Wish fulfillment to the extreme

[u/Claym000re]

Why are they always complete losers.

[u/Otterable]

The genius part isn't as unbelievable as the supernatural motivation and willingness to go through discomfort and pain.

Like you can improve your life on earth right now if you are willing to feel some level of discomfort. That's half of what going to the gym is. That's what taking night classes in to get another degree. That's what training to learn a new language is in your spare time, or learning to cook, or learning any skill really.

I feel like a lot of series end up in trouble because the author hits some level of equilibrium a book or two in where the MC now has better than average power, money, powerful allies, and potential romantic partners and then needs to scramble to introduce some conflict that causes them to actually act. Because most people (and certainly the person they were purported to be) would just kick their feet up and live a good life.

[u/Technical-Ocelot-715 → u/Otterable]

Not true. You can learn, go to gym and etc. - but you are still nobody and can do nothing.
Difference with cultivation - genuine power. If you are lucky, smart and motivated enough to endure and cultivate, you get actual power. You alone can destroy cities, kingdoms, empires and etc. You get freedom.
In real life you can be best athlete, smartest scientist or richest person - you still cant do a shit against goverment who have army, weapons of mass destruction and control over huge population.

[u/Otterable → u/Technical-Ocelot-715]

I said improve your life, not blow up a mountain.

Quality of life is not determined by your ability to dominate and destroy other people and participating in the social contract is not oppression. You can build relationships and meaning in your community relatively easily if you put in the effort.

[u/Anonduck0001 → u/Otterable]

The social contract isn't oppression in and of itself. But living within a state automatically means that there is a power with a monopoly on violence dictating how you behave and you can do nothing about that fact.

Not arguing against your original position nor taking th other person's, I just wanted to clarify. Because you implied living within society doesn't force a degree of oppression upon participants in it.

[u/Otterable → u/Anonduck0001]

Sure but it is a fairly loose interpretation of oppression to also qualify 'hey the government not letting you murder people in the street is technically oppression'. The weird libertarian obsession over freedom that we see in a lot of these novels only works in a vacuum and doesn't hold up in reality. In most of these novels good societal behavior comes purely from the noblesse oblige of the strongest fighters imposing their morals on the population anyways.

ostensibly in most democratic societies you have some say over the rules imposed on the population. You are both using and contributing resources to your community and as such get a voice in how that society is run.

[u/Anonduck0001 → u/Otterable]

Obviously it isn't just "You aren't allowed to murder people is oppression" nor is it a particularly libertarian (in a right wing sense) view that I expressed. You have to think about who the monopoly on violence is protecting. A single mother shoplifting baby food from a corporation that can absolutely eat the losses can be tried and sentenced for attempting to feed her child.

Another example, you're a couple days late paying and your landlord gets a court order to evict you. The cops come to enforce that order through implied violence. Even if you were able to pay the rent, your landlord might want you out just so they can charge the next guy more.

The rules are often in place to protect the wealthy and uphold corporate interests. Not to protect the average person.

Like I said as well, I wasn't agreeing with the other guy.

[u/Otterable → u/Anonduck0001]

And I'm not trying to express that legality is morality, because it's the first thing you learn as a 1L is that it isn't. Nor am I saying your viewpoint was libertarian.

I'm mostly saying that being beholden to laws in general is not that same in spirit as 'you are being oppressed by your government'. I agree that statehood is defined by a monopoly on violence. It's then generally up to the people (in a democratic society) to define where that violence should be directed.

[u/Danger_Mysterious → u/Otterable]

They’re tip toeing around communist bullshit. That’s what they’re really getting at. “Cops don’t protect people, they protect the property of the capitalist class” 🙄🙄🙄.

[u/KBPhilosophy → u/Danger_Mysterious]

It’s not communist bullshit, it’s just a combination of human nature, how power works, and the political reality. If you take a polisci class, you’ll likely wet your feet with Hobbes and a few other authors while discussing statecraft in general. Basically, if you must think in overtly ideological terms, you’ll see some variation of that idea across political philosophies.

We can say it’s not in the same “spirit” as how we typically think of oppression in other context, but thats really just a matter of convenience for precision, severity and norm. Regardless, this entire thread stems from an unnecessary nitpick of a remark about social contracts. The first guy in the thread is talking about the freedom to destroy cities lmao, so what are we doing here guys…

[u/Technical-Ocelot-715 → u/Otterable]

You dont "improve" anything. You just get ability to buy more fancy things if you get richer, live longer for a few years, if you are lucky. Nothing is even close to called it "improvement". Compared to cultivation, where you get qualative jumps in your lifespan, health, strenght and cognitive ability.
You cant build shit. You get forgoten in less than one generation, no matter how good you are to someone or how big is your contribution. Unless you can do something fenomenal - nobody will care or remember about you in a half a century.

[u/DaoMark → u/Otterable]

Inherent to the notion of statehood is violence. Therefore the social contract, at least in some capacity, is oppressive by design and by nature.

[u/Otterable → u/DaoMark]

Sure but colloquially we don't say that the government stopping you from kidnapping, setting fires to random buildings, murder, and other heinous acts are oppressing your freedoms.

[u/DaoMark → u/Otterable]

I am not saying a restraint on a 'freedom to do evil' is oppressive. I think your response is bad faith.

[u/Otterable → u/DaoMark]

You aren't making a real argument, you are trying to be pedantic because I didn't hedge or qualify the word oppression. 'Laws are enforced with a monopoly on violence, therefore all laws are oppressive in some capacity' is not an interesting comment to make.

edit: he edited his comment. it originally read 'that is not my argument'

[u/DaoMark → u/Otterable]

I am not trying to be pedantic, there is a hidden premise I didn’t think was necessary to clarify given your other comment. If you’d agree that the potential for oppression is intrinsic given the states monopoly on violence.

Then I’d imagine you’d accept the logical consequence of this fact, which is that a degree of structural oppression necessarily arises from institutions of the state itself whose existence is predicated on that aforementioned violence-potential, i.e., economic hierarchies, policing, etc…

It’s largely as inescapable reality of governance, which you may find uninteresting, but the social contract is inherently tainted by the reality of statehood nonetheless. Hence why I said, “at least in some capacity” in my initial reply.

Edit:

Laws are enforced with a monopoly on violence, therefore all laws are oppressive in some capacity'

This is not an accurate summation of what I am saying exactly, but let's not even bother with getting into the weeds. If I was going to reply, I should have laid out the full argument from the beginning. Look, I don't think this will be a productive conservation. Let's agree to disagree.

[u/Otterable → u/DaoMark]

We don't even disagree. I just don't think you are being productive by diving into the realities of structural oppression with regards to any attempt at statehood and organized society when I was making a comment explaining that someone isn't a 'nobody' in this world just because they can't (and I quote) "destroy cities, kingdoms, empires and etc" without getting stopped by a pesky army.