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John's avatar

Unironically one of the best articles I've read this year thus far. I hope the typos are to dissuade AI scrapers.

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Egg Report's avatar

You know what they say, mistakes into miracles

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-Nate's avatar

Also "No good deed goes un punished" .

-Nate

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James Jings's avatar

Was just thinking to myself this morning about why certain political tribes like to use the word "stupid" when what they clearly mean is "evil". Couldn't have asked for a better explication, thanks.

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Dasein667's avatar

ohhh look he’s moving closer to the French radical situationalists, ethics at-hand are the only relevant ethics! situations are those at-hand, and ethics are excess 3rd and 4th level justifications that only impair our ability to act as man ought to

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Dasein667's avatar

(Soyjack pointing or something dot jay peg)

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Joseph Hex's avatar

Everyone should, at least once, have to help one mentally and financially dysfunctional person for an extended amount of time.

You realize that no amount of money can help some people, and that no amount of paid bureaucrats filling out Word docs and doing counseling can ever fix some problems; you realize, as you've said so well in this essay, that brokenness is only possible to fix with a pouring out of oneself, and that often what's crooked can't be made straight. Ever.

Thanks for the essay.

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-Nate's avatar

Funny you mention this .

My Sweet has been taking in foster children for close to forty years .

We're down to out last one now and her cousin's son had a baby with a crack whore before he died, her grand daughter took in this 7 year old boy and is caring for him .

It's amazing to watch .

I don't mind helping other but they need to be the ones who can be helped .

-Nate

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ip's avatar

To "help" you need to deem yourself the judge between good and bad, which is inherently subjective - most "help" is projection. Think "helping" a struggling person on a strict diet by offering food. Perhaps there is a different word to differentiate help from "help".

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-Nate's avatar

This is pretty insightful .

-Nate

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Impurrtinent Creature's avatar

So what you're saying is that liquidation is the more pragmatic choice

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Alejandro Salinas's avatar

Reminds me of Cousins by Ye. Ye presents himself to the world, time and time again, as the "wounded man" on the side of the road. With Cousins he takes that concept to its logical conclusion. Most people reacted to his song with cool, detached irony. Making jokes and memes about it.

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ip's avatar

Or it's a matter of memory. The society teaches to memorize and index services you want. Decision is between acting and doing a "recall available societal services applicable to this situation to offload it to society".

Similarly the Christ/God example - you can see it as thankless sacrifice, or as Christ/God having no/extremely bad memory.

All acts are thankless if you do not recall having done them to receive the thanks.

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