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muffinlemma280 karma

What is the endgame for covid-19? Will it just become an endemic childhood illness like other coronaviruses or will children be vaccinated? Do you think the virus will continue to mutate frequently like an influenza and require new vaccines periodically?

muffinlemma156 karma

How can anyone know the moral teachings are objectively valid when the source of those teachings appears to be the arbitrary authority of people like yourself who claim to have obtained this authority from God?

How do we know you have that authority, when people like yourself (not you, but your brother bishops, cardinals, and popes) have engaged in systematic deception over many decades regarding the child sex abuse scandal?

Is there some way to test these teachings? For instance, how can anyone know, objectively, that eating meat on Friday is appropriately punished by endless torment?

muffinlemma96 karma

Do you think many organizations will go out of business permanently due to covid and the resulting economic fallout? How is the Philly orch doing? The met's decision to continue their shutdown is really disheartening.

I'm a regional orchestra player who sometimes subs with bigger ICSOM groups and this has been absolutely devastating for me and my colleagues. We're working retail, we can't get unemployment, it feels like everything has collapsed and there is no end in sight. I've actually played with you before FWIW, you were a soloist for one of my regional orchestras, thank you for doing this AMA.

muffinlemma78 karma

The unfairness of the audition system comes at the resume round and prior. Classical music is a tiny world, everyone is 1 degree of separation.

To even get an audition spot in the first place you must study with people in the orchestra, or already have a job at a peer institution, or be a recent graduate of Juilliard, Curtis, Colburn, or one of the tiny number of peer institutions AND have several prestigious fellowships from places like Tanglewood, Aspen, Verbier, Pacific Music Festival, etc.

Orchestras have very little artistic, intellectual, and cultural/racial diversity because the pipeline toward an orchestra job is incredibly narrow and sorts out everyone except the upper middle class/wealthy folks who can afford the instruments, training, and audition process.

It’s not necessarily about being “good enough” to play in a professional orchestra. It’s about having enough money, having the right kind of background and support, having the right kind of personality, being willing to conform to the styles and opinions of whoever is in control, and being lucky.

For every orchestra opening, there are probably more than 100 musicians who could play the role better than adequately and certainly much better than the person retiring.

Source: I went to schools and festivals mentioned above, have won several auditions, played with more than a dozen professional orchestras across the US, taught music at the college level, switched careers, and am now on the board of an orchestra.

I don’t know OP but I know a dozen people who play in the Florida Orchestra or work in admin there.

Bottom line: orchestra auditions are not somehow “fair” just because people can’t discriminate based on race or gender literally while candidates are playing. The discrimination happens long before that. The result is a super narrow, bland, and inbred artistic landscape. It’s boring and redundant AF.

muffinlemma37 karma

How can we know the Catholic Church is God’s official religious organization and teaches “the fullness of truth?”

What is your evidence for this claim, and what are we to make of the many reversals of older teachings and the extremely wicked behavior of clergy over many centuries?

If truth is objective, shouldn’t we expect an organization claiming to teach the truth not to contradict itself on major issues like slavery, usury, religious freedom, democracy, women’s rights, the eternal damnation of babies/children who die prior to baptism, and (most recently by Pope Francis) divorce and remarriage?

If the Catholic clergy are God’s anointed official representatives and authorities, why have they done so many twistedly cruel and evil things throughout history? Shouldn’t we expect the men of God to be better than the rest of us?