dangrsmind
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2009
- Messages
- 2,056
- Reaction score
- 0
Continuing from yesterday's posting in the same format with R.C.'s questions in bold, Shrim's answers in italics, and my comments in normal text.
"A lot of young people listen to your music who are dealing with real issues do superstition and oppression coming from family, faith, and other frauds. How do you reach out to the young adult struggling with identity in a terminal world?"
"Well my real message as it's shaping up is Thelemic Law, the Law of Will."
"The overall message to kids is to let kids know that a lot of us have been in similar situations be it faith, be it broken homes or anything, but I think that we reach out to these kids."
"Some of the kids, they like it just for the musical aspect and some of them really relate to it on a conscious level and the kids that just kind of listen to it it hits them subconsciously. They don't realize it until down the road."
"So it's something that I can be glad about, people living through our music and turning it into their own terminology and their own way of living and to spawn the realization of their will."
"...with our content being more explicit-some kids get turned on to it simply for that. They're not used to hearing rappers talk about things like sodomy and things like Jesus Christ performing acts of fellatio."
"For the more educated it will hit them consciously and for the more uneducated it'll hit them subconscious [SIC] and the end result it spawns itself in these kids heads. They are able to take it and make it positive or negative. I think there has to be balance, you have to have both."
Shrim is clearly aware that a lot of kids listen to this music as well as "young adults", but he seems to honestly believe that listening to this music is beneficial to them. This section for me evokes a concern that I've had all along with the horrocore approach to teaching as detailed here by Shrim.
There is a Tibetan mediation practice known as Chöd or "cutting through the ego" which utilizes ritual objects made of human bones and is sometimes performed in "charnel grounds", places where they toss dead bodies in Tibet. This practice is quite disturbing to people that don't understand it and there have been accusations of necrophilia and other things associated with the practice from Westerners.
In Buddhism it is said that there are 84,000 different ways to reach enlightenment, and the Buddha taught a path for each different kind of person. In the Buddhist doctrine, Chöd for example, would not be taught to just anyone and the guru is repsonsible for evaluating whether a given practice will be effective or appropriate for a given individual. Chöd is generally not appropriate for someone that is already morbidly drawn to symbols of death, demons, and so on since it involves direct confrontation with such mental entities.
I see Shrim's horrorcore as a similar spiritual practice; one that clearly isn't for everyone. But the problem is there is no one providing the filter in the role of the guru here; he's allowing anyone to hear these teachings and some of them (at least on person we know of) was clearly not able to see the higher meaning or understand what Shrim is trying to say about Thelema. Despite what he is saying here, horrorcore is not something that could be of benefit to all people. But he'll sell records to anyone with a credit card number...
There is a very good reason that Buddhism developed this approach over a period of many centuries.
"Do you think the darker aspects of religious motifs or horrcore function more to break the Christian symbols and old ideas these symbols hold for people like having Jesus Christ felate himself-is that the attempt to destroy these concepts in peoples heads, or is it an attempt to manipulate the concepts?"
"..it's very gratifying to me to able to invert the symbolism and whatnot into my own way, but really the end result is to kind of destroy it or taint it in their own heads."
"When you mess up the way they think of things, they try and find some other alternative way of thinking about things. That, at least, inspires them to pick up a book and read it."
Another teaching moment, R.C. hints at the somewhat subtle difference between destroying a symbol rendering it meaningless and altering the meaning so as to redirect the symbol's power to your own ends.
Consider KKK cross burnings and the use of the "pink triangle" by the gay community (formerly used by the Nazis to label gays in concentration camps) as examples of destroying vs. redirecting symbols.
I am fairly certain that Shrim does not understand this distinction in this conversation.
Also note the reference to invoking cognitive dissonance in his audience. Shrim needs to read the article on "The Oath" in the same issue of DD which talks about this precise issue in some detail. Picking up a book is only one of multiple possible response to the dissonance Shrim is creating here.
R.C. then asks,
"What book?"
"You know it really depends. There'd be a list of books I would tell people to look at. I know a lot of people when they hear my music they get turned on to Satanism. Laveyan Satanism. Which to me is more secular humanism more than anything."
R.C. responds,
"Bad deal: that's just Christianity without Jesus."
Shrim back pedals pretty quickly here since it is obvious that R.C. is not impressed with LaVey et al.
"It seems like a lot of these kids use that as a stepping stone. I mean that was my stepping stone."
"I got some 'knowledge' out of it, but I progressed. It wasn't enough. Not enough questions were answered for me."
"But once you get into Aleister Crowley and the Thelemic Law, Will and the whole Magical system it's really powerful and it's more realistic."
(to be continued...)
"A lot of young people listen to your music who are dealing with real issues do superstition and oppression coming from family, faith, and other frauds. How do you reach out to the young adult struggling with identity in a terminal world?"
"Well my real message as it's shaping up is Thelemic Law, the Law of Will."
"The overall message to kids is to let kids know that a lot of us have been in similar situations be it faith, be it broken homes or anything, but I think that we reach out to these kids."
"Some of the kids, they like it just for the musical aspect and some of them really relate to it on a conscious level and the kids that just kind of listen to it it hits them subconsciously. They don't realize it until down the road."
"So it's something that I can be glad about, people living through our music and turning it into their own terminology and their own way of living and to spawn the realization of their will."
"...with our content being more explicit-some kids get turned on to it simply for that. They're not used to hearing rappers talk about things like sodomy and things like Jesus Christ performing acts of fellatio."
"For the more educated it will hit them consciously and for the more uneducated it'll hit them subconscious [SIC] and the end result it spawns itself in these kids heads. They are able to take it and make it positive or negative. I think there has to be balance, you have to have both."
Shrim is clearly aware that a lot of kids listen to this music as well as "young adults", but he seems to honestly believe that listening to this music is beneficial to them. This section for me evokes a concern that I've had all along with the horrocore approach to teaching as detailed here by Shrim.
There is a Tibetan mediation practice known as Chöd or "cutting through the ego" which utilizes ritual objects made of human bones and is sometimes performed in "charnel grounds", places where they toss dead bodies in Tibet. This practice is quite disturbing to people that don't understand it and there have been accusations of necrophilia and other things associated with the practice from Westerners.
In Buddhism it is said that there are 84,000 different ways to reach enlightenment, and the Buddha taught a path for each different kind of person. In the Buddhist doctrine, Chöd for example, would not be taught to just anyone and the guru is repsonsible for evaluating whether a given practice will be effective or appropriate for a given individual. Chöd is generally not appropriate for someone that is already morbidly drawn to symbols of death, demons, and so on since it involves direct confrontation with such mental entities.
I see Shrim's horrorcore as a similar spiritual practice; one that clearly isn't for everyone. But the problem is there is no one providing the filter in the role of the guru here; he's allowing anyone to hear these teachings and some of them (at least on person we know of) was clearly not able to see the higher meaning or understand what Shrim is trying to say about Thelema. Despite what he is saying here, horrorcore is not something that could be of benefit to all people. But he'll sell records to anyone with a credit card number...
There is a very good reason that Buddhism developed this approach over a period of many centuries.
"Do you think the darker aspects of religious motifs or horrcore function more to break the Christian symbols and old ideas these symbols hold for people like having Jesus Christ felate himself-is that the attempt to destroy these concepts in peoples heads, or is it an attempt to manipulate the concepts?"
"..it's very gratifying to me to able to invert the symbolism and whatnot into my own way, but really the end result is to kind of destroy it or taint it in their own heads."
"When you mess up the way they think of things, they try and find some other alternative way of thinking about things. That, at least, inspires them to pick up a book and read it."
Another teaching moment, R.C. hints at the somewhat subtle difference between destroying a symbol rendering it meaningless and altering the meaning so as to redirect the symbol's power to your own ends.
Consider KKK cross burnings and the use of the "pink triangle" by the gay community (formerly used by the Nazis to label gays in concentration camps) as examples of destroying vs. redirecting symbols.
I am fairly certain that Shrim does not understand this distinction in this conversation.
Also note the reference to invoking cognitive dissonance in his audience. Shrim needs to read the article on "The Oath" in the same issue of DD which talks about this precise issue in some detail. Picking up a book is only one of multiple possible response to the dissonance Shrim is creating here.
R.C. then asks,
"What book?"
"You know it really depends. There'd be a list of books I would tell people to look at. I know a lot of people when they hear my music they get turned on to Satanism. Laveyan Satanism. Which to me is more secular humanism more than anything."
R.C. responds,
"Bad deal: that's just Christianity without Jesus."
Shrim back pedals pretty quickly here since it is obvious that R.C. is not impressed with LaVey et al.
"It seems like a lot of these kids use that as a stepping stone. I mean that was my stepping stone."
"I got some 'knowledge' out of it, but I progressed. It wasn't enough. Not enough questions were answered for me."
"But once you get into Aleister Crowley and the Thelemic Law, Will and the whole Magical system it's really powerful and it's more realistic."
(to be continued...)
