u/ConsciousMaybe6930

Modern Westerners no longer see marriage as necessary for intimate relationships, but more of an add-on that enhances intimate relationships that already exist. The vast majority of people engage in sexual intercourse premaritally, to the point that waiting for marriage in order to have sexual intercourse is seen as prudish and fringe. How would Hera, usually a goddess most associated with marriage, choose to remain relevant in this day and age?

My opinion is that she would concentrate on her domains of militaristic and political sovereignty, as well as youthful energy and fertility. She would be prayed to when a state wants to channel the energies of its youth into procreation and warfare and the wisdom of its elders into political hegemony. What do you think?

"Ако ти се не свиђа, иди негде другде."

"Ко си ти да исправљаш криве Дрине?"

"Ви који тражите да богати дају друштву сте себични лопови."

Све ове реченице садрже исту суштину; да је систем какав је неприкосновен, део природног закона који не сме да се мења, већ само да му се прилагоди. Свако ко искази жељу за променом буде окарактерисан као горда, злонамерна будала која неоправдано хоће више од онога што има, уместо да се на коленима захваљује Богу и моћницима што има и то мало. Много људи у Србији управо тако гледа на студентске протесте; као покрет преовлашћених деришта која не знају за своје место и одговарајућу понизност и захвалност према систему. Чему то? Зашто морамо да прихватимо да је све тако како мора да буде и да трпимо, јер иначе смо зликовци?

Paul usually gets flak and controversy over his deeds, from messianic impostorship in order to galvanise the Fremen to the Great Jihad that exterminated tens of billions of people across the Corrino Imperium and his culpability in both. However, I find that there is a more pertinent, even if a lot more low-key, example of Paul's character that tells us a lot more precisely what kind of a person he is and that is his attitude towards Irulan. To put it simply, Paul is horrible to the poor girl for no reason than pure spite for the Corrinos and anger that he has to marry her in the first place instead of Chani. He routinely disrespects and humiliates Irulan, openly displaying his sole affection towards his concubine and treating her as if she were his actual wife. He could have tried to at least be cordial and friendly, but no, he chooses to openly mock Irulan and deny her even any covert extramarital intimacy, even when he openly says he doesn't want to even touch her, which is just senselessly cruel. I couldn't help but sympathise with Irulan and her shock at the revelation that Paul fully planned to father children only on Chani and make them his sole heirs, denying Irulan even the role of the empress mother and the continuation of the Corrino lineage. Imagine the utter humiliation and despair at the revelation that your husband, barbaric usurper though he might be, decided to twist the knife so much as to deny you the progeny of your own bloodline in favor of some desert concubine. All throughout their marriage, Paul almost relishes stomping on Irulan to prove his love and devotion to Chani, which is simply petty and pathetic. Aside from all the destruction and ruin he had wrought, Paul is simply a person who behaves like a spiteful teenager (which he is, lol) when he feels slighted and frustrated.

I am not saying that anarchism is Impossible per se, but that the modern civilisational and technological complexity inherently produces technocratic bureaucracies that are necessary to manage such complex systems, who then naturally monopolise power in the society; it is a simple fact that one cannot manage a factory, for example, through random sortition like in Ancient Athenaian democracy, but requires a cadre of experts, but such difference in expertise naturally puts power in the hands of the experts, who would likely form an oligarchy of the factory. Similar goes to a bureaucratic apparatus necessary to run all the calculations and notes that keep the systems going; soon enough and they will realise that the systems grind to a halt without them.

In order for an anarchic society to be viable, in my eyes, there needs to be a limited difference of competence and skill between its members, as to no small clique ever be too important and necessary for the running of the systems and concentrate political power within themselves in such way, but that would require heavy downsizing in tech, maybe even a return to pre-industrial society.

Most adaptations I see treat gods as "dudes with superpowers", just a scrappy bunch of dramatic people who also happen to have specific superpowers. Needless to say, this massively diminishes the godhood of the gods in my eyes; instead of beings and forces beyond mortal comprehension that need to be honored and placated, lest they wreck horrific ruin and tragedy upon mortals, they are made into a degraded laughingstock so the audience might feel superior to them and better about themselves. It's as if people are unconsciously scared and disgusted at the thought of these alien gods having power over them and seek to degrade them as much as possible and make mockeries of them.

Most adaptations I see treat gods as "dudes with superpowers", just a scrappy bunch of dramatic people who also happen to have specific superpowers. Needless to say, this massively diminishes the godhood of the gods in my eyes; instead of beings and forces beyond mortal comprehension that need to be honored and placated, lest they wreck horrific ruin and tragedy upon mortals, they are made into a degraded laughingstock so the audience might feel superior to them and better about themselves. It's as if people are unconsciously scared and disgusted at the thought of these alien gods having power over them and seek to degrade them as much as possible.

For example, I liked EPIC: The Musical with how it handled the gods; properly personable and epically dramatic, but also visibly dangerous, powerful and superior to mortals.

I come from an Orthodox Christian tradition, where I have been taught that the only true moral paragon of sinlessness was Jesus Christus, by virtue of being God in the flesh. Everyone else, even extraordinary holy people like Maria Theotokos and the prophets, were still just humans who had to align their lives and spirits with God in order to be elevated from their inborn sinfulness by the divine energies. Many of them famously rebelled against God and had to pray for forgiveness, like Moses and David. No matter how virtuous their lives, none of them are made into moral role models, a right that belongs exclusively to Jesus Christus as the only truly perfect human.

Islam, AFAIK, is pretty explicitly against the idea that God incarnates on Earth and that Muhammad is anything other than ordinary human being. Why does it then insist that Muhammad is sinless and morally impeccable enough for his example (Sunna) to be pedantically followed by billions of Muslims 1,400 years later? Doesn't this characterisation bring Muhammad a bit too close to God? As a human, even an extraordinary holy one, Muhammad should have still made mistakes and sinned like anyone else, but always found a way back to God and His forgiveness. Why is Muhammad so morally superior to Moses and David? How is this not a deification of Muhammad?

Nietzsche was a firm believer in the aristocracy as the healthiest socioeconomic organisation of mankind; the subjected masses laboring tirelessly to provide the means for a select few to pursue artistic expression and self-cultivation into paragons of human potential. He compared the aristocracy to the fruit of mankind, the endgoal of all suffering and toil by which a given society might only be judged as healthy or decadent. Healthy societies produced aristocracies which would cherish life and produce awesome works of art, indulging in gleeful warfare and cruelty as means of the expression of their will to power and life-affirmation. Decadent societies would be infected with a strong democratic sentiment that seeks the leveling of the aristocracy and their privileges in favor of the utilitarian commonwealth and freedom. Such societies would be consumed with mindless and meaningless hedonism, as Nietzsche did not believe the masses possessed the necessary qualities to be integrated and focused personalities with subtle yet profound character and appreciation of higher virtues. Both liberalism and socialism, to Nietzsche, signified Huxleyan dystopias. He would praise Ancient Graeco-Roman civilisation as the golden age (albeit one in slow decline ever since Socrates) of healthy nobility. Particularly, he would name Sparta as an exemplary Hellenic polis.

Here lie the problems; these kind of aristocracies are a thing of the past and shall never return. The modern technology and economy have advanced to such a degree that they simply do not permit a return to exclusionary hereditary oligarchy the way old aristocracies were; the bourgeoisie and their technocratic bureaucracies have thoroughly replaced the old nobility and gentry. A modern aristocracy would be extremely fragile, rigid, self-absorbed and wasteful and would collapse very quickly, to be replaced by a capitalist state. Furthermore, the whole Nietzsche's idea that aristocracies produce the best artistic wonders of humanity and democracies don't is brought into question; mass liberalisation of arts has produced an unprecedented boom of artistic talent, as more and more talented people would find it possible to practice and externalise their talents than ever before. This is especially egregious when you consider that Sparta, which Nietzsche praised, produced absolutely no artworks at all and was a very poor society in continuous decline due to their overly rigid socioeconomics policies, mostly focused on suppressing slave revolt after slave revolt. Slavery too had become very economically unfeasible and keeping the entire population in slavery like Spartans would mean a complete collapse of the society very quickly.

Simply put, Nietzsche's aristocracy is a thing of the past that can never return and even if it does, it would do more harm than good and collapse quickly, doing no laudable deeds Nietzsche envisioned aristocracies doing. With that in mind, we should think of what the philosophers-aristocrats (free spirits) of the future might look like, since the return to pre-industrial aristocracies is a return to a more primitive stage of mankind at this point.