coffee_enjoyer
☕️
No bio...
User ID: 541
I don’t think you can ascribe Belief A causation to Outcome C when there’s a huge expanse of Phenomena B between them. In the case of 2024’s progressive politics, there are clearer phenomena that caused it, and we can imagine 1776-like norms which inspire a different sort of progress than the one we ostensibly have now. For universalism, it explains more if you look to the French Revolution, which was no more influenced by Christianity than the counter-revolutionaries (who were arguably more influenced by Christianity, or at least Christian heritage). If Christianity can equally inspire both Divine Right nobilities and universalism, it’s more clear to ignore it altogether and look for more direct and salient causes.
I mean, would we ever say that Confucius inspired Mao’s revolution? No, there was an interjecting element in between. Did the Talmud inspire the Soviet Union? No, elements in between. The distances are way too large to clearly ascribe causal attributes, and other causes make more sense.
I suppose we can say, that Christianity causes universalism in the same way Christopher Columbus caused millions of Indians to die from disease. It’s simply that exploring a new thing comes with completely “random”, unknowable, unforeseen problems down the road. But we can imagine a discovery of America that does not accidentally induce a smallpox epidemic, so it’s not like there’s any wisdom in connecting discovery to smallpox in our minds.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
America has rolled out a new national anthem, except only for black people: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sQ0B7cF3DQk
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2d ago
You should post it as a parent comment in main thread
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1d ago
What is the cognitive difference between someone who uses a living experienced figure of speech, versus a dead metaphor only understood through conversation? Examples: run a tight ship, get on board.
When sailing was commonplace in English culture, these phrases would convey salient and significant experiences: the idea of strict rank inherent to seafaring, the idea of one singular authority deciding life and death with no one else around for hundreds of miles, civilized cooperative order versus chaos (ship versus rough seas), the prospect of status enhancement from obedient conduct; and the “board” of the ship meant near-claustrophobic proximity, rank-and-file, before tasks were dispersed. None of this meaning is transmitted in the expression today, only the connotation of when the phrase was previously heard by you. So, if you heard “run a tight ship” today, you would probably just imagine a manager who likes to be hands-on… and that’s it.
Some questions:
-
Am I just wrong here? I don’t think so. Consider the new zoomer expression “delete your account”. This expression conveys meaning which would be lost on someone living in 1860. It implies an immediate, swift, final action which totally eliminates a type of socializing (a type alien to the 19th century). We can easily imagine “delete your account” becoming an offline expression in the future, but then it would only connote basic shaming.
-
Are metaphors, in some sense, vastly more important for cognition than we think? How do we understand a word without metaphor? A word like “sufficient” seems to connote less than a phrase, just a small intellectual feeling without image, emotion, sound, texture — a hunch.
-
Should we kill off dead metaphors, and somehow replace them with living metaphors?
-
Should we give children a breadth of metaphorical experiences in the Montessori sense for cognitive gain?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
I don’t follow. The normative protestor is not pledging allegiance to Hamas, those are exceptional outliers.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d 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
☕️
2d ago
Can we really not domesticate monkeys and employ them in repetitive labor like collecting fruit and removing trash from beaches? Does the world not yearn for monkey-based saffron plantations?
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
You’re conflating “white” as the term used to refer to European peoples, with “purely white” of complexion which Franklin refers to. That context is complexion. The founding fathers unanimously believed that common European people were “white”, as French and Spaniards were granted citizenship during a time in which it was restricted to whites. I mean, you should know that, France was a key ally to America at this time.
So Frankin makes this aside that he likes his ethnicity, and then says
But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
That’s surprising to me for some reason. But, (afaik) it’s evangelicals who are most supportive of Israel among Christians in Texas
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
6d 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:
-
[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.
-
[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”.
We have to be careful not to misinterpret a spiritual ruling for a worldly ruling. “No longer barbarian or Scythian” also includes the line “no longer slave or free”; a different verse with the same intention specifies “no male or female in Christ”. Now, we know that early Christians comprised both slave and free men, and we know there was no call to free these Christian slaves. And we also know that there were strict rules regarding how women ought to behave, always submitted to either the husband or the male church leader. So we can’t take “no barbarian or Scythian” to mean the eradication of cultural units or allegiances, because there were binding cultural rules for women and allegiances of slaves to masters. IMO these verses are “simply” saying that within the spirit of Christ our worldly identities are enveloped toward spiritual ends (heavenly rewards and judgments). Christ has primacy, and is the whole spiritual “bloodline” if you will, but its relevant category is spirit and not world. So I may be a worldly slave, yet freed in Christ, or free in the world yet a slave to Christ (too lazy google this passage). I may be wealthy in the world, but it would be a mistake for the church to give me extra attention and place me in the front because of worldly wealth.
Paul sort of demonstrates this nuance in Romans. His gentile Christian congregants are his brothers, yet he doesn’t deny that “I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin”, and he especially desired that his worldly brothers would join the spiritual brotherhood. I think this is the morally correct nuance to take regarding world concerns and religion concerns. Genetic differences in race are a world concern that concern the political aspect of a person (rules on emigration, whatever). The absolute irrelevance of genetics for spiritual life and spiritual ends is a religious truth that concerns the spiritual aspect of a person. They are different. The spiritual has supremacy but also has little bearing on the political (“give unto Caesar…”).
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
3d ago
The only realistic move is to organize into a tight religious in-group, because: religion is the best way to train the young’s’ spiritual/mental immune system against political propaganda, religion is the best way to transmit cultural/philosophical concerns, and (most of all) America offers strong religious protections which would allow you to live sequestered away from normal life in America. Note that (while I think Western Christianity is the best) your religion need not be fantastical or even really theistic. Unitarian Universalism for instance is simply the progressive worldview codified into religious dogma and adorned in tax protections. There’s nothing stopping a conservative from establishing a religion that believes in Spinoza’s God, believes that the Western classics were divinely inspired, or even believes that certain developed populations are God’s chosen people. Now your community’s resources can be pooled together without taxes, you can establish schools with a religious and conduct requirement, etc
“The protestors” don’t wave a Hamas flag, any more than “the Israeli protestors” call everyone protesting a Hamas terrorist (see: Shai Davidai). Some instances (almost always of non-affiliated / non-students outside of campus grounds) do not allow you to impugn a whole protest movement.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
18hr ago
Football has for decades been a way to stave off unrest. First, the sport attracts the attention of violent men without impressive economic prospects, as the sport itself is visibly violent and masculine. It is the closest similitude to war (armor, helmets, commands, clashes). It gives these men a castrated, impotent tribal identity in the form of regional teams, which are corporations motivated by capital without any serious tie to a region or interest. The men wear the insignia and colors of their favorite team and recite the assigned warcries. This establishes the attention of the cohort who are at most risk of unrest. Now that they have your attention, they push domestication propaganda in the form of rituals (national anthems, even the new “black” national anthem) and spectacles (ads, half time shows). After a Super Bowl there are occasional riots, but this is like when the waters of a flooded dam are redirected so as to keep the integrity of the dam — the Super Bowl brought tens of thousands of the most passionate fans, and not all of them will have their masculine energy siphoned off completely; they are allowed to expend the rest of their energy in a controlled way.
You might think, “but what about the kneeling for the flag controversy? Didn’t this create more controversy rather then unity?” No, this acted as a marketing campaign to give football more attention in the at-risk cohorts (black nationalists and MAGA guys). Both of them are now tuning in to football news, maybe they watch and want the kneeler to lose, maybe the opposite. Were they to ignore that controversy, they would not be capturing the full cohort they want and neither would they be accomplishing the sublimation ritual. Adding gambling to football culture was another way to do this (while producing an enormous profit), because gambling was already in video games but you want attention given to football as well. I think this is also why the “Sketch” streamer is being astroturfed. This is where Travis and cowboys and TSwift come in. They code right, they bring in more viewers.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
2d ago
The “young” Right re-learned the importance of religion for survival only recently, I’d argue, around the time of the Benedict Plan in 2017. And public thinkers like Jordan Peterson only recently brought serious arguments for religion to the public, in a way that can satisfy the more “rational” conservative cohort who would otherwise be stuck on Nietzsche and new atheism. So it’s not surprising you haven’t seen this development immediately.
I don’t get your point about the Satanic Temple. Satanism is not a culture, it’s pretty much only an aesthetic, so it lacks the motive to utilize tax exemption for the purpose of maintaining a culture. If I were to bet, practicing “Satanists” are usually anti-natalists who think that their cultural heritage sucks. I similarly don’t get your point about the Amish; they were established at a time when no one policed how you established towns and schools… when there was no mass media… they just plopped themselves in Ohio and created, effectively, a micro-nation because they could… and there were few taxes then. So you’re comparing apples to orangutans here, in that there is genuinely no comparison to be made.
your solution to almost any issue is more dakka religion
Approximately, yes. More accurately, it’s “hierarchical organized communities which use stories and rituals and social competition to guide human behavior, whose leaders are chosen by virtuous conduct and who are prevented from having any material bias of self-gain eg accumulating wealth or women.” This just so happens to be religious in nature due to quirks of the flesh human nature. It’s hard to look at the demise of South Korea, the resilience of the Pashtuns, the birth rates of the Abrahamic Orthodox, the beauty of renaissance art, the economic waste of consumerist sexual competition, and the quasi-religious attitudes of political radicals and not come to the conclusion that what we need is Optimized Religion(s).
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
5d ago
Hyper realism in video games is a mistake. Dialogue scenes should be like paintings, or a series of paintings / illustrations with ambient moving parts (like in a good documentary). You can never make the human face appear hyper-realistic enough to exceed the value of a good painting or illustration. Do the characters of Miyazaki lack expression, or the faces of Caravaggio? No. And hyper realistic environments are also less memorable, filled with too much clutter.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
9hr ago
Connotation plays a big role here. “Stuck in a forest with a man” is a phrase that has horror movie connotations, and isn’t going to be analyzed in some dispassionate objective meticulous way (the median forest of median size, with the median man, some random distance away). That’s just not how humans will interpret questions on the fly. The question begs to be understood in terms of conflict: why else would you be stuck? Why else would man be compared to bear? The question would be a lot different if it was: “[points to a random man] would you rather be 200ft from that man in a forest, or 200ft from a bear?” Women also do not want to signal that they are interested in strange men, but they do want to signal that they like animals, which is feminine-coded in America.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
Ben Franklin
Close but no cigar. “When I consider, that the English are the Offspring of Germans [..] I am not for refusing entirely to admit them into our Colonies: all that seems to be necessary is, to distribute them more equally, mix them with the English, establish English Schools where they are now too thick settled […] I am not against the Admission of Germans in general, for they have their Virtues, their industry and frugality is exemplary; They are excellent husbandmen and contribute greatly to the improvement of a Country.”
His worry seemed to have been that they would outnumber the English. Remember at this time they all spoke German, had German newspapers, etc
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
4d ago
Wealthy Jewish donors are uniquely driven to withhold donations based on this combined ethnic, religious, and political interest (Israel + the Jewish people). No gentile donors are as motivated toward any issue because they lack this level of tribalism. Imagine if Bill Gates was concerned about the low number of white admits, or withdrew donations because of white identity politics, or etc. This is a prisoner’s dilemma problem, or even example of Popper’s paradox of tolerance. There is one group of Americans who have a maximal focus on their tribe; all other groups are pressured to focus on helping Americans generally. If only one group is hyper-focused on the Israel issue, then they effectively get to decide the mainstream narrative. Non-Jews either have to be okay with a perpetual Jewish “decisive vote” on matters regarding the Middle East and the anti-semitism topic, or they have to rebuke this level of tribalism.
Abbott
One his largest single donors is Jewish, Jeff Yass, who made the largest single donation in Texas history. Yass is also a big supporter of Israel and Zionism. Another big donor is Ken Fischer. There are other wealthy Jewish philanthropists in Texas who he may want donations from, like Michael Dell. If these donors are single-issue donors, then Abbott knows he can get millions by taking a hard stance on the protests. Evangelical interests need not factor in.
I don’t see these events as anything but (1) a textbook example of college student protests and (2) a frightening display of Jewish social and cultural power.
The students believe that Israel is killing too many innocent people. Lots of intelligent people believe that; whether or not it is factually the case, it is a rational belief that many reasonable people hold, including many Jews. Even Chuck Schumer of all people has the opinion that Israel is behaving immorally. The students want their universities to cut financial and academic ties with Israel. All very simple, all very traditional, and very reasonable as far as college kids go. No different than protests against the Vietnam War or South Africa or the Iraq War. The protests have been exceptionally peaceful; if BLM was “mostly peaceful”, PLM is utopian. Try as I might, I could find no clear case of a Jewish student being physically victimized. Most of the arguably anti-Semitic comments have come from outside the campuses, by random non-affiliated protests, one-off statements that do not tell us anything about the college protestors. There’s your typical extremism college student view, but this is normal as far as college students go.
What makes this event so unique IMO is how Jews have finessed the narrative in their favor. Despite no evidence of any physical attack, the most over-represented ethnicity on college campuses (with the most advocacy groups and the most political clout) claim to feel “unsafe”. The media reports this as if it is true, and now the narrative is no longer “is Israel committing human rights violations?”, but “are Jews safe?”. In a reasonable world, the discourse would center on whether Israel is or is not committing human rights violations, and why some of the smartest students in America strongly feel they they are. A secondary question may be whether Jews in America are too close to Israel in terms of political ties, because that’s a serious problem if Israel becomes a pariah state. But Jews have strategically shifted the narrative to their own victimhood, with zero evidence. They have influenced politicians to make statements and start inquiries. They have significant sway over MSM narrative. They threaten to take tens of millions of their donations away from universities who don’t prevent the protests.
I found a video from earlier this week that illustrates the power of victim politics. An immigrant Uber driver arrives to his requested client, but can’t fulfill the request because the client accidentally ordered the wrong car. A verbal altercation ensues; phones are equipped by both parties. The client brags about his status as a lawyer, threatens to get the driver fired, claims he is being aggressed, claims the driver has threatened his children, and when all of these fail to exert his power, he claims that the driver muttered antisemitism under his breath. This last accusations makes the driver flee immediately.
The internet is saying that the client is a big shot music industry lawyer. If the internet is right, the client was on the board of directors of UJA, a Jewish charity that oversees more than one billion dollars in endowment (one of the largest local charities in the world). The man is from a pedigreed family: his Dad once ran Columbia Records. Without any shame, he punches down to a poor immigrant rideshare driver and falsely accuses him of antisemitism to record him and get him fired. And not for anything serious, but because of a minor inconvenience. If this is the attitude of someone on the board of UJA, then I think it could hint to a larger, dangerous attitude in the Jewish-Zionist community: that it is permissible to weaponize victimhood for personal or communal gain.
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.
More options
Context Copy link