Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Why Evil Triumphs - Dennis Prager" video.

  1. "You can never behave well enough to be saved" Two ideas here -- one, you never know which of your evil acts will spiral into doing the most damage. In this chaotic world, the largest one could be damped out almost immediately (or even lead to much good in reaction to it), and the smallest one could spiral out of control disastrously. Two, pushing yourself to "act religious" leads too easily into performative behavior that misses the root purpose. Concentrating on orienting yourself internally to the good will help you reliably act to the good. Orienting yourself towards Christ (in the case of Christians) or the Law (in the case of Jews) is the core of this. Although interestingly, "If you don't feel religious, act religious" is in some ways a statement of faith itself. You seem to put your faith in being attentive to the Law, at least from what I can see.
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  2. "What is atonal music?" All music has a "tonic" note -- in almost all Western music, it's the pitch that the piece usually ends on. It's the bottom and the top of the scale. The emotional value of all the notes in between -- the note just above and below, that sound "unresolved" until you go to the tonic, the "fifth" note of the scale, that sounds powerful, the "third" note, that determines whether the key is major or minor -- your mind calculates all of these with respect to the "tonic". "Atonal" music treats every pitch as equal to all the others. It removes all sense of melody or narrative from the piece. It's nearly impossible to listen to, like a French arthouse concept movie, only worse.
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  3. "What's atonal music?" It's comforting to me that someone as aware of culture as Francis is, doesn't know what atonal music is. Most people who don't pay attention to formal music, don't know what it is; only our elite institutions are that corrupt.
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