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The Faustian compact

Started by Prelate Diogenes Shandor, June 09, 2018, 04:05:47 AM

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Prelate Diogenes Shandor

There are five woes that are innate to the world: Ignorance, Death, Poverty, Disease, and Starvation

To combat these woes, the demon Giving-A-Fuck was conjured. And Giving-A-Fuck did batyle against them and did weaken them, yet only at a terrible price. For with it, Giving-A-Fuck brought into the world every woe other than the primordial five: War, hatred, racism, sexism, lies, toadying, slavery, oppression, mammon, obesity, delusion, fear, panic, grief, imprisonment, execution, vanity, judgementalness, attachment, and too many others to name, and at times it even turned and bolstered the primordial five, bolstering their common forms and creating new ones as well, such as false knowledge where there was once just ignorance.

Be wary of passions and attachments, and make sure you aren't giving too much of a fuck
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

minuspace

:lulz:
I suppose the difference is that of which fucks are given?

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#2
Quote from: LuciferX on June 09, 2018, 09:01:39 AM
:lulz:
I suppose the difference is that of which fucks are given?

It makes a difference, but it's less significant than the amount of fucks given. Caring too much about things that are otherwise reasonable or even just to worry about causes problems. The USAPATRIOT act came out of people worrying about their safety, naziism and ethnic strife in places like the middle east and eastern europe and subsaharan africa derive from love of one's cultural heritage, communism and the reign of terror both came from a desire for legal and economic equality, McCarthyism and America's slavish devotion to capitalism and greed both derive mostly from people being appalled by communist purges, Ayn Rand was a direct reaction to Jospeh Stalin, concern over the possibility of children getting injured led to the removal of every piece of playground equipmemt that could possibly compete with videogames for kids' attention and consequently helped fuel America's obesity epidemic, misplaced concerns about children's mental health is causing parents not to vaccinate their kids against diseases that could kill them, islamofascism and christofascism both derive from a desire to save people's souls, Trump was elected by people who were worried about losing their obsolete jobs, FOSTA-SESTA is derived from concerns about people being exploited, SOPA was proposed as part of an attempt to protect an industry that employs lots of people, there have been countless revolutions throughout history which have accomplished nothing except to replace one tyrant with another who is functionally identical (while killing a lot of people in the process), obesity is caused by the combination of lack of famine and enjoyment of one of life's simpler pleasjres, anorexia is caused by being concerned about obesity, strong ethnic identity hinders integration, concerns about employment cause ludditism, tradition is a stumbling block to progress, there are countless people who have killed for love, and liberalism's concerns about feelings and identity have gotten so loud and obnoxious that they're driving people away to Trump and indirectly helping him wreck the country.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

minuspace

Because I hope there is such a thing as good fucks to give, I think I was referring to this essay by H. Frankfurt:
hNSp://omero.humnet.unipi.it/matdid/587/Frankfurt%20The%20Importance%20of%20what%20we%20care%20about.pdf

minuspace

I just got stuck on 2)
"... It is still the case that this person's moral judgments are one thing and the fact that he cares about them so much is another. His belief that certain courses of action are dictated by ethical considerations differs, in other words, from his belief that no other considerations compare in importance to those."
Something about the distinction does not sit right with me.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on June 10, 2018, 06:41:19 PM
Quote from: LuciferX on June 09, 2018, 09:01:39 AM
:lulz:
I suppose the difference is that of which fucks are given?

It makes a difference, but it's less significant than the amount of fucks given. Caring too much about things that are otherwise reasonable or even just to worry about causes problems. The USAPATRIOT act came out of people worrying about their safety, naziism and ethnic strife in places like the middle east and eastern europe and subsaharan africa derive from love of one's cultural heritage, communism and the reign of terror both came from a desire for legal and economic equality, McCarthyism and America's slavish devotion to capitalism and greed both derive mostly from people being appalled by communist purges, Ayn Rand was a direct reaction to Jospeh Stalin, concern over the possibility of children getting injured led to the removal of every piece of playground equipmemt that could possibly compete with videogames for kids' attention and consequently helped fuel America's obesity epidemic, misplaced concerns about children's mental health is causing parents not to vaccinate their kids against diseases that could kill them, islamofascism and christofascism both derive from a desire to save people's souls, Trump was elected by people who were worried about losing their obsolete jobs, FOSTA-SESTA is derived from concerns about people being exploited, SOPA was proposed as part of an attempt to protect an industry that employs lots of people, there have been countless revolutions throughout history which have accomplished nothing except to replace one tyrant with another who is functionally identical (while killing a lot of people in the process), obesity is caused by the combination of lack of famine and enjoyment of one of life's simpler pleasjres, anorexia is caused by being concerned about obesity, strong ethnic identity hinders integration, concerns about employment cause ludditism, tradition is a stumbling block to progress, there are countless people who have killed for love, and liberalism's concerns about feelings and identity have gotten so loud and obnoxious that they're driving people away to Trump and indirectly helping him wreck the country.

This is a concern troll.  Its also a pile of half-truths and made-up bullshit.

I have come to the conclusion that PDS is a Trumpster, based on this and similar other posts.
Molon Lube

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#6
Hell no. Trump's actually a good example of what I'm talking about; he cares so much about the American manufacturing sector that he's willing to fuck over the entire rest of the country in a vain attempt to bring it back from the dead. He thinks it matters where people come from; it doesn't. He thinks it matters what people believe; it doesn't. He thinks that restrooms matter; they don't. He thinks he matters because he's a businessman; businessmen don't matter; they're the lowest class of celebrity; his time as a reality star was more significant, and reality stars are not significant.

The problem (other than Russia and the electoral college, which also need to be handled somehow) is that for whtever reason a certain segment are impressed that he was a businessman, and care whether people have green cards, and worry about a dead and buried sector of the economy, and various other piddling shit like that, instead of not giving a fuck about those things. Personally I think that they should be sedated.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on June 11, 2018, 07:53:10 PM
Hell no. Trump's actually a good example of what I'm talking about;

That's interesting, because the post I was quoting was basically a collage of Trump-faction talking points.
Molon Lube

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 12, 2018, 05:43:20 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on June 11, 2018, 07:53:10 PM
Hell no. Trump's actually a good example of what I'm talking about;

That's interesting, because the post I was quoting was basically a collage of Trump-faction talking points.
I think you may have read it backwards. In retrospect I worded it a bit ambiguously. For example the intended point of the statements "McCarthyism and America's slavish devotion to capitalism and greed both derive mostly from people being appalled by communist purges" and "Ayn Rand was a direct reaction to Jospeh Stalin" was not that greed is good, but instead that maybe we should have cared a little bit less about what Stalin was doing (especially since, in retrospect, it turned out that communism was a red herring and Russia is just inherently an authoritarian shithole). The intended point of the statement "USAPATRIOT act came out of people worrying about their safety," was that people are prone to panic; I personally wish that Bush would have just kept on reading that book for the next eight years, because he caused a lot less harm when he was underreacting than he did after he started overreacting. The point of the statements "SOPA was proposed as part of an attempt to protect an industry that employs lots of people," and "concerns about employment cause ludditism" was that if the course of our civilization means that an industry or employment sector dies, then we should let it die, like the lamplighters, carriage drivers, and whalers before them. etc.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

The quoted post cnsisted of statements of the form:
Bad thing X happened because of seemingly reasonable concern Y

But it's point was not to justify X but to show that even a reasonable concern can be very very bad if taken too far.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

minuspace

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on June 12, 2018, 06:45:20 PM
The quoted post cnsisted of statements of the form:
Bad thing X happened because of seemingly reasonable concern Y

But it's point was not to justify X but to show that even a reasonable concern can be very very bad if taken too far.

I think, in behavioral economics, it's called the substitution bias. Works best when seasoned with liberal amounts of cognitive dissonance.

LMNO

Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on June 12, 2018, 06:45:20 PM

Bad thing X happened because of seemingly reasonable concern Y


So, that entire wall of text can be summed up in one line? 

...


Apart from that, I have issues with the things you plug in for the X,Y values, as the wording of the premise lends the idea of objectivity.  The majority of your examples could be more accurate by substituting "was sold as an answer to" in place of "happened because of".  There seem to be deeper core reasons for doing terrible things to other humans, but doing those things were made palatable using loftier excuses.

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

#12
Quote from: LMNO on June 13, 2018, 01:05:44 PM
Quote from: Prelate Diogenes Shandor on June 12, 2018, 06:45:20 PM

Bad thing X happened because of seemingly reasonable concern Y


So, that entire wall of text can be summed up in one line? 

...


Apart from that, I have issues with the things you plug in for the X,Y values, as the wording of the premise lends the idea of objectivity.  The majority of your examples could be more accurate by substituting "was sold as an answer to" in place of "happened because of".  There seem to be deeper core reasons for doing terrible things to other humans, but doing those things were made palatable using loftier excuses.

I put my faith in Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to maliciousness what can be adequete;y explained by stupidity".

I believe that most of these defective solutions were for the most part proffered in good faith, by people who are stupid or crazy*. In either case whether it is stupidity or deception, caring deeply about the issue it relates to makes you vulnerable to it. Many of these solutions are worse than not tackling the issue at all.

The ultimate expression of this principle would be how Naziism was. in a roundabout way, a reaction to the effects on Germany of the Treaty of Versailles; as bad as the effects of this treaty were on their Germany, it still nonetheless would literally have been more responsible of them to deal with the problem by shooting up on heroin until they forgot about it instead of dealing with it the way they did.







*And not necessarily inherently stupid or crazy; more often a garbage-in-garbage-out type thing like folie a deux or theology, where they've taken in crazy false inormation and returned it in a refined form.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

This thing with families being separated is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It stems ultimately from people treating illegal immigration as if it were an "issue" rather than ignoring illegal immigration like the non-issue it is. They felt, incorrectly, that they had to something about illegal immigration, when in fact they should have done nothing about illegal immigration, because ilegal immigration doesn't matter.

Practice Wu Wei in all things
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago

Prelate Diogenes Shandor

The concept I'm promoting here is also found in eastern religion and philosophy (and also in some of the relatively lucid parts of the bible). I've just phrased it in clearer but more vulgar terms. In the older philosophies giving-a-fuck is referred to by terms such as "attachment" "passion" or "desire" (and if you want to include phrases and concepts that aren't exact matches but are similar also "doing" (taoism) and "chasing the wind" (book of ecclesiastes) and also custom/nomos and social/national/ethnic identity (Diogenes of Sinope)). These terms are less distasteful but also less clear.

Although admittedly, in hindsight, my use of an abstruse just-so-story parable probably canceled out much of my gains in terms of clarity. Mea maxima culpa.
Praise NHGH! For the tribulation of all sentient beings.


a plague on both your houses -Mercutio


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrTGgpWmdZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWd7nPjJH8


It is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would plunge us back into the darkness -H.P.Lovecraft


He who fights with monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster -Nietzsche


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q


You are a fluke of the universe, and whether you can hear it of not the universe is laughing behind your back -Deteriorata


Don't use the email address in my profile, I lost the password years ago