Eetan
10mo ago
This sacrifice was, of course, quite ephemeral
as he then became an ultra-powerful warlord with multiple wives and an army of devotees.
Yes, Mo made it big, unlike 99,9999% self proclaimed prophets in history. Their stories usually end with "murdered" "executed" "died in prison" "died in poverty". Mo knew it, but never gave up, because he meant it, he was certain that his message true revelation from God.
Yeah wow, poor guy, his life sure must have been hard.
Would you openly stand for your beliefs for ten years, while your town hates and despises you, would you persevere while your neighbors regularly spit at you and smear your house with camel dung?
Eetan
10mo ago
Yes, list of banned books should contain books that are actually banned now and here, not in 18th century.
Maybe the books should be sorted by tiers.
Brass: Not found on Amazon
Bronze: Not found in large university library
Silver: Not found in Library of Congress
Gold: Not found on libgen and similar pirate sites
Diamond: Possession will send you to prison in Western country
Eetan
10mo ago
he figure of Odin shows interesting overlap in emphasizing the idea of self-sacrifice for social benefit,
Except, in the myth, the benefit was learning secret of runes, the myth says nothing about how it was useful to anyone else than Odin.
which is actually not common to all religions (as an example it’s absent in the figure of Muhammad)
??? Mo was happily married and living well, and sacrificed it all to preach his message to unfriendly audience, faced hatred, persecution, and finally had to flee his hometown to save his life.
Eetan
10mo ago
Yes, you said that death penalty for adultery is small step in right direction.
For comparison, in US it would mean executing 15% of adults. Without putting anything into your mouth, I fail to see your "final destination" as anything other than Himalaya sized mountain of skulls.
Ah, well if we can cherry pick examples to our liking, there are plenty of places in the US that resemble third world countries.
Now show places in US with regular armed uprisings against US government with death tolls from hundreds to thousands.
Eetan
10mo ago
“When I look at the donation list from my daughters’ schools, I see fewer Chinese names than some other ethnic groups…Some Chinese parents ask, ‘We are already paying so much tuition, why do we need to give more?’” The culture of alumni giving is still relatively new in China and Hong Kong.
Exactly. Are the universities capitalist firms selling a product, or charitable organizations living off begging?
Pick one. If the thing they are sellling is valuable, they should openly name a price. When you buy burger, you pay and it is finished, McDonalds will not pester you for rest of your life into "donating".
Eetan
10mo ago
Evidently so, if current policies are ineffective. But short of applying direct force, this is a problem virtually every developed and semi-developed country on Earth doesn't have a solid proposal for. If people's own choices can't reliably produce an outcome, and coercion can't reliably produce an outcome, all that remains is to institute more crushing and draconian penalties.
So the mullahs are weenies, so your plan for creating perfect trad society is more prisons, more torture and more executions. Your proposed solution is you and few hundred thousands of Revolutionary Guards (how many of them would be wiling to obey?) waging full scale war against the whole population (while Iran is indeed surrounded by enemies willing to exploit the opportunity).
Good luck with your plan.
And the same incidentally could be said of many western countries, where suicide rates are up, there's a great sense of apathy in the population
LOL. People willing to do this are anything but apathetic. Especially when they know they will not get slap on the wrist like BLM, when they know they can be shot or tortured to death. The Iranian government wishes the people were "apathetic".
Eetan
10mo ago
In your opinion, should the mullahs try harder? Should they do more?
Assuming they could try harder - remember that Iran is country with massively disaffected populace, with regular riots and urprisings with death toll in the hundreds. Country more like Tsarist Russia than Stalin's one.
Is Iran forcing women to have sex at gunpoint? They've done that no more than Japan, Russia, China or the west has.
Iran is enforcing all the online trad wish list - no porn, no homosexuality, no fornication, no adultery, no no-fault divorce (on woman side), no indecent clothing, no women's (or men's) rights in general. We were told it would result in happy wonderland full of big happy families. Somehow, it happened otherwise.
Eetan
10mo ago
Always found it interesting that Odin is also a figure who sacrifices himself on a tree to benefit the world
No, Odin sacrificed to learn secret of the runes for himself.
Anyway, you just disproved your previous assertion that Christianity was necessary to evolve "prosocial genes" in population. If old Germanic religion was as good, the Northern Europeans could stick to Odin and Thor and would be just fine.
Eetan
10mo ago
Seems more to me like you have a hard time comprehending that some people don't think the US is all it's cracked up to be.
Still the ratio between people coming to US and people leaving speaks for itself.
Seeing people voting with their legs is about the only objective measure of oppression that exists. Genuinely oppressed people are running away from their persecutors (if they have the opportunity, most oppressed people in history had nowhere to go).
I'm curious, do you think most Africans still live in mud huts too?
Not anymore, most Africans now live in favela style housing in mega cities. Hellish by our standards, paradisical by standards of their previous village life.
Eetan
10mo ago
Russia is not entitled to empire.
Empires are not given by some kind Santa Claus because you are good guy who is "entitled" to them. Empires are taken if you have strength to do so.
And, as we saw during the latest events, Russian strength is not as it was advertised. World's second super power just ain't so.
Eetan
10mo ago
This isn't true. In western society that remark is hyperbole and we all know it, because nobody here is forcing tradition and religion down people's throats at gunpoint.
This subthread is not about Western society, it is about Iran.
He asked what a more traditional solution sounded like. Well, I gave him one. Current trends and demographics seem to be making the case that the latter is the more attractive long-term option.
Iran - society with all drawbacks of modernity and none of its benefits - is not attractive at all.
If your solution is Iranian one, it is unsatisfactory.
Eetan
10mo ago
What I mean by all this is that it’s entirely possible Europeans have higher prosocial genes due to 1400 years of evolutionary selection, that this is pro-civilizational, but that our current “widget meritocracy” is ultimately anti-civilizational because it rewards self gain through widget production which (because cognition is zero sum) necessarily punishes those with substantive moral feelings.
If Christianity helped to spread "prosocial genes" in population, we would observe that people who were Christian the longest - Greeks, Sicilians, Southern Italians, Spanish and other Mediterrannean peoples - would be the most "prosocial" and people who were Christian only for short time - Nordic and Baltic peoples - would be wild raging two legged beasts.
Do we observe it?
Eetan
10mo ago
Iran has a TFR of 1.7, is regularly roiled by massive anti-regime protests, and religious affiliation is sharply declining among the nation's youth. Not much of a start.
Okay. And? That's unrelated to what you originally asked for. I don't know what this response is supposed to make me think in light of what I quoted.
This response is supposed to make you grasp that the most thorough effort in current times to force tradition and religion at gun point failed as thoroughly as it could fail.
Where did ayatollahs go wrong? Were they too soft, were they too concerned about human rights, should they imprison, torture and kill more?
Eetan
10mo ago
For non-Western perspective, see Russian official list of "extremist material".
It is grab bag of various stuff, mostly videos, that were found by Russian courts to be "extreme". Unlike western democracies, Russia still does things in old formal state-bureaucratic ways (when these methods fails, other, less formal like exotic teas or unsafe windows are applied).
As of January 2024, list is 5408 entries long, growing every day and behind every entry is long prison term for "extremism" and "hate".
Eetan
10mo ago
Excellent list.
Some genres of banned books you missed:
Criminal literature/art - writings/memoirs by unreformed, unrepentant, non-ideological criminals extolling and celebrating life of crime.
Pro final exit writings - not philosophical defenses of the act, but how-to manuals for effective final exit. This content is also strongly censored, because TPTB deeply care about every human life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctioned_Suicide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peaceful_Pill_Handbook
In 2008, the Society for Promotion of Community Standards objected to the book's publication. This led to its banning in New Zealand on the grounds that it was an objectionable publication.[5] A short time later, the book was republished in redacted form and is available only if sealed, and an indication of the censorship classification is displayed.[6][7]
Eetan
11mo ago
That's basically the plot of an episode of the X-Files.
That's basically recent history, declassified and documented by respectable mainstream media.
“There might be a number of reasons for a coverup,” Mark Pilkington, author of Mirage Men: A journey into disinformation, paranoia and UFOs, told me. “They might be covering up secret advanced aircraft such as the U-2 and SR-71, and no doubt other things.”
For example, the forerunners of the U-2 high-altitude spy plane, developed for the CIA by the Air Force, caused similar confusion when they flew from Groom Lake (the celebrated Area 51) in the mid-1950s. These aircraft had a silver finish, and at 60,000 feet – far above other aircraft of the time – the U-2 looked like a bright metallic blob and was repeatedly reported as a flying saucer. A similar situation arose with the SR-71 Blackbird, which, at Mach 3, was far too fast and too high to be any known aircraft and was assumed to be Something Else. Some 50% of U.S.UFO reports at the time might have been caused by sightings of these two aircraft.
The Truth Behind UFO Sightings and the U.S. Air Force
How long has this been going on?
Much of it dates to the first flights of the U2 spy plane back in the 1950s. The CIA's in-house journal had a story about 10 years ago that said that one of the functions of Project Blue Book [the official Air Force investigation into UFOs] was to monitor how visible the U2 was to people on the ground. Someone would see what they thought was a UFO and then the Air Force would send someone around to talk with them. Of course, the Air Force would have a schedule of the U2 flights and be able to tell if what the person saw was indeed a U2. By talking to all these supposed UFO witnesses, the CIA could assess how visible the U2 was.
COLD WAR UFO COVERUP SHIELDED SPY PLANES
For decades, a cottage industry of UFO buffs has thrived on the belief that the U.S. government covered up crucial information about mysterious flying objects.
Turns out that in thousands of cases the suspicions were right, a CIA historian has documented for the first time.
At the height of the Cold War, the Air Force and CIA willfully misled the public by claiming that thousands of sightings of unidentified flying objects were caused by ice crystals, temperature inversions and other tricks of nature, when in fact they were produced by the flight of high-flying, super-secret spy planes, according to historian Gerald K. Haines.
A study by Haines published this spring in the declassified version of Studies of Intelligence, a secret CIA journal, found that the government concocted the explanations both to calm fears about UFOs and to maintain secrecy about its most advanced espionage aircraft at the time, the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird.
The article concludes that "over half of all U.F.O." sightings in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s "were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights."
Eetan
11mo ago
The entire thing is full of really dumb metrics that are unrelated to any reasonable definition of freedom.
What is freedom? It depends whom you ask.
Squishy people will say: Freedom is when same sex married couple can defend their marijuana field with assault rifles.
Hardcore people will say: Freedom is when different age bracket married couple can defend their racially exclusive town with sawed off shotguns and machine guns.
Eetan
11mo ago
What if we also merge with Mexico?
Only over John C. Calhoun's dead body first.
John C. Calhoun, speech on Mexico (January 4, 1848).
The next reason assigned is, that either holding Mexico as a province, or incorporating her into the Union, would be unprecedented by any example in our history. We have conquered many of the neighboring tribes of Indians, but we have never thought of holding them in subjection, or of incorporating them into our Union. They have been left as an independent people in the midst of us, or have been driven back into the forests. Nor have we ever incorporated into the Union any but the Caucasian race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the first departure of the kind; for more than half of its population are pure Indians, and by far the larger portion of the residue mixed blood.
I protest against the incorporation of such a people. Ours is the Government of the white man.
Eetan
11mo ago
Imagine if 20-30% of Americans were french people explicitly voting with the goal of making things worse for the English?
I am sure that if you asked the French, they would tell you with the same sincerity that the English are keeping them down and do not let them breathe.
This was common discourse during the end times of Soviet Union too. The Russians complained that they are feeding the non-Russians, the non-Russians cried that the Russians are sucking their blood. All were persuaded that if only they became "independent", all their problems would be solved and they would live like in Hollywood movie.
As history shows, things happened otherwise.
Living in this country has made me incredible sympathetic to everygroup that ever concluded ethnic cleansing or ethno-nationalism was the only option
Go ahead, play Yugoslavian games and win Yugoslavian prizes. The world can always enjoy some more exciting war footage and cool atrocity videos.
Eetan
11mo ago
Ethnic Expulsions would be the best thing for birth rates.
This is the theory. Now, let us look at the example of countries that recently tried this recipe for growth.
Bosnia And Herzegovina Birth Rate
Civil war, ethnic cleansing and atrocities galore, but any rebound and growth is not evident.
Eetan
11mo ago
I know this. I consider the bulk of international law illegitimate
Do you object to current international law concerning war in particular, or to the idea of laws and custom of warfare in general?
If the latter, then your beef is not only with soft modern liberal age, but with nearly all cultures of history, who had their laws and customs concerning wars.
There were always people who said "Might makes right!" "Fuck the law, we have guns". It this is what inspires you, go ahead, but better make dooubly sure that you really have the might and that you really possess enough guns.
I consider history when evaluating a populace, yes. And Palestinians are historically, as a group, bad.
So, "good people" should have carte blanche to massacre "bad people" with impunity. Who gets to decide who is "bad"? Well, the "good" people, they are experts on goodness and badness, after all.
To disagree is not just to disagree with me, but to disagree with the international community as understood by their actions (rather than their virtue signaling at the UN). Egypt has continually refused to either accept Gazan refugees or to annex Gaza. Ditto Lebanon and Jordan with the West Bankers. And those refugees in those two countries are not allowed to join society as a whole, instead are relegated to camps.
Palestinians are bad, because no one wants them, no one would welcome them as refugees.
As someone who identifies with Jews/Israelis, this is really the last argument you should use.
Eetan
11mo ago
There is overwhelming evidence that aliens are here observing Earth, and have been for some time.
Correction: there is overwhelming evidence that Pentagon/MSM/friendly three letter organizations (or some groups/factions inside them) want us to believe that aliens are out there, observing Earth.
It is serious, even Tucker Carlson jumped on the bandwagon and went full bore into UFO/UAP issue.
Should we believe? Who wouldn't want to believe, after all?
You mean revisionist works? Large number in post-Soviet sphere, in Western world most prominent is Grover Furr whose prodigious output shows how Stalin did absolutely nothing wrong.
His books are available on Amazon and generally more obscure than banned, because few people today really care one way or another.
https://www.amazon.com/Khrushchev-Lied-Revelation-Khrushchevs-Communist/dp/061544105X
https://www.amazon.com/Trotskys-Lies-Grover-Furr/dp/0578521040
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Lies-Evidence-Accusation-Bloodlands/dp/0692200991
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