Is punk a (dis)organized religion or spirituality?

Hey all,

Shouting out to all you fellow dregs who are fighting to stop the world from destroying itself through being ignorant to the shit we are in. I am currently studying Religious Studies at a Canadian university (don't get me wrong most all the people in this field are atheist or agnostic at least and I am certainly not becoming a priest at the end of my studies) and I'm in a course about Implicit or Secular Religion. We have studied Disney, star wars and star trek fandom from the view of them holding the same characteristics of a spiritual or religious group. We also looked at rave goers as religious and the super-obsessive pop band followers too. So my question is, do you all think Punk could be a form of lose-knit non-organized secular spiritual community (not religious per say).
I think I am literally the first to write a paper on this, and many of my punk friends agree there is something (not godly at all but powerful) that binds us all together, keeps us committed to the cause, gets us to take up anarchistic and anti-establishment views, and for many more hard-core than myself, drives them to forsake the modern consumer world for a smaller and REALER existence in communes and as street punks. I just wanted your takes on this to see if I am alone in this view and as far as the field of Secular religious studies goes Punk fits well in to the framework used for most of all the other studies. \m/

 

Thanks StegoSaurus, I agree the drive for something far more important then the shows and the booze and the albums is inherent in Punk, and is what I would say keeps us bound together on websites like these. Yet, the more I look at my own experiences from becoming a punk in high school to realizing there was something so much more to the movement than just the style, sound, and circle of friend. The lyrical integrity of the stark truths and profound yet mundane tone they are presented in is just so brilliant. But I have noticed in doing this project that the punk community has so many marks of other religious groups or practices:
-Factions (or sects in religio-jargon) like thrash, ska, hate punk, mod, straight-edge, and so on
-an us-them understanding of similar community members compared to those incredibly far off from the movement's codified values (like fucking fascists)
-debates and discussions (like this forum) to better understand what being a Punk really means and the wider implications of it in your normal everyday life
-huge lifestyle (and often lifelong) commitments (e.g. tattoos and piercings, forsaking modern consumerism, activism) and of course a sliding scale from these who see themselves as punks but make it far less central to their lives and don't express it in visual ways
-vast time and effort poured into the creation, experiencing and interpretation of the culture and focal point, punk rock music
-the commonly shared ideology of anarchism (though with vastly different interpretations of it)
-the almost conversational and revelatory experience of your first punk show and first mosh pit

This last point on mosh pits I find incredibly interesting and I have come to describe as a baptism in chaotic sensory deprivation and aggression - a giving oneself up to one's, often unknown, peers and trusting they won't trample you to death when (not if) you get knocked down. How the pit works to change perspectives and keep people coming back for more again and again despite the fact that the ever-present aggression is so completely the opposite of what most people would see as a worthwhile Friday night event, yet anyone my timid wife-to-be included who goes into them seems to come out with an entirely new understanding of what the movement is after.

Do any of you agree or am way off on this last point, or trying to take something so typically anti-religious as punk and forcing it inaccurately into these categories? (Help a brother out, there is literally no fucking academic writing on this.)

 

Well I finished the paper and its fucking huge, but I could have said way more. I think I might just do something on this as my master's--it'd be a good excuse to hitch-hike across Canada to BC and hit up some shows on the way. I think writing about the experience of living on the road and interviewing punkers from all over at shows, bars and sitting on the curb would pretty much be the best damn school work I'd ever get to do. Either way, if any of you feel like a pretty dry read, but would like to look into this further feel free to download the paper in .pdf format here and post what you thought about it. <http://www.cs.mun.ca/~jct183/Punk%20Paper.pdf>. thanks for your insights, I ended up not being able to use them though, stupid ethics committees need their forms filled out or the world will come to a fucking end. But thanks for your opinions, and keep them coming I might just continue this research.