I cannot rightly say "all," or even "most," but certainly many of the Wiccans I have known or observed over the years appear to find in Wicca a unique brand of escapism from the travails of our modern world, a safe haven from the uniquely complex moral, environmental, social and political issues that define our era. They appear to seek to turn back the clock, to retreat into a pagan agrarian culture that no longer exists, or to "resurrect" a Medieval, "thatched-cottage-on-the-edge-of-the-woods" society that is far more a product of Renaissance festivals and paperback fantasy novels than of anything to be found in real, recorded history. This nostalgic (from the Greek nostos algos, or literally, "To look homeward with longing") brand of Wicca generally embodies an abdication of responsibility for the ills of modern society, rather than the conscious creation of resolutions to those ills and a brighter future for everybody.

But I understand those nostalgic feelings, I really do. Society, at this present moment in history, is frighteningly unbalanced in favor of violence, fascism, corporate hegemony, misogyny, the Industrial rape and pillage of the Earth and its parallel attack on the human spirit in the form of rampant consumerism, etc. We are clearly headed at break-neck speed toward almost certain disaster. Faced with our present real world situation, who wouldn't "Look homeward with longing?"

There's an episode of the old 1960s Star Trek television series in which Kirk and company beam down to help evacuate a planet whose sun is about to go supernova. But when the "away team" reaches the planet's surface, they find nobody home. The residents have all vanished, having used a historical video library/time machine to escape the destruction by slipping into their own past