Spell Breakers

During a short flight between Stockholm and Berlin recently, I did what I always do when up in the air, I listened to a podcast. One of my go to-pods the last couple of years is called Rune Soup by Gordon White. In this particular episode he engaged in quite a lengthy chat with a chap named Rhyd Wildermuth, of whom I had never heard of before but definitively earned a spot on my radar.

The episode, titled Politics as Religion: Ressentiment and Identitarianism, is from mid June this year and is a meta-discussion about politics - what it is and what it isn't, etc.. The amount of highly sophisticated perspectives the two gentlemen share with the listener are really staggering, so I recommend anyone who has the least bit of interest in the topic, be it ideology, philosophy or current affairs, to give it a listen.

What stuck with me the most though, were three simple examples, on how to disarm three of the most toxic spells of today's lunacy. They casually dropped them at the end of the show, and as of hearing them utter the sentences, they immediately struck me as both being highly potent as well as being easy-as-cake.

Therefore, let me share with you, three magnificent responses to three common declarations - declarations which in most cases only serve to assert power over you and the world in which you dwell (the reason why I call them spells).

Declaration: "What you are saying is offensive!"

Response: No, it isn't.

Declaration: "You are [a] cis man/bi-polar/liberal/climate denier/etc. etc."

Response: No, you don't get to define who I am. (Only I get to do that.)

Declaration: "Everything is political."

Response: No, it isn't. (Joy is not political; and it's way better.) 

That's it. 

Even though I strongly believe cancel culture, gender identity movements and the ridiculously over-valued political system are going to implode by themselves some day soon anyway, until that day comes there's no reason to let oneself get sucked into their poisonous maelstroms whenever it can be avoided. 

Remember, you don't need somebody else's approval to walk with your head held high.

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