The Senility Hypothesis

[sdi]

I'm very tired of the "demonic hypothesis" being bandied about as a means of understanding why America is becoming schizophrenic and tearing itself to pieces right now. (In fairness to JMG, he only proposed it as a tentative hypothesis and does not seem to hold to it very tightly; but at least a significant segment of the Ecosophia community seems to have taken it as gospel.) I thought I might offer an alternative.

In her book Anyone Can See the Light, Dr. Dianne Morrissey talks about her near death experience and the things she learned from it. One of the things she discusses is senility: "I learned from being in the Light that if I continued to judge others as I had been doing, I would become senile before I died again! The Light of God told me that senility was created for those who would have a hard time accepting the reality of Heaven, once they had crossed over. So they are made childlike, and thus able to accept Heaven as it is."

Plotinus says something vaguely concordant in Enneads I ix, about how arguing for suicide as a response to senility is a pointless exercise, since a philosophical life—trying to accept and embrace what is—is prophylactic against senility.

I might suggest that human societies are creatures, just as much as humans are: they exhibit various stages of life, and in the same way they are born (from parent societies, no less), so too do they grow old and die. Some civilizations, for whatever reason, are mature and philosophical and die with grace; others may get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and are murdered before even coming to age. Ours, however, seems to me to be like the judgemental person Morrissey describes—it insists upon forcing its view of the world onto others, and is unable to accept or appreciate the world as it is. Consequently, as it ages, it seems to have grown senile and is too judgmental, too forgetful, too proud to make sense of the world around it any more. So it forgets and is confused and frustrated and flails and rattles apart as a side effect of allowing it a way to transition out of existence.

Consequently, it seems to me that climate change and the "green movement," Trump and the "Resistance," COVID and the anti-vaxxers, the divisive political climate, all are mere symptoms of a deeply flawed worldview which has been stuck in a rut for centuries. Indeed, I might suggest that the "demonic hypothesis" itself is born from that same worldview: one that assigns humans much greater agency than they in fact have, and doesn't recognize that maybe the West's great life is coming to an end exactly as it ought to.

I would urge people to look at the world in such a way that, rather than divide it into camps or try to assign blame, instead accepts that the gods are good and know what they are doing, and gracefully tries to cushion the blow as much as one reasonably can.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Some timely wisdom, and good material for meditation. I would tend to agree. Thank you.

Instead of the "demonic hypothesis," we might speak instead of the "demonization hypothesis"—in which those who judge are judged by the same standards they proclaim. In real time, as a variant on Hesiod: Wish harm for others, and harm yourself most...and perhaps not always in the physical sense.

Axé!

[sdi]

You're welcome. I like your point concerning the "demonization hypothesis," and yes, I agree entirely. (For anyone following along who's not familiar with Hesiod, Br'er Wolf is referring to Works and Days ll. 719–21: "The best treasure a man can have is a sparing tongue, and the greatest pleasure, one that moves orderly; for if you speak evil, you yourself will soon be worse spoken of.") Jesus, too, speaks the point as well as Hesiod (Matt. 7:1–2); and didn't Sallustius, following Plato, say the soul brings itself to judgement? What a terrible fate, to demonize yourself!

[thinking_turtle]

One of the founders of Greenpeace wrote a book called "Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom" (still on my to-read list.) The title implies a human rather than a demonic hand. Perhaps these divisive issues are not demonic in nature, but rather the technical way in which our society is ruled. In that case, as boccaderlupo's "demonization hypothesis" suggests, we should not judge before we really understand what's going on.

And the last few years have taught me that I know far less than I thought I did.

[sdi]

Yes—it's like how the vulgar think of death as the worst of evils, but the enlightened see it as the greatest of goods. Why should we believe the death of a society as any worse than the death of a person? Sure, there are pains and troubles as the body breaks down, and we should try to ease them as best we can, but such a stage is merely temporary—and oh, what beauty follows it!

[sdi]

Looks like JMG has formally closed his hypothesis.

[deansmith]

Thanks for sharing this over at JMGs magic Monday, and I really enjoyed reading it. I was always very uncomfortable with both the hypothesis (because as a former evangelical Christian I’ve seen all too often people blaming demons for things they don’t agree with and seeing the immensely awful things that can happen from that) and the portion of the commentariat that took it as gospel. I guess the problem to my mind wasn’t so much the hypothesis as when someone that people put on a spiritual pedestal put out something like that, no matter how loosely they hold it, a significant amount of people will take it and use it to justify horrible behavior. I don’t think that happened in this case (I think), but it’s how witch hunts and satanic panics happen. Anyhow, thanks again.

[sdi]

You're welcome. You know, I hadn't put two-and-two together, but I probably became pretty wary of demons-as-an-explanation for phenomena from my evangelical upbringing, too.

me too?

[kallianeira]

Well said both of you.

As a not-former evangelical Christian, the whole demon thing was mysterious to me and the discussion around the idea both on the C***d forum and Magic Mondays has been extremely enlightening.

In "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" there is a harrowing part of the narrative where the teenage girl finding out a bit too publicly about sexuality is exorcised (read incarcerated and starved) by her church for possession.

cheers

Re: me too?

[deansmith]

As a magician, I’m certainly open to the existence of classes of beings hostile to humans, and I’ve encountered them a few times. However that being said the vast majority of the time, humans do a fine job of being irrational, mean, and just plain weird, and no further explanation is necessary. Especially where tribalism is concerned.

Just curious, but why do you use asterisks when spelling Covid? I see others do that and also with the word vax. Is there a reason?

Re: me too?

[kallianeira]

Asterisks are, first, a way of attempting to defeat Algorithms/bots snooping for certain terms.
If it is someone else's page I think it courteous to spare them being snooped for something I said.

Second, an indication of scepticism about accepted use of a term or concept. (You also see this eg with people's use of various spellings of "God".)

Note sdi's use of a gif for a certain word in the Isis and Osiris myth a little while back... I am not savvy enough to do that trick. :)

Re: me too?

[sdi]

Regarding the bots, I appreciate the consideration, but alas, they're much too sophisticated to be defeated by such simple measures these days.

Regarding gifs, do you mean the hieroglyphics (like 𓃦 woof woof)? I just copy-paste those from Wikipedia's list of hieroglyphic signs. :)

Re: me too?

[kallianeira]

Oh, I hadn't realized: time for more ingenuity then :)

The ?gif was when you were talking about trying to find more about the Goddess losing her head and understandably weren't wanting to use the natural expression. It was text in what looked like one of the older fonts.

Re: me too?

[sdi]

Oh! That can be done by typing <code>I am typing on a typewriter</code> so long as Dreamwidth is in "Casual HTML" or "Raw HTML" mode.

Bots will pick it up, as it's just plain text from their perspective: the only difference is the font. (Nonetheless, I still don't recommend searching for that term. Ick.)