coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The premise of democracy is that we can access truthful information, and that we can share political information to peers using the expected normal means of communication. The normal means of sharing political information since 2010 has been online. Yet, every major company which controlled our normal means of political communication conspired to hide essential political information. This thwarts how democracy is intended to operate, regardless of whether it technically violated a rule. It is very much central to the concern of, “is our democracy working or did an actor destroy it?” And this is the heart of the concern over election fraud, whether it in substance thwarts democracy, not just by a technical rule.
(If one political side is fundamentally thwarting democracy, then in my humble opinion the other side can do the same. They can do this by, for instance, accusing them of technical election fraud or vampirical adenochrome or whatever they want. They are morally justified to defend themselves using the same weapon as their attacker.)
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Major social media companies colluding together to prevent the voter from accessing vital information about a candidate is such a significant violation of democratic norms that it should be our entire focus when discussing election fraud. We had information hidden from us which indicated a candidate’s son was paid by the spy chief of our geopolitical rival, and a corrupt oligarch in the most important geopolitical region of Europe (Ukraine), and that the candidate met with many of the players paying his son, and that Biden-as-VP held Ukrainian aid hostage unless he fire the prosecutor that was investigating the corrupt company which was paying his son. (This oligarch went on to participate in one of the largest money laundering cases in American history, in a little discussed story, using his Chabad-affiliates — but this is a story for another post).
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
There’s hardly a case in the Old Testament where God’s love and mercy does not hinge on recognition and submission. See how Christ came in the sign of Jonah: the mercy of God is by swallowing Jonah in a whale when God produced a storm to traumatize him for failing to heed His desire. And Jonah was only released when he “called out to the Lord”, declaring “salvation belongs to the Lord”. Jonah’s mission of mercy was to warn Ninevah of the consequences of their sin: “Yet forty days and Ninevah will be overthrown!” As a response, the Ninevans fasted, sat in ashes, called out to God, and turned from their evil ways.
”Who knows? God may turn and relent, and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
You write that there is an “enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world has worked so hard to cement”, and I have to say, I dont think this is what is stopping people from being Christian to any significant degree. These people have met Christians, they have passed church signs, they have already seen ads, they have already imbibed the cool-aid Christ that acts like a hippie, they’ve seen the reels or tik toks by Christians before. They actually have an image in their mind of a much weaker and accepting Jesus, I bet. And we don’t actually see the standard irreligious American choose their social identification based on what people are nicest. They don’t chase the jobs which allow them to be nicest to those in need, they chase the job that gives them money. (There’s not a waiting list for retirement community volunteers.) They buy the product that gives them status. They listen to the self-aggrandizing, self-worshipful hymns of rappers. They want the university that gives them status. They care a lot about their hairlines and jawlines. They watch shows and model their identity based off of characters who are cool and beautiful. They are, you know, animals with instincts, like you and me. Or at least just me. The girls used to like Kim Kardashian, now they adore Taylor Swift. The boys like Andrew Tate or John Wick. Humans like high status people, not nice people. I mean, maybe Taylor Swift is nice, but she doesn’t sing songs about washing feet and loving homeless people. Her liturgies music videos are filled with status signifiers and handsome men.
There is no ad you can make that is going to get non-Christians to adopt Christianity
If there are ads that can make people watch movies for three hours, there are ads that can make people pick up some Christian literature or attend a church once. Do you think anyone is watching a movie about the nicest man in existence? The top movies of 2023 are the heroic spider man and the beautiful Barbie.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The love for enemies is a Christian love, an imitation of what Christ does. This includes, for example, warning the uncharitable wealthy of the eternal hellfire that awaits them, as Jesus does on many occasions. It may include insulting some by calling them children of Satan, for the purposes of hopefully awakening an obstinate soul. It also means, in some cases, “showing mercy by fear, hating even the garment stained by their flesh”, while still loving the person’s soul. It means that if someone in your church sins against you without apology or listening the church’s correction, the whole community severs all ties with them completely (Matthew 18:17). Historically, perhaps the best example of Christian love is the execution of criminals: allow them the dignity to confess and speak to a priest, then execute them quickly without needless pain. Hence the death penalty was justified by Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, in a framework of Christian love.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I’ll supply two answers, one theological and one psychological. IMO the psychological is more interesting.
Theologically: see how Jesus unpacks John 3:16. To finish the phrase and with my emphasis added,
[…] that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already
The loving God is loving, but His love is defined on His own terms, the terms defined in his book. So important is faith and so assured is punishment, that immediately after the mention of love we are lead to eternal life versus condemnation. “God so loved the world, that he saves only those who believe in his son.”
You are right that this passage does not explain why God is loving. But I think an answer to this question isn’t possible when we know that God’s very nature is love. God is loving because that is what God is. And yet, it is up to God to define the term. This is explained in the Book of Job. Job continually seeks a final explanation from God, only to be shown how absolutely powerful God. At the end, Job admits —
I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Note that Job was the best of the best. “None like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man.” Yet he was put through his trials because of the question, “does Job fear God for no reason?” In the end, Job understands that the final justification of the fear of God is that He is infinitely powerful and totally beyond him in understanding. He did not find affection as the final answer, although God did shower him in gifts after his ordeal. Instead he found frightening, awe-full power beyond his understanding, which worked to compel his faith despite heroic tragedy.
But maybe you believe that Christ somehow changed the nature of God from the old to the New Testament. Is he no longer to be feared? But Jesus says, “fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”. In Luke, this is a rare case of triple emphasis: “ I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!”. And in the Magnificat we read, “mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.”
Did the atonement somehow eradicate fear? Not for everyone. Because we read in Hebrews,
if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? […] It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Maybe I am sidetracked now. To get directly back to the question: Jesus must be seen as dominant and powerful, possibly even before he is loving. This is what “Lord” means. The Lord had power over the entire kingdom. Jesus acted mercifully toward those who already feared God (as was normative in first century Judea), but who lacked an understanding of God’s forgiveness and compassion. But these two things — fear and love — are tied together. The threat of punishment is key: “it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” which doesn’t believe. It is precisely because of our nature that God needed to send the highest status man, his Son, to rescue sinners.
Psychological explanation
We can reliably predict what humans desire: it relates to status and reward. Super Bowl commercials illustrate our hopeless addiction to status and reward, as companies vie to associate their false hopes with the highest status and pleasure. What ads attempt to get across is that their product will deliver you beatitude, ie happiness. Iteration after iteration proves that this changes consumer behavior. “This is the way to beatitude; its absence will result in loss and alienation and pain.” There must be some reward for a behavior to occur, or some threat of pain, and the whole world is trying to sell you things based on this. There is no Stanley Cup without the felt sense of loss without its possession. There is no desire for the Super Bowl ring without the fear of losing it — causing many to fumble. They use celebrities in their ads because, in addition to being woefully sinful, humans are woefully social.
Man is inherently, comically bad at not giving in to easy but harmful pleasure-seeking. Obesity, addiction, 90% of dieting attempts failing, everyone’s constant lament about their screen time — this is well-proven. Civilization devised a way to fight against this by the institution of social environments. Put a boy in a classroom with a strong and dominant male teacher, who praises upon doing well, and he will study well. Put a boy in a classroom with an inattentive and cold teacher, and he will scroll through Andrew Tate videos on his phone — the dominant man who sells a cohesive existential worldview with a path to beatitude.
So now: what is the reward shown in the ad for becoming a servant of Christ? There is no reward, only discomfort. Why would depicting submissive Christians motivate anyone to seek Christ? Psychologically, the ad is inexplicable. No one wants to be subservient, yet the ad tells us that [advertised social movement] is submissive and uncomfortable — whereas Jesus tells us that the humble are exalted. There is no promise of beatitude, no promise of vitality or eternal life. No promise of Sonship to the Almighty, no promise of retribution to the evildoer. No promise that the worldly interests cast aside are repaid a hundredfold by God. No other advertisement tells you that buying their product will result in you being submissive, right? The best that can be hoped for is a pitiful, “wow, these embarrassing Christians like to show their humility. I guess I dont want to execute them, but neither do I want these losers as my friends and leaders”.
The reaction that a viewer should have for a well-made advert of Christianity should be the same reaction that people had to Christ’s preaching. Amazement. Wonder. A desire for glory. “And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’” Yeah, this isn’t easy to come up with, but if I throw you 100 million dollars I’m sure you could figure something out.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Ahh I was looking forward to replying to your response today! At least I think it was your reply, not 100% sure. I just copy/pasted the post to the CW, if you still have yours you should paste it.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
“He Gets Us” doesn’t get it
[repost because server wipe, if that’s cool with everyone. Same post as yesterday, but probably some uncorrected mistakes from my note app]
The Christian advertising campaign “He Gets Us” aired two ads during the Super Bowl. The first ad asks “who is my neighbor?” interspersed with shots of mostly unsavory characters. The one you don’t value or welcome, the ad answers, to the drums of glitch-y hip hop. The second ad is titled “Foot Washing” and proved quite controversial. Among the scenes of foot washing depicted in the ad, the following have generated the most discussion: a Mexican police officer washing the feet of a black man wearing gold chains in an alley; a “preppy” normie-coded girl washing the feet of an alt girl; a cowboy washing the feet of aNative American; a woman washing the feet of a girl seeking an abortion (with pro-life activists sidelined, their signs upside down); an oil worker washing the feet of an environmental activist; a woman washing the feet of an illegal migrant; a Christian woman washing the feet of a Muslim; and a priest washing the feet of a sassy gay man. This last ad has tenfold the views on YouTube, in large part due to the negative response by Christians and conservatives, for example Matt Walsh and Babylon Bee editor Joel Berry. Joel writes,
There’s a reason the “He Gets Us” commercial didn’t show a liberal washing the feet of someone in a MAGA hat, or a BLM protestor washing an officer’s feet. That would’ve been actually subversive. Because they were strictly following oppressed v oppressor intersectionality guidelines.
I mostly agree with Joel. I think that this ad campaign is a failure.
The campaign fails to understand what brings people to a religion, or any social movement for that matter, or even any product, and as such it will not lead viewers to join their evangelical church or behave in the intended Christian manner. The audience of the Super Bowl is jointly comprised of people who care about what’s popular and cool, and people who care about remarkable feats of strength and dominance. These people are not going to be compelled to “love” their crack addict neighbor because you tell them to, because why would they listen to you? — there is no deeper motivation substantiated as for why they should do this. In the Gospel, Jesus doesn’t say “love your neighbor because it’s nice to do that and I am guilting you”, he says “love your neighbor so as to be a son of God whom created you, and obtain His reward, or else risk judgment from the eternal judge.” This is reward-driven and status-seeking behavior, the reward being administered by God and the status being administered by the church body. In its context, it requires a belief that the person saying it is the ultimate judge of both life and afterlife. (To behave Christlike, the required motivation is the totalizing significance of Christ... hence the name of the religion.) The starting point of the faith is the most dominant and powerful person telling you to care for the poor, not some cheeky “you should care about the poor because you should.”
Again, the Super Bowl viewer cares about what is popular and what is dominant. That’s normal, I’m not criticizing it. So could you not pull anything out of the religious tradition to depict the popularity and dominance of God? What, you feel bad playing off of FOMO to get people to your church? Jesus did just that on many occasions. 1, 2, 3, 4. Do you somehow feel guilty describing Jesus as glorious and powerful? What about the 72,000 angels he commands? You don’t want to tell the viewer that their prayers will be answered, when every 10 minutes there’s an ad for betting and gambling? Viva Las Vegas, non Vita Christi. So it has to be asked, what exactly is the purpose of the campaign? How is this getting people to your church, or even just getting people to behave better? “Jesus gets me” because… biker smoker and crack addict?
If the object of the ad is the instill a sense of pity to compel the viewer to behave morally, then there’s clearly more relevant subjects. Why not the focal point of the religion, the “innocent beautiful sacrificial lamb slain for our freedom” motif? The religion already comes with a built-in way to empower pity. You could say, “he gets us because he dealt with all our pain and temptation”, and that would make much more sense, while incentivizing the intended result of the ad. As is, I get the idea that the ad campaigners are afraid of any depiction of the life of Christ. I don’t get the sense that these people believe he is an essential ingredient of the moral life. And it’s fine if they don’t, that’s their business, but then dont make multimillion dollars ads that about it. If Christ is indeed essential, then your multimillion dollar ad campaign ought to be directed toward producing an image of Christ that is alluring, whether this be through scenes of pity or scenes of power. In an attempt to make Christianity subversive you should not be subverting Christianity.
Back to Joel’s critique of the ad: yes, the foot washing ad is problematic. Beside the fact that it is misinterpreted (explained below), it only works to further demean the image of Christianity to an irreligious America. “If I become a Christian, I’ll have to wash an old man’s feet?” The only viewers that will be compelled here are the foot fetish enthusiasts piqued by the alt girl. You are not going to convince anyone to join your social movement by promising them the opportunity to wash a man’s feet in an alley.
As was mentioned, the ad elevates the status of people who are not exactly Christ-coded, and those whose status is already elevated. During a Super Bowl, it’s not subversive to elevate the status of a vaguely athletic black man wearing gold chains. The half time show was Usher! Neither is it subversive to show an oil rig worker subservient to an environmental activist. In whose world is an environmental activist not more privileged than a dust-coated oil worker? And a wholesome girl washing an alt girl’s feet is not subversive in an event inaugurated by Post Malone’s national anthem. No, no; show me a wealthy and attractive CEO washing the feet of his fat ugly employee, if you must. But don’t just reinstitute the high/low status dynamic already in place by the world.
My last criticism I’ll try to keep short: the theological ground of these ads is spurious. There is indeed a scene where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, but the writer goes out of his way to clarify the meaning behind it. It begins by mentioning that Jesus “loved his own who were in the world”, namely his followers present and future. The students are shocked when their superior attempts to perform this subservient act, until it is explained to be necessary. “If your Lord washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done to you. I am not speaking of all of you [not Judas]; I know whom I have chosen.” So, rather than being an act that a Christian is compelled to do to anyone, we have an act that Christians do to one another, to cultivate humility spirit and esteem for their brethren. They are told not to do it to merely self-labeled Christians, like Judas, let alone those of other faiths, as the ad suggests they do.
Foot washing was a culture-specific action that reflected the status hierarchy in a way that has no direct American parallel. An approximate American parallel would be for a boss to allow his employer to use his office, or for a boss to cook his employee’s family a dinner, or to clean his employee’s keyboard. The difficulty in understanding the event without careful study is the reason why it’s a mistake depict it as a means of propagating your worldview. Nothing is accomplished.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
This is a situation where it’s illustrative to look at the alternative behavioral choice. A 17 year old whose parents do not allow her to host a party with drinking will instead attend parties where no responsible adults are present. These parties will probably include drugs and sexual harassment by strangers.
The “don’t leave” was made to sound like they were trapping the kids but it was certainly more about preventing them from driving drunk. Which, again, some percentage of teen drinkers will do after attending a party without adult supervision.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Postville: a clash of cultures in heartland America
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The people in charge of things have no training in traditional philosophy or morality, so it’s no surprise that they have botched the whole notion of a good execution.
Any method in which an inmate can fight against their execution and save themselves some seconds of life is going to be more dreadful than otherwise. This is obvious. This should be obvious. The feeling of dread from the slow experience of death and the knowledge that you can temporarily avoid it from, say, holding your breath, increases the torment manifold. We’ve known this forever, which is why the the worst criminals were crucified, and why the civilized method of execution back when we were enlightened was a quick hanging (death by breaking neck actually) or a quick beheading. These executions were done with dignity, relatively soon after their crime. Some dumb modernite had the bright idea that a prisoner deserves execution but also deserves to be kept in prison for years, allowed or made to continually gamble his life through the process of appealing his sentence to the courts. Horrible.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Music is a shitty vehicle for political ideology and I thank the heavens there isn’t more of it. But, there has been some recent politically-conscious music. Have you seen the MGMT Little Dark Age memes? These were all over the place. From the lyrics: “Policemen swear to God, love seeping from their guns | I know my friends and I would probably turn and run | If you get out of bed, come find us heading for the bridge | Bring a stone, all the rage, my little dark age”. Vampire Weekend”s Unbearably White is gorgeous and quite political:
Discussing the track with The Sunday Times before its release, Koenig commented that "infighting among white people about who is marginally more or less white is not particularly interesting", and that the song partially explores that.[1] The phrase "unbearably white" had previously been used as a criticism of the band, in reference to their race
I don’t really care about black culture all too much but I’d bet many would tell you that today is the peak of black influence, with rap becoming truly global in a way that jazz only grazed.
You mention the Beatles, but they weren’t political as much as naive about the world (imagine).
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The strength of learning is more tied to the salience of reward and punishment than mere quantity of repeated behavior. That is the most interesting variation of the thesis I suppose. Per my OP, we have cases of strong learning that do not involve repetition or effortful recall.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
But our willing to recall is likely predicated on a reward being pursued. A student makes an effort to recall and is either successful (rewarded) or unsuccessful (punished) and the strength of these are based on their desire for some contingent reward tied to the material.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Can you think of a case of a “repeated behavior” inducing learning where the repeated behavior is not tied to a reward?
What I mean is: a piano student might practice a scale because of a desired goal, or to not be punished by their teacher; both are driven by a desire for preferred state (obvious). A student even in a very boring class that he doesn’t care about will remember some information because there is still a reward for the behavior (competing over peers, not having a bad grade). In these cases, the student may repeat a behavior (practicing) which induces learning, and this is driven by a reward, but what if the repetition occurs without a reward drive?
The reason for this question is that I find it interesting how reading a book results in a fraction of the information retention of using flash cards. You can read a passage repeatedly (repeating a behavior) yet not retain much information. But when you repeat with flash cards, your comprehension of the material is self-judged, which taps into the reward drive and results in more retention. There is also a “testing effect” phenomenon where doing tests somehow increases retention despite not having much repetition involved (the “somehow” is the reward drive, activated upon salient judgment).
So, if the desire for reward is a huge variable in learning, it’s interesting to think of a case where repetition results in negligible learning because of negligible reward-drive. However I’m at a loss of thinking of an example of this behavior. Maybe the phenomenon of highly autistic people never learning a social etiquette despite observing many repetitions and consequences? There are definitely cases where a behavior with zero repetition can result in great retention (you are not going to forget the accident that led to a broken leg, or the appearance of the most beautiful girl you’ve seen if only once, or the location of the largest pile of gold in a video game).
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
That’s probably not to absolve their sins unless their priest specifically told them to nail themselves to a cross as an act of penance after confession (which is unlikely). Instead this seems like a purely devotional act.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Your last sentence rests on a category error fallacy. Arab is an umbrella group, but Palestinian is a specific ethnic group. The Palestinian homeland is Egypt in the same way that the Irish homeland is Spain, both being Europeans of Celtic origin; in other words, it’s a mistake to assume that an ethnic homeland is the same as an umbrella group’s territory. The DNA of Palestinians is closer to Samaritans than “North African Sunni Arab Muslims” for this reason. Also, I don’t think this argument would be made if the Palestinians sought to repatriate Israelis to Brooklyn or Lakewood. Isn’t Israeli culture unique despite belonging to the general umbrella group “Jews”?
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I do believe that we feed them and do not yet adorn their walls with the the signs of their crime.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
The idea of freedom of speech developed in a period with strong indecency laws and “unsightly beggar ordinances”. For hundreds of years people were able to see the nuance between permissible expression and things that are disgusting. I am not saying “anything someone finds disgusting should be illegal”, and in fact no such law has ever existed, rather that what a reasonable person finds disgusting should not be done in public. This is how eg indecency laws operated. The rare case of contention over decency versus indecency does not invalidate the utility of the distinction in the 90% of applicable cases where a majority of reasonable persons concur. If we choose to ignore disgusting things you run the risk of causing serious harm (disgust) to reasonable people which in some cases can be worse than a slap.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
We haven’t had excessive cue-response punishment in America for a long time, because what is universally important for deterring animal behavior is that the punishment occur parallel or quickly following the behavior. The association must be intuitive and salient for deterrence to occur for animals, and it’s only different among Civilized Man because he has been trained to constantly self-administer judgment of behavior so that cue-response rewards and punishments are artificially associated with the behavior in the mind. Taking a long time to arrest someone, or placing them on bail, is not sufficient punishment for animals if our intention is to change behavior. You can even ask them why they are being punished and they might say something approximately like “the government” or “racism” or “snitches”, ie they are mentally inculcating a pattern that is only going to produce more criminality in the future.
But in any case, it’s the fault of judges if they don’t follow the rules, not the fault of a given schema. Your 1909 quote is clearly about a specific category of crime that wasn’t considered serious at the time (hitting your wife).
But you need the reform and rehabilitation as well as the punishment, otherwise you are just throwing the person back into the same environment from which they came
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my post. You do not need any reform or rehab because animal behavior will 100% change provided a behavior is associated with punishment. That is the reform, that is the rehab. It’s how you learn not to touch hot things, not to be mean to others, and even to keep your King defended in Chess. Dog’s do not actually need reward-training to learn not to jump on the counter because you can just pinch their butt and shout, or quickly place them in a cage (if you are one of those progressives who mistakenly believes that isolation and boredom are less painful than brief physical pain). This is all very simple animal psychology that should be common knowledge and taught in schools. An animal can become traumatically afraid of walking on ice simply by falling into a frozen lake, no reform required (I sadly learned this from personal experience: my genetically-evolved Labrador never swam in her life because she escaped the yard and found her way on a frozen lake.)
Fewer slaps on the wrist
I say, many more physical slaps on the wrist for young criminality including poor school behavior, which progresses in adulthood to beatings (continued until morality improves).
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I think you’ve kind of elaborated on the wrong things (although I’m interested to hear more about the skateboarding and if we know any of the same spots).
The short version is that I believe that there are multiple basic human intuitions that are simply missing from the modern secular liberal mindset/worldview
But what are they? I do too though. I believe that there is a human instinct for retribution that has been delegitimized in academic penal theory regarding deterrence, and that a victim is actually owed this retributive justice because it instinctively feels good and its omission is a harm. Additionally I think that there are some things humans naturally find disgusting, and that disgust is also a harm (in a lesser but similar way that assault is a harm), and I found the class I took on Rawls laughable because the professor a priori denied that a person has a right to not feel disgust while possessing a right to not be slapped.
castrated our society's ability to discuss certain topics
But what topics?
Penny / Neely
I definitely agree here. Once a civil authority can no longer predictably keep you safe from crime or make satisfaction after the event, you should have the right to inflict corrective corporal punishment on the criminal provided you have sufficient evidence of the crime occurring (video recording). This is doubly true if the crime will not be investigated or if the response time is greater than half an hour. Our idea of withholding personal justice is predicated on the faith that our victimhood will be satisfied by a higher civil power. It’s also truly insane from a psychological position of (ironically) deterrence theory. Imagine if you withheld administering a slap on your dog after biting a child, and instead waited months before assigning a verdict. Such a process is only effective for rational intellectual creatures and criminals who reason about there actions longterm, not for your average violent or antisocial criminal. We could be deterring so much more crime by simply beating criminals immediately if sufficient evidence is obvious, or at the very least throwing them in a cell without food for 30 hours (the walls decorated with the psychological cues of their crime). This is actually vastly better for the criminal who hopefully develops a minor trauma response when considering criminality in the future.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
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The Homer Simpson “do it for her” meme (or, the plot of Interstellar condensed (seeing that movie in theaters was a profound experience for me)); I remember this meme was transfigured to Marian theology
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
When I tried to get into poetry I realized that the meaning of the poem doesn’t reside in the author but in your own memory of what each word connotes, and what the rhythms and the releases connote. This isn’t some death of the author argument but just the psychology of how words work. And as poetry is about great and worthwhile experiences (at least historically), this means it’s about re-collecting your own great and worthwhile experiences. So we read
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.
This is a cathartic expression; there is strain and relief. Mercy is associated with the relief. This poem is impossible to comprehend unless you’ve been under or seen an awaited gentle rain. Heaven, the place of ideal perfection, is associated here with the beauty of a sky in a gentle rain — have you ever seen the rain on a sunny day? We can imagine Man looking up at the beauty of the heavens, focusing on the ideal of heaven, with such awe that the rain only lands “on the place beneath” — the earth unnamed. The more that you repeat the poem with added meaning, the more the words retain this greater meaning. You can come back to the poem a year later and when you recite the words the meaning will come back to you on their own, like magical runes.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
I was about to write pretty much the same thing but you wrote it better. So I’ll just add: poetry is the sub-stimuli and music is the super-stimuli; lyrical music is poetry with greater specification of emotion. The decline of poetry coincides with greater availability of music, though interestingly it’s speculated that the ancient poets were accompanied by music. And from the Smiths:
You say : "'Ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said
A hundred times (maybe less, maybe more)
If you must write prose/poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loan"
This can be read one hundred ways, but the music and tone specifies it minutely.
coffee_enjoyer
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1yr ago
Sorry I think I got it wrong, they aren’t the drivers (haha) but the third party sellers / middle men. Apparently they have pretty insular marketing conferences and organizations to help other ultra orthodox enter this niche. But yeah this makes sense for them if they have to pray a number of times a day and can’t work around women. I was primarily mentioning this as an example of the sustainability of the ultra orthodox economy in light of their growth.
Material success is not known to prevent suicidal ideation. Humans require a purpose greater than “make widget, do drugs and women”.
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