When Humility Seems Like Arrogance

There is always the potential, the logical possibility, for a person to be misunderstood or misperceived by those who are willing to make assumptions, especially if the latter only care about reinforcing or clinging to beliefs that spring from those misperceptions--or beliefs that are threatened by the truth.  So many people are eager to talk in a vague, general sense about the potential for misperceptions to fuel false or unproven beliefs; almost no one is willing to become a rationalist to avoid contributing to the idiocy they selectively recognize in others.  The only way to avoid false beliefs is to avoid making assumptions altogether while embracing the inherent, deep truths of logical axioms, without which nothing would be possible, true, or knowable.  Since this is an enormous process that, while it is not impossible and does not have to take any long amount of time to adapt to, it is easy for rationalism and rationalists to be mistaken for selfish, arrogant people by those in the grip of delusions.

The inherent humility of not believing in what cannot be logically proven is so easily mistaken for grave arrogance by those who are too bound to their preferred assumptions to realize that seeming arrogance is not arrogance at all.  To be arrogant, one must actually think more of oneself than one's metaphysical and moral status would lead one to without emotionalistic beliefs, meaning that what seems arrogant to an outsider could be completely rational and morally permissible.  To believe even the smallest or most trivial irrational thing, like that looking at a door proves it actually exists as a material object outside of one's immaterial consciousness, a person must be arrogant and ignorant regarding their own epistemological limitations.  Epistemological arrogance is just so secondary to the irrationality of all aasumptions that it might not be specifically contemplated at first by rationalists.

Contrarily, it might seem arrogant to non-rationalists that someone might think anything is absolutely certain or inherently true, as is the case with logical axioms.  This is far deeper than the existence or nature of moral values, other minds, and God.  While it is impossible to actually know if morality exists, other minds exist, and so on, it is impossible to fully escape the metaphysical and epistemological fact that deductive reasoning is true by necessity, that it is impossible for there to be no truths about anything, that contradictions cannot be true, or that one has the capacity to directly grasp and prove these facts as long as one exists as a conscious, thinking being.  Anyone could ponder the very core of all truths and genuine knowledge by looking to the only self-verifying logical facts, and it is possible for anyone to reason out why a variety of beliefs are false due to internal contradiction (necessitating automatic impossibility) or why numerous ideas are unprovable or unfalsifiable.

Recognizing the inherent truth of logical axioms is only the first phase towards discovering, understanding, and holistically accepting even more precise truths about axioms and other aspects of reality.  Nothing could be more foundational or philosophically important than the fact that a handful of axioms are true irregardless of what else is.  It is not arrogance to discover and celebrate this absolute certainty where it can be found in the laws of logic and introspective experiences.  Instead, it is objectively arrogant to think that logical axioms are false, as if one is not epistemological relying on or metaphysically governed by them whether one has ever thought about the issue at all.  It is objectivelt arrogant, likewise, to think that one can know what reason has been consulted for or what is beyond human epistemological limitations (like whether memories of past events are accurate of if the past events even happened at all).

Acknowledging the depth, absolute certainty, utterly foundational and inescapable nature, and self-verifying truth--logical axioms could not be false without being true, meaning they are true by default--of logical axioms could seem like an arrogant thing to fools, yes.  In truth, it is non-rationalists who are the arrogant ones, and the many aspects of this issue are not likely to be discovered or cherished by most people in a highly emotionalistic culture.  Even a portion of these truths would already contradict most of the asinine beliefs that are so popular in common approaches to everything from broad epistemology to practical life.  The assumptions and desire-driven delusions of non-rationalists are where the deepest form of arrogance, especially when there is denial of logical axioms.  Recognizing that logical axioms are self-evidently true is only the first step of rationalism, but this basic awareness of logical axioms leads to discoveries about other issues and more appreciation for and discoveries about logical axioms, which always hinge on the fact that logical axioms are true by necessity and the foundation of all truths and possibilities.

It is only consistent rationalists who are humble in the most pervasive, universal, intentional sense.  Humility is not thinking that one knows what one does not or cannot know, not exaggerating one's known metaphysical and epistemological nature, and not sinking into the delusions of emotionalism or contradiction.  None of these truths are going to popular in any widespread sense unless the majority of the world population suddenly became rationalists, but they are true and vital nonetheless.  This kind of rationalistic humility is often misperceived as arrogance because it disregards assumptions, undermines arbitrary societal traditions, and does not cure the subjective dissatisfaction of fools.When they think that rationalistic humility is arrogance and that philosophical delusions are expressions of humility, a person struggles in vain against reality itself.

The Ten Commandments

One cannot learn from the book of Exodus, which mentions the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 without calling them by that name and later says in chapter 31 that God wrote "two tablets of the Testimony" for Moses, what the content of these tablets is.  After Moses destroys the two tablets out of anger upon returning from Mount Sinai and finding his people in the throes of idolatry, chapter 34 of Exodus (verse 28) details how Moses made new tablets himself and clarifies that they contained the Ten Commandments.  Even here, it is still not directly affirmed that the initial contents of Exodus 20 are the Ten Commandments, though it could ne rather easy to convince many Christians to assume that what is written on the stones has been described by now.

Only in Deuteronomy 5:5-22 does the Bible actually specify that it was the instructions now called the Ten Commandments that God put on the stones once the Bible recites them for the second time (the first place being Exodus 20).  Again, most Christians seem to just assume that it is obvious that the Ten Commandments were on the tablets inscribed by God and the duplicates created by Moses, when it is only by putting multiple passages together that this can be realized.  The only real importance of this is just the avoidance of assumptions, but there is a far greater issue related to the Ten Commandments with more severe and far-reaching ramifications.  Sometimes the Ten Commandments are regarded as if they are the epitome of all Christian morality, with the moral revelation that follows supposedly being either less important or just commentary on these initial ten instructions.

The fallacies of evangelical moral philosophy keep its adherents too blind to see that there is nothing special about the Ten Commandments that sets all of them above all other commands given by Yahweh.  It does not logically follow from them being presented to Moses in Exodus 20 ahead of the other numerous moral demands of Yahweh that they are the most important, as if coveting or honoring one's parents could possibly be a more serious offense than the capital offense of rape of humans (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) or animals (Exodus 22:19), to give just one example!  The order of moral revelation in Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments included, is somewhat random, and it is clear that it not only does not logically follow from the order of communication that the ones mentioned earlier are more important, but also that some of the sins mentioned later in Mosaic Law are worse than those condemned in the Ten Commandments.

Some of the Ten Commandments do indeed address more than might initially seem to be the case, as a prohibition of theft would forbid kidnapping a person, even though kidnapping is separately tackled in Mosaic Law and given the death penalty (Exodus 21:16) in contrast to other forms of theft.  Still, it is nothing but an obvious delusion when someone pretends like the Ten Commandments condemning adultery somehow addresses general promiscuity or rape (except for adulterous rape) or like their condemnation of murder addresses other kinds of assaults or specifies which physical punishments are just or unjust, such as distinguishing criminal assaults from limited flogging or the very limited Lex Talionis [1].  Similar to how the Golden Rule is totally incomplete on its own, the Ten Commandments are but a small, sometimes lesser part of Biblical ethics.

The philosophical errors of evangelicals will prevent them from realizing practically all of these truths about Christian theology, but especially that there are more important Biblical commands than the prohibition of murder, adultery, coveting, general theft, or working on the Sabbath.  Since rape or extended, unjust torture can be far more traumatic and degrading than murder and the victim still lives with all of their pain, murder could have been replaced by multiple other condemnations that come later in Mosaic Law if the Ten Commandments were supposed to prohibit the most destructive and dehumanizing sins.  Coveting would not even be on the list at all if this was the goal!  Sins like coveting and blasphemy are clearly major moral issues within the Christian worldview, but they are not the ultimate sins, nor is anything else mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-many-biblical-exceptions-to-lex.html

Existential Pangs

The gulf between minds, if other minds exist, prevents me from knowing just to what extent I can relate to other people.  One experience I suspect most or all people share, though, is that of spontaneously being overcome by deep existential concerns at random times.  Before I became a rationalist and experienced variations of this on a constant basis but without assumptions, I had moments or hours where a sadness or longing I could not put into words at the time would come over me, even as a child.  All of the sudden, my thoughts and feelings were directed towards a desire to understand, savor, and express something I was not fully aware of about myself, something far deeper and more central to reality and human life than many typical conversations, behaviors, and thoughts of non-rationalists would hint at.

No one needs to have the constructive horrors of an existential crisis to at least periodically have intense existential pangs of sadness, desire, and excitement that force even those who care nothing for deep epistemology or abstract truths to at least momentarily face the explicitly philosophical side of reality.  Flashes of concern for what one believes, how reality truly is, and how one will or should react can arise to haunt people for a short time.  In some cases, people might be haunted for more than a short time, as hints of these existential pangs could follow them into regular life (as if there is such a thing as life without philosophical beliefs or outside the scope of philosophical truths!).  How a person feels about this is subjective, but the ramifications and the things such pangs brush up against are far too deep compared to the trivialities of common priorities to be likely to prompt consistent rationalistic thought.

In fact, some non-rationalists who spend their time in the shallow pursuit of hedonism might be trying to actively flee from the painful enlightenment that can come from rationally pursuing truth at the expense of all else.  Those who abstain from directly contemplating knowable truths or who have not yet discovered that the only true starting point is logical axioms and rationalism might be trying to put off whatever overwhelmed feelings an existential experience might have triggered, if not outright dread.  Particularly existential feelings can inspire or terrify people--or even both at once.  They are too personal and too tied to objectively foundational or otherwise deep truths and issues for most people to just completely ignore them.

Whether someone is terrified or intoxicated by these experiences or both, it is plain that these feelings are not shallow, and for some people, they might be the only times they directly think about more than emotionalistic motivations, personal preferences, and mere practicality.  These experiences can be so powerful that even if one had never pondered major philosophical issues like the nature of truth, knowledge, of values or intentionally discovered any specific, demonstrable philosophical truths about them, one could be motivated by that experience to dwell on these things intently.  Rationalists and non-rationalists alike can be penetrated to their cores by them whether or not they tell anyone else about their experiences.

A rationalist might or might not have these experiences, and if they do, there is no automatic frequency that they involuntarily surface.  Either way, only a rationalist can truly understand the philosophical facts and issues brought up by these existential pangs in a consistent and intentional manner.  No one else has anything but random assumptions with perhaps the occasional burst of rational clarity.  Moreover, rationalists can live in prolonged, potentially constant states of existential pangs because of their awareness of core reality (logical axioms and their own existence) and the way that all epistemological and metaphysical matters of free will, morality, meaning, and psychology must be consistent with that core.  Loving and savoring truth could bring difficulty even for rationalists sometimes, but they can appreciate overt existential experiences, seek them out, and, most importantly, understand what can be known of reality with or without existential pangs of emotion in their mind.

The Supposed Grand Importance Of History

It is not important to know who the first person to purify water or write a play was, even if the safety of humans and the expression of ideas and experiences in entertainment are significant.  People can discover, rediscover, reflect on, and pursue such things with or without approaching them in the context of historical documents.  Not only can historical events like scientific discoveries or wars not be proven or disproven at all (only logical possibilities and historical evidences can be known), but even when they inspire people to pursue truth, autonomy, and so on, it is not as if anyone needs the historical stories, true or false, to discover basic philosophical truths or to be inspired to pursue them!  Almost every reason non-rationalists think history is important amounts to personal interest, which of course is irrelevant to whether history is important, and the usefulness of or familiarity with supposed historical facts in a society full of people who assume history is knowable and important is at best exaggerated by the typical person.

There are some historical events that, if they happened, are genuinely important, but this is not just because they are past events.  If Jesus resurrected because of divine power, then the event of his resurrection and the related events are objectively important because it validates the ethics he taught; in contrast, if a town was founded in 1607 instead of 1616 or 1634 and there is no ideological reason why this was the case, there is no inherent philosophical significance.  History is not important just because events have happened.  Only certain kinds of events have relevance to matters of necessary truths, absolute certainty, moral obligation, and core metaphysics or general philosophy (an example that is relevant to general philosophy and metaphysics would be the Big Bang, and an example that is relevant to moral obligation would be the resurrection of Jesus if it occurred).

If racism, murder, rape, and abduction are evil, for example, then any event that involved someone taking a non-hypocritical, non-emotionalistic stance against them is important.  Again, this would not be because history "matters" in itself, but because certain events are especially connected with things like moral progress (if moral obligations exist).  Only a fool thinks they need examples of historical figures who might not even have existed and are epistemologically speaking the subjects of hearsay to avoid obvious ideological and societal inconsistencies.  No event like the abolition of race-based slavery is truly significant apart from some sort of moral or metaphysical importance that is by nature not shared by all occurrences between the start of the cosmos and the present day.

Other than examples like those given above, there is nothing important or special about studying history except to see how other people reportedly lived in light of various worldviews.  One cannot even demonstrate that these events other than the bringing of the universe into existence actually happened, and yet logical axioms, one's own conscious existence, and other related things are both true and knowable all the same.  Absolutely nothing about the past is what enables one to know these things or what gives them their epistemological and metaphysical significance as philosophical issues.  Regardless of what happened, even if the universe only began to exist a moment ago, I exist as a being that is aware of the necessary truths of reason and that is aware of my own existence and perceptions.

This is where a rational person starts--not with the potential illusions of historical evidences and other forms of sheer hearsay, for that is all that historical documentation reduces down to: a mere evidence that could be misleading or an illusion of the senses or memories.  For the most part, it is only philosophically important to understand the epistemology of history, not many supposed events themselves, because it, like all other epistemological and metaphysical issues, reduces down to the laws of logic.  Pure subjective fascination and cultural usefulness are the only valid reasons to care about history outside of the the rationalistic approach to history as an epistemological subject and an occasionally existential or theological one.  In a world full of irrationalists who crave subjective persuasion and feelings of validation, pure subjective interest is just likely to be mistaken for something grand about the topic itself and not a feature of a person's feelings or attitudes.

Pro-Life Liberals

Mainstream liberalism has popularized the idea that the supposed right to kill babies before they exit the womb is a vital or basic part of feminism, which is in turn associated with liberalism even though feminism, that misunderstood idea that is nothing but gender egalitarianism, is philosophically correct and liberalism is erroneous.  This is such a popular part of how modern liberals present their ideologies that pro-choice stances are regarded by both many conservatives and many liberals as an inherent part of liberal philosophy.  Those who acknowledge nuance are capable of discovering something that defies common expectations, highlights the fleeting embers of rationality in some liberal ideas, and exposes the hypocrisy of popular liberals all at once.  The basic concept of pro-life ideology is actually compatible with core liberalism.

Abortion and liberalism are so closely associated that it might genuinely surprise some people that, irrespective of the philosophical flaws of liberalism, a person could be a liberal and sincerely, consistently pro-life.  There are indeed some who openly identify as pro-life liberals, seeing that trivializing the unborn, which are just humans at a different stage of development than those outside of the womb, is contrary to the goal of affirming whatever human rights exist, as they would also be rights of the unborn.  Killing a human of any size or in any location for the sake of convenience is mere selfishness.  While there is one case where killing an unborn child is necessarily permissible even on Biblical ethics--a mother is not obligated to sacrifice her life for her child if a pregnancy was to genuinely threaten her life--abortion outside of this very limited context is objectively no different from murder except that it targets humans in the womb.

Being a liberal does not mean a person denies or has not realized these things.  It might be more unlikely that a liberal will be pro-life, just as it is more unlikely that a conservative will be a gender egalitarian, but it is not impossible.  A liberal who cares more about remaining consistent with certain ideological components of liberalism, such as the professed universality of human rights (this does not mean that liberal philosophy identifies human rights correctly, only that it is at least aimed at honoring them), could easily end up pro-life.  They would just have to avoid the liberal tendency of moving away from the status quo simply for the sake of pursuing imagined progress when not all ideas that have been historically popular are false.  A pro-life liberal would also understand that there is not only no inconsistency between pro-life philosophy and gender egalitarianism, but that feminism/egalitarianism, in rejecting hypocrisies and discrimination against men and women, elevates all people, including the unborn.

For all the stupidity of liberalism, at least liberalism is meant to affirm human rights better than the likewise fallacious tenets of conservatism do.  This means that it, in some ways, more naturally lends itself to pro-life ideas than conservatism does!  Liberalism as a whole is nothing but conscience-based emotionalism and a set of arbitrary goals rooted in personal preference or cultural appeal, just like conservatism (though conservatism is oriented around tradition), but there are some aspects of it that are rationalistically valid.  If there are human rights, then all humans have them, as liberalism insists; that the unborn are humans would mean they deserve whatever treatment people naturally deserve.  It is not difficult to realize how this core of liberalism and pro-life philosophy overlap to some extent.  Liberalism in its current dominant form excludes pro-life ideas, yet this is only because other sides of liberalism are ignored by the many vocal liberals.

Game Review--The Wolf Among Us (PS Vita)

"There hasn't been a murder in Fabletown in a long time."

--Bigby Wolf, The Wolf Among Us

"Bigby Wolf.  The Big Bad Wolf.  You used to be something.  They used to fear you.  They'd hide anywhere their small shivering bodies would fit."

--Bloody Mary, The Wolf Among Us

The Wolf Among Us serves as a prequel to the DC Comics/Vertigo stories set in a universe where characters and creatures from various fables inhabit a city as they hide from humans, a tale of conspiracy and corruption that cleverly builds on well-known fairy tales as it explores everything from the abuse of sex workers to the way that a crowd of non-rationalists can be so very manipulated back and forth.  This Woodsman, "big bad" Wolf, Snow White, and Bloody Mary are not the versions found in modern children's stories, and this frees The Wolf Among Us to invert cliches and let fairy tales serve as an ironic mirror that displays the potential complexities of the human heart, even if its characters tend to not be humans at all.

Production Values

The aesthetic style is a great fit for this kind of unconventional video game experience and for a more overtly cinematic tale, but long loading times and visual hiccups, which sometimes become extreme, mar the quality of the production values.  The freezes and jolts of these hiccups can be so bad that they interfere with the quick-time events, with the screen freezing and then flashing to where players have less than a moment or two to press the right button before missing the prompt--and perhaps dying if they cannot press it with minimal warning, depending on the part of the game.  Thankfully, the audio fares far better.  Masterful line delivery when it comes to the voice acting rarely, if ever, suffers from the difficulties of the visual performance, and, in a cinematic game about choice and layered characterization, quality voice acting and writing are utter necessities.

Gameplay

A heavily dialogue-based game, The Wolf Among Us is largely played by deciding how to verbally respond to other characters, with combat quick-time events and mild investigative exploration comprising the majority of rest of the gameplay.  Bigby Wolf can be kind, aggressive, or pragmatically cooperative depending on what the player wishes as he interacts with the residents of Fabletown, strengthening relationships with or disregarding others as is chosen.  Since the outcome of various scenes is the same no matter what dialogue or behavioral option the player selects, the choices can be more limiting than they might seem at first, yet entire scenes can be added/removed or altered in some cases.  None of this changes the context of excellent writing and worldbuilding that even the smaller dialogue options are presented in.  Replaying most chapters to pick different choices is even necessary to obtain all of the PlayStation trophies for the game, though.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Years and years after gaining a reputation as the fierce creature known as The Big Bad Wolf, Sheriff Bigby Wolf, who can take a human form, ensures the legendary creatures of Fabletown do not mistreat each other or get seen by humans without glamours, magic spells that make them appear as humans despite really being an anthropomorphic animal.  A prostitute's decapitated head is found on the doorstep of his living area, sparking a series of murders that drives Bigby to discover an entangled web of secrecy, deception, and figurative enslavement that has Fabletown in the grip of a shadowy figure.  The investigation also gives Bigby repeated opportunities to decide if he wants to descend into the savagery associated with his earlier days or pursue justice itself.

Intellectual Content

Fabletown is a hotbed of fallacious beliefs and general stupidity, with some of the assumptions and errors of fellow Fables even interfering with Bigby's murder investigation.  For instance, when Beast sees his wife Beauty and Bigby Wolf at the prostitute's hotel, he is enraged after he assumes that Beauty and Bigby are committing adultery together, when not only is this an assumption he does not even pause to recognize, but he himself is in the hotel, which by his own idiotic assumptions would mean he is inconsistent for exempting himself from suspicion!  His physical assault of Bigby only slows down an investigation that he never had a reason to interfere with anyway.  Beast, however, is one of the least calculating of these philosophically delusional beings.  Fabletown is slowly revealed to be consumed with egoism, the inherently fallacious stance that one's preferences and self-interest are the ultimate good or the unsound pursuit of one's own wishes at the expense of all else.  Ichabod Crane confesses just how easy it is to build a life around one's own preferences as the rest of one's existence crumbles, even if he had something else in mind when he said it: "It started as most things do: very, very small.  Nothing more than a thought."  Crane is actually a murder suspect for a time, with one of the things that other characters end up looking down on him for not actually being exploitative in itself, but his words are still very relevant to how assumptions enslave people, can drive them to destroy their lives, and provide nothing valid to cling to when the rug is pulled out from under them.

Also of note is how directly The Wolf Among Us handles the dismissal and abuse of sex workers--and it even shows an environment with male and female sex workers in a bold move that defies sexist stereotypes.  While it does not actually portray or tackle sexual abuse in particular, the game repeatedly brushes up against subjects like this.  There is not even any contradiction between the idea that at least some forms of sex work are immoral and that all sex workers do not deserve to be exploited or regarded as mere objects to be used and discarded as is subjectively convenient.  A former prostitute's words at the end of the game reinforce just how helpless and trapped she and others like her were until Bigby took the murders of her companions so seriously.  Ironically, even the true Christian stance on all of this is not what many would expect: the Bible condemns prostitution (places like Leviticus 19:29 and Deuteronomy 23:17-18 do condemn prostitution directly in various ways, though the separate condemnations of adultery and promiscuity would already exclude this), yet since nudity and sexual attraction are Biblically nonsinful (see Deuteronomy 4:2, though I have written extensively about other aspects of why these things are nonsinful), sexual stripping for money or sexual dancing would not be sinful in themselves.  Even if they were, though, it would still not be the case that sex workers do not have whatever human rights everyone else possesses by virtue of being human.

Conclusion

It might not have the cultural visibility of Telltale's The Walking Dead games, but The Wolf Among Us is a superb addition to this very precise subgenre of gaming.  Combining a much more mature take on fairy tales, the typical narrative complexity and deep characterization of Telltale games, and the special capacity of video games to better reflect the choices of human existence than any other artistic medium, this game succeeds on almost every level--and perhaps the flaws of the Vita version are absent from the version on home consoles.  If it was not for the numerous issues with freezes and slowdowns in some of the interactive cutscenes with quick-time events, The Wolf Among Us would have even been perfectly situated on the Vita.  Alas, only the mechanics, lore, and plot themselves are utilized well here, not the performance of the game.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  From mildly graphic depictions of mutilated corpses to blood-inducing physical fights, there is violent imagery in this game that is certainly more at home with an M rating.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "shit," "fuck," and "bitch" are used many times throughout the five episodes.

 3.  Nudity:  Female breasts are seen occasionally, though this is at most partial nudity in the same way the exposure of the male torso is.

 4.  Sexuality:  Multiple parts of the game involve direct talk about sexuality.  In one section, sexual noises can be heard from behind a door.

Family Association

There might not be a specific lone word (that I have heard) for discriminating against someone because they were born into a given family, as there is for sexism, racism, and ageism, but this form of discrimination, like the others, is aimed at something a person cannot change about themselves.  A person cannot change their family on a whim, even if they do not associate with their family through conversation or activities.  They cannot will away their family ties, for even the death of a family member would not change the fact that they were family whether it was wanted or not.  Being associated biologically to someone a person did not choose to be related to (short of some unprovable pre-conception consciousness) does not reveal their own worldview, personality, talents, or desires.

Like some forms of sexism or racism, discrimination based upon family association reduces down either to assuming something about one person based on the real or imagined worldview, behaviors, or personality of another person or to thinking someone should be regarded like their family even if they have little in common.  Aside from the issue of whether morality exists and what is just, it is inherently irrational to make assumptions, and this kind of discrimination is either based on assumptions (when the discrimination is expressed in action) or is an assumption (when the discrimination is on the level of belief).  It is thinking of or treating someone a certain way for reasons other than understanding their actual nature as a person.  Like other such forms of discrimination, it is contrary to reason and amounts to nothing but selfishness and stupidity.

Family deserves neither default special care nor scorn from a person, and yet whether a one or all family members of a given person deserve one or the other, what they as an individual deserve is dictated by their beliefs and actions.  Metaphysically, someone's philosophical stances, individuality, and personal choices are their own.  Epistemologically, no one could ever know what a person is like based on who their family members are because the latter is totally irrelevant.  Morally, if people deserve anything at all, it is not because of association with someone else with their own moral standing.  Individualistic appraisal of people in the context of rationalism is the only way to truly understand what perceptions of other people we have.  There are just longstanding tendencies to judge people without knowing them, and without even grasping what does or does not logically follow from various circumstances, that span societies comprised of individual non-rationalists.

Biases for and against someone because of their family ties are no less irrational and unjust than the bias of some people to defend or highly regard their own family members just because they are family.  All biases are rooted in petty assumptions, preferences, and superficiality, and those involving family--one's own or another one--are no different than all the other forms of irrational discrimination in this regard.  A refusal to refrain from pretending to know someone's beliefs, personality traits, and competencies because of their family associations that might not even be wanted is at the heart of this kind of bias.  Family, like one's gender, race, and age, are not choosable traits that a person can exchange at will.  It is sheer folly to think more or less of someone because of this happenstance association or even to make assumptions about them that are neither positive nor negative.

Becoming A Rationalist

In many ways, becoming a rationalist is like becoming a Christian.  Anyone who is sincere in either, but especially someone who is sincere in both together, knows that their life will not be the same from the moment of their philosophical shift onward due to the immensity of the personal commitment that both demand.  Of course, commitment to rationalism is very different from all other commitments, as only commitment to rationalism and what reason proves is commitment that by nature cannot be based off of assumptions, illusions, and mere perceptions--unless a person ironically embraced rationalism selectively because of personal appeal instead of its inherent truth.  Any ideas that are not rationalistically verifiable could be false, including aspects of Christian theology.

However, just as Christianity has ramifications for almost all of a person's life, rationalism has ramifications that go far beyond the very limited, selective rationality many people are comfortable stopping at.  In fact, rationalism is more foundational and important than even theism (which is demonstrably true by logical deduction to an uncaused cause) and whatever moral obligations might or might not exist (which cannot be known to exist, though some ideas of moral obligations could be true) because God, morality, and the external world of matter, along with everything else other than the laws of logic, could not even exist if it is not logically possible.  Whether something exists does not necessarily mean it could not have been the case that it does not exist, and vice versa; this too is dictated by the laws of logic and nothing else.

There are no truths at all without the laws of logic, their necessary axioms, and the possibilities and impossibilities rooted in them.  The whole of reality--including truths, epistemological proofs (which are just the comprehension of logically necessary truths), and possibilities--could not exist without the laws of logic to necessitate or permit it to.  This makes rationalism inherently true whether Christianity or any other ideology besides rationalism is true, and it means that other ideas, true and false, are only true or false because of reason and are only known to be true, false, or unknowable because of reason.  Moral obligations, scientific paradigms, and theistic truths and possibilities are secondary to the self-evident, necessary truths of logic.  All aspects of life and core reality, from the most abstract to the most practical, hinge on the objective fact that rationalism is inherently true.

It is only a handful of logical truths (including that one must exist as a consciousness as long as there is any perception or thought present) that is self-evident, and only the logical truths that immediately follow from these things are obvious even though they are not self-evident like axioms.  Neither any religious ideas nor any scientific ideas are self-evident; becoming a rationalist is to embrace truths that are far deeper and more important than religious or scientific truths, which are often unprovable, could ever be.  Ironically, many of the statements made in Romans 1 about how it is obvious that God exists, though this is only philosophically obvious only in light of certain metaphysical facts like the impossibility of an infinite causal chain or the self-creation of the universe, are more applicable when made about rationalism and the truth and presence of the laws of logic than they are about theism.

In the deepest sense, it is logical axioms and the direct experiences of introspection that are "plain" to all, even though some people try in vain to flee from them, deny them, or add contradictory ideas alongside them.  This is not to say most people have even thought about logical axioms or their own existence enough to actually recognize why these things have to be true.  No one would be confused in discussions about them or talk or live as if these things are false or unknowable if that was the case.  Only rationalists understand these basic but ever-vital, utterly foundational, and (when it comes to logical axioms) universal and all-encompassing truths.  They are also in a position to start directly understanding that rationalism is not for the delusional, the hypocrites, or the apathetic.  It is self-verifyingly true, but no one will even clearly grasp this without shedding biases, assumptions, or indifference.

It is no wonder that most people act as if they are confused or terrified by rationalism: it spills over into all other things and demands their full devotion.  Not even Christianity could possibly be self-evidently true on any level or necessarily true beyond the parts that are rationalistically provable, like the existence of an uncaused cause that preceded the cosmos.  Rationalism exposes the stupidity and futility of all assumptions and brings light to the dark corners of ideas and hearts that many might prefer to go unseen.  Rationalism is true regardless of people's beliefs and is for everyone, but becoming a rationalist is not something many people are currently ready for.  This process severs the most cherished misconceptions from a person's worldview, after all.  Who but a sincere person who already is somewhat orienting himself or herself towards rationality would want that?

Existence And Life

The concept of existing and the concept of being alive in a biological sense are not identical.  It does not matter whether there is an afterlife of any kind, but unless the concept of existing in an afterlife or existing as an uncaused cause prior to the universe was the same as the concept of ordinary life, they could not be distinguished or addressed as anything except the same idea.  Clearly, these ideas are not the same.  The relevance beyond the fundamental metaphysics of consciousness and the logical possibility of a certain type of afterlife pertain to explicitly Christian theology.  If basic existence as a consciousness and biological life are not synonymous concepts, does this mean that the Biblical descriptions of humans in hell do allow for eternal conscious torment for all unsaved beings despite using the language of death, destruction, and annihilation?

Not at all!  Whether or not the word soul refers to consciousness, restricted to a body or not, or to the mind-body composite that humans live as in daily life, the Biblical language still describes the nonexistence of the soul, rather than just a biological death that leads to eternal life with or without salvation.  The soul dies, not just the body and the mind's tie to it (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28).  God is the only conscious being that does not depend on another being for its continued existence, which means the existence of human souls is metaphysically dependent on the divine consciousness.  Humans are not immortal by nature (1 Timothy 6:16).  The wicked are said to be dismissed from reality as one leaves a dream upon waking from it (Psalm 73:18-20).  The unsaved will perish (John 3:16).  Even if someone has not yet realized that Biblical ideas like the wages of sin being death (Romans 6:23) are actually in part affirmations of annihilationism, these other verses make it clear that the unsaved are not only said to biologically die, but to metaphysically cease to exist as conscious beings altogether.

One could cease to live as a biological creature and still hypothetically exist as an unembodied consciousness.  However, the Bible simply does not teach that this is the default for all unsaved beings.  All references to eternal life and death are rightly understood in light of the verses that explicitly say the wicked will cease to exist as conscious beings, like Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:4, Matthew 10:28, and even John 3:16 of all verses.  Then, even if the Biblical teachings on hell were not as clearly affirmative of annihilationism as words can be without bypassing language, without looking straight into an author's actual mind to focus on concepts without the ambiguity of words, it would still be obvious that the wording of every verse about the ultimate punishment of unsaved beings other than those about the mark of the beast or a demonic entity (like Revelation 20:10) directly suggests annihilationism, or is at least consistent with it.

The concepts of existence as a conscious being and living as a biological creature are plainly distinct, even if experience as a biological creature requires existence as a conscious being, and this still does not logically establish that the Biblical promise of eternal life to those committed to Christ means that the unsaved will all still exist forever, as opposed to just having temporary life on Earth and a temporary existence in hell before permanent destruction.  In fact, some passages make it very plain that permanent, cosmic death of consciousness is the grand wages of sin for fallen humankind (with the possible exception of a group of people who receive a "mark of the beast").  Even with the aforementioned distinction, annihilationism is still the obvious Biblical teaching about the general fate of the unsaved once a reader makes no assumptions about the text and evaluates relevant philosophical ideas without fallacies.

American Capitalism

America could have a far more destructive cultural devotion to money than it does at the present time.  Any culture could always be more immoral and destructive than it is simply by more deeply clinging to errors and injustices.  As far as the economic structure of the nation is concerned, though, there is little that is rationalistic about the worldviews and motivations behind the workplace, with the pursuit of money for the sake of money (which is in turn really for the sake of something money supposedly brings) being one of the primary factors that shape and define American culture.  Capitalism is not inherently oppressive, but American capitalism certainly is.  There are numerous ways that the country's wealthy or wealthier citizens can gratuitously, hypocritically, or cruelly manipulate those of a lower economic standing, all in order to gain more wealth they do not need.

Even things like medical treatments, necessary for survival or a high quality of life for many people, are twisted into excuses to separate people from gratuitous amounts of money.  People might be given pointless or irrelevant treatments because it brings in more revenue.  Cash prices for medical/dental visits without insurance might be cheaper than the "discounted" insurance prices--which are discounted from an even higher, more arbitrary total, meaning insurance is sometimes just a fraudulent way to manipulate people into feeling like they have saved money thanks to their insurance plans even though they have already spent more than they would apart from insurance.  As long as someone can pay an extreme fee, there is not likely to be any objection from those requiring the payments.  If this is how the medical sphere is, what of the workplace?

Some business leaders think paying employees an amount that is unlivable even when working 40 hours a week is "adequate pay," even though working for 40 hours a week and still not having the money to live without basic financial worries is clearly insufficient.  Some managers might even intentionally schedule their workers with hours meant to go under the minimum required for benefits like insurance.  What happens to those who cannot even enter the conventional workplace of America due to disabilities or other unfortunate personal circumstances?  Death or homelessness could easily follow.  Homeless people have even been arrested for the supposed crime of "vagrancy," or simply not having a home or income.  Anyone who thinks that the evidence does not fully imply that many Americans (though this could be true of people elsewhere, of course) are not fixated on the mere social construct of money far more than a rationalistic society would be is not paying thorough attention or is making comfort-driven assumptions.

Money is not the issue.  As the Bible would put it, it is the love of money above a love of reason, truth, morality, and others from which a deadly kind of economic selfishness springs.  Money and even the possessions that could be used as a measurement of wealth outside of a modern currency system do not make people believe anything irrational, act hypocritically, oppress others, or misunderstand themselves in order to feel more at home in the philosophical and personal minefield of American capitalism in its current form.  Petty assumptions (as opposed to rationalistic knowledge of truths), greed, and philosophical apathy are the driving forces behind America's general applications of capitalism.  In turn, more assumptions, greed, and apathy are birthed when the philosophically weak-minded cannot bear the figurative and sometimes literal brutality of being trapped in poverty or being judged for meaningless factors like how relatively little they might care about money.

Many aspects of American society are very plainly preserved by those who are willing to trample on others for the sake of financial prosperity or to stay alive in a culture that, broadly speaking, is enslaved to greed, materialistic consumerism, and classism.  For some people who struggle with living out such asinine, destructive ideas, desperation--the desire to continue living and to not have to worry about basic needs--pushes them to live as if money is more than an arbitrary social construct that is not necessary for life outside of a specific kind of culture.  For others, sheer stupidity in assuming that their desires should take priority over the needs of others is the culprit (what makes them automatically deserve greater monetary flourishing than others?), even if irrationality is ultimately to blame in all cases.

Philosophical Depth In Entertainment

It can be very clear upon analyzing a work of entertainment if the more substantial aspects, or at least ideas that hint at genuine depth, were probably included naturally out of a concern for truly understanding concepts or out of a shallow desire to appear more sophisticated and important than the work turned out to be.  The way themes are used, which things are given priority, and how coherent the different parts of the project are can be indicators of how sincere and deep the themes truly are.  It is certainly possible to approach a story with high artistic and philosophical intentions born from rationality, sincerity, and general depth and still simply fail to execute things well, but these three elements of a work are still sometimes evidence for or against the intellectual competence of its creators.

Something like The Matrix, Prometheus or Saw was made to intentionally explore philosophical issues.  Whether or not the artistic quality or lack of quality in specific aspects of those films had turned out differently, their philosophical cores would have been the same; one explores the fact that sensory experiences alone are not proof one is perceiving the world of matter as it is, one is self-admittedly, at least according to the director, made in part because of his fascination with the issue of humanity's origins, and the other is so creative and riddled with moral and existential ideas that someone would almost have to care about them to include so many, as well as to make them so consistently prominent in a way that enhances the storytelling.  This is not true of a work of entertainment where philosophical ideas are addressed poorly or inaccurately because they were only there to give an illusory or shallow sense of weight to the plot.

Ironically, the director of Saw later helmed the very intellectually lackluster Aquaman, and whether the finished movie would have been artistically and thematically superior if the original plans for Justice League had not been butchered, it just very lightly dipped its toes into issues like ocean pollution, using them as undeveloped ways to reach desired story beats.  While Saw is genuinely philosophical and thoughtful, Aquaman is a superficial disaster of a movie when it comes to almost anything beyond visuals and action spectacle.  This is how the differences between a project of true intellectual and personal (for the characters or creative team) depth and one where important or major ideas are just used as a means to the end of enticing viewers to spend money might look.  The latter kind of work is not executed well enough to be ultimately competent in exploring certain topics it might still touch upon.

When the plot and themes of entertainment are harmonized, there is potential for great depth that goes far beyond what even exploring deep topics with different intentions could allow for.  The extent to which philosophically significant ideas are developed is one indicator of how sincere and capable the creators of a work are.  Although there might be reasons why the final cut is less intellectually or artistically authentic than it could have been, or even needed to be, that have little to do with some of those directly involved (like objections from executives or a greater desire for broad audience appeal than the desire for depth and sincerity), consistently false or shallow philosophical ideas being featured in stories from a given director are possible evidence that he or she is shallow.

Of course, is it not true that accessibility, artistic quality, and philosophical depth exclude each other so that only one or two of them can be successfully be an aspect of a work of entertainment at a time.  It is entirely possible for them to all come together and even necessary for entertainment to reach its greatest and most impactful heights.  Everyone has direct access to the laws of logic even if they never choose to take advantage of this, so no one is truly incapable of understanding anything about the themes of a story.  It also never benefits a story to omit or develop important themes relevant to the story.  No, it only potentially benefits people involved in the creation of entertainment who care about mass appeal and money for the sake of money.

The Historicity Of The Biblical Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar, the pagan ruler of Babylon whose forces defeated Jerusalem and destroyed the First Jewish Temple, is a figure pivotal in Jewish history and in the chronology of Biblical stories by extension.  Without his defeat of Jerusalem that reportedly occurred in 586 BC (nothing in the historical record is truly certain, though there are logically possible events and even sensory evidences that specific events likely happened), the Temple would not have been destroyed, and the sequence of events leading up to the time of Jesus as presented in the Bible would differ enormously.  It was the destruction of the Temple that led to the Jewish Diaspora, the scattering of the Jews around the Gentile world of the era.

Given his prominence in certain parts of the Bible, any evidence for the historicity of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (more specifically, Nebuchadnezzar II) is historical evidence that parallels or supports Biblical accounts found in the Old Testament.  While the historicity of Jesus is a far more central part of the evidences for Christianity than documentation or archeological support for a king of the world before Christ, evidence of Nebuchadnezzar's presence in history, especially as related to the Jewish kingdom of the day, has major ramifications for the seeming probability of the Bible's veracity.  What evidence for his existence might there be among the records and artifacts left by the Babylonians of the 6th century BC or their neighbors?

From the inscription on the Ishtar Gates to the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle, a set of tablets testifying to a Babylonian military victory against Judah, there is strong evidence for the historicity of Nebuchadnezzar, and even for the historicity of his campaign against Jerusalem and the city's eventual defeat.  The Ishtar Gates merely have writing on them that according to archeologists and historians describes how Nebuchadnezzar built them to incite awe in other nations, which would make it seem likely that he existed as a historical figure, but the Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle directly speaks of how the Babylonian ruler overcame Jehoiachin, king of Judah at the time of the 586 BC defeat according to the Bible.  These alone are significant evidences.

Jesus might be the most primary figure of Biblical history, but he is far from the only Biblical figure for which there is either vast or strong evidences from documentation or archeology.  Any evidence at all in favor of the historical accuracy of Biblical stories contributes to the probabilistic likelihood of Christianity being true, even when it comes to secondary or minor figures, events, and locations.  Nebuchadnezzar, though, is not minor despite of course being secondary to someone like Jesus--and being yet another tyrant who would be put to death under Mosaic Law.  His role in the broad Biblical path leading to the New Testament era is no small thing.  Besides, every person like him whose existence in an earlier age of history is supported (but not proven, as it does not logically follow from perceptions and evidences that something like the historical life of a person is by necessity a truth) is relevant to Christianity and evaluating its evidences.

As always, however, I am in no way expressing belief in the asinine idea that sensory perceptions and historical evidences prove anything more on their own than that there are perceptions and evidences.  Only reason and introspection grant absolute certainty, though the things of which one can be absolutely certain are far fewer than plenty of people think and far more than others might think.  Fools tend to think that history or science or hearsay or anything else besides pure reason is at the heart of epistemology and metaphysics.  There are numerous possible ways that evidences can be illusions, ranging from the unverifiability of most sensory experiences to the fact that historical documents and oral tradition all reduce down to hearsay, yet what is left is the fact that there is still support, short of logical proof, for pieces of history like the rule and military campaigns of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

Political Controversy Around Employers And Employees

The workplace is a part of life where certain fallacious stereotypes, as all stereotypes are fallacious thanks to all of them sharing the fallacy of composition and non sequiturs, flourish, with some people making positive or negative assumptions about others based on whether they are a "low-level" worker or in a more managerial position.  It is quite popular to stir up misunderstandings by pitting these two groups against each other.  In some situations, there is reason for an employer or employee to criticize, push back against, or even somewhat harshly call out the other party, but conservatives and liberals, in their typically inverse ways, encourage this even when there is nothing one could rationally object to.

Conservatives might look at employees with automatic suspicion, assuming that they are "entitled," lazy, incompetent, or in need of surrendering all of their free time to their professional lives (liberals could as well, but they are more likely to assume that workers are inherently victims and that employers are oppressors).  Employees who even rightly criticize their employers might be perceived as ungrateful or selfish people who are unwilling to work thoroughly in order to make a living.  The selective authoritarianism of conservatism rears its head here, conflicting with the otherwise regular tendency for them to praise freedom from authorities over them.

Liberals are more likely to think some of the opposite ideas.  They might look at employers, except perhaps in the case of small businesses, with automatic suspicion, assuming that having managerial power means someone is cruel, abusive, and eager to underpay employees while hoarding profits for himself or herself.  Employers will be hated by some liberals no matter how they actually treat their employees simply because of stereotypes or because they have greater workplace authority than their workers.  Instead of truly avoiding biases, liberals have a tendency to make assumptions about those with corporate authority.

As with so many other issues, conservatives snd liberals miss so much of the truth about the core nature of being an employer and employee--that is, not the assumed stereotypes or individualistic traits, but the concept of actually being an employer or employee in itself--because they make the errors opposite to the errors of the other side.  It is demonstrably true that being on either broad side of the hierarchy within a company does not make one monstrous or unintelligent--or a victim of someone else within the company.  Delusional philosophical ideas or political gain is the only reason why someone would believe or promote these stances.

Corporate leadership and employees alike could be rational, caring, competent people who are not seeking to exploit or deceive each other.  Someone from either group could be irrational, selfish, or lazy, or their worldviews and actions could take them in a very different direction.  None of these traits are present just because of how much power they have inside a company.  Political controversy has many people eager to merely oppose what someone else says that they make similar or even categorically identical mistakes, which they of course cling to for the sake of opposing someone else instead of understanding truth.  The two political parties with the most prominence are slaves to mirror fallacies.

Movie Review--Dredd

"Citizens in fear of the street.  The gun.  The gang.  Only one thing fighting for order in the chaos: the men and women of the Hall of Justice.  Juries.  Executioners.  Judges."

--Judge Dredd, Dredd

"Sooner or later the Justice Department is going to come through the blast doors looking for their judges.  They'll find their bodies all shot up.  One on level 25, one in the slo-mo den.  Just a bust that went wrong.  That means no torture.  No raping, no skinning.  Just a bunch of bullets to the head and chest."

--Madeline Madrigal, Dredd

Dredd is yet another unapologetically R-rated work of fiction from the past decade that is incredibly relevant to modern times thanks to its themes.  Not once does it sacrifice its thematic foundation, which explores the nature of legal prescriptions and militarized police, to tell a story set in a very well-realized hellscape of a future America.  In the same way, never does it sacrifice its artistic integrity to make a philosophical point.  The film's world of mutant powers like telepathy and open, regular combat between a militarized police force and a host of criminals unite both of these aspects into a final product that makes few to no true missteps.  Whatever the reason(s), Dredd did not make enough of a financial splash to lead to a major franchise, though this is not because the movie itself is not strong enough to launch a series of science fiction action films that would show that Marvel and DC do not have the only comics that can be cinematically adapted with great results.

Production Values

The world of Dredd, with all of its desperation and chaos, gets portrayed through excellent sets and mostly superb effects that make Mega City One seem far more grounded, physically real, and consistently structured than the sets of many other contemporary films.  The increasing reliance on enormous amounts of CGI in modern cinema, which can either benefit a movie or hinder it depending on the individual movie in question, makes Dredd all the more retrospectively unique for its more generally realistic visuals that forgo relentless CGI of an obvious kind.  Its action benefits from this more overtly realistic presentation, even during scenes of extreme destruction like when Ma-Ma's mounted guns tear through an entire level of a massive apartment tower.

Karl Urban is right at home as a "Judge" in this dystopian America.  His character and performance drive the movie, all without him ever showing his full face that has become so iconic thanks to The Lord of the Rings and The Boys.  Dredd himself is a philosophically incompetent character who epistemologically conflates arbitrary human laws and punishments with justice, but the performance is exactly what it needed to be to convey Dredd's resolve and intense but quiet personality.  Olivia Thirlby's Judge Cassandra Anderson, a rookie who is barely accepted as a Judge, comes alongside Dredd so he can assess her skills, is likewise excellently acted.  Thirlby gets the chance to show her face and emphasize emotions that distinguish her from Urban.  Of course, Lena Heady, Cersei Lannister herself, brings a strong presence of her own as the sadistic, egoistic villain Madeline Madrigal who authorizes savagery like forcing people to take a drug that dramatically slows their perception of time, skinning them, and tossing them off a very high balcony.  This trio, surrounded by fitting performances from side characters, is the heart of Dredd.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

In the society that follows a vaguely described war that led to the creation of megacities with "cursed earth" beyond their borders, a class of elite police officers called Judges war with near-endless crime waves.  A potential Judge's field test becomes complicated when she and her partner, Judge Dredd, arrest one of gang leader Madeline Madrigal's key subordinates.  Madeline locks down the entire massive apartment skyscraper with metallic sliding barriers blocking all side windows and entryways, announcing over an intercom that she will not lift them until both Judges are dead.  She promises to kill anyone found helping them and their entire families.  Dredd and Anderson, the potential Judge he is overseeing, must use everything from their standard weapons to the latter's unique psychic abilities (she is called a "mutant") to survive, resist Madeline Madrigal's cruelty, and enforce a legal system that is, of course, arbitrary.

Intellectual Content

Judge Dredd gives no indication that he thinks anything about moral epistemology and grounding beyond believing that legal power makes laws just and obligatory.  Because of this, he threatens someone with imprisonment for vagrancy, or homelessness.  He kills and arrests people over use of narcotics, but he still gives Ma-Ma a taste of slo-mo before he throws her from the top of the tower, an offense she was guilty of having done to others.  If use of illegal drugs is automatically evil, then he also committed an immoral act, not to mention an utterly hypocritical one, in the name of justice.  Dredd also physically assaults a prisoner to gain information, acting as if utilitarianism is true and the ends justify the means, but effectiveness and success at reaching a goal are not what make something morally good, or even permissible.  The truth is that Dredd is neither rational nor just, as he has epistemological faith in the social construct of a human legal system instead of rationalistically contemplating moral obligations as either nonexistent or objective.  He is irrational and a hypocrite who is willing to commit some of the very acts he condemns as universally evil if others carried them out.

Even so, he is naive enough to think he is actually avoiding epistemological errors.  "Can't execute a perp on 99%," says Dredd in response to someone else, as if it is possible to come anywhere near proving that the past has even existed for longer than a moment or that an alien or demon did not take someone's appearance to commit a crime.  Absolute certainty about a matter of criminal investigation is unattainable outside of grasping objective logical possibilities, the limited evidences and what they seem to point to, and what would logically follow if certain events happened.  Statements like this reveal that he is thoroughly irrational on many levels and simply makes assumptions that he believes to be authoritative, though they amount to nothing but conscience, arbitrary human laws, or preferences and other perceptions.  Dredd's partner Cassandra Anderson actually has access to more epistemological perceptions than him as a psychic mutant.  She can see into other minds.  The psychic abilities of Cassandra blend well with the realism, but she uses them in ways that undermine Dredd's worldview, such as by seeing that the hacker that locked them in the tower was forced by Ma-Ma and that justice is not treating him as if he voluntarily participated in any abductions, lockdowns, drug trafficking, or murders.  Again, Dredd is not just, nor is he rational; he merely acts in accordance with legal dictates he assumes are valid.

Conclusion

Rarely is a reboot as superior to the original film as Dredd is to Sylvester Stallone's 1995 Judge Dredd.  Watching it now, Karl Urban's version seems all the more distinct in a decade of forced humor in movies, which undercuts the thematic and dramatic impact of plenty of films.  More importantly, it does not only have uniqueness; it has genuine quality in its performances, worldbuilding, commitment to grittiness, and philosophical underpinnings.  Yes, some things could have been handled better to make it more aesthetically coherent, such as the coloring of some of the slow-motion sequences.  Beyond minor things like this, so much gets handled well in plot-relevant, character-driven, thematically clever ways that Dredd stands as one of the best movies of its genre from the past two or three decades.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Early on, Dredd fires a "hotshot" round into a criminal's mouth when he refuses to release a hostage," burning his head from the inside out.  Other scenes show bloody gunfights up close.  One even shows Judge Anderson blow a man's skull apart using upward shots.  Ma-Ma and her cruel subordinates talk about raping and skinning people, but this is never shown.

 2.  Profanity:  "Bitch" and variations of "damn," "shit," and "fuck" get thrown around in dialogue.

 3.  Nudity:  A woman's breasts are visible in the background during a Judge raid on a group of drug users with weapons.

Absurdism: A Subcategory Of Existentialism

Broad existentialism as a philosophical subject is about values, freedom, and personal identity, meaning nihilism, moral realism, certain kinds of theism, and absurdism are all deeply existential in nature.  For some reason, absurdism is sometimes said to not be a form of existentialism, despite it directly pertaining to issues of meaning and the personal desire for something to be genuinely meaningful.  This very blatantly relates to the concepts of personal identity, the choices one makes in light of existential uncertainty, and whether or not objective values exist.  To deny that absurdism is a type of existentialism is analogous to denying that Christianity is a religion or that hypocrisy is a type of irrationality.

Absurdism is a specific subcategory of existential philosophy centering on the fact that it is impossible for any being with human limitations to prove that either objective meaning exists or that nihilism is true (which, if correct, means it would be true that there is no such thing as meaning, only perceptions and preferences about the idea of meaning).  Absurdism is not relativism, total epistemological skepticism, or nihilism, with the first two being self-refuting and impossible and the latter being unprovable.  It is the true ideology holding that one cannot know if meaning exists or not, which leaves anyone sincere about seeking meaning in the position of craving or pursuing something that might not exist or might not take the form they expect if it does exist.

In other words, absurdism is a kind of rationalistically valid skepticism about something that is at the heart of existentialism: whether or not there is anything existentially significant about anything in existence rather than just the subjective longing for meaning.  Only an irrational person would not grasp how this is an existential philosophy even if it is more accurate and specific than many other forms of existentialism.  This is comparable to how some people pretend like Christianity is somehow not a religion even though it is a systematic theological framework that goes beyond mere theism and has its own set of values and metaphysical beings.  Of course Christianity is a religion, just as absurdism is clearly a type of existentialism.

That absurdism is an ideological subcategory of existentialism is yet another logical fact that would not need to be focused on in this way except as a response to imbecilic assumptions and false distinctions made by other people.  It would not even need to be focused on except as a reaction to the ideas of irrational people, unlike logical axioms, the general epistemological disconnect between sensory perceptions and the real external world, and so on.  One might encounter this contradictory misconception that absurdism is not an existential philosophy from time to time, but it is by no means difficult to fully disprove to oneself or others in a very short amount of time.  Any ideas that have to do with meaning and general values are existential to some extent.

The Philosophical And Personal Aspects Of Mental Health

Depression, anxiety, emotional numbness, anhedonia, psychosis, and other mental health issues can derail most of a person's life even if they had no major problems to worry about beforehand or no other issues besides the mental illness once it starts.  Mental illness is a philosophical subject because all ideas and all parts of reality, including consciousness, experiences, and self-awareness, are philosophical.  The deeply personal aspects of mental illnesses simply take the spotlight away from this for many non-rationalists.  Only when embraced as a very abstract subject pertaining to numerous key logical truths about consciousness and individuality and as a highly personal part of life is mental health fully.

Worth noting is that unlike depression, anxiety, emotional numbness, or other such conditions, which a person can immediately know they have with absolute certainty simply by introspecting and correctly identifying their experiences without making assumptions, something like psychosis cannot be proven to be a condition one has because with or without psychosis, it is impossible for a person to actually prove that they are not hallucinating most of their perceptions of the external world.  There is an inherent (given human limitations) epistemological barrier to even truly knowing if one has psychosis at all.  This is an example of how the more overtly philosophical and personal sides of mental health overlap, as the metaphysical and epistemological issues inevitably impact people in a very personal sense even if they are in no way rationalistic in their comprehension of various conditions.

Having a mental disorder or illness does not mean a person is or will soon be irrational, though.  Someone struggling with one of the aforementioned mental illnesses or others is not fated to make philosophical assumptions or errors, incapable of handling relationships, or unable to understand himself or herself very thoroughly just because of their condition.  However, resolving or lessening the burden will still make people feel more connected with themselves even if they are already highly introspective and self-aware, which in turn can facilitate at least how a connection to reason, to their environment, or to others is experienced.  There are immense personal benefits to taking mental health far more seriously than so much of present American society does.

This is why it is in everyone's best interest to not misunderstand or ignore logical and introspective facts related to mental health.  A person's explicitly philosophical depths of self-awareness, or at least the way they experience their self-awareness, and their core psychological stability will have the power to affect much of their life.  Understanding the way the philosophical and personal sides of mental health intertwine--yes, everything is philosophical, but the personal side of mental health is lived in light of more abstract truths--gives people the freedom to make progress in many other parts of their life, spilling over into deeper introspection, a greater ease of reasoning out or revisiting abstract philosophical truths, thriving emotions, workplace stability, and greater fulfillment in relationships, and so on.  It is nothing to be scoffed at or neglected.

Ignoring The Struggle With Poverty

The Biblical purpose of government is solely to mete out just punishments on the specific sins Yahweh revealed to be crimes, not underpunishing or overpunishing as the subjective feelings of individuals or groups wish for.  This and this alone is what a government operating on Mosaic Law would primarily do.  Where does this leave the Biblical commands about caring for the poor?  According to plenty of mainstream evangelicals, the government is supposed to do almost nothing about poverty, while the church and charities handle the issue.  Aside from evangelicals trying to cite the Bible about government as they literally condemn or ignore the only obligations the Bible does prescribe governing officials--killing people like murders and kidnappers, taking money from thieves as damages for victims, and so on--there is much to the Biblical side of the topic beyond this.

Mosaic Law does still have plenty to say about caring for the poor.  What it says just turns out to mostly be about how people who do not have positions of political power should and should not treat the poor.  Some of the only things that those in power are told to do with respect to poverty is to refrain from ever having biases for or against the poor, especially in a context of a criminal case (Exodus 23:2-3 and 6-7).  This does not mean the Bible does not prescribe measures that would actually lift people out of poverty or greatly alleviate their suffering!  For example, the year of Jubilee, which was instructed to be honored every 50 years following seven Sabbath years where the land itself is allowed to rest, is a year where debts are cancelled (Leviticus 25).

Moreover, miscellaneous things like leaving the edges of the crops on a field for the poor would certainly benefit even those who have no income at all (Leviticus 19:9-10).  It is not as if never prescribing the government to end poverty through forced wealth redistribution means that the Bible does not take poverty very seriously and prescribe other approaches that would dramatically reduce its scope, severity, and societal ramifications.  Will these things be discovered or encouraged by evangelicals?  Almost certainly not, given their hypocritical aversion to Mosaic Law, which they proclaim came from a perfect deity whose nature never changes and then disregard as almost totally irrelevant, outdated, or unjust.  At least they tend to say that addressing poverty is not a major obligatory role of the government.

They then might say that tackling poverty is a role of the church.  It is not even formal churches that are told to specifically handle poverty, but the people who are committed to God, whether or not they attend church at all.  Without even understanding what the "church" truly is apart from the context of the unbiblical tradition of weekly Sunday church attendance, many Christians--or at least evangelicals--rightly insist the Bible does not permit governments to take wealth from one person who did not obtain it sinfully and give it to someone else.  They might think this is what the Biblical position would be without having ever avoided all assumptions or even thought about it beyond popular talking points or personal preferences, but they admit this much.  They just then do little to nothing to actually help the poor.

What do most Christians who advocate for the church to directly handle poverty, whether or not they have truly consistent, assumption-free beliefs?  Probably nothing more than occasionally make small efforts that accomplish almost nothing but make them feel arbitrarily content with themselves for a time.  To go a lifetime while having the means to help the poor, which not everyone has, but never actually using them, this kind of evangelical must forget or ignore what James 2:14-17 says: it is useless to think that comprehension alone is all that there is to commitment to Christian morality.  One must act upon it.  As if a Christian needs to even read James 2 to realize that it logically follows that something needs to be done about poverty when it is more than just another philosophical topic to understand!