Starting A Business: The Need For Preexisting Wealth

One of the suggestions some conservatives like to make when people complain about financial difficulties is that they should start their own business.  Often stated flippantly, as if this is something easy in itself or easy for the majority of people despite their circumstances, this idea is often believed alongside the idea that the core reason why many people are not as prosperous as corporate executives is because they lack drive, passion, or even intelligence (ironic since this is an irrational idea for many reasons).  Laziness is what plenty of conservatives assume is the most significant obstacle to personal wealth, which is itself a lazy and erroneous stance that someone could only embrace because of assumptions, and false assumptions at that.  It is money that people need to begin a business, even if rationality is necessary to understand how to handle finances.

Hiring employees if the business is not a sole proprietorship, buying inventory to sell or equipment to use, distributing marketing, and paying for whatever overhead costs might be present (like utilities) all require money.  That a person's business could generate a vast income once it gains its footing cannot do absolutely anything on its own to get a business started.  Yes, the potential revenue could attract investors, either in the formal sense or just friends willing and able to support the startup, hoping to have their investments repaid or exceeded if the business finds success, but not everyone has the connections or visibility to secure this kind of financial support.  Not even a bank loan is some guaranteed way to help someone start his or her business.

If they had the money, there would be no reason to get a loan for the business to begin with, and since the business has not been established yet, there is no company credit history or reputation to leverage in favor of the loan, so already having money is clearly the best and easiest way to start a business.  What about offering property as collateral to make a loan more likely?  Not everyone wants or can afford to offer up their vehicle or land or home just in case the business venture backfires, which would put them in a worse financial position than before they had ever attempted the startup, due to all the resources that had already been put into it.  Receiving a loan is not necessarily easy by any means because having money makes it far easier to make more money or secure loans.

The conservative belief that people with financial struggles should "just start their own business" is outright idiotic in light of all this!  It is impossible or extremely difficult to open a formal business unless there is already a sizeable amount of money one can rely on.  There is no way short of connections to people who already have wealth or business success, extreme luck, or theft to actually get the money for launching a business if one desperately needs to start a business to gain more money, and finding investors or loans could so easily be about luck more than almost any other factor.  Whether the money for starting a business is provided by external investors/lenders or by someone's current personal wealth, there is an inherent need for preexisting wealth to start a business.  Someone has to pay for the resources that the organization will use.

Current strains of conservative ideology hold that the sole or primary reason why people cannot easily amass money is just laziness or perhaps stupidity.  This is untrue because it does not logically follow from a person being financially desperate that there are either of these things, and there is also the fact that there are numerous factors far beyond a person's motivation or persistency that will determine how much money they make, as well as how they earn that money.  Starting a business is far from some universal possibility or something guaranteed to strengthen a person's finances even if they are able to actually get that business established.  As usual, conservativism's tenets are largely contrary to reason here.  Of course starting a thriving business would be helpful for so many.  It is just not easy to earn that kind of money without already having money!

The Internet Of Things

The word internet is more familiar to many than the phrase Internet of Things, but the concepts the latter refers to are distinct from the former in a way that parallels metaphysics far more foundational than technology could possibly be.  The internet is the collective of webpages and online services that so many devices connect with today, while every laptop, smartphone, gaming console, tablet, and "smart" home device (like a wifi-enabled thermostat) fall into the Internet of Things--the physical objects that connect with the internet.  Some people use the words physical and digital separately, and rightly so: a digital version of a product like a book or a video game is not made of matter.  It is a construct of the digital world.

The physical world is not the digital world, for the digital world is nonphysical despite having a seeming causal reliance on the physical world (though even perfect correlations like this cannot be proven to be anything more than just that, perception-based correlations).  It is impossible to grasp a webpage or a digital book because there is no solid page to touch, just the physical components of the hardware, which runs with its own immaterial software, that is used to either project or access the internet or digital products obtained through the internet.  The Internet of Things is what allows someone to take advantage of the virtual world and view items or text with no physical substance whatsoever.

Depending on how broad the scope of objects referred to is, the phrase Internet of Things could refer to the physical devices that project the internet so that other devices can use them, or to both the physical items that sustain (servers and routers) or connect (like smartphones) with the internet.  It could also reference objects that interact with Bluetooth, which is usually categorized separately from the likes of WiFi or LTE connections despite being extremely similar, with its inherent pairing of devices being the distinguishing characteristics.  Words only matter as a malleable way to communicate things, so the real issue is about the nature of the internet, the objects associated with it, and how this parallels or is unique compared to the metaphysics of other things.

Even if they think the opposite, everyone who speaks of some things as digital and some as physical is already talking as if it is true (and it is both true and provable) that the internet is immaterial, just like people who use different words for "me" and "my body."  This distinction between hardware technology and the nonphysical world that it can create parallels the differences between consciousness and matter, with matter including the body that a mind perceives.  In this context, the physical could create the immaterial and vice versa, and it is impossible to demonstrate whether it is physical particles contributing to objects that gave rise to nonphysical consciousness or conscious perception of an individual that creates and/or holds matter in existence.  In fact, proving that matter of any kind exists is far beyond the worldviews of most people, who tend to assume that there is an external world on the fallacies of epistemological faith, even most people who gravitate towards a fascination with the laws of nature.

It is unclear which brings the other into existence because sensory perceptions are not logical proofs.  Either of these causal relationships is logically possible in that there is no contradiction in them on their own, as mind and matter are still metaphysically distinct and epistemologically knowable through separate proofs.  With the Internet of Things and the internet itself, there is a very close parallel with the physical body and immateriality of consciousness although the causal relationship is not as significant as it is for the knowable existence of consciousness and matter.  The internet might not have the ability to perceive and grasp the laws of logic, but it is nonphysical just like consciousness (and the laws of logic, which also transcend the mind) and correlates to the status of physical objects that project it.  Moderners are surrounded by artificial parallels to the substance dualism of mind an body and might go a lifetime without realizing any of this!

Perception And Reality

There is a sense in which everyone who even thinks there is a distinction between perceptions and reality beyond those perceptions--even if the perceptions aligned with the latter perfectly, it would still by necessity be true that perceptions are not the thing being perceived, unless they are introspective perceptions--recognizes that perceptions must already be part of reality in order to even be experienced.  However, in a deeper sense, it might be rare for someone to focus on the fact that perceptions are part of reality, just as a part of someone's consciousness and its subjective experiences, which of course must exist in order to be perceived at all, whether or not the perceptions are disconnected from actual external objects or events.  Non-rationalists might even overlook this fact entirely or thoroughly misunderstand it.

Memories of past events, sensory perceptions of visual or auditory stimuli, and dreams are all examples of perception-based experiences that either have no connection with the truth of external events or objects (like dreams, even if many things in dreams are inspired by or borrowed from waking sensory perceptions) or that cannot be proven to correspond to anything beyond one's mind no matter how strongly it seems otherwise (memories and most sensory experiences).  The epistemological disconnect between most kinds of perception and things beyond those perceptions, however, would not make the perceptions themselves illusions, as they must exist within one's mind in order to be perceived to begin with.  Since one's own consciousness is still a part of objective reality despite the fact that it allows for subjective experience, all the contents of consciousness, even if its perceptions of a great many things could be illusory, are part of reality.

These perceptions are just a part of the reality of conscious experience as a being that is incapable of knowing many things.  Of course, the necessary truths of reason still dictate even things that cannot be proven, such as whether an object one visually perceives is actually there or not, but the truth of logical axioms, one's own existence, and other facts that logically follow from axioms or one's conscious experience can still be known.  Even for an omniscient being, the truth of logical axioms and the existence of its own consciousness would still be the only self-evident things, as literally any other knowledge, even of reason and its own mind, would hinge on this prior knowledge, with even knowledge of its consciousness hinging metaphysically and epistemologically on reason at the absolute core.

Additionally, even an omniscient bring would still have perceptions, but they would simply know all truths about how they do or do not match up with scientific laws, historical events, or moral obligations!  Logical truths would be relied on even by the omniscient because nothing else is possible.  Perception is but one part of reality, one that might or might not be aligned with truths beyond it, but even subjective perceptions can only exist because they are logically possible and can only be known because of reason.  The sole way to absolute certainty is to not make assumptions and to recognize the inherent truth of logical axioms, the unchanging starting point of all necessity and possibility.  Logic quite literally dictates, confines, and reveals reality.

Game Review--Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (PS4)

"See, as the story goes, this place provided a safe haven for hundreds, maybe even thousands, of pirates, and they . . . they shared everything.  Property, resources . . ."

--Sam Drake, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

Introducing Nathan Drake's brother Sam, a character not even mentioned in the prior games, Uncharted 4 continues the much-needed improvement process made after the first game.  A new historical conspiracy, more layers to the relationships between characters, and vastly superior graphics, not to mention a survival mode, make this by far the best out of the main installments.  Naughty Dog even gets to include a very direct reference to one of its older games (Crash Bandicoot) in a way that highlights just how far the company has come.  Indeed, even the Uncharted series itself has come a long way from a very weak beginning to this largely masterful conclusion to the story of Nathan Drake--for now, at least.  Uncharted 4 is much closer to the likes of The Last of Us in its characterization than Drake's Fortune ever dared to be.  The stark differences in quality across many aspects of the franchise are blatant from the first minutes onward.

Production Values

Uncharted never looked as good as it does here in its PS3 days or, hell, in the PS4 remaster of the original trilogy.  Now you can see sweat on faces, freckles on skin, and more realistic eyes and facial expressions, as well as a broader range of strong colors.  Thanks to these enhanced graphics, it is easy to see that Nathan, Elena, and Sully look distinctly older, which adds more weight to their character interactions.  It does not hurt that the dialogue, though it still retains plenty of the franchise's signature sarcasm, gets much more personal than it ever did before.  There is far more than comedic responses.  The combination of the more lifelike visuals and the more earnest characterization is an enormous pillar for the single player story.  As was always the case in the series, the voice acting is great, both for the returning characters and newcomers like Sam Drake and Nadine Ross.

Gameplay

Only fitting for what is the last of Nathan Drake's adventures of this kind, there are prolonged climbing sequences, puzzle segments, vehicle-based levels in which Nathan can get inside or outside the car at whim, and sections where Nathan has to escape a vehicle that is aggressively following him, and shootouts.  Some of these elements have been utilized before in previous Uncharted games, but here they reach their zenith as far as the execution is concerned.  That which was established before A Thief's End is honored or perfected.  The adventure gameplay is also balanced better than ever before with the character drama, partly by offering the player chances to have optional conversations with characters like Elena or Sam at key moments.  With them being optional, you do not have to participate in these dialogue exchanges, but they excel at showcasing quiet, vulnerable moments that are so very human.  These characters are not rationalists by any means, as is typical in fiction, but they are at least not shortchanged here.

Even in the platforming, a core aspect of Uncharted from the start, new features include a grappling hook and piton, an object that can be inserted into some surfaces so that Nathan can have an additional handhold wherever he places it.  The platforming mechanics that remained stagnant, but not necessarily in a bad way, in earlier games are given one last evolution as Nathan engages in his most personal hunt of the series.  Had it never received these additions, the climbing and general environmental traversal would still be spectacular, particularly once Nathan makes it to a legendary pirate colony that has fallen into partial decay.  A network of wooden and stone structures and the shining sun allow for a great contrast to the indoor puzzles leading up to this point.  Furthermore, the story mode is not all that there is to play this time (yes, there was multiplayer in the preceding trilogy, but that was excluded from The Nathan Drake Collection).

Like Raid Mode in the Resident Evil Revelations games, survival mode (seen above) has the player withstand waves of enemies in different locations alone or in co-op.  Unlike the story, survival mode has its own progression systems where you level up, earning passive player buffs, pistol enhancements, and access to more weaponry and mysticals--single-use abilities that can inflict damage on enemies or slow them down.  The varying difficulty levels are actually what lets you play as specific characters, but the gameplay itself is not affected by the cosmetic change.  What can impact the mechanics is equipping certain unlockable items that generate more money for kills with a particular method or increase sprinting speed, for instance.  These perks are most helpful against more commonplace enemies, but in every 10th wave, with every five waves taking place in its own set environment, a "Warlord" appears.  These warlords are pirate djinns with their own enormous health bars as bosses, having the appearance of flaming skeletons in pirate clothing.  In between these bosses that come every 10 waves, there are also periodic objectives like remaining within a very limited area as enemies encroach upon it or collecting 100 pieces of treasure within a time limit.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Young Nathan and his brother Sam lived in a Catholic school for part of their childhoods, becoming familiar with Catholic imagery of the crucifixion, which ends up being relevant to a major treasure hunt later in their lives.  The two of them become inmates in a Panamanian prison in order to put themselves geographically closed to several clues about the wealth of the pirate Henry Avery, who is rumored to have established a pirate utopia centuries ago.  Sam is shot as Nate escapes the prison, yet 15 years later, when Nathan has retired from his past "profession" and settled down with Elena, Sam shows up alive and says a criminal from Panama has given him months to find Avery's treasure before he will kill him.

Intellectual Content

Henry Avery's fixation on Dismas, the repentant thief crucified next to Jesus, is a major plot point.  As if they neither understand what Roman crucifixion is supposed to have entailed and the sheer diversity and intensity of the torture involved, physical and psychological, Nate and Sam even talk about the crucified thieves alongside Jesus casually, referencing how Dismas says he deserves to be crucified and not Jesus.  Feeling or saying or believing that one deserves something does not make it so, for that would depend instead upon whether their are objective moral obligations and what those obligations are.  The repentant thief's words in Luke 23 would not make their treatment just or reveal moral obligations to readers of the Bible just because he said crucifixion was "deserved" in his case.  No, the Bible addresses criminal justice very thoroughly in the Torah, and everything from the constant separation of flogging and execution (they are never paired) to to prohibition of degrading criminals (Deuteronomy 25:3) to the rejection of different punishments for locals and foreigners (Leviticus 24:22), even aside from the prohibition of displaying a corpse--not a living person whose torture is extended as long as possible--for longer than a single day (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), all make it very obvious that combining these things would be among the worst of possible unjust treatment of a person.

Of course, the literary evidence inside and outside of the Bible indicates that Roman crucifixion went far beyond just a few lashes followed by public capital punishment; Jesus himself was predicted to not actually resemble a normal human form after his abuse, and the agony Jesus suffered in any individual part of his crucifixion process is already condemned by Mosaic Law.  Perhaps Avery's affinity for Dismas is purely a hoax to begin with, as Nathan later finds that the suposed pirate utopia was really being used to separate colonists from their wealth, which was then secreted away from the treasury, and eventually moved again to Avery's ship.  The pseudo-anarchist city of Libertalia, as it is called, was ultimately an egoistic trap made to give the illusion of freedom to its ordinary inhabitants.  What a surprise that non-rationalists would end up immersed in deception, betrayal of their companions, and avoidable violence!  Even after locating the treasure of Libertalia, Nathan once again does not get to keep the majority of it, the riches snatched away from him yet another time, an ironically fitting fate given that only Avery was the one to take that very wealth away from others.

Conclusion

Uncharted as a franchise did not immediately strike gold, yet by the end of its main narrative, characters that were once sometimes pathetic in how simplistic they were give way to characterization that actually reflects deeper experiences.  The whole time up until now, Uncharted mostly danced around why anyone would ever seek out a life of hardship to hunt treasures that might not even be found, and A Thief's End addresses this more personally than ever before.  The bonds between Nathan and the various people in his life are elevated high as they wrestle with their own dilemmas and priorities.  Uncharted 4 certainly has more than mere enhancements of the graphics to offer due to its writing and themes, even though the visuals are themselves given new heights.  That survival mode provides more to explore after the main story just makes it an even stronger game.  Hopefully The Lost Legacy, which I have yet to play, mirrors most of these changes for the better.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Blood can be drawn in the cutscenes or in the gameplay itself as characters use guns, swords, or their fists to attack each other.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "damn" and "shit" are sometimes used.

When To Show Mercy

There is never a necessary time for mercy.  Something almost everyone wants and yet almost no one is willing to show in the same way they arrogantly expect it, mercy is inherently undeserved and often used as an excuse to tolerate stupidity while favoring some people over others on baseless grounds.  I myself do delight in showing mercy to fellow rationalists and to the (seemingly) genuinely repentant whenever I can, although I can be far harsher with non-rationalists in person than even the abrasive comments I make about them here testify to.  It is not irrational or immoral for a person to despise mercy, however, though they would be a hypocrite to always withhold it from others and yet demand or expect it when they need it.  Justice is deserved; mercy is not, and non-rationalists cannot deserve to be treated like they are the equals of rationalists.  The unfortunate truth is that irrationalists are common since irrationality is the norm of a person's life until they intentionally flee from it, having relied on logical axioms being true the whole time and yet never actually realizing or rightfully caring about this foundation of all things.

If anything about truth matters, there is indeed a merciful aspect to not structuring every interaction with non-rationalists who have given evidence of their emotionalism (or other error) so that it is not aimed at intimidating and psychologically brutalizing them into, at a minimum, fucking silence for as long as they believe in fallacies or contradictions; this would be emotionally harmful to many non-rationalists, but not only do their subjective feelings and self-esteem not matter in this regard whatsoever, but since all truth is dictated or shaped by the laws of logic and non-rationalists misunderstand or do not care about reason, non-rationalists cannot deserve to be treated otherwise, as if they are intelligent or thoroughly deep or intellectually or morally mature.  That reason is true irrespective of their feelings means the latter by necessity either is meaningless or has value only because it is logically possible or necessary for this to be the case.

Some people do come closer to deserving mercy than others, though, even though of course not a single person could deserve it no matter how minor their sins or how repentant they are.  These are people likely to be very personally impacted by mercy and driven to abandon errors and turn from wrongdoing because they are already rational or repentant without being shown mercy.  The most strategic and significant times to show mercy are always these kinds of situations: when someone is poised to seemingly turn from irrationality and other sin or a rationalist who has made a mistake and yet chooses to not be characterized by their error.  In certain instances, mercy can truly help motivate someone to embrace reason and live for truth and justice, forsaking their assumptions, emotionalism, or apathy about deep matters of reality.

It is just that only the people who act as if they are truly contrite, are willing to change, or are already changing for the better fall into this relatively small group of people for whom mercy will have this motivating impact.  Almost anyone else is more likely to just feign greater rationality or regret for their philosophical mistakes (of which moral mistakes are but one subcategory), only to continue believing or doing the exact same things, or perhaps they will not even understand what the problem is to begin with.  Pretending to want mercy just to appease confrontation would always be an easy way for non-rationalists who at least can seem authentic.  This is why actually talking with and observing them after mercy is shown will reveal to the greatest extent possible given human limitations if they were genuine.

Again, not even the repentant can deserve mercy; they just come closer to deserving it despite it being logically impossible to deserve to not be treated justly, with justice quite literally being what one deserves.  No one could possibly deserve the slightest mercy: not family members, not the superficial, not hypocrites or irrationalists of any kind.  There are plenty of evangelical Christians who will even say that they realize mercy is undeserved, only to then somehow think mercy is owed to every person as if they do deserve it, when they themselves do not even respond to mercy correctly!  They might show mercy to people based on arbitrary emotionalistic criteria that do not match up with the universal ability of fallen humans to accept God's mercy and the universally undeserved nature of mercy.  All mercy is arbitrary in one sense, yes, but people who think mercy is deserved by some and not by others, especially when they put no more thought into this than the minimal introspection it takes to see how they feel about it, have put themselves in a position where they would deserve the contempt of all beings that understand reason.

The Inherent Invalidity Of Statistical Inferences

To infer in the sense of believing irrationally is to succumb to the idiocy of thinking that non-necessary truths about one object, person, or other thing must also be true of another.  An example is the fallacies of thinking that because the last two times someone saw a dog, the dog attacked them, that all dogs or even all dogs of that breed will be savage.  Another example is thinking that just because one has not become sick after years of a careful diet, that one will continue to not be sick as long as the same diet is adhered to.  There are examples of a more grand kind--there is no way to prove that the sun will rise tomorrow through memories of it rising each morning in the past, or to prove that that gravity will not suddenly act differently on matter than it does now.  Someone who believes these things are knowable has made assumptions through inferences.  A rationalist might realize that it seems like a given thing is true in light of other perception-based, probabilistic evidences that all fall short of logical proof, which are often memories of past experiences, but he or she would not believe that these evidence-based probabilities are true.

Inferences, as one can find out from a few moments of rationalistic thought, are the very essence of almost all popular beliefs about statistics.  Statistics about various things are not necessary truths like logical axioms.  They are only correspond to logical possibilities for the many variables and events that do not contradict logical axioms, even if the actual nature of accurate statistics is not understood by many people.  For instance, if four out of a set of four men choose a career in the military, this has nothing to do with the false idea that men are naturally violent or callous, and there is also no way to know if it was individual personality or cultural pressures that led them to make this choice.  This is yet another limitation of statistics obvious to anyone open to not making assumptions: not only is it impossible to prove hearsay statistics or to validly extrapolate from them to another population or set, but even an accurate statistic, such as that expressed by "42% people like steak," would not demonstrate why the statistic is accurate.  Almost all statistics are just unverifiable hearsay or exaggerated, assumed ideas in the first place, but even accurate statistics would not prove causal connections between things, only correlations at best.

There are many logically possible reasons why whatever percentage of people actually like steak--not that I or any being with my epistemological limitations could possibly know that percentage--might enjoy this kind of food, so it is folly to pretend like it could only be one factor that is responsible.  Moreover, one generation of people might like it for one reason, to be replaced by another generation of which different statistics would be true.  Even accurate statistics about most miscellaneous things people like to cite statistics for could suddenly change because there is nothing logically necessary about the statistic remaining constant.  The percentage of animals in a population with a specific gene could change, the ratio of people within a demographic who say they like a specific genre of music could change, the percentage of American buyers who purchase a specific product could change, and there is no logical necessity in these fluctuations, as each of these changes would be a logical possibility that cannot be proven by prior events or percentages.

It is asinine to believe that 68% of American taxpayers have a certain political stance or that 90% of a certain organism will/must exhibit some happenstance behavioral characteristic that does not define the nature of the species.  Fools confuse random events, correlations, or arbitrary trends that do not by logical necessity prove anything more for proof of random ideas.  Ask five people if they are rational, and if three say yes, it does not mean that 60% of the give people truly are rational (they would have to be rationalists for that to be the case), nor does it mean that 60% of all people are rational even if this was true.  Just because four out of a specific group of 10 people said they would sacrifice free time for the sake of a career does not mean 40% of people care about careers more than free time.  When people extrapolate statistics that cannot be proven to begin with, this is exactly the kind of stupidity they indulge in!  They are compounding assumptions by extrapolating something that might or might not be true another thing that is irrelevant or unverifiable.

The Humanity Of Christ

Jesus was likely not born on December 25th out of all the days of the year, with the Bible's story of his birth not directly commenting on which day or month of any particular calendar system it occurred.  Nonetheless, the arbitrary affiliation of December with the birth of Jesus receives more attention than much more substantial matters pertaining to the incarnation and its ramifications, if it happened.  The logical possiblity of a divine being taking on a human body (though Jesus is not Yahweh and the Bible does not explicitly clarify whether Yahweh created him), as well as the moral necessities that follow if such a thing did happen, are of much greater philosophical depth and consequence than which random day of a standardized calendar Christ would have emerged from a human womb.

The Biblically unspecified issue of whether Jesus was literally brought into existence by Yahweh is of some relevance to the incarnation and death of Christ, for if the entity sometimes called "the Father" truly begot his "Son" in an ultimate sense, Jesus would not have existed past-eternally as would Yahweh.  For such a created pseudo-divine being to take upon a human body and eventually die would not be as strange as if it was truly a lone uncaused cause that did this, though Trinitarian theology is already logically impossible in itself and in how it relates to other Biblical events and doctrines.  If Jesus and Yahweh, along with the Holy Spirit, are all fully one and the same and yet still distinct (a contradiction and thus impossibility already), the death of one of them would be the death of them all, and yet there would then be no world for Jesus to be resurrected into since contingent things depend on Yahweh's existence according to Acts 17:28.

However, there is nothing logically impossible about a spiritual being that precedes the cosmos entering the universe in a physical form while still being fully divine to whatever extent it was before this incarnation.  For something to be impossible, it must contradict logical axioms, and contradicting other necessary truths that follow from axioms or contradicting itself would be subcategories of this, since all truths and possibilities by necessity cannot conflict with the intrinsic truths of axioms.  For Jesus to exist and not exist at once or for him to be only human and only divine simultaneously is impossible.  No divine power can sidestep logical necessity.  It is just that the incarnation itself is not something impossible, nor is it as difficult to grasp as some people think in spite of its layers.  Possibility alone does not mean something is true, but it does mean there is nothing metaphysically impossible about it, however bizarre it might seem.

The humanity of Christ is also of great importance in connecting with something that would already be clear from the Genesis creation account, which calls God's creations good (Genesis 1:31), and the moral details of Mosaic Law, which condemns adding to God's commands (Deuteronomy 4:2).  The human body might be susceptible to decay and eventual death on this side of Eden due to biological death being a foreshadowing of the cosmic death human sin deserves, and it can be used for irrational ends of many kinds, but it is not itself immoral.  Having a human body, celebrating the body, and enjoying the body's various pleasures in any way not condemned in Biblical commands, is something that is objectively nonsinful by true Christian standards, and if this was not the case, Jesus could not remain totally innocent after the incarnation simply by having a body.  That "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14) and that Jesus is supposed to be without sin (directly implied in John 8:46) would not even be possible if the body was sinful.

These are not exactly popular things to acknowledge aloud at Christmas even among most Christians.  The evangelical focus on irrelevant or assumed issues at this time of year is of course given to false or shallow ideas, for the most part.  Some of these truths even inherently exclude tenets of evangelicalism like conventional Trinitarianism and legalistic prudery.  Evangelicals sometimes prefer to dwell on idiotic things like the phrase "happy holidays," pagan traditions, or the cultural association of Jesus with December rather than the logical possibility of the incarnation, its moral ramifications, and other issues pertaining to an incorporeal, divine being that existed before the universe physically entering it.

The Utter Inadequacy Of The Golden Rule On Its Own

In Matthew 7:12, Jesus says to always practice treating others the way one would have them treat oneself.  What is almost universally overlooked is how he is not inviting a subjectivist, conscience-based moral epistemology that both contradicts the Bible and is logically invalid wholly apart from whatever the Bible says.  In that very verse, he mentions how this is when practiced correctly consistent with Mosaic Law, yet Yahweh's commands are far more precise than the "golden rule" of doing to others what one would hope for it the treatment was reversed.  It is absolutely impossible to know from the golden rule which actions are obligatory, which are evil, and whether morality exists at all.  On its own, the golden rule even could lead to outright sin on the Christian worldview in everything from casual interactions with other people to the most egregious human rights violations.

A key Biblical example would be the thief on the cross who according to Luke's account actually said he thought he deserved forced nudity, extreme physical torture, and a prolonged, sadistic execution because some tyrant had the power to use crucifixion to intimidate others.  Only a goddamn fool would think that any of this is allowed or prescribed in the same Mosaic Law that condemns more than 40 lashes, separates corporal and capital punishment, degrading someone in their physical or psychological treatment, and forbids discrimination against foreigners (Roman crucifixion was reserved for non-citizens); in fact, Roman crucifixion is perhaps the single most Biblically unjust legal punishment from all of recorded history [1], and the Bible itself says someone who was victimized by it though it was just.  Over the centuries, many Christians have in their almost endless stupidity and confusion over Biblical ethics agreed with the thief on the cross.  This is one way to apply the golden rule without rationality or justice behind it.

There is this side of the matter, that people might mistakenly think they deserve abuse, dehumanization, and disproportionate punishment (the Bible always has upper limits that are never to be transgressed for each of its physical and financial penalties), and then there is the fact that the golden rule on its own would mean that even someone who was being justly punished would be being mistreated as long as they did not want to be treated as they actually deserve.  If the golden rule is all that there is to morality, morality does not really exist and is a matter of subjective whim, for the person who does not wish to be treated even as they deserve would be right under the golden rule isolated from all other truths or ideas about justice.  People who like the golden rule almost never seem to realize this, but then again, no one who actually thinks the golden rule in a conceptual vacuum even gives a moral direction to go in are highly irrational already.

The golden rule is utterly, woefully inadequate at actually describing the many precise actions that are just, permissible, or sinful on the Christian worldview, and no Christian should have a difficult time accepting this.  What if someone would like to be murdered because they want to die but do not want to commit suicide?  What if someone does not want to be treated justly no matter how heinous their sins?  What if someone truly believes they deserve cruelties that are inherently unjust no matter who they are inflicted on?  The concept of the golden rule on its own, apart from the strict context of Mosaic Law's details, is only about subjective preferences and the empty emotionalism of believing something is morally good or obligatory because one feels good about it or wants it.

Jesus, an obvious Christian theonomist, would be contradicting almost everything else he says about God's commands in the Torah if this is what he was supporting.  That he says that the golden rule summarizes "the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12) shows that this is not the foundation or clarity of Mosaic Law, but the other way around.  Mosaic Law with all of its specific prohibitions and punishments is the foundation of the golden rule!  Leave it to evangelicals to misunderstand the most fundamental, deep things about a Biblical issue, though.  There is not one thing about Christian theology or rationalistic philosophy, the truths of the latter being the intrinsic foundation of all things, that evangelicals will not misunderstand at least in part.  Assumptions, contradictions, and vagueness are the hallmarks of their philosophical ideas and beliefs.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html

Movie Review--The Ring Two (Unrated Edition)

"Evelyn wasn't well.  She had been having problems during the pregnancy: hallucinations, visions.  She believed some thing had come for her baby from the waters of the world beyond this one."

--Nun, The Ring Two

Japanese director Hideo Nakata helmed The Ring Two after he directed the original Japanese film Ring and after the American remake called The Ring was released under a different director.  While neither being a sequel nor having a director of a particular nationality making a movie for an audience halfway across the world by necessity damns a film to fall short of its potential, The Ring Two is by no means as well-crafted as The Ring.  Wooden or halfhearted acting (if some of the cast members cannot do better than this, then they are not cut out for acting), a more generic attempt to explore Samara, and dialogue that neither brings more philosophical weight nor reveals deep characterization all keep The Ring Two mediocre at best.  Not even the usually talented Naomi Watts saves this movie.  As for this review covering the unrated edition, a movie only has to not have an extended cut rated by the MPAA to have an unrated edition, yes, but the unrated version of a horror film is usually supposed to add more explicitly violent or macabre content, and there is no indication from just watching this edition of The Ring Two that anything belonging in these categories was added unless it is only a few second long.

Production Values

There was an (for me) almost surprising lack of effects needed to tell the story of this sequel, though putting the focus on the cast is not something that elevates the movie.  On the contrary, from Emily VanCamp, who became an MCU actress but whose younger self is in The Ring Two, to Naomi Watts herself, the actresses and actors here are mostly bland or needlessly detached in their performances.  With respect to Naomi Watts and how she is so much more expressive and well-realized in something like Peter Jackson's King Kong, Perhaps the difference is because of the respective directorial styles and input of Peter Jackson and Hideo Nakata.  In either case, though King Kong and The Ring Two both came out in 2005 and star Naomi Watts, the latter does not even come close to utilizing her as well.  Unfortunately, it does not utilize its other cast members well either--especially in a film with abysmal to mediocre acting, David Dorfman as Aidan Keller, the son of Naomi Watts' character, is pitiful compared to the child actors of several more modern horror movies like It.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A young girl named Emily is shown Samara's cursed videotape by a romantic interest desperate to pass on the death sentence before seven days have passed since he watched it, but Emily holds her hands up over her eyes after being told it is the scariest movie of all time.  Rachel Keller and her young son Aidan have moved to escape their traumatic confrontation with Samara, but Rachel sees the face of the boy and momentarily sees Samara grab her.  She enters the house where the death took place, takes the tape linked to Samara out of the VCR, and burns it.  Aidan nonetheless has a nightmare in which Samara emerges from a TV screen to grab him, after which he begins having an aversion to water and seeing Samara.  By burning the tape, Rachel had in a sense released Samara to try to take over Aidan's body to use as her own vessel.

Intellectual Content

In addition to wasting its cast and story, The Ring Two similarly wastes the few more explicitly epistemological or metaphysical issues raised throughout its runtime.  When Rachel is asked if her son's pictures of himself and a mirror that supposedly show Samara (the man asking her has not yet looked at them) prove a ghost is attaching itself to him, she says that "The proof is what will happen."  Of course, future events cannot be proven to be about to happen, as one can only prove that it seems like a specific event will take place out of all the logically possible future occurrences.  Even after such a thing happened, one would not be able to prove that it did occur because there is not a way to prove that one's memory of events is accurate and, more importantly, no event is true by necessity, for only logical axioms, what logically follows from them, and conceptual truths (which are logical truths pertaining to specific concepts beyond just the laws of logic) are inherently true and none of them are events.  Another idea that could have been explored more is a reference to how Samara's mother supposedly feared an afterlife of water and a sea demon affiliated with it--this also is relegated to a single scene, but the lore potential and hypothetical metaphysics held much promise.

Conclusion

Gore Verbinski's The Ring does an admirable job of adapting foreign source material to a Western style while maintaining a PG-13 rating.  The Ring Two loses most of what made the lore of the first one unique and does little to nothing with its characters.  Lead actress Naomi Watts is not at her best, and the script is weak.  Samara herself is both less mysterious (which is not always negative on its own) and far more generic than before.  There is no particular reason for there to actually be a sequel in the first place when the content and execution is so lackluster at best.  Moreover, even the unrated edition of The Ring Two has scarcely anything to make its mark as a horror film, as its horror elements are extremely weak in a thematic and presentational sense, and generic practically the whole way through.  The Ring series only went downhill after the first entry.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Blood comes out from under a door in one scene, but the majority of the content related to violence is just Samara grabbing a struggling victim or Rachel trying to force Samara underwater to drown her.

 2.  Profanity:  For a movie over two hours long and one that is unrated, there is not much profanity here.  Still, some profanity like a use of "fucking" is used.

Intangible Assets

At least some in the business world have realized that not all things a company can use to further its successes are physical.  No one can grasp or physically see employee morale, consumer brand recognition, and so on because they are objectively nonphysical.  The phrase intangible assets often specifically refers to such things like positive consumer attitudes, brand recognition, and intellectual property as opposed to something like a production facility or land.  This phrase is entrenched enough in business language for it to not be unfamiliar to people who have thoroughly scrutinized business terminology, but precise enough to not be a phrase or a concept that everyone interested in business would naturally think about.  All the same, there are a handful of ways that this phrase and the idea behind it connect with vital philosophical truths and issues.

To clarify, no one needs to think about examples of immateriality in business in order to think about, discover, and understand ideas pertaining to metaphysical immateriality and materiality and the epistemology of proving or disproving them.  However, the concept of intangible assets is also something that could be easily overlooked by businesspeople, some of them naturalists, who use the phrase without ever actually thinking about its actual veracity or ramifications.  Business transactions actually require some forms of intangible assets like consumer willingness to purchase or recognition of company brand, while a few intangible assets like software differ significantly from the ones I will focus on.  

Brand recognition, for instance, is just a reaction of familiarity, or a state of mind within a person's consciousness, and goodwill is just an attitude extended by one person to another, which also makes it a state of consciousness.  In other words, these particular intangible assets that have been identified by some in the business world are just situational aspects of consciousness.  Consciousness, as an immaterial thing that might or might not ultimately spring from a certain arrangement of matter [1]--and that might also be what matter is sustained by on a constant basis, not that any person with my limitations could prove either possibility--and specific mental states like familiarity with a company's work or logo are part of the the experiences specific people.

In other words, some intangible assets are qualities of an individual's consciousness, of something other than themselves, instead of separate things with their own immateriality.  They are neither physical things, for all physical things are tangible at least under certain circumstances, nor immaterial things with the same kind of metaphysical separateness as empty space, time, or the laws of logic, none of which are qualities of other things although there are logically necessary relationships between them and other things.  In the same way that emotions are immaterial despite potentially being accompanied by bodily reactions but could only possibly exist as part of a whole consciousness, the intangible assets like brand recognition or consumer appreciation are merely fragments of something more fundamental that is also immaterial.

In addition to the exact metaphysical nature of such intangible business assets, there is also the fact that there might be plenty of businesspeople who use the phrase intangible assets and knowingly accept the concept as true while simultaneously believing that everything is made of or causally reduces to physical matter.  Naturalists, like everyone except a perfectly consistent rationalist, are capable of not only making true or false assumptions, but of believing in contradictory, exclusive notions.  I do not mean these businesspeople necessarily embrace a strict metaphysical naturalism which would entail that nothing at all that is immaterial exists or could exist, which is already demonstrably false, but a more naturalistic approach to something like consciousness according to which an immaterial thing like a mind can is brought into existence by something material (the brain and/or extended nervous system).

Again, no one needs to specifically focus on the deeper metaphysics of intangible assets to understand immateriality, consciousness, or matter, but these other subjects do dictate the nature of this aspect of business although many in the business world might completely ignore it, as well as ignore the numerous other ways that business, which many pursue with practical intentions in mind, is inescapably intertwined with philosophy.  Not everything that a company can use to its benefit is physical because not everything is physical.  That some immaterial things exist is not purely speculative, but an objectively demonstrable fact, with consciousness being not only one of the immaterial things that can be proven to exist by logical necessity as long as there is any thought or perception, but also one of the only things that can be proven to exist in the first place.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/what-is-emergent-naturalism.html

The Nature Of Hearsay (Part 2)

Unless someone articulates logical truths that anyone could realize by looking directly to reason, there is no such thing as that person making claims that are truly knowable.  However, this would not involve claiming that any particular event of the last happened except for the logically necessary creation of the cosmos by the uncaused cause [1] happened because there is no way to demonstrate any other particular event has actually took place.  Current events and history alike have this epistemological barrier separating one from this aspect of reality.  There are numerous ways, though, that many non-rationalists cling to double standards when it comes to which events of the historical timeline or present day that they believe, despite how they never have proof of these conclusions, only subjective persuasion, consensus, or random assumptions to fallaciously hold onto.

In part one of this series, I addressed the epistemological stupidity of belief in hearsay, all hearsay, not just random, possible but unprovable events that a person one subjectively likes says happened, as well as the relationship of this fact to both how one should live in light of the abundance of hearsay about serious matters and to the evidence for Christianity.  Here, I will focus on the utter hypocrisy of almost everyone who believes in hearsay.  Believing or disbelieving hearsay is epistemologically irrational in itself, but most people who situationally acknowledge certain claims of personal or historical events as hearsay are quick to embrace others as true simply because they are slaves to the fallacies they share with their supposedly honest source.  This is why there are fools who think they can know Fox News is telling the truth as opposed to CNN or vice versa, to give just one example.

It is the idea knowingly or unknowingly expressed when someone says "I trust this news organization is telling me the truth, but not that one."  It is the idiotic notion that one can "know" one news story about logically possible foreign events is true as opposed to another based on subjective persuasion or an assumption (that is all anyone could base their belief it is true or false in), or that one can be justified in believing without absolute logical proof instead of mere words.  If one newspaper reports that a natural disaster struck a country on the other side of the world and another reports that the disaster never occurred, how could one possibly know which is correct?  Either one could be true or could have been true, but only one can be true at a time.  In no case can one simply know which is the case by hearing or reading the assertion.

Scientists, historians, journalists, news reporters, and everyday people openly talk and act as if they make such assumptions all the time, yet hearsay is epistemologically nothing more than unverifiable and unfalsifiable claims--any logically possible event might have happened, but there is no way to prove it did.  This is no less true of whether someone committed murder five days ago than it is about whether Jesus resurrected almost two thousand years ago.  Hearsay is universally incapable of establishing anything except that there is hearsay.  However, conservatives and liberals, people stupid enough to confuse scientific experiences and the laws of logic, and many other groups of people will hold to obvious double standards when they do believe in hearsay, and rarely does someone consider the evidence for or against an event having happened, distinguish between evidence and proof, and make no assumptions at all about the matter.

When someone thinks that it is impossible to know if a favorite public figure who was accused of murder is guilty but that they can know the accuser is wrong, or thinks that they can know one historian claiming to know the past (instead of just evidences and perceptions suggesting that certain past events happened) is correct and another is wrong, they have added hypocrisy to their irrationality of making even a single assumption in the first place.  What this does not mean that people are irrational to just be honest in stating that they remember certain events happening or that certain events are logically possible or impossible.  On the contrary, recognizing evidences supporting or leading away from various logically possible ideas is entirely compatible with rationalism unless it is mingled with assumptions.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

The Pleasure Of Food

There are far more foundational and otherwise significant pleasures than food.  Before it is an opportunity for experimentation and pleasure, it is a means of survival first and foremost, and survival is objectively meaningless on its own, without any logical or moral significance.  Although which things people find pleasurable and the exact emotions or sensations they experience while eating or pursuing some other pleasure are subjective, even on a subjective level, food seems to rarely be the pleasure that people in general, given the opportunity to pursue other things, will build their life around.  There are still objective depths to other pleasures that food can never reach no matter what certain individuals or cultural groups feel or believe.

For example, sexuality has a far more abstract nature and far more extensive, precise ramifications, in addition to being more existentially personal, more nuanced, having more moral dimensions, and being more foundational to introspective life.  It is clearly more philosophically significant than food could possibly be since food is a practicality that can be used for reflection and self-exploration, while sexuality is a personal, abstract thing that happens to have practical uses that still never separate from its inherently philosophical nature (all things are philosophical, but some things are deeper than others, and sexuality is far deeper than food).  However, food is still a part of human experience and is still governed by the necessary truths of logic.

That food is not central except to the philosophically secondary practicalities of life does not mean there is no way to enjoy something as basic as food in an overtly rationalistic, existential way.  Food can be a source of great joy, a reminder that human life can have its pleasures even across a lifetime of trials.  Consuming food can be a very personal experience alone or when shared with friends.  Creating it can be an expression of genuine intelligence, emotion, and creativity, and devouring it is a pleasure unique among all others in the method by which it is experienced.  It is just that food is never foundational or significant in any way on its own, but only when it connects with other issues that are themselves foundational, personal, or abstract--except significant as a practical necessity to survival, yet even this is at best secondary to matters of deeper philosophy.

In the context of Christianity, consuming food is yet another experience that God would have prepared the body for so that the mind could appreciate it or even long for it.  The asceticism (an anti-pleasure ideology) of the general evangelical church is actually mistaken for a doctrine of Biblical Christianity when everything from food to sexuality to friendship are pleasures to enjoy within the much larger range of moral freedom than even lifelong Christians often realize the Bible grants--the most all-encompassing restriction is to not violate its actual commands or their logical extensions (see Deuteronomy 4:2).  The body, just as it was fashioned for sexual pleasure, is prepared for the sensory experiences that can be involved in merely eating, and Yahweh is not opposed to intentionally trying to spark or delight in pleasures of the tongue.

Food is still an example of a practical necessity that can be savored in a much deeper way than practicality alone could ever allow for or deserve.  The most foundational and/or highest pleasures all pertain to rationality, autonomy, introspective connection with one's own self, moral stability, deep friendship rooted in rationalism and thorough openness, and so on, the difference being that these are inherently core or existential things that can have practical benefits instead of the other way around, with all truths about them transcending mere convenience.  Food does not even begin to rival these things, and people who think of food as the deepest pleasure of life fail to understand the comparative triviality of something that has no metaphysical, moral, or epistemological primacy.  None of this negates that food is a legitimate pleasure that Christians can appreciate all the more as Christians.

True Egalitarianism

Plenty of people, including many conservatives and liberals, might say they care about treating people fairly, without any discriminatory favor or mistreatment on the basis of gender (or race, age, and so on).  There is no such thing as a rational conservative or liberal--though several ideas associated with each ideology are true--but almost all of them will talk as if and perhaps truly believe that they do not treat people in an arbitrary or inconsistent manner.  They like to think of themselves as rational, just, ideologically and morally consistent people.  However, if someone is a contemporary conservative or liberal all the way through, then they cannot possibly avoid beliefs or treatment of others that are inherently sexist, with the sole exception of someone who takes aspects of liberal gender egalitarianism and remains perfectly consistent with them.

When it comes to gender, many people like to pretend like fairness is expecting women to cover their bodies but not men (and if men were pressured to cover there bodies, this would be consistency in an erroneous direction), women to be affirmed for their beauty and sex appeal and men for their financial stability and physical strength, and men to not notice or care when they are abused by the opposite gender, among many other things.  Only an intellectual insect in the grip of irrational beliefs would ever think any of this could possibly be fair to men and women!  Still, even people who supposedly care about refuting and fighting gender stereotypes might really just care about benefiting only women or only men, which contradicts the entire nature of true egalitarianism.  They might be delusional enough to think some unfortunate personal experience with the opposite gender demonstrates that their gender is the oppressed one and the other gender is not.

Just as Christianity is not true or false or does not entail certain ideas because of one's upbringing or wider experiences, gender egalitarianism having to do with all men/boys and women/girls, recognizing the philosophically false ideas of all gender stereotypes, and liberating everyone from gender stereotypes does not depend on anyone's personal life experiences.  Gender egalitarianism is not about women or men, but about people and their individuality and shared humanity, and gender egalitarianism is demonstrably true, whether or not some man or woman has experienced victimization that, if they were not rationalistic, would motivate them to embrace assumptions, hypocrisies, and outright falsehoods.  The events of our lives do not make egalitarianism about just men or just women, as some pretend.

People who will not focus on the issues of egalitarianism themselves, which are grounded in and revealed by reason, without getting past their own personal background and preferences are goddamn fools, especially since it takes no more than a moment or two to fully understand why someone's gender and personal history have nothing to do with whether gender egalitarianism is philosophically true as opposed to misandry or misogyny--egalitarianism is not only opposed to one or the other.  The random experiences of people do not make egalitarianism true; it is true by logical necessity on its own (and I am not even talking about strictly moral egalitarianism, but metaphysical egalitarianism).  The trauma women and men have had forced upon them by an irrational, unjust society does not negate the destructive ideas and behaviors thrust upon the opposite gender.

True egalitarianism is not dictated by how one feels about one's own gender or the other one, or by as how one has been treated by one gender of the other.  People who think themselves egalitarians while they ignore or do not care about how issues like sexual consent or leadership are about both men and women are just as stupid, blind, and hypocritical as the idiot who thinks they understand Christianity while believing in evangelicalism or who thinks they are deeply rational without being a rationalist.  People who call or think themselves egalitarians while privately or outwardly favoring one gender over the other, when they reveal the evidence of this stupidity, can of course be refuted and mocked with pleasure, for personal humiliation and social ostracization might be the only things that grab the attention of the irrational.

Sexual Horror

There are two ways to make a work of art fall into the genre of sexual horror: either derive the horror elements from nonconsensual sexual activities or the threat of it, or make the environments or creatures themselves resemble genitalia to make them seem alien or eerie.  Sexuality in the right context is a thing of great pleasure, a core part of human existence on a mental/phenomenological and bodily level alike, an enormously significant moral category, a way to bind two people's minds and bodies together, and a way to introspectively savor self-awareness and the potential depths of passion.  It is far from the most foundational or otherwise important part of reality, but it is a vital one.  The precise subgenre of sexual horror takes something that can be so very pleasurable and existential and puts in a context of terror, violation, or even just the strangeness of a foreign visual style for environments meant to parallel sexual organs.

Some of the more overt examples of sexual horror works that have been made and released are so niche or controversial that the vast majority of people who love diverse art have probably never heard of them.  The erotic cosmic horror game Lust for Darkness is an example.  Merging Lovecraftian-inspired cosmic horror with a sexual bent and an exploration of how irrational people might destroy themselves in the pursuit of pleasure, Lust for Darkness is artistically mixed in quality but very unique and bold in its themes.  Still, there are somewhat culturally mainstream examples that are more recognized for other reasons or that somehow have had their sexual horror get less noticed.  Outlast is very explicit in relying on the sexual horror of rape or threatened rape in the Whistleblower DLC for the first game and in the main story of the second game.  This is a series of sexual horror that is not as well known for this aspect because the horror is broader than just this, but it is very direct and intense when it is present.  For a franchise with distinct sexual horror that is better known than Outlast but still does not always have its sexual horror acknowledged, there is Alien, which has either subtle or overt sexual horror depending on the film and scene.  

The worm-like creatures of Prometheus have heads that resemble vaginas; the second mouth of the Alien franchise's xenomorph that protrudes from the outwardly visible mouth resembles a penis (concept art for the original film actually makes this mouth within a mouth look even more like a realistic human penis).  The facehuggers implant xenomorph eggs in humans by orally raping them, just as the squid-like creature at the end of Prometheus orally rapes the Engineer because the mouth is where it insert its genitalia.  The sexual horror here comes from creatures that seemingly act without any sort of grand ideological motivations in an attempt to sexually reproduce.  In other words, they might not be malicious or hypocritical or evil in the way humans are when they rape or otherwise sexually violate people, but they are relentless and are ultimately in many cases performing aggressive sexual acts against the will of the human victims (or animal victims in some of the entries, like Alien 3).

As the examples show, this branch of horror can be organically matched with everything from cosmic horror to science fiction.  When done right, sexual horror can be more personal and thematically powerful than standard horror alone.  Like cosmic horror, sexual horror directly deals with very crucial parts of what it means to be human and thus of what the nature of reality is.  It does not have to get used just for sheer shock value.  The subgenre is great for its uniqueness, its combination of typically separated elements, and its subject matter that can so easily prompt moralistic reflection and thought about relationships between persons, among other things.  There is nothing wrong with even rationalists being subjectively averse to this kind of horror, or to horror as a whole, but sexual horror is inherently philosophically charged in ways that are more overt than they are in plenty of other genres and their respective subgenres.  Sexuality is no small part of human existence and connects directly with even more foundational issues of introspection, morality, subjectivity, and more, so to deny its potential for artistic exploration is thoroughly irrational.

Game Review--Borderlands 3 Deluxe Edition (PS4)

"Like, follow, and obey!"

--Tyreen Calypso, Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 introduces many changes.  The Pre-Sequel had players travel between a moon of Pandora and the Helios space station orbiting Pandora, but in Borderlands 3, multiple planets beyond Pandora are accessible for the first time.  A machine in the new Sanctuary automatically stores lost loot from missions until its capacity is full, which ensures up to a point that missed weapons can still be accessed.  Expansions to a character's ammunition, backpack, and item bank are now purchased with money instead of Eridium bars.  The Badass Token system has been altered and renamed.  Now, the Guardian Rank enhancements, as they are called, are locked until the end of all story missions.  With all of these changes also comes the return of characters from Borderlands, Borderlands 2, The Pre-Sequel, and Tales from the Borderlands, so it is not as if a familiar cast does not await series veterans.  If it was not for the very obvious deficiencies in the game, this would be the best of the series by far.  Borderlands 3 unfortunately has one of the weakest Borderlands stories, second only to the story of the almost narratively lifeless first game, persistent visual issues that have not gone away via updates even by 2022, and glitches that still have not been patched as of the last time I played.

Production Values

One of the first things that greets players is the three to five minute initial loading time upon staring the game from the PS4 menu.  When first loading the game and first starting to play with a given character's profile, wait times of up to minutes are an ordinary experience.  Even once the game does load, both cutscenes and walking around need time to transition from the blurry or incomplete parts of the environments or character models to the fuller version of them.  The graphical performance consistently takes time to even show the detail of the world, from the beginning of the game to the end.  Then there are the glitches where certain side missions appear on the map, only to disappear once you teleport to that region.  Borderlands 3 is a game full of bugs.  In addition to this, the developers made some very stupid design choices like making most of the challenges (like killing 500 of a specific enemy type) almost unviewable, as when the prompt appears to let players see a challenge they just completed, holding the prompted button to view the challenges does not actually take them to that challenge list.  The characterization is also very lacking in the same ideological and linguistic flourishes that made the likes of Handsome Jack such excellent characters, but references to everything Rick and Morty to Biblical phrases to cultural trends regarding memes or cryptocurrency still make it in.  The sarcasm and satirical pop culture references are still very much intact.

Gameplay

Though the basic mechanics are the same as usual, there are some very noticeable evolutions to enemy types, the weapon variety, and the optional activities.  Some enemies now have two or even three bars worth of damage they can take, with the golden bar at the top of some health bar sets corresponding to biological or artificial armor levels (a new addition) or the blue bar corresponding to the shield of the enemies; armor and shields have specific elemental weapon vulnerabilities, such as how shock weapons drain the shields faster.  Since, like in previous Borderlands games, you eventually can carry up to four equipped weapons at once, having diverse elemental types and weapon categories like a shotgun and a pistol all equipped in different slots makes you far more prepared for the enemies types that might appear.  The guns themselves are splendidly distinct, with many featuring two alternate modes of fire or separate projectile styles.  For instance, a random machine gun might switch between fully automatic firing or three round bursts, and a random submachine gun might switch between incendiary and corrosion elemental damage at player whim.  Tediore guns can now walk or bounce around after throwing them to perform the reload task, some weapons have their own specific shield much like the playable character has theirs, 

There are also now a multitude of new objectives that neither fall into story missions or side missions, a few of them being great ways to experiment with new or powerful guns.  Searching for Claptrap unit parts, translating Eridian symbols for Tannis, bringing exotic vehicle parts to Ellie, killing special targets for Zero, and hunting exotic creatures for Sir Hammerlock are all new additions to the optional side of the game.  While not full quests in themselves, these bonus objectives are scattered across the different planets and their sections.  For all of the game's flaws in other areas, the gameplay is still extremely strong, and new activities help contribute to this.  Adding to the diversity of the gameplay is one region set in an asteroid base with low gravity, which plays like the parts of the The Pre-Sequel on the surface of Elpis where you the gravitational attraction is low and you rely on oxygen tanks, but here, there is no oxygen tank mechanic required for breathing and faster mobility.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Handsome Jack's death did not affect the presence of the bandits he was intent on slaughtering, and after other Vaults were suggested at the end of Borderlands 2, Lilith and the new antagonistic Calypso twins search for a map to more Vaults.  Lilith had telepathically called out to mercenaries willing to join the Crimson Raiders, hoping to stop the twins from using the incredible influence they have gained over the bandits to find the Great Vault.  Tyreen and Troy, the siblings, have amassed the reputation of gods as they pretend to care about the bandits, only to use them for financial offerings and soldiers when they want to attack certain enemies.  However, the Calypsos are also sirens.  They possess genuine power beyond just ordinary human abilities and the social loyalty of their massive follower base.  In the midst of this pseudo-religious revolution, the Maliwan Corporation has gone to war with Atlas in a conflict that has ravaged civilian populations--and that lets returning characters play a role in stopping the Calypsos.

Intellectual Content

This time, while there is still plenty of attention given to corporate greed, the story focuses more on satire targeting social media popularity, cults of personality, televangelists, and fitheistic devotion.  Tyreen and Troy Calypso, the "twin gods," exploit the common desire for community by pretending to love Pandora's bandits while taking their resources, using them as expendable warriors, and encouraging their self-endangering acts of devotion to the siblings.  Their very high number of followers collectively form the Children of the Vault.  The Calypsos are not presented as uncaused causes although they do have superhuman powers as sirens, which are not gods in Borderlands lore; a long-standing human character even becomes a siren in this game.  However, since they do have supernatural powers to manipulate external objects with telekinesis at will or even sometimes by accident, they can perform miracles of sorts, which means there is sensory evidence of  available to the Children of the Vault even if it is clear that sirens are not true deities and that the Calypso twins make it as obvious as words and actions can, without actually seeing into someone's thoughts, that they are only pretending to be "gods" for the social power it gives them.  Beyond this, Borderlands 3 is somewhat lacking in the more explicitly philosophical humor and exploration of certain past games, but its typical emphasis on artificial intelligence and technology continues.  A side mission about testing a glitch-riddled and microtransaction-heavy game, though, is an ironic to feature in a game with such extensive DLC and many deficient visual aspects!

Conclusion

Borderlands 3 could have been the utter height of the series in full instead of in part, but its technical issues, asinine design choices, and random story hold it back from persistent greatness.  The direct follow-up to the masterpiece of Borderlands 2 called for a much more polished game and structured plot.  In spite of these very clear problems with this third main installment, the guns and their features have never had more variety, and the scope of the regions has expanded through visiting multiple planets.  Not everything is horrid.  It is just unusual for a Borderlands game after the original to be so aggressively mixed in quality.  The Pre-Sequel did not reach the same level of impact as Borderlands 2, yet it was a much better game overall than the end of the primary trilogy.  For someone simply looking to appreciate a new arsenal, there is still plenty to do, even if attached to this new arsenal is a set of major problems or missed opportunities that Gearbox somehow squandered.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Borderlands 3 is fairy graphic despite its specific stylized animation.  Enemy body parts can come apart upon shooting them, especially with headshots.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fucking," "shit," and "bitch" are heard in the game.