On Mon, 19 Mar 2001, Ken Brown wrote: [Snip; it's nice to know people know their history...]
I strongly suspect that if they had met a half-pissed skinny bloke with pagan tendencies in black leather with multiple piercings, white makeup, and a penchant for the gloomy end of rock, they would have cut his head off first and done the cultural analysis afterwards.
Which would seem to get us back to my original point. This "Goth" look is as powerful a message as any, and as likely to shock current Christians as it would have been earlier ones, especially if you happen to be the only one not to belong. The same goes for groups of chanting classmates and an isolated Wicca. In both cases the message is a one of collective aggression and certainly regularly sending such a message casts doubts on both the sender and the message. Even if the message takes the superficial appearance of valid religious expression. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university