@spqr_sulla Someone who would cheat on a standardized state exam to gain the credential at the expense of acquiring actual knowledge.
Then graduate to acquire VC funding for products and services that produce zero actual value.
Soulless busybodies.
@BlastingThrough Are there any local populations that assist with climbs here akin to the Sherpas for Mt. Everest? Or was your group and those like it entirely self sufficient?
Almost everyone who quotes "BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT" has missed the joke.
It was Shakespeare——a master of magnificent verbosity and brevity alike——who wrote the line. Yet he placed it in the mouth of Polonius, a pompous old fool.
The irony could scarcely be more obvious.
Yet modern Poloniuses repeat it in perfect earnest. They wield it against elaborate prose, rhetorical ornament, parenthetical digression, descriptive detail, extended argument, comic build-up, thoroughness, precision—in short, against many of the very devices in which Shakespeare himself luxuriated.
Shakespeare did not present the adage as a commandment. He put it into the mouth of a fool incapable of practising it, whilst he himself employed brevity when brevity suited his purposes, and verbosity when verbosity suited them better.
Then as now, no one praises a virtue more passionately than the fool who lacks it.
Sandu Tudor was a Romanian poet, painter, and journalist. He was also an adventurer. Most of his youth was spent traveling and working odd jobs. But eventually, he was serendipitously led to Mount Athos. He said many mini miracles guided him there, despite his original goal of writing a tabloid about the bad aspects of monasticism.
When he got to Mount Athos in 1929, he just followed the monks around and copied them. However, his performative prostrations became real. Somehow, he got a taste of the noetic prayer. So, he ended up staying for 7 months. Then, he truly converted. Even though he grew up in an Orthodox family and country, he realized he hadn’t experienced true Orthodoxy before.
When he returned home, people thought he went insane. He had grown a beard and became serious about repentance. He claimed many churches, even though they appeared Christian, were actually practicing the religion of the Dark One. They were outward and political, a shell of what the Apostles and Holy Fathers once taught.
So, Sandu started a movement called the Burning Bush. It was intended to revive the ancient and mystical tradition of hesychasm. And he quickly made many enemies this way. He was arrested for reading the Philokalia. He was accused of conspiring against the government. But all he was doing was praying.
Finally, in 1948, he officially became a monk. But the spying and harassment didn’t stop. In fact, it only got worse. Sandu’s influence was still felt in society. His movement was growing. So, the secret police threw him in Aiud Prison, a communist reeducation camp where people were tortured not only physically, but mentally.
Some said the mental tortures were worse. They were supposed to reprogram people to deny God. So, some Christians became perfect communists. Other Christians were broken and became like animals. But Sandu, along with other members of the Burning Bush, just increased their prayer. Like the youths in the furnace, they were refined into gold, into saints.
They were forced to find the Kingdom of Heaven within. They were forced to learn the spiritual benefits of suffering. They learned the hard way, that God is not in books, but in crucifixion. Like Father Roman Braga said, “When God speaks to you He does not use material words but brings you joy. I experienced such joys in prison, I could not detach myself from them. I was never interested when they brought me food or water...”
Nevertheless, Sandu did not make it out like Roman did. He was beaten so bad, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. This happened in 1962! That’s not that long ago. So, it wouldn’t be unthinkable for us to find ourselves in a similar situation again. There is hope though. A hope that transcends death.
Yet, it’s only when we’re surrounded by death that we can truly appreciate it. According to one of Sandu’s friends, they were locked in a cold cell together. It was as cold as the winter was outside, around -22 degrees Fahrenheit. It had no windows. It was covered in urine and feces. Everyone who went in there was expected to die.
But Sandu spread out on the ground in the shape of a cross and told his friend to lay on top of him the same way. Then, Sandu said “Don’t say anything more than: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner!” Later, Sandu started praying and a blinding light entered the room. Then, time stopped.
When the guards finally checked on them, they found out they had survived for 8 days without water, food, sleep, or anything to wear in below freezing temperatures. Sandu was hotter than he was when he went in too. Everything around him had melted. So, Sandu didn’t just die. He made that prison holy before he left.
Like the faithful in the first century, he was a real, miracle working Christian. At the end, he wasn’t cultural or intellectual. He was truly otherworldly. And if we are blessed, maybe we will have a chance to do the same.
When you observe the contemporary rw grift today understand that performative prostrations do eventually become real.
You cannot fool the Truth. Mock it and it will Humble you.
Whatever comes next isn't going to be Art Deco or Neopaganism or Nietzschean/Dionysian Ayn Rand flavored Vitalism or anything of the sort.
For the Postmodern reaction of Metamodernism to have any legs it will have to be something new entirely.
In the Book of Kings, whenever a righteous king takes power in Judah, his immediate enemy is “the groves” (asherim) and “the high places” (bamot):
These are hidden sites of self-mutilation, ritual prostitution, and child sacrifice in the name of Ba’al, Molech, and Asherah — the gods of the tribes that Israel neglected to eradicate in the conquest of Canaan
Weak kings allow these altars to fester in the wilderness; truly wicked kings bring the whoredoms into the cities, and eventually into the holy place of the temple
It struck me, as we pulled down the rocks and bagged the garbage, that the homeless camp is an altar to our enemies’ gods
Their most sacred principle is the abolition of distinction, the worship of entropy — and the shrine of their cult is a midden heap, ideally somewhere that was once beautiful
@0x49fa98 It's actually a positive sign for ones coalition to have ragebait manufactured against it.
You should really be worried if no one finds you worthy enough to bait in the first place.
@annakhachiyan trvke
Whether or not someone truly has the potential of ascendant regal taste is revealed in how they feel about "unconventional" noses.
This goes for both men and women.
@sleepy_devo The ones that understand this the best had left-leaning sensibilities prior to 2016 that gradually progressed into rw common sense sentiment
Ironically only exacerbates the intrinsic lifelong black sheep identity
Imagine a lifeline that both supported Obama & Trump unironically