Humans are prone to have a vertical axis in their cosmologies for a number of practical reasons. I think they are particularly prone to this when they have a shifting way of life, not tied to a small territory, as when they wander wide in search of forage and game, or herd their flocks over different pasture-lands seasonally, or raid well into the territories of their neighbors, or rob and pillage over far distances, made easier atop a horse, or when they must emigrate. In short, the less intimately involved a people are in their local environment, and the less they are tied to it by long history, the more likely are they to seek continuity in the Sky, see it as the land of the gods, who send the all-important weather, for good and bad. It is the vast screen on which signs and portents appear, perhaps where their mighty-ones go at death. And mountains are venerated as stepping-stones to the heavens. If this notion is true, I'm sure it's much more complicated than this, but it's a general impression I've gotten. I think, too, that where you have a vertical cosmological axis, the Underworld tends to become the symbolic opposite of the Sky-realm. All of this seems so natural to us, because it's with us from our earliest cultural imprinting, and merely encultures what is hard-wired into our brains and learned from physical experience. But some cultures are more verticalized and sky-oriented than others, for good or ill. I think, particularly when life is harsh, insecure, and Nature seems like the Evil Mother, or if sudden attack and slaughter by invaders can come at any time, a people longs for escape-- to a better, safer place-- to the uplands and mountains, perhaps, even beyond that to the Sky-world after death. Otherwise, I think people naturally will want to cling to their ancient land, and remain in it even after death, to join those who have gone before them.
But with the advances of the project of civilization, we have sought security and welfare apart from the mercies of the landscape; in short, we have sought to control things to our benefit, apart from Nature, and live in unnatural defensive settlements, where Nature, as it hasn't come under our direct control and use, no longer means much to us other than as a means to our benefit. And on and on, to our present state, where the vast hordes of humanity are unmoored from Nature and place, even the immediate physical environment, to the point at which we live in our cultural head-world and even feed off video-screens much of our waking time. No wonder we can't respond to our destruction of the real world. We have escaped from Nature, and so Nature writ largest-- the Biosphere. We want to be safe, happy, independent, removed into our own comfortable wish-fulfilment head-world, to stay youthful and beautiful, and grow ever more godlike forever. And damn the consequences for Nature, which we have no more feeling for than any other deracinating screen-entertainment.
Some other person could write volumes expanding on this damning critique, but I can't, and I've still got to get to 'Sky Bums', which term I tend to apply to those guilty of this monstrous Sky-orientation-- but how do you differentiate when present-day human culture is so shot-through with it? Who isn't a Sky-person? Well, there are those of us who at least have qualms about what we have, are, and will do to others, from individuals to the human community at various magnitudes, or even to non-human others from individuals to the natural community at various magnitudes, even to the whole of earthly Life. But for purposes of this 'ETs vs. Faeries' series, which seems to go on without end in sight, I focus on New-Agers and ETs as 'Sky Bums'.
It's easy to attack New Agers, and as easy to be dismissed by them for it, I suppose. I don't criticize individuals, though, but their mind-set, in which a strong urge toward escape in the form of 'spirituality', 'purity', idealism, metaphysics, mentalism (non-physicality), holistic erasure of inconvenient differences, optimistic self-delusion, and in general, a wish-fulfilment head-set and supportive ideology that is Sky-orientation taken to the omega-point. How can such genuinely nice people be so wrong-headed? Well, they aren't all of a piece, I'd like to say, and they're hardly more wrong-headed than the generality of humans, sad to say. But if the 'better' people, which they often are, are so hopeless, what hope is there, one asks. I might also say that even when their idealism includes 'ecological concern', it seems idealized, metaphysical, purified of earthly dross-- in short, deracinated, unmoored. It's better than nothing, maybe, and the best they can do, but does it contribute to practical efforts to save the world? And 'Ecology' is often 'harmonized (lumped) with all the other 'liberal' worthy causes which one must affirm and support, though they be mutually contradictory and competitive, in reality. But again, I don't want to condemn the entirety of New-Agedom, and there may be forms, offshoots, of the movement which might actually be 'deep green' in effect and hold promise for the future, but which I would expect, rather, from the more earthy, pagan, wing. But as I have said, in the Age of Ecology, everything must be rethought-- reexamined and evaluated for it's ecological effectiveness and fittingness for a realistic ecological civilization, but as complex as the human mazeway now is, how can you objectively evaluate cultural manifestations under this criterion? Very problematic. So even what might seem to be Biosphere-friendly in real effect may not be. But one must try. Sigh.
Well, now that I've trashed the New Age, I'll take on those darlings, the Extraterrestrials, in 'Sky Bums II'.
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