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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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The first circle of Hell is Limbo, and it is a place "of perfect natural felicity". That is, it is our world when all the bad things are solved - war, sickness, poverty, greed and so on. But it is without hope. It is deprived of the supernatural, of the vision of God which is what the enjoyment of the saved and blessed consists of.

It is true that the Church has softened on Limbo and really you never hear of it anymore today. But it was never formally a doctrine (something that has to be believed); rather, it was grappling with the problems of justice and mercy; if infants die before they can be baptised, how can they be condemned to Hell? What about the virtuous pagans and those who never got the chance to hear of God?

On the other hand, if you can be saved just by living a good life, then there was no need for the Incarnation and, crucially, the Crucifixion. If you can be saved without believing in Christ, without ever hearing of Him, then what does that mean for the Great Commission?

So Limbo was a technical solution: a human paradise (for the righteous but unsaved) without the supernatural.

Which is why Limbo, in the Divine Comedy, is on the outskirts of Hell and is a place of sadness, even though there is no pain or sickness or the rest of our earthly woes there. They can never enjoy the bliss of the Divine Vision. And why Purgatory, even though the souls there (by one reading) suffer pains as grievous as the damned in Hell, is a place of hope - because it is where the saved work off the earthly penalties for sin, before they go to Heaven (and it's not a matter of "second chance" or 'earning a place in Heaven' - the souls in Purgatory are already saved).

C.S. Lewis had a somewhat different take on it in his The Pilgrim's Regress, but he too took the view: a place not of suffering, except the suffering of being without hope.

I've often thought about the contrast here - we on earth want an earthly paradise, no more tears or grief or loss, Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. And the Church says "yes, you can have that - but it's in the map of Hell, not of Heaven. You can have the secular ideal, but never the supernatural one."

And some people probably would be very happy with that bargain. I never watched The Good Place, but a while back there it was all over social media. And my understanding - SPOILERS - is that in the end, after uncounted millennia of perfect happiness, the characters finally choose non-existence because they've had it all. The writers seem to have presented that as the most desirable end, and not true eternity. But I think it's interesting that even there, the same message is in the water: without the supernatural, purely natural felicity will eventually pall and satiate.

That is, it is our world when all the bad things are solved - war, sickness, poverty, greed and so on.

War ? War is what created man and what created civilization.

We'd be nothing but bugs without war.

The suffering modern man experiences because he has been deprived of war and struggle is rather evident.

War destroys lies, reveals all the cards. It's truly horrible but like most others, we are a horrible species and pretending otherwise is useless in the face of historical record.

War is where we're at our most buglike.

You can't even find insects that hunt cooperatively.

I do not see how this is true, much less relevant.

I'll expand. War is where you go to die for the benefit of the hive (that's the best case - oftentimes the hive as a whole is not the beneficiary, only the elites are).

War is where propaganda is at its heaviest and most blatant in retrospect. Men will not go to war without this memetic attack pheromone.

That the modern man "suffers without war" is a) not really true and b) he isn't without war. You have a rich pick of various noble causes all over the world: I suggest the recent little proxy operation in Eastern Europe. In the (I assume) rather unlikely event that the system around you prevents you from joining any organized conflict, go to war against the system.

If your objection is that men are no longer forced to go to war, my reply is thus: then suffer.

modern man "suffers without war" is a) not really true a

I trust you are unfamiliar with the effects of war on rates of mental illness ?

Men will not go to war without this memetic attack pheromone.

I'll make your formulation more precise. Men who have been raised by women, in a civilized environment will not go to war without a lot of propaganda. Well, most of them.

the benefit of the hive (that's the best case - oftentimes the hive as a whole is not the beneficiary, only the elites are.

Deaths due to warfare were traditionally higher in elite classes. Also in recent conflicts officers casualty rates are usually higher than that of enlisted.

go to war against the system.

Men aren't bugs. A bug would go fight a tank and get squashed.

Once the system is weak enough, things will get more interesting.

For example, this hateful[1] French savage[3] racist colonizer[2] is advising his people to not fight the rioters, but let the rioters educate the Boomers who kept them as pets. Wait till his enemies weaken each other, and then reconsider. Can you find bugs doing even elementary tactics of this kind of the "let them kill each other so I can finish off the weaker victor" ?

[1]see the link

[2]married to a Congolese woman.

[3]just look at the tattoos

Based on what I can tell - I much prefer the warless rates of illness, mental and physical. I, for one, am not in any particular need of Higher Purpose(tm).

..apart from societies engaged in perpetual warfare - Israel, modern humans don't even breed sustainably.

Israel is the only place in the world where non-religious , university education women have more than 2.1 children on average-

Bugs breed. QED.

That being said, you again drop a correlation without putting any work into establishing the existence of any mechanism. Let's see Russia and Ukraine's birth rates.

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