#secularization post-Enlightenment

[in-sightpublishing]

Dr. Marty Shoemaker on Spiritual Care in Humanist Chaplaincy

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/09/08 Dr. Martin “Marty” Shoemaker is a trained clinical psychologist and, currently, a Humanist Chaplain at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Multifaith Centre) and Vancouver General Hospital (August, 2014-Present). Previously, he worked as a psychologist and instructor in…

[germiyahu]

There's such an intricate interplay between antisemitism and islamophobia from the slacktivist left. For every reason they can think of to delegitimize the Jewish People's connection to Eretz Yisrael, it's propped up by some Noble Savage presumptions about Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims.

Since Jews in America are seen as a model minority, seen as having accessed whiteness and privilege, and "antisemitism" is at worst having to explain what Hanukah is to clueless Christians, the Left is confused as to exactly why Jews care about Jerusalem and the Land of Israel so much. Shouldn't they be above such petty and barbaric and outdated concerns such as a dusty old book from 2,000 years ago?

They should be more enlightened than that. They're all rich suburban secular Democrats. They're the leftist religion, according to bloggers on this very platform. There is no room for Judaism to be a religion, there's no acknowledgment of ancient customs, rituals, and the deep mysticism that's still alive and well in the Jewish community. There's no attempt to understand Jewish history and culture and why a group of people you think shares your vaguely atheistic vaguely liberal (and not in the Tankie sense) vaguely smug detached Western worldview... is more complex and unique than that.

Jews should be happy living in Diaspora because clearly the problem of antisemitism is fixed now, and never really was a problem in America. There must be something sinister behind a desire to reestablish a country by and for Jews. There must be something colonial, oppressive, European and White about it. Because why else would they do it? They have it good here. And no we won't acknowledge where Israelis primarily descend from because that requires us to do research and have a shred of nuance and integrity when it comes to Jews. No thanks!

A lot of the modern left is nonconsensually dragging Jews kicking and screaming from their own unique demographic toward the banal Norm. To themselves. But not totally. See they think they relate to Jews and vice versa, but not enough that when they think Jews should "know better," or haven't "learned their lesson," from the Holocaust, it engenders a deep seeded disgust and mistrust and rage that's not felt for actually privileged mainstream dominant society.

Conversely, the slacktivist Left sees Arabs as savages. Silly desert people who eat sand and worship a big black cube and cover every inch of their bodies for some reason. How quaint! When the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim cause explains that Jerusalem is important to them, the White Western Leftist nods sagely and says "Your culture is so valid queen," because they don't care. They just accept that Muslim society would be willing to fight over an ancient city proscribed as holy in dusty old tomes. Because that fits the narrative already surrounding Muslims.

They're seen as backwards, but the Left, reacting to their conservative parents and the Bush era, see "Muslims are backwards," and says not "No actually they're modern groups of people with practical geopolitical goals," but instead "Yeah and that makes them better than us!" Especially with this new crop of baby Leftists who think Islamo-Fascist "Feudalism" or whatever the best term would be, is aspirational or at least harmless... because it's not capitalism :)

So Muslims are infantilized and condescended to because the Western Leftist is still just as racist as their parents, but they feel guilty about their parents without considering their contribution to White Supremacy and the Post Bush surveillance state. And all the while Jews are reprimanded and held to an impossible standard because the Western Leftist, again, rejects their conservative parents' philosemitism, and decides that Jews Must be Punished when they step off the pedestal that Suffering the Shoah placed them on.

Jews should be above nationalism, Jews should know that demurely suffering pogroms and ethnic cleansing and genocide and general inequity and humiliation will earn them their divine reward in the end. Muslims should not be above nationalism, because they're not capable of being above it, and can't we throw them a bone, after all Obama was the worst president in history because of the Drone War and let's not mention George W Bush at all :0

Hot take, but I believe this is an essential underpinning of where the average disaffected White millennial/zoomer Leftist's head is at with regard to Israel and Palestine. They won't acknowledge it of course, but I can generally see through things like this.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

thank you so much for that excellent chani post. i've seen some annoying takes on twitter about how not making her totally devoted and subservient to paul makes her 'unlikeable' and i'm like. buddy. i think that speaks more to how you see women. than anything about her. this chani is very dynamic and interesting to me.

i'll be honest and say i've not read the books. this is me speaking from what i've seen of summaries, but i think giving her a real cause to fight for yet also genuinely loving paul gives her an interesting struggle, and also plays into how the portrayal of the fremen (seems to me to be) more diverse and nuanced. as in, the fremen themselves seem to have more of a push-and-pull to them. the clarification of how different fremen believe differently (the south being more fundamentalist) is a very important thing to include in a movie where you can run into the danger of saying that all adherents to a foreign, islam-adjacent (in coding) religion are all fundamentalists. that can (in less nuanced hands) be a pretty irresponsible thing. so showing that there's also more secular/pragmatic/less dogmatic sectors of the culture seems a pretty good counterweight.

so yeah. this is how i processed it as a movie-goer. and having chani represent that aspect (believing in people over prophecy, action over religion) and having stilgar as the humanized face of the southern peoples (showing that yknow, regardless of being fundamenist beliefs, theyre still PEOPLE with the capacity for love, friendship, honor) makes total logical sense. you're not just "telling" us that there's different aspects to fremen culture, you're SHOWING us by showing different characters who represent those aspects, without demonizing either or turning either into a one-note stereotype.

Thank you! I'm not someone who was a long-term fan of the books before the movie came out (I tried reading Dune as a teenager when I was reading a lot of classic sci-fi but found it too boring) but I did read Dune and Dune Messiah after the first movie came out, both because I wanted to know what happened next and because I wanted to have an opinion on how the movies worked as adaptations.

(book and movie spoilers below and also I basically ended up writing a whole essay in response to this)

My single biggest frustration with the book is that after they arrive at Sietch Tabr and Jessica drinks the Water of Life and becomes Reverend Mother...the book up and skips two years of the story and when we next see Paul he's already got Fremen followers who are ready to die for him and he's in an established relationship with Chani. Oh I was SO MAD when I got to this part. I was like FRANK. FRANK!!!! Did you seriously just skip two years of the most interesting part of your own story???

The thing is, even though I know that Frank Herbert's intention was to write a critique of the idea that oppressed people need an enlightened external (white) savior to liberate them...if you don't provide an alternate explanation for what's happening then you end up falling into some Orientalist tropes anyway. And because, in the book, we don't see the process of how your average background fedaykin comes to trust Paul as a military and political leader, there is nothing in the text to counter the idea that the Fremen are a bunch of unquestioning religious fanatics easily swayed to do violence by belief in a prophecy.

My second biggest frustration with the book is that we're given no reason at all why Chani would fall in love with Paul. While she has some memorable scenes, she doesn't have a lot to do as a character in the book, and she's missing from a whole chunk of the end...because she's in the south...because she and Paul have a baby, Leto II, who's then killed off-page when the sardaukar attack the south. (I'm honestly really glad they cut this from the film, because it never seemed to be given the narrative weight it deserved in the book.)

So you can imagine how happy I was when the Villeneuve movies figured out how to address both these frustrations by tying them together. The fedaykin don't just blindly accept Paul because of some prophecy. They come to trust him because he proves himself as a fighter, and because he starts out from a place of genuine solidarity and humility--which it is possible for him to do because he has no structural power over them at that point. And Chani falls in love with him for the same reason, in that heady environment of fighting side by side for a political cause, and maybe for the first time in a while starting to believe that you can win.

I think the Villeneuve movies improve a lot on what's in the book in terms of how the Fremen are portrayed...when we're with the fedaykin and/or Chani and Stilgar. There we see political debates and discussion and the fact that not all the Fremen think the same way. And we also see little humanizing moments of folks just hanging out, celebrating after a victory in battle and just shooting the shit and being friends.

I do wish the movie had extended this to more parts of Fremen society. If there's one thing I could have added, it would be seeing more of daily life in Sietch Tabr. It makes sense that when we're seeing things from Jessica's POV, she is more distant from and suspicious of the Fremen, seeing them as a force to be manipulated, but I wish we had even one or two scenes of people just being people in the sietch. It felt kind of weirdly empty and not particularly lived-in as a place, and I think they could've easily countered this, with scenes from Chani, Stilgar or Paul's POV, and that would have made it hit even harder when the sietch is attacked.

If there were two things I could have added, I wanted more exploration of the people of the south. Why are they more fundamentalist than the Fremen who live in the north? (We get one line about how "nothing can survive [in the south] without faith" but I wanted more than that.) While I think the movie did a fantastic job of humanizing and differentiating the Fremen we see around Paul, when we get to the south it does backslide a little into "undifferentiated mass of fanatics." Surely the people of the south also have some diversity of political views.

I think there are some interesting threads they could have pulled on in terms of how proximity to direct colonial violence shapes people's ideology. Sietch Tabr is one of the closest Fremen communities to Arrakeen, the seat of colonial control. They have probably had to mount some kind of armed resistance for generations just to keep from being wiped out. I can see that producing skepticism of the prophecy ("well I can't sit around waiting for a messiah but I do have this rocket launcher") as well as resentment at the idea of someone swooping in and taking credit for a struggle that you've put your life on the line for, and probably a lot of people you know have died for. There seem to be some generational differences, too, where young people of Chani's generation put less stock in the prophecy, while the true believers are mostly older. I can see faith in the prophecy coming out of despair--when you've been fighting for decades with no change, maybe you draw the conclusion that only an outside power coming to your aid will make a difference. While the people of the south are still under colonial rule, maybe being generally outside the reach of direct Harkonnen violence (the Harkonnens don't even know they're there) makes the concepts of both oppression and liberation feel more abstract and more receptive to being filled in with Bene Gesserit mysticism. It seems absurd to want more from a movie that's nearly three hours long already...but I wanted more of this.

Still, I do think they managed to improve on a lot of things that frustrated me or are simply dated about the book, while keeping the political thriller/war drama/epic tragedy elements that I think are the heart of the story, and in some cases drawing them out more clearly and effectively than the book did. The best kind of book-to-film adaptation imo is one that has a strong point of view in terms of what the story is About, on a large-scale thematic level, and is not afraid to change individual elements of canon in service of telling that story the most effective way possible in a cinematic medium. While there are always things I want more of, I feel like Denis Villeneuve really, really understood the assignment in terms of the overarching themes of the the story and he delivered so fucking well.

[nile-the-empathy-cleric]

Back with some more Italian folk magic thoughts and recommendations

I believe the spirit of my Nonna was reaching out to me recently as I was decluttering in my efforts to spark change in the new year. I went through some boxes in my basement and came across her old chaplet rosary and several holy medals she kept and immediately felt a sense of immense comfort after a stressful week. Her rosary, though beautiful, is a precious and fragile heirloom and while I would love to use it in my day to day practice, I fear it’s too delicate to carry around. So for now, I will put her rosary on my altar and give it a special place.

The chaplet rosary did give me inspiration though. I’ve found in moments of intense anxiety and dysregulation I need an external means of grounding. In college I used to carry around prayer beads and say meditative chants when I was overwhelmed to keep me in the present. I’ve since lost those beads and have reconnected to my folk practice, finding that praying the rosary has a similar effect for me. After rediscovering my Nonna’s chaplet I decided to craft my own 2 decade rosary I could cary with me. Granted, I’m not really Catholic anymore and consider myself mostly secular (though I heavily resonate with animism and ancestor veneration), the rosary feels like more of an emotionally and culturally significant tool for me as opposed to a religious one.

I used sodalite beads for my rosary to help promote emotional balance. As I crafted my rosary I thought about my Nonna and my memories of her, as well as my intention of inner peace, protection, and blessing. As I worked I burned loose rose and mugwort incense to invite out the divine energy of the Madonna as well as increase the power of my intention. It was a very meaningful and personal process, but one I would recommend if you’re so inclined. Since creating this chaplet rosary I’ve carried it with me to work in case I need that external grounding. It’s given me a sense of ease and a deeper connection to my Nonna ( who I miss very much).

I try to remember to post about my reconnecting journey and folk practice every once in a while— though my last post on the topic was 6 months ago. I’ve come across more resources recently that I would highly recommend for others interested in learning about Italian folk magic that were not included in an older post I made. These are more recent publications and are more accessible than some of the academic sources I shared. These first is an academic text but it’s one I thoroughly enjoyed. Italian Witchcraft and Shamanism: The Tradition of Segnature, Indigenous and Trans-Cultural Shamanic Traditions in Italy by Dr. Angela Puca. It’s an enlightening and incredibly well researched read. She also has a YouTube channel where she discusses her work. I highly recommend checking it out.

I’d also like to recommend Della Medicina: The Tradition of Italian-American Folk Healing by Lisa Fazio for my more herbalism and green witchcraft inclined practitioners— though there’s plenty of in depth info beyond herbal remedies. I’d rate this one a 10/10– it’s super thorough and incredibly interesting. It feels like the perfect blend of academic and layman information. I really appreciated this book and it deserves some more love!

[cultureon]

Disneyland is in Every Thought

With this post I want to outline a series of articles divided into 3 parts. In the content of them I want to describe some historical, cultural and social phenomena that, in my opinion, have the most significant impact on the formation of our contemporary. I don’t deny that this selection is relative and reflects my subjective opinion, as well as that I limit myself to the Western European model to consider the historical development.

What happened? According to Walter Benjamin.

The first half of the 20th century. Europe had not yet recovered from the shock of the First World War, although Germany, under the influence of political disorder, had already embarked on the fascist path. 

Walter Benjamin, who had emigrated to France because of the persecution of Jews in Germany, undertook to write one of the most influential essays in the history of art and media  - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". With an avant-garde style influenced by the crisp air of Parian freedom, Benjamin was able to capture the foreshadowing of a technological revolution that transformed social attitudes and cultural space forever. 

Through the transformation of industrial technology, the notion of the “work of art” changed not only its external form but also its semantic context. From the unique print on glass (Daguerreotype) to photographic film, from the unique theatrical performance to the mechanical reproduction of film, cinema and photography have replaced the classical notion of the “original” with the modern notion of the “copy”. 

Benjamin observes:

“With the invention of cinema and photography, the meaning we put into the notion of uniqueness has become irrelevant. It is meaningless to demand originality from something that itself can exist only as a copy." 

Meanwhile, under the pressure of the spirit of the time (Zeitgeist) the concept of “Genius” as of the mediator between spiritual and profound, and the idea of “Intrinsic value of art“ were effectively sent into oblivion without a farewell parade, namely subjected to secularization.

Not without a strained enthusiasm, Walter writes:

“For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual’.

In the process of this turn, art, under the pressure of social transformation, leaves the realm of purely aesthetic relations and becomes a mode of transformation of the perception within the political context of the social dynamic. 

This change in the human-artwork relationship was imbued with hopes for a better future and a change in the course of human history. Hopes that unfortunately were never fulfilled.  Even Waller Benjamin by the irony of the hard fate, fell victim to the Nazi, which, through the glitter of new forms of art reproduction, was covering up a political crime against humanity, i.e. used the very “emancipated art" for its own political purpose -  to propaganda of the regime of national-socialism.

Why did it happen? A first critical assessment from Adorno and Horkheimer

Only 12 years after the publication of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, and 7 years after tragic death of Benjamin, the highly respected founders of the “Frankfurt School“ of critical philosophy - Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their work ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” described the changes of the culture industry based on Hegel's philosophical concept of dialectical unfolding of the history.

In this book Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer compare the new time of mass reproduction with the stage of Enlightenment. Period of the Enlightenment also became a force that changed social relations in the 18-19 centuries. It was centered around the transformation of public education and around the figure of Imanuel Kant, with his project, outlined in the Critique of Pure Reason, namely the victory of the rational over the religious. 

Enlightenment, understood in the widest sense as the advance of thought, has always aimed at liberating human beings from fear and installing them as masters”. 

Under the influence of Enlightenment, human beings for the first time went beyond the mode of identity given to he/she within a social role and developed new self perception. Self-evident dedication to family and conformity to other individuals fell into decline, making way for a sensible individualism that contributed to the rise of culture. This shift often calls - change from the mode of sincerity to the mode of authenticity. 

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, we were witnessing the new twist in identity mode - decline of authenticity. Culture has ceased to be a force for empowering individuality and in fact became an industry that fosters the creation of fake identity based on mass culture. The artist has been downgraded to employee of the business industry, and intellectual property has been reduced to a product of general consumption. 

"Today the order of life allows no room for the ego to draw spiritual or intellectual conclusions. The thought which leads to knowledge is neutralized and used as a mere qualification on specific labor markets and to heighten to commodity value of the personality.”. 

Thus Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, in spite of their aggressive but necessary criticism, legitimize the society of mass consumption as the process of historical necessity that took its place in our recent past. 

The view on culture in the context of emancipation no longer had its sublime naivety of Benjamin hope, but is characterized by a critical view towards validity.

“What we had set out to do was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism”. With these words Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer characterized their book which became a classic example in exposing the sweet glow of the mass consumer society.

The result of fusion and Marcuse's one-dimensional man. 

In 1964, during the golden years of capitalism, Herbert Marcuse published his highly controversial and scandalous book, entitled “One-Dimensional Man”. There, through an insightful form of critical reflection, he delineates from the individual to the collective level of the spiritual, intellectual and cultural phenomena that till today defines our social and political relations. 

These days, 17 years after publication of the “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”, capitalism has thoroughly conquered its place in the Western society and within the pressure on post war Europe and Third World countries, began its mission to make the whole world a better (more profitable) place. 

“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form” - says Marcuse. 

In the content of the book "One Dimensional Man", Marcuse wants to make us realize that the media and entertainment industry has transformed itself into an absolute form of power over society. This became possible through control over human desires. By creating demand for goods that are not necessary but desirable, capitalism, through the media industry and the subtle psychological manipulations, mastered by Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays in the 1930s, has extended its influence over the public opinion. 

The publicly endorsed consumption of mass-produced goods made it possible to replace the pursuit of long-term and tedious goals (e.g., changing the social system through the interaction and cooperation of individuals) with short-term gratification (shopping, smoking, movies) as a form of social control. This new way of life of modern man was supported by an uncriticizable belief in progress as a necessity to which the human world is subjected. Speculating on the philosophical doctrine of Positivism, which asserts that the source of true knowledge is available only through empirical research, the world of technological progress has no longer remained an object of criticism and reflection, but has turned into a self-fulfilling given. 

Marcuse asserts:

“Rationality and productivity guide our life and death. We know that destruction is the price of progress just as death is the price of life, that the prerequisites for satisfaction and joy are renunciation and hard work, that business must go on at all costs, and that alternatives are utopian."

In the conditions of progress as a necessity, Marcuse notes that the tendency to tolerance and the maintenance of diversity in society is implementing only if the generally accepted norms, as the culture of mass consumption, are not criticized, and the realm of socially accepted consumer activity recognized as the best of all possibilities for the existence of society. This ensures that thinking remains flat, one-dimensional and self-preserving. If the new emerging thought does not obey the rule of correlation with the system - it automatically forfeits its privilege of being tolerated and becomes the result of “Savagery” and therefore not subject to review or discussion. "It is obvious that in the realm of Happy Consciousness no place for feelings of guilt, the concerns of conscience have taken over the calculation. When the fate of the whole is at stake, no act is considered a crime except the rejection of the whole or the refusal to defend it" - writes Marcuse. 

However, Marcuse does not leave us without hope. In spite of the one-dimensionality of modern man, he asserts that there is an accessible act of breath of the fresh air that takes place in pure creativity. Which I find still relevant today. Even though it's obvious that with the development of new technologies and social media, this act of pure creativity is becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish. 

And that's what Marcuse also predicted:

“The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents.”

Summarize

During the time spent reading this compilation we drew a historical parallel and learned that the forms of technical enrichment have changed not only the forms of the production of goods, but also the meaning of cultural concepts, of the work of art, the forms of human self-perception and the way of thinking/living of the individual, which to this day are under compulsion to either conform to technical progress or be excluded from social dynamics.

[hero-israel]

What they said.

And I could have put another 4-6 similar messages in here, I can tell what is weighing on peoples' minds. Though we are outnumbered, it is not hard to see through the lies of our enemies. We just need people who will listen to us.

"Every accusation is a confession" was never more true than in claiming JEWS want to kill off ARABS. The briefest review of regional demographics - WHO has actually wiped out WHOM - makes that instantly clear. Mahmoud Abbas said his family fled their home in Safed in 1948 because they were sure the Jews would try to get revenge for Arab massacres in 1929. In 1967 when Israel took the West Bank, Arabs in Hebron were so afraid of reprisals for 1929 that they flew white bedsheets from their windows and piled their weapons outside their front doors.

There is no such thing as a "genocide" that is true for Palestinians but false for white people. And while most of the time, posting about hypocrisy and double standards isn't going to make a real-life change, this is one time where I'd really like people to point it out, to demand answers from those who correctly identify the Alt-Right as lying. We should also request clarification on whether all warfare involving urban bombing is automatically considered genocide (spoiler: it isn't, but this time Jews are involved, aha!).

Desmond Tutu was notorious for insisting Jews forgive the genocide that had actually been committed against them and also that they be constantly condemned and judged for the potential genocide they were always just about to commit. It is not even meant as a statement of fact - just a way to put us in our place. As David Schraub put it:

For thousands of years, for much of the world, part of the cultural patrimony enjoyed by all non-Jews -- spiritual and secular, Church and Mosque, enlightenment and romantic, European and Middle Eastern -- was the unquestionable right to stand superior over Jews. It was that right which the Holocaust took away, or at least called into question; the unthinking faith of knowing you were the more enlightened one, the spiritually purer one, the more rational one, the dispenser of morality rather than the object of it. To be sure, some people were better positioned to enjoy this right than others. And some people arrived onto the scene late in the game, only to discover that part of the bounty they were promised may no longer be on the table. Of course they're aggrieved! The European immigrant who never owned a slave but was at least promised racial superiority is quite resentful when the wages of Whiteness stop being what they once were. Similarly, persons who lived far from the centers of Christian or Muslim power where Jewish subordination was forged are nonetheless well aware of what was supposed to be included in modernity's gift basket. They recognize what they've "lost" as acutely as anyone else.

Every definition of "genocide" rests on intent; you cannot accidentally do it. That's what both the U.N., Genocide Watch, and basic common sense say. The militia going door-to-door to torture and massacre all the children and elderly is genocidal intent. "The missile launcher built into your house just fired at us, we will now destroy it, you have 5 minutes to evacuate" is not.

I have no idea what is coming next in Gaza, how long it will last or how bad it will get. Godforbid, if the death toll gets another zero at the end, it may become impossible to get people to see it as non-genocidal, regardless of what is empirically, definitionally true. But if people are going to cite sources and moral authorities, let them stick with the boundaries they have introduced.

[tuulikki]

A while back you reblogged my post (pisses me off when sci-fi writes religion out of their stories) and I've been turning what you said over in my head since then. Specifically in the past few days, as the version with your addition has been passed around.

What, specifically, DO these authors think they’re writing out of their story?

Ive been trying to find a charitable way to answer this question for myself, but it's hard to. I'm jewish, after all. To me, a story without religion is one where my people have been wiped out. That was the original point of my post, but... i think that what you said, about religion being tied to culture and tradition and the context of its time, makes the image in my head a little sadder.

It becomes one where jews haven't just been wiped out, but completely forgotten. Rendered obsolete.

I don't know what point I'm trying to make, really. I just wanted to share, and to thank you for the interaction. I've gone through your blog a bit, and you seem pretty cool. :)

Hey, I'm answering after a long delay, because what you asked was something I needed to mull over.

I think a fair few things are happening. And I thought this over long enough that it even came out in a semi-coherent list.

First, I think people forget that secularism is an ideology, not a "default" neutral state of how human societies organise themselves. Because there's no such thing as a "default" human society. It's a specific idea that a lot of people decided to believe in.

Second, I think they forget that secularism is a culturally-bound idea that emerged out of the religious history of Western Christendom (i.e., Reformation and Counter-Reformation punching each other in the face). The idea that the political and the religious could or should be separate spheres, with religion being private rather than public, did not show up anywhere else in a way we'd recognise unless Europeans barged in.

Third, people think secular = modern. People already will comfortably imagine that someone living in the modern age could be doing so without being modern: "modern" means looking, thinking, and behaving a very specific way. The old (broke-ass) narratives that projected that humanity would one day abandon all belief in religion, spirituality, the supernatural, superstition, or even plain-old clinging to ideologies in favour of ascending to pure enlightened reason have demonstrably turned out to be bullshit. But if you're raised with a cultural belief that progress to modernity looks like progress to secularity, then it's an article of faith that the scifi future will be secular.

Fourth, I think there's some wicked bad history involved in what people are writing out when they write out religion:

They tend to assume that no one was oppressed, enslaved, marginalised, or stressed before Big Monotheism.

They tend to have the very specifically Protestant definition of "religion" as individually-held cosmic convictions—and to project both that definition of religion and the cultural primacy of the individual into the past and the future as universal values so that, the less a religion reflects the core positions of Protestantism, the less it will be understood or presented favourably (unless its a Noble Savage'd indigenous tradition).

They tend to associate religion with "violence" and "intolerance," even though (to quote the sociologist José Casanova), "none of the horrible massacres [of the 20th century]—not the senseless slaughter of millions of young Europeans in the trenches of World War I; or the countless millions of victims of Bolshevik and Communist terror through revolution, civil war, collectivization campaigns, the great famine in Ukraine, the repeated cycles of Stalinist terror, and the gulag; or the most unfathomable of all, the Nazi Holocaust and the global conflagration of World War II, culminating in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—can be said to have been caused by religious fanaticism and intolerance. All of them were, rather, products of modern secular ideologies."

So that's what I think is going on :/

[guildofpriapus]

Hide in Plain Sight - The League of Priapus and The Devolution of Enlightenment

by Gregory Saint-Desoux

The Surreptitious Elidation of Post-War Enlightenment Values in Western Society: A Critical Examination of The Guild of Priapus

Abstract

This paper explores the erosion of post-war Enlightenment values in contemporary Western society, with a focus on the alleged influence of a clandestine organization known as The Guild of Priapus. This group purportedly promotes a cultural shift from religious observance to an emphasis on sensuality, cruelty, and brutality. By examining historical, sociocultural, and philosophical perspectives, this paper seeks to understand the complexities underlying this transformation and its implications for modern society.

Introduction

The aftermath of World War II saw the emergence of Enlightenment ideals—reason, progress, and secular humanism—intended to guide a war-torn world toward peace and prosperity. However, recent decades have witnessed a noticeable deviation from these principles. This paper argues that this shift is not merely a natural evolution but is catalyzed by an intricate network of influences epitomized by The Guild of Priapus, an alleged occult organization with significant global reach.

Historical Context and Philosophical Underpinnings

The Enlightenment era championed values such as rationality, empirical evidence, and individual liberty. Post-war societies, particularly in the West, embraced these ideals, fostering advancements in democracy, science, and philosophy. However, as the 20th century waned, signs of decay in these values became evident. The rise of consumerism, secularization, and cultural hedonism marked a departure from Enlightenment principles.

The Guild of Priapus: Myth or Reality?

The Guild of Priapus, named after the Greco-Roman deity of fertility, is rumored to be a covert organization that promotes indulgence in sensuality, cruelty, and brutality. Although empirical evidence of its existence is scant, the mythos surrounding the Guild speaks to broader societal concerns. The narrative of such a group suggests a cultural fascination with power and excess, echoing historical cults and secret societies.

Cultural Shifts and the Decline of Religious Observance

The decline in religious observance in the West is a significant factor in this transformation. As traditional religious institutions lose influence, many individuals seek meaning in alternative forms of spirituality or material indulgence. The Guild of Priapus serves as a metaphor for this shift, highlighting the tension between spiritual emptiness and the pursuit of earthly pleasures.

Implications of Sensuality, Cruelty, and Brutality

The alleged tenets of The Guild of Priapus—sensuality, the commodification and disempowerment of women and the poor—mirror broader societal trends. The commodification of sexuality, the normalization of violence in media, and the increasing polarization and dehumanization in political discourse all reflect these values. This section examines how such dynamics undermine Enlightenment ideals, fostering a society driven by base instincts rather than reason and empathy.

Conclusion

The narrative of The Guild of Priapus, whether fact or fiction, provides a lens through which to view the degradation of post-war Enlightenment values in Western society. By understanding the forces at play, both real and imagined, we can better navigate the challenges of preserving the core tenets of rationalism, humanism, and ethical progress. The task ahead is not merely to resist the allure of decadence but to reinvigorate the philosophical foundations that have historically guided human advancement.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jerome Coplusky for The UnPopulist:

“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” announced Justice Anthony Kennedy at the opening of his majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), recognizing the constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry with “equal dignity in the eyes of the law” and receive the legal and material benefits that flow from government recognition of the relationship. ... The nation’s pivot to support for same-sex marriage was swift and, for religious conservatives, jarring. With Obergefell, some feared that their decades-long culture war might be a lost cause. In their eyes, the decision did not merely announce an expansion of rights to gays and lesbians (providing legal sanction to a lifestyle they deemed sinful) but amounted to the remaking—or destruction—of the very institution of marriage, premised on a novel understanding of human nature and the purpose of the family. The legal protection of homosexual marriage, aside from its increased social acceptance and widespread cultural celebration, effectively announced the United States as a post-Christian, even anti-Christian, order and portended the persecution of the faithful. The expected election of Hillary Clinton in 2016 would solidify that liberal triumph and ensure civilizational collapse. ...

The Benedict Option

[T]he conservative editor and commentator Rod Dreher suggested that “the common culture—insofar as we have one—is so far gone into decadence and individualism that the only sensible thing for us to do is to strategically retreat from the mainstream to strengthen our Christian commitments, and our church communities.” ... For Dreher, same-sex marriage was the decisive battle in the culture war, and the Supreme Court’s landmark Obergefell decision became “the Waterloo of religious conservatism.” He thus pronounced the American culture war concluded, with “hostile secular nihilism” the victorious and “traditional, historical Christianity” the defeated. ... Dreher made his case at length in his bestselling 2017 book, The Benedict Option. ... The problem wasn’t simply the overreach of the courts but something much deeper and more ingrained. The United States was indeed a secular, liberal, Enlightenment polity, and it was founded on the false and dangerous Enlightenment program—the attempt to rely on reason alone to “create a secular morality,” “impose man’s natural will upon nature,” and unleash “the freely choosing individual.” ... The “end point of modernity,” in Dreher’s recounting, was already announced by Justice Anthony Kennedy in his 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Dreher acidly observed that the pronouncement was a celebration of “the autonomous, freely choosing individual, finding meaning in no one but himself.” Such was the fundamental maxim of our decadent post-Christian era. It heralded the arrival of a new dark age. Decisions like Obergefell were not betrayals of the founding ideas but really the logical outworking of them. There could be no way to reconcile a truly authentic Christian life with liberal modernity. ... And so Dreher proposed a postliberal project ... whereby the truly faithful might ... engage in “a strategic withdrawal.” ... Dreher dubbed this “the Benedict Option,” elaborating on something the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote at the end of his influential book After Virtue. Lamenting the loss of a moral consensus, MacIntyre suggested that those who endeavored to live serious and ordered lives might choose to establish “local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us.” MacIntyre famously closed his meditation with the pronouncement [...]

Deneen’s Dreams

The political theorist Patrick J. Deneen arrived at a similar conclusion in his 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed. Deneen charted the course of “liberalism”—an abstraction granted almost sinister agency—from its emergence in the seventeenth century to its fruition in contemporary Western society, a story of success that culminated in moral, social, environmental, and spiritual disaster. ... “The foundations of liberalism,” he claimed, “were laid by a series of thinkers whose central aim was to disassemble what they concluded were irrational religious and social norms in the pursuit of civil peace that might in turn foster stability and prosperity, and eventually individual liberty of conscience and action.” ... Liberals (and pre-liberals such as Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes) set out to remake the world according to a new—and false—anthropology. They conceived of human beings as “rights-bearing individuals who could fashion and pursue for themselves their own version of the good life.” But they really aspired to free the individual from authority, culture, and tradition—even human nature itself. Liberalism undermined all the bonds of human solidarity that had been forged over time by the family, the church, and the whole range of social associations and institutions embedded in localities. In the place of all that, liberalism has produced an increasingly centralized and tyrannical state to “protect” the radically unencumbered individual’s enjoyment of rights, property, and pursuit of consumption. ... [...]

‘Common-Good Constitutionalism’

In an influential review of Why Liberalism Failed, Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule praised Deneen’s diagnosis of the problem but suggested his proposed remedy was inadequate. ... Vermeule was ... dissatisfied with Deneen’s advocacy of a tactical retreat to a “vague communitarian localism.” ... An expert in administrative law whose own spiritual journey had brought him to Rome, Vermeule pitched ... a more audacious proposal that he believed to be “more consistent with Deneen’s own argument”: a quiet coup against the liberal “imperium.” He suggested that motivated and well-trained postliberal elites, rather than retreat from the world or try to build democratic majorities to reshape policy, ought to “strategically locate themselves within liberal institutions and work to undo the liberalism of the state from within,” and then use the machinery of the administrative state to impose upon the country their “substantive comprehensive theory of the good.” ... Vermeule’s point ... was that there was no need to withdraw to enclaves or dream of building a new order from scratch when they could deploy the administrative state and bureaucracy that liberalism had constructed as “the great instrument with which to restore a substantive politics of the good.” ... [...]

Rather than advise anti-liberal traditionalists to take flight from the battle and withdraw into an impotent localism, Vermeule proposed they use the force of the law, enthused and well-placed bureaucrats of the administrative state, and a powerful executive to orient the polis toward his conception of the common good. ... This counter-liberal proposal was, in short, a call for an American ralliement, to infiltrate and transform the liberal regime over time into a fully Catholic one, taking over the state bureaucracy (and sidestepping democratically elected representatives) so that it might rightly reorient its citizens. 

[...]

As it turned out, it would be Donald J. Trump—whose very “brand” had for years been gold-plated decadence—who emerged as the avatar of populist resentments and conservative Christian hopes. ... Already a celebrity businessman, Trump achieved political notice and notoriety as a purveyor of the racially charged “birther” conspiracy theory, and on the campaign trail he demonstrated an uncanny ability to tap into deep veins of populist anger and distrust (of “elites,” “experts,” “the deep state,” and so forth), and secure the devotion and loyalty of millions of heretofore “values voters.” His political rallies were likened to old-time revival meetings; he spoke to his supporters like a televangelist to his network flock. The slogan he chose for his movement, his political raison d'être, “Make America Great Again,” is a restorationist sentiment; it was complemented by his vow to put “America First!” ... The long-aggrieved would have their hopes fulfilled and fearful Christians their rights protected by the edicts of a charismatic strongman. “Christianity will have power,” the candidate told an audience in 2016. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.” ... Instructed to regard the tussle of politics as spiritual warfare, a contest between the supernatural forces of good and evil, Christian Trumpists saw the election as a “miracle,” the unlikely president a providentially given instrument to shatter their enemies and restore an imagined Christian America. ... [T]hose books advocating a strategic withdrawal ... now seemed untimely. The advent of Trump (and the enduring spirit of MAGA) suggested that reconquest was possible. Why build arks when you can command battleships? Why endure the liberal American order when you can found a better one? Perhaps we await not a new St. Benedict but another—doubtless very different—Emperor Constantine?

Far-right postliberal academics such as Adrian Vermeule want a Christian nationalist coup to overthrow constitutional pluralism.

[tanadrin]

@alightingdove

I'm fully aware of the weirdness. I'm very aware of the world's religions and their differences. My point is that the virtues of Buddhism are, generally, well-intentioned and sustainable from a secular perspective. We know why the Buddha became an ascetic - he witnessed sickness, aging, and death, and he decided to leave his luxurious life in pursuit of meaning.

Had to break this discussion out of the comments section because I think you're making a number of serious errors in your assumptions.

One--Buddhism is not an especially noble or enlightened religion. As this Buddhist and scholar of Buddhism points out, traditional Buddhist morality is deeply medieval, and very out of step with modern values. It is patriarchal, puritanical, and authoritarian. See also this post and this one.

Two--we have narratives about the Buddha, composed centuries after his death. As scholars of religion like Stephen Shoemaker and the cognitive scientists they have based their work on have pointed out, oral traditions are very bad at preserving authentic historical detail. They very quickly become adapted to serve the politics of later eras, and later traditions get written back onto the founders of movements to justify themselves. This is certainly true of Christianity, which had developed elaborate ahistorical traditions about Jesus within a hundred years of his death; it is even more true of Buddhism, whose oldest texts date to something like four hundred years after the Buddha's death. Islam, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and many other traditions centered on a single founder figure (even one who was certainly historical, like Muhammad) have similar problems.

Three--religions catch on for many reasons. "Disillusionment" seems to be only one factor out of many. People adopt new traditions because of politics, identity, millennarian fervor (very big in early Islam and Christianity), hope of strategic benefit (knowledge or power from the gods), because they're forced to under threat of violence, and so forth.

So I think it is a bad idea to ascribe particular generosity or wisdom to (or to be excessively deferential to) people who, even if the traditions surrounding them are entirely authentic, made claims about the world which are unprovable or outright false, and whose morality was repugnant. And it's especially a bad idea to do so just because they have proven historically successful, given that the reasons they have proven to be thus may be pretty arbitrary.

[feygaleh]

Same guy from the previous ask (Israeli, Zionist, Orthodox): what caused me to want to write this is how, in one of your posts (an answer to an ask about whether you denied Jewish connection to the Land of Israel), you seemed to indicate that Jewish life in exile is the only legitimate way to practice Judaism. After rereading, I have to admit that this isn't a necessary conclusion. However, I would ask you to hear out two extremities I would like to present: the Israelist and the Exilist.

As an Israeli, I find I'm more familiar with the Israelist mindset: the idea that the only legitimate Jewish existence is in an independent state in Israel. Historically, I can point to a variety of views I also associate with this type of person: seeing Jews who live in exile as weak, pale "Soaps" to the Israeli strong, tanned "Sabra"; looking at certain traditions as "old fashioned" and "exilist" (meaning, only belonging in exile); and looking down upon the Jews from exile, as someone who needs to be educated.

The Exilist is, admittedly, something I formed in my mind following your post, and I don't have concrete evidence of its existence. I do think I've seen hints of such worldviews, however. That worldview would be seeing Jewish life in exile as the only legitimate Jewish existence. It would see the Jewish fate as being necessarily dispersed among the nations, making the world a better place each from their own place. It might look at Judaism as merely a religion, with Jews around the world being American, or British, of French of Moses' faith. They see exile as an ideal, and consider the Israeli and Zionist old fashioned. A country for the Jews alone? How would they be able to be a Light to the Nations that way? No, Jewish existence must be, always and forever, in exile.

I would note that in the framing of the Exilist PoV I used some of the historical ideas of the founders of the Reform movement. Thus, if you choose to agree with them on that ground that I'm only painting it as extreme due to my Orthodox perspective, I suppose that's fair. However, from my point of view, both those extremes are wrong. The former has led to forcing Yemenite and Mizrahi children to be separated from their families, to be educated by more "enlightened" Sabras, attempting to force children of religious families into secularity. It might be that I see it as horrible mostly from that angle, but the idea of kidnapping someone because you don't like the education their family offers... It's a problem.

Again, me being Israeli makes me more aware to problems from that side. If I'm right with my classification of the two extremities, I suppose that the result of Exilist views would be more complete assimilation, trying to fit in with general society more and more to the level of voiding Judaism of meaning, leaving it an empty shell. This is already how many people view organizations like JVP - I don't know how it's seen in the context you're used to, but I've seen people talk about how un-Jewish some of their Mikveh suggestions are, or how they turn every holiday to vouching for Palestine and so universalized as to turn it empty of uniquely Jewish meaning.

My main problem with those (admittedly theoretical) extremities is that they devalue and delegitimize everyone who isn't them: both consider themselves to be the Right Way to do Judaism (TM), and all other ways are Wrong.

I could talk about the fighting back vs fixing society from within approaches to battling Antisemitism, but I'm not really sure I'm qualified for that analysis (hopefully that doesn't come off as hypocritical after this long analysis I already made). The point is, no one should assume their way of dealing with things is the catch-all solution.

So long as we reject the Israelist view, we can still admit that the state of Israel has done wrongs, and perhaps is continuing on doing them, and should stop. So long as we reject the Exilist view, we can accept that the State of Israel is very important to some Jews and is a legitimate part of their practice. We can see that some people consider it essential for their practice, and that is fine - even if we don't share their views.

Hopefully that didn't come off as too accusatory in any way, it was not my intention. Thank you for reading.

TL;DR: there are two theoretical extremes regarding Jewish existence, seeing either Israel or Exile as inherent to Jewish practice to the degree of delegitimizing the approach of it through Exile or Israel, respectively. I believe both extremes are bad and need to be rejected, and that we should accept the wide variations of Jewish practice even if we disagree with them.

(Also, this was my first anonymous ask abd I just discovered I don't get notified when it's answered. Makes sense, all things considered, but kind of not conductive to this type of conversation.)

sorry for taking so long to get back to you! i was running errands for my mother for days, had a birthday, then a 12 hour drive

anywho! i really appreciate this perspective i hadn’t even considered some of this

i’ve definitely been pondering it for the past few days. i really appreciate you taking your time to explain

[germiyahu]

I would like to politely request that if you find yourself not understanding the point of my posts, don't engage with them. Don't embarrass yourself.

Because I certainly don't want to have to point out the irony of a person reacting to my (long winded) wry post about how uninformed uninterested Americans project and misinterpret the motivations, on a societal level, of Israelis and Palestinians... in a way that completely confirms that. You don't understand Zionism, point blank. You have not done your research, you do not understand why Jews for their entire history have yearned to return to Eretz Yisrael, and so you lie about that history, or you uncritically regurgitate other people's lies that you've heard about it.

You don't expect better of Muslims either, and there's a reason I only mentioned how people like you interpret this conflict to be about Jews vs Muslims, so do not pretend you care about the maybe 10% of Palestinians who are Christians. I note that the antizionist crowd routinely erases Bedouins, Druze, Samaritans, Circassians, Christian and Muslim Arabs who choose an Israeli identity over a Palestinian one. Not a single antizionist can mention the actual diversity of Israeli society without acting like their teeth are being pulled. So spare me.

My post was a (long winded and wry) assessment of what I have seen and what I think the general slacktivist Left conceive of Israel and Palestine. That it's a conflict between enlightened secular Christian-Lite white people who should know better, who should be over things like wanting a return to Zion... and what you see as noble savage barbaric Muslims who at least live a good honest non capitalist life, and we as the West owe them whatever they want because the War on Terror was horrific, yes.

But in the process you 1) erase the Jewish heritage and connection to their indigenous homeland, and replaces every single motivation for Zionism as racist imperialist bloodthirsty greed. Have fun gaslighting all of us as to how that's not blood libel. And you 2) excuse suicide bombing, targeting civilians, stabbing and driving over random people, mass shootings, war rape, hostage taking, torture, making fun little games out of torture... you'll excuse everything Hamas and their allied groups do in the name of "resistance," not just because you dehumanize Jews, but because I believe you really don't think Muslims are capable of being better than that. And because yeah, they're attacking Jews, who you view as privileged and annoying and the root of all problems in the world, so that's another reason not to expect better of them.

It ignores that there are tens of millions of Muslims who care about democracy, human rights, coexistence, peace... a lot of them are Palestinians. But you don't listen to them, you don't let them take the lead in their own liberation movement. You cheer on fascists because that's what a Muslim is in your head. Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, now the Houthis: masked insurgents who have no regard for the sanctity of human life, no regard for their own people, sadistic manchildren who are only interested in enriching themselves and causing pain in the world, thinly scaffolded with the most cruel interpretations of a religion that a billion people follow. The only difference between you and your conservative racist parents is that you think the terrorists are the good guys now.

But thanks for stopping by :)

[funnuraba]

Sequel to my earlier post: (European voice) it's literally so culty and problematic of secular Jews to celebrate Jewish holidays. Here in Europe we are very enlightened, and we don't even care anymore about the religion we spent centuries oppressing and killing you for not following. Why are you Jews so stuck up and obsessed with your "culture"? That we used to kill you over? (after a Jewish person gets mad) YOU CAN'T YELL AT ME FOR BEING CONFUSED JUST BECAUSE THERE ARE NO JEWS IN MY COUNTRY FOR SOME REASON!!!!

[casablancasyndrome]

In his influential work, Chatterjee examines a dilemma facing postcolonial regimes that seek to create a new hegemony by which to lead national state formation. The dilemma is that the ideology employed is derivative of post-Enlightenment rationalist thought; yet those who must be mobilized for the war of liberation (the masses) were unfamiliar with and often antagonistic to this “alien” discourse. At “the moment of departure,” then, the intelligentsia and elite were brought under the influence of this borrowed discourse, which had penetrated these societies through the structures of capital and feeling, a penetration that was uneven. At “the moment of maneuver,” the actual war of liberation or revolution, the masses had to be mobilized through a hegemonic discourse that employed signs and symbols familiar to these masses. By thus using “their” language (not necessarily a secular nationalist ideology; indeed, many religious and traditional signs and symbols were employed), they were brought into the nationalist struggle. At “the moment of arrival,” the multiple discourses and groups which had been mobilized are “resolved.” This is done through a “discourse of order.” The resolution occurs in one of two ways: either a bourgeois-landowning alliance against workers and peasants, or a national populist government in opposition to the previous political, social, and economic elite.

Magdy Mounir El Shamaa - The National Imaginarium

[frashokereti]

My Journey to Zoroastrianism, Part I:

Hello followers! My aim with this blog is to introduce Zoroastrianism to all those who are interested with a unique twist- my own journey, step by step, into the faith of my ancestors in the context of a post-COVID modernity. In this blog I share my insights, translate events into a Zoroastrian framework, discuss the faith and philosophy of Zoroastrianism, and my own personal journey and struggles in adopting this faith and allowing me to understand the world around me. It is my hope that followers can find themselves in my experiences and hopefully derive some benefit from learning about the world through the Mazdayasna lens.

In a world largely dominated by Abrahamic traditions, Greco-Roman philosophy, existentialism and continental philosophy, and of course secular ideologies like liberalism and Marxism, it can be difficult to view phenomena outside of these lenses. For many, the realities of modernity had led to a loss of meaning and purpose, and an unfulfilling life. In helping you all understand the Mazdaean philosophy, it is my hope to help people find this meaning and order. It is not meant for everyone, but for those who find this journey worthwhile, I offer my respect and share my joy. And while many see no validity to the metaphysical and spiritual in the age of machines and code, there is still something to be learned from Zoroastrian as a way of life and a philosophy- even if one does not want to believe in the cosmological. For me, I found this most helpful.

My journey to Zoroastrianism has imbued my life with a sense of purpose and an ethical basis by which to understand the problems of humankind and today's confusion as well as my own inner struggles. As they say in the Zoroastrian tradition, the cosmic battle between Asha and Druj occur not only in the world of Getig, our material reality- they also occur in our inner psyche. The cosmic battle between order and chaos, truth and the lie, righteousness and evil, is just ass much in our hearts and minds as it is all around us. And we are tasked to make meaning of this and partake on both fronts. Throughout this journey I will refer to Zoroastrian phenomena and concepts in both symbolic form, tying them to real-world phenomena, and in lore-form, respecting the faith as-is.

A turning point in my life was in the years of 2020-2024. Much happened here that made me reach a limit of sorts. The best way I can describe it is that my soul and mind were worn out. I was raised a Christian, but had a falling out with the faith in my late teens and into my twenties. I became an atheist in the era of the New Atheist movement, voraciously reading Dawkins, Hitchens and Sam Harris. I found that divorcing myself of my juvenile understanding of God and the Cosmos was liberating, and though surrendering to an unknown void was terrifying at the time, I slowly felt less of a need for faith, belief in an afterlife, or deity in my life. I still, during that time, was not acutely acquainted with mortality, and I was surrounded by negative influences that imbued me with a sense of despair and pessimism. I saw that without this guiding light, I could continue to live on an ethical basis of humanism, but as I got to know humans more- our psyches, our systems, our motivations, and the true nature of history- I realized humanity as a species is deeply flawed and in many ways not redeemable. I found myself seeing the point in Christianity's concept of sin and repentance. My foundation of humanism was challenged when I learned to challenge my inner narratives that I was a good person, I learned that much evil occurs when people believe they are right and others are wrong. I realized our minds lie to us, they protect us with defense mechanisms designed to justify our selfish interests while convincing us we are inherently good and those that are antithetical to us are wrong.

I believed in naive notions of progress, fostered by Enlightenment thinking. Deep down I believed in progress not just historically, but personally. I believed as long as I kept trying to perfect myself, rid myself of trauma and flaws, process emotions and develop a sense of worldly maturity, that the world will accept me, that I'll finally fit in. I had this wrong-headed belief in experts and authorities, believing that the world was just, had an order and expectation to it, a rhythm of propriety, and if I just brought myself up to par, the world would be easier. I was dead wrong in this as events of the past several years taught me our world is anything but just and ordered in its current form, that experts are often pushing angles and just as imperfect as we are, that the true nature of the human application of justice and law is deeply biased and imperfectible, and that blind belief in progress makes us unthinking followers. I also saw society going in many directions that I felt were puzzling, and ultimately saw that society as a whole had no answer to global injustice, and that we are all partaking in it. This stirred something in me. I could no longer use humanism as an ethical basis to live my life. It placed too much faith and hope in our imperfect species and world, and it masked raw self-interest, political motivations and prejudices. I realized then that what I needed was to find something rooted in an ideal we ought to aspire to.

[kkoffin]

ex Muslim and Jewish??? I mean that's so cool may I ask, because you said you're a secular Jewish woman, how it came to be? We're you born Jewish and then converted to Islam and then left Islam, or were you born into a Muslim family and left Islam in fabor of Judaism but then decided to be secular (which personally I'd find weird because conversion to Judaism is into the religion lol, but I don't judge, I understand aversion from religion as a whole!)

Anyway, your takes are so good and very enlightening, your posts well-worded and understandable and comprehensible which I admire.

You're really cool and I'm sorry if the question was really invasive I'm just curious as a Jewish woman myself.

P.S., I love your url. Iconic.

dw, the question isn't invasive, but do prepare for some trauma-dump lol

My mother's side of the family is ethnically Jewish but hasn't practiced religiously or culturally at all since WW2. To be honest, I didn't even find out I was Jewish until pretty late in life, it only came up because my mum took a DNA test. So I was raised atheist by my single mother, and at some point during some great financial struggle, a very traditional (conservative) Muslim man appeared in her life and offered to "take care of her" if she converts. My mum sometimes says that she honestly believes she would've committed suicide if she hadn't converted, that's how dire financial issues were. So she converted to Islam and I essentially had to as well, even though I never believed in it. He would abuse me or her if I didn't act how he wanted, so she semi-abused me instead, knowing it was less bad than whatever he would do to me, but enough to satisfy him. I don't think anyone ever has to forgive their abuser but I do forgive her for what happened. Anyways, financial and emotional abuse got worse over the years until eventually my mum's mother died and she automatically inherited a big enough sum of money for us to get away from him and for us to pay rent while she found a job again. We're lucky to live in a country where such a thing can happen.

Anyways I'm a little awkward about being Jewish because I kinda know... nothing? about the culture? Not being raised in it, plus there's very very few Jews where I live, so most of my cultural experience with Jews is online, or at the single holocaust memorial in my state which has info on Jewish history. I have chosen to.. readopt?? the Jewishness in me? in a way? I do love the people and the culture, and above all I want to protect them. I feel like most of my content relating to Jewish stuff is only very surface-level "lets not kill Jews. That's not a good thing to do". I don't want to act like an expert in the topic in any degree, but I do like letting people know I'm Jewish in hopes of making more Jewish friends <3

also thanks for the compliments on my posts and url <3