Dichotomies of Direction
Nov. 19th, 2011 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiWhen CMA (The Council of Magickal Artss) bought their land over a decade ago they had a rough time which turned into roughly three year cycles of drama. No one expected this, and it mystified a lot of people. The group was warned beforehand that buying property would change the organization, and this flashed me back to a meeting of the local SCA barony in 1989 where the well travelled Rolf the Red told the assembled folks that investing in land would change everything.
I got a clear explanation of this when riding down to a CMA event with a friend of mine and her then boyfriend, Dug Credit. (RIP) He explained it this way:
CMA was now made up of two groups. The older group was the people who went to events for the festival, and going and having a good time was the main reason why they were there. He called these people Festives. They were interested in the non-physical property of CMA.
The other group were the people interested in the stewardship of the land over other considerations. He called these people Landies, and they were concerned with the physical property of the organization as their prime focus.
These two groups didn't have much common ground, and the needs of running a camp and dealing with the spiritual and mental aspects of the event were different things and required different foci. Of course neither could survive without the other, though the FEstives had an advantage in that department, as CMA started out as an organization that rented space so it could survive as such, while without someone showing up to camp at the festivals the Landies would be without both land and festival. Still, something of a symbiosis was what would stabilize the situation, and for a while it didn't happen, resulting in the big blow up of 2003.
I thought after this discussion what a nice bullet the Barony of the Steppes dodged by choosing to hold their main event in Canton instead of looking to buy land.
But you might say, "Nyyki, you're not going to CMA events anymore, so why is this coming up?" Well, it's coming up because of things said to me by folks involved with Occupy.
I know people involved with Occupy on both coasts. And anyone paying attention to the news has probably heard that a lot of camps have been cleared out this week. There are folks who were camping who felt that was the core of the movement, while others felt it was just one small part of the big picture, and the political action and pointing out the inequities of our current system was the big deal. Some of the folks I've talked with felt the camps hindered the movement more than helped it. So you have two groups, one focused on physical spaces and the other focused on the conceptual goals. Sound familiar?
I have my own opinion about what the true value of Occupy is, but I don't want to get into a long discussion about the movement's value and relevance. But it has gotten me to start thinking about Dug's idea as something that covers more than just one organization, and that it might be something common to all philosophical entities that also have the need to have a physical presence somewhere. (When I was involved in running a pagan church this never came up, because we were so focused on keeping he doors open we never got to the point where the message could conflict with that)
I'd be interested in hearing how other types of groups handle it, like Renaissance Faires, recreation camps tied to a particular philosophy, etc. I'm wondering how far this spreads. Does it flow outside groups made up of a high percentage of Creative/Intuitive folks?
I got a clear explanation of this when riding down to a CMA event with a friend of mine and her then boyfriend, Dug Credit. (RIP) He explained it this way:
CMA was now made up of two groups. The older group was the people who went to events for the festival, and going and having a good time was the main reason why they were there. He called these people Festives. They were interested in the non-physical property of CMA.
The other group were the people interested in the stewardship of the land over other considerations. He called these people Landies, and they were concerned with the physical property of the organization as their prime focus.
These two groups didn't have much common ground, and the needs of running a camp and dealing with the spiritual and mental aspects of the event were different things and required different foci. Of course neither could survive without the other, though the FEstives had an advantage in that department, as CMA started out as an organization that rented space so it could survive as such, while without someone showing up to camp at the festivals the Landies would be without both land and festival. Still, something of a symbiosis was what would stabilize the situation, and for a while it didn't happen, resulting in the big blow up of 2003.
I thought after this discussion what a nice bullet the Barony of the Steppes dodged by choosing to hold their main event in Canton instead of looking to buy land.
But you might say, "Nyyki, you're not going to CMA events anymore, so why is this coming up?" Well, it's coming up because of things said to me by folks involved with Occupy.
I know people involved with Occupy on both coasts. And anyone paying attention to the news has probably heard that a lot of camps have been cleared out this week. There are folks who were camping who felt that was the core of the movement, while others felt it was just one small part of the big picture, and the political action and pointing out the inequities of our current system was the big deal. Some of the folks I've talked with felt the camps hindered the movement more than helped it. So you have two groups, one focused on physical spaces and the other focused on the conceptual goals. Sound familiar?
I have my own opinion about what the true value of Occupy is, but I don't want to get into a long discussion about the movement's value and relevance. But it has gotten me to start thinking about Dug's idea as something that covers more than just one organization, and that it might be something common to all philosophical entities that also have the need to have a physical presence somewhere. (When I was involved in running a pagan church this never came up, because we were so focused on keeping he doors open we never got to the point where the message could conflict with that)
I'd be interested in hearing how other types of groups handle it, like Renaissance Faires, recreation camps tied to a particular philosophy, etc. I'm wondering how far this spreads. Does it flow outside groups made up of a high percentage of Creative/Intuitive folks?
