What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[malloc]

Can you imagine how long a list of things that both 1) originated in the West and 2) are hated by Christian fundamentalists would be?

Sure but there is a difference between Christian fundamentalists and mainstream Christianity. Rotting bones makes it sound like Islam in general prohibits chess, not just the hardliners.

[Travis B.]

Can you imagine how long a list of things that both 1) originated in the West and 2) are hated by Christian fundamentalists would be?

Sure but there is a difference between Christian fundamentalists and mainstream Christianity. Rotting bones makes it sound like Islam in general prohibits chess, not just the hardliners.

Just like how a large percentage of Christians don't care about every little dictate in the Bible, a large percentage of Muslims don't care about every little dictate in the Quran and hadith.

[zompist]

There's an assumed metaphysics behind mainstream 21st century thinking on both the left and the right: 1. every individual belongs to a cultural collective, 2. culture determines values and that 3. the values of each culture Platonically emanate out of its religion.

FWIW... on (1) I'd say every individual comes out of a culture, but they can change cultures, or change themselves. No one is as deracinated as they think they are, but then no one is obligated to stay close to their roots.

(2) seems like a truism... it's saying a moral system produces morality. But "culture" isn't a single thing. We can criticize a culture's morality... though only from some other moral system that itself has cultural roots.

(3) This wasn't even true 500 years ago, and it's far from true today. You and a couple billion other people take values from Marxism, and why not? Religion itself will tell you that the power structure is often scandalously irreligious. Power has its own systems to validate itself. So does science, or art.

[Raphael]

Can you imagine how long a list of things that both 1) originated in the West and 2) are hated by Christian fundamentalists would be?

Sure but there is a difference between Christian fundamentalists and mainstream Christianity. Rotting bones makes it sound like Islam in general prohibits chess, not just the hardliners.

IIRC r b explicitly said "Islamists", not "Muslims".

[rotting bones]

There's an assumed metaphysics behind mainstream 21st century thinking on both the left and the right: 1. every individual belongs to a cultural collective, 2. culture determines values and that 3. the values of each culture Platonically emanate out of its religion.

FWIW... on (1) I'd say every individual comes out of a culture, but they can change cultures, or change themselves. No one is as deracinated as they think they are, but then no one is obligated to stay close to their roots.

(2) seems like a truism... it's saying a moral system produces morality. But "culture" isn't a single thing. We can criticize a culture's morality... though only from some other moral system that itself has cultural roots.

(3) This wasn't even true 500 years ago, and it's far from true today. You and a couple billion other people take values from Marxism, and why not? Religion itself will tell you that the power structure is often scandalously irreligious. Power has its own systems to validate itself. So does science, or art.

I wouldn't describe what I get from Marxism as values per se. I wrote a medium-length post to explain my perspective on these issues: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... -ideology/

[rotting bones]

Can you imagine how long a list of things that both 1) originated in the West and 2) are hated by Christian fundamentalists would be?

Sure but there is a difference between Christian fundamentalists and mainstream Christianity. Rotting bones makes it sound like Islam in general prohibits chess, not just the hardliners.

There are hadiths to that effect which I'm starting to remember. I have definitely heard a scholar say that thinking over a chess board is analogous to a pagan contemplating an idol. I think it was Islam’s great hero, Ali, who imparted this nugget of wisdom to posterity. Shias think this is more important than Sunnis, but Shiite law is not primarily based on hadith like Sunni law. It’s based on mysticism and “logic”, al-mantiq.

Hadiths are not binding in Islam the way the Quran is. The most important hadiths are the ones considered by tradition to be reliable from every angle. "From every angle" means no reputable scholar has seriously disputed their authenticity, they are compatible with the Quran, and they promote goodness in line with human reason. This is a very high bar. The famous example is the hadith of the ants, which forbids collective punishment: https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadi ... phet-ants/ (This is an a fortiori structure. Islamic scholarship regards animals to be sentient, but less than human. If ants are protected from collective punishment, humans are even more so.)

The problem with the hadiths is that like the gospels, they were collected long after Muhammad. The early (meaning really early, pre-Golden Age) Muslims considered collecting hadiths to be an idolatrous activity, detracting from Muhammad's human nature. They thought the Quran was more than sufficient. Nowadays, totally ignoring all hadiths is considered to be a non-traditional position called Quranism. It is small, but growing in popularity.

Note that even Saudi Arabia holds chess tournaments. I think some people just enjoy recoiling in horror from various things. They like the feeling of being able to identify wrongness according to ideological frameworks and the rush of horror that follows. It’s like living your life as a secret agent. These people often end up being called "geniuses" if they are able to channel this addiction into a technical field. The rapid identification of errors makes them right more often than not.

[malloc]

Note that even Saudi Arabia holds chess tournaments. I think some people just enjoy recoiling in horror from various things. They like the feeling of being able to identify wrongness according to ideological frameworks and the rush of horror that follows. It’s like living your life as a secret agent. These people often end up being called "geniuses" if they are able to channel this addiction into a technical field. The rapid identification of errors makes them right more often than not.

It does seem odd though, that Muslims would ignore emphatic prohibitions like this en masse. Nobody accuses Hindus of secretly eating hamburgers or observant Jews of working on Saturdays after all.

[zompist]

Nobody accuses Hindus of secretly eating hamburgers

I got news for you.

[malloc]

Nobody accuses Hindus of secretly eating hamburgers

I got news for you.

I have often heard of people getting lynched or threatened with violence for eating beef in India although I thought they were mostly Muslims facing sectarian persecution from Hindu nationalists. This is quite different than Hindus all secretly eating beef, which be analogous to the kind of hypocrisy that Rotting Bones has often ascribed to Muslims.

[rotting bones]

Nobody accuses Hindus of secretly eating hamburgers

I got news for you.

I have often heard of people getting lynched or threatened with violence for eating beef in India although I thought they were mostly Muslims facing sectarian persecution from Hindu nationalists. This is quite different than Hindus all secretly eating beef, which be analogous to the kind of hypocrisy that Rotting Bones has often ascribed to Muslims.

Hindus eat beef all the time in Bengal. This is a much more of an emphatic prohibition in Hinduism than chess is in Islam. That's one reason why BJP used to be controversial in Bengal. Traditionally, petit bourgeois Vaishnavites typically avoided beef; the Shakta majority, devotees of Kali, did not. In the recent past, educated Hindus of every kind ate all kinds of meat before the contemporary rise of fascism.

Note that the upper class that promotes fascism in India eat beef all the time. Such prohibitions ONLY apply to the poor and minorities. "Morality" is a tactic designed to break our spirits. Think of social systems, not values: https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... -ideology/

Don't take my word for it. You can try searching for terms yourself: Saudi Arabia chess tournament, etc.

[malloc]

Hindus eat beef all the time in Bengal. This is a much more of an emphatic prohibition in Hinduism than chess is in Islam. That's one reason why BJP used to be controversial in Bengal. Traditionally, petit bourgeois Vaishnavites typically avoided beef; the Shakta majority, devotees of Kali, did not. In the recent past, educated Hindus of every kind ate all kinds of meat before the contemporary rise of fascism.

Quite interesting and something I had never heard before.

How does your theory of material conditions over culture explain the fact that many areas with similar material conditions nonetheless differ greatly in cultural values? For instance, Western Europe, Eastern Asia, and the USA are comparable in wealth yet they also differ dramatically in attitudes toward gender and sexuality, religion, policing, and so forth. Norway puts even its nastiest criminals in rooms far nicer than my current apartment while Singapore brutally flogs litterbugs yet they are comparable in wealth and economic development. That suggests that cultural values matter at least somewhat.

[rotting bones]

How does your theory of material conditions over culture explain the fact that many areas with similar material conditions nonetheless differ greatly in cultural values?

Yes. The material conditions are one set of constraints on social evolution. Another big one is institutional practice: If all the rowers at a dock are taught to pull the oar in one way, they are going to teach the next generation to do it the same way. This is a social institution, a school that teaches rowers to pull the oar in one specific way, not a condition of the soul or whatever.

For instance, Western Europe, Eastern Asia, and the USA are comparable in wealth yet they also differ dramatically in attitudes toward gender and sexuality, religion, policing, and so forth. Norway puts even its nastiest criminals in rooms far nicer than my current apartment while Singapore brutally flogs litterbugs yet they are comparable in wealth and economic development. That suggests that cultural values matter at least somewhat.

Singapore is a different matter. It's a tiny postcolonial one party state that became fabulously wealthy because it's a trade nexus. Its processes of wealth extraction don't scale to society in general.

Singapore is authoritarian because it's a one party state. It's a one party state because the respective procedures of wealth extraction created different kinds of political alliances in Singapore and Norway. I'd compare Singapore to Dubai.

[malloc]

Yes. The material conditions are one set of constraints on social evolution. Another big one is institutional practice: If all the rowers at a dock are taught to pull the oar in one way, they are going to teach the next generation to do it the same way. This is a social institution, a school that teaches rowers to pull the oar in one specific way, not a condition of the soul or whatever.

Sure but social norms and practices passed down through generations are culture and generally what people mean when they talk about culture.

[rotting bones]

Sure but social norms and practices passed down through generations are culture and generally what people mean when they talk about culture.

People normally say culture should be preserved. But most people accept that social institutions can and should be changed. I think it's silly to say the BS you were told by a weird uncle as a kid is a core part of your identity, people are conditioned by it, are fighting for it, etc. It's all garbage. I'm thinking of responding to traditionalism with, "stfu human." If they kill me for it, that's a bonus.

[Ares Land]

Note that even Saudi Arabia holds chess tournaments. I think some people just enjoy recoiling in horror from various things. They like the feeling of being able to identify wrongness according to ideological frameworks and the rush of horror that follows. It’s like living your life as a secret agent. These people often end up being called "geniuses" if they are able to channel this addiction into a technical field. The rapid identification of errors makes them right more often than not.

It does seem odd though, that Muslims would ignore emphatic prohibitions like this en masse. Nobody accuses Hindus of secretly eating hamburgers or observant Jews of working on Saturdays after all.

That was in the Middle Ages, but the Catholic Church did forbid chess at one point, a prohibition that was entirely ignored.

Closer to home, I think various Christian fundamentalists have condemned RPGs as Satanic, something which most Christians entirely ignore.

[alice]

The Victorian Underworld¹, by the wonderfully-named Kellow Chesney, in an original Penguin edition from the 1970s.

¹Note the simplicity of the title. Nowadays it would be something like Dodgers, costers, and shofulmen: the inhabitants of the Victorian Underworld. In the 18th century, allowing for time machines, it woud have been something like The Victorian Underworld, being a Description of the divers Peoples of the lower Orders in the country of England² and the Lives thereof, plus many additional Words which this Writer is regrettably unable to imagine.
² The book is not concerned with the rest of the UK.

[Raphael]

In the 18th century, allowing for time machines, it woud have been something like The Victorian Underworld, being a Description of the divers Peoples of the lower Orders in the country of England² and the Lives thereof, plus many additional Words which this Writer is regrettably unable to imagine.

I guess that's because back then, cover blurbs hadn't been invented yet, and therefore, publishers thought it was a good idea to put as much information about the book as possible right into the title.

[alice]

In the 18th century, allowing for time machines, it woud have been something like The Victorian Underworld, being a Description of the divers Peoples of the lower Orders in the country of England² and the Lives thereof, plus many additional Words which this Writer is regrettably unable to imagine.

I guess that's because back then, cover blurbs hadn't been invented yet, and therefore, publishers thought it was a good idea to put as much information about the book as possible right into the title.

Ah yes. Publishers were proper publishers in those days.

[rotting bones]

Particle physics in 17 hours: https://youtu.be/YFiQIZOM2fw

[rotting bones]

Work music playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbGXX9x8AEZs