domain:inv.nadeko.net
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5m ago
But Americans aren't like that, and ultimately my husband and I are American, and feel miserable coming and going from the church service to the children's room and back as necessary.
Huh, most folks in my church will just have their kids in the Liturgy with them, and if the kid is screaming no big deal. Our bishop came in one time and literally admonished people if they thought to judge the children who were crying during a service, strongly saying that kids are closer to God than we are.
It's interesting, Orthodoxy is so different based on where you go and who you talk to. From @urquan's post above sounds like he and you have both had some more ascetic/intense parishes. I'm grateful to have not found that! Hah. But we do still have the grace and beauty, and I am incredibly lucky in that way.
In terms of feasting, and kids going in and out of the liturgy running around, that does sound lovely. I do wish it was even more relaxed here in America, maybe one day.
RenOS
something is wrong
5m ago
I was interviewing at a mining company way back when and they were just so boring and dry
Also, thanks to my parents I am an east-coast latte-sipping downtown elitist lib-pilled yuppie (see my flair). So moving to Calgary (and Alberta generally, although I liked Austin so if Calgary was cool I'd deal with the awful governance) is not a very appealing option. Soy-jacking aside, I love the vibe of big cities, and the absurd fun and convenience they provide.
It's not so much "city fun kid boring", I fucking loved growing up in Toronto. I want my kid to experience that. And Toronto is so much better now than when I was a kid.
No offense, but I started out predisposed to believing you, but the more you post, the more I think the revealed preferences people are correct, at least in your particular case. Whatever you wish to be true, large, especially capital cities in the west have been on a trajectory of being increasingly fun and cool for the young, childless and high-powered careerist, while becoming less and less affordable for families. The same goes for all the popular jobs. You pay a significant premium to have a job that is fun, and if that premium is so expensive that you can't afford kids, it means you value that fun higher than kids. No, people in the past didn't have fun jobs, in fact if boring and dry is the worst you can come up with, that's probably a top 1% job in terms of satisfaction right there, certainly in the past and to some degree even currently.
I did my PhD in London. For my career, and probably even for that of my wife, it would have been MUCH better to stay there. My PhD supervisor was ready to take me over as a postdoc, and she is quite successful. My wife, meanwhile, had worked with Friston (the neuroscientist), and would have had a decent shot at getting a postdoc there as well. But we both chose against it, for multiple reasons, but primarily because raising kids in London sucks. My supervisor had her first child almost simultaneously with mine (just a few weeks difference), and I really can't see her getting more than one. We went back to [small university city in germany] and are now on our second child and counting. We will probably have three, maybe four (though more are unlikely, since we didn't start early enough and I'm also not a particular fan of having babies past 40).
And it was totally worth it! Kids really are the greatest meaning-generators. Fun also gets a lot cheaper; Suddenly, I don't need to go on expensive vacations or the like. All the simple things that have become boring for me, if I do it with our eldest and she is having fun, I have fun as well through the magic of empathy. Hell, even playing peekaboo with our baby is lots of fun. And no, doing it with other kids isn't the same.
Tbh, I'd say that you're stuck in a local maximum that is pleasant and fun right now but will lead to you being dissatisfied in the long-term, and you even recognise that fact, but you don't leave bc you aren't willing to suffer a little in the valley on the way towards a better maximum.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
7m ago
what are "the" passions?
Pleasures and pains.
I am more qualified
Then why do you take mere discussion of the phenomenon as an attack on your rights?
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
7m ago
You're in for a treat.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
9m ago
I strongly believe the “gung ho liturgy go hard fasting is hard everyone must follow rules originally followed by monks” energy of Orthodoxy, which attracts the competitive male converts to it, is also the greatest problem for the Orthodox Church. The “standard” practice is incredibly high — and in service of an incredibly high goal, total union with God. Literally to “have everything that God has.”
This REALLY depends on your parish my friend. I've read a lot of the Orthodox Church Fathers and yeah, the asceticism can be pretty harsh.
That being said, my own parish is very chill and the priest has basically told me that if it isn't good for my soul, don't worry about it. Hell, he even told me that my girlfriend and I living together was ok as long as it was good for the relationship, since we were dating before I converted.
Overall my experience has absolutely NOT been of a super militant, super strict fasting, hardcore church. I would strongly urge you to check out different parishes, or hang out with different groups.
Also, online Orthodoxy is horrible and I wouldn't go near it tbh. I have found very few public, online Orthodox folks that I think are actually humble. And humility is the chief virtue, without her we have nothing.
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
28m ago
Time is a terrible thing to waste. The question to be asked of younger folk not using their time employed or in education is "How are you going to fund your retirement?" Working hard and making money in your 20s / 30s I think definitely beats working as an old person. Banking on the AI miracle seems too low probability to me. The adage I think of is the job you are doing now often leads to what you do in the future. And short unemployment begets long-term unemployment.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
35m ago
In reality though, they should "just go be Orthodox." ;P
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
35m ago
but I'll bet even the average Catholic priest doesn't really, truly believe in angels and demons and would freak out as much as any secular person if he experienced something actually supernatural.
You're probably not wrong, sadly! I don't have a ton of experience with the Catholic church so I can't say one way or another, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were correct here. 100% with Protestants, I don't think most of them genuinely believe at all.
I will say though, it is different with Orthodox clergy! Again, insofar as my own experience is a guide. The Orthodox clergy I have talked to genuinely believe, discuss supernatural phenomena happening to them and other congregants, and are incredibly committed to the preternatural as a part of their worldview. Now, this doesn't mean all the laity deeply believe and that's a separate problem, but I have noticed a big difference.
I remain a materialist atheist and it's very unlikely anything will convince me to change. @FCfromSSC writes some very cogent criticisms of materialism and I get his point that materialists often base their "knowledge" on constructs no more inherently trustworthy than faith, but that just tells me no one can really "know" anything. Maybe for some people that leaves belief wide open as a choose-your-own-adventure, but I find myself unable to just make myself believe things. "You don't have an answer for how the universe started, therefore Jesus" is such a huge leap that I don't understand how people get there, though clearly many do.
Hmmm, I'm not sure you are fully grasping the point @FCfromSSC is making. I may be butchering it, but the basic idea is an invitation to interrogate your own axioms. You may say nobody can really "know" anything, but regardless, to live and function in the world you do have to "know" things and have some axioms. Perhaps this idea that nobody can "know" anything is an axiom itself. Once you start to dig deeper into the structures of your beliefs, you find that a lot of them are built on houses of cards.
As for the leap - it's not as ridiculous as it may seem. It does take some reading and some genuine motivation and learning, but I'd recommend some books on Biblical symbolism like The Language of Creation, or Peterson's Holy are We Who Wrestle. If you want a deeper, historiographical lens, check out Violence Unveiled - Humanity at the Crossroads.
No argument will convince me to just "reason" my way into accepting Jesus or Mohammad PBUH or the Tao. (Don't try; you do not have an argument I have not heard before.) The only thing that would trigger a conversion in me is witnessing something with my own eyes. Show me an angel, so to speak.
These beings don't necessarily appear to us everyday, especially if we don't try to reach out to them. Our minds can be quite closed. Have you tried fasting, or camping alone in the wilderness for 3+ days? Or, alternatively and frankly much riskier, you could try psychedelics and pray to an angel and ask for a sign. He who seeks shall find, and to he who knocks, it shall be opened.
Does being "religious" actually change anyone's beliefs or behavior? Not really. I've long been of the opinion that being religious has almost no impact on an individual's character and says little about him
My conversion dramatically changed my own actions and character, in concrete ways. I have seen and heard many other stories of this being true. I do agree in general though that too often Christianity is worn as a sort of facade of piety while doing whatever you want. Christ had that in his own day, and I'm sure we will always have religious hypocrites amongst us. I am hypocritical in my own ways. That doesn't mean that He isn't alive, and active in the world.
AmericanSaxeCoburgGothic
Happy to be here! Goal is to post the most exclamation points.
36m ago
I think of the survivor who jumped from the Golden Gate bridge- all their problems suddenly seemed very solvable. What I see in friends and colleagues is a lack of faith (organized religion) that is coupled or leads to a lack of optimism in the world; and I think poor planning for their future (you're saving how much for retirement!). But I guess a Marxist interpretation would be the false lies distort a workers' view to accept their station in life. I guess my point is a strict reasoning and rationalist approach to life can be more harmful given certain personal characteristics and the human capacity of self delusion.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
39m ago
Thank you for the response. Just to press the point, is the worst that would happen to an hypothetical child that he or she would end up like you? Is that so bad?
RenOS
something is wrong
1hr ago
It's not about having no experience, it's about them having a tendency to tell you that behaving like a good christian or [insert religion] will surely lead to you finding and holding a partner, when it's at best unrelated or at worst actively counterproductive.
Ironically, I would actually say that they are better equipped to give good relationship advice once you already are committed to each other, for the same reason.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1hr ago
But what I'm saying is that my friends really aren't too 5% Giga-chads and those last two example friends are extremely not that.
So if I know lots of non-alphas who are fucking, what's up?
incognitomaorach
1hr ago
Anecdata but my views have changed substantially (civ nat/soc dem to "quite a bit further right") via online discourse, osmosis, and frankly I think my views coming into contact with reality. A large amount of my IRL contacts have also moved further to the right on social issues specifically, mostly driven my immigration, or at least online discourse and media that is shaped by immigration. How much of this is driven my argumentation vs. just looking at reality is difficult to parse, but what I would say is once certain dominoes fall, one becomes much more receptive to argumentation around other points and policies. The nature of tribalism means that it's extremely hard to remain iconoclastic and the step from "I'm on the left except for the extreme culture war stuff" to "I'm on the right" is an order of magnitude smaller than the step from "I'm on the left" to "I'm on the right".
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
This team in one day produced themselves 70 opportunities for video. Again, boasting or all but, "Yeah sometimes we hit people behind our targets. Bummer." Where's the video? We do know this happened, since both sides say it did. 70 opportunities from one team in one day for video of a bad shot.
Nothing.
Surely this should make you investigate your priors? If we accept that this happened but can't find video, then it shows that video isn't needed to prove something happened!
Firstly, I think there is video but we just don't see it since we're not in the Arab media-sphere, not on the right telegram channels. I've read some books and reports, that's enough. Here's one video of a prisoner being raped: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qmjGdzyj5BA
Furthermore, video footage is often misleading. It can be selectively edited or leave out context as we're both aware. Nobody is going to watch enough video to distinguish excecptions from standard, on the scale of armies and states.
Finally, the standard for believing that Israel acts with cruelty should not be high. We know there were violent protests when the Israelis started investigating torture of prisoners - protests against the prosecutions. This indicates that there's a good number of Israelis who are in favour of torturing prisoners, shooting prisoners.
I don't need live video to know that there's a lot of rape in South Africa, even if it's politically relevant in that many don't like blacks or the end of apartheid. Likewise with Venezuela. We don't need extensive evidence to prove it's a shithole. Some things are just straightforward and make sense. They can be derived from first principles.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1hr ago
Oh, there used to be android instructions. It's not too hard though it's pretty much - install on Windows using the Windows instructions, then install onscripter plus on your tablet, then transfer the game's folders across to your tablet, then run it. If you can get umineko project running may as well stick with that though - when I played it UP ran like crap on android.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
2hr ago
Lol that's all good man, my perspective on posting is if you never want people talking about it, don't mention it. I meant it in the sense of genetics, it would be unwise for me to have children. Ironically, or perhaps just fucking inevitably, kids were the only thing I was ever one hundred percent certain I wanted growing up.
I know I could adopt, but... Well I haven't found the woman yet who doesn't jump on her backwards bike and backpedal out of the relationship when I say "hey I have a tenuous grasp on reality at the best of times, plus it's heritable, so let's adopt a kid together!" Well there was one, the girl of my dreams, she didn't want kids, but she would have been a great mom and she put up with my bullshit for a very long time, but she was solidly progressive, and so when I started drifting further rightward (I was a lefty centrist when we started dating) we stopped being able to talk as much as we had, so I fucked that.
I don't mind any longer. I'm not saying I wouldn't jump at the chance if a woman asked me to adopt with her, but I'm alright. My brother and sister have kids and they are not shy about asking for help watching them, so I get to be the cool uncle, which is a good consolation prize.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
Israel has a domestic tech base and production capacity
No, they don't. China has a domestic tech base and production capacity. Russia has production capacity. Israel just produces a few high-end pieces in a giant web of European and American IP and supply chains. Intel has a fab in Israel, running on Dutch lithography equipment, itself made from German lenses...
Does Israel produce all of the umpteen million parts needed for aircraft and guided missiles? No. They import. They're heavily reliant on imported steel! There's no guns or shells or machine tools without steel. They have zero oil production, only natural gas. They're heavily reliant on imported energy. They're surely heavily reliant on all kinds of key industrial infrastructure (transformers, large turbines, construction vehicles).
If Western sanctions fall on Israel, the country disintegrates immediately since it's just impossible to sustain an advanced, high-tech economy at their low level of scale. America first is an entirely separate issue. Russia and America can afford to scorn the world to a certain extent, they're actually big countries. Size matters a lot. The US can't bully China or Russia or Europe with assured success but it can wipe the floor with Israel economically.
Iran isn't a specialized high-tech economy, they're sanctions-proofed and have a much sounder, more developed foundation in their industrial base. Iran actually is energy-secure and a net energy exporter. Iran is the 10th biggest steel producer, Israel isn't even on the list.
As I got older, I realized that a version of “the law of attraction” or “the secret” or “practice gratitude journaling to make you happy” was in fact pretty much true.
It's basically the inverse of "misery loves company" - both are self-reinforcing loops where your internal state shapes who you spend time with and what you pay attention to, which then reinforces the original state.
I was just rereading DFW's E Pluribus Unum where he talks about the same mechanism with loneliness: lonely people watch TV (or some other isolating hobby) for connection → less real-world interaction → more isolated → more TV. The medium becomes a kind of attractor state that keeps pulling you back.
Same principle whether it's gratitude journaling pulling you toward noticing good things, or doom-scrolling pulling you toward catastrophe. Once you're in the loop, the feedback mechanism does the rest. Knowing about the loop doesn't necessarily free you from it, you can see the curtain and still get caught in the performance. The hard part, like you say, is trying to forget or pretend not to do the curtain checking practice. I have some friends who swear by psychedelic usage as lifting them out of depressive states etc. but ultimately I think if you're pretty well adjusted or don't have some kind of PTSD or OCD, psychedelic use (even one off!) can make it really hard to break out of the "it's all a farce, look at us it's just monkeys [playing status games/performing characters/etc.]" mindset. Like yeah that's kinda true, just try not to think about it and you'll be much happier.
TowardsPanna
2hr ago
Is there any research on how a nation's (its people) body language, thinking styles, communication styles, attitudes towards self, etc, etc, is affected by a past where the country was subordinate to another country/empire? Slave mentality or the like.
Soteriologian
2hr ago
I have strong feelings that GUI toolkits have never been done well. All existing solutions are bad, and they’re mostly all bad in the exact same ways.
The root of the problem is smart people want to work on things where they can deliver formal results—and in many areas of software engineering, you can! Databases, type systems, even graphics to a large extent are all backed by substantial formal theory (even if the users of these technologies are largely unaware).
UI, on the other hand, has no backing in formal theory whatsoever. It’s like knot theory in mathematics, or the Collatz conjecture—nobody even knows where to start to make progress in a direction anyone would care about.
Soteriologian
2hr ago
It’s hard to do any worse than the results themselves these days, but they pull it off somehow.
RenOS
something is wrong
2hr ago
Hmm weird, I can't find anything on how to play that on android. The umineko project version is a bit tedious to get running, but so far it seems to work, so I'll just use that.
MachineElfPaladin
2hr ago
Nondeterministic free will is not nearly so clearly evident to me as it appears to be to you.
For those three lines of evidence you list, I can think of at least one other phenomenon which I'd say fits all of them pretty well, especially if you give me a couple hundred years' worth of leeway on technological development and scientific inquiry, and yet is unambiguously false.
For another, we have good reasons to think that decisionmaking and behavior are at the very least strongly dependent on the material actions of the brain, in that we can go screwing with neurons on chemical, electromagnetic, or mechanical levels and notice that it results in changes in those things.
This reminds me of a story I've once read (or watched?), which indeed ends on the main character achieving immortality, even godhood, as they desired, but sacrificing the world in the process. Then they sit in the never, for eternity, doing nothing. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the story, or much more details. But I always thought that this is the appropriate ending for "main character has limitless ambition and no moral compass whatsoever".
Me, you, @Gaashk, @ortherox (sp?) and I think @TheDag (?) are Orthodox. Probably more if I had to guess.
Is this true? I've heard over and over that the allegorical/symbolic reading of the Scriptures is something the Church Fathers did. We even have the words allegorical and symbolic in many Orthodox chants. Perhaps symbolic over and against literal I agree with - the literal and the symbolic were seen as one. Symbol literally means "where heaven and earth meet."
And hey I'm working on converting the techies on twitter. Come help out!!
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