5mo ago

You don't have to fear these things

160 comments

I mean, tarot is fucking stupid as well.
- No, tarot is a fantastic card game : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tarot_card_games&diffonly=true
  Cartomancy using a tarot game cards is stupid though.
  
  Holy shit, Tarot was a game all this time? Time to buy a pack and get some people for a game night!
  
  Fair point.
- Atheist utilitarian technology professional here. I read tarot. Not because I believe anything mystical is coming through the cards. They just happen to be a very rich and rounded set of symbology to lay out and use to talk through a topic. I have never had anyone walk away from one of my readings without saying “that was more interesting than I thought it was going to be.” Of course my style is very interactive and I involve them a lot as we go. Of course others out there take an oracular approach that’s utter horseshit.
  
  Things can be interesting, and still utter nonsense.
  
  i want to hang out with YOU
  
  "I play therapist by telling my clients they are the decrepit goblin that stumbled into the stinky swamp and ask them if they want to try to get out of it by using the enchanted axe or call upon the great dragon to lift them up."
  
  Indeed. Sometimes it's helpful to filter your thoughts through a different lense, and tarot can spark ideas or aspects you hadn't considered as you try to fit things within the context of the cards you're seeing.

You SHOULD fear alcohol and cigarettes, but from scientific reasons. Tarot is also unaceptable for a scientific mind.
- Tarot cards have cool artwork on them, and they are as harmful as a RNG, or cootie catchers.
  
  Artwork is perfectly fine, but shaping your view about the reality and directing your life based on tarot is pure superstition and stupidity.
  
  Also, Tarot is also a completely normal card game like Skat--nothing wrong with that
- "Using a framing device to interpret your feelings is unacceptable to a scientific mind"
  Okay square.
  
  Okay square
  I'm not even mad
- If you don't try to predict your life with Tarot, it can be a fun story creativity task.
  
  I'd say more that if you don't genuinely think it predicts your life, it can be fun. It's like reading horoscopes and chuckling at them.
- There's nothing wrong with tarot as a concept. It's a wonderful self reflection and guided meditation tool. Just don't ascribe magical precognitive powers to it and you're fine.
- Tarot can be used for other games, for example solitare.
  
  I played poker with a set of tarot cards and six people died. Steven Wright
  
  Or Balatro
- You SHOULD fear alcohol
  I think fearing it is going a bit overboard. Moderation is the key.
  
  Science says there is no healthy dose of alcohol - no moderation, but complete absence.
- Tarok is played with tarot cards and you can still get the OG set from Piatnik.
  Just in case you're trying to impress some Austrian grandma...

I mean tarot is still superstitious nonsense, but so are religions.
- I like tarot because it’s like „death; the tower of doom; the swamp of famine” and that means that you’re gonna have a chill week or something
  
  FWIW, tarot decks were used for card playing before they were used for divining money from the gullible
  
  The card that portends doom is the Tower, usually. There are as many interpretations of Tarot as there are folks that read it, but Death usually means “change.”
  Tarot is largely harmless; it’s odd how upset folks on Lemmy get over it. It’s mostly middle aged women and queer men who do it for fun. I use it as a way of organizing my thoughts sometimes - I own a few decks which I enjoy as art pieces and brainstorming tools. I’ll read for friends sometimes and I’m pretty open about the fact that I’m mostly leaning on what the cards do in the Binding of Isaac.
  
  It doesn't mean you're gonna have a chill week.
  It means literally nothing.
  "You drew a royal flush, congratulations. That means the local mayor will give you an enema. Since it's in the suit of clubs, that means it'll happen on Tuesday afternoon. That'll be $30, thanks. Go get flushed, removed."
- There's a bunch of card games you can play with tarot decks. People should mention this more so that they become more popular again. The people using them for non game reasons is the same as if they were using a Yu-Gi-Oh deck for it.
  PS: the standard 52 deck is also a kind of tarot deck.
- No, we use it as a reframing device. You basically point a random story generator at currently relevant facets of your life. This helps you to see them from a new perspective, which can get you unstuck when you have reasoned yourself into a corner.
  There's absolutely no belief in magic necessary to use it.
  
  People who use tarot absolutely believe in magic.
  I loathe apologists.
  I personally hate people who try to marry atheism and mysticism as a unified community. It is completely at odds with my values.

tbf, even without religion, coffee still keeps me up at night
- Isn't that it's point?

Why did they draw the underwear to make it look like it's covered in loose pubes
- Your underwear aren't?
- Shit happens

Coffe!? How? I am a little bit confused
- I think that one is for the Mormons? I'm like 85% sure they think caffeine is against their religion.
  
  im an exmo, yeah that's basically it. The "doctrine" we get that from says:
  And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.
  this was "interpreted" as caffeine specifically, probably because the cult leaders didn't want to give up hot cocoa.
  
  Yeah, that one's a Mormon thing. The rule only covers coffee and tea if you want to be pedantic about it, though there are many 'spirit of the law' type people who avoid caffeine entirely.
  
  Correct.
  Source: Last Podcast on the Left had an excellent series on mormonism.
- Mormons aren't allowed hot drinks. I wonder if anyone's made an exception for cold brew.
  
  Are Mormons also against alcohol?
  
  Hot drinks is the scriptural term, but is officially interpreted as “coffee bean” and “tea leaf”.
  So you could have peppermint tea, but not tiramisu.

Anime
D&D
Secular music
Public-schoolers
Questions
- I, too, am disappointed by the lack of D&D on this infographic. Plus it needs more Ozzy.

Where's "beating my meat red, raw, and throbbing"?
- Under the panties labeled “my sexuality”

Don't play Dungeons and Dragons or Satan will get you.
- *don't play DnD with a killer DM.
  Unless you're into that. (I assure you, it's way more exciting if you let me occasionally kill a character. I promise it won't happen too often, and it'll be in the oneshots... which i tune to be challenging.)
  but if you play with a carebear DM... you'll get fluff campaigns.
  
  Killer DMs are fine, so long as they show up with a stack of character sheets and you know what you're getting into. There's a D&D variant called "Kobolds Ate My Baby" where you immediately respawn the turn after you die as a new Kobold and charge right back into the mix.
  if you play with a carebear DM… you’ll get fluff campaigns
  Story heavy campaigns with generous rules for resurrection and a focus on social interaction over combat give you more time to engage in high drama. When you're not worried about a bad die roll ending a character arc, you don't feel the urge to minmax in order to have fun and can play up the fluffier aspects of the game.
  Perma-Death also tends to mean more when it happens less often. Having an "In Memoriam" game for a beloved character means a bit more than throwing half a dozen alts into a ditch.

Alcohol addiction is pretty fucking dangerous.
- That's not what the meme says

The hell is wrong with yoga??? It is a awsome self weight exercise and cardio program. Better for you than running.
- Yoga originated as meditative practice in Hinduism with some spiritual goals that are a bit more than just the more generic “mindfulness” you might find in your typical modern fitness class.
  (It’s also found in Buddhism and Jainism,)
  The physical stretches and poses are great for healthy, low intensity exercise; and meditation is a thing that exists basically in every religious flavor you’d like; so it’s certainly possible to make even a “fundie-approved” version, but eh. Good luck with that.
  Ultimately it could have been lumped into “other beliefs”,
  
  Los of churches actually have "Christian Yoga" classes which, oddly enough, is usually just the exercise with nothing religous about it.
  It's this word thing where they show how something beneficial can work without involving spirituality.
- It's legitimately a religion, the other organized religions don't like these ancient forms of religion that don't require payments to participate in, and can be learned for free. It really cuts into their business model.
- Don't try to understand the mind of a fundie christian.
  I've heard sermons that claimed "psychology" was a religion. Their problem with yoga is similar. (It has connections to hinduism. At least that's part of it.)
  A lot of megachurches have classes/programs that are almost exactly yoga, but by a different name. The name they give it escapes me.
  Hell. There are shops on Amazon that sell yoga stuff (mats, balls, shorts, whatever) without calling it "yoga" balls or "yoga" mats so christians don't feel sinful buying it.
  And yes, they're just retailers buying yoga gear wholesale (or drop-ship or whatever) and listing it without using the word "yoga."
  Edit: Googling to find if there's a common name for the christian version of yoga, I found this god-awful thing.
  
  ''Don't get sucked into this horrible devil religion that Yoga is! Instead, Take My copywriten and trade marked program instead. good news, for a fee we can train YOU to be a certified bottom of the pyramid scheme block so you can teach ''downward facing GOD IS LOVE'' to your local collection of suckers, saps, rubes, and marks!!''
  
  That link just made my day
- The term “yoga” in Hindu practice refers to a lot more than just the physical exercises. The idea that one just goes to a yoga studio for workouts doesn’t mesh with traditional practice at all. There’s a lot of spiritual components that get left out by the upper middle class white women who run studios.

Mormonism?

Don’t forget music and the entire fantasy genre

I'm in fear of that hairy underwear.

Coffee and Yoga?
- Mormons are anti coffee
- My ex-mother outlaw wouldn't do yoga because she thought it was a religion or witchcraft or something (ETA: and thus thought it imperiled her eternal soul because she might pick up some beliefs) and she was a mainline Baptist so yeah, yoga.
  
  I know it's a typo but an ex-mother outlaw who won't do yoga sounds pretty cool. "In a world where yoga was required by law. She said no. Rated R"
  
  It is technically part of a repressive religion itself so the placement in the list does seem a bit odd to me, but the nuance is that nonpractitioners can use it to stretch and exercise without any spiritualism.
  
  thought it was a religion
  It absolutely started as a religious practice. There are various forms of yoga that are used as mediation practices in Hinduism.
  That said, Westerners almost never practice yoga that way. They'll sprinkle in a generous helping of, "namaste" but they're basically doing it as a form of light exercise.
  It's like if a bunch of Indians saw a Catholic ceremony and said, "That's a pretty good workout. Stand up, sit down, kneel, sit, kneel, stand. It's not a religious thing, I just go to mass for leg day."
  
  The church I grew up in offered "yoga style stretching class" that did not have any heathen influences like gongs or deep breathing or Sanskrit names for stuff, was separated by gender, did not allow yoga pants or bare midriffs and avoided any postures that flaunted the privates. You know.. to avoid giving Satan(TM) a foothold in your nether bits.

Alcohol use disorder is the third leading preventable cause of death in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventable_causes_of_death
- Hundreds of millions of people "abuse" alcohol casually and live long, full lives.
  Tarot on the other hand gives you some kind of turbocancer brain damage if you engage with it more than once, as if it's more than a curious novelty.
  
  Tarot does WHAT?!
  
  I'm not sure what your getting at.
  Are you saying that choices and activities are cool as long as they mostly don't cause death?
  Hundreds of millions of people smoke, own guns, eschew safety equipment and live long, full lives.
- Behind driving.
  
  How do you mean?

My mother is pretty liberal by my country's standards, but she is nonetheless religious and I knew deep down all her restrictions "just because" was due to religion. She think I "might get ideas". It occurred to me that religious people are prurient, or ironically dirty minded. Most kids and people don't give dirty meanings to things unless you taught them specifically.
- (Some) things aren't weird unless you make them weird.

Daycares if you grew up in the 90s

Coffee?
- Mormons, jehovas witnesses, probably other religions too
  
  There is a krishna restaurant nearby, they have excellent food but no coffee (nor carbonated water for some reason).

Religion taught me to fear eating meat
Religion taught me to fear not eating meat
- Religion taught me to fear beating meat
  Religion taught me to fear not beating meat

What, no Heavy Metal?
- If you can't beat'm, join'm

A childhood friend of mine wasn't allowed to watch the Smurfs because it featured "witchcraft". FFS!
- Yeah my partner grew up in that sort of household. Same for Scooby Doo. Kinda blew my mind.
  I think my parents only made me go to church twice as a kid and I watched those cartoons all the time, understanding full well that they were just cartoons.
  
  Does Scooby Doo even have any supernatural or magical aspects? Wasn't it always "old man Jenkins in a rubber mask" or something?

Ironically "The World" is a Tarot card.
- yeah but So is THE DEVIL
  (/s)

Well alcohol fucks with your brain, so it isn't all bad.

What's the context of the coffee taboo?
- Mormons is my guess

I mean I'm kind of afraid of the world. This planet has earthquakes and volcanoes and pandemics and tsunamis and prions and cancer and war and landmines and maybe a big asteroid every billion years.
No reason not to enjoy everything we've got, of course. It's still the best home.

I can see things like LGTBQ+, your own body/sexuality, and alcohol depending on who you ask, but why yoga, the world, or coffee? Yes these things can be scary to some people, but certainly aren't things to be taught to be feared unless you are trying to create something similar to brainwashed slaves.
- You're supposed to "be IN the world, not OF the world."
  It means that while you technically live here, among other people, you're supposed to hold yourself apart from whatever those people are doing. It leads to a whole "that's not meant for me" mindset where you avoid learning new things because that might make you too knowledgeable and worldly. Like, you could befriend non-Mormons, but it really should be for the purposes of converting them, not to get to know them or have a diverse social circle. You shouldn't let any of THEM influence YOU in any way. Mormons are weird.
  
  Sounds like something those cult like people would preach.
- Some religions, for example Mormonism, picked up a taboo of coffee and tea alongside other abolitionist sentiments popular at the time, with similar reasoning to alcohol - caffeine is a psychoactive drug, so it's not "pure." Mormonism was founded when early puritanical and evangelical Christian movements grew rapidly in the US, and you'll see a similar taboo among other Christian sects originating in this time period.
  Yoga probably has the same taboo in American Christianity as Dungeons and Dragons once did during the satanic scare era, and that taboo is likely only due to the link to spiritualist practices in yoga. To the brainwashed evangelical, since it's not Christianity, it's Satan.
  Edit: a few words added for clarity

Nobody wearing those granny panties is talking about sex

160 comments