No one rules alone, and the exercise of power requires both will and legitimacy.
I just want to point out, that international law you so fiercely defend is famously lacking legitimacy on all front ranging from democratic deficit, representation deficit with opaque power structures like UN security council or of course lack/arbitrariness/double standard of enforcement of international law. USA literally has Hague invasion Act since 2002, which preemptively enables US president to attack international court in Hague if they ever dare to apprehend US military personnel.
History has shown again and again that the weak can prevail against the strong by being willing to endure greater costs despite facial material inferiority, and that apparent strength can mask a lack of internal willpower
Yes, history shown that weak can make themselves strong and foment some sort of revolt, they can endure in silence sometimes for decades or even centuries like in North Korea or African tyrannies, weak can also whine and appeal to strong to make their plight more bearable. Sometimes the weak are lucky and strong are more benevolent and even indulge the weak in their power fantasies. In the end it all only affirms the law of the jungle.
We see again and again from Trump himself as well as senior figures like Miller and Hegseth a belief that American power entitles them to do what they want - that others should give way to power because it is powerful. This is not the strong doing what they will, it is a moral appeal. It is not a conventional moral appeal, but it is a moral appeal nonetheless.
So the critique is that they overestimated their strength and their inside and outside enemies are more powerful than them? Yes, this may very well be the case.
They cannot appeal to higher principles or laws because they themselves have rejected them.
The higher principles themselves are only upheld by force. There is no international law in manypolar world, or in a world where the hegemon in form of USA will no longer uphold it. All the "allies" such as in EU or Canada can do is just whine and seethe. They can go and beg China or some other big dog to stand up for them, in the same way let's say Greek city states begged Rome to protect them from Macedonia or some such.
That is the very point I am making. Again, you may be raging that Trump is actually weak, that he endangers the very position of USA as the world hegemon ruling over land and sea by international law threat of violence by nuclear carrier fleet. Without that kind of power you have world roamed by pirates, bandits, warlords, rogue states, rebels and cartels rule the day. Of course, that is the law of the jungle.
That Trump took a bet an lost and made last of the Iraq > Afghanistan > Iran blunders which make US look weak - similarly to how USA lost in Vietnam and it was not until the end of Cold War and winning the first Gulf War decisively where US empire reclaimed the title of ultimate planetary macho. So maybe it will take some other US president to show the world the true US power and discipline all the children around the world to adhere to international law or else. But again, it is all just power talk in the end.
They cannot appeal to higher principles or laws because they themselves have rejected them.
Of course they can. International law is no set of "higher principles", it is bunch of shit made up by some bureaucrats. For instance I have more faith in in principled stance of my local mayor to protect my rights than some nonsense spewed by United Nations Human Rights council now led by some guy from Indonesia. Plus I do not know why Trump or anybody else could not appeal to higher principles ranging from national or even Global Security down to things like because this random council over there approved. It is exactly these principles behind the aforementioned Hague Invasion Act or many instances of ignoring international law.
georgioz
1d ago
Interesting, do you want to increase aid to Darfur? Would you vote for a politician who took money from a pro-Janjaweed group and defended their actions?
I said that if anything, the things happening in Darfur or Nigeria are more important to me than fucking Gaza. Not that it essential or that it makes me single issue Darfur voter. I would analyze a politician holistically in line with principle of subsidiarity.
The term colonization is absolutely used about the West Bank and I dont see a problem with that. But again you overestimating the degree to which discourse is about ideology. Most people are just upset about Israels behavior and the suffering of innocents in Palestine.
And I think that you are underestimating the degree to which this discourse is captured by ideology. The level of emotion on the left is unhinged, it is just another operation with its own viral energy. I do not believe that it was all just some random thing when from all the conflicts and all the suffering of women and children in the world right now, this one was just randomly taken up by the left and hammered for years. I am not denying that the emotions are genuine, it is just strategically selected to garner sympathy. It is the same for all the leftist causes, like their most successful op so far of killing of George Floyd. Of course there were people genuinely horrified by what happened. But at the same time it was also a cynical operation to ram through policies that the left was preparing for decades. The same shit with Gaza here.
The wider leftist position is quickly becoming the normie position because it is actually very defensible: "dont send money and weapons to a country full of religious nuts who believe they are justified in getting revenge on a defenceless population full of children".
Sure, I could get under policy of not sending billions of dollars to Israel. Except it is probably more complicated given that Israel is an ally let's say in current conflict with Iran, they literally bombed the country. Whatever you think about this war, if it was caused by Israel or what, the fact is that it is a military ally and thus some support is necessary. US always sent weapons to movements and countries that committed violence. While your stance seems okay to me, it also seems naive.
By the way I am also for instance pissed that there is any help also sent to Gaza. I do not want to have anything to do with that awful place, it is not my responsibility. Let Egyptians and Saudis and other neighbors do that part.
Most people are just horrified by Israels relentless violence towards the women and children of Palestine, and even more horrified by all the supposedly good people who are defending it.
There are people now defending carpet bombing of Nazi Germany or Japan including dropping of nuclear bomb. If this is something that seems unbelievable to you then you probably are not so engaged in this discourse. The problem is that I am horrified by too many things, such as genocide in Darfur, and the overall region of Sahel and other things. I think that there are many conflicts where the moral situation is much clearer.
I am not particularly energized by Palestinians in this sense, I do not see a reason why they should jump as a front issue for me. For instance I am focusing on Ukraine, which has much more direct impact on me. If there would be any other conflict, it would probably be genocidal persecution of ethnicities linked to Christianity in Sahel region especially in Darfur and Nigeria. Everything else is distant.
I dont think I have heard the word "historical oppression" once, and no one pretends that Palestinians are saints who can do no wrong. Nearly all advocacy is aimed at the innocent children in Gaza and excludes anyone who could possibly be a militant. Leftist have many terrible positions, but this is not one of them.
I am curious. None of your leftie pro-Palestine friends ever used the term colonizer, colonized or colonialism in relation to this shit?
I heard a counterargument from Daryl Cooper of Martyr made podcast that it is okay to have double standard and expect more from Israel - because they are western democracy. It is the same logic where US military has to behave perfectly despite fighting literal genocidal maniacs and other lunatic cults. Everybody expects that Putin or Xijinping will do gangster shit. Nobody is surprised that some muslim radicals are right this second genociding Christians in Darfur or Nigeria or that there are literal slave markets in Libya selling black slaves - not even BLM gives a shit. But that all pales in comparison with war crimes of western countries.
In a sense it is cynically logical - you will criticize somebody you can actually influence. There is no need to criticize Kim Jong Un, he does not care. Not even new pope Leo criticized him yet, in fact he is supposedly building diplomatic bridge with North Korea. Of course pope had a lot to say about US immigration policy or conduct of Iran war or about tyrants waging war - while dining with literal murderer Cameroon leader who is in power since 1982.
Oh yes, this is the Fuentes critique I was talking about. It is unironically impressive how successful "Israel First" policy is. Their politicians were able to wrap foreign dignitaries around their fingers and train them like dogs to implement their policies. The point being that people like Fuentes admire this chutzpah, they want USA to become the same. Everybody will bow to US supremacy under cross or some such. People in UN should be in awe and they should persecute antiamericanism and christophobia with the same if not greater zeal as antisemitism even as Americans bomb their adversaries to stone age. All media from NYT and WSJ and Fox or whatever will be united in this righteous messaging, EU diplomats and their regional media will parrot it in the same way they lap the current propaganda. It will be amazing.
I was commenting on leftists. For them Israel is yet another white supremacist western colonizer, they do not admire Israel at all. In a sense Gaza war does not matter, the moral standard is "historical oppression" and history is unchanged - Palestinians were and always will be historically colonized and oppressed even if they clear Palestine from the river to the sea. This is what Yglesias vs Savodnik discussion is about.
I heard something similar with regards to advice - it is incredibly hard to give a good advice. For a complex advice to be useful one needs to know the circumstances quite a lot, otherwise the advice can do more harm than good. And by complex I mean even mundane stuff such as if it is a good idea to buy a car and if yes, then what car to buy. And on the other spectrum most useful advice seems inane, but it is general enough so that it always works: exercise a bit, eat normal food, sleep well. Basic but eternal stuff.
But I agree that almost any good advice is boring. I remembered a joke, where a guy is on medical checkup
- Guy: Doctor, I have a question. For better health, would you recommend organic or standard potatoes?
- Doctor: Quit smoking.
I think that both Yglesias but also Peter Savodnik are correct: the current wave of antizionism/antisemitism or however you call it is at the same time caused by behaviour of Israel but also independent of it.
I actually saw this argument from Nick Fuentes couple of months ago, when I watched couple of interviews with him around the time he was on Piers Morgan, just to see what he is about. He described himself as being such pro-American nationalist, as Zionists (including US Zionists) are pro Israel. Israel defines itself as literal Jewish state in its declaration of independence, where you have automatic citizenship as soon as prove your Jewish origin - so an ethnostate if you consider Jews as an ethnicity. It also has explicitly religious underpinnings observing sabbath in public places or outsourcings significant parts of the public life to religious sphere such as marriages (e.g. it is impossible to be gay married inside Israel, you have to travel abroad). It is also unapologetically colonial state in nature, although they use the word "pioneer" tasked by reclamation of land lost thousands of years ago in their form of Manifest Destiny - the reclamation of the Promised Land. It is a state where you have public discussions around immigration, national security, threat of fertility of non-Jewish population toward the primary function of the state as safe haven for Jews to prevent potentiality of another Holocaust and all that.
I think there was an inevitable clash between Israel and current predominant leftist culture. Any other western adjacent nation with similar policies is immediately labeled as ultranationalist or fascist state. Was it also caused by Israel through their behavior since basically 19th century? Of course - but only tangentially. The same critique would be leveled against Israel no matter what. Heck even countries like Ireland or Finland can be blamed for colonialism or be target of such a rhetoric, so there is no defense against that.
I think Fuentes is onto something when he says that the power of Holocaust as a story is weakening, it no longer serves as a shield for a free pass. Israel is viewed as a western democracy, Jews are white colonizers and they are oppressors and not oppressed. I can use hilarious example of Whoopi Goldberg who usually claims that everybody is racist - of course except Hitler, who only engaged in white-on-white conflict of Germans against Jews. And she said it whole year before October 7 and Gaza War. This was at least unspoken ethos and pathos inside significant part of the left, it only strengthened after Gaza war.
Exactly. Sometimes these insults are very good at grounding the discussion, making it real. Imagine somebody says shit like this (a literal Richard Dawkins quote)
The biological organism is a temporary triumph over the chaotic whims of entropy, a sophisticated vessel that maintains its own structural integrity until the moment it ceases to do so. We must observe that a creature remains alive for exactly the duration of its lifespan, neither a second more nor a second less, as dictated by the cold mathematics of cellular survival. To be alive is, in a rather literal sense, to continue the process of not being dead, until such time as the chemistry of life concludes its tenure.
You can just retort "You just said you live until you die you retard" and it maybe angers the other side enough to hack their script and hopefully resulting in normal discussion.
georgioz
1d ago
There is huge irony in all this and as usual, this language is self-defeating. In the old days every dumbass was retarded - except of course mentally retarded people. It was low class and retarded behavior to tell your local 70IQ Timmy that he is a retard - unless you were funny and creative with it of course. Banning this word actually brought the spotlight onto literal retards as the only ones who subconsciously own that moniker, they are now the only retards around.
In a strange way telling your neighbor that he is a retard humanized mentally retarded, it blurred the lines. It is by the way a common evolution of "power words". Take an example of how the world literally evolved due to its usage for heavy emphasis to such an extent, that it became synonym with figuratively. Example: "he is literally retarded" means that he did something really, really dumb such as microwaving his cell phone to test if it was a hoax or dumb shit like that. It does not mean that he suffers from "intellectual disability" which is the correct current word of the day as replacement for mental retardation.
The point is that "might makes right" apparently is defacto governing principle. Iran does not give a shit about international law by shooting at commercial ships and going against UN Security Council and other international bodies. The sad thing is that nobody is able to persuade them otherwise.
If there is one social law that actually objectively "exists", that it is adhered to by all organisms, then it is the law of the jungle, the vae victis, eat or be eaten. It is not exactly might makes "right", because law of the jungle does not care about righteousness. Might just uses force to impose your will or your programing onto reality, it is used by wolves when killing baby deers and it is utilized by chimpanzees or humans in wars. This is the default, everything else is only a structure on top of this underlying fact. It is important to remember that always.
I don't see how this is a bubble. The best counteargument to all AI skeptics for broad range of critiques including this one is the following: this is the worst the AI will ever be - symbolized by famous Will Smith eating spaghetti evolution. The original 2023 quality is something you can do on consumer grade computer with standard graphic card for couple of hundreds bucks. Even the 2024 result you can replicate by renting hardware for maybe $20k.
The point being, that cost is still decreasing by factor of 100 every year. It may be questionable if the frontier models will ever pay off given how quickly the field progresses, but it does not matter. If all of these companies blow-up, the underlying technology will still be there in the same way Google replaced Yahoo or Amazon was the first to really scale the commercial potential of internet well into the internet era.
The bubble is not going anywhere, the value in terms of the models is real and tangible, it is here to stay. Or to be precise, there is no real bubble, we are not talking about worthless tulip bulbs or NTF images. The models are real and useful. If anything it would be akin to processor "bubble", where miniaturization and chip breakthroughs resulted in Moore's law which basically held for decades. Yes, there are mass graves of companies that failed to keep the pace, including titans like Global Foundries or Panasonic, where individual investors bet on the wrong horse and lost everything. It does not matter, chips are very cheap, very powerful and very useful. The market itself is huge and important and if you hedged your bets correctly, you would be very wealthy.
Not necessarily. I can see it for instance in a context where somebody moves into a high trust society let's say from Russia, and all he sees is quokkas waiting to be slaughtered and harvested. It is just pure mercenary outlook - I came here to exploit your weakness you morons, before it all burns down. While your country turns to shit for you wimps, I can still return to my homeland with my riches if necessary. I guess Somali fraudsters in Michigan or any other tribal society members have this outlook.
By the way it is not as if they can do anything about it even if they wanted, they often cannot even vote. It is what it is and they are just navigating the waters they were given access to. Plus their children are often taught that their host countries are shit, so why not embrace that?
The link between feminist causes in the US and the Israel-Palestine conflict in the minds of omnicause activists is that real progress (as defined by the activist left) on both can only be made if the lump is defeated, and military defeat of Israel by Hamas would take a lump out of the lump. This is as stupid as it sounds, which is why I subscribe to the mistake theory on this point.
I would not underestimate this. There is a perfectly valid theory from liberation standpoint; that nobody is truly free unless the least free is liberated. If it produces seeming logical contradiction, then this is perfect as it means we need to do more Marxist work to align Marxist Theory and Praxis. Being able to hold contradictory opinions is a feature of Marxism, this is how you perform dialectic - you resolve the contradiction by abolishing the concepts and create something new and better. It is akin to dissolving the question. We may not see how such a reconciliation can look like now, but we have faith that such a solution exists if we try hard enough.
You for instance see it with feminists vs trans issues exemplified with simple "what is a woman" question. The true liberation will happen only if we abolish the gender binary completely. We did not manage it yet, but we are getting there. It is very similar to how the old school Marxists thought that capitalism and its opposite the socialism will eventually transform into true communism. The same for lets say how dictatorship of proletariat is only transitional period before bourgeoisie and proletariat will be "reconciled" by completely abolishing class as a concept and entering classless society. Again, nobody knows precisely how to do it, you need to do the work, that is the point.
It may all seem stupid and contradictory and all that. But for some reason these conspiracy theories are very resilient and they lived 150+ years already. They are internally coherent and people can believe them. You just need to understand the idea behind these concepts including the "lump theory" you describe, the crux of the leftist conspiracy theory that explains everything. I many times argued that leftism is where true conspiracy theories live, where "serious" people and respected academics can believe in conspiracies that deliberately oppress victims and create oppressive "systems" of - capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, colonialism etc. James Lindsay was more eloquent in his speech in EU parliament about it.
In fact with colonialism it is straightforward as it uses the same word. Colonizers are oppressors, colonized are the oppressed the evil system that colonizers create and perpetuate to keep their privilege is called colonialism, and the solution is to decolonize everything until we reach "Equity" - the ultimate "Social Justice" akin to communism. The same goes for leftist feminist theory where men oppress women via patriarchy and we need to dismantle the patriarchy to achieve social justice etc. It is all the same omnicause but in a more metalevel of intersectionality. So yes, decolonization and dismantling of patriarchy are related concepts, they both must proceed in order to establish true Equity and Social Justice. Don't know how, but we must believe such a progress is possible through proper work. And if it fails, it just means that true Social Justice was never tried.
I don’t really think that Finns are actually so much happier than Greeks. In fact, I often think they’re less happy. So what really explains the difference? Social pressure. Finns read every day about how rich and happy they’re supposed to be, how low their unemployment is, how their social fabric is the envy of the world, how un-corrupt they are, how lucky they are to have been born Finns.
While there may be something to your theory, this is old news. Finland now experiences double digit unemployment of 10,9% with youth unemployment approaching 25%. They are now worst in EU, worse than Spain. The same for GDP per capita which stagnated basically since 2008. Their famous education and good results in PISA tests is also history as it plummeted from first place in 2006 to out of top 10 today. There is something rotten in state of Finland.
The latter is especially helpful at something like a T intersection when the sightlines are blocked and someone could come zooming along with very little advance warning.
I hate this for many reasons. First, just relax and sit back instead of blocking my view with your ugly head. Second, you do not know what I want to do, if I want to move slowly to let some pedestrian pass or start quickly to move before he reaches the crossing etc. Also, I am the one driving - your unhelpful and inconsistent advice is worth shit when of course sometimes you sleep or play with your cell phone etc.
I deliberately also do not do it when my wife is driving even if she sometimes asks for advice for exactly the same reason. She is the one 100% concentrated on driving. I cannot evaluate the situation in a second she gives me when she asks. I'd rather nap or think about Roman Empire or something instead of being useless backseat driver. We are not in a race where you need a navigator. If you cannot process the information, then slow down. If you are too tired to do even basics such as turning left, then let's switch and let me drive.
I actually think it is the only logical thinking they perform. If you truly believe in white privilege and that misogyny and patriarchy is ever-present and powerful, then of course you will make those associations on personal level, and you should date white privileged boys to eke out a little bit of that power for yourself. You would be stupid if you go for oppressed black handicapped weakling.
It is self-defeating nature of these movements, the same by the way goes for the other side of the spectrum, where some parts of the manosphere give advice to have many sexual partners. They at the same time resent women as hoes, but then they cannot help themselves and validate their own masculinity by sleeping with dozens or even hundreds of them - thus actually giving them value.
There is a saying that you are what you worship. If you worship power, this is how it logically ends.
You will still end up with a co-op President or maybe some circle of powerful union leaders sitting in cozy office deciding what to do with capital worth billions of dollars, while the rest of the schmucks would still need to punch their card and make steel, or whatever the anointed kings and counts of the factory decided to do.
I really do not understand why are people so enamored with politics as deciding mechanism for economic power. People are raging against the 1,000 billionaires in USA, but they think 1,000 top elected government bureaucrats are better deciding what to do with $4,9 trillion of tax revenue every year - we are talking potential net worth of $100 trillion plus? And that is the best case scenario - worst case you get some petty dictator who actually decides everything personally, effectively becoming as far from your cookie cutter billionaire as they are from homeless addicts on the street. There is not one billionaire now that could even lick a boot of people like Joseph Stalin, who could just say a word and the whole country of 100 million people and its whole capital stock would make his wish happen. But he was just an appointed leader of co-op labor councils - or soviets in Russian. What a bunch of nonsense.
In general geographical names are extremely common in Hungary. Not only countries, but also regions like Alföldi, but also cities such as Kecskeméty and of course rivers such as Tisza. It is just the way it is.
Locke commits the very thing I described as secular view of rights. He flipped the Thomist definition of natural laws on their head, he individualized and privatized the law. Instead of liberty being a positive effect of virtuous and God-fearing community, it is suddenly an entitlement by individual. The community is there to provide the service that the individual is entitled to, if the service is bad, the individual has to file the complaint. It is completely different framing.
In Thomist way of thinking, you yourself were born fallen due to original sin, you are prone to sin and debasement of your dignity. You are free only if you live in a virtuous community as part of the Church. In Lockean view this is subverted. You are entitled to freedom and all your rights from birth, you own it, it is your entitlement bestowed onto you by God or some such. Community can only deprive you of your entitlements, they literally stole what was given to you by God. In fact you as individual are in contract with community, you can judge if the community is worthy of you and renege on that contract if you think that your "rights" - your entitlements are not met. That is what I mean by "absent duty" - you can theoretically start judging the community as soon as you come out from the birth canal and immediately shake your little fists in indignant rage of how bad the community you were born into is. You can do that without lifting a finger or performing any duty.
Of course this does not surprise me, Locke was a protestant. So of course he would turn away from communal to individual - it is for everybody to become their own little god, pronounce ownership/stewardship of their very own god given rights, performing their very own exegesis of what it actually means and then judge the community for not subscribing to their view of morality and everything. In fact Locke encourages this as "right" to revolution - by the way this supposed "right" automatically shows how insufficient his logic is. Right to revolution sounds different from let's say right to property, especially when judging from the lense of duty - so now what, you have duty to accept other people revolting against percieved tyranny? So you will end up in the same fragmentation that you see with protestant church now. Again, it is dangerous change of view from sinful human achieving liberty only if existing as part of virtuous community providing just laws, to individual who is somehow capable of analyzing his God given rights without sin of pride or greed, judging society as sinful and unable to meet his individual yardstick of justice - up until violent revolution for this perceived sin of tyranny.
Which again ties to the original thing: yes, rights exist only as a fiction and they matter only as far as they are enforced. This is doubly so for Lockean rights, where everybody can have their own exegesis of what rights were given to them by god. If they judge the community as morally insufficient, they also have right to revolt or to view other people revolt as infringement on their own rights. This all only proves that even Lockean rights are made up by all individuals, and then only those versions that can be enforced at the point of the gun of revolutionaries matter. Especially if rights are stripped of the whole "given by god" veneer invented by Locke. For secularists, rights are just strongly worded made up laws, or maybe some supposed facts of biology (e.g. it is really "bad" if people suffer, therefore people have right to avoid suffering). This secular transformation of Christian natural law or Lockean fiction is even more obviously made up.
Wouldn't the Lockean Liberal view be something more like: mankind is created in the image and likeness of God. Yes, man is sinful, and fallen, but as a result of being made in the image of God, mankind is endowed with dignity which it is sinful to violate.
The set of principles surrounding this inviolable dignity, we call "rights" and it is the duty of us as individuals and as a society to set up governments which do not violate these rights.
This is a secular view of rights which is actually not in line with at least traditional teaching of Catholic Church. Yes, you are created in image of God and you have dignity, however you diminish your dignity every time you even sin yourself. You are not entitled to absolute dignity, e.g. you do not have absolute entitlement to get free food whenever you are hungry and thus turn this situation on its head by blaming the society for its inability to feed you. Even in Catholic church where they sometimes strategically adopt the language of rights, they are curtailed by additional concepts such as subsidiarity, where the duty starts with yourself. Which then conflicts with the basic definition of rights as entitlement without duty - you are the first to have duty to for instance feed yourself. That is the main difference between catholic social teaching and modern rights-based system.
In fact you can get to completely different conclusions. For instance if somebody who is able bodied and just lazy turns to get food from soup kitchen, it is that person who is committing the sin of sloth diminishing his own dignity. On top, he also steals from patrimony of the poor.
The liberal/libertarian simply believes that the best way to set up society is to let everyone pursue the proper management and development of their God-given talents by protecting a handful of core principles: life, liberty and property (or the pursuit of happiness.)
Absolutely not. The fundamental basis of libertarian view of right is that of self-ownership, the Catholic teaching is all about your life belonging to God. In libertarian view state cannot impose duties on you by virtue of self-ownership, exactly opposite is the case from Catholic teachings. And there are no few flaring points, we are talking about things like euthanasia, prostitution, drug sales and many other things.
As for liberal or secular view of rights, we talked about it before. And again, it is complete subversion of social teaching of the Church where individual is entitled to ever expanding set of rights and if not provided, it is society to blame for absence. Again, it is entitlement absent duty.
Don't most rights imply a corresponding duty?
Not really, at least not in the modern sense of what rights mean. Christians talked about duties all the time of course even in language of commandments etc. However there is understanding that people are sinful. It does not make sense to talk about "right", as it would entail basically living in an utopian society without sin.
Plus it creates quite a conundrum for libertarians who love to talk about intrinsic rights as property of individuals. If we are talking about duties, we now have collectivist category sometimes encompassing the whole humanity. For libertarian right to life to fully exist, everybody on Earth has to acknowledge and follow up on 6th commandment and duty not to murder.
Again, this is not equivalent position. Christians pray to god every day for miracle of life, that they were gifted by god fearing neighbors who follow the law and they understand that this is by no means given, that people are sinful. They understand how fragile things are. Human right activists approach the topic from entitlement to their rights and they are shocked and indignant if something happens. It is quite a different approach.
It actually leads to quite a different view of society. The original Christian view is that society (or Church if you wish) is generally good, but individual is sinful. The liberal or libertarian view seems to be that the individual is always correct and entitled to rights, but society is oppressive and sinful not to provide for such enlightened individual to exist.
Rights might be legal fictions in some sense, but so is money, or the concept of the United States, or the position of President of the United States.
Sure, that is all the OP wanted to say. Rights are fictional and subject to whims of people and governments. In a sense right is just a more fancy word for law. We can talk about various types of law from law from Hammurabi law to Universal Declaration of Human rights. All of them are of the same cloth, just a fiction in certain place and time subject to enforcement of some kind. There is nothing intrinsic to them.
Freedom of movement in article 13, freedom of assembly and association under article 20, freedom of religion under article 18 - all related to lockdowns for starters.
Rooted in natural law, it is objectively the case that different beings carry with them different moral duties and obligations.
Original natural law theory is Catholic doctrine stemming from objective morality and God, it was also more about natural law and less about natural rights, especially in the modern sense that right is personal and individual property. Additionally, modern rights do not have much with duties and obligations. Or to be more precise rights are entitlements absent duty or obligation. You are entitled to your right, you do not have any obligation toward that right.
It an aspiration - the universal declaration of human rights, say, is a declaration that we as a community have decided that human beings must be treated in this way.
If that is so, then some other community or even the same community but in different time can aspire to different set of rights which they will declare as universal. Just remember COVID when suddenly all those "universal human rights" stopped working for a prolonged time. Quite a fickle things these rights, they can change their way of existence quite a lot, can they not?
Materialists do not believe that nothing that isn't a physical object exists.
This is sophism. You absolutely understand what he wanted to say. He said that human rights exist as a fiction created by state as opposed to their existence as that of the sun or the moon. It is perfectly fine distinction to make even for materialists. Even materialists understand that let's say Francis Underwood exists as a fictional character and POTUS in famous Netflix TV show as opposed to let's say Donald Trump existing as a real person and POTUS. In similar fashion rights exist as a fiction enforced by power of government, that is all that the OP said and it is perfectly in line with materialism. Without government they still exist as a fiction, but nobody cares in the same way nobody cares for my version of fictional president of USA named Chad Norris or my version of universal human rights, that in my fictional world prevented government spying on email correspondence or property theft over prolonged period named as property tax. I hope now it is clear.
Over time, I've lost faith in religion. I no longer believe in deontology.
I am not sure what is this about. If one evaluates Christianity, it is at worst a mix of deontology and virtue ethics.
I doubt objectivism. I don't think consequentialism produces meaningfully outcomes. I find modernism passe. The rationalists seem kinda irrational. I've done the calculations: utilitarianism doesn't math out.
I wholeheartedly agree
I think I'll have to RTVRN to tradition: I think Plato might have had it. Maybe Aesthetics as Virtue was the true path all along.
Again, it seems that you discovered virtue ethics. Christianity - or at least Catholicism - specifically talks about transcendentals of Good, Truth and Beauty. This is basic Thomas Aquinas, he talks about concepts related to beauty such as Claritas, Integritas, Consonantia, Honestas and their relation to the other transcendentals and also toward deontological concepts such as duty. For example if you act in accordance to your duty (of let's say POTUS) you radiate Claritas. It is often cited concept where duty formed by reason forms something beautiful when in action - e.g. when a worker honestly and dutifully pursues his craft, he creates beauty. One can also say the same about politics as a craft.
There is also great deal of wisdom in Catholic teaching when it comes to aesthetic morality. While sin is ugly, it can also lead to a dangerous sin of pride. Sometimes seeing ugly things all around you means something lacking on your part, inability of you as an observer to honestly judge correct aesthetics. In a sense it is lack of your inner beauty, replacing it with ugly sin of pride, which prevents you to see the harmony even in supposedly ugly things.
I think it is more than that. If you are successful doctor, everybody wants to be your friend just in case they need you to get preferential treatment, and maybe even save their lives. You will be invited to parties and so forth. If you are a a techbro, then your status is related to your ability to fix their slow computer and maybe for an off-chance that they need you to vouche for their niece to get a job in your company - but knowing somebody from HR or at least nepotism friendly bullshit job manager such as marketing would be better. Nobody will need you in case they need to setup their Vertical Pod Autoscalers or some such.
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