#asciilifeform | 2026-02-09

Logged on 2026-02-08 10:05:01 phf: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117846 << elaborate please. i kind of have some idea, but i don't remember this being discussed in logs, nor have i seen it anywhere really

10:09

sides are heavily psychologized, ie. heavily influenced by 20th century Psychology, and founded upon the same set of Psycho-Humanistic assumptions.

10:11

Among other things I do not believe in the existence of Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and Narcissists. I like to point out to people that prior

10:12

to the early 1970s or so, most people did not believe in these concepts. Even today, belief in such has not caught on in many countries.

10:23

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117858 << I am friends with several of these people who converted in recent years to Eastern Orthodoxy (especially Russian) without having the heritage.

10:23

Logged on 2026-02-08 10:41:32 phf: lacking all that, you don't really have much choice. everybody wants to retvrn but it ends up being just a return to the church of your parents, that many left for very good reasons. it's shallow, hypocritical, deservedly lampooned (king of the hill), or else it's an attempt to adopt somebody else's tradition on the most shallow grounds. like you know going eastern orthodox without ever reading gogol's "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka"

10:25

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117859 << Many Orthodox clergy-members in America are former Anglican such as Metropolitan Tikhon Mollard and Father Josiah Trenham.

10:25

Logged on 2026-02-08 10:41:32 phf: as a child, basically just protestantism with cool beards and robes

10:26

The same is true for laypersons of course. Apparently there are parishes where 1/3 or more of the members are former Anglicans.

10:30

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117860 << Seeing all of those concepts mentioned in the same sentence gave me flash-backs of Aleksandr Dugin.

10:30

Logged on 2026-02-08 10:50:29 phf: that is to say that christianity as it is practiced is fake and gay. it could easily compete with sovl invictus in terms of weird, transcendental, virile, whateve; you have gnosticism, hesychasm, knights templar, crusades, beowulf, arthurian myths, tolkien, eastern european literature and folklore, etc. etc. but all actual return is just a return to the fake and gay.

10:33

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117857 << Speaking in tongues began in non-Mainline churches during the 20th century, specifically the Azusa Street Revival of 1906.

10:33

Logged on 2026-02-08 10:34:30 phf: i mean protestants almost completely stripped christianity of transcendental and rapturous, outside of handful codified vaudeville acts, like speaking in tongues. where's traditionally exegesis provided path to transcendental for the thinking men, while christian art and architecture served same purpose for everyone. apocrypha gave you a shared mythology, a kind of marvel universe in which you actively lived and participated

10:33

It does not reflect historic Protestantism.

10:34

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117856 << The situation is somewhat more nuanced.

10:34

Logged on 2026-02-08 10:26:53 phf: and then gutenberg gave peasants the ability to read the bible, and protestants in the attempt to bring back early christianity created something new entirely, the fire and brimstone literalist movement, stripped of either the depth of the exegesis or the whimsy of the apocrypha, reinterpreted by dullards and prudes, tradition that mostly continued to this day

10:36

Early Lutheranism and Calvinism were educated, middle or upper-middle class movements which worked closely with governments.

10:37

The Deuterocanon (apocrypha of the Old Testament) was still respected, though not considered inspired.

10:38

Even in Puritan New England, the Deuterocanon was widely read, being treated as literature rather than Scripture.

~ 16 minutes ~

10:54

American culture currently is, to 20th/21st century Humanism, what Saudi Arabia is to Islam. The enforcement of this system is not mainly by the financial elites, even less by immigrants (though I do not support immigration).

10:57

Among persons who work in educational institutions, those who work in the management of large corporations, and those of relatively high educational

10:58

attainment in general, there is covenant of mutual enforcement of Psycho-Humanistic values, whether the persons are Liberal or Conservative.

11:05

I pray that all of you will be able to escape this evil covenant.

11:08

The leader of this channel Mr Datskovskiy was only a small child when he was taken to the United States against his will.

11:08

Others including myself did not choose to be born in America.

11:19

asciilifeform: The legacy of your contributions to computing will endure within China.

~ 16 minutes ~

11:35

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117861 << ah cool, i thought maybe you have more narrative around this idea. e.g. i initially started reflecting on the idea that these concepts were bogus when i was rereading the three musketeers couple of years ago. that in general putting human experience into a framework of psychoanalysis did great damage to western culture, possibly one of the original sins of the decline.

11:35

Logged on 2026-02-09 10:09:21 gregorynyssa1: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117852 << The meaning of the sentence is what is directly implied. In the present day, the views of all

11:35

specifically what stood out to me is just how, i dunno, unrestricted the musketeers are. they are chads, assholes, self serving, often self-destructive, have all kinds of vices, combined all that with deep sitted principles of honor, high agency, extreme at times competence, etc. so it's not like maldoror, not like when modern author sets out to write a "chad", they are not andrew tates, some kind of over top transgressive masculinity

11:35

and i was looking where my own analysis of them came, and i realized it's from the psychoanalytic framework that i realized has been turned into a modern morality system. i personally have to deliberately transgress all forms of "oh this is toxic, reee!", but the musketeers don't, bcause they obviously don't know that framework exists. they are at times psychopathic, narcissistic, etc. without becoming an ism. but it stands out to me,

11:35

because even if you accept this transgression in your own life, you expect any form of narration around it to be a maldoror, an anti-hero, where's musketeers's are presented as positive characters without any reservation

11:44

i mean they execute miladay at the end, which is not even presented as a moral dilemma, it's obviously right and proper! the only reservation is athos's personal love. what a completely inconceivable resolution to "modern audience". kind of parallel's the treatment of shylock in the merchant of venice, another book i've been heavily reflecting on. where resolution, ignore the modern reeing, is basically "some crime should be solved

11:44

above law, because criminal is playing tricks that are designed to subvert the system. we as thinking men, just going to decide what outcome is in harmony with continuation of this here society of ours."

11:48

as far as shylock we live in a complete reversal of the principles of that book, that is to say a society where law stands above men, and it's not even law in traditional sense, but rather a framework of control precisely designed to stand above men at all times. "computer here says, `no` -- but can't you?? -- my hands are tied". psychoanalysis is one of the building blocks of that reversal.

12:01

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117876 << yes, i'm being reductionist, but it's also because i don't know much about protestantism, and all i do i learned from dumas :) growing up huguenots were the bad guys, and now i'm married to one!

12:01

Logged on 2026-02-09 10:34:48 gregorynyssa1: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117856 << The situation is somewhat more nuanced.

~ 17 minutes ~

12:19

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117879 << there's a variety of meanings of apocrytha, one of them is "the Apocrytha", but i'm using it the most broad sense of christian writing outside of canon. miracula, hagiography, exegesis, allegory, bunch of othre popular formats i can't recall. you can't have life of saints if you don't have saints, so you lose an entire plasts layers of secondary material from

12:19

Logged on 2026-02-09 10:37:53 gregorynyssa1: The Deuterocanon (apocrypha of the Old Testament) was still respected, though not considered inspired.

12:19

"soliloquies..." to "st augustine walks into a tavern" bawdy folk jokes. which was said to support my original point, if you strip down christianity, and then your stripped down version runs into the ground, you don't have much to rebuild with

~ 24 minutes ~

12:43

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117871 << i sort of think if you were to ask somebody who studied history and also media literate to name a bunch of cool things about christianity off the top of head, the lists would roughly be the same?

12:43

Logged on 2026-02-09 10:30:59 gregorynyssa1: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-08#1117860 << Seeing all of those concepts mentioned in the same sentence gave me flash-backs of Aleksandr Dugin.

12:45

but i dunno, knights templar was a very popular genre in the 90s in russia, you know "the hidden secrets of the nazi antarctica base"

12:46

but perhaps more specifically i'm pretty close to dugin culturally, but also by specific background, in that dugin hasn't always been his current "trad" iteration. he's kind of like a hipster in that sense, so it's great shame they went after his daughter, really my heart aches for him, every time i think about, because i can't even fucking imagine

12:56

so i've seen dugin in person a bunch, back when he, limonov and letov were running national bolshevik party, and at an apartment party once of that same circle. i wouldn't be able to say how his views changed since then, because i have only vague idea of what the views were back then, and, tbh what they are now. but my point is "we were cooking in the same broth", maybe separated by age. so if i were to do a christian revival, mine

12:56

will probably look similar to dugin's attempt.

13:00

that is to say i'd go plundering the cool past for its memetic value, preserving only the book and the faith obviously, but taking a whole different tone, vibe, style, cause, whatever from what it is now. i'd probably even pick up the o.g. secret society aspect of it

13:02

josemaria escriva's approach was totally the correct approach, i mean obv, he's greater man than myself, that's why vatican did him dirty. the last man to attempt to save catholicism from what it has become

~ 4 hours 53 minutes ~

17:55

phf: That is a great observation about Dumas's novel. Thanks for sharing.

17:56

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117890 << Atlas Shrugged had a similar effect for me.

17:56

Logged on 2026-02-09 11:35:36 phf: specifically what stood out to me is just how, i dunno, unrestricted the musketeers are. they are chads, assholes, self serving, often self-destructive, have all kinds of vices, combined all that with deep sitted principles of honor, high agency, extreme at times competence, etc. so it's not like maldoror, not like when modern author sets out to write a "chad", they are not andrew tates, some kind of over top transgressive masculinity

17:58

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117891 << Before roughly 1970, most people when reasoning about others were not in the habit of using mental labels describing

17:58

Logged on 2026-02-09 11:35:40 phf: and i was looking where my own analysis of them came, and i realized it's from the psychoanalytic framework that i realized has been turned into a modern morality system. i personally have to deliberately transgress all forms of "oh this is toxic, reee!", but the musketeers don't, bcause they obviously don't know that framework exists. they are at times psychopathic, narcissistic, etc. without becoming an ism. but it stands out to me,

17:59

overarching mental tendencies such as Sociopath, Narcissist, or even Nerd. They were more concerned with people's particular beliefs and actions.

18:02

This runs counter to the common rule-of-thumb that being more modern means being more Reductionistic.

18:04

If you go back 2-3 generations and farther, Western people were very concerned about the moral valence of particular actions.

18:05

They were frequently asking themselves: was this action sinful; was that action sinful?

18:07

It was quite reductive compared to how people reason today about socio-ethical matters.

18:08

Guilt and shame were located in actions themselves, not the (purported) sequence of incorrect senses, feelings, and personality-traits leading up to the offending action.

18:08

After the guilt of an action was established, the door to repentance was opened.

18:09

The repentance of the offender being likewise directed at the action itself.

18:13

Rather crucially, according to Catholicism and also the general thrust of Protestant sentiment, if the offender were to repent,

18:13

the sin would be truly gone. Usually it would not hang around as "evidence" of one's character, barring the commission of a felony.

18:14

I call this framework Remissive Justice. It is very far from what we have today. The present-day Western society, especially the Anglosphere, views

18:14

all behavior through the lens of "evidence" and sticky labels describing over-arching mental "tendencies."

18:15

The concept of "sin" is replaced with "red flag." The act of trying hard to avoid perceived as sinful (which should have been praiseworthy) is nowadays known as "masking."

18:16

EDIT. to avoid being perceived as sinful

18:17

The first-world system of social ethics is based on Erythrolabarism (red-flag-ism), which is "evidentiary" in nature rather than "normative."

18:19

Hence my mention of "catechesis" being a direly missing ingredient: the return to a normative system of understanding and judgement.

~ 35 minutes ~

18:54

http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2026-02-09#1117904 << Wow, I did not see the report two years after Darya Dugina

18:54

Logged on 2026-02-09 12:46:37 phf: but perhaps more specifically i'm pretty close to dugin culturally, but also by specific background, in that dugin hasn't always been his current "trad" iteration. he's kind of like a hipster in that sense, so it's great shame they went after his daughter, really my heart aches for him, every time i think about, because i can't even fucking imagine

18:55