body dysmorphia is a thing. and as populations numbers swell it is more obvious to see it in its many expressions. It's not surprising that it is a coming of age issue either. For this is when we leave our "family" home on a quest to become grounded in our own homes. to know how to come home to ourselves. And looking at the current empire and the glamour magic i can understand why that is so challenging. folks who are not comfortable in their bodies have my respect and service. as a herbalist its one of the root causes of most expressions of depression, anxiety, suicide, loss and despair. and something I help folk with. there are many ways to work with it, to help the person come home. as an animist i find my plant allies and my spiritual guides invaluable in this work.
the gender debate seems far more political than anything else especially since it doesn't pay mind to the fact that not being able to be present in your body, or when present being overwhelmed by unmanageable feelings is a huge part of the why.
Not being present in our bodies is probably the core malady affecting modern people. Everything sold to us promises to help us escape body, or make us love body again, but of course never delivers.
when the domesticated have to start outsourcing everything does it matter if they're actually in a body? My story around elderflower best sums it up for me:
What you say about concepts losing their attachment to real things reminds me of an old essay by Freddie deBoer where he refers to this (in the specific context of criticisms, and what we'd now call cancelling) as "critique drift." I like that phrase because I think the word "drift" emphasizes how it's a thing that happens while you're not paying too much attention. You can intuitively start saying "but what about this argument" and "but that's white men stuff," and eventually you just habitually say it without thinking as precisely about why you're saying it. And if you get approval every time, the drift happens even more easily.
In my opinion, a lot of people are aware somehow in their bones that the drift is happening... they're somehow feeling discomfort about it, about their lack of confidence in the things they're saying. They say things and no longer feel in touch with the meaning of what they're saying, and that doesn't feel good. But the way they respond to that discomfort, in my opinion, is to turn it outward and tell other people that they are doing things wrong.
ooh I like that. Words drift all the time, sometimes to mean their complete opposite. And often I think when people encounter a term or criticism without knowing the background behind it, it then takes on a life quite different from how it was intended.
The winter here has been cold and miserable too, and we were under a freezing fog for over a week at the end of December. But I conjured up the energy to join the choir for practice this evening and now I'm glowing with the joy of sharing song in person with others. There's something extremely grounding about an in-person discussion with a some Yorkshire pensioners (I'm the youngest person in the choir by some years!); it shows up the frenzied nature of a lot of online discourse.
I would say it's an insult to mystery cults. Going back to the ancient Greeks shows mystery cults as social movements where the wildness within each was allowed to run free and the trappings of civilization were mocked and upended. Women and slaves freely participated in ritual dance with citizens. A study I once read on the cult of Dionysus cracked me up when they mentioned the use of "spinal hyperflexion" to music to induce a trance state among the ancient mystery cults. That's the fanciest description of headbanging I've ever heard.
I guess my point is that mystery cults were very different from the modern woke movement and in ways that don't reflect well on wokeness. They brought people together and provided a source of social bonding between slave and free and women and men. They emphasized the body and the accessibility of religious experience to all. By contrast, wokeism divides us with endless arguments over who is the most oppressed and pronoun minutae. Wokeism sees the source of knowledge not in ourselves or in our bodies but in academic theory.
Late fall and winter continue to become more disconcerting for me. I wore shorts through the entire month of December. The sun and the moon told me it should be cold and time for a nice fire; the weather said it was spring.
On the topic of wokeness as a esoteric mystery cult, I read this article over the weekend: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-rationality-declined-decades.html. I think the shift in language usage is pretty fascinating. The shifting from rational to emotional language and collective to individual could be an important element in what's going on in American society.
Wokeness hits many of the key elements in this sort of environment in some of its incarnations. The individual's feelings are paramount; whatever you feel is what is true. Broad identities can be eschewed in favor of ever more individualistic ones with long bullet-pointed lists in people's online bios. Like you point out, "systemic" and "structural" can be slapped on everything much like green*. It also enables people to identify some hidden collective working to oppress them and further galvanizes the individual's complex identity in a way similar to the common Christian persecution complex. "Privilege", likewise, becomes useful primarily as an ad hominem deflection against any critique. The rational, material, or empirical is often rejected outright and attempts to interrogate or quantify issues are taken as existential attacks.
*Just noting that I do believe there are actual systemic and structural issues, lest my comment here be construed otherwise. I just don't think, generally, that the current social justice movement in the United States has much to offer in analyzing and working to address these issues.
body dysmorphia is a thing. and as populations numbers swell it is more obvious to see it in its many expressions. It's not surprising that it is a coming of age issue either. For this is when we leave our "family" home on a quest to become grounded in our own homes. to know how to come home to ourselves. And looking at the current empire and the glamour magic i can understand why that is so challenging. folks who are not comfortable in their bodies have my respect and service. as a herbalist its one of the root causes of most expressions of depression, anxiety, suicide, loss and despair. and something I help folk with. there are many ways to work with it, to help the person come home. as an animist i find my plant allies and my spiritual guides invaluable in this work.
the gender debate seems far more political than anything else especially since it doesn't pay mind to the fact that not being able to be present in your body, or when present being overwhelmed by unmanageable feelings is a huge part of the why.
Not being present in our bodies is probably the core malady affecting modern people. Everything sold to us promises to help us escape body, or make us love body again, but of course never delivers.
when the domesticated have to start outsourcing everything does it matter if they're actually in a body? My story around elderflower best sums it up for me:
https://www.natashaclarke.com/stories
What you say about concepts losing their attachment to real things reminds me of an old essay by Freddie deBoer where he refers to this (in the specific context of criticisms, and what we'd now call cancelling) as "critique drift." I like that phrase because I think the word "drift" emphasizes how it's a thing that happens while you're not paying too much attention. You can intuitively start saying "but what about this argument" and "but that's white men stuff," and eventually you just habitually say it without thinking as precisely about why you're saying it. And if you get approval every time, the drift happens even more easily.
In my opinion, a lot of people are aware somehow in their bones that the drift is happening... they're somehow feeling discomfort about it, about their lack of confidence in the things they're saying. They say things and no longer feel in touch with the meaning of what they're saying, and that doesn't feel good. But the way they respond to that discomfort, in my opinion, is to turn it outward and tell other people that they are doing things wrong.
ooh I like that. Words drift all the time, sometimes to mean their complete opposite. And often I think when people encounter a term or criticism without knowing the background behind it, it then takes on a life quite different from how it was intended.
The winter here has been cold and miserable too, and we were under a freezing fog for over a week at the end of December. But I conjured up the energy to join the choir for practice this evening and now I'm glowing with the joy of sharing song in person with others. There's something extremely grounding about an in-person discussion with a some Yorkshire pensioners (I'm the youngest person in the choir by some years!); it shows up the frenzied nature of a lot of online discourse.
Oh that sounds really, really lovely. In-person events are so rare now. Cherish that!
I would say it's an insult to mystery cults. Going back to the ancient Greeks shows mystery cults as social movements where the wildness within each was allowed to run free and the trappings of civilization were mocked and upended. Women and slaves freely participated in ritual dance with citizens. A study I once read on the cult of Dionysus cracked me up when they mentioned the use of "spinal hyperflexion" to music to induce a trance state among the ancient mystery cults. That's the fanciest description of headbanging I've ever heard.
I guess my point is that mystery cults were very different from the modern woke movement and in ways that don't reflect well on wokeness. They brought people together and provided a source of social bonding between slave and free and women and men. They emphasized the body and the accessibility of religious experience to all. By contrast, wokeism divides us with endless arguments over who is the most oppressed and pronoun minutae. Wokeism sees the source of knowledge not in ourselves or in our bodies but in academic theory.
Late fall and winter continue to become more disconcerting for me. I wore shorts through the entire month of December. The sun and the moon told me it should be cold and time for a nice fire; the weather said it was spring.
On the topic of wokeness as a esoteric mystery cult, I read this article over the weekend: https://phys.org/news/2022-01-rationality-declined-decades.html. I think the shift in language usage is pretty fascinating. The shifting from rational to emotional language and collective to individual could be an important element in what's going on in American society.
Wokeness hits many of the key elements in this sort of environment in some of its incarnations. The individual's feelings are paramount; whatever you feel is what is true. Broad identities can be eschewed in favor of ever more individualistic ones with long bullet-pointed lists in people's online bios. Like you point out, "systemic" and "structural" can be slapped on everything much like green*. It also enables people to identify some hidden collective working to oppress them and further galvanizes the individual's complex identity in a way similar to the common Christian persecution complex. "Privilege", likewise, becomes useful primarily as an ad hominem deflection against any critique. The rational, material, or empirical is often rejected outright and attempts to interrogate or quantify issues are taken as existential attacks.
*Just noting that I do believe there are actual systemic and structural issues, lest my comment here be construed otherwise. I just don't think, generally, that the current social justice movement in the United States has much to offer in analyzing and working to address these issues.