After having posted weekly about a lot of topics before starting a blog, I decided to personally translate and repost the 9 months or so as a blog, and I’ve just finished them. So this is the first post post post, as it were, so it seems like an apt time to look at the whole idea of post-, which seems to be a thing now. Being post-something means we feel we’ve worked through the initial form of a movement and found a new perception that’s beyond it.
Post feminism: I’m still very much a feminist, which to my way of thinking means I don’t believe women are inferior to men. But I’m post- the feminism that takes“male” values, norms, and expectations as givens. (Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice and Marilyn Waring’s If Women Counted were 2 early, basic, mainstream-friendly, assumption-busting books.) I’m very much post the unconscious internalization of a paradigm of human society based on competition, hierarchy, control, and self-interest.
The CityTree folks recently wrote about a newer term, post activism. I was never a good activist in the classic sense of going to demonstrations to begin with, so I can’t really call myself a post activist, but I basically fall in line with the idea of striving for a healthy balance of walking, talking, and making sure I’m resourced. I’ve written before (and might again) how I seem to be a morphogenesist, and that seems to be the form my activism (or post activism) takes.
I’ve never heard this one, but I very much identify as post new age. I was there at the very beginning of the new age movement, when it was anything but shallow and commercialized, and I can’t express how exciting it felt, how I waited for New Dimensions radio when it was the only platform exploring these grand new/old ideas bringing mysticism into everyday life, for music that made me feel like I was sitting a foot above the ground, for gathering with folks interested in realities beyond the only civilization I knew. There was so much hope for change. I’m hardly new age anymore, especially when it comes to denial of shadow, emphasis on personal wealth, and lack of intellectual rigor. but I still feel aligned with the spirit of those days..
Most difficult, I might be post-witchcraft. Eventually I’ll have a lot more to say about magic and the craft, but for now, it’s strange that after the great wave of pagan witchcraft in the 90s and 00s that I was such a part of faded, there seems to be a resurgence – and I’m not really into it. I was always drawn to the magic of surprising synchronicities born of aligning one’s life with the sublime natural forces than to spellwork and calculated manifestation. Back in the day, witches were also said to be priestesses, and I’ve always been more priestess than witch. To paraphrase activist Emma Goldman, if we’re not going to sing, dance, and get carried away in the raptures of ecstatic union (maybe not every time, but often!), I don’t want to be part of the circle.
And these days, can’t forget to mention post-zionism. It is progress that it’s become mentionable.
I’m also post- a big chunk of life, which feels way better than anyone led me to believe. So far, it’s way better out here toward elderhood. I think that’s worth knowing.