Jack of Orange Pill left the kind of insightful comment I’d originally hoped for on my piece about occult evangelization, before things got all twisted around into a lot of name-calling. There are many good points to consider in Jack’s comments, but I find this particularly useful as the seed for another discussion:

So if we as a group, as a unified front, the Pagans, the Wiccans, the Psychopaths and the Learyites, the Hippies and the Primitives and the Monastics and all the disparate sides can agree on a few of the fundamental truths, and present that as a unified, stripped down message to the world, is that not for the better?

(Jason had some other good points on my post about spiritual communities that might be worth reading in conjunction with this)

To rephrase Jack’s question a little, I’d ask is it possible for all these various groups of counter-culturalists and alternative spiritual people to come up with something that is a “unified, stripped down message” to present to the world? Sometimes it feels like that’s not even possible thanks to the sheer amount of in-fighting perpetrated by all sides (myself included, of course - I do love to instigate). Is there something that all these different types of people can sit down and agree upon? Is that even something we should approach? An increasingly strong group of voices say yes and they make a lot of good points.

Here’s my problem with this though - trying to be as even-handed as possible. I feel that the creation of a socio-political movement of any kind is necessarily going to be co-opted into the power-plays and posturing that we’re so accustomed to in that area. It’s not that the current people in power are corrupt. It’s simply that power corrupts. I personally don’t believe there’s any way to avoid this. I could be mistaken, and I’m sure people could come up with many satisfying examples of leaders who proved otherwise. For every positive example you could produce though, I could produce ten thousand negative examples. Those are not good odds. But does that mean such a thing shouldn’t even be attempted? Of course not, it’s just the big danger that I see.

Beyond just being corrupted by power though, this kind of thinking to me says that there is a solution within the system. If we just figure out a way to play the liberal/conservative game a little bit better, if we just give it the right amount of juice…. I just see this as a dead-end. I could be totally wrong, but that’s what I see. Playing “their” game turns you into one of two possible things: a winner or a loser. Either way, you’re in *their* game, playing by their rules. And since they own it and designed it, you’re either going to lose, or you’re going to be engineered into a position that’s useful for them. Your “victory” will be merely you being used as a pawn in a larger game you weren’t even following.

What I’m saying is why should we even need to play their game at all? Why should we follow their rule and power structures and try to work our way up inside of them? Why don’t we just make our own alongside them, outside them, interspersed amongst them? Do it well enough and set a good enough example, and you’re going to gradually draw people out of the old crappy game into your fun new game. It’s like building a huge awesome playground next to a broken old swingset. If you make it good enough, everybody’s going to want to be a part of it. Especially if they see you having a lot of fun. The old swingset will rust and fall into ruin. The game of just trying to acquire power in the old system though is just to sit there on the old swingset and pretend to be happy because it’s finally your turn to go for a ride - and you try to prevent anybody else from sitting in the power seat. It’s a losing game and it’s not as fun.

My third argument would be why do we need to create a unified message or a unified front? Won’t that just make it easier for the Empire to spot us and stomp us down into dust? If we stay small and loose we offer an assymetrical challenge that they don’t know how to react against politically or otherwise. The only way in fact that they could match us is by breaking themselves down into small units and trying to become us. Many people talk about how counter-intelligence programs of the 60’s and 70’s were this big awful boogeyman. COINTELPRO, and Operation CHAOS were supposed to be this horrible thing where the g-men dressed up like us and tried to set us up. But if there’s one thing our side knows much better is that you become what you pretend to be. If a government agent dresses up and pretends to be a chaos magickian and befriends chaos magickians and discusses chaos magick, guess what! He’s become us! We’ve turned them into a mirror of us, rather than us becoming a mirror of them. To fight the Empire is to become infected by it’s insanity. But to trick the Empire into fighting us on our terms forces it to become infected by our sanity and our humanity.

What’s better, us becoming insane or them becoming sane, open-minded and awash in our love and energy? Forget about disinformation agents plaguing us with lies. Welcome them as magicians and mythographers of the new era. Forget about undercover cops posing as protestors. Look into their eyes, buy them a drink, get stoned and watch the Matrix together.

There’s only one way any of us stand a chance and it’s not by becoming the bad guys, but by turning the bad guys into us. At the end of the day, a platform of ideas do not give us power in the real world. Treasuring and sharing human values on the other hand will reap immeasurable rewards. Sitting down and being friends with somebody, sharing a meal and a drink and a conversation cuts across all cultural groups and ideological divisions. Not even the most hardened evil reptilian is able to resist these most valuable and basic of all tactics for social change.