coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
But he is not saying “they don’t matter” socially or politically, because then he would advocate for freeing slaves and treating women like men. But nobody was advocating for these things. So whatever Paul is saying here, it can’t have anything to do with actions related to the polis (the social, the political). The “in Christ” isn’t some stand-in for “now that Christ has come, we treat everyone the same”, because we know from the text and from history that they had rules regarding women and rules regarding slaves. It makes the most sense to understand “in Christ” in its spiritual dimension. Consider:
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[a few sentences above our passage] If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
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[a few sentences down from our passage] Wives, submit to your husbands. Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters.
Paul could very well have advocated that women be treated like men and the slaves be freed by their masters. It’s all on the same page of the letter. But given Paul didn’t even sense the possibility of a contradiction, I find it most reasonable to conclude that we are talking about things “not on Earth”.
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
I think that permabans for longterm users should become 6-month and rarely year-long bans. The forum does not (yet) have the userbase numbers where permabans are favorable over longterm bans. If there were hundreds of users who ate bans and who would be expected to participate again, then permabans would be preferable, because no one wants to read one horrible comment every day from the returning exiled. But we don’t currently have that problem. Were Hylnka to be banned in 6month increments, we (1) sufficiently stave off the problem of bad content, because one bad comment every 6 months is entirely acceptable, and one bad monthly from ~6 banned longterm users is also acceptable; while importantly, (2) we benefit from the (perhaps) 20% chance that upon return the content follows the rules, especially because people generally become more pacified with age which increases the percent every iteration. If that 20% chance occurs, it’s a longterm supply of valuable contributions which are worth the few one-off bad comments you have to read before the correct dice roll. There’s also a unique benefit to forum culture for retaining those invested longterm.
An alternative punishment could be requiring a two page essay on rule-following as a costly signal of contrition and to promote salience of infraction, after some ban period. And an alternative safeguard for good content upon return would be to automatically delete every comment by the user upon hitting -2 points after 10min, for a set duration of time proportional to number of times automatic deletion of comment occurs.
This is my analysis, deontologists may disagree.
coffee_enjoyer
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29d 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
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1mo 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.
coffee_enjoyer
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8d ago
I enjoy chewing ginger and thyme. What else should I try chewing on?
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo 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:
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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.
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Corporal punishment is a valid way to inflict punishment on malefactors.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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
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22d 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
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8d ago
that cannot be emulated
If you lack creativity, then nothing can be emulated. You should just accept defeat at that point. Consider that Hebrew is a reinvented language.
tax exemption
It’s so difficult yet virtually every small non-denominational Christian church is tax exempt? This is another case of defeatism. No one said change is trivially easy; this level of defeatism is unwarranted.
these just so happened to give you true belief in the specific doctrines of the denomination you found it most convenient for your political goals to join
They give me insight into a lot of things, most of them have absolutely no political consequences. But some have political consequences, sure. Is it surprising that God wants his people to thrive? This is the basis of all religion.
coffee_enjoyer
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8d ago
Political goals are accomplished through influence. Communal political influence requires (1) the conscious saving of money which is reinforced socially especially for the rich members, (2) the directing of the money to a centralized lobbying arm which can efficiently accomplish goals, (3) protection against out-group propaganda. Read about the political influence of Kiryas Joel if you’d like, which at one point was the poorest town in America, yet senators would make a speech every year to them because of their donations and block voting; and they then benefitted from that politician’s funding of amenities and lack of investigation into crimes. Political goals are also accomplished through consumer behavior. Religious cultures direct consumer behavior toward in-group providers, and boycott companies against their goals. Religions take the money that is ordinarily spent on wasteful consumerism and direct it to communal goods. They also hire among their own.
vastly overstate said religious protections
No I do not. Every Protestant church has religious protections.
isn't this just "instrumentalizing religion”
That depends if you believe in it or not. If you don’t believe in it, then obviously you shouldn’t do it. Personally, I have had divine revelations in dreams and given an understanding of mystical meaning behind Biblical symbols and allegories. But that’s just me, you know? I’m also tired: of people who don’t understand how people work, of my dog eating deer poop, of hubris, of the cost of a double cheeseburger at Wendy’s. I am not sure what tiredness has to do with this conversation.
ridiculous idea
Yeah, civic nationalism has really been working hasn’t it? Was it Einstein who said that the mark of a genius was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result? Meanwhile, I will stick to my understanding of how culture operates which is informed by thousands of years of history and a hundred years of social psychology.
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
It is impossible for Christianity to have “won” by only being attractive to the poor and the servants. For one, they have no rights or military training, so it would be impossible for them to ever exert influence on the middle or upper classes, who controlled everything and made up the military leadership. But it’s also impossible given the wealth of early Christian writings we have — it’s expensive to have dedicated theologians who copy and write thousands of pages. There’s also no reason that a pagan mystery cult couldn’t have defeated Christianity, if the only thing of importance was the promise of an afterlife (there were lots, including Mithras for the soldiers!). And if the poorest members were being converted on the promise of an afterlife, they would pose zero political threat and the powerful Pagans would be happy about this as it would reduce the problem of slave rebellions. (Is Christianity the opium of the people, or is Christianity its own “slave revolt” against the powerful? It cannot be both, so please make up your mind, 19th century.) Lastly, we know as early as the Apostles that they had issues with how to treat wealthy Christians, and they were writing rules on how to subsidize poor widows — things that wouldn’t be worth writing about if it was just a religion of the poor.
coffee_enjoyer
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25d 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
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25d 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.
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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?
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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.
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Placing normal people around poetry and modern art so we can measure whether there is any benefit.
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For twins, force one of them to masturbate frequently and the other not, what are outcomes of their children?
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Feed all kinds of mammals on organic food and measure the fourth-generational effect compared to GMO
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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
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1mo 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.
coffee_enjoyer
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13d ago
monotheism
This is begging the question a bit. There is no reason that Mithraism or Sol Invictus or some other monolatric religion couldn’t have transitioned into monotheistic. Even the transition from a Pagan pantheon to a monarch presiding over angels could have easily taken place (as it did in early Judaism), with Zeus presiding as sovereign. This also doesn’t explain why trinitarian Christianity defeated Arianism, as the latter is more “clearly” or primitively monotheistic. Monotheism was also tried once in ancient Egypt with a “son of God” figure too, but it never took off there (Atenism).
Maybe monotheism plays a part, but it’s more likely that Christianity and Islam have unique characteristics that cause their popularity. Islam, after all, was influenced by Nestorian Christianity. So it makes just as much sense that the actual beliefs, rituals, etc lead to popularity, rather than that they have only one god.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Ah ok. My intuition is different: in either case, the one actively attempting to enter the de facto designated area intends to harass the people in the area, whether or not it meets a legal standard of harassment. There is no plausible reason for their entrance into the area which doesn’t involve starting a confrontation. It should be discouraged because that’s how confrontations begin, and as evidence for this the police routinely separate protesting camps for this exact reason (and whether or not the protests are legally done).
coffee_enjoyer
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11d ago
You should post it as a parent comment in main thread
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Yes, Chabadnik hat + phenotype + context clues (smirking as recording a group of Palestinian protesters).
coffee_enjoyer
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2mo ago
Wait, why does Scott trust Aella’s data? Aella is an internet propagandist for polygamy and promiscuity. Many happy monogamists who find polygamy disgusting would never subscribe to her or follow her. Her monogamist followers are preselected with being unsatisfied with monogamy, and her polygamy followers are preselected with finding polygamy satisfying (hence why they are following a promiscuous woman who talks about it all day). Her most die hard followers are the most likely to take the survey, even just because they see the link more often, and the followers are those who have found the most benefit regardless of how it affects the median polygamist. “Just in, atheists are unsatisfied with atheism, as proven by a survey of atheists who follow Bishop Robert Barron on Twitter.” Am I missing something?
If I can quote a speech from everyone’s least favorite 20th century antisemite, not to be edgy but to demonstrate three separate points:
The Jew, who is himself a nationalist more than any other nation, who through millennia did not mix with any other race […] this same Jew preaches every day with thousands of tongues, from 19,000 papers in Germany alone, that all nations on Earth are equal, that international solidarity should bind all the peoples, that no people can lay a claim to a special status etc., and, above all, that no nation has a reason to be proud of anything that is called or is national. What a nation means, he, who himself never dreams of climbing down to those to whom he preaches internationalism, knows well.
This speech was made in 1920, two years after Hitler received his “punch a Nazi” treatment for giving a similar speech on German nationalism by a crowd disgusted by his extremism. The history of “white identiarianism” or whatever we wish to call it is not linear. Americans as late as 1960 overwhelmingly believed that “white” was a primary identity marker and wanted a white majority in their country. Yet Germany went through a period of progressivism in which German national identity was attacked, only to swing the complete opposite way, only to swing again in the complete opposite — and today it may be swinging once more with the rise of the AfD. Russians, too, went from nationalism to internationalism and back to nationalism. I think this precludes any possibility of a genetic explanation and instead shows that ideology and culture are what shapes these things. And I think this is also an antitode to doomerism because we can’t predict the future based on the past.
The content of the speech is interesting because it highlights the disconnect between American Jews and white American gentiles. I would argue that Jews are the most nationalist people on earth today. They engage in ancestor worship on a weekly basis, they are obsessed with bloodlines, they unite Race and Religion together and choose the former whenever questions of membership arise, their very nation bans religious intermarriage and protects the priestly bloodlines even from the (rare) convert. They put barriers in the way of orthodox conversion yet welcome any “born Jew” with ease. Secular Jewish culture has cross-pollination with religious Jews, and so secular Jews receive an implicit influence of positive racial identity.
As such, it may be hard for even a secular Jew to imagine what it is like growing up in a culture with no such positive identity indoctrination. A white gentile can’t get a free meal at his local university Chabad house where a racial leader talks about how important their DNA is and how the universe has specifically chosen their race to lead the world. He doesn’t go to a church that talks positively about the history of his people. And the stories told in school are not about the triumphs and glories of “the whites”, as a Jewish school teaches about the great Jewish sages and advisers. While his school does teach about great American figures without mention of race, when race is mentioned he learns that his are the villains, the enslavers and the oppressors. The Jews, of course, believe that they were the slaves and the oppressed, in Egypt before God freed them, in the Middle Ages despite opulent wealth, and in the holocaust, that “burnt offering” which established the state of Israel.
Now, to disagree with Adolf Hitler, I do not think that most of the Jewish internationalist voices both a century ago and today are involved in an explicit conspiracy to aid their race by reducing the solidarity of other races (although they would have every motive to do this, it would be morally permissible in their religion and perhaps even morally obligatory given that it helps Jews). Instead, I think it’s easy to push for greater immigration when you know that your host country is not your real home — your real home is every Jewish community and Israel. The Jew’s neighbor is never going to be the new Guatemalan, because the Talmud specifies that “love your neighbor” means only other Jews. So these voices don’t realize that they are blinded to many of the drawbacks of immigration, because their implicit or explicit identity protects them from ever considering the prospect of assimilation with potentially deleterious low-culture migrants. Dan Gertler may fund the Chabad House of Central Africa, indeed he may siphon off their blood diamonds and become a billionaire in doing so, but never in a million years would he consider assimilating there. And the wealthiest billionaire gentile families who push immigration for profit have a similar bias because they know full well that their childrens’ elite boarding school is far from Haitian gangs and Honduran cartels.
Finally, to answer the main question: why do the whites harm themselves? Because they are indoctrinated at a young age from the propaganda which (ironically) the arch-villains of the 20th century warned against. The neural circuitry of in-group preference is the same as familial love: you need to raise children up with positive identity, otherwise they will never truly establish the communal bond. It’s like how an abused child that doesn’t form a bond with his parents will grow up to be avoidant of relationships; even if he rationally understands that his impulses are illogical, they are still there. This is why — as you write — even the conservative Brits are too polite. They logically know something, but the instinct is not developed in the heart. Identity is not primarily rational but instinctive and emotional. And the religious Jews know this, so they fiercely protect their right to indoctrinate their children, such as by launching an international legal effort when Sweden wanted a Rabbi’s children enrolled in a public school.
coffee_enjoyer
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2mo ago
Your essay is way too long for how little point you are deriving. I read four paragraphs before deciding it’s more efficient if I just briefly argue why hip hop is harmful in a comment, than divining what your argument is.
Music is about producing a spirit in a person, a social emotional-behavioral orientation. Music can produce approximately any emotional space, from the felt sense of eeriness, to grief, even to tones that connote honor, duty, profundity, you name it. We do not need to prove how it does this, as we all agree it does this. This means we can judge music not just by how well it accomplishes its intended emotional result (its technical skill), but whether the resultant emotional space is beneficial or harmful to social life.
Rap, a normal selection of popular rap, focuses on self-aggrandizement, pride, antisociality, and lust. If you were to literally ask yourself, “what is the worst emotional orientation to promote in the youth?”, you would come up with a litany of themes that occur in rap. What would be worse for the youth than to hyper-focus on lust, consumerism, killing people who slight you, and narcissism? Okay, well that’s most popular rap songs. Were satanists to be producing good music (again), it would probably wind up more prosocial than hip hop.
But don’t take my word for it. If you had a teenage daughter this month there’s a good chance has heard
Head so good, she a honor roll. She ride the dick like a carnival. Way too rich to drive a Rove'. Made a milli' off the stove. She like to put it in her nose. Pretty bitch with white toes. I'm all about business, I'm mindin' minе.Pull up in the trenches like Columbine. Pull up with the rocket like NumbaNine
You haven’t “discovered” anything special when you notice that your most debased and primitive animal self enjoys the fantasy of power and sex. Every 10 year old can imagine this. Someone who thinks this music is good is as tasteless as a foodie who tells you sugar is the most exquisite because it makes his mouth feel the best. The music is bad, because the spirit it produces is bad. Yes, it may be pleasurable, but you wouldn’t say the best medicine is heroin, would you?
The lyrics are only one aspect of music. The BPM and rhythm can also induce in a person a sense of patient thought or a sense of urgency. Rap combines sin with urgency.
An unwise person may reply, “okay, but like, The Beach Boys also sang about hooking up with girls…”
In a totally different phenomenological space that promotes delicate emotion, love, fidelity, and not lust, which is communicated via the slow beat, the instrumentation, and vocals.
coffee_enjoyer
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1mo ago
Does anyone out there even know the specific white nationalist who wrote that essay? Did anyone come out and vouch for his supposed reputation back then? The essay set off my intuition that it was a psy-op, especially with its traction on Twitter, manicured writing style, and intended takeaway. It’s something I would write if I were paid to persuade people against identifying with their race.
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27d 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.
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18d ago
Nonviolent protesting is historically treated as a legal grey area in American history, which the admins of Columbia are well aware of, their own university having a history of it. It’s treated that way because the alternative is non-nonviolent protesting, which is much worse. Not everything moral and immoral is codified in law
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18d ago
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.
That’s surprising to me for some reason. But, (afaik) it’s evangelicals who are most supportive of Israel among Christians in Texas
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