domain:firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com
Rabbi Raphael Hirsch wrote,
Mankind, estranged from G-d, longs in vain for happiness and peace, longs for the garden of Eden, but they have chosen a way on which they will never find them! Cherubim and the flames of the sword of suffering "preserve" for mankind the road to Eden. Their message: Men cannot win Eden through his own strength; this road is saturated with blood; he will find Gan-Eden again if he is willing to be led and commanded by G-d. [Rabbi Raphael Hirsch: Commentary on the Torah]
I think Hirsh is right in that the story of Eden captures something that people, or something inside people, longs deeply for; and there are two paths that appear to lead toward it. One path respects our position as servants of a Higher Power, the position of our fellow man as being made in His image, and the constraints of the moral and causal laws of nature and human nature. The other does not. Both are essentially spiritual in their composition. What does Marx's utopian vision look like? No divisions by class or country, no courts or cops, no private possessions, and plenty for all. Sound familiar? If you want to understand Marxists, you should think of Marx, not as a political philosopher, but as a self-anointed prophet. When Bertrand Russell met with Lenin, he unexpectedly found that Lenin regarded Marx that way:
If he [Lenin] wanted to prove a point, he thought it enough to quote a text of Marx. No fundamentalist was ever more addicted to scripture than he was to Marx. [Bertrand Russell, describing his meeting with Lenin in a 1962 interview with David Susskind]
Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. [Russell, Bertrand (1920): "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism".]
In a political compass model, the FDP was to the right of the CDU on economic issues and to their left on social issues. (The CSU is a Bavarian party which has caucused with the CDU since forever, but is the farthest right of all the respectable parties on both economic and social issues because Bavaria is the Texas of Germany).
The fact that it is easy to explain the difference between the FDP and CDU but hard to given an unambiguous answer to "which is more right-wing?" is itself evidence against the 1D left-right model.
The Netherlands were governed by "Purple coalitions" including the left-wing PvdA and the right-liberal VVD but excluding the Christian centrist CDA from 1994-2002 and 2012-2017. The 1994-2002 Purple coalition explicitly excluded the CDA becuase the VVD, PvdA and left-liberal D66 wanted them out of office. The coalition passed significant social-left legislation opposed by the CDA including the legalisation of prostitution, gay marriage and euthanasia. (The 2012-7 purple coalition is a less good example because the only reason the CDA and D66 were excluded was that the VVD and PvdA didn't need their votes.)
This one, of course, makes perfect sense under a political compass style model - the PvdA is economic left, social centre, the VVD is economic right, social centre, the D66 is economic centre, social left, and the CDA is economic centre, social right. So PvdA-VVD-D66 is a social centre-left coalition which is all over the place on economics.
If you want to go full horseshoe, there are two important examples of the Communist KPD co-operating with the far right in Weimar Germany - the KPD had been ordered by Moscow to oppose the centre-left SDP as a priority. The 1931 Prussian referendum was an attempt to recall the SPD-led State government in Prussia which was supported by the Stahlhelm (an anti-democratic right-wing veteran's organisation tied to the DNVP), the Nazis and the KPD. There was a transport strike in Berlin in November 1932 where Nazi and KPD goon squads worked together to protect strikers and intimidate scabs.
I also endorse the modern German examples downthread.
bonsaii
37m ago
Does anyone here actually consider Western food amongst their favorite cuisines?
Personally, I find American cuisine is downright trash-tier. My city is lauded by many as a "top-tier food city" but the examples people give of great food are pizza, hot dogs, burgers, Italian beef, and cheesesteak. Most of the ones I've tried I would call oil-drenched slop. None were actually delicious enough to justify the health detriments, especially when similarly unhealthy but better tasting options exist like Mexican tacos, Indian curry, Iranian kababs, Japanese ramen, Chinese hot pot, etc.
In my experience, this has applied to Western countries in general. Except for the Mediterranean-adjacent Italian, Spanish, and Greek, I don't think I've ever particularly enjoyed any other Western food. Do Canada, Australia, and New Zealand even have an identifiable cuisine? I don't know of any British, Nordic, or Slavic restaurants in my area. France is stereotyped as the culinary capital, but most of what I've had was overpriced and looked better than it actually tasted.
It may be that most of the hype around Western food is concentrated in fine-dining, in which I'm largely uninterested. When it comes to a more typical meal, I have a hard time putting any country (aside from Italy/Spain/Greece) above bottom tier when comparing to other regional cuisines from East Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, or Latin America.
So am I eating the wrong things, is my taste atypical for someone raised in the West, or is it relatively common for most Western cuisines to be clustered in the bottom-tier?
sohois
39m ago
It's still early days for us, not even at the first scan. Mostly just been reassuring my wife that not everything has the potential to cause a miscarriage.
We also got Oster's book, and yeah, it's not too much that you won't know already, and the unorthodox advice on things like drinking alcohol and caffeine aren't any use for my wife as she barely touches either in normal times
anon_
45m ago
the genuinely criminal distribution of actual CP by drowning it in mostly if not entirely indistinguishable AI forgeries
There is a civilizational fence here that you probably don't want to tear down cavalierly.
In particular, it's feasible (perhaps it would not come to pass) that:
- You drown the world in AI CP
- Child victimization goes down in the short term as predicted, the government doubles down on prosecuting those who harm actual children
- Over time, the prevalence and easy accessibility of AI CP erodes the norm against considering young children in a sexual manner
- Decades later, this rebounds into increasing harm of actual children
- With the norm eroded, there is less popular will to double down on prosecuting these cases.
They can't/won't do this though. Why not?
Failure of your imagination to supply a steel man to your opposition.
Thus the fact that these men have sexual urges at all is an abomination to women
This is not a brave statement, but I'm gonna double down on "sexual urges that are focused on a 5 year old are abominable" and maybe "and should be to individuals of all sexes"
anon_
52m ago
No, but again, imaging to oneself is very different than publishing/distributing.
anon_
55m ago
I fully agree that exaggerating the negativity of it is itself harmful.
But at the same time, this does fall within the longstanding tradition against libel, false light -- publishing a nude image of someone is a clear implication that they have willingly posed nude. If that is false, it's squarely libel. That's not the end of the world -- we can say it's bad/wrong/illegal without saying it's the worst thing that can happen. Nuance is dead, they say.
That said, if some horny teenager wants to create the images, rub one out and then keep them to himself, that's back in "creepy-but-not-illegal" territory.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
56m ago
He explicitly stated that if we could Read/Write minds then he’d change his mind.
Demonstrate mind reading and mind control, and I'll agree that Determinism appears to be correct. In the meantime, I'll continue to point out that confident assertions are not evidence.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
57m ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on The Future Does Not Compute. Also trying to catch up on my Shakespeare with The Tempest.
anon_
1hr ago
I'd like to add another option
- Wanted to do the right thing, but doing the right thing is hard (building a better mousetrap, except it's a billion/trillion dollar a machine) and there are structural impediments (legitimate & illegitimate) and entrenched interests. Over time, the desire to do the right thing sublimates into doing what's possible. That in turn includes maintaining allies against opposition.
SSCReader
1hr ago
Religious people don't treat cults and fanatics as "accidental harm".
Sure they do, in that they sympathize with the victims as being misled. Now of course what they see as a cult and what they see as a religion may vary from their own biases. But many of my Christian neighbors think Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons are a cult and think most of the people are being taken advantage of. See how they react to people trying to deny blood products to their kids that will kill them. We don't arrest them for attempted murder, we generally just override their decision. We clearly do in fact treat people differently where we think they are making bad choices for what they see as good reasons.
That doesn't mean we don't do anything, we have negligent homicide and the like for a reason. But we do not as a society see it as harmful as a direct planned harm.
AvocadoPanic
1hr ago
That's why I put it in ' '.
It's like retouching a photo to make them look nude. This or composting their head / face into porn feels a bit different to me than writing a prompt that would generate a similar appearing image.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
1hr ago
For the Gone Girl of Vallejo case, I don't think the problem is that the Police Departmnet didn't have the resources to figure out what was going on. The problem is that they went out of their way to be assholes to potential victims. Putting Aaron Quinn's phone on Airplane mode when he was expecting to receive a call from a potential kidnapper was something that doesn't come down to insufficient resources. It was just plain idiocy.
Jimmy Akin did an episode on the case and he also came to the conclusion that the police were especially incompetent in this case.
That said, I agree in principle that the police should only be equipped to handle 95% of the cases in their jurisdiction, and in the 5% that are more complicated there should be some sort of national team that can deploy when needed with all the resources and skills to solve the weird problems.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
I don't think this is true. Religious people don't treat cults and fanatics as "accidental harm". Progressives reframe harm caused by the excesses of their ideology as accidental, and my whole argument is that this is based on flawed reasoning.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
That is exactly what it was.
No idea why he wanted to do it, but apparently a lot of the machining was his own work, so I had to give him credit for effort.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2hr ago
Some of it, sure. Other parts were garden-variety and embezzlement and obstruction. Calling that “societally beneficial” is like judging the Soviet Union only by its number of tanks.
As for the Romans—half their early conflicts were rebellions; they just hadn’t got around to calling their socii “Romans” yet. But by a stricter standard, the first Roman equivalent to the Whiskey Rebellion happened in 495. Well, it’s marginally longer than our record!
NewCharlesInCharge
2hr ago
It's a strange side effect that whether or not the shooter is killed impacts whether or not their writings are kept private.
If she was alive this material would be discoverable and likely submitted as evidence in the eventual case against her.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
2hr ago
The Nabokov quote is, but the Houllebecq quote is not. I was using Humbert Humbert's monologue as a companion to Houllebecq thirsting after illegally young people.
I thought that would be obvious without attribution, but many of you guys haven't read Lolita and it shows.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
And getting killed just the same. Because if the Fraternal Brotherhood of Pigs, Sheep, Deer, Bison, Elk, and Moose decide that wolves need to be trampled (presumably by the bison and moose), any contracts the wolves have are worthless.
I think your taste is atypical for someone raised in the West. For example, I could never agree that tacos are better than burgers. They are both incredibly tasty foods. In general, I think American food is quite good (albeit not always very distinct due to our immigrant culture and the fact we adapt a lot of other cuisine).
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