#self justification

[serenityquest]

[chuckstiposition]

'In Benares (Baranasi), foul mouthed and incontinent Aghori ascetics wallow in ritual pollution by claiming literally to eat putrid human flesh from skulls and to sleep with menstruating prostitutes as a way of denying the reality of the everyday distinctions of this world and developing extraordinary spiritual power'

Nigel Barley - Dancing on the Grave

This sentence is quite something. Humans really are able to justify anything to themselves. Spiritual power..... sure 🤔

[howifeltabouthim]

I'm not supposed to feel this, but I do: I don't think the act was vile. I think it was necessary.

Lisa Taddeo, from Animal

[lieutenantdru]

Now, I'm not a doctor and this ain't medical advice. But.

I just think that smoking (in addition to being cool+sexy) clears your T zone, gives you a cough with a mechanical cause, dries out your mouth and lungs, changes your voice just enough that your smart speaker gives you that "I couldn't verify your voice" routine, lingers on everything you ever touched, adds interesting texture to your jeans when you brush ashes in, makes you steal lighters, makes you have to focus on how to light while driving, makes you buy tea in glass bottles that you can use as an ashtray in your car, gives you an excuse not to get back together with your ex who said they'd leave you if you started smoking again, makes your pocket friends sad...

It makes your body an inhospitable environment for any diseases to take hold. If you're already emotionally and physically dead inside, what's it gonna do? Nothing, that's what.

Anyway, that's why I feel comfortable buying a pack of Reds while wearing a face mask.

[honestheretic]

"I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday. "

--Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1948

[randomwordbyruth]

What is Hell? What is Hell?In accurate words, the devil will grin and state, 'sin.'"It is pride that copies humility."

[gettothedancing]

Today, the passive value of tolerance means little more than “I will overlook your sins if you overlook mine.” Just so, egalitarianism and multiculturalism do not lead to the affirmation of all that is unique and glorious in masculinity or femininity or in the various cultures of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, but rather to the collapsing of all distinctions in favor of a Marxist identity politics that reduces people to their race, class, or sex, without imbuing them with any kind of essential worth. Worse yet, swapping out traditional virtues with progressive values has helped create a generation of young people who say to themselves, “Well, yes, I may be living a sinful lifestyle, but that is OK because I recycle cans.” Rather than train up young people to live in accordance with a set standard of virtue, our values-driven schools have taught students to justify their own sinful behavior by commending themselves for the great tolerance and inclusivism they extend toward others who have likewise given in to their base, misdirected passions. Two full generations have been instructed to feel intense concern for the destruction of the environment and for social justice issues on the other side of the globe, while feeling no compunction about indulging their appetites, humiliating their peers, and treating their parents with contempt. In the moral-ethical haze that sets in when values take the place of virtues, it becomes all too easy to redefine narcissism as self-esteem, envy as fairness, and consumerism as a natural and inalienable right. . . . The best way to expose the smallness, meanness, and ultimate ineffectiveness of the pseudo-virtues is to build up in young people a passionate love for the real virtues. Let them come to know, experience, and love transcendent, time-tested, traditional virtues, and the pseudo-virtues will lose their charm and appeal.

Louis Markos

[gettothedancing]

I really do believe that our attitudes are shaped much more by our social groups than they are by facts on the ground. We are not great reasoners. Most people don’t like to think at all, or like to think as little as possible. And by most, I mean roughly 70 percent of the population. Even the rest seem to devote a lot of their resources to justifying beliefs that they want to hold, as opposed to forming credible beliefs based only on fact. . . . Think about if you were to utter a fact that contradicted the opinions of the majority of those in your social group. You pay a price for that. If I said I voted for Trump, most of my academic colleagues would think I’m crazy. They wouldn’t talk to me. That’s how social pressure influences our epistemological commitments, and it often does it in imperceptible ways.

Steven Sloman, professor of cognitive science at Brown University, in an intervew with Vox’s Sean Illing, June 15, 2018