The Monastery of the White Tiger

As part of The Divinity of Infrastructure, entertainment media is not exempt from this precept. Entertainment media not created by the monastery itself is haram, but because The Monastery of the White Tiger is not about complete isolation, we do include some entertainment media. Right now, only entertainment media produced from before is considered halal. In univeral metric time, ignoring the current number of days in this cycle, that's ten cycles ago. Originally, it was going to be ten cycles from the present day but then I realized that I don't want to constantly be checking every day, "What new media do I have access to today?" so it's easier to do it this way. That way, there's another positive to every new cycle. (Though, this time period may be extended even further.) There's also other media that's been grandfathered in due to its nature: White Tiger (2021) and Anathem (2008).

Notice that previous statements were in regards to entertainment media. Anything non-fictional that is not for entertainment purposes is grandfathered in. News reports from new organizations are considered halal. Editorials and commentaries from after the previously mentioned time period are considered haram.

Websites are not considered media in the same sense as what I've previously described. Websites (and the electronic feed, in general) changes the form of consumption drastically to where even if you're just perusing the news, it becomes a form of consumption in of itself. The halal usage of websites should be informational purposes only. Anything else requires The Discipline. So while you would normally write down a social media site as a service you are using, if you are using that social media site to look up someone's social media account and not going through the site or their page, this does not require The Discipline.

Though, there is a fuzzy margin there in the context of non-fiction. Yesterday, I researched EPUB vs PDF and found a reddit post where people were discussing the merits of each format. Now that is opinion, similar to an editorial, but it is informational in the sense that it is giving me context to weigh different options.

Another interesting question in regards to the release dates of media: should you include the first time it was ever released or when it would have been available to you? As of right now, The Usual Suspects is fine if I judge it by when it was released at Sundance but if I go by the general release, that's after. For now, we'll do the first time, but it does create questions.

There are also other edge cases. For example, I have recorded television broadcasts that took place after the point of halal/haram, but the shows themselves were originally broadcast in a time of being halal. Additionally, media is released in haram time periods but was obviously made in a halal time period. (Nirvana - the lead singer died when it was halal but new media is still being released)Both of these cases are fine.

This does bring up the question of: what if media is informational but not in service to The Discipline? That's probably too dogmatic for right now. Though, there is something kind of masturbatory about learning facts for the sake of facts and this maybe reconsidered at a future date.