If all you've got's a prayer...

Me

You may or may not buy this story. But I hope you can agree that the Harvard faculty in 2007 by and large believes in human equality, social justice, world peace and community leadership, that the faculty of the same institution held much the same beliefs in 1957, 1907, 1857 and 1807, and that in any of these years they would have described these views as the absolute cynosure of Christianity. Perhaps I am just naturally suspicious, but it strains my credulity slightly to believe that sometime in 1969, the very same beliefs were rederived from pure reason and universal ethics, whose concurrence with the New Testament is remarkable to say the least.

OP Hm. Possibly so. Tho TBH I don't really think I know what pure reason or universal ethics are.

Me Whose quote ?
OP I imagined was the same Erik Naggum. Oh, Moldbug is it.

Me Mhm.
OP Well, what do you say? Are pure reason and universal ethics remarkably concurrent with the new testament?

Me I think that the labels used by people in similar positions to discuss unrelated items similarly situated in their conceptual universe are unremarkably similar. The kid in Alaska with a hurt companion dog he got as a puppy, and the kid in Congo with a veal dieing of dysentery are living completely unrelated experiences which they will label the same way. All the people call highs "highs", but what does that mean ?
OP Aha... but what's the label here, "remarkable concurrence", or "pure reason and universal ethics"?

Me "Human equality, social justice, world peace and community leadership". Jefferson believed in these, as well as Plato. and Obama. Jefferson kept slaves, but didn't think it okay to fuck the younger boy slaves in the ass. Plato thought it okay. Obama didn't think it ok to own slaves at all. Yet they all believe in "community leadership".
OP Oh, I see. Yeah.

Me It's this economy of label gun cartridge that then makes the illusion of human communication so seemingly factual. That you reduce everything to those labels everyone else reduces to allows you to imagine your writing of "pink" in a novel evokes the color pink in the reader. Which it does, depending on exactly what you mean. It does activate the content of that label. The thing breaks down immediately if relied upon it seriously however. Boy tells you he loves you. Well... don't they all ? And why wouldn't they. They want to fuck, right ? What else do you say, "I want to put you in a hogtie and spit in your mouth" ? That could as easily be the label, and if it became the label it'd be no better - in fact in no way different. It could be "bumstcz bumstcz" for all it matters.
OP Hm... but why is it necessarily illusion, human communication?

Me Didn't I just explain that ? Because the moment it is relied upon seriously it proves itself unworkable. That's the stuff of illusions.
OP It doesn't prove unworkable if the labels are examined though. Maybe a lot of it is, or superficial communication is, but necessarily and always?

Me I'm not saying human communication can't be deliberately constructed. The catch, of course, is that such construction requires dehumanisation.
OP Haha!

Me Which is why slavery is a requisite for intimate relations, at least at the onset, and education a requisite for participation in the academia. Absent the subjection of one to another, communication remains a meaningless exercise.
OP Indeed.

Me Which is also why current US academia is so wholly devoid of value, intellectually. They're trying to construct academia without subjection, and this obviously results in the state of monkeys : everyone howling in their own law, and being silent is no longer listening, but merely waiting for your turn to speak.
OP Yeah. That bit's nicely put.

Me I stole from someone, but I don't remember whom. Anyway, this is also why the insistence on empathy. It's not really a moral imperative, as presented. It's ontological fear. They figure empathy, if universal and ubiquitous, could perhaps be relied on to resolve the problem of communication. I don't know what's more naive than this, but it'd have to be something the faithful do. Like awaiting for Jesus to recome or w/e. In the end, the original argument can be recast as "people in any position of power at all points in history are fundamentally a group that got there accidentally and are about to regress to the mean, so they're subjectively desperate and thus faithful". Obviously, their faith takes the same form, for it is the same thing, as discussed. And so... it's always really the same story, of different people with their different fears. What's a wave going to think ? That the wind returns, right ? That momentum never ceases, that tide is forever, all that. It'd have to be different momentums for each particular wave to be maintained, but in the end... they all need the "same" thing. While this argument does have some merit in the very very general, it happens to also be a very socialist-informed view of the world, and certainly dedicated to the spread of that particular "ideology", if we can call simple marauding stupidity an ideology. In fact it glosses over differences in exactly the same manner and exactly for the same purpose rank utopianism glosses over its own logical inconsistencies.
OP Hm.

Me Amusingly enough, remember the boy that didn't want to talk about relationship issues, because that somehow "devalues" the whole thing and thought it proper that the other should guess his feelings, as a token of twu wuv ?
OP Yes.

Me That boy is not at all different from the would-be academic that imagines "empathy" will solve the problem of communication. In fact, it is the exact same infantile mental process at work. Exactly the same.
OP Yeah, i see it.

Me And then kids that actually belong in Universities shall be turned down from them because they don't twu wuv the people currently present, notwithstanding the obvious fact that the people currently present have no more business there than a flock of sheep that happened to go in, attracted by the nicely manicured lawns, and moreover their only chance to be made of the place and have their mere presence turn into actual belonging would have been their adaptation to those turned away kids in the first place. Which, strangely enough, is actually a biblical story if memory serves.
OP Something like that, yeah. Well they're paying, that's why they're there.

Me Being there because you've paid is like showing up on the rugby team because you've prayed. Perhaps if you're a very good athlete already a prayer or two can't hurt anything. If all you've got's a prayer...
OP Lol.