Who is my enemy?

[MaxPC]

Every person is his or her own worst enemy.
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Romans 7:15

Each person is called by Christ to have a personal relationship with Him. Each person will inevitably let down both Christ and himself. Each person cannot blame others; every person can only address his or her own attitudes and own up to hypocrisy.

[RZehr]

I’ve produced five American children since 2010, and I think they’re pretty non-horrible. And with a moment of thought I could list some other things since 2010 that are non-horrible.

I don't consider you to be culturally American, you seem culturally Mennonite. So I assume your children aren't either. But I would be extremely curious to know of anything produced by cultural Americans since 2010 that isn't horrible. I have asked about this in many places and never got an answer.

I’m in the seed business. Agriculture. Since we began the program after 2010, we’ve developed a few new seed varieties through traditional selective plant breeding, that have been granted PVP protection by the USDA. While the lead plant breeder is a Christian, he is not a Mennonite.
Might be small thing, but that’s how bigger things start. This is how humans have developed most of the plants that we now eat. Incremental improvements.

I would agree that my faith identity is larger and more important than my national culture identity or citizenship.

[Franklin]

What do you mean by the word "hate" in that sentence? What do you do as a result?

I pray for their destruction and I avoid them.

[Ken]

What do you mean by the word "hate" in that sentence? What do you do as a result?

I pray for their destruction and I avoid them.

Who do you pray to? Or is that just an expression?

[Franklin]

I have certainly waded through a lot of bad code written by modern programmers. But I don't think that makes them evil or horrible, and I don't think that makes them my enemy. And I could some vivid examples of backstabbing in my career too, but I have just moved on each time, letting it go.

On the whole, I think software is an area where we are objectively doing amazing new things that the old school of programming did not know how to do. Modern programmers are improving a lot of things, and we would not have the Internet, smart phones, modern energy systems, search engines, efficient supply chains, or many other things without them. Some of them write very, very clean code. So I really cannot agree with the notion that "modern programmers never improve anything, they only make things worse". And if you look at my own personal contribution to modern software, it is tiny, I am just one imperfect, myopic person and my contributions will not revolutionize the industry. I am most effective when I work with other communities. But I will never be the great god of software.

I work with software developers every day. I don't hate them, I set up situations where we learn together, reviewing each other's designs and code, coming to a common understanding of our goals, what constitutes maintainable code, etc. Software is a lot like auto mechanics or making furniture that way, you have to learn it, it takes time, you have to keep learning even after you have initially mastered it, and it's generally helpful to be good at learning from others. "Plays well with others" is one of the things we hire for where I work.

Enmity gets in the way of "plays well with others". You can't do both at the same time.

In the spiritual realm, enmity gets in the way of redemptive love and the ministry of reconciliation. And enmity is often built on self-righteousness, insisting that I am better than these other bad people instead of looking for ways to serve, teach, learn together, etc.

My website Reactionary Software goes into this issue in depth, and includes links my open source code. All I can say is that I disagree with what you wrote. I only work with technical people outside of modern culture. Programmers of modern culture are the very worst people in the world in my opinion.

[Franklin]

Getting off topic. But to answer your question, just in the area of science we have many new discoveries. To cite just four...

Sequencing the human genome and CRISPR technology which is opened up all kinds of new avenues for curing diseases like cancer, muscular dystrophy, heart disease as well as revolutionize agriculture.

The discovery of the Higgs boson particle by physicists at CERN which is revolutionizing advanced physics

The plutonium-powered Curiosity Rover and Perseverance Rovers landing on Mars and greatly increasing our knowledge of the Red Planet

The James Webb Telescope which is revolutionizing astronomy

CRISPR


Higgs-boson


Mars Perseverance Rover


James Webb Telescope Here is the Carina Nebula showing the birth of a star

Before getting into these 4 examples, I should clarify what I mean. For example, Costco roasted chicken has value in my opinion and is still produced by Americans. While the intelligence of Americans is in rapid decline due to the dysgenic effects of modern culture, there are still some intelligent Americans capable of producing intelligent things. There are fundamentally two things that modern Americans are incapable of. One is good design. This means good music, good art, good architecture, well designed software or any other gadget, etc. The other thing they are incapable of is fundamental advances in science, math, or any other deep area. This is due to the decline in intelligence.

Now to the examples. CRISPR technology required some intelligence to develop, but it is just a technique. It is not any kind of fundamental insight. I couldn't find the history of the development of the Curiosity Rover. I assume that if it were designed after 2010 then it would be an unreliable piece of junk. If you can find the history of the design, I would be interested to see it. The idea of the Higgs boson is quite old. Finding it mostly depended on advances in computing power which continues even at the present since this is mostly a matter of tweaking things. The design of the James Webb Telescope seems to have been done in 2005 with the rest of the time being mostly construction.

I discussed the basic idea of cultural decay on my Arkian site. I gave the example of astronomy comparing Aristarchus of Samos with Ptolemy. Current science is like the science of Ptolemy, very ugly while still requiring some intelligence. As dysgenic forces continue to lower intelligence, soon science will be forgotten altogether.

[PetrChelcicky]

As for programming, I have no own ideas about programming but I read a German blogger (and information professional), Hadmut Danisch who shares Franklin's critique. But I suppose that the problem is rather "modernity" than "Americanism" - or perhaps Americans like Ken having too positive a view of modernity.
The problem seems to me that in older times people were taught to work meticulously (as a goal in itself) and today they are taught to be "effective" (arriving at a given goal and ignoring all side effects and possible consequences, not even documenting exactly what they have done, so that others can repair their errors).

[PetrChelcicky]

As for the "public space" subject now mentioned by Ken and Bootstrap: I have from time to time emphasized that in modern times the "public space" as the space of Caesar has been extended etremely, at the cost of the "private space" of Christians. In Soviet Russia the private space was reduced to Sunday morning when everyone was allowed to visit the service of his own association. At all other places the state decided what was good or bad. (And Soviet Russia only realized a program which was shared by most other Leftists.)
Under those conditions a Christian community cannot thrive and therefore there must be a political fight about what stays private and what becomes public, and what can or cannot be done at the public space.
Insofar I think that the Christian Right was right and Ken was wrong. The Christian Right foresaw that the result of a gay marriage law would be that an aggressive and fanatical LBGTQ-movement would scrutinize all citizens and make their life to hell if they did not agree to supporting gay marriages.
But even from a quite mundane position I insist that peace-by-agreement requires that the conflicting persons have equal rights. If someone can plead for gay marriage at a public place, another one must have the right to say No at the same place. Without that kind of justice, there will be no peace.

[PetrChelcicky]

Last point: "enemy"
I have been a student of philosophy, so I really LIKE to make distinctions.
If somebody damages me, I put him into one of three groups:
a) many people who are simply careless or ruthless in pursuing their own ways to happiness ("well, sorry, but you stood in my way and so you have brought it to yourself").
b) some people who are really hostile to me as a person - normally as a matter of vengefulness for something I have done or as a result of fear what I might do to them. Those are the more interesting "enemies" which need more preoccupation in thinking (particularly amiable thinking)
c) few people who are really "small scale sadists", that is they have no grudge against me but simply find it fun to act badly and view me cringe (the "school bully" type). Well, in a way I grant them their fun, but it is not very good for themselves, if it becomes a habit or an addiction and, like alcool. needs more and more action to get sufficient fun out of it.

[Bootstrap]

What do you mean by the word "hate" in that sentence? What do you do as a result?

I pray for their destruction and I avoid them.

And that includes someone who writes code you don't like or uses GitHub rather than Mercurial for source code control?