Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
Lo, those who are entombed are cast on high grounds.
Men stir up strife unopposed.
Groaning is throughout the land, mingled with laments.
See now the land is deprived of kingship.
What the pyramid hid is empty.
The people are diminished.
-Ipuwer
User ID: 2538
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
Well, they're all valid constructions, at least to my ear, just like discarding T and always using V is a valid construction. Rather, I'm accenting a shift in linguistic preference toward more formal and less colloquial constructions, a shift that has been long underway but accelerated thanks to the rise of ESL.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
I don't think theological liberalisation or even a loss of faith among Protestants necessarily entails a decay into centralised power. In fact, if anything, I'd say libertarianism is the more fundamental ideology that was hallucinated into existence as a way of dealing with religious fracture. I wouldn't say things like homesteading, having solar panels, raising cattle, hosting your own git server, self-custody of your Bitcoin, etc., have any particular rooting in Protestant theology itself (although I won't pretend some Protestants don't try to contend so; but I think this is them failing to recognise their own reflection in the Rorschach dots, rather than remotely serious exegesis of what's actually being said in the text).
As for whether theological liberalism resulted in a loss of power, I mean, kind of? But the Jews who are actually in power are not the sort who take the Torah particularly seriously. I mean, they do in a sort of "It's tradition, and it's our tradition" sense. It's clear Scott in Unsong has great affection for Jewish tradition. But it's also definitely not the same sort of respect as religious fundamentalists have.
And the Catholics in power today... well, as has been questioned on this very forum: "Is the pope Catholic?"
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
Yeah, I think Catholics/Jews/Protestants all somewhat misunderstand each other, but they do have distinct and conflicting models of the world, and I think the US is substantially worse since letting Catholics and Jews into positions of influence.
The biggest point of conflict is that unlike Catholics and Jews, Protestants have no will to power in the sense of large state or quasi-state institutions, while Catholics and Jews do. To American Protestants, the dream is to be self-sovereign and free not merely from control by the centralised state, but free even from dependency on it in the first place. As far as I can tell from extensive interaction with Catholics and Jews, this dream is... not at all shared by them. This entire thought paradigm doesn't even exist in their heads, and to the extent they try to entertain it, it seems silly and quaint. Their model of the world is there is centralised power and we need to be in control of it. The Catholic view is they're the rightful shepherds of the sheeple, and the sheeple ought to defer to their expertise, and this is the rightful way of the world; the Jewish view is to exploit the discrepancy in cognitive ability and offer the sheeple bad deals which put the Jews in charge of everything, then say "Well, the sheeple signed off on it right here! Look at the contract they signed!" Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, basically. Or Mark Zuckerberg.
As someone from a Protestant-adjacent background, I do find both of these views naturally repulsive. But at the same time, the root problem of the Protestant model is that the sheeple are indeed completely retarded, and trying to give them a say in anything really does just result in them putting shysters in charge of everything. As is abundantly displayed in software choice, if you offer people sovereignty and freedom, they don't want it: they want the mass surveillance, censorship, and ads. I don't fault the Jews for the slur "goyim": it's completely justified.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
The biggest difficulty with pushing a second language is that non-English second languages are mostly useless: everything interesting in the world happens in English. Yes, if you live in a non-English-speaking country, you need to communicate with the locals in the regional language (e.g., Russian), but even in Russia, every intelligent person under 40 speaks English, and even many of the intelligent people over 40. Even in countries like China, where there is the most cultural and technological independence from the Anglosphere, a large chunk of the interesting conversation and research happens in English among the under-40s.
That said, regarding local languages, even for English itself there is the emergence of an "International English" which is distinct from native English dialects. American English is already kind of like this compared to British dialects, but the mass influx of ESL speakers across the globe into public and business discourse has rendered even native American English a regional dialect rather than a de facto international standard. Key changes are dropping the arcane rules over auxiliary verbs like "do" ("I do see the benefit of that" -> "I see the benefit of that.", "How do you start a business?" -> "How to start a business?"), dropping the redundancy in continuous verb conjugations ("I'm using Arch Linux" -> "I use Arch Linux"), use of formal verbs over colloquial constructions using "get" ("My cough got better" -> "I recovered from my cough"). Revealingly, all of these represent a move from informal to formal constructions. In fact, this is consistent with the trajectory of English since the early modern period. Most languages feature some form of T-V distinction or similar formality management, but English has lost this distinction, and in exactly the opposite direction of the stereotype: English has lost the informal form and retained only the formal form! It's not that Anglos began classifying foreigners as family: it's that they began classifying their own families as strangers. In fact, informality has been so lost that even native English speakers often perceive the T-V formality backwards: "thou" is often perceived as formal!
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
"Scott, I think your legislation on trans issues and your legislation specifically protecting queers on sex offender registry is fantastic. Like, I really applaud you for that and I think you deserve to be here for that".
You did not just say that.
That is indeed my contention. That a leftist didn't say it.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
"The Epstein Class" is a right-wing shibboleth. An actual leftist would say "the capitalist class" or "the bourgeoisie."
While they're often talking about largely the same group, the worldviews are quite different: one world model runs on sexual blackmail, and the other on asymmetric bargaining power enabled by control of capital.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
It's not about pushing internal schism stuff. It's about trying to tar and feather the Jews and any pro-Israeli sentiment as pedophile-coded. And yes, that reeks of rightoid mentality. Leftists do not think or talk that way.
The leftists don't passionately oppose pedophilia because doing so is low-class and right-wing coded, so just like they don't oppose Israel or the Jews because doing so is low-class and right-wing coded. The way the left phrases these things is they're against sexual abuse of the vulnerable and against the colonialism of marginalised groups like Palestinians.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
The vocalisation doesn't sound sincere at all to me. It sounds like a right-wing activist LARPing as a leftist.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
3mo ago
Remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically.
Something sooner or later will snap, and whatever happens will not be "ethical." Either the parasites will successfully consume the host, at which point there will be no more host to feast on so they'll die, or the host immune response will trigger and maybe the host can burn them off before it dies (much of the time when the body dies "from disease", it's actually dying from being unable to endure the force of its own immune response!)
Regardless, I'd say the prognosis is not good.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
Well, Americans bringing guns to their celebration of *checks notes* shooting the government troops until they fled across an ocean sure seems out of character.
Hope they didn't throw any tea in the harbour.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
Well, in this case it looks like that's exactly what isn't happening: the details don't look particularly bad, but the sentences are severe because the judge is trying to send a political message.
50 years in prison over some petty vandalism is completely ridiculous.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
Discretionary sentencing should be with respect to the severity of the case details, not with respect to whether the judge feels like sending us all a message (and yes, the message is to us, not to the person sentenced to de facto their entire life in prison. One can only contend the deterrence message is to the offender if there's an expectation they'll be released and a participating member of society again).
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
The number one purpose of punishment is punishment? We really put our top wordcels on that lmao
Anyway, no, the issue isn't with criminal punishment as a deterrence: it's with with judicial discretion regarding deterrence. Despite all perception to the contrary, the law is not the judge's personal megaphone to blare his opinions on the rest of society.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
I don't care about the incident one way or the other, but the notion that a judge can deliver harsh/light sentences "to send a message" is ridiculous.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
This is an empty statement. Whether you're hanged as a traitor or celebrated as a founder is defined by whether you win or not. This is true regardless of whether the Constitution says so or not, so if this is what the Constitution is saying here, it's basically a rooster crowing to claim credit for the sunrise.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
The reality is it's even stupider than this: the reason the American government is so brain-fried and obsessed with aliens is because it's full of Americans (heaven help us all).
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
Yeah, at least for violent aggression, I think it's a ridiculous case to make. Many Down's syndrome people are severely retarded, to the point that they indeed cannot be held fully accountable for things like theft. Even if they sorta understand money, it's more in the 4-year-old sense of "handing over some random green papers and coins is a ritual you do before you walk out of the store with stuff", rather than any understanding of monetary value and transaction. The level of understanding common in Congress, basically. Yet even among downies and Congresspeople, it is well-understood that you can't just maul random people on the street and walk off with their stuff. Even most animals that grow up around humans don't have trouble with this.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
Nah, if someone put out a study showing J6'ers had below-average IQ, it would be enshrined in liturgical canon immediately.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
The great awokening happened under the Tories and the UK is in many ways less woke now than when then tories left office.
None of this had anything to do with them or Starmer. The UK has no cultural sovereignty because it doesn't control the internet: the Americans do. To the extent wokeness has receded in the UK, it's because it's receded in the United States.
And I don't think it's actually receded: I think woke power centres are coyly biding their time while the right clowns itself in the most ridiculous ways imaginable. Never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake.
Mark my words, next election, woke will return with a vengeance, and they will go Nuremberg on the right.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
The progressive would never admit to being a scientific racists.
Like everything else, cognitive science is subject to The Movement and its ends: to the extent that it serves the purpose at hand, IQ is as rock-solid science as universal gravitation; to the extent that it doesn't, it's lies that must be quelled and suppressed.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
Your narrative is rather... motivated, I'd say lol
Kings and gold are more tightly associated than Indians and the Ganges river, and there have been no shortage of kings throughout history who were extravagant spenders, e.g., Nero. Heck, even in the New Testament, the association between money and kings is abundantly clear: "Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's." (Luke 20:24). And it's not like this is some story concocted by the Jews: coins did, in fact, have Caesar's image on them, and this is not a matter of any historical dispute.
Further, the association between knights and banking is also... well, not exactly a story the Jedi would tell you (my young apprentice). The Knights Templar were basically an international banking cabal, thriving on using religious pretense to dodge international commerce restrictions.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
end up being largely about how subtly you can cheat
I wouldn't say that. There are distinct local optima that are not just bumping up against the arbitrary constraint blocking the way to the global optimum. In fact, this is arguably the definition of a good constraint: one that induces a non-trivial local optimum.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
The classic "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Never short!
Traditionally, the way to handle this was to reallocate to stable assets, where "stable asset" meant gold and treasury bonds.
With the crash we're headed for, I think canned fruits and bullets are the stable assets of choice.
Soteriologian
Unstammering Papageno
4mo ago
I agree with your presentation on kingship and the origin of its authority, and that Moldbug doesn’t really "get" it.
That said, you're still left with the age-old problem of "What happens when the sun sets on the sun-king?" Enlightenment philosophy was developed and trounced everything in its path for a reason! In the same sense that true kingship is ultimately grounded in conquest and social Darwinism, I point to the triumph of liberalism over older thought modalities and say, "Behold, your king."
Finally, there are a lot more problems with kingship today than there were in the Enlightenment era, because the nature of battle has changed. What is a knight in the face of an autonomous drone swarm, where each unit that can kill him and his brethren costs less than his monthly salary? What is a knight when his bank account can be frozen on the whims of a bureaucrat?
Whatever a knight is in 2026, it looks nothing like a knight from medieval Europe. And a true king surely more unrecognisable still.
But then again, I suppose a true king, by definition, would figure all this out.
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel"
Yeah, I honestly don't understand why companies are so pumped to hire this sort of person. In my experience, they contribute little, and it's all in a very metric-chasing but not-actually-value-adding sort of way. Yet people like Elon Musk are, in his own words, willing to go to war to let this sort of person in.
And Elon Musk is nowhere near the most smoothbrained capitalist out there running our world.
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