Oui! Si! Da! Ja! Yes!
Any way you scream it, one group hopes you'll be having an orgasm in the name of world peace this Friday at 6:08 GMT.
At the exact moment of the winter solstice, the world is urged to get busy at the second annual Global Orgasm for World Peace.
What better way to find a solution to a problem than by ignoring the problem and making yourself feel better about it? Feel bad about flying around in that private jet? No problem, just pay to offset your pollution and keep flying! Want to stop the various global conflicts, from Iraq to Burma to Darfur? Just screw your neighbor at this precise time. The "mental and spirtual energy" from that act will cause the levels of "violence, hatred and fear around the world" to reduce.
Magical thinking at its finest.
1 comments:
I'm going to give this bloggage (and the great linked rant endorsing Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, one of my favorites) a 93% of a hell yeah.
I'm mostly a rationalist. I have a hardcore engineering geekery side to my family, but there's also this mystic poetic streak. End result: for a long time I had a burning demystify to reverse engineer mysticism and magic in all their forms.
When I was in my early 20s I had this boyfriend who was an anthro student doing his paper on weird new age beliefs, so while hanging out with him I got hardcore exposure to most of it: UFO nuts, conspiracyholics, neopagans, ceremonial magicians, tantric yogis, you name it.
I think that there is a tiny part of it that is "magic" for all intents and purposes. Intuitive flashes like "my friend is going to call in the next five minutes" -- and they do. Synchronicities. Astrology? Well, it's been around for a couple of thousand years so it's got some longevity, and while most of the modern stuff is pure narcissistic drivel, the kind of astrology practiced back in the days when you'd be drawn and quartered if you did a bad job of calling a battle outcome has something that seems to work behind it, for the same reason that a song sounds better when musicians are all playing on the beat.
There's are yoga exercises that involve meditating while under the influence of sensory stimuli. It's similar to what goes on in western religion when you are asked to contemplate some abstract philosophical concept while surrounded by incense, music, people acting formally and glorious architecture. A certain cult of Tibetans took a more sex, drugs and rock and roll approach, and Aleister Crowley introduced that to the Victorian drawing room magicians. The basic idea is that if you focus on something while indulging in pleasurable brain chemical inducing activity like getting high or having sex (or listening to a cathedral choir), the notion will imbed itself in your subconscious rather than being shrugged off like most information we receive through our eyes.
It works, for the same reason that cognitive behavioral therapy works, or that The Secret book currently being plugged by Oprah, about getting what you want through positive thinking. You are training yourself to have certain thoughts induce pleasurable brain activity. In theory, people who engage in this peace exercise are making their brain pleasure centers light up at the thought of peace so that they'll be aware of it even when not consciously focused on it, and as such will attract others who are focused on it.
In practice, though, it sounds like more baby boomerish narcissistic wanking, literally, and I think people could do a better job of promoting peace by INTERACTING PEACEFULLY WITH OTHER HUMANS and by MAKING AN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT FILLED WITH PEOPLE OTHERS ACTUALLY WANT TO HANG OUT WITH RATHER THAN SELF-ABSORBED WHINEY LECHEROUS ASSHATS rather than going off by themselves and getting hedonistic.
Post a Comment