I still feel like you're missing the point. You must be useful in order to survive. Stripping away all human culture, in the wild, an animal that isn't useful to itself or the group it belongs to is... food for other individuals and groups. Without utility (the ability to hunt/gather, use violence to protect itself, the group, or territory) an organism is... fertilizer. Even plants have utility -- convert CO2 to Oxygen & water & fibrous material, procreate, provide habitat or food to other organisms (as a procreation method) -- and there's no patriarchy telling them to be productive or useful.
I'm not sure what sort of utopia you're arguing in favour of, but I choose to be useful to improve my life for myself, my friends, and society at large. I choose to not be a burden to others wherever possible. I'm happy to pay my taxes and receive benefits in return that improve my life in return -- clean water, roads, free education, social programs and healthcare, etc. I'm also happy that my taxes help provide these things who can't immediately contribute to pay for these things -- because having basic needs met serves as a foundation for society to grow and build upon.
So you've reduced masculinity "having testicles".
You haven't really answered my question. If you aren't useful, what are you?
Let's ask the opposite question... If you're not useful, what are you doing with your time?
As much as I enjoy spending time in the 'nothing box' (i.e. doing nothing productive or of any consequence) I have an innate desire to solve problems, take care of my family and friends, make things better for them, and improve the lives of others in general. The solving of problems allows me to earn a living, yay for me. Everything else just gives me life meaning.
So I'll say again... Where's the glory in being useless?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, full stop.
There's nothing saying that this isn't something of our own creation.
The Roswell incident exposed the existence of Mylar -- something human-made, classified, but other-worldly in appearance and texture to anyone who might have seen it at that time... Now something mundane enough to be used as potato chip bags.
Really? I just handed down a 2017 MacBook Pro -- still supported by Apple, meaning it runs the latest OS, and gets patches.
Can you give me an example of any other device with longer software support from the original vendor, at no cost to the end user?
I work in IT. Most systems have laughable security. Passwords are often saved in plain text in scripts or config files. I went to a site to help out a very large provincial governmental organization move some data out of one system and into another. They sat me down with a loaner laptop and the guy logged me into his user account on the server. When I asked for escalated privileges, he told me he'd go get someone who knew the service account passwords.
After a few minutes, I started poking around on my own... And had administrative access within an hour. I could read the database (raw data), access documents, start and stop the software, plus, figured out how to get into the upstream system that fed data to this server... I was working on figuring out the software's admin password when the guy came back. I'm sure that given some more time, I could have rooted the box because the OS hadn't been updated in years.
@TemporaryBoyfriend
@lemmy.ca