Boethius

@Loba I hadn't considered that there might be a spiritual or sexual dimension to being otherkin (as I believe that's the label for that identity). With my comments I was more trying to map out how to relate to a person like a friend or family member should they declare themselves to be otherkin -- that I would want to relate to them empathetically but without "feeding" into their idea of being otherkin. To be fair, I suppose there is something judgmental in that from my end. After all, everyone has a right to pursue whatever spiritual path that feels right for them. So if a friend of family member declared themselves to be otherkin and viewed it as a positive thing then I would respect that decision of theirs. I probably wouldn't be greatly interested in talking about it (not least of all because my own religious beliefs allow no room for non-human souls) but it doesn't seem like something that would naturally come up much either. As far as finding a shamanic teacher, good luck with that! Truly. I know how hard it can be feeling like you're close to being on a personal spiritual path while not yet having found it ?

People internalize the values of being a "winner" in the competitive arena of capitalism. That is, everyone wants to be rich and famous. It is true that no one is obligated to adopt such values, but our culture at large encourages these values through advertising, tv shows, movies, etc.

The world will be re-enchanted, one way or another:

And you're in a good position to determine this from postings on an internet forum? Talk about being judgmental...

I don't think of them as savages either. I believe they are humans who are a bit confused and who have been greatly harmed by other people. In the second video included in the first post, the dragon lady recounts different stories of having been harmed by others (including an account of rape). My overall point is that -- insofar as we are capable -- we should try to be compassionate towards such people while still drawing them back to some understanding of themselves as being human like everyone else.

I try to take responsibility for my consumer choices, and I shop at a place that makes public declarations of being engaged on these issues: https://www.wegmans.com/about-us/making-a-difference/sustainability-at-wegmans/seafood-sustainability/ If I took Seaspiracy's claims at face value, I would have to believe that Wegmans is a part of the "conspiracy" as well. Which would be inconvenient given that I generally buy 1/2 pound of fish each week ? That's why I've been using this forum to "work out" my ideas on this topic (if you look at my initial posting I included a question about what it is we should be doing as individuals to help address the problem of over-fishing and then in a later post settled upon the answer of supporting organizations like the NRDC that have the resources necessary to petition the government to regulate the fishing industries). I have no criticism of the vegan lifestyle, but it's not for me. And so while my approach may not be perfect, at this point I do feel like I've done my due diligence in thinking through my participation in the larger fishing system. Edit: wrong link

I never said anything about "healing" people. I said my intent would be to support people. I would try to empathetically (and humbly) support people in coming back to some reasonable sense of shared reality.

I'm saying that market corrections will result to the same # of fish being harvested overall, so that the problem of overfishing quite possibly remains as much of a problem as it was before. And since I'm not an economist I don't know that for sure, so I could be wrong. It seems to me that the most effective thing an individual can do to address the problem of overfishing is to petition their government to regulate the fishing industry more stringently and to not subsidize an industry that is already over-harvesting. But if someone else wants to fight the problem of over-fishing by becoming a vegan, it certainly won't harm anything! So I do respect that decision even if it's not the one I am making personally.

It's important to have boundaries. I'm not going to pretend that drinking a couple bottles of wine a day is healthy and in a similar way I'm not going to pretend that extreme body modification for the sake of becoming a dragon is psychologically healthy. That being said, if a person doesn't want me to be in their life because they find me to be "judgmental" then that's a choice I would respect.

The argument I made above: "I am doubtful about the effectiveness of this (even as an individual action). After all, if I stop eating fish then sure the demand goes down, but so does the price of fish overall. And with a lower price other people might be more likely to buy fish than they were before. So are a fewer # of fish harvested overall?"

I'm not attempting to demonize veganism, honestly. I have total respect for a person who makes the choice to become vegan, whether that be as a moral choice, a religious choice, a personal choice, or whatever. But I'm also not going to pretend to agree that veganism is the only or best choice to the (very real) problem of overfishing. Because I don't agree with that claim and I don't believe his movie made an effective argument for that claim either.

I am doubtful about the effectiveness of this (even as an individual action). After all, if I stop eating fish then sure the demand goes down, but so does the price of fish overall. And with a lower price other people might be more likely to buy fish than they were before. So are a fewer # of fish harvested overall? As long as the government says it's safe I'm not that worried about it. If you think governmental regulations are somehow inadequate or have been subject to industrial corruption, that's another conversation altogether. You assume it's self-evident that consuming fish is a moral/spiritual evil. Not all religious traditions agree with that. Refer to Romans 14:2 for example.

Meh, I remain hopeful that our governments are still capable of figuring something out. One thing I saw after researching some of Seaspiracy's claims is that government subsidies of the fishing industries leads to overfishing. (maybe that was in the movie? I didn't hear it.) So something we can do, as informed citizens, is to petition the government to not subsidize the fishing industry and to support environmental groups in such petitions. In fact, one of the organizations that Seaspiracy "called out" was the NRDC (an organization I myself have been faithfully supporting for a few years now), and the NRDC takes action on these exact concerns: https://www.nrdc.org/issues/stop-overfishing-and-restore-fisheries I feel like Seaspiracy could have been a much more useful movie had it not set a goal of proselytizing on behalf of veganism and instead just provided the viewer with tools for taking action.

Like I said, I'm not greatly interested in the film's "moral" message about honoring the sacredness of ocean life. My interest is in how we could manage fish harvesting to be sustainable. The film does not make a systematic argument for the impossibility of doing as much. As for the Amazon rain forest, I'm sure some people do have a sentimental attachment to it, but again my concern would be more about the sustainable harvesting of resources. Because overfishing is a concern for me only insofar as it threatens the sustainability of harvesting fish populations to feed the human race. Again, I'm not thinking about these problems in moral, spiritual, or sentimental terms but instead in terms of the sustainable harvesting of resources.

I think part of supporting a person who thinks they're not human is to help bring them back to a sense of themselves as a human. My guess is that they believes themselves to be non-human in the first place because there is something about themselves that they believe cannot be expressed as a human. For example, maybe they want other people to relate to them with a greater level of compassion than is conventionally extended to people. I would be comfortable in holding space for another person to explore those parts of themselves that they feel to be cut off from the "normal" human experience, but I'm not going to play along in pretending that they are somehow categorically different from me.

I feel that these people should be supported. That's not to say that we all should be feeding into their delusions of themselves as being something other than human (and yes, I do regard their claims as fundamentally delusional). But kindness, concern, and treating them as fellow human beings goes a long way.

It prevents people from seeing the world in more holistic ways. I'm thinking about seeing the world organized at various different levels of complexity or being able to see various systems at operation in the world. People who are hardcore materialists tend to simply experience the world as consisting of a series of different physical objects (smartphones, toothbrushes, trees, pets, humans) without there being any deeper order to the objects. For instance, could such a person think of Friendship as a special type of relationship that comes with its own joys and responsibilities? This would be a more Platonic way of understanding friendship. Or imagine trying to talk with a rationalist about something like systems of oppression. Such a person would likely refuse to believe that such a thing exists absent a bunch of evidence (even though, philosophically speaking, no amount of evidence would likely suffice to convince the most committed rationalist that systems of oppression exist). So what I'm really talking about here is ontology. This is what is meant when we speak of rationalists as being committed to an unexamined and unconscious set of metaphysics. That is, a rationalist only recognizes a restricted categories of "things" as having existence, as being real. And when someone (from a spiritual background, for instance) starts talking about things that go beyond the rationalist's ontological committments, the very predictable response from the rationalist is that the "thing" in question is not "real" and hence is of no interest to anything (and it is here that the rationalist's ego comes into clear view). Anyways, I hope that helps.

There seems to be a basic "leap" in logic that is present in both this thread and in the movie (I'm speaking from having watched the entire thing and not just the trailer). On the one hand, the movie begins by exploring the notion of sustainability, in terms of the over-fishing of the oceans that might lead to the collapse of fishing markets in 2048. After going through a series of atrocities (murder of dolphins and whales, slavery in the fishing industry, disingenous NGO's, the filthiness of fish farming, etc) the narrator shifts focus from sustainable fishing practices to the sacredness of our oceans and the animal life contained therein. He concludes the movie by proclaiming that the best way to "protect" our oceans and its life is by not eating seafood. At the end of the day, what starts as a pragmatic concern about fishing systems morphs into a moralistic impulse to honor the sacredness of our oceans. Putting the moral argument aside, are there ways an informed person can consume seafood so as to protect the health and integrity of our remaining fish populations? This seems to be a more holistic problem, and one whose solution cannot be to go vegan. After all, assuming our goal is for the entire human population to be able to consume seafood in ways that are sustainable, then by definition the solution is not for every human being to go vegan (and in these terms, for an individual person to go vegan is effectively saying that they are willing to eat less fish so that others can eat more!)

On nights when I can't sleep because I have too much energy coursing through my body, I like to stand barefoot in my concrete basement for a good 10 -- 20 minutes. That usually helps bring me back into my body well enough to be able to at least kind of sleep.

To become a beautiful human being. To become a beautiful soul that is "worth" being saved from the grip of death.

I understand and am sympathetic (at least partly). I think it was pretty shameful a couple years ago when a young white woman was shamed for wearing a kimono dress to prom (on charges of cultural appropriation). But on the other hand, I don't see that there is any reasonable defense for a white person who gets recorded on video hurling ethnic slurs at people of color. So my assumption is that social media shaming will be the standard way for our society to "adjudicate" public instances of racism (if only because it's easy) and I hope that we can develop some sense of good judgment and maybe even the possibility of forgiveness.

I agree with that. In fact, it's what we've been doing the past few years already with recording people's bad behavior, uploading it to social media, and getting people doxxed/fired.

The "funny" thing is that most of us struggle with these sorts of thoughts from time to time. I find that if I can generate awareness that my own insecurities are the insecurities that other people face as well, then I feel less lonely and can extend more compassion to myself (and to others).

I figure that our children's books and movies have a lot of warnings about the dangers of magic for a reason. The Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter is a case in point. So even though there may well be some level of "reality" to the magical and the miraculous, it's probably best to heed the warnings in not being too curious about it all.

I agree! The average Christian hasn't felt a great need to engage in an academic, forensic analysis of the historical record while agnostically suspending final judgment on Christianity's truth claims. Most people would tell you that they have better shit to do with their time. And yet 1/3 of the world's population is Christian. Perhaps the truthfulness of religious "myths" (whether you're using that word in its negative sense or its neutral sense) is determined by other means -- which again, seems to be what your response implies.