It's not on me to show that your imagineered religion isn't real.
Actually it is entirely your responsibility to show that I have "imagineered" a "religion", if you wish to claim that I have.
I have, rather, said that puberty is a natural process that follows a sexed pathway, and that interrupting that has deleterious consequences
I bolded the value judgement (the ought).
You can't make it go away just by shifting which word you hide it inside.
This thing that you garnered from fiction, this thing which is a pure creation of imagination.
Everything is a pure creation of imagination right up until it isn't. Oftentimes, it is the wizard who is the one who makes it so. It is in fact one of the most important of the usages of the term "magic": "magic: to summon pure creation of imagination into reality".
It is entirely reasonable to read a description which is uncontroversial: "Gandolf is a wizard of Middle Earth".
He is an
imaginary wizard, but a wizard nonetheless
Then I might look at another such statement: "Ged is a wizard of Earthsea."
I might even continue in this vein.
Then I can ask another question: what is the common intersection of these? Of course mostly it is the ability to use the difficult-to-understand truths of our reality for the joy of creation and the furtherance of their society, their power to summon pure creation of imagination into reality.
And then we can make an extrapolation: "What does a 'Wizard of Earth' look like?" And even "who is the wizard this author is writing so as to speak to through this metaphor?"
Oftentimes in the first, I see exactly the folks who busy themselves etching precious metals onto formed glass, setting them with blocks of silicon also meticulously etched, waving objects to emit unseen force across over some parts, and then pouring many many lines of very meticulous text through the lot of it, and most importantly through all of this, the power to
summon pure creation of imagination into reality as the subject of these discussions.
And then there is the other shoe that must drop: in all the important ways,
the "creation of fiction" is based on real people who are as I am.
More than anything, I think this is what bothers you, that there is this dialogue around the power to summon pure creation of imagination into reality.
"He is a wizard at Excel" is a figurative use of language.
Your self-assessment of your technical abilities does not make you an actual wizard. It is, in fact, a narcissistic personality trait you are claiming is a 'gender'.
Your language use is not standard, and others have the moral obligation to resist your nonsense.
I fully admit to my narcissistic tendencies.
It's actually a great part of the topics discussed in LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea.
In it, a young wizard does something stupid to rove himself and unleashes a dark thing on the world that pursues him until he finally learns how he must face it.
One of the things that I am forced to acknowledge through my life is, in fact, that circa 2006? 2007? I did in fact let myself get provoked into using the power to summon
pure creation of imagination
Into reality to summon something
very ugly into reality, and have since known entirely what that whole book was about.
But it was most certainly written to me, and to everyone who is as I am. I see in my power the power to do
absolutely horrible things. I see the fuse dry and ready to be lit quite often to cause chaos. Oh how fun it would be! But that's straight up "evil wizard" trope.
That's the thing about reading. There's another message in those books insofar as "evil wizards are complete pieces of shit, and are something to oppose as a whole society."
There are certainly a lot of good hate letters written by a lot of authors for "Evil Wizard, esquire."
More, in fact, than ever I read as love letters to the "good wizard" and most of those usually involve some
incidents for which shame ought be carried regardless.
So I don't do those things because it would be stupid to do those things, and it always will be stupid to do those things, and I have really good reasons as to understanding why those things are stupid: not because I would be opposed but
why they would oppose me.
Namely because it infringes on our mutually compatible self actualization, and that this is the common root of villainy, defined as portrayed.
And also,
I don't want to be a villain, and recognize that I can be and have been.
I recognize that I'm quite lucky, and recognize that this is entirely coincidence! No woo there. In any of it. Just good, sound principles.
I recognize too that if I had thought any less about core principles, or read fewer of those books, there would be something very bad crawling across the earth.
And the word used to describe the target of maximal empathy, to describe the protagonist in fact by LeGuin, was "wizard". In many ways the title was a work of functional linguistic art: A Wizard of Earthsea. It is open in a lot of directions and by a skillful author, this is a choice. It implies that there are wizards of other places. That there are perhaps wizards elsewhere in other imaginings, and valid for being so. It was only about A Wizard of [a place]. It implies that what makes the protagonist is not the magic of Earthsea but something about who he is, and would be A Wizard wherever he found himself.
So at least she seems to be in my corner.
As to why it's my gender, well, you'll get it
eventually.
This derail in fact revolves around the power to summon
pure creation of imagination
Into reality.
Thanks for that Emily. You have given me something beautiful, or well, I guess I've stolen it and made it all my own. You gave me the words somehow without even apparently first understanding them yourself!
Lucky indeed. Though purely coincidence.
Now,
others have the moral obligation to resist
This is an interesting concept.
Where do you get your ought from? Why are you more right in your use of language than me? Others have a moral obligation to resist the shifting of language?
It's certainly not an obligation I have so far derived from language used so as to actually fit usefully into a consistent framework.
I'm open to discussing that, but you just say "Yer Wrong *thumb nose*".
I can say that I have studied my whole life the concepts of language, and specifically the applications you claim, without substantive argument, to be abuse of language.
I built my career around using language precisely and powerfully and to understand the meaning of what I am looking at through all it's layers of complexity,
including the physical layers.
So, is this the nonsense people have the moral obligation to resist:
to bring their child up to be open and accepting with as much of themselves as they can be, and to only seek to change that which is absolutely vital for their own happiness
???
Or is it something else I've written? Can you point to it? Have I said anything that isn't completely honest? Or that anyone didn't already know?
Or are you saying people have a moral obligation to resist my identity as "wizard"?