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Buffy Poisoning Young Minds!

These shows with spiritual designs get their claws in early!

Following extract from Wikipedia on Bod:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bod_(series)

Tie-ins and Taoism

As well as books for each of the televised episodes, there have been two other tie-in books based on Bod, by Alison and Lo Cole, the children of creators Joanna and Michael Cole. Bod's Way: The Meaning of Life was being worked on by Michael Cole before he died in 2001, and was completed by Alison.

The books reveal the Taoist beliefs of Bod's original creators.[2]

Bod's Way: The Meaning of Life by Alison Cole, 2002, ISBN 1-84357-029-7

Bod's New Leaf: Making a Fresh Start by Alison and Lo Cole, 2003, ISBN 1-84357-076-9

:shock:
 
Teenage girls experimenting with Wicca? Surely Hell will freeze over, cats and dogs will demand equal marriage rights, and mass hysteria will take hold. And Buffy is to blame? And these young girls are unaware of the consequences! Like apophemia and confirmation bias! Heaven forfend a gust of wind should snuff a ritual candle and freak the poor little dears right out of their wits. Yes, worrying about such things is a sign of mental ageing. I personally hope they have all their silly teenage wishes come true... Mwahahaha!
 
I'd say that in my observation, there's currently a revival of interest in the occult among young people. I haven't noticed a corresponding social panic. Why is that?
 
A recent attitudes-study in the U.S. by--I want to say Pew Research but I can't be sure--showed an acceleration of the loss of interest in organised religion among young people (I forget the cut-off for 'young') but a marked rise in the number for whom 'spirituality' and 'alternative spiritual beliefs and practices' are important to their sense of self. One of the headline findings was a boom in believers for astrology and [probably pseudo] qabalistic study.
 
James_H said:
I'd say that in my observation, there's currently a revival of interest in the occult among young people. I haven't noticed a corresponding social panic. Why is that?
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I think the traditional media and the Baby Boomers who run the show in the west have already written off Millennials! The comical extent to which they have been blamed for the downfall of civilisation with their decadent choice of sandwich fillings and the like is so hackneyed that it has become a running joke.
 
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James_H said:
I'd say that in my observation, there's currently a revival of interest in the occult among young people. I haven't noticed a corresponding social panic. Why is that?
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Maybe social panics require an easily understandable cause (or pseudo-cause) and a sensational consequence .. so "Buffy poisoning young minds!" worked well, but at the moment there doesn't seem to be a grabby headline-y cause for the rise of occult interest. "Tumblr poisoning young minds" doesn't have the same ring. Maybe if there's a sensational crime/tragedy soon which can be blamed on occult interest then a social panic will get going, or maybe (cf Yith's data) the occult is too mainstream now for it to cause a panic.
 
Yithian said:
I think the traditional media and the Baby Boomers who run the show in the west have already written off Millenials! The comical extent to which they have been blamed for the downfall of civilisation with their decadent choice of sandwich fillings and the like is so hackneyed that it has become a running joke.
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'Sandwich fillings'...?

o_O
 
Toasted avocado was the cuplrit, I believe.
 
Yithian said:
...an acceleration of the loss of interest in organised religion among young people ... but a marked rise in the number for whom 'spirituality' and 'alternative spiritual beliefs and practices' are important to their sense of self.
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If veganism seems too much trouble, lactose intolerance is too difficult to spell and "dyslexia" no longer elicits the sympathetic cooing it once did, how are today's fragile little flowers to proclaim their uniqueness? Simply profess their adherence to a New Age "Pick any belief from Column A; add any ritual from Column B; assemble any three attributes from Column C into a deity" religion.

How many people do we all know who'd describe themselves on an Internet dating site as "Not religious but spiritual"? What does that vaporous emission of saccharine pish even mean? Are they all Fotherington-Tomas?

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maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
If veganism seems too much trouble, lactose intolerance is too difficult to spell and "dyslexia" no longer elicits the sympathetic cooing it once did, how are today's fragile little flowers to proclaim their uniqueness? Simply profess their adherence to a New Age "Pick any belief from Column A; add any ritual from Column B; assemble any three attributes from Column C into a deity" religion.

How many people do we all know who'd describe themselves on an Internet dating site as "Not religious but spiritual"? What does that vaporous emission of saccharine pish even mean? Are they all Fotherington-Tomas?

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maximus otter
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I'm not at all a believer but I do get something spiritual from a few of the Pagan Gods. Especially the more bellicose/trickster ones like The Morrigan and Loki.

Perhaps not what those young dears have in mind.
 
Yithian said:
A recent attitudes-study in the U.S. by--I want to say Pew Research but I can't be sure--showed an acceleration of the loss of interest in organised religion among young people (I forget the cut-off for 'young') but a marked rise in the number for whom 'spirituality' and 'alternative spiritual beliefs and practices' are important to their sense of self. ...
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You may be referring to this September 2017 study focused on the 'spiritual but not religious' self-attribution ...

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...s-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/
 
Xanatic* said:
Was the summary "Them bitches be crazy!"?
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I think I saw two different takes on it. The TYT one was peculiarly focused on the fact that astronomy is bullshit--but the host seemed to think that astrology claims that all people of the same sign have the same kind of things happening to them as opposed to the allignment of celestial bodies at the exact moment of birth.

Not that astrology isn't almost certainly bullshit, mind you, but let's give it a fair hearing at least.

Can't for the life of me recall who the other commentator was; I subscribe to too many YouTube channels.
 
maximus otter said:
... How many people do we all know who'd describe themselves on an Internet dating site as "Not religious but spiritual"? What does that vaporous emission of saccharine pish even mean? ...
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At least within my experience on the American scene, this sort of 'spiritual but not religious' self-description traces back at least as far as the early 1970's. One of the institutions the Sixties-era counterculture challenged was the church, so discussion of one's personal orientation to religious affairs was a common topic.

The typically intended connotation of the 'spiritual / not religious' bit was more or less: "I believe there's something beyond the mundane, but I don't necessarily ascribe it to 'God' / 'Gods', and I certainly don't subscribe to any institutionalized religion's version of it."

As the Seventies unfolded, such issues and discussions were influenced by the 'me-centric' pop context of the era. 'Spiritual' became a sort of code word for 'my individual experience of some higher order' (emphasis on the individual) rather than a generic alternative or analogue for the collective / social activities associated with traditional religion.

As far as I know, nowhere along the line did anyone circumscribe, much less specify, what it is that 'spiritual' / 'spirituality' denotes. It can be either an extremely deep or an extremely empty descriptor depending on who's citing it.

In other words, it's the semantic equivalent of vaporware. I suspect its persistence in discourse relies in large part on its fluid (if not completely void ... ) meaning.
 
There was a TV sitcom (situation comedy) called "Bewitched" (1964-1971) where an "ordinary mortal", Darren marries Samantha, a witch. It's more an interracial parable since Samantha is more a supernatural member of a different "race" than a practitioner. Basically it was sitcom silliness with Samantha having supernatural powers and trying to keep it under wraps from the neighbors. it did horrify many fundamentalist Christians as attempting to put a friendly face on a Biblically condemned practice, but as a Catholic, I never made it to be anymore than made up and having little to do with the occult. No doubt more than a few did...as evangelical radio testimonials went.

A few years later my uncle gave me a book called "Stranger than Science" by Frank Edwards, and that's what hooked me into the Fortean realm.

Funny how things go.

So moving ahead to Buffy...and as I understand it, a "normal" teen taking on serious dark powers. At the time I was watching a different anime series from Japan with the same theme that appeared the same year as the Buffy movie (1992). It was called Sailor Moon.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Yes, that is an indication of decadence and inner moral decay. Proof!
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I was given some kind of artisanal toasted shrimp and avocado roll with of sauce that my sister-in-law picked up at a department store. I scoffed somewhat when I heard it cost about eight quid (how good could it get?), but that warm avocado did indeed do some kind of warm, sweet melty magic that rocked my tongue.

I guess I am partly responsible for the downfall of Western Civilsation despite my age...
 
Yithian said:
I was given some kind of artisanal toasted shrimp and avocado roll with of sauce that my sister-in-law picked up at a department store. I scoffed somewhat when I heard it cost about eight quid (how good could it get?), but that warm avocado did indeed do some kind of warm, sweet melty magic that rocked my tongue.

I guess I am partly responsible for the downfall of Western Civilsation despite my age...
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Like Nero, you play the fiddle while Rome burns.
 
Yithian said:
This was the genesis:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/16/millionaire-millennials-avocado-property-coffee.html
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"When I had my first business when I was 19, I was in the gym at 6 a.m. in the morning, and I finished at 10.30 at night, and I did it seven days a week and I did it until I could afford my first home."
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If he hadn't thrown his money away on that gym subscription he could have done it a lot sooner.

Edit - rereading it he owned the gym. My horoscope did say I would make silly mistakes today..
 
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