Picking up wild animals which would much prefer to be left alone, so you can get your picture taken, is not loving them. Keeping animals in cages so you can have something on your shelf to look at, is not loving them. Most animal ownership is possession for the possessive, masquerading as caring.
I feel like I’ve seen this take a lot more in the past ~5 years than I did before. Not just that zoos are unethical, but that any animal ownership (or really interaction of any kind) is inherently abusive.
You’re certainly entitled to feel however you want about animal ownership and act accordingly, but personally I feel like it’s honestly kind of a weird take?
Humans are obviously not the only species that develops symbiolotic relationships with other organisms (in a diversity of power dynamics), but we are also not the only species who take on specifcally ownership or shepherd roles for other species (like spiders with frog pets, or fungus farmer ants, among many many other examples). Thus, the ontological position this opinion must operate from is that humans are somehow distinct and superior to nature, such that we have separate and unique responsibilities not to engage in mutualistic ownership with other organisms, on the basis that like, we’re somehow “above” that? That we’re so enlightened and knowledgeable that we exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms?
Of course, a lot of our relationships to animals can be described as harmful in other terms without needing to take this specific stance. Like, our relationship with many agricultural animals can be critiqued through the harm done to their individual well-beings and through the harm their propagation does to the global environment. Or irresponsible pet owners can be critiqued for how their unwillingness to control the reproduction or predatory abilities of their pets can harm local ecosystems, like an introduced invasive species might. Or valid criticisms of many zoos when they prioritize profits over animal welfare, rehabilitation, ecosystem restoration, and education. Or that the general public picking up wild animals is a problem because it disturbs their fragile ecosystems and traumatizes them, especially when done on the large scale of human populations (but distinctly not for ecological study, wild animal healthcare, education, etc., like Steve Irwin et. al) But none of these are specific criques of the mutualistic ownership relationship itself as much as problems with the way we handle that relationship.
Idk, I’m interested to understand your opinion, especially if it has detail I’m missing beyond “we shouldn’t have pets, zoos, or farms because we’re better than that”!
It’s a reference to Roy Batty from Blade Runner. I didn’t know the name Batty Koda so I looked it up and I had completely forgotten about that movie lol
I know you meant this as a funny reply, and I’m sure your cat is very well taken care of.
…but I want to point out that the argument against pet ownership is more about the millions of animals in puppy mills, or on the streets, or abused by breeders, or bred with genetic issues for the sake of purity of breed. Your cat was extremely lucky to be adopted by you. But so many other cats are not. So many other cats die in shelters, or on the streets, or from euthanization, or in breeding mills. We create and fund the system that brings the unlucky cats into existence, for our own benefit.
The argument is that all those millions of cats and dogs that suffer and die so we can choose a few of them to pamper as pets, is not worth it.
Your cat isn’t an abuse victim. But all the other cats who weren’t so lucky, are.
Plus animal abuse is incredibly hard to discover: because animals cannot go to the police and report their owners. Lol. They don’t have voices. That makes them incredibly easy victims to exploit. Humans as a whole are really a hard group of people to trust with such vulnerable creatures, ngl.
My most charitable interpretation of you bringing up that spiders have frog pets is that, because pet-ownership is a thing that other animals do, it’s okay/natural for humans to do them too. And if we argue that it’s not okay for humans to do it, it must be because we think humans are inherently superior or something. Hopefully it’s accurate because that’s how I understood you.
This leads me to say:
The difference between us and other species that develop ownership/shepherding/symbiotic/whatever relationships with other creatures, is that humans can conceptualize morality. (inb4 the “morality is subjective” line: yeah, it is. But if you agree that suffering, torture, etc is a bad thing then we’re on the same page here axiomatically.) Unlike spiders, or farmer ants, we understand that causing other creatures to suffer is wrong. Because we are smart enough to understand, we have the responsibility to act in accordance with that understanding.
Another point is: male lions kill the cubs of other lions. Dolphins rape each other. Rats eat their own babies sometimes. Cats play with the mice they catch before killing them. The natural world is full of animals doing horrific things to each other. If you are going to say that it’s okay for humans to keep pets (or whatever) because animals do it/it’s natural… why can’t humans kill and eat their own babies? It’s because we know causing others to suffer is wrong, and therefore hold ourselves to a higher standard. We ARE superior: in the sense that we’ve invented philosophy and morality. That’s not a weird take. And it’s not a take that’s incompatible with this argument.
Similarly, we don’t hold our own children accountable for their crimes to the same degree we hold adults. If a kid steals money, or beats someone up, our society doesn’t punish them the same way as an adult. Because we understand that their brains have not yet developed the capacity to fully understand empathy. To truly be responsible for the suffering they cause.
Animals are, a lot like human children in that sense.
Therefore, we totally can “exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms.” We literally already do when it comes to things like murder, rape, and torture. Why not add distressing and frightening animals to take photos with them, or keeping them in cages, or what have you; to the list of things we should take responsibility for?
On “mutual ownership”. I’m not convinced that anything, whose agency has been removed through confinement, can be said to have equal weight in the decision to be owned, and thus be claimed “mutual”.
You give evidence of our like behavior with other animals, and claim that my position MUST operate from the belief of our “difference and superiority”.
Consider the inverse: Humans are not distinct and not superior. Therefor, all animal behavior is acceptable human behavior, for we are not but animals.
Its not exactly the society most would want to live in. People can and do use animal nature as means to justify horrible behavior. “Its a dog eat dog world, the villain proclaims”, as if the only surprise is that their victim would have expected it any other way. Mantises devour the male after copulation. Why then do you demand I not do the same?! Pointing to the way things are in nature as a means to find justification for human behavior doesn’t seem to lead to a useful foundation for ethics; maybe it even to to its dissolution.
So yes, I think we’re different. I think that in many ways our difference comes from our responsibility of stewardship. Because we do have knowledge, agency and control to the degree that we can destroy or restore environments.
There’s something to know in the future, which others don’t seem to have mentioned. Resizing a partition is 2 steps: resizing the filesystem, and resizing the partition.
When shrinking, you first resize the filesystem, and with this you make sure that the filesystem does not want to use data outside of the wanted shrinked size. If that not possible because you don’t have enough free space, the shrink operation should tell that. After shrinking is done, you can continue with changing the partition table, to actually resize the partition.
When expanding you first expand the partition (so that the fs will have room to expand to), and then expand the filesystem.
If you’re familiar with partitioning from the tools of microsoft windows, it’s disk manager does the 2 steps without you noticing. This is just how most graphical partition managers work.
But it’s important to be aware that the partition and the filesystem is not one and the same object. The filesystem resides in the partition like your feet does in your shoes, and the beginning of the partition helps for the system to find the beginning of the file system, which must end at the partition’s end (or before that, but that’s not efficient).
If you prefer graphical partition managers (I do too, it’s much easier), Linux has a few of them. I recommend you to use GParted. It’s a Linux based pendrive-bootable partition editor. They have an official live image, but I would recommend using the SystemRescue system (a live system too), which includes that and many other tools.
In this case, that the problem had already happened, it may or may not be easier to use this.
I think it’s more constructive to interpret what someone means, rather than with our own definitions that occasionally go against the common vernacular.
That’s why pointing out that today’s authoritarian dictatorships aren’t communism - while correct - is always interpreted as a True Scotsman. They’re differentiating “crony” capitalism because they haven’t been convinced that capitalism inevitably leads to the rich buying laws. They think we just need the right people in charge.
But the same applies the other way. Libertarians argue that centralizing power (redistribution, workers owning production, etc) in any manner inevitably leads to oppression.
I think if a Libertarian considered workers owning production in good faith but using their own terms, they’d see that a bunch of people owning production is more decentralized than one dude owning the whole factory. And then become a left libertarian.
I was incorrectly assuming that’s what you meant by workers owning production, but I see in your reply to the other post that you also include state power organized labor.
So I guess my point is that a Libertarian would use the meme above with a punchline of “we just say communism” instead of Soviet Communism, when most here would not agree that’s the inevitable result of all communism.
Yeah, I get that. That’s actually what I was saying in my first post. A libertarian would see any form of communism as the path to tyranny, much like the meme does toward capitalism.
I’m just asking what form of collectivization best argues against that point? You mentioned left libertarianism.
Libertarians tend to say things like democracy, a well informed populace, and a strong constitution would reduce government growth and therefore abuse (cronyism). How can that same problem of abuse be avoided in a real collective society?
I’m not going to pretend like I have all the answers there. Personally I don’t think goverments are helpful; the vanguard state has failed repeatedly. Those weren’t “crony” vanguard state. But unions and co-ops have worked out much better. If everybody is voting, then elites would need to coerce everyone instead of just whoever is in charge. One Stalin can’t ruin everything.
This can cause its own problems (like voter fatigue), but those can be mitigated in various ways (like with liquid democracy). And if/when it becomes corrupt and your voice goes unheard, then creating or joining a new union is much easier than doing so with a new government.
When I say redistribution, I mean someone taking from one person and distributing what they took to others. In practical terms that means taxes and government programs. That centralizes power to the government to make decisions how redistribution happens and who benefits. Or so is the Libertarian argument.
The workers owning production is a bit more complex. I think most libertarians would point to the like of Soviet Communism where state power organized labor. Again, centralization. But private co-ops and such exist so I don’t think they can mark it across the the board.
libertarians believe wholeheartedly in freedom of association and the right to voluntary exchange. As soon as you start talking forced anything, you’ve lost us.
Can 300 million people collectively run an economy and be focused on making those decisions? No.
Then a group of representatives are needed to do it for them, but wait, isn’t that the same thing as a government owning and operating the economy? Like in fascism? Oh no!
Then a group of representatives are needed to do it for them, but wait, isn’t that the same thing as a government owning and operating the economy? Like in fascism? Oh no!
Sure, if you ignore all the differences that makes it entirely different, such as:
Democratic control
Local level decision making toward central goals being done by workers and not capitalist overseers
The lack of a profit motive
Claes consciousness, aka we understand how things actually work and we don’t have to blame misfortunes on a scapegoat like under capitalism
I’m going to take the Libertarian perspective here again. If you remove profit motive in any sense, how can a group allocate resources effectively or incentivize work? Price/profit margin signal more than just greed. The market self corrects based on prices.
you remove profit motive in any sense, how can a group allocate resources effectively or incentivize work?
Empirical response: How did the soviet economy grow 50 percent during the Great depression?
Theory based response: when you remove profit seeking workers are no longer alienated from their labor, as the harder they work the more it benefits them and their community and not some rich fuck.
If I’m working a job now, what incentive do I have to be as productive as possible? The potential for promotion? If I wanted to optimize my chances for that, I’d be more interested in learning to be a kissass than to improve my work.
Price/profit margin signal more than just greed. The market self corrects based on prices.
Price is a very low information density signal. It isnt actually rational to do economic planning (as all firms do in market economies) off of price, why do you think non-hostile corporate espionage is a thing?
Remember that growth is relative. GDP per capita in the mid 30s was still three times higher in countries like the states, UK, and Switzerland compared to the Soviet Union. This trend continued into the next decades. Pretty much all of Europe had a stronger economy. And there weren’t mass famines and rampant scarcity issues to the same extent in the west. Yes the Soviet economy did grow, but the libertarian argument is about efficiency.
And sure, price in isolation isn’t a super useful indicator. But many factors influence price (competition from profit seeking, availability of resources, etc). As for the latter part, companies do run market research, including non hostile espionage, to find what consumers want most. I personally don’t see where that would be irrational. It directly fills needs.
Remember that growth is relative. GDP per capita in the mid 30s was still three times higher in countries like the states, UK, and Switzerland compared to the Soviet Union. This trend continued into the next decades. Pretty much all of Europe had a stronger economy.
And how did that pan out for high GDP France? GDP per capita is a bad statistic to use. Two economists trading a random object and 20 dollars back and forth raises the GDP of a place by forty dollars per cycle
And there weren’t mass famines and rampant scarcity issues to the same extent in the west.
Thats because they exported their economic problems to the colonies. Look up how many people starved to death In British colonial India. Also the soviet union ended the previously periodic famines when their collectivization policy was fully implemented
Yes the Soviet economy did grow, but the libertarian argument is about efficiency.
What sort of efficiency? Because Marxists argue that capitalism is really good at making profit and really bad comparatively at efficiently improving human outcomes.
But many factors influence price (competition from profit seeking, availability of resources, etc).
That is literally why it has low information value.
1 - Are you saying that France made poor economic plans because they were invaded by the Germans? It might be because they were being bombed and attacked during the deadliest and largest war in modern history. Devastating war tends to have devastating economic effects.
And trade is a good indicator of an economy. It turns out fair trade is massively beneficial to everyone. The study of the allocation of resources is what economics is all about. And I don’t think you’d say that poor countries had lower GDP because they didn’t have textbook economists trading 20s in the back rooms.
2 - The starvation you mention also correlates with India’s driest years on record for over a century in agricultural areas. These famines were later tamed by the import of western technology like railroads. And Britain still grew 3/4 of its own food, although decreasing, for much of this period.
I’m not calling the British innocent. They imposed taxes and tariffs that helped themselves, as they did with colonial America, and damaged the Raj economy as a result. They did not, however, “pillage” India, as some have oversimplified.
3 - What sort of human outcomes? The USSR had terrible housing, lower life expectancy than western countries, and had significantly worse technology, infrastructure, working conditions, and availability of goods and services. The USSR’s economy growing at all doesn’t equate to magic wonderland.
These are the human outcomes of states that detach people from their own interest (communism, socialism, fascism). It makes everyone equal at the cost of making everyone poor.
Libertarians argue that generally, free enterprise, and it’s efficiency by extention, leads to better human outcomes. And the data seems to back it.
Only by people who don’t understand that NTS is about moving goalposts when a generalization is challenged and think it means “anyone who claims to be part of a group is part of that group”.
Agreed on both, though if I ever get a personnal macbook (which I’m definitely considering, their silicon is so good), it’s definitely gonna involve a sticker
But they’re overpriced and have made many anti-consumer choices and as a consequence have made other platforms worse, because many other companies like to follow Apple.
I spent a little bit of time looking for true alternatives to a MacBook that would fit my needs, but there really aren’t any. Once you check out laptops with 16+ hour of battery life, then add a bright, HDR, color-accurate display, then add the performance of the M-series chips (which are not THE best, but certainly close to the best options from AMD and Intel), and decent speakers, there really isn’t anything to compete.
A base 14" M3 Pro is around $1750, which isn’t that far out of line for high-performing laptops in general. If someone needs something cheaper, they can get a used 14" M1 Pro for around $900-$1k. Also, if you’re someone that already owns an iPhone, it’s kind of hard to even see why you would go with something else unless you are required to use Windows applications or want to play a bunch of AAA games.
I’m beginning to think that people that diss MacBooks are just people that never owned them.
For people that are really struggling financially, but still want the above features, the 2020 13" M1 Air w/16GB RAM and 256GB storage can be found for about $500.
I was an Apple employee, though… And they’d bin it and give me a new one every 24 months because upgrading’s not an option. Wouldn’t even wipe them and hand them/sell them to employees.
All the actual workhorse machines were Lenovo. If you worked with external clients, you’d get a Surface Pro so they didn’t have to work around your incompatibilities with their software, systems, and enterprise environments.
Also used to use an old Pentium 4 we found as a team server because multi-threading and 64-bit wasn’t available for some MS Enterprise applications in macOS then, but 365 and applications like Power BI is obviously what Apple runs on. This ancient box had a 4:3 monitor and an IBM logo on it, so it was made some time before 2005. But 64-bit CPU and no macOS, so it crunched calculations faster than the 6-core i7 in the MBPs. The day we could finally use all cores and 64-bit on the macOS systems was amazing, but we still kept the old IBM box around to monitor and log connections. I like to think my old friend is still kicking on…
Find another well build machine in a similar form factor that performs similarly, and gets even comparable battery life. Raw benchmarking performance isn’t the only value to a laptop.
The dell xps 13+ maybe? But that’s 13th Gen. intel and battery life is pretty awful.
But its all chained to shit rabidly anti consumer borderline soyware proprietary ecosystem software, so it’s basically trash.
Also, they’ve been making some really fucking stupid design decisions. Fucking camera in the middle of my fucking screen? Kill yourself, I’d rather just not have it.
Most people probably wouldn’t even recognize the gateway logo anymore. It would work on me though. My past experience with gateways is entirely negative.
I don’t necessarily agree. If a brand makes high quality stuff I’m not gonna avoid them just because they put their logo on their stuff. I have a kickass Adidas backpack from 2014 that is by far my favorite, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna get rid of it just because it has an Adidas logo on it.
I also have perfectly good clothes with various brands on them, and I’m not just gonna throw them away because that’s wasteful as hell. I don’t go out of my way to buy stuff with brands on them, but that won’t stop me from buying something I genuinely like and find to be high quality.
Honestly, I’m not against ads, I understand that a site with free articles needs to pay the bills somehow. The reason I use ad block is that online ads have become so intrusive that it makes websites unusable, and the way they track you is way over the line. If ads didn’t completely destroy the experience of reading a website and were reasonable in the data they collected I probably wouldn’t bother with ad block.
When I just used a browser ad blocker I made a point to unblock sites that I wanted to support and didn’t use obnoxious ads. Unfortunately for them I now use a network ad blocker too and it’s more of a hassle. One of these days I might make a list of domains to unblock but at the moment I’m more concerned with figuring out how to block YouTube ads at the domain level.
Afaik, they are unblockable. They are served from the same domain as the video, so if you block them you can’t see the video either.
Instead of blocking it at the domain level, you can install adblockers on almost any platform. I recommend uBlock for Firefox and ReVanced for Android. ReVanced is also supposed to work on Android TVs, iirc.
Assuming you don’t mind microG, with revanced you can sign in and have access to more of the bells and whistles. Otherwise, newpipe is great, and it’s more than YouTube. It handles bandcamo and other services too
ReVanced is a modded YouTube (and others) app. IE normal YouTube but you fuck with it locally to skirt what got the original Vanced guys. Adblock, OLED black theme same old thing Vanced provided. I’ve used NewPipe very little but I’d summerise a comparison as ReVanced has better user experience (thanks to Google making the app) and you can sign in/get notifications ect
If there’s something really important on that disk, don’t do ANYTHING, just unplug it and hand it over to a data recovery company.
If there isn’t anything really important on there, go ahead and try and do it yourself.
Paying $100 to a data recovery company can save you a ton of headaches if it has the only copy of your thesis on there and you mess it up trying to fix things yourself.
If you create an image of the disk in the current state from a live boot or an other machine. You can try fixing it without having to risk making things worse
Where is data recovery $100? In my country, data recovery is like $1000 USD to look at your drive, and then they tell you how much they can recover and a full quote.
Depends on what they actually need to do. When it’s a drive that’s working and they just have to image it and run some recovery software it should be pretty cheap.
Clean room repair of dead hard disks is a different story.
i own four xx20 series thinkpads. One of which has debian with i3wm, the other three dont have anything installed atm. Sue me ik.
xx20 series is the best tbh. The only thing maybe arguably better is x80 series, due to the more modern processors and actual features over the xx20 series. xx40
my w520 with an i7 2720qm or whatever the fuck is it is is genuinely better than any intel mobile cpu that isn’t quad core. AND it’s socketed.
looking for a cheap xx40s (or p it’s whichever one is better i cant remember) just for the completion, as well as an xx80 just to have one with more modern hardware, but my xx20 is everything i’ll need in a laptop tbh. I would also like to get an x220 at some point.
naming legend for anybody wondering.
x - model type, w, t, x, etc
x - the device type, 4, 5, 2, etc usually screen size related
n - device model? Release related.
n - 0, just the number zero, anything that isn’t a zero is e waste im pretty sure.
i’ve heard, but honestly, is there anything interesting about them other than the like 2% performance uplift? And the fact that batteries are only semi-compatible between them. I suppose they might be more power efficient? I have no clue, if you have any knowledge it would be appreciated.
My w520 with 4 cores still smokes anything that isn’t like 9th gen mobile in terms of multi core. Thanks intel very cool.
Erwin and Attenborough didn’t believe either of those things.
Attenborough is a massive hypocrit who wants the poors to go plant based but refuses to, and also thinks the world is overpopulated but wont use fewer resources.
Erwin’s job was literally harassing animals for entertainment until one finally got the better of him.
I don’t know much about him, but poking around a bit shows him saying vegetarian or reduced meat consumption. He eats cheese and fish. Sounds like he’s doing exactly like what he’s recommending to others.
Attenborough is a pescatarian, and Irwin was specifically rescuing animals and transporting them to places that were more natural, and less human infested.
I haven’t heard anything about David Attenborough talking about plant based stuff so I won’t dispute it but he did help found and fund the zoology museum in my town, one that specifically tries to educate people on the dangers of climate change and making species endangered. From what I’ve seen of his filming they’re pretty conscious about not leaving any waste behind too.
“We must change our diet. The true tragedy of our time is still unfolding – the loss of biodiversity,” Sir David says in the film. “Half of fertile land on Earth is now farmland, 70 percent of birds are domestic, majority chickens. There’s little left for the world. We have completely destroyed it.
and yet
“I do eat cheese, I have to say, and I eat fish. But by and large I’ve become much more vegetarian over the past few years than I thought I would ever be.”
Sure he helps fund some decent shit. He’s rich, knighted, connected to aristocracy. He’s also a spineless twerp.
Do you drive a car? How about ride the bus? Use electricity?
Spineless twerp!!
Yeah, just because he admits to not being your idea of perfect, eating cheese and fish, doesn’t mean he isn’t trying. I see that comment about eating cheese and fish to mean he’s not eating steak every night, like others.
Yeah sure. Skipping the Camembert and buying a plant based really fermented one instead is just too hard for a multi millionaire. What an unrealistic standard! He only thinks the apocalypse is nigh.
I mean that’s like equivalent to like walking the 60 km commute you have to do. Be realistic, it’s not like you manage to be plant based on a budget that’s below median for your city or something. It’s not like you give up cheese entirely because you can’t afford the vegan replacements but recognise the cruelty of animal ag. What’s a millionaire famous guy to do?
he’s still a hipocrite… like yes it’s good that he advocates, it would be better if he followed through and used some of his staggering, mind meltingly large wealth to actually do something.
Instead he pays lip service while using an enormous amount of resources and being shitty. Is lip service better than no service? yes. Is it good enough for one of the most privileged individuals on the planet? no.
If even a billion people lived like him we’d destroy the world in a week.
Everyone is a bit of a hypocrite. Even you. It’s important to know when someone is being hypocritical but has a point and when they’re just being hypocritical. I think this is pretty clearly the former.
He’s also only a hypocrite if you believe the only possible outcomes are perfect success, and complete failure. He, by all accounts, seems to live by what he preaches. Not perfectly, but again, that only matters if the only marker for success for you is perfection, in which case no one will meet it.
He’s a multi millionaire who admits to still eating red meat despite having the funds to hire a professional chef to make delicious plant based meals every meal. He also admits to eating chickens while decrying it.
Fuck me for holding people with more power to higher standards I guess.
He’s also intensely classist and has deeply problematic views about overpopulation. Doing the very British thing of talking about too many African people while completely ignoring the massively asymmetric resource consumption that he takes part it.
I just think if you’re one of the most privileged people on the planet and you think the world is dying you ought to live a life which if the average person lived would be sustainable. Not do some token effort, far below that of your average poor person, and claim that’s all you can manage.
Any reduction in the resources used from agriculture? If he could be eating red meat daily, but instead only eats cheese and fish occasionally… That’s good, if not perfect.
Vegetarianism (or in his case pescetarianism) is not inherently reductionarian, so him saying he’s become much more vegetarian isn’t really meaningful without knowing how much of that land based meat was replaced with fish and cheese. Dairy comes from cattle or other ruminants, just like red meat. Fishing is ravaging the seas like agriculture is ravaging the land.
Erwin routinely relocated animals from areas that had high human interaction to conservation or animal refugee. He never used tranquilizes while showing the animals of left alone, were no threat.
The one that “got him” only got him because he didn’t believe in harming animals and he could have easily survived it.
Grew up with this stupid interpretation that it refers to some small gate in Jerusalem that camels had to bend down to use or something.
Jesus literally gives the answer in the next sentence:
”Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” He replied, “What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”“ Luke 18:25-27 NRSV
God can save anyone. And my layman’s interpretation on top of it, no man can save himself.
Well yeah, but if you’re a Christian you believe that it’s literally God telling you that you can’t be rich and go to heaven. God may make an exception, but it would be just as absurd for you to count on being an exception to this rule as it would be for you to count on being the exception to the rule that “none come to the father but through me”. If you’re rich, you’re just as damned as if you were never Christian to begin with.
I am a Christian and I think your argument is weak. That Jesus talks of a rich person here is irrelevant, the core of Jesus teaching is that salvation is a gift freely given, but not something we can obtain in our own power.
Fair point, what I meant is that in relation to being saved, it’s irrelevant he is rich because only God can save people. In relation to the hardships you’d face with being a Christian and rich it’s valid.
One thing I never understood was how any of it could be taken seriously if I could do literally anything and then go to confession and it’s all ok. Like imagine the absolute most atrocious thing one could do, then admit you did it to a priest, and you’re good? What if you just did that over and over again?
I’m not looking to “slam” Christianity, I’m just curious about that part.
It is something you can see the early Christians debating as well.
This is a take from James 2 “”What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.“ James 2:14-18 NRSV
And this is from Romans written by Paul
”There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.“ Romans 8:1-2 NRSV
”because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.“ Romans 10:9-10 NRSV
And from Ephesians (which might have been written by Paul) ”For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.“ Ephesians 2:8-9 NRSV
I’m just cherry picking a bit here, plus there was of course much more debate on this topic than what we have documented. My personal thought on is it that, while it may seem wildly unfair, what other alternative than “saved by grace” could there really be that doesn’t result in people saving themselves. If Jesus truly paid the price, what else is there to pay?
The concept of “works” without knowing that term exactly was always how I explained myself: in that I may not have any faith, but if any of this is real I should be judged by my actions regardless of what I believe to be true.
I can understand your viewpoint and while there are verses in the bible that are very clear on Jesus being the “way”, I personally think God is doing everything he can to save as many as possible. And if someone is living in accordance with how God wants us to live I genuinely hope that is enough.
I mean, you also have many people from other religions who dedicate their whole life to knowing God and following his teaching. Sure if the teaching is evil, that’s an issue, but many religions follow the same basic principles and I think there is more to it than just whether you specifically call yourself a Christian. Don’t really have any bible verses to support it, just my personal conviction.
If you sincerely make the choice to follow Jesus, you would feel immense empathy and guilt about bringing calamity on your fellow human beings. If you had already done so, you’d be moved to repent and atone with those you afflicted, with whatever life you had left.
That’s the power of Christ’s love.
If you were an evil mustache twirling villain who thinks “I can just say some words and act real sad and I get zero consequences for all the evil stuff I enjoyed doing”, you’re fooling yourself. As if God would be some kind of mall cop and not see the evil heart right through it lol.
You know someone’s heart by their works and their nature. They aren’t saved by good deeds, but good will towards their neighbors is a side effect of being saved.
This is why it’s so heartbreaking seeing how people abuse the name of Christ to get people’s guards down, before dragging both through the mud. Evil’s best footsoldiers are hateful “Christians in name only”.
People always ask about a certain funny-mustached dictator’s final thoughts alone in a bunker. “What if he really meant it? Would Jesus forgive him?”
Yep! But I imagine if we’re honest with ourselves and he was actually leaning that way, he would have put a stop to his atrocities much sooner. A confession only out of the sudden realization of impending consequences is seldom a change of heart.
That Jesus talks of a rich person here is irrelevant
It’s really very relevant:
20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
The message here isn’t about buying your way into heaven, it’s about earthly attachments. In part it is about sacrificing your own desires, but ultimately it’s about split loyalties. If you want to enter heaven, you cannot be burdened by avarice, by the desire for possessions. And if you truly seek to follow what Jesus is teaching, then you would give up everything to do it.
I agree, but I think making it to sound like Jesus says rich people can’t be saved is a misinterpretation. It seems to me he says it’s hard for rich people to truly follow him and his teaching, and that only God can save people.
The problem is, if after hearing the teaching you are still rich then you haven’t understood the teaching or really accepted the message - because you are still attached to your worldly possessions.
It’s not that “rich people can’t be saved”… it’s that being rich and following Jesus are fundamentally incompatible. You can’t be rich and “truly follow him”, as you put it.
The easiest thought experiment here is asking “But how do you get rich?”
Well, it’s certainly not by putting others first and being fair and equitable in all your dealings. That’s against the “game” (oh sorry, “best practices”) of business.
A ton of capitalist co-opting of Christianity makes all kinds of excuses for why a Godly person could work 1,000,000x harder than everyone else and be “blessed” with the burdens of wealth, but it’s all propaganda.
Inheritance maybe? Okay, the question still becomes: What did you do with your resources?
Being honest with these questions makes the truth rather apparent, in my humble opinion.
Context is important. Literally the next couple verses in both passages say something along the lines of "The disciples asked, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus said, ‘With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.’ "
I think it isn’t really to do with the money itself but with the mindset. If you’re the type to dodge taxes and scam people, and love money above all, which is arguably what it takes to become rich, then you clearly aren’t a Christian transformed by God.
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