Ask Nathan Anything 2: Self-Absorption Boogaloo

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I did one of these earlier in the year and it lasted for several pages before dying out; an attempt to resurrect it didn't bear fruit, but since several other posters have started new ones in the last few days, Why Not Me?

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What anime is your sig from?

It's from Black Lagoon, which is a delightful genre pastiche of big, dumb, nihilistic 70s-90s action movies. I changed it from McThief the Crime Cat to better reflect my current tired-of-the-BS outlook.

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Name your top five favorite philosophers/political theorists.

Philosophers:

Nagarjuna
Pseudo-Dionysius
David Hume (surprisingly)
Immanuel Kant
Martin Buber

Political theorists:

Mencius
Whatever absolute FF seventeenth-century Englishman wrote this poem
Eduard Bernstein
Walter Benjamin
Giorgio Agamben (sometimes)

Figures are chronological within each list. The fact that each list begins with an Asian philosopher before moving into the Western tradition is coincidental and I assure you that Nagarjuna and Mencius aren't there as tokens.

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Would you rather attend a Knocked Loose show or a Pentecostal church service?

The latter, easily. I have a personal and professional interest in religious practices other than my own; I don't have a personal or professional interest in music I don't like.

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Do you hope to have more posts than BRTD one day

No, of course not. BRTD is the irreplaceable cornerstone upon which Atlas Forum rests--il miglior fabbro, as Dante would say.

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Would you rather attend a Knocked Loose show or a Pentecostal church service?

The latter, easily. I have a personal and professional interest in religious practices other than my own; I don't have a personal or professional interest in music I don't like.

Follow up: Do you prefer Knocked Loose or Paramore?

I actually like Paramore a lot and have since I was in high school.

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Do you follow South Korean politics in detail? I'm asking because there are many fascinating dynamics at play that may be of interest to you such as all three left-leaning Presidents of South Korea having been Catholics (though Roh was lapsed by the time of his death iirc).

I don't, no. In grad school I took a class called East Asian Christianities that discussed South Korean Catholic leftist figures such as Kim Chi-ha, but I didn't realize that extended to South Korea's Presidents. Fascinating. (Incidentally, Japanese Catholics as a demographic are also left-leaning, although there are conservative Japanese Catholics such as novelist Sono Ayako and current Deputy PM Asō Tarō--both of them massive HPs in my book, for reasons not directly related to their political or religious views.)

What is your opinion of New England style Chinese American cuisine?

I had to look up what this was; I only went for Chinese food two or three times when I was living in the Boston area, and none of it was this particular fusion. It looks interesting, but I myself couldn't say whether I think I'd like it or not.

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Henry VIII vs Ibn Saud.

UGH. At least the worst effects of Henry's toxicity were mostly confined to England within his lifetime, I guess.

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Who, in your opinion, was the most and least appalling among three main antagonists of the Count of Monte Crust: DE Wilford, Danglars of Mercer? (I'm leaving Caderousse out, because he was a small fish.)

That's tough, mostly because it's been over a decade since I read the book, but also because each of them is so awful in his own way. Going by what I remember of it, Morcerf pissed me off the most because he literally sells some of the other characters into slavery, and Danglars pissed me off the least because I thought his daughter was a pretty cool character. I'm willing to be unpleasantly surprised by de Villefort if I reread it, though!

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I like Hume because he presents such a robust challenge to so many aspects of my worldview--my religiosity, my tendency to take the phenomenal world at face value, my quasi-animist emotive attitude about the natural world, etc. I don't agree with most of his conclusions, otherwise I'd be, well, closer philosophically and religiously to you guys, but sometimes exposure to one of the strongest cases against one's worldview can be clarifying, challenging, and even kind of fun.

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I like Hume because he presents such a robust challenge to so many aspects of my worldview--my religiosity, my tendency to take the phenomenal world at face value, my quasi-animist emotive attitude about the natural world, etc. I don't agree with most of his conclusions, otherwise I'd be, well, closer philosophically and religiously to you guys, but sometimes exposure to one of the strongest cases against one's worldview can be clarifying, challenging, and even kind of fun.

It's always healthy. And Hume (a bit like Adam Smith) is more nuanced than the '101' that people read/assume.

But be warned (not really...); Hume and His Dark Materials (which-i-thoroughly-reccomend-watching-because-ruth-wilson-is-amazing) did more than anything to gut my Catholic apologism.

I read (and enjoyed!) His Dark Materials as a kid. For whatever reason, it didn't "work on" me, although I respect Pullman's artistic and intellectual achievement in it. In general, bad pro-Christian polemic tends to give me more pause and cause me more doubt than good anti-Christian polemic.

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What elements are you most looking for in a work of fiction (be it novel, film, or TV)? In other words, looking at your favorites, what aspects do you like more in them? And what are the aspects that you feel less strongly about, and on which you're more willing to forgive flaws?

Conversely, what do you think are your own greatest areas of strength and weakness as a writer?

I tend to put thematic ambition and overall style and tone before most other things, but I wouldn't say that I'm more willing to forgive flaws in areas I feel less strongly about. You'll remember from our experience watching Chris Colorado together that I loved the show's themes, style, and tone (which are its strengths) but was so annoyed by its problems with character writing and voice acting that I eventually decided to set it aside. If I'm already not super invested in something about a piece of writing, it starts to really bother me when it's done wrong. Conversely, I'm willing to forgive a lot in a book or movie or show that attempts to strike a style and tone that I like or to advance a thematic message that I agree with but falls flat. Such failures can have camp value in and of themselves!

I think my strengths as a writer are characterization and, again, thematic ambition (I flatter myself). My weakest point is putting together coherent plotlines, which I've heard many writers say is genuinely a lot harder than people who like to denigrate plot give it credit for being.

What is your opinion of secular humanism (and atheism as a legitimate belief system generally)?

I mean, atheism isn't really a belief system in and of itself, is it? It's a lack of belief in something; there are systems of thought that I strongly admire that are atheist, but to talk about "atheism" as a system of thought in and of itself isn't really to say much. As for secular humanism, I think more highly of it than I used to; I used to be easily annoyed by the earnestness and faith in human improvement that it involves, but now I find those traits admirable almost to the point of envying them.

Do you listen to Japanese music? And if so, who are your favorite Japanese musicians?

Back when I watched a lot more anime than I do now I was really into a soundtrack composer called Kajiura Yuki and I still really like a lot of her work. Among more "serious" Japanese musicians and composers, I'm a big admirer of Sakamoto Ryūichi and I like some of the seventies and eighties acts like ARB and Takeuchi Mariya. I also go through intermittent stages of blasting Nakamori Akina and Aikawa Nanase. And there's a dreampop band called (I'm sorry for this) Mass of the Fermenting Dregs that I really like.

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What do you view as the best and worse aspects of the Great Society?

Good question! The best aspects imo are Medicare, Medicaid (normie answers, I know), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; American public media is obviously threadbare compared to public media in most other developed countries but it's much better than nothing and for many poorer households (including mine when I was a kid) its children's programming in particular does a universe of good. The worst aspect is HEA, not because it was a bad idea at the time but because in hindsight it was one of the opening gambits in the student loans/tuition hikes arms race that continues to this day.

- Favorite Republican nominee since 1980

Tough to say. Maybe Romney on a purely personal level; I know people who know him (a cousin by marriage was a mid-level appointee in his gubernatorial administration) and apparently the "decent Mormon family man" image holds up at least at the level of professional acquaintance; it's possible that it breaks down as you get to know him better but I try to be charitable so I don't want to assume so. I'd like to be able to say McCain, but my actual opinion of McCain is that he was a Dumbledore-esque larger-than-life figure who, by late in his life, had done so many great things and so many terrible things that it became hard to know where one ended and the other began.

Politically, maybe Dole? 1996 was kind of a "me too" election in both directions, and Dole's public image was a throwback to a more self-reflective, less strident and extreme era of conservative politics that was already on the way out by the time Reagan hit the scene.

- 3 Favorite World Leaders in past 40 years

Hack/troll maroon avatar answer: Sankara, Lula, Morales.
(Normal, sane) answer: Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, and maybe Romano Prodi? It's hard to say because a lot of the other Great Human Rights Hero answers have turned out to be duds or frauds (see one Aung San Suu Kyi) and a lot of the other developed-world center-left answers have gone out of their way to further entrench the worst parts of the Washington Consensus.

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How blown is your mind that this song is 20 years old?

Not particularly blown. I'm a bit younger than you, so I was a little kid when this came out and I'm in my late twenties now; no mystery there. Ask me this question about "That's What You Get" in seven or eight years and then we can talk.

Going back to philosophy for a second, I seem to remember we discussed Hegel's theory of history a while ago and you said you didn't know what to make of it. I was wondering if you'd formed a more definite opinion on it, where it fits with your own thoughts on history.

It's crock. History doesn't have any particular goal or any particular structure; it just is, in the form of one damn thing after another, and more often than not humanity as a whole learns nothing from it. It's true that there's meaning in it that's found rather than constructed, but meaning isn't the same thing as structure or design.

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You sport a socialist avatar. Do you care to specify your preferred economic structure?

I'd like to see a mixed economy with a public sector in which most of the underlying economic infrastructure is concentrated (but insulated from politically motivated meddling by a strong state/government distinction) and a services-focused private sector consisting mostly of workers' and consumers' cooperatives rather than the current system of corporations with shareholders disconnected from a business's participation in the real economy. I'm not a "socialism is when the government does stuff roads are socialism in action " socialist but I'm not an unreconstructed midcentury central planner either.

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What's one big thing you've gotten wrong and one thing you think you've gotten right?

I've been "wrong about" (a better way to put it would be "misconstruing") my gender identity and sexual orientation a few different times now. I also used to be enormously too charitable about the motivations of Pope Francis's staunchest critics within the Catholic Church.

Conversely, at least in the last four or five years I think I've more or less trusted the right people and chosen my friends wisely. On the political front, I've consistently been wholeheartedly convinced of the absolute moral wrongness of politics based on religious or racial prejudice for my entire life and it's an irreducible key issue for me.

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If you were playing a Crusader Kings game and the Pope excommunicated your character and you were sick of him and didn't want to meet his demands to lift it so you decided to join a heresy would you choose Cathar, Fraticelli, Lollard or Waldensian?

[In theory just converting to Orthodox would be the best move especially since that effectively let's you pick your own Pope but we'll assume that's not an option for practicality purposes)

I don't know from Crusader Kings but in real life I have the most positive mental image of the Waldensians so probably them. Shame about the low view of the sacraments though.

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Opinion of Gnosticism?

Absolutely horrendous.

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Opinion of Gnosticism?

Absolutely horrendous.

Would you mind expanding on this? I have a friend who is rather intensely interested in gnosticism but I don't feel like I have much of a base for critique.

The fundamental premise of Gnosticism is that one is saved through knowledge, rather than through either moral behavior or a correct emotional disposition. The secondary premise is that this knowledge is passed through an initiatory tradition rather than being directly available to the common believer. It's a combination of a "fact-checking" mentality and a fundamentally elitist impulse. Additionally, Gnosticism is profoundly contemptuous of the material world and material moral questions; it was also pretty intensely misogynistic even by the standards of the time in its ancient forms, although Gnosticism's modern rehabilitators typically correct for that.

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Is neo-paganism a racist attempt by (some) Europeans to say that God couldn’t be Jewish/Middle Eastern/Italian?

Not All (or even Most) Neopaganism, but some is, sure, especially among very-online neopagans.

What's it like being the most right-wing user on Atlas?

Not being the most right-wing user on Atlas, I wouldn't know.

Ever read anything about Mohism?

Yes, and it's left a favorable impression on me, but I'm not as familiar with it as I am with Mencianism (of which I also approve).

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Who is your favorite Kennedy

Rosemary.

If you were playing a Crusader Kings game and the Pope excommunicated your character and you were sick of him and didn't want to meet his demands to lift it so you decided to join a heresy would you choose Cathar, Fraticelli, Lollard or Waldensian?

[In theory just converting to Orthodox would be the best move especially since that effectively let's you pick your own Pope but we'll assume that's not an option for practicality purposes)

As a follow up, if your character was actually a faithful Catholic would you rather join the Benedictine or Dominican Order?

Probably Benedictine, again going by the orders in real life. I like the ~aesthetic~ and spirituality behind the early mendicant orders, and I very much admire St. Dominic and especially St. Francis, but politically and especially militarily the Dominicans and Franciscans got up to some pretty bad stuff, roaming the countryside harassing Jews, scapegoating heretics and sometimes also gay men, etc.--the "DEUS VULT" kind of Catholic politics has never agreed with me at all, and I associate it much more with the mendicant orders than with the Benedictines.

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What are your thoughts on John Rawls?

Generally positive. I haven't made enough of a specific study of him to say for sure, but I can tell that he's a hell of a lot better than most of what passes for political and social philosophy these days.

How would you react if church handed out plastic ziplock bags and asked to fill them with dirt from a place you are "rooted" and bring them to church the next week but didn't say why?

I'd be confused, but I wouldn't see any particular reason not to do so. I can imagine a social teaching-focused Catholic parish doing something like that.

Do you like dank Christian memes?

I don't like all dank Christian memes, but this one is fantastic, yeah.

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If '68 George Wallace was resurrected and somehow became the Dem nominee in 2020, would you support him over Trump?

No, but I'd grit my teeth and support '72 or '76 George Wallace over Trump.

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Which is better: The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption?

I actually haven't seen The Godfather all the way through--I haven't been avoiding it or anything; I just haven't made time for it yet--but I've seen parts of it, and I like what I've seen of it better than The Shawshank Redemption. I've never found Andy Dufresne to be a very compelling protagonist, although there are other things Shawshank does very well.

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How do you reconcile the doctrine of Papal infallibility with the fact that men such as Rodrigo Borgia have sat on the throne of St. Peter?

Infallibility=/=impeccability. A Pope can be the nastiest, most low-down son of a bitch who ever lived and still not formally teach heresy in his capacity as Pope, which is all Papal infallibility means.