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I have a higher than average strain of consistent misanthropy, but I also ascribe to a weird blend of Catholic moralism and Aristotelian / Platonic virtue ethics - courage being high among them.
I know that sounds pretentious (and it is!) but what this boils down to is I think the world is very fucked up, I am unsure if it can be fixed, but I think we ought to try and the ends do not justify the means because the means become the ends. The only way out of this is through it, and through it with hard work and - by the day - more and more pain and suffering.
What worries me about Altman types is they seem to be operating in both a deceitful and covert way. Covert in that their final objectives are cloaked and obfuscated, deceitful in that they are manipulating current systems to go to those objectives, instead of pointing out that the current systems are fucked up and we should change them or build alternatives.
To be more specific, Altman's lobbying is 100% designed to (a) get regulatory capture for OpenAI and (b) re-direct hundreds of billions of dollars of public money to fund it. And, until today, this was all done with a ton of vibes emitting peace-and-love-and-altruism and "we're an non-profit research company, maaaaaan." It seems like comic book levels of cold calculating hyper capitalist mixed with techno anarchist mixed with millenium cult leader.
Did you read Toilken as a kid? I’ve long taken inspiration from the book which was “do your duty and that which is right even if it seems unlikely to win over evil.”
No. I never got into it.
What you've just described is the core message of the Bible.
I wish the literary character story of Christ in the New Testament was more appreciated. The entire point of The Agony in the Garden is that a literal God-Man, who is already assured of his salvation and the promise of paradise, not only doubts himself and his "role" in the story, but actively asks to avoid it;
Luke 22:42
Although his faith returns, Christ experiences this agony/passion all the way through his earthly death.
To me, that is a much more visceral and compelling exposition of "do your duty even in the face of fear/danger/death" because it is coming from a character who already has assurance of the outcome. It's a deeply metaphysical complexity.
Anyways, yeah, I guess LoTR Is neat.
That seems less compelling if more re assuring. If Christ can have doubt or a desire to not face the hard roads then so can I.
The difference is in LOTR you have people who are by and large sure that what they do won’t accomplish their goal (ie evil will prevail) and instead of trying to flee and eek out an okay life take a stand. And it is that hope against all odds (or estel) that overcomes evil.
Open the aperture a little bit and you get the countless stories of martyrdom (especially in the early Church) wherein the same principle is illustrated.
Again, I'm not saying that LoTR is not valuable or that it does not convey worthwhile virtue ethics.
Yes. Stephen for example. Swords and spears sound better.
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