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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (7467)	3/5/2001 3:56:32 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

When I was in high school, I volunteered at a local McGovern campaign headquarters. I considered myself to be a philosophical anarchist, along the lines of Prince Kropotkin, although willing to work for incremental change. I also participated as a "marshall" at the Inaugural Protests at the Washington Monument in '72, guarding the stage. I got booted from the chairmanship of my high school human relations council for inviting a Black Panther to address the group (the invitation was rescinded). On my first ballot, I only voted for one Democrat, the rest were either Socialists or members of the DC Statehood Party. I tried to drum up interest in an SDS chapter at my college when I was a freshman, but failed. I was raised a Conservative Jew, but my mother had been a convert, and after my parents were divorced, she went back to the Catholic Church. I spent my teen years as a nominal Catholic. By the time I was fourteen, I was a pantheist, and by the time I was 16 I was an atheist. However, I thought my way out of atheism a couple of years later. I returned, in a sporadically observant way, to Judaism, but was ambivalent, and spent a portion of my adult years as a Catholic. However, I have been unaffiliated for over a dozen years. I also am very well acquainted with other religious traditions. I have read the Bhagavad- Gita, the Upanishads, and the Vedas any number of times; various Buddhist sutras, plus the Tibetan Book of the Dead, DT Suzuki on Zen, and Alan Watts; the Quran and various books on the subject; and some books on Jainism and others. I have also spent time studying Kabbalah and various books in the Catholic mystical tradition, including the works of Teilhard de Chardin. Things are often more complicated than they appear at first. I don't mind your asking about the dark strain. Yes, I think that nihilism is a real threat. I just am not so concerned with the specifics of people's viewpoints, as with certain key assumptions and orientations.