urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
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User ID: 226
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
8d ago
I would also want proportion to the amount of non-violent usefulness for the item, and the amount of necessity for the item in society. No one needs a firearm to get along in society. Yes, it may have usefulness in a law-abiding way, but even the closest thing to a necessity for firearms in society in self-defense -- which involves, inherently, violence. It may be justified violence, but it is violence. Someone who shoots a carjacker is doing the same thing an armed carjacker-gone-wrong does -- using a firearm against a person. And there is no necessity in the 21st century to hunt for food, and certainly no necessity to hunt or shoot for sport.
A car, however -- using a car to run someone over is incorrectly using a car. No one for a lawful or legitimate purpose runs over a person with a car. There is no sense in which a car is supposed to be used to run someone over. There are no sports in which people get run over by cars. There is no such thing as driving through a crash test barrier made of clay for sport. A car, used properly, is not a weapon, it's a means of transport. Firearms are weapons.
And you also kind of need a car to get along in society -- especially in places where public transportation does not exist or is woefully inadequate. It makes a lot more sense to give your depressed teen (with a drivers' license, of course!) access to the family car than to give them a gun. After all, if they can't use the car to go visit their friends, or go to their after-school job, what they'll be doing is moping around the house. And that just sounds like more depression.
Perhaps he could have used the gun at a firing range to let off some stress. But if I were the parents, and actually paid attention to the kid, I wouldn't let him do that without supervision. And I wouldn't even do that, personally. The parents made an active choice to put a weapon in the hands of their depressed, angry son, unsupervised. That's not bad parenting, that's ludicriously harmful parenting. I would even say negligent.
All that being said, it's interesting to me that owning a firearm is a right, but driving a car is a privilege -- yet the former is optional and the latter, for many people, a necessity.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
20d ago
Yeah, I think a huge part is insufficient pair bonding. I wonder if perhaps the problem is social media and porn -- unrealistic expectations abound there.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
1mo ago
Critically, it was the very abstention of the early Christians from public life that, ultimately, led to their success -- while there were certainly some failures to communicate doctrines like the eucharistic presence (leading to claims that Christians were slaughtering and eating human babies) and universal fraternity (leading to non-Christians seeing Christian spouses calling each other "brother" and "sister"), there was also a sense in which the strength and conviction of the early Christians impressed the Romans. Later on, Christians whose theology spared them from the fear of death worked in hospitals treating the sick, which astounded the Romans who abandoned the plague-ridden. It was these things that the later Christians could point to and say, "look how impressive we are, you should adopt our belief system."
This co-existed, of course, with attempts at public preaching. You've got to do both. You can't abandon the public spectacle of St. Paul, but you must, you must, embrace the cloistered enlightenment of St. John. Any form of Christianity that embraces one while rejecting the other becomes imbalanced.
The Buddhist to Eastern Orthodox pathway demonstrates itself yet again, hah. I personally come at things from a different angle -- I find Buddhism, even in its secularized form, off-putting, especially in its denial of the self and its total repudiation of physical pleasures. Desire certainly brings about suffering, but it also certainly brings about joy.
I do definitely wonder if there's a "intellectual faith" vs "mystic faith" personality difference, that tends to define where a convert ends up in the spectrum of Christian churches -- and the latter attracts people to Eastern Orthodoxy like flies to honey. The former, of course, pulls in people to western Christianity, especially to Thomist Catholicism and confessional forms of Protestantism. I find myself compelled by the intellectual distinctives of western Christianity, even as I agree with the Chalcedonian Orthodox on many of the historical and theological issues about which they contend.
Probably no one believes me on this, but I have a stronger emotional reaction to western liturgical services than to the Byzantine liturgy. It is undoubtedly beautiful, but also Byzantine in the fullest sense of the word. Western liturgies seem to operate in a different way, even in its most accumulative forms -- there's a more easily perceptible progression towards the Eucharist and and then down from it.
Several years ago I had my come-to-Jesus moment where I took to heart Camus's assertion that an atheist who sees the absurdity of our intelligence and spirituality within a naturalistic materialistic worldview has but three options: accept the absurdity, commit suicide (The Myth of Sisyphus begins with the eerie line that "there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide"), or commit philosophical suicide -- and accept faith. I found the absurdity intolerable. And so I thought about these options within the context of Kierkegaard's "leap into faith", and, having rejected the choice of suicide within the confines of a psychiatric ward, I took the leap.
I began with my belief in the Bible (which I never truly lost; even as an atheist I believed it was invaluable as literature in a Jordan Peterson sense) and, on that basis, I investigated the various churches, seeking what was testable and true. During this time I wrote a 10,000-word treatise on the Biblical model of baptism, demolishing arguments against baptismal regeneration and infant baptism with facts and logic (TM). I also wrote a nearly-as-long treatise in favor of the Eucharist.
During these explorations, I flitted from Calvinism to Anglicanism, and finally found a stable place in Catholicism, where I remained in worship, if not in sacrament, for years. I met some wonderful, kind, young Catholics who were, and remain, passionate about Jesus Christ and his most pure mother. This faith got me through COVID, at least, and for that I thank the Lord.
But I had all sorts of lingering doubts about the Papacy, about the Vatican councils (both of them), about The Magisterium (TM), about Mariology, about clerical celibacy -- the details of these are painful and frustrating to me, and do not bear repeating. But suffice it to say that I found myself increasingly distrusting the claims the institutional Catholic Church made about itself, despite admiring, in many ways, the theology. I have been assured a thousand times that Catholicism cannot be separated from the Pope. But I find myself admiring the shape and form of Catholicism before the time of high Papal supremacy from the 17-1900s. Where, pray tell, are the trads who reject Vatican I?
It was in that mode that I first walked into an Eastern Orthodox church. I saw it, not as the bride of Christ, but as the homely single girl in a town where everyone else was married. I saw no other option to continue believing in the Incarnate God, one person in two natures, and I seized upon the option I was given.
If I'm being honest, I see no bride of Christ within the world: I see her in the saints beloved of our God, not in the institutions who claim to wear the mantle of their holiness. If there is anything that remains Protestant about my faith, it is that the Church in her holiness is fundamentally visible only to God, who judges all hearts.
During this time I worked with a priest, a convert, a good man, though I'm not sure we ever really understood each other. But I increasingly felt out of place: worshipping with strange music in a strange church full of strangers. There were definitely young converts to which I related quite a bit. But the one I related to the most, an argumentative but faithful young man who wanted to be a priest, seemed more infatuated with the cultures of far-off Eastern Europe than his own, and I found this cosmopolitan attitude of fascination with all-things foreign as more reminiscent of blue tribers who hate my country rather than the red tribe Christians with whom I argued, like (and literally as) family about not putting the stars and stripes within the church sanctuary.
Actually, I felt like, in some ways, I fit in all too well -- a young, neurotic, book-obsessed young man brought to interest in Orthodoxy by the internet. But, in another, I fit in poorly: the model Orthodox convert very much seems to be an evangelical Protestant, spiritual-but-not-religious atheist, or Buddhist, who would never consider Catholicism with a 10-foot pole. I have heard nearly as many bad arguments against Catholicism within Orthodoxy as I did growing up Protestant, and I have never met a Catholic-to-Orthodox convert.
Although in serious terms that term also would not describe me, I would say that my mode of thinking and praying is fundamentally Roman Catholic -- I find much to identify with in the "greats" of Catholic theology, like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and I am compelled by the Catholic view of "faith seeking understanding," of reason not against faith, but in support of faith, in favor of faith. I find the rejection of this concept with Orthodoxy off-putting, like I am being asked to cut off my nose to spite my face.
If reason is not a potential part of a healthy breakfast way to communion with God, then why was it the only thing that ever got me to knock on the door of an Orthodox parish -- and for that matter, the only thing that got most converts to do so? I was frustrated when my priest, after many meetings of saying, "reason is not the way to God," then said, "you have to look at the history, how people did things," in response to my doubts about Orthodoxy. In other words, it was tolerable to use the rational analysis of historical evidence to get to Orthodoxy, but once you're in it, suddenly rationality becomes useless. This seemed to me uselessly self-serving, and it was not long after that I walked away from Eastern Orthodoxy. I did the Orthodox endorsed (TM) thing of Asking My Priest (TM), and it led me away from the Orthodox Church, not towards it.
All this co-existed with me trying hopelessly to convince my parents and my girlfriend that I wasn't insane, or about to lose my soul. Catholicism was enough of a stretch for my parents; my girlfriend admires Catholicism, though I'm not sure she has a religious bone in her body. Our fiercest argument, and the closest we've ever come to truly splitting up, was based around my own interest in Eastern Orthodoxy and desire to bring up my children in my Christian faith. I met her in a college atheist club -- where we were the two least anti-religious people there -- and up until that point I think she saw my religious beliefs as a weird phase, which, to be fair, I am wont to get into.
(I once spent some time as a teenager engaging in "floor living" like some kind of Japanese LARP, cursing the invention of the chair as an insult against the natural ability of human beings to squat and sit without furniture. She teases me about this relentlessly.)
But at that point I think it crystalized for her that I really believed in it, that my faith in God was a real part of my life that would motivate real decisions. And, in response, she made no secret of the fact that she would never baptize her children in a religious faith before they could choose it for themselves, and that she found Eastern Orthodoxy in particular to be a bizarre religion. She expressed open and profound displeasure at their weird music, and the weird parishioners, and the overly-intense fasts, and the total foreign-ness of that faith.
To be fair, I actually think she's right about this from the American perspective -- Eastern Orthodoxy is a weird religion by US standards, and its culinary rules and cultural outlook is indeed quite foreign. Not only that, but, no offense intended, the converts are kind of weird -- there is one guy at the local Orthodox parish who wears a kilt for the Liturgy. In the United States. That sort of nerdy, male oddness is normative -- so is simple "male-ness," to be blunt. And my girlfriend, though she loves ideas, hates hates hates cultural weirdness and is a very feminine person, and in that sense she is probably more conservative than I am. (I once had her take a Big Five personality test, which said she is high in the segments of Openness to Experience that relate to appreciation for intellectual thinking, but moderately low in the segments that relate to appreciation of unusual aesthetic preferences. This explained a lot about her.)
I think my we very nearly broke up then and there, during that one tense conversation. But where in God's green earth would I ever find another woman who cares for me as much as her, or agrees with me as much as her, or holds as similar a worldview to me as her (faith excepted), or shares as many beliefs about how to run a family as her?
It certainly wouldn't be in the American Orthodox Church. Much more attractive and eligible men than I struggle there; most seem to find Protestants and convert them; it seems like Rod Dreher lost his.
I think you shared at one point that your wife is Eastern Orthodox -- this surely makes that process much easier for you, as your conversion experience hopefully bonds you to her more closely. For me, it did the opposite. My partner enjoys listening to me talk about Christianity as she does all my thoughts, but I could tell that she appreciated them as ideas, almost as fiction -- in the same way that @FarNearEverywhere likes Tolkien -- rather than as a living faith that she would care to base her life on. ("I think you're taking this too seriously, urquan," she would tell me, "faith is not about ideas, it's just what people believe.") "Seeing, she did not see; and hearing, she did not hear, nor did she understand."
It was around this time that I gave up on faith, started having sex with my girlfriend, and adopted a sort of vaguely Christian agnosticism. I knew at the time -- I knew -- that this would end up in a dark place, perhaps a darker place than I had been in even during my periods of "new atheism". And, on that matter, I was right: my time as a post-Christian has been, bar none, the darkest and least functional point in my life. Angry at the world, frustrated at myself, critical towards all, charitable towards none, eager to judge, slow to mercy, I am like the prophet of a wrathful God, bent on inventing Hell for lack of Heaven. If someone told me they thought I was possessed by a demon, I would believe them. I am as disconnected from my values and my spirit as any daemoniac, and my torments are legion. "O how unlike the place from whence I fell!"
These are just disconnected thoughts. But nevertheless they are real ones, more real than any of my actual "arguments," such as they are, against Eastern Orthodoxy. But, as I said, I am at my low point, and about to the place where I'm willing once again to commit philosophical suicide for want of the alternative. I suppose I am praying that somewhere, some way, I receive some of this "confirmation" you speak of, something to push me, or pull me, kicking and screaming, towards something, anything, some new path, that I might live, and have life abundantly. I am begging for something worth living for.
Several months ago, I was PMing with @dovetailing about the Eastern Orthodox Church; he is also a convert to Orthodoxy. I dropped the thread despite wanting to reply, because I just couldn't find the right words. He sent me a very kind PM during that radio silence, which I appreciated very much. These, I suppose, are the right words, and I would ask him to take my reply to you as a reply to him.
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sociological surveys usually don’t bother distinguishing mass attending orthodox from Catholics
Well, I wouldn't either, if the orthodox in question are attending the sacrifice of the mass and not the divine liturgy! (this is tongue in cheek)
Maybe it's just my local area, but conservative Presbyterians seem bigger than Lutherans or the continuing Anglicans. Though I do get the sense they're much older than even the Lutherans or Anglicans, who seem to have at least a few younger members and families.
I think Presbyterians just have a hard time distinguishing themselves from the Reformed Baptists, especially given their generally low/moderate sacramental theology. My sense is that conservative Christians who get themselves interested in some Calvin just stay where they are and see their Calvinism as a theological spin on their existing denominational affiliation (heck, around here even the continuing Anglicans are calvinists, much to my chagrin). I actually think Calvinism is kind of the evangelical Protestant version of being a trad -- male, intellectual, a little stuck up. And I say this as someone who was really attracted to Calvinism before I realized I had to find a place where the eucharistic theology was unapologetically realist and baptism was regeneration ipso facto -- so you can infer from that what you will about me.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
Not OP, but as someone struggling with delayed sleep problems, this is an incredibly helpful and inspiring comment.
How do you deal with the desire to do electronic things during your evening hours?
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
Oh, if only my parents were like that. They go on a frenzy to remove Christmas decorations at their house starting December 26, and it's usually gone by New Years'.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
I'm trying to convince my parents (who have decorated their house with huge numbers of lights since I was a kid) to keep the lights up into January. I'm hopeful they'll actually do it this year, that always makes me joyful to go to their house and see the pretty lights.
I hate January.
urquan
The end desire of the system is Kubernetes for human beings
4mo ago
When it comes down to it, my ability to rationalize my negative thoughts is too strong for me to overcome.
This is definitely something I've struggled with. I think one of the big challenges for smart, philosophical people who struggle with emotional regulation is how powerful the rationalizing impulse is in them.
That's one of the big reasons I want to lean more towards skill or solution based therapy, actually -- I'm not particularly interested in altering my worldview or doing extensive cognitive restructuring, and to be entirely honest I would find it impossible to lean on the judgment of a psychotherapist when doing so. I think someone would have to be close to enlightened -- as @TheDag said -- to actually offer insight into my cognitions or personality that would both ring true and motivate change. Otherwise, and this is what I've run into with the current therapist, I would quite easily be able to argue against their supposed insights to my satisfaction, if not theirs. My hope would be that, with a more skills-based approach, we could talk more about behaviors than cognitions. And my behavior is really what I want to be different.
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