Feb 2, 2020, 9:14 AM
(re-post from ban)
Imitate Jesus.
There wasn’t much better advice. I’ve harped on it here for a while, but this requires re-telling. Jesus imitation offers the best strategy for those that lack agency. And in his time; that was damn near every soul. The low/no-agency Jesus strategy works in low-trust and high-trust systems/situations. But, please understand at the time of emergence it was ONLY patriarchal systems of order in which to navigate. The foundation for an agency-less ethic to disperse to an underclass was sorely lacking.
When there is proper order, acceptance and maintenance of that order is needed. With the Jesus trick one is sure not to run afoul of those with more power (specifically in ways that could get you picked out of the herd and culled). This allows one to stick around long enough to develop agency of their own.
But, in a landscape of chaos (currently caused by over-order and over-abundance of information lacking coherence and salience) the Jesus trick only allows for further entropy. In times where order needs to be created the creator’s son falls short of the mark [his trick doesn’t multiply/no breeding]:
By: James Thomson (d. 1882)
“This poor sexless Jew, with a noble feminine heart, and a magnificent though uncultivated and crazy brain, did no work to earn his bread; evaded all social and political responsibilities, took no wife and contemned his own family; lived [as] a vagabond, fed and housed by charity (if by miracle, it is clear that we cannot imitate him: would that we could!); uttered many beautiful and even sublime moral truths and more impracticable precepts; preached continually himself, and faith in himself alone as the one thing necessary; and died with the lamentable cry of womanish desperation, perhaps the most significant confession in history of a life of supreme self-illusion laid bare to itself at the point of death. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? He founded a sect which holds him up as the Great Exemplar of mankind, and scarcely one member of which even tries to tread in his footsteps. I have much love and reverence for him as a man; but am quite certain that if everyone really set about following his example, the world (which is surely mad enough already) would soon be one vast Bedlam broken loose.”
Jesus provides an imitation model for the ideal under-class citizen {That is ANY dependent: men/women that lack agency, disabled, children, etc.} but, doesn’t set up an iterative, imitable, image for those needing to create order.
See, in order creation, what IS isn’t enough. If it were, we wouldn’t be driven to produce. In a situation that needs order more of those able to unfurl order in the cosmic space are necessary one must be able to produce. We ought not have incentives that favor consumers but producers.
It is irresponsible to imitate Jesus as you ought to do more than sacrifice yourself to the greater “good”{as right now it’s the greater BAD} of humanity. As humanity isn’t what it was; and to sacrifice yourself to it (for their sins) isn’t heroic anymore but moronic; they’re undeserving and spoiled {NOT oppressed}. They know EXACTLY what they do; and if they don’t it’s a failure on their behalf to correct for the error {you have the internet and the worlds information at your finger-tips; ignoramus}[if you’d like to place the blame on the system, fine, but you best not be a part of it].
We are now at a point in time where we ought to be saying do as Jesus said; not as he did [calculate like Jesus]. And we ought to be picking out specific instances to pull from:
We need the Jesus that flipped over tables and scolded the higher-ups of the day; we need the Jesus that proclaimed “go forth and multiple,” we need the Jesus that spat out the lukewarm, we need the Jesus that warns us of God coming back with that flaming sword of Truth to do some swift re-ordering… the tolerance isn’t (for)bearable any longer!
It’s irresponsible to act in this naive manner: forbearing for those that will surely act irreciprocal when given the chance. Irreciprocity IS immoral and to roll out the red carpet for its manifestation is suicide. To extend tolerance to those that will use tolerance against you to undermine and usurp your position is not kind, it isn’t Jesus like; it’s immoral, an insane display of ineptness and it’s no better if it’s innate {your instinct to allow others to walk all over you; agreeable; feminine}.
The time has come once again to set limits. And as man is the measure of all things; it is he that ought to set those limits. And those limits ought to lead to the form and function of a flourishing culture. One that preserves its landscape of Jesus-like emergence as opposed to dismantling that very landscape in His name.’