Slightly off topic but not really: about using storytelling and art to push garbage like this. I was thinking the other day about the parable of the talents, and how mad the master was at the servant who wasted his gifts. How much angrier would the master have been if the servant had used that talent to finance evil endeavors and presented THAT at the end?
Then I thought to the allegations against Neil Gaiman, and how he once talked about Red Rising Hood’s wolf in the most beautiful and poetic language, then reading some of the allegations and - if true - how grotesque and tawdry was the reality.
It hit me that you can be an exceptional, even gifted artist and still misuse that gift for evil.
Think back to the duel of Finrod and Sauron and remember this important lesson: Sauron can sing too.
I understand that Alice Munroe's short stories also read very differently now that we know she chose her child molester husband over her daughter, the daughter he molested.
That is the fear. Because people have so fully accepted promiscuity and homosexuality as normal, while they will shrink back from the abuse of children (for now), they won't want to have their own little pet sins put back in the sins category.
It's just like trying to tackle government overreach and overspending. Government spending is destroying our nation financially, driving prices of everything through the roof, devaluing our dollar, and putting a crippling burden of debt on American citizens for decades to come. But the only way to reign this spending in is to cut that government spending. And while even the most staunch conservative would agree this is needed, when cuts are being proposed, people throw up the red flags. "No! you can't cut my government check! No! That's my money! You cut somewhere else!" If someone is benefiting from a program, they most definitely will not agree to it being cut, even if it is needed to save this country financially. It's like the union reps at Hostess who refused to give an inch when the company was facing bankruptcy, and because of their stubbornness, the business folded and they all lost their jobs.
And its so pervasive to society - 4 generations now have indulged in these lusts, have seen these as normal, and 6 or even 7 generations, really (my great-great grandmother was a midwife in the early 20th century and boy did she have tales to tell!). What is done in secret will eventually come out into the light.
So I don't know if it can be saved - especially when the church itself, the one true bullwark against such pervasive, openly accepted lust and sin - is eyeball deep in the same sins. All I can do at this point is cry out to God
And yet, I've seen people find God and suddenly do and 180 on what they think or aprove of or are willing to give up.
If the returned Christianity that's going on gains momentum, we might still yet be saved.
The other thing is, that the acceptance of the sins by the general public, who don't do them, has been like a rubber band. The people stretching more and more to accept things that they are being told are okay but that they don't actually like.
It is possible that this band will reach a point where they're just disgusted and start to snap back, in which case while individuals will not want to give up their own sins, there may be so many other people who are willing to give them up that we may see a motion back towards center.
"But the truth is, there is no part of our memory that easily separates the way characters behave in a TV show set in the modern day from our neighbors."
Which actually makes sense when you think a moment about our past.
What would have separated in the caveman's mind fiction from history? In both he is sitting around a campfire being told of things he did not witness. Yes on an objective level we can say that one actually happened and the other didn't, but we're not concerned about objectivity right now - we're concerned about how the mind operates. And to the brain, the input would be the same.
This is what I think some haven't realized yet. Humanity "won" the earth by basically being able to share, swap and absorb data with each other. So our society can make long term plans because I know I can start a project, convey the project to new humans (my children) and their minds will pick that up and continue the project forward.
Modern conditioning and media techniques therefore are essentially high jacking this process/advantage because, as you said, the brain doesn't really have a way to check the true/falseness of relayed data.
Right. Especially when the information comes in the form of people you can see and hear in a environment a lot like yours
I think people are much more likely to file a sitcom away as "what other people think" then say Star Trek... Because the alien background makes it a little easier to separate from reality.
Absolutely. And it's not just sexuality. It's all of morality. That's why we have a heresy named just for us - Americanism. And that we need to expel it and Liberalism from our minds.
100%. The things I watched on tv in the 90s are nothing compared with what's on Netflix now... yet I got sick of most of them at the time. I remember that I used to like "Friends" the first year it was out. A friend of mine who was much more religious (I wasn't at the time) asked me if it didn't bother me because it was so immoral. I told her it didn't bother me because I knew it wasn't real and because it was the only raunchy thing I watched so it was just "fun." I enjoyed the actors, and the scripts were funny, and I could look past how unlikely their behavior was to make anyone happy in real life because it was (to me) so obviously a fantasy. By the end of the second year I was done. My brain couldn't maintain the fantasy anymore--if these people had been real, they'd have been incredibly messed up by that time. And the number of non-raunchy shows to watch was growing smaller and smaller--as a kid, I'd watched reruns of Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle, Green Acres, etc., and watched Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart, and other similar shows at night. "Friends" was naughty and funny... for a while. But I was astonished to see how many years it was on, and later disgusted to see things like "Gray's Anatomy" (it motto should have been "Having Sex and Saving Lives") and "Law and Order: SVU" (it's real, original name was "Law and Order: Sex Crimes") go one for years and years. People watch these things, and much worse, for hour after hour. Of course it influences what they think of as normal and fine.
Sauron can sing too.
Slightly off topic but not really: about using storytelling and art to push garbage like this. I was thinking the other day about the parable of the talents, and how mad the master was at the servant who wasted his gifts. How much angrier would the master have been if the servant had used that talent to finance evil endeavors and presented THAT at the end?
Then I thought to the allegations against Neil Gaiman, and how he once talked about Red Rising Hood’s wolf in the most beautiful and poetic language, then reading some of the allegations and - if true - how grotesque and tawdry was the reality.
It hit me that you can be an exceptional, even gifted artist and still misuse that gift for evil.
Think back to the duel of Finrod and Sauron and remember this important lesson: Sauron can sing too.
I understand that Alice Munroe's short stories also read very differently now that we know she chose her child molester husband over her daughter, the daughter he molested.
The same thing with Marion Zimmer Bradley
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Closet-Moira-Greyland/dp/9527065208
That's horrifying. Her poor daughter. I hope she's had some really good quality help.
Beautifully put.
That is the fear. Because people have so fully accepted promiscuity and homosexuality as normal, while they will shrink back from the abuse of children (for now), they won't want to have their own little pet sins put back in the sins category.
It's just like trying to tackle government overreach and overspending. Government spending is destroying our nation financially, driving prices of everything through the roof, devaluing our dollar, and putting a crippling burden of debt on American citizens for decades to come. But the only way to reign this spending in is to cut that government spending. And while even the most staunch conservative would agree this is needed, when cuts are being proposed, people throw up the red flags. "No! you can't cut my government check! No! That's my money! You cut somewhere else!" If someone is benefiting from a program, they most definitely will not agree to it being cut, even if it is needed to save this country financially. It's like the union reps at Hostess who refused to give an inch when the company was facing bankruptcy, and because of their stubbornness, the business folded and they all lost their jobs.
And its so pervasive to society - 4 generations now have indulged in these lusts, have seen these as normal, and 6 or even 7 generations, really (my great-great grandmother was a midwife in the early 20th century and boy did she have tales to tell!). What is done in secret will eventually come out into the light.
So I don't know if it can be saved - especially when the church itself, the one true bullwark against such pervasive, openly accepted lust and sin - is eyeball deep in the same sins. All I can do at this point is cry out to God
II do not think you're wrong.
And yet, I've seen people find God and suddenly do and 180 on what they think or aprove of or are willing to give up.
If the returned Christianity that's going on gains momentum, we might still yet be saved.
The other thing is, that the acceptance of the sins by the general public, who don't do them, has been like a rubber band. The people stretching more and more to accept things that they are being told are okay but that they don't actually like.
It is possible that this band will reach a point where they're just disgusted and start to snap back, in which case while individuals will not want to give up their own sins, there may be so many other people who are willing to give them up that we may see a motion back towards center.
"But the truth is, there is no part of our memory that easily separates the way characters behave in a TV show set in the modern day from our neighbors."
Which actually makes sense when you think a moment about our past.
What would have separated in the caveman's mind fiction from history? In both he is sitting around a campfire being told of things he did not witness. Yes on an objective level we can say that one actually happened and the other didn't, but we're not concerned about objectivity right now - we're concerned about how the mind operates. And to the brain, the input would be the same.
This is what I think some haven't realized yet. Humanity "won" the earth by basically being able to share, swap and absorb data with each other. So our society can make long term plans because I know I can start a project, convey the project to new humans (my children) and their minds will pick that up and continue the project forward.
Modern conditioning and media techniques therefore are essentially high jacking this process/advantage because, as you said, the brain doesn't really have a way to check the true/falseness of relayed data.
Right. Especially when the information comes in the form of people you can see and hear in a environment a lot like yours
I think people are much more likely to file a sitcom away as "what other people think" then say Star Trek... Because the alien background makes it a little easier to separate from reality.
Absolutely. And it's not just sexuality. It's all of morality. That's why we have a heresy named just for us - Americanism. And that we need to expel it and Liberalism from our minds.
Agreed.
100%. The things I watched on tv in the 90s are nothing compared with what's on Netflix now... yet I got sick of most of them at the time. I remember that I used to like "Friends" the first year it was out. A friend of mine who was much more religious (I wasn't at the time) asked me if it didn't bother me because it was so immoral. I told her it didn't bother me because I knew it wasn't real and because it was the only raunchy thing I watched so it was just "fun." I enjoyed the actors, and the scripts were funny, and I could look past how unlikely their behavior was to make anyone happy in real life because it was (to me) so obviously a fantasy. By the end of the second year I was done. My brain couldn't maintain the fantasy anymore--if these people had been real, they'd have been incredibly messed up by that time. And the number of non-raunchy shows to watch was growing smaller and smaller--as a kid, I'd watched reruns of Andy Griffith, Gomer Pyle, Green Acres, etc., and watched Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart, and other similar shows at night. "Friends" was naughty and funny... for a while. But I was astonished to see how many years it was on, and later disgusted to see things like "Gray's Anatomy" (it motto should have been "Having Sex and Saving Lives") and "Law and Order: SVU" (it's real, original name was "Law and Order: Sex Crimes") go one for years and years. People watch these things, and much worse, for hour after hour. Of course it influences what they think of as normal and fine.
Agreed. For a while it was all,: oh I don't mind if it has a few things I disagree with, I'm watching it for the good story.
But it's gotten to the point that there's nothing decent, and quite a few things that I disagree with so strongly, I don't want to watch them anymore.
I used to think that people who wouldn't watch tv were snobs. Now I can barely stand to have it on!
Nowadays I mainly watch Japanese, Hindu, or Chinese shows.