Fruck
Lacks all conviction
Fruck is just this guy, you know?
User ID: 889
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
9d ago
Right and that's why my argument continued for several sentences after that first one.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
9d ago
Ah God damn it. You're right, I meant to say it doesn't impose costs as a deterrent on morally neutral behaviour.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
9d ago
Society doesn't impose costs on morally neutral behaviour. Also you are suggesting a 'host' solution, you will only get justifications for why it can't be done in return. This would not be possible even if you hadn't brought in the concept of parasitism, now it is double plus infinity not possible.
I hate this framing. And I'm not just saying that because I'm trying to romance 2rafa. You can't just say 'just treat this loaded term as neutral' when you're talking about societal issues, because society isn't just made up of autistic wordcels like us. That said, I'm pretty much willing to talk about anything, so I can't help but notice that I don't want to talk about this in these terms. It probably means you could make bank off of championing this on social media - at least until you are debanked.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11d ago
No, Trump is not a nazi. Nor is JD Vance or Stephen Miller, or probably anyone in the administration. I'm skeptical that any of the incidents OP posted are suggestive that the Fourth Reich is some fifth column in the Republican party. But at the same time, there's been a groundswell of interest and support and tolerance of ideas like Great Replacement Theory and authoritarianism in the Red Tribe mainstream that's been slowly gaining steam for the last decade. And, while I know everything wrong with the Red Tribe is actually the Blue Tribe's fault, what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?
Lmao. "Look, Trump isn't a nazi, neither is any republican leader, and I don't think anything in this post is evidence of Nazism. But you guys are are nazis! Look at all these things we never fucking talk about because we're too busy calling Trump or Stephen Miller a nazi! What else are we supposed to do except bring up shit that I don't think is Nazism and use it to tar you as nazis?". I don't know, talk about the shit you think is actually Nazism?
See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:
The first line of the narcissist's prayer is "That didn't happen".
We have been telling you that this would happen from the very beginning.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
12d ago
It has been 15 years since I have had occasion to use this.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
13d ago
I think cjet has the right of it below. The stupid thing these people did was not follow the golden rule of the internet - don't say anything you don't want held against you.
Also question: Is Wayne Hope a nazi? What about Francis Greenslade? Or what about Shaun Micallef, it's his show. Did that clip in anyway make you think any of them might be a nazi? Or did the context tell you they weren't serious, even though Wayne explicitly states that Nazis really are a superior race?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
13d ago
Every post of yours in this thread shows a steadfast and truly exceptional dedication to pretending to be retarded and I am genuinely impressed from a rhetorical standpoint. I know you are smart enough to understand the concept of a joke and the concept of irony, which makes your constant and wilful refusal to ever engage with what these people said in context impressive imo. I think it sucks from every other standpoint though.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
13d ago
You mean like a critique of Marxism as "the communists took the Christian idea of heaven and tried to make it a reality on Earth, which thus failed terribly?"
Critiques like that of Marxism are a subset of the anthropological phenomenon Girard is describing. Girard's point isn't limited to a single political ideology. It's a critique of the entire modern mindset, and the desire to 'build a better world' on the back of a designated enemy. He saw this pattern repeating everywhere, from the French Revolution to modern social justice movements. The Antichrist is the principle that weaponizes compassion for victims to create an engine of perpetual conflict. It's a critique of secular humanism and its endless quest for new victims and new oppressors, a quest which leads to a permanent state of social conflict - the 'chaos marketed as order' I mentioned.
Personally, I found it always rich that a religious institution which had been a steadfast ally of the ruling classes for most of its existence thought it had any moral standing to criticize people
Then you don't understand religion. A religious institution without a belief in its moral standing is a social club. A religious institution derives its morality from divine authority. You are judging it on criteria it doesn't care about, you can't then be flummoxed that it doesn't care about your judgement.
I am still unsure what point you think Thiel is making when he speculates about Greta Thunberg being the antichrist, and if it is a purely theological point (which might be beyond an atheist such as myself) or a sociological point dressed in the language of Christianity. From the "secular perversion of Christian ideals" angle, I would imagine something like "Friday For Future takes the Christian ideal of humans being good stewards of creation and strips it from its Christian roots." But without the basis of Christianity, this idea becomes unsound?
Thunberg is a shibboleth. She is just a good representative of the secular doomsday cult, she's a child prophet.
Regarding Stewardship you are missing the point entirely, deliberately it seems? Or was that Marxist line literally all the thought you put into understanding Girard's thesis? The idea doesn't become unsound, it becomes dangerous. We don't understand all the ways certain sociological concepts interact, which ones affect which. Compassion is good, but decoupled from religion, from a framework of original sin, grace, transcendence, and forgiveness, it turns suicidal. It gets coopted by grifters, narcissists, psychopaths. Perhaps that is what Thiel is doing! If it is, it would have been a lot harder to figure out without Girard's Antichrist.
It is my firm belief that human virtue significantly predates any religion known today, and that Christianity has no intellectual property rights on caring about the natural world (FFF) or trying to alleviate the suffering on Earth (EA) or equality (SJ) or trying to avoid bad consequences of technology-driven change (AI safety).
Do you similarly believe Christianity has no ip rights on the development of everything you just mentioned? Because I see a pretty direct (straightforwardly direct in the case of social justice) through line from Christianity to them. They aren't just virtuous, they are virtuous according to the tenets of Christianity and built on a bedrock of assumptions that most other cultures in history found bizarre.
I agree that there is something wrong with the world, actually. Personally I would mention negative externalities (the driving force of both climate change and AI x-risk) first and foremost. Then there is the increasing spread between capital and income, and the related rise of real estate prices, global poverty, and an increase of anti-liberal patterns both on the left and on the right, the related demolition of the concept of truth, social media induced loneliness, a military conflict in Europe and the total clusterfuck of the Middle East, to mention but a few. Interestingly enough, a lot of these are things in which Thiel is either in the position to alleviate the problem and does not or in which he is actively profiting from being part of the problem.
What are you arguing now? That Thiel sees different problems to you? Actually most of those things, I'm pretty sure, Thiel would argue are symptoms of... You guessed it, the Antichrist. In the Girard sense. Dismissing his position as 'deliberately obfuscated' would carry more weight if you hadn't already admitted you have no idea what Girard said or any interest in finding out.
The entire point is that the quasi-religious framework he's using explains the rise of things like the 'demolition of truth' and the 'anti liberal patterns' you mentioned. And that by tying the religious and secular conceptions of the Antichrist together Thiel provides a way two disparate groups he belongs to - Christians who believe the bible is true if not necessarily 100% accurate and tech bros - can share culture.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
14d ago
I don't see the conspiracy angle here and I can see from the other posts that I'm not the only nooticer who feels that way. But you clearly aren't alone in your assumption either! Is this a case of different cultures inculcating different pattern matching behaviours? It does make me think - the closest this came to triggering my 'that's retarded' impulse is it made me think 'reeeeaaally?' Meanwhile I feel like I spend most of my time on X thinking 'well that's retarded'. And part of that is of course that I trust you and your judgement more than some X rando and thus extend you more charity, and similarly I don't want this to be false for political reasons (although I try not to let that influence me anyway), but there is more to it than that. I guess the 'that's retarded' impulse gets triggered when someone's pattern matching behaviour doesn't just not align with my own but aligns against the patterns I have internalised. This is probably obvious to most people but it just clicked for me.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
14d ago
It's possible to have both at once though. Like if you are depressed and then you develop schizophrenia. In that instance they determine schizophrenia by assessing whether your symptoms are affected by your mood - if it is, it's more likely bipolar or schizoaffective disorder, if it isn't, it's schizophrenia.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
15d ago
That was a fantastic read, cheers. I liked his list of jobs for modern shamans in particular.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
15d ago
It would be nice if it was the social media digital id thing all the five eyes countries are currently doing to try to ensnare the US and enforce their social media policies.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
16d ago
but you gave me a chance to show off so of course I'm going to take it.
It is a good way to distinguish yourself from the hoi polloi after all.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
16d ago
Your argument hinges on a rigid set of stereotypes - a sincere believer must be a rural fundamentalist, and a tech billionaire must be a secular rationalist. But in the big tent you don't have the luxury of enforcing ideological conformity.
It doesn't matter if Thiel believes in the Antichrist the same way I do, or as strongly as I do or as literally as I do, what matters is that I know what he means and those who don't can easily find out. This series of lectures basically says 'there is something wrong with the world, and I think we should call that wrong thing the Antichrist, and here's why.'
This works well as a cultural touchstone for red tribe for several reasons - a) historical precedence - Christianity has long been at home in the red tribe. At the same time, Thiel is a student of Rene Girard, who used the Antichrist to refer to the secular perversion of Christian ideals leading to mimetic crisis and the failure of scapegoating mechanisms, bringing chaos marketed as order. I assume Thiel is using the term with that intellectual framework in mind, making it both a populist shibboleth and a high-concept philosophical argument, meaning it b) both uses and reinforces the current resurgence of Christianity in the red tribe by embracing a low status red tribe marker (distinguishing Thiel from the typical conception of the billionaire) and legitimising it amongst tech bro types (who have always been susceptible to esoteric and fantastical mythologies aesthetically) and also c) it upsets people who don't get the shibboleths, who, because they don't get the shibboleths, are forced to interpret it through their typical understanding of the world where it just sounds insane.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
16d ago
Yeah the right understands the left better than the other way around. That might change in the near future though, because the right understand the left better out of necessity - it is more important to understand your opponent's theory of mind when you are weaker than them than when you are stronger than them.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
17d ago
Yep that's the West today, two different cultures that hate each other and don't understand each other's mythology (not implying symmetrical ignorance, because one side understands the other a lot better than the other way around, but broadly speaking) laughing at how stupid each other is.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20d ago
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20d ago
Ah yes, 'just make characters with character' but they can't be all eye candy, even if it's a video game, and it literally only exists for the purposes of escapism. And they can't all be white - even if it's historically accurate, even if the story takes place in a time and place where there were next to no non-white people and white people were actually racist, proper racist unlike the 'less comfortable with people who don't look like them' racism of today, the kind of racists who fought over nationality, you have to put some other races in or it's white supremacy.
As for mukokuseki, no, that's Whig history. In the early days of idpol 'the white skin enjoyers' were basically non-existent in terms of presence, especially in the anime scene. All the racists there were racist like me - at all times willing to talk to and work with and befriend and bang any other race but unwilling to self flagellate over imagined historical crimes.
That is why I am suspicious of claims Supergiant were 'just making characters' when they made a bunch of changes that all just so happen to appeal to the woke ideology. Maybe you are too young to be around for the start of this shit, but I'm not. I have seen the insidious 'just make characters with character, but also they have to follow these rules or you're cancelled' argument and the death by degrees it enables.
Also, at a glance. And yet Hestia is one of the most popular characters in that franchise, because she has character - despite being pretty. Why are progressives obsessed with looks?
Edit: accidentally hit post too early, added the last sentence.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20d ago
That's a pretty good argument, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something deeper to your complaint. There is an undercurrent of resentment to your position that twists the perspective you are arguing, not necessarily in your case, although that isn't to rule it out. In particular -
TIL the word for "basically white, or close enough that dark skin-fearing consumers won't raise a fuss".
Is an ironic inversion of the argument against mukokuseki in the early days of the idpol ascension, which was that mukokuseki was the word for 'Japanese but not so Japanese it upsets white people.' Either way it's white supremacy?
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20d ago
God damn, that was a great read. And Eisenman made some good arguments - I wish the current proponents of his cosmology argued so well. It is depressing to realise that Alexander, despite by the sounds of it representing the majority opinion, essentially lost, though.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
21d ago
"Not every room in my house needs to be aesthetically pleasing! Where's the variety? Where's the tension? If every room in my house is painted pleasant colours, I will take aesthetic pleasure for granted and I won't appreciate those rooms as much! That's why I painted my living room traffic cone orange with bright pink molding."
Also I don't know why you would assume a Japanese production with Japanese artists working in a Japanese style would make a white character, but they didn't. She's mukokuseki.
Edit: lol that was you calling her a big tiddy Asian girl, so I think even you know you're being reductive.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
21d ago
Oh of course. Your mention of this time last year made me think there was something election related involved and I got lost in trying to remember what the youths were saying back then.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
22d ago
What about their opinion on the Israel situation do you find baffling in particular?
What would it look like if that happened? We'd get a bunch of studies showing powdered milk in a plastic bottle is just as good as actual milk from a mother's body, despite that being as crazy as claiming powdered milk is just as good as regular milk.
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