Even though it's heavily frowned upon these days, I still say we should question things, even our own beliefs. Where's the harm in that? Even if it reinforces your beliefs, that is if you don't suffer from confirmation bias, it keeps things calibrated, and brings you to the facts, and not just what someone tells you what the facts are. You don't think people in power would lie to us? Come on.
For a minute this sister had me questioning my very core beliefs about God and the Devil, and as always I'm going under the assumption that they're real, although that may not be the case. I can't prove they exist any more than anyone can prove they don't. It caught be by surprise a bit, but I went with it, and I sure did give the opposing view it's say. We should respect and even consider other people's views whether we agree or not.
I had to hear what a professional had to say about Slipknot, and what the common thing in all their music videos could be. What comes to mind when I think of their videos are things like evil, negativity, gore, anger, depression, sickness, cruelty, sadness, madness, etc. That's what's in your face anyway, but I had the feeling she might give it a New Age spin, and sure enough she did. Still she had me questioning things.
As first she mentioned how shocked she was when she first heard them, and rightly so. She quoted some lyrics that surprised me, even for Slipknot. It went way beyond Satanic. It's sick, and things you wouldn't want to say publicly, although I guess it's okay if it's in a song. It's just metaphorical, right? Right.
I'm not sure how someone with a moral compass or even just a sense of repulsion could get past that, but she spent 60 hours getting to know Slipknot videos. She says she wanted to know what their appeal was so she gave herself a crash course. She filmed herself watching the videos and showed stills. Her face went from repulsion and horror to less so, then she sort of flatlined and accepted it, and by the end she was rocking out.
It illustrates perfectly how desensitizing works, but most people will just see it as someone getting to like a band. Should something that repulses you so badly at first not be a warning? Should it be pursued, much less enjoyed? That was Crowley's philosophy.
To each their own of course, but to embrace evil and sickness on purpose seems wrong, but these days wrong is right. Funny...a book said this would happen. I'm not talking about sickos being into it, I mean the general public, and a therapist no less.
But then she brought up a good idea, within reason. She said that we tend to keep our pain bottled up and not express it and therefore deal with it, and she's right. She says that the masks are about expressing your pain, literally showing it on your face. I don't know if that's all there is to it but I can see that, and she's right about not expressing things and dealing with them, although there are limits, or should be anyway.
Is it a good thing to wear our pain on our faces? I'm not an expert so I can't say, but it we all look like a bunch of sadsacks, what good will that do? Back in the day they'd say "Put on a happy face." There was an old song that said that. Maybe that was all bullshit, and pain is the new happy. Things have been flipped 180-degrees, so why not I guess.
Anyway she said some other stuff and I really started to wonder if I'm wrong, and if we're going to worship in the being in the first place, could the Devil really be the good guy? No one can say anything for certain about things like this, and like I said I question my own beliefs occasionally. "Am I wrong? "I really just let the facts go by, but then as usual the sheer evil and cruelty associated with that came into my head, and that will never be my thing.
It brought me back to my beliefs. I've been saying for a while that we're being desensitized to evil in increments, accepting trash as just "entertainment," and the part of the video that showed her slowly changing from repulsion to acceptance to enjoyment eerily but perfectly showed a condensed version of exactly how it works, over a much longer period of time.
I get the allure of the dark. We all have a dark side and it's good to acknowledge that, but to dwell in it or act upon it in a way that harms others is a different deal. People are accepting things that twenty years ago would've made them sick. You can't jump from the Beatles to Slipknot. If someone were in a coma for twenty years and they went to sleep to the Beatles and woke up to Slipknot, they'd think they'd died and gone to Hell. Like music getting darker and such, the acceptance of evil can't just happen at once...it has to be done in stages.
Taylor Handby made some good points, and she's better qualified to say what's best than I am, but I think we all have to ask if something is right or wrong, that is if we still have a sense of it. I don't feel the need to get into that type of thing, not to mention the inhuman lyrics, to express my pain, but again to each their own.
The one song that tied it all together for her is called "The Devil in I." Interesting. Either that's pure coincidence or it's being shown right to our faces, as I believe. Of course the Devil isn't real and using his name is purely metaphorical in her views, and maybe she's right. She thinks that the Devil in "The Devil in I" represents the pain in all of us. Maybe or maybe not. Maybe it's straight-up what it says. In any case, how she could turn those disgusting lyrics into anything metaphorical, and not what they are is beyond me. I guess she's telling her clients to listen to Slipknot.
She got so into Slipknot that she had a makeup artist do her her own mask. She described the pain it represented, and again that's great, but if you have to embrace that level of evil to do it, I don't know if that's the best therapy or not. It's not what I'd choose. As far as Slipknot goes I've listened to them because I like their two previous drummers and I really like the guy they have now. The music isn't really my cup of tea, nor the vibe.
At one point, accompanied by soft piano music, she flashed dozens of comments by people who'd been helped in some way by Slipknot's music, and even a few who say it kept them from doing themselves in. That's fantastic, and I understand the healing power of music as well as anyone, but does all music heal? I don't think so.
Look into videos where they show water turning into ice as they play different types of music, and see how the crystals form. It'll make you think. Even if their music helps, if the biblical narrative is true, will it really help in the long run, as in eternity?
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