“Well, if they are right...there are no unseen forces and then the only importance of these belief systems is the effect they have socially and politically. If you are of that bent already, then the discussions on this site about the possibility that there really are some forces at work here is not relevant.”<br> <br>I don’t see it as irrelevant, or mutually exclusive, at all. To me, it is obvious the “unseen forces” of the world of deep politics reach into every realm of existence of mankind, including the “religious/mystical/occult/meta-physical”. In fact, somewhere out there at the edge is an analysis of the concept of “unseen forces” or “political witchraft” that combines both a rigorous historical and material intuition with the overall understanding that much of the knowledge of “science” is hidden from our view, and sharpens both so to speak. Personally, I tend to think the result lies more in the realm of lessening popular superstitions of all kinds, and generating immense liberatory potential/hope. Wizard of Oz style. So, to me, it is the social and political angle that is the “unseen force” itself. And I would like to think that there might be a little room for this “pedestrian” take at RI. <br><br>”…There's simply no one in these parts "feeding" doctrine of any kind to the pagans I know.”<br><br>Hah. Just because it’s less obviously fed from the elites than the fundamentalist christian mysticism shouldn’t lead us to ignore it. It comes down to influencing those populations with influence. <br><br>“That's why around here they are so ecclectic as to really barely hold together as a class.” <br><br>That says something right there as to why they might push a plethora of “new religions”.<br><br>”… I invite you to look again at Christianity, especially the evangelical and fundamentalist varieties. Do we agree that these systems have implications that are disturbing? Role of women, role of government, relation to environment, etc. This variety of Christianity sees Bush as doing God's work. Talk about implications…..Where I am, the ideology being pushed is fundamentalist Christianity....and it's gaining ground every day. ..”<br><br>For me, this says it in a nutshell, proving that the real battle is down here on earth, and in the minds of the (for lack of a better word) “counter-culture”. <br><br>I fear the implications of your thinking more than those of the average right-wing fundamentalist christian. The fundamentalists are capitalizing on essential contradictions inherent in your message regarding the “Role women, role of government, relation to environment, etc.” <br><br>You are actually proving my larger (political) point for me here, by illustrating how counter-cultural new-agers are being influenced to perpetuate the red-blue divide and conquer meme. You are stuck in an artificial mental/spiritual divide from most of your neighbors. It’s the divide exploited by chip berlet and the modern cointelpro.<br><br>Maybe you should try thinking dynamically about talking to your neighbors on different terms for awhile. What are the motivations of the working-class poor people being duped by fundamentalism? Why do those ideals hold sway? A big part of the answer is your inability to articulate a credible alternative. If we are really interested in deep, lasting, revolutionary, ---yeah, spiritual--- change we need to learn to start dealing with our fellow working-class (assuming you are one) where they are at. You can choose to meet people half-way, or you can create unrealistic expectations of spiritual change. <br><br>Because of your background (assuming liberal, white, college-educated, westerner), you can’t see this resurgance in neo-paganism for what it is: an attempt to distract and stupefy certain segments of the sub-elites, (and you can’t see how you are part of those sub-elites). You have this dualistic view of “anti-pagan=pro-christian”. It’s a knee-jerk, almost reactionary response to the old religions that prevents you from seeing the “players” on the stage as they are today. And by a large degree, the people have always taken back those elements of their faith that will lead to a betterment of their lives. Why do you think progressive liberation theology was so popular all over the “3rd world”? <br><br>As to your constant return to the evils of the “three giant trees”, I say – “get over it”. The resurgent neo-paganistic ideologies leave nothing for us to work with, especially when trying to win the battle for the “hearts and minds” of the vast masses of people with the fundamentalist elements of the three major religions. <br><br>On a social level, I believe more of us – especially those who claim to be more “conscious” - need to be much more self-critical, not just in terms of our individual behaviour, but in terms of where we decide to put the (psychic) weight of our place in a historical struggle of, yes, gasp! - good vs evil. If you want long-lasting change, we need to start dealing with the hand we were dealt, and not walk away from the table. And there’s a whole history of why you were dealt that hand, and it’s largely your own (inter-generational) fault. <br><br>Maybe you can see it like the idea of building a 3rd-party in the US. As indistinct from republicans, as horrible, as bad, as corrupt, as the democratic party is, within our petrified 2-party system many (including myself) have learned it was foolishness. So you got your Naderites, your Greens, your Reform party, and all of them sap the strength of working-class unity, and at the tired, bitter, end of the day --- if we want to have any chance of sense of unity with our fellow citizens --- we have to plug our noses and drag ourselves back and get back into the pile of shit. <br><br> Talk about “western ideology” – what is more “western” than reducing everything to a self-admittedly disconnected stance, a hyper-individualist, highly personal take (“regional differences”), leading us away from the macro-analysis of our current world that is so necessary now? <br><br>Actually, I see the reluctance to politically self-educate, assess the available evidence, and then make accurate --- generalizations --, as a big part of the problem. <br><br> ”Well, I guess you might want to specify what the implications for the modern American neo pagans are. Are you suggesting they are akin to Nazism?” <br><br>On the level of how they influence the thinkings of potentially-activist people, and the ramifications of the widesrpread adoption of the tenets of “neo-paganism” in any movement for social change, yes.<br><br>“You also acknowledge that the socialist rhetoric was hijacked. Could we not argue the same for the pagan (and is pagan what you mean by occult? Once again, the two get used interchangeably.) In addition, let's please acknowledge an AWFUL lot of Christian rhetoric from Hitler, whatever his occult underpinnings.”<br><br>I believe its pretty clear that the Nazis, and many of the real leaders of the NWO, had and have what (if we could agree on exactly what it actually was) could be legitimately called a “pagan” ethos. <br>Despite the Nazis attempts to use the mainstream churches, and those churches varying degrees of collaboration, my reading shows that, just like today, at it’s barely-concealed roots lay a non-christian, “evil-validating” (yes, “worshipping”) foundation that heavily expropriated from/based itself upon neo-pagan beliefs, incorporating them alongside and superior to christianity in their propaganda and ideology. <br><br>“You don't condemn Christianity or socialism for the way they were used by the Nazis,”<br>Yes I do. There are huge lessons to be learned there And if I was talking to my neighbor who is a conservative christian, or to my social-democratic friends in the Green Party, I would be talking differently, but it would be simply a different angle of the same picture. And, more importantly for the point of this discussion, aren’t you and I both fully aware of that record? The difference is they purged any truly good church people into the death camps as things got worse (check Pastor Niemuller quote), and they had a “Night of the Long Knives” that revealed the falsity of their socialist rhetoric. There was no concurrent wholesale persecution of pagans and occultists of significance, when they were “good germans”. The Nazis were infatuated with paganism and the occult (separately or differently), and they were far more interested in developing a new “religion” and a new “man”, than they were in defending christianity. And they certainly weren’t defending Judaism. Of course the masses of german people of the “lower classes” were not exposed to this as much, but the bourgeoisie was, and the artists were, and all the sub-elites. It was the semi-covert existence of “esoteric fascism” that played a role in ensuring unity and control among the ruling classes themselves.<br><br>“...so I guess if you can show me what that ideology is and that this ideology is not simply one set of a whole host of pagan ideologies floating around, we can have a better discussion.”<br><br>That is what I believe 100%. I just don’t have much time left today. As soon as I posted about Potter I realized I had stepped into a rathole and a half. It was just that it’s sooo incredibly popular and well-marketed (and I’ve seen a number of children’s fads come and go in my day) that it got me to thinking: this is being used to indoctrinate white, western kids into a new religious mentality, just as the (lack of) credibility of the old religions is revealed. And I did get upset about LOR. When it was a book. Just like Pokemon, D&D, black metal, or fundamentalist zionist or muslim or white power music.<br><br>You also argue that paganism is somehow sapping the front lines of bodies in the fight for justice. Well, first off, I'd say the same of Christianity,<br><br>I just made the point that in my activist circles, we get more support from those perceived as conservative christians than we ever do from new-agers, who ---REALITY CHECK – are largely apolitical. <br><br> But there is NO force, and I say this categorically, that is serving the state more effectively than Christianity. None. <br><br>I would say that the fundamentalist Islam is a greater threat, purely numerically. <br><br>Whether justifying wars, diverting attention from social justice issues to worry about "moral" issues such as banning gay marriage or somehow in ways I can't even figure out, <br><br>But this is what the liberal elites and foundation-funded left-wing think tanks are pushing as well - IDENTITY POLITICS. <br>Todays pagans are “CLEARLY and OVERWHELMINGLY” from the wealthier, more “educated” classes<br><br> Christianity is the guilty party. <br><br>Not the only one, by a long shot.<br><br>This is, primarily, because it is the state religion (or as close as can be had until they finally erase that little church/state wall.)<br><br>This is very distorted view of deep political reality. Christianity is the “overt” face of one part of the system, but I see a greater threat within the “ranks” of well-intentioned westerners to offer another, and this is what’s most important – in context with who they are –better opiate. <br><br>”As for new age navel gazing...well, I wish I could disagree, though I still say even television is more responsible for apathy and inaction.” <br><br>Not on the part of us influential white people. What typical snotty leftist elitism. So your new-age friends are so much smarter than those beer-swilling, SUV-driving christian rednecks watching Jerry Springer? The scary part is, even after all the attention to the growth of populist economic desperation, all the Farm Aids, all the ”Places In the Hearts” and “The Rivers”, in the midst of a forced downsizing of America’s heartland, the left (I’m not even thinking about flaky Wiccans and what not now) stood down and sold out the plight of middle america --- big time. And then they applauded and made apologies for Waco, and PBS and Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert savged the militia movement. “Nothing here to see, folks, just a bunch of ignorant racists, move on..” <br>I’ve been in your “neo-pagan” crowd for years, and I’d say, despite the expensive educations and all the priveledge of your backgorunds, you folks have LESS common-sense and WORSE political intuition than most any one of those red-state working poor. The new-agers I know don’t watch TV much at all, although they do partake in the popular culture in their own unique way. <br><br>“…Profit through enlightenment..coming to just about any religion near you.”<br><br>The profit angle, just like the corporate angle, misses so much of the real boat when it comes to the damage the “new-age” movement has wrought.<br><br>”By the way, I think you are wrong in one area. The environmental movement (or what's left of it) has a pretty fair number of pagans at its base, I think. And there are certainly pagans in the G8/anti-globalization actions. Check out Starhawk's page to see a fine example of neo-pagan political activism. And you might want to cut back a tad on your generalizations.
www.starhawk.org/…She's a pagan, dude. You go grrrl.”<br><br> This finishes it for me for today. I see we are worlds apart. Fuckin’ STARHAWK is what you think of as an “activist”? And the western “environmental movement” is what you think of as “activism”? This is really not meant to be construed as offensive, but at this point I can see that you are seriously under-informed about the reality of political affairs in the US. We may need to break this out into a separate discussion. This focus on “blame middle america”, the the “end of suburbia”, “rampant consumerism” is wrapped up in the same ball of wax as the eco-catastrophism and environmental fascism of your neo-pagan crowd. What exactly do you think will bring us to accept the new world order, anyway? In addition to Islamic terrorism, in today’s world, it’s the Kyoto Accords, Codex Alimentarius, and other high-minded treaties that dissolve national sovereignty and weaken/ attack resistant economies. <br><br> <br>”:Again, our first task, though, in this debate, is to define who we are talking about.” <br>You go first. What exactly do you think are the main widely-held beliefs of the western new-age neo-pagans?<br><br>[OK - I just saw your last post says something about this, so I will read and respond later....]<br><br>Here’s some reading:<br>Although his somewhat reductive and unsophisticated style leaves some holes, this essay still says something important:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/newagemp.html">www.autodidactproject.org...agemp.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br> <p></p><i></i>