At this point, we all know that social media is making us unwell. We know it is jeopardizing mental health, democracy, social progress, and our collective ability to focus. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time discussing these trends, but not as much time discussing solutions. So, what can we do about it?
Continue reading “Five Rules to Keep Social Media From Ruining Your Life”
I consider myself a mystic, and yet I am an atheist. I don’t believe in God, gods, the afterlife, or the supernatural. How is this not a contradiction in terms? Isn’t supernaturalism and woo central to the experience of mysticism?
Continue reading “On Atheistic Mysticism”
In this episode of Sacred Tension, I speak with attorney Adam Goldstein of The Foundation For Individual Rights in Education. We have a wide ranging conversation about free speech law, free speech culture, tech platforms, how free speech interacts with the right vs. the left, and much more.
Continue reading “Sacred Tension: What is Free Speech? With Adam Goldstein of FIRE”
Several days ago, I was meditating with Sam Harris’s Waking Up app. During the meditation Harris instructed me, quite simply, to find the “I” who is doing the meditating and to look for the self within consciousness. I did as instructed and, just like that, my sense of self was obliterated. As simply as a candle being blown out, my feeling of being a self within my head was extinguished, and all that remained was the vast sky of consciousness.
Continue reading “Satanism, Meditation, and the Tyranny of the Self”
There is one particular section in Jaron Lanier’s book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now that keeps me up at night. He describes the trajectory of online social justice movements. First, they experience a honeymoon phase of progress, but because of the invisible business model of social media, these social movements are algorithmically catalogued, manipulated, and studied for profit in a way that leads to greater social unrest, bigotry, and inequality. Lanier calls this process “Arc Burn,” in reference to MLK Jr’s moral ark quote.
Continue reading “Arc Burn: How Social Media is Breaking Us”
In this episode of Sacred Tension I speak with new religious movements scholar Joseph Laycock about his book Speak of the Devil: How the Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion.
Continue reading “Sacred Tension: Speak of the Devil with Joseph Laycock”
I’m intensely social in the Satanic community, mostly online. I have an active Discord server, I regularly interview members of the Satanic Temple community, and I serve on Ordination Council for Satanic Ministry. I do a lot of very social Sataning.
As someone who’s been burned again and again by religious community, this does cause some anxiety. There is trepidation in giving my heart over to fellow fallible, neurotic, and disorganized human beings. It’s inevitable that someone within the Satanic community will leave me feeling deeply wounded, and I will have to confront the difficult emotional challenge of navigating how much of that hurt has to do with Satanism itself or just specific individuals within Satanism.
As I’ve reflected on this dynamic I’ve come to realize that a paradox lies at the heart of my Satanism: I’m able to engage publicly in Satanism because, at its most fundamental root, my Satanism is solitary.
Continue reading “On Solitary Satanism”
Stephen Bradford Long 