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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.thelema,talk.religion.misc,talk.religion.newage,alt.magick,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory,talk.philosophy.misc,alt.politics.radical-left From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Subject: TMaroney: Thelemic Communities Date: 30 Jun 1997 18:45:09 -0700 [both from thelema93-l@hollyfeld.org: Tim Maroney] >The crux of the problem is this: there are times when a community, to >remain a community, must impose on at least some of the members, or force >them out. A Thelemic community (which is not the same as a community of >Thelemites) would have at its foundation the idea that no such imposition >or exclusion is possible. I'm not sure why this would be the case. The definition of Thelemite (and as always, I'm using Rabelais) focuses on a psychological process in the individual. A Thelemic community would be one in which the members were Thelemites, which is to say, they had an inner spur or goad toward virtue rather than being driven primarily be external codes. This doesn't mean there are no external limitations on action, and it doesn't mean that the people who have this process going on within them couldn't find themselves in conflict and have to resolve it. It also doesn't mean that they could never come to general consensus on modes of governance, or choose to enter into contracts. It just means they would live by their own lights. A community of Thelemites does exclude conflict in Crowley's system of interpretation, since such people would be in touch with the magical will of all that Crowley invented for this purpose, and that is a will in which no individual will is in conflict with any other. This interpretation of his, which can be found numerous places including "The Heart of the Master", does not seem particularly in line with Liber AL, which preaches eternal conflict, but then Crowley was never possessed by Emerson's hobgoblin. In any case, Crowley felt that it was the general will to create a benevolent despot who would guarantee a smoothly functioning society -- and of course, the despot would be someone like him. To me the biggest problem with creating a community of Thelemites would be finding enough of them, and excluding non-Thelemites without turning into a sort of tyrrany of judgment. "The enlightened elders have determined that you are not sufficiently self-motivated to join in our community" -- eeeewwww! One might hope, though, to devise some sort of society in which the self-selection process would be biased towards getting Thelemites interested and losing non-Thelemites to voluntary attrition. This is a sticky problem and I don't have a solution to suggest. -- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org http://www.maroney.org ===================================================================== >Seriously, I see where our apparent disagreement is. I agree with >everything you say, given your definition of "Thelemic community". Hi Jeffrey, You didn't quote your correspondent, but I think you're talking to me here. >But I >have something different in mind: a community founded on Thelemic >principles which may or may not be entirely composed of Thelemites. The only Thelemic principle I know is that of being a Thelemite: of cultivating and listening to deep sources of virtue in the self, rather than being blindly programmed from the outside. That being the case, I don't know how to define a Thelemic community except as a community of Thelemites, or at least a community in which Thelemites are able to be Thelemites and others are able to become so if they choose. This requires institutionalized guarantees of individual liberty and social rewards for expressions of individuality, as well as the least restrictive social contract possible. It wouldn't need to be entirely composed of Thelemites -- and it certainly wouldn't need to include anyone who uses that name. >I agree that a group in which everyone is trying to follow their Will, or >is goaded to virtue from within, or however you want to formulate it, is >ideal. But then you have to have a means of deciding who is such a >person, with possible unThelemic complications. Suppose I am a >Thelemite, with a nonThelemite lover who wants to live with me? Can the >community justify my lover's exclusion? Or does it allow the lover to >come in? And how, once in does it deal with the nonThelemite? Yes, a very sticky issue. Ideally a community is formed by voluntary self-selection and the only reason anyone would be excluded would be serious crimes such as murder, armed robbery, exploitation of workers, etc. But how does a voluntary process lead to a community of people with a particular personality trait? One way is to skew the nature of the society so that those without the trait tend to lose interest and select themselves out. An example of skewed self-selection would be on ARCANA, the occult scholarship list you and I belong to. Every few months a person or two who is completely lacking in the qualities needed for scholarly discussion pops up and starts posting five or ten stupid messages a day. Usually the listowners don't have to do anything -- everyone tunes out the bozos, and getting no responses, they go off to find greener pastures. When three or four appear at the same time, then they start to reinforce each other and the listowners have to start laying down the law, because it's all one big room; chances are if it were more internally divided by voluntary self-selection into rooms frequented by various people, this intervention would not be required. How to skew the process towards Thelemites? A Thelemic community could simply decline to give any external programming to the zombies who crave it, or give so many different possible sources of programming that they fail to find the comfort they seek in abdicating their freedom to choose: a kind of active pluralism. Fortunately, I think Western society is already heading this way. The twentieth century crisis of values is causing the formation of enclaves of thought. Right now they tend to be superstitious and anti-pluralistic within themselves, but I think their contact with other groups in a secular society is likely to cause that to loosen up over the next fifty years or so. Look at Europe -- there's a lot of attachment to local tradition, as there should be, but the increasing closeness of the European community brings home to its people, who routinely travel between countries, the fact that their traditions are only points in a continuum of possible traditions. There are rivalries and superstitions, but in general there is also the tolerance and openness that comes from exposure to different worldviews. The alternative is that we wind up with a bunch of warring cults, each with its own closed doctrinal system. Thelemites can't be free in such groups because they are not free to publically pursue lines of thought that wander from the straight and narrow. It is ironic that many of the groups today which call themselves Thelemic are narrow-minded and doctrinally exclusionary, with no internal process for the public expression of non-party-line sentiments. These quasi-Thelemic groups are made up primarily of people who have accepted the external programming of the belief-system called Thelema, with only a smattering of inwardly-determined Thelemites in the membership. Again I hope that they will find themselves participating in the general social trend towards greater pluralism. Rather than forming Thelemic communities now, which would be very difficult given the problems with membership selection, we may just want to consider how to make society at large more acceptable for Thelemites. >What I am thinking of goes in two directions: how an political entity >established on the principles of Thelema would relate with those of its >members who are not Thelemites; 1: Guarantee rights. 2: Lead by example. One thing a government could do, for instance, would be to make celebrities of whistle-blowers, people whose intrinsic sense of ethics did not allow them to take the easy road by supporting corrupt social institutions. Under no circumstances would it ever be acceptable to establish a social hierarchy of differential rights based on judgments of merit. Any institution of this sort would be rapidly subverted. It's a similar problem to that of Crowley's "benevolent despotism". Let's say you somehow manage to find a person who would be suitable for the despotic role and put them in power. (Not Crowley -- god, what a nightmare that would be!) Then what about their successor? The people most motivated to seek the role of despot would be those least qualified for it. The first benevolent despot would probably die by poison or coup, and then a more traditional despotism would be established. Similarly, those most drawn to attaining the status of being "officially enlightened and thus entitled to more freedom" are exactly those people whose insecurities and need to dominate others make them most unsuited to that role. The only answer is simply not to establish systems that invite this kind of abuse. >and how a community on a smaller scale >might handle the situation of strangers among us--that is nonThelemites >who, for economic reasons or emotional bonds or what have you, are a part >of the community. I don't have any good answers here. The only smaller communities I feel comfortable in are those dedicated to particular projects, rather than insular tribal live-work communities. I have yet to encounter a tribal group that didn't exhibit a doctrinal rigidity and a discriminatory insider/outsider dynamic. My goal is to join with more than one smaller project-oriented community which only consume small slices of my life. Of course I also have my social community of friends, most of whom are artists, musicians and writers rather than occultists. Somehow these issues don't come up there. -- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org http://www.maroney.org EOF -- (emailed replies may be posted) ------- join the AMT syncretism!!! see http://www.abyss.com/tokus ---------- call: 408/2-666-SLUG!! "sa avidya ya vimuktaye" -- "that which liberates is ignorance"
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