Game Review--Lara Croft Go (PS Vita)

Lara Croft GO made it to the Vita after debuting as a very unusual kind of Tomb Raider game.  Lacking third-person gameplay or camera angles and making Lara and other creatures move in turns, it is a much more explicitly puzzle-based game, as each level and each part of a level is its own self-contained puzzle where a very precise set of movements and activities is often the only way to advance to the next section.  There is a mild story, but there is no thorough plotline with subplots, explicit themes, or characterization of any kind beyond the gestures made by Lara Croft herself (and, if the creatures are characters, a recurring antagonist creature as well).  This game is a slower-paced, unconventional part of the series, and not expecting something quite different can stop mere preference-based objections from interfering with enjoyment of what it does offer.

Production Values

The art style is more stylized in this  isometric, turn-based Tomb Raider game than is the case in the other recent games of the main series (the reboot series or the previous titles).  Initially a mobile game from 2015, Lara Croft GO was brought to the PS Vita and PS4 the following year, and it does look and play like a game right at home on iOS or Android, which in one sense then naturally lends itself to a PS Vita port thanks to the Vita's portability and touch screen.  Though the environments do not become especially varied until the latter half, the colors are vibrant, the animations are fairly smooth, and the art style is very fitting for a game with an overhead perspective.  If anything, one of its mild drawbacks here is the way the left analog stick can be very sensitive when it comes to moving Lara even if players meant to go in another direction or not move so many times.

Gameplay

As mentioned earlier, this is a turn-based game, and Lara must walk within set pathway or navigate through slightly open areas with their own limited number of stepping points.  When Lara moves, so do enemies that have a fixed path they repeatedly travel in, certain enemies that Lara got too close to (they follow her), and any boulders that have been pushed using mechanisms in the landscape.  Aligning the movements of some enemies or boulders with Lara's own, as well as taking some uncharacteristic moves to ensure that she is not crushed or otherwise killed when necessary, is vital to getting past many sections.  New mechanics like carrying torches that scare away enemies or parts of the floor collapse if stepped on twice are gradually introduced and incorporated into the increasingly precise puzzles.

Story

Lara Croft searches for an artifact that requires her to place three keys, all as an enormous snake pursues her throughout a series of connected regions.  Lacking dialogue and just focusing on its protagonist as she moves from one area to another, resolving puzzles and challenges along the way, Lara Croft GO only has a minimal story at most, which works for the style of gameplay and graphics that it features.  This is not so much a negative characteristic of this particular game as much as it is an inherent limitation of what can be done with a general game of this type.  The isolation and speechlessness of the events lends itself better to a spin-off Tomb Raider offering that is very unlike the main entries.

Intellectual Content

Solving environmental puzzles is the lowest of the more abstract applications of reason, but the puzzles of Lara Croft GO still bring some level of intellectual depth, even if it comes out far more in the later parts of the game.  The early puzzles are not especially elaborate or complicated.  It is when enemies, moveable pillars, time-sensitive boulders, and collapsible floors or walls, among other things, are combined in various ways that the gameplay becomes deeper despite there being no explicitly philosophical ideas the game is supposed to convey.  When it does become tougher, but even before this point, there actually is a constantly accessible hint system that will trace out Lara's next necessary steps if a player truly gets stumped, sidestepping the need to even consult the internet for a puzzle walkthrough.  

Conclusion

Expectations might thoroughly impact someone's enjoyment of this game, not that its positive qualities are undermined or affirmed by how much someone enjoys it.  As a mobile spin-off that came to the PS Vita, Lara Croft GO is not bad, just very different from the typical Tomb Raider game.  Of course this is not as good as something like Rise of the Tomb Raider, but it is a very distinct kind of game, a more relaxed but still puzzle-oriented strategy game of sorts.  Dialogue, other human characters, and stronger themes beyond the minimalist approach to the events are not necessary for Lara Croft GO to succeed in its smaller, less conventional goals as part of the Tomb Raider franchise.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Creatures like snakes, giant spiders, and reptilian beasts can bloodlessly kill Lara, and she can kill them using her guns or spears, or by letting large objects like boulders crush them.

Seduced By Language

If I listen to music or speak with a friend, whatever emotion I experience is not tied to any linguistic knowledge unless I was to choose to focus on words so much that my emotions are oriented around them and my thoughts involve words. Even then, the capacity for emotion precedes the learning or construction of language, and, more significantly, the laws of logic that metaphysically permit possibilities, ground necessary truths, and epistemologically reveal all true knowledge are even more fundamental than emotion.  The construct of words, despite its total irrelevance to the truth or falsity of concepts, can affect how a person feels about something even if this is not permitted to influence their worldview.

Anyone who believes in a philosophical idea because they liked how it was communicated by a speaker, such as a churchgoer who is emotionally persuaded by a pastor or a scientist who is excited by the words of another scientist they assume must be correct, is someone who has been seduced by language to betray reason--emotion and excitement are not irrational and do not make someone forsake alignment with reason, for someone allows this to happen.  No one is involuntarily, imperceptibly forced to believe in certain ideas because of the words they have been exposed to or come up with themselves.  It is one thing to have one's emotional or other perceptions fluctuate as one uses, hears, or reads various words, but to believe in something because words made one feel a certain way is irrational (with the exception of believing one feels a certain way because of words if that is the case, and even then, this knowledge is attained because of reason).

Yes, words can make people feel a certain way or experience something differently about how they think about a concept, and yet language does not stop anyone from discovering a knowable logical truth, prevent anyone from making assumptions or ignoring truths they either know or could know, or recognizing the distinction between having one's emotional states potentially change in reaction to language and choosing to not align with reason on the level of actual belief and proof.  There is nothing irrational or petty about the former.  The latter, in contrast, is to let a social construct that can impact one's subjective emotions dictate what one believes about truths that are ultimately not dependent on either language or emotion.  Language as used by other people, one's own speech or writing, or even privately thinking in linguistic terms does not lead to emotionalism or other forms of irrationalism unless someone lets this happen.

Some might like the cultural connotation of the word or just how it makes them feel.  When understood and restrained properly, this is not something to hate, shun, or fear, in oneself or in others.  There might be certain people who do not even ever have to put direct effort into avoiding the fallacies of linguistic emotionalism.  Words have their practical usefulness for communication between non-telepathic beings (though this is connected with things far deeper than practicality) just as they have their more abstract nature, and none of the communicative, emotional, or intellectual elements of language are changed just because many people let themselves be seduced by language away from reason.  Language itself, after all, is a mental or social construct that has no deceiving mind of its own.  At most, it is emotionalistically influential because the majority of people are far from rationalism already.

As long as a person recognizes and continues to inwardly acknowledge that logical truths are are the core of reality, and that language is at most a logically possible tool for communication and at times introspection (though language cannot even be learned without self-awareness, general experience, and the grasp of reason already being present), then intentionally savoring the emotion that words can ignite is not something irrational.  It is indeed within everyone's power to understand these necessary truths and that language does not ground reason and is not in any way an epistemological requirement to know it.  The laws of logic are of the supreme, intrinsically foundational nature both metaphysically and epistemologically, so there could be nothing more fundamental than them: not God, not the universe, not the human mind, and certainly not emotion or social constructs, the latter of which includes language.

Working To Live

Rationalistic people work to live instead of intentionally living to just work by setting their lives up to revolve around nothing but a career--they will certainly not make work the basis of their worldview or pretend like anything other than logical axioms are the heart of all things, but they might only bother with work at all out of the need for money to obtain other things they need or desire.  Even for people who are not irrational enough to structure their lives this way on purpose, desperation can make it seem appealing to some people as a hopeful escape from the constancy and difficulty of poverty.  All the same, even structuring one's life around work does not typically help people better their lives overall.

They might wake up exhausted from the work of the previous days or weeks, only to devote most of their time or energy for the day to more work, and then they come home just as tired or even more so, needing to repeat the rigid cycle until the arrival of the weekend.  Even the weekend is not always a respite.  Not only is more work looming ahead in a couple of days at most, and some do not even have their weekends completely free, but emergencies or errands might consume the relatively little free time the weekend is supposed to offer.  More substantial things like savoring ones worldview, friendships, mental health, or hobbies 

Of course a person can and needs to psychologically prioritize at least all of these besides hobbies over professional work just to even be a rational person whether or not their workload is enormous--and they can be understood and appreciated even by hyper-busy people (especially strictly logical truths that underpin all things, which are accessible in any place or time).  It is not as if there is any excuse for going years without either discovering or revisiting/celebrating these truths.  However, there might be people who would eagerly throw themselves into relentless work out of boredom or to escape family members or to earn as much money and prestige as they can, but they are for the most part either desperate or stupid, in dire need of more money or irrational enough, if applicable, to think that the social construct of professional business is the heart of human life or the whole of reality, or at least the most important part of it.

Whether or not a person has the desperation or irrationality to blindly accept the standard work cycle, the often inflexible work cycle of American will not even have the same impact on all individuals.  It is possible for someone to be energized or feel empowered by their professional job and for someone else holding the same job to be psychologically and physically drained, with work vampirically diminishing the rest of their lives even as it provides the income necessary to actually do many things outside of work.  The increasing monetization or price increases of everyday things is in part what makes work so often a necessity to participate in society despite its objective intrusion into some parts of life.

Although inconvenient tasks of various kinds are an ongoing part of many people's daily lives, professional work is but a small part of human existence, and one of the least important aspects of it at that.  If it was not for the initial difficulty or unfamiliar nature of growing one's own food, storing one's own water, and arranging one's own shelter with or without the wonders of electricity and other advanced technology, perhaps more people would simply remove themselves from the current state of the American workplace.  Unfortunately, even those who would gladly switch to such a lifestyle could quickly find that even here, already having money at the outset is a major help in getting started.  Who, for instance, could easily obtain the land needed to grow food without some degree of preexisting wealth on someone's part?  Money itself is not the problem, and professional work itself does not have to be incentivized or forced upon people in all the ways it currently is.  It is the typical tendency for workers and employers to try to make work occupy most of their time that hurts almost everyone even if they do not want to realize it.

The First Woe

One of the most severe judgments in Revelation is given the title of the "first woe" (Revelation 9:12), a five month period where the Abyss is unlocked and creatures emerging from it under the domain of the Angel of the Abyss torment people without God's seal, the victims unable to die despite longing for it.  Even if the other judgments of this apocalyptic book are fully literal, such as hailstones of 100 pounds falling to the ground (16:21) or violence and disease killing a fourth of the global population (6:7-8), they do not even begin to rival the suffering that would be involved in this first woe, otherwise called the judgment of the fifth trumpet (9:1).  According to Revelation 9:6, "During those days, people will seek for death but will not find it; they will long for death, but death will elude them."

There are many details of Revelation 9 that are unique or otherwise worth noting, such as the reference to the angel of the Abyss named Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek.  The names Abaddon and Apollyon never receive mention again before or after this in the Bible, and Revelation 9 itself does not specify if this angel is a fallen angel that acts out of malice towards humans, uncaring of how God is limiting its expressions of brutality while still directing them towards or a servant of Yahweh acting at his behest as its legions of locust creatures torment most of humanity.  A being that seems to be an allusion to the devil is said to only be intent on the likes of deception and destruction (John 10:10), but God himself is said to eventually destroy the general wicked in hell in the sense of totally removing them from existence (Matthew 10:28).

In light of this, and because it would still be unclear even without the word destroy being associated with both God and seemingly Satan in different ways, it is unclear if the Destroyer that presides over the Abyss is supposed to be demonic or fully angelic.  Either way, there is a more significant truth Revelation 9 affirms that transcends whether the Bible is true or false.  If someone longs to die from great torment but cannot, they are experiencing firsthand the logical fact true independent of all experience that mere death is nothing compared to many forms of agony, especially pain that cannot be stopped.  One human torturing another is objectively more harmful, more cruel, and more dehumanizing than murder alone could ever be.  If this is true of many kinds of person-on-person torture, is Revelation 9 affirming this and saying people deserve worse than death?

Ultimately, this is not at all the case.  When it comes to divine punishments such as the first woe and the likely much worse but still limited suffering experienced in hell before annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23, Mathew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:4, and even John 3:16 are key verses on this), even these potentially great torments are distinctly temporary and have nothing to do with things like the worst kinds of suffering associated with sexual abuse, which is always classified as sinful unlike killing or even some mostly minor physical punishments, or the heretical concept of eternal conscious torment for all unsaved beings that has so many in its grip.  Mosaic Law describes the few acts of physical punishments that are Biblically valid and the rigid contexts and limitations they have.  The punishments of Revelation 9 are more severe because they are directly authorized or caused by God.  All of these things are true of Biblical theology and its ramifications at once.

The first woe might seem to both affirm the grand truth that killing is lesser than plenty of tortures and then insist that unrighteous people do deserve worse than death, but it is not eternal conscious torment that the people of Revelation 9 receive, and neither is the Biblically designated fate of the general unsaved.  Their final status is permanent death of the soul after possible durations of suffering to varying degrees, and not endless torture or torture involving the infliction of the very worst sins that would make one deserve hell in the first place, like rape or prolonged, unjustly harsh physical punishments that would go beyond the limited ones prescribed by God in Mosaic Law.  Everything in the Bible from the Torah to Revelation is either consistent with or directly acknowledges that death is far from the worst fate possible, and this is why there are sins greater than murder alone could possibly be.

Masturbating To Sensual Clothing

Many men and women have likely at least considered masturbating to an attractive member of the opposite gender at least once in their lives.  Perhaps they saw this person in a scene from a film, in a random image on the internet, or at some point during the day.  Psychologically excited by the sight, presence, or memory of the person in question, they thought about sexually stimulating themselves to thoughts of that encounter.  Perhaps they acted upon this desire.  Regardless, most of the things about a person that are sexually admired in such a context have nothing to do with sexuality--including body parts like the chest, buttocks, or arms.

It is not merely erotica that can incite or exacerbate a desire to masturbate, after all.  Things observed randomly in daily life can arouse the sexual excitement of random onlookers of the opposite gender, irrespective of their actual nature in relation to sexuality.  Just as nonsexual personality traits can ignite a sexual attraction that makes people desire to pleasure themselves while thinking of the person whose traits they find arousing, nonsexual clothing types of men and women can ignite sexual attraction in the opposite gender to the point of stirring up the desire to masturbate to the people wearing them.

It is not as if women do not practice the inverse of this, or as if the specific men who do masturbate to actresses they find sexy or to coworkers or select friends of the opposite gender do so simply because they are men.  Thus, the popular belief that only men or all men practice this is asinine and sexist, as is the belief that it is somehow degrading or perverted when men do it and not objectionable when women do it.  Both genders can appreciate sensual imagery of the opposite gender, and both genders might find some of that sensual imagery sexually exciting.

However, the issue at hand is the fact that the men who masturbate to certain women in bikinis (or other revealing clothing) and women who masturbate to shirtless men (or men who are otherwise uncovered) are deriving sexual stimulation from nonsexual and ordinary things.  Men and women are free to pleasure themselves to images and thoughts of certain members of the opposite gender they find sexy without fearing that doing so brings confusion about the distinction between sexual and nonsexual stimuli.

A woman masturbating to a shirtless or naked man or a man masturbating to a woman in a bikini can be fully aware that there is nothing sexual about showing the human body and enjoy self-pleasuring all the more for this paradoxical fact!  Sexual attraction sparked by nonsexual things like aesthetic beauty, personality traits, and revealing clothing is already paradoxical, but every person who masturbates to someone of the opposite gender in swimwear or some other such clothing pleasures himself or herself to a sensual but nonsexual thing.

Movie Review--Gretel And Hansel

 "Come, children, and listen, for the story I tell holds a lesson.  A lesson that might one day keep you safe.  So gather in close and hear me well.  It's the story of the Beautiful Child with the little pink cap.
--Holda, Gretel and Hansel


Many of the best horror films have an R rating.  Not all of them do.  Gretel and Hansel gives a dark PG-13 take on the already grim (get it?) source material without forgoing a somewhat optimistic ending.  Its small cast frees it to explore a handful of characters, a welcome thing to any horror viewer who would like to see Sophia Lillis handle a more directly primary role than that of Beverly in the It movies, both of which featured an ensemble cast.  In this retelling of the Grimm fairy tale, the cannibalistic witch actually lets Gretel and Hansel stay with her for multiple days before her sinister nature is revealed to them, and she also tries to train Gretel as a witch herself.


Production Values

One of the best opening narrations of the past decade immediately foreshadows the darkness and high production quality of Gretel and Hansel, with everything from the contrast of blues and reds with duller colors to the unique soundtrack giving the film details that stand out from many PG-13 horror efforts--not that an arbitrary MPAA rating has anything to do with quality.  It is just that the PG-13 rating can so easily be used as a way to get wider age demographics to watch a horror movie with no substance.  Thankfully, there is plenty of substance to this cinematic feast.  Sophia Lilis finally gets a horror film that focuses mostly on her in a smaller cast setting, and her Gretel faces decisions of genuine gravity when she struggles with choosing to watch over her brother or explore the alluring powers of witchcraft activating within her.  Gretel and Hansel is first and foremost Lillis's movie.  Her stellar performance is also met with similarly excellent performances from Sam Leakey, whose role as Hansel is his first documented acting credit, and Alice Krige, who must convey both malevolence and subtlety as the witch.


Story

Some spoilers are below.

A girl born during a famine receives the title "Beautiful Child," but she is expected to die of sickness, so her father brings her to an enchantress who cured her but granted hee the "Second Sight," a precognition.  The child also develops other abilities as she grows.  She is eventually exiled as a young girl because of the danger she poses to nearby people.  Years later, a girl named Gretel cares for her younger brother after her mom forces them out into a life of starvation amidst poverty and cruelty.  The two stumble upon a house full of food as they experience severe hunger, with a witch residing there while showing herself as a kind person.  The strange woman quickly starts grooming Gretel groomed to be a witch as she espouses sexist ideas about men and attempts to turn Gretel against her brother Hansel.


Intellectual Content

The blatantly asinine epistemological statements made all throughout by Gretel and the witch contain pathetic phrases like "Think less, know more" and an assertion by Gretel that she doesn't exist if a gate she is looking at is not real.  These comments do not reflect any overarching theme of Gretel and Hansel, but there is a more direct look into whether the powers of witchcraft can be used in a morally positive way.  Witches are often portrayed as abusive, unjustly violent, hostile women willing to kidnap and murder in addition to casting spells.  The basic concept of a witch does not entail this, of course.

Having powers of sorcery does not automatically make one malevolent.  However, moral emotions (conscience) and social norms have no epistemological validity, so someone being comfortable with a non-malevolent witch would not make sorcery amoral.  Interestingly, Exodus 22:18 says to kill witches (on the testimony of two or three witnesses as other passages clarify) regardless of whether they have kidnapped or murdered anyone, with those deeds receiving capital penalties as separate crimes.  There is clearly not a Biblical exemption for witches (male or female) who use sorcery without using it specifically for malevolent ends.


Conclusion

Gretel and Hansel's reconstruction of a tale likely familiar to many people of diverse ages is a triumph on practically every level.  The lack of empty jumpscares, use of color contrasts and contrasts of light and darkness, superb acting, and unflinching focus on its lead youths all help guide it into excellence from start to finish.  Director Oz Perkins (who also directed A24's The Blackcoat's Daughter) helms a movie that intentionally or unintentionally shows that fairy tales have much more to offer than Disney adaptions and lighthearted stories aimed at children suggest.  The PG-13 rating does not clash with the macabre vision behind his movie whatsoever and only exemplifies how accessible horror can be.

Content:
 1.  Violence:  An arrow is shot through the forehead of an assailant early on.  Closer to the end, a bucket of human body parts is poured onto a table and a character is burned and decapitated onscreen.

Hypocrisy With Climate Disaster And The Second Coming

What someone does or does not believe about the future stems from even more foundational parts of their worldview.  A person who is rationalistic can understand the evidential probability or logical possibility of future events without pretending like he or she knows which of the numerous possible events will actually occur, and non-rationalists will instead believe that specific future events will happen on the arbitrary grounds of emotion, persuasion, or mere perception or desire.  How people react to false predictions will likely reflect whatever irrationality is in the rest of their worldview, as in the case of how the typical kind of non-rationalistic Christian dismisses the logical possibility of human-spurred climate disaster because of inaccurate predictions while not treating the Second Coming the same way.

The Second Coming of Jesus might have been predicted falsely many times throughout church history, but it does not logically follow that there will be no Second Coming at all.  Whether Jesus is divine or whether he will return are metaphysical issues that are not dictated by whether fools across history claimed or even privately believed they knew when the return of Christ would occur.  Many Christians would agree with this, but not on the basis of strictly logical necessity, agreeing that false predictions of the Second Coming do not mean Christianity is false only because they are emotionalistically attached to Christianity already, not because they recognize how the invalidity of Christian eschatology does not logically follow from idiots making such claims.  The same is true of environmental disaster of human origin.

Irregardless of whether human-caused climate change leads to some sort of catastrophe, the truth of the matter will not depend on if some environmentalists, like some Christians, made assumptions and proclaimed errors out of misguided zeal.  The way evangelical Christians tend to react to this as opposed to the false dates for Christ's return shows that they are very willing to overlook false predictions when they are made by other evangelicals.  It is not hard to see in the individual cases of climate alarmism and Christian eschatology that there is no such thing as knowledge, as opposed to assumptions, of when major events will happen.  It is not difficult to see that any fool could believe or assert that an event is right around the corner when there is no way they could prove it.

Non-rationalists are certainly prone to fallacies no matter which ones they end up holding onto.  So very easily, fallacious beliefs involve the hypocrisy of treating different groups of people as if one of them is not in the wrong for having epistemological or moral errors.  This hypocrisy could take the form of conservatives criticizing liberals for the misandry they also embrace just as it could take the form of evangelical Christians, who are often also conservatives, thinking that failed promises of ecological disaster invalidate all strands of environmentalism while ignoring the similarities to how they treat the Second Coming.  Insincerity and its more important cousin irrationality are what convince them to have such distinct philosophical standards in their metaphysical ideologies, epistemological frameworks, and moral stances.

Pet Sematary: The Cosmic Horror Of Death

Death is more certain than taxes and human conflict and economic cycles, Louis Creed believes.  The protagonist of the novel Pet Sematary is right in the sense that, as social constructs, the likes of taxes and monetary cycles are not as fundamental as biological life and death, with their overlap with scientific phenomena that could occur without human inventions.  As an initial adherent of scientism who confuses science for reason, evidence for proof, and supernaturalism for an impossibility or unlikelihood, Louis is nonetheless personally comfortable with death, especially as a university doctor.  When his wife lashes out at the very mention of death as something natural, he maintains his worldview with all of its mixture of partial correctness, outright logical falsities, and mere assumptions.

Zelda, the deformed but abusive sister of his wife Rachel, died when she was young, and Rachel has allowed the trauma to make her emotionalistic even as Louis makes assumptions about death and the afterlife.  Their daughter Ellie comes to realize that the family cat Church could die at any time no matter how unexpected it is.  Is there an afterlife for animal consciousness?  For human minds?  These are some of the issues that these characters dwell on or discuss as the novel unfolds.  Church is eventually killed on a road near the Creed home, and a fatherly neighbor named Jud secretly brings Louis to a Native American burial ground behind the "Pet Sematary," a place where local children have buried their animals for decades.

Jud warns him that he might hear strange voices or sounds or see bizarre lights and to dismiss it all as some relatively ordinary event.  The death of a university student named Pascow who, in the moments before his death, warned Louis not to go to the more dangerous cemetery, and subsequent, seeming experiences with Pascow's ghost have already softened Louis toward the possibility of supernaturalism, not that there are not supernatural (literally just nonphysical) things that are knowable with absolute logical certainly, like the necessary truths of reason themselves or the uncaused cause.  Sensory experiences would not prove the supernatural exists except for that sensory perceptions cannot exist without a consciousness, and consciousness is immaterial no matter its causal relationship to the body.  Still, Louis has already started to shift his worldview.

Jud indeed brings him to a Micmac burial site after an abnormal presence stalks the duo.  He does not clarify why, only that Louis needs to bury Church there.  Before long, Church has been resurrected, albeit changed.  As the events happen, the multiple references in the "act" divisions of the book and by the characters to the resurrection of Lazarus by Jesus in John 11 hold up one of the most famous Biblical stories of resurrection.  All people who die, the Bible says, will be resurrected, some to face the justice of annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4, Mathew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, Romans 6:23) and some to eternal life (Daniel 12:2), but Louis finds a different sort of resurrection.  The Micmac site distorts the nonhuman animal or even the person that is returned to life.  A Wendigo associated with the area and with cannibalism has "turned the ground sour," offering intended or unwitting resurrection at the cost of the creature's former self.  The reanimated bodies become tainted or possessed by the Wendigo.  According to Jud's stories of his youth and the experiences of Louis, this resurrection has never been a fully positive one or in some cases positive at all.

So great is the cosmic horror of death, of the loss of a fellow person whom one loves, that the still-irrationalistic Louis buries his son Gage when one of his own children is killed on the same road as Church.  Ellie wants God to resurrect Gage.  She has heard that if Jesus had not specified that Lazarus should come forth, all of the dead nearby would have come to life again.  Louis is more open to theism and to twisted versions of Christianity he is familiar with in particular.  He has also seen the power of the unusual burial site, and he hopes that Gage will not come "back" a lesser shell of himself.  Yes, what has happened once from the same activity might not happen again: anything but logical necessities could change at any time, and even scientific laws could fluctuate from one occasion to another even if they never do.  Church's altered status after his resurrection would not by necessity be the fate of Gage.

The evidence short of logical proof still suggested otherwise, and Louis buries Gage.  The very young child returns as a conduit for the Wendigo to conduct murder.  Pascow's warning was made in vain.  This Micmac burial ground that Jud says will outlast modern societies is tied to an eldritch entity of sorts that can influence people to have urges to sleep or act as fits its will.  However, the sheer intensity of grief and despair play a role.  Louis hopes against probability that Gage would not also be corrupted.  It is not the hope itself that is irrational.  It is that he never stopped when all available evidences, as based in perception and thus potential illusion as they were, pointed to the opposite.  Louis has to kill his resurrected baby's body when the possessed vessel kills Jud and then Rachel.

It is not just the Wendigo and the nature of supernaturalism and the laws of the natural world (which the characters frequently make errors or assumptions about) that contribute to the horror of Pet Sematary.  Loss and sadness are enemies of the protagonist just like the Wendigo.  Desperately hoping that if he buries Rachel in the Wendigo's land faster than he did with Gage, he drags her corpse, places her in the ground, and waits.  Even a rational person can be seized by grief (though simple experience of emotions does not make someone rational or irrational).  For an irrational person like Louis, handling not just one death but two could be excruciating and overwhelming.  In a way, the more central cosmic horror of Pet Sematary is not the Wendigo or the possibility of unwanted supernatural beings at all.

It is rooted in how death can claim any creature at any time, how death means survivors must live with an absence, and how sadness can be so crushing that people might, avoidably but tragically, yield to whatever irrational beliefs or actions they think will make the pain disappear.  Many who have lost a friend or family member might relate to at least the temptation to become lost in false worldviews, assumptions, emotionalism, addiction, or isolation in the wake of death.  Death, after all, is not just the natural end of the body.  Either the mind of a person vanishes forever or at some point, in some way lives on, but those still living are left without them in either case.  What happens to the mind is an even greater concern.  The loss of a loved one can be a penetrating horror indeed.

The Passage Of Time

The difference between the perception of a thing, whether it is a logical truth, a physical object, or something else, and the thing itself is a major one: the former is a matter of subjective experience that can be malleable, and the latter is a matter of how something is no matter what a person ignores, assumes, or hates about it.  Epistemological limitations can prevent knowledge of whether particular things are true, such as whether a building one is looking is really there outside of one's consciousness or is just a mental image (the mental image is present either way), but no one believes in assumptions or errors except because of stupidity.

One thing that is commonly confused for perceptions of it or for some other such thing is time.  Some pretend like time is invented by humans with the creation and use of clocks and other timepieces like hourglasses, with people being prompted to design these by the strong but illusory impression that there really is such a thing as duration.  Others believe that because societal units of measurement for time, such as hours and minutes, are created by people, the thing those units apply to does not really exist outside of perception or convention; however, moments still exist and pass without people using words to refer to it, units to track it, and devices to mark it elapsing.

The passage of time is a nonphysical thing without which physical and mental events could not take place.  Existing independently from matter though it was ultimately created by either the uncaused cause or something created by the uncaused cause (an eternal past is logically impossible because the present moment would never be reached), time is not a thought, a feeling, or a preference.  Time can be grasped as it is by the intellect if one looks to the laws of logic without making assumptions, but it is not the same thing as a sense of time any more than a physical item is the mental perception of it.  In actuality, one can realize that the present moment cannot be an illusion, while many particular material environments one and the objects within them cannot be proven to exist outside of one's mind (yet the existence of matter can be proven [1]).

That time objectively exists, both in the sense that it is real and the sense that it does not depend on perception or even events in order to elapse, is still something that can be known amidst a subjective sense of time, sometimes called chronoception.  A dull, uneventful, terrifying, or bothersome experience can make it seem like time is passing more slowly, while an engaging, elating, or desired experience could make it seem like time is passing more quickly.  Common phrases like "time goes by fast when you enjoy yourself" hint at this as they still, if meant literally, would be communicating the erroneous idea of time itself speeding up or slowing down rather than time simply being perceived differently.

Five minutes is still five minutes no matter how thrilling or dreadful the events that occurred during those five minutes were.  Time cannot change in its rate of passage, though the words people use for units of time can be changed, nothing but arbitrary communicational constructs.  Time is not the electronic or mechanical timepieces that are made to measure it, nor is it anything else but the immaterial duration in which events happen, though it does not depend on the events in order to exist.  It is the other way around.  The notions of time being a very thorough illusion of perception, a physical part of the natural world, or a pragmatic, intentional construct for social coordination are very obviously false.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/08/matter-is-not-illusion.html

Near-Death Experiences (Part Three)

If near-death experiences are valid, why does everyone who is medically resuscitated or almost dead not have one?  This needs to be understood as it relates to logical necessity and possibility irrespective of Christian theology and then as it relates to Christianity, the religion that is both consistent with rationalistic truths and that has much historical evidence in its favor.  First of all, it is not true by logical necessity in itself that if there is an afterlife, every single person would receive it.  If Christianity or something similar is true, then yes, all people who die have some sort of afterlife, even if only for several minutes or some other limited duration to receive judgment and then be annihilated (Revelation 20:11-15).  This is if Christianity is true.  Perhaps the uncaused cause only grants some people an afterlife of any sort.  It could also be the case that the uncaused cause allows some other being to arbitrarily decide to bestow an afterlife upon some of the human dead.

Second, just because not everyone mentions that they had a near-death experience does not mean that they did not have one that they distinctly recall.  Moreover, those who genuinely have no memory of such an experience could have still had one.  Whether or not the Biblical afterlife of eternal bliss in New Jerusalem or torment leading to eternal death (nonexistence) in the lake of fire await us, people being revived from death or from near-death states without any memory of an afterlife would not mean that they did not experience a conscious existence.  God or some other sort of supernatural being could have overridden their memories or they could have simply forgotten as the neurological activity correlating to mental phenomena (which is immaterial) resumed.  This epistemological barrier goes both ways--remembering an afterlife after resuscitation does not mean there is one, or that it is that particular kind of afterlife, and not remembering an afterlife does not mean there is not one.

As far as Biblical stories go, however, none of the people resurrected by Jesus, such as the daughter of Jairus in Mark 5 and Lazarus in John 11, say anything about experiencing an immediate afterlife of any kind.  If this was as directly as the Bible touched upon the status of the dead between now and their resurrection (Daniel 12:2), it would not explicitly establish that there is no conscious experience until the resurrection, but it would be evidence for what is sometimes called soul sleep.  In light of the multiple verses that clearly refer to death as an unconscious nonexistence or sleep (some of which are mentioned below), it is very weighty that none of these resurrected individuals hint at the opposite.  Even the spirit of the prophet Samuel, summoned by the witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28, is surprised when he is called up, perhaps because he was revived as an unembodied spirit by being stirred up before his resurrection.

It is indeed very significant that, in addition to the Bible saying with almost the same level of directness that the dead are not conscious until their resurrection (Job 3:1-19, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Mark 5:35-40) as it does that people will come to an end in hell (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6), its resurrection accounts do not involve people saying they saw a proto-heaven or proto-hell before the final judgment.  To clarify, the doctrines of annihilationism and soul sleep do not have equal directness of clarity because, while the nature of hell and Yahweh's cosmic justice is very blatantly affirmed by prophets, Jesus, and Paul (and on a repeated basis, though only one direct comment is enough), the references to the dead sleeping or being in a state of nonexistence could be the assumptions of people who has not know what comes after death in the case of Job and the author of Ecclesiastes and a metaphor in the case of Jesus and Paul.  However, this seems unlikely, and the people who pretend to take the Bible literally whenever the text is consistent with this are sometimes the first to disregard the literal statements suggesting soul sleep.

Does this mean that all near-death experiences are illusions if Christianity is true?  No!  To a soul that dies and then is resurrected, it would seem like only a moment passed from the death of the body to resurrection before God, and there is nothing logically impossible about a consciousness perceiving the last position of its body upon awakening even if those circumstances happened long ago.  It could still be true that the "dead in Christ" see Yahweh and Jesus immediately upon death because their very next experience is that of their resurrection to eternal life.  Unless there is an afterlife that is vastly different for various individuals, at least some near-death experiences are mere mental perceptions while a person is almost dead, and even then, a person could not know from a near-death experience alone that there is an afterlife.  They would have to be dead and know with absolute certainty that they are dead, something they cannot even have when trying to know if the sensory world of this present life is as they perceive it.

The Utilitarianism Of Caiaphas And Others

Much later than its examples of relativism in the book of Judges, where almost everyone does what is right in the meaningless subjectivity of "their own eyes," the Bible gives an example of a prominent Jewish figure who endorsed utilitarianism in defiance of Mosaic Law.  Caiaphas, the same high priest who opposes Jesus in Matthew 26:57-68 before his crucifixion, states in John 11:49 that it is "better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."  Speaking of Jesus and the desire to eliminate him to prevent Roman interference with the Jews, he is willing to harm others as long as it contributes to safety.  Of course, the Romans were incredibly utilitarian as well; they practiced what is likely the most absolutely inhumane behaviors of the entire historical record in order to terrify opposition to Rome.

Caiaphas is notably not merely talking like a utilitarian without eventually acting on his erroneous philosophy.  He does later participate in the slander of Jesus, wanting him dead for claiming to be more than just a Jewish human.  Matthew 26:65-67 mentions that Caiaphas's companions begin beating Jesus after Caiaphas calls him a blasphemer, though the text does not specify if Caiaphas committed this physical assault.  For those who did so with his support, striking Jesus physically was in total defiance of the Mosaic Law the allegedly served, where beatings with fists are among the sins punished (in this case, monetarily as according to Exodus 21:18-19) and not the deserved punishment for any sin.  The utilitarianism Of Caiaphas and his kind is on display here, where they are willing to act this hypocritically, abusively, and emotionalistically for the sake of perceived order among the Jews.  The tragedy in this regard is not merely that they struck Jesus, but that they would mistreat any person in this manner.

While the fixed nature of Christianity's moral obligations excludes utilitarianism's situational flexibility and this can be known from logical deduction, Romans 3 does have Paul directly address a form of utilitarianism at a different point in the New Testament.  Divine grace is morally good, though not obligatory, and it can only be shown in a context of mercy, with mercy being impossible unless a genuine offense has been committed and justice has been suspended.  An irrationalist might think that if grace is good and can only be shown in response to sin, then sin is trivial or mandatory because it precedes that grace and sets the stage for it.  Paul does not hesitate to condemn such fools in Romans 3:8: "Why not say--as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say--'Let us do evil so that good may result'?  Their condemnation is deserved."

It seems that there were people claiming Christians live in utilitarian delusion (and less rational, sincere Christians might).  Romans 6:1-2 further rebukes this error of sinning for the sake of receiving more grace, for if something is morally wrong, tied to the nature of a deity whose character does not change (Malachi 3:6), then there is no such thing as being justified in committing evil for the sake of a real or supposed good that will come about.  That which is evil by nature should never be done.  There are very precise, avoidable situations where any course of action is immoral, like the dilemma facing Jephthah in Judges 11 where he has to choose between breaking a vow to God and human sacrifice--but in these scenarios, the right thing is avoiding the objectively greater evil instead of seeking a good outcome through evil things.  Even here, utilitarianism is invalid within Christian philosophy and, more foundationally, is logically invalid in itself.

Utilitarianism is logically impossible in itself beyond what the Bible does or does not say.  If something is morally good, it is good because of its nature as it relates to the nature of the uncaused cause.  If something is immoral, it is contrary to moral obligation or value and thus the deed, belief, or desire in question should not be indulged in.  The Bible just addresses utilitarianism on occasion with a very blatant directness.  It is clear in Mosaic Law that God is revealing obligations that do not shift with preferences, circumstances, or outcomes, but the Torah says more what the obligations are rather than what they are not.  With Caiaphas, though, the New Testament provides an example of a hypocrite who believes in and practices utilitarianism while supposedly adhering to Mosaic Law, and Paul points out how utilitarianism contradicts even the Biblical doctrines of divine mercy and salvation that the Old Testament had already introduced.

Blind Consumerism

The rich and poor alike are heavily pressured to intertwine their lives with the extreme consumerism that dominates some aspects of American society, though it is much easier for the former to actually live this out without drastic financial consequences.  Whether it is the potential thrill of obtaining new items or yielding to social pressures, if not something else, there is not just one reason why consumerism might be subjectively attractive to the average person.  Consumerism, though, is just the elevation of one aspect of human life and society to the point where people treat it as if is more than truly is.  It is by necessity an irrationalistic worldview and lifestyle, yet one that many people are willing to denounce as they indulge in it at the very same time.  The allure of materialistic pursuit of physical belongings can be strong indeed for some.

People who assume that constantly buying products will inevitably free them from every trial of life or actually align  them with the nature of reality are fools, yes.  To be clear, though, consumerism is not having or loving possessions.  A person could have possessions and not be seized by greed, by arrogance, or by apathy towards more substantial matters.  It is just that consumerism is idiotic and could only ironically be morally good or permissible if this matches up with the moral nature of the uncaused cause, but even then it would not be the foundation of reality, and blind consumerism, the kind many seem to be in the clutches of, is still idiotic because it could only be embraced on the basis of assumptions or preferences, most likely springing from emotionalistic infatuation.  At the same time, the compatibility of owning material things and not making ones worldview, emotions, or lifestyle revolve around them is attainable for everyone.

A person who deeply understands, savors, and builds their life around intangible things like logical truths, knowledge of truths, introspective wholeness and pleasure, and morality (if moral obligations exist) can still have and enjoy material possessions.  There is no hypocrisy in this because there is no conceptual contradiction in these ideas.  Blind consumerism is ideologically and behaviorally idiotic, yes.  Having and enjoying possessions is not the same as embracing economic/consumeristic materialism (distinct from metaphysical materialism/naturalism).  Having many possessions and looking forward to gaining new ones is not necessarily consumerism, much less the blind form of consumerism that only can be accepted on the basis of assumptions, emotion, or social conditioning.

Like any other manifestation of emotionalism, assumptions, or errors, blind consumerism is of course irrational, but so is the idea that material possessions should be shunned or forsaken just because it is possible for certain people to mistakenly orient their lives around them.  Materialistic consumerism is idiotic just like assumed asceticism.  A broad personal library of possessions is utterly unecessary to know the core necessary truths of reason, to understand one's own self, to be a righteous person, and to even obtain some happiness, making consumerism irrelevant to the most foundational things possible, but pursuing material gain and possessions without rejecting these truths is not irrational or consumeristic.

Movie Review--Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters (Unrated)

"There's a place deep in the forest, nearby the mountains.  A place dark witches use for their Sabbath."

--Mina, Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters 

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters occasionally has some great ideas like taking the classic story in a very different direction, but in other cases, such as with the style of the dialogue, it does not capitalize on anywhere near as well as it could have.  The humor or attempts at it fall far short of the dark but clever humor of something like Borderlands, the dialogue is very unusual for the era the story is set in, and the characters are seldom developed.  It is nowhere near as stylistically unique as the later Gretel and Hansel and nowhere near as thematically deep as The VVitch, but having more of a slant towards action and extreme violence is not what makes them Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters a lesser movie than these other witch films.  Indeed, the execution is what is severely lacking.  Ideas like a witches' Sabbath and a hyper-violent, steampunk version of Hansel and Gretel could have been so much better utilized than they are in the context of the script here.  At least the unrated version adds to the violence that gives the movie the majority of its very limited style.

Production Values

The effects of Witch Hunters are wildly inconsistent.  Sometimes they look far more artificial than tends to be the case even today when CGI distinctively looks different from the sets and cast.  Sometimes they look fairly competent for an early 2010's release.  By far, the physical variety in the witches that appear for the Blood Moon near the end is the best aspect of the aesthetic and effects side of the project.  Even worse than the inconsistent effects, though, is the consistently poor dialogue.  Phrases that sound more at home in casual modern conversations than in a setting closer to medieval Europe are used all throughout, all without any of the quality that a better-crafted parody of fairy tales would have.  No, the lines and delivery of Gemma Arterton's Gretel and Jeremy Renner's Hansel are not exceptions.  It is Famke Jannsen as the Grand Witch Muriel who certainly does the best with her role, although even her doing her best with the character does not come close to saving the film because of her limited screentime compared to the titular characters.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

The two siblings eventually leave the exact position their father left them in and stumbled upon a house in the woods made of candy.  When a witch inside tries to force Hansel to eat so she can feast upon him, Gretel uses a nail to free herself from her shackles, save her brother, and lock the witch in the oven meant to cook Hansel.  As adults, the duo kills witches as bounty hunters, and the mayor of a Augsburg (in Germany) hires them to find an unusually high amount of missing children.  A coven of witches led by Muriel discovers a way to make their kind immune to the pain and damage of flames, a common manner of death for them, but a captured witch reveals enough information for Hansel and Gretel to anticipate a special Sabbath of sorts for witches.

Intellectual Content

Despite the movie not doing almost anything to explore the significant moral issues that would be present in the world portrayed, it does actually give hints of how false accusations of sorcery are still taken seriously by some in this land plagued by witches--though Hansel directly admits he is stupid enough (though he does not describe it in this way) to not have more than little to no evidence beyond hearsay to kill women for supposed witchcraft.  Of far greater importance is the torture for information that Hansel and Gretel are willing to casually inflict on captive witches, which is completely foreign to the Biblical punishments for sorcery that have long been falsely associated with such cruel treatment even though they only involve execution far quicker than that of almost any pagan country and far less painful than even just living in an American prison.  For the sake of clarifying what is ultimately obvious in the text, verses like Exodus 22:18 that demand the death of witches do not allow for torture to gain confessions or for execution methods to be drawn out for the sake of torture.  Elsewhere in Mosaic Law, these are already directly or indirectly condemned as it is.

Conclusion

Yet another example of concepts with potential getting explored through mostly poor to mediocre execution, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is absolutely not one of the best movies about witchcraft that the last 10-20 years have produced.  Lacking natural dialogue or the kind of satire it perhaps was supposed to provide, it amounts to nothing more than a string of very violent scenes, which to be clear is not artistically or morally problematic at all in itself, and very out of place dialogue without almost any character development to accompany all of this.  This kind of take on fairy tales can be done in a vastly superior way, and anyone looking for a better version of the Hansel and Gretel story has a better option in 2020's Gretel and Hansel.  Witch Hunters does manage to handle one thing well, though, and that is the visual variety of its many witches, something that is perhaps unrivaled.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Plenty of violence, including limbs getting ripped off of torsos in direct view of the camera, an eye popping, and a living person exploding and throwing bloody pieces of his body around a room, is included.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fuck," "shit," "bitch," and "damn" are used.

 3.  Nudity:  A woman sheds her clothing and is seen naked from behind as she enters a pool of water ahead of Hansel.

Triumph Over The Natural World

There is a massive amount of factors in the perceived external world that humans can have some control over, even if it takes periods of time longer than many lifetimes to more fully develop this control.  Indeed, a standard human lifetime at this time is not long enough to scientifically advance to where we are now in one generation, especially since scientific correlations must often be stumbled into.  Unlike logical truths, correlations between natural events are not knowable (for non-omniscient beings) without experiential prompting, and even then they are only knowable on the level of logical possibilities, what would follow from certain ideas about nature if true, and what one's subjective sensory perceptions suggest is the case.  There is no metaphysical necessity or intrinsic certainty in the laws of nature or in how one could use them to guard against natural forces, whereas reason is inherently true, absolutely certain, and the only immutable thing in existence.  Reason must be relied on to even know what one can of one's sensory experiences when the inverse is not true.  Even so, it is possible to make great advances based on long-term observations of nature that ironically protect humans from nature.

Communication can now occur across enormous distances due to electronic devices, providing the option to hear someone's voice or see their face without being remotely close to them in a geographical sense.  Modern transportation, despite having its own flaws and difficulties, allows for people to travel local, national, and international distances faster and more safely than before.  Buildings and vehicles can be equipped with climate control capabilities to protect against temperature fluctuations of an unsafe or merely unwanted kind.  Electronic technology can produce lighting and heat, previously accessible from sources like the sun, campfires, or torches.  Medicine can aid the immune system in protecting against disease of bacterial and viral origins, while highly-developed projectile weapons can aid physical strength in protecting against animals and other people.  So much of modern technological triumph over vulnerability to nature, though technology relies on materials that originate in nature, is taken for granted by some of the same people who stereotype the younger generations as ungrateful for the relative privileges of contemporary life.

While humans are still biological creatures living in nature and are still quite vulnerable to its power, a great deal of the threat posed by the environment can be partly or entirely nullified by using human mastery over matter.  Genuine triumph over the natural world has been achieved to some extent.  Still, a hurricane, flood, heat wave, or freeze could devastate even the more developed societies of the planet, if only it strikes at an inopportune time or with enough severity.  All the same, the very existence of most things observed in the external world cannot be proven to exist, only to be perceived as if they exist.  Matter exists, but even the sole way for a human to actually know this [1]--which requires making no assumptions, intentionally discovering the objective truths of logic, and then discovering what logically follows from very specific truths--is something that most people would almost certainly not understand in their current intellectual state or be outright terrified of.

That some sort of matter exists, both in the sense that one's consciousness inhabits a body (whose form and size cannot be known from just perceiving that one has certain limbs, size, or appearance) and in the sense that there is an environment or stimulus beyond one's body, is knowable, but very difficult to actually discover.  It is in fact easier to realize that there is by logical necessity an uncaused cause, even if it is only oneself or the entity that brought oneself into existence.  Since self-creation, matter past-eternally existing without a beginning, and coming into existence without some kind of metaphysical cause are all logical impossibilities, there is an uncaused cause, whether it is the deity of any popular religion or not.

Nature's deity, which either created the physical universe or initiated the causal chain which led to its existence, would be something humans are far more vulnerable to than natural disasters or the obstacles we have only overcome by gradual technological progression.  So many people by all appearances believe at least one of two things.  They probably think that seeing something means it must exist outside of their consciousness, though they tend to have never even realized the distinction between consciousness and the external world; they also likely hold that something must not exist if they cannot see it.  The external world, or as many people might call it instead, nature, is visible, but for the existence of most things within it is utterly unverifiable for humans.  The uncaused cause, on the contrary, is not visible and yet exists by logical necessity whether or not the natural world does.  It might not be the Biblical Yahweh, though there is a great deal of evidence that it is, but there is an uncaused cause, and such a being could wield power far beyond the totality of nature's.  That people worry more about the cosmos than the uncaused cause is because of irrationalistic priorities.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

The Need For Confrontation

There is nothing Biblically wrong with going so far as to enjoy confrontation, as long as a person does not hope for someone to be irrational or unjust so that they can be justified in anger towards them and lash out.  Anger, verbal harshness, and even hatred itself are never inherently irrational or otherwise sinful, but to wish for someone to err just to have the opportunity to enjoy confrontation with them (within the limitations of justice) is to wish for stupidity and evil to be present, and thus is itself irrational and wicked.  Even if they do not actually want for some people to err so that they have someone to legitimately oppose, people could fall into other errors.

Confrontation could intoxicate or terrify people based on their personalities and worldviews, or it might be something that neither excites nor worries a given individual.  Even for rationalists, urges might arise that need to be monitored and controlled, as perfect rationality in grasping logical truths and structuring priorities does not mean that someone will not have the involuntary desire for controversy to exist without need, or that he or she will not flee from controversial interactions even where they are utterly necessary.  A non-emotionalistic kind of intolerance is always the intrinsically rational response to stupidity and sin in all of their forms, but this does not entail hoping for someone to intellectually or morally fail in order to pounce on them, nor does it entail always forgoing confrontation out of timidness or a misguided kind of love.

Literally everything is or could be controversial; everything from the most fundamental and basic (but still extraordinarily deep) truths to their most precise ramifications to every possible experience and deed could offend, frighten, or disappoint someone.  Regardless of the actual nature of the truth or thing in question, subjectivity is all non-rationalists tend to look to.  The world is full of non-rationalists, and their errors on top of errors, their layers of hypocrisy, and their ruthless egoistic devotion to personal preferences make confrontation necessary.  There would be no need to ever confront anyone if all people made no assumptions and embraced the truth.  The unity and personal and societal peace would be unparalleled.

There never has been, as far as all historical evidence suggests, even a single rationalistic society, and there is certainly example after example in the modern world of people who gleefully stir up confrontation where there was no need for it, or who shirk from telling others their faults or even from just resolutely speaking in favor of truth as a whole, no matter how they will be perceived, disliked, or feared because of it.  Wanting someone to choose irrationality to gloat over them (though non-rationalists are inferior to rationalists and deserve to be treated as such) and tolerating stupidity are inverse errors here.  There is no shortage of either in a culture that tries to financially and emotionally profit from outrage or tolerance without regard for anything beyond preferences, assumptions, and cultural norms.

The worst possible error is the denial of the fact that logical axioms are inherently true, and many people will ignore or reject this truth.  There could not possibly be something irrational or unjust about harboring anger or hatred towards them.  Confronting those who succumb to this most extreme kind of folly and the rest of the irrationalism it connects with is indeed a necessity to fully live for the all-encompassing nature of logical truths.  Neglecting or opposing axioms and what hinges on them is at the heart of the numerous errors of non-rationalists, and yet although taking delight in their inferiority or exploiting every opportunity to refute them publicly is no sin, there are certainly ways to approach confrontation and controversy with irrational beliefs or motives.

Profiting From Misfortune

The very nature of business is that the problems of consumers provide opportunities for services and products that can alleviate or perhaps altogether solve the issue.  As individual people try to buy something to remedy isolated instances of problems in their lives, they might forget or wholly overlook the fact that this is what the entirety of business hinges upon.  This is not automatically an exploitative or negative thing, as will be addressed; it is just a truth that is often never realized amidst blind consumerism or one that is misunderstood to be an inherent moral flaw of not just how some businesses could be operated, but of business itself.  It is this that makes businesses and consumers so powerful in their dealings with each other if only they will embrace it, for each has something the other needs or wants, though the bleak landscape of the American business world is usually not structured to honor the fact that nothing about this has to degrade either party.

 

Almost all jobs or services do very overtly, inevitably depend on other people having some sort of problem or at least suboptimal circumstance that needs to be resolved.  Without this, there would be neither a need for most businesses to exist nor anything for consumers to go to them for in the first place.  Even when a dire need is not in view, such as in cases of wanting something that meant more for leisure or additional comfort of living, the "problem" is having the desire for the product or service that a person does not need but still wishes to buy, although this is a very different problem to have than, say, an electrical socket not working or a clogged sink.  Unless a person is carelessly or intentionally spending money just to spend it, not even caring what it is spent on, all consumer activity and product or service offerings from businesses are ultimately about rectifying a problem or satisfying a desire.

An insect infestation in a house, a malfunctioning car, a lack of security systems, and so on either are problems or could easily lead to them, and thus an array of options are there to handle each by paying for a solution.  Exterminators, tutors, mechanics, and more would not be able to profit unless there were actual misfortunes that had befallen other people--or their clients are just insistent on having a given product/service despite it offering them no major advantage or there not being a problem to resolve.  This is not exploration, as neither party necessarily has any malice or selfishness or desire to use the other party as if they are nothing more than a means to a personal end.  However, it is the nature of business.  If there was no practical need or personal desire, there would be neither sellers nor buyers.

Not all business, once again, is itself exploitative of consumers, for it actually enables some problems to be fully addressed and does not have to involve any cruelty or selfishness on the part of the people selling products and services (or performing the services).  Profiting from misfortune can be mutually beneficial to both sides as long as there is no egoism or dehumanization involved.  Additionally, when done right, this process does allow for both parties to prosper beyond what they might ever have achieved otherwise.  It is the system of American capitalism that prompts some people to pervert this by creating products meant to break after a given time or work less effectively in order to convince people they need a replacement product, among other things.  These excesses are where selling solutions to various misfortunes becomes egoistic, avaricious, and dehumanizing to practically everyone involved.

A Couple's First Experiences

The obsession of some people with having a partner who has never done anything sexual or romantic with a previous partner stops them from understanding or appreciating their partner--or both.  In evangelical circles, it is often motivated by allegiance to the unbiblical idea that all sex or other interpersonal sexual activities outside of a legal marriage are sinful; in the secular world, it is emotionalistic, possessive jealousy or egoism that stands behind it, especially when someone thinks whatever they have romantically done is not an issue, all while being suspicious or condemnatory toward their partner for having dated, kissed, or done morally permissible sexual things with former partners.  This is in part how so much of the fixation on entering romantic relationships with virgins endures.

Ironic in this is that one could engage in oral sex, sexual fondling, mutual masturbation, and other such activities while still being a virgin, which pertains only to having sex (intercourse).  Thus, being a virgin does not actually exclude many other sexual behaviors that one could do alone or with a partner.  Despite this, a certain kind of person would not only want a virgin with regard to intercourse as a partner, but they would also want someone who has never done anything sexual before except perhaps with their own hands and genitalia.  They are reacting out of emotionalistic offense either way, but they might be overlooking how they and their new partner would still have their own first kiss or sexual exploration.

It does not have to be either partner's first time dating or exchanging a kiss, among other things, to make it their first time doing so together.  As long as a partner has not done anything that is objectively disloyal or otherwise immoral, there is nothing to object to, and the relationship can flourish regardless of how many people they have dated or done other things with.  Jealousy stops people from enjoying relationships as fully as they could even if there is nothing that actually merits being disturbed, offended, or hurt by in the other person's romantic life up to this point.  A focus on the experiences one has shared with one's partner and that one hopes to eventually share with them, of a romantic, sexual, or other kind, could bring peace and contentment to someone struggling with this.

If a man and a woman have a romantic relationship in which neither of them errs, but the relationship does not work out for some other reason, they have not deprived their future partner--if they will have another one--of something owed to them.  Every subsequent dating bond is a chance to have a new series of firsts that might culminate in a lifelong partnership of rationality, mutuality, honesty, and affection.  There is no need, as much as a person can control it, to allow irritation or insecurity about a partner's past romantic experience (or sexual experience as far as nonsinful things are concerned) to hold an instance of dating or marriage back from its full potential.

The Hunt's Exploration Of Conspiracy Theories

Released in early 2020 just before the pandemic lockdown, the controversial, very well-executed comedy thriller The Hunt used humor to hold up the errors and assumptions of liberalism and conservativism.  A group of what turns out to be mostly conservatives espousing fallacious beliefs about the "deep state," immigration, or other popular, contemporary political topics is abducted to be hunted for the pleasure of cruel, wealthy liberals, satirizing many things that conservatives and liberals believe about themselves and each other.  Characters holding to both political philosophies are introduced and often killed, but not before they can make some stupid or satirical comment.

The opening of the film shows a group chat that makes an inside joke about hunting an assortment of "deplorables," people revealed to have, among other things, supported conservative conspiracy theories about the hunting of conservatives by a mysterious "manor."  One of these participants in the hunt specifically references the deep state as being tied to the people in control of the slaughter.  One could not, of course, have access to the evidence for a deep state if one was not a political insider, since it would by nature have to be hidden away from all but select members or targets in order to remain a deep state.  That does not stop people in The Hunt or in real life from at least paying lip service to this epistemological stupidity when it appeals to them.  What it does do for the movie is add layers to the criticism of why many conspiracy theorists believe in particular conspiracies: after all, there really is a hunt of human prey afoot.

The Hunt emphasizes how stupid some of the conspiracy theories of the conservative abductees are, only to reveal at the end that a malevolent conspiracy actually was true, though no one could know from hearsay, emotional persuasion, or any other such thing involving assumptions whether such a conspiracy exists.  In this way, The Hunt brilliantly touches upon how there is nothing logically impossible about some conspiracy theories being or becoming true while still focusing on how they would be unverifiable by outsiders.  To what extent these truths were meant to be acknowledged beyond the convenience they pose to the story is uncertain, but they are still acknowledged.

The leader of the kidnappers and murderers, who goes by Athena, insists that the schemes alluded to in the text messages were only a joke taken out of context by idiots, as if that has anything to do with making their later deeds morally permissible or just.  Athena says that the charges were false at the time they were made, but that the victims "made" them true, a victim blaming idea implying she believes the just response to stupidity is kidnapping and murder.  Her "Manorgate" conspiracy was initiated in order to feel justified in degrading people because they were stupid enough to assume the plan was already in motion.  At the same time, The Hunt does not fail to exemplify the irrationalism of people from both political parties when it comes to conspiracy theories and much more.

As long as a conspiracy theory does not involve a contradiction of logical axioms, itself, or some other truth, it is indeed logically possible.  Of course there could be or (if there is not one) could have been a deep state, since this is consistent with logical axioms, but not if the same "liberal elites" conservatives credit with running the deep state are simultaneously too incompetent to carry out political plans, as those very conservatives might also believe; it is not uncommon to hear both the concepts of the extreme incompetence of government, especially liberal-led government, and the malicious, masterfully orchestrated takeover of the nation and world supported by the same conservatives.  Certain other conspiracy theories might possibly be true, whether they involve aliens or government malice, and this could not be known by an outsider with human limitations.