Ploys—ways of thinking, feeling, talking, and acting—which stabilize eternalism; and antidotes to use against them.
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⚒︎ Imposing fixed meanings
Forcing fixed meanings on experience always eventually results in unpleasant shocks when reality refuses to conform to your pre-determined categories.
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⚒︎ Smearing meaning all over everything
Monist eternalism—the New Age and SBNR, for example—say everything is meaningful, but leaves vague what the meanings are.
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⚒︎ Magical thinking
Magical thinking—hallucinating causal connections—is powerfully synergistic with eternalism (the stance that everything has a fixed meaning).
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⚒︎ Hope
Hope is harmful in devaluing the present and shifting attention to imaginary futures that may never exist.
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⚒︎ Pretending
Eternalist religions and political systems are always partly make-believe, like children playing at being pirates.
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⚒︎ Colluding for eternalism
Because eternalist delusion is so desirable, we collude to maintain it. To save each other from nihilism, we support each other in not-seeing nebulosity.
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⚒︎ Hiding from nebulosity
Hiding from nebulosity is a ploy to preserve eternalism by physically avoiding ambiguous situations and information.
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⚒︎ Kitsch and naïveté
Eternalist kitsch is the denial of the possibility of meaninglessness. This leads to willfully idiotic sentimentality.
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⚒︎ Armed & armored eternalism
When nebulosity becomes obvious, eternalism fails to fit reality. You can armor yourself against evidence, and arm yourself to destroy it.
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⚒︎ Faith
Privileging faith over experience is an eternalist ploy for blinding yourself to signs of nebulosity.
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⚒︎ Thought suppression
Thought suppression is a ploy for maintaining faith in non-existent meanings. It leads to deliberate stupidity, inability to express oneself, and inaction.
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⚒︎ Bargaining and recommitment
When eternalism lets you down, you are tempted to make a bargain with it. Eternalism will behave itself better, and in return you renew your faith in it.
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⚒︎ Wistful certainty
Wistful certainty is a ploy for reinforcing eternalism based on the thought that there must exist whatever it takes to make eternalism seem to work.
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⚒︎ Faithful bafflement
Faithful bafflement is a ploy for maintaining the eternalist stance that remains committed but begins to doubt.
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⚒︎ Mystification
Mystification uses thoughts as a weapon against authentic thinking. It creates glib, bogus metaphysical explanations that sweep meaninglessness under the rug.
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⚒︎ Rehearsing the horrors of nihilism
Reminding yourself and others of how bad nihilism is can help maintain the eternalist stance. This is the hellfire and brimstone of eternalist preaching.
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⚒︎ Purification
Purity is an obsessive focus for dualist eternalism. It mobilizes emotions of disgust, guilt, shame, and self-righteous anger.
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⚒︎ Fortress eternalism
In the face of undeserved suffering, is difficult not to fall into the stance that most things are God’s will, but not the horrible bits.
