Tarot

[DrZoidberg]

Some people feel good without a need for escapism and the 'spiritual' so to s[eak.

I don't think spiritualism is escapism. Science and the scientific mindset is all about describing the world by simplifying it and slapping labels on all components. If you want to be a man of action who gets things done, this is most efficient way to organise your life.

Or to quote Pinker, "chemistry isn't the study of sticks and balls. The sticks and balls aren't actually there. Molecules aren't even arranged in the pattern chemistry schematics suggest they are".

In this very scientifically litterate world insisting that science is the only valid language, that I think is the problematic escapism of our age.

But it gets even more complicated. Scientism is so pervasive that we get religious fundamentalism. I don't know if you have noticed, but creationists use scientific language and scientific ways of thinking to justify their beliefs. New Age uses quantum mechanic terms to justify their beliefs. This is not religion or spiritualism. Its just bad science.

Before the discovery of electricity mystics and spiritualists never talked about energy. The whole concept of feeling eachothers energy is 100% scientism. Its just bad science. Very bad science. If you think this is what spirituality is, then of course you will think it's dumb.

But it used to be worse. Scientific positivism, that gave us stuff like eugenics, Nazism and scientific racism was peak scientism. Our world is recovering from that lunacy.

As I see it is that we are essentially a bunch of monkeys that have learned symbolic thinking and a language to describe those symbols. Which is cool. But we're still mostly monkeys. Non-verbal in our emotional life. Science is 100% verbal and symbolic thinking.

The monkey in us needs to feel validated and taken care of. And as long as we ignore it we are making ourselves very easy to manipulate.

I think that thinking there's a conflict between science and religion is a mistake. I don’t even like Gould's non-overlapping magisteria. Science and religion/spiritualism are talking about completely different dimensions of being.

Religion has nothing to say about how or why a tree grows. All religion can do is help us understand why we care about it and help us explore how we feel about it.

The evolutionary drive to procreation explains why you have a girlfriend. That doesn't explain at all why you have that girlfriend in particular, or how she validates you, makes you happy and inspires you to be a better person.

 

[DrZoidberg]

 

[bilby]

Religion has nothing to say about how or why a tree grows. All religion can do is help us understand why we care about it and help us explore how we feel about it.

You misspelled "psychology".

How does that make you feel?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Religion has nothing to say about how or why a tree grows. All religion can do is help us understand why we care about it and help us explore how we feel about it.

You misspelled "psychology".

How does that make you feel?

It's good you brought it up, because psychology is the scientific field, more than any other, that bridges the science spirituality gap. Or tries to.

Psychology isn't a science. Psychology is using scientific methodology to explain the mind and behaviour. But results aren't replicable, categories (and diagnoses) are quite fluid. Ie, not science.

We use psychology because it's better than nothing. But you don't need to study much psychology to find the flaws. If you read about any psychiatric diagnosis and you think about how it applies to you, you will find symptoms in your behaviour of every single brand of crazy.

Psychology has nothing to say about qualia or subjectivity. You will never and cannot ever know what another person is feeling. Empathy is you mirroring and projecting. But the idea that you actually feel what they are feeling is a complete fantasy. Yet, it's empathy that keeps society together.

There's no amount of study that can teach you what someone with schizophrenia is actually thinking or feeling. But important note. Religion or spirituality can't teach you that either.

All spirituality can do is give you tools to manage your frustration with not knowing. That's not nothing. That's a useful and important function.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

How is Tarot doing anything but butting one's own perspective into reality?

This is why I like the Tao Te Ching, Eightfold Path, and The Four Noble Truths. Life is about relations and change and our struggle to deal with that. The human mind wants routine. Life doesn't provide it at a guarantee, hence we struggle. People get lost in the meaning of things, when things have no meaning unless we provide them. Where as the documents above teach us about relations between things and how something doesn't have to have a moral value to have importance.

As I see it, whatever can jolt you out of your current frame of mind and make you see things from another perspective is good. Do that. But nobody can say what works best for you. It's so personal. We all got our personal triggers, red flags, safe spaces etc.

Quantum physics and neurology suffice for that. The very basis of the nature of existance, observations, and self... instead of some ridiculous pride. There is exploration and then there is arrogant self indulgence.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Religion has nothing to say about how or why a tree grows. All religion can do is help us understand why we care about it and help us explore how we feel about it.

You misspelled "psychology".

How does that make you feel?

Agreed. What we can learn about ourselves in religion, while not zero, is very very very limited. Older philosophy and literature tells us so much more.

 

[Tharmas]

Dr. Z, I hope you'll show us some examples from your deck as you progress with it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Dr. Z, I hope you'll show us some examples from your deck as you progress with it.

I'm still working on the structure. I have a lot of art that I plan on using.

Here's some of it.

https://instagram.com/tomsprettycolours?igshid=ZDdkNTZiNTM=

I have a couple of ideas that I am workshopping.

I will make sets of cards in themes. The themes will be on things that are important to you right now. So you can remove themes that aren't relevant. That allows for greater specificity.

There's also a "grammar" I want to steal from The Archetypes deck. Cards can be sorted in three categorese that say , do this, with what and why. I think it's a really cool way to do readings, and allows for a greater variety of readings. He didn't develop it so much. I can make it better, I think.

In the same deck he has some interesting "further reading" material mechanic. I think here to, can be expanded. I will use mobile phones and an app for greater variety and flexibility.

Basically, if you pull a combo of cards, that combo will form a new, more specific card.

Right now I will mess around with this structure.

As far as content I have already created more than I need. At this point its a question of narrowing it down and cutting out redundancies and dead weight.

I might split it into several decks. Because I just have too much that I love

 

[bilby]

Religion has nothing to say about how or why a tree grows. All religion can do is help us understand why we care about it and help us explore how we feel about it.

You misspelled "psychology".

How does that make you feel?

It's good you brought it up, because psychology is the scientific field, more than any other, that bridges the science spirituality gap. Or tries to.

Psychology isn't a science. Psychology is using scientific methodology to explain the mind and behaviour. But results aren't replicable, categories (and diagnoses) are quite fluid. Ie, not science.

We use psychology because it's better than nothing. But you don't need to study much psychology to find the flaws. If you read about any psychiatric diagnosis and you think about how it applies to you, you will find symptoms in your behaviour of every single brand of crazy.

Psychology has nothing to say about qualia or subjectivity. You will never and cannot ever know what another person is feeling. Empathy is you mirroring and projecting. But the idea that you actually feel what they are feeling is a complete fantasy. Yet, it's empathy that keeps society together.

There's no amount of study that can teach you what someone with schizophrenia is actually thinking or feeling. But important note. Religion or spirituality can't teach you that either.

All spirituality can do is give you tools to manage your frustration with not knowing. That's not nothing. That's a useful and important function.

Psychology isn't psychiatry, and vice-versa.

Religion certainly has a psychological component, but it's basically psychology with guesses replaced by dogmas. Not at all useful, and often actively counterproductive for the poor buggers who subscribe to it.

Managing your frustration with being ignorant by making shit up and pretending it's knowledge is not particularly useful. It would be far more healthy to take the approach of teaching people that it's OK not to know stuff. "I don't know" is a healthy and reasonable response to any question to which you do not know the answer.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Religion has nothing to say about how or why a tree grows. All religion can do is help us understand why we care about it and help us explore how we feel about it.

You misspelled "psychology".

How does that make you feel?

It's good you brought it up, because psychology is the scientific field, more than any other, that bridges the science spirituality gap. Or tries to.

Psychology isn't a science. Psychology is using scientific methodology to explain the mind and behaviour. But results aren't replicable, categories (and diagnoses) are quite fluid. Ie, not science.

We use psychology because it's better than nothing. But you don't need to study much psychology to find the flaws. If you read about any psychiatric diagnosis and you think about how it applies to you, you will find symptoms in your behaviour of every single brand of crazy.

Psychology has nothing to say about qualia or subjectivity. You will never and cannot ever know what another person is feeling. Empathy is you mirroring and projecting. But the idea that you actually feel what they are feeling is a complete fantasy. Yet, it's empathy that keeps society together.

There's no amount of study that can teach you what someone with schizophrenia is actually thinking or feeling. But important note. Religion or spirituality can't teach you that either.

All spirituality can do is give you tools to manage your frustration with not knowing. That's not nothing. That's a useful and important function.

Psychology isn't psychiatry, and vice-versa.

Nit-pick much? That distinction is not relevant in this context.

Religion certainly has a psychological component, but it's basically psychology with guesses replaced by dogmas. Not at all useful, and often actively counterproductive for the poor buggers who subscribe to it.

Yeah well, neither is a guitar until you learn to play it.

Managing your frustration with being ignorant by making shit up and pretending it's knowledge is not particularly useful. It would be far more healthy to take the approach of teaching people that it's OK not to know stuff. "I don't know" is a healthy and reasonable response to any question to which you do not know the answer.

Why are you saying this to me? I'm an atheist. Why are you preaching to the choir?

 

[bilby]

Why are you saying this to me? I'm an atheist. Why are you preaching to the choir?

Because psychological abuse of people, particularly by schools, to make them fearful of not knowing things, or of admitting to not knowing things, is absolute not unique to religion - despite being a central plank of religion, it's also very common in secular environments too.

Indeed, the skill of learning to say that you don't know, when you genuinely don't know, is one which few atheists have mastered. That even fewer religious devotees have mastered it is barely relevant.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Why are you saying this to me? I'm an atheist. Why are you preaching to the choir?

Because psychological abuse of people, particularly by schools, to make them fearful of not knowing things, or of admitting to not knowing things, is absolute not unique to religion - despite being a central plank of religion, it's also very common in secular environments too.

Agreed

Indeed, the skill of learning to say that you don't know, when you genuinely don't know, is one which few atheists have mastered. That even fewer religious devotees have mastered it is barely relevant.

Many many times I have said that I don't know, but then I act as if I do know. I am in denial about not knowing. That's the hard part for me. And cracking this nut is how spiritual practice have helped me. Don't worry. I'm not enlightened yet. I think it's turtles (layers of self denial) all the way down.

It's about cultivating genuine humility, openness and curiousity about life. Without simultaneously becoming passive and spineless.

Or to paraphrase John Cleese "smart people don't take the Bible litterally. They never have".

 

[No Robots]

In 1978, I had a psychotic breakdown. I was 17 and in my first year of university. I was taking philosophy and enjoying its mind-expanding properties. I was also smoking a lot of dope. My mind started to function in odd ways. I took an interest in mysticism. I asked my mom to lend me her Tarot deck, which she did. I started hearing voices. I thought I had telepathy. Eventually my best friend and my mom staged an intervention, and I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed a powerful anti-psychotic (the young pharmacist gave me an alarmed look when I went to get the the prescription filled, and asked me, “Do you know what this is for?” I just gave him look, and he scurried away). The drug rapidly solved the problem, and I moved away from the weed, eventually encountering even worse problems with alcohol. Anyway, I very recently found out about Robert T. Browne. It struck me that he died in October 1978, almost the exact time that my mental health issues started. I like to speculate that his departing soul somehow touched mine and plunged me into confusion and upheaval that was finally resolved 45 years later in December, 2022. By the way, it was while searching for a response to an argument on this discussion board that I found out about Browne. Thanks, Infidels!