I am a huge fan of Expanded Universe, which also killed Star Wars in many other ways. There were many other interesting expansions, the most famous being that of admiral Thrawn painting the Empire in slightly better way and subverting the movie narratives a little bit. Then there was now non-canonic Yuuzhan Vong War, which made the post Empire republic look stupid, partly vindicating the Empire as they would have been able to deal with that out of galaxy invasion much more efficiently with their technology of star destroyers and Death Stars. And of course there were several force users, who claimed that there was not Dark or Light side and that the force is just a tool to be used for good. An interesting idea which was developed quite a lot in EU and which produced some Sith Lords and light masters questioning the dichotomy between the force sides.
The main thing going against The Last Jedi is not that it destroyed the themes in the original movies, but that it was just shit. The fandom would jump on other perspectives or even non-canonical things happening - if they were good.
georgioz
1d ago
This is interesting as I completely agree with you but for other reasons. The Gillette me-too ad made their CEO CEO doubling and tripling down, costing the brand decades of goodwill and brand power valued in billions. The 2016 Ghostbusters was a flop costing the studio somewhere in the range of $80 million.
This exactly shows my point, it is no longer wives that buy feminist razors for their husbands, or boyfriends taking their girlfriends to movies they maybe like. If anything, you provide prime examples of how the situation changed, and it will get more polarized in the future. If western companies won't provide what men want, there are always entrepreneurs from other countries willing to accommodate.
georgioz
1d ago
A more correct statement would be that they used to spend less than women, because women used to spend their money. The modern world of loneliness is unlike anything we have seen before. If you have tens of millions of single men, they will spend their hard earned money on something. What it will be is anyone's guess, but it will be a seismic shift.
One of the pet theories I have is pure economics. It is a public knowledge that women make 85% of purchases and they account for 80% of consumer spending. We also have predictions about "sheconomy" by Morgan & Stanley that 45% of women will be single and childless by 2030. By the way sheconomy is an interesting choice of a word for what is named as “male lonelines epidemic” on the other side of the gender coin, but that is besides the point.
Now what is more important is what is left unsaid. Yes, women used to make most purchasing decisions - because they went shopping using their husband's credit card. If 45% of women will be single by 2030, it by virtue of mathematics also means, that there will be similar number of single men in charge of their own spending, men who are increasingly moving to the right compared to women. This means that in totality the purchasing power of male population is probably going to increase significantly, and that pandering solely to increasingly progressive women by companies and advertisers may no longer be the winning strategy as Gillette or Anheuser-Busch learned the hard way. We may see some more surprises in upcoming years solely due to economic factors outside of any culture aspects.
Possibly. She did not say anything per se, she basically refused to answer or "take the opportunity" to apologize for perceived racism of "good jeans/genes" ad. But I guess refusing to make a statement can be considered a scissor statement in that sense, especially in the context where the whole concept is broad enough to encompass anything, including stuff like "men should sit when they pee".
For me real scissor statement should be something that is genuinely surprising, where the other side did not know that different view is even possible. So for instance "trans women are women" is not exactly a scissor in this day and age although it may have started as one, similar to "its okay to be white". Mild scissor can be something like "hotdogs are sandwiches" or "tomato is a fruit". In that sense Sweeney refusing to apologize for perceived racism in that context can be considered a surprising scissor, as it is not something people expect from Hollywood starlet.
It reminded me of another similar example of recent scissor statement, where the Dune star Timothée Chalamet called child free life as bleak. The response was of course ranging from "of course, does anybody thinks differently?" through "its easy for him to say when he is a millionaire" to "there is nothing bleak being independent childless woman".
Absolutely. I think Scott had a good article somewhere around human language. The gist of the idea is that natural language is meant for broad communication of general concepts. It presupposes certain common knowledge and discards uncommon outliers, which increases data throughput. On the opposite side is precise scientific or even mathematical language. It focuses exactly on the edge cases between general concepts and hones on minute differences given their theoretical or experimental setup.
Let me give an example in common parlance: please take a chair. Everybody knows what is a chair. This is a chair. This is also a chair. This may also be a chair. This is not a chair, it is a table. But there may be some outliers which on rare occasion can make things complicated: is this a chair? It looks like a tree stump which is definitely not a chair. Or is it? We had a distinction between a chair and a table - what about this one?
Scientific parlance: please move your body over there to the object that consists of four wooden square prisms connected to wooden plank with backrest and armrest. What is armrest you ask? It is of geometric shape of .... You can go all the way down to any specific details and say this unassuming sentence using whole books of related physical, chemical and mathematical concepts, possbly invariably incorporating all the human knowledge. It is absolute overkill for normal speech.
There are so many issues stemming from misunderstanding what type of language we are using, or even using scientific term in its common meaning as a special subset of polysemy. One of the most egregious examples can be always found in economy where common words like demand, capital, investment and many others have specific scientific meaning with huge difference related to common usage of those word. But there are many more such examples.
Yudkowsky had it correct when he observed, that many problems can be easily answered by dissolving the question instead of immediately embracing your presuppositions and focusing on the answer. This is age old tactics of combating sophist arguments that rely on equivocations and other tricks to mystify and confuse all the participants.
georgioz
5d ago
All good points including Evans Veres also being a huge dick. I am not against children's literature - I am quite a fan of The Three Investigators and they did dumb shit constantly, including going against dangerous hardened criminals alone or crawling into unknown dark caverns just because. I am not at all against the genre and it was not necessarily meant as a criticism of Harry Potter which I also like quite a lot. It was more to point that Harry being moron is a fact and most heroes of these children books are quite self-aware of that.
While awaiting trial at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, a paramilitary group that opposes Voldemort and his own paramilitary group, Harry is also systematically excluded from the operations of the group by its adult members.
To be honest, throughout all the books Harry acted impulsively and against good advice of most of his allies. There is a reason why Yud was pissed or let's say motivated enough, to create a non-moronic version of Harry in his own fanfic. The fact that Harry even lives can be assigned more to dumb luck rather than anything else, so it makes sense that people keep secrets from him. Heck, Dumbledore himself held the prophecy for himself and told to Harry about it only in OOTP book you read - because basically he thought that Harry would be dumb enough to disobey and get himself killed if told earlier. And for good reason, Harry is just a child and being dumb is excusable. The same goes for Dumbledore keeping the truth about horcruxes for himself up until the last minute. The idea was to keep Harry free of concerns and give him normal childhood, but the unsaid part in this noble speech is that Dumbledore did not trust that Harry would keep it all secret, and would spill it over to somebody so that Voldemort would learn about the fact, and he would put together that Harry is a horcrux.
By the way, there is a great video comparing Frodo Baggins and Harry Potter as heroes, arguing that they are the opposites. Harry is the "chosen one", a special hero who on the other hand acts like a moron trying to do normal stuff like playing sports games and fooling around, while almost getting himself killed multiple times due to his own stupidity. Of course a lot of it is a plot device to make especially Hermione look awesome, but it is still there as his character trait. While Frodo is a normal or even unassuming guy especially among the heroes of the fellowship, but he almost always acts with integrity, courage and wisdom. This in turn paradoxically makes him extra special to the extent that he is even trusted with the One Ring as he can resist its temptations.
Ironman/Robert Downey Jr. with comparable real life cultural icon being that of Elon Musk. When I think about it, modifying Bruce Wayne/Batman fits more than ever with decadent society turning into Gotham City real fast.
I will not be the first to use this comparison, but the startup tech-savvy entrepreneur is the modern version of pirate/conquistador/adventurer. They are highly individualistic people who carve their own space in hostile environment already occupied by corporate and state behemoths, often winning with boldness and intelligence racking huge treasures, fame and armies of women from around the world, who want to have babies with them.
Give them buff physique from gym, interest in MMA and Brazilian jiujutsu and some gun kata skills they use when cartel goons break into their underground bunker/office next to private power plant in Panama in order to kidnap them to steal some cryptocurrency. You have a pretty compelling hero right there. Maybe even more so than some naive secret service government spook which is so uncool today. You can even spice it up by making him traditional Catholic with some templar ethos or something.
This seems strange to me, as one of the cornerstones of at least Catholic doctrine is the concept of Natural Law, which is basically God's law written on human heart, even that of secularists. The idea is that God's law is immutable and universal, and Christians should not be surprised if other people hold facets of it.
georgioz
7d ago
What is the difference that justifies, in purely secular, non-religious terms, treating gay couples differently than straight ones?
This is easy. You can be secular Cultural Christian. You do not believe in God, do not pray and you do not go to church. But you adhere to Christian Ethics purely due to your preference in the same way let's say some secular people prefer libertarianism, other people prefer progressivism and yet other prefer communism or whatnot. So it is purely my preference that stems from my materialist mind in this materialist world, and this preference has equal validity as your preference.
Or if you dislike that argument, I can borrow tankie secular argument against gay relations: it is a result of decadence of bourgeoise and fascist society, it goes against reproduction of worker class and thus it is inherently counterrevolutionary and reactionary.
georgioz
10d ago
Where is the use of force implied by the poster above me?
Even nazis didn’t start like this, they had the Madagascar plan. Call it an intuition when government proposes death as a solution to a mundane problem. And what is next.
georgioz
11d ago
There was a case of former soldier paraolympic medal winner who asked for 5 years to get assistance with ramp for her wheelchair in her home. Instead Canadian government offered to finance assisted suicide if she is "desperate". Euthanizing war veterans on wheelchairs seems to me as Nazi as it can get. And that was back in 2022.
Many other such cases, it will only grow. The overall trend goes up, the number of people euthanized by MAID in canada rose from 5,000 in 2018 to 15,000 in 2023 and is was fifth leading cause of death in Canada in 2022 and now is probably 4th.
That said, if you want to redefine modern marriage to exclude people who are provably infertile in advance, I'm all for it.
This is to large extent already happening, as the institution was hollowed out for decades, many people especially secularists are now questioning the meaning of marriage altogether, as they realize that all these Disney stories about love don't make sense. Nobody needs a paper from government certifying that two people love each other, especially if it is extremely easy to get a divorce and secularists are raving about and supporting "alternative families" anyways. The societal advantages are evaporating every year, less and less people care if somebody is married or not, with or without children. Every year there is less social stigma, but in turn marriage also has less support from communities.
Modern secular marriage is something akin to cargo cult, an idea running on vapors, mimicking the outside appearance of something that worked in the past. I think this was also the main drive behind gay marriages - they wanted to leech off of the legitimacy and high status of the institution in order to normalize their lifestyles. As with everything, each action has a reaction, and all these things changed the institution itself. I am not solely blaming gay marriages for this, the trend began long before that, but legalizing same sex marriages kind of hammered the idea home - do you really want to be in a marriage club with gays and weirdos running various marriage frauds?
As of now the marriage only make sense in religious communities, where it retains its inherent meaning, purpose and where it is seen as a sacrament with sacred vows and everything. The differences are stark enough compared to modern secular marriage, that it should probably get a new name. Maybe something how Catholics use it: secular union is a concubinage, while religious union is sacramental marriage. Then who cares what secularists and atheists declare themselves - they can create a secular union with their gay sex partner or with their polyamorous polycule out in Vegas in front of Elvis or just a two (or three or ten of them) exchanging ribbons under some old tree or whatever as a proof of whatever they want to declare and capture for their TikTok audience. It is still not a marriage from Christian standpoint.
This is the classical example of exception proving the rule. Let's take another example of a state supported institution - incorporation into limited liability and other companies. The institution is there to support businesses, which are formed to pursue profit. The upside for the society is economic dynamism. Everybody understands, that there are unsuccessful businesses which fail to fulfil the imperative. Nevertheless it does not mean that the institution is without merit.
And it for sure does not mean, that just because there are some failed businesses, the whole institution should be hollowed out, because it is a "discrimination" that people cannot create companies for other things - such as group of bros creating a company in order to drink every Friday, which they can write off from their taxes.
...the 'socially progressive' view being that, the arguments against equal marriage all being rooted in their proponents' metaphysical assumptions, and the imposition of metaphysical beliefs by state power having spilt rivers of blood in 17th-century Europe (more recent to the Founding Fathers than the Civil War is to today), the official elevation of opposite-gender couples over same-gender couples cannot be justified as government policy.
There are many secular arguments for elevating opposite sex marriages. One of the better ones defines marriage as an institution primarily aimed to form families and raise children. It is because of this social good that marriage is elevated, and it gives the couple certain benefits. Marriage is not a certificate that two people love each other and its primary function is not tax benefits or shiny paper or anything like that. This intuitive family/children connection is also behind the fact, that it is not possible to marry your parent or your sibling.
georgioz
12d ago
I recently saw somebody posting his L on some trading forum. He shorted chicken fastfood in Korea, because he thought that the fundamentals of demographic crisis will impact that industry negatively. Then apparently the Nvidia CEO dined in some chicken restaurant in Seoul and it created fried chicken fad, boosting shares of chicken restaurants. He lost everything as he was forced to sell on his margin call.
This has been my experience with Catholics, for what it's worth - even just anecdotally, I have heard plenty of jokes along the lines of, "I'm a Catholic and that's why I don't give a fig what the pope says".
This is actually surprisingly in line with Catholic doctrine. You do not have to listen to each interview with Pope and obey his suggestions regarding climate change or whatnot. There are only specific situations such as when he speaks ex cathedra where his words have binding power, but even then it is in conjunction with other bishops and clergy. Of course he is still the pope and thus influential, but he is not a dictator as he is sometimes seen by other Christians or atheists.
My reply is that SJP is just a political ideology. If its proponents do not meddle with politics, there is no point to it at all. And of course that means that it attracts plenty of sociopaths who play status games. But they have literally nothing worth protecting by keeping out of politics.
If you look at Christianity from the standpoint of Secular Humanism, it is also just an ideology as any other. Christianity is a just group of people who meet on various councils, put together some philosophical texts etc. What is a difference between Christians and secular humanists themselves - who also go around on meetings, put together things like humanist manifesto etc? Or socialists, who gather around communities, discuss things every 5 years as part of socialist international and so forth?
And of course secularists have a lot of things worth protecting by keeping out of politics - like their moral status where they feel as if they have the high ground from which they can criticize everybody else. Things like running secular communist experiment #45 with another disastrous result will only discredit beautiful ideas behind, that may work in smaller communities. So all the arguments that you use when supposedly "protecting" Christians by banning them from attaining political power also work for secularists.
The tenets of a religion being twisted under the pressure from realpolitik the way the SCOTUS has twisted the text of the constitution (e.g. commerce clause, Roe) is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.
Christianity survived 2000 years of tenets twisting by everybody including bishops and popes. Don't worry, Christians will be fine.
In short, I think that the wall between religion and state protects religion as much as it protects the state. If organized religion meddles in matters of the state, the consequence will be that it will attract the kind of people who look for temporal power, and before long your religion will be run by sociopaths who sell indulgence to their believers, burn heretics and organize crusades.
Of course that organized religion will meddle in matters of state. There is no other possibility, as organized religion impacts moral stance and worldview of adherents who in turn then apply these ideas in their lives - including things like how to vote, which laws to pass etc.
In short, I think that the wall between religion and state protects religion as much as it protects the state. If organized religion meddles in matters of the state, the consequence will be that it will attract the kind of people who look for temporal power, and before long your religion will be run by sociopaths who sell indulgence to their believers, burn heretics and organize crusades.
In short, I think that the Christian wall between liberalism and state protects liberalism as much as it protects the state. If unanchored degenerate ideologies meddle in matters of state, the consequence will be that it will attract the kind of ungodly people who look for temporal power, and before long your institutions will be run by sociopaths who want to castrate children, censor preaching as hate speech and who want to send people into gulags.
It helps that (from my understanding), in Christianity you can be saved even if you live in a sinful state in this fallen world. If you believe that eating seafood or gay/unmarried sex or abortions condemn you to hell, liberalism is very compatible with not committing any of these sins. (Things do get a bit hairy around religious objection to military service though, or if you object to paying taxes which finance what you consider to be sinful behavior.)
It helps, that from my understanding, in Liberalism you can function even in a state with various laws impeding on certain liberties. If you believe that let's say eating meat is killing the planet, Christianity is very compatible with not committing these sins. See, Christians are benevolent like that, and they even have historic record to prove it.
Theologians like WLC think as far as separation between church and state go that Christianity should always and forever remain independent of the state and that the strength of our belief should stand on it's own merits. I think he's wrong about this.
I think that there is a huge equivocation when it comes to what the separation of church and state actually means. In my notion the separation means, that the state is sovereign in a sense that all the power comes from voters through legislature, executive and judiciary. In other words it is not possible for a Pope in Vatican to create some order which will be automatically valid law for people in such a sovereign state. But it is absolutely possible for such an order to be brought through standard political process and pass as a binding law.
What secularists and progressives achieved, is that they expanded this definition of separation over to untenable proposal, that no religious ideas can be part of the state. They somehow convinced Christians that their ideas have no place in political process and that they cannot influence the laws. This is obvious stupidity, as first it is impossible to judge. E.g. if a state adopts laws against murder because all the MPs are Christians and murder goes against sixth commandment - does it mean it is now somehow religion inside a state? Is it possible to pass such a law only if one has "neutral" stance such as adopting utilitarian moral reasoning for passing such a law? It does not make sense and it is incredible that supposed Christians like French are just going with this explanation as a reason why to just lie down and let everybody else - be it communists, progressives and atheists or even Muslims - to use political power to entrench their own version of non-Christian ethics and ideas into state structures. To me it seems insane.
I do not think that there is such a stark difference between these options and specific denominations. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can move yourself and your family into religious enclave, creating space for the community to flourish. You can vote for laws in accordance with Christian ethics inside your local community and promote for these laws to go state or even nation-wide. And you can also go into enemy territory and "win the argument".
The same goes for going backwards in time for similar analysis. Yes, protestants were always fractured and individualistic. But they were political power of their own and Christians were able to push for things that David French would now maybe see as unimaginable. For instance, it was absolutely common to have prayers and bible readings in public schools up until 1960s. It was not until 1952 supreme court ruling that stroke down blasphemy laws in favor of supposedly neutral and secular reading of first amendment, the same goes for porn and other things. Christians held bottom up political power, and politicians they voted in had to reflect their moral preferences and uphold their worldview. It does not have to be anything coming top-down from a pope or archbishop.
I think this is exactly what is going on now. For instance if Muslims can create their own communities and then pass laws in line with their preferences like anti-LGBT laws in Dearborn, Michigan - all in line with supposedly "neutral" and pluralistic views, then why cannot Christians do the same? The supposed neutral "French" position does not even make sense in many instances as they are quite binary - you either allow children to tansition or you don't. You either have progress flag displayed during July in your school or you don't. You either allow or disallow crosses or prayers in public schools. In the end, there is no "neutral" position. If you have population of progressives in a city, then they will remove religious symbols from the school and replace them with their own things. What many people start to realize is that they can utilize their political power and implement their ideas in the same way as all these other ideologues do.
Walsh would not have said 'your body my choice'.
What are you talking about, I can perfectly imagine him saying that. Specifically on the topic of abortion he had quips like its not your body (because it is child's body). So your body my choice (of protecting baby's life) could actually fit his modus operandi relatively well. Walsh is also a troll such as literally describing himself as theocratic fascist on his X bio as of now. He is an entertainer, positioning himself as some sort of simple redneck delivering shocking statements in deadpan manner - this is the same tactics that other right-wing activists/youtubers/personalities use to move the Overton Window be it Jesse Lee Peterson or Matan Even. When it comes to hoe scaring, he has has pieces with names like This is How We Stop the Festering Disease Called OnlyFans. so there is that
So I am not sure what your mental model of Matt Walsh is, but he is very different from the more snobbish position taken by Ivy League educated catholic Michael Knowles inside Daily Wire staff. In fact I'd say that at least since Kirk's assassination, Walsh actually turned more serious and gloomy, kind of blurring the line between obvious troll for entertaining purposes and serious anger and rage.
This is not true, the Catholic church has space for mysticism in form of over 10 thousand saints - including doctors of faith - having mystical experiences, for which the Church is of course mocked by atheists and protestants alike. The point being is that Catholic church examines these experiences to weed out heretic beliefs exactly in order not to introduce them to the fold. Otherwise before long you will have female bishops wedding 4 polyamorous gays. It is only rejected mysticism let's say related to Arianism or Gnosticism which were rooted out. But the Catholic church acknowledges things like stigmata, exorcism and miracles to this day when they venerate a new saint.
I think the core of the issue is misunderstanding of what true united church would look like. Catholic church was for thousands of years a world spanning organization now encompassing billions of people. For some like you, they focus on scholastic and rational tradition of Thomas Aquinas. For others, Catholics were anti-science barbarians and yet for some, Catholics are heretics engaging in dangerous mysticism not supported in scripture. You can pick and chose what to criticize, a root meaning in the word heresy. When protestants disagree, they splinter in one of now 40,000 churches. When Catholics disagree, they have a process which includes pluralism and syncretism to keep the core beliefs intact under other pillars of the church.
See, Jordan Peterson is a Cultural Christian and basically an atheist. For him the Jesus Christ is anything but a historical figure, Son of God who was resurrected for our sins. His Christology is heretical - he views him as an archetype, as a good story and anything but what he really was. He even refuses to answer what he thinks about historical Jesus for dozens of times when asked, hedging his response exactly in Jungian terms. He literally picks and chooses what he likes about God and Christ and weaves that into his understanding - which is literal definition of the word heresy or hairesis (αἵρεσις) - to choose. To choose what you accept, what you ignore and what you add.
The Jungian dialectics between chaos and order, the supposed feminine and masculine principle or even political left and right is definitely not part of Catholic teaching. In fact it is closer to the Hegelian understanding of the state of things, which in turn is very close to Gnosticism - a belief that God is supposed to be realized by humans who interact via social structures. This is as anticatholic as it gets, it goes back to early church when they combated this heresy.
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