That's pretty good. I wholly agree that the people comparable to "meta-gamers" are the same type of people who are ruining the fucking planet, largely by harnessing/weaponizing capitalism.
The religious stuff is interesting and I follow it, I guess you're arguing that it was a synthesis of emergent capitalism and the religious foundations that it had to reconcile with - at this point I guess it just seems superfluous but perhaps that is just me being very alienated from the religious communities.
When I've been constructing games there are always those who seek to dominate by bending/breaking the rules which were clearly intended to foster the "balance" of said game. These people are useful for refining rules/mechanisms to a point which properly contains them. At no point should these monstrous individuals not be contained - I think this is one of the many tasks set before socialism.
I pretty much entirely agree but I don't think it started with Calvinism. At least if I'm understanding you correctly, Calvinism may have been an intensification of this in the West but this gameification of religion can be seen all over the place. Such as anywhere where there's a divine right of kings sort of situation and the subsequent hoarding of wealth and the hierarchies that necessitates. And that can be found not only in Catholicism going much farther back but religions all over the world.
Calvinism was a very important theoretical development in Christianity and western religion and western philosophy. It's really solidified the belief that good things happen to people because god loves them and bad things happen to people because they're sinners. Before that the dominating view was that everyone was a sinner together. Calvinism is fundamental to the development of Capitalism because it's when the predominant religious and philosophical belief came to be "Fuck you poors I got mine because god loved me". Wealth was no longer seen as a bad thing but in fact viewed as proof that you were literally chosen by god. And since you were chosen by god anything you did was by definition righteous, and your continued accumulation of wealth was proof. Not to say Europe didn't exploit a whole lot of horrors before Calvinism, but Calvinism was none the less a key change in how European society thought and functioned.
Saint and Calvanism are very different. You pray to saints so your ship doesn't sink or you find your shoes or your cows don't get sick. In Calvanism you pray because god predestined you to be wealthy and powerful and people who are chosen by god pray, so you pray to close that self-fulfilling loop.
It's on the Chapo YouTube, Matt just rambles about whatever but one of his big theses involves the relationship of Calvinism to capitalism and how much it's fucked us
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That's pretty good. I wholly agree that the people comparable to "meta-gamers" are the same type of people who are ruining the fucking planet, largely by harnessing/weaponizing capitalism.
The religious stuff is interesting and I follow it, I guess you're arguing that it was a synthesis of emergent capitalism and the religious foundations that it had to reconcile with - at this point I guess it just seems superfluous but perhaps that is just me being very alienated from the religious communities.
When I've been constructing games there are always those who seek to dominate by bending/breaking the rules which were clearly intended to foster the "balance" of said game. These people are useful for refining rules/mechanisms to a point which properly contains them. At no point should these monstrous individuals not be contained - I think this is one of the many tasks set before socialism.
I pretty much entirely agree but I don't think it started with Calvinism. At least if I'm understanding you correctly, Calvinism may have been an intensification of this in the West but this gameification of religion can be seen all over the place. Such as anywhere where there's a divine right of kings sort of situation and the subsequent hoarding of wealth and the hierarchies that necessitates. And that can be found not only in Catholicism going much farther back but religions all over the world.
Calvinism was a very important theoretical development in Christianity and western religion and western philosophy. It's really solidified the belief that good things happen to people because god loves them and bad things happen to people because they're sinners. Before that the dominating view was that everyone was a sinner together. Calvinism is fundamental to the development of Capitalism because it's when the predominant religious and philosophical belief came to be "Fuck you poors I got mine because god loved me". Wealth was no longer seen as a bad thing but in fact viewed as proof that you were literally chosen by god. And since you were chosen by god anything you did was by definition righteous, and your continued accumulation of wealth was proof. Not to say Europe didn't exploit a whole lot of horrors before Calvinism, but Calvinism was none the less a key change in how European society thought and functioned.
ok, good points.
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Saint and Calvanism are very different. You pray to saints so your ship doesn't sink or you find your shoes or your cows don't get sick. In Calvanism you pray because god predestined you to be wealthy and powerful and people who are chosen by god pray, so you pray to close that self-fulfilling loop.
ok, good points.
This is a pretty mainstream view by a lot of historians of religion and historians of American religion especially.
Do you listen to the Cushvlogs?
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It's on the Chapo YouTube, Matt just rambles about whatever but one of his big theses involves the relationship of Calvinism to capitalism and how much it's fucked us
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Makes perfect sense, :matt-jokerfied: 101
3/10 :jesse-wtf: