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
Women mostly have no clue what sexually interests them and don't have the language to describe it other than vibes ("I just didn't feel a spark, you know?") and so you should assume that any time they give romantic advice to men they're just saying something they'd find useful or pro-social without being able to consider whether that's something that would really interest them in a man. I'm rarely one to make sweeping generalizations about the dating world, but even women I really like and respect for their thoughtfulness and honesty in other areas of their life seem totally incapable of describing their real romantic interests. It's the closest thing to a universal I've found.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2mo ago
This is simple to understand: it’s because the reason the kids are having less sex and doing less drugs is that they’re less healthy, socially connected, and happy — not because they’re following the social conservative model of being healthy, socially connected, and happy. The ideology of social conservatives is not “the kids must do less drugs, and I don’t care about anything else.”
We could solve drug abuse by just shooting anyone who’s addicted to drugs, but somehow I don’t expect that this would make anyone very happy.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
Blown tens of billions on the "Metaverse", a project which no one wants and has negative traction
It certainly has negative traction, but I for one really want the metaverse. I grew up at the height of the virtual world craze, and I really miss that energy. I would absolutely love a credible and full-featured virtual world where you can customize a character, build structures, socialize with people, and play games, especially if it had connections to real-life friends in VR. As it is, these features all exist, but are spread throughout different games and platforms, many of which are dated, like many MMOs and Second Life. I absolutely see the value proposition of the Metaverse, but I would want to see some credible implementations of the opportunity for expansive creativity and socialization.
That being said, this has been the dream of silicon valley and cyberpunk for several decades at this point, and they've never gotten it to take off. But I will absolutely keep the dream alive.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
6mo ago
· Edited 6mo ago
Do religious people actually genuinely believe that those who willingly perform such stunts are capable of having all their sins washed away?
I'm copying this from other comments because you removed it. I don't think this was in bad faith at all, it's a very good question.
And yes. But the form of Christianity I believe in also holds that, while God forgives all things because of genuine repentance, he doesn't remove the natural consequences of sin, and he doesn't remove the requirement for intense, even painful, spiritual growth and purification after partaking in sin. In this sense, yes, some sins are worse than others, and more sins are worse than fewer sins.
The closest person to Lily in the Christian tradition is probably St. Mary of Egypt, who was a prostitute who often refused payment for her services because she just loved sex, and even went on a pilgrimage to try and bang pilgrims. According to the hagiography, she tried to enter a church and could not, and was struck with remorse, pledging to become an aescetic if God would forgive her. After receiving absolution, she fled into the desert and lived as a hermit.
I don't see it in your comment -- did this woman repent? Did she publicly say that she's ashamed of her actions and she believes God has given her grace to overcome them? Has she been baptized? If not, will she?
If yes, my response to her is the same as to Russell Brand: I trust in God to judge you spiritually, but to earn my temporal respect you must prove your amendment over a long period of time, and that starts with shutting up.
Stop trying to be a celebrity. Don't go on shows to talk about how great your conversion is and how much of a degenerate you were and how much of a good Christian you are now -- just stop. Go into the desert. Become an aescetic. For someone whose sins are so public and attention-seeking, repentance must inevitably involve privacy and humility. And that path may be painful, involving great sacrifice -- it may indeed include religious vows someday. But no one said the Christian life was easy, least of all the man nailed to the cross.
When St. Paul became a Christian, he did not immediately set out to preach to the world, but fled to Arabia for three years. If your goal is truly to make yourself right with God, and not to win the favor of men, you should treasure this opportunity as a pearl of great price. Christianity is not a get-out-of-consequences-free-card, but the Way that leads to life.
But if your goal is merely to resurrect your temporal reputation and not to resurrect your soul, then you will be numbered among the goats and there can be no redemption for you.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
2mo ago
I also heard he seems to have noped off to Hungary, but yeah, last time I checked in with him he said he was getting a divorce. I believe there was an argument about "whether the cross can be co-opted." But that's the last I heard of him.
While I really respect his struggles with Catholicism, and I know they were very personal for him (he said that a priest he was personally close with was credibly accused of sex abuse, which broke his trust in the whole institution), I also get the sense that they went full-steam-ahead into Orthodoxy as kind of a second option, the second-most attractive girl at the bar altar rail, and so there's a lot of trauma, conversion, and ideological flip-flopping involved in his personal journey, which reads to me more like desperation than divine ascent. I wonder if that just got to be too much for his wife, especially considering how famously repulsive Orthodoxy is to non-Orthodox women, something I've observed personally. He also just strikes me as quite a depressive, just a very moody and somber person whose view of life and the future is almost perfectly apocalyptic, and I can't imagine that makes a marriage easy to manage. When I think about Dreher, the overwhelming feeling is "sad." He doesn't feel like he's chasing the divine, he feels like he's running away from brokenness. Which is not a bad starting point, but far from anything that measures up to holy Benedict.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
9mo ago
I had to tune out at the first commercial break, I can't stand any more of these two.
It's pretty clear Trump's lost this one, he made so many simple errors that he could have avoided by simply staying on message.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
11mo ago
I'm in shock. It certainly occurred to me that someone might try to do this, the logic of @Quantumfreakonomics seems like something someone could easily come to follow. The people who have repeatedly described Trump as a "threat to democracy" aren't responsible for this and I don't hold them responsible for this. But you need to be really damn careful throwing around words like that.
Seeing a major political candidate shot at on live TV in front of a crowd of people is so raw and real that it's hard to comprehend. I wasn't alive for any of the other attempted political assasinations.
Three weeks ago, there didn't even seem to be an election. Now, the President is incompetent and his opponent is being shot at. I fear for my country if Trump wins. Will people keep trying to shoot at him? Will they start trying to shoot at anyone else?
And the Trump political ads write themselves. "They hate you and our movement so much they tried to silence me. First they attacked me with phony prosecutions. Now they've pulled out the guns. Our enemies are lawless and violent. Vote Trump for democracy and order."
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
18d ago
I strongly believe the “gung ho liturgy go hard fasting is hard everyone must follow rules originally followed by monks” energy of Orthodoxy, which attracts the competitive male converts to it, is also the greatest problem for the Orthodox Church. The “standard” practice is incredibly high — and in service of an incredibly high goal, total union with God. Literally to “have everything that God has.”
I often feel like the Orthodox Church sets up people to fail. All the models of faith that the Orthodox Church offers in modern times are very hard to approach, and many are claimed to literally work miracles. The impression I get is that the goal for the laity is to be a monk. Even the supposed basics involve going vegan for half the year.
And yes, I know the objection: ask your priest! The rules can be changed! Economia!
Gee, thanks. I always wanted to be a charity case, a special exception, because I don’t want to be moaning on the floor of the parish hall on Easter Sunday because I was finally able to eat a cheeseburger. This also understandably raises questions of moral inconsistency and clerical power.
My earlier post about the Orthodox Church, the AAQC one — I guess what I was trying to get across in that rambling diversion was that it’s really hard for me, and people I love, to imagine actually living an Orthodox lifestyle.
Every ex-orthodox rant post I’ve ever read boils down to that — the demands of the Orthodox faith are incredibly high. Perhaps that’s what God asks of people. But perhaps not.
I believe the Western approach, of mandating a low minimum and permitting more intense asceticism as spiritual directors and the Spirit himself guides, is a more human and fruitful approach. It sets up people to succeed, not to fail. And it remains open to sanctity in lay life, in a way I think E. Orthodoxy struggles to do.
Just some disorganized thoughts. But my general posture towards Orthodoxy is this — they can have all the theological points they want, but I have to find the way where I can actually follow Christ. And I’m not convinced the Eastern Orthodox Church is that place.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
Yeah you can expect emotional outbursts on occasion, but the literal "I love you more than anything" one day to "You mean nothing to me whatsoever" the next 180 turn feels like something humans SHOULDN'T be capable of doing.
I have to thread the needle very carefully on this -- this is obviously very bad and dangerous behavior that endangers other people, sometimes severely. It's very bad, to the point of profound evil.
But I also can't help but feel a real sadness in my heart for people whose internal life is so utterly dichotomous and disintegrated that anything resembling this appears like appropriate behavior for them. I can't imagine the internal anguish this must reflect. That's really what distinguishes BPD from APD: psychopaths will hurt and manipulate you to get what they want from you, and feel nothing, while borderlines will hurt and manipulate you as a part of hurting and manipulating themselves, and feel everything.
It doesn't make their behavior and the damage they do any more justifiable, but I just imagine borderlines as bundles of suffering so radiant in their suffering that the rest of the world gets sucked into their black hole of anguish, a kind of anti-divinity. It's no wonder people are so attracted to what is essentially a dark god! The pervasive feeling of being around a borderline is much like being around a prophet -- everything is extreme, the world is transcendent, and wrong is evil. If you are appreciated by them, you're given a rare gift, a precious pearl of great price. (This is the male equivalent to the "I can fix the abusive husband" meme.) I never dated one, though I certainly wanted to date at least a few before I realized their deep flaws, and for that I am grateful.
Extreme behavior often summons extreme adoration and affiliation, even if temporary, which is almost certainly the evopsych explanation for the existence of all the cluster B personality syndromes (psychopathy, narcissism, histrionic, and borderline). Crucially, the cluster A and C syndromes... are rather less adaptive even at subclinical levels, since they universally include behaviors that actively turn people away even without a "turn" (and avoidant PD sufferers, for instance, believe no one could ever like them, while schizoids don't really like anyone).
I guess what I'm saying is... remember that every extreme behavior has some sort of function, in moderation, and that people with extreme problems like this aren't ontologically different from the rest of us, even if, tragically, the only thing that can often be done for them is to keep them from harming others. My point is to demonstrate the reason why these traits persist and have attraction, while not endorsing the exaggeration as the truth. This is how people are made to feel -- in other words, those around a borderline sufferer are drawn into the cycle of intensity and delusion as much as the individual is. And so both sides are understandable, but in the way that a plane crash is "understandable."
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
There’s so much there, and it’s so rich and dense with detail, but I find myself noting one thing in particular — every relationship dispute you describe there concentrates around sex.
Given that Lana has had fallings-out with both a man and a woman over sex, is it possible that she just has a very low sex drive, and believed this to be indicative of lesbianism even though it might actually mean she’s just not very sexual towards anyone? “Well that jerk only wanted one thing, and it’s disgusting.” “Well that hoe only wanted one thing, and it’s disgusting.”
Maybe she doesn’t really want to have sex with anyone, but attributed it to male perversion, or something, which the lesbian falling-out gives the lie to?
They pointed me toward a post (now removed) on a subreddit I'd never heard of--a "suicide watch" subreddit. It is apparently a place for people to post their suicidal inclinations and get "non-judgemental peer support ONLY," whatever that means in the context of an anonymous internet forum.
The suicidewatch subreddit has always struck me as weird, in that it expects incredibly specific behaviors from posters that are in line with the way suicide hotline call center workers are trained, but from anonymous redditors. I argue that this makes it strictly worse for the people who go there feeling hopeless — the median post gets almost no responses because the rules are so strict no one wants to reply, and the responses someone does get are very vague, non-specific, non-judgmental and therefore useless. There’s no authenticity in it. You might as well talk to ChatGPT.
When you say she’s (or was?) a “religious Protestant” — what do you mean by that? Because it strikes me as very odd that she would hold the views she did and be a member of an evangelical church. I know of feminist evangelicals in that mould, but I always think of them as people who are simply in the process of leaving, as Lana eventually did. I find it shocking that she wouldn’t be able to find a home in the mainline Protestant world, where her views are extremely common! And I wonder if perhaps the extremity of her behaviors reflects the zeal of an evangelical-to-agnostic convert, a type with which I am very familiar. But perhaps she was mainline, which would make this moot and frankly make her behavior and the opposition of the church (the mainlines couldn’t enforce sliced bread remaining sliced even if they tried) even more concerning.
A sad story. But I wonder if the object lesson is not so much about intolerance of dissent as it is about the characteristic Christian calling of humility: humility before morality, before duty, before other people, and ultimately before God. If tolerance comes from anywhere, it comes from understanding in humility that you may be wrong; and that others, in their humility, may also be. And that neither of you may — I say “may” here advisedly — be wicked and perverse for your error, but simply human.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1mo ago
Something is just off in the first world, and COVID and AI accelerated it. I don’t know what exactly died. But the US, in particular, seems to be dealing with the kind of crisis Western Europe did in the previous century, a loss of faith in all institutions and the massacre of all meta-narratives. Neither my progressive or even conservative friends care much about the Constitution or the framers or the civic religion any more. I don’t know anyone who’s optimistic about the future. I certainly know some people who have optimism about their own future, or who are making the best of their lives as they exist, but about the social fabric people feel… trapped, like we’re already six feet under and there’s no escaping it.
People want to put this at the feet of wokeness, or Trump, or communism, or atheism, but I don’t know what it is. Even those narratives seem snuffed out.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10d ago
· Edited 10d ago
Also, "Increased experience of meaningness in day-to-day life." - yeah, making major life changes, having a new project, and potentially a new social group, can do that for you.
I have an acquaintance from college who transitioned male to female. They once showed me a picture of a neckbeard with acne, saying "this is what I used to look like, then I transitioned and I'm so happy with how I look." Well, no crap my friend, you shaved the neckbeard and started taking care of yourself!
Whacking it to not being able to do math is a common AGP pastime.
Now I want to know whether "being forced to find the derivative of an integral" is someone's kink. Surely not?
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
We hear a lot from people who are romantically struggling. I don't want to belittle that experience, which I know can be incredibly painful and lonely.
But it would be good to hear from people who are satisfied with their romantic life for a change. Are there any Mottezians with happy love lives who want to share their experience?
Also congratulations to @2rafa on the engagement and @Gaashk on the new baby.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
9d ago
Their description of what testosterone does to their mental processes sounds completely alien to me. I cannot relate to it whatsoever.
Can you give some examples? What I can recall is trans men talking about becoming incredibly and uncontrollably horny after starting T, and, well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that seems reasonably accurate to the experience of any man who’s ever gone through puberty.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
Private religious colleges are forbidden to “require a faith statement” from enrolling students.
This is a particularly bizarre law. Was it really necessary? I mean, really?
The reality is that private religious colleges generally provide a lower-tier and more expensive education in exchange for providing students an environment where they're surrounded by their co-religionists. The faith statement requirement is the actual selling point of religious colleges.
And with the exception of a few institutions like Notre Dame, I can't imagine a scenario where a person applies to various institutions and the least expensive or most prestigious option, or even the option with the best cost-to-benefit ratio, is a religious college. (Insert jokes about Notre Dame being as religious nowadays as the owners of the similarly-named cathedral in Paris.) Attending a religious institution is always a sacrifice on the basis of explicitly wanting a college environment that requires tests of faith.
I guess maybe it's oriented towards closeted atheists, kids whose parents don't know their religious beliefs and who push them into attending a private religious college, and who fear for their future should they openly resist. But while I'm more sympathetic to the clash of conscience-vs-convenience such a scenario invokes than you might think, the idea that we're going to prohibit a practice that provides benefits to people of diverse religious backgrounds on the off chance a closeted deconvert has to have a confrontation with their parents just doesn't pass the "compelling state interest" test.
More realistically, it's just an attack on the existence of religious colleges at all. Which is shameful. Though it's probably tied to funding requirements, which make such things more thorny. I believe in the freedom of association to create religious colleges and require a faith-based test for admission, but I do have skepticism that such institutions should receive state funding except for strictly secular safety-and-utility matters a la Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, and my feeling is that Espinoza v. Montana DOR was wrongly decided precisely because state payments to religious institutions creates government leverage that can be wielded against the conscientiously-held doctrines of the religious. The separation of church and state is not about protecting the state from religion, but about protecting religion from the state.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
3mo ago
· Edited 3mo ago
In Warcraft III the story - the best I can tell about it was that it was manufactured. I don't think that anyone felt any kind of connection to any of the characters. It felt that the story was trying to tell you what to feel about the characters and not make you (btw - problem of the woke movies too) feel it.
Yeah, Blizzard's writing has always been more like a series of events that happen to occur chronologically rather than any kind of story with a plot. Sometimes you get the sense they expect something will have a big emotional payoff and give it a big cutscene, and it's just a character introduced 20 minutes ago randomly doing something for random reasons invented on the spot.
The Warcraft universe kind of feels like if you trained an LLM on Tolkien, D&D, and heavy metal lyrics, and then had it create a fantasy story. Everything is an exaggerated version of the shared consciousness about what a "dwarf" is or what an "elf" is or what medieval fantasy looks like. And sometimes is just an exaggerated version of the real world for some reason, so we get New Jersey gangster goblins and Jamaican Trolls who love the Loa, mon.
This is why we got the terrible terrible surreal God Of War 3 ending (kratos is hope he is chasing a little girl to the light), terrible Mass Effect 3 ending( little girl and the light) and the whole gears of war.
A lot of this stuff just feels like the 1990s-early 2010s. Anyone remember early Five Gum ads? Or heck, Bionicle. There was a trend towards hard-edged and tryhard atmospheres, everything had to be edgy and serious even if it didn't warrant it. People praise those Playstation 2 ads, but they seem like surrealist nonsense with no actual connection to video games. It really does feel like the "burgers?" meme.
Exhibit A was The Matrix, there were so many neat elements of it and it's remained in the popular consciousness for that reason, but it had to go eerily spiritual in a film series about technology. Who the heck was that grandma, anyway? What does this chosen one nonesense have to do with robots using humans as batteries?
I wouldn't say I'm into hard science fiction, but I think you need to be careful about inserting vague spiritualist nonsense in a story about technology. The spiritual and humanistic elements of a story about technology have to arise from the impact of technology on people and how it changes their perception of the world, not from spiritual powers imposed from the outside.
I enjoy stories about technology, but the problem with science fiction is that its authors have always been too Big Five Open for their own good and have squirted strange new ideas onto the page alongside the thoughtful reflections about the future of science and tech. I will say, for a cluster of people so committed to materialism and atheism, science fiction authors seem strangely compelled to write about beings of pure spirit and gods.
You can tell a compelling genre story about characters struggling against evil, but you have to think about characters and their motivations and have them act accordingly. I don't understand why game stories leaned so heavily into pseudo-mystical elements to add depth (poorly) instead of character motivations, which is the way in which deep stories actually stick with people. Your game will not be the source of a spiritual awakening, but it might inspire someone to strive for what is just and right, which is an important message that's easily possible.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
11mo ago
I think Biden's popularity is lower than Harris's because his weakness and mental frailty has been in the news for a month. Meanwhile, she's been mostly out of the spotlight for years now, which is good, because when she's in the spotlight we're treated to monologues about the significance of the passage of time unburdening us from what has been.
Her favorability will go down once she has to speak extemporaneously and people have to actually evaluate her as a potential president rather than just someone with a pulse.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
1d ago
It’s hardly surprising that a movie playing on those themes is going to resonate with modern western people raised with the idea of a separation between the mind and the body
Sometimes you'll even find evangelicals who misunderstand Christian teaching on the dead -- it's really common among evangelicals to find people discussing how "I won't need my body when I'm gone," or speaking of "Jesus taking me out of this vessel of a body," in a way that reveals they misunderstand the ultimate Christian view of the human person as body and soul and the Christian agreement with the Pharisees on the resurrection of the dead.
Obviously this isn't an indictment of evangelicalism as a belief system -- informed evangelicals are firm believers in the resurrection -- but it just shows how widespread this view is. I also strongly agree with the Orthodox on the point that cremation is just a bad call, because the overall culture of cremation encourages the neglect of the bodies of the dead by making them scatterable and transportable. The proper resting place of human remains is the ground or the crypt, not an urn on a mantlepiece or the ocean or -- God help us -- Disney World.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
10d ago
I've had mild insomnia all my life, and the good old autism spectrum "this tag on the collar of my clothing will drive me insane if I can't tear it off right now" sensory issues.
This and your other comment in this thread makes me wonder whether you're autistic. No judgment, it just sounds like that's what you're implying.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
I agree. Sometimes I feel like the only person who wants both the J6 rioters and the BLM rioters to be punished harshly. Lawlessness is lawlessness, riots are riots, violence is violence, and the fundamental duty of the state is to maintain its monopoly on violence by curtailing violent uprisings with great fire and fury.
That being said, I suspect you and I are more Auth than Trump or Trump supporters are, and at least he got this out of his system so we can focus on other things.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
8mo ago
I have no idea what's going to happen. But I do think there's a real chance of a Harris blowout. Trump was underestimated in 2016, but the previous 8 years have not been kind to his reputation among low-information voters. The abortion debate and Harris's gender have joined revulsion to Donald Trump as factors polarizing a lot of female voters to the left. I suspect we're going to see unprecedented gender splits on the ballot.
Whether anyone likes it or not, Trump is uniquely polarizing, with 40% of the population loving him, 50% hating his guts, and 10% trying to figure out what to do. As someone who moved from column B to column C, I don't see how Trump gets over the hump of how many people believe he's deeply evil.
I'm going to vote for him for the first time ever, but if I had any money to put down, I'd bet on Harris.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
11mo ago
Yeah, there are so many actual weird and discomfiting right-wing figures to pick on, I don't know why "just make up insane creeps who have a set of views no one actually has" is what these folks came up with. It's ludicrous. It won't persuade anyone who wasn't already persuaded.
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
Woke and catholic women seem to find different parts of my beliefs/personality to be a deal breaker.
I realize I’m asking you to list your flaws, but could you elaborate on your thoughts here?
urquan
Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.
5mo ago
We’ve had several posters trying to get people to define woke in the past couple weeks — is this just the current meme again? It seems like there’s been a large increase in trolls and insincere posters as well.
Wait, is this actually what they believe, or are you exaggerating? This is Scientology levels of completely delusional.
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