domain:badcyber.com
There's a huge divide among "neo-pagans" between Greek/Roman interpretation and Norse paganism.
But the vast majority of the sources we have on Norse paganism are very late, post-Christian, and preserved (and thus filtered) through Christian sources. Take a figure like Odin who appears to be heavily influenced by Christianity - as is well known Odin was hung from a tree. Odin himself is a trickster, appears to be more of a (Christian-influenced) archetypical confabulation of Jupiter and Saturn. Norse paganism may have developed as a sort of temporary bridge between the two traditions.
In contrast, the proto-indo-european "Sky Father", Dyeus Phter, the seat of the gods, is very clearly transmitted in the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter. Of course Jupiter derives from the Proto-Indo-European compound Dyeus Phter- "sky-father" or "shining father". The lack of an unequivocal solar chieftain god in Norse paganism stands out here. There's also strong evidence for such tribal organization in Greek society.
My own curiosity in these questions pertains to the interactions between myth and genetic evolution. Hinduism would be an example par excellence for the extremely underappreciated interaction of the two, but it's not a good example of the preservation of proto-indo-european religion. I still think Greek/Roman paganism is the best we have on that front.
celluloid_dream
14hr ago
Yes, that is the argument. Downvoting on political allegiance is corrosive to this site. I don't want to litigate the specific value of each example. You can find something in each to downvote on, I'm sure. God forbid someone have a little fun with a turn of phrase, quoting a meme, etc. etc. but considering they are minority opinions, and we want to preserve a diverse ideological ecosystem, they should be at least left alone, not shunned. That's how you get .. gestures at the trajectory of this site over the years.
But I will say it's interesting that so many seem to interpret aldomilyar's comment as problematic. I happen to unironically hold that opinion. I think most people I know IRL would agree with it. If that is considered snark or trolling here, maybe the situation is more dire than I thought.
Rosencrantz2
14hr ago
This seems super culturally mediated, though--I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count the way that a modern woman's feelings about wolf whistles does.
Perhaps but we are talking about UK culture, which I am part of, and so I do feel fairly comfortable telling a British religious person this. Moreover there's a gradient of feelings where some religious people will be upset about even having to see parts of a woman's face or hair, and in this extreme case I don't feel too many qualms about telling them they need to get over their feelings. Perhaps that's the same in reverse as a catcaller telling a woman she needs to get over her objections to catcalling, but so be it.
I'm not sure I see how catcalling "actively get[s] into someone's space," which is why I noted that provided the 18 arrests were made for actual assault rather than mere catcalling, there's less to complain about here. The realm of "offensive speech" and unwilling audiences is a fascinating one for legal theorists precisely because what counts as "invading" someone's "space" in public is really tricky. Our bodies are an easy place to draw a line: unwanted physical contact is bad! Our senses are much more complicated. How is dressing provocatively any different from speaking provocatively, from the perspective of the unwilling audience? Are our ears more important than our eyes, somehow? "You can just look away!"--or--"you can just plug your ears!" There seem to be a lot of unstated assumptions in the assertion that there is a "significant" difference between catcalling and parading around in provocative clothing.
For sure there's a theoretical debate to be had which I think is perhaps too laborious to really get into here, but part of that debate would need to get into questions of intent. The catcaller is manifestly trying to get a specific woman's attention and prevent her from going about her business undisturbed. The skimpily dressed woman may also be trying to distract a given man. But we actually don't know, and most of the time cannot know, if she is or not merely from the fact of her dress. It's just harder to establish an intent to impinge on a specific individual to the woman in this case than the man. If she actively flashes a body part at a specific man, we would have established an intent towards that particular person, and in that case, the woman's act is similarly invasive as catcalling – maybe even if another woman is showing a similar amount of skin as a matter of course, but not pushing it specifically towards a given unconsenting man. Innocence is not merely in what is shown but how it's shown.
Celestial-body-NOS
Quod non licet bovi, non liceat Iovi.
14hr ago
Was [L]emuria ever a science hypothesis?
Originally, it was attempting to provide a mechanism for how lemur fossils were found in India and Madagascar. (For today's lucky 10,000, lemurs are a tree-dwelling mammal related to monkeys and apes.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
14hr ago
I'm not sure whether this is your point, but if I were the kind of person to take that particular Biblical edict seriously, I would likely be in favor of laws that discouraged other people from behaving in ways that might tend to inspire rebelliousness in my extremities.
Yes, the end of trainspotting where Mark Renton gives his monologue.
I saw trainspotting at the end of my 10th grade, each year after the end of an academic year, we'd get a short spring break before classes for the next grade began, 11th is when people join cram schools, stop showing up to school and you "grow up" to do better in standardised tests where selection percentages are zero point something.
Trainspottings ending is cathartic, it's a funny, gritty, dreamy movie that captures north UK very well, at least from the people from that part I've interacted with.
I knew life would get worse starting next month which it did. It's a great movie, recommend it and it's sequel to everyone. Born Slippy is a fucking banger.
WandererintheWilderness
14hr ago
I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count
Well, maybe you're not but here is an appeal to authority that the devout Amish, at least, should acknowledge.
The white race as we see it has aryans as a large part of their own heritage but facial [ reconstruction itself doesn't make them look like the [blue eyed blonde haired people you would see in discussions.] (https://www.razibkhan.com/p/steppe-20-swipe-right-on-a-steppe) Not denying that they were paler than South Asians, but still swarthy.
The caste system was implemented too late.
The biggest mistake was letting the underclass flourish, castes or jatis are an indus valley thing, varna is what aryans had which is why you had similar systems in ancient germanic lands, I'll have to go through some survivethejive for references for that.
They see a religion that ultimately precipitated the degeneration of the ruling caste and the dysgenic hellscape that followed
Unfortunately the decline here has been quite steep, it would have been worse under Islam or Christianity since there would have been no castes, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan all show how bad that could have been.
Greek/Roman paganism is a way better inspiration for those people than Hinduism.
You can't pick and choose these things. The germanic faith was much closer to what we worship here than the Greek for instance. If you are of an Indo European heritage and worship your ancestors, you can never ignore the most developed faith in that pantheon, also the only alive one.
Tom Roswell who runs survivethejive shows an amazing amount of restraint towards Hindus, unfortunately the bad comments he gets are mostly from 80 iq people who hate him for bringing up the Aryan Invasion, even though it doesn't change religious beliefs one whit, beyond making the othering the upper castes. He still defends Hindus and Hinduism because he too can recognize the importance of its existence, despite sustained efforts to kill off ploythiesm.
Modern Indians, vast majority are not representative of those who are worthy of their heritage, the aesthetics around us are terrible. Which needs to change.
TowardsPanna
14hr ago
Do you have "comfort movies," or even particular scenes in a movie that you've watched an unlikely number of times?
Sometimes when I just need some emotional nutrition during low energy ebbs of the day, or when I'm just bored of how much some aspects of the current world suck, I just want to take in something I know I'll like.
One of them is Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Especially the first third. I like the brief interviews with Mizutani for some reason. And the beautiful sad music that plays from 22:30 when Jiro talks about his tragic childhood.
anti_dan
15hr ago
If you can't throw an apple and peanut butter sandwich in a bag how are you even considered a parent?
I disagree about them being good in theory, and certainly in practice they seem an epic failure. The food is either not healthy or not eaten by the target audience.
I guess I can imagine being of a puritan mindset where I would want to suppress feelings of being attracted out of shame, or out of a strong moral view on female virtue, and therefore would prefer form-fitting clothing be kept away from me wherever possible. Is that where you're going with this, or something else?
The example I provided was a picture of women in full niqab. My experience with men from countries where niqab is common is that they are often extremely distressed by the comparatively immodest dress of Western women. Traces of that remain in most Western regimes, too, though usually limited to the exposure of genitals (and sometimes breasts) being treated as legitimately "distressing" to display.
(Fun fact: Australia used to require protruding labia to be removed from pornographic displays, so even in contexts where it was legal to display female genitalia, it was not legal to do so with complete anatomical accuracy! I have seen it argued that this may have contributed to the rise of cosmetic labiaplasties.)
I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass
This seems super culturally mediated, though--I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count the way that a modern woman's feelings about wolf whistles does.
a fairly significant difference between actively getting into someone's space by catcalling them and just being seen by them as you go about your own business
I'm not sure I see how catcalling "actively get[s] into someone's space," which is why I noted that provided the 18 arrests were made for actual assault rather than mere catcalling, there's less to complain about here. The realm of "offensive speech" and unwilling audiences is a fascinating one for legal theorists precisely because what counts as "invading" someone's "space" in public is really tricky. Our bodies are an easy place to draw a line: unwanted physical contact is bad! Our senses are much more complicated. How is dressing provocatively any different from speaking provocatively, from the perspective of the unwilling audience? Are our ears more important than our eyes, somehow? "You can just look away!"--or--"you can just plug your ears!" There seem to be a lot of unstated assumptions in the assertion that there is a "significant" difference between catcalling and parading around in provocative clothing.
("But you shouldn't think of something like exercise clothing as sexually provocative!" "No, you shouldn't think of something like catcalling as provocative!" Etc.)
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
15hr ago
· Edited 15hr ago
Right. I mean, I think it would be progress if the "humans > AI" camp habitually named objectively quantifiable things that they themselves can do and they assert the LLMs can't, which aren't gotchas that depend on differences that are orthogonal to intelligence as usually understood ("touch your nose 5+8 times"). We could then weigh those things against all the things the LLMs can do that the speaker can't (like, solve IMO problems), and argue about which side of the delta looks more like intelligence.
Currently, I'm really not seeing much of that; the arguments all seem to cherry-pick historical peaks of human achievement ("can AI write a symphony?"), be based on vibes ("my poems are based on true feelings, rather than slop") or involve Russell conjugation ("I cleverly inject literary references and use phrasing that reflects my education; the AI stochastically parrots").
The aryans from the steppe were not white
The Aryans from the Steppe were white and commonly descended from Corded Ware culture along with the majority of European cultures, including the Italo-Celtic, Germanic, and Balto-Slavic languages. The Aryans are genetically closest to modern-day Northern Europeans. It's a cope from Indian Nationalists that they were not white.
This is not to say the development of Hinduism was purely white or that Hinduism is a white religion, neither of which I believe. But the Aryans were white.
The central argument is that these people, upon falling out with their Abrahamic faith, look to the past and cannot deny the appeal of the most fleshed-out aryan faith.
They see a religion that ultimately precipitated the degeneration of the ruling caste and the dysgenic hellscape that followed. The caste system was implemented too late. There are important lessons there but there's certainly not a religion to follow. Although I also have criticisms of Christianity, and there's a lot Christians who IMO don't have a lot of credibility to be hostile towards Hinduism given what they themselves worship.
Greek/Roman paganism is a way better inspiration for those people than Hinduism.
Edit: To provide some more data on the first point...
David Reich described the Aryan invading population in 2019:
... the population that contributed genetic material to South Asia was (roughly) 60% Yamnaya [my note: European steppe ancestry], ~30% European farmer-like ancestry"
And the remaining 10% was of West Siberian Hunter-Gatherer origin, a population which is similar to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers.
That ethnic composition is nearly identical to modern Northern Europeans (note "Earthly Neolitic" == European farmers).
In comparison, even among the Brahmin, >70% admixture from the Indus Valley and the indigenous Andamanese.
iprayiam3
15hr ago
Painting anti-catcalling measures with the "feminist" brush is accurate to the point of describing that women benefit from them, but misses the fundamental truth that this behavior reinforces the position of already-powerful men, rather than dismantling it.
Yeah but basically all of feminism/lgbt/idpol works this way. Powerful people benefit from the benefits and are insulated from the social ramifications of the breakdown of gender roles in society.
'The sexual revolution primarily benefitted high status men who wanted consequence free sex, while destroying middle/low class families and communities' is not a hot take.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
15hr ago
This has to be the best religious question I've vend asked. I'm by birth from a Gaudiya Vaishnav sect with heavy shakta infliences, over time, I've been drawn more towards Kashmir Shaivism.
I do see Shiva as my own personal diety or Kul Devta. The question with regards to my own perception is somewhat beyond me, I try to not read too much about shaivism as I want my practice to deliver all insights.
You can have a personal, familial and a societal faith within Hinduism, Abhinavavupta, the great sage wrote a great commentary on the Bhagawat Gita, even though Trika or Kashmir Shaivism is non dual shiva worship that believes in a universal consciousness.
It makes sense to refer to the as the same religion as they are about the same dieties and very fluid. You have faiths at various levels. Trika is a famously caste, race, gender blind esoteric path but the societal religion was a different flavor of Shiva worship.
How do you know about the 4 branches, for the uninitiated, they are Vaishnav, Shaiv, Shakta and Smarta.
Rosencrantz2
15hr ago
Women dressing in form-fitting or revealing clothing and parading themselves in full view of the public is something that some men find "alarming" or "distressing." You can see the result of laws that seek to minimize that distress.
Can you elaborate on this bit? I guess I can imagine being of a puritan mindset where I would want to suppress feelings of being attracted out of shame, or out of a strong moral view on female virtue, and therefore would prefer form-fitting clothing be kept away from me wherever possible. Is that where you're going with this, or something else?
Setting the legal debate aside (I find myself not too sure of my views on what the laws should be in this area), I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass, and a fairly significant difference between actively getting into someone's space by catcalling them and just being seen by them as you go about your own business.
ControlsFreak
15hr ago
I mean, I did just accurately describe your behavior before. We were having a nice pleasant conversation until you went wild and declared the conversation over due to the difficulty in your position.
But to each their own. You can put your hands over your eyes and also plug your ears with your thumbs at the same time. I'll still just be here, pleasantly pointing out where there are problems with attempts at meta-ethics or philosophy of mathematics.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
15hr ago
It's dysgenic in that the more blue blooded simply let the underclass run wild due to cheap labor, now that we are in a democracy, the extant of that damage is incredible.
Castes are not dysgenic at all as without them you have less smart people overall. Compare Pakistan with Indian, Pakistanis and Sikhs are seen as blue collar immigrants and regularly live in ghettos with blacks, Indians, many are scammy, Hindus I meant, produce way smarter outliers.
The ideal thing would have been what England did where the blue blooded replaced their own underclass a few times.
Just the usual billion dollars a year of international aid adds up over time
Not really when the 'grass gets mowed' every so often and everything that is build up is razed to the ground. And then there are all the restrictions that mean that they simply can't use the money to build a solid economy. From my perspective, all that aid just goes into a black hole.
Note that Israel has now been systematically destroying Gaza, so it takes enormous resources just to build back housing, hospitals, schools, etc. So even getting back to a aid-dependent economy with basic needs being met, will requires enormous investments.
I'm not sure how much Israel would contribute
You really think that after just razing most of Gaza to the ground, they will spend a lot of money to rebuild it???
Was my "several hours later" link broken? Ongoing attacks are very good evidence that attacks will be ongoing; that's not a matter of trust or distrust, just inductive reasoning.
It is very obvious that there is a conflict happening where both parties distrust each other immensely and use violence against each other. You keep spending effort to prove this (albeit in a rather biased way), as if it is in doubt and as if scoring brownie points about this matters if the goal is actual peace.
You undermine your own point with your 'inductive reasoning,' because if you limit yourself to extrapolating short term trends then your fantasy that a unilateral surrender is a reasonable thing to demand and would solve the problem is absurd. Because inductive reasoning would not make one conclude that the Palestinians would give up violence, especially when an oppressive regime governs them. And inductive reasoning would not lead one to conclude that Israel would suddenly change course and allow the Palestinians to actually build up a proper economy.
Is there an issue with hyperlinks here? I'm not sure you read mine, and I can't even see yours.
I put two hyperlinks in my previous post, and I can see yours.
This is the sort of thing that requires a source.
That's an unreasonable request when it is a pattern of behavior that goes back a long time. Besides, modern search engines are fully enshittified now, so finding proper evidence has gotten ever harder.
Or is it that you're under the impression that insults are appropriate on TheMotte but sources are not? The opposite is true.
It is a criticism of your beliefs, which is not a personal insult, unless you believe that I may not dismiss your beliefs.
Ultimately, the idea that all Palestinians can suddenly be made to no longer be violent, is absurd. It either requires the belief that the Palestinians are a hive mind, or that Hamas or whomever have a perfect way of controlling the behavior of every person. If your solutions are build on such absurd beliefs, then I cannot take them seriously.
Note that it is just as absurd to think that Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers can be made to suddenly stop using unjustified violence against Palestinians.
I'd hoped you would find it valuable to learn that you were so wrong about Gazan overpopulation
Sorry for not fisking your entire comment. After all, even if you were right on this point, it still would not actually disprove my claims, that merely require that overpopulation exists, not a specific cause. But you are wrong:
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/14/g-s1-59633/gaza-buffer-zone-israel-military
And note that I never claimed that this is the only reason for overpopulation.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
15hr ago
I was kidding, I get what you mean, and agree.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
15hr ago
My suggestion: Just take in onboard as constructive criticism. Look, this isn't a big deal, as so often I'm just writing what comes to mind without thinking much about it.
GBRK
15hr ago
You complain about "poor human capital" and "dysgenics" seemingly ignorant of the fact that if you're right, hinduism-- specifically, any proscriptions regarding caste separation-- must be the direct cause. The very existence of an "upper caste" requires the existence of a lower caste. And once you've created one, you can't turn around and complain that that caste then turns around and wants to become the "upper" caste themselves.
incognitomaorach
15hr ago
Perhaps somewhat off topic but do you mind if I ask your personal theology when it comes to God(s)? Do you see Shiva as your personal god above a multitiude of others (who also exist) or as the ultimate, true God of which the others are simply aspects? Or Shiva perhaps as a co-reflection of a more ultimate divine source? Honestly I think the religious commitments between the 4 largest branches of Hinduism seem to be much, much larger than the gap between e.g. Protestantism/Catholicisim, to the point where I'm not sure it makes sense to refer to them all as the same religion.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
15hr ago
Thank you? What am I supposed to do now, warn myself? Temp-ban myself? I believe that the Ancient Chinese have written on the topic, but I'll leave it in the hands of the other mods.
The finale of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is fairly kino.
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