Proving Godwins law in one post?

[The Johnny]

For example, religion. I take it as a sort of emotional weakness that they cannot tolerate their life having no intrinsic meaning or value, or that them and their pet wont make it to heaven, so they build this whole dream or hope on an afterlife and a benevolent universe created by a benevolent intelligent being.

Not everyone has enough solace in their life to support/maintain a worldview without God; i probably have enough solace so that i dont need to drift into fantasy land regarding that, maybe i was born smarter, maybe those ideas were disproven by my particular experiences, who knows?

Saying/thinking "they deserve it" just legitimizes feeling good or indifferent about other people's misfortune.

"Hey man, the drug war in Mexico sure is shitty, but the population deserves it for not doing anything about it"

"Surely total war is awful, but we deserve it for allowing it!"

etc, etc, etc

[P3nT4gR4m]

"Deserving it" also probably a bad choice of words. There are connotations of rightness and wrongness.

If you step off a cliff, you will fall toward planetary mass with an acceleration of 10 meters per second, per second do you "deserve" that? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

No recording angel, just cause and effect. No punishment for immorality, just dumbassery. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

All very good points. Any social system may try to bring some level of balance to the idea of strong vs weak... but in the end every social system will have flaws and weak points that the strong/powerful will exploit. So while fighting for social balance may have value, we still must consider the real world issue of these exploitations and how to protect yourself from being on the receiving end of that exploitation.

Fighting for what you choose to believe in and fighting for yourself aren't mutually exclusive.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Regarding OP, this is reminiscent of a certain Anton LaVey and the "weak vs. strong" stuff that permeated his writing. Ultimately, the entire Satanism thing was a very Discordian put-on, which is still mindfucking teenagers to this day, and which I approve of for that reason. So framing it in that way Satanism, like the positions P3nt takes in the OP, is basically Discordianism with all pretense of an overarching theme of "goodness" and "altruism" removed.

It's kind of hard to come to terms with that when we live in a world where there is more than just "weak vs. strong" at play. There is the Consortium of the Strong as well -- the Status Quo, which does actively conspire against both the Weak and against the Strong when they don't join it. However "strong" you may be on your own, if it is the position of the Status Quo that you are not Membership Material, you will be shit on.

For example, Frederick Douglass was no doubt among the strongest men of his day, and he did achieve a good measure of respect and admiration and a certain degree of exception to the prevailing political thought. But because of his race, there was an absolute limit to how much privilege he could earn; and every shred of privilege he earned, he did so at twice the cost and twice the risk of any white man. So you can't really say "eh, either you're weak or you're strong, whatever" and leave it at that. Sometimes being strong isn't enough, even if you're stronger than most, because the culture around you is hostile to you.

Having said that, I think the general tone of the OP is accurate. People do need to quit playing the victim card as much as they do, and that goes for everyone, not any one particular group of people. In general we like to pretend that our failures are someone else's fault, just as we like to pretend that our success was entirely our own doing. The self-centered "what about ME" thing is played out in my opinion.

[Salty]

It is worth noting that "Through Adversity, Strength", the Satanic axiom, has led pretty directly to some pretty distasteful ideology that passively approves of and actively promotes sexism as well as racism. Just look at all the people in charge of The Church these days. Those guys are absolute DICKS.

OSHI-sexism.

Anyhow, I agree that they share a certain something with Discordians. I saw quite a lot of it when I first found this place. But then, there's a lot of other stuff as well.

What about mental deftness? Is that a strength?

[The Johnny]

Satanism has applications for membership, and it charges a fee, thats retarded.

And founding a "religion" or whatever they call themselves in something they dont actually believe exists, really? They are like MADJICK atheists that want to hog negative attention.

"OMG IM SO EDGY IM A SATANISTS, LOOK AT ME, FUCK YOU"

[tyrannosaurus vex]

It is worth noting that "Through Adversity, Strength", the Satanic axiom, has led pretty directly to some pretty distasteful ideology that passively approves of and actively promotes sexism as well as racism. Just look at all the people in charge of The Church these days. Those guys are absolute DICKS.

OSHI-sexism.

Anyhow, I agree that they share a certain something with Discordians. I saw quite a lot of it when I first found this place. But then, there's a lot of other stuff as well.

What about mental deftness? Is that a strength?

I don't want to get on a tangent about Satanism, but the only thing most Satanists are good at is being Satanists. Their writing sucks (even LaVey's wasn't that good - including the stuff he plagiarized), their style sucks (I heard a few of them discovered Brown and the Steampunk look was invented), and their philosophy would suck if they had one that went beyond "lol I bet this'll piss off my parents." I tend to put the original shit from LaVey in a category completely unrelated to the Church of Satan (or it's hundreds of one-man spin-offs), because if you actually read what he was saying, "Satanism" was just a front for a philosophy that blows over the heads of most of these "Satanist" assholes.

As it relates to this discussion, yes, this kind of thinking has led to some distasteful things that passively (and in some cases actively) promotes sexism and racism, and a number of other numb-skulled shenanigans. The underlying philosophy is not necessarily to blame though, because it never claimed to be an interpersonal, large-scale philosophy. It is one which is intended exclusively for the Individual. That a bunch of people get together and decide to be "Satanic" together is even more ridiculous than a bunch of people deciding to be "Discordian" together (over the long-term in a communal sense). That it leads to terrible things when that people try it is hardly a surprise.

[The Johnny]

"Im a Satanist, because it sounds cool and edgy, and because nobody knows who Max Stirner is."

[Cain]

What I criticise as weakness or lack of power isn't necessarily the weakness or lack of power in and of itself (everybody has to start somewhere) it's wilfully hanging onto that state and insisting that you shouldn't have to change, the world should be a different way, that  pisses me off. That's where you cross the line into "deserves it" as far as my sympathy for you is concerned.

But that's a type of power in and of itself.  Critiquing the current system of affairs and presenting them as immoral is one of the more powerful gambits one can deploy, if successful.  People like to see themselves as good and moral, and presenting your situation in such a way allows for you to win both active advocates and passive supporters.

Nietzsche showed this perfectly when he dealt with what he saw as the reversal of values under Christianity.  And Foucault would no doubt add that resistance is, in and of itself, paradigmatic of the strategies of power.

The only truly powerless position is the one which says "do nothing at all".  Everything else is a matter of degree, effectiveness and context.  Is this particular strategy useful in this setting?  Would this be more effective?  What are the potential downsides?

Power involves every possible strategy for controlling one's environment and distribution of power within a society.  Only someone who refuses to play that game entirely is removed from power.

[Junkenstein]

Satanism has applications for membership, and it charges a fee, thats retarded.

No good sir, That is genuis.


Every version of a satan entity I can imagine involves thousands and thousands of fucking forms, each more arcane and semicolon riddled than the last.

I can think of no finer representation of Satan than Bureaucracy and charging for the privilege.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Satanism has applications for membership, and it charges a fee, thats retarded.

Also, by your logic, the Church of the Subgenius isn't Satanic at all. And we know better.

[The Johnny]

Satanism has applications for membership, and it charges a fee, thats retarded.

No good sir, That is genuis.


Every version of a satan entity I can imagine involves thousands and thousands of fucking forms, each more arcane and semicolon riddled than the last.

I can think of no finer representation of Satan than Bureaucracy and charging for the privilege.

"NO! SATAN IS SUPPOSED TO BE A METAPHORES FOR OUR INNER DESIERS!!1" 

[Junkenstein]

Unfortunately, charging idiot children cash for membership in an individualistic religion is a rather deep seated inner desire.


It feels like some kind of public warning service or something.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

You seem to be mixing a lot of dichotomies here.

You start off talking about strength versus weakness, but veer into privilege versus lack thereof, luxury versus want, security versus vulnerability.

Those aren't all the same things and range from loosely related to not in any way remotely related. Hard to address the topic when it's many topics conflated like this.