@Leucrotta also I was gonna write a followup post about how raver spirituality becoming a thing is a sign that there's a huge spiritual vacuum in our culture as a whole.

@starkatt @Leucrotta I can't say that I'm surprised. Most of the "gods" that came before have been found to be outdated, unwanted, or just plain inadequate to the needs of reality in the 21st century. Probably why a lot of systems I see now are not mono-thiestic. it seems to me that reality is too complex, and faith is too fragile to just have one god propping the whole of it up. overlap and load-balancing is needed.

@starkatt @Leucrotta though that may just be my bias for engineer-style thinking.

@kelseyhusky @starkatt I have opinions about this one if you want?

@Leucrotta @kelseyhusky I'd like to hear 'em

@starkatt @Leucrotta Same!

@kelseyhusky @starkatt Okay! So to me, monotheism really answers BIG abstract philosophical stuff with an overarching, encompassing concept of divinity.

But on the ground that can play out as remote, and even sterile, and most religions answer this with polytheism or pantheism; monotheists get saints or tathagatas, polytheists get fulltrui, "heads." Something easier to wrap your head around and work with unless you're a specific type of mystic.

@starkatt Okay so Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a ton of stuff; "Dancing in the Streets" is simply my favorite of her books. It's basically about how ecstatic festivals - and the invariable way the establishment tries to cash in on them - are a feature of humanity through the ages. She's *dismissive* of raves, weirdly enough (she's a Boomer, insert especially foul Russian swears here) but I feel they map to that experience *exactly*.

@starkatt I think that humanity NEEDS paganism in the sense of staying up late dancing, wearing costumes, and getting hopped up on whatever happens to be most available. Seeing a divinity moving through the universe - as interpreted by the individual who might simply be a very humanist atheist - seems to be innate to this experience of being part of a divine whole.

@Leucrotta I very much agree.

@starkatt With sterility, none of the big religions are antithetical to ecstatic experience (we have a holiday where you're SUPPOSED to dance with the Torah; we have a holiday where you're supposed to laugh, wear costumes and get hopped up), but all of them play out so BADLY in the USA - and it doesn't help that Christianity's become intrinsically linked to political repression. I'm reminded of what King says about young people leaving the church in droves, in Letter from a Birmingham Jail.