Theos-Talk Archives (October 2010 Message tt00116)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "paijmanstheo" <th.paijmans@...> wrote:
>
> My friend, these are all the symptoms of an institure in decline. The old guard has lost itself in futile, ego-driven power struggles and has failed to train and establish a new, young and vigorous line of replacements to guide theosophy trhough the 21st century when they're gone - and as a consequence, theosophy is now as dead as a doornail.
> 
Gerontocracy is ubiquitous in the movement.

The opportunity to encourage "the younger generation" rather than run them off has now been lost twice and perhaps three times.  My cohort of young theosophists who arrived in the late 70s/early 80s are now grandparents, but they're still young upstarts to the octogenarian power structure.  The 60ish are still waiting their turns, while the 40yo and 20yo generations are not there in any numbers.  

I had great admiration and affection for Grace Knoche, who did more than anyone to encourage my writing and research back in the 1980s.  But the Pasadena TS now seems to be in a state of collapse, Sunrise magazine being shut down the year after Grace died.  The "leader for life" tradition in that organization meant leader to age 96, surely not a good thing for the health of the society.  While Radha is "president for life" de facto rather than de jure, the specter of someone clinging to power into her 90s certainly seems to haunt the Adyar TS as well.  I just learned that Theosophy magazine is no more, and wonder if gerontocracy might be an even bigger issue in ULT than in the Adyar or Pasadena TSes. There does seem to be a loss of vitality in that group from what I can see online.

One of the many factors that make me feel more comfortable in the Church of Light than I ever was in the TSes is that the leadership is of my own generation, open to new ideas, without any apparent sense of entitlement.  It's a far more encouraging environment for anyone wanting to pursue historical research into TS origins!  But unfortunately the organizations with the most archival resources at their disposal are the least interested in such research.