Probably not, but this is how I feel is the effect of a lot of you guys
like BJ and Ed Stamas when you carry on about how everything is an
illusion, including my problems. For me, this world is as real as
anything I feel - and I think carrying on about how We Are All Really
One, and we need to concentrate on our similarities instead of our
differences is just glossing over unpleasantries and trying to solve
problems by ignoring them. I know full well the dangers of getting into
an I'm-a-victim-and-I'm-not-gonna-do-anything funk, but I think telling
another he's doing that can also be easily be used as a brush off to
justify one's real oppression of others.
No, I don't think the world that comes to our senses and responds to our
causations is an illusion. It seems to me that spending billions of
years evolving this complex and interrelated order around us is a lot of
trouble for anyone to go to, just to create an illusion. The order of
the material universe revealed to us by western science is far more
profound and beautiful than any fabrication that any religionists have
presented us. The religion of physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology
is much more likely to describe the divine. Spirit is the things that
are harder to measure that are generated by matter, and spirit in turn
regenerates matter - and neither can exist without the other. (Maybe we
can start a Pantheism thread separate from this gender one.)
What is a relevant Rainbow issue? Well, I fancy we are more than just a
group that gets together to camp in the woods. If that were the case,
then agr should be just a bunch of technical discussions of kitchen
methods and shitter design. But many people claim that we are camping to
achieve other purposes. We claim to be for peace, so I would deduce that
such posts as Ellen's and Thomas's about nuclear disarmament would
certainly be relevant. We say we are for protecting the environment, so
everything that Starfire posts about her actions is also relevant. Some
think that psychedelic drugs aid our spiritual quests, and we are
harassed by the authorities for using them, so Pie Man's stuff is
relevant. And - we say we are feminists, and many sisters complain of
sexual harassment at our gatherings, so I think it is most appropriate
to discuss the frustrations that lead to this. I'll concur that in the
last two weeks this collection of threads has dominated the newsgroup,
but I think it is more a temporary flare up in the fire.
I'm getting a little frustrated that discussions of broad abstractions,
and pick apart flames, have started to replace talking about real
individual experiences and solutions to individual problems. My original
Long Post, Julia's post where she mentioned - among other things -
talking to your tits, and MT Crystal's Golden Road piece are examples of
what I would like to see more of.
- Butterfly Bill
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