flora_explora @ flora_explora @beehaw.org

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Joined

2 yr. ago

I really liked the Some More News episode on this! It explains pretty well how regardless of a rich person's intelligence they probably get corrupted by mental distortions due to being rich. That is, Elon haa probably been powertripping for too long and lost all basis on how to take good decisions because he lives in his own rich fantasy world thinking he accomplished everything because of his own superior genius...

A lot of people I know use either no or they pronouns. If there would ever arise a weird scenario where it is unclear if I were referring to one specific person or the group, I could still just use their name.

Even with cis people I often try to use their name more instead of pronouns. But this is because I mostly speak German and there is no native they I could use, so using the name makes it neutral. A lot of trans/nb people use they (or dey) in German, too ;)

Why pay for Spotify when you can just use a cracked version via xManager? ;)

Yeah, same :D

Sure, science cannot and will never give answers to everything and that's fine. We will never know all there is to know. But I would strongly disagree that religion offers any answers to the 'grand mystery' at all. Because religion is not about looking at the world and trying to figure anything out. Religion is using the unknown to project own beliefs onto it. At best, religion that tries to actually figure things out is really philosophy. Religion itself is not a tool at all to figure anything out about the outside world.

I fail to see how objectivity and religion/spirituality are not in conflict when the latter are based on one's own projections onto the unknown? Sure, this isn't directly affecting me, but the moment religious or spiritual people take decisions or actions that affect other people, this can involve me. Think of abortion or other ethical debates. Or even morality, which is a huge pile of shit all thought up by religious people from their own projections. This is affecting me in my daily life, because I get confronted by a sexist, transphobic, homophobic worldview all stemming in huge parts from religious teachings. Even if the people marginalizing me aren't religious, they still got their morals from our religion-indoctrinated society. This has been a huge and often deadly undertaking of so many people to get rid of these morals and to don't judge others.

We all project stuff onto others or onto the unknown. I just want us to be honest about it and that we try to be transparent about it. I'm totally fine if a person says that they believe in something superstitious, god, etc as long as they are aware that this is a product of their own mind and that they don't value others differently because of it. I think in the end it boils down to values (which is the basis of morals I guess). If your values are informed by your own religious/spiritual belief, then this seems problematic to me because it will affect people negatively. But as long as a person can separate their own belief from their values, I'm fine with this.

Hm yes, I've heard this argument before and this I agree that people can benefit from the community aspect of religion and the wisdom of religious/spiritual scholars. But I don't see how this is necessarily connected to religion/spirituality itself? Why not have these outside of religion? How is it necessary to be religious or spiritual to form a community?

I have the feeling that it is indeed harder for people to form communities without religion or some sort of spiritual believe. Like, back in time people were much more connected via these institutions, while today people are much more individualistic (at least in western societies). But I think the underlying problem here isn't the missing religious community but rather capitalism. As an anarchist I imagine a world in where people are connected in a community by the motivation of a communal project (which is the community itself) and how to have a good life for everyone.

We can certainly learn from religious/spiritual teachings, but the problem is when you project stuff into the unknown you easily end up with a belief that mirrors your worldview. And this has caused tremendous harm. As a gay, neurodivergent trans woman, I would have been excluded and discriminated against a lot in religious/spiritual communities. And the same scholars from which we could learn something would often see women or POCs as sub-human. The same goes with most philosophers btw. We can try to nitpick what knowledge can benefit us, but we have to be careful what teaching only makes sense in their limited, discriminatory and hegemonic worldview.

All in all, I don't see how communities can actually benefit from religion or spirituality. I can see that accumulated knowledge by religious scholars can offer us something, but I cannot see how this is tied to being religious? When they tell you to perform rhythmic prayers five times a day, great, but why not just have a communal gymnastics class or something? And when they teach you how focus on the things that are important or to look inside than this isn't connected to religion/spirituality either.

A bit offtopic: Now I'm imagining an alternative community approach where the connecting factor is an anarchist, anti-capitalistic idea and where we could have accumulated knowledge of how to live life better together in a community. But even this would create a very fragile balance because scholars could then powertrip etc... An endless topic to explore! I really enjoyed Ursula le Guin's book The Dispossessed (fiction) and cannot recommend it enough ;)

Or you use a good adblocker and then get extremely irritated when you once in a while have to listen to an ad ;)

Oh, interesting point! I'm actually on board with celebrating uncertainty and accepting that we will never know certain things. Not sure why this needs to be labeled as spirituality though?

On the other hand, have a look at the spirituality community on Beehaw that actually seems to already be a theat to objectivity/science. I agree that spirituality isn't necessarily producing this but I still cannot see how it would be beneficial? But this could just be my autistic mind trying to unnecessarily rationalize everything ;)

Unfortunately Netflix' plan to squeeze even more out of people seems to have worked though :/ I was hoping for the same effect there, i.e. that people would instead resort to alternatives like piracy... Maybe these are different audiences though? Or is it maybe more important to people to have entertainment to escape real life (like streaming services) than entertainment with a flavor of empowerment?

Not sure if I'm overcompensating as well, but religion and spirituality feel very anti-knowledge to me. That is, in my view they try to fill the gap of what we don't know (and may never know) with their own projections (although science isn't free from doing exactly that either). Like, I know that we will never be able to understand the whole world etc, but spirituality just feels like giving up on trying to explain the world based on knowledge. I theoretically understand that other people need to fill this gap with something because they would otherwise face existential crisis or whatever. But I don't have these feelings so it seems pretty alienating to me. Well, the same goes for many things 'normal' people feel, like heteronormativity, which I don't get either.

Anyways, it always feels very weird to me when people talk about spiritual or religious ideas. In my view spirituality is problematic because I consider it to be anti-knowledge, but I don't have a better alternative either.

I guess society needs people like him that make crazy things. Science itself is pretty much like this, trying out stuff and be creative. People often made inventions while other people were telling them that it would be impossible to do so.

However, I think where he actually behaved really like an asshole was taking people with him who he made believe to be in a safe vessel. He could have made a disclaimer saying something like "this is an experimental vessel, I'm not sure if it will hold up and people have warned me. I still want to take the risk and you can come, too, if you are willing to take the same risk."

Well, I meant the field of string theory and the leadng scientists she mentioned. And calling her rant dumb seems like you are dismissing her argument without actually thinking about it. So you probably aren't interested in an open discussion either...

Not sure if you are serious? If so, I think you probably didn't understand why she is angry. As she clearly states, studying string theory in itself is totally valid. But the way they presented their ideas or let their ideas be presented is the reason she is angry.