Destabilizing Modern Society - Examples are Gender Fluidity and Mass Immigration (Congress, generation)

[jbgusa]

General Topic

Most of the battles of needed, and salutary reforms have been accomplished in modern, Western countries. Legalized, societally sanctioned segregation is dead. Apartheid, in South Africa is gone. The free dumping of pollutants into the air and waters is largely gone. Universal suffrage is here. If you can fight, you can vote. The forces that fueled much of this was the “left” of past eras.

Now, with much of the “low hanging fruit” gathered, progressive forces don’t rest on their laurels. New causes are needed. Many of these causes have profoundly destabilizing consequences. Typical among them are gender fluidity and mass immigration.

I have decided to limit this thread to two of these, gender fluidity and mass immigration. The other topics will have to be for other threads. This list is hardly exclusive. They all involve profound changes for the way society is organized and are not the product of needed discussion and debate.

Gender Fluidity

Mammals (with exceptions such as mules) are organized around two genders, governed by equipment with which they are born. Unlike other mammals, humans have extremely complex social interactions, where people may not fit into stereotypical categories. An early example of gender change is Renee Richards, a close friend of part of my family, who wrote Second Serve by Renee Richards and John Ames. Some have regretted this. See (link, excerpts below):

Originally Posted by BBC article, How do I go back to the Debbie I was?

Many who transition to a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth will live happy lives. But BBC News has heard from others who, like Debbie, have reversed the process.
***********
Debbie believes she transitioned as a way of dealing with the sexual abuse she endured as a child.
"I thought I was going to be on a journey to becoming a different person... I'd morph into someone else and leave that traumatised woman completely behind," she said.
But through counselling, she added, it had become apparent "the transition was a way of trying to escape".

This is of societal concern for a few reasons. For one, society may have to organize itself very differently to accommodate multiple and to some extent arbitrary categories. For another, insurance and other assistance programs, ultimately publicly funded will be expected to fund the transitioning and de-transitioning procedures. Most people are not Renee Richards, whose income as a doctor and family upper-middle class status provided the means.

Mass immigration

Effectively we have opened the borders to all comers, and a full panoply of benefits. Again, the people who are paying are excluded from the discussion. This is all regulatory.

Common threads in all of this

Democracy in the West is built on consensus, debate and discussion, not fear and panic. All of the above are largely foisted upon society. These changes when, involving legislation, are often tucked into “must pass” bills such as annual omnibus budget and spending bills at the state level. That way, the legislation passes even though many legislators probably would like the opportunity to vote “no.” “Mass immigration” and other changes are frequently being accomplished by regulatory, not legislative means. This is notoriously hard to stop other than through litigation, often up to the U.S. Supreme Court level. This is no way to debate matters that profoundly affect the people.

[M3 Mitch]

I certainly agree on the "gender fluidity" topic. If I started "identifying as a cat" on the job, I would be told curtly to knock it off or go pee in a cup so they could determine what kind of drug is driving the weird behavior. But if I said I am going to "identify as a woman" apparently that would be OK and management would go along with it. But pretending to be something you are not is generally something for young children. I don't think adults with normal intelligence should be doing it.

Mass migration depends on who is migrating. Most Mexican people around here are good hard working honest folk, and I favor welcoming them. But, not the handful with a criminal background. And there are some people who embrace a culture that's not compatible with the American way of life, and I think we can do without them.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

General Topic

Most of the battles of needed, and salutary reforms have been accomplished in modern, Western countries. Legalized, societally sanctioned segregation is dead. Apartheid, in South Africa is gone. The free dumping of pollutants into the air and waters is largely gone. Universal suffrage is here. If you can fight, you can vote. The forces that fueled much of this was the “left” of past eras.

Now, with much of the “low hanging fruit” gathered, progressive forces don’t rest on their laurels. New causes are needed. Many of these causes have profoundly destabilizing consequences. Typical among them are gender fluidity and mass immigration.

I have decided to limit this thread to two of these, gender fluidity and mass immigration. The other topics will have to be for other threads. This list is hardly exclusive. They all involve profound changes for the way society is organized and are not the product of needed discussion and debate.

Gender Fluidity

Mammals (with exceptions such as mules) are organized around two genders, governed by equipment with which they are born. Unlike other mammals, humans have extremely complex social interactions, where people may not fit into stereotypical categories. An early example of gender change is Renee Richards, a close friend of part of my family, who wrote Second Serve by Renee Richards and John Ames. Some have regretted this. See (link, excerpts below):

This is of societal concern for a few reasons. For one, society may have to organize itself very differently to accommodate multiple and to some extent arbitrary categories. For another, insurance and other assistance programs, ultimately publicly funded will be expected to fund the transitioning and de-transitioning procedures. Most people are not Renee Richards, whose income as a doctor and family upper-middle class status provided the means.

Mass immigration

Effectively we have opened the borders to all comers, and a full panoply of benefits. Again, the people who are paying are excluded from the discussion. This is all regulatory.

Common threads in all of this

Democracy in the West is built on consensus, debate and discussion, not fear and panic. All of the above are largely foisted upon society. These changes when, involving legislation, are often tucked into “must pass” bills such as annual omnibus budget and spending bills at the state level. That way, the legislation passes even though many legislators probably would like the opportunity to vote “no.” “Mass immigration” and other changes are frequently being accomplished by regulatory, not legislative means. This is notoriously hard to stop other than through litigation, often up to the U.S. Supreme Court level. This is no way to debate matters that profoundly affect the people.

1. All of your complaints about gender fluidity and mass immigration are not at all unlike the same type of complaints people used against segregation, the free dumping of pollutants into the air and waters, and universal suffrage...basically stating that change was profoundly destabilizing.

2. There's a heck of a lot of difference between the real consequences (if any) of gender fluidity and mass immigration. Whether my neighbor thinks he or she is male or female really has little impact on my life. Oh, I may or may not like it, but ultimately other than personal taste...it's their personal business. On the other hand, mass immigration is a totally different situation. If there is mass immigration, what does that do to consumption of our natural resources, import/export balances, housing availability, food production. Those and more such things are not simply a personal taste issue.

3. I have long advocated that Congress should not be able to pass 'omnibus' legislation. Bill should only be able to be submitted that stick to one specific topic.

[Listener2307]

Destabilizing Modern Society - Examples are Gender Fluidity and Mass Immigration

The first thing I thought of was John B Calhoun's Mouse Utopia experiment in the 1960's. Read about it here.
Dr Calhoun gave mice everything they wanted. He expected they would reproduce themselves into trouble, but it didn't happen.
They reproduced up to a certain extent and then lost interest in reproducing. They groomed themselves excessively, but lost interest in defending territories and competing for food.
Then, in spite of having everything a mouse or mouse family could possible want, they died down to the last mouse. There has never been a rational explanation for their behavior.


Here's the way Calhoun put it:

Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.

[censusdata]

I feel what's going on with the gender stuff is a knee jerk reaction of college educated Millennials who were severely bullied over not meeting perfect expected gender norms. Rather it's a sensitive guy who was constantly beat up and call names or a girl who wasn't feminine and pretty... it's like those people have taken over critical positions (teachers, librarians, etc) and are trying to push social norms to the other extreme. I remember the small group of 'others' at my high school and they suffered horribly at the hands of jocks and cheerleaders. Some took their own lives.

On sexual issues it's the same thing. People raised to feel ashamed of natural sexual feelings and taught that sex was dirty are now pushing the other extremes like porn lite reading materials and drag shows for young children.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by censusdata

I feel what's going on with the gender stuff is a knee jerk reaction of college educated Millennials who were severely bullied over not meeting perfect expected gender norms. Rather it's a sensitive guy who was constantly beat up and call names or a girl who wasn't feminine and pretty... it's like those people have taken over critical positions (teachers, librarians, etc) and are trying to push social norms to the other extreme. I remember the small group of 'others' at my high school and they suffered horribly at the hands of jocks and cheerleaders. Some took their own lives.

On sexual issues it's the same thing. People raised to feel ashamed of natural sexual feelings and taught that sex was dirty are now pushing the other extremes like porn lite reading materials and drag shows for young children.

That is one of the most ot-of-the-box and best analyses I have read, and it makes sense.

My out-of-the-box and politically incorrect view is that woman's suffrage and woman in the workplace has played a role as well. Both of these, I consider, to have been constructive changes. However, the diminution in the gender divide at the polls and in the workplace allows for some increased tolerance of fluidity. For example, when was the last time you have heard of a stag party? On the other hand there is "lady's night out."

As far as women in the workplace, I feel that it maximizes the ability for all people to give their best. Abigail Adams was as smart as any person in the Continental Congress or in her husband's Cabinet, but she had no way to give of that except as an advisor. What a waste.

On a personal note, my mother graduated Syracuse in 1954. She was c*m (filtered word edited) laude in psychology and wanted to get a Masters, to go into testing. My wife's great aunt graduated with similar honors at Cornell. Both were, at least in their younger years, consigned to the kitchen. When my Dad died in 1973, she had no profession. Again, what a waste.

For all the good things, we must recognize the drawbacks that censusdata points out, i.e. the lowering of boundaries.

[ticking]

Originally Posted by Listener2307

The first thing I thought of was John B Calhoun's Mouse Utopia experiment in the 1960's. Read about it here.
Dr Calhoun gave mice everything they wanted. He expected they would reproduce themselves into trouble, but it didn't happen.
They reproduced up to a certain extent and then lost interest in reproducing. They groomed themselves excessively, but lost interest in defending territories and competing for food.
Then, in spite of having everything a mouse or mouse family could possible want, they died down to the last mouse. There has never been a rational explanation for their behavior.


Here's the way Calhoun put it:


Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.

A bit humorous in a way, and likely a parallel with what we see in segments of our own society.

When the need to battle/compete in society is lost, the substitute is often some sort of numbing behavior, drugs, gaming overeating, social media. If the mice could have been given little mice gaming devices, they probably wouldn't have overgroomed and had BO and a lot of social media posts instead.


To the OP's post, I don't see lots of immigration or gender issues as causing societal destabilization directly. I will say having a strong immigrant workforce has impowered many of the rich 'fat mice' to lose their way. Take away the workforce and make the currently rudderless 'mice' work or lose their comforts/die.

[Sonic_Spork]

From the viewpoint of someone on the left who does NOT see things the way several posters here do...

To respond to a few points already mentioned:
So we had civil rights, suffrage, feminist and equal rights movements of various sorts in the last century. Even most on the right will say that getting those freedoms and equal rights and protections under the law and access to opportunity was a GOOD thing, if only because they don't want to be seen as bigots or called such. What they kinda sorta maybe kinda think in the dark of night in their own minds? Not for me to say. But along with women going into the workforce and gaining the ability to, say, have our own financial accounts and various freedoms we didn't used to have, the advent and mass popularity of safe, reliable birth control and increasing access to it, and no fault divorce.... You get a situation where there are people in society who are beginning to realize that the "traditional gender role" was something that no one would agree to if they had any other choice. And I think that men are realizing this too, because a lot of them do not want to work their backsides off pursuing ambitious education and career and then come home and have to do the dishes. But when women are in the workplace, they sure aren't gonna put up with a guy who seems more a liability to them in terms of adding work and stress to our lives, than an asset in any kind of a way.

And we saw a backlash in terms of the concept of bullying. All those movies of the 80s that illustrate these social hierarchies, were jocks beat up nerds and the value of girls/women is all and only about looks, where cruelty and humiliation is not only perfectly acceptable and normal, it's a standard, expected part of growing up... Well, as someone who is Gen X but on the very young end of it, on the very cusp of being a Millennial, I saw the period of time where thinking started to shift. I was PART of that. On the front lines of that. Where the goths and nerds and stoners and weirdos started to take over, and all of a sudden you couldn't assume that the prom King was gonna be a football star, or a straight guy, or hell...a guy.

Authoritarian structures, assumed rules, and "the way things just are" had done nothing but beat people up and make them want to kill themselves. The moment choices started to become available, you bet your backside people were interested in taking them.

And a lot of what has happened since honestly seems like the former bullies blowing gaskets left and right because no one is letting them get away with it anymore. But I digress.

The right believes that the left wants "open" borders, and it is vanishingly rare to hear such an extreme idea from actual people on the left. What we want, is strong vetting to keep out the criminal and the dangerous, but to have enough compassion to share the resources of America with those who are in need of them. "Your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free." The American dream. And especially refugees from countries that WE had a big part in destabilizing in the first place.

What the left does not want to talk about, but it's an unspoken elephant in the room... Is it actually OK, or is it kinda freakin' racist & wrong, to have poor people from other countries come here to do the hard work and dirty jobs that middle class white America doesn't want, for lower pay than we wish to accept? Is white elitism just a more polite form of white supremacy, with a PC intellectual veneer? Oh no, it's not about race, no, we welcome people of all races to become educated and move up into the world of offices and investments, innovation and yoga and lattes. Certainly, indeed. But it's like... I have no particular fear of "white replacement" right? The idea of America's ethnic makeup becoming less pale doesn't bug me, shifts in languages spoken and religions practiced don't upset my apple cart. Oh, how enlightened I am, isn't that so very progressive of me! Or am I simply happy to hear that people of color are willing to do the dirty job of having and raising babies, so that white women can opt out and "live our best lives?" Oof.

Hm.

So yeah, it's a problem we have that I think at least the left must be willing to ponder, what ugly truths may lie beneath our virtue signaling.

But I don't want to go back to systems where people accept lives full of cruelty, misery, and situations no one would accept if they had a choice. I still feel that the impulse from the right is to take away the freedom and the choices because they don't like the look of the results, and that is not a solution I wish to accept without a fight. I don't buy for one second the argument that those subjugated under the authoritarian social structures of times gone by were actually much happier because they had fewer choices and blissful ignorance of any alternative besides what was in front of them.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

The right believes that the left wants "open" borders, and it is vanishingly rare to hear such an extreme idea from actual people on the left. What we want, is strong vetting to keep out the criminal and the dangerous, but to have enough compassion to share the resources of America with those who are in need of them. "Your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free." The American dream. And especially refugees from countries that WE had a big part in destabilizing in the first place.

The problem is that the Left wants to let people in before they are "vetted", knowing full well that the "vetting" won't occur until years down the road. Those that would not pass the "vetting" will have disappeared into the woodwork. The idea of borders where people are vetted is a fantasy if they come rushing in. As far as the U.S. destabilizing these countries, they were never "stable" in the first place. They were banana republics, where the upper class did fine, everyone else, not so much.

Originally Posted by Sonic_Spork

What the left does not want to talk about, but it's an unspoken elephant in the room... Is it actually OK, or is it kinda freakin' racist & wrong, to have poor people from other countries come here to do the hard work and dirty jobs that middle class white America doesn't want, for lower pay than we wish to accept? Is white elitism just a more polite form of white supremacy, with a PC intellectual veneer? Oh no, it's not about race, no, we welcome people of all races to become educated and move up into the world of offices and investments, innovation and yoga and lattes. Certainly, indeed. But it's like... I have no particular fear of "white replacement" right? The idea of America's ethnic makeup becoming less pale doesn't bug me, shifts in languages spoken and religions practiced don't upset my apple cart. Oh, how enlightened I am, isn't that so very progressive of me! Or am I simply happy to hear that people of color are willing to do the dirty job of having and raising babies, so that white women can opt out and "live our best lives?" Oof.

Hm.

So yeah, it's a problem we have that I think at least the left must be willing to ponder, what ugly truths may lie beneath our virtue signaling.

The problem is if they and their children don't learn English they'll never really get ahead. Back in the 1890's and early 1900's the immigrants' first task was to learn English, at night school. Thus, maybe the first generation occupied the jobs no one would want but their children would go on to higher education and a better life. Nowadays we simply accommodate foreign languages too much, primarily to empowertheir "community leaders." The actual people need to be able to speak English. Instead we provide bilingual and in some cases uni-lingual signage in foreign languages for many functions, including voting, motor vehicle bureaus, supermarkets and drug stores. If people want to come here, learn the language.

[Phil P]

None of this is new... Back in ancient mesopotamia 4000 years ago, the Sumerians built a massive border wall to keep out immigrating Amorites. It didn't really work, Amorites walked around or over / under it. It's shockingly similar to the USs current border wall! Same problems, same attempted solutions... This isn't a new phenominon at all, and the debate around letting people assimilate or keep them out still happens.

https://www.history.com/news/7-famous-border-walls

Same thing with gender. Outside of European and North American 1600s views spawned from the Reformation theological purtianizing, for most all of history, people haven't sliced nicely into 2 gender boxes and people pretty much lived and let live. What we are seeing today on this front isn't some new human concoction, it's a return to how people actually used to live throughout most of the globe for most of history. Even in midieval Catholic Europe, sex outside of procreation was dissuaded, though not really enforced. The thing that's changed is the ability to medically alter more than was possible in the past.

Really, modern society is an anomoly in many ways from historical human behavior. Whether post modern society tries to continue these recent lines of thinking or revert has yet to be seen. What some people call progressive could actually be called reactionary depending on the lens it's looked through. I'm sure the Native Americans kinda wished they had the ability to build a wall over the entire Appalachian mountain chain to keep those darn land hogging European treaty breakers out, along with all the other darn raiding tribes that would come in, pillage, and leave.