We had one this afternoon and I really liked listening to it from the safety of my room. I even had the window open.
I like how it feels just before a thunderstorm. There’s usually a noticeable warm stirring in the air and a pleasant balance of humidity just before. The air itself feels charged to me and I know a thunderstorm is brewing. The lightening and thunder always commands your attention for a second, and when it rains the sound is a nice ambient track for thinking and daydreaming. I like sitting at my desk with the window open when it’s raining.
Because you’re an introvert, you’re looking for an excuse to do what you love - sit on the computer for hours, busy yourself with art, books and philosophy.
It makes you appreciate what you have - shelter. A thunderstorm isn’t so nice, particularly if you live in a cold climate and you’re a bum, yeah?
Silence is boring, manimals need constant mental, visual and auditory stimulation, just like other sentient species (apes, crows, etcetera).
It’s instinctual, although thunderstorms can be deadly, they also signify refreshment, being able to drink the rain from leaves, replenishing and revitalizing the earth.
You need a God to surrender to, you want to be ruled by the thunder God, give yourself over to someone above you, because of your feminine nature.
It’s unusual, and humans crave unusual stimuli. We get bored of the same thing, same thing, but then too much weirdsness can creep us out, so a thunderstorm is the right level of abnormality for sensors where as intuitives (see Karl Jung) are comfortable with alien visitations, black eyed kids and things of that sort.
A blanket of sound. And you didn’t even realize you were cold.
A thunder god is a god I could worship. No Christian-imposed guilt, no shame.
I don’t really feel the cold much anyway. Don’t like it when it’s hot though.
One rather Clinical answer is thunderstorms bring better ions to us…
Another less Cold is that thunderstorms are nature, and even in a big city you get the feeling of nature. Even in your cozy house or cabin, the sound and feel of the storm comes in.
We do so much to Close out nature, yet some nature come pouring in anyway.
Were you raised Christian?
In some interpretations of Christianity, there is no guilt, as Christ already paid your penalty.
Your sins have been erased, sure, but there is the obvious feeling of guilt since someone was tortured to Death on your behalf to get rid of those sins. You are born in debt to Christ. I am sure some sociopaths can manage not to feel any guilt AND Believe this, but for most people…
The red is your interpretation, but it’s highly unorthodox I’m sure.
Debt wasn’t merely transferred from God to Christ, it was obliterated.
However, your interpretation has merit, for how can two wrongs make a right?
Actually I Think it is very very orthodox. It is certainly Catholic. Now to be clear, they generally do not officially put it this way. But when they say Christ died for your sins, it is implicit. It is part of why guilt is so common in christianity.
That may be true in some very abstract theological realm, but I am talking About what happens in humans when they are told Jesus suffered and died for your sins. I am talking about what the priests and reverends convey when they relay this
and what is inevitable when homo sapians are told this.
To be very clear: I know it is not doctrine that now you are a sinner in relation to Christ. I am not arguing doctrine as it exists on the page. I am saying this is what happens this is what it means in reality.
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It’s ridiculous. I have my mother to thank for cutting through this one. I remember her muttering something about not liking being born and being told someone died so she would have no sins. She would prefer to bear her own sins and not have to wander around in Gratitude for a gift she is being told she did not earn or ask for.
That one is supposed to feel Gratitude is also part of the guilt creating mechanism and that is nearly universally conveyed in practice.
The Christian can argue that it is not official doctrine, but this present a problem: it means that Christian doctrine includes very poor knowledge of human psychology.
And further if the Church wanted to eradicate this near universal misuse of the belief, it could focus on it. But it never does. A few individual priests or pastors may have. But no organized attempt has been made to dissuage people of what, well, a human is going to do with the knowledge that they should be grateful to someone who was tortured to Death as part of a magical ritual sacrifice - he gave his only son - to eliminate their original sin Before they were born.
The only way to reasonably understand and know christianity, is to understand why human sacrifice existed, why it was commonplace, and why and how it ended historically. If people don’t see that, then they won’t ever understand the christian religion and its logic.
One of the explanations is that there is an intuitive understanding in humans (especially pagans) that in nature, a man cannot be the last link in the food/nature’s hierarchy chain. Everything in nature feeds on something else. The man felt that he needed that link above him.
No my parents are not religious at all. I found my own path.
I have no penalty to pay so Christ died for nothing in that case.
the bible was written by guys…they want you to behave in a certain way…they use the carrot and the stick…
how dumb can we get
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Population control. The elites in Mesoamerica, Egypt, Mesopotamia and other places needed to keep common folk from overpopulating. Overpopulating leads to civil unrest, famine, pestilence and war. Back then they didn’t have “green” revolutions and shit to compensate, and neither will we soon.
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Magical thinking. Nature was anthropomorphized. if I want something from it, whether it’s fertility, food or rain, I have to sacrifice something in exchange (barter), and since I have one too many daughters, or one too many slaves…
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Pagans didn’t consider manimals peculiarly special, killing them wasn’t so different from killing any other beast. Then monotheism came along with its universalizing, and suddenly, manimals were special and unique, they had rights as well as duties. So long as no one harmed another (and themselves), all were permitted to live, regardless of overpopulation, regardless of whether they were valuable to someone or not. Kings were supposed to serve and protect, rather than exploit and oppress. The Jews actually had passive anarchy for several hundred years. They were reluctant to install David, especially the priest caste, the Levites were weary of kings. Similar revolutions in consciousness took place during the axial age in Greece, Rome, Persia, India, China and elsewhere. Christianity is but an extending and a furthering of such principles. Now, even if you harm others (and yourself), you still had value, absolute value.
For Pagans, value was relative. All nature had value, but some manimals, plants and animals had more value to some than others. For example, killing one of your kids because you have too many and one of them was crippled or retarded, was no biggie. You still valued him, because he was yours and as well as a part of nature, but it’s also a part of nature for the cycle of birth/death to continue, for some things to be sacrificed so that others might live. Competition was considered part and parcel. In other words, you valued you and your healthy children more, so it was necessary to sacrifice one for the sake of many or even one other. It didn’t really, truly matter because we could always make more. Life was deemed expendable. Competition and death weren’t compartmentalized, yin and yang went together, life was more, holistic.
For monotheists, you can’t kill someone who hasn’t killed, or for Christians, you can’t kill under any circumstances, which is why the guilty must be imprisoned, institutionalized, rehabilitated, but not put to death, which is why crippled/retarded child must be spared, even if there’s only so much food to go around. Such only becomes possible during times of abundance, abundance affords manimals the opportunity to feed and clothe everyone, virtually. For a while, the elites hoarded the wealth and resources, paganism morphed, the elites were singled out, thought to be descended from Gods, they were special and unique, but suddenly, common folk wanted to be special and unique too, so common folk had to be deemed sovereign. Surplus food production makes henotheism possible, and from there, monotheism and atheism. It makes universal valuing possible, because in nature, there’s only so much food to go around. Now we can feed and clothe everyone, so let’s. The Utilitarians took it one step further. Now animals have absolute rights too. So the objective becomes to transform nature into an artificial utopia of man’s reconstruction.
So from there comes the vegans, and one step further, the fruititarians, and one step further, would be turning your own feces, urine and dirt into edible substances, so that no blood may ever again be shed on behalf of another, to do away with mortality, violence and bloodshed for all time. Some people may genuinely have this inclination, call them New Agers or whatever. Then there’s the consumerists who don’t give a fuck about nature, they want to get high off it (hedonism and materialism), but all these ideologies and lifestyles come about because of surplus food production, they can’t actually exist, at least not for long, in primitive societies, or the consequences would be disastrous.
In primitive societies, there can be no excessive materialism and hedonism, nor can there be veganism and fruititarianism or turning feces, urine and soil into food and drink, there can be no absolute human or animal rights, someone or something has to die so that others may live, and beings can only live frugally and within limits, but civilization makes artifice and excess, whether it be an egoistic/hedonist or an altruistic/survivalist artifice and excess possible, or some combination of the two. In primitive conditions, sometimes cannibalism is even necessary, such is nature, such has been the way of things since the dawning.
So what does man do, how far does he want to take it? Should we kill animals that eat anything other than fruit, we have the resources? Why not force fruititarianism on all of nature, cleanse it of its sin? We could find a way to convert soil into food for manimals, plants and animals, then we could do away with nature, take the remaining animals and feed us and them on this sludge, in giant cities where we never have to compete again, and then if we could just find the cure for aging. Yes, utopia is on the horizon… or is it?
Moreno
Yeah, you can see how some or many of them could still feel indebted.
A Storm, Forever Momentary by Boris Pasternak
And then summer bid farewell
To the station. Taking off its cap,
Thunder took as a souvenir
A hundred blinding photos of night.
A bunch of lilacs grew dim. At that
Moment the thunder, gathering an armful
Of lightning, attempted from the field
To illuminate town hall.
And when a wave of gloating
Poured along the building’s roof
And, like charcoal lines in a sketch,
A gate of rain crashed down,
The abyss of consciousness began to flash:
And so, it seemed, illumination
Could reach even those corners of the mind
Where it is now as light as day.
You posted this on Jan. 26th. You live in England. Isn’t it the dead of Winter in our hemisphere?
It’s been a strange mixture lately. A bit of snow the other day, which I found out by making the mistake of going out into the garden in bare feet. Sun that is almost lukewarm in the mornings but with bursts of ice cold rain too.