Naturalistic Paganism
Margot Adler Day
Today is Margot Adler Day. Margot Adler (April 16, 1946 – July 28, 2014) was a Wiccan priestess, NPR correspondent, and author of Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America. She was one of the most influential people in the formation of contemporary Neo-Paganism. Read More
Mid-Month Meditation: Julia Roberts as Mother Nature
We encourage our readers to use these Mid-Month Meditations as an opportunity to take a short break from everything else. Rather than treating these posts the way you would any other post, set aside 10 minutes someplace quiet and semi-private to have an experience. Take a minute to relax first. After watching the video below, take a few minutes to let the experience sink in. If it feels right, leave a comment.
“The Declaration of Interdependence” by David Suzuki and Tara Cullis
The Declaration of Interdependence was written by David Suzuki, Tara Cullis, Raffi Cavoukian, Wade Davis and Guujaaw back in 1992 for the United Nations’ Earth Summit. It was published last year, accompanied with traditional Haida style art by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. As a spirited call to action and “pledge to Planet Earth”, we created this video to show just how relevant this text still is today. We’re thrilled to have David Suzuki and his wife Tara Cullis, two of the foremost leaders of the environmental movement featured in this very special Thought Bubble. Read More
“How Deep Is Your Ecology?” by John Halstead
We continue with our April theme, Nature, with a discussion of “Deep Ecology”.
What is Deep Ecology?
In 1972, Arne Naess coined the term “deep ecology” to contrast with “shallow” environmentalism. At the core of deep ecology is the idea that nature is sacred, meaning it has intrinsic value apart from its usefulness to human beings. The destruction of the environment is thus perceived as a desecration (literally a de-sacred-ing). In contrast, “shallow” environmentalism is concerned only with the effects of environmental devastation on human beings. Shallow environmentalism seeks to remedy the symptoms of ecological collapse without the transformation, or even the consciousness, of the “deep-seeded” cultural assumptions that gave rise to the collapse. Read More
“Interstellar and the Spaceflight Zeitgeist” by Ben Sibelman
This essay was originally published at the Solseed blog.
Space Flight and Hollywood’s Pessimism
2013 was the Year of the Space Blockbuster. You’d think all those big-budget films featuring space travel and colonization ought to have thrilled people like us who believe in those goals, but the pessimistic tone of most of those movies rather undercuts their value from that perspective. Oblivion and After Earth portray the aftermath of planetary disasters that wiped out civilization on our home planet, while Ender’s Game, like 2009’s Avatar, describes a human spacefleet bent on the destruction of someone else’s homeworld. In Elysium, the eponymous space colony serves as a means for the super-rich to set themselves apart from an overpopulated, impoverished Earth sorely in need of a new Occupy movement. Gravity dramatizes an all-too-realistic space-debris catastrophe that wipes out everything we’ve built in low Earth orbit. The indie film Europa Report tells an inspiring tale of scientific discovery, but like Gravity, it also focuses on the deadly dangers of space travel. Even Star Trek, the venerable utopian franchise, was taken Into Darkness, with a Starfleet admiral trying to lie us into war with the Klingons and a starship crashing into San Francisco. Read More
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Pagan Coming Out Day – May 2nd
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