They weren’t countries. They became countries when the colonizers (and I’m using that term as accurately as possible) lumped together into managed regions and then told them they were countries with their own governments and flags. It was all “We’re going to conquer these people and these people and these people, then put Governor Fitzroy, nephew to the Prince, in charge of all of it with a big army to back him up.” Then they wrote laws and made flags and all the happy crappy stuff they do. Then they lost WWII (because pretty much everyone except for the US lost WWII), and said “you’re on your own.”
They turned former colonies into artificial countries with governments that all but guaranteed factionalism.
There was always war, and there always will be war. But the specific type of war we’re seeing in former colonies is because of the post-colonial situation.
Hey, so I believe in a higher power but I’m not on board with any particular religion. Anyone else think it’s cool to just fly solo as a good human, no religion attached?
In my experience, at least in the US, non-denominational when associated with an institution generally means “Christian” but not affiliated with a sect. They’re (typically) still quite Christian, and the phrase can be and is applied to churches ranging from the ones flying Pride flags and declaring that they’re open to everyone to ones like Westboro - some of the most radical Christian churches are non-denominational because their views are too conservative for even the more conservative right wing religions.
The phrase itself is an organizational status and does not indicate what kinds of beliefs a person has. It’s not unlike someone describing themselves as “politically independent.” You don’t know if they’re Greenpeace types, libertarians, or far right of the republicans.
Edit: The usual term in the US for what I think you’re describing is “Spiritual, but not religious.” That’s the way it’s usually written in census and survey forms.
I’m a strong atheist, which means I have a positive belief that no gods exist, just for the record. The way I would put it is that I have never heard of nor have been able to come up with a god concept that I believe is an actual being.
I prefer to use the term “god concept” rather than god to make it clear that we’re talking about a specific idea of a god rather than an actual being. So Odin is a god concept, as is Minerva. Multiple god concepts exist in the bible, including the original regional father-deity El, El’s wife Ashera, their children including Yahweh, and so on. When the Israelites started to move from polytheism to henotheism (many gods exist but you should only worship one), and then to “monotheism” (in scare quotes because there are enough different god concepts as well as divine beings who would be counted as gods in any other pantheon).
In any case, I don’t think having a god concept which you believe refers to an actual being in itself is an indication of anything, good or bad. In my opinion, there’s a feedback loop between the disposition of people and their religions. The problems come in when the religions around the god concepts become extreme. The Amish have a fairly strong god concept, and while I’m not Amish (thank god), I don’t think they do harm unless you think of their actions within their community. 90% of UUs are great people. Sponoza’s Watchmaker would suggest we have to study ourselves to discover what constitutes good. And so on.
So I’d say that your belief is absolutely fine, but you also might be interested in the neurophysiological, social, and anthropological bases of humans so often having god concepts.
I played WoW a bit after its initial release through the first couple xpacs. Getting the MMO itch again, but I know the WoW I grew up with doesn’t really exist anymore, so now I’m pretty out of touch....
I started with MMOs back in the MUD days, both on dial up BBSs and (eventually) on university servers. I will always remember the sysop who walked me through signing up for his BBS MUD while I was giving responses like “y” and “go north” because I thought he was just an infocom game and not an actual person. Twelve year old me was so embarrassed that I never went back. If you’re out there, sysop, or if you’re just someone who has tried their best to support online communities despite the best intentions of absolute idiots, I salute you.
I played EverQuest since it came out, stupidly choosing a ranger and studying fletching all very badly because I didn’t know about gaming the game mechanics and had read too many fantasy novels. I played a lot, mostly by myself, and didn’t get too far. I also tried EQ2 when it came out, and when Diablo 2 released I decided to experiment with gaming the trading market.
I was an early WoW adopter. I played through the level caps two or three times. I joined a more serious raiding guild when I hit 60 (instead of my old rpg guild) and cornered the market on cotton a couple of weeks in a row here and there. I eventually fell out of it - end game content turned into feeling like a job, where you had to study and rehearse in order to get past bosses, your loot dropping was like a 1 in 20 chance, and if you screwed up a single person could cause a group wipe. Honestly, it just got boring compared to being a level 8 warlock wandering around.
What is keeping me from trying new ones is that there’s a massive disadvantage in starting an MMO that’s already been going on for years and years. You can fire up Skyrim for the very first time this afternoon, and have the exact same experience (honestly, a much improved one) as if you fired it up on launch day. I can launch Baldur or Disco or Stray and just not have to worry about getting ganked other than what was already intended by the devs. There was a time in EverQuest where another player challenged me to 1v1 and finally talked me into trying it, then proceeded to beat the living shit out of me but then bandage me right before I died. He kept on doing it until I disconnected. As funny as that was in retrospect, it’s also a problem with MMOs in general.
I would love for there to be a new WoW - something that restored the magic of the game when you could solo or group up and both explore the world and feel progress. I’m still waiting.
Not the OP, but since the post is a picture I’m going to make a guess that the meant they couldn’t shoot pictures, not shoot a firearm. Given the fact they’re calling the vehicle a ute and it has non-US plates, I think I’d go further and say that it’s extremely unlikely that the person is armed with a firearm.
Hay, could you take a look through my comment history and see if I’m someone you’d want to talk to? I apologize for the snarky bits and the one liners.
You mentioned doing a discord to watch on that Bjork mushroom movie, which unfortunately is only in theaters right now.
Anyway, take a look at the kinds of things I write and hit me up if you want to talk.
The problem with this question is that its assumption is so wrong that it is rebdered meaningless. Chomsky once wrote the sentence “Colorless greed ideas sleep furiously” as an example of a sentence that has syntactic correctness but no semantic meaning. Also, why a chicken, in particular? Why this animal who has been so successfully domesticated and differentially bred over centuries that calling it out is like Roy Confort calling out the similarly domesticated banana as evidence of god and creation?
In any case, eggs came first. The egg, if you will, is basically a big cell. It has a lot going on, but it got figured out long before modern birds, much less the domesticated chicken.
But of course, that’s not what they really mean. What they really mean is - how do you get from not-chicken to chicken without the biological equivalent of a big bang (and I’m not even touching on how cosmogenesis gets misunderstood)?
And the real answer is that, whether we’re talking about natural or human driven evolution, there’s no line between chicken and not-chicken. Its fairly easy for us to say that a cat is not a chicken and that a jellyfish is not a chicken, but as you get into the later dinosaurs and early birds, you start to move into grey areas.
Which brings us back around to semantics. As humans, for some reason, we like hard categories around things. That’s often not how the real world works. There’s really a lot of just continuous blessings, and ideas like species are a convenient label for us to understand gross differences but whose utility starts to fall apart once too closely examined. The definitions written in textbooks for high school students are unhelpful, as they represent the ideas as if they were handed down from on high, rather than “this is a convenient way of organizing things for some of our purposes.”
Alaska is super progressive on that front. It’s not UBI per se. It’s closer to what the Saudis and some other oil-based countries do.
The basic argument is that oil, as a natural resource, belongs to Alaskans in common in the same way as air and water does. Oil companies must pay for extracting the resource, and part of that pay is directly remitted to the citizens. I think both Alaska and Alaskans should be getting more than they are, but that’s the general idea and legal justification as I understand it in practice, I believe it comes out to only a few thousand per year per person, but I’m not Alaskan and am open to correction on any of these points. It’s just something I looked into as a UBI supporter myself.
I’m not the other person, but I think you might be confusing the term “determinism.” I think you might also have a bit of an over-enthusiastic understanding of quantum mechanics, which is a very common problem when people have QM explained in lay person terms I’m not going to get into the QM stuff because I’m a biologist and not a physicist, and I think your world just became more interesting with your new information. I’d just say hold off on the conclusions until you read a bit more, and start sliding towards the actual science books rather than the pop science books as you get your feet under you. You’ll have a different appreciation once you can read an advanced undergraduate textbook on modern physics.
Determinism as used here means behavioral determinism. There is significant evidence that a large number of our actions and reactions aren’t thought through, but rather are “automatic” responses. In fact, some neuroimaging work on decision-making has indicated that we reach a conclusion and then reverse-justify it by thinking we’re thinking about it. My subconscious mind has already decided to buy the bagel, but my conscious mind is still talking itself into it.
Again, people can take that kind of thing to an unjustified extreme. I think free will exists in a limited sense, but that it is highly constrained. In this case (the original question, not the person to whom you’re replying) is using their own misunderstanding of behavioral determinism to excuse their misbehavior. It’s a self-indulgent philosophy that you can probably pick apart if you really wanted to spend the time and effort in making them meticulously explain every step and aspect of their position, but it’s probably easier to just drop the person or to deal with them while remembering they’re possibly clinically psychotic, but almost definitely at least an asshole.
This could see tens of thousands dead, 90% of which will be Palestinian and most of whom had nothing to do with the attacks. It could also be the last hurrah for Hamas.
I honestly don’t understand this one, and I used to do this for a living. Terrorist attacks frequently make sense. 9/11 successfully engaged the US in a “global war on terror.” It resulted in a massive burning of resources and an engagement lasting far longer than anyone anticipated. It failed in that al Qaeda has effectively been rendered inoperative, there was no pan-Arab or pan-Islamic movement that rose up to strike down the current world order, and the leadership did not generally get to retire to a life of quiet reflection. But at least it was comprehensible.
This is looking more like the equivalent of the Charles Manson Helter Skelter attack, where some psychotic thought he could ignite a national race war with an incomprehensible slaughter.
If it were not so big, I’d think it was a red flag operation. It’s just that stupid and the consequences are just that dire. This is handing Bobo exactly what he needs on a silver platter.
History lives in the present (lemmy.zip)
Context (for those who don’t know): Israel and Palestine
Trans men enter Miss Italy contest to protest anti-trans ‘women from birth’ rule (sh.itjust.works)
More details: thepinknews.com/…/miss-italy-trans-men-trans-wome…
What are your thoughts on the concept of having faith in a Higher Power but choosing to distance oneself from established religious doctrines?
Hey, so I believe in a higher power but I’m not on board with any particular religion. Anyone else think it’s cool to just fly solo as a good human, no religion attached?
What MMOs are you all playing?
I played WoW a bit after its initial release through the first couple xpacs. Getting the MMO itch again, but I know the WoW I grew up with doesn’t really exist anymore, so now I’m pretty out of touch....
Patchyrogan vs. Patchyjones, tonight at 8. PPV Prime Time. Cage Match!! (mander.xyz)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachycephalosaurus
/c/fuck_weapons (lemmy.ml)
Dear consumer: do not operate this motor vehicle while experiencing emotion...
Al Leong, the henchmost henchman that ever henched. At the end of Double Dragon. (lemmy.ca)
Oh. I'm sorry. Lemme just... (startrek.website)
No doubts (lemmy.ml)
When there's shenanigans at Risa, it's the usual suspects. (lemmy.world)
And yes, I see the cruel irony of putting Stamets over Spacey.
Egyptian hat seller, 1920s (lemmy.world)
What Lemmy users have on their walls. Stock art wall decals. (lemmy.world)
Wall monkeys on Amazon is a damn goldmine of really weird shit.
Denver experimented with giving people $1,000 a month. It reduced homelessness and increased full-time employment, a study found. (www.businessinsider.com)
cross-posted from: lemmit.online/post/1021018...
What are the shortest karaoke songs?
I like going to karaoke bars with my friends, but so many songs have problems:...
"Good Boy" by Sarah's Scribbles (64.media.tumblr.com)
Source: Website - RSS
What's the best response to someone who believes in hard determinism but also uses this to deny responsibility for any immoral actions they commit?
That is, they think all of their decisions were preordained, and then use this to claim that they can’t be held responsible for anything they do.
Israeli death toll passes 600, another 2,048 injured (www.timesofisrael.com)
Nice (lemmy.zip)
I wonder what they thought of furbies (lemmy.world)
"it's About time" by nate_fakes (telegra.ph)
Source:...