(FB 1544266409 Timestamp) CHRISTIANITY Just finished a talk with James Fox Higgins of The Rational Rise. (Damn, seriously love that man. Wonderful human.) In that discussion I think I have talked about my view of reforming christianity more so than any other public venue. The net of it is that christianity (and all our european religions for that matter) are compatible with natural law. Yet, it is christian tolerance that has made us vulnerable and is the reason we can be so easily undermined. The most intolerant wins, and we were not intolerante enough. So hence my advocacy of a very intolerant law. But a law that must somehow accommodate our traditional religion(s). He did bring up one interesting idea that (foolishly) hadn’t occurred to me: is our vulnerability as christians due to our failure to legislate christianity and thereby prevent other religions. The answer to which I think was yes. But taking it further, what would have happened if we had been smart enough to (a) legislate america as a christian country, (b) had used the jefferson bible as the definition of christianity, (c) and encoded the christian ethos (as I have), as well as (d) natural law of reciprocity (as I have)? In retrospect that would have been a very good thing. Now, i still hold the opinion that training in mindfulness by stoic (cognitive behavioral) method is superior to supernaturalism; that training in ‘sacredness’ by ‘church lesson, ritual, and oath’ is superior to any other method available to us because unlike schools it involves the whole family; that the model of jesus is excellent for teaching optimum cooperation; that the natural law can be taught in church – because the church advocated it; that it can be taught with sacredness not supernaturalism; and that the church did a much better job of educating the people than the state. I think these things are almost impossible to argue with. This is a very non-supernatural method of achieving christian ends. But it preserves the church(es) as the center of civil society and restores via-positiva to the moral discipline and limits the state to via-negativa actions. Thereby ending the means by which our civilization has been undermined.
Form: Mini Essay
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Curt Doolittle shared a post.
(FB 1544246689 Timestamp) SELF AUTHORING – SUPPRESSION OF MALINTUITION (suppression of the influence of cognitive biases) (repost) —“Q: Hey Curt, do you have a thought on the use of self-affirmations to create change in the self? For example, do you consciously talk positively with yourself with the intent on changing your own perception (personal narrative) ? Or do you think such a practice of positive self-affirmation can be used as an effective way of changing one’s personal narrative?”— Yes, that’s the essence of self authoring and stoicism is a formal approach to it. Yes it works. Although you can only change to what is true and good from what is false and not good. Most of the time I try to talk myself into either: 1 – ‘Be kind; be overly kind; they are only children, and doing the best they can in life.’ (It is very hard to control the autistic urge to anger and to punish perceived stupidity) or 2 – ‘Keep going no matter what, no matter how hard, you always win in the end” or 3 – “You can’t change that, and don’t need to, just do better in the future.” or 4 – “People think about you a lot less than you imagine, and generally better than you imagine, so don’t worry about it”. And those are things everyone probably needs to do. I don’t have the problem of ‘don’t take it personally’. I’m not agreeable enough to be affected by others. when they are wrong, only when I have been wrong. I have a lot of guilt about my occasionally losing tolerance for mortals and losing battle with my autism and hurting or disappointing people I care about; my divorce and one other relationship i should have handled better (i was very ill in both circumstances); underperforming for my investors. And the only one of those I can fix is my investors. cheers (edit) The only thing I would add is “What is the worst that can happen?” I think this is the advice people thank me for the most. If we are too concerned with failure to take risks that do not harm us,then we unnecessarily pass on opportunities for success. People forgive failure in pursuit of moral ends. failure in and of itself if costing nothing harmful or immoral is a good thing – we learn from it.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544234280 Timestamp) CONTRA WEINSTEIN VS DAWKINS I would love to have this debate because the alternative is that while we have a natural neurological demand for stories (frames) the world has solved for the satisfaction of demand, and one can solve for the satisfaction of that demand by a host of means – some of which have entirely positive externalities, and some of which have entirely negative externalities. Some of which are in fact eugenic, and some of which are in fact dysgenic – a disease, or cancer. In other words, we SURVIVE some religions, but those religions that we survive appear to have been reproductively successful for that which does not lead to ends that put our survival under our CONTROL: domestication. And while a relativist might say ‘well evolution doesn’t make that distinction’ – saying so would be incompatible with (a) self determination of group or man, (b) the evidence that we achieve what we do through self and other ‘domestication’, or (c) that those who achieve the most domestication are responsible for dragging mankind out of his animal condition into his human rational condition with which he control his destiny (survival), in a universe arguably hostile to (costly) sentient life.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544206793 Timestamp) HOW TO ARGUE WITH THE HERD: “SEPARATION DOES NOT REQUIRE SUBJUGATION” (but without separation subjugation is not only necessary, but unavoidable.) From The Other Half: —“Hi Curt, Thanks for your answer. Iâm happy to be thought an Abrahamist, Abraham being a man who defied the moral rules of his tribe in obedience to an inner voice, as the artists who gave us the Western canon have always done. You strategically left the artist out of your taxonomy in #5 above, but included him as a mystic and escapist in #7. The fact that you canât see a difference between mysticism and escapism says to me that my secular theology can encompass your materialism, but the latter can only deal with my position by reducing and trivializing it. You say youâre seeking to understand and improve the world, but I see Marxist levels of hubris and folly in the assumption that you can understand and improve it with the limited equipment youâre using viz. mathematics and economics. …. Your morality as I understand it is imposed by authority and obeyed by people who donât want the responsibility of thinking about situations that donât admit of binary answers, whereas the morality of the artist is internally generated by a part of him that is not his sociological self. This morality is what true sovereignty looks like, though few of us are capable of it at this point in our development as it involves the willingness to be in a minority of one. Hence the temptation of authoritarian answers to postmodern anomie. Ironically, your assumption that art is the arena of competing, positive moral norms is one that you share with the postmodernists, even if they prefer the term ideology to morality. ….. In contrast, Mailerâs line about the key to the universe being a metaphor and not a measure, recognises that artists are always smarter than ideologues and moralists. The line was in fact written in response to the first moon landing, a technological achievement of the kind of computing intelligence you apply to everything, and an example of how poorly materialists imagine transcendence of present problems. Launching a phallic rocket at the moon just to be the first one to do it is trivially heroic when set beside the worldâs mythologies and literatures in which the moon was a goddess who punishes transgression as Diana did Actaeonâs, though Iâm sure few people at NASA worried about the ramifications in the collective unconscious of their achievement. Americaâs subsequent hegemony and the atomisation of the body politic wonât I think be undone by propertarianism except possibly in a parodic way. A real body politic would have to be held together by a morality that comes from the inner life that you donât believe in, where we reckon with sexual difference in a way that doesnât involve subjugation.”—John Tangney “SEPARATION DOES NOT REQUIRE SUBJUGATION.” Paragraph one makes no argument it consists of straw manning and critique. to propose and argument you would have to construct one that states that Physical Fitness, Training in the Virtues (self authoring), literature, history, law, economics, science, logic, and mathematics have, must, or can produce worse outcomes than Mysticism, Occult, sophism, pseudoscience, philosophy and theology. I mean. I’ve done the work. that won’t happen. The second argument you’d have to make is that you aren’t simply covering for low, sexual, social, economic, political, and military value and simply self medicating your way out of reality. The third that you’re not using self medication, justifying it, and demanding others pay for it. A’ll I”m saying is that separation between the feminine (you) and the masculine (us) group strategies is beneficial to both, but if not beneficial can be solved by conquest, prosecution, and law. But that is better than another dark age of ignorance produced by people like yourself addicted and demonstrating addiction responses, to self medication. Achievement is superior to self medication. That is a judgement. And since I am not willing to let you spread addiction to self medication to future generations as people like you did in the past, destroying the great civilizations and bringing about a dark age of dysgeneia poverty disease and ignorance, the there are only a few choices for people like me and people like you: Extermination, Conquest and rule, Separation, or surrender. History shows that for europeans, trying to domesticate others turns out to be our end through outbreeding since the majority underclass wins. Ergo, separation. We were speciating (races) before agrarianism. Agrarianism is over. We can easily return to speciation – we can afford to. Hence, separate, prosper, and gradually speciate. I have no problem leaving you and yours (the herd) behind, while me and mine (many packs), continue to drag ourselves into the gods you need to govern you. 😉 Upon separation, all the 20th century will have done is assisted in the ‘culling’ of our remaining undomesticated demi-humans. It will advanced our evolutionary progress by two thousand years. (HOw is that for a counter-proposition of our inequality, undesirability of defective and defectors, and our disgust at cohabitation with you. 😉 Revolt, Separate, Prosper, Speciate. May the best group win.
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BTW: my background is in fine art. In fact, I’m teaching a class on art starting next semester. And as usual it will be as good or better than the best universities. 😉
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544289574 Timestamp) IS IT POSSIBLE TO ELIMINATE RELIGION? Well yes, but again, it’s not possible to deny that religion did serve as a (very) cheap (simple) universal (available to morons) education (training) in mindfulness (and sacredness – non-consumption ), and in the positive laws (manners, ethics, morals, rituals, traditions) in an era where only the privileged could get an education. The only difficult education in that list is mindfulness and stoicism was clearly the best of all methods of mindfulness discovered in both the ancient world and the present (cognitive behavioral therapy). The rest is just ordinary education through repetition (ritual) and oath (prayer). There is nothing else other than the act of doing all that repetition and oath in public. There is some advantage and giving that oath to a proxy (ancestor, king, hero, god) rather than to each other – those with whom we have material conflicts. That abrahamism and the abrahamic religions are outright evil is not to say that the category of training (education) religions provided is not both beneficial, and very likely, necessary – because it’s as unnatural as reading and math. The question is how can we convert the depreciating asset that is our existing religious infrastructure into a new asset that is appreciating, and removes the vulnerability and harm of the past.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544288676 Timestamp) CAN WE ELIMINATE RELIGION? NOT REALLY, BUT THAT REQUIRES WE DEFINE RELIGION AS MARKET DEMANDS RATHER THAN THE CURRENT MEANS OF PRODUCTION. —“However unrealistic of a goal it might be, wouldn’t the ideal situation be a world without organised religion? Or is there some benefit to religion that I’m not seeing?”—Dann Hopkins Religion is just education. that’s all. Period. The ‘trick’ of both church and state is to claim church does no education, or that state education is sufficient. We need training in physical fitness, mindfulness, manners-ethics-morals-rituals (payments to the commons), the laws, the means of calculating that we think of as the 3R’s, the skills to run a household, and the skills for employment. It does not, as it once did, provide for physical fitness. It provides mindfulness in the personal, interpersonal, and public spheres of life. It provides the some of the manners, ethics, morals rituals that are the positive laws of the social order (not negative laws as is law proper). It provides a venue for public contract making (this is my child, this is my promise to the community, this is my mate, this is our property, this person has died and his or her property may be distributed). It is, to some degree, a computational necessity – meaning that it is very bad not to have that mindfulness. It provides child-level parables and myths which are no less a form of calculation about action in the world than are laws, logic, and mathematics. But there is no reason we cannot have lessons, parables and mythos and histories for each class of people at each stage of their lives, all of which contain the same messages. There is no reason the church rather than the school, post office, or library is not still the center of civic life, and that government is not relegated to the production and maintenance of material commons, just as we keep commerce out of religion. So I think I have most of this figured out – not that I am interested in the content in and of itself, but that I understand how to frame the problem, and restore the incentives, such that the second abrahamic dark age does not capture our people.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544287916 Timestamp) IT DEPENDS UPON HOW YOU DEFINE CHRISTIANITY —“I’m confused about something. If you don’t think biblical Christianity is actually true, e.g.you think it is based on elaborate deception, then how is it allowable? How is it beneficial? I believe you’ve made a point of calling out intentional deception as unallowable in society. What reason is there to assume that you can take away non-deceptive parts and dump the rest, and still have a workable system? My impression is that the Jefferson Bible is in no sense Christianity. (my apologies if this is already addressed in the video or elsewhere; I haven’t watched yet)”— Matt Evans Well, that depends upon what you call ‘christianity’ and whether you think it’s good. Christianity can be the scientific content, and the consequences of that scientific content, which while very limited we can demonstrate are in fact good. Or whether you think Christianity is all the nonsense that is wrapped around it (lies). As a scientist I have to acknowledge that the optimum game theory humans can play is the christian command for love of others. I can’t escape that. As a scientist I have to acknowledge that everything else about christianity is catastrophically bad, even if not as evil as judaism or islam. Now, once we distill christianity down to those few rules (rules of optimum prisoner’s dilemma), the question is whether it is still ‘christianity’ in any meaningful way. I would argue that it is still christianity, because religions constitute our means of intuitionistically training members of the polity, nation, and civilization, to pursue the same strategy – hopefully one in their interest – that allows different groups to cooperate at large scale. I think (well I’m certain) that the short list of rules in christianity are optimums. But I do not think the jesus story is good. I am certain the god story is bad. And I think as do many that the christian god is a semitic tyrant over the semitic slaves – and completely against the interests of our people – which is why our people have incrementally escaped christianity, turned it to our own, while the jews and muslims have only become more obsessed with theirs. So, in attempting to solve the problem of the future, how can we provide the same psychological, social, and political functions as did christianity, and suppress, defeat, or eliminate competitors to those rules – competitors that would return us to the semitic darkness that we have saved ourselves from. Now, we have tools of: Naturalism(reality) < Logic and Mathematics (Measurement) < Science(Due DIligence, Naturalism) < Law+Economics(Decidability) < History (Evidence) < Literature (Analogy, Pedagogy, Theorizing), Philosophy (Removing Science), and Theology(Removing Reason) to work with. And I can find no reason to gracefully fail across the spectrum of Measurements, Due Diligence, Decidability < Evidence < Pedagogy, if we supply mindfulness (what we consider spirituality) through equally scientific means (training). And if we have to teach people SOMETHING, why teach them a falsehood when we can teach the same content truthfully (scientifically)? And the only answer is to preserve the psychological malinvestment of preceding generations at the expense of all past and future generations. I think moral education – and a uniform one – is necessary, just as is fitness, daily survival knowledge, calculation ability, and job skills. I think personal, interpersonal, and civic mindfulness is a natural demand of conscious creatures. I think the civic ritual of church: the oath, the historical lessons, and the balance between the heroic tragic warrior and the loving tragic saint (jesus) are important. One can look at the great religions and traditions and observe relatively easily how each tries to, and succeeds in, providing those goods in satisfaction of those demands. It is very difficult to look at judaism, and islam and say that they are other than a destructive force in the world compared to the other religions and traditions – particularly the hindu, chinese and japanese traditions. When we look at christianity it was designed as and used as a destructive force in the world. And the three abrahamic religions are responsible for more evil than all but the great plagues. Our ancestors succeeded in germanizing christianity by keeping it’s good parts and eliminating its bad parts. I see my function, and our function as the living generation encountering this remaining problem, as continuing to modernize that “sick, twisted, desert anti-civilizational blood cult’, into an institution like the catholic church once provided as a competitor to the state, and restoring its role in education, but to deprive it of semitic deceits, and use our own far superior history. I might fail, but it is my job to remove as much lying from our civilization in order to defend our high-trust people against further decline. And if that means the church must further reform then that’s what it means. The alternative is not restoration, but that the church, within a generation or so, will die off. Numbers are numbers. The church doesn’t have any. IF we are to have a church so to speak, and a civic religion that is more than just legalism, that includes the personal mindfulness, socialization and festival that legalism doesn’t provide – making us all invested in one another – then we need a church that provides future benefits to people not past. And while I haven’t discussed much of this in public yet, I think I know at least MOST of the answer. We never ceased being polytheistic. Ever. Just as we are poly grammatical (Frames, Paradigms). Many heroes are always better than one, as long as they are compatible. We are too different in our abilities, social roles, occupations and responsibilities. There is a basis upon which the heroic family in all her grammars and stories, rests, and that is Individual Sovereignty, the natural law of reciprocity, truth and duty and, yes, charity. And it is christian charity: exhaustive optimism and investment in others – rather than donations or mental fantasies that forms that basis.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544283381 Timestamp) THERE IS NO APOLOGY THAT STANDS SCRUTINY I just don’t use the christian (semitic) model of thought at all. zero. I use the western (european) model of thought: Literature, History, War, Economics, Law, Science, Logic, and Mathematics. (LHWELSLM). I can’t read apologist literature. It’s all Abrahamism. It’s no different from marxism, postmodernism, and feminism, and was and always will be, something forced upon us, that which we struggled to escape, that which we nearly escaped, and that which we are still trying to escape. I do science. I don’t really do philosophy except to undrestand it’s failures. I don’t do theology except to understand its failure. There is no apology for sophism and supernaturalism or pseudoscience that stands scrutiny.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544289574 Timestamp) IS IT POSSIBLE TO ELIMINATE RELIGION? Well yes, but again, it’s not possible to deny that religion did serve as a (very) cheap (simple) universal (available to morons) education (training) in mindfulness (and sacredness – non-consumption ), and in the positive laws (manners, ethics, morals, rituals, traditions) in an era where only the privileged could get an education. The only difficult education in that list is mindfulness and stoicism was clearly the best of all methods of mindfulness discovered in both the ancient world and the present (cognitive behavioral therapy). The rest is just ordinary education through repetition (ritual) and oath (prayer). There is nothing else other than the act of doing all that repetition and oath in public. There is some advantage and giving that oath to a proxy (ancestor, king, hero, god) rather than to each other – those with whom we have material conflicts. That abrahamism and the abrahamic religions are outright evil is not to say that the category of training (education) religions provided is not both beneficial, and very likely, necessary – because it’s as unnatural as reading and math. The question is how can we convert the depreciating asset that is our existing religious infrastructure into a new asset that is appreciating, and removes the vulnerability and harm of the past.
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Curt Doolittle updated his status.
(FB 1544288676 Timestamp) CAN WE ELIMINATE RELIGION? NOT REALLY, BUT THAT REQUIRES WE DEFINE RELIGION AS MARKET DEMANDS RATHER THAN THE CURRENT MEANS OF PRODUCTION. —“However unrealistic of a goal it might be, wouldn’t the ideal situation be a world without organised religion? Or is there some benefit to religion that I’m not seeing?”—Dann Hopkins Religion is just education. that’s all. Period. The ‘trick’ of both church and state is to claim church does no education, or that state education is sufficient. We need training in physical fitness, mindfulness, manners-ethics-morals-rituals (payments to the commons), the laws, the means of calculating that we think of as the 3R’s, the skills to run a household, and the skills for employment. It does not, as it once did, provide for physical fitness. It provides mindfulness in the personal, interpersonal, and public spheres of life. It provides the some of the manners, ethics, morals rituals that are the positive laws of the social order (not negative laws as is law proper). It provides a venue for public contract making (this is my child, this is my promise to the community, this is my mate, this is our property, this person has died and his or her property may be distributed). It is, to some degree, a computational necessity – meaning that it is very bad not to have that mindfulness. It provides child-level parables and myths which are no less a form of calculation about action in the world than are laws, logic, and mathematics. But there is no reason we cannot have lessons, parables and mythos and histories for each class of people at each stage of their lives, all of which contain the same messages. There is no reason the church rather than the school, post office, or library is not still the center of civic life, and that government is not relegated to the production and maintenance of material commons, just as we keep commerce out of religion. So I think I have most of this figured out – not that I am interested in the content in and of itself, but that I understand how to frame the problem, and restore the incentives, such that the second abrahamic dark age does not capture our people.