The PK phenomenon raises all kinds of interesting questions for consideration. Realizing how hard it is to build legitimate grass roots mass movements nationally, I am always somewhat suspicious of something like PK that goes from a few hundred to a few thousand, to hundreds of thousands in just a couple of years. That kind of growth, even if it taps into wide-spread and deep social discontent, does not happen without considerable resources. I rather doubt it was entirely self-financed (by passing the plate at PK events). That does not mean it is illegitimate or a sinister tool of hidden forces. But it does suggest institutional or other support. That support might have come from organized church and religious groups that endorsed what PK said it was all about. It may have come from wealthy donors. It could have come from the religious right, or from other rightwing or right-leaning sources. It may have been combination of all of those and more. Do some of those "investors" have their own ideological agenda? You bet they do. Their relationship to PK may be totally opportunistic, sinister, or parasitic. Others may see PK as a means to gain access to an audience they could not easily secure in their own rights. Assume all of that. Still PK has obviously tapped into a widespread sentiment among some men and speaks to deeply felt needs and anxieties. There is much angst in the land and much pain in the psyches of men, especially working class and "middle class" white men between the ages of 30 and 60 who are watching stable elements of their personal and social world break down and feel powerless to stop it or to protect themselves and their families from its consequences. While most of the Left rails against the "system" and speaks to broad issues of economic and social justice, they do not address the individual and personal pain that is a derivative of the systemic forces at work. That was not always so, but it is so now and has been so for at least the last several decades. That is because the Left can no longer offer the cultural and spiritual support and framework within which individuals can make sense of their lives and of the world-shaking changes going on about them. (One need only catalog the range of "cults," spiritual healers, meditators, counter-culture communes, and other phenomenon that have passed through our social scene over the last three or four decades to see evidence of this void and how folks try to fill it.) Unlike the PK, the Left has proven unable to offer a compelling vision of what an alternative social arrangement might be like. Whether PK has an ulterior or hidden agenda, or is subject to the manipulation of those who do, I really am in no position to judge. That it could fall prey to that despite the best intentions of its founders, I do not doubt. It also appears clear to me that PK's message is a mixed and contradictory one when it comes to male-female relations, hierarchy, and other matters for which legitimate criticism has been raised. Alarmist condemnations and wild stereotyping, however, whatever the intentions of those who use them, do nothing to alter the course PK will take (and may actually accelerate PK down that trajectory as a defensive reaction). The best antidote I know for any reactionary potential PK may have or prophylactic against that is the creation of a legitimate, mass-based, democratic movement that addresses the underlying systemic causes of social and spiritual malaise and alienation -- one that offers those attracted to PK another (not necessarily competing) alternative for what ails them -- one that creates a cultural and spiritual community that is egalitarian, nurturing, healing, supportive, and life-affirming and a vision of how society might be organized toward those ends. That's my two cents. In solidarity, Michael
