It's such a "blessing"!

[Dancefortwo]

Huh?  

This is a term that defies logic to me and it infers that there is a deity that is giving out special things called "blessings" -  like babies, talent  ("he was blessed with such talent")   circumstances...("I was blessed with this great job")  situations......("I was blessed to have such good friend")  and so on.  I hear this all the time.  So if blessings are handed out by a god what about curses?  Have you ever been "blessed"?  I never have.  I've never, ever used this term at any point in my life.  I've worked for stuff and honed my talents myself over many years.  It wasn't given to me magically.  So there!

[Dom]

Huh?  

This is a term that defies logic to me and it infers that there is a deity that is giving out special things called "blessings" -  like babies, talent  ("he was blessed with such talent")   circumstances...("I was blessed with this great job")  situations......("I was blessed to have such good friend")  and so on.  I hear this all the time.  So if blessings are handed out by a god what about curses?  Have you ever been "blessed"?  I never have.  I've never, ever used this term at any point in my life.  I've worked for stuff and honed my talents myself over many years.  It wasn't given to me magically.  So there!

Bless your heart!  

[Dancefortwo]

Huh?  

This is a term that defies logic to me and it infers that there is a deity that is giving out special things called "blessings" -  like babies, talent  ("he was blessed with such talent")   circumstances...("I was blessed with this great job")  situations......("I was blessed to have such good friend")  and so on.  I hear this all the time.  So if blessings are handed out by a god what about curses?  Have you ever been "blessed"?  I never have.  I've never, ever used this term at any point in my life.  I've worked for stuff and honed my talents myself over many years.  It wasn't given to me magically.  So there!

Bless your heart!  

Oh, shut up Dom.                                      


That's the worst.  "Bless your little ol' heart.  Geeze I hate that phrase.

[no one]

Some can't deal that the talent switch is set to maximum for some earthlings. As with everything, they need magic to fill that vacuumous void of ignorance.

[Minimalist]

Huh?  

This is a term that defies logic to me and it infers that there is a deity that is giving out special things called "blessings" -  like babies, talent  ("he was blessed with such talent")   circumstances...("I was blessed with this great job")  situations......("I was blessed to have such good friend")  and so on.  I hear this all the time.  So if blessings are handed out by a god what about curses?  Have you ever been "blessed"?  I never have.  I've never, ever used this term at any point in my life.  I've worked for stuff and honed my talents myself over many years.  It wasn't given to me magically.  So there!

Bless your heart!  

Oh, shut up Dom.                                      


That's the worst.  "Bless your little ol' heart.  Geeze I hate that phrase.

It doesn't compare to "fuck you and the horse you rode in on," does it!

[Unsapien]

Well blessings & curses absolve one of responsibility.

I didn't get whatever goal I set for myself... I must have just been cursed it wasn't my fault.

It's right up there with "god's looking out for me"

Hey look I survived the tornado for no real good reason, I must have been blessed, too bad about all my dead neighbours though.

[Alan V]

Depending on where you live, you might have to behave like an anthropologist visiting some native culture. My wife says she has done that for most of her life.

[Vera]

Well blessings & curses absolve one of responsibility.

I didn't get whatever goal I set for myself... I must have just been cursed it wasn't my fault.

It's right up there with "god's looking out for me"

Hey look I survived the tornado for no real good reason, I must have been blessed, too bad about all my dead neighbours though.

"What a blessing to know there's a devil and that we're not exactly to blame,
For all guile and all greed, and each rotten misdeed
Which may blacken sweet mankind's good name.
What a blessing to know there's a devil,
Or we'd all simply die of shame."

[Vera]

@Unsapien @Dancefortwo I will never forget someone I knew in South Africa repeatedly thanking god for “saving” them from the Christmas tsunami (they were on vacation there)… by means of them forgetting their towel and having to go back to the hotel (I guess Douglas Adams was wrong, manaing not to lose your towel isn’t all it’s cracked up to be )

Or the guy in Brazil, who, again, was telling me how god personally saved him, by making him late for the bus he’d usually take. The bus was set fire to by some gangsters and people died.

I guess those people who died weren’t as blessed.

The most morally repugnant one, though, was someone else in Brazil telling me about a couple whose two-year-old was dying of cancer and during that time the woman got pregnant… which was a gift/blessing from god. I am still lost for words. When we talked more about it, this person (who believes that suffering teaches us lessons and/or is due to something we did in a previous life (she believed in an especially vile and especially popular in Brazil “religion” of sorts that combines the very worst of both worlds, so they believe in original sin and the rest of the xtian bull, plus reincarnation and karma and all that vile shit about people paying for something they did (even if they don’t remember it) in a previous life), when asked if the pregnancy is a blessing, what is the cancer… she said, it’s a lesson. When I asked what exactly did the two-year-old learnt... she told me it was a lesson for the parents.

I know most of them are absolutely unaware just how selfish and morally repugnant this line of "thinking" is... but even with this aside, what kind of a benevolent god teaches you "lessons" by allowing a child to be born only to die. Even if you believe that child is going to Heaven, it's repugnant.


Then, when she told me that my mum has lupus because she's chosen it in a previous life and/or done something do deserve it, I asked her what *exactly* makes being gangraped by soldiers in Congo a fitting "retribution" or lesson... There wasn't an answer...

[Minimalist]

So, Vera.  "Blessing" = "dumb luck?"

Got it.  

[Dānu]

I suppose there are worse impulses for when life hands you lemons than to desperately try to make lemonade.

[Alan V]

The impulse to blame everything bad on oneself and credit everything good to God is masochistic.

[Vera]

The impulse to blame everything bad on oneself and credit everything good to God is masochistic.

Apart from what kind of humanity is moulded by a belief system that teaches you that everything bad in your life is due to your own faults and everything good is a gift *despite* your faults, what I find so offensive (apart from the “saved” ones apparently thinking they deserved to be saved… which implies that the rest of the people who died didn’t), is that people most often proclaim this whole “suffering teaches us stuff” crap when talking about the suffering of others. Like that woman in Brazil. It wasn’t *her* child that was dying after all.

And the whole suffering teaches us lessons is abhorrent, because in the vast majority of cases, it comes from people who are either talking about the suffering of others or, having gone through something unpleasant or hard themselves (like this woman who’d gone through a nasty divorce and a couple of other things, absolutely incomparable to losing a child), think that because *they* have overcome something bad, everything else is equally overcame-able, so to speak; that because *they* have learnt something from their experience, everyone else who goes through often immeasurably more horrific experience should "learn" something too.

Again, tell this to someone who’s been gangraped or watched a child die painfully. Or, watched a child after he or she had been raped. I keep mentioning Denis Mukwege (I cried when he was awarded the Nobel Prize) and wonder what *he* thinks of suffering and how "ennobling" and "instructive" it is. When asked what was the youngest rape victim he's treated, he said it was a baby... NO "lesson" worth anything can be taught this way.

*If* someone is talking about their own suffering and how it’s made them a better person or taught them something – I have all the respect and sympathy in the world for that person. When people talk about suffering in general as being something ultimately useful and good, it is at best inconsiderate and ignorant, at worst unbelievablt selfish and repugnant.

[Dancefortwo]

The one that gets me is that talent is a blessing.  A violinist studies for 15 years and practices daily, goes to a music academy to study further, all the while putting aside a social life, sometimes sacraficing close family ties to study in another country to further hone perfection and then people come along and call his or her talent a "blessing from god".    I'd like to take a voilin bow and shove it up their nose.

[Reltzik]

It's a pretty straightforward long  con.

Step 1:  Plant the idea of an intelligent force behind the apparently random (or, at least, out of our ability to control or predict) events and circumstances of our lives.  This is pretty easy because our brains are wired for agency-detection, even when none exists.

Step 2:  Get people into the habit of interpreting this stuff as blessings, or judgement, or the intelligent force's plan, or mysterious ways.  You know the usual suspects.  This is also pretty easy because our brains are wired for creating narratives and imagining what other people (or pseudo-fictional-persons) are thinking.  Keep doing Step 2 until it becomes habitual, automatic, and unthinking.

Step 3:  Get them to believe that you speak for the source of those blessings, judgements, etc.  This is the trick, and you'll probably lose a chunk of them, but that's okay.  So long as you keep a decent portion of them you're still in the game.  The ones who stay will be the most impressionable and gullible, aka the money pots, so in a way the smart ones leaving is a feature, not a bug.

Step 4:  Issue commands from yourself that being.  You That being commands them to devote themselves to you that being.   You It commands them to live their lives according to your its will, to vote according to your its will, to hate love the people that you it hate loves, and to give 10% of their income plus labor plus offerings plus "seeds" to you it.  Oh, and a bunch of silly stuff that makes them feel that they're sacrificing to be in the religion and thus make them subconsciously find ways to rationalize that sacrifice in order to not feel like they done goofed.  In exchange, the being will bestow blessings, albeit subtly in a manner indistinguishable from if that being didn't exist at all mysterious ways.

Step 5:  Send them out to recruit more marks save souls by spreading this message.

Step 6:  Prophet Profit.

A side-effect (or a deliberate part) of this con is that it has people talking to other people about blessing this and judgement that.

... oh, and it also works even if no one's doing it on purpose, since the leader can fall for the innate human biases towards agency detection, narrative-construction, Dunning-Kruger, and so forth.

[Vera]

The one that gets me is that talent is a blessing.  A violinist studies for 15 years and practices daily, goes to a music academy to study further, all the while putting aside a social life, sometimes sacraficing close family ties to study in another country to further hone perfection and then people come along and call his or her talent a "blessing from god".    I'd like to take a voilin bow and shove it up their nose.

Hehe, I confess I’ve snickered when seeing people say that Jaroussky’s (my favourite countertenor) voice is a gift from god… and knowing he’s an atheist. Here he is, singing one the most beautiful parts of Pergolesi Stabat Mater.



And the all time favourite – without religion we wouldn’t have Bach. Because he totally wouldn’t have been composing works dedicated to whatever else might have been one of the most important things during his life, hadn’t Christianity been it.

[epronovost]

Oh, shut up Dom.                                        


That's the worst.  "Bless your little ol' heart.  Geeze I hate that phrase.

Fine, then bless your spleen. You like your spleen don't you?

[Dānu]

Don't waste time blessing my spleen while I'm busy cursing my liver.

[M.Linoge]

When asked what was the youngest rape victim he's treated, he said it was a baby... NO "lesson" worth anything can be taught this way.

It's amazing how often the god of love and forgiveness imparts wisdom through the medium of violation, degradation and loss.

[Dancefortwo]

The one that gets me is that talent is a blessing.  A violinist studies for 15 years and practices daily, goes to a music academy to study further, all the while putting aside a social life, sometimes sacraficing close family ties to study in another country to further hone perfection and then people come along and call his or her talent a "blessing from god".    I'd like to take a voilin bow and shove it up their nose.

Hehe, I confess I’ve snickered when seeing people say that Jaroussky’s (my favourite countertenor) voice is a gift from god… and knowing he’s an atheist. Here he is, singing one the most beautiful parts of Pergolesi Stabat Mater.




And the all time favourite – without religion we wouldn’t have Bach. Because he totally wouldn’t have been composing works dedicated to whatever else might have been one of the most important things during his life, hadn’t Christianity been it.  

Countertenors are amazing.  Genetics with the addition of years of study, pratice, training = talent.    Also, the happenstance of where you were born and the surrounding culture contributes extensively what kind of talent will be cultivated.  Someone born in the Congo will most likely not become a countertenor.

Don't forget Amadaus means something like "love of god" or "god's love" and many Christian  considered Mozart's genius a "gift from god".   I don't hear Christians saying the same thing about Stephen Hawking's genius because he was an atheist and blew Christianity out of the water.   Most conservative Christians consider him to be evil and satanic, but here again, they denote special supernatural qualities on his genius.

[Bucky Ball]

"Bless her heart" is the polite (church lady) way of saying "She's so totally full of shit".

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Bless her heart" is the polite (church lady) way of saying "She's so totally full of shit".

Ever hear "Bless his pointed little head"?

[Thumpalumpacus]

I worked for every lick I've ever played on a guitar. I credit my mom much more than I credit any "blessing". She kept good music around the house both from the stereo and her piano or organ. That's what showed me that music isn't just heard, but played.

I've been called "talented" before, but make no mistake: I am not. I had to work for it, and I suspect most other artists of any stripe have put in the same work.

Just as "luck is where preparation meets opportunity", talent is where vision meets discipline. God need not apply.

[Vera]

Countertenors are amazing.  Genetics with the addition of years of study, pratice, training = talent.    Also, the happenstance of where you were born and the surrounding culture contributes extensively what kind of talent will be cultivated.  Someone born in the Congo will most likely not become a countertenor.

Don't forget Amadaus means something like "love of god" or "god's love" and many Christian  considered Mozart's genius a "gift from god".   I don't hear Christians saying the same thing about Stephen Hawking's genius because he was an atheist and blew Christianity out of the water.   Most conservative Christians consider him to be evil and satanic, but here again, they denote special supernatural qualities on his genius.

Hahahahaha. God, some people are so desperate (and then all those desperate attempts to prove that someone famous “converted” on their deathbed… as if that’d make their – or any – delusion any truer… then again, strength in numbers, I guess, the same weak mentality and insecurity that leads people to get validation from likes… must be so sad, deriving your own worth from - and in comparison with – others)

I love countertenors! There’s apparently a revived interest in them so there’s a whole new crop of excellent ones these days. Coupled with a renewed interest in Baroque music and baroque opera in particular, these are glorious times. They’ve recorded most of Vivaldi’s and Handel’s operas, often, more than once, so that now I can choose my favourite singers and/or conductors!

Case in point (love every bit of this opera): one of my favourite tenors and the same countertenor. How can something so short, a mere minute and a half, be so sublimely beautiful I will never understand…



(There’s a singer who is actually similar to the castrati of old; I think it’s a hormonal thing or something. He does sound different from a countertenor (who, I’ve read, are often baritones, when singing “normally”). I do prefer the sound of the countertenors but maybe I’m not used to a “castrato”. There is a thinness to his voice that is not exactly my cup of thing. Don't get me wrong, it's very good, but there is a certain quality to the singing of a countertenor that I really love that's missing from this one.)



You’re right, it is a European tradition; but your comment reminded me of a flashmob of Carmen I saw ages ago and how stunned people were when this huuuuge black guy suddenly started singing opera. In all fairness, I think it’s above all the fact that he’s dressed in a tracksuit, but it’s still funny to watch the faces of people.

[brunumb]

Thanks Vera.  I just love flashmob performances.  They really lift my spirits.