Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act.
It seems strange that a Rabbi would proclaim himself agnostic and have his first sermon be about how Adam ought to have eaten the whole fruit of knowledge and not just part of it, but I have to agree with the introduction that there is an authenticity to it. Beerman, if he is to be believed, was inspired by the Spinozan God-as-nature idea, and argued that authentic doubt can be a religious stance.
The tropes fit perfectly into today's leftism: social justice, activism, inequality, racism, oppression, but these things must have made a different impression before Current Year. Various dubious aspects pepper the narrative, like support for the Rosenbergs. If there's one thing I've taken away from it, it is the reminder that I'm not exactly a church-goer myself, and that perhaps a renewed study of my relation to God is in order.
Curiously enough, I've been reading the Old Testament.
Uh... I'm doing a lot of noticing. Like the entire story is just Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and then Joseph ingratiating themselves with wealthy and powerful people, then running off with all their shit. Possibly their daughters. Joseph really takes the cake, where he convinces the Pharaoh to tax his people exorbitantly, and then sells their grains back to them at such insane prices, they have to sell themselves into slavery to him in order to not starve. But you know, they're happy to do so. That's what the book says after all. So anyways, the next book starts with the Egyptians unjustly turning on Joseph and his clan as soon as the Pharaoh dies and they lose his protection, for some reason.
Like, bronze age morality, I get it, Odysseus is quite the scoundrel too and he's still a hero. But, uh... that is the single most Jewish origin story I could possibly imagine. Like if the most antisemitic person you'd ever heard of tried to write a story about where the Jews came from, I'm not sure he'd do it any different. And that's the first book and change of Moses.
Anyways...the bronze age, amirite?
Things get spicier when you notice that there are modern groups whose moral guidance with outsiders is remarkably similar and what the effects of that are. Further discussion of that is probably best left for the culture war thread.
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