Europeans fought wars to force them to buy opium. This explains a significant amount of their attitude to the West.
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

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  11. el Avatar
    el

    [April 2023] “In the United States, where the phenomenon has reached epidemic proportions, a report from 2021 showed that about 80,000 deaths per year were attributable to opioid abuse. Israel has not reached this level, but since the number of autopsies performed is exceptionally low due to religious restrictions, it is hard to identify deaths that have resulted from opioid abuse and to recognize the signs of an approaching epidemic.”

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Oof! That’s really unfortunate. Bad enough here– I don’t like to think that we are exporting the problem to everybody else 😦

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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