Christianity, maybe an improvement on political religions

I am slowly swinging around to the view that being genuinely religious is probably good for a lot of people, maybe most people... a big, big improvement over politics-as-religion. Without me personally wanting to be religious.

I've had religious-type ecstacy experiences in group sex scenarios... should be obvious from the stories... those scenarios are great in the moment, but from what I can tell and what I have observed, they don't lead to real community. Your "value" is very much based on sex appeal, ability to bring in hot women, ability to be a hot woman, etc. There is a woman, Gwen Kansen, who did a twitter thread about how her group sex communities effectively eject or de-prioritize older women... her group sex communities are filled with middle-aged guys chasing chicks in their 20s, and I've seen this dynamic as well, the invisible older woman thing. I hope Kansen writes something longer and linkable, cause she's emphasized something usually locked in the attic like a crazy aunt.

In Christianity, your core value is you, and being alive, and your immortal soul; you have an inviolate soul regardless of your external views and features. Of course we all know that, in the real world, that's often not how it works... the hot Christian gal isn't into you because of your beautiful soul in the eyes of god, your boss doesn't hire you for that reason, etc.: there are still real value judgments involved. But there is some latent brutality in the competitive world, that the Christian world tries to de-elevate... and I'm not complaining here: I've done fine a lot of the time, competitively, I'm not complaining about the competition, and competition has a lot of merits. Adam Smith wrote about how the competition of capitalism encourages kindness and courtesy, because those things make good business sense. The average American or European store clerk is 100x more useful than the average Soviet government "worker." The more advanced the market economy, the better the service, and the better the range of products. Capitalism and its competitive features are great. Christianity encourages people to have kids, to be fruitful and multiple, so it isn't as narcissistic as secular life usually is.

Competition is good but it creates its own challenges (that is not a criticism of capitalism, it is a statement about how not all dimensions can be maximized at once), and the way competition affects and infects people who always want to do better than the guy next to them. Christianity does a bit to blunt some of that competitiveness... a point that comes from the Peter Thiel and Rene Girard views of Christianity... I've also gotten lucky in a bunch of ways, and I can see why a lot of the people who've been genetically unlikely, familially unlucky, etc., would be angry. Advertising and movies tell us, "People are f**king all the time, tons of guys are f**king all these hot women constantly." Porn is a fantasy world whose subtext tells us the same. And if you aren't, cause most guys aren't, what do you do? Where do you go? "Self improvement" is a good answer... but some guys move into the incel "movement," into becoming a herbivore, and other unsavory or undesirable paths. Instead of learning not be Gollum they embrace being Gollum, with a keyboard. The reality is that guys f**king the hottest chicks usually have many attributes that guys who are not f**king hot chicks lack. Game is a remedy to that but its success depends greatly on where you start from. It can be hugely frustrating. The "dignity" that comes from game comes from success. Lack success in f**king hot chicks and you lack dignity in the eyes of game. Christianity argues that dignity is innate and part of man's ability to accept Christ. Both men and women should strive to create families, since families are a literal investment in the future.

Christianity is better than 4chan/8chan, and it lets people create authentic communities, in a way that sex parties and non-monogamy communities don't really do. It could be that "The turning tide of intellectual atheism: A growing number of leading serious intellectuals are recognising the need for Christianity’s resurrection but can’t quite bring the faith to life in themselves" has something to it, because it's hard to look at the world today, particularly the average/below average person's world, and think, "this person is better off without religious structuring and community." Yes, I'm aware of many of Christianity's problems, no need to cite them, I read the '00s-era books about how religion sucks. Those books don't appear to have anticipated the present, when people choose to worship political shit instead. Worshipping technology/progress is also better than worshipping political figures (but also much much harder... you have to learn and do things to worship technology properly... much harder than simply "having the right beliefs.") "Your family is broken but you’re going to fix the world." Right.

But... I can't really believe in god. I can believe in the ability of man to believe in god, and the old-school Christian god is a better choice than a political party, or, worse, single political figure:

Unfortunately, the various strains of wokeism on the left and Trumpism on the right cannot truly fill the spiritual void—what the journalist Murtaza Hussain calls America’s “God-shaped hole.” Religion, in part, is about distancing yourself from the temporal world, with all its imperfection. At its best, religion confers relief by withholding final judgments until another time—perhaps until eternity. The new secular religions unleash dissatisfaction not toward the possibilities of divine grace or justice but toward one’s fellow citizens, who become embodiments of sin—“deplorables” or “enemies of the state.”

In the context of the Red Quest, treating "f**king a lot" as a primary identity/source of purpose is great but doesn't seem to work for most people over the course of their whole lives. A lot of people wind up not too far from where I might be, "It was a great run... but now what...?" Atheism is on the rise, and Christianity is falling as fast as birth rates. "Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009." Wow, that's a big change... "Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or 'nothing in particular,' now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009." We probably have our first truly atheist president, as I write (2019), or a president with so little religious feeling that "areligious" most accurately describes him. What's that mean? I don't know... but the somewhat religious feelings that certain activities have elicited in me, aren't really eliciting them any more.

Those are some bigger-picture questions I have been thinking about. Like most people I'm susceptible to loneliness. I've found many ways of accepting and dealing with this, but I think there's a kind of denial of fundamental and existential human loneliness in American society. Advertising tells us to deal with it by buying shit (which will then help us f**k more or better... but it doesn't). Modern tribal politics tells us to solve it by being part of the team, by voting for such and such a candidate. The morning after you buy the thing, you wake up, and you're still you. The morning after your candidate wins or loses, you wake up, and you're still you, and you still don't have a relationship with the elected person, and the elected person still wants your money and your vote, and at night the TV eventually goes off, and then what? You are still you.

I've said, I think only privately up till now, that I've tended to prioritize "breadth" in relationships rather than "depth." More tenuous connections, fewer deep ones. And that's been good. That's how do the sex club, non-mono thing well. When you part ways with your main girls, you start sending out feelers along your wide, but kind of shallow, network, and often something comes back. The girl who has broken up with her guy reaches out. The couple who are excited by their first experiences have some interest. The girl you know from a party is curious. But broad, shallow relationships tend to evaporate over time, like water in a pan. Deeper relationships should endure, and should be less dependent on external things (money, sex appeal, etc.). I'm not saying or advocating that guys should prioritize deeper relationships over shallower ones. Neither is "better." They have different functions. But it's a useful thing to consider. Politics don't seem to facilitate deep relationships, because the relationship depends on the political affiliation. Religion seems better at this, for many people, but it's hard.

This is not an "answers" piece, or a "how to do a thing" one. It's a "questions" piece. "Game" helps guys figure out how to lead their lives. It exists because the social/sexual conditions (the two are really the same thing) of the last sixty years have changed more radically than basically any other period in human history. I have been meaning to talk about "Behind Claude’s Doors, in 1960s Paris she became known as the world’s most exclusive madam." A great read for players and aspiring players, because the world was different then... "Claude explained that these famous men, men who could have anything and anyone, weren’t paying for sex. They were paying for an experience." Still true, mostly, and what I was trying to tell the wannabe escort from Tinder.. “Going to a hooker was not looked down upon then. It was before the pill; girls weren’t giving it away.” The world has changed, and now they are, but many guys don't properly understand how much. "Even though this was France, casual sex was still some time away. Nice girls didn’t ‘do it.’" They sure do now.

It's possible for an otherwise average guy, who is determined and disciplined in a few vital and important ways, to rack up three figures of lays. Prior to the '60s, that's never been true (average guys... elite guys have managed such feats). It's a change lots of us, maybe all of us, sense, but few of us follow to the end. Who wants Christian restraint when there are orgasms to be had, hot chicks for dudes and exciting c**k for chicks? Almost no one. Plenty of Christians are sexual hypocrites. Newt Gingrich was having an affair while prosecuting Clinton for some blowjobs, back when political scandals were about minor personal peccadillos instead of attempting to subvert democracy and sell out Americans and America to dictators abroad. But what are we doing, as a society, with the decline of Christianity? No f**kin idea. Twitter, I guess? Pornography as a maker medium. "Environmentalism" that is often pious and ineffective at the same time. Screaming into the void at the idiots. All of us have a limited number of days alive, and there are limits to our energy (even if we use it well). What's top priority? Why?

We all think we have the "right" to hot sex now, an expectation that fuels divorce. In the old days... hot sex wasn't a right. Having a partner who "understands" you, who "gets" you, wasn't a right. The main expectation was... the woman would have kids and take care of them. The guy would work. The kids would be fed and clothed. Today... needs and desires are much higher. Gaps between expectations and normal reality lead to unhappiness. Where do you channel unhappiness? You used to be able to say that I believe in Christ and he loves me back. Now, you channel it where? The sexual market place (SMP)? Or maybe into politics? But the political leader never loves you back. The political organization is happy to take your money. Politics is supposed to be about adjudicating differing preferences and solving coordination problems. Try to turn it into a fundamental identity and it stops working well at doing the very things it's supposed to do.

The insurrectionist riot of 6 January 2021 delineates that space between online fantasy land and real actions. I assume most of the insurrectionists are going to be charged, probably with felonies, and they'll plead out or be convicted. Most of them are nuts, yeah, or probably didn't understand what they were really doing, or just kept pushing as hard as they could. Yet there's also no parole in the federal criminal system. There are going to be some come-to-Jesus moments when they're sitting in cells, wondering why they took 4chan and twitter seriously. Most people, however strident online, are pretty comfortable in real life. Our biggest societal challenge today, far left and far right, is excessive comfort. No, the biggest challenge is probably family and family formation, but excessive comfort might be a close #2.

XBTUSD said about "The most stridently asserted opinions will disappear down the memory hole," "I like that you post those from time to time. It humanizes you, like you just can’t resist screaming into the void at the idiots."

It's funny cause it's true... I know I should stop. Why scream into the void? On the very few politics / healthcare / history posts, I try to step back and frame things in terms of longer time periods than the present, something almost no one else does. Anything that happened more than 72 hours ago, doesn't exist on the Internet. Anything longer than 999 characters, maybe 250 words, doesn't exist on the Internet.

Online, too, there are no consequences for wrong views... but the actual doctors and so forth, do have consequences. Who bears the consequences? That's the vital question/insight. Take online too seriously, and go too far with it, and you might end up with based_kekistani as a roommate while police search for you. Relative to that, church and a family look pretty good, don't they? If not for you, then for others.