Growing up without growing up

[ASBO]

It seems to me metal addresses this need.

"Growing up" as we know it in modern times means accepting a lot of stuff as unchanging, giving up on meaning beyond the material, dedicating yourself to a life of rote.

What if growing up instead meant becoming realistic, so that you could see how the world works and use that to make sense of what you must do?

Metal does this through the allegory of fantasy. Battle, natural selection, disease, death and hunting of demons are all metal topics. Each one emphasizes a metaphor for reality: struggle, purging of the parasitic, and doing what is required to assert positive dominance.

If we can grow up by accepting literal reality, we can do what we need to in order to survive without it dominating us, and without taking on that hopelessness of those who "grew up" by reducing their hopes for life to material demands.

Metal may be a truer maturity than most ever discover in adulthood.

[istaros]

this hints at both ends of the individualist fallacy. one extreme being, "i am powerless, i just have to accept it, get me another beer, Seinfeld's starting" - and the other being "i haven't been given power, but i will not die on my knees, i am more important than the rest and deserve to be treated more importantly". same cause, different permutations. metal addresses the cause, ignoring the illusion of there being a difference between egotists and submissives, by placing the human perspective as part and parcel of a larger, ongoing process. molding yourself to the world and gaining control over it work in tandem, they can't be pursued separately. it's interesting that so many people's first impression of black metal (in my experience) is that it glorifies individualism. i'm sure part of that comes from attempts to look into satanism and subsequently stumbling on the laveyan type

[ASBO]

It's like they give up on real power, and so they want surrogate power, and fight for that, destroying real power -- and real hope -- in the process.