I think that should be astrological rise.
However, as the cosmetics giant Sephora recently found out, mysticism and its more formal manifestation, witch culture, are not topics to be taken lightly. When the company tried to commodify and condense witch-related practices into a “Starter Witch Kit,” they managed to piss off a bunch of actual witches, forcing the kit’s manufacturer to apologize and pull the product.
Whut ?
While the US government does not regularly collect detailed religious data, because of concerns that it may violate the separation of church and state, several organizations have tried to fill the data gap. From 1990 to 2008, Trinity College in Connecticut ran three large, detailed religion surveys. Those have shown that Wicca grew tremendously over this period. From an estimated 8,000 Wiccans in 1990, they found there were about 340,000 practitioners in 2008. They also estimated there were around 340,000 Pagans in 2008.
https://qz.com/quartzy/1411909/the-explosive-growth-of-witches-wiccans-and-pagans-in-the-us/
Loved the pun!
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, there is a growing network of festivals and drum circle-esque type things around "witch" people are aggregating. People want community, and will form it when there is a sufficient bone structure onto put flesh on. This can also be impacted by social unrest as people tend to organize around common likes, but more so around perceived common interests.
The social bone structure and the core values present within it that structure at the beginning, which fosters community and shapes its developmental track, and or lifespan, is a vital, but often missed aspect of group viability and longevity as well as its capacity to become an influential voice in a social context. For example; one of the reasons the atheist movement rose in influence was the advent of 4 horsemen (so to speak) and why it fell again is the formation and dissolution of public debates which was the bone structure. (There were other factors like too many piglets attempting to channel the milk of influence toward their special cause which fractured the coherency of the nascent group.)
Every group starts out fighting against some existing zeitgeist, be it social or environmental, and those that last as a coherent entity and become influential either become adept at manufacturing a scary ghost of the vanquished enemy they once fought, or transition from fighting against things (which it had to do to establish itself as a coherent entity), to now fight for things in the context of the broader community. Because the DNA in the atheist movement was built on fighting against, and did not, or has yet transitioned to a well established "fighting for" behavioral prosody, it's influence and coherency as an influential player on the social field diminished. This is not to pick on that movement, it is just to illustrate the way humans groups tend to form and carry on, or become selected out.
I could be missing something(s)
Joe Carter you lost me at the “piglets”.
ReplyDeleteJose Pina Coelho You lost me at "you lost me". Without understanding what that means exactly, I will attempt to clarify. (I apologize if I am responding to a straw man argument that you are not making)
ReplyDeleteI was speaking of the the appropriation of the temporary prominence of the nascent group to legitimize smaller agendas such as the gamer thing, left leaning American style political rhetoric and feminism, which may be valid positions, but when the prominence of these subset ideas becomes out of proportion to what is needed for the developmental health of the group as whole to be an influential entity in the broader context of society, that local appropriation tends to be of a parasitic nature, not a nourishing one which has the net effect of diminishing the influence of the broader agenda on the altar of these narrower ones.
I was not using piglet as a pejorative, it was an attempt to be illustrative of the properties of groups in general. It is an attempt to be observational, not accusatory.
I could be missing something(s)
Joe Carter not a straw man, I just became lost when you mentioned piglets. I’m failing to parse what they’re standing for.
ReplyDeleteJose Pina Coelho Again I am trying to illustrate a larger point, and not speak specifically about the atheist movement as if I have a lock on insight. I am attempting to point to how smaller agendas can latch on to larger groups that are developing momentum in their early stages and feed off the energy of that larger one to the point where they diminish the capacity of that larger one to develop to its potential. In some cases the energy draw can be in effect fatal to the larger agenda.
ReplyDeleteJoe Carter got it now. Thx
ReplyDeleteTime to go long on giant stone circle futures.
ReplyDelete