Thread by @KrisAtLarge

ah, more topics of interest.

I'm sure folks have noticed the extreme tendency in the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi / @NateSilver538 fascıst circle to one-size-fits-all explanations for...well, everything! "tribalism" and "narrative" are like Elon Musk's infamous "X App" fixation.

(1/x)

https://twitter.com/KrisAtLarge/status/1633234960063819778

they're like the dreary Campbell "monomyth" that dullards like @jordanbpeterson think is actually a valid intellectual concept, when really it's just the same Western daydream: the Theory of Everything. the single concept or doctrine that explains...everything there is.

(2/x)

one sees a similar attitude in scientifically illiterate #STEM-Lord types (@sama and @ID_AA_Carmack, say) who don't really know anything about science and who therefore tend to think that "science" is merely a small collection of equations that somehow...sum it ALL up.

(3/x)

it's like thinking a T-shirt with Maxwell's Equations on it was a complete description of all physics. ultimately this is _scientism_, the mystification of science—treating "science" as though it were a Holy Book, only not religious. this is how Christians see the Bible.

(4/x)

it's their one stable point, their one reference. everything else, to a devout "biblical Christian", is secondary and subsidiary to The Bible. it's got everything a person needs, right? the beginning of the world *and* the ending of it, all there in one volume.

(5/x)

but in *practice*, Christians get as bored of reading the same book over and over again as anyone else, so Christians devour a HUGE quantity of subsidiary media—but all of it is in a sense merely *allegorical*. Christians only want the same few stories, over and over.

(6/x)

that was the chief draw of #Narnia: it, like the Bible, gives us both the beginning and the end of a whole world, a shoddily constructed world full of weird racism and bigotry—but we get to see Narnia *die*, and that's what @MattWalshBlog and @PastorMark both love to see.

(7/x)

@mtaibbi's narratives are part of the same psychodrama—they have the same breathless air of *inevitable victory* that pervades the Bible and Christian eschatology. he speaks of all his battles as if they were already won—to build confidence, you see.

(8/x)

of course @mtaibbi (and other @elonmusk conspirators like @bariweiss, @MrAndyNgo, @ShellenbergerMD, @lhfang, @stillgray, &c.) always pretend that their losses are victories, too. the @realDonaldTrump method: just SAY you're "winning", all the time, and people believe it.

(9/x)

they've got all the answers—just like any two-bit Christian preacher-grifter like @pastorlocke or @RickWarren.

heck, @mtaibbi is *winning* right now! he's on the path of Truth™, striding to inevitable victory, the Great Wave, etc.

can't you taste it?

~Chara of Pnictogen