ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
Blogger, Christian convert, general strange one. https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/
User ID: 3709
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1hr ago
Friend, mate, old buddy, old pal - learn a new song? "Righties are dumb and smelly and low-class and have too many bastard kids and are way too sympathetic to the low-grade low-IQ blacks and browns who have too many bastard kids" is getting boring now.
Ok come on now. @AlexanderTurok is biased against many right-wing folks as he has admitted, just like 80%+ of us here are biased against the left, progressives, wokes, etc etc. The entire point of this site is to allow us to discuss across ideological divides.
Personally I think this post was fine and shows a willingness to take the feedback from the mods he was given earlier.
While it's a bit of a personal attack, I do think this is a interesting frame - should the elites not care about the working class? So far in America they have (at least nominally), seems like folks nowadays are sort of turning against that. I am curious to see where elite consensus moves on this.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1hr ago
Interesting post! I agree that all things being equal, a summer job is a great way to spend time. I did a couple summer jobs, but also spent a few summers just playing video games nonstop from sunrise to well past sundown. Personally I think if I was forced to get a summer job every summer, I would've developed a lot more virtue overall.
I'm curious overall - do you not see a benefit to being in touch with the working class whatsoever? To understanding how the other half lives, so to speak?
Or are you just saying that being in touch with the working class isn't good strictly in the sense of getting into an Ivy League school?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4hr ago
God is inherently interesting and doesn't need us to make Him anything. Eventually more and more people will be broken by the dopamine treadmill and will come back to God, as I have. Happens every day.
It may not necessarily happen immediately, I'd imagine this will play out over a large time scale as it often does. But the wages of sin are death, especially on a societal scale.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
4hr ago
I am familiar, I the Jesus Prayer and occasionally prayer beads. I still think meditation in the Buddhist view is more flexible and able to look into different things, such as focusing attention on the body, or the breath, areas and objects of attention which are useful in the Christian path.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
15hr ago
If a game gets worse when you play the meta then it's just a shallow, badly designed game.
Cries even worse in DOTA2...
Cries in League of Legends...
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
16hr ago
What you rarely seem to find is women who have their lives generally organized, they don't spend money exorbitantly, they stay in shape through regular but not obsessive exercise and watching their diet, and have moderate ambition but are happy to just relax most nights. Someone who would be a nice supplement/complement to your own life and isn't going to disrupt your own routines.
See it sounds to me like you are trying to treat men and women as the exact same and getting frustrated that they aren't. Women are not and shouldn't be as hardcore about discipline and working out etc. as a man. That's ok.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
17hr ago
It is indeed a pretty brutal and humbling realization. I knew exactly what you were going to talk about with the Christmas tree!
Having parents explode with anger at children is a terrible thing, and I pray I don't end up doing it if I'm blessed with kids. Except in rare circumstances, of course.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
17hr ago
Great write up thanks for pointing all of this out. I didn't grow up with anything like this, and eventually drifted to a more traditional lifestyle after seeing where the atomized liberal worldview led. I wish I had! It's hard for kids to see the benefit though, I'd imagine.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
18hr ago
I hate to be pithy, but the problem is that we have forgotten God. I'm serious.
As we lose our connection to the divine and to a personal sense of moral agency, and responsibility, our society can't help but fall apart like this. A religious revival is desperately needed.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
18hr ago
I love the earnestness on display here! I think you should have kids, but agree with the thrust of your post that productive members of society is a bigger problem than quantity itself.
A huge issue is that we have lost community, which is a bit of a meme at this point but it's true. We don't have extended family, extended friend networks, etc. I think the most important thing to focus on is improving that social fabric as you can. Joining a religion helps with that too.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Generally the mods want a little more for a top level comment btw, at least summarizing the link preferably.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Correct! Hence why I said "Christian orthodoxy" as opposed to "Orthodox." I admit that the language get a bit confusing ahaha, thanks for clarifying.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
@Blueberry this is what I meant if you're curious.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Mostly a set of techniques to help settle the mind from the vast distractions in the modern world. A more direct praxis for us to enter states where we can perceive the spiritual world of angels, demons, etc, and get in touch with God.
The ancient Christians recommended meditation or watchfulness before entering into any prayer whatsoever. In the modern world I believe that almost none of us truly are in that mental state due to our myriad distractions. I think Buddhist meditation and understandings could be quite useful for revitalizing direct, contemplative experience of the divine amongst Christians.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Not being against the Gays is one of the more salient points
No, this is not true at all from my perspective. Not only is it not one of the things Buddhism offers, Buddhism itself is strongly against gays, and also women. If you look into the roots of the Buddhist tradition there is far stronger sentiment and prohibitions against sexual perversion than in mainstream Christianity.
That being said, I do think the modern Church has a perhaps too myopic focus on sexual sin sometimes.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Thanks for the blunt takes! Interesting views here, very realpolitik. I do agree with most of your take on the Protestant denominations in the U.S., seems as if their cultural moment is fading. Sometimes I wonder if a new religion will come in to pick up the slack, like the "western folk religion" @Stefferi mentioned above, but more formalized.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Great comment. Yeah I do think that the Western folk religion is quite dominant sadly, especially given how uhhh.... poor it seems to be at actually improving people's lives or leading to useful social organization.
I had to laugh at the (often imagined.) All too true.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
Very much the 2nd. My take as an Orthodox Christian is that fomenting fears and guesses about the apocalypse is strictly sinful, and mostly a Protestant thing. Christ Himself says:
“But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only.“
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
it's no surprise that the religions with this disadvantage are dying.
Source for this? It seems to me that Christianity is growing again as the more 'scientific' ideologies are on the decline.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1d ago
How do you think religion in the West will interact with the Culture War in the next few elections, and in the future? Up until recently, the religious right seemed to be a mainstay of at least American politics. In Europe of course, Christianity is mostly an irrelevant force (though theoretically Catholics should have some weight?).
However, the evangelical right has been losing quite a bit of power and cultural cachet, and we're seeing the rise of more traditional versions of Christianity such as Catholicism and to a lesser extent, Orthodoxy. Buddhism has also made inroads in a more serious way, as well as Islam mostly via immigration of Muslim peoples.
In the future, how will these religions impact politics? Personally I see a fusion of Buddhism x Christianity already happening, and expect a sort of Christian orthodoxy mixing in Buddhism mental techniques as the most successful religion of the 21st century. That being said, I feel it could shake out in many different areas on the political spectrum - ironically, many of the Orthodox priests I know personally are surprisingly liberal.
One area we could see a resurgence is in monasteries, and the potential downstream impact in local communities. Within the Catholic community (and Orthodoxy in the U.S.) there has been a groundswell lately of pushes for more monasteries, and revitalizing the monastic order in general. We'll see how it shakes out.
Tell me, what do you think religion will do to the modern political landscape?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
7d ago
Currently re-reading The Craft Sequence which is great.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
9d ago
It’s great to see political realignment in action. A lot of folks here are extremely blackpilled about politics, but this to me seems a perfect example of how democracy is supposed to work.
The Democrats ignored a major issue for a long time, lost popularity massively from it, then pivoted. Love to see it.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
13d ago
My company had a little mini-reorg recently. It also consisted of shuffling some matrix management, and it also gave lip service to new AI tools. I hope no one expects a defense contractor to lead the charge in adopting AI-driven requirements.
Same here. Do you know why the reorgs happen so often? It's exhausting.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
14d ago
Since the entire conceit of liberalism is that good performers who are worthy of unrestricted freedom shouldn't be held back by bad performers who are not[3] (and those negative consequences of excess freedom correctly fall on the virtueless, which is the fundamental problem trads and progs have with liberalism since charity for those people isn't mandated), we can understand it, but we can't really do anything about it other than offer our velvet glove before we give 'em the iron fist.
Yeah I must admit this is a pretty scathing indictment of the whole 'liberal' project. Alas.
There used to be (and still is in some areas) a long, rich tradition of the humanities, passed down throughout the centuries via the academy and other institutions of knowledge generation.
This tradition and gatekeeping it is crucial, and keeping the chain of humanities alive is in my opinion crucial as well. If you just let the masses go at it as they will, art becomes diluted and we stop caring about the old great works of art. As we're seeing now...
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