Random Thought Thread Part III: The Thinking

[ER]

Now there I agree. From what I see fear and anger seem to be motivating a lot of people's politics.

[RCMerchant]

Who says religion has anything to do with God? Religion strikes me as people reaching toward God, whom they instinctively seem to be aware of, but God may not have anything to do with any religion ever constructed, despite the fact almost every religion claims to speak for God and be a path to God. Still I would have to say religions have probably inspired more people to goodness than they have toward evil, it's just that the many small (and even large) good deeds done by religious people are not what gets concentrated on, it's the evil done in the name of religion, usually by a minority of people within a given religion. It's just human nature to concentrate on the bad in life and miss the good. Also religion can be confused with a personal conviction, such as Christianity has never tied membership in a church or participation in religious services with being a Christian, which is a matter of inner belief. God is a universal/multiversal force that probably doesn't live in a church.


But anyway, I do like that quote by Augustus I originally posted and think it makes a good point.

Well, you just made a mud puddle of trying to separate religion from a god... and politics.
Religion has always been politics. Politics in the modern era has become religion. And fear is always the standing factor for both.

[ER]

I don't think I mentioned politics in my posts until I agreed with you about fear being a motivator in politics, and added anger as well.  Religion, politics, clubs, cliques, tribes, nations, causes, they're all symptoms of a deeper force: human nature.  At the deepest level that's what's to praise or blame in everything people have ever done, good, bad, in between.

[indianasmith]

Well said.  If people didn't fight over religion, they'd fight over something else.  One of my atheist friends likes to post this little ditty all the time:

"The steel of war routinely sparks;
No flint need ever strike it.
'To arms!' is nature's hardy cry -
We fight because we like it."

[ER]

Ever have one of those mornings where you went to bed feeling fine but wake up so inexplicably achy that you wonder if little gray aliens may have experimented on you in the night?

[indianasmith]

Ever have one of those mornings where you went to bed feeling fine but wake up so inexplicably achy that you wonder if little gray aliens may have experimented on you in the night?

Sorry!  On the positive side, your clone will be fully developed in one week.

[ER]

 

[lester1/2jr]

crypto is rallying because the Fed has to print more money to bail out banks who lost money in crypto

[LilCerberus]

crypto is rallying because the Fed has to print more money to bail out banks who lost money in crypto

Keeps reminding me of the tulip mania of the 1630s.....

[LilCerberus]

crypto is rallying because the Fed has to print more money to bail out banks who lost money in crypto

Keeps reminding me of the tulip mania of the 1630s.....

Kinda makes me feel like I was cheated outa the market on craft beers & carbon fiber nano tubes.....

[lester1/2jr]

I'll be impressed with bitcoin when people start actually using it. I see Tesla cars on the road, I don't see anyone I know using bitcoin instead of regular money


edit: apparently it wasn't because they were invested in bitcoin, they were just similarly caught off guard by the move to higher interest rates? or something

[indianasmith]

To date, three different Amazon reviewers have given my book one star because I dismissed the possibility of Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens being gay lovers.  I mean, it's ONE LINE in a 640 page novel!!!!! 
Agenda much?

[ER]

I had a professor who took the same view about Emily Dickinson, not just saying she was possibly a lesbian but taking the fact so much for granted she wanted us to proceed from that point. When once I asked her on what evidence she based that, she got flustered and curt with me. In short she had no evidence.

A few years ago I found out she was telling her classes Jane Austen was not only a lesbian but incestuously involved with her sister.

Same deal with Hamilton, people want to jump into things they cannot know.

An exercise in speculation quickly becomes seductive, but it's unfair in most cases to try to lay out your personal framework of belief as how something was when it can't be known.

Sorry about the shallow reviews. I read your novel and thought it was good.

[indianasmith]

I had a professor who took the same view about Emily Dickinson, not just saying she was possibly a lesbian but taking the fact so much for granted she wanted us to proceed from that point. When once I asked her on what evidence she based that, she got flustered and curt with me. In short she had no evidence.

A few years ago I found out she was telling her classes Jane Austen was not only a lesbian but incestuously involved with her sister.

Same deal with Hamilton, people want to jump into things they cannot know.

An exercise in speculation quickly becomes seductive, but it's unfair in most cases to try to lay out your personal framework of belief as how something was when it can't be known.

Sorry about the shallow reviews. I read your novel and thought it was good.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that Hamilton and Laurens had a thing.
But looking at the arc of the man's life, with his powerful and well-documented attraction to women, combined with the lack of so much of a whisper about any other same-sex relations in the decades he lived after Laurens died, I find it improbable.  So that's how I wrote it.
I have no problem if someone wants to think it was otherwise, I just find that judging an entire book about an imaginary timeline of the man's life on ONE LINE is - well, as you said, shallow and frankly missing the point.

[Allhallowsday]

...
It's not outside the realm of possibility that Hamilton and Laurens had a thing.
But looking at the arc of the man's life, with his powerful and well-documented attraction to women, combined with the lack of so much of a whisper about any other same-sex relations in the decades he lived after Laurens died, I find it improbable.  So that's how I wrote it.
I have no problem if someone wants to think it was otherwise, I just find that judging an entire book about an imaginary timeline of the man's life on ONE LINE is - well, as you said, shallow and frankly missing the point.

Can you provide a link to these reviews?