The march of civilization is not a particularly well organized procession; sometimes it almost seems as if the stragglers outnumber those who keep in step. At any rate, in the Brown Borough most of us are content to linger on the long road, even though it be dark, and though there be no lights to lead us, and no flowers to make lingering worth while. In the van of the march the music brays confidently, wearying the ears of heaven with its brazen boastings of progress, but no echo of that music reaches us or cheers us, strung out wearily as we are along the forgotten miles.
Perhaps Heaven only hears the boasting, perhaps Heaven has washed its hands of us, perhaps after all we are but dirt and deserve nothing better. """
- some percentage of people do creepy stuff to and around children - some percentage of people are part of a minority outgroup - these groups naturally have some overlap - an ingroup member who does creepy stuff is "a creep" and an outgroup member who does creepy stuff is "a 〇〇 creep", due to how people classify others - so "〇〇" gets tied to "creep" in a way "not 〇〇" doesn't, even if percentages are the same, and "creep" becomes fuel for those who hate 〇〇 - and so, because they're being attacked, the 〇〇 people feel the need to defend, denying there is any such thing as a "creep 〇〇" or even "creep is good, actually"
like that before posted too much about, domestic violence in lesbian relationships, or women beating husbands or children more generally, you get a swarm of women denying the possibility or defending it
it's just that stuff kinda trashed what chance i had at life and now is slowly killing me, so difficult to be not bitter. though it must be helpful to people sometimes also of course
@xue@Moon maths aren't consistent either, of course. there's no platonic world, and everyone has an own separate copy. they do at least have the pretence of trying to keep in sync and building carefully, though, while a big collection of stories covering thousands of years of people making stuff up and then revising and rewriting and modifying in a thousand different, incompatible directions has only revisionist popular translators
read the thing through a dozen times and not really interested in spending more time on it now when haven't got much left, though; sorry bringing it up
@xue@Moon it has no consistency on any given point. two incompatible creation stories, incompatible recountings of jesus' birth, god has a physical body that walks around in one place and not in another, "kill all your enemies" in one place, "turn your cheeks" in another, "gay is evil and should be killed", but it's also "completely normal and fine", we will all return to dust from whence we came, wander in she'ol forever, be taken up into heaven etc etc, and god is forgiving but you have to do good works, except all you have to do is believe, except if you don't pay the proper tithe then god will kill you just like that >:( , and we should all just enjoy life while we can, eating and drinking all our fill, because there's no hope in the face of god for puny mortals, except instead we should all live self-sacrificing and receive rewards after we're dead, and overindulging actually is a sin
@xue@Moon though john is different, being written later, and paul stuff goes off in some completely different direction, but the jesus message is fairly consistent:
- you must do good works - you must want to do them, not for legalese purposes
don't look to bible for consistency, though; of course can justify whatever if you're choosing