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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 3 months

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By: Salomé Sibonex

Published: Jan 29, 2024

I’ve been seeking a reprieve from the ugly sides of our world lately and I found it in Hogwarts Wizarding School of Magic.

Even though Harry Potter’s world isn’t utopian, the whimsy of magic and the drama of a battle between good and evil helped wash away the ugly banality of the real world’s problems. There was one problem I couldn’t find a reprieve from, though. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry encounters a problem I’m all too familiar with and that lives at the core of many societal issues. At this point in the series, Harry’s known for his infamous past as a child who survived a direct attack from the embodiment of evil, Voldemort, and his battles against evil and chaos conquering Hogwarts. And yet, even Harry Potter in a world of elves and flying brooms can’t escape the ever-present human problem of conformity.

Watching Harry Potter struggle to overcome other people’s desire for conformity and disdain for anyone who threatens it made me realize: many people cheering this fictional protagonist on would fight against him in real life.

Despite having proven his loyalty, courage, and inclination to fight against evil, Harry Potter’s warning that Voldemort has returned is met with annoyance and disbelief from everyone but his close friends and the embodiment of wisdom, Dumbledore. This problem introduces a crucial element of what causes a lot of today’s destructive conformity: motivated reasoning. Similar to confirmation bias, motivated reasoning happens when someone is motivated to either agree or disagree with new information based on their current beliefs, thus letting that motivation shape their response more than whether the information is true.

You often hear people lament how, despite having access to all the information in the world, it seems like people are getting dumber. A big part of why access to information alone doesn’t reduce ignorance is because of motivated reasoning. People today are inclined to fight against information that challenges their worldview, often because it’s just easier than updating it.

It would be easier for his peers and the authorities if Harry Potter was wrong about danger on the horizon, so they decide to believe he’s wrong, regardless of whether he’s wrong. They deride and dismiss him with accusations I’ve faced myself when sharing inconvenient truths; his classmates scoff “he just wants to be famous!”, which our culture has shortened to “grifter!” Harry Potter—the infamous beacon of hope and repeated warrior for good over evil—is accused of grifting by his own classmates simply because it’d be easier if that were true. Unfortunately for them, it’s not.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is a masterpiece for many reasons, but one reason is that her characters and the stories they live out are so real despite happening in such a surreal world. Watching the scene where Harry Potter tries to warn people about a problem he’s proven himself trustworthy and competent to assess—only to be shouted down by people who want the easy route today at the risk of hardship tomorrow—felt uncomfortably real.

I criticized the manipulative pressure activists used to make people pledge allegiance to BLM without researching the organization (which turned out to be corrupt) or the movement itself (which turned out to be a guise for spreading destructive ideas in the name of “anti-racism”). When I speak about that today, I’m praised. But then the Israel attack on October 7th happened and suddenly the same message against letting social pressure rush you to pledge allegiance to positions you don’t understand now got me derided for not “using my platform” properly. The pattern repeats.

You can be the same person with the same message, but other people will respond to you differently based on where the winds of culture have blown them this week.

Unprincipled people are constantly shifting their targets because their worldviews aren’t tethered to anything deeper than seeking social approval and avoiding cognitive dissonance. They will wish death on you for not posting a flag emoji while claiming to hold the moral high ground.

Unprincipled people believe their frantic rushing from Current Thing to Current Thing is proof of their moral character, but it’s actually proof of how unreliable the opinions of anyone but your close friends and personal Dumbledores can be. Just look at J.K. Rowling’s experience.

While the fact that people with Harry Potter tattoos were the quickest to turn on the creator of their favorite story simply because her opinions didn’t sway with the ever-changing winds of culture (she maintains the once-uncontested reality that trans-women are trans-women and biological women are biological women), that’s only one example of a conformist culture that hates heroes. Harry Potter himself is the perfect litmus test for whether we have a culture that praises heroes or villains.

Forget about Harry’s magic abilities. What truly makes Harry Potter a magical character isn’t his ability to wield magic, which most of the magic world can do—it’s his character that makes him stand apart from all others. If Harry Potter were a real, non-magical person in our society today, his unusually strong character would make him a pariah. Unlike most of the magical world’s people, Harry Potter is pursuing a goal far bigger than himself; this makes him the target of both disgruntled plebs and power-hungry tyrants. People who don’t have a strong and honorable mission in life hate seeing people who do—it either reminds them they’re wasting their lives or threatens their ability to fulfill their evil mission. A lot of arm-chair internet activists and government officials would hate Harry Potter.

It’s not just that Harry has a unique destiny that makes his character compelling—it’s the fact that he has the courage and determination to pursue that destiny and develop the necessary skills to do so that makes his character admirable. Every person—especially in an individualistic culture that valorizes people who make their own way in life—wants to feel like they have a unique life path that leads to greatness. Luckily for those living in a free society, they do. Unlike in centrally-planned economies like Cuba and China, where your destiny is mostly determined by what your government allows, people in free countries can determine the course of their lives.

The government doesn’t dictate what you can study, what businesses you can open, how many kids you can have, or how much money you’re allowed to make. We’re free to imagine a future for ourselves and set out to develop the skills needed to achieve it. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone will.

Businesses fail, personal tragedies happen, and obstacles appear. The people who give up on their journey or never get going but believe they could’ve done otherwise harbor regrets, and those regrets easily turn to resentment. These are the bitter people who see the hope and success of others as a stinging reminder of their failures. People who’ve given up or never tried to forge the future they wanted would hate some as determined and ambitious as Harry Potter.

Despite being an orphan, a victim of neglect by his step-family, stalked by a violent gang of death-eaters working for Voldemort, and a childhood victim of assault, Harry Potter doesn’t wear the label of victim.

In a culture like ours that sees victimhood as a hierarchy that dictates your treatment, an individual who refuses to identify as a victim is inherently subversive.

Instead of demanding special treatment because of his hardships, Harry Potter strives not just to overcome them, but uses his hardships as fuel to make him stronger than he would be without them. One might argue it would’ve been better if Harry Potter’s parents were never killed by Voldemort and thus he would’ve never been fated to fight him—and if your idea of a good life is ease and subsistence, that would be true—but your life would make a terrible story. Harry Potter’s victimization by Voldemort’s evil is what imbued him with the ability to become a hero. With darkness comes light, but in a culture that doesn’t believe in light, many people linger in the dark and resent anyone who reminds them their darkness is a choice.

Harry Potter is the archetypical hero. He pursues a mission that starts with his personal journey of understanding himself and helping those close to him, which leads him to help the world. He goes above and beyond what others do to become worthy of the future he wants. He never identifies with the many ways he’s been victimized, but instead transmutes his hardships into victories. And for all these heroic qualities, Harry Potter would be maligned by our culture as privileged, “alt-right,” and much like his creator has experienced, his efforts to do good would be met with hostility and accusations of grifting from people who care more about the ease of clinging to their worldview than discovering the truth.

Entire countries end up on the wrong side of history when they stop cheering for heroes.

#Salomé Sibonex #Salome Sibonex #We The Black Sheep #Harry Potter #heterodox #privilege #oppressor #oppressed #meritocracy #heroes #villains #victimhood #victimhood culture #victimhood hierarchy #religion is a mental illness

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irreplaceable-spark · 8 months

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A Resurgence of Vision | Vivek Ramaswamy | EP 380

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discuss his ongoing campaign, the long-growing hunger for depth in political discussion, the dire need for a renewed American vision, and how Vivek plans to strip the Washington administrative agencies of their unconstitutional powers. Vivek Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur, author, and political activist. Vivek has been making headlines since announcing his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, running on a platform in part to dismantle the expansive and corrupt bureaucracy that has seeped into nearly all facets of American government. Prior to this, Ramaswamy was the founder and CEO of the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences. Leaving in 2021, he published “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam.” In 2022, he co-founded Strive Asset Management with Anson Frericks, which focuses on an alternative to the now-pushed ESG investment framework. That same year Ramaswamy published “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.” and has since been deemed one of the “Intellectual Godfathers of the anti-woke movement.”

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sheepskinnedgoat · 1 year

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If you're comfortable answering, how would you describe Sophia and your relationship with her? ☺️

Oh gosh, well, lemme try.

Sophia is Wisdom. Not just a personification or an embodiment of it, but the path to it. I think through this Wisdom, we can strive for better things for ourselves and the collective of humanity and earth and the world around us. It could even bring an individual closer toward "transcendence" or something like that, where our soul finally finds it's full way back to ultimate Oneness spiritually? But first, Oneness comes materially; I feel like that's the Wisdom test, really.

Anyway, she's also like, the mom to our mom. Since I was raised by my grandmother, both Earth and Sophia give me "your grandma, but raises you like a practiced mom" feelings and so I cherish both very much. And to make things harder to formulate into words, Sophia in all her wise momness gave us a creator/crafter to give us earth and the universe and our entire existence.

And like a good mom, "bridges" the gap between the self still forming and the self still growing and the self that finds completion.

So I guess that's how I would describe my relationship with Sophia.

#sophia #wisdom #christianity #heterodox #syncretic #goddess #deity #anonymous #thank u for this ask!

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thesynaxarium · 2 years

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Today we celebrate the miracle of Saint Euphemia performed at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451 AD at Chalcedon. At this council, the heresy of Eutychian Monophysitism was addressed, the erroneous belief that the divinity of Jesus Christ consumed His human nature. The Orthodox and heterodox could not come to a decision, and thus left it up to the Holy Spirit to intervene. The fathers prayed to Saint Euphemia whose relics had recently been found in the church which held the council. Both the orthodox and heterodox wrote their theological statements on a scroll and placed them on the chest of the relics of Saint Euphemia. They closed the tomb and had it guarded for three days where both parties fasted and prayed. On the third day, the patriarch opened the tomb finding the Orthodox scroll held in the right hand of the saint and the heterodox scroll at her feet. Thus, the orthodox teaching of the dual natures of Jesus Christ prevailed. May Saint Euphemia intercede for us always + #saint #euphemia #miracle #ecumenical #ecumenicalcouncil #council #heterodox #tomb #relic #relics #holy #monophysite #orthodox #saintoftheday (at Kadıköy) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf2LmFHvHga/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#saint #euphemia #miracle #ecumenical #ecumenicalcouncil #council #heterodox #tomb #relic #relics #holy #monophysite #orthodox #saintoftheday

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dusk-dawn-longposts · 2 years

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... ur a time witch, harrx! , , . , . , , #DialecticalMaterialism #IntegralTheory #phenomenology #TranspersonalPsychology #Matrixial #psychoanalysis #SchizoAnalysis #Enneagram #NeuroDiversity #epistemology #metamodernism #archetypes #heterodox #BrachaEttinger #femininity #femme #feminism #lacan #deleuze #deleuzeguattari #processrelational #emergentism #rhizome #transpersonal #emanationism #kabbalah #mysticism #spiritualbutnotreligious #deism #animism , ... https://www.instagram.com/p/CfFEI5WuuhV/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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alchemisoul · 2 years

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There's seemingly a predisposition among social media and political coverage and commentary, if neither heterodox or heretical in nature, when preferably both, to become propaganda - a proclivity to become weaponzined as such in cases where it wasn't already as much to begin with.

#proganda #heretic #heretics #heterodox media #heterodox #writing #just my thoughts #right of wrong #whatever i was feeling at the time #shower thoughts #media #politics #echo chamber #ideology #philosophy

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lesbiancosimaniehaus · 6 months

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So many of you absolute numbskulls misuse and misinterpret sociological terms such as socialization and intersectionality, and it’s not even a little bit funny. Socialization is a lifelong process. It’s a dynamic process. Females receive “female” socialization by virtue of being female. An individual is either more receptive to it, or less receptive to it, or the input is more or less intense. The most masculine woman still “receives” female socialization. Socialization simply refers to the process be which an agent is exposed to and by which it receives social information such as norms and rules and mores. It’s basically the way people react to culture. I can’t stand all these feminist-ish “critical thinking” women using the term and not even having a basic sociological definition to work with. Same with “social construct”. Same with “intersectionality”. Yashar Mounk (sp?) had a very interesting conversation on the unspeakable podcast about how absolute idiots butchered the idea of “intersectionality” to an extent that Kimberle Crenshaw couldn’t even trace the prevailing use to what she’d originally written on the subject.

#by absolute idiots I mean so-called intellectuals #I have no patience for people who call themselves intellectuals #of any sort of political background or ideological persuasion #the feminists and the libertarians and the breadtubes and the heterodox are all equally targets of septicism to me

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constance-mcentee · 4 months

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Sunday, 7 January 2024

An Episcopalian priest I know shared the following quote on her Facebook page today for Epiphany:

“Once we meet Jesus, we all go home by another way.”

There wasn't a source attributed to this quote, but it stuck with me nonetheless. And, I'm sure this quote is a reference to the story of the Magi going home by a different route so they could avoid King Herod (Matthew 2:12).

I'm a heterodox Christian, a heretic. My beliefs are nonstandard, to say the least. As I'm trying a journal practice this year revolving around the Gift of Advent (Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love), I found this quote really put me at peace with my strange faith.

I'm not really sure what I truly believe, but this idea that I'll still find my way "home" (whatever that might fully entail) after my experiences with what Jesus embodies (the Gifts of Advent) is just really comforting.

#epiphany #queer christian #heterodox christian #proud heretic

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alanshemper · 5 months

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In the twenty-first century, realizing that economics is totally fucked is a rite of passage for every serious intellectual. It’s more or less a precondition for doing anything actually interesting in the social sciences. But after a certain point, it’s not enough to just bash this politburo, boys’ club, or priesthood and its dogmas. To do so is merely to define yourself in opposition to the enemy.

What we need is an actual science of the economy, one which we presently lack. Without it we will be unable to do the kind of planning which is necessary in order to establish economic democracy, build up new industries, achieve full employment, and complete a green transition. Economics clearly has dropped the ball. Who will pick it up? And how do you avoid making the same mistakes?

July 2023

#economics #heterodox economics #fred lee #Frederick S Lee

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garden-ghoul · 5 months

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very interested in what eco is doing with brother william here---he's the sort of classic Historical Novel Enlightened Protagonist who believes in science and that learning from non-christians is for the ultimate good and that it is better to be too forgiving than too zealous. but I don't think it's just so he can be relateable and avoid making the reader uncomfortable with historical mores? certainly on a practical level it makes him a good detective, but it also allows eco to do a lot of examination of contemporary attitudes about logic, rhetoric, theology, and science, which might be an end of its own for him. I think he's fascinated by how ideas both cultural and technological spread during the early renaissance and the interaction between religion and science.

#notr #he is also of course very interested in hypocrisy #how are rules written and how are they carried out?#how do religious authorities justify breaking them?#how is the way brother william breaks them DIFFERENT than how less heterodox monks break them?

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aeide-thea · 11 months

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an impulse i don't get—

or rather, so as not to be disingenuous, an impulse i get perfectly well but strongly dislike when i'm faced with it, which means i need to reexamine it in myself when i generate it—

is the impulse to sit in judgment about What Counts As Queer. like. yeah, okay, i do get it really, we're all disempowered by hegemonic culture and setting ourselves up as petty kings shores up our egos! but if there's anything i've loved about discovering queerness in and for myself, it's been the realization that there were worldviews beyond my own—and that there still are, almost certainly! that the world is a firework show of exploding possibility, and that i and my current understanding of myself and everyone else are just one bright spark in a whole connected series of them, and that more will come after me, bringing new colors and configurations to my field of vision, if i just keep my eyes open…

and so i just always feel. god. how close-minded, to shut your eyes to someone else's vision of queerness, to say not just 'that isn't a version of queerness that i recognize or feel represented by,' but to say categorically, 'that isn't queer'! if someone's saying in all sincerity, 'this feels alien to the framework i grew up with, and exciting or comforting or both to me'—i want to hear them out, and make space in my own understanding for a multiplicity of queernesses. i'm not always perfect at it! but i want to.

because what's the alternative? join with the biphobes and transphobes who would've said my gq4gq relationship with my transfem ex was really just straight, or at least enough of a union of opposites for government work? join with the aphobes and arophobes who are constantly insinuating that if you're not actively sucking or fucking, you're a square—never mind those of us who are isolated, or traumatized, or anxious, or any of the thousand other reasons why our queerness might not be siting itself in sex or romance, right now or ever! join with the people who sneer at poly and flinch from kink, as if reexamining those relational conventions were somehow cleanly separable from reexamining all the other ones—as if we should want it to be?

anyway, this is about a lot of things, really, and at least one of them i pretty actively don't want to talk about in specific; but i just think, god, i wish we could all learn a little more generosity, and a little more humility. we know the world, and the human heart, encompass more than is dreamt of in kyriarchal philosophy; why then are we so resistant to the idea that they might also encompass more than is dreamt of in our own? movement after movement of queers have come, and built, and been built upon in turn; our personal convictions are not, i feel certain, the final course to be laid down on the great work of enlightenment and liberation—and how depressing it would be, if they were!