Examples From Some Favorite Blogs

[deketemoisont]

The Archdruid Report
Ecosophia
The Scholar's Stage
LessWrong
Slate Star Codex
Duncan Sabien
The Last Psychiatrist
sam[]zdat
Hotel Concierge
David Chapman's sites
Dan Wang

(What was the last item in this list now has another post to itself: https://deketemoisont.dreamwidth.org/1929.html .)

Comments

[deketemoisont]

Not asking for detail, just a bit of chronology: you had a religious experience before looking into magic, then were introduced to JMG and took seriously first the magic and later the peak oil hypothesis? Seems we're now at "energy-wise we're fucked, but we might still figure out this spiritus/awen/önd [I couldn't find an Anglo-Saxon term] thing".

"On the other hand, I worry about cases like "I dunno, bro, but if you push this pedal and turn this key, it makes a loud sound!" being all we have of internal combustion engines." - stuff I find depressing shouldn't be this funny. :)

[jprussell]

Not asking for detail, just a bit of chronology: you had a religious experience before looking into magic, then were introduced to JMG and took seriously first the magic and later the peak oil hypothesis? Seems we're now at "energy-wise we're fucked, but we might still figure out this spiritus/awen/önd [I couldn't find an Anglo-Saxon term] thing".

No worries! My timeline went something like this:
- ~1989-1998: Raised generic American Protestant Christian
- 1998-2001: Open to Wiccan stuff because of my first girlfriend was a witch
- 2003-2007: Met smart Christian friends in college, gave Christianity a shot as a religion I took seriously
- 2007-2013: Kinda lazily considered myself a Christian
- ~2013-2018: Increasingly atheistic agnostic
- ~2016-2017: A friend of mine introduces me to JMG explicitly from the political/energetic standpoint, but mentions the magic stuff, which I find far more interesting
- ~2017-2021: I get interested in the Runes and start studying them from the standpoint of "this is all a way of accessing my subconscious, nothing non-material happening here
- 2021: I read World Full of Gods, decide to give daily magical practice and "actually believing Gods are separate beings" a shot, and have a weird, strong religious experience - I get hooked
- 2021 - 2023: Following along with the practices laid out in Druid Magic Handbook, The Dolmen Arch, and eventually "The Modern Order of Essenes".

What's maybe not crystal clear above is that I started some form of "magical" practice before I learned about JMG, found out about him, which pressed me to take the religious side of things more seriously, which has major results, and that then kept going, and eventually, I was like "if JMG is right about this spirit stuff, maybe the idea that progress is a myth and energy is more finite than any of us want" is a cogent one.

"On the other hand, I worry about cases like "I dunno, bro, but if you push this pedal and turn this key, it makes a loud sound!" being all we have of internal combustion engines." - stuff I find depressing shouldn't be this funny. :)

Heh, well, thanks - since finding Postcards from Barsoom on substack, thanks to a comment on Ecosophia as well as spending most of the last week reading the archives of The Last Psychiatrist, I've been thinking about the role of humor in otherwise "serious" political/societal thinking discourse. I'm pretty sure that the answer is "it matters way more than any of us think", whatever else it is.

Cheers,
Jeff