Rinse Tide
The moon scrubs the earth tirelessly, thanklessly
That’s just how the duckstack crumbles
Time to start up the duckstack. Press the prime button 10 times. Can’t find it? Its the red button that looks like a bubble. Oh I guess its clear on yours. Well press that a bunch, one second between each press. Now that that’s done, push in the release lever and pull the ripcord. That didn’t work? Hm. Try priming it again and pulling the ripcord again. You have to pull it fast. Still nothing? Ok, lets try something else. You see that lever on the side? no the other one. Yeah flip that to off and give it a rattle. No trust me I know what I’m doing, I do this to my own duckstack all the time, its fishy as heck but it works. Yeah just shake it around, then flip it to on while pressing the throttle. Yeah just like that, now hold the throttle and pull the ripcord, it should still be primed. Ok not sure what’s going on there, that should work. Try again. There we go.
The Spitting Image
Whose idea was this
We got a new monument this year. Its like a catholic icon and its mounted next to the bell tower. Like it says in the name, it spits. Sits up there and spits all day. I think they think its gonna attract tourists or something and maybe they’re right, tourists can be some really sick people. I don’t know.
But what are we going to do with this? We aren’t tourists we live here, and we’ve got this thing just spitting at us all day. I don’t care if it raises the GDP, this is lived experience, this is pathos, this is qualia. Its an image, and it spits. John Locke never foresaw this.
Walk around with an umbrella for the spitting image. Maybe the image wants umbrellas. Maybe you’re playing right into its hands. Can you take that chance? Remember, this thing spits. And its just going to keep doing it, it is not going to run out. Do whatever feels right to you but I just wanted to let you know. We’ve got a new spitting image in town, its the spitting image of one.
Brief Intermission
Ok done
Supermeant
The Nietzschean Übermensch is dead, and we have killed him!
“You have and will collect many identities throughout your life. The most important of these is that you are a Child of God.” This is a saying our church uses often, applicable to same sex attraction, race, borders, fashion… Everything. What you center your identity on changes how you act. Everyone must have an answer to the question “what kind of man am I meant to be?” Men want to know this. And young men especially. And the answer society, irrefutably, gives them, is: a worse woman.
Most commonly this comes out in school, where conformity and nonaggression are values supreme. “what kind of man should you be? One who does not rock the boat, who is agreeable, risk averse, group oriented and never gets into fights, dutifully following orders. Neutered.” This is the way we treat dogs, and if you get into the right corners of social discourse (or literally just the DNC) you will find people advocating for the vasectomy part too.
These values have their place, but certainly leaves out many other true and good values, that also have their place. Where can a man go to learn these values? Not church. Or most churches, at least. This often fails my religious smell test: True religion is useful, and conformity for conformity’s own sake, where it pops up, usually isn't.
Nietzsche called this "slave morality". We call it "the longhouse". A schoolmarm standing over you telling you that being yourself is evil— forever. "the highest morality is following and enforcing social norms." And my friend Zero HP Lovecraft associates this explicitly with the decline of contemporary Christianity, because it simply cannot compete with sexual libertinism, among other things. A weak belief system is consumed by something people actually believe in: being libtards. Zero HP Lovecraft posits a need for a new, Nietzschean-Christian fusion if Christianity is to survive.
People must have meaning in life. True religion cannot just be useful for girls. This doesn't mean true religion can't have rules. Men actually love rules, under a certain presentation, and are naturally submissive to honorable hierarchy and peer structures. Blind obedience actually can be a virtue, because any good leader is going to be able to give directions that account for consequences that may not be immediately apparent. But even Christ’s apostles weren't following him for nothing. They were promised power1 and authority, kingdoms and crowns, and there was a palpable feeling that they were building something. In short, they were activated. They believed in it. Who can give themselves for something they get nothing out of? I would say such a thing is not even noble2.
Hell is a Christianity that doesn't reward or expect anything from you, a Christianity where you didn't earn it, a Christianity where you can never look yourself in the eye.
This is a philosophical difference that goes much deeper than philosophy. What is the meaning of life? God is a symbol of this. So what does God “want”, in your belief system? I don’t mean what he commands, I mean objectives. In contemporary Christianity, his objective is self aggrandizement. God wants you to make yourself small so that he looks glorious. In my Christianity, God wants peers.
And this isn’t necessarily something Joseph Smith taught, but I believe God has arranged it so that the natural desires of mankind line up with this. Lust for life and zest for life comes from momentum. You cannot merely discuss duty and sacrifice, especially when the duty and sacrifices being asked are not trivial. “give me $1000” “why?” “sacrifice.” You have to give people self esteem.
My graced friend Mathias Cicotte, the former assistant AG for Alaska, wrote an article last week about how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in short, does not require nearly so much blind faith in its doctrines as contemporary Christianity, because its doctrines are apparently more exalting. Well worth a read3.
In Exodus 20 God called upon Moses- bring all Israel up to me, that they may know me." To know God for themselves. Independent of Moses, independent of scripture. The children of Israel saw this would require much of them and said "PLEASE NO". But God’s desire has not changed. In God’s desired system, you are not merely dependent on a prophet- you are a prophet yourself. Every man is a holy man like Moses (or Peter, or Joseph Smith), and every man is a priest to his own family, and every man owns his stewardship. The family doesn’t exist so that you can donate it to the church, the church exists to support and grow fully atomized (and yet holy) families, dedicating themselves individually to God. Then, you grow what you are and tithe it to the church because you believe in it- This is the opposite of the longhouse, and is in fact very close to the natural system men who respect each other form as they become friends. Compare Nietzsche to this Joseph Smith quote: “I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves.”
There’s a role for submission to the church in this, which is the church has authority to govern its affairs. Just as I don’t own the company I work for I don’t own the church. But I do like the church’s CEO. If I offend the church it has the right to rebuke me in its organizational capacity- but its primary responsibility is to warn you and show you the way, not to browbeat you, which is why every month, the first Sunday’s church services are an open mic for bearing testimony of God’s works in your life. Edification4 is the goal, not compliance. Though the two look similar at sufficient scale, because true principles lead to good fruit.
There is a type of person this style of governance simply does not come naturally to, and they will focus on rule over principle, and norms over truth. The eye cannot say of the mouth “we have no need of people like this”. Thankfully, there are many systems and scriptures in the church that direct these impulses in a better way, and personally I can say I see them hardly ever. But I encounter plenty of these types online, and you can recognize them because they think the best way to get someone to follow truth is by lying
The greeks5 invented this, they call it “sophistry”, and in short it is the art of when asked for bread, giving a stone. When telling Joseph Smith about this, God called it preachers who “have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof”, it happens when you want someone to do what you say but you don’t have anything to offer them in return. This is, of course, extremely offensive if someone catches on to it, which is why salesmen are a universally despised race. Sects of religion can get away with it because their claims tend to be unfalsifiable until the afterlife. One reason among many I advocate for testing religions primarily by their fruit.
Here are some stones that people have tried to give me.
I was told fighting is evil. I was told many half truths about men and women, and often that men and women are the same.
I was told that getting laid is not important. Most Christians think there is no sex in heaven, they think God is sexless, they think sex is sort of an inconvenient necessity (at best). You can’t tell a teenage man this. Well. You can tell a teenage man this, but you can’t expect him to listen to you, ever again.
Sex is the most important thing to teenage boys. Actually its the most important thing to most adult boys too, most of the time, I think about having sex about 400 times per day. I’m not even a teenager anymore even. You think God designed that by accident? You think God didn’t make man in his own image?6 You can insist all day long to a boy that there’s more important things in life and if you are a man telling him this you are lying. The truth is there is a matrix of very important things in life and misusing sexual appetites can seriously harm other ones. If you want a man to feel fulfilled you have to promise him sex. Historically Christianity has always been dominated by women.
I was told about something called “muscular Christianity”. They told me this to hand wave Mathias’ article’s claims: “Catholicism already has that”. For many Catholics especially (especially online ones) there is a belief that nothing good can exist outside the church, and anything that looks good is simply a pale imitation. But what is muscular Christianity? It is being muscular, and Christian. Like playing sports and stuff. That has nothing to do with the article’s real concerns. It has no basis and it has no goal, it is in short an ideological babysitter. Something to vent some energy and time, dressed up as a solution. This is, and should be, massively insulting as an adult.
Sophistry. Salesmanship. Trying to give someone something they don’t want. Hiding the defects and enhancing the benefits, in hopes of some alternate third objective that the customer doesn’t care about- money, power, getting them out of your hair. You cannot come to someone and tell them “I have true religion” and then lie to them. You cannot expect someone to sacrifice for a lie. And you cannot get mad when someone catches on.
There is a matrix of important things in life, things that are earnestly very beneficial, very long term, very useful and helpful and good. And there are even things that are these things only extremely situationally- But what is there for a man made to believe vice is virtue? He cannot be noble. He cannot live earnestly. He cannot be exalted. And why would he care about either virtue or vice? He has been taught them in an irreconcilable way- you cannot fight for something no comprehensible principle can be extracted from. You cannot stake your life on nonsense.
We must have true doctrine if we want to become all that we can be. There is no other way. Men must have a fire in their bones, and it is upon this engine that their power turns.
Ancient History
Its a new year, after all.
Toddler playing with some alphabet toys: Look, its “L. for elephant.”
Mama set the baby on the edge of the table just to rest her there, and the toddler started laughing. “No, she's not food!”
Toddler’s imagination games are growing more powerful. “Powerzuka! Powerzuka! Something is wrong!” I interrupted him to ask if he wanted to go to salt lake and see the lights. “Yeah. That will keep me safe. There’s no powerzukas up there.” Never going to know what he was talking about.
Toddler came up to me in great distress. Because he had shoved a skittle up his nose. We never had to worry about this stuff with Jethro!
“I don't have elephant toes. Just toes.”
My wife sat down to work on something on the floor and then both kids came over and sat on her. So when she was done she couldn’t get up. And she said “I’m stuck!” and the toddler looked at her and said, “You're stuck? On the floor? With bumblegum?”
Ultra black eye
NEW YEARS PREDICTIONS
New year, new you. You’re being replaced.
A fun new years tradition is new years predictions. Here’s what I think:
Rubber doors
Snails gain two spirals this year instead of the normal one they get every year
Instead of movies, smells
A fifth branch of government7 based on the sin of vanity
Glasses for the third eye chakra8
Corn off the cob
zombie apocalypse (boring version)
Exactly one year
Ducksnax
drop
τ T τ T τ T τ T τ Previous Duckstack τ T τ T τ T τ T τ
and in many cases literal power,
Imagine a man who devotes his life to grass advocacy. He pickets outside of garden stores to sell more grass. He signs petitions to force houses to have grass. He pesters politicians for grass support. Certainly a man can do these things but the mind recoils against it- surely he must have some reason for doing this? What man could waste himself on something of so little apparent value?
As is everything my friends write. As is everything I write! Read everything I have written. Right now.
There are hundreds of scriptures like this:
D&C 50:23 And that which doth not edify is not of God, and is darkness.
24 That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.
who were gay
with apologies to my like, Hindu readers. I have no idea what you think tbh
Executive, legislative, judicial, media
Turns out literally everyone’s is nearsighted
The Greeks (who were gay)