Fascism has a pretty murky definition that sounds awful close to communism, perhaps with a slightly more inclusive ‘elite population’, because it tends to have a racist bent. Both are authoritarian and both do unspeakable things to their populations.
No I cannot name one thing about communism or facism that isn’t almost identical. But, China did grow up being staunchly communist. It’s how it rose to prominence. So if I am hungry, cold and tired living under an authoritarian regime, do I give a fuck what it’s called?
Semantics are getting in the way of a good conversation, so we can call it comuno-facism, or facio- communism if it makes people feel better. I don’t care about the name as much as I do the facts. But everything I am seeing is definitionally correct for both fascism and communism as history has laid such systems out for us. Either way it’s authoritarian.
I’m late to the party but I’m fascinated why incarceration rates are never linked when freedom is discussed. Surely they are a bigger indicator than say, the age I can buy booze?
You’re just a liberal of the John Locke era in denial. Admit it. 
Which isn’t a bad thing. If I HAD to describe myself with only one word as an option while a PLA dude has a gun to my head, that’s what I’d use.
However, no one in his right mind would ever associate me with the Far Left as interpreted in any any country, I’m normally a centrist who’s more progressive than most when it comes to social issues and certain things like LGBTQ rights.
Which probably makes me a liberal snowflake even though I’ve stated my reasons in “the stupid thread” are mostly pragmatic(remember the crony capitalism articles I posted? Hint: China is asshole!).
Anyway, you have a very warped impression of China, which is understandable since you’ve never been there. Seriously, people are just going about their day doing normal shit everyone else does. No one’s living in fear, nor consciously watching what they say or do 24/7.
Culturally, no one really cares about politics and when they do, it’s when Trump starts dissing them. Other than that, the general impression is that you have too much free time on your hands that should be spent on doing something more constructive like studying and upgrading yourself to make more money instead.
I’ll give you an example. I love doing business in China because there are LESS REGULATIONS than any other country I’ve been to. I’d bet a lot of money this will be the case if I compare them with the US.
I’ll tell you which is the most authoritarian country which isn’t a shithole I’ve been to. And @tails1 can probably vouch for this. It’s Singapore. Every single China person whom I know has been there always laments that it’s citizens are “so afraid of the law”.
I’ve been quite fair to China, but here’s one thing I really don’t trust. It’s their crime statistics. No fucking way. In fact, any official stats the CCP gives out should be treated like the burden of proof in their legal system. It’s bullshit until proven otherwise.
Here’s one very simple example:
They can’t be the top fentanyl supplier to the US while being also being a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Just this fact alone completely defies logic.
I mean, look at this shit lol:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1054531.shtml
Have you guys ever heard of this kind of scams in any other part of the world? If I told this to you without proof, would you believe me?
I’m NOT as well versed in the Catholic religion as others here but I’m not sure you’re gonna find many Catholics other than @BrickHead and @Sloth, the latter who’s now an ex-Catholic looking for some other denomination, which makes him a Christian version of a Ronin(lol just joking). I think @zecarlo may be religious but he doesn’t seem willing to discuss his views. I have no idea what denomination @pat is from.
Here’s all I know. 20 years of going to normal Catholic churches and I’ve never seen a single person speaking in tongues. I’ve seen people get over-emotional, pass out etc. The normal stuff that can be attributed to normal human emotions.
I go to an evangelist church of the loony variety once and 3 people near me can simultaneously speak in tongues at the same time every time a song is being sung. Several years later, this church’s leaders were charged with several counts of misappropriation of church funds and jailed.
Which isn’t to say I think it’s impossible. I just think it’s highly improbable that the average person can speak in tongues so easily so IMHO if people are doing that in a church, it’s more probable that they’ve been brainwashed by the church’s leaders, which means the church is a pretty shady one, to say the least.
I was an altar boy. I can tell Jesus to stfu and he can’t do anything about it.
Don’t get me started on the Jesus jokes.
You know what’s the difference between Jesus and a painting? You only need 1 nail to hang up a painting.
Yep it’s kind of weird. Like a Western city but not if you’re caught. But you could be breaking the law with chewing gum, but sex workers in the shopping centre are fine. And there was a feel that different people got treated differently for… errr… Reasons.
YES! Exactly what I was saying wrt to people going about their daily lives. Now imagine people from CHINA getting the impression that Singaporeans are “so afraid of the law” just by observing their normal actions like crossing the streets and obeying stop signs.
I believe they’re only limited to 2 places in the CBD where there are also lots of foreigners,
Still in conversion process, almost half way through.
I think you’ve hit on two examples that explains Singapore quite well. Crossing the street and the two places sex workers are. Super authoritarian, if you have right of way and walk into traffic, it stops. Very hard to do if you’re not used to it. And Sex workers but just in places to appease the foreigners.
I got on well with Singaporean colleagues and climbers. Had more issue with English ex-pats. They used to try and get away with stuff they knew wouldn’t fly in the UK. Some seedy characters.
Couldn’t agree with you more. It seems as though those kinds of churches substitute emotion for devotion.
Sad to say that the Catholic Church is not without it’s fair share of misappropriations of funds as well as scandals. The atrocities that have been swept under the rug are reprehensible. It just goes to show that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It’s why I’ve not stepped into a church in almost 20 years. Just feel dirty and feel like I shouldn’t even be in there. It’s a personal, emotional thing, which doesn’t make this an objective statement so I sincerely mean no offense to other Catholics. This was even BEFORE the scandal broke out. Something was just not right to me even then but I can’t explain it.
Not that a priest ever did anything to me before. The ones I studied under were great guys but could turn really violent if someone pissed them off lol. But then they were really old and one was Irish so… wait or was he Welsh? Can’t remember.
I remember one young priest was telling the congregation a story of how he got his “calling by God” and i was thinking this dude was insane. Then I married my wife and found out that he sounded just like one of her relatives with schizophrenia.
That is frustrating that you had that experience! It seems like lot of Catholics including clergy are substituting emotion for devotion these days. They will hear an amazing conversion story and feel like they need one just as amazing so they may tend to be hyperbolic. This leads to more and more outrageous sounding stories. Not that Jesus can’t or doesn’t come to some in extraordinary ways. Saint John of the Cross says, "people, on account of their joy in the gift, not only long to believe in it more readily, but even feel impelled to make use of it outside the proper time.” (A. III, 31:2) This can lead people to even make things up, so attached are they to the appearance of having a particular gift. The ironic thing is that these conversion stories that are hammed up in order to bring more people to Christ, end up being more off-putting that anything.
There are certainly some beautiful stories throughout the Catholic Church but I think that most of us are ordinary people. I am no theologian and I am definitely no saint but I believe the most important aspects of our faith are seeking truth, growing in virtue, and aggressively rooting out sin. These are not only the most important but also the most effective way to bring people to God.
Edit: Include participation in the sacraments to the list of most important things
It was either Gregory House or Thomas Szasz who said:
“If you talk to God, you’re praying. If he talks back, you’re psychotic.”
I think either the former or the latter said “schizophrenic”. Can’t remember. But I’m not endorsing the works of Thomas Szasz after speaking to numerous psychiatrists in different countries over several years because of my relative’s illness. Just thought the line made a lot of sense.
My POV is that religion is a personal thing, which is why I tend to not want to discuss my actual beliefs. If you’ve been to any MLM seminar, you’ll see people doing the same thing wrt to telling uplifting stories of how their lives have been changed blah blah blah. These are sales pitches, not religious practices.
I mean, we can discuss how religion has improved our lives and all. Maybe a couple of personal experiences here and there about spirituality. That’s fine as both a theological and cultural discussion. But you can easily tell when someone is mentally unstable when he/she says some weird shit that leaves the average person with a funny look on their face.
The priest I was talking about said something like he was saying a specific prayer to God in his mind asking whether he should become a priest. The the woman in front of him then said THE EXACT SAME WORDS he had asked God out loud.
The first thought that was going through my mind, and probably almost every person’s in the church was this man needed a psychiatrist, not the priesthood.
You should know we Catholics, while being poor guilt ridden saps, are also pretty cynical bastards when people say shit like this lol.
And the thing is I live in Asia. We are superstitious as fuck to the extent my parents will hire an expensive feng shui master every year to check out our houses and advise on placement of objects and all that bullshit. But when it comes to the Catholic faith, they won’t take stories like this seriously. I get that this sounds absurd, but it’s the way it is.
Here’s an interesting story that I don’t mind sharing since I’ve never told anyone this IRL.
Chinese people in general believe the soul of a deceased person will return on either the 7th day or the 49th day for one last visit, depending on where you live. For our case, it’s the 7th day. What we do is spread talcum powder all over the floor on the 7th Day after everyone is going to sleep to see if the dead person actually returned.
We did this when my grandfather died. The next day, there was rosary drawn on the powder, with a shape covered in thorns surrounding it, not unlike the crown of thorns Jesus was made to wear. Now, this drawing was meticulously drawn. Someone took a fuckload of time and effort doing this so I was the main suspect since I was the only “artistically inclined” person in the household as I was in some advanced art program in school which I eventually dropped for math cos I’m Asian.
But I know:
- It wasn’t me. (Duh)
- Given my 2.5 years of art education at the time specializing mostly in oil painting for the practical syllabus, I could tell this “drawing” was really done by someone with real skills that none of my family members possessed. This wasn’t some shit you do with your finger. It was something meticulously drawn and “carved out” with equipment and water.
- It conflicts with the Catholic faith since we don’t believe in the soul returning after 7 days.
This is the only unexplainable thing that’s ever happened that I can’t figure out other than one of my parents or brothers has a secret talent in art and had been secretly practicing the specific techniques required to pull it off for some time.
My parents took a photo and showed it to a priest. He said to just pray and he didn’t know why it happened. This was like 25 years ago and no one has owned up to doing it even though I’ve been pressing them all this time and my brothers have long left the Catholic faith.
EDIT:
To be clear, I’m one of the biggest skeptics you’ll probably ever meet because a multitude of “supernatural occurrences” that people around me have “experienced” in my presence that can be explained by basic human psychology so my current opinion still stands that the above story has a rational explanation to it on a balance of probabilities.
“Everybody lies”
House MD
Correct.
If that’s the case I know a lot of mentally unstable people.
South America, Mexico, Cuba are very much the same way. They will hang rosaries outside their windows to ward off rain, really treading very fine line between superstition and religion.
Being religious isn’t fun. It doesn’t fix your life, your just as fucked up as you were before. It isn’t happy-go-lucky. It’s actually really hard. People hate your guts by default. There is a hell of a lot of misinformation even within the religious communities. Then there is plain old hypocrisy and evil. Despite all of that, what it does do is tend to put one on the side of the truth, because if you are truly religious, you are always seeking truth and often finding it. That doesn’t mean you know or find The Ultimate Truth to questions like “Why do we even exist at all?” But in general, one tends to error on the side of the truth in most circumstances. And that’s a pretty big deal.
It’s not popular positions, most of the time, but being on the side of truth has it’s own comforts.
No, they don’t.
That is an amazing story! I am not sure if it conflicts with the Catholic faith because we don’t know who or what did it. Miracles do happen though. I would be curious as to why you think it conflicts with Catholicism.
You make another great point about religion though. It seems very unlikely that one can can convince another to truly believe something. You can present facts and evidence or provide a compelling argument but they don’t have to believe it. In fact people are often more steadfast in their beliefs when confronted with evidence that counters their beliefs. They have to come to the conclusion themselves.
What is the “it” in this statement?
In the end faith is a personal journey, nobody can do it for you. I respect people a lot more when they bother to do their own research and come up with their own conclusions. Those tend to be the true believers, vs. those who hear a few fluffy nice words and ‘get filled with the Spirit!’
Faith is what you have when you are all alone, the chips are down and nobody is there to help you. Everybody has this moment. They have either had it or they will have it and how you respond says the most about your faith and what you truly actually believe to be true.