Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Xonas Pitfall]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Imagine if I told you: "Well, I don't really love my child but this gives me options to love every child." That means you don't love your child.

Hmm...

Isn't it more like?

“I love my child, so I want them to wear Christian robes, sing Christian songs, read Christian scripture, pray, go to church, follow Christian moral rules, marry within the faith, raise their children Christian, spread the gospel, and live according to Christian teachings.”

“I love my child, so I want them to explore who they are and decide what kind of life they want to live, as long as they aren't doing injustice.”

-

“I love my child, so I want everyone to know about my child. I want them on TV, in the news, everywhere. I want everyone talking about them.”

“I love my child, and I hope they become a good person and do whatever they want to do.”

-

“I love this song, so I want everyone to hear it, sing it, and pass it on to their children.”

“I love this song. I hope other people enjoy it too, but they can listen to whatever they want, as long as they aren’t using their music to harm or oppress others.”

-

Obviously, I’m presenting the left quite mildly, politely here, haha. They have their extremes too  

[Leo Gura]

@Xonas Pitfall Just imagine this:

Imagine loving your culture, your nation, so much you would go to war for it.

No leftist loves their culture like that.

[Nemra]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Imagine loving your culture, your nation, so much you would go to war for it.

Isn't their love biased?

I'm not judging.

[Xonas Pitfall]

7 minutes ago, Nemra said:

Isn't their love biased?

I'm not judging.

Yes, haha, that’s why I think it’s useful to clarify what we mean by “love” here.

By this definition, Hitler quite “loved” German people 

“I love my child so much that I’d be willing to kill them if they don’t behave the way I want.”

“I love my child so much that I’d kill anyone who refuses to listen to them on TV. I want everyone talking about them.”

“I love this song so much that I’ll murder anyone who disagrees that it’s the best song.”

An authoritarian government “loves” its culture; an oligarchy “loves” its social structure.

Edited 14 hours ago by Xonas Pitfall

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, Nemra said:

Isn't their love biased?

I'm not judging.

Stop analyzing it and just imagine loving your culture so much you are willing to be shot in the head for it.

Edited 14 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Nemra]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Stop analayzing it and just imagine loving your culture so much you are willing to be shot in the head for it.

Yeah, I can imagine that. I would helplessly love my hypnosis. My culture would be greater than other cultures for me.

I can also imagine myself fighting for other cultures against my culture as well.

In reality, I'm drawn toward a culture that is more developed; that's my bias, you could say. I was brought up in different cultures. And honestly, I'm not willing to be shot in the head for any culture on identitarian grounds.

Edited 12 hours ago by Nemra

[Xonas Pitfall]

Random tangent: this kind of reminds me of the “you can either annihilate yourself or become everything” path to enlightenment 

• Imagine loving your culture so much that you’re willing to be shot in the head for it.
• Or imagine loving your culture so much that you make it lovable and accessible to everyone, so you don’t need to shoot anyone in the head to keep validating it or making sure it’s regarded as the truth.

Annihilate everything so your culture is the only one.

Annihilate all bias within your culture so anyone can love it.

Something, something, something...

[Nemra]

3 hours ago, Nemra said:

Yeah, I can imagine that. I would helplessly love my hypnosis. My culture would be greater than other cultures for me.

I can also imagine myself fighting for other cultures against my culture as well.

In reality, I'm drawn toward a culture that is more developed; that's my bias, you could say. I was brought up in different cultures. And honestly, I'm not willing to be shot in the head for any culture on identitarian grounds.

Well, people will fight for their culture because their values align with their culture's values. So, as long as mine aligns mostly with some culture's values, I can imagine a scenario where I get shot in the head for defending it against an actual threat. But I haven't found such a culture yet.

[Adrian colby]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

The point that's being missed in all this is that conservatives honestly love their culture and leftists do not.

Imagine actually loving your culture.

I acknowledge the question you are posing. So sitting here, I am imagining it, and I think that’s actually where my distinction between love and attachment becomes clearer. I can love my immediate culture, but I can also love ‘culture’ and the richness of cultures that aren’t the immediate culture from which I emerged . I can love traditions, creativity, rituals, stories, music, customs and ways of relating that emerge through them. I do truly ‘feel’ the ecstasy of that running through me. I can want to preserve aspects of my own culture because they are beautiful, meaningful or simply things I prefer and enjoy participating in ( authentically, not by conditioning). None of that requires me to identify with the culture as a whole or require other people to conform to it. I can deconstruct and see through it and still profoundly accept its  richness without dismissing it altogether. That’s where I think the distinction between love and attachment really becomes clear to me. 

Culture isn’t something separate from the individuals and relationships that constitute it. Those individuals contain an enormous diversity of preferences, experiences and ways of being, so no single cultural template can represent all of them. Nor has any culture, including conservative culture, ever actually been fixed or static. Culture is a living system in continuous process. What we now call traditional culture is itself the accumulated outcome of previous cultural transformations. Christianisation transformed pagan Europe. The Reformation transformed Christianity. The Enlightenment transformed our relationship with religious and political authority. Industrialisation transformed family, work and community etc. Each generation inherits something that has already changed and changes it again. And each generation prior complains. The continuity of a culture therefore doesn’t depend upon preserving all of its contents unchanged. It depends upon maintaining enough coherence through change that the pattern remains recognisable over time. In that sense it’s much like a biological system.

my body remains recognisably me despite continually replacing cells, reorganising itself, responding to its environment and changing throughout my life. If a living system literally prevented change in order to preserve its present state, it wouldn’t preserve itself. It would eventually cease functioning. Which brings me back to Preservation and adaptation are therefore not opposites to me. They are complementary processes through which a culture remains alive.

So yes, I can imagine loving my culture. But if I imagine loving it in the way you seem to be suggesting, honestly I imagine myself becoming highly stressed, emotionally reactive, controlling, selfish and ultimately self-destructive. If my identity became so attached to my cultural preferences that other people not having those preferences felt like a threat to me, I would no longer maintain the boundary between myself and others. I would start pushing my preferences outward and trying to make other people conform to them. If everyone becomes more like me, I don’t have to confront the discomfort of accepting them as they actually are. I don’t have to adapt myself to reality or find harmony with difference. that’s where I would call it attachment rather than love. I would be mistaking my beliefs and preferences for reality itself and becoming possessive of something that was never mine to possess.

For me, profound love is a radical form of acceptance. That doesn’t mean being  passive, no preferences, or never trying to preserve something I value, It means I can love something without requiring it to become or remain what ‘i’ need it to be.

 I can imagine loving my culture “till death do us part.” I just can’t imagine needing everyone else to marry it too. in that sense what you are describing as conservative love isn’t love at all but a lack of acceptance of reality.

i understand what you are saying about typical liberal deconstruction of cultural constructs.I’ve  been through that myself but I didn’t result in nihilism or nothing to love, it progressed into the profound acceptance of the richness of diversity, culturally and individually. Loving my own preferences within my immediate culture ( returning to those that were authentic to me and not those simply conditioned after I had deconstructed them) but also recognising and accepting the preferences of others as part of that richness. It was a holistic integrative process. I can love and participate in Christian music without identifying as a Christian and I can also be dismissive of Christian music whose lyrics are harmful and destructive. If I attach my identity to the culture of ‘Christianity’ and expect conformity to it… serious problems start to occur within my own discernment ( cognitive dissonance)

I live in Ireland and the country is predominantly liberal/progressive/green. I can’t say I see a demonstration of not loving their individual culture. Quite the opposite actually.  A contemporary Irish person’s culture can simultaneously contain Celtic inheritance, Christianity, pre-Christian mythology, Enlightenment values, liberal democracy, British influences, American media, European identity, local traditions, global music, internet culture, family customs and individual subcultures. the traditional Irish Celtic culture including its language are still very much celebrated and preserved lovingly by most of its people because it is seen as a valued and enjoyed preference worth passing onto future generations but it doesn’t mean obliterating all the rest or forcing the rest to conform to only it to preserve it… that doesn’t logically follow. 
 

I can love Irish culture in that I can also nuture its continued development. In that sense it is not a case that preserving it means love and developing it means it is not loved or visa versa rather recognising those two mechanisms interact as a part of the whole. 

 

 

 

 

[Leo Gura]

None of you have a clue what is means to,

LOVE YOUR CULTURE!

NONE OF YOU LOVE YOUR CULTURE! YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THAT IS!

[abc123]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

None of you have a clue what is means to,

LOVE YOUR CULTURE!

NONE OF YOU LOVE YOUR CULTURE! YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THAT IS!

Is it the same as loving mayonnaise? 

[Rafael Thundercat]

26 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

None of you have a clue what is means to,

LOVE YOUR CULTURE!

NONE OF YOU LOVE YOUR CULTURE! YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THAT IS!

Maybe the guys who exploded themselfs for Islam are an example of Loving so much their culture. I would not explode myself for any culture.  

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

Maybe the guys who exploded themselfs for Islam are an example of Loving so much their culture.

PRECISELY!

You have no comprehension of how much they LOVE their culture.

Edited 9 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Human Mint]

I know an expat that loves my culture more than I do.

[Yimpa]

1 hour ago, abc123 said:

Is it the same as loving mayonnaise? 

 

[Nemra]

@Leo Gura, so, do you love everything about your culture(s)?

Certainly, there are things that you don't love.

I can help cultivate and develop my culture to make it more open-minded (assuming I can do that), but not necessarily accept biased stuff and conformities.

It's like you are saying that to love your friends, you should love their toxic behaviors, and if you don't, then you don't really love them. Well, I can accept them as they are and help them develop themselves, but I won't tolerate or encourage their toxic behavior; otherwise, I would be an idiot.

Edited 2 hours ago by Nemra

[Lyubov]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

None of you have a clue what is means to,

LOVE YOUR CULTURE!

NONE OF YOU LOVE YOUR CULTURE! YOU CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT THAT IS!

It is just where people center their love so it def feels like the familiar is being challenged and their whole world is under attack when they perceive anything that is out of their control which changes it. It’s simultaneously also a less conscious experience. Switch out culture for identity and self expression and you have what the liberal has built their house with. You take that away for a liberal and it’s the same thing conservatives are doing now for them. But I think a distinction has to be made here about who is more honest with themselves. 

[abc123]

1 hour ago, Yimpa said:

 

haha glad someone caught it 

[aurum]

I don’t consider myself a strong patriot. But even I’ve grown tired of listening to progressives in the US just endlessly bash America.

I would like to see someone like Kyle Kulinski make an hour long episode just talking about all the ways America is great right NOW. Not when we have some progressive social democracy. Not when we make “progress”. Right now.

But of course, they will never make such a video. They are too focused on endless criticism.

Edited 4 hours ago by aurum

[Ulax]

@aurum Yes. Its cartoonish.

But there is so much social pressure on the left these days re what opinions to have.