The section before this was about the history of Yoga, and I feel the author just had a fucking seizure while watching Fox News, before continuing to write the book. 
Like what.
remember to be mad at communism when you stretch your calves everyone
It's fairly common for people into chakras and crystals to also have a bunch of reactionary brain worms. My friends ex is a vegan whose really into yoga and organic food, also thinks the Holocaust was a hoax because she watched some YouTube videos on how there was exercise equipment at Auschwitz and most of the people died of cholera or something.
Every hippy crystal/astrology person in Tinder is a coin flip between fairly normal person who just happens to be into it and anti-vax, libertarian, white supremacist psycho.
Which is nuts to me, 10 - 20 years 95% of those people were very left wing, or at least primitivist. Basically you can track what happened to JP Spears and see that writ large across western culture.
Which is nuts to me, 10 - 20 years 95% of those people were very left wing
I'm not sure that's entirely true. There were reactionary spiritualists as far back as the 60s. I think that Yogi the Beatles were into became a sex pest AnCap.
I had people who sent me that guys videos all the time several years back and there was definitely a point where his views starting seeping into what was supposedly tongue in cheek stuff. Dude also gets fucking acupuncture for his dog.
If you can be convinced about magic rocks and meditation super-powers, you can probably be easily convinced about all sorts of stupid shit.
Yeah she basically has "So open minded it could fall out" syndrome. When they were still together I told my friend he needed to consider putting a parental lock on Youtube because the conspiracy videos were absolutely melting her brain.
The author is using the contrast they've drawn between "cultural Marxists" and capitalism and religion to prove an earlier contrast, the one between myth and science
So this book is actually anti-science
How much hippy yoga weed this this fucker have before writing this book
I didn't even consider that...Someone else also pointed out how another section I posted which I thought was just a tangent actually ran defence for the caste system.
The amount of brain worms right-wingers transmit in seemingly innocent books, videos etc. that people might stumble onto is legit scary.
Careful. You've stumbled upon a book from a timeline where Jordan Peterson became popular with the hippy yoga cult crowd instead of the manosphere. Read on and this universe may collapse in on itself 😬
The fact that JBP still exists and is popular in the mirror world means I'm fine with letting the two universes collapse. Now if the alt-universe had the USSA instead...
Have you considered that by attempting to abolish unjust hierarchies, you are actually creating new hierarchies?
Literally every 14 year old's first argument when confronted with topics of privilege, hierarchies etc.
Such edgy nihilism was pretty popular among teenagers around 2000, just without yoga part, but i guess when you are so far in that rabbithole you can use any random idea as shield.
I never thought words like "social justice warriors" and "cultural Marxists" would be used in an actual book I would read, let alone a book about Yoga. And I'm not even getting into the absolutely ridiculous argument in the paragraph. Like, the logic is so childish, I would expect better from a redditor.
As far as I can tell, nothing. It's just another tangent.
For the purpose of yoga, it is important to understand the myth of Judgment Day. Judgment Day is a concept that is found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It was also found in ancient Egyptian, Persian, Mesopotamian, and Greek mythologies. The idea is that when you die, you are judged on your actions and sent to heaven or hell accordingly. In the case of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is the judge. And therefore, God creates the rules one must follow. If one follows the rules, one goes to heaven or hell. Secular nation-states also follow the framework underlying Judgment Day, though they exclude the idea of God. Instead of God, they speak of citizens as a collective, and commandments take the form of a constitution. The citizens are expected to live by the nation’s law; those who don’t are judged and penalized. Structurally, then, the notion of Judgment Day is implicit even in the secular idea of social justice and corporate social responsibility.
The concept of a judge, Judgment Day, and the binary between heaven and hell are not dominant motifs in Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism. In Buddhism, the Buddha is not a judge. The idea of heaven and hell exists, but it’s not quite based on judgment or commandments. Buddhism speaks of the concept of karma and the belief in rebirth based on your actions in this life. The rules of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are restricted to religious ascetic orders and communities, more for functional than metaphysical reasons. You go to heaven not by following rules, but by restraining senses and seeking wisdom. Thus, the Buddhist concept of heaven and hell is not based on following or breaking rules, but on psychological transformation and accumulating karma that either raises us or casts us down in the many-tiered cosmos.
The concept of judgment comes in a society that believes in equality, and therefore strives toward homogeneity, shunning heterogeneity. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are based on diversity, which is often misread as inequality. Every human being is different, because we all carry different karmic burdens from our previous lives. Each one has different strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So, one rule cannot apply to all. Likewise, different people need different forms of yoga and different kinds of teachers. There is no one yoga for all, no one guru for all. The yoga that works for our particular context and our body is best for us, but it might not work for others. Yoga cannot be benchmarked or indexed or standardized. Nor can gurus, yogis, or yoginis.
Like, this might be the worst book I've ever read.
You could've just begun with "different people need different forms of yoga..." You don't need to fucking discuss the difference between Abrahamic and Indic religions for three paragraphs, preceded by four paragraphs of "high school tier" philosophy about money being an illusion and other "myths"
I just wanna read about Yoga.
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism are based on diversity, which is often misread as inequality. Every human being is different, because we all carry different karmic burdens from our previous lives. Each one has different strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So, one rule cannot apply to all
This is just a defence of casteism here. One belief is that people who have good Karma are reborn as Brahmins and those with bad karma are reborn in the "lower" castes. Thus they can justify casteism since those in lower castes deserve it by being evil in the previous birth.
I didn't even consider that. I just thought it was a meaningless tangent that should've been edited out. Turns out, it was wholly intentional.
The amount of brain worms right-wingers transmit in seemingly innocent books, videos etc. that people might stumble onto is legit scary.
interpreting Hinduism as wholly casteist is like interpreting Christianity based off all the preachers who think Black people are going to hell
Lingayatism and arguably Shaivism in general doesn't care about caste, and that's like 100 million+ people. Also they invented the protestant reformation 400 years before Martin Luther existed
You are correct that the thousands of beliefs and sects under Hinduism cannot all be tarred in the same brush as casteist but that specific quote is definitely a nod towards casteism and discrimination against disabled people.
except it's not "thousands of beliefs and sects", it's literally a couple that cover hundreds of millions of people in South India
it's like ignoring Evangelicalism or Catholicism
But North Indian Brahminical Hinduism is a cancer, yes
The myth of a world without myth is actually exactly how I would describe the outlook of liberalism
Comrade! Don't do yoga! Kettle bells are the true workout of the proletariat!!!
Don't worry, they don't engage in behavior creating an imbalance with power dynamics, creating a predatory culture abusing those who look up to you as a mentor figure because they're enlightened and above such earthly desires checks notes ...
TW/CW:SA
There was literally a special on Netflix about a yoga instructor who would take advantage of his clients and molest / assault / rape them...
Edit: Not even an isolated incident.... Link to Wikipedia after a quick Google search. It's like it's part of the practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_by_yoga_gurus
A lot of crunchy granola white middle class "peace and love" "I'm not religious but I am spiritual" stuff is used as an entrance to the alt-right pipeline. If they're willing to believe that doing a bunch of stretches will make them a millionaire, they're also going to be willing to believe nonsense about the "wokes" ruining society.
wokes
The legions of lost souls with blocked chakras and negative auras who are acting very destructive right now
This is on brand with these hippie or new age types. I remember during Covid watching some documentary on Vice, I think, about some antivax loonies that went to Mexico to found some kind of ''commune''. I know I'm on Hexbear, so I won't rail against anarchists, but some self-professed ones were there, along with Trump chuds, bazinga brains, vibes chicks that talk about energies, and crystals, and do yoga, libertarians, ancaps, you name it.
Venn diagram, circle, etc, but yeah there are a million “”anarchist”” expat cults
Hahaha, I looked around for it again, and I found it. It was called ''We went to anti-vax Burning Man''. Here's a link if anybody wants to watch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk-_1UBskPw
Edit: I think you guys are right now that I saw the logo of the event again, of ''Anarchapulco''. So this was like another doc of the same fiasco.
It might’ve Guatemala, and those people were PMC KKKarens. Like their jobs were marketing and PR and shit, but most of them were also white and delusional so they created a cult
establishing their own myth of a world without myth
ok so you think pursuing truth is bad, got it
