The Sage Garden

[memphis]

My position remains that, even if circumcision’s supposed health benefits are highly dubious and even if the real initial ‘reasons’ for doing it weren’t the reasons of a culture that any of us would want to emulate were we to construct a religion or ethnoreligion from scratch right now, it’s, as you acknowledge, simply untrue to suggest that it is anywhere nearly as damaging, dangerous, and prima facie unreasonable as FGM, and that considering the almost uniformly stupefyingly awful outcomes of laws banning non-life-threatening religious practices (I say ‘almost’ because I suspect someone may bring up polygamy or whatever and I want to say that yes I am aware that there are instances of laws of this kind both being good ideas and more-or-less working if you look for them but that doesn’t mean it’s not best approached with extreme caution) it’s, and I know at this point I’m just repeating myself but I want to underscore that having fully read and understood your argument I’m not going to run away from having said this, intellectually and morally irresponsible to actually go and treat it with the same sort of legal condemnation as we do FGM.

And with the above sentence (yes, it's all one sentence) Nathan has won the Sage Garden. The rest of players, however, will enjoy some lovely parting gifts.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh, I hadn't realized that was a single sentence. Yup, that's a pretty long one. Still agree with the point though.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

The worst is that Snowstalker is making some pro-ISIS posts that would qualify that are getting ignored.

There's nothing wrong in being a fan of Egyptian deities. I'm pro-Isis and pro-Osiris, though my favourite goddess is Bastet because I adore cats.

>2014
>not being pro-Anubis

lolno

Thoth 5ever (normal)

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

The worst is that Snowstalker is making some pro-ISIS posts that would qualify that are getting ignored.

There's nothing wrong in being a fan of Egyptian deities. I'm pro-Isis and pro-Osiris, though my favourite goddess is Bastet because I adore cats.

>2014
>not being pro-Anubis

lolno

Thoth 5ever (normal)

you're Nut's

[homelycooking]

My position remains that, even if circumcision’s supposed health benefits are highly dubious and even if the real initial ‘reasons’ for doing it weren’t the reasons of a culture that any of us would want to emulate were we to construct a religion or ethnoreligion from scratch right now, it’s, as you acknowledge, simply untrue to suggest that it is anywhere nearly as damaging, dangerous, and prima facie unreasonable as FGM, and that considering the almost uniformly stupefyingly awful outcomes of laws banning non-life-threatening religious practices (I say ‘almost’ because I suspect someone may bring up polygamy or whatever and I want to say that yes I am aware that there are instances of laws of this kind both being good ideas and more-or-less working if you look for them but that doesn’t mean it’s not best approached with extreme caution) it’s, and I know at this point I’m just repeating myself but I want to underscore that having fully read and understood your argument I’m not going to run away from having said this, intellectually and morally irresponsible to actually go and treat it with the same sort of legal condemnation as we do FGM.

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I'm not trying to be a cleverdick, but I do want to demonstrate to you, Nathan, that it's immensely advantageous to make an argument in two relatively short sentences than in a one-sentence, 196-word paragraph. On a message board, attention spans are quite limited (think TL;DR), and I think that your ideas would receive much more serious consideration if you would express them in a less discursive style. Please take this as advice, albeit unsolicited, and not derision.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The worst is that Snowstalker is making some pro-ISIS posts that would qualify that are getting ignored.

There's nothing wrong in being a fan of Egyptian deities. I'm pro-Isis and pro-Osiris, though my favourite goddess is Bastet because I adore cats.

>2014
>not being pro-Anubis

lolno

Thoth 5ever (normal)

you're Nut's

All of these represent the same failed faction.  Anubis long ago went from being a major god to Osiris' retriever. Thoth likes to pretend he is impartial in the battles between the gods but let's not kid ourselves. And everyone knows Osiris is Nut's favorite son.
 
Vote Set. A choice not an echo.

[IceSpear]

For the record, I'm not really arguing that this topic is worth legislating about. I understand that would do more harm than good in the current context. You know as well as I do that legislation can't always achieve what we would like it to.

However, I find it frankly strange that you seem to argue that opposition to circumcision to be immoral. If anything, I would argue that removing a part of a newborn's body without a medical reason (yes, I know there are sometimes medical grounds for circumcision, and I obviously have no problem with them, as I have no problem is it's an adult who makes the choice) is the immoral thing. Which again, doesn't mean it should be banned.

That's why I amended 'immoral' to 'morally irresponsible' after a certain point. Advocating for legally banning circumcision is morally irresponsible because it I don't think it adequately takes into account the histories of the groups that traditionally consider circumcision important and of legislation that targets them and their customs. Just personally opposing and advocating against circumcision is fine as far as I'm concerned.

Something like 100-150 million women have their genitals mutilated. That is also done for ‘cultural’ reasons. It is of course far far worse than the practice of male circumcision. It is of course, rightly improper to make appeals to culture and defence in tradition of such practices. Part of the main cultural reasons for doing so is of course misogynistic; it is the traditional inference that women’s sexual parts are ‘dirty’ and its removal promotes both virginity and fidelity. So why are males circumcised for religious and cultural reasons? There is evidence that as a procedure it was a form of emasculation. We tend to forget the ritualistic forms of castration that took place across cultures the majority of which have of course been made culturally redundant. Circumcision provided two ‘benefits’; it lowered sexual arousal in young males (as someone who has not been circumcised I am able, without the need for any other lubrication to masturbate ‘dry’) and it reduced the ability of men to inseminate other women (by ‘other’, I mean not his wife). The biological reason as to why men have a foreskin is in part, to a siphon off other men’s semen if the male penetrates a women immediately after other man. For whatever ancient reason the domino effect of the practice of circumcision took off amongst Semitic peoples, it was not for health reasons. If it was for reasons of cleanliness then it was at most a subjective cleanliness.

Both male and female circumcision are first recorded in Egypt. In the case of male circumcision that practice spread to neighbouring Semitic peoples and was subsequently layered with religious significance. Female circumcision remained fairly self-contained within that area until it was utilised much, much later on by Arab and Coptic cultures. Both were originally practiced for the same reason and for the same ends regardless of what difference people now place on them.

It would be improper of me to oppose FGM without giving pause to reflect on the shared cultural history of male circumcision.

I just want to chime in that as someone who is circumsized (and against unwilling circumcision), the thousands of times I have masturbated have all been dry, and I've never needed lubricant.

God, this discussion is so weird.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My position remains that, even if circumcision’s supposed health benefits are highly dubious and even if the real initial ‘reasons’ for doing it weren’t the reasons of a culture that any of us would want to emulate were we to construct a religion or ethnoreligion from scratch right now, it’s, as you acknowledge, simply untrue to suggest that it is anywhere nearly as damaging, dangerous, and prima facie unreasonable as FGM, and that considering the almost uniformly stupefyingly awful outcomes of laws banning non-life-threatening religious practices (I say ‘almost’ because I suspect someone may bring up polygamy or whatever and I want to say that yes I am aware that there are instances of laws of this kind both being good ideas and more-or-less working if you look for them but that doesn’t mean it’s not best approached with extreme caution) it’s, and I know at this point I’m just repeating myself but I want to underscore that having fully read and understood your argument I’m not going to run away from having said this, intellectually and morally irresponsible to actually go and treat it with the same sort of legal condemnation as we do FGM.

And with the above sentence (yes, it's all one sentence) Nathan has won the Sage Garden. The rest of players, however, will enjoy some lovely parting gifts.

Is sage about writing style now? Really? Really? I know that writing style exacerbates sage but I don't think it can be sage. Does that mean that Proust is 'sage'? Melville? Yoshiya and Kawabata? The ontological size, as oakvale defines it, of the idea I'm expressing here isn't really supposed to be all that large. If we are going to talk about writing style, excessive hyperbole is far more sagacious than mere long-windedess. The ontological size of the idea that circumcision is a crime against humanity and ought to be a felony and that mohalim are monsters is more than sufficient to qualify as sage, so I'm really glad you've been so assiduous about posting directly into this thread.

homelycooking's advice is advice I've received before, it's good advice, it's advice I'd do better to accept more often, and I thank him for it.

[Simfan34]

The worst is that Snowstalker is making some pro-ISIS posts that would qualify that are getting ignored.

There's nothing wrong in being a fan of Egyptian deities. I'm pro-Isis and pro-Osiris, though my favourite goddess is Bastet because I adore cats.

>2014
>not being pro-Anubis

lolno

Thoth 5ever (normal)

you're Nut's

All of these represent the same failed faction.  Anubis long ago went from being a major god to Osiris' retriever. Thoth likes to pretend he is impartial in the battles between the gods but let's not kid ourselves. And everyone knows Osiris is Nut's favorite son.
 
Vote Set. A choice not an echo.

I'm a normal, fun-loving person- go with Bes.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Anyway, I'm not comfortable with the idea of giving the authority to declare 'winners' of the Sage Garden to anybody who makes posts like this:

Agreed. Particularly true when the <scarequotes> identity is in direct conflict with scientific fact.

(Hint: He's talking about trans* people.)

[memphis]

Is sage about writing style now? Really? Really? I know that writing style exacerbates sage but I don't think it can be sage.

Dude, all sage means is a haugty self-important attitude. And you constantly revel in it. Needlessly using million dollar words and absurdly complex sentence structure out of a sad little need to prove your intellectual worth through form rather than devising a logical and consistent content. Proust was absolutely a sage.  Sage has very little to do with quality of content. For bad content, we have another thread entirely.

[Meursault]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with 'sage', and it's preferable to a casual posting style.

[Lief 🗽]

mods pls lock

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Is sage about writing style now? Really? Really? I know that writing style exacerbates sage but I don't think it can be sage.

Dude, all sage means is a haugty self-important attitude. And you constantly revel in it. Needlessly using million dollar words and absurdly complex sentence structure out of a sad little need to prove your intellectual worth through form rather than devising a logical and consistent content.

No, that's just how I write. If your reading comprehension was up to the task you'd be able to discern content through the somewhat elliptical structure, and possibly discern why I write in a discursive and elliptical manner. It's not to prove anything, because I don't have to.

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Oh? What writers do you like, memphis?

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It has to do with style of content, which is not the same thing as style of form.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with 'sage', and it's preferable to a casual posting style.

This is a really weird situation to be saying this in, but thanks for sticking up for me, I guess. I hope you find the way I post enjoyable even if you roundly despise most of the ideas in favor of which I post. I know I do for you.

[memphis]

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

That counts as neither an argument nor a response.

Can you seriously not imagine any legitimate reason why one might prefer to talk about sensitive issues in an elliptical style, or, hell, even just complex issues in a complex style? Does the idea that this can be a sincerely useful rhetorical technique really offend you that badly? Is life for you all just hyperbolic absolutes, telling trans* people what they're allowed to think about biology, and heroic lone crusades in defense of the defenseless straight male?

[Meursault]

I do. I wish you were less obsequious - you sometimes give the impression of wanting to be victimized because you think it would put you morally in the right (but then, I think that's true of most Christians) - but there's not a thing wrong with your writing style as such.

Things have gotten incredibly pedestrian over the last sixty or so years. I learned to write in school by reading a lot of Nietzsche, a lot of H.L. Mencken, and surrealists. The first two were too acerbic to be publishable today; the latter is an entire genre which could not be invented tomorrow - it would be too pretentious.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I do. I wish you were less obsequious - you sometimes give the impression of wanting to be victimized because you think it would put you morally in the right (but then, I think that's true of most Christians) - but there's not a thing wrong with your writing style as such.

That's fair. I wish you'd moralize power dynamics a good deal more, but then, I think that's true of most people interested in pre-Christian European religions in the way that you are. And I'm honestly glad that we're able to hurl invective about how we think each other's ideologies are all that's wrong with the world and then go and talk amicably about horror movies.

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All of the writers I mentioned in my response to memphis's J'accuse up above are ones I quite like and who have made a profound impression on my aesthetic sensibilities, as are Trollope, Joyce, and, more recently, Mervyn Peake and Angela Carter. A lot of that is realism, but it's very ornate realism that recognizes how complicated and oft-subjective 'reality' actually is.

[Meursault]

My interest in European paganism stems from my rejection of moral absolutism and not the reverse. And I am not actually religious, and surely no frilly, fuzzy neo-pagan. I am rather looking for a symbolic, pluralistic antithesis to the prevailing imagery regime.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My interest in European paganism stems from my rejection of moral absolutism and not the reverse. And I am not actually religious, and surely no frilly, fuzzy neo-pagan. I am rather looking for a symbolic, pluralistic antithesis to the prevailing imagery regime.

Thank you for the clarification but I was already aware of that. Much of this is what I take issue with, as a matter of fact. I have a great deal of sympathy for looking for an antithesis to the prevailing imagery regime but I think you and I have different notions of what the prevailing imagery regime currently is. My preferred antithesis is indeed largely grounded in the same Christianity that, in (I think) other guises and through (I think) other avenues, informs currently dominant cultural standards, but it is in some significant ways semiotically syncretic, even though my beliefs aren't particularly syncretic dogmatically.

[free my dawg]

ITT: Socialists cheering on the rise of extremist theocratic reactionaries because they'll stick it to America.

That sound you hear is Marx rolling in his grave.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Pretty clear that the thread should be locked. Levels of toxicity are way too high.

[Simfan34]

How about we lop the whole thing off and call it a day?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

With a garden it would be more a case of digging it up and starting again, but, sure.

[Simfan34]

Sage is a perennial plant, isn't it...