PBP12: K is also for Kin
Recently, Devo posted How Can You Support Community When You Suffer From Misanthropy?, and it got us talking in chat. Chabas said:
“If I fix the world around me, and everyone does their bit for that, the Kemetic community such as it is will follow as a natural consequence of, y’know, the world running better. If I put my energy into fixing the Kemetic community, it’ll do jack-shit for the world as a whole.”
Two very distinct viewpoints, both of which got me thinking.
I have no kin, in the religious sense. My practice sidles up alongside the practices of others in some places, but the shit that I am doing (or trying to do, anyway) is not the same shit anyone else is doing. I am a large splotchy-lump-that-used-to-be-a-circle that venn diagrams all over the place- some cover bigger chunks than others. But in the end it’s just me, and a community cannot consist of only one.
I get my religious-community-fix at The Cauldron. TC has been my home for a while, now. (Next month it will be seven years!) There are a lot of people there whom I consider good friends; there a lot of intelligent people whose opinions I respect on a wide variety of subjects.
Outside of TC… I love my family, but I am not exceptionally close with anyone besides my parents. I have a few friends I talk to sporadically, but only online. By my own choices, I have cut ties with all of my former meat-space friends. I will make new friends eventually- after I move- but the reality of the fact is I have very-little-to-no interaction with other communities, or the world at large. I live in a bubble.
So when I am faced with the desire to help make the world a better place… what does that mean in practice? Is change more effective in a ripple-out method (improve the small communities I am a part of, and hope the change spreads without petering out) or trickle-down method (improve the world at large, and hope that there’s enough momentum to work down)? While I believe that everyone can make a change, I am also a realist- I am a single person. I will not change the world. I can try- and that effort is not lessened by a diminished audience/effective zone- but my name will not be remembered.
Do you have religious kin? How do you think change is most effective?
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The problem is, my post wasn’t about fixing the world at large vs. fixing the pagan world, or even about fixing the Kemetic world. It was about broadening horizons, and being civil to those who might come to your ‘island’ and say hi. That’s really all I was getting at. Less walls, more communication. I chose the reference the pagan and Kemetic communities because they are what I know most about.
In regards to the questions posed by this post, I have a very very small group of people that I can say I am ‘kin’ to in a religious context. Change, in my opinion could or should be worked through both angles. Bettering the communities you are a part of (say, online), and also trying to better the world around you, you know- in real life. If I see the potential to help someone I meet- online or offline, I always try to help. Why? Because that’s what I was taught to do- religion, for me, has nothing to do with it
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Devo recently posted..How Can You Support Community When You Suffer From Misanthropy?