WordWolf

"Bumbaway achuna." "Equinsu ocha!" "I'll have you know that I have the reflexes of a cat and the speed of a mongoose. Throw it. I DARE YOU!"

Remind me to actually check at some point. Or look at it the other way- why didn't we come up with new names for where people live when we're talking MILLIONS, but rather used the same name for what was used for THOUSANDS? We can't ask people in the past to retroactively use a different name, but we can ask the current people to use a new one. References written in the 19th and 20th century to envelopes shipped are "mail", after all, not "snail-mail" even though we've started calling it that now.... "If you build it, they will come." I really am not privy to what other people were like around Cain over the years. I do know that people will try new things if they think there's a benefit- or can be convinced there's a benefit. Lacking any details about Enoch City, I have no certainity as to WHY anyone would have moved there. I think it's logical people moved there because they visited there and decided to move there. Why did they decide to move there based on a visit? There was some advantage- whether economic (trade is easier), social (all the entertainment and interaction is here), or some other kind. Besides, I think you're thinking of both a modern-sized city sprung up all at once, and a busy month or something, when I expect this took decades and produced something they considered a city but we wouldn't by current standards. I think they went from a few people to dozens to hundreds to over 1000, in steps and with things being expanded periodically. Of course, again, it's all my thinking, but I think it's not unsound or unreasonable at least.

Is that "INGLOROIOUS BASTERDS?"

To a degree, I think it's true that SOME people never go beyond what they are taught. So, if you teach them nonsense- give them catchphrases, cultural indoctrination, whatever- and they will just spit back whatever you gave them. When the ex-twi, cgeer crowd began pushing a God who wasn't all-knowing, we got supposed leaders and others all spitting back the same catchphrases by rote, not evaluating what was taught. I see the same thing sometimes with society-give people a catchy song and you don't need any evidence to back yourself up. For vpw, this was very useful. Since he encouraged others to forsake all other sources of information besides himself/twi, not going beyond what you are taught became not going beyond what HE taught. In fact, there's still people who believe that- we've even seen posters here claim the only real innovation-like scientific discoveries and improvements- can only be by Divine Revelation or by demonic involvement. Nonsense- but it's lazy thinking and of a piece with what vpw taught. Very self-serving, and, I imagine, a comfort to the intellectually lazy.

That's it.

I think it began because vpw, as a student, was very LAZY. He never saw knowledge as having value in itself, only as a commodity. So, he never did any thinking for himself. Look back at his entire history- it's the story of a person who plagiarized, ripped off, and parroted the work of others. He was incapable of original work because he never bothered to learn things on more than a surface level- so he could only repeat back or copy, never innovate. His idea of "innovation" was to make COSMETIC CHANGES so something was the same but looked different. So, vpw never went further than he was taught...until it came to abusing authority, Scripture, or people. In those, he was able to break new ground, as near as I can tell.

When people start turning up missing in London, a multi-national group of martial artists show up to confront the martial artist despot and his companions who kill the people and trick locals into cannibalism. It's a musical, some of the time.

"Bananas."

It may sound like it, but you're playing the wrong game there. And really, you've probably seen the other movie but my description was vague.

It is. Amazing how much of the song is hard to recognize, no?

I'm not in this discussion to psychoanalyze your wife-that's your business as I see it. I refuse to step out of discussing what alignment Big Bang Theory characters are on your say-so, however. And since you brought it up, I'll explain a difference, again. Seeing something to sympathize with does not make someone similar to a character, in and of itself. Someone jokes I'm like Sheldon Cooper and can't see it. That's probably because I have my own sense of how things are ordered, and don't relate that well to them because I'm a lot smarter than them, and have some interests in common with Sheldon. The differences end rather sharply because the same person would have to freely admit I socialize freely with them and would gladly volunteer help with a smile with no plan to get a return favor, and even prefer to offer one in return along with profound thanks and gracious acceptance when being given a favor by them. Sheldon Cooper refuses favors from others, and refuses gifts. He considers them all OBLIGATIONS and will calculate, to the dollar, the value of a gift to prevent himself from feeling the slightest degree of being beholden to them. He has friends he's been almost forced to accept, several of whom are scientists. When they get accolades, awards, or other acknowledgements of their achievements, he NEVER has a good word for them about them and NEVER thinks they are deserved-in fact, he often has a MEAN COMMENT while the others are all congratulating the friend. When his girlfriend was excitedly telling him about her paper making the cover of a peer-reviewed journal, he ignored her, and interrupted her to gush about having 100 Twitter followers at that moment. Sheldon has written up himself, and insisted on, signed contracts with his friend Leonard and with his girlfriend, Amy. Whenever one of them has an obligation to fulfill as written, Sheldon will immediately remind them. When he has an obligation to fulfill as written, he generally will go out of his way to try not to fulfill it and complain when they are brought up- and saw nothing wrong with blackmailing Leonard into signing a different agreement Sheldon freely admitted was phrased specifically to benefit Sheldon more than the previous, more reciprocal one. When we see Sheldon doing something nice for someone, it's always been due to one of 2 things: A) he's been scolded by another character for failing to do it and reluctantly admitted he was supposed to B) he's preparing to ask someone else to do something nice for them and is trying to butter them up first If you're married to someone who sounds like that, who never thinks of you unless she wants something from you, who never is happy to see you or others just because it's nice to see you, or a family member or friend, who never would offer to do something nice without being pushed into it, then ok, she really is like Sheldon Cooper and I'll concede the point. (And pray for you both.) Using liberty as occasion for the flesh often would look like Chaotic Evil because Chaotic Evils do what they want at the moment no matter the consequences for others. The yoke of bondage would look a lot like Lawful Evil because it would inflict a set of rules and regulations on people which allowed them to be exploited. The twi system, with its draconian regulations and 15-minute intervals, very much looks Lawful Evil. It's designed to use the rules to put others in subjection and enslave them for the benefit of a few and at the expense of the many. "But by love serve one another" doesn't fit in the Evil part of the axis at all. It would fit in the Good axis in one of the 3 boxes, depending on how it was done. A lot of the Groovy Christians arrived Chaotic Good, with no long-term plans on HOW to love one another, just a conviction to do it. Equally, there's Christians who are convinced a system is the best way to serve others- Billy Graham seems to be a great example of that. That would make him seem Lawful Good. In fact, the current Pope appears to be saying much the same thing (unless he's deceiving everyone, but the Franciscan Order as a whole seems oriented towards that.) Lacking a writer to confirm it, people are not as easy to classify as fictional characters, but general tendencies can be discussed. What I meant was, power FOR ITS OWN SAKE, power AS A GOAL and MOTIVATOR, that can be seen as an indicator for Evil. Those who want power because they want to wield the power for themselves and have no thoughts for those who they will have power OVER, they would appear Evil. Those who would use rulership specifically to try to benefit the ruled, they would appear Good. (Strider/Aragorn of Lord of the Rings is an obvious example of the Good, and Denethor of Lord of the Rings is an obvious example of the not-Good.)

If everyone will indulge me, here's a bit on how the old alignment system worked. It can still make for interesting discussions. http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html (There's links there for pages entirely about an alignment, and one about discussing using the system with real people, also.) There's 2 axes, ethics and morals. Ethics is Law vs Chaos, morals is Good vs Evil. Law refers to order and structure, chaos refers to independence and impulse. Good refers to caring about others, evil refers to only caring about oneself. Then there's neutrality toward either axis. So, Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good. Lawful Neutral, "true Neutral" (neutral neutral), Chaotic Neutral. Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil. Lawful Goods follow the rules and structure and say that benefits the most people. (Superman, Captain America.) Neutral Goods try to benefit the most people, whether by the rules or by breaking them if needed. (Classic Star Trek's Captain Kirk-the new movie one's different.) Chaotic Goods try to benefit the most people, and feel structures prevent that from happening. (Errol Flynn's Robin Hood.) Lawful Neutrals believe in structure and order and otherwise don't get involved with others/are indifferent. (The Transporter of the movie series, Captain Jean-Luc Picard.) I'm skipping "true neutrals" because I consider that, generally, a copout. Chaotic Neutrals believe only in freedom and in themselves. (Captain Jack Sparrow.) Lawful Evils believe in a structure, and believe it's there and others are there so they themself can be in charge. (Saruman, Sauron, Darth Vader, Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine, Darth Tyrranus/Count Dooku.) Neutral Evils believe they should be in charge, but will use structure or go off the map, whichever they think benefits them the most at that moment. (Jafar from Disney's Aladdin.) Chaotic Evils act solely from impulse and without a real blueprint, and will do whatever they want no matter who it hurts. (Gollum, Jason Voorhees, Charles Manson.) Sometimes, for fun, people will discuss who would fit which alignments in fiction or IRL, and why. They can make for interesting discussions of the source material, which is why I was doing it recently. Example: Indiana Jones. Someone claimed he's Lawful Good. I disagree. Henry Jones Senior is Lawful Good. Henry Jones Jr is "making it up as I go along." Maverick heroes in general, those who dash off without a plan and rely on luck and audacity, those circle around Chaotic Good and are fun to watch in action movies. People usually don't want to watch a movie about someone who believes in the system and tries to make it work, (Jaime Escalante of "Stand and Deliver"), but rather someone who gets to break all the rules and jump to the top inside of 90 minutes. The establishment characters are usually supporting ones, as people see them.

When people start turning up missing in London, a multi-national group of martial artists show up to confront the people killing them and encouraging cannibalism.

You may not recognize those words, but you've probably heard this song. "You move it to the left, yeah, and you go for yourself. You move it to the right, yeah, if it takes all night." "Now take it kinda slow, with a whole lot of soul. Don't move it too fast. Just make it last. You scratch just like a monkey. Yeah ya do, real cool. You slide it to the limbo. Yeah, how low can you go? Now come on baby, come on baby! Don't fall down on me now." "Hitch me hitch hike baby, across the floor. Whow, whow, whow, I can't stand it no more. Now come on, baby (oh, come on baby!), now get into your slide. Just ride, ride, ride little pony ride." "Yeah, yeah, yeah, shake your tail feather, baby."

Everyone has morals, whether good or evil. Everyone either cares about others or considers them merchandise. Everyone has a tendency towards order and structure, or to independence and impulse. Game alignment charts aren't precise tools for real people, but the general tendencies can be mapped. There's things I can relate to about the characters, but that doesn't make me the characters or ENTIRELY like them. I can relate to how Sheldon can't relate to the average person- but not how he discounts them so completely as people. I doubt your Mrs only sees people as "tools I can use" like Sheldon does. I got part of it, but you drifted into a mental shorthand and I can't read your mind. What did you mean by "the biblical duality of legalism/license"?

When I have some time, I can look into the phrasing. What we're thinking of as "coveting" (looking at her with desire) might not be what they thought as "coveting." I'll know better after I look things up. (They might have meant EXACTLY what we mean, which would be inconvenient for me, but at least I'd know.) The question isn't "would he make a city?" but "WHY would he make a city?" Here's what we have, courtesy the NASB: Genesis 4:12-17. "12 When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth.” 13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is too great to bear! 14 Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 So the Lord said to him, “Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. 16 Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. 17 Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived, and gave birth to Enoch; and he built a city, and called the name of the city Enoch, after the name of his son." So, we have that he made the city, which was VERY peculiar at the time. Without a specific verse saying "therefore he made a city", we look at his mindset at the time, his goals, his obstacles, and his life in general. We have very little to work with. What we have is 1) he won't be a successful farmer henceforth (he had been a farmer) 2) he will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the Earth, adrift, without a home (this troubled him to a degree) 3) the Presence of God would be hidden from Cain (which troubled him to a degree) 4) Cain thought whoever found him would kill him like he killed Abel (God addressed that one) So, with #4 no longer a concern, we have 1-3. Cain's reason would likely be one, two, or all of them. (I have no guarantee of this, but if I were a profiler, I'd be working from this as my speculative model.) Cain was hidden from the Presence of God- which could make him feel lonely, adrift. Cain was pronounced to be a vagrant and wanderer, a loner-which could make him feel lonely, adrift. Cain would need another way to get food or income other than farming- like raising cattle or taking up a trade depending on how many customers he could find. Despite the pronouncement, Cain was not forced to walk the Earth indefinitely, and was permitted to make his own choice, pick a spot of land, and settle down. To a degree, this would aid his attempt to do a job requiring a location-like raising cattle, farming (which he can't do himself), or practicing a crafting trade. Frankly, why WOULDN'T he pick a spot and settle down? He was already outside God's good graces, and starting up some kind of town would alleviate problems 2 & 3. I have no guarantee they're why he did it, but humans haven't changed so much in the intervening centuries that his motives would be alien to us.

"World Wisdom" takes work to acquire. Of course vpw was against it- and denigrated it. I do believe in Divine Revelation, but I also view "World Wisdom" with a LOT more respect than people wanted me to in twi (unless it was THEIR World Wisdom that was being discussed.) Knowledge is such an amazing thing for the most part, no matter what the source. It's one reason I've poked behind curtains for decades and read information addressed to INSIDERS down the years- making some FASCINATING discoveries people never meant to let slip. I never went around broadcasting them because I looked around for my OWN learning and my OWN understanding, not for everyone else's understanding.

This is obviously "Apples."

I think there's a distinction between INTENT and "the banality of evil", as the video spoke of. With "the banality of evil", they spoke of how many people can move along like drones and act in accord with others, in an "I was only following orders" fashion. IIRC, it was Edmund Burke that said that the only thing evil needs is for good men to do nothing. There's also the INTENT differences, which he closed with- where people CHOOSE to get involved and act, or choose NOT to get involved with something and harm. Simply put, the intent of evil is about who matters- with evil, self and the people around self matter, BUT NO ONE ELSE. Evil people have no problem prospering AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS-others do not count. Evil people are not required to SEE themselves as evil, either- often there are rationalizations and excuses for the self. Hitler called himself the savior of the German people and, apparently, bought into his own hype about being a great benefactor of them. The fact that he was getting them money by seizing the assets of Jews and other whom he wanted killed off was worthy of a footnote at best-as he saw it. vpw saw nothing wrong with his deliberate decisions to set up a twi structure that made it EFFICIENT for him to exploit young people, including molesting and raping women, whenever he wanted. In his final days, after years of doing that while advocating morals in public and discarding them in private, he apparently had no comprehension that he'd done wrong in the process. For fun, a friend and I considered the AD&D (1st/2nd edition) Alignment Graph recently. That's the thing with 2 axes- one for Good, Evil and Neutrality towards both, and Law (Order, Structure), Chaos (Independence, Impulse) and Neutrality towards both, with 9 possible results for the personality of a character or even a living person. (People don't have a writer to answer to, so they don't always seem easy to classify, especially when we don't have access to all of their lives.) http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html http://www.easydamus.com/alignmentreal.html http://www.easydamus.com/alignmenttest.html We examined the characters of the television show "the Big Bang Theory." Surprisingly, we agreed instantly that one main character was "Lawful Evil"-Sheldon Cooper. Sheldon IMAGINES himself as "Good", and when he plays games where he can choose alignments, seems to choose Good aligned characters like all his friends. However, no matter what he tells himself and them, Sheldon is Evil by Alignment standards. Sheldon doesn't think anyone else matters other than him-until their existence impinges on his own. When a FRIEND gets good news or congratulations, he is ambivalent and never responds with congratulations- unless he's TOLD he's supposed to congratulate others. Despite having a HIGH genius IQ, he legitimately doesn't understand the simplest things about other people-because he doesn't CARE to. This is the same man who studied Finnish to kill time while waiting for a computer operating system, but has never put in an afternoon to understand people at all. Sheldon wouldn't even HAVE friends except that Leonard considers him one (and signed a friendship CONTRACT to that effect), and introduced Sheldon to Penny, Raj and Howard, who in turn introduced Sheldon to Bernadette and Amy. The only character Sheldon's ever made friends with by himself was Wil- after considering him an enemy for years, until Wil gave him a rare gift. He only ever tried to make a new friend (Barry Kripke) because he wanted favors from him. Sheldon always has to have things HIS WAY and will overlook others completely, In fact, when a friend is troubled and needs a sympathetic ear, Sheldon will FORGET THEY ARE IN THE ROOM WITH HIM. His own status as a boyfriend is in spite of his lack of doing any of the traditional boyfriend things- and his girlfriend clearly WANTS him to do some and has to verbally remind him of anything-despite even having a GF/BF CONTRACT specifying his duties. He has no trouble whatsoever remembering when they suit him, but he has to be goaded into doing anything SHE wants to do. So, there's what I might consider "oblivious evil" -drones propping up systematic evil because they can't be bothered to know what's going on around them, and there's "evil intent"- someone making deliberate decisions to marginalize others and elevate themselves at the expense of others. Evil is about the exercise of power, and the attitude towards others, as I see it.

"Now take it kinda slow, with a whole lot of soul. Don't move it too fast. Just make it last. You scratch just like a monkey. Yeah ya do, real cool. You slide it to the limbo. Yeah, how low can you go? Now come on baby, come on baby! Don't fall down on me now." "Hitch me hitch hike baby, across the floor. Whow, whow, whow, I can't stand it no more. Now come on, baby (oh, come on baby!), now get into your slide. Just ride, ride, ride little pony ride."

IIRC, a guy we call Raf once made the point that Jesus was using a legitimate figure of speech- exaggeration- to make his point about adultery, which his audience understood. (He wasn't literally telling people to forgive exactly 490 times, either.) Regarding cities, I've seen the "mid-cities" of Texas between Dallas and Ft Worth. They're considered "cities" but I'd consider them something more like big towns. (I consider all of them collectively to make a "mid-city" but that's just me.) Technically, they are cities, just not on the scale I am used to. Cain was sentenced to be a wanderer and alone. Eventually, he tried to cancel that out, and he did so by building a big place and trying to get people to come to him instead of the other way around, as I see it. They didn't NEED a city, he WANTED a city.

It was??? It's Goodfellas.

"Disney's Beauty and the Beast." ================================== "But I'm funny how? I mean, funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?"

Jim Carrey Once Bitten Cleavon Little

"Hitch me hitch hike baby, across the floor. Whow, whow, whow, I can't stand it no more. Now come on, baby (oh, come on baby!), now get into your slide. Just ride, ride, ride little pony ride."