Donnadogsoth

Where are you, rosencrantz? Where is the universe?

A clever repartee, but not one that understands my usage of the word "presumption".

First, you're describing the grave sin of presumption. Committing a sin presuming God will forgive you is worse than the sin itself. Second, you're ignoring Purgatory. You don't "get away with it" in Catholicism. Every penny is to be repaid either in this life or in Purgatory. The fact that many people act presumptuously, isn't the Church's fault. The fact that most people aren't even aware of Purgatory or the nature of the sins such as presumption, is.

Is there an archetypal/psychological reason for the situation you describe? Father is Authority and Authority is rarely as sympathetic or lovable than the pure Nurturing Love represented by Mother. Should Mother die, Father becomes the source of a contradictory mix of nurturing love and authority, making him appear "bumbling," and in need of redemption, typically by the wise love of his daughter. An evil step-mother lacks nurturing love, and is the capital authority in the relationship, making the father the underdog and backup source of nurturing love.

I think we agree about animals and human priority. Concerning plants, they merit respect, the moreso for how rare and old they are. But no amount of Death Cab for Cutie music will make me eat bugs unless a macro-meat embargo is put in place. I'm generally against eating things that haven't had their digestive tracts removed prior to being cooked. And, of course, the next stage in the humiliation of Western man will be eating not cooked bugs but raw, live ones. Fear Factor in every dining room.

Art doesn't just reflect us, it sculpts us. Playing against the healthy norm of real society can surprise and intrigue, but when type is played against over and over the term ad nauseum starts to apply, and we lose sight of what normal is. The best example I can think of is the female karate master/supermodel character. This is the character who just walked off a fashion show runway, has a perfect weight...and can demolish any man attacker in seconds. This is cute to see once or twice, but how many women are there like this in reality? I'm betting there are some rough women out there, but they probably look rough, they look the part. I realise why this is done: for feminist reasons and to titillate the audience with the ironic surprise factor. There is a sexiness to seeing women performing martial arts manoeuvers. We feel better thinking that women are as martially competent as men—even though the vast majority of “bad guys” remain, well, guys. So that's a note of realism, but it contradicts the superheroine character as indicator of equality of type. Perhaps telling girls they are as tough, or can be as tough, as boys is sending the wrong message. Martial arts is a good thing to learn, but learning toughness from the movies and tv is like learning about war from a videogame: it lies. Hollywood lies. Some of the better films don't lie, or don't lie all the time, but as a rule it's based on lying and lies. So when the type of Woman is so distorted, and accompanied by a distorted type of Man, the population is absorbing the wrong messages about what human beings are, as types. Sophists will, of course, claim exceptions exist everywhere, and of course they're right, but those exceptions don't cancel the type.

The would never be persons because they lack self-conscious reasoning. But if they are "little souls" endowed with real feelings, they merit more empathetic consideration than if they were robots or stones, similar, but to a lesser degree, to how puppies merit such.

I'm Platonic enough to believe in the politicisation of art, of art as a political tool. The only problem is that art is presently under the control of the wrong people. Despite this, good films and good filmmaking squeak through here and there. I was reading a feminist review of Prometheus recently bitching about the treatment of the female characters in it. People like that help corrupt art by playing against type. Playing against type can be fun here and there, and even make a point about buried potentials, but when everything is playing against type, it gets nauseating. "Type" to my mind is wikkum*-headed families, including extensions and derivatives thereof. * white hetero cisgender Christian male

I think ants have heart. I think things are usually icebergish, where there's more going on under the surface than we think. Wouldn't the null hypothesis be that ants are more or less "pure physics"? I think we'd need some kind of fMRI that could scan them while they're moving, since drugging them into quiescence would delete the brain activity needed to prove the hypothesis. If we could map the ant brain, and compare it with the human brain, we could see if the activity in the structures in the human brain associated with expressions of "heart" matched activity in analogous structures in the ant's brain. Really I think that would be all there is to it, because ants are so single-minded any other kind of test would detect nothing. Proving ants have heart could have serious ramifications for how humanity relates to animals, including possibly extending rights to animals that have heart. If ants were proven to be more or less "pure physics" then our relationship to them might change in the other direction.

No, I don't mean to ask whether ants have hearts that pump their blood, I mean whether ants have emotional earnestness. They appear to have heart, unlimited motivation, and zeal, but I'm curious what the FDR crowd has to say on the matter.

A suggestion: Whites have been bought by the consumer economy. Too many toys to buy, whereas children are an expensive hassle.

You know, Europe had its tiffs, too. What are your thoughts about that?

I believe the mental leap we need to make is simply that Sage of Mainstreet is aware of the ongoing soft white genocide and finds this unhappy news, and perhaps has a bit of an irritation as a result of it, making him or her seem grumpy. Whether the Africans are supermen or savages makes no difference with regards to the source of this ongoing process.

Feminists are too busy worrying about seated men's knees being further than 8" apart whilst on the subway.

Sorry to belabour the point, but what would be a non-arbitrary racial distinction?

I agree. Even in general, the creation of a new, more correct scientific worldview destroys the previous ramified worldview.

I'm not sure what Sage's agenda is, but I am curious about you use of the word "arbitrary". What is arbitrary about describing the differences between the races of man?

I think you're referencing what a friend of mine calls "demonic creativity"--e.g. new torture implements or new ways to make society uglier than before. I'm referring to the creative ideal of classical art and science: things that increase our power over nature, including the beautiful which enhances our lives, rather than things that make life ghastly.

I appreciate that, guitarhack.

The fact that a church can be, or was, desecrated invalidates its sacredness? That's like saying that because strokes can induce aphasia reading isn't possible. Other than that, I have no remedy to such a failure to understand my meaning.

That's akin to the "warrior race" fantasies of science fiction, so I would agree with you. Africans merely stealing the ships (and kidnapping a few navigators) would not in itself raise them above stone age technology and culture. When does a thing, through change, become other than itself?

Outside of a development of his creative powers, man is akin to the baboons. With creativity, namely science (physical economy) and art (social practice), man can increase his power over nature, power to survive in general. In this sense, we are in the image of a God that is the creative source of the universe. That defines sacred practice, science and art, whatever the specific nomenclature. On the contrary, the discovery of a new principle of nature benefits everyone, it's an act acting upon the entire human species as a single gestalt. The specific technological or artistic applications may "radiate" from individual to individual over time, but the essential efficient power over nature is increased commonly by that discovery, and so the self-interest every individual has in increasing that power is served. Your sentiments on rape, peer pressure, personal property, and your lies about me put you on the level of that consummate capitalist, the pimp.

1. The crowd as such, as a troop of baboon-like yahoos, no, that is not the higher moral concern. Mankind as made in the image of God, as being creative and therefore possessing his own reason to exist, that is the higher concern. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness advance that concern, not life, liberty, and property. There is a balance between the common good and the individual's autonomy. 2. If "immoral" refers to a contradiction in property rights, then peer pressuring a rape is moral?

1. The basis for morality cannot be whatever the crowd feels like peer pressuring someone into doing. 2. Telescopes had something to do with discovering the principle of universal gravitation. I'm not sure how to address you other than that. What do you think?

It just a ballpark number, shirgall. How would the Africans have gotten to America without the technology the Europeans had?