Ask Nathan Anything 2: Self-Absorption Boogaloo

[Antonio the Sixth]

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.

I appreciate Nietzsche for exactly these reasons (although his thought creeps me out too much for me to be able to say I like him). But yeah, as someone who actually agrees with Hume on all or most of these points, I'm really glad you take his views so seriously.

[Gracile]

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

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

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

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.

[Sumner 1868]

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

[OSR stands with Israel]

- Favorite Republican nominee since 1980

- 3 Favorite World Leaders in past 40 years

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

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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

[Antonio the Sixth]

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.

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

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.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

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

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

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.

[afleitch]

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

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

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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)

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

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.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

They don't offer any real gameplay benefits over vanilla Catholic but they're good for escaping the Pope. Fraticelli can be fun because it has effectively it's own Pope. I once played a game with the goal of overthrowing the Pope and replacing the Papacy with the Fraticelli one, but I got bogged down fighting Muslims in France (the Umayyad Caliphate was able to drive all of the Catholics out of Iberia and establish a foothold in France, and they even beat back the Crusade for France the Pope called because basically all the AI Catholic rulersp that game were morons.)

[Sol]

Opinion of Gnosticism?

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

Opinion of Gnosticism?

Absolutely horrendous.

[Sol]

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.

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

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.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

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

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

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

[Orser67]

Ever read anything about Mohism?

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

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).

[All Along The Watchtower]

Who is your favorite Kennedy and why is it Bobby c.1968?