What about freedom from taxes?
Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny, especially when the majority has no comprehension of the interests of the people they are tyrannizing over.
Fair. I guess the thing that the statistics miss is that most people tend to gravitate towards others in the same cohort. So despite the calculators of doom, there are actually probably a lot of people adjacent to someone's life that fit their reasonable standards.
Goodness the 30% not obese is just depressing.
As a follow-up, what are literary examples of magnanimity?
Two that come to mind are Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings and Beowulf from, well, Beowulf.
The key piece in both cases is that they are kings who strive for greatness with almost reckless disregard for their own needs, and they do it out of love for their people.
Ooh I like this description. It captures something about magnanimity very concisely.
I'd add that the generosity is unexpected because it's not in the least self-serving. The ambitious soul is small and turned inward, as are most of us, so the magnanimous soul is unexpected because it breaks the bounds of what small souls consider to be possible.
I think this is exactly right. Ambition and magnanimity are similar in that they both urge a person to great deeds, but greatness for the sake of the other is what makes magnanimity different.
From the Latin, "magna", for "great", and "anima" for "soul".
Literally, "great-soul-ness".
Then, what does that mean? Great can mean large, or expansive, so you could say it means the quality of a soul that encompasses much. And I'd say the soul encompasses much through love, because love is expansive.
The numbers don't pass the smell test to me.
If you're terminally online it probably looks convincing, but if you go out and talk to real people, this doesn't seem to match reality.
Hence, incel bait lol
Yeah these numbers seem fake. Or at least based on bad math.
Based gigachad behavior on his part 🫡
This feels like incel bait:
Sorry I can't think of any drama to stir right now, but I'm trying to start some interesting discussions over in Communities.
I'm loving NoStrudel's community features. Everyone go check it out.
I've started reading Mansfield Park, by Jane Austin, and I'm at the point where the family visits the Sotherton house. One thing I was struck by during the Sotherton visit was how Fanny Price approaches everything with such an attitude of receptivity. On the drive to the house, for instance, she eagerly takes in every detail of the countryside, and in the house itself, she is intensely interested in the tour and the history of the home. It's easy to see why Fanny expresses such great gratitude; she notices all the things to be grateful for.
For others who have read the book, did you also notice a theme of receptivity in Fanny's character? Is she the only character properly disposed to the leisure of the upper class families in the novel? Does her childhood in a less wealthy home predispose her to this attitude of receptivity to beauty?
It seems that many cradle Catholics fall away from the faith for a time, then have a re-conversion and return to the Faith at some point in adulthood.
If you're a cradle Catholic, was this your story? Did you remain a practicing Catholic all your life? What made you remain in or return to the Church as an adult? I'm curious to hear what influenced people's faith journeys.
What comes to mind when you think of "magnanimity"? How would you define it? How does it differ from ambition or generosity?
Discuss.
Our society could certainly stand to grow a thicker skin.
More importantly, we rely on external forces to regulate our impulses rather than building up that virtue ourselves. The example that comes to mind is when TikTok introduced the feature to tell users it's time to log off when they've been scrolling too long.
You can't externalize self-discipline. Externally-imposed discipline is just tyranny.
I'm just waiting for the first traditional social media to migrate to being interoperable with Nostr. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, something.
If Zoom could replace Skype...
I read the outline of the Nostr protocol, thought, "this is awesome, it could be the next big thing for social media," and since I'm a software developer, I want to get in early so that, if and when it becomes widely adopted, I have some skills already to stay ahead of the game.