Talk:Findhorn Foundation/Archive 1

Local Relations

Local relations between the Findhorn Foundation and the village of Findhorn have occasionally foundered over inconsiderate use of the word 'Findhorn' to mean either the former or the associated Ecovillage. See for example Walker (1994) and also Findhorn (disambiguation).

The Findhorn Foundation itself has a policy of attempting to avoid inappropriate usage but this does not prevent both visitors to the Ecovillage and the media transgressing it. Further confusion occurs because many local people now use the term 'The Foundation', even when they are referring to Ecovillage organisations which have no formal connection with the Findhorn Foundation itself. Confused? You will be. Ben MacDui 19:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The other point of view on it all

I can't help but think (bearning in mind that Wikipedia is NPOV) that we should re-write a lot of this article. The basis behind the Foundation is that new age beliefs are based on sound ideas and concepts; clearly however, a lot of people think it is a load of hocum. There's also a large knowledge in the area that a huge number of the young American people that came over in the 60s & 70s were simply the children of rich parents who sent them abroad to avoid the Draft. I don't feel I could write a neutral piece on this though perhaps someone else should or could?

I think those issues belong on pages to do with the new age beliefs themselves; we need only assert here that these are beliefs rather than facts, which I think has been done fairly well. Jaz Mcdougall 15:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

'Peter left Eileen'

I removed this part of the sentence as someone's personal affairs don;t seem relevant, and the syntax breaks the next sentence, which starts 'Eileen remained'. Via strass 13:05, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

---

The Beliefs in UFO's in early history of the community

Why has there been no mention of the issue of Caddy believing that they were in communication with extraterristrials at the start of the community?--Redblossom 21:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If you name a source, I'll check this, but I never read about this, and it doesn't seem to be a big thing as it doesn't appear to be an issue in the Community for decades.--Landover(g) (talk) 03:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyvio?

Much of the material is taken near-verbatim from the Foundation's website, pepped up by generous use of peacock terms. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:27, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I've started by getting rid of the more obvious examples of this. I've also added a paragraph covering Findhorn's early existence as a sort of flying saucer / contactee 'cult' (cf. George Adamski or the Aetherius Society), something they usually ignore in their publicity nowadays. Someone needs to do some work on the many unreferenced claims in the other sections.Quixote34 (talk) 13:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation as New Religious Movement?

Just wondering why this categorisation is deemed appropriate given that it clearly states in the lead that the community has 'no formal creed or doctrine'? surely an NRM is defined by such? 82.41.44.87 (talk) 19:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Substantial revision proposal

I have something of an issue with the wording of this article in a couple of places:

First up, the lead: correctly describes the initial setup by the Caddys as a commune but then inaccurately describes the modern day foundation as a commune. Here is a quote from the lead of the linked article describing a commune: people living together, sharing common interests, property, possessions, resources, work and income. These values simply do not apply to the modern day community at Findhorn anymore than they apply to any other community anywhere. ie: all communities from local to global level share resources, work, income. All communities consist of people living together and sharing common interests. That, surely, is the definition of a community. It is at best misleading and at worst weasel words to try to portray the Findhorn Foundation as a commune. Individuals living in the Foundation retain all their private property (unless they wish to dispose of it) and although there is a strong and tight-knit local community in which many people work towards the common good it is simply inaccurate to think of it as analogous to the hippy communes of the 60s and 70s where all property and resources were shared equally by all members.

Second, this paragraph: Initially, many of its practices were unconventional even by the standards of New Age circles. During the early and mid 1960s, Caddy and his circle of 'channelers' believed that they were in contact with extraterrestrials through the medium of telepathy, and prepared a 'landing strip' for flying saucers at nearby Cluny Hill.[7] The contactee element of Findhorn's origins was gradually played down during the 1970s after the predicted landings failed to happen, and is no longer mentioned in its publicity. I propose this entire paragraph be struck off. It is based on a single article published in the Fortean Times for which the 'journalist' did not even visit the community, and instead interviewed a couple of people who, by their own admission, had left the community decades before after falling out with the founders. This is akin to asking the proverbial 'disgruntled former employee' what they think of their old boss and predictably resulted in nothing more than axe-grinding. The entire article is POV and makes no effort to offer balance. The fact that it was published in the FT, which regularly publishes stories about UFO encounters, bigfoot sightings and other highly dubious phenomena should also give cause for alarm when considering whether or not this is truly a reputable source.

Finally, even if it is decided that the above paragraph should stay, its last sentence should most definitely be deleted. These are practically the definition of weasel words. 'played down' and 'no longer mentioned' are clearly intended to suggest to the reader that these beliefs continue out of sight. The more compelling and truthful reason why nobody in the Foundation was willing to talk to this 'journalist' about his UFO story is that very few or none of the current members of the community either know or care about what Peter Caddy may or may not have believed about UFOs. It simply is not remotely relevant to the lives of the overwhelming majority of the people who live there and to pretend otherwise is blatant falsehood.

I have previously removed the completely unwarranted NRM tag from this article and I am suspicious that there appears to be an effort to portray this community as a cult of esoteric new-age weirdos when the truth is that they are a group of normal people living normal lives who are simply more tolerant of differences in spiritual practice than might be found elsewhere.

I would like to try and establish a consensus between editors about this article which is why I have posted here on the talk page rather than simply making the edit. I'll return over the next few days to see if anyone replies. If it goes more than a week or so with no response, I'll be bold and correct what I know to be inaccurate and misleading information based on sloppy and unprofessional journalism. Scriblio (talk) 23:14, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Why is it "inaccurate and misleading" if Caddy's belief in UFOs is well-documented (a couple of examples you can check on Google Books: see Lewis, The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements p.476; Sutcliffe, Children of the New Age, p.99, which specifically mentions a letter to Monica Parish talking about his belief in 'space brothers'). They did believe they were channeling extraterrestrial 'intelligences' and this was integral to the community's early history; as such, it's entirely appropriate to place it here as part of the history, even if it is not a belief to which they currently subscribe.

As for 'more tolerant of differences'; well, look at Castro, 1996. It's fairly detailed in advancing reasons why the community can't simply be characterised as 'normal'. The point being that there are two sides to any objective presentation of the Foundation's work.Quixote34 (talk) 17:34, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, the NRM tag was present because the section describing the Foundation's current work appeared to have been lifted wholesale from their website and made a variety of grandiose claims - most of which required checking. I got rid of the more obvious examples, but some work still needs to be done.Quixote34 (talk) 09:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, ok, thanks for your response. I hope we can reach a productive agreement on this. Apologies for taking so long to reply. Glad someone else is taking an interest.

First up: what I see as misleading is the phrase 'no longer mentioned in their publicity' with reference to the UFO beliefs. I stand by my assertion that this is dishonest. I'm not wikilawyer enough to be able to quote which specific policies would apply but I can't believe wikipedia is in the business of making insinuations. That's clearly what this sentence does, it insinuates that although it's no longer in the publicity, it probably still goes on. I would like to see it replaced with something like 'but there is no evidence to suggest that these beliefs have any relevance to the modern community' - we are talking about something that happened forty years ago and has been forgotten by everyone except those with an axe to grind.

Which brings me neatly to my next point: Castro, 1996. I had a look at this and it falls into exactly the same trap as the FT article. Stephen Castro was a former member of the community at Findhorn and published his book after falling out with them. This, as I mentioned above, is exactly the kind of "disgruntled former employee" testimony that should not be regarded in any way as objective. From the text I looked at it seems that Castro's main grievance is that the community failed to conform to his personal vision of what a spiritual group should look like. When his ideas were rejected by the community he stomped off and vented his fury in a book that was never going to be anything but an attack - note title. I think the appropriate policy here would be the one about not giving undue weight to fringe opinions.

You say that there are two sides to any presentation of the Foundation's work. I would counter that in fact there are a great deal more than two sides and to set up this kind of this-view-vs-that-view adversarial argument is not helping to find any kind of objective presentation and is not really representative of anything but one man's personal grudge. He judged them to be hypocrites and got a book published by a tiny local imprint so he could rub it in their faces. This is nothing more than vindictive score-settling and really doesn't deserve to be considered as any kind of credible source.

The Findhorn Foundation is indeed more 'tolerant of differences' in spiritual belief and practice than mainstream society. As a result, many people with somewhat esoteric beliefs find that they are accepted there in a way they would not be elsewhere. As stated however, the community itself has no formal creed or doctrine beyond providing a space for people to explore their own spirituality. Please note that I did not try to define the community itself as 'normal', I was referring broadly to the people who live, work and raise families there.

I can clearly see that the UFO stuff is relevant to Peter Caddy as an individual and I don't understand why it's not mentioned on his personal page rather than here. I think that to try and hang this on the hundreds of people who live there today who have no idea about it is pretty despicable. I dispute that it was in fact 'integral to the early history of the community'. This will obviously be very difficult for me to prove with cites - ie: nobody is going to publish a story saying "The early Findhorn community had nothing to do with UFO watching" not because it's not true, but because it's not exciting. Allowing the article to stand as it is gives precedence to sensationalism over sense.

I see you have put in a lot of work on this article as well as some fine work on other UFO-related articles for which I commend you. I just think that here the cart is being put some distance ahead of the horse. Scriblio (talk) 21:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi - I really used Castro to make a point that there are other viewpoints on the community's work; you will note that his allegations are not really dealt with in the article in its current form. If anything, my main concern is defining the mainstream evaluation of Findhorn - if there is one. But if you regard Castro as a one-sided and contaminated source, you'll also have to accept my point that most of the existing content of the article was just taken straight from Findhorn's own publicity, which under Wikipedia's rules of objectivity, hardly constitutes an objective evaluation either.

As you say above, it's not true to say that "the early Findhorn community had nothing to do with UFO watching". For the first decade or so of its existence, there was a clear link between the community and the contactee tradition - an interesting piece of cultural transmission whereby post-war American nuclear paranoia (probably the main source of UFO belief as a cultural trope) seems to have got mixed up with the theosophy-influenced New Age; rather similar to the Aetherius Society, in some ways. To try and state that this belief is somehow only specific to Caddy, and therefore something that should be shunted off to his biographical page, is a bit misleading given Caddy's role in the community for many years, and the fact that the 'guidance' the Caddys believed they were receiving - 'guidance' that they followed in order to shape the community's early character and practises, and that they passed on to others in that community - was in many cases supposed to have been given by the 'Space Brothers'.

This really seems to be an issue of whether the community's early character is at all relevant to its existence today. I'd argue that it is: no organisation springs up, fully-formed and functioning, out of the ground. The fact that some of these characteristics might seem a little quaint, naive or even deluded to modern eyes - or to an organisation in the process of trying to reshape itself as a mainstream NGO - shouldn't mean that they are ignored, and neither should the fact that they make an entertaining narrative of fringe beliefs at the height of the nuclear age. After all, the giant cabbages, "Devas", and the like are all given prominence in more, well, reverent descriptions - but the 'Space Brothers' are not, despite being equally significant to that period. Quixote34 (talk) 09:54, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Images at Flickr

Found a folder with image Findhorn Foundation it would be worth while to request the owner to release these images under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA license. --Ekabhishek (talk) 18:23, 14 January 2009 (UTC)