Christmas Spirit

[Walsingham]

OK. If it comes to waste, what about pride? Christians massively against pride. Yet how much money do we waste as a culture on cosmetics? HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars are spent on cosmetics every year. there's no medical necessity for it. Why don't we run about chucking mud at people trying to look nice?

 

Don't give me any straw man crap either. Cosmetics are a bigger issue for waste than Christmas. If we're going to be against waste it's a fair target.

 

Come to that why do I have a wardrobe full of all sorts of shirts and jackets and things? Boiler suits. That's the ticket. One sort of boiler suit, made locally from local materials. Lovely pig-skin boilersuit. None of this bongzilion garments from China nonsense.

[Gorgon]

Not if you don't recognise the category as anything other than a group psychological phenomenon. Surely it is the belief in divinity that is on the face of it fantastical and requiring proof. If there is no evidence then, ipso facto, there is no observable divinity.

 

The other side of the argument has invented a category outside what can be observed and documented, that's not a draw or a technical KO. It's cheating.

 

The category is, by definition, irrelevant. Having an opinion on its validity is stupid and baseless, regardless of the opinion itself.

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Seems to me it's is all about categories. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin. How do you account for the metaphysical in a real world setting.

Edited December 15, 2011 by Gorgon

[Moose]

I thought this picture of a lemur was kinda cute:

 

[Blarghagh]

Needs more Christmas Spirit.

[Morgoth]

Why can't people just can get along regardless of their little differences? It's Holiday time, FFS.

[Oblarg]

Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Seems to me it's is all about categories. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin. How do you account for the metaphysical in a real world setting.

 

You don't - by definition, the metaphysical is an unknown. This, the act of claiming knowledge about the metaphysical is absurd, regardless of the stance taken.

[Tale]

The truly unknowable is equivalent to the non-existant. If it interacts, it can be known. If it does not interact, it is irrelevant.

[Calax]

Why can't people just can get along regardless of their little differences? It's Holiday time, FFS.

More often than not, because groups tend to foist those little differences on each other and force you to conform to their chosen style of life.

[Oblarg]

The truly unknowable is equivalent to the non-existant. If it interacts, it can be known. If it does not interact, it is irrelevant.

 

Irrelevant and non-existent are not the same thing. The purely supernatural is, indeed, irrelevant. No one knows if it exists or not, and frankly no one should care, for just that reason.

[Walsingham]

To suggest that the imaginary has no impact on the physical world is pure snow-driven nonsense. If it didn't, what would be the point of double-blind clinical trials?

 

I'd like to proudly announce that due (at about 80%) to Krez' neo-puritan claptrap I went out this afternoon and bought a bottle of whisky I can barely afford and am guzzling it now. It is delicious. But even if it weren't I would be glowing.

[Orogun01]

To suggest that the imaginary has no impact on the physical world is pure snow-driven nonsense. If it didn't, what would be the point of double-blind clinical trials?

 

I'd like to proudly announce that due (at about 80%) to Krez' neo-puritan claptrap I went out this afternoon and bought a bottle of whisky I can barely afford and am guzzling it now. It is delicious. But even if it weren't I would be glowing.

Cheers mate!

[Humodour]

Krezack, you know I'm a big fan of your hippy stuff, but you sound like a total douche right now.

 

Is that it? You're not even going to bother asking yourself if what I said might have some truth? If maybe the immense waste and consumption associated with Christmas is a worrying excess that people should start taking responsibility for?

 

This atheism movement doesn't seem to have any green agenda, by the way.

 

Never said it did. I was weighing in with a different perspective on why Christmas isn't such a good thing.

[Hurlshort]

Krezack, you know I'm a big fan of your hippy stuff, but you sound like a total douche right now.

 

Is that it? You're not even going to bother asking yourself if what I said might have some truth? If maybe the immense waste and consumption associated with Christmas is a worrying excess that people should start taking responsibility for?

 

 

You realize you are basically questioning my parenting skills, don't you? I think it's better for our friendship that I ignore your remarks on raising kids.

 

I get that you are just trying to raise awareness, but your tact leaves much to be desired.

[Asol]

"Thou shalt worship no god" sticks in my craw as badly as "Thou shalt worship no god but me."

Yes, but their case is better. I would love for them to be wrong though.

 

The priority of placing religious or metaphysical traditions or thinking at the top of the list of apparently irrational behavior in others to be addressed is effectively an endorsement of more real problems in mass popular behavior such as consumerism which are far harder to tackle and far more widely enabled. In this way I find atheists particularly bothersome when vocal, because they tend to single issue crusade something they mistake for not being piss-ant relative to their own contributions to our problems. We can point our fingers in the mirror for the walmart, over population, EU zone, BP etc rather than at Jesus or Ganesha. Christmas trending from the religious to consumerism is just well rationalized degeneracy.

[Guard Dog]

Krezack, you know I'm a big fan of your hippy stuff, but you sound like a total douche right now.

 

Is that it? You're not even going to bother asking yourself if what I said might have some truth? If maybe the immense waste and consumption associated with Christmas is a worrying excess that people should start taking responsibility for?

 

This atheism movement doesn't seem to have any green agenda, by the way.

 

Never said it did. I was weighing in with a different perspective on why Christmas isn't such a good thing.

Krez, I get the feeling you will go through your entire life with a scowl on your face because somewhere, someone is doing something you disapprove of and is enjoying it. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go drink a lot of beer whose bottles I won't recycle and work on rebuilding my 1969 muscle car which will get really lousy fuel consumption and pollute the atmosphere every time I gun the engine...which will be often!

 

Merry Christmas!

[Calax]

and that, GD, is why my kids generation is going to DESPISE your generation.

[Walsingham]

"Thou shalt worship no god" sticks in my craw as badly as "Thou shalt worship no god but me."

Yes, but their case is better. I would love for them to be wrong though.

 

The priority of placing religious or metaphysical traditions or thinking at the top of the list of apparently irrational behavior in others to be addressed is effectively an endorsement of more real problems in mass popular behavior such as consumerism which are far harder to tackle and far more widely enabled. In this way I find atheists particularly bothersome when vocal, because they tend to single issue crusade something they mistake for not being piss-ant relative to their own contributions to our problems. We can point our fingers in the mirror for the walmart, over population, EU zone, BP etc rather than at Jesus or Ganesha. Christmas trending from the religious to consumerism is just well rationalized degeneracy.

 

Good point!

 

What I DO find interesting is that just as there seems to a sybaritic instinct native to a certain percentage of humans, so too seems the puritan ecstacy of self-denial and other-denial. IT's just that the sins have changed. Not the beards and pointing.

[Blarghagh]

Krez, I get the feeling you will go through your entire life with a scowl on your face because somewhere, someone is doing something you disapprove of and is enjoying it. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go drink a lot of beer whose bottles I won't recycle and work on rebuilding my 1969 muscle car which will get really lousy fuel consumption and pollute the atmosphere every time I gun the engine...which will be often!

 

Are you Denis Leary? How dare you steal Bill Hicks' routine!

[Humodour]

Krezack, you know I'm a big fan of your hippy stuff, but you sound like a total douche right now.

 

Is that it? You're not even going to bother asking yourself if what I said might have some truth? If maybe the immense waste and consumption associated with Christmas is a worrying excess that people should start taking responsibility for?

 

 

You realize you are basically questioning my parenting skills, don't you? I think it's better for our friendship that I ignore your remarks on raising kids.

 

I get that you are just trying to raise awareness, but your tact leaves much to be desired.

 

I don't give a smeg about your parenting skills (although I get the impression you're a great parent). In fact, I'd suggest we keep your parenting skills out of this and return to the wider question of whether Christmas is a socially positive force in its current form. I'm saying think about the planet we all inhabit and what waste and excess consumption does to it (and yeah, if that doesn't motivate you to give a ****, as with people like Guard Dog, then do think about what state you're leaving the planet in for your children to inherit).

 

There's every chance you are not even one of the people guilty of using Christmas as an excuses to be a hugely wasteful consumer whore (although given how many people do, I won't hold my breath), but I'm responding to you because you got defensive at me when I established the connection between Christmas and waste.

 

What I DO find interesting is that just as there seems to a sybaritic instinct native to a certain percentage of humans, so too seems the puritan ecstacy of self-denial and other-denial. IT's just that the sins have changed. Not the beards and pointing.

 

Oh don't you bloody-well turn this back on the people who actually bother to care. It's not self-denial that's causing global warming - although I'm sure denial comes into play on that issue for you in terms of pretending the scientists are all wrong. And it's not self-denial that causes the majority of the world's population to be in poverty or near-poverty conditions - certainly conditions that are so wildly disproportionate to our own. It's unsustainable consumption. Note that word unsustainable. The most tragic thing about this all is that consumption isn't the evil because it can be made a heck of a lot more sustainable. The evil is Western society's collective laziness when it comes to considering alternatives in production and consumption which would alleviate the problems. Pretending the problems aren't severe or don't exist, or passing the blame on to somebody else's behaviour is just so much easier than asking "what if my lifestyle is hurting someone and I can fix that?"

 

But, whatever, right? Hippies invented climate science during drug frenzies. It's all a great big socialist fraud to tax the rich more.

[Walsingham]

LOL. Oh I see. The great lie that if you don't agree then you don't care.

 

I find all this sincerely amusing, since I dare say I've seen more human suffering and pitched in to help than 90% of the socialists I meet or talk to. Indeed, looking back at my early years I'd probably be defined as a socialist. Yet over the years my stance has changed in a way I like to think of as maturing. Although you will no doubt consider it merely rotten.

 

The great failing of socialism, and your own messianic green tendency, and indeed your anti-Christmas stance, is that you propose solutions which need to be applied uniformly and dramatically to the entire human race, against its strongest natural inclinations. And perhaps if applied across the board they would achieve the object you have in mind. BUT THEY CANNOT, because thankfully the human spirit is too trenchant to be swayed by a tyrannical imposition. The result instead from partial application is the breaking of current institutions and oppression of a minority (those you can lay your hands on) for the simple purpose of depriving what alrready is and subliming it into so much hot gas.

 

Your crusade - and I use the word in its fullest sense - against Christmas may serve to make particularly sensitive souls lose their taste for a holiday they might otherwise enjoy. It might wreck some cheerful congregation's intended public artwork. It may even, with the greatest determination, reduce global economic activity at Christmas time. But it cannot achieve its aim of solving the global warming issue. So whom does it serve?

 

You will bridle, I'm sure at my insinuation that it only serves your desire to place your morals publicly above mine. But as Hurlshot has already said, your entire line of reasoning directly assumes that when I celebrate Christmas I only do so out of a blinkered and fatuous contempt for my fellow man. So this makes us even.

[Guard Dog]

YOU ARE LoF! I KNEW IT!!!!!

 

I'm kidding of course. Grow a sense of humor Krez. If it makes you feel any better my car is many months and thousands of dollars away from me even starting it, let alone wasting gas with it. So my evil plans for single handedly desolating the globe are on hold for now.

 

Oh, and I did put my empty beer bottles in the recycle bin, just for you. I didn't want you to think I don't care just because you post fruity and irrational things!

[Calax]

From what I've seen, most of the rampant consumerism has died down. I haven't been in and rediculous lines, but then I've also not been out at peak shopping hours or on peak shopping days.

[Giantevilhead]

Our society has become weak in the ways of the Christmas Spirit and dark forces have been arrayed against us in this moment of vulnerability. This threat could never have arisen just a few short decades ago, when people had such a hard on for Christmas that ornaments weren't hung on Christmas trees.

 

We cannot sacrifice Christmas. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our holidays and we fall back. They take down entire Nativity Scenes and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!

[Gorgon]

I guess I'll be 'different' and wish everyone a merry xmas. Ho ho ho. I even spelled it with and 'x'.

[Walsingham]

Our society has become weak in the ways of the Christmas Spirit and dark forces have been arrayed against us in this moment of vulnerability. This threat could never have arisen just a few short decades ago, when people had such a hard on for Christmas that ornaments weren't hung on Christmas trees.

 

We cannot sacrifice Christmas. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our holidays and we fall back. They take down entire Nativity Scenes and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!

 

*public school conditioning kicks in, responding to obvious rallying speech*

 

*snaps to attention*

 

*begins assembling wall of mealie bags*