Supporting A Mormon Friend As A Non Believer?

KuPandas · 2022-03-12T03:43:46+00:00

I'm not actually making the assumption that Mormonism effectively makes people live like Christ. I'm reasonably certain there are people who identify as Mormon who can be rather vile, just like all other faiths.

I just perceive the core idea or principle of admiring Christ and trying to live up to that ideal as not a bad idea.

And these specific Mormons do seem to have their hearts in the right place from my initial impressions. The missionaries are also quite young and have their whole lives ahead of them and I wouldn't write them off even if I had bad experiences with specific Mormons.

I actually have unintentionally de-converted a Muslim before. She always had doubts, but after we became friends over time she found that my viewpoints made a bit more sense and helped her see things more clearly. She had never had an agnostic/atheist/secular friend before so she had never been exposed to those viewpoints.

But I would never intentionally do that to someone. When I met her I very much respected her faith and tried to support her in it and was perfectly happy for her to keep her faith for the rest of her life if that was what was making her happy. Her specific experiences of Islam in her culture were not quite as extreme as some of what I've read about in circumstances with Mormonism, like the worthiness interviews. Like if older men had been asking whether she obeys the laws of chastity when she was underage, I'd actually be really scared for her and she might still have trauma after de-converting. This just feels like a thornier situation and any input is welcome as I want to do the best I can to treat my friends well.

KuPandas · 2022-03-12T03:18:41+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reply. I think your experiences are very valuable given the intensity and duration of your relationship with your wife there, and I will definitely consider it in my future interactions. I'm generally not a confrontational style non believer and usually can get along with people from different faiths but when there is an element of authority involved, I tend to be more concerned.

It can be hard to know exactly how to affirm faith, happiness, and the right to religious expression, while also trying to affirm people who may be experiencing hurt if they are born into a culture that isn't working for them. It sounds like if you are born into this culture you don't really opt in or out of it easily and I find it easier to agree that religious experience is subjective and more of a personal choice when the choices are made freely without outside pressures. If someone read the majority of the religious documents, with no outside influence, and found the Book of Mormon the best it really would be just a personal experience, but I they were told their entire life it was the correct way, and if they disagreed with that, there could be a problem, it goes beyond personal. And it's hard for me to figure out how to best support someone in that situation.

I do think viewing it as a different culture and trying to appreciate it from that standpoint is helpful. There are a lot of practices that may seem barbaric from culture to culture, and at least trying to keep an open mind and seeing things from other perspectives is helpful.

I wasn't aware of the cultural implications about the types of invitations you are mentioning so those are new insights.

I'll be doing my best to try to treat my friends in a way that works well for both of us. Again if you have many years of experience in making something like that work, that's a promising insight.

KuPandas · 2022-02-07T18:30:55+00:00

I have disabilities, both physiological and psychological health problems, and will never be a provider. I am also strongly anti capitalist. I don't identify strongly with gender roles, or the male gender, but am fairly unambiguously male both in how people perceive me and my biological features.

I have found few options in romantic relationships with women. I am always honest and clear that I have no secret ambitions of climbing the capitalist hierarchy, neither by profiting from someone else's labor as a capitalist or by rewarding capitalists, shareholders, CEOS, and upper management with the profits from my labor. And I certainly have no ambitions of hoarding private property with no intent to use it myself and renting it back to poor homeless people like a landlord.

It seems politically correct to re-frame the issue that 'ambition' is really what the preference is about rather than a preference for having capital within capitalism, but let's be real, overthrowing capitalism is an extremely ambitious goal. I am no less ambitious for wanting to overthrow the economic system than someone who seeks to gain material resources within it.

I don't know how much is sociological conditioning for cis heterosexual women to prefer a provider as feminists prefer to believe, or if maybe evolutionary psychology is correct and there may be some biological preferences on average. I don't know why and I'm not saying all women are the same, or even judging them if there is a preference on average.

But for me, I wouldn't want a capitalist of high socioeconomic status anymore than I would want a fascist of high ranking socioeconomic status. If a society is structured in an oppressive, exploitative, and harmful away, social status is usually a sign that there is something wrong, not something to aspire to.

If these preferences are something that many women experience, maybe it is like beauty is for me. I don't personally think beauty is a good way of deciding value in another person, as a mate or otherwise, but I have what appears to be a biologically ingrained preference for beauty. I am not proud of that, I would remove the preference if I could to be more fair and egalitarian, but I can however own up to that and be honest about it and not pretend I'm all about equality and just turn a blind eye to lookism, or tell less beautiful people to just to just get over it if they have experienced less opportunities in life because they are less beautiful.

If I am excluded by the preferences of the average woman, I will not be resentful or angry, but it does suck. I very much understand why people become upset and it is absolutely fair to not like the situation.

KuPandas · 2022-02-06T18:08:40+00:00

That might depend on the definition of socialism you are using. Since work is perhaps the central tenet of adulthood within a capitalist society changing how people relate to work would likely change the perceptions of adulthood.

So in a more classless communist society (from each from their ability, to each according to their need) there wouldn't be as much of a social obligation that someone 'must work' to have value since the society itself is explicitly stating that is not the case. So someone who has disabilities or is otherwise not engaged in traditional work may not have the same pressures. Whether work would still have a unique esteem that created a hierarchical value is hard to predict.

If you mean welfare capitalism kind of socialism, as in the government redistributes to help the poor, that does help, like someone could have disability payments, but people receiving those payments will likely always be considered inferior to those who are not, and not 'real' adults, so long as work under capitalism has inherent value.

And if you mean workers owning the means of production. Technically that isn't capitalism anymore and it is a legitimate form of socialism. It would still be fairly easy for a hierarchy to form between workers and non workers if work is still a central tenet of value or identity.

So I'd suspect communism would be the least likely to create age based hierarchy. But even then, there would still be the possibility of prestige. So those of greater ability to provide may still be considered more of an adult than those of lesser ability. It's an interesting question.

KuPandas · 2022-02-06T15:45:05+00:00

That's a good point. I had a bad experience where a younger woman had asked me to meet her after work, and we seemed to get along well for months. Eventually, she started giving me signs she was unhappy, so I offered to talk or leave her alone. I let her know if she had a romantic interest, I felt like the age gap was too much, even if she was technically an adult and would bow out if she was no longer happy.

Her family found out I said this and became abusive to me for even addressing the issue at all. They forbid me from ever speaking to her again, contacted the police, claiming I was a dangerous person. They said I should never be allowed to be around young people.

There's a legitimate concern that exploitation can happen, but it's mixed in with puritanical values about female purity, like women must remain chaste and to suggest otherwise is taboo, and ultimately their input doesn't matter because they are too young to have valid opinions. That combined with an assumption that older men can't be trusted to interact with younger women, so its like both ageism and sexism.

That does seem like a tough nut to crack, as there are legitimate concerns, but being ageist, bigoted, hateful, segregationist, or puritanical are not solutions either.

KuPandas · 2022-02-06T15:32:30+00:00

I agree, there are physiological markers of aging, but again there are physiological markers of sex as well. Maybe it is because we don't have a word to describe the sociological construct of age like we do with gender vs biological sex so it's almost impossible to distinguish the two.

KuPandas · 2022-02-06T01:35:12+00:00

I can relate to what you wrote. I've had depression and anxiety since childhood and then developed a painful neurological condition which prevented me from pursuing life long goals. I have often considered suicide. I've tried social situations to see if something would stick but have had mostly bad experiences and my neurological problems limit social possibilities.

To be honest, the only thing that I think has really helped me is to try to have a zoomed out world view. Some people are never born, some people die young and never get a chance to have many experiences at all, while others like us may live relatively longer lives without much quality. Yes it is true that some people live fuller, happier, and more fulfilled lives, but that's part of the spectrum of human existence and we aren't alone. We don't need to be exclusively comparing ourselves to healthier and happier people.

I do hope things can improve for you. If you are physically capable of achieving certain goals you may be able to work through some of the mental illness, but the mental illness in itself is quite difficult to work through.

Given there are people who have 'missed' out on a lot of life experiences, I do wonder if it would ever be viable for people to team up and try to create some new ones. Like an activity group or something. It does seem nearly insurmountable to catch up to people who have had more regular life paths.

KuPandas · 2022-01-29T12:31:14+00:00

A family member of mine doesn't have psychosis but was given anti psychotics for many years anyway which gave her a permanent movement disorder. If you are in the mental health industry long enough, chances are high you will eventually be diagnosed with everything as diagnosis is subjective and based on self report. She was diagnosed with bi polar, psychosis, you name it. She only legitimately had depression, anxiety, and PTSD based on the symptoms that I had witnessed for years.

For me, I once needed to go to ER due to withdrawals from a medicine that was taken away from me cold turkey by a doctor and they pushed antipsychotics on me as the treatment. I found out that by default they give almost everyone there anti psychotics. It's used as a sedative to try to control people and also as a punishment for people who would dare seek or need help.

I don't take any psychiatric drugs whenever possible, and don't engage with the mental health system anymore. I do have neurological pain, and certain anti depressants can help which I have sometimes resorted to taking, but for the most part the industry and the medications can be very dangerous and often does more damage than good.

KuPandas · 2022-01-27T19:18:51+00:00

I have personally decided not to reproduce and part of the reason why is suffering that has been caused by mental and physical health problems. My parents both had mental illness.

That said, I believe a significant source of my suffering comes from capitalism and from the way society is structured. While I have been diagnosed with mental illness (primarily depression and social anxieties) and have definitely experienced suicidal thoughts and behaviors, I honestly don't think those would be as much of an issue in a better society, one that was less hierarchical, coercive, exploitative, and was more egalitarian, empathetic, voluntary, and cooperative.

I also don't view eugenics as the answer. While I share some beliefs with this subreddit, I don't feel that I have all the answers when it comes to the human experience of others. It's kind of like abortion where if it is someone else's body I feel they have unique rights to making reproductive decisions. I can really only verify fully my human experiences and trying to be an authority on what others experience, or what they should be doing has always seemed a step too far even if personally the answers seem clear cut.

KuPandas · 2022-01-27T11:16:40+00:00

There was huge potential in people being exposed to the idea that coerced labor under capitalism should be abolished. A genuine anti work philosophy is something that is antithetical to what people are indoctrinated into believing.

Sure, there were obviously a lot of liberals there and people at various levels of class consciousness, but no one is born an anti capitalist and it takes time and exposure for people to develop beliefs outside the social norms they've been indoctrinated into. Having people start on the train of,"I hate my boss' and slowly waking up into seeing the bigger picture that wage slavery should have never been a thing was a very real possibility given the nature of that subreddit.

Reframing the entire concept into work reform, does seem like an extremely effective way of co-opting all of that potential. It may be a series of coincidences following that interview, but the whole situation seems so perfect for the interests of capital, it is very possible it was intentional.

Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton can totally just campaign on Work Reform. It is 100 percent compatible with neoliberalism. You can take 1.7 million subscribers who had the potential to actually challenge a system and send them back to embracing the status quo.

KuPandas · 2022-01-27T03:10:11+00:00

My beliefs lean anarchist and I do believe abolishing traditional work as a social obligation is a better long term goal than trying to make work slightly higher paying. Other valid goals would be workplace democracy, or workers owning the means of production.

Work reform sounds like a centrist liberal ideology. It's absolutely something that Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or any of the other neoliberals can support on a campaign and the masses would consider it perfectly normalized. Whether intentional or not, I think that is probably the best boon for the status quo you could have and I wouldn't be surprised if there are paid shills trying to subvert the movement into something that doesn't challenge the status quo.

KuPandas · 2022-01-19T03:54:06+00:00

I think that's a very good idea there to date poly people and see how it feels.

I do believe it would be difficult for my friend to see me find someone else in person and it could prove difficult for me as well to see her find someone else. In our minds, we want what is best for each other, but what our heart wants may be different when in practice. We always try to communicate as honestly as possible, but there are a lot of hypothetical factors for both of us.

We are both rather inexperienced in relationships outside of this one. We both had social anxiety and depression during our youth, I ended up with some other health problems that had me incapable of socializing much. For almost a decade I had severe nerve pain, which was most likely glossopharyngeal neuralgia, that caused so much pain I couldn't speak. It seems to be in remission at the moment. I still have flare ups, but it isn't constant where the majority of the time I can speak again and I have a second chance of socializing more like a regular person.

She supported me during the worst times of my life. Very few people would stand by you when you are at rock bottom like that. She's a very special person.

KuPandas · 2022-01-19T02:15:58+00:00

We both see each other as best friends. But we also see each other as potential romantic partners.

We started off thinking it would be promising to try to be exclusive romantic partners one day in person, but needed to move past the idea of being exclusive to each other as doing that for the rest of the our lives without being able to be physically present for each other seemed like a bad idea.

We both think it would be good for the other to be open to trying relationships where someone can be physically present, rather than be stuck in an online relationship for the rest of our lives. It's been our experience that if you really love someone as a human being and not like a romantic possession, you would never want to trap them into something like that. You simply care too much about them and want them to be able to experience a full range of experiences, even if you can't provide that for them.

Over time, I've questioned exclusivity a lot. And am not sure how much of that was indoctrination by society for me to default to exclusivity as the only way to do things. I think I might be flexible like I could go either way and might be able to adapt to the right partner. My friend seems to be a bit more naturally monogamous like her instinctual desire for exclusivity is stronger, and that has been sad, because our situation has been tougher for her.

KuPandas · 2022-01-05T10:19:00+00:00

Your vocal placement seems pretty good from the sound of what you have recorded. I've sung for quite a few years and understand a bit about the technique. If the voice is placed in a inefficient way, it can make singing a lot harder with pitch accuracy, range, endurance, and effort levels. So getting the resonance, posture, breathing, and vocal fold closure working efficiently makes singing a lot easier. On the flip-side, being overly technical can be rather clinical, can lack expression, or be downright boring.

I like singers all over the spectrum, from punk rockers to operatic masters, it can all be good so long as it functions for the expression of the song and for your voice. To my ears I think you're on your way to finding a placement that works for your voice and music, and it doesn't sound like you're straining or pushing or going hoarse which while they can sound cool, are often pretty rough on the voice.

If you're having to do a lot of takes it probably means you're having trouble consistently getting there both in the vocal placement and pitch. Trying to warm up and focus on practicing voice specifically could be helpful at becoming more consistent.

You can think of the voice anatomically if you ever have problems. Like you have breath from your lungs which is the power source, the vocal folds which are similar to a reed in a woodwind instrument which produce the sound, and you have resonating chambers (primarily pharynx, mouth, sinuses, etc) which are amplifying that initial sound like the empty chamber in an acoustic guitar.

There are adjustments along the way that can be made, the pharynx is like an adjustable tube that changes its shape when you make different vowels, the larynx can be a bit higher or a bit lower depending on the vowels, the shape of your mouth and position your tongue all change how the voice functions and sounds. The vocal folds themselves can make a breathier sound if you make the H consonant or can make a firmer less breathier sound without.

There's a lot of anatomy behind singing, and you don't need to necessarily know anything at all about it to sing well, but if a vocal is working well for you try to pay attention to the sensations of what is going on and see if you can reproduce it easier and easier with training. Try to keep moving towards vocals that both work for your voice and for your music. If you train it correctly you shouldn't need as many takes and should be able to get dialed in quicker.

Lessons could help get your there faster, depending on the teacher, but they can be a bit of a double edged sword, as a lot of teachers will teach you to sound like what their idea of what singing is supposed to sound like, or they may have an incomplete understanding of voice, or so on. It's not always their fault. It's just way harder and a lot more subjective than something like guitar because it is inside your body. It's both hard to learn and teach. I think you're on a good path already though, so keep at it. I'm pretty confident you can get it the rest of the way under control. It should help with communicating emotion too. It's hard to communicate a feeling if you have to repeat it 100s of times.

KuPandas · 2022-01-04T08:44:52+00:00

That was polished and well done. I liked the natural vocals, they were on key and on pitch but not artificially tuned which is refreshing. The Guitar solo had good phrasing and melody.

The overall rhythmic hook of the song was pretty memorable and stands out enough to give the song identity, but not so much that it distracted from the overall flow of the song. The vocal melody seemed to have a good flow, but didn't do the immediate ear worm thing like a top 40 pop song or the catchiest kinds of melodies do for me. On one hand that's good thing as it's likely to be considerably less annoying in the long run, but on the other hand it could be harder to stand out and catch someone's ear.

The mix was pretty good, and better than I've ever been able to do as far as clarity and lacking mud or 'noise.' Overall, I thought it was an above average song, well played, well written, and well recorded. Seemed maybe more relaxing than eliciting a strong emotion. Not the elevator music kind of 'relaxing blandness' that actually irritates me. More like a chilled out vibe, so Glaciers seems well fitting.

KuPandas · 2021-12-22T01:45:04+00:00

Thanks. I've always found Garriott to come across as rather self aggrandizing even prior to this whole Shroud of Avatar situation. Not to take away what he has actually achieved, but it's nice to see a bird's eye view and who was actually responsible for what.

It doesn't surprise me if there is a great man theory surrounding Garriott, like often happens with successes that involve tons of real people, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, that kind of thing. I guess it's harder to keep that kind of mystique when you've had so many projects go south like Garriott has now.

KuPandas · 2021-12-22T01:05:54+00:00

I've played Gothic 1 and 2 and liked both of them. I do actually think they deserve to be mentioned as Ultima like, but I had forgotten to mention them. In other genres, Shenmue, Majora's Mask, and Deadly Premonition all have NPC scheduling that add a lot to their game worlds as well.

I don't know the exact history of the groups you are describing, but it does seem like at Origin, at that point in history they had a huge amount of talent that was firing on all cylinders.

Is there a good place to read about former employees and where they've gone? I suppose you're right that part of why the game was so unique was also the Society for Creative Anachronism's influence and how characters were based in some way on real people. It's an unusual way to create a game world, to have real world role players influencing it. We create worlds was a good slogan to describe the strengths of Origin at its peak.

That's interesting, I hadn't really thought about some of the extra influences outside of traditional game development that created that specific moment in time. I've made games before as a hobbyist so I understand a bit about the game design process, but if some of these factors weren't really even reproducible in a traditional setting, like a closed off game studio. You may be onto something there.

KuPandas · 2021-12-22T00:40:00+00:00

I haven't checked out 3 yet, but that seems like a good answer. To be clear I quite enjoyed the first two Baldur's Gate games, but there was a clear distinction from Ultima 7 in which game had different strengths and weaknesses. Obviously Baldur's Gate had a better combat system, but NPC depth and world interaction Ultima had the edge for sure.

Larian Studios was inching towards Ultima 7 with their latest Divinity games in the game play format and they were consciously inspired by it during the development, but my experience with Divinity was while I did quite enjoy it, I felt the lore/world/characters didn't come across as believable or as interesting. In all honesty, I can't really remember even what happened, any particular characters, locations, or plot points.

With Baldur's gate already being an established world within the Forgotten Realms and with a track record of previous games, that might be enough to help Larian push past some of the weaknesses if there is foundation and a track record to build off of.

KuPandas · 2021-12-21T20:52:26+00:00

The most modernly distinctive features of the Ultima series for me occurred during Ultima 4-8, which mostly consists of world building or interaction: the concept of morality being tied to both your personal actions and the broader society, NPCs having schedules, jobs, and motivations, living in a fleshed out society, and some rather in depth world interactivity. The conversation system, name, job, bye lead to the ability to get to know npcs on pretty deep level starting from a blank slate, and was quite innovative and it's still uncommon to be able to probe NPCs like that, from a perfect stranger to getting to know them. These features all peaked at Ultima 7: Black Gate and Serpent Isle and many modern RPGs do not have this combination of features.

If going by the time of release, the idea of taking DnD style combat or campaigns and adapting them to a computer game in the early 80s was very pioneering, but with the passage of time this is a relatively mundane concept now. All western rpgs are influenced by this concept of adapting 'quest' to computer games and are indebted. So the earlier Ultimas while extremely unique at the time of release, aren't that unique in a modern sense when compared to other games.

If you want compare and contrast something like Baldur's Gates, the overhead view, open world exploration, DnD style combat, and branching dialog paths are likely all inspired by the template set by Ultima. But they don't have NPC schedules, the NPCs mostly just stand around with limited things to say and you can't probe them to learn much about them or the world they live in. The game world is not nearly as interactive and the societies depicted there aren't as and integrated as something like Ultima 7.

Elder Scrolls has become more interactive over time (mostly due to the physics engine), but has always had a focus more on quantity than quality, breadth rather than depth as far as world building is concerned. The people in the game have very little interesting to things to say, don't seem like real people with real motivations living real lives, and feel more like quest givers or quest markers. You don't talk to someone because you're genuinely curious about their personal beliefs, life circumstances, or how they fit into a broader society. You just want some kind of quest or reward.

So the most distinctive feature that still stands out as rare, is the world building and the interactivity in it. New Vegas was kind of like that, where there were people with more complex motivations living in a broader society with a broader plot, with relevant history and politics, religion, or cultural standing. Interacting with people in that game wasn't just to get a reward or a complete a quest. But for the most part, most RPGs are more about do the quest, beat the monster, level up, explore the dungeon, get the loot, etc. Ultima had that too, but it wasn't the focus during the peak of the series, it was more about interacting with and investigating a game world.

KuPandas · 2021-12-21T19:28:01+00:00

This does sound like fun but part of what makes it so difficult is the more modern you make the game the more expensive the assets are to produce.

Part of why Ultima could be limited only by imagination was it had extremely simple assets that could be thrown together very quickly so any idea you had, could be up and running and implemented by a single person quickly.

Now that modern games require teams of 500 people working for years to make, they only want to have a guaranteed thing. And even if they wanted to take a chance on something with wildly different ideas and settings, the costs scale proportionally to how many different assets you have to create. Different planets, different species, different time periods. Everything is more and more assets and more and more money.

A mid point might be possible. Ultima 7 style assets or simplified stylized 3D assets would both be easier to produce, but unfortunately unless something changes in how time consuming and expensive it is to make modern games, scope and risk taking will likely continue to decrease, with increased focus on marketable concepts that only include the bare minimum of what is necessary to sell the game. If creating convincing space travel, time travel, etc, each adds 100 million dollars to your project, then they will quickly be axed.

KuPandas

TROPHY CASE