But civilization is so much more comfortable, don't you think? Beer, grocery stores, police services, fire services, Wal-Mart, fast food, sleeping without watch standing, courts of law for disputes, styling boutiques.
Et cetera. 
Posted on 02/25/2008 1:13:10 PM PST by Caleb1411
“It does save you from the leprosy of loneliness”
Yes, there is definitely that.
I think too, that people confuse satisfaction with self-indulgence.
It’s like when we were kids and ate too much candy until we got sick.
We had great fun up until that point, and then we suffered for it.
So...many adult think they’ll be happy if have the freedom to self-indulge, but then they wind up paying for it.
The notion that great “satisfaction” can be had by forgetting yourself and concentrating on the needs of others seems to be going by the wayside.
People call this “losing yourself” and they think it is a bad thing.
That's me ... managerial semi-leisure! Or at least I'll attain it as soon as Ubiquitous Anoreth gets her driver's license :-).
I suppose the date and the extent to which the Christians actually became dominant in the Empire remains controversial?
I think dicostu needs a penguin! It’s a wonder that aliens only ate “his/her” Buick!
F
My parents used to have Buicks. If aliens find them tasty, that’s an improvement over my opinion of them!
My longm observation has been that for the marriage to flourish, both marriage partners have to be committed to 'marriage' as an institution, covenant, sacrament, rather than just committed to each other. Commitment to 'each other" is wonderful, but on its own it is not nearly as stable as commitment to marriage per se.
That generally means they have religious beliefs, whether Jewish, Christian, Mormon or whatever, which highlight marriage as a covenant that involves God. In which case the partners understand that they have freely ruled out divorce as a possibility. And which means they both are highly motivated to make the marriage as harmonious and satisfactory to each other as possible, because it's your state of life til death intervenes, so it behooves you to live with a satisfied person.
Mind you, atheism/agnosticism does not automatically rule out lifelong marital fidelity, and religious beliefs don't absolutely immunize you from divorce. But it helps.
As for the kids: don't raise them with a sense of being pampered house guests but make sure they always, at every point, have work to do. And after they move out, at 18 or 20 or whenever, sell the house.
Ha!
As in "Comp'ny's comin', you'uns best red up the table."
Well, in the Really Rural South (say, 5 miles south of me :-), “y’all” is the second person singular, and “all y’all” is the second person plural.
Always sounded like YOONS to me but you are undoubtedly correct.
I am not scoffing. I am constantly being corrected for referring to meself as “meself.”
;-o)
Do all y’all like boiled peanuts? It is not a taste I have acquired, particularly, although a few pints of Guinness does make them palatable for meself.
F
I am worried that the traditional way will not be the only way to procreate in the future.
I am imagining that if China or other totalitarian societies face a bearth dearth in the future they will just mass-clone them, and that later than that, future totalitarian governments will build androids, robots, or what-have-you.
Absolutely in my mind. First, what is a Christian (not to be dense or rhetorical, but is it group defined or individually defined or a combination)? How is that measured? A hundred years after the fall of the empire in the west, Gregory of Tours writes about all the pagan temples / shrines in Gaul that were still in use. The German tribes except the Franks (they were catholic with a small c) belonged to a heretical sect of Christianity called Arianism. But were they really Arians or were they still pagans with a Christian veneer?
Here are some really good books on the subject: I am reading this one right now: The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire by Michele Renee Salzman
I read this one two years ago (really good)
Rodney Stark
Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome
But civilization is so much more comfortable, don't you think? Beer, grocery stores, police services, fire services, Wal-Mart, fast food, sleeping without watch standing, courts of law for disputes, styling boutiques.
Et cetera.
Thanks! If it was heavy metal, I’d have ordered it for my son!
I’ve never tried boiled peanuts (they have a bazillion points), but Der Prinz lived in South Carolina for ten years, and he says they’re horrible.
It’s a brilliant album, though the first song is a little not kid friendly (highly suggestive).
The time that Rome was being Christianized is when the west fell. This was Gibbons main point, one led to the other. People that throw out the decadent charge against Rome as one of the reasons she fell then have to explain why she grew so fast when she was more decadent in terms of Christian morality. The homosexuality card is overplayed in my opinion. The new work done on the fall of Rome is leading to other conclusions. Rome was just fine in terms of culture and population, she self-destructed thru civil war played out between pretenders to the throne and Theodosius. Theodosius won and Rome lost. The Germans took over the remains.
Then Bill probably wouldn’t understand it :-).
LOL!
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