Morality or biology?

partinobodycular · Oct 17, 2022

jayem said:
I just don’t don’t see homosexuality as a significant problem.

I'm with you on this. I don't think that it's as big of a problem as some people like to make it out to be either, but then again, I have to stop and ask myself, is the increase in things like ADHD, and OCD, and LGBTQ, and extremism, and gun violence, purely the result of changing social dynamics, or is it possible that there's an underlying environmental cause for why all of them are increasing in unison. Surely it's not that farfetched to think that our modern environment may be responsible to some degree for the increase in ADHD and OCD et al. They're obviously not just lifestyle choices.

But if environmental changes can cause neurological issues like ADHD and OCD then why can't they be responsible for other, less obvious neurological issues as well, such as LGBTQ and extremism? We're good at recognizing the blatantly obvious environmental consequences, but are we missing the less obvious ones. The ones that don't manifest themselves for a generation, or two, or three. And don't manifest themselves as obvious neurological abnormalities, but simply as social issues.

If it was an increase in cancer we'd never consider blaming the victim, but is that what we're doing when we blame people for things that humanity itself had a hand in causing?

Tuur · Oct 18, 2022

partinobodycular said:
Back in the 1960's we tended to focus on things such as air pollution from car exhaust, so in 1975 the government mandated catalytic converters, but we weren't concerned about things such as greenhouse gases until around 1980, and we didn't start worrying about microplastics until the 2000's. We tend to only notice things when they become glaringly obvious. Who knows what we're overlooking today, for example all the RF waves from cell phones. So to claim that pollution is better today than it was 60 years ago is to overlook and therefore underestimate the effects that we're having on future generations.

That's what one would presume, but epigenetic studies consistently show that the effects of environmental changes don't show up until two or three generations later.

Here's just one quick example of many, many such studies.

So the ideas that pollution is getting better, and that we should've seen the effects earlier, may not be accurate. We may only now be experiencing the insidious nature of the impact that modern society is having on future generations.

As I've mentioned a couple of times now, people often look for plausible deniability. So they point out that pollution is better now, or that we should have seen the effects earlier, but they may simply be whistling past the graveyard, rather than looking at the changes that are staring them in the face.

Car exhaust? It was far more than that. To control bowl weevils, cotton farmers used arsenic. It worked, but arsenic doesn't break down. To get a nice shade of white, lead oxide was used in paint. Lead was used in a lot of things. Mercury was in more places than thermometers and thermostats and silent switches. DDT is effective against mosquitoes and was still in use. There was a chemical used in transformer oil because it was a flame retardant that turned out to have bad effects on life. Asbestos was everywhere. Those in my generation have Strontium 90 in our bones, courtesy of above ground nuclear weapons tests. In those days a river in the US was so polluted that it burned. This is just a partial list of things from memory.

Okay, so this is getting close to "In my day, we walked uphill both ways to go to school," but I do remember more pollution back during my childhood than there is now.

partinobodycular · Oct 18, 2022

Yet another example of science finding a link between the products we use and cancer. But isn't it extremely naive to think that cancer is the only, or even the predominate effect that these chemicals are having on us? OCD, ADHD, autism, diabetes, and yes even LGBTQ may be a direct result of what we're putting into the environment.

Name some malady that's had a recent uptick in prevalence and there's a definite possibility that our polluting of the environment has had something to do with it.

Are we too quick to blame liberalism, or conservatism, or extremism, or atheism, for what we perceive of as social problems, when they're actually the result of environmental problems foisted upon us by the recklessness of our parents and grandparents. It's as if the sins of our grandparents are being visited upon our youth, and we're blaming them for it.

FireDragon76 · Nov 3, 2022

partinobodycular said:
Yet another example of science finding a link between the products we use and cancer. But isn't it extremely naive to think that cancer is the only, or even the predominate effect that these chemicals are having on us? OCD, ADHD, autism, diabetes, and yes even LGBTQ may be a direct result of what we're putting into the environment.

Name some malady that's had a recent uptick in prevalence and there's a definite possibility that our polluting of the environment has had something to do with it.

Are we too quick to blame liberalism, or conservatism, or extremism, or atheism, for what we perceive of as social problems, when they're actually the result of environmental problems foisted upon us by the recklessness of our parents and grandparents. It's as if the sins of our grandparents are being visited upon our youth, and we're blaming them for it.

We've had LGBT people long before we had modern industrial processes that produced ample amounts of pollution. We know more about transpeople or two-spirit individuals in preindustrial or non-industrial cultures, because most non-western cultures don't consider who you sleep with, in terms of gender, to be particularly consequential. It's the social roles you fill that are more consequential.

Morality or biology?

partinobodycular

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Tuur

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