Open Post on the Lonliness of the Magical/Esoteric Path

[causticus]

General discussion thread for how to deal with the loneliness issues that tend to creep up as one advances further down this path. The usual etiquette of Ecosphian discussions apply here.

Comments

[causticus]

That second paragraph well describes the impetus for me gradually unraveling myself from social media over the past six years or so. When my own evolving positions on this or that issue require too much unpacking for a typical fly-by Faceplant comment exchange, I figured the juice was not worth the squeeze. Converting a few casual "friends" (that I only converse with online) to my own way of seeing things was just not worth it and would undoubtedly create more problems than anything in the way of mutual understanding. In retrospect I found myself drifting away from an old echo chamber. As someone who has always seen himself as an independent thinker, I would often forget that many other people are socially motivated by groupthink and conformity way more than I am. I learned the groupthinkers were suddenly no longer my "friends" the moment I no longer agreed with whatever the group-mind deemed to be the correct opinions. This is one of the central dysfunctions of modernity; the age of coherent family/clan structures has long passed; now people socially organize along the lines of abstract ideologies and consumer tastes.

[jprussell]

There's a rather good analysis of the fracturing of western culture through the 20th century here: https://meaningness.com/meaningness-and-time

He goes through how traditional societies handle meaning, what modernity did to that, and then how modernity's attempt to provide a coherent, single way of making sense of the world fell apart due to the world wars and their aftermath. He comes at things from what seems to be a materialist-Buddhist take on the world, but he at least takes meaning and spirituality seriously. I found the whole website quite helpful for identifying and thinking through various spiritual issues, even if I now don't wholly agree with it.

What I found most relevant to your comment here is how he traces the development of a single "Counter Culture" to the many counter cultures of cliques to the complete atomization of today.

[causticus]

Thanks for the link, it's an interesting little piece, even if I'm not one to be all that impressed with a pseudo-Buddhistic, materialist worldview. I would probably agree that fluidity is here to stay in one form (or many!) or another, especially given we're now in the age of Aquarius. The old Piscean type of ideological absolutism will be fading out over the next few centuries until it becomes a historical footnote. The singe counter-culture was a mass reaction to 1500 years of said absolution, though like anything that defines itself by what it is NOT, as opposed to what it stands for, cannot be a long term cultural replacement. Notice how the people who most fervently embraced postmodernistic ideas have now suddenly plunged into yet another absolutist ideology, albiet one which has rules and mores that seem to shift every six months.