I hope you write at length about addiction sometime. You've written that the devil's main strategy is convincing us there's no point in doing better-- we're already damned. The addict struggles with this on a moral/ physiological level on a daily basis. Tough spot to be in.
"no spiritual idea can stand until it’s been dragged into a battle of dominance and submission, where it must play the part of an authoritarian daddy and be ritualistically trounced, all for the sake of satisfying some parochial insecurity that one may at some point be forced to ‘submit’ to it."
Beautiful paragraph.
It seems that a large part of what you address in that paragraph, and in the rest of this essay (which I really wish were much longer - you ought to make a book of it) is the delicate dance of self-loathing and narcissism, which are never found very far apart.
It has occurred to me that a lot of the resentment aimed at "religion" (meaning Christianity) comes from a place of fear. Specifically, fear of being somehow co-opted or held captive by a belief system, as if being assaulted by some hypnotic proselytizer with spirals in his eyes. And that plays back into what you described in this entry.
I love your observations on Twitter, but I would really like to see you grow them into long-form writing more often. And I'd like to see that, in turn, grow into even longer writing.
How am I *just now reading this* I’m absolutely bowled over w glee. This is a great piece
I hope you write at length about addiction sometime. You've written that the devil's main strategy is convincing us there's no point in doing better-- we're already damned. The addict struggles with this on a moral/ physiological level on a daily basis. Tough spot to be in.
"no spiritual idea can stand until it’s been dragged into a battle of dominance and submission, where it must play the part of an authoritarian daddy and be ritualistically trounced, all for the sake of satisfying some parochial insecurity that one may at some point be forced to ‘submit’ to it."
Beautiful paragraph.
It seems that a large part of what you address in that paragraph, and in the rest of this essay (which I really wish were much longer - you ought to make a book of it) is the delicate dance of self-loathing and narcissism, which are never found very far apart.
It has occurred to me that a lot of the resentment aimed at "religion" (meaning Christianity) comes from a place of fear. Specifically, fear of being somehow co-opted or held captive by a belief system, as if being assaulted by some hypnotic proselytizer with spirals in his eyes. And that plays back into what you described in this entry.
I love your observations on Twitter, but I would really like to see you grow them into long-form writing more often. And I'd like to see that, in turn, grow into even longer writing.