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Choose your status game wisely

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Re: Choose your status game wisely

#271

Post by xenocratus »

dontcare007 wrote: post #266
tomgp wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DFW concluded that if you don’t choose what to worship it gets chosen for you. What he’s saying is that one should be conscious and deliberate, self aware. Like much of DFW there’s a strong christian undercurrent to ‘this is water’. Far from being an argument against religion and worship the message i take is that the value of religion can be that it focuses one outward, towards community and so on.

not choosing is a choice too.

His point, I'd say, is that whatever the choice (including not choosing something consciously) should be done consciously. I.e. You should be aware that you aren't choosing anything, or that you want to pursue money, or fame, or whatever.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#272

Post by Viliam1234 »

giantg2 wrote: post #215
exdsq wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked with a guy who wore a suit to the office as a 2-year experience dev and he was always taken into client meetings last minute when they needed someone. Helped his career a fair bit I think!

Opposite here. My office had people wearing dress pants and dress or polo shirts. I decided to add a tie. I was taken aside and told not to do that since it made me seem out of touch with the culture. Seemed like a pretty small step up from the based line to me. So much for dress for the job you want, or next job up BS...

I think how the experts play this game is by buying a very expensive well-fitting designer polo shirt. The trick is to impress people in a way that seems that you are not trying hard. Trying hard is low-status, just being "naturally" impressive is high-status.

The rules of the game are not mentioned publicly, so that people who know them can feel superior to those who don't. The mere knowledge of the rules signals good upbringing or great social skills.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#273

Post by Zababa »

xenocratus wrote: post #186

> Choose money and you’ll end up working all the time. Choose beauty and you’ll always want to look better. Choose fame and you’ll constantly be seeking attention. This is straight-up paraphrasing David Foster Wallace in This Is Water, just that DFW was talking about these things as de-facto personal religions that we're usually unconscious of. So the "choose" part isn't nearly that explicit in his view. The bit in T…

> Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

I wonder if this is an explanation for impostor syndrome. Every time I read about it, it comes from people working in intellectual professions. Those people probably value their intellect a lot, possibly more than money, status or things like that. Thus their insecurities manifest themselves as impostor syndrome.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#274

Post by thomastjeffery »

vlunkr wrote: post #155
thomastjeffery wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith was always described to me as a belief in something that cannot be proven. In my experience, however, especially in terms of Christianity, faith is a belief in something that cannot be proven, and - crucially - can be disproven . To put it more clearly, faith detaches a claim from reality, and puts it into a realm above criticism. As a small example, the idea that the first human male was created directly by a…

The definition of faith as believing in something that can be disproven is a contradiction. You believe your religion is disproven, that is why you no longer have faith in it.

I absolutely did have faith in my religion, despite the fact that it can be (and had been) thoroughly disproven. Mostly because I simply wasn't aware of that fact.

The LDS (Mormon) church, like most religious groups, put a lot of effort into insulating itself from criticism. It presented me a narrative about itself that is contradicted by historical record, most of which is published, albeit less energetically, by that very same church.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#275

Post by emadabdulrahim »

xenocratus wrote: post #271
dontcare007 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not choosing is a choice too.

His point, I'd say, is that whatever the choice (including not choosing something consciously) should be done consciously. I.e. You should be aware that you aren't choosing anything, or that you want to pursue money, or fame, or whatever.

Can one really not chose in this situation? What one worships is somewhat synonym with what one values the most. How can a man ever not have something that he values more than other things? On what basis would he act?

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#276

Post by thomastjeffery »

throw0101a wrote: post #230
thomastjeffery wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faith was always described to me as a belief in something that cannot be proven. In my experience, however, especially in terms of Christianity, faith is a belief in something that cannot be proven, and - crucially - can be disproven . To put it more clearly, faith detaches a claim from reality, and puts it into a realm above criticism. As a small example, the idea that the first human male was created directly by a…

> Faith was always described to me as a belief in something that cannot be proven. That is certainly one way to define it. Faith is the sibling/cousin of trust as the first two videos go over. If US Census Bureau says the population of the US is 331M, you are trusting them, putting your faith in their methods, that they are getting it right: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States#Population > In my experience,…

Your argument illustrates exactly what I'm talking about.

If it's just a belief in God, then why call it Christianity? Does the historicity of the Bible have no bearing on what it means to be Christian?

Instead of confronting the origins of the claim of God's existence, you carefully dodge it by saying I can't disprove the existence of God.

Of course I can't disprove the existence of some ethereal diety, but I can disprove the existence of Jaweh and Jehova, at least as they are described in the Bible.

So if the story of God in the Bible isn't history, then why should I fall back on a belief of God in the abstract? If I can illustrate the origins of the Christian God as fraudulent, then I see no reason to assume the existence of a God anywhere outside fiction.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#277

Post by alar44 »

Flankk wrote: post #94
alar44 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeling fulfilled doesn't pay the bills, unfortunately.

False dichotomy, it usually does. One day you will die. You won't be thinking about bills.

And if you spent your life in poverty trying to be an artist, you might think "would have been nice to not have been scraping by my whole life".

I did the passion project thing for 15 years. Much happier with a stable income and not worrying about money.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#278

Post by thomastjeffery »

throw0101a wrote: post #232
thomastjeffery wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I walked around with a King James Bible every time I went to church. I spent a year learning about The Old Testament in seminary, and another year learning about The New Testament. The Book of Mormon itself directly quotes the King James Bible, errors included. It absolutely is a flavor of Christianity, no matter how unappetizing you find it. The entire story in The Book of Mormon is about Jews who fled the old world…

You start getting into 'no true Scotsman' arguments at this point. Is the only "true" Christianity that which professes the Nicene Creed? Teaches the Real Presence? Other? However, just because the Mormons are using the same words (from the same book) does not necessarily mean that they have the same theological concepts: > This brings me to an example which does involve error of a sort sufficient to make successful…

Your argument is that because Mormons don't believe in the Trinity, that they don't believe in omnipotence and omnipresence.

This argument is false. Mormons believe that the Trinity is two living immortal men (Elohim and Jesus), and one omnipresent spirit.

They are also very inconsistent with the idea, since originally they did believe in the Trinity, but later Joseph started preaching the three beings doctrine, and had the Book of Mormon edited to reflect it.

But all of this is splitting hairs. There is no point arguing whether Mormons worship the wrong version of God, because God is fiction in the first place.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#279

Post by thomastjeffery »

bsenftner wrote: post #225
thomastjeffery wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's making the broad assumption that religion won't "eat you alive". My personal experience deeply contradicts that. My perspective is that atheism is not a lack of worship, but a lack of faith. Faith requires you suspend critical thinking on a predetermined set of claims. Atheism, to me, is the rejection of faith; to direct critical thought to all claims. Taking that to its conclusion, I worship critical thinking…

The devils greatest achievement is taking God's one true gift, our rational mind, and convincing people they need to use faith, a direct rejection of our rational capabilities, do be close to God. So beautiful in its sublime deception. So powerful, it insidiously destroys the most intelligent minds.

What an elegant self-contradictory statement.

Re: Choose your status game wisely

#280

Post by mattgreenrocks »

erikerikson wrote: post #252
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part about status is mostly how seriously people take it. If you’re on either extreme, then, yeah, your life is different. But the nature of status is that it is statistically impossible for everyone to be high status. Thus, it is a zero sum game, and one which is usually rigged against you, and full of people who aren’t smart enough to realize this + are willing to give up more than you are. Play stupid ga…

And, it turns out, this is more conducive to increasing your status. Beyond the signalling games, it's reality that confers status. Consider... Would you rather look rich or be rich? Would you rather look like you can do mostly whatever you want or actually do mostly whatever you want?

Exactly. And once you internalize this mindset, you see that status is a game that is hard to win in absolute terms, but is easier to manipulate than it would seem.

More importantly, you’re content enough to not fall into the hole of lifelong grasping at more status. And then you’re free to be yourself. Able to play the game well enough when necessary, but no longer bound by feelings of needing to 24/7.

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