Nick on Quora

A2A McKayla.

McKayla, I squirm under this question. You and Jeremy are the two people that, when you started following me, I thought “… I should be a better person”.

I’m not a better person in the past three months. But I did think I should be, for a moment.

I’ve given a monthly tithe to two charities, because they both accosted me at the train station, because I’d finally started earning an actual salary, and because I knew the causes and knew them to be just. And because secular, apathetic, and big-government though I am, I reflected that, now that I had money, a tithe was a reasonable thing for me to give back.

One charity got overly aggressive with cold calling me to increase my tithe, so they’re out. Come to think of, I now remember there was an added reason why that charity got my initial tithe: the accosters were two young blonde Swedish twins, completing each others’ sentences.

No I am not making this up.

No I am not above that kind of thing. Neither, it would seem, was the charity.

Shame, because it is a charity close to my libertarian heart. Amnesty International.

The other charity has had me hooked for well over a decade. Doctors Without Borders. To heal the sick and the wounded where humanity is at its lowest ebb. That is a truly noble thing. That is Tikkun olam.

(What’s that? “Repairing the world” is only the liberal Jewish interpretation of the phrase, and the Orthodox interpretation is “eliminating idolatry”? That’s… *shrug*.)

… Not one aggressively secular, historically informed answer to the question? Really? OP is clearly looking for one:

Some religions made it a main cause to conquer countries i.e. Islam, others’ was to unite religions i.e. Sikhism.

I’m not contradicting the other answers, but there is a place for this answer too. If any of you as Christians do not wish to be scandalised by a secular perspective, well, please stop reading now.

---

The purpose behind the Historical Jesus’ preaching, so far as secular scholars can discern (and Historical Jesus research is notoriously slippery) was either apocalyptical (the majority view), or a commensal egalitarianism (Crossan’s view). Either to prepare Jews for the end days and the return of the Messiah; or to subvert the power structures of Jewish life with a community of embryonic socialism.

I like the latter narrative, but it seems to have fallen back out of fashion now.

The purpose of Jewish Christianity was to keep the Historical Jesus’ vision going, within the framework of Judaism.

The purpose of Pauline Christianity, and all the other shards of practice that emerged away from Jerusalem over the next century, seems to have been more radical still (leading to its rupture with Judaism), but also much less coherent. Whatever their theologies (and there were many), a common social imperative was offering support and succour to the Roman underclass.

The purpose of Imperial Christianity was to harness the emerging religion to the cause of unifying the empire. As civic institutions decayed, the emperors noticed that the hierarchy developed around the Christian church could fill in many of the functions that the civil service and noble benefactors no longer could—including, but certainly no longer restricted to, offering support and succour to the Roman underclass.

q is a Voiceless uvular stop, IPA [q].

Q is a Voiceless uvular affricate, IPA [q͡χ].

Not δυνατότερο. One, because that’s Modern Greek, not Ancient; Two, because Modern Greek doesn’t have a distinct word for “loud”, it just uses the word for “strong”, dynatos. (In fact the OP’s form is “stronger, louder”.)

Actually looking at Woodhouse’s English-Ancient Greek Dictionary, Ancient Greek isn’t much better. The words given for “loud” are literally: big, sharp, clear-sounding, upright, bitter, piercing, over-toned, shining, noisy, roaring (of waves), sonorous. They’re mostly ambiguous, which disqualifies them for me.

Gegōnocracy, “rule of the sonorous” is the least ambiguous as a word, but it would end up ambiguous in English with gegonocracy “rule of facts (what has happened)”; in fact, I wasn’t familiar with the adjective gegōnos.

If I had to pick one, I’d go with rhothiocracy, “rule of those roaring like waves”. I don’t love it, it’s not actually that commonly used of people. But Aristophanes did use it to refer to popular acclamation (albeit in a mariner context): “raise loud waves of applause in his favour this day” (Knights 546)

My preference would be to go with shouting as the root notion here, certainly out-shouting your opposition: “Rule of Shouting”. Boo-cracy (< bo-ē) is ambiguous with the Rule of Oxen (< bo-os), though that may be a feature and not a bug. (EDIT, h/t John Gragson: maybe instead Boēto-cracy “Rule of the Shouty”.)

Craugo-cracy (< krazō, kraugazō) works best for me, and a kraugē is typically an angry, not a joyful shout.

Sicut alicubi dixit medicus bonus Habibus Magnus: Confiteor.

[As the good doctor Habib the Great has put it elsewhere: “I Confess”]

[Hey, it’s not my fault Habib chose to quote the Catholic Mass in Latin.]

---

You know, Habib le toubib, I’ve been expecting a question like this for maybe a month or two. Since I started interacting non-trivially with both yourself and your brother from another mother, Jeremy Markeith Thompson.

[Is that an instance of racism? I suspect that would be overusing the term, but you tell me.]

It’s been an interesting thread to see, with people lining up to admit that they are all too human—and on occasion, that they are overcompensating and rejecting their ingroup instead of their outgroup.

Riaan Engelbrecht, to my exasperation, has actually summarised quite well what I was about to say here, in his comment to the alicubi answer:

You nailed it, Habib. My emotions are rarely politically correct (warning for the Andrew Weill lightening bolt to strike…).

However, you can train your mind to teach your mouth to shut up long enough to be nice, be reasonable. Sometimes, during this short respite, I have been able to stop and think. Putting myself in the other person’s shoes emotionally has taught me that there is another side to the story.

I have initial emotional reactions that count as prejudice. I am aware of them, and I keep my goddamn mouth shut when I do become aware of them, because not being judgemental is a core part of who I seek to be.

The emotional reactions are, for the most part, fear of the unfamiliar. They are real, and they dissipate soon enough—as I become more familiar.

When I first arrived back in Australia (age 12), I stared at the 7–11 store owner next door, who was Korean. First time I’d seen an Asian; Tasmania was quite whitebread, and so was Crete. If you stare at Asians in Australia though, you’re not going to get anything else done in your day: they have similar numbers to Blacks in the US. Similarly, I used to stare at Somalis when they first started becoming part of the Australian fabric a decade ago. I don’t stare as much now, because they are becoming more familiar.

There’ll be a little bit of media feeding into my fears. I know I was somewhat anxious when accosted by a black panhandler in Memphis, or walked past groups of drunk Aboriginal young men in Darwin. But I don’t know that I’d be much more comfortable with drunk white young men, or white panhandlers.

(And I did end up making an attempt at banter with the panhandler, at least—earning me a “Where y’all from? Australia? Love that place! Crocodile Hunter! Dollar, please.”)

The primordial Other I was brought up to define myself against, that I catch myself fearing the most, is Turks for Greece, and Aboriginals for Australia. I’ve felt awkward when introduced to Aboriginals in Australia; I’ve kept my mouth shut, and soon enough ended up in friendly discussion with them. By contrast, I was positively giddy on my playdate with a Turkish guy a couple of weeks ago (and Quora truly helped me with that in advance)—which is progress against what I would have felt like 30 years ago. But yeah, there’s been a little bit of work needed for me to get over any blockers.

The only other thing I can think of is that I suspect I don’t find non-Caucasians physically attractive in the same proportions that I do Caucasians. That’s explicable as a familiarity thing: I don’t particularly go for blondes either—though for some reason, redheads fascinate me. But the list of non-Caucasians I do find physically attractive, I hasten to add, is certainly non-zero.

Jeremy, you can ask me specifics later… 🙂

Modern Greek speakers tend to squirm when addressed in the politeness plural, unless they are deliberately being high and mighty. The politeness plural connotes negative, not positive politeness to them, and emphasises social distance. Greeks don’t like social distance, they like being friendly and in your face. The exception these days would be officialdom and other explicit hierarchies, and even there, I’m stretched to think how much of that survives. I suspect it survives more in the Church.

As a diasporan, I approach new acquaintances in Greece online, using the politeness plural a fair bit. They will put up with it in the first exchange, and no longer. The explicit signal to cut it out, if you persist, is στον ενικό, είπαμε. “I told you: singular!”

{“Tier 1, Lurkers”:0,

“Tier 2, Occasional Users”:44,

“Tier 3, Regular Users”:27,

“Tier 4, Serious Users”:157,

“Tier 5, Popular Users”:45,

“Tier 6, Superstars”:4}

So: I mostly follow “serious users” (like myself: 20–1000 followers). I follow a few “popular users” (1k–10k followers). And I follow very few “superstars”:

• Jordan Yates
• Sam Morningstar
• Judith Meyer
• Quora

Jordan and Sam will be relieved to know they have only just hit the Superstar threshold; and Judith is sadly inactive.

I dearly, earnestly, ardently want you to learn Modern Greek for the pop culture.

But don’t do it to help you with Ancient Greek philosophy. You’ll trip over more false friends than you can shake a stick it. Meanings and connotations of words have changed over the millennia, and nowhere is getting the precise connotations of words more important than philosophy—especially given how hopelessly vague Ancient Greek philosophical terminology is.

Do however relish the magnificent juxtaposition of Heraclitus and St John Damascene in this 1993 pop song:

Τα πάντα ρει, τα πάντα ρει
Γι’ αυτό απόψε είναι Λαμπρή

Ta panta rhei, Everything Flows.
So let’s make tonight an Easter party!

[St John Damascene wrote the Easter hymn “Day of resurrection, let us be bright ye peoples”, Ἀναστάσεως ἡμέρα λαμπρυνθῶμεν Λαοί. Bright-Day is the colloquial Greek word for Easter.]

OP.

• Why has Yishan Wong refused Top Writer status on Quora? (tl;dr; he’s refused to say)
• Why do some Quorans reject the Top Writer title? (no other instances given)
• Why do people decide to opt-out of the Quora “Top Writers” program? (a comment reports that a Mary Bennett did)
• How can I opt-out of being in the Top Writers program?
• Who opted out of the Top Writers (Quora program) program? (Anon, appears to have hinted he was Yishan Wong)
• I Declined To Be In The Top Writer Program (Yishan Wong only member)
• What is it like to opt-out of being a Top Writer?

So lots of interest in declining the TW in particular, but not much evidence to date since the TW program was launched.

I have seen at least one other Quoran say they’ve refused the award, but of course, Quora Search (and it may have been in a comment); so I can’t find it.

EDIT: Godfrey Lawrence Noel McDonnell’s answer to Is there a way to remove the grey top writers quill and inkwell from a grey/ex TW’s profile? Although that is removing retrospectively a past TW badge.

EDIT: Rory Young : https://www.quora.com/What-are-c…

EDIT: Bhuvi Jain : https://www.quora.com/What-are-c…

Let me preface this by saying that I am a cinematic dunce.

At least, when I was a kid, Bill Collins was still presenting pre-1950 Hollywood films every Saturday night on Australian television. That was the 80s, of course. I think I got a lot more depth in my cinematic education then than the young kids today to, with the hair and the iPods and the not getting off of my lawn.

But still. Dunce. I didn’t even get who had died at the end of The Sixth Sense.

This was endlessly frustrating to my colleague in the States Nishad, who was a cinephile. He forced me to watch films, to make up for my duncehood. I thank him for making me watch The Seven Samurai.

OTOH: he also made me watch Blade Runner, and my reaction to that was, “Yeah, it’s Noir with Robots. So?”

---

On Mary C. Gignilliat’s mention, I’ve watched Apocalypse Now Redux. I had never watched either the original, or this edit.

Is the original Apocalypse Now, 49 minutes shorter, significantly tighter? This is a director’s cut, and it may have suffered from it. Do let me know if it has.

Thank you Mez, for reminding me I should have watched it a long time ago.

Of course, I suffer for having watched it 35 years after Nam was a live issue. (But then again, the film really isn’t about Nam at all, of course; so maybe that’s a good thing.)

I also suffer for being a cinematic dunce.

I got it. I was unsettled by it. And I’m happy I was able to put the cultural touchstones to a movie, all the quotables from Kilgore (Duvall) in particular.

I’ve got to admit: I didn’t enjoy it. Tamar kept seeing my brow furrowing.

I’m OK with it not having that much of a narrative, and with it being self-consciously trippy, even if the self-indulgence of Jimbo and the Doors gets very old very quickly. But I prefer discipline in my art, I’m more Apollo than Dionysus. I think 2001 was much more successful there than Apocalypse Now.

I’m OK with shows of cinematographic inventiveness; but again, the merge edits seem to me to have been handled more elegantly elsewhere. In fact, that was what struck me about the filming of it: it was artistic alright, but it was inelegant. Fairly obvious in its use of imagery. Unsubtle in some of its juxtapositions, such as the tape from home playing while the gunner was killed.

And it was dated. That surprised me. The mumbling narrator; the cross fades; the poring through closeups of letters; the extreme closeups of faces. Those were fads, it turned out, not building elements of film for all time.

The other surprise, for such a spawner of memes and cultural memories, was how less… monumental it was than I’d imagined. I thought there’d be a bellow or a shout behind “taste of victory” or “the horror, the horror”, I fancied that the Wagnerian choppers were going to jump out of my laptop. In actual experience, it was… subtle where I was hoping for it not to be.

The trip down through degradation of Martin Sheen was clear, once I got over my first half hour of confusion; in fact, it was pretty obvious that the actual Mistah Kurtz was going to prove a MacGuffin, and that Brando and Sheen were supposed to be the same heart of darkness ultimately, long before the Cambodian tribesmen bowed down before him. And much of it was well handled. The border bridge, the Playboy weirdness at the PABX, the shooting up of the boat with the puppy.

I think the whole Surfing Chopper thing was unbalanced though. Duvall was chewing a lot of scenery, making Sheen a bewildered bystander, in a way that really didn’t fit in with the rest of the film: his antics really were a strange entr’acte, and the parody of the military seemed forced. (Perhaps Nam really was like that, and it just seems unbelievable now. After all, I thought Nixon meeting the protesters in Oliver Stone’s film was a fabrication too.)

A grand ambitious ramshackle film. I’m glad it exists; but I thought it was let down by its ambition.

And that judgement, I guess, is why I’m a cinematic dunce. (Or why I should try again with the original edit.)