Is NOrth Korea "Thelemic" in it's Philosophy [Juche]?
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y0Yrkjkkk
There are many videos about Juche, and a whole wikipedia article. I wanted some opinions here. I've seen many sides of the argument over NK. The 4 corners documentary shows how many people in the more remote towns are really starving to death, which is not right. Then you've got the American defector who died I think in 2004 and defected during the Korean war from the US side and ran right through the DMZ. He had nothing but good things to say about the regime and the people, culture, and whatnot.
A big driving point in the philosophy of Juche is that mankind and each individual man or woman are the creators of their own destiny. This sounds oddly individualistic in light of Eastern cultures mostly being more the opposite.
And just for the heck of it here's some streaming footage of actual North Korean (1 channel) television:
original.livestream.com/channelnk -
Doesn't sound Thelemic to me at all, Aside from the totalitarian elements, your summation is almost inside out. Thelema is not a doctrine of individuals manifesting their own destiny but, rather, of individuals discerning and expressing their innate destiny. - Not of determining what you will be but, rather, of determining what you are and mindfully aligning your intellect and choices with that,
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There can be a gulf between a person's words and their actions, and I tend to favor actions over the words when evaluating reality. This effect is amplified when we're dealing with war-faring governments. My rule of thumb is, the loftier the rhetoric, the darker the crime
I know of six American soldiers who defected to NK after the Korean war. Obviously, these were great propaganda opportunities for NK, so they were treated very well. Four were used as actors in anti-American Korean war films and became local celebrities. Only one ever was allowed to leave NK, and he never went back, saying that he regretted his defection immediately. The ones who weren't able to leave would likely be killed if they criticized the government.
I would say that attempting to control other peoples' reality, such as through propaganda (did you know that if you're one of the favored North Koreans allowed to live in the capital, your apartment will have a propaganda broadcasting radio that you can't turn off?), is about as unthelemic as it gets. "Do what thou wilt" and "Every man and every woman is a star" emphasize respecting the self-determination of others, including the right to evaluate reality on our own terms.
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Thank you, both. Jim, I like your insight and although I'm in the process now of reverting to my Roman Catholic faith in which I was brought up [which could make another thread as I have some questions for Thelemites on the Divinity of Christ and the validity of my "Mother Church"] I was really just curious as Ive been watching documentaries on NK lately. And yes, the stronger the rhetoric the more often the opposite of the rhetoric is true. I'm well aware as I think I said of the 150,000 in these camps who are 3 generations and get randomly executed. I was more sort of asking about the Juche philosophy in its essence rather than how it's carried out. Sort of like how people try to separate Marxism from Stalin's practices and so on and so forth. But really, at the end of the day, infringing on someone else's True Will (including the will to live peacefully and unharmed) is a moral violation in my opinion, and such a law as Thelema, pretending that the question of worshipping the Abrahamic God and Jesus is not in the picture, is practically perfection.
If anyone would be interested and is a Linux user there's a distribution they made called "Red Star OS"
kevinchen.co/blog/installing-north-korea-red-star-oFunnily it uses and re-names this older version of Firefox which supposedly limits your browsing capabilities to like the one main North Korean hub of their own sort of LAN they have that's not connected to the world wide web. Anyway, thank you both. Will be curious to see if anyone else has thoughts on this.
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@Frater Tenc said
"Thank you, both. Jim, I like your insight and although I'm in the process now of reverting to my Roman Catholic faith "
This fascinates me...
looking forward to that thread!