Pagan Values: Relating to the Wild

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If you thought my last post ended kind of abruptly, you're right! Plugging away at my discussion of pacifism, defining ideas like violence and destruction in order to talk about Just War theory and environmentalism, I hardly noticed how long and how far afield I'd gone until the clock chimed eight (metaphorically, anyway). It was time to call it a night, and leave the rest for another day. For today, actually.

When I last wrote, I'd set out to find a workable definition of "violence" that would give us some insight into the fundamental principles of pacifism and how they're reflected in the modern environmentalist movement. Opponents of pacifism would like to blur the distinction between destruction and violence and back advocates of creative nonviolence into a corner defending the straw-man view that we can somehow avoid all forms of destruction. Of course we can't, nor would we want to! But luckily, we've seen that this unsubtle approach fails to address how we actually experience the world around us. When we define violence as the rejection, denial or diminishment of the unique and meaningful individuality of being, distinct from destruction as a natural and inevitable aspect of the manifest world, we see that we can strive to avoid violence, against others and against ourselves. Cultivating honorable, reverent relationships and recognizing the utter uniqueness of all beings as meaningfully interconnected is something that we most certainly can accomplish, right here, right now. It also transforms the way we relate to the natural world, and challenges us to reconsider the initial myth of an inherently violent "human nature" at war with each other and its surroundings.

Violence Without Spirit

Our contemporary Western culture suffers from a kind of schizophrenia or sociopathy when it comes to our relationship with the natural world. Exceedingly, almost irrationally anthropocentric, we have come to view almost any check to human well-being, longevity and prolificacy as a kind of malicious rejection of our assumed right to thrive. Under a definition that mistakes all forms of destruction as forms of violence, human beings not only act violently against the wheat field, the deer and the tree; nature itself acts violently against us. The natural force and power of storms and quakes, the inhospitable landscapes of desert, jungle and tundra, even the annual withering and hibernation of winter, all of these become not merely forces of destruction with which we strive, but ways in which the natural world acts out violently. Against this violence, we assert our right to survive, aspiring to tame and control for the benefit of our species.

But reducing destruction and violence to synonyms has another effect: it confuses our perception of indwelling spirit, allowing us to ignore nature as animate and full of divinity whenever it suits us. Only today, when we have employed our knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and other sciences to subjugate vast realms of the physical world to our needs and desires do we feel secure enough to set aside protected lands and national parks for recreation and aesthetic pleasure. In these places set-apart and roped off, we can open ourselves up to the sacredness of the natural world, we can perceive nature as something with which we might enter into relationship in a meaningful way. But outside of these designated spaces, we slip back into an attitude that treats the natural world as spiritless and empty, something which we can control and use for our own purposes.

The wild tiger is merely an amoral predator mindlessly acting on its base instinct; it can be hunted down, or protected, according to our current sentimentality. When a tiger attacks within the "safe space" of a zoo, however, we perceive it as a being capable, at least in some truncated way, of relationship and so we seek to "punish" it, as though killing the creature might serve as a lesson for other tigers or obtain justice for the victim of the attack. Likewise, we tend to react with horror to those who suggest floods and earthquakes are vengeful acts of an angry god, labeling such views superstitious and ignorant. Yet we respond with apathy or even reluctant acceptance to the pervasive ecological destruction happening around us on a daily basis. We step in to prevent it most passionately only when it mars our "national treasures" or favorite recreational spots. In this way we foster a disconnect between our perception of "wild" nature as senseless and dangerous, and "tame" nature as charming, revitalizing, and sentient only to the extent that it is also relatively safe.

As with many other attitudes of modern culture, we project these assumptions back in time onto societies quite different from our own, and draw odd conclusions. We quite rightly recognize that for most of humanity's existence, the wildness and wilderness of the natural world was a very real and constant danger. Yet we fail to grasp how our ancestors were able to relate to the wild as sentient and radiant with immanent divinity without reducing its force or controlling its power. Instead we assume that ancient peoples, surrounded as they were with danger and challenge, were themselves more prone to violence and less capable, in a milieu of fear and hardship, of developing the mindfulness necessary for peaceful, "civilized" living. The pacifist sees violence as "mindless" because it involves the willful forfeit of mindful choice to respect and honor unique Spirit in all beings. But a mistaken view of human nature as inherently violent attributes that same mindlessness to the complete absence of our ability to choose. The closer we come to nature, in other words (either by looking back in history to when our ancestors lived entrenched in it, or by sloughing off the social assumptions and restrictions that keep us civilized and safe), the closer we come to our own inner mindlessness. When we leave the confines of the zoo, we once again become ruthless predators. Like the natural world itself, we are wild, dangerous and a bit senseless at our core. At our very heart beneath the layers of civilizing influence, implies this view, we lack the capacity to make mindful choices, to relate "face-to-face" with other beings.

Old Stories of the Hunt

As a pacifist who believes that people are not only capable of peaceful, reverent relationship with one another but supremely and deeply suited to such relationship, I don't accept the view that our core is empty of empathy and spirit. Rather, it seems to me that the closer we come to nature--our own and that of the manifest world in which we live--the more capable we become of real connection and understanding. I suspect that our ancestors, living in more intimate contact with wildness and wilderness on a daily basis, were probably less violent than we believe them to be, perhaps even less violent than we ourselves are today. Our modern tendency to sanitize and depersonalize violence with technologies that also allow us to commit horrific acts on a massive scale can fool us into believing we live safe and peaceful lives, but this illusion only lasts as long as we can maintain our ignorance of the real consequences of violence and war.

Among ancient tribal cultures, on the other hand, life-threatening wildness and bodily conflict and destruction were always lurking at the edges of ordinary awareness. Because of this, ancient peoples learned to build relationships of honor and appreciation with the potentially destructive forces and powers of the wilderness, both outside and within themselves. Their stories and myths can show us even today a way of relating to the wild with reverence instead of fear, affirming a mindful relationship with Spirit rather than a senseless battle of instincts. These stories speak to us from a time when human beings remembered, recognized and imagined our roots as deeply entwined in the natural world, when we had only just come into our power as a species capable of cleverness and creativity. A time when we still appreciated these traits in ourselves as an aspect of our own unique individuality within an expansive and inclusive world, and not as qualities that set us apart from and above the world.

From the Cheyenne, for instance, comes the myth of the Great Race, a contest among all creatures to determine who would eat whom. The story goes that long ago, the buffalos, who were huge and strong, used to eat people instead of the other way around. But the people cried out that this was unfair, and so the buffalo proposed there be a race between the four-legged and the two-legged animals to decide the proper relationship among them. The buffalo chose the strongest and fastest of their kind to contend. The people, meanwhile, enlisted the help of the birds of the air who, although only two-legged like the people, outstripped the buffalo on their swift wings. From then on, people hunted buffalo for food, though they would not consume the beard of the buffalo because it was a reminder that once they had been the prey.

Among the Blackfoot, there is another legend about the hunting of buffalo. In this story, no one could induce the buffalo to fall to their deaths over the edge of a cliff, and so the people were slowly starving and wasting away. In the kind of desperation that gives way to jest, one young woman promised that she would marry one of the buffalo, if only they would jump; and soon they were running and tumbling down the cliff, while a great bull, master of the buffalo, came to claim her hand in marriage. The girl's father, outraged and afraid, went on a journey to rescue her and bring her back to her family, but he was soon discovered and trampled to death by the herd. As the girl mourned, the bull pointed out that such was the sadness of the buffalo, too, when they watched their relatives plunge to their deaths in order to feed the people. "But I will pity you," said the bull, "and make you a deal. If you can bring your father back to life, I will let you go, so that you may return to your family." And so the girl found a shard of bone from her father's shattered remains and sang a secret song that restored her father to life. The bull honored his agreement, but said, "Because you have shown that your people have a holy power capable of bringing the dead to life again, we will show you our song and dance. You must remember this dance, so that even though you hunt us and eat us, you will afterwards restore us to life again." This is the story the Blackfoot tell about how the Buffalo Dance began, with its priests dressed in buffalo robes and wearing bulls' heads shuffling along and singing the continuation of life for the massive beasts.

In both these stories, we see a new relationship with the natural world, one that respects its wildness and potential danger without rejecting meaningful relationship. The people who told these stories were buffalo hunters, in relationship with the animal not as domestic stock but as great, untamed creatures perfectly capable, through death or deprivation, of hurting the people who depended on them. It would be easy to say that these legends simply serve, like our modern justifications, to excuse violence as inherent or necessary. From the perspective of Just War theory*, the hunting of animals for food can be considered a form of "just" violence. The needs of the people and the practical benefits of killing outweigh whatever negative consequences the people might suffer, as well as the needs or desires (including the desire to live) that the animals being hunted might have. When an animal has the power and potential to be dangerous and even life-threatening to a human being, the case seems even more obvious; after all, there is no reasoning or other "peaceful" means of reconciling with a senseless animal. Such stories of contest and exchange might amuse or reassure us, but for the most part they're just superstition, overlaying the reality of pragmatic survival.

But what if instead we take these ancient myths at face-value? In Just War theory, the enemy or opponent does not consent to his own destruction, but at the heart of these myths is the awareness of nature, as well as people, as capable of consent and choice. The buffalo himself takes initiative, proposing conditions of equal exchange and just, honorable relationship with human beings. He consents to the terms of the great race or the marriage, accepts the consequences and even, in both stories, demonstrates empathy with human suffering. In the Blackfoot legend, especially, through intermarriage human beings and buffalo come into more intimate understanding, recognizing their common "holy power" to create new life through music and ritual. These stories are not a rejection of "face-to-face" relationship, but a celebration of it. Rather than a prize wrestled from the flesh of unwilling prey, the survival and fruitful life of human beings becomes a gift, in which nature gives of itself by its own consent with the understanding that we, too, will give of ourselves in return. And so, even though the end result is the same (the people still hunt and kill the buffalo in order to survive), a potential act of violence is transformed into an act of mutual empowerment and renewal.

This transformation is what practical pacifism can help us to realize. It puts us in touch with our awareness of relationship, and where there is relationship there is the possibility of generous giving and of gratitude, even in the most difficult, dangerous or destructive circumstances. To hunt a species to extinction dishonors the gift of life that creature has given us, but it also means we rob ourselves of that gift. When we diminish others, we also diminish ourselves. But when we see ourselves as connected to and concerned with the prosperity and protection of others at our most fundamental level, we become more care-full in how we act and react, how we live in and respond to the world around us. We can longer turn a deaf ear or blind eye to others; we learn to listen to them closely, to reach out to them in connection and communication, so that we might know what gifts they offer and how best to honor those gifts in return. At its simplest, pacifism asks us to care for other beings and preserve them from the callousness and diminishment of violence. For when we empower and appreciate others, when we recognize in others the capacity for choice and consensual relationship, we also empower and elevate ourselves and honor our own potential.




*To be fair, Just War theory is rarely if ever actually applied to anything other than literal warfare among humans; however, its implications about the nature of violence and our relationship with potentially destructive forces can be more widely considered and applied.

Pagan Values: Violence, Destruction & The Difference

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Is it really the case, as I claimed earlier, that there is no equivalent to the "just war" theory when it comes to understanding our relationship with the natural world? With a moment's thought we can soon list lots of occasions when an individual or group of people have had to hunt or harvest, plow fields for food or cut down trees for shelter, in order to survive. To say that people are not sometimes "at war" with or struggling against their local environment treads dangerously close to the naive view of nature as benign, beneficent, even tame.

The truth is, the natural world is anything but tame; it is wild, it is the epitome of wildness and wilderness. Forces of the natural world--the ferocity of a wildfire, the upheaval of an earthquake, the very barrenness of a desert or the pummeling pressure of a river's relentless current--can be sources of terrific destruction and obstacles against which we struggle every day. Meanwhile, the "red in tooth and claw" reality of predator and prey certainly seems founded on an inherent relationship between violence and survival. How can we choose to live by principles of pacifism and creative nonviolence in light of this wildness? How can we apply pacifism to environmentalism--let alone to our everyday, social and political lives--when violence appears ubiquitous, especially in the natural world?

Violence in Human/Nature

Really, it has always been the apparent violence of nature as a whole--more than that of humanity alone--that has been the greatest stumbling block for the philosophy of nonviolence. Most arguments against pacifism as an unrealistic ideal only rely partially on the actual history of human violence; after all, there are also many examples in human history of our capacity for empathy, kindness and near-infinite adaptability. Opponents of pacifism more often use nature as the best evidence against its practical realization. Projecting back in time an imagined pure or fundamental "human nature" imbued with all the base self-interest of the animal world and drenched in the blood and strife of continuous struggle against competitors for the scarce resources needed to survive, they argue that people simply cannot overcome an innate tendency towards destruction. The closed system of the earth itself means there is only a finite amount of land, food and other resources to go around. We continually find ourselves in conflict, destroying when there is no more room to create, surviving and thriving at the expense of our rivals and our prey. Even those rare individuals, the argument goes, who can overcome or mitigate violence do so through suppression or denial of their own nature. But this requires extraordinary discipline and strength of will not available to most of us. Pacifism might be an option for the inhumanly committed with unwavering focus, but as a general goal for the average person it just doesn't work.

The flaw in this view is that it takes for granted that destruction is synonymous with violence, and where the former exists the latter must also be present. To kill a neighbor to gain his prosperous fields is, from this perspective, hardly different from the act of eating the harvest of those fields, or hunting down a stag, or chopping down a tree to build shelter. In all these situations, one life is destroyed for the sake of another. We might say that killing a fellow human being is worse because, by some unspoken measure, human beings are better or more important than a stag, a tree or a field of wheat. But this objection relies on a rather flimsy judgment of value. To make a distinction between violence against human beings and violence against non-humans misrepresents our own intuitive relationship with destruction. As soon as we acknowledge that humans are not inherently "better" than the rest of the natural world--something many Pagans find obvious already--we lose what ground we've gained towards a nonviolent philosophy and find ourselves again faced with the overwhelming presence of destruction, and therefore (supposedly) violence in nature and humankind.

Natural Empathy & Our Need for Destruction

The more appropriate and useful distinction that we need to make is, I believe, between mere destruction and violence. That is, between destruction as a natural and inevitable aspect of the manifest world; and violence as an intentional form of destructive dishonor or irreverence towards the unique individuality of being. Not only does this subtle shift circumvent the false dichotomy of humanity-versus-nature, but it reflects the difference between destruction and violence that we experience intuitively and reveals exactly what it is about violence that makes it so damaging and undesirable.

As self-aware social animals, we human beings have developed a natural tendency towards empathy, evident even in early childhood. This ability to connect imaginatively and emotionally with the "other"--not just with other people, but any being that we perceive as animate and aware, from pets, to plants, to landscapes and weather--allows us to function well in supportive communities, but it also means that we feel a visceral discomfort when witnessing others in pain. When cornered by our own urgent needs or fears, however, our capacity for self-consciousness and imagination can come to serve violence rather than empathy, encouraging us to invent convincing justifications for inflicting pain on others. These justifications--self-defense, punishment, deterrence, and preemptive force, to name a few--hold in common a typical diminishment of the "other" into a being less worthy of our empathy, less capable of suffering, against which we can direct destructive force guilt-free.

Sometimes this diminishment portrays the other as a less-than-complete being, not merely an animal but a vicious, repulsive, uncomplicated thing that cannot be trusted to live peacefully and behave civilly, and must therefore be either contained or exterminated. Other times, we diminish the other by viewing it as an abstract destructive power against which we have every right to strive for life. The mugger with the knife looming up out of the dark is as impersonal as the tornado or the virus that threatens us, and we react with a similarly reflexive defense. The criminal condemned to execution is, as Ani DiFranco says, "a symbol, not a human being; that way they can kill [him], and say it's not murder, it's a metaphor." An excellent example of diminishment comes from Jared Diamond's book, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal:

[I]n 1982 one of Australia's leading news magazines, The Bulletin, published a letter by a lady named Patricia Cobern, who denied indignantly that white settlers had exterminated the Tasmanians. In fact, wrote Ms. Cobern, the settlers were peace-loving and of high moral character, while Tasmanians were treacherous, murderous, warlike, filthy, gluttonous, vermin-infested, and disfigured by syphilis. Moreover, they took poor care of their infants, never bathed, and had repulsive marriage customs. They died out because of all those poor health practices, plus a death wish and a lack of religious beliefs. It was just a coincidence that, after thousands of years of existence, they happened to die out during a conflict with the settlers. The only massacres were of settlers by Tasmanians, not vice versa. Besides, the settlers only armed themselves in self-defense, were unfamiliar with guns, and never shot more than forty-one Tasmanians at one time.

Such justifications, listed emphatically one after another, bely the utter absurdity of such attempts at diminishment. As Cobern's explanations grow more and more bizarre and unlikely (the Tasmanians had a "death wish"? the settlers "never shot more than forty-one" at a time?), what becomes obvious is her desperate need to prove that the deaths of the Tasmanians were, one way or another, inevitable.

Choice & Consent

Why this desperate need to prove inevitability? Because destruction really is inevitable, unavoidable. It is, in essence, simply another aspect of creation, that which breaks down before it can build up, making room for the new and letting the old and stale lapse back into the void of potential. We recognize this basic fact at gut-level, so deep is this relationship between destruction and creation, dark and light, winter and spring. Destruction is not always undesirable; sometimes it can even be a welcome relief. And so, what every form of diminishing the other has in common is our need to justify violence by transforming it into a form of destruction.

These justifications would not work so well, or even be necessary, if we did not already understand on an intuitive level that destruction and violence are not the same. We would not need to deny the relevance of empathy and reverence, to deny our own active participation in destruction, if we did not sense on some level that these things make a difference. What we already know is that some deaths, some break-downs, some sources of pain and suffering, are not inevitable. What we already know is that, unlike destruction, violence is always a choice. It is a choice to destroy, to induce pain, to allow our own needs and passions to overshadow those of the other and to force our will upon others without their consent. The word "violence" itself comes from the Latin violentia, which translates as vehemence or impetuosity. Both words suggest the application of force without thought or consideration, without empathy for the suffering it might cause. Related is the verb violare, which gives rise to the English "violate" and means "to treat with violence or irreverence, to dishonor."

When trying to understand a philosophy of pacifism or nonviolence, therefore, we can define the word "violence" broadly, without making the absurd claim that all destruction should or can be avoided. Personally, I define "violence" as: a rejection or denial of the unique and meaningful individuality of a being. Rejecting that another being has a unique and meaningful individual existence independent from our own can lead us to impose our wills or passions on them by force. Such force can be physical and cause physical injury or even death, but it can also be emotional, psychological or even spiritual. In her book Living With Honour, Emma Restall Orr talks about the Welsh and Gealic words for "face," and invokes the notion of "being face-to-face" as at the heart of what honor means in Celtic society. An act of violence against another is an act of dishonor, refusing to come face-to-face, diminishing and disempowering others, alienating and isolating them and denying them relationship with us, denying our interconnection.

We can also act violently towards ourselves; this kind of self-violence is more often emotional or spiritual than physical and so less often acknowledged. But if we remember the definition of violence, then we realize that any time we reject our own individuality as unique and meaningful, any time we deny our capacity for creative engagement with the world, we commit an act of spiritual violence against our own beings. This diminishment of our own being is why we so often seek to justify violence, insisting that it is actually inevitable or necessary destruction in which we had no choice or active participation. When we have the capacity and opportunity to choose, and yet forfeit that choice thoughtlessly, rejecting our capacity to act as a unique individual "face-to-face" with another, we act violently not only against the other, but against ourselves. For every act of violence, both victim and violator become "faceless," both are dishonored and diminished.

Relationship & Story: Exploring Ethics from a Pagan Perspective

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The beginning of June marks the beginning of the first-ever International Pagan Values Blogging Month, and I couldn't be more excited! I also couldn't be busier, as I juggle schedules, arrange for my summer vacation, plan for my up-coming birthday and help my boyfriend move into his new apartment. So, I hope you will forgive me if I kick off this month's posts with a review of two excellent books on "Pagan values" already out there in circulation and well worth reading: Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics by Emma Restall Orr, and The Other Side of Virtue, by Brendan Myers. Within the next few days, I'll also be guest posting over at Druid Journal on ecology, environmentalism and practical pacifism, as an introduction to a four(ish)-part series on the role of pacifism, violence and warriorhood in Paganism. I'll be updating here again to let you know when that post is up, so be sure to hop on over to check it out! Until then, enjoy the following review, first published in Sky, Earth, Sea: A Journal of Practical Spirituality (Spring 2009).

"The greatest achievement of spirit: the ability to transform nearly anything--even our suffering and tragedy--into art."

- Myers, The Other Side of Virtue

As the Pagan community continues to change and grow, establishing itself as a thriving contemporary spiritual tradition (or more accurately, traditions!), the needs of this diverse and somewhat chaotic community also continue to develop beyond those of first-generation neophytes looking for initiatory experiences and basic how-to guides. One aspect of this evolving need for a deeper, more complex engagement with the Pagan spiritual path--so familiar to those who demand "advanced" Pagan texts that move beyond the typical "Druidry 101," for instance--can be seen in the community's desire to establish its own unique sense of ethics and virtue apart from the divinely mandated good-and-evil dualism of a monotheistic mainstream. From the earliest modern practitioners of Wicca and Druidry, we find examples of moral formulations: the Wiccan Rede, the Law of Threefold Return, and the collection of Druidic triads, to name only a few. And yet many of us can see that these simple codes often leave much to be desired, faltering under pressure or deteriorating into self-justifying rhetoric. Two new texts published recently by O Books, however, rise to the challenge and take on the complex, wild and vital questions of ethical action and virtuous living, seeking new ways of approaching such ancient problems: Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics, by Emma Restall Orr, and Brenden Myers's text, The Other Side of Virtue: Where our virtues come from, what they really mean, and where they might be taking us.

Both texts center on the idea of relationship, more specifically that between the self and the world (and those in it), as the defining aspect of what we should consider an ethical or virtuous life. Emma Restall Orr sets out in her book, Living With Honour, to provide a clear basis for making practical (or "applied") ethical choices apart from the moral doctrines laid out by monotheistic religions and secular culture, which have tended in recent times to be dualistic and hierarchical. The result is a uniquely Pagan conception of ethics based on the primacy of "honorable relationship," an on-going, active engagement with the world and those living in it, guided by courage, generosity and loyalty. While Restall Orr focuses primarily on how this relationship with the world shapes our everyday choices and behavior in order to form a healthy interconnection with other beings, in Brenden Myers's work The Other Side of Virtue, the author trains his attention on the engaged individual, exploring how a self-aware relationship with Immensities helps each of us to discover, as well as to create, "who we are." For Myers, self-knowledge presents a philosophical "problem," and the work of resolving it cultivates a person's virtue in the form of human excellence. Both authors, however, recognize a core ambivalence about assuming such relationship with the world will always be safely benign, challenging the easy dichotomy between good and evil so common to monotheistic religions. In searching for an alternative ethical foundation, both Myers and Restall Orr evoke Pagan and Druidic notions of creative story-telling as the means by which we might shape our lives with a sense of meaning, beauty and truth.

Emma Restall Orr's text might be considered, for many readers, to be the more practical and down-to-earth of the two. She devotes the first half of this clear-sighted and articulate book to deconstructing common (and commonly misunderstood) terms such as "Pagan," "morality," and "honor", as well as developing a broad understanding of the many schools of thought that have contributed to the study of ethics over the centuries. Leaping over whole philosophical systems in a single bound, she is likely to leave some readers a little giddy with vertigo, but her treatment is invariably sharp and fair, seeking the central tenants and common threads that will be most illuminating without risking oversimplification. Her careful exploration of the multifarious foundations and processes that go into making everyday choices--from emotion and instinct, to reason and the rule of law--prepares the reader for the "applied ethics" of later chapters. Further, her brief description of various Pagan traditions and their unique moral formulations provides a place for the contemplative Pagan reader to find an initial foothold of familiar subject matter, while also clarifying (for Pagan and non-Pagan readers alike) how one can establish and maintain a functional ethical model outside of the doctrines of monotheistic religions and secular humanism. Scattered throughout these sections of analysis and dissection are Restall Orr's characteristic flashes of narrative--dancing in the rain, savoring an apple, reading quietly in the park--which give flavor and moving insight into the potential of engaged ethical living.

These more poetic moments become less common in the second half of Living with Honour, as Restall Orr buckles down to the nitty-gritty and addresses many contemporary social and political issues of our time. Exploring everything from suicide and euthanasia to animal rights and vegetarianism, parenting and romance to ecology and materialism, she applies her ethic of "honorable relationship" with intensity and consistency. Her approach puts the individual's ability to choose freely, no matter how difficult or convoluted the circumstances, at the heart of an ethical life, and eschews any reliance on socially-imposed "morality" or external rule of law. This text does not aim to rewrite the shared assumptions of a Judeo-Christian mainstream, but instead celebrates the anarchistic, pluralistic tendencies of the modern Pagan community as essential to developing a sense of individual responsibility ("response-ability") that relates more directly and receptively to a world that is always complex and in flux. Because of her intensity, however, some of her conclusions may make readers cringe (especially those passages which call for strict veganism or which challenge the usual notions of death); her thorough deconstruction of our potential for careless exploitation is pitiless, daunting, even at times overwhelming. One might wonder how it is ever possible to have enough knowledge or power to be capable of making truly effective ethical choices in the face of a huge and infinitely complicated world.

However, her unfaltering emphasis on personal, responsive relationship softens her own tendency towards moralizing, saving the text from becoming just another example of imposing doctrine. Instead, Restall Orr works tirelessly to remind readers that ethical living must be guided, above all, by an open and ever-changing experience of the world itself, here and now. In the third and final section of her book, she addresses the feelings of fear, impotence, inertia and confusion that often keep us from acting according to our own sense of ethics. As an antidote to such feelings, she suggests a kind of stubborn, loving integrity that seeks for a meaningful, empowering sense of self immersed in an infinitely beautiful world. In these final pages, she tells a story of scared awe and gratitude, in which the choice to act ethically is rarely ever a choice at all, but only the natural response that empathy and integrity evoke in a receptive individual willing to place honorable relationship above pure self-interest or familiar fears.

In some ways, this poetic conclusion to Restall Orr's work leads naturally to the first chapters of Brenden Myers's The Other Side of Virtue, which opens with a warm circle of storytellers gathered around a crackling fire, inviting the reader to join. While Restall Orr finds powerful, ecstatic inspiration above all in the wildness of the natural world, Myers is clearly moved and motivated strongly by the shared life and work of community and locates the beginning of his discussion of virtue in this setting. The first "movement" of the text (which is structured like a song or musical score) plays informally with images and metaphors to be developed more fully later on, asserting aphorisms and even making jokes. Reading along, it is almost impossible not to begin to engage the text directly, chuckling aloud or scribbling notes in the margin, developing a dialogue, a conversation of ideas and possibilities. While Restall Orr prepares the reader to enter into the thick of ethical analysis by first covering the familiar ground of Pagan tradition, Myers uses a different approach to his task of defining virtue: establishing a sense of community that will run through the rest of the book and give landscape and texture to the path it will trace.

In the following three movements, Myers proceeds to examine the historical development of the concept of "virtue," beginning with the tribal culture of Heroic societies, through the developing emphasis on reason in ancient Classical philosophy, following the various permutations over the centuries as they produced humanism, romanticism and contemporary examples, real and fictional, of honorable heroes and great men. Throughout this discussion, Myers includes useful details about the changes in society and politics, as well as myriad quotations from ancient texts, to give context and perspective to the evolving definition of human virtue. His examination of particular thinkers and writers, such as Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Nietzsche, provide stepping stones through history for the reader; however, at times they give the text almost too specific a focus, as though standing in for whole schools of thought without giving the reader enough perspective to see how these trends weave together in a broader theory. Meanwhile, the influence of Judeo-Christian morality and its redefinition of virtue as that of passivity and obedience, so intriguingly mentioned in the book's overture, is left almost entirely unmentioned. Here is one place where Restall Orr's sweeping but sometimes overly broad discussion of philosophical concepts can compliment Myers's more specialized focus and remind the reader of the "bigger picture" that might otherwise be lost in the historical milieu.

If the discussion of virtue's historical development, although very well-researched and highly informative, feels a bit dense or cobbled together at times, the fifth movement of The Other Side is where Myers really hits his stride. In it, he attempts to lay bare the "logical structure" of virtue itself, as he understands it, and the slowly-unfolding weaving together of seemingly disparate ideas from previous sections is by turns masterful, musical and mind-blowing. Here we are confronted in a kind of pure contemplation with some of the "Immensities" (Myers's term) that Restall Orr addresses more directly and practically in the later chapters of her own work: the Earth, Death (or Time), and Other People; as well as some of the responses their presence in our lives can evoke: wonder, integrity, and humanity. For Myers, the issue of relationship--the place of the individual within a community and landscape--comes to the forefront in "threshold" experiences whereby a person's sense of identity and self-knowledge is challenged, shaken to its core and thus transformed by an engagement with something both infinitely knowable and intimately overwhelming.

Unlike Restall Orr, who believes that an open engagement with the world usually renders the "ethical" course of action obvious and natural, Myers suggests that we develop our sense of virtue, or human excellence, precisely in those situations when an Immensity calls our most fundamental assumptions about the self and the world into question--that is, precisely when we are least certain of what we once believed to be obvious. His discussion of how these experiences shape us, however, is remarkably similar to Restall Orr's. He too emphasizes our inherent ability to choose as both a revelatory and creative act, at once revealing ourselves to our own self-awareness and helping to create those very selves. The choices we make are shaped by our sense of story (what sociologists might call, on a larger scale, our mythology, what Druids might call our "song") and the role we see ourselves playing as that story unfolds. There is no guarantee that Fortune will be kind or an Immensity benign--in fact, the potentially transformative nature of threshold experiences might be considered inescapably destructive, even traumatic to some extent. But with a strong sense of story, rather than a reliance on traditional definitions of right and wrong, we both discover and create meaning and beauty in our lives through the choices we pursue at such times.

Of course, the study of ethics and the exploration of virtue are not precisely one and the same. On the one hand, virtue is only one way among many to approach the question of ethics (including relativism, utilitarianism, deontology, etc.); on the other hand, there are certain amoral or nonmoral aspects to our understanding virtue itself (such as beauty, physical skills and even good fortune), so that it is difficult to see one as fitting snugly as a subcategory into the other. It may be a gross simplification to say that virtue concerns the effects of a relationship with an Immense world on the nature and knowledge of the self, while ethics is the study of how this relationship is expressed in our behavior and practical choices in everyday life. Yet it seems these two approaches are essentially the ways in which two remarkable contemporary Druid authors have chosen to explore a subject of vast complexity and vital relevance for every human being today. These two books, published so fortuitously within a few months of each other, should most definitely be read together, and read more than once. The questions they raise and problems they wrestle have continuing importance fundamental to our perception of ourselves and the world we live in with one another. And as our own stories change and evolve over the course of our lives, these texts will continuing to offer fresh new insight and possibilities for meaning, beauty, knowledge and truth.

• Brenden Myers, The Other Side of Virtue: Where our virtues come from, what they really mean, and where they might be taking us, O Books, 2008.


• Emma Restall Orr, Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics, O Books, 2007.

Integrity in the Workplace

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Let's put this post under the general topic of "Druid ethics," maybe... even though that may send a few people shuddering off to some other, less presumptuous blog where they talk mostly about altars and ritual and attending the Druid version of weekly Mass. Or maybe, if it makes you feel better, we can just put this in the "things that should be better about the world" category, or the "how to be decent to one another" category. Really, all this is about, in the end, is realizing that spirituality is part of daily life. Simple as that.

The concept of integrity--of integration, of being whole--is an important (dare I say integral) aspect of my spiritual life. It doesn't involve sitting down for meditation everyday and willing myself to be whole, it doesn't involve elaborate rituals to establish and ensure my wholeness. The funny thing about integrity is, if I'm not doing it all the time, every waking moment of my mundane life, then... well, it doesn't really count, does it? If integrity is only something I have when I'm "being spiritual" then it's not really wholeness. So this is one way that I work to bring a spiritual meaning to every aspect of my life. As long as I am working towards wholeness and an integrity of being (integrity writ large is nothing other than harmony, really--harmony in the web and weave of existence), then I am practicing my spirituality, even if it doesn't involve complex rituals or summoning the gods.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but recently I've noticed a startling lack of integrity in the workplace. I know! Who would have ever imagined?! I'm sure you're as shocked and dismayed as I am about this. But I'll give you, in case you're not sure (and thus not shocked by) what I'm talking about, a few recent examples.

Take iTunes for instance. The other week, I left a negative review on one of my favorite TV shows, not because I don't like the show, but because the price for a "season pass" had doubled since last year (now, purchasing a season's worth of episodes actually costs twenty dollars more than the DVDs, and that's for a poorer quality file that can only be played on a select number pre-authorized computers, without any DVD extras or commentaries). The next day, what do I find downloading onto my computer via iTunes' automatic update, but two free episodes of that very show. No notice from iTunes (or the television network that owns and most likely authorized the free download). I feel cheap, as if someone just tried to buy me off. Whereas before I might have considered springing for the show anyway, now I feel annoyed that they would presume to send me files I didn't ask for instead of confronting the fact that their prices may be unfair.

That's not such a big deal, of course, just one small example. But something happened today at work which brought the issue a bit too close to home.

And this is where I could get into some trouble. Because, to reference Arendt on the strange American paradox of "the co-existence of political freedom and social oppression"--the last person to complain about the company I work for on a public blog (though she did so anonymously and, apparently, discreetly) was fired. I know this because there was, at the time, a rumor going around that it was me. People knew I "blogged" because I'm "a writer." They don't know, of course, that I'm also a Druid and therefore slightly more suspect than the average Christian citizen. This is only one more example of a lack of integrity in the workplace. Certainly there should be some forum for honest discussion of an employer's flaws and faults? Everyone knows that rarely is a work environment perfect, let alone fair or free of discrimination.

In any case, all of my wonderful readers must now promise not to turn me in. Fair enough? If I lose my job, I won't be able to afford internet access, and my blogging will cease. And then won't you be sorry? So.

The price of oil is up. The price of everything is up, actually. We all know this, let's be fair. I work at a family diner. I serve breakfast, mostly. Recently, our prices have been going up to reflect the growing expense of food and the grease it's quite often deep fried in (see: hashbrowns, french fries, cod fish sandwiches, etc.). I try to avoid fried foods because they're so damn bad for you, but frankly, they've become a staple food in the American diet. Most of my customers understand the price increases, shrug their shoulders and deal with it. Most of my customers are regulars, though, and I've gotten into the habit of being honest with them. A manager once caught me answering the "how are you?" question with, "Well, I'm good, but I had a rough weekend, so I'm a bit tired." How dare I actually admit to the human sensation of fatigue!? I'm supposed to be the all-smiling, all-serving, all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Or... wait, no, that's Tyler Durden. Anyway.

Today, I was honest with a customer, and it almost got me fired. The price of the grease we use to fry foods has been going up, much faster than the price of the food on the menu (we'd probably lose more money if we tried to print new menus each time there was a cost increase, so we just hold our breath--by "we" I mean the Company--and hope it all evens out by the end of each financial period). So the Company's response to these expenses is to conserve oil by changing it less frequently. The result: limp, overly greasy french fries. Sorry folks, but when you dip potatoes in boiling oil over and over, that's what you're bound to get. Call it "going green," call it what you want. One day, you're going to have to choose between crisp golden french fries and the real cost of the food you take for granted.

Today, a very nice, polite young couple out for lunch complained that their fries "looked old" and asked for a new order. So I explained to them that the fries were actually very fresh, I explained about the increasing costs and how "corporate" has required us to change our cooking oil less frequently in an attempt to conserve and save money. I explained that it takes up to an hour to clean out and change the deep fryer and the next cleaning couldn't be done until tonight. I explained that the french fries were perfectly edible, of course, but if they just didn't look appealing maybe they might want to try something that wasn't deep fried--grilled homefries, perhaps, or steamed vegetables, or some soup (our soups are usually pretty good). They asked to see a manager.

My manager came back screaming at me--"You don't tell customers our grease is dirty!"

This is the first time--believe it or not--that I've been reprimanded for telling the truth to a customer. Usually, both the customer and the manager are more sympathetic. (It's sad, though, that the truth requires sympathy these days...)

But I was angry and offended, nonetheless. Here's where that whole "integrity" thing comes in. I snapped back, before I could stop myself, "Well, what do you want me to say? The grease is old! Do you want me to make up a new lie for everything they order, each time I have to serve it looking like crap? What am I supposed to say? What lie am I supposed to tell them?"

Here's the thing--it certainly isn't about the money, but really, I make barely more than $2.50 an hour, that's how little the Company values my service. They tell us to always value the customer and sympathize with him or her--and I do. Except, I don't just pretend to, I actually care about my customers. My customers are the people who really keep me fed and clothed and housed, and I'm more inclined to side with them when management asks me to lie and wheedle them into ordering food that isn't good for them and won't even taste decent. I'm more inclined to be honest with them and treat them with respect, than to coddle them and "kiss ass"--in part because that's just the way I interact with people, but also because honesty and respect are all too rare these days.

And this is what it comes down to. My manager picked up the check for that nice young couple, and they didn't bother to tip. Instead, they got increasingly sulky and rude, picking at their perfectly good burgers until they felt it was time to leave.

Integrity goes both ways. Why should we expect companies to have integrity when we cannot exercise integrity and respect as consumers? Plenty of corporations have gotten filthy rich by treating their customers and clients like spoiled children, dangling distracting treats and pacifiers in front of them whenever the least complaint arises, catering to the shaky self-esteem and insecurities of a population that holds a paradoxical expectation of somehow "deserving" to be treated like royalty while secretly fearing they're not really good enough to be treated like mature, intelligent human beings capable of making important decisions on their own.

Later today, because some of the schools were out for Columbus Day, we had a lunch rush with lots of small children. At one table, a family sat chowing down while their little one, strapped into his highchair, stared zombie-like into the buzzing screen of a portable DVD player propped up inches from his face, running scenes from "Ratatouille," in which a rat knows more about eating healthy than most American kids these days. When I brought the kids their free cookies at the end of the meal, the little thing practically choked on a grape that he attempted to spit out directly onto the table in order to stuff the sugar-coated round bit of crumby cardboard pastry into his mouth.

Is this what we want to be? Infantile, distracted, unable to swallow what's good for us, choking on and spitting up anything that isn't convenient and sugary sweet?

Understand, I do sympathize. That's part of the whole integrity thing, too. I completely understand how easy it is to lapse back into the selfish, insecure entitlement of childhood, or the selfish, insecure entitlement of the worker trying to please the boss by double-crossing the consumer so that they can earn enough to be a good consumer in their turn. But there's a cycle here that must be broken. And basic respect can break it, most effectively. You'd be amazed how positively most people respond to being treated decently as fellow human beings. You'd be surprised how much they appreciate sincerity, how great a relief it is from all the bullshit we're surrounded by everyday.

And of course, I lied, I didn't almost get fired. The Company wouldn't fire me--I make them too much money. I'm a good worker, a really good worker, because mostly I like my job and I care about doing well and working hard, not for the Company's sake but because it's the kind of person I am, the kind of person I want to be. My customers like me, because I honestly like them. You can't buy that kind of work ethic or sincerity, that kind of personal integrity.

And people aren't so far gone that they can no longer tell the difference. Anyway, at least not yet.

The Hunter

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The Hunter

I.

You must want something more
than anger.
That is the only way to begin.
You must slip inside the animal you will slaughter,
flesh sliding over flesh, the gore stripped
from the bones, the bones sharpened into knives,
the knives sewn into the loose, bloody hide
of the animal killed and gutted.
You must put on her sticky, porous
translucent skin
and run. That is the only way to begin.

You must love death, you must fall
in worship at the sound of death coming.
The bone knives clatter, bleached clicking wet teeth;
the sinews stretch
and sing—your body is its instrument—your legs
a mouth, humming, you drink
and dance and undress, until your skin
is flecked and twitching
like hers. You must want something. You must
love the body, desire it; you must want,
more than anything, for the body to continue.


II.

Look, just above you
your anger perches, mangy and full of noise,
clutching at some weak, bare limb.
Your anger preens itself
because it is afraid of ruin;
it pretends indignation over every moving body.
You must know this already.
You would sing arias
in praise of blood, but your bloated anger
chokes, its damp skin pimpled and diseased.
It delineates, scorns
the living with a grinding throat. The carcass drips
cold fat, and your anger eats, imagining
the dead are clean and quiet.


III.

Do not be ashamed. The killer
is not this anger you imagine,
he is a lover.
He seduces death—he rubs the bones slowly
against the grinding stone, turns them over in his
hands. He undoes haste with the patient rhythm
of his body working.
You must not hurry away from this.
Stay and listen. He knows
where the animal lives,
how her blood and bones move. He knows her
lungs, the lust of her legs when they are working,
the sweat and the sound of her attention
drawn up sharp.
With his stillness, he makes space, too, a vessel.
Even this separation
holds two bodies quietly until they lose
their shape, until they move
the way sound moves in water, passing
itself along like surrender. He works
the tender thread in and out, tightens
the closing knot, and in that slipping sound,
the animal hears death coming.


IV.

That is how to begin. Now, run.
Run into the open, run tangling with the mute,
thick harmony of muscles,
or laughing, or singing blessings over bone, run
until the meat of your body becomes wind,
rain and heat, each stride a storm
shifting skin and blood, the face, the thighs,
the easy bonds of proximity, run until death
collects around you, clinging offspring
of your desire, sweat along the nape or brow,
run until you learn to kill
with devotion
and suffering, until your body trembles
like a landscape beneath thunder, trembles with limbs
rustling, thrashing, until nothing
can withstand you, until everything opens
before you and the threads come loose and the knives
fall away, run
until her flight can finally undo you, until you feel her
blood loosen sweetly when it touches yours, until
you have slit her throat
and gutted her, until you have put on her skin
as if it were your own
and let it take you
into ruin.

This poem was first published in The Particular, Fall 2008: Second Person & You. For more poetry and short stories, check out our page on Facebook, or email the.particular.mag [at] gmail [dot] com for a free .pdf file or information on receiving a print subscription to upcoming issues.

Aw, Nets!

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Uh-oh, I can feel my ambivalence rising again. Just saw the bit on the Colbert Report about "Nothing But Nets," donating $10 to this organization to buy a mosquito net for kids over in Africa to save them from contracting malaria. And at first my response is, "Aww, that's great! And only ten bucks!"

But then I start to actually think about it beyond the initial gut reaction that allows me to bask in my own sense of goodness when deigning to help the impoverished.

Firstly, those who don't die of malaria are exposed to plenty of other things (AIDS, starvation, exploitation and war, etc.) that cause suffering and death. Not to say, of course, that we shouldn't bother protecting against malaria... Just that it's the kind of short-sighted goal that allows well-off people on the other side of the world to feel good about themselves while doing, honestly, very very little to actually address their role in the problem. Not to mention if, for instance, this organization was about sending over condoms and other forms of birth control and drug treatments to combat AIDS, don't you think some jerk-off conservative Christians would be up in arms about it? AIDS is by far the leading cause of death in Africa, outstripping malaria by 1.3 million yearly (and that's not including the one-third of HIV-infected individuals who technically die of tuberculosis as a result of contracting the virus). Furthermore, this part of the world already suffers from acute over-population that, combined with the Western exploitation of workers and resources, leads to vast segments of the population starving, consistently if not always to death. If we focus our efforts only on combatting one form of disease, without addressing the education and birth control necessary to stabilize the population or the role that Western capitalist globalization plays in exploiting the poverty already rampant, then really all we're doing is exacerbating the situation.

After all, in a population that is impoverished, exploited and kept intentionally ignorant for the benefit of those living in luxury, preventing one particular disease won't make a dent--there will always be new diseases to come in and take malaria's place. That's how nature works. Over population leads to depleted resources, which leads to weakened immune systems, while at the same time the increased contact of people living in densely populated areas makes contracting and spreading disease all the more likely (not to mention violent conflict and sometimes war). With the exploitation of the capitalist "free market" removing resources and shipping them to the other side of the world, such resources are no longer available to sustain the immediate population, thus the circumstances of over-population are artificially created and maintained--then relief efforts by conscientious philanthropists (whose wealth comes from that very exploitation that created the problem) ship back just enough food and medicine to keep that population alive without removing the real cause of its poverty, if anything worsening the problem by allowing an increase in population in an area already depleted of its natural resources. It's Ecology 101.

But it's also very very hard to argue against fighting disease, especially when the prevention comes at, what seems to us, such a small cost. Ten dollars. I understand why, of course. People want to be good, they want to help, they want to believe it is within their power to save the lives of those who are suffering, they want to believe that they are powerful and that salvation is easy. People want to be good--it's just that they so very rarely bother to figure out how.

So. Before deciding to donate to Nothing But Nets, ask yourself this: why is a huge segment of the world's population so impoverished that they can't even afford that life-saving ten dollar net? What kind of sickening, reprehensible system are we living in that allows kids in this country to earn in two weeks' allowance what children in Africa are dying from lack of? And instead of just saying, here, take my ten dollars, just this once--what can you do to correct the system so that this type of disgusting inequality no longer exists? Does it mean buying locally grown/made organic foods and clothing? Does it mean examining the real cost of each household item you purchase instead of trying to get a good deal at Wal-Mart? Does it mean asking yourself where the oil needed to run your car and make your plastics actually comes from? Does it mean giving up your caffeine, nicotine and other legal and illegal drug addictions so that farmers across the globe can go back to growing food instead of cash crops to keep the wealthy high, buzzed and indifferent? Does it mean living in voluntary poverty in a country that dismisses the political and spiritual efficacy of such a choice as mere "backwardness"?

And aren't all of those choices a lot more difficult than dashing off a check for ten bucks and hoping that somehow someone else will figure out how to solve the problem without asking you to sacrifice the luxury that allows you your comfortable indifference?

Nothing but nets, indeed.

Language and Morality

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I'm annoyed. This is going to be one of those entries. Be forewarned...

Well, today at work a guy accused me of being judgmental.

He was complaining about our manager giving him an overloaded schedule this week in response to his request to work more hours, and another guy chimed in that maybe he asked her (the manager) while she was PMSing. As I overheard, I remarked casually, "Well now, that's a sexist comment." And the guy jumped down my throat--not the one who'd actually made the comment (who acted apologetic and kind of shrugged it off as a bad joke), but the other one. He asked me why it was sexist, and I responded, "Well, by definition--making an assumption based on a person's gender and treating them as merely a stereotype of a group rather than as an individual... that's sexist by definition."* "You don't think women behave irrationally when they're PMSing?" he challenged. "I think that some individuals will behave irrationally under certain circumstances, like when they're tired or uncomfortable," I explained, "and that others may just be a bit irrational in general--but no, making a statement about an individual based on the assumption that all women are irrational during their periods [a generalized stereotype based on a person's sex] and that they cannot control their irrationality as well as men, who don't 'PMS' [a devaluation of women based on that stereotype, see definition below]... I think that's sexism plain and simple and no, I don't believe it to be true." He then accused me of just trying to force everyone to be "P.C." and of being judgmental because I was "making a judgment about someone else's judgment instead of actually listening to that person."

Language

Okay, firstly--words. Words have power. Let me say that again: words have power. I try to avoid saying things I don't mean, and I try to respect the amazing and beautiful power of words when I do speak (including their ability to communicate subtlety, humor and irony--all of which I'm pretty good at picking up on and I don't call people out on sexist remarks when I can tell they're just trying to be funny and not meaning it seriously--though I also think that kind of humor is a bit distasteful). I'm a writer. I love words. I'm also a feminist (i.e. I believe that men and women are equal) and I believe that it is important to treat people as unique individuals in any circumstance, rather than merely as a member of particular groups, biological, cultural or otherwise. To treat a person merely as a member of a group to which they belong is an act of existential violence against the unique and complex individuality of that person (even if attributing positive qualities to the group, like saying Obama must be good at basketball; and even if that person chooses to be a part of the group through lifestyle, association or activity, like saying all [golfers/cat-lovers/police officers/etc.] behave or think the same way.

Of course, it gets tricky, because often people don't want to count positive stereotypes as a form of racism/sexism/classism/etc., and at the same time plenty of individuals like to associate themselves by choice with particular groups because they want to benefit from the image or ideas that group evokes (think of the teen who dresses "goth" so that her peers will get a particular view of her as a hard-hearted, poetry-reading rebel). All the same, striving to connect with individuals as unique beings is something we owe each other and ourselves, because otherwise we're walking through a shallow world of warped reflection, like a hall of mirrors. By treating people as stereotypes, what we're saying is, "Everything I know about you is just something I know about myself, projected out into the world." If you treat all women as potentially irrational during "that time of the month," then you're acting on your own beliefs and opinions warped to suit a projected "other", rather than learning something about the individual women in your life and responding to their unique realities. In short, you've cut yourself off from actually being present to the real world; you've substituted your assumptions about reality for reality itself.

Of course, I didn't have the opportunity to explain any of this to this particular coworker because he was too busy righteously defending others' right to be "politically incorrect." Now, apparently the term "politically correct" was invented in the 1980s by conservatives trying to undermine liberal efforts to increase awareness of--you guessed it--the power of words (in particular, the power of words in relation to group and social identity). To throw out the accusation of "P.C." at a person was basically a way to shut down any attempt at rational discussion by using a similar circular logic that this coworker today tried to use on me. The argument goes that if you attempt to think carefully about people's word choices and encourage yourself and others to speak with more accuracy, sensitivity and awareness, then you forfeit your right to criticize others' unthinking use of language. Obviously the argument is clearly fallacious when stated in such clear terms, so let me put it the way it's more commonly phrased: if you make judgments about appropriate language, then you're being just as "judgmental" as you're accusing someone else of being, and therefore you have no right to criticize them because you're just as bad.

Judgment

In addition to assuming that the problem with sexist/racist/etc. language is that it is "judgmental" (when it is, in fact, just the opposite--it eschews any actual judgment, accurate or otherwise, in favor of unthinking prejudice), this faulty logic relies on obscuring the multiple meanings of the word "judgment" itself. Since it is an argument in favor of the thoughtless use of words, this actually seems rather fitting.

Being "judgmental" has a strongly negative connotation, because it evokes the sense of imposing our own moral judgment on another person, usually with a verbal condemnation and/or poor treatment. What is the difference, though, between making a moral judgment about a person, and making a "mental judgment"** about a statement or concept? It seems to me that there's a big one, and while the former may be personally, socially or even philosophically offensive, the latter is essential to living a thoughtful, inquisitive life. What P.C. nay-sayers tend to do is confuse the two kinds of judgment, reducing them to one and the same thing, and then badger those of us trying to make thoughtful "mental judgments" into feeling guilty for imposing "moral judgments" on others, when that is precisely what we are trying to avoid. Then there are "mushy-thinking liberals" (a term a friend of mine adopted from, I believe, Chomsky), who focus on the censorship of language, rather than on an investigation of what such language actually communicates. This overly-P.C. crowd is often too greatly worried about hurting people's feelings or coming across as morally "judgmental", but they fall into the very same trap as the conservative anti-P.C. people. Whatever the motivation (attempting to shut down rational discussion as a kind of power-play, or wanting to appear all-accepting of others for the sake of one's personal gratification at the expense of actual thoughtfulness), the end result of such a reductionist definition of "judgment" is the same: it makes thinking itself look like a social and personal flaw.

One way to avoid this is to make a careful distinction between imposing moral judgments on other people, and making mental judgments about "objective" facts. Notice that in the conversation that began this post, I remarked that the comment was sexist, not the person. According to the definition of "sexism" and the nature of the comment itself, this was a fair assessment of objective reality, rather than a projected moral claim. Of course, it is generally agreed in our culture that sexism is more or less "immoral." (Of course, as I've already noted, language also affords the opportunity for satire and irony, for instance by utilizing "immoral" language deliberately and self-consciously to undermine the power of such language. I love Stephen Colbert's humor for this very reason. He has mastered the art of making claims or asserting ideas in such a way that he lays bare their utter absurdity, and his feigned sincerity heightens that ridiculousness while putting us on guard against individuals who actually would assert such claims in all seriousness. If the comment had been made with ironic intent, then my observation that it was sexist would not hav been a moral judgment at all, but rather just stating the obvious, kind of like ruining the punchline of a joke by observing the particular play on words and/or expectations involved.)

Morality

There are many good reasons why sexism, racism and all forms of prejudice are considered inherently immoral (as I've already outlined above). However, once again, there is a difference between claiming a statement is sexist because it is immoral, and claiming that it is immoral because it is sexist. In the first instance, I am imposing my own moral judgment on another person and attempting to censor them based on those moral claims, essentially trying to make them play by my own moral rules. In the second instance, I am observing that a given statement, as an objective entity, fits the established definition of "sexism" and should probably, therefore, be reevaluated for its moral implications. See the difference?

Take another example: the other day, a different (male) coworker called another (female) coworker a fat cow who looks like she spends all her time out drinking instead of home taking care of her kids. My knee-jerk reaction was to criticize him for making such a mean-spirited comment, because to me such maliciousness is never justified even if the observations it attempts to communicate are accurate (which I don't think they were this time, in any case). This is a moral issue on my part, growing out of my belief in loving-kindness and respect for others, and so my attempt to censor his behavior was, in this case, a moral imposition on my part (one that he rightly pointed out I have no real right to make). I wanted him to play by my moral sense of fairness and kindness, but he has the perfect right to be a nasty jerk to another person if he likes, regardless of what I think of his behavior. On the other hand, I do have the right to guide my own actions according to my moral commitments, and since I believe that sharing my beliefs with others in a respectful, open way is also a moral act on my part, I have the right to communicate my opinion of his behavior and explain my reasons behind it.

So is calling out a statement for being "sexist" morally judgmental? Well, in some ways, it is a moral act on my part, since I probably wouldn't have bothered to do it if I didn't think sexism was wrong, offensive and morally damaging to both the person making the comment and the comment's target or object of reference. I feel that it is morally right to point out the harmful or thoughtless behavior of others--in a kind and respectful way--not as a way of condemning them or imposing my beliefs (which would be morally judgmental), but in order to encourage dialogue and discussion--an equal, free exchange of information and ideas for the betterment of all involved. It would appear that, since my coworker took offense to me calling the statement sexist, he too most likely believes that sexism is basically immoral, and so I have no need to impose my own values on him as we already agree about the fundamental moral issue at stake and differ only in its application. (Either that, or he's playing by the social rules that say a person should act offended when they feel a remark is intended as a slight or insult, whether or not the remark actually offends them. I tend not to act offended unless I'm actually offended, which confuses people sometimes, because I laugh off mean-spirited jibes while occasionally being hurt by comments that people intended to be complimentary but are, in fact, not. See below.)

Despondence

The fact that this coworker has three times now suggested that my intelligence is not a desirable quality but rather an unfortunate idiosyncrasy (twice in accusing me of being "judgmental," and once while actually hitting on me(!) by saying I needed to be "relieved" of the thoughtful expression I'd developed while reading an interesting book) has me generally annoyed, but also feeling a bit despondent.*** This last exchange--during what he clearly considered a flirtatious encounter--was obviously meant to be some kind of complimentary come-on, an appeal to my romantic feminine nature. Why I would want to be "relieved" of my thoughtfulness in favor of some frivolous romantic "fun" is beyond me. I find conversation and discussion to be fun, and more than that, fulfilling. I also appreciate levity and joy, though rarely would I characterize such things as mindless or frivolous, at least not in their ideal forms.

So yes, I am discouraged, even gloomy, about the social relationships I often find myself in. It might sound arrogant to say that I am more intelligent than most of the people I know and work with on a daily basis, but the truth is that, intelligence (whatever that is) aside, I am definitely more thoughtful. I have no need to make this claim about myself--they make it for me. But while they seem to think it's an unfortunate side-effect of having no "life" and nothing better to do, I see it as one of my best qualities, something I really love about myself and that I want to share with others. Thus, I often feel drawn to people who exhibit a similar thoughtfulness or at least hint at it through off-handed remarks. Sometimes the very same people who intrigue me with such remarks also come across as being judgmental and kind of rude, for the very reason that they're willing to make controversial statements based on personal convictions. Right now, for instance, I'm crushing on a guy who, I'm pretty sure, thinks I'm just another thoughtless, good-because-the-Bible-says-so kind of girl. The very fact that he might be indifferent to me because of this incorrect perception has me intrigued (unlike those who are indifferent to me because they know I'm not an easy lay, who don't interest me at all, and sadly make up the vast majority of guys I know). But it's also frustrating because I'm afforded so few opportunities to demonstrate my depth and personality, and he has no real reason to give me any, as far as he's concerned. I don't want to make the same mistake with others. Which is why I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, to engage them in conversation, to explore the reasons behind their actions. I don't want to make the mistake of assuming someone is just silly or shallow when they're just quiet or reserved.

Which is why I agreed to go on a date with someone who has been dropping hints of his interest for, gosh, over a year now, despite my friendly indifference and my interest in this other guy. I had some qualms about it--is it right to go on a date when you have a feeling it's not going to work out? Am I obligated to inform him of my interest in someone else, or would that just be needlessly hurtful? Have I come to treat men as a commodity, waiting for a perfect guy to come along who has all the right "features" (like a compatible morality, similar interests, thoughtful mind, sense of humor, self-control, reserved nature, cute little goatee and a nice smile) instead of focusing on the feelings a person might be able to evoke (or, on the other hand, is it right to allow feelings alone to dictate relationships rather than attempting to engage another person on all levels, mental, emotional, philosophical, etc.)? Sometimes, I admit, I may over think things. I want to do what's right. In the end, though, right or not, I agreed to go on the date.

And I sat here all evening waiting for his call.

And it never came.


Definitions

*sex·ism (noun)
1. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles.
2. discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex.


**judg·ment (noun)
1. an act or instance of judging.
2. the ability to judge, make a decision, or form an opinion objectively, authoritatively, and wisely, esp. in matters affecting action; good sense; discretion.
3. the demonstration or exercise of such ability or capacity.
4. the forming of an opinion, estimate, notion, or conclusion, as from circumstances presented to the mind.


***de·spond·ent (adjective)
1. feeling or showing profound hopelessness, dejection, discouragement, or gloom

Lacuna: Religion & Politics

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Consider this a mid-winter cleaning.

For most of my life (i.e. all those years I was "in school"), the time just after the holidays served as a transition into a new semester. The projects and papers of the previous semester's classes were finished and turned in (for better or worse); the themes and (con)texts of those classes were, if not forgotten, at least rounded out in a kind of momentary resolution. January was a time for starting over again, kicking back and easing into the beginning of a new semester.

It seems that, though I'm no longer in school, my mental circannual rhythm is still adjusted to this pattern of intense exertion and then sudden rest around this time of year. Instead of feeling guilty about it, I've decided I might as well embrace it. So this is an intellectual lacuna, so what? That's not so bad. Some people's entire lives could be characterized as such. No need to fret.

Meanwhile, so as not to leave readers hanging, these next few posts will be a few random pieces and excerpts which I had intended, at one time or another over the past year, to develop into full-fledged blog posts, but never did. Think of these posts as "Ali Uncensored," with all the sloppiness of a widely-engaged mind.


Is America Ready for a [Insert Type of Religious Zealot Chosen by Church Leaders Here] President?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the concept of "Separation of Church and State" is about the separation of religious institutions from political institutions, in order to preserve the sovereignty of both in their respective realms. It is not about demanding individual government officials renounce all religious beliefs and behave in their public role as if they were all materialist atheists. If you'll notice, this is the very specific bent of Kennedy's speech--he denounces the imposition of religious institutions on the government and on the general public, but he never says that a religious or spiritual worldview is an inherently dangerous or unhealthy one from which to make moral or political decisions.

This is a subtlety in distinction that few people bother to notice these days, it seems. Religious believers themselves often assume that a religion is synonymous with its socio-political institution, rather than a worldview out of which that institution arises but which may also have other applications. They relinquish their capacity to act as thinking, moral agents so that, while in Kennedy's day a Catholic might have been able to make decisions about policy based on his beliefs without the need for priestly dictation, today believers not only want to learn about "laws of love" and whatnot while they sit in church, they want their priest to work out the complicated application of such beliefs and endorse a particular candidate or policy so that they, the believers, don't have to do that work for themselves. Couple this with the media-obsessed Information Age in which politicians are assumed to obfuscate and pander, and selling public policy and political candidates has become a matter of who can put on the most convincing act of sincerity and urgency, and you have a public making political decisions based on the illusion of "good character" instead of on the actual work accomplished and policies pursued. In such a situation, it's only natural that candor about religious beliefs is mistaken for a sign of honesty, as well as a covert message that here is a leader who, like the local minister or the Pope, is willing to do the work of moral decision-making that the public has given up.

This does not mean that all religious believers are inherently less intelligent than their secularist counterparts (this is, perhaps, the lie that has so convinced them they are not capable of making moral decisions themselves in the first place). It is perfectly possible for religious individuals to function as rational, moral participants in the political domain, making decisions that affect public policy without imposing on others the worldview from which those decisions were made--given that they are willing to do the work of analysis and application in the context of an infinitely complex and unpredictable world. The "fairy tales" of a given religious faith, however, are no more inherently ridiculous or a sign of intellectual weakness than are the "fairy tales" of Descartes (with his thinking ego eating its own tail, which gave birth to a worldview in which matter and mind are irrevocably severed) or of Locke and Hobbes (with their mythologies of the "State of Nature" in which man is an isolated individual whose only social connections are that of imagined abstractions imposed out of convenience or fear). If anything, perhaps, religious believers can attain to a certain intellectual honesty (if they try), because they at least acknowledge the roots of their worldview and continue to explore the myths and stories that serve as its foundation, whereas most secularists are so entrenched in their own worldview that they rarely revisit their own founding philosophies and mythologies, and instead think they can get away with making bigoted statements about large segments of the population without being challenged.

To Love a God: Struggling with Morality in Polytheism

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In my continued attempts to explore polytheism and the various pantheons of the ancients, I recently read both R. J. Stewart's Celtic Gods, Celtic Goddesses, and Goddess: Myths of the Female Divine, coauthored by David Leeming and Jake Page. In some ways, polytheism continues to have a certain appeal or attraction for me as, perhaps, a final, definitive embrace of my Druid path. Devoting myself to wild, colorful deities of my ancestors carries the same kind of tantalizing mystique and fresh spiritual intrigue as dancing with faeries, seeing auras, singing with the river stones or treading moonlit wooded paths in the evening, seeking contemplative solitude or poetic coincidence in the world. The fulfillment of this imagined "magical self" that I have been crafting and cultivating over the past several years--first through witchcraft, and now through Druidry and other occult studies--seems always to have been the kind of devoted, ecstatic priestess who was only naturally polytheistic or, at the very least, more interesting than a plain, familiar Christian.


Still, though I continue to explore polytheism--in particular, the loose conglomeration of deities one could call the Celtic pantheon--I'm reminded again and again of certain things that don't quite sit well with me. Leeming's and Page's Goddess brought this unease home to me once again as I read the book over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Putting the Double-D in Goddess

The least problematic issue I run aground on is the ancient forms of Goddess-worship, those associated with the deep caverns of the earth painted with symbolic vulvas and protective, procreative wombs. While beautifully ecstatic, creative and sensual--celebrating the power of both womanhood and nature to give and sustain life, and transforming death into a return to generative darkness--it has always struck me as, well, a bit lop-sided (might I even say, top-heavy?). In its purest form, perhaps, in which Goddess is conceived as almost androgynous or trans-gendered, all-embracing in her presence, it echoes and affirms the kind of pan(en)theism with which I find myself most comfortable. Goddess not as anthropomorphic deity, but as life-force, Spirit and ground of creative being, transcends the male-female divide in the same way the God of my childhood Catholicism embraced all existence and paradox when the priest called upon the Divine as loving Mother (for now, I'll not spend time explaining that not all Christians are patriarchal misogynists--just trust me on that one ;).

But it seems, far from this aspiration towards pan-gendered unity reflected in certain pantheist and monotheist traditions today, many ancient Goddess myths take for granted the secondary, disposable nature of the male counterpart. This has always felt, to me, just as unbalanced and short-sighted as a spirituality that takes for granted the female side of Spirit as secondary or non-essential. Not only does it seem to reduce men to either amusing pets or convenient sacrifices, but it puts forward a view of the feminine with an exaggerated sense of sensuality, fecundity and receptivity. Perhaps the truth is, in being female, I personally look for the animus or male energy in my conception of a personified (that is to say, in some sense, an "external") conception of deity, while feminine aspects of the Divine I experience more directly as imminent, an animating breath or Life-force within me. This has made it difficult for me to feel comfortable worshipping a Goddess, but it has not stopped me from experiencing the Goddess-nature of myself and the larger Divine that suffuses reality.

Gods Behaving Badly

Another stumbling block I find within many polytheistic traditions is when the balance so clearly swings in the other direction, away from Goddess-worship and towards the repression and distortion of the feminine archetype of Spirit. Though Christianity has become an easy scapegoat to blame for rampant, repressive patriarchy among the world's religions and spiritual traditions, the myths explored by Leeming and Page often illustrate repressive, misogynistic and downright immoral behavior within plenty of purely polytheistic pantheons. Zeus's many rapes of women, both mortal and divine; the early Epic of Gilgamesh and his rejection of Ishtar as an untrustworthy seductress; even a late Apache myth about the toothed "vagina" goddesses, progeny of the Kicking Monster, who must be tamed, literally de-fanged and taught the pleasure of submissive "swallowing"!

Certainly the sexist mythology of Eve and the Fall, as well as of Lilith, Adam's first wife who dared to believe herself an equal, have their place within the Christian tradition, but it is also important to note that these are Jewish myths in origin. As far as new contributions to the misogyny of past and contemporary traditions, Christianity seems to have added very little, at least if we consider its mythology rather than its socio-political structures. Indeed, within the Gospels, women are often treated as equals, as worthy and devoted disciples, and as the most powerful of divine instruments (from creative vessels of new life, to sacred witnesses to the grief and mystery of death). The fact that the socio-political institution of Christianity as a religion has not always reflected the feminist lessons of its own mythology is no surprise; consider, after all, how rarely the gods and goddesses of various polytheistic pantheons seem actually to embrace the ideals of diversity and humanism that have become a cornerstone for the Neopagan movement. Although the modern Pagan religion as a socio-political counterculture encourages equality, personal will and tolerance, polytheistic pantheons seem full of deities with no qualms about unequal favoritism, fickle wrath or even seemingly manipulative impositions onto the human personal will.

Worship & Love

If I find polytheistic deities a bit fickle or inexplicable, however, this is partly because they are much more closely related to the mysterious forces of nature, which themselves are often highly indifferent to the whims or will of men. Oddly enough, I have no trouble appreciating, praising and even loving these forces of nature when I experience them within the context of a more unifying, interwoven, infinitely-living whole--when I experience the fierceness of a thunderstorm, the brutal cold and blinding purity of snow, the persistence and continuity of a wide river and the stolid starkness of the hills that loom over it. I can appreciate and experience the way in which Spirit manifests itself in each of these particulars, to create a tension and conflict out of which beauty and transformation arise through struggle. Yet, can I call these particular beings--these nature spirits and animating forces--gods and goddesses? And can I really worship them as such?

There is no question that I respect, admire and sometimes even fear the various particulars and manifestations of the world--but the quirk of having been raised Catholic is that, for me, these feelings are not enough. I grew up believing that the proper attitude towards one's god(s)--that is, the proper relationship between oneself and the Divine--is that of love. The Law of Love, which trumps everything else according to the "Good" Book, is to love God, and to love others and oneself as one loves God--creatively, freely and unconditionally. Jesus Christ, as portrayed as a deity incarnate in the Gospels, engages in the small, daily activity of creative, unconditional loving--he acts morally within the human sphere of experience in order to blow open and transform that sphere, transfusing it with Divinity. He is not only a poet-prophet, magician, philosopher-teacher and political radical--he's just a damned good guy, really. In the theology of Christianity, humanity is not simply incidental to the indifferent glories of a Divine natural world; Jesus, as deity, not only acknowledges and celebrates a sense of sacredness in nature (through parables and acts of natural magic) but elevates human beings themselves as deserving of respect, as worthy of Divine love. To me, he is not only a deity to be praised or feared (i.e. to be worshipped), but to be loved, intimately and fully.

Yet the mythology of Christ is not simply that of love, light and warm-fuzzies. Other, more scholarly Pagans than I have noted the parallels between the Christ myth of death and rebirth/resurrection and those of other polytheistic cultures. The Sacrificial God-King who dies to redeem and bless the land is a common mythological figure, particularly among agricultural-based societies. The deaths of these gods, however, are usually portrayed as brought about by those very same inexplicable and larger-than-life forces of nature--the God-King sacrificed to the Goddess-Mother/-Lover/-Land--and require of human beings either mere ritual witness, or the requisite personal sacrifices. The sacrificial death of Christ, on the other hand, is deeply human; indeed, it is not the inexplicable and sometimes tragically indifferent mysteries of nature which demand it, but the inexplicable and equally tragic community of humanity itself. Jesus, as historical figure, goes to his death at the hands of his fellow man, while Christ, as deity, inverts and subverts the vast gulf of power usually assumed to exist between all-powerful God- and Goddess-forces and a humanity buffeted about by their winds. Christ then becomes not only a deity of love and moral commitment, but a dark god of death, destruction, tragedy and the shadows of the underworld--not merely the ugly or incomprehensible fears of nature, but those within humanity itself. With humanity so intimately involved in the mythology of this deity, it also lends new responsibility (some ex-Catholics would probably be accurate in even saying "guilt" to some extent, though I have always understood it as response-ability) to the relationship one has with the Divine. We see that we are not powerless and ineffectual, that we are indeed capable of killing a god, and that this becomes yet another reason why love of Divinity and for Divinity, as both manifest within and transcendent beyond humanity, is possible.

The Disconnected Line

All that said, I have no doubt that my friendly neighborhood Pagans and polytheists out there have intimate, inspiring, even loving relationships with their gods and goddesses, which move way beyond simple worship in terms of praise and fear. I see these relationships expressed daily in indirect ways, as other bloggers talk about their spiritual practices and experiences. What I find frustrating is, well, akin to the frustration a person might have when trying to start dating again after years of being "out of the game." How do you meet the "right god"? How do you go about beginning the process of learning about one another and establishing a connection?

I'm still puzzled about this process. I read the books on mythology and ancient tales that people recommend, but I often feel as though these are out-of-date phonebooks and I'm looking up numbers for deities who have grown and moved on. Or, perhaps a more apt metaphor, it feels a bit like stalking someone on Facebook or MySpace, where the worst and the best of a person (or deity, as the case may be) are splayed for public view out of all context, hardly reflective of the real experience of knowing and working with him or her. Even among the Celtic deities, many of whom I find intriguing and potentially powerful patrons, I find myself coming up against silence, the dialtone of a disconnected line. Perhaps if I were part of a working group of local Druids, rather than a solitary practitioner, making that connection might be easier. I've even contemplated the more indirect route--meditating, for instance, on my apparent connection with frogs, hares/rabbits, pigs and even horses as recurring totem animals, researching which deities in which pantheons are associated with them, almost as if they were mutual friends who might be able to introduce us.

The question I always come back to, though, is: is all this really necessary, anyway? Am I, perhaps, just a naturally monogamous lover and, spiritually speaking, worshipper? Did I get lucky and meet the "right god" when I was very young, growing up with a Christ that is not the judgmental, oppressive or vindictive deity known to so many others? Is it, perhaps, really all right to be a Christian Druid, in the end? I mean, of course it's "all right" in the sense that the OBOD and AODA communities embrace seekers on the Druid path regardless of their religious backgrounds. But my concern is really about internal consistency and the integrity of a personal spiritual tradition. Is there something inherently polytheistic about Druidry? If there is, I am bound to confront it one of these days. Still, I wonder, who are these Gods and Goddesses of the Neopagan pantheons, and how do modern practitioners reconcile the sometimes less than admirable and moral mythologies from which they seem to evolve?

For those of you readers who are polytheists, I really would love to hear your views on this. Over the past few years, I've come to understand and even experience the nature of spirit guides, ancestors, "elementals" and group thought-forms (for which I can never remember the gosh-darn name--it starts with an 'e', right?)... but deities, Gods and Goddesses... they remain beyond me.