LOTR did not have complex villains in the slightest? They were bad period. Morgoth is literally evil incarnate, Sauron was evil af appreciating craft doesn’t make him good, Saruman was considered completely fallen, Gollum did not have a path to redemption he had moments of humanization. They were pretty straight forward. You could argue depth was added in the Silmarilian but there wasn’t really a humanizing element to call them complicated or morally complex, they were morally simple and some had a reason they fell to corruption.

Smaug, the Goblin King, Shelob. Evil as hell.

I guess some of the corrupt humans were more morally ambiguous but it never left you feeling unsure if someone was good or evil, it is pretty crystal clear.

What modern media enables selfish behavior no matter the cost? Breaking Bad is literally about the cost, Game of Thrones is about everyone is basically not a good person.

The best morally complex character I can think of is Magneto. He’s not a good guy, he’s not doing good things but in his position you’d ask yourself “what would I do different?” he’s trying to prevent trauma he’s already experienced and he unashamed about it.

What about anime? They’re gotten goofier and brighter in my opinion. Popular stuff used to be Inuyasha, Fullmetal Alchemist. Then you had Death Note, Bleach, Naruto. These are all on a scale of pretty moody with tads or dapples of sunshine and goof.

Now there’s animes like “I was turned into a hedgehog and my girlfriend isn’t sure how to respond!” It’s wayy fucking goofier and brighter.

What happened was people knew the world wasn’t good guys and bad guys, it became clear that morality was grey and for good reason.

…yes?

I don’t understand what you’re implying exactly you’re being condescending with no reason?

It’s as I said. People were talking about it probably being bad, were confirmed it was bad and continue to act surprised it is bad with constant posts like this “LOOK HOW BAD THIS GAME IS” after it was known to be bad.

I don’t really pay attention to big title games/released like this, I knew from other’s posting it was going to be bad before it released. For the last few weeks all I’ve heard is this game being bad. So honestly, I don’t know but apparently they knew. Because somehow I knew too.

Edit : I googled. Found a post from 4 months ago where apparently they spoke about lore stuff that suggested the game will suck, then a post from a month ago talking about how Wolverine fans are aptly aware it will suck. So again, no idea how people knew but they clearly knew.

Before this game even came out people knew it was bad

I’m so sick of hearing about games that suck. Just don’t buy them, stop talking about it. What the fuck are these people doing? Why must they play every game that companies tell them to play and why must these communities talk about it?

Don’t you understand this is what causes these problems?

Piece of trash

It is. But I still understand it.

Controversial opinion, a lot of those artists are already paid when it comes to TV. Fuck that, in my opinion.

Glad I spent my teens and 20s getting stoned and reading the shit out of wikipedia before this shit happened. Can’t trust anything written online now.

It actually gives you wiiings. Which apparently they do to avoid false advertisement or some shit?

Look I’m of the opinion that we’re all gonna die and if I’m drinking energy drinks regularly, it’s not cause I am aiming to live a healthy life.

But don’t all those zero calorie, alternate sweeteners also apparently cause heart problems and other stuff as well?

It’s also classism. Originally only the very high class could read, then it became you had to speak Greek, then Latin, then French, then a combination of them all. I don’t know if it was intentional, but it feels true.

Rapa Nui at it’s peak

Looks fake

Heat the milk up slightly separately and add the spice into that. You want the liquid flavored.

Uhh was America buying Russian petroleum? Thought there was an embargo?

Yes! That’s what brought me back here to this album. Thao is such an odd artist for me, she’ll release music and I go back to her old stuff before I get into her new stuff. She’s great

Look I think we both believe the same thing overall but for whatever reason we’re not meeting up in the same space.

But you are suggesting violence wasn’t common and hunter-gatherers didn’t engage in it when history tells a completely opposite story that violence was pretty steady. As much as people would cooperate, the also fought. It really depended on resources, and resources were thin. The periods of violence weren’t brief, they were common, everyday and existed alongside peace basically in a duality. We have proof our ancestors likely integrated with neanderthals, we also have proof the two probably beat the shit out of each other. Things aren’t black and white they’re always grey.

I do think humans are innately violent and selfish, but I think you’re viewing that phrasing in our society’s lens. Violent and selfish to us typically means violence and selfish towards our fellow countrymen, neighbors, allies. But we’re not talking about towns and cities of millions, we’re talking about clans and cultures of maybe a few hundred tops. They likely viewed their own much closer, but when it came to outsiders they were in competition for resources with, they had to be selfish and likely were willing to be violent for their own people. It isn’t the same individual selfishness, it is more of a “me and my people” selfishness that you can still see today with racism, nationalism, weird cultural identity issues. We find skeletons with signs of trauma all the time suggesting violence was constant for these people, raids and clashes were common. You had to fight for what you needed quite literally.

Today we see how much education is a decider in how selfish people are, those who can understand society and view people with empathy and understand how that fits in tend to engage in it more. For most of human history there were less people on the entire planet than in my area alone, I live amongst maybe 9million people. That’s massively more than the entire planet housed for thousands upon thousands of years. And the fact we don’t fight, aren’t violent and work everyday together shows we have deincentivized violence massively and for the better. Society today is more altruistic, we are the kinder people. But in our hearts and minds still exist the ancient selfish and violent human.

Capitalism doesn’t discourage cooperation at all, as much as we might have issues with our society, capitalism and beyond has actually brought about massive cooperation so that we exist in far greater numbers and experience less violence than our ancestors did. That shows we are better at cooperating. The last 10,000 years might be a fraction but it is not insignificant. Before the last 10,000 years the population was barely scratching 1 million, today we add roughly 100 million each year. Most people who have ever lived have actually lived in the era of recorded history. That is the significant fraction of human history.

First of all. Calm down, chill out. Relax.

I didn’t once say anything negative about cooperation, I didn’t even use that word once. What are you talking about? Why are you building this strawman of cooperation and then dismantling it for me when it has little to do with what I said?

It is a false belief people have that ancient man was overall more altruistic, they weren’t. They did not experiment, they engaged with what worked. Cooperation is definitely key to our survival but bigger than that is our ability to weigh risk vs reward and more often than not the more important part of that is risk. Sometimes abandoning an injured ally, allowing the weaker individuals to perish, to abandon the place you call home and other selfish, sociopathic choices were the decision that would lend to one’s further survival. Which is probably why we have so much selfishness in our society, not in capitalistic society, but in all societies. It is part of the human condition, people are selfish and rude and protect their feelings more than anything else. Literally most of therapy is people learning to not engage with those knee jerk emotional/mental responses that reinforce these behaviors.

While you can say cooperation was a big part of humanity’s success it actually wasn’t the big one. The big one was risk vs reward being able to plan and just overall decision making. Which unfortunately psychopaths tend to have the edge over the regular person for, which is why they probably have been routinely successful at survival way back in ancient times and today. Game theory shows us that cheating actually can benefit you especially in the short term and most of human history, for a specific person, is short term. Game theory also shows us it is kind of full of shit, according to game theory the prisoner’s dilemma should end in disaster. In practice, it really doesn’t work that cleanly. Game theory relies on humans basically being heartless reptiles, which people aren’t because they like to cooperate and be liked and engage in kindness and respect.

So I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to make or why you have an issue with what I said. History is messy, but what is clear is ancient man was not overall altruistic, it wasn’t paradise and people/society today is overall completely better.