iammisc

Can you explain? The amish are not against technology by any means. They just don't think you need to let it run you. I mean, as many said, the amish use telephones and even cars if necessary for business, or emergency. How is this any different?

This is religion, as you point out.

> But the chasidim and the amish express that by living close to their family, while "a typical American" moves far away from home and then has to rely on FaceTime and WhatsApp.

It's not just this binary though. There are various levels of facetime and whatsapping as well.

And actually, most americans live close to family. On HN we are a bubble.

A big part of Christian spirituality is feeling joy even while in pain, and of finding hope even when there is no reason to hope. In the Book of Job, Job is tested in his faith by having almost every suffering in the book thrown at him. Christian martyrs were known for embracing their martyrdom. Catholicism teaches us to find joy in suffering (St Theresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church, said 'Lord, either let me suffer or let me die'). These are all spiritual tools 'installed' at a young age. They are installed via phrases our parents and community member's mention and bring up children in. Things like 'God sees all', whenever someone is slighted, or 'just pray' (which I know drives some people here nuts).

Today, such practices are often criticized. Mother Theresa is currently castigated for this aspect of Catholic spirituality, mainly by a society that sees any problem as fixable with just the right 'stuff'. A lot of the confusion in this thread is from people whose own views were challenged by this story. The story fit none of their preconceived notions of what causes drug abuse and none of their 'stuff' (policy solutions, chemicals, etc) could clearly fix it. However, such practices are vital.

I'll give you an example. My wife and I lost seven children before birth. Now, this is a very traumatic experience, especially with not having had any children before that. I'm not going to claim I'm a great person, or even a great Catholic. I was angry at God, upset with the church, mad at life basically. I stopped going to mass for several months (as did my wife). We basically lived alone, and cut off all friends / community. These are unhealthy reactions. Things changed when a deacon who I was friendly with told me to go to confession, and to embrace the cross God has given. Broadly speaking he was correct. The basic part of Christian hope (that by our continued suffering, God will save us) was absolutely vital. After seven miscarriages (some very late), no medical answers whatsoever (all doctors were stumped, nothing wrong with either my wife and I after many tests), my wife and I fought all the time. We frequently had thoughts of suicide, etc. Many today would suggest a therapist, but confession and meditative prayer helped more.

Church teaching on suffering gave me a purpose. Catholics believe that in our moments of suffering, we are taking on the cleansing of the entire world. By offering our sufferings to God, we make the world a better place. Such a thing probably sounds ridiculous to many non-Catholics, but this process of taking the worst possible outcomes and believing that such a thing actually serves to help others and your community really helps when you're feeling down.

It's very difficult to explain. Confession for me broke the cycle of despair. I'd go almost daily at the beginning, half the time just to talk to someone else in confidence, and tell him that I hated and cursed God (which was my main sin at the time). I don't think any therapist could substitute here, since a therapist could potentially encourage me to distance myself from God, and certainly wouldn't speak on behalf of God, but the priest would. For example, when I confessed hating God and despising him, the priest told me that's okay, because God loved me still anyway. Was that frustrating to hear? Yes... but ultimately it's true. From that it transformed into meditative prayer (i.e., praying the Jesus prayer while walking... this is a common Orthodox practice). From that into asking God to accept my own personal trials as penance for the world. And from that, I started feeling better about my own place in the world and in fact, I found that I was being pulled to do good for other people, which helped provide meaning. Eventually, we did end up having living children, which was also nice, but these experiences have stuck with me. Again... I'm not a perfect Catholic. My confessions are still littered with all kinds of sins (and sometimes very serious ones), but just knowing what to do when things go bad is important.

Presuming Singapore correctly identifies the dealers, how is this a violation of liberty? You typically don't have the ability to harm others and drugs cause clear harm. It's not like laws against theft cost me personal liberty.

But I can't help but think this is a spiritual problem.

In particular, rehab seems utterly useless. Obviously, it helps them get over the chemical dependency. But it seems to completely neglect the spiritual one.

Unfortunately you cannot install the spiritual tools that lead to non nihilism later in life which is why childhood spirituality and culture are so important. Many parents and our entire culture have crossed Chesterton's fence but have run so far away we can't see the fence in hindsight and can't put two and two together that it prevented us from the cliff.

This is the key that people often miss in this regard. The staggering ROman Republic was hardly a great country.

At least other administrations justify their attempts to break the law and mount some defense.

> The president knows this. He told the press that his administration had surveyed the opinions of constitutional scholars, and that most thought an extension would be unlawful. Yet under political pressure from the left, Biden nevertheless ultimately decided to issue the extension.

In other words: SCOTUS wrote words clearly indicating a ban would be illegal. By a technicality (expiration date), they didn't issue an explicit ruling. Biden did it anyway, while admitting he knew it was illegal.

> The president knows this. He told the press that his administration had surveyed the opinions of constitutional scholars, and that most thought an extension would be unlawful. Yet under political pressure from the left, Biden nevertheless ultimately decided to issue the extension.

In other words: SCOTUS wrote words clearly indicating a ban would be illegal. By a technicality (expiration date), they didn't issue an explicit ruling. Biden did it anyway, while admitting he knew it was illegal.

Why don't we just condemn both? I mean... Google is going down the same path as the defense contractors and instead of stopping it from evolving into something like them, you're essentially arguing to look the other way

Edit: why am I being downvotes? The president explicitly stated his plan to ignore another SCOTUS ruling

Are these not already against the law? BY no means am I asking to repeal these sensible laws.

Also, I dunno what I'd wager any more. I used to think that people would not accept being forced to hand over personal medical information to enter a location to prevent a disease with an incredibly low deathrate for most of the population and with an incredibly low deathrate for the remainder of the population with a freely available drug, but everybody else seems to think this is normal.

Or like, after 9/11, I thought having your nudes photographed by the government to enter an airplane would be considered a gross violation of privacy, but now having a pornographic photoshoot / assault is considered totally normal at the airport.

It seems to me people are increasingly willing to trade freedom for 'security'.

By the way you put it your 'not affected' is actually more strict than Oregon state (which is known for having had more severe lockdowns than others).

Shows you how far the definition of 'not affected' has come. If you had told us four years ago you needed to provide medical information to enter a store, most people would have rightly been horrified. Thankfully the united states is not there yet.

Now zero is the only acceptable answer to many

Classification section, quote:

Sporadic (sCJD), caused by the spontaneous misfolding of prion-protein in an individual.[20] This accounts for 85% of cases of CJD.[56] Familial (fCJD), caused by an inherited mutation in the prion-protein gene.[55] This accounts for the majority of the other 15% of cases of CJD.[56] Acquired CJD, caused by contamination with tissue from an infected person, usually as the result of a medical procedure (iatrogenic CJD). Medical procedures that are associated with the spread of this form of CJD include blood transfusion from the infected person, use of human-derived pituitary growth hormones, gonadotropin hormone therapy, and corneal and meningeal transplants.[55][56][57] Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) is a type of acquired CJD potentially acquired from bovine spongiform encephalopathy or caused by consuming food contaminated with prions.[55][58]

However American law requires bakers to bake cakes for events they as an individual disagree with. An old lady florist was individuals fined for refusing to do an event she thought was morally questionable.

It seems the only 'people' with rights to conscience are multi billion dollar companies conveniently doing the bidding of the party in power. So that's strange.

Will I am the walrus be fact checked next?

Given that there is no way to measure absolute scientific progress, this is a meaningless and baseless claim.

At the time of Galileo, scientists had, after many centuries, perfected their means of calculating geocentric orbits. Thee equations worked extremely well. Experts at the time would have told you that science had progressed significantly since the time of Aristotle. Yet it had progressed in a completely wrong direction.

There is no reason to believe science is somehow progressed perfectly today in every arena.

Not the OC, but this is quite the claim considering you're doing exactly the same thing