The Evangelical Universalist Forum

An essay on snowflakism by Bruce Thornton


The only problem is that we constantly seek solutions - from the outside. Not from God and** not** looking inside. Instead, let Trumpenstein and the Trumpeters rescue us. Or whoever is in change. How should we answer this question :question:

:laughing: Dave :laughing: :mrgreen:

This came today, from the Christian Patheos site.

#IStandWithMoore Against SBC Hypocrisy

I will quote it here - for reflection. :smiley:

Randy you quoted a statement from ‘Stand with Moore’ that said:

We have to ask is this really happening? :open_mouth:

Is it possible that culture and society and… heaven forbid, the idea of the Godly family, may be changing? :astonished:

Also, why is that essay being linked in this thread? It isn’t about the therapeutic culture effect. :confused:

You can’t have “therapeutic society’ and other ways that humans have understood the use/misuse of government” (AKA reaction to the Trumpenstein election) , without also examining “Hypocrisy and Christian values” (which deals specifically with Trumpenstein and SBC representatives - either endorsing or denouncing him). And considering it comes from the SBC (i.e. Southern Baptist Convention), which is a huge Christian organization - they do have things to share, for us to reflect upon. :smiley:

It’s like saying this:

It’s OK to denounce folks, crying over the election of Trumpenstein - get on with it
It’s NOT OK for the SBC representatives…to specially say things, about electing a man to office… who doesn’t represent right wing, Christian values (AKA We as Christians, **don’t **want to hear that Christian value stuff - regarding a chosen leader. Just give us someone who can implement, author Ayn Rand economic and political agendas).

What’s wrong with this picture :question:

http://www.lagrandeonline.com/Art/Front/Cartoon_WhatsWrong_Aug2008.jpg

Ah, got it. Most of that essay wasn’t about people overreacting to the Trump election, so I didn’t think of it being primarily about that (the overreactions just being a recent symptom of a larger long-running cultural shift which the article was discussing).

But strictly speaking, you’re wrong. You can actually discuss both problems separately, because they’re two quite different problems. Nor does the problem of sacrificing Christian values for power (which is absolutely not new to the current Trump version of the problem) count as a rebuttal to the problem of the rise of a therapeutic culture (which is also not new to the current Trump version of that problem).

Relatedly, if I question why an article on problem H is in a thread about a problem T, that is not the same as me saying it’s not okay to discuss problem T, too. But switching to a completely different problem, even though it coincidentally also happens to involve Trump, looks like thread hijacking.

In honoring the separation of the 2 topics, I opened up a separate thread at [Why are we sacrificing Christian values at election time?) :wink:

Just a footnote here. I have observed that many threads here, get off on tangents. And often it’s initiated, by the original thread author. I’m still trying to figure out the difference there and bringing up a Christian ethical consideration, of a pseudo-therapeutic essay - on the Trumpenstein election (and bringing up an article reference, to support that sub-point). Can someone please enlighten me :question: :astonished: :confused:

Anyone who understands your sentence is free to try to enlighten you; I can’t, because I can’t even understand what you’re saying in that bolded section. And any guesses I made wouldn’t sound charitable.

I’m glad you made a new thread for it, though, as I do think your article’s topic is important, too, and deserves its own attention. :slight_smile:

Let me try again. For example: Someone might open a thread on free will, with the objective that we really have no free will. Then they bring up sub topics, like evolution, genesis, etc. Sub topics that have nothing to do, with the original topic, thesis, hypothesis, or question. I have seen many threads like this here. How is this different, from what I was attempting to do - in this thread? Hope this helps.

After all, isn’t the sub topic of creationism and young earth vs old earth, big bang and evolution - really a new thread?

Or am I really the only one, observing these events in threads here?

babylonbee.com/news/local-snowfl … -students/

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: Great!

So, you only sounded like you were repeatedly trying to defend the inclusion of the new, barely relevant topic as actually being so relevant that not including it would be wrong. You actually knew full well this sub topic has nothing to do with the original topic, thesis, hypothesis, or question. Your real purpose was an extended satirical attack against people who, having introduced a topic, then go on in their own thread to bring up new topics that don’t have much to do with the original topic – and you chose DaveB as the target of your satire, presumably because he has been doing this and it annoys you (which would be strange, since I often find you flippantly flipping topics around in other people’s threads, much as in this one, using holy-fool tradition for your justification). But since he hadn’t had time to flip the topic himself, and you were in a rush and didn’t want to wait for him to do it again in his own thread so that you could satirize a fresh example of it, you did it yourself (as you often do in other threads), thus kicking off your extended satire where you pretended, by changing someone else’s topic, that someone changing their own topic made perfect sense.

And now that I have made your point for you, by trying to figure out why you would think the two topics were related while you satirically defended their relation, even though you knew perfectly well from the beginning they weren’t (this being part of your satirical objection to people like, presumably, DaveB, since it would be pretty damn unfair for you to randomly flip topics in someone’s thread to protest someone flipping topics randomly in their own thread, to someone who wasn’t flipping their own topics around kind of randomly in his own threads), your purpose has been achieved and you have laid the cards of your satirical protest on the table, expecting me (as one of the ad/mods whose attention you hoped to get) to agree that if person A changes topics in their own thread, they don’t really have the right to do so in their own thread. So we ad/mods ought to be policing this better, ensuring that people don’t change topics in their own threads so much.

Except there are two problems:

A.) This isn’t an example of someone flipping topics in their own thread. Dave hadn’t done that here yet. Hijacking someone else’s topic isn’t the same as someone changing their own topics.

and

B.) I don’t agree that people have no right to change topics in their own thread; whereas I have some minor disagreement about people trying to change other people’s topics (to get attention for themselves and away from the thread’s starter perhaps). Which is what your satire involved; and indeed, you’ve managed to use me for hijacking attention away from anyone discussing Dave’s point by getting more or almost all the attention for yourself.

If you decide to defend this by claiming you’re only a philosophical zombie with no free will and this is an example of P-Zombie pragmatism, I’m going to treat you as a philosophical zombie for a change, i.e. as a spambot doing what spambots are pragmatically designed to do (by people who aren’t themselves spambots). Since I don’t think you’re going to think it’s very amusing to be treated as a spambot (although I’ll be somewhat grimly amused at treating you as a spambot for insisting on being nothing more than a spambot as an excuse for your behavior), I thought I should alert you before you tried in case you were thinking about doing so.

However, if you now reveal instead that this whole extended farrago was your way of satirizing the solipcistic attention-getting attitudes promoted by the culture being critiqued in the article Dave linked to, I would at least agree that the topic turned out to be relevant after all, and even Dave might appreciate the massive (if tediously extended and looping) irony involved. But even then, I would still think your article deserved its own thread for discussion and attention. :slight_smile:

It was Christmas and it’s going on New Years, Jason. So I’m in a festive good mood. I’ll neither confirm nor deny, your commentary and analysis. Much like they do, when being questioned by political committees. I’m too much into the holiday spirit now.

Nothing against DaveB. I actually like the guy and enjoy his posts - for the most part. But considering I like works like Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, for their “deeper meaning”, might give folks insight - into my literary preferences and style. I really just hang out with P-Zombies (along with Holy Fools), so they made me an honorary member.

Of course, it could be that I thought the article was related - so I just shared it (nothing else intended nor implied). Then realized later, that other thread starters or thread posters - have done things, I thought were similar (when it was pointed out, the 2 articles are not related). Sometimes the simplest explanation, is really the best.

I run 2 sizable LinkedIn groups myself. I get around any ambiguities, by writing out the rules. And if something comes up that’s not covered, the rules are appended. Which is the norm for LinkedIn groups. Folks can always refer to the written rules.

Maybe you’ve been with relatives, sitting comfortably in a room by a fire, all talking about Grandpa and what you should do with him, where he might be happy in a ‘home’ or something? And after about a half an hour, Grandpa speaks up and says “Uh…you know I’m sitting right here, don’t you”? :laughing:

Going back over this thread - I’ve posted the OP which was just a link; and then I posted some laughy faces at someone else’s joke, and then agreed with something someone said, and as far as I can tell, I haven’t gone off-topic at all. That’s as to this particular thread. I have at times been guilty of getting drawn aside by a shiny object that I can’t resist, but not here.

Be that as it may, I have it on good assurance that DaveB is aware, not only of his prodigious mental abilities, quick-as-a-whip wit, Mariana-trench-deep understanding of all things, and is an honorary Navajo known as David Shining Horse - he is also aware of his many, more-than-Mariana-trench-deep foibles. Mea culpa, mea culpa…I forget the rest… :blush:

It’s time for a resolution!!! (Beatles: So You Want a Resolution, uh huh) I resolve to avoid the temptation of said shiny objects (that’s like, a metaphor for off-topic wanderings/wonderings) and stay on point. I will fail, repent, fail, repent ad nauseum, but in many ways - that’s kinda like life. :smiley:

Noel!!

So, Dave, are you really being sincere, here, when you say

:question:

If so, can you share how that came about :question:
And does anything I share regarding the Lakota, Ojibwa or Ute tribal ceremonies (the tribes I usually hung around with) here - at this forum - resonate with you :question:

Although some things I’ve shared, were really from the Southwestern / South American Indian tribes (i.e. Ayahuasca and Peyote ceremonies). Which I have observed. But can neither confirm non deny, if I have ever participated.

Randy, I’ve been immersed the past few weeks in R. Allen Chappell’s Navajo mystery series (amazon.com/Navajo-Nation-My … s=chappell) and have read many other Native American themed materials, but that is a close as I’ve gotten to the real thing.
The David Shining Horse moniker was stolen directly from book 5 of that series, which I managed to turn into a joke on my relatives who were here for the holidays. Uncle Dave is a bit quirky, you know…so when at dinner he mentioned his fascination with things Navajo, certain rituals and such, in particular the naming of children, he asked the assembled diners at table if they would feel comfortable calling him David Shining Horse. It went over quite well, and only one person took me seriously. :laughing:

So to answer your question: I was not serious about it, any more than I was serious about the Mariana-trench thingies. I was attempting the…how you say…ah, yes…lightheartedness.

I like and respect you and Jason as well, though be assured I find you both just as frustrating as you find me.

That’s the new flag I heard about, Andre?