You’ve touched on an age old problem. We all have it. We were designed with it. We all want it. Most of us don’t know how to get it.
We were all created with a God shaped void in our life. A yearning for something. Some of us find “it”.
That’s God.
God designed us to desire Him and to be loved. To be communal creatures. We need community. So if we can’t find it in something good as sinners some find it in something bad. Some look with a vengeance to fill that void. Like all the Red Bull folks that live beyond the edge. But I’ve fill that void as designed. And I’m happy and at peace. Not to be cheesy, but it’s really true. Jesus. He fills that void. It’s not just an old character one can gravitate to from days gone by. He is alive and one can have a relationship with Him. For real. This is why He made the roadmap of life. The Bible. He is found in there. One day some will invite Him into their lives and make Him Lord. Well, it’s quite simple, but hard to grasp for some. But as He says, I stand at the door and knock. Life is truly amazing and fulfilling once you get it. I’ve never been so excited for what’s next as I am now. I’ve been saved for over 40 years and it only gets better.
Thanks again big cat for your work. I’m most always on the same page as you. One day I hope you can join me on this page in life.
there is certainly a sort of slot in most people's minds that says "put idea bigger than me here."
there are lots of theories as to why ranging from the religious to the biological to the sociological ideas of self-domestication by a species winding up encoded in genes.
leaving aside the why (and the needless disagreements it often seems to elicit) the what looks pretty uncontroversial. this need exists in humans and if you have that slot (i suspect some small subset including possibly myself do not) and it is not filled, you feel strong discomfort and dissonance and you will seek something to fill that gap.
i think it is no coincidence that as religion has attenuated in the west that secular cults with religious style dogmas have proliferated. it's an empty slot for them to grab.
this is why the early pages of marxist playbooks are all about emptying that slot, effacing religion, family, community, and fellowship. they seek to pry the slot open so they can infect the desperate and alienated people that creates with their own doctrine.
it's why i find it so be such an anti-human and monstrous ideology.
the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values. there are many roads to the same realizations and i'm gratified to see the tent around them getting bigger again as so many of find commonality in destination if not route and start to push society back toward something conducive to human flourishing.
ennobling wreckers went WAY too far.
it's time to get back to high trust, high function.
laws, constitutions, markets all sit downstream from society. none of them can save us if we are bad people.
I mean... another article by Gato where he says 'Hitler should have won WWII' without actually saying it...
And his comment: "the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values." Is completely false. He probably believes it, but only because he's sitting atop a culture built on Christian values, and is benefitting from the unseen labour of millions of Christians.
Christian values disappeared in the last, what, 30 years, and the whole thing's falling apart, with *no possible* solution.
And we can't even talk about it, because that would be mean to jews and women.
"And his comment: "the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values." Is completely false."
While his statement could have been written more clearly - “power of community” seems weird here - hopefully you’re not saying that there are no shared values without shared religion? Demonstrably false.
Declaring there is a slot in most people's minds that says "put idea bigger than me here” does seem, to me, to trivialize (write off), at least by appearance, the spiritual need to know one’s place in the bigger scheme of things as simply a missing mechanical piece, like a Roman Arch Lego set that was shrinkwrapped lacking the keystone piece. Some as you say may lack the drive to seek out that keystone, but that reflects the experience and needs of that subset, not necessarily what may be a more subtle need troubling others.
Recovering alcoholics/addicts refer to that slot often. A slot they were trying to fill with substances, and finally were able to fill with their connection to God (or Good Orderly Direction), in sobriety.
Yes, and not rewrites either. And let’s bring back Western Civilization that was stripped from the system along with the great literature that helped form it.
Much worse, in my mind, Ryan, is the penchant for re-writing history all together -- and doing so for malign purposes.
I have to wonder how many of these pathological, borderline psychopathic, really, LARPers chanting "Death To America" from their $80K/yr. regressed adult daycare centers were brainwashed with the "1619 Project(tion)" anti-White, anti-Western fictional revision of American history? Is it any wonder why they hate the nation which has given them so much?
"Death To America! (but please pay off our college loans first)"
The Marxists and the usurpers have spent half a century undermining and twisting history and warping young impressionable minds. What we are witnessing today is simply the inevitable outcome. The Long March is complete.
There may be hope on the horizon, however. Public perception of these Brooks Brothers revolutionaries hovers somewhere around disgust. This is quite different than the (similarly staged) St. George/BLM riots 4 years ago, which many if not most openly supported and cheered on.
Yes you’ve mentioned what is part of the problem. Back in the 1990s, schools were doing away with the ‘Western Civilization’/‘Western Traditions’ track. I was lucky; it was still a required year long sequence for me.
Critics of pedagogy had pointed out that that history has a bias. They’re not wrong! They implemented a system in which any history was allowed to take the place of specific history. The same number of credit hours was required, with more diversity of focus allowed.
I think they may have had some idea that in aggregate the civic body would be learning more and varied history and so it would smush together and create a more knowledgeable society. Of course it doesn’t work that way, because people need to know a fairly broad set of the same things in order to communicate with each other. Also, when a person hasn’t studied multiple perspectives on the same topic, they haven’t learned enough to be analytic or to critique.
What should have happened is, the required number of credits should have doubled (or more) and the extra credit hours should have been given requirements around other takes on the same subject. Ideally people would have to study at least two different takes, so that they were directly exposed to the fact that multiple perspectives do exist: it’s never a binary question of ‘one is correct and the other is incorrect’.
We’d still have some of the same Tower of Babel situation, in that no one can know all the history, but at least we’d have a more intellectually humble and broadly informed populace.
People mention “teaching analytical thinking”. There has to be a set of conflicting ideas already in memory or spread out across the table for inspection in order for there to be any analysis.
This also applies for the people who are proud to not be demonstrating against war and slaughter (the two are not the same, and slaughter does not imply that a war between equals is what’s happening).
Analysis is lacking across all of society.
We haven’t updated our educational commitments to prepare citizens to be able to understand and think about a post-world war 1 world. 4 years isn’t enough and one ideological track isn’t enough.
Our siloing began well before social media; it just wasn’t as visible. It was always visible to people who studied phenomena such as: how populations sort themselves out physically, moving here or there to find their people, and, how people develop cultural blinders in concert with others they’re in proximity to.
Part of that is the inescapable human condition. Humans form culture, cultures differ, positive feedback is why. In the post world war 1 world, the technological and economic capabilities we now have to move around and act influentially or be influenced at a distance leave us with a choice: we can update our educational commitments to facilitate that analytical ability (which was never needed in a closed world) or we can watch as people who only have acquired one commitment to one silo of knowledge fight it out with other groups that are committed to their own silos. Having contempt for people who are stuck in silos, though: sometimes that’s warranted, as anyone can be expected to have worked through questions such as The Golden Rule, the limits to what they can impose on others, and the responsibilities that come with rights. Often however, and especially when it comes to mocking people who haven’t studied everything while also mocking them for having studied at all (good grief, and it’s not impressive to see), it’s not warranted. People need to get a grip on the complexity of the world with all its societies and support the expansion of educational rigor and breadth to prepare people to be qualified to have opinions about the world.
“Ideally people should have to study at least two different additional takes” is what I meant to say, for a total of at least 3. No reduction on the core western civilization track, either. It dominates a large part of the world and the details of its history are with us today in their effects both good and bad.
I vaguely remember that thank you. I’m never surprised anymore when ideological groups gang up. I’m not even sure which happens first—the narrow mindset or the eagerness to gang. I’ve seen academics do it for all sorts of reasons. I’ve seen religious ideologues do it too. This is a post literate society and McLuhan was a genius.
Yes, we are all born with a God sized void in our being.
Your comment reminds me of this scene in the movie "Tombstone:"
Wyatt Earp:
What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
Doc Holliday:
A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
Wyatt Earp:
What does he want?
Doc Holliday:
Revenge.
Wyatt Earp:
For what?
Doc Holliday:
Bein' born.
Johnny Ringo needed Jesus to fill that black hole that was his soul. We are all in the same boat. Without Jesus, we are endlessly searching for wholeness.
Here is an excerpt from a famous interview with Tom Brady:
Calvary Chapel
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“There’s Gotta Be More Than This…”- Tom Brady
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In what many are calling the most exciting Super Bowl game ever played, Tom Brady ended the debate over who is the greatest quarterback of all time. He is the only quarterback to win five Super Bowl games, and it’s a record that may last decades. At one point the Patriots were down 25 points, and I found myself congratulating a pastor friend who lived in Georgia on a great victory. But, as one commentator put it, “Tom Brady saved his most ruthless performance for the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl.” The unlikely, and terribly suspenseful, comeback sent the game into the first overtime period in Super Bowl history before the Patriots forced their way into the end zone to win it in overtime.
As I sat there in amazement, watching the celebration, I turned to my wife and said, “Isn’t this the guy that 10 years ago said…” After searching online, I found the sobering interview with Tom Brady I was looking for.
In June 2005, 60-Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft spoke with New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady about his success on and off the field. What he said about being satisfied in life surprised everyone.
BRADY: …There’s times where I’m not the person that I want to be. Why do I have three Super Bowl rings, and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, “Hey man, this is what is.” I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think: God, it’s gotta be more than this. I mean this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be. I mean I’ve done it. I’m 27. And what else is there for me?
My! that was a long comment....but I liked it anyway. I'll re-set the balance with a short one: I'm not one for finding transcendental motives for college-kid 'protesters'. Prefer to call a spade a spade. A spoilt brat is just.... a spoilt brat.
Fair enough, Graham! I think many of these "protestors" are probably paid chaos agents. Just a theory, lol. I am reminded of the BLM protestors in 2020.
Thanks, Ryan! I can relate to having an endless void inside me. I have a highly addictive personality and outside of my faith, have led a rather rebellious and hedonistic lifestyle during some darker times in my life.
Along these lines the word church was explained to me once and it shifted my view.
Ekklesia - ἐκκλησία
Church in terms of the people assembled or worldwide that share belief, rather than Church as a building. Going to church has meaning when one goes to be with others in the community, not so much when one goes to an edifice. Early church lacked purpose-built structures. God may be found anywhere there is belief, and it’s even better when He is found with others.
Yes, this; great post Fred. Victor Frankl proved that man can live without food, water, warmth, sex, shelter, and material needs met for indeterminate times based on what he saw in Nazi concentration camps. What he cannot live without is meaning. When society kills God, it will make its own, an age old patterns that always results in catastrophe.
Yes, perfect. You need never think. Everything was handed to you to believe and make you feel all cozy inside. Manufactured community just as this article says.
Scripture, tradition, reason, experience - four elements of method to understand God - John Wesley. Faith starting as faith alone can be nourished through critical thinking and evidence.
I agree with you when you identify the human need to honor something bigger than themselves or otherwise risk a void in their lives. But that is as a far as I will agree with your post. The void can be filled with religion, cult religions, just plain cults, and all sorts of other fillers. You have found Jesus to fill the void and I am happy for you, but it's not the only way. Please consider your statement that the only way to fill the void is Jesus or your conception of God is an arrogant belief. I mean this respectfully.
Every single major world religion claims their’s is the only way, their’s is the right way. This is not unique to Christianity alone, or to this man who believes this way. I would expect someone with a strong faith to feel that their faith is the only way if they indeed are truly practicing their faith. I don’t get offended by it in the least and don’t see it as something to be corrected, chastised, or even noted that he should consider what he is saying as being arrogant. I think that is more arrogant than what he is saying.
I find it interesting how Christianity’s teachings themselves are the least threatening out of all and more humble and forgiving than any others (when practiced authentically and not radically,) yet they threaten more people in the world than any other religion. That is interesting indeed.
Not every single major world religion makes that claim. Judaism does not make that claim. Hinduism does not make that claim. Buddhism does not make that claim. Confucianism does not make that claim. As far as I know, the only major religions that make that claim are Christianity (and Christian adjacent, eg LDS) and Islam. Christians and Moslems are free to believe their religion is the right way, I don't care, but it's still arrogant.
Actually they do Lol. Any spiritual following will feel their way is the best way or the only way, or why follow it?
Judaism absolutely refutes that Jesus was God’s son and they wholeheartedly believe only they are God’s chosen people. If using your definition of arrogance that’s pretty arrogant. Although I see much support for their belief in the Old Testament and understand why they think that way, and don’t consider it arrogant myself.
Both Hinduism and Buddhism certainly believe their faith is the right way or they wouldn’t follow it. The most arrogant man I have ever met in my entire life was a Hindu. It was his way or the highway and he treated you like less than a worm if you were of a different faith. So it comes down to whether you choose to learn what their faith really teaches (accepting of all faiths) or judge them by their rotten apples. I choose to not judge them by the few that I have met. Both Hindu and Buddhists have multiple deities and gods too that they feel very strongly about. But they are no more or less tolerant of other religions than true Christianity is. IF we are speaking about tolerance. Maybe you have yet to meet an authentic Christian. Not surprising. There are so few these days.
Confucianism isn’t a major world religion but a set of philosophies and ethics. They don’t claim a diety/God at all.
As for arrogance, religious pluralism or atheism is the most arrogant of them all doing the same thing they accuse Christianity of.
As far as I understand about Christianity, It is not arrogant if they believe that the Bible is truly God’s word and that everything it says is indeed the truth given by him. And if the word of God says there is only one way to him, and they believe what he says, I see it not as arrogance but obedience. Obedience to God’s word is very important to them and understandable.
Arrogance on the other hand is selfish and an offensive tactic only, by overly defensive people. Obedience is not selfish at all, and neither offensive or defensive. I’d rather work alongside an obedient mind than a truly arrogant mind any day.
I find it really interesting how much their faith is twisted and despised by so many. To say they are arrogant is openly despising them. Possibly many of them deserve such attacks, I know I have met quite a few, but the religion itself outside of the practice of sinful men is rather beautiful. Doesn’t deserve the backlash so many want to give it. Again, censoring and manipulating the message happens everywhere with everything and it also happened with Christianity for selfish and political purposes.
My reply seemed to disappear so I apologize if this is a repost. Anyway, I should have known better than to get into this conversation so I'm giving myself the last word, and leaving it at that. You are just wrong. Here is what a Chabad (Orthodox) rabbi had to say, you can look up the other religions on your own if you care to. "The nations of the world are all G‑d's children. He doesn't treat them all the same because they aren't all the same. He wants each nation to develop in its own way. So each nation has a different path to reach their full potential. To the Jewish nation he gave the Torah as our way of expressing our souls. But Judaism is not for everyone. We don't believe that a non-Jew needs to become Jewish to find G‑d." https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/160971/jewish/Is-Judaism-the-Truth.htm
Well then the people I have met in the Judaism faith have given it a very false picture. Just like many Christians have given a false picture of what their faith really teaches. That’s my whole point. I don’t think you have learned what it actually teaches if you’re calling them arrogant.
My whole point in all these posts is that you shouldn’t be so quick to criticize someone for sharing their belief as it relates to their faith. You don’t have to respond at all if you have nothing to add but insults. That’s really the only thing that was arrogant here. I just felt like defending them because no one ever does and it’s wrong. Free speech and all that. He was using his to try and lift people up. You were using yours to try and tear them down.
Fred, the prophet Jeremiah said the human condition is actually worse than just aimlessness- "The heart is desperately wicked, who can know it?" You can look it up.
Good for you. Do you imply/believe your journey is the only possible/acceptable one as in “I’m The Truth”, or are you just sharing your personal opinion and accept others exist?
In my experience it has most frequently been atheists who demean and ridicule POF as silly for not subscribing to their creatorless belief system, rarely the other way, perhaps because of the teachings of love thy neighbor (golden rule).
Belief and critical thinking are not two disparate worldviews, they are complementary, and the latter can refine the former, as it has for C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Wesley, and many others. Can you accept that my critical thinking may legitimately lead me to different conclusions than yours?
Methodism combines scripture, tradition, reason, and experience as four pillars of a method for a faith in God. This is one way of answering your question. One may hold beliefs and apply critical thinking (reason) to them based on evidence (experience). https://www.umc.org/en/content/our-four-theological-guidelines
True belief is necessarily uncritical, unless you are simply redefining it out of existence due to the apparent success of scientific inquiry that leads to technology and alleviates so much of the physical suffering that religion sells itself as alleviating in the end. But most by far would prefer to feel good now, if "only" physically.
I’m just trying to understand, will you allow me? By the way, your own comment about “faith and critical thinking are not mutually exclusive” is a very interesting proposition. Will you care to explain? Faith per definition is a grace, something bestowed upon you by the grace of god (not my definition, that of the church, not the building, the community). Critical thinking requires you to open up the basis of your beliefs, and question, and test them, very much as in an empirical journey. So what gives? Are these world views compatible as you affirm, and if yes, how can they be reconciled?
Critical thinking merely requires examining and understanding other beliefs, not accepting them.
And faith doesn’t always have to be blind. You fly on airlines because you have faith (or maybe not today…) in the engineers who claim to have built the aircraft according to good scientific principles. If you understand the principles underlying the truth behind belief it strengthens (or breaks) your faith depending upon the validity of the object of your faith.
We had a course in Catholic high school called Apologetics - the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. I was very taken with the idea. However, when we would get to a sticky point in the Catholic religion/belief system, the priest (a TOR or teacher of religion) would always say, "well, you have to have faith". I think that course had a lot to do with propelling me further into critical thinking and away from religion, and, in fact, a belief in god, gods, or most things supernatural. I have tried to "have faith" through my mother's, husband's, and my own cancers. It didn't work. I was in the proverbial foxhole, but still an atheist. I admire people who have faith, but it is not something you can fake or attest to if you don't.
Faith may be considered a grace, yes. That's hardly anyone's definition though. There are various things that can be considered to be graces.
"Critical thinking" seems to come up a bit short when it comes to serious questions, such as "why should I not just club you in the head and take your stuff?". How might you approach a question such as that?
critical thinking would allow you to see that society or civilization, which is desired I believe, would crumble if everyone did that. We're seeing a bit of that with what is happening in some places where people are allowed to do just what you said.
"If everyone did that" is a different matter, and honestly a bogus argument. Various people will do various things for various reasons, mostly completely unrelated to what I do and outside of my control or knowledge.
I subscribe to your wish for our dear cat. I suspect he may be about to set his foot on the path already, as he wrote, a month or so back, that essay in which he discussed his concern for what a western culture without Christianity would look like. And he didn't like what he saw. post scriptum --- I really like what you have written here.
I attended UCLA in the early 90’s. Over half of the school was Asian descent. Still is. Does anyone in their right mind think these kids are misdirected, involved in silly protests, or acting like babies. I can tell you right now, they are NOT! Because if they did, they would bring shame on their family, they would be yanked out of their university education and put to work by mom and dad. No second chances.
No, right now there are a bunch of paid, open society agitators, at each of these universities protesting. And a few kids who realise they are now of age to be drafted into the military at the drop of a hat.
Flat earth movement is benign. Hey, if they think the earth is flat who are they hurting. I can think of quite a few people in high places who have HURT us and our world over the past four years. I would be a bit more concerned about these monsters than a group of kids protesting, or flat earth disciples.
Separate the paid agitators, find out who,paid them to agitate, convict them if guilty of crime, and get on with life. While you are at it, Identify the pharma, medical, government and deep state characters who have made an excellent attempt to ruin our lives. Now they belong behind bars for a very long time.
And it will be something else in a couple of years. And a new group of unfulfilled people to follow them. But hey I grew up in the 60’s and my draft number was 109. Funny what you remember 6 decades later
This is hilariously funny. A 6 word sentence with an egregious grammatical error.
I know US Americans generally have poor language skills, but one might have expected universities would have weeded out the worst offenders prior to admission.
You ever see how happy and proud a toddler is when you ask one to carry something over there for mommy?
These kids were in daycare when they were toddlers. They weren't really learning during their most lively and non-exhausted hours to do something important for the person they loved most in all the world.
And here we are.
I was so lucky that when I had to return to work after three months' maternity leave, the now unhusband transferred to the night shift and was home to take over when I had to leave, and then my mom came over to let him go to sleep, and my kid was never in the hands of strangers until he started nursery school in a tiny neighborhood place run by a woman whose son went to school with my brother and my mom knew her from the Jewish center.
Too many people who must absolutely work outside the home while having to raise their kids somehow were not so lucky. And of course the ones who are far more privileged--you should see what those kids look like, the toddlers pushed in strollers facing forward by blank-faced nannies. I saw them on the crowded streets of Manhattan when I went out to buy lunch. Tiny kids in a sea of grownup legs and at just the right level to breathe in bus fumes.
I think you have put your finger on it. Of all the comments I read, many of them quite good, yours stands out to me. Since WWII the countries have shifted, by intentional plan, from one parent going out every day to earn a living to needing both parents to do so to stay afloat Day care, early preschool, supervised activities all day til the parents come home from work, then add divorced single parent and dysfunctional families. Throw head meds into the mix and voila! modern society. Any wonder the toddler-adults want to find (quoting Firesign Theater here): "a bunch of guys who dress alike and follow them around."
What a lot of people overlook as they complain about women going to work instead of staying home with the kids is that women have always had to work while raising children. That's why societies everywhere invented baby-carrying thingies as simple as a wrapping cloth or as elaborate as cradle boards because mom had to plant rice or gather berries etc. etc. long before the kids could toddle.
And by the time a kid was four she was holding a baby sibling on her hip.
Poor urban women took in washing or boarders and the money-earning activities took place in the home. Or maybe they had no way of earning money and the kids died pretty often from non-fatal illnesses that are bad for the malnourished.
It was only in the '50s in this country that we had such prosperity that the sight of middle-class women home all the time seemed normal and the way life should be.
So many of the knit and crochet designers posting their patterns on a fiber arts website say in their bios how they were taught to do these things by their grandmas.
Now so many of the grandmas just want to visit and not teach. Community is people who love you and want to show you how to do things that are useful and beautiful skills that you'll feel proud of accomplishing.
I would add one more item to the satanic brew undermining stable society: the trend-turned-requirement of working 50-60 (and more!) hours a week.
A modifying ingredient: First question at a social gathering: ‘what do you do?’ Followed by commiserating about how little time one has to pursue leisure activities. Civic activities not even on the menu. POOF there goes our republic.
Sent to places to be merely kept “safe” and “entertained” instead of engaged in meaningful investigations, responsibilities, and relationships. We need to look at early care / “education” differently if we are indeed going to have a society that needs it as much as we seem to think.
Oh…wait…we’ll not do that cause it’s just a perfect way to begin the indoctrination earlier.
A healthy society begins with healthy parents and intentional childbearing for good reasons rather than less-good reasons.
And it's not more early-childhood education we need. It's retirement-fund credit for women staying home to raise their children, because one can lose an/the earning spouse for many reasons. If a woman who wants to stay home has some minimal assurance that she won't starve in middle- and older age because she takes herself out of the earning pool during the years her kids need her most, she'll be more comfortable making such a choice.
Children most need socialization into normal society which means neighborhoods where you encounter children and old people regularly and learn to interact with all of them from the start.
It's a very hard truth to learn that one cannot have everything at the same time. Children do actually need intense parenting/grandparenting attention for the first four years at least. You cannot pay people to love your kids for you and if the people you pay don't actually love kids in general, even worse.
Well said! My first grandchild is due in mid-June and I'm planning to spend as much time as I can with her and any siblings who come along. I've been telling my son and his wife that at least the first 2 years are so very important for language and social development, and they have to take the time and spend the energy now, no matter what. I just retired in January after a 43-year stint as a fed civilian but I did take off (no outside pay!) about 5 years when my kids were small so I know whereof I speak.
A loving normal environment where nobody goes in for "enrichment advice by experts" but just does all the normal happy things with babies from the start, doing all the instinctive things that pour out of new mommies and grandmas because we are hardwired to do them, is what every baby needs.
Hard lessons were learned from the kibbutz system begun during British Mandatory Palestine and carried over into Israel, the independent nation. The kibbutz children's wing, staffed by caring devoted childrearers, produced generations of kids with powerful group identity and serious problems with interpersonal relationships. It turns out that babies and toddlers need their mommies and not even the most dedicated modern thinkers about childrearing.
Yeah. And a whole lot of them are being paid. And a whole lot of them are not ‘students’. And there is government and corporate money that is funding the radical groups that organize this shit.
Here’s the solution. Let them burn it all down. All of it. UCLA reduced to dozens of piles of smoking rubble. Then reclaim the land and turn it into something for society. Like green space and affordable housing.
Let’s be honest. You are dealing with the most self absorbed, useless, selfish generation in the history of the world.
So true. A few souless agitators paid to plan & lead the ignorant wannabes to follow along. They’ll be lucky if they grow out of their awkwardness- like most of us. It’s really a natural right of passage to feel awkward, but the narrative wants to make you’re a victim & blame it on the wrong body, parents etc. anything but the truth - you’re immature & will grow out of it.
It almost always comes back to family, being loved & belonging. That’s why communists/ Marxists whatever work hard to divide families. Hence, the feminist movement was born out of a plan headed up by cia operative Gloria Stienem to denigrate & create a feeling of unfulfillment in mothers who wanted to stay home & nurture their families. Also to push along the bad patriarch narrative, goes hand in hand. Put your kids in daycare, we’ll take care of them. Any state run education is a bad thing, involves nasty, manipulative indoctrination of all kinds, no truth & primes some kids for fitted brown shirts. Thankfully many are onto it & are refusing to participate. Not enough though.
Yes, RG! Just about any sociological study you read about crime and its roots seems to show a common thread of families with absent or distant fathers who never imbued their children with any of what we would call traditional family values and sensible world view.
Do you realize you sound like one of those "build back better" folks? Maybe you're more aligned with them than you think....
Blaming people for trying to find their way in life when there are even LESS road-signs today than when I (now sixty) was a child (and, to be sure, there weren't a hell of a lot of them then, either) strikes me as being less than charitable. Perhaps consider el gato's suggestion of tough love more seriously as a better way to go than stiffly declaring "worst generation EVAH", and consigning them (which are YOUNG PEOPLE, after all) to history's dustbin.
For my part, I don't know how kids are alive today. It's really the saddest thing, and blaming the victims of bad parenting and social/media mind control is like taking another roundhouse at a battered wife seeking help.
That’s comical. We bailed out of what already was an unconventional ‘normal’ life, moved onto our sailboat, and our boat remains our home today. I’m about as far from ‘build back better’ as one could get. My preferred form of govt is none, just as the Founders intended. Local control and a Federal Govt that fulfills their three Constitutional duties; protect the border, protect private property, adjudicate disputes between states. Anything beyond that I reject.
Having travelled at least 50,000 sea miles over the past decade plus, visiting many countries and cultures, making friends and spending time with different people (including dozens and dozens of young people) all over the world, I stand by what I said.
The most self absorbed and selfish generation in the history of the world. In fact, let me add insufferable to the list.
You are making excuses for bad behavior. That’s crap. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t joined the ‘protests’ at the closest university in support of that bad behavior. They’re all ‘organic’ of course.
As a mid 50s kid, I had no advantages in life other than two parents who loved me. I paid my own way through college. I paid my own way through law school. I never asked for or expected help from anyone. If I got some, I was incredibly grateful and remain so today. When I passed the bar (with at the time the highest number of perfect essay scores in the state’s history), I wrote every high school teacher I could locate a letter thanking them for helping me make that happen. Nobody told me to do that. I did it because I was grateful. Walk around Columbia or UCLA today and do you see kids who are grateful? Haha.
The useless generation is not, as you allude, ‘trying to make their way in life’. To the contrary, they are looking for (apparently) people like you who will cut them massive slack, pay off their student loans, and give them UBI because the job they were promised just doesn’t pay enough to fund their party lifestyle.
They are nothing but sheep who can’t conjur up an independent thought or perform logical analysis if their lives depended on it. Don’t forget, 99% of them lined up for the death vax. So most of them are unlikely to make it past 40 anyway.
I'm sorry, friend, but this is "OK boomer" type stuff. *I* suggested being a tad more encouraging "than burn it all down", but you piled on like I hurt your feelings, and needed a "correction". Allow me to retort.
I made it pretty clear the young have been betrayed by at LEAST their virtue-signaling parents, and needed a little tough love as el gato suggested. That seemed to escape your rage at me not nodding like a trained seal at the very worst of your anarchic impulse: to set a fire to UCLA--which I don't accept as a realistic or desired endpoint, regardless of where one comes down on this "issue" (or even if you were being serious or not.) My WHOLE point was PRECISELY that: a rejection of hyperbole that served none but your already set opinion.
I appreciate you pulled yourself by your own bootstraps. Good for you. Not everyone can, but your doing so doesn't make you any better than the children you condemn. I mean, look at this thread! Have all your travels not granted you the wisdom (and humility) to recognize that just MAYBE the obvious madness unfortunately displayed by young people may just be a logical reaction to a world where they have been stripped of soul, of meaning, and hope (which, I note, you seem fine with, as "most of them are unlikely to make it past 40 anyway". That's cold, bitter stuff, dude, and it doesn't seem like the lessons of the Covid Experience have fully settled in for you.) That is on us: for not creating a nurturing environment--which many of us, in our narcissism, indulged with performance trophy culture instead of actually passing down the wisdom young people need to be viable. We allowed this situation to be created so we could shop at Costco and indulge *our* every whim, while neglecting the kids to television and social media. (This casual "I've got mine, Jack" ethos is also why the US I grew up in, as sorry as it was, was a far better place than what we've left the past two or three generations. Simply, "we" had a peace dividend, and decided whistle past the graveyard while our "leaders" stole it, instead spending it on full spectrum dominance. How can ANYONE brought up in that insanity be anything less than a little off?)
Perhaps you might be better served taking a step away from the keyboard before you blow a gasket (and, yes, I understand you didn't get the "death vax" so SADS may not be in your future, but that level of anger--expressed in an online forum where none are accountable beyond the reputations they establish with people of like mind--doesn't seem to be doing you any favors.)
I haven't lived in the US in a couple of years now, but I saw the front-lines when we lived in Portland, OR. And, yes, I will grant that what happened in 2020 is a reason we don't live there anymore. But, I could never summon anything more than momentary rage that inevitably descended into soul-numbing sadness at what was happening. If anything has been learned the past few years (which we can trace back at least 10000 years) is that humans make mistakes, often homicidal ones, and it is up to us to REASONABLY respond with appropriate sanction against those behaving badly. That's not happening in the US anymore, and you shaking your fist at the young for acting on the manipulated reality the "leadership" provide for them cradle to grave may feel good, but you're missing the target. Point your anger where it belongs, and if so moved, act on it.
I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm sure you're a decent fellow, well-meaning even. But playing Disco Inferno on the UCLA campus is a tune too far for me.
How abut this: you stop burning for a conflagration on the UCLA campus, and I'll nod my head more readily should our paths cross again?
Nice. As a ‘Boomer’ it’s interesting to see you playing the generation card. Given your obvious level of intelligence, I would have anticipated better.
There is no denying that 18 years of govt schools could turn anyone’s brain to a wasteland. And that the corrupt idiots running the Us into the ground on purpose aren’t making it easy. Those are reasons. But not excuses.
When each of our boys turned 8 we sat them down and informed them, that if they wanted to go to college, they had to figure it out on their own. They had a decade to figure it out. Our oldest determined he would become good enough at something, that he would get a scholarship. And he did. He was already a ski racer and he became an outstanding ski racer and earned a full ride scholarship to a small school in Montana. We gave him all the help we could and over 10 years, spent 10x on racing than it would have cost us to just pay for his college. But that wasn’t the point and at 36 he knows what we did, why we did it, and he is incredibly grateful…and a very successful software developer.
Our youngest chose to not go to college. Instead, he became a welder. And then he met a girl and they wanted to start a business. Mowing lawns, doing landscaping, plowing snow. But they had no money. So the moved to a small town in northern MI, lived in a tent in a national forest for 18 months, through a full MI winter, while they worked and saved money to start their business. A decade later they have a cabin in the woods they built themselves, no debt, and a nice little business.
Could we have gotten them started with a loan or by purchasing some equipment. Yes. Just like we could have paid for the oldest ones college. But again, that wasn’t the point. They now look back on their time in the tent and realize just how far they have come. And they are grateful. And they now know why we didn’t just set them up.
And on that point, they would like to grow their business. But they cannot. Why. Because they can’t hire any help. The insufferable, self absorbed generation does not want to work. They’ve had 16-20 year olds quit in the first day. Multiple times. They’ve tried working with the local high school to get co-op students who might want to learn the ins and outs of running a small business. It’s totally useless and they’ve given up.
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact”
And the facts are obvious.
I don’t know where you live so I cannot assess what cultural differences versus the US there may be. But in so many of the places we have been, elders are respected, children are respectful, and parents don’t put up with bullshit.
As you correctly point out, there certainly are many reasons why the culture is what it is. And you left the country, for Gods sake, at least partially because of that. So it’s very rich that you are defending the very type of behavior that caused you to leave. That’s nice.
Which essentially proves my original point. Which is to say, it all needs to be burned down. All of it. And something better can be built from the ashes. When a segment of society expects to have it handed to them on a silver platter, because that is what they have been taught, that is a problem that will never be solved. Unless it is destroyed. So let them destroy it. They are going to seal their fate one way or the other. Let’s make it the other, so the rest of us can enjoy the few remaining years we might have on the planet.
And please, learn the difference between literal and figurative speech. It is a difficult concept for many, but I’m betting you know the difference. But your narrative doesn’t work if you admit it.
Aw thanks brother. Indeed. We are on a sailboat that can go, and has already been, just about anywhere in the world. We are always prepped with 50 gallons of diesel, 100 gallons of water, 16 gallons of gas (for generator and RIB engine), food for 30 days, solar, inverter, radar, plotter, sonar, a big anchor and 250 ft of chain. Although at the moment we are waiting for parts to fix our sick engine. I’ve got a locker full of 1500 dollars worth of spares…but not the one I need. LOL.
Also, lots of metal on board. Precious and otherwise.
It was pretty funny. Dude defends the useless ones and then admits they are the reason he left Portland and most likely the country. Haha.
In a way all the students who have student loans are being paid. They are receiving money from the government and we all know that the "loans" will probably be unpaid, mostly forgiven by a leftist government someday.
Bullshit. So rioting on campus, barricading buildings, beating Jewish girls, all while pleading for people to bring them vegan food is “trying to fit into their social paradigm”.
If you arrive in a vehicle with bank robber and you enter the bank and stand around texting your wife while the bank is robbed and then you leave with the robber and get in the car and drive away…guess what crime you will be charged with.
It’s totally amazing to me that you and others want to defend these criminals. It’s no wonder that the majority of them are useless and self absorbed. It’s people like you that give them permission to act like animals.
Go find a safe space. Eventually they will be coming for all of us.
indeed. it's a substantial group that's a decade behind in their emotional development being put into adult situations for which they are clearly not ready.
this is not an easy thing to fix, but it's also not that big a group. a lot of the kids are fine. we've just been creating a world where the loony and demanding ones who adopt bizarre, marginal views get treated like a protected and privileged class.
if we knock that off, the rest will start to heal.
When the writer Mordecai Richler was questioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when he was a young man in the late 1940s about his attendance at events put on by "red" organizations, his answer was simple: I wanted to meet girls. I think all this cosplay is part of that.
A lot of it, I think, is that these are the children of Putnam's "Bowling Alone" society: atomized and rudderless, with parents who threatened to sue school boards when their Precious Ones scraped their knees on the playground.
Social media just amplified the phenomenon whereas children of the 80s like me would hog the photocopier at the library to produce shitty 'zines and look to Ally Sheedy as the hot emo-girl we all wanted to bang. Now their inner Cluster B broken psyches are exposed for all to see, and, at least recently, they are celebrated and rewarded for it whereas my generation was tougher: kids like these were called "spazzes" and thrown in dumpsters, and the Lousy Deans of Animal House would hand out expulsions like cards at a blackjack table. That societal check on unhinged narcissism seemed to keep the lid on the kettle back then, whereas now it's been weaponized to obscure institutional rot.
Have you ever noticed how the most extreme society-smashing versions of communism took hold in the most conservative filial-obedience trained societies? They couldn't wait to murder grandpa and grandma.
I think more and more parents are waking up to the fact that college education has changed quite a bit from what they went through. While there are still valid cases for higher education, many are finding that a lot of them just aren't useful in today's world. Even some kids are waking up to the idea of going into a trade job as opposed to huge amounts of debt.
The actors in today's crisis seem to be largely paid. The signs and tents are all well-produced and plentiful - something not found in a true, naturally-forming protest. (Much like pallets of bricks left near gatherings to "protest" St. Floyd?) There were way too many people pulled out from recent arrests who didn't seem to be even close to your typical college student.
I think the "please send us food" thing was great. No self-awareness. No grasp of reality. I think many who haven't been gripped by the "join the group" fever can easily see how ludicrous that position is.
Personally, I think more states need to do what FL did. State quite clearly what's allowed for a real protest and what crosses the line. Signs? Gatherings? Chants? Cool. Tents, blocking access to buildings or "taking over" buildings, violence against other students, and such? Kicked out without prejudice - for students and employees. I think most of the "protesters" de-escalated that pretty quickly down to just signs because it was clear that anything else would cross the line and result in quick consequences.
The heart of it all is the need for community and meaning, and the forces of manipulation are contorting even *that* into a warped definition of “belonging” in order to get out ahead of anything meaningful.
I noticed this during the 2008 and 2012 Ron Paul campaigns. I’m 47, and I grew up in the early days of Harry Browne and Ron Paul and Mary Ruwart; I knew the principles and the consequences and what it meant to cleave to them come what may.
And I could see *immediately* that half the r3VOLution was just kids looking for a cool club; it didn’t surprise me in the slightest when they all went over to Bernie.
I meet people at Porcfest who bemoan the loss of that momentum but I know that a lot of those kids were completely unprepared for the demands of a free society, intellectually or emotionally. We can’t have the nice things because most people can’t handle them.
The higher ed infrastructure has to collapse, along with institutionalized education under the state. It just infantilizes and abuses children born into an increasingly unmoored society.
(And organized religions can also abuse and infantilize; institutions sclerose and obedience to status quo becomes the prime directive)
We get out of this by getting our children out of it. Sacrifice everything if you have to. The sooner you make that decision, the easier it is. If I told you what we lived on, and how, when my babies were small (AND I had a serious cancer twice in that time), many would not believe me. But I knew I had ONE priority.
The fact that there are professional protesters involved and behind all of this makes me think that the government and other special interest groups understand the obvious truths you just explained all too well and purposefully harness its power to advance a narrative or position and lend it credibility by their numbers. And they do this at the cost of innocent young minds or confused older adults just wanting to belong. They are nothing more than tools, and that makes what they belong to unstable.
of course. this is where the marxist "useful idiots" have always come from.
it's why the opening moves in the marxist playbooks are always the destruction of affinity and community and values.
the wipe out family, religion, patriotism, belief in markets, liberty, and fair play. they come for social organizations and universities and gradeschools. anything that fosters community. the alienated are easy to manipulate, they are already dying to join something.
The rich kids yes… my friends who have generated real wealth all have wannabe marxists kids. Also, they grew up in the “every kid deserves a trophy” era.
Well big cat,
You’ve touched on an age old problem. We all have it. We were designed with it. We all want it. Most of us don’t know how to get it.
We were all created with a God shaped void in our life. A yearning for something. Some of us find “it”.
That’s God.
God designed us to desire Him and to be loved. To be communal creatures. We need community. So if we can’t find it in something good as sinners some find it in something bad. Some look with a vengeance to fill that void. Like all the Red Bull folks that live beyond the edge. But I’ve fill that void as designed. And I’m happy and at peace. Not to be cheesy, but it’s really true. Jesus. He fills that void. It’s not just an old character one can gravitate to from days gone by. He is alive and one can have a relationship with Him. For real. This is why He made the roadmap of life. The Bible. He is found in there. One day some will invite Him into their lives and make Him Lord. Well, it’s quite simple, but hard to grasp for some. But as He says, I stand at the door and knock. Life is truly amazing and fulfilling once you get it. I’ve never been so excited for what’s next as I am now. I’ve been saved for over 40 years and it only gets better.
Thanks again big cat for your work. I’m most always on the same page as you. One day I hope you can join me on this page in life.
there is certainly a sort of slot in most people's minds that says "put idea bigger than me here."
there are lots of theories as to why ranging from the religious to the biological to the sociological ideas of self-domestication by a species winding up encoded in genes.
leaving aside the why (and the needless disagreements it often seems to elicit) the what looks pretty uncontroversial. this need exists in humans and if you have that slot (i suspect some small subset including possibly myself do not) and it is not filled, you feel strong discomfort and dissonance and you will seek something to fill that gap.
i think it is no coincidence that as religion has attenuated in the west that secular cults with religious style dogmas have proliferated. it's an empty slot for them to grab.
this is why the early pages of marxist playbooks are all about emptying that slot, effacing religion, family, community, and fellowship. they seek to pry the slot open so they can infect the desperate and alienated people that creates with their own doctrine.
it's why i find it so be such an anti-human and monstrous ideology.
the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values. there are many roads to the same realizations and i'm gratified to see the tent around them getting bigger again as so many of find commonality in destination if not route and start to push society back toward something conducive to human flourishing.
ennobling wreckers went WAY too far.
it's time to get back to high trust, high function.
laws, constitutions, markets all sit downstream from society. none of them can save us if we are bad people.
This is a great comment.
I mean... another article by Gato where he says 'Hitler should have won WWII' without actually saying it...
And his comment: "the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values." Is completely false. He probably believes it, but only because he's sitting atop a culture built on Christian values, and is benefitting from the unseen labour of millions of Christians.
Christian values disappeared in the last, what, 30 years, and the whole thing's falling apart, with *no possible* solution.
And we can't even talk about it, because that would be mean to jews and women.
"And his comment: "the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values." Is completely false."
While his statement could have been written more clearly - “power of community” seems weird here - hopefully you’re not saying that there are no shared values without shared religion? Demonstrably false.
Talking about what, exactly, would be mean to jews and women?
the real power of community is that we need not share religious/deistic beliefs to share values
Great comment. Just as I hope to not have authoritarian "overlords" so also do I hope to not have a theocracy.
You don't have a God slot? What sacrilege. Don't you know God made cats?
You mean like the Lion of Judah? Of course!
Declaring there is a slot in most people's minds that says "put idea bigger than me here” does seem, to me, to trivialize (write off), at least by appearance, the spiritual need to know one’s place in the bigger scheme of things as simply a missing mechanical piece, like a Roman Arch Lego set that was shrinkwrapped lacking the keystone piece. Some as you say may lack the drive to seek out that keystone, but that reflects the experience and needs of that subset, not necessarily what may be a more subtle need troubling others.
Recovering alcoholics/addicts refer to that slot often. A slot they were trying to fill with substances, and finally were able to fill with their connection to God (or Good Orderly Direction), in sobriety.
CatManDu - "its a big tent" So many rebels without a clue and for needful things, it's a Leland Gaunt world.
it would help if our educational system actually taught history.
there is no better cautionary tale than history.
hence the phrase:
he who controls the present controls the past. he who controls the past controls the future.
it's why "re-writing history" is always such a focus for the dogmatists who want you to do the same things that failed before.
🎯
100%
Yes, and not rewrites either. And let’s bring back Western Civilization that was stripped from the system along with the great literature that helped form it.
Indeed John!
Which one?
Pick it.
But start with the most important and enigmatic lesson in history; the inescapable capability of humans to forget it.
Much worse, in my mind, Ryan, is the penchant for re-writing history all together -- and doing so for malign purposes.
I have to wonder how many of these pathological, borderline psychopathic, really, LARPers chanting "Death To America" from their $80K/yr. regressed adult daycare centers were brainwashed with the "1619 Project(tion)" anti-White, anti-Western fictional revision of American history? Is it any wonder why they hate the nation which has given them so much?
"Death To America! (but please pay off our college loans first)"
The Marxists and the usurpers have spent half a century undermining and twisting history and warping young impressionable minds. What we are witnessing today is simply the inevitable outcome. The Long March is complete.
There may be hope on the horizon, however. Public perception of these Brooks Brothers revolutionaries hovers somewhere around disgust. This is quite different than the (similarly staged) St. George/BLM riots 4 years ago, which many if not most openly supported and cheered on.
{...Marxists and the usurpers have spent half a century undermining and twisting history and warping young impressionable minds...}
Just subscribe to Yuri Bezmenov's views on the topic right here on Substack
spot on.
Maybe what should be taught is analytical thinking about the evidence behind the narratives. You know, that sciencey stuff. Very dangerous, though.
Agree
Seems like a good time to drop this here again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)
This is basically the story of why we divided into tribes. Cain and Abel figure prominently.
And I say that and hawk this book despite my assertion that I'm amongst that small subset that do not need to fill that slot.
Yes you’ve mentioned what is part of the problem. Back in the 1990s, schools were doing away with the ‘Western Civilization’/‘Western Traditions’ track. I was lucky; it was still a required year long sequence for me.
Critics of pedagogy had pointed out that that history has a bias. They’re not wrong! They implemented a system in which any history was allowed to take the place of specific history. The same number of credit hours was required, with more diversity of focus allowed.
I think they may have had some idea that in aggregate the civic body would be learning more and varied history and so it would smush together and create a more knowledgeable society. Of course it doesn’t work that way, because people need to know a fairly broad set of the same things in order to communicate with each other. Also, when a person hasn’t studied multiple perspectives on the same topic, they haven’t learned enough to be analytic or to critique.
What should have happened is, the required number of credits should have doubled (or more) and the extra credit hours should have been given requirements around other takes on the same subject. Ideally people would have to study at least two different takes, so that they were directly exposed to the fact that multiple perspectives do exist: it’s never a binary question of ‘one is correct and the other is incorrect’.
We’d still have some of the same Tower of Babel situation, in that no one can know all the history, but at least we’d have a more intellectually humble and broadly informed populace.
People mention “teaching analytical thinking”. There has to be a set of conflicting ideas already in memory or spread out across the table for inspection in order for there to be any analysis.
This also applies for the people who are proud to not be demonstrating against war and slaughter (the two are not the same, and slaughter does not imply that a war between equals is what’s happening).
Analysis is lacking across all of society.
We haven’t updated our educational commitments to prepare citizens to be able to understand and think about a post-world war 1 world. 4 years isn’t enough and one ideological track isn’t enough.
Our siloing began well before social media; it just wasn’t as visible. It was always visible to people who studied phenomena such as: how populations sort themselves out physically, moving here or there to find their people, and, how people develop cultural blinders in concert with others they’re in proximity to.
Part of that is the inescapable human condition. Humans form culture, cultures differ, positive feedback is why. In the post world war 1 world, the technological and economic capabilities we now have to move around and act influentially or be influenced at a distance leave us with a choice: we can update our educational commitments to facilitate that analytical ability (which was never needed in a closed world) or we can watch as people who only have acquired one commitment to one silo of knowledge fight it out with other groups that are committed to their own silos. Having contempt for people who are stuck in silos, though: sometimes that’s warranted, as anyone can be expected to have worked through questions such as The Golden Rule, the limits to what they can impose on others, and the responsibilities that come with rights. Often however, and especially when it comes to mocking people who haven’t studied everything while also mocking them for having studied at all (good grief, and it’s not impressive to see), it’s not warranted. People need to get a grip on the complexity of the world with all its societies and support the expansion of educational rigor and breadth to prepare people to be qualified to have opinions about the world.
Excellent
“Ideally people should have to study at least two different additional takes” is what I meant to say, for a total of at least 3. No reduction on the core western civilization track, either. It dominates a large part of the world and the details of its history are with us today in their effects both good and bad.
Mark Crispin Miller was forbidden to teach his course in recognizing propaganda at NYU with condemnation from his "colleagues".
I vaguely remember that thank you. I’m never surprised anymore when ideological groups gang up. I’m not even sure which happens first—the narrow mindset or the eagerness to gang. I’ve seen academics do it for all sorts of reasons. I’ve seen religious ideologues do it too. This is a post literate society and McLuhan was a genius.
💯
Yes, we are all born with a God sized void in our being.
Your comment reminds me of this scene in the movie "Tombstone:"
Wyatt Earp:
What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?
Doc Holliday:
A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of himself. And he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.
Wyatt Earp:
What does he want?
Doc Holliday:
Revenge.
Wyatt Earp:
For what?
Doc Holliday:
Bein' born.
Johnny Ringo needed Jesus to fill that black hole that was his soul. We are all in the same boat. Without Jesus, we are endlessly searching for wholeness.
SOURCE: https://www.quotes.net/mquote/97676
Here is an excerpt from a famous interview with Tom Brady:
Calvary Chapel
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“There’s Gotta Be More Than This…”- Tom Brady
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In what many are calling the most exciting Super Bowl game ever played, Tom Brady ended the debate over who is the greatest quarterback of all time. He is the only quarterback to win five Super Bowl games, and it’s a record that may last decades. At one point the Patriots were down 25 points, and I found myself congratulating a pastor friend who lived in Georgia on a great victory. But, as one commentator put it, “Tom Brady saved his most ruthless performance for the Atlanta Falcons in the Super Bowl.” The unlikely, and terribly suspenseful, comeback sent the game into the first overtime period in Super Bowl history before the Patriots forced their way into the end zone to win it in overtime.
As I sat there in amazement, watching the celebration, I turned to my wife and said, “Isn’t this the guy that 10 years ago said…” After searching online, I found the sobering interview with Tom Brady I was looking for.
In June 2005, 60-Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft spoke with New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady about his success on and off the field. What he said about being satisfied in life surprised everyone.
BRADY: …There’s times where I’m not the person that I want to be. Why do I have three Super Bowl rings, and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, “Hey man, this is what is.” I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me, I think: God, it’s gotta be more than this. I mean this can’t be what it’s all cracked up to be. I mean I’ve done it. I’m 27. And what else is there for me?
KROFT: What’s the answer?
BRADY: I wish I knew. I wish I knew…
SOURCE:
https://calvarychapel.com/posts/theres-gotta-be-more-than-this-tom-brady/
My! that was a long comment....but I liked it anyway. I'll re-set the balance with a short one: I'm not one for finding transcendental motives for college-kid 'protesters'. Prefer to call a spade a spade. A spoilt brat is just.... a spoilt brat.
Fair enough, Graham! I think many of these "protestors" are probably paid chaos agents. Just a theory, lol. I am reminded of the BLM protestors in 2020.
I loved that quote from Tombstone. I tried to post it last week but had trouble finding it.
i thought it was a great comment!
Thanks, Ryan! I can relate to having an endless void inside me. I have a highly addictive personality and outside of my faith, have led a rather rebellious and hedonistic lifestyle during some darker times in my life.
Along these lines the word church was explained to me once and it shifted my view.
Ekklesia - ἐκκλησία
Church in terms of the people assembled or worldwide that share belief, rather than Church as a building. Going to church has meaning when one goes to be with others in the community, not so much when one goes to an edifice. Early church lacked purpose-built structures. God may be found anywhere there is belief, and it’s even better when He is found with others.
Faith and critical thinking are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, this; great post Fred. Victor Frankl proved that man can live without food, water, warmth, sex, shelter, and material needs met for indeterminate times based on what he saw in Nazi concentration camps. What he cannot live without is meaning. When society kills God, it will make its own, an age old patterns that always results in catastrophe.
Yes, perfect. You need never think. Everything was handed to you to believe and make you feel all cozy inside. Manufactured community just as this article says.
Scripture, tradition, reason, experience - four elements of method to understand God - John Wesley. Faith starting as faith alone can be nourished through critical thinking and evidence.
https://www.umc.org/en/content/our-four-theological-guidelines
Is the concept of God patent-protected?
Is He public domain?
Is the concept definable in human language?
I agree with you when you identify the human need to honor something bigger than themselves or otherwise risk a void in their lives. But that is as a far as I will agree with your post. The void can be filled with religion, cult religions, just plain cults, and all sorts of other fillers. You have found Jesus to fill the void and I am happy for you, but it's not the only way. Please consider your statement that the only way to fill the void is Jesus or your conception of God is an arrogant belief. I mean this respectfully.
Every single major world religion claims their’s is the only way, their’s is the right way. This is not unique to Christianity alone, or to this man who believes this way. I would expect someone with a strong faith to feel that their faith is the only way if they indeed are truly practicing their faith. I don’t get offended by it in the least and don’t see it as something to be corrected, chastised, or even noted that he should consider what he is saying as being arrogant. I think that is more arrogant than what he is saying.
I find it interesting how Christianity’s teachings themselves are the least threatening out of all and more humble and forgiving than any others (when practiced authentically and not radically,) yet they threaten more people in the world than any other religion. That is interesting indeed.
Not every single major world religion makes that claim. Judaism does not make that claim. Hinduism does not make that claim. Buddhism does not make that claim. Confucianism does not make that claim. As far as I know, the only major religions that make that claim are Christianity (and Christian adjacent, eg LDS) and Islam. Christians and Moslems are free to believe their religion is the right way, I don't care, but it's still arrogant.
Actually they do Lol. Any spiritual following will feel their way is the best way or the only way, or why follow it?
Judaism absolutely refutes that Jesus was God’s son and they wholeheartedly believe only they are God’s chosen people. If using your definition of arrogance that’s pretty arrogant. Although I see much support for their belief in the Old Testament and understand why they think that way, and don’t consider it arrogant myself.
Both Hinduism and Buddhism certainly believe their faith is the right way or they wouldn’t follow it. The most arrogant man I have ever met in my entire life was a Hindu. It was his way or the highway and he treated you like less than a worm if you were of a different faith. So it comes down to whether you choose to learn what their faith really teaches (accepting of all faiths) or judge them by their rotten apples. I choose to not judge them by the few that I have met. Both Hindu and Buddhists have multiple deities and gods too that they feel very strongly about. But they are no more or less tolerant of other religions than true Christianity is. IF we are speaking about tolerance. Maybe you have yet to meet an authentic Christian. Not surprising. There are so few these days.
Confucianism isn’t a major world religion but a set of philosophies and ethics. They don’t claim a diety/God at all.
As for arrogance, religious pluralism or atheism is the most arrogant of them all doing the same thing they accuse Christianity of.
As far as I understand about Christianity, It is not arrogant if they believe that the Bible is truly God’s word and that everything it says is indeed the truth given by him. And if the word of God says there is only one way to him, and they believe what he says, I see it not as arrogance but obedience. Obedience to God’s word is very important to them and understandable.
Arrogance on the other hand is selfish and an offensive tactic only, by overly defensive people. Obedience is not selfish at all, and neither offensive or defensive. I’d rather work alongside an obedient mind than a truly arrogant mind any day.
I find it really interesting how much their faith is twisted and despised by so many. To say they are arrogant is openly despising them. Possibly many of them deserve such attacks, I know I have met quite a few, but the religion itself outside of the practice of sinful men is rather beautiful. Doesn’t deserve the backlash so many want to give it. Again, censoring and manipulating the message happens everywhere with everything and it also happened with Christianity for selfish and political purposes.
My reply seemed to disappear so I apologize if this is a repost. Anyway, I should have known better than to get into this conversation so I'm giving myself the last word, and leaving it at that. You are just wrong. Here is what a Chabad (Orthodox) rabbi had to say, you can look up the other religions on your own if you care to. "The nations of the world are all G‑d's children. He doesn't treat them all the same because they aren't all the same. He wants each nation to develop in its own way. So each nation has a different path to reach their full potential. To the Jewish nation he gave the Torah as our way of expressing our souls. But Judaism is not for everyone. We don't believe that a non-Jew needs to become Jewish to find G‑d." https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/160971/jewish/Is-Judaism-the-Truth.htm
Well then the people I have met in the Judaism faith have given it a very false picture. Just like many Christians have given a false picture of what their faith really teaches. That’s my whole point. I don’t think you have learned what it actually teaches if you’re calling them arrogant.
My whole point in all these posts is that you shouldn’t be so quick to criticize someone for sharing their belief as it relates to their faith. You don’t have to respond at all if you have nothing to add but insults. That’s really the only thing that was arrogant here. I just felt like defending them because no one ever does and it’s wrong. Free speech and all that. He was using his to try and lift people up. You were using yours to try and tear them down.
Fred, the prophet Jeremiah said the human condition is actually worse than just aimlessness- "The heart is desperately wicked, who can know it?" You can look it up.
Nailed it.
Good for you. Do you imply/believe your journey is the only possible/acceptable one as in “I’m The Truth”, or are you just sharing your personal opinion and accept others exist?
What is your purpose in trying to bait someone who expressed their faith?
yes, I was wondering that myself, la chevalerie vit
should we constantly bait others that we feel they must explain their belief
as if they are forcing us, I hope not. I do believe in God
In my experience it has most frequently been atheists who demean and ridicule POF as silly for not subscribing to their creatorless belief system, rarely the other way, perhaps because of the teachings of love thy neighbor (golden rule).
Belief and critical thinking are not two disparate worldviews, they are complementary, and the latter can refine the former, as it has for C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Wesley, and many others. Can you accept that my critical thinking may legitimately lead me to different conclusions than yours?
Methodism combines scripture, tradition, reason, and experience as four pillars of a method for a faith in God. This is one way of answering your question. One may hold beliefs and apply critical thinking (reason) to them based on evidence (experience). https://www.umc.org/en/content/our-four-theological-guidelines
True belief is necessarily uncritical, unless you are simply redefining it out of existence due to the apparent success of scientific inquiry that leads to technology and alleviates so much of the physical suffering that religion sells itself as alleviating in the end. But most by far would prefer to feel good now, if "only" physically.
I’m just trying to understand, will you allow me? By the way, your own comment about “faith and critical thinking are not mutually exclusive” is a very interesting proposition. Will you care to explain? Faith per definition is a grace, something bestowed upon you by the grace of god (not my definition, that of the church, not the building, the community). Critical thinking requires you to open up the basis of your beliefs, and question, and test them, very much as in an empirical journey. So what gives? Are these world views compatible as you affirm, and if yes, how can they be reconciled?
Critical thinking merely requires examining and understanding other beliefs, not accepting them.
And faith doesn’t always have to be blind. You fly on airlines because you have faith (or maybe not today…) in the engineers who claim to have built the aircraft according to good scientific principles. If you understand the principles underlying the truth behind belief it strengthens (or breaks) your faith depending upon the validity of the object of your faith.
There is an excellent record (until recently) of airline safety, so flying really isn't an act of faith where there is excellent empirical evidence.
We had a course in Catholic high school called Apologetics - the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. I was very taken with the idea. However, when we would get to a sticky point in the Catholic religion/belief system, the priest (a TOR or teacher of religion) would always say, "well, you have to have faith". I think that course had a lot to do with propelling me further into critical thinking and away from religion, and, in fact, a belief in god, gods, or most things supernatural. I have tried to "have faith" through my mother's, husband's, and my own cancers. It didn't work. I was in the proverbial foxhole, but still an atheist. I admire people who have faith, but it is not something you can fake or attest to if you don't.
Faith may be considered a grace, yes. That's hardly anyone's definition though. There are various things that can be considered to be graces.
"Critical thinking" seems to come up a bit short when it comes to serious questions, such as "why should I not just club you in the head and take your stuff?". How might you approach a question such as that?
critical thinking would allow you to see that society or civilization, which is desired I believe, would crumble if everyone did that. We're seeing a bit of that with what is happening in some places where people are allowed to do just what you said.
"If everyone did that" is a different matter, and honestly a bogus argument. Various people will do various things for various reasons, mostly completely unrelated to what I do and outside of my control or knowledge.
How does critical thinking guide what *I* do?
de bait or debate?
I subscribe to your wish for our dear cat. I suspect he may be about to set his foot on the path already, as he wrote, a month or so back, that essay in which he discussed his concern for what a western culture without Christianity would look like. And he didn't like what he saw. post scriptum --- I really like what you have written here.
I attended UCLA in the early 90’s. Over half of the school was Asian descent. Still is. Does anyone in their right mind think these kids are misdirected, involved in silly protests, or acting like babies. I can tell you right now, they are NOT! Because if they did, they would bring shame on their family, they would be yanked out of their university education and put to work by mom and dad. No second chances.
No, right now there are a bunch of paid, open society agitators, at each of these universities protesting. And a few kids who realise they are now of age to be drafted into the military at the drop of a hat.
Flat earth movement is benign. Hey, if they think the earth is flat who are they hurting. I can think of quite a few people in high places who have HURT us and our world over the past four years. I would be a bit more concerned about these monsters than a group of kids protesting, or flat earth disciples.
Separate the paid agitators, find out who,paid them to agitate, convict them if guilty of crime, and get on with life. While you are at it, Identify the pharma, medical, government and deep state characters who have made an excellent attempt to ruin our lives. Now they belong behind bars for a very long time.
A lot of these paid "protestors" were probably protesting for BLM four years ago.
And it will be something else in a couple of years. And a new group of unfulfilled people to follow them. But hey I grew up in the 60’s and my draft number was 109. Funny what you remember 6 decades later
"i wish i was more educated!”
This is hilariously funny. A 6 word sentence with an egregious grammatical error.
I know US Americans generally have poor language skills, but one might have expected universities would have weeded out the worst offenders prior to admission.
Yeah... Columbia/NYU students making that error is, well... to be expected, I suppose.
Uselessness is a bad bad feeling.
You ever see how happy and proud a toddler is when you ask one to carry something over there for mommy?
These kids were in daycare when they were toddlers. They weren't really learning during their most lively and non-exhausted hours to do something important for the person they loved most in all the world.
And here we are.
I was so lucky that when I had to return to work after three months' maternity leave, the now unhusband transferred to the night shift and was home to take over when I had to leave, and then my mom came over to let him go to sleep, and my kid was never in the hands of strangers until he started nursery school in a tiny neighborhood place run by a woman whose son went to school with my brother and my mom knew her from the Jewish center.
Too many people who must absolutely work outside the home while having to raise their kids somehow were not so lucky. And of course the ones who are far more privileged--you should see what those kids look like, the toddlers pushed in strollers facing forward by blank-faced nannies. I saw them on the crowded streets of Manhattan when I went out to buy lunch. Tiny kids in a sea of grownup legs and at just the right level to breathe in bus fumes.
You betcha here we are.
I think you have put your finger on it. Of all the comments I read, many of them quite good, yours stands out to me. Since WWII the countries have shifted, by intentional plan, from one parent going out every day to earn a living to needing both parents to do so to stay afloat Day care, early preschool, supervised activities all day til the parents come home from work, then add divorced single parent and dysfunctional families. Throw head meds into the mix and voila! modern society. Any wonder the toddler-adults want to find (quoting Firesign Theater here): "a bunch of guys who dress alike and follow them around."
What a lot of people overlook as they complain about women going to work instead of staying home with the kids is that women have always had to work while raising children. That's why societies everywhere invented baby-carrying thingies as simple as a wrapping cloth or as elaborate as cradle boards because mom had to plant rice or gather berries etc. etc. long before the kids could toddle.
And by the time a kid was four she was holding a baby sibling on her hip.
Poor urban women took in washing or boarders and the money-earning activities took place in the home. Or maybe they had no way of earning money and the kids died pretty often from non-fatal illnesses that are bad for the malnourished.
It was only in the '50s in this country that we had such prosperity that the sight of middle-class women home all the time seemed normal and the way life should be.
So many of the knit and crochet designers posting their patterns on a fiber arts website say in their bios how they were taught to do these things by their grandmas.
Now so many of the grandmas just want to visit and not teach. Community is people who love you and want to show you how to do things that are useful and beautiful skills that you'll feel proud of accomplishing.
Thanks for you addition.
Great thread.
I would add one more item to the satanic brew undermining stable society: the trend-turned-requirement of working 50-60 (and more!) hours a week.
A modifying ingredient: First question at a social gathering: ‘what do you do?’ Followed by commiserating about how little time one has to pursue leisure activities. Civic activities not even on the menu. POOF there goes our republic.
Sent to places to be merely kept “safe” and “entertained” instead of engaged in meaningful investigations, responsibilities, and relationships. We need to look at early care / “education” differently if we are indeed going to have a society that needs it as much as we seem to think.
Oh…wait…we’ll not do that cause it’s just a perfect way to begin the indoctrination earlier.
And employ (mostly) women in low paying work.
A healthy society begins with healthy parents and intentional childbearing for good reasons rather than less-good reasons.
And it's not more early-childhood education we need. It's retirement-fund credit for women staying home to raise their children, because one can lose an/the earning spouse for many reasons. If a woman who wants to stay home has some minimal assurance that she won't starve in middle- and older age because she takes herself out of the earning pool during the years her kids need her most, she'll be more comfortable making such a choice.
Children most need socialization into normal society which means neighborhoods where you encounter children and old people regularly and learn to interact with all of them from the start.
It's a very hard truth to learn that one cannot have everything at the same time. Children do actually need intense parenting/grandparenting attention for the first four years at least. You cannot pay people to love your kids for you and if the people you pay don't actually love kids in general, even worse.
Well said! My first grandchild is due in mid-June and I'm planning to spend as much time as I can with her and any siblings who come along. I've been telling my son and his wife that at least the first 2 years are so very important for language and social development, and they have to take the time and spend the energy now, no matter what. I just retired in January after a 43-year stint as a fed civilian but I did take off (no outside pay!) about 5 years when my kids were small so I know whereof I speak.
PS: Mazal tov and every good wish to you and your son and family!
Thank you so much!
A loving normal environment where nobody goes in for "enrichment advice by experts" but just does all the normal happy things with babies from the start, doing all the instinctive things that pour out of new mommies and grandmas because we are hardwired to do them, is what every baby needs.
Hard lessons were learned from the kibbutz system begun during British Mandatory Palestine and carried over into Israel, the independent nation. The kibbutz children's wing, staffed by caring devoted childrearers, produced generations of kids with powerful group identity and serious problems with interpersonal relationships. It turns out that babies and toddlers need their mommies and not even the most dedicated modern thinkers about childrearing.
Yeah. And a whole lot of them are being paid. And a whole lot of them are not ‘students’. And there is government and corporate money that is funding the radical groups that organize this shit.
Here’s the solution. Let them burn it all down. All of it. UCLA reduced to dozens of piles of smoking rubble. Then reclaim the land and turn it into something for society. Like green space and affordable housing.
Let’s be honest. You are dealing with the most self absorbed, useless, selfish generation in the history of the world.
The message to them is simple. Fuck off.
i suspect that not that many of them are boing paid.
why bother? you only need to pay a few and the rest will follow.
small numbers of folks "throwing parties" can attract a lot of guests, especially if there are large groups of kids around with nothing to do.
That makes sense. It only takes a handful of paid "ringleaders" to attract a disillusioned crowd.
So true. A few souless agitators paid to plan & lead the ignorant wannabes to follow along. They’ll be lucky if they grow out of their awkwardness- like most of us. It’s really a natural right of passage to feel awkward, but the narrative wants to make you’re a victim & blame it on the wrong body, parents etc. anything but the truth - you’re immature & will grow out of it.
They are getting paid, many of them. Look at the agitators, they look more like gang boys and girls, not uni students.
💯
I really think a lot of this has to do with the lack of fatherly figures, what you point out and gato's point(s).
It almost always comes back to family, being loved & belonging. That’s why communists/ Marxists whatever work hard to divide families. Hence, the feminist movement was born out of a plan headed up by cia operative Gloria Stienem to denigrate & create a feeling of unfulfillment in mothers who wanted to stay home & nurture their families. Also to push along the bad patriarch narrative, goes hand in hand. Put your kids in daycare, we’ll take care of them. Any state run education is a bad thing, involves nasty, manipulative indoctrination of all kinds, no truth & primes some kids for fitted brown shirts. Thankfully many are onto it & are refusing to participate. Not enough though.
Spot on
Yes, RG! Just about any sociological study you read about crime and its roots seems to show a common thread of families with absent or distant fathers who never imbued their children with any of what we would call traditional family values and sensible world view.
Nailed it
Do you realize you sound like one of those "build back better" folks? Maybe you're more aligned with them than you think....
Blaming people for trying to find their way in life when there are even LESS road-signs today than when I (now sixty) was a child (and, to be sure, there weren't a hell of a lot of them then, either) strikes me as being less than charitable. Perhaps consider el gato's suggestion of tough love more seriously as a better way to go than stiffly declaring "worst generation EVAH", and consigning them (which are YOUNG PEOPLE, after all) to history's dustbin.
For my part, I don't know how kids are alive today. It's really the saddest thing, and blaming the victims of bad parenting and social/media mind control is like taking another roundhouse at a battered wife seeking help.
That’s comical. We bailed out of what already was an unconventional ‘normal’ life, moved onto our sailboat, and our boat remains our home today. I’m about as far from ‘build back better’ as one could get. My preferred form of govt is none, just as the Founders intended. Local control and a Federal Govt that fulfills their three Constitutional duties; protect the border, protect private property, adjudicate disputes between states. Anything beyond that I reject.
Having travelled at least 50,000 sea miles over the past decade plus, visiting many countries and cultures, making friends and spending time with different people (including dozens and dozens of young people) all over the world, I stand by what I said.
The most self absorbed and selfish generation in the history of the world. In fact, let me add insufferable to the list.
You are making excuses for bad behavior. That’s crap. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t joined the ‘protests’ at the closest university in support of that bad behavior. They’re all ‘organic’ of course.
As a mid 50s kid, I had no advantages in life other than two parents who loved me. I paid my own way through college. I paid my own way through law school. I never asked for or expected help from anyone. If I got some, I was incredibly grateful and remain so today. When I passed the bar (with at the time the highest number of perfect essay scores in the state’s history), I wrote every high school teacher I could locate a letter thanking them for helping me make that happen. Nobody told me to do that. I did it because I was grateful. Walk around Columbia or UCLA today and do you see kids who are grateful? Haha.
The useless generation is not, as you allude, ‘trying to make their way in life’. To the contrary, they are looking for (apparently) people like you who will cut them massive slack, pay off their student loans, and give them UBI because the job they were promised just doesn’t pay enough to fund their party lifestyle.
They are nothing but sheep who can’t conjur up an independent thought or perform logical analysis if their lives depended on it. Don’t forget, 99% of them lined up for the death vax. So most of them are unlikely to make it past 40 anyway.
I'm sorry, friend, but this is "OK boomer" type stuff. *I* suggested being a tad more encouraging "than burn it all down", but you piled on like I hurt your feelings, and needed a "correction". Allow me to retort.
I made it pretty clear the young have been betrayed by at LEAST their virtue-signaling parents, and needed a little tough love as el gato suggested. That seemed to escape your rage at me not nodding like a trained seal at the very worst of your anarchic impulse: to set a fire to UCLA--which I don't accept as a realistic or desired endpoint, regardless of where one comes down on this "issue" (or even if you were being serious or not.) My WHOLE point was PRECISELY that: a rejection of hyperbole that served none but your already set opinion.
I appreciate you pulled yourself by your own bootstraps. Good for you. Not everyone can, but your doing so doesn't make you any better than the children you condemn. I mean, look at this thread! Have all your travels not granted you the wisdom (and humility) to recognize that just MAYBE the obvious madness unfortunately displayed by young people may just be a logical reaction to a world where they have been stripped of soul, of meaning, and hope (which, I note, you seem fine with, as "most of them are unlikely to make it past 40 anyway". That's cold, bitter stuff, dude, and it doesn't seem like the lessons of the Covid Experience have fully settled in for you.) That is on us: for not creating a nurturing environment--which many of us, in our narcissism, indulged with performance trophy culture instead of actually passing down the wisdom young people need to be viable. We allowed this situation to be created so we could shop at Costco and indulge *our* every whim, while neglecting the kids to television and social media. (This casual "I've got mine, Jack" ethos is also why the US I grew up in, as sorry as it was, was a far better place than what we've left the past two or three generations. Simply, "we" had a peace dividend, and decided whistle past the graveyard while our "leaders" stole it, instead spending it on full spectrum dominance. How can ANYONE brought up in that insanity be anything less than a little off?)
Perhaps you might be better served taking a step away from the keyboard before you blow a gasket (and, yes, I understand you didn't get the "death vax" so SADS may not be in your future, but that level of anger--expressed in an online forum where none are accountable beyond the reputations they establish with people of like mind--doesn't seem to be doing you any favors.)
I haven't lived in the US in a couple of years now, but I saw the front-lines when we lived in Portland, OR. And, yes, I will grant that what happened in 2020 is a reason we don't live there anymore. But, I could never summon anything more than momentary rage that inevitably descended into soul-numbing sadness at what was happening. If anything has been learned the past few years (which we can trace back at least 10000 years) is that humans make mistakes, often homicidal ones, and it is up to us to REASONABLY respond with appropriate sanction against those behaving badly. That's not happening in the US anymore, and you shaking your fist at the young for acting on the manipulated reality the "leadership" provide for them cradle to grave may feel good, but you're missing the target. Point your anger where it belongs, and if so moved, act on it.
I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm sure you're a decent fellow, well-meaning even. But playing Disco Inferno on the UCLA campus is a tune too far for me.
How abut this: you stop burning for a conflagration on the UCLA campus, and I'll nod my head more readily should our paths cross again?
Nice. As a ‘Boomer’ it’s interesting to see you playing the generation card. Given your obvious level of intelligence, I would have anticipated better.
There is no denying that 18 years of govt schools could turn anyone’s brain to a wasteland. And that the corrupt idiots running the Us into the ground on purpose aren’t making it easy. Those are reasons. But not excuses.
When each of our boys turned 8 we sat them down and informed them, that if they wanted to go to college, they had to figure it out on their own. They had a decade to figure it out. Our oldest determined he would become good enough at something, that he would get a scholarship. And he did. He was already a ski racer and he became an outstanding ski racer and earned a full ride scholarship to a small school in Montana. We gave him all the help we could and over 10 years, spent 10x on racing than it would have cost us to just pay for his college. But that wasn’t the point and at 36 he knows what we did, why we did it, and he is incredibly grateful…and a very successful software developer.
Our youngest chose to not go to college. Instead, he became a welder. And then he met a girl and they wanted to start a business. Mowing lawns, doing landscaping, plowing snow. But they had no money. So the moved to a small town in northern MI, lived in a tent in a national forest for 18 months, through a full MI winter, while they worked and saved money to start their business. A decade later they have a cabin in the woods they built themselves, no debt, and a nice little business.
Could we have gotten them started with a loan or by purchasing some equipment. Yes. Just like we could have paid for the oldest ones college. But again, that wasn’t the point. They now look back on their time in the tent and realize just how far they have come. And they are grateful. And they now know why we didn’t just set them up.
And on that point, they would like to grow their business. But they cannot. Why. Because they can’t hire any help. The insufferable, self absorbed generation does not want to work. They’ve had 16-20 year olds quit in the first day. Multiple times. They’ve tried working with the local high school to get co-op students who might want to learn the ins and outs of running a small business. It’s totally useless and they’ve given up.
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact”
And the facts are obvious.
I don’t know where you live so I cannot assess what cultural differences versus the US there may be. But in so many of the places we have been, elders are respected, children are respectful, and parents don’t put up with bullshit.
As you correctly point out, there certainly are many reasons why the culture is what it is. And you left the country, for Gods sake, at least partially because of that. So it’s very rich that you are defending the very type of behavior that caused you to leave. That’s nice.
Which essentially proves my original point. Which is to say, it all needs to be burned down. All of it. And something better can be built from the ashes. When a segment of society expects to have it handed to them on a silver platter, because that is what they have been taught, that is a problem that will never be solved. Unless it is destroyed. So let them destroy it. They are going to seal their fate one way or the other. Let’s make it the other, so the rest of us can enjoy the few remaining years we might have on the planet.
And please, learn the difference between literal and figurative speech. It is a difficult concept for many, but I’m betting you know the difference. But your narrative doesn’t work if you admit it.
Enjoy your day.
I know who I'd rather endure tough times with and it isn't Deskpoet. The name alone is pretty much a giveaway.
Aw thanks brother. Indeed. We are on a sailboat that can go, and has already been, just about anywhere in the world. We are always prepped with 50 gallons of diesel, 100 gallons of water, 16 gallons of gas (for generator and RIB engine), food for 30 days, solar, inverter, radar, plotter, sonar, a big anchor and 250 ft of chain. Although at the moment we are waiting for parts to fix our sick engine. I’ve got a locker full of 1500 dollars worth of spares…but not the one I need. LOL.
Also, lots of metal on board. Precious and otherwise.
It was pretty funny. Dude defends the useless ones and then admits they are the reason he left Portland and most likely the country. Haha.
Thx for starting my day with a smile!
VERY well said
In a way all the students who have student loans are being paid. They are receiving money from the government and we all know that the "loans" will probably be unpaid, mostly forgiven by a leftist government someday.
Well who raised them. They are just trying to fit in to their social paradigm as all people have done over time.
And I'm a Gen Xer
Bullshit. So rioting on campus, barricading buildings, beating Jewish girls, all while pleading for people to bring them vegan food is “trying to fit into their social paradigm”.
Sounds to me that you may as well join them.
What a bunch of crap.
How many of them are actually engaging in violent behavior as opposed to just being obnoxious
Nothing about any of these protest are organic
It’s all for the purpose of us fighting each other
No doubt about that.
If you arrive in a vehicle with bank robber and you enter the bank and stand around texting your wife while the bank is robbed and then you leave with the robber and get in the car and drive away…guess what crime you will be charged with.
It’s totally amazing to me that you and others want to defend these criminals. It’s no wonder that the majority of them are useless and self absorbed. It’s people like you that give them permission to act like animals.
Go find a safe space. Eventually they will be coming for all of us.
😂😂
"I wish I was more educated", she said as she shut down the school.
It's good they are getting practice putting up tents. That will come in handy when they are living on the streets.
Down by the river. 😄
In a van!
https://youtu.be/Xv2VIEY9-A8?si=eUvUip2lGBZMpWTB
And, "the revolution forgot to pack a lunch".
Perfect!
And yet they're all old enough to vote, and they'll all be driven out to vote in coming elections. Makes one's blood run cold, does it not?
indeed. it's a substantial group that's a decade behind in their emotional development being put into adult situations for which they are clearly not ready.
this is not an easy thing to fix, but it's also not that big a group. a lot of the kids are fine. we've just been creating a world where the loony and demanding ones who adopt bizarre, marginal views get treated like a protected and privileged class.
if we knock that off, the rest will start to heal.
Lots of them are on the spectrum. Neurologically damaged.
" a lot of the kids are fine" - true. My three twenty-something sons are fine. They are as incredulous as I am at all this nonsense.
i know lots of great teenagers.
they just want their world back from the deranged crybullies who has become such a protected class.
i think we should give it to them.
There's a group that needs to learn first hand the meaning of the word "consequences".
They* paid for a meal plan, not catering.
*Or their parents did. Or government money did. Or whatever.
When the writer Mordecai Richler was questioned by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when he was a young man in the late 1940s about his attendance at events put on by "red" organizations, his answer was simple: I wanted to meet girls. I think all this cosplay is part of that.
A lot of it, I think, is that these are the children of Putnam's "Bowling Alone" society: atomized and rudderless, with parents who threatened to sue school boards when their Precious Ones scraped their knees on the playground.
Social media just amplified the phenomenon whereas children of the 80s like me would hog the photocopier at the library to produce shitty 'zines and look to Ally Sheedy as the hot emo-girl we all wanted to bang. Now their inner Cluster B broken psyches are exposed for all to see, and, at least recently, they are celebrated and rewarded for it whereas my generation was tougher: kids like these were called "spazzes" and thrown in dumpsters, and the Lousy Deans of Animal House would hand out expulsions like cards at a blackjack table. That societal check on unhinged narcissism seemed to keep the lid on the kettle back then, whereas now it's been weaponized to obscure institutional rot.
>>>>I wanted to meet girls
Uh, this actually is explanatory for many things... playing the guitar, wearing a uniform, et al.
"Uh, this actually is explanatory for many things... playing the guitar"
Meh. Drummers always seem to get the tricks.
And the guy why plays kazoo.
yeah and about $100k in my twenties!...:)
Red Guards: mindlessly supporting the current thing since 1966. https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/jordan-peterson-struggle-session-episode-3
Have you ever noticed how the most extreme society-smashing versions of communism took hold in the most conservative filial-obedience trained societies? They couldn't wait to murder grandpa and grandma.
You're videos are fantastic!
This is brilliant. It is a reflection on a group of children who never learned how to reflect.
I think more and more parents are waking up to the fact that college education has changed quite a bit from what they went through. While there are still valid cases for higher education, many are finding that a lot of them just aren't useful in today's world. Even some kids are waking up to the idea of going into a trade job as opposed to huge amounts of debt.
The actors in today's crisis seem to be largely paid. The signs and tents are all well-produced and plentiful - something not found in a true, naturally-forming protest. (Much like pallets of bricks left near gatherings to "protest" St. Floyd?) There were way too many people pulled out from recent arrests who didn't seem to be even close to your typical college student.
I think the "please send us food" thing was great. No self-awareness. No grasp of reality. I think many who haven't been gripped by the "join the group" fever can easily see how ludicrous that position is.
Personally, I think more states need to do what FL did. State quite clearly what's allowed for a real protest and what crosses the line. Signs? Gatherings? Chants? Cool. Tents, blocking access to buildings or "taking over" buildings, violence against other students, and such? Kicked out without prejudice - for students and employees. I think most of the "protesters" de-escalated that pretty quickly down to just signs because it was clear that anything else would cross the line and result in quick consequences.
The heart of it all is the need for community and meaning, and the forces of manipulation are contorting even *that* into a warped definition of “belonging” in order to get out ahead of anything meaningful.
I noticed this during the 2008 and 2012 Ron Paul campaigns. I’m 47, and I grew up in the early days of Harry Browne and Ron Paul and Mary Ruwart; I knew the principles and the consequences and what it meant to cleave to them come what may.
And I could see *immediately* that half the r3VOLution was just kids looking for a cool club; it didn’t surprise me in the slightest when they all went over to Bernie.
I meet people at Porcfest who bemoan the loss of that momentum but I know that a lot of those kids were completely unprepared for the demands of a free society, intellectually or emotionally. We can’t have the nice things because most people can’t handle them.
The higher ed infrastructure has to collapse, along with institutionalized education under the state. It just infantilizes and abuses children born into an increasingly unmoored society.
(And organized religions can also abuse and infantilize; institutions sclerose and obedience to status quo becomes the prime directive)
We get out of this by getting our children out of it. Sacrifice everything if you have to. The sooner you make that decision, the easier it is. If I told you what we lived on, and how, when my babies were small (AND I had a serious cancer twice in that time), many would not believe me. But I knew I had ONE priority.
No regerts, as they say.
Nice - a fan of Dr. No.
Jib. Cut thereof. Like.
The fact that there are professional protesters involved and behind all of this makes me think that the government and other special interest groups understand the obvious truths you just explained all too well and purposefully harness its power to advance a narrative or position and lend it credibility by their numbers. And they do this at the cost of innocent young minds or confused older adults just wanting to belong. They are nothing more than tools, and that makes what they belong to unstable.
of course. this is where the marxist "useful idiots" have always come from.
it's why the opening moves in the marxist playbooks are always the destruction of affinity and community and values.
the wipe out family, religion, patriotism, belief in markets, liberty, and fair play. they come for social organizations and universities and gradeschools. anything that fosters community. the alienated are easy to manipulate, they are already dying to join something.
The rich kids yes… my friends who have generated real wealth all have wannabe marxists kids. Also, they grew up in the “every kid deserves a trophy” era.