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Previous essays in this series
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I’ve recently had my DNA analyzed through 23andMe (a birthday gift) and the most fascinating thing has turned out to be my maternal haplogroup. The mtDNA is found in the mitochondria, and is not subject to recombination at sexual reproduction, and a copy (which can mutate occasionally, which is how subclades and new haplotypes begin) is passed down from mothers to their children, but only daughters pass that same sequence on to the next generation, so it’s a direct matrilineal lineage back to a common ancestor, who was an ancient woman, and my great-something grandmother. In the case of my haplogroup, she was the woman who started the haplotype “U” fairly soon after humans left Africa, and her lineage goes back to the earliest common female ancestor of all humans, in Africa, (called "Mitochondrial Eve") who started the haplotype “L”.
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My first installment demonstrated societies can be understood as ecosystems. When we think of society as an ecosystem, one question moves to the front: people are organisms, but where are the others? Ecosystems are not monocultures. A cultural ecology obviously depends on people and exists at the level of consciousness, so where are the other organisms?
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Memes
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Jarume Uwujare argues cultures should relate as equals when they take something from another, and contribute something to the other in return. I think we all can agree people can and should relate as equals, but I argue this is a confused way to think about cultures.
If I have what you want, we are not equal unless you also have what I want, and want it with about the same intensity. We can easily have a formal equality to make an exchange or not, but this equality is modified, sometimes drastically, by the intensity each of us has to make the exchange. The more desperate one party is compared to the other, the greater an important kind of inequality.
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Some people within the Pagan community object to instances of what they consider “cultural appropriation.” Smudging with sage, seeking a power animal, celebrating Day of the Dead, is somehow stealing. To my mind they are confused about culture, confused about appropriation, and even confused about what it is to be a human being. In their confusion they attack other Pagans, creating a problem for all of us.
No NeoPagans practice traditions with an unbroken connection to pre-Christian times. Almost all old Pagan traditions have been mostly oral, and the core of those teachings have been lost. When once Pagan practices have survived, their interpretation will have changed, as Sabina Magliocco has described in rural Italy.
Full Title: Social Media's Centralization of Online Dialogue Hurts Pagan Culture
What if wildly witchy articles no longer existed? Imagine if only corporate media "Pagan" blogs were available, as milquetoast as the fake Christianity that dominates media to suppress robust, responsible Christians? Paganism tamed!
The more corporate social media centralizes online dialogue, the closer we move to deterioration of Pagan culture and extinction of meaningful online Pagan conversation.
I love social media, but it could devastate Pagan innovation and culture unless we do something. Here's why:
