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It’s so much easier to destroy than to build. Everyone wants to criticize, no one wants to create. The moment you try to do something positive, you become vulnerable.
There is no cost to naysaying, in fact many will praise you for it, and that is good. A yes costs much more than a no, for everyone involved
If I say “everything is fucked”... you want to hear that. If I try to imagine an exit, other than death, I will hear only the sound of your no https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1064256564280913928
I am using a mental model where I think the west is suffering from a lack of animating convictions. It could be otherwise. It could be that convictions don’t matter, only growth
It could be that when there are 100$ bills lying on the ground, all beliefs are good, and when there are not, all beliefs are evil. I don’t think that is true, because if it were, we would never have got out of warm, equatorial zones
What I want to do is create—or at least fabricate—something that you can believe in.
The modern era reached its modality when a majority of people could no longer believe in a power outside themselves. “Believe in yourself” is a prayer, haven’t you noticed?
The religions that built the world are no longer adequate to the world they have built
Christianity won’t save us, it’s too idealistic, it won’t acknowledge the nature of man
(yes it does, you don’t understand Christianity, it teaches man’s nature is sinful)
(No, it teaches that man can transcend his nature by submitting to God)
(yes it does, you don’t understand Christianity, it teaches man’s nature is sinful)
(No, it teaches that man can transcend his nature by submitting to God)
Variants of progressivism won’t save us: all of Christianity’s idealism unmoored from the realism of judaism? All sky and no earth, a formula for a fall
Islam won’t save us, for the opposite reason. It is far too close to the earth, all earth and no sky, submission without salvation
Neoliberalism won’t save us, we’re already in it. “Socially liberal” means political control through sexual control. Bureaucracy that exists to sell you objects to insert in your ass. No, don’t take away the porn! https://twitter.com/gritcult/status/1072330952691605504
Eastern faiths won’t save us, they were never a part of us, and they do not sit properly in the western mind.
A faith which teaches that men are beasts will never elevate them above the level of beasts. A faith that cannot acknowledge man's beast nature will be unable to tame him https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1037330250961575936
A faith that tries to speak to man in all his particularities, which acknowledges the differences of different peoples... how can such a faith take hold of a diverse nation?
Universalism is a catalyst for virality, maybe even a precondition for belief. Who outside a few eccentrics would believe in a non-universalist faith?
Similarly with transcendence, who would follow a holy man who cannot offer transcendence? If you promise these things you’re a fraud, if you don’t, you are impotent.
transcendence and universality, these are the desires of the human heart, however specious those desires might be. Together they become a platform for moral inclination, for coping with death, and for justification of birth
That’s why all ideologies need an eschatology, it’s why eschatology is the beating heart of religion, because a story about the ultimate end is what gives context to the anticipation of one’s personal end https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1019938214688145409
Is it any wonder we can’t be satisfied with scientism, which promises us only heat death? Is it any wonder moderns feel little inclination to have children?
All ideology wants to be total ideology. Can we imagine a faith that can withstand extreme devotion, extreme piety, its principles taken to their logical conclusions? https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1069699115133493249
I thought about all this, and I was reminded of the Trinity, theology's naked contradiction, the claim that 3 = 1, a claim so audacious that only faith could justify it
All of our heads are full of contradictions. Truths that obtain in one context may not obtain in another. From within the mind, truth is just generalization from memory. Why fight it?
Philosophy and religion have a place for contradiction. It fuels philosophical ideation and conviction. It takes no energy to believe truth, tremendous energy to believe a contradiction. the more audacious the contradiction, the more energy https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1024007277206896640
Indeed, wrestling with a contradiction is a generator of spiritual energy: a man who fights a necessary contradiction comes to believe in it, in mutually exclusive things, and with fervency, and loyalty
There is nothing, NOTHING in this world for free. If you are want to buy a god you can believe in, I mean really believe, you will have to pay a price in epistemology.
This is the alchemy of the trinity, the secret of faith, which is wholly contradiction and holy contradiction
I swear vgr is reading me on the dL https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1072707135627096064
