I was just sent this https://www.mzbworks.com/prayer.htm—really fantastic. TLDR luck/magic is real but only works on one thing. I normally think of luck like the compass in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) (that points to what you want most), although unlike this essay, I normally think of it where the user can juggle multiple goals and the compass will adjust to that. Here, with the author’s notion of prayer, we can really only activate the power of luck on one thing. Perhaps “at a time”, perhaps not.
But this fellow was not an average young man; a little more was expected of him. He was not satisfied with Jesus’ answer, and said, “Master, all this have I done from my childhood.” In other words; “I’ve already done that, I think I’m ready for the next step on the way.”
So this remarkable Rabbi leveled with him, and gave him the next step; “Then go, sell what thou hast and give to the poor, and follow me.”
You can almost see the young man’s mind working. “What? Me, who has kept the Commandments all my life? Must I do this too? There’s nothing in the Law and the Prophets about this! People will call me crazy! Why can’t I keep what I’ve got and be saved right here?”
So the Bible tells us the young man “went away sorrowing; for he had great possessions.”
It doesn’t say anywhere that this young man was damned, or that Jesus reproached him, or cursed him. He probably went on keeping the Commandments, and may have lived an excellent life, a happy life, as a pillar of his community.
But he had wanted something more; and he never got that. He never became one of the inner circle.
Just found it charming that jesus was like “oh you should’ve mentioned you beat easy mode already, i usually don’t get around to telling people there are different difficulty levels”. But the application to charitable living/giving is obvious. I literally recently said to myself “eh give yourself the beef cheat this month (i’m mostly vegetarian just open to cheating once or twice a month), you donated a kidney” which is of dubious validity, and yet, just might work (in some sense).
but there’s a sting in the tail. I knew a man who decided to concentrate entirely on money-making for a few years so that he would have money to study music and compose. He was an overwhelmingly talented man in half a dozen fields, and he became, in a scant six years, almost a millionaire. But that six years had wrought a tragic change in him, for by the time he had the money he had once vowed to devote to his composing, he had spent five years without once touching his piano, his cello, his flute and bassoon, his books.
He said, when asked about his decision, “Oh, music. That was just a juvenile notion. Now I’ve got a business to look after.” The very act of making money had altered the man himself beyond recognition. Yet he had sincerely loved music, and the world of music is much the poorer by the loss of strange and lovely compositions, now never to be completed or published—so that use of mental power backfired
setting aside the fact that I almost literally did this personally, I thought this would resonate with some of yall who’ve thought about value drift.
I was just sent this https://www.mzbworks.com/prayer.htm—really fantastic. TLDR luck/magic is real but only works on one thing. I normally think of luck like the compass in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) (that points to what you want most), although unlike this essay, I normally think of it where the user can juggle multiple goals and the compass will adjust to that. Here, with the author’s notion of prayer, we can really only activate the power of luck on one thing. Perhaps “at a time”, perhaps not.
Just found it charming that jesus was like “oh you should’ve mentioned you beat easy mode already, i usually don’t get around to telling people there are different difficulty levels”. But the application to charitable living/giving is obvious. I literally recently said to myself “eh give yourself the beef cheat this month (i’m mostly vegetarian just open to cheating once or twice a month), you donated a kidney” which is of dubious validity, and yet, just might work (in some sense).
setting aside the fact that I almost literally did this personally, I thought this would resonate with some of yall who’ve thought about value drift.