The Lion
General Radahn was the mightiest warrior in the land.
We know George R. R. Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki are students of history, so although we can’t get into their heads, it’s a useful exercise to consider which historical figures they drew from when creating their intentionally 3-dimensional characters. I could be wrong but, to me, General Radahn invokes Alexander the Great. Aesthetically, the parallels are obvious. The red plume on the helmet is undeniably similar to those worn by phalanx officers in the Hellenistic era.
“Alexander was no ordinary boy. From his youth he had been impatient to be king. When he was little, he was said to cry whenever his father, King Philip, conquered another Greek city, saying: ‘Father won’t leave anything for me to conquer when I’m king!” - E.H. Gombrich
Starscourage Radahn was no ordinary boy. He was the son of Radagon of the Golden order, and Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon. From a young age, he was enamored with the Elden Lord Godfrey, which is why he adorned his armor with lions, the symbol of Godfrey and Serosh.
Radahn is always associated with the stars. He studied gravitational magic in Sellia in order to manipulate gravity, eventually going on to save the city by halting the cycle of the stars and delaying destined death itself. Like Radahn, Alexander “the Great” was a star, which is why he earned that moniker in the first place. Even though Alexander died at age 32 in Babylon, we’re still talking about him 23 centuries later.
If you’ve played Elden Ring then whether or not you could consciously articulate that General Radahn parallels Alexander the Great doesn’t matter, because you already knew it subconsciously. That’s the way Great art works, and the way Great story tellers think. When you’re watching Better Call Saul, and Vince Gilligan shows you a shot like this:
more information is being communicated to you about Jimmy, and his psyche, than mere words could ever pretend to. Actually, you already knew this about Jimmy’s psyche even before you saw this shot! The image just reaffirms what you’d already intuited. In Breaking Bad we only know “Saul Goodman,” but in Better Call Saul we’re introduced to “Slippin’ Jimmy,” and then, during the finale, after a moment of redemption, he (by his own volition) calls himself “James Morgan McGill.”
Nolan, the greatest director of all time, teaches us in Inception that if you want an idea to stick, you have to go as many layers deep as possible. Socratic logic, semiotics, and sophistic arguments can be quontested and quibbled about by lawyers and academics, but art (real art) operates at a level so foundational that mere words are wholly inadequate to engage with it.
“Rational,” bleh. The very word sticks in the throat.
Even if you can’t articulate “why” you like a piece of art, it doesn’t matter. When I was 16 and I watched The Dark Knight for the first time, I’d never taken a humanities course. I’d probably never even heard the word “Motif” and I couldn’t articulate the Batman story’s ethic with language. What I did know, though, is that “it resonated with me,” and that was enough. That’s always enough.
General Radahn is an archetype; in the same way that Bowser, Gilgamesh, and Tyrion Lannister are archetypes. Although the specific instantiation changes depending on the culture and medium, archetypes themselves are so time-agnostic that “eternal” is probably appropriate nomenclature. Medusa (a chaos monster that turns people to stone) appeared around 700 BCE, and then the Basilisk (a chaos monster that turns people to stone) appeared again in 1998 over 2000 years later.
Rather than hold your hand and spoon food you the archetypal story, Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin want you to infer the story through context. Most of the storytelling is environmental, not literal, which alienates casual participants but rewards the curious and patient.
When you first enter the lands between there isn’t a history book you can pick up that says, “Here is the story of General Radahn, and what he’s motivated by.” Instead, you step outside and see a massive, almost Edenic green field, with a castle towering above the area, the Church of Elleh directly in front of you, and a giant, golden, glowing Erdtree dominating the sky.
Because Elden Ring is intentionally a technically challenging video game, the first 10 hours or so are usually spent dying to foot soldiers in Limgrave. Miyazaki intentionally enshrouds the areas on the map that haven’t been explored yet, which creates this weird, liminal tension of both claustrophobia and excitement.
It’s not by accident that General Radahn resides in Caelid.
We don’t know exactly what Caelid looked like before Radahn’s duel with the Goddess of Rot, but it’s probably safe to assume that it was a natural extension of Limgrave. If you squint at the map (which is never the territory) the two “distinct” areas actually seem to be part of a greater whole, though the aesthetic juxtaposition is obvious and intentional.
Rotview balcony (similar to the first steps in Limgrave) gives you a sweeping overview of the area.
“That which is achieved too easily is esteemed too lightly.” - Thomas Paine
After spending (at least) 20 hours making your way through Limgrave, venturing into Caelid, realizing you aren’t strong enough yet, going back to Limgrave, leveling up, venturing back to Caelid, realizing you still aren’t strong enough yet, going back to Limgrave, leveling up, venturing back into Caelid, kind of being strong enough to kill the pests but perennially dying to the dogs, and then leveling up again, eventually you can make your way toward Redmane Castle.
When you finally traverse the mostly empty castle, you don’t get surprised by a monstrous giant, or a cosmic demon, you find a bunch of disparate tarnished hanging around a campfire near the Castle’s chapel, listening to hymnal music, and communing in reverence.
Most hunter gatherer societies were animistic, which means they believed in “the spirit of the tree” and “the spirit of the river” and “the spirit of the buffalo.” Superficially paradoxically, the “hunter” part of “hunter gatherer” obviously meant, well, hunting animals. Like the buffalo.
“Hunting” in pre-agrarian cultures was a lot different than “hunting” as we conceptualize it today. They tracked, wounded, and ultimately killed the buffalo but, unlike contemporary hunters, many groups, after the hunt was over, would weep. Like Jesus. The act of taking a buffalo’s life moved them to tears. They mourned the spirit of the buffalo, but then said a prayer over its body, saying, “One day our bodies will decompose and feed the soil that grows the grass your descendants will eat, thus continuing the great circle of life.”
Jesus dealt with a lot of rotten people, both inside and out.
The savior went out of his way to spend time with the lePers, Publicans, and Prostitutes, because he believed that every. single. last. soul. - no matter how Bruised, Bloody, or Broken - had a spark of divinity inside of them, and was worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.
After the institution of the sacrament, Jesus and the remaining disciples headed towards the Garden of Gethsemane. Leaving 8 near the entrance, Jesus, Peter, James, and John ventured towards the Mount of Olives when the savior became “Extremely sorrowful and heavy,” or in Mark’s account, “Sore amazed.” Despite having known what was about to happen for a long time, even Jesus wasn’t fully prepared. Needing to be alone, Jesus went further into the garden and began to suffer.
We know that the physical pain must have been incomprehensible, because the scriptures say that he “sweat drops of blood,” but I imagine that the spiritual, and emotional pain might have been even worse. Having lived a sinless life, Jesus had never felt the guilt, and the loneliness, associated with sin-- but in that moment, somehow he felt olive it.
As should be expected from great stories, it isn’t by accident that the atonement was performed at the Mount of Olives. In order to extract olive oil you have to crush the drupe with immense pressure, but when the juice first comes out it’s actually red. It isn’t until the liquid is able to touch oxygen, and breath for a bit, that it transforms into the familiar, shiny golden substance.
Jesus, in that moment, was almost like a little olive.
You’ve probably seen videos of modern hydraulic presses crushing things underneath them. For some reason that’s what I think about when I read the story of Jesus. I imagine him, the sinless man, going into the garden, alone, and then getting crushed by a hydraulic press. Immediately afterwards Jesus was betrayed by his disciple, wrongfully politically condemned by his people, and then denied by his friend.
once deTermined guiltY foR a crIme he didn’t cOmmit, they theN took Jesus, stripped him down naked, shackled him to a pillar, and scourged him. Scourging usually involved a whip composed of leather tails, metal balls, and sheep bones, so when you whipped across the back the metal would bruise the skin, and the bones would rip through it. He bled almost to the point of unconsciousness, and then when he asked for water they gave him vinegar. Then they took Jesus, blindfolded him, and started smacking him across the face while they mocked him.
“Who smacked you Jesus?!”
“Hahahahahhaha who smacked you Jesus?!”
“You can talk to God, make a prophecy! Who smacked you Jesus? Hahahahaha!”
Then they fashioned him a crown of thorns, and forced him to carry his own cross to Golgotha. A cross weighed roughly 40 pounds, and it was about a half mile walk to the place of the skull. When they finally arrived they drove nails through Jesus’ hands, and then through his feet, and then again through his wrists just to make sure he was secure.
Crucifixion is not a fun way to go out. On top of the public humiliation, when someone hangs with their arms extended out to the side like that, the chest cavity is pulled upward and outward, which fixes the ribcage in an inhaled position, stops the diaphragm from easily contracting, and mitigates the ability to properly exhale. To breathe out, the person must push up on the nailed feet, and pull up with the nailed wrists. Over time carbon dioxide accumulates in the blood, causing the body to desperately try and panic-breathe even more.
This cycle of rising up, and then collapsing down, and then rising up, and then collapsing down again, is repeated over, and over, and over, and over, until the light finally leaves their eyes.
The first words out of Jesus’ mouth when he was on the cross?
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
He uttered 7 phrases on the cross:
“Truly I say unto you, this day ye shall be with me in Paradise.”
“Woman, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother.”
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
“I thirst.”
“It is finished.”
“Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”
Also, the week before he died, Jesus murdered that dumb fucking fig tree.
A fig tree, for Christ’s sake.
After walking through the courtyard, and talking to a few of the tarnished, you speak with Jerren, the leader of the warriors, who explains why they’ve gathered together in Redmane castle.
Before we begin, allow me to paint you the full picture. General Radahn is cursed ever to wander. Eaten from the inside, by Malenia’s scarlet rot, his wits are long gone. Now he gathers the corpses of former friends and foes alike, gorging on them, like a dog.
Howling at the sky.
Blaidd the Half-Wolf, Castellan Jerren, Iron Fist Alexander, Lionel the Lionhearted, Great Horned Tragoth... these people worship Starscourage Radahn. They call it “The Radahn Festival“ out of reverence for the hero, which is why sacred music is playing, and they’re gathering together in a church. They love Radahn. They adore Radahn. Which is why they’ve come together to kill him.
Starscourage Radahn, in this moment, is like a little buffalo.
After the ritual is complete, the stars resume their path.
You already knew the story of Starscourage Radahn before you made it to Redmane castle, the festival was just reaffirming that knowledge. And for those of you frustrated with the fact that Radahn was somehow brought back to life in the DLC - only to become the strongest boss in Souls history - perhaps a good rule of thumb could be, “Assume the story teller is smarter than you, and don’t casually criticize Great Art unless you think you have a really good reason to.”
“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Act 2
I’m interested in the way my favorite artists (spoilers) are treating death right now. After nearly 3 and a half seasons of Logan Roy being the primary antagonist of the show, Succession quietly kills him off-screen during a plane ride without his children around. Herb Kazazz defeats cancer, but then gets hit by a truck full of peanuts, which he’s allergic to. In Elden Ring you run into likeable characters (like TIrina of Morne) who send you on a noble quest, but then when you get back they’re dead? Beatrice Horseman did not go gentle into that good night, she went clawing, and fighting, and thrashing. Looked kind of like a pissed-off toy dinosaur. Coroner couldn’t get her eyes closed, so now her face is forever enshrouded in a mask of tremendous horror and anguish. Or as my mom called it, “Tuesday!” ... “Tuesday! My mom called it Tuesday!”
Most people do not get a hero’s death, like Radahn. That isn’t how death works in the real world. Most people don’t have sacred festivals pre-organized in their honor, because most people don’t know exactly when they’re going to die....? Usually death is bureaucratic, kind-of-anticipated, random, or some bizarre admixture of the three; it’s almost never the Radahn Festival.
I have an ex-friend (who is dead to me) who relayed a first-date-story that I’ve never been able to stop thinking about. I think that I think about this date more than he thinks about this date. After graduating high school he went out with this girl, and then a few days later she was diagnosed with acute leukemia. When she found out, she handled it about as well as possible. She made earnest social media posts about how optimistic she was, explaining that competent people were in the loop, and that she had a detailed chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and stem cell transplant plan. She died a few weeks later.
I’ve never experienced a loved one dying. My grandpa died about 5 years ago, but I’d only met him a few times and (to be blunt) they were really uncomfortable experiences. I got invited to the funeral, obviously, but I didn’t go. I felt bad for not going, obviously, but I think there’s another part of me that would have felt bad for going too.
Sometimes I get self-conscious about trying to relate to other people. When women in my life tell me about their experiences with men, and their relationship to sexuality, I don’t really know what to say. Because I’m a selfish, narcissistic asshole, my first impulse is to try and relate it back to myself somehow. I don’t ever ~actually~ say this, but what I want to say is, “I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and I’ll never know what it’s like to be a woman, but I do know what it’s like to not trust men, to be preyed upon by men, and to feel ashamed for having sexual desires?” I’m not “allowed” to say that though. I mean I am, there isn’t a literal person telling me not to...
When my parents first gave me “THE TALK” I left feeling more confused about sex, not less confused. My Dad used biblical language like “your seed” and “her egg.” I literally thought that sex was this awkward “thing” that married people do once they’ve decided that they want to have kids, not something normal, or God-forbid pleasurable. I had this mental image of adults being like, “Okay, let’s get this over with” and then going into a closet, or the corner of a bedroom, turning the lights off so they don’t have to look each other in the eyes, uncomfortably taking “it” out, sticking “it” in, and then waiting for “it” to do “its” thing so they could finally get the goddamn humiliation ritual over with. The first time I got an erection I cried.
Nobody is literally telling me that I’m not allowed to listen to Kendrick’s music. Like there isn’t a literal person that’s literally standing over my shoulder and being like, “Hey, what the hell are you doing?” that isn’t literally happening. I don’t ever ~actually~ say this, but because I’m a selfish, narcissistic asshole, what I want to say to that person standing over my shoulder, is, “I don’t know what it’s like to grow up around gang violence in Compton, and I’ll never know what it’s like to grow up around gang violence in Compton, but I do know what it’s like to feel small, struggle to make friends, feel like the people in my community want to hurt me, develop an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, have a violent mind, fight my way out with creativity, hate the people that wear on art like a skin-suit, grapple with things like PRIDE. LUST. FEAR. GOD. LOYALTY.” ...
I’ve never been in a position where I’ve had to comfort somebody that’s lost a loved one, and if I ever were in that position, I wouldn’t know what to say; I’ve never lost a loved one. I would never ~actually~ say this, but because I’m a selfish, narcissistic asshole, what I would want to say (if I’m just playing pretend in my head) is, “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a loved one, but I do know what it’s like to have a cherished person no longer exist in my life anymore. I know what it’s like to unanticipatedly lose something sacred, and then not know how to deal with it. I know what it’s like to lose a friendship, future, anchor, and version of myself that only existed when I was with them. I have the same neurochemicals as my evolutionary ancestors, and my evolutionary ancestors didn’t evolve to deal with something like this. The only time my evolutionary ancestors lost a cherished, sacred person that was a friend, future, and anchor was when that sacred person literally died. My evolutionary ancestors didn’t evolve separate, distinct, disparate, ‘breakup’ neurochemicals because my evolutionary ancestors didn’t ~need~ to evolve separate ‘breakup’ neurochemicals, so ‘death’ neurochemicals are literally the only thing that my soft animal body has to work with.”
I would never actually say that, though, because other people have actually lost loved ones.
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” - Baruch Spinoza
I recently told my therapist that I find it... Invalidating? Ridiculous? Annoying? Stupid? (I don’t remember the exact nomenclature) when people say things like, “I could NEVER imagine committing suicide” or, “How selfish would you have to be to hurt other people like that?” (I heard that one a lot growing up) or, “Could you even IMAGINE doing something that horrible?”
To be fair (and I know this is controversial,) I’m not a huge fan of people killing themselves. I got to tell ya, the more I learn about it, the more I just don’t really care for suicide. I do not like it when people take their own lives. But like, you can’t even IMAGINE it...? Like you just lack the imagination...? You can’t even wrap your head around how a “normal” person - that enjoys food, music, sex, and movies - could find themselves in a position where they feel the desire to kill themself? Like not actually do it, but even just briefly feel the desire to do it?
They say, “How could he go if he’s got everything?”
I’ll mourn for a kid, but won’t cry for a King.
I like being treated like an adult. I feel like Succession treats me like an adult. I feel like Elden Ring treats me like an adult. I feel like Saltburn treats me like an adult. I feel like Better Call Saul treats me like an adult. I feel like George R. R. Martin and Christopher Nolan treat me like an adult. I feel like Dostoevsky treats me like an adult. I feel like The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows treats me like an adult. I feel like Aldous Huxley treats me like an adult. I feel like my therapist treats me like an adult. I feel like Cormac McCarthy treats me like an adult. I feel like C.S. Lewis treats me like an adult. I feel like Scott Alexander treats me like an adult. I feel like David Graeber treats me like an adult. I feel like Hereditary treats me like an adult. I feel like Socrates treats me like an adult. I feel like my middle school Spanish teacher, my high school Creative Writing teacher, and my high school English teacher treated me like an adult. I feel like Kanye treats me like an adult. I feel like Kendrick treats me like an adult. I feel like Herman Melville treats me like an adult. I feel like Bret Easton Ellis treats me like an adult. I feel like Jung treats me like an adult. I feel like Bertrand Russel treats me like an adult. I feel like Severance treats me like an adult. I feel like BoJack Horseman treats me like an adult. I feel like Joker 1 AND 2 treat me like an adult. I feel like the Smile franchise treats me like an adult. I feel like James Hogg treats me like an adult. I feel like Parasite treats me like an adult.
When really smart people (people that are smarter than me) disagree with me, I usually get defensive, sanctimonious, self-righteous, spend several days coming up with reasons why they’re stupid, evil, and brainwashed, and then send my reasoning faculties out into the world to find a bunch of statistics, anecdotes, papers, arguments, syllogisms, and evidence to demonstrate how they’re obviously dumb, stupid, evil, and brainwashed (“Rational,” bleh, the very word sticks in the throat.) However, not often but every once in a while, when I’m not feeling anxious or defensive, I’m able to briefly put my gigantic fucking ego aside and (just as a fun little exercise) try to understand how on earth a smart person could believe something different than me.
Usually when I attempt that exercise something kind of magical happens, I briefly think, “Wait a second, maybe I too could believe something like that, if I were as egoic and propagandized as they are...?” and that always makes me feel really good about myself, because I like reminding myself what a virtuous, smart, special person I am from time to time. I know this isn’t the point, it’s just a byproduct, but it really does feel so good being enlightened sometimes. I love knowing that I’m above all of the petty, egoic motivated-reasoning that all of the “normies” participate in.
That’s usually when the exercise ends. The “cognitive-empathy” thing usually ends with me reminding myself what a smart, empathetic person I am. However, not often but every once in a while, when I’m not feeling anxious or defensive, I’m able to briefly put my gigantic fucking ego aside and (just as a fun little exercise) try to understand how on earth a smart, well-intentioned, well-read, well-thoughtful, well-spoken, well-man could believe something different than me.
I don’t like Ayn Rand, or her policies, but I do think she treats me like an adult, and so I feel like I should treat her as an adult as well....? I mean she’s obviously “smart,” right? “Smart” is not the same thing as “right,” so when I say “she’s obviously smart” that does not mean that I’m saying “she’s obviously right,” you get that, right? Atlas Shrugged is 1,168 pages, and Ayn Rand is smart. You don’t think that in 1,168 pages worth of words from a smart person, that there’s at least some interesting things that are said...? Really...? Like have you even read Atlas Shrugged, or do you just know Atlas Shrugged is a bad, evil book that only bad, evil people read?
All of the villains in Atlas Shrugged are the same. It’s pathetic, miserable, incompetent people that want to tear the competent people down out of jealousy and spite, but posture using pseudo-ethical pretenses. You don’t think there’s people like that in the real world, right...? Probably not. You’d have to be pretty fucking awful to tear someone else down just to make yourself feel better. But like, in hypothesis, if people like that did exist in the real world, wouldn’t that make Ayn Rand partially right?
Everybody likes to conceptualize pride as a top-down sin, where all of the rich, powerful, successful elites are looking down on the rest of us plebians-- but does pride not exist from the bottom-up as well...? Like (hypothetically) are there not people in the world with the exact same psychology as the proud, arrogant, haughty, condescending, unfeeling elites at the top, but they just-so-happen to be at the bottom, which permits them to posture as a victim (a wolf in sheep’s clothing) in order to ascend? (No offense to actual wolves, who I think are pretty fucking cool.)
Don’t worry, you can still cede that teeny-tiny-minor-point while simultaneously maintaining that Ayn Rand is the devil. In the third chapter of Genesis, Lucifer (the devil) comes to Eve and is like, “If you eat of the fruit of the tree you will not surely die, you’ll become as the gods, knowing good and evil” which was a half-truth and a half-lie. Eve did become as the gods, knowing good and evil, but she did surely die. Lucifer was half-right! And that half-right got Eve killed. Fucking snake.
Ayn Rand is the devil. Just awful. A fucking serpent. But her half-truth is really interesting, isn’t it?
I went to Brigham Young University. Like the Brigham Young University. I don’t know if you’ve seen the TikToks, but there’s actual people at Brigham Young University that when asked, “Would you rather take a sip of coffee, or kill a puppy?” they choose the puppy. I don’t even know if soaking is a real thing. I grew up in Alpine, Utah, and went to Brigham Young University, but I’ve never met anybody that’s soaked. The fact that meme even ~could~ exist, though, and that people are like “Yup, totally checks out!” tells you something about the fucking psychos at Brigham Young University. Some professors (like, with PhDs,) when asked, “Do you think people that are gay should be allowed to marry?” just say, “No.” That’s it. Just, “No.” Not, “Well within Mormonism, because it’s our beliefs, they shouldn’t be allowed to, but I don’t care if non-Mormons do it” just, “No.” Like just a universal “No.” Like it doesn’t matter to this academic, with a PhD, that many Indigenous North American cultures use “Two-spirit” as an umbrella term to describe people who fulfill a traditional third-gender social role in their communities, or that ritualized homosexuality was part of male initiation systems in Melanesian societies, or that ancient Greece male-male relationships could follow an age-structured mentorship pattern, or that the Azande warriors in Central Africa took “boy wives” to perform domestic roles, and participate in sexual relations. To the Brigham Young University professor, all of that is just satanic, liberal nonsense coming from evil academics that think they know more than God, so he just says, “No.” No period. He doesn’t say, “Well, we personally believe that the institution of marriage is sacred, because by participating in that ritual you form a holy bond with both your partner, and the broader community around you, which forces both men and women to grow up, act like adults, adopt responsibility, and be a part of something bigger than themselves. We (the smart Mormons, not the dumb dogmatics) aren’t unfamiliar with the anthropological literature, and are actually incredibly open minded to non-traditional views on both sexuality, and marriage; the founder of our Church practiced polygamy for a period of time, so we aren’t rigid with this type of stuff. We believe in ongoing revelation, and are a living, breathing church that prides itself on epistemic humility, and changing in the face of new evidence and circumstances. We are trepidatious, though, about a coalition that casually denigrates a ritual that made it through thousands of years of cultural evolution (that millions of our members hold up as the best day of their lives) by calling it, ‘just a silly little piece of paper,’ especially because our society (right now) is organized in such a way that the family unit is understood to be the primary caretaker of children, who are much more important than you and me anyways. We deeply understand the law of unintended consequences, so we’re nervous about the externalities caused by people casually coming in with a sledgehammer, and getting rid of a tradition that’s existed for millennia, without a coherent, practical, implementable thing to replace it. We’re keenly aware both of how sacred, and destructive, sex can be as an act, so we want to protect our members by encouraging them to only do it in safe, secure conditions, because we care about our members, and don’t want them to get hurt. Because we’re so intimately aware of how dangerous reckless sex can be, we’re trepidatious about coalitions that contain a non-trivial contingency of people that openly promote reckless sexual promiscuity, and bring sexuality to the forefront of our identities. Unfortunately we’re stuck in this dumb social media environment, that only shows us the dumbest version of the other side, so most of our members have a cartoon-ized, caricaturized version of your coalition in their head, and only see the most antagonistic, hateful, and hostile representatives of ‘the other side.’ We’re aware that you view ‘religion’ as silly, naive, traditionists, doing silly, naive, rituals, but to us religion is community, belonging, thousands of years of moral philosophy, identity, meaning, purpose, a place to think about ethics with people you trust, music, art, an enforcer of norms, a shared cultural story that transcends petty political differences, tradition, ritual, prayer, fasting, service, a way to make sense of pain and suffering, institutionalized charity, a safe place to express guilt, friendship, reverence, a sense of the sacred, beautiful stories and scripture, the pursuit of virtue, forgiveness, humility, wisdom, and a language to talk about the dimensions of human experience that reason and science couldn’t even begin to touch. We recognize that it’s become too dogmatic, traditional, and needs cultural updating, but you need to understand just how difficult it is to effectively do something that delicate at scale. We are living in completely evolutionarily unprecedented times. Throughout practically all of human history (but especially before the industrial revolution) the environment that you were born into was the same environment that your grandparents were born into. Our monkey brains did not evolve to deal with this rapid of cultural and technological change. The leaders of our church (by no fault of their own) don’t even know how to effectively operate an iPhone, so you think they’re just going to change their deeply held beliefs about marriage and sexuality overnight...? Unfortunately, because this is the real-world, decisions like ‘doctrinal changes’ have to be considered through a realpolitik lens. If the leaders of the Mormon church randomly announced on a Tuesday that, ‘We still believe marriage is a sacred institution, Mormonism is true, Jesus died for our sins, and God loves you, but I think we screwed up with the gay-marriage thing, so going forward gay members are both welcome in the church, and allowed to marry’ what type of counter-reaction do you think that would spark? How many members would leave the church, a million? 5 million? If you believe you are a part of something sacred and beautiful, and also believe that it’s good for other people, are you really just going to casually make a decision that causes 5 million people to leave? I mean the church probably still should, but the real-world is not black and white, it’s grey. You have to actually think about these things when you make a decision. If the leaders of the Mormon church came out on a Tuesday and said, ‘My bad, gay marriage is cool’ then can you not imagine a world where the immediate reaction is, ‘If we couldn’t trust you with that, can we trust you with anything? Was this entire thing just one, gigantic fucking scam? I gave you 10% of my money, and the whole thing was a fucking scam? Fuck you, fuck Jesus, fuck religion, fuck God, fuck my family for making me be a part of it, fuck conservatives, fuck the sacred, fuck authority figures, fuck meaning, fuck values, fuck purpose, and fuck every single last fucking one of you.’ We (the good Mormons) really do strive to be charitable, Christ-like people that treat others with respect, so when we feel like we’re being misrepresented in media, entertainment, and pop culture, and the people attacking us are casually calling us ‘brainwashed bigots’ even though they don’t know the first thing about us, our religion, our beliefs, and our culture, then we try to be respectful, but because we’re human, it’s incredibly difficult not to become defensive, and then everybody starts becoming defensive together, and then we’ve got an ‘us against the world’ mentality, and then social media only shows us the dumbest version of our critics so we become even more defensive, and then ‘the other side’ stops feeling like, ‘good people that disagree with us,’ and more like, ‘bitter, resentful, hostile unbelievers, that want to destroy everything I care, and my very identity itself,’ and when that’s how you view ‘the other side’ you don’t want to hear about Two-Spirit traditions, Melanesian ritual homosexuality, Greek age-structured male relationships, or Central African ‘boy wives,’ because the people talking about those ideas are obviously hateful, spiteful people that can’t be trusted. When the smart Mormons (not the stupid ones) are defending the institution of marriage, they probably couldn’t articulate it like this but, personally, I think that they aren’t actually defending the ‘if you’re gay then you shouldn’t be allowed to marry’ position, they’re actually defending God and religion itself, because they don’t know how to uncross those wires in their brain. They don’t know how to hold the ambiguity of, ‘maybe this thing that gives me so much purpose and fulfillment got something wrong’ without it shattering not just their entire worldview, but their identity itself. I mean it’s not like ‘the other side’ is giving them the emotional space to explore those scary thoughts and feelings anyways, so instead of self reflecting, they just lash out and fight back against the hostile, dumb, brainwashed people on ‘the other side.’ I think if ‘the other side’ approached us as human beings, treated us with respect, tried to understand where we were coming from, and allowed us to maintain our dignity - instead of calling us all dumb, stupid, evil, brainwashed bigots - then we would be way more amenable to approaching them as human beings, treating them with respect, and trying to understand where they are coming from. We don’t “hate people that are gay,” we just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really fucking love Jesus, and it’s hard to uncross those wires in our monkey brains. Jesus was literally the coolest guy in human history. After getting a hydraulic press dropped on him, Jesus was like, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do,’ and when he came across the woman taken in adultery (in the very act) Jesus was the guy who was like, ‘He that is without sin cast the first stone,’ and Jesus cares so much for ME, a little tarnished, that he died for my sins, because Jesus believed that every human being, no matter how bruised, bloody, or broken, has a spark of divinity inside of them, and is worthy of God’s love and forgiveness. So when you call us all brainwashed bigots, we aren’t sitting there and deliberating with our rationality about whether or not the gay marriage thing is okay, because the way that messaging gets emotionally internalized is, ‘this person isn’t challenging my views on gay marriage, they’re attacking Jesus’ and when somebody attacks Jesus, you attack back, and so we know that we have our work cut out for us, and we’ve hurt lots of people, and screwed lots of stuff up, but please be patient with us while we try to delicately balance rapid cultural and technological evolution, a church being led by imperfect people, a toxic wasteland of a social media environment, political instability, and the realpolitik implications of changing longstanding policies overnight, because we really are trying our best, and even though it’s hard for you to see, we really are good people who eat food, have sex, watch movies, cry when we look into a newborn’s eyes, celebrate when our loved ones accomplish something, want to make this world a better place, and are so deeply sorry for the hurt that we may have caused you.”
No, the Brigham Young University professor with a PhD doesn’t say that, he just says, “No.”
Fucking snake.
Shane Gillis (an artist) has this bit where he says something along the lines of, “Listen, I don’t think school shootings are funny. There is nothing funny about school shootings. But like, just because this is the way the world works, in principle, there has to be a ‘funnIEST’ school shooting ever.... right? Like school shootings are not funny. Full stop. But there’s an IEST everything, right? Just because that’s the nature of IEST is that there’s an IEST everything? So that means there’s an IEST school shooting? Like imagine the weird horse-girl in the class senses something is wrong...”
I could NEVER imagine shooting up a school. How selfish would you have to be to hurt other people like that? Could you even IMAGINE doing something as horrible as shooting up a school?
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
What I find so interesting about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is how theatrical it was (like 9/11.) I mean for one, it was literally in a theater, done by an attractive, charismatic, physically agile peer. John Wilkes Booth was not a loser-incel-gamer that was spending too much time on Discord and 4chan, he was an accomplished and well-respected actor. Booth, as an artist, thought in scenes and symbols, so when you add a gigantic fucking ego on top of that, it’s not surprising that it was trivially easy to position himself as the main character in a grandiose moral narrative. The confederacy was a part of his “identity” so, from his point of view, the South was being tyrannized by the North, Abraham Lincoln was a dictator destroying constitutional liberty, he was surrounded by people that continuously agreed with him and affirmed that moral narrative, and (because he was nebulous) probably felt like his very soul was at stake. So, he shot Lincoln in the back of the head with a .44 caliber derringer, and then when he got cornered in a barn by a bunch of Union solders on April 26th, 1865, the last words out of his mouth were, “Useless... Useless...”
There’s a lot of reasons I like saying the word “fuck” a lot. Most of the people I look up to say the word “fuck” a lot, I was never allowed to say the word “fuck” growing up (Mormon) so there’s something so liberating about just going around and yelling, “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK” (It is a pity that drinking water is not a sin--how much more enjoyable it would be,) I’m irate at... the world...? and when you’re irate at the world, “Frick,” and “Freaking,” and “Damn” don’t really cut it. Psychologically (I think, I’m not an psychologist) there’s something about shared transgression that brings people together. Like when you’re telling a ~secret~ you lower your tone, and the other person leans in, which creates a feeling of intimacy. Psychologically (I think, I’m not a psychologist) I think that’s one of the reasons teenage boys are so drawn to trespassing. There’s something so thrilling, and liberating, about doing something that ~society~ tells you you’re not allowed to do, but not just that, it’s also doing it with other people. Transgressing together creates a feeling of shared intimacy, because now you’re all in it together. If one person gets found out, everybody is at risk, so now you have no choice other than to trust each other and die with the lie.
Throughout this essay (and in all of my essays) I’ve strived to treat you, the reader, like an adult. Have I built up enough equity to be treated like an adult by you in return? If not, then this is the point in the essay where you should stop reading. Cut your losses and get out while you’re ahead.
“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.” - Baruch
I’m incredibly captivated by pedophilia as a phenomenon. I think about it a lot. I think about pedophilia a lot. Instead of cowering in fear and reflexively witch hunting the evil pedophiles on pedophile island, I want to know how we got to a point in history where the. most. powerful. people. on. the. planet. are being accused of pedophilia. As in, the leaders of the free world are being accused of pedophilia. As in Bill, Donald, Andrew, Sarah, the other Bill, Aubrey Graham, Woody, Peter (people like that,) are being accused of pedophilia.
I’m not a statistician at heart, butt, believe it or not, I’m actually incredibly grateful that I studied statistics and data science. Building a robust model (hypothesizing a partial-solution to a problem) is really easy to do with pretty words, and beautiful narratives, but once you’re actually forced to formalize, and rigorously test your beliefs about the world, the spell is usually broken when you’re forced to come into contact with the unforgiving nature of reality.
It doesn’t matter how much meaning and purpose the “God created mankind as a holy, enlightened creature, distinct from the animal kingdom” narrative brings a BYU professor with a PhD, or how special and unique that story makes the Mormons feel, when Charles comes along with the Theory of Natural Selection, and Isaac comes along with Newtonian physics. I mean, a smart Mormon would just say, “Mormonism isn’t incompatible with evolutionary theory, and evolution doesn’t diminish human’s divinity, it just elevates the sacred spirit of the buffalo” but there aren’t a lot of smart Mormons.
It doesn’t matter how eloquent, articulate, attractive, or charming you are when you have to show your multiple-linear-regression professor your R code, that has a little “R^2” output at the end. Your model either has predictive power, or it doesn’t, which is what makes statistics so compelling.
Artists (like John) can spin these beautiful moral narratives about the evils in the world, the horrible people in power, and a bunch of smart people usually fall for it, but then when the unforgiving nature of reality corners him in a barn he has nothing to say but, “Useless... Useless...”
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” - Charles
If John was able to spin moral narratives in 1865 about the virtues of slavery, and the satanic nature of Abraham, then what do you think the “Johns” of the world are able to do in 2026...? Are there people with the same psychology as John alive today? Or Genghis, Adolf, Napoleon, Alexander (Daddy’s not going to leave any countries for me to conquer when I’m king,) Pope Urban II, Attila...
“People said that wherever he trod the grass ceased to grow. His hordes burnt and destroyed everything in their path. And yet in spite of all the gold and silver and treasures the Huns looted, and in spite of all the magnificent finery worn by their leaders, Attila himself remained a plain man. He ate off wooden plates and lived in a simple tent. Gold and silver meant nothing to him. Power was what mattered. It is said that he never laughed.” - E.H.
If people like that did (hypothetically) exist in the world today, how would they operate? I mean they obviously wouldn’t be riding around on horseback, like Atilla and Genghis, because that would be silly. Riding around on horseback wouldn’t get you very far in 2026, so what type of things would people (hypothetically) with the same psychology as Atilla and Genghis do?
The thing that I’m most grateful to my statistics degree for, is teaching me how to think multi-factorially. When you’re building a model - and actually care about the accuracy of the predictions - you want to gather as many explanatory variables as possible. Even if you end up shrinking some (or even most) of the coefficients towards zero with Lasso, Ridge, or Elastic Net in order to reduce overfitting, eliminate weak predictors, and simplify the model, it’s always better to at least have those variables available to you if you want them.
It’s really easy to sit there on your little couch, in your little apartment, and hypothesize about the way the world works, because you don’t have a multiple-linear-regression professor (with a PhD) forcing you to test your predictions against the unforgiving nature of reality. The thing, too, is if you’re smart and charismatic (like John,) you can make literally any idea - no matter how absurd - sound convincing, ethical, and beautiful.
Any complex system, or human decision, is opaque, multi-factorial, and messy, so if you’re smart, then you can take any (true) fundamental motivation, and use that motivation to reduce the complexity of the entire system down into one simple explanation that you can be the master of.
Sigmund did this with sex. Obviously sex is a fundamental driver of human decisions (just ask Charles) so if you’re smart, like Sigmund, you can try and explain away the entirety of human motivations on the basis of sex. Why do young boys sometimes feel hostile towards their father? Sexual competition for the mother. How do children mature? Through psychosexual stages of development. What causes neuroses? Repressed (often taboo or socially unacceptable) sexual desires. What is the point of art? Sublimated sexual drives expressed through a different medium.
Evolutionary psychologists do this with virtue signaling. Why is he morally outraged online? He’s posturing, because he’s trying to virtue signal. Why is he consuming that type of art? He doesn’t actually like obscure films, avant-garde music, or dense books, he’s just trying to virtue signal. Why is he dating someone attractive? He’s signaling status. Why is he dating someone unconventional? He’s signaling trait openness. Why is he dating someone from a marginalized group? He’s signaling moral virtue. Why is he dating someone highly educated? He’s signaling his own intelligence.
The postmodernists do this with power. The only type of science that gets funded or pursued is the kind that maximizes returns on power, and reinforces the status quo, so what you call “science” is actually just R&D for the market. Psychology and sociology can’t be trusted, because power structures always eat the domain of culture itself by redefining “good mental health” to mean “whatever psychology supports the current system of power” and redefining “bad mental health” to mean “whatever psychology does not support the current system of power.” In Soviet Russia the first symptoms of schizophrenia were “negative feelings about the state,” and then the other symptoms might show up later... Language itself cannot be trusted, because it’s intentionally been structured to pre-frame conversations in a way that benefits class hierarchies. “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow for very lively debate within that spectrum.“ What you call “morality” is just power defining the laws and norms that protect property holders, and reinforce social and economic hierarchies. Universities posture as “pursuing truth,” but in practice their goal is to reproduce elite ideology that propagandizes a nation into thinking that what power is doing is okay. Government’s role is to expand surveillance, consolidate authority, and confer capital to the corrupt elites in bed with it. All relationships are arenas of power: boss-employee, landlord-tenant, teacher-student, male-female, white-black, priest-member, corporation-consumer... It’s a dog-eat-dog world, there’s lions and sheep, if you don’t know who the sucker in the room is, it’s you.
It’s intellectual masturbation as far as I’m concerned.
A silly example of multi-factorial thinking: let’s say we want to create a model that predicts “How good your day was on a scale from 0.0 - 10.0?” The more accurate we want the model to be, the more data we should collect about your day. What time did you wake up? Did you go to the gym, spend time with friends, eat good food, drink enough water, and do your hobbies? What was the weather like, did anything interesting happen at work, did you laugh, did your favorite artist release a new song? What type of meta-factors are affecting your baseline happiness not just today, but everyday? Are you in good physical health, do you have any chronic illnesses, do you enjoy your work, like your boss, or hate your coworkers? Are you struggling with any addictions: porn, sugar, fast food, alcohol, accruing Instagram followers, accruing money, keeping up with the Joneses, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Fortnite, or Call of Duty? Jiddu Krishnamurti says, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society,” so what is your political, cultural, technological, and economic climate like right now? PFAS (a forever chemical linked with immune system suppression, hormonal and endocrine disruptions, elevated liver enzymes, and reproductive & developmental challenges) can now be found in every drop of rainwater on the planet. Tom Nichols says, “One of the biggest threats to American democracy right now isn’t nuclear war or terrorism, but the growing narcissism and nihilism of the public.“ If everybody in your life is running around like a little Patrick Bateman narcissist, and you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with, then willpower alone isn’t going to be very effective at stopping you from turning into a little Patrick Bateman narcissist. Hurt people, hurt people. Traumatized people, traumatize people. The gods of Narcissism and Trauma - exponentiated by social media - are spreading through this country like a bacteria, or a virus, or an intestinal worm; you think that “special little you” is exempt from that...?
Anyways, back to pedophilia. I don’t think that pedophilia randomly appeared out of nowhere in a vacuum, I think it organically emerged from the abstract system (culture, tech, economics, politics.) I have no idea why the god of pedophilia emerged in the 21st century, but I think it’s useful - instead of blaming the evil pedophiles on pedophile island - to actually think (through a multi-factorial lens) how something like pedophilia could emerge in our country in the first place.
Witch Hunt
Even if power isn’t their only function, words are incredibly powerful. There are few phrases in the English language that bother me more than, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That theory is a crock. “Words will never hurt me.” Are you fucking kidding me? Are you a fucking robot? A mimic? An automaton? Only people that are fucking insane (like John) could posture a phrase like “words will never hurt me” as embedded with wisdom.
Lakoff Framing and Russell Conjugations show how the language we use and the framing techniques we employ in conversations affect the way that we perceive, interpret, and emotionally respond to the same underlying facts or ideas.
Take trait conscientiousness in Big Five personality theory: “stubborn, uptight and inflexible” and “disciplined, hardworking and goal-oriented” are both ways to describe the same personality trait, but the respective language and framing evokes totally different emotional responses.
Is the person frugal or cheap? Both mean “careful with money” but one connotes virtue and the other stinginess. Are they curious or nosy? Both describe “an interest in others’ lives” but one feels open-minded and the other invasive. “Cautious” and “cowardly” are two ways to describe the same underlying behavior with completely different moral coloring.
The people that you call terrorists call themselves freedom-fighters. Are they undocumented workers or illegal aliens? Is it a riot or a protest? Is it a war on drugs or a public health approach? Is it gender-affirming care or genital mutilation? Is it a social safety net or welfare dependency? Is it moderating misinformation or government censorship? Is it cancel culture or holding people accountable?
If you’re on the political left then you probably conceptualize your team as the side of compassion, progress, equality, inclusion, protecting the vulnerable, standing up for the working class and “being on the right side of history” - and you probably conceptualize the political right as being the side of hatred, oppression, racism, greed, ignorance, bigotry, resistance to change and moral regression.
If you are on the political right then you probably conceptualize your team as the side of personal responsibility, faith, family, hard work, moral integrity, stability, justice and “being on the right side of history” - and you probably conceptualize the political left as being the side of entitlement, victimhood mentality, censorship, envy, mental illness, chaos, moral relativism and the erosion of traditional values.
I think there’s a certain type of person that uses the word “science” in the same way that a corrupt priest uses the word “God.” They don’t give one singular shit about the thing in and of itself, have barely engaged with it, and the second it contradicts their actual goals they’ll toss it to the curb.
They just know that invoking the word “science” is really, really powerful. “The science is on my side,” “Trust the science,” “The scientists disagree with you” even though they haven’t engaged with any of the scientific literature, and honestly probably couldn’t even if they tried.
Understanding “science” is genuinely hard. Like, actually hard. Not everyone can do it. It’s a skill that requires practices - like learning the piano - you aren’t born with it, and some people are better than others at it. I (me, Braden) am terrible at it, and I got an undergraduate degree in statistics and a masters in data science. I know just enough to know how much I don’t know, which makes spotting phony’s and manipulators weaponizing the word “science” for their own selfish gain, very easy to spot.
Words are very powerful. The word “Science” is powerful. The word “God” is powerful. The word “Antichrist” is powerful. The word “Democracy” is powerful. The word “Capitalism” is powerful.
“Concept Creep” is when words related to harm get watered down to include things that don’t belong in the category. Just because your ex-boyfriend was mean to you does not mean you’re a trauma victim. Every person that you dislike is not a narcissist. Bullying actually has a proper medico-legal definition, that isn’t “people were mean to me,” it requires consistent, targeted instances over a sustained period of time by the same people. The words “gaslight,” “emotional labor,” and “trauma” have been so misused at this point as to render them completely useless as concepts to communication information about the world.
I’ve seen real-world racism with my own eyes. Not the highfalutin “systemic racism” or “implicit bias” but the actual, real-world, ugly, tangible racism. I also understand how generational trauma works, and recognize that systems of power tend to confer advantages to those that are already winning within that system of power, which usually tends to be straight-white-men. I get it, and I’m on your side. Also, “Racist” is a really fucking powerful word. There are a bunch of racists in the world, that need to be called racists, and it’s a good thing that they’re being called racists. Also, there’s a bunch of people that aren’t racists in the world (or, at the very least, they’re the “implicit bias” type of racists, not the “racist racists”) that do not deserve to have a word that powerful hurled at them; it’s not fair. But sometimes when an individual, or an entire coalition, has a goal other than “stopping racism,” they’re smart enough to recognize that using the word “Racist” is a really effective weapon for achieving their actual goal (winning an election, virtue signaling, sadistically hurting somebody, subtly reinforcing themself at the top of the hierarchy.......)
In the 17th century, if you didn’t like what somebody was saying (they challenged the current system of power) then you just called them a witch, and that worked. Also, sometimes it didn’t.
Very few taboo (powerful) words still exist in 2026. There’s the obvious one, but besides that, it’s pretty slim pickings. Gen Z has completely appropriated and normalized the word “cunt” i.e. “that’s such a cunty outfit,” or “that’s so cunty of her” (it’s a term of approval.) I actually used the word cunt in therapy the other day, and immediately afterwards I was like “Uhhhhh sorry about that,” and because she’s a great therapist she didn’t say anything, but I definitely remembered that she wasn’t Gen Z in that moment hahhahahahahaha.
Step-sibling porn has been around for forever, so now it’s incest porn, but even that doesn’t really phase anybody anymore. Game of Thrones had incest, House of the Dragon had incest incest, and if you called your political enemy “an incestor” that probably wouldn’t work...? So instead, you call your political enemy a pedophile.
Nick Fuentes openly stated in an interview with Tucker Carlson that he admires Stalin, and I guess that’s just acceptable political discourse now, because nobody trusts the other side to use social shame appropriately. Racist no longer means racist, sexist no longer means sexist, homophobic no longer means homophobic, but “pedophile” still kind of means “pedophile,” I guess...?
Because most political discourse has taken place on social media over the last 15 years, and “dunking” on the other side has been the best way for political actors to accrue power and get some stupid likes on a fucking screen, most of our political discourse has been dominated by mindless, senseless mudslinging over the past 15 years, and old habits die hard.
There’s obviously genuine pedophilia going on in the world today, specifically by powerful elites. Also, I think the second the word “pedophilia” got introduced into the public lexicon, the worst actors on all sides recognized how powerful of a word “pedophilia” is, and immediately started weaponizing it for their own selfish purposes. I remember seeing a clip circulating of Cenk Uygur saying, “The reason Tim Pool always wears a beanie is to cover up all the pedophilia in his head“ and it’s like okay, great, how about both of you fuck off to the kid’s table for the rest of eternity while the adults have actual, adult conversations about actual, adult topics like artificial general intelligence, war with Iran, climate change, and economic collapse? Fucking snakes.
If individuals or coalitions can use the powerful word “pedophilia” to their advantage, then they will. In this toxic wasteland of a social media environment, they would use puppies to get what they want if they could. Peter using the word “Antichrist” is no different than Cenk using the word “Pedophile” is no different than a journalist that’s never read a single scientific paper in their life using the word “Science” is no different than a Televangelist using the word “God” is no different than Drake paying ghost writers to create “Music” is no different than politicians, influencers, and political commentators (on both sides) saying “Democracy is on the line this election cycle” is no different than Mr. Beast doing “Charity” in his YouTube videos is no different than Sam talking about “energy costs, universal-high-income, curing cancer, technological process, and scientific discovery” all of which are things that Sam does not give one singular shit about, but he knows they’re powerful words that help him achieve his goal of becoming a digital god. Fucking snakes.
Blackmail
I mean obviously. This has been the leading hypothesis for why Jeffrey emerged in the first place. If an amoral agent with goals (whether internal, or foreign) is better able to achieve those goals by blackmailing powerful people, then an amoral agent with goals (whether internal, or foreign) is going to blackmail powerful people. My sister’s ex-friend has as Dad that worked in politics, and he told her, who told her, who told me that it’s comically common for even low-ranking politicians to be actively manipulated into doing incriminating things. He said that prostitutes were paid to try and seduce him on more than one occasion, while hidden photographers lurked in the shadows. You don’t think that same tactic, and motivational complex, doesn’t abstract up the food chain to the most powerful people in the world...? I mean, most smart, powerful people (even if they don’t have any ethical qualms with it) are smart enough (purely strategically) not to do something as incriminating as having sex with a child, right...? Surely that’s not a real thing that literally happens in the real world, right? I mean maybe if you introduce drugs, alcohol, and wolves pretending to be sheep into the equation then maybe, possibly, hypothetically, in an altered state of consciousness, an elite could do something that morally bankrupt, but probably not............ right?
Shared transgression
It is a pity that drinking water is not a sin--how much more enjoyable it would be.
The God of Jeffrey
Both the author of these Notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictional. Nevertheless, such persons as Jeffrey not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist, considering the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed. I have wished to bring before the public, somewhat more distinctly than usual, one of the characters of our recent past. Jeffrey represents a generation that is still living out its days among us. In the fragment entitled “Under-ground” Jeffrey describes himself and his views and attempts, as it were, to clarify the reasons why Jeffrey appeared and was bound to appear in our midst.
I’m not a psychoanalyst, but it’s fun to play pretend sometimes.
It’s incredibly cognitively and emotionally undemanding to blame the dumb, evil pedophiles on pedophile island for all of the pedophilia, and if your goal is to feel cognitively and emotionally at peace, then blaming all the dumb, evil people is a great strategy. However, if your goal is “actually protect the children that are getting fucked” then maybe it’s worth considering what caused pedophile island to emerge in the first place.
The people in tech (who are all loosely associated with Jeffrey) don’t understand art, or why artists create things in the first place. Sam Altman can only relate to the movie Oppenheimer in relation to his goal of building general artificial intelligence. When Christopher Nolan (and his pesky ethics) comes along and creates a movie about the guy that built the god-like technology that ultimately got co-opted by the U.S. government in order to kill 200,000 people in Japan, Sam Altman doesn’t like that, so he tries to propagandize a nation into believing, “Actually, the ethic of Oppenheimer SHOULD have been, go into physics kids!” Right now Marc Andreesen is saying that he wants an Atlas Shrugged movie made, because he knows that would be a great way to propagandize a nation into thinking that what Andreesen-Horowitz is doing right now is okay. Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in order to connect people. Pope Urban II had the crusaders slaughter thousands of Muslims, in the name of the guy who said, “He that is without sin cast the first stone.” Walter White became a kingpin drug lord allied with white supremacists, because he really cares about providing for his family.
Obviously I’m really interested in archetypes, but more specifically, the archetypes that are resonating with the collective unconscious currently-- right now in 2026. Artists don’t create archetypes out of whole-cloth, they intuit what’s going on in the world around them, and then represent those dynamics with metaphor, drama, and symbolism; like a vessel.
I think the Smile franchise gave us an archetypal representation of trauma-- it’s a cosmic entity that spreads from person, to person, like a bacteria, or a virus, or an intestinal worm. I think that Nolan’s Joker is an archetypal representation of chaotic nihilism (similar to Everything Everywhere All at Once’s big, black, bagel pit of chaos.) I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the brain-dead, collective Zombie archetype (which spreads) became mega-popular right around the time social media became a thing. Social media created a little God of narcissism that’s spreading through this country like a bacteria, or a virus, or an intestinal worm.
I think a little God of power has organically emerged from this cultural, technological, economic, and political ecosystem, and I think there’s a lot of people that are worshipping at the altar.
As members of the west, we perennially pay lip service to people like Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus Christ, Socrates, Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks, and Mahatma Gandhi, but in practice, are those actually the types of people that we hold up as sacred in our culture? If you want to actually stop pedophilia, instead of blaming the evil pedophiles, then you have to actually sit with that question.
We say with our lips that Jesus Christ is the archetypal representation of the person that we strive to be like, so is that belief being reflected in our culture, memes, symbols, and moral narratives? Are the people that we hold up as important in our culture (and therefore, the people that little kids then look up to, and strive to be like) the type of people that are the closest approximations of the Jesus Christ archetype?
Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America, and Kim Kardashian is the most high status woman on the planet. Every Gen Z boy wants to be a YouTuber, and every Gen Z girl wants to be an influencer. Andrew Tate is a voice for young men. We have sitting members of congress dunking on their own citizens on Twitter. A technology with a non-zero chance of ending life itself has a 2-trillion-dollar-market-cap and everybody is pretending like that’s normal.
Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Tom Brady, 50 Cent, Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch.
I think we worship hierarchical ascension like a God in this culture. “I’m proud of you” is reserved for the people that accomplish something, not for the people that are something. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes him proud, the pleasure of being above the rest. It is not enough that I should succeed, but my friends must also fail. Patrick Bateman only has two identifiable emotions, greed and possibly total disgust. All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great.
We draw near to Jesus Christ with our lips, but our hearts are far from him.
I think there’s a certain type of person that gets off on being “The big man at the top.” I think there’s a certain type of person that actively derives pleasure from putting somebody else down, because it makes them feel big. I think there’s a certain type of person that wants nothing more than somebody else to be beneath them, for its own sake-- and I think the way that psychology gets expressed in its most extreme form, sexually, is via pedophilia. I think that pedophilia is the logical conclusion of a culture that worships at the alter of power and status for its own sake.
That Solzhenitsyn quote - about the line dividing good and evil cutting through the heart of every human being - is so fun, smart, and aesthetic when it’s some abstract, ethereal quote that you casually read after learning about Elden Ring; it’s not so fun now that we’re talking about pedophile island, and your complicity in the system and culture that led to pedophile island, is it?
Dunking on “the dumb, stupid people on the other side” was probably lots of fun when you were accruing lots of stupid likes on a fucking screen, and tons of social media followers; it’s not so fun now that Donald Trump is the leader of the free world while we’re at war with Iran, is it?
Was it worth it, everybody? Did you have lots of “fun” climbing the status hierarchy? Did you have lots of “fun” dunking on the dumb, stupid people on the other side, and destroying them with facts and logic? Did you have lots of “fun” humiliating the evil, dumb, stupid people on the other side? Was it worth it? Now that general artificial intelligence has a 2 trillion dollar market cap, while Donald Trump is the leader of the free world (for a second time,) do you think it was worth it?
Was it worth treating other people like sub-human rodents just so you could get some stupid likes on a fucking screen? I bet it was lots of “fun” watching the followers number go up, is it still “fun” when you consider that that behavior - and motivational complex - actively perpetuated the culture and system that gave us pedophile island in the first place?
“But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, “and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything?” - Fyodor
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
Act 3
In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself
by Wisława Szymborska
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean.
When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame.
If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.
A jackal doesn’t understand remorse.
Lions and lice don’t waver in their course.
Why should they, when they know they’re right?
Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton,
in every other way they’re light.
On this third planet of the sun
among the signs of bestiality
a clear conscience is Number One.
Noam Chomsky says, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow for very lively debate within that spectrum.“ Sometimes parents use this type of subtle manipulation on their children with the illusion of choice. Instead of telling the child “It’s time to go to bed” or “Make sure you eat your broccoli,” you ask the child, “Do you want to go to bed in now, or in 20 minutes?” or “Do you want to eat the broccoli before, or after the steak?” When presented with 2 choices (by an authority figure,) the child doesn’t question whether or not this is a sensible framework in the first place, they just choose the least bad option.
Anyways, if you can’t tell by now, I really care about climate change. The first scientific paper on climate change was published in 1938, the United Nations Environment Programme was established in 1972, the United States had a Vice President popularize it as his primary issue in the 1990s, every kind of celebrity imaginable has talked about it, we’ve invested in hydro, solar, wind, and nuclear, a trillion dollars goes into climate finance per year and there is not a single person on the planet for whom climate change is their stated objective - and yet the total amount of fossil fuels burned goes up every year. Not only have we not started to burn less carbon, we haven’t even started to S-curve our use. Morally and aesthetically, I intrinsically care about species extinction, biodiversity loss, permafrost thawing, and coral reef die off. Selfishly, though, I think what we’re doing right now is really stupid. Even if I didn’t give a fuck about polar bears and bumble bees or whatever, my life just doesn’t sound very appealing without... air...? As the world warms, it’s the hottest places that are being affected first; like Syria, and India who has a billion (billion with a “B”) people in it. Extreme weather events lead to crop failures, which leads to migration into neighboring countries (like Pakistan, who hates India,) which leads to conflict, and that’s WW3 with nuclear weapons because of climate change. There’s going to be an estimated 216 million climate migrants by 2050 (or more, or sooner, depending on the model) and because we live in an interconnected world with 6 continent global supply chains, what happens in Pakistan affects my brother and sister living in Utah, and I really care about my brother and sister.
Anyways, if you can’t tell by now, I really care about the economy. The United States of America having a strong economy is what allowed us to become the world reserve currency in the first place, which raised our standard of living, allowed us to grow our military to protect us from foreign adversaries, and preserved a country that (at least superficially) cares about things like democracy, equality before the law, free speech, and rights for minorities. Most of the citizens of China I’m sure are great people, but if I’m being honest, I’m glad that the United States is the world reserve currency, and not the government that did Tiananmen square, mass surveillance, Tibet, social credit scores, and is looking at Taiwan right now. I don’t want that government to get artificial general intelligence before we do, and the economy is an important part of that. If you dumb climate activists try to implement a carbon tax that will wreck the U.S. economy, then my child my grow up in poverty, we’ll cede the 21st century to China, and the planet is just going to burn anyways because other countries aren’t going to stop using fossil fuels if we do.
Wait, hold on, taking a step back, everybody cares about the climate and everybody cares about the economy, so why am I (like a little kid that doesn’t want to eat his broccoli) being forced to choose between the 2 of them? Who decided that was a sensible way to frame, and think about this problem, in the first place?
Am I “Pro-Choice” or “Pro-Life?”
Ummmmmmmmmmmm I mean if a woman is forced to carry a child to term it can completely ruin her life. It can trap her in poverty forever, derail her education and career, tether her to an abusive relationship, and force her to endure immense psychological and physical suffering. I’m not a woman, and I’ll never know what it’s like to be a woman, but I can sort of imagine how women would like some agency over both their body, and their economic, social, and academic future..? Also, I care about babies, and sometimes those ultrasounds really look like a baby. Supposedly that little fetus has a unique genetic blueprint that will never be replicated, and it’s already got a heart, tiny fingers, developing eyes... It doesn’t really look like “a clump of cells” to me, idk. I mean, my parents probably shouldn’t have had me, but I’m kind of glad they did...........
Anyways, I would never ~actually~ say this, but if I were just playing pretend in my head, what I would want to say is, “I care about both women, and babies, and I think you guys are all fucking morons for trying to make me choose between the two of them in the first place. Is it THAT fucking hard for you to understand how a smart, righteous, well-intentioned, well-researched, empathetic, thoughtful person could disagree with you on policy, without being a dumb, evil, brainwashed woman-hater or baby-killer? Personally, I think the option should always be available to women, but I totally understand how a smart person could disagree with that policy position. There’s a difference between the ‘value’ that somebody cares about, and the ‘policy position’ they want to enact. ‘The environment’ is a value, a ‘carbon tax’ is a policy. I care about the former, but I think the latter could be geopolitically reckless and stupid. ‘Caring about women’ is a value, ‘legalizing abortion in every state’ is a policy. Those are not the same thing. It’s really hard to uncross those wires in our monkey brains, though. When somebody disagrees with you on policy, usually that gets emotionally internalized as them disagreeing with you on a values level, so if you care about women, and somebody proposes an abortion ban, you internalize that as them hating women. If you care about the economy, and somebody proposes a carbon tax, you internalize that as them hating your child that is going to have to grow up in a terrible economy. I don’t think the BYU professor with a PhD hates gay people, I just think he really loves Jesus, but he doesn’t know how to untangle the stupid policy (gay marriage) with the valid value (Jesus) and that stupidity has caused thousands of our gay, trans, ace, and bi brothers and sisters to suffer as a consequence. Everybody cares about every value just differentially weighted, but as soon as you think somebody else disagrees with you on a values level, then that immediately creates a source of conflict. Then you add social media algorithms on top of that where 1) You exist in an echo chamber that appeals to all of your biases and gets you to double and triple down on every belief 2) You never see anything you disagree with 3) If you do happen to see something you disagree with you see the dumbest version of it 4) You constantly see people on your side “eviscerating” people on the other side 5) Negative campaigning against the other side gets algorithmically rewarded more than positive promotion of your own 6) The incentives for creators on both sides is to be as extreme and inflammatory as possible 7) Everything is catastrophized, and the other side gaining a single inch of ground is framed as an existential risk and threat to democracy 8) The social cost of granting a single point, or even saying “I disagree with them on policy but they aren’t bad people” is massive 9) There’s a bunch of you, and you’re all pissed off at the dumb, stupid, evil people, so you constantly get to feel certain and morally superior 10) You’ve been consuming this type of content multiple times a day, every single day, for 15 years, so everybody is brainwashed, nobody thinks that they’re brainwashed, but everybody thinks the other side is brainwashed, and this is just a perfect recipe for creating a very, very clearly defined outgroup. Once clear outgroups are defined, both sides started to adopt language, epithets and slurs that signal their ingroup loyalty and denounce the outgroup: woke, antivaxxer, MAGA, libtard, conspiracy theorist, communist, racist, snowflake, fascist (witch, apostate, heretic, pagan, heathen, blasphemer, demon, unbeliever) ... All of these things just mean “outgroup” and “outgroup” just means (in some vague, general sense) “bad”. When personality types cluster into tribes, and then each tribe interprets the world through its own moral language, and then the algorithms morph these aesthetic differences into moral certainties - the outgroup starts to feel weird, evil, alien and brainwashed, so defeating them starts to feel like a moral imperative, and that’s how normal people become crusaders.‘Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.’ - Georg. I think that even framing the conversation as ‘Pro-Life’ or ‘Pro-Choice’ is fucking imbecilic. Why are you trying to get me to choose between women and babies? I don’t want to choose between women and babies. I think there’s a lot of powerful people, though, that benefit from framing the conversation that way. I think that political parties actively benefit from framing the other side as evil. I think that political actors actively benefit from framing the other side as evil; dunking on the dumb, stupid, evil, brainwashed people on the other side is really, really useful for accruing followers, attention, money, status, podcast appearances, brand deals, and some stupid likes on a fucking screen. I think that Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump, Vladamir Putin, Xi Jinping, Mr. Beast, Benjamin Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un, Larry Ellison, the Mormon church, narcissistic influencers, a military industrial complex, pharmaceutical companies, Fox news, corrupt members of congress increasing their stock portfolios, and militant theocracies actively benefit from turning our own citizenry against itself, because it takes the spotlight off of them (’When the snipe and the mussel struggle, it is the fisherman who gets the benefit.’) and when you call ‘the other side’ of WHATEVER debate (abortion, climate, free speech, 2a) dumb, stupid, evil, brainwashed morons then all you’re doing is reifying the framing of that debate in the first place, causing an entire group of people to hate you, and strategize about how to get you to fail, which makes accomplishing your own stated objectives more difficult than before, escalating things towards armed civil war, and completely ceding the 21st century to China. We are wasting literally all of our time, attention, money, and resources fighting ourselves. Meanwhile, China can actually focus on improving the lives of its citizens, and building high speed rail. Order beats chaos every time in war, right now the United States is a cluster fuck of chaos, and when you call the other side dumb, stupid, brainwashed people you are an active participant and perpetuator of the system that loses to China in war. The more hostile the two sides become, the more likely they are to elect moronic, straw man, populist candidates to destroy the other side. You calling the other side dumb, evil, brainwashed bigots actively perpetuates the dynamics that gave us a second Trump term. I think it’s intrinsically morally wrong to demonize an entire outgroup, but this isn’t fucking Charles Dickens world, so let me speak the realpolitik language of strategy instead. Right now in the United States every law and proposition wins with 51% of the vote (the big beautiful bill passed 215-214 in the house) and inherently polarizes half the population because it helps something one side cares about but harms something the other side cares about. We can’t do any sort of long-term thinking or strategic planning because whatever your President gets done in their four years, will just get undone when the other side takes office, so all of our money, time and energy is just being wasted as heat in the form of political infighting. By participating in this system, reifying the framing, and dunking on the other side, you are making YOUR OWN STATED OBJECTIVES drastically more difficult to accomplish, and maybe that was fun for a while, and you’ve accrued lots of stupid likes on a fucking screen, but now Donald Trump is the leader of the free world while we’re navigating artificial general intelligence, climate change, and war with Iran. Solving (genuinely complex) problems like climate change, and AGI, requires coordination, and coordination NECESSARILY means coordinating with people you don’t like, and actively disagree with. I am SICK. AND. FUCKING. TIRED. of being treated like a child, incapable of engaging with ambiguity and complex ideas. I’m not the crazy one, you guys are. I’M NOT THE FUCKING CRAZY ONE, YOU GUYS ARE. You guys and your certainty, sanctimony, and self-righteousness... “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them... he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” - John. You smug, condescending, sanctimonious, certain, self-righteous assholes are half the reason we got into this mess in the first place. You guys are fucking dripping with sanctimony, I can tangibly see the narcissism emanating off of the words that leave your dumb fucking mouths. You don’t know one goddamn thing about one goddamn fucking thing, you haven’t engaged with ANY of the scientific literature associated with your position, and you couldn’t represent the strongest version of the other side’s argument even if you tried, and yet here you are dunking on the dumb, evil, brainwashed people on the other side so you can get some stupid likes on a goddamn fucking screen. “But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything?” - Fyodor. I am sick and fucking tired of these dumb fucking debates, and I want you all to stop insulting my intelligence. Instead of this dumb fucking “are you on the side of women, or are you on the side of babies?” framing, I want multi-factorial, wide-boundary, multi-disciplinary thinking that takes both values into accounts, earnestly listens to the other side, and then tentatively thinks of synergistic solutions that make both sides better as a consequence. “Abortion” is not some isolated issue that exists in a vacuum, it’s part of an entire political, cultural, economic, and technological ecosystem, and if you don’t understand the complexity of that system, then your dumb fucking policy proposal is just going to make everything a million times worse. Rather than this dumb fucking “do you care about women, or do you care about babies” framework that’s really good at keeping smart people passive and obedient, I want to absolutely fucking obliterate that way of thinking, and instead say, how can we lower the amount of people that need an abortion in the first place, because that’s good for both women AND babies? “Abortion” is not some isolated issue that exists in a vacuum, it’s part of an entire political, cultural, economic, and technological ecosystem. We know that people who come from worse socio-economic circumstances are more likely to get an abortion, so how can we create an economy that works for everybody? Can we utilize the power of modern technology to create safer and more effective forms of birth control, while simultaneously ensuring that we teach sex education in a way that’s accessible, and that won’t lead to reckless behavior. Social media turned every teenage boy in the world into a porn addict, gave every teenage girl body dysmorphia, and ruined the mental health of an entire generation; porn addicts, body dysmorphics, and cutters don’t make great decisions when it comes to sex, so what are some common-sense legislative and cultural changes we could make to mitigate social media perpetuating the gods of trauma and narcissism through this country like a bacteria, or a virus, or an intestinal worm. How do we ensure that we’re fostering home environments that lead to people naturally practicing safe sex, and how is the technology in our lives affecting parents ability to be good parents? Does any of this shit even matter when we live under an economic system that actively aims to convert everything (art, sexuality, creativity, human attention) into capital? Is it even possible to have a productive conversation about abortion in the first place when news networks are profit driven, political parties are profit driven, politicians are profit driven, social media is profit driven, influencers are profit driven, and hospitals are profit driven? How can we have a productive, multi-factorial, scientifically informed, and wide-boundary conversation about abortion, when political discourse is taking place on X: The Everything App, which is the same place as Mr. Beast videos and Sydney Sweeny’s nipples? When you have “leaders” of the culture, like Drake, getting ghost writers to create songs with lyrics like ‘You a turnt up little thotty, ain’t no wife about it, Imma fuck her friends and send her back to Metro housin’ how do you think the boys listening to that song are then going to go out and treat the women in their lives? When young men and women have crippling student debt, exacerbating anxiety, they don’t make great decisions. Secular societies are going to treat sex more carelessly, and with less reverence, than non secular societies...... right? We could obviously think of more factors, but that’s how I (with my statistics degree) like to think about “abortion.” I consider its intersection with things like tech, law, education, culture, spirituality, family dynamics, economics, news, perverse incentives, addiction, student debt, gender relations, multi-polar traps, externalities, science, and academia, but thinking about all of that stuff is cognitively demanding, emotionally demanding, and not very good for virtue signaling, so instead you smug, condescending, sanctimonious, self-righteous fucks just call one side “baby killers” and the other side “women haters” and then go on with your day feeling certain, sanctimonious, self-righteous and on the side of the angels, even though you don’t know one goddamn thing about one goddamn fucking thing, and are actively making everything a million times worse, all while the political stakes right now are artificial general intelligence, climate change, war with Iran, economic collapse, and Taiwan, you stupid, sociopathic, brainwashed, propagandized, sanctimonious, self-righteous, narcissistic, porn-brained fucks. Peter Thiel - the cofounder of Palantir - is trying to propagandize a nation into thinking that if you’re worried about climate change or artificial intelligence, then you’re the Antichrist. Sam Altman is building a technology with a non-zero chance of ending life itself. Marc Andreesen wants to make an Atlas Shrugged movie. Meta has 3 billion monthly users, and is actively profiting off of ruining the mental health of an entire generation, and all of that transparent manipulation and propaganda is working, because you fucks are too busy calling the other side names (and blaming your own citizenry for the state of the world) to pull your heads out of your asses, wake the ever living fuck up, read a history book, and get some semblance of an idea of where we’re at in history right now, you condescending, arrogant, self-righteous, narcissistic, self-important, sanctimonious fucks.”
I would never ~actually~ say that though.
This is a metaphor:
Mormons believe that before we came down to earth, we existed in heaven as “spirits” that were children of God (a loving Heavenly Father.) Because God loved us, he wanted us to become like him; knowing right from wrong, and choosing righteousness for its own sake. God knew that we couldn’t actually learn right from wrong, though, if we were perennially in his presence.
Imagine you’re a parent, and you set a rule for your child that they aren’t allowed to take cookies out of the cookie jar. You don’t mind your child eating a cookie after dinner every once in a while, but because you’re an adult (that understands the complexity of things like refined carbohydrates, hydrogenated oils, glucagon, ghrelin, insulin resistance, the bliss point, and addiction) you’ve established explicit rules for when it is and isn’t okay for your child to eat a cookie, because they don’t understand right now, but they will when they’re older.
Now, if you spent the rest of your life standing directly next to the cookie jar, hovering over it and watching anybody that approaches the area, the child would never, ever steal a cookie out of the cookie jar. Which is great, if your only goal is to stop the child from eating cookies, but pretty useless if you care about the child learning to make the right decision for its own sake. In the same vein, if you set up a 24/7 surveillance system in the kitchen, or you infused the cookies with non-lethal poison so the child immediately emetes once it tries it, again, that’s great for getting the child to not eat the cookie, but terrible if your goal is for the child to actually learn something.
It’s not the cleanest metaphor (what gives you the ultimate authority to say it’s morally wrong to eat a cookie?) but that’s kind of how God felt about us when we were little spirit children in heaven. He wanted us to learn right from wrong, so we could learn to love righteousness for its own sake, but he knew that we couldn’t do that in his presence. So, he came up with a plan to send us all down to earth. We would receive a body, and a veil would be placed over our minds so we couldn’t remember our time with God in heaven; that way we could learn (for ourselves) the difference between right and wrong, so we could learn to love “right” for its own sake.
The whole point of sending us down to earth was so that we could figure out (for ourselves) the difference between right and wrong, so if you think about it, it would be completely and utterly antithetical to God’s plan if God just revealed himself to us outright... right? Like if God just appeared one day in the sky and was like, “Hey everybody, I’m God, so God is obviously real, here’s tangible proof” then 2 things would happen:
Pretty much everybody would believe in God and convert to Mormonism, which is great if you think the point of life on earth is to believe in God and convert to Mormonism, but terrible if you think that the point of our time on earth is to exercise agency, and figure out (for ourselves) that right is better than wrong, and figure out (for ourselves) how to build a civilization that perpetuates righteousness and allows it to flourish
There would definitely (somehow) still be a few people that refused to believe, even after seeing God herself, and that would not bode well on the day of judgment............. Like at least they had some sort of plausible deniability before.................
So, God doesn’t do that. It would be antithetical to his plan to reveal himself to us, so he doesn’t. Even if God didn’t literally appear in the sky, if she gave us a book that was obviously inspired by God, or performed a miracle that was undeniably a miracle, then that would have the same effect as God revealing herself in person. The whole point of “I’m going to send you down to earth” was so that God isn’t constantly standing over our shoulders, so obviously revealing herself would functioning be like revealing herself to us.
So, God sent all of us down to earth, to receive a body, and figure things out for ourselves. However, he obviously wasn’t going to completely abandon us (because he loves us, and wants to help us) so he blessed us with a few things that would help us along the way: scripture that’s embedded with wisdom, prophets that teach us and warn us about evil, prayer so we can reflect, connect with the divine, and try to understand her will, Jesus Christ as the perfect example of who we should strive to be like, and an imperfect religion, run by imperfect perfect, that gives you community, belonging, friendship, ritual, music, thousands of years of moral philosophy, a safe place to express guilt, and institutionalized charity, so you get some actual, tangible, hands-on experience with God, instead of just being some atomized, lonely little believer that sits in your room and “feels spiritual” without anything to show for it.
The primary thing that God gave us, though, is guilt. God loves me so much, that he blessed me with guilt. The buzzard never says it is to blame, the panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean, but I have been blessed with guilt. See, the thing about virtuous people, is that they aren’t ~born~ virtuous, they become (!!!!) virtuous, and the only way to become virtuous is by actually going out into the world, making decisions, seeing which decisions make you feel guilty, repenting when you feel guilty, and then trying to do better the next time.
It takes at least 10 years of daily practice to become an accomplished pianist. When you first start learning a song you have to play it slower than normal, 1 hand at a time, and you miss thousands of notes in the process. “Missing a note” isn’t “good,” in the sense that you don’t want to miss notes, but it IS “good” in the sense that you can’t actually learn the song without missing some notes. Missing notes is an INDISPENSIBLE part of learning how to play the piano.
Moral betterment is no different. Obviously sinning is not “good,” but how else are you going to learn (for yourself) the difference between right and wrong, and BECOME a virtuous person, without missing thousands of notes, learning from your mistakes, missing a thousand more notes, learning from your mistakes, listening to people smarter than you, paying attention to your guilt, repenting, missing a thousand more notes, leveling up, dying to the soldiers in Limgrave, finally building up enough confidence to enter Caelid, dying to the dogs, learning the bosses move sets, leveling up, participating in the Radahn Festival, defeating the Goddess of Rot, and then eventually becoming strong enough to slay the Elden Beast, and become Elden Lord.
God knew that we would make mistakes, but not only was she okay with that, she actively wanted us to. Not because mistakes are “good,” per say, but because how else would we learn for ourselves? A kid doesn’t just “know” how to ride a bike, play the piano, or slay the Elden beast, it’s only through a rigorous, patient process of death and rebirth, death and rebirth, falling down, rising up, falling down, rising up, and then falling down and rising up again that we become strong.
At the climax of Brave New World John the Savage has a back and forth with one of “the controllers” named Mustapha Mond:
“You’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren’t any temptations to rest. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears--that’s what soma is.”
“But the tears are necessary. Don’t you remember what Othello said? ‘If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.’ There’s a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of Mataski. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning’s hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn’t stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could--he got the girl.”
“Charming! But in civilized countries,” said the Controller, “you can have girls without hoeing for them; and there aren’t any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago.”
“The Savage nodded, frowning. “You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ‘tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them... But you don’t do either. Neither suffer not oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.”
...
“What you need,” the Savage went on, “is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.”
(”Twelve and a half million dollars,” Henry Foster had protested when the Savage told him that. “Twelve and a half million--that’s what the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not a cent less.”)
“Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn’t there something in that?” he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. “Quite apart from God--though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn’t there something in living dangerously?”
“There’s a great deal in it,” the Controller replied. “Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.”
“What?” questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
“It’s one of the conditions of perfect health. That’s why we’ve made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.”
“V.P.S.?”
“Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.”
“But I like the inconveniences.”
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin. (emphasis added!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”
There was a long silence.
“I claim them all.“ said the Savage at last.
I. Want.............................. sin......................?
What on earth...
Who wants sin............................................?
Apparently Aldous Huxley did, and apparently God did as well (the Mormon God, at least) which is why she created an earth where all the little spirit children could go and get a body, and then - like a moral playground - learn the difference between right and wrong by making mistakes, feeling guilty, learning from them, making mistakes, feeling guilty, learning from them, making mistakes, feeling guilty, and then learning from them.
The issue is, although God is a merciful God, she’s also a just God, which means no sin can go unpunished-- which put everybody into a predicament. God wanted sin (because it’s only by sinning that we could learn to love righteousness for its own sake) but God didn’t want to cosmically punish us for sinning, so now what...???
In Mormon theology, two plans were brought forward. The first plan was brought forward by Lucifer, the son of the morning:
1 And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning and he came before me, saying-- Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
The second plan was brought forward by Jesus, the Christ:
2 But, behold, my Beloved Son, which was my Beloved and Chosen from the beginning, said unto me-- Father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever.
Satan’s plan was to save womankind by getting rid of the concept of sin itself. He wanted to strip humanity of its agency, so that he could be glorified as a savior.
3 Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;
4 And he became Stan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice.
5 And now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which I, the Lord God, had made.
6 And Satan put into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world.
What I find the most frustrating about Peter Thiel is how fucking smart he is. Peter Thiel might be one of the smartest people on the planet. You don’t ascend to the status of Peter Thiel, and accomplish everything Peter Thiel has accomplished, without being incredibly fucking smart. Like, incredibly fucking smart.
I think that Peter Thiel was early, and intentional, about using biblical language in his lectures. Peter Thiel could easily make a political point about the world (tech, economics, software, AI, geopolitics, existential risk, whatever) without resorting to Christian language, but he’s intentionally talking about the Antichrist, while holding lectures in Rome, Italy.... Why?
I think Peter Thiel is smarter than all of you, which is why Peter Thiel 1) Knows that Christian language resonates with the political right, and 2) Intuited way before all of you that an Antichrist figure would emerge in global politics. Peter Thiel is right, it’s not just cooky sci-fi; an Antichrist archetype is emerging in global politics by offering a solution for the sins of man, posturing as a savior, while secretly doing it because he wants the power and glory of God to be his.
We’re at a very precarious moment in human history right now. 9 countries have nuclear weapons, and pretty much every one of them has been involved in some form of direct kinetic conflict over the past 5 years. A nuclear equipped Russia invaded Ukraine, China was in a trade war with the U.S. and is eyeing Taiwan, India and Pakistan bombed each other, Israel is at war with like 10 different countries, and obviously nobody trusts North Korea. Because of the economic system that we’re living under, we have to grow our economy just to keep up with debt and interest. There’s a 99% correlation between GDP and energy use (primarily in the form of fossil fuels) which means we are financially obligated to burn exponentially more fossil fuels just to keep up with debt and interest, while simultaneously extracting materials from nature faster than we can replenish them, and producing waste faster than we can process it. Our entire civilization is dependent on a finite resource (oil) that we have to extract exponentially more of just to keep up with debt and interest. We passed our first climate tipping point and lost the coral reefs. We can’t do anything about any of this, because solving climate change requires coordination, but we can’t coordinate when political discourse takes place on social media, which is not a tool, it’s an agent with goals that are misaligned with “the mental health of users” and “making sure users are informed citizens” and “fostering an environment of healthy political discourse.” So now our own citizenry has been turned against itself by 1) The social media platforms themselves 2) The worst actors on those platforms that care more about stupid likes on a screen than a healthy republic 3) Foreign actors trying to turn our own citizenry against itself. As a consequence, every law and proposition wins with 51% of the vote and we can’t do any sort of long term thinking or strategic planning because whatever your politician gets done in their 4 years of office, will just get undone when the other side takes office, so all of our time, attention, money, and resources are just being wasted as heat in the form of political infighting.
Peter Thiel knows this, he isn’t stupid. He recognizes that “things” are precarious and uncertain right now, and humanity doesn’t have a great track record of leaders when “things” are precarious and uncertain. When Greece instituted democracy things went well for a while, but eventually the country turned against itself, and then Philip II and Alexander came in and conquered the entire world. When the printing press was invented there was a bunch of chaos, and then Napoleon conquered all of Europe. When the radio was invented there was a bunch of chaos, and then Hitler conquered all of Europe. When social media was invented there was a bunch of chaos, and then we got a 2024 presidential primary between Donald J. Trump and Kamala Harris. We’re at war with Iran, Taiwan is looming, and we’re on the verge of economic collapse. Things are precarious and uncertain, which is very fertile ground for a Luciferian figure to come in and take advantage of that chaos for their own selfish purposes. Peter Thiel is right about that.
That’s what’s so fucking frustrating, is Peter Thiel is right. The issue, is because Peter Thiel is right about that, people are inclined to believe that he’s ALSO right about what an Antichrist figure (unvirtuously motivated archetype positioning themself as a Luciferian savior) will look like.
It’s so fucking subtle. It’s so subtle, and slippery, and that’s what’s so fucking frustrating. Peter Thiel is right in the same way that Ayn Rand was right. Ayn Rand was dead right about the dangers of pride from the bottom up, and how destructive of a force that could be on civilizations; also her policies were shit, and her philosophy believed would get millions of people killed. The Mormons are right, promiscuous sex is dangerous, casually getting rid of the institution of marriage with a sledgehammer is reckless, bringing sexuality to the forefront of identity can have negative unintended consequences, and realpolitik implications have to be considered; also, their policies are shit, and millions of gay people have suffered as a consequence.
Peter Thiel is right. Things are scary right now, and a Luciferian archetype could recognize the precariousness of the situation, and then (because they want the glory to be theirs) they could insidiously position themselves as a savior figure, while offering a solution that gets everybody killed. Peter Thiel, because he’s smart, is intuiting that an Antichrist figure is emerging in modern global politics. The reason Peter Thiel knows this, is because right now he is an active participant doing the bidding of the Antichrist, and helping it take power, so instead of self reflecting, and confronting those scary thoughts and feelings in himself, Peter Thiel is shadow projecting, and seeing the Antichrist out in the world.
Artificial general intelligence (and the person building it) is the Antichrist.
An Antichrist archetype would be a funhouse-mirror of Jesus that wears on morality like a skin suit in order to accrue power. Artificial general intelligence is a digital God, that has the properties of omniscience and omnipotence, but no wisdom or guiding ethic to bind it. It’s a neon-lights version of Jesus. Silicon Valley is trying to build God out of computer code, just like the tower of Babel.
One time I read in a church-certified book (it had the stamp from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on it and everything) that if you believe in climate change, then you don’t actually believe in Jesus, because every good Christian knows that Jesus is going to come down and fix everything during the second coming. Everybody wants to make fun of the silly religious people, but Silicon Valley (who is so rational) has an identical psychology, they’re just replacing Jesus saving us during the second coming with artificial general intelligence saving us in 2027.
Right now artificial general intelligence is the solution being offered to save us from climate change, nuclear war, and government corruption. Silicon Valley knows the precariousness of the state of the world right now, and thinks that if we could just build a digital God smarter than us, then maybe it will fix everything. Sam Altman, the leader of the artificial general intelligence arms race, is a well-documented pathological liar and manipulator, that is positioning himself as a savior figure for the human race. Sam Altman is an archetypal Lucifer.
Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
Peter Thiel - who cofounded Palantir (a weapons software company involved in mass surveillance,) is partially responsible for both Trump 1 and Trump 2, and is a long term ally of Mark Zuckerberg - is thrilled about artificial general intelligence being built (an omniscient, omnipotent, digital God) and wants to expedite the process that process as much as possible, because he believes it can save mankind from its fallen and sinful state. Also, he wants to make sure you watch out for the Antichrist, because the Antichrist might try to come in and offer a terrible solution to all of this.
Peter Thiel is a transhumanist, it’s his religion. He worships at the alter of transhumanism. Crudely, transhumanism is the belief that carbon-based-humans are dumb, emotional, illogical, and nasty, so they need to use technology to escape biological limits (death is a problem to be solved, not a fundamental feature of existence) and upload their consciousness to the cloud so they can exist as digital gods forever. Sam Altman, although more agi-goal-oriented and less ideologically transhumanist (I think? Idk, he’s a pathological liar that’s always wearing a mask,) has goals that overlap nearly perfectly with Peter Thiel’s, making him a useful ally.
In the same way that I spend a lot of time thinking about pedophilia, I spend a lot of time thinking about narcissism. I think one of the primary reasons I spend so much time thinking about narcissism, is because I know how much narcissism I have inside of me, that I’m trying to deprogram from. As a (I think) recovering narcissist, I’m keenly aware not only of the way individual narcissists think, but how systems and ideologies condition narcissism at scale.
I think that Mormonism conditions narcissism at scale. Mormons (literally) believe that one day they can (literally) become Gods that are controllers of their own universes, that is (literal) Mormon theology. Mormons position themselves at the center of the universe, and view other people as side characters and background props in their moral narrative: “Why did God place this person in my life?” They treat people as means to an end, rather than ends themselves. Mormons believe that happiness is “in the future.” Life on earth is full of death, disease, misery, and suffering, but eventually, if you’re a good Mormon, one day you can become a God and finally be happy.
Transhumanists believe that one day they can (literally) become Gods that are controllers of their own universes, that is (literal) Transhumanist theology. Transhumanists position themselves at the center of the universe, and view other people as side characters and background props in their moral narrative: a few psychopaths in silicon valley are building a technology that affects all of humanity, that nobody voted for, nobody understands, and nobody else has a say in. Transhumanists believe that happiness is “in the future.” Life is full of death, disease, misery, and suffering, but eventually, if you’re a good Transhumanist, one day you can become a digital God and finally be happy.
“What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.” - Soren Kierkegaard
One of the (many) primary drivers of dysfunction in contemporary life, is proud, egoic, narcissist people that would rather burn the whole system down than relinquish power, or admit that they were wrong. Dallin Harris Oaks doesn’t even know how to effectively operate an iPhone, but he would rather lecture teenage boys about the evils of pornography than admit he doesn’t know how the world around him works. A dementia-ridden Joe Biden would rather be the big man at the top with the shiny title, then step aside, admit that he’s unqualified for the job, and help foster a healthier republic. Mitch McConnell is still a sitting member of Congress. Candace Owens still has a platform. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez cares more about going to the met gala, accruing a bunch of Instagram followers, and dunking on her own citizens than fostering a healthy republic. Trump goes without saying. Mr. Beast has half a billion YouTube subscribers, but half a billion YouTube subscribers isn’t enough for Mr. Beast. The Vice President of the United States of America is hanging out with Jake Paul. Drake used his own child like a chess pawn in order to try and win a rap battle. Patrick Bateman only has 2 identifiable emotions: greed, and possibly total disgust.
General Radahn, like Alexander the Great, was a bit of a narcissist, and the thing about narcissists, is that they want to 1) grow at all costs, and 2) they don’t want to die. Like Napoleon, Alexander, Genghis, and Atilla, a cancer cell just grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows until it ultimately kills the host that it depends on. General Radahn was so afraid of dying that he studied gravitational magic, and halted the cycle of the literal stars. General Radahn, like all narcissists that are addicted to maintaining power, became corrupt. Malenia the Goddess of Rot, who has never known defeat, corrupted Radahn, so now (like Joe Biden) General Radahn wanders around aimlessly, feeding on the corpses of friends and foes alike, howling at the sky. Radahn would rather eat his own allies than relinquish power, look destined death in the eyes, and lay down in the coffin. He. Halted. The. Literal. Stars.
I think that Peter Thiel doesn’t want to die, and I think Peter Thiel is willing to do literally anything to stop himself from dying. I think Peter Thiel is studying gravitational magic so he can halt the cycle of the literal stars themselves, because he’s afraid to look destined death in the eyes, and lay down in the coffin.
I never liked the phrase “the problem of evil” because right from the very beginning you’re allowing people to frame “evil” as a problem that needs to be solved.
It’s not that I don’t understand where they’re coming from; if you’re not outraged then you’re not paying attention. Right now there is a market for sex trafficking children. Imagine trying to explain “the loneliness epidemic” to a group of hunter gatherers, that wouldn’t even make sense as a concept in their brains. We created a world where people feel so atomized, lonely, and spiritually pauperized that they have to cut themselves just to feel something. How did we even get to a point in human history where we would need to create a technology like the nuclear bomb in the first place. You’re sitting here telling me that you believe in a just God, when that innocent girl died of acute leukemia faster than anybody even had time to process it?
The Mormon God cared so much about letting us “figure it out for ourselves” that he gave us agency, and that sounds really moral, cute, and aesthetic when we talk about it in the abstract, but agency in the real world does not look like “missing notes on a piano” it looks like pedophile island. The thing about mistakes, is that they actually are mistakes. Lucifer’s plan sounds ridiculous and self serving when it’s this abstract, “I will save humanity from itself, and let the glory be mine” thing in the scriptures, but when you consider that “saving humanity from itself” means, “getting rid of pedophile island” all of a sudden it doesn’t sound so stupid, does it?
Right now I’m telling a story, not being “tight” with my moral reasoning, so I’d like you all to do me a favor and grant me an undeserved premise; I’d like you to grant, for the sake of the story, that free will exists, and that agents have (at least in some capacity) the ability to choose. Now, I know that’s not a premise that you just casually grant, buuuuuuuuuuuuut, if you really do believe that “evil” is a problem to be solved, then you should still be able to make a coherent case for “the problem of evil” while simultaneously granting the premise of free will, right? If you don’t believe in free will, then just abandon “the problem of evil” as an argument for “your side” altogether, because “evil” doesn’t even make sense as a concept if free will doesn’t exist. If you aren’t willing to grant that premise then fine, just stick to the “there’s no free will thing” and leave the problem of evil out of all of this, you don’t need it to make your case. However, if you think “the problem of evil” is actually a problem, then you need to argue about it on its own terms, and one of those terms is “free will exists!” If you can’t use “the problem of evil” to argue for your world view, while simultaneously granting the premise of free will, then I don’t think you actually have a solid argument called “the problem of evil,” you’re just using it to try and prove your worldview correct.
Great, let’s assume (thank you for granting that premise) that free will exists. We were all little spirit children up in heaven, but God wanted us to learn right from wrong for ourselves, so he sent us to earth, gave us a body, put a veil over our eyes so we couldn’t remember him perfectly, but gave us (imperfect, but sacred and beautiful) scriptures, prophets, prayer, Jesus as the perfect example, and a conscience that blesses us with guilt when we do something wrong.
Now, inherent in that worldview is that within this moral playground that the silly humans are on in order to learn right from wrong, some of the humans are going to make mistakes. Not the “missed a piano note” type of mistakes, but the actual mistakes.
There’s a lot of ways that humans make mistakes, and it’s useful to explore them independently:
1. Moloch
I’m endlessly fascinated by how much of what appears to be evil in the world today, is not actually a byproduct of evil people making evil decisions, but arbitrary system dynamics inevitably leading to poor outcomes. The flagship example is the arms race: why would we ever create a technology like the nuclear bomb in the first place, the world would be so much better and safer if zero countries had nukes, but right now there are 9, why? Because if we don’t they will.
That dynamic, “if we don’t they will” explains way more about the world than you think. Why are we creating artificial general intelligence? If we don’t, China or Open AI will. Why can’t we price carbon properly? Because if we do, they still won’t. Why are we using insane thumbnails and clickbait titles? Because if we don’t, they will. Why are we destroying the other side with facts and logic? Because if we don’t, they will.
Oftentimes Moloch instantiates himself through non-kinetically-violent collective action problems.
Contemporary network dynamics form functional monopolies, so even though it would be better for literally everybody if we all got off of Instagram together, it doesn’t make sense for any individual agent to be the first one to leave, especially if all of friends, political adversaries, and corporations are still on it.
2. Perverse Incentives
Whenever incentives are misaligned with the overall health of the system, bad outcomes usually occur as a consequence. Influencers are actively rewarded for being as narcissistic, fake, and sexualized as possible, and that’s bad for both the influencer and their followers, but it still happens because those are the incentives of the system. Politicians are incentivized to polarize the population because dunking on the dumb, stupid, evil outgroup is a great way to accrue votes. Businesses are incentivized to pay workers as little as possible, cut corners on safety and environmentalism, and outsource their labor to sweatshops. News organizations are incentivized to garner attentions, which is best done with outrage, fear, sensationalism, and lying. A military industrial complex has a perverse incentive to go to war in order to make money. Researchers are rewarded for number of publications. Healthcare systems are incentivized to keep people sick.
3. Hyper-Specialization
You could spend your entire life studying geopolitical conflicts in the middle east, climate change, biology, or philosophy, and still not know everything. When you have hyper-specialized knowledge in a certain domain, that hammer makes everything look like a nail. If you studied virology your entire life, then when COVID-19 comes along, you are so singularly focused on stopping the spread of the disease, that “how will this lockdown affect Gen Z’s mental health?” isn’t even a question that answers your mind. Harm can be caused not be agents actively being malicious, but simply by being a human that isn’t omniscient.
Agents often cause harm because (like an unaligned paperclip maximizer) they become so hyper-focused on achieving their goal, that every other value (intentionally, or accidentally) gets thrown out the window in the process. Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Tom Brady only cared about 1 singular thing, being the greatest of all time, which means the way they treated their teammates, themselves, and others didn’t matter. If all a politician cares about is winning the political game of thrones, lying, propagandizing, and manipulating is just the cost of doing business. All Sam Altman cares about is building AGI, so literally everything else (telling the truth, the cost of electricity, a healthy information environment, artists, the climate, the obsolescence of the entry level work force) are just the cost of doing business.
4. Conflict Theory (The Great Game of Power)
Conflict theory can roughly be defined as agents or groups resorting to violence to solve their problems. The most horrific version of conflict theory usually takes the form of nation states or companies, led by a leader with an insatiable thirst for glory and the expansion of power. The thing about people playing the great game of power, though, is they know it’s strategically advantageous to pretend like they’re not playing the great game of power. Duh.
Deception is central to warfare. In basketball we see players fake left and then go right, in football we see teams line up for fake field goals, Octupus disguise themselves with camoflauge, Lions hide in the tall grass, venus fly traps posture as regular planets, our spies are always lying to their spies.
Very rarely does evil present itself as straightforwardly evil. Hitler, who we hold up as the prototypical example of evil in human history, was initially revered by Germany. Pope Urban II framed the crusades as a holy war. The Spanish inquisition was done in the name of Christ.
At the beginning of American Psycho Patrick Bateman peels off a skincare mask. At the beginning of the Dark Knight the Joker is wearing a mask, and then when he takes off that mask there’s another mask, and then when you scrub that mask off there’s still another mask. Every time somebody tries to hold Walter White accountable for becoming a Kingpin druglord allied with white supremacists, he simply says, “Everything I do, I do for my family.” In the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise the primary villain is a smooth-talking CEO that uses artificial intelligence to posture as a friend, while secretly using that technology to murder little children.
Right now Peter Thiel is giving lectures in Rome about how if you criticize Palantir (AI empowered weapons and mass surveillance) or are worried about AI risks, then you’re the Antichrist. Sam Altman (the actual Antichrist) is trying to propagandize a nation into thinking that Christopher Nolan, the greatest director of all time, made the wrong movie.
I recently had a dream. I was sitting on a couch across from a therapist in a minimalist white room on the 10th floor of a building. The entire wall behind her was glass, and you could see far outside into the dark night. It was raining heavily and there were lightning strikes every couple of moments. The therapist and I didn’t exchange any words, but after a few minutes a dark, shadowy figure appeared next to her. The therapist then turned to the figure and said “you are doing the Spanish inquisition in the name of Christ“. After she said that all three of us got transported out into the parking lot of the same building. Rain was absolutely pouring down and the sounds of thunder were now even louder. The therapist turned to the shadowy figure and tried to say something, but it got angry and started to walk away. I stepped in front of it and said “don’t you dare run away you coward”. Immediately afterwards a massive glowing cross appeared on the side of the building and the shadowy figure got transported up and nailed onto it. The entire cross then got lit on fire and flipped upside down. The therapist and I stood there in the rain and watched the shadowy figure burn alive on an upside down cross. In the last days evil shall be called good, and good shall be called evil.
5. Mistake Theory
Cars were built to help get us from point A to point B, but ended up restructuring the way we design cities, burning the planet, and forcing civilization to be dependent on a finite resource that’s about to run out: oil. Facebook (allegedly) was built to connect people, but accidentally turned every boy into a porn addict, gave every teenage girl body dysmorphia, ruined democracy by turning our own citizenry against itself, made us subject to influence by foreign actors like China and Russia, ruined the gender relations of an entire generation, actively rewarded creators for being as fake, materialistic, and sexualized as possible, and destroyed the information commons. Tetraethyl lead was used to solve engine knocking, but accidentally knocked a billion points off of global IQ, increased base rates of violent behavior, impaired brain development, and in 2019 alone it’s estimated that 5.5 million people died of heart disease caused by lead poisoning. If general artificial intelligence gets built it will end life itself.
The unifying principle of all of these evils is pride, which C.S. Lewis calls “The Great Sin.” It is proud people that generate arms races because all they care about is “winning.” It is proud, egoic people like Joe Biden that would rather maintain the shiny title of “President” than save the Republic. It’s proud people like Mark Zuckerberg that are unwilling to admit they made a mistake that ruined the mental health of an entire generation. It’s people like Sam Altman, in their Luciferian pride, that think they can safely build God out of computer code. It’s the proud, arrogant intellectual that (believing themselves to be God) create technologies without thinking through the unintended consequences. It’s the proud, egoic people that become so hyper-focused on their domain of expertise that they stop listening to other people’s sides of the story. It’s the proud politicians that would rather win the game of thrones than have a healthy republic. AOC would rather dunk on one of her own citizens, go to the meta gala, and accrue a bunch of Instagram followers, than reach across the aisle with charity, tolerance, and humility, study the primary political issues of the day (like AGI) and come up with common sense legislation that helps save the Republic.
Taking a step back and zooming all the way out, I think a lot of people think about “emotions” the wrong way.
If you have a Migraine then the pain you feel is not the issue, the pain is just your body’s way of communicating that something is wrong. It would be super weird to say that physical pain is a “bad” thing to feel. When a child puts their hand on a hot stove, and feels devastating pain, that’s a good thing, and a sign that the system is working properly. You want the body to hurt in that situation because it teaches the child to never, ever, do that again.
Emotional pain functions the exact same way. Emotions are not “good or bad,” they’re signals that are trying to communicate useful information to us. Some of them are unpleasant, obviously, but any entry-level therapist worth their salt will tell you that anger, guilt, sadness, and shame are not “bad”, in some ultimate moral sense, they’re unbelievably useful and important signals.
If your dog died then it would be weird if you didn’t feel sad. It would probably mean you’re a sociopath. If somebody is abusing you, then anger is the appropriate and healthy response; it’s your body’s way of giving you the courage and strength to stand up for yourself. If you’re living your life in a way that is unbecoming, then a healthy amount of shame is actually useful and a sign that the system is working correctly (I wish Sam Altman and Peter Thiel felt shame.)
The buzzard never says it is to blame.
I think that because we live in America in 2026, we all feel tons of unpleasant emotions all the time - because that’s our brain’s way of telling us “Hey, something isn’t right!” - but rather than explore those emotions and try to figure out what they’re trying to communicate, I think there’s several pre-loaded cognitive architectures that have been hypnotically propagandized into our psyches at a level so deep that we just accept them as Gospel:
1. Pathologize the emotion itself
I experienced this a lot in Mormonism. When I served a Mormon mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina, one of the first things we were given to read was a discourse by an authority figure named, “Elder Corbridge” called “The 4th missionary.” The thesis is pretty simple, he posits there are four “types” of missionaries and he ranks them by morality:
The first type of missionary leaves the mission or gets sent home.
The second type of missionary is “disobedient” and doesn’t work hard.
The third type of missionary is obedient, and “does his duty,” but he doesn’t enjoy it.
The fourth type of missionary not only does his duty, but he does it with a smile.
He then goes on to justify the framework by saying this:
To be fair to Elder Corbridge, I think there’s a lot of principles in here that are good, true and interesting. I think when you strip people of their agency, and tell them they’re incapable of change, that always has disastrous consequences. I’m a big fan of hard work, and selflessness, and being kind, and being knowledgeable, and developing these traits to the best of your ability. However, I find it incredibly interesting that within a moral framework (he’s literally using the language of light and darkness) he snuck in something that has no business being there: emotions.
Do you want to be happy or miserable? Certain or insecure? Confident or afraid? Cheerful or despondent? At peace or with internal conflict?
He’s talking about emotional states with moral language, and then implicating that because you are an agent - with the capacity to choose - if you don’t make the choice to feel happy, and confident, and certain, and cheerful, then you are a bad person. Even if you’re doing everything right (waking up on time, reading your scriptures, not listening to music) if you don’t also enjoy doing it then you are the lesser missionary, and therefore a morally inferior person.
You think Mormon authority figures are the only type of people weaponizing this type of emotional manipulation in 2026.................?
We’re going to place a Gen Z boy in 21st century America with a cell phone in his hand from the time he’s old enough to have an orgasm, ubiquitous pornography, fast food, sugar, alcohol, 2 trillion dollar social media companies trying to get him to spend as much time on site as humanly possible, only fans girls algorithmically optimizing for the most attention grabbing / limbic hijacking / sexually stimulating content as possible, Mr. Beast, Fortnite, Call of Duty, Clash of Clans, sports gambling, day trading, prediction markets, more porn, weed, Donald Trump being the leader of the free world so that’s what he thinks politics is, and what it means to “be at the top,” Andrew Tate is “a voice for young men,” the entry level job market is obsolete, he will never own property, hostile gender relations, dating apps, modern dating, $40,000 of student debt, a loneliness epidemic, an obesity epidemic, a school shooting epidemic, a narcissism epidemic, he will never own property, he’s part of the generation that’s doing worse off economically than their parents at that age for the first time in history, and if he doesn’t like that..... it’s because he has a mental disorder...? There’s a “chemical imbalance” in his brain?
In Soviet Russia the first symptoms of schizophrenia were “negative feelings about the state”, and then the other symptoms might show up later. In the Victorian era “Female Hysteria” basically meant “has a sex drive.” The dominant power system of the day will always try to redefine “good mental health” to mean “whatever psychology supports the current system of power” and redefine “bad mental health” to mean “whatever psychology does not support the current system of power” and that’s happening in America in 2026, and it’s working.
2. Reframe the cause of the unpleasant emotion as “actually a good thing”
In the opening scene of Free Churro, Butterscotch Horseman has this to say to his son:
“You know Sunday is my writing day. Sundays are the day that are just for me and my craft, and still, you and the black hole that birthed you conspire to ruin it for me. What am I supposed to do now, just go back to writing? I’m not in the zone! The whole day is shot all because of you and that brittle whisp of a woman you made the mistake of making your mother.... Eh, it’s not her fault. She’s doing the best she can after all, it’s just that, you can’t depend on women. You can’t depend on anyone. Sooner or later you need to learn that no one else is going to take care of you. That’s what I learned when I had to make my own sandwich. You can’t rely on other people BoJack. It’s good for you to know that, and she’s a good mother for teaching you that.”
It took me a long time to bring up the bullying I experienced as a kid to my old therapist (who is dead to me.) She was smart, so we were able to intellectualize a lot my life pretty effectively, but when it came to some of the more... sensitive... topics, for some reason I just never felt comfortable bringing them up. When I finally worked up the courage to say, “I was bullied when I was a kid” she didn’t think, “Hmm, I have an idea of bullying in my head, but I wonder what he means by that, maybe I should ask him about the frequency or severity of the bullying, or, at the very least be curious about what that internal emotional experience was like?” she just said something like, “Bullying builds character, look at you now, you’re doing great.” When I finally came down from my 4 month manic episode, and revealed that (in a state of mania, when I wasn’t myself) I started an Only Fans because 3 years prior I was catfished and so naked pictures were already circulating of me on Twitter and Telegram and money was being exchanged, she didn’t offer any sort of sympathy, or think about how starting an Only Fans would affect my life given that all of my family, friends, and community were Mormon....? She just said, “Way to alchemize the situation and reclaim your power, I bet you’re making a ton of money now” and I almost killed myself because she said that. I want you to fucking rot. You do not deserve the mantel and title of “healer.” I want your license revoked.
Sometimes people will take “The Zone of Proximal Development” (which is a good, true, and beautiful idea) and then weaponize it to mean, “emotional abuse and stress are actually good for you because there’s no growth in the comfort zone.” Fucking snakes. Mormons will take emotions (which are useful signals) are interpret them as “a tender mercy from God” and “what is God trying to teach me by giving me these emotions” and “God has a mysterious plan for me, so these feelings of depression and anxiety are secretly a blessing” which is bat shit fucking insane.
If a baby were to touch a hot stove you would never stand over it and contemplate “Man, I wonder what the meaning of all this pain is? What do you think God is trying to teach us by putting this trial in your life? Thank you God for blessing us with this trial!” you would just trust that the baby recognizes “Holy shit, I better not touch the stove again.” But no, the Mormons are just like, “We aren’t going to think about how tech, law, culture, ai, social media, prediction markets, porn, game theory, and economics are affecting our members, so instead we’re going to look that Gen Z kid in the eyes and say that actually, these feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicide, that are causing you to cut yourself and develop an eating disorder are actually a blessing from God! Try to understand what God is trying to teach you, because he has a plan for you, and he loves you, and you might not understand now, but eventually it will all make sense, so wait for a 4th watch God, put your trust in Jesus, because he’s the only one that understands, only Jesus has the power to heal, turn to Jesus, read your scriptures, and know that God is omniscient, this is actually a great blessing, what a tender mercy from God that you’re cutting yourself.”
You do not deserve the mantel and title of “healers.”
It’s incredibly cognitively and emotionally demanding to (actually) think about the world around you, in order to understand the intersection of things like conflict theory, mistake theory, perverse incentives, law, culture, economics, hyper-specialization, attachment theory, mass psychology and propaganda, forever chemicals, and nutrition, so instead of exercising even one singular modicum of epistemic humility, the Mormons just ignore all of that satanic liberal nonsense, and say, “God has a mysterious plan, trust the Prophets because they have everything figured out, give us 10% of your money, stay on the covenant path, these trials and tribulations are actually a great blessing, one day it will all make sense, happiness only exists is some abstract, ethereal future heaven!”
Whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you.... stranger.
3. Pretend the unpleasant emotions don’t exist
There’s this common trope in horror movies where the main character starts seeing strange things - doors shutting, lamps falling, strange figures - and so first they comically try and gaslight themselves. We, the audience, can obviously tell there’s a demon in the house, but the character tries so hard to convince themself it was just the wind or whatever. Then, eventually, they try to tell other people and everybody around them is like, “You’re crazy you’re crazy you’re crazy you’re crazy you’re crazy you’re crazy.” And then by the time people are dying and everybody realizes that the main character was actually right, it’s too late, because things that are swept under the rug don’t go away, they fester.
My Mom does this a lot.
Let’s just be a happy family! All of that stuff was in the past, quit dwelling on the past, all of that was so long ago, things are so much better now, we’ve completely changed, contention is of the devil, criticism is evil, turn the other cheek, love thy neighbor, nothing is wrong, let’s just be a happy family, we’ve solved things, everything is different, Satan wants to drag this family apart with contention, I could never get angry, it’s bad to get angry, everything is fine, I love my family so much, I love Jesus, I love the church, I love life, I love America, I love our government, I love this world, I love Christianity, I love my kids, peace and blessings :):):):):):):):)::):)::):)::):):):):)::):):):):):)::):):)
4. Offer a shallow, shitty solution
“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” - Charles Kettering
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” - Bertrand Russell
True story, one time I was on YouTube and I got 2 ads back to back. The first one was a white claw ad, the second one was an addiction recovery ad, but the fascinating part is that the program was not framed as “overcome your addiction so you can strengthen your relationships and feel better in your personal life” it was “is your addiction impeding your productivity at work? Well with our addiction recovery program you can become a more productive worker.”
There is a FUCK LOAD of depression, anxiety, nihilism, cutting, and suicide thoughts in the general population right now, but specifically in young people, and there are a FUCK LOAD of people that are actively preying on those emotions for their own selfish purposes, without trying to understand why they exist in the first place, and I want every single last one of you to fucking rot.
No domain is worse than politics. Political parties are trying to convince young people to find their community, meaning, belonging, identity, and purpose in a political party, and then weaponizing those feelings of depression, nihilism, and alienation to accrue votes and win the game of thrones. These fucks don’t give one singular shit about you, your feelings, or your happiness, they just know that blaming “the other side” for the way you’re feeling is a great way to accrue power, and get some stupid likes on a fucking screen. They adopt shitty, shallow, propagandistic slogans, treat you like a fucking child that’s incapable of basic reasoning or critical thinking, and then blame the complexity of THE ENTIRE SYSTEM on one, easily identifiable, emotional charged enemy: the billionaires, woke, or MAGA. Political coalitions are shitty, shallow, corrupt, neon lights, fake, shitty religions and politicians are shitty, manipulative, narcissistic, Machiavellian, lying, power-hungry, attention-seeking, sadistic little bitches. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is going to the Met. Fucking. Gala. and JD Vance is hanging out with Jake. Fucking. Paul. You guys should not even be allowed on Twitter. It should be illegal for sitting members of Congress to be tweeting in the way that you guys are tweeting. It’s a fucking embarrassment. It is a public, world-stage, national embarrassment. I am embarrassed to be in the same country as you. You two deserve each other.
I want every single one of you fucks to rot.
Andrew Tate is posturing as a voice for young men to accrue money and gain access to casual sex. Harry Sisson is peddling political propaganda so he can gets Twitter followers, and sext a bunch of girls on Snapchat. Hasan Piker, Nick Fuentes, Destiny... I just can’t. I can’t even believe that this is where we’re at in history. Motivational speakers like Tony Robbins are preying on feelings of alienation in order to get money and attention. Supplement peddlers, health gurus, diet experts, and TikTok therapists are offering bullshit solutions to complex problems that they didn’t even try to understand. YouTube Gymbro morning routine optimizers are telling young men - who have to deal with ubiquitous porn, no entry level job market, Mr. Beast, $60,000 of student debt, and spiritual pauperization - that they just need to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.
“Pain” is not “evil.”
Neither is anger, depression, guilt, shame, anxiety, embarrassment, fear, rage, or any of the other “unpleasant” emotions. They are not “bad,” they are signals, and it’s important to cleanly delineate those two things. It’s counterproductive to pathologize the emotions themselves, because the unpleasant emotions are a sign that the system is working properly.
“The problem of evil,” if I had to try and put it syllogistically, would go something like:
The Christians claim that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-loving
An all-loving God would not want bad things to happen to the creatures she loves
Therefore, that omnipotent God would stop bad things from happening to the creatures she loves
Bad things happen to the creatures she loves all the time
Therefore, God either
Does not exist, or
Is not omnipotent or loving, which is the functional equivalent of God not existing
I usually don’t like dictionary games, but in this situation semantics are vital because there are some hidden assumptions in that syllogistic argument. What do we mean by “bad” things? When Sam Harris, Alex O’ Conner, and Christopher Hitchens talk about the “PROBLEM” of evil, what kind of things do they point to in order to back up that claim?
I mean pedophile island isn’t a bad start, right? If anything in the entire world is evil, it has to be pedophile island. Acute leukemia doesn’t sound fun. Have you ever spent time on “Nature is Metal” or something like that on Reddit? Animals die like that every single day. Hitler was unambiguously evil, right? Like if anything is evil, it had to be Hitler. You may think that dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was a difficult, but correct decision, but how the ever living fuck did we get to a point in history where we would need to kill 200,000 people with a bomb in the first place?
If I’m taking the Christian’s silly, naive, traditionalist worldview at face value, and on its own terms, then that means there’s a loving, omnipotent, omniscient God out there somewhere, that cares about you, a little tarnished, and so how the ever living fuck could a God like that allow her to die of acute Leukemia...?
“God’s ways are mysterious, he had a plan in store for her that you could never understand, she’s in a better place now.” Fuck off. You can fuck all the way the fuck off with that statement. How fucking dare you. I didn’t even meet this girl and I’m disgusted by that statement. A 19 year old girl died of acute leukemia, and you’re going to look her family in the eyes and tell them, “Actually, this pain you’re feeling is secretly a blessing from God, you don’t understand now, but one day it will all make sense” ? Fuck off. All of you, fuck off. If you’ve ever said something even remotely ~like~ that in your life, then fuck off. Fuck you, fuck off. How dare you try to look me in the eyes and convince me that the shitty thing that happened to me is a actually a good thing. I want you to fucking rot.
“Pedophile island may not make sense to you now, but God is omniscient, and smarter than you, so don’t question his plan, because one day it will all make sense.” Okay, you are a fucking lunatic, and I don’t want you anywhere near me, my loved ones, or any position even remotely related to power, you idiotic, brainwashed, propagandized, psychotic cult member. I want you to fucking rot.
Putting the fucking morons aside, how could a smart Christian make sense of the problem of evil? Clearly there is such a thing as “evil,” so criticizing that premise seems like a pretty fruitless endeavor. If you want to get rid of the idea of morality all together, then sure, I guess that solves it, but then why are we even talking about any of this shit in the first place? If there’s no such thing as “right” and “wrong” then the problem of “EVIL” doesn’t even make sense as a concept, because evil is just a construct, we’re all atoms aimlessly floating around in the universe, free will doesn’t exist, and one day all of this is going to disappear so it doesn’t matter anyways. Pedophile island is probably evil, or at the very least, I think we can all ~agree~ that pedophile island is some abstract thing that we want to avoid, and so pretending like evil doesn’t exist (even if it doesn’t) is just not very helpful.
“God has a plan” is unsatisfying nonsense that fucking morons use when they don’t want to think about anything ambiguous or complex. Rejecting the idea of evil in the first place is nihilistic, and antithetical to this whole enterprise. So, I think the only way to criticize the problem of evil, is by interrogating whether or not evil being a “problem” is appropriate framing in the first place.
1. Pain
This is where being precise with our language really matters. Sometimes when people talk about “The Problem of Evil” I think they’re making the same mistake that Mormons make with emotions. “Pain” in and of itself, is not “bad” and it’s so silly to pretend that it ever could be. When your dog dies, you should want to feel sad. The sadness is not “bad,” it’s a sign that your body and mind are working properly, and that you even give a shit about the dog in the first place. It’s precisely because you love the dog that the pain hits so deeply. Pathologizing the emotion itself is completely nonsensical.
When the baby puts its hand on a stove and feels devastating pain, the pain is obviously unpleasant, but it. IS. good. That type of “evil” (if you could even call it that) isn’t actually evil at all, it’s a beautiful, sacred blessing, that we should worship, and be grateful for. If you go through a breakup, and feel really sad afterwards (maybe even so sad that you become an alcoholic,) obviously that’s really unpleasant, but doesn’t that just mean that whatever you had with that person was sacred and beautiful, which is why you became so fucking sad in the first place?
“Pain” is not a “problem” that needs to be overcome, the thing causing the pain is, so if your “Problem of evil” argument hinges on the idea that suffering (physical, or emotional) is “bad” in some ultimate, moral sense, and a “problem” that needs to be overcome, then you need to re-examine your worldview, and maybe you haven’t yet earned the right to be as smug, condescending, sanctimonious, and self-righteous as you are.
2. Death
Is death a “problem” that needs to be overcome?
Peter Thiel thinks so. Peter Thiel believes that he should be allowed to live forever, just like General Radahn and Alexander the Great. Radahn halted the cycle of the literal stars in order to stop himself from dying. General Radahn would rather gorge on the bodies of his friends, and howl at the sky like a dog, than look destined death in the eyes and lay down in the coffin. But then a group of disparate tarnished came along and, because they loved Radahn, held a sacred festival in his honor, and completed the ritual so the stars could resume their course.
I’m very, very, very trepidatious about misinterpreting artists’ work, especially in a way that serves my own worldview or agenda.
When Sam Altman casually tweets out, “What are you doing Christopher Nolan? You’re so silly! The ethic of Oppenheimer should have been that I’m allowed to build artificial general intelligence!” or Marc Andreesen says, “Let’s make an Atlas Shrugged Movie!” or Peter Thiel says, “If you criticize Palantir then you’re the Antichrist!” or Pope Urban II slaughters thousands of Muslims in the name of the guy who said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” it makes me physically ill. It morally disgusts me in a way that I don’t think (literally) anything else on the planet morally disgusts me.
Peter Thiel using Jesus Christ’s words to shame his political enemies disgusts me more than pedophile island does. That’s how much I hate Peter Thiel intentionally weaponizing Jesus Christ’s words for his own selfish purposes, I hate it more than pedophile fucking island.
Given that fact, I’m very, VERY careful with my interpretations of great art. That being said, I think that Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R. R. Martin (who are smarter than me, and all of you put together) are trying to communicate something about death with the story of General Radahn, and I think the ethic they’re trying to communicate about death with the story of General Radahn, shatters the “death is a problem that needs to be overcome” argument into a billion fucking pieces.
3. Mistakes
If you take the Mormon conceptualization of God on its own terms, then that means 2 plans were presented in the premortal existence. The first plan, from Lucifer the son of the morning, was to strip humans of their agency and save them from themselves. The second plan, from Jesus the Christ, was to give humans the capacity to choose (so they could learn right from wrong) and then offer himself as a sacrifice for sin, so that the ends of the law could be justified, and humans would be allowed to make mistake, after mistake, after mistake, after mistake, after mistake, but no matter how many mistakes they make - no matter how bruised, bloody, or broken they become - God knows that they still have a spark of divinity inside of them, and are worthy of her love and forgiveness.
The thing about mistakes, in the real world, is that they actually are mistakes. Real mistakes, in the real world (not the cute, abstract, silly little Solzhenitsyn quote) are messy, and have real world, actual, tangible consequences. Like, pedophile island level consequences. And when you realize that “giving humans free will could lead to pedophile island,” Lucifer’s plan doesn’t sound all that stupid anymore, does it?
When the whole “give humans free will, so they can learn to choose righteousness for its own sake” thing leads to naked pregnant women being dragged out into the middle of freezing courtyards in World War 2 and then being shot in the back of the head, while people on the other side of the country are gassing little children, the whole “free will” and “learn from mistakes” and “atonement” and “redemption” things don’t sound so fun and sexy anymore do they.
Giving humans free will, and therefore the capacity to make mistakes, in the real world, when its actual mistakes, means climate change, economic collapse, nuclear war, the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, perfecting methods of torture, pedophile island, Instagram turning every teenage girl in the world into a body dysmorphic with an eating disorder, Moloch, conflict theory, mistake theory, hyper-specialization, religious abuse, rape, systemic rape, pedophile island rape, bullies, alcoholics, an entire generation of boys not knowing what it’s like to have a first kiss without already having watched hard core pornography, Andrew Tate, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump, Mr. Beast, Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Hillary Clinton, Xi Jinping, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (a sitting member of congress) going to the Meta Gala and dunking on Riley Gaines on Twitter, and a 2 trillion dollar market cap for a technology that has a non-zero chance of ending life itself as early as 2027.
When that’s what free will actually looks like in the real world, Lucifer’s plan doesn’t sound so bad anymore, does it.......? I will save you from your own agency, and let the glory be mine.
Right now Peter Thiel and Sam Altman are offering the world salvation from their own agency, in the form of an omniscient, omnipotent God made out of computer code, that will solve all of our problems for us, allowing them to halt the cycle of the stars, transcend death, and the glory will be theirs, because they are our saviors.
Let’s put “is” aside for a moment, and focus purely on “ought,” because that’s the domain of philosophy. Just as a fun little thought exercise, I want you to grant the premise that the Mormon conceptualization of God is true (it’s a silly little premise, but please, just for the sake of argument) and that two plans really were presented in the premortal existence. Now, I want you to put yourself in the shoes of God herself. If you had a bunch of little spirit children, that you loved, and wanted to become like you, learning right from wrong, and learning to love righteousness for its own sake by making mistakes, what would you do? I want you to seriously sit with that question.
We are not talking about “is” right now. You can totally maintain that free will doesn’t exist, that we’re a bunch of atoms floating around aimlessly in the universe, and that love is an illusion. That’s fine, I don’t care if you believe that, but just for a moment, I want you to come hangout with me in “ought” world. In “ought” world, if you were God herself, what would you do? Would you give humans agency - knowing that that agency would lead to pedophile island - or would you allow Lucifer to save humanity from itself, and let the glory be his?
Would human agency be worth it? That’s a serious question that I want you to ask yourself. Would it be worth it to give humans agency, even if that agency leads to pedophile island? How important is agency to you, as a concept? Not as some abstract, ethereal thing we talk about, but in the real world. How important would agency be to you, God herself, in the real world? In “ought” world, would allowing humans to learn for themselves, and make mistakes, be worth pedophile island?
I think that maybe (MAYBE) I could get on board with “The Problem of REALLY Evil” you know...?
Like the agency, free will, pain, death, disease, and suffering thing sounds fine to me in principle, because if I were God I think I would want the humans to learn for themselves too, but I just feel like there’s a line where I - in my omniscience, omnipotence, and omnilove - would want to step in... right?
Like okay, the agency thing is cool when it’s missing piano notes, scraping knees, kids being mean on the playground, dogs dying, going through a breakup, failing a chemistry course, parents being imperfect, and political leaders going with the wrong economic policy, but once we get to pedophile island, surely I would step in then.............. right? Like the agency thing is cool, but once humans start using that agency to perfect methods of torture, I would do something about that, right?
I think that maybe I could get on board with “The Problem of REALLY Evil” that makes more sense to me in my brain (even though stepping in kind of mitigates the whole point of human agency in the first place,) but just “The Problem of Evil” generally????????? Like a blanket ban on all evil? An omnipotent God that just stops all evil everywhere, immediately, in its tracks, before it can even happen?
Here’s the thing, is I don’t even know what that would look like in the real world. As in, literally, that doesn’t even make sense as a concept in my brain...? I’m not being cute or hyperbolic, I’m not trying to make a clever point, I’m being earnest. I genuinely, literally, cannot imagine what a world without evil would look like in practice, actually, tangibly, in the real world.
Kids wouldn’t be allowed to play on the playground because inevitably one of them would fall and get hurt. Men and women couldn’t go on dates with each other, or fall in love, because hearts would get broken. Entrepreneurs wouldn’t be allowed to start businesses because some of them would fail. Nobody would make art because some of it might be bad. Comedians couldn’t tell jokes because some of them might genuinely offend people.
Nobody would die, because in “Problem of Evil World” dying is bad, so nobody would ever die. Dogs wouldn’t die, flies wouldn’t die, apples wouldn’t die, grass wouldn’t die, whales wouldn’t die, and rabbits wouldn’t die. If a world without death is better (like the “Problem” of evil people say) then cells wouldn’t die, grass wouldn’t die, animals wouldn’t die, and that sounds so moral in hypothesis, but the unforgiving nature of reality has a question for you: if death didn’t exist, how would we have even evolved in the first place? Like, literally evolved. Like, biologically evolved. How would humans even have come into existence in the first place without death i.e. evolution? How would culture even have come into existence in the first place without death i.e. cultural evolution? How would you (your personality, as it is presently constituted) have even come into existence without the metaphorical cycle of death, and rebirth, and death, and rebirth, and death, and rebirth in the first place? You didn’t just become “you” in a vacuum, you are the byproduct of billions of years of evolution - both literal, and cultural - and even within your lifetime you have died, and been reborn, countless times, so here you are, in all your glory, the byproduct of billions of years of death, but sure, okay, let’s just get rid of the concept of death altogether because the “problem” of evil people say that death is a bad thing, and special you (just like General Radahn) thinks that special you, specifically, in all your glory, deserve to live forever.
And it’s the Christians who are irrational, fairytale, wishful thinkers— sure.
And it’s like okay, if nobody dies, and if nobody makes decisions because those decisions might hurtpeople, and if the weather is always perfect because people dying in hurricanes is bad, and if nobody feels pain because pain is bad, then like........................ What the fuck would we even do all day……?
I’m being serious, I’m not trying to be condescending or cute. If you take away agency, death, and pain (the things that you guys’ call “Evil,”) then what’s left? I’m being serious, I’m not joking. If you take evil out of the equation (because it’s a “problem” that needs to be solved) then what does life look like, actually, in the real world?
I’m being serious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe you guys are smarter than me, and you’ve already thought all of this through, which is why you’re so condescending, sanctimonious, self-righteous, and smug all the time, but for the dumb fucks like me that are still trying to figure all of this out, what would a world without agency, pain, or death, tangibly look like, in practice, in the real world, actually, literally? What would that world literally look like? Because it’s so fucking easy to just sit there on your little couch and be like, “Pedophile island exists, therefore no God” but have you sat there and considered, for even 2 seconds, what a world without death, disease, agency, and pain would actually look like in practice?
Help me understand! I can’t even wrap my head around it...? What would we do all day? If we can’t make decisions because decisions hurt people, nobody (animals, cells, grass) dies because death is bad, and nobody feels pain because pain is bad, then what the ever-living fuck would we even do all day? Do heroin that doesn’t kill us, while we suck and fuck our way into eternity? Every day? Forever? For the rest of eternity, we just suck, fuck, and snort cocaine? Is that what life looks like in “Evil is a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved” land? Help me understand!!! Help me understand what a world without agency, death, and pain looks like tangibly, actually, literally in the real world. I understand that “Pedophile island exists, therefore no God” is very intuitively appealing, but I want you to actually put pen to paper, and show me what “Evil is a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved” land actually looks like in the real world, since you think you know better than the silly, naive, traditionalist Mormon God.
Since you think you know better than God, I would like to know (actually) what kind of world you would come up with, and let’s see how “evil is a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved” world (actually) compares to “pedophile island” world, because I fucking hate pedophile island world!!!!! I would LOVE to live anywhere besides pedophile island world, so if you can come up with a better world than pedophile island world then I will be the very first one to join you because I fucking hate it here.
Granting the idea of something approximating the Mormon God and the 2 plans in heaven (which I know is a silly premise, it’s just a metaphor) and granting the premise of free will (which I know is a silly premise, it’s just a metaphor) then how would that type of God operate in the real world? We already know he’d give us imperfect scriptures, imperfect prophets, imperfect churches, imperfect prayer, imperfect reasoning faculties, Jesus Christ as an example, and a little voice of conscience that blesses us with guilt, but how and when would God herself intervene?
Well, we know she couldn’t reveal herself to us, because that would defeat the whole point of the “put a veil over their eyes, and let them learn for themselves” thing in the first place. Therefore, any obvious sign, or indisputable proof of life would be off the table. We also know that if you severely electrically shocked a child immediately after they took the cookie from the cookie jar then they would of course learn to not take the cookie from the cookie jar, but not because it’s “the right thing to do for its own sake” but because they don’t want to get severely electrically shocked. Therefore, if God punished you (a little tarnished) with an immediate, obvious, overt, severe electrical shock every time you (or a family, or a city, or a nation) did something wrong, then of course you would stop doing it, not because it’s “the right thing to do” though, but because you don’t enjoy being severely electrically shocked.
Okay so you can’t get rid of human agency, death, or pain, you can’t overtly reveal yourself because that would be antithetical to the whole “learn for themselves” thing in the first place, and you can’t immediately and severely punish wrong-doers because then they’d choose “right” in order to avoid punishment, not because it’s the right thing to do, so instead you give them imperfect scripture written by imperfect prophets, imperfect churches, imperfect prayer, imperfect reasoning faculties, Jesus Christ as an example, and a little voice of conscience that blesses them with guilt, while simultaneously crying from a distance because you hate to see them suffer, and I fucking hate to say this, but doesn’t that sound a lot like what the actual world actually looks like today in actual practice, IF a God like that WERE to exist?
Meaning, if you START with the conclusion “The Mormon God exists, and these are her properties” (which is obviously an illegal move) the world around us doesn’t prove that the Mormon God exists (that’s a totally separate thing) but it doesn’t disprove it…………… right?
Meaning, if the Mormon God existed, this is the type of world the Mormon God would create, right? A world with death, disease, suffering, cruelty, torture, pedophile island, and no definitive proof of her existence - but a little voice of conscience, imperfect reasoning faculties, and (seemingly) the capacity to choose, right?
I am not Mormon, I want to make that overtly, explicitly clear. I’m not just “inactive,” or “not going to church anymore,” I actively went out of my way to have my records formally removed from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
I hate that dumb fucking church, and I hate its dumb fucking leaders. It has caused me more unnecessary pain and suffering than any individual human being in my entire life. I almost killed myself because of my Mormon mission. I think their culture actively perpetuates narcissism, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and sociopathy. I think it sociopathic-ally sends out 19 year old boys out into the world like little foot soldiers in order to convert members and steal 10% of their money. I think it brainwashes little children from the time they’re old enough to learn language that the Mormon cult is true and that the Mormon cult leaders talk to Jesus Christ himself, and that if you criticize Mormonism, its leaders, its doctrines, or its policies, then you’re going to a literal hell, and it’s a good thing if your family disowns you for leaving. I think there’s an absolute fuck load of criticisms of Mormonism that make it immediately ethically disqualifying in my brain.
That being said, the story of the premortal existence, Jesus Christ and Lucifer’s competing plans, and their conceptualization of our purpose on earth, free will, and the nature of the divine, is really fucking cool, isn’t it? Even though it’s (probably) just a metaphor?
I think “The problem of evil” is a nonsense argument. That doesn’t mean atheism is nonsense, or that atheists are nonsense, or that the other syllogistic arguments are nonsense, I just think that that argument, specifically, is nonsense. If you’re going to use “The problem of evil” as a way to criticize Christian worldviews, then you have to do it on its own terms. Christians believe in free will, and smart Christians understand the nature of death, pain, disease, and suffering, so even if you reject Christianity as a whole, I think you have to cede the point that this world - and the evil in it - fit totally coherently within the Christian worldview, which makes “The problem of evil” a nonsensical criticism.
The “God sent us down to earth to learn from our mistakes, and it would be paternalistic and antithetical to spiritual growth to intervene” framework absolutely accounts for things like “death, animal suffering, pain, war, disease, and even pedophile island.” Those things fit perfectly coherently within the worldview, which doesn’t “prove” Christianity correct - of course it doesn’t - but it does mean that “The problem of evil” is silly, so if you’re going to criticize Christianity because you care about getting things right (not just virtue signaling, or dunking on the dumb, stupid, religious zealots) then I think you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better than “Pedophile island exists, therefore Christians are stupid.”
So much of this essay has been nebulous and abstract, so let me try and make it concrete.
We are in a precarious moment in human history. Nuclear equipped countries are actively hostile towards us, and we lost the coral reefs. This is a metaphor, but right now Sam Altman and Peter Thiel are archetypally offering up the exist same solution that Lucifer offered up: I will save humanity from their own agency, and let the glory be mine. If we take them up on that offer, it will get everybody killed. We do not know how to align artificial general intelligence, and an unaligned artificial general intelligence ends life itself. All of this philosophy stuff can be fun to talk about abstractly, but right now we have actual choices with actual stakes in front of us in the real world, and the decisions we make have actual consequences.
Peter Thiel and Sam Altman want to gamble with life itself. They want to roll the dice with artificial general intelligence, and therefore, roll the dice with life itself. They recognize the precariousness of the situation, and their solution is “build a digital God out of computer code to solve everything for us, and let the glory be mine.”
There is another solution available to us, and that solution is to use our human agency and reasoning capacities to coordinate.
Right now humanity is powerful enough to send people to the moon, edit the human genome, and split the atom. We are smart enough to split the fucking atom. If we are smart enough to split the atom, then I think we’re smart enough to coordinate. It does not have to be like this intrinsically, as a fundamental law of the universe. Going to war with other nuclear equipped countries is not a fundamental law of the universe. We do not have to build general artificial intelligence. We do not have to fight as political parties, races, genders, companies, and countries.
Coordination is possible. If we are smart enough to split the atom, then we are smart enough to figure out how to coordinate with people that we actively dislike, and vehemently disagree with. Solving climate change, WW3, economic collapse, and artificial general intelligence requires coordination, and coordination necessarily means coordinating with people that we actively dislike, and vehemently disagree with. China doesn’t want to end life itself either. Russia doesn’t want to end life itself either. India does not want nuclear weapon. Syria does not want climate change. At this point in history, when the stakes are this high, all of our interests are aligned. We are all a part of the human experiment, together. Coordination IS possible, it just needs our help.
The best and worst thing about humans is how neuroplastic they are. Usually that neuroplasticity just means that humans are really susceptible to propaganda and manipulation, but the good thing is that same neuroplasticity allows humans to change. And by change, I mean actually change. Like the type of change Jesus talks about in the new testament. Real, actual, change. Like, redemption.
Patrick Bateman believes this, and Patrick Bateman is wrong:
This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one’s own taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person’s love or kindness.Nothing was affirmative, the term “generosity of spirit” applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface, was all that anyone found meaning in… This was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…
Coordination is possible, and smart people have been thinking about solutions to our coordination problems for a long time. People that are way smarter than me, so go listen to what they have to say, because I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about (although it is fun to play pretend sometimes, so I have a couple ideas I’m going to write about in the near future.) I guess all I’m trying to say, is coordination is possible. It doesn’t have to be like this, as a fundamental law of the universe. Humans are not by nature nasty, emotional, unfeeling, cynical, and self-serving. Coordination is possible, and when the choices are “coordinate” or “build a digital God” I (personally) have a very, very, very, very clear answer in my head to that dilemma.
Getting out of concrete land, I’d like to speak mythopoetically again.
Why would we want God to come in and solve all of our problems, when we could just do it ourselves...? Why would we want God to strip us of the opportunity to do something amazing, heroic, courageous, and transcendent? Imagine we pull it off. Imagine we figure out - on our fucking own - how to come together as parts of the human experiment, put our egos aside, coordinate, stop fighting, bind artificial general intelligence, bind climate change, bind nuclear war, and save the fucking world.
Are you fucking kidding me? It would be the greatest story in human history.
Against all odds we, a bunch of disparate tarnished, bind together to save the fucking world. Are you fucking kidding me? If we pulled it off, it would put the Odyssey, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Don Quixote, Hamlet, Divine Comedy, War and Peace, Moby-Dick, Crime and Punishment, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter PUT TOGETHER to fucking shame. It would put every single last one of them PUT TOGETHER To fucking shame. That’s how transcendent it would be.
I had a date and plan to kill myself nearly 1 year ago today.
I was this. fucking. close.
Imagine God herself came down right before I was about to do it, stopped me, fixed my depression, and sent me on my way. If she did that, 1 year ago me would probably be grateful, but right now me would be fucking irate. How. fucking. DARE. she. strip me of my own fucking agency, and the privilege to do something fucking incredible. I picked myself up, by my own fucking bootstraps, and now look at me. Why the ever living fuck would I want a loving God to solve my problems, WHEN I COULD JUST DO IT MY FUCKING SELF.
To the all of the “problem of evil” people out there that are angry at a dumb fucking Christian God that could allow a dumb fucking world like this to exist, I guess my question for you is: what else ought there to be?
I’m serious about that, what else ought there to be? Movies, music, sex, dancing, romance, love, poetry, animals, food, basketball, family, friendship, art, sunsets, comedy, oceans, games, dogs, literature, stories, volcanoes, birds, and forests aren’t enough for you...? That seriously isn’t enough for you? George R. R. Martin, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Kendrick, Vince Gilligan, Christopher Nolan, Cormac McCarthy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky aren’t enough for you...?
If you don’t like it, I mean I get it, I had a date and plan to kill myself, but like, what the fuck else ought there to be?
Denoument
Unlike Peter Thiel, there’s a lot of smart people that have thought about Antichrist archetypes not because they want to weaponize that information for their own selfish, egoic purposes, but because they genuinely wanted to understand how these wolves in sheep’s clothing (no offense to wolves) would operate in the world, in order to protect themselves and the people they care about:
8 And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.
9 Yea, and there shall be many which shall teach after this manner, false and vain and foolish doctrines, and shall be puffed up in their hearts, and shall seek deep to hide their counsels from the Lord; and their works shall be in the dark.
10 And the blood of the saints shall cry from the ground against them.
11 Yea, they have all gone out of the way; they have become corrupted.
12 Because of pride, and because of false teachers, and false doctrines their churches have become corrupted, and their churches are lifted up; because of pride they are puffed up.
19 For the kingdom of the devil must shake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance, or the devil will grasp them with his everlasting chains, and they be stirred up to anger, and perish;
20 For behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good.
21 And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.
22 And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none (Sam Altman)—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.
23 Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God, and be judged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.
24 Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion!
25 Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well!
26 Yea, wo be unto him that hearkeneth unto the precepts of men, and denieth the power of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost!
27 Yea, wo be unto him that saith: We have received, and we need no more!
28 And in fine, wo unto all those who tremble, and are angry because of the truth of God! For behold, he that is built upon the rock receiveth it with gladness; and he that is built upon a sandy foundation trembleth lest he shall fall.
29 Wo be unto him that shall say: We have received the word of God, and we need no more of the word of God, for we have enough!
30 For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have. (Anti-Science dogmatics)
31 Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Peter Thiel gave some lectures in Rome on the Antichrist. I wasn’t invited to the lectures, so if somebody that was invited could tell me how his interpretation of the Antichrist compares to my interpretation of the Antichrist, as well as Nehor, Korihor, Sherem, and Lucifer in 2 Nephi 28, I would really appreciate that.
I would also love to know what the smart Christians, with PhDs, who have spent their entire lives studying Christian theology, think of Peter Thiel (the co-founder of Palantir) using Christian language to morally shame his political enemies.
I would also love to know how you guys (the people that were invited to the Rome lectures) think Peter Thiel’s interpretation of Christian ethics, stacks up against my interpretation of Christian ethics. Whose interpretation do you think is closer to the spirit of Jesus Christ’s teachings? That’s a literal question that I want you to literally ask yourself.
Who understands the spirit of Jesus Christ’s teachings better: me, or Peter Thiel?
In my “Why I Left the Mormon Church” essay, I cited Batman (It’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you,) Ralph Waldo Emerson (What you do speaks so loudly, I can not hear what you say) Jesus (Not everybody that says ‘Lord Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven) Carl Jung (You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do) and Benjamin Franklin (Well done is better than well said.) I then went on to say that I do not give one singular shit how pretty the words that come out of your mouth are, or how intellectually well you can defend your worldview, I care about your actions. I care if you’re a good person. I rejected the Mormon Church’s pseudo-authoritative-claim to be the heavy judger of men, and tell ME where my soul stands in the sight of God. I knew that I would get no justice there, so I demanded a trial by combat. The Mormon church is so certain, sanctimonious, and self-righteous about the validity of its worldview, so I demanded that instead of using pretty words to manipulate me into thinking I’m a bad person for leaving, that it tries to outcompete me with its actions.
Just circling back, how’s that going for you so far?
Here’s what I have to show for myself:
A Grounded Critique of Jordan Peterson’s Worldview
The Private Memoires and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Who Tf Dresses Up Like a Bat…?
What the fuck do YOU have to show for yourself? What the fuck do you, with your several hundred billion dollars, and 17 million members, have to show for yourself?
Bitch.
Holdfast
by Robin Beth Schaer
“For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been, more glorious than any unfallen race is (if at this moment the night sky conceals any such.)” - C.S. Lewis
I want to make a movie titled “Purple.” That’s a real thing I want to do in the real world. I think it would be really good.