My next way


This philosophy stuff is fun

We're going to meander a bit again. You don't mind if we walk while we do it, do you? It's such a nice day out. Fifty-two and sunshiney with just a bit of cloud cover. And those birds are really getting with the program.

In my short seminary days, I got the idea of an ur-faith, a religion that all other religions drew from. As it turned out, I was approaching the issue from the wrong end, but it was a fascinating exploration. How could this have influenced that, or could theotherthing influence both?

I groove on philosophy. Good thing, because it's a survival tactic for me.

Anyway, I kept building this framework in my head, Sometimes I'd have to rip it apart and start again. Great fun. I could spend hours doing that.

And then it was time for the note on the original version of Technopagan Yearnings. You can still see a version of that note at the NeoWayland NetWork page. There are three sentences that we're concerned with here. Since I'm the one who wrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it again, for our purposes here I'm combining those sentences into a new paragraph. And goosing the capitalization a bit.

I'm a technopagan. I seek the Divine in Human, Nature, and Machine. I want to find the synthesis between mankind and ideas, between faith and technology, between what was and what will be.

It was an important idea, but I didn't have it worked out all the way. I still don't. But I've never stopped thinking about it.

You see, I think our technology is going to change our lives. But not the way you think.

Let me ask you a question.

If much of your life was spent in a virtual environment, would you need a house or an apartment?

That's one way things could change.

When nanotechnology becomes practical almost overnight, the impossible will become possible.

Others have called it a Convergence.

I don't.

I see it as a Manifestation.

And even the Manifestation is not the end result, but just opening another door.

Something unforeseen. So it was time that someone started to think about it.

But we're a symbolic race (A is A, A is not B), we manipulate symbols to manipulate our thoughts. We manipulate symbols to manipulate our perceptions. We manipulate symbols to manipulate our reality.

I needed a symbol, an unpronounceable syllable that would sum up my understanding and speculation.

And that is when it sat for a while. Although I still thought about it.

My understanding changed. Especially as I considered that the real difference between witchcraft and ceremonial magick was the price tag. The items and tools that a witch used were the items around him or her.

A technopagan would carry tools not because they were technology (working or not), but because they were tools that needed to be close at hand.

OF COURSE this fed into my tool fetish. We're talking about me after all.

I was doing some zen studies at the time.

Then I decided that I needed a domain name from my gadget and design blog. Teknologi.com was taken by a German company. Technopagan.com was taken.

But teknopagan.com wasn't taken. I liked the implications of technology, knowledge, and practical Paganism.

And it could be my work. Hmmm, I thought, tek was interesting. But I didn't want any confusion with the William Shatner novels. This wasn't fiction, it was a Way.

But tekn, with the Pagan silent and invisible, that could work.

That DID work.

And that was my unpronounceable syllable, the symbol for the Way I was thinking of.


Posted: Thu - March 11, 2010 at 10:29 AM
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