comparing mysticisms

This is from my impressions walking through Oxford, which is full of religious iconography....

This trip really is coming to a end. I have found Britain to be rather a religious place, at least with regard to its overall cultural suggestiveness and iconography. Australia is less imbued with mysticism at the level of the mainstream. There is something much more considerably cultish about belonging to a church in Australia, as compared to how it seems to be here. The mainstream of the Australian population is considerably more agnostic and irreverent towards authorities such as religious authorities than the society seems to be here. It's not that I have actually met anybody who was overtly religious here -- there are the street preachers, the tramp that told me "God bless" when I bought a charity newspaper from him, and the various cathedrals and theosophical and Christian bookstores.

So religion is in relatively good standing over here, as compared to over there.

Notably, however, I come from a cowboy state where the mysticism of survival of the fittest -- the predominating social darwinistic faith -- holds sway. In general, despite with the surface religiosity of British society, mysticism holds sway much less than it does in Perth. The British approach the things that are beyond human control -- like disablement and death and gender -- in a thoroughly enlightened way, compared to the many social darwinistically imbued Australians.