2012 Youth : New Psychedelic Renaissance Apocalypse Culture and Technopaganism

To begin our exploration of the 2012 Youth culture, here is a short film that will allow us to see what a concert, trance festival or night of fun looks like today. This is no different than going to a rave, Lollapalooza or Ozzfest for these young people. It lasts about seven minutes. If it is too loud, you are too old...but some of you may want to turn the volume down a bit. Enjoy.

2012 is the year that means many things to many people. Imperium.

Most of the folks my age have children of the Generation Next category. Historically we are the children of the Baby Boomers and our children have inherited many things from us. With the advent of the 2012 phenomena, there are many outlooks on how it plays into the current world view. This article covers a wide range of topics that are too diverse to do complete justice to. In essence my goal is to expose some of you to what is the current cultural landscape that your children maybe living in. I make no judgements about it. There are no rights or wrongs from my vantage points. For some of you, this is chance to learn about the musical media and philosophy that is the predominant force for what I will label the 2012 Youth. The music may not be to all of your liking, but do try to listen to it with an open mind and heart. I want to cover what seem to be the three major forces of the 2012 movement for the younger set, these are the Apocalypse Culture, the Psychedelic Renaissance and Technopaganism. All are actually under the banner of Technopaganism as a movement. I have chosen one major musical group for each category, each your kids probably know by name and I have chosen them because they are relevant now in the year 2012. Other than that, they each are not the only representatives of the 2012 Youth movement. As I say the greater aspects of this article are much wider than can be addressed here. Keep in mind that all of these are influenced by the Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll aspect of traditional psychedelia. Although today it would probably be Virtual Sex, Smart Drugs and Electronica. I also think for those of us who indulged in all these things in our past, many of my generation are hypocritical and blinded to how the Generation Next is following the path we set, perhaps more consciously and productively than we ever did try to. I reserve no judgements. I ask that you try not to as you read this article.

This is their generation, not ours.

LIKE HAPPENED TO NEO IN THE MOVIE THE MATRIX 2012 IS A SERIES OF CULTURAL CHOICES BY THOSE LIVING IN SUCH TIMES . HE HAD TO CHOOSE TO FOLLOW THE WHITE RABBIT = HE GUIDED THE ANCIENT HEROES TO AND THROUGH THE UNDERWORLD,AND HE ALSO BROUGHT MESSAGES FROM ABOVE TO THE MERE MORTALS HERE ON EARTH. RABBIT DOES NOT NEED AN OUTSIDE SOURCE TO ILLUMINATE HIS WAY. 2011 HAD BEEN THE YEAR OF THE SHINY METAL RABBIT.

"One of the most important archetypes is that of the Psychopomp. A Psychopomp is a god or goddess (energy form) that acts as a liaison, and guide, between the three worlds-the physical earthly level that we dwell upon, the Underworld and the Heavens. In classical mythology, the Roman God Mercury was a Psychopomp, for example.

Symbolically, Rabbit in the Underworld is therefore representative of USING ONE'S INTUITION: knowing how to get around "in the dark" and being comfortable traveling in "unmarked territory." By default, it can also denote having or DEVELOPING TRUST IN THE "INNER LIGHT." His connection to the Collective Energy maintains his pathway.

They teach us Unconditional Love, and Compassion for Life, by virtue of eliciting those things within us. And one important symbolical meaning that Rabbit should elicit in us is that of PLAYFULNESS AND JOY. Their nonsense displays of happiness are part of the Dance of Life-which is nothing more than a Cosmic Binkie." This odd but meaningful bit of wordplay describes the 2012 Youth culture amazingly well. Although 2012 is a Dragon or Blue Storm year, it is very influenced by the 2011.

The young people that are graduating from high school this year are a different breed, their generation is not looking to the past or waiting for the future wishfully. They believe in the now, the moment and being it. This is the mark of the 2012 Youth.

This literature is the most common source for the term Apocalypse Culture, although it did not necessarily invent it originally.

" Apocalypse Culture is a collection of articles, interviews and documents that explore the various marginal aspects of culture edited by Adam Parfrey.It explores aesthetic nihilism, destructive cults, extreme violence, sexual deviancy, conspiracy theory, extreme forms of nationalism, etc. First published in 1987, reprinted twice (1990, 2001), and in 2000 the sequel Apocalypse Culture II was released. The book has been widely campaigned against and has been banned in many countries."

Apocalypse culture can be said to contain aspects of Discordanism and Nihilism. The scientific and skeptical model of reality is upheld. Therefore true knowledge is not possible, and that despite what we wish to believe, reality does not inherently exist as such. Nihilism is a vein of many subcultural beliefs. This is the incorporation of the existential idea that morality does not truly exist, and that any such ideas in a dogmatic system are artificially contrived. So is the discordant idealism, that chaos, discord, and dissension are more desirable qualities in a true human being, than are harmony, faith, and order as proposed by religions in former centuries. Most profoundly in the ideas of anarchism, ecological movements, and even modern Satanism. All these form into the modes that create modern Apocalypse culture.

Although there are many influences on the Apocalypse Culture of 2012 Youth today, none of them alone speaks for the entire tribal cosmology, for they are not one unified tribe. They Occupy, they are Anonymous, but they are also American Natives. They agents of calm, but love surfing in the eye of the cosmic coming storm.

They are a generation caged in Aquarius.

Perhaps it is because they are the new generational root race that would rise out of Southwestern America, as Edgar Cayce once predicted. Maybe they are the reborn Atlanean culture according to Ignatius Donnelley. Perhaps they are the reborn sons and daughters of the Ghost dance foretold by Sitting Bull. Perhaps they are those Left Behind as expected by Christians awaiting the Antichrist. Perhaps they are the illuminated ones, that the prophets wrote of in the Book of Daniel. Perhaps they are the Star children awaiting the return of Ezekiel's Wheel. Or perhaps they are all Buddhas awakening to their galactic gateways in 2012. Or perhaps they are something other all together...

Or as lesser known gospel writers Motley Crue said in the 1980s, " God Bless the Children of the Beast. "

Andrew VanWyngarden – lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, bass guitar, drums (2002–present)

Benjamin Goldwasser – vocals, keyboards, guitar (2002–present)

And the MGMT band :

Will Berman - drums, percussion, backing vocals (2008-present)
James Richardson - drums (2007-2008), lead guitar, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals, multiple instruments (2008-present)
Matt Asti - bass guitar (2008-present)


Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden formed the band while attending Wesleyan University during their freshman year. The band first started with the name The Management, but since this name was already being used by another band, they later changed it to MGMT.

"We weren't trying to start a band," remarked Goldwasser. "We were just hanging out, showing each other music that we liked." They experimented with noise rock and electronica before settling on what Paco Alvarez of Spin calls "their current brand of shape-shifting psychedelic pop."

MGMT seem like they might have just applied for the job of young hipster rockstars, but it was just a fall back position until the world goes apocalyptic and their entorage of friends can get back to being the sixth root race to repopulate the Earth. Either that or they are going to try to wind the Maya calendar with a little help from their friends.

MGMT is not a band, although they have been touring and making videos for a while.

When they got a phone call from the A&R department of Columbia Records saying they were interested in their music, they thought it was a joke. MGMT does not have the standard outlook of a band in the rock sense. They seem to have no vested interest in their success, carrying a fleet of their friends along for the ride. If it all ended tomorrow, it would probably not matter to them. These ideas are expressed in the video interview.

MGMT is not a duo, although there are two of them behind the musical creativity.

The band uses primitive feels to their musical arrangements. Acoustical with synthetic, pop sensibility with anarchistic esthetics. Take some time to listen to the interview with MGMT, and then watch the video for Time To Pretend. Time To Pretend is an Apocalypse Culture manifesto of sorts. It has all the aspects and imagery that go with this movement.

MGMT is sure of one thing to quote their hit single, " The Youth is starting to change..."

Psychedelic music (sometimes psychedelia) covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in the United States and Britain. It often used new recording techniques and effects and drew on non-Western sources such as the ragas and drones of Indian music. It spread into psychedelic folk, psychedelic rock, psychedelic pop and psychedelic soul in the 1960s before declining in the early 1970s. It helped create many new musical genres including progressive rock, kosmische musik, synth rock, jazz rock, heavy metal, glam rock, funk, electro and bubblegum pop. It was revived in forms of neopsychedelia from the 1980s and re-emerged in electronic music in genres including acid house, trance music (see psychedelic trance) and new rave. These musical influences and the arts are the sacred text of the psychedelic renaissance, for all practical purposes.

The new psychedelic renaissance in America is a combination of classical paganism, neo-paganism and new age beliefs. It is also influenced greatly by people like Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground artistically.

It is the practice of pagan traditions that usually pre-date Christianity, and are still practiced to the modern day. This includes eastern, western, shamanism and aboriginal traditions. Neopaganism and New Age have this similarity in common, and therefore are often put together for generalized explanation of their belief systems. Also they are both products of the post-cold war era for the most part. The main difference between neopagans and those who practice classical paganism is the incorporation of modern religious dogma and rituals ( such as monotheistic ideas and other non-pagan beliefs ) and the intermixing of various rituals and traditions from other pagan beliefs without discrimination. The practitioners try their best to follow the rituals and methods as they were originally practiced and do not incorporate ideas from other traditions, trying to achieve the purest similarity to how the original beliefs practiced their religion. These belief generally include the ideas of pantheism, ritualism, polytheism and animism. This includes but is not limited to Voodoo, Wicca, Odinism, Shinto, Hinduism, Taoism, and many other lesser proto-religious forms.

Jona Bechtolt – vocals, programming, guitar, drums, bass, percussion, claps, synths, keyboards, piano, effects

Claire L. Evans - vocals

YACHT is an American band from Portland, Oregon, Marfa, Texas, and Los Angeles, CA. Jona Bechtolt chose the name YACHT in reference to Y.A.C.H.T., an alternative school in Portland, Oregon. It is an acronym that represent the philosophy, spirit and artistic darkness that is just a few light years left of the pop music culture. At first YACHT might be mistaken for a purest performance art or theatrical stage duo, but they are none of those things either. They are a force of natural chaos that feeds itself on the most positive of unnatural vibrations. They are cosmic to say the least, but somehow more human than many bands around to see 2012.

When performing live, YACHT is accompanied by the following band members:

Rob "Bobby Birdman" Kieswetter – vocals, bass, keyboard
Jeffrey Brodsky – drums, percussion
Katy Davidson - guitar, keyboard, vocals

The core group consists of Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, but expands to include musicians Rob "Bobby Birdman" Kieswetter, Jeffrey Brodsky and Katy Davidson as touring members. Live performances during this period included dancing along to music as well as elaborate PowerPoint presentations.

Bechtolt told SPIN Magazine "It stands for Young Americans Challenging High Technology. It refers to an education program that was held in Portland, Oregon. I was enrolled when I was 16, back in 1996."

YACHT uses minimalism with an usually tribal take on pop music sensations. They are dance punk and alternative, they are eletropop and synthetic. They are pagan and they are anarchistic. But they are true representatives of the new utopian psychedelic renaissance in musical art form.

They discuss this in the interview and the video is of their dual single Utopia and Dystopia. It is a long piece, but you should try to listen all the way through. As the two sections are drastically different in tonal intent.

All of their songs have magical, pagan, utopian and psychedelia overtones that are undeniable, if not altogether intentional. In true psychedelic renaissance tradition. Statements they make in the video interview shows that they truly do not consider themselves or even where they tour part of the same culture. At least not the culture that these two poet philosophers live in cosmologically. It is another culture and continent for all practical purposes.

Not the United States of America, but Utopia.

In the information age, something has been lost and something has been reclaimed. As we desperately try to manifest order out of chaos, a strange new sword has been pulled from the philosopher's stone. Technology has given birth to the new magick, IT is the new alchemy and everyone under the age of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion know it. They live it, breathe it and see it as a friendly user template. It is a world waiting to be explored like the Straights of Magellan. Nothing is sacred anymore.

Technopaganism has a number of distinct definitions found in various discourse: The use of modern-day devices in magical ritual. This can include the substitution of technology for traditional magical tools, such as using their oven for a hearth, keeping a "Disk of Shadows" instead of a "Book of Shadows", and using a laser pointer as a wand. In other practice, technology is the target of the magical work, such as the use of stones and other charms to help improve the performance of mundane items or online role-playing avatars. Modern tribal/urban primitive movements such as urban shamanism and rave culture. This is often used in association with electronic dance music. An emergent trend in neopagan thought that deals with spiritual and magical facets of technology and technological society. Associated with this is the use of technological metaphors (most often computer and/or telecommunications metaphors) to describe spiritual phenomena, as well as the use of symbolism from popular culture in spiritual contexts.

Technopaganism is the thread that connects these three movements within modern anarchism. It is the shared spirit, the sacred txt and the holy ground that is bringing together the next generation. All this is relevant, but what truly bonds the movement of technopaganism are music, dance and technology. They are the holy trinity of the Halo generation. All is one.

This is a relatively new kind of twist on the outlooks of what are traditionally called paganism. In essence the key idea is that modern technology, devices, computers and artifacts of the post-industrial world can be used as sacred or magical tools, just as the challis or athame have been in classical and neopaganism. supplicate. This is a wide subject and would be unfair to discuss without further discourse.

As with any religions or dogmas there are widely accepted versions and more secular ones depending on who is practicing the rituals. As time passes, there are likely to be more expansions on these themes, for modern pagan beliefs are an ever evolving art unto themselves. When used to describe belief systems, technopaganism focuses on the spiritual side of technology. This can include the belief that technological items and artifacts of modern living - such as buildings, roads, parks, cars, and other such items - have pseudo-spirits, or totem spirits, of their own. This also extends to cities.

One example of an alternative technopagan belief that faces substantial objections is that the Internet itself is attaining a unique spirit. Indeed, it is the stated objective of the creator of VRML to bring about the merging of the spiritual world with the physical world. These are only examples of a much broader scope that is a cultural phenomena.

As Arthur C. Clarke once prophetically stated to the science fiction world of readers, " Any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic. "

Sonny John Moore is his real world name.

No musician, band or hip hop artist more truly represents the music of the technopaganism more fully. SKRILLEX is more than a DJ, he is a modern traveling minstrel, a one man vortex of artificially enhanced energies and the most amazing one man show ever to take flight from California and the American West Coast.

Sonny was born on January 15, 1988. He better known by his stage name Skrillex, is an American electronic music producer and former singer–songwriter. Raised in Northeast Los Angeles, California, Moore joined the American post–hardcore band From First to Last as the lead singer in 2004, and recorded two studio albums with the band (Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has a Bodycount (2004) and Heroine (2006)) before leaving to pursue a solo career in 2007. He began his first tour as a solo artist in late–2007. After recruiting a new band lineup, Moore joined the Alternative Press Tour to support bands such as All Time Low and The Rocket Summer, and appeared on the cover of Alternative Press annual 100 Bands You Need to Know issue. After releasing the Gypsyhook EP in 2009, Moore was scheduled to record his debut studio album, Bells, with producer Noah Shain. However, he ceased production of the album and began performing under the name Skrillex. After releasing the My Name is Skrillex EP for free download on his official MySpace page, he released the Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites EP in late–2010 and More Monsters and Sprites EP in mid–2011. Both have since become a moderate commercial success. On November 30, 2011, he was nominated for a total of five Grammy Awards at the 54th Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist.[6] On December 5, 2011, the BBC announced that he had been nominated for their Sound of 2012 poll. On December 12, 2011, he was also named MTV's EDM Artist of the Year, ranking in front of successful acts such as David Guetta and deadmau5.

Skrillex is considered Dubstep and Electronica. But he is truly a prime example of technopaganism at its purest.

Take time to listen to the brief interview with him above, watch the video to his first real hit remix ( which includes his little sister in the video). Then watch the live concert footage that ends this article, you have to be amazed by the vivid interactive and first virutal stage show. Skrillex runs all of it by himself live, like a virtual traveling minstral.

For those of you that this is a first time exposure to any of these ideas, or the music behind them. Know that your kids are well aware of these concepts, these artists and may even embrace some of the concepts I have laid out for you. As I said before this is much too wide of a subject to do complete justice to in a single article. But I hope I have introduced you to some of the things that will help you understand the world and underground culture of the 2012 Youth today.

For those of you that this is a first time exposure to any of these ideas, or the music behind them. Know that your kids are well aware of these concepts, these artists and may even embrace some of the concepts I have laid out for you.

This is just a small intersection of the wider cultural phenomenon I hope to have opened up for some of you who are readers. Welcome to the age of prophecies, miracles and terrors. Maybe it is time for a change in our hearts, but first we must travel in space.

'The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. Great things are done when men and mountains meet. What is grand is necessarily obscure to weak men. That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care. Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. Do what thou Wilt, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction.' - William Blake

As I said before this is much too wide of a subject to do complete justice to in a single article. But I hope I have introduced you to some of the things that will help you understand the world and underground culture of the 2012 Youth today.

When the music is over turn up the lights.