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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1351 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 5, 2025

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?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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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.

I finished The Sun Also Rises this week. I needed to intersperse my slog through a history of the roman empire with some shorter candy. I grabbed recs from a couple people, this one from @FiveHourMarathon and Stranger in a Strange Land from someone else.

In short: I found it decent but not great, and strangely compelling in many ways. I powered through it fairly quickly, found myself looking forward to it, and felt like Hemingway did a great job of conveying an enormous amount of depth through simple language in a way that is lost on many authors (especially in Spain).

At the end of the day, though, it's a circular story with a lot of repetition, and the things that made it so transgressive and compelling aren't really that unique nowadays.

The level of cuckery that Jake engages in with Brett (re: the bullfigher) is pretty breathtaking. I'm glad that she didn't end up getting him killed in the ring. It would have been too predictable, for one thing, and added a discernible plot to something he clearly designed not to exist, for another.

I thought the Sun Also Rises made much more sense after college than highschool. When you meet people who live their lives without hope, or goals, or responsibilities.

I agree 100%, it'd be almost nonsensical as a highschooler

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