Right-Wing Discussion Thread XVII: The Snark Enlightenment

[Luminesa]

Sometimes you need some not-so-nice people with a different moral set to get the good stuff done ^^

Yes, sadly. For example aid to Sub-Saharan Africa. Now Christianity, Islam and humanism all support such aid.

For the record I'm not actually an East Kekistanist. Hell I don't even mind aiding Australoids not because I like them a lot but simply because there aren't too many of them. In the worse case we can just feed everyone in Papua New Guinea or something. They only have about 8.25 million people now anyway. However we really can't afford to feed everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa if its population keeps exploding and its economy keeps underperforming. I really don't want humanity to eventually have to face the moral dilemma of either feeding SSA & lowering everyone else's living standards significantly or letting more than 100 million folks in SSA starve to death.

I'm just not someone who likes to signal virtues or allegiance and then ignore the actual problems. Eventually we will have to face the problems together as a species no matter whether it is genocidal AI, climate change, fuel depletion, Sub-Saharan African overpopulation or alien invasion. These are all fucking problems and they need to be solved ASAP.

...The flip is an Australoid?

[Luminesa]

Maybe you will think this against Church teaching, but I disagree that it is the "current supreme injustice of our time," as we are dealing with issues such as climate change that will kill many more if left unchecked and set an even more dangerous precedent for society if allowed to continue unchecked. However, I do not support abortion. I just disagree with the illegalization of abortion as a means of preventing it. I believe that for illegalization to ever be viable, we will more closely have to address the root issues of abortion and provide viable alternatives. Additionally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the government should prevent abortions, but not expressly that the act of abortion must be banned. It is clear from the history of abortion that illegalization is clearly not the most effective form of prevention, and therefore the state providing more services in an attempt to save as many lives as possible is a more reasonable pursuit, and perfectly in line with Church teaching.

When we meet God at Judgement, somethings tells me "Hey God, I didn't try to stop the unjust murder of your children, but I reduced my carbon emissions" isn't going to go down very well. Ending abortion is more important than limiting climate change, because dead children can't enjoy anything in a crappy polluted world or an eco-paradise world. If you don't support banning abortion, you effectively support the existence of abortion. There's no getting around that. You can go on and on about how you supposedly don't support abortion, but when it comes to actually trying to oppose abortion and actually saving the lives of the unborn, words aren't enough. Saying abortion has to be legal in order to limit it is nonsensical. That's not even an attempt to limit it, it's an outright embrace of the culture of death.

This is what is in line with the Church teaching when it comes to a nation's law on abortion:

The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:

"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."

The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights.

Abortion is a polarizing issue, so it can be extremely difficult to change our position. The Church is clear on her commitment to sanctity of life. We have our personal opinion on politics, but when that opinion strays from and even contradicts the will of God, we are left with a choice. I pray we all make the correct choice.

To add to your statement, the Catechism calls for us both to care for the sanctity of life and to care for our planet, to be stewards of God’s creation. If we wish to save the planet from the horrors of climate change, we can also do so by caring for the most vulnerable among us, our own unborn. I think one can and should care for both.

[Novus America]

Religious tolerance is always preferable to intolerance. Not only is intolerance evil, it creates a less effective society.

Society should not tolerate things that are dangerous to its fabric. Regardless, disliking Catholicism is not the same as being intolerant of it. I tolerate the Roman Catholic Church just fine, but that doesn't mean that I have to like or agree with it or its membership.

Fun fact: the Catholic Church in Britain has higher attendance than the Anglican Communion in Britain

Christ never said that the truth would be popular, and cult movements are historically very good at retaining membership.

No. My approach is to taking a different approach.
The current approach is not working.

Also we can address inequality by supporting the poorest areas.

Why should a millionaire who is black get an advantage over a poor Asian?
And giving them that advantage only makes racial issues worse.

We're not discussing economic inequality here; you wanted to abolish Black History Month. Black History Month exists in the first place because black history and the contributions of black people to the United States has historically been neglected and ignored by wider society, which is a big part of why racists like Neko-koku are so dismissive of African cultures and their achievements. If you ban Black History Month whilst ignoring the underlying issues that led to its creation in the first place, all you are doing is perpetuating the marginalisation of your country's minorities.

Yes, sadly. For example aid to Sub-Saharan Africa. Now Christianity, Islam and humanism all support such aid.

For the record I'm not actually an East Kekistanist. Hell I don't even mind aiding Australoids not because I like them a lot but simply because there aren't too many of them. In the worse case we can just feed everyone in Papua New Guinea or something. They only have about 8.25 million people now anyway. However we really can't afford to feed everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa if its population keeps exploding and its economy keeps underperforming. I really don't want humanity to eventually have to face the moral dilemma of either feeding SSA & lowering everyone else's living standards significantly or letting more than 100 million folks in SSA starve to death.

I'm just not someone who likes to signal virtues or allegiance and then ignore the actual problems. Eventually we will have to face the problems together as a species no matter whether it is genocidal AI, climate change, fuel depletion, Sub-Saharan African overpopulation or alien invasion. These are all fucking problems and they need to be solved ASAP.

Sub-Saharan Africa has a smaller population than either China or India despite being substantially larger than both put together.

Quit it with the "East Kekistan" nonsense. No one is interested in your meme ideology, or in your blatant racism against people of African descent.

Oh but I never said ban teaching African history, the history of slavery and its effects, of great African Americans. We should teach the Civil Rights movement and teach why our obsession with race was so destructive (but there is no reason to continue that destructive past) We should teach all those things and teach it all year round. Just naming a month after it is a silly gimmick that does nothing. Sticking a name a a calendar has done nothing at all.

And it encourages dubious history anyways, because it removes it from the greater context.
If you teach African American history separately then it encourages people to think of it as something entirely separate which is the problem. It encourages segregation. The history of African Americans and other Americans are inextricably linked.
We need to teach more about African Americans in American history, not teach that their history is a entirely separate history.

Again if the current thing is a complete failure why continue with it?

Although are other issue is lumping all African Americans as on single ethnic group, culture, society. When although a very large number came over as slaves from south Western Africa via the slave trade and thus most African Americans descended from them, that is not the only way all came, something we often forget in our attempts to lump all together.

[Hakons]

Fun fact: the Catholic Church in Britain has higher attendance than the Anglican Communion in Britain

Christ never said that the truth would be popular, and cult movements are historically very good at retaining membership.

Thank you for complimenting our ability to actually keep people in the Body of Christ.

[Hakons]

To add to your statement, the Catechism calls for us both to care for the sanctity of life and to care for our planet, to be stewards of God’s creation. If we wish to save the planet from the horrors of climate change, we can also do so by caring for the most vulnerable among us, our own unborn. I think one can and should care for both.

Thank you! It was probably wrong of me to focus on what is more important. In political situations we have to prioritize issues, but that doesn't stop us from still having a clear stance on other issues.

[Bienenhalde]

Ending abortion is more important than limiting climate change, because dead children can't enjoy anything in a crappy polluted world or an eco-paradise world.

Dead children are a direct result of climate change.

Hence why we should be opposed to both abortion and climate change. Although I do not necessarily agree with Hakons assumption that ending abortion is more important. It is more complicated than that.

[Hakons]

Dead children are a direct result of climate change.

Hence why we should be opposed to both abortion and climate change. Although I do not necessarily agree with Hakons assumption that ending abortion is more important. It is more complicated than that.

The very statement "opposed to climate change" shows how climate change isn't really comparable to abortion. Being opposed to a climate trend doesn't change that climate trend. Reducing climate change by reducing emissions and the consumption of materials is a laudable goal, but I don't see how that is on the same level of trying to end the daily mass slaughter of humans in the womb. This isn't an either or situation, but sometimes the political parties make it that way. I don't see how reducing a single nation's emissions and consumption will have (if at all) any measurable effect on deaths from climate change (once again another dubious, difficult to measure claim), as opposed to the concrete reality of the millions of human fetuses killed every year that would be greatly reduced by combating abortion.

[Loben The 2nd]

“Secular Christianity.”
What.

Cultural christianity and such.

Not buying into that nigh heretical bullshit.

[Hanafuridake]

I'm home kids

Dad, where's mom?

She left because of Dad's alcoholism.

[Fahran]

And if morality is inherently intertwined with reality (if I got this part wrong, my apologies) then he’s still the one subjectively deciding it. The power level is kinda irrelevant.

This is a difficult issue to respond to because the Jewish custom since the time of Maimonides has been to describe G-d with negative statements at least in formal discourse. G-d is not like man. G-d is not unloving. G-d is not bound by human limitations. G-d is not unjust. Jews do have a concept similar to the Orthodox with regard to separation in some contexts, and there is often the notion that G-d is imminent as well - or, rather, that G-d is not distant. But, with G-d, descriptions such as objective or subjective don't really make a lot of sense if you mean them in a conventional way unless we presume that objectivity is impossible and then there's no distinction to be made in any case. G-d tells us what is moral and what is immoral and, even if he does not, G-d created the universe where such standards matter. It's not the same as a man or woman making an argument. G-d word creates. He says it and it becomes so.

[Fahran]

Dad, where's mom?

She left because of Dad's alcoholism.

I miss mom!

[Totally Not OEP]

Yes because Neko is a spergy white nationalist.

Your use of spergy brought this into warnable territory for me. *** Warned for Flaming ***

Anybody else remember that time Jakker banned me for posting a pic of Tay-K?

[Kowani]

And if morality is inherently intertwined with reality (if I got this part wrong, my apologies) then he’s still the one subjectively deciding it. The power level is kinda irrelevant.

This is a difficult issue to respond to because the Jewish custom since the time of Maimonides has been to describe G-d with negative statements at least in formal discourse. G-d is not like man. G-d is not unloving. G-d is not bound by human limitations. G-d is not unjust. Jews do have a concept similar to the Orthodox with regard to separation in some contexts, and there is often the notion that G-d is imminent as well - or, rather, that G-d is not distant. But, with G-d, descriptions such as objective or subjective don't really make a lot of sense if you mean them in a conventional way unless we presume that objectivity is impossible and then there's no distinction to be made in any case. G-d tells us what is moral and what is immoral and, even if he does not, G-d created the universe where such standards matter. It's not the same as a man or woman making an argument. G-d word creates. He says it and it becomes so.

“He says and it becomes so.” That’s still subjective, regardless of how many years of linguistic tradition you have. God deciding what is or isn’t immoral is…well, inherently subjective.

[Fahran]

Anybody else remember that time Jakker banned me for posting a pic of Tay-K?

Bad OEP.

I do think the offense was warnable in this case due to NS's rules on using social/development disorders as insults, even if the basic sentiment behind it, namely "don't be racist to Africans", is a much nicer sentiment. That said, let's try to focus on the topic. I'll try to bring up a new one, I suppose.

How do y'all feel about the American Counter-Culture's appropriation of Sufism, Kabbalism, and Buddhism? I think most can surmise my opinion on the subject, but I've been reading of late about the absorption of mystical ideas, mostly Sufi in this case, into the beatnik and hippie movements, and I'm mostly appalled at how they managed the mental gymnastics to discard massive swathes of the religions they borrowed from.

[Fahran]

“He says and it becomes so.” That’s still subjective, regardless of how many years of linguistic tradition you have. God deciding what is or isn’t immoral is…well, inherently subjective.

Then any religious framework must reside within the subjective. That doesn't really mean that such morality is not still absolute and beyond reproach. Your basic argument here is that reality, even beyond human perceptions, is entirely subjective by virtue of it being created. I'm still inclined to think your making G-d like man, which is a heretical approach to G-d's nature.

[Kowani]

“He says and it becomes so.” That’s still subjective, regardless of how many years of linguistic tradition you have. God deciding what is or isn’t immoral is…well, inherently subjective.

Then any religious framework must reside within the subjective. That doesn't really mean that such morality is not still absolute and beyond reproach. Your basic argument here is that reality, even beyond human perceptions, is entirely subjective.

I mean, I never actually claimed that is was neither absolute nor beyond reproach. (Although there’s a whole thing about inconsistency that I could go into). But yeah, it’s pretty damn subjective.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Your use of spergy brought this into warnable territory for me. *** Warned for Flaming ***

Anybody else remember that time Jakker banned me for posting a pic of Tay-K?

It was a sign you should get better taste in music.

[Fahran]

I mean, I never actually claimed that is was neither absolute nor beyond reproach. (Although there’s a whole thing about inconsistency that I could go into). But yeah, it’s pretty damn subjective.

Is your basic argument here that objectivity is more or less impossible? Because, in this context, morality being subjective from the perspective of G-d, presuming such an assertion isn't denounced immediately as humanizing a non-human, non-limited being responsible for creating reality, doesn't change a whole lot about the rightness or wrongness of particular behaviors within this paradigm. G-d has the knowledge and power to impose his morality on us beyond any argumentation, beyond any misplaced sense of martyrdom in the face of righteous punishment, and beyond any resistance.

Attempting to argue morality with G-d would be like trying to explain the behavior of a character in a novel to the especially acute author who wrote and conceived of that character and who knows the characterization and character development perfectly. Except, in this context, you're another character in the same novel with imperfect knowledge who must abide by the author's rules in-universe.

[Bienenhalde]

In terms of values the Sinosphere and the secular alt-right are actually pretty close. For example "might makes right" is something most people in China agrees with.

I don't think that's true, but it's kind of irrelevant either way because the Sinosphere existed thousands of years before modern Chinese people did.

Hmm...Well, the way I see it is that the Cultural Revolution destroyed traditional Chinese values, but now people in mainland Chinese have subsequently given up on the ideals of communism, leading to a sort of cynical nihilistic vacuum where the idea of "might makes right" makes sense to most people.

[Kowani]

I mean, I never actually claimed that is was neither absolute nor beyond reproach. (Although there’s a whole thing about inconsistency that I could go into). But yeah, it’s pretty damn subjective.

Is your basic argument here that objectivity is more or less impossible? Because, in this context, morality being subjective from the perspective of G-d, presuming such an assertion isn't denounced immediately as humanizing a non-human, non-limited being responsible for creating reality, doesn't change a whole lot about the rightness or wrongness of particular behaviors within this paradigm. G-d has the knowledge and power to impose his morality on us beyond any argumentation, beyond any misplaced sense of martyrdom in the face of righteous punishment, and beyond any resistance.

Well, he has to be limited. Laws of logic and all that. I believe the example I gave in the IDT was square circles. That aside, I’m not quite certain that you’re understanding my argument.

Attempting to argue morality with G-d would be like trying to explain the behavior of a character in a novel to the especially acute author who wrote and conceived of that character and who knows the characterization and character development perfectly. Except, in this context, you're another character in the same novel with imperfect knowledge who must abide by the author's rules in-universe.

You realize all you’ve made God now is directly responsible for every time someone broke his moral commandments.

[Bienenhalde]

Anyway I wish all of you guys, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, secular etc the best.

I'm in fact not a nasty dude. I'm actually also someone who wants to fix nastiness of the world. However I don't think we have enough resources to be nice yet. If we are prematurely nice we will probably end up getting destroyed. Without humans what is human ethics good for?

I don't think we have time to wait any more. Carbon sequestration needs to start now. Fusion power needs to be developed. The population of Sub-Saharan Africa can't be allowed to explode without limits.

Greedy, power-hungry narcissists are not going to fix the world's problems, though. I do agree that the modern, Western obsession with individual rights at the expense of all else is a grave mistake. What we need is more collectivism; we need to accept the sacrifice of individual rights for the greater good. But leaders also need to be devoted to the greater good and not to obtaining power and wealth for themselves.

[Totally Not OEP]

Anybody else remember that time Jakker banned me for posting a pic of Tay-K?

It was a sign you should get better taste in music.

Jakker is low key about the 14/88 I think.

[United Muscovite Nations]

Semi-related as far as law and government go it's worth noting that in the Old Testament, God warns the Israelites about the evil of government and only agrees to give Israel an earthly government after they demand it, and after he explicitly says that establishing such is a rejection of Him.

[Luminesa]

This is a difficult issue to respond to because the Jewish custom since the time of Maimonides has been to describe G-d with negative statements at least in formal discourse. G-d is not like man. G-d is not unloving. G-d is not bound by human limitations. G-d is not unjust. Jews do have a concept similar to the Orthodox with regard to separation in some contexts, and there is often the notion that G-d is imminent as well - or, rather, that G-d is not distant. But, with G-d, descriptions such as objective or subjective don't really make a lot of sense if you mean them in a conventional way unless we presume that objectivity is impossible and then there's no distinction to be made in any case. G-d tells us what is moral and what is immoral and, even if he does not, G-d created the universe where such standards matter. It's not the same as a man or woman making an argument. G-d word creates. He says it and it becomes so.

“He says and it becomes so.” That’s still subjective, regardless of how many years of linguistic tradition you have. God deciding what is or isn’t immoral is…well, inherently subjective.

If God is a single constant in the universe, then anything He says become objective fact. God is not a constantly changing being.

[Luminesa]

Anyway I wish all of you guys, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, secular etc the best.

I'm in fact not a nasty dude. I'm actually also someone who wants to fix nastiness of the world. However I don't think we have enough resources to be nice yet. If we are prematurely nice we will probably end up getting destroyed. Without humans what is human ethics good for?

I don't think we have time to wait any more. Carbon sequestration needs to start now. Fusion power needs to be developed. The population of Sub-Saharan Africa can't be allowed to explode without limits.

...What's wrong with Africans having children?