{"id":1264,"date":"2012-02-04T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/apagansblog\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2012-02-04T17:38:34","modified_gmt":"2012-02-04T22:38:34","slug":"where-to-in-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/apagansblog\/2012\/02\/where-to-in-2010.html","title":{"rendered":"Where to in 2010?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have not been doing much political posting for many months, ever since I finally gave up hope that the Democrats, with a few exceptions, amounted to anything\u00a0 more than a somewhat more humane version of the moral filth that the Republicans now represent. Of course I will vote Democratic in November, for the same reason I\u2019d vote for a robber against a serial killer. But nothing more. There is no very positive reason to vote for an almost wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street except that the alternative is a sadistic representative of Wall Street and the oil industry.<\/p>\n

But that decision has left me with a problem for this blog. What should it be about? I am a political scientist by training.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t want to play \u201caint it awful?\u201d and fill each week with atrocity stories and who is behind them.<\/p>\n

But to concentrate on traditional theological issues is difficult.\u00a0 Our traditions are based on personal experience, small groups, and generally have no sacred texts to argue over.\u00a0 (Even us Gardnerians do not as a rule treat the Book Of Shadows<\/em> as the kind of thing the Bible is supposed to be.) Many groups are secretive. We do not have corrupt church hierarchies or passionate disagreements about scripture or as to who is or is not a ‘real’ Pagan.\u00a0 That is good for us but bad for blog posts.<\/p>\n

And I really have little use for Pagan gossip.\u00a0 Plus I doubt anyone could do a better job covering the most important news in our broader community than does Jason Pitzi-Waters and his blog, the Wild Hunt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I am also a very private person and my personal life doesn\u2019t seem very interesting to others anyway.\u00a0 It\u2019s not bad, don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 At a personal level 2011 was the best year of my life.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t seem newsworthy, particularly to people I don\u2019t know. So what should my blog emphasize? Coming to a new vision for my blog was hampered by the efforts I was putting into finishing a manuscript, Faultlines: the 60s, the culture war, and the return of the Divine Feminine<\/em>, on which I have worked for some years.<\/p>\n

January 1 I finished it.\u00a0 I explore the current American cultural, religious, and political crisis and the rise of nihilism throughout our elites and particularly on the right as part of the collapse in a almost three century long effort to base the modern world on concepts inherited from agricultural societies and the religions that were shaped by them. This, even most modern secularists have searched for a secular version of the Christian God handing down moral commandments from on high.\u00a0 And those efforts have failed.<\/p>\n

It is not much better in much American religion.\u00a0 The Christian church in particular seems mired in turning its back on the mind and heart by embracing a cold and angry Fundamentalism, or in seeking to break free from these assumptions about deity and the idolatry of scripture and explore as much as it is able the feminine side of God and how the sacred is immanent as well as transcendent.\u00a0 I wish the latter well for these approaches are in harmony with the world we have created over the past\u00a0 two and a fraction centuries and I think they are in harmony with spirituality as actually experienced by people.\u00a0 While the jury is out as to whether the Christian church will succeed in this effort at renewal, it is quite clear that failing to do so leads to irrationality and what I call religious nihilism: the theology of Will transcendent and the worship of Power.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, in doing my research I saw that the efforts by Christians, Buddhists and those within other traditions to emphasize nature, ecology, the feminine, and immanence are gravitating to themes that have long been central to NeoPaganism.\u00a0 Often women within these other traditions who are exploring these themes mentioned Starhawk as an inspiration.<\/p>\n

Here is something positive to explore, free from repeated immersion in the moral sewers of Republican and most Democratic politics.\u00a0 In 2010 I hope increasingly to explore how the entire world looks different when seen from a Pagan perspective.\u00a0 We Pagans are just learning this for ourselves, for we have grown up in societies shaped by 1500 years of monopolistic monotheism, with a deity often modeled after an omnipotent and omniscient despot. Alternative views were wiped out violently for most of that time if the church and its henchmen could do so.\u00a0 Much has been forgotten and even what has continued takes on a different form within the context of post agricultural modern society.<\/p>\n

Yes, we are an Old People, as the song goes, an expression of some of humanity’s most basic spiritual insights and experiences.\u00a0 But as it says, we are also a New People, curiously harmonious with a world of science, cities, and technology.\u00a0 We are Deeper than before.\u00a0 Or at least we can be.\u00a0 I plan on concentrating on various dimensions of these themes in much that will appear over the next year or more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have not been doing much political posting for many months, ever since I finally gave up hope that the Democrats, with a few exceptions, amounted to anything\u00a0 more than a somewhat more humane version of the moral filth that the Republicans now represent. 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