I found this extremely helpful; it motivated me to go read your entire blog history. I hope you write more; I think the “dark side” is a concept I had only the rough edges of, but one that I unknowingly desired to understand better (and had seen the hints of in other’s writing around the community.) I feel like the similarly named “dark arts” may have been an occluding red herring.
The more you shine the light of legibility, required defensibility and justification, public scrutiny of beliefs, social reality that people’s judgement might be flawed and they need to distrust themselves and have the virtue of changing their minds, the more those with low mana get their souls written into by social reality.
This is something I liked seeing written. This is a trade-off I don’t often see recognized by people around me; without recognizing this, communal pursuits can destroy and subsume the weaker people within them. As one who has had their soul partly killed in the past by the legibility requirements of people who were alien to me, I value this lesson and anything that helps people develop protective immunity.
I found this extremely helpful; it motivated me to go read your entire blog history. I hope you write more; I think the “dark side” is a concept I had only the rough edges of, but one that I unknowingly desired to understand better (and had seen the hints of in other’s writing around the community.) I feel like the similarly named “dark arts” may have been an occluding red herring.
This is something I liked seeing written. This is a trade-off I don’t often see recognized by people around me; without recognizing this, communal pursuits can destroy and subsume the weaker people within them. As one who has had their soul partly killed in the past by the legibility requirements of people who were alien to me, I value this lesson and anything that helps people develop protective immunity.