Roisin Murphy

[WarriorN]

Is it true? Did did say this?

"Puberty blockers ARE FUCKED! Big pharma laughing all the way to the bank!"

Need to catch up on more thoughtful posts here; Barry Wall has shared a times article here which is relevant to the stained Guardian music review:

x.com/headwarriortwm/status/1701516186091970878?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

Maybe so, Warrior, but the kids start crying when it vibrates their insides. Not suitable for the School Run.

Side note: Bass won't be turned up 'high', will it? It's too low, that's the problem.

All good points. Yes, after many decades of a borderline smug/self satisfied personal belief mash up of altruistic humanism/borderline and occasionally full on atheism/Thatcher style libertarianism/more recently Blue Labour style politics, I'm realising that humanism is way more connected to Christianity than I was happy to admit.

I have to say I'm moving more and more away from the humans are evolutionary selected for altruism POV. This is pretty much Dawkins view, that we have succeeded as a species and thus select for altruist tendencies. He then throws in group dynamics as a driver.

Stephen Pinker feels that these traits, what you might call "cultural humanity" are also evolved, especially in his specialist area of language and it's common function in mankind.

For me, the humanist ideal seemed to really reflect the evidence as we progressed into the 90s and 00s, organised religion had fewer answers, and a common humanity seemed logical, a belief in "altruistic group dynamics" explaining religious drives and also more and more my more agnostic worldview of people working for the common good. I think I even wore a New Atheist t-shirt, declaring that Dawkins, Hitchins, Pinker and Goldacre had (all) the answer(s).

Then the first chips in this worldview, leading to it somewhat crumbling down for me. Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling Of The American Mind, the growing intersectional analysis change in reading grievances and objectives for all of us to isolated groups. So that the Seattle anti WTO traditional class based movement in late 90s within just a decade had gone from poor v rich and our common good, to whites v blacks, hetero v gay, cis v trans.

Now I'm realising, effectively with the hegemony of elites society sledgehammering trans ideology thru an unsure and unwilling society, that "altruism" and group dynamics really does exist, but not in the way I thought.

Kindness is being weaponised by those who'll force trans ideology on us (SNP and Irish, Canadian, US etc, politicians bending over backwards to justify males in women's prisons), group dynamics as mass pile on purity spirals to force the declared authentic selves of the trans community to crowbar superiority over the long established and equitable rights of a much much larger group ie women.

Q is, can the previous Enlightenment situation ever be recovered?

I'd experiment.

That's exactly the kind of advice that got us into this mess, Warrior.

Hey listen I enjoy Pinker, Hitchens (what a guy) and Haidt (Coddling should be required reading) as much as the next woman but I do think that Humanism was fighting against a strawman because Humanism IS basically Christianity without the founding myths. Well, not a strawman as such but really a confusion of the Christian philosophy (which is intensely communitarian and anti-violence) with the ugly ways in which the Christian philosophy has been used to justify war, racism and sectarianism (all things Christ is explicitly shown as being against).

Dawkins' idea of evolution self-selecting for altruism is beased on an evo-bio theory around why Neanderthals didn't propagate as much as Hom-Sap. Because Neanderthals tended to be more isolationist and less cooperative. That's still a valid theory but it's hotly contested, it's not the settled science Dawkins took it as (he's not an evolutionary biologist). Interestingly, the highest proportion of neanderthal DNA is found in those ethnic groups who now have the most communitarian forms of Government: the Scandinavian nations.

I don't think we can ever return to Enlightenment ideals because we have lost the founding philosophies of Christianity, particularly those which cautioned against hasty judgement, hierarchical thinking and scapegoating. Instead, we are returning to the pre-Christian tradition in which scapegoating was seen as a justifable method for ridding ourselves of troublesome outsiders. Back in the pre-Christian era this was generally done by stoning and stoning a scapegoat was seen as a pretty virtuous thing to do. Because it got rid of a dangerous outsider and also pour enourager les autres - it made the in-group more cohesive. Christ overturned this by saying 'He who is without stain, let him cast the first stone' and it's hard to communicate how shocking and controversial a statement that was in the historical and cultural conditions which pertained at that time. Now, we've lost the vestigial meaning of that particular story, and we have rapidly returning to stoning the scapegoat, although now we do it with verbal stones and brickbats, such as threatening JK Rowling with threats of rape, death and cancellation on Twitter. Or trying to destroy Roisin's career for her alleged 'stain' (the verbal echoes are uncanny tbh)

I am sure that a full return to physical scapegoating may well lie in our future. If the rule of law, and the ideals of fair judgement and rehabilitiation, continue to erode at their current pace, then why not?

Twiddle with your bass, they said, it'll be fun, they said. Before you know it Sam Smith is poledancing in a teletubbie costume.

Fantastic post! This is why I stay online re this subject...whole weeks go past where it's just negative stimuli as trans ideology digs in and froths more visibly.
And then feedback like this really gets me thinking.

I have been wondering why this has become the hill I die on, metaphorically speaking. Why as a man with no kids in a bubble of serenity that trans doesn't impinge on in any meaningful way, why I'm so tested by it, so perturbed.

Maybe it's a litmus test for how I feel about the world, life in general, and a challenge to my altruistic tendencies and group dynamics drive.

Right now, the people I feel most respect for are Christians who don't browbeat, have a consistent outgoing worldview, and lack all the froth and wasted energy of the woke/trans ideologues.

And the women of MN and greater GC community who just keep pushing and pushing back.

And what I call the moral atheists, like Helen Joyce and Kath Stock and Julie Bindel, who haven't mistaken atheism for amoralism, have dedicated their whole lives to speaking out loudly, yes new moral leadership.

Trans medicalisation, TWAW, men in women's spaces, industrialised surrogacy, sex work is work...fuck all that! If the neo religious Left won't say it, and the modern Right are too distracted to object, then it's down to the GCs.

Your posts are giving me real food for thought.

Love your sin/stain "typo", lol.

I think you find it disturbing because you (we) are being asked to deny the evidence of our own eyes when it comes to TWAW. And we are required to joyously affirm a lie, and act like we really believe it. And if we demure (nevermind outright resist) then the penalties are severe.

Yeah we should all be disturbed by that whether we have a horse in the race or not. It is genuinely, actually, incredibly alarming.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” George Orwell

Your comment about entering what one might call A New Dark Age, of shaming in public, adds to my take, of woke scold purity spiral as violence, of SJW herd mentality as momentum/energy, of a new castes system as social identifier, high worth thinking meaning the very opposite of critical thinking, is somehow consistent with the world as it seems to be today.

Geopolitical strife on the increase. No more unipolar US world 1989-2003 (Berlin Wall to 9/11), or even Bipolar world 1945-1989. Now it's Multipolar with China on the rise and rise.

And women again put in their box, as male dominance re establishes after a few decades of increasing rights and independence achieved the hard way by women in last few decades, this time not the Alpha Males at forefront (ie male society fighting Suffragettes), but the Beta Cucks who have invaded spaces while our uncivil society waves it on.

It feels like we're returning to a feral world, but with none of Enlightenment counterbalancing of morals tempered with progress and cooperation.

@WarriorN

Oh dearie me..

Wot - the Time article?

Times?

Yes.. Give me a minute, I'm just - hahahaha - trying to get my breath back..

Ha!

A few key excerpts:

The media group called an “untangling sex and gender” meeting in April so staff could discuss the way the newspaper covers women’s rights.

....

Four gender-critical speakers claimed they had been harassed because of their views, with one deputy editor noting that attempts to organise internal events had resulted in “efforts to loudly, even violently, protest or stop meetings taking place”. No one rebutted these views before 150 attendees.

However, the imbalance in speakers subsequently left many in the newsroom furious because it was held during the newspaper’s diversity, equity and inclusion week, Semafor reported.

One former staff member said: “As long as The Guardian bows to Guardian US, I don’t see much changing.”

Sonia Sodha also says she's been doxxed and harassed in that article.

It sounds really very seriously toxic at the Guardian.

And when the Guardian begs for money, it makes a big song and dance of how independent its news coverage is because the paper is not beholden to any millionaire shareholders etc.

“I’m free… to do what I want… any old ti-ime!”

No you’re not, Guardian, because you are in thrall to your American bosses. Not so independent and cutting-edge after all, eh? You’re on a leash to keep you toeing that candy-pink, white and baby-blue party line.

Apologies for laughing at children experiencing physical and mental harm*, but this just made me snort out loud.

*Hopefully not too dark a joke, given the seriousness of the topic. I have been enjoying the powerful messages behind the satire/parodies on Twitter and this one hit the same weak spot that I have for comedy as a means of communication. If anyone is on Twitter, the transavian and LetKidsSmoke "campaigns" are both incredibly powerful ways of holding up a mirror to the very serious side of what is happening to gender-questioning children through deliberately farcical, yet incredibly relevant, analogy.

https://twitter.com/xxclusionary/status/1699835848823308757?t=wAgNgj7B4C3WBclZ_MSeog&s=19

https://twitter.com/sometherapist/status/1700954934567698656?t=P2G8MgSCW6pyjYuwZLmaaA&s=19

A couple of screenshots too. There are posters with slogans as well.

I'm afraid I too giggled at the Roisin induced vibrating kids in the car on the school run.

I'd just like to add that the Jewish "Old Testament" prophets had some very similar things to say, so Jesus and the "New Testament" writers were not entirely revolutionary; Jewish theology had already challenged the early understanding that the good of the tribe was the arbiter of morality.

The good of the tribe to some extent explains the aspects of Mosaic law that we find very problematic, but the Bible (and the Scriptures that Jesus knew) is a more complex set of writings than is always acknowledged, and there is a widening of morality from "the good of the tribe" to "the good of the whole of humanity", with injunctions to care for vulnerable people in those societies such as widows and foreigners.

This is really interesting. I don't know much at all about Judaism and I don't know the OT as well as I'd like to, so this is really useful insight. Thank you!

I do know that the Gospels were intended partly to respond to, challenge and 'update' various OT / Mosaic philosophies, and also that a lot of the things Christ is represented as saying in the Gospels were incredibly controversial and counter-intuitive within a Mosaic and a Roman Imperial context. I think 21st century Western Europeans struggle to appreciate this as Christianity underpins so much of the social, legal and moralistic structure that we take for granted.

And TRA is "incredibly controversial and counter intuitive" within the context we live in today.

O the humanity!

BBC axes Roisin Murphy songs, interviews and concert highlights from music programme - after singer… https://mol.im/a/12510045 via https://dailym.ai/android