#to be clear i am not saying religious hypocrisy is a bad thing

[kindredspiritsandgoodomens]

doctor who celebrates british christmas which, much like the church of england, is vaguely embarrassed to be associated with religion

honestly i am glad of the restraint doctor who has showed by not having a christmas episode where the doctor goes back to the real actual nativity or something

[crime-soncloud]

Alright so Canto 3... Where do I begin (spoilers obvs)

Alright firstly, RIP Effie and Saude, I genuinely was kinda heartbroken over them both. Effies fate was grisly and really helped the themes and backstory of this canto (that's gonna be touched on more at the end). Meanwhile Saude was such a tragic and very noble death, one that neatly parallelled Sinclair. Wasn't at all expecting them to die, I fully thought they would be some light hearted rivals, but NOPE they're not returning.

In terms of the gameplay... Yall I wasn't even prepared, I ate shit on a lot of these encounters, the dungeon was a disaster at points, the first time I've lost an encounter so far, and I had to Grind. Ended up actually improving a decent bit, and finally started blocking and evading. As I said before, Kromer was a struggle, I lost like 5 times because of when she staggered you using the nails and did a bajillion damage.

In terms of the outer layer of the story, without the big moments, I liked how Don quixote consistently fucks up the plans and causes big fights. Also loved Siegfried coming in, wrecking the teams shit, don quixote fangirling, and then leaving. Honestly I would probably be don quixote, I would suck as a team member. Understand why Vergillus was such a dick, still feel really bad for Don, girlie felt broken by that. Really curious what happened before with them. Rewatching it really makes me want to hug Don, Vergillus is abelist for this (/j /silly). Also Don quixote beating up Sinclair after he goes too far was surprising but interesting as hell. Probably important to backstory

Gregor constantly acting and creating stories in these situations is amazing, and Mersault being previously employed by N corp is interesting 👀 there's something that's gonna be unpacked.

Alright then... Time to go through the main arc, that of Sinclair, and the themes. Firstly, while I am an atheist, I have had a fair amount of dealings with religion and religious people (mostly alright apart from a few). However I think the theme of religious extremism, religious hypocrisy, and guilt/responsibility are extremely well done. As I said, Saude in this canto neatly contrasts Sinclair, as while Sinclair betrayed his family out of hatred/distaste of the mechanical parts (another really nuanced and interesting theme with a lot of depth), and never came clean, leading to him feeling deep guilt over his actions, Saude betrayed the team to try to save herself and Effie, and ultimately was able to redeem herself when she found out Effie died, by holding off N corp. Speaking of Effie, to me the fact he was essentially made into a "heretic" by N corp, to me indicates the idea that they are hypocritical, calling others heretics for trying to improve their lives using the enhancements (there's also an argument for the church's persecution of queer people here, but that might not be intentional, just an interesting thought), but forcing them onto people breaking in so they have an excuse to punish and torture them inhumanely because "they're not human" (can you see the queer subtext I'm seeing?). Finally Dante is amazing this canto, in how they also grow, and manages to support Sinclair, and starts to wonder who are they? What did they do? Are they a good person? And this becomes a catalyst for them to be better, more responsible, and to support Sinclair, the things that Dante says in the final part of the story is genuinely amazing

And as for the backstory... I want to hug Sinclair. His dislike of his family for what they did, feeling as though they are colder, due to their prosthetics. And then Kromer and Demian are interesting, Kromer appearing kind and caring but having a clear air of malice, hatred, and cruelty. The way she acts is chilling, and that cg of her standing over Sinclair is Evil.

Meanwhile I have no fucking clue about Demian, he seems kinda cool but has something going on under the surface, we'll probably have to fight him eventually. Extremely curious, his wisdom, sign (that is what we collect in the dungeon), saving of Sinclair, speeches, and the fact that he is the only character so far that isn't a fixer but hears Dante?? Like okay he is important AF. Definitely very interesting.

I was told by @zebrashork that it had to take a break at points in this canto, and it was fucked up a bit, and BOY is it! I'm probably missing a few things though. Also @flextapeyeehaw sorry for tagging you here, but I wanted to say that you didn't say anything about Kromer, when it came to hateable characters, but FUCK KROMER!

Will be tackling the 3.5 chapter/canto, I expect it to be light-hearted. Probably will just rb this with my thoughts on it

[heidigentille]

WHAT TARKOVSKY READ, PART 1: FOREIGN LITERATURE

Quotes about favorite and least favorite foreign authors and works by Andrei Tarkovsky from his diaries, interviews and speeches.

📚 I am rereading T. Mann. Genius writer. Death in Venice is amazing. This is with a ridiculous plot. (Martyrology. August 15, 1970).

📚 Read Vonnegut's The Children's Crusade. Yes. He is both a pacifist and a good fellow. Likho writes. But where, where is our Russian senseless and useless great depth?! Sad. (Martyrology. September 1, 1970).

📚 We must finally find out if Camus' "The Plague" was filmed. If not, then it would be worth talking to O. Teinishvili. Let him offer Gambarov two things: "The Plague" and a script about Dostoevsky, which we were going to write with Misharin. Solonitsyn could be a wonderful Dostoevsky. (Martyrology. September 7, 1970).

📚 I read Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle". Dark book. And smartly written. Still, pessimism has too little to do with art. Literature, like art in general, is religious. In its highest manifestation, it gives strength, inspires hope in the face of the modern world - monstrously cruel and, in its senselessness, reached the point of absurdity. Modern real art needs catharsis, with which it would cleanse people before the coming catastrophes, and maybe a catastrophe. (Martyrology. September 9, 1970).

📚 I read Akutagawa's story about water kappas. Pretty bad. Sluggishly. (Martyrology. September 18, 1970).

📚 I'm reading The Bead Game - a brilliant book! ... A super-art built on universalism, on the experience of all knowledge and discoveries. Spiritual symbol of life. Brilliantly conceived novel! Haven't read anything like this in a long time. (Martyrology. September 20, 1970).

📚 I finished reading "The Glass Bead Game". Amazing impression. (Martyrology. September 26, 1970).

📚 I am reading the amazing Thomas Mann - "Joseph and his brothers". Some otherworldly book. Otherworldly kitchen gossip. It becomes clear why the typist, having finished rewriting "Joseph", said: "Now at least I know how it really was." Yes ... and as for the film adaptation, I just don’t know what to say. So far, in my opinion, it is inexpressible. (Martyrology. September 15, 1970).

📚 About "Solaris": "... it attracted me first of all not by the fantastic nature of the events told, not by the amazing unexpectedness of the world composed by the author. What struck me was the author's realism in developing a situation that was fundamentally possible, the accuracy of psychological motivations in the behavior of the characters who fell into this situation ... ”(From an interview with O. Evgenyeva, 1971).

📚 I carry an unbearable burden on my shoulders. Mannovsky's "Doctor Faustus" is the most complex conglomeration of the life lived by the author, his lost hopes lost in his lost homeland, thoughts about suffering, the painful suffering of the artist, about his sinfulness. On the one hand, he (the artist) is an ordinary person, on the other hand, he cannot be ordinary, therefore, he pays for his talent with his soul. (Martyrology. December 5, 1973).

I have read Peer Gynt by Ibsen. Grandiose. (Martyrology. September 18, 1974).

📚 I am reading "Stiller" by M. Frisch. He is smart, he is too smart for a good writer, he is precise, economical, charming - a Japanese garden. He is very sweet and looks like his characters. This is also not a plus. I know him. He fed Larisa and me with dinner near Locarno. He was with a mistress whom everyone in Switzerland condemned for being his mistress. Dinner was delicious, the restaurant was wonderful, the tables were under oaks (or beeches?), and all those invited who condemned her talked to her sweetly and naturally, smiled at her. Good upbringing? Hypocrisy? Bigotry? Snobbery? And I liked him, a kind of puss in boots ... (Martyrology. July 4, 1975).

📚 I re-read the stories and Kafka's Metamorphosis. Somehow it doesn't work for me. (Martyrology. September 17, 1976).

📚 What a surprisingly clear relationship: Hoffmann - Hesse - Bulgakov. And what kind of children they are - pure, believing, suffering, not spoiled by glory, scrupulous, naive and passionate, noble ... "Golden Pot" - "Steppe Wolf" - "Master and Margarita". (Martyrology. April 14, 1976).

📚 I re-read Castaneda: "The Lessons of Don Juan". Wonderful book! And very truthful, because 1) the world is not at all the way it seems to us, and 2) it may well become different under certain conditions. (Martyrology. January 27, 1979).

📚 I read Lorca's amazing essays - amazingly passionate, sublime, deep and truly poetic insights. (Martyrology. June 6, 1980).

📚 "The Book of the World" ("Le livre de la paix") by Bernard Benson is some kind of delusional and stupid book. It is completely incomprehensible why it is: 1) popular and why 2) it needs to be filmed. I don't understand anything. Very strange. M. b., is this a provocation of the ideas of the struggle for peace? It's possible. That is what I talked about with Bibi A[derson] in Stockholm. (Martyrology. June 10, 1981).

📚 Since childhood, I have been very fond of the book "Robinson Crusoe" - I always liked it terribly and excited the enumeration of what was thrown ashore and what was Crusoe's prey. We live materialized, repeating the existence of space and time. That is, we live thanks to the presence of this phenomenon or two phenomena and are very sensitive to them, because they limit our physical limits. (A word about the Apocalypse).

📚 "Hamlet" is the best dramatic and poetic work that only exists in the world. (From a meeting with the audience in London, 1984).

📚 A romantic would try to invent this aura, because he guesses that it should be. But the poet sees it. You can say that there were poets among the Romantics as well. Of course, I do not argue. There was Hoffmann, whom I simply adore. (From a conversation with Jerzy Illg and Leonhard Neuger, March 26, 1985).

📚 I have great respect for Stanislav Lem, I love his works, and when I can, I read them. … He was interested in the collision of man with the cosmos, with the Unknown, but I was interested in an internal, spiritual problem. I picked up this novel only because for the first time I saw a work that I could define as a story of repentance. What is repentance, repentance in the literal, classical sense of the word? When for us our memory of committed misconduct, of sins becomes a reality. For me, Lem's novel was a reason to make such a picture. (From a conversation with Jerzy Illg and Leonhard Neuger, March 26, 1985).

📚 I read Flaubert's "St. Anthony": headily, secondarily (after the primary sources), illustratively and very magnificently. Serezha Parajanov would have made a wonderful adaptation of this. (Martyrology. March 26, 1986).

📘 Separately, it is worth noting that in the 1974 questionnaire, Andrei Tarkovsky answered “Doctor Faustus” in the column about his favorite foreign prose or novel, and Thomas Mann “Tonio Kroeger” in the column about a foreign novel; Maupassant.

[serinemolecule]

Not to harp on the obvious, but the discussion feels hollow without it: the only reason some people - not all, maybe not most, but definitely some - push for "equality" and "inclusiveness" and etc. in tech is because it's seen as a desirable and powerful position. No one's been belly-aching about it back when it was fashionable to tell nerds to stop being fat and ugly and what a bunch of losers they are. It's only up for discussion now that there's something to be gained from it. It's hypocrisy.

(context: a lot of women-in-tech discourse)

I mean, I was belly-aching about it.

I like to say I was a feminist until I met other feminists. I definitely saw plenty of things nerds could be doing better for equality. But then the first time I met other feminists, they were harassing nerds and writing long essays about how nerds were even worse than average men (which still seems to me like an absolutely insane position).

That was... a really big crisis of faith there. I spent years reading feminist literature, trying to understand their point. And the crazy thing was, a lot of the principles and concepts do appeal to me. But then the way they’d apply it, talking about how privileged nerds were, or just using it as an excuse to be assholes to people, that’s always seemed wrong to me.

My approach at the time was just to try to understand it better in private, and never talk about it in public. This lasted until I read the SSC essays on social justice which I entirely agreed on, then I joined Tumblr to hit on Scott, and since then I started getting more comfortable with writing out my thoughts, but also the really bad SJ of the early 2010s just mostly faded away from the spaces I’m in. I still hear insane stories from other places (like the New York Times! wtf!) but it no longer feels like a crisis afflicting my own community, so I never wrote anything out.

Part of it’s that my community is the rats, now. SJWs may still exist here, but they don’t have a social power to turn us against each other. Whatever effect Topher’s tweet had on the rest of the world, it means he’s no longer welcome among rats anymore. We dismiss them with equanimity using the ancient proverb, “Haters gonna hate”.

Anyway, I suppose now’s as good a time as any for me to talk about what I think about feminist theory.

I get the impression that Scott is embarrassed by his old posts on gender politics, but I still endorse every word. Even the words people like to criticize the most, I endorse as an angry expression of “Why don’t you care about how many people your ideology is hurting?” That said:

Privilege theory – I remember encountering privilege theory and thinking “yes, this totally fits the model that normies are privileged and nerds are marginalized”, until I got to the part where they started talking about how privileged nerds were. I think the theory is still pretty good, and of course the practice about writing privilege checklists and using it to silence people is incredibly fucked up.

Patriarchy theory – Fortunately, no one talks about patriarchy theory anymore. It came from the radfems and it always seemed horrible to me. It's uncontroversially true that ruling class is mostly male, but patriarchy theory seems to just equivocate between that and insane conspiracy theories.

For example, “culture is built for the benefit of men at the expense of women” requires you to just dismiss everything that hurts men and helps women, to excuse that fashion policing is nearly solely perpetuated by other women, and even if it’s true, the fact that it is perpetuated by everyone means pointing the finger at a specific group will not help fix the problem. Did Kamala Harris exercise “girl power” when she kept black prisoners in jail past their release date? 

Cultural appropriation – The usual steelman I hear for this is “it sucks when white people take your culture for themselves, and yet still call it cringe when you practice your own culture” – but the only objectionable part is the latter! Stop objecting to the former part! There’s nothing wrong with culture mixing and it is in fact one of the most beautiful things in the world!

Part of it’s that I’m a first-gen immigrant, and cultural appropriation attitudes often come from insecurities second-gen immigrants have. Cultural appropriation just means I’m now an expert on your new culture and you’re not allowed to stop me from infodumping on it.

The other steelman is “misusing religious artifacts is bad” and I think to the extent that it’s bad, it’s bad whether you’re doing it to your own culture or to other cultures.

In general I think Halloween was, among other things, a great celebration of diversity that did not need to be cancelled, and I don’t think any costume was offensive to the majority of any culture.

Intersectionality – This word confused me for so long. People kept explaining it as “black women often have problems specific to their group that neither women’s groups nor black groups themselves are equipped to fight” which just seemed obviously true and didn’t seem like we needed a word for it.

Over the years, I’ve seen it be used as a reminder of “don’t forget how your activism affects other marginalized groups”, so it’s probably a useful concept to keep around.

Microaggressions – I think being oblivious to microaggressions is an autism thing, but I still think it’s insane to make them a political issue. Sure, you can vent about them, but acting like they’re on par with actual aggressions just seems like a losing cause.

On second thought, I don’t think I have a problem with making them a political issue in general. I think the whole tactic of SJWs being a hateful harassment mob makes the microaggressions thing just come off as especially petty.

I also think there’s a lot of competing access needs here. I actually really like infodumping about what kind of Asian I am to anyone willing to listen, and I think acting like the question is the root of all evil is really unfair, especially since literally everyone who’s ever asked has been happy to learn about the finer points about Chinese ethnic groups.

Isms as prejudice + power – People have mostly stopped discoursing about this, which is good. Language policing always seemed bad to me.

Objectification – SSC says everything I feel on the topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/17/my-objections-to-objectification/

The last time this came up in Discord, people said that objectification is more than the straw-man being criticized in this article, that it’s about people being entitled to your body or whatever. But I think the article does address that: “This is obviously a legitimate complaint. It’s just not a complaint about objectification.”

I got exposed to objectification as a criticism of hot girls in video games. And I just can’t see hot girls in video games as a bad thing.

Rape culture – [cw rape] This is an incredibly sensitive subject so I’m going to give you some time to stop reading here.

Our culture has a serious problem with rape. I think it’s important to understand that it’s usually committed by friends and family, that it’s depressingly common and has nearly definitely happened to people you know, that it’s usually committed by people who don’t think of what they’re doing as rape, and that all the discourse on it is really fucked up.

I also think that calling this “rape culture” entirely misses the point. I’m sympathetic that SSC doesn’t understand it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/19/i-do-not-understand-rape-culture/

Our problem isn’t that we glorify rape. Our problem is that we consider it a special kind of evil so bad that of course no normal person would ever do it, and this makes it easy to rationalize that whatever this normal person did couldn’t have been rape, which causes huge harms.

I don’t have answers, but I think it’s incredibly clear that calling it “rape culture” doesn’t help.

In general, I don’t think feminist activism on the topic of rape goes in the right direction. The smug “consent is like tea” video has the exact same problem. People don’t need to hear more “normal people would never rape” messaging.

[neilbutterfield-blog]

In our Ethics class we were asked to share our views on Morality. I just want to share mine here.

I basically grew up in a church. A Sunday school kid, attended every religious camps, became a youth leader, became Sunday School teacher, became a worship/song leader—they even call me ‘pastor’ at that.

But, after 19 years I figured out that religions do not make sense to me anymore. Well, it did not happen overnight. It took me years of doubt and research and a lot of emotional scars and trauma—religious trauma.

It all goes down to existential and identity crisis, questions on morality, and the hypocrisy of some church goers (also the questionable credibility, mistranslations, and the inconsistency of the bible).

I used to believe that without God I am just evil and misguided and as they say: I will go to hell. But is that right? That we cannot be a good person if we don’t worship and recognize a higher entity? Picture this: Japan is one of the countries in the world that has the highest number of atheist citizens but has the lowest crime rate. So, is it really religion that makes us ethically and morally correct? I think not and also the numbers tell otherwise. (see: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most- atheist-countries)

I do believe that over the millions of years that the human evolved to have a consciousness, we have also acquired the ability, the instinct, to examine how right or wrong an action is. Right and wrong is very different from good and evil. In a scenario that an action is done for the right reason but with the wrong action cannot be determined using the religious based perspective because there is no in- between; there is no scale.

I do believe that morality is subjective, but the Christians believe otherwise. Their argument is that you can’t just decide whether an action is morally correct or wrong. In an argument I had, they presented the idea that if drugs make them feel good that does not make it morally correct. So, they need a written law to guide them—the bible.

There are moral values that are deemed right by our ancestors but what were also their basis? How reliable are their scales of morality before establishing those values? What gives us guarantee that the old moral values are the must-have values we should possess right now. There's none. A moral value is a concept that covers the all the good for everyone. So, if you say you do drugs just because you like it and it feels good, well that refutes being moral because that's a catalyst to your own physical degradation. You’re a terrible caretaker of your own body.

Moreover, the bible does not give a clear view on morality. I was a Sunday School teacher, so I know a lot about what the bible says. It says there that we should disregard the laws of the Old Testament because we must follow the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament but still people are cherry picking laws from the Old Testament to justify their hatred among several group of people. We can’t just ignore

the law about not eating fish or shrimp but implement the others, that’s hypocrisy. There are numerous opposing statements in the bible and a lot of mistranslated words. One of the most famous is the word “homosexuality” in the bible. The word “arsenokoitai” means child molester, a phedophile, but in 1946 they changed it to homosexual. And they used it to shame the LGBT community up to this day and that’s not very morally correct at all. (see: https://um-insight.net/perspectives/has- %E2%80%9Chomosexual%E2%80%9D-always-been-in-the-bible/)

Those are just some of my reasons why I left the church and disagree to their teachings in morality (I still have a lot). The bottom-line is, it’s okay and your right to have a moral independence. My religion made me feel bad about myself and made me want to end my existence because of my sexual orientation and has caused me irreversible religious trauma because of their incorrect teachings in morality and that the idea of me going to hell shoving down to my throat made me question the things they implanted in my childhood. There 4,300 religions and 2,407,650 known and worshipped gods in the world, how sure are you that the one you are born in is the right one?

With all that being said, I believe that morality is being morally and ethically free.

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

1\Hi Em! I’d like your typing help if you don’t mind but first I just want to thank you for your advice I read about a year ago to go out and be a Person first before being a Type. That advice pulled me out of a slump where I was way too hard up about defining myself and other people with theories without considering their empirical basis. Anyway, I suspect I’m an INFJ 1 (162?) but I’m a little sceptical of actually being this supposed rare unicorn hype-type and would appreciate your input.

2\I really like planning ahead – daily schedules, which classes to take each semester, etc. I’ve been organising my personal schedule with detailed monthly calendars consistently since I was 18 (I’m now going on 22). I get frustrated easily when there are sudden timing changes, like people cancelling or being very late, and tend to need at least a day’s notice to be mentally prepared, even if it wouldn’t really affect my other activities, which I acknowledge can be a bit irrational.            

           3\I’m a good listener – I’ve been told this by several friends. I haven’t always been the best at advice but my strat is to ask the heck out of the situation that’s bothering them to help them open up about all the different aspects of their concerns. I think it makes them feel thoroughly heard and I enjoy helping them to process their thoughts and feelings without sharing much about myself, if I can see they don’t have that capacity in the moment. Their confidence is rewarding for me too.            

4\However, I’ve realised this might be an unhealthy double-edged sword because I apply the same standard to people who’d like to share my burdens. I tend not to volunteer much info unless asked directly/shown clear signs that my listener wants to hear me out, leading me to dismiss the good intentions of my more easily distracted friends. Also I’d have analysed my feelings from 1000 angles before verbalising so I usually won’t open up unless I’m sure they’re willing to stick around for all of it.            

5\In middle/high school, I was naturally sporty enough/had decent enough spatial awareness to be selected to join sports teams (I did netball and then ultimate frisbee) but performed quite poorly in competitive training because I just couldn’t get a lot of basic stuff right. I also could never really get along with my teammates, who tended to be louder and more social, in contrast to how much better I fit in and how many more interests I shared with my more academically-inclined classmates.            

6\I read a lot of fiction, but ironically I’m terrible at telling stories about things that have happened to me. I remember random details about people like their birthdays and little habits, but when it comes to reimagining a specific event, I can never string together a retelling that comes across as engaging to a listener: either I rush it and give the gist/punchline too early or spend too long filling in atmospheric details that give the “vibe” of the scene but with poor narrative structure.            

7\I’m interested in analysing group dynamics! and how subtle behaviour can affect the overall atmosphere of a social setting. Lack of consensus bothers me, although I try to understand where each person is coming from and rationalise whether their logic “makes sense”. I picked civil engineering as my major because it felt like a waste to drop STEM subjects, which I’d been doing well in, but I’m increasingly leaning towards pursuing urban planning in future because of its sociological aspects.            

8\Other facts: I didn’t have much of a Rebellious Teen phase, I’ve kinda always been the good/smart kid growing up and am probably still lowkey elitist (though I’m working on that). Hypocrisy bugs me a lot. I track my expenses religiously and rarely splurge. I really enjoy learning but I’m all for conceptual understanding – having to do heavy memorising puts me off.   Thanks for your time in reading this and let me know if you need clarification/better examples on anything. Have a nice day!             

---------------------

Hi anon,

I’ll go through this but everything here sounds a lot more like the Si-Ne axis than the Ni-Se axis. I think aux Fe is possible but not guaranteed, and I’m not really getting anything for enneagram except possibly 6.

My guess is ISFJ, but there were a few things that implied a certain rigidity and I don’t know if it’s coming from Si+Fe, or if your Si is actually auxiliary. I’m pretty sure ISFJ is correct but if it doesn’t seem right, that would be worth digging into.

The part about disliking interruptions to your plans is more a high Ni or Si thing. The part that gave me pause is the super-detailed schedule because I’ve never done that and a lot of the high Si users or Ni users I know don’t - like, they have a clear mental schedule, and important appointments are obviously marked off, and they don’t like sudden changes, but unless they’re exceptionally busy (and maybe you are) a lot of it is purely in their head and not a detailed start to finish day. If I’m misinterpreting and that’s what you meant, then disregard this.

The part about being a good listener definitely sounds like an Fe approach. It also sounds like a possible low Ne approach. An INFJ wouldn’t really be approaching the problem from every possible angle or focusing on asking direct questions; you also note that you look for clear signs or cues that it’s okay for you to share, rather than making inferences. The extensive emotional analysis sounds like lower Ti, as does the interest in group dynamics.

The part about sports isn’t super helpful; I think a lot of exceptionally good at sports people have high Se, but mediocre or bad at sports doesn’t really mean much. Similarly I haven’t really seen a pattern of if someone can tell a story well and MBTI; there are at least two factors (recall and understanding what’s engaging to others) and you have to be good at both to be good at storytelling. The difficulty with your teammates sounds probably just like general introversion and perhaps some social awkwardness.

I will say your statements about picking civil engineering and group consensus made me briefly think INTP, but I think unless you’re fairly unhealthy your lack of spontaneity rules that out.

Finally: I want to cover conceptual understanding here. You are very specifically interested in very pragmatic, applied things: civil engineering and sociology. You provided a ton of details elsewhere. And then, at the end, you mention a preference for conceptual understanding with no details about it.

This doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it does call into question what you mean by conceptual understanding. I think people divide things into rote memorization and conceptual understanding with no middle ground between, and that’s a big factor in people mistyping as intuitives. I think very few people actually enjoy rote memorization; I went into the physical sciences and math, in fact, because I dislike the rote memorization of, say, biology, but I like things where you can reason through problems from a few first principles and derive things and do actual hands-on experiments.

If ISFJ seems really off to you, let me know, but in that case I would guess aux Ne with something else driving the ‘needs closure’ aspects of your personality, rather than anything with Ni.

[drdougdouglass]

Religious Bigotry in Presidential Politics: 8 Things Every Voter Should Know about the Intolerance of a Leading Democrat Candidate for President [Video and Poll]

Craig Huey May 1, 2019 Government, Congress, and Politics, Politics Leave a Comment

Religious intolerance and bigotry are increasing in America…

Faith-bashing and shaming is becoming popular among leading candidates for president.

The latest is Democrat Pete Buttigieg (pronounced Budda-judge) – who has already raised $7 million and is polling in 3rd place behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Here are 8 things you should know about what he has already said – what his lies and distortions are … and what the truth really is:

Pete Buttigieg viciously attacked Christians as hypocrites.

In a “Meet the Press” interview, Buttigieg criticized evangelicals who support President Trump by saying, “Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in Scripture or in church, where it’s about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making sure that you’re focusing your efforts on the poor.”

“We see the diametric opposite of that in this presidency … Even on the version of Christianity that you hear on the religious right, which is about sexual ethics – I can’t believe that somebody who was writing hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of person you want to be leading this nation.”

He viciously attacked Vice President Mike Pence for his Christian faith.

At an LGBT fundraising event, Buttigieg attacked Vice President Mike Pence – an evangelical Christian – for signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015 while he was Governor of Indiana. The law protects the freedom of religious expression and conscience of businesses and employees.

Buttigieg believes Pence’s support of President Trump can only be explained in one of two ways: “Either he abandoned his religious principles in order to be part of this campaign and administration,” he said, “Or he has some very strange sense of destiny, that God somehow wants this in order to get somewhere better, which I think does very little credit to God…”

In a further frontal attack against the Vice President, Buttigieg proclaimed this about his same-sex marriage: “My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man – and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God. And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand, that if you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir is with my creator.”

Pete Buttigieg twists the truth about religious freedom … freedom of conscience … and the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment.

He said, “I hope that teachings about inclusion and love win out over what I personally consider to be a handful of scriptures that reflect the moral expectations of the era in which they were recorded…”

“Our right to practice our faith freely is respected up to the point where doing so involves harming others,” he continued, “One of the problems with RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] was it authorized harming others so long as you remembered to use your religion as an excuse.”

Of course, he doesn’t specify how he believes the Religious Freedom Restoration Act harms members of the LBGT community. Certainly he’s not talking about physical harm – which is the type of harm prohibited by scripture against those practicing an immoral lifestyle.

Buttigieg preaches a lie about God, homosexuality and Scripture.

He twists truth and scripture to suit his own opinions – as do socialist and progressive Christians…

He criticizes Trump’s past. He decries his talk and tweets. But he ignores the clear teaching of scriptures he doesn’t like. For example:

The scripture that says marriage is between a man and a woman (Matthew 19:3-8)

The scripture that teaches homosexual behavior – like other sexual sins – is wrong (Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11)

He believes in killing the unborn – even children born alive, if they were meant to be killed before birth.

He believes in denying freedom of conscience and freedom of religious expression to Christians who oppose celebrating sexual immorality of any type.

Pete Buttigieg proclaims he is a Christian – and a better one than most.

During a recent Q&A at an event in Austin, Texas, Buttigieg said, “…I try to live a life that is consistent with Christian teachings. I know that it is my responsibility not to ever do anything that would in public life, not be equally beneficial or make as much sense to people of another faith or people of no faith. But in my life I believe in that Christian ethic, the idea that was drilled into me in Catholic school even though I’m no Catholic, I’m Episcopalian.”

At the same event he questioned whether Vice President Mike Pence truly believes in Scripture.

Pete Buttigieg knows Scripture and theology.

He studied Catholic liberation theology doctrine in high school and college. Developed mainly by Latin American Roman Catholics, liberation theology emphasizes liberation from social, political and economic oppression as the essence of Christian salvation rather than worship of God, confession of sin, and trust in the redemptive death of Jesus Christ on the cross coupled with His bodily resurrection.

At Harvard, he wrote a thesis on the Puritans. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.

His father attended seminary in the 1960s, intending to become a Jesuit Priest … but instead became a secular intellectual.

His mother was “attached to the Episcopal faith,” but didn’t attend very many services.

At Harvard, Buttigieg was influenced by a prominent scholar who traced American exceptionalism to the Puritans of New England. “You can’t understand America without understanding the Puritans,” Buttigieg says. “In many ways, we’re still living out their legacy in ways that are good and bad.”

He says he looks for inspiration from people who have put their faith into action, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. “As we talk of the need for a religious left, we should remember that the black church has been [putting faith into action] for quite some time,” Buttigieg reminds.

When he speaks to a Christian audience, he selectively quotes Bible verses about caring for the poor and the sick.

Buttigieg isn’t looking for tolerance of his homosexuality or homosexual marriage. He is looking for total acceptance.

He wants to use the power of government edict to force acceptance of his lifestyle – whether people like it or not.

If elected, he would be the first homosexual president … and his same-sex marriage partner would be the first same-sex spouse in the White House.

Pete Buttigieg is trying to lead the Democrat Party to include Christians – and be the Party that’s anti-Christian, anti-family and anti-First Amendment rights.

“I think it’s unfortunate [the Democratic Party] has lost touch with a religious tradition that I think can help explain and relate our values,” Buttigieg says. “At least in my interpretation, it helps to root [in religion] a lot of what it is we do believe in when it comes to protecting the sick and the stranger and the poor, as well as skepticism of the wealthy and the powerful and the established.”

Watch this analysis of Pete Buttigieg’s far-left beliefs and policies by news commentator Laura Ingraham (about 7 ½ minutes).

Finally, let’s be clear about Evangelicals and support for Trump/Pence….

As I said in “Are Christians Hypocrites? 10 Surprising Realities About Christians and President Trump“, Evangelical support for Trump is based on policy only.

It’s not based on his rhetoric. It’s not based on his past – or even present – behavior. It’s not based on anything about Trump as a flawed person – or on whether or not he’s a real Christian.

It’s based on his policies that reflect Biblical truth … and non-negotiable Christian values:

He is the most pro-Israel president ever.

He is revolutionizing the Judicial branch with strict constructionist judges … not judicial activists – including 2 new Supreme Court Justices … and over 100 lower court appellate judges.

He is the most pro-life president ever.

He has done more to protect religious liberty than any other president ever.

He has done more to protect the persecuted church around the world than any other president ever.

In addition, he has restored our economy, increased employment – especially among minority groups – increased wages … and promoted entrepreneurship and innovation with massive deregulation and business tax cuts.

When he needs to be called out, we will call him out.

But when he enacts good policies, we rejoice and should say thanks without apology.

We choose policy over personality.

We choose key non-negotiable issues over articulate platitudes and talking points.

We choose action over empty promises.

This is not hypocrisy. This is respecting promises made, promises kept.

As president of an ad agency, I like taglines…

I suggest the following tagline for President Trump:

“He’s a doer, not a dreamer.”

What do you think? Email me at craig@craighuey.com

  Mayor Pete is NOT at the Top of my list of favorite candidates.

Both his vaulting ambition and shocking low standards concern me greatly.

But if he gets the nomination, he's got my vote.

The thing I like about him the MOST is how he seems to be terrifying all the Right People.

[daresplaining]

Some Initial Thoughts on Daredevil Volume 6

[ID: Excerpt from the current Daredevil run. Matt Murdock is standing in his apartment, wearing the bottom half of his Daredevil costume, a Punisher shirt, and no mask. He is unshaven and his face is bandaged. He’s talking with Luke Cage, Danny Rand, and Jessica Jones, all of whom are in civvies.]

Matt: “...You’re all murderers.”

Luke: “You can feel bad about what happened. You should. But you need to make sure your head’s right before going out there again! You’ve been getting into street brawls with cops! You’re a walking bandage spokesman! You--”

Matt: “We’re all murderers! This is... why didn’t I ever... w-we can’t do this. We’re not above the law, we--”

Danny: “Hey... let’s just... let’s just take a moment, catch our breath...”

Daredevil vol. 6 #5 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, and Sunny Gho

    I haven’t talked much about the current Daredevil run, because I tend to avoid talking about things I’m not enjoying, but I was extremely torn about the first story arc. It’s not just because it's ripped right from the Netflix show (616 Matt has never been this religious, all of the themes and character cameos are Netflix-y, and the recently-revealed cover for #9 is basically a screenshot from Season 3.) If that’s where Zdarsky has drawn his inspiration, that’s fine. It’s his story to tell. It’s not what I would like, since I am very attached to 616 Matt, but it’s certainly a way to get MCU fans reading comics, and that’s great! Soule made clear references to the show as well, and at least Matt has his red hair back (poor Jessica hasn’t been so lucky). And it’s not just because the characterization is iffy (as I discussed in regards to the Punisher’s guest appearance in issue #4). And it’s not even the themes of the story itself. Zdarsky is far from the first person to address the violence and hypocrisy inherent in superheroism-- that was a primary theme of Nocenti’s run as well, and digging into Matt’s mindset regarding this aspect of his crimefighting can be highly compelling.

    My biggest disconnect with this story is its seeming ignoring of Daredevil continuity. I’d be far more convinced by Matt’s freak-out about murder if this didn’t take place so soon after “Shadowland”, when Matt rammed a sai through Bullseye’s chest on the roof of the Javits Center. I would be more interested if this story addressed the other people Matt has accidentally killed over the past 55 years: the Fixer, who had a heart attack while fleeing Daredevil in the very first issue of the comic. Heather Glenn, who Matt drove to suicide. All of the various Silver Age villains who conveniently fell to their deaths after Matt tried and failed to rescue them. Heck (...not to make everything about Mike, but...), Matt’s newfound regrets about trying to delete his brother! Matt is not a killer, and I would hate for him to come across that way, but if that’s what Zdarsky wants to explore, he should at least explore it in a meaningful way. I would love this story if it were actually in conversation with the rest of the comic, particularly coming, as I mentioned, so close on the heels of the biggest murder-centric Daredevil story ever written. Given all of this context, all of the painful experiences Matt has had involving the deaths of others, I’m struggling to buy his having a mental breakdown over causing the death of a random guy in what was clearly an accident... without even mentioning those past experiences and explaining why this is somehow more traumatic.  

    So far, this run has felt like all flash and no bang-- beautiful art and cool fight scenes strung together by weak characterization and uninspired writing... plus a complete lack of a supporting cast, which was one of the downfalls of Soule’s run as well. And to be clear: I love beautiful art and cool fight scenes. I just feel like this story thinks it’s deeper and more groundbreaking than it actually is. I think there are a lot of strengths in this run, and of course I will keep reading, because it’s Daredevil, but that’s been my reaction so far. I have high hopes for improvement. I was so-so on a lot of Soule’s run, and then he introduced Mike, so you really can’t judge a story until it’s over. Please, Zdarsky, give me a reason to love this run.

[music-and-migration-blog]

How do you experience translocality in your daily life involving music?

In my personal music choice, I experience translocality when I listen to punk, ska, new wave, reggae, rap and rock (or any combination of these) because they are all tools to fight against oppressive forces. People often use music to spread ideas that are damaging to powerful regimes; these ideas: freedom, equal rights, anti-capitalism, anti-religion, and creating culture rather than consuming it are things oppressive (capitalistic) societies don’t want to be globally rejoiced. Even though the genres sound different, they all stand for similar things. Reggae, for example, acts as a vehicle to speak out against “Babylon’s” tyranny, colonization, inequity and racism. All these music types have been historically demonized by the oppressive ruling class (wealthy/racist/capitalists). This can be observed easily as rock was once considered “the devil’s music,” surely because of its message to rebel against strict religious culture that was oppressing POC, women, LGBT people and all forms of dissent. Another example is how the punks of Indonesia are/were considered a threat in Indonesia for their messages of rebellion against fundamentalist Islam and freedom from oppression. Then, rap has historically been called the music of “violence” and “thugs” due to systemic racism of course, but also for its outcry against the system rigged against black and poor people, police brutality and socioeconomic inequity. Finally, reggae has been dismissed and stereotyped as stoner/hippy music. However, oppressive classes have tried to discredit reggae because of its strong stance on imperialism, colonization, slavery, and the hypocrisy of ruling classes to disproportionately punish black people in Jamaica for using cannabis while using it themselves without consequence.

I experience translocality when I listen to the music of oppressed people because as person coming from a poor immigrant background, I can relate to what the music has to say; it connects me as a disenfranchised youth left behind by the system. I live and always have lived in the ghettos with my poor immigrants and African descended people who have been left behind by racist legislation like gerrymandering to break up voting areas to make it more beneficial to republicans, redlining neighborhoods, creating food deserts in urban areas and opening one corporate grocery that upcharges, denying POC to purchase land in the past among other Jim Crow era norms that still have persisting effects today, like property taxes funding schools and education. Poor neighborhoods mean poor schools which mean art and music programs being cut, not paying public school teachers enough. When I see the disparity between my neighborhoods versus those who have funding for private, for-profit charter schools and catholic schools, it makes me sick. The teachings of these kind of schools, which demonize poor people, Muslims, Jewish people, LGBTs, Hispanics and Black people make it easier to create policies that invoke ghettoization and starve welfare programs. When minority kids have a poor education and no art programs, no opportunities except to work for minimum wage in bad conditions, it’s a strategic move to push those people towards crime. Not to mention the lobbying by police unions that supports for-profit prisons, criminalization of marijuana, etc. that disproportionately affects these people compared to the upper-class white people who do similar crimes but get minimal time. The music I listen to reminds and connects me to others who experience similar things.

Additionally, because I am a business student, I can’t help but see the exploitation capitalism causes every day that I sit in class and watch as culture is produced for the youth by businesses who want to influence what and how we think to turn a profit. It’s clear this is the case due to the very strict music industry that only plays and supports carefully constructed, meaningless garbage on the radio. This same industry is famous for its rampant sexual abuse of artists and censorship from what they really want to say; the same industry that has whitewashed and appropriated cultures/music for money. All around, the corporatization of music has led to its decline in creative quality and silenced dissenting voices.  The people who are creating music that sends a message of freedom from oppression is not supported by the system, so when I listen to music like that, it reminds me that I’m a part of a resistance that has no real physical location, but a connection with disenfranchised people, nonetheless.

Word count: 719

[quakerjoe]

A Cuppa Joe for 3 January 2019

 Regarding Patriotism

 Patriotism. What the fuck IS that exactly? I used to think it stemmed from the nation’s actual motto “E Pluribus Unum” meaning “From Many, One” where we all stand together, united, as one people, Americans, and look out for one another. That was a hard delusion to wake up from. While such a thing is possible if we so desire it, it isn’t going to happen evidently. Seriously, think about this for a moment. Who do you see the most out here going on about “patriotism” today? Angry white dudes. I don’t see African Americans out there blowing the “Look at me, asshole! I’m a PATRIOT!” horns loudly, nor anyone from the LGBTQ community or from any minority such as our Islamic/Arabic neighbors who came here to get away from all the radical, violent religious bullshit and just want to pray in peace. Angry. White. Dudes. All pining for a “Christian Nation” while acting exactly the opposite to the teachings of Christ. They clean their guns and play circle-jerk warrior in the woods with their limp-dick friends because they’re too much of a sad sack to actually JOIN the military and SERVE. THAT would be Patriotism.

Then again, is serving in the military really being patriotic anymore? I was proud when I served, but looking back on it, WHO was I really serving? Was I truly protecting the US from some threat? Not really. We’re on the other side of the planet, far away from any direct threat. Two massive oceans divide us from any other military that may want to harm us. Then again, WHY would any other military even WANT to harm us? Could it have something to do with the way this nation invades other nations to topple their elected governments and establish banana republics in order to get what “we” want from them? By “we”, I of course don’t mean that you or I give a shit what the price of bananas is. Oil, on the other hand… We all care about oil prices because we’re constantly being blocked from developing and using green power sources so that the rich twats in Big Fossil Fuels can get even richer. They spend thousands on buying elected officials here who band together and pass a tax break law that gives those rich twats savings in the millions and even billions.

But do Central and South American nations have a mobile force to invade us? Fuck no. What about Persian nations that we and other European nations carved up for oil field access, ignoring the territories if Sunni and Shiite, creating nations that have all sort of in-fighting between the two peoples? That’s on us, kids. Still, they don’t have a military worth a damn that can cross the oceans and get to us. So is being over THERE being “patriotic” and really defending our freedom? Fuck no. So WHO are we serving? Rich. White. Dudes. Period. Are THEY “patriotic”? They bribe the government to use military force in nations that they want something from, like oil, or poppy fields for Big Pharma, and they USE us as cheap mercenaries; cannon fodder to secure their FINANCIAL interests, and the thanks veterans get when they get home is shit wages, their families on some sort of financial assistance, and when they need medical or mental health, we practically ignore them and then wonder why the suicide rate for returning vets is so high. Fewer mouths for Uncle Sam to feed, right? Meanwhile, the rich, white dudes don’t ever have to look at them or deal with them and even though the blood is on their hands from war, they weren’t the ones sent in to do the killing. THEY don’t have to deal with the consequences; they just cash in and get rich. No guilt. No empathy. No PTSD. Nada. Just loads of cash. Meanwhile, we use up our munitions and equipment and keep the War Machine and major contractors super-financed in contracts that aren’t bid for anymore. That doesn’t sound at all patriotic to me, but there’s something you need to understand.

YOU are not a person, you’re a component. You’re something to exploit and rob. When people in government today see “We the People” they automatically see that as “We the Rich Fuckers” and the rest of us are the plebes; the livestock that generates money for them and we don’t matter to them. If we did, we’d have had free healthcare coverage and education decades ago, and it’d also be the best on the planet and there’d be a sense of pride in being an American from the richest down to the poorest because we’d be at our healthiest and our smartest. Instead, we revel in our arrogance, our ignorance, and our stupidity. We roll in a puddle of hubris and it seems that most “patriots” don’t even know what that word means. THAT, dear Joes, is the new definition of “patriotism” among the ‘plebe class’, and just like in days of Olde, when the Constitution was first drafted, “People” meant the wealthy class who owned land and property and were the only ones who voted. They got the good food, the good medicine, and the good education while you got little to none of any of it and you’d have been working since the day you could walk and talk at the same time until the day you dropped dead. That’s what MAGA is all about, only trumplefuckstick’s supporters are poor, stupid fucks who must believe that they’re really millionaires who are temporarily inconvenienced at the moment and that they’ll be rich soon with 45 at the helm.

Their idea of “patriotism” is to literally shit on everyone here that isn’t of their ilk- ignorant-as-fuck white, cist-gendered, white, “Christian” MEN or their brainwashed, sidekick women who dine on hate as well. They’re praying for the End of Days one moment, while hoping that just before that happens they get an opportunity to hunt down and murder Obama or HRC or just go on an all-out “nigger hunt” or a chance to do-in the “towelheads” living here. They’re praying for a chance to slaughter anyone LGBTQ because the bible calls them an abomination to be destroyed. They give me the impression that they watch “The Handmaiden’s Tale” and jerk off to it because using women as breeding stock and enslaving them and killing the “uppity ones” is a dirty, wet dream of theirs, and they call it “patriotic”.

So someone out there, please remind me what it truly means to be a Patriot of the United  States of America. As far as I can see, we went from aspirations towards “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” to “I got mine; fuck the rest of y’all! Bootstraps, fucker! Pull yourself up or just die ‘cause I’m not going to help you. I had to work hard to get what I’ve got. Get a job!” Instead of looking UP at the rich and powerful shitting on us, too many of us are looking down at those less fortunate than those wielding the “White Privilege” card and blaming the POOR for all their woes as they look down their noses at them and continue to let the shit roll downhill instead of reaching down to help someone up. It’s a disgrace. It’s the OPPOSITE of being patriotic. It’s the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what I was taught it meant to be an actual Christian and frankly, the level of hypocrisy from the religious people here is sickening, insulting, and fucking INSANE. 

I tire of so-called “Christians” showing up here telling me that they’re not ALL bad. Well, they ARE. If you’re watching evil transpire before you and you do NOTHING, you’re guilty of that evil too, and frankly I am still waiting for some sort of allied Christian movement to get together enough to call out the ‘false prophets’ getting rich in this country and getting behind, en masse, to see to it we get Universal Healthcare for ALL, a bolstered safety net program that includes “food stamps”, the promotion of medicines and science because if there is a god, we were blessed with senses that should be trying to study how He/She/It made the universe and how to make the world a healthier, safer place of PEACE, not a nation with a bloated military budget that can’t even pass muster when audited while people here in our own country are going hungry and homeless because “fuck you, you peasant, that’s why”. If your idea of being a “Christian” is ignoring the bible and praying at home, in private and you insist on going to a tax have to pray (yes, church) then you’d better be DOING something to fight against the evils sweeping the nation and against the tenants of Jesus. Evangelicals, or Talibangelists as I call them, are on the move. Where the fuck are YOU? Yeah, hanging around your community trying to do “good deeds” is sweet and all, but wouldn’t it fight hunger and poverty MORE, in line with Christ’s teachings, if you got off your ass and rallied AGAINST the Talibangelists and called them out on their bullshit? Where’s your presence in the REAL clear and present danger here? Where is YOUR voice when it comes to defeating the false prophets we’ve been warned repeatedly about?

>Matthew 7:15 clearly states “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are raving wolves.” Perhaps you “Christians” should STOP ELECTING THEM! Forwarding and backing known pedophiles and sex offenders doesn’t sound too Christian OR patriotic to me.

>Matthew 24:11 Jesus says “and many false prophets will appear and lead many astray.” Sounds like the brainless twats on FOX and trumplefuckstick lying to the masses who slop back the shit like it is gravy and not the feces that it is.

>Matthew 24:24 says “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

>Second Peter 2:1-3 “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.” 

>First John 4:1 “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” So forgive my skepticism of all you alleged “Christians”, but I’ll believe in you when you SHOW me that you’re not all talk and no ACTION. 

> Jeremiah 23:16 Tell me this one doesn’t apply to suckers who vote GOP and Corporate Democrat as well as those fuckwits who go to mega-churches to throw away their money and their souls: “This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD.” 

> Ezekiel 13:9 “My hand will be against the prophets who see false visions and who give lying divinations. They shall not be in the council of my people, nor be enrolled in the register of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord God.” We have truly FAILED as a nation at this one, kids. So quit with all the religious preaching on my page. If you haven’t sold all you own and have given it all to the poor, then I’m not going to take you seriously. (Matthew 19:21 and Luke 18:22). 

From what my parents and grandparents taught me, part of being a Patriot was to confront evil and help those in need, and honestly, I’m not seeing it from the “Christian” community, only their hubris and vanity and a defensive sense of pride compounded with an extremist element here that uses the Bible as license to commit all manner of atrocities against their fellow countrymen/women etc. even though we were WARNED about this sort of fuckery- “because they are turning whole families away from the truth by their false teaching. And they do it only for money” (Titus 1:11) AND “Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.” (1 Timothy 6:5).

If you haven’t noticed, we are HERE: 

> 2nd Tim 4:3-4 “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” So let’s just pull this sanctimonious bus off to the side of the pretentiousness highway and cut the shit with your religious ramblings and let’s focus on saving the world and figuring out what it truly means to be “patriotic”, shall we? We SHOULD be looking out for one another REGARDLESS of religious beliefs.

Having said all that, Dear Joes, tell me this- how do YOU define “Patriotism” today?

[automatismoateo]

I'm Arguably Better at Being Christian than My Christian Family via /r/atheism

I'm Arguably Better at Being Christian than My Christian Family

Personal anecdote here, but I find it funny how my evangelical family are worried I'm not making it to heaven with them because I am critical of the blatant racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in the religion. Yet, I would say I'm a better "Christian" then they are without even trying. Collectively, they each have "sinned" much more than I can even imagine, in comparison, I haven't come close to how bad they are. My family are the types of Christians that believe they are better than others for following the faith, meanwhile they have done some heinous things in their lives but it doesn't matter anymore because they accept Christ now.

I'm talking about my father who neglected me, was verbally abusive towards my mom, physically abusive to my stepmother, tried to kill himself right in front of me. Had children out of wedlock, covered in tattoos, etc. Then my stepmother who again, has children out of wedlock, tattoos, is vain, money-hungry... then you have my stepsister who used to sleep around a lot, tattoos, children out of wedlock, used to be a wannabe insta "model" (I'm convinced she would have done OnlyF if it was around at the time). The list goes on with several family members. Meanwhile, I've never abused anyone, don't have tattoos, no kids, I've only been with one person my whole life, loving and accepting to everyone, etc.

Now I want to be clear that I am not religious so I don’t care about the "sins" they've committed because I don't really believe in sin anyway. And I also don't think I'm better than anyone either (hell I'm looking to get a tat someday as well), I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy that they think they have room to judge. According to them, I'm not making it to heaven because I support gay people, but somehow they are with all the shit they've done?

Submitted November 27, 2022 at 09:16PM by Ok_Razzmatazz3571 (From Reddit https://ift.tt/GZnex6O)

[peachie-alpaca]

very long post about my experience with therapy and how it affected me, and moving forward from the negative experience

i’ve been going to therapy for almost two years now but i’ve decided to quit it. not quitting therapy in general, but quitting my (now ex) therapist.

because honestly? this therapist didnt have my best interest in mind and it took me a while to realize this.

this is hard for me to talk about but I need to write it out. I wanted to talk about it sooner but I waited until after I actually quit her to since it was so stressful for me to think about. i kept getting anxiety attacks and insecurity about my decision.

but anyway, I really liked this therapist. I really did. she really made me feel understood and I easily got attached to her. even when I would notice little red flags, I ignored them, I kept giving her the benefit of the doubt.

I didn’t quit her because she pushed me to go out of my comfort zone, I certainly did accomplish uncomfortable things and she acknowledged this. 

no, what made me quit her was getting to actually know her ideals that conflict with mine, her making me feel unheard. and, at worst, her hypocrisy. i’ll get to that later.

“wait, didn’t you just say she made you feel understood?” 

at first, yes. after all, she was my first therapist. practically anyone who would simply listen to my deepest fears and thoughts was great in my book, and I had been dreaming about going to a therapist for years. I knew I needed it.

so when I could finally get into an insurance plan that pays for therapy, I wore rose-tinted glasses towards her.

i didn’t care at first that she... hardly took notes.

at most, during some sessions, i would see her quickly scribble something down at the end. well....

whenever I brought up really important things about myself, she wouldn’t delve into them more or ask questions. she would listen, nod, and get the conversation back to the topic of “what goals do you want to accomplish?”

again, this didn’t bother me at the time, “yeah! sorry to bring up irrelevant things, haha!”

it’s one thing to make progress, it’s another to dismiss big things about myself that are very important to me. 

i sort of had a mini epiphany moment when meeting with my psychiatrist for the first time. he asked about my upbringing and i explained it was abusive, then he asked, “are you talking about this with your therapist?” 

i whispered “no”....

it’s not that I haven’t told her, i told her almost first session about my family life. but it didn’t lead to anything more than her saying “okay I see, so that was hard for you” then moving on.

i brought this up with her next session, but that didn’t go anywhere, either... said it’s “off topic for the goals we had”

i had also told her that i came from a religious pentecostal borderline culty home, and that i wanted nothing to do with it now and i’m 1000% atheist. i don’t believe in the god of the bible or any gods for that matter. and i made this very clear to her that it is a trauma of mine. this was a whole process i went through in the past years and came to a head in the beginning of 2019, when i finally accepted myself as bisexual and atheist.

so for her to say to me, when i was sad and anxious about my grandma’s declining health, “I know you said you aren’t a christian anymore, but you’re still a spiritual person and i want to know how that is helping you in coping with your grandmother possibly passing away?”

what?

i felt so shocked that she described me that way, i wanted to cry. “spiritual”? i am hardly the type, even when I was christian. this completely took me aback, and i corrected her shortly afterwards. she apologized and reworded herself but i just... i couldn’t get over it. 

had she not listened to me one bit? I even told her about how i joined a discord server last year specifically for ex-religious people to come together for support.

but i was insecure... i didn’t want to think i had a “bad therapist”

"i guess no therapist has super memory right? who cares if she got a few things wrong...."

i was never afraid to be open and honest when she hurt my feelings. i did feel safe enough to tell her my real thoughts, which i appreciate from her. on multiple occasions when i took things she said the wrong way, i would tell her.

 for example, when she said she was upset when i wasn’t honest with her about a choice (which i later told the truth anyway so...), or when i felt she didn’t take my menstrual pain serious, or when she made me feel like i was making excuses with my depression. 

those conflicts cleared up and i understood she didn’t mean harm, but they stayed at the back of my mind. there are a lot more instances like that where certain things she said lowkey made me skeptical of her, but i’m not trying to write a novel. I wrote them down in my phone notes tho, haha.

it wasn’t all negative, she did help me with skills of thinking outside the box. i could feel that my time with her, i had developed skills that help me not think so negative about the smallest things, relating to my social anxiety. she helped me on how to feel grounded and get some wider perspective of interactions outside myself.

this is why it took me so long to realize she wasn’t good for me, because she wasn’t the cliché obviously terrible therapist. she wasn’t blatantly awful. i question her practices but maybe someone else can benefit from it, idk.

what finally made me quit her for good and realize that she is actually doing more harm than good, was when she wanted to diagnose me with a personality disorder, despite her saying she cannot diagnose me with a personality disorder because i have depression.

when earlier in the year i said i was very concerned that i had a different personality disorder, she just insisted that while yes i have traits, no i didn’t have it, that i’m depressed so she cannot diagnose me with it.

(i’m not going to say which personality disorders since that’s a bit too personal for me to get into, so they’re just 1 and 2.)

i find this extremely unethical and hypocritical.

i questioned her on this and brought it up myself.

“you said you couldn’t diagnose me with 1, even though you yourself admitted i have traits of it, and i identify with it way more than 2, so why can you diagnose me with 2 and not 1? I thought you couldn’t diagnose personality disorders because i have depression?”

she nervously said, “yes, technically i cannot do that, but i strongly feel you have 2 instead of 1. I know this, I know you.”

i did not say anything, and just looked away from her. the air in that room was so unnerving and.... i can’t describe more how i felt.

after that session, to tell you the truth, i avoided her for weeks. i made excuses and told her i needed to reschedule a day or two before each session. i was procrastinating quitting her, also because I needed some paperwork from her before I quit.

but i finally did it, this week. i knew i couldn’t just disappear. besides me not wanting to be billed for missing appointments, i’m not the type that doesn’t give closure. it’s understandable if people do if their therapist did something extremely offensive or illegal, but for some reason i just felt it had to be done in a conclusive way. idk. maybe i didn’t need to do that.

it was short and uncomfortable, i cried. a part of me was a little girl, wanting things to be fixed and that “this is a bad ending! lets just make up and try again! we did that before, why can’t we now?” 

i hushed her in my mind, and said, as a mature adult, “this is for our own good. this has to be done.”

i didn’t get into my huge problem with her about the personality diagnosis, which i regret. I just wanted the session to end as quickly as possible. i mainly told her i felt extremely disrespected and that we just aren’t a good fit for each other. that’s what all the articles about therapy say, right? that you have to be a good fit with your therapist?

i felt so empty afterwards, and this experience honestly leaves me anxious for my next therapist. i feel scared to open up only for them to be something i thought they weren’t...

i want to find a good therapist, i’m just kind of doubtful of it... it was hard enough to find an english speaking therapist. as you might know, i live in germany. even though i’m learning german, i feel more comfortable speaking my native language, which makes sense right?

i’ll keep trying, i won’t lose hope...

[ashfaqqahmad]

Can religion be logical final

Religious scholars define everything as per their own convenience

Click here to read the previous part of this article

Have you seen the movie ‘Judai‘ where Johny Lever concludes Upasana Singh saying ‘abba dab a Jabba’ as a love acceptance in his own style? Nowadays religious scholars of this type are also found who deduce meanings of symbolic shlokas or verses in this style.

Most religious scholars are Johny Leavers explaining the meaning of ‘abba dabba jabba‘ in their own way. Suppose eighty things proved to be wrong out of a hundred things said, then they will ignore them and will glorify the rest twenty, proved right (by fluke).

Well, it’s an irony that to this day, Muslims consider Jews to be the most dangerous people that they are unpredictable. They will reject any of their writings outright, but in the past, they adopted the boasts, fabricated in the name of this Jewish religion with an open heart because it was in their own interest. The literature like Adam, Eve, Abraham, Lut, Moses, David, Suleiman, Jaboor, Taurat, etc. belonged to them. All these people were clan chiefs in their times, and kings in the future, who often used to make stories to prove themselves as an incarnation or messenger of God and propagate it to the people, so that their power would not be challenged or other interests can be fulfilled.

Most religious literature is only meant for the glorification

In India too, from Mauryan period to Shunga Empire (associated with religion) and from Khilji to Aurangzeb (associated with personal glorification and politics), the same spectacles were repeated. Otherwise, God cannot be so biased to not signify any lower class to send incarnations in India or in West Asia all the family members would have been Prophets. It means that in such large civilizations, populations, it was only Abraham‘s family that Prophets were born one after the other. Don’t you feel this is a strange coincidence? Does it not seem that like the Gandhi family, prophecy is also following a dynastic tradition that after the father, only son or brother after the brother will become Prophet. Almost all of them from Abraham to Muhammad are parts of the same dynastic vine. Does God seem like a man with limited intelligence?

How did humans start their journey on earth

In the initial phase, someone set a format of the divine incarnation or messenger and the next ones followed the same track. Since all was written around Jesus and before that it was alive only in the legends so the Jews adjusted it in their own way at the time of writing and to continue this series, they predicted the next Christ in which Jesus was caught.

From here, the twist came. Since all the written history was being prepared, then how would Jesus be recognized as the Messiah? As a result, the high-voltage drama was created and later when the followers of Jesus wrote their Bible (New Testament) then all the old content was verified. Why? Because it was necessary for their own verification. This was to prove their prophecy in Abraham‘s lineage. Whereas the formers (believers of the Old Testament) have been denying Jesus Christ to be Messiah till this day and have always declared them liars.

In the seventh century, Muhammad Sahab did the same. Either by himself or his followers did it, is buried in the past but it is clear that he carried forward the same sequence. They verified the content of the Jews, who have been hated by Muslims since then. Why? Because it was necessary for their own authenticity. But here too the same thing happened that those formers (Christians, Jews) refused to accept him as the sequel of their concept and held a liar who abducted their concept and the angels.

Suitable editing was done in this borrowed literature

A lot of editing has been done to this literature according to the need and time. I am giving two brief examples. The Jews clearly wrote that the Jehovah ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, in a dream, so he took Isaac (in their conception son of Sarah, Isaac was the son of Abraham, while Ismail was son of maid Hajra), with the sacrificial goods, and when Isaac asked who will we sacrifice, he answered that the one who has given the order will make arrangements and reached to the sacrificial site and tied Isaac. While adopting the same story, the Muslims have replaced Isaac with Ismail and also modified that Abraham had told the truth and Ismail himself was ready. After all, Ismail had to be proved great.

In the same way, anal sex freak citizens of Prophet Lut’s city were buried by the rain of stones (which is now called the Dead Sea) because sodomy was a sin in the eyes of God. They took that much part but deducted the rest story because the basis of this story was morality, and in the next part, morality was torn apart, where both his daughters, who craved male intercourse, drank him, had intercourse with him and conceived his children. That is, it would not suit that a prophet is drinking wine and having sex with daughters, so they removed that part.

what possibilities are there in the universe outside our planet

However, the stories that are repeated for centuries are automatically accepted as true and then tens of proofs are made to prove them true and the translation like ‘abba dabba jabba‘ containing those stories is prepared according to own convenience. If you read the literature of any religion by being absolutely neutral, then you will see contradictions and holes in fifty places, which the engineers of that religion will try to show you by putting a patch on it.

Both Aryans and Semitic descended from the same stream, but in this case, I would call the Aryans more clever that they coined God in the larger philosophical way so that even after centuries they could justify it in every way, (not the present-day modern Hindu, Vedic religion/Aryasamaji). Whereas the Semitic people started to form God as Jehovah and made a cartoon in the first step instead of a superpower.

The Muslims improved the image due to being the last writers, but even after being described as formless, they made mistakes like long hands to hold the sky and throne, etc. which the engineers have to resort to the ‘abba dabba jabba’ method to cover up.

We can consider incarnations as Gurus

If you want to understand Jesus, then he has to be considered as guru just as the Sikhs do. If you perceive him charmed by the miracles and divine powers, you will probably never understand. He was a social reformer of his time, was a rebel, a revolutionary, but later the writers added many such things with him for his glorification, which made his credibility suspicious. The blame is on the writers and not on him. Similarly, while reading religious books, you have to pay attention to their motives and not on their stories.

If you acknowledge great men as Gurus, then you will be able to understand that they were also human beings, so obviously they can also have some weakness with a hundred characteristics. Or if you will focus on their weaknesses then you will understand their circumstantial reasons too. It can be understood by some examples. There is no solution to blind faith in the world. Everyone is ready to believe some unseen divine power with eyes closed. In such a situation, you pay attention to people around you and you find that they are wild, uncivilized, barbaric and are far away from every rule and regulation. Their life is uncertain and insecure because of their ways and you want to improve them.

If God is there then how can it be from the point of view of science

So much you will know that no such person will listen to you because you are the same person among them. What is different in you that they listen to you? In such a situation, you can attract people to you by claiming to be a divine incarnation. You can prove your authenticity by putting a seal of ‘verified’ on the stories prevalent already.

You will have to struggle with this, but your personality will be different from them. Here your claims are not important, your motive is important which does not depend on any kind of selfishness, but on the well being of the people. However, it needs courage, because for this purpose you will have to sacrifice all your dreams, your future and your personal life.

And then to change those bad people suppose you show them the dream that those of you who drink here do not drink because it has a negative effect on not only you but also on your family. Control yourself here, you will get river of liquor in heaven. Or don’t do lascivious activities here, and believe that if you control your nature here and live a life of decency, then after death, there will be many hoors you will get. These claims may be false because no one has seen them but the reforms can be seen on the ground.

what are the possibilities for new writers

Later, it was the fault of the next generations that they forgot the motive and claimed and spread the same things for their selfishness (like terrorists, martyrdom for jihad, seventy-two hoors, the greed of Jannat (heaven)). Imagine that namaz meant that salat (connection) where humans could connect with God around him in the form of Brahma element for a moment through meditation, but people offering namaz as a formality, indulge in different thoughts of all over the world while looking at other people around, mosque fans and mats. The same situation is of Hindus who spend hours worshipping in temples, who despite having the art of meditation, are trapped in hypocrisy.

We can learn from religious books

All such books were meant to show the path according to the circumstances of that time, to decide the rules of governance but they never became effective. Why? Because instead of understanding their motives people just mugged up. When all religions give the message of love, peace and brotherhood, then why is there so much chaos in the world? When all religious books teach you best practices, then why are their believers in the world full of evils? Why are they full of hate? According to this, religions were designed to turn humans into deities, then how are devils with demonic tendencies coming out of them?

After all, why is there so much hatred, so much violence, so much bloodshed in the whole world? Because the religions that were expected to form the social system have failed. Rather the religions have not failed, people have failed to understand their purpose. And that is the reason that people are pretending to be religious, doing hypocrisy day and night but still, there is disturbance, hatred and backwardness in their lives. And those populations of the west who are called atheists, they have absorbed the core of religion and they are living a better life than us.

How to write a book in Microsoft word  

Religion is not what its stakeholders explain to you in the form of millions of words of fraud, but one that is hidden in your nature, but which you keep on pressing because it strikes your interest or selfishness. And if God exists, then he is not observing you from heaven like a magician or executioner, but he is around you, is inside you.

इस लेख को हिंदी में पढ़ने के लिये यहाँ क्लिक करें

[modronlotus]

I need to get something off my chest.

I've been thinking about how my family officially found out (well, somewhat) about my practice and it's clinging to me. All of the emotions are latched on to me.

I've been wanting to tell you guys about what happened. That way you can learn from my experience. Because I'm honestly no different than any of you who haven't officially said your spirituality out loud. 

So let's get this going:

--

First I want to say I don't officially know what I am. 

I know my beliefs; I love the idea as everything is energy and manipulating it creates magic. That belief is reinforced every time I do a tarot reading or practice with my pendulum. I believe in the power of chakras, meditation, and balancing your body. I believe in your right to choose what you want out of your practice and not dictate what others should and shouldn't do. I like the ideas of Buddhism and reaching a state of enlightenment. I'm an eceltic cottage witch who likes tarot, green tarot, everything that has to do with Taurus, and five-hour baths.

But I don't know what I am religiously.

I don't dabble with deities, although I have thought of working with Hecate, Chang-E, or Nox.

But I don't know what I am religiously.

This is completely the opposite of how I grew up. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, I was even an Unbaptized Publisher (which is pretty much a fancy title for nothing) when I was nine. 

But I remember a few things being wrong with that belief system. And I remember having a hard time with the smallest things growing up this way:

I wasn't allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school. It was considered worshiping an idol. I had a teacher who refused to believe this and gave me the hardest time about it.

I remember sitting in class reading a "Young People Ask" book. Its a publication that's supposed to help explain puberty and going to school among those who aren't Witnesses to teens. There was a picture of a girl and boy kissing in a car. My grandmother came to school and whooped me because the teacher (same one as I previously mentioned) told her I was sneak reading it and being disgusting with the pictures.

I wasn't allowed to watch Scooby Doo, Harry Potter, or anything to do with ghosts, witches, demons, or anything magic. That's So Raven was off limits, especially.

I remember having a hard time explaining after Christmas break that I didn't have a Christmas. My grandparents did celebrate their wedding anniversary around that time and everyone received gifts from that, but no Christmas.

I wasn't allowed to go to Halloween parties or participate in them in school. I went trick or treating once when I was four or five; I was Blossom from PowerPuff Girls.

Birthdays aren't celebrated at all, as the two birthdays mentioned in the New Testament of Jehovah's Witnesses had someone killed. I kind of know how old my mother is and I definitely don't know how old my grandmother is because of this. It's awkward telling that to people.

I remember hearing a talk at a convention once when I had a crush on a boy who wasn't in "The Truth". We were in fourth grade, he was the son of the Vice-Principal, and was incredibly smart and sweet. A good kid. But that doesn't matter to Witnesses; you're not allowed to marry or date anyone outside of "The Truth". I remember crying my heart out during the meeting, my grandmother holding my head to her side to keep me quiet. I never told her why I was upset.

You see, growing up a Witness wasn't that bad. I didn't go anywhere really and stayed home, but I just was used to it. We weren't supposed to have friends outside the Kingdom Hall anyway.

But the problem was I felt dirty being there. I felt like an outsider. I remember looking at the two other people there that were my age and thinking about how different we were. I didn't want to be a missionary. I didn't want to give talks. I didn't want to go out in Field Service and go door-to-door. I didn't want to sit in that meeting three times a week; I constantly got in trouble for falling asleep. 

The biggest wakeup call I had was when my mother tried to kill herself. I was nine, my sister was a few months old, and my mother had just gotten back into the congregation. 

I still went to meetings with my grandmother, did everything the same, but didn't say anything about my mother. You see, my family doesn't like to talk about anything negative. Depression is a bad topic. Leaving the Kingdom Hall was worse.

My mother wasn't ever the same after that, but that's an entirely different discussion. But she plays apart in this story:

My mother has always prided herself on being "a friend to the friendless". She wears everything she does with a badge, even if it's not good. Like going to jail, being in a mental institution, or leaving her kids. She tries to make it sound like an amazing experience for her to have. 

She has friends upon friends who are some of the lowest individuals you can think of. Thieves, drunks, druggies, etc. She helps them anyway. She considers herself their friend.

I never saw it that way. I just laid in my room, quietly cried and blasted music with a million candles lit. I read books I personally bought, like Vampire Diaries or Wolf at the Door. I loved Twilight, I'm not ashamed of it. It was an escape, especially with vampires.

One day, I received a gift from an ex-boyfriend: a pentacle necklace. I thought it was beautiful. I didn't have an association with the symbol, I just thought it was gorgeous.

I wore it everyday. My grandmother saw it, called me a demon lover and possessed, and my mother had me throw away all the books I bought. Over sixty. Twilight was spared because I was letting someone borrow them at the time and I told my mother I'd give them to him. His dog tore them to pieces. 

Now, even though my family doesn't talk about and tends to forget negative things, if it's something bad that they don't like they'll never forget. Like me getting that necklace.

In December of 2015 I got married. We didn't have the money for a big ceremony, but we did our best. Bought a cake, made reservations for 15 people at a local Chinese place, and had a handfastening ceremony in the park. I made my dress from red velvet and leftover white fur from a Christmas show I was working on in college. My husband wore his interview clothes and a new cardigan. It was perfect for us.

Now, my husband wanted us to get married in winter. He hates the heat and I love the cooler time of year anyway. He chose December 21st for the first day of winter. Coincidentally that's also the winter solstice.

I got call after call, even the morning of the wedding, from my grandmother and mother about how I was being sneakily Pagan behind their back. They tried to back out of coming a good dozen times, but showed up anyway. They were the only ones from my side that did, along with my sister and my cousins under the age of seven.

I won't go into details, but my mother pretty much ruined my wedding day for my husband. I knew something bad was going to happen; I even asked my tarot cards the night before how it would go. It didn't end well.

They didnt know it, but the week before my husband and I found out we were pregnant with our daughter. I sent a letter to my mom, tried clearing the air, but before the baby was even mentioned I was pretty much disowned.

However, now that my daughter's here, my family felt a sense of entitlement. They wanted to see her. Everyone does when there's a baby. But dealing with birth and postpartum issues, I didn't want that.

So I decided a few weeks ago to call my mother and explain that I wasn't comfortable with the demanding nature of everything around my daughter. I'm still not. But she's my daughter, my decision.

She understood that, in her talking-over-me way.

Then I decided now was the time to tell her about my tarot business.

This is why: we're moving back up to where she lives soon. With how nosy everyone is, they were going to find out anyway. It's better to give a warning to avoid bigger issues down the line.

Plus my mother has a track record with hiding things like this from my grandmother. You know, to help me out and cause less drama. She'd do the same thing here, right?

Wrong.

She called me a demon, again. Didn't understand why I wanted to tell her about my business, about my spirituality. The same woman who says she'll always be there for my daughter in one sentence and then demonizes me, literally, in the next. And then she brought up my wedding day, saying I lied about getting married on the first day of winter. 

How am I supposed to take that? I'm expected to lay down, agree, say I'm sorry, and forget about it. I'm expected to let her berate me and then demand to be near my child. I'm expected to agree to being a liar when I'm not.

So I cut her off. Her and everyone else.

I've dealt with the abuse my entire life. I've dealt with the toxicity my entire life. But this conversation, this hypocrisy, is not happening to my child. I don't want her to feel support and love and then complete dismissal from a family that's been there her whole life. 

Not ever.

I wanted to share this because it's a constant conversation in the magical community about whether to stay quiet about your practice or expose it. 

I do agree with some teachings; that you need to be like the Earth; silent and speaking when it's necessary.

I agree with keeping your craft from those who would cause harm or problems.

But I also believe in putting your foot down and nipping problems in the bud.

Should I have said anything? I think so. It was going to happen sooner or later.

I was tired of the constant battle over child care and if my business really matters and when I was going to make something of myself.

I was tired of not feeling any support.

I was tired of being told I was loved by the people who said they only cared about my baby.

I was tired of my husband being excluded from everything, and in turn me.

I was tired of being seen as less than a person by the people who raised me.

And I was tired of constantly being told, "You can always go to the Kingdom Hall".

No. I can't. And I won't.

I took some to sit down and talk with Karyn from The Lost Lemurian about my experience with coming out of the broom closet.

We also talked about how difficult it is to have an ongoing practice while living at home with religious restriction.

Take a look at our conversation here; lots of tips and tricks are given for practicing in everyday subtle ways.

--

Bit of a personal post today, but I hope I was able to help you in some way. Talking about your spirituality is such a sensitive topic. I just wanted to be open and honest with you guys about my own.

I also want to say if you guys ever need someone to rant to about things like this, feel free to email me. I'll listen. I'll help in any way I can. No matter what you believe, I promise that.

[risalei-nur]

TAFSIR: Risale-i Nur: The Rays Collection:The Fourteenth Ray.Part56

                       The Addendum to the Sixteenth Letter

                                                     In His Name!

                       There is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.

Without reason ‘the worldly’ became suspicious of a powerless stranger like myself, and imagining me to have the power of thousands of people, put me under numerous restrictions. They did not give permission for me to stay one or two nights in Bedre, a district of Barla, or on one of the mountains of Barla. I heard that they say:

“Said has power equal to that of fifty thousand soldiers, we cannot therefore set him free.”

So I say:

You, unhappy people, whose view is restricted to this world! How is it that you do not know the matters of the world, despite working for the world with all your strength, and govern it like lunatics? If it is my person you fear, it is not fifty thousand soldiers, one soldier even could do more than me. That is, he could be posted at the door of my room and tell me: “You can’t go out!”

But if it is my profession and my being herald of the Qur’an and the moral strength of belief that you fear, then you are wrong, it is not fifty thousand soldiers, you should be aware that in respect of my profession I have the strength of fifty million! For through the strength of the All-Wise Qur’an, I challenge all Europe including your irreligious people. Through the lights of belief I have published, I have razed the sturdy bastions they call the physical sciences and Nature. I have cast down lower than animals their greatest irreligious philosophers. If all Europe was to gather, of which your irreligious people are a part, through God’s assistance, they could not make me recant a single matter of that way of mine. God willing, they could not defeat me....

Since the matter is thus, I do not interfere in your world, so don’t you interfere in my hereafter! If you do, if it will be of no avail.

What is determined by God cannot be turned by force; 

A flame that if lit by God, cannot be extinguished by puffing. 

‘The worldly’ are exceptionally and excessively suspicious of me; quite simply, they are frightened of me. Imagining things non-existent in me, which even if they were existent would not constitute a political crime and could not be the cause of accusation, like being a shaykh, or of significant rank or family, or being a tribal leader, and influential, and having numerous followers, or meeting with people from my native region, or being connected with the affairs of the world, or even entering politics, or even the opposition; imagining these things in me, they have been carried away by groundless fears. At a time even that they are discussing pardoning those in prison and outside, that is, those that according to them cannot be pardoned, they have quite simply barred me from everything. A bad and ephemeral person wrote the following good and enduring words:

If tyranny has cannon, shot, and forts, 

Right has an untwistable arm, a constant face.

And I say:

If the worldly have rule, power, and strength,

Through the Qur’an’s effulgence, its servant

Has unfaltering knowledge, an unsilenceable voice;

He has an unerring heart, an unquenchable light.

Many friends, as well as a military commander under whose surveillance I was, repeatedly asked:

“Why don’t you apply for the release papers and put forward a petition?”

T h e A n s w e r : I do not apply and I cannot apply for five or six reasons:

The First: I did not interfere in ‘the worldly’s’ world so that I should have been convicted and apply to them. I was convicted by Divine Determining; my faults are before it, and I apply to it. 

The Second: I believe and have certain knowledge that this world is a swiftly changing guest-house. Therefore, it is not the true homeland and everywhere is the same. Since I am not going to remain permanently in my homeland, it is pointless to struggle for it; it is not worth going there. Since everywhere is a guest-house, if the mercy of the guest-house’s Owner befriends one, everyone is a friend and everywhere familiar. Whereas if it does not befriend one, everywhere is a load on the heart and everyone hostile. 

The Third: Application is made within the framework of the law. But the way I have been treated these six years has been arbitrary and outside the law. The Exiles’ Law was not applied to me. They looked on me as though I had been stripped of all the rights of civilization and even of all worldly rights. To apply in the name of the law to those whose dealings with me have been thus outside the law is meaningless. 

The Fourth: This year, the local official applied in my name for me to stay for a few days in the village of Bedre, which is a sort of district of Barla, for a change of air. How can those who reject such an unimportant need of mine be applied to? If they are applied to, it would be a futile and degrading abasement.

The Fifth: To claim a right before those who claim a wrong to be right, and to apply to them, is a wrong. It is disrespectful towards right. I do not want to perpetrate such a wrong and show disrespect for right. And that is that. 

The Sixth: The distress and difficulty ‘the worldly’ have caused me has not been due to politics, because they know I do not meddle in politics and flee from it. Rather, knowingly or unknowingly, they torment me on account of aggressive atheism because I am bound to religion. In which case, to apply to them infers regretting religion and flattering the cause of aggressive atheism. Moreover, Divine Determining, which is just, would punish me through their tyrannical hand on my applying to them and having recourse to them, for they oppress me because of my being bound to religion. As for Divine Determining, from time to time it represses me due to my hypocrisy before ‘the worldly’ because of my deficiency in religion and in sincerity. Since this is so, for the time being I cannot be saved from this distress. If I apply to the worldly, Divine Determining would say:

“Hypocrite! Pay the penalty for applying!”

And if I do not apply, ‘the worldly’ say:

“You don’t recognize us, go on suffering difficulties!”

The Seventh Reason: It is well-known that an official’s duty is to give harmful individuals no opportunity to cause harm and to assist those who are beneficial. Whereas the official who took me into custody approached me, an elderly guest at the door of the grave, when I was expounding a subtle aspect of belief contained in

There is no god but God

as though I was perpetrating some misdemeanour, although he had not been to me for a long time previously. He caused the sincere unfortunate who was listening to be deprived, and me to be angry. There were certain people here, and he attached no importance to them. Then when they acted discourteously in a way that would poison the life of the village, he started to be gracious and appreciative towards them. Furthermore, it is well-known that someone in prison who has committed a hundred crimes can meet with the person who supervises him whether the official be of high or low rank. But in this last year, although two important people in the national government charged with supervising me have passed by my house several times, they have absolutely neither met with me nor asked after my condition. At first I supposed that they did not come near to me due to enmity, then it became clear that it was due to their fearful suspicions; they were fleeing from me as though I was going to gobble them up. Thus, to recognize a government whose members and officials are like those men and have recourse to it and apply to it, is not sensible, but a futile abasement. If it had been the Old Said, he would have said, like ‘Antara:

The very water of life becomes Hell through abasement,

Whereas Hell with dignity becomes a place of pride.

The Old Said no longer exists, and the New Said considers it meaningless to talk with ‘the worldly’. Let their world be the end of them! They can do what they like. He is silent, saying, we shall be judged together with them at the Last Judgement.

The Eighth Reason for my not applying: According to the rule, “The result of illicit love is merciless torment,” Divine Determining, which is just, torments me through the tyrannous hand of ‘the worldly’ because I incline towards them, since they are not worthy of it. Saying, I deserve this torment, I am silent. For in the Great War I fought and strove as a Commander of a volunteer regiment. Applauded by the Commander-in-Chief of the army and Enver Pasha, I sacrificed my valuable students and friends. I was wounded and taken prisoner. Returning from captivity, I cast myself into danger through works like The Seven Steps, aiming them at the heads of the British, who had occupied Istanbul. I assisted those who hold me without reason in this torment and captivity. As for them, they punish me in this way for that help. Those friends here cause me in three months the hardship and distress I suffered in three years as a prisoner-of-war in Russia. And the Russians did not prevent me from giving religious instruction, although they regarded me as a Kurdish Militia Commander, a cruel man who had slaughtered Cossacks and prisoners. I used to instruct the great majority of my ninety fellow officer prisoners. One time, the Russian commander came and listened. Because he did not know Turkish, he thought it was political instruction, and put a stop to it. Then later he gave permission. Also, in the same barracks, we made a room into a mosque, and I used to lead the prayers. They did not interfere at all. They did not prevent me from mixing, or from communicating, with the others. Whereas my friends here, my fellow citizens and co-religionists and those for whose benefits in the form of religious belief I have struggled, have held me in a tortuous captivity not for three years, but for six, for absolutely no reason and although they know I have severed all my relations with the world. They have prevented me mixing with others. They have prevented me from giving religious instruction, despite my having a certificate, and even from giving private instruction in my room. They have prevented me from communicating with others. They have even barred me from the mosque which I repaired and where I acted as prayer-leader for four years, although I had the necessary certificate. And now, to deprive me of the merit of performing the prayers in congregation, they do not accept me as prayer-leader even for three private individuals, my permanent congregation and brothers of the hereafter.

Furthermore, if, although I do not want it, someone is to call me good, the official who holds me in surveillance is jealous and angry. Thinking he will destroy my influence, he entirely unscrupulously takes precautions, and pesters me in order to curry favour with his superiors.

To whom can someone in such a position have recourse other than God Almighty? If the judge is also the claimant, of course he cannot complain to him. Come on, you say! What can we say to this? You say what you like, I say this: there are many dissemblers among these friends of mine. A dissembler is worse than an unbeliever. For that reason they make me suffer what the infidel Russian did not make me suffer.

You unfortunates, what have I done to you and what I am doing? I am trying to save your belief and am serving your eternal happiness! It means that my service is not sincere and purely for God’s sake so that it has the reverse effect. In return, you torment me at every opportunity. For sure, we shall meet at the Last Judgement. I say:

God is enough for us and the best of protectors. (3:173)

The best of lords and the best of helpers. (8:40)

The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!

S a i d N u r s I 

[ruffoverthinksthings]

There's something I have to ask you that has some of its roots far before Descendants, but seriously....wtf is up with Frollo?! I'm interested in his character because of his deep complexities for a Disney Villian (never mind the Hugo novel), but why cant he get a grip on raising children and building a healthy family? Even as a product of the medieval era , that can't be an excuse for his dysfunctional relationships with others(progressive people like Esmeralda and Phoebus existed back then 1/2

Mymain question to you is ,what do you think it is about him that cantsee the pain he causes to claudine/ not esme and the entire HONDcast? What ever happened to him in his childhood ( nature vsnurture), that makes him nearly impossible to reach past his veil ofdarkness. Even in his attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of hisLord, with Claudine, is he forever delusional? Can he change in thisuniverse and what would it take? 2/2

There’sthree key concepts that explain why Frollo still can’t redeemhimself, see the pain, the suffering, the wrongdoing he’s causingin the name of God and his ideas of what is “Good.” These are:

CognitiveDissonance

TheMyth of Redemptive Violence by Walter Wink, and

SexualSuppression in the Catholic Church, and the ideas of ReligiousLeaders being beyond the common man

Allof these are actually easily explainable using the lyrics ofHellfire:

BeataMariaYou know I am a righteous manOf my virtue I amjustly proud

BeataMariaYou know I'm so much purer thanThe common, vulgar,weak, licentious crowd

Thentell me, MariaWhy I see her dancing thereWhy hersmold'ring eyes still scorch my soulI feel her, I seeherThe sun caught in her raven hairIs blazing in me outof all control

Here,we see what Frollo thinks of himself: a saint among sinners, a man ofstrong faith in a land of unbelievers, someone who does Good whereasthe rest fall into Temptation and Sin.

Likemajority of the leaders of the Catholic Church, and especiallybecause it’s in the Medieval Era, he is seen as someone who isinherently above his fellow man, better, purer, more virtuous, whichis why he deserves to hold his position, and use all the power andinfluence that affords him.

Butthen, Esmeralda comes along, he is tempted by her beauty, and herealizes that he is not as invulnerable and incorruptible as hethought he was.

Unfortunatelyfor all of us, he refuses to take responsibility for it.

It'snot my faultI'm not to blameIt is the gypsy girlThewitch who sent this flameIt's not my faultIf in God'splanHe made the devil so muchStronger than a man

Here,he refuses to believe that there’s any fault in him, that he isstill prone to temptation despite his beliefs; rather, he engages inwhat is called “Scapegoating,” putting all the blame inEsmeralda, going so far as to irrationally cast her as some wickedenchantress with powers that he doesn’t stand a chance ofresisting, than just a woman he is fully capable of getting over.

However,that involves him admitting that he was wrong about his belief thathe is incorruptible and “holier than thou,” and he wants toprotect that idea, more than he actually wants to be it, simplybecause it’s less distressing for him.

Thisis called Cognitive Dissonance, the stress someone experiencesfrom having a belief or more than directly oppose their actions andbehaviours.

Otherexamples of Cognitive Dissonance are:

Someonewho believes themselves a healthy person despite having a pack-a-daycigarette habit;

Someonewho buys a product or a service and it doesn’t turn out nearly asgood as they thought it would, so they make all manner of excuses andjustifications to make it better (in their minds); and

Someonewho stays in a relationship that has long past its expiration date,because they don’t believe themselves to be someone who gets it“wrong” with something as important as romantic relationships.

Peoplesuffering from cognitive dissonance often find ways to “spin”things and defend their original beliefs, rather than reevaluate whatthey thought was true and their identity. Rationality, logic, orconsistency ceases to matter to them; sparing themselves from thedistress that they were wrong or are acting against their beliefstakes priority above everything else.

Withthe above examples:

Thesmoker convinces themselves that cigarette smoking isn’t reallythat bad for their health (it’s actually worse);

Thatthe price, the manufacturer, or some other quality of the product orservice automatically makes it better despite the reality of it, likewith the exploding Samsung phones incident, and people refusing toreturn them in spite of the danger to themselves and everyone else;and

Thatthey can still salvage the relationship, that all the problems andissues are not nearly as bad as they are, and that they simply haveto try harder.

WithFrollo, he chooses the Myth of Redemptive Violence.

Inits essence, it’s “Good Vs Evil,” “The Final Clash,” theBook of Revelations where the forces of the Righteous do battle withthe Wicked, purging all that is unholy and ushering in a new, betterworld, or bringing all those deserving into heaven.

It’sinteresting because you see this constantly with all of Disney’sfilms with a classic “Villain” antagonist: there’s PrincePhilip slaying Maleficent; Tiana and Naveen outsmarting Dr. Facillierand letting his Friends from the Other Side do their thing; andTarzan doing battle with Clayton.

Theymay or may not have a direct hand in bringing about theirdoom—Clayton accidentally hung himself because of his refusal toaccept Tarzan’s help, for example—but it’s always VERY clear tothe audience that A) the protagonists are “good” people, B) theantagonists are “evil” people, and C) there is no redeeming the“villains,” there’s only killing, jailing, or trapping them inan enchanted lamp, because they will never turn to good.

Asstated above, Frollo believes himself to be a righteous man, theepitome of goodness, the Holy Servant of God, and people that don’tfit into his worldview are declared “Wicked” and must beslain. He has killed numerous gypsies, has been responsiblefor the death and/or suffering of numerous innocent civilians, andalmost drowned Quasimodo in a well, if it weren’t for the ArchDeacon warning him of his hypocrisy.

Inhis views, there is no salvation, no forgiveness of the sinner, noramending for your wicked ways—there is only judgment, and yoursentence is death.

Protectme, MariaDon't let the siren cast her spellDon't let herfire sear my flesh and boneDestroy EsmeraldaAnd let hertaste the fires of Hell!Or else let her be mine and mine alone

Here,Frollo shows just how extreme and devoid of nuance his sense ofmorality is—either you live, or you die. He also shows more of hisCognitive Dissonance and Redemptive Violence once more, where hepleads that—against the customs and the traditions of the church,and the scandal that would erupt— Esmeralda be “given” to him.

Thisis especially poignant as the Catholic Church has a massive,well-known history of suppressing sexuality and policing the sexualbehaviour of their followers and especially their ordained leaders,usually to disastrous results.

Insteadof giving them a chance to it in healthy ways, or to treat havingsexual urges as a natural thing, the Catholic church paints it asweakness, a flaw in you, a sign that you have failed and that you areshameful, awful, and a sinner for having them in the first place.

“Shaming”someone is the BEST way to get someone to do the thing you’reshaming them for—as you cut their self-esteem, and make thembelieve that they are weak and deficit in some manner, the morelikely they will be to do the vice or the crime because they want tofeel better, and the more likely they will accept that they truly AREbeyond saving, that there’s no hope for salvation, so fuck it,let’s do the thing.

Itgets even worse in the ending of Hellfire:

HellfireDarkfireNow gypsy, it's your turnChoose me orYourpyreBe mine or you will burnGod have mercy on herGodhave mercy on meBut she will be mineOr she will burn!

Here,Frollo shows the depths of his hypocrisy and the amazing mentalacrobatics he’s performing, saying “God have mercy” whilstpromising the opposite of mercy: death, or enslavement.

Here,Frollo shows that he’s no longer following the doctrines, the laws,or the traditions of the church, what God decreed or Jesus relayed tohis followers.

Here,Frollo shows that all he truly follows is what he believes to beRight—what is Right for him.

Iassumed that this behaviour follows him onto the Isle, where he has avery warped sense of religious morality that is really just hisselfish desires, being justified in his eyes by tacking the name ofGod onto it, much like Richard “Rick” Ratcliffe.

Whycan’t he get a grip on a loving marriage, relating in healthymanners to people, and building a loving family life for Claudine?

Because,like the rest of the Villains, he wasn’t marrying and having kidsfor unselfish reasons, he was using his ex-wife Salome to satisfy hissexual needs, is still using Claudine as a means to fulfillhis broken dreams and ambitions, and is unconsciously using them bothto serve himself first and foremost.

Thesexuality that was Frollo’s downfall has not disappeared—it’sstill there, and I’d argue it’s actually stronger consideringthe constant state of stress and despair in the Isle that forcespeople to resort to their basest instincts, and engage in whateverwill give them some measure of relief.

However,instead of going the healthy route of acknowledging that he isflawed, and that he should return to attempting celibacy in spite oftemptation, Frollo merely twists his lustful desires into somethingthat would be acceptable in his beliefs, and that of hiscongregation.

Howdoes he achieve this? Marriage, with all the intercourse for thepurpose of reproduction, and reproduction only.

I’dimagine that, after becoming the only Catholicreligious leader alive or not yet renouncing his faith, and thedeplorable state of everything and the VKsbeing raised, he sees himselfas some kind of New Adam,meant to be the progenitor of anew race of “Good, Christian People” who would eventually becomethe inheritors of this wretched hell, take it away from the hands ofthe Demon Queen that rules it (Maleficent), and rebirth it as aparadise.

Beforeyou ask, yes, he could be the CELIBATE steward of this new world,taking care of his non-ordained congregation’s children, but thatwouldn’t let him satisfy his sexual needs, and is thus not anoption in his mind.

Andbefore you ask why he doesn’t get flack about this, all of thepeople on the Isle are criminals, and if you weren’t living in thedeplorable conditions they were BGU, you learn to loosen yourstandards right quick here.

That,and they can be manipulated easily and lead to believe that undercertain circumstances, marriage and sexual intercourse with Judgesare possible—a lot of these people can’t read, and have noconcept of critical thinking.

Whyis he like this with Claudine, raising her up to be an ideal ratherthan a person?

Becausehe know he’s old, he knows he’s weak, and he’s essentiallytrapped in his church and a small area around it in Temple Way—he’sunable to bring the fight to the Islanders (not including hiscongregation, because they’re obviously theexception), be it ideologically or especially physically, so he hasto raise an army to do it for him.

Claudineis not just his daughter to him, or his Flock—she is a Messiahfigure to them, the “child that will lead them” as the actualJesus Christ was, the true successor to Frollo’s church when heinevitably passes away.

Sowhenever she starts to deviate from his ideals (i.e. growing up to beher own person, independent of her father’s desires), he doesn’tsee it as cruel and manipulative to mess with her emotions likethis—he sees himself as a sculptor making sure that this livingclay does not end up malformed, that she is completely, absolutelyperfect in every waypossible.

I’dalso be remiss not to mention that poor nutrition, dementia, and oldage have taken a serious tollon him.

Ishis being a product of the Medieval Era an excuse for hisdysfunctional socialinteractions?

Itis, actually!

Phoebusand Esmeralda are shown to be progressives in the movie, but theproblem is, they’re still the exception,not the rule; the world ofFrance in 1482 is nowhere NEAR the level of multiculturalism anddiversity we see today.

Mostpeople of that erawill never even leave the towns they live in, let alone be able tohave the means to travel vast continents and entire oceans to meetpeople unlike themselves—and as European Spice Expeditions haveshown, the interaction is more likely to be lethalto the natives than friendly, let alone romantic.

There’salso the fact that if a foreigner lives in France, it’s usuallyfrom a slave trade of some sort or as part of a roving band of apersecuted minority, like Esmeralda and the rest of the Romanipeople.

Thetimes they live in are very xenophobic, with very black and whitemorality—there are only sinners and the faithful, and again, withFrollo, there is no room for outsiders like Esmeralda and the Romanipeople, whom he believes only deserve death.

Andagain, there’s also the fact that Frollo is a Judge, and alongsidehis religion and his authority, believes himself to be inherentlyabove and better than people, and that he cannot do anything wrongbecause he is of that high position, as only a “Good” person canhold that office.

Tohave a wicked, sinful man capable of cruelty and madness would beparadoxical, and would absolutely never happen! (/sarcasm)

Thisis why he can’t see the pain and the suffering he inflicts onothers with his actions—he simply believes himself to be BEYOND andincapable of doingevil.

Withthe question of nature and nurture, I won’t headcanon aboutFrollo’s childhood, since the Nurture has the lion’s share ofblame here.

He’svery old, he’s obviously a very senior member of the church, andhas a lot of respect—he has spent almost all of his life beingtreated as higher and better than his fellow man, he has massivepower other people, and the beliefs of his church (and consequently,himself) is that he is a reliable, infallible authority for what is“Good” and what is “Evil.”

Andas the saying goes, power corrupts.

Mostpeople behave in fear of some higher authority, be they the police,their parents, or that of your superior at work. Unfortunately forall of us, Frollo only really fears two people: the Arch-Deacon, andGod.

Thewords of the “commoners” matter not to him. Maleficent has longknown that these people are beyond reason or are not worth it, sodoesn’t exercise her authority. And even within hiscongregation—more of a cult, at this point, really—dissent isimmediately silenced, murmurs that “Father Frollo” might not beas virtuous and holy as they think he is shushed like a motherreprimanding her child during Sunday mass.

Toend this rather long, lengthy tirade, can he ever break free of thedelusion, and can he truly change his ways?

Realistically,no, and no.

Unlikeactual dogs, you can’t teach Frollo new tricks, especially onesthat contradict his worldview, and he’s already shown time andagain that he won’t accept any objective evidence that he’swrong—every action of his is justified to him, and that subjectivedecision is what makes it “Right.”

Itdoesn’t help that, as I’ve said in other headcanons and mentionedabove, the people of the Isle of the Lost tend to be the ones whohave lost all hope, and are desperately clinging onto whatever it isthey can for comfort.

Ifyou bring him to Auradon, and have him meet up with the (much sanerand reasonable, but not entirely) congregations of Auradon, it’dlikely end in shouting and claims of heresy and going against God.

Havingyour everything pulled out from under you and getting throwninto the great big unknown is terrifying and painful.

Andfor many people, they’d rather be wrong and not realize it, thansuffer that—thus, Cognitive dissonance, and belief in RedemptiveViolence, with both exacerbated by the Catholic Church’s stance on“deviant” sexual behaviour.