Between the Buried and Me, a progressive metal band that is considered legendary, is philosophically political in so much as that most of their albums are about the inevitable decline of humanity and the destruction of everything due to capitalism, greed, regressive ideologies etc. If you’ve never listened to them you should start with the Great Misdirect. Spotify has a live version I think and it is phenomenal.

There is a primate that washes their fruit off and it is a learned behavior. They have taught all the other in the species to do the same thing.

Very well said. Is it even possible to quantify intelligence? I mean, you can obviously measures brain size, which they did, and that was lacking, then they measured amount of gray matter, which matters a lot more, conclusively, but there is also the fact that even losing pieces of the brain cannot stop a person from being fully functioning due to neuroplasticity, and then you have concepts like IQ tests which are verifiable steeped in white exceptionalism aka racist as hell.

It seems like the issue is more nuanced than all that.

Not to mention grades are about doing the work and having the discipline and organizational skills. There are plenty of people who are very intelligent, but lack both of those. US testing metrics (is that the right word?) are heavily flawed. This isn’t even bringing up the racist aspect of most institutions, including educational being headed up and formulated by white people.

That’s fucked.

I really appreciate your comment, so wanted to say so outright, but real talk… this is a fantastic story idea.

When you put it like that, it is absolutely brilliant.

These kinds of behaviors are really hammering home that Christians are just nazis with training wheels huh?

You can wholeheartedly fuck yourself off into the sun for that comment. Very ironic that you lead with “such and such is edgelord bullshit” though.

I’ll add to that, that you can just consider that still to this day, cannibal human beings exist, and to them, it is moral and ethical, because it is part of their culture. That is “morally” and ethically reprehensible to us, but we exist in a different sphere of influence than them. Does this make them wrong? If so, then by who’s metric? I agree with your opening sentence, btw. Don’t have time to get into the weeds and read all of this right now though. Just got off work.

They’re social constructs for the most part. Try to apply your concept of laws, justice and morality with a paramecium in a drop of water.

Why so dimissive?

It reminds me of the whole “keeping a level head while someone loses their shit on you, to demonstrably prove they’re the asshole”, but writ large.

On the other side of that coin, it is much easier for someone with a high degree of intelligence and self awareness, to perform the necessary mental gymnastics to justify bullshit beliefs…

Much easier to rearrange reality to fit your perception rather than alter your perception and admit that you’re possibly wrong.

Yeah. It’s totally the sunken cost fallacy. They mistakenly think that there is too much to lose to change their minds and cut their losses.