Hippiness galore!

[sabotabby]

Oh weird; they're making a movie of The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. I can't quite explain this book's place in my life. I read it at a wayyy too impressionable age, and at some level, it shaped a lot of my ideas about politics and ecology and urban planning. When I read it later, it had aged badly—to say the least—and I found the resolution wholly upsetting in a way that exemplified why I reject pacifism as an ideology even while I agree with a lot of the author's ideas.

...but damn I do kinda want to see it as a movie, if they do a good job. And if they do a bad job, I think it's fodder for the most epic screenshot review since Atlas Shrugged.

Comments

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Wow. I was so into The Spiral Dance in college. It pretty much exemplified my Wiccan phase. By the time Fifth Sacred Thing came out I was beginning to get sarcastic about most of the deep boos that I loved (oh sure, Tom Robbins had his appeal up until I was in my late 20s but I was starting to think that I was a little full of shit when I defended my own viewpoint.)

[sabotabby]

I was out of my Wiccan phase (which, in fairness, probably lasted about two weeks) but at the beginning of my hardcore political not-a-phase.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

When was that impressionable age? Because I'd like to compare what was warping my worldview at the time.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

I don't think I had a worldview in my 20s.

[sabotabby]

Well, the book's been out 18 years, which would have made me 15 at the youngest. And I do remember being quite young, so I probably read it around the time of its publication. A family friend gave it to us to read.

I don't think I had a worldview at the time; a lot of things were influencing me, from Marx to Ayn Rand, and I lacked the discernment to judge between them.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

That is the age at which I was reading and failing to understand the full meaning of Terry Goodkind! (I got better.)

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I only think I had a Worldview was because my parents watched the news at dinner almost every night. I realize that by 15 my direction was heavily influenced by stuff I found amusing without fully understanding: Pogo collections from the McCarthy years, the communist manifesto, Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle, Erma Bombeck and Judith Viorst. One very weird influential item was The Fall And Rise of Reginald Perrin, which is very odd considering it was about the existential crisis of a middle aged British guy in a corporate environment which was even then evaporating and I was a 15 year old in Orlando Florida. I can't quite explain what I got from them, beyond avoiding a career until my mid 30s. I haven't been able to return to those books, not because I think they haven't aged well, but because I suspect they'd now be unbearably sad rather than funny.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I was exposed to all sorts of weird shit at that age. I think I had more confidence than coherence. I mean, I was vaguely lefty but I'd hit on weird things like libertarianism that sounded good. I think at around 15 I was largely interested in Dick Lit.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I am totally looking forward to that movie, good or bad. The first time I heard about the book was when I was trapped on a train next to a hippie woman, going from Missouri to Chicago, and she (exactly like an Xtian proselytizer) could NOT stop trying to convince me to read it because it would change my life. Of course that made me hate it deeply, and I didn't actually read it for another about ten years, when a fellow teacher I liked also recommended it. I started the book very aloof and ready to hate its woo and hippiness, although there was at least a bit of acclimation to Bay Area pagan/wiccan stuff going on with me around 2002. And I was surprised to find that I liked it, though I am afraid that it's not much of a political plan. Starhawk herself seems to me to be actually a useful leftist -- at antiwar meetings her interventions were good, and not ultraleft or liberal. I've even done a spiral dance with her, up at a lefty educational conference in Humboldt County!

[sabotabby]

Starhawk as a person seems to be not as useless as that book would suggest! It has far too much woo to make me actually think it's decent, but it does have some interesting ideas in it.

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what this is. Is it some canadian thing?

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

It's like the wicca hippie version of Ayn Rand's books. In a grim postapocalytic world, small hippie peaceful perfectly-empathic utopia meets evil fascist brainwashed brutal military machine - but triumphs via nonviolence! Also there's magic chakra healing and a lot of anti-monogamy sentiment.

I doubt you'd make it through five pages.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

My head, it hurts!

[sabotabby]

You should read it. You'd get a kick out of it.

[sabotabby]

Don't forget the orgy! And the sperm magic. I wonder if that's going in the movie.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

I've forgotten the orgy and the sperm magic. :( I guess I'm due for a re-read!

[sabotabby]

Clearly!

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Sperm-magic! There needs to be a porn parody too.

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

It's basically the exact same thing as Atlas Shrugged, only with opposite political views! The movie will be equally hilariously terrible.

[sabotabby]

I feel like they might get better actors for it, which would make a difference. But the characters are about as one-dimensional as Rand's.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I'm imagining a variation on the movie version of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.

[sabotabby]

Isn't that actually good? (I've never seen it.)

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

Well, they can't get WORSE actors, for sure.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Since I come from a different strain of Trotskyism than maeve66, I had a very different impression of Starhawk as a person when I encountered her in anti-IMF and antiwar planning meetings. (This would have been roughly ten years ago.) As the kids say on Twitter: smh. The very mention of her name is enough to provoke nausea for me.

[sabotabby]

Details?

I have a feeling I'd either love her or hate her guts IRL.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

It's too long ago for me to remember details. One thing I do remember: Apparently speakers' time limits are authoritarian, unless you disagree with the person speaking. Especially if that person you disagree with is not a pacifist.

[sabotabby]

This does not surprise me at all.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Geez. GTFO of our movements!

[lemur-catta.livejournal.com]

Now I feel all hippy-wicca nostalgic for my high school years. I remember The Spiral Dance but ,never knew she wrote fiction. Maybe I'll read that just for the diversion value and, in case I download the film some day. I need something kind of light and naively optimistic just now (and a little sperm magic wouldnt hurt.)

[sabotabby]

It's highly entertaining and very terrible. Let me know what you think of it.

[constintina.livejournal.com]

I have a possibly unfair anti-Starhawk bias. I was in jail with her once. At any given time there were at least three girls giving her a massage. She led chants/dance things which, fine, but me and my friends were both treated disdainfully by her acolytes for not participating and told that the stuff we were doing to keep our spirits up (making up musical numbers about our stupid situation) was messing up their vibe and we had to stop. This was the time in jail when I found myself sympathizing more with the guards than many of my fellow arrestees, who were speechifying to the guards about bow fucked up it was that there were no vegan sandwiches and coming up to me crying about how "[they were] not supposed to be here!" meaning in jail. Unlike the other, bad people in jail.

We all were released without charges, which we were probably gonna no matter what given the era and that it was a mass pre-emptive arrest that had turned into a huge clusterfuck given 1. the complete lack of any illegal activity 2. the complete lack of anything that could be twisted into "evidence" of illegal activity 3. the fact that a bunch of journalists and random passers-by were swept up in the arrest. However, Starhawk reportedly took credit for our good fortune, believing her chanting and dancing had freed us, which reportedly led Cindy Milstein (also there, though not held with me) to nearly blow a gasket. And that is my anarchist gossip contribution for today.

[sabotabby]

That is some quality A++ gossip. I don't think that's unfair at all. I would have actually choked a bitch in that situation.

[constintina.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Just trying to be fair as I didn't personally hear her take credit for our release, and most of the awfulness came from her minions, not directly from her, so for all I know she scolded them afterwards and found their behavior as abhorrant as I did...

But probably not.

And that's why I just cannot even deal with her.

Oh! Also I remember first-hand stories of her derailing/bully facilitating UFPJ meetings back in those days, but I can't recall details. I didn't got to those meetings, but friends and family did. Apparently they were soul-killing rough.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

+1 to the A++!!