Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2023
- Messages
- 14
The crazy train was supposed to pull into the station, not blow past it!
That seems pessimistic. Good times can also create strong men.Good times create weak men.
Weak men create bad times.
It is not "pessimistic", it is just reality.That seems pessimistic. Good times can also create strong men.
You surely overestimate humanity, we work really hard to destroy ourselves without even trying.So it just repeats itself in an endless loop? They just mediate the current population until it blows itself up, then they move in and just take over as if nothing ever happened? I mean... I kind of get a bit about what the author is going for but this seems needlessly nihilistic. At least throw a twist in there that humanity managed to rise above their manipulations or something rather than the alien's plan working flawlessly as she manipulated an idiotic class president into being a meat puppet for her.
I saw a good takedown on this whole concept before.It is not "pessimistic", it is just reality.
Good times cannot create strong men because there is no incentive to be strong and instead there are incentives to be weak.
But even if we pretend that we could agree on solid definitions, it's easy to see that the theory makes no sense. "Hard times create strong men" - well, unless the hardness of the times comes from famine, natural disasters, disease, or foreign invasion, in which case it is more likely to create weakened and desperate men (and women). "Strong men create good times" - good times for whom? If we are to understand this phrase in its Greco-Roman sense, strong men conquer, subjecting others to their will. Are these good times? Are they good even for the conqueror, who faces the horrors of aggressive war and the constant threat of rebellion? "Good times create weak men" - tell it to any of the human beings alive today who are taller and healthier and live longer than men in hard times past. Besides, in many ancient societies the leisure class provided the warriors, which implies that times of prosperity should result in a larger class of trained fighters, not a smaller or weaker one. "Weak men create hard times" - this one doesn't even sound logical. Do the weak men generate hard times by design? Why would they do this? Or is the implication that they do so inadvertently - but if so, aren't hard times more simply the direct result of good times? And given the list of "hard times" I gave earlier, how many of them could be prevented by a generation of "strong" men?
The only way that the aphorism explains history is by reinforcing confirmation bias - by seeming to confirm what we already believe about the state of the world and the causes behind it. Only those worried about a perceived crisis in masculinity are likely to care about the notion of "weak men" and what trouble they might cause. Only those who wish to see themselves or specific others as "strong men" are likely to believe that the mere existence of such men will bring about a better world. This has nothing to do with history and everything with stereotypes, prejudice and bias. It started as a baseless morality tale, and that is what it still is.