RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)

[DocJones]

Here's an interesting view to ponder based on the divergence above...
"What should I have been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had not these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires?  I should have robbed and lied and killed.  Nothing of what makes the chief happiness in my life would have have existed for me. I looked for an answer to my question.  And thought could not give an answer to my question -- it is incommensurable with my question.  The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and wrong.  And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way,  it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere.  Where could I have got it?  By reason could I have arrived at knowing I must love my neighbor and not oppress him?  I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul.  But who discovered it?  Not reason.  Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires.  That is the deduction of reason.  But loving one's neighbor reason could never discover, because it's irrational." - Leo Tolstoy 'Anna Karenina'

[RandyB]

Greetings!

Yeah, more snarky, pseudo-intellectualizing by clueless atheists.

Get rid of Christianity, Christian morality, and Christian order, and you will fuck around and find out how benevolent and kind society is. Most societies will be absolutely ruled by savage beasts, raping whomever they so choose, and subjugating and slaughtering everyone that doesn't bow the fuck down to them.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Want to see Western civilization without Christian morality?

Game of Thrones.

[FelixGamingX1]

Greetings!

Yeah, more snarky, pseudo-intellectualizing by clueless atheists.

Get rid of Christianity, Christian morality, and Christian order, and you will fuck around and find out how benevolent and kind society is. Most societies will be absolutely ruled by savage beasts, raping whomever they so choose, and subjugating and slaughtering everyone that doesn't bow the fuck down to them.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Want to see Western civilization without Christian morality?

Game of Thrones.

Great show, awful ending.

[SHARK]

Greetings!

Yeah, more snarky, pseudo-intellectualizing by clueless atheists.

Get rid of Christianity, Christian morality, and Christian order, and you will fuck around and find out how benevolent and kind society is. Most societies will be absolutely ruled by savage beasts, raping whomever they so choose, and subjugating and slaughtering everyone that doesn't bow the fuck down to them.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Want to see Western civilization without Christian morality?

Game of Thrones.

Greetings!

*Exactly* my friend!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

[Reckall]

   The problem with the scene, and the point you are looking to make, is pretty much the entirety of western society "decent" was largely designed and enforced along the lines of that afterlife reward.  It is at this point ingrained into people.   It is the expected social norm for everyone, to be "decent" afterlife reward or not.  Without those expectations beaten into western Civ with thousands of years reinforcing it,  well, it becomes the simple fact that the expectation of a divine reward guided the entire general "rulebook" for society.   Let society collapse, then you will see who is, or is not really "decent".

I think that you missed...

Notice how the formulation already cuts off those also expecting a divine reward. This is not about them

...in my answer.

However, true, in the Western society, "decent" was usually tied to Christian values - even for those who weren't Christian or that weren't even aware of the correlation.

Today, literally in the times we are living in, we are looking at a tectonic shift in the bedrock of Western values. A very worrying Christianity ---> Wokeness shift. This hijacking is being noted by Christian and Atheist thinkers alike, and it is generating a whole literature about it (*). This means that those looking for a guidance for their "decency" are more and more looking to Wokeness as their guide.

Fine (actually no). But if you shift your core values the very moment "Wokeness is the new compass", if you change a century old brand because George Floyd was killed, or ditch your Supermodels because today appreciating the female form gets you cancelled, or turn your RPG into a wokefest, then you have no internal values. You are only someone whose life and actions are calculated so to please an external entity - be it God, social consensus or anything else - hoping for recognition and a reward.

And for this reason you remain a piece of shit.

(*) Examples of these studies can be found both in internet articles...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210417021650/https://www.convergemedia.org/wokeism-the-new-religion-of-the-west/

...And in books. A lot of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Wokeness-Justice-Movement-Hijacking/dp/1684512433

[Reckall]

So a person acts decently for their whole life because they are expecting a divine reward and that makes them a piece of shit?

That makes no sense at all.  Who would even think like that?

Because I condivide Cohle's belief that you should be decent irrespectively of a "reward" of any kind.

Maybe this is because it is a topic that touches me closely. 13 years in a Catholic school didn't made me a Catholic (or a religious person in general), but they left me with the idea that this Jesus guy was a pretty cool dude, worth listening to. I also like Saint Augustine as a philosopher.

My beliefs? I do believe in a "soul" inhabiting the body and in free will, nothing else. I think that the idea of a "collective unconscious" is pretty cool and I hope that something like that does exists for real. But I also believe that when we die our soul will dissolve back into the collective unconscious the way the atoms and the molecules of our body will return to the physical world. The end.

So, when I try to be "decent" it is because I want to. I don't look for "divine rewards" or even social acceptance. And I'm not seeing "decency" in Wokeness at all. If I'll ever publish something "Woke" is because I came to believe in it. But be assured that racism in my current CoC campaign is a real thing, whereas orcs will not be "niggers" in a future D&D campaign: my choice, my consequences.

[oggsmash]

   The problem with the scene, and the point you are looking to make, is pretty much the entirety of western society "decent" was largely designed and enforced along the lines of that afterlife reward.  It is at this point ingrained into people.   It is the expected social norm for everyone, to be "decent" afterlife reward or not.  Without those expectations beaten into western Civ with thousands of years reinforcing it,  well, it becomes the simple fact that the expectation of a divine reward guided the entire general "rulebook" for society.   Let society collapse, then you will see who is, or is not really "decent".

I think that you missed...

Notice how the formulation already cuts off those also expecting a divine reward. This is not about them

...in my answer.

However, true, in the Western society, "decent" was usually tied to Christian values - even for those who weren't Christian or that weren't even aware of the correlation.

Today, literally in the times we are living in, we are looking at a tectonic shift in the bedrock of Western values. A very worrying Christianity ---> Wokeness shift. This hijacking is being noted by Christian and Atheist thinkers alike, and it is generating a whole literature about it (*). This means that those looking for a guidance for their "decency" are more and more looking to Wokeness as their guide.

Fine (actually no). But if you shift your core values the very moment "Wokeness is the new compass", if you change a century old brand because George Floyd was killed, or ditch your Supermodels because today appreciating the female form gets you cancelled, or turn your RPG into a wokefest, then you have no internal values. You are only someone whose life and actions are calculated so to please an external entity - be it God, social consensus or anything else - hoping for recognition and a reward.

And for this reason you remain a piece of shit.

(*) Examples of these studies can be found both in internet articles...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210417021650/https://www.convergemedia.org/wokeism-the-new-religion-of-the-west/

...And in books. A lot of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Wokeness-Justice-Movement-Hijacking/dp/1684512433

  We agree, I just think it can be summed up MUCH faster, if you as a person have no firm principles, you are a piece of shit.   This is not to say a principle can not shift over time, but it should be due to careful thought and consideration, not due to the latest "download" from the hive mind.

[Ghostmaker]

As I remarked in the Redlist thread, TBP noticed it. Amusingly, the thread was insta-locked by Tanka and the link killed. No surprise there.

What does surprise me is that the poster (ryu238) didn't even eat a warning for the thread.

Now, Tanka is an utter sped who shouldn't be allowed out without supervision. But you'd think he'd have eagerly slapped down ryu238, knowing Tanka's proclivities for whipping out his dick -- metaphorically speaking. And mind you, the threadlock was at almost 11pm Monday, so it's not like they haven't had time to figure out what to hit ryu238 with.

So my guess is they agree with him, but since TBP has a long history of 'AAAAAH DON'T LINK TO WRONGTHINK' that probably took precedence. I'm a bit surprised they locked the thread though.

[Mithgarthr]

Sorry, I'm new to the site... "TBP"? I'm guessing since it refers to RPGNet, it's something like "The Bad Place"?

[Pat]

Sorry, I'm new to the site... "TBP"? I'm guessing since it refers to RPGNet, it's something like "The Bad Place"?

The Big Purple, a reference to their color scheme.

[Mithgarthr]

Sorry, I'm new to the site... "TBP"? I'm guessing since it refers to RPGNet, it's something like "The Bad Place"?

The Big Purple, a reference to their color scheme.

Aaaah. Makes more sense, but way less funny than I was hoping for. 

[wmarshal]

I never even visited the red list post until TBP blocked the link to the thread and identified this site as a "hate site". I wasn't really interested in that thread because I already know what companies I do and do not want to do business with. Now there may be a Streisand effect going on. Some of the woke want to use the red list as a buy list, but they also don't want to refer (or even acknowledge the existence of) to a site that's considered taboo. They can't do the "hard work" of coming up with their own buy list. In a way they can't do that work since they would inevitably start to fight amongst themselves ("Splinter!") as to who to include and exclude.

*I enjoyed The Life of Brian. I just wish it hadn't become prophetic.

[Ghostmaker]

I never even visited the red list post until TBP blocked the link to the thread and identified this site as a "hate site". I wasn't really interested in that thread because I already know what companies I do and do not want to do business with. Now there may be a Streisand effect going on. Some of the woke want to use the red list as a buy list, but they also don't want to refer (or even acknowledge the existence of) to a site that's considered taboo. They can't do the "hard work" of coming up with their own buy list. In a way they can't do that work since they would inevitably start to fight amongst themselves ("Splinter!") as to who to include and exclude.

*I enjoyed The Life of Brian. I just wish it hadn't become prophetic.

One of the things I would like to note is that for all their talk about 'supporting woke artists', there's a reason 'get woke go broke' is a truism. An awful lot of woke types subscribe to very, very uncapitalist ideas and don't buy the stuff (or worse, from an economic perspective, they pirate it).

So yeah, they'll talk this shit up, but let me know when they actually spend the dinero on it.

[HappyDaze]

I never even visited the red list post until TBP blocked the link to the thread and identified this site as a "hate site". I wasn't really interested in that thread because I already know what companies I do and do not want to do business with. Now there may be a Streisand effect going on. Some of the woke want to use the red list as a buy list, but they also don't want to refer (or even acknowledge the existence of) to a site that's considered taboo. They can't do the "hard work" of coming up with their own buy list. In a way they can't do that work since they would inevitably start to fight amongst themselves ("Splinter!") as to who to include and exclude.

*I enjoyed The Life of Brian. I just wish it hadn't become prophetic.

One of the things I would like to note is that for all their talk about 'supporting woke artists', there's a reason 'get woke go broke' is a truism. An awful lot of woke types subscribe to very, very uncapitalist ideas and don't buy the stuff (or worse, from an economic perspective, they pirate it).

So yeah, they'll talk this shit up, but let me know when they actually spend the dinero on it.

Says the asshole that has openly stated he pirates material from those of different political views because, hey...the law obviously only applies when it suits him.

[Ghostmaker]

I never even visited the red list post until TBP blocked the link to the thread and identified this site as a "hate site". I wasn't really interested in that thread because I already know what companies I do and do not want to do business with. Now there may be a Streisand effect going on. Some of the woke want to use the red list as a buy list, but they also don't want to refer (or even acknowledge the existence of) to a site that's considered taboo. They can't do the "hard work" of coming up with their own buy list. In a way they can't do that work since they would inevitably start to fight amongst themselves ("Splinter!") as to who to include and exclude.

*I enjoyed The Life of Brian. I just wish it hadn't become prophetic.

One of the things I would like to note is that for all their talk about 'supporting woke artists', there's a reason 'get woke go broke' is a truism. An awful lot of woke types subscribe to very, very uncapitalist ideas and don't buy the stuff (or worse, from an economic perspective, they pirate it).

So yeah, they'll talk this shit up, but let me know when they actually spend the dinero on it.

Says the asshole that has openly stated he pirates material from those of different political views because, hey...the law obviously only applies when it suits him.

*shrug* Welcome to the new rules.

You don't like them, maybe don't push them.