Progress on that ...

One new person has signed up for one of the two meetups, and
has RSVP-ed, and so apparently is interested. I've already gone
on record as requiring a quorum of six to hold a Meetup.
Otherwise, the thing would have that uncomfortable "blind date"
feel to it. I'll give it a few months, and if I can get the
siz RSVPs will be delighted to hold the Meetup, but I'm
still not optimistic. Not that this should keep anybody from
signing up and RSVP-ing, as both are free.

http://www.Meetup.com/

If things don't work out, I'll probably just dump the Recon
meetup and replace the Pagan meetup with a Conservative Pagan
meetup. It's a question of what it is that people are interested
in, and willing to put an effort out for. While other Pagan
lists are just lingering, in some cases looking very much
like something waiting to be put out of its misery, the
Conservative Pagan lists are slowly but surely taking off.

Personally, I'm not completely surprised. Political Correctness
primarily worked by terrorizing people into silence, so a lot
of the lurking and slacking we see now may be little more than
a conditioned response in a Liberal-domainated community.
Conservatives, however, had the good sense to reject the
confrontationally paranoid PC ethic from Day One, and to reject
it firmly. This has made for a much more warm and comfortable
social atmosphere, one that encourages spontaneity.

Also, while Liberalism seems to encourage the true believer
to make endless demands of others, often with little concern
as to how reasonable those demands are, Conservativism
has encouraged more of a spirit of self-reliance. The
difference is that while a liberal will show up to a
participatory event and wonder why all of the work hasn't
already been done (by whom is never made clear), the
conservative knows that work gets done only because somebody
does it, and "if not by me, then by who" he asks himself,
just diving in and doing what needs to be done, and there is
nothing more participatory than a mailing list.

It's the difference between a political view that would turn
us all into dependents of the state, vs. one that wants
children to really grow up to be adults, and the expectations
such views create as to what is to be expected out of the
individual by others, and by himself. I think that this
is where the real future of Paganism is to be found. I'll
keep this list up for a possible future time when an
expanding Conservative Pagan community, looking for new
places to meet online, discovers it.


Antistoicus