Workplace Spirituality and Witchcraft
<obli> hi otter
<@Otter> hey obli
<@Otter> how's it going ethere?
<obli> its raining out of doors
<obli> :P
<obli> schools finish
<obli> ed
<obli> just tendralling
<@Otter> tendralling?
<obli> preparing things for next year
* Otter nods
<@Otter> when does it start up again?
<@Otter> what is the typical academic year down there anyway?
<@Otter> you're not following the northern hemisphere ag cycle for that, are you?
<@Otter> school sept - may, off for the summer to work the farm?
<obli> mid feb to mid nov
<obli> but yeah i'm done with school
<obli> for now
<@Otter> okay, good
<@Otter> haven't slain the beast, though, right?
<@Otter> how many more years will it take to drive a stake through its heart?
<obli> what beast
<@Otter> school
<@Otter> keeps coming back
<obli> i'll do my masters eventually
<obli> feels pretty false to just jump into it right away
<obli> without a least a couple of years of independant art practice
<@Otter> your masters?
* Otter nods
<@Otter> what do you have left on your current degree?
<@Otter> i worry about people who do eight years of college without actually trying whatever its they're studying for
<@Otter> would be a bitch to get through all that and discover you hate the work
<obli> a masters is fairly neccicarry to be taken seriously in the art world
<@Otter> which shows how well the art world understand art :-Þ
<obli> its more about the gallery system
* Otter nods
<@Otter> i understand
<@Otter> the quality of art can't be objectively determined
<obli> i don't know if i even care about the art world
<obli> thats why i'm exploring a few avanues at once
<@Otter> and successful artists make art, not art galleries
<@Otter> so people have to have a way to determine what they can claim is good without looking like idiots
<@Otter> what else are you exploring?
<@Otter> your pagan research is pretty interesting
<obli> galleries manage artists carreers
<obli> the small press stuff
<@Otter> i like your goal of making original materials available to people who aren't able to travel all over the world to beg access to obscure collections
<obli> putting out feelers to publications looking for illustrators
<obli> weighing up a couple of proposals
<@Otter> could probably make a living at that
<obli> proposals for gallery shows
<obli> videogame stuff
<obli> and
<@Otter> Wulf's in the habit of sending his Blender stuff to the authors of the books that inspire it
<@Otter> i wonder if you coudl drum up any business that way
<obli> some work dealing with workplace spirituality
<obli> the "movement"
<@Otter> games are getting pretty h uge these days
<@Otter> the workplace spirituality movement?
<@Otter> i didn't realize there was one
<@Otter> brb
<obli> it was (at first) an offshoot of the "positive thinking" movement
<obli> capitalism attempting to compensate for the death of god
<obli> prosperity gospel without jesus
<obli> the human potential movement had a big influence on it in the 80's
<obli> "team building exersises"
<obli> "motivational speakers"
<obli> oprah
<obli> that kind of shit
<@Otter> b
<@Otter> land of bilk and money
<obli> have you been to a mcdonalds lately?
<@Otter> why?
<@Otter> no
<obli> at the mcdonalds in town here
<obli> theres a whole wall of
<obli> workplace spirituality quotes
<obli> "whether you think you can or think you can't
<obli> you're right"
<obli> etc
* Otter nods
<obli> and a tv in the middle
<obli> playing middle of the road pop music station
<obli> they use this as a venue to sell people toys of transformers, barbies and hotel transyvanias
<obli> this is what middle of the road looks like
<obli> this in innocuous and inoffencive
<obli> is
<@Otter> i quit eating there because of the food
<@Otter> sounds offensively inoffensive
<obli> yeah the food is shit
<obli> its open 24 hours
<obli> the chicken wraps are tollerable
<obli> but yes
<obli> my proposal centres around recreating this wall
<obli> in a gallery space
<obli> but
<obli> using material from a couple of old scrapbooks kept by dunedin bussinesses in the 1920s
<obli> that are chock full of early workplace spirituality shit
<obli> motivational quotes
<obli> guides and advice for "salesmanship"
<obli> ur workplace spirituality
<obli> before it became an industry
<obli> which warped it into the ubiquitious pap to be consumed by everyone...
<obli> don't get me wrong
<obli> it was always shit
<obli> like dumb shit
<obli> that told bussinessmen what they wanted to hear
<obli> but
<obli> it had the intention of improving bussiness
<obli> now it has the intention of selling workplace spirituality
<obli> so it's become this weird thing, that no body wanted or intended, but since it exists, and has no antibodies to prevent itself being wholey engulfed by capitalism
<obli> it's become a product to be sold, as widely as possible
<obli> i don't know if anything else like it exists, in the western world
<obli> though i'm sure there are parallels with plenty of things that sprung up during the soviet union
<@Otter> other than causing motivational quotes to appear, what effect does it have?
<obli> it's a spiritual system
<obli> designed to make people complaicent within the capitalist system
<obli> work hard and you will be rewarded, all those people getting fucked over? it's their own fault, not working hard enough
<@Otter> arbeit macht frei
<obli> also unions are evil, they are engines of lazyness
<obli> "the man occupied with hauling the oars doesn't have time to rock the boat"
<obli> thats in one of those scrap books
<@Otter> there is some truth to that, lol
<@Otter> that one reminds me of the tao te ching
<@Otter> how does workplace spirituality feel about feminism?
<obli> this is why i am deeply skeptical of right hand traditions
<obli> witchcraft is the politically suppressed aspects of religion
<@Otter> what do you mean by right hand?
<obli> those religious groups that follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention
<@Otter> so any spiritual/religoius system that tells you what to do?
<obli> thats an over simplification
<obli> there are degrees of being told what to do
<obli> theoreticly there could be a religious system whose entire tenant was don't kill people with a sword
<obli> technically it's telling you what to do
<obli> but i don't think in and of it's self it would qualify as rhp to many people
<@Otter> rhp/lph as i've encountered it is a false dichotomy
<obli> i imagine it is to most lhp people
<obli> no one is going out of thier way to be as chaotic as possible
<obli> doesn't take much to not be rhp though
<obli> being a free thinker is usually more than enough
<@Otter> there are degrees of following ethical codes and social convention
<@Otter> how much do you need to be rhp in your understanding?
<@Otter> so all free thinkers, or nearly all of them, are lhp?
<obli> there are people who claim that the rhp seeks the disolution of the ego, where as the lhp seeks it's fulfilment
<@Otter> or is there an ambidextrous middle ground?
* Otter nods
<@Otter> i've met several of those
<@Otter> they insist i want to become my gods
<obli> i think they are on to something with regards to the right hand path
<obli> as in
<obli> it's about transendance
<@Otter> transcendence is another tricky one
<obli> kind of moot if you don't believe in an afterlife
<@Otter> generally, paganism isn't transcendent because it the divine isn't seen as something outside of everyday reality
<@Otter> -it
<obli> yeah
<@Otter> but that doesn't mean it lacks divinity
<obli> yeah
posted by Classical Polytheist @ 07:10
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