Druidry with John Michael Greer

[@Elfland.]

Very informative, as well as EXTREMELY illuminating. The mental distinctions I had between "city" and "rural" nature were quite definitely in society defined boxes. My mind is absolutely blown & I am going to more deeply explore many of the topics and ideas that were discussed, on a personal level.

[@echoecho3155]

The exchange around 35:00 reminded me of a quote from Gundam Unicorn: _"It's all humanity's doing: indiscriminate development, dropping the colonies and the asteroid. If humanity is the product of nature, that makes all of mankind's waste and poison natural products, too. And even if it's rendered unfit for human habitation, it'll be the result of nature achieving a new balance."_

[@setoste]

These episodes with Greer are fantastic.

[@knighterrant7212]

New JMG drop gonna be LIT 🔥🔥🔥

[@JEKAZOL]

JMG book in the waiting room of the doctors (UK). Imagine my surprise!

[@xaime3802]

The fragment around 41:58. Oh my God, that is something that so many of the academics are too afraid to do, to take the logic all the way to its ultimate conclusion. In fact, many are called hokey or crazy just because they do, like it was with the Daryl J. Bem ESP experiment I believe, where the only thing he did was apply the already existing methodology from the field of psychology to data on ESP. His article got published in Nature, provoked outrage, and caused the entire field of psychology to reconsider it's own methods, so that "such mistakes" would not happen again.

[@marasmiusgoldcrow6746]

Human beings aren't just wicked smart apes as some would have us believe. We are a force of nature.!.

[@mikrophonie5633]

Greer is a druid and I'm a monkey's uncle

[@lgbtqiarights]

this comment is magical

[@AndreiHognogi]

Premieres in 22 days..

[@black_eagle]

I respect this guy's knowledge, but there is something very annoying about his personality. Cloying? Smug? Self-impressed, -amused and -important? The constant "mm-hmm's" and laughing at his own wit? I don't quite have the words for it, but it's an irritating act.

[@inquisitor4635]

I have an uncle that is very much like this. An intelligent, brilliant nerdy type that gives off the same aura. Once you get to know him you discover he is not pathological or malicious, but just very unguarded, open and honest with his intellect in a quirky way.

[@matthiasmuller7677]

"We know next to nothing about actual druids so we just make stuff up because we're to proud to engage in an exiisting religion but too eccentric to just be atheists". I think I'll pass.

[@echoecho3155]

If you read the Druidry Handbook, he explicitly states that the only thing adopted from the ancient druids is more of an assumed guiding ethos and the name. It's a "new" spiritual movement, built haphazardly on a foundation of ancient literature, oral tradition, and modern forgeries. In other words, it's basically like every other religion to some degree, simply younger (though, as another commenter pointed out, it's older than some new religions like Mormonism). I won't disagree that a lot of people are just atheists LARPing, but you encounter that in a lot of orthodox Christian circles as well.

[@matthiasmuller7677]

@@echoecho3155 There is still a difference between someone dabbling in orthodox christianity without really getting it and some boomer creating a religious product for consumption.

[@echoecho3155]

@@matthiasmuller7677 Not really. Half of all Christianity today is feel-good product for boomers, kids, and prisoners, and even more orthodox forms are highly-commercialized. Also, this wasn't created by some boomer in the last 50 years as part of the hippie craze. The Druid Revival has been around since the 18th Century.

[@matthiasmuller7677]

@@echoecho3155 hm I still think there is a difference between for example the endless number of protestant sects on the one hand who all think that they have found the right answers to the one question and then on the other hand the druid guy from whom I get the vibe "There is no real answer so I might as well make something up". Btw by consumption I don't necessarily mean commercialization. I for example sympathize with Orthodoxy but I hesitate to convert because I was born into Catholicism and even though it wouldn't cost me a penny to convert it feels kinda consumeristic to do so. But Orthodoxy itself isn't a product. It is authentically grown tradition. This druidry seems to appropriate a speculative tradition to lend it legitimacy. That makes it a product in my eyes.

[@echoecho3155]

​@@matthiasmuller7677 It is very vague, but that's more because the philosophy is one centered around practice rather than belief, a sentiment common in ancient religions. For example, a Classical Greek could believe the gods were literal beings on Mount Olympus, noncorporeal spirits, metaphors, or even nothing at all, and still practice in the temple cult. Whatever the gods were, it clearly only mattered if rituals were carried out properly. This is because of the belief that Truth manifests in action rather than thought. For example, tea is always a good treatment for a cold (I'm dealing with a cold right now, so this comes to mind). Regardless of whether or not I believe in a physiological explanation or I think that God gave the recipe for tea to Moses to fight infection or elf-magic enchants tea to scare away disease-causing spirits, the tea will work. The act of making and drinking the tea ultimately matters more than the belief behind it. Druidry is very much a philosophy of religious practice rather than a comprehensive religious orthodoxy unto itself. It gives you certain tools, rituals, and ethics that can augment or direct one's spiritual practice, hence why there's Christian druids (like many of the ones who founded the Druid Revival in the first place), neopagan druids, atheists, and everything in between. As for "speculative tradition," the tradition is three-hundred years old at this point, so it's certainly no longer speculative. While those initial revivalists in the 18th Century were just kind of winging it based on a loose assumed ethos, that period has long since passed, and druids have had established orders, rituals, and practice ever since. The early Christian church obviously went through a similar period. Practices and beliefs were very fluid and often based on assumption-you see evidence of this in Paul's epistles, where he often is arbitrating debates on what proper Christian practice should be. The Trinity, an essential concept to modern Christianity, wasn't an absolute part of the tradition until 325, nearly two centuries after the church's foundation.

[@t3649]

Catholic Druidry sounds very interesting