Lifted from the comments, a difference of worldview:

From subsequent rumblings in the linked threads,

Some replies bemoan patriotism and a sense of affinity with one’s country, while others denounce “supremacist systems and the myth of meritocracy.” At which point, readers may object that being born in a relatively congenial part of the world is not a “privilege,” or by implication a basis for guilt, or a Gotcha! to be exploited by others. Any more than being born somewhere less congenial is a sin, a thing for which to atone.

Readers may also note how an alleged randomness, in which differences in outcome can only be explained by pillage and oppression, and in which nothing has ever been earned, can, for some, be ideologically convenient. And a habit of mind.

“I think they know they ‘got lucky’ but don’t really care,” chides one of the subsequent commenters. “Everything is luck and random chance,” insists another. Note the implication that the comfort and agreeableness of a society is merely a matter of chance, of luck. As if the preceding cultivation of values and behaviour played no part whatsoever. As if culture and civilisation didn’t matter.

You can of course say that a newborn played no part in preceding events and cannot take credit for them. But those preceding events were in large part a product of collective effort, of a preference for one kind of society over another, and of people, including one’s ancestors, behaving accordingly. The “relative safety” of the country in which one is born is not some arbitrary, unrelated thing. It doesn’t arise simply by “random chance.” A person doesn’t just happen to be born into a context that their parents also just happened to be born into.

I could not have been born to Mr and Mrs Jeong in South Korea, any more than I could have been born to a Yemeni peasant couple, or a Californian billionaire. Much as I – the person talking to you now – could not have been born in 1652. The newborn me was a result of a particular lineage, of choices made by specific individuals and the genes of those individuals – who can of course say the same thing about themselves. To imply that anyone’s birth is a random thing, as if it could have happened anywhere, at any time, as if the particulars were immaterial, is, it seems to me, a little odd. Indeed, arse-backwards. And I doubt that many parents see the birth of their child as some random occurrence, unmoored from any context or preceding events. I’d imagine it wouldn’t seem random at all.

Or, as Mr Burkett puts in in the thread linked above,

Unless you imagine a queue of souls waiting to spawn in some small but arbitrary body on a continent chosen by the spin of a wheel. Or cosmic bingo balls.

Update, via the comments:

Ian adds,

In one of the threads or sub-threads on X, Geoffrey Miller and others point out that civilisations are built by, among other things, lineage, ancestry, and no small effort over vast stretches of time. Often with a view to posterity and giving one’s offspring a better life. This prompts someone to reply, rather sniffily, “It’s only by chance you were born to said ancestors.”

As if one could have entirely different ancestors who are entirely unconnected to the ancestors one does actually have. As if, while having entirely different ancestors, you could somehow be exactly the same person you are now, and not someone else. A hypothetical being. The assertion – that a specific person being born in a functional society was some random, meaningless occurrence and somehow unfair – is often deployed by people whose goals are rather questionable.

One commenter, a “pansexual she/her,” insists that civilisations are built by “stealing and oppressing other people.” Other, more edifying variables are not deemed interesting. I’m guessing that our “pansexual she/her,” the one who doesn’t think that lineage and genetic continuity play a role of any importance, isn’t herself a parent. And therefore hasn’t had the strange pleasure of seeing her children develop the features and attributes of various relatives. A sister, an uncle, a grandfather.

Regarding which, commenter Uma Thurman’s Feet adds,

Which is sort of why the Rawlsian tosh mouthed above, and mouthed so triumphantly, with such self-satisfaction, is ultimately unconvincing. Not only is it glib and arse-backwards, it also rather jars with the imperatives and experience of parenting.

Consider this an open thread.

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By all means consider this an open thread.

Oh yes. The buttons:

From Oklahoma City, the thrills and spills of public transport:

Oklahoma City Police arrested an Embark passenger for attacking a bus driver while he was driving this past weekend, which sent the bus directly into the side of a building. The passenger was trying to get the bus to stop at a railroad track. pic.twitter.com/X9oxY61II4

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) April 25, 2024

Today’s words, since you ask, are bogglingly selfish morony.

Update, via the comments:

As noted here before, many times, when it comes to the criminal underclass, we are but objects in their world.

Given its obviousness, you’d think the whole selfish morony thing might crop up occasionally in editorials and opinion pieces on the subject of crime. Instead, however, we tend to see quite different intentions.

Consider this an open thread.

A while ago, following this display of progressive parenting, I wrote,

A quip that resulted in some rumblings on the topic of marriage and shared surnames, or the lack thereof. In the comments, Steve E noted,

And Ray added,

As I said at the time, I don’t have strong feelings on the subject, but it occurs to me that not taking your husband’s surname, ostensibly as some Assertion Of Progress And Enlightenment – while retaining what is presumably your father’s surname – does create complications.

For instance, having different surnames can confuse people as to whether you’re married or not, and if so, to whom. And any children with hyphenated surnames – a fashionable statement of the aforementioned Progress And Enlightenment – will then face the issue of what to do when they get married, especially if it’s to someone whose own name is also modishly hyphenated. Do they ditch some of the accumulated names – and if so, which ones? Or do they go for multiply hyphenated surnames, which would very quickly become a bit much?

Say, if Derek Williams and Sarah Anderson get married but retain their own surnames, and their children’s surnames are hyphenated as Anderson-Williams, they may enjoy a sheen of modernity, and perhaps connotations of aristocracy and status. But what happens when little Annie Anderson-Williams grows up and wants to marry James Houghton-Clompington? Do we get a brood of Anderson-Williams-Houghton-Clompingtons?

I’m exaggerating for comic effect, of course. But only slightly.

As a new, supposedly more equitable tradition – at least outside of the Spanish-speaking world – it seems scarcely less prone to complication and trade-offs. When hyphenated offspring come to name their own children – and if they follow the same rules as their hyphenated parents – the whole thing rapidly becomes unworkable, and, at risk of causing offence, names will have to be cut. Lest each child sound like a law firm.

Though I suppose one could take it as a kind of unintended symbolism, a measure of modern progressivism. In that, the problem it allegedly addresses doesn’t seem to be much of a problem for most of those it supposedly oppresses, and the solution offered is somewhat short-sighted and soon results in something close to absurdity.

In the original thread, pst314 added,

Also, among gay couples. Though gay couples tend not to result in children, thereby sidestepping the issue of escalating hyphenation and a society-wide overhaul of stationery, due to the need to enlarge the ‘print name’ and ‘signature’ boxes on every official form.

What brought to mind the above was this:

1) A family is a unit and should all share the same name, however that’s decided. You could choose the mother’s name or you could choose a random name, I guess, but they need to share a common name.

2) There’s a strong case that you really want to throw dads a bone with respect… https://t.co/xjCFIctVop

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 22, 2024

And subsequently, this:

Anytime I hear somebody say within earshot of a new father anything that sounds even remotely like, “he doesn’t really look like him, more takes after his mom” I’m filled with the sense that we have lost touch with some very basic and important loadbearing structures.

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) April 22, 2024

According to Finnegans Take, above, “equality requires sacrifice,” and it’s “honestly insane” that the husband and father’s surname is commonly the one taken. A convention that is, we’re told, “obviously misogynistic” and “obviously a practice to move away from.” “I’m proud to say my child will be taking her mother’s name,” he adds. Which, while aired in overheated terms, at least avoids the Looming Hyphenation Crisis.

Though I’m not sure why pride should be a factor, or why perpetuating the mother’s surname – but not the father’s – should be construed as any more equal, or somehow more fair.

Update, via the comments:

In the Atlantic article that prompted the exchange embedded above, its author, Michael Waters, notes,

This is announced almost mournfully, and the term “habitual and unconscious” is deployed, much like the claim by Finnegans Take that the matter “gets basically zero attention,” as if people getting married never, ever consider the issue at all. Rather than the possibility that many people do consider the matter, but may simply arrive at conclusions that suit themselves and their families, rather than pleasing an Atlantic columnist whose “constellation of personal obsessions” include “queer history,” and who, inevitably, lives in Brooklyn.

This is followed by the sombre news:

Failed, you hear. Failed. How disappointing you people are.

We’re also told that “the rate at which parents are choosing not to marry has risen dramatically over the past 50 years.” With one quoted sociologist adding, “I think you can say with a very high degree of confidence that unmarried parents are less likely to pass down the father’s last name.”

So there’s that, I guess.

As suggested by Wanye Burkett, above, the mother of the child is generally rather obvious. The identity of the father, however, his connection with the child, is sometimes less so. As a result, some nod of affirmation – or papering over the cracks – may be in order. And given current rates of fatherlessness, and the typically suboptimal consequences, publicly affirming a connection of child and father, or step-father, or adoptive father, doesn’t strike me as an obviously bad thing.

Or, as Mr Burkett puts it,

Again, this is not a subject on which I have strong feelings. I don’t spend my evenings being vexed by it. But it seems to me that the custom isn’t “obviously” without a function, or that it’s “obviously a practice to move away from,” or that its existence is “insane.”

As a footnote of sorts, it may also be tricky to deviate from such a tradition without the risk of that deviation being construed as rather pointed, perhaps even insulting. Not unlike the young, progressive woman, featured here recently, who, at her wedding, didn’t want her father to walk her down the aisle. Because that would look too patriarchal and old-fashioned, and insufficiently progressive. While still expecting him to pay for everything, obviously.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course:

In the piece linked above, Ben Sixsmith responds to an attempt, by Lukas Shayo, to problematise a much-loved comic strip, one that must now, it seems, be fretted over as both “violent” and “sexist.” Readers familiar with the strip in question may wonder whether complaining in print about Calvin’s mom being, well, a mom, and about the “sexism” of a cartoon six-year-old, should result in some reflection on one’s chosen career, and one’s life choices more generally.

As Ben replies,

I’ve said before, regarding the pop-culture site io9, the more insufferably woke the site has become, the more generic and unwritten its content feels. By which I mean, it was once possible to stumble across lengthy articles on niche pop-culture subjects, often written with an affectionate expertise. Now, however, it’s difficult to differentiate one contributor from another. The content doesn’t read as if anyone in particular wrote it. It’s flavourless, uniform in its politics and ideological assumptions, both pointedly announced, and uniform in its tone. It might as well be generated by an algorithm.

Regarding Ben’s piece, Aelfheld adds,

It’s practically a genre – and a tool for the forging of progressive credentials. Basically, take something that’s very good and that a lot of people like, or have liked as children, and then problematise it, sour it, generally in a narrow, glib, and self-satisfied way. While getting details hopelessly wrong and missing all kinds of subtlety.

Or as Ben puts it, “joyless Buzzfeed-esque finger-wagging.”

See also, certain popular songs of the 1940s.

The author of the joyless prattle, Lukas Shayo – CUNY and Brooklyn, naturally – does rather struggle to find his “10 ways” in which Calvin and Hobbes should elicit regret or disapproval. We’re told, for instance, that,

And we’re informed that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices – the strip concluded in 1995 – may be “baffling for young readers.”

Mr Shayo also bemoans Calvin spending “too much time by himself,” thereby allowing his imagination to entertain the reader.

We’re told, with improbable earnestness:

Also troubling to Mr Shayo is the thought of our comic-strip protagonist being “unsupervised in an enormous forest.” Or, unregistered by the author, what Calvin perceives as an enormous forest. This, remember, is a six-year-old boy who regularly ventures into outer space and who perceives his stuffed toy as an eloquent, talking tiger. This one reminded me of being six or so myself and, with my cousin in tow, fearlessly exploring a small strip of woodland behind my grandmother’s house, and which six-year-old me chose to see as enormous and therefore a basis for adventure.

Given that the charm of Calvin and Hobbes so often hinges on the mismatch between what Calvin imagines and rather more mundane reality, you’d think that Mr Shayo might entertain such possibilities. But no. Wokeness must be announced, a posture assumed, and things found problematic. Because contrived disappointment, a souring of all the things, is the latest must-have. For a certain kind of person. And everything, especially things that many people have enjoyed, must be judged – and found wanting – by the narrow standards of one’s own self-admiring in-group at this precise point in time.

Update, via the comments:

Aitch adds,

While Dean reveals,

I suppose that’s what makes it grimly funny, in a disappointing modernity kind of way. If you poke through Mr Shayo’s other, numerous contributions, the tone, such as it is, is much the same. There’s no obvious personality – no sense of any particular person having written it – no sense of mischief, and no discernible wit. Mr Shayo is, however, capable of making entirely contradictory claims, on the very same subject, mere days apart.

For instance, in the “10 Ways” article quoted above, Mr Shayo worries that the absence of smartphones and GPS tracking devices may be “baffling for young readers,” and he bemoans how the strip “doesn’t have any modern technology.” And yet we’re told – days later – that, “the lack of technological influence makes the strip read as a timeless work.” “It always feels that it’s something that could still happen today… the absence of technology is hardly notable.”

Likewise, Mr Shayo insists that “ending Calvin and Hobbes is exactly what saved it,” and praises the strip’s creator, Bill Watterson, for refusing to license spin-offs, adaptations, and potentially lucrative merchandise, thereby “living up to the ideals that the strip… championed.” “Ending the strip,” we’re told, “was a good decision” and “there is no reason to tarnish that legacy by adding more to an already concluded work.”

While, one week earlier, “Calvin and Hobbes needs to be an animated show.” Because “an adaptation or continuation is essential.”

These, shall we say, inconsistencies, among many others, aren’t a result of some cunning AI spoof, some infinitely deep intelligence. This is just the standard of writing, and thinking, now deemed good enough.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.