popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
I guess my point is, what is a genuine religious revival supposed to look like?
Some thoughts.
Over the past year, I've trained my brain to be Christian after two decades of hard materialism since age 14 or so. Miracles didn't play a role. Rather, I decided there was at least a plausible chance personal theism was true — this came from meditating on why I'm not a p-zombie, and why I have powerful aesthetic preferences which seem unmoored from selection pressures. Suspending my materialist assumptions, with great effort, I moved through life with the constant idea that (a) something was actively providing my existence, and (b) it was actively observing me.
Have I brainwashed myself? Possibly. But it feels increasingly obvious that that something is there, and it has been speaking to me for a long time.
After this 'religious revival' came the task of seeking the most plausible source of divine revelation. IMO the evidence for the legitimizing claim of Christianity is an order of magnitude above any other candidate, and its actual theology (try Mere Christianity and Problem of Pain by CS Lewis) matches what "something" was steering me towards as an atheist.
Perhaps these online anons larping "Christ is king" and parents pursuing churches for their kids will brainwash themselves to real religion, too.
But we want to find a sect of Christianity that isn't pussies. We don't want a sect of Christianity that will start inviting drag queens to teach Sunday school because they don't want anyone to feel bad, or they feel like they need to appeal to "modern audiences".
I had good luck with my local Catholic parish. From what I can tell, female ordination, accepting divorce, and gay marriage initiates the pozzing death spiral in any Christian denomination, so watch out for those. Or perhaps it's that only pozzed churches can reconcile those with the scriptural evidence.
Baptist upbringing, which seemed to revolve around what a piece of shit they were and that every single thought they have will send them to hell.
Unregulated thoughts do indeed lead to hell. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Hateful, lustful, or prideful thoughts reinforce themselves in a vicious cycle towards a mind consumed by hate, lust, and/or pride — this is the death of the psuche (psyche, 'soul-life') against which God mercifully cuts short bios life to prevent a descent into infinite depravity.
Yes, it is a hard teaching, and not one for four-year-olds. No, you will not find a "non pussy" church that doesn't take the wide gate leading to hell extremely seriously.
popocatepetl
2d ago
Why are the first two things beyond the pale, but the second two aren’t?
There's no hard reason. Christian ethics are the water we swim in, so people don't bother to provide counterarguments for things that are clearly wrong in the Christian tradition.
- "Outright race-hatred" - Christ commissioned his disciples to baptize all nations and commanded love of other peoples on the sermon on the mount.
- "Theocracy" - Ambiguous evidence. There is some scriptural evidence for separation of church and state, but on the other hand, the civil power of Pilate comes from God, and theocracy was tolerated for a least 1500 years in Christendom.
- "Monarchy" - Literally the default system of government commended. 'Christ is king.'
This bizarre drama is the party politics version of a Thucydides Trap. The right currently has two broad factions: one that wants to return to the 90s, and another that thinks that the 90s naturally led to 2020, so a reconfiguration of American politics, ideology, and society is needed. The first faction is larger but is seemingly losing the argument. People like Lindsay or Joel Berry, noticing this, are attempting to Gossip-Shame-Rally-Moralize the MacIntyre-adjacent right while they're still an obvious minority.
Usually, cancellers in this situation would draw the racist/fascist card. But ironically this accusation, despite being fairly plausible here, is so overdone and the right is so inured to it that everyone would ignore it. Thus the bizarre accusation that the target is "communist".
One is reminded of the unhinged factional battles in the French revolution, where the guy who ended the French monarchy was executed for being a crypto-royalist.
popocatepetl
3d ago
I think the biggest problem with this proposal is that I don't think there are easy levers to just control culture.
If we're entering this politically impossible situation where @ArjinFerman gets these powers, it's fairly easy. Does he want to reverse the sexual revolution, as a random example? Illegalize over-the-counter contraceptives and abortion clinics. Mandate >90% male:female ratio in colleges and technical schools. Remove mandatory maternity leave and allow discrimination against female hires. End no fault divorce. Lower welfare benefits for single people (Edit: Perhaps this falls under 'economy', so nix this.) Done and dusted.
The CRA is a fairly modest law that radically reshaped American culture over time. With a literal culture czar, you could steer the country at least that effectively.
"Authoritarianism" isn't equivocal; the Democrats were just wrong.
Perhaps StoneToss demonstrates the difference a bit clearer.
A common meme in the western world is that a strong leader not bound by constitutional/bureaucratic restraints and low personal freedom go together. They share the same word: it is all 'authoritarianism'. Whereas it is clear to me that oppression of personal freedoms is a possible for every node within the Polybius cycle, and if anything democracy tends to more restrictions and a more ant-farm-like society.
popocatepetl
3d ago
'Authoritarianism' is equivocal. Sometimes it means a strong executive leader overruling the bureaucracy and consensus-making institutions to implement policy. (This sense usually comes from the blue tribe.) Other times it refers to a reduction in civil rights for private citizens. (This sense is used by everyone, but different sides disagree about which rights to complain about.)
A good example: 2020 Republicans decrying the 'authoritarianism' of government Covid policy, while 2020 Democrats were decrying the 'authoritarianism' of Trump trying to interfere with government agencies implementing Covid policy.
He is essentially describing the European settlement of the USA, but moreso. The people striking the earth then were either like the Puritans (high social trust, virtuous, extremely educated, high IQ) or like the borderers (intrepid, enterprising, indomitable, competitive), both bootstrapping civilization in hostile environments, alone. So, 'elite human capital'. This is unlike the South American/Mexican example where heavily armed free companies set themselves up as feudal lords over extractive slave empires.
North America's competitive advantage lasted for its first few centuries, and the USA really became something of a City on the Hill institutionally. But this advantage has evaporated with its advantage in human capital (and no, I don't just mean IQ), along with the inevitable loss of virtue and social cohesion that comes with prosperity. America's supposedly amazing new institutions are sagging under the stress. (You'll notice that its genius constitution flops when you try to govern Liberia with it.) My prediction is that liberal democracy as the default political model will not survive the century. We will retvrn to, if not the old ways, something that tastes of the old ways.
So with the Mars colonies, if they even happen. There's nothing new under Sol.
Stop worrying about people not having kids! Like, if you're reading this and that is something that you were worried about, I'm begging you, please, it'll be alright. Evolution works! It doesn't need your help! Organisms that are supposed to reproduce, will.
Total violation of Hume's guillotine. Yes, obviously, whichever human organisms manage to reproduce in the modern environment, will, and their traits will proliferate, and afterwards it may be said that evolution "worked". Evolution also works when underground mammals lose their sight, or male anglerfish lose their brains. Whether these adaptations to selection pressures are desirable is another question.
The bulk of people reproducing now are (a) extremely high time-preference poor people, or (b) highly religious people. There is also a tiny number of rich people breeding well. If you do not want humanity to consist of this type of population in the future, low birth rates should bother you.
popocatepetl
1mo ago
Is it an AI video? If so, it's the best I've seen (well, subject to the 'how do you know elephants are good at hiding in trees?' problem). I can't find a single off frame or weird verbal cadence.
Wokeness — I refuse to use scarequotes as if it's not a real and easily definable ideology — took over all the real institutions of power over the last 30 years, and in a sudden rush in 2020. Major companies without DEI goals, universities that don't act as seminaries for wokeness, and media and information sources that don't assume wokeness as a foundational premise are as rare as hen teeth.
2024 Republicans (who include several anti-woke ideologies under their tent) have seized the political organs. This is because public office is the only part of the American power structure that takes input from the dalit and shudra castes, or to some extent even the vaisyas.
Whether political power will translate to real institutional change is yet to be seen. I predict that unless Trump is willing to be a Red Caesar, that is, to step out of the bounds of his legal constitutional authority and dare anyone to stop him, it will not.
popocatepetl
1mo ago
Internet speak for "self-indulgent extreme pessimism".
Honestly, I was nonplussed at how convinced The Motte was about a Kamala victory in the predictions subthread. Most picked Harris, and even those who picked Trump expressed less confidence than the prediction markets, which were about 65% Trump at the time.
My guess? I don't think you guys are susceptible to propaganda so much as addicted to the black pill. This is a very dour message board. So I agree with the second half of your post more than the headline.
Electoral college - 80% Trump
Popular vote - Cointoss
Polls show a close race, but pollsters underestimated Trump support in both 2016 and 2020, when he was supposed to lose soundly. (In October 2020, poll aggregators were showing him down by 10 points nationally.) I see a lot of people arguing "surely they've adjusted now", but if anything, my impression is the media has been trying to hyperstition a Kamala victory, and I wouldn't put it past polling organizations to be part of that attempt. Reports of a close race encourage turnout from an otherwise divided and demoralized Democratic base. The timing of the sudden Kamala swing in polls feels artificial.
Riots/violent coup attempts - 10%
For either party. The level of passion from Democrats is lower, and the sort of Republicans who would consider staging a January 6th again will, I think, have been spooked by the DOJ's level of political repression in the last four years.
Relatedly, do you think there will be issues certifying the election results? Which side do you think will struggle more if they lose?
Neither side will contest the election. Republicans will bark about illegal votes if they lose, but not bite. Meanwhile, Democrats will kvetch about the electoral college if they lose despite a popular vote victory, but otherwise stand down.
MAGA Republicans will be devastated if they lose this one, woke Democrats merely irritated.
popocatepetl
1mo ago
More identifiable name is the whole of it. Donald could be anyone (Sutherland, Rumsfeld, Duck), while if you say Trump, it could only be one man. So "Trump" is a more useful signifier when bringing up a topic involving him, which makes that use habitual. The same goes for Kamala vs Harris.
You see this all the time in sports. Patrick Mahomes is always "Mahomes", while Lamar Jackson is "Lamar".
popocatepetl
2mo ago
There aren't that many interesting regular season narratives this year. "Will Aaron Rodgers succeed with the Jets?" "The Bengals are a dumpster fire despite Joe Burrow." Most of the rest I can think of are playoff specifics. (eg "Can the Bills/Ravens stop choking?")
My gut says this a growing problem. With expanded playoffs, every high Q-rating quarterback will almost certainly get into the dance. This leaves the regular season feeling a bit like a formality.
Modernist entryists or Nietzschean reactionaries have an equal tendency to quote scripture out of context and not holistically. Let me suggest gently that you do not know scripture as well as Thomas Aquinas, other doctors of the church, or the great theologians of the middle ages. I am sure that if radical self-mutilation becomes a trend in the year 2500, similar people will be quoting Matthew 5:30 and saying Christians are being inconsistent for not cutting their hands off.
As for these specific errors, the meaning of Matthew 8:21-22 is that God comes before family in the order of charity (this is a part of Christian virtue theology I did not mention because it was irrelevant to the point at hand).
Luke 18:18-23 was a rich young man called to a vocation in the priesthood, but he rejected the call because of earthly attachment. Jesus does not demand self-penury of many other people who ask for salvation in the gospels; it was particular to the rich young man's circumstances. Every soul has need of its own mortifications. Some of Jesus's closest friends feast, drink wine, and anoint with three hundred denarii oils. To address your specific point, the "poor" in this instance that the rich young man would give to are members of his tribal ingroup; his family is ostensibly already well taken care of, thus obeying the order of charity.
You're discussing early in his ministry (Matthew 10:5-6). Later on Jesus has no problem healing Gentiles (e.g. Matthew 15) and ultimately he sent the disciples out to Save literally everyone (Matthew 28:19-20):
Yes, this is exactly my point. He went first to his in-group, and then to all nations. When a member of the out-group appeared in need before him (immediate neighbor), he ministered to them. But he observed the order of charity. In parable, first the Lord invites his family and friends to the wedding banquet, and when they refuse, he goes into the streets to summon others.
Any moral system that insists you have some obligation to black crack babies across the country is trivially extendible to cover unfortunates all across the world and I suspect there's cognitive dissonance in not doing so.
That moral system is called Christianity. Precious few have any problem tolerating the cognitive dissonance
Traditionally Christianity has taught an order of charity, expounded most famously by St. Aquinas, formulated by synthesizing the teachings of the epistles. To cut through the scholasticism talk, it went something like: immediate family, immediate neighbors, extended family, coreligionists and countrymen, distant neighbors (eg people in Malawi), and then enemies.
The modern progressive version of "all biomass is equally loved by God, buy mosquito nets for Ndugu rather than a toy for Johnny" is not eternally the Christian moral system, but something that appeared rather recently.
If a progressive Christian comes at you with the Good Samaritan, ask them why Jesus sent out the twelve telling them to not to go among the Gentiles or enter Samaritan towns.
popocatepetl
3mo ago
So are you saying all subjective categories are self-referential? "Republicans are people who vote for other Republicans" and such?
That is a volitional category, not a subjective category. With volitional categories you can give the appearance of circularity with statements like "Christians are those who believe in Christianity" or "Military families are families where a father/mother has enlisted in the military." This superficial circularity is resolved by defining the second term. "Christians are those who believe Jesus of Nazarath (0-33 AD) was the son of God and his teachings result in eternal life for those who follow them." "Military families are families where a father/mother receives a salary from the government to train in the use of weapons and fight in the event of war."
This cannot be done with "A female is someone who wants to be treated as a female". Even if female is understood to be volitional, the second term goes undefined.
I think we can both agree that gender does exist as something independent of sex?
With the exception of grammar? No. If gender is not sex, it is incumbent on gender theorists to provide a non-circular definition.
"External gender" is your term for "gender roles", which can be defined as the manners and expectations society has for the male/female biological sex. If you want to say "gender roles should be abolished", you have a coherent position. But trans advocates do not (usually) want this; they want the gender roles to remain even as they deny female/male (the real, definable concepts) as meaningful categories.
I'm waiting for a non-self-referential definition of gender
External Gender: People perceived as "female" get treated differently
Internal Gender: I prefer being called "ma'am", and am happier when my external gender is "female".
This is self-referential. "The meaning of female gender is treating a person like a female, and a person who is of female gender is one who wants to be treated like a female."
popocatepetl
4mo ago
the main appeal is texture
This is the key. In some East Asian cuisine, while the flavor matters it's just one dimension. (Interesting substack. TW descriptions of disgusting food.)
popocatepetl
4mo ago
I'm curious if anyone has any other opinions.
It's nonsense. The LLM did a good job identifying the concepts and vocabulary people use when trying to say something profound about reality, whether or not they have anything substantive to say. (Which it doesn't.)
popocatepetl
4mo ago
Though the lens of US politics: In recent days the Biden admin has been pushing hard for a Gaza ceasefire. (My interpretation sees this as part of the fresh burst to win the 2024 election now that Biden has withdrawn.) Does this keep Israel-Palestine a live issue through election day?
popocatepetl
4mo ago
Wild take: Right-wingers don't dislike Kamala.
Not wild. I'm as opposed to DEI and representationalism as anyone. Here's (what I'll try to make) an unvarnished report of my feelings.
I feel no animosity towards her. From the catbird seat, she will doubtless say things to make me dislike her in the future. But for now, I see her as a minority actress who was chosen to play the wife of an rich white guy in an insurance ad, except instead of playing wife she was playing vice president, and the rich white guy wasn't her husband but Joe Biden.
My animosity is for the people who put her there, both on the supply and demand end. That animosity is fairly strong, more or less whenever I see a BIPOC/gender-nonconforming minority in a leadership position now.
popocatepetl
4mo ago
"woe to him who has the full backing of the board—he is a dead man walking.”
It's the same with starting quarterbacks. By the time a head coach has to answer questions about benching them, it's over.
Sure!
I didn't know the word at the time, but the technique is something Catholics call "active recollection". Periodically throughout the day, I would perform a kind of rapid partial body scan, thinking 'Where does this there-ness in my hand come from?' or similar. And then I would close my eyes and ignore everything external, and "push" my mind's watchfulness inward, looking for someone looking back.
According to a prayer manual I read later, this is one method of 'putting yourself in the presence of God', which is precondition to mental prayer. Unfortunately, according to prayer theory, God initiates contact and you merely respond, so I can't promise this technique will work for anyone reading this.
I performed this mental ritual especially in the morning when waking up. The awareness, or perhaps the fear, of God continued for ten, twenty minutes, an hour afterward, and eventually started riding with me as a constant companion, like a depersonalized super-superego perched on my shoulder.
What does God feel like? It is changing as my prayer life develops, and it changes within prayer as I go deeper. God (the Father) feels like an ocean: he does not seemingly come to greet you, but you descend into Him, where it is cold and dark and you fear for your safety. And then there is what Christians call the holy spirit, which is like rain, and it washes you towards the ocean. Depending on what it wants from your prayer, it can fall on you as tears, reconciliation, and immense catharsis (this is what most people want from religion); other times it is intellectual, and ideas will arrive fully formed in your mind, accompanied with a "gentle breath" of overpowering peacefulness, often at odds with the content of its ideas. (A few months ago, the holy spirit pacifically informed me that heaven is somewhat like being tortured to death.)
Come to think of it, here's something else.
When I was age 12, I learned to masturbate. I started creating a "wall" around my mind. I would imagine a small point in the center of my mind and "push" everything out, to a 5 foot radius around me. I would put my force field up whenever I was doing the deed or having sexual thoughts. To anyone observing me, I would say they weren't allowed, they weren't allowed.
I forgot I even used to do this until a few months ago. The universe felt dead and my thoughts "alone" for twenty-odd years between then and now.
In retrospect, my early meditations were unconsciously about breaking "the wall", and allowing for things "beneath", "between", or at any rate very intimate with my thoughts. (Psalm 139 relevant: "If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.") Before, I had unconsciously felt there was some "private room" I could withdraw to and consider the world freely, from an spectator's remove. Ironically, I even assumed this when meta-contemplating my own thoughts and desires from a materialist perspective. Of course, whether one accepts the framework of materialism or theism, no such room can exist.
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