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Message: [QUOTE="OttoinGrotto, post: 1135832, member: 297"] I agree with you, although I think the solution starts by demanding better from men. It's only fairly recently in history that women have cruded up the way men have traditionally "enjoyed" conducting themselves, and like you said it feeds in to a degrading cycle. I think part of how you break that cycle is by encouraging the men to really think about what it means to be their best selves, and act accordingly. Men lowered the bar, and for a long time women didn't meet them there, but now some of them don't seem to mind mucking it up. If men take on the responsibility to be better, I trust that women will will too. I do feel that in general, in terms of being better people, a woman's inclination tends towards being more caring for others than men, so if that inclination isn't suppressed as it seems it often is now, things can get a lot better. Some things I believe our society can do to support this is to stop worshiping anti-heroes, not tear down generally good people for the occasional mishap, and celebrate more the people that are trying to be the best they can. Narratives matter. Right now, we and our media loves the villain that appears pious but that is really a hypocrite. Let's have heroes that actually are pious and represent an ideal. The alternative to that is a hero that the part of ourselves that is content to accept our flaws as uncontrollable identifies with, and when that identity is fed we either stagnate, or worse, excuse more backsliding. That's the mental state we're in when we care more about identifying hypocrites than applauding people that have figured out where they're strong enough to make some moral stand, but aren't yet strong enough to make all of the moral stands they should to be consistent. Since we're all imperfect, consistently not being a hypocrite and celebrating the honesty of our shortcomings as an excuse for not being critical is not a greater virtue than striving to be the best people we can. If we succumb to that temptation, we're just a bunch of crabs in a bucket. Anyway, that's some of the stuff on my mind today. [/QUOTE]

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