urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
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User ID: 226
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
Given that it's actually the school that owns the copyright (apparently "sorry our daughter killed your family, here's the copyright to her writings" is a thing now...), my guess is that there's discussions of the school environment in her writings that the school believes would be damaging, even if the ground truth is actually anodyne.
Even very light discussion of "my school didn't affirm my gender identity and led me through Unfixable Trauma, they're horrible homophobes and transphobes" could very easily rile up the rainbow mafia against them. From what we've seen of her writings, and especially considering she hated these people enough to kill them in cold blood, my guess is she wasn't afraid to call them all sorts of evil names and accuse them of all kinds of wickedness. It would be even more damaging if we set aside my assumption of good faith on the part of my ingroup and assume these accusations were of genuinely terrible things that really happened.
I don't think this is an action by the woke mob, I think it's an action in defense against the woke mob. Given that the parents who transferred the rights to the school liked it enough to send their child to there, I expect that their action was in solidarity with them.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
How many people really need to spend four years (and an increasingly large amount of money) on a degree, if we're being honest?
Increasingly, anyone who wants to do anything better-compensated or more-dignified than working at McDonald's or stocking shelves at Walmart. But that's only if we exclude trade apprenticeships or 2-year technical degrees, which I'd count under "college."
But the road to success for non-college-educated has eroded.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
Ah, so you're saying she's cheer captain and you're on the bleachers?
I kid. But there is this feeling I get from Swift where she's a massively popular and famous artist, but tailors (heh) her music to this sort of disaffected, underdog-feeling woman who's actually, if she could evaluate her life honestly, doing just fine in the world. It's the constant insecurity-feeding of it I don't like.
And it's that she's the most famous female singer in the world who sings normie songs about normie problems, but releases albums with titles like "The Tortured Poets Department" like she's some sort of radical high artist crafting poetry from Reading Gaol.
I still don't get the "not like other girls" meme, but insofar as I get it, it's that there's a huge cadre of young women who think they're different and creative and original and unique, but are actually just extremely conventional in an environment where bohemianism is conventional (and may God save us). That's what annoys me about Taylor Swift.
My girlfriend is one of the only women I know who doesn't like Taylor Swift -- but I think in part that's because she likes real country, and sees Swift as one of the pop-country sellouts who helped destroy country music. The coal miner's daughter can sing about being the underdog, the pretty girl born of stockbrokers can keep her fantasies of being downtrodden to herself.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
I'm often startled at how culturally significant the Matrix has been. The sequels weren't all that good, the plot of the original was strange and confusing, and the concept of "the world is revealed to be an illusion" has been done better -- but the concept of the colored pills, bullet time, and Laurence Fishburne's performance as Morpheus just made the movie hard to forget. The strange aesthetic made it both confusing and memorable. (Sometimes I think the flaws of Star Wars did the same -- both the OT and the prequels have diehard fans precisely because they were tacky and disjointed. The sequels are so polished, but they're polished like a turd.)
The Matrix definitely sticks out in my memory, but personally I'd rather everyone take the Christpill from Catholic Morpheus.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
30d ago
I only mean that she attended a "non-denominational" Christian (is that an oxymoron?) church in the area
Ah, that does mean evangelical. Almost universally, “non-denominational” means “Baptist in denial.” Sometimes with more charismatic influence than is typical of Baptists. It would be absolutely no surprise to me for a pro-choice feminist to have a falling out with such a congregation over gay marriage, as those congregations are typically conservative doctrinally even if they’re experimental liturgically and ecclesiologically. (And congregational autonomy isn’t even a strange idea for evangelicals.)
That also draws into relief why she felt her religion was either/or — one characteristic of many non-denominationals is a general ignorance of forms of Christianity outside the evangelical orbit, so the concept of an institutional Christianity that is somewhat, well, woke would be unfamiliar. That also makes her pathway more clear to me; she brought the non-denominational emphasis on spiritual autonomy, raw authenticity, and emotional intensity to her politics, with disastrous results.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
It's less about Eastern Orthodoxy as a set of beliefs, and more about the practices and people of Eastern Orthodoxy. And we're not talking about secular women here, I suppose they'd just go running in the opposite direction for reasons that you well understand, but conservative-to-moderate, vaguely religious women, in the United States. And it isn't an active hate, it's not that these ladies are obsessed with Orthodoxy and want to cast hexes at it or something, they just have no interest in it and find it a little odd that anyone would.
As I understand it, the median Orthodox convert in the United States is an intellectual, introverted, evangelical, college-educated man, who discovered Orthodoxy through the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit, also known as Wikipedia. From what I've heard, and seen, the women in this man's life get dragged to the divine liturgy ("St. Nathaniel says 'come and see!'"), and most often do not hear the angels singing the way the man did the first time he witnessed the liturgy.
At my local Orthodox parish, there was a young guy who dragged his entire family to Orthodoxy, and while his parents and siblings were committed, it's obvious he was the one who orchestrated the whole thing. They'd never have stepped foot in an Orthodox church if he hadn't pushed them.
Frederica Mathewes-Green, who as I understand it is kind of the "influencer mom" of American Orthodoxy, said in one of her videos that she just didn't like the divine liturgy the first time she went to an Orthodox church. She grew to like it, but that initial revulsion, or indifference, is what I've generally seen and heard from women who've had experience with Orthodoxy.
Participating in the honored tradition, I dragged both my mother and my girlfriend to liturgy a few times -- neither liked it. Both of them liked going to mass, though. (Definitely not the latin mass -- they can't understand what anyone's saying.)
I think a lot of it has to do with the people. Your framing says a lot, actually -- the intellectual content of faith is the thing that brings our evangelical man to become interested in Orthodoxy, but the women he drags don't know or care about any of that. She's interested in what's actually going on around her: what songs are they singing? What is this strange artwork on the walls? What's the content of the sermon? What do the candles mean? What are the people like? Are they a bear normal, or strange? Are people happy here? Does this seem like a community where I fit in?
And if we're talking about somewhat conservative American women, the sort of women who might be interested in a conservative religious tradition, we're talking about women who are generally very interested in social convention, unobtrusiveness, familiarity. They're very socially-oriented, they want a community that feels familiar, friendly, and safe, not strange, alienating, and unpredictable.
As our female draggee looks around, she sees these weird Byzantine paintings on the walls where people look odd, with strange proportions and almost alien-like ridges and folds in the depictions of their skin (in some icons, St. Paul genuinely just looks like a space alien to me with his giant head). The church bells ring out, and instead of the sweet ding donging of Western church bells, she hears them clanging like a hailstorm. ("Was that an accident?") She hears odd music she's never heard before, no familiar hymns, no familiar cadence -- if the chant is Byzantine-style, it genuinely sounds, to Western ears, like something from the Muslim and not the Christian world -- and she smells weird smells of strange incense, as some guy in an elaborate robe starts swinging it at her. And the worst part? She's not supposed to sit down! "It's for the old ladies," our evangelical man helpfully told her. Well, she's not an old lady, but this just doesn't seem right. She feels like she's put on the spot and has to stand where everyone can watch her, in a situation where she already feels out of place. And now she can't even get comfortable by sitting down and just watching!
The service ends, and, though she's shy, evangelical man starts dragging her around to talk to people, and she can't help but feel like they're just... a little off. There's the man who's wearing a kilt as his Sunday best in the middle of Kansas. There's the guy who wears a bowtie. There's the dude who seems prone to leering, like he's been on a naval vessel for six months and hasn't seen the sight of a woman in that time. There's the guy she can overhear talking about the upcoming Holy Friday service, who's telling his friends, "I just can't wait to stick it to those Jews." (A real anecdote I heard from an Orthodox friend of mine about someone he knew.) And a bunch of the men, including the priest, have a thick, untrimmed beard -- can't they trim them?
Half the people in the church are speaking in foreign languages she can't understand, and are sticking to themselves, avoiding eye contact. She feels like a foreigner in her own country. People are talking about the lenten fast, and are speaking about cheese like they've been on the naval vessel with the leerer with only bread and water -- wait, these people can't eat cheese for months out of the year? The priest is friendly, but seems strange, overly intellectual, and his beard looks greasy. She strikes up a conversation with another convert's wife, and she tells her, "yeah, I didn't like the orthodox church either at first -- it grows on you."
And the overwhelming feeling our dragged-along woman feels to all this is an unadulterated, grade A:
ICK!
My mom told me once, after I'd stopped exploring Orthodoxy, that the Orthodox parishioners "seemed like hippies." My girlfriend was less expressive, but said she thought they "felt like strange people." Neither would have attended the divine liturgy if I hadn't dragged them, and neither had any interest in continuing to attend after I stopped being interested. They just found it overwhelmingly weird.
This obviously doesn't apply to cradle Orthodox -- it is their tradition and they're quite familiar with it. It's western Christianity that seems weird to them. And there are, of course, women who choose to convert to Orthodoxy on their own, but I've never talked to any of them so I can't offer a take.
Sometimes I share my views on Eastern Orthodoxy and people seem surprised by them -- I don't know, maybe I've just seen a tiny sliver of what Orthodoxy in America looks like and it's different elsewhere. I owe a lot to my time exploring Orthodoxy, including a strengthening of my love for the Mother of God, an appreciation for the iconographic tradition (looks over at my icon of Christ Pantokrator), a more reserved approach to the procession of the Holy Spirit, a grounding and softening of my Western 'hard edges' -- without abandoning the juridical lens on Christianity as some Orthodox seem to call for -- and even a belief in the essence-energies distinction, which, interestingly, resolved a struggle I'd had with Western Mariology. And I sincerely and deeply respect the Orthodox tradition as a pathway to communion with God.
But despite all that, my own feeling after sincerely exploring Orthodoxy is that, for all the missionary zeal it's developed in America through conversion, it still feels like it's someone else's church, and I'm just living in barbarian lands an ethnic diaspora of ethnicities I simply am not a part of. And where even the native converts are, respectfully, not always the most 'normal' or conventional people, even if I bear no ill will towards them.
I had a convert friend in the Orthodox church who was quite interesting, obviously very intelligent. But he also had a passion for Orthodoxy and Eastern Europe that bordered on obsessive; he would talk about and cook Russian cuisine for people, despite being as English-German as the rest of us American white people. He had a two-bedroom condo, and one entire bedroom had been converted into what can only be described as a chapel, with icons covering every wall and liturgical books overflowing bookcases. He wanted to be a priest, but had no interest in marriage (which would make him the perfect Catholic seminarian, but obviously led to some stern pastoral advice from his spiritual father). He honestly struck me as the kind of guy who just needed to get laid.
While I respect other cultures and I'm even open to trying their cuisine, I simply have no interest in becoming Greek or Bulgarian or Russian. At times, it felt to me like fitting in the Orthodox church required a cultural self-emptying, not merely a spiritual one. As though to become Orthodox I had to renounce the profound insights of the Western philosophical tradition or the honor due to my ancestors and embrace a worldview that sees them as something between "deeply mistaken" and "the Great Satan of the whole world." I get enough hatred of the West from the secular world, and I just don't care to receive it from my fellow Christians.
And I guess that's what I see in Dreher. He's a Western man, born in Louisiana, and restoring his relationship with his parents was important to him. But he has so self-emptied himself of his culture that he's literally fled the West to go to Hungary, despite writing a book about how Westerners can create pockets of grace within the West after the model of the great founder of Western monasticism.
If I mean anything by this long post, I mean to say that Orthodoxy feels foreign, alien, even converts often feel somewhat odd or unusual, and very often its prescription to Westerners is "reject your people, RETVRN to ours." And that this is picked up by non-Orthodox women more than non-Orthodox men, because of their strong attunement to social signals and preference for the conventional.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
moldbug and why reactionaries must be purged from the community
When I first read about neoreaction, I thought it was really interesting that Bay Area computer scientists were getting into monarchism and treating it seriously. Then I read more deeply into it, and realized it was this bizarre monarchical system where kingdoms compete like corporations under a CEO and the fittest survive, like somehow social darwinism but worse, a capitalist abomination of monarchism. They make no reference to the actual historical reasons people support(ed) monarchies, like divine right of kings, providing a social ideal, which are just cooler and more passionate reasons someone might like monarchism. As it stands the neoreaction people offer nothing to the heart, belying its engineering origins. I regard it as what happens when libertarians who read Hacker News and Ayn Rand stop believing in liberty.
With respect to our rationalist posters, I think of the broader rationalist sphere as a bunch of very crazy people, most of whom have bad ideas that rarely diverge from their social mileu. People will disagree with me on this, but Scott is the singular exception, and the only one I respect: he seems like a basically normal, if very intelligent, guy who got caught up with the wrong kinda smart people and let them rot his prodigious knack for observation and empathy.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
9mo ago
Possibly because you believe he won't be able to accomplish anything for it anyway, but will tar the idea for the future by his association with it.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
8d 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
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
30d ago
Someone here predicted that the Elon-Trump alliance would fracture. Was it 2rafa?
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
Ordinarily Congress can’t just specify what they think the Constitution means, though there’s caselaw about the possible ways in which courts might defer to Congress in certain cases.
But the 14th amendment, like a lot of the amendments, ends with a section that gives Congress a lot of leeway: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” A huge portion of civil rights law and federal power over the states comes from this simple delegation of power. Presumably the claim is that Congress would simply be enforcing the amendment to a class of persons to whom it already applies, just in an unenforced way. This is why the title of the act says “implement” — the claim is that the blueprint already allows for this but that they just want to build it.
All Congressional action comes under review by the courts, but Congress can of course claim any power it wishes even if the courts see fit to strike it down.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
You know who wants to kill the Jews today? It's not right wingers.
I agree that in a raw sense the greatest threat to Jewish lives is Palestinians (and the opposite is also true, of course), but I find it ironic to claim that right-wing antisemitism is dead by posting here, of all places.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
When Life of Brian, the Monty Python comedy, was released some were offended by the last joke that has the crucified sing "always look on the bright side of life", and one journalist asked whether we'd find it all so funny if it weren't crosses but gas chambers, whether the amount of time that has passed influences us so much.
Historically, depiction of the cross is the only artistic Christian universal -- what aniconists of both the Byzantine crisis and the Protestant Reformation had in common was a belief that the cross (and the sacrament) is the only acceptable religious imagery, which is why their churches look like this.
But I've heard historians argue that in early Christian times, when crucifixion was still an active form of punishment in the Roman empire and one to which an insistent Christian might be subjected, there was extreme reluctance to depict it. They assert that this is why the earliest Christian art prefers motifs like the good shepherd, loaves and fishes, St. Mary and the Christchild, etc.
When Christianity became legally protected, and crucifixion faded into the past as a form of torture, this school of historians argues that Christians became more willing to depict the cross as an explicit image of the death of Christ.
There's also a recent Christian sect -- let's call it what it is, it's a cult -- called the Iglesia ni Cristo, which outright rejects the depiction of the cross, and makes fun of mainstream Christians for depicting it with the same sorts of dumb gotchas that edgy 14-year-old atheists use. "If Jesus died in the electric chair, would you wear necklaces with electric chairs?" To which I respond, yes.
I've heard that the LDS church is also reluctant to depict the cross, but when you ask Mormons their reasoning, it's something along the lines of "we don't depict the cross because Jesus isn't dead any more," which is just a folk theology explanation plucked from evangelical Protestantism (like a lot of things in Mormonism), as it's the same argument that lay Protestants invoke against depictions of the cross-with-corpus, i.e. the crucifix.
So, yeah, historical horrors do seem to fade with intensity over time, as living memory of the reality is lost and they become more like distant symbols.
But it's worth noting that the cross maintained significant symbolic importance for Christians (we would not remember it if it did not!), just as the holocaust maintains significant symbolic importance for Jews. The OP contains a link to a Jewish man Singalularly singularly distraught over any attempt to mock or trivialize the holocaust, which rather reminds me of my own youthful offense at artistic depictions that seem to mock or trivialize the cross.
I'm sure Jewish people will remember the Holocaust long after everyone else has forgotten it. But remembering historical events is kind of their thing, a tendency which they imparted to Christians.
(Intriguingly, there's an overlap of concepts as "holocaust" is sacrificial terminology, and Christianity of course interprets the crucifixion of Jesus as singularly sacrificial -- and D-R literally has "holocausts" as a translation for "burnt offerings" in that passage. I was hoping to make a grand point about the significance of historical events in theological identity, but of course the preferred Hebrew term for the holocaust is "Shoah," which doesn't have anything to do with ritual sacrifice.)
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
The religious revival is notable for only really happening among heterosexual white men. I believe this is because it’s become clear to everyone that the ruling belief system has no place for heterosexuals or white men, and they’re searching for an alternative belief system and community that values and valorizes heterosexuality instead of rejecting and demonizing it. The young straight men I know are either depressed and demoralized, or they’re religious.
Old religions have the social proof and track record to do this. They’re also attracted to personal development and ideological purity, which is why traditional Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and to a lesser extent confessional Protestantism, are the religions of choice. Evangelicals bend too far to try and appeal to the world with laser shows and electric guitars, and mainlines try too hard to appeal to the world with ideological indifference.
But the problem is it takes two to tango, and straight women are the movers and shakers of the ruling belief system. So you’re ending up with straight men crowding into Latin masses and Divine Liturgies, with the women there so crowded with male attention that it might as well be Tinder or so obsessed with a rigid sense of gender roles that no spiritually-sensitive man could ever be masculine enough for them. The one exception I’ve found is the genuinely rad-trad Catholics who are comfortable attending mass at SSPX chapels, where there do seem to be a lot of women. This certainly has a lot to do with having 7 children to a family, approximately half of which will statistically be women.
I don’t actually know if this current wave of religious revival will last, if it can’t reproduce it can’t persist. Rad trad Catholics will, but I don’t have much optimism for the future of Eastern Orthodoxy in America as I think the orthobro converts will burn themselves out, and the evangelistic and phyletistic contradictions at the heart of Orthodox ecclesiology will eventually show their ugly face.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
11mo ago
Yeah, I really don't understand what all the discussion about Biden somehow being removed from the ticket is coming from. It can't happen. The rules are designed to make that impossible. Are the Democratic leaders/influencers calling for it trying to set themselves up to appeal to a hypothetical future nominee for 2028? Biden's already made it clear he won't step down voluntarily.
If the Democratic party loses in November, he's going down with the ship. And I guess we'll find Harris laying on a door frame in the middle of the ocean.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
Wow, that’s… massive. Is it just party coalitions reshuffling? But such a massive drop in such a short amount of time makes me want to assume the null hypothesis, measurement error.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
In fact, if you follow through with their logic, it’s basically: “we’re Christians, and you’re not.”
Correct. And in fact, this is exactly what you're saying to them.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2mo ago
· Edited 2mo ago
People need to learn to be a bit more inconvenienced and uncomfortable.
No.
I disgree with you on veganism, but I don't go around calling you "vegan-brained."
I was giving reasons why people feel the way they do about cars, and instead of engaging with them seriously, you're name-calling. You can make the argument that cars are net-bad, but that would be a serious discussion that engages seriously with the value differences (for instance, the core of my post -- that people are more concerned about intentional than accidental violence) between you and the "car-brained" rather than calling them names. There's a serious balance to be struck, and I'm sympathetic to the needs of people who would prefer not to drive a car particularly in cities, but there are real, serious concerns people have about the security of public transit. Your post amounts to calling car drivers big babies whose concerns are entirely in their head, and totally disregarding their values and interests, and that strikes me as quite similar to the ad hominem attacks you were upset about earlier. Just because people disagree with you doesn't make them biased -- or wrong. (Doesn't make them right, either.)
I'm actually robustly pro-public-transit, and even sympathetic to the aims of ultimately reducing cars in cities. I just believe that the safety concerns about our cities are more real than you do -- we have a factual and values disagreement, and we should be able to discuss them reasonably without one side accusing the other of being insane, or stupid. I'm not pro-car -- I'm anti-crime, and pro-autonomy. Perhaps I didn't communicate that effectively enough.
On the topic of this being an AAQC -- I would agree this wasn't really one of my better posts; I actually think my response to you was a much better reflection of my values than this one, though I believe the best motte posts are those that offer a take that reveals what a worldview looks like from the inside, as I believe this one does. It's definitely true that my AAQCs have leaned towards the moments where I'm more partisan, or firmly opinionated, and less where I'm diplomatic or synthesizing, which is a fair critique of the AAQC system.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
I linked the glossary below if you want to dive yourself.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I did look at the lesswrong post and I was bewildered at how seriously the commenters took the ideas of alternate personalities and behavior modification; for people who declare themselves scientific and anti-superstition they seem pretty stitious to me. Family systems therapy pervades the commentariat, which I find rather disturbing; I was sold that this was a tool to help people deal with mental illness and not a means to manipulate or explain the world in real terms, but they're treating it like they're talking about real-world magic. If this is what people mean by "therapy culture" then I agree wholeheartedly with the criticism of it. At this point, I'm ready to declare family systems therapy a cause of psychogenic illness, whatever good it might have done it's now clearly driving people mad.
That being said, I try to avoid prying too deeply into either delusional thinking or true crime; the former I fear might infest me (though I don't have a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia) and the latter just makes me angry. I have finite grey matter and I'd rather spend it on things that don't make me feel like the only sane man in an insane world. We need connection to reality and to other people and to average people and to people of different perspectives to remain sane, and this is a great example of why.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
I actually thought about that very idea before, I'm intrigued to read that a confluence of interests between antisemites and Zionists was hypothetically conceived. It seems logical that you'd want a place you could send Jews if you didn't like them that much.
But raw ethnic antisemitism just doesn't make logical sense to me, if you really hate Jews I presume you'd consider the Holocaust a great achievement, but antisemites deny it happened, and if you think Jewish presence in your country creates a disloyal class, presumably you'd want somewhere to banish them, but antisemites hate even the concept of a Jewish state. Frankly, I've never been persuaded from my core assumption that hardcore antisemitism is just people looking for a scapegoat to pin their ingroup's problems on the outgroup, and if the scapegoat goes away the problems can no longer be blamed on it.
But also, honestly, I don't know that the far-right actually supports Israel in large numbers, although I'm sure it happens. It seems to me that far-rightists who hate Jews tend to really despise the state of Israel for similar reasons to the left, and believe that any support for the Israelis in the West is due to "Jewish control of the media."
Possibly the bluesky poster is saying someone like Trump is far right, but I consider the idea that the firmly pro-Israel part of the right is either far-right or anti-semitic to be laughable. These are the most philosemitic gentiles who have ever existed on the face of the earth, they brag about how much they love Jews and how much they want Jews to like them.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
· Edited 5mo ago
Most of the great events in world history happened because people made decisions based on gut, and put personal negotiation above political correctness. It obviously has the possibility of causing instability — but the love of stability over significance and valor is the stuff of the neoliberal consensus, which is collapsing.
All things considered, I would prefer to live in interesting times to boring times, and I’d argue the revealed preferences of human beings are the same. Note the way veterans obsess about their service, or the way pledges go through humiliating rituals only to be bossed around and corralled by half-sober frat brothers, and then remember the situation fondly! And moreover: note how inside Russia there’s immense nostalgia for the rule of Stalin of all people, and note how pumped up the Chinese people are to take Taiwan. People would rather, especially in hindsight, live through a time that will go in the history books than one that will be forgotten. People would rather fly high, and end up too close to the sun, than swing low and drown in the deep. Would you rather be Abraham Lincoln, or James Garfield? Both were shot, but only one was shot because he was historically important.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
Then sponsored content began taking up a greater and greater percentage of your news feed
Yeah, I left Facebook after they made an algorithmic change that led to my feed being taken up by toxoplasmosis-inducing posts full of scissor statements that generated clicks by being controversial. I had carefully curated my feed to see only posts from local organizations and friends who posted things I wanted to hear, but they spit right in the face of that and filled my feed with things designed by robots to make people maximally angry.
This is the same reason I can't use Twitter or even reddit nowadays, I log in for 5 minutes -- literally -- and I'm overwhelmed by 50,000 people trying to get me to feel fear or anger or hate. But listening to the teaching of the Jedi that these things lead to suffering, and the apostolic teaching that "enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, and envy" leads to ruin, I chose to walk away from such things and focus on "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, and whatever is gracious," which leads not to suffering and anxiety but to peace that passeth all understanding. Iterum dico, gaudete!
I disagree with you that the problem with Facebook was too much personal stuff or memes or pictures of people's kids... IMO that was the nice side of Facebook that gave you a small sense of connection to people you know in real life. I'm not annoyed by calls for sympathy, but I don't talk politics in real life outside of a small group of people I can have motte-style conversations with, so Facebook politics was much more grating to me than it was to you. But maybe this is an agreeableness thing.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
7mo ago
Which are the not-scummy ones?
And the worst one isn't even the last -- "I would like to breed your daughter" comes across as much more disrespectful to me than "I would like to creampie your daughter"; obviously I wouldn't like hearing it in that way, but it sounds more horny than disrespectful. "I would like to breed your daughter" sounds like she's going to be inseminated like an animal. Using "breed" in a human context comes across as wildly inappropriate, while saying 'creampie' in a human context is just horny. (And if you invert it, the pattern follows -- "I would like to breed your mare" sounds like a normal thing for a horse person to say, "I would like to creampie your mare" is followed by a call to the police.)
(And yes, I know "breeding kink" is a real term, but I think it's an insane people describe the natural urge to reproduce as a 'kink' and not, say, the normal outworkings of sexuality. It's like saying you have an 'orgasm kink.' Oh really? Are you demisexual too?)
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