ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
Blogger, Christian convert, general strange one. https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/
User ID: 3709
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Hey thanks man. It’s a gift from God, was never very good at it without Him heh.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Can you spell out the obvious conclusions for me?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Do you really think shoving all the gays back in the closet and teaching masturbation is evil will fix everything? I get that's low hanging fruit but that's what a return to Christianity also implies, the wages of sin are death. If so what do you actually think we should do about the gays? I feel like we have enough Scientific and psychological knowledge about them and their are millions of them just in the US so what are we gonna do? I think that a quiet return to Christianity works a lot better when you have secular society for your gay sons to fade into
This is a great question, and definitely one the Church has struggled to have a convincing answer to for the modern world. Personally I do think that being gay is sinful and overall worse than being attracted to the opposite sex, and aiming for a family. I don't think pushing gays back in the closet will fix everything. However, I do think that promoting and growing the amount of healthy, happy marriages with children who are treated well will fix many of the problems in our society, if not most!
Of course if you believe Christianity is true well than that's that.
Yep... that is that heh. I do love Buddhism though, and actually was deeply into it for over a decade before I converted. So I agree with you on some things at least.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Absolutely! I could've been more clear - I don't blame game devs individually at all! I think this issue is a broader reflection of our cultural values, what we assign status to, and how difficult we make it for people to actually change things as opposed to just work as cogs in a giant system.
I hope we are able to renew some of our cultural institutions, but we'll likely need some clearing of the deadwood first.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
No need to be so rude. We have different beliefs. I believe He exists, so yes forgotten God is how I put it.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
This is why the drum needs to be beaten over and over again that e-verify and ruinous fines for companies that employ illegal immigrants is the only way the problem will be solved. Trying to forcibly deport people while giving them a wonderful economic situation is a fool's gambit.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
For instance, I'm developing a game, and the standards for indie games over the past decade have ballooned to such a wild degree that we're now selecting for elite members of the population who can learn and do anything. If 8-10 years ago you could succeed off a fun gameplay loop alone, in 2025 it now takes a unique art style, a healthy and active social media presence, and a fun+unique gameplay loop at minimum. You may counter that I'm describing the mega-hits, but the market is so risky that if you're not aiming for a mega-hit, you're rolling the dice on a flop. Gamers have criticized the industry for years for letting AA games die, but they died at the hands of the consumer.
The real problem with all of this is that our best and brightest are competing to make video games and other pieces of entertainment which are, let's be real, mostly meaningless. Not all games can be Expedition 33.
No offense meant, but ideally these gifted people would be going into government and industry, not spending all their time on video games.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Which policy could they name? And which are the three?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
I'm not saying they have discovered anything. I'm saying the techniques are more salient in the Buddhist tradition and easier for the modern mind to understand. Prayer and meditative prayer is an extremely confusing concept comparatively, in my opinion. It's also not nearly as popular in Christian circles.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Somatic meditation, breath meditation, and other forms of attentional work are practiced in Catholicism? Do you have sources? I'd be quite curious.
I'm Orthodox and while we do have hesychasm, more.... fluid forms of attentional practice are often frowned upon. I haven't done an exhaustive dive though.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Because we don't study history, and we lose the cultural understanding that made those works great in the first place. We forget the lessons our fathers learnt in blood when we forget the art that touched their hearts. We doom ourselves to falling into the same pits they did.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
The issue I see here is that conservatism is increasingly the ideology of uneducated people and those who went to third-rate universities. Instead of thinking about how to acquire power, or attract EHC who have power, they're smoking copium about how noble manual labor is.
Hmm I think it's hard to put the entire right into a bucket like that. I would say the same for the left. It's a broad coalition. Neither party right now really appeals to the educated elite imo, with progressives throwing away much of their historic stances and technocratic focus for identity politics.
In general I think the left has an ideal intellectual as an effete, sarcastic, witty urbanite who focuses on socialization. Whereas the ideal intellectual on the right is a woodsman, a man who knows the Western canon extremely well, can debate and write poetry with the best of them, but also does have that connection with the land and with the common people. It's a very classically Christian notion, imo.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
It never made sense to me in art, literature, history, or other liberal arts. Those things can be easily learned by simply reading tge texts, or practicing drawing or writing. If I had a kid who wanted to be a writer, im not sure I’d make him go through university— in fact it’s a waste of time.
There used to be (and still is in some areas) a long, rich tradition of the humanities, passed down throughout the centuries via the academy and other institutions of knowledge generation.
This tradition and gatekeeping it is crucial, and keeping the chain of humanities alive is in my opinion crucial as well. If you just let the masses go at it as they will, art becomes diluted and we stop caring about the old great works of art. As we're seeing now...
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Friend, mate, old buddy, old pal - learn a new song? "Righties are dumb and smelly and low-class and have too many bastard kids and are way too sympathetic to the low-grade low-IQ blacks and browns who have too many bastard kids" is getting boring now.
Ok come on now. @AlexanderTurok is biased against many right-wing folks as he has admitted, just like 80%+ of us here are biased against the left, progressives, wokes, etc etc. The entire point of this site is to allow us to discuss across ideological divides.
Personally I think this post was fine and shows a willingness to take the feedback from the mods he was given earlier.
While it's a bit of a personal attack, I do think this is a interesting frame - should the elites not care about the working class? So far in America they have (at least nominally), seems like folks nowadays are sort of turning against that. I am curious to see where elite consensus moves on this.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Interesting post! I agree that all things being equal, a summer job is a great way to spend time. I did a couple summer jobs, but also spent a few summers just playing video games nonstop from sunrise to well past sundown. Personally I think if I was forced to get a summer job every summer, I would've developed a lot more virtue overall.
I'm curious overall - do you not see a benefit to being in touch with the working class whatsoever? To understanding how the other half lives, so to speak?
Or are you just saying that being in touch with the working class isn't good strictly in the sense of getting into an Ivy League school?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
God is inherently interesting and doesn't need us to make Him anything. Eventually more and more people will be broken by the dopamine treadmill and will come back to God, as I have. Happens every day.
It may not necessarily happen immediately, I'd imagine this will play out over a large time scale as it often does. But the wages of sin are death, especially on a societal scale.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
I am familiar, I the Jesus Prayer and occasionally prayer beads. I still think meditation in the Buddhist view is more flexible and able to look into different things, such as focusing attention on the body, or the breath, areas and objects of attention which are useful in the Christian path.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
Cries even worse in DOTA2...
Cries in League of Legends...
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
What you rarely seem to find is women who have their lives generally organized, they don't spend money exorbitantly, they stay in shape through regular but not obsessive exercise and watching their diet, and have moderate ambition but are happy to just relax most nights. Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't. Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
It is indeed a pretty brutal and humbling realization. I knew exactly what you were going to talk about with the Christmas tree!
Having parents explode with anger at children is a terrible thing, and I pray I don't end up doing it if I'm blessed with kids. Except in rare circumstances, of course.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Great write up thanks for pointing all of this out. I didn't grow up with anything like this, and eventually drifted to a more traditional lifestyle after seeing where the atomized liberal worldview led. I wish I had! It's hard for kids to see the benefit though, I'd imagine.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
I hate to be pithy, but the problem is that we have forgotten God. I'm serious.
As we lose our connection to the divine and to a personal sense of moral agency, and responsibility, our society can't help but fall apart like this. A religious revival is desperately needed.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
I love the earnestness on display here! I think you should have kids, but agree with the thrust of your post that productive members of society is a bigger problem than quantity itself.
A huge issue is that we have lost community, which is a bit of a meme at this point but it's true. We don't have extended family, extended friend networks, etc. I think the most important thing to focus on is improving that social fabric as you can. Joining a religion helps with that too.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4d ago
Generally the mods want a little more for a top level comment btw, at least summarizing the link preferably.
“Heap more evils upon them O Lord, heap more evils upon those who are glorious upon earth.”
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