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TorqueWrench10's avatar

As an aside, it’s dead important to remember antiquity is no guarantor of orthodoxy. From the New Testament its clear heresy became an immediate problem. I didn’t get involved in Buddhism but I was involved with stoicism, after reading about Adm. Stockdale, as a Christian thinking it could be “baptized”. Which isn’t to say none of it is true. But it was ineffective, I didn’t just feel less pain, I felt less. Only later did I rediscover Christian criticism from Pascal who said the stoic mistake is that it says we can always do what we may only sometimes do, and Augustine who pointed at that those great masters of themselves committed suicide an awful lot. I bring it up because stoicism seems very akin to Buddhism. We think just because something is less degenerate than modern times it’s good whereas it could just be a different trap.

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Matthew Stanley's avatar

As a plug for a Scouts alternative, I grew up in Christian Service Brigade and went to the Sequoia Brigade Camps here in northern California. CSB was founded in 1937, and continues to help young men learn from older men about how to live biblical and masculine lives. It's a wonderful organization.

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