BF2S Forums First World Problems

I'd love to continue this discussion but I need to have another beer and watch some TV, its too hot to do anything else.

Dilbert_X wrote:

its too hot

You bought your car the same time BF2 came out?

dilbert keeps his cars a long time to sustain the cognitive dissonance about driving himself everywhere, individually, using a highly polluting mode of transport.

There used to be a hoarder who came to my job. Car was clean on the outside. On the inside...hoarder house. The smell.

I occasionally find myself behind a 70s-80s car, back in them days all cars pumped out filth, driving in traffic was as bad as smoking.

I turned out OK thankfully.

you should get a bike. i thought low co2 emissions were your thing?

ok, now you're just cherrypicking and making things up to suit your self-valorising little world view.

'i don't eat meat! therefore it's fine i've driven subaru's every day for the last 20 years!'

i'm sure the atmosphere is taking notes.

aren't your shoes made of leather? do you not consume any dairy products?

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-08 02:59:22)

that's all very nice, but not the argument you've made, time and time again, about your personal emissions profile.

weren't those shoes made in and shipped from india?

if i'm responsible for the industrial output of korea's coal-powered economy, simply by being here and 'benefitting' supposedly from its products, aren't you and western consumers like you responsible for keeping the lights on in india's highly polluting manufacturing sector?

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-08 03:10:26)

well, the facts are clear: 20 million australians are punching well above their weight globally, more than anyone else save for a few tiny groups of gulf-dwelling arabs taking baths in oil.

In just 2.3 days the average American or Australian emits as much as the average Malian or Nigerien in a year.

great. so i'll continue living the exact carbon-intensive lifestyle i want, then, and pointing at china. works great for me.

maybe quit with this fucking gospel-of-personal-emissions when you're evidently such a flip-flopping little hypocrite?

i would say in many ways their cases are much worse, insofar as south korea is like a high-pressure concentration of all the negative trends in 'late capitalism', condensing as it does the experience of development, growth, bubble, boom, burst, etc, in 3-4 short generations rather than the long spans of american experience.

youths today in SK go through one of the most insane crucibles of education anywhere in the world, literally revising/cramming for 12-14 hours a day for most of their entire full-time education. if they don't get into one of about 4 seoul-based universities, they are on the trash-heap and destined for low-status jobs.

the ones who do make it through the insane education system then find themselves underpaid in 'prestigious' salaryman-corporate roles which no longer pay enough to scrabble up the housing ladder. status, material tokens, displays of wealth, etc, matter more here than in the west, where over the generations many parental attitudes have softened and a 'love and happiness is most important'-type of thinking has replaced the old model of marriages as alliances of status/wealth between families, on the western bourgeois 18th-19th century model.

even 'great' jobs can't afford housing in the major seoul metropolitan area. the only way to get onto the ladder is either with a huge hand-down from parents or to plug all your salary into investments and stock speculations. like the west, the multipliers between average income and average house prices are way out of whack. this couples in with the very rigid hierarchy of korean/east asian societies. getting a house and settling down in a smaller city, a different province, etc, is markedly seen as 'losing face' and admitting to a lower status; the centre is the place to be. similar to relaxing attitudes to marriage/love in the west, where now it's actually quite bougie and hip to move to pittsburgh or detroit or someplace that's 'on the up', in korean society this attitude markedly does not exist.

the gender politics angle is honestly batshit insane. young men harbour lots of resentment about doing mililtary service and at their decreasing quality of life. their parents are still pushing them hard, through that schooling system, pushing them to accept crushing corporate roles for the kudos/job security/etc, and even then they find themselves unhappy or not making the cut. so, to them, the success of women or the increasing prevalence of gender politics in the cultural conversation seems like an additional insult. all this, when women in korea literally still make a 35% lower income, on average, in the exact same roles as their male peers. like there is no other way to cut it: it's still one of the most patriarchal societies on earth. and yet if you speak to anyone under, say, 35 about women or 'feminism', they will unleash a torrent of hatred. really fucking crazy.

Last edited by uziq (2022-03-08 08:14:19)

i don't know enough about the parties and their histories, but in such a young democracy it's fair to say that labels such as 'conservative' and 'liberal' acquire an air of utmost provisionality.