Meadowsweet & Myrrh: politics

Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

This is not a blog post.

In this time of fluid demographics and long-distance community building, I find myself over and over running up against this single, searing question:

WHY do I want to be a part of [this] community?

Doesn't matter which community it is. The fact is, we have a choice now about which communities we belong to, a choice unlike any our ancestors have faced in the past. With online networking and social media sites, I can choose my friends, contacts, teachers and mentors from all over the world. When once it might have been impossible, or at least semantically meaningless, to "choose" to belong to a religion other than the one of my immediate family and neighbors, today I can choose to be Pagan and to network with others I've never even met in real life. Even within the Pagan community, I can choose to be a Revivalist Druid or a Celtic Reconstructionist, a Witch, a Hellenist or a Heathen. I can choose to be a participant on various online forums, email lists and blogs with almost unending options, and each choice will put me in touch with different people and different community expectations and standards.

So when I make these choices about what communities I'm going to belong to, I find myself more and more running up against that question: why? Why do I want to belong to your community? Is your community supportive, accepting, challenging, grounded, honest, full of humor and curiosity? Or does your community bicker and encourage in-fighting, playing to the lowest common denominator, drumming up melodrama and one-upmanship? What's more important to your community: popularity and huge membership numbers, or authenticity and sincerity in the relationships it nurtures and cultivates? Calculated politeness that just barely passes for "tolerance," or warm hospitality and celebration of diversity?

The Long Goodbye: Part Four

It seemed I had two choices before me. The Page of Wands, a young, spontaneous and energetic form that could be the very embodiment of the internet as a medium, with its attention-grabbing multimedia and almost endless opportunities for someone to make a name for herself through charisma and laughter. Or the Ten of Pentacles, embodying formality, structure and an engagement with traditional patterns of expression that could lead to the fruitful, prosperous marriage of spirit and form characterized by generosity and exchange. And the third card? The choice that was not a choice?

Making a Clean Break

Last night, I had a dream. One of those dreams so vivid and blunt, it's hard to ignore the message. One of those dreams that just feels like a metaphor, even when you're in it.

I dreamt I was a student in college again, engaged in a class discussion led by a wise old professor. Yet this professor seemed to take particular pleasure in setting me up for embarrassment and frustration. As the discussion progressed, he would often interrupt himself or students as they explained their ideas or expounded on theories, and shoot a question at me. Being a dream, I can't now remember even what the subject was — but I do know that, again and again, I felt the frustration rise as I found myself interrupted, torn out of my focus on the ideas of others as they unfolded — forced instead to stand up to prove myself to these peers, to prove myself worthy of being there to learn. It wasn't enough to attend, to listen intently and consider carefully the concepts being shared. But more frustrating was that, each time this professor interrupted the flow of conversation to challenge me to a verbal duel, he allowed only a sentence out of my mouth before he veered back again, leaving me hanging there dumb, my words decontextualized and my thoughts unfinished. It felt for all the world like a goddamned Twitter feed — one hundred forty characters was all I got.

Until at one point, I finally managed to break out of it. The next question he asked me, I found myself speaking in paragraphs. Whole arguments cascaded out of my mouth in point after point, theories backed up by evidence and examples, counter-arguments considered and deconstructed. The professor seemed impressed, asked another question to prompt me... yet I could feel something slipping. The students around me began to talk over me in their own conversations. Someone behind me snickered. Mid-sentence, the professor interrupted me again, this time to tell me, "Well, at least you've finally demonstrated that you're not a complete idiot, which is a bit of a surprise. Some of your ideas were actually pretty sound. Of course, you're horribly boring, so boring that your dullness itself is offensive and detracts from the values of your ideas no matter what they are. You were more attractive when you weren't saying anything."

Water on Water's the Way: Blog Action Day 2010

When it occurred to me that the animals are swimming
around in the water in the oceans in our bodies.
And another had been found, another ocean on the planet,
given that our blood is just like the Atlantic.

- Modest Mouse, "3rd Planet"

Everybody knows we're mostly water. But I remember the kind of mystic revelation that hit me the first time I read that scene in J.D. Salinger's short story "Teddy" where the ten-year-old describes watching his little sister drinking milk, how he suddenly saw that she was God and the milk was God, and "all she was doing was pouring God into God." David Suzuki echoes this startling but simple truth when he writes in his book, The Sacred Balance, that "we are intimately fused to our surroundings and the notion of separateness or isolation is an illusion." Our physical being weaves us intimately into the world of air, water, soil and sun, and as Suzuki says, "these four 'sacred elements' are created, cleansed and renewed by the web of life itself."

When we eat, we participate with Spirit and the gods in a dance of growth, death, decay and rebirth, as even our waste returns eventually to the land to nourish and enrich the soil from which our food grows. Plants transform the energy gifted to them by the sun into forms that can be absorbed and exchanged, and when we work, we release that energy again through the efforts of our hands, legs, mouths and minds to shape the world. Our breath is the breath of our ancestors, but also of the atmosphere and the weather, the winds and storms that encircle the planet and rustle the leaves of the tree just outside the window. And when we drink of those waters that well up from the earth, blessed, guarded and sustained by the gods and goddesses of the oceans and the holy springs and the caves of the underworld, all we are doing is pouring god into god.

How Many Druids Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

Well, I was so busy doing my best to write up an unbiased report on the recent news coming out of the UK about The Druid Network being granted religious charitable status by the Charity Commission — and interviewing lots of folks (including some who are kind of like famous people now, you know, if you're a Druid) about their own thoughts and opinions on the news — and then collecting and organizing all the information I could about US and UK nonprofit law to write up an article on the process of seeking status as a church or religious organization for minority faiths — that I never did get around to writing about what I thought of the whole thing. And now it seems I may have missed the boat, or the wave, or the tide, or whatever water-related metaphor you want to use [insert plug for Blog Action Day 2010 on 15 October here]. But — to twist a trope that's also been making its way around the Pagan blogosphere — I'm a Druid, and I have opinions about stuff.

Of course, I'll be honest, most of those opinions are about other people's opinions. The run-down of my own initial reaction to the news, which I read about first on The Pagan and The Pen goes something like: Hey! That's fantastic! Good for them! Even though I'm not a member of TDN because (a) I don't agree completely with the definition of deity that Emma Restall Orr outlines in her book Living Druidry, and (b) it seems like the Network is mostly focused on the UK more than the US — I still very much respect the organization's leadership and the projects they promote. Plus, their anti-hierarchical anarchic tendencies are pretty cool, and Jeff and I really enjoyed doing the freely-available-on-their-website Perennial Course in Living Druidry over this past year. Maybe this news will help them grow and inspire more people to take a serious look at Druidry and what it can offer as a modern spiritual tradition. Whereupon I forwarded the news and link on to Jason at The Wild Hunt to perhaps be included in the regular "Pagan Community Notes" feature... because at that point, it was of note to our community, but not actual news.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Folks who might be a bit out-of-the-loop (such as yours truly) but still eager to hop on board the Opinions About Social Change Express as it makes its way around the blogosphere next week might want to think about participating in the annual Blog Action Day on Friday, 15 October, when thousands of bloggers will join an international discussion about water.

Yes, that's right: water. From the Blog Action Day website:

Right now, almost a billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water. That’s one in eight of us who are subject to preventable disease and even death because of something that many of us take for granted.

Access to clean water is not just a human rights issue. It’s an environmental issue. An animal welfare issue. A sustainability issue. Water is a global issue, and it affects all of us.

In previous years, Blog Action Day has focused on issues like climate change, poverty and environmental awareness. I'll be participating once again this year with reflections on water and its role as both element and realm in Druidic spirituality, and how our spiritual relationship with water connects us to the larger questions of social justice and environmental activism.

I encourage others out there in the Pagan blogosphere to join in the conversation a week from today and share their insights, too! Just visit the Blog Action Day 2010 website for more information and to register your blog.

You can also snag this year's Blog Action Day badge, though not as snazzy as last year's it's infinitely more practical and proactive:

Change.org|Start Petition

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (7)

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Seven — Day of Silence

Is this a dream of mine, or something somebody told me? There is a house full of people, all of them moving and silent, and you cannot know where they are because you cannot hear them moving. It is dark. And so every once in a while, in the dark, suddenly you come upon another person — and you are both surprised, and horrified, to discover one another in the quiet, busy emptiness of the world.

Today, the house reminds me of this dream — except the rooms are full of sunlight, and against every windowpane a bee churns away its noisy presence into dust and nothing.

~*~

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (3)

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, I attended a retreat on Celtic spirituality and peacemaking in Northern Ireland. The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day Three — Telling Our Stories

I find that I very much want to tell my story and that as I rehearse it in my head, new aspects come out, come into focus, in the narrative of my journey towards peacemaking. I want to share this.

Perhaps I want to share this more than I want to listen to others — and I wonder why this is. I'm trying to sit with that and not come down too hard on myself. There is a process of articulation that I am longing for, not even to be heard, but to hear myself telling the story again. Yet I do want to hear the stories of others as well, and as I listen (sometimes through thick accents) I can hear resonating ideas that I have experienced, too. The violence and sense of silent invasion of both illness and Western medicine, for instance. The lessons of dealing with abuse and creating and defending that safe space into which even the violent cannot and will not come. The experiences of war and the implications of being part of the culture of aggression, being implicated and a part of that violence against our own individual will — and how we resist, in all the little ways.

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (1)

In August 2010, just past the waxing quarter moon, a bunch of strangers met for the first time in Rostrevor, a small town in County Down, Northern Ireland, nestled below the Mourne Mountains on the edge of Carlingford Lough that opens out into the sea. From all over the world — from Portland to Hong Kong, from Glasgow to Nashville — they gathered together to learn about peacemaking rooted in the Celtic sense of sacred hospitality and the holiness of the land.

It was my first time traveling alone, and my first journey ever beyond the borders of the United States. For me, the week-long retreat became a kind of pilgrimage, back to the land of my ancestors, and beyond the ninth wave into a place of conversation, connection and new friendships forged.

The hosts of the retreat asked us to respect the safe and sacred space created by the community, and refrain from attributing direct quotes to any of the attendants or speakers. With that in mind, the following are excerpts from the journal I kept.

Day One — The Airport

On the drive out, Jeff and I talked about the distinction between superstition and faith. Decontextualization, it would seem. Faith assumes a certain articulated worldview, a complete or at least coherent theology. Superstition, on the other hand, seems without any larger context — people do things without knowing why or how it works. What does this imply about the anti-theology, anti-intellectualism of the modern Pagan community? Can practice without theology be much more than superstition?

Pagan Peace-Making: A Call for Submissions

Six months ago, I resolved to write a book. Or, at least, to try. I gave myself a year, to flush out all the insecurities and psychological stumbling blocks that were in the way, and begin the work of articulating my vision and song of practical Pagan peace-making.

Six months later, the journey has changed shape. The process I committed to has come to demand that, first, before the sojourn of writing there must be a period of pilgrimage, a going-out along the peace-forging path in a new and more social way, learning from others as I go. Back at the beginning of May, I was invited to join the blogging project Pagan+Politics, and the familiar anxiety swept over me again as I wondered if I was up to the challenge. The experience has been both simpler and more difficult than I anticipated, with a great deal of stress and distraction as I have fought the urge to follow arguments far off course, into unfruitful bickering and petty fact-checking. Yet it has helped me to clarify my own thoughts, as well as get a better sense of where the detractors and dismissers of peace-making are coming from. Most importantly, however, it provided an opportunity to hear from readers the relief and gratitude at discovering they were not the only Pagan Pacifists out there, and to discover just how important it is for us to hear the voices of others and to know that we are not alone.

The Peaceful Warrior: Pagan Pacifism Without Excuse (Part 2)

Vulnerability, Individuality and Interdependence

Contemporaries of the Celts reported them as being strongly independent, and many of the heroic tales passed down to current day describe courageous individuals who choose a life of glory and accomplishment to be remembered down the ages, rather than an unremarkable life of longevity and quiet. Cu Chulainn, the quintessential Celtic warrior-hero, makes just this choice when he overhears a prophecy that the young man to take up arms that day would become the most famous hero in Erin; the eager young hero then proceeds to test out, and break, every piece of weaponry in the land until the king himself must offer him his own spear and war chariot.^[6] At first glance, such stories might seem to support the notion that the ancient Celts were hungry for conflict and the accolades that could be earned, that they were downright scornful of peace and "easy living." But other well-documented aspects of Celtic culture suggest another interpretation, perhaps no more true than this first but more relevant to today's world.

The Peaceful Warrior: Pagan Pacifism Without Excuse (Part 1)

There is no going back. We consent to our own destruction, with the passing of time, with the changing seasons, with the restless intensity of living and breathing. Above the blazing concrete and glass of the city skyline, sharp-wedged forms of birds wheel and tip against the dark, blustering sky of the oncoming summer storm. I find myself thinking again that it takes an awful lot of courage to live in this world sometimes, knowing even at the height of summer that winter is coming, the dark is coming, and death, too, will eventually arrive to claim us. It takes courage to release ourselves, to enter willingly into the wild dance that whirls in this liminal space between life and death, creation and destruction. In my mind, the image of birds crashing through wind currents and swift-driven clouds commingles with the image of the warrior, poised in grace on the edge of chaos. The face of that warrior is not violence, but fearlessness. And the culmination of fearlessness, the height of its realization, is peace.

On Violence and Control

We live in a modern world, a world that has known the power of peace as well as the force of violence and war. A world that has known King and his dreams of the mountaintop. That witnessed Gandhi leading hundreds to the shore, stooping to gather the sea salt forbidden to them by law but offered freely and ceaselessly by something far greater and older than empire. And it is no less true for being trite: these days we have the capacity for obscene violence as well. This world we live in has seen the invention of atomic weapons by men cloistered away in sterile laboratories, and the use of those weapons to intimidate and threaten, to bring whole cities broken and poisoned to the ground. I share this world with you, and together we have watched our modern culture grow bloated and listless with propagandistic marketing trends and diet fast food. Yet alongside these we've felt a dawning common understanding that can no longer excuse violence against women and the marginalized, nor accept the callous mechanizations that would treat nature as fuel to burn for turning a profit. These times are unique, with their contradictions and global communications networks. There is no going back. We live in a world in tension, a culture brought precariously to the brink of tremendous violence again and again. How can we live, fully and freely, in such a world?

Memorial Day, Motherland and Blood Sacrifice

It's Memorial Day here in the United States, and I find myself, once again and as usual, deeply ambivalent.

As a Pagan pacifist, as a peace-making Druid, I know that I am not naturally inclined to celebrate holidays of militarism, patriotism and nationalism. This is simple and straight-forward. I find it easier to celebrate the values commemorated on Martin Luther King Day — those of social justice and the sentiments of equality and community, as well as the grief of injustice and of dreams mown down by hate and violence — than the adolescent indulgence in triumphant glorying and loud reveling that occurs each July on Independence Day. Yet unlike these others, Memorial Day leaves me feeling disconcerted and conflicted. All through this holiday weekend, I have read passing comments and thoughtful reflections alike on the True Meaning of Memorial Day, all repeating and revolving around this singular, pervasive notion: that we must "honor the memory of the soldiers who fought and died for us." Honor is such a powerful word, and death such a vital reality. But there is a kind of emptiness, a hollowness echoing within that expression, one that takes for granted what our relationship is to the dead, what our responsibilities are to the living, what honor and memory truly look like, how they function, what they require of us.

Pacifism comes to Pagan+Politics

I am pleased, proud and (incredibly) nervous to announce that I have been invited to join the ranks of politically-savvy bloggers over at the Pagan Newswire Collective's Pagan+Politics group blog. Many thanks to Jason for his invitation and his vote of confidence — I hope to rise to the challenge of writing weekly about pacifistic- and anarchistic-related news, without too many days ending in tears and wails of "why doesn't anybody understand me?!"

My introductory post is already up, but in case you need some enticement, here's an excerpt:

I have been writing publicly about pacifism for several years now, and it still remains a challenge to face down my own anxieties about misinterpretation, hypocrisy, judgement and impotence. It is not always fun to write about ideals and ethical principles that can make not only my readers but even myself feel uncomfortable, uncertain, inadequate, angry or sorrowful.

So why do it? Because I honestly believe that, despite our discomfort and uncertainty, despite our habitual resistance to the idea, the truth is that peace is easy and freedom is innate. Though we are surrounded today with myriad examples of violence, war, hatred and rage, though we have complicated systems of government control looming over us at every step — ordinary, everyday life for most of us is still characterized by spontaneous, consensual cooperation and moments full of the profound simplicity of peaceful relationship. Outside my window and here in this room, the world revels in this sunny spring afternoon, a spring that came without coercion or malice, that arose delicately and swiftly out of the interplay of countless creatures and forces, gods and forms, all organizing themselves through their striving and reaching and vying and dancing, rooted in the necessary rot of autumn, preserved through the inevitable cold of winter, and deeply engaged in the ceaseless process of becoming something beautiful.

The Politics of Clean(s)ing, Revisited

What follows is a very long investigation of all of the assumptions and logical arguments that went into the writing of the original post, and my responses to many of the counter-arguments put forward in the comments afterwards. Please do not think that because I have not changed my opinion, it is because I have not listened closely and thought deeply about all of your ideas and objections. And please do not take personal offense when I say that, on the whole, no one replied with a counter-argument that I had not yet considered in coming to the conclusions I did (in fact, some I even directly addressed, however parenthetically, in the original post itself, and I will attempt to point out where I did so whenever I can).

The Shape of My Argument

[1] One thing that becomes immediately apparent to me in reading through the many comments is that most of you focused on only one half of what is irreducibly a two-part argument. The argument made in the original post takes this form: (a) here are some of the potential negative consequences of doing x; (b) here are some of the potential positive consequences of doing the alternative, namely y; in conclusion, (c) generally I believe it is better to do y than x. The counter-arguments provided in the comments focused almost exclusively on the first part of this argument, offering many opinions on why my discussion of the negative consequences of doing x were inaccurate, exaggerated or simply in error. Now, I disagree with many of the counter-arguments put forward (and I will get to that in a second), but first I want to point out that, because of the form of my argument, lessening or even wholly disproving (a) does not necessarily affect (b) or (c).

[2] Imagine that (x) and (y) are two sides of a single scale, and our conclusion (c) is influenced by which side is "heavier." For every positive consequence of doing y, we add a weight to the (y) side to make it heavier and for every negative consequence of doing x, we add an "anti-gravity-unit" to the (x) side to make it lighter, and vice versa. Personally, I found many of the positives on the side of (y) (i.e. doing your own housework) to be quite heavy and moving, and many of the negatives on the side of (x) (i.e. hiring a housekeeper) to be quite impressive in their negative quality. In my view, this swung the scales decidedly towards (y) as a fruitful, meaningful and natural alternative. This did not seem to me to be a radical argument in any way, shape or form. But supposing for just a minute that I really am wholly and completely wrong about (x). Is this enough to even out the scales, or possibly even tip them in (x)'s favor? Only if I am also completely and wholly wrong about (y) as well and the positive "weights" I found in (y)'s favor are also exaggerated, inaccurate or flat-out wrong. Yet even those of you who argued against my conclusion suggested that you, too, found my arguments in support of (y) to be powerful and moving (Nettle, for instance, in one of her earlier comments). In the end, even if (x) turns out to be positive, unless it is "more positive" than (y), I am inclined to stand by my original conclusion (c), that is: in general, it is better to do y than x.

[3] This is why I have not yet been swayed to change my opinion on this matter. Not because I have not listened to or considered your points carefully enough, but because even when I agreed with some of them (and there were plenty of points commenters made with which I do in fact agree), they did not strike me as "heavy" enough to affect the overall conclusion. Perhaps your counter-arguments could potentially serve to mitigate the dire tone of my original post to some extent... but without addressing the second half of this two-part approach, the conversation inevitably remains lopsided. I actually point this out in the original post itself, when I state that I do not know of a reason why someone should hire a housekeeper instead of doing their own housework (excepting age, illness or disability — the role of exceptions in the formation of a logical argument is something I will also come back to later). In other words, one effective counter-argument would be to offer a compelling reason why doing x is not only neutral, not even simply good in itself, but why it is actually better than doing y. No one, as far as I can see, actually attempted to provide such a reason, but focused instead on the task of establishing (x)'s neutrality. (If you have a compelling reason after all, please chime in and let me know — but please also finish reading the whole of this reply first, as you may find your response has been addressed already in some of my arguments further on.)

[4] In responding to your comments, therefore, I will again follow this two-sided approach to the question of our relationship to cleaning and cleansing. First, I will address those counter-arguments presented in disagreement with my first assertion, (a), that doing x has potential negative consequences. Then I will go back to my second assertion, (b), that doing y has some profoundly positive consequences, and I will attempt to elaborate on some of the philosophical underpinnings of my view, in order to point out how they differ, sometimes sharply, from some of the unexamined cultural assumptions used in counter-arguments against assertion (a), and at other times are completely in keeping with some of the arguments made by yourselves in the comments. In my personal opinion, I find the second half of my argument, in which I talk about the positive consequences of doing your own housework, to be much more meaningful, powerful and relevant than the first part of my argument. But perhaps this is only because I am personally much more inclined to appreciate "pro-active" arguments for making positive change than I am "reactionary" arguments against making poor decisions. We all make poor decisions in our lives sometimes and trying to avoid every single one of them can leave us feeling trapped and restricted to the point of suffocation — all the more reason to focus on those positive changes and creatively-engaging activities that we can do, and that can bring us joy and gratitude as well as benefit to others.

Counter-Arguments in Support of Hiring a Housekeeper

[5] Many (though certainly not all!) of the counter-arguments you presented in the comments were of one (or sometimes both) of two main types: an unnoticed logical fallacy, or an unexamined cultural assumption. Some of these flaws are subtle and easily missed, others are very, very common and so we've learned to overlook them. Often cultural assumptions and logical errors function in ways that are mutually supportive, making them almost impossible to notice in the flow of a conversation (especially one that is emotionally intense or prone to distractions and interruptions, like those taking place in a blog comment thread). Because I have spent a lot of time arguing some admittedly outside-the-mainstream ideas in the past, I've become pretty familiar with some of these counter-arguments, which tend to come up again and again in only slightly altered forms around almost every controversial topic you can name (including vegetarianism and pacifism, two of my old favorites — for this reason, I might, if I have time, point you back to some previous blog posts and comment threads in which I have argued against these same logical fallacies and cultural assumptions in the past).

The Limits of Knowledge and the Primacy of Individualism

[6] One of the mot frequent logical fallacies has already been largely addressed above, and more widely it is formulated as the following: "the absence of evidence is the same thing as evidence of absence." This mistake usually happens when someone is trying to prove a negative, i.e. to prove with absolute certainty either that something is impossible or that something doesn't exist. The absence of irrefutable evidence in favor of the existence of deity, for instance, is often taken by atheists as evidence in support of the irrefutable absence or nonexistence of deity. In this particular discussion, the fallacy appeared in a more tame form, and was expressed in the argument: "I have not experienced any negative consequences from x, therefore x does not have any negative consequences" (or, in a slightly tweaked form, "if it is possible that there are no negative consequences of x, then x is a perfectly good thing to do" — this second variation is more like mistaking neutral evidence, rather than a lack of evidence, for favorable support).

[7] It might seem at first that I fall back on this fallacy in reasoning through my own argument, when describing the dystopian scenario of hiring a housekeeper as a compilation of all the potential negative consequences and unhealthy relationships that might result, as if this is concrete proof that such consequences are always the case and no positive consequences or healthy relationships are possible. However, I am careful to point out that this is a collection of details to consider, and not a definitive characterization of all relevant scenarios possible. As I discussed already above, if even a few of these negative aspects or consequences are present, the main thrust of my argument has hit the mark, and in the off chance that no such negative consequences can be found, this is only enough to argue for neutrality in this particular instance and we still then require some evidence of positive consequences in order to be relevant to the final conclusion.

[8] Another fallacy is that anecdotal evidence holds as much weight as or may even replace a broader perspective that surveys and takes into account general cultural trends. In order to counter this tendency within many comments, I quoted earlier some recent statistics about relative wage and earnings, to illustrate that while my characterization of housekeeping may not always be true, it is still a fair description of the work in general. I had hoped to be able to supplement this information with some further demographic details culled from old college notes and my various sociology books, but they are unfortunately still packed away after my recent move. Luckily, Clare has stepped in with some anecdotal evidence of her own to lend that touch of immediacy and emotional resonance that sometimes only a personal account can deliver. (Note, however, that Clare's personal accounts can no more take the place of that broader perspective than can Thora's or Nettle's or Cat's or anyone else's, and it is by collecting all of these accounts and many others than we can slowly come to understand the vague shape and color of the "Big Picture," such as it may be.)

[9] It seems to me that these two logical fallacies are so common today because they are supported by an unexamined cultural assumption that I have decided to call the "Inherent Right to Fist-Swinging." In modern Western culture, we put a tremendous emphasis on individualism and individual rights, and when speaking about the limits of these rights, we often recall the saying, "your right to swing your fist stops at my nose." In a kind of bizarre twist, we often extend this argument to the assumption that, "my capacity to speak about the value of fist-swinging cannot extend beyond my own nose." Rather than exercise our ability to gather information, perceive patterns and make general evaluations regarding the virtues and drawbacks of certain actions, we restrict our opinions to only those things we have directly experienced, lest we trespass on someone else's fist-swinging rights. We might safely make statements about our experiences of swinging our own fists without being challenged (or, when we are challenged, such debates devolve quickly into he-said-she-said shouting matches), but we cannot dare draw any broader conclusions, nor may we draw conclusions about anything we have not directly experienced.

[10] With this unexamined cultural assumption in place, it becomes obvious why anecdotal evidence comes to hold so much more weight and relevance than the analysis of large amounts of collected data. Such data speaks for no one in particular, and therefore exists in the murky, uncertain realm "beyond my own nose" about which we feel uncomfortable and even fundamentally incapable of making value statements. The fear of trespassing however unknowingly on the rights of others has also worked to transform the territory of neutrality into one of positive preference. An argument that puts limits on our ability to speak confidently about universal or broadly-applicable virtues and values (because we can't know for sure that a given person might not actually enjoy doing x and benefit from it, for instance) is seen as one that appears to preserve the sanctity of the realm "beyond my own nose," keeping it free and clear of our meddling opinions, which is itself a good thing. In other words, if something isn't absolutely bad all the time, then it has the potential to be at worst merely neutral, and refusing to form an opinion about something which is neutral is, in fact, a good thing. Thus, the absence of irrefutable evidence (for instance, if we cannot prove for certain that doing x always has solely negative consequences for everyone) is mistaken for the irrefutable evidence of absence (i.e. our inherent inability to make value statements that might apply to others), and this in itself is viewed as a positive good, insofar as it preserves the sanctity of the realm of others' fist-swinging rights. This is slippery and convoluted thinking and gives rise to the common assumption that, because we cannot know everything about everyone, therefore we cannot claim to fairly evaluate anything about anyone except ourselves.

The Sin of Hypocrisy in a (Class-)Free State

[11] The next few logical fallacies tend to show up during counter-arguments utilizing a particular brand of rhetoric to expand the limits of an argument beyond the bounds of its original conclusions in order to prove that it is inconsistent or hypocritical. One such fallacy is really better described as an inappropriate or sloppy use of analogy. While analogy can be a particularly powerful tool when used to lay bare the fundamental relationships and logical connections between two ideas by substituting alternative examples and seeing if "the logic still holds," it can be badly abused if it is used instead to presume or imply similarity. Take, for instance, the analogy kitten:cat::puppy:dog, or "kitten is to cat as puppy is to dog." The relationship between the first and second of each of these pairings is that of child or youth to mature adult; however, because both pairs also hold other similarities in common (e.g. both are small, furry mammals that have been domesticated into common household pets), one might draw certain irrelevant or unsupported assumptions about what this analogy is saying either intentionally or implicitly about cats and dogs as larger categories. If we were then to make a claim such as, "kitten is to cat as calf is to cattle," a person who was distracted or confused by the irrelevant similarities of the first analogy might draw from this new analogy the false conclusion that we mean to claim that cattle, too, are common household pets. They might go on to reject this new analogy, objecting that it is not logically sound precisely because cattle are not pets.

[12] I bring up this point more in anticipation of future counter-arguments than because of past instances (although Cat's response to Jeff's hyperbole regarding Obama's cleaning habits could potentially be considered a variation). Later in this discussion I will be speaking about cultural assumptions that have been used in support of hiring a housekeeper, and substituting other situations or examples in which such assumptions might also function, in order to examine whether or not we always come to the same conclusions. I will appreciate it a great deal if you pay careful attention to the logical construction of these analogies and do not mistake them for statements about similarity. For instance, if I bring up the fact (as I did in the original post) that certain Libertarians argue that by hiring prostitutes we are doing them a favor because otherwise they would be unemployed, and I compare it to the argument, made a few times in the comments, that by hiring housekeepers we are doing them a favor because otherwise they would be unemployed, I am not suggesting that housekeepers are prostitutes. Rather, I am looking at the way in which the statement "at least doing x is better than unemployment" functions as a counter-argument, in order to discover if it is really a substantive or relevant objection.

[13] Another fallacy that hinges on mistaken similarity takes the following form: "if x and y hold characteristic z in common, an argument in support of (or against) x must also be in support of (or against) y, regardless of whatever other relevant characteristics x and y do not hold in common." This argument was actually used several times in your comments above: first when Nettle asked me if I held an equally negative view of hiring child care providers because, like housekeepers, they tend to be women doing what is traditionally considered "women's work," and again when Thora assumed that because I value cleaning as an aspect of self-reliance, I must therefore believe that we must all take our own waste and garbage to the dump as well. Now one salient characteristic that both waste management and child care happen to hold in common, and which distinguishes them both from private household cleaning, is the role of community involvement. I am a strong believer in the saying that "it takes a village to raise a child," and while I do agree that the role of the parents in a child's life and development is of utmost, possibly even paramount importance, I see no reason why this cannot also be supplemented appropriately with the care and support of non-parental child care providers in ways that are beneficial for everyone involved. However, I would not argue that child care providers can completely replace or take over the responsibilities of the parents. Likewise, the management of refuse and waste is not merely a private concern, but one of social implications for sanitation, health and even infrastructure; this is why waste management workers are hired by the city and paid with taxpayers' dollars. However, once again, I would not suggest that waste management workers hold the sole responsibility for the garbage generated by a community (I refer you to the following parenthetical paragraph, below). Meanwhile, the maintenance of a private household is by definition a private concern of the individual homeowner(s); it is therefore precisely the epitomic realm in which both waste management and child care find their expressions in personal responsibility. In my opinion, I feel that this attitude towards private household cleaning as being naturally the realm of personal rather than social import may actually be reflected in the generally lower status and wages for housekeeping cleaners (as compared to child care workers, waste management workers and even "janitors and cleaners" hired to maintain public spaces such as schools, office buildings, etc. — as per the employment stats listed in my earlier comment).

[14] (Incidentally, however, my views of cleaning as a valuable form of self-reliance do in fact extend to waste management as far as an individual or household is capable: I believe we should strive, through reduced consumption, reuse of materials, recycling, composting and home water-recycling and -filtration systems, to lighten our burden on community sanitation as much as possible. Like Jeff, I can't help but wonder if more people would find it in their best interest to reevaluate their consumption habits and reduce their waste if they were left to deal with the consequences of those habits directly, rather than having their waste shuffled quickly out of sight via convenient roadside service. Though I would not seriously suggest we do away with garbage pick-up entirely, I do try to form healthier, more socially- and environmentally-respectful habits based on this awareness.)

[15] The final fallacy-of-similarity that I want to address is one I have already mentioned: that is, the role played by exceptions in the construction and support of an argument. I notice that although I was careful to mention at the very beginning of my original post that exceptions such as old age, poor health or disability could certainly be valid reasons to hire a housekeeper, they were brought up time and again in your comments as though they were powerful counter-arguments against my more general claim about the benefit of doing your own housework whenever possible. It seems to me that the reason so many of you either unintentionally overlooked or deliberately ignored the qualifications I made sure to include in my original argument might be because of an increasingly prevalent tendency to assume that if there are potential exceptions to a particular given principle, then that principle must not have any value worth working towards. This kind of thinking is also very common among people who reject the vegan/vegetarian diet as a viable alternative to the Standard American Diet (SAD), based on the argument that some individuals suffer from particular (although exceptional or relatively rare) forms of nutrient absorption problems, or by proposing the (again exceptional) scenario of being lost and starving in the woods and resorting to hunting out of necessity. Again, this argument is used when dismissing the principles of nonviolence as ineffectual, by bringing up dire circumstances of self-defense against sociopathic homicidal maniacs or other similarly unstoppable or irrational forces, as if these characterized the majority rather than the minority of cases.

[16] The use of exceptions which are relatively uncharacteristic of most of the people to whom a given principle might apply, in order to argue against the worth of that principle in general or as a whole, is really a very weak counter-argument in itself. But I include it here as a fallacy-of-similarity because I think it exposes a flaw in how we make comparisons of value; i.e. in such an argument, we take the exception as the norm towards which we conform our expectations of ourselves and others, rather than striving towards the norm laid out by the general principle, even when such a principle is far from a radical ideal. In other words, we tend to look towards those alternatives that we resort to in times of extreme difficulty or under unusual circumstances, as harmful or lamentable as they may be, in order to define the standard of everyday behavior. Because we might react instinctively with violent defense against a maniac, we assume that violence is an acceptable norm of daily life; because we might resort to eating animal flesh in harsh climates or extenuating circumstances where better food is not available, we assume that meat-eating is the basis of an average healthy diet. And because a small minority of the population may require the assistance of a housekeepers or because we might ourselves one day become too sick or too old to clean for ourselves, we feel comfortable justifying the reliance on a housekeeper as an acceptable practice even during the healthy prime of our lives.

[17] The problem with such an approach is that, when we take for granted that the norm should be defined by those rare exceptions, we tend to see in ourselves and in others a similarity with those exceptions. And so, for example, every instance of violence becomes in our minds an instance in which we are defending ourselves instinctually against an irrational maniac (even when this is not in fact the case). Likewise, one reader of my original post claimed to suffer from dust allergies that, as far as is known, she has never exhibited in the past decade, and which have only begun to plague her now that she has both the financial means and the social pressure to hire a housekeeper. In such a situation where we are expected by others or even by ourselves to conform to an "exception" that will justify our violation of a generally valuable principle, we are likely to begin believing, whether consciously or subconsciously, that we are in fact such an exception and to exhibit symptoms or problems accordingly.

[18] I believe that one reason we have this tendency to define ourselves and others in terms of "exceptions" and to thus dismiss principles that might otherwise have value for the greater majority is, in part, related to the point I made above about the "Inherent Right to Fist-Swinging." If we cannot know for sure that another person is not indeed a legitimate exception, then it is more valuable in our estimation to "play it safe" by downplaying the value of the ideal or higher principle so as not to trespass on another's rights or cause unintentional offense by appearing judgmental. But I think that the use of exceptions as supposedly powerful, and potentially even definitively devastating counter-arguments goes beyond this, to the issue of hypocrisy and our cultural assumptions about freedom.

[19] What all of these fallacies-of-similarity have in common, as I mentioned above, is the attempt to extend or warp an argument beyond its intended, logical conclusion and thus demonstrate that it is inconsistent or hypocritical. To prove an argument is inherently hypocritical is assumed to be a fatal blow to the value of such an argument. Indeed, in our culture it is much worse to be a hypocrite than to be a failure, and we assume it is also much more likely, so that any occasion when someone fails to live up perfectly to the values they espouse, we accuse them not of imperfection, but of hypocrisy. If a person who upholds the values of pacifism cannot always perfectly conform to the ideals of nonviolence, but may occasionally slip up out of ignorance or natural human shortcomings, then the philosophy of pacifism itself is assumed to be impractical, hypocritical and relatively valueless. (You will also notice in this conclusion again the assumption that a principle must be judged not in terms of its broader implications but by the individuals who embody it, another example of our cultural assumptions about the primacy of individualism.) In this way, too, if a person who argues in favor of the value of self-reliance cannot be completely self-reliant to the extreme of total isolated independence from others in all cases — a ridiculous notion considering our nature as social creatures and our physical as well as spiritual interconnection — then the principle of self-reliance is dismissed as hypocritical and valueless.

[20] Why is hypocrisy considered such a sin in our culture? For a time, this question puzzled me. But I have come to believe that it is because of another common cultural assumption which goes largely unexamined today: that our society is a free and open one, and one in which "class" exists only insofar as it is an incidental stratification through which we can pass almost effortlessly in fluid social mobility. It is often said that Americans show a great amount of "can do" attitude — certainly it was that sentiment that became a catalyst and catchphrase for the most recent successful presidential campaign — and we believe this quite readily about ourselves at times and, perhaps even more importantly, about others. With such an assumption in place, we therefore conclude that anyone and everyone is fully and completely capable of living up to and realizing whatever particular values or principles they claim to hold dear. We may not always hold ourselves to these standards; after all, we are very much aware of all of the limitations, restrictions and obstacles that we face personally every day and which might prevent us from reaching our ideals — all the more reason to identify ourselves as and show solidarity with others who may be "exceptions." And so we find ourselves suspicious of anyone who aspires to any ideals with which we might potentially one day take exception. We assume, first of all, that if they express such ideals it is because they are not exceptions themselves and must not have mitigating circumstances of their own. We accuse them of not having considered such exceptions, of being unfair in their expectations of others, and of being hypocritical in the application of their values to themselves when we discover that they are not actually perfect or perfectly capable. This is often true regardless of whether or not a person has in fact behaved hypocritically, and our mistrust is only reinforced by the fact that so many of our public figures and political and cultural leaders do so often hide behind a mask of very real hypocrisy.

[21] Oddly enough, because our underlying cultural assumptions often slip by unexamined and can inform our attitudes without us consciously noticing their effect, we are perfectly capable of holding two contradictory assumptions at once. Such is the case with our assumption that this is a completely free and open society full of can-do people who have no excuse for failure or imperfection, but who are also, as it happens, woefully crippled by myriad exceptions, handicaps and extenuating circumstances around which we must constantly tiptoe with care if we are to avoid accusations of prejudice, ignorance, imposition or, worst of all, hypocrisy. We may, during any given argument, swing towards one of these views rather than another, depending on how we view the individual against whom we are arguing, but many of us comfortably hold both in our arsenal of counter-arguments, ready to use this one or that one when the other one fails us.

The Broken Window Fallacy

[22] There is a parable told by Frédéric Bastiat in an essay (published one hundred and sixty years ago, in 1850) that illustrates starkly what he called, and what has since come to be quite well known as, the "Broken Window Fallacy." In Bastiat's parable, a shopkeeper's son accidentally breaks a window and the shopkeeper must hire a glazier to repair it; when the shopkeeper laments the incident, onlookers remonstrate him, saying that certainly this unfortunate event at least benefits the glazier, and after all what would become of the glaziers if windows were never broken? But, Bastiat says, "if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, 'Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.'" In other words, such a conclusion can result only from the narrow consideration of a single economic transaction, and takes no account of all of the other potential uses to which both the glazier and the payment given to him might have been put instead. The shopkeeper, had his son not broken his window, might have instead spent the money on a new pair of shoes or a new book for his library, or on food for his family, or on a night at the local concert hall, benefitting the cobbler or the printer or the grocer or the musicians. Likewise the glazier, had he not been employed repairing the broken window of the shopkeeper's place, might have been employed to fashion windows for the new town hall or the beautiful new church being built, or perhaps he might have had some even greater personal project to which he could have devoted himself and that would have had the potential for greater enrichment of both the personal and the financial sort. "Thus, the child did not bring any net benefit to the town. Instead, he made the town poorer by at least the value of one window, if not more."

[23] Yet despite the obvious flaw in this kind of specious reasoning on a small scale, the Broken Window Fallacy is employed with gleeful abandon even today to justify everything from the economic advantages of war to the misguided spending practices of state infrastructure projects. It has become the common wisdom of economists and politicians to cheer on the industries of warfare and weapons manufacturing as providing essential opportunities for employment and economic growth, especially during times of hardship and recession, and yet such industries not only pour tremendous amounts of human labor and material resources into crafting objects which will inevitably be destroyed — indeed, this is their whole intended purpose — but which do no small amount of damage themselves before their own eventual destruction. In short, the military-industrial complex takes the Broken Window Fallacy to new levels of myopic stupidity and has become, essentially, an industry devoted to the manufacturing of Window-Breaking Machines.

[24] However, there are subtler forms of this fallacy no less unfortunate in their application. When the coal mining industry began to crumble and collapse, leaving a great number of the working class unemployed across central Pennsylvania, the state turned to the reliable wisdom of the Broken Window Fallacy and put many of them to work in road construction through the Department of Transportation (more commonly known as PennDOT). Intentionally relaxing standards for construction and maintenance, they were able to employ many who might not otherwise have had the training or skills for such work; in addition, the less competent repair work would often last only a year or two before needing further maintenance, ensuring an endless round of construction projects and an indefinite number of employment opportunities stretching into the future. As a result, years later, many of these lowered standards (and the resulting lower pay for less-skilled work) persist and the condition of the roads state-wide has continued to grow worse and worse. Such an approach, though not nearly as misguided as the wanton and intentional destruction of the military-industrial complex, has certainly left the state of Pennsylvania poorer in the long-run with barely a benefit to the workers themselves. (Contrast this to the city of Pittsburgh, which responded to the decline of the city's once-thriving steel industry by actively encouraging the growth of careers in medicine, education, architecture and most recently "green technology," as well as funding cultural programs in the arts.)

[25] I bring up these examples not to distract from the original discussion regarding the relative merits of hiring a housekeeper, but to illustrate in what way these examples utilize, applied on a larger scale, some of the same logical failings and cultural assumptions many of you used in your own counter-arguments. For what the Broken Window Fallacy really concerns itself with is the too-often unseen or unrecognized detriment, to both the individual worker and the community as a whole, of employing someone to do unnecessary work, what we might call the "cost of opportunity." This may be true even when the work, such as that of the glazier, is otherwise potentially enjoyable or well-paying, but it becomes especially relevant when we begin to speak about menial and traditionally "lower-class" work. In such instances, the fallacy manifests itself most readily in the counter-argment, already previously mentioned, that insists: "at least doing x is better than being unemployed." Such is the objection, almost word for word, that the townspeople of Bastiat's parable make to the complaints of the shopkeeper, and yet it is one, as he points out, that rests on assumptions about the unseen and a narrow consideration of alternatives.

[26] One red flag that should make us immediately suspicious of the logic behind this counter-argument is that it is almost never used to justify a regression to some previous economic state (I say almost never, knowing full-well the resurgence in marketing for so-called "clean coal" alternatives in central Pennsylvania in recent years), but is instead used practically exclusively to defend the current status quo. The logic "at least doing x is better than being unemployed" was once used to argue against the raising of the minimum wage that would force businesses to lay-off elevator operators; yet after the resulting invention of the automatic elevator, few would suggest that we have done a great disservice to those who, for lack of elevator operator work, have found themselves homeless and starving on the streets. Likewise, having fought valiantly in this country to establish child labor laws to protect the rights, health and safety of those underage, rarely do we hear an argument supporting the repeal of these protections so that families might be relieved of their burden in times of financial or physical hardship. Such suggestions immediately present themselves to us as ridiculous and wrong-headed, as does similar reasoning when it is applied to circumstances in other countries or cultures far below the lowest acceptable standards of our own. Thus we make no objection to the call to boycott sweatshop-manufactured clothing produced by workers being paid seven cents an hour. We do not worry that, as a result of our boycott, such workers will be forced into poverty and starvation, since to our eyes they must already be living in such conditions to accept so pitiful a payment.

[27] My point here is not to suggest that housekeepers are equivalent or even similar to unprotected underaged workers or grossly-underpaid sweatshop employees in the Third World (please see my discussion above about the use of analogies for clarification on this matter). Rather, I mean to illustrate that, under certain conditions, we find the counter-argument "at least doing x is better than being unemployed!" to be clearly flimsy, pessimistic and sometimes downright backwards in its outlook and assumptions about the world. In fact, the conditions under which we reject this kind of reasoning could be characterized most generally as precisely those times when we have clear evidence for the viability of more advantageous alternatives. In this, we are often lacking in both optimism and imagination, refusing to believe such options exist or are even possible unless they have been fairly well-established for us among the norms of our own contemporary culture, and leaving others to take on both the risk and the resistance of establishing more progressive standards for the future. But if we can only accept the Broken Window Fallacy as reliable and soundly-reasoned wisdom in situations where we are fundamentally uncertain about the potential alternatives, then it must also be clear to us that our relative reliance on this logical fallacy is determined largely by what our cultural assumptions tell us, overtly or implicitly, about the unknown.

[28] So what are the whisperings and whistlings in the dark that arise from our cultural assumptions when it comes to the question of housekeeping and other forms of menial labor? In my experience one particularly pervasive assumption — which might even be described as the most persistent and driving primary anxiety of a capitalist society — is that, to put it simply, there are only a limited number of "good jobs" available, and its corollary, that these are always fewer than the size of a given population. There is no particular reason why this must absolutely be the case, and indeed we have very little evidence to believe it to be inherently and irrevocably true other than the insistence of practically everyone else around us. Yet the healthy functioning of a capitalist society rests on this incurable belief, tied intimately to the (presumably loose) stratification of class, as the impetus to competition behind our strivings for creativity, innovation and efficiency. Even those of the highest class buy into this cultural assumption. As only one example, the doctor examining Jeff's broken foot recently treated us to his impromptu ponderings on his son, third in his class at a prestigious local private school, working diligently to "beat out" the two Korean kids above him, apparently under the impression that there are only two well-paying job openings available for prep-school graduates.

[29] When the competition even among the upper classes for meaningful and gainful employment is so fierce, those of us with the liberal ideal that everyone deserves the right and opportunity to work often find ourselves defending the strange and unfortunate notion that, in order for this to be possible, we are obligated to create "bad jobs," relatively low-paying and unskilled work that we might otherwise do for ourselves or find creative alternative methods to avoid altogether. Thus, the Broken Window Fallacy slips in practically unnoticed to bolster our belief and alleviate our quietly nagging guilt, assuring us that this is to the benefit of the workers as well as the community because without such jobs available many of the people so employed would soon find that all of the better jobs had already been taken. Thus we shift our focus from our own choice about how to use our financial and material resources, to the apparent lack of choice that we assume others must face which would lead them to pursue even the lowest-paying menial work, and so we offer such jobs as a kind of consolation prize to those to whom life has handed the short straw, lest they be left with nothing. This, at least, is what we tell ourselves in excuse, though rarely do we refuse or even pause to consider when the latest technological advancement allows us to replace telephone operators, factory assembly line workers, bank tellers, agricultural workers, gas station attendants, grocery store cashiers and any number of other positions, with automated systems or technological tools that give us the same level of competence or personal control. Indeed we roundly acknowledge that higher levels of education open up greater, not fewer, opportunities for employment, in part because they equip us with the skills and creativity to forge wholly new career paths if we choose, while the viable options for menial labor erode under constant threat of being rendered redundant or irrelevant by the next wave of technological innovation. Still, we persist in the belief that it is the market of well-paying and respectable career options that is glutted and only by hiring others to do our own undesirable tasks can we, with patronizing affection, offer that helping hand so desperately needed.

[30] The slightly more sinister assumption lurking behind this logic is the belief that some people — due to personal disadvantages of background or education, gender, race or ethnicity, personality, or physical or mental deficiencies — simply are not capable of doing any better. Accordingly, this counter-argument suggests, by creating Window Repair work for such individuals, far from doing them a disservice, we are in actual fact doing them a favor. Here again we see the insidious work of two cultural assumptions in collision: the assumption that in a free and open society of can-do citizens no one would be working a low-paying, menial job unless they were essentially incapable of doing any better, and the habit of mind that assumes that if they are incapable of doing better it is due to the exceptions of personal disadvantage (such as disability or lack of intelligence or initiative). Such exceptions, as I have discussed already, are believed to be much more common than they truly are for a variety of reasons, and offer more acceptable explanations of disadvantage than an acknowledgement of broader social trends (often existing in that uncertain space "beyond our own nose") where systemic injustices and inequalities might function apparently beyond the scope of any one individual's or group's ability to neatly control the results. It can often be difficult, even among the highly-educated, for a person to gain enough cultural and historical perspective to develop a firm grasp on social trends and their myriad consequences, whereas almost everyone can name at least one friend or coworker who has benefitted from a diligent work ethic or some well-timed brown-nosing, while another has been passed over for promotion time and again due to a confrontational personality, laziness on the job or even poor personal hygiene. We are not only prone, in a culture preoccupied with individualism, to believe more strongly in the individual's responsibility or culpability for finding work, but it makes more immediate sense to us, for we are often more likely to see the immediate causes and effects on this smaller scale than the echoing, shifting tides of systemic conditions stretching back for several generations.

[31] All of this assumes, of course, that such menial work is undesirable and ideally avoidable, and yet there is often an oddly-reasoned view that accompanies our patronage of those whom we hire for such tasks, that would have us believe that because even the best job can be miserable and demeaning under certain repressive or unfortunate circumstances, therefore even the worst job can be a welcome dream-come-true if approached with the appropriate attitude. It is this kind of thinking that leads some Libertarians to the defense of prostitution as a woman's rightful alternative to the poverty of unemployment, and leads others to the defense of housekeeping and similar menial work because it is a more dignified or more ethical alternative to prostitution. In both cases, the argument applauds those individuals in situations of disadvantage for "owning" the conditions in which they find themselves and making the best of the situation through hard work and a kind of stubborn humility. What such rationalizations hold in common is the readiness to believe that attitude is everything, and the willingness to view our exploitation of someone else's disadvantage as a twisted form of generosity and empowerment.

The Location of and Right to Self-Identity

[32] An unexamined but pervasive cultural attitude that colors and complicates this discussion to the point of inanity is the deep-seated assumption that a person's self-identity is defined primarily by how they earn money. This unacknowledged view brings us immediately back to the concerns raised in my discussion about the "Inherent Right to Fist-Swinging," and threatens to transform almost any discussion about how we choose to spend our time, energy and resources into a discussion about the demands others have the right to make on us for these things. It is this cultural assumption that, I believe, truly lies at the heart of the transformation of my actual argument about the drawbacks of hiring a housekeeper, into the one portrayed as and responded to in your comments, namely an imagined argument about the drawbacks of employing housekeepers (plural), as if they were a single, monolithic group of individuals whose self-identity rested solely in their line of work, and whose self-identity as well as livelihood is therefore threatened by my particular perspective.

[33] The fact that there are indeed some (exceptional) individuals for whom housekeeping and other such work is a calculated (and often temporary) choice that confers advantages such as self-employment, schedule flexibility and independence, only serves to reinforce this view. In such a situation, an argument against hiring a housekeeper might, if taken seriously by too many people, negatively impact such individuals' ability to find this type of employment (though they would, presumably, have other options available to them). Yet, these individuals will argue, isn't it their right to work as a housekeeper if that is the profession they choose? Of course, you won't catch them arguing for their right to work as an elevator operator, a gladiator, an assistant juniper-berry picker, or a lunar tour guide — such a counter-argument is, as usual, confined only to the relevant aspects of the current cultural status quo one feels is in need of defending. And so we come to a discussion about the precise location of such work-related self-identity and the implications of the belief in an individual's right to choose.

[34] For in this highly individual world, I agree whole-heartedly that a person's self-identity is something sacred, to be celebrated and cultivated with care and craft. However, if we assume that this self-identity rests exclusively or even primarily in that person's choice of career, and yet we persist in our belief that it remains of the individual's choosing, then we are led to some rather unrealistic and even contradictory conclusions about the nature of the market economy and the function of its producer-consumer relations. The fact of the matter is that consumer choices, not those of the workers, largely dictate what types of work will be available, and what little power workers are able to exert to this effect, for instance through organized labor unions, is often constricted in focus and negligible on a larger scale. It is our choice as consumers to support certain industries over others, to overlook the injustices or harmful consequences of this one while speaking out against the similar effects of that one; furthermore, we are very much aware of this power of ours and understand that it is to be wielded carefully and consciously whenever possible.

[35] However, when we insist that anyone who chooses to earn a living and create a self-identity based on a particular form of work has the right to demand our compliance and support for that choice, we find ourselves squeezed uncomfortably into the same fist-swinging paradigm that would restrict our own choices of lifestyle to those safely within the bounds of "our own nose," fearful that any more wide-spread implications might trespass on another's right to their chosen self-identity. To my mind there is little difference between the argument that we are wrong to praise the values of self-reliance and cleaning our own homes at the apparent expense of those who choose to be housekeepers, and the argument that we are obligated to support not only the troops, but the war, simply because some individuals have chosen to be soldiers. The logic is the same in both scenarios, though I think most of you would object to the latter. The question of what right individuals reasonably have to choose the means by which they earn a living is an essentially different question from our rights as individuals to make choices about how to best spend our time, energy and resources — for while one is a relatively simple question of employment that can be answered at least in part by the current circumstances that exist in the market economy, the other is a question about our self-identity as creative beings engaged in shaping the world around us, and it is here, precisely in this realm "beyond our own nose" that we share with and engage with each other in ways that render our self-identity meaningful.

Monday, April 5, 2010

The Politics of Clean(s)ing

From the Pagan celebrations of renewing energies simmering below the surface between Imbolc and Beltane, to the purifying rituals and fasts of the Lenten season leading up to the Easter holiday of rebirth and resurrection, to the secular traditions of "spring cleaning" — it seems the topic of cleansing always pushes its way up through the muck and dirt and caked layers of old dead leaves during this time of year, much like the tulips and daffodils and, I suspect, responding to the same warm sunlight and cool rains.

My usual rituals of spring cleaning have been put on hold this year as I pack up to move from my old apartment into my new home with my partner. The process, a kind of ultimate spring cleaning (except with more cardboard boxes and lots of heavy lifting), has given me a new appreciation for all those past years of intense nook-and-cranny scouring and scrubbing and clearing out the cobwebs of the previous winter. I can immediately tell those places where the cleaning "took," and those hidden corners that I overlooked time and again, now revealed in all their glory of tumbling dust-bunny mountains. And of course, there really is nothing quite like the first deep-cleaning of the new season, with all the windows thrown open and the vernal breeze rich with hyacinths and the first hint of magnolia mingling with the citrus scents of eco-friendly cleaning supplies.

And so, I've been thinking a lot recently about cleaning, and cleansing.^[*] In particular, I've been thinking about the ways in which clean(s)ing puts us into relationship with others, with the landscape and with the Song of the World, or rather, how so often it fails to do just that. I call this the "politics" of clean(s)ing, in the sense that it concerns the how's and why's of living in community, and our responsibilities (and response-abilities) in such relationship.

About the Cleaning-Lady

To illustrate the importance of the "politics of clean(s)ing," I want to focus first on what I consider to be the epitome of an unhealthy relationship, a kind of cleaning dystopia. Now normally there are very few things that would provoke me to unequivocal judgment in this blog; I try to respect others' rights to think, behave and define themselves and their values each on their own, in hopes they will do the same for me, and I would rather engage in mutual discourse than a contest in condemning. But you are about to witness, dear readers, a departure from this general track in the following statement: I know of absolutely no reason (with the exception of those who are physically unable due to age, illness or disability) for anyone to have a housekeeper, ever.

My reasons for such a strong view are manifold, but they have their origins in my up-bringing by a strong feminist mother who also, as it happens, was an incurable pack-rat. The fact is that the title of "housekeeper" is for good reason practically interchangeable with "cleaning-lady" — it is a job still dominated almost entirely by women, almost all of whom are underpaid and overworked. My sense of social justice cringes at the very notion of patronizing and perpetuating such a horrifically sexist and demeaning profession (and I must reject the notion, as I've heard some Libertarians argue in support of prostitution, that by exploiting women who have no better options, we are somehow doing them a favor).

The logic that supports this degrading profession — and believe me, there are few jobs more degrading than cleaning up someone else's waste and filth — is that it would be ridiculous to pay someone a living wage to do work you could very well do for yourself (if you were so inclined, which of course you are not). It is the same logic that exempts severs and wait-staff from minimum wage laws (after all, you could have gotten your own food... though, of course, you didn't). The result is an ugly mess of unhealthy relationships lurking just beneath that gleaming surface that we would like to call "clean."

Consider the following: out-for-hire housekeepers are often paid according to the number of houses they clean, which gives them quite a large incentive to clean a given house as quickly as possible, and move on to the next. As a result, they often focus far more on the appearance of cleanliness than on actual, deep-cleaning itself. And can you blame them? The job of housekeeper rarely comes with job security or benefits, such as health care, and on top of that, you don't get paid if you don't show up. Which also means that housekeepers will often show up to work even when they are injured or ill, which is much more frequent in a job that involves hard physical work and dealing all day with other people's germs. Whether for reasons of speed or because she is feeling less than full of vigorous health, or quite often both, a housekeeper will likely cut every corner she can, wiping down that kitchen counter once with an already-used rag from the bathroom rather than wasting time prepping a clean one and scrubbing to kill all those invisible germs that we can't see anyway. And really, it's not her house, so why should it matter to her? There is, after all, a subversive logic that plays in the heads of the working-class housekeepers and waitresses as well, which is that if the client or customer really cared about the work, they would have done it themselves, and what you're really paid for is the task of keeping up appearances. Every once in a while, you might find that wizened Buddhist woman who treats waiting tables at the local diner like a Teahouse Practice; or the devoted housekeeper who sees the task of cleaning and sterilizing other people's homes as her small homage to Mother Teresa... but such saints are few and far between, and most folks are just fellow human beings struggling to make ends meet.

The sum total of all of this? We invite someone into our home — this place meant to be a family space of comfort and safety, rest and sanctuary and warm memory — and this person brings with her the systemic violence of lingering sexism and injustice and very often poverty; she brings with her the illnesses, frenzied stress and repressed resentment of a demeaning and difficult job; she brings with her all those literal germs from all the other houses she's cleaned that day, not to mention the harsh industrial chemicals that are just as bad for the earth as they are for the human body... and when she leaves, we survey our domain and call it "clean." And yet, how could this be clean? How could this truly be healthy? We have invited in countless violations of kindness, honor and responsibility — we have welcomed in a reality rife with invisible illness and imbalance for the sake of a superficial glimmering appearance, and in the very act of doing so we have relinquished our own responsibilities.

courtesy of Perfecto Insecto, via flickr

Why Cleansing Matters

In some ways, the argument that if you really cared about the work, you would do it yourself, though often bitter and self-justifying among those who work in the "service industry," has a deeply relevant point. Cleaning puts us into relationship with the places and objects that we clean — but more specifically, it is work that restores our relationship with all those things that we have used up and worn out with our daily living, often taking them for granted or overlooking them as our grime collects and our handling wears. The process of cleaning is our chance to re-attune with these, to demonstrate with our hands and our care, our time and concentration, the gratitude and respect that they are due. During this time we spend cleaning, we become willing attendants to those objects and places that have continually served us, patiently and reliably and without protest. For the Pagan who views all of the embodied, physical world as sacred, cleaning is a sacred act of cleansing, in which we purify our relationships with a space and its dwelling spirits (whether literal or metaphorical) by redressing the imbalances of carelessness and inattention that can so often creep into our lives.

This is the why of cleansing, but the how is also intensely important. The cleansing process puts us in touch and in tune with an object or space so that we can establish a healthy and respectful "working relationship." But as any good ritualist or spellcrafter knows, when we set about the work of clearing away the mirky or harmful energies and the lingering spiritual echoes of a place or object, we also engage in opening ourselves and emptying ourselves. We give ourselves a chance to start fresh with a new sense of freedom grounded in the present, the here-now. Household cleaning tasks are often slow and repetitive — the same sweep of the broom or swish of the mop, the same turn and twist of the dishrag, the same back-and-forth of the scrub brush on the shower tile — and so they can become a kind of embodied meditation similar to that of smudging a sacred circle or cleansing a crystal. They require and help to cultivate self-discipline, gradually quieting the riot of thoughts in the mind and bringing the attention into focus on the most mundane of details.

And so this is why, I think, it is in the spring that we find ourselves so often thinking about cleaning and cleansing. Not only is cleaning a natural and practical way to direct those energies that come bubbling up from beneath the long-frozen ground and pouring down from the ever-higher sun, but it provokes a kind of revery in the mundane. The freshly washed curtains sway in the breeze beside the newly dusted windowsill, on which sits the most mundane and common of things: a few fresh-cut flowers in a vase. And life urges us to stop and smell the flowers, to slow down, to give our attention willingly and reverently to those little things that are tripping and tumbling over themselves in offering, that give of themselves endlessly and utterly fill our lives, a glass that runneth over with the generous fecundity of spring and simple things.

^[*] The two words trace back to the same Proto-Germanic roots meaning "to gleam" or make bright, with cleanse retaining its older spelling and pronunciation and clean, once used only as an adjective, taking over in the common usage. I have noticed that cleansing often tends to evoke a kind of formality and sacredness that cleaning does not, and so I will use these two terms in this way: cleaning being the mundane process, and cleansing being cleaning with that extra bit of umph added in (let's say the "s" stands for "sacred").

Thursday, October 15, 2009

How to Save the World: Seven Pillars of Vegetarianism

So the title of this post is a bit grandiose, but we're talking about climate change here today, because it's Blog Action Day 2009. Think thousands of bloggers sitting in front of their computers can't change the world? Well.... you're probably right — but! That won't stop us from trying. My goal here today is not to convince you climate change is real and caused by human activity (it is), or to lecture you about the evils of modern consumer-based society and why a market system based on consumption will never, truly actively support a reduce-reuse-recycle model (it won't). My goal here today, friends, is to give you an excuse.

Actually, seven. Seven excuses, seven reasons to give up meat, to go vegetarian; seven excuses to save the world. You see, according to current studies on global warming and its major contributors, one of the most effective and easiest ways for ordinary individuals to fight global warming and help the environment is to reduce their consumption of animal products. Steve Pavlina notes in an article earlier this year:

A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. [...] In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, eating one pound of meat is equivalent to driving an SUV 40 miles.

Reducing our reliance on and support of the environmentally-devastating meat industry by cutting meat and dairy out of our diets has more impact than switching to that hybrid car or buying those energy-efficient light bulbs. Eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, especially one of mostly locally-grown organic foods, might just be the single best thing you can do to help restore the natural ecosystems of this planet, ecosystems human life evolved within and on which we depend for our future survival. And you can make the change immediately, starting today, at your very next meal. That's your first excuse.

But if that's not enough, I have six more. Vegetarianism isn't just about the environment, though that is an essential pillar in support of this lifestyle. At every level of our personal and social existence, we find compelling reasons why a vegetarian diet is not only a good idea, but a deeply meaningful choice to live with respect and gratitude as part of the natural world. The seven pillars that support this view are: biological, historical, environmental, political, ethical, psychological and spiritual. And each pillar has tied to it a strawman argument against the vegetarian diet, set up like a scarecrow to frighten people away from examining their choices too carefully. Well, consider this post a kind of Bad Wolf essay, panting and prowling through the temple, ready to blow those strawmen down.

Biological

The first pillar of vegetarianism is biological: as a species, we have evolved biologically to eat plants, not other animals. Recent discoveries in anthropology and paleontology provide evidence that our closest ancestors are not aggressive, omnivorous chimpanzees but "peaceful vegetarian" apes such as the gorilla and the bonobo. Our teeth are shaped primarily for ripping and grinding plant matter, rather than gripping and tearing flesh, and recently uncovered fossils of our earliest ancestor, Ardipithecus ramidus, has teeth much smaller, flatter and less protruding than predicted by earlier "killer ape" theories put forth by scientists. Our immune system is built to handle a vegetarian diet, as well — if we fail to cook our broccoli long enough, all we risk is slightly crunchy broccoli, and not potential deadly infections such as E. coli or tapeworms that can come from eating contaminated meat or foods cross-contaminated through animal feces. Our senses have developed to aid us in determining which fruit is ripe or rotten, whereas such discernment of meat is usually much more difficult. Furthermore, our digestive system is not physically capable of digesting most animal flesh, which must usually be cooked first to render it even remotely palatable; the sight and smell of raw meat sickens us, while fresh fruits and vegetables are inherently appealing to our visual and olfactory senses as well as our culinary tastes. Consuming even cooked meat puts unnatural strain on our bodies that can lead to digestive problems and heart disease, while eating fruits and vegetables provide us with the appropriate balance of nutrients, vitamins and minerals as well as the sugars and carbohydrates we crave and the fiber and water necessary to keep our bodies running smoothly.

The argument constructed against all this biological evidence is that we are not meant to be vegetarians, but omnivores, and thus eating three meals a day based primarily around a meat main-course is not only perfectly healthy but necessary to meet our nutritional needs. Besides taking for granted that the farm-raised, hormone-injected animals we eat today are in any way comparable to animals in the wild (to be dealt with later), this argument ignores the fact that most omnivores in the animal kingdom with similar teeth and digestive systems to our own (as opposed to, say, bears and other mainly-carnivorous animals) use meat only as an occasional supplement to a plant-based diet, rather than a staple food in itself. This meat is usually in the form of insects or scavenged carrion. It is true that we have certain minimal requirements for protein and fats that must be met, but studies have shown that eating a diverse diet of fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes more than adequately satisfies these needs (almost all cases of protein deficiency are, in fact, cases of starvation, not an imbalanced diet). Indeed, most Americans eat far too much protein, and health problems from heart disease to cancer can result. Stop for a moment and ask yourself where herbivorous animals such as cows, sheep, gorillas, and elephants get their protein to begin with. Their bodies, like ours, naturally manufacture protein out of the amino acids found in abundance in plant matter. When we eat animal proteins, in fact, our digestive system must first break these down before it can obtain the amino acids it needs, putting it under unnecessary strain.

Of course, as a species we are capable of eating an omnivorous diet, and this is one (of several) reasons why we have survived and managed to populate vastly different environments the world over. However, this does not mean that a meat-based diet is ultimately the healthiest or the best choice, especially for those living in circumstances which offer many ready alternatives. We should seriously question the practice of taking emergency survival techniques (such as eating whatever is available in harsh environments with few alternatives) as a foundation for ordinary healthy living. We should also remind ourselves that we are not defined merely by our biology; we can make lifestyle choices informed by other aspects of our social and personal lives as well, while still respecting our biology and physical needs. For instance, although the female human is capable of reproduction at as early an age as 12 or 13, few people today would argue that teen pregnancy is a good idea, let alone take it as an imperative to impregnate young girls as soon as possible.

Historical

This leads us to a consideration of our history as a human species, and how we have traditionally dealt with the question of diet. Long ago, our species evolved in the tropics of south-west Africa (this is why, incidentally, the colors, textures and tastes of tropical fruits are so particularly appealing to us); from there, we eventually migrated and spread to Eurasia and other climates where such foods were not as readily available. In response to changing environments, we found new alternatives provided by the indigenous flora and fauna, eventually establishing traditions of agriculture to supplement and then eventually replace a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Studies in archeology and anthropology show us that in ancient as well as modern day hunter-gatherer tribal societies, hunting and fishing rituals centered on showing respect and gratitude for the sacrificed animal and a promise or prayer for the continuation of its species. These rituals were sometimes so elaborate and lengthy (Joseph Campbell reports a three-day ceremony for the killing of a single stag) that they rendered frequent or mass-scale hunting simply impractical, which in itself insured a limited diet of meat and a restriction on just how quickly a species of animal could be depleted. With the introduction of agriculture and the domestication of livestock, the balance of plant- and animal-based food in the diet varied depending on a person's individual wealth and social class. Animal domestication on a large scale in Europe tended to have certain unhealthy consequences for the surrounding population, giving rise to epidemics and a general increase in disease and unsanitary living conditions for both humans and animals (Europeans brought these diseases with them to the New World, and the result was devastating to the native population). Meanwhile, agriculture and domestication alike contributed to the quickening process of deforestation and the homogenizing of ecosystems through controlled cultivation.

The historical support for vegetarianism is not so cut-and-dry as the previous biological arguments, precisely because for the most part humanity has survived by eating a combination of plant- and animal-based foods. What is clear is that our species has a history of adapting to local environments and finding or creating alternatives to support our lifestyle choices. History also provides us with evidence that the kind of large-scale animal consumption that our culture relies on today has traditionally had negative consequences for both human beings and the environment, while the hunting and eating of wild game in hunter-gatherer cultures has been healthier for both and tends to include natural limits that help to mitigate negative consequences. This evidence does not make the claim that eating meat is physically or ethically worse (see above, and below), but challenges us to question our ability to do so without putting strain on our relationship with the natural world on which we rely.

The historical objection is simply that "we have always eaten meat" and if our ancestors did so, then it certainly couldn't be wrong for us to continue the practice. There is no real need to bring up the myriad examples of horrific, unethical and generally unhealthy practices once embraced by human beings in the past that we have thankfully left behind us (or in some cases are still working to overcome). It is sufficient to point out that our ancestors themselves set a precedent of adaptation and change, rather than strict adherence to past lifestyles; if such were not the case, our species would still be nibbling fruits and crunching on ants in the African tropics. Furthermore, most objections of this nature focus on the generally healthier and more respectful relationship of the tribal hunter with his prey, and skips over the several thousand years of less idyllic agricultural practices that are our more immediate heritage. Certainly invoking the rituals and restrictions faced by hunter-gatherers to justify today's meat-based diet is not enough to overrule the reality of modern factory-farming and animal abuse.

Environmental

And so we return to the contemporary concerns of environmentalists today, and the role that the modern meat industry plays in contributing to the global warming and environmental damage more generally. We have already touched on a few of these concerns in the introduction to this post, but just for fun, I'm going to quote two more statistics from Pavlina's essay:

To produce one pound of meat requires, on average, about 5000 gallons of water. Compare that to 25 gallons for a pound of wheat. To produce their daily food, a vegetarian needs 300 gallons of water per day, while a typical meat-eater needs 4000 gallons. It takes energy to transport all that water too, and this means more greenhouse gas emissions.

and this one:

The EPA reports that the run-off from factory farms pollutes our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. Food animals in the USA produce 45 tons of animal excrement per second. That’s 130 times as much excrement as our human population produces. Some farms have so much excrement to deal with that they actually liquefy it and spray it into the air, so it gets carried away by the wind.

What these two tidbits effectively illustrate (and his article is full-to-bursting with similar facts) is precisely that those problems which were negligible on a small scale at the beginning of the agricultural revolution fester and grow into hugely wasteful, damaging practices when allowed to proceed unchecked and unquestioned. The modern approach to factory-farming, reliant on hormone injections, genetic modification, and the assembly-line rearing, slaughtering and processing of animals, consumes more energy and produces more waste than most people can even conceive of when they chow down on that mass-produced burger from the local fastfood joint. Once again, this pillar of vegetarianism does not insist that eating meat is inherently wrong, but points to the pervasive systems of meat production and processing today and asks us whether we can really turn a blind eye to their consequences every time we crave a porkchop.

It took me a long time to come up with any possible objection that could be propped up against this pillar and used to argue that, despite all evidence to the contrary, "eating meat is actually better for the environment." Only one has come to mind, and its approach is twofold and somewhat self-contradictory. On the one hand, I have often heard modern-day hunters argue that hunting and killing animals is necessary for their population control and more humane than allowing them to starve during the winter or risk being hit on the highway (this argument is more about killing than eating, of course, and in any case does not directly address the question of domesticated animals). On the other hand, apparently some individuals argue that the domestication of certain animals protects them from extinction and preserves their species (albeit in subservience to human need) into the future. So bizarre are both these claims — and so limited their understanding of "environmental benefit" — that I can hardly bother to deconstruct and reject them. Needless to say, both aspects of this argument rely on a kind of anthropocentric arrogance that assumes our right as well as our ability to control who gets to live and die, while ignoring our own role in eliminating the natural predators and destroying the habitats that would have kept the populations of these animals in ecological balance.

Political

As we move from pillar to pillar in support of vegetarianism, we find ourselves moving from the more objective realm of fact and evidence, to the increasingly subjective realm of personal and social choice and relationship. Politics is the first pillar in which we find the consequences of meat-eating echoing beyond the biological and environmental effects, to the nature of manipulation, misinformation and monopoly.

Current models of factory farming, together with corporate pressures from international giants such as McDonald's, render the meat industry especially prone to monopolization. Currently, the majority of U.S. meat production comes from only a handful of key corporations, who can quite effectively exert huge political influence on government legislation and regulation through lobbying and financial support. They utilize this influence to secure government subsidies which artificially lower the prices consumers pay for products to well below their actual monetary (not to mention environmental and social) costs; meanwhile, regulatory agencies run by former CEOs of the industry are effectively impotent to enforce what few regulations manage to pass into law. Lobbyists of the meat industry continue to fight against informative labeling regarding nutritional value, and the use of hormones, genetic modifications and dangerous chemicals in the production and processing of their animals. The general lack of regulation and information makes possible gross violations of basic human rights and worker safety, as well as jeopardizing general consumer health.

Perhaps none of this bothers you; perhaps you are content to be misled and manipulated by callous corporate giants, as long as you can get that steak dinner for cheap. But personally, as someone fundamentally against manipulation and abuse on principle, I find it impossible to ignore the role that my dietary choices play in the existence and continuation of this industry. When considering the wide-spread social implications of such a choice, reducing or eliminating my consumption of meat and other animal products becomes not just a personal matter of health and environmental awareness, but a political statement against the tyranny of greed and the inhumane, almost sociopathic priorities of corporate interests. Refusing to eat the byproducts of such a corrupt industry is surely not the only way to fight back, but it's one that I can enact, publicly or privately, on a daily basis regardless of other circumstances.

Objections to this pillar of vegetarianism include the rebuttal that factory-farming practices for produce and grains are just as bad, environmentally and politically, as those of the meat industry, as well as the insistence that the meat industry is a thriving business that is necessary to employ and support certain sectors of the domestic and global economies. It is true that factory farming is damaging in general, and that this includes the produce industry's use of petrochemical fertilizers and insecticides, as well as the genetically-modified monoculture crops that sprawl across much of the midwest. On the other hand, a huge portion of these farms' harvests go not to feed human beings, but to support the meat industry itself. Furthermore, when it comes to resisting the potential monopolies of the industry, it becomes much easier to seek out local, organic farms to provide yearly produce, or even to grow your own vegetables and fruits in a personal or community garden. I know of few people, however, willing to take on the task of raising and slaughtering their own cattle. As far as the argument that meat-eating is "good for business," I can only point out that industries founded on abusive and unhealthy practices deserve to flounder and fail, so that new, better alternatives can be found. Would anyone seriously argue, for instance, that the reliance on slave labor to shore up the cotton industry in post-revolutionary America could possibly justify slavery as a necessary and valuable practice?

Ethical

We are now approaching the final three pillars of vegetarianism: ethics, psychology and spirituality. Each of these topics is so complex and interwoven that it really deserves its own full-length essay, but for now I want to summarize some of the main points, and the various objections they tend to raise.

As we turn to the question of ethics, we are forced to confront the very notion of a "meat industry" as an industry like any other capitalist industry in the modern world. Whereas certain objects and items can (perhaps) be produced, exchanged and consumed without any inherent diminishment to their existential meaning or value, the fact that we feel comfortable as a society approaching other living, clearly sentient beings with this attitude raises serious ethical implications. What lines do we draw that separate some living creatures from others, and are these lines justified or even upheld in actual practice? The very notion of "animal rights abuses" may be controversial in some circles (though certainly not here in this blog), but human rights abuses seem much more widely acknowledged as worthy of condemnation and resistance; and yet, the very industry that provides you with sliced, plastic-wrapped deli meat in the supermarket aisle also treats its workers, as well as its consumer base, in abusive and manipulative ways. When we subject one part of the community of life to a model of lifeless consumerism, it seems an inevitable consequence that the rest of that community soon follows, and human beings as well as animals are reduced to mere numbers to be crunched, or gears to be turned.

There is also the ethical question of integrity, and the extent to which we can justifiably pay off others to do the "dirty work" we would rather not confront ourselves. When asked to explain my vegetarianism, this is the first point I make, as it seems the one to conjure up the fewest objections. Certainly, there are myriad unpleasant jobs in the world, but few are as dangerous, humiliating and psychologically traumatizing as the work of a slaughterhouse employee. Although perhaps this is not an inherent aspect of meat processing and packing, it is certainly an undeniable reality of our current system and must be acknowledged and dealt with as such.

Objections that animals just aren't as valuable or important, ethically, as human beings often rest on flimsy or arbitrary quibbling over definition. Not only because any consistent definition of personhood must either include some animals, or exclude some human beings who suffer from physical or mental handicaps, but also because of the diversity of social definitions which attempt to draw lines between animals themselves, designating some as food and others as pets. The argument that plants have been shown to experience a form of pain or survival instinct when threatened (besides deserving careful scrutiny itself) certainly cannot justify an ethical nihilism which declares that, if we can't help causing harm, we might as well not bother to mitigate what harm we do cause. Instead, it challenges us to think more deeply about our relationship to all living beings, sentient and non-sentient alike, and to consider the spiritual implications of relationship with both living and non-living things.

Psychological

The ethical pillar of vegetarianism rubs up against the psychological in many ways as we come to questions of personhood, harm and respectful reverence for fellow beings. Our psychological relationship with the plant world has traditionally been one of quiet cultivation and mutual nourishment, often involving community cooperation to ensure the planting, growing and harvesting proceed smoothly through the seasonal changes. Plants — both wild and human-cultivated — seem to us to more readily accept a symbiotic relationship with humans (as well as other animals) and offer up fruits, seeds and other parts of themselves in their own time. A ripe apple that falls to the ground in autumn can hardly be a traumatic loss for the tree, and on some emotional and psychological level we appreciate this aspect of our reliance on plant stuffs for food.

In contrast, hunting is roundly understood to be an act of potential harm, bringing about a death that the animal may not willingly accept, and one that many traditional tribal societies dealt with through rituals of petition and penitence, seeking forgiveness and cleansing of the "blood guilt" individual hunters themselves inevitably took on for the sake of the community. Rites of a son's "first kill" as an initiation into manhood were once understood as the willful taking-on of a burden or unpleasant task; modern back-patting for such an accomplishment are much more likely to be celebrations of intentional violence as symbolic of a macho-patriarchical conception of desensitized, power-oriented masculinity.

These broad portraits of our relationship to the plant and animal worlds are, of course, not nearly as subtle and complex as any given individual's experience are likely to be, but that does not diminish their importance in shaping the social patterns that influence how and what we share together at meals. Despite all of the above arguments of the previous pillars, it's still possible — in theory — to acknowledge the eating of animal flesh as potentially ethical and healthy, posing no inherent threat to social or personal well-being and being done with respect and reverence for the animals sacrificed. But we must not forget that we are ourselves psychological beings. We may strive for this ideal, but in our strivings we can also willfully ignore the harsh reality of our current meat industry, which rejects and undermines health, ethics and reverence at almost every turn, precisely because our psyches jar and balk at the disjoint.

I know full well that not all of the fruits and vegetables I eat are grown, harvested and processed in environmentally-friendly and respectful ways, yet the strain of this disjoint is not so great because I also know that seeking out organic, local produce is a very real possibility, as is someday growing it myself. On the other hand, commitments to only eat organic, abuse-free animal flesh put a much greater strain on the personal psyche, not only because such commitments are much more difficult to keep (and more likely to be bent or broken in the face of social pressures, for instance, at community meal-events), but because few people can conceive of the real possibility of raising and slaughtering their own food in a way that still feels respectful and emotionally-satisfying. I know myself well enough to know I am not a person who could kill an animal, especially one for whom I had developed respect and reverence through attentive care. Perhaps, under different circumstances, I could become such a person, but I see little point in supposing a reality that posits such a drastic change to my psychological being.

There may be some objection that eschewing the violence and pain on which our existence is inevitably founded is somehow weak-minded or even an unhealthy form of denial. I have addressed in the past my response to this conflation of violence and destruction, so I won't spend much time now responding to such an objection. But I will point out that, psychologically speaking, it becomes much more difficult to argue that vegetarianism is a symptom of weak-mindedness when we stop to consider the enormous social and personal pressures in place that must be overcome in order to make and maintain such a choice. (Anyone who can write an almost 5,000-word manifesto on the matter surely can't be too horribly weak-minded, in any case, if I do say so myself!)

Spiritual

At last we come to what, for me, is the crux of the matter. Scientists, nutritionists and historians may eventually chip away at the first three pillars with new discoveries and more reliable data; society may someday become more just and people more decent to one another and to those with whom they share the world, as the last three pillars wear away to dust. But even if this might one day be the case, even then — this final pillar will remain, not so much a support structure, as an altar. And upon that altar I rest my hands, my lips, and sometimes my weary head, in love and gratitude and praise.

For, to me, abstinence from animal flesh is not just about the ethical and social implications, not just about respecting ecological balance and upholding human and animal rights. It's an act of ritual and worship, an act of communion, surrender and grace as well as intent and creativity. In a consumer culture that has trained us to shovel food down our throats as carelessly as we pump gas into our cars (next time you're driving down the highway, notice the proliferation of gas stations and fastfood joints at all the same exits), my commitment to vegetarianism is a spiritual commitment to approach my daily meals with mindfulness and reverence, as a thrice-daily meditative rite. It's an act of acknowledgement that I am not, in fact, at the top of the food chain, that my body is fragile and, like my spirit, dependent on the mud and the rain and the sunlight, intimately tied to those things and reliant on the simple, quiet subtlety of the lush flora that thrive in every square inch that earth and sea and sky allow them.

In the end, it is a personal choice to shape my spiritual life through my own creative self-will, to become the person I want to be. And I can think of few relevant objections to that.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

This is not a blog post.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

The Long Goodbye: Part Four

Friday, October 15, 2010

Water on Water's the Way: Blog Action Day 2010

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

How Many Druids Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

Friday, October 8, 2010

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (7)

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (3)

Monday, August 30, 2010

Peace and the Celtic Spirit: Excerpts from a Journal (1)

Monday, June 21, 2010

Pagan Peace-Making: A Call for Submissions

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

The Peaceful Warrior: Pagan Pacifism Without Excuse (Part 2)

Thursday, June 3, 2010