"Do not sympathize too much with jesus because you may turn to one of his followers"
I really hate this era of discourse. It's mostly dominated by emotionally-driven americans with juvenile opinions who take twitter and facebook too seriously. A dumbed down elite making dumb meta-arguments using the emotional drivels of the most vocal but equally dumb sample of humans as input data. Meanwhile, european intellectual social commentary has either completely stopped or is hidden deep inside academic meetings and is afraid to meet the public. The UK doesnt seem to have much to offer also, and the bleak russians seem to have decided on collective suicide.
What's left? I guess i will wait for GPT-41 to write an actual intellectully challenging novel
Renaissance, Enlightenment and Modernism were famous for bringing science and reason mainstream, but they were surrounded by the Middle Ages, Counter-Reformation and Romanticism etc. These periods were surely not devoid of intellectuals making great strides, just, as you say, hidden deep inside academic meetings.
I think the stochastic pendulum is clearly thinking about slowly turning around; if it is though, it also means it is currently at an extreme.
Tend to agree with your sentiment. What are, in your opinion, three undervalued novels from the last 100 years that you would consider to be among the highest human achievements in fiction?
I didn’t know this was true for the rest of Europe but it’s certainly true for Germany. At least in the US you have interesting personalities the likes you’ll find on podcasts. On the other hand the discourse in Germany isn’t nearly as extreme. I suspect those things correlate.
Maybe that's why Zuck is pushing the metaverse. Since people can't be glued off their screens, create a party inside their screens and remake their friday night through faithful facsimiles to force them to party again like it's the 70s.
That's why people don't buy a house, live with parents longer, live as nomads etc.
I don't share the pessimism around this - housing should be a commodity i can get at a touch of a button because it is easy to build (and i work remotely). There are interests preventing this though, so until then, anything goes
If we reframe this into societal terms, so that this doesn't get dragged into a "not all men want that" argument, why is it that most modern societies had/has rigid, monogamous family units? There are stereotypes for both promiscuous men and women, and clearly there's some degree of promiscuity in both genders. But the (vast?) majority of societies also adopted monogamous family units for most social classes. If men and women are promiscuous by nature, which forces led to the family unit in modern societies? Or perhaps that's just an illusion? How common was it to have a paramour anyway?
Why would that be the goal? Men who have a partner still have the option to pursue sex outside of a relationship. Many simply pay for that type of sexual relationship with no "struggles" you speak of.
This is really not polyamory or non-monogamy in the way you’re framing it. Paying for sex outside of your marriage isn’t really non-monogamy in my book - it’s just sad.
The original argument is that monogamy is in place because men cannot get sex elsewhere. That is obviously not true. The point being that men also desire faithful long-term companionship. The ones who want casual sex or multiple partners still obtain that even in our monogamy-by-law society.
obviously nonmonogamous communities did not survive so what we see may be survivor bias. Nowadays however it IS becoming possible for nonmonogamous socieites to survive due to our superior technology. Hopefully there will be better studies out there than my office-chair evopsych.
Ah... On the "men...want..." part, are you interested in what actual individual human men really want? Or just in a very simplistic, macho stereotype - which few men are likely to voice disagreement with, when it is repeatedly and forcefully voiced, in the context of a society where men often face harsh punishments (social and/or physical) for having non-conformist feeling on subjects like sex. And generally worse if they actually try to voice those feelings.
Then you define "want" in a very narrow sense, and there definitely is no evidence to show that it's "social condtioniting", nor that it's a desire shared by (nearly) all men.
Eros did not just represent lust but also love. Agape is a context more limited to christianity, which kind of has anti-sexual overtone.
But there were many Erotes representing all kinds of desire and attraction
> Anteros ("Love Returned"),[1] Hedylogos ("Sweet-talk"), Hermaphroditus ("Hermaphrodite" or "Effeminate"), Himeros ("Impetuous Love" or "Pressing Desire"), Hymenaios ("Bridal-Hymn"), and Pothos ("Desire, Longing," especially for one who is absent)
> [...] christianity, which kind of has anti-sexual overtone.
As a Christian, I wouldn't agree with this statement. Most denominations that I've experienced are very pro-sex. We see sex as a gift from God, intended to bond two (or, depending on the denomination, maybe more) people together. God is Love, we're taught, and sex is understood to be an expression of love.
Now, you might be right if you said Christianity was against certain types of sex. I'm not, and I think the sexual morality police are an overly loud portion of Christians. Most Christians I know are very open and accepting of people's sexuality. But there is certainly an abundance of Christians who feel it's our responsibility to tell people about the right and wrong applications of sex.
But "anti-sex" overall? Any such denomination would go extinct pretty quickly if their followers actually followed that.
I realize you didn’t talk explicitely of catholicism but at least in catholicism there is a strong control of sex: priests make vows of celibacy, sex is seen only as a means for reproduction, and there is literature on using exercise (if not worse) to put off sex. Lots of practices of christianity have masoquism undertones (original sin, some rituals). Of course this does not mean everyday christians share this interpretation, but historically I believe it correct to say the Catholic church is not pro-sex.
It’s important to realize that Catholicism as practiced by a given culture is influenced by prevailing beliefs.
The puritan(ical) genesis of the United States has resulted in a mostly Protestant practice of Catholicism in the U.S. (polls of US Catholics show that over half diverge with Catholic teachings).
Thanks for the source. I guess it is possible to understand the text as "pro-sex" if one limits it to the context of marriage only and not allowing any anticonceptive mechanism. Independently of my personal beliefs I would not qualify anything with those limitations as "pro-sex", since they limit substantially what sex is allowed.
Really there is Greek specific to Christian use? That's interesting.
I'll have to look into that. It makes sense that different groups used different worlds. There are English terms like sanctification that you don't hear outside Christian circles.
The word 'agape' existed before Christianity, and meant something broadly similar - some kind of love, not necessarily romantic or sexual.
It seems to me that the precise nuance varied a lot over time. For example, the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in ~200 BC, uses it for all forms of love, including in the extremely saucy Song of Solomon [1]. The 20th Delphic maxim (~600 BC) is "Φιλίαν ἀγάπα", which means something like "desire friendship" [2]. In the Odyssey (~700 BC), Eurycleia describes Telemachus as "μοῦνος ἐὼν ἀγαπητός", meaning Odysseus's "only and beloved" son [3].
Sure people stop and think. traditionalism does not have a lot of potential for commercial exploitation so you see more of the other. You can't stop it, but you can at least let people know that the whole romantic ecosystem from hollywood to PUAs is basically a marketing scam.
