urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
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User ID: 226
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
11d ago
If the argument you’re making is “less than 100% of marriages are worthwhile,” I think that’s completely uncontroversial. If the argument is “100% of marriages are not worthwhile,” then I think that’s wrong.
It sounds to me like you’re intending to say the first, but the way you put it at first — “I've never had a single person tell me it's easier to have a wife” — implies you mean the second. People are bringing up their own marriages to argue against the second, while you’re defending the first. I think an unintentional motte and bailey has been set up, just because of a lack of clarity in the discussion.
But the big difference in views I think I see is that the “wife guys” are arguing for marriage through the concept of companionate love: “she’s the best part of my day, she makes my life meaningful,” etc. You’re talking about it in terms of economic and sexual utility: “I could have sex with any woman, and get assistants to do things around the house I don’t want to do.” If that’s what the utility of a marriage consists of then of course Bezos doesn’t need it! But if marriage includes an intimate relationship of growth in and with the other person, then it’s no wonder at all why Bezos would throw such a lavish wedding if he believes he’s found someone he can have that with. He can be right or wrong about the particular woman he made that choice with (like he apparently did with the first one), but it’s not straightforwardly stupid.
People are bringing up their own marriages to insist that this kind of companionate love is possible in the long term, even if all or even most marriages don’t live up to it. They’re protecting the concept of a pair-bond.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
16d ago
Ah, that makes sense. I have never suspected autism in myself — not least because my development showed the exact opposite of the typical pattern for autism, where non-verbal development outpaces verbal development. But the sensory issues are similar: certain soft fabrics (velvety fabrics? I don’t actually know) are uncomfortable for me. My parents and I started calling it “the fuzzies” when I was a kid, which I admit does sound like an autism origin story.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
22d ago
What liturgical book is that from?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
24d ago
At the end of the day, romantic drive (in the storge sense)
I don't know that storge really describes what I'm getting at when I talk about romantic drive, but that word has been used in all sorts of contexts to mean so many different things, so I don't know.
I find it hard to meaningfully distinguish "companionate love" from "passionate love." I can understand the difference between infatuation (which often involves an impossible idealization) and a deeper intimacy based on truth, but I see a great overlap between the concept of eros and the more companionate romantic love you're describing as storge. In particular, I've been in relationships where the passion increases over time, rather than decreases -- and also where lots of things that are described as characteristic of infatuation (like "'Desire for "complete union,' permanency") also grow over time.
But infatuation is also fun! Yes, it's dangerous. Yes, it has led men and women off cliffs into the great dark beyond. But many great and valuable things begin with a little risk. When I fell in love with a woman for the first time, it was one of the most intense experiences of my life, and I've only ever been able to describe it in spiritual terms, both then and now.
Would you say that you've felt limerance before and believed on that basis that it's dangerous, or is your cynicism about eros based mostly on observing others who've experienced it?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
25d ago
I suppose I can't really relate personally, in the sense that my libido is quite low and I don't have a lot of interest in casual dating or sex.
Do you have a strong romantic drive, or is the concept of marriage for you mostly a material alliance for childrearing? If you lean mostly towards the latter, I think that would absolutely contribute to your feeling that marriage in the modern concept has little to offer.
Also not a fan of casual sex, but my libido is moderate to high. I just enjoy sex with an intimate partner in a romantic context a lot more than casual trysts. I can’t have a tryst without catching feelings — not overwhelming passion or anything, I’m not insane, but I end up wanting to make a connection. I’m probably in the top 10% of men in terms of… romance orientation? Physical affection? Romanticalness? So the incentive for me to date is strong, even if I never wanted to marry, even if I never wanted kids. So long as there’s a woman out there with sweet eyes and a warm smile, I’m going to want to look deeply into them and smile back.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
26d ago
they believe that Jesus and the archangel Michael are the same thing
This is actually common in old school Protestantism; if I recall correctly, both Luther and Calvin flirted with the idea. The concept is that “Who is like God” indicates that Michael is like God, I.e. consubstantial with God, I.e. Jesus. It’s also true that the “angel of the Lord” in the OT is often identified with Christ in most Christian traditions, so the idea of “Jesus is an angel and God” isn’t that far fetched.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
29d ago
I see, I had only ever heard about the parental abuse, not the abuse from extended family.
That seems to demonstrate @HereAndGone’s point — she’s dealt with the abuse by making it not about sex but about autonomy, and so I can see how a strong view that does take sexual transgression as corrupting would be incredibly hard to bear.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1mo ago
Woah, that’s stunning. So we need puberty for brain development to reach its full potential?
Youre not supposed to derive worldly rewards from it.
Correct. You’re supposed to derive heavenly rewards from it. Which is why I’m talking about a hierarchy that is not of this world!
I see what you're saying, and I agree it is a serious problem people often have with Christianity, but the supernatural and cosmic justice elements are load-bearing. There are elements of Christian moral teaching that I believed before I converted to Christianity and would doubtless still believe even if I apostasized, but the whole scope of the Christian doctrine about holiness, martyrdom, charity, and asceticism is founded on the principle that Heaven exists and there's treasure there.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2mo ago
I won’t be deceptive about my belief that Mormons are not Christian. There is no hidden “meat” (to use their “milk and meat” framing) coming next.
Unfortunately, "milk before meat" is just a common feature of religious apologetics in general. Actually, it's a part of persuasion more generally -- you get people to agree on common ground before you talk about things they might find objectionable. Just like you probably shouldn't begin a first date by talking about your worst traits.
And there is a dishonesty about it, and I have been personally affected by it before and felt betrayed, but it's a practice that everyone does. There is nothing really unique in the way the LDS church does it. Christians do it to each other all the time; Catholic apologists do it to Protestants, Protestant missionaries do it to Catholics, Baptists do it to Lutherans, Lutherans do it to Calvinists. Everyone wants to persuade.
It's notable that you're saying "general consent" is the definition of who gets to use the term "Christian" -- because I can present to you many Protestants, and many more in the past, who said that Roman Catholics should not be described with the term "Christian." They set a defininition -- "Christians are people who believe justification is by faith alone" -- and then they applied it. You're doing that, too, but with a slightly more expansive definition.
And so that's the fundamental problem I have about your point of view -- you're saying that the definition of "Christian" you use is the true one, that all others are simply false scotsmen, and in so doing you're fighting over words instead of doctrines. But we cannot know what is the true Christianity a priori. We have to, as the apostle wrote, "test everything; hold fast what is good."
I even see in the Mormon faith things to praise, things to find common ground with, things that could lead to an actually fruitful discussion where we both come away with a greater respect for each other -- which, if you believe someone should convert to your religion, is the only way to begin. Milk and meat, and all that. It is for this reason that when St. Paul went to the areopagus, he began his preaching by praising the Greek pagans: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious."
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2mo ago
Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had.
At the same time, this leaves seriously open whether reunion is possible at all, because if "the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox in the form she has always had," then the West would be saying that active, persistent, and stubborn denial of the dogma of Papal infallibility over a century, and of other Catholic dogmas for centuries, has no consequences and requires no renunciation. In other words, it means they're not dogmas!
When dogmas are defined, they're not "suggestions." They're not even "firm teachings," or "infallible teachings." They are solemn declarations that someone who denies this is anathema, accursed, cut off, removed from communion with the Church. The classical ecumenical dogmatic language, "Let them be anathema," comes from St. Paul's declaration that opens Galatians:
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed.
So to say that something is a dogma is, in Biblical and ecclesiastical idiom, to say that all who dissent are "deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ," and "turning to a different gospel!" It is a solemn declaration of unmistakable error, and it cannot be relativized -- only affirmed or denied.
Ratzinger seems to be wanting to do a very Ratzinger thing here: to assert the possibility of reform without reform, even to the point of saying dogma can be held -- or not -- so long as you say someone else can believe it's dogma. It's a functional denial of dogma that doesn't actually want to admit that it is.
Conservative Catholics love talking about Pope Benedict as a "defender of dogma," but the man was, abundantly, a modernist. Just a rather conservative one. And I don't say that as an insult -- I love Pope Benedict, and I prefer his vision of modernist-conservative Catholicism to traditional, pre-conciliar Catholicism -- but because everyone has to be clear what's at stake.
Like much of the post-conciliar Church, Ratzinger's views reflect, essentially, institutional intertia in the guise of teaching authority: we cannot say we were mistaken about our dogmas, because that would scandalize the faithful and call into question our entire history, and so we say, with one side of our mouth the Immaculate Conception is dogma! and with the other the Orthodox East, which steadfastly denies that this is a dogma, is perfectly and entirely prepared for communion with us! But both of these things cannot be true. You can't have your bread and eat it too.
My view is that Catholicism has gone halfway -- opened the door to unity on the basis of the first millennium -- without committing, as did Pope Paul VI, when he called the Catholic ecumenical councils of the second millennium "general councils of the West" -- which seems to demote them to the status of the Councils of Toledo, rather than infallible councils. Yet Christ asks that we give him everything, like he himself gave up everything so that: "those who believe in me... may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee," in the priestly words of Jesus in John 17.
I think the real obstacle to unity isn't so much the two Marian dogmas, provided that the Assumption is considered to be a doctrine of the Dormition as well -- and the Orthodox, not that I speak for them, would probably say that the Immaculate Conception can be accepted as a pious belief, so long as it is asserted as a plausible explanation for the moral perfection and grace-full-ness of the Mother of God rather than a fixed, infallible doctrine, and thus open to critique made in the spirit of charity (as even Thomas Aquinas did).
In other words, the pre-1850s landscape could have been a much more fruitful place for ecumenical dialogue. If Vatican II had happened early, in place of Vatican I, we would live in a very different world. But I believe the Vatican Councils destroy each other, like matter and dark matter, and in so doing they also bring to heel the legitimate power of the Vatican -- which should be great indeed, but always in line with tradition, and with the charism of persuasion in the spirit of truth and not "ordinary and universal magisterial teaching" requiring "religious submission of will and intellect."
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2mo ago
It is unclear what the cardinals will do about it- his cartoonish corruption was a scandal for Pope Francis in his pontificate, so it's not like he's popular, but who's going to actually deal with him is unclear.
This prompts an interesting question for me -- who's actually in charge? If some sort of major crisis happens, or some terrorist incident happens that disrupts the conclave, or something especially dire, who coordinates the response? Who is empowered to make sure things run properly?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3mo ago
And to answer that question, we’re going to need something much better than a Twitter poll.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
3mo ago
That’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always understood it to mean. It can be somewhat exaggerated, but how I’ve seen it used is as a direct counterpoint to someone claiming that something is bad by discussing its advantages.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
It's no different than HPMOR, in my view.
Yeah, and I also think HPMOR is very silly and shouldn't be treated as serious. Harry Potter fanfiction is not the means by which serious people discuss or disseminate philosophical treatises; it insults Harry Potter by trying to make it something it isn't, and insults philosophical treatises by trying to make them something they're not. That Yudkowsky used Harry Potter fanfiction to distribute his ideas indicates to me an unwillingness to choose the right register in which to communicate, a bit like TYPING IN ALL CAPS LIKE YOU'RE A BOOMER WITH A BROKEN CAPS LOCK or refusng 2 us propper gramar to rite yur txt bc its to hard 2 rite n propr inglish. It indicates a disrespect to your content and your audience, while also implying you don't believe your work is strong enough to stand on its own without adding a gimmick.
And that's exactly what I charge our cultists here are doing: they're disrespecting themselves by describing extremely significant and important themes in metaphysics and social reality through video game references, which aren't reality, indicating that either they can't justify their views in more complex terms or don't have the patience, lucidity, and self-control to choose to do so, both of which are damning.
I have some minor personal experience with cult shit, and this is definitely cult shit.
Sure, maybe. But I don't see "cult shit" as meaningfully distinguished from crazy; by crazy I don't simply mean schizophrenia or something along those lines, but simply that these are people whose reasoning and behavior are separated from reality and whose ramblings are therefore fruitless and best to be ignored. I don't really care, Margaret, whether the delusions came from neurological abnormalities or from manipulation as part of a cult.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
I just can’t imagine being so much of a loser that I’m going to base my moral convictions on characters in a video game. That’s the thing that really strikes me here, not the murder and the consequentialism or even the rationalism, it’s that this is a person of obvious intelligence who has founded their entire worldview on video games and the Matrix movies.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
Well this makes no sense at all.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
Why does Private equity play such a big role in modern investing? Is it a new thing, or did some regulatory change happen, or is there some reason I hear them brought up in almost any economic discussion nowadays, or am I just misremembering a time before private equity was a talking point?
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
That’s fair, and good context — my point is mostly about modern-day antisemitism of the kind Jewish people seem to be worried about, where I’ve rarely seen this; I’ve seen a lot of people complain about “New York Jews” but few, if any, who make such complaints and then talk about they should all go to Israel. It seems more like aimless, grumpy complaints, or like sour grapes, like I’ve said, rather than something thought out.
"SJW" was never used all that much, and was mostly used in online and nerdy discourse. Nerds are much worse at playing the social games of verbal politics, and their strategy of reclaiming the term backfired.
And I think it also has to do with social justice discourse spreading much wider than the original, core movement, and gaining ground among people who weren't familiar with the core activists. These ideas were introduced to them as just decent things decent people are doing, there's no politics here, this is just about being a good person, and when they were questioned they found it confusing and impolite, and white-collar professionals hate nothing more than impolite things. This attitude got back-filled in to the activists themselves, because it was useful, and then became the official line against any accusations of woke politics. Then "woke" became something Republicans in the Senate ask judicial nominees, which just bewildered and offended the elite professional jurists who thought they were above such trivialities.
I also don't think "woke" was ever really used as a descriptor for the movement, it was more of a meme, like "it's hard to be woke in a sleeping society" or something by someone vaguely affiliated with the social justice movement. So for normie liberals who got interested in woke politics, it rather sounded like the opposite-side verison of civil rights groups getting very angry about Pepe the frog memes and calling Pepe a white supremacist symbol, because some people on 4chan used Pepe in racist memes. So everyone on the left side of the fence sees the "woke" descriptor as eminently silly, even though they refuse to give anyone a better one.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
Fair enough, it was a dumb comment.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
I would suggest to the white nationalists that, within their own framework, right now is precisely the correct time for white nationalists to quietly disappear.
That assumes the purpose of white nationalism is to fight anti-white discrimination rather than what their name actually says: establishing a white ethnonation. That's a terrible pipe dream of pipe dreams, but "we're just here to fight against discrimination against our in-group" is the motte, not the bailey, and it's not truly the central goal they want to accomplish. If you take their actual goals seriously, then now is actually the time to become louder: the broader political coalition they like is gaining power and implementing goals they approve of, so they have momentum.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
Thank you for the explanation, I was extremely confused by what was going on here.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
5mo ago
What does the Bible actually command about spending your own time in service of the poor?
It says that it's a sign of predestination to salvation (Matt 25):
Then the King will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’
But I know moderates who strongly oppose a lot of the trans stuff but are firmly in support of gay marriage. Have people with this viewpoint just flipped away from identifying as Republican en masse?
Looking at the Gallup data, independents don’t show much of a change. My supposition is that a lot of moderate Republicans have left the party since 2020, leaving more firm conservatives. I’m not convinced this change is due to a massive number of people changing their minds.
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