i enjoy seeing the ‘is santa real’ philosophy-posting. my instinct is that moving the bar for “exists” backwards to “does the idea of this affect reality” is a lot more metaphysically dangerous than just explicating that the idea of things that dont exist can affect reality.
if santa is real because of how he affects peoples actions or what he embodies then luke skywalker is also real, and youre just going to have to develop a new term to mean what “real, and exists” means in the typical plain frank sense (like, has some literal reality).
this is, interestingly, the basis for lots of modern “chaos magick” (modern ritual magic heavily rooted in psychology, i guess). ‘mickey mouse’ is ‘real’, in a sense, so u can channel him or summon his essence or whatever in a ritual setting. thats why you have to distinguish imo
part of why i find this interesting is i hit this exact wall in another religious world i was around and it really freaked me out and bothered me a lot. example. you get into tibetan buddhism and part of some practice ur doing is to make an offering to a deity named hayagriva
then later, youre talking to someone and theyre like, yeah, hayagriva is a protector god + will protect you on journeys
then later, youre talking to someone else, and they say, actually hayagriva is just a concept that is an embodiment of wrathful forms of wisdom, or something
then later, youre talking to someone else, and they say, actually hayagriva is just a concept that is an embodiment of wrathful forms of wisdom, or something
that hayagriva like, represents certain aspects of your own…
okay hold up. those are two completely different things. they are not even close to the same ballpark. if this is a real god for one guy and a symbol for someone else, thats almost like two different religions really.
okay hold up. those are two completely different things. they are not even close to the same ballpark. if this is a real god for one guy and a symbol for someone else, thats almost like two different religions really.
thats why altho its often seen as antithetical to mysticism or supernaturalism, i cut it with a knife, and i recoil from any fuzz about what is “real”. i mean the santa thing is funny, but its an interesting play example, some people do talk about “actual religion” that way irl.
im not responding to any one person i just saw it as an interesting general topic of conversation.
(gm)
(gm)
this also, electrically, bleeds out into other things. for example, “is god actually XYZ or is that a metaphor”. you start asking questions like that and get to some (often accidentally) interesting places, especially with other people, in my experience
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