So, I was listening to Waldo and Magic yesterday (by Robert A. Heinlein) while I did some stuff around the house. I have to listen to a book while cleaning/packing because, you see, otherwise I get bored. And when I get bored I wander off and things are left undone. So, I was listening to the book and doing stuff, and was charmed in Waldo (mild spoilers) by the notion that we set reality. What we believed was true. Before Galileo’s theories (He wasn’t the first one) were accepted the Earth was at the center of the universe and flat and the sun was a light in the sky, and you could touch the sky from the highest mountain. With a ladder.
There is something oddly comforting in thinking that all the perplexities of the universe, all the complications of our current existence, are all of them in our mind, and we could wish them differently.
Yes, I know there is some support for the idea that our mind affects more than should rationally be possible. There might be a basis for faith healing and, yep, the whole universe might be a hologram affected by the mind – BUT NOT LIKE THAT. (Which is too bad because if it were, we could totally decide the solar system planets were habitable, and we could have colonies on the moon this year. Pasturing cattle. Never mind.)
But influenced by the mind or not, reality both of the world and the human mind has hard edges that won’t bend or soften because we want it to.
There are inflexible laws to both how external reality works and how internal reality works. Things don’t happen just because you close your eyes and believe really hard. And people really believe that, modern people, like us. Take, for instance DNC attendees convinced they could levitate the Denver Mint.)
The thing we have to remember is that this doesn’t mean these people are stupid, or even mentally ill in the classical sense. Their issue is closer to Reagan’s “they know so many things that just aren’t so.” And to an extent that’s because the Geeks have inherited the Earth. And to an extent it is because communism fell.
To explain: I used to wonder if magic had ever worked, because why would our ancestor, living tight, close to the bone, and lives of really loud desperation (compared to us) invest so much time in something that never paid off.
This question is not exactly true. It did pay off to an extent, physically, since a lot of natural healing, or other basic but weird learning went under the name of “magic” and those parts worked. What I underestimated and what I am slowly coming to understand, in the face of the insanity of feminists, in SFWA and out, in the face of the insanity of communists because “this time it will work” and in the face of the summer of recovery two and three and four and five and… which people still believe in, is that such beliefs even when they didn’t work, worked.
The world has always been too hard for some percentage of humans. The mind has always been unable to face reality naked. What I mean is, for those of us who believe in something more, it’s easy to say “He won’t give me more than I can handle,” but what about the others? What about those who’ve convinced themselves that there’s nothing but humans, nothing but the naked human mind and the uncaring universe. I don’t mean the ones who have some measure of doubt. All of us, even the most faith-filled have some measure of doubt, and the measure changes through the days and years – I mean the ones who were brought up to believe that anything religious is crazy talk. The ones who try to be “sane” in a peculiar way no human has ever quite managed.
I normally don’t bring religion into these posts, but given the theme, it behooves us to remember that a very wise rabbi who might or might not have been something else said “Man doesn’t live from bread alone.” Even if it’s not your belief or your tradition, you have to acknowledge the wisdom in it. It has taken me years to figure it out.
Most ancient religions were magic. Most primitive religions were magic. It seems to be the base setting of human belief, something along the lines of “I pull this lever and supernatural being dances to my command.” This is something that the more sophisticated and modern churches fight against constantly, because in modern religion, it is still a temptation.
When you remove the more sophisticated religion from the choices for (eh) sophisticated humans, and when those humans aren’t sophisticated enough to face the world with a naked mind (and most people aren’t) you get magic again.
Only this time because the Geeks have conquered the Earth, we get magic with a justification. They know just enough about a quantum universe and the crazier theories at the fringe of science, and they’ve read Diana Wynne Jones or similar, where magic will work on Earth if enough people believe it. They know just enough to convince their sophisticated minds that this time, if we believe enough it will work.
Why this is suddenly, incredibly important (and the reason why mainstream publishing has for decades been pushing fantasy over science fiction – not as a plan, but as a coping mechanism for themselves) is that communism fell. Their “religion” fell. It was proven false.
In the early nineties European communists looked dazed, as the truth about the Soviet Union came out. They stumbled around like living dead.
American communists were more insulated because our papers never published the full insanity and evil that went on in communist countries.
There were a lot more communists in America than you think, and many who didn’t (still don’t) know they’re communist. What they want is indistinguishable from the program of CPUSA, but they don’t know it. They think it’s only “logical” and “sensible” and what “all good people think.” This is because they were taught this by parents, grandparents, schools.
The point is they can’t face it. They can’t face the history that Marxism has failed everywhere it was tried. (Yesterday I read an article about Marxism and how Marx’s theory of immiseration has failed miserably and even Marx would laugh at the sorry asses of modern “Marxists” but I can’t find it. If any of you read it, throw me a link? I didn’t even know that, of course, because my teachers had bought into “third world immiseration” — which doesn’t make any sense, not even remotely, because their lives have been getting better too, unless their local leaders are communists, in which case it functions as well as for everyone else. Salamandyr found it and here’s the link.) Instead they put hands in ears and go “this time will be different.”
This is because they believe in magic. Oh, most of them, unless they are hard core fans, are not so silly that they CALL it magic and most of them wouldn’t try to do something so stupid as to try to levitate the Denver Mint.
But they believe in magic nonetheless, at the gut level where it might be impossible to eradicate it from the human psyche except with the aid of the more evolved religions.
They believe in magic at the level of “if we do what’s ‘right’” then the right things will happen. Except what they believe is right is part of the religion of Marxism or one of the curious subsets that have emerged, such as radical feminism or “downtrodden race supremacy.”
In this universe, while it’s completely crazy to raise taxes in a recession, it’s still the “right” thing from a moral point of view, because finite pie, and everything the rich stole belongs to us. (The idea of “You didn’t create that” goes deep. They literally don’t think it’s possible to create wealth.) And while the idea of killing 90% of men or preventing 90% of baby boys from being born is not only abhorrent to us, but self-obviously would create hell on earth, it’s the “right” thing to do and therefore doing it should bring rewards they’ve learned to expect.
To us this is heinous, to them it’s an article of faith. If you truly believe women are naturally superior and more peaceful (yay, magic vaginas!) then NOT making sure 90% of humanity are female would be evil. And they truly believe this. It only requires them to ignore EVERY real woman they know, but faith is like that.
Fortunately they can’t try out the second one. The first one is being done by the sneaky means of printing a lot of money and thereby devaluing all savings and denuding the middle class.
And they’re trying a lot of other crazy, self-obviously dangerous and stupid things, like apologizing to third world dictators and appeasing tyrants. To us, this is dangerous and insane, but to them it’s the right thing, and so it SHOULD bring peace.
See, the problem is that if they accept communism was wrong, wrong from the beginning, that it was a cult and as a cult it has failed to produce results, the emotional pain will kill them. So they believe that if we all just wanted it really hard, and if they do all “the right” things, it will work. “This time it will work.”
It’s no coincidence that both communists and Nazis were obsessed with researching the supernatural. At some level they knew that was the only way it would “work.”
Our ancestors held on to crazy beliefs because it made it easier to live in a world where most of what they thought they knew was wrong and more often than not bit them in the ass.
Our “liberal” friends are in the same pickle. And no, I don’t know how to fix it, because no, rubbing their nose in reality doesn’t help. If the reality of the mess the USSR really was didn’t fix them, if they can believe Che “I club children to death with my riffle” Guevara was a sort of sensitive idealist, if they can believe this lousy economy is “recovering”, if they can believe, against all history, that bowing and scraping to tyrants like Putin will bring peace…. We can’t reach them. What can we use that will get through?
Nothing. And attempts to try make them uncomfortable and lead them to more psychotic responses. Hence why the Social Justice Whiners of SFF have now CONVINCED themselves that they live in a sort of chattel servitude and that until their enlightened selves appeared on the scene SF/F was all wall to wall white males writing about machinery. This only requires them to ignore the last fifty years of publication history. It’s much easier to believe than that you can levitate a building in the middle of Denver. Child’s play.
And yes, they’re mad at us, because at some level they “know” that if we all JUST believed the same way, the world would work the way they want it to. We’re keeping them form their paradise. It would all be lovely if we just let them do the “right things.” (Which involves, variously the rest of us “shutting up” or “going away and dying.”)
It won’t of course. Reality has sharp edges that won’t bend. As sure as the fire will burn, their attempts to do what they learned is the right thing will only bring more pain. Because what they learned is the “right” thing has nothing to do with reality. It is — not even religious — a magic belief, with no basis in reality. And so it will fail.
But that will only make them crazier.
Is there a point where the tide turns? I don’t know. The human mind is an amazing, supple thing. Justifying is what it does. Civilizations have had their “hit bottom, turn around” moments, but the thought of what it would take for that makes my blood run cold and I don’t think we’re headed for that – not in our life times, at least.
So what comes next? I don’t know. They will continue to shrill for a long time. Louder, as things get worse. Just be ready for that.
And teach the children well. There is some indication that at least the kids can see reality, once they’re out of school some years. At least some of them. (The crazy we’ll always have with us.)
There will always be some people trying to levitate the Denver Mint or its equivalent. Some people really need fluffy pink clouds around the edges of their reality. But provided we stop now, and combat everywhere we can the bizarre idea that communism is the most advanced form of government and that we’re inevitably headed there, we should eventually be all right.
Oh, not in my life time, and possibly not in the lifetime of anyone reading this. But this mess started before we were born. We’re in it for the long game.
Just keep fighting, and be aware that for a while the response is not going to be just hateful, or just crazy. The response is going to be bonkers (as well as hateful and repugnant.)
If we’re very lucky, the world won’t end in chickens, and the species will recover from this wobble and go on.
According To Hoyt 
Lots to think about on this one, I’ll be back with fuller thoughts, but I remembered this from yesterday. I think this was either the article you were reading or this post is discussing the same article you were reading (about Marxist immiseration)
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/349442.php
Thank you!
Heh, I was going to post the link to the actual article from Ace, but I had to go find it at AoSHQ 1st. And Salamandyr already beat me to it.
Here it is anyway 😉
http://denbeste.nu/external/Harris02.html
Salamndyr is faster than the eye can follow!
It helps me to run back under the log when exposed to daylight!
That was quick…..
Deep down the moonbats’ secret desire is to find a way to hold our heads and force us to drink their kool-aide. As you say, then all will be well, their vision will be forced into reality. Or so their core belief system tells them. Eventually this will kill them, sadly, not near soon enough.
But reality pushes back. The MSM feeds us pap, so the masses gravitate to Fox and the interweb. Mainstream publishing actively seeks to force their world view on the reader, just look at the success of Baen and indie. Every rule and regulation inflicted upon us to make things “fair” only drives the real economy further underground.
On the positive side change is upon us, and change always brings opportunity for those with the guts to grab hold and ride the critter. You, bless you, are already doing some of that with your indie efforts. And I say bless you because you’re not only making your own way in this new field, but encouraging others to do likewise with practical step by step advice. I’ve already steered several budding authors to your writings for their encouraging and helpful instruction.
I was once at a con where some panelists assured me that education would bring about their utopia. The notion that that would bring back the gulag, aka re-education camps, shocked the wits out of them.
I was at a con when it was pointed out teachers are fallible and an icon of the field — swear I’m not lying — and a writer I PERSONALLY enjoy/have enjoyed in the past, said “We should have robot teachers.”
Well, comes the day when AI can truly pass a Turing test, that may very well come to be. And all the less than stellar teachers in the job for the security and prestige will quickly find themselves redundant.
But until such time as a robot can equal the best teachers, the ones that can inspire a student to develop a thirst for knowledge and a desire to excel in their chosen area of study,
A major fault with our current education system is the number of in the flesh robots in so many teaching positions. So I guess my real question is: how could robots make things any worse?
Hackers.
“I Always do What Teddy Says” Harry Harrison
Who tells the robots what to teach? And what students would reject the authority of the more-perfect robot teacher to learn for themselves?
That’s just…dumb. Dumb as a box of rocks. On toast without butter. Maybe, MAYBE if we had a Dahak ala Mutineer’s Moon that could be something worth considering, but only considering. Robots are not fricking magical! They’re dumb computers running dumb software written by inconsistent, error prone, fallible beings that occasionally approximate human beings (I have a BS in Computer Science…I are what I speak of, though I do hardware and only do development when I’m bored* or the developers can’t figure it out.). You can’t get something out of a computer that is better than what is put into it. As the saying goes, garbage in, garbage out.
What we need is educators that educate instead of indoctrinate. What we need is a system that supports that goal instead of squashing it.
* Okay, I’m frequently bored, but bored enough to program happens about once every other year. And rarely do I have the urge for more than five minutes or so.
Just for clarification, my comment is in response to Sarah’s post, not Uncle Lar’s…he posted before mine did.
Robots are not fricking magical! They’re dumb computers running dumb software written by inconsistent, error prone, fallible beings that occasionally approximate human beings (I have a BS in Computer Science…I are what I speak of, though I do hardware and only do development when I’m bored* or the developers can’t figure it out.)
Aaah, but according to too many people these days, they absolutely are. I can’t count the number of times that people are looking at the industrial world crumbling apart around them, and conclude that this is because we don’t need it any more, because the robots will be doing all the work.
(Does that include all the thinking too? Where do these robots come from? Do you actually have a clue what any of this work entails, such that you could even program a robot to do it? Have you even done the blinky light program on an Arduino? )
Other good ones are: “The pilot was prevented from deploying the landing gear due to a faulty altitude sensor. Clearly, what is needed is more intelligent computers to fly our planes.”
“Isn’t it crazy that people are allowed to drive?! They are so unsafe! In the future, robots will drive all our cars, and humans won’t be *allowed* to operate machinery!”
Ehgads. I completely agree with you, and it’s one of my own soapbox points.
The two latter attitudes, by the way, is why we were closer to having flying cars in the 1950s than we are now.
I still remember the pundits whose reaction to Y2K issues was why can’t the computers just figure it out, because they are so smart.
If you’re not familiar with Jack Williamson’s _With Folded Hands_, I recommend it. And then giving copies to the people who think that all risky activities should be handled by robots.
What’s scary is that I suspect that too many would like the Humanoids to be in charge. They’d be safe, well feed and not have to work. [Frown]
Unfortunately, they’ll take a lot of others with them.
From my viewpoint– the -isms are in an anti-magic field zone that they have made with their minds. When something works (felt this a few times in my life) it’s euphoric (like having all the stop lights turn green as you reach the intersection).
I believe in magic, but I always figured that magic is like that story about the guy stuck on a rooftop in a flood, praying for deliverance and then getting the boats and helicopters and whatever which he refuses because he expects something flashier, like an angel coming to carry him over the waters, and then when he drowns he gets scolded by god or Peter or somebody for having been too dumb to take what had been offered – he did get his miracles, several times, but he didn’t notice because they looked too ordinary.
With luck magic, or prayer, can bend the reality to give you opportunities, but you then need to notice them and grab them when they come, and you still have to do the heavy lifting yourself the mundane way. But it can’t change the whole of reality in any major ways.
So a big part of the game is to try and figure out the rules too.
And I guess I see life as something like that. A game, perhaps meant to educate, perhaps existing for some other reason. But the bad parts are absolutely necessary because being challenged is a big part of this. Perhaps the main part. You won’t really learn unless you keep getting challenged, again and again, in different ways. And you can’t always win either. Learning how to cope with losing is also an important part, even when those losses can be a game over.
So creating a paradise on Earth would be pointless, even if it could be done. And it can’t be done. There will always be challenges, and any ‘happily ever after’ is always going to be just a temporary stage in real life. If you’re very lucky it may be a personal happily ever after, but that’s the best you can hope for.
But then, I also believe in reincarnation, at least in some form. Well, thinking like this is what works for me. Thinking that even if I were to lose the whole game this time I can probably play again and can maybe do better then – and that there may be a point to losing too – makes losing bearable and helps me to keep on trying. Because I also believe that learning how to play so that you _do_ win as often as possible is also one of the points of being here (and learning to see when you did win and when you did lose, which is not always self-evident either. Part of figuring out the rules).
I had an English teacher in High School that used to say “they lived happily ever after — with a few problems.” That was based on her viewpoint that without a few problems to overcome, life would be dreary and uninspiring. It’s helped me out a few times…
There was an old Science Fiction story that ended with “and they lived happily ever after – but it wasn’t always easy.” I think I read it in a 50’s or 60’s Analog. Remember the line but not the story name.
I’ve always remembered the ending of Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon, though not verbatim. “They did not live happily ever after, but they lived as happily as they could for as long as they could.” An admirable sentiment, IMNSHO.
The traditional end to German fairy tales is “And if they have not died, they are living still.” (“Und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, dann leben sie nach Heute.”)
I’m tempted to append that to every bit of flash fic I see my friends post now, just for my own amusement.
Lazarus Long in “The man who was too lazy to fail.”–“And as far as I know, he’s there still.”
It positively sings in the original German, doesn’t it? The translation is much less effective as a formula.
Yes, it does. The flow’s truly lost in translation.
The original, as I just observed, can be sung to the tune of ‘Amazing Grace’ (or if you prefer, ‘The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island’). The English translation can’t be sung to anything, really.
Other German tales end — look, there runs a little mouse, and whoever catches it can make a great fur hat out of its hide.
In the Appalachians they often ended their tales, “And last time I went around to see them they were doing all right.”
“The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.”
― G.K. Chesterton
“Then they moved to North America, where one day a passerby happened to spot an altercation through the window; the passerby laughed with great amusement when the princess threw a chair at the prince, but drew up aghast with horror when the prince hurled back a cushion, and promptly telephoned the police. Within the hour the prince was in jail and the princess in tears begging for his release, while her case worker explained with great somberness of mien to the police that the princess was clearly codependently neurotic and should not be listened to. And if they have not died, they are living still.”
Yea– I am with you
Great post. Please explain, once more, what “the world will end in chickens” means.
Thank you!
Oh. My younger kid woke up one morning and while having breakfast (probably still dreaming. He wakes SLOWLY.) Told me “I’ve seen the end. It all ends in chickens.” When fully awake he couldn’t explain it, so Kate used the resurrected rubber chickens in the end of Convent (?)
Since then “the world end in chickens” has become a by word in our little group for “Stupid things make it ‘the end of the world'”
Yup ConVent. Ruined the next academic meeting banquet for me, by the way. I kept looking at the rolls and chicken and fighting not to snicker.
I shall tell Kate she did a good job.
I read ConVent shortly after Sarah had told the story about the quote, so when I got to that in the book, I spewed so hard, I could hardly talk for five minutes.
Having dealt with chickens, “it all ends in chickens” is a glimpse into a personal hell. I will NOT be sleeping well tonight…
When I was about 12, my mother decided to take advantage of Sears getting out of the poultry business, and bought 400 fertilized eggs and four brooders at a ridiculously low price. She expected to lose anywhere from a third to half of them, so didn’t think 400 would be a problem. IIRC, we lost less than a dozen. The poults came in early March. By September, we were up to our eye teeth in chickens, and the chickens were just the right size to cut up and freeze. We spent the next month slaughtering, plucking, cutting up, and freezing over 300 chickens. It filled our freezer, my grandmother’s freezer, and my cousin’s freezer. We ate chicken twice to three times a week for the next year.
I’m with Rob…
Growing up, several families in our church owned farms that among other things produced eggs commercially. As anyone familiar with the process knows an egg farmer culls the hens every year. Older, less productive, and any troublemakers that pecked eggs or got in too many fights met the axe. So the church ladies had a chicken party. The farmer did the axe work and the ladies did the rest, big pots of scalding water and stewed chicken put up in Mason jars. Stewed chicken over biscuits was a staple at our church dinners. Never cared for it all that much at the time, but I surely do miss it now.
One of my husband’s favorite dishes is a chicken and noodle-style dumpling dish over potatoes (TWO starches, yes.) It’s very, very good and I feel as though I missed out as a child.
There never has been and never will be anything to equal mom’s slow stewed chicken with new (freshly picked and just shelled) peas. NOTHING. Just a little garlic, some onion, (caramelize the onion in the olive soil, then set aside while browning chicken. Then put it all back in.) olive oil. brown the chicken, then add JUST a little bit of water (a sweetish table wine will do too, but only a little so as not to overpower the peas/chicken) salt and pepper to taste. Cover tightly. Stew chicken 5 hours or so, then add peas. Cook another half hour to 40 minutes. Serve with toasted bread to soak up the liquid (adding a little bit of flour to the liquid sort of making it into gravy is an option.) mmmmmmmmmmmm.
I’m sitting here trying to decide on lunch — and you lay out a tantalizing dish that takes 6 HOURS?!?
E. Vul. You. Combine as necessary.
You’d have to get new peas. they’re better if you grow them yourself, so they go from vine to pot…
So — I see you’re liberal with your portions of E and Vul.
Always…
😐
I’m eating. It’s not enticing slow cooked chicken. Might as well be straw. Taste my tears and anguish.
Oh, right, shy and retiring. Pardon me, I’ll see myself out…
If you start now, you’re ready for supper.
Also, Mr. Crockpot is your stewing friend.
As I understand our host’s clarification, if I start now I’ll be ready to water the pea plants by supper…
Probably ought to start on the coop for the fresh chicken, too.
You MUST have a farmer’s market nearby?
Now shopping. You know, you could just call it a secret recipe?
Chickens should be ready to butcher in a couple more weeks . . . peas are a good six inches (somehow, chickens didn’t eat them yet).
Might have to give this one a try, though the peas are the lazy kind where you can eat the pod.
I love peas where you eat the pod. It’s one of my weaknesses in life.
Do it this way – brown the chicken and caramelize the onions the night before, then put all but the peas in a crock pot in the morning and add the peas a half hour before taking it all out.
I see suburbanbanshee beat me to the crock pot suggestion. I really need to learn to read further downthread before adding my own comments.
Speaking of peas in yummy dishes, when I was still living with my parents, we would have “peas and new potatoes” when the first of the potatoes had reached just about golf ball size. Mom made a cream sauce and put over them, and it was one of the most awesome things ever.
If you don’t have access to fresh peas, frozen new peas are your best bet. It keeps the sugars intact pretty well.
We’re already in the hot season here, but now I want this… so out of sync.
Copy-pasted and thank you. At some point I shall actually make this.
I grew up with chickens (granted layers, not fryers) Good LORD. Their IQ might improve when cut up and frozen.
So does their amenability, of course.
I have this theory every chicken is a reincarnated t-rex. And it will NEVER forgive us.
For true horror stories talk to someone who’d raised turkeys for a living. Just like chickens only more so.
Tame turkeys are dumber than any other bird known, especially those raised for the table. I grew up with turkeys as part of the family barnyard. Turkeys are the only bird known that will drown itself looking up to see where the water falling on its head is coming from. Rocks have more intelligence.
WILD turkeys, on the other hand…
I don’t know about that. I saw a wild turkey kill himself by flying at our mirrored office window thinking it was another male. Hit the window and broke it’s neck. One of my coworkers had it for dinner.
I’ve read that the “drown by looking up into the rain” story is a myth, but my father used to talk about it like he’d seen it, so I don’t know.
A guy my mom worked for had a really bad year when it happened to them.
I’ve also seen biologists assure folks that the “coydog” is a myth, because coyotes can’t cross with dogs.
That would explain the way they run. Ridiculous creatures.
Depends on the breed. Our Favorite Amphibian could not understand why people thought chickens were dumb – his have roughly the IQ of the average dog. Also, they’re pack-hunting, fiercely territorial predators: several stray cats barely got out of his back yard alive. Then he got some new hens from one of the more modern breeds, and suddenly understood. The cabbage in the garden was smarter. I believe those hens got eaten pretty quickly.
I wish I could remember who said something like this: ‘There are animals that are dumber than chickens, and there may even be some that are more malicious, but not even humans can beat them on a combined point score.’
Yep. Our family raised 50 every summer, to provide for Sunday dinners the rest of the year. I got fairly good at plucking…
I understand T.S. Eliot ‘s first draft read “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a chicken.”
Ah! So you too have read the purged (because too scary) version!
“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the chickens began to take hold.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a chicken.”
“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Chicken held illimitable dominion over all.”
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead chicken.”
I like the middle one 😉
You won’t fool me, young man! It’s chickens all the way down!”
I’ve been to Hoboken.
Once upon a time, in a hole in there ground, there lived a chicken.
“On one otherwise normal Tuesday evening I had the chance to live the American dream. I was able to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss from a fourteen-story chicken.”
🙂
whoa? A fourteen story chicken is the thing of nightmares.
YES– I used to tend chickens. They make for great nightmares (chickenmares? or nightchickens?)
May have to add chickenmares to the bestiary, soon as I figure out what goes where. As to nightchickens? *shudder*
ummm… so maybe not for the kiddies, but her ya go… (from the folks at troma)
Not 14 stories, but pretty sure i’m gonna have issues sleeping tonight all the same.
When Strackzynski was a writer for “The Real Ghostbusters” he wrote an episode where a fellow summoned Satan, but his wish? Not Power, Fame or Glory, He wanted Satan to eliminate ALL chickens from the world.
whoa. A deal with the devil I can understand. Unfortunately they’re useful as a food source, and people would starve.
Apparently the genesis of the story is the animation studio office was next to a chicken processing plant, and they wondered who would run such a place. “Obviously someone who really, really hated chickens.”
IIRC, Satan was pretty put out by having all the chickens in Hell.
“Things that can’t go on forever — won’t.” Around my house, this is called “The Great Slap Up Side O’ the Head.” i see it coming. I don’t look forward to it.
Yep. When the Gods of the Copybook Headings return, some people are in for a world of hurt. Okay, we all are, but some people will be unpleasantly surprised.
It’s not like they weren’t warned.
Levitating the Denver Mint? Heck, here in Canada, we used to have the Natural Law Party, who wanted to create world peace through “yogic flying”. Wish I was making this up.
Fairness to my own silly country bids me add that the Natural Law Party never got enough votes to elect even one member to Parliament. In fact, I’m pretty sure every Natural Law candidate in history lost his deposit.
(I don’t think you have this practice in the U.S. In Canada, every candidate for Parliament is required to put up some nominal sum of money, such as $1,000, along with the papers to file his candidacy. Under the old rules, if he then failed to get at least 10% of the vote, he forfeited the money. Nowadays the rules are different, and if you get 10% of the vote, the government pays a percentage of your campaign expenses for you; but the principle is much the same, and people still use ‘losing one’s deposit’ as a way of saying that a candidate failed to get 10% of the vote.)
Woodstock – trying to stop a rainstorm by chanting.
Yes.
The only things I could add are a) Naruto references b) some thoughts on post and mental illness. The mental illness side of things feels like an essay for another venue.
This is tangential to the thrust of your piece, but a while back Jonah Goldberg made the argument that the modern take on the medieval conception of the order of the cosmos is mistaken. It wasn’t, as we generally conceive that the medieval mind arrogantly placed the earth at the “center” of the universe, but that they humbly placed it at the “bottom”. We were the sludge, the muck at the bottom of the heavenly order, far removed from the rarefied heavens, and barely better than the dank pit of Hell beneath our feet.
Religious objection to the Copernican view of the universe had less to do with dashed arrogance, than with it conferred to humanity an elevated role, placing them undeservedly amongst the heavens with the angels.
I don’t have the evidence to prove it, but it does comport better with my understanding of medieval Christian humility than the common argument.
I recommend The Discarded Image, by C. S. Lewis. It describes the mediaeval world-view in scholarly detail. Goldberg’s claim, so far as you have described it, is exactly correct.
However, the theological resistance to the Copernican hypothesis had more to do with the fact that the Bible uses certain phrases about the earth being fixed and immovable, being ‘God’s footstool’, and so on. The rule was that if a scientific hypothesis contradicted the literal meaning of Scripture, then the Church had to prefer Scripture; but if the hypothesis was confirmed by the weight of the evidence, then the Church was at liberty to read the relevant passages in a figurative sense. I believe this principle was actually laid down by St. Augustine over a thousand years before Copernicus.
For a detailed discussion, see Michael Flynn’s series of articles beginning with ‘The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown’.
So the world is actually God’s office swivel chair? Does that make the Moon an Ergo wrist rest?
When Dante and Virgil got past the last circle of Hell, they did it by climbing down Satan — except that you could only climb down to his waist. From his waist to his feet, you had to climb up, because that was the point to which all things fell.
which is how it can be both the center and the bottom.
Yes I read that, and it was probably true in some places, wrong in others, true at some times and wrong at others. Humans are nothing if not inconsistent!
All the same, the idea of climbing a ladder, getting up there and giving the sky a good shine is … enthralling.
Sarah. I utterly refuse to believe that even you would touch the sky, and decide it needed to be cleaned. Now somebody go write this idea that just popped into my head. Neat freak housewife _cleaning_ (A) a UFO (2) the Afterlife (3) the Council of Star Nations Hall where she’s been taken to determine if Humans are a danger to the Universe.
If I touched the sky, I’d bring windex and a polishing cloth. TRUST me.
Well, the Greco-Roman/medieval sky (ie, the area between earth and the beginning of the heavens) was notoriously infested with demons of the air and/or reasonably neutral spirits that just liked to be pains in the butt. So they probably made a mess, even without all the bird doodoo.
Demons of the Air? Dust Bunnies, right?
Let us know if you see Jimi kissing….
We look forward to reading your version.
I have issues with the interchangeability of “belief” and “Faith”. It is my opinion that belief is capable of toxicity, and it can come in a lot of forms. And attaching the word belief to it lends it legitimacy. One person believes that private ownership of weapons is stupid, another person believes that the comet Khohoutek is come to take them to heaven, another belives that if we just do it right, communism will work. I work very hard to have no “beliefs”. I have opinions, but those opinions, since I have no “belief” invested in them, I change them when I am confronted by evidence that my opinions are incorrect. When people “believe’ something, they demand respect for those “beliefs” because, after all, it’s what they believe, right? nevermind that their belief is irrational and toxic.
I also have faith. My faith has never required me to harm anyone, and while people seek out beliefs, I have no recollection of seeking out faith. Rather, it seems to have sought me. Not everyone gets it, not one person in a hundred seems to understand what I am saying, and it’s no skin off my back.
The litmus test for me has always been this: belief tells you to shout obscenities at the funerals of soldiers, belief tells you that you are good and wogs are bad, belief tells you communism will work if it’s just tried hard enough. Belief is the visible manifestation of hucksters, conmen, snake oil salesmen and in short anyone who seeks to control someone else. Faith has none of those properties.
I’m sorry I’m not explaining myself very well. it isn’t a concept that lends itself well to explanation
(And yes, I know it was Hale-Bopp)
Yes, but their beliefs are (very loosely) coordinated into a system of faith.
I would say that for any definition of Faith which involves something divine and not something created by humans, no. Their beliefs are coordinated into a religion. Religion and faith are two distinct and separate things. if you mean “faith system” in the way you’d say “Catholic” or “moonie” or “Environmentalist” (With an emphasis on “mental”) , then yes, but I am of the opinion that the term ‘Faith” is misapplied in that instance. Possibly dangerously so.
You’ve got a very good point about “belief” (I might quibble about the true dissimilarity between belief and faith, but that’s another day). Especially in the area of scientific inquiry, if one “believes” in a scientific theory, one is wrong.
Well, at least one formulation of faith that I’m familiar with requires that the object of faith be true, so I guess I’m with you in the separation between the two of them.
Now if I could just get a better understanding of hope, and where it differs from faith, I’d be getting somewhere.
As anyone who has stepped on the tines of a previously unsuspected rake can tell you, things exist (painfully) without anyone believing in them. And what decides the order of precedence? If I believe in a pink wombat before you believe pink wombats don’t exist, but you believe harder, who wins? Won’t *somebody* think of the wombats?
I’ve been wondering how to deal with the trigger-happy Safe Space Explorers. I think something like a reverse counter-insurgency ink-blot strategy might work. We clearly delineate more and more spaces as being “unsafe” and post signs about multiple trigger warnings ahead. Then we clear and hold territory, always saying “but it is for your own safety! Yes, I know there are Ebil Men in that section. Don’t fret; I’ve had my shots and lots of training. Don’t try this at home! You go over there and put a blanket over your head so you won’t see.” Possibly some of the brighter ones will start to notice the fence is encircling *them*, but the rest will feel so safe and enlightened telling everyone else in the Safest Reservation how delicately triggered they are….
Slowly backing them into the soft goods department, then cornering them in the pillow section? Sounds good to me. Maybe I’ll add trigger warnings for adventure, brave deeds, true love, and manly men on my next book and see what happens.
“Magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.” (Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites.)
Of course, that’s in a world where magic *is* the ever-present reality. I like the idea of swapping out “reality” for the first word.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
― Philip K. Dick
Darn, you beat me to it. I was going to post that exact quote. So instead, I’ll contribute one of my own (literally):
“The universe doesn’t care about your feelings or what you want to be true. The universe is what it is. And either your beliefs correspond to reality, or you’re due for a rude awakening someday.” – Robin Munn
Splendid! (I’d dearly love to swipe that. May I? With attribution, of course.)
It might be wise to point out, too, that the universe is neither kind nor cruel, neither fair nor unfair; it is utterly neutral.
Ben Hartley
(I write it, I sign it.)
Feel free.
And yes, the universe is neutral; figuring out reality, and making our beliefs conform to reality, is how (among other things) we have extended people’s lives by over a decade. Because we now believe that disease is caused by germs, rather than by an imbalance of humors. On the other hand, I’m sure there are also beliefs that we hold which don’t conform with reality — and the universe doesn’t care there, either. We’ll only figure out what they are when we receive that rude awakening.
“May it please milord Hero, the world is not what we wish it to be. It is what it is. No, I have over-assumed. Perhaps it is indeed what we wish it to be. Either way, it is what it is.” Star in Glory Road (Robert Heinlein again)
While we’re self-quoting:
‘Reality is what bites you on the arse when you are looking the other way.’ – Tom Simon
*I* think of the wombats! Mostly Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels, but it’s a start…
She’s my role model 😉 “Remember Tunnel 34!”
“Safe Space Explorers”. Ir’s mean, but it’s true. I like.
Who is to say that it’s not a consensus reality? Convince enough people that Mars is a dry desert, and the canals and ancient Martian civilizations disappear?
Maybe the world was flat, before Columbus managed to convince enough of the rest of us to make it so. The “Hundredth Monkey” phenomenon might be an artifact of this. Perhaps there is a critical mass of “mind” that has to believe, before reality shifts to make it so.
If the universe really does work this way, I want to have a long talk with the rest of you bastards. Some of you have some very sick, sick minds.
The problem is that consensus reality is that it’s not consensus reality, so if it ever was, it stopped.
How would you test the hypothesis, one way or another?
It’s a little amusing to consider that perhaps there might be something to this, and that is a reason why we’re finding that quite a few bits of “settled science” are no longer reproducible. They’ve gone back and re-done some of the research in a bunch of different areas, and found that the original work is no longer reproducible, which leads to the question of whether or not the original experiments and studies were flawed, or if something fundamental changed.
It’s solipsist as hell, but it is a bit of a humorous situation: Maybe a lot of what we’re experiencing is really something of a popularity contest for ideas, and the reason that magic and alchemy don’t work anymore is that there aren’t enough “true believers” around, anymore.
There’s enough weird stuff going on around me that I really can’t say one way or another, so I keep an open mind. Something needs to account for all the different results we keep getting with research that’s been done. I can’t even keep track of the current “conventional wisdom” any more, when it comes to things like “Is coffee harmful, or good for your health…”. Don’t like the answer you get today? Wait a few weeks or months, it’ll likely be a different one then.
In some ways, I just don’t trust reality. It’s being delivered to me by some rather dodgy senses, and there’s some suspicions on my part that it’s being synthesized by some equally dodgy mental processes that are terribly prone to self-delusion.
I suspect a lot of it is dodgy studies, or studies that aren’t big enough to prove anything, or something not properly understood about how the study was originally done vs. how it’s being done now.
For example, this new thing about women vs. men handling mice having a serious effect on study results. Whodathunkit? But in the really olden days, all the profs and students doing the mouse studies (most places, anyway) would have been men.
That’s an example of what I’m talking about. Then, there’s the other stuff, which is a lot more basic, and which you would think would have fewer variables that might need to be controlled for, like in chemistry.
There are some things that I’ve personally observed, over the years, that really make me wonder about things. I’ve watched guys I’ve worked with get dramatically different results from doing the exact same thing I’m doing, and that’s gone in both directions–Sometimes they got the results I was trying for, and other times, they couldn’t repeat what I was doing. And, this was on tasks with variables that should have been completely controlled. We had one device that would only work if I was on the site with it, and it would completely refuse to work whenever I wasn’t there.
Go figure. I still don’t understand some of that stuff, years after the fact. I’ve done a lot of reading about quantum effects over the years, and I sometimes wonder if the “observer effect” doesn’t extend itself into areas we haven’t considered before.
There are probably subtleties in the way people handle things that could explain the “works with one person and not another”. You’d probably have to have multiple videos from multiple directions to test this, of course.
However, I read an article about the “critical mass” notion many years ago, where they indicated that some things, such as making crystals of new compounds, were apparently very difficult at first, but after it had been done several times, it became easier for even beginners at distant labs to repeat the process, and it seemed to have a tipping point, rather than be the continuous improvement that would be expected from honing techniques.
I don’t know. I don’t really tend to believe that kind of thing, but I can’t be sure.
In one of L. Sprague deCamp’s Reg Rivers stories, two characters discuss a third who gave up radical animal rights activism only to become a radical anti-tobacco activist a couple of years later. One character speculates that some people become addicted to fanaticism. I’ve often wondered if deCamp wasn’t on to something big there. Are there people who actually get an endorphin charge out of hardcore, my-way-or-nothing-at-all radicalism? If so, trying to argue with them is totally counterproductive, it just gives them another rush.
If, in the lab, you give people a chance to buy “green” products, they are more likely to lie and cheat (for money) in a game afterward. They’d put in their good for the day.
Being a fanatic lets you get your daily dosage of being good while being an arrogant bully and so having fun rather than all the painstaking and dull work of telling the truth, being kind to your neighbor, and giving to charity.
Eh, I’d believe that about as much as any other social science experiment which probably hasn’t been reproduced (which is most of them): very tentatively. It sounds good, but a lot of things sound good once you attach the right narrative to them.
Couple of months ago, I put up a post about my theory that everyone needs a certain amount of irrational belief in their lives, and if they don’t fill the requirement with something like religion, they’ll substitute something else. It’s interesting to observe that the non-religious types out there will usually have some other belief system that they have just as much irrational belief in, whether it’s socialism, communism, or anthropogenic global warming. And, just like the religiously faithful, you’ll have just about as much luck arguing them out of their positions. You can’t reason someone out of a belief system that they never reasoned themselves into, in the first place.
… or that vaccines are evil. (arrgh.)
Yes, this. I choose to cling to a certain religion because I can’t bear the thought of living in a cold empty universe … this has become crystal clear to me in the last few years, during which our family has suffered several crises and a tragedy. I consciously went through the thought process of “where is God in all this misery” and decided that even if God is a right hard bastard who is impossible for a human to understand, I prefer that to sound and fury signifying nothing. So my faith is consciously chosen because I am that amount of weak. But I find, as I talk with people, that though everyone’s faith has some aspect of this in it, nobody else that I know IRL has gone through that conscious thought process.
We should meet IRL sometime, then.
I would like that. I am experimenting with travel this summer … we’ll see how that works out and implications for the future …
Yes.
Bonus points for being played by The Doctor.
Many people don’t believe in God. Very few lack religion.
Or, as someone else noted, the essense of conservatism is that Christ is not an elected position.
I think so. Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is largely about this.
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer.
Whoops, crossed with analogkid. It’s definitely worth reading for anyone who wants an insight into fanaticism.
Magical thinking ‘makes it so’ embodies our current POTUS, I think. He’s pursued these things based not on assessment (before or after) but on belief in the magical ideology. Thus, the intrusion of reality will not sway him, and the dissonance of reality will continue to diminish him.
Beyond this, my name is scrawled all over yesterday’s comment section. Today I shall aim for shy and retiring, perhaps meek? I’d say humble, but let’s not be ludicrous.
Our fearless leader is a lawyer and community organizer. His belief system is such that if he says a thing and gets enough people to believe him it must therefore be true. And should you point out that the emperor is nekkid, well you’re just rayssssist.
On yesterday’s topic, I intentionally did not post as the subject is such a hot button for me that I felt compelled to sit back and let others vent.
Megan McArdle has an article up about how Obama can’t fix the VA, and it’s not his fault, it’s the nature of the beast.
Some commenters are pointing out, none too gently, that he promised. It’s nobody’s fault but his that he can’t deliver.
The problem is that the people like McArdle have mis-identified what the VA actually is. It isn’t a mechanism to aid those who have sacrificed for the common good, the veterans, it’s an entity designed to transfer wealth from the taxpayers to the Democratic party via government employee unions. Inasmuch as that is the reality, there’s nothing really there for Mr. Obama to fix.
Please don’t, you’re much more fun when you aren’t meek. 🙂
😀
Thinking of “Faith Healing” the mind is a chemical factory that produces chemicals that regulate functions. Therefore if say a virus enters the blood stream, the mind gears up the immune system to eradicate it. Faith healing accelerates the mind’s chemical production and priority to eradicate the virus. Quick change is seen if the individual’s mind really goes to work. If science could figure out how to assist the mind to concentrate ‘healing’ for lack of a better word, we would see some radical changes.
The idea of making the world change through simple belief can be summed up in the old “Wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which gets filled first.”
This pretty much proves that faith healing is impossible:
on the other hand, I get the feeling there’s a lot about the Higgs field and things like dark energy we don’t understand.
Too many years of scientists saying “we have the answers”, only to discover that there are still more questions to discover. Humans have a habit of creating comfortable boxes to exist in, then pretending nothing exists outside of it. Then the universe comes along and says “tear down these walls”.
I thought everyone here understood you can’t prove a negative. It’s not possible to prove that faith healing is impossible. The best you could do would be to explain away all prior instances where it has appeared to work.
And even then, who can say that the mechanism that the explanation uses was not instigated or amplified by faith? Also, whether the improvement comes from a higher power, or by focused thoughts activating things in the body is irrelevant, if it was the faith of the person which motivated it to happen.
The contention of the video: the confirmation (via probability analysis) of the Higgs boson and thus the Higgs field provides the final piece for unification of the Standard Model in Quantum Field Theory. Given this, all affective fields above the threshhold of significance have been identified. While this leaves a great deal of physics to yet identify, it is below the threshhold. Given this there is no unidentified affective field wherein supernatural events could be conducted: no telekinesis, no faith healing, no soul, etc.
It’s an interesting talk, and the speaker is engaging and informative, quite fun.
Which is not to say I accept the premise of absolute identification of all possible avenues for actions by a higher power, or the definitive statement that there can be no soul. Where science, religion and faith intersect all three lose their way.
How does he establish that an affective field is necessary?
I’m not sure I have enough information to answer definitively.
The best guess: It cannot be observed, therefore it does not exist. Bolstered by the mathematics underlying the theory, wherein they can find no holes. Therefore, surely no holes exist.
I have a doubt.
Thanks for bringing up the irrationality of the two deadliest beliefs of the 20th century: communisim and fascism/naziism.
For some reason, when I shop library or estate sales, I keep finding Third Reich books. The latest is “The Goebbels Diaries 1942-43”, translated by a former American-Lutherna pacifist, Louis P. Lochner. (547 pages). Goebbels was one of the Nazi trinity: Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, and Josef Goebbels.
I cannot express how stunned I STILL am after reading the 547 pages of Joseph Goebbels descriptions of the political situation and his personal reflections. Narcissm and malignancy hardly dent how I would describe this man, as well as Hitler and Hermann Goring.
Ever wonder what would happen of a very talented narcissist got unlimited power in the United States of America?
yes. fortunately the current narcissist is not very talented.
Heh. So very true on so many levels…
We were super-close to that during the first two years of Obama’s first term. Presidency, both houses of Congress, and 4/9 of the Supreme Court. One more death on the SC and we would have been screwed permanently.
Thomas Sowell goes into detail on a very similar theory in The Vision of the Anointed. The idea that if a program fails, all you have to do is try harder, and that it’s the intentions of people that determine success or failure. So when a program fails it’s because the program’s opponents had bad intentions, they wanted the program to fail. You need to eliminate the opposition for your own good intentions to work. It, like what you wrote here, is really frightening to contemplate where it leads.
What do you mean by the more evolved religions?
Um… not the religions of primitive people’s. For this purpose, even Egyptian religion might be more evolved. I don’t know enough about it to pronounce. SOME people viewed Roman religion in a more… spiritual manner. Less evolved religion treats the gods as a vending machine. Put prayer/sacrifice/offering in, retrieve material/physical boon. I think this is the DEFAULT setting for humans and even the more “spiritual” religions have to guard their followers against slipping into that mode.
Oh. The notion of treating my God as a vending machine is horrifying to me. The thought of treating Him that way makes me rather sick.
If Heaven is God’s home, then the door marked VENDING MACHINES leads to the down staircase…
‘To give riches, to kindle love and lust, to discover treasures – as these were the sum of ambition, so they were the qualifications in chief demand from the spirits. The class of people to whom such considerations would appeal were those obviously – and as I have otherwise indicated – who could not obtain their satisfaction through the normal channels – the outcasts, the incompetent, the ignorant, the lonely, the deformed, the hideous, the impotent and those whom Nature and Grace alike denied. . . .
‘As part of the root-matter out of which comes the lying art of spirits there stands forth the hypothetical efficacy of adjuration, prayer and ceremonial acts of worship in connection therewith. But in Magic that efficacy can be manifested only over things trivial or abominable, because it is obvious that for any higher purpose we should have recourse thereto through the ordinary channels of religion. If the hypothesis of prayer is true, Magic is out of court on the side of holy things because there is a more excellent way of obtaining the great gifts, the good gifts and the gifts that do not pass away. But if it is not true, Magic is out of court also because it depends from and comes down to the earth with that false assumption which is at its basis.’
—A. E. Waite, The Book of Ceremonial Magic
But it’s the way a LOT of human critters work, even now. Think about Liberation Theology (“Christian” Marxism, yay!) or, with fewer veils, “name it and claim it” “theology,” wherein all you need to do is have faith that the Lord will give you that third car, the 5k ft^2 house, the beautiful 2.5 children who never misbehave, etc. etc, and He will, because He wants you to be happy, or some other poisonous, heretical nonsense.
THANK you for calling that “poisonous, heretical nonsense”. The idea that “God loves you and therefore He wants you to be happy and not have anything bad happen to you” is one of the more insidiously soul-destroying ideas I’ve heard recently. (Some are more soul-destroying, but they’re usually more obvious). It contradicts not just the explicit teachings of the Bible (Jesus, to his disciples: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart: I have overcome the world”), but also the life experience of just about every deeply spiritual person out there. The more spiritual a person is, the more often their life story is filled with suffering. For just one example, look at the Bible, when the apostle Paul is writing about his own sufferings in 2 Corinthians. How many of these people pushing the “health and wealth” B.S. would dare to look at that passage and say “Well, clearly Paul wasn’t spiritual enough”? It would knock the foundation out from under their theological house of cards.
All the more frustrating because that heresy has penetrated the public consciousness as being typical of what faith and prayer are. It’s very hard to deal with for the rest of us when the irreligious believe that faith means say a prayer, sing and shout, and then sit on your butt. Stay off my team, people!
Oh hey, who stuck a soapbox under my feet? *kicks it into the closet nonchalantly and wanders off, grumbling*
That soapbox sure gets around. Is it made of pear wood?
*Peers cautiously into the closet*
That might explain a few things…
Forget about Paul. How many people can look at *Jesus* and say God doesn’t let bad things happen to those who love him?
On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 8:02 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> Robin Munn commented: “THANK you for calling that “poisonous, > heretical nonsense”. The idea that “God loves you and therefore He wants > you to be happy and not have anything bad happen to you” is one of the more > insidiously soul-destroying ideas I’ve heard recently. (Some are mo” >
But that one’s easy to justify — “Oh, that was because Jesus came for that purpose, to take away the sins of the world, and that’s the only kind of suffering he went through”. (So they would say, though I would disagree). Whereas looking at Paul’s life, and the sufferings he went through while serving God, is a lot harder to rationalize away.
All you have to do is censor out the bits about carrying your cross, and other references to a Christian’s suffering.
I’ve heard of at least one “prosperity gospel” preacher who claimed that Jesus was actually living rich on earth before the Crucifixion, and that various stuff to the contrary was being misinterpreted.
Things like “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head”?
On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 4:37 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:
> suburbanbanshee commented: “I’ve heard of at least one “prosperity > gospel” preacher who claimed that Jesus was actually living rich on earth > before the Crucifixion, and that various stuff to the contrary was being > misinterpreted.” >
The sad thing is that every religion has an edge where it veers off into magic. It may be disapproved, it may be denounced or even prosecuted as impiety, but it exists.
And drawing the line is somewhat hard. Take the lead curse tablets they found in the spring of a certain British-Roman shrine, with the inscription declaring that the maker of the tablets donates to the great goddess the goods that were stolen from him — arise, great goddess, and reclaim your goods, lest you be scorned among the gods for inability!
world-building religions is a topic on which I can rant for many pages.
IIRC, the official Roman religion (public version, Empire-era) was considered a contract between the gods and the state. Good citizens made at least a token sacrifice and acknowledgment of the power of the deities, and the gods took care of the Empire. Those people who wouldn’t go along endangered the contract and thus the safety and prosperity of the Empire. What people believed at home (Mithras, the Magna Mater, Isis, Swimming Garum Monster) was their business.
Swimming Garum Monster made me giggle a little. In a purely manly way, of course. *ahem*
Oh, but Communism IS the most advanced form of government ….. when you understand that government is a form of rot, like gangrene.
‘ “But that would be putting the clock back,” gasped the Governor. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”
‘ “I have seen them both in an egg,” said Caspian. “We call it Going Bad in Narnia.” ’
–The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
I think that Marxism is a cult. One thing cult members do is deny the reality outside. They can’t deal with it. We saw how the coltishness worked with Uncle Timmy and archon a week or so ago. The people just couldn’t deal with reality and had to ensure that they wouldn’t deal with Uncle Timmy and any conflicting realties. Yet they accuse us of being “anti science.”
With some of them it’s a cult. With far too many of them it’s simply the will to power. The Aristocracy of the Old World firmly believed in the Divine Right OF Kings, even though there was precious little evidence to support it. The Planter Aristocracy firmly believed that they were doing the “drakes” a favor by “taking care” of them. The Social Darwinists firmly believed that their success at being rich made them morally superior to the poor, and thus gave them the right to tell the poor what to do.
And this bunch firmly believes that they hare the Light and the Way, and that means they can push the rest of us around and it’s OK.
They are morally no worse than the Aristos, the Planters, or the Social Darwinists. But neither are they one iota better.
How the pluperfect hell did “darkies” end up as “drakes”
Gods, but I hate technology with an opinion!
The Social Darwinists come from the second or third generation of the money. They were the ones who would go to the Ivy Covered Snob Factories and then to Germany, where they would come back with all those GREAT ideas:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/they-had-dream_793497.html?nopager=1
Marx and Bismarck have a lot to answer for.
Now, let’s be reasonable. Social Darwinists often objected to charity — but other than that, they were ready to let the chips fall where they may. It was the humane and enlightened Progressives who were unwilling, and wanted to indulge in practices to prevent suffering, such as involuntary eugenic sterilizations, which the Social Darwinists did not support.
I know a surprising number of people who had internalized the idea that if you say the right thing, believe the right thing, do the right thing, make yourself available to the right people, your life is made and success will come flowing into your lap.
And they are surprised after a long struggle to realize that they are not made, success did not fall into their laps, and instead of doing things to help themselves develop they wound up supporting others who succeeded and left them behind like worn out shoes.
Some of them determined that they are owed, in any way they can find to be reimbursed. Others determine they just didn’t listen to the instructions close enough,are flawed, and somehow failed in carrying out the program (and that break my heart). And those who pick up and vow to start learning and doing it over for themselves.
The third path is the hardest because you have to walk away from blaming others and blaming yourself for failure. You have to go beyond saying things like only the future matters and learn to say that the only thing you can do about the past is learn from it or lie about it.
It is possible to learn that what you know is false. It is possible to reason yourself out of something you never reasoned yourself into. It just takes a lot of humility and a lot of self confidence that you can find the right answer – you have to believe in the process. But you do need a place to start, a lie to detect, a corner to start picking at to peel the falseness back.
Which is why the average person in the neolithic age had about 700 times the net worth of the average person today.
Yes, indeed. but if you say that, they’ll agree. Remember, great matriarchy, etc?
It also works if you say “at the time of ancient Egypt” or whatever.
Some of it is surely confirmation bias (is that the term I’m looking for?). My kids only quarrel when I’m on the phone. And so do the kids of every other parent I know. Except they actually don’t: it’s just more annoying when I’m trying to make a doctor’s appointment, so I notice it more. It’s magic: pick up the phone and the kids start fighting.
I think I read somewhere that there may be a biological basis for this: that it’s less dangerous to think you see a pattern that indicates a predator and flee and be wrong than to think you don’t see one, fail to flee, and be wrong. So magic: a pattern your mind picks out of the noise which isn’t actually there.
“It only rains when I go on vacation.” Which may be true IF you always go to Seattle in November to visit your in-laws. Or spend the summers in Houston (yeah, my family was/is Odd).
It’s the tendency to notice two things in conjunction more than either one alone. A distinct subset of confirmation bias.