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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   23448 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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All those examples look like shallow references where a thing was named after a biblical or Catholic thing to sound slightly cooler. Are any of those media Christian beyond that?

In Halo 3, the Master and Savior of humanity sacrifices himself in the “gravemind”, says “it is finished”, and is then entombed cryogenically frozen and later “resurrected”, all of which is very Biblical. But this is shallow because most things in our culture are shallow. To Kill a Mockingbird? Lord of the Flies? Not just shallow but actively detrimental to cultivating wisdom. Just worthless slop.

What is the complaint against To Kill a Mockingbird? (And no fair bringing up Go Set a Watchman.)

Presumably because it shits on secular morality in the same w as y that the story of Jonah does.

Do you means shits on "non-secular" morality? Jonah can be easily read as a critique of religious righteousness. Personally, I think the critique is fairly trenchant.

No, it "shits" on secular morality by explicitly rejecting identity in favor of conduct.

How is identity "secular morality"?

Because it is.

Secular morality revolves around "context". Secular morality holds that what is happening matters less than who it is happening to, see "punching up" vs "punching down" and "no enemies to the left". Harper Lee's book is in many respects a condemnation of this attitude/sentiment.

The sort of tribalism you describe is far older than anything remotely resembling secularism, and "identity" does not have to involve bespoke marxian analysis.

As far as I'm aware for most of history people had a much stronger sense of collective identity, and they were fat less secular than nowadays.

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