What Does It Mean to Be a Man?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Sloth is putting the Hfactor treatment on Hfactor, namely being contentious for the sake of it.

Some might call that poetic justice.[/quote]

This is why we can’t have nice threads and this forum has turned into a cesspool. You and him couldn’t help but let personal vendettas keep you from making the thread any good. It’s sad, but whatever I can’t control that. Like I said maybe we should just have race threads and kneedragger threads because the moment I tried to have ANYTHING different you two felt the need to attack it. I think the forum has sucked for a while because it pretty much has been dominated by two people posting threads. I want to make it a better place to discuss things and that means diversity of topics. I really don’t think the only thing people in here want to talk about is black on white crime and vortex videos, but that’s all we have to really work with at this moment.

I thought we needed a new thread on PWI that wasn’t the same old same old. I DIDN’T think the thread would be based on attacking me simply because I made it. I still for the life of me can’t figure out why it is.

FWIW my New Year’s Resolution is to help people more. I’m 30 years old and I have some lifting goals but my main one is to help people more. Volunteering, whatever. I’m saddened that this thread didn’t go well, but I’m not letting it keep me from trying to achieve that goal.

42

On the man vs. person aspect – suppose the head of a military service academy gives a speech to the cadets on “what it means” to be an officer in that particular branch of the service, in terms of: leadership; character; responsibility; etc. What proportion of the qualities in that speech are going to be specific to good officers in that branch of the military as opposed to other branches of the military (or even specific to good military leaders vs. good civilian leaders)? If the proportion of items in the speech specific to good officers in that branch of the service is low or even zero: does that make it an unworthy or bad or otherwise defective speech?

44

[quote]undoredo wrote:
On the man vs. person aspect – suppose the head of a military service academy gives a speech to the cadets on “what it means” to be an officer in that particular branch of the service, in terms of: leadership; character; responsibility; etc. What proportion of the qualities in that speech are going to be specific to good officers in that branch of the military as opposed to other branches of the military (or even specific to good military leaders vs. good civilian leaders)? If the proportion of items in the speech specific to good officers in that branch of the service is low or even zero: does that make it an unworthy or bad or otherwise defective speech?
[/quote]

I wouldn’t think so. I thought I made it quite clear from my original post that I was hoping people wouldn’t come to the ludicrous conclusions of “a good man raises his kids therefore women don’t need to.” Again I put this in the opening paragraph. Since then a few key members have either not read that or because of previous posts of mine chose to ignore it. I can’t keep fighting it though or trying to explain what I was after. The purpose has already been defeated.

45

[quote]Sloth wrote:
It’s like everyone is scared to say something exclusively about men, even in a thread with men in the title.
[/quote]
The video I posted mentions something exclusively about men. It even has the first vowel sound in that specific thing pronounced in a long, drawn-out manner: “…eeeeeeeee…”.

46

My intent isn’t to harm you. You’ve basically said that God and Judeo-Christian morals don’t count because they can’t be counted.

So, show me where it says a man must take care of his children. Or, run into a burning building for grannie Smith. If you can’t, by your own skepticism, what business do you have proposing that there are moral obligations connected to being a ‘man?’

If you say you have no faith in their (these moral obligations) existence, in the very things you propose, I don’t either. Nobody should.

Any and all morals you fancy is your personal hang-up, based on your biased and prejudiced list of “supposed to act” and “not supposed to act.”

So if you don’t believe in the real of existence of good and evil, what are you doing trying to rally people into projecting moral obligations on some thing called a “man.”

Why shouldn’t a “man” not cheat on his wife?
Why shouldn’t he pass the burning house by, as screams pour out of it? Because karma, a superstitious concept, will put him into a burning building surrounded by do-nothing passer-by? Nope. A real man understands that the social contract is for the other sucker to follow.

And good for you on the volunteer work. Then again, I actually admit to a system that claims that such IS good work.

48

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]undoredo wrote:
On the man vs. person aspect – suppose the head of a military service academy gives a speech to the cadets on “what it means” to be an officer in that particular branch of the service, in terms of: leadership; character; responsibility; etc. What proportion of the qualities in that speech are going to be specific to good officers in that branch of the military as opposed to other branches of the military (or even specific to good military leaders vs. good civilian leaders)? If the proportion of items in the speech specific to good officers in that branch of the service is low or even zero: does that make it an unworthy or bad or otherwise defective speech?
[/quote]
I wouldn’t think so.
[/quote]
Ok, thanks. I should have made it more clear I was hoping for a response from Sloth.

*EDIT: just to be clear, again I will say I am taking issue with the man vs. person aspect of Sloth’s objection to the original post. I have no issue with the where-did-the-moral-obligations-come-from aspect of Sloth’s objection.

49

[quote]undoredo wrote:
On the man vs. person aspect – suppose the head of a military service academy gives a speech to the cadets on “what it means” to be an officer in that particular branch of the service, in terms of: leadership; character; responsibility; etc. What proportion of the qualities in that speech are going to be specific to good officers in that branch of the military as opposed to other branches of the military (or even specific to good military leaders vs. good civilian leaders)? If the proportion of items in the speech specific to good officers in that branch of the service is low or even zero: does that make it an unworthy or bad or otherwise defective speech?

[/quote]

Huh?

50

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

FWIW my New Year’s Resolution is to help people more. I’m 30 years old and I have some lifting goals but my main one is to help people more. Volunteering, whatever. I’m saddened that this thread didn’t go well, but I’m not letting it keep me from trying to achieve that goal.

[/quote]

Do you plan on doing this in Kansas? Reason I ask is all I ever hear from you on PWI about folks in Kansas is that they are all such sad sacks of shit. You might work on this a bit to hasten your goal.

Other than that there’s nothing wrong with the premise of your thread.
[/quote]

Of course I plan on doing this in Kansas. Around me is not just sad sacks of shit. I have a lot of those around me though with some great people. Why would I not work in the area I live to meet this goal? If I lived in Montana it would be Montana. The main reason I bring up where I live so much is because people on this forum sometimes thinks only democrats and black people get welfare and social assistance. Where I live we have very few democrats and very few black people and we have tons of people on welfare and social assistance. I’m just trying to get people to realize it is hardly a one party or one race thing (social programs).

51

[quote]Sloth wrote:
My intent isn’t to harm you. You’ve basically said that God and Judeo-Christian morals don’t count because they can’t be counted.

So, show me where it says a man must take care of his children. Or, run into a burning building for grannie Smith. If you can’t, by your own skepticism, what business do you have proposing that there are moral obligations connected to being a ‘man?’

If you say you have no faith in their (these moral obligations) existence, in the very things you propose, I don’t either. Nobody should.

Any and all morals you fancy is your personal hang-up, based on your biased and prejudiced list of “supposed to act” and “not supposed to act.”

So if you don’t believe in the real of existence of good and evil, what are you doing trying to rally people into projecting moral obligations on some thing called a “man.”

Why shouldn’t a “man” not cheat on his wife?
Why shouldn’t he pass the burning house by, as screams pour out of it? Because karma, a superstitious concept, will put him into a burning building surrounded by do-nothing passer-by? Nope. A real man understands that the social contract is for the other sucker to follow.

And good for you on the volunteer work. Then again, I actually admit to a system that claims that such IS good work.
[/quote]

If you think that you have to be religious to be a good man and do good things we will never agree on anything. You can believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being. You can not believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can not believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being.

You keep acting as if this isn’t the case. I don’t know why you keep acting as if this isn’t the case. If you honestly believe this to be true then I don’t know why you posted in the thread in the first place. In my original post I asked for people NOT to focus on the minute details as the discussion wouldn’t work if people sat on hypotheticals and other stuff. You ignored that suggestion immediately. At this point (3 pages) the thread was ruined to me long ago.

52

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]undoredo wrote:
On the man vs. person aspect – suppose the head of a military service academy gives a speech to the cadets on “what it means” to be an officer in that particular branch of the service, in terms of: leadership; character; responsibility; etc. What proportion of the qualities in that speech are going to be specific to good officers in that branch of the military as opposed to other branches of the military (or even specific to good military leaders vs. good civilian leaders)? If the proportion of items in the speech specific to good officers in that branch of the service is low or even zero: does that make it an unworthy or bad or otherwise defective speech?

[/quote]

Huh?
[/quote]
Hypothetical situation:

Officer in charge of the US Naval academy gives a speech to naval cadets. Topic of the speech is “what it means to be a naval officer”. At least 95% (perhaps even 100%) of the items mentioned in the speech are not specific to being a naval officer, but rather are traits of a good leader in any field of endeavor. Does the lack of specificity to the duties of naval officers make this a bad or unworthy or defective speech, considering the fact that the speech is billed as “what it means to be a naval officer”?

53

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
My intent isn’t to harm you. You’ve basically said that God and Judeo-Christian morals don’t count because they can’t be counted.

So, show me where it says a man must take care of his children. Or, run into a burning building for grannie Smith. If you can’t, by your own skepticism, what business do you have proposing that there are moral obligations connected to being a ‘man?’

If you say you have no faith in their (these moral obligations) existence, in the very things you propose, I don’t either. Nobody should.

Any and all morals you fancy is your personal hang-up, based on your biased and prejudiced list of “supposed to act” and “not supposed to act.”

So if you don’t believe in the real of existence of good and evil, what are you doing trying to rally people into projecting moral obligations on some thing called a “man.”

Why shouldn’t a “man” not cheat on his wife?
Why shouldn’t he pass the burning house by, as screams pour out of it? Because karma, a superstitious concept, will put him into a burning building surrounded by do-nothing passer-by? Nope. A real man understands that the social contract is for the other sucker to follow.

And good for you on the volunteer work. Then again, I actually admit to a system that claims that such IS good work.
[/quote]

If you think that you have to be religious to be a good man and do good things we will never agree on anything. You can believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being. You can not believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can not believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being.

You keep acting as if this isn’t the case.
[/quote]
Well, no. Actually, Sloth is acting as though the person who does not believe in God and does good things has no basis to consider his actions good; and the person who does not believe in God and does bad things has no basis to consider his actions bad. That is quite a different thing from acting as though the person who does not believe in God cannot do good things. (Odd choice of verb, but I suppose typing on a keyboard is acting.)

55

[quote]undoredo wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
My intent isn’t to harm you. You’ve basically said that God and Judeo-Christian morals don’t count because they can’t be counted.

So, show me where it says a man must take care of his children. Or, run into a burning building for grannie Smith. If you can’t, by your own skepticism, what business do you have proposing that there are moral obligations connected to being a ‘man?’

If you say you have no faith in their (these moral obligations) existence, in the very things you propose, I don’t either. Nobody should.

Any and all morals you fancy is your personal hang-up, based on your biased and prejudiced list of “supposed to act” and “not supposed to act.”

So if you don’t believe in the real of existence of good and evil, what are you doing trying to rally people into projecting moral obligations on some thing called a “man.”

Why shouldn’t a “man” not cheat on his wife?
Why shouldn’t he pass the burning house by, as screams pour out of it? Because karma, a superstitious concept, will put him into a burning building surrounded by do-nothing passer-by? Nope. A real man understands that the social contract is for the other sucker to follow.

And good for you on the volunteer work. Then again, I actually admit to a system that claims that such IS good work.
[/quote]

If you think that you have to be religious to be a good man and do good things we will never agree on anything. You can believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being. You can not believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can not believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being.

You keep acting as if this isn’t the case.
[/quote]
Well, no. Actually, Sloth is acting as though the person who does not believe in God and does good things has no basis to consider his actions good; and the person who does not believe in God and does bad things has no basis to consider his actions bad. That is quite a different thing from acting as though the person who does not believe in God cannot do good things. (Odd choice of verb, but I suppose typing on a keyboard is acting.)
[/quote]

Pretty much. Furthermore, I would specifically point out that if it’s ridiculous to believe in God, and push for/advocate Judeo-Christian morality, then it’s no less ridiculous to believe that there are “good and bad (evil) things.” Have either been spotted through a telescope or microscope? God. Or, the cold, deaf, and dumb universe’s whatever-amount commandments for “good and bad (morally evil) things?”

Ah, but we’re not REALLY claiming that “good and bad things” are REALLY, in actuality, good and bad. That requires faith in something we can’t stain on a slide. And faith is for the ignorant.

If it ridiculous for me to advance a morality whose existence I at least have faith in, surely it’s at least as ridiculous for another to advance a morality whose reality THEY themselves don’t even believe in.

Define a man on a foundation you don’t at least believe in?

56

[quote]undoredo wrote:
Well, no. Actually, Sloth is acting as though the person who does not believe in God and does good things has no basis to consider his actions good; and the person who does not believe in God and does bad things has no basis to consider his actions bad. That is quite a different thing from acting as though the person who does not believe in God cannot do good things. (Odd choice of verb, but I suppose typing on a keyboard is acting.)
[/quote]

And yet Sloth and I have had this debate before and I still think it gets us nowhere and is a completely pointless debate to have. I fully understand what he’s saying I just have no idea why he is saying it in this thread when I asked people not to go down that rabbit hole.

I get what he’s saying and I’m not saying he’s wrong, but if we do that in this thread we can’t even discuss what I set out to discuss. That’s why I said please don’t do that in the OP. Of course that lasted about as long as my OP.

Like I said it’s akin to me saying 2+2=4 and him going perhaps, but what is 2 and how do we know about 2? Those kinds of thoughts are perfectly fine to have but if we do them in here then we get exactly what we have. One thread with multiple pages of absolutely nothing being accomplished. Like I said someone could have participated in this thread and not focused on the fact I’m a non-believer and we could have discussed things. Instead people said “oh you don’t believe therefore we cannot talk about this.” Which is fine I guess, but it ruined what I thought may be a good thread.

57

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]undoredo wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
My intent isn’t to harm you. You’ve basically said that God and Judeo-Christian morals don’t count because they can’t be counted.

So, show me where it says a man must take care of his children. Or, run into a burning building for grannie Smith. If you can’t, by your own skepticism, what business do you have proposing that there are moral obligations connected to being a ‘man?’

If you say you have no faith in their (these moral obligations) existence, in the very things you propose, I don’t either. Nobody should.

Any and all morals you fancy is your personal hang-up, based on your biased and prejudiced list of “supposed to act” and “not supposed to act.”

So if you don’t believe in the real of existence of good and evil, what are you doing trying to rally people into projecting moral obligations on some thing called a “man.”

Why shouldn’t a “man” not cheat on his wife?
Why shouldn’t he pass the burning house by, as screams pour out of it? Because karma, a superstitious concept, will put him into a burning building surrounded by do-nothing passer-by? Nope. A real man understands that the social contract is for the other sucker to follow.

And good for you on the volunteer work. Then again, I actually admit to a system that claims that such IS good work.
[/quote]

If you think that you have to be religious to be a good man and do good things we will never agree on anything. You can believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being. You can not believe in God and be a worthless piece of shit. You can not believe in God and be an awesome and helpful human being.

You keep acting as if this isn’t the case.
[/quote]
Well, no. Actually, Sloth is acting as though the person who does not believe in God and does good things has no basis to consider his actions good; and the person who does not believe in God and does bad things has no basis to consider his actions bad. That is quite a different thing from acting as though the person who does not believe in God cannot do good things. (Odd choice of verb, but I suppose typing on a keyboard is acting.)
[/quote]

Pretty much. Furthermore, I would specifically point out that if it’s ridiculous to believe in God, and push for/advocate Judeo-Christian morality, then it’s no less ridiculous to believe that there are “good and bad (evil) things.” Have either been spotted through a telescope or microscope? God. Or, the cold, deaf, and dumb universe’s whatever-amount commandments for “good and bad (morally evil) things?”

Ah, but we’re not REALLY claiming that “good and bad things” or REALLY, in actuality, good and bad. That requires faith in something we can’t stain on a slide. And faith is for the ignorant.

If it ridiculous for me to advance a morality whose existence I at least have faith in, surely it’s at least as ridiculous for another to advance a morality whose reality THEY themselves don’t even believe in.

Define a man on a foundation you don’t at least believe in?
[/quote]

Except it doesn’t require faith. It requires agreement. That’s ALL it required in this thread. People saying I think this is right and other people saying I also think that is right. It really doesn’t matter whether I am Buddhist or catholic or atheist or whatever. You can still have those agreements on things. In fact I was looking forward to seeing what other people thought. Of course we didn’t get to do that because we just argued about different shit instead.

You have just chose to make this thread about something else. It’s ok, but I don’t know why it HAD to be that way.

58

[quote]undoredo wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]undoredo wrote:
On the man vs. person aspect – suppose the head of a military service academy gives a speech to the cadets on “what it means” to be an officer in that particular branch of the service, in terms of: leadership; character; responsibility; etc. What proportion of the qualities in that speech are going to be specific to good officers in that branch of the military as opposed to other branches of the military (or even specific to good military leaders vs. good civilian leaders)? If the proportion of items in the speech specific to good officers in that branch of the service is low or even zero: does that make it an unworthy or bad or otherwise defective speech?

[/quote]

Huh?
[/quote]
Hypothetical situation:

Officer in charge of the US Naval academy gives a speech to naval cadets. Topic of the speech is “what it means to be a naval officer”. At least 95% (perhaps even 100%) of the items mentioned in the speech are not specific to being a naval officer, but rather are traits of a good leader in any field of endeavor. Does the lack of specificity to the duties of naval officers make this a bad or unworthy or defective speech, considering the fact that the speech is billed as “what it means to be a naval officer”?
[/quote]

No. But this is defined through law (Naval officer). We have a reasonable expectation in that situation. What makes a man, isn’t. It’s been allowed for debate.

In fact, you mentioned that the human adult male has a greater propensity for certain misdeeds than, I presume the human female. Well, since those heightened proclivities draw a contrast between the male and the female, then it should serve to define “a man.”

59

[quote]H factor wrote:

Except it doesn’t require faith. It requires agreement. [/quote]

If everyone who views this thread worked out an agreement that blue is the “right” favorite color, it doesn’t make blue the right favorite color. It doesn’t even make it the “right” favorite color in our owns minds, because we don’t actually believe there is one.

60

[quote]H factor wrote:

You have just chose to make this thread about something else. It’s ok, but I don’t know why it HAD to be that way. [/quote]

You made the thread about moral obligations!