Crazed Nightfall GO!!

Anytime, friend. Have a happy journey!

No problem, thanks for hearing me out - It’s the first time I’ve been asked about it on the net and it was a fun thing to write.

Ahhh I really understand your difficulty and hesitance - there’s so much confusion on where to start and how to read, and also so many translations butcher the work and frame everything in a western perspective. I had a similar experience, yeah.

I have a suggestion that sounds silly but I think is very helpful for this: Start with kids books. Pick up a religious book for kids that tells the stories and the teachings - they highlight the main events, and convey the themes and intents of that religion in a simple, easy-to-digest manner. Then read a book for young adults - they lay out the deeper parts of the religion, and grislier parts of the myths and teachings. After doing that, you become familiar with the names and places and stories, and reading the big books with all the depth of that religion becomes a tad easier. Also, you learn how much fanaticism is present in the religion from the subtext.

Oooh and I recommend listening to the lectures by some of the gurus and religious teachers online - there’s loads of them, and some are crap, so just filter them out as soon as you hear something stupid or sexist or any other crap. Religious books are a big chore sometimes, while these lectures are usually pretty easy-to-digest, and tell you a lot about the currently held beliefs of a particular religion.

After that, I think it’s just something that becomes easier as you read more of it. It does become a bore time to time, and for Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, you’ll have to read works by different authors if you want to get some actual info, as there are so many versions of a scripture and so many translations of it.

Aw that’s a bummer. But based on their full comment, they don’t seem narrow-minded about it just a bit… frustrated? Oh well I can empathise.

Haha thanks for liking it - I’m grateful I got a chance to explore without people being down my throat about it.

Regarding my choice for Hinduism - I guess it all started when I wondered about what happened after death. I grew out of the idea of eternal heaven or hell pretty quickly - started to dislike it a lot, infact - because eternity of consequences for a jiffy of a lifetime seemed too inflexible - so this eliminated the Abrahamic religions, Zoroastrianism, and some ideologies of Hinduism that believed in eternal heaven/hell.

I really liked the concept of reincarnation and karma. It made sense to me. You live a life, and the circumstances and options of your next life are decided based on the deeds of that life - you repeat this cycle until you feel like your soul has experienced all it needs to, and break out of the cycle, complete and one with the world. So the options left were Greek/Roman, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikh.

I didn’t like the Greek gods they seemed more like mortals with power than divine beings. I dropped Sikhism bc it’s monotheistic and I like the idea of multiple gods for everything. Following Jainism sincerely was a bit too extreme for me.

There were other factors like the way each religion described morality, mortal priorities, and ideal way to lead life - I liked some and disliked some, but I mostly avoided religions that were too rigid and inflexible on how daily life was supposed to be lived.

Ultimately, It ended up between Hinduism and Buddhism. I picked Hinduism because of its scriptures - Gita, Mahabharata, and the Upanishads - there’s a looot more but these influenced me a lot. And also because of the flexibility it offered - I could pick a belief system, or make up my own belief system as long as it was in line with the core beliefs of Hinduism, and you could philosophize enough to justify your beliefs (There’s even a school of thought, that believes in the gods but actively chooses to ignore them lol, and it is considered a valid Hindu ideology).

While I identify as Hindu, I haven’t picked a definite school of thought to follow - am currently following a blend of different schools of thought interweaved with my own logic, and haven’t yet solidified my beliefs - I still have a lot of reading left to do.

Ahh, I think I rambled a bit too long, thanks for hearing me out :)

If you’re interested, the short story The Egg by Andy Weir is a fun read - it is by no means a descriptor for any Hindu beliefs, but the concepts and vibes of reincarnation and one-ness of everyone/everything are pretty similar.

Hell yea! I’m a novel reader too - you’re caught up with SkydemonOrder or Mylasted? Or God forbid… the raw MTL??

I’m hyped af for these chapters because I really really like the art and the way they animate the characters.

Awesome

how’d you like this chap btw?

Hmm, I think “pretend you’re convinced of this stuff” is a long-winded way to say “believe” - belief is an inherent, basic feeling in humans - you believe your loved ones when they say they love you, you believe someone when they ask you to trust you, you believe someone when they claim something about themselves, your dog believes you will come back even though you have disappeared suddenly when you go to work, people believe love to be more than a chemical reaction inside your brain - all of these things happen without you knowing 100% sure what the exact situation is, without you knowing a numerical value for all the stats, or what will exactly happen. Sure, you could base your thinking around probabilities based only on what you have observed or simply just believe things. I think belief is one of the things that seperates setience from plain sapience.

It’s probably best to seperate a fanatic from a general religious person - I use religion to frame and try make sense of things that I can’t know by pure observation or those that don’t have a straightforward answer - what happens after death, what is purpose, why is there suffering, etc. - in an attempt to look for something other than “it’s all meaningless, everyone and everything happened by pure chance”, plus there are a lot of philosophies and stories that make for good thought experiments.

I can’t comprehend someone literally shopping around and picking how they’re going to view… reality. It’s just reality

It’s also probably best to shed the narrow “Religion = mindless god worship” view - people are complex, as are cultures. Not all religions push aggressively for blind faith and discarding of logic in face of reality (many do, yes, and I’m sure that has shaped your view on religion). In a way, you can think of religion to be positive nihilism for many - ascribing meaning to the meaningless or unexplained.

Hell yeah! I’m Hindu and I love it.

I loved mythology as a child and devoured every myth from every culture I could get my hands on. Later this evolved into exploration of religion. I’ve read religious books of many religions - Hindu epics and scriptures, Buddhist scriptures, Jain scriptures, Quran, Bible, Guru Granth Sahib, and the Avesta - I enjoyed them all, and my parents encouraged this exploration.

I ultimately came back to Hinduism because a lot of the stuff in it made sense and resonated with me, and let me adopt a mindset that works well for letting me process and ascribe meaning to the various experiences and phenomenon of life.

Hinduism is a collection of hundreds of belief-systems - a lot of which are uber chill, some literally cult-like, some polticised and weaponised for oppression, and some that are intense but harmless. You can choose what makes sense to you - I personally follow a pretty chill belief system, but it also makes me seem not serious about it.

Oooh and it is fun in the community - festivals, temples, ceremonies, and various cultural events -there are so many of these, and each of them very fun depending on the people involved in the celebration.

Since there’s no manhwa community yet (that I know of), I decided to post it here. Please let me know if this doesn’t belong here, since it’s a Manhwa

I don’t mind them being on reddit at that age. I just wish they knew when to keep their mouth shut - 90% of the bad discussions I saw in the last three years could’ve been solved with a 10sec search.

I get it, I was a teen and I browsed reddit too, and enjoyed it a lot.

I definitely think it’s gotten worse. Teens used to be more of lurkers in my experience, but that isn’t the case anymore especially because reddit is encouraging teens to treat the site more like twitter, and rewarding mindless engagement. I don’t remember the content being this mindless, or the teenagers being this vocal.

Or maybe we’re just grumpy old people now idk anymore man

Lol, I kinda agree, which is somewhat related to another thing I won’t miss: The teenagers.

The lockdown + reddit’s new direction of becoming more like fb/insta has drastically increased the number of teenagers on reddit. I hate it. It’s like an eternal summer-reddit.

The discussions get crappy and stale, they don’t follow rediquette, they are insufferably naive but aggressive with their opinions due to twitterification of their online socialisation. and so.fricking.horny. TIFU and Askreddit almost completely became horny fantasy posting, and I blame the teenagers for it.

God I feel like a terminally-online grumpy old man for saying it, but UGH interacting with teens online is like a human rights violation.

Kinda. I’ve been a part of it so long, and it has exposed me to so much new stuff. Reddit got me through some tough times as a kid, and I definitely would’ve been a different person if I hadn’t found reddit.

But the site has been dying for a while now. Hivemind is bigger than before, so many more teenagers, no one is following rediquette, and admins are actively trying to 9Gag-ify the place. I’ve been finding myself disliking the place more and more for a while, sinking time into it more out of habit than anything else.

The only things I’m gonna miss is the ease of access to expert opinions - I could just go on the trees or bugs or any other niche subreddits and get someone really knowledgeable to answer it.

That, and discussions about my city and country - not many folks joining sadly

I think False Knees has to be it. Beautiful illustrations and heartwarming writing

Edit: One of my favourites from them It’s part of a chill 31-part storyline, which I recommend reading from the start

Personal Use:

• Firefox with all privacy guards enabled on PC
• Samsung Internet and Firefox on mobile

Work Use: Edge. Honestly such an impressive browser - much faster than other browsers ime, great set of built in tools. If it wasn’t for the privacy concerns, I would probably shift to Edge.

I agree wholeheartedly with your definition of exploitation. Which is why I wish for best practices:

• Free range, proper food and shelter, and generally ensuring best quality of life in any way possible, and treated with dignity in exchange for the milk.

• Leave the cows and bulls to their own devices in the fields, so that that pregnancy can happen naturally

• Jersey cattle and other farm cows produce huge amounts of milk, and the calf is only killed out of greed to maximise profits

• Don’t inject cows with hormones for the sole purpose of driving up milk production

• Don’t kill the cows for meat

Basically, I would like it if cows were treated like pets with whom you exchange food in exchange for their stuff, than goods-production-biomachines.

This is of course an expensive endeavour and the feasiblity as a business model on a large scale in every circumstance is debatable - but it is very much possible. For example, we have a farm nearby where they treat the cows with dignity, and manage to be profitable. The milk they sell is more expensive than the normal one, but it is worth the moral relief.

Been vegetarian all my life.

I consider veganism to be the most ethical ideology with the current factory farm infrastructure, but I don’t agree with it’s extreme principles in a world with ethical farming practices. I would continue being a vegetarian if we could do things ethically - free range, and without exploitation.

I haven’t had any struggle at all in my country- it’s awesome. I’ve always been surprised with the dismissiveness and outright hostility towards vegan peeps in the western part of the world, it makes me sympathise a lot. Over in my country, Vegetarianism is completely normal and people are very respectful of vegetarian and vegan lifestyles - part of it is due to these lifestyles originate due to religion here.

I’m someone who just found out what Neocities is, and I am so delighted! Damn, people are so creative and fun with their sites! It feels so rad to click through whatever unique links and blogs they have.

Thanks a lot for posting this.

Eh, dictionary definition is not always indicative or sometime outdated about the way the word is used irl - in this particular case, I feel ‘cope’ has a more helpless feel to it, while ‘deal’ seems to give more agency to the person in question.

Granted it’s all subjective and dependant on how those words are used in one’s circles, though.

I’m fortunate for the same reason as you and have the same opinion

‘Palm Springs’ comes to mind I’ve heard good things about the new DnD movie

Don’t have much recommendations, sorry. I’ll check out Tucker and Dale, thanks for the recommend