Philip is a South African Christian missionary working with the Moken people (aka Sea Gypsies) on the island of Ko Phayam, in Thailand. When the tsunami in 2004 destroyed their boats, they were forced to live on land. Philip is trying to help them make the transition to a new way of life. He sees his role as striving to be the embodiment of God’s love, not as trying to convince anyone to adopt his particular beliefs.
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Music: “Brightside of the Sun,” by Basin and Range; “Life Upside Down,” by Brett Newski; “Smoke Alarm,” by Carsie Blanton.
Hi Chris!
Really hope you bring TOMA back, that was my favorite podcast.
Take it easy dude.
Nice interview with someone who seems more genuinely interested in helping people in this life, than trying to save them from the fiery punishments of the next one. I particularly liked his view of God as a concept that grows more incomprehensible the more you try to ‘know’ Him/Her/It.
Re. the outrage of SJW, recently I was checking my Twitter feed and noticed the Tweet of someone who openly declared herself as a feminist –you know how it is, not someone you specifically follow, but is followed by someone else and nevertheless you get to see their Tweets. This person had Tweeted that every young man should own a cat in order to learn how consent can be removed at any given time, i.e. how a purrying kitten may all of the sudden tire of your unsolicited petting at any given moment, and you need to live with it or else the cat will scratch your eyes out.
It wan’t a bad analogy, but like all mental experiments you can find a flaw if you pry deep enough, so I decided to share the famous video of Chris’s first sexual experience with a cat. I thought it would be seen as a funny example of how sometimes a cat is very clear of what she wants.
Big. Mistake.
The barrage of insults I received ranged from the perfectly valid ("you failed to understand what the Twitterer was trying to say with the cat analogy"), the not-so-valid ("Nobody asked you for your opinion!" Um, I thought the point of Twitter was for people to share their opinion publicly, even if they were not solicited) to the totally hyperbolic ("YOU FUCKING CAT-RAPE APOLOGIST WHY DONT YOU STAY OUT OF ANYTHING THAT MOVES").
I was taken aback that such a seemingly inocuous anecdote unleashed such a vitriolic reaction, to the point that I was afraid I had unexpectedly kickstarted the #MeowTwoo movement…
("Oh how dare you make fun of the #MeToo movement!" No, I’m making fun of people who can’t tell the difference between clear mysoginy, and a funny cat annecdote)
I think Mike Bonnano was right when he pointed out the political Left take the issues they fight for so seriously they often take them way out of proportion; which is why the Right have now resorted to trolling tactics like Pepe the Frog memes. Hell, in retrospect I suspect maybe these feminists thought I was one of those trolls –curse the alt-right for hijacking the symbol of the Red Pill– but then again, if you are using cat analogies to ‘fight’ over women’s rights, you should probably expect well-intentionted people like me to come up with the occasional satirical comment. But I guess we now live in a time when even a bad joke is enough to get you red-flagged for life…
Strangely, I didn’t notice any of that vitriol being aimed at me, the purrpetrator. (See what I did there?) Or am I just oblivious to it at this point?
Yeah, it was weird. The rants were more aimed at me than at "the podcast that glorifies animal rape" as they put it. You have been warned, tho: 9 1/2 Lives has not aged well.