👁️ autosurveillant 👁️ @pee_zombie@schelling.pt

ingroup normies: begging & screaming "please leave us alone w/ our unquestioned moral systems pLEASe!!!"

ingroup utility monsters: what would u do if time man forced you to rape ur dad. what if it would kill Hitler. now imagine Hitler was a p zombie would that be moral? what if-
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RT @NLRG_
are carnivores Bad
https://twitter.com/NLRG_/status/1430150963067822086

I've found that all I can do here is pay close attention to who treats their friends well, who notices efforts & reciprocates, rather than taking them for granted. thru this I've made some v close friends, but also some huge mistakes. perhaps this is a skill worth investing in.

but even then, I do often find myself disconcerted by the ease with which some Americans declare someone they've just met, a friend; and vice versa, how quickly they seem able to drop someone that has helped them out for years, due to superficial differences. makes one feel alone

all in all, a bit of atomization is probably much preferable to the alternative; being able to not pay much attention to the integrity of your social bonds is a luxury, one which speaks to the reliability of the economic system.

personally, I'd rather be lonely than starving.

in a society defined by the ineptitude of the system, the senseless cruelty of its whims, a keen awareness of who you can lean on is not just desirable, but necessary for survival; a poor investment of jovial sentiment can have dire consequences, should your trust be misplaced.

when you feel sure in your ability to procure whatever you need w/o a mediating personal relationship, it becomes less pressing to strictly modulate which relationships you invest in, who gets to hear what; mistakes are much lower stakes, as "friends" are ultimately fungible.

eventually I came to the realization that the difference, ultimately, stemmed from the fundamentally different models of economic organization; in an atomized society where needs are mediated by money, it's not often necessary to really be aware of who you can expect help from

I used to chalk this difference up to one of language, but thats not the case, as English has parallels to each of the Russian words for types of companions; дгуг (droog) being a real friend, товарищ (tovarish) being comrade or colleague, знакомый (znakomiy) being an acquaintance

w/o that assurance of being able to rely on someone, what kind of friendship can you really have? a shallow one composed of only positives, contingent on never being too tedious? not much of a friendship, is it? it's a tough lesson, forcing us to reckon w/ how alone we really are

most of the people I'd describe as "friends" were, in fact something much closer to companions of convenience at best, and distance acquaintances at worst. thinking about what my grandparents said, I realized I probably couldn't actually rely on most of these people in a pinch

when I was growing up as a childhood immigrant, my grandparents often gave me shit about my rather cavalier usage of the word; I found this tedious and would respond by doubling down. eventually, upon thinking hard about why they might be doing this, I realized they were right.
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RT @mechanical_monk
americans throw the word "friend" around like a bean bag

they'll spend one evening at some meetup and be like "i made 3 new friends"
https://twitter.com/mechanical_monk/status/1429906072286998530

does our future holds yet more instances of such retreats from the world, closed system ideologies promising shelter from the epistemic wilds, a single correct set of rules to follow saving one from the unintelligible horror of modernity?

singularities are tough to live thru.

I do understand, ofc, what might drive one to such extremes; when one is embedded in a cult purporting to have the One True Worldview, that outsiders are always trying to trick them into sinning thru clever words, that the broader society is evil, insularity becomes attractive.

there are other groups in our society which have v similar semantic constructions, contorting themselves to try & fit every new edge case they encounter into the precise shape of their ideology's received wisdom, which is considered sacrosanct. these, also, lead to absurdities.

however, they do not see it as such; to those embedded in these belief systems, this sort of contortion is seen as par for the course, a burden they must bear as they try and carry out their people's mission. this has broader implications on these people's general epistemics, too

to many outside the community, such as myself, a non-practicing Jew, its clearly this is a ridiculous perversion of the spirit in which the received wisdom was intended, and those that engage in such semantic trickery are flouting the undying meanings of their supposed beliefs

this solution is fascinating in its implications; it implies that the critical aspects of the belief system are the specific inherited forms of the commandments, rather than any particular spirit in which they may have been intended; words are redefined to allow certain behaviors

a simple way of resolving this issue is by redefining what the "private domain" entails; the eruv is one such method. by paying the city to allow the communities to erect these domain markers, they can fit the rigors of the Orthodoxy into modern life, w/o taking on undue burdens

during Shabbat a Jew also faces restrictions on what they may may do outside the home, such as carry objects; this presents difficulties for ex, new parents, as much of modern life takes place in the public sphere. carrying objects is allowed within the "private domain", however

for those that follow a strict interpretation of the Torah's teachings, Shabbat, or the Sabbath, is a pretty important part of the practice; on this day, a Jew may not "do work", which includes many activities, such as lighting fires, which, in modern times, includes electricity.