coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
11mo ago
You didn’t argue your main point, though, at all. Why is it McCarthyite tactics, a witch-hunt, and scare-mongering?
The opposing side’s argument is simple. Our geopolitical rival, which is close to an ethno-state, benefits from the education we give their students, who then go back to China. Those slots could be taken by American students. There’s another argument: forcing universities to hire Americans to compete globally (and while we’re there, forcing companies to hire Americans) means forcing a cultural shift where leaders now have to start seriously considering how education can be improved. On this last point, maybe the “Imperial Examination” style educational model is a better fit for Chinese and not Americans, and Americans uniquely benefit from teacher-pupil relationships for cultural or genetic reasons.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
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Furries as a result of reduced environmental enrichment and maternal bonding. Furries associate with a dog foremost because (1) dogs receives abundant physical affection and (2) dogs primarily engage in the environment in a sense-rich way.
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How the New Testament is a truly great central text for a culture. It tracks a humble individual who persuades his followers with plain truth and moral insight, it criticizes both legal authority and the very idea of moral authority, it shows us the universal propensity toward social sins, it repudiates power and wealth and distraction, and it possesses a better understanding of happiness than pop culture today (the hedonic treadmill, growth mindset, and so on are efficiently fleshed out in the Gospel). It’s truly remarkable that this became the central text, let alone in the Roman Empire. I fear the consequences of a society which no longer sees it as a high level of truth. You don’t have to “believe in God” (I increasingly find belief or unbelief to be missing the point). The idea that such a text could actually become sacred is proof of the importance of religion, because only fervent individuals could hoist it up against the Pagan stories and worldly books. I can’t imagine any solitary book as useful for guiding a society than the New Testament.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
This is more of an aside, but there’s a complexity to the Christian position on homosexuality. Homosexuality refers to both actions and an inclination of the flesh. The Pope is not saying that it’s okay for priests to engage in any homosexual behavior — because it’s not even okay for them to engage in heterosexual behavior! — instead he is saying that he does not judge the proclivities of the flesh, which come from an essentially unconscious part of a human. Hunger happens whether we will it or not, and the sin of gluttony is to always obey our hunger. Similarly, the sin of lust according to Christianity comes from the act (as well as when we consciously look with desire upon a woman, which is a conscious act), and not what “the flesh” wants. What the flesh wants at any moment has nothing to do with our Will, though it is influenced by past behavior. The Pope is saying that if the “flesh” of a Priest is homosexual, that is, if it desires men rather than women, the priest is not to be judged, because a man is only responsive for what he wills (does and thinks and intends and attends and so forth).
The Pope’s position has additional complexity because he is morally prevented from revising anything that Christ would have believed. The Pope does not replace Christ, he is bound (by fear of hell) to obey Christ. So while Jesus said little on homosexuality (I think perhaps one or two opaque references), the Jewish and early Christian sources are clear.
There is one final level of complexity, which is that platonic male physical affection was historically normal and now is not. This means that a homosexual of Jesus’ era up until the era of Wilde could have as much physical affection with a male to his heart’s content, just not to his flesh’s content. Loving, living with, and forever enjoying his company? Yes. The whole spectrum of friendship and love and physical affection which are elements of today’s construct of homosexuality were entirely permissible, if not promoted in stories like David and Jonathon. You just can’t whip your dick out. Anything involving a dick would be a sin. This is important, because much of the harm seen in anti-homosexuality is the loss of the romantic/love sphere, yet in the past, the only thing lost would be handjobs/oral/anal. Incidentally, heterosexuals also lost these upon joining Christianity, because sex was established as a solely pro-procreative act (they lacked the scientific understanding that the ubiquity of oral sex among animals promotes safe copulation for the female for microbiotic reasons).
I disagree with the ad hoc social justice theology, because the Kingdom of God is not of our world (John 18:36). One of the most significant problems facing Christianity is the failure to read the plain wording of Jesus’ teachings, that we share between brothers (Christians in the Church) and lay down our lives for our friends (fellowship in the Church). Christians are not golems designed to do good for outsiders continually. They are designed to help Christians and make Christians, which is why so many of the passages on charity speak about brothers and little ones (in Christ). The Apostles did everything for Christians, they formed churches and shared wealth among Christians and did not go around healing atheists. Of the non-Christians, they said not even to share a meal with them! Any charity done to a non-Christian without the purpose of conversion is wasted.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan has been manipulated by false teachers who suppose that, despite every single parable possessing greater meaning in each word chosen, this parable simply means “do good to everyone”. Indeed, instead of Jesus saying “do good to everyone”, he wastes his words contriving his only parable with no greater meaning. A Samaritan, the original Jews / true priestly line of Israel, who are the neighboring faith of the Jews? No reason this is added. A man traveling from Jerusalem, the home of the Jews? No reason added. Encountering a man half-dead, on a path, and doing what was sufficient to save his life? Nope, no reason this part was added. How about when Jesus refuses to heal the Canaanite woman unless she humbled herself, saying “it is not right to throw the bread to the dogs”? He must have just been speaking in tongues, …
So the Archbishop should have elevated the masses to the mysteries of God instead of picturing Jesus as a SJW, IMO. But as for the King humbling himself? I find this beautiful. The only problem with a hereditary monarchy is that they lack the right moral training. Consider also in Philippians 2:
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Consider the end result. Are you making knees bow? Are you making tongues confess?
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Thank you for correction, my memory was quite off. Although there is also the “don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers” in 2 Cor 6:14, and then the ‘those who don’t care for their relatives are worse than unbelievers’ in 1 Tim 5:8.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
As you mentioned, Jesus was against the religious developments of the Pharisees and was also critical of the Sadducees (who may be “Levites” in this parable). Their focus on purity laws, criticized abundantly in the Gospel, means that they could not touch a corpse without great inconvenience. The man is described as half-dead. Hyrcanus who ordered the Samaritan temple destroyed was aligned with the Pharisees IIRC. As Jesus came for the “lost flock”, and as he’s shown elsewhere friendly to Samaritans, I don’t think he or his followers considered them the out-group. In John 4 it’s mentioned that his apostles were surprised he was talking to a woman, but didn’t ask her what her business was, as they did with others considered the out group. He then stayed with them and apparently converted many of them.
The only criticism against the Samaritans by Jesus, as far as I know, is that the woman had five husbands. An interesting aside, in that passage, what’s translated as “no dealings with Samaritans” could be translated as “no joining up with Samaritans.” Perhaps these five husbands allude to the five books of the Pentateuch which the Samaritans believed to be holy only, and Jesus is coming to her as the one which represents the joining of the five books of the Torah. The husband motif is elsewhere found in the Bible, and this also allows us to make sense of why the woman twice repeats “he told me all that I ever did”.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I wouldn’t phrase it like that. Jesus helps all manners of sinners because that’s one of the things God is for: a physician who heals the sick. He is not so much “associating with the out-group”, which for him are the Pharisees that he despises and curses, as showing us what God is. His associates are the Apostles, who are not sinners except the foretold Judas. I think we can be sure that this is the point because it’s specified exactly in the passage where he reclines with tax collectors etc:
Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
The complete and utter vanity of the news when seen from the longterm is why I can’t help being drawn to the good news of religion. At the very least my quibbles are echos through the ages, beginning with the first quibblings of the Christians 2000 years ago. At the most, maybe I learn something that increases my happiness, who knows?
Something to note when considering Ashkenazi in Europe is history is that they really were their own nation, a kind of mobile and extra-territorial nation who 100% believed they were their own peoplehood. The Rabbis had jurisdiction over their subjects and could excommunicate anyone at will. They had their own laws and traditions and tax codes. This means that when you read about “oppression”, you are actually reading about a conflict between two nations. This needs to be dwelled upon, because if you compare European-Jewish conflict to European-European conflict, you quickly see that Jews were the least attacked and the safest group in Europe by a large margin. (Consider this an historical White on White argument if you must). Of course there would be conflicts against Jews, their own nation was in a geographical area made up of many states and ruled by hereditary rulers. And of course they would lose these conflicts, because they chose to be their own traveling nation. But compare the bloodshed between, say, Catholics and Protestants, or even British versus British in the War of the Roses with 100,000 dead. Jews have little to complain about regarding their treatment in European history before the holocaust, as they were the safest group by a large margin.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Thought: the problem I have with rap is the same problem as the pre-Christian age of heroes: while it’s good and necessary to have a heroic ideal to long for, to set our eyes toward in a far-off distance, for 99% of our days we play the role of servant and not hero. We usually work toward glory without any glory. We serve either a future ideal of ourselves or an actual boss or company. The heroic Pagan constructs are in fact inglorious precisely because they are too heroic, and the lowliness of Christ is in fact glorious precisely because of the lowliness. And so the high heroic Roman Empire was subjugated to the lowly crucified Christian.
Other thought: this video of rural Pakistani villagers reacting to the famous Agni Parthene is very cute.
Last thought: I really hate the show Succession? It seems like fantasy porn.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
And the Celts. The celts were obliterated by the Romans and then the Saxons, and Wales was the last Celtic holdout.
In Central Europe during 30 years war:
https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545974
The rewards for their cooperation began to accrue to the Jews directly following the crushing of the Bohemian rebels at the Battle of the White Mountain, in November 1620. With the Protestant forces dis-persed, the city of Prague was ruthlessly sacked, all that is except for the Judenstadt. The emperor's soldiery were under strict instructions, which they obeyed, not to enter the Jewish quarter.
The privileged treatment continued under the new governor of Bohemia, Karl von Liechtenstein, a nobleman with close links with Jacob Bassevi, the Jewish financier who was at the center of the efforts to raise Jewish cash for the emperor and who had been ennobled--the first Jew to receive such an honor from a Holy Roman Emperor--by Rudolph II, in 1614.
In conclusion, it does seem that previous views of the fate of Central European Jewry during the Thirty Years' War stand in need of revision. The influence of certain preconceived notions appears to be widely dis-cernible in the historiography, ideas which have tended to distort our view of the question. On the one hand, there is an entrenched expecta-tion that as a defenseless and supposedly constantly victimized group, the jews of Germany and Austria must have been "easy prey for the marauding soldiery."
On the other, there is the marked tendency in pre-1939 German Jewish historical writing to flatly deny that the Jews were affected by or experienced major historical events differently from other Germans. The truth is that the terrible upheavals of the Thirty Years' War mostly worked in favor of German and all Central Euro-pean Jewry, appreciably enhanced the Jewish role in German life, and prepared the ground for the "Age of the Court Jew"-the late seven-teenth and early eighteenth century-the high-water mark of Jewish influence on Central European commerce and finance.
Note that 30% of HRE population died (though, unsure how many from violence and starvation rather than disease; perhaps 3-6% of that number) during the Thirty Years’ War. I also can’t find a number on the the number of Jews in the HRE at that time, but we can be certain they died less due to starvation, pillaging, and combat.
As for all of European history? I don’t think any Academic has crunched those numbers.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Jews did not primarily live in the countryside during European history outside of Russia, iirc. They would live in close proximity to the King with whom they had a unique economic partnership. There were no agricultural Jews in Northern, Southern, or Central Europe, unless I am mistaken.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
The Middle Ages were radically different. Even disputing a Christian doctrine in a Catholic country could you have killed. Apostasy in a Muslim country would have you killed, and apostasy in a Jewish city as a Jew would have you made anathema with the threat of being killed. Today is much different than the Middle Ages. I’m merely asserting that the Jews as a whole did not face more threat than everyone else, because everyone else was dying in wars and starving to death (outside the “urban” center).
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
It’s a blunder to say that because a religion possesses something that is called “sacrifice”, that what we think when we say “sacrifice” calls to mind all the same meaning, baggage, and effect. Rome had myths and stories that entail something Christians could call self-sacrifice. But what early Christians understood by sacrifice is a totally different thing, which just happens to share the same referent.
If you lived as a Roman you would be forced into internalizing their view of power and sacrifice: the Emperor had power and you sacrifice for the Emperor and if you’re lucky you get something in return; the gods you worshipped are under a tyrannical pantheon; the most glorious human to exist is certainly the Emperor or a great warrior who carved out land for Rome; you worship a powerful human-like god and you make a promise of sacrifice for the god to benefit you, and if if benefits you, you make the sacrifice. Because the thing you are worshipping is always high-and-mighty and glorious, what you internalize is that power and glory are the only things that really matter. This is problematic because mathematically only a few can have power and glory.
This is in sharp contrast to the Christian view. What a Christian looks at as the best is not a warrior with a lot of land and slaves. They look at a person whose mission was to help people with little care for material reward, who didn’t despise sinners, who served the Father of all mankind up to and including crucifixion, and who willingly died in our place as a servant to our shared Creator. This is an inversion of the entire Roman system, which by the time of Christianity was already collapsing from waste, ill morals, and corruption. Rome invented bread for the masses and Christianity invented heavenly bread for the Mass: they are not the same. In the Christian system, a simple laborer could understand that there is nothing in life he is missing and that he is up to the standards of God.
The monasteries provided us with the beginnings of formal logic, architectural improvements, philosophical improvements, and many of the classics from the Ancient World. But if you think the Pagans were so good, we are back to the first question: how did the lowly crucified triumph over Roman Might? In fact, how did the lowly crucified religion triumph over almost the whole world? And one point they had near-hegemony.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Brings back good memories! Ill always be partial to Oblivion though.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
They had their own quarters of a city with nearly full self-rule and a religious freedom that no one else in Europe had. This was clearly desirable to them which is why they traveled great lengths to live in Europe. Humans don’t really value whether they “own land” (after all, in America it’s not yours if you don’t pay taxes), they care whether they have a place of their own with self-rule. They were given their own unique quarters of European cities where they were free of all the pains of the typical serf or peasant and were protected by the personal interest of the King. In practice, is that ownership? In the cases where they loaned money, they held the value of many properties, but as non-agricultural people, they had no interest in owning and living in farm lands in Western Europe. In fact, the Talmud has passages about how farming is a disreputable profession, which is one of the reasons Ashkenazi didn’t farm much.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Should post this in main thread btw if the questions thread was a misclick
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Nope, outdated view
For over 200 years, Gibbon's model and its expanded explanatory versions—the conflict model and the legislative model—have provided the major narrative. The conflict model asserts that Christianity rose in conflict with paganism, defeating it only after emperors became Christian and were willing to use their power to require conversion through coercion. The legislative model is based on the Theodosian Code published in AD 438.
In the last decade of the twentieth century and into the twenty–first century, multiple new discoveries of texts and documents, along with new research (such as modern archaeology and numismatics), combined with new fields of study (such as sociology and anthropology) and modern mathematical modeling, have undermined much of this traditional view. According to modern theories, Christianity became established in the third century, before Constantine, paganism did not end in the fourth century, and imperial legislation had only limited effect before the era of the eastern emperor Justinian I (reign 527 to 565).[1][2][3][4] In the twenty-first century, the conflict model has become marginalized, while a grassroots theory has developed.[5][6]
According to Stark, the rate of Christianity's growth under its first Christian emperor in the 4th century did not alter (more than normal regional fluctuations) from its rate of growth in the first three centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_Christianization_of_the_Roman_Empire
Also a poor argument from common sense. Rome was already very diverse, and already had many diverse gods which usually got together fine. State-sponsored Christianity would have caused considerable and significant division in the Empire, like it would in America today, whereas tolerance and a pantheon and appropriation would have kept the Pax Romana. So the argument doesn’t even require evidence to disprove
Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, posted a photo on Twitter celebrating the Jewish American Heritage Month.
Met with Jewish White House staff in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. Our Administration is proud to recognize the Jewish staffers who help carry our nation forward each day and are helping create a more inclusive tomorrow.
I counted, give or take, 155 Jewish Staff Members. There are 474 White House Staff Members in total, meaning that Jews comprise 32% of all staff members. This is a radical over-representation of 1400%, or 14x what should be expected given the population of 2.2%. As everyone pictured is White, presumably this really is a photo with all the Jewish staff members who wanted to participate in the event (otherwise: why no black staffers present?). There may be some not pictured for various work-related or personal reasons, and perhaps some with Jewish spouses pictured. I had difficulty finding the figures on other demographics. According to an authoritative source, 14% of the staff are Black (this just happens to be the same number and is not a typo). I could find nothing on Asian members, but perusing the total list of White House Staff names I calculated give or take 50 with exclusively Asian names; this should be construed as a minimum because of high exogamy rates and names not always being obviously Asian. That puts Asians at 10.5%. Given that Black people sit at 14%, I would go out on a limb and say that the Latino constituents also comprise roughly their makeup in America; let’s peg it at a slightly lower 15% (if someone wants to check from the list of staffers’ names be my guest).
All of this puts the non-Jewish White percent at 28.5%, counting the Turkish and Arab names as White (and ignoring the probably ~2% Native American that Joe slipped in there). And so, among White House staffers, Whites are quite under-represented and Jews are enormously over-represented. This is problematic IMO, because the domestic founding population of a nation shouldn’t be so under-represented, and a single ethnic cluster with a strong activism network and their own influential nation state probably shouldn’t be 14x over-represented among White House staffers without anyone in established media criticizing or noticing. Alas, such topics have been posted frequently, but in previous cases the over-representation was among Cabinet Members and Supreme Court Justices and so on. This shows that even in a large sample size such as 474, the over-representation remains. If I could put my position into as few words as possible, I would steal from a random tweet on the subject: “Half of the White House staff is Jewish, but we get told that ‘White Supremacists’ run America lol.” What pains me is that while the default white Americans are so under-represented, they are the ones who face the most ruthless black propaganda against their demographic. It’s important to educate others on the problem of representation, I suppose.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Default White is a regrettable term, but “non-Jewish” is even more regrettable, and saying the word gentile in this context seems off. Similarly, “plain” comes with negative baggage. I also don’t want to say European, because the majority of Jewish Americans very much have European heritage. There really aren’t too many options, and I think if I said Christian-ancestry I’d also find disagreement.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
I’m not 100% sure what point you’re making. European nationalities have had a shared culture for over a thousand years (nota bene: this is not mutually exclusive to unique culture). This is thanks first to Christendom, then to the proliferation of philosophy and music and art and literature. This is obvious when studying history. They are also genetically similar, due to prehistory but also due to genetic proliferation of Celts and Germanics. While Europeans did not define themselves like the Ashkenazi in premodernity as based on bloodline, it is quite silly to allege that European Americans have no shared genetics or culture. So, why would we single our Jewish Americans? Four reasons. (1) They are the group over-represented, and I would be as perturbed if the Irish were as over represented. (2) Absolutely every group but whites put themselves into larger groups, which includes Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. (3) They have their own unique religion, historical culture, (important in their minds) bloodlines, and intensive advocacy networks. (4) When people talk about white privilege, they may mean Jews if going by data, so a cultural correction is in order.
Let me know what you think. I see no argument for why it isn’t justifiable to mention Jewish over-representation when they are obviously their own unique cultural group within a large cultural tent, which any Rabbi would tell you.
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
Those with influence get to decide popular culture, and I live in a country that runs off popular culture, which means my life and those whom I love are affected by the culture of those in power. If Catholics were so over-represented, Biden would likely not speak about transphobia when Christian children were gunned down by a Transgender activist. Well, if Catholics were so over-represented they would actually comprise the entire White House staff, and then they would build two more White Houses and fill each one with the same amount (all Catholics), and there would still be roughly 100 Catholics left over to fiddle with their rosary beads. Do you think Jews would be content if 30% of the staff were Muslim? This is a good way to think about it. Why not 90% Muslim? Jews would have nothing to fear if Muslims hypothetically comprised the entire political apparatus, right? And atheists nothing to fear if every leader were a Mormon from Utah?
coffee_enjoyer
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11mo ago
If you mean instead, that the singular parent-influence that led to a 14x exaggerated hiring rate and that also leads to Biden policy decisions was replaced by a Catholic one, then of course this would be in my interests. Do you think Jews are just burning their money by spending millions of dollars on advocacy groups, lobbying, and so on? Or do they perhaps benefit? Well, of course they benefit, otherwise the money would not be spent. Whether there’s a direct connection between Jewish lobbying and a 14x over-representation is not something I know, because it hasn’t been investigated (neither reported), because I don’t have the lobbyists to order the investigation. The Black lobby of course gets a special video call with Biden’s team, seen in my link above.
I don’t see anything particularly bad about this law. The very, very bad possible future is if they decide criticism of Jews as a religion or culture constitutes a hate crime. Everyone should have unilateral permission to criticize religions and cultures. Knowing the ADL, they will try to get anything critical of Judaism, Jewish Advocacy Groups, and Israel labeled as hate. The law as written applies to all protected classes.
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