Comment by SirFatty
5 days ago
Came to ask a similar question, but also has it always been like this? The difference is now these people/groups on the fringe had no visibility before the internet?
It's nuts.
5 days ago
Came to ask a similar question, but also has it always been like this? The difference is now these people/groups on the fringe had no visibility before the internet?
It's nuts.
It’s always been like this, have you read the Bible? Or the Koran? It’s insane. Ours is just our flavor of crazy. Every generation has some. When you dig at it, there’s always a religion.
Mage is a game for teenagers, it doesn't try to be anything else other than a game where you roll dice do to stuff.
tbf Helter Skelter was a song about a fairground ride that didn't really pretend to be much more than an excuse for Paul McCartney to write something loud, but that didn't stop a sufficiently manipulative individual turning it into a reason why the Family should murder people. And he didn't even need the internet to help him find followers.
Mage yea, but the cult? Where do you roll for crazy? Is it a save against perception? Constitution? Or intelligence check?
I know the church of Scientology wants you to crit that roll of tithing.
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Without speaking for religions I'm not familiar with, I grew up Catholic, and one of the most important Catholic beliefs is that during Mass, the bread (i.e. "communion" wafers) and wine quite literally transform into the body and blood of Jesus, and that eating and drinking it is a necessary ritual to get into heaven[1], which was a source of controversy even back as far as the Protestant Reformation, with some sects retaining that doctrine and others abandoning it. In a lot of ways, what's considered "normal" or "crazy" in a religion comes to what you're familiar with.
For those not familiar with the bible enough to know what to look for to find the wild stuff, look up the story of Elisha summoning bears out of the first to maul children for calling him bald, or the last two chapters of Daniel (which I think are only in the Catholic bible) where he literally blows up a dragon by feeding it a cake.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...
The "bears" story reads a lot more sensibly if you translated it correctly as "a gang of thugs tries to bully Elisha into killing himself." Still reliant on the supernatural, but what do you expect from such a book?
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Yeah "Transubstantiation" is another technical term people might want to look at in this topic. The art piece "An Oak Tree" is a comment on these ideas. It's a glass of water. But, the artist's notes for this work insist it is an oak tree.
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I've recently started attending an Episcopal church. We have some people who lean heavy on transubstantiation, but our priest says, "look, something holy happens during communion, exactly what, we don't know."
See also: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/real-presence/?
"Belief in the real presence does not imply a claim to know how Christ is present in the eucharistic elements. Belief in the real presence does not imply belief that the consecrated eucharistic elements cease to be bread and wine."
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To be fair, the description of the dragon incident is pretty mundane, and all he does is prove that the large reptile they had previously been feeding (& worshiping) could be killed:
"Then Daniel took pitch, and fat, and hair, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof: this he put in the dragon's mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder: and Daniel said, Lo, these are the gods ye worship."
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Yes, Catholicism has definitely accumulated some cruft :)
It is used ti be always religion. But now downsides are well understood. And alternatives that can fill the same need (social activities) - like gathering with your neighbors, singing, performing arts, clubs, parks and paries are available and great.
Religions have multitudes of problems but suicide rates amongst atheists is higher than you'd think it would be. It seems like for many, rejection of organized religion leads to adoption of ad hoc quasi-religions with no mooring to them, leaving the person who is seeking a solid belief system drifting until they find a cult, give in to madness that causes self-harm, or adopt their own system of belief that they then need to vigorously protect from other beliefs.
Some percentage of the population has a lesser need for a belief system (supernatural, ad hoc, or anything else) but in general, most humans appear to be hardcoded for this need and the overlap doesn't align strictly with atheism. For the atheist with a deep need for something to believe in, the results can be ugly. Though far from perfect, organized religions tend to weed out their most destructive beliefs or end up getting squashed by adherents of other belief systems that are less internally destructive.
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I can see that. There’s definitely a reason they keep pumping out Call of Duty’s and Madden’s.
It's no more crazy than a virgin conception. And yet, here we are. A good chunk of the planet believes that drivel, but they'd throw their own daughters out of the house if they made the same claim.
> Came to ask a similar question, but also has it always been like this?
Crazy people have always existed (especially cults), but I'd argue recruitment numbers are through the roof thanks to technology and a failing economic environment (instability makes people rationalize crazy behavior).
It's not that those groups didn't have visibility before, it's just easier for the people who share the same...interests...to cloister together on an international scale.
Have you heard of Heavens Gate? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_(religious_g...].
There are at least a dozen I can think of, including the ‘drink the koolaid’ Jonestown massacre.
People be crazy, yo.
Of course, Jim Jones and L Ron Hubbard, David Kersh. I realize there have always been people that are coocoo for cocoa puffs. But so many as there appear to be now?
Internet made possible to know global news all the time. I think that there have always been a lot of people with very crazy and extremist views, but we only knew about the ones closer to us. Now it's possible to know about crazy people from the other side of the planet, so it looks like there's a lot more of them than before.
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Just a note that the Heaven's Gate website is still up. It's a wonderful snapshot of 90s web design. https://www.heavensgate.com/
I was curious who's keeping that website alive, and allegedly it's two former members of the cult: Mark and Sarah King
https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-suicide-cults-surviving-me...
what a wild set of SEO keywords
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I mean, cults have constantly shown up for all of recorded human history. Read a history of Scientology and you'll see a lot of commonalities, say. Rationalism is probably the first major cult/new religion to emerge in the internet era (Objectivism may be a marginal case, as its rise overlapped with USENET a bit), which does make it especially visible.
I personally (for better or worse) became familiar with Ayn Rand as a teenager, and I think Objectivism as a kind of extended Ayn Rand social circle and set of organizations has faced the charge of cultish-ness, and that dates back to, I want to say, the 70s and 80s at least. I know Rand wrote much earlier than that, but I think the social and organizational dynamics unfolded rather late in her career.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/366635-there-are-two-novels...
Her books were very popular with the gifted kids I hung out with in the late 80s. Cool kids would carry around hardback copies of Atlas Shrugged, impressive by the sheer physical size and art deco cover. How did that trend begin?
By setting up the misfits in a revenge of the nerds scenario?
Ira Levin did a much better job of it and showed what it would lead to but his 'This Perfect Day' did not - predictably - get the same kind of reception as Atlas Shrugged did.
People reading the book and being into it and telling other people.
It’s also a hard book to read so it may be smart kids trying to signal being smart.
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What's funny is that Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shear already took the piss out of Ayn Rand in Illuminatus! (1969-1971).
Albert Ellis wrote a book, "Is Objectivism a Religion" as far back as 1968. Murray Rothbard wrote "Mozart Was a Red", a play satirizing Rand's circle, in the early 60's. Ayn Rand was calling her own circle of friends, in "jest", "The Collective" in the 50's. The dynamics were there from almost the beginning.
I think it's pretty similar dynamics. It's unquestioned premises (dogma) which are supposed to be accepted simply because this is "objectivism" or "rationalism".
Very similar to my childhood religion. "We have figured everything out and everyone else is wrong for not figuring things out".
Rationalism seems like a giant castle built on sand. They just keep accruing premises without ever going backwards to see if those premises make sense. A good example of this is their notions of "information hazards".
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/09/murray-n-rothbard/unders...