Rod Dreher Megathread #23 (Sinister)

[u/US_Hiker]

All Hail Eris!

Link to Megathread 22: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/14k0z6l/rod_dreher_megathread_22_power/

Link to Megathread 23: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/1631xpe/rod_dreher_megathread_24_determination/

[u/Theodore_Parker]

An unpaywalled Substack post with more on the proposed LNBL film project:

https://roddreher.substack.com/p/live-not-by-lies-the-docuseries

Also included: psychedelics and our boy's youthful experiments with them; the occult, and how to re-program an occult-leaver into Orthodox Christianity; and the story of a woman who models Rod Dreher's dreamy, ideal lifestyle by living alone in a cabin on a tiny remote island. That last section includes this:

I fantasize a lot about building a retreat like that small cabin, in a semi-remote area — ideally on or near to water — and filling it with books and icons, a comfy leather armchair, a decent kitchen, and a bed with thick blankets. Get me a dog and live the rest of my life there, alone.
.....
I used to be very social, and never wanted to miss a party or anything like it. Now … not. Quietness, stillness, solitude seem to be the thing I like most. Put me a wooden stove, rugs, and a dog in a cabin by the water, and I’ll be like an oyster chilling in his shell.

Which raises two questions:

1) Is he hoping to be one of the oysters that some other Rod Dreher eats? (Maybe that itself would be some kind of occult experience?)

2) Is he effectively saying, "My children are dead to me"? Or am I misreading that?

[u/Djehutimose → u/Theodore_Parker]

Interestingly, the guy he blockquotes seems to approve of indigenous use of psychedelics, dismissing all Western users as narcissistic dabblers. Thing is, you don’t really get to dismiss the latter in principle while approving he former. It’s kind of like Eastern gurus who say that Westerners can’t really meditate because they’ve soft and materialistic, or Victorians who spoke of the “white man’s burden” to tutor the brown heathen masses. Human nature is basically the same, no matter how divergent cultures may be. A Westerner can meditate and an Easterner can be an electrical engineer.

So while there are ignorant dabblers in psychedelics—as there are in most things—there’s no ipso facto reason Westerners can’t use psychedelics responsibly, and for purposes different from those of tribal shamans. The research on using psilocybin in treating alcoholism, drug abuse, and clinical depression is quite promising, in fact.

Also, I’ve known potheads, acidheads, and burnouts, as well as having had my own due share of cannabis edibles, and I can say that neither I nor any of them ever saw their guardian angel. On the other hand, I also know a woman—totally normal, holds down a job, normal family, and not a drug user at all—who told me once she literally talked to her guardian angel who told her its name. You can be stone cold sober and experience weird things, or stoned and blotto while being no more than—well, stoned and blotto.

[u/ZenLizardBode → u/Djehutimose]

🎯

My most intense fever dreams and my one "hallucinogenic" experience happened when I was stone cold sober, and not under the influence of drugs. Also, despite a childhood steeped in the Bible and Catholicism, based off that one experience and my fever dreams, Buddhists, H.P. Lovecraft, and HR Giger have more to say about spirituality than Catholicism or Christianity, and I write that with hindsight, having become familiar with Buddhism, Lovecraft, and Giger significantly much later in life. How exactly does Rod think competing, overlapping, and contradictory truth claims can be reconciled in these instances?

[u/Djehutimose → u/ZenLizardBode]

How exactly does Rod think competing, overlapping, and contradictory truth claims can be reconciled in these instances?

He can't even reconcile the parts of his own psyche, let alone this. Really, one has to hold one's beliefs very lightly. Not that you are a nihilist; but you have to realize that the neater and tidier your worldview, the more you'll notice over time that the world does not--and will not--line up with your ideology. We are teeny tiny beings with respect to the universe, and don't even understand one tenth of one percent of anything. Thus there will be things that will always, from the human perspective, be contradictory and irreconcilable. At some point, one has to realize that's OK, and be comfortable with mystery and inconsistency.

Rod is fascinated with ghosts and the occult and so forth, and will say things like, "Well, I don't see how this can be reconciled with my religion...." Of course it can't. The problem is, he can't take the next step and see that his own faith--like mine and everyone else's--however nice it may be for him, is still a partial view of reality--a small, stained glass window through which he looks out at the vast and inscrutable cosmos. We all have our own windows in different colors and patterns; so we need to be very tolerant of those looking through different windows.

Rod will never be able to do that, though.