apilgrimpassingby

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#absolutely obsessed with morally grey and or insane men who are with innocent but strong female characters #that simultaneously love them and abhor them as they conquer their own personal villain.

Anecdotally, this seems to be a fairly common thing with women - any idea why this is?

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A wonderful little mood brightener created by indiarosecrawford

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He Lives

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There's a phenomenon that I don't have an elegant name for (I'm referring to it in my head as Politics Really Matters based on the lecture on non-Western Protestantism that lead to me thinking about this, my mutual @kaleb-is-definitely-sane called it "politicalism" in a DM conversation) but have a lot of thoughts about which I'm going to post here.

Essentially, it's the belief that the human experience and human problems are primarily political in nature, and hence, their solutions are also primarily political. It's hard to see because it's been a major force in Western society since the French Revolution and has enjoyed basically absolute dominance (at least in educated circles) since the end of Freudianism, but once you see it it becomes very glaring.

For example, if you were to go up to a bunch of people and ask them "how would we make a better society?", their solutions would likely be things like having more or less government expenditure in various directions, more or less government regulation, more or less government power, etc. Likewise, if you were to ask "are there more important things to do than make a better society?" I doubt there'd be more than one or two or said "no".

Which is notable because these are hardly the only ways you could answer them.

To use something alluded to earlier, a Freudian would say that what we need to improve society is better psychiatry and perhaps fewer sexual inhibitions. Likewise, various technocratic types would tell us that green energy or going to Mars or AI or eugenics or what have you will solve society's problems, and government's job is to avoid interfering with Progress. Alternately, Christianity (and likely Islam) would suggest that we should convert to Christianity (or Islam), and that eternal souls are more important than society - in fact, framing the unit in question as "society" rather than "the human race" (technocracy) or "the Children of Adam" (Christianity) is a form of Politics Really Matters.

Tagging @thathopeyetlives and @isaacsapphire, who I can rely on to have Opinions about this (likewise with already-tagged Kaleb).

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Ok bc I'm insanely curious: I want to see how many Christian denominations on here believe in evolution/the big bang.

If you pick other denomination please tell me what denomination you are in the tags!

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This claim specifically is something I see a form of very frequently, and it sometimes feels like I'm taking crazy pills how there's little criticism or even discussion of the idea - this concept that religion is an *excuse* for "bigotry" / deviation from liberal-progressive values rather than the actual cause of dissent.

It's another example of (to quote historian of Christianity Alec Ryrie) "the widespread conviction which has dominated European and European-derived societies at least since the French Revolution, that politics fundamentally matters, the conviction that most human problems are susceptible of political solutions (emphasis added)." Under this view, everyone's religion, upbringing, psychology, etc. are definitionally less significant than their politics in shaping their approach to the world, so religion "must" be a mask for a fundamentally political dissent rather than the political dissent coming from religion.

I feel like you could do some anthropological analysis here of the "goon" or "wendigo" firearms and night vision goggles operator LARP culture here in the USA.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

Anyway, maybe I should have been clearer about this: night witches are not real, not even in the way the Imaginary Liberal/Conservative/Atheist/Christian etc. is. There were no covens of devil-worshipping baby-eating child-raping witches in Early Modern Europe or the 1980s Anglosphere*, and there aren't any in contemporary West Africa (where the term comes from); in all cases, it was a myth concocted to give people a guy to hate and blame a range of problems on.

*One of the things the book notes is that all Satanic Panic incidents occurred in English-speaking countries (the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) or countries where proficiency in English as a second language is common (the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries) - that is, countries where material from America could easily spread.

Another criticism of a Slacktivist post:

Here, Fred Clark makes a pretty reasonable criticism of the concept of the "Imaginary Liberal" -- the imagined target of one of those stupid "I'm proud to be everything that liberals hate" stickers.

Obviously the majority of "things that liberals hate" are within the broader range of things that all normal humans will hate. (and I don't think that this kind of pride is a good thing).

He then goes rather astray by jumping into the concept of very extreme "Satanic pedophile" caricature -- I feel increasingly like we need a treatment of this concept from a "banality of evil" perspective rather than a "lurid exagerration" one -- and also the absurd and implausible fantasy-world of the very kooky Left Behind novels.

But I think this does protest too much, I do think there's a very coherent "locus of dissent" concerning things that the Right admires (often rightly) and the Left disdains or sneers at.

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I'd agree with most of this, but there's one bit I'd vehemently disagree with.

"Nothing has been fixed".

This is defeatist nonsense. Much has been fixed. In 1958, white American approval of interracial marriage was just 5%; in 2024, white disapproval of interracial marriage was just 6%. That's a complete reversal of the consensus in one lifetime.

Obviously there's a great deal of work that needs to be done. But doing work at all is predicated on the fact that some things can be and have been fixed. If it weren't for that there'd be no point in trying.

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(In defence of the invocation of Left Behind - here because I don't really have a good place to put this - the books have sold 80 million copies, a figure comparable to the total number of Tom Clancy novels in print and sales of The Da Vinci Code. Clearly a lot of people like these books. Also Fred Clark's written so much about these books I suspect they live rent-free in his head now.)

Having read the article, I see a common problem with Fred Clark's content: he's incredibly insightful about the "other side", but refuses (or perhaps is unable) to turn the critical lens on his own "team".

The Imaginary Liberal is very much A Thing, but he's got his opposite-wing counterpart, the Imaginary Conservative.

You've mentioned in another recent post that many Tumblr users seem surprised or indignant to learn that right-wingers hate corporate greed too - in their view, people who are pro-capitalism don't support it because they think its goods outweigh its evils, or because they think the evils of socialism are worse than the evils of capitalism, or even because they personally benefit from capitalism, but because they love big business and oppressing the proletariat. Likewise, a great deal of pro-immigration rhetoric assumes that the average nativist/isolationist is a card-carrying biological racist, which in my experience is usually not the case.

Examples could be endlessly multiplied: the Imaginary Atheists who populate Chick Tracts and God's Not Dead films, Imaginary Christians whose religion is a thin veil for their bigotry and power-hunger, Imaginary Communists who just hate rich people and want to enslave everyone, Imaginary Capitalists as described above, and so on.

There really should be a name for this phenomenon. A book about the Satanic Panic I started reading today (Speak of the Devil: tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England) uses the term "night witches", an anthropological term with a comparable meaning (imaginary societies of witches whose values and practices are an inversion of those of the society that believes in them - the name comes from the fact that they usually meet and do their work by night, contrasting normal society), but that's about wholly imaginary groups reviled by everyone in a given culture, rather than a heavily demonised and distorted image of a subset of society reviled by another specific subset. Any proposed names?

Another criticism of a Slacktivist post:

Here, Fred Clark makes a pretty reasonable criticism of the concept of the "Imaginary Liberal" -- the imagined target of one of those stupid "I'm proud to be everything that liberals hate" stickers.

Obviously the majority of "things that liberals hate" are within the broader range of things that all normal humans will hate. (and I don't think that this kind of pride is a good thing).

He then goes rather astray by jumping into the concept of very extreme "Satanic pedophile" caricature -- I feel increasingly like we need a treatment of this concept from a "banality of evil" perspective rather than a "lurid exagerration" one -- and also the absurd and implausible fantasy-world of the very kooky Left Behind novels.

But I think this does protest too much, I do think there's a very coherent "locus of dissent" concerning things that the Right admires (often rightly) and the Left disdains or sneers at.

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take my mermaid quiz boy

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Hi, hope you're doing well. I'm sure you've talked about this before, but what do you think exactly of Calvinism/unconditional election? Is it supported by the Bible/fathers?

I've written before about my problems with Reformed theology in general and TULIP in particular; I hope these answer your questions.

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There's a lot I love about Orthodox theology, but one of the top ones has definitely got to be that you are not just allowed but mandated to stop worrying about whether your non-Christian friends will go to Hell.

They will be judged by a God who is in fact good and does in fact love mankind, and this is in fact reason enough to be optimistic about the fate of them and humanity in general.

Meanwhile, believing that you're saved and everyone around you is damned (even if you're legitimately not being self-righteous about it) is the sin of prelest, so knock that sh*t off.

I always get whiplash reading posts like this bc while I am fully, completely, and nauseatingly aware that this is common belief and practice in many a church, including some denomination’s base doctrine, this experience is so radically and fundamentally different from my own faith and relationship with God that I read it and go

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Thanks for your charity! Goodbye and God bless you!

I have to say, I think the biggest reason I'm catholic is the eucharist. Just... having the real physical presence of Christ exactly where you are, where you can worship him, adore him, just be with him... I couldn't ever leave the catholic church, because it would mean leaving the eucharist - Jesus - behind.

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Maybe I was unclear: what I meant was that it seems to me, in your view, there is nothing in type that distinguishes the Eucharist from, say, a cross necklace.

I think the Scriptures say plenty about it. Such as that it kills people who desecrate it (1 Corinthians 11:30) and that Christ doubled down when His disciples found the teaching that His flesh must be eaten hard to accept (John 6:60-61).

And how is "The Eucharist is a symbol" any less specific than "The Eucharist is the true Body and Blood of Christ"? Orthodox Eucharistic theology is famous for its non-specificity - for us, it's "the Eucharist is the true Body and Blood but we don't know how".

"The Fathers disagreed on stuff, therefore I can ignore everything they said." That's a total non sequitur. Theologians now disagree plenty with each other, would you therefore insist on the "me and my Bible under a tree" approach?

I have to say, I think the biggest reason I'm catholic is the eucharist. Just... having the real physical presence of Christ exactly where you are, where you can worship him, adore him, just be with him... I couldn't ever leave the catholic church, because it would mean leaving the eucharist - Jesus - behind.

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I mean ... I get this, but this is also irrelevant to what I was saying.

I wasn't trying to make a full defence of the Apostolic doctrine of the Real Presence*, but to respond to a specific criticism of it: the accusation that it limits God to a specific place.

Commenting on the specifics of your post, it seems like in your view, there's nothing actually special about Communion - it's simply a particularly potent symbol with divine ordination, and another symbol could theoretically be equally grace-bearing. Which I find hard to square with how the Scriptures and the Fathers talk about the Sacrament.

*As in, the doctrine held by the Apostolic Churches - Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, the Miaphysite Churches, the Assyrian Church and high-church Anglicanism - that the physical body and blood of Christ is present in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. This is a distinct thing from the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which states that the bread and wine not only becomes Christ, but that the substance of bread and wine are obliterated in the process - which all the other Apostolic churches deny.

I have to say, I think the biggest reason I'm catholic is the eucharist. Just... having the real physical presence of Christ exactly where you are, where you can worship him, adore him, just be with him... I couldn't ever leave the catholic church, because it would mean leaving the eucharist - Jesus - behind.

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Here's the song if you want to listen to it!

Also, I've started making a Southern Gothic playlist, and I'm sure you'll be glad to know that "Strange Fruit" is in it.

After an 11-hour drive back from my dig in Scotland with some fans of country music, I now like the Steeldrivers, particularly "Ghosts of Mississippi", a song whose chorus begins with "oh Lord, why have You abandoned me/you got me down in Mississippi, where I don't wanna be".

I'm fascinated by the notion that being in Mississippi is an equivalent punishment to being crucified.

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After an 11-hour drive back from my dig in Scotland with some fans of country music, I now like the Steeldrivers, particularly "Ghosts of Mississippi", a song whose chorus begins with "oh Lord, why have You abandoned me/you got me down in Mississippi, where I don't wanna be".

I'm fascinated by the notion that being in Mississippi is an equivalent punishment to being crucified.