Freetalk Friday 1

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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

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fightinfrenchman wrote:
Jam wrote:
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What am I thinking about?
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wtf How did you know? I am questioning everything right now.
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

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I’m just sitting here ready to crush
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

evilcheadar wrote:I’m just sitting here ready to crush
What are you crushing
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by lejend »

deleted_user wrote:Read any good books as of late?

I have to choose one to read concurrent with my sister, for discussion. I need ideas.
Currently reading the following books.

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I recommend this book if you're interested in learning how the modern world came into being, why America is unlike any other country, and why conservatives are hostile to socialism, nationalism, and all other strains of collectivism.

In brief, it's because collectivists are reactionaries aiming to drag the world back to the tribalism of pre-modern times, in opposition to the liberal/individualist ideals on which America was founded.

This is why 'conservatism' is a misnomer; unlike European conservatism (which may be opposed to liberalism), American conservatism is actually about conserving the liberal ideals of the Founding, so it's a fundamentally liberal ideology.

Some excerpts:
Capitalism is unnatural. Democracy is unnatural. Human rights are unnatural. The world we live in today is unnatural, and we stumbled into it more or less by accident. The natural state of mankind is grinding poverty punctuated by horrific violence terminating with an early death. It was like this for a very, very long time.
Science, technology, trade, and property existed in countless civilizations prior to the Miracle, and yet we could not achieve escape velocity from the status quo of one to three dollars per day. Ideas changed everything. This new thinking, which I call the Lockean Revolution, was a wide and deep change in popular attitudes. It held that the individual is sovereign; that our rights come from God, not government; that the fruits of our labors belong to us; and that no man should be less equal before the law because of his faith or class. Of course, such a revolutionary way of viewing the world wasn’t universally accepted or implemented overnight, but the mental switch had been flipped.
In later chapters, I spell out how liberalism and capitalism created the Miracle and how the United States of America is the fruit of the Miracle. But the key point to understand for the arc of this book is that both are unnatural. The idea that we should presume strangers are not only inherently trustworthy but also have innate dignity and rights does not come naturally to us. We have to be taught that—carefully taught. The free market is even more unnatural, because it doesn’t just encourage us to see strangers to be tolerated; it encourages us to see strangers as customers.

The Miracle comes out of this worldview. It is the product of a bourgeois revolution, an eighteenthcentury middle-class ideology of merit, industriousness, innovation, contracts, and rights. Capitalism is the most cooperative system ever created for the peaceful improvement of peoples’ lives. It has only a single fatal flaw: It doesn’t feel like it.

The market system is so good at getting people—from all over the world—to work together that we barely notice how much we’re cooperating. Liberalism, meanwhile, by refusing to give people direction and meaning from above—as every ancient system did, and every modern totalitarianism does—depends on a healthy civil society to provide the sense of meaning and belonging we all crave. Civil society, as I explain later, is that vast social ecosystem—family, schools, churches, associations, sports, business, local communities, etc.—that mediates life between the state and the individual. It is a healthy civil society, not the state, that civilizes people. We come into this world no different than any caveman, Viking, Aztec, or Roman came into this world: humans in the raw, literally and figuratively. Starting with the family, civil society introduces us to the conversation about the world and our place in it.

When civil society fails, people fall through the cracks. The causes of failure can take many forms, as can the consequences. But one thing holds fairly constant: When we fail to properly civilize people, human nature rushes in. Absent a higher alternative, human nature drives us to make sense of the world on its own instinctual terms: That’s tribalism.
But this is not just a phenomenon of the poor and poorly educated or of strangers in the New World. The pull of the tribe is inscribed on every human heart, and it can take highly intellectual and sophisticated forms. In later chapters, I argue that the sense of alienation we feel toward liberal democratic capitalism should rightly be understood as romanticism. Nailing down the meaning, history, and forms of romanticism, as we will see, is a tricky business. But I agree with the scholars who argue that romanticism begins with the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The core of romanticism, for Rousseau and those who followed, is the primacy of feelings. Specifically, the feeling that the world we live in is not right, that it is unsatisfying and devoid of authenticity and meaning (or simply requires too much of us and there must be an easier way). Secondarily, because our feelings tell us that the world is out of balance, rigged artificial, unfair, or—most often—oppressive and exploitative, our natural wiring drives us to the belief that someone must be responsible. The evil string pullers take different forms depending on the flavor of tribalism. But the most common include: the Jews, the capitalists, and—these days on the right—the globalists and cultural Marxists.
Spend a few minutes actually studying what activists mean by “social justice” and you will discover that it is often a reactionary effort. It claims the rule of law is a rigged system designed to protect the interests of the patriarchy or white privilege or the “one percent.” Social justice holds that abstract rules or timeless principles are inadequate if they do not lead to “redistributive” or “economic” justice. In other words, as Friedrich Hayek famously observed, social justice is about the subjective will to power of a tribal coalition, not universal principles.

Today’s identity politics, likewise, holds that objective standards of merit or notions of free speech are invalid, even racist, if they perpetuate the amorphously defined evil of “white privilege.” Christian organizations must adopt secular values, because deviation from social justice principles or priorities is a new form of heresy. Recently resurgent white supremacists and various “nationalists” share the same categorical thinking, arguing that the system is rigged toward minorities. All that matters is “winning” for my team or race or coalition. Following the rules or tolerating expression you disagree with has been redefined as surrender. Your enemies’ misfortune is your victory, and vice versa.

Under the best of circumstances, every important endeavor requires work. Every person who has ever been married understands that marriage requires effort. Every athlete understands the importance of practice and training. Every general knows that troops lose their edge unless it is carefully maintained. The Miracle of liberal democratic capitalism is not self-sustaining. Turn your back on its maintenance and it will fall apart. Take it for granted and people will start reverting to their natural impulses of tribalism. The best will lack all conviction and the worst will be full of passionate intensity. Things will fall apart.
Image

A massive defense of the English Reformation. The author thoroughly rebuts most or all Catholic arguments against Protestantism, but I found his answers to Evangelical/Nonconformist critiques of episcopacy to be pretty weak and unconvincing. It's still a great resource for any Protestant, though.
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

@lejend Do you think there is a "conservative" party in the United States, based on how you describe conservatism?
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by lejend »

fightinfrenchman wrote:@lejend Do you think there is a "conservative" party in the United States, based on how you describe conservatism?
I don't think there's a conservative party, but most conservatives can be found in the Republican Party, which is a broad coalition of conservatives, nationalists, moral traditionalists and other factions, many of whom aren't fans of conservatism at all.
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

@lejend What percentage of the Republican party do you think is hostile to nationalism?
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Goodspeed »

@lejend I don't think "conservative" is the misnomer. Rather "liberal" as a description of the progressive ideology is a misnomer. Both can be described as liberal ideologies depending on your definition of the word. The real difference between the two is that conservatives don't want anything to change, and progressives do.

That there is more nationalism and racism among conservatives makes sense, because conservatives want to stay in a society that views immigrants and people of other races as second-rate citizens. That's what they are used to, and any change is scary. That includes multiculturalism, perhaps above all.
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Riotcoke »

Does every thread on esoc have to end up as political?
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Riotcoke wrote:Does every thread on esoc have to end up as political?
Only in the off topic
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Goodspeed »

Riotcoke wrote:Does every thread on esoc have to end up as political?
By all means, change the subject
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Starting my new job this morning
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Riotcoke »

What is it?
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Basically a customer service person at a small fiber optics business
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Goodspeed »

Small enough so that you won't have anything to do half the time and can spend time doing other things like reading books or playing Go?
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by edeholland »

Had an exhausting few days with the introduction weekend for new members of my student association. I'm back at the office now, but since I'm the only in my room I have enough times for reading books and playing Go.
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Goodspeed »

And watching Nick Sibicky lectures ^_^
This is a good one:

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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Goodspeed wrote:Small enough so that you won't have anything to do half the time and can spend time doing other things like reading books or playing Go?
Well I have to learn about fiber thingsh but that's the end goal yeah
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by evilcheadar »

Imagine being asked to contain yourself much like Jacques Cousteau's underwater breathing apparatus
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Day 2 of the job and I'm alone, doing absolutely nothing
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Goodspeed »

Perfect
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

I'm so bored
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

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Post by Goodspeed »

Might be a good time to take up a new hobby :hmm:
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by fightinfrenchman »

Goodspeed wrote:Might be a good time to take up a new hobby :hmm:
Reading is too hard, record a video of you playing and narrating Go and I'll watch it
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Re: Freetalk Friday 1

Post by Goodspeed »

It's impossible to play a live game and narrate it in a way a complete beginner would understand. There's no time to explain everything
Reading is easy

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