Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
No bio...
User ID: 732
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
For those of you who aren't Christian, I'd like to hear more about what your own spiritual/moral system looks like, and what your own vision of the future of society going forward is.
As for what I think religion is going to look like in the future, I think it’s very tough to predict what AI is going to do and how it will shape people’s religious experiences. I’m loath to make an attempt at prediction just yet.
What I’d like future religion to look like, once the hyper-advanced one-world technocracy takes over, is a paradigm that leaves room for both a High Religion and a Low Religion. The High Religion would be highly centralized, universalized, and cosmopolitan, filling a similar social role to medieval Catholicism. It’d be the religion of the State, a hierarchical and orderly religion with grand cathedrals, inspiring awe.
I’d like this to look, theologically and aesthetically, something like Zoroastrianism, or, for a fictional example, the Faith Of The Seven in A Song Of Ice And Fire. There is a central overarching godhead, but it is split into multiple personae/sub-identities which act as intermediaries between its incomprehensible hyperintelligence and mankind. Those personae don’t all share the same motivations and intentions, which can explain why so much of the world seems chaotic and not guided by some grand unified “master plan”.
The Low Religion would look more like Shinto or Proto-Indo-European religion, centered around ancestor worship and personal tutelary deities. Guardian angels, the spirits of specific locations or families, nature spirits, etc. It would allow for a far more eclectic and personalized range of worship practices rooted in specific communities, and could be theologically integrated in some way with the High Religion such that they are understood not to be in inherent tension.
As for my personal spirituality, I’m very much still trying to figure that out. Like you, I’m trying to balance the competing demands of, on the one hand, attempting to locate a worldview which intuitively seems true and meaningful, and on the other hand trying to make sure my religious practices can integrate me into a larger cultural and communal framework that isn’t a total weirdo LARP. If there was a thriving modern Hellenist community in the United States today I would probably join it in a heartbeat, but there isn’t, so I have to try and figure out what actually-existing thing works for me. I’ve been reading into Hermeticism and esotericism more generally, in the hope that it will allow me to engage in an existing religious tradition on a level beyond the literal/exoteric.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
I'd point to the wealth of social science evidence showing that religious people are happier, have more friends, give more money to charity, have more trust, have more children and, my personal favourite, have more satisfying sex lives. In our atomised, lonely, anxious, childless and sexless age, all that stuff seems even more important.
How do you know you’re not mistaking correlation for causation, or even getting the causation reversed? Perhaps people who are inclined toward pro-social and conservative temperaments are more likely to express religious belief to pollsters because that’s the social software into which they were raised? Meanwhile the people with the same basic temperament (and same basically successful and pro-social life patterns) who live in Japan — a country where Christianity has had very little impact, and in which most people’s engagement with religious practice is extremely sporadic and surface-level — would either express wishy-washy belief in Buddhism, or honestly report that they are not sincerely religious.
Only the Abrahamic religions seem to have a strong pronatal effect
Why is “having a lot of kids” the most important thing a religion can inspire its adherents to do? African and Haitian Christians routinely have families of 6-7 children, and that certainly hasn’t made their lives or their countries better. I’d much rather those places have smaller families, but for geopolitical reasons and for their own good.
Islam leads to gestures wildly at the Middle East.
Islamic societies were the most advanced in the world for centuries. Look into the Islamic Golden Age. The civilization that built the Alhambra and founded the first universities in the world, institutions which directly inspired the Europeans who founded the oldest centers of higher learning in Europe.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
This forum has a ton of lurkers and users who at some point switch from only posting sporadically to suddenly becoming more active. It’s very plausible that TequilaMockingbird is one such user, and that seeing Hlynka banned inspired him to “take up the mantle” of defending the cultural/ideological corner that Hlynka had previously occupied. There has always been a contingent of users here who (bizarrely) found Hlynka’s posts profoundly insightful and important, and who thought he was fighting the good fight against the (imagined) “Blue Tribe” consensus of the community.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
To be clear, I have never been nostalgic for Hlynka and have been glad he’s gone since the second he caught his ban.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
I would find that extremely surprising, given my interactions with Kulak and my observations of his personal interactions with others. (There are places other than TheMotte where he dwells, and I’ve also been known to dwell in some of them.) Mostly I’d just be very surprised to learn that Kulak has a second, way less strident, persona. I’ve watched him have embarrassing and quite personally-vindictive crash-outs over relatively minor disagreements — something which I’ve never seen from @hydroacetylene.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
Both @Belisarius and I speculated four months ago that @TequilaMockingbird may be the return of Hlynka, but my confidence was fairly low then and remains a bit shaky even now. The “Steve Sailer is actually a liberal” thing is so inexplicable a delusion that it’s tough to believe two people could arrive at it independently, but I guess it’s plausible, given a certain set of intellectual priors (and generalized mistrust of urban Californians) which Hlynka and TequilaMockingbird might just happen to share.
I support the ban because anyone who peppers their post full of “dude I’m totally gonna get banned for this one, the mods are gonna be soooo pissed” ban-baiting deserves to get what they’re asking for. This can be true even if he’s not truly a ban evader.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
2mo ago
I think @problem_redditor was referring to “other humans” as aliens.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
When I was a kid in that actual era, I listened to a ton of music from the 80’s and 90’s, as well as contemporary music. I think that’s extremely normal and doesn’t say much about the quality of current music.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
Well… you’re right about white, American, and not bald! Sadly you struck out on the rest. Although I’m intrigued by that last part. Hopefully at some point in my life I’ll make you right about that!
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
I can’t resist the temptation. Do me do me do me!
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
You probably know he's hugely popular
Yeah, I definitely wanted this to be my bridge back into the genre, and had heard a lot of great things about it. I agree that the characterizations are dicey at times and that much of the dialogue writing is awful. I find the cosmology interesting, though, and I admit I’m a sucker for the “here’s a list of factions with distinct personality traits and iconography, sort yourself into the one that you’d be a part of” trope.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
I have not read any of his other stuff (I read a lot of fantasy literature in middle school and high school, but took a very long break from the genre) so I have no preconceived notions.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
Oh good. The worst parts of the books so far have l been Sanderson’s various pathetic attempts at insult humor, which he apparently considers the height of wit, and that entire mini-arc brought out the nadir of it.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
I just started Oathbringer, the third novel in the Stormlight Archive series. I really enjoyed the second half of The Way Of Kings and the first two-thirds of Words Of Radiance, but I found the
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
I really appreciate this comment, because it reveals that I have put too much trust in commentators who are either extrapolating from incomplete information, or simply grasping at straws. I should have used more humility before speaking confidently regarding a topic about which I lacked sufficient direct knowledge!
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
No. You are still missing the point I was trying to make. By all means, perhaps it matters that the characters are white. My argument is that (the pro-race-blind-casting position is that) it shouldn't matter if a character who is theoretically white within the story is played by an actor who is visibly black.
Buddy… appearance is part of acting. One uses one’s physical body to portray actions, emotion, intent, etc. This is also why we use costuming and make-up to alter actors’ appearances to better fit the story we’re attempting to tell. The hypothetical “steel-manned pro-race-blind-casting advocate” would readily acknowledge the absurdity of making a Pride and Prejudice film in which one of the actors (and only one) decided to wear a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and cargo shorts while the rest of the actors wore period clothing. The only artistically-defensible reason to do so is if one were trying to make some sort of meta-commentary. And sure, I could definitely imagine an artfully-done version of this, intentionally poking at the conventions of filmmaking and storytelling, forcing audiences to confront their own expectations, etc. That’s its own genre, though, and is obviously very distinct from genres in which verisimilitude is valued and important.
What you’re failing to grapple with is the distinct expectations that separate different genres. The Muppets can get away with what they do because they’re in a specific genre in which verisimilitude does not, and cannot, exist as an expectation. There are no real-world analogues for talking frogs and green furry guys who live in trash cans. The conventions of the genre have specific demands and expectations, and the audience is already bought into them. What you’re now asking audiences to do is alter their expectations such that all genres throw out previous expectations of visual verisimilitude, and adopt ones closer to madcap puppet comedy. And you don’t seem to have a coherent artistic reason why, since you don’t seem to have properly internalized why so many genres had that expectation in the first place.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
and to make fewer snide comments about the apparent population genetics of the Ring of Powers Shire being implausible, which is, again, missing the point on a level with complaining that a Muppet doesn't look like a real barnyard animal.
You have chosen an especially poor example with Rings Of Power, because it belies either an ignorance about the purpose behind Tolkien’s work, or else an intentional disregard for it. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories are intended as an ersatz mythos for the historical peoples of the British Isles; the various peoples and factions of the world are rough stand-ins or symbolic idealizations of the various ethnic groups and their myths which have coalesced into the modern (white) peoples of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. (And, by extension, the Celtic and North Germanic peoples of Continental Europe.) Gondor as a rough analogue for Roman-Celtic Britain, Rohan as the horse-obsessed Anglo-Saxons, Elves as the remnants of the pre-Aryan Neolithic peoples, etc. To the extent that this matters to you, it should matter that the actors involved at least plausibly physically resemble somebody belonging to, or descending from, those peoples. It matters that they’re white in a way that it doesn’t matter if the actors in a Star Wars film are white.
You dodged Nybbler’s pretty incisive point about a non-black actor playing a historically black individual. If a director set out to make a Harriet Tubman biopic and chose to cast Saiorse Ronan in the title role, there is no amount of “she just really crushed the audition, and I’ve always wanted to work with her” that would suffice to excuse what would be (correctly) interpreted at a slap in the face to black Americans. They own Harriet Tubman’s legacy in a way that white people obviously don’t. She means something to them, it’s important for them to see themselves in her, and pretty much everybody understands that.
So then the question is, are white people allowed to own any historical figures or stories of their own? Is it right and fair for white British people, a great many of whom are directly descended from RAF pilots, to expect that a casting director honor the reality of what those men looked like, sounded like, etc.? Is it fair for Brits to want to see themselves reflected accurately on screen? What about their fictional/mythical but still important figures? King Arthur? Sherlock Holmes? Jeeves and Wooster? Mr. Darcy?
I expect that your answer might be, “Sure, but that doesn’t mean any individual casting director has any obligation to care about that.” But I don’t think you actually believe that. I think you recognize that there is an explicitly redistributive aspect to modern race-swapped casting. A desire to make up for past wrongs and throw a bone to non-white actors who’ve had a relatively rougher go of it than their white companions. Isn’t that why you would “encourage” directors to keep doing it if you had the power to do so?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
This is an astute observation, but I assume you can reason out what the result would be if an entire generation or two of Americans were raised only being exposed to the counterfactual reality presented in media, with no knowledge of our exposure to the mundane-but-not-telegenic underlying reality. They’d have an extremely skewed understanding of what the world is actually like.
Will be curious to see how the tone of shows like this changes having now entered an era of “reckoning” and “post-mortems” of democratic hubris.
This appears not to be happening at all, so far as I can tell. After a brief but abortive period of maybe a couple of weeks immediately following the election, in which it seemed like there might be some small but sincere effort toward this, progressives appear overwhelmingly to have hunkered down into a stance that they were right all along and that the voters really are just too irredeemable to ever be trusted again. Go on Bluesky and see how people who are perceived to be advocating “popularism” are treated. (You’re accused of throwing trans people and minorities to the wolves, betraying them for short-term mercenary political gain.)
A handful of smart-but-cynical elite figures like Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein might be trying to conduct a proper course-correction, but they appear to have little or no influence on the tier of progressives thought leaders and activists just below them. Presumably television scriptwriters are on the tier even below that one, totally insulated from the imprecations of politically-savvy wonks.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
and the only thing it accomplishes is to potentially egg on the next mass shooter
Do you genuinely believe that the next mass shooter is reading The Motte? And if the answer is yes, do you believe that his opinions would not have been radicalized if not for having read racially-tinged comments on The Motte?
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
"don't adopt a black kid, they're all bad, and they're ruining everything".
No, the actual claim is, “The specific black kids who are up for adoption/fostering in America are, to an extremely large extent, likely to be a huge problem.” They are not a randomly-selected cross-section of the overall black population. There is a reason why they are up for adoption, and it is nearly always a terrible reflection on the parents.
If you accept any sort of hereditarian explanation of human behavior, then it should matter to you that the kid you’re considering for adoption is very very very likely to be the child of A) a drug addict), B) an incarcerated person, or C) a teenage unwed mother. (Or the very common D) all of the above.) The same traits that led such a person to such a lowly state are likely to manifest at least to some extent in the child as well. Even if you don’t accept any hereditarian claims, you still have to worry about things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, childhood malnutrition, and even neglect/abuse leading to stunted cognitive/physical development, etc. Again, these things are not guaranteed to make the child a ticking time bomb, but the likelihood is far from zero.
These things are at least partially true of non-black children up for adoption or in the foster system as well, but to a markedly lesser extent. The likelihood of these problems just is higher when it comes to adopting a black child. That could change at some point down the road, and certainly there are numerous exceptions and success stories even today, but that doesn’t mean it’s immoral or misguided to take these things into account.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
I’m not disagreeing with any of that. I’m fully aware that the people I’m talking about start their instruments at a young age. That doesn’t mean they don’t still need a bunch more instruction and practice later on.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
If you haven't learned the violin by 12, you probably aren't going to learn it very well if at all.
Musicians can actually, you know, improve past what they’ve learned by age 12. That’s when serious musicians start grinding, learning new techniques, expanding their knowledge of theory, etc. My high school’s band program (of which I was a part) was small and pathetic compared to wealthier schools in our district, but a number of the musician kids I knew even then were spending a lot of time practicing to get good enough to potentially pursue it further into college and beyond. A disproportionate number of them, as I’m sure you can imagine, were Asian. Far from the Tiger Mom caricature — toiling away miserably at an instrument they hate in order to farm Extracurricular Points — most of them seemed to genuinely love the opportunity to get better at creating beautiful music.
I had a summer job between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Your classic fast food job, working mostly with dudes 5+ years my senior. After that, though, as I started to get more serious about extracurricular, my parents encouraged me to quit in order to focus on schoolwork, summer reading assignments, summer band practice, etc. I also similarly had a job — this time a restaurant job — for over a year during college, which directly and negatively impacted my ability to participate in many of the projects which would have been very helpful for preparing my professional development in my chosen major.
I agree that these jobs were enriching in the sense that they forced me to develop time management, a thick skin when being given negative feedback or undesirable tasks, and an exposure to a broad cross-section of society. I further agree that many of the individuals at whom you’re taking aim would certainly have benefited considerably in the same way. I’m just not convinced that these are strictly superior qualities to develop for the specific class of people who are genuine candidates for the Ivy League in 2025.
I think our society does still need a basically aristocratic class of people who are afforded the luxury of focusing purely on pursuits of the mind. The problem of ensuring that they’ve interfaced enough with the real world to prevent them from spiraling into the delusions of Pure Political Theory™️ is a very real one, but I’m not convinced that making them flip burgers or pick strawberries for a year is the optimal way to achieve that end.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
3mo ago
The things Asians are having their kids do aren't really things that help them grow or learn, they're just a box checking exercise to help them get into college.
What sorts of things do you have in mind? As far as I’m aware, such things might include, for example, practicing an instrument. This strikes me as a great example of growth and learning, even if the logic motivating it (at least on the part of the parents) might be mostly mercenary.
I also want Catholicism without the baked-in commitments to universal human equality and open-ended duty of care to the least productive, least valuable members of the human race. (Commitments which appear to be a large factor underlying why the Catholic Church is one of the largest and most committed facilitators of mass immigration to Europe and the United States.) I’m also uncomfortable with how many of its most important saints are venerated precisely because they were persecuted by the society around them; this seems yet again to center the outcasts, the dissidents, the weirdos. Catholicism built a very impressive edifice atop a Third-Worldist-adjacent ideological chassis, but the underlying logic was inevitably going to take over and become dominant at some point, which is (in my opinion) how you get modern Catholicism.
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