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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29300 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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I think your persistent schtick of grilling leaders over being poor role models doesn't make for good critique. We may live in a fatherless age, but that doesn't mean it's healthy to seek a Daddy in Musk, Peterson, Trump or any other vaguely authoritative and charismatic male; thus, irrelevant if they are underwhelming in that capacity, as most remarkable figures throughout history have been, in any case. We need some way other than celebrity worship to impart values to laymen. There was a certain institution called Church that worked on that, if memory serves.

it’s the specific variant of that stuff that emerged in mid-20th century America. America has been liberal from the start, but this is a sub-variant of a sub-variant of liberalism

From a stratospheric (say Duginist in Noomakhia) point of view where Pharaohs and Plato and actual Nazis and Haredim stand on the same ideological game board as early 20th century progressivists, SJWs and Musk, it may look like «SVU» is a tiny elaboration on a basic Enlightenment take, an unremarkable niche within a niche. But that a priori search space only exists in the abstract; most of those regions either cannot be upscaled for purposes of industrial civilization, or accessed without a catastrophic transition event. Progress may not reveal the Hegelian truth of social organization; it certainly prunes branches away, and all the diversity that practically matters is the diversity we have left on the table. In this sense, Muskianism – or Thielism, or a more broad techno-optimistic «SVU» coalition – is very meaningfully different from «SJC». Space colonization as opposed to penny-pinching footprint optimization, the doctrine of growth as opposed to degrowth, supply side thinking as opposed to grievance-driven spoils system – all that is consequential, more so than speculative details of communal living and sexual mores in eventual Mars colonies. Even if it doesn't have enough verbal novelty to entertain you.

One can read the Quran and Hadiths and come up with a relatively firm picture of the ideal Islamic society in practice.

Are you bullish on Islamists inheriting California? What would you suggest to invest in?

I agree having more explicit and legible work in the ideological direction would be nice. These rich dudes should employ someone talented for that purpose, like their opponents do.

Neal Stephenson, maybe.

There was a certain institution called Church that worked on that, if memory serves.

Lazy counter: isn't God simply the ultimate surrogate father figure, the Biggest Daddy, if you will?

That's not a lazy counter, that's the fucking point.

I recently re-watched the old George C Scott adaptation of the Christmas Carol and the thesis of that film could be summed up as "what's the point of being rich if you 'aint going to get a bitch pregnant". Less flippantly it's about legacy, it's about what's going to out-live you and who racking up a high score on your bank balance doesn't mean shit if it all just goes back to the bank when you croak. Accordingly, reject nihilism and all that liberal nonsense about your life belonging to you. Embrace parenthood. Raise children, train protege's, and build institutions. Choose life.

In terms of leaving a legacy, spreading your memes is better than spreading your genes. Is Andrew Carnegie remembered for his children or for the various universities, charities and other organizations he founded?

But if the goal is to spread your genes, a billionaire today could easily have hundreds of children using IVF. Though I imagine he wouldn't be a very good parent.

The play would be to offer couples with infertile men/lesbians access to your (presumably pretty high quality to begin with) banked sperm in exchange for an annuity valued at several thousand per year in perpetual income and all the expenses of IVF paid. Then your child has two parents, and instead of the parents paying out thousands to get pregnant someone pays them. Sperm banks exist, make your product negative cost there will be pretty good demand.

That's not the point of what I was responding to, though? Dase was pointing out the celebrity-as-father-figure thing, and I was raising the point that replacing the fake-but-physical father figures with one that is completely intangible and invisible probably isn't much of an improvement, even accounting for the "reject false idols" and "the concept of God is less impermanent than a mortal human" aspects.

Well, I alluded to «what would Jesus do» prompt, and Jesus Christ is not just God and ultimate role example for Christians but a Superstar, of course. Still, he has the advantage of not being an erratic American CEO.

And even Church doesn't recommend following Jahweh's example.

They do add some confusion with the whole Trinity thing.

They do add some confusion with the whole Trinity thing.

I was always under the impression that BPD is part of the traditional Middle Eastern conception of fatherhood.

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