Some thoughts on Paganism/Druidism
Jun. 18th, 2006 12:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kallistiiI was thinking the other day about how much of the Neo-Pagan movement has a heavy "back to nature" slant to it.
To me, this sounds too much like what I call "Golden Ageism". That is, the trend of people to look at the past, and fantasise about how good things were in the past. This rose covered view of the past is caused by the time dilation that is caused by how we grow up. When we hit twenty, we have gone through high school, puberty, started college/university, and maybe even have finished by then. But those "teen" years represent fully half of our lives at age 20. Thus the canvas of our memory ends up with very broad strokes painting those times for us, as there the canvas is now half full depicting our teen years.
Jump forward to age 40.
Now that almost ten year period is only a quarter of our lives, but as it was painted with broad strokes, many of the nuances get lost. and thus we only see the colours in the distance. So it looks better to us, as we are pre-disposed to seeing the good instead of the bad. But during those years, so much of our lives are set in stone.
One of the touchstones I use is music. Many people I know become stuck on the music of their teenage years. The War Generation teen years were dominated by Big bands and Jazz Singers. Baby-Boomers, early Rock or "Classic Rock", the music of the 50s-60s-70s. Gen X, Goth, Industrial and Punk. Gen Y, Grunge & Pop. Today's youth, Hip-hop, Emo. Again, broad strokes, but it gives you an idea. Any time you go more than two generations or more younger than your generation, chances are, you can't stand their music, may complain how it is noise. Their fashions grate against your sensibilities, and you just can't understand what they find about "that noise" that is musical.
OK, enough for now, in a day or two, I will talk about how this relates to Neo-Paganism, and "Back to Nature".
ttyl
To me, this sounds too much like what I call "Golden Ageism". That is, the trend of people to look at the past, and fantasise about how good things were in the past. This rose covered view of the past is caused by the time dilation that is caused by how we grow up. When we hit twenty, we have gone through high school, puberty, started college/university, and maybe even have finished by then. But those "teen" years represent fully half of our lives at age 20. Thus the canvas of our memory ends up with very broad strokes painting those times for us, as there the canvas is now half full depicting our teen years.
Jump forward to age 40.
Now that almost ten year period is only a quarter of our lives, but as it was painted with broad strokes, many of the nuances get lost. and thus we only see the colours in the distance. So it looks better to us, as we are pre-disposed to seeing the good instead of the bad. But during those years, so much of our lives are set in stone.
One of the touchstones I use is music. Many people I know become stuck on the music of their teenage years. The War Generation teen years were dominated by Big bands and Jazz Singers. Baby-Boomers, early Rock or "Classic Rock", the music of the 50s-60s-70s. Gen X, Goth, Industrial and Punk. Gen Y, Grunge & Pop. Today's youth, Hip-hop, Emo. Again, broad strokes, but it gives you an idea. Any time you go more than two generations or more younger than your generation, chances are, you can't stand their music, may complain how it is noise. Their fashions grate against your sensibilities, and you just can't understand what they find about "that noise" that is musical.
OK, enough for now, in a day or two, I will talk about how this relates to Neo-Paganism, and "Back to Nature".
ttyl
