Episode 143: Harry Potter and the Weekend Seminar

[montrith]

JT possibly has the most soothing voice of any F Plus guest reader, perhaps second only to Lou Fernandez.

I'd like to use this opportunity to call dibs on "Voice that inspired most crappy accents".

[Adam Bozarth]

My voice isn't soothing? Hmmph.

Yeah, I think new age appeals to the spiritual needs we all have, and it's more exotic than the patriarchal robe fest of the Catholic Church. I don't blame them. If you could have magic powers through a religion, that is more enticing than being a servant to a really violent deity who says he loves you no matter what.

But I also think that happens when people are good at science in school and their rebellion makes them actively hate learning and exploring the intricacies of reality. It's a shame. I don't know how you solve it besides getting kids excited about books with interesting facts in them instead of wizard stories.

[Mister Smalls]

My voice isn't soothing? Hmmph.

I feel like you've been in enough episodes to qualify as just a reader, rather than a guest reader.  </asscover>

[Fatty Bo Batty]

My voice isn't soothing? Hmmph.

Yeah, I think new age appeals to the spiritual needs we all have, and it's more exotic than the patriarchal robe fest of the Catholic Church. I don't blame them. If you could have magic powers through a religion, that is more enticing than being a servant to a really violent deity who says he loves you no matter what.

But I also think that happens when people are good at science in school and their rebellion makes them actively hate learning and exploring the intricacies of reality. It's a shame. I don't know how you solve it besides getting kids excited about books with interesting facts in them instead of wizard stories.

True story, my friend's fussy baby was calmed down and started giggling by listening to you talk about not receiving a Capuchin monkey.

[Adam Bozarth]

I am very worried that a baby was listening to the F Plus, but I am glad that he or she has such sophisticated taste already at such an early age.

[Fatty Bo Batty]

Eh, it wasn't dick-bugs, waifus, or F-list, so it's fine.

[crow]

I'm curious, do you believe that knowledge is possible?

That's tough. I feel like there is an undeniable truth but humans aren't able to perceive all of it. There's just too much to know in order to know the absolute truth.

I do believe we all construct an understanding of the world around us, but every perception is different. For the most part, we all have things that nearly everyone can agree on, like what colors are what or what wind feels like. However, after a certain point, you are constructing your own perspective on the world. The more you learn, the less you have to make up, but even what you choose to learn can affect your perception. At one point, these people perceived the world of magick as within the realm of possibility. The problem is that they never think about if their assumptions are true or not.

You have to keep your individual knowledge fluid, dynamic, ready to change. What led me out of Catholicism was the fact that the tenets all had a basis in fact and reality that suited a long ago age. Ironically, the more I learned in my science classes in Catholic school showed me how backwards and spooky the church still is.

As far as humans ever grasping real, undeniable Truth goes, I don't think it's 100% attainable. That truth is an asymptote that we will forever be curving towards, but we won't ever grasp.

Does that answer anything or do I sound like an idiot who was kicked out of Honors Philosophy?

I understand, it's a soft postmodern take on things.  I personally came at it from the other way, I was a believer in nothing, and things added up too much for me to say that reality is nonexistent.  I actually ended up in a church, Eastern Orthodox Christianity to be exact, because they said that logic and reality are fluid and that God is unknowable except through what He reveals to us.

[A Meat]

Has anyone mentioned that Oberon is the name of the king of the fairies in a Midsummer Night's Dream, a fittingly bullshit fake name for a guy whose previous fake name was "Otter G'Zell" (according to Wikipedia, which also happens to put him in the category "American libertarians")

Also go ahead and GIS Oberon Zell-Ravenheart if you haven't yet, he looks exactly like the image that pops in your head when you hear the words "hippie wizard".

Also, his personal website http://www.oberonzell.com/index.html

look at the 'contact' section if you want to invite him to your con (you have to pay for all of his expenses of course)

[Tiny Prancer]

Somewhat unrelated but worth bringing up for a similar tangent of "fucking new age hippie idiots", here's an article about how a bunch of asshole new ageists visiting Serpent Mount keep burying these stupid trash objects called "Orgonites" into the mound because they're supposed to have spritirual powers or some bullshit and they're trying to "reactivate" the mound.

Especially noteworthy is this quote, which really gets to the heart of the bullshit:

Longtime resident and earthworks enthusiast Geoffrey Sea noted something weirdly familiar about much of the terminology used by New Age groups—such as “intergalactic portals”—and the notion that secret elements were being mined at Serpent Mound. “Why do I know this?” wondered the local historian and researcher. “There is an element of cheesy science fiction that runs through all of this.” He finally realized that much of the New Age terms relating to Serpent Mound and the “light warriors” seems to come from the 1994 film Stargate. According to Sea, the film’s story line features space travelers who enter a giant portal that, once activated, zaps them across the galaxy, where they encounter an alien civilization that looks like ancient Egypt. The aliens are mining a secret element used to power space ships.

[EYE OF ZA]

I'll be honest, I listen to this podcast while doing other things a lot, so sometimes it takes me a few listens to appreciate the nuance.  Usually I get a pretty good idea of the site and of what you read.  Even the weird ranting blogs.

I've listened to this episode three or four times and I have no clue what this website is or what it offers.

[Sovereign]

I'll be honest, I listen to this podcast while doing other things a lot, so sometimes it takes me a few listens to appreciate the nuance.  Usually I get a pretty good idea of the site and of what you read.  Even the weird ranting blogs.

I've listened to this episode three or four times and I have no clue what this website is or what it offers.

I feel the exact same way. As far as I can tell it's just some eccentric hippie trying to make some money off of gullible people while also writing a bunch of high fantasy nonsense. Any further attempts in trying to decipher the messages might result in brain damage.

[A Meat]

So I was curious about what "Himalayan Singing Bowls" are (they're basically just bells) and through a few Youtube related videos I somehow ended up on this video:

It seems to be a dude in a Plague Doctor mask unboxing a LootCrate and softly making shitty jokes for almost forty minutes.

I don't think there's a way I can explain this, I mean, I don't get the regular "lady crinkling paper in front of your ear" ASMR, but this is totally baffling in every shape and form.

[Tiny Prancer]

I've occasionally dabbled in ASMR stuff, and there's a lot of ASMR videos that cross over into other general youtube vlog stuff, like unboxing and craft videos, but I can't really explain the plague mask. I think maybe it's a fantasy/scifi element? Or it's for people who have issues with making eye contact? There's a very wide range to what people do for these videos.

But yeah, as someone who grew up with new age-y stuff, Himalayan Singing Bowls are something I came across pretty commonly. They're a standard "spiritual" instrument that's sold at stores that cater to new age interests and regularly bought because they make a nice sound and they're related to eastern religious practices which means they're super important to buy when you want to be up with your new age game.

(man I really need to listen to this episode soon so I can see how much different or not different at all it is from the new age stuff I grew up with.)

[Sovereign]

That's kind of the gimmick in the ASMR community, people figure out that they can build an audience by recording relaxing sounds so why not use your $6000 microphone for wacky characters and weekly "shows"? Good on them for putting a creative effort in it I guess, but if ASMR could be induced via text it would appear in an Fplus episode. It's not even that the dialogue and costumes video creators choose are inherently stupid, but they often end up really bizarre because - surprise - a lot of them are weird people. That's probably why you're not supposed to pay much attention to what the person in the video is saying.

[A Meat]

I just tried searching for some sort of online discussion of ASMR on forums or something, but I didn't really find anything beyond either people asking "What's ASMR?" or "Isn't ASMR awesome?" I'm going to guess most of it is just Youtube based and therefore unfit for F+.