The Fucked Art of Not Giving Subtlety

``Oh no! He used a bad word in his title! Let's cancel him!''

Yeah... fuck that. Who cares?

🤷‍♂️

Okay, that aside, this week has been a doozy. Very little down time, a little bout with some half-assed cold that I suspect is due to the massive temperature/humidity changes of the week and the like.

Still alive though.

So about that title. ``The Fucked Art of Not Giving Subtlety`` is an obvious poke at The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, the same guy who also wrote Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, and Compatibility and Chemistry in Relationships. He is [hopefully] not the same as Marilyn Manson, nor Charles Manson---too man-y man-sons around these days. Easy to get confused.

The book, the book is alright. It codifies what I believe any rational adult will eventually figure out on their own, that choices are what governs our journey through life (the destination being death, though what happens after is determined by whether one's a believer or otherwise), and that no matter what choices we make, it inadvertently discriminates and closes off a whole series of choices/things that we cannot reach out to. That's the high level abstract summary that holds true.

Of course, reading something like that would be as fun as having a root canal done (this is a borrowed simile---I thank God that I have a well-taken care of set of pearly whites), so it is couched in more familiar terms of ``giving a fuck'' to something. One of the important lessons within the book is to develop more intrinsic measures of progress (i.e. character development) over extrinsic ones, the reason being that intrinsic measures are under more of our own control as compared to the extrinsic ones, and with more control, the satisfaction of attaining them tends to be more complete than the extrinsic ones that are effectively some kind of luck of the draw.

Or as Saitama of One Punch Man puts it: ensuring that the You of today can beat the You of yesterday---that's progress.

I like another aphorism that complements what Manson is trying to get at in this book.

Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.

In short, it's a case of ``you do you'', subjected to the usual civic-mindedness of not infringing on other people's choices as much as possible.

Speaking of ``you do you'', I did wonder what the fundamental difference between [political] liberalism and [political] conservatism. One working definition that struck me was this:

In [political] liberalism, the ideology is defined by what they don't do, while in [political] conservatism, the ideology is defined by what the do do.

In short, it seems to me that [political] liberalism's boundaries begin unbounded, and where they exist, they are defined by a decision plane that states what lies outside of the ideology's existing ideological space. So, one such boundary might be ``we do not discriminate people by their skin colour''---it means that anyone who discriminates people by their skin colour (i.e. a positive assertion of action) is outside of the [political] liberalism ideology, while those who do not, whether because they never thought of it, or if they once used to but has since decided not to, they are inside of the [political] liberalism ideology.

Comparatively, [political] conservatism's ideological boundaries always begin bounded, with new decision planes being allowed to push the boundaries outward only if it is [somewhat] consistent with existing assertions. But with a bounded system like [political] conservatism, there are few ways in which the boundaries may be pushed outward---the existing axioms within the reasoning system comprises a closed set no matter how complex the new consequences are generated. So it would seem that new candidate boundary assertions need to come from outside of the [political] conservatism's ideological boundary, i.e. from the [political] liberalism camp.

In short, neither side can exist on their own---[political] conservatism alone leads to static and staleness, while [political] liberalism in extremis leads to anarchy with no shared sense of values. It is the creative tension of boundaries between these two that allows the civil society to flourish.

``Eh MT, you talk so much cock about conservatism and liberalism. You're a Christian right? How does that fit into the picture? Isn't Christianity conservative by definition?''

A low blow indeed. In many ways, the fact that Christianity is biblically defined (i.e. from the canon) makes it a poster child of conservatism due to the rules/principles at present within the biblical canon. A central premise is that God is good, and God is all-knowing, and so the rules/principles that He set is indeed good and ought to be followed.

That part is true. But is Christianity's conservatism the same as the political conservatism we see around? That is debatable, because of a difference of opinion of biblical interpretation through suitable amounts of cherry-picking---this is the flaw of humanity, especially for those who claim their political conservatism as stemming from the Bible. Recall that the Bible has both Old and New Testaments---the New Testaments are part of the New Covenant with Jesus from which us believers derive our identity of ``Christians'' from. So, I'm not saying that the Old Testament is wrong, but I am saying that the Old Testament teachings need to be interpreted according to the New Testament in order to be of a Christian teaching; otherwise it is no different from Judaism.

Another point of note is that just because something appears in the Bible, it does not mean that it is a God-approved action. There are many different genres of writings within the Bible, and each should be interpreted and understood according to what they are. Thus, reading say 1 Samuel and claiming that it represents the rules and ordinances that God set upon us is just dumb, dangerously dumb no less.

Again, as Christians, we believe in Christ. Loving the Lord is foremost, then loving one's neighbours is next---I didn't say this, a lawyer who was thinking of tricking Jesus did (Luke 10:27), to which Jesus affirmed in the next verse (``And he said to him, `You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.' ''). The other thing is that it is not up to us to exact judgement---that role is up to the Lord Himself. Our role on Earth is to exemplify the transformation we had undergone when we declared our faith publicly, and to evangelise the lost. But evangelism does not mean forcing our beliefs upon people---we show them how our belief has changed us for the better, and God will work upon their hearts in due course.

So... long story short, Christianity's conservatism has little to do with political conservatism---the former is about conservatism of human behaviour to avoid sinning after being saved, while the latter is about enacting human rules to keep to an arbitrarily chosen set of rules that may be cherry-picked from the Bible to borrow the prestige of God's word to legitimise their agenda.

If one were a true believer, one would realise that this world is fallen, and that accruing power and wealth in this world is antithetical to what Jesus had been teaching; if anything, those who cling on mindlessly to strange notions of political conservatism act more like Pharisees than disciples of Christ.

But who am I to judge?

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Going back to the title of this post ``The Fucked Art of Not Giving Subtlety''---that's sort of how I generally operate. I have no subtlety---life's too short to molly-coddle everyone we meet. For the most part, there's no need to engage---I don't know them, they don't know me, there's no need to give unsolicited... anything. For those who know me, I suppose they begrudgingly appreciate the unsubtley that I have, though I know that just because they can appreciate it is no pretext to keep on doing that.

And hence the modifier of ``fucked art''. Do not be unsubtle all the time---a light touch is the way to go. Observe, orient, decide, and then act.

Till the next update.