Kaiju whisperer. Galactic backpacker. My other ride is a TARDIS.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 21st, 2023

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  • This is exactly it.

    I’m moving to China for work, so I’m interested in alternative points of view on Chinese society from the usual U.S. mainstream media CCP hate boner. I checked out hexbear, and… my goodness.

    They cheer for a version of China that the Chinese themselves would be embarrassed by. It’s clearly driven by 14-year-old white boy edgelords who are enamored with a hardcore Marxist-Leninist vision of China that never existed, most likely in reaction to a dislike of modern Western capitalism. I mean, they referenced “struggle sessions” with nostalgia and cheer for Bashar al-Assad because China is being friendly to him.

    Real-life China is quite different from the depictions you see on main Lemmy instances, but it sure as hell isn’t anything like what the tankies are jerking off to, either.




  • I think generalizing the good of human beings to all sentient beings is a great example of how a rigorous ethical discourse can expand traditional morality. The idea of giving rights to great apes is a wonderful example and I hope we can get there soon.

    And likewise, a lot of traditionally “wrong” behaviors can be argued to be morally neutral if they don’t really diminish the well-being of human beings. Sex work is another example.


  • I think simply put:

    Morality is an inherent classification of right and wrong behaviors, often the result of tradition, upbringing, and/or society.

    Ethics is a moral system at which one may arrive through philosophy and rational thought.

    Ethics tends to define right and wrong in terms of its impact on human well-being, and not just as a inherent sense of right and wrong. As such, it may arrive at conclusions that feel “morally wrong” but actually perpetuate a greater well-being. (One example being utilitarianism.) This is also its danger, as one may argue oneself into a behavior which is rationally ethical but inherently harmful (e.g. eugenics).

    The power of ethics is that it can be used to derive moral guidelines for new circumstances, such as AI or global ecological considerations. Such considerations can be derived from morality, but they have a tendency to not truly appreciate new variables and instead attempt to reduce new systems to familiar circumstances, thus often missing nuance.

    I’d argue that ultimately, a sound ethical system must be derived from rational ethical thought, gently guided by sound morality as a safeguard against dangerous fallacies.





  • My spouse and I lived in a bunch of countries over the years. We speak Quebec French, English, and Spanish, as well as a smattering of Chinese, Bulgarian, Korean, and a few odds and ends here and there.

    We basically speak whatever we think people around us won’t understand. Very colloquial Quebec French in non-French-speaking countries, Chinese around white people, Bulgarian around non-white people, or even a cryptic mix of everything when we’re not completely sure.

    We figure anyone who understands is probably someone we want to know… Hasn’t happened very often, but it does happen. So far we weren’t saying anything overly embarrassing when we got caught, but we sure as hell have no filter between us because of this!







  • I’ve traveled to 50 countries and lived in 7.

    I don’t think being well traveled is about distance or number of countries visited… For me, it’s more about whether you’ve traveled independently and built some skills of adaptability and resilience to deal with new situations. That can happen with as little as one new foreign country.

    For me, a well-traveled person is someone who can deal with all the stress, uncertainty, and chaos of travel. That can be as simple as ordering food in a language you don’t speak, or deciphering an alphabet you’re not familiar with to get on the right bus. Heck, it can happen in your own country, some times.

    But once you’ve done something like that, the kind of travel skill you develop is pretty universal. Not to say no place in the world will ever throw you a curve ball, but once you accept not everything works like it does in your country and you learn to stay cool under pressure when nothing makes sense, you’re well on your way to being able to thrive anywhere you go.