And then:
"Meh. Is that all there is? It was so quick, it hurt a little, and then he fell asleep. God above, now I have to hunt for some good sex? I'll be 60!"
Nice Jewish girls don't misuse apostrophes, heebie.
Apostrophers, on the other hand, are fair game.
Wow I can definitely relate to that post.
I am 31 made out with one woman and never had sex. Other than the religious implications I could have written that post.
Although, while I am an atheist I was brought up in a pretty conservative Evangelical Christian family and I think some of that still affects the way I deal with relationships so even that felt kind of familiar.
It's a sobering post; the woman is reconsidering a bit of her faith, or her religious practice, and I cross my fingers for her in much the same way I tend to do when I see someone, say, in the process of leaving the Conservative faith or something (e.g. E.D. Kain, ex- of Balloon Juice). It's clearly a painful process.
CJB, it seemed like the restrictions of SN's religious community have been instrumental in the development of her situation. You mention that you have a similar background, but imply that you are no longer a member of such a community. Leaving aside all the complications that brings in and of itself (and I honestly have no idea what it's like, so it's possible that is doing more work than I anticipated), I find myself wondering what you see as the primary influences of your own situation.
I find myself hoping for more than "bad luck," bc that one is...painful and bitter.
On a more human level: it sucks to feel like you've been left out of life, to some extent. I think there are more people out there who share that sentiment than one might think, but I'm not sure that makes it much easier.
What do you want?
How do you feel about Jewish girls, CJB?
Mostly I blame me. I don't like being around large groups of people and I have almost no intuitive ability to read social cues.
The comments to the linked post are interesting. I confess that I've had to google several of the recurrent Hebrew terms -- pretty much all of them are completely unfamiliar.
Sorry I seem to be live-blogging my reading of that post, but I've found it fascinating. This is what the internet is best at: bringing an unknown world.
This is what the internet is best at: bringing an unknown world.
That plus funny pictures of cats. Don't forget the cats.
13: Have you seen the Charlie Sheen cats?
Oh, man. I want to tell you not to get down on yourself, but I have a feeling it would sound hollow. (I'm still thinking it, though.)
More practically, though -- and if you weren't looking for suggestions, or a practical discussion, I understand, just tell me and I'll leave off it -- the internet seems designed for people who don't like large groups of people and have trouble with social cues. I don't mean to diminish the difficulty of your situation - hell, I have a hard enough time not feeling sorry for myself, in different circumstances - or repeat that hugely annoying popular lie about how everyone finds someone eventually, but only to say that it might be an arena with the highest ROI for you.
Probably the best advice people have given me is to make sure you love the rest of your life. Like, find things you love. But that's about all I got.
I hope it goes well for you.
Right, the cats.
One last remark on linked post. This portion of a comment there I found interesting:
Most mitzvot (commanded acts) such as shomer negiah are part of a *communal* system. If we practice shomer negiah, our families and/or communities should help us find partners, which we can't do ourselves, when not permitted sight or contact with potential mates! Your misery and loneliness are not solely due to personal failings - family and community have not done right by you. No wonder you're furious and want to ditch them all. One is caught between tradition (strict shomer negiah and arranged marriage) and modernity (relaxed tzeniut and free partner choice).This seems smart.
Dang, what's with the doubly-indented concluding remark in 16? It's the second time I've done this in the last few days.
CJB, dona's right about the possibilities in connecting internetically with people in your area. Not necessarily via online dating, but maybe local social/political activism lists, that kind of thing. Honestly, though, unless you're in a largish metro area, those lists can be pretty goofy.
re: 17
http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/cats-quote-charlie-sheen/
I don't normally find LOLcats stuff funny, but that one creases me up. Esp. the first image.
Even as a nonbeliever, I have an enormous amount of respect for SN, the ideal she's lived, and the suffering she's inflicted on herself and endured. If she gives up now, what has she to gain: pleasure and satisfaction? Perhaps, but what meaningfulness she'd have to eject; she's a living counterexample to the sunk costs fallacy (or at least the conceptions of rationality and utility underlying it).
She needs to let her fear turn to anger and her anger to hate, of the secular realm and its inhabitants. I wonder if Judaism does not allow for a similar practical devaluing of the world, as might Christianity or Buddhism (from what little I know of it)? (Not merely in theory, but also practices of devaluation: abstention, willful ignorance, conscious and explicit rituals of denial, etc. That doesn't seem plausible though; Ortho Judaism seems, from an outsider's perspective, to offer more ritual and practice than, say, "mainline Protestantism".)
19: The, um, 7th one is cracking me up.
20: She needs to let her fear turn to anger and her anger to hate, of the secular realm and its inhabitants.
You are trolling us here, right?
And yeah, the linked quote in 16 is on to something.
Thanks, ttaM. I should have put the link, but it takes so long on an iPod.
The comments in that thread really are smart, and speak to the issues. Another:
Humans have physiological need for touch from other living beings. Touch causes a cascade of positive neurological and hormonal responses. Plants/gardening, pets, horseback riding, contact sports, and physical caretaking all cause the response to various degrees, and erotic and parenting touch apparently influence the response the most. What does halakhah say about this? Non-erotic touch between people of the same gender is permitted. While taking up female wrestling may not be realistic for a follower of tzeniut (modesty), therapeutic massage, such as at a spa, is permitted within halakhah. None of your posts have mentioned therapeautic touch. It's not sleazy (unless one prefers it that way). Modern western massage is modest (draping is required in most jurisdictions) and boundaried. It's affordable. There are many female practitioners. One can also learn mutual massage, because it's important to learn how to communicate one's touch preferences, and how to understand the touch preference of others.
It's important to learn how to communicate one's touch preferences, and how to understand those of others! Indeed! Sorry I'm quoting at length. The rest of that comment is good, too.
I'm reminded of ogged one time saying that he yearned for physical touch so much that he'd considered hiring someone.
That's very sad, but I am ashamed to say this
I am very seriously considering not going to shule on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur this year
made me laugh out loud.
You don't have any elderly relatives where skipping Mass on Easter Sunday because they were unhappy with the church would be a huge thing? (I mean, I know why it struck you funny, but it's not that alien.)
And there I go being humorless™. Sorry about that.
No, I know exactly what she's saying, and of course it's a huge thing.
And I wouldn't say my reaction counted as evidence of my sublime humor.
I don't understand adherence to ritual (or to commandment, with rationale) either, being an utter heathen, but it's not as though the secular world doesn't have its own rituals.
That kind of thing seems a world apart. I think I'm interested in the linked post and the issues it raises because there are so many people captured (I want to say) by a similar dynamic, and I don't remotely think it's a freakish thing. Just out of rhythm with current trends. Let's say.
There's increasingly little room for difference in the globalized world. It's neither good nor bad. I blame capitalism.
I want to say that the passage quoted in 16 gets at the heart of the issue and so the problem is that her community has let her down, but of course there have always been women unhappy about not being married in completely traditional cultures, where the interaction with modernity isn't an issue. Sometimes the system just doesn't work.
What's different here is that she has the option of stepping outside the community-driven system that's failed her, and looking for a partner in a more modern context, to the extent that she can reconcile that with her ethics and social mores.
it's not as though the secular world doesn't have its own rituals
Sure, but if you grow up in a religion that is very sexually conservative, you don't learn them. The division offered is that through religious marriage, you will get respect, devotion, and permanence, and outside of that, there is nothing but temporary physical pleasure. As SN writes, living a chaste life is supposed to make that pleasure seem all the more special and meaningful as a promise, but can end up making one realize the need for physical pleasure in itself because that is the need the religious worldview refuses to validate outside its own terms.
When you turn to the secular culture for the promised radical freedom of physical pleasure, and you find it has its own rituals and rules to control desire, it can be deeply disappointing.
There's increasingly little room for difference in the globalized world.
20:"Hate" is a little strong, dude. "Contempt" or "Indifference" are also wrong. "Withdrawal" or "abandonment" might be humbler. Best is feel the world kicked you away, and the world was right. Then you can approach wisdom.
Humans have physiological need for touch from other living beings
I doubt it, but I do assume various kinds of asceticism are possibilities, since millions upon millions practice them. Da Buddha could tell people all they didn't really need, but I am a little more cowardly or crueler of something.
Do I need human (or furry friend) touch? I've gone without it for freaking ages at a time, and when I was getting it, I don't remember it making me happier. More intense at times in both directions, but not more content.
I never know what to say. I know it's not unique to me, but that doesn't mean other people can handle it.
When you turn to the secular culture for the promised radical freedom of physical pleasure, and you find it has its own rituals and rules to control desire, it can be deeply disappointing.
Oh yeah. Intimacy is more rare than almost anyone will tell you. And companionship more common.
33.2 is certainly correct.
Regarding the rituals of the secular world, I was thinking of things like: Women must shave their legs. Or, engagement necessarily involves the presentation of a ring.
These things don't particularly have to do with any promised radical freedom of physical pleasure. They're just ritualistic forms of presentation.
Presentation is a part of it, I think. SN women have asked me on a number of occasions what it's like to, for example, wear whatever I want, and I have to say, listen, it's not like non-SN women are really ever wearing whatever we want. We have a much less formal, but by no means less strict, system of controls over what is expected of us. My non-religious female students, for example, might feel like it is their duty to wear cleavage-revealing pink sweatshirts a lot. Do they do it because they just love people staring at their tits? Some might! But for others it's a response to feeling like it's one's duty as a secular woman to show off one's tits. Being "free" from religious laws means one has to negotiate with all the other competing messages about how to be a woman in the world.
The big problem is the one LB identifies in 32, I think. Having strict religious laws to live by is totally great if you're not queer or weird or ugly. Your community will be there to assist you in all kinds of ways, from getting an education to finding a partner to helping raise your children; there's a plan that kicks in if things go a little off-track. But when you're way off-track in some way, and have needs that can't be accounted for by that community, you can get lost, and there's no one to talk to.
Even if you do know the rules, it's, uh, not easy out there. That is the one thing that everyone I know, regardless of gender, age, or orientation, agrees on: dating is absolutely awful. For some reason there seem to be a large number of people out there all looking for something similar, yet who are willing to treat each other badly as they search.
So. That's a thing.
It does seem like where many people might have married young in the past and stuck it out in non-ideal circumstances, now those couples would never get married in the first place. I don't know which is better.
36: Yes. Though it would be a mistake to suppose that the controls on an SN woman are on the same order as those on a non-SN woman, I'm guessing. I'm not sure. A no-touch rule is pretty freakin' harsh, and would make a person crazy eventually.
It's not a no touch rule, it's a no-touching-men-you're-not-married to rule -- more no sex than no touch. If you've got family, particularly family with kids, you can get some physical affection. That's still harsh, but more survivable.
For some reason there seem to be a large number of people out there all looking for something similar, yet who are willing to treat each other badly as they search.
This is one of the ways in which the academic job market is almost exactly like blind dating. You have a lot of people who desperately want love, and yet the actual interview/date is spent with both parties pretending to be too good for each other, and then not calling for as long as possible afterward.
39: Yeah, and it does ramp up one's expectation of sexual tension. If being alone in a room with a man means DANGER and you're constantly reminded of that, it changes the way you perceive heterosexual interactions, making them seem hypersexualized. I didn't mean to give Von Wafer a hard time about the no-door-closing thing, but my objection to that kind of carefulness comes from being in environments in which it seems basically impossible that a man and a woman could have a conversation or make physical contact without having sex.
Part of the difficulty of her situation is that while she's apparently decided to opt out of shomer negiah, there's not really any social support in the secular world for someone starting to explore sex after early adulthood (similar problem for CJB). I wonder if she has any close female friends who aren't frum -- maybe at work? -- who she can get some kind of support and advice from.
If being alone in a room with a man means DANGER and you're constantly reminded of that, it changes the way you perceive heterosexual interactions, making them seem hypersexualized.
I understand hanging around with Apostropher has the same effect.
42: The comment thread to her post mentions several such places and invites her to email the commenter privately regarding frum-but-questioning communities, so apparently there is social support. Good for her for writing the post, then!
I wonder if she has any close female friends who aren't frum -- maybe at work? -- who she can get some kind of support and advice from.
As someone who gets a lot of questions like this, I will say that it's really really hard to give support and advice of this kind to a recently-SN woman. One such person asked me, now that she's sleeping with her BF, he expects her to spend the night all night every night and she can't get anything done, but if she stops, he will run off with someone else and has been threatening to do so, and they can't move in together or get married yet. Even though she's not totally observant anymore, she doesn't relish clicking through partner after partner so wants to keep this one by any means necessary, so what should she do?
It's a delicate situation. If she were totally secular, I'd say DTMFA and throw yourself into your work; you're not a sex slave. But that transitional period is so difficult because, without the sexual ethics you've always had, it's really easy for someone to come in and take advantage of your lack of experience to tell you what he expects.
(I told her that I think she should DTMFA, but that, as a first step, she needs to insist on 3 nights per week at home alone, which I suspect might give her a little perspective of the kind necessary for being able to DTMFA.)
I didn't mean to give Von Wafer a hard time about the no-door-closing thing, but my objection to that kind of carefulness comes from being in environments in which it seems basically impossible that a man and a woman could have a conversation or make physical contact without having sex.
FWIW, I wasn't put off at all, AWB (kisses -- but only with the door open). I took it in the spirit that I thought it was offered and also realized, midway into that thread, that I was conflating two different things and thus sounding more strident about the one (the closed doors), which I don't really care about at all and have given very little thought to, than the other (the housing of prospective students in their own hotel rooms), about which I've thought a great deal and care about somewhat more than not at all.
frum-but-questioning communities,
This sounds like a much better place to turn for advice than secular friends.
he expects her to spend the night all night every night and she can't get anything done
Isn't that why heterosexual women invented Grey's Anatomy and heartfelt talks?
This comment from the linked post:
people are advised to place ALL their faith in hashem and shatchonim. This system is designed for VERY YOUNG ADULTS who would otherwise lack the maturity and judgment to select a mate without certain controls.
This is somewhat familiar to me... the idea that a young person can't be trusted to develop good judgement, that what you want is nearly always bad for you, and broad experience can only lead you off the correct path. I think my parents tried hard to be open minded and flexible, but instinctively they still feel this way.
If you're going to break out of the system, it's best to do it when you're young.
Yeah, it's pretty cynical about the possibilities of mature sexual decision-making, especially on the part of men. Men who refrain from ever touching women or looking at them too long are disrespectful, so, by default, if you're trying to initiate physical contact with a man, he is necessarily someone who does not respect you or your sexuality. While I of course support the desire to seek greater freedom and all that, it's very hard to do so when you associate all the necessary behaviors as disrespectful.
It's not unrelated, I think, to my experience a little over a year ago of being violently threatened by the recently-Church-of-Christ guy I went out with on a blind date. I don't want to excuse his behavior, but I don't think 23/25 years as a religious virgin contributed to his ability to imagine a mature or non-violent means of expressing sexual interest.
I've got non-violence down, but I'm still working on a mature means of expressing pretty much anything.
Opening all your remarks with "What's that, Sonny?" helps.
You don't have any elderly relatives where skipping Mass on Easter Sunday because they were unhappy with the church would be a huge thing?
In the early 2000s, my father (who is the sort of person to whom people seeking to talk to somebody about this sort of thing talk about this sort of thing) had many conversations with people who were so disgusted by the exposed behavior of the Boston archdiocese that they had stopped attending church pretty flatly. For most of them -- though they were not particularly devoted (but evaluating other people's piety is pretty useless) -- it was a very big deal.
Sex is a never-discussed topic in my family, except for cases where something goes horrifically wrong. To be honest, I don't know why this is. My parents aren't that conservative about it; but talking about it just never feels comfortable. It's very, very private.
So I guess I do have a strong sense that sex is inherently transgressive, and this doesn't exactly help in knowing how to deal with it.
Sexual purity was a lot more important to my church than to my parents, who were just grateful that I didn't seem to be turning out to be like the asexual creepy loners among their siblings.
55: My family's like that. No religion, no particularly expressed sexual morals, but the topic was not raised, ever. (My parents split up in their fifties, and did not, to the best of my knowledge, ever date or pursue sexual or romantic contact with anyone or thing after that point.) I don't think this was a matter of principle so much as a combination of being conventional people of their generation (just pre-Boomer) and having a truly terrible relationship.
It does make one inhibited, starting out -- trying to express sexual interest while starting with a baseline assumption that there's just no acceptable way to talk about sex at all is ineffective and confusing to everyone else involved.
I don't think my family talked about it much, either. There were sexually explicit books on the shelves, no sense was ever given that sex was transgressive or bad, or filthy in any way, it just wasn't much of a topic of conversation. When I started having girlfriends they didn't care about much other than whether I was happy, and even then, they weren't prying.
My Dad sometimes talked about gay friends of his, so if either my sister or I had turned out to be gay, we'd have been aware that it wasn't something my parents would have had an issue with; but other than that, not much was ever said. Isn't that basically how most families are? Who are these families that talk about sex?
"... it's not as though the secular world doesn't have its own rituals..."
Yeah. And if there aren't any on the ready-to-invoke rack then I think there's some need to make them up as needed. That's what I've been doing recently. There's nothing elaborate and there's no OCD anxiety if circumstances get in the way but it's somewhat more formal behavior than anything I've done in many decades.
Well, in my case, my family was quite prying about everything else except for sex. It really was a bit odd.
We talked a lot about sex, but it was really weird.
My mom on male homosexuality: "It's gross, but I get it."
On female homosexuality: "A woman just doesn't have, you know, anything to be interested in."
On masturbation: "You have to do something with your time."
On prostitution: "Hookers don't have what you'd call normal sex."
On virginity: "You think it's so great now because you're 14. Give it a few years."
On nudity: "Movies always show women taking their clothes off first. Doesn't happen."
On male attractiveness: "The voice is all that matters."
On female attractiveness: "Wear lotion with some kind of perfume in it. It's how you let them know you're available."
It's not like we had full question-and-answer conversations about these things. There were just these cryptic aphorisms.
I didn't seem to be turning out to be like the asexual creepy loners among their siblings
Hey now.
62: Sorry! I am very much like those aunts and uncles in many ways, which is why they were concerned. My own position is that it is weird that there seems to be no social allowance for asexuality. People really seem not to know what to do with those whose main goal is something other than partnering.
My family issued occasional instructions and comfort -- probably the liberal norm. My mother-in-law, however, seems to have been effusive and bizarre. My favorite story is when she intercepted a postcard to my wife that hinted at a boy she should take advantage of, with the code, "I'm sending you a toy." My m-i-l called up my wife and told her, free of context, that if she ever used a dildo, make sure to clean it with bleach.
I received a text message from her once that said, "The ketubah demands that you provide three things to your beloved: food, clothing, and" -- and here the message breaks, and here comes the following message -- "sexual satisfaction." She later claimed it was in reference to a conversation that we'd had two weeks prior, but I think it was a purely random thought that she wanted to share.
My family was somewhat like ttaM's, although when I got older, my father started making snarky remarks about the sex I was presumably getting. He's turned into something of a dirty old man, honestly.
(The same father who later gifted me, my sister, my sister's boyfriend, and my mother--his ex-wife--with Hitachi Magic Wands one Christmas.)
32
I want to say that the passage quoted in 16 gets at the heart of the issue and so the problem is that her community has let her down, ...
I don't know that we know that. I read the linked post (not her entire blog) and it seems possible to me that she (for whatever reason) rejected those opportunities to marry that her community did provide. And she currently seems more comfortable complaining than taking realistic steps to change her situation.
58: There's not talking about it much, and then really not talking about it at all. Ever. Even by implication. Like, there is no possible way I could have perceived a relative as an asexual creepy loner based on family conversations, because we couldn't have gotten near enough to the topic to convey that impression.
James, you seem to be a very uncharitable person. I read the linked post to be saying precisely that she wishes to take realistic steps to change her situation, but is unsure how to go about it.
On male attractiveness: "The voice is all that matters."
Huh. My voice has, on occasion, been described as "mellifluous". Laydeez.
Voice is can be pretty important, it's true. Meet a man (or woman) with a really pleasing, sexy voice, and, well ... be pleasantly disposed.
I have also been complimented on my voice. (Laydeez.)
More importantly, a man (or woman) with an unpleasant voice or vocal timbre has a lot to overcome.
Poking around the archives of a friend's blog, I see that my voice was called "gorgeous" by someone who I have met only over the phone. Although a former roommate's wife told me it was "unusual" and "nasal", which I think is generally false, but you know, full disclosure or whatever.
An attractive voice is a lovely thing. I had a good friend in high school, who I didn't actually end up dating, but I did spend hours on the phone with him, and his voice was wonderful. I'm vaguely surprised he didn't end up working in radio.
I have the voice of a thousand angels screaming in uniform ecstasy, auto-tuned. Well, only kind of like that.
75: Frankly, James has been pissing me off lately more than bob ever tends to. But this is not an ad hominem blog. So that's enough of that.
Let's not take my mother's sexual advice too seriously. She is crazy.
I think my voice is annoying but recently have received a number of compliments regarding it. Also, I'm completely shocked* to realize that there are people in this world who find American accents attractive (on their own merits, separate from the person attached to the accent).
*I understand that I probably shouldn't be, but still.
Let's not take my mother's sexual advice too seriously. She is crazy.
If I've learned anything from this blog, it's that crazy persons know from sex, but one shouldn't be involved with them. So maybe advice-taking is actually the right level of engagement.
82: Actually, if you weren't such a loser, you'd have noticed that it was.
I'm a philosopher, so I know what an ad hominem argument is, and I say that 80 wasn't one.
The remarks listed in 61 do seem kind of crazy.
I just tried to pick out one for criticism -- in case we feel like having a fight -- and almost all of them are nuts.
Who are these families that talk about sex?
Unitarians. Didn't we just have a thread about that?
70.1 was ad hominem, guys! Geez.
Counterpoint: James is subhuman.
Today I'm grading high school essays for scholarship money again! Choice quote in this essay: (The question gives them a quote about questioning your parents, and asks them to reconcile it with the Biblical Honor Thy Parents thing. Some heads are asploding.)
"One should always honor their father and mother. Even if they do not agree with their parents, they must keep in mind that their parents truly have their best interests at heart. The act of discipline is an act of love. Parents must teach children to submit so that they will be able to submit to authority in their later life."
Oh man, kid.
92: Seriously? I can't figure out if you're joking. Um, because I shifted from saying anything about James's particular remarks, to saying something about his constitution as a person. I've put that colloquially, but that's the essence of an ad hominem attack. Though I guess I could have said something about his mother.
94: except that your personal attacks were not an attempt to discredit his argument, or at least not particularly specifically. You were just pointing out a character flaw. Which I'm not sure was even particularly insulting. This might help!
Awl wins the thread at only 95 comments. Hi!
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Speaking of mellifluous voices, just saw There But For Fortune (Phil Ochs documentary ) and highly recommend it. Excellently done, although both depressingly nostalgic for me, and depressingly depressing.
</quasi-bob>
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A high school friend of mine linked this week's Vows on facebook. I spent forever trying to figure out if he was making fun of it, or thought it was important, or was quoted in it, or what, before I finally realized that no, he wrote it.
I don't know quite what to think of this.
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It's a well established fact that the only vehicle capable of carrying a man, a woman, and five children is a stretch Hummer.
Sex is a never-discussed topic in my family, except for cases where something goes horrifically wrong.
Kids, we just wanted to let you know that your uncle and Fluffkins both have the clap and if you want to go to Applebees, don't use your real name and don't ever sit in booth on the far left.
In my family we never talked about the larynx.
Actually, I discovered that my grandfather's brother kept an illegitimate child secret for his entire life. Not really secret, I guess, because everybody of that generation knew, but completely unmentioned until one day the kid decided to go to a family reunion. He was near to collecting SS at that point.
102: From 98 I learned that late in his (short) life Ochs had his larynx injured in a mugging on a Tanzanian beach and felt he could never really sing after that. He apparently also thought that the CIA had done it.
96: You had to link to something invoking sanctimony?
Well, I consider myself duly slapped for misuse of the formal sense of ad hominem. It's important not to misuse the term. I didn't read the whole thing, because it's on a yellow background.
Which non-weapon technology would you undo?
"The internet is a powerful thing that we could in fact live without. Although it has proved to be very useful in some situations, the negative events resulting from its creation greatly outnumber the positive."
103: In the generation previous to ours (and presumably in the current generation), there are a lot of similar kept secrets. My mom, in her 50s and 60s, decided to explore some of these matters, and it's really surprising, to say the least, what emerges.
Later, same essay:
"While it is impossible, I would like to imagine how our society would look without the internet and what a wonderful place it would have been."
A different essay lectured me on and on about how simple and beautiful life was, before cell phones. Most of us can't imagine what a simpler, more family-oriented time it was, like this 18 year old kid can.
61: Shit my Mom Says starring Betty White as AWB's mom. Yes, she's too old to be AWB's mom but the script seems to have her name written all over it.
p.s. white rappers suck. (Ad Eminem.)
Without the internet, I wouldn't have been able to spend an hour today catching up on all the fascinating Charlie Sheen interviews I've missed in the last couple of weeks.
p.s. white rappers suck. (Ad Eminem.)
So do these omelettes. (Ad ham in 'em)
On the contrary, they're pretty tasty. (Ad om nom nom.)
(Voice is also a big one for me. Not just speaking of attraction but like...well, for instance, when I know people virtually before I meet them in the steakosphere, I already have a voice picked out for them a lot of the time and then it doesn't always match. This has happened to some of you, in fact. This entire comment is in parentheses because I suspect it may be a little dumb. No-one in here but us words.)
Mom, it looks cold out there. (Ad come on in o mom.)
104: In 1972, a deranged fan pushed Frank Zappa off a stage face first into a concrete orchestra pit. Among other injuries, his larynx was crushed and the pitch of his voice was much deeper after he recovered.
The omelettes may be tasty, but don't order the grits (ad hominy).
...this is not an ad hominem blog.
But it is a blog hominum. Discuss.
117: I learned that lesson the hard way, this prison camp about 50 clicks from Da Nang. (ad harmed in 'nam)
116: Those violinists had some serious muscle.
114: You've hit upon the entire reason for my pseud. Everyone should always take everything I say to be within parentheses.
You're not giving emoticon hugs?
If I've learned anything from this blog, it's that crazy persons know from sex, but one shouldn't be involved with them. So maybe advice-taking is actually the right level of engagement.
Crazy persons know from sex in that they're (often) great to have sex with; one does not ever take advice from them. I believe Apo will back me up on this.
Speaking of sex practices, The Loving Dead does a much better job than I would have thought possible combining zombie-horror and sex.
I'm told emoticons are frowned upon here. Plus I can never figure out who's a huggy person and who isn't, including me.
Man, I remember the good old days, when I still had hope that life could be something more than constant misery and internet.
114: when I know people virtually before I meet them in the steakosphere, I already have a voice picked out for them
Interesting. Would it be indelicate to ask whose voice you have picked for... people currently posting? Like me for example, obviously you must have me figured for... Isaiah "Old Spice Guy" Mustafa? Denzel Washington? Michael Jai White? Don't be shy.
128: when I still had hope that life could be something more than constant misery and internet.
... but I repeat myself. *rim shot*
It never works out the way you'd hope, DS.
108: I'm old enough to have looked at the alumni notes from my high school and seen the tangible output of the briefly complicated three person triangle graduating together. I have no idea what the kids were told.
114: Voices are incredibly important, though I'm not sure I have voices assigned to virtual friends -- I think you're fairly aurally inclined.
I've sometimes heard from virtual friends, before I talk to them either on the phone or in person, that they didn't expect me to be an alto, maybe expected something nasally. Oh.
From the link in 125: "The zombie plague is a sexually transmitted disease, turning its victims into shambling, horny, voracious killers after an incubation period during which they become increasingly promiscuous."
My general stance on the whole zombie thing is EFUCKINGNOUGH ALREADY KILL IT WITH FIRE, but I've gotta admit, this take sounds like it has legs.
When you read my comments, imagine a cross between Barry White and James Mason. laydeez.
imagine a cross between Barry White and James Mason
"Literature existed since the beginning of language which is why it sparks interest amongst many, such as myself."
Would it be indelicate to ask whose voice you have picked for... people currently posting?
Ronald Colman? Cary Grant? Powers Booth?
I have a deep, mellifluous baritone suggesting a mysterious past in the British Colonial Caribbean but also a polished education in the Mother Country.
No wait, that's Neil Nunes on the radio. Never mind.
134: Fortunately there's already a movie adaptation of that story.
136: Doesn't Barry White have a deep voice? And aren't you on the short side for a male person? Though I think you said recently that you approximated a baritone -- or, wait, maybe it was Stanley who said that. Whoever it was, I was surprised.
Actually, nevermind. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I thought DS just sounded like Bryant Gumbel, whatever he sounds like.
131: A safety PSA for those joking about the old Urkel: the new Urkel is big enough to break most people in half and has some pretty serious anger issues.
I have the voice of a thousand angels screaming in uniform ecstasy, auto-tuned.
70
James, you seem to be a very uncharitable person. I read the linked post to be saying precisely that she wishes to take realistic steps to change her situation, but is unsure how to go about it.
I got echoes of the "good guys" you sometimes encounter on the internet complaining that women don't recognize how awesome they are.
And I got echoes of my own past when I was vaguely dissatisified with something but it wasn't something that had to be fixed immediately so I would procrastinate for years until it was too late to do anything. But I don't blame God for this.
129: Oh I don't have them for everyone. And, ok, I had to google Michael Jai White, so you don't get his voice. I think I'm most likely to have them for people whose faces I have seen on flickr or facebook or wherevs, now that I think about it.
145.2: You should have been my dissertation adviser.
Alas, literature too is dying because of the internet. IPv6 will probably finish it off for good.
142.2: Yes, well, the gentleman in question needn't know how I actually sound to imagine my sounding like Isaiah Mustafa. Or even Wesley Snipes or Forrest Whitaker.
98:Near the top of this thread, I was going to quote from Och's "I've Had Her (She's Nothing)" which is a long string of metaphors for disillusionment (in a voice not Och's own...oh never mind)...anyway to say sex may not be worth the hassles. I couldn't find an appropriate verse.
I cannot stand to be touched, in the autistic screaming punching fit way, except by a partner or lover, in which case it's terrific, until it gets sticky.
And there ain't no lonely like the lonely you feel in bed next to somebody. Soul-killing stuff. And we all end up there.
Maybe it would make my unfogged experience richer to assign voices deliberately. Bob's comments will now be heard in the voice of Edith Bouvier Beale if I can install that script in my brain.
I think I'm most likely to have them for people whose faces I have seen on flickr
I hesitate to ask.
Somebody should be Roseanne Roseannadanna, but I can't figure out who.
Someone should set up the technology to do an audio thread, just once.
I think I'd be very inhibited on an audio thread. It's like the worst of both worlds - you don't have the person in front of you to read all their nonverbal cues, and you can't reread and edit what you say before posting.
Didn't somebody set up a text-to-speech interface (using the mac synth voices) at some point? I remember I had parsimon using the "Bubbles" voice.
It wouldn't have to be more real-time than a normal thread; you could have some sort of preview before posting.
Everyone could just record themselves saying 'Merry Mary wants to marry,' for comparison's sake.
We've talked about this before, haven't we?
For my money the obvious vocal choice for Bob would be Charles Gunning*, but that might be a little too close to the bone.
Smearcase is ignoring my prodding. He's probably like, "who the hell is this 'DS' guy and why does he sound like Carrot Top?"
(* He voices the angry prisoner in Waking Life.)
you could have some sort of preview before posting.
Oh, but that would be way too boring to go back and listen to my weak attempts at rambling and comic timing. I'd get way too annoyed with myself if I tried to preview.
162: That's an app for Mac, Sifu. That's only useful to people from J.J. Abrams movies.
163: Yeah, I'd be happy with that myself.
164.1: just for that I'm giving you Steve Jobs's voice.
Actually, that's not true. I gave you "Bahh".
162: Ah, the Stanley tech-support thread. I never did figure out what was happening on his computer.
163.2: Given that we know you to be a sought-after wedding emcee, I doubt you're Mr. Squeaky-Voice.
Why all black? I don't think Forest, or Danny Glover, or Morgan F sound all that "black", whatever that means. Am I wrong?
The big "D" makes one think baritone, I suppose.
I speak like I write, except way way less.
My voice is lower than I imagine it, being small they wanted me to be tenor, and I couldn't do it. I am much calmer, cooler, kinder, gentler, charming in person, where someone might stab me in the eye. It's a sociopath thing.
Except when I shriek.
169.1: No you're not wrong, none of them sound stereotypically "black." It's just never occurred to me to think of any white guys I would sound like. What white guys sound like Bryant Gumbel?
168: You know, there might be a recording of me on the Internets still, somewhere. I wonder.
Tell your future academic school about a neat learning experience you've had!
"Knowing Christ affects every other aspect in my life and how I can spread his love and his Word with other people, so that they know the true meaning about Christ. The overall outcome of this adventurous experience is good because I have been able to give my life to him so that he may direct me in the way of his plan so that his knowledge is spread throughout the world. What I do in my life greatly influences those around me and how they live their lives in God so that we may continue to grow in his love."
This is why I never feel comfortable talking about my beliefs in the South.
171: Let us know if you're willing to share it. I'd try to judge whether you look like Bryant Gumbel if I knew what he looked like, particularly, in the first place. As it stands, I figure he looks like you.
172: "I love Jesus. Jesus is better than cats. I'm going to see Jesus again and again."
If I linked to most recordings of me on the internet, people I know would be likely to trace the web traffic back to Unfogged. (There aren't that many people checking out recorded physics lectures on the interwebs.) There's one that would be pretty safe, but includes a fairly awful-sounding laugh not far in, so I won't link to it.
172: And there was a time when I thought Harold Bloom was wrong about America's true religion being Gnosticism in all its forms.
people I know would be likely to trace the web traffic back to Unfogged
Can links and such be put on the flickr pool? Which seems relatively safe? Maybe put in a separate section there; I recall that there's a discussion thread function there.
Doesn't Barry White have a deep voice? And aren't you on the short side for a male person?
Tessitura and physical stature are unrelated, babe. And in fact, I'm not just a baritone, I'm a bass-baritone. It's more of a girth thing, IYKWIMAITYD.
Another one saying that cell phones are a dangerous technological innovation that should be undone, if it were possible.
Tessitura and physical stature are unrelated, babe.
I guess I've never heard the manager say, "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Terfel will not be performing tonight because he is too short."
179: I admit I was impressed and surprised, and smiled. Even though depth isn't everything!
160: Totally not ignoring your prodding! Like I said, I don't have one for you. But if you want a voice assigned, you get, um....the guy who voiced Garfield and the doorman on Rhoda. I didn't promise this was going to turn out well.
172: I love Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus Christ Superstar is better than cats. I'm going to see JesusChrist Superstar again and again. FTFY.
It is possible to upload videos to Flickr.
181: Well then that's about the only one he hasn't used. Ooh zing! Opera cancellation snark!
But if you ask singers, height and fach. Not just "Wagneriennes are girthy" but tenors tend to be short. (People expect me to be a tenor.) It has to do with the length of the chords or something. Oh finally I get to say it: Laydeez....
*"height and fach are related."
186: To be fair, the times I heard him at the Met he sang the roof all the way off the place, to my uneducated ear.
173: Hmmm, can't find the recording. There was an online archive of poetry readings somewheres but those can be a little ephemeral sometimes.
As for Bryant Gumbel -- I'd like to say we're lookalikes, as he's a handsome guy, but it ain't so. We're pretty close to soundalikes though. He's an American morning television guy, I can't remember what his regular gig is now.
(Thanks for making me the baseline, that's very flattering!)
82: I admit I was impressed and surprised, and smiled. Even though depth isn't everything!
Oh do behave, you two!
188 Oh I wasn't meaning to be dismissive of your tastes. He just bails a lot.
190: No, no, my taste in music is highly dismissable, and he did cancel a performance due to "back pain" when he would have spent most of the show sitting in a chair. Rather a lot of German cursing in the audience at that announcement.
183.1: Oh hey, that's not so bad. At least Lorenzo Music had an awesome name. And stoned, maybe I do sound a bit like him.
People would occasionally videotape parts of my tours, so it's certainly possible that there's some video of me online somewhere, but a quick search of Youtube isn't finding anything.
I've always heard DS's voice as a quite deep. Same with Jesus's. I have never assigned a voice to Flippanter (who has been totally cracking me up for the past several weeks), which is odd. LB has always sounded very calm to me. And...I just got bored with this game.
189: Of course you're the baseline.
{deleted comment about celebrity comparisons and how weird they are)
Von, you should read my comments in a damp, lascivious whisper, with quiet storm radio thunder in the background.
How does one join the flickr group these days? Maybe I should finally do it. I just created a new account.
More importantly, a man (or woman) with an unpleasant voice or vocal timbre has a lot to overcome.
Perhaps, and yet I witnessed Michael Cera get laid (in a movie) this very night.
I tend to murmur because I don't like the inner-ear sound when I raise my voice.
199: Add Armsmasher as a contact and ask him to add you to the group.
199: I think you have to ask armsmasher or heebie (replacing ogged) to invite you, you being whatever your flickr account name is.
I'm beginning to suspect that Sifu Tweety is a bit of a dork.
Huh, I hadn't realized heebie was an administrator of the group now.
But if you ask singers, height and fach
My recent listening experience includes Thomas Quasthoff and Ian Bostridge—okay fine, Quasthoff's an outlier, but still. In my choral singing experience, I suppose basses have slightly surpassed tenors generally, size-wise.
I suppose basses have slightly surpassed tenors generally, size-wise.
Pics or it didn't happen.
okay fine, Quasthoff's an outlier
Oh no you di-glottal-stop-unt.
I won't start about Bostridge except to say that he's the least gracious recitalist I've ever seen. He looked like he'd rather be getting a root canal.
205: I believe she's an administrator of the flickr group, but she still won't fix the apostrophe error in the OP. Stubborn, that one.
Okay. So, heebie, if you're reading, I added you as a contact in a newly-created flickr account under a phrase that's an anagram of my name. Hopefully that's unambiguous. Can I be added to the pool?
essear's real name is E.E. Ham-Mad?
It's actually pretty excellent that flickr communications might founder because Facebook doesn't work there. Ha!
There's a girl in our office who's quite attractive and a really nice person, but she has a voice like Donald Duck. I really take my hat off to her partner (she has one).
The odd thing about the world according to AWB's mum, upthread, is that it's spectacularly fucked up, but clearly very seriously and intelligently thought through. And presumably it works for her. So how fucked up is it really?
My reaction to the woman linked in th OP is that there but for the grace of the absence of god, go I, and I came from a very liberal environment by the light of its times (both my godfathers were flamboyantly gay, a fact well known to my parents when they picked them - well, they could hardly have missed it). I hung out in the swinging 60s/70s with no inhibitions but my own and I still had no idea how to play the rules. I only ever got laid by accident.
OK, having fisked this thread backwards, I'll do some work.
106: Which non-weapon technology would you undo?
Ha! It's a trick question, because there are no non-weapon technologies.
Even as a nonbeliever, I have an enormous amount of respect for SN, the ideal she's lived, and the suffering she's inflicted on herself and endured.
Hmm, I don't know about that. If she'd lived an incredibly restrictive and difficult life for a good reason - she'd spent most of her adult life in Antarctica doing climate research or something - then fair enough. But she's imposed all these restrictions on herself for no reason at all, and at the age of 40 it's dawned on her that they're making her extremely miserable. Not respect, I think, so much as pity.
172: My roommate is reading applications for a fellowship and got a recommendation letter along these lines from a high school principle. Miss A is the sort of girl who is a quiet leader, and she shows her quiet leadership in all sorts of Christian ways. Her faith in Jesus helps her make good decisions and help others to make good decisions. We're so proud of her faith in Christ. Etc. She sent it to me for translation. Yes, the recommending school is in Texas. (Seriously, this is what you send for your student in New York?) The student herself apparently wrote about the greatest learning experience of her life being accepting Christ into her heart.
I mean, I get it. When I was an evangelical, every question was potentially an opportunity to share my faith in testimony and know that God will use my testimony to help me succeed--or not, if He wanted me to understand persecution. I have cousins who still live on that planet and have never been able to graduate from any kind of college, Christian or otherwise, because the answer to every question must be JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.
Sunday School joke! (I heard this in Sunday School.)
The kids' Sunday School teacher says, "Kids, do you know who it is that lives in a tree, has a big bushy tail, and stores nuts for the winter?" No one raises a hand until one kid, tentatively, says, "I know the answer is supposed to be Jesus, but that sure as hell sounds like a squirrel."
it's spectacularly fucked up, but clearly very seriously and intelligently thought through.
This is exactly how I'd describe my mom. She's hilarious, and you'd like her! But she's also completely insane.
Principal. Arg. Never wake up at 430.
The principal argument for never waking up at 430 is that if you have a whole pie in the fridge you will eat part of it, with an outcome somewhere in the interval between negative pie and positive pie.
/dorkjoke
I think I woke everyone up this morning and feel bad about it.
221: I couldn't figure out where that noise was coming from. That was you? Where'd you get the goat?
216:If she'd lived an incredibly restrictive and difficult life for a good reason - she'd spent most of her adult life in Antarctica doing climate research or something
(Not personal)
Note the high value placed on asceticism in service of Science or Society or Production relative to religion or spirituality. Or I suppose Sport or Art, a very restricted social life or diet and strong discipline is admired for a novelist or painter, mountain climber or surfer, but not a monk or priest.
Have we changed because Religion does not serve Capitalist Accumulation or Consumption? Weber be damned!
Just noted, mainly, as I read of every third Heian noble retiring to a temple, by choice sometimes.
Now I know why I couldn't sleep. Someone was up on the internet.
bob, not so much service to Science or Production as Service to Others. If she'd said "OMG I've been working 100 hours a week as a Wall Street lawyer and now I find I'm amazingly rich but I am really unhappy and have no friends", I don't think she would get too much sympathy.
Surprisingly, it seems that being a woman and living your whole life in accordance with a very strict version of a patriarchal religion can cause unhappiness. Well, yes. It's a shame it's taken her half her life to work that out.
226: Well, her role in that patriarchal religion is about service to God and family, which, if you take the religion seriously, isn't worthless or self-indulgent. It seems like a pity to me because I don't share her religion, but for someone who did, what she's been doing has been worthwhile.
The joke in 217 made me laugh.
if you take the religion seriously
...aaaaand that's the whole problem right there.
My life would be a lot less stressful if I didn't take politics seriously.
228: but it seems from that article that she isn't taking her religion too seriously either now -
"I feel deep down that if I am not going to get the practical benefits of a Torah lifestyle - if it does not even make me feel particularly spiritual anymore, and I am angry at God and I cannot seem to attract a decent Orthodox man - then I would at least like to have some fun"
- and that much of her anguish is from her sense of the time she's wasted. That's the way I read it anyway.
There's a huge difference between being angry at God and thinking he's not there -- as far as I can tell, she thinks she kept her side of a bargain with someone who accepted her efforts and didn't come through with what he owed her in return, not that she spent her life doing something pointless in the service of a delusion.
she thinks she kept her side of a bargain with someone who accepted her efforts and didn't come through with what he owed her in return
That part of the post struck me as strange: are you supposed to be following the various commandments in exchange for a reward? I know nothing about Orthodox Judaism, but that seems odd.
You're right. It doesn't always work out that way.
234: Well, isn't that what the book of Job is about? On the one hand, no, you don't expect a reward for following the commandments, God does what he does and who are we to understand or criticize? On the other hand, Job, a good man and beloved by God, certainly gets pissed off at God when his family and cattle die and he ends up sitting on a dungheap scraping his boils with a potsherd. So getting mad about that kind of thing can't be exactly the wrong reaction, either, can it?
I can't believe I got pwned on the book of Job.
Fuck you and your "suffering", dad!
are you supposed to be following the various commandments in exchange for a reward?
No, but following them as strictly as she did is a huge undertaking and I'm sure a lot of people who do it at least subconsciously expect to get something out of it. Remember (as we discussed a little while ago) that the Christian concept of reward or punishment in the afterlife doesn't really have an equivalent in Judaism as practiced today. In Biblical times the idea was that the reward or punishment would come in this life; after a few thousand years it's become obvious that that doesn't actually happen in any straightforward or consistent way, so people don't necessarily believe it literally anymore, but there's nothing else to replace it except "follow the commandments because God said so," which isn't very satisfying. So you can see how the idea of worldly reward would persist even if it's not officially encouraged.
The Book of Job is of course an attempt to wrestle with this problem from around the time that people were realizing that the "worldly reward" concept didn't work.
I can't believe it took that long to notice the lack of worldly rewards.
The Book of Job is totally sadistic.
242: More seriously on 238, that (and other) aspect(s) of the Book of Job was one of the biggies for laying the early groundwork for me getting off the religion bus.
I can't believe it took that long to notice the lack of worldly rewards.
They may have just been lucky for a while.
244: I thought it was more that they were always worshipping idols, so there was always a good explanation for things not working out.
239: that the Christian concept of reward or punishment in the afterlife doesn't really have an equivalent in Judaism
I had a somewhat awkward moment on a business trip when a colleague tried to explain to me that Christianity was a more advanced religion than Judaism due to just this. It was also so apparent in his delivery that he assumed I was a Christian that I felt compelled to say something like, "Although I was raised in a Christian household, I no longer practice and do not believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God or died for our sins." A bit awkward as I said, but it shut the fucker up for a while.
I have been young, and now am not too old,
And I have seen the righteous forsaken,
His health, his honour and his quality taken
This is not what we were formerly told.
They may have just been lucky for a while.
Damn lucky. Job is reckoned to be one of the later books isn't it?
245: "I preached/sacrificed/ritualized good but boy the did they follow bad!" was probably in the toolkit of the very first shaman to trouble the species.
239: there's nothing else to replace it except "follow the commandments because God said so,"
To be honest, I thought that was indeed supposed to be the reason. Of course it's not very satisfying, which is one reason I tend to find (many) religions baffling.
book of Job is about?
Job asks all of these great, insightful questions about suffering. The answer he gets is "Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?" For which the tersest paraphrase is "Who the hell are you to be asking questions?"
Ecclesiastes is also good, if not comforting.
250: There's definitely some promises of material reward coming from G_d's side of the deal.
233 et seq. may be misinterpreting the text. The expected reward of living a pious and godly life is not that God will reward you necessarily, but that a male member of the community will find those qualities attractive and will marry you.
Not unrelated: Because it is psychologically somewhat less difficult for young men than young women to leave the community, some very religious communities suffer from a gender imbalance.
The Book of Job is totally sadistic.
Most jobs are.
252: Yeah. It seems rather craven to making deals with God. What's in it for God? The prospect of adulation? It seems a little childish.
Heh.
The prospect of adulation? It seems a little childish.
Judging by the Commandments, God is into that sort of thing.
The not killing other people is the hard commandment.
Also, see In re Leviathan. Who knows what God wants out of anything?
Most of the other ones rarely apply, unless your mom asks you not to kill somebody.
My neighbors do make it easy for me by not hathing any oxen.
When I see my neighbor's oxen, I just want them so bad!
239 reminds me of the Shalom Auslander piece (which I heard on This American Life) about how, after a life of rigorous orthodox judaism, he was finally moved to ask for one thing -- if he walked all the way from his house (upstate somewhere, maybe? Definitely not on Manhattan) to Madison Square Garden to watch the simulcast of the Rangers (because he couldn't turn his own TV on, of course, and had constructed a complicated rationalization for his alternate plan), could god at least let the Rangers win? God did not, and was duly forsaken.
256: He's a three-year-old in a princess get-up, as far as I can tell.
I went to confession to tell the priest that I had seen imaginary grizzlies leaning against the dude next door, but apparently it's not a problem to witness false bears against thy neighbor.
I assume the bears were named Gladly and bumped into things a lot.
263: If G-d doesn't smite you for that, then I think will lose my faith.
264: whereas I got in tons of trouble for yelling at the toilet; "Thou shit not call" and all that.
I thought it was more that they were always worshipping idols, so there was always a good explanation for things not working out.
Yeah, for a long time it seems like no one was really paying much attention to the commandments, so it was easy for the prophets to explain why bad things happened.
259. Many of the others are pointedly jealous with respect to other dieties. Graven images have been the source of a lot of conflict; people feel strongly about images.
I thought that was indeed supposed to be the reason.
Oh, it definitely is, at least today. People aren't supposed to be doing this stuff in expectation of a reward. The Bible was written thousands of years ago, of course, and it was probably interpreted differently then.
271: Back then, they didn't even have rewards for women.
Tuli Kupferberg went for the LHF of "Thou shalt not covert thy neighbour's ass", and god help me I'm old enough to remember the record coming out.
270: Remember how upset all those girls were when David Archuleta didn't win -- people still have very strong feelings about idols.
I'm pretty sure G-d made me an Unfogged front page poster to reward my virtue.
275: Don't go confusing G-d with Ogg-d!
So I assume you all lead dirty, dirty lives. Besides chaste neb.
Maybe it was to reward Ben's virtue.
263 is the best visualization of YHWH ever.
As a very young boy, I briefly had an image of God as the guy dressed up as George Washington on the President's Day commercials. Not sure why.
278: But, how can you be explained, apo? Is that another one of G-d's cruel jokes?
279: Careful, k-sky! We haven't heard from parsimon since she posted that!
263 is awesome. Please, God, don't smite parsimon! Smite peep instead! He's just trying to ingratiate himself with You!
I worried after 263 that I'd offended religious persons in our midst, for a failure of respect due the deity. Sorry. I'm an atheist, and I do respect a number of religious persons; religious cultures are cultures like any other.
Heebie, peep, I don't think you really need to googleproof God.
religious cultures are cultures like any other
I disagree. Yogurt is in a class all by itself.
Not unrelated: Because it is psychologically somewhat less difficult for young men than young women to leave the community, some very religious communities suffer from a gender imbalance.
But the poster's 40. We're not talking about some impressionable teenager who's been brought up in a sheltered community here.
But, how can you be explained, apo? Is that another one of G-d's cruel jokes?
BEHOLD NOW APOSTROPHER WHICH I MADE WITH THEE. HE EATETH LOW-HANGING FRUIT AS AN OX.
Genesis 2:17: "but you must not click on apo's link, for when you do you will certainly see something you wish you hadn't."
261 is awesome, especially because I'm picturing Megan literally drooling while gazing at some sweet oxen.
239: there's nothing else to replace it except "follow the commandments because God said so,"
I'm a bit betrunken right now, but I think this is a common but deeply mistaken way for atheists to interpret the normativity of God's commands. (I suspect it derives from the way that divine-command theory was appropriated as a political ideology, and then thoroughly overturned, such that it's not hard to see divine normativity except as a thoroughly unjustified absolute despotism; see Philip Pullman, passim.)
ANYWAY. I think a better way (e.g. a way that's not so obviously bonkers) to interpret divine normativity is to take a step back, and to see it as an alternative to existentialist/nature-of-rationality stories about the nature of normativity itself; what makes for reasons and oughts out of all of this matter in motion. The promises about Eretz Israel and all that stuff are nice, icing on the cake, but fundamentally it's about Genesis 1 &c., about giving form to the void. Why do anything at all? Well, if it weren't for the fact that it's all a silly fairy-tale, "because it fits into the plan/will of That Which Made Existence" would be a reasonably compelling answer.
Goddamnit. I need to always look at the last timestamp; I always post hours after a thread's died.
I confess I'm having trouble understanding 292.2. You mean: if we're asking why ought follows from is, we rationalist types might think there needs to be a reason. But an alternative is to suppose that that's simply the way the world is: this is the form God has given the world. ? So the shift from is to ought is seamless. ?
I should probably eat something, because I really can't tell if I'm getting the idea or am totally confused.
Not so much why ought follows from is, but whether there's anything to 'ought' at all; how could there be ought-ness?
Now, the right answer is that it's a bit of a malformed question; the primates we are happen to have randomly evolved such that, as an evolutionary by-product, we have consciousness such that questions like this are possible, but there's no way to answer such things from an external standpoint; one simply has to accept the idea of ought-ness once you start to ask for reasons for anything. Sartre + Korsgaard + Gibbard, more or less.
But that's a bit of a scary answer, and may not give one the desired sort of awe at the moral law within, &c. So. If it weren't for it all being a fairy-tale, the idea of the God of Genesis imbues all of creation with ought; the ought of a teleological universe, existing for God's (rather inscrutable) reasons. Fitting one's own life into the weave of this plan may still not be justified from an external point of view, sure--no attempt to ground normativity could be--but it's nevertheless perhaps more satisfying in that it's bigger. Not just 'my country, right or wrong', but 'all of existence, right or wrong'--it's easier to see how the 'right or wrong' part of that could seem nonsensical, when the first part is as big as 'all of existence'.
Now, the right answer is that it's a bit of a malformed question
No!
I always do such a shitty job of talking about religion (see, e.g., the blank stares of the kids in the Sunday School class I taught last Sunday, who were not impressed with my supposedly provocative discussion prompt that walking on water was "pretty lame for a superpower").
BUT Trapnel's points make sense to me. In at least in some forms of Christianity -- though apparently not in the "if I don't have buttsex I will go to heaven" school that seems to be a stand-in for "Christianity" among nonbelievers -- "you must obey x law because of y potential reward" is exactly the opposite of the point.
But that doesn't mean that "you must obey x law just because God says so" is the point, either. It's more that God loves you, and wants you to love other people, so you should do that because that's what you can do in this life to be a fulfilled human being. Or something like that.
Dang. I'm not entirely sure I'm getting it, but I feel smarter just reading the last several comments.
With "fulfilled human being" meaning "human being who is fully participating in life with God," not some kind of material or immediate satisfaction of fulfillment.
And this ends Halford's Incoherent Theological Thoughts (HITT).
297: I don't think that's what xt is saying at all. The story of Job doesn't fit the God of your third paragraph. God doesn't love Job, or give a shit if he loves other people. God wants Job to know his place.
Are you guys having trouble with Unfogged on Google Chrome? It's working fine for me on Firefox but won't load on Chrome.
This is doing a very effective job of convincing me more strongly than ever that religion (while, you know, go for it, people who it means something to, as long as you're not jerks) is an utter waste of time. So that's... good?
295: the idea of the God of Genesis imbues all of creation with ought; the ought of a teleological universe
Okay. Thanks -- I thought that was the idea.
I'm using Chrome (well, and older build of Chromium, for weird idiosycratic reasons) right now to say that contra 300, at least as crucially modified by 299, 297 is at least in the neighborhood of what I was getting at, I think.
Nevertheless, Job is tricky just because it's so incredibly fucked up. I mean, seriously. What the fuck, dude.
302: Yep! Just, y'know, as D^2 would say, DBACAI.
302 might have come off a little snippy about things that people find very important for perfectly valid reasons; it just has no pull whatsoever for me.
306 before 305, which addresses in an oblique way what's actually bothering me.
But your answer lead inevitably to Job, which I'm sure how it ended up in the Bible in the first place. If God makes ought, and God is a bully, then you being a victim is right. It's Might Makes Right on a grand scale.
The idea in Catholic theology is much more humane. Things are either objectively right or objectively wrong. God is omnibenevolent, so what he wants is always right, but there's an objective standard, and if you had the ability to measure God by that standard he would meet it. God can't be a bully because he's omnibenevolent.
I'm not sure that I understand 390.2, or why it's necessarily inconsistent with what Trapnel wrote above. In general, while "God is a sadistic asshole" is certainly a plausible reading of Job (which predates the New Testament, of course), the more (reasonable? attractive?) reading is that an undue focus on worldly things, even worldly piety is a way of distancing yourself from God, and that experiencing suffering can be a way to participate more fully in the godly life.
I should now stop talking without a license.
And stop talking without closing tags.
If I were really trying, I'd say that Job is about just how awesome, as in awe-inspiring, incomprehensibly beyond-everything in an amazing and terrifying way, God is, and how futile it is to try to squeeze the real oughtness--which all flows from His design/plan/will/whatever into our flawed and partial intuitions about justice. Again, the Leviathan line.
Or hey, analogy (I'm about to go to bed anyway!)--God tells you a unified Theory of Physics that totally blows your mind; it's impossibly counterintuitive. [Maybe you're still pre-Newton even!] Does this count against God's theory? Of course not! You don't argue physics with God; the very idea that your physics intuitions count as evidence against what he says is ridiculous!
... but before I go, everyone really should (re-)read the Brick Testament version of Job. That is some fucked-up shit.
In Catholic theology, God doesn't create ought, anymore than he makes 2 + 2 = 4.
I hate it when you post interesting things and then go to bed, trapnel.
314: In Catholic theology, God doesn't create ought, anymore than he makes 2 + 2 = 4 ought creates God.
Well, my best friend just IMd me, so I guess I'll stay for a bit. But I really should be banned, what with the analogy.
314: In Catholic theology, God doesn't create ought
Cripe, you know, I'm a confirmed Catholic, but I apparently never paid any attention at all, because I'm not sure I've known that.
Or rather, sure: and maybe that's why God as source of oughtness seems so medieval to me. I'd assumed it was because I'm a 20th century over-educated rationalist (who has also spent time studying meta-ethics).
In any case, I can't really, in a true sense, wrap my head around the idea that God/the world comes in a state of oughtness.
I wish Kotsko still came around these parts.
Also, I've said it before, and we've talked about it before, but blog comments about theology don't have much to do with religious practice, one way or another.
Who knows what God wants out of anything?
John Donne tells us that "[t]here is a soul in that man, and a will in that soul, and God is in love with that soul, and would have it."
I'm late to this discussion, but what's interesting to me about the Book of Job is that the relationship between God and Job is almost secondary to the relationship between God and Satan. At the start of the book, Satan keeps needling God, trying to make him doubt the goodness of humankind, which he claims as his greatest accomplishment. God reveals some insecurity on this point (remember, this is after repeated instances where humankind has demonstrated itself to be an epic fail, i.e., the fall of Adam and Eve, the flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc.). So then God has to prove the worthiness of his creation, which incidentally involves torturing Job. At the end of all this, you have God telling Job, more or less, that he's super powerful and so Job has no right to question him, and Job basically agrees. But that conversation about God's infallibility takes place in the shadow of God's earlier interactions with Satan, which demonstrated God's fallibility and insecurity. It's weird.
(I'm under deadline, but that's my cent and a half.)
312: I'm not sure that's the same argument. One position is that if you were capable of understanding God's plan, you would assent to it, because you would see that it was just. Another position is that asking if God's plan is just is meaningless, because God defines what is and is not just. In the second position, there's nothing to understand.
If Trapnel's still here, then I'll say that this:
295: Now, the right answer is that it's a bit of a malformed question; the primates we are happen to have randomly evolved such that, as an evolutionary by-product, we have consciousness such that questions like this are possible, but there's no way to answer such things from an external standpoint
is more or less right, though I might quibble with the terms. You make it sound as though there's not much else to explore about the nature of normativity after the (somewhat shrugging) "we're just that kind of creature" sentiment. I figure that's not what you mean, but there's no need to go straight for the evolutionary biology angle. Materialist.
322: It's weird.
Yes, it is. But the Israelite religion was fairly cosmopolitan ("henotheistic" is the preferred term by specialists, I think, worshiping one God but not necessarily disbelieving in others) as much of the Old Testament was being written down; indeed the OT records much of the controversy over that cosmopolitanism. It was only well after the fact and by degrees that the idea of a purely monotheistic God came about, and later yet that the triple traits of omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience became common (if not universally accepted even to this day). The fit with the older version of events -- in which God looks a lot like any other "supreme being" Near Eastern deity, fallible and vulnerable and neurotic even while proclaiming Himself supreme, and constantly in contention with and being taunted by other powers -- was always going to be poor.
You make it sound as though there's not much else to explore about the nature of normativity after the (somewhat shrugging) "we're just that kind of creature" sentiment. I figure that's not what you mean, but there's no need to go straight for the evolutionary biology angle. Materialist.
Well, I think there's not all that much more to be said about the ought-ness itself. I mean, I don't see much point to "well, but do we really really have reason to X?" sorts of questions; I don't see much to explore about just how grabby that ought-ness is. But I agree that there's a lot of interesting internal questions.
I suspect I think less of interest can be discerned through metaethics than you do, but this may be more about categorization; I think there's a lot to be said for moral reasoning, and I think it's fair to say that substantively answering the question what we have reason to do tells us about the nature of normativity. (Because I'm somewhat deflationist about their being much more to its nature than that; than it being ought-apt, and it being reason-apt.)
But that conversation about God's infallibility takes place in the shadow of God's earlier interactions with Satan, which demonstrated God's fallibility and insecurity. It's weird.
This gives me an excuse to plug Randy Newman's Faust again in which he takes great pleasure in imagining a number of arguments between god and the devil.
Take, for example, this song, one of my favorites. The devil has been asking god some tough questions and god (sung by James Taylor, in an inspired bit of casting) responds by calling up the heavenly choir, including summoning a group of children, and begins to sing about all the wonder beauty in the world.
[Note the devil groaning in the background that god is going to try to get out of their argument with such a transparently manipulative tactic.]
But then, after a young girl angel sings a solo about how it must be so difficult for the devil to be so mean all the time, he spots an opportunity, because he happens to know something about this girl, and begins to ask her questions.
[I love the exchange where he asks how shes been adapting to heaven in the two months since she's died and she replies, "I've tried to make friends here, but it's hard." -- so good].
The devil points out that this excessively cute young girl was, in fact, brutally murdered (in "a Burger King in Tuscon") and that the man who murdered her will go on to live a successful life and end up in heaven. He challenges god to explain this seeming injustice.
god replies that there are many ways in which people can be welcomed into his good graces, confession, redemption, absolution and, "in the case of this man predestination."
As a satire of theological argument, I think it's fantastic.
326: Normativity goes beyond just moral reasoning, which is why there's a lot more to be said about it. There's just plain rule-following, or what looks to us like rule-following. Language use partakes of normativity. Etc.
There's an area of moral/political philosophy that defines normativity more narrowly than I tend to. So I think we're just talking about slightly different things.
Ah, no, I generally think of it broadly, but wasn't at that moment. Though we may still disagree, insofar as my instinct in each area--language, rule-following generally, decision-theory--is to look for context, and to suspect that there's not (much) more to it than what's illuminated by our answers to the substantive, internal questions.
329: Well, peace. We've touched on this before, and I can't bring myself to construct and present a broad argument for the value of philosophizing. I'm also tired.
This thread is not complete without shomer negiah panties.
327 is pretty great; thanks, Nick.
well demons as such are only really defined in contrast to the post-neoplatonic description of god. before that, its just imperial language isn't it?
"In Catholic theology, God doesn't create ought, anymore than he makes 2 + 2 = 4."
this always seemed irrelevant to me, becasue which side these sort of believes come down on is deteremined by the more proximate theological issues. so maybe its important, because you dodn't think you can win the other one.
Which is why the more insightful things are either iconoclastic completist thomes which go out of date in five mintues, or witty aphorisms
