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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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Again, you're just taking it for granted that the narrative is substantially untrue.

No I am not, I am saying that the motive for Holocaust remembrance is real, powerful, and valid even if the narrative is substantially untrue. The motive for Holocaust remembrance is not contingent on the historical truth of the narrative as challenged by Revisionists. I fully recognize that and always have, but that fact only uncovers a much deeper conflict and presents larger problems in ascertaining the truth of the matter.

but if AI-generated VR experiences become a standard delivery system for educational materials, this sounds a lot less scary than "High-tech dystopian Jew brainwashing." Then you're just complaining that we have too much Holocaust remembrance, and will go on insisting that the backlash will happen any day now.

The point I am trying to make, in the spirit of JTarrou's thought experiment, is that the line between culture/politics/religion or education/brain-washing is purely semantic. The critique I am making is not that it is brain-washing per se, it's that it is specifically brain-washing (or education, however you prefer) with a motive to influence children's perceptions of Jews in a particular direction. It's the religion I oppose, not religion itself or even its imminent technological innovations.

I am not grandstanding against VR brain-washing, I am saying to pay attention to the curriculum that gets mandated, the identities and narratives that get constructed into post-modern mega-churches, the messaging and content that is prioritized for adoption. What counts as education and what counts as brainwashing? The prevailing religion. Again, I'll reiterate that JTarrou suggests:

perhaps we should try to formalize it and create an Ecumenical Political Church, espousing a very vague and general set of principles to bound the acceptable limits of politics, that recognizes the fundamental tension of politics and is maximally inclusive.

And I am saying that we already have this, and it's the Holocaust narrative. You can call it education, but that's what it is all the same.

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