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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-108
Last weeks posts on Moon of Alabama:
Middle East:
Ukraine:
Iran:
—
Other issues:
Gaza:
Empire:
Germany:
Use as open (not related to wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
Given president Biden‘s health condition and cognitive decline, the question was raised by many observers in the early days of his administration:
Who is really in charge of decision making?
The question has neither been answered nor lost its urgency – but people got used to accepting Biden‘s public image as the status quo. A few barflies, including myself, believe that Obama has been in charge wherever it really mattered. After all, it is him who has been the chief strategist of the Dems during the 2020 primaries. He told Pete Buttigieg, despite the promising start that he had, to drop out of the race in favour of Biden, whose score was close to nothing at that point. Obama‘s other achievement was to prevent the clearly leading Bernie Sanders from being nominated, instead, a way was paved for the unattractive and colorless Biden.
On April 12th, RT discussed Obamas role in its 360° – show:
https://www.rt.com/shows/360-view/595587-obama-family-business-politics/
Their curiosity had been inspired by an „informal“ teatime visit of Obama to Rishi Sunak, on March 17th in 10 Downing Street. Nothing much was disclosed about the talk they had together – and about Obama‘s emerging (?) role in US foreign policy, now that Victoria Nuland is out of the game. Donald Trump commented:
Obama has plenty to do with it. I call him Biden’s Boss.
In the RT show, the journalist Chris Widener painted the following picture of Biden and Obama, at the time of the 2020 elections. Obama would say something like:
Look Joe, we know what you’re up to. So here is the deal I’m gonna make you. I let you sleep in the White House for four to eight years. You’ll be the president. I’ll run the show.
„And“ adds Widener, returning to the world of facts,
he even came out and said it. When we asked him „would you like to be president for a third term?” – “No, what I’d really like, is to have somebody who put a little thing into his ear and tell him what to do.“
Another guest in the RT show, the journalist Steve Malzberg, reported:
Shortly after the 2020 election, we asked Barak Obama about a possible third term. „Well of course it’s illegal. But I think if I could run, I would win.“ „I do envision myself sitting in a basement somewhere, with a walky talky, whatever kind of thing. Someone is sitting in the Oval Office with an earpiece, and I’m calling the shots.“ That’s exactly what he said, and he is such a narcissus, that you have to believe that that is exactly what is happening.
So it appears that the Biden voters of 2020 brought us a third Obama term, with Biden as his presidential puppet and mouthpiece. A fourth term of this kind may be just around the corner: Currently, Biden polls at 34%, Trump at 40%. But recently, since Obama joined the Biden campaign team, two major smart moves have been played: One is to open the door for a possible release of Julian Assange, in order to improve Biden’s public image. The other is the firing of Victoria Nuland. She has, for decades and with full autonomy, been in charge of the US efforts of destroying Russia with help from Ukraine. I reckon Obama wasn’t impressed by her recent progress toward that goal, so he ended her career. It remains to hope that this marks a change of paradigm in US foreign policy.
Now “we the people“, in the US and abroad, have been for four years at the receiving end of the shit that the Biden administration created, because Obama liked and exploited that arrangement. Now he wants another four years of it. And it has become clear why he prefers the senile Biden as „president“ over anybody with more profile and credibility: Biden‘s weakness and dependency makes him easier to control.
Posted by: grunzt | Apr 14 2024 13:22 utc | 3
Replying to:
Posted by: Arch Bungle | Apr 14 2024 15:28 utc | 28
in the Palestine Open thread, to try and stop that thread from getting too Anechoic.
Currency != Money
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Apr 14 2024 14:59 utc | 23
Not my wheelhouse, but:
1. A hot young peasant woman has “currency” (her feminine appeal), but no money.
I get where you’re coming from, except that the charms of the buxom lass are a commodity (harsh though that might sound), in that they’re not fully fungible, except in some weirdly perverted barter-based economy. She would be unlikely to be able to use her charms to top up her PAYG phone or electric meter, for example.
2. A fat, balding millionaire has “money”, which for the hot young peasant woman is “currency”.
Depends on exactly what our fat, greasy, slimy oligarch has got though. If he’s got a wallet full of FRNs or that crappy plastic stuff signed by the Chief Cashier of the BoE then he’s got currency. If he’s got a bag full of silver Dollars, Britannias, Philharmonics or Maples he’s got money (if he’s got the equivalent in gold then her charms had better be outstanding!).
3. They both have “currency”, though one does not have “money”
4. Their “currency” is each of a different kind, but tradable.
Not really, as above she has, or is (this is getting seedy) a commodity which he seeks to purchase (or rent!).
5. When the fat, balding millionaire trades his money for the peasant woman’s feminine appeal, this is an exchange of “currency”.
Again, not really, it’s the purchase of a commodity.
6. The exchange from the millionaire’s perspective is a trade of his “monetary currency” for “service currency”.
Now we’re kind of getting to the crux of it, he either has currency, or he has money which he can use as a currency. Remember that the currency described earlier is a “promissory note” (allegedly) exchangeable at the issuing bank for the equivalent amount of silver or gold it is (or purports to be) representative of. This is the money that (again, allegedly) backs the currency.
This is also the fundamental error that Echo-gnomic Chamberpot and all too many other economists make. They believe that currency can be issued and circulated willy-nilly with no regard as to whether the underlying money actually exists. They believe currency and money are entirely interchangeable; they are not!.
7. The exchange from the peasant woman’s perspective is a trade of “service currency” for “money”.
(Seediness intrudes again) she sold her commodity.
Conclusion: Under certain conditions “currency = money”.
Tl:dr – money can used as currency for exchange with a commodity, but currency itself is not money.
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Apr 14 2024 16:52 utc | 9
Mick Ryan. Writes columns for the oz ABC.
Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the U.S. Marine Corps University Command and Staff College and School of Advanced Warfighting, he is a passionate advocate of professional education and lifelong learning. He has commanded at platoon, squadron, regiment, task force, and brigade level. In January 2018, he assumed command of the Australian Defence College in Canberra, Australia. In 2021 he was an adjunct scholar at the Modern War Institute. Mick was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his leadership of Australia’s first reconstruction task force in Afghanistan. He completed his 35-year career with the Australian Army and transitioned to the Army Reserve as a major general on February 27, 2022. His book, War Transformed, was published on February 15, 2022, by U.S. Naval Institute Books.
“The Russians are in trouble’: Mick Ryan predicts outcome of Ukrainian offensive”
“A year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin is beginning new offensives – and he desperately needs a victory”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-27/russia-ukraine-post-war-planning/101473304
While there is little prospect of the Russia-Ukraine war being over this year, it may now be time to ask such questions about this conflict. And the most important question, because this outcome looks very likely, what happens when Ukraine wins?
Th vast majority of oz military are the same as that clown and they are the ones that are willing to take Australia to war with China if the US orders it.
Bit that last piece I quoted – What comes after – for the western world? I have the impression many think its just a matter of toppling the current elite and all will be good.
What has occurred in the west is too deep and systemic to change quickly for the better. The way the average person views the world outside the west – 500 years of European domination, ending with 150 or so years of British and the post WWII Anglo American domination of the world finalizing with the utter hubris of the uni power post Soviet collapse.
The destruction of production, of education in the west perhaps starting in the 80’s. The utter farce of GDP based on speculation in the stock markets, real estate and so called services. The inability of the golden billion to even produce artillery shells puts that in stark perspective.
On top of that, past cultural underpinnings of the social structure have been replaced by the woke culture or better seen as a cult – a death cult. Started off as a good thing – concern for the environment re mining, man made erosion, pollution of the waterways ect. The other part of wokism was also good – the decriminalization of homosexuality.
But that has morphed into what it is now the environment morphing into that Idiot child paraded around to meetings and pumped at us in the media. Whats been done to her is no different to convincing children they want to be the opposite sex and then irreversibly changing them physically. But these extremes are now the underpinnings of western culture that is taught in the schools, in all the media.
Genetic tracing may not be 100% but I think it will be in the ball park. Three peoples. The original modern human group in Africa and the two groups that went north across the Red Sea area. One of those was the light shinned group which all light skinned people today have the DNA of. The other was a dark skinned group that is now known as Australian aboriginal DNA.
Both groups out of Africa mixed with the neanderthals that already inhabited Eurasia and now have neanderthal DNA. Black African peoples do not have neanderthal DNA. The dark skinned peoples of Africa all came from that original group and formed the different peoples there.
Although there is no difference in intelligence between the peoples, there was something else in the character of the light skinned group – imagination? innovation?. I’m not sure what is exactly but all or most innovations or technology advances have come from the light skinned peoples. The first of what is termed as modern humans is determined by bone structure and cranium cavity – brain size. Humans first started with exactly the same tool kit as the neanderthals, knapped stone edges and points, grinding stones for grinding seeds, cordage made from plant fibers and so forth.
Australian Aboriginal people had little more than that when white people first arrived. A very conservative culture that from archaeological records and other things that has remained quite stable throughout the Holocene, most nations of aboriginal peoples, their oral histories, territorial boundaries, rock art and so forth going back to that time. The one thing they did do was migrate a across the sea far earlier than any other humans.
The peoples of Africa have had interaction, influence come down from the north so its difficult to tell how much innovation occurred there.
But along with technologies, mor formalized religious beliefs developed amongst the light skinned group. All cultures have spiritual beliefs, most are strongly tied to the land, the territory they live on, the living earth. It is spirites that cause the changes in climate, and evil spirits that bring natural disasters or somebody has offended a spirit.
But among the light skinned peoples some odd spiritual beliefs have formed at different times, human sacrifice and so forth right down to the pure death cults.
I look at the gender alphabet that is now being pushed at young children, confusing them then performing irreversible sex change on them and I can’t see that as being any different from the various cultures that have incorporated human sacrifice and so forth. This pushing of the rainbow flag as the underpinning of the culture – it is a death cult that occurring anywhere, due to declining reproduction will cause extinction of a species, extinction of a people.
We see the WEF types talking about population reduction, rabid greens saying people must go so the planet will be saved – its a death cult, a doomsday cult that has gripped the western world.
Homosexuality is something rarely if ever seen in the natural world. I have seen it twice with domestic animals, once with two bulls that had been kept separate from the cows for a number of years and when released with the cows, ignored the cows and shagged each other. Another place was dogs. Many properties with working dogs will only have males as they don’t want the hassle of a female dog constantly being in pup. But on just one place homosexualism did occur. That all came from a single dog that would shag anything. He was the alpha dog and it was soon taken up by all the dogs. A new six old month pup there – the squeals of pain as it was getting raped – I would’ve shot the lot.
Sex education classes are not required in the natural world. It is like eating, drinking, learning to walk ect and when that time comes, babies are made.
In the previous open thread Roger linked an article on a 15 year study that also linked to the paper though there was some sort of sign in or subscribe blocker so I could read the entire article, but the basics of it was that childhood gender confusion dispersal as young adults.
In a more normal world, there is no gender confusion amongst prepuberty children. Boys see that they have a penis, girls see that they have a vagina.
In the past and still for most non western peoples, cultures have been underpinned by some form of spiritual belief, the spiritual belief and culture linking back to far far distant past. But like with early communism, everything from the past, not just excess baggage has been discarded.
And so, even if the western elites are toppled, the so called western world will just be a babbling mess for a good period. The cult of gender alphabet coupled to the currently fake science of man made climate change.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 14 2024 22:33 utc | 30
[from the Iran thread:]
Posted by: ak74 | Apr 14 2024 22:55 utc | 144
[Hudson:]
“And I think Alastair Crooke has cited Trita Parsi, one of the Israeli political leaders, saying the objective really in all this, of Israel’s conflict and Biden’s acquiescence to it, is that Israel is engaged in a deliberate and systematic effort to destroy existing laws and norms about warfare. And that’s really it.
You have people, you have reporters, such as Pepe Escobar, saying that the United States is a chaos agent. But there’s a logic in this. The United States is looking forward to what it’s going to be doing in the Near East, in Ukraine, and especially in the China Sea and Taiwan. Looking forward, the United States says, how do we prevent other nations moving against us in the international court or suing or somehow putting sanctions against us? Israel is the test case, not simply for what’s happening there in Israel and Palestine itself, but against anything that the United States will be doing through the rest of the world.
That’s why the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., echoed by Lincoln and other U.S. officials, said there’s no court of justice ruling against genocide, that it was a non-binding ruling. Well, of course it was binding, but it has no means of enforcement. And both Lincoln and yesterday, the head of the army said, there is no genocide taking place in Gaza. Well, what that means is you have to go to a court, and that’s going to take years and years. And by the time the court case is over and there’s any judgment of reparations due, then you’re going to, by then the Gazans will all be dead. So the U.S. aim is to end the rule of international law that is why the United Nations was founded in 1945.
And in fact, this international law goes way back to 1648 with the peace of Westphalia in Germany to end the 30 years war. All the European nations agreed not to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries. Well, that also was part of the United Nations principle.
And yet you have the United States explicitly advocating regime change in other countries, and most specifically in Russia and throughout the Middle East. So if you can end the whole kind of rule of law, then there’s really no alternative to the United States rules-based order, which means we can do whatever we want, chaos.”
Gaza: The Strategic Imperative
https://michael-hudson.com/2024/04/gaza-the-strategic-imperative/
This is an important point to be made. The significance of this Israel war goes far beyond the Middle East but has ramifications for the world: The Americans and their Israeli partners are using this war to return the world to the bad old days before such inconvenient legal roadblocks like the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Convention, Vienna Convention, international law and the rules of war, or even the Treaty of Westphalia.
That is, the Americans, Israelis, and their allied “democracies” want to turn back the clock to a Hobbesian world based upon the law of the jungle–even as they spout propaganda about the rule of law.
As such, the American Empire of Chaos is deliberately fomenting tension, conflict and ultimately war from Eastern Europe to the Middle East to East Asia as a Machiavellian means towards this end. And the Zionist “crazies” in Israel are the perfect partner in advancing this ambition.
That is what the USA’s Rules Based Order is really about: a return to barbarism, but with a “democratic” mask.
Another way of putting this, perhaps, is that this deliberate breakdown of law and order in the Western sphere is eroding the old order based on some sort of belief in God, democracy, basic rights, individual liberty, equality under the law, a social contract – basically a mutually cooperative, well-meaning society. That world and its civilization is being torn down on many fronts – social, military, political, informational, psychological, cultural etc.
And what will replace it is some sort of technocratic totalitarianism, a modernistic form of tyranny in polities comprising hundreds of millions (versus older societies with a single human tyrant and only a few million population). This may well present with a benign appearance in most, though not necessarily all, jurisdictions, but the control quotient will be uncompromisingly totalitarian. (‘Resistance will be futile!’)
It’s ironic: much of the criticism about the Hegemonic ‘rules-based order’ is merited; however, once the people-level rules which used to bind our societies together are indeed fractured, we may find things get a whole lot worse.
In any case, looks like the soft world we have known in the West will soon be no more.
“It’s a hard rain, gonna fall…”
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 15 2024 3:56 utc | 46
I hope I don’t wear out too many scroll wheels but a lot of thoughts – things I have pondered since whenever starting to come together so I thought I would write them down somewhere while I still can and its in my mind.
…….
From the cultural revolution to communism with Chinese characteristics….
Characteristics – Chinese culture. The cultures of the ethnic various groups. The cultures of the smaller ethnic groups, all or most listed with UNESCO as intangible heritage.
We saw with the Houthi’s how they withstood all that was thrown at them including the starvation siege and still kept on fighting. Gaza the same, only far more terrible but still fighting, no calling of the masses for surrender. They have also withstood 70 years of massacres, their homes being destroyed and constantly forced off there land. Also without self destructive social breakdown. A very strong culture – underpinned by their spiritual belief.
One thing that becomes apparent when looking at the different peoples, both present and past. There culture, their social structure is underpinned by some form of spiritual belief.
We saw Putin in putting Russia back together put an emphasis on and promote the four main religions of the Russian federation that the early communists had tried to discard, to try and replace it with an ideology that discarded everything from the past.
In the west, everything from the past is being eradicated to usher in the woke ideology. The cultural revolution….
Putin also believes the past is also important – important to remember, both the good and the bad. That which was good, that which was bad to be remembered so the same mistakes are not repeated. Remembering is to learn. That what makes history so important and how cultures develop.
Wars? Wars are not a product of religion. They are a product of the development of technology’s. The ability to store and preserve food, have an abundance of food. Technologies for weapons and to be able to transport food and equipment. But without the ability to store food local biffups/hostilities are subject to the need to go off and find food.
I left the question of the spiritual side of things open for a long time but I found I could not believe in anything supernatural. For a short time after watching some of the geopolitical doings, but also from reading about the past I was angry for a bit at religions thinking they are responsible for many wars.
No. War is already there. Religion is often used as a tool, but it is not the cause of wars.
Even so, I had always felt it importent to respect the religious beliefs of others so long as they were not extremist. Insulting that is no different than insulting another persons family.
Western culture? It was a culture underpinned by by Christianity. But in particular, a culture that come via the Church of Rome, The holey Roman Empire of Westphalia. That is the west. It is what defines this mythical ‘West’. Much baggage to be discarded.
Recently when talking with my sister who is fully woke to the point on believing children have the right, and the need for sex change. So although she fully embraces the ideology she still had the need for a spiritual belief and was god shopping. Looking for a god that suited her.
She could not understand how I had no urge for a spiritual belief.
Sevel years ago, I attended a funeral. One mate, rough as guts, nothing out of bounds, Only attends a church for births, marriages and funerals. He is of Italian descent, his parents coming out from Italy after WWII and he was born here. So catholic. We had been good friends for 40 years and On the way home I said something, I’m not sure if it was about religion in general or the catholic church. That was simply a no go area. Knowing him for so long, there had been nothing to indicate he was in anyway religious or felt so strikingly about it even though I doubt as an adult he ever attended a church for a normal service nor did he ever associate with church going religious people.
So that spiritual aspect is there for many people and is still the underpinnings of whatever is left of western cultures. We see in many Muslim nations, the mosque is still a very central part of peoples lives. In tracing that family history of my surname, I had to go back through the old parish recods are kept. Up until not long back it was the church in each town and village that kept all local records. Births, marriages and deaths. I traced it back till people had no surnames and could not trace the family name or the forebears of that further than one, perhaps two generations. It wasn’t long before the beginning of surnames that names for marriages and deaths were not even matched with who they had been born to.
But the church was the center of every town and village. It was the local government office, the cultural center, and the spiritual center.
I my earlier post I put up some thoughts around the thinking that just ousting the current crop of elites will fix the western world, but there will be much more to it than that. I doubt anything like Putin will appear in the west to rebuild us from the ashes of this collapsed debauchery and insanity. To underpin the culture will require a reinstatement of Christianity, though minus the baggage that had accumulated by the time of the Holy Roman Empire of Westphalia and the baggage that has accumulated since.
The past must be remembered accurately, all classified documents of that, including to the current day made public.
With Christian zionism so preventable in the US, which is an extremist belief, US is in a bad way. For the rest of the western world finding their way back may be a little easier but I suspect we shall have to go though the destruction and poverty of this woke death cult before we find our way back to normalcy and can fit in with the emerging multi-polar world
Spiritual underpinning of culture, of family, is the underpinning of any stable society.
Perhaps odd that I have arrived at this conclusion as I have no spiritual feelings or need for them myself. Perhaps why I can think about it in this way. Maybe just not enough booze at the moment.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 15 2024 7:06 utc | 60
If the Gunditjmara had not worked out how to farm, manage and harvest eels on their own, you would have your work cut out explaining how outsiders from Asia, Africa or South American came to Australia and taught only the Gunditjmara how to create and manage an eel fishery, and not any other indigenous groups on the Australian continent.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Apr 15 2024 0:16 utc | 34
And here in the OT thread is a nice place to discuss it
6.000 BPE
There is so much misunderstood in the west, we lost almost everything and tried convincing others that we knew the most.
I can only quote Plato’s Timaeus
“The citizens have a friendly feeling towards the Athenians, believing themselves to be related to them. Hither came Solon, and was received with honour; and here he first learnt, by conversing with the Egyptian priests, how ignorant he and his countrymen were of antiquity. Perceiving this, and with the view of eliciting information from them, he told them the tales of Phoroneus and Niobe, and also of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and he endeavoured to count the generations which had since passed. Thereupon an aged priest said to him: ‘O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are ever young, and there is no old man who is a Hellene.’ ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘In mind,’ replied the priest, ‘I mean to say that you are children; there is no opinion or tradition of knowledge among you which is white with age; and I will tell you why. Like the rest of mankind you have suffered from convulsions of nature, which are chiefly brought about by the two great agencies of fire and water. The former is symbolized in the Hellenic tale of young Phaethon who drove his father’s horses the wrong way, and having burnt up the earth was himself burnt up by a thunderbolt. For there occurs at long intervals a derangement of the heavenly bodies, and then the earth is destroyed by fire. At such times, and when fire is the agent, those who dwell by rivers or on the seashore are safer than those who dwell upon high and dry places, who in their turn are safer when the danger is from water. Now the Nile is our saviour from fire, and as there is little rain in Egypt, we are not harmed by water; whereas in other countries, when a deluge comes, the inhabitants are swept by the rivers into the sea. The memorials which your own and other nations have once had of the famous actions of mankind perish in the waters at certain periods; and the rude survivors in the mountains begin again, knowing nothing of the world before the flood. But in Egypt the traditions of our own and other lands are by us registered for ever in our temples. The genealogies which you have recited to us out of your own annals, Solon, are a mere children’s story. For in the first place, you remember one deluge only, and there were many of them, and you know nothing of that fairest and noblest race of which you are a seed or remnant. The memory of them was lost, because there was no written voice among you. For in the times before the great flood Athens was the greatest and best of cities and did the noblest deeds and had the best constitution of any under the face of heaven.’ Solon marvelled, and desired to be informed of the particulars. ‘You are welcome to hear them,’ said the priest, ‘both for your own sake and for that of the city, and above all for the sake of the goddess who is the common foundress of both our cities. Nine thousand years have elapsed since she founded yours, and eight thousand since she founded ours, as our annals record. ”
Posted by: Newbie | Apr 15 2024 12:25 utc | 75
Posted by: bevin | Apr 15 2024 15:42 utc | 84
‘Willing Self-Deception’: Canadian Doctors Amputate Healthy Fingers Of Young Man With ‘Body Dysphoria’
…..For this young man, “The importance [of living] in accordance with his perceived body image was a stronger inner motivation” than concerns about how the amputation would affect his relationships “at work or in sports and leisure.” In other words, he chose to conform to his inner feelings instead of the outer world. These are exactly the same terms in which people with gender dysphoria express their desire to change their bodies to be more like those of the opposite sex.
Both arguments rely on the spirit of our age, expressive individualism. This worldview argues that “everybody is ultimately defined by an inner core of feelings that they have, and authenticity is found by being able to express those feelings outwardly,” according to Grove City College Professor Carl Trueman. This worldview is so pervasive that many people adopt it without realizing it. …….
Have no idea how these things get going, are deliberately, or conspiratorially, organized etc. but it sure feels as if what is really behind all this institutionally supported mental illness is a concerted effort to break society down. But I guess that could be inverted into: endemic mental illness results in society increasingly promoting neurotic, and indeed increasingly evil, behaviours.
From the article linked above about ‘expressive individualism’:
An Australian woman, who identified as male 12 years ago, has sued the psychiatrist who placed her on testosterone after one visit and later signed off on surgery to mutilate her body to be more like a man’s. Another specialist had recommended she obtain a “throughout psychiatric work-up before embarking on hormone treatment.” The woman now regrets her “gender transition” and argues the psychiatrist acted irresponsibly by initiating irreversible procedures so hastily. Sadly, it’s too late.
“We need to be telling stories” like this, said Grove City College theologian Carl Trueman on “Washington Watch” — “the most compelling and emotionally powerful stories.” He argued that, for the purpose of influencing society, it doesn’t matter whether Christians can win the philosophical argument against the transgender ideology unless we can win a platform for our views.
And Christians can win the philosophical argument. The transgender ideology “is unsustainable to build or maintain a society,” argued Trueman. “This highly subjective notion of the self means that we’re likely to be living in a time of constant chaos and flux, of constant gotchas … and one simply cannot build a coherent view of society or a vision of the future based on that kind of fragmentation.”
Undergirding the conflicting notions of the self is a more fundamental debate between “those who believe that the material world has intentionality and purpose, and those who don’t,” as “Washington Watch” host Joseph Backholm put it. In other words, “Does the world as a whole have a moral shape to it?” Trueman offered. “Does it represent a sort of external authority to which we need to conform ourselves in order to flourish? Or is it just stuff? Is the world simply a giant piece of … cosmic Play-Doh over which we can exert our wills?”
That distinction, when applied to human beings in particular, becomes, “Does my body have any authority for my identity? Or is it simply a piece of stuff?” Our answer reveals what we believe about the origin and purpose of humanity. “Are human beings made in the image of God, or … are we simply exalted animals?” Trueman continued. “And therefore, is it legitimate to … transcend ourselves using our technological skills? Or are there limits … intrinsic to us, or perhaps, we might say, imposed upon us from without?”
The Bible clearly answers these questions. The first man didn’t make himself. He only came to life after God “formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7). God shows his people, if anything, they’re the Play-Doh in his hands. When Jeremiah witnessed a potter who took a spoiled lump of clay and “reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do,” the Lord instructed him to tell his people, “like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand” (Jeremiah 18:4, 6). Even the heart of the most powerful person “is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov. 21:1). God gives us our purpose, our meaning, our limits, our roles, and our very existence.
Opposing Christianity on each of these points is a philosophy Trueman calls “expressive individualism,” which argues that “everybody is ultimately defined by an inner core of feelings that they have, and authenticity is found by being able to express those feelings outwardly.” He explained that it applies the 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s argument that “If God is dead, then we’ve effectively made ourselves gods. It’s for us to create meaning.” Backholm pointed out a connection to the abortion debate, with the slogan “my body, my choice,” making the claim that “I’m in control of myself.”
“We like to think we’re masters of our own destiny,” added Trueman, “but there’s a lot of evidence that points in the other direction.” He explained two disadvantages in particular. First, “imagine the burden placed upon a three- or four-year-old who asks their parents, ‘Who am I? Am I a boy or a girl?’ And the parent says, ‘Well, you’ve got to decide that for yourself.’ That’s a terrifying burden to place on the child.” Second, “sooner or later, nature bites back. We’re seeing already with the accounts of detransitioners.”
“Rather than having a conversation about whether boys can become girls,” reasoned Backholm, it’s “more helpful … to have this conversation about whether there’s a purpose to our existence and purpose to our lives. And if we can settle that, if we can convince somebody that their life actually has meaning, then the conversation about their sex … becomes easier.”
Note how my personal bugaboo is in the mix: excessive materialism.
Posted by: scorpion | Apr 15 2024 16:11 utc | 85
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