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Notes -
So, there's a recurring criticism I see in many spaces regarding various right-wing projects in building parallel institutions, alternative ideological frames to that of the left, cultural resilience, and so on (ranging from critics of "Benedict Option" strategies, to Neema Parvini when talking about why "American nationalism" does not and cannot exist), which is that the thing in question is "a LARP," or "LARP-y," or something similar. Which is to say that it is "performative," that the actions aren't backed by some sort of deep-down "genuine" belief.
To which I say: so what?
First, whence this idea that the "deep-down" internal mindset of a person is more important than the actions themselves? Do a person's deeds carry so little weight, compared to their mental state when doing them?
But more importantly, isn't this how anyone gets started with something? I mean, a lot of the examples that come to my mind are things that I'm only familiar with second-hand, but I'll try to explain.
I'm old enough that back in the first few grades of elementary school, they made us stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day. I think back on us as first graders, doing that. Were we actually earnestly pledging our undying allegiance to the Republic and its flag? We didn't even understand all the words we were saying. We were just reciting what we were told to recite, the way we were taught to recite it, because we didn't want to get in trouble. It was all fake, all performative, all "a LARP."
Those of you who grew up religious, did you really understand every hymn you sang, every element of each ritual you participated in, from the very first time you did it? Or was there at least some "going through the motions" and mimicking your elders, with true understanding coming later?
In one of the replies to that Twitter post on the "homeschool prom" linked late last thread, someone described school dances as "a LARP" of the actual 'courtship' scene/process. Well, how else do people learn?
One common criticism of Pascal's Wager is that, even if you buy the argument, it only serves to persuade you that you should believe God exists, and there's a clear gap between thinking "I should believe God exists" and thinking "God exists." I mention it, because Pascal himself addressed this point shortly after introducing the Wager. And his answer is LARPing. Once you're convinced you should believe in God, then start acting as if He exists. "LARP" as a person who believes in God. If you do it thoroughly enough for long enough, Pascal argues, you'll start to actually believe it.
I've seen similar arguments in everything from job interview advice to dating advice — picture the person you want to be, and then act as they would, even if it's "all pretend."
It all comes down to the same classic piece of advice: "fake it till you make it." And what is the "fake it" stage, if not "LARP-y"? If not "performative" and, well, fake?
The reason given for this strategy is that it rarely stays fake forever. Maintaining a performative pretense, saying and doing one thing all while constantly going "this is silly, this is stupid, this is fake, this isn't me, I don't believe any of this" in your head is hard (at least for non-sociopaths). It's why governments have made citizens recite propaganda slogans over and over, why they made us say the Pledge of Allegiance over and over — because many times, it doesn't stay fake, doesn't stay merely performative. Again, it's fake it till you make it.
And even if an individual never "makes it," never achieves real belief no matter how long they perfectly maintain "the LARP"? Well, when we're talking about a long-term project involving a significant number of people, you have to consider future generations. Which gets to a concept mentioned here on the Motte before: generational loss of hypocrisy. Even if the first generation never get rid of their inner "this is so fake" thoughts… well, the next generations — whether that's new recruits, or their literal children — can't see those inner thoughts, only the outer "act." The LARP will not be multi-generational. To quote @WhiningCoil again:
So, to sum up, the accusation that a project of this sort is "LARP-y" is kind of irrelevant. Yes, it'll be LARP-y to start with; it kind of has to be. That's how things work. It's a phase — a necessary phase in the process of becoming something more, and if the people involved stay determined enough, and keep it up long enough, that phase will pass, and it will become something more.
Fake it till you make it.
(I'm hoping this isn't too incoherent, and isn't too low effort for a top-level post.)
People have no idea how real world change is actually effected. Freemasonry sprung out of a LARP novel about a fictitious Rosicrucian Brotherhood; freemasonry rituals involved LARPing; this organization had a huge effect on the modern West. If you are an atheist, it’s impossible to see Christianity as anything other than a Hellenic / Hellenized-Jewish LARP over the Old Testament — yet it’s the most important movement of religious history. The entirety of the Roman elite were engaged in various “mystery cult” LARP rituals, like the Mithraists who were LARPing their own version of a Persian cult. Hitler, of course, was motivated by Wagner’s Live Opera Role Playing work Rienzi, a LORP, and then joined a LARPing movement filled with LARPing occultists who inflated their numbers, and before all his speeches he neurotically LARPed the gestures to seem organic and impassioned. It was LARPing all the way down, and the last thing you can say about Hitler is that his influence on reality was small.
The thing about the LARP is that the more you do it, the more it becomes true. If I were to throw you into the Chinese military, to do their ritual allegiances, you would be faking it 100%. But when you fake it, there’s invisible peer pressure and then music and ambience which changes your memory of the event… The second time you do it, it’s only 95% fake. After enough times, you wouldn’t be LARPing anymore. Provided that the ritual is actually reinforcing the right things. Not too dissimilar to the techniques used by the Chinese in the Korean War to gradually change a person’s identity. Of course, it’s far easier when you yourself are interested in modifying your own identity.
It’s like if I just repeat an affirmation, that’s not going to do much. But if I repeat it while elaborating upon all the connections in my life, and all the benefits, and I imagine various rewards of the affirming identity, over time I will believe it. Our own identity is constructed by memories, and we can modify our memories and make new ones — ergo, we can construct our own identity. This is akin to sports hypnotism. It works.
LARPing isn’t fake, it’s pre-reality. What’s fake is people pretending that they are in reality, when they are doing nothing. This comprises a lot of posting online. Posting online does little; LARPing identity rituals can change the entire history of the world. I imagine that this is part of the reason why IRL organizations are routinely slandered as LARPs — it is a useful tool to prevent anything that has actual potency from disrupting current structures.
Also, “authentic belief” itself is kind of mysterious as a concept. If I’m some guy online, and I write all these logical reasons for why Jesus is definitely God, but my behavior in the world does not evidence this belief, then do I really believe it? I mean, Jesus says right there that giving away my wealth gives me 100fold in this life and the next. So, why am I not doing it? There would be no better investment or use of my time. The reason no one does it is because they don’t actually believe. Whatever they say they believe, it doesn’t matter, because their revealed
preferencebelief is that they don’t believe. So their criticism of others’ lack of belief is Pharaiscal. They would be more faithful to a Mr Beast challenge prize. And well, of course, Jesus also assumes this, hence why he spends so much time talking about how we need just the faith/trust the size of a mustard seed. I think that, we don’t really believe as we think we believe; we believe we believe, because this feels good; in actual fact, in our soul, we do not believe. And we don’t believe because there is insufficient social reinforcement / identity-rituals regarding the belief. The “faith statements” are something of a stretch or exercise: you practice believing that this bread is real flesh, and that the man was born a virgin and revived from death, in a socially-reinforcing way; and though you will never fully believe, you will at least be convinced part of the way, that it’s a good idea to be kind and a little giving. The faith statement is not a belief statement (we don’t accurately know what we believe) it’s instead an exercise with a mechanical consequence in our behavior.Hardly. I am perfectly willing to believe that a lot of Christians - and certainly a majority of early Christians - sincerely believe in the objective reality of their messiah and his miracles.
But it’s at least the case that Jesus larped, and then the Disciples larped when writing about specific miracles.
Not necessarily.
Jesus may have been earnestly delusional. We certainly get a lot of schizophrenic self-proclaimed messiahs nowadays; why would the original article need to be anything more or less than the most successful one in history? C.S. Lewis used to say the "Jesus was insane" hypothesis could be dismissed by looking at the overall coherence and sensibleness of his teachings whenever he wasn't declaring himself the Son of Man. But that doesn't track with my, or many others' experiences talking to the mentally-will but well-educated. (See Scott's "Professor T" story for anecdata that's at least adjacent.) Grant that crazy attracts crazy, and whoever originated the more fantastical miracle stories may have likewise just been psychotic at the time, or something.
Granted, it's likely that someone deliberately made something up at some point, but even then I'm not sure I'd call it LARPing if they were attempting to perpetrate actual fraud against would-be followers. A hoax isn't the same thing as LARPing.
We also have to take into account that none of the accounts of Jesus we have are even claimed to be first-hand accounts - even granting that the person in fact existed and the general story of Jesus-the-religious-leader is broadly accurate, the Gospels are the product of several iterations of sanewashing (by followers who did not need to believe anything more outlandish than the common sense of the era) and selection (as we now know of Christian writings that were nixed such as the fanfic-tier Infancy gospels).
In my own estimation, the likelihood that a historical Jesus actually existed seems pretty low, and the apparent scientific consensus for it fake - looking at the main arguments commonly cited (..."we don't have more evidence about other historical figures considered uncontroversial"? "Some Roman guy writing centuries later recounted Jesus's execution as a fact"?), they seem to be borne of desperation to latch onto anything that will allow the consensus-supporter to dissociate themselves from cringe (internet atheists and professional skeptics?) and potential professional repercussions (would a prominent "Jesus was fictional" proponent have an easy time, e.g., socialising at relevant research conferences or asking to access the Vatican archives?).
This definitely isn't true!
Even setting aside the authenticity of the Gospels for the sake of argument, (and while I am not familiar with all of the fanfic-tier works, my understanding are that it's generally pretty easy to separate the fanfic-tier stuff from the canonical works due to anachronisms and such) Paul claims to have had a firsthand encounter with Christ and from what I understand mainstream academia typically recognizes many of the Pauline letters as authentic and very early dated.
See for example 1st Corinthians, which as I understand is generally believed to be genuine and originally written about twenty – thirty years after Christ's death, and in which Paul specifically claims to have met Christ (1 Corinthians 15:9).
This also isn't a remotely accurate description of the historical evidence at play. Here's a short list of non-Christians who wrote about pretty unambiguously about Christ within a single century of His death:
Before 200 AD Christians were a significant enough phenomenon that a Greek playwright wrote a parodic play featuring them. It's pretty clear that Christianity wasn't something that got dreamed up a few centuries after the fact – Romans and Greeks were writing letters and plays that display a clear familiarity with Christians and their doctrines well before that time, and we have some early Christian inscriptions as well that rule that out.
And of course this is all without reference to Christian primary sources, such as the Pauline letters (as I mentioned) or the Didache that are believed to be written relatively recently after Christ's death.
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