 |
PM |  | |
Quote | | |
Reply | | |
Full Topic | |
| Joined: | Sep 22nd, 2008 |
| Location: | Europe |
| Posts: | 291 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
I haven't contributed for quite a while, my interests now push me towards research on activism. I'm coming from a 2nd world country so as much as I'd like to, we cannot do activism here the way it's done in 1st w. countries. There's a huge pressure for opportunism and emigration, or just for "getting up" in my society. During my uni studies as I learned about colonial history and its posterity, (neoliberalism, human trafficking..), I started slowly doubting the spiritualist "mission."
What is lacking in ITC, I think, and maybe this would invalidate (/transform/expand?) the whole enterprise, is a historical awareness and current economic transnationalism awareness: outsourcing/offshoring, the contractual exploitation of countries with less infrastructure, U.S. military presence (~300 offshore military bases), etc..
Because: it seems to be that this "spiritualist endeavor," or this category we call "ITC" is somewhat still locked in a 19th century nationalism. If you're in the U.S., go to a cemetery, you get English voices.. in Germany you get German voices. The hardest is to find the exception... My point is, to point out this nation-bias which hides a social class bias: a vast majority on this planet have no way to get in touch with what we loosely define as "spirituality." And their poverty is our riches. We'd like to get closer to heavens, but they are paying the cost.
So here are few sources:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/equiano1/summary.html
("early" African society was very stratified, they had slaves and they sold their kind for the whites. There wasn't any "takeover," colonialism was/is a business where only the leaders of an exploited country profit, as well as the exploiters.)
A more recent phenomenon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdLf4fihP78
(I don't agree with the style/manner of his presentation - I guess American mindset avoids mourning or melancholic topics so it has to be "sadlirious")
http://www.ecouterre.com/reality-show-sends-fashion-bloggers-to-work-in-cambodian-sweatshop/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ScG9TspWB0
David Brooks: The Social Animal (talks about psych experiments/fieldwork on working class people's mental health, behavior, psych-environmental toxicity.
From this wider perspective, ITC seems, with a U.S. base seems to be a form of franchising. Yesterday I've read about Hugh Hefner's death, it turns out Playboy has had "charters" in 19 other countries. But can you apply that mindset to something that was originally came from Germany/Luxembourg. Ofc, the debate is on, since there was the Spiritual Telegraph journal, Fox sisters, the Ouija board's planchette pointer was originally a French invention so with industrialism they had to add a technological basis to mediumship. But sometimes I wonder if there isn't any political undercurrent to into which soil is the flag of ITC jabbed. After all, every 1st world nation comes up with more human rights, more amenities for their people to feel more dignified, have a reason to keep their birth-given national identity.
That's my 5 cents.
Last edited on Sep 29th, 2017 08:43 AM by neokortex_simulacrum