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Organza Quiz posted:It's about choosing to view others with love and kindness as a conscious choice, in full knowledge that there are other ways to look at them. I think this is actually a pretty good definition of faith from a certain perspective.
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Apr 7, 2022 15:20
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Keromaru5 posted:For another, it's also possible to achieve theosis in this world. That's basically what sainthood is. Not to derail but I don't think that is something every Christian would agree on 
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Aug 4, 2022 19:57
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FishBulbia posted:How do people at all interact with genuinely religious people? How do you coexist with someone so hateful that they believe they are destined for heaven and everyone around them is damned? I get that there are many exceptions to these types, people who just make up their own beliefs and pretend they're following their religion, that almost seems to the norm. Not quite sure what "genuinely religious" means here. I am "genuinely religious" by most standard definitions (I am an active member of a religious organization) and your summary does not accurately reflect my beliefs nor those of any other members of the organization I am part of that I know. Edit: and there are plenty of religions in the world where the concepts of salvation, heaven, and hell are not even relevant. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 19:18
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FishBulbia posted:Yeah you just get excommunicated if you cross with the wrong amount of fingers. This is factually incorrect for most Christian Churches that I am aware of and I am pretty sure it is incorrect with regards to many if not most other religions as well.
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Aug 31, 2022 02:50
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Josef bugman posted:I mean what problems do you think cannot be? Because even personality disorders can be treated with enough money. Not to get into anything else but this is absolutely not true. There are plenty of people who have problems that make their lives very difficult who have received extensive combinations of therapy (both chemical and non-chemical) and have little or no permanent relief. Therapy is not a perfect science by any means and our understanding of the human mind on a scientific level is still sketchy at best; there are plenty of disorders, illnesses, and sicknesses of the soul (for want of a better term) for which therapy can offer little or no relief no matter what you are willing to pay. Edit: specifically to your post: personality disorders are notoriously difficult to treat and much treatment involves developing coping mechanisms rather than being able to "cure" the underlying problem. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Oct 28, 2022 |
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Oct 28, 2022 13:23
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Josef bugman posted:Sure, but those things can still be treated with resources. They cannot be cured but it's much easier to manage when you don't have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. No-one is going to argue that material wealth does not make life easier- it is patently true that being rich makes for an easier life. All people, however, are fully human - from the richest to the poorest, from the most powerful to the least - and thus access the full range of human experience: we all feel pain; we all feel joy; we all love and have love unrequited; we all experience friendships and suffer false friends; we are all lonely; we all have hopes and dreams, many of which cannot be made good and some of which can; we all envy and covet; we all wonder why we exist; we all experience the existential dread of our own mortality. All of these things belong to us all. Material conditions can affect some of them and make others easier or harder to bear but it cannot resolve all of them and all of them play in to whether we are "happy" or not. To say that the rich are simply "happy" (or should be) is to miss two fundamental points: 1) the experience of being human is not just a product of material conditions, and 2) we are all human with all the good and bad that entails. And note: it is important to recognize this not because denying the common human experience is immoral (although I think it is) but because it is incorrect and will lead to erroneous understanding of why people do what they do.
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Oct 28, 2022 15:26
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Killingyouguy! posted:Aren't there like, studies that billionaires are far more likely to be sociopaths. Like I don't think the 'we all share the human experience' thing is actually true There are some pop things that I have heard of but never actually anything really peer-reviewed and comprehensive. It also hinges on the definition of "sociopath" which can be pretty fluid. I would also be very uncomfortable with simply defining some class of people with a personality disorder "not human" which the above essentially does.
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Oct 28, 2022 15:39
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Nessus posted:I would say that what you are saying is wrong, yeah, particularly in this maximalist stage, and if I'm going to go a step further I would say that it almost amounts to deifying the rich, just in a negative direction. I don't think that's justified even if they may be political/class enemies in need of secular opposition for the benefit of the non-rich, because it will, if nothing else, lead you to assume they have godlike powers which will demoralize you and make you produce bad strategic calls. Absolutely, says what I was trying to get at much better and the deifying point is really important: it is all people being people at the end of the day.
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Oct 28, 2022 15:44
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Nessus posted:E: basically I think no one disagrees that money solves the problems that come from not having money. There are other sources of suffering, though. You seem to be saying those problems, those sources of suffering, either don’t exist or don’t matter, whichever works at the moment. You can loathe the rich while not saying they are imaginary devils. Many do. Yes, I think this is the crux of it and where much of the disagreement comes from.
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Oct 28, 2022 18:59
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Josef bugman posted:I, wait what? Am I saying that? Yes, it certainly sounded like that. Josef bugman posted:What I am attempting to say is "Rich people can effect the world more than poor people" and that includes making themselves happy? When have I postulated any of the other? They torment people through inaction and the fruits they reap are good ones for them and those close to them? I'm not implying familial guilt and, tbh, thats kind of odd that that is what you've drawn from what I've said. They can ameliorate the things for themselves that can be addressed by wealth but much of personal human suffering cannot be addressed in this way. Josef bugman posted:qDeath, illness etc etc. Yes you keep going on and on about them because they are the only ones that matter to everyone. But I don't think that makes the rich unhappy. I don't think it makes them sad. Ultimately, I don't think the uber wealthy are actually "secretly sad" about stuff. All your evidence is stuff like "they make sad tweets" and so on. I don't think that implies anything other than a reasonable human being whose feelings fluctuate but will usually end up happier than those with nowt. I do not posit that the wealthy and powerful are "secretly sad" (although some have posited this). I posit that they are able to ameliorate some of life's problems but not all and have a fair few other ones that come along with wealth. As such I would posit that on the whole most of the wealthy and powerful are, on the level of their own personal experience of life, probably about as happy/sad and contented/discontented as everyone else.
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Oct 28, 2022 19:23
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Josef bugman posted:
Unrequited love would be the classical and obvious one: obvious enough that whole epic poems have been written about it by people from all backgrounds. Things like shame and disgrace also come to mind immediately. Josef bugman posted:
Yes, I am talking about the personal experience of life of individual humans, nothing else makes sense in my view. Suffering, happiness, contentment, fulfillment, salvation, etc. are all descriptions of experiences that apply to individual human beings and are not abstract (i.e. there is no suffering if there is no individual that is actually experiencing suffering). Even God became man (something that I believe factually happened as laid out in the Nicene Creed) at least partly because this individualization is so important. Also as far as I am concerned there is no such thing as "aggregate happiness" or "aggregate suffering" where you somehow "sum up" the happiness or suffering of a class of people and get a real thing, it seems to me to be an incoherent concept. If I am suffering then I am suffering, even if other members of "my class" (whatever that may be) are not. They may or may not suffer in reaction to my suffering but that is also an individual reaction, not a reflection of some sort of general "suffering pool" belonging to the class that is being added to or drawn from. And there is no universal scale of these experiences, no "you will experience exactly this quanta of joy due to this thing": something that may be quite tolerable to one person may be intolerable suffering to another, what brings one person joy may evoke no reaction in another. This is not necessarily because one person is strong while the other is weak, not necessarily that one person has the "right thoughts" while the other is somehow disordered. All are individuals and any discussion like this that does not start with the individual is, in my view, wide of the mark. "Josef bugman" posted:
Also owe a comment on this before I drop off the internet for the weekend. As to point 1) I actually do believe in a soul but beyond that I would say that the experience of being human for each one of us is such a combination of various influences: genetics, upbringing, random experiences, etc. and then all mixed together in such a poorly understood way that it is essentially an emergent phenomenon. Its form for any person certainly cannot be fully predicted by analysis of the material inputs and will certainly not be fully determined by that person's current material conditions. For me this is effectively "not just material conditions" but, setting aside a soul, if you say it is just "material conditions but not fully understood" then I won't argue because it still works out to the same thing in my view: my current material conditions are only one small part of my experience of being human. As to point 2) yes, many people with wealth and power should use both better; this is both true and completely irrelevant to the point. Whatever they do they are still fully human with the full range of human experience and indeed it is this human experience that drives their bad behaviour. Fear, pride, cruelty, disinterest, self-obsession, envy, greed, arrogance, etc. are all fully human and arise from fully human thought processes. V. V. Putin is not invading Ukraine and inflicting pain, cruelty, and death because he is an alien lizard man: he is a human with fully human reasons (a burning (and utterly false) sense of injustice, envy of his predecessors, desire for a legacy, etc.) for what he is doing and to believe otherwise is simply incorrect. Apologies for my incoherent ramblings, I very seldom post or put my thoughts into words so what comes out when I try tends to be rather scattered.
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Oct 29, 2022 02:09
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Josef bugman posted:Do you think the uber-wealthy feel shame? I would point to several former presidents to disabuse you of that notion. Unrequited love may well be a thing for them, but such is inherent to many people. I am trying to say that the cushioning of the individual via material circumstances makes their suffering less long lasting and/or less impactful than those that suffer material deprivation alongside those already existing feelings. Of course they do, as evidenced by the fact that many will go to extraordinary lengths - tell almost any lie, construct almost any justification you can imagine - to avoid feeling it (note that the very poor and every one in between does this as well). A great deal of behaviour (including that of a certain recent US and a current Russian President) can be explained by this. More broadly your assertion would imply that, for example, a very rich man has never argued with his wife, said something unkind, realized that he was in the wrong, felt ashamed, and apologized the next morning and I don't think that assertion is accurate. Josef bugman posted:If everything is like that then you'd never get a view of the whole. If we cannot look at material circumstances and see differences that they cause, or look at systems and think of what they may make then you reduce everyone to the same playing field. Also, as regards the bolded bit: If a great deal of a group people suffer discrimination, hatred and disdain based on who they are and not their material action then they are already being sorted into classes. The aggregate happiness or unhappiness of the slave and the lord can be measured and seen by the fact that the slave dies hungry and abused and the king dies rich and feted by all. To reduce everything to the individual as the only means of assaying understanding of things is to try and take an understandable and kind view and draw an unkind conclusion. Of course you can examine, analyze, and take action on things that affect large classes of people and I do not assert otherwise - if we could not do this then government and society would be impossible. The locus of suffering, however, remains with the individual because suffering (at least as I have always understood it) is an experience that humans have, not an external thing. If there is no-one to experience it, then there is no suffering because the experience is what suffering is. In this view I would not say anyone "inflicts suffering" on anyone else; rather, someone inflicts for example pain or injury on another person and that other person experiences suffering in response. The experience of suffering will also be different for each individual and different individuals will suffer in response to different things. There are common threads of course and things that pretty much everyone responds to with suffering but the actual reality of the suffering is individual. We certainly want to systemically improve things but we want to do so not because of some abstract concept of a "person who suffers" but because we want to make things better for real, individual people. This is part of why it is so important to actually engage with the people who are affected by such propose "improvements" - they may not suffer the way we think they do or want what we think they want. Fake edit: A banal example of what I mean when I say that different individuals will suffer in response to different things: I went sailing on my small 14' open boat a couple of weeks ago which is very late in the season here. It was cold; I got water in my boots while launching the boat and my socks were going "squelch" the entire time I was out; I got sunburned and windburned; I was bleeding from my hand after smashing it on a sharp bracket that I need to fix; and I had a wonderful time! I was with a friend who's company I very much enjoy and she enjoys sailing as much as I do, it was great! I was cold, wet, lightly injured, etc. and There. Was. No. Suffering. Now, someone who did not enjoy sailing would have had exactly the same material experience as I did but would have had a terrible time and definitely would have experienced suffering. Same situation but one would have suffering while the other did not. Josef bugman posted:I don't mean to have said that the rich cannot "feel" certain things. I think I may have been a bit emotional less night and not communicating properly. What I am meaning to try and say is that, on aggregate, the wealthy have the resources to deal with their feelings in a way that could be constructive. But they don't and won't because they are happier as they are than they would be as poorer people. And again, some sources of suffering can be address by wealth, others cannot; some sources of joy can purchased, others not; and which is which will be depend on the individual. I don't disagree that it is easier on a personal level to be rich than poor (and I certainly do not argue we need to have sympathy for the rich because "they are the real victims" or anything like that) but it does not solve all of the issues of being human. Also not sure what you mean by "the wealthy have the resources to deal with their feelings in a way that could be constructive. But they don't and won't because they are happier as they are than they would be as poorer people." Many wealthy people manage quite well with their lives and are not particularly helpful or kind to others but the same is true for those who are not so wealthy. There are those who attempt to use their wealth and power to help others and have a miserable experience because they do it poorly, can't do enough, or do a good job and suffer because of other things in their lives that have nothing to do with their wealth. The same is true of many poor people as well. Sure, lots of rich people are assholes and happy but so are lots of poor people (and some of these assholes may be happy and some may be sad for reasons that may or may not have to do with their assholery). The assholery of the rich man has the potential to have a much broader negative effect then the assholery of the poor man and is therefore of more concern but that does not mean that it is fundamentally different in kind - just scale.
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Oct 30, 2022 01:37
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Josef bugman posted:I, don't think one can just say that the current situation anywhere is "just" caused by a single dude trying to avoid feeling shame. It'd be interesting to try and prove it, but I suspect that there is more to it than that. It is not just caused by that of course, it is one cause out of many, but that does not alter the point that I am making that trying to avoid feeling shame is certainly a pretty big motivating factor for the behaviour of a lot of people that would otherwise seem illogical. I would point the old saying "people don't get in trouble so much for the scandal as for the attempt to cover it up afterwards" as further evidence of this. Josef bugman posted:If shame were enough to make people change their behavior then things would be significantly different. Shame certainly changes people's behaviour; however frequently it does not change it for the better. Josef bugman posted:I have always understood suffering as being a thing wider than the individual and an external thing applied to people that must be remedied. It can come from internal feelings, but is ultimately caused by external factors. You also cannot experience suffering if there is no outside to impose it. But suffering is still imposed due to effects from an exterior source. The thing is that there are several factors that mean that suffering will be experienced by a great deal of people in almost all circumstances. We cannot go "getting stabbed is only suffering because you believe it to be" can we? Everyone, bar the cenobites, would not want to be stabbed and it would cause suffering. The abstract concept and approach to suffering is important because material factors can mitigate suffering. And I can only agree with what others have said: this does not match the definition of suffering I have worked with and I think you are collapsing several distinct concepts together to the detriment of analysis and understanding. Suffering can definitely be cause by external factors (although I don't think that is the only source of it) but there is not necessarily a one-to-one mapping between external factors and suffering in a given individual. Something that one person responds to with suffering another person may not. And no, I think suffering cannot be abstract, it is something that is experienced by an individual and if you are talking about something collective then you are talking about something else. There are certainly many things that will cause most people to suffer and can be addressed collectively but the suffering is still something that is experienced individually and may actually be experienced in different ways. The individual can never be forgotten even when we discuss the largest issues. This is actually crucial when you think about morals and sin. There is the moral principle that people must be treated as ends in themselves and not as means to an end, or, as Terry Pratchett put it more concretely in the voice of Granny Weatherwax "sin is what happens when you start to treat people as things": to me as soon as you start to abstract things like suffering and forget the individuals you are getting dangerously close to "treating people as things". From this arises such thoughts as "one death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic", the proletariat starts to look very "lumpen", and then the pogroms start. Josef bugman posted:But there is still suffering from those things. The good of the situation outweighed the suffering because you enjoy being on a boat, but the suffering still happened. No you are simply incorrect: I. Did. Not. Suffer. My internal response to these things was not suffering: they were part of the experience of that day, and my experience of the day would have been no better had I been warm, had dry socks, and not scraped my hand. These all made me alive and were part of the great experience. My suffering is something that I experience and is mine alone. I don't mean to sound harsh here but I can put this in no other way: I did not experience suffering and you cannot say that I did - you do not have that power over me. Josef bugman posted:The scale renders the difference one of kind. You cannot simply boil everything down to individuals it is a wider thing than that. For me scale is a difference in scale (and can certainly affect the level of concern and may entail different approaches to rectify): a difference in kind for me would be to postulate that the motivating factors for the assholery are something other than human assholery and I don't think that postulate can be sustained. This is I suppose partly a quibble over definition but I think maintaining the distinction is important.
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Oct 31, 2022 02:04
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Josef bugman posted:It's like how I view "lies" as saying something that isn't true. Even when it's out of ignorance, it's still a lie. This is also a highly unconventional definition of "lie". I have never encountered any philosophy that does not make a distinction between mistake and intentional deception. If I tell someone the meeting is at 17:00 because that is the latest memo I got but it has actually been moved to 18:00 and no-one told me then I have told the other person something in error but I have not lied - I have told the truth as I knew it to be. If I know the meeting has moved to 18:00 but still tell them it is at 17:00 then I have lied - I have not told the truth as I know it to be. The person may miss the meeting either way but the underlying reason is different and their reaction to me will probably be different as well. These distinctions are actually important and are part of the basis for understanding humans. Collapsing them all together inhabits understanding human behaviour and (in my opinion) degrades and cheapens humanity. You seem to want to collapse a whole pile of different things into simple black-and-white concepts but people just aren't that simple! You seem to want to deny all agency to at least certain people when they responding to the situations they are presented with and this is just not correct. This is evidenced by the fact that people do not respond to their situations the way you think they should but instead of recognizing their agency it seems you get confused and seem to conclude that they are somehow mistaken or disordered instead.
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Oct 31, 2022 12:57
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Josef bugman posted:Is it? I don't know how we prove something was said as a specific "lie" vs that person simply being mistaken. I mean everything needs a proof. Otherwise how do we know it? No, the person was either deceptive or mistaken - that is a question of reality. Whether you can determine which is it was is a different question- it is a question of what can be know. These are absolutely distinct things.
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Oct 31, 2022 13:49
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Josef bugman posted:We need a knowledge of what the person intended when they said the information don't we. We need to prove that reality, and that can be tricky. Our reaction will be based what we can know but what the other person actually did is independent of what we do or do not know. These are distinct things and must be treated as such. This is a very basic philosophical distinction (episiotomy vs. metaphysics if I recall the terminology correcty) that has been around for a long time.
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Oct 31, 2022 14:44
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Josef bugman posted:If we know what was said by them was untrue, how do we determine if its a lie other than by knowing the intent of the person? Perhaps we cannot, perhaps we can only guess. This does not alter the fact that the other person either made a mistake or engaged in deception: the difference between the two is internal to them. What distinguishes the two is in their intent, not our knowledge. What we know is irrelevant to whether or not they lied. What we know and what they actually did are two distinct things.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:29
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Josef bugman posted:That's sad. I dunno, I'm glad I kicked off the conversation, but I'm sorry if I've been stupid. It has been a good conversation and I have certainly clarified some of my thinking to myself by having to set it down in a somewhat organized manner. Our Sunday minister was describing dialectic in the sermon this Sunday (it is a University Chapel) and one of the points he made was that dialectic is a conversation and people cannot leave a conversation in the same place they entered it. We engage in dialectic here and I think everyone ends up in a new place than we were before. I don't think you are stupid at all and you definitely care a lot. I think that you just may be a bit rigid in how you value things and in how you seek only universals rather than recognizing (and perhaps valuing) the inherent subjectivity of the experience of being human which is ultimately where our lives are situated. Just my thoughts...
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Nov 1, 2022 12:35
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Nessus posted:I think being willing to test even your cherished assumptions and beliefs is valuable. But there is a tendency which I think is often celebrated, due to a mix of entertainment value and emotional utility, which instead centers the idea of criticism— it makes critique into the highest good, even exceeding actual action towards the good. Yes, as a practical example it can be very easy elevate critique to the level where you become "that guy" who in the meeting always points out the problems with anything that is proposed but never actually offers any solutions. The critique may be valid but if it never actually leads anywhere then it is pretty useless and everyone will just tune it out (and be justified in doing so).
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Nov 2, 2022 14:35
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Prurient Squid posted:Believing that there's just one people all with the same interests living in harmony is the most totalitarian assumption there is. The right to strike, the right to protest, the right to sue in court all take as their starting to point that there are conflicting economic interests and a certain scope of legitimate antagonistic struggle. If there really was just one common interest then any person sewing discontent would have to be insane for opposing society and the only right course would be to put them in a mental hospital. I think it would be fair to say that from a Christian perspective there is supposed to be one concern that is primary, paramount, and universal for all people at all places at all times and in every situation: the Kingdom of God (or however your denomination chooses to name it). There are other things to be concerned about but from a Christian perspective that is the one that must be primary and I think Christ is very clear on this point. Of course this is less practically helpful then it first seems because the first thing we Christians start to do is argue about what the "Kingdom of God" actually means This is also where I think some of the social Gospel misinterpretes the rich man a bit: the reason that the rich man should give away his riches is not mainly because it is kind and moral (although these are good reasons) but because the riches are a distraction from the Kingdom of God: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also".
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Nov 23, 2022 15:02
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JcDent posted:I'd say the real distinction here for Christians is that we shouldn't be advocating for literally eating the rich or making excited proclamations about who's going against the wall. Yes, even if we consider being rich to be intrinsically sinful (not a position I necessarily hold but one that is certainly defensible) we from a Christian perspective are not allowed to hate the rich or hope for their pain and suffering. Two of the collects read in my church on various Sundays of the year say (in part): "Oh Lord who hatest nothing that Thou hast made and forgivest all them that are penitent" and "Lord who desirest not the death of a sinner but rather that he turn from his wickedness and live". The path of hatred and a desire for revenge on those we view as sinful is not open to us as Christians. Absolutely we can (and must) call out the sin but we must desire that the sinner repent and be made whole again rather than that they somehow "get what's coming to them". And I am no saint: I have the same susceptibility to hate and the desire for revenge as anyone else. We can be aware of the path we should follow but that does not make it easy.
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Nov 23, 2022 16:40
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Prurient Squid posted:OK, open question. Why do governments and quasi-state institutions carry out measures of repression? What's the purpose? In addition to things mentioned above: because the people making the decisions believe it is "necessary" and/or "for the greater good" or some variation thereof. And remember: at the end of the day it is always people who are making the choices.
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Nov 23, 2022 18:37
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Josef bugman posted:Partially. But let's take car ownership as an example. I know it causes problems and is killing the planet. But if I don't have one I cannot get to work or drive my girlfriend to work. What choice do I have in a situation where the only real options are "starve/lose your home" and "contribute to a social evil". Even trying to do better elsewhere doesn't make up for the damage done. Indeed, the choices that people make are always constrained. My point is that when an organization does something it is not some abstract, disembodied entity: at the end of the day it is some set of people who have determined (often unknowingly and at cross-purposes) on what is going to happen and all of them will have constraints, blind spots, passions, hopes, and bad days that affect the decisions they make. You can't take the people out of human affairs!
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Nov 23, 2022 19:00
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Tias posted:I mean Indeed, wealth and the concern for it normally distract us from The Kingdom of God which is why the rich man should get rid of all his wealth (and realy the means by which this is to be done is secondary although certainly Christ gives suggestions). However in theory it is possible that someone could be wealthy and yet be able not to have that wealth distract them from The Kingdom of God. I would guess it to be unlikely but it may be possible. Basically I draw a distinction between the material wealth (value- neutral in-and-of itself) and the effect it has on the person who holds it (often but not always negative and in most cases probably mixed with a lot of other things). I think maintaining such distinctions is very important but I understand if others don't which is why I say that the position that the rich are inherently sinful is very defensible even if I think it is an oversimplification of the issue. To consider it another way: I certainly agree with the statement that in our current state all people are inherently sinful (and that is basic doctrine for me). The rich are in a particularly dangerous state because they have so much treasure in the wrong place that it is almost (maybe completely?) impossible for them to get their treasure in the right place and thus are particularly likely to be living in certain types of sin. That is a statement I would agree with completely. And to be clear: I am not saying "oh those poor rich people, they are the true victims, we need to have particular sympathy for them" or any crap like that. I think I am more pointing out that from a Christian perspective sin may manifest differently in different situations but fundamentally the sin of the rich and the poor is still of the same nature: separation from The Kingdom of God. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Nov 24, 2022 |
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Nov 24, 2022 14:46
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Prurient Squid posted:I just wonder. Do people when they leave politics forget the ideals that once inspired them and only remember the enemies and frenemies and slights and bellow-the-belt blows, the memory of which are lodged in their nervous system? I would guess that operating in a combative environment like that might cause some lasting damage. I would also hypothesize that over time the ideals and goals you have may become so personified in those who supported or opposed you that after a while the ideals and persons can no longer be psychologically separated.
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Nov 24, 2022 15:46
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Earwicker posted:Marx was a foreigner living in the capital of a massive colonial empire, i think it is generally uncontroversial to say that works published under his name were written directly by himself and in some cases his co-writers, who are credited as such. It is worth noting, however that from a Christian perspective we consider the Gospels to be an accurate representation (although certainly not in the fundamtalist-literal sense of American evangelical Christianity) of the teachings of Christ. That is of course not a historical-critical perspective but that is not the framework we necessarily use when developing doctrine and the truth of the Gospel message is a point of doctrine for most Churches that I am aware of.
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Nov 24, 2022 20:43
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Josef bugman posted:Things must be analysed in order to make sense. Up to a point. Analysis is a process that often has no logical end so if you want to actually do something you need to figure out when you know enough to start doing and then actually start doing. I can't count the number of projects that I have been involved in that fizzled before they even got started due to people refusing to stop analyzing even though there was certainly enough knowledge to get going. You may not need to know that it is a spear or an arrow that has impaled you, you may only need to know how to safely remove an object of that size.
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Nov 29, 2022 17:06
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Josef bugman posted:"If something can't stand up to analysis and scrutiny does it deserve to exist?" Eventually that gets applied to the person and, often, we can't stand the glare of ourselves. Depends on the analysis. I could do a profit-based analysis that concludes that we should work orphans to death because it would increase profits. I personally would not conclude that my current position that we should not work orphans to death should be discarded because it does not stand up to that analysis. Analysis is just a process. You can analyze the same thing different ways and come to different conclusions based on how you have analysed it. Analysis is not in-and-of-itself moral or immoral, good or bad, it is just one thing that you can do and the results of a given analysis are not necessarily valuable depending upon you viewpoint. Edit: also worth remembering to separate the analysis (a process) from the conclusions (the end-product of the process). The conclusions arise from the analysis but they are separate from it. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 18:55
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When discussions like this come up I always remember the line towards the end of Unforgiven where William Muny is about to shot the sheriff who protests that he "does not deserve this". William Muny replies "deserve ain't got nothing to do with it". Although the context is very different I have generally found that "deserve ain't got nothing to do with it" is a very useful maxim to keep in mind when considering whether a person "should" live or die - deserve just is not a useful concept in this situation.
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Nov 30, 2022 19:57
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Josef bugman posted:I am so sorry I have never seen a single one of those bits of media and have no idea how they relate to what you are attempting to communicate. I am so so sorry I cannot give that post the response it deserves. But what we think we "should value" is also be highly dependent on the environment in which we exist. We don't just choose who we are or what we think, it is a product of nature, nurture, and also self reflection (which in turn is influenced by the first two). To go back to your example of the baby borne in Ancient Greece and the baby borne now in a "Modern Western" country: you may start with exactly the same baby but by growing up in the two different environments you will end up with two completely different people - not the same person with different experiences but two different people. Who we are is not set at birth with our life experiences painted on top somehow; who we are is actively determined by what we experience. It is impossible (and indeed highly misleading) to try and separate the two. Furthermore, this process is largely outside of our personal control; you have only a partial influence on who you are. You may be able to make some decisions about "what sort of person you want to be" but even "what sort of person you want to be" will be strongly influenced by your experiences (over which you have no control and often not even a clear understanding). As you point out this interaction is so highly complex that it is effectively unpredictable (I might even say non-deterministic for practical purposes) for any individual person in any meaningful way; as such there will always be outliers. That said, our values and what we take to be obvious are going to be products of our background in one way or another. For example you hold that some very modern values (e.g. those in power should use in a very particular way, wars of conquest are wrong, that sort of thing) are essentially "obvious" in that anyone who thinks about them would come to the same conclusions you do. You cite the fact that there are some outliers in past societies who have held views that look a bit like yours to support this but I don't think that follows for two reasons: 1) Often when you dig into these views they don't actually proceed from a place that is similar; the reasoning is completely different and the apparent similarity is often a by-product that is not very deep. The Levellers and modern socialists would probably find a lot to fight about if they actually tried to work together! 2) This observation cuts both ways: I can find plenty of outliers in our society who have views that upon deep reflection I find obviously repugnant (people of this ethnicity are lesser, slavery is a natural aspect of human life, child marriage is a-OK, I could go on) but in other societies would have been considered just fine and indeed in some cases bedrocks of social stability; they only seem obviously repugnant to me because of my background (putting on my secular hat). Many of our modern values may have been, upon deep reflection, just as obviously repugnant to people in other societies. Imaging how disgusted you would be by someone suggesting it was OK for you to marry a 10-year old; now consider that Marcus may have been just as disgusted by the suggestion that he abandon what he considered to be his duties as the Emperor to expand the glory of Rome. You don't need to agree with his position it but you must be willing to entertain the possibility that he would have felt that way if you want to actually understand him. My point is not that we all need to be moral relativists or anything like that (obviously taking off my secular hat I have a very clear idea of what I consider to be the universal baseline) but we need to be aware that most of what we think is obvious and clear is not so. We need to be willing to approach the past on its own terms if we actually want to understand it. We also need to be aware that our own values, even the ones we hold most dear and think are the most self-evident, are actually much more contingent and less obvious than we think they are. Just because someone in Classical Rome had some ideas about what power relationships should be that look a bit modern does not mean that they are actually similar to what we think; does not mean that a considered, kind, compassionate, and intelligent person in Classical Rome would agree with them; and indeed does not even imply that the someone was actually correct!
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Dec 6, 2022 03:44
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Bar Ran Dun posted:I’d be careful to not get too much towards the black slate. Twin studies of separated twins often show remarkable similarity in preferences. If one has been a parent, one may find many startling things heritable in one’s children (and not culturally heritable.) Indeed, and I would say that the difference in expression means that they are different people It is not that each baby is just a blank slate on which the person is imprinted but it is also not the case that the baby is somehow the complete final person and their upbringing is just "flavour". The two interact together in amazing and (often beautiful and joyful) ways to form the person at any given moment in their life. I would also say that the person is never "finished": I am different person than I was ten years ago and a expect to be a different person again ten years hence - to my mind that is a beautiful and wonderful thing
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Dec 6, 2022 13:43
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Prurient Squid posted:Eric Hobsbawm once argued that you cannot be a nationalist without misunderstanding your nations history. I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to be a "traditionalist" without being very largely ignorant of Christianity's real traditions. I follow a particular Christian tradition as developed in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (in daily practice the Canadian 1962 revision although I actually think the 1662 edition has much to recommend it, particularly in the form of the Communion service). In my Diocese this marks me as "traditional" but I would never claim that the tradition I follow is the only valid one and I am quite happy to study and understand others. I also would not claim my tradition somehow "recaptures" true primitive Christianity - it evolves out of a specific set of circumstances in the 16th and 17th centuries AD - and that does not bother me one whit: we are always able to learn more and our relationship to the Kingdom of God is never finished or static. This is the tradition that I love and brings me closer to God! This is a pretty good blog post someone shared that gets a bit at how I feel about the Prayer Book: https://thewomanfredi.blogspot.com/2022/10/off-by-heart-love-letter-to-book-of.html?m=1
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Dec 6, 2022 18:09
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Prurient Squid posted:I'm thinking about the idea that all ideologies should be judged by "their fruits" and actually I don't agree with this. That sort of gives me the image that world history is a big old-timey computer and there are different punch cards labeled Islam, Christianity, Arab Nationalism, Marxism etc... and you just insert the punch cards into the machine and it goes beep boop and then you patiently wait for the verdict. Broadly speaking I think I agree with this assessment and particularly the fact that it is very hard to use the events of history to judge the "value" of an idea. History is so confused and contingent that it is often impossible to say that a given thing directly lead to some particular outcome: would thing X always happen because of system Y or is it only because of a specific interaction with person Z at exactly time T and if any of those has changed slightly would the outcome have been completely different? History is not inevitable! That also touches on another point that I think is sometimes missed: I don't think most people hold their religious beliefs (or most others for that matter) as a result of some sort of moral optimization process. For example I am not Christian because I have examined all of the moral content of all system out there and based on that decided that Anglican Christianity is "best". Rather I am looking for "Truth": in my experience of reality Christianity is "True" and at the end of the day I that experience of reality is what I have to go on. This is always in flux of course and I have been effectively atheist at various point in my life but that feeling of Truth keeps calling me back. The the virtues of the moral system are not the primary reason that I an Christian.
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Dec 7, 2022 21:58
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Prurient Squid posted:I feel a distinct voice that is emerging in this thread is "fanatic anti-elitist who nevertheless has disdain for ordinary people". I don't really know how to circle that square. Maybe it's an American experience. I think I know the type of thinking you are referencing with this but I would be interested in knowing where you feel you are seeing it in this thread. A_Bluenoser fucked around with this message at 14:35 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 14:15
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Prurient Squid posted:I don't understand why what I said is so controversial. Haven't multiple people said "people don't want socialism, they want to personally get ahead", "people don't even want a meritocracy, they want advancement for themselves even by nepotism". It's not a very flattering portrait of the ordinary man on the street. But I'm not going to continue down this road because it's not my vibe. But those are not claims about "the ordinary man" but rather about everyone: we are all open to the sins of wanting to "get ahead" even at the expense of our neighbors, myself included! It is not that "we can't have nice things because of some lumpen degenerate proletariat but of course I know better" which is what your comment seemed to imply. I also not directly in response to you but more in relation to discussions about "what people want" in general: think it is very important to try and understand where people are coming from and actually try to sympathize with them rather than just thinking them "wrong" or "degenerate". Often you may still end up disagreeing with them but from a position of sympathy and equity rather than of condemnation and superiority; it is easy for the proletariat to start to look quite "lumpen" if you are not careful!
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Dec 13, 2022 15:31
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Killingyouguy! posted:Reddit atheist hot take: unflattering portraits of the ordinary man are religions bread and butter. "everyone inherently deserves hell, man cannot create anything good, only God creates good things" "people trying to eke out any pleasure out of life are actually fools who are perpetuating their own misery" etc so why be surprised The term "religion" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
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Dec 13, 2022 16:19
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Prurient Squid posted:Hopefully that's going to change. Thing is I haven't been on any picket lines recently because my nerves are just destroyed. I don't think any political system is inevitable; history is not inevitable!
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Dec 13, 2022 16:31
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docbeard posted:I'm no Catholic but this example seems pretty clear to me. Also not Roman Catholic and not that I disagree with what you say at all but I don't think that this passage is a particularly clear example of unconditional forgiveness. This is not a story about Christ forgiving a repenting sinner (and indeed there is no indication in the story that the woman repents) but rather about not standing in judgment over someone from the position of self-righteousness: this story is about the judges rather than the judged. Note that Christ says "and sin no more" which one could even use as a counter to the argument that it directs forgiveness to the repeat sinner. She is forgiven but it is to some degree incidental to the main point of the story which is the condemnation of the self-righteous judges. If the priest is refusing absolution from a sense of self-righteousness then fair enough, the story applies: if not then we may need to look elsewhere. Again not to disagree at all with your main point that a priest withholding absolution is problematic in the highest (although ultimately authorized in theory I suppose: "whosoever's sins ye forgive, they are forgiven and whosoever's sins ye retain, they are retained" and all that) but I don't know that this passage is the clearest argument for that. Not trying to be argumentative and apologies if this came off as such but peeling this sort of thing to find unexpected meanings is a bit of a passion of mine.
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Dec 19, 2022 16:13
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Glory to the newborn King! Merry Christmas all!
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Dec 25, 2022 02:10
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Tias posted:It's folk christian, which is to say extremely pagan with a thin coat of christianity on top I personally don't think this is at all a useful or correct way of thinking: "Folk Christianity" is still Christianity and the syncretic practices become Christian when done in the Christian context.
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Jan 9, 2023 14:27
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