Muh Faith, 2
Let me first say that my previous post wasn't about shitting on Mormonism or on Mormons as a whole. I have many Mormon readers, and they have been kind to me. I'm a great fan of Mormons and I wish more people were like them.
That said, I think Mitt Romney is an evil profiteer and a dishonest hack, "weeping" when his church finally kneeled to Leftist pressure and accepted blacks in their church. Aren't you supposed to follow your church leadership, whatever they say? Why do you weep when they say something which just happens to be good for you? You'll note that Mitt Romney's father was the man who presided over the Detroit riots, and made a career of his "moderate" conservatism, i.e. swimming left and dragging his church with him.
Rumor has it the GOP establishment wants to nominate Romney again. Which again shows they don't really want to win. If all they want is to lose, they could nominate Cruz and lose even worse. But what they want is to send a message about what is tolerated. People like Trump will be crushed; people like Cruz aren't tolerated either. People who weep when freedom of association is abolished in favor of blacks are to be favored and lionized.
A common theme of this blog is that people using religion for their personal benefit is not only possible; it's to be expected. People tend to take religion seriously only to the extent that interests them. See an even more jarring example.
The Pope, Francis I, had this to say in a recent meeting with a group of "French Social Christians". I take it there are other French Christians which aren't social. There he said (Google Translate works well with Italian):
"Emmanuel Levinas bases its philosophy on the meeting with the other," sums up Francis. "The other has a face. We must go out of ourselves to contemplate. "The adventure of the caravels would therefore something metaphysical? "From Magellan onwards, he has learned to look at the world from the south. That's why the world is best seen from the periphery to the center and I understand better my faith from the periphery, but the periphery can be human, linked to poverty, health, or a feeling of existential periphery ". We understand well the importance of this issue has taken on in the preaching of Francis.
Emmanuel Levinas being some Jewish philosopher bullshit artist who made a killing in France, the mecca of all bullshit artists. Apparently the Pope takes his insight from Jewish philosophers, instead of the Catholic catechism.
"There's something that bothers me," the Pope said. "Of course, globalization unites us and thus has positive aspects. But I think there are good and less good globalization. The less good can be represented by a sphere: every person is equal distance from the center. This first scheme separates man from himself, uniformizes him and eventually prevents him to express himself freely. The best globalization would be quite a polyhedron. All are united, but every people, every nation, retains its identity, its culture, its wealth. The stakes for me is this good globalization, which allows us to keep what defines us. This second vision of globalization allows to unite people while preserving their uniqueness, which favors dialogue, mutual understanding. So that there is dialogue, there is a condition sine qua non : starting with his own identity. If they are not clear with myself, if I know my religious, cultural, philosophical, I can not turn to another. There is no membership dialogue ".
Got it? Me neither. That's the crap the Catholic Church is selling these days. The global polyhedron.
"The only continent that can bring some unity to the world is Europe," the Pope added. "China has perhaps a more ancient culture, more profound. But only Europe has a vocation of universality and service. " Francis returns then on the theme of his speech in Strasbourg, on 25 November 2014, when he compared Europe to a grandmother a little 'tired. "But here is the mother became a grandmother" sorridecon a hint of irony. I think of the biblical stories, the old Sarah who laughs when he learns that gets pregnant. The question may seem strange, but I can not not do it. It's too late? Grandma can once again become a young mother? "A head of state I have already asked this question," replies the Pope. "Yes, it can. But under certain conditions. Spain and Italy have a birth rate close to zero. France gets along better because he built a family policy that encourages the birth. Being a mother means having children. "But the renewal is not only quantitative. "If Europe wants to rejuvenate, he must rediscover their cultural roots. Of all the Western countries, Europe has the stronger and deeper roots. Through colonization, these roots have even reached the new world. But forgetting its own history, Europe weakens. It is then that risks becoming an empty place. "
Don't get it? It doesn't make a lot of sense. Europe having "a vocation of service". The grandmother becoming a young mother. Rejuvenating by rediscovering cultural roots. Come on Francis, what are you talking about? Spell it out.
"We can speak today of Arab invasion. It is a social fact, "he says with detachment, as if observed that the weather is cold. But he immediately added - and theorists of the "Great Replacement", dear to the far right, would remain disappointed - "how many invasions has experienced Europe in the course of its history! But he has always been able to overcome herself, go ahead then they find themselves as increased by the exchange between cultures."
Now I get it. He finally said it, Francis. We are under an Arab invasion. That is a fact. But it's no big deal! We have been invaded before, amirite? And we're still around, amirite? What, untold numbers of people were killed, mamed, raped and kidnapped during those past invasions? The Arab invasions of the past were only repelled by physically expelling the Arabs after centuries of fighting? Details, details. The Pope doesn't bother himself with details. He has more important things to care about. The Big Picture. The Polyhedron. The Other.
A while ago I quoted Scott Atran on religion being a coordination mechanism based on preposterous assertions (as I had put it previously, unfalsifiable crap), which are useful to check out who is loyal and who isn't. Turns out it doesn't really need to be preposterous or unfalsifiable. You can say obviously false things and still get away with it as long as your frame is strong enough. Or as long as you have power.
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[…] By spandrell […]
Benedict XVI was a better pope, a better man, and a clearer thinker. In 2004, just before assuming the Papacy, he wrote about Europe's foremost problem: "The West reveals here a hatred of itself, which is strange and can be only considered pathological; the West is laudably trying to open itself, full of understanding, to external values, but it no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure." The entire article is worth reading. The fact that we're now stuck with Pope Francis -- a thoroughly comical and ridiculous figure, incapable even of sophistry -- is perplexing. What could have caused Benedict to step down, I wonder? Despair, perhaps?
There's a fairly popular conspiracy theory out there. http://www.onepeterfive.com/vatican-conspiracy-against-pope-benedict-for-pope-francis/ Pretty sordid stuff, as usual.
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
Pope Francis I has identified the Arab Invasion as an invasion, without condemning it as an invasion. As a trained Jesuit, Francis's purpose appears to be spreading FUD against the enemies of The Roman Catholic Church.
"But I think there are good and less good globalization blah blah blah" It's almost if he's grasping towards Sailer-style concentric circles of loyalties here but it turns into some mushy childish thought experiment. Or maybe he got an urge to replace Moldbug's Patchwork with a Dodecahedron. "The only continent that can bring some unity to the world is Europe blah blah blah" The SWPL man's burden. "Universality" and "service" could rightly be considered core tenets of the prog worldview, and Pope Faggot for all his other slights at least sees with clarity that Euros are the only ones flying that flag. Carbon footprints, interfaith dialogue, 'responsible' family sizes, yadda yadda... So paradoxically, Europe must "rejuvenate" itself to be able to infect other peoples of the world with that same poison.
Summary of Francis: "there is no evil in the world, just Euroman not doing enough to help everyone out." Church and civic groups usually get leaders who have a little bit of dark enlightenment; carry a large dose of cynicism; and hand out the participation awards with a practiced smile. Francis appears to be a True Believer who really thinks you can hug your neighbor; smoke a crack pipe with him; and everything will be all right.
A religion that makes no demands and holds no one accountable will inevitably iterate towards narcissistic hedonism. It feels like modern technology picks at the vulnerabilities in all religions (the printing press probably had something to do with Martin Luther). If a religion allows for status competitions along any axis, it will get locked into that axis until it is destroyed. This suicidal kindness of the West looks an awful lot like MM's puritan thesis drawn out from an earlier starting point to its inevitable conclusion. Islam places status on savagery, with predictable results, while Judaism has fractured along multiple lines (secular Jews are on the Christian kindness holiness vector, Chassidic Jews seem broken on the universalist path, crossed with the status from studying path). I'm not sure about eastern religions, but the older a religion, the more robust its defenses against holiness competition, generally.
There is much less disagreement between various movements within Orthodox Judaism than you think. Chasidism is an established movement within Orthodox Judaism that was born in the 18th cent AD. Its main adversarial faction *was* the Mitnagdim/Litvaks. But they are no longer adversaries of each other, really (there is a lot of cross-influence). Either way, Judaism is one of the oldest religions, tracing its roots to the pre-Axial Age (considering the Sinai revelation to take place about 3300 years ago, which makes it approx. as old as Hinduism and *definitely* older than Buddhism). Since Rabbinic Judaism traces its lineage to the Levites of those times, this makes it the most robust system, going beyond religious orthodoxy and making it into strongest orthopraxy to date, with very visible results. Besides the determination of its adherents, one of the ways in which it has survived was that it absorbed all the cultural "genes" from other peoples it encountered, via mostly "horizontal cultural gene transfer." This includes monogamy (10 c AD, Rhine Region of Germany), matrilineal principle modeled after Roman citizenship (1st cent AD, Judea), messianism (Persia 5th c BC), non-proselytization (Rome 5th c AD), rabbinic power inheritance modeled after the Hellenic scholarch inheritance model (2nd cent BC, Judea), and possibly many more. Jews were replicating the right institutions and throwing out the rest as garbage. Sometimes it involved painful splits and conflicts, but under intense cultural (and some biologic) selection, the right modes prevailed. Haskalah (secularism) might be a dead-end for Jews in Diaspora. But there might be a place for some form of it in Israel, provided it is not vehemently anti-Orthodox or anti-Jewish. (Kind of like: it's easy to be a Han Chinese in Han China, but not so in, say, America.)
[…] The global polyhedron (1, 2). Fake flights from selection. Mandatory participation in providence. Cropped-back […]
"All are united, but every people, every nation, retains its identity, its culture, its wealth." This is actually encouraging. The question I would have for Pope Francis is if this means people would be free to decide who can be part of the nations, cultures, and identities? The world can cooperate with each other but we must respect the rights of peoples to have their own spaces (neighborhoods, towns, states, nations, kingdoms). This is the human rights issue of our time. The right to association, borders, and defined peoplehood.
The Polyhedron is the new Cathedral.