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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25373 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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This is, to be blunt, a character flaw

Not only is it not a flaw, it's a virtue! The fundamental axiom of all value is that it is destroyed by abundance. Ensuring that this knowledge is able to take root and flower in every mind that provides suitable soil for it is of vital importance.

No one, despite the great amount of effort exerted, ever got so much as a footnote in a history book for being born, having children, feeling great love or anger or jealousy, spinning out an entire hidden inner universe with the utmost uniqueness and specificity, being ground into ashes by implacable anxiety, or dying - experiences that are if not common to all lives then at least common to a great many of them. We do, however, give great honors to star NFL quarterbacks, and rightly so. Not many people can throw a ball like that.

Are the achievements of NFL quarterbacks diminished by the existence of beer league sports?

No, but they might be if you forced the NFL to sponsor beer league sports and give a bunch of time/resources to them.

At the very least, the prestige of the term "NFL player" would drop significantly. To bring this back to the original point, the prestige of being a player who beat *insert game* is significantly lower with games that have easy modes. You can be part of the group that beat *insert game* on hard mode, but human beings aren't great at modifiers, and I could see it dropping total prestige.

We aren't talking about economic value here. We're talking about the virtue of overcoming challenges, which is not limited, and in no way requires an external reference.

We aren't talking about economic value here. We're talking about the virtue of overcoming challenges

I know.

Then I think your argument isn't very good because virtue is not lessened by lack of scarcity. Almost nobody murders people, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable to refrain from killing. And if someone really struggled with anger issues such that it was a real struggle for them to not get violent with people, I would say they should be proud at their success even though most people find it easy.

Hey, is it me who gets to be the C.S. Lewis quote poster today? I can't believe it.

This popped into my head from Mere Christianity:

Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God’s eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God’s eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend.

Lewis is talking about God's judgment, but you can really substitute your moral framework here; he's talking about external actions vs internal choices, which is a cross-cultural theme. And I do think there's a tremendous difference between the two.

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