Usury

Usury is a term that is now near-universally misunderstood, perhaps by design, because usury is a very popular practice, and many important people benefit from it. The most common definition you will see for it is “charging excessive interest,” probably from American legal issues and legislation that don’t deal with usury at all. Usury’s actual definition is “charging interest on a mutuum loan.” The word usury comes from charging interest on the use of money rather than the use of an asset. Mutuum is not a very common word. A “mutuum” means a loan of fungible things to be replaced…

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Materialist Inversions of Solipsism

Well, we’ve come full circle from gnostics believing the material world is an illusion to materialists believing that consciousness is an illusion. People are often unaware of the materialist assumptions they hold and how they affect their view of reality, even when they lead to absurd, contradictory conclusions. Even an intelligent person like Scott Adams can end up in a silly place because of such assumptions—the primary one being that the material world is all that exists. Having read his view on free will in one of his books, he was almost at a compatibilist belief regarding free will (his…

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Materialism and Gnosticism

Check out a great thread by author (and attorney) Alexander Palacio: It’s odd that the extremes of materialism (in the philosophical sense, the belief that only the material is real and of consequence) end up in the same place as Gnostic heresy in denying the importance and reality of the body. According to the materialist, you ARE your body, there is metaphysically no separate spiritual “soul” that ascends to heaven or goes anywhere else. Thus one would think that the body is, therefore, the only thing that can be sacred because it is all humans are. However, the disregard for…

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A Propagandized View of Debt and Forgiveness

Certain issues have been so heavily subject to political messaging that normally rational individuals will be unable to hear arguments outside the frame established by propaganda. Debt is one of these, and for some, the messaging surrounding the concept runs so deep that they will, during the context of the topic, forget the normal meaning of words. “Student debt forgiveness,” as the name should imply, involves the forgiveness of debt. And yet, church-going Americans who have a firm grasp of the forgiveness offered by God through Christ, suddenly forget its meaning entirely any time you mention student loans. They immediately…

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The Wages of Sin… And Student Debt

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” Who is responsible for the fall of man? If you want to have a fun discussion in Sunday school (or anywhere where people know the fundamental creation stories of Abrahamic faiths), pose this question, and see where the debate goes. Very obviously, Adam and Eve are both responsible for the sin they committed by eating the forbidden fruit. Otherwise, they would not have been cast from the Garden of Eden and incurred the debt of sin which is fulfilled in death. But the snake is also present and were it not…

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Virtue Ethics of the State Cult

Or of the Death Cult. Since I touched upon it during the livestream today, I thought it might follow up a bit here in regards to the vast difference between individual and collective moral impetuses between the death cultist and the Christian, or between the political left and right, communist and free man—whatever terms and groupings you like to use, since most of these are pointing in similar direction. To a Christian, or to one of the noble pagans, virtue is an individual endeavor. The locus of discretion lies in the individual, and it is up to the individual to…

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Idols

Idols are a problem to western society. No, I’m not writing today about the Japanese phenomenon surrounding teenage girls. What I’m thinking of is the idolatrous obsession over certain concepts that, through constant attempts to appease as if they are deities, inhibit discourse, clear thinking, and can even cause stumbling on your path to heaven. One of these, which I’ve talked about already, is Democracy. The idea that democracy as some unmitigated good is not just accepted as fact in the body politic, attempts to even suggest that it might merely be a conditional good, that is one that is…

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MONEY

I did a livestream last night talking about some of the big “Red Pills” I had taken, especially having known and spent time with Dan Bilzerian. As part of that, I said that the biggest thing I learned from him is that MONEY is the most important thing when it comes to pursuing worldly ambitions – sex, power, status, etc. Enough money can overcome any deficit. It can: Buy attention directly (advertising) Buy attention indirectly (lavish parties, etc.) Buy sex directly (prostitution) Buy sex indirectly (lavish vacations provided free to women, the transaction of attention from a “high-status” male for…

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I mentioned school indoctrination

If you read the short thread and its replies – especially from teachers – you have another piece of evidence to what I asserted regarding education just being one of many products produced jointly through schools. Just to clarify, “indoctrination” is not necessarily bad or good itself, but is bad or good depending on what is being preached. The real question here is not what, but by whom. The party that is both most interested in the healthy attitudes of the child, is in the best position to judge a child’s needs, and is through the natural order the first…

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The Millennial Obsession with Harry Potter

It’s a curious case – Millenials, particularly in the “literary” and “writing” (I use those terms as ironically as possible) community are constantly referencing Harry Potter, particularly when it comes to some of the basic parts of the moral play, such as Lord Voldemort, who represents whatever current-year evil they happen to be personally obsessed with (usually just orange man bad). Why? Why so much obsession with a children’s book series, to the point where people put their Hogwarts house in their twitter bio? Yes, you are so Gryffindor, Miss Keyboard Warrior! Here’s my basic explanation: Mythological vacuum Social reinforcement…

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