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Sometime later (and deeper): “hmm… seems very uneven… going to have to use a self leveling magma…”

Indeed. Which makes it an even bigger problem that there are hardly enough moderate politicians saying “here’s what we hear you saying about migration and he’s what we will actually do to rectify that”

I didn’t mention the censorship because he is wrong about that

I also don’t agree with his quote about “no need for barriers”. I wasn’t aware he had said that.

He is referring to the poor handling of migration in Europe, which is true. And the general ignoring of popular outrage at how migration is managed.

That he is a fascist dickhead is indicative of the problem. Many many people who are not racist think migration is handled terribly in Europe and the problem is moderate politicians are hopelessly slow to engage with this and as a result the only people talking about it are fascist nutbags…

mishandling migration, and ignoring populist concerns.

I think Vance is a tool, but can someone explain how these two points aren’t objectively true?

Oh it won’t end

We’re not just post-truth, we’re post-information if it doesn’t even matter if a particular thing is made up or not…

“retention bots” of some description wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest…

endless wars of who’s federeated with who

i’ve been here for months and months, i might have seen this mentioned as an aside once or twice. but “endless wars”?

It’s a bit like why drilling into a wall might make the lights go out if you hit a cable. Your brain only registers “feeling” in any part of your body because a nerve carried that information to it. The nerves from your lower arm and hand pass your elbow. Hitting the nerve directly causes signals in it which you brain interprets as pain in your fingers. Presumably the nerves for the pinky side of your hand are slightly more exposed.

but look at his appeal to widows and the unmarried in Corinthians

you are missing that barely a verse earlier he attributes people’s different ability in this regard to the grace of God…

“I wish that all men were as I am [single and celebate]. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” - 1 Cor 7:7

he recognises people are given different abilities by God. this is not “failure”. Yes, if God has decided that you aren’t for the single celebate life it is better to get married than burn with desire. As Paul makes clear “But if you do marry, you have not sinned” (1 Cor 7:28)

I understand your hypothesis, but Paul neither says what you want him to say (that sex itself is shameful), nor does it stand up as an explanation when it comes to other things Paul says…

to follow on from your verse above…

“If a brother has an unbelieving wife and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. 13And if a woman has an unbelieving husband and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. 14For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.” - 1 Cor 7:12

This is a far cry from the “original sin” and polluting effect of sex espoused by the later catholic church. it’s the exact opposite. a christian women might be having sex with a heathen husband. but far from this polluting her in any way, it does the opposite - she sanctifies (makes holy) her unbelieving husband! and similiarly, children of such a marriage are not polluted by this act of sex with a non-christian. rather “they are made holy” (v14).

these are not the words of a man who thinks sex is a dirty and pernicious problem.

later on this same passage, Paul makes it clear that his preference for people to not be married is due to the persecution the church is experiencing:

"26Because of the present crisis, I think it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27Are you committed to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you free of commitment? Do not look for a wife. 28But if you do marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. " - 1 Cor 7:26-28

Paul is not acting like someone who finds sex itself shameful. He is acting like someone who has seen the additional suffering caused by persecution to married people (and by natural consequence, people with children). He is echoing Jesus’ words on the matter: “How dreadful it will be in those days [the end times] for pregnant women and nursing mothers!” (Matthew 24:19)

In this time (the late 50s AD), Nero has taken over from Claudius and had begun his severe persecution of Christians (Tertullian quoted by Eusebius). This was on top of a famine seen during the time of Claudius (Acts 11:27-29), which you can read in Joesphus caused some families to be in such a desperate state that they resorted to canabalism of children.

This, together with the expectation that Christ would return soon (“Brothers, time is short… this world in its present form is passing away” - 1 Cor 7:29-31), meant that being single and free to spread the gospel was a priority.

But I’ll say again - Paul never calls sex in a monogamous marriage “shameful”. In fact he goes to the extraordinary lengths of saying a wife has the right(!) to demand sex from her husband (1 Cor 7:4b).

Any hypothesis of Paul’s internal thoughts has to accomodate this behaviour and being a “sex repulsed asexual” does not cut it. He was a self confessed “zealous Jew” (Gal 1:14) when it came to Torah defined sin (male homosexual acts, orgies, cultic practices, adultery), but as for lawful marriage, he acknowledges it is what some are called to by God and within which women ought to have conjugal rights.

hahahahahaha nope.

Oh both Paul and Jesus were morally conservative, no doubt about that. I was replying to someone I felt was implying Paul was somehow co-opting Jesus’ liberal movement into something more conservative and respectable. Whereas I think the opposite is true. Paul pushed frontiers Jesus never mentioned.

soapbox to preach his own distain by insisting that pleasure in sex is bad

I don’t think this is quite the right angle though. He was certainly disgusted by same sex acts and the contexts in which likely had in mind: cultic practises, orgies and temple pederasty.

But he is never against sexual pleasure within heterosexual monogamy as if there was something distasteful about pleasure itself. He never states that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Never condemns solo masturbation for instance (which one might have expected since he had a non-jewish audience). Also, neither he nor any other NT writer calls into question sexual pleasure once a couple can no longer bear children. (Which you would expect if they were against unproductive pleasure in a puritan way). On the contrary, his assertion that a wife’s body belongs to her husband and a husband’s body belongs to his wife and that couples were to not deprive each other of sex except by mutual agreement has to be seen as being both radically democratic in how relationships are conducted by also acknowledging that pleasure in sex serves a purpose in itself. (One only has to imagine a would-be prayerful monastic husband, perhaps emulating Paul himself, being told, no, you have to have sex with your wife, to realise that Paul was not some acerbic prude)

Paul’s view he explicitly links to his expectation that the world is ending soon (forgive me I can look up references at the moment). He wishes that everyone was as he was (single and celebrate). But this appears to have been born out of a controversy over whether or not travelling apostles could expect churches to bear the cost of a wife travelling with them. Given his other statements on wishing to never cause stumbling blocks of cost on already very poor communities this seems to be born out of practical mindedness rather than any kind of general anti-sex view. He regards the better practice to be celebrate and await Jesus return. But that if people felt they’d otherwise be too tempted, then they should marry and that was fine. He explicitly notes that married people will suffer a lot in life, which has to be read in the context of the ongoing persecution of Christians. And the use of torture of one’s loved ones as a psychological weapon.

conservative bullshit that Paul’s hijacked letters contained

Yes. I believe Paul was visionary and radical. But I also think he felt his innovations were partially justified given “time was short”. If there weren’t enough male ministers and gospel workers then he was ok with talented women breaking the social mould. (And not begrudgingly, he sings their praises many multiple times). But it’s impossible to tell how he would have felt or spoken had he known his system would be used for 2000 years not 20.

A later generation of disciples apparently decided Jesus’ return was delayed didn’t have the same appetite as Paul for breaking the mould and fell back on traditional gender roles more firmly.

Practically speaking since war is unthinkable is would result in as much economic isolation as Europe can bear. It would be the end of NATO. Almost immediately there’s be European voices saying ‘What’s the real harm?’ and other appeasers. I think the political lash back would only last 5-10 years as parties opposed would find the only tool at hand - economic punishment - to be unsustainable. It would legitimise nationalistic sentiments in Europe even further. Britain would, naturally, talk of betrayal but not be able to make any resistance of any substance.

♫ … Now don’t be sad, 'cause two out of three ain’t bad… ♫

And as a result there are 8 or 9 rivers called “Avon” in the UK…

I’ve heard various explanations, I don’t know how accurate the following is. I’d be interested to learn more:

• the very earliest colony settlements had to bargain hard and with precision in order to survive. It began a contractual culture that eventually extended into litigation

• due to high immigration from many differing backgrounds, disputes had to be settled in litigation rather than relying on social understanding

• the religious culture was largely inherited from the Puritans who had a legalistic and inflexible reading of the new testament. (This unwillingness to compromise is why they were persecuted in Europe and fled to the new world)

• the American identity is ‘invented’ (in the sense that’s it’s an abrupt mixing of many old world cultures) and so national identity was initially based on cerebral activities (the Constitution, Bill of Rights) rather than evolved from a very long history of social bonds found in old world ‘nations’. This required a cerebral precision to be at the heart of identity which easily extended to legal rights and relations

As I say, take with a pinch of salt. But this is the gist of what I’ve heard from people who know more than me.

Me trying to do anything turns into a depth first search of all human knowledge

If you want to try an ‘old world’ replacement, the England v France rugby match from 8th Feb (part of the six nations tournament) was great

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