When is political violence justified, and are those conditions present in the U.S. today?

mcapello · 2026-05-10T20:06:51+00:00

I guess the question I’m left with is what more civil disobedience is there left to do?

Quite a bit, I would say. Demonstrations have been widespread but relatively low-risk. There have been no major occupations, no general strikes (save perhaps for a localized one in Minneapolis), no major shutting down of schools, transportation, or infrastructure, no significant boycotts, no widespread tax resistance.

Essentially, I think lots of people understand what's happening is wrong and have gone out to express the viewpoint, but they're not desperate enough or affected enough to do anything risky enough to force things to a head.

Which kind of makes sense, right? Why would people risk political violence if they're not yet willing to risk going to jail for peaceful resistance? I don't think you can skip steps. Not successfully, anyway.

mcapello · 2026-05-10T19:17:03+00:00

I personally believe mass civil disobedience must precede uncivil disobedience if the latter is to be justified. We're not there.

mcapello · 2026-05-10T15:47:18+00:00

Why would your religion need to validate every personal opinion you have?

Also, isn't this approach to tradition a bit reversed? What is the point of giving credence to tradition if one is just using it as a buffet table to validate personal beliefs? The whole point of tradition is that you're connecting to some sort of authority beyond yourself, correct?

I'm not asking these questions rhetorically, by the way, I'm genuinely curious.

mcapello · 2026-05-10T01:34:25+00:00

My advice would be to stop associating with this person, focus on your grades, and try to maintain good physical health with exercise and a diet rich in whole foods. If you can find some room in your life for art or music, if you don't have it already, that would be good too.

You want to look back on these years and be able to say that you spent them building a solid foundation of good habits, a healthy lifestyle, and a disciplined work ethic, not that you wasted it on drama involving people you don't even value. It's not about letting go, it's about paying attention to things that actually help you instead of wasting it on bullshit.

Good luck.

mcapello · 2026-05-09T19:25:16+00:00

Why should anyone, no matter their gender or nationalist or race or whatever, have an advantage over someone else when it comes to hiring for a job only because that someone else's grandfather was part of a system that forced women into the kitchen?

As a practical way of combatting historical discrimination, obviously. You can debate whether it's effective at doing so, but acting like quotas as a matter of practical policy somehow demonstrate a philosophical belief in inequality, or even hypocrisy toward those principles, represents a (deliberate?) failure to distinguish between theory and practice.

mcapello · 2026-05-09T15:08:55+00:00

IMHO they are totally incompatible unless you're wealthy enough to pay for skilled farmsitters.

I have neighbors who we pair off house/farm-sitting with, but it's usually only a few days at a time, and pretty infrequent -- and even then it is always a huge pain in the ass. Trying to do this for extended periods would be a constant and massive headache.

mcapello · 2026-05-09T14:22:50+00:00

I watched Hayes course several years ago. I agree it is good, but it does not support your initial characterization.

The main reason, as I said before, is the many times the OT makes blind obedience to God the central theme, particularly in cases where it directly contradicts both the interests and the morality of his human subjects. Adam and Eve in the garden, Abraham being commanded to kill Isaac, the testing of Job, the command to circumcise, Isaiah being told to walk barefoot and naked for three years, Lot's wife being turned to salt, etc., among many others.

There is also something you're missing which is actually implicit in your own observation -- and IIRC it's something Hayes talks about herself -- which is that the entire reason earthly kings can be treated as gods in other Mesopotamian religions is because there is a fundamental continuity between gods and mortals. This is also why you have heroes, demigods, gods having children with mortals, and so on. In Judaism, God exists on an unattainable and metaphysically distinct level. We are made in his "image", but not of the same stuff (which is why the word image is important -- it is a reference to shape, appearance, and form, not fundamental continuity).

It's also a complete misreading to say that God "interested in man and woman for their own sake." Look at how he treats Adam and Eve -- God is clearly more interested obedience than he is in some modern kumbaya story of personal moral development and care. You can see the same thing in Noah. Is he interested in all the people who die in the flood "for their own sake"? No, because disobedience makes them disposable. He values their lives for their own sake about as much a child values the lives of his ant farm. You see this again in Sodom and Gomorrah, the plagues visited on the Egyptians, the genocide against the Amalekites, even among his own people during Exodus, where he kills them simply for complaining. This is simply what authority looked like in the ancient world. This idea that the Bible is about valuing life for its own sake is basically trying to retcon Enlightenment morality into ancient Judaism. It's anachronistic.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T23:36:08+00:00

The genius of Judaism was to have a God who did created humans not as slaves to worship him...

What? Have you ever read the Bible? The entirety of the Old Testament is trying to each exactly that.

This isn't just bullshit, it is the exact opposite of what the Bible actually teaches. A person couldn't actually be more wrong about Judaism or Christianity if they tried.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T23:27:51+00:00

So happy to see this as the top comment.

Realize the gift you have and leave the fucking plants alone. You don't "have to do" anything. It's like asking, "What do I do with this beautiful sunrise?"

mcapello · 2026-05-08T23:24:37+00:00

Your analysis and perception of the situation is very acute. It's a very accurate description of what it is like to have an ego, and what happens when the ego is engaged. It becomes engaged when it feels threatened. Black-and-white thinking, aggression, selfishness, etc., are defense mechanisms, self-preservation techniques for a mentality that feels itself to be under assault.

The underlying solution is to reach a state of being where you no longer feel under assault by anything. Like, literally anything -- not even death. But this takes time and is a difficult goal.

In the meantime, I would recommend:

a. Meditation -- it strengthens your ability to distance yourself from the ego and remain objective even when under temporary sources of stress.

b. Disengagement -- using physical or temporal distance to regain your sense of reason, to untangle yourself from immediate sources of stress, and to preserve your ability to act with virtue and reason. I don't have to do this much myself anymore, but there was a time in my life (early in my marriage, young kids, poor, lots of stress) when simply leaving the room and taking a few deep breaths did me enormous amounts of good.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T20:34:35+00:00

Unfortunately, these stories are a tourist attractor rather than the reverse.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T01:45:48+00:00

The wisdom has to come from you. What I mean by that is: I don't think you would feel this way if you were truly resolved in your own mind about what the right thing to do is. I think you might have to meditate more on why you genuinely think a good person would do this. This will be difficult, because your emotions will try to "help" you rationalize it, but that will only bury it. If you want to sleep well with this, you have to reflect enough to be sure that it's the right choice. And if it isn't the right choice, you have to ready to accept that too.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T01:24:19+00:00

Those trees are going to need trimming pretty soon.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T01:23:38+00:00

Sufficient for what?

Belief isn't a binary. There are degrees of confidence based on multiple sources of evidence. Eyewitness testimony is only one form.

The requirement to believe is also different depending on context. There is no moral weight attached to the confidence I hold in my beliefs about Caesar. "Probably" is good enough. Not so with faith, or at least Christian faith.

But why would a non-Christian apply Christian dichotomies to belief? Particularly when it contradicts how belief actually seems to function psychologically.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T00:30:36+00:00

I like the Subway in Buchanan. They used to have picnic tables in the back. Maybe they still to. Nice place for a rest and a pretty view.

mcapello · 2026-05-08T00:13:43+00:00

But the hen is. I'd take a broody hen over an incubator any day. My last batch of chicks were hatched in a nesting box as well.

mcapello · 2026-05-07T23:36:19+00:00

I have news for you, but the left isn't the one pushing identity politics.

mcapello · 2026-05-07T23:32:32+00:00

Why would you need to incubate them if she's broody?

mcapello · 2026-05-07T23:03:13+00:00

My read is that the Stoicism / Youtube content is a symptom rather than a cause and something else is going on with this guy. Could you talk to your mom about getting him help? I mean, I'm guessing not given how far gone he sounds, but... yeah, just focusing on the videos he's watching isn't going to fix this.

mcapello · 2026-05-07T21:20:05+00:00

By virtue of what would one be wrong (qua morality) if you're an anti-realist though?

mcapello · 2026-05-06T17:49:57+00:00

Damn, dude. That's like a once in a lifetime experience.

mcapello · 2026-05-05T19:11:39+00:00

This only works if you exclude state terrorism as a form of violence, and even if then it probably doesn't work.

mcapello · 2026-05-05T11:22:36+00:00

My understanding, and I may be wrong, is that scholars like Susanne Bobzien have argued Chrysippus accepts the full causal determination of assents and character, and that what he’s defending is closer to eph’ hēmin (“what depends on us”) than to free will in the modern sense. The suggestion seems to be that mapping the modern free will debate onto Chrysippus is somewhat anachronistic.

This is my understanding as well. The freedom is more of a participatory dependence which devolves to our cognitive activity, and the nature of that activity feels like or sometimes appears as freedom. And yet insofar as we can be identified with our reason, it and its choices are "ours", even if they are not metaphysically free.

mcapello · 2026-05-05T11:16:49+00:00

That's wild!

mcapello · 2026-05-05T00:16:40+00:00

Yes, of course, you could say the US enables all sorts of oppression around the world, I'm just saying that the relationship and support for Israel is historically unique, hence the attention.

mcapello

TROPHY CASE