I'm pretty anti-woo, but honestly the media did a disservice to orb mommy. She always came across as cogent and at least interesting in the debates, whereas the MSM had portrayed her as ready to sage the fuck outta the stage.
There's spiritualism and there is woo. The left can use some spiritualism. The ultimate goal of our project is to elevate the human condition, and there is something about cold, calculating industrialism and economics that leaves an empty hole in that project. On the other hand, new age occultism was a mess.
I have the same gut reaction of anti-woo, then I remember that their beliefs are no more outlandish than generic American Christianity and am fine again, but it does require active self-reminding on my part.
yeah, there's a difference between talking about things like "positive energies" or "vibes" or whatever you wanna call it, which is an actual real thing even separate from any spiritual mythologial new age nonsense, and then on the other hand there's straight up woo shit, which honestly is home to some of the most capitalist predatory soul seeking leeches I've ever come across. SO much shit from healing crystals to salt lamps to fortune reading and other methods of divination are straight up scams to take advantage of the most desperate people who are at their worst, telling them exactly what the want to hear (regardless of how true or incorrect or even damaging it is) to feel better in the moment, for a price of course. One of my friends worked at a psychic hotline, and they had so many stories of shit like a woman spending away her life savings and retirement because she desperately wanted a baby but was having fertility issues, and would spend hours and hours on the line just to have someone tell her about how her baby is "right around the corner" and all the lovely things its gonna do as it grows up and how amazing it'll be. Honestly in some cases its no different than a drug dealer trying to get someone hooked on their product so they'll have a steady stream of income.
Really, we'd all be much better off if part of our education addressed propaganda, deception, manipulation, cognitive biases, and common fallacies and the like. So much woo shit plays on very basic fundamental things like hindsight bias, the barnum effect, confirmation bias, apophenia, survivor bias, and the like, that much of it turns from mystically profound to embarrassingly predictable just by having knowledge of the existence of those kinds of thought mistakes.
The early 2000s skeptic movement turning into the alt-right, tradcaths, etc., really sucked. We really could use some popular figures exposing all those fallacies and logic traps rn
Yeah, the inherent issue is that as a leftist, you just kinda gotta assume that everyone is acting in bad faith, or trying to further fascism. You have to always be on the defensive, and for many it’s hard to reconcile that in a healthy way. Dash don’t need to worry about that, partially because they have a much bigger presence, but also because their always on the attack. Their only trying to protect themselves, never others.
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I'm pretty anti-woo, but honestly the media did a disservice to orb mommy. She always came across as cogent and at least interesting in the debates, whereas the MSM had portrayed her as ready to sage the fuck outta the stage.
There's spiritualism and there is woo. The left can use some spiritualism. The ultimate goal of our project is to elevate the human condition, and there is something about cold, calculating industrialism and economics that leaves an empty hole in that project. On the other hand, new age occultism was a mess.
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I have the same gut reaction of anti-woo, then I remember that their beliefs are no more outlandish than generic American Christianity and am fine again, but it does require active self-reminding on my part.
yeah, there's a difference between talking about things like "positive energies" or "vibes" or whatever you wanna call it, which is an actual real thing even separate from any spiritual mythologial new age nonsense, and then on the other hand there's straight up woo shit, which honestly is home to some of the most capitalist predatory soul seeking leeches I've ever come across. SO much shit from healing crystals to salt lamps to fortune reading and other methods of divination are straight up scams to take advantage of the most desperate people who are at their worst, telling them exactly what the want to hear (regardless of how true or incorrect or even damaging it is) to feel better in the moment, for a price of course. One of my friends worked at a psychic hotline, and they had so many stories of shit like a woman spending away her life savings and retirement because she desperately wanted a baby but was having fertility issues, and would spend hours and hours on the line just to have someone tell her about how her baby is "right around the corner" and all the lovely things its gonna do as it grows up and how amazing it'll be. Honestly in some cases its no different than a drug dealer trying to get someone hooked on their product so they'll have a steady stream of income.
Really, we'd all be much better off if part of our education addressed propaganda, deception, manipulation, cognitive biases, and common fallacies and the like. So much woo shit plays on very basic fundamental things like hindsight bias, the barnum effect, confirmation bias, apophenia, survivor bias, and the like, that much of it turns from mystically profound to embarrassingly predictable just by having knowledge of the existence of those kinds of thought mistakes.
The early 2000s skeptic movement turning into the alt-right, tradcaths, etc., really sucked. We really could use some popular figures exposing all those fallacies and logic traps rn
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Yeah, the inherent issue is that as a leftist, you just kinda gotta assume that everyone is acting in bad faith, or trying to further fascism. You have to always be on the defensive, and for many it’s hard to reconcile that in a healthy way. Dash don’t need to worry about that, partially because they have a much bigger presence, but also because their always on the attack. Their only trying to protect themselves, never others.
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