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| Lodged | From | Messages |
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 Post by Briarlands suppressed by | ||
 The United States of Briarlands | And also Winx Club and Bratz! | |
 The Republic of Phydios |
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 The Commonwealth of Evpolitia | To be fair here, he did stop, 83 minutes ago to be specific. | |
Post by Briarlands suppressed by | ||
 The Federal Republic of Vendellamoore | Tweaking | |
 The Ancient Tellurian Union of The Gallant Old Republic | While it is always encouraging to see the continued vibrancy of "conservative religious families" they are such a minority (even compared to the Haredi) that it is drops in a lake compared to the number of children the rest of society has. These families also have their own problems to deal with: children who drift away from the faith, infertility, individualism/the rise of singleness, the social pressure to contracept, and the loss of the culture war. Having gone to a college populated largely by such families I can say with some confidence that my fellow students are certainly net way ahead of the rest of the US in terms of having kids etc, but they aren't that ahead: tons of them remain single, can't have kids, or don't have very many for one reason or another. If they were a country their birth would be above replacement, but not significantly so. Moreover, if the wider demographic collapse happens, it will really harm these families too: there will be scarcity, a push towards automation (think Wall-E), governmental crisis, economic shrinking, and decay of infrastructure. My point is not that these families can't survive and be part of a future cultural revival, but that there are serious obstacles to that and inevitable hardship regardless. | |
| The United States of Briarlands | Stop suppressing my posts! Show Song of the South and Critter Country some respect! | |
| The Republic of Phydios | Your posts were suppressed because you are being disruptive and borderline spammy. This is a region for serious discussion; if you want something else, find a better region for you. | |
| The United States of Briarlands | Here's a serious discussion for you: Was Song of the South really as racist as they say it was? | |
 The Republic of Clear Bay | Why are you so obsessed with Song of the South? | |
| The United States of Briarlands | I watched it when I was a teenager and I loved it! It's Walt Disney's greatest movie and makes you sing, dance, and learn | |
 The Commonwealth of Teresar | Honestly, I've never heard of it. Although I'm curious, why do people think that it's racist? | |
| The Republic of Phydios | The film was accused of romanticizing slavery. The source material is set in the 1870s, after slavery's abolition, but apparently the film did not make that clear. Considering Disney's allegiances and the current political climate, they are even more committed than before to trying to memory-hole the film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_South#Depiction_of_race | |
 The Friendly Republic of New Dolgaria | Disclaimer: I have not seen the film. But I know of the controversy around it. Even though it's technically not romanticizing slavery, it definitely is romanticizing the post-slavery lives of African Americans, which was by no means all song and dance, to put it lightly, even during Reconstruction. Although James Baskett (playing Uncle Remus) deserves praise for his performance (and he defended the film), it has been used since its release by those seeking to romanticize and white-wash the Confederacy, slavery, and Jim Crow. | |
 The Federation of Roborian | I have a much less negative view in general of sub-replacement birthrates and associated 'demographic collapse' than most conservatives, not saying that it does not have any problems associated with it, but that I do not consider it as the sort of society-destroying threat that it seems to be most frequently seen as. On a theological level, we seem to put a great deal of emphasis on applying the Adamic/Noahic commands to multiply to us today, but seem to minimize to nearly the point of nonexistence the commands of Paul written specifically to us, which says that non-marriage is not simply an acceptable option, but that we explicitly ought not to marry, unless burning with passion. I think that the social urge among devout communities to marry quickly, marry young, and have a great many children is something primarily fueled by culture. 'He who refrains from marriage does better' sounds instinctively culturally 'liberal' and at least in my experience seems to scarcely ever be promoted by the church, at best one hears thing such as 'singleness can be a gift/calling', that carry the tone of a consolation prize to make people who missed out on marriage feel better. Perhaps Catholics do better at this, but at least from Catholic commentators I have heard just as much if not more of the 'marry quick, marry young' urging, with singleness only seemingly referenced in the limited frame of a calling to the priesthood, rather than Paul's explicit preference for all people. Moving to the practical grounds, I do not think that demographic 'collapse' is as apocalyptic as is implied by that terminology. It is an interesting sort of inverse Malthusianism, where instead of panicking that a growing population will ruin everything, we panick that a shrinking one will do so, and neither are correct, at least today. We are in the best shape to deal with a declining birthrate than ever in human history, the productive capacity of one person in the developed world is exponentially greater than it used to be, and in the less-developed world, while birthrates are falling as well, they are doing so more slowly than in wealthier countries, a 'softer landing' as that declines. Japan is the prototypical horror story, combining a dramatically lessened birthrate with the exacerbating factor of long lifespans and the second exacerbating factor of strictly limited immigration, to the point where their economy outright stopped growing and...they are fine. They have problems, certainly, economic and social difficulties, but so does every country, and theirs are rather less severe than many. The overwhelming majority of the population continues to live at a level of comfort unheard of for most of human history, and their demographic situation is on the far side of the bell curve in terms of its severity relative to what is most likely to happen in places such as the United States. Transitions to reduced populations, increased automation, and the like are liable to be bumpy, as all such transitions are, but particularly given the accompanying fears of automation, mass unemployment, declining populations, far from worsening that issue, may well make that adaptation easier. I cannot see any compelling evidence for punishing scarcity in demographic reduction-we have societally gone from the point where nearly the entire population must farm to keep the species alive to where a single percent can comfortably feed a nation, and that general trend applies across most all aspects of the economy. A reverse population pyramid can bring difficulties with less working-age people supporting more retirement-age people but the bad outcome, even in a case of actually shrinking GDP, is one of a general reduction in luxury rather than a general removal of necessities. The final question would be geopolitical, more people=more power, economically and militarily, the shift of power from Europe, North America, and East Asian to mostly Africa by that standard. It is certainly a change, and any change in foreign affairs can be concerning, but besides the general fear of the unknown, I do not see an objective problem with this. For starters, international power is less dependent on pure population than it has been in history, the U.S. is not going to cease to be because of a weakened capacity for levee en masse, and MAD applies almost regardless of population, and for follow-up, these transitions are going to be extremely gradual, as those growing countries are also tailing off in their birthrates. It is not a situation of exponential growth for some and general decline for others, the fertility dip is global and affecting basically every country, which means a less dramatic, more gradual, and thus less disruptive shift in influence. Even with that said, while we all tend to be fans of the Western tradition, I am not entirely sure that increased influence for some of the more faithful nations in Africa over secularized Western Europe, or certainly China, is necessarily a bad thing. Shifting from specifics to generalities, while 'peak oil' and the like have long been exaggerated, the various resources of the Earth are still not infinite, and on those grounds, a contracting global population seems less likely to push us closer to conflicts over resources than a growing one would. The short of it is that I see the drop in fertility as, while a challenge like many things are, not catastrophic, being neither something we as Christians are called on to reverse, nor an economic death knell for an already extremely productive society, nor any guarantor of international conflict. I have never seen the movie and can offer no opinion on it as a whole, but I did have a collection of Disney songs on VHS as a kid. Included in there was 'Zip-a-dee-do-dah', which I believe was from 'Song of the South', and whatever the rest of the film may be, that is a wonderfully cheery tune. | |
Post by Briarlands suppressed by | ||
| The United States of Briarlands | Thank you! Happy dance! | |
| The United States of Briarlands | Tiana's Bayou Adventure and Titan AE are the real racists and no fun | |
| The Republic of Phydios |
New Dolgaria and Ineva | |
| The United States of Briarlands | You know what's unnecessary? Changing Splash Mountain for Tiana's Bayou Adventure even though there's nothing racist about Song of the South! | |
| The Commonwealth of Teresar | You know something? I think we should stop talking about the whole Song of the South thing and start talking more about banning abortion. Because that's our main focus, right? | |
| The Republic of Phydios | Branding is everything for Disney. They want the rides to have characters and themes that guests recognize. Splash Mountain was actually rather odd in being themed after a movie that Disney would prefer to never be known again. I'm not surprised they changed it. Well, we do talk about many things here besides abortion. But this fixation on Song of the South is certainly getting old. | |
| The United States of Briarlands | Titan A.E. is old! That is SOOOO 2000! No respect! |
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