An inventory of what we have learned.
Readership: All
Length: 1,300 words
Reading Time: 5 minutes
October turned out to be a very busy month for posting. Even though I posted every day for two weeks, I still didn’t hit all the topics I had planned.
The topics have been highly varied. I wrote a few posts about the situation between China and Taiwan which pushed back my scheduled writings.
- Fake News: China and Taiwan go to war (2021-10-08)
- War between China and Taiwan makes no sense (2021-10-09)
- A Nugget of Truth about China and Taiwan (2021-10-10)
- Communications and Perspectives (2021-10-11)
Adam Piggott responded to this short series in his post, Taiwan and Data Point Analysis (2021-10-09), which offered a thoughtful assessment of the risks involved with an expat’s continuation as a resident of Taiwan. (Adam’s analysis was also reposted on XYZ.)
There were some good posts on intersexual relationships and Inner Game.
- Start Small to Build Internal Locus of Control (2021-10-14)
- How to build your ex to go back to being fond of you (2021-10-15)
- 50 Female Evasion and Control Tactics (2021-10-22)
The theme I had originally planned for October was Gothicism and Gnosticism. Before studying these topics, I had the notion that they were somehow linked. But after studying the two, I found they are not connected as much as I once believed, at least, not any more than Gnosticism is connected to just about everything else.
I did not know what to expect when I started studying these subjects. I just had a strong impression that they were topics that I needed to examine. Thanks goes to Ed Hurst for an email discussion that kick-started my knowledge of Gnosticism. After this correspondence, I found that it was a much more extensive subject than I expected. So when I finally dug into it after many delays and days of contemplation on the matter, I spent most of my writing efforts on this subject, and I only touched on Gothicism obliquely in a couple posts.
Posts in this series are listed here.
- A Brief History of Gnosticism (2021-10-26)
- The Religion of Gnosticism (2021-10-27)
- 10 Defining Traits of Gnosticism (2021-10-28)
- Breaking the Stronghold of Gnosticism (2021-10-29)
- Knowing One’s Self (2021-10-30)
- Objective Communications for Effective Group Leadership (2021-11-01)
- Modern Day Gnostic Media (2021-11-02)
- The Pervasive Influence of Modern Gnosticism (2021-11-03)
- The Ruling Ideology of Gnosticism (2021-11-04)
I have a couple more posts on Gnosticism in progress, one related to the church, and another related to the Red Pill, but they need a bit more research and contemplation to complete. I’ll get around to finishing them at some point in the future.
Judging by the sharp decrease in views and comments since the latter half of October, I take it that many readers have gotten the impression that Gnosticism is uninteresting or that it strays away from the main topics discussed in this blog – building frame, masculinity, marriage, married game, and understanding the nature of women.
However, and speaking for myself personally, I’ve discovered that having a firm understanding of Gnosticism has strengthened my frame more than most of the other theories and insights that I usually cover. Namely, it has given me all of the following frame enhancements.
- I’ve apprehended a structural paradigm which allows me to discern the underlying spiritual nature of all that goes on in the world (e.g. philosophy, the news, advertisements, media, social movements, personal social interactions, etc.), and this allows me to better identify what is happening in the spiritual world around me and within myself as well.
- I have a greater regard for how humanity has a latent fascination, or even an obsession with spiritualizing the material world through philosophical pursuits, and how this sin becomes an illusory distraction from seeing this same activity as their own sin. IOW, the sin of psychological solipsism is blinding and effaces one’s spiritual identity in Christ.
- I’ve come to see how humanity will go to insane lengths to avoid the effects of sin and to better themselves (according to their own perceptions) by intentionally ignoring the truth.
- I know why atheists and humanists dislike God and the Christian religion.
- I know why feminists, liberals, and progressives dislike Christian morality and external authority.
- I have a deeper understanding of how democracy and progressivism are flawed from a Christian perspective.
- I have a better appreciation for the differences between faith in God and faith in humanity.
- I can identify which types of activities, social associations, and motivations are more likely to be blessed by God.
- I know why certain types of activities, social associations, and motivations seem good from a human standpoint, but are cursed by God.
- It has solidified my confidence in the need for structures of authority.
- It has increased my general wisdom about relying on structures of authority as vehicles of purpose and blessings.
- It has broadened my ability to think beyond myself and my own interests.
- I can better understand why God allows suffering.
- I can understand not only one’s subjective motivation to avoid suffering, which is to avert the unpleasant sensation of pain, but also one’s spiritual motivation to escape suffering, which is to evade having to trust God and being molded by Him.
- It is easier to tell the difference between redemptive suffering and suffering as a result of selfishness and stupidity.
- It is easier to know when and why it can be wrong to avoid suffering, and when and why it is wise to avoid suffering.
- I’ve come to see myself more clearly. I’ve come to understand that my own internal drive towards excellence and my strong interest in forming exact philosophies and theories about life are what make me a good writer and professor, but it also makes me appear cold, ungraceful, and unloving. Furthermore, these inclinations are actually rooted in latent Gnostic tendencies. Realizing this about myself has led to my repentance.
All in all, that is a check mate frame! I can say that the way I look at life is forever changed for the better after this study of Gnosticism.
Yet, I remain concerned for my readers. From our past communications, Ed Hurst, Mogadishu Matt, Nikolai Vladivostok, and I have expressed a common musing among ourselves – that those posts which we believe are most penetrating and insightful often receive fewer views than others, and that we don’t really understand why that is, or why other posts that seem spurious to us will spike readers’ interests. Perhaps it is the nature of blogging. Even so, I hope that my readers might be able to apprehend some of the insights I listed above from reading these posts.
Other Posts in October included the following. I want to express my own appreciation and that on behalf of our readers to Deti, Lexet, NovaSeeker, and Scott for their contributions.
- Σ Frame (Jack): A Case Study of Contrasting Perspectives on the WORD (2021-10-01)
- Σ Frame (Scott): A Literal Military Stand Down (2021-10-02)
- Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): Is Our Fallen Nature as God Designed it? (2021-10-04)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Thou Shalt Not Assume Gestational Status! (2021-10-06)
- Σ Frame (Lexet): Whipped Dogs (2021-10-12)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Have Tattoos? Will Slide! (2021-10-13)
- Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): Another Schism will Come (2021-10-18)
- Σ Frame (Deti): Disclosing the Taboo of Masculine Sexuality (2021-10-20)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Infogalactic is now blacklisted (2021-10-23)
- Σ Frame (NovaSeeker): Is a second Dark Ages a real possibility? (2021-10-25)
- Σ Frame (Jack): Wimmin Luv Cats because ¡Science! (2021-10-31)
In upcoming posts, we’ll return to our regular scheduled programming. The theme for the month of November is Agency, which is a very old subject in the sphere that has never reached a satisfying conclusion. I have some new insights on this subject, and RedPillApostle has much to say on this as well.
God bless your internal awareness of the Gnostic forces of our age!
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caterpillar345
Soup Sandwich
Lexet Blog
Novaseeker
Oscar
Red Pill Apostle
Jack
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Σ Frame 
I initially wasn’t interested in reading your Gnostic series as I thought I already knew enough about it, but I had a look and got sucked in by the philosophical angle. It gave me a lot to think about, and I’m still thinking about it.
Don’t worry about the punters; we put hours of effort into informative, well-researched posts that no one reads, while a thrown-together rant goes viral. The few that read the best posts will appreciate them all the more.
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Thanks~!
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This seems like a good place to give some initial thoughts on being in Russia.
— I’m living in a city. I’ve never lived in a city before, always in an exurb/suburb. Cities are old. The buildings in cities are old. The bricks that the buildings are constructed of are old. So, living in the older downtown part of the city means that it looks like everything is falling apart. However, when compared to US cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and NYC, and their older buildings, it looks about the same.
— I’m not sure if it’s because zoning is more mixed or because public transportation is so much better, but the streets almost always seem empty in comparison to basically every US city, and I found this to be true in Minsk and Berlin as well.
— I saw some city workers sweeping up the leaves from the trees with brooms that were straight up no B.S. like something out of the 1500s, a modern dimensional stick with branches/rushes/whatever tied around the end. Craziest thing.
— It’s not summer time, but I saw a woman in a bikini getting ready to go swimming in the Volga.
— How fun to get here just in time for a couple weeks of lockdown. Fun I say.
— Visa, Paypal, and Xoom all seem to think that any transaction between the US and Russia is automatically fraud. Here they don’t use third party processors like Zelle or Venmo. Instead, they can send money directly to another credit card number. Well, we don’t do it that way in the US. However, Xoom promises to do that. Nope, every time, someone in the chain reverses the transaction immediately. So, I’m back to paying rent on my apartment in cash.
— Local grocery stores are about the size of your average Chik-Fil-A, but they are full service. They have produce, meat, dairy, frozen foods, paper goods etc, and booze.
— Stray dogs. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a stray dog in the US.
— Folks around here are more used to the weather. I’m out bundled up with gloves on, and they’re out not as bundled up with no gloves. One day, I saw a dude out walking in Birkenstock style sandals and it had to be 40 degrees F. Nuts.
— Car guys are car guys no matter where you go. It’s funny to see a Lada cruising down the street thumping out bass heavy rap music, or to find a perfectly restored Lada sitting parked on the street.
— People on the streets are mostly high school aged kids and pensioners. Walking on asphalt/brick/concrete is hard on the body. I imagine that helps explain why the pensioners all walk like they’re half-crippled, they are from walking on the pavement.
— I thought my Russian was better than it is. I’m not even at the See Ivan run stage yet. I’m close, but not quite.
— I’m not convinced that learning Russian by learning proper grammar first is really the best way. I’m going to stick with this until the end of the year and then evaluate. If it’s not what I want, then I’m going to hire some college student to help me by working our way through a novel written at a high school aged level of language. We can discuss it and I can learn the grammar etc. as we read the story.
— My kid is sending me pictures of him and my truck up in the mountains with snow in the background. I miss my truck. I miss my kids and my dog too, but having my truck here would be helpful, having them here wouldn’t. Haha.
Now, I’m off to the bank to get cash in smaller bills because the grocery isn’t going to want to make change for a 5000 ruble bill. Then, it’s off to Магнит у дома, my local grocery for food.
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Enjoyed reading your post! Insightful!
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The modern way of learning languages is completely wrong. It’s the reason why people think it’s easier to learn a language when you are a child. Who honestly thinks it’s easier for someone dumber to learn than someone smarter. You learn the words first, then the grammar and reading comes after. You can look up videos called acquiring language, they’re usually made by people that know 5 or 10+.
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That’s certainly true here in the USSA, to the extent that Americans even bother to learn a second language to any degree of proficiency. Then again, everything we teach here is taught “the wrong way,” which explains the abysmal intellectual state of the population.
On the subject of languages, I’ve heard more than one non-native speaker of Russian say that concentrating on grammar isn’t a good way to become conversationally fluent in the language. I can’t offer an opinion on this, since I don’t speak any Slavic languages, but for every other language in which I’m proficient (all of them Germanic, Romance, or Semitic), I can’t imagine NOT paying attention to grammar. Grammar is the “mechanics” of how a language functions, how one communicates in it. Not learning its grammar when trying to become proficient in a language is, in my mind, like trying to become an engineer without mastering higher mathematics.
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I’ve been thinking about language learning for a while. You can’t learn grammar without words, and it really helps if you know what those words mean. I suppose you could learn grammar with made up words, but that seems ridiculous.
At the same time, I’m not sure learning the base form of a thousand words in isolation helps either.
Given just a couple more lessons since I wrote this, and I’ve gotten a better perspective on what my instructor is doing. She’s basically giving me the Cliff Notes version of Russian grammar such that when I see it in context, it’s not a complete surprise. Incidentally, russian is incredibly regular in comparison to english, so it’s perhaps more helpful than it might be for someone learning english.
I was talking with a friend about this, and something lots of people forget is that an 8 year old has probably had 20K hours of exposure to their native tongue. A dedicated language learner might have one tenth that amount, and then beat themselves up at not being as fluent as an adult peer without considering the difference in time dedicated to things.
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@ Kevin Blackwell
I’m bilingual. My native language is Spanish, and I learned English when my family moved to the USA.
Learning a language absolutely is easier for a child than for an adult. Babies are born not knowing a language, and have to learn it, so God designed their brains to do just that. For most of us, that ability degrades with age. The brain simply becomes less flexible, and less able to learn new things with age. Thus the old saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.
People who speak that many languages have a natural talent for languages. Trying to learn how to learn new languages from them is like trying to learn how to play a sport from an Olympic athlete. It doesn’t work for an ordinary person, because they just don’t have the talent for it.
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@Oscar, I’m not sure that I agree with you going back to my comment about time spent.
Children learn their native tongue via brute force exposure in an environment where all the written words are also in their primary language. For children who learn another language at home, they also probably (likely) get significant exposure to that secondary language far beyond that of most adult language learners.
No one expects a child who has 500 hours of exposure to a second language to be fluent, but almost every adult trying to learn a second language is frustrated because they don’t have native levels of fluency after 500 hours. If you studied a foreign language for four years in high school, you’d have about 500 hours of classroom time.
A child doesn’t have an existing understanding of grammar, doesn’t have an existing vocabulary which may, but not always provide bridges from their native language to their new language.
It seems like every time I turn around, I’m finding a Russian word that is familiar either by root, usage, or is just a Russified word of which I’m already familiar. For example, bicycle = velociped (велосипед), couch = divan (диван), taxi = taxi (такси). A child doesn’t have those connections.
So, I’m not sure that I agree that children learn languages easier than adults.
I could be wrong. IDK.
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The Russian word for tea = chai (чай) sounds like the Chinese word for tea = chá (茶).
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@ anonymous_ng
Yeah, you’re wrong. Go to any immigrant community and see who speaks two languages; the kids, or the adults? I used to translate for my parents, which is a common experience for immigrant kids.
Kids don’t learn a language “by brute force”. They learn it by immersion and absorption. Kids’ brains are like sponges. Adults’ brains are not. That’s not my opinion, it’s very well established neurological fact.
After three years of living in the USA, I spoke English so well — with a California accent — that people had no idea I was an immigrant, unless I told them. There’s no way I could do that now with any language. Ever. And neither can the vast majority of adults.
And, by the way, kids learn grammar by immersion and absorption. They pick up tenses, word placement, and all the other myriad rules of grammar simply by listening to natives talk, even if they don’t explicitly know the rules or grammar, or words that describe the rules, like “past participle”, and so on. Very few adults can do that.
You’re conversing with someone who’s lived both sides of this equation. Spanish is my native language. I learned English as a kid. I also learned some German, Italian, and Arabic as an adult, because of my time in the Army.
Learning a new language as a kid is immeasurably easier than trying to learn a new language as an adult.
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@Oscar, you make a convincing argument, and since we are talking about a relative measure, that children learn easier, not that adults can’t learn, then I’m going to agree with you, given an equivalent immersion exposure, children adapt and learn their second tongue easier than the adult do.
Lastly, perhaps we’re arguing semantics about how kids learn. You called it immersion and absorbsion. That’s what I call brute force. They aren’t studying vocabulary lists with spaced repitition systems and flashcards. They aren’t learning grammar constructs and how to relate them to their mother tongue. Instead, they are just consuming massive amounts of comprehensible input with a strong motivation. Learn or be different. Learn or be mocked.
One thing I’ve observed among adults who come to the US from elsewhere is that some reach what I call a good enough level of fluency and stop trying to get better. My friends from Russia are like this. However, my friend from Bulgaria barely has an accent. My friend from Romania has a bit more of an accent. My friend from Colombia has a stronger accent. All three of these men are engineers, and all have a stronger vocabulary than my Russian friend who was a school teacher.
Again, it seems to me that strong fluency is more common in children than in adults, which again supports your position.
🙂
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Based on my own experience in learning languages (French, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese), and on my experience as an English teacher in Asia for many years, I agree with Oscar. I’ll also add that from a physiological perspective, children’s brains are still growing and have more nerve connections that are used for language development. These connections get “pruned” as one grows older, making it harder to learn a new language. In addition to the nervous system, there is also a motor skill coordination of the mouth and tongue that is developed during childhood. If these motor skills are not learned in childhood, then they cannot be learned as well as an adult. This is why people continue to have accents for years, even after being immersed in another culture and becoming proficient in that language.
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@Jack, interesting point about mouth position, motor skills, etc.
I definitely think that having spent my 30s singing as a choral bass has been a very definite help in learning languages, both the new phonemes and how to produce them.
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I’ve been a reader of your blog for several months but have never commented. I found this series on Gnosticism to be fascinating especially since I had little prior knowledge of it. Your writing gave me a new frame in which to understand contemporary conventional spirituality and I think your 17 point summary above is a succinct explanation of why we should care about Gnosticism. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
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Thank you Paul! I’m glad to know you are benefitting from this blog.
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I’ve been busy mainly. I like the series although I’ve studied it a bunch before and didn’t learn as much as most people probably.
In general, I’ve always thought of most of the controversies in the early Church especially gnosticism to be secular philosophies. So, while maybe the core of understanding reality and pointing out what is true and false is similar with many philosophies, what is done about it is where the distinctions are really made. The Scriptures in particular always go back to temptation and the sinful nature of man and repenting and reconciling it to God. 99% of the other secular philosophies focus on puffing up man into something that can overcome these things through various means such as knowledge (gnosticism tends to fall mainly here and then some others), asceticism (monks and eastern religions), generally doing good to others to make yourself feel better (therapeutic moral deism), karma (eastern religions), or whatever. These all inevitably fail.
I unpacked the various levels in this post as you know.
Christianity and Masculinity: Unpacking and tying together the meta-levels of Christianity, reality and the red pill into a hierarchical understanding: theological, scientific, and philosophical/cultural (2021-03-29)
Even the PUAs which get the general creation level nature right devolve into secular philosophies because they don’t have the solid theological foundation that grounds creation and Biblical mission. But the PUAs like Roosh end up finding all those secular philosophies meaningless, so they strive higher than the creation level to religion to find answers.
I think the other thing that detracts from engagement is most people like the manospherian vs. masculine and feminine Christian discussion on the relationships and sexuality of men and women. Those tend to always be the most engaging posts, as I’ve found on my blog and elsewhere.
The only other ones that rival it are the ones that generate a lot of debate, such as my posts on divorce and vehemently disagreeing with it. So only a few people but dozens of comments.
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They find out how empty it is in the end. Nihilism. I heard one man who had been with many women state something like, “They all feel the same and they all f_¢k the same. It gets old after awhile, same old same old.” Interesting way of putting it, I thought.
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That’s what brought us here to begin with, and it takes a lot of iterations (rounds of) discussing/dissecting the subject, IMO, to really begin getting a good grip on female nature (fallen) and the male understanding of it.
Getting into the deeper spiritual/theological topics, like Gnosticism, is well worth it. I, for one, found it interesting, however I found myself reading and absorbing it more than commenting on it. It is thought provoking, where the male-female stuff elicits more of an emotional response, along with the intellectual response (rational thought), to the subject. In other words, it triggers emotions in us from our past experiences with the ‘fairer sex’ and we want to verbally weigh-in with commentary on what’s being discussed. I guess it’s something of a release to comment on that subject, while Gnosticism and other deeper subjects conjure up a more reflective mindset.
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DS, your comment digs into the question of whether the Red Pill is Gnostic. This is a topic that I’m working on now, but I haven’t finished writing the post.
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This series on Gnosticism has done a remarkable job at getting me to look in the mirror. Now, it’s helping me eliminate blind spots in my life. Keep on posting!
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Yes, I did not expect this going into it, but now I can see that doing this study had an important purpose for my own spiritual growth. I’m glad to know it has had the same effect on others.
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I believe that the Gnosticism we have today bears only a faint resemblance to the original stuff the Apostles faced. It was, to all appearances, wiped out a couple of times, and resurfaced in Eastern Europe for a while around the Late Middle Ages through the Renaissance. The most recent revival has some of the same ideas, but like a lot of modern stuff, the connection is sometimes quite dubious. I think you did an excellent job of exploring what it is now.
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Early in this study, I found it was very difficult to trace the “evolution”, or a “lineage”, of the different embodiments of gnostic philosophy. Strictly speaking, Gnosticism is a term modern scholars have used to refer to any of various philosophical and ideological movements in the Greco-Roman world in the early Christian era, particularly in the 2nd century. However, there is little scholarly consensus on whether these movements are in fact related and, if so, how. So there is no way to “map out” the history, so to speak, unless one adopts a mystical type of approach of recognizing similarities and patterns among them. This is further complicated by the fact that the connections and categorizations depend heavily on how one defines Gnosticism, whether it is a philosophy, or a religion, or a social movement, or some combination of these. In this study, I recognized that there must be a natural and/or spiritual force behind it (which is what makes it seem esoteric, BTW), and under this assumption, I concluded that ultimately, Gnosticism is a mystical expression of the human sinful nature which goes back to the foundational block of rejecting Jesus. By this definition, it most certainly has continued up to the present day. I’ve settled with this definition because it is the most useful for developing an analytical understanding of sinful human nature and the world around us.
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Totally Off Topic: Paging Mr. Deti again!
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Staged photo… humblebrage.
Translation: Men, just be lucky enough to LOOK like me and have the OPTIONS to meet women like this, church is a great way for you to meet women for men like us! The men that are there have been beaten down by men like us for decades, and you know how church attracts rejects? Losers? Addicts? The ugly? Yeah…. so its a gold mine for men like us! Check it out!
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Just couldn’t resist the temptation, could you? And, what the heck is a “humblebrage”?
By the way, haver you ever considered being happy for others’ happiness, instead of being bitter? Do you think your bitterness has made you any happier?
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No, that look cannot be faked. That’s the look of a woman deeply in love and with a raging sexual desire for a man.
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Good find Oscar. His smile looks less natural than hers, but the picture looks much like one that Scott posted of him and his Mychael. The description is better than the picture. He gets in 2 humorous digs at her with enough humor to make her role her eyes at him instead of hurt her feelings, although he might be serious about his Ken Griffey Jr. card. Let’s hope for his sake he never has to choose between the two.
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Respectfully disagree with those who say this look can’t be faked. I don’t believe any of us is such an expert in body language that we can tell from a photo. Mrs. Pratt might very well be madly in love with him – she probably is. Same for Scott and Mychael’s photo – she’s probably wild about Scott. But I don’t buy it that us guys on the internet can tell from a photo. She’s smiling and looking up at him (he’s taller).
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I don’t know if it’s genuine, or not, nor do I care. I just saw the photo, and it made me think of Deti’s axiom, so I thought it would be funny to share it here. Cue dramatic temper tantrum.
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When you look around at how most wives look at their husbands, you’ll find that this enthusiastic look of whole-hearted, school-girl-like passion is so exceedingly rare that it stands to reason that either (1) genuine feminine love for a man is common and the vast majority of women are trying to hide it, or else, (2) genuine feminine love for a man is rare, so when you do see it, it’s totally genuine. I’ll go with the latter.
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Jack, I would say that I’m skeptical when it’s a picture because people pose for pictures. People create “reality” with pictures.
I agree that if you see a woman doing this in real life, not taking a picture, then it’s very likely the case that she’s REALLY into the guy.
My wife has told me many times that lots of women she knows on e.g. Facebook, use photos, posts, etc. to fake having a good relationship with their husbands when she knows otherwise about them. We men also “pose” for pictures sometimes.
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Okay spelling Nazi, what the heck is a “haver”?
I’ve been plenty happy for others. Never have a knocked a man in this forum or in day to day living of people I meet of what they have and I don’t. I just don’t like staged photos, and humblebrags. They are bad enough when women do it, but on men it’s just petty.
Hollywood people / famous people…… yeah, that’s a natural photo and look. Its posed… and even if it wasn’t, this guy gets women to look at him like this who are NOT married to him. He was married to a Playboy centerfold and sex symbol for a bit too. Divorced…. so the look was fake? Not real?
The good looking will only put up with “so much” before they double down and shame every other man who could never compete with them on any level and then tell them “how easy it is to meet a pretty gal fifteen years younger than you… who just happens to be connected to a very powerful political legend of a family”…
So toadies like me have to find things to do… no matter how campy, or low brow they are. Leaving work early today to be on “The Price Is Right”. It’s fun, it’s so Americana, and a fixture of the modern culture. I don’t need anyone to be happy for me. The happiness I have found in this life… was by no one else’s help or “justifying”.
As for languages. I learned Welsh by my mother. There is no way I could have learned it as an adult. I was taught it along side English growing up as boy into a teenager. “Diolch mam annwyl…”
🙂
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It’s a typo of “have”. What’s a “humblebrage”?
Right. Like, “Oh, you guys have it so hard!”
I don’t know. I just posted the link because it was a funny way to reinforce Deti’s axiom that, unless she’s head over heels for you, dump her. Way to throw a wet blanket onto a lighthearted post, Sunshine Sally. Are you always this much fun?
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Using LSD references (Sunshine Sally) really is trite Oscar. It think it was also used in a Sheryl Crow song… I ramble. I never have knocked a man in this forum or people I have met for being married.
So Deti’s axiom is light hearted and fun? His axiom is pretty dead serious. Look, I’ve said before, even Scott in his practice when counseling a man in his marriage doesn’t and would never say, “Bring wedding photos in…. ah, see…. She is not giving you visceral look in these photos, your marriage was doomed from the start. I can’t help you. Your only chance is to divorce and go find / date only women that give you this.”
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I had no idea that Sunshine Sally was linked to LSD. I just used it to describe your obviously upbeat, sunny disposition. So, are you always this much fun? And, what’s a “humblebrage”?
You whine constantly about what other men have that you don’t. Heck, you just did that the last time you threw a tantrum and stormed off.
I never said that. I never even said I agreed with Deti. I just said my post was lighthearted. Thanks for taking it so seriously.
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No, again… you’re wrong. I was told and it was accepted as FACT here that men who don’t get sex or have sex are lesser men and its a need like “air, water and food”.
I take you seriously Oscar because you are serious. Excuse me for not being able to read the “secret language and cues of men” lol!
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No, you weren’t. Here’s Deti’s response to that false accusation after you threw a tantrum, and stormed off.
There is no “secret language and cues”. You insist on reading minds, instead of reading words, and dishonestly misinterpreting every statement as a personal attack, just as you did with Deti. That causes a lot of unnecessary miscommunication which predictably leads to you eventually throwing tantrums and storming off.
So, are you always this much fun? And, what’s a “humblebrage”?
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Go up the thread and see where he calls men who don’t get sex “lesser men”. He then says, “I never said that”, and as usual, you all believe the lie, the shifted goalposts…… or what-he-really-was-trying-to-say.
The whole forum wants to know that about you Oscar. You are always confrontational, angry, condescending, and smug… I can’t imagine you ever enjoying anything.
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I read the thread. Have you considered the possibility that you misinterpreted what Deti wrote? Maybe you could talk it over with him man to man, instead of calling him an “arrogant prick”, throwing a tantrum, and storming off.
Really? Why hasn’t anyone ever asked?
Yes, that explains why I took someone’s lighthearted post far too seriously, and replied to it angrily, after having called a fellow poster an “arrogant prick”, throwing a tantrum, asking to be banned, and storming off.
Oh, wait, that wasn’t me. Who was it again?
So, you also lack imagination?
What’s a “humblebrage”?
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In hopes of purchasing peace here and us men coming together instead of flying apart:
Jason, everyone here is on your side. No one here wishes you ill. I know you’re responding and reacting out of anger, frustration, and pain – and I know that even if you don’t. I’ve been exactly where you are, whether you believe me or not. I know exactly what you’re going through. I have been there.
At the risk of “whataboutism”, if you think being single and sexless is bad, try being married and sexless. Try being responsible for and having to live with a contentious, bitchy, stingy woman who won’t f__k you and complains about f__king you when she deigns to f__k you. It’s like, it’s WORSE THAN, buying a really nice car on a 72 month payment plan and then not being allowed to drive it because it won’t start or it’s always in the shop. Try having a woman, having to support her and be responsible for her, and then not getting the one benefit you’re supposed to get in exchange for all that responsibility.
I did exactly what blue pillers and women told me to do. I bought the cow. And then for 15 years I wasn’t allowed any milk. I had to pay for it. I had to take care of it. I had to shelter, feed, and get medical care for it. I had to support its calves. But I got no benefits from it.
Anyway – No one here wants anything bad for you. Everyone here wants only good for you. Your lashing out and getting angry at me isn’t helping you.
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To sum it up – there have been times during those 15 years I might rather have been you. I might rather not have owned a cow that was a timesuck and a moneywaster. More than once I look back on that time and think it would have been better to have been alone.
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Oscar and Deti:
ME: “No man “died” because he didn’t get sex.”
YOU: ‘True. But the man who wants sex (which is almost all men) and who cannot get it, loses a piece of his humanity. He becomes less human, less masculine, less “a man”, even if only in his own eyes and in relationship to himself. It causes great distraction and excruciating pain. It causes emotional instability and mental disorders.”
Oscar didn’t read the response.
I cannot get sex, so I am a lesser man, prone to mental disorders, less human, distracted and in pain.
Thank you for putting men like me OUT for good. “Oh, too bad he can’t get it”, and now he never will because he is damaged and women don’t like “damaged men”. I am angry and justly so at that. You even doubled down later on. No man here would ever disagree with you Deti (rolls eyes).
They like pretty boy in the post above. I know you all look like this from your descriptions of your life before you married. IOI’s everywhere. Dates galore, women “letting you know”…
80% are locked out, you then give ways for men to meet someone, and then say there are NONE left… and the ones that are of WORTH????????? They only want men like you all and the man in the above pic.
You at least had OPTIONS Deti. To date, to kiss, to feel up to experiment……… You then play the “Oh, I know exactly what you are going through”…
YOU DON’T stop playing it off like you do. All of you. I am constantly upbraided about “incorrect conceptions about marriage” because I am not married. You have NO CLUE what I deal with. NONE.
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Oh well. I tried. I don’t have to justify any of this to you, though I tried to.
Jason, none of this is helping you.. Everyone here wants only to help.
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Yep, you sure did. A soft word turns away wrath (Proverbs 15:1), but that requires good faith on both sides. Your good faith is entirely one-sided.
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You didn’t try. You took your situation and equated it with mine. Called men like myself “lesser” and still pat yourself on the back. Typical lawyer.
As for Oscar… I could walk in here and say, “Hey… It’s a good day!”
And he would find some way to prove his wrong I was.
As for Jack. Seen uncountable images of women looking at men like that, photos, media and in real life…. from casuals, to the movies, and TV over the decades. He’s an actor. She grew up in a household with a super actor. Plus… politician / political family. Totally staged.
When they divorce…. you all will make up some excuse a la “1984” to explain why. Oscar will then claim he “knew it all along”.
Posting late or early???? Just returned from a taping of “The Price Is Right”. It airs on Dec. 28.
You will see Lastmod be one of the first four called down. I got on stage. Won big. Made it to Showcase Showdown. I am under disclosure… so I can’t say much else. Had a great time. It was so LA and so California. Good night!
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Cool Jason! I’ll be watching. You mean December 28th?
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Yeah. December 28th. Airs on your local CBS affiliate. It was a ton of fun! Really interesting to see in-between scenes and cuts and breaks while things get setup! Glad I signed up to try out for this! 🙂
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Deti shared what is probably the most painful experience of his life, and this is how Jason reacts to it. Zero compassion. 100% self-centeredness. What a swell guy!
Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. It wasn’t that Jason dishonestly misinterpreted Deti’s statement, threw a tantrum, called Deti an “arrogant prick”, asked to be banned, stormed off, then came back to throw another tantrum (less dramatic this time) over a lighthearted post I made.
Still taking a lighthearted post far too seriously.
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That is 100% false. I read Deti’s response. The difference is that I chose to interpret his response in good faith, because everything I’ve read of Deti’s tells me that he has compassion for hurting men, and wants to help them, probably because of his own pain. Even when I disagree with Deti, I still choose interpret his opinions from that perspective.
You chose to dishonestly misinterpret Deti’s words as a personal attack on you. Your bitterness, anger, self-pity, and “seething hatred for” your “fellow man” create a lot of negative self-fulfilling prophecies, and feedback loops.
Yeah, I’m totally on Chris Pratt’s level. I mean, I do own a Triumph motorcycle, so we’re practically twins.
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At least with a cow that doesn’t give any milk you can slaughter it, cut it up, and eat it.
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The option is still there, but I’ve been told such things are frowned upon.
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The series on Gnosticism did not resonate with me. This may put me in the minority of your readers, but what I read struck me as wrong. I’ll point out a few reasons.
I understand intuition as the means of direct revelation, by which God communicates with his people. When one “hears the voice of God”, this is not normally literally hearing a voice (although this does happen), but rather sensed at an intuitive level (e.g. a ‘moment’ of inspiration) that is perceived as instantly and truly as any of the physical senses.
By this definition, I’m a Gnostic, which is absurd, but whatever. Moreover, political correctness is itself illogical, so it does not reflect intellect. Quite the contrary, it indicates a rejection of intellect. So, I reject the notion that reason (the mind) and intuition (the spiritual) are incompatible, or that you don’t need both.
The human senses (including the spiritual sense) are orthogonal to whether or not one accepts/rejects Christ. Presumably if one accepts Christ, one is accepting objectivity, whereas if one rejects Christ, one is accepting subjectivity.
Gnosticism includes idolatry and rebellion, but not all idolatry and rebellion are Gnosticism. Idolatry and rebellion are older, by far, than Gnosticism, and it’s not at all clear why I should label modern forms of idolatry and rebellion as Gnosticism. I don’t see how this level of abstraction is valuable. To put it simply, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
This leads to my final criticism: abstractions are intellectual distractions. They are inherently untrue. Call out idolatry and rebellion plainly and clearly. Don’t obfuscate it behind philosophy and abstraction. These abstractions are themselves antithetical to both the direct revelation of mysticism and the personal nature of God.
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The dichotomy of intellect vs spiritual is itself an unhelpful abstraction, even as the discussion of mysticism and Gnosticism leans heavily on these distinctions. Indeed, as Charlton notes, most define God as that which is beyond intellect (i.e. spiritual), beyond creation (i.e. creator), and beyond mortality and time (i.e. immortal), but these are all definitions from an abstracted intellectual frame. God is no thing.
God is personal. Jesus is one with the Father at the deepest personal level, as a person knows another person, not as a Gnostic mystery or even a Christian mystery. We too know (and pray to) Jesus as a person, not the abstraction (i.e. God), but rather as you would a family member or friend.
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Ramman3000,
Thanks for your valuable comments.
One of the biggest blind spots of western Christianity is the wider culture’s massive reliance on the Greco-Roman tradition of logic and reason. I wrote a post about the Aristotelian approach to truth a while back. Western Christians continue to remain unaware that this is not a Biblical approach to Truth, and so to them, it is expected that the best arguments supporting the Christian faith should be comprised of an Aristotelian exercise in reason. It is almost as if they believe Jesus had said, “He who seeks after truth must have elegantly constructed syllogisms based on concrete facts, and must never pose a dishonest argument. Otherwise, he is a liar and the truth is not in him, or at best, one unskilled in dividing the word of truth through a righteous argument.”
Your arguments adopt the same Aristotelian approach.
The point is that it is an ethical stance that relies on an appeal to logic and reason (e.g. equality, tolerance, etc.), and not faith in God’s covenant order. Whether the argument is logically sound or not is irrelevant to the fact that it is still an appeal to logic and reason.
For most people, the mind and the heart are incompatible, and they are forever engaged in a tug-of-war between the two. I agree that they are compatible for the Christian (or rather, the mature Christian), however one’s faith must direct one’s intellect, and not the other way around. The mind must be brought into subjection to one’s faith.
Adhering to a purely rational approach is one way that we conform to this world.
True, but this is still looking at the Christian religion through the lens of rationalism.
Yes, there is much more to be said about that. Gnosticism is a well developed system of belief that combines reason and intuition to displace faith in Christ. Addictions are a form of idolatry that rely on a biological or psychological dependence. Equality, feminism, Marxism, and even liberal democracy are embodiments of spiritual rebellion that have their own philosophies.
That’s right. The mind is incapable of processing many aspects of Truth, and so abstractions, analogies, archetypes, mythos, parables, etc. are commonly used to express ineffable aspects of the Truth that the mind cannot fully comprehend. The Gnostic approach is to unashamedly declare that the human mind IS capable of apprehending the Truth of such things, and that the mind can be relied upon as a trustworthy moral guide.
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Jack said:
I read that post, concluded that it is taking a (5,000+ word) rational approach to truth, and then considered what Jesus said:
This is one’s entire person.
This presumes—without justification—that I love the Lord with only my mind.
Irrationality is not an appeal to logic and reason, but an appeal to emotion, beliefs, and/or authority. It is a rejection of the mind, denying the whole person and is thus a rejection of God. One cannot reject reason and have faith in God’s covenant order, for one cannot trust (have faith) without the (renewed) mind.
But this is still beside the point. One cannot love God through reason, one loves God with their entire being, in a personal relationship. It is true that I love my wife because in my mind I decided to, and our collective rational decision prevents any talk of divorce. I also love her with my heart, my body, and my soul. Yet, to describe my love for her as a collection of those things is incomplete and insufficient. I love her deeply and personally: she is mine and I am hers, completely.
They are not merely compatible, but foundational. Gnosticism—as described here—puts these aspects of a person at odds, pitting them against one another. So too does the presented alternative to Gnosticism. But the mind (rational) is not subservient to the heart (spiritual/mystical). We cannot divide what is indivisible. One must trust in—and be directed by—Jesus with their whole being (mind, body, heart, and soul). No part of it directs, or is subjected to, another.
Jesus promised a renewing of the body as well. Mind. Body. Heart. Soul. All renewed.
No, the problem is not loving Jesus with one’s entire person. Whether one does this with only their mind, only their heart, only their soul, or any combination isn’t critical. What matters is the rejection of relationship with God, that is, not putting trust (that is, faith) in Jesus.
I’m genuinely perplexed why you reject the mind, yet your posts here require a reasonably high level intellect to comprehend, perhaps even so high that some of us have trouble readily understanding them.
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Correction: Irrationality is not logic and reason, but it is an appeal (based on emotion, et al). What one appeals to is truly irrelevant, for one can appeal to anything. That doesn’t make it so. I could, for example, say that the Aristotelian approach is an appeal to God’s divine nature.
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