*Yor

I’m stuck at chapter IX, where flipping forward a bit I know I’m going to have to dedicate a serious reading session to, and I just cannot find the time.

This is an area where terminology gets real fuzzy. “Spiritual” is inherently vague and individualistic. I’m referring more to personal faith in a particular sect: read specific texts, pray in a particular way, organize your metaphysical model in line with an established religious tradition.

Generally I don’t like to reference specific religious texts, my beliefs are much too syncretic for that, but I was raised Christian, and for all the faults of the various Christian institutions, Jesus himself seems pretty based:

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

If someone practices Christian dogma that way, I’d be hesitant to call them oppressed or an oppressor. It’s still definitely a specific religion, but it’s engagement with the emergent power structure that causes the oppression.

“Which is accurate. It’s the infection or cancer that kills you.” That’s you. That’s what you said.

Yes. I said that AIDS itself doesn’t kill you. In fact these days it’s much more manageable with modern treatment. I never said it didn’t raise your risk of dying from something else, obviously, that’s the main thing it does.

It’s like you’d disagree that being a tight rope walker could lead to a higher risk of plumeting to ones’ death

I’d say that tight rope walking doesn’t kill you. I used to go to the rock climbing gym all the time, and there was a slack line there constantly being used and I never saw anyone die on it. Tight rope walking isn’t all that dangerous, any more than any other moderate athletic act. Tight rope walking 50 feet above the ground is dangerous, but I’d also argue that being on a tight rope 50 feet above the ground is drastically safer than being in the exact same point in space minus the tight rope.

Because that’s exactly what this AIDS analogy is ignoring. Yeah, it can easily make an easily oppressed person more materially oppressed if it leads them into the influence of religious oppressors. But it can also be a source of fortitude and resilience against those very oppressors. Martin Luther is a fantastic example, his devotion gave him the resolve to call out the Catholic Church for its oppressive bullshit.

Rubes are gonna be rubes. If it’s not a religious institution, it’ll be an MLM or an NFT grift or a political party or something. Religion, the faith, isn’t oppressing anyone any more than franchise owners or cyber security nerds or political activists. That is the reality of the situation.

I never said it wasn’t dangerous.

I’ll go further, and say the text of the 2nd Amendment implies gun owners should be members of a well-regulated militia. I think every State Guard should accept anyone who applies, and give them basic training. In exchange for being part of the reserve, and passing firearm classes, you can keep and bear arms.

If you don’t want to be part of a well-related militia, no guns. If you can’t pass firearm training, no guns.

Guilty, but now I’m considering switching to footnotes¹. They let you express a related thought without disrupting the flow².

¹I blame House of Leaves. Lotta footnotes in there, and they can go a long way before they really get out of hand.

² Sure there are cons, like the fact that the reader has to go to the bottom for context, but there’s also no real length limit.

The Secret Service has traced your IP address and is converging on your location as we speak.

Yeah I went to take that same test to see how high it scored, and flex on this chud with a higher score. “Free test” then charges $15 for results. Screw that, I’m not doing that for a bit.

But for those who are curious, it’s a pretty straightforward multiple choice pattern recognition test. It’s not really difficult at all. Pretty sure I got every question right in like a quarter of the allotted time. It’s really funny that he described it as “time crunching” and “adrenaline pumping”.

They don’t understand what I’m saying. Oppression is a specific phenomenon. Becoming susceptible to oppression is not the same thing as being oppressed.

Thank you for sparing me the rant I was inhaling to deliver.

The system is so good. You wanna run a political intrigue campaign? Great! Not only are there dozens of skills to navigate the nuances of that style, but there are multiple supplemental guides if you want to get real nitty gritty. You wanna run a hyper-tactical combat heavy campaign? Great! The combat can be extremely rich, with an entire book dedicated to Martial Arts.

You can run any setting you can think of: sci-fi, fantasy, modern, historical, cinematic, realistic. The mechanics are there. But the base system is so simple and modular, you can run it off an index card. I almost think of it less as an RPG than an RPG engine. You really can adapt it to any kind of game concept.

That ain’t working

I’m an Epsilon male, I try to be as unnoticeable as possible.

It’s like saying AIDS doesn’t kill people because it merely weakens their immune system.

Which is accurate. It’s the infection or cancer that kills you, like the priest or the astrologer oppresses you. The belief might make you more susceptible to oppression, but it’s not what’s oppressing you.

I’ll have you know I’m quirky and unique. I slap the bags of rice at the grocery store, who else would do that?

Religion, as in faith in God, doesn’t oppress anyone. Religion, the institution, oppresses people. If astrology had a comparable institution, it would absolutely oppress people.

That’s part of the point. Destroy the government, and the public’s faith in it, so billionaires can do as they please sans regulations.

Pam Bondi said the list was on her desk to review. Then suddenly there was never a list. I wouldn’t call that a “total lack of evidence”.

Yes, I gave far finders.

The correct answer