/lit/ - Literature

>A similar consideration might apply in the current debate over gay marriage. The deep reason for the reportedly rather inchoate and intemperate wrath of Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien in the face of the proposed alteration in marriage law is no doubt his sense that a supposed "extension" of marriage to gay people in fact removes the right to marry from heterosexual people.


Marriage has always been a symbol of the association of sex and procreation. I'm not saying sex always has to be about procreation, or even that married couples shouldn't be expected to reproduce, but the two ideas should be connected in public consciousness. Without this connection, natural birth is not seen as mysterious or beautiful, but merely primitive. Artificial insemination and designer babies are on the rise, we're headed toward this future
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dialectic_of_Sex

Major philosophers, like Peter Singer, are now advocating "post birth abortion". Children are being more and more commodified, the same as sex is, due to their disconnection from it. It's a future of eugenics that doesn't value human life for itself. As abortion of defective children is on the rise, euthanasia of defective people may very well follow.

I'm not saying homosexuality should be outlawed. I'm not even saying homosexuals shouldn't have civil unions or be able to adopt (certainly that's preferable to foster parents and orphanages), but I am saying that marriage is the linchpin of our association of sex with procreation. This isn't about "equality", even in times when homosexual relationships were seen as spiritually superior to heterosexual relationships, gay marriage would still have been seen as absurd. The only historical precedent legal gay marriage has in the West is with deranged Roman emperors, and you might as well use Caligula's appointing a horse to senate as a precedent for animal rights if we're going there. And it becomes a pointless caricature to continue to define marriage as a couple, why even limit it to two people anymore? It's just a mock imitation of heterosexual marriage.

>>6742859
>John Milbank
>people here take this guy seriously

Christian Socialism? That's like, double stupid.

>>6742885
Yeah, Christian capitalism or Christian serfdom makes a lot more sense.

>>6742885
He's a combination of two of /lit/'s biggest and worst memes: socialism and Christianity. Of course people are going to spam threads about the Memedank.

>>6742942
I know. I hope all of this passes so I don't get assaulted in every thread about economics and religion.

>>6742942
Max Stirner is /lit/'s biggest meme

>>6743007
Stirner is a spook.

>>6743007
>two of

Leave it to the Christian memer namefag to not know how to read.

>>6743032
It's a bit silly to dismiss either socialism or Christianity as internet memes. Meme pics of Christianity and socialism aren't really proliferated than meme pics of any other topic. They're proliferated as topics, but hardly as memes. Christ-chan is an internet meme. Christianity in general isn't.

>>6743010
Stirner is character from a J. Peterman catalogue.

>>6742942
If you aren't interested in socialism and/or Christianity than you are a plebeian, sorry.

>>6743203

>>6743196

>>6743344
Stirnerist patriotism

not literature FUCK OFF

>>6743508
No, fuck YOU!

>>6742859
You posted this before, and I asked you this before, but the thread 404'd before I could check for your answer: is it really about the name? He proposing ivil unions just to keep the exclusivity of the concept of marriage, but he doesn't specify which amount of legal difference between the two should be maintained, so it seems to be about words, am I missing something?

>>6742861
>I'm not even saying homosexuals shouldn't have civil unions or be able to adopt (certainly that's preferable to foster parents and orphanages)

He thinks that it is preferable that kids should be brought up being taught that sodomy is normal than being brought up by foster parents?

>>6742861
>Marriage has always been a symbol of the association of sex and procreation.

This isn't the Christian marriage but only the civil marriage (not that the two are opposed). Marriage isn't just a sign between men, it's a sacrament, i.e. a sign between God and man. It's not just a public function but a blessing from God. Marriage isn't just about the rearing of children which are necessary for the good of state, but the union of man and wife for their own good.

It's vain to defend natural marriage at this point because the postmoderns have denied natural law altogether. They don't think that nature exists. They are pure nominalists who only believe in words and the power of words. We may as well start by defending supernatural marriage which exists with the blessing of God. The desacralized civil marriage is already woefully lacking and so defending it seems superfluous.

>>6743488
double spook

The modern state is something like Stirner's union of egoists. It has for its subjects the Cartesian ego, "I think, therefore I am."

The Cartesian ego has no essence other than thought. It is radically free to determine its own essence. So if the Cartesian ego thinks that it is a woman, then it is a woman. Whereas the ancient concept of the State was about recognising some higher reality and bringing its subjects in conformity to that reality, the modern state is about giving the liberated Cartesian ego every means possible to dream up its on reality. For example, the ancient Indian state was based not the Hindu cosmology of the gradations of beings, such that if you were born into the Brahmin class, it was because your soul had merited it in its past life. Religion is about bringing your soul into conformity with a reality higher than itself, but the modern Cartesian ego recognises no reality higher than itself and so has no religion, or, it is its own religion. The purpose of public life is not mutual assistance in realizing a reality greater than that which can be accomplished by the individual, but merely in preserving peace so that the individual can "realize himself", or "find himself" (as opposed to, for example, finding God).

>>6744047
HOW

>>6744061
I think it is about the name, and that's a fair thing for it to be about.

>>6744067
While marriage is a sacrament in the Anglican Church, Milbank has to contend with Anglicans pushing to make it a sacrament open to gay couples. So he's not just on the defensive from the secular, but actually on the defensive within the Church as well.

>>6744086
like smooth wine

>>6744063
Sodomy is bad, but not any worse than any other intercourse not open to procreation.

>>6744086
And it should be noted that this is more and more expected to be achieved purely within the market space.

>>6744088
do you do?

>>6744086
The modern license to form your own identity is completely novel.and opposed to all past societies where persons were.given an identity at birth and expected to realize it. Whereas the latter can lead to rebellion against society as the person feels his given position in life unworthy of himself, the former leads to the existential crisis, the rebellion against existence itself because all of existence puts limitation on his desire to define himself. It's really a rebellion against God. The person experiencing the existential crisis is in a war against God over who gets to define who he is; God put him in a world he has no control of, gave him natural qualities and limitations he has no or little control of, and this he absolutely resents because it limits his power. Therefore, the modern must deny both God and nature as potential limits on his being, and exist in a pure vacuum where he is free to be his own God in his own universe.

>>6744097

12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Most people never fully realize the Cartesian ego and terminate in the philistine level of the popular or fashionable. People who have experienced the existential crisis are in a more advanced stage of the Cartesian ego coming to realize its essence. When the Cartesian ego fully realizes its essence it is Lucifer; Lucifer is the pattern on which the Cartesian ego is model. For the Cartesian ego is this: to want to be totally self-subsistent until one can say what God said to Moses, "I AM THAT I AM", i.e. I am existence itself, I am everything. Kierkegaard documents the rising consciousness of the Cartesian ego in the Sickness Unto Death where the Sickness is the despair of the Cartesian ego as it struggles against God and nature to define itself, and the highest point of this despair is the despair of rebellion or defiance where the Cartesian ego finally realizes that thought it may not be able to define itself perfectly, it will exist purely in defiance of all things that would try to define it (like God) and would rather reign in its own hell than live in God's heaven.

Well it just goes to show that sounding thoughtful and intelligent doesn't mean you're not a fucking idiot.

A stupid argument can't become smart no matter how you dress it up.

>>6744094
>Sodomy is bad
Use plenty of lube next time, and build up to penetration with a lot of foreplay.

>>6744113
Nice post, really.

>>6744132
Sodomy is bad insofar as the highest expression of love in sex is that which is open to the creation of a child. Not that which is basically just for the creation of a child (since that is mere "pragmatic sex"), neither that which is just essentially masturbation, but sex which is about two people deeply in love with each other and open to the possibility of their physical expression of that transcending itself so far as to become another human being created by love.

>>6744113
This is how the Cartesian ego naturally develops.

It begins in childhood by enjoying its own thought and imagination. This is not harmful in itself, except the child is often encouraged to think and imagine whatever it feels like, is given no limit or guide, and so begins to feel like it should be its own master. Then in adolescence, usually, it realizes that there is an external world to which it is somehow enslaved. For example, he is told that he will soon have to get a job. He imagines himself having a good job and comfortable home, but this disgusts him because he has an infinite capacity for thought and imagination and so the notion that his existence should be limited by his "job" offends him. At this point it is most susceptible to becoming a Marxist or revolutionary in wanting to change the world so as to make it more pleasing to his thought or imagination. It has not yet become essentially aware. Awareness begins when it realizes that no matter how the world was arranged, it would still rebel against it. This phenomenon is described excellently in Dostoevsky's first half of The Underground Man where the man says that those building the perfect society are vain, because even if such a society were built the ego would still rebel simply to assert itself. No longer, then, is the ego a revolutionary against society, but is a revolutionary against God Himself. At this point, incidentally, the ego will become aware of God's existence, even if it were an atheist before; this is because it is becoming more and more aware of (1) the contingency of the world, and (2) that it is not contingent upon his own thought but exists separately from his own thought. This leads him naturally to imagine another ego for whom the world really does exist in its own thought, and that supreme ego is what people have always called God, and it realizes that it is this that it is rebelling against.

>>6744184
At this point the ego is capable of anything for the sake of rebellion. This stage of mind is the most approximate to the state of mind of the demons. St. Thomas says that it is impossible for the demons to ever be forgiven because their intellectual natures are perfected in such a way that they can never change their minds once they have made it up. Similarly, in this stage, the Cartesian ego begins to formalize a final state of mind to which it can fully commit itself to at all points and potentially never give up. It "hardens its heart", in the biblical phrase. Whereas the Marxist revolutionary is muddleheaded in that he is a revolutionary here, and a reactionary there, this metaphysical revolutionary fully realizes its revolutionary potential and becomes consistent in its thinking. It "hates with a perfect hatred." It's this malice that Christ calls the sin against the Holy Ghost. It's not that the ego couldn't be happy by accepting the Holy Ghost, it's that it refuses to be. In a sense the Cartesian ego was right to think that it could not be satisfied by the merely trivial like the job identity, because it really does have an infinite potential for thought and imagination. But instead of seeking for this infinite to be grounded in the infinitude of God, it wants to ground itself, be its own God.

>>6742859

Does anyone have that meme of Milbank saying " we were taking secular thought too seriously" ?

>>6742861
>Artificial insemination and designer babies are on the rise, we're headed toward this future
About time too. It's incredibly comforting to know I can tick a "prevent downs syndrome" and many other boxes.

>And it becomes a pointless caricature to continue to define marriage as a couple, why even limit it to two people anymore?
Why indeed. Ive been saying this for years. People in polyamorous relationships should have rights too. There is no real equality until I can marry both of my Thai girlfriends and have incredible threesomes that aren't deemed 'infidelity'.

>>6744206
?

The quote is from this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRemJU5mTPc
at 4:54

>>6744215
>About time too. It's incredibly comforting to know I can tick a "prevent downs syndrome" and many other boxes.
The more box ticking gets incorporated into making kids, the more kids who haven't had their boxes ticked will be stigmatized.

>Why indeed. Ive been saying this for years. People in polyamorous relationships should have rights too. There is no real equality until I can marry both of my Thai girlfriends and have incredible threesomes that aren't deemed 'infidelity'.
Why would you even bother getting married here?

>>6744090
>I think it is about the name, and that's a fair thing for it to be about.
Nah, that's just silly, if the exclusive privilege of heterosexuality exists only in name, it doesn't exist at all. The argument is based ln the assumption of christians being silly.
Also, why would they even bother that their privilege gets also applied to a minority, how does that make it lose its balue at all? I for one think christians are better than that.
Here's a suggestion to solve the problem forever: let's think of homosexuality as a special kind of infertility. There, everybody can calm down.

>>6744256
>The more box ticking gets incorporated into making kids, the more kids who haven't had their boxes ticked will be stigmatized.
Oh, come on. Kids with certain genomic 'errors' will no longer have to suffer the horrors that many kids today are born with - From a cleft palate to downs. It can also reduce the potential for those more susceptible to degenerative diseases like huntington's, parkinsons, etc... I'd argue that a child born with downs syndrome, or a cleft palate, or spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, or one of the many others is more likely to be stigmatized. Eradicating these would reduce stigmatization.

>Why would you even bother getting married here?
For tax reduction, potential loan/mortgage, and a few other financial reasons.

>>6744441
I really don't think that can be equated with designer babies.

Marriages don't provide any tax incentive unless one person makes way less than the other.

>>6744085
A double spook is like a double negative, it turns non-spooky