COMMUNITY BE DAMNED
There is something about Psionics that sets us radically apart from the occult/New Age/Pagan-Of-Various-Descriptions folk. We do not give a damn about community.
There is a reason for this. Psionics is designed to be practiced by the isolated individual, working alone, often in secret. While it can be done in concert with others, it is never necessary and often counterproductive to work that way. While there are those who think this a drawback, I believe it gives us one great advantage--freedom.
Community is a bad thing. Communities take control of people's lives in ways that they do not realize until it is too late. Communities claim power over individuals, enforcing their mores upon them. Community is unhappy people wearing brown shirts marching to the book-burning. And, against psionics, community is powerless because the isolated individual is not controllable by the few resources a community has against erring members. The psionics person is not a member and is not subject to its control.
The individual who goes forth in life not caring what a given community thinks or cares about anything is an individual who cannot be controlled by that community. There are few things in life more satisfying than the look on an interviewer's face when he asks how you feel about the concerns of X community and you answer him, "I couldn't care less what X community thinks about anything." Believe me, it shakes them to the core! Their entire worldview is based on the notion of people wanting some sort of mass acceptance and faced with someone who rejects that acceptance, or at least any value associated with it they are left utterly confused.
The Pagan spends her life worrying about what her fellow Pagans, and probably everyone else in the world, thinks about her every move. The Psionics person goes his merry way and laughs at what the rest of the world thinks. We handle criticism in a very simple way--we ignore it. And we laugh very loudly at those foolish enough to think that we would somehow care about their approval or lack thereof.
After all, it is not like they can do anything to stop us.
There is something about Psionics that sets us radically apart from the occult/New Age/Pagan-Of-Various-Descriptions folk. We do not give a damn about community.
There is a reason for this. Psionics is designed to be practiced by the isolated individual, working alone, often in secret. While it can be done in concert with others, it is never necessary and often counterproductive to work that way. While there are those who think this a drawback, I believe it gives us one great advantage--freedom.
Community is a bad thing. Communities take control of people's lives in ways that they do not realize until it is too late. Communities claim power over individuals, enforcing their mores upon them. Community is unhappy people wearing brown shirts marching to the book-burning. And, against psionics, community is powerless because the isolated individual is not controllable by the few resources a community has against erring members. The psionics person is not a member and is not subject to its control.
The individual who goes forth in life not caring what a given community thinks or cares about anything is an individual who cannot be controlled by that community. There are few things in life more satisfying than the look on an interviewer's face when he asks how you feel about the concerns of X community and you answer him, "I couldn't care less what X community thinks about anything." Believe me, it shakes them to the core! Their entire worldview is based on the notion of people wanting some sort of mass acceptance and faced with someone who rejects that acceptance, or at least any value associated with it they are left utterly confused.
The Pagan spends her life worrying about what her fellow Pagans, and probably everyone else in the world, thinks about her every move. The Psionics person goes his merry way and laughs at what the rest of the world thinks. We handle criticism in a very simple way--we ignore it. And we laugh very loudly at those foolish enough to think that we would somehow care about their approval or lack thereof.
After all, it is not like they can do anything to stop us.