And then this shit won't matter anymore And the language and imagery used is violent, vicious, brutal -- that fake you, the wrong you, will be defeated, beaten, broken, smashed, KILLED, BURIED, THROWN INTO THE FIRE AND BURNED TO ASH
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This idea of violently tearing yourself out of a filthy chrysalis to emerge brand new, innocent, and free, and clean It's this really raw deep psychological stuff The Passion followed by the Resurrection Tortured to death on the Cross, then the stone rolling away from the tomb
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Death and rebirth, the symbolism of baptism And I go with the theory that baptism was originally a lot more hardcore, that the point of it is traumatic initiation, simulated drowning They held you down until you thought you were actually going to die
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Christianity is, well, it's a very BDSM religion And it's very bipolar I mean Paul's rants in his letters are *incredibly* familiar if you've experienced bipolar mood swings or seen them in someone else
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This is even a thing Christian writers have explicitly talked about, like some early discussion of what we'd call "clinical depression" today was called the "dark night of the soul" in medieval times (which Douglas Adams made fun of with "the long dark teatime of the soul")
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And they'd say that those called to be saints were prone to "fits of ecstasy" followed immediately by "the dark night" That God's nearness and inspiration was regularly and immediately followed by his withdrawal, a period of spiritual "dryness and despair"
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Like I know diagnosis-from-a-distance of historical figures is problematic but it's actually this Christian discourse about this stuff that's evolved into secular psychologists knowing bipolar (i.e. "mania" and "melancholia") was a thing
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And I mean I get it, even now, I really do It's powerful stuff I think it's obviously very unhealthy and giving this memeplex free rein has led directly to *gestures around* but you can see why as they refined this doctrine into the pure product Christians took over everything
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The fierce belief this world is a rotting husk and it doesn't matter and it's all bullshit but if you can BREAK FREE you can stop being THIS and start being THE PERSON YOU REALLY ARE AND ALWAYS WERE There's SOMETHING BETTER OUT THERE and if you could JUST REACH IT
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(Bioshock Infinite was a lot of wasted potential but they were touching on something really potent with the imagery they were using The baptism that turns Booker into Comstock, that drives him in a mad quest to "baptize" the whole world in fire, redeem and purify it)
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(The toxic way Christianity mutated into American exceptionalism, all this talk of a New World, a new country, a new constitutional order The idea that America was where you went to wipe the slate clean and start over, that here you get what you REALLY DESERVE)
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New York? Oh sorry I meant the New Jerusalem
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