These sort of unwritten arbitrary-yet-sacrosanct rules help identify outsiders and preserve cultural identity. Culture only lasts if it has walls.
“My late brother Francis, staying with a French family to improve his knowledge of the language, was helping himself to cheese at dinner. The plateau included a wedge of brie, and the inexperienced Englishman, instead of slicing along the side, cut off the point, or nose. His hostess, exercising that special French skill in making foreign visitors feel at ease, remarked: ‘Je n’ai jamais vu personne qui découpât comme ça le nez d’un brie.’ Francis said that he distinctly heard, in the air above the family dining-table, the sharp hiss of the circumflex over the third person singular of the past subjunctive.”
— John Sturrock, London Review of Books 1996
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In the real world whether you're a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, etc, there are only two options at the top of the ballot and you're picking one of them. Being Catholic doesn't put you beyond politics, and you sound like pretentious (and dishonest) when you pretend it does.
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Aquinas distinguishes three mental states we often conflate: Knowledge, when something follows clearly from something certain, and once grasped isn't a matter of choice. Opinion, something arbitrarily chosen. Belief falls in between, it's neither arbitrary, nor held by necessity.
"Can you change your beliefs?" is one of my favorite questions to think about. Because like, not really. I can't decide to wake up tomorrow believing something different. But why not? It's just thoughts. Path dependency? The minds of my past selves constraining present me?
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People on both sides don't want to hear this but the issue is complicated. Disability payments have actually been shown to INCREASE rates and severity of disability. But it's not because people are lying, it's because you create a mindset of dependency.
Sean Strickland is an idiot. Always has been, always will be.
It's a good thing he can fight, because he would probably be homeless if he actually had to think for a living.
VA Disability is a short cut so the Government doesn't have to live in court dealing with Occupational Disability Lawsuits 24/7/365.
If they want to get rid of VA Disability, as it currently stands, that's fine with us...as long as you also allow us to sue the Government for Disability Compensation like civilians get to do with their employers.
If you think the Government is in debt now, imagine the lawsuits for millions in compensation every year from service members getting out.
We currently cannot sue the government for disability like civilians can with their employers.
The attorney fees alone would probably cost the government more than VA Disability does.
The US Government is getting off super cheap with VA Disability.
Focus on your next fight Sean.
Damn, that boy stupid.
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"Let death and exile and every other thing which appears dreadful be daily before your eyes; but most of all death: and you will never think of anything mean nor will you desire anything extravagantly."
Tucker Carlson recounts a private meeting where Donald Trump dismissed serious concerns over a potential war with Iran by casually telling him, "In the end, we're all dead anyway."
"I said to him, shocked, 'But what about our kids, our grandkids, our country?'
Made with AI
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No matter how much they deny it, the atheist's values will eventually reduce to nothing more than maximizing physical pleasure and minimizing physical pain.
I know that among my followers, MAID is reviled.
But I'm actually a supporter of it.
Having recently had a relative die horrifically, with pain that MAID could have alleviated, my support is stronger than ever.
First, just look at the reasons people do MAID:
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Wow can't wait for the day we can buy steak fries in America.
no wonder our cancer rates the highest in the world
Community note
The US does not have the world's highest cancer rate. Per GLOBOCAN 2022 (IARC/WCRF) age-standardized incidence data, Australia ranks highest at ~462/100,000, followed by New Zealand and Denmark; the US ranks around 4th-5th at ~367/100,000. worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankin… wcrf.org/preventing-can…
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This is the response you always get when you point out that things have ends. But notice that the very language of "perception" answers the question. Different agents have different perceptions; that's not a contradiction, that's how perception works!
What’s “bad” for the rat is “good” for the cat. Which perception of reality is the correct one? The rat or the cat?
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This highlights something important, which is the fallacy being used to attack such people is of the form "If you can't articulate it, it isn't real."
We live in an age where descriptions are treated as more real than the realities they're meant to describe.
"‘Who are we?’ is a question that the English never needed to ask themselves because they instinctively knew who they were. England was simply ‘home’." — Sir Roger Scruton, England: an elegy
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Wayne keeps pushing this position that ends (as opposed to means) are totally arbitrary and undecidable (which is why he calls them "preferences"). But that's obviously false! We can absolutely compare ends, Aristotle begins his work on ethics by doing exactly that!
If ethical philosophers were honest they’d name the field, “Preferences.”
Oh, wow, you can give *reasons* for your preferences in this specific domain? Wow, you’re so right — that’s completely different from all other kinds of preferences.
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You'll know things are better when these doctors start going to prison.
ALT Kranendonk made sure she was in the room for the second MAiD assessment, and it was there where she noticed the doctor speak in 'really loose terms, never using the words death or dying. 'She explains MAiD to my grandmother by saying: "We're going to give you medicine, you're going to feel at peace. And I just want you to know that you won't have a bowel movement." 'She's saying it in these strange terms, that aren't literal,' Kranendonk says, adding: 'My Oma's just kind of nodding. Her first language is not English, she is 83-years old and severely hearing-impaired.' Kranendonk looked at the doctor, and said: 'She doesn't understand what you're saying.'
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