Serving in the army I’ve seen more than my fair share of out and proud racists. For some people it’s thoroughly bound up in their identity. One of my corporals would go on about how much he hated brown people (not his exact words), except of course the ones he knew personally and worked alongside.
When I was about 12 I went to visita school friends house. His mum picked me up and on the way to there house they were singing racist songs and bragging about how racist they were. The dumb thing was the kid was clearly half black and his single mum obviously had a chip in her shoulder.
It’s like watching your neighbors join the mafia am gradually become more and more irredeemably corrupt and there’s nothing we can do except hope they stay there side of the pond, which they won’t.
It clearly means no more olive branch, only arrows.
That’ll be the Dunning-Kruger effect. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much intelligence to want to lord it over others, and once you have one person like that in a position of power, they draw others to them.
When did they ever? The poisonous atmosphere was on of the key reasons I left.
Well that’s just one more thing to look forward to. At the mere age of 45 I’m definitely grumpier, but in many ways I’m also more progressive, so maybe there’s hope.
I’d rather eat my own earwax thanks.
Odd how we associate light with life and thus with divinity. For millions of years life got on fine without eyesight and life continued on its way. Makes you realise how much we form our ideas within the limits of our senses.
It’s actually a fairly well known phenomenon h th at brain damage can make people more aggressive, less empathetic and generally more selfish.
Typically they double down.
Honestly, if Jesus came back and turned up in DC he’d be flipping tables and whipping people like you wouldn’t believe.
Often when people say they are ‘working with’ some deity or other, they just mean they are asking them for favour rather than worshipping. They hope to gain something from it as a transaction, which stands in stark contrast to actual worship.
That’s handy, I need to get that job.
Is that first author papers?
Wales is my favourite country for castles among many other things. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed there.
Do you believe a thing because your religion tells you to, or do you adhere to your religion because it aligns with your observations/beliefs?
Not that one is necessarily better than the other, but understanding your position can teach you a lot about your motivations.
I suppose dimensional analysis is useful if you’re a mole and need to be able to navigate underground.
Ontologically it’s the difference between understanding yourself as part of creation and acting accordingly, and seeing creation as something to be manipulated for your own benefit as self and other.
When push came to shove I just didn’t believe what I was told I had to believe. I was told that I had to do certain things for doctrinal reasons, and I realised that if I believed it I would naturally comply. So if I didn’t believe in the core principles I might as well accept I wasn’t a Christian.
Except spread it about a bit, which you really don’t want, unless the object is to contaminate the area.
What’s that poem? America is a gun.
It might have to come to that. Some things can be tested like that, memorisation for example, and there are numerous practical tests. But the written tests, especially the open book ones conducted demolish have to undergo serious scrutiny.
One of the biggest potential issues in dealing with students these days is the ease of having ChatGBT write their assignments. Quite how to address this possibility I have yet to decide, but it seems that regular teachers are already dealing with it.
I have a strange compound memory of playing the AMIGA game Dungeon Master with this song playing. It evokes a strange set of emotions and is one of the reasons I took up the mandolin.
Reading his books, I never got the impression that Tolkien favoured doing nothing while evil eats itself. Quite the opposite.
Precisely. Paradoxically enough though it often takes someone else giving you the green light, and more importantly holding you accountable, to get the process going.
I ask because with financial and ethical costs of international travel, online communication unimagined a few decades ago, and the 99% solidarity nature of the work, I feel it is perfectly feasible for the right person.
What are people views on distance vs in person induction into the A.’.A.’.(I say induction, not initiation, as the latter is in my view something that happens over the course of the work, not by the ‘laying on of hands’).
That’s pretty much how I see it. Ask many to give up his favourite toys and see how much he screams. Never mind that the house is on fire.
