There's two kinds of optimism and they relate to politics in different ways. On the one hand there's passifying optimism. This is the veiw that things will get better. It looks at progress as inevitable. This can have the dangerous side effect of people resigning themselves to not do any of the work of making things better, because everything will just work it self out. Steven Pinker is a good example of this.
Then there's motivating optimism. Not the view that things *will* get better, but that they sure as heck *can*. This is the optimism of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Angela Davis. It's the veiw that you can actually win, but you have work for it. It won't happen on it's own, you have to make it happen. Most positive social change has been driven forward by motivated optimists. Motivating optimism getd shit done.
@nickibrill Give the gold coins back to the damn Romans and give us our land back
when he said “Render unto God what is God’s, render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s” that was pointing out how caesar as a notmal human could not possibly have a claim on God’s Promised Land for the Hebrews. honestly it was probably more his anti-roman claims that got Jesus executed more than anything the Temple brought against him.
its crazy to me how you could read his story and draw such an authoritarian interpretation from it. (2/2)
today my pastor gave a sermon on the fifth commandment, to honor your parents. in it he acknowledged how some parents can be abusive, but he just kind of brushed passed the issue saying we should honor them anyway.
i dont know, it just kind of got on my nerves that he didnt say something like “of course you should try and keep yourself safe” or anything to that affect. he also talked about how Jesus encouraged his followers to obey the earthly authorities put over them and like...
no? Jesus was a poor Jewish man living in roman occupied territories. he specifically called for the restoration of the oppressed and for the end of wealth, like, i dont think he was in favor of just pandering to despotic leaders (1/2)
Bible, Christianity
I hear people say sometimes that they want things to go back to how they were in the Bible. I relate, but I don't think in the same way.
Like, I want the Year of Jubilee to be a thing again. I want interest on loans to be considered unthinkable. I want the concept of protecting visitors and immigrants engrained in society. I want more communities like the early church of Acts where everything was super socialist and people looked out for whoever was associated with them.
ive figured out why (okay, part of why) i dont like mega churches.
they kill community.
think about it, small local churches used to be the center of whatever community they were present in: hosting social events, charitable action, and civil outreach. megachurches try to do the same type of thing, but when youre drawing in thousands of people from across multiple cities, it doesnt have the same binding affect as when your congregation comes from within a few blocks
the megachurches push out local ones like a theological Walmart, and subsume their community. how are you supposed to connect with people when your sitting next to a different group every week with no hope of finding anyone familiar? how are you supposed to maintain a relationship with your pastor when his time is literally worth millions of dollars
megachurches turn dehumanize people in the place we’re supposed to be the most connected
listening to the wildlands podcast (modern history of the democratic party told by an obama speech writer) and this episode theyre talking about the trump election
my head keeps going back to how angry and toxic the world felt after that election; how i lost friends and got into arguments and felt the whole country was against me and people like me
now i look around, and the world is still angry. but not just the racist and homophobic vitriol that was put on spotlight that november
now theres also the anger of AOC, the anger of the womens march, the anger of Green New Deal proponents, the anger of me and people like. an authentic anger at the world we’ve been forced into
i think that embracing that anger is the only way to move forward
i wonder how much dc heroes all being IconicTM in ways that marvel heroes arent has affected the movies need to up the stakes. it took marvel all of phase one to get to aliens in vading new york, dc started there with man of steel
they never took the time to build the heroes up as legends, relying on their cultural weight to start from that point.
Build a better world with community and nudes.