• VubDapple@real.lemmy.fan
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    1 month ago

    Pynchon from Gravity’s Rainbow:

    “Don’t forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as a spectacle, as a diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death’s a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ‘n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they’re still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled “black” by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks, continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. So, Jews are negotiable. Every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or Hersey bars.”

    • orange_squeezer@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      It wasn’t until I got to the cigarettes and cunts as currency that I realized this was not a particularly hardcore monologue from Gravity Falls, a popular show I had not watched, but Gravity’s Rainbow. Great excerpt though.

  • C1pher@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Bust a nut, pass your genetics and perish. Thats it. What you do in between that is up to you.

    • MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      No, social behavior has always been a party of biology. Even after you reproduce how you care for your young and your extended family has a huge impact on the species. Herd animals or anything that flocks can’t function solo. If all the adults just left after they reproduced the species wouldn’t survive. Reproduction is key for the individual, but it’s never that simple. The version you’re told in school is always a highly simplified version of the truth.

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        1 month ago

        Honestly the entire idea that the only purpose of humanity is to make the next generation or support that process in some way just feels gross in a very eugenics adjacent way. If you start with that premise, it’s just too easy to conclude that anyone who isn’t working towards that end is disposable.

    • socsa@piefed.social
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      1 month ago

      How about I do something which will make life better for people who are actually alive already instead of increasing total human suffering by making new people.

      • EvilCartyen@feddit.dk
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        1 month ago

        Having kids can be extremely fulfilling, doesn’t increase human suffering at all. Having kids subjectively improved my life and the lives of many people adjacent to me, e.g. the lives of my family members and friends and my kids’ friends.

        I don’t understand how the Internet is so anti kids, it’s pretty baffling.

        • Emerald@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          You say it’s improved your life and the lives of those adjacent to you, your family members, friends, and your kids’ friends. But you haven’t said its improved your kids life. I think that’s what the OP was talking about. A being who doesn’t exist doesn’t desire to exist so making new life isn’t doing them a favor and only exposes them to harm.

  • RQG@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    At uni the biologist parties were always the ones with the most sex. So that checks out.

    The least sex was electrical or mechanical engineering. Just the couple of ay dudes had some fun.

    Weirdest sex was for sure psychology student parties.

  • Nay@feddit.nl
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    1 month ago

    Imo, the meaning of life is to experience as much as possible. Simple as that.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Oh lol that one on the left is the meme where xianxia fighters explain their move in the middle of battle.