Social Pressures within Neopaganism

[IH_Zero]

I tend to stay away from the "real world" pagan community. I'm a cynical a*****e, and the "fluffy happy rainbows and sunshine" set up would bring out the worst in me.

Also, besides from being a bit of an empath, and a palm reader, I haven't had any of those "oh so special!" experiences almost everyone in the community around here spouts on about (I believe less than half of them). It doesn't make me feel like a shoddy pagan. It just plain annoys me.  

[Pelta]

Starlock

How are the expectations we're setting influencing the nature of the community?

Telling people what to expect often tells people what to look for. People will often only see what they want to, thus end up partially blinded to the unexpected.

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Does failing to meet these expectations make us feel like lousy Pagans?

I have never had the problem of letting other people's expectations cloud my own. Usually because my expectations of myself are higher than anybody else's.

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Have you ever felt that since you can't do this or that, maybe you shouldn't be persuing this path?

I can't see auras. I tried for a long time when I thought I was supposed to be able to, with no avail. Then I realised that reading body language was pretty much the same thing and relied on my intuition to bring me to the same level of understanding. Same effect, different process. No two people do the same thing the same way.

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Where do these expectations come from? Are they coming from outsiders? From within the communities themselves? Some primal human need to conform to something?

In a way, I would suspect all of those answers. Outsider pressures often expect pagans to be able to read Tarot, tell fortunes, cast love spells etc. and this could be what drives many beginning pagans to look towards these paths. It is what they believe is expected of them as a beginning pagan.

I have yet to see as much pressure from within the community to conform to something, but that could be because I automatically assume that what they're doing is inapplicable to me because it's completely different from what I'm doing. Perhaps the closest thing to pagan peer pressure I've seen comes from Mr. Darks and some Otherkin communitites.

Everybody wants to feel wanted, to feel like they belong to something. Conformity is a big step in why many people decide to become pagan in the first place. After all, non-conformity is just another kind of conformity. Thus the pressures driving them there also push them in the direction of the previously mentioned paths they're expected to follow. SRW's self-perpetuating dream.

It is often expected that beginning pagans will try being Wiccan. This is usually the case, but as in every generalisation there are those that break the mold. Expectation does not necessarily dictate the paths that one will follow. Fortune, change and fools will always hold sway.