What is worse, racism or rape?

[sharon45]

So the idea that the world would be filled with generosity and love if everybody would be Catholic, I think is folly.

Of course, since the religion is not about that.

 

[sharon45]

If most people wanted equality we'd have had it a long time ago. Conclusion = it's just something some people say, but nobody believes in.

Nice fallacy.

The world is full of socialists who stopped being socialist the moment they started making some serious money.

Equality doesn't necessarily mean we have to be all socialists.

 

[skepticalbip]

So the idea that the world would be filled with generosity and love if everybody would be Catholic, I think is folly.

Of course, since the religion is not about that.

The best I can figure by casually listening to my Catholic friends is that Catholicism is about:

1) Tithing
2) Attending mass
3) Learning the rituals
4) Suffering
5) Getting into heaven

 

[sharon45]

Of course, since the religion is not about that.

The best I can figure by casually listening to my Catholic friends is that Catholicism is about:

1) Tithing
2) Attending mass
3) Learning the rituals
4) Suffering
5) Getting into heaven

It is really about corrupt power.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I like privilege. I don't think people truly want equality. I think we all want to be privileged. If not consiously, subconsciously. If most people wanted equality we'd have had it a long time ago. Conclusion = it's just something some people say, but nobody believes in.

The world is full of socialists who stopped being socialist the moment they started making some serious money.

I think that the reason I'm liberal, for multiculturalism, for free trade and globalism, is because I'm the kind of guy it would benefit.

Now do people want privilege or do people want prosperity? I think the distinction matters. Prosperity need not necessarily come at the expense of others.

Again... I think it's in-group out group. We have a group we identify with. Within this group we want to have status. Having privilege is a form of status. Arguably, the most valuable form of status. Privilege just means that whatever you do will get more attention, and more likely be assumed as valuable, compared to somebody who isn't privileged.

Somebody who is already rich and well connected, as well as possessing skills valuable in the future, benefits from liberalism, openness and dynamism. Their status and privilege will only increase among their peers. Somebody who's value is in decline (for whatever reason), or worries about it, will more likely want whatever politics slows down change and dynamism. I'm refraining from saying liberalism vs conservatism. Because modern

I don't think it's about prosperity at all. It's ONLY about getting ahead in our group of identity. That's why naturally beautiful people often condemn plastic surgeries and think we should just "love ourselves for who we are". Because they don't want competition, and if somebody beats them to it through surgeries they can look down on them.

I don't think we give a rats ass about prosperity for it's own sake. But as the world becomes more globalised and group we identify with swell (thanks to the Internet) status will increasingly be coupled with prosperity in general.

I can take a concrete example. I go to Burning Man type events. The typical visitor to a Burning Man event is a well educated, middle-class entrepreneur. Often young and successful. Just the type of people best suited to take advantage of our new globalised world. If you're not something impressive in the corporate world or a "self made" millionaire these people don't give a shit about you. Sure, there's quite a few hippies at Burning Man. But the core audience don't give a shit about the hippies. That's not the people they identify with, and it's not their peers. These are highly mobile international people. Mostly white. But there's a few successful Asian and African entrepreneurs. For these people they just want as open markets as possible. Because these will be increasingly privileged in that world. An overwhelming majority of these guys are libertarians, or far towards that. These people's wealth and personal identity comes directly from national prosperity. These people's money is tied to general growth in the countries these people have investments in.

The Burning Man hippies/New Age are generally people who have failed in their market. They want lefty/socialist reforms to protect them and get equality in spite of not deserving it (ie, haven't worked for it). So they want open borders for that reason. Since they don't think they can succeed in their market left to their own devices they think that everybody needs to be helped.

I'm convinced that the new nationalists, against the refugees, are people with obsolete skills, or low skill labour, who are worried that unskilled Syrians, or better skilled Syrians will knock them completely out of the jobs market. And that's a real fear. Because computers are increasingly taking away unskilled jobs.

Bottom line, prosperity only matters if it's tied to your ability to rise above your peers. If you only compare yourselves to people within the same market, the same country for example, then everybody in that market will follow the same rules. So you can "afford" to sacrifice prosperity, if it will help you keep a high status.

And status can be directly converted to sexual opportunity with more desirable mates... which I think is what it's all about fundamentally.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Of course, since the religion is not about that.

The best I can figure by casually listening to my Catholic friends is that Catholicism is about:

1) Tithing
2) Attending mass
3) Learning the rituals
4) Suffering
5) Getting into heaven

6) shame during sex
7) realising that since you've already sinned and will go to hell, you might as well go for it and commit the most debauched acts of perversity imaginable.
8) be forgiven for those same acts of debauched perversity.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Catholics are people addicted to cats.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The best I can figure by casually listening to my Catholic friends is that Catholicism is about:

1) Tithing
2) Attending mass
3) Learning the rituals
4) Suffering
5) Getting into heaven

6) shame during sex
7) realising that since you've already sinned and will go to hell, you might as well go for it and commit the most debauched acts of perversity imaginable.
8) be forgiven for those same acts of debauched perversity.

9) protecting priests
10) supporting war
11) supporting peace

 

[Crazy Eddie]

That depends what your goal is. Do you want to be successful or make the world a better place. If I had to pick one I know which one I'm aiming for. I don't have a Jesus complex.

I mean, making the world a better place is pretty nebulous, and can basically be filed under 'success' depending on your outlook.

At any rate, the impetus for making the world a better place should stem from wanting to live in a better world. I know I do. Though at the same time, so does everyone, and everyone has their own idea of what makes a better world. Some of these ideas are mutually exclusive, the result is conflict. So perhaps the bhuddists have it right. If you do nothing you leave nothing undone.

The Jesus Complex is at play there, though. One man cannot change the whole world. But six billion people can all change one tiny part of it. The least you can do is try to help your kids/friends/neighbors make better choices and be nicer to each other. The next-to-least thing you can do is be kinder to your co-workers and your customers as you go through your career. If you REALLY want to go the extra mile, also be kind and generous to total strangers and expect nothing in return. That's not asking for too much, but 90% of all people won't make it that far.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I guess you would have to define what success means. I would rather live amongst people treated fairly than myself given privilege over others based on some arbitrary characteristic like race, etc. Are you successful if you are merely handed the world?

I like privilege. I don't think people truly want equality. I think we all want to be privileged. If not consiously, subconsciously. If most people wanted equality we'd have had it a long time ago. Conclusion = it's just something some people say, but nobody believes in.

Everybody has different privileges, depending on who and what they are. Not all privileges are equal in all possible contexts.

But that's not what people are talking about when it comes to equality. There's a difference between lacking privileges and being oppressed, and people who have never experienced oppression find that difference hard to understand because loosing some privileges really does FEEL like oppression when you don't have another point of reference for it (kind of like when you ban your kid from playing Xbox and suddenly he thinks you're a tyrannical fascist).

I think that the reason I'm liberal, for multiculturalism, for free trade and globalism, is because I'm the kind of guy it would benefit.

Personally I think EVERYONE would benefit, just not everyone realizes this.

Now do people want privilege or do people want prosperity? I think the distinction matters. Prosperity need not necessarily come at the expense of others.

Again... I think it's in-group out group. We have a group we identify with. Within this group we want to have status. Having privilege is a form of status. Arguably, the most valuable form of status. Privilege just means that whatever you do will get more attention, and more likely be assumed as valuable, compared to somebody who isn't privileged.

Which is a good point; that's pretty much why the majority of southerners passionately supported slavery even though very few of them actually owned slaves. The slaver society was an in-group in which white people IN GENERAL had certain privileges and abolishing slavery threatened that status by definition.

I don't think there's any actual value calculus going on, though. Alot of people born with privileges don't see themselves as having them at all, and people born without them see themselves as privileged in one context or another. I think it's actually all relative to where you started vs. where you expect to finish and people want to feel like they are getting what they think they deserve, which for some people is quite a lot and possibly unreasonable.

Not disagreeing with you, actually. I think that alot of this is just going on inside of people's heads and doesn't really mean anything from an objective/statistical standpoint, which is what makes it all really hard to understand. It's not about outcomes or equality, it's about the perception thereof.

I can take a concrete example. I go to Burning Man type events. The typical visitor to a Burning Man event is a well educated, middle-class entrepreneur. Often young and successful. Just the type of people best suited to take advantage of our new globalised world. If you're not something impressive in the corporate world or a "self made" millionaire these people don't give a shit about you. Sure, there's quite a few hippies at Burning Man. But the core audience don't give a shit about the hippies. That's not the people they identify with, and it's not their peers. These are highly mobile international people. Mostly white. But there's a few successful Asian and African entrepreneurs. For these people they just want as open markets as possible. Because these will be increasingly privileged in that world. An overwhelming majority of these guys are libertarians, or far towards that. These people's wealth and personal identity comes directly from national prosperity. These people's money is tied to general growth in the countries these people have investments in.

The Burning Man hippies/New Age are generally people who have failed in their market. They want lefty/socialist reforms to protect them and get equality in spite of not deserving it (ie, haven't worked for it). So they want open borders for that reason. Since they don't think they can succeed in their market left to their own devices they think that everybody needs to be helped.

I'm convinced that the new nationalists, against the refugees, are people with obsolete skills, or low skill labour, who are worried that unskilled Syrians, or better skilled Syrians will knock them completely out of the jobs market. And that's a real fear. Because computers are increasingly taking away unskilled jobs.

Bottom line, prosperity only matters if it's tied to your ability to rise above your peers. If you only compare yourselves to people within the same market, the same country for example, then everybody in that market will follow the same rules. So you can "afford" to sacrifice prosperity, if it will help you keep a high status.

While this is all probably true, again, I doubt that most people really put that much thought into it. If you ask even the very wealthy Burning Man visitor what it means to live in a gobalized world, he may not be able to clearly articulate it and might just be going on autopilot because that's what most of his peers already think. For every ten people who share those political and economic beliefs, there's maybe one or two who actually understands why those beliefs are the way they are or what they mean. For everyone else, they're happy just as long as they FEEL like they're making progress in their particular group.

And status can be directly converted to sexual opportunity with more desirable mates... which I think is what it's all about fundamentally.

No wonder Christians are obsessed with sex.

 

[whichphilosophy]

The best I can figure by casually listening to my Catholic friends is that Catholicism is about:

1) Tithing
2) Attending mass
3) Learning the rituals
4) Suffering
5) Getting into heaven

6) shame during sex
7) realising that since you've already sinned and will go to hell, you might as well go for it and commit the most debauched acts of perversity imaginable.
8) be forgiven for those same acts of debauched perversity.

Catholics think sex is serious and think sinners just do this for fun.

 

[bilby]

The best I can figure by casually listening to my Catholic friends is that Catholicism is about:

1) Tithing
2) Attending mass
3) Learning the rituals
4) Suffering
5) Getting into heaven

6) shame during sex
7) realising that since you've already sinned and will go to hell, you might as well go for it and commit the most debauched acts of perversity imaginable.
8) be forgiven for those same acts of debauched perversity.

9) protecting priests
10) supporting war
11) supporting peace

1) Surprise and fear
2) Fear, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope
3) An almost fanat

Amongst their many weapons, are such diverse elements as: Surprise; Fear; An almost fanatical devotion to the Pope...

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Catholics are people addicted to cats.

You're going to burn for that one!

 

[DrZoidberg]

6) shame during sex
7) realising that since you've already sinned and will go to hell, you might as well go for it and commit the most debauched acts of perversity imaginable.
8) be forgiven for those same acts of debauched perversity.

9) protecting priests
10) supporting war
11) supporting peace

Are you talking about the old Catholic saying "it takes a village to raise a child, but only a child to raise a penis?"

 

[DrZoidberg]

While this is all probably true, again, I doubt that most people really put that much thought into it. If you ask even the very wealthy Burning Man visitor what it means to live in a gobalized world, he may not be able to clearly articulate it and might just be going on autopilot because that's what most of his peers already think. For every ten people who share those political and economic beliefs, there's maybe one or two who actually understands why those beliefs are the way they are or what they mean. For everyone else, they're happy just as long as they FEEL like they're making progress in their particular group.

I don't know about that. Burning man visitors tend to be extremely well educated. I think most of them are supremely good at explaining why they go. I remember several discussions this summer (at the Scandinavian one, the Borderlands) where the expression "virtue signalling" was used a lot. I got the impression that most people realized that the middle-class interest in appearing environmentally friendly was just that... appearances. And they knew it. Environmental friendliness was just yet another way for the rich people to spot who didn't belong among them. They didn't actually care about the environment. Well... a little bit. Burning Man has a long history of subsidizing art criticizing capitalism. The Burning man credo is overtly anti-capitalist. The "Man" in Burning Man is "the Man". as in "stick it to the man". They're burning an effigy that represents authority. Yeah... well... silicone valley money created Burning Man and made it what it is. Without loads of money from Silicone Valley venure capitalists Burning Man would just be yet another festival. Without capitalism Burning Man would never have happened. These are mostly well educated people. They understand this.

That was my impression anyway.

And status can be directly converted to sexual opportunity with more desirable mates... which I think is what it's all about fundamentally.

No wonder Christians are obsessed with sex.

Well... everybody is obsessed with sex. That's how come our species hasn't died out. You don't need to delve deep into the world of kink and BDSM to figure out exactly how and why Evangelical Christians get turned on by rejecting Christianity. Here's a tip. Try the Tantric 21 day challenge. At the end of that, sex will be the ONLY thing you are capable of thinking about. Controlling and denying sexuality is also a sexual act.

If you think of Evangelical Christians as all kinky perverts it makes the stuff they say make perfect sense.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Catholics are people addicted to cats.

One or two priests prefer choir boys to cats.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know about that. Burning man visitors tend to be extremely well educated. I think most of them are supremely good at explaining why they go. I remember several discussions this summer (at the Scandinavian one, the Borderlands) where the expression "virtue signalling" was used a lot. I got the impression that most people realized that the middle-class interest in appearing environmentally friendly was just that... appearances. And they knew it. Environmental friendliness was just yet another way for the rich people to spot who didn't belong among them. They didn't actually care about the environment. Well... a little bit. Burning Man has a long history of subsidizing art criticizing capitalism. The Burning man credo is overtly anti-capitalist. The "Man" in Burning Man is "the Man". as in "stick it to the man". They're burning an effigy that represents authority. Yeah... well... silicone valley money created Burning Man and made it what it is. Without loads of money from Silicone Valley venure capitalists Burning Man would just be yet another festival. Without capitalism Burning Man would never have happened. These are mostly well educated people. They understand this.

That was my impression anyway.

And status can be directly converted to sexual opportunity with more desirable mates... which I think is what it's all about fundamentally.

No wonder Christians are obsessed with sex.

Well... everybody is obsessed with sex. That's how come our species hasn't died out. You don't need to delve deep into the world of kink and BDSM to figure out exactly how and why Evangelical Christians get turned on by rejecting Christianity. Here's a tip. Try the Tantric 21 day challenge. At the end of that, sex will be the ONLY thing you are capable of thinking about. Controlling and denying sexuality is also a sexual act.

If you think of Evangelical Christians as all kinky perverts it makes the stuff they say make perfect sense.

When religious people tell others to stop thinking of sex, it makes them think of sex. An illustration. Tell someone not to think of a cat, and his mind's eye will give him an image of a cat.

 

[DrZoidberg]

When religious people tell others to stop thinking of sex, it makes them think of sex. An illustration. Tell someone not to think of a cat, and his mind's eye will give him an image of a cat.

Yup, totally. All this talk of sinning just evokes thoughts of sinning. They might as well be sucking each other off. I'm pretty sure Evangelical Christians think more about gay sex than gays do.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

And status can be directly converted to sexual opportunity with more desirable mates... which I think is what it's all about fundamentally.

No wonder Christians are obsessed with sex.

Well... everybody is obsessed with sex. That's how come our species hasn't died out. You don't need to delve deep into the world of kink and BDSM to figure out exactly how and why Evangelical Christians get turned on by rejecting Christianity. Here's a tip. Try the Tantric 21 day challenge. At the end of that, sex will be the ONLY thing you are capable of thinking about. Controlling and denying sexuality is also a sexual act.

If you think of Evangelical Christians as all kinky perverts it makes the stuff they say make perfect sense.

I dated a Born Again Evangelical once. I can confirm this 100%: those were 4 of the wildest, kinkiest, messiest, bed-rockingest months of my adult life.

From that and other experiences I've become convinced that a lot of religious fanaticism (particularly among Christians, but possibly Muslims as well) is really just an attempt to overcompensate for extreme horniness.

Actually, it's one of the things that undermines JP's "religions cause bigotry and sexism!" bent. I know a number of Christians who cling to religion PURELY for the social camaraderie and the need of an external authority system to check their own animalistic drives. The hornier they are, the more likely they are to overreact to someone else's perversion, ESPECIALLY if said pervert isn't doing enough to denounce his own "sins," as in the case of a gay Christian or an unrepentant fornicator.

And this is even more true of the homophobic/secretly gay Christians. Homophobia is not the fear of gay people, homophobia is the fear of BEING gay, and nobody is more afraid of being gay than a gay person surrounded by puritans.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

When religious people tell others to stop thinking of sex, it makes them think of sex. An illustration. Tell someone not to think of a cat, and his mind's eye will give him an image of a cat.

Sometimes you lick the pussy, and sometimes the pussy lick you.