The Best from "Quillette"

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sciborg2

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« Reply #45 on: November 09, 2018, 11:50:36 pm »
Oddly enough it seems to me the sacredness of Life extending to one's political opponents is not a rarity but definitely something being eaten away at. It's a bit crazy to say but "Murder is Wrong" may become a lodestone for the remaining sane among us regardless of our political inclinations.

Indeed, it's something that I think is definitely slipping away though.  Basically, a new story every day at how this erodes though.

Hmmm...I do think you are on to something about needing to cultivate the "irrational" part of ourselves, that deeper-Darkness/higher-Light.

No one wants to really explore that, because it is antithetical with the idea that we are fully rational.

There's definitely something to be said about our inner narrator, our connection to stories and how this impacts our consciousness, and how this all ties into the deeper self.

Well, condsidering that the aim, now-a-days seems to be to get a materialistic as possible, via neuropsychology and the like, something so abstract is not regarded as particularly true, let alone particularly important.

But your reply does make me wonder if the idea of Sacrifice as part of our relationship with the numinous does falter and affect the Ground.

Sure, but even as our relationship to the practical.  There is practical pay-off for sacrifice.  In fact, that is plausibly why we regard it with a numinous quality.  Society would not work, if not for our "compact with the future" and that compact is largely sealed with sacrifice.

Why the Ground is of so much importance, finding the transcendent (or at least agreed upon) principles and promoting them - comes back to the cultivation of opponents. Media should do a better job of showing people who disagree able to argue peacefully - where I think Reason/Logic has the important but not necessarily preeminent role.

Media only reflects what makes money, not what is necessarily real or true though.

Without transcendent Ground there is no human society, possibly not even a robotic/android one either. Though I sometimes wonder if our future synthetic children might be the better inheritors of the future than humans could be...

I certainly hope they are, for our sake.

There does seem to be a need, at least among moderns of the West, to argue that their pre-rational/irrational commitments are (or will be) satisfied by evidence. That's what Quilette and what one takes as its liberal counterforce, Vox, seem to run on.

But I wonder if that's true beyond the confines of the dedicated interlocutors in Internet spaces. Does your average moderate or even conservative/liberal worry too much about the importance of Reason? I suspect there may be a silent majority more interested in being Reasonable which includes but isn't exclusive to the easily manipulable claim of Rationality.

Re: Sacrifice I do think even going back to the 90s there was something accepted about the archetypal importance of giving something. The Ancients seem to figure its importance more deeply than we do. Perhaps that is why a sacrifice made for the support of a Principle on one's own part is so convincing, or at least I feel it used to be.

And along those lines that is the problem with media, Patreon pundits, and the like - they tell their readership what they want to [hear], b/c to do otherwise is to sacrifice readership, monthly payments, etc. Quilette, Vox, National Review, to say nothing of Youtube punditry, all seem to engage in this gaming.

I'd love for someone to come along and do this sort of thing with a promise to never ask for money, but then again I'm not doing it either so...
« Last Edit: November 10, 2018, 12:30:20 am by sciborg2 »

sciborg2

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« Reply #46 on: November 12, 2018, 09:32:13 pm »
Article about the creator of Quilette:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/11/intellectual-dark-web-quillette-claire-lehmann-221917

I'd say that it's in line w/ how I thought of the publication so no surprises for me overall. It's a liberal magazine largely based around criticism of liberals, though I'm glad she wants to expand that.

But I think it's odd to not talk about the elephant in the room, that the atheists arguing with each other about liberalism/conservatism doesn't touch on the broad dividing question of God's place in academia as well as society at large.

Or, if not God, the Transcendental Good / Platonic Mathematics / Irreducible Consciousness.

You can't be a publication for Free Thought if that thought isn't exploring the question of things (arguably) more than material.

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« Reply #47 on: November 12, 2018, 10:47:15 pm »
There does seem to be a need, at least among moderns of the West, to argue that their pre-rational/irrational commitments are (or will be) satisfied by evidence. That's what Quilette and what one takes as its liberal counterforce, Vox, seem to run on.

But I wonder if that's true beyond the confines of the dedicated interlocutors in Internet spaces. Does your average moderate or even conservative/liberal worry too much about the importance of Reason? I suspect there may be a silent majority more interested in being Reasonable which includes but isn't exclusive to the easily manipulable claim of Rationality.

Maybe I am just off, but I don't think either "side" is too apt to consider their position is plausibly rooted nearly totally in irrationality.  In fact, it's levied at the other side time and time again. No one really seems to realize the implications of that simple fact, or no one really care to try to address it.  Probably because it's near impossible now.

Re: Sacrifice I do think even going back to the 90s there was something accepted about the archetypal importance of giving something. The Ancients seem to figure its importance more deeply than we do. Perhaps that is why a sacrifice made for the support of a Principle on one's own part is so convincing, or at least I feel it used to be.

Yeah, maybe it's just me romanticizing the past though?

And along those lines that is the problem with media, Patreon pundits, and the like - they tell their readership what they want to [hear], b/c to do otherwise is to sacrifice readership, monthly payments, etc. Quilette, Vox, National Review, to say nothing of Youtube punditry, all seem to engage in this gaming.

I'd love for someone to come along and do this sort of thing with a promise to never ask for money, but then again I'm not doing it either so...

That's part of the issue though.  If you are going to do it, you need to do it full-time.  If you do it full-time, how else do you make any money to survive if not monetizing your position.  And that inevitably means pandering, most probably.
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« Reply #48 on: November 12, 2018, 10:53:58 pm »
Article about the creator of Quilette:

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/11/intellectual-dark-web-quillette-claire-lehmann-221917

I'd say that it's in line w/ how I thought of the publication so no surprises for me overall. It's a liberal magazine largely based around criticism of liberals, though I'm glad she wants to expand that.

But I think it's odd to not talk about the elephant in the room, that the atheists arguing with each other about liberalism/conservatism doesn't touch on the broad dividing question of God's place in academia as well as society at large.

Or, if not God, the Transcendental Good / Platonic Mathematics / Irreducible Consciousness.

You can't be a publication for Free Thought if that thought isn't exploring the question of things (arguably) more than material.

It could be that I am misunderstanding, but it seems that this is exactly what that Chomsky video, about the Ghost and the Machine, gets at.  In that, we've taken that something like Materialism is "good enough" and so we run around in circles inside that little box we imagine the world could/should/would fit into.  It's not really a shock, I mean, take what Harris says about things like transcendentalism or whatever, how boring it is.  Is it really a shock that no one wants to write on something so abstract, complicated and plausibly unprovable as the nature of God?

Sure, the site is about "Free Thought" but our thought now-a-days has many unspoken, given assumptions to it.  No one is suppressing thought outside of it, just no one is really even considering it, at least, not academically.  Our times Thomas Aquinas we have not.  Plausibly even rightly so, because maybe the question isn't actually an academic one at all.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

sciborg2

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« Reply #49 on: November 13, 2018, 01:24:06 pm »
Deleted my last post which I made while half-awake, realized I was just repeating myself lol

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« Reply #50 on: November 14, 2018, 05:41:36 pm »
There does seem to be a need, at least among moderns of the West, to argue that their pre-rational/irrational commitments are (or will be) satisfied by evidence. That's what Quilette and what one takes as its liberal counterforce, Vox, seem to run on.

But I wonder if that's true beyond the confines of the dedicated interlocutors in Internet spaces. Does your average moderate or even conservative/liberal worry too much about the importance of Reason? I suspect there may be a silent majority more interested in being Reasonable which includes but isn't exclusive to the easily manipulable claim of Rationality.

Maybe I am just off, but I don't think either "side" is too apt to consider their position is plausibly rooted nearly totally in irrationality.  In fact, it's levied at the other side time and time again. No one really seems to realize the implications of that simple fact, or no one really care to try to address it.  Probably because it's near impossible now.[/quote]

Having thought about this a bit more, but isn't a symptom of this "appeal to rationality" belied in both side's penchant for labeling the other as "stupid?"  As in, their side has the onus of Reason behind it, while those other's, well, they are just not smart enough to grasp the superiority of The Argument.
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

TaoHorror

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« Reply #51 on: November 14, 2018, 07:48:41 pm »
Having thought about this a bit more, but isn't a symptom of this "appeal to rationality" belied in both side's penchant for labeling the other as "stupid?"  As in, their side has the onus of Reason behind it, while those other's, well, they are just not smart enough to grasp the superiority of The Argument.

Hence, conspiracy is attractive as it includes the "smarties" from the other side. If the other side is "wrong", either they're just not getting it or they're suffering from it or they're in on it.
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« Reply #52 on: November 14, 2018, 08:13:32 pm »
Hence, conspiracy is attractive as it includes the "smarties" from the other side. If the other side is "wrong", either they're just not getting it or they're suffering from it or they're in on it.

Right, plus that also appeals to "individuality" and "differentiation" in that it allows people to stake out ground that marks them as "special" or "unique."
I am a warrior of ages, Anasurimbor. . . ages. I have dipped my nimil in a thousand hearts. I have ridden both against and for the No-God in the great wars that authored this wilderness. I have scaled the ramparts of great Golgotterath, watched the hearts of High Kings break for fury. -Cet'ingira

sciborg2

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« Reply #53 on: November 14, 2018, 09:36:33 pm »
Hence, conspiracy is attractive as it includes the "smarties" from the other side. If the other side is "wrong", either they're just not getting it or they're suffering from it or they're in on it.

Right, plus that also appeals to "individuality" and "differentiation" in that it allows people to stake out ground that marks them as "special" or "unique."

Yup, see New Atheist conception of "Bright"...sadly I've met a lot of stupid atheists whose non-belief didn't magically make them geniuses or rational in any other aspect of life...

On the flip side the association with being religious and being moral...lotta hypocrites there too...