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Great quotes from the article: >Kant put it in 1784, “‘Have the courage to use your own understanding!’ — that is the motto of enlightenment.” >The virtue of

Great quotes from the article: >Kant put it in 1784, “‘Have the courage to use your own understanding!’ — that is the motto of enlightenment.” >The virtue of the film today is its capacity to offend a whole new generation of viewers for different reasons. I wish that in 2019 we were not so quick to personally attack for unique or politically incorrect ideas.

inflatableDodo 8y ago
>I wish that in 2019 we were not so quick to personally attack for unique or politically incorrect ideas. I don't think we do that any more now than we used to, is just that as what is considered politically incorrect changes some people will think that there is an increase due to them personally getting more shit, where there is actually just a change in focus.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Yea, I meant we should have made progress, maturing past it, but people are the same as always.
  - inflatableDodo 8y ago
    As far as progress goes, I kinda agree with John Gray - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-interview-atheism https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-intervie...
    - acqq 8y ago
      He has a lot of valid points ("we outsourced the slavery and pollution") but he somehow likes religions more than atheism, which is definitely inconsistent: he recognizes the "false beliefs" in the everyday Western world (keeping the eyes closed about the mentioned "outsourcing"), but then avoids to treat the same the religions which obviously can't all be true. Only atheism is consistent with the existence of all other religions (simply claiming that it's the humans who invented various mutually conflicting stories about one or more "deities"). He also claims that the atheism "is a religion" which is by definition false: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." Moreover, the changes brought by enlightenment were actually revolutionary and immense. But what is his correct observation is that no rights are fixed and that the most of the humans who have them now can as well lose them fast.
      - wallace_f 8y ago
        Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. And some large part of it is in fact junk and even sometimes dangerous. But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Human beings are really bad at reason. Just in my opinion. Atheism is an affirmative answer to a question about your faith in the unknown. So I agree with him, again just personally.
        acqq 8y ago
        > Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. If you take a honest look in what religions are "really about" you'd come to: hell. Deities providing a place to torture human souls. Even Buddhism (as a developed religion, not as an idea on which it was established) has its hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) The proof that all of these stories are actually produced by humans and even have one origin is that the concept of hell effectively didn't exist around 3000 years ago but then appeared in all the cultures which mutually exchanged goods through the trade routes around 2500 years ago. The timing also doesn't fit with any of the religions claiming they have "the truth": the concept of hell was surely unknown to early Judaism but was provably spread across the cultures centuries before the Christianity appeared. > But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Like, we can imagine hell really good, and obviously successfully spread the invented stories about it. Heaven on another side is either non-existence, or profoundly uninteresting or obviously produced for a mind of sex-obsessed hormone pushed teenagers who will therefore be motivated to die for their "religion" (virgins always ready for sex). > Human beings are really bad at reason. Should we then prevent them from trying to reason about their religions? Or shouldn't we support them exactly to do so? The problem is, raising people to "not do something" because they will be "punished" in the afterlife provably doesn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now -- the human civilization constantly being near to complete annihilation. By pure nature of how probability works, there will be sooner or later some false alarm that will indeed trigger the actual detonation of the nuclear weapons. The only sane action by humanity would be to reduce their amount to the scale which makes humanity's annihilation impossible. We are very far from that at the moment. Because it's so profitable making these weapons. Yes, human beings are really bad at reason. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-109020/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-k... "military and intelligence leaders responded by unveiling their proposal for a pre-emptive thermonuclear attack on the Soviet Union, to be launched sometime in late 1963. JFK stormed away from the meeting in disgust, remarking scathingly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”"
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      Thanks for the link. An on-point article in the context of my comment. I liked this quote, even if I'm not 100% in agreement: >On the whole, they are older and wiser myths than secular myths like progress
      - inflatableDodo 8y ago
        To be honest, that article is a bit of a fluff piece, his essay in the New Statesman on the subject puts his point across better. - https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940 https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  I think the rise of social media, and its vast ability to strip comments/speech of context and so enable dogpiling/offence/etc, has caused a huge rise in personal attacks for "problematic" statements. I have personal conversations offline with people where we can discuss controversial topics without anyone taking offence or "calling out". I have learned to avoid any such topics on social media because of the social consequences. I know many others who do the same: simply avoid certain topics online. I'm old enough to remember how we were before the internet, too. It wasn't like this. Discussions were more interesting and less fraught. People had a wider range of opinions on everything. At least, that's how I remember it.
  - fit2rule 8y ago
    Every salient point concerning social agency and individual responsibility made by Monty Python in "Life of Brian" as well as most of their other films, can be validated by the manifestations of social media. We are, literally, living the Monty Python moments which resonate so well. All it takes to demonstrate this is a brief moment of pause before you hit the upvote or the downvote button. Beyond that point, we are all made of wood and weigh the same as a duck.
    - otaviokz 8y ago
      > All it takes to demonstrate this is a brief moment of pause before you hit the upvote or the downvote button. WOW, that was well phrased.
  - inflatableDodo 8y ago
    There may be an increase in off the cuff rudeness to people you are unlikely to meet, as the internet makes that so much easier with fewer immediate consequences, but (at least here in the UK) we do not have anywhere near the same level of serious personal attacks. You might be more likely to encounter someone on the internet who is willing to be rude to you for your opinion, but you are much less likely to meet someone on the street that is willing to beat you up for it.
    - 8y ago
bilbo0s 8y ago
>I wish that in 2019 we were not so quick to personally attack for unique or politically incorrect ideas... That's the beauty of the film, it deftly illustrates that the vast majority of us don't have any "unique politically incorrect ideas". We're all, kind of, members of the People's Front of Judea. (Except, of course, for those of us who are members of the Judean People's Front.) Basically, the movie showed that most of us are "uniquely rebellious" in almost exactly the same way. Same taglines. Same clothes. Same beliefs. Same pass times. Etc etc etc. We've all become the brooding Goth teenager, who believes him or herself to be unique and counter cultural. Yet somehow we still look, sound and dress like every other "uniquely rebellious" Goth teenager on the planet. The film makes fun of the fact that there were very few people out there with completely unique and insightful views back when it was made. The reason it resonates today is because this central fact is still true. Not many people with unique ideas out there at all. Most of what we hear, we've already heard before.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Actually, I completely agree with you here.
- singingfish 8y ago
  Whatever happened to the Popular Front?
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    He's over there.
    - floathub 8y ago
      No, that's the Popular People's Front.
fit2rule 8y ago
How do you know she's a witch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g

inflatableDodo 8y ago

>I wish that in 2019 we were not so quick to personally attack for unique or politically incorrect ideas. I don't think we do that any more now than we used to, is just that as what is considered politically incorrect changes some people will think that there is an increase due to them personally getting more shit, where there is actually just a change in focus.

wallace_f 8y ago
Yea, I meant we should have made progress, maturing past it, but people are the same as always.
- inflatableDodo 8y ago
  As far as progress goes, I kinda agree with John Gray - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-interview-atheism https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qbwqem/john-gray-intervie...
  - acqq 8y ago
    He has a lot of valid points ("we outsourced the slavery and pollution") but he somehow likes religions more than atheism, which is definitely inconsistent: he recognizes the "false beliefs" in the everyday Western world (keeping the eyes closed about the mentioned "outsourcing"), but then avoids to treat the same the religions which obviously can't all be true. Only atheism is consistent with the existence of all other religions (simply claiming that it's the humans who invented various mutually conflicting stories about one or more "deities"). He also claims that the atheism "is a religion" which is by definition false: "disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods." Moreover, the changes brought by enlightenment were actually revolutionary and immense. But what is his correct observation is that no rights are fixed and that the most of the humans who have them now can as well lose them fast.
    - wallace_f 8y ago
      Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. And some large part of it is in fact junk and even sometimes dangerous. But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Human beings are really bad at reason. Just in my opinion. Atheism is an affirmative answer to a question about your faith in the unknown. So I agree with him, again just personally.
      - acqq 8y ago
        > Religion, in my opinion, is not really about believing in a dude in sandals up in the clouds somewhere. If you take a honest look in what religions are "really about" you'd come to: hell. Deities providing a place to torture human souls. Even Buddhism (as a developed religion, not as an idea on which it was established) has its hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naraka_(Buddhism) The proof that all of these stories are actually produced by humans and even have one origin is that the concept of hell effectively didn't exist around 3000 years ago but then appeared in all the cultures which mutually exchanged goods through the trade routes around 2500 years ago. The timing also doesn't fit with any of the religions claiming they have "the truth": the concept of hell was surely unknown to early Judaism but was provably spread across the cultures centuries before the Christianity appeared. > But it has value in exploring questions and aspects of humanity that we are not able to understand with reason. Like, we can imagine hell really good, and obviously successfully spread the invented stories about it. Heaven on another side is either non-existence, or profoundly uninteresting or obviously produced for a mind of sex-obsessed hormone pushed teenagers who will therefore be motivated to die for their "religion" (virgins always ready for sex). > Human beings are really bad at reason. Should we then prevent them from trying to reason about their religions? Or shouldn't we support them exactly to do so? The problem is, raising people to "not do something" because they will be "punished" in the afterlife provably doesn't work, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are now -- the human civilization constantly being near to complete annihilation. By pure nature of how probability works, there will be sooner or later some false alarm that will indeed trigger the actual detonation of the nuclear weapons. The only sane action by humanity would be to reduce their amount to the scale which makes humanity's annihilation impossible. We are very far from that at the moment. Because it's so profitable making these weapons. Yes, human beings are really bad at reason. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-109020/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/john-f-k... "military and intelligence leaders responded by unveiling their proposal for a pre-emptive thermonuclear attack on the Soviet Union, to be launched sometime in late 1963. JFK stormed away from the meeting in disgust, remarking scathingly to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “And we call ourselves the human race.”"
  - wallace_f 8y ago
    Thanks for the link. An on-point article in the context of my comment. I liked this quote, even if I'm not 100% in agreement: >On the whole, they are older and wiser myths than secular myths like progress
    - inflatableDodo 8y ago
      To be honest, that article is a bit of a fluff piece, his essay in the New Statesman on the subject puts his point across better. - https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940 https://www.newstatesman.com/node/148940
marcus_holmes 8y ago
I think the rise of social media, and its vast ability to strip comments/speech of context and so enable dogpiling/offence/etc, has caused a huge rise in personal attacks for "problematic" statements. I have personal conversations offline with people where we can discuss controversial topics without anyone taking offence or "calling out". I have learned to avoid any such topics on social media because of the social consequences. I know many others who do the same: simply avoid certain topics online. I'm old enough to remember how we were before the internet, too. It wasn't like this. Discussions were more interesting and less fraught. People had a wider range of opinions on everything. At least, that's how I remember it.
- fit2rule 8y ago
  Every salient point concerning social agency and individual responsibility made by Monty Python in "Life of Brian" as well as most of their other films, can be validated by the manifestations of social media. We are, literally, living the Monty Python moments which resonate so well. All it takes to demonstrate this is a brief moment of pause before you hit the upvote or the downvote button. Beyond that point, we are all made of wood and weigh the same as a duck.
  - otaviokz 8y ago
    > All it takes to demonstrate this is a brief moment of pause before you hit the upvote or the downvote button. WOW, that was well phrased.
- inflatableDodo 8y ago
  There may be an increase in off the cuff rudeness to people you are unlikely to meet, as the internet makes that so much easier with fewer immediate consequences, but (at least here in the UK) we do not have anywhere near the same level of serious personal attacks. You might be more likely to encounter someone on the internet who is willing to be rude to you for your opinion, but you are much less likely to meet someone on the street that is willing to beat you up for it.
  - 8y ago

bilbo0s 8y ago

>I wish that in 2019 we were not so quick to personally attack for unique or politically incorrect ideas... That's the beauty of the film, it deftly illustrates that the vast majority of us don't have any "unique politically incorrect ideas". We're all, kind of, members of the People's Front of Judea. (Except, of course, for those of us who are members of the Judean People's Front.) Basically, the movie showed that most of us are "uniquely rebellious" in almost exactly the same way. Same taglines. Same clothes. Same beliefs. Same pass times. Etc etc etc. We've all become the brooding Goth teenager, who believes him or herself to be unique and counter cultural. Yet somehow we still look, sound and dress like every other "uniquely rebellious" Goth teenager on the planet. The film makes fun of the fact that there were very few people out there with completely unique and insightful views back when it was made. The reason it resonates today is because this central fact is still true. Not many people with unique ideas out there at all. Most of what we hear, we've already heard before.

wallace_f 8y ago
Actually, I completely agree with you here.
singingfish 8y ago
Whatever happened to the Popular Front?
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  He's over there.
  - floathub 8y ago
    No, that's the Popular People's Front.

fit2rule 8y ago

How do you know she's a witch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g