(no subject)
Oct. 9th, 2012 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
citrakayahI have discovered that I adore neopagan folk music, ever since someone was kind enough to post a link to ”I Don’t Speak Human” on the Werelist. Omnia is very, very good. So I bought some of their music off Amazon, while listening to my mother point out that if I plan on being an architect, I should probably not publicly identify as neopagan, at which point I reminded her that I am:
1. an atheist who is literally incapable of worship (which is, I suppose, not completely true)
2. am in possession of some degree of subtlety, so that if I did suddenly become neopagan, I would not feel the necessity to tell half the planet, nor (to address her other point) would I ever join any religious group without thinking about it heavily
After which she informed me that if I did join a neopagan group, she wanted me to know that my family wasn’t the sort to freak out about that. Which I already knew.
Debate.org is turning out to be rather fun. I won the debate on privatization of science, tied another on gun control (because no one voted), and am currently arguing that developed countries have a moral obligation to mitigate climate change. Also discussing the election on the Werelist, where many people are apparently not voting, and we all got into an argument as to the merits of voting, and then someone raised the issue of the whole ‘Fair Tax’ nonsense, which basically suggests that the solution to all tax problems is a tax on consumption rather than income, and that this will somehow close the loopholes rich people use to evade taxes (by lowering them drastically while allowing them to spend vast amounts of money on foreign goods and thus avoid paying the tax).
Meanwhile, I’ve been mentally beating myself on the head ever since I heard Romney has a five point lead. Good grief; I thought this wasn’t going to be a close race, but Romney seems to be convincing people that he isn’t actually an absurd Tea Party extremist. Which he is. And which he will probably govern as, given that on average political candidates try to fulfill a fair number of their promises. Don’t know exactly how Romney will act, but currently he’s basically the equivalent of an existential threat if he governs at all like he’s said he will, despite being (on the Political Compass) literally a unit to the economic right to Obama. Of course, the Political Compass ranks people according to actions, not promises. And I’m not really sure Romney’s past actions will be a very good predictor of his future actions.
I hate politics here. What passes for the left around here is really quite far to the right. I mean, can you even imagine someone saying, “Yes, I favor socialism and redistribution of wealth, federal funding of arts and sciences, regulations, and single-payer health care” and getting elected in this country? The right’s gone so far right in the past few years… Obama’s individual mandate was originally proposed by the freaking Heritage Foundation, after all.
Wonder what people in Europe are thinking of us right now. Probably that we’re all insane.
Found out that I was looking along the wrong lines if I wanted life in the Sun, and am now looking into plasma-based life, since the kilometer-long solar dragons I originally was planning at the request ofsiliconshaman spent most of their life outside the Sun, moving into it as part of their orbit of it. And had to somehow evolve silica aerogel and a biological thermocouple. Which would be fine if these were genetically engineered lifeforms, but they aren’t.
Also, the corona is apparently too hot even for silica aerogels. I’ve heard of substances capable of withstanding the heat there, but they are metals, which are unacceptably conductive to heat.
Currently looking into technoshamanism, mostly to determine what it is, because so far I don’t think I’ve found any really good resources on the subject. Anyone know of good resources?
1. an atheist who is literally incapable of worship (which is, I suppose, not completely true)
2. am in possession of some degree of subtlety, so that if I did suddenly become neopagan, I would not feel the necessity to tell half the planet, nor (to address her other point) would I ever join any religious group without thinking about it heavily
After which she informed me that if I did join a neopagan group, she wanted me to know that my family wasn’t the sort to freak out about that. Which I already knew.
Debate.org is turning out to be rather fun. I won the debate on privatization of science, tied another on gun control (because no one voted), and am currently arguing that developed countries have a moral obligation to mitigate climate change. Also discussing the election on the Werelist, where many people are apparently not voting, and we all got into an argument as to the merits of voting, and then someone raised the issue of the whole ‘Fair Tax’ nonsense, which basically suggests that the solution to all tax problems is a tax on consumption rather than income, and that this will somehow close the loopholes rich people use to evade taxes (by lowering them drastically while allowing them to spend vast amounts of money on foreign goods and thus avoid paying the tax).
Meanwhile, I’ve been mentally beating myself on the head ever since I heard Romney has a five point lead. Good grief; I thought this wasn’t going to be a close race, but Romney seems to be convincing people that he isn’t actually an absurd Tea Party extremist. Which he is. And which he will probably govern as, given that on average political candidates try to fulfill a fair number of their promises. Don’t know exactly how Romney will act, but currently he’s basically the equivalent of an existential threat if he governs at all like he’s said he will, despite being (on the Political Compass) literally a unit to the economic right to Obama. Of course, the Political Compass ranks people according to actions, not promises. And I’m not really sure Romney’s past actions will be a very good predictor of his future actions.
I hate politics here. What passes for the left around here is really quite far to the right. I mean, can you even imagine someone saying, “Yes, I favor socialism and redistribution of wealth, federal funding of arts and sciences, regulations, and single-payer health care” and getting elected in this country? The right’s gone so far right in the past few years… Obama’s individual mandate was originally proposed by the freaking Heritage Foundation, after all.
Wonder what people in Europe are thinking of us right now. Probably that we’re all insane.
Found out that I was looking along the wrong lines if I wanted life in the Sun, and am now looking into plasma-based life, since the kilometer-long solar dragons I originally was planning at the request of
siliconshaman Also, the corona is apparently too hot even for silica aerogels. I’ve heard of substances capable of withstanding the heat there, but they are metals, which are unacceptably conductive to heat.
Currently looking into technoshamanism, mostly to determine what it is, because so far I don’t think I’ve found any really good resources on the subject. Anyone know of good resources?
no subject
Date: 2012-10-09 11:35 pm (UTC)Well there are “neopagan atheists” of sorts. (People who see mythology or deities as mental or poetic symbols, people who are naturalistic pantheists, and what not) but either way - someone who is an atheist is at its root still atheism and explaining any kind of frills and interests on the side would just muddy things up I’d imagine. (Not to mention people mistake atheists of all sorts of things and beliefs enough already, good grief.)
Sadly on the technoshamanism we’re not too familiar on it nor know much about it at all. Perhaps its of a similar vain to technopaganism?
- Earth Listener
no subject
Date: 2012-10-10 01:56 am (UTC)That... fairly accurately describes my beliefs; the part about viewing mythology and/or deities as mental/poetic symbols--that's a theme that appears in my fiction, my meditations, and my psychology. I call them Archetypes.
What I've managed to gleam is basically 'shamanism, but in the belief that there's no difference between the spiritual and the physical, so you can alter the spiritual by altering the physical'. Most of what I've seen seems to actually be scientifically verified--it's just a statement of the placebo effect, like here.