#religious utopia

[joy-haver]

I do think it is very important that we, as anarchists, take the project of understanding anarchy seriously. I think that sometimes people are so afraid of being prescriptive that they avoid being imaginative. No, we cannot and will not dictate the ways it must be; but we must imagine the many ways it could be, if we ever want it to come about.

We want a plethora of options to choose from; a thousand pictures of a possible society, knowing that none of them will be what we end up with, because no plan survives contact with reality and no plan need be followed completely.

But we know, with surety, that curiosity is absolutely the path towards a better world.

How will anarchism handle building safety? How will we respond when harms occur in our communities? How will we defend if some colonial power arises elsewhere and seeks our end?

These are not challenges to anarchy, nor are they critiques. These are the living questions we must always answer, imperfect as it will be, and always be striving to imagine new futures of.

Treat every question in good faith. Sit with it. The person who wants to ensure there is still medicine for their kid in the anarchist revolution is not your enemy, they are your friend, who is worried about their needs being met.

To me, this is why we must be utopians. We must truly believe that if we explore our options enough, we can do this in a way that is best for everyone. That it is possible for us to leave no one behind. We must believe it and we must act on it, with our intellectual labor of theory, our creative labor of envisioning, and our physical labor of building the future we want to live in, through our minute, specific, helpful, and curious daily actions.

Go, daydream, my friends.

[sunshinies]

🪽HOLYUTOPIC : a xenogender that feels connected to or like it belongs in a holy paradise , such as the garden of eden or mt. olympus ; a gender that feels religious or godly and like it belongs in a holy place.

☁️——— coined by reid and ellie . . . for @lovesse’s coining event day 1 , “ something holy . “

[PT: Holyutopic: a xenogender that feels connected to or like it belongs in a holy paradise, such as the garden of eden or mt. olympus. it is a gender that feels religious or godly and like it belongs in a holy place. END PT.]

[violetteforevernever]

friday @ the chapel/can u believe I grew up like this

[themyscirah]

Reading shit comics kind of sucks but at least I get the satisfaction of proving my own point w this

[ereh-emanresu-tresni]

.

[smallhatlogan]

man all the attempts to comfort artists talking about their worsening mental health brought about by AI generated art with stuff like "just keep pushing through your art is REAL and that's what matters" just kind of ignores the reality of like, people losing their jobs??? like that's why people are despairing more than the philosophical bullshit about what real art is or whatever

[mercurial-cereal]

It Is Illegal To Collect Rainwater in the West Bank — Here’s Why - The Messenger

[pikslasrce]

my mom is so apolitical it hurtsssssss

[deanmarywinchester]

“There had always been peasant uprisings, uprisings of the underclasses, and crucifixions of radical leaders, long before Jesus' time- but the resurrection, or at least a belief in the story of it and the story of what the apostles did in its wake, seemed to say something different about this history.

Another way of reading that moment in Acts 2 is not that it's describing a community formation to be literally adhered to by all true believers going forward, but that it's highlighting the thought-to-be impossible things that the event of the resurrection radically reframed: these uprisings, which have always happened and will continue to happen, these impossible communities that will form against all odds and always have, which will live out a spirit of abundance and solidarity in a world that swears the law is scarcity and rift, are themselves the eternal and ongoing heirs to the true reality, and they shall live, and live abundantly.

It's hard to explain without sounding like a zealot. Maybe I am a zealot.

What I'm saying is, the resurrection, if thought about this way, served as much as an atonement as it did a reminder: do not believe the lies-do not believe the lies that empire tells about what is possible and what is not.

Do not give way to evil.”

— Adrian Shirk, Heaven is a Place on Earth; Searching for an American Utopia

[jesterbells]

One of the things I love about Babylon 5

I find the opinion that religion wouldn't exist in Star Trek kind of extreme. The notion seems to rely on the idea that, in the enlightened future Star Trek proposes, religion is too barbaric of a concept to survive.

This is, first of all, untrue within the text of the franchise. Pike is said to have had a religious upbringing in SNW, McCoy seems to have some connection to Christianity, Picard is agnostic, a lot of the Bajorans including Kira are religious, there is a Muslim background character in Lower Decks, and the crew seem pretty open to the idea of God existing in Star Trek V. Hell, there are tons and tons of biblical references in TOS. There's a whole episode called Journey to Babel.

But even aside from canon evidence, the idea that religion is something that humans must evolve past in order to reach their full potential is pretty uncharitable. People aren't all going to believe the same thing. The best thing we can hope for in the future is not that people will stop having these different beliefs, but that (so long as they do not condone poor treatment or devaluing of others), we will stop seeing certain religions as barbaric and we can simply believe them and express them without pain. A world where you could walk down the street and see an atheist, a Christian, a Hindu, and any other religion, all treating each other's beliefs with respect, not forcing their views on others. Just listening and understanding.

Quite frankly what we need is more representation of religions in Star Trek. Religions from indigenous peoples, African nations, Asian nations, etc. have seen little coverage or reference in Star Trek at all. And I think that's a shame. Star Trek has always been about growing as people and educating ourselves as times around us change. It doesn't matter if a religion has 100 followers or 100 million followers. People can always learn more about them, and I'd love seeing a future where they are all equally valued and get to be seen.

[joy-haver]

How to Have Joy.

You must invent secret languages where the words mean nothing.

You must dance around and make your body move in ways that could never be read as attractive, only beautiful in the way a dog leaping and huffing and biting at a stick is beautiful. The beauty of play.

You must know every tragedy and mourn it fully, and live a life of joy and a life of grief, together, intertwined, weaving, knowing they are always the same whole, and denying nothing,

“How to be silly” must be the book you wrote with your body. People must read and know it from your face and your memory.

You must love the little flowers and the wasps that sting, and bumble around like them in the wind, finding nothing, pollinating nonetheless.

You must cherish your sleeping, and the groggy bedheaded way you speak in the morning, and the childlike habit building of wiggling around while brushing ur teeth.

You must stay silly, but never at the expense of anything. And never must anything come at its expense.

You must take your silliness seriously.

You must fight for a world of joy.

You must not forget that joy is why you fight.

[therevengeoffrankenstein]

something that strikes me about pw's 'gray' is just how. religious it is. it's very religious. religion plays such a subtle, omnipresent role in it. because of course it does.

[fuiru]

A 44 year old man goes to a K-Pop Concert

I promised you a report on the K-pop concert that I, a 44-year-old accountant, went to a couple of weeks ago with my wife and daughter in Toronto. So here it is.

The band we saw were Ateez. They're my daughter's favourite band and my wife's second favourite. I know most of my mutuals are similarly aged like me and may not be familiar with them so let me give you a brief primer on Ateez.

Imagine the most attractive eight men you can think of, just unfathomably beautiful specimens of aesthetic perfection, and make them sing songs that somehow combine the subjects of 'dancing like nobody is watching' with 'we live in a dystopian hellscape that we must all work together to overthrow'. Give them an ongoing music video story lore that literally nobody - not even the band themselves - understand, so that online discussion of their visual motifs looks more like the fevered rantings of a conspiracy theorist, complete with speculation about alternate realities and time being a Moebius strip. There is also a giant sand timer, for some reason.

That's Ateez. That's what you need to know.

Now, K-pop concerts are very different to the gigs I've been going to for the last 28 (!) years. There's no support act, for a start. Also the band perform for like, three hours, with breaks for costume changes and interpretive dance. Furthermore, hanging above everything is the constant looming threat of mandatory military service.

So this being my first such concert, I wasn't sure what to expect. What happened was difficult to explain, but I will try as I am already six paragraphs into this write-up and I'm too invested to stop now. Here goes:

In his Wicked + Divine comics series, Kieron Gillen places modern pop icons as deities, feeding upon and gaining strength from the worship of their fans at the altar of musical performance. I thought I understood that metaphor. I thought I understood it AS a metaphor. I was wrong, because that night Ateez WERE Gods with a capital G and we were their worshippers, a crowd emanating adoration (in the religious and non-religious senses), bestowing strength upon them and gaining their strength in return.

If that sounds weird, it probably is. But as pointed out above, I have lived over four decades and never yet experienced anything like the overwhelming passion of that crowd, the utter abandon with which they conveyed their love for the band.

"But Fuiru, what of the actual music?" you ask. Thinking back, there was a moment in one of their songs - I can't remember which - where I watched the stage, and the people around me, taking it in, and I thought, "Man, I just love Music". But that doesn't answer your question, sorry.

Ateez's music is bloody great. As a tiresome indie/rock/metal kid I'm resisting the urge to add the usual tiresome indie/rock/metal caveat of "...for pop music" because honestly that does it a disservice. They have some genuinely amazing songs. Halazia is an absolute fucking masterpiece that descends into furious hardcore breakbeat. Bouncy is a big, brash racket that somehow is also a perfect pop song. Utopia, Wonderland, and Guerrilla are similarly superb. The obligatory boy band slow number is represented by Dancing Like Butterfly Wings which will make you cry because you will forever associate it with your twelve year old daughter being pointed to and waved at by her favourite Ateez member (Seonghwa) because of her Seonghwa-branded lightstick.

That might just be me, though.

So in summary: being a 44 year old dad at his first K-pop concert rules and you should endeavour to partake in the experience if the opportunity arises.

Finally, for any Atiny reading this: my bias would be San or Seonghwa but my wife and daughter said they were taken so it’s Mingi. My concert outfit (designed and created by my offspring) reflects this.

[makingqueerhistory]

“As Umber taught me, the Quran is teeming with queer possibilities. Now I’m not saying that the Quran is a guidebook to a queer utopia, because, like many religious texts, it has its fair share of hegemonic rules and restrictions. But it is also an extraordinarily poetic work, with a diverse range of thoughts, many of which feel compatible with being queer. Prophet Muhammed once said, ‘Islam began as something strange and will return to being something strange, so give blessings to those who are strange.’ Amen Muhammed! If you replace the world Islam with ‘people’, the sentence could feasibly be the slogan for a queer sex-positive disco in Berlin.” ― Amrou Al-Kadhi, Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between (Affiliate link)

[unifybullseye]

grieving your guiding light (missed maruki deadline ending)

(Not Shipping)

optional thoughts yapping about this:

There is something about the missed deadline ending that reminds me deeply of Rumi with the way Ren wakes up and has a hazy memory like Rumi did.

Maruki puts Ren on a weird high horse, something i’d say even close to worshipping. Maruki’s palace has religious undertones as is, picturing Rumi as his “Eve,” and he pictures Ren as his “guiding light.” He willingly put the continued existence of a Utopia onto a teenage boy who he knew had a sentimental heart. He manipulated him by showing him that if he didn’t accept the reality then he’s ripping his friends away of happiness, and then the disgusting act of using Akechi’s “corpse” and using him as an “it” to basically say “the blood is on your hands.”

Anyways, Maruki has weak morals. The “don’t throw away your mask” song repeats “don’t sleep through dreams that can come true,” and yet, the moment Ren was too much trouble, he convinced himself that putting him in permanent sleep purgatory was the way to his happiness. He acts high and mighty about what is right, what is suffering, what is happiness, yet he fails to have a solid thinking of what “justice” is, unlike the phantom thieves and Akechi. NCP dialogue throughout third semester reveals many contradictions in the reality. His reality is faulty at best and it will continue to contradict on top of itself over and over until it’s a giant mush.

Because he genuinely convinced himself this was the best thing to do, I see him grieving over Ren, in a sense. Even in the ending he says “i wanted you to accept this gift with your own free will.” It’s not like he necessarily wanted to do this to Ren, but he believes he is “selfless” enough to do so.

He lost Ren, his light to his research. And he lost Rumi, the person who he created a perfect world for. The moment he realized Rumi couldn’t remember her trauma, he decided right then and there that he would not remind her of it, and clarified her as something he “lost.” He sees forgetting as happiness, so truly, he has no problem with “sleeping through dreams that can come true.” And I don’t think it would stop at Ren, why would it? The moment someone’s issues contradict with another, the easiest solution is something like Ren’s state. His reality will have no actual life eventually. A psychological murder of the human race.

Placing this much expectation on a teenage boy is all in all gross, and he was too reliant on him. He confided in a young boy and got attached. He sickeningly grieves over what ���had to happen” with Ren, falling in self pity. And that’s what happened with Rumi, aka falling into a self pitying of “losing her” when it was his own doings. But he fully, genuinely believes he lost both of them.

This is not to say I think Maruki is obsessed over him in this ending; far far from it, he has other issues to attend to and a whole reality to create. If anything, he forgets him at some point. But at the beginning, I can see him visiting a couple times, or looking over him from afar like a God would. But Rumi will forever be engraved in his palace, and I think Ren would be too, with them both being the reasons why Maruki could create this reality.

I can also get into how him seeing Ren’s desire and grief for Akechi also reminds me of Maruki and Rumi but that’s a can of worms for another day lmao

[rafry]

Euclydia, Cults and Need for Control

Disclaimer: this analysis raises sensitive topics. if you are/were a victim of a cult and the topic triggers you, please refrain from reading further(/seek help). Additionally, I am not a specialist on said topic, nor am I a clinician. But I am a survivor, so part of the narrative may or may not be just me projecting the trauma on a silly yellow triangle. That said, reader discretion is advised! :)

The take: Euclydia is likely to be a cult-like society and the reason Bill, after years of abuse, grows up to be as he is: a power-hungry monster. Let's analyze!

For the starters, The Start. Each state has its own anthem. How lucky that we were kindly provided with the Euclidian hymn (hidden under the code "FORGETTHEPAST")! Lets take a look:

"Two dimensions to and from, You always know which way to go If you're lost, don't be afraid, In Euclydia you've got it made! Run too far too right of frame, You'll appear on left again! Jump too high, don't fry or fret, You'll pop up from the ground, I bet! In this place there is no fear, Roles and rules, always clear, Euclydia, we hold you dear…"

That tells us way more than we could've asked for, really. The most important: Euclydia is a state of Clear Rules™. Everything works perfectly thanks to The Rules and The Roles, and the state is loved by it's citizens. It's might be a caricature 2D utopia, but how it reacts when the rules are questioned?

"Eye doctor of a different kind, who wants to make his patient blind The doctor says: 'three sips a day will make the visions go away' Fussy eater, baby Billy Wouldn't drink unless it's silly..."

If there's anything about cults and the way they make people behave, is that the "wrong" ones in the community are usually ostracized and/or heavily medicated to not cause any troubles. Those people are sometimes called 'heretics', but may as well just be called crazy or insane by their peers. Oh look completely unrelated picture:

"Cipher, Cipher, he's insane Starting fires with his brain"

Honestly, the other time it would be it. Euclydia, if not Is, then sure does Act like a cult in some way. I could've finished here, easily, but there's something missing, isn't?

"The hell do you mean by 'The Need to Control', OP?"

I mean that the BILLVILLE is important.

There's the thing about trauma survivors: some of us, after living a life with no control over ones societal position (ostracization/isolation), body (forcibly medicated) or even mind (feeling of inadequacy), crave for some form of control to be regained.

It can turn toxic very quickly when the only form of control one has ever seen in their life is being The Leader (cult leader/shitty parent/armageddon overlord/you get the idea, it's about becoming an authority figure).

And so, Bill becomes a cult leader! Very possibly covering up the need for control and admiration with what I call "The most inefficient way to build an Interdimentional Portal ever", since, well, he's got to lie to himself every now and then, that's his thing (trauma response).

As for the details:

He uses the dead mans body — the body that wouldn't cause any resistance, thus being perfect for taking under control.

He sees the position of the interviewer as more authoritative than the position of the interviewee — and he swaps the roles. That wasn't enough though, so he demands (politely) to be called "My Lord And Master" for a good measure.

He very possibly recreates some of Euclydia-like order in his own "Town" in terms of expressing individuality. They might've been pretty decent in following scripts, I think.

So, I don't think Euclydia has ever been religious in any way, since that would left some other scars on Bills psyche for sure. But highly authoritative, ignorant, strict in its rules to the point of self-damnation? That checks. That's the place that has formed Bill, after all.

That's the place that he wishes to rebuild.

Maybe not consciously, maybe distorted by his illness and broken memory of a loving-paradise-home that has never actually been that way, but he seeks the comfort of familiarity — most of us do. Familiar stings are better than an uncontrollable too-bright future, isn't?

I hope he does well on therapy.