FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
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User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
42m ago
the modal reality "politics in a multi-party democracy" and "rule of law" are meant to evoke is one where hard limits on the scope and scale of political conflict exist and are respected, and where law is capable of settling conflicts. That is not the world we are living in.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
45m ago
Can war be avoided, can any side triumph without vast bloodshed, can compromises be negotiated, can assurances be made?
Separation. Erode federal power, establish common knowledge that federal power should not be enforced or respected. That's the best possible use of power, and even that is Russian roulette.
On an individual level, allow the Sort to run its course, cooperate with it if possible. If you live in the wrong place, move. That's just common sense.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
Please do, I am frequently compelled to do the same and understand completely.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
Pinging @Stellula, as it may be relevant to their interests.
I said that it was transactional. I didn't say it was purely transactional. There's a difference.
Can you name a type of human interaction that is not "transactional" in some way? If I talk to a stranger, is that not in some sense transactional? When I catch some random family's baby staring at me in the grocery store and begin making silly faces to try to get them to laugh, is that not clearly "transactional"? When I have lunch together with a friend, is that not transactional in some sense?
You seem to be claiming that there's the set of human interactions, and then a subset of transactional human interactions, and then a sub-subset of purely transactional human interactions. But if in fact all human interaction is transactional, and then a subset is purely transactional, then the "transactional" label adds nothing meaningful to the term "interaction", and the joint in reality is the "purely", the compartmentalization and formalization of an interaction, and with it the exclusion and severing of other possible connections and relations and interactions. We "transact" because we wish for more interaction with someone, and the "more" is open-ended. We "purely transact" with someone because we want a specific interaction and no more. These two modes of transaction are notably distinct.
If your love for your beloved is contingent on them possessing some particular quality, then you are liable to the charge that you don't really love the person: what you really love is that quality. You are a lover of intelligence, or humor, or beauty, but not of that particular person.
Perhaps, if we confine ourselves to abstractions, though I'm skeptical that this is actually an accurate description at the object level.
But if you say that you would continue to love the person regardless of any qualities they possess whatsoever, even if they were stripped of all qualities and left only as a "bare particular", then it would seem that your choice is entirely arbitrary and without justification; for what could be motivating your choice if it is made in the absence of all qualities? And a baseless arbitrary choice cannot constitute love either.
I would not agree with this formulation, so far as I understand the argument; it seems to be a false dichotomy emerging excessive abstraction. The dichotomy is drawn between the instrumental "I love them for the characteristics they possess" and the arbitrary "I love them for for some ineffable, arbitrary themness", but there is a third option: "I love them because I have loved them." In this, the instrumental emerges from and utterly overtakes the arbitrary, while being inextricable from it.
Put a grain of sand into an oyster and wait, and the result often enough is a pearl. Pearls do not form without the grain of sand, but pearls are not themselves reducible to grains of sand. They are an accretion, a composite, of which the sand is a foundation but of which the foundation is far, far less than what is built upon it, like an inverted pyramid. One might describe them better as an investment.
My relationship with my wife began in a quite arbitrary fashion; having been acquaintances for a few years, we spent some time together at a church event and hit it off over a common love for movies, books and video games. On the other hand, this arbitrariness was only possible from an explicitly-instrumental foundation: we found each other because we were both actively looking for a sane, stable, committed Christian of the opposite sex to build a family with, and also there was some amount of behind-the-scenes matchmaking from mutual friends nudging things along.
The love we share now does not rest significantly on our common love for movies, books and video games. Nor is it based solely the instrumental desire for marriage and a family; we no longer want marriage in the abstract, we want this marriage, and our love were persist even if we were unable to have children. What it rests on is nearly a decade of choices made and actions taken out of love for one another: in-jokes, acts of kindness, acts of service, shared hardship, shared joy, shared knowledge, and so on and on. Further, these have accrued because neither of us acted as though these were "purely transactional", nor did transactionality enter the calculus in any significant way; we do the things we do because each of us perceive that such acts will please and support the other. I want my wife to be happy and to have a good life, and she wants the same for me, and the longer these objectives guide our actions the more solid and substantial our love grows, and the less we recognize a good apart from the good found in each other.
The conclusion we draw is that, if there is such a thing as "love" at all, it belongs to the domain of the unsayable.
This appears to me to be sophistry through a retreat to arbitrary abstraction.
And yet I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
What does that definition mistakenly contain that we might better remove? What does that definition lack that we might wish to add? It tells us that love is a terminal value, and it defines that love is and is not. In what way is any of this "unsayable"?
I occasionally become impatient with people who glibly assert that they are "in love" without realizing that they are uttering an absurdity (or without realizing that, statistically speaking, their relationship probably won't last the year).
I share this impatience, because such people are generally not describing Love but infatuation.
To assume that we know love when we feel it is presumptuous. We can always interrogate whether any emotion, action, or other particular entity is an instantiation of the general concept of love, whether the conditions of instantiation of love can ever be met at all, etc.
Just so. But equally, to claim that we do not know love when we have practiced it as an intentional way of life is sophistry. Certainly not all questions have answers, but just as certainly some questions do have answers, and this is one of them. Why ask questions if you don't want answers?
Whether it was blue-on-blue remains to be seen, but blue-on-blue is much, much easier to deal with than red/blue.
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