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Hail Satan?


This will likely be the click-baitiest post title of Startical 2.0, but it is in fact the title of the film I watched on Netflix while taking a lunch break.  And it was good.

If you haven't yet seen it, let me perhaps surprise you with the seven fundamental tenets of The Satanic Temple:
  1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
  2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
  3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
  4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
  5. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
  6. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
  7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
In short, if, like me, you've ever undertaken any activism in the name of continuous progress, the above should resonate quite well, as should the film itself.

All this reminds me of Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens from which one of my greatest takeaways was that:
Religion is both universal and missionary
 The film highlights the universal and missionary nature of the story of The Satantic Temple which applies equally well outside of religion to perhaps any progressive cause, including the visions of many startups.  Imagine if all these causes were to advance together in solidarity.  I often do and it makes me hopeful about the future.

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