• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

Japanese Belief System

LiberationBattle

LiberationBattle

Well-Known Member
I spent a recent week in SC with my beloved grandmother. She and her friends were very much excited to hear my understanding of the universe. They grew up under the belief of Judaism, but now see religion very much as a choice to be social with like-minded individuals, not as a guaranteed passage to some mysterious Over-world, or some virtuous guidance. Here is my decided belief system after watching many anime and listening to Japanese music. I have tried to write this many times in the past, but could never find the words until now.

You are entitled to your personal belief system if it makes you happy and enlightened. It is great to love the world and your place in it, but to cast suspicion on others for their belief is wrong.
This is my personal understanding of an unforgiving, thankless world where I have always had to do things my own way.

Religion:
Luke Bryan wrote a song called "Most People are Good", explaining his "understanding" that people have an innate innocent mind and right to enjoy our youth. I call him Puke Bryan.
Japan: Mr. Puke could not be IMHO any more far from the truth. War, corruption, and greed are built very much into our genetic makeup. Millennia of being programmed into "Survival of the Fittest" has made us innately "evil" at birth. I'm not necessarily saying we all are going to commit murder or pedophilia; but things like anger, jealousy, and spite are all beyond our control. Many anime (my favorite example is Corpse Princess) build upon this idea. Last I checked, it was English Dubbed on Netflix. Watch it and share it!

Religion:
Those who obey an invisible "guardian" are promised eternal salvation.
Japan: Why is it that sin and suffering exist in a world where salvation is even an option? Is it a grand challenge? Hell doesn't seem that bad of an option in my opinion, seeing as the Japanese shared a sort of "Judgement" with the Greek, who placed Tartarus (For those who betrayed each other) and Cocytus (For those who betrayed the Gods) next to, not under Elysium. The Greeks also had a sort of Parliament with three Judges, not one super powerful guardian who would seemingly deny his own creation to the land of freedom.

Religion: We who speak English have little differentiation between "Fate" and "Destiny", they are all but synonymous.
Japan:
"Sadame" (Destiny), is predetermination...ultimately death. There is no escaping this.
"Unmei" (Fate), is a choice that you can make. True love, a successful life, and happiness are all within your hands alone, so make the best of it.
The Japanese challenge the idea of predetermination. If God exists, he is a liar and ultimately our enemy.

Religion: Miracles are gifts bestowed by The Lord by chance and predetermination. Do these "gifts" include pain and suffering?
Japan: Miracles are drawn upon by those who work for them! Success is a choice, you have to want it. I have always gotten off easy, especially in HS, with decent grades in anything but history, and with little effort because it came naturally to me. But as I entered my second semester in college, challenges hit me like lead bricks. Despite trying many things,
school has always been out of my reach.

---

Most English music is horrible because of its "bipolarized" nature: I call it "chalk music". When you were playing with a small pack of chalk on your driveway, did you try to blend colors and fail miserably? That's what this music feels like to me, nothing stands out. It is either "happy", "sad", or utterly tasteless.

Japanese music is more like pastels. There are more shades and hues, and they are fun and easy to blend together. Rock and Scream music sings of love and passion, music (known only to Japan) with a dark "Horror" connotation sings of truth and enlightenment, and Pop music talks of things besides sex and drugs. Rap music in Japan is also very subtle and entertaining.

"Bonds of Promise" (Yakusoku no Kizuna) from "Beyond the Boundary"
with English Lyrics

"Baptize" by Empire of Fairies (Yousei Teikoku) turn on captions
I adore this band for its German and Greek inspiration.
 
Fridgemagnetman said:
Thought you could make it fit into your Japanese ideas, then post about it :)
Click to expand...
It very much fits! Thank you @Fridgemagnetman.
According to Wiki, it is very much like I described with the Greek Judgement system. It's a very voluntary religion, pretty much unorthodox as you can choose your own Kami (Gods) to believe in. There is no Bible or Quran, nor punishment for believing against one another. I LOVE THE IDEA!
 
LiberationBattle said:
War, corruption, and greed are built very much into our genetic makeup. Millennia of being programmed into "Survival of the Fittest" has made us innately "evil" at birth. I'm not necessarily saying we all are going to commit murder or pedophilia; but things like anger, jealousy, and spite are all beyond our control.
Click to expand...

Love it, I've enjoyed reading Japanese creation myths and fairy tails and they are always so ... light, enlightened, I have never resonated with western religion, it has always seemed so judgmental.

However, the one part I would strongly disagree with is that no on is innately evil at birth. Our genetic make up simply holds the blueprint to building a human and dictates nothing about our actions. Our feelings are indeed hormonally driven and often learned behaviour from our childhoods and so could arguably count as genetic structure. But the actions we take are entirely CHOICE. There is no single strand of dna that programs war, that is a choice. Many argue that they are evil at birth and cannot help their actions, but this is always just an excuse to divulge responsibility. Anger yes, innate, the actions we perform as a result are entirely our own.
 
Bella Pines said:
Love it, I've enjoyed reading Japanese creation myths and fairy tails and they are always so ... light, enlightened, I have never resonated with western religion, it has always seemed so judgmental.

However, the one part I would strongly disagree with is that no on is innately evil at birth. Our genetic make up simply holds the blueprint to building a human and dictates nothing about our actions. Our feelings are indeed hormonally driven and often learned behaviour from our childhoods and so could arguably count as genetic structure. But the actions we take are entirely CHOICE. There is no single strand of dna that programs war, that is a choice. Many argue that they are evil at birth and cannot help their actions, but this is always just an excuse to divulge responsibility. Anger yes, innate, the actions we perform as a result are entirely our own.
Click to expand...

Glad you liked it! You are right, it is hard to program malice into genetics, and there is plenty of capacity for one to choose good over evil. Doctors and psychs aren’t sure about the whole ‘Nature vs Nurture’ concept, but they know that it’s not primarily one over the other.

My brother, after my father died and I went into an angry tirade, was convinced I was going down to his perception of Hell. It wasn’t an easy time for me and I had to rethink many things about the world.

As I said, I enjoy GrecoRoman myth where ‘Hell’ wasn’t so far away from ‘Heaven’.

In the Japanese anime Corpse Princess, Makina Hoshimura fights to regain her humanity after becoming an undead vessel of destruction. She is convinced she is no “hero out for justice”, only the defilement that destroys other defilements in the world. But she is forced to reconsider this when her guardian and best friend is killed in battle.
One of the Seven Stars, a rogue cohort of monsters out to destroy the world, named Tooya, is discovered to have a confusing and tragic past life:
Only a child of an impoverished family, she lived off next to nothing. Then one day, to her elation, she is invited to come to a carnival. She and her family had all the fun and excitement they could, eating food, playing games, and going on rides. Then...on the top of a ferris wheel, they share a celebratory drink...doused in poison. The poor girl died that evening not knowing the difference between “happiness” and “death”.

She is later destroyed upon realizing differently, that the joy of life is “life” itself.

I have thus far lived a decent life; but like all of us, it’s nowhere near clear or perfect.
Thank you for posting!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom