make a commune

terry davis gave the only description of a biblical god gen z can latch onto. we're not stupid enough to actually believe in the catholic god and especially not the evangelist god, but one that's as brutal and strange as terry described is actually pretty believable. granted its not without precedent. he seemed to mainly pull from the old testament, which frames god as some strange, unpredictable entity who drops rotten meat on people he doesn't like and tells parents to kill their sons, only to say "nah just kidding" right before they do it.

what frustrates me above all is people who are clearly complete atheists but are for some reason attached to the bible as some sort of wisdom book. anyone who claims some deep, complex *intellectual* meaning in a bible story is selling crap. the bible is a bunch of crap. but at least people like terry have an actual complete thought about it -- something to grasp onto. and that complete thought is, "this book has secret messages from the director of the universe encoded into it". it's something like that codex of crap book, the one with a thousand images of non-existent plants. it probably means nothing, but because no one knows what it means, some people think it might have great hidden meaning. same with the bible. and that's why you have gen z'ers suddenly picking up the bible in 2024, even though deep down they don't believe anything in the christian canon. not that there is anything to believe. only the schizophrenics have a solid "idea", that the book can be used for divining, whale bone oracles, regardless of if that shit actually works. if you have a solid idea of what god likes, then doing those things will probably bring you great health and fortune. who am i to say that doesn't work. it seems like a worthy thing to spend some thought on. might as well do some science to see what god likes.

fundamentally an ideology like terry's relies on the preconceived notion that the universe we inhabit is directed in some way by an entity. some people lack this preconceived notion. but the people who feel it feel a certain energy in serendipity that they can't explain away as mere coincidences of random noise.

any successful religion (unlike the ones dying in post industrial american cities) provides a succinct idea of what god wants from you, and promises an improved life if you do those things. it's a simple formula. islam tells you to pray on a mat and be generous to others, and avoid being gay, eat certain foods. terry's god wants you to make pixel art in the ega palette, kill your enemies, be fertile and produce children through the birth canal and not C-section.

i wittled my mom down far enough to find out that she is basically an atheist, but she held on to using the word "god" to mean "love between people" (???). i think she had to finally relinquish that. but that's the kind of community we had at plymouth church in syracuse. i don't think anyone in there was trying to decipher the intentions of god or predict his next move. why not? that's like exactly what we should be doing in a big church. we even have an organ!

gen z needs to be making communes. we're not stupid enough for another hundred years of catholic church. you want a sense of community? it's not going to come from a belief structure centered on not jerking off and clutching beads. do you remember the "the garden" commune that got harassed off tiktok a couple years ago? yeah, that's exactly what we should be doing. people said it was a cult. but of course it looks like a cult to someone in the cult of the modern consumer. the city slicker.

make a commune with your friends, produce goods of value, reclaim lost knowledge, become good craftsmen.