As a Pagan I find the following campaign quite interesting, though I don’t necessarily agree with every single point. The basic proposal is that the state should be run by an order of priestesses. There’s a democratic element too, but subject to veto by the priestesses, and a form of conscription for everyone under 25.
What a crock of shit…
Sounds interesting.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of being ruled by a bunch of girls. That being said, I abhor and detest how Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the US, the UK, etcetera, all resemble one another in their essence. I think everyone should drift apart, fragment, splinter, do their own thing. Nations should divide themselves into dozens or hundreds of smaller entities, each one experimenting with its own institutions and laws. Humanity is stuck in a rut, it believes there’s only one or two ways of doing things. Either you’re a Christian or an Atheist, a Republican or Democrat, and so on. The way I see it, humanity is in its infancy, we should be exploring numerous ways of living and being, but instead, we’re homogenizing, to the detriment of ourselves and Gaia. We should go in dozens, hundreds of different directions, in order to discover the good, if there is one good, perhaps there’s many. Scientists perform experiments in order to determine truth, they test out x hypothesis, y and z, before arriving at (a) conclusion(s). We should be doing the same thing with our societies, performing thousands of social experiments, see how they turn out. But of course, the powers that be, the ones turning your off from what I’m saying, don’t like radical change, because they’re comfortable, they have the least to gain and the most to lose if such a state of affairs were to come to pass. Society serves them and their interests, let’s envision one, or several, that might serve ours.
Sexism is cute when girls in body paint do it.
seriously???
I think it’d be an interesting social experiment.
Would a matriarchal society be more harmonious, peaceful and prosperous?
Or would it collapse, due to weak, ineffectual and incompetent leadership?
I’d be interested to know what’s in the pics.
This strikes me as totally anachronistic, as do most sovereignty movements. The reason governments are homogenizing is because homogeneous practices, even if inefficient in an abstract sense, are more efficient than a situation where everyone does something different. It’s easier to negotiate trade, to allow for free travel and the free movement of labor. I’m all for experimentation, the Deweyan “Laboratories of Democracy”, but that kind of system has significant costs.
Also anachronistic is concern that women in charge would be a bad thing. Look at the trajectory of society, graduation rates from high school up through almost every professional degree, crime, employment, you name it. In virtually every measurable way, girls are out-performing boys. The developed world will be run by women in the coming decades, start getting used to that idea.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, especially when trying radically new things, untried and untested things, like modernity. I’d be more than willing to sacrifice some efficiency in exchange for more diversity, multiplicity and plurality, whilst erring on the side of caution. The reason why the world is homogenizing, is because the political and economic elites are consolidating the polities and economies of the world. It’s not necessarily for our benefit, on the contrary.
Women are good at following recipes, but not good at coming up with their own. Women need loads of precedent, they’re less capable of improvising and innovating, they get lost without directions from someone else. I don’t think they should be put in leadership positions, especially when it comes to politics, law and warfare, they’d be out of their element, but, let’s see Mercia or some others prove me wrong.
Maybe it’s chicken and egg. Elites move towards homogeneity because it tends to generate wealth. A specific example I’m familiar with is international law surrounding IP. It’s possible to create a system where IP laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But the elites have a strong incentive towards homogeneity, because it makes it easier to enforce some kind of IP around the world if everyone is on the same page. A blanket international treaty that lays out specific protections and specific remedies if a party fails to live up to them is easier to enforce, which is especially important in the international law context where all agreements are essentially gentlemen’s agreements, i.e., there’s no higher authority that wields a monopoly on coercion (and no one really wants to go to war). Even though the IP laws that come out suck a little bit from everyone’s point of view, most countries sign on because it makes trade partnerships easier: countries enforce rights owned by each others citizens, and their citizens know what to expect when they conduct business abroad. It consolidates the power, but it’s arguable that that’s a byproduct, because even if the goal was just the short term benefit of one country, all countries would still likely participate (and they do, TRIPS participation is nearly universal).
A cooking metaphor seems somehow apt for what reads a lot like saying that women need men to tell them what to do (and should just stay in the kitchen and follow recipes, pardon the caricature). Again, totally anachronistic. No one operating today can avoid using “loads of precedent”. And whatever innate differences exist between men and women, the variation within either population dwarfs them, even at the very high and very low end.
The top left photo has a girl who looks like you, sporty figure pale skin long red hair. She is holding a wood sign with some language I’ve never seen before that is shaped in a circle on the sign. She has a two piece wool outfit, skirt and top, exposing a lot of skin. It’s daylight in a field with a bunch of pagan hippies in the background. The grass is cut low so it looks like a public park.
The middle left society is a horn dance in the middle of the street with a bunch of onlookers. There are two lines of men wearing antlers dancing toward each other and then back out, back and forth. It’s like a parade.
The middle right picture is women’s police, just some women in blue jackets there.
The bottom picture is some town hall with lots of steps, government buildings, and people walking around.
The girl (probably in her late teens) pictured in the upper left has a either tattoos or paint across a large part of her midriff and on her face around her eyes. The tattoos look celtic to me; they are a dark blue or black, and they are reminiscent of vines, coiling around her hips and circling her left eye and up the bridge of her nose. I know the British isles were home to the Pict people before the Romans invaded; I believe Pict was the Roman term for them and was in reference to their tattooing. I would bet the paganism of this group is related to the Picts and other celtic tribes that were absorbed into the Angles after their invasion into England.
To the right beside the picture of the girl is a map of “The Shires of Mercia”, apparently an area in the middle of England. It’s divided into 22 counties, and they are a patchwork colored using the colors from the flag and coat of arms of Mercia, blue yellow grey and white.
Thank you both for your descriptions. Are all those from the first page?
Been there, tried that, failed miserably.
While men have been in charge of societies we have had countless millennia of warfare, death and suppression. I seriously doubt women could do any worse, and could very probably do a lot better.
It’s also true that while men have been in charge we have had incredible advances in all areas of human life, but I don’t know why it follows that such things would not be possible with women in charge.
The Pagan aspect of it also appeals, since it’s only the monotheist and patriarchal religions that need to force their beliefs on others, and go to war with each other in the name of the one true way.
Neopaganism is a reactionary movement. It’s bad stuff, don’t touch it.
It’s very liberating stuff, and it has no dogmas or rules. It is spiritual freedom.
Some neopaganism is reactionary, some is not.
No, it’s really pretty much straight reactionary bullshit.
To me, this is a major tension. The reactionary nature of Neopaganism is romantic in nature. It draws from an (idealized) past. While I am wary of that line of analysis, using “tradition” as a critique of the excesses of modernity definitely has a place. Society has been in a radical state of change since WW1 (or the '60s counterculture movement, which represents another acceleration). Personally, I’m all about the adrenaline and pushing down on the accelerator but I recognize that cars need breaks. But within the “tradition” angle community is the primary focus.
Likewise, post-modern critique is powerful and absolutely has a place on the table. But from the opposite end. Is what we consider “progress” really “progress”? What do we mean by those words and how do they relate to the broader structures in society? Within post-modern/post-structuralist conception the radical individual is all that matters.
What concerns me is the fusion of the two. Using a fabricated “tradition” to justify a community of radical individualists. That’s why evangelicalism is fucked up, that’s why neopaganism is fucked up. Their romantic appeal to a socially isolated society where “an it harm none, do what ye will”. Heathenry gets a much harder hit than Wicca because it’s origins are in fucking German national romanticism. But Wicca is still all kinds of bullshit. Basically enshrining the liberal conception of the individual while justifying it within a traditionalist past. It’s the worst aspects of Evangelicalism without any redeeming qualities . . . and at this point Evangelicalism has precious few of those.
Yes, and I don’t know why it follows that such things as happened with men in charge would not happen with women… including what you discount.
Thinking that women are not just as clan-ish, territorial, aggressive, and so on, …is pure ignorance.
Right, because talking about forcing men to conscript in the army is not “forcing your beliefs on others”… Crazy…