But I wonder… could you actually develop an MCU type thing that has the felt depth and gravitas of old living traditions but also the narrative freedom to tell new stories? If you can do that you could rule the world. I suspect anime pulls that off to some extent.
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Rajamouli’s movies (Bahubali series) are a brave attempt to create entirely new stories in the spirit of Hindu mythology but I suspect the incumbency of the living canon is just too strong and entrenched to compete with. New material can’t rise above “entertainment” 🤔
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In the west, modern Christian storytelling (eg Hallmark movies) seems to ignore literal mythology and build an alt extended universe around Christian values, but I think it doesn’t really work. Either culturally or economically. It’s a kind of resistance art/rearguard action
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In both East and west, post-canon-freeze storytelling seems to effectively reduce to “lives of saints” stuff, which I can’t help but read as Mary-Sue stories. Eg Mirabai story reads like a Mary Sue story adjacent to Krishna canon to me.
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Islam tries really hard to counterprogram this human tendency to make fandom larps of everything but I don’t think it succeeds. Sufi saint culture is exactly the same, despite the strictures against representational art.
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I suspect people who take religion seriously try to look for its cultural adaptive functions at too high a level of abstraction, like “meaning making”
The adaptive function is mainly at the action figure level for 90% of “believers.” Narrative sensemaking with Mary Sue options.
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By the typology in the Gita of 4 types of faith, I think the pie chart is:
Gnana yoga (knowledge faith): 1%
Raja yoga (self-mastery faith): 9%
Karma yoga (righteous-action faith): 20%
Bhakti yoga (devotional/fandom faith): 70%
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Oh damn I wonder if my pie chart of yogas can be mapped to keirsey mbti temperaments. Wouldn’t be surprising since jungian thought has roots in myth too.
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Replying to @vgr
having gods as action figures u can touch and pose seems very mbti S (sensory)
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Gnana yoga: NT
Raja yoga: SP?
Karma yoga: SJ
Bhakti yoga: NF?
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Speaking of tech updates, there’s this AR app coloring roll app for Hindu pantheon. You put it up on wall, kids color it, and scanning a god in AR app brings up augmented content.
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This is why Zuck is smart to bet on the metaverse. The Hindu metaverse will be a huge deal. And Meta probably knows it since half the content on Indian WhatsApp is fandom traffic. Images, songs, etc.
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In case it isn’t clear, I’m taking the opposite view to the usual interpretation that comic book EU fandoms are modern religions. I think religions are old fandoms that acquired some intellectual/philosophical trappings. Religions supervene on fandom/larp phenomenology.
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I’m surprised somebody hasn’t rushed to make nft collections based on Hindu mythology. Get each minted hash blessed by a priest. Famous temples could sponsor ongoing mints. Donate at Tirupati, QR code pops, scan it and you have proof-of-darshan nft.
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I mean all the blessed threads and amulets and stuff are basically physical nft mints. I just got a red thread from a family religious thing.
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Pilgrimages are collection quests. Often the collected artifact is holy water. People have mint condition sealed little brass pots of Ganga water in their home shrines. It’s like comic-con souvenir badges or something.
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An interesting Hinduism 1/1 NFT is saligrams: ammonite fossils that are co-opted as Vishnu symbols. Most religious households have a few and they play an important role in some rituals.
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