coffee_enjoyer
☕️
No bio...
User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
desiring to record all of their faces
What do you think the devout Jewish man was attempting to do by walking into the small, dense protesting square with his phone recording? We can make rational inferences here, this isn’t an SAT problem. His compatriots online are threatening to ensure none of them get a job after graduating.
cop uniform
That’s my fault, replace that with a pro-cop outfit
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
16d ago
are not really interested in having a real debate - they want to proselytize
This is not the case for SS, who I see entering into cited discussions with critics who usually do not bring citations.
The actual challenge is that Holocaust deniers are a very highly motivated group of people
I think they are highly motivated because the holocaust is one of the central events of the 20th century which they believe has false historiography. If you go to a Christian forum you will see no shortage of debaters who only care about the Trinity or an Atonement theory because, being central elements of their topic of interest, they consider the correct interpretation to be important. I mean jeeze, “faith vs works” which be the whole forum posting history of a given online Christian debater. The typical holocaust denier has far less interest at stake than, say, the typical online Israeli or Zionist. One of them believes something is wrong, the other’s identity is at stake. I know that it’s popular wisdom that holocaust deniers are really, strongly motivated by hating Jews, but I think that is imputing on them a baseless and primitive psychology. “They hate them because they are more successful” — do you see Protestant whites online dedicating their online presence to hating Catholics or Chinese, Harvard grads, AP students, tall people? I personally do not subscribe to the “spontaneously generated hatred” theory of holocaust denial. It’s more like moon landing denial, the passion for which is motivated by clarifying a central narrative in the popular psyche. Are these people going to be a bit nuts? Yeah, probably every historical revisionist regardless of topic is a bit nuts. (If you want to see this in the wild, there’s a forum called EarlyWritings which focuses on early Christian historiography, and you see posters whose whole posting history centers on a conspiracy involving Marcion or Valentinus etc. And they are clearly not motivated by hatred.)
If we had really shitty and annoying holocaust posters I would say ban them all, but SS posts are IMO interesting, well-written, and novel. Actually, he may be the best of his kind on the whole internet! When was the last top-level post he made on this, like two months ago? However I agree with mod note that he needs to be more clear in the title about his intentions. But let him make a top level post like ever 2-3 months IMO.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1mo ago
Texas Governor Abbott signs law attempting to ban free speech at universities whenever the speech criticizes Israel in certain ways (described below).
The Executive Order requires all universities to —
-
Review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution.
-
Ensure that these policies are being enforced on campuses and that groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies.
-
Include the definition of antisemitism, adopted by the State of Texas in Section 448.001 of the Texas Government Code, in university free speech policies to guide university personnel and students on what constitutes antisemitic speech.
Section 448.001 reads
Examples of antisemitism are included with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's "Working Definition of Antisemitism" adopted on May 26, 2016
And this definition includes (among other things) —
-
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
-
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
-
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
-
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
These examples are intentionally ambiguous and can be weaponized by politicians or the judiciary against critics. The first example simply bans anyone from criticizing Israel in the same way that Israel routinely criticize others, by comparing them to Nazis. This cuts off a whole spectrum of political comparisons from ever applying to Israel. The second example could imply that you are antisemitic if you criticize Israel for things without also criticizing other nations in the same breath, however culturally and politically distant the nation. The third implies that an ethnostate cannot be considered racist if it is Jewish. The fourth implies that no one — not a single politician who is Jewish — can be accused of being more loyal to his self-defined homeland than America.
IMO this is a clear affront to freedom of speech. I find it embarrassing that any conservative in America would sign a law like this. The ambiguity is dangerous because it could be used by biased politicians or judges in its broadest application. While I don’t think it’s good public rhetoric to compare Israel to Nazis, that should be legal because (1) Nazis are everyone’s go-to villains, (2) Israel was recently the subject of an ICJ inquiry regarding genocide, (3) ethnonations should be extra scrutinized for genocide, (4) ethnonations with a history of genocide (Kitos War) and who fondly remember their nation previously committing genocide in their Holy Text should be super extra scrutinized for potential genocidal acts. The holocaust, like it or not, has no actual relevance to the current conduct of the Israeli regime. In real life, multigenerational ethnic groups do not swear off the same violence that their grandparents were victims of. So comparisons are fair game, if usually in bad taste.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
9d ago
“All Israel” in that passage does not mean something like “literally every proclaimed Israelite”. In Romans 9 you find:
For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel […] it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved”
These are instrumental to understanding what Paul says in Romans 11, preceding it in the same epistle (an epistle without original delineations nonetheless). Israel != flesh, and Israel = a saved remnant. If not all who are descended from Israel are Israel, then when we read in 11 that “all Israel will be saved”, we must take this to mean the aforementioned real Israel rather than descended Israel by flesh (otherwise there would be no point in making the distinction beforehand).
This is why there’s a theme of a remnant Israel and a “broken off” Israel. Consider how pointless Paul’s effort would be to “save some” of his brothers by preaching if, at the end of the day, literally all of them are saved regardless of his preaching.
This may come off as mere miscellany to any non-Abrahamist readers but the consequences are serious for keeping the gospel stable. If every Jew is saved at the end of days, then there is no reason to convert to Christianity as a Jew or to preach to Jews (which the original apostles did). And Jesus’ threats of hell make no sense. It destroys the integrity of the Gospel in the same way that someone saying “you don’t have to follow the mitzvahs to be rewarded and saved” would destroy the integrity of Judaism.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
If you had read your own link, you would have found that Meinecke settled in a protesting location and subsequently counter protestors came to his location to disrupt him. We can turn on our thinking caps and realize that in our example at Yale, the Palestinian protesters are the original protesters.
Protestors surrounded Meinecke after about an hour.
and
Eventually, PrideFest attendees noticed Meinecke's presence.
If you continued reading your link, you would have found that one of the Court’s advised remedies was to make the counter-protestor step back from the original protestor.
there were several less speech-restrictive alternatives to achieve public safety. The officers could have required the protestors to take a step back from Meinecke. They could have called for more officers — as they did after Meinecke was arrested. They could have erected a free speech barricade.
These are the same actions taken by the original protesting unit to prevent confrontation with the Jewish student: he can counter protest mere steps away from the protest, just not where the original protestors are packed like sardines protesting. They self-barricaded themelves to prevent confrontation. It is commendable, but not exactly surprising, that these intelligent Yale student performed the exact actions that a Court had recommended to a police department, while using completely non-aggressive means (holding hands chained together). As to why there weren’t police officers doing this already, that’s a significant question that the admins should answer.
Do you really think that if the police were there to ensure the safety of student both protesting and counter-protesting, that they would have allowed both protestors and counter-protestors to stand side by side in a dimly lit courtyard? I just find this totally unreasonable, as there is no benefit at all to that, unless you are neurotically obsessed with the idea of punishing protestors who don’t get their little protest stamps confirmed for not following legal minutiae.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
I had asked the OP for evidence regarding Columbia but yeah, the video in the Twitter thread is from a Yale courtyard. There is no evidence he is being blocked from entering a building (at 9pm).
about access to a building
No, it is clearly a courtyard. We would need a longer video to prove anything more than that.
It was great, for the one side able to use it, isn't the most compelling argument for neutral access to public fora.
You would have to argue that regarding the obvious and clear special concerns of a student-led protest movement
court case
Well, Meinecke did not engage with any counter-protesters and had his own location where he was protesting.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
norm where whatever protest group that takes a public forum first gets to exclude people who disagree with their message
This is already the norm for legally-sanctioned protests, though, right? As I mentioned in other replies, it is common for police to prevent counter protestors from intruding on the space of protestors and vice versa.
a public forum
The video looks like it is taken at a courtyard, one of a dozen around the University. They aren’t holding captive the main amphitheater at Columbia or something, where yeah there would be a concern regarding the reasonable use of university amenities. Ironically, you could even argue that the courtyard is seeing greater facility during this protest, given the population density from the looks of it. But I’m not familiar with the layout of the university and where the video is taken.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
11d ago
The Amish are not parasitic for the simple reason that they pay more than they take out. This makes them less parasitic than other groups. They pay taxes, except social security, because they do their own thing for that, and they pool money for healthcare expenditures. They don’t really need roads in perfect conditions, they don’t spend a lot of time in jails, they don’t require a lot of policing, they don’t go into troublesome college debt, etc. They have solved the criminality problem without need for the military or police. And what makes them much less parasitic than normal American culture is that they don’t wastefully spend resources on fleeting pleasures. When a normal American makes a lot of money they might waste that money for their own pleasure; when an Amish makes a lot of money more of it goes into their community because they don’t do a lot of consumerism or debauchery.
The military point misses something important. There’s something called IW alternative service where conscientious observers aid the country in non-violent ways and the Amish used this during the Korean/Vietnam war. So the labor they would have spent as soldiers may be spent as factory workers. The economy does not stop when war occurs, even the deadliest wars need people to work factories, which the Amish work without committing to crimes or vice — possibly the best possible factory worker profile.
I found this study on Amish criminality and genetic selection . It argues that the Amish criminality rate is too low to be explained purely by criminal gene outflow and that there is also an element of cultural transmission. Another way we can measure this (which I don’t think has been done) is to search for homicide offenders in Ohio and filter for Amish-associated first and last names, as well as birthplace location. My intuition is that there are not a lot of formerly Amish homicide offenders.
Note that the question of gene outflow must answer to how America receives criminals. The Amish ostracize their criminals; were they the only people in America, the ostracized criminals would have to live in a makeshift criminal colony far away from Amish areas. If America lacks a solution to criminality like the Amish solution, that’s not an Amish problem, that’s again an America problem.
This is visible in the fact that there are very few converts
This is entirely explained by the lack of knowledge about Amish QoL. People don’t move to countries without knowing the job market and quality of life, neither do they buy kale without information about its health benefits. The average American might find the Amish quaint and cute, but they absolutely do not know how successful they are in terms of generating a high quality of life. (I, a 99th percentile Amish aficionado, was myself greatly surprised when I began checking all the metrics of Amish QoL. For instance, that the women are quite happy, feminism not included.)
Re: 5, I imagine the gay Amish can’t have sex and instead have to rely on loving platonic friendships with their male friends. Even so, we can imagine an Amish possible world where the gays get to form couples. My post is not intended to imply “let’s copy Amish 100%”, but rather to imply that all of our social progress since 1710 has not allowed us to live as good as our friends stuck in the past. In fact, it makes us and our progress-worshipping seem pretty silly and backwards. How much money and talent has been wasted on feminism when this does not appear to be a requirement for female happiness?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
Not at all, we can ask reasonable questions like:
-
does the protest movement actually represent a serious concern among a significant number of students? (Concerns like: segregation, corruption, genocide, or etc?) (Yes)
-
does the protest movement occupy a small space, and are there a sufficient number of protesters to occupy that space? (Yes)
-
is the space unnecessary for reasonable facility at the university? (Yes)
If you don’t want this textbook example of protesting, you are saying you only want protests when they get permission by the party in power (state and/or administrators or an institution). You would be denying, for instance, the implicit right of Jewish students to protest if (hypothetically) a university would ban their synagogues. You would be denying the utility and morality of all the protests that occurred to end segregation. Genocide is as serious as any of these concerns, and apparently a number of students — with negative financial interest and negligible social interest at play, students at our top university — want to protest about it. There are a lot of ramifications to that belief and it involves a superstitious belief in the omnibenevolence of those in power.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
16d ago
The alternative theories are as follows:
-
Jews died of typhus and starvation en masse near the end of the war, in the same way that 200-400k Germans died of starvation in the final months of the war and the months that followed. We should expect very high starvation numbers in isolated concentration camps given that the Germans themselves were starving all over Germany, and they would feed themselves before feeding other nationalities. There’s even the question of, “these people are obviously going to starve to death, should we let them cannibalize themselves to the last man or take them out of their misery?” A lot of the infrastructure to supply concentration camps was bombed. The mainstream historical assertions about Jewish fatalities shows shockingly low typhus death rates which make no sense in light of the typhus death rates we see from the Civil War, WW1, Russians in WWII, and shipping voyage logs. Sometimes this question is answered by the fact that Germans really really cared about cleanliness in their camps, hence the delousing chambers, but this makes little sense in light of genocidal intent and the survivor testimony that confirms frequent typhus bouts.
-
Jewish population figures were actually accurate prior to WWII (holocaust historians claim that every figure of the Jewish population from before WWII undercounted areas of Russia by millions).
-
Many Jews after the war assimilated with a non-Jewish identity.
I don’t think holocaust proponents grasp how strong the motive would be to to cement a holocaust narrative. You effectively demoralize Germany, a rival nation that “caused” two wars and which historically created the upperclass of Europe. You effectively seal the moral superiority of America. If the Allied bombing campaign led to millions of starvation deaths among Jewish camp captives, this would be grounds for criticism, but instead the blame is solely laid on Germans. You bulwark against any European nationalism movement because this threatens American hegemony. You justify the creation of Israel and retcon the reputation of Jews as predatory moneylenders to “burnt offering” lambs (literally the word “holocaust”). And lastly you perfect all the neat psy-op techniques that you started in WW1, which also consisted of gas chambers and torturing people etc.
police officer who found the evidence was a virulent racist
Well that’s the thing, in my opinion even the most virulent 20th century European racist would not gas family after family of downtrodden Jews. This is inexplicable when you consider (1) there were no camp whistleblowers, not even a friend or family member of a camp member who was confided in, which is improbable, (2) the elderly camp guards put on trial in Germany who have entered the “honest old people” phase of dementia more often than not assert that the holocaust didn’t happen. I don’t know, can you imagine hundreds or thousands of Russian soldiers putting family after family of innocent Ukrainians to death by gassing, women and children in all? None of them leaking or whistleblowing? And most of them, even when age has taken away their inhibitions, maintain that it didn’t happen? This is improbable to me.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
21d ago
What is the future of Islam in the West and the future of the West with Islam?
-
Popular youth figures Andrew Tate and Sneako became Muslims and made it a part of their media personality, which frequently gets millions of unique views with the audience mostly impressionable young boys.
-
Muslim memes are becoming popular online. Muslim terminology is becoming popular online — I have seen cases of Muslim expressions like inshallah and mashallah entering terminally online lexicon (which is the first step to normie lexicon).
-
Unlike Christianity, there is a confluence of significant factors that lead to Islam retaining strict behavioral and cultural rules. Mosques and scholars are funded by wealthy Arabs who have a monetary, political, and genetic influence in the spread of the religion; imams have children, the more strict the imam the more children, and dynastic imam families are not uncommon; the center of the religion is the Middle East where there is a constant threat of violence if leaders stray far enough from orthodoxy; the practice of excluding women from decision-making means that feminine-coded tolerance is sidelined; the religion itself highly emphasizes the following of strict tradition and punishments for “innovation”.
-
We are seeing the influence of Muslims in the criticisms against Israel, in a London street draped with Ramadan signs on Easter, and so on.
It’s interesting that “Islam is a threat” discourse has died down relative to a decade ago, despite the influence of the religion increasing. Is it because so many people have lost faith in both liberalism and liberal Christianity that they no longer care? I think that could play a part. Is it just laziness? Has there been a fundamental shift in assessment of Muslims?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12d ago
I would immediately put trillions toward requiring citizens to participate in longterm studies. If you are a twin, you are going to be forced to participate.
-
Dozens of twin mothers, one of them works and one of them doesn’t, what are the health outcomes? Dozens more, one with physical contact with child all day and one not, what are health outcomes?
-
Corporations will be forced to hire some percent applicants who lack full or partial college education but appear intelligent from testing, so we can measure how important college truly is for employee quality.
-
Placing normal people around poetry and modern art so we can measure whether there is any benefit.
-
For twins, force one of them to masturbate frequently and the other not, what are outcomes of their children?
-
Feed all kinds of mammals on organic food and measure the fourth-generational effect compared to GMO
-
I read a study once that longterm fasting can cure schizophrenia. Force some schizophrenics to fast because I want the study to be replicated
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
16d ago
The moral complaint against the Germans in such a scenario is nowhere near the moral complaint in the official holocaust scenario, even though they may still be ultimately culpable (full culpability and level of evilness are distinct things). Germans reasonably attempted to relocate Jews; any reasonable Germany would have to do something about the foreign nation living on their soil who have a history of revolution including in Germany, and who have compatriots in the rival Soviet Union, and who have never ever assimilated fully and unshackled themselves from ethnic solidarity. A Germany that didn’t place them in camps is a Germany that would likely have their munitions depots bombed. So they were placed in camps, like Japanese in America and like the Palestinians tomorrow. If you believe that Germany should have “evened out” their starvation so that if affected Germans and Jews equally, okay, maybe from the standard of moral perfection, but there is obviously less evilness here than purposefully taking lives which would not already be lost in a trolly problem sense.
Now if you mean, “America has no culpability because they are allowed to bomb a country to infinity”, okay, but this would have needed to be argued, and Jews might wonder why there was no attempt to negotiate their release in exchange for better terms of German surrender, or whether America even calculated their loss of life when they bombed railways.
we should expect camp guards with dementia to be truthful (despite having probably spent decades justifying and minimizing their crimes, at least in their own heads).
Yes. You don’t just forget putting women and children to death in your 20s for years. Just like how the demented will at times confess infidelity (many such cases)
but all these Jews would stridently hold on to their assimilated identities despite at least many of them being at some point eligible for Holocaust victim compensation
If they started families and have a new life, the isn’t an easy decision, and once old age hits that becomes harder. And do you expect the demented to fill out a complicated holocaust victim compensation plan? This isn’t a reasonable comparison. However, from my hypothesis we would see them remembering their Jewish adolescence and heritage, 100%. But I don’t know how we could measure or catalog such cases which occur in the armchair of an Eastern European home.
explanation to the everpresent "Where did the Jews go" question
Right but you understand that both sides have this problem, because there has been no serious archaeological attempt at quantifying human remains or cremation remains around concentration camps. Which IMO strongly reinforces the revisionist side, because why on earth wouldn’t historians be interested in finding remains and quantifying numbers and so on?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
24d ago
I think Folamh3 is close to it ITT. He had confronted his cheating partner who then emotionally abused him, leading to his suicide just hours later. If he were already depressed and planning suicide, he wouldn’t have cared about her infidelity or would have messaged her something else. The fact that he attempted to reconcile the relationship hours before taking his life indicates that he had no plans to do so before the event. So the overwhelming probability is that the experience was causal to his suicide. Which then should make us disgusted that the woman who caused it received attention and pity after the event.
Now what’s the deepest reason he committed suicide? We could blame it on the immoral woman — iirc, the actress he was seeing took Harvey Weinstein as a date to the premiere of her movie, likely indicating she sold her body for status. But I don’t think this is the deepest reason, because as a rich icon Bourdain could easily have found a morally upright partner. The reason definitely isn’t depression; that to me is a truly dangerous “just so” story that thwarts all thinking. I would assert that the reason is poor moral value.
Here is the liberal-individualist boomer par excellence. He tours the world and waxes poetic on the quaint social life, yet considers himself above their primitive family and social ties. He sits down with large families to eat, he attends their communal festivals, and he transmits this all to the solitary Americans in their living room. He is the rootless cosmopolitan, an omni-tourist, an enjoyer of spectacle over substance. Seeing all these wonders of the world, he’s yet unable to internalize their moral significance and necessity. He is self-worshipping; he cooked himself an identity in Kitchen Confidential and was too blinded by pride to ever revise it. Bourdain wanted to be the cool Western individualist loner, enjoyer of all but adherent to none. He attended every place’s ritual meal — each one a eucharist, essential, consuming God — but only as the aloof tourist, the narrator. It was this pride and absence of self-reflection (one’s real needs and obligations) which is the deepest reason. He let his heart be captured by an exotic woman to fulfill his own self-image, the idol he worshipped, which led to his demise.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
12d ago
How does a social progressive respond to the Amish Question, namely that the Amish have a better quality of life according to nearly all objective indicators? (Including but not limited to: lower suicide risk, greater longevity, lower female depression risk, greater sense of purpose, greater community, lower cancer and diabetes risk, negligible drug and alcohol use, lower carbon footprint, and lower income inequality)
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
18d ago
We have no way of measuring a person’s aesthetic or (full) ethical value through educational and visa selection processes. This is the problem underlying immigration where immigration looks good on paper. Are Indians smart, hardworking, and nonviolent? Yes. But this is only part of the value of a human being. We must also care that a human has a high ingrained sense of empathy without the threat of punishment, and that a person can sense visual beauty and the invisible value of beauty. These are almost terminal values: an ideal world must consist of empathetic humans who love beauty, because these qualities are necessary for an optimal world according to Western values (love-filled people in a beautiful world).
When I look at videos of India there does appear to be people whose eyes never rest momentarily to notice the ugliness and poverty surrounding them. They do not seem to feel the pain of guilt when they rip off tourists (an eternal complaint about gypsies, whose extraction is Indian). It is as if their inner life is too locked in to the ratrace of personal interest. Cognitive science has begun to understand the role that eye movement plays in a person’s inner life, and the way that some Indians stare at people sets off a threat detection alarm to Westerners.
I do not know the best way to measure the full ethical dimension of a person for the purposes of immigration but looking at how they live is certainty better than ignoring the question altogether. And maybe better then this would be looking at what happens in their brain when confronted with suffering strangers, or scenes of ugliness, and looking at infant behavior for AI-determined signs of empathy.
A problem with this essay is that it takes everything that a Jewish student says as true, when we don’t actually know if what they allege is true. There are no links to police reports and investigations, and no rigorous comparison of “Jewish student victimization” versus “Palestinian student victimization”. That is problematic because it allows a random anonymous Jewish student the power to change the discourse, because he can tell his story to the author who then writes it in the Atlantic. It’s doubtful that the author has as many Palestinian friends as Jewish friends, or considers everything a Palestinian student alleged to be true in the same way he does for Jewish students.
The piece in the Atlantic is… a story. It is written to persuade the reader. He omits things not part of his narrative, like that a Jewish organization was caught writing a hoax anti-semitic message at Stanford. Similar hoaxes have occurred at other universities: 1, 2, 3. Jewish groups love their hoaxes. If one of the only(?) people caught writing something antisemitic is Jewish, what then is the probability that the other writings and postings are by a Jewish student? We can’t ignore that there would be a strong motive to do this and that it has been done frequently before.
If there have been some altercations and insensitive comments which have victimized Jewish students at Stanford in the year 2024, I expect to see a video recording or audio recording, at the very least I would need it to be confirmed by two gentile witnesses who are not affiliated with Jewish organizations.
edit here’s a Twitter thread of alleged altercations at Stanford in which an Arab or Palestinian was victimized. Are these events real? Well, isn’t that the point — the author picks and choose which hearsay to post in his article. We need a clear breakdown of victimization rates, not more hearsay narratives.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
9d ago
The moral instinct itself functions as a way to secure the genes of the moral person’s group. That is the evolutionary purpose of morality. If moral people are coerced into doing good to everyone equally, then (1) this would decrease morality on the whole [moral genes] because behavioral energy expenditure is zero-sum and so amoral or immoral genes will flourish [see sociopathy], and (2) it would be unjust because they are owed the benefit of their own nature (moral in-group formation). As an example, members of Group A have strong moral interests in the form of guilt and pity and care for others, whereas Group B evolved such that this cognitive expenditure is spent on self-interest or family-interest. If Group A and Group B have to live together, and if Group A is pressured into giving moral help to Group B, then B is parasitic off of A, and in the future there will be less of Group A. In order for Group A to secure its genes, given that it spends cognitive energy on moral interest, it must direct its moral interest only to the in-group. Otherwise those genes will fade into oblivion. Anyone telling Group A to share its moral concerns (and this includes some mainstream interpretations of Christianity) are fundamentally against moral development, what may simply be called evil or satanic. If moral genes are enhanced from in-group interest, then moral in-group interest is better for the whole world. We can call this the trickle down theory of morality if we want to be cheeky, except in this case it’s real.
[in-group based rules-based utilitarianism fails because] each person is, after all, a member of multiple overlapping communities of various sizes and levels of cohesion, whose interests are frequently in conflict with each other
This is your brain on 20th century propaganda . jpg. More seriously, nobody in the past had any problem understanding what their in-group was. It was ethnicity and religion. This is the most natural way to develop an in-group such that it secures genes. The only exception you find in the favoring of ethnicity is when people join cults, like early Christianity, but consider that this cult was unusual in its promotion and selection for morality, and in any case these were region-specific churches which didn’t do a lot of charitable intermingling with each other.
Utilitarianism as a practical framework comes with huge benefits for an in-group, just not when seen as a top-level explanation of morality. I was writing about the Amish yesterday so let me use them as an example again. One of the rules they developed is that when you make a lot of money you give it back to the community. What is an ineffectual platitude in mainstream America is a gene-enhancing practice among the Amish. The recipients of the charity are all similar to the giver, both ethnically and religiously. For this reason, the Amish have the highest rate of charity and the lowest income disparity among all ethnic groups. Here, you see that a utilitarian rule works wonders. But note that this moral action would be wasted if not for the fact that the Amish select for moral genes via their cultural practices. Once you stop selecting for moral genes, then a moral person giving away money even to his own community is reducing sum-total morality over generations.
Another way that utilitarianism can help us practically is by creating rules which govern interaction between groups without privileging any one group. For instance, “in the case of a disaster, every nation should spend 2% of their resources on the affected nation”. This is a great rule and motivated purely by self-interest, because (1) we can all imagine being the struck nation, (2) it does not harm any moral nation by making them spend more. This is essentially insurance. People don’t take out insurance because they are moral but because they are self-interested. So maybe this shouldn’t even be counted as utilitarian, but we can imagine moral scenarios where this occurs.
There’s an interesting question of, “should we send malaria nets to Africa if we knew for certain they would not send aid to a different poor nation if they could” (in other words, if they were in our shoes). I would say absolutely not. If this intuition is shared, then it hints to a reciprocity rule undergirding morality between groups. Note that we can still send malaria nets, we would just require something of interest for ourselves: a territorial claim, resources, investment, etc.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
9d ago
since in the sentence immediately preceding he explicitly contrasts "Israel" with "the gentiles."
We can read until that sentence starting with 11:20
Jews were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you
Who are the natural branches that are not spared, which causes gentiles to be afraid lest they share the same fate? If all are spared, then there are no natural branches who are not spared. The phraseology explains that the verdict on Israel is more severe, hence “fear, for if God did not spare natural branches he will not spare you”, but your reading has it that Israel’s verdict is less severe. If gentiles fear a loss of salvation, and Israel’s verdict is more severe, but all of Israel is saved… this is a very silly interpretation which is all over the place.
Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off
Just continuing the reading, gentiles must fear God’s severity toward those who have fallen.
And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
This supports my view given the conditional if. We are now back to talking about the grafted in Israel, the Israel by faith, which was defined two chapters ago. If Paul believes that they will all be saved, why is it if and not when? Why is it “God has the power” rather than “God will”?
Finally we have
a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way all Israel will be saved as it is written
The key to understanding the above is clearly the sentence that makes zero sense in your theology: “It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel”. This makes no sense in your theology because it necessarily implies that not all of born-Israel are saved. There are (A) those descended from Israel, who (B) are not Israel, (C) which is important to know for the purposes of salvation, and we know (D) all of Israel will be saved. Your theology requires something that conflicts with (B) because you allege that all descended from Israel are Israel, whereas Paul specifically denies this. (C) is also a stumbling block to your theology because Paul specifically mentions (A+B) in the context of salvation and in the context of understanding the prophecy of saved Jews. An additional point (E) is that Paul writes “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved”, which against conflicts with an all-inclusive salvation. If all are predestined to be saved then never can there be only a remnant saved.
it will be much easier for them who are "natural" branches
That’s just saying that the natural branches would have an easier time fitting into Christianity than a Pagan Greek, given the monotheism and the shared scriptures which they are familiar with
This does not necessarily mean every single Jew
So which ones aren’t?
not just a small remnant
Then why does he specifically mention a remnant?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
9d ago
Romans 11 says that the “natural branches” have been broken off due to their unbelief, and that there is a small “reserved” remnant who believe by faith. That reserved remnant are the Jews who believed / will believe in Christ. I don’t believe any early Christian theologians interpreted this differently
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
14d ago
Sports are dopaminergic in a way that hard labor isn’t, and dopaminergic pathways compete against each other. So sports players are growing the pleasure pathways of competition and socialization, which compete against the pleasure pathways of food salience, whereas someone digging a hole isn’t having fun at all — and in fact craves pleasure after work, like in the form food.
A completely different explanation is that you are noticing class differences. Adults who do sports recreationally are healthier and more intelligent on average, whereas construction workers are not.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
29d ago
On the archaic social technology of Good Friday
Today is Good Friday, a Christian holiday that commemorates the worst Friday ever. In a couple days, through a beautiful deus ex machina humanitas, the worst Friday becomes the best Friday. What significance did this event have in Christian Western history?
There’s an old European myth about a young prince facing punishment for misbehavior. When the boy prince committed an infraction, his tutor would discipline him. But the tutor would be disgracing the majesty of the royal seat by flogging a future king, himself only a lowly tutor. How then did he discipline the heir apparent? He would take the boy’s best friend, and in the presence of the heir he would whip the friend for the royal’s crime. Seeing his own deserved punishment transferred onto his beloved friend (the “whipping boy”), the innocent friend a substitute for his own transgression, the heir would be overwhelmed with guilt, pity, and shame. The event would change the heir’s conduct even more than if he were the one whipped. And there is more benefit to this exchange: the heir learns to identify the pain of another as occurring because of his own misconduct, seeing that his conduct affects the whole kingdom while increasing his capacity for empathy — important wisdom for a man to have.
Compare this myth to one of the oldest writings on Good Friday we have:
But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own compassion and power, how the love of God through exceeding care for men did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those who are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable process! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors! (Epistle to Diognetus, 150AD)
We see that our princely myth and the Crucifixion share a similar emotional dimension. The Christian believes that “Christ bore our sins on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness — through his wounds we have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24). This doesn’t just play out on Good Friday, though. It’s an event that recurs continually in the heart of the believer. It doesn’t work intellectually, but emotionally. Consider: were you to tell a troublesome heir in our princely myth that his crime deserves whipping, he would reply “yeah, so?” If you were to tell him that someone, somewhere, at some point in history was whipped for that very crime, he would reply “uh, okay?” But if you were to take his beloved and best friend, an innocent boy, and show him the consequence of his crime by whipping him in front of him, then the significance of the crime would be apparent to our heir, and then he would repent and change.
That is close to the operation at play on Good Friday. But in the Christian story, it’s not the friend who is punished for the prince, but the prince of heaven who is punished for his friend. It’s not the tutor who administers the punishment, it is the tutor who is punished, tortured by a crowd of sinners similar to his lowly friend. It’s not the dignity of the graceful prince that is safe, it is the grace of the prince that saves the sinner. And it’s not the honor of a future king that causes this process, but the compassion of a King whose son is given over to torment, so that the goodness and honor of God could be beheld by sinners.
As the central event of the Christian religion, this is the lense through which the West understood their moral concerns. And that’s pretty interesting, because their ideas are so distant from our secular beliefs now:
-
There is a serious, perfect moral standard that all must follow. The moral standard is objective, existing since the beginning of time. The failure to follow it deserves punishment, which Christ pays out of mercy.
-
Corporal punishment is a valid way to inflict punishment on malefactors.
-
A punishment may be deserved and yet withheld out of mercy or clemency. (Is “mercy” even a thing anymore? There doesn’t seem an interest in mercy for the contrite for social infractions.)
-
Humans are not born perfect, they require serious intervention to behave morality. This intervention was first moral law, and then a dramatic intercession by the Son of God. Noble savage et al conflicts with this idea. As does the equality of cultures. This cannot be reconciled.
-
Drama is used for a moral purpose. The crucifixion is intrinsically dramatic and the drama effects moral change. Our dramas no longer serve that purpose.
-
Friendship, love and mercy are the primary modes of morality, in fact required to understand the Cross (and so the Eucharist, and thus to be moral). It seems like the focus on morality has since morphed into “obeying peer pressure”, and a false “loving everyone equally” which doesn’t entail love as a feeling (but more an “equalizing” absence of love for one’s own group.)
As an aside, there is great music that captures the dramatic-emotional sense of the crucifixion. From Bach: “your grave and headstone shall, for the anxious conscience, be a comfortable pillow and resting place for the soul”. From Bach again: “Behold the bridegroom! Behold his patience. Look at our guilt.” And from the Syrian Fairuz: “as at the cross she bewailed what was done, to his heart hers was so atuned, both were pierced when they pierced the One.”
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
15d ago
This leaping hunting dog can be made to open and close its mouth using the lever beneath the chest. Originally secured by means of a thong tied through the hole in the back of its neck and two in the throat, the lever was later attached with a metal dowel in the right shoulder. When the mouth is opened, two teeth and a red tongue are visible.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
25d ago
Johnson leaves out a strong argument (which is frequently omitted): Europeans have been united in a shared culture for hundreds of years. This began with Catholicism and continued after the reformation. It affected every culture in Europe, and had little effect on cultures outside of Europe. This is why the monks of Ireland had their works read in Germany, why the composers of Germany were recruited to British courts, why Italian architecture inspired Scottish buildings, why a Spanish novel was read across Europe, why British plays were in heard in France, and so on. If you were a prominent European thinker or composer it was probable that you would spend time in other European countries, and unthinkable that you would spend time in the Middle East or Asia. And none of this culture affected Asia, or the Middle East, except for late indirect influences in maybe northern Turkey or something. So even if race were wholly socially constructed, everyone with European ancestry is influenced and stained by the culture of Christendom and its consequences.
I think what made original WoW so great is that the races/classes neatly represented the divisions of fantasy. Dwarves for LOTR-inspired fantasy, the undead for horror/grim fantasy, the medieval-themed human storyline for medieval fantasy, etc etc. This meant they by playing a new race or class, you were actually exploring a new major division of the fantasy genre, and thus a new and distinct aesthetic mode. The expansions kind of ruined this, as did “every race can play ever class!” silliness. Future MMORPGs should focus on this aspect, representing the entirety of fantasy through divisions involving race/class/region.
More options
Context Copy link