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2010.06.22 20:33 katiejoh WeddingPlanning

Discuss your personal wedding planning here! Please be sure to check out our rules.
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2024.05.14 12:45 Errora403 PUBG MOBILE VERSION 3.2 UPDATE ANNOUNCEMENT

PUBG MOBILE VERSION 3.2 UPDATE ANNOUNCEMENT
Report bugs here and earn rewards: https://pubgmobile.live/support
PUBG MOBILE will begin pushing out the update on 5/13 at 2:00 (UTC+0). Service will not be interrupted. To ensure a quick and smooth update, please be in a good network environment and make sure you have enough available storage on your device.
Update Reward: Update the game between 5/13–5/27 (UTC+0) to get 3,000 BP, 100 AG, and a Mecha Warship Theme (3d).

Key Updates

  1. New Themed Mode "Mecha Fusion": Engage in thrilling battles in a brand new battleship themed area with new mecha vehicles!
  2. World of Wonder Updates: Bring your competitive experience to the next level with new mecha gameplay!
  3. Firearm and Vehicle Updates: P90 and Skorpion have been rebalanced. QBZ added to Erangel and Miramar. Select vehicles now have a delayed explosion mechanic. Experience a different kind of battle!
  4. Collection System: The Collection System is here! Start growing your collection today!
  5. Home: The mysterious Elegant Ancient Capital resource pack is coming soon! Build your dream Home and show off your creativity in the Home Competition!

New Themed Mode: Mecha Fusion

Available: 2024/5/13 at 2:00 (UTC+0)–2024/7/9 at 20:59 (UTC+0)
Supported Maps: Erangel, Livik, and Miramar (Ranked and Unranked)
https://preview.redd.it/6m82y04sfd0d1.png?width=1384&format=png&auto=webp&s=a0ce25f8079e2fabcfe43c9bb5b98fb3d648170e

New Mecha Vehicles

  • Strider: A two-seater vehicle with the ability to jump. It's armed with missiles that can be used to bombard designated areas. Missiles can be replenished at the Repair Station in the Assembly Base.
  • Levitron: A special vechile that can switch between a speed form and a magnetic form. Serves as the upper-body component that combines with a Strider to form the Armamech.
    • In speed form, the maximum speed and hover height will be increased, and the vehicle gains a "collision acceleration" ability: it will not slow down when it hits an obstacle. Instead, it will accelerate using the stored magnetic energy.
    • In magnetic form, the maximum speed and hover height will be reduced, but it can activate a "Magnetize" ability to grab and toss characters, vehicles, and specific objects.
  • Armamech: A four-seater vehicle combined from a Levitron and a Strider. It can also be directly summoned from the Steel Ark.
    • It possesses 2 weapons that it can freely switch between: the Strider's missiles, and the Levitron's "Magnetize" ability.
    • It has a boosted jump that enables it to leap high and far with the assistance of jets.
    • Bring a Levitron and a Strider close together to combine them. After combining, the pilot of the Levitron becomes the pilot of the Armamech. It can also be separated at any time.

Brand New Environments

  • Steel Ark:
    • A giant space battleship that will land on the map at the start of a match. You can enter it and explore inside. The core of the Steel Ark is a platform where you can summon the Armamech from the skies! You can launch yourself into the air in this mecha for everyone to see.
    • The ark consists of many areas. You can find all kinds of supplies and Supply Crates at the Command Post, Dormitory, Warehouse, and more.
    • From the landing pad, you can board an evacuation Wingman, which will take you straight to the Playzone!
    • You can use elevators and ziplines in the ark to get around.
    • Steel Ark Air Drop: A Steel Ark loaded with supplies will fly around during the match and drop supplies consisting of an Air Drop Crate and several Supply Crates at specific drop points.
  • Assembly Base:
    • The Assembly Base contains a Mecha Repair Station. Approach it in a mecha to replenish the mecha's health, fuel, and missiles.
    • On the top floor of the Assembly Base, there is a detector that can determine the location of crates within the Assembly Base. An Access Card can be found in one of the crates, which can be used to open the door to the Secret Room and get loads of supplies.

New Items

  • Jetpack: Pick it up and equip it to increase movement speed. It possesses the ability to hover in the air for a short duration. It consumes Energy rapidly when lifting off. Energy will only be replenished when you reach the ground. The Jetpack has a Health bar that protects you from damage to your back and arms. It will be destroyed after taking a certain amount of damage. When reaching a certain speed while moving forward, it can switch to a speed form. You will perform a special action when you tap "Lift Off" as it switches to the speed form. The Jetpack comes with the "Magnetize" ability, but you will not be able to fly fast when using it.
  • Personal AED: If you have this item, you can tap self-rescue after being knocked down. Once successful, you will recover from the knocked down state. Each player can only carry one of these items. Self-rescuing will be interrupted if you move while using this item.
  • Magnet Gun: This is a downgraded version of the Levitron's "Magnetize" ability in gun form. Switch to it by tapping on the firearm bar. It works the same as the Levitron's "Magnetize", but with reduced values.
  • Respawn Beacon: Throw the beacon on the ground to mark a location that the plane will pass over. Recalled teammates can parachute into the match again at the cost of a respawn chance. Teammates who have used up all their respawn chances cannot respawn.
  • Quick Parachute: When parachuting, a quick parachute button will appear at a certain height in the air. Tap it to immediately deploy the parachute which can also be freely put away.
  • Repair Station: Approach the Repair Station in a mecha to replenish its health, fuel, and missiles.

New Legendary Pilot Challenge

Get themed items, special vehicle cosmetics, Armamech dance emotes, special Elimination Broadcasts, and more by completing this difficult themed mode challenge.

World of Wonder

Available: Releases with the version
https://preview.redd.it/p1fd1vgtfd0d1.png?width=1384&format=png&auto=webp&s=e85c32e7ca039909f454cf08cf359f0df7137de5

World of Wonder Updates

  • Fuzzy search is now supported. You can search for maps by creation ID, creator UID, creation name, and description.
  • Added the friends tab to check what creations your friends have made at a glance.
  • Gift Access Point: You can now send Space Gifts from the creation details page and the creator's profile page.
  • You can view your play data and creation data in WOW on your player information page.
  • Ranking Improvements: Added support for more variables. Matches will now announce when a ranking player is in the match.
  • Copied Creations Limit: The number of copied creations you can have (including creations that are already published or those under review) is limited based on your Creator Level. When the limit is reached, you can only publish original creations unless you take down an existing copied creation.
  • Improved map recommendations and showcasing. Updated the WOW Creator page.

New Gameplay Devices

  • Contested Object Device: Use this device to spawn a contested object, which players can hold in their hands similar to "capture the flag".
  • Contested Object Handover Device: Contested objects can be handed over to this device for rewards.
  • Defensive Tower Device: Use this device to generate a fixed defense tower and configure its weapon type.

Gameplay Device Improvements

  • PvE Enemy Spawn Device: Supports spawning PvE enemies at random, configuring the PvE enemy's type, and randomizing their weight. You can also configure the PvE enemy's team.
  • Random Action Device: Supports storing the result of a random integer in a custom variable.
  • Special Vehicle Device: Added mechas.
  • Map Indicator Device: Supports real-time display of icons and text in the game.
  • Area Trigger Device: The action of the specific object entering the zone can be detected by the Area Trigger Device.
  • Overall Action Device: The action of players leaving the match can be detected.
  • Humanoid Enemy Spawn Device: Can now add buffs to spawned humanoid enemies.
  • Grouped Object Action Device: Supports configuring grouped objects. Loading any one of them automatically removes the others.
  • Item Issuance Device, Item Spawn Device, Custom Shop Device: Added 5.7mm ammo and the MG3.

New Interactive Objects

  • Target Dummy: A target dummy from the single-player training stage that shows damage numbers when hit and has several poses.
  • Soccer Ball: A soccer ball that moves upon contact.

Interactive Object Improvements

  • New Dynamic Moving Object Actions: Every new movement method for moving objects has a corresponding action. They can be activated by the detectable actions of other devices.
  • Guiding Lines: Launch pads and trampolines have guiding lines that show the trajectory of the player being launched into the air.

Controls & Interaction

  • Guiding Lines When Placing Objects In Midair: When placing objects in the air, guiding lines that project the current object's position on the ground can be shown.
  • Backpack Objects Can Be Interactized: You can take out interactized attachments such as a spinning ferris wheel from your backpack.
  • Object Interactization—Collidable Interactization: Set whether interactized objects move when hit by characters, vehicles, bullets, or throwables.
  • Object Interactization—Holding Interactization: Interactized objects can be held and tossed by characters.
  • Coordinate Editing in Free Editing Mode: In Free Editing Mode, you can select an object directly and move, rotate, or resize it by modifying its coordinates.
  • Object Editing Interface: Each object has an editing interface where you can directly edit the object's orientation, scaling, interactization type, or gameplay device parameters.
  • Object Placement and Alignment Improvements: Improved the usability of object snap and area grid, as well as added more object alignment parameters.
  • Auto Snap Option When Re-Editing: In the previous version, objects automatically snapped to their initial position when brought close to it during re-editing. This setting can now be toggled on and off in the editor's parameter settings interface, and is off by default.
  • Object Movement and Rotation Increment: Added movement and rotation increment settings to the editor's parameter settings interface.
  • Free Editing Top View Now Perfectly Flat: In Free Editing Mode, the previous top view editing was not perfectly flat, resulting in inaccurate positioning when placing objects from midair. Now, the editing view has been changed to be perfectly flat.
  • Added temporary resources. They will be replaced with default resources when they expire.

Game Parameters

  • Retaining Shop Tokens: Shop Tokens can now be kept during a match or across matches.
  • Overall Action Management: Added tag customization and filter features. You can create tags for gameplay devices to classify and filter them based on the tags.
  • Armed AI Customization Interface: Attributes for armed AI and defense towers can be customized, including health, attack, and more.
  • Match Log Interface: In-game logs now include the save feature. You can save and view all logs generated during play tests.

Other Updates

  • Group Editing: The team leader can edit the permissions of team members for better team management.
  • Enchantopia Updates: You can invite friends to Enchantopia and edit your team there. Added more interesting gameplay to the stages.
  • Cost Calculation Improvements: Fine-tuned how the system determines the cost of an object.
  • New map templates.

Classic Updates

Livik Map Updates

  • Added 4 new XT Upgrade Crates on top of the existing ones. New firearm upgrades are for the UMP45, SKS, DP-28, and M762. Upgrade Crates for these 4 firearms can be found in Livik or purchased from the Shop for 10 tokens.
    • UMP45 Upgrade: Reduced hip fire bullet spread by 20%.
    • SKS Upgrade: Faster recoil recovery after firing.
    • DP-28 Upgrade: Faster reload speed.
    • M762 Upgrade: Reduced muzzle shake.

Erangel Map Updates

  • Improved the quality of models seen by players at high altitudes, and resolved the issue of buildings disappearing.

Home Updates

The Home System is permanently available, and will be updated each version with interesting gameplay and building cosmetics.

Home Competition

Submission Period: 2024/5/13 at 00:00–2024/6/1 at 8:59 (UTC+0)
Selection Period: 2024/6/1 at 9:00–2024/7/1 at 9:00 (UTC+0)
  • You must reach at least 200 Home Prosperity before you can register for the Home Competition.
  • If players miss the submission period, they can still register during the selection period. After registering, they will be placed in the next round's matchmaking pool.
  • After registering, the selection criteria will be based on the current look of the player's Home.
  • During the selection period, you'll be matched with players of similar Home Prosperity at random every 3 days, for 10 rounds in total.
  • During the face-off, the player that obtains more votes wins. The winner gets to loot points from the loser.
  • Participate in Home Face-Offs to win Home Points and increase your Home Face-Off Level. The higher the Home Face-Off Level, the better the rewards.
  • Home Votes can be obtained by completing missions and by sending Home gifts. Note: Regular Popularity gifts do not grant Home Votes.
  • Home gifts given during each face-off round of the selection period will count towards Home Votes. Home gifts given outside a face-off round will not count towards the number of votes.

Home Events

  • Elegant Ancient Capital Style Event:
    • Available: 2024/5/18 at 2:00 (UTC+0)
    • Purchase Elegant Ancient Capital Home items during the event to get Style Points that can be redeemed for amazing rewards.
  • Ancient Capital Theme Debut Celebration:
    • Available: 2024/5/18 at 00:00 (UTC+0)–2024/5/31 at 23:59 (UTC+0)
    • The Event Center is launching an event to celebrate Elegant Ancient Capital's arrival. Get a Congratulatory Ancient Capital Object Pack when you reach Home Lv. 3, and use it to build an Ancient Capital Style Home in an instant!
    • Visit your Home and upgrade your Home Level to get additional rewards, including Home Coins, Classic Crate Coupons, AG, Ancient Capital themed items, and more.

Home Building Updates

  • Build With Blueprint & Group Editing:
    • Improved the process of building with blueprints. You can now go to More - Save Blueprint to copy and save the draft.
    • The Home Level required to build with blueprints and publish blueprints has been reduced to Lv. 3.
    • You can set the level of the blueprint you want to edit with a tap.
    • The Home Level required to access group editing has been reduced to Lv. 5. You can go to Blueprint Editing - More - Group Editing to invite your friends to build your Home together.
  • Home Resource Updates:
    • The mysterious Elegant Ancient Capital resource pack will be coming soon, along with a surprise event that will reward the Elegant Ancient Capital doorplate and exclusive background music for a limited time.
    • Reach Home Lv. 3 to get a basic Elegant Ancient Capital object pack.

Home Resource & Content Updates

  • Added an access point to the Home Shop in Home. Not only can you browse and edit freely in your Home, you can also enjoy the fun of shopping at any time.
  • Added an access point to the Home Lucky Spin in the Home Shop, so you can more conveniently acquire your favorite items:
    • Upgraded the Lucky Spin event. There are now multiple Lucky Spins available at once, providing you with more diverse shopping options.
    • Elegant Ancient Capital themed items will be available in the Home Lucky Spin.
  • The Elegant Ancient Capital themed items are now available in the Home Shop. Give your Home style a unique twist.
  • Upgraded the Home's lighting effects so players can take more quality photos.
  • Added customizable atmosphere modules that can be adjusted in visit mode.
  • Added privacy settings so you can now control who has access to your Home. Additionally, after reaching Home Lv. 15, you can enable the private channel feature to enjoy private time with your friends.
  • Improved object interactions. Added new facial expression changes after sitting down. Added new interactive objects: Smith Machine, Treadmill, Bathtub.
  • Improved butler actions. Butlers can now turn around and look at the player when they are within a specific range.
  • Home Tree Status Notification: When coins can be collected from the current Home Tree, you will see a notification icon on the Friends tab, the Enter My Home button, and the Home details page.

Metro Royale Updates

Available: 2024/5/15 at 1:00 (UTC+0)
Matchmaking: 2024/5/15 at 2:00 (UTC+0)
  • Collectibles Cabinet Updates: New Chapter 20 Collectibles
  • After obtaining specific Fabled collectibles, they can be displayed in the player's Personal Space.
  • After obtaining specific Fabled collectibles, turn in collectibles to get certain Fabled collectible decorations for the Home.
  • New Honor Rewards: Chapter 20 Elite Avatar, Chapter 20 Hero Avatar Frame, and Chapter 20 Legendary Name Tag. These rewards can be claimed after reaching the corresponding Honor level.
  • New elite PvE enemy in Misty Port and Arctic Base: Strider.
  • New firearms: P90 (Cobra), P90 (Steel Front).
  • Player EXP can now be earned via Metro Royale matches.
  • Companion EXP can be earned by bringing companions to Metro Royale matches.
  • You can now tap to repair all items at once on the loadout page.
  • You can now tap to open multiple inventory gift packs at once.
  • Improved the firearm status at the preparation stage at the start of the match. Firearms will be reloaded by default and set to full auto firing mode.
  • Fixed the issue of incorrect models for some drop items.

Firearm & Vehicle Improvements

  • Firearm Adjustments:
    • P90 damage adjustment.
    • QBZ added to Erangel and Miramar.
    • Skorpion Improvements: Base damage increased from 22 to 24, 15% faster reload time, 20% faster aim down sights time, 30% reduced bullet spread when moving, 10% less sway when shooting.
  • Delayed Explosion Mechanic for Select Vehicles: When a vehicle's health reaches 0, it won't explode right away. Instead, its engine will stop working and it will catch on fire before exploding after 5 seconds. If the vehicle is damaged by an explosion during this period, it will explode immediately. (Some special vehicles aren't affected by this change.)
  • Mobile Shop Vehicle Modification: Added a new item to the Mobile Shop in Erangel, Livik, Miramar, and Sanhok. Use Shop Tokens to purchase its key and turn the Mobile Shop into a drivable vehicle. Items can only be purchased from the Mobile Shop when it's parked. If the vehicle is destroyed, it can no longer be used as a shop.

General Improvements

  • Victory Dance: The A7 Victory Dance comes with an exclusive camera view. Select it from Creation Mode's Victory Dance tab.
  • In-game Mark: When marking supplies with universal mark/quick chat, the quantity of the marked supply will also be shown.
  • Customize Buttons: When customizing controls, you can now quickly copy your Arena Mode layout to use in Classic Mode.
  • Improved Highlights:
    • Companions that you bring into matches will now show in highlights.
    • When recording highlights, all emotes that meet the requirements will be recorded and displayed during playback.
    • Adjusted the retention priority of highlights and the recording conditions of some clips to make it easier to retain them.
    • Teammate numbers now show in highlights.
    • Smoke from exploding grenades now shows in highlights.
  • Auto Pick Up: You can now choose whether to discard or put your previous melee weapon into your backpack after picking up a new one.
  • Sprinting Interrupts Peek Mode: This new setting is enabled by default. When disabled, if you perform a sprint while peeking, it won't interrupt peek mode and you won't start sprinting.
  • New Individual Companion Display: Players can now choose to display their companions, and companions added to the companion system will take turns showing off. This can be done in the Lobby or in a match.
  • Device Update: 120 fps and 90 fps are now available for select devices for you to enjoy a smoother gaming experience.

System Improvements

  • New Collection System: Collect firearms, finishes, and more to get awesome rewards.
  • Themed Event Shop additions: Mecha themed gameplay cosmetics, social items, fun items, and more.
  • Chat Room Feature Updates:
    • Improved the list of featured chat rooms and added filters for chat room type, language, and more.
    • Added Speaking Mode: In regular mode, the host's permission is required to speak. In free mode, any player can freely speak.
    • Added new discussion topics to the chat room. Share your thoughts to increase the interactive atmosphere.
    • Added new ways to send Space Gifts.
    • Added chat room status updates in the Friends List.
  • Birthday Care System: You can now add your birthday to your Social Player Card as part of the new birthday care system. You'll receive surprise care rewards when you log in on your birthday.
  • Synergy: Complete missions such as adding friends and teaming up during the event to get Synergy items and the Underworld Outlaw Set (time-limited).

New Season: Cycle 6 Season 18

Available: 2024/5/18 at 2:00 (UTC+0)–2024/7/15 at 23:59 (UTC+0)
https://preview.redd.it/4125d8rwfd0d1.png?width=1384&format=png&auto=webp&s=a74a0f8340ef11eecf1c7d4c0e9f9104b22ad806
  • Reward updates: New legendary items: C6S18 Glasses, C6S18 Set, C6S18 Mask, C6S18 Cover, C6S18 - DBS
  • Season Token Event Shop Update: C6S18 - Parachute

All-Talent Championship S19

Available: 2024/5/20–2024/7/4 (UTC+0)
  • New Event Shop Rewards: Pop Sensation Set (Epic), Elven Tracker Cover (Legendary), Elven Tracker Set (Legendary), Finest Flavors - QBZ (Epic)
  • New All-Talent Championship S19 Crate Rewards: Pop Sensation Set (Epic), Elven Tracker Cover (Legendary), Elven Tracker Set (Legendary), Finest Flavors - QBZ (Epic), Labyrinth Scale - M24 (Epic), Inked Battleground Parachute (Epic)
  • New First and Second Runner-Up Rewards: Ducky Fighter Set (Legendary), Ducky Fighter Cover (Legendary), Time Traveler - Kar98K (Legendary), Round Parachute (Camo) (Epic), Mr. Bronze Set (Epic)

Popularity Gift Events

New Redemption Shop

  • Popularity Gift Redemption Shop: The Redemption Shop is permanently available and its rewards will be continuously updated. Use tokens earned from Popularity Battles and Team Popularity Battles to redeem rewards.

Popularity Battle Event

Registration Period: 2024/5/14 at 00:00–2024/5/19 at 8:59 (UTC+0)
Battle Period: 2024/5/19 at 9:00–2024/6/18 at 9:00 (UTC+0)
  • Main Updates:
    • New widget tool: Popularity Battle progress can now be synced to your device.
    • New rewards: Popularity Coin, Stickers
    • Lowered the points required to reach each level so obtaining rewards is easier.
  • Rules:
    • Register to participate in the Popularity Battle event. During the battle period, get randomly matched with a powerful opponent every 3 days for a popularity contest. Lasts 10 rounds in total.
    • During the battle period, the Popularity of both competitors will be compared. The one with the highest Popularity wins.
    • The winner can claim some of their opponent's points.
    • Participate in Popularity Battles to win Battle Points and increase Battle Level. The higher the Battle Level, the better the rewards.

Team Popularity Battle Event

Registration Period: 2024/6/17 at 00:00–2024/6/23 at 8:59 (UTC+0)
Battle Period: 2024/6/23 at 9:00–2024/7/9 at 9:30 (UTC+0)
  • Main Content:
    • New widget tool: Popularity Battle progress can now be synced to your device.
    • New reward: Popularity Coin
    • Lowered the points required to reach each level so obtaining rewards is easier.
  • Rules:
    • Matchmaking: There will be a total of 8 rounds. Teams of similar strength will be matched every 2 days. Players within each team will be ranked by Popularity through 1v1 Popularity Battles.
    • Battle: Both sides will compete to see who can gain the most Popularity during this phase.
    • The total score will be determined by the win-loss record of each player on the team. In the event of a tie (2:2), the total Popularity of both teams will be compared.
    • The team with the higher total score will be declared the winner, and can loot Battle Points from the defeated team.
    • If all players within a team have the same score, they can jointly claim the level rewards and ranking rewards.
    • Teams that have registered can have their team leader create an exclusive Nickname Badge for the team, which serves as a symbol of the close bond between team members and gift recipients.
    • Nickname Badges support custom text and are unique.
    • Players can obtain a Nickname Badge by registering a team or by completing gift missions.

Security & Game Environment Improvements

Account Security

  • Players who are conducting video reviews will now show the status, "Reviewing Video", on the Friend List.
  • You can now log in via QR code with accounts linked to certain platforms.
  • Improved account protection system with better account linking and unlinking procedures, and improved security verification and abnormal login reminders. Enhanced in-game notifications for better player awareness on how accounts are stolen to minimize their occurrence.
  • Improved account recovery tool to enhance account retrieval and self-unlinking, to help more account owners in retrieving their accounts.

Security Strategy Improvements

  • Improved cheat detection for X-Ray vision, auto aim, no recoil, speed hacks, modified resource files, and more.
  • Improved violation detection for unfair cooperation and teaming up with cheaters.
  • Improved the in-game detection and countermeasures against account farming, prohibited transactions, escorting, botting and other violations to better regulate in-game behavior and improve players' gaming experience.
  • Improved detection and penalties for inappropriate text, voice messages, avatars, and Home designs to better regulate in-game behavior.
submitted by Errora403 to PUBGMobile [link] [comments]

2024.05.14 10:37 vibranition Template Monster Promo Code in May 2024

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submitted by vibranition to AceOffers [link] [comments]

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submitted by vibranition to AceOffers [link] [comments]

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submitted by Hot_Entertainment695 to aitoolsdeals [link] [comments]

2024.05.13 10:59 adulting4kids Character Traits of Addiction

When our characters suffer addiction we know little about we should look up these different things to add into the description of the traits to provide more depth and reality to them. It makes it more three dimensional and can build into different subplots that are integrated into a larger storyline.
Here are just a few of the things people are addicted to and how those addictions are manifested into traits that are part of a full character profile.
  1. Alcohol:
    • Dependence
    • Craving
    • Tolerance
    • Withdrawal symptoms
    • Loss of control
  2. Tobacco:
    • Nicotine dependence
    • Habitual use
    • Respiratory issues
    • Withdrawal symptoms
    • Health deterioration
  3. Cocaine:
    • Intense euphoria
    • Increased energy
    • Agitation
    • Paranoia
    • Rapid heart rate
  4. Heroin:
    • Euphoria
    • Drowsiness
    • Needle marks
    • Respiratory depression
    • Nausea
  5. Marijuana:
    • Altered perception
    • Memory impairment
    • Lack of coordination
    • Dependence
    • Impaired judgment
  6. Prescription opioids:
    • Pain relief
    • Sedation
    • Dependence
    • Tolerance
    • Respiratory depression
  7. Benzodiazepines:
    • Anxiety relief
    • Sedation
    • Dependence
    • Withdrawal symptoms
    • Memory impairment
  8. Methamphetamine:
    • Increased alertness
    • Euphoria
    • Agitation
    • Psychotic symptoms
    • Cardiovascular issues
  9. Gambling:
    • Compulsive behavior
    • Financial losses
    • Obsessive thoughts
    • Relationship strain
    • Chasing losses
  10. Video games:
    • Escapism
    • Social isolation
    • Obsessive gaming
    • Impaired daily functioning
    • Disrupted sleep
  11. Social media:
    • Constant checking
    • Fear of missing out (FOMO)
    • Validation-seeking behavior
    • Time distortion
    • Negative impact on mental health
  12. Internet:
    • Excessive online time
    • Cyber addiction
    • Social disconnection
    • Impact on real-life relationships
    • Compulsive browsing
  13. Shopping:
    • Compulsive buying
    • Financial strain
    • Temporary emotional relief
    • Hoarding tendencies
    • Impaired financial decision-making
  14. Work:
    • Workaholism
    • Neglect of personal life
    • Burnout
    • Constant need for achievement
    • Difficulty delegating tasks
  15. Exercise:
    • Compulsive exercising
    • Exercise as a primary source of identity
    • Physical strain
    • Disregard for rest and recovery
    • Negative impact on mental health
  16. Food:
    • Binge eating
    • Emotional eating
    • Loss of control
    • Negative body image
    • Compulsive overeating
  17. Sugar:
    • Craving for sugary foods
    • Energy crashes
    • Weight gain
    • Increased risk of health issues
    • Difficulty moderating intake
  18. Coffee:
    • Caffeine dependence
    • Increased tolerance
    • Physical withdrawal symptoms
    • Disrupted sleep
    • Jitters and restlessness
  19. Tea:
    • Caffeine dependence
    • Ritualistic consumption
    • Calming effect
    • Impact on hydration
    • Withdrawal headaches
  20. Energy drinks:
    • Excessive caffeine intake
    • High sugar content
    • Stimulant-induced alertness
    • Potential health risks
    • Dependency for energy boost
  21. Sex:
    • Compulsive sexual behavior
    • Relationship strain
    • Risky sexual activities
    • Obsessive thoughts
    • Impact on daily functioning
  22. Pornography:
    • Excessive consumption
    • Escapism
    • Distorted views of relationships
    • Impact on sexual health
    • Relationship strain
  23. Prescription medications:
    • Dependence on medication
    • Over-reliance
    • Impact on physical health
    • Potential for misuse
    • Tolerance
  24. Codeine:
    • Pain relief
    • Sedation
    • Dependence
    • Respiratory depression
    • Misuse potential
  25. LSD:
    • Altered perception
    • Hallucinations
    • Distorted sense of time
    • Potential for psychological distress
    • Flashbacks
  26. MDMA (Ecstasy):
    • Increased empathy
    • Euphoria
    • Dehydration
    • Hyperactivity
    • Potential for overheating
  27. Ketamine:
    • Dissociation
    • Hallucinations
    • Impaired motor function
    • Dependence
    • Bladder and urinary issues
  28. Inhalants:
    • Euphoria
    • Dizziness
    • Short-term hallucinations
    • Potential for brain and organ damage
    • Sudden sniffing death
  29. Caffeine:
    • Stimulant effects
    • Dependence
    • Withdrawal headaches
    • Increased heart rate
    • Insomnia
  30. Nicotine:
    • Stimulant effects
    • Dependence
    • Withdrawal symptoms
    • Increased heart rate
    • Respiratory issues
  31. Sex:
    • Compulsive sexual behavior
    • Relationship strain
    • Risky sexual activities
    • Obsessive thoughts
    • Impact on daily functioning
  32. Pornography:
    • Excessive consumption
    • Escapism
    • Distorted views of relationships
    • Impact on sexual health
    • Relationship strain
  33. Prescription medications:
    • Dependence on medication
    • Over-reliance
    • Impact on physical health
    • Potential for misuse
    • Tolerance
  34. Codeine:
    • Pain relief
    • Sedation
    • Dependence
    • Respiratory depression
    • Misuse potential
  35. LSD:
    • Altered perception
    • Hallucinations
    • Distorted sense of time
    • Potential for psychological distress
    • Flashbacks
  36. MDMA (Ecstasy):
    • Increased empathy
    • Euphoria
    • Dehydration
    • Hyperactivity
    • Potential for overheating
  37. Ketamine:
    • Dissociation
    • Hallucinations
    • Impaired motor function
    • Dependence
    • Bladder and urinary issues
  38. Inhalants:
    • Euphoria
    • Dizziness
    • Short-term hallucinations
    • Potential for brain and organ damage
    • Sudden sniffing death
  39. Caffeine:
    • Stimulant effects
    • Dependence
    • Withdrawal headaches
    • Increased heart rate
    • Insomnia
  40. Painkillers:
    • Pain relief
    • Tolerance
    • Dependence
    • Risk of overdose
    • Respiratory depression
  41. Sleeping pills:
    • Sedation
    • Dependence
    • Tolerance
    • Impaired cognitive function
    • Disrupted sleep patterns
  42. Compulsive lying:
    • Habitual dishonesty
    • Concealing the truth
    • Strained relationships
    • Loss of trust
    • Need for constant validation
  43. Plastic surgery:
    • Body dysmorphic tendencies
    • Constant pursuit of perfection
    • Psychological impact
    • Financial strain
    • Societal pressure
  44. Cutting/self-harm:
    • Coping mechanism
    • Emotional release
    • Negative emotions relief
    • Risk of infection
    • Concealing scars
  45. Powecontrol:
    • Manipulative behavior
    • Desire for dominance
    • Strained relationships
    • Lack of empathy
    • Fear-based control
  46. Fame:
    • Constant pursuit of recognition
    • Validation-seeking behavior
    • Impact on mental health
    • Shifting priorities
    • Loss of privacy
  47. Attention:
    • Constant need for validation
    • Disregard for personal boundaries
    • Impact on relationships
    • Social media-centric behavior
    • Self-worth tied to attention
  48. Sugar-sweetened beverages:
    • High sugar content
    • Increased calorie intake
    • Weight gain
    • Tooth decay
    • Dependency on sugary drinks
  49. Fast food:
    • High-fat content
    • High calorie intake
    • Dependence on convenience
    • Weight gain
    • Negative impact on health
  50. Selfies:
    • Constant need for self-documentation
    • Validation-seeking behavior
    • Impact on self-esteem
    • Comparison to others
    • Social media-centric behavior
  51. Cosmetic procedures:
    • Desire for physical enhancement
    • Psychological impact
    • Financial strain
    • Body dysmorphic tendencies
    • Societal pressure
  52. Hoarding:
    • Compulsive accumulation of possessions
    • Difficulty discarding items
    • Impaired living space
    • Emotional attachment to objects
    • Strained relationships
  53. Overeating:
    • Binge eating episodes
    • Emotional eating
    • Loss of control
    • Negative impact on physical health
    • Guilt and shame
  54. Prescription stimulants:
    • Increased alertness
    • Improved focus and concentration
    • Dependence
    • Tolerance
    • Potential for misuse
  55. Over-the-counter drugs:
    • Self-medication
    • Potential for misuse
    • Dependency
    • Health risks
    • Lack of professional guidance
  56. Romantic relationships:
    • Codependency
    • Obsessive thoughts
    • Fear of abandonment
    • Emotional highs and lows
    • Strained personal identity
  57. Codependency:
    • Excessive reliance on others
    • Neglect of personal needs
    • Difficulty setting boundaries
    • Fear of rejection
    • Strained relationships
  58. Social approval:
    • Constant need for validation
    • Fear of judgment
    • Impact on self-esteem
    • Conforming behavior
    • Social media-centric validation
  59. Thrill-seeking:
    • Constant pursuit of excitement
    • Risk-taking behavior
    • Impaired judgment
    • Adrenaline dependence
    • Impact on personal safety
  60. Narcotics:
    • Pain relief
    • Sedation
    • Dependence
    • Tolerance
    • Health risks
  61. Designer drugs (e.g., bath salts):
    • Intense euphoria
    • Hallucinations
    • Agitation
    • Increased heart rate
    • Severe health risks
  62. Over-the-counter cough medicine abuse:
    • Euphoria
    • Dizziness
    • Hallucinations
    • Impaired coordination
    • Health risks
  63. Social media stalking:
    • Compulsive checking of profiles
    • Intrusive thoughts
    • Obsessive behavior
    • Impact on mental well-being
    • Strained personal relationships
  64. Fear of missing out (FOMO):
    • Constant need to be involved
    • Anxiety about social events
    • Comparison to others
    • Impact on mental health
    • Social media-centric anxiety
  65. Collecting:
    • Compulsive acquisition of items
    • Difficulty discarding possessions
    • Emotional attachment to collections
    • Strained living space
    • Financial strain
  66. Fantasy sports addiction:
    • Excessive time spent on fantasy sports
    • Impact on work or relationships
    • Obsessive tracking of player stats
    • Financial investment
    • Escapism from reality
  67. Conspiracy theories obsession:
    • Constant consumption of conspiracy content
    • Alienation from mainstream information
    • Impact on critical thinking
    • Strained relationships
    • Difficulty accepting evidence-based information
  68. Extreme diets:
    • Obsessive focus on dieting
    • Impact on physical health
    • Emotional distress related to food
    • Social isolation due to dietary restrictions
    • Negative body image
  69. Extreme couponing:
    • Compulsive pursuit of discounts
    • Hoarding of coupons
    • Excessive stockpiling of items
    • Impact on financial well-being
    • Strained living space
  70. Internet trolling:
    • Habitual provocative online behavior
    • Seeking emotional reactions
    • Anonymity-driven aggression
    • Strained online communities
    • Legal consequences
  71. Spiritual bypassing:
    • Avoidance of negative emotions through spirituality
    • Denial of personal challenges
    • Strained relationships
    • Lack of emotional authenticity
    • Disconnect from reality
  72. Extreme minimalism:
    • Compulsive decluttering
    • Obsessive focus on possessions
    • Strained relationships due to minimalistic lifestyle
    • Anxiety about material belongings
    • Rigidity in lifestyle choices
  73. Gaming loot box addiction:
    • Compulsive spending on in-game purchases
    • Chasing virtual rewards
    • Financial strain
    • Impact on real-life responsibilities
    • Gambling-like behavior
  74. Rumination:
    • Constant overthinking
    • Obsessive focus on past mistakes
    • Impact on mental health
    • Difficulty moving forward
    • Strained relationships
  75. Approval-seeking behavior:
    • Constant need for validation
    • Fear of rejection
    • Impact on decision-making
    • Strained authenticity
    • Mental health implications
  76. News addiction:
    • Compulsive consumption of news
    • Anxiety related to current events
    • Impact on mental well-being
    • Difficulty disconnecting from news cycle
    • Strained worldview
  77. Anger addiction:
    • Habitual anger expression
    • Seeking confrontation
    • Strained relationships
    • Negative impact on mental health
    • Legal consequences
  78. Religious zealotry:
    • Extreme devotion to religious beliefs
    • Intolerance of other perspectives
    • Strained relationships with non-believers
    • Willingness to harm others in the name of faith
    • Resistance to critical thinking
  79. Mindless scrolling:
    • Excessive time spent on scrolling through content
    • Impact on productivity
    • Impaired attention span
    • Social isolation
    • Disrupted sleep patterns
submitted by adulting4kids to writingthruit [link] [comments]

2024.05.12 23:13 Lily_McAllister 👇 SWEET DEAL 👇 $30 OFF COUPON ON SITE! USX MOUNT Full Motion TV Wall Mount for 42"-82" TVs, Swivel and Tilt TV Mount, Wall Mount TV Bracket with Articulating 6 Arms, Max VESA 600x400mm, 120 lbs, 16" Wood Studs with Wall Drilling Template

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2024.05.12 14:24 pbjclimbing Get 45% Off Rytr's Annual Subscription with My Rytr Coupon Code

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2024.05.12 05:18 pbjclimbing Get $100 in Exoticca Travel Credit with Your Exoticca Coupon Code

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2024.05.12 00:43 pbjclimbing Rytr Coupon: Get 45% Off an Annual Subscription

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submitted by pbjclimbing to referralcodes [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 15:58 Soninetz Agility Writer Black Friday 2024: New Features Revealed

Agility Writer Black Friday 2024: New Features Revealed
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Useful Links:
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submitted by Soninetz to ReviewsFactory [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 14:39 blondietrauma Template Monster Coupon Code for 2024

Use the link for Template Monster Coupon Code for 2024. The website features a wide selection of coupons, promo codes, and discount deals that are updated regularly for you to choose from and make your purchase more affordable.
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2024.05.11 14:38 blondietrauma TemplateMonster Coupon Code for 2024

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2024.05.11 14:32 pbjclimbing Rytr AI Coupon: Get 30% Off Rytr with My Coupon Code

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submitted by pbjclimbing to Referrallinks [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 03:35 babyxxpigeon17 A Niagara vacation

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark, when out of the blue, my wife called me at work. "We're going to Niagara Falls for the weekend. I got us an awesome deal!"
We had both been working at our first "full-fledged" jobs for a year and had reached that moment after graduation when you suddenly realize you can't make that impact on the world your student enthusiasm once promised. At first, I just sighed. It was the dead of January, and I had already expended all my energy on a week of inconsequential stress. I just wanted to collapse on the couch for two days. Sarah felt a similar weary exhaustion. I could tell. Her tone was more hopeful than excited, but she had dreaded the routine we were sinking into and was trying her best to pull us free.
I looked to the ceiling and adjusted my telephone headset. At that time I was working at Stats Canada on the tele-query desk. I took a deep breath and, as convincingly as possible, said, "Sounds good." I don't think she bought it, but we went nonetheless.
This was Niagara Falls before the casinos when there was a very distinct off-season. When we got to the hotel, we were given the details of our "lovers' special". One dinner to be used either Friday or Saturday, two breakfasts, a roll of tokens for the arcade, 10% off some "4D" movie ride experience, and a 2-for-1 coupon to Max Tussaud's. I guessed it was Madame's nephew? We also got a bottle of sparkling wine in our room and chocolate treats on our pillows. I was impressed. It sounded good.
When we got into our room and saw the "bottle" of wine - basically an aeroplane-sized glass and half - and the chocolates - "fun wrapped" Oh Henry's left over from Halloween - we both started to laugh. The tone for two wonderful days had been set. We decided to cash in on our dinner coupon right away.
The restaurant off the lobby had hopes of being better. There were huge panoramic windows that promised a view of the gorge. Unfortunately, they had some winter moisture problems that day, and it felt like we were defrosting amid the dripping streaks and foggy patches. The decor was your standard booths and tables though the "romantic" lighting was unique. Dollar store battery-powered tea lights were lodged inside thick tumbler glasses and shed a muted pleasantness in a "what a great idea for a craft" sort of way. I had a feeling they were created by our waitress since she was the one who always seemed to be fussing with them. Only one other couple was in the dining room, so she attended to us immediately.
"Can I get you something to start?"
"Sure." "Thank you, that would be nice." We both responded simultaneously.
"And what would the lady like this evening?"
Sarah smiled at the flattery. "I think I'll have a glass of white wine." She glanced over at me to see my reaction. This was a subtle cue of the mood to follow. Diet Coke was usually the beverage of choice. She didn't normally drink alcohol. One glass numbed her nose and made her giggle far too easily. When she did drink, however, it meant she was comfortable with my company and open to anything to follow. I raised my eyebrows in a debonair way.
"And for the gentleman?"
"Do you have Foster's on tap?"
"Yes we do."
"I'll have a pint please."
Sarah smiled at the happy memories I invoked. At university, Foster's was my signature beer. It was at a time when Crocodile Dundee was a known name, and Australia was inexplicably cool. 15 cent buffalo wings and a pitcher of Foster's was the Tuesday night special at the London Arms pub. There the Classics Club would meet and, as a group, circle the wagons and drink ourselves into extroverts.
As soon as the waitress left, Sarah smiled at me. She reached out and held my hand across the table. With my gaze on hers, she slipped her foot from her shoe and slowly began sliding it up my pant leg.
"I got a pedicure this morning." She announced seductively.
I nodded and pretended I didn't notice her invitation. "What colour?" I asked.
"I'm not telling." She teased. "You'll just have to find out later." Her devious little smile was gorgeous.
"Mmmm. I can't wait."
When the waitress returned with our drinks, we immediately retreated to our personal spaces as if we had been discovered by the chaperone. Sarah opened the menu and began to salivate at the variety.
"Can we add an appetizer to the package dinner?" Her question seemed innocent enough.
"You're on the package?" Our friendly waitress disappeared, and we were no longer a lady or a gentleman. She ripped the menu out of Sarah's hand and took mine before I had even opened it. She then scurried to her podium and brought back a tattered, grease-stained, photocopied page that we had to share. We both burst out laughing.
The waitress was flustered that we were not as bothered as she was. "The drinks are NOT included!"
"What choices do we have?" I asked, expecting the usual chicken or fish. I had been on many packages before with my parents.
"Coffee or tea." The waitress snapped.
Sarah and I looked at each other in amused disbelief.
"I'll have coffee please." I didn't even flinch at the ridiculously limited package. I was eager to get my order in early.
"And I'll have the tea!" Sarah followed my lead. "Can I have some milk with that?"
"Yes." The waitress snarled.
"Fantastic!" I enthused.
"Yes, great! I'm glad we got the package, Honey." Sarah joked.
The waitress stormed off and returned sometime later with our lettuce-only salads drowned in Kraft's Italian dressing and our chewy chicken dinners, which she had thoughtfully allowed to cool. She tossed the plates on the table and left us to peacefully devour our deal. We didn't see her again until we requested the bill. For some reason, we found it amusing to leave a generous tip, which of course, defeated the purpose of the package, but we didn't care. It was fun.
The rest of the holiday was marred with similar off-season products and services. The wax museum was only half open, so we couldn't see the pop stars of the seventies. I didn't think it was a problem, but Sarah pouted playfully. She really wanted to see young Bowie. Meanwhile, the arcade was particularly stingy about spitting out coupons. So much so that Mike, the scraggly-haired repair guy, ended up escorting us from game to game and repairing the devices on demand. In no time, he was acting like an old drinking buddy. He joked and laughed, then, out of the blue, revealed that working at the Niagara Falls Fun Centre wasn't his career choice, that his dream was to be part of a travelling carnival. He desperately wanted to see more of the world, he explained and socialize with a greater variety of "wildlife." Mike winked at Sarah to punctuate his meaning, then began advising her on which games to play.
Sarah was partial to Skee ball and clearly had career potential in the sport, but Mike quickly pointed out that the token-to-coupon payout was not the best. In a furtive whisper, he revealed that The Storm Stopper was your best bet, provided the arcade had left it on its original factory settings. He assured us the ones here were "cool." The game had lights that ran around the outside in opposite directions and you had to hit the button at just the right spot to win. It looked impossible, but Mike was right; if you calculated tokens in versus coupons won, it was the best deal. It only took a little practice to win a minor jackpot every 5 or 6 times.
We would cheer each win as if Toronto had won the Stanley Cup. I would give a quick fist pump and a full lung "Yes!" while Sarah would jump up and down screaming, "WhoooHooo!" Of course, in the end, when we cashed in, "Mike's secret" only bumped us up from a key-chain flashlight to a "deluxe" nail beauty set. Mind you, it did come complete with clippers, scissors, a file AND a cuticle scraper. Not only that, it was all neatly packaged in a paisley-patterned pink and green plastic vinyl case. Mike was so pleased to give us our prize and to be honest, we were thrilled to win it if only to see his broad chicletted smile. It was more of a trophy than a grooming set.
That night, I made reservations for us at a fancy Chinese food restaurant - the Bamboo Garden. When we arrived, we had half-expected renovations of some sort. Instead, the place was immaculate. Gentle pools teeming with goldfish highlighted the epic black and red Ming dynasty decor. Real candles flickered on crisp white tablecloths. Again, the restaurant was virtually ours. The reservations on my part were entirely unnecessary. In fact, as soon as we entered, they knew us by name and guided us directly to our table. A live lounge piano caressed the air, its notes danced vaguely around familiar harmonies until finally, as if prompted by our presence, a song emerged immediately accompanied by the velvet voice of oriental karaoke. It was our song remastered
submitted by babyxxpigeon17 to Tik_tok_stories [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 01:00 Odd-Hand-2026 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 who is Lord of that house? The desire of Eyes Rodgers heart ♥️ she is NOT Guyana 🇬🇾 but a jealous no data hate you so much but gotta learn from you 🐒! Cant see shit..🐒 its never gonna be you 🇯🇲 denies her ancestors for plug and play deception

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 who is Lord of that house? The desire of Eyes Rodgers heart ♥️ she is NOT Guyana 🇬🇾 but a jealous no data hate you so much but gotta learn from you 🐒! Cant see shit..🐒 its never gonna be you 🇯🇲 denies her ancestors for plug and play deception submitted by Odd-Hand-2026 to TartarianAR [link] [comments]

2024.05.11 00:29 cap-tain_19 I made a thing. Their relationship isn't exactly romantic since it's one sided so I picked a template on platonic relationships.

I did this a while ago and wanted to post it but couldn't be bothered to open ny computer so I just downloaded a screenshot I had sent to someone of this on discord lmao. Sorry that it's not very high res.
I might start posting less frequently and being less active for a little bit, I had to let go of my little boy Wooster today, my oldest pet rat.
submitted by cap-tain_19 to OriginalCharacter [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 20:03 Wandering_Scarabs Tangential but... Postmodernism.

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l42yKCnUBa0
Jean Baudrillard, a famous writer on the topic of “postmodernism,” explained postmodernism by means of four stages that symbols and objects have progressed through.
Stage 1: “Basic reflection of reality.” Here, symbols and objects attempt to create an objective reflection of reality. For example a chair is made to be sat on and is valuable if it fulfills its purpose, and a shirt is valuable if it covers your skin. The symbols, stories, myths, etc. of our ancestors were an attempt to describe reality as best they could (agree with the results or not). A symbol or image of a god was meant to represent an objectively existent force in reality. Here I see a comparison to very early Polytheism and the Stellar Tradition, where we accepted the objective, dualistic and spiritual nature of reality, the existence of the gods, and so on, with very complex systems that understood reality itself is complex. Inherently this can only ever be, at best, an attempt at metaphysical knowledge about reality, but it is an honest attempt.
Stage 2: "Perversion of reality.” Here the relationship between value and objective reality begins to shift, for example a chair may still serve its primary function, but be more valuable if made with a rare material, by someone of note, and/or for someone of great importance. There may be no practical difference between the stage 1 and stage 2 chairs, and yet the stage 2 chair is given more value. Symbols (perhaps most famously the serpent) are also twisted, for example as a means to control people, or even by demonizing all gods and saying there is only One True God. The complexity of reality is ignored, in favor of a simple “good vs. evil” breakdown, where everything is either Godly or Demonic. The comparison here is the SolaAgricultural tradition and, especially, Monotheism. There is an acceptance of some sort of reality, but that reality is twisted intentionally, whether that be to control people, confuse them, or anything of the sort.
Stage 3: “Pretense of reality.” Here we have the appearance of reality, but much more of a detachment from it. The idea that gods are "just archetypes," or that magic is “just psychology,” illustrate this, along with Physicalism at large. People pretend these are the totality of reality, of which they consider themselves to be the "true seekers," but in the end they outright ignore the most important aspects of our reality. Christian Nationalism is another illustration, where leaders outright lie and fabricate history under the pretense of truth, such as the U.S. being founded as a Christian nation. Objects mainly have value thanks to Materialism and Consumerism, not to mention advertising, and the rejection of higher reality makes such things easier to fall for.
Stage 4: "Bears no relation to any reality whatsoever." This is what may be called "postmodernism," total detachment from reality. An very worrying illustration is the democratization of science, where politics and public opinion now hold as much (or more) sway as empirical evidence (with strict empiricism or “scientism” already falling under "stage 3,” since there are so many other forms of knowledge than empirical knowledge.). Here, a shirt or chair like from stage 1 may be significantly less valuable than an identical shirt or chair endorsed by a famous celebrity. We all know politicians lie when they make promises and yet cheer any time they make one anyways. Our symbols only represent our made up realities: watered-down Christianized ideology such as we see running rampant in polytheistic revival, or modern pop-cultural fictions and multiverses, for example.
Baudrillard gives the example of Main Street at Disney Parks. Not only do we spend more time and money on these fabrications than reality (e.g. replacing the gods on our altars with Disney stuff), but our very differentiation between the "real world" and "Disney world" is a delusion. Disneyland is part of the “real world”. There is no inner child to most adults which is in hiding and in need of release, rather they are very outwardly children yet still wield great power. The world is childish and run by mental and spiritual children. The "perfect world" of Disney is still draining your so-called "real" money (which itself belongs to stage 3, as paper money has no objective value).How often do we obsess over the lives and stories of fictional people, such as families in TV shows, meant purely as consumer content? Even I am guilty of this. Our biggest "influencers" are literal morons on terrible platforms, platforms which encourage us to pretend our true selves are only the best moments we choose to share online.
Stage 5: To these 4 stages I propose adding a 5th in the 21st century: “replacement of reality.” Artificial intelligence, virtual and alternate realities, one of the most recent symbols of status at the time of writing this is the new Apple headset, costing thousands of dollars, people just walking around and existing in a totally manufactured reality, one which will inevitably be shaped by those in positions of power and wealth. The popularity of fake news also may deserve ranking in this new, 5th stage, perhaps even something like plastic surgery.
It is important to note that I do not believe we necessarily pass linearly through these stages. For example there are currently people whose beliefs and practices conform to any one of these 4+ stages, or they fit different stages depending on the context.
Morality is another way to look at the stages, and for this I will use the modern example of the debate on abortion. In stage 1, morality is a quest for objective truth, so for instance with abortion we would realize that the issue is objectively complicated.
In stage 2, morality is twisted to fit the reality promoted by those in power, so for us this would be that abortion is always wrong. They still believe in an objective morality in theory, but twist and simplify that morality.
Stage 3 brings us Moral Relativism, whether abortion is right or wrong depends on who you ask, what culture you were raised in, etc. There is no objective morality, but this itself is an objective truth in a way. This is opposed to the second stage Monotheists who believe abortion is objectively wrong all together, or first stage folks who know the topic can be more complicated than black and white. Basically whatever the culture says is moral, is. Whatever morals the Relativist has, they do not believe them to be more correct than any other morals.
Finally in stage 4+, morality is completely dependent on what those in power (politicians, corporations, influencers, etc.) say is moral. It's a warped form of Moral Relativism, really. This individual believes that morals are relative, but not to culture or anything of the sort. Instead, morals are relative to whatever suits them best at the time, and whatever they are told by "authorities" of high symbol/object value. They do not believe the values and morals of others are equally valid to theirs (stage 3), nor do their actions suggest any belief in a consistent objective morality, warped or otherwise (stage 1 and 2). Instead, their morals are relative to whatever their own pseudo-reality is, whatever is to their benefit, and this itself mainly stems from the aforementioned authorities. And note that someone may be, say, a stage 2 monotheist when it comes to religion, but a stage 4 on morality, and so on.
"Whataboutism" is another illustration of moral Postmodern manipulation. Say a person is telling you how evil the current president of the U.S. is because they do X. You ask, "what about the fact that your favorite president did X too, were they also evil?" The Postmodernist will then say you are engaging in "whataboutism." To one who accepts Moral Realism it is immediately clear why the question is valid though: the answer determines if the person is truly opposed to X or simply using it against those they don’t like, special pleading. Postmodernists simply believe whatever they need or want to at the time to support their own biases, not that X is actually immoral.
Our paper money is another example of stage 3, “pretense of reality.” The paper money system is entirely theoretical, in reality the paper is worth very, very little. It's just tied to this conceptual system that, were it to be cast aside, would make all cash meaningless paper. Stage 1 would be things like services, sustenance, shelter, useful things, symbols that were thought to impact reality, etc., objective things all people need. Stage 2 is illustrated by gold, we give it meaning beyond what it has, but it's a real thing with a limited amount of it in the world, you cannot get trillions in debt just printing new gold into existence as with stage 3 cash. And for stage 4+, what better example than NFTs and Bitcoin, or views, likes, and upvotes?
Social media gives us insight into the world of stage 4 / Postmodernism. All the big-name forums or social media platforms, as well as many smaller ones, are oversaturated with advertisements, these new religious symbols and their new valuable objects, to the point where advertisers choose which platforms or outlets survive and which crash and burn. Whole sites wield the power to silence dissenters of whichever ideologies they find unappealing. In many cases people are extremely limited in the number of characters they can use at once, making true discourse impossible. People live entirely fake lives to instill jealousy in others, who go on to lie to themselves and others as well, and groupthink is encouraged through voting systems which create hiveminds and drive out any independent thought. All these fit with Baudrillard’s fourth stage - none of this is reality. Consumerism is objectively less valuable than individuation and freedom, it is not a valid way to live life, it only wastes life, time, and resources. Human thought is not limited by a character count, this does not describe reality in any way, instead creating a new "reality" where any idea longer than a few sentences is a "word salad" and cannot hold one's attention. There are fewer and fewer "great thinkers," and they are not the ones being heard and viewed. The endless, manufactured, touched up selfies, vacations wasted taking pictures instead of living, time lost in the imagery rather than the real event - this is not objective reality. It not only rejects reality but twists and perverts it, replacing it with a manufactured (simulated) one.
Cancel culture is another unfortunate offspring of Postmodernist thought. Due to the power held and used by the creators and maintainers of all these stage 4 images and objects, "reality" is now defined by such entities. A famous actor was fired from all his roles including a massive franchise on mere accusations of abuse, before the crimes were even brought to court (where it turned out things were not so clear cut). If it can happen to a rich, beloved movie star, imagine what could happen to you. I am not suggesting you feel bad for a billionaire who helps fabricate reality, nor do I believe we have a great and trustworthy justice system in place. All I want to illustrate is how a mere accusation led to guilt and punishment because corporations and the more popular political party said they were guilty, and culture followed blindly, before it even reached the justice system at all. Even in cases where someone ends up being guilty, they cannot be found guilty before investigation and judgment. But this does not matter in a world where reality is whatever is most popular at the time.
All forms of media contribute to this, there is no longer any reality in culture outside of the images and realities created for us, created to distract us from this disturbing rejection of reality. Games, shows, movies, children’s content, fiction and non-fiction works, governments, news outlets… not every single individual instance of these may be wholly negative, but the positive ones are becoming more and more rare. I’ve found an interesting source of philosophy on this matter in the poetry of Jim Morrison, famously known as the singer of The Doors, whose father was all too familiar with the fabrication of reality. Morrison wrote about how the powers that be use content from films to museums (where we simulate history) and everything in between to blind citizens to their power over us, our values, even our own meanings regarding life. He feared that humans had become simple spectators, staring blankly into the screen, letting it write their reality for them. He even predicted the "meta" nature of our modern culture, where everything has become self-referential, filled with cameos and easter eggs, dead actors resurrected and old ones de-aged, because media-created reality is now the only reality. All it can reference is itself, lest it shatter the illusion or acknowledge reality. Just look at how our culture cannot even create new content, just remakes, sequels, shared universes, etc.
"There are no longer “dancers,” the possessed. The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. If all the radios and televisions were deprived of their sources of power, all the books and paintings burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed, all the arts of vicarious existence… We are content with the “given” in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosized from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark." - Jim Morrison
Another great example of postmodernism is the idea of secularism, that we can separate the public from the religious, or that there are actually people who have no religion whatsoever. This rejects the reality that religion applies to many aspects of life, that someone who is non-theistic or simply “spiritual” still is often religious. For example we can look to sports, where all sorts of weird rituals and ceremonies take place that have nothing to do with the layman understanding of religion, gods, the divine, etc, but are studied as such by religious scholars nonetheless. It can even tie back to the Disneyland example, such as how we pretend America is a secular country, or delude ourselves into thinking the hateful Atheism of France (or places like the USSR before it) is somehow not its own form of religion. In stage 1 we recognized there was no separating the spiritual and religious from daily life. Stage 2 keeps this mostly in place but twists it to fit monotheism. It's not until stage 3 that this really changes to keeping religion “private,” and stage 4 flips the whole thing on its head to where the state and corporations have become god, and the gods have become fantasy.
Postmodernism has even seeped into the WLHP to a great extent. For example, with the identification of the Christian entity Satan with all sorts of beings that have no correlation to him. The Satanist who says that The Devil is Setesh, the Serpent, Prometheus, or any other such deity is placing objective reality on the backburner in favor of a popular cultural meme - that all these beings are Satan, despite their histories, characteristics, mythologies, etc. It is Postmodernism which allows certain groups from the late 1900s to claim absurd things like being the first and only Satanists with no regard for objective reality, or which allows organizations to claim the title of Romantic Satanists when their values and acts fly in the face of that literary movement. It's why people who think they are on the WLHP can still fall for things like Physicalism against all evidence and reason. It's how occultists can create completely made up identities for themselves that, even after being exposed as fraudulent, are still parroted blindly by their followers. And in a wider sense it applies to modern polytheism overall, where new age, fluff bunny occultists come in changing polytheism to monotheism, or saying all male and female goddesses are just a manifestation of duo-theism. There is no escaping Postmodern irrationality.
Our symbols of the divine, of deeper spiritual meanings and truths, of a reality beyond this one, have all been replaced with corporate logos, meme templates, and easter eggs. Like me, many others also have altars in every room of the house, their altars are simply shrines to brands, consumer content, companies, political parties, famous actors, etc. The utility of an object no longer defines it, but instead it is the fabricated social status a thing is supposed to create, such as an uncomfortable designer chair being ten times the cost of a more comfortable and practical one. If your car can reliably get you place to place, but isn’t sporting the right hood ornament, or a fresh coat of paint, all the fancy add ons and a high floor price, then the object simply is not as valuable as if it had these entirely unnecessary things, and therefore the individual themselves is judged as less valuable. Two identical shirts can vary in price by hundreds of dollars based solely on the name printed on the tag inside. All of these values are entirely manufactured and completely detached from objective reality.
Perhaps worst of all is that people and objects have become harder to tell apart, as best exemplified with celebrities. They are fake people with false personalities who we are supposed to see as the ideal human beings. All of their flaws are edited and filtered out, and then we are condemned for not being on par. To postmodern companies, the individual is literally just an object to be used as a means to an end, a cog in a machine rather than an individual with needs, goals, drives, etc. Politicians are themselves celebrities now, and I do not only mean literal actors running for office, but rather that people cheer for them like they do a rock star, consume their media like it is a drug, defend them as if they were their favorite comic character… What gives these politicians and celebrities their power? An association with the new system of symbols and objects of value, the system which disregards reality all together in order to encourage things like Consumerism and obedience.
Postmodernism has an influence over almost every aspect of our lives. It encourages people to believe any fleeting thing they want, or more often are told to want, is of foremost importance or value. It allows constant advertising to empty us of any "inconvenient" meaning or value and fill the void with Consumerism and material things, or to fill it with work lives that are ultimately pointless and amount to nothing more than some conceptual material wage (money itself not even being "real"). The value of objects defines and overtakes the value of the individual. A disregard for objectivity means a disregard for the scientific method itself, allowing science to become a process of authoritarianism at worst and democracy at best, a process of media propaganda rather than a quest for truth. Whatever facts benefit the high-object-value people and the symbols they associate with are true, and facts which do not are false, being able to change at the drop of a hat as needed.
Postmodernism is clearly the natural outcome of our move from profound reality to a fabricated simulation of reality created to control, stifle, and subdue human beings… an immoral and dangerous metaphysics too blind to see that without any objective reality nobody can ever be correct, including themselves.
submitted by Wandering_Scarabs to Setianism [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 20:00 Wandering_Scarabs Postmodernism (written or audio)

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l42yKCnUBa0
Jean Baudrillard, a famous writer on the topic of “postmodernism,” explained postmodernism by means of four stages that symbols and objects have progressed through.
Stage 1: “Basic reflection of reality.” Here, symbols and objects attempt to create an objective reflection of reality. For example a chair is made to be sat on and is valuable if it fulfills its purpose, and a shirt is valuable if it covers your skin. The symbols, stories, myths, etc. of our ancestors were an attempt to describe reality as best they could (agree with the results or not). A symbol or image of a god was meant to represent an objectively existent force in reality. Here I see a comparison to very early Polytheism and the Stellar Tradition, where we accepted the objective, dualistic and spiritual nature of reality, the existence of the gods, and so on, with very complex systems that understood reality itself is complex. Inherently this can only ever be, at best, an attempt at metaphysical knowledge about reality, but it is an honest attempt.
Stage 2: "Perversion of reality.” Here the relationship between value and objective reality begins to shift, for example a chair may still serve its primary function, but be more valuable if made with a rare material, by someone of note, and/or for someone of great importance. There may be no practical difference between the stage 1 and stage 2 chairs, and yet the stage 2 chair is given more value. Symbols (perhaps most famously the serpent) are also twisted, for example as a means to control people, or even by demonizing all gods and saying there is only One True God. The complexity of reality is ignored, in favor of a simple “good vs. evil” breakdown, where everything is either Godly or Demonic. The comparison here is the SolaAgricultural tradition and, especially, Monotheism. There is an acceptance of some sort of reality, but that reality is twisted intentionally, whether that be to control people, confuse them, or anything of the sort.
Stage 3: “Pretense of reality.” Here we have the appearance of reality, but much more of a detachment from it. The idea that gods are "just archetypes," or that magic is “just psychology,” illustrate this, along with Physicalism at large. People pretend these are the totality of reality, of which they consider themselves to be the "true seekers," but in the end they outright ignore the most important aspects of our reality. Christian Nationalism is another illustration, where leaders outright lie and fabricate history under the pretense of truth, such as the U.S. being founded as a Christian nation. Objects mainly have value thanks to Materialism and Consumerism, not to mention advertising, and the rejection of higher reality makes such things easier to fall for.
Stage 4: "Bears no relation to any reality whatsoever." This is what may be called "postmodernism," total detachment from reality. An very worrying illustration is the democratization of science, where politics and public opinion now hold as much (or more) sway as empirical evidence (with strict empiricism or “scientism” already falling under "stage 3,” since there are so many other forms of knowledge than empirical knowledge.). Here, a shirt or chair like from stage 1 may be significantly less valuable than an identical shirt or chair endorsed by a famous celebrity. We all know politicians lie when they make promises and yet cheer any time they make one anyways. Our symbols only represent our made up realities: watered-down Christianized ideology such as we see running rampant in polytheistic revival, or modern pop-cultural fictions and multiverses, for example.
Baudrillard gives the example of Main Street at Disney Parks. Not only do we spend more time and money on these fabrications than reality (e.g. replacing the gods on our altars with Disney stuff), but our very differentiation between the "real world" and "Disney world" is a delusion. Disneyland is part of the “real world”. There is no inner child to most adults which is in hiding and in need of release, rather they are very outwardly children yet still wield great power. The world is childish and run by mental and spiritual children. The "perfect world" of Disney is still draining your so-called "real" money (which itself belongs to stage 3, as paper money has no objective value).How often do we obsess over the lives and stories of fictional people, such as families in TV shows, meant purely as consumer content? Even I am guilty of this. Our biggest "influencers" are literal morons on terrible platforms, platforms which encourage us to pretend our true selves are only the best moments we choose to share online.
Stage 5: To these 4 stages I propose adding a 5th in the 21st century: “replacement of reality.” Artificial intelligence, virtual and alternate realities, one of the most recent symbols of status at the time of writing this is the new Apple headset, costing thousands of dollars, people just walking around and existing in a totally manufactured reality, one which will inevitably be shaped by those in positions of power and wealth. The popularity of fake news also may deserve ranking in this new, 5th stage, perhaps even something like plastic surgery.
It is important to note that I do not believe we necessarily pass linearly through these stages. For example there are currently people whose beliefs and practices conform to any one of these 4+ stages, or they fit different stages depending on the context.
Morality is another way to look at the stages, and for this I will use the modern example of the debate on abortion. In stage 1, morality is a quest for objective truth, so for instance with abortion we would realize that the issue is objectively complicated.
In stage 2, morality is twisted to fit the reality promoted by those in power, so for us this would be that abortion is always wrong. They still believe in an objective morality in theory, but twist and simplify that morality.
Stage 3 brings us Moral Relativism, whether abortion is right or wrong depends on who you ask, what culture you were raised in, etc. There is no objective morality, but this itself is an objective truth in a way. This is opposed to the second stage Monotheists who believe abortion is objectively wrong all together, or first stage folks who know the topic can be more complicated than black and white. Basically whatever the culture says is moral, is. Whatever morals the Relativist has, they do not believe them to be more correct than any other morals.
Finally in stage 4+, morality is completely dependent on what those in power (politicians, corporations, influencers, etc.) say is moral. It's a warped form of Moral Relativism, really. This individual believes that morals are relative, but not to culture or anything of the sort. Instead, morals are relative to whatever suits them best at the time, and whatever they are told by "authorities" of high symbol/object value. They do not believe the values and morals of others are equally valid to theirs (stage 3), nor do their actions suggest any belief in a consistent objective morality, warped or otherwise (stage 1 and 2). Instead, their morals are relative to whatever their own pseudo-reality is, whatever is to their benefit, and this itself mainly stems from the aforementioned authorities. And note that someone may be, say, a stage 2 monotheist when it comes to religion, but a stage 4 on morality, and so on.
"Whataboutism" is another illustration of moral Postmodern manipulation. Say a person is telling you how evil the current president of the U.S. is because they do X. You ask, "what about the fact that your favorite president did X too, were they also evil?" The Postmodernist will then say you are engaging in "whataboutism." To one who accepts Moral Realism it is immediately clear why the question is valid though: the answer determines if the person is truly opposed to X or simply using it against those they don’t like, special pleading. Postmodernists simply believe whatever they need or want to at the time to support their own biases, not that X is actually immoral.
Our paper money is another example of stage 3, “pretense of reality.” The paper money system is entirely theoretical, in reality the paper is worth very, very little. It's just tied to this conceptual system that, were it to be cast aside, would make all cash meaningless paper. Stage 1 would be things like services, sustenance, shelter, useful things, symbols that were thought to impact reality, etc., objective things all people need. Stage 2 is illustrated by gold, we give it meaning beyond what it has, but it's a real thing with a limited amount of it in the world, you cannot get trillions in debt just printing new gold into existence as with stage 3 cash. And for stage 4+, what better example than NFTs and Bitcoin, or views, likes, and upvotes?
Social media gives us insight into the world of stage 4 / Postmodernism. All the big-name forums or social media platforms, as well as many smaller ones, are oversaturated with advertisements, these new religious symbols and their new valuable objects, to the point where advertisers choose which platforms or outlets survive and which crash and burn. Whole sites wield the power to silence dissenters of whichever ideologies they find unappealing. In many cases people are extremely limited in the number of characters they can use at once, making true discourse impossible. People live entirely fake lives to instill jealousy in others, who go on to lie to themselves and others as well, and groupthink is encouraged through voting systems which create hiveminds and drive out any independent thought. All these fit with Baudrillard’s fourth stage - none of this is reality. Consumerism is objectively less valuable than individuation and freedom, it is not a valid way to live life, it only wastes life, time, and resources. Human thought is not limited by a character count, this does not describe reality in any way, instead creating a new "reality" where any idea longer than a few sentences is a "word salad" and cannot hold one's attention. There are fewer and fewer "great thinkers," and they are not the ones being heard and viewed. The endless, manufactured, touched up selfies, vacations wasted taking pictures instead of living, time lost in the imagery rather than the real event - this is not objective reality. It not only rejects reality but twists and perverts it, replacing it with a manufactured (simulated) one.
Cancel culture is another unfortunate offspring of Postmodernist thought. Due to the power held and used by the creators and maintainers of all these stage 4 images and objects, "reality" is now defined by such entities. A famous actor was fired from all his roles including a massive franchise on mere accusations of abuse, before the crimes were even brought to court (where it turned out things were not so clear cut). If it can happen to a rich, beloved movie star, imagine what could happen to you. I am not suggesting you feel bad for a billionaire who helps fabricate reality, nor do I believe we have a great and trustworthy justice system in place. All I want to illustrate is how a mere accusation led to guilt and punishment because corporations and the more popular political party said they were guilty, and culture followed blindly, before it even reached the justice system at all. Even in cases where someone ends up being guilty, they cannot be found guilty before investigation and judgment. But this does not matter in a world where reality is whatever is most popular at the time.
All forms of media contribute to this, there is no longer any reality in culture outside of the images and realities created for us, created to distract us from this disturbing rejection of reality. Games, shows, movies, children’s content, fiction and non-fiction works, governments, news outlets… not every single individual instance of these may be wholly negative, but the positive ones are becoming more and more rare. I’ve found an interesting source of philosophy on this matter in the poetry of Jim Morrison, famously known as the singer of The Doors, whose father was all too familiar with the fabrication of reality. Morrison wrote about how the powers that be use content from films to museums (where we simulate history) and everything in between to blind citizens to their power over us, our values, even our own meanings regarding life. He feared that humans had become simple spectators, staring blankly into the screen, letting it write their reality for them. He even predicted the "meta" nature of our modern culture, where everything has become self-referential, filled with cameos and easter eggs, dead actors resurrected and old ones de-aged, because media-created reality is now the only reality. All it can reference is itself, lest it shatter the illusion or acknowledge reality. Just look at how our culture cannot even create new content, just remakes, sequels, shared universes, etc.
"There are no longer “dancers,” the possessed. The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. If all the radios and televisions were deprived of their sources of power, all the books and paintings burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed, all the arts of vicarious existence… We are content with the “given” in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosized from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark." - Jim Morrison
Another great example of postmodernism is the idea of secularism, that we can separate the public from the religious, or that there are actually people who have no religion whatsoever. This rejects the reality that religion applies to many aspects of life, that someone who is non-theistic or simply “spiritual” still is often religious. For example we can look to sports, where all sorts of weird rituals and ceremonies take place that have nothing to do with the layman understanding of religion, gods, the divine, etc, but are studied as such by religious scholars nonetheless. It can even tie back to the Disneyland example, such as how we pretend America is a secular country, or delude ourselves into thinking the hateful Atheism of France (or places like the USSR before it) is somehow not its own form of religion. In stage 1 we recognized there was no separating the spiritual and religious from daily life. Stage 2 keeps this mostly in place but twists it to fit monotheism. It's not until stage 3 that this really changes to keeping religion “private,” and stage 4 flips the whole thing on its head to where the state and corporations have become god, and the gods have become fantasy.
Postmodernism has even seeped into the WLHP to a great extent. For example, with the identification of the Christian entity Satan with all sorts of beings that have no correlation to him. The Satanist who says that The Devil is Setesh, the Serpent, Prometheus, or any other such deity is placing objective reality on the backburner in favor of a popular cultural meme - that all these beings are Satan, despite their histories, characteristics, mythologies, etc. It is Postmodernism which allows certain groups from the late 1900s to claim absurd things like being the first and only Satanists with no regard for objective reality, or which allows organizations to claim the title of Romantic Satanists when their values and acts fly in the face of that literary movement. It's why people who think they are on the WLHP can still fall for things like Physicalism against all evidence and reason. It's how occultists can create completely made up identities for themselves that, even after being exposed as fraudulent, are still parroted blindly by their followers. And in a wider sense it applies to modern polytheism overall, where new age, fluff bunny occultists come in changing polytheism to monotheism, or saying all male and female goddesses are just a manifestation of duo-theism. There is no escaping Postmodern irrationality.
Our symbols of the divine, of deeper spiritual meanings and truths, of a reality beyond this one, have all been replaced with corporate logos, meme templates, and easter eggs. Like me, many others also have altars in every room of the house, their altars are simply shrines to brands, consumer content, companies, political parties, famous actors, etc. The utility of an object no longer defines it, but instead it is the fabricated social status a thing is supposed to create, such as an uncomfortable designer chair being ten times the cost of a more comfortable and practical one. If your car can reliably get you place to place, but isn’t sporting the right hood ornament, or a fresh coat of paint, all the fancy add ons and a high floor price, then the object simply is not as valuable as if it had these entirely unnecessary things, and therefore the individual themselves is judged as less valuable. Two identical shirts can vary in price by hundreds of dollars based solely on the name printed on the tag inside. All of these values are entirely manufactured and completely detached from objective reality.
Perhaps worst of all is that people and objects have become harder to tell apart, as best exemplified with celebrities. They are fake people with false personalities who we are supposed to see as the ideal human beings. All of their flaws are edited and filtered out, and then we are condemned for not being on par. To postmodern companies, the individual is literally just an object to be used as a means to an end, a cog in a machine rather than an individual with needs, goals, drives, etc. Politicians are themselves celebrities now, and I do not only mean literal actors running for office, but rather that people cheer for them like they do a rock star, consume their media like it is a drug, defend them as if they were their favorite comic character… What gives these politicians and celebrities their power? An association with the new system of symbols and objects of value, the system which disregards reality all together in order to encourage things like Consumerism and obedience.
Postmodernism has an influence over almost every aspect of our lives. It encourages people to believe any fleeting thing they want, or more often are told to want, is of foremost importance or value. It allows constant advertising to empty us of any "inconvenient" meaning or value and fill the void with Consumerism and material things, or to fill it with work lives that are ultimately pointless and amount to nothing more than some conceptual material wage (money itself not even being "real"). The value of objects defines and overtakes the value of the individual. A disregard for objectivity means a disregard for the scientific method itself, allowing science to become a process of authoritarianism at worst and democracy at best, a process of media propaganda rather than a quest for truth. Whatever facts benefit the high-object-value people and the symbols they associate with are true, and facts which do not are false, being able to change at the drop of a hat as needed.
Postmodernism is clearly the natural outcome of our move from profound reality to a fabricated simulation of reality created to control, stifle, and subdue human beings… an immoral and dangerous metaphysics too blind to see that without any objective reality nobody can ever be correct, including themselves.
submitted by Wandering_Scarabs to EsotericOccult [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 19:59 Wandering_Scarabs Postmodernism (written or audio)

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l42yKCnUBa0
Jean Baudrillard, a famous writer on the topic of “postmodernism,” explained postmodernism by means of four stages that symbols and objects have progressed through.
Stage 1: “Basic reflection of reality.” Here, symbols and objects attempt to create an objective reflection of reality. For example a chair is made to be sat on and is valuable if it fulfills its purpose, and a shirt is valuable if it covers your skin. The symbols, stories, myths, etc. of our ancestors were an attempt to describe reality as best they could (agree with the results or not). A symbol or image of a god was meant to represent an objectively existent force in reality. Here I see a comparison to very early Polytheism and the Stellar Tradition, where we accepted the objective, dualistic and spiritual nature of reality, the existence of the gods, and so on, with very complex systems that understood reality itself is complex. Inherently this can only ever be, at best, an attempt at metaphysical knowledge about reality, but it is an honest attempt.
Stage 2: "Perversion of reality.” Here the relationship between value and objective reality begins to shift, for example a chair may still serve its primary function, but be more valuable if made with a rare material, by someone of note, and/or for someone of great importance. There may be no practical difference between the stage 1 and stage 2 chairs, and yet the stage 2 chair is given more value. Symbols (perhaps most famously the serpent) are also twisted, for example as a means to control people, or even by demonizing all gods and saying there is only One True God. The complexity of reality is ignored, in favor of a simple “good vs. evil” breakdown, where everything is either Godly or Demonic. The comparison here is the SolaAgricultural tradition and, especially, Monotheism. There is an acceptance of some sort of reality, but that reality is twisted intentionally, whether that be to control people, confuse them, or anything of the sort.
Stage 3: “Pretense of reality.” Here we have the appearance of reality, but much more of a detachment from it. The idea that gods are "just archetypes," or that magic is “just psychology,” illustrate this, along with Physicalism at large. People pretend these are the totality of reality, of which they consider themselves to be the "true seekers," but in the end they outright ignore the most important aspects of our reality. Christian Nationalism is another illustration, where leaders outright lie and fabricate history under the pretense of truth, such as the U.S. being founded as a Christian nation. Objects mainly have value thanks to Materialism and Consumerism, not to mention advertising, and the rejection of higher reality makes such things easier to fall for.
Stage 4: "Bears no relation to any reality whatsoever." This is what may be called "postmodernism," total detachment from reality. An very worrying illustration is the democratization of science, where politics and public opinion now hold as much (or more) sway as empirical evidence (with strict empiricism or “scientism” already falling under "stage 3,” since there are so many other forms of knowledge than empirical knowledge.). Here, a shirt or chair like from stage 1 may be significantly less valuable than an identical shirt or chair endorsed by a famous celebrity. We all know politicians lie when they make promises and yet cheer any time they make one anyways. Our symbols only represent our made up realities: watered-down Christianized ideology such as we see running rampant in polytheistic revival, or modern pop-cultural fictions and multiverses, for example.
Baudrillard gives the example of Main Street at Disney Parks. Not only do we spend more time and money on these fabrications than reality (e.g. replacing the gods on our altars with Disney stuff), but our very differentiation between the "real world" and "Disney world" is a delusion. Disneyland is part of the “real world”. There is no inner child to most adults which is in hiding and in need of release, rather they are very outwardly children yet still wield great power. The world is childish and run by mental and spiritual children. The "perfect world" of Disney is still draining your so-called "real" money (which itself belongs to stage 3, as paper money has no objective value).How often do we obsess over the lives and stories of fictional people, such as families in TV shows, meant purely as consumer content? Even I am guilty of this. Our biggest "influencers" are literal morons on terrible platforms, platforms which encourage us to pretend our true selves are only the best moments we choose to share online.
Stage 5: To these 4 stages I propose adding a 5th in the 21st century: “replacement of reality.” Artificial intelligence, virtual and alternate realities, one of the most recent symbols of status at the time of writing this is the new Apple headset, costing thousands of dollars, people just walking around and existing in a totally manufactured reality, one which will inevitably be shaped by those in positions of power and wealth. The popularity of fake news also may deserve ranking in this new, 5th stage, perhaps even something like plastic surgery.
It is important to note that I do not believe we necessarily pass linearly through these stages. For example there are currently people whose beliefs and practices conform to any one of these 4+ stages, or they fit different stages depending on the context.
Morality is another way to look at the stages, and for this I will use the modern example of the debate on abortion. In stage 1, morality is a quest for objective truth, so for instance with abortion we would realize that the issue is objectively complicated.
In stage 2, morality is twisted to fit the reality promoted by those in power, so for us this would be that abortion is always wrong. They still believe in an objective morality in theory, but twist and simplify that morality.
Stage 3 brings us Moral Relativism, whether abortion is right or wrong depends on who you ask, what culture you were raised in, etc. There is no objective morality, but this itself is an objective truth in a way. This is opposed to the second stage Monotheists who believe abortion is objectively wrong all together, or first stage folks who know the topic can be more complicated than black and white. Basically whatever the culture says is moral, is. Whatever morals the Relativist has, they do not believe them to be more correct than any other morals.
Finally in stage 4+, morality is completely dependent on what those in power (politicians, corporations, influencers, etc.) say is moral. It's a warped form of Moral Relativism, really. This individual believes that morals are relative, but not to culture or anything of the sort. Instead, morals are relative to whatever suits them best at the time, and whatever they are told by "authorities" of high symbol/object value. They do not believe the values and morals of others are equally valid to theirs (stage 3), nor do their actions suggest any belief in a consistent objective morality, warped or otherwise (stage 1 and 2). Instead, their morals are relative to whatever their own pseudo-reality is, whatever is to their benefit, and this itself mainly stems from the aforementioned authorities. And note that someone may be, say, a stage 2 monotheist when it comes to religion, but a stage 4 on morality, and so on.
"Whataboutism" is another illustration of moral Postmodern manipulation. Say a person is telling you how evil the current president of the U.S. is because they do X. You ask, "what about the fact that your favorite president did X too, were they also evil?" The Postmodernist will then say you are engaging in "whataboutism." To one who accepts Moral Realism it is immediately clear why the question is valid though: the answer determines if the person is truly opposed to X or simply using it against those they don’t like, special pleading. Postmodernists simply believe whatever they need or want to at the time to support their own biases, not that X is actually immoral.
Our paper money is another example of stage 3, “pretense of reality.” The paper money system is entirely theoretical, in reality the paper is worth very, very little. It's just tied to this conceptual system that, were it to be cast aside, would make all cash meaningless paper. Stage 1 would be things like services, sustenance, shelter, useful things, symbols that were thought to impact reality, etc., objective things all people need. Stage 2 is illustrated by gold, we give it meaning beyond what it has, but it's a real thing with a limited amount of it in the world, you cannot get trillions in debt just printing new gold into existence as with stage 3 cash. And for stage 4+, what better example than NFTs and Bitcoin, or views, likes, and upvotes?
Social media gives us insight into the world of stage 4 / Postmodernism. All the big-name forums or social media platforms, as well as many smaller ones, are oversaturated with advertisements, these new religious symbols and their new valuable objects, to the point where advertisers choose which platforms or outlets survive and which crash and burn. Whole sites wield the power to silence dissenters of whichever ideologies they find unappealing. In many cases people are extremely limited in the number of characters they can use at once, making true discourse impossible. People live entirely fake lives to instill jealousy in others, who go on to lie to themselves and others as well, and groupthink is encouraged through voting systems which create hiveminds and drive out any independent thought. All these fit with Baudrillard’s fourth stage - none of this is reality. Consumerism is objectively less valuable than individuation and freedom, it is not a valid way to live life, it only wastes life, time, and resources. Human thought is not limited by a character count, this does not describe reality in any way, instead creating a new "reality" where any idea longer than a few sentences is a "word salad" and cannot hold one's attention. There are fewer and fewer "great thinkers," and they are not the ones being heard and viewed. The endless, manufactured, touched up selfies, vacations wasted taking pictures instead of living, time lost in the imagery rather than the real event - this is not objective reality. It not only rejects reality but twists and perverts it, replacing it with a manufactured (simulated) one.
Cancel culture is another unfortunate offspring of Postmodernist thought. Due to the power held and used by the creators and maintainers of all these stage 4 images and objects, "reality" is now defined by such entities. A famous actor was fired from all his roles including a massive franchise on mere accusations of abuse, before the crimes were even brought to court (where it turned out things were not so clear cut). If it can happen to a rich, beloved movie star, imagine what could happen to you. I am not suggesting you feel bad for a billionaire who helps fabricate reality, nor do I believe we have a great and trustworthy justice system in place. All I want to illustrate is how a mere accusation led to guilt and punishment because corporations and the more popular political party said they were guilty, and culture followed blindly, before it even reached the justice system at all. Even in cases where someone ends up being guilty, they cannot be found guilty before investigation and judgment. But this does not matter in a world where reality is whatever is most popular at the time.
All forms of media contribute to this, there is no longer any reality in culture outside of the images and realities created for us, created to distract us from this disturbing rejection of reality. Games, shows, movies, children’s content, fiction and non-fiction works, governments, news outlets… not every single individual instance of these may be wholly negative, but the positive ones are becoming more and more rare. I’ve found an interesting source of philosophy on this matter in the poetry of Jim Morrison, famously known as the singer of The Doors, whose father was all too familiar with the fabrication of reality. Morrison wrote about how the powers that be use content from films to museums (where we simulate history) and everything in between to blind citizens to their power over us, our values, even our own meanings regarding life. He feared that humans had become simple spectators, staring blankly into the screen, letting it write their reality for them. He even predicted the "meta" nature of our modern culture, where everything has become self-referential, filled with cameos and easter eggs, dead actors resurrected and old ones de-aged, because media-created reality is now the only reality. All it can reference is itself, lest it shatter the illusion or acknowledge reality. Just look at how our culture cannot even create new content, just remakes, sequels, shared universes, etc.
"There are no longer “dancers,” the possessed. The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. If all the radios and televisions were deprived of their sources of power, all the books and paintings burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed, all the arts of vicarious existence… We are content with the “given” in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosized from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark." - Jim Morrison
Another great example of postmodernism is the idea of secularism, that we can separate the public from the religious, or that there are actually people who have no religion whatsoever. This rejects the reality that religion applies to many aspects of life, that someone who is non-theistic or simply “spiritual” still is often religious. For example we can look to sports, where all sorts of weird rituals and ceremonies take place that have nothing to do with the layman understanding of religion, gods, the divine, etc, but are studied as such by religious scholars nonetheless. It can even tie back to the Disneyland example, such as how we pretend America is a secular country, or delude ourselves into thinking the hateful Atheism of France (or places like the USSR before it) is somehow not its own form of religion. In stage 1 we recognized there was no separating the spiritual and religious from daily life. Stage 2 keeps this mostly in place but twists it to fit monotheism. It's not until stage 3 that this really changes to keeping religion “private,” and stage 4 flips the whole thing on its head to where the state and corporations have become god, and the gods have become fantasy.
Postmodernism has even seeped into the WLHP to a great extent. For example, with the identification of the Christian entity Satan with all sorts of beings that have no correlation to him. The Satanist who says that The Devil is Setesh, the Serpent, Prometheus, or any other such deity is placing objective reality on the backburner in favor of a popular cultural meme - that all these beings are Satan, despite their histories, characteristics, mythologies, etc. It is Postmodernism which allows certain groups from the late 1900s to claim absurd things like being the first and only Satanists with no regard for objective reality, or which allows organizations to claim the title of Romantic Satanists when their values and acts fly in the face of that literary movement. It's why people who think they are on the WLHP can still fall for things like Physicalism against all evidence and reason. It's how occultists can create completely made up identities for themselves that, even after being exposed as fraudulent, are still parroted blindly by their followers. And in a wider sense it applies to modern polytheism overall, where new age, fluff bunny occultists come in changing polytheism to monotheism, or saying all male and female goddesses are just a manifestation of duo-theism. There is no escaping Postmodern irrationality.
Our symbols of the divine, of deeper spiritual meanings and truths, of a reality beyond this one, have all been replaced with corporate logos, meme templates, and easter eggs. Like me, many others also have altars in every room of the house, their altars are simply shrines to brands, consumer content, companies, political parties, famous actors, etc. The utility of an object no longer defines it, but instead it is the fabricated social status a thing is supposed to create, such as an uncomfortable designer chair being ten times the cost of a more comfortable and practical one. If your car can reliably get you place to place, but isn’t sporting the right hood ornament, or a fresh coat of paint, all the fancy add ons and a high floor price, then the object simply is not as valuable as if it had these entirely unnecessary things, and therefore the individual themselves is judged as less valuable. Two identical shirts can vary in price by hundreds of dollars based solely on the name printed on the tag inside. All of these values are entirely manufactured and completely detached from objective reality.
Perhaps worst of all is that people and objects have become harder to tell apart, as best exemplified with celebrities. They are fake people with false personalities who we are supposed to see as the ideal human beings. All of their flaws are edited and filtered out, and then we are condemned for not being on par. To postmodern companies, the individual is literally just an object to be used as a means to an end, a cog in a machine rather than an individual with needs, goals, drives, etc. Politicians are themselves celebrities now, and I do not only mean literal actors running for office, but rather that people cheer for them like they do a rock star, consume their media like it is a drug, defend them as if they were their favorite comic character… What gives these politicians and celebrities their power? An association with the new system of symbols and objects of value, the system which disregards reality all together in order to encourage things like Consumerism and obedience.
Postmodernism has an influence over almost every aspect of our lives. It encourages people to believe any fleeting thing they want, or more often are told to want, is of foremost importance or value. It allows constant advertising to empty us of any "inconvenient" meaning or value and fill the void with Consumerism and material things, or to fill it with work lives that are ultimately pointless and amount to nothing more than some conceptual material wage (money itself not even being "real"). The value of objects defines and overtakes the value of the individual. A disregard for objectivity means a disregard for the scientific method itself, allowing science to become a process of authoritarianism at worst and democracy at best, a process of media propaganda rather than a quest for truth. Whatever facts benefit the high-object-value people and the symbols they associate with are true, and facts which do not are false, being able to change at the drop of a hat as needed.
Postmodernism is clearly the natural outcome of our move from profound reality to a fabricated simulation of reality created to control, stifle, and subdue human beings… an immoral and dangerous metaphysics too blind to see that without any objective reality nobody can ever be correct, including themselves.
submitted by Wandering_Scarabs to LeftHandPath [link] [comments]

2024.05.10 19:59 Wandering_Scarabs Postmodernism (written or audio)

Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l42yKCnUBa0
Jean Baudrillard, a famous writer on the topic of “postmodernism,” explained postmodernism by means of four stages that symbols and objects have progressed through.
Stage 1: “Basic reflection of reality.” Here, symbols and objects attempt to create an objective reflection of reality. For example a chair is made to be sat on and is valuable if it fulfills its purpose, and a shirt is valuable if it covers your skin. The symbols, stories, myths, etc. of our ancestors were an attempt to describe reality as best they could (agree with the results or not). A symbol or image of a god was meant to represent an objectively existent force in reality. Here I see a comparison to very early Polytheism and the Stellar Tradition, where we accepted the objective, dualistic and spiritual nature of reality, the existence of the gods, and so on, with very complex systems that understood reality itself is complex. Inherently this can only ever be, at best, an attempt at metaphysical knowledge about reality, but it is an honest attempt.
Stage 2: "Perversion of reality.” Here the relationship between value and objective reality begins to shift, for example a chair may still serve its primary function, but be more valuable if made with a rare material, by someone of note, and/or for someone of great importance. There may be no practical difference between the stage 1 and stage 2 chairs, and yet the stage 2 chair is given more value. Symbols (perhaps most famously the serpent) are also twisted, for example as a means to control people, or even by demonizing all gods and saying there is only One True God. The complexity of reality is ignored, in favor of a simple “good vs. evil” breakdown, where everything is either Godly or Demonic. The comparison here is the SolaAgricultural tradition and, especially, Monotheism. There is an acceptance of some sort of reality, but that reality is twisted intentionally, whether that be to control people, confuse them, or anything of the sort.
Stage 3: “Pretense of reality.” Here we have the appearance of reality, but much more of a detachment from it. The idea that gods are "just archetypes," or that magic is “just psychology,” illustrate this, along with Physicalism at large. People pretend these are the totality of reality, of which they consider themselves to be the "true seekers," but in the end they outright ignore the most important aspects of our reality. Christian Nationalism is another illustration, where leaders outright lie and fabricate history under the pretense of truth, such as the U.S. being founded as a Christian nation. Objects mainly have value thanks to Materialism and Consumerism, not to mention advertising, and the rejection of higher reality makes such things easier to fall for.
Stage 4: "Bears no relation to any reality whatsoever." This is what may be called "postmodernism," total detachment from reality. An very worrying illustration is the democratization of science, where politics and public opinion now hold as much (or more) sway as empirical evidence (with strict empiricism or “scientism” already falling under "stage 3,” since there are so many other forms of knowledge than empirical knowledge.). Here, a shirt or chair like from stage 1 may be significantly less valuable than an identical shirt or chair endorsed by a famous celebrity. We all know politicians lie when they make promises and yet cheer any time they make one anyways. Our symbols only represent our made up realities: watered-down Christianized ideology such as we see running rampant in polytheistic revival, or modern pop-cultural fictions and multiverses, for example.
Baudrillard gives the example of Main Street at Disney Parks. Not only do we spend more time and money on these fabrications than reality (e.g. replacing the gods on our altars with Disney stuff), but our very differentiation between the "real world" and "Disney world" is a delusion. Disneyland is part of the “real world”. There is no inner child to most adults which is in hiding and in need of release, rather they are very outwardly children yet still wield great power. The world is childish and run by mental and spiritual children. The "perfect world" of Disney is still draining your so-called "real" money (which itself belongs to stage 3, as paper money has no objective value).How often do we obsess over the lives and stories of fictional people, such as families in TV shows, meant purely as consumer content? Even I am guilty of this. Our biggest "influencers" are literal morons on terrible platforms, platforms which encourage us to pretend our true selves are only the best moments we choose to share online.
Stage 5: To these 4 stages I propose adding a 5th in the 21st century: “replacement of reality.” Artificial intelligence, virtual and alternate realities, one of the most recent symbols of status at the time of writing this is the new Apple headset, costing thousands of dollars, people just walking around and existing in a totally manufactured reality, one which will inevitably be shaped by those in positions of power and wealth. The popularity of fake news also may deserve ranking in this new, 5th stage, perhaps even something like plastic surgery.
It is important to note that I do not believe we necessarily pass linearly through these stages. For example there are currently people whose beliefs and practices conform to any one of these 4+ stages, or they fit different stages depending on the context.
Morality is another way to look at the stages, and for this I will use the modern example of the debate on abortion. In stage 1, morality is a quest for objective truth, so for instance with abortion we would realize that the issue is objectively complicated.
In stage 2, morality is twisted to fit the reality promoted by those in power, so for us this would be that abortion is always wrong. They still believe in an objective morality in theory, but twist and simplify that morality.
Stage 3 brings us Moral Relativism, whether abortion is right or wrong depends on who you ask, what culture you were raised in, etc. There is no objective morality, but this itself is an objective truth in a way. This is opposed to the second stage Monotheists who believe abortion is objectively wrong all together, or first stage folks who know the topic can be more complicated than black and white. Basically whatever the culture says is moral, is. Whatever morals the Relativist has, they do not believe them to be more correct than any other morals.
Finally in stage 4+, morality is completely dependent on what those in power (politicians, corporations, influencers, etc.) say is moral. It's a warped form of Moral Relativism, really. This individual believes that morals are relative, but not to culture or anything of the sort. Instead, morals are relative to whatever suits them best at the time, and whatever they are told by "authorities" of high symbol/object value. They do not believe the values and morals of others are equally valid to theirs (stage 3), nor do their actions suggest any belief in a consistent objective morality, warped or otherwise (stage 1 and 2). Instead, their morals are relative to whatever their own pseudo-reality is, whatever is to their benefit, and this itself mainly stems from the aforementioned authorities. And note that someone may be, say, a stage 2 monotheist when it comes to religion, but a stage 4 on morality, and so on.
"Whataboutism" is another illustration of moral Postmodern manipulation. Say a person is telling you how evil the current president of the U.S. is because they do X. You ask, "what about the fact that your favorite president did X too, were they also evil?" The Postmodernist will then say you are engaging in "whataboutism." To one who accepts Moral Realism it is immediately clear why the question is valid though: the answer determines if the person is truly opposed to X or simply using it against those they don’t like, special pleading. Postmodernists simply believe whatever they need or want to at the time to support their own biases, not that X is actually immoral.
Our paper money is another example of stage 3, “pretense of reality.” The paper money system is entirely theoretical, in reality the paper is worth very, very little. It's just tied to this conceptual system that, were it to be cast aside, would make all cash meaningless paper. Stage 1 would be things like services, sustenance, shelter, useful things, symbols that were thought to impact reality, etc., objective things all people need. Stage 2 is illustrated by gold, we give it meaning beyond what it has, but it's a real thing with a limited amount of it in the world, you cannot get trillions in debt just printing new gold into existence as with stage 3 cash. And for stage 4+, what better example than NFTs and Bitcoin, or views, likes, and upvotes?
Social media gives us insight into the world of stage 4 / Postmodernism. All the big-name forums or social media platforms, as well as many smaller ones, are oversaturated with advertisements, these new religious symbols and their new valuable objects, to the point where advertisers choose which platforms or outlets survive and which crash and burn. Whole sites wield the power to silence dissenters of whichever ideologies they find unappealing. In many cases people are extremely limited in the number of characters they can use at once, making true discourse impossible. People live entirely fake lives to instill jealousy in others, who go on to lie to themselves and others as well, and groupthink is encouraged through voting systems which create hiveminds and drive out any independent thought. All these fit with Baudrillard’s fourth stage - none of this is reality. Consumerism is objectively less valuable than individuation and freedom, it is not a valid way to live life, it only wastes life, time, and resources. Human thought is not limited by a character count, this does not describe reality in any way, instead creating a new "reality" where any idea longer than a few sentences is a "word salad" and cannot hold one's attention. There are fewer and fewer "great thinkers," and they are not the ones being heard and viewed. The endless, manufactured, touched up selfies, vacations wasted taking pictures instead of living, time lost in the imagery rather than the real event - this is not objective reality. It not only rejects reality but twists and perverts it, replacing it with a manufactured (simulated) one.
Cancel culture is another unfortunate offspring of Postmodernist thought. Due to the power held and used by the creators and maintainers of all these stage 4 images and objects, "reality" is now defined by such entities. A famous actor was fired from all his roles including a massive franchise on mere accusations of abuse, before the crimes were even brought to court (where it turned out things were not so clear cut). If it can happen to a rich, beloved movie star, imagine what could happen to you. I am not suggesting you feel bad for a billionaire who helps fabricate reality, nor do I believe we have a great and trustworthy justice system in place. All I want to illustrate is how a mere accusation led to guilt and punishment because corporations and the more popular political party said they were guilty, and culture followed blindly, before it even reached the justice system at all. Even in cases where someone ends up being guilty, they cannot be found guilty before investigation and judgment. But this does not matter in a world where reality is whatever is most popular at the time.
All forms of media contribute to this, there is no longer any reality in culture outside of the images and realities created for us, created to distract us from this disturbing rejection of reality. Games, shows, movies, children’s content, fiction and non-fiction works, governments, news outlets… not every single individual instance of these may be wholly negative, but the positive ones are becoming more and more rare. I’ve found an interesting source of philosophy on this matter in the poetry of Jim Morrison, famously known as the singer of The Doors, whose father was all too familiar with the fabrication of reality. Morrison wrote about how the powers that be use content from films to museums (where we simulate history) and everything in between to blind citizens to their power over us, our values, even our own meanings regarding life. He feared that humans had become simple spectators, staring blankly into the screen, letting it write their reality for them. He even predicted the "meta" nature of our modern culture, where everything has become self-referential, filled with cameos and easter eggs, dead actors resurrected and old ones de-aged, because media-created reality is now the only reality. All it can reference is itself, lest it shatter the illusion or acknowledge reality. Just look at how our culture cannot even create new content, just remakes, sequels, shared universes, etc.
"There are no longer “dancers,” the possessed. The cleavage of men into actor and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish. If all the radios and televisions were deprived of their sources of power, all the books and paintings burned tomorrow, all shows and cinemas closed, all the arts of vicarious existence… We are content with the “given” in sensation’s quest. We have been metamorphosized from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark." - Jim Morrison
Another great example of postmodernism is the idea of secularism, that we can separate the public from the religious, or that there are actually people who have no religion whatsoever. This rejects the reality that religion applies to many aspects of life, that someone who is non-theistic or simply “spiritual” still is often religious. For example we can look to sports, where all sorts of weird rituals and ceremonies take place that have nothing to do with the layman understanding of religion, gods, the divine, etc, but are studied as such by religious scholars nonetheless. It can even tie back to the Disneyland example, such as how we pretend America is a secular country, or delude ourselves into thinking the hateful Atheism of France (or places like the USSR before it) is somehow not its own form of religion. In stage 1 we recognized there was no separating the spiritual and religious from daily life. Stage 2 keeps this mostly in place but twists it to fit monotheism. It's not until stage 3 that this really changes to keeping religion “private,” and stage 4 flips the whole thing on its head to where the state and corporations have become god, and the gods have become fantasy.
Postmodernism has even seeped into the WLHP to a great extent. For example, with the identification of the Christian entity Satan with all sorts of beings that have no correlation to him. The Satanist who says that The Devil is Setesh, the Serpent, Prometheus, or any other such deity is placing objective reality on the backburner in favor of a popular cultural meme - that all these beings are Satan, despite their histories, characteristics, mythologies, etc. It is Postmodernism which allows certain groups from the late 1900s to claim absurd things like being the first and only Satanists with no regard for objective reality, or which allows organizations to claim the title of Romantic Satanists when their values and acts fly in the face of that literary movement. It's why people who think they are on the WLHP can still fall for things like Physicalism against all evidence and reason. It's how occultists can create completely made up identities for themselves that, even after being exposed as fraudulent, are still parroted blindly by their followers. And in a wider sense it applies to modern polytheism overall, where new age, fluff bunny occultists come in changing polytheism to monotheism, or saying all male and female goddesses are just a manifestation of duo-theism. There is no escaping Postmodern irrationality.
Our symbols of the divine, of deeper spiritual meanings and truths, of a reality beyond this one, have all been replaced with corporate logos, meme templates, and easter eggs. Like me, many others also have altars in every room of the house, their altars are simply shrines to brands, consumer content, companies, political parties, famous actors, etc. The utility of an object no longer defines it, but instead it is the fabricated social status a thing is supposed to create, such as an uncomfortable designer chair being ten times the cost of a more comfortable and practical one. If your car can reliably get you place to place, but isn’t sporting the right hood ornament, or a fresh coat of paint, all the fancy add ons and a high floor price, then the object simply is not as valuable as if it had these entirely unnecessary things, and therefore the individual themselves is judged as less valuable. Two identical shirts can vary in price by hundreds of dollars based solely on the name printed on the tag inside. All of these values are entirely manufactured and completely detached from objective reality.
Perhaps worst of all is that people and objects have become harder to tell apart, as best exemplified with celebrities. They are fake people with false personalities who we are supposed to see as the ideal human beings. All of their flaws are edited and filtered out, and then we are condemned for not being on par. To postmodern companies, the individual is literally just an object to be used as a means to an end, a cog in a machine rather than an individual with needs, goals, drives, etc. Politicians are themselves celebrities now, and I do not only mean literal actors running for office, but rather that people cheer for them like they do a rock star, consume their media like it is a drug, defend them as if they were their favorite comic character… What gives these politicians and celebrities their power? An association with the new system of symbols and objects of value, the system which disregards reality all together in order to encourage things like Consumerism and obedience.
Postmodernism has an influence over almost every aspect of our lives. It encourages people to believe any fleeting thing they want, or more often are told to want, is of foremost importance or value. It allows constant advertising to empty us of any "inconvenient" meaning or value and fill the void with Consumerism and material things, or to fill it with work lives that are ultimately pointless and amount to nothing more than some conceptual material wage (money itself not even being "real"). The value of objects defines and overtakes the value of the individual. A disregard for objectivity means a disregard for the scientific method itself, allowing science to become a process of authoritarianism at worst and democracy at best, a process of media propaganda rather than a quest for truth. Whatever facts benefit the high-object-value people and the symbols they associate with are true, and facts which do not are false, being able to change at the drop of a hat as needed.
Postmodernism is clearly the natural outcome of our move from profound reality to a fabricated simulation of reality created to control, stifle, and subdue human beings… an immoral and dangerous metaphysics too blind to see that without any objective reality nobody can ever be correct, including themselves.
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2024.05.10 19:59 abaganoush What is your favorite film genre? How many genres do you enjoy?

I just discovered the ULTIMATE LIST OF ALL FILM GENRES KNOWN TO WIKIPEDIA – and I'm flabbergasted: There's just too many of them.
The link details them all, but here are the unformatted raw names, all 291 of them:
ActionArthouse Heroic bloodshed Hong Kong action AdventureSurvival Art Biographical Christian ComedyAction Black Commedia all'italianaSexy Bromantic Dramedy Gross out Horror Parody Mo lei tau Thriller Remarriage Romantic Sex Screwball Silent Slapstick CyberpunkJapanese DocumentaryAnimated City symphony Docudrama Mockumentary Mondo Pseudo Semi Travel DramaCalligrafismo Dramedy Historical Legal MelodramaKorean EroticCommedia sexy all'italiana Pink Sexploitation Thriller Educational Social guidance EpicSword-and-sandal Experimental Exploitationsee Exploitation film template FantasyComedy Contemporary Fantastique High Historical Magic realism Science Film noirNeo-noir Pulp noir Tech noir GothicRomance Southern Space Suburban Urban HorrorArthouse Body Cannibal Chinese horror Christmas horror Comedy Eco Fantastique Found footage German underground Ghost Giallo Holiday Japanese horror Korean horror Lovecraftian Natural New French Extremity Psycho-biddy Psychological Religious Science fiction Slasher Splatter Satanic Maximalist film Minimalist film Mumblecore MusicalArthouse Backstage Jukebox Musicarello Operetta Sceneggiata MysteryDetectiveOccult detective Whodunit Giallo Pop culture fictionCrossover PornographicHardcore pornography Softcore pornography (Malayalam) Propaganda Reality RomanticComedyBromantic Fantasy Gothic Paranormal Thriller Science fictionArt Comedy Fantastique Fantasy Gothic Horror Military New Wave Planetary romance Space opera Steampunk Tokusatsu Western Slice of life Slow cinema ThrillerComedy Erotic Financial Giallo Legal New French Extremity Political Psychological Romantic Techno TransgressiveCinema of Transgression Extreme cinema New French Extremity TrickBy themeAnimals Beach party Body swap BuddyBuddy cop Female Cannibal Chicano Colonial Coming-of-age Concert CrimeDetective Gangster Gentleman thief Gokudō Gong'an Heist Heroic bloodshed Hood Mafia Mafia comedy Mumbai underworld Poliziotteschi Yakuza Dance DisasterApocalyptic DrugPsychedelic Stoner Dystopian Ecchi Economic Ethnographic ExploitationBlaxploitation Mexploitation Turksploitation Extraterrestrial Food and drink Gendai-geki Ghost Goona-goona epic GothicRomance Space Suburban Girls with guns Harem HentaiLolicon Shotacon Tentacle erotica Homeland Isekai JidaigekiSamurai Kaitō LGBTYaoi Yuri Luchador Magical girl Martial artsBruceploitation Chopsocky Gun fu Kung fu Ninja Wuxia MechaAnime MonsterGiant monster Kaiju Mummy Vampire ZombieZombie comedy Mountain Mouth of Garbage Muslim social NatureEnvironmental issues Opera Outlaw biker Ozploitation Partisan film PrisonWomen Race Rape and revenge Road Rubble Rumberas SexploitationBavarian porn Commedia sexy all'italiana Mexican sex comedy Nazi exploitation Pornochanchada Nunsploitation Sex report Shoshimin-eiga Slavery Slice of life Snuff South Seas Sports SpyEurospy Superhero Surfing Swashbuckler Sword-and-sandal Sword and sorcery Travel Trial Vigilante WarAnti-war Euro War Submarine WesternAcid Contemporary Western Dacoit Western Fantasy Florida Horror Meat pie Northern Ostern Revisionist Science fiction Singing cowboy Space Spaghetti Weird Western Zapata WesternBy movementor periodAbsolute American eccentric cinema New Objectivity Australian New Wave Auteur films Berlin School Bourekas Brighton School British New WaveKitchen sink realism Budapest school Calligrafismo Cannibal boom Cinéma du look Cinema Novo Cinema of Transgression Cinéma pur Commedia all'italiana Czechoslovak New Wave Documentary Film Movement Dogme 95 Erra Cinema European art cinema Film d'art Film gris Free Cinema French New Wave German Expressionist German underground horror Nigerian Golden Age Grupo Cine Liberación Heimatfilm Hollywood on the Tiber Hong Kong New Wave Indiewood Iranian New Wave Italian futurist Italian neorealist Japanese New Wave Kammerspielfilm L.A. Rebellion Lettrist Modernist film Mumblecore Neorealist New French Extremity New German New generation New Hollywood New Nollywood New Queer No wave Nuevo Cine Mexicano Pan-Indian film Parallel cinema Persian Film Poetic realist Polish Film School Poliziotteschi Praška filmska škola Prussian film Pure Film Movement Remodernist Romanian New Wave Slow cinema Spaghetti Western Socialist realist Social realistKitchen sink realism Soviet parallel Structural Surrealist Sword-and-sandal Telefoni Bianchi Third Cinema Toronto New Wave Vulgar auteurism Yugoslav Black WaveBy demographicAdult Black Children and familyAnime MenSeinen Stag TeenShōnen Shōjo WomenChick flick JoseiBy format,technique,approach,or production3D Actuality AnimationAnime Art Cartoon Computer Stop-motion Traditional Anthology Art B movie Behind-the-scenes Black-and-white Blockbuster Cinéma vérité Classical Hollywood cinema Collage Color Compilation Composite Computer screen Cultmidnight movie Database cinema Docufiction Ethnofiction ExperimentalAbstract Feature Featurette Film à clef Film-poem Found footage Grindhouse Hyperlink cinema IndependentGuerrilla filmmaking List of American independent films Interstitial art Live actionanimation Low-budget Major film studios Masala Maximalist film Message picture Meta-film Minimalist film Mockbuster Modernist film Musical short Mythopoeia Neorealist No-budget One-shot Paracinema Participatory Poetry Postmodernist Reverse motion Satire Sceneggiata Semidocumentary Serial Shinpa Short Silent Slow cinema Socialist realist Sound Underground Video nasty Vulgar auteurism Z movie
So where do you stand? Which is your favorite?
submitted by abaganoush to movies [link] [comments]

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