Now We Are Ten

10candlesTen years ago, I started a blog using Blogger’s FTP service to my own domain, which you cannot do any more. Blogs were the cool new thing.

If you go back and look at the archives (sidebar, scroll down past the blogroll), you will find that my concerns then looked a lot like my concerns now.

Progress is an illusion.

9 thoughts on “Now We Are Ten

  1. As sad as it is to admit, I agree. The most depressing news in recent memory was the spate of studies showing that, for huge numbers of people, facts just don’t matter. Truth only makes these people dig in their heels and cling harder to preconceptions.

    Resistance to progress may be genetically engrained in so many people that it cannot be overcome even by developmental encouragement from infancy. If that doesn’t suck, I don’t know what does.

    If you can’t convince someone that Climate Change is caused by human activity even with reams of data, how can you possibly convince him or her that followers of alternative religions aren’t dangerous deviants?

    16 Studies Show Differences in Conservative and Liberal Brains:

    http://2012election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004818

    1. T.L.

      A scholar could do a theoretical study on this subject. How do spiritual experiences and practices differ between those who read scholarly versus unscholarly books, and/or who have a correct or incorrect view of history?

  2. Medeine Ragana

    “16 Studies Show Differences in Conservative and Liberal Brains:”

    You know, I wonder if Nature hasn’t done that on purpose – to have one counteract the other.

  3. Same subject but slightly different angle, I just love(?) this:

    March 13, 2003 you wrote, “…there is still that Llewellyn prejudice against “scholarly” books.”

    Exactly 10 years ago today you were lamenting this characteristic of that particular publishing house as *still* being an issue. I suspect that it would *still* qualify as among the “concerns then (which) looked a lot like my concerns now.”

    Every time I am in the bookstore & I see titles like, “How to Turn Your Ex-Boyfriend into a One-Eared Salamander” or “Smokin’ Hot Sexy Wicca: Light Your Sacred Pants on Fire” or “Speed Magick the Über Fast Way: 5 Simple Steps to Mastering the World in Ten Days or Less” or “Dances with Bunnies” I shake my fist at the crescent moon & other such publishers. (I exaggerate a wee bit, but some of the current titles make the Frosts look good.)

    This is part of our public face. Scholarly books certainly don’t dominate & sometimes don’t even occupy the “New Age,” “Alternative Religion” or “Body/Mind/Spirit” aisles. I am all for freedom of weirdness (obviously) but sometimes I wonder if that sort of content doesn’t ultimately set us all back a few paces when it is our turn at the interfaith table & we want to be taken seriously. It makes me wonder if the Pagan publishing boom was progress at all.

    Oh, goodness. /rant off

    Happy, Happy Tenth to you! When I was first introduced to the blogosphere (less that two years ago… old dog, new tricks) I had just finished “Her Hidden Children” & “Green Egg Omelette.” Naturally, I looked to see if you had a blog & was delighted to find it. I was an omnivorously indiscriminate noob a first — very little remains of my original reading list/blogroll except for “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek.” Thank you.

    1. T.L.

      Other religions, Catholics, Baptists, Protestants, etc., do not require that their congregations be scholarly, even though the leaders have attended Divinity School. So, just like the woman who has to work twice as hard as man to become a CEO, do Wiccans have to become more scholarly than the rest of the world in order to get a spot at the Interfaith Table? (A LOT OF people will be excluded.)

      https://sites.google.com/site/paganmythontheamericanfrontier/

      1. This is an important point with which I agree. I am not making the argument that all Pagans need to “scholarly” to receive respect in interfaith dialogue. I am expressing frustration with the lack of availability of scholarly — or even spiritual — work in our bookstores thanks, at least in part, to the preferences of dominant publishing houses.

        I am a relatively educated Pagan & although I entertain fantasies of returning to school & joining the small pool of Pagan scholars/researchers, I recognize that this career path is not “in my cards” so to speak. This means I depend upon the work of “scholarly” Pagan authors to further my continuing education & enrich my ever-developing practice. Unfortunately, most Pagan academic writing will not be ever published & unless I am made aware of the obscure blog in which these works are made available, I will never see them. I will pay for books, even the nasty publication prices charged in the academic genre, but the books are just not there. I will also pay for thoughtful, original, non-academic spiritual writing. These books are also comparatively few & far between. Access: this is the crux of my beef.

        So, I admit that when my choices on the bookshelf are limited to writings which in redux are only regurgitated variations of certain early author’s gyrations (i.e., walk this way with this stick & end here, saying this, or, circumambulate the orb twenty times keeping focus on the root chakra, or, jump up & down in a deosil stag’s leap holding the sacred boughs overhead…) or even more disappointing, just spiritless pulp, I feel bitter.

        Dianne Sylvan (admittedly, also not an “academic”) made a good point about this phenomenon in one of her post-pagan publications: “…I had the surprising epiphany that that there wasn’t nearly enough spirituality in my religious community. People seemed so hung up on the toys and trappings & not nearly concerned enough with what I felt was the real point: unity with the Divine. Surely, I thought, there were others who would agree that spells and bells weren’t the most important thing about Wicca… but apparently they weren’t the ones writing most of the books…” Or, perhaps, they just weren’t the ones getting published.

        Thanks for the interesting link.

  4. Don’t be hatin’ on “Dances with Bunnies.” That was a great book.

    Seriously though, you are 100% right Moma, and hilarious! Rant all you want; I’ll read it.

    Progress may be an illusion, but as long as we’ve got folks like Chas in our corner there will be hope for the future and something intelligent around for us to read.

    Happy Anniversary Chas!

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