2026-08-31
Religion is the ultimate panopticon. X: Made lots of notes. Y: Self-censored some religion-related notes
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- personal
- target audience - strictly myself
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- Religion is the ultimate panopticon.
- If I look at all the notes I have self-censored, two broad categories stand out:
- Notes that involve privacy of people around me
- Notes that are critical of Indian govt or various religions
- Given this, it should be completely unsurprising that merging both is useful for those in power.
- Many religious people are distributed enforcers of violence. Violence breeds suppression not just of speech but of thought itself.
- Famous quote: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize"
- I wil go further. "To learn who rules over you, figure out the thoughts you don't allow yourself to think."
- What are the thoughts you are suppressing yourself from thinking, so much that even parts of yourself are at war with yourself stopping you from thinking them? Parts of you that are internalised voices of people you've met, deep internalised evolutionary fears of their disapproval, your lack of safety if their disapproval means violence not just being abandoned by the tribe.
- Making notes this public is just painfully reminding me of the notes that are not public. It's like a scab in a wound. This Paul Graham [1] quote explains it well:
When I proofread an essay, there are usually passages that stick out in an annoying way, sometimes because they're clumsily written, and sometimes because I'm not sure they're true. The annoyance starts out unconscious, but after the tenth reading or so I'm saying "Ugh, that part" each time I hit it. They become like briars that catch your sleeve as you walk past.
Religions are collections of cherished but mistaken principles. So anything that can be described either literally or metaphorically as a religion will have valuable unexplored ideas in its shadow. Copernicus and Darwin both made discoveries of this type.
What are people in your field religious about, in the sense of being too attached to some principle that might not be as self-evident as they think? What becomes possible if you discard it?
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