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
25d ago
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
25d ago
Agreed, that is what Christians should have been doing. Shaming people indiscriminately and without explanation in the name of sin is not showing the love of Christ, imo.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
pineapples
Lol, I love that this is a thing here now.
Like, one, America is an actual nation. Number two, the concept of having a passport and citizenship mean something. Being an American means something. Therefore, number three, different laws apply to foreigners, illegal immigrants, than to the native population. Number four, if people who are not native to America start burning things down, then you not only have to take action, you have to deport those people immediately. Number five, if foreign politicians like the President of Mexico starts cheering on, you know, effectively a kind of invasion into your country, you don't side with them, you side against them.
This is an extremely good breakdown! I mean yeah the total disregard for the law and the idea of a nation is just... insane. I don't understand it. I guess there's a justification that moral law is higher than secular law, which I agree with but like... you can't just ignore it as a politician.
EDIT: My other favorite quote from this video:
Of course you arrest the people in face masks! You don't just allow ninjas to roam around in the street!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
The Romans had huge amounts of superstitions and traditions related to declaring war, and making peace. Numa Pompilius, who first held the title Pontifex Maximus which has gone in unbroken succession to our current Pope Leo, introduced the tradition of the Temple of Janus to the Roman populace in order to tame their warlike urges.
Hasn't the succession been broken a few times? Like with the antipopes and such?
But yes agree with the broader point. It speaks to the entire idea of chaos growing and the flood coming to consume us as we chip away at meaning and reality. Truth becomes impossible to pin down - are we at war? or are we in peace?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Good points. It's repeated a lot around here, but the post-WW2 global order does seem to have almost fully broken down at this point.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Dismantling a tool that could be used for a nefarious purpose isn't proof that a nefarious purpose won't occur, but it's about as good as one can get from inference. Especially given the rather elaborate preparation kabuki sets the Trump administration has demonstrated to date, such as the whole DOGE saga and how it started with the USAID takedown. There was a heck of a lot of choreographing in that, which is about as good an indication of prepatory planning, and the sort of policy-cognizant planning that would recognize tools for a crackdown campaign.
Except because of the makeup of the whole apparatus, it couldn't be used by Trump or the right. It was a left-only set up from the beginning.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Thanks! Yeah already follow Lyons (he's Orthodox btw!) and the Wyclif guy looks interesting. Subbed to him.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Man, just got back in the gym (once a week) doing some basic compound lifts, and holy crap it feels amazing! I've been doing calisthenics for a while and kind of thought I was getting into shape, but it's crazy how much more efficient the gym is. Highly recommend for folks if you've been putting it off.
What helped for me is deciding not to commit to a whole big schedule, just going in and doing squats, bench, RDL, shoulder press, lat pull downs, and some seated rows. I can knock it all out in like ~45 mins which is nice, and doable once a week. Hopefully it's a generally balanced workout routine, I got it from Gemini so... who knows?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Not bad! I think we are generally on the same page, hah. Personally I simply see religion as a higher level of rationality - while materialism may work on some level, humans still inherently operate in the world on a symbolic frame. To ignore the symbolic frame entirely is foolish.
That being said, I personally think the symbolic frame is the higher level of reality as opposed to the secular materialist one. But that takes a bigger leap.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Sun Tzu said to be subtle to the point of formlessness. I feel like the current developments in terms of drones are simply taking that old advice seriously. Instead of having a small number of very expensive assets concentrated in one geographic position for ease of communication and handling and to leverage overlapping areas of influence (phalanx, encamped Roman legion, turtle ships, line formation, star fort, grand battery, battleship, tank brigade, transport convoy, carrier group, bomber wing), we're taking another step towards uniquitous, distributed, affordable and flexibly deployed assets (skirmishers in general, zealot sicarii, flying columns, organic artillery, guerilla tactics, a rifle behind each blade of grass, minefields, man-portable anti-tank and anti-air weapons, nuclear triad). The means of destruction are to be omnipresent, always available, always replaceable, and as unpredictable as possible. The entire theater of war is to be flooded with them to the point where you're no longer able to seek out and destroy a discrete enemy at all, or able to hold and lay claim to a specific place, because the enemy is not obliged to present any vulnerabilities in order to attack and all places are equally undesirable to occupy.
Wow, this paragraph was extremely chilling. Good job.
we're sill at the early stages of what will one day be swarms of millions of miniscule drones mapping out the contested space, being eyes and ears for hundreds of thousands of anti-personnel drones, backed up with tens of thousands of anti-armor drones.
Didn't think about the different type/level of drone but it makes a lot of sense. Again, chilling!!! But kind of cool.
More realistically, the countermeasure to infinite omnipresent autonomous drone swarms will be infinite omnipresent autonomous drone swarms of our own. It's practically guaranteed. I'd be willing to take bets on this if I had money to spare.
What about EMPs? Or strikes at drone control centers?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
If war becomes increasingly technological, as seems the trend, we can expect a re-feudalization of our politics produced by this basic military necessity. Not in our lifetime, of course, but soon. Mass politics is necessary to get masses of men into the field in an age when how many men you can put in the field determines who wins. This five hundred year cycle of "democracy" has really been the political concessions necessary to get large numbers of men into the army.
Wait so you're saying that we'll see less democracy as technology increases, and the need for manpower decreases?
And yeah I do agree corporate power is highly concerning. Especially that of AI companies. We'll see where things shake out I suppose.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Is he supposed to be Tim Dillon?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I love you and @BurdensomeCount's fun elitist views. Not elitist in a negative way, and you both seem to really mean it! It's quite enjoyable.
What are some of the last few good blogs?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Eh, I still think in general while yes an extremely good liar can pull it off, it's much harder on average. Perhaps if you get all of your news from one person it is riskier.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Hmm I suppose I am, though from your reply it sounded like you had done none of those things.
I could go down a whole rabbit whole on history and the symbolic worldview versus materialism etc but idk I don’t want to evangelize if you aren’t into it hah. Thanks for following up.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
In the correlations with easier, the countries with higher establishment media trust, and the higher willingness to support media truth-corrections, are also the countries where most people still prefer to read rather than hear (or watch) their online news.
This makes me wonder if the rise of podcasting/media is partially due to the fact that when you don't trust someone, you want to get more senses/more data when you take in information. It's much easier to consistently lie in print than it is in a talkshow or video, if only because you can pick up on tone of voice, pitch, etc etc.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I hope you become a priest. Would be a good calling for you, from your writing on here!!!
But yeah I mean, sigh. That’s the rub. We can long for a better church all day but for our individual souls we need community. I agree with most of your critiques and wish we were more like the original church, that’s Orthodoxy’s whole thing. Even if we aren’t always perfect at it.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Ahh yes not sure how it got here.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Sure, DMed.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Oh.... well why are you so contemptuous about it all? If you haven't tried the suggestions people have offered to open yourself to the supernatural, what makes you so confident that you are right?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Thank you for the detailed response!
I think part of the problem is that many churches try to do this, and end up shaming each other and causing all sorts of antisocial issues, grasping at social status, etc etc. How do you propose to avoid all of this? These are major problems that have derailed all sorts of churches in the past.
You know, I do think the "vibe" of Christianity could and should be more intense, we should be more focused on the faith, etc. I think that's the aim of monasteries. Have you heard of this book? My copy has not yet arrived but from what I've heard on podcasts this book probably argues something very similar.
And again my question is - are you going to start a new Church? What is the actual plan you have (assuming you are a Christian - I actually don't know!) From my POV, even if most churches aren't perfect, it's a sight better to join an existing church that is directionally right (compared to other churches) and do my best, rather than trying to start something myself.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Where does Jung say that Satan needs to be raised into the trinity? I remember reading something about how we need to embrace the divine feminine, but don't remember the Satan part.
In the Red Book, where he says all sorts of weird stuff. It was only released a few years ago so this wasn't common knowledge for most of the period of Jung scholarship. He also basically tried to start a cult, among other things.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I think needing to have "meaning in your life" is largely overrated. Life is largely something you just get through -- nature loved using the stick much more than the carrot.
It seems to differ quite a bit from person to person. For people like me, having no meaning in life is enough to drive you to drink, or far worse. I'd imagine this might also be a semantic issue - you probably have "meaning" in the sense I mean, even if you don't necessarily see it that way. For me meaning is like... motivation to do anything whatsoever. Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
Modern society is extremely cushy in most ways, sanding off the edges of the stick. This is why I see populists as a natural enemy -- they want "burn it all down" for stupid reasons based largely on hallucinations, and they'd take my comfy pillows away in the process.
Perhaps you are typical minding here. The majority of people, it seems, don't have their happiness or satisfaction levels meaningfully raised by material gain. Perhaps there is more to life than creature comforts. I agree that most people are under massive delusions though, it's quite sad.
If I have any life goals, it would be to build something, probably a video game or maybe something with AI. I've made essentially zero progress in that goal, but I have no illusions that the fault lies with anyone other than myself for being excessively lazy.
Why do you want to build something?
Hey another Motte Orthodox convert! There are a bunch of us here. We should start a club or something.
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