On New Baha'i Blogs: Introducing The Neocrats

Photo: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Africa

"Bahai friends of mine have started a blog that is highly interactive and great fun," "rr" said. "Its called www.neocrats.com. I think your readers would enjoy taking a peek. Could you please share the news?" Having had a look-see for myself, I am delighted to pass on the news.

The Neocrats has an absolutely intriguing three-column format. We are used to two-column--one for blog text and one for links. On this blog there is a third column in the middle called "extras", and this is were the team of Saleem, Mogogo, Sarmad, and Oscar de Clavier hang out with their discourse about the blog. These guys are not roommates; they're world-mates, residing in Ulster, Boston, London, The Hague, and Ouagadougou. They invite writers to step up and participate as they will in response to the various themes introduced, "Lessons from starvation" and "Spring" being two so far. The Neocrats is, as "rr" put it, "highly interactive." In a word, it is a smorgasblog. The first posting occured on March 5th, 2006, so count The Neocrats as another blog that started during the fast. Here is a sample post on just that subject:

Fasting is revolutionary: it can change everything, or nothing.

Fasting is tricky, it’s a subversive activity. When you start, suddenly you’re no longer the government of your self, you’re the general of the guerilla separatists, running through the jungle in a loincloth with your ardent soldiers deployed around you; you’re diving into the tunnels; you’re fighting against the godless Huns.

It’s an insurgency against several impulses, of which eating and drinking are only the most obvious. But there are better ones, and you get into tangled situations: if I’m talking to a girl because I find her attractive, have I broken my fast? This is when you are dealing with the infiltrators. Possibly the girl is a bright soul, and speaking with her is to embrace a comrade in the rebellion. But she might be a government agent, sent to seduce and corrode. The fast is a dark game of confusion, because fasting has nothing to do with not eating and not drinking.

I love the fast, even if I hate not eating, and not drinking. The most insubstantial element of the fast, the most meaningless - no food, no water - is the one that conflicts and distracts the most, that draws us alluringly away from something else. Your daily life is altered physically, mentally: but it might be for nothing, you might forget the spirit, and any historian can tell you that this is the pattern of all revolutions.

Viva la fast, we scream, as we stuff hamburgers down mouths.

Saleem, " Lessons from Starvation: Number Five," The Neocrats