George Soros might be a fear spell

This morning, I went to a Bible Study in a local protestant church. The church is woke on the mask question and the lady presenting the Study is really well read, so it is always an interesting time. Even better, she is a Boomer who has figured out computer technology. She has figured it out enough to record her presentations and upload them as podcasts, presumably to SoundCloud or a similar service.

On said service, she told us about how she looked up who was following her. Among her followers was some foundation/institute/thingy affiliated with none other than scary evil George Soros himself. The gist of her little story was that she was afraid of putting the presentations up there if Scary Soros and his Commie Crew of Marxian Misfits was listening in. Would she not get persecuted or at least put on some list? Fortunately, she claims to have taken this worry to prayer and God resolved it for her. Happy ending for her, but it got me thinking. Is there a fear spell surrounding George Soros, particularly among American Christians?

The reason for my question is twofold. First, George Soros seems a little too obvious for me. Sure, he hides behind front groups, but that is about as transparent as when potential Clinton witnesses coincidentally perish in car accidents. The enemies of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True tend to hide in plain sight but if Tucker Carlson can mention Soros on Fox News, I have my doubts as to Soros being more than a scarecrow.

Second, the Devil loves himself some fear spells. They are an extremely efficient way to stop Christians from spreading their message. If Christians are afraid of persecution without there being an actual persecution, the Devil wins. You see, full size persecutions are difficult to set up. One has to take over a whole government and then get all the wheels in motion. It's a bureaucratic pain in the hindquarters, even for the Devil. Much more efficient to just plant fearful thoughts in people. Why persecute people if they are going to effectively persecute themselves? Fear is an extremely powerful weapon.

I could be wrong with all this. Maybe George Soros is planning to round up Christians. But I have a hunch that the Devil is hyping up a fear spell here. Either way, be not afraid of the guy. He has no real power at all, unless you give it to him first.

The Delta-Bravo continuum

Since the SSH is more of a series of behavioral patterns than a set of drawers to toss people into, it makes sense that some people can exhibit multiple of these patterns, depending on the situation. The PUA world has long talked about situational alphas, which is a similar concept to this proposed continuum.

The idea of the Delta-Bravo continuum is that people who would normally be Deltas can be situational Bravos, and vice versa.

As patterns go, Delta and Bravo are extremely similar. Both function best when given a purpose by an alpha. Both can set their minds to someone else's goal, without suffering a mental crisis á la special boy. Finally, both tend to be fairly normal men with simple, conventional desires. They are not alphas who want to rule the world, gammas who live in a delusion bubble, or sigmas/omegas who want God only knows what. Since they are so close, I posit that a Delta can be a situational Bravo much easier than he could be a situational Sigma, et cetera.

For example, a Delta being a situational Bravo would be if a group decides that the most experienced member takes charge. If this most experienced member is somewhat reluctant, he is a Delta being forced into the Bravo role. I am confident that every Delta over twenty five reading this has a story about being asked to lead something he did not want to lead, simply because Deltas get so good at stuff that it makes sense for them to lead, much as some of them do not enjoy it.

Conversely, one can occasionally observe the more cheerful and boisterous members of the group really shrinking back when there is something new to learn, when the terrain becomes unfamiliar. This, I believe, would be a Bravo being a situational Delta because he does not know enough to lead. It is worth recalling that Alphas and Bravos tend to lead because they, often correctly, consider themselves to be good at leading, whereas gammas lead to get petty revenge or an ego boost. Therefore, when a Bravo feels unable to lead properly, he shrinks back. Alphas do the same thing, to an extent, because they too are capable of stepping back to benefit the group effort. It just takes a little more effort to slow down an alpha. If you ever see a guy with nothing but respect for the guy who just busted his nose, it is two alphas who figured out their relative hierarchy the hard way. If, on the other hand, busted nose says he actually won because the other guy cheated and he is off his game this week and is secretly an MMA champion, well, you can guess.

Waiting Room Theory

 Hopefully, nobody reading this has too much experience with the waiting room in the hospital. It is not a fun place to spend any length of time. Anywhere from a few seconds to many hours ago, you saw your loved one being moved throuth the door, into a room down the hall, and you do not know if they come back, or how much of them comes back. It truly is a horrible feeling, a combination of fear and powerlessness. Both fear and powerlessness are bad feelings in their own right, but the hospital waiting room takes it to a whole new level of suck.

So why do people chase this feeling?

I am not kidding. People actually go out of their way to get into 'waiting room situations'. They try to be powerless yet emotionally invested, if not outright afraid. Consider politics for instance. People right now are losing sleep about whether or not the guy they believe left office will be impeached again. On the other side, people are losing sleep about electoral irregularities in a contest between two factions of the same status quo in a demographically doomed empire.

Granted, there is only one truth, one correct version of events, and one of the political perspectives will be closest to that, but that is not the point. The point is the 'losing sleep' part. In the entire United States, there are some number less than ten thousand people who have tangible, immediate influence in the federal political process, and three hundred million and then some who do not. Those not-even-ten-thousand are the only ones who have any right to worry about this stuff in the short term. The rest of the country does not. And here is the kicker: the rest of the country would not even know what to get worked up about this week if they did not watch the fake news all the time. They fire up their computers and effectively order the machine to make them angry and afraid by lying to them when they open some article, video, social media feed, et cetera ad nauseam. News junkies are junkies too, and they need to get clean like every other junkie.

But how does one get clean? How does one stop worrying about stuff that one does not control? Unfortunately, I have no idea. But I would like to help people, so if you know anything about stopping anxiety and undue worries, please do drop a comment. Much Love!

Why I hate determinism

Content warning: I will be sticking to clean speech, but I will discuss some rather dark things to illustrate my point. I trust the reader's discernment if they want to keep reading.

Please do not read this as a theological opinion. As a matter of fact, please do not assign too much of any 'logic' anything to this. It is purely my subjective opinion, elucidated and explained. Thanks.

The header realy says it all. I hate determinism in all its forms. Predestination, fate, whatever people call it, keep it away from me. I am not going to wage into the determinsism versus free will debate, I just subjectively hate determinism. And here's why:

There ceases to be a point. Believing the future is already decided means that your actions do not matter. It leads to a personal nihilism, because there is nothing that you can change about the future so why bother? If carrying a gun is not going to prevent you from getting robbed, because your life is already mapped out anyway, why bother trying to protect yourself? If fate or something else has already decided whether or not you will be stuck with an abusive spouse, why seek help? If your future with substance abuse is already set in stone, what is the point of trying to get clean?

Yes, that went to a dark place very quickly. But that is the point. Believing that you can do something about unfortunate circumstances is often the only possible shot at a way out. That is why I personally and subjectively hate determinism. It implies telling an abuse victim 'hey, this is your lot in life, sucks to be you.' It tells genuine victims that they will always be victims, that they cannot fight. Maybe that is why people find it appealing: it gives them every excuse not to fight. It turns their weakness to wisdom. 

Side note: being weak is not necessarily bad, especially as a woman. Not everyone has to engage in conflict. As I have written before, there is plenty to do for the conflict avoidant. But, please, stop telling those who fight that it does not matter anyway. You do not have to be ashamed of your weakness. It is not shameful to be weak. It is however shameful to discourage the fighters and attack their strength from 'their side'. It is a psychological backstab. Cut it out.

Again, this is not an argument for or against determinism in the philosophical or theological sense. I have personally witnessed reasonable people argue both sides. This is my subjective opinion, my roundabout way of saying 'bodybags for blackpills'. Much love!

Plans for a Biden Admininstration

The whole point of planning is that less-than-ideal future events do not bite you in the posterior any more than they have to. You do not plan to get all As without studying, you do not plan that your love handles just magically evaporate between Dunkin Donuts trips, et cetera. You plan for the absolute worst. Some of us plan to survive for years without access to a grocery store. Others plan for the possibility of being abducted by mind-controlling alien lizard people. Realistic or not, what you plan for is the worst outcome that you reasonably expect.

Therefore, I think it is prudent to plan for the possibility that President-Pretend China Joe, or Javier Bardem, or whomever actually runs them, gets a full four years at the helm of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America. What does this mean specifically, and what can one do about it? The recommendations below will be divided according to groups, since this hypothetical affects everyone differently.

People outside the US: figure out post haste who the next big dog after Uncle Sam is, specific to your region. Is it Russia, China, or India, or anyone else? The thing is that nobody takes this administration seriously. Therefore, some regional hegemonies may or may not get some ideas. Study them, what they want, if they are currently capable of making such moves, et cetera.

Non-US Citizens in the US: What is the situation in your country of citizenships? There is a non-zero probability that they look better that Biden's handler's America. This goes double if you hail from Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and select other countries. I am no expert on world politics, but I will certainly be studying my home country to see if it is worth setting up shop there. On the other hand, you can certainly bloom where you are currently planted, especially with God's help.

US Citizens inside the US: I encourage you to disengage from Federal-Level politics entirely. If you are a politics fiend, there is plenty of opportunity at the State and Local levels. I believe it was Missouri that recently cancelled a lot of gun control, for example. Furthermore, a lot of 'battleground states' went +5 or more for Trump in November because they had implemented strict voter fraud prevention at the state level*. Take out the roots of the Leftist power structure, one county clerk at a time.

Christians: You'll be golden. A majority of the ink in the Bible details how God uses any genuine follower in any circumstance to mop the floor with evil authorities. All you need to worry about is being a genuine follower of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, but you needed to worry about that before Wednesday as well. Nothing actually changed in the grand scope of things, but this hypothetical situation is certainly added incentive. If you ever needed a reason to quit various sins, here it is. More specifically, I encourage you to detach yourself from various things that the powers of this world can take away. Examples of this would include excessive money and social status. It will get less comfortable, so you will have to get stronger. As always, hope, pray, and love.
For further reading: consider Matt Cochran's post on the same topic. 

Non-Christians: I am not going to attempt to convert you, especially not here. What I will do is encourage you to study the history of the Christian Faith, using whatever sources you consider trustworthy. Specifically, I offer the following syllogism:
Premise 1: Somewhere between 0 and 150 AD, this group calling themselves Christians showed up on the politcal map, initially in the Middle East.
Premise 2: The Roman Empire, the hegemonic power at the time, did not like these Christians and went after them, at great loss of life on the Christian side.

Premise 3: By AD 325, Emperor Constantine was helping the Christian Church and formally converted the entire Roman empire around that time.

Conclusion: Whatever this early church was up to really works against a hostile political authority.

If, in your analysis, the premises check out, and the conclusion follows, it stands to reason that the Christian way of life offers an effective strategy against hostile governments. Even if you do not believe in God the Father of Jesus Christ, I strongly encourage you to try out the prescriptions of the Christian Life. They will help. Be a cargo cult Christian for a year, see how it works out for you.

Thanks for reading. We will make it through this hypothetical winter, and through every real winter. Much Love!

* Credit for this observation goes to Razörfist by the by. Check out his rants on the election.

What the Pharisees got right

First of all, allow me to thank @PewienBear and @Scutum for the inspiration that lead to this post. At the time of writing, they are probably still duking it out about theology, so go watch them if you have enough popcorn handy.

The Pharisees got something right. They did not get a whole lot right, considering how often and how forcefully Jesus Christ of Nazareth decided to unload on them and their hypocrisy and other sins, but they did get one thing right: Righteousness itself. The law they professed to follow was in fact God's own law at the time.
A few caveats are in order. Yes, they royally sucked at following said law despite publicly preaching it, and most of them completely missed the memo that Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the Christ, leading to the first recorded example of "How Deer Ewe!?!" (Luke 13:11ff). Furthermore, said law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ on the Cross.
That being said, what does this fulfilled law look like? What does God require of us in response to His Perfect Love? I cannot tell you that with certainty. But I can offer a few pointers.
For starters, we have Matthew 5:20. Individual translations vary, but the gist of it is that Jesus tells us we have to be 'more righteous' than the Pharisees were. More righteous means the Pharisees were righteous to some extent. This begs the question: what were they righteous about?
I contend that they were righteous about the law. The law that Jesus came to fulfil, as per Matthew 5:17. Again, we arrive at the question above: what does this law look like?
We are told, in Matthew 22:37-40 that the whole Law rests on two commandments, to love God above all else and our neighbor as ourselves. Personally, I find it extremely fitting that the God who loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for us asks us to love. I am no hippie by telling you that it is all about love, maaaaaan, because it very much is.
Getting back on topic, what is this love that explains everything? It does not take a sporadic and inconsistent blogger like myself to tell you that it has extremely little to do with what takes up the skin suit of love in pop culture malware. Shout-out to @architectbear for this rhetorical gem, by the way.
This love is painful. We're supposed to take up an entire cross. What Matthew 16:24 mentions is at least a few hundred pounds of wooden beams, considering that it has to hold a whole human several feet off the ground. Worse yet, if you are a bigger specimen, your cross is also bigger, because it has to hold you up. This sucker scales. Take up your cross as opposed to any old cross.
Next up, this love is sacrificial. John 15:13 foretells not only the Passion, it is also sage advice for us. We have to sacrifice first for God and then for others, in order to love Him and them.
Finally, this love is joyful. The trials are to be enjoyed. See James 1:2, Romans 12:12, and 1 Peter 1:8 among many other verses. I do not know how joyful the Pharisees were, but we have to be joyful.

TL;DR : The pharisees got the old law mostly right. The new law is love, which is painful, demands sacrifice, and you will enjoy the ride.

Much love!