Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “darvo,” came with a rhyme:
Twinkle twinkle little star, what you say is what you are.
Now what does this mean, and what is “darvo”? Wikipedia defines the latter as
DARVO is an acronym for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender”. Some researchers and advocates have characterized it as a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers. The abuser denies the abuse ever took place, attacks the victim for attempting to hold the abuser accountable, and claims that they, the abuser, are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing the reality of the victim and offender. This usually involves not just “playing the victim” but also victim blaming.
But that’s repeated in the strip, with the meaning tweaked a bit to cover religion:
The trouble with the phrase ‘DARVO’ is that there are also proactive DARVOists, people who anticipate that they will be accused of something and get their accusations out first, making it look like anyone with a legitimate grievance is engaging in DARVO himself.
In the 21st Century everyone has access to the same Game Theory textbooks. We’re seeing the New Right, the New Left, and internet trolls engaging in the same tactics.
“I’m a victim of soy-kum-stance!”
-Curly Howard
… on a more serious note, I’d point out that we ALL can be victims of cancer, addiction, self-destruction, natural disaster, disease, and – to the point – religion. That’s a distinction worth making – a victim of another person (demagogue, zealot, personality cult, etc.), or of a process (gene repair, dopamine, plate tectonics etc.) gone awry.
I hesitate to call the latter category “inanimate” – dopamine is inanimate, but usually associated with a living process (as far as we know them).
But I’m sure Jesus knows all that. I mean god. I mean the holy ghost.
I would go further, we are all victims of fortune, beneficial and not so beneficial. So it is simply [good] fortune that I am not religious and in turn that I was born with the smarts and grew up in an environment not to be religious.
And while it is convenient to divvy this universe into living and non-living, unless we are advocating for some sort of élan vital, all processes are of the same kind, just that the complexity increases.
Unfair! How else can you defend dogma? You’ve got to stay rooted to your position while warding off attackers. Intellectual honesty is counterproductive. Keeping an open mind just means that other people get to mess with it.
Hmmm. Darvo.
Could the Author be referring to the mutual lawsuits between a couple of movie stars, where the score is currently about 2-1 (or in cash terms, 15M$-2M$)?
Has “deepfake” video tech reached the point that they can get it past a moderately competent lawyer’s image analyst? Yet?
(Also, “DARVO” not to be confused with “DAVROS“, for people of a “certain age”, which I suspect includes both myself and The Author.