Cultural Backlash: An Open Post

[causticus]

There were some interesting discussions on yesterday's Magic Monday post and on the past month's or so posts on the Ecosophia blog regarding the collapse of alternative spirituality in the West and a likely impending cultural backlash against decades of general rot and grubbiness that is decaying our civilization from within.

Some of us here in the US are afraid that a sudden cultural jolt in the other direction, away from leftism/progressivism, will result in any type of spirituality that doesn't fit a narrow, literalist Christian/Abrahamic format as being seen by the reaction mob as "part of the problem." Anything the people leading and directing this backlash deem to be adjacent to the aforementioned cultural rot will be lazily lumped together into one big, bad conspiracy against what they believe they are trying to save and preserve. This likely means anything occult/esoteric, overtly pagan, or too foreign will be included, with very little nuance. As we know, the moral collapse of both Neopaganism and the postmodern occult scene hasn't helped matters at all in this respect, especially in light of recent tragic events.

Anyway, I want to know what anyone else here thinks of this and anything in your own area (US or somewhere else) you have seen indicative of a new cultural direction that may or or may not involve the condemnation of the things I listed above (or anything else that comes to mind). Also, we could use this space to think up ideas on how to preserve and carry on various spiritual teachings and practices if/when an intolerant religious climate becomes reality.

This is an open post that will stay open for quite a long time.

Comments

a college student's perspective

[only1bladetitan]

I've actually been rather worried about this too. I have been in college for the past 5 years and seen a progression of students in my area go from welcoming of the diversity of religions they see present on campus to significantly less welcoming of the idea of the occult and non-christian beliefs, moreso severely recently. I ran a pagan org at my college up until recently, and after a rumor was spread that people were protesting our events, people stopped coming out of fear of retribution. No one was protesting, to be clear, but the fact that the idea of someone protesting made a lot of our members afraid of being targeted by the more conservative students we have on campus. some students didn't like the idea of having to actually make an effort to do the things we were talking about, but I think that's almost entirely to blame on the neopagan movement and how companies have tried to make the occult and pagan practices into an aesthetic you can buy to be and not put any effort into, which is so sad to me. I'm hoping it doesn't come down to needing to go into hiding religiously, but if needed I converted most of my books into a .txt or .pdf library that I'm keeping on a microSD card. I think whether or not that's needed is going to be a matter of how deep people end up diving into their own madness of extremes and whether or not they'll feel emboldened to do so by the current administration. I don't know that it's gotten that far yet, but I feel like it's definitely something to look out for just in case. Really wish this wasn't happening. I appreciate you posting this.

Re: a college student's perspective

[causticus]

Thank you for the data points!