Monday, January 6, 2025
Sunday, January 5, 2025
The Ravanisation of Aryavarta
OK, this just got even stranger than I expected! So apparently there are a number of temples in the "Aryan" northern part of India where Ravana is worshipped. As already pointed out in a previous blog post, Ravana is the *bad guy* from the Hindu epic Ramayana.
It´s not entirely clear to me why some Hindus have chosen to worship the demon-king of Lanka, but there could be a connection to Shaivism. While Rama is associated with Vaishnavism, Ravana has a connection of sorts to Shiva. Some of these temples do contain Shiva-lingas. Maybe it´s also a caste issue? One of the temples is also dedicated to various goddesses and claims a connection to the Indus Valley Civilization. Or so the article linked below says. Wikipedia says something else and I´m not near enough to take a look myself...
It seems Rama´s devotees aren´t always happy about the Ravana temples, but they do "fit the format" in the extremely diverse and downright confusing religious landscape of Hinduism...
From Lanka with love
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| Good guy? |
Ravana is the demon-king and ruler of Lanka who is the chief protagonist of Rama in the Hindu epic Ramayana. In other words: Ravana is the bad guy in a story considered sacred scripture by many Hindus. Rama, by contrast, is regarded as an avatar of the god Vishnu and worshipped as a deity in his own right. He is associated with Ayodhya in northern India.
One of the central plot elements of the epic is Rama´s invasion of Lanka and overthrow of its wicked ruler Ravana (who had abducted Rama´s wife Sita). Lanka is virtually always identified with the island of Ceylon south of India. Today, Ceylon is co-terminous with the independent state of Sri Lanka. For decades, Sri Lanka suffered a civil war between the Buddhist Singhalese and the Hindu Tamils. At one point, India sent "peace keepers" to the northern portion of Sri Lanka. Many Singhelese regarded this as a foreign Hindu aggression in support of the Tamils. Note that most Tamils live in southern India, in the state of Tamil Nadu.
It was probably inevitable that Singhalese nationalists would appropriate the figure of Ravana and turn him into *the good guy* who defended ancient Lanka against a similar Hindu incursion. The Sri Lankan government even named the nation´s first satellite after Ravana! A scholar has refered to this process as "Ravanisation".
It seems that the entire Ravana problematique is pretty complex. For instance, the Tamils themselves have appropriated Ravana as a positive symbol. Despite being Hindu, many Indian Tamils resent the perceived domination of northern Indian "Aryans" and Hindutva nationalists. Since these rever Rama, casting his enemy Ravana in the role of hero becomes tempting for Tamil regionalists. In a final fine irony, the Singhalese on Sri Lanka are actually also "Aryans", while being suspicious of both Tamils and northern Indian "Aryans"...
Why Sri Lanka named its first ever satellite after Ravana
Tamils praise Ravana on Twitter
Parabol
Vänstermagasinet Parabol anställer "motorsågsmassaker" på SVT:s dokumentär om styckmordet på 1980-talet. Ett citat från artikeln av Lars Borgnäs (som tydligen refuserats av alla stora medier):
>>>Sannolikt har ytterst få av alla dem som hyllar ”Det svenska styckmordet” satt sig in i detaljerna kring bevisningen och gett sig själva möjlighet att bedöma dokumentärens tillförlitlighet. Många litar blint på den och stämmer in i kravet på upprättelse för de båda läkarna.
>>>Den aningslösheten hos journalister, krönikörer, ledarskribenter och andra opinionsbildare som tar ställning i flock utan egna kunskaper, är både häpnadsväckande och skrämmande.
Länkar nedan.
Det gamla galna Sverige
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| Svenskt dårhus? |
En sak stör mig rätt mycket med medias kommentarer om styckmordet på 1980-talet: påståendet att alla på 80-talet skulle ha varit direkt korkade, eller rentav galna. Det gamla galna Sverige.
Riktigt beklämmande blir det när attacker av den typen publiceras i Aftonbladet, som ju ska föreställa arbetarrörelsens tidning. Vad var egentligen "galet" på 1980-talet, enligt dem? Folkhemmet?
Det snällaste man kan säga om detta är att det är...fascinerande hur olika årtionden i efterskott förvandlas till antingen utopier eller dystopier. Tanken att Sverige skulle ha varit "mindre polariserat" för x antal årtionden sedan är den utopiska versionen. Tanken att 1990-talet såg ut ungefär som en svensk noir-film är den dystopiska. Och nu alltså att 1980-talet skulle ha varit helt jävla vansinnigt.
Givetvis var 80-talet inte någon utopi, men på många sätt är det vår egen tid (särskilt de senaste tio åren) som är verkligt galen. 80-talet ter sig närmast rationellt i jämförelse.
Vad ligger bakom denna kampanj...egentligen? Är det något slags projicering? Dagens kulturelit projicerar dagens samhällskollaps på 1980-talet. De var galna. Vi är rationella.
Tjena.
Den som sår vinden...
Från vår "ofrivilliga grannblogg":
Here be no dragons
A short but good debunk of a young earth creationist documentary. The YEC´s argues that reports of dragons, flying snakes and sea-serpents are observations of surviving dinosaurs and allied forms. Which somehow proves the Bible. It doesn´t.
Even apart from the fact that all non-avian dinosaurs and some other ancient reptilian groups most certainly died out 66 million years ago. The evidence for their survival well into modern times simply doesn´t add up. And that´s that.
Also indirectly a debunk of cryptozoology.
Planet of the Apes
Many Hindus want to believe stuff like this. It´s sheer speculation, of course. Probably not true. It´s highly unlikely, to say the least, that the authors of the Ramayana had knowledge of the Americas. Their supposed knowledge of Central Europe or the Arctic could have come from Greek sources, transmitted through the Persians or the Macedonians/Greeks.
And while the Vanaras are fascinating, please show me the evidence of such an ancient race...
Time dilation
This is an intriguing but also somewhat disturbing video about a recent scientific study, arguing that dark energy might not really exist. In reality, time goes slower in certain parts of the universe and faster in others. This "time dilation" creates the illusion of the phenomenon scientists try to explain in terms of "dark energy". Indeed, the universe might even start to contract at some point (the Big Crunch).
I know that Einstein had some pretty exotic ideas about the nature of time, but I never really reflected on the topic until...well, now really. What does it even *mean* that time goes faster in some regions of space and more slowly in others? Doesn´t the Crunch happen at the same...ahem...time for everyone?
Or as Sabine Hossenfelder argued (I think): If light would be conscious, it would experience a 100 billion year-journey throughout the universe as happening in one instant...but the journey would *still* take 100 billion years?!
Dude.
Supercontinent cycle
Damn, we are going to go extinct already in 250 million years?! Fuck.
Pangea Ultima, the Next Supercontinent, May Doom Mammals to Far-future Extinction
De-evolution
A good summary of Michael Cremo´s book "Human Devolution", here called "de-evolution" for some reason. Gotta love the click-baity titles and AI-generated alien monster pics, LOL.
When I´m not entirely awake, I want to believe something like this. But is it true? Who knows. Probably not. Besides, there might not be any necessary contradiction between Darwinian evolution and "Vedic de-evolution". Cough Theosophy cough cough.
The quest continues.
It´s a niche thing
Overheard on the internets: "The next time you think speculative evolution is weird, remember that hummingbirds are a theropod dinosaur filling the ecological niche of a bee."
Bingo!
Reminds me of Huston Smith, who once opined that maybe the hummingbird is the divine archetype of a bird LARP-ing as a butterfly...
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Pandas are fake and gay (?!)
YouTube´s biggest troll and/or resident kook extraordinaire Hans Wormhat claims that Giant Pandas aren´t real animals, but human actors in fur suits?! The reasons are somewhat unclear. Other fake animals include koalas, anacondas, penguins and the Great White Shark. Zebras are real, but probably painted to look striped. OK, so I haven´t linked to *all* of his fake animal videos. But you get the pic.
Great Apes are of course also fake, but in this case, the supposed reasons are at least clear enough. Wormhat is a creationist, so obviously the human primates dressing up like apes in zoos and national parks are paid agitators for Darwin´s evolutionary theory! I mean, aint that obvious?
Apparently, Mike Tyson knows the truth - that´s why the legendary boxer offered to fight a gorilla in the ring. He knew that the rilla was really a non-boxing man in a monkey suit. Tyson knows since he is presumably initiated into the Club, and is really a very muscular female?! Yes, Mr Wormhat also believes in conspiracy theories about transgender or intersex people being pretty much everywhere...
Tinfoil Hat, pardon, Wormhat also claims to believe that the Earth is flat, so naturally the ISS must be a gigantic hoax, too. It´s actually a submersible.
I think I know exactly who is fake around here, but sure, I suppose there is a remote chance that Hans actually believes all of this. Just don´t tell Tyson.
Transvestigation
Hans Wormhat is a notorious troll on YouTube, who claims to believe in a large number of fairly absurd conspiracy theories. My favorite is the claim that Giant Pandas are really human actors dressed in fur suites! The whole thing could be parody (note the strange name "Wormhat" and its similarity to "Tinfoil Hat"), but on the web, it´s really impossible to know.
The clips above sound seriously paranoid, but - as I said - who knows? Wormhat is into something called "transvestigation", apparently the idea that many female celebrities are really male (and sometimes vice versa). I noted accusations like this against Michelle Obama and the first lady of France, but always assumed they were tongue-in-cheek. However, it seems some people (Incels?) un-ironically believe in the claims. This is combined with ideas about secret societies and initiations, et cetera.
Mr Wormhat takes the whole thing to an entirely new level, claiming that "they are all trannies" and that transvestigation has therefore become meaningless. Says Wormhat, half of the current human population is intersex. Many "men" are really women, many "women" are men. Mike Tyson, for instance, is a woman. Wormhat claims that his entire family consist of "Baphos" or "Baphometians", a reference to the androgyne devil-like figure Baphomet (popularized in the US by the Satanic Temple). His "sister" was really his brother, his "brother" was his sister, and his "father" was the one who gave birth to him?! It´s not clear why these genetic deformities didn´t hurt Wormhat?
Wormhat claims to be a Biblical Christian (while rejecting the apostle Paul!), but his view of the intersex people is surprisingly coy. He sees most of them as victims of the system and therefore preaches charity. Which is intriguing to be sure, since conservative Christians are dead against any form of transgenderism, regarding it as fakery. Wormhat hints that it´s more complicated than this. Perhaps the intersex caste system is the result of a eugenics breeding program of the secret cabals?
Make of this "investigation" whatsoever ye wish.
Humiliation fetish
Why do some people believe (or pretend to believe) in obviously absurd and downright silly things, such as flat earthism, that giant pandas are really actors in fur suits, that Mike Tyson is a woman, and so on? One explanation I stumbled across on the proverbial internets is that it´s a "humiliation fetish".
But who is being humiliated? Answer: pretty much everyone. This includes those who believe in the strange claims of the troll, those who know he´s trolling but can´t help getting angry anyway and - most importantly - the troll himself.
Yes, the troll gets a kick out of being humiliated. In other words, the whole thing is a form of sado-masochism.
That would actually explain a thing or two. Once you see it, you can´t unsee it! And it works just as well for true believers in really absurd causes...
Persuasion and learning
A hard-hitting polemic against (mostly fundamentalist) Christianity by Richard Carrier. Think theodicy, morality, slavery, and so on. Even references YouTube personality Matt Dillahunty.
What Carrier is saying struck me some time ago: since most modern Western Christians (including theologically conservative ones) agree with the atheists that God must be omnibenevolent if he is "all-good", they can´t really win the argument. It´s not hard for an atheist to demonstrate that the Biblical God *isn´t* omnibenevolent. Why believe in such a god, then?
It might be harder to use this rhetorical strategy against very traditionalist Christian groups, or against Muslims or Hindus, who presumably don´t believe that God´s "all-goodness" entails 100% constant benevolence. If they believe in an "all-good" god at all. Note, btw, that the only person in the Bible who claims that all-good means omnibenevolent is Satan! (When he tempts Jesus in the desert.)
But in a modern world in which nobody wants to be a martyr, and everyone prefers the prosperity gospel to righteous suffering, the Carrier-Dillahunty strategy presumably works very well indeed!
Idealist from the Paleozoic?
Richard Carrier on the war path...again! This time against an unrepentant Idealist philosopher, Bernardo Kastrup. Carrier defends physicalism. That he considers Idealism to be more or less cray-cray is obvious from the following paragraph:
>>>There is a reason 52% of all philosophers are physicalists and that this becomes 68% of all philosophers when you exclude delusional theists. But Idealism is still the least likely alternative. There are theisms more likely; and those are pretty damn unlikely.
>>>Yet nontheist alternatives do even better still—nonetheist nonnaturalisms (like Taoism) outperform theism; and nonphysicalist naturalisms (like emergent qualia dualism) outperform those. So Idealism is right up there with “Faerie Abductions” or “Lizard People Secretly Rule the Earth.”
Still, it´s an interesting essay, to be sure.
Spökraketer
Har Clas Svahn en "back channel" till danska säkerhetstjänsten? Eller nej?
I och för sig *lite* mer logiskt att Ryssland spionerar på Danmark med drönare, än att Iran skickar drönare till New Jersey och Staten Island...
Reap the whirlwind
If you´re for globalization, you can´t complain about Elon Musk´s "election interference". Globalism, you know?
After all, Musk is simply doing *in public* what the globalist elites have always been doing *in private*. So why wasn´t *that* evil evilly "election interference"?
Is it before this particular globalist elitist supports "the other guy"? Well, tough! You choose to be the bitches of the zillionaires. Reap the whirlwind...
Och storm skola de skörda
Och vems fel är det här då? Skolan *är* en "serviceinrättning", både p.g.a. privatiseringsvågen och p.g.a. en viss typ av hyper-modern medelklasskultur.
Vind sår de, och storm skola de skörda...
Berufsverbot
There is a certain irony in this, obviously....
Palestinian Authority suspends Al Jazeera TV channel in the West Bank
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