Philosophy Now Forum

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:20 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:03 pm Or you may.

You've got me wondering if it's worth looking into Satanism.

One doesn't have to do anything that formal. To worship oneself will perform the same result.

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:20 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:03 pm Or you may.

You've got me wondering if it's worth looking into Satanism.

You are joking of course, because you could not believe either in a 'divinity' or a 'demonic'. These are concepts, or symbols, that have no meaning for you except, sort of, as cartoons.

But inadvertedly you point to something quite interesting and valid: Hebrew idea-imperialism, which informes Christianity at the most basic level, turned against any native religious view that was not its own. The mission of the god thus defined is to utterly destroy and annihilate any god-concept that is different from the one it professes. This leads to all sort of radical and insidious behavior but it starts in the idea-realm.

Now 'satan' (in the Jewish Bible) is not quite the Satan that has been defined over the Christian centuries. What can be termed satanic and demoniac, by Christians, is left open. But in one aspect all that is demonic is everything pagan. So when you say 'It might be worthwhile to look into Satanism" you are inadvertently describing what, in fact, many people (intellectuals, artists, spiritualists) actually did! What had been pushed out of the picture, what had been made to seem *evil*, had to be revisited and reconsidered.

The return to the Earth, the return to the Body (which had also been demonized) has become, for so many, the necessary turn.

Again, once one sees somewhat more clearly into the (negative) side of Hebrew idea-imperialism, which so infects standard Christianity and which is inseparable from it, the more that one can understand how this former system is breaking down and why.

But to say it is breaking down (disappearing) is not accurate. Among a certain class it is being rejected while it is simultaneously being taken up by millions of others as Christian Evangelism (chiefly Pentecostalism) burns like a fire throughout the Global South.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:22 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:15 pm Yet I would suggest to you that if you went down a line of 'declared values' you would reveal yourself as essentially a 'woke' person.

You poor soul.

Wow.

Well, that's a new one. I'm going to save that one, because it's just priceless.

I am so pleased! But what I say is quite true. You have never sufficiently analyzed yourself. In this sense you are blind to yourself.

It's a trip, I admit.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:23 pm One doesn't have to do anything that formal. To worship oneself will perform the same result.

There you have it! Ones very 'self' -- what one actually and really is, one's substance, one's being -- is made to seem Satanic. You have to give yourself over to something 'wholly other' which means a god-definition that can be managed on a mass-scale.

The 'self' in this sense also is linked to 'the body' as well as 'the earth'.

What I try to point out to dearest Immanuel is that he has never actually looked into these elements of his own belief-system. But the more he talks, the more he reveals, and when he reveals he thus explains what his true orientation is and what effect it must have.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:40 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:20 pm
You've got me wondering if it's worth looking into Satanism.

You are joking of course, because you could not believe either in a 'divinity' or a 'demonic'. These are concepts, or symbols, that have no meaning for you except, sort of, as cartoons.

I don't think Satanists believe in Satan. I seem to think they are some sort of activist group that campaigns against religious influence in government and education, etc. I could never be bothered to be an activist, but if I could, that's the kind of activism I would go for.

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:57 pm I don't think Satanists believe in Satan. I seem to think they are some sort of activist group that campaigns against religious influence in government and education, etc. I could never be bothered to be an activist, but if I could, that's the kind of activism I would go for

OK, fair enough, but might you give them a nominal donation? Say a few pounds?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 7:15 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:57 pm I don't think Satanists believe in Satan. I seem to think they are some sort of activist group that campaigns against religious influence in government and education, etc. I could never be bothered to be an activist, but if I could, that's the kind of activism I would go for

OK, fair enough, but might you give them a nominal donation? Say a few pounds?

Probably not. I don't usually donate money to anything; you can never be sure that it will go where you want it to. There is one exception; one charity that I occasionally give money to, and this will make you laugh, it's a Christian organisation.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:23 pm

Harbal wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:20 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:03 pm Or you may.

You've got me wondering if it's worth looking into Satanism.

One doesn't have to do anything that formal. To worship oneself will perform the same result.

How does one "worship oneself"? Do you burn incense at an altar with a picture of yourself on it or something? Or is worshiping oneself, by negation, anything that doesn't involve prostrating yourself to a god who allegedly drowned almost all of humanity because we dared to do our best to get some kind of mostly harmless enjoyment out of this shit hole he threw us in?

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:26 pm How does one "worship oneself"?

Act like you made yourself. Act like you'll live forever. Act like you are personally the grounds of morality. Act like you are the meaning and purpose of your own whole life.

"Worship" is about esteem. It's about what you put first, what you dedicate your life to, what is the locus of all your hopes and expectations, and the determining factor in all your decisions. If that's you, then you're worshipping yourself. You may not know it, but you are.

Whatever holds that place in your life is the thing that you "worship." And you worship it so passionately, that you make it the whole meaning of your existence.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:32 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:26 pm How does one "worship oneself"?

Act like you made yourself. Act like you'll live forever. Act like you are personally the grounds of morality. Act like you are the meaning and purpose of your own whole life.

I see what you’re saying. And wouldn’t the effect be the same if you worshipped no one, no higher being, no one other than yourself, as if you worshipped only yourself?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:32 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:26 pm How does one "worship oneself"?

Act like you made yourself. Act like you'll live forever. Act like you are personally the grounds of morality. Act like you are the meaning and purpose of your own whole life.

"Worship" is about esteem. It's about what you put first, what you dedicate your life to, what is the locus of all your hopes and expectations, and the determining factor in all your decisions. If that's you, then you're worshipping yourself. You may not know it, but you are.

Whatever holds that place in your life is the thing that you "worship." And you worship it so passionately, that you make it the whole meaning of your existence.

Then I'm sorry, IC. I've got nothing better to "worship". The world is a dump. Had God done a better job, then I'd have something else to "worship".

I'm sure it can be said that there have been many God-worshiping popes and emperors who have done many times more destruction and carnage to humanity than I have. Go complain to them.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:32 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:26 pm How does one "worship oneself"?

Act like you made yourself. Act like you'll live forever. Act like you are personally the grounds of morality. Act like you are the meaning and purpose of your own whole life.

"Worship" is about esteem. It's about what you put first, what you dedicate your life to, what is the locus of all your hopes and expectations, and the determining factor in all your decisions. If that's you, then you're worshipping yourself. You may not know it, but you are.

Whatever holds that place in your life is the thing that you "worship." And you worship it so passionately, that you make it the whole meaning of your existence.

I can't speak for Gary, but you miss the point completely where I am concerned. Nothing and no one should be, or deserves to be, worshipped.

commonsense wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:44 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:32 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:26 pm How does one "worship oneself"?

Act like you made yourself. Act like you'll live forever. Act like you are personally the grounds of morality. Act like you are the meaning and purpose of your own whole life.

I see what you’re saying. And wouldn’t the effect be the same if you worshipped no one, no higher being, no one other than yourself, as if you worshipped only yourself?

Indeed so.

I'd explain it like this: we all need to make decisions, you see...choices of priority...decisions about how to allocate our resources of time and energy (which are not infinite)...things to which we dedicate our creativity, our finances, our mental work, and so on. We have to have means of self-assessing as to how well we're doing, whether or not we're making any progress in the particular projects we care about, or whether we are being (according to our own standards) "good" people. We all want to know these things, and we all automatically decide them relative to some value.

But what value? What's the goal of the project, the appropriate subject of our efforts and resources, and how do we know we're being everything we think we should be?

We all pick something. And we judge our progress in all these areas by comparing it to what we think we should be achieving. That "something" that we pick turns out to be the thing we're worshipping. It has control of our interest, our tribute, our energies, our admiration, our ambition and our resources. So it could be anything.

"Self" is a popular choice: I simply judge the worth of everything by relationship to its utility or pleasurableness as I experience it in my own life. My happiness becomes the touchstone of everything. That's self-worship.

Harbal wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:51 pm Nothing and no one should be, or deserves to be, worshipped.

"Should," Harbal?

That's a word of moral evaluation. "I should" means "I ought to," which means "I owe it (to somebody or something) to do X," or "not to do X." It implies one has a duty to something.

What is the origin of this "should"? Who says "nothing should be worshipped"?

Could it be "the self"?

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 9:50 pm Then I'm sorry, IC. I've got nothing better to "worship".

That's a loss. The "self" is a thoroughly unhappy object of worship, you will certainly find. It's also unbelievably demanding and hard to satisfy.

And it dies. Just as it appeared for no reason it knows, it goes to a destiny over which it has no power. So it doesn't provide a whole lot of directon as to what you should do in the meanwhile, except to serve its unrelenting demands, with diminishing outcomes, until one passes away bitter and aimless from this scene.

But we all pick our paths.