Harold Fjord posted:

I think you can sort of do the third thing if you get an official from the religion they claim they are following involved. but for the hospital itself to take the role in making any kind of religious decision is pretty sketchy.

Nichael posted:

if i was president, i simply wouldn't do genocide

The Sean posted:

it's a prereq, sorry

wait: of the US or elsewhere?

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I was just at a conference where someone presented a paper on spiritual care in hospitals, and said he was surprised that the hospitals' policies adhere to the written doctrine of their faiths, the argument being that we have to take people just as seriously when they believe in idiosyncratic volkish woo woo because they had an incomplete catechesis, as opposed to providing care their faith proscribes.

My opinion was that if someone is an Anglican, and we're taking their spiritual care seriously, we have to adhere to the Anglican Church, and not someone who has confused their yoga practice with the actual doctrine of their faith. I don't like the Book of Concord, but if we're taking the metaphysical perspective that spiritual care matters, we need to be thorough in its administration. A physician does not prescribe what the patient thinks they need, he provides them with the correct medication, in consultation with a pharmacist. So, I said, cuius regio, eius religio. Whatever religion you claim to profess, will be taken seriously, and thoroughly, and you ought to receive the best, and that means most correct, as we've accepted the premise that your soul is on the line, spiritual care possible.

This led to a whole thing about respecting people's beliefs, but again, if people believe they are Anglican, and believe they are dying, or otherwise need to work through the spiritual care team, then to take their belief seriously, it needs to be engaged with as a serious ideology and practice, and correctly, so that they receive the unction of the sick - not (just) allowing their relatives to all hold hands in a circle or whatever, because that's Anglicanism as they understand it. Cuius regio, eius religio, the Ottomans figured this out with the Millet. To incorporate religious practice and the law, the state needs a system to work though.

My argument was, it's more respectful of their beliefs to take those beliefs more seriously, and administer care more correctly, than the patient themselves understands. The only rebuttal I got was, "well what about their feelings?", "Different people believe different things", "you have to agree to disagree" etc etc. I don't want you to think I was taking a stance "theology doesn't care about your feelings". I think I'm going out of the way to honour people's feelings here. I'm genuinely confused about why it's better to condescend to people by humouring them, rather than actually doing the best we can to engage with their belief system.

Okay, while apply that to discussing any political issue with a liberal. Am I supposed to care how they think or feel the economy works, or am I supposed to discuss the economy in material terms, which means rejecting their priors and anecdotes, and cutesy stories, and half understood talking points? If they want to discuss the economy, isn't it important to establish that we're thoroughly describing a real system of resources and labour, which is guided by political and ideological decisions rather than something that is just-so?

"Gosh, who can say how the economy works? I guess we each have our own perspectives." is useless to actually describing, and so discussing, the socioeconomic system of a nation. We can say, and what we say can be disputed. If we're treating these as descriptions of reality, or informed by reality, they need to be challenged. I realize in the context of dinner parties I've had to be more flexible. I don't like it, but my wife says being relentless is my "best and worst quality", which is awfully kind of her to say, but doesn't resolve the issue.

The Sean posted:

it's a prereq, sorry

wait: of the US or elsewhere?

camoseven posted:

health insurance is somehow worse than ever and i truly hope hell is real and obama rots there for eternity

Nothus posted:

FF is right, the results imply there are people out there with both a favorable and unfavorable opinion of Harris.

Harold Fjord posted:

Oh yeah bring them back the BBB I'm sure we'll all rush to the polls

Pepe Silvia Browne posted:

lol with the names of the three other things wtf are you getting under the "Medical Plans" ?

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/sahilkapur/status/1780942068472246693

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Okay, while apply that to discussing any political issue with a liberal. Am I supposed to care how they think or feel the economy works, or am I supposed to discuss the economy in material terms, which means rejecting their priors and anecdotes, and cutesy stories, and half understood talking points? If they want to discuss the economy, isn't it important to establish that we're thoroughly describing a real system of resources and labour, which is guided by political and ideological decisions rather than something that is just-so?

quote:

People who say this suggest that the world is sharply divided into separate societies, sealed units, each within its own system of thought. They feel that the respect and tolerance due from one system to another requires us never to take up a critical position to any other culture, that we can never claim to say what is good or bad there. I shall call this position “moral isolationism.” I want to suggest that it is certainly not forced on us. In fact, I want to go further, and say that it makes no sense at all. It is something you can say, but not believe. People usually take it up because they think it is a respectful attitude to other cultures. But, in fact, it’s not respectful. Nobody can respect what they genuinely do not understand. If we are to take anyone seriously, we have to know enough about him to make a favourable judgement, however general and tentative. And we do understand people in other cultures in this way. If we didn’t, a mass of our most necessary thinking would be paralysed.

I am going to take a remote example, because we shall probably find it easier to think about without getting agitated than we should if I took an urgent contemporary one, such as female circumcision in Africa or the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or the placing of political prisoners in Russian mental hospitals. And I think the principles involved will still be the same. My remote example is this. There is, I am told, a verb in classical Japanese which means “to try out one’s new sword on a chance wayfarer.” A samurai sword had to be tried out because, if it was to work properly, it had to slice through someone at a single blow, from the shoulder to the opposite flank. If it couldn’t do this, the warrior bungled his stroke. This injured his honour, offended his ancestors, and might let down his emperor. So tests were needed, and wayfarers had to be expended. Any wayfarer would do – provided, of course, that he wasn’t another samurai. Scientists will recognize a familiar problem here about the right of experimental subjects.

Now, when we hear of a custom like this, we may well reflect that we do not understand it. This allows us to say that we are not qualified to criticize or judge it, because we are not members of any other culture either, except our own. So we seem to be moral isolationists. But this can’t be so. To explain why it is impossible, I will consider three questions. My first question is this – does the isolating barrier work both ways? Are people in other cultures equally unable to criticise us? The question struck me sharply when I recently read a remark in the Guardian newspaper by an anthropologist about a South American Indian. This Indian had been taken into a Brazilian town for an operation, which had saved his life. When he came back to his village, this man made several highly critical remarks about the white Brazilians’ way of life. They may very well have been justified. But the interesting point was that the anthropologist described these remarks as a “damning indictment of Western civilisation.” Now, the Indian had been in that town about a fortnight. Was he in a position to deliver a damning indictment? If he was, then it seems as if we ourselves would be qualified to deliver an indictment on the Samurai – if only we could spend a fortnight in ancient Japan. That can hardly be right. But if we discounted all such criticism of cultures by outsiders, we would lose the benefit of a lot of splendid suggestions which orient us, and help us understand our own culture. What do we do about this? My own impression is that we believe that outsiders can, in principle, deliver perfectly good indictments – only it usually takes more than a fortnight to make them damning.

quote:

Suppose, for instance, that I criticise the bisecting samurai, that I say his behaviour is brutal. What will usually happen is that someone will protest, saying that I have no right to make criticisms like this of another culture. But his next move isn’t usually to drop the subject. He will try to fill in the background, to make me understand the custom by explaining the exalted ideals of discipline and devotion which produced it. He will probably talk of the lower value which the ancient Japanese placed on individual life generally. He may well suggest that this is far healthier than our own obsession with security. He may add, too, that the wayfarers didn’t seriously mind being bisected, that, in principle, they consented to the whole argument. Now, if my objector talks like this, he is implying that it is possible to understand alien customs – because that is just what he is trying to do. He implies, too, that if I do manage to understand them, I shall do something better than giving up judging entirely. He expects me to change my present judgement to a truer one – namely, one that is favourable. And the standards I must use to do this can’t just be samurai standards. They have to be ones current in my own culture.

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/sahilkapur/status/1780942068472246693

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

gradenko_2000 posted:

it is this same worldview that informs the echelon of anti-usa, anti-nato, anti-west leftists who are willing to sacrifice ukrainians, syrians,

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/POTUS/status/1780743053130527004

gradenko_2000 posted:

mycelium - notes on imperialism

in online leftist spaces the overlap between solidarity for victims of western imperialism and solidarity for victims of non-western imperialism appears diminishingly small. the same is true of activist spaces i'm involved with in real life.

i dislike binaries, but here i use this one - western vs. non-western - because it's the same that many anglophone leftists choose to adopt in their worldview. this binary is violent, a product of a long history of colonialisms and imperialisms that as leftists we are presumed to be most familiar with - that of western european colonial powers and the modern american empire.

it is this same worldview that informs the echelon of anti-usa, anti-nato, anti-west leftists who are willing to sacrifice ukrainians, syrians, hong kongers, tibetans, uyghurs, indigenous peoples under russian and chinese occupation, taiwanese etc. at the altar of an imagined, morally pure form of "decolonisation" and "anti-imperialism."

syrian writer leila al-shami writes of an "anti-imperialism of idiots" - that group of self-proclaimed leftists who equate imperialism with the actions of the usa alone, and in the process fall in with fascist states sporting minimally "socialist" aesthetics.

"This pro-fascist left seems blind to any form of imperialism that is non-western in origin... Everything that happens is viewed through the prism of what it means for westerners – only white men have the power to make history." (Leila Al-Shami)

i reject this binary worldview which plagues the anglosphere left. the palestinian cause is linked to the syrian cause is linked to the ukrainian cause is linked to the uyghur cause, and so forth, because imperialism doesn't actually discriminate between western and non-western victims, and the us, western europe, israel, china, russia etc. can all be as bad as each other. decolonial and anti-imperialist solidarity means we stand with all oppressed peoples, so we go back to that tired old saying - none of us are free until all of us are free. 9/9

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

The one who made that Tweet blames Barthes (and to be fair to the Ukraine-and-Taiwan-flag-haver "death of the author" is some very annoying poo poo to always have to wade through):

https://twitter.com/RadCentrism/status/1731784634902384656?t=r28lukKFEfdpaMIjOIHTjA&s=19

Trabisnikof posted:

Weird how there’s no Basque mushroom or a mushroom for any of the places France does imperialism in Africa….

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

what if the person who drew the number drew it in an intentionally vague way so it could be either number, as is almost certainly the case in this instance? fuckin dumbass

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

what if the person who drew the number drew it in an intentionally vague way so it could be either number, as is almost certainly the case in this instance? fuckin dumbass

Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide posted:

"Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!"

"What's the problem?" said Lunkwill.

"I'll tell you what the problem is mate," said Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!"

"We demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be the problem!"

"You just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise, "and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"

"That's right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.

"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.

"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.

"That's right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!"

The Sean posted:

it's a prereq, sorry

wait: of the US or elsewhere?

HallelujahLee posted:

lol they had 4 years and didnt do a single one of these things

VitalSigns posted:

Ok but seriously, I don't see how you can respect everyone's religious beliefs, implicitly accepting that their religion is a personal belief and not an objective truth that controls where their souls end up, but then also insist that you're a better judge of their beliefs than they are and you have to override their beliefs and do it "right" to save their soul.

That just makes no sense to me. It seems like you should either:

Pick the religion you think is the objective truth and treat everyone with that to save their very real souls regardless of what they want. Sorry, Islam is fake, and your soul is on the line so here's the last rights in God's native language: English

OR

Respect their beliefs by actually respecting their beliefs whatever they are.

This third thing where you respect their beliefs, unless you think they're doing their religion wrong, then you stop respecting what they want and do what you think they're supposed to believe instead, and justify this by saying only this specific Anglican ritual will save their soul (but you'd do a different ritual if they say they're Catholic or Jewish) is not very logical imo.

gradenko_2000 posted:

mycelium - notes on imperialism

in online leftist spaces the overlap between solidarity for victims of western imperialism and solidarity for victims of non-western imperialism appears diminishingly small. the same is true of activist spaces i'm involved with in real life.

i dislike binaries, but here i use this one - western vs. non-western - because it's the same that many anglophone leftists choose to adopt in their worldview. this binary is violent, a product of a long history of colonialisms and imperialisms that as leftists we are presumed to be most familiar with - that of western european colonial powers and the modern american empire.

it is this same worldview that informs the echelon of anti-usa, anti-nato, anti-west leftists who are willing to sacrifice ukrainians, syrians, hong kongers, tibetans, uyghurs, indigenous peoples under russian and chinese occupation, taiwanese etc. at the altar of an imagined, morally pure form of "decolonisation" and "anti-imperialism."

syrian writer leila al-shami writes of an "anti-imperialism of idiots" - that group of self-proclaimed leftists who equate imperialism with the actions of the usa alone, and in the process fall in with fascist states sporting minimally "socialist" aesthetics.

"This pro-fascist left seems blind to any form of imperialism that is non-western in origin... Everything that happens is viewed through the prism of what it means for westerners – only white men have the power to make history." (Leila Al-Shami)

i reject this binary worldview which plagues the anglosphere left. the palestinian cause is linked to the syrian cause is linked to the ukrainian cause is linked to the uyghur cause, and so forth, because imperialism doesn't actually discriminate between western and non-western victims, and the us, western europe, israel, china, russia etc. can all be as bad as each other. decolonial and anti-imperialist solidarity means we stand with all oppressed peoples, so we go back to that tired old saying - none of us are free until all of us are free. 9/9

Willa Rogers posted:

obama's obelisk has started going up in chicago.



what it's planned to look like when finished:




It's going to dominate the lakefront view south of the loop.

fits my needs posted:

https://x.com/sahilkapur/status/1780942068472246693

VitalSigns posted:

Yeah if they're cool with that official then sure, he's gonna do what he does.

But if they say "nah I don't want the priest I just want to hold hands with my family" it'd be odd to say "sorry you're religion X so you have to do what he says your soul is on the line"