The point of hate speech laws was the ability to turn state crimes into federal ones for the purposes of trials being taken out of places considered too bigoted to adjudicate properly.

I believe there are likely many examples in history of people happily (at first) giving up their freedoms. It seems like a pretty human thing to do.

Tbh I have had a similar problem. Most places that discuss philosophy are full of bots, spam and bad faith; then you have places like this forum which is nice and I do enjoy, but sometimes seems to expect an uncommonly high level of formal knowledge on the subject. I just like to think about deep things and talk about it with smart, open minded people; I don't want to read math journals, ethical treatises and philosophy books in the original French. Sadly there isn't really a place for people like us, as communities inevitably trend towards one or the other in time.

I'm hesitant to put into words, not because I doubt your ability to understand but because I doubt my ability to describe it well. Something about this topic does odd things to my mind, and I end up leaning a bit poetic about it at times.

To some degree I think reality is self-reinforcing, contradictory and recursive, is the best way I can think to put it. There is something instead of nothing, because there is something there. Reality exists because it does. Things are the way they are, because that's the way things are. What seems like a recursive, thought-terminating response is actually the truth of it. It's fascinating to ask the why's and how's, but on a fundamental level, I sometimes think we overthink it.

Perfect truth and knowledge are ultimately unattainable, so we will never run out of new questions, and the answers will never be complete. As none of us is capable of perfect understanding, on some level we all have to accept our imperfect/incomplete truths *as* truth in order to live our lives. I believe this tension between what we internally hold as true and the actual reality of the world around us explains much about humanity as a whole, though I think there are many ways people end up reacting to it.

I also think that's why we ask so many questions we're not capable of understanding the answers to, which only leads to more questions with imperfect answers as we eternally seek the impossible totality of understanding. What drew me to OPs post originally was that I have also had thoughts about the interplay between 1, 0 and infinity. I am not educated enough in math or philosophy to even pretend to know if any of my or OPs thoughts are actually feasible under our current model of the universe, but I can't help but feel some truth to it in my bones, if only in a poetic sense.

Fascinating to see others independently come to similar realizations as myself. I can tell you from experience though that this line of reasoning (however true) has tended to be more harmful than helpful, in my experience.

Why must everything have a point?

Yes

Why is there something instead of nothing?

Because there is.

Personally, I can't recommend it, as one who has also followed this line of thought. It's enlightening but alienating.

Interesting. I will admit to not being deeply read on philosophy these days, but is that related to gestalt consciousness?

In The Mystery of the Mind (1975), Penfield wrote:

“The mind seems to act independently of the brain in a way that we do not yet understand. ... It is not possible to explain the mind on the basis of neuronal action within the brain" (ref}. — Wayfarer

I'm curious if that is at all related to the brain/gut interactions we are discovering now.

Pardon the intrusion, but I think the fact that they are ontologically incapable of not responding to it, even though it would arguably be beneficial to ignore it in the current moment, illustrates that their actions have become more ideologically motivated than meant for real change.

To add on a bit of a late point, I have often found that people who are pro-woke tend to retreat to theoreticals and philosophy while neglecting the material concerns that were brought up. It's an understandable impulse, but a frustrating one. I am sympathetic to moral concerns, obviously, but I find woke actions often have a startling lack of pragmatism backing them up. It gives off the vibe that they would rather lose than compromise what seem to be increasingly rigid beliefs. While I find this admirable to an extent, it makes attempts at rational discussion about pragmatic solutions all but impossible sometimes, even when you ultimately share similar goals.

I believe humans, like all animals, are inherently mostly selfish. That is not the same as evil, but it often overlaps. I sometimes take solace in the fact that other animals, if in our position of global dominance, would likely handle it just as if not more poorly. That said, I do sympathize with that viewpoint. It's easy to look at the world and history and see only the tragedies.

Interestingly enough, I tried my hand at developing what I called a "meta-religion" called Narrativism a while back. The gist of it was to essentially establish a permission structure between religions by offering the framework of Narrativism as an addition to their beliefs instead of as an alternative. The basic idea was that whether or not you believe other religions, the stories and wisdom that we share culturally can still be enlightening or individually helpful. Narrativism is about finding those stories in other religions/cultures and finding useful ways they can be applied to the self and others. I had some basic tenets and whatnot written up at one point but I'd have to dig them out.

Edit: Found them

The Principles of Narrativism

-We do not concern ourselves with the truth of a person’s religious beliefs.

-We understand that belief is a constructed narrative that we choose to accept as true about reality and our lives.

-We accept that while there is much overlap in belief between and among established religions, each person’s interpretation of reality, religious phenomena and/or dogma is deeply personal and unique to them as an expression of how they experience life.

-We understand that while someone may not be open to specific dogma or belief systems of other religions, certain narratives within most religions overlap in ways that an inspiration from one may help a practitioner of another.

-We will work to help ourselves and, with consent, others construct or modify personal beliefs for the benefit of the believer and others through promoting education, tolerance and open-mindness.

Appropriate it's called a daimon because my path in life has been hell, lol.

Less that it's the tech itself and more that it lets us see "the soul." Imo the soul is the electrochemical processes happening in your body, making the soul more of an active process than a fully static aspect. Either way, it's an invisible energy that makes you who you are and leaves the body on death. Sounds like what people thought a soul was to me.

Welcome.

I realized years ago that what ancient peoples referred to as the soul was likely them attempting to understand internal body electrochemistry. So in that framework, you can see the "soul" with a variety of different medical imaging technologies.

Vietnam and Afghanistan proved an entrenched and armed populace can defeat a technologically superior foe. America was even founded by doing so.

There will be very few gun owners willing to risk a drone strike on themselves or their families to take a potshot at a soldier or cop. — RogueAI

We have people that would literally do that right now in this country with very little excuse. You cannot comprehend how much some Americans like guns and hate authority.

Guns are literally why Americans have civil liberty in the first place.

Time is a predictable cycle on a large enough scale. It will destroy them too in time. The question is how much damage will be done before that happens.

"When every second counts, the police are only minutes away!"

Agreed. My mom almost got kidnapped when she was pregnant with me. Without her gun threatening the guy off, it's very possible she, my younger siblings and I might not be here. It's honestly wild to me that some people are so excited by the idea of making sure the most vulnerable among us have no personal protection in exchange for some nebulous idea of safety.

*shrug* Not sure what else to say to that. Giving up personal freedom for an imperfect promise of safety does not seem rational to me.

The President is Commander-in-Chief of the military and has historically broad applications for deploying the national guard, was more my point. And no, I don't see it as a distraction. I see a lot of attempts at gun control as a very deliberate attempt to make the populace easier to control. Proper gun training, safety and respect for the power of the tool does more good than banning them does. To be clear though, I am not fully against some level of gun regulation.

To your broader point, I don't see giving up individual power as an equivalent exchange for what you get in return. Countries that have banned guns also have wealth inequality and violent criminals. What sense does it make to ask that someone give up their personal protection for an imperfect promise of external protection?

So just to be clear, your argument is that you want the government (currently run by Trump) to be the only people allowed to have guns? And you see no problems with this alternative future?

Perhaps. If true though, I can't say I'm upset, as woke is a poison pill for ideology. Hopefully if the GoP doubles down on identity politics, this will swing us back to the middle again as they fracture their growing coalition.

To further add to your point, dynamite is really good at killing humans, but no one wants to outlaw that.

Why would enjoying pain that is caused to you be evil?

And yes, nostalgia is inherently a mixed feeling. It is a longing for a past that combines both positive feelings for the memory and negative feelings for the loss. The current usage of the word has drifted somewhat.

People are complicated, emotions even more so. Also, not everything is reduceable to pure good or evil.

Sadists and masochists come to mind. Or the mixed feelings of things like nostalgia. I think you are oversimplifying human emotional range.

I was not aware someone else had discovered Truth. /s

I think gun control, like many modern causes, uses good intentions to mask bad ideas.

Seems like a rather rosy and narrow interpretation of what "woke" has become.

I don't know that it's possible to discuss "woke" effectively with how much it's been used and misued over the years, but frankly I couldn't be happier it is going away. I honestly blame it, its supporters and their "end of history" nonsense for the past decade or so of political failure.

I suppose that tracks with "the least shall be the greatest among you" and whatnot. I do not have a lot of direct experience with Catholicism.

Perhaps we are arguing semantics then.



Interesting.

Does the Parable of Laborers not contradict this theory somewhat?

Is it open to a theologian to conclude that there is no god and remain a theologian?

A philosopher may do so and remain a philosopher. — Banno

I would not think that constraining philosophical beliefs to a specific framework and set of assumptions would make it not philosophy. It may not be *accurate* philosophy, but I would argue Theology is still an act of philosophy in practice, just a narrowly defined one.



Agreed; religion almost always mutates along with the culture practicing it. I would think many of the inconsistencies in long term religions often arise from trying to square beliefs from different eras cohesively.

I'm not sure I would agree. Theology is a subset of philosophy dealing specifically within religious thought, as I see it. Religion was the original philosophy, in a way, just operating with much less scientific knowledge and filling in the gaps with assumptions and pre-existing cultural ideas.

Wouldn't a god that can interact with imperfect beings, and lead them to the light, be better than a god who cannot interact with imperfect beings? — Banno

I would agree, though my understanding was that it was more our fault than his according to doctrine. It's not a requirement, but Christianity hits low self-esteem in an interesting way. Either way, if I were an all powerful god, I would do things very differently, lol.

But the higher point is the methodological one made above, that theology consists in justifying a given series of doctrines, not in their critique.

It starts with the conclusion and works through to the explanation, unable to reach an alternate conclusion. — Banno

Agree here as well. I added more of your statement than intended, I think. Although I do think your point fails to account for how often the church disagrees and schisms over those doctrines, which possibly indicates that it's not always *entirely* self-affirming. Coming to similar but different conclusions is still coming to different conclusions.