“The void where #judgment should be does not stay empty. It fills with #opinion, which feels enough like thinking that the substitution goes unnoticed. But opinion answers to nothing.”
https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/dont-surrender-judgment-improve-it
The supposedly sacred #tradition has become the #marketplace, and what it dismisses as casual is the thing that resists being bought. We cannot manufacture the intrinsic experience of affection or offer it on demand. So we get artificial flowers instead.
https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/conservative-sexual-omission
Consent is the sieve, and the community is what shakes it. There are predators in those communities too. The difference is that this mechanism exists openly, is named, and carries consequences. What is most telling is that religion and much of secular culture deny they need any such mechanism at all, even in the face of their own atrocious failures.
# consent #feminism #conservative #religion
“Americans seem to forget that we lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and failed to achieve our stated objectives in Iraq. You would think all these tough guys would be strong enough to endure the truth, but apparently not.”
https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/warrior-ethos-or-the-swagger-of-delusion?r=1vlkkg
“If you have to go through millions of German #Christians to get one Bonhoeffer, it’s not worth it.”
https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/religion-is-no-refuge-from-evil?r=1vlkkg
“As a #community, we can say that the people who do not #respect #consent are not welcome regardless of their #money, #property, and #prestige.”
https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/burning-man-and-beyond-a-community?r=1vlkkg
“It’s easier to remain silent about your instinctive impulses than to have #men shame you. And it’s even worse when the #women do it.”
https://thesparkmag.substack.com/p/the-women-who-wont-shut-up?r=1vlkkg
"... wherever you begin by denying the fundamental liberties of mankind, and equality among people, you move toward the concentration camp system, and it is a road on which it is difficult to halt."
Primo Levi,
Auschwitz Survivor
Beliefs have become more important than people. As much as I like The Big Lebowski, it did people wrong by defining nihilism as believing in nothing. Nihilism is not believing in what exists.
Example: ask a woman in Texas suffering from an #ectopic pregnancy crisis if beliefs matter more than all medical #experience and #knowledge. The answer to that question is "yes." And it doesn't matter what they #believe, they don't believe in what exists and that is nihilism.
"The temptation of the original thinker, that is hard to resist, is to pour the new wine of discovery into old bottles."
