New Website in the Works

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For folks still following along at home....

No, I'm not gone or giving up writing. Yes, a new website is in the works, incorporating a more permanent/static structure in addition to a blog feature to showcase my writing and share news with readers. My hope is to have the new website ready to launch by my birthday in mid-June. (Though I'm not making any promises.) Stay tuned for announcements here and on Facebook (where I also now have an author page) as the months roll by.

If you can't bear to do without me and my startling wit till then — well, that's probably something you should have a doctor take a look at. In the meantime, though, I'll still be posting fairly regularly about Pagan and Druid themes over on my wedding blog, Wedding on the Edge, along with my partner, Jeff Lilly (author of Druid Journal). I'll also be making the occasional appearance over at Pagan+Politics.

So hang in there, my friends. And in the meantime, spend some time outside making peace with cold winter and dawning spring. Many blessings, and many thanks.

"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."

- Joseph Campbell

The Long Goodbye: Part Four

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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."

The Long Goodbye: Part Two

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Then, out of the blue, several things happened at once. Most of them were things that, for one reason or another, I did not want to mention here on Meadowsweet for a little while... out of a sense of privacy, respect, and a bit of base superstition.

Synchronicity Abounds

The first, already known to readers, was that I posted the announcement for the Samhain to Solstice "Same Time Tomorrow" Donation Drive, which I'd been planning for a couple months in hopes that I might generate enough funds from supportive readers to move this blog to an expanded website with its own domain name. Almost as soon as I'd posted the announcement, however, a creeping sense of regret and frustration began to steal over me. I knew that I would dislike always wondering, as each day passed, if anyone would like my work enough to donate, which is why I'd only planned it as a temporary measure. I had no idea how painful it would be to feel overlooked as the month went by, with less than one percent of readers acknowledging the donation drive, and my readership numbers actually shrinking after I shared my request for suppport. Yet within a week of the donation drive announcement, a new job opportunity came my way and I began working from home as an independent contractor with a more flexible schedule and better pay than my former waitressing job — doing work that, being project-based and detail-oriented, satisfies my Gemini urge to plunge into the nitty-gritty and make measurable progress on particular tasks, and then move swiftly on to the next one. Experiencing the sense of job satisfaction and enjoyment I got from this new work put my frustration with blogging into sharp relief.

The Long Goodbye: Part One

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The golden cups
are in his hand,
his hand is on the knife
and the knife is
above my head.

- Taliesin*

Three times I drew the Seven of Cups, card of soul-wrought dreams and tempting fantasies beckoning, and possibilities so numerous they seem to paralyze all ability to choose. Three times I drew the card in daily meditation before I finally agreed to seek for further guidance.

Where It's At

Things have been all tangled up lately. The puzzle box or wrinkled seed that was planted in my heart during my time in Northern Ireland — the small, mysterious thing curled in upon itself that I had all but forgotten about as things returned to normal — has been creaking and clicking as one by one its latches unhook and slip open... or it has been germinating and putting down roots that slip their sly tendrils in to pry open the soil of my soul. It all sounds very dramatic when you put it like that, but the truth is that I have been growing increasingly dissatisfied and frustrated with certain aspects of my work. And when I say work, I mean the soul-work of my writing, that strange little hobby that cannot make me a living but is indispensable to making me alive.

I've started to have serious doubts about blogging as the appropriate medium for my writing. It takes a huge amount of pride-swallowing to write that sentence, considering it was only a few months ago I was raving about how Meadowsweet & Myrrh was like my online "home," and scoffing arrogantly at people who easily abandon their blogs and let them lie fallow and un-updated for months at a time. I take my writing — and thus my blogging — very seriously, perhaps too seriously at times. I am as slow to abandon a project as I am to leave behind a faith path that no longer meets my spiritual needs (and it took my nigh on half a decade of dilly-dallying to do that before I finally dropped the Catholic label and admitted to myself what everyone else already knew).

Same Time Tomorrow: A Meadowsweet Donation Drive

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Click above to donate!

"It's hard to be famous and alive. I just want to play music every day and hear someone say, 'Thanks, that was great, here's some money, same time tomorrow, okay?'"

- Terry Pratchett, from Soul Music

Lovely, beautiful, generous readers.... have you been working out? Seriously, you're looking really good these days, at least ten years younger than you are (you're in your early thirties, right?). Your hair always looks fantastic. And have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy your company? Always so witty and interesting — you must be the joy and envy of all your many friends. Also, I heard that your spouse/offspring/pet did really well in that thing he or she was doing, and I know that you must be so proud — though I bet they have you to thank for all your encouragement and support. You know, speaking of support....

I've been thinking recently, especially after my little crisis back in September, that it's time for a bit of a shake-up around the old blog. I have visions in my head of a truly marvelous semi-magazine layout, with feature articles, more frequent guest posts, an expanded resources page, maybe a poetry and lectio divina column... And, most thrilling of all, a domain name. O so professional.

Of course, I've been blogging here at meadowsweet-myrrh dot blogspot dot com for several years now, fast approaching my three-hundreth post, and the sheer number of pages published here could easily fill a couple sizable books. Meanwhile, the number of you wonderful readers has crept up and up, especially over the last year. Many of you keep coming back because, let's be frank, you are wise and well-read people who recognize good writing when you read it — but more importantly, at least I hope anyway, you can tell when a person has poured her heart and soul into the work she shares, and you are kind and empathetic folks as well as being intelligent and sharp as a tack.

The Politics of Clean(s)ing, Revisited

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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.

Cultivating an Environment of Truth

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"Truth is generated from its environment; in that way it becomes a powerful reality."

- Chögyam Trungpa

The man is a regular. He's a thin man, with dark hair and a work-worn face stretched from years of cigarettes and morning coffee and whatever it is he does to earn a living during the day, and he sits at the counter sipping slowly from his cup. Some of the other servers have complained about him in the past, about how he rifles through the pile of discarded checks next to the register, looking for unused coupons that other customers have carelessly left behind. Why does he need two dollars off? All he gets is coffee and toast... A cheapskate, some of them call him, even though he always tips a dollar, just to sit and read the newspaper and joke with the other regulars.

This morning, I'm wiping down the metal knobs and syrup dispensers before refilling the small red buckets of sanitizer and replacing the old used rags with fresh ones. It's early, before seven still, and dawn is flat like a diorama beyond the restaurant window. Behind me, the regular complains to his buddy. "They're shutting down half the city for the G-20, I don't know if we'll be able to get any work done. Maybe they'll give us the week off, but I doubt it. Anyway, you won't be able to get anywhere..." His buddy makes some amused grunt and pours one tiny creamer into his own coffee mug, delicately pinching the white plastic between his large, grubby fingers. "Well, hopefully the cops'll beat up some protesters anyway. And catch it on film, so they can play it on TV, over and over..."

I barely even flinch or pause in my cleaning. It's no surprise that the man is a committed conservative. He once complained about Obama perpetuating fraud against the U.S. government because he wasn't born inside the United States (I did not bother to point out to him that Hawaii is, in fact, part of the United States, whereas McCain was born in Panama). To complain about such matters when the previous administration allowed wire-tapping of citizens, torture of unjustly detained prisoners, and an illegal war based on false evidence... well, it was already clear the man didn't derive all his political priorities from careful reasoning and unbiased sources.

But I struggle to get over this last remark nonetheless. During my college days, and occasionally afterwards, I had been a protester. I had "turned my back on Bush" at his second inauguration, only to come face to face with a fat little man wearing an "I Salute Dick Cheney" baseball cap and baring his teeth through spittle at me and the thin, hippie-dressed girl beside me as we raised our fists in peace signs over our heads. I had marched in D.C. just a week after the Iraq War had begun; I had stood among others at peace vigils in the chill of winter and the reawakening of spring alike during the following years, holding stubby candles in flimsy paper cones to catch the dripping wax. I had swallowed tears of frustration and anger over Katrina and the slaughtering in the Gaza Strip, attended talks, lectures and poetry readings, wandered through galleries of photographs bearing stolid, unflinching witness to the things human beings can do to each other.

For all the man knows, I could be protesting come September, when a handful of the obscenely rich come to meet in my city, a city half-empty and struggling from collapsed industry, trying to rebuild with dignity, culture, art, medicine and education. I could be in the streets soon, holding up signs or handing out pamphlets asking why we still believe, so gullibly, that these men of power have our best interests in mind and not merely their own. I could be protesting, giving voice to the incredulity and hope in my bones. I have thought about it. Even though the papers say that G-20 protesters are struggling against government opposition for their right to legal permits for protest space. I've thought about marching in the streets, adding my voice to those who object, who say "no" when so many others hunch up, keep their heads low and try to avoid trouble. I am lucky, in some ways; I have very little to lose.

"Fucking protesters, man." The man chuckles to himself as his buddy finishes adding creamers to his styrofoam cup and leaves two dollar bills for the coffee at the front register before heading out the door. Then the regular is left alone at the counter, one hand wrapped around his warm mug, the other playing absent-mindedly with the edge of a napkin. I see him almost every morning I work, and sometimes I pass him on the street as I walk the neighborhood on my days off. He always greets me with amiable familiarity, trusting in the gentleness and civility that I have cultivated in my work as a waitress. To him, I must seem like a Nice Quiet Girl, and he's not really wrong in thinking so.

"Did you hear me honk, this morning?" he asks me as I'm refilling his cup. "You were walking up Monroe Avenue--I honked, but I didn't know if you heard me."

"O, that was you?" I smile, though my mind is still churning silently over his last comment, imagining the officer--maybe one I know, maybe one who comes in for breakfast and gets his meal for half-price--imagining the raised baton, or the mace or taser, imagining the officer approaching a row of us pacing along the curb, signs wavering and drooping as we wonder whether we should run...

"You walk alone to work like that every day, in the dark? You'd better be careful..."

"O, it's not really that dark, it's early morning by the time I'm walking to work, except in the winter when it's too cold for anyone else to be out. And this is a good neighborhood, I've never had any problems."

"Still, I hope you carry something--a handgun or something. There are a lot of crazy people out there."

For a moment, my sarcastic sense of humor whispers like a friendly devil in my ear, No shit, I'm looking at one... Carry a gun, for gods' sake!? This is a family neighborhood, with children, and dog-walkers out before the sun comes up. I know my neighbors, medical students, and grandparents whose grandkids visit on weekends, elderly Jewish ladies whose families have owned houses on this hill for generations, and young yuppy couples biking through the wooded park to their yoga classes. Carry a gun! But even this man, this regular who sips coffee and munches on his toast for forty-one cents on someone else's coupon...even he isn't the "crazy" people I might fear, if there are such people. He, too, is part of the neighborhood in its stability and community. I don't believe for a second that he would wish me harm, and as he looks at me over his coffee, I can tell that even his cautions and advice come from a place of goodness and caring for my welfare, no matter how mistaken they may be.

I wonder if that would change if he knew my political views. I wonder how he would feel if it was me on television being beaten by the cops, if it was my slim, defiant body huddled against the pavement, arms bracing against the blows. He didn't believe I was at the Superbowl riots in Oakland last winter, standing quietly in the snow completely sober and awake to the night, as students raged around me smelling of beer and sweat-dampened scarves, setting broken furniture on fire and tipping over cars. I watched the new horned moon set between buildings and let the pulse of city energy run through me, allowing it to swell and subsided into stillness again. I seem small, maybe even fragile, but I am hardly ever afraid. There are people much bigger than me, much less sure of their own power, who carry fear with them everywhere, like a handgun. He doesn't believe I could be a protester, some messy liberal pussy with nothing better to do than make trouble, someone who deserves a beating, sport for the hard-working, entertainment for the up-standing. I have worked to become gentle, kind, self-disciplined--he likely believes I am both too weak and too sensible to be caught screaming and waving my anger in the air under a banner of anti-anything.

It's not so much that he's wrong about me. He is wrong about protesters.

"What is wrong with spelling out the truth? When you spell out the truth it loses its essence and becomes either 'my' truth or 'your' truth; it becomes an end in itself. But by implying the truth, the truth doesn't become anyone's property.

When the dragon wants a rainstorm he causes thunder and lightning. That brings the rain."

- Chögyam Trungpa

Protesters aren't some special category of crazy leftist hippies. They're just people, of course, but then it depends on what you think of people. Despite some of my experiences in this world so far--watching unjust war, corruption and greed, fear-mongering and propaganda, starving children wasting away to support extravagant lifestyles for the wealthy on the other side of the world--despite this, I trust in a fundamental goodness in human beings. There is a beauty to the mess and flux of the world, and people share in this beauty, striving in all kinds of ways, through stupidity and ignorance, through kind intentions and fears of failure, to become better, to do what is good. I have never had reason to doubt this, never in my experience come upon a person who did not have some good in them working its way out.

The regular, sitting before me at the counter with concern on his face, is not an evil man, not a person who would sincerely wish violence on another person. When he jokes about cops beating marchers, he does so casually, almost as if it doesn't actually happen, not in the real world, not to real people. He has forgotten how to really look at other people, to see in them the complexity and messiness that reflects his own. He sees people--or, anyway, some people--merely as means to an end, as the irritable causes of effects in the political world that he does not like, causes that should be stopped, gotten rid of. I cannot agree with him on this view of people, and because I can't agree, I also can't hate him for it. He is not a Reason This Country Is Going to Hell... he is just a man, foolish and messy, with good in him working its way out.

So how do I correct him? Can I spell out the truth for him? No doubt there have been plenty of people dictating the problems of war and corruption, putting forth arguments and making passionate pleas. Sometimes I add my voice to this crowd, crying out for justice and peace and compassion. I am someone who speaks out, who acts to demonstrate my commitments and my ideals. But I am more than that, more than a voice in the crowd, more than a protester and conscientious objector, more than a mind twisting and twirling facts into the strong ropes that hold together an argument for peace and local community building. I am also the young woman who serves this man coffee four mornings a week, and helps him sort through two-dollar-off coupons.

When a person discovers the basic goodness in herself and in others, she discovers fearlessness. She discovers that there is no reason to be afraid, even when destruction and death threaten. Destruction isn't personal, and there is no cause for resentment. When a person discovers this inner strength, this courage within her, she becomes gentle with others as well as herself, she does not worry so much about correcting every wrong view around her. She trusts. Because she knows that the way to remedy fear is not to render life docile and harmless through explication, but to encourage others to discover the goodness in themselves. How to do that? It takes courage to face this truth (though why it should be so hard to admit to ourselves that we might be basically good just the way we are I've never quite figured out). But you cannot just tell people about it; to explain it would rob them of the opportunity to embody courage themselves, to face this truth on their own.

In the end, I don't say anything to the man at the counter. I cannot change his view of people except by being most truly myself, by treating him with respect and gentleness, holding up a mirror that he might see his goodness belying his prejudices, revealing his blindspots. In the end, I don't say anything, this time. There is nothing I could say that I am not already saying with my being, with my presence there full of everything I am--pacifist and intellectual and poet and mystic--all crammed into the body of some unassuming waitress, coffee pot in one hand, clean rag in the other.

Security, Prosperity, Generosity

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My dear readers,

Times is hard.

Hopefully you already know Jeff Lilly, at least through his insightful writings over at Druid Journal. Jeff is a fellow member of AODA, a dear friend of mine, and a wonderful human being if ever I knew one. Only a few months ago, 'friends' was all we were, but since mid-March, we have become much more than that to one another.

Life works in mysterious ways. For the past two months, it seems the churning mechanisms of coincidence that spin this Universe of ours have been conspiring to make us happy. Family and social circumstances seemed perfectly in sync, bringing our lives closer together, smoothing the path before us. If I didn't know better, I would have suspected that we were merely madly in love, but it was more than that. Love couldn't explain why his ex-wife's fiancé's parents happen to live only minutes from me, or why his initial choice for a new apartment fell though just when a place became available that was cheaper and in a better location. Love couldn't explain my sudden surge of motivation and energy, or why all my mind-boggling bad luck seemed to be giving way to pleasant surprises and clear sailing... could it?

As sometimes happens, though, the ride has been getting a bit bumpier lately. Still finalizing the paperwork on his divorce and nailing down plans to move the whole family out to Pittsburgh, this morning Jeff received some difficult news about his work situation. His initial reaction--maybe from shock--was all smiles. Mine, on the other hand, was tearful panic and worry. Sometimes, I still believe I'm some kind of a bad luck charm, that whenever I get close to someone, life seems to get messy and more difficult for them. On the other hand, Jeff seemed full of confidence and enthusiasm, rattling off several alternative employment options he could pursue immediately. After a reassuring and mutually supportive phone call, my own anxiety was replaced with resolve. Thorn is right, as we delve more deeply into our Great Work, it's not that we never lose our center, it's that we return to center, we recover our poise and grace, more quickly than we used to.

I love this man. Not just because of his optimism and openness, his kindness and generosity. He has spent a great deal of time these past few months praising my strength and courage, and sometimes, I think, overlooking his own. And so on his behalf I would like to ask you, my dear readers, for your support and encouragement over these next few weeks. Please, keep Jeff in your thoughts and prayers, send him comfort and confidence, whether by energy, deity, spellwork or carrier pigeon. If I know anything about prosperity magic, it's that there is a weaving triad of mutual support at work: security, prosperity, generosity. Generosity is something the Celts were known for: a welcoming, giving spirit. I already know you all possess these in abundance. If, in your daily work, you could light a candle for Jeff, for his family and especially for his children, I know your warmth and positivity will be felt and returned with appreciation and gratitude.

Meanwhile, for those of you with a little extra funds lying around, Jeff does provide some neat services through his website, including beautifully-recorded guided meditations and spiritual name analyses. Please hop on over and check those out, if you're interested; every bit helps! (But don't tell him that I made such a shameless plug for him, okay?)

Shaman & Priest: How America's Cultural Landscape Shapes Its Religious Institutions

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This morning, I was up at quarter of five, a good half-hour before my alarm. My bladder full, my abdomen cramped and my lower back stiff with tension, I shuffled to the bathroom to begin my daily ablutions and stem the oncoming moontide. I steadied myself, blinking awake, washed my face and hands, brushed my hair and bound it into a tightly-wound bun pinned high against my skull. Not a hair loose, an earring glinting in each ear. I slipped on the smooth black slacks and polo shirt, the work uniform, the ceremonial costume. After a quick bowl of cereal and some juice, I sat in the dark living room, my only light a flickering candle amongst the clutter on the coffee table. I sat still. I gazed into the flame. I prayed for heat, for the warm fingers of the coming day to work the tension out of my body, to loosen the muscles of my womb around its loss of lifeblood, to soothe the ache. Then, as the dawn beyond my window slowly lightened, I grabbed my apron and my name tag, threw on a sweater and headed for the door. Stalking the twilight of early morning, slinking through intersections, startling the rabbits still grazing, dark round figures shivering in wet front lawns.... I was off to the hunt.

The Hunter & The Farmer

For several years now, I have thought of waiting tables as a hunter-gatherer kind of job. Each morning, I stalk my prey at their usual watering hole, serving up coffee and eggs with a sleek and casual smile; I am quiet, unobtrusive; I bide my time. My earnings are gifts from the gods of generosity and good luck, coming in unpredictable floods and trickles. I gather the silvery coins from the tabletops, I fold the bills into my apron pocket, and I move on again, cleaning, preparing for the breakfast rush, the lunch rush, the next herd to come and go. I'm no agriculturalist. Most of my houseplants are scraggly at best, clinging to life despite my ineptitude and reaching for those few hours of sunlight that slip in among the surrounding apartment buildings looming tall on all sides. My parents would have liked to think they were preparing me for a steady-income career, what with my good grades in high school, a solid list of extracurricular activities, distinguished honors at the top of my college class. But in all this cultivation, they never quite understood: I was hunting, always hunting, stalking my passions, following my bliss, lingering long hours in the familiar territories of my needs and desires, hoping to catch the scent. And so, when money became necessary, I found a job that let me hunt it down, working for the customers rather than the company, relying on my skill, speed and patience to get me what I need.

Recently, Jeff and I discussed the nature of serving as a kind of entrepreneurial career. Although waiting tables is usually a low-income working-class job, many contractors and consultants these days can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year taking on projects and hiring out their services to individual clients, juggling several commitments at once, balancing workload with financial goals. With global online networking and increased mobility and travel, people rarely spend a lifetime working the same job at a single company. They're far more likely to change careers, holding three to five different jobs over the course of their lives, while continuing their education or pursuing hobbies that can lead to small business opportunities. The days of gradual progress up a single corporate ladder, putting down roots, prizing stability and rewarding loyalty... these days are giving way to the hunt. The cultivator has again become predator, the agriculturalist has become quick-witted, light-footed. Risk and fortune hum taut between the skilled hands of the hunter, drawing his bow and holding his breath.

The Shaman & The Priest

Is it any surprise, then, that the priestly orders of our familiar organized religions are giving way once again to the prominence of shamanistic traditions and individual spiritual experience? Joseph Campbell, in his book The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, writes that in agriculturally-based societies,

There is a rigid relationship not only of the individual to his fellows, but also of village life to the calendrical cycle; for the planters are intensely aware of their dependency upon the gods of the elements. One short period of too much or too little rain at the critical moment, and a whole year of labor results in famine. Whereas for the hunter--hunter's luck is a very different thing.

To plow, to plant, to cultivate and harvest, at precisely the right time, in obedience to the seasons and the cycles of weather--such practices require the discipline of a community, and the knowledge of tradition, of the cycles and seasons of the past. The religious life speaks to and reflects this cultural structure. Ordained priests carry on the traditions of the previous generation, preserving the knowledge of the changing moods of the gods, remembering the appropriate rites and rituals needed to please, praise and appease them. The priest is the shepherd of the flock, the good farmer cultivating and reaping souls.

But the shaman--the shaman, like the hunter, goes out into the wilderness, alone, to seek her own truths. Practiced skills and passed-on techniques may be helpful, but in the end, what matters is the moment, the immediate presence of the here-now through which Spirit, the prey, is moving. No amount of community support, structure or tradition can replace her personal experiences, her individual capacity for attention and response, receptivity and creative activity. In a hunter-gatherer culture, people's spiritual lives naturally echo the needs of their mundane lives, shrugging off organized tradition in search of meaningful personal experiences. The individual, the present moment, the activity of the hunt itself--these become nodes of meaning in a chaotic, often unpredictable world.

Warrior, Shaman, Lover, Queen: A Druid Priestess

While I was at work waiting tables this morning, stiff and flinching against the noise and fluorescent lights, my boyfriend sent me the following email:

In my dream just now, you had climbed up a little way into a tree, and were wearing a gorgeous white and cream colored dress covered with flowers, and white flowers were in your hair, and the garden and the air and the light all around were like the perfect afternoon of an impressionist painting, and you said to me, The central question is, 'Is Druidry Earthly?'

Is Druidry Earthly? The stereotype of the old, bearded Druid priests in white robes, collecting mistletoe from the oak with a golden sickle according to some mysteriously complicated astronomical timing, catching the harvested plant in a white cloth so that it would not touch the ground... such an image might raise some doubt. And yet, even the structure and tradition of organized religion grows and evolves out of culture, out of our relationship with the land and its seasons. The growers, the farmers, are no less connected to the earth than the wild huntsman tracking deer through the woods. The vision of me, dressed in the impractical white of purity, suspended among the branches of the tree like the lightning-seeded mistletoe itself, gives me pause. Am I earthly? Do I sometimes try too hard to be that ideal image of the priestess? What is my connection to the land, to the community and to the past? But the dream also makes me smile, for it reminds me of another vision, one that I myself had several years ago during meditation when I first embarked on this Druid path:

I was wandering through a dense woods, the trees all thin and straight and touched with the bright, young green of full spring. Entering a clearing, I sat down in the mud and grass, spreading my gray-green dress around my folded legs. I stretched out my arms, feeling the wind raking my unbound hair, and felt--for an instant--the fiery blue lines of energy, interwoven connection spinning out in all directions around me, dodging and twining through the trees, opening to the sky, sinking deep into the earth and arcing all the way to the sun.

There is room in Druidry, I think, for the shaman and the priest. In a culture that still clings to the social traditions of agricultural society and dismisses hunter-gatherer lifestyle as inherently "primitive" even while adopting some of its characteristics, Druidry can find a place of balance and harmony, acknowledging everything priesthood and shamanism have to offer. Individual experience, the intensity of the moment, the essential nature of creativity and spontaneity and play; and the deep roots of tradition, the ancestors, the accumulation of wisdom and meaning, the vital participation in community. The Druid priestess can be lover and warrior, shaman and queen. She can weave these roles together. She can become something new.

On Striving & Strife

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The following is an excerpt from my personal journal. It's self-indulgent and whiny, to give you fair warning. But I had a tough day at work and I'm exhausted and I need to hear from you lovely, supportive people out there that it's not all noise and worthless effort.... Because I have absolute faith you'll chime in to comfort me. Because you're wonderful like that.

I really do like my work. What I dislike, at times, is my job.

Which might sound weird, since most people who wait tables dislike the customers. I actually quite like my customers. Rarely these days do I meet someone who is just so awful and demanding and rude that it actually upsets me. Most of the time, a sincere smile and honest effort to be helpful will decrease the stress-level of even the angriest customer, and those few that can't be appeased or helped, well, they're only going to be there for an hour or so anyway at most, and then they're gone.

What's stressful is coworkers. Especially lazy coworkers who do nothing but complain about the work and the customers, and then turn around and complain that they don't get more hours or that their customers don't tip them better. Well, which is it? Either you want to be here more (and really earn the money you somehow think customers owe you), or you want to be here less and forfeit good tips because of a lazy, bad attitude.

What stresses me out is that, I love my work. I mean my real work, the work of writing and studying and engaging deeply with the world through an active spiritual and artistic life. And I do it for free, a measly three days a week and whatever other hours I can scrape together. The other four days, I go in (very early and always on time) to a job where, on any given day I could work my ass off for almost nothing, but where most of the time I wait on customers who like me and tip me reasonably well. I don't smoke (cigarettes or pot), I don't drink, I don't party, I don't drive, I don't have cable or even health insurance. I make tons of sacrifices so that I can squeak by working four days a week at a "real job" so that on my days off I can--what? relax? get high? go to the bar? No. So that I can write essays and poetry, meet self-set deadlines for book reviews and newsletters that don't earn me a dime, go to the park to be grateful for the trees, spend time in meditation and practicing guitar. I love my work.

Meanwhile, I am open to ridicule because I "never go anywhere" and I never "do anything" but "sit around and read books." Some days, even when my customers are kind, my coworkers make me feel like crying. I have the right to the choices I've made with my life, and I have worked hard at this restaurant for four years now, to earn seniority, to establish a regular schedule and familiar customers. So that in my spare time, instead of frittering away funds on things to help me escape reality, I can settle down into my life and learn to love it, learn to cultivate happiness and gratitude, and try my hardest to give back, to give freely and without need for compensation or reward. Because I want to be that kind of person, the person who can give freely, with no strings attached, because her basic needs are met and she's content.

It's been a long time since anyone loved me for my good intentions. You spend enough years at a job like this, and you start to think that the only thing that matters is what you actually accomplish, what you can actually do for others. They don't care if you're trying. And everyone wants something. The list grows, and the more efficient you are, the more they want. And gods forbid you're happy--because, certainly, they aren't, and they will want what they think you have, since it seems to bring you something they haven't found for themselves. So they will criticize your restraint and your modest lifestyle, and they will continually fight for those shifts you rely on to barely scrape by. How can you please them, how can you possibly ever give them what they want from you? They want you to be like them--to go clubbing, buy expensive clothes, blow hundreds of dollars on pot and cigarettes--and at the same time, they want you to make do with even less, to cut back so that they can have more. It's only fair.

But I'm tired. I work so hard, because I love my work. Still, every once in a while, I want to be loved just for trying. I want to be supported and appreciated because I strive, because every day, every moment of my life, I am always striving. Striving to be a better waitress, striving to be a better coworker, a better writer and a better thinker and a better friend. To be more independent, and to be more involved; to be more caring, and to be thicker-skinned; to be more confident, and to be more modest; to be more ethical, and to be more accepting; to be more outgoing, and to be more easy-going; to be more imaginative, and to be more realistic. I even try, idiotically, to be more helpful and efficient while maintaining a socially acceptable level of apathy and cynicism.

And yesterday, my best friend confides that he sometimes feels he can't talk to anyone because no one cares about the things he does, or at least not as much. So I want to care even more, to read and learn even more, so that I can be there for him and be someone he can talk to. Because he's important to me and I don't want him to feel alone. But I only have so much energy. And sometimes, I don't know what to do. I try to seek stability and health, so that I can be my best, so that I can accomplish all these things... but sometimes, I end up feeling utterly inadequate.

Last night, I dreamt that my best friend and I were at a parade, and he handed me a small brown pill. I swallowed it whole, like an inside joke, and it turned me into a donkey. And I just ran away from everything, ran on my four hooves striking the dirt, my tail swinging at flies and my long ears flopping, soft and gray. To be a beast of burden, to be soft and gray and free to be simple, to chew grass and stare with large eyes at the world.

So this is the parade. And I'm the ass.

Passing on Plans

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Well, this blog's two-year anniversary has come and gone, passing by swiftly with nary a post. Oops! The past month has been absolutely full of surprises, joys, stresses and nerve-wracking wonderment. That up-coming post on the role of imagination in practical polytheism, which believe it or not I began brainstorming on the very first day of February, has yet to be written... still lurking somewhere between the sloppy notes and the sloppier outline stages.

That's the funny thing about plans. Sometimes, they happen, sometimes they don't. Today, I am awaiting the arrival of a person I have been wanting to meet for quite a while now, a person who only a few months ago was merely another acquaintance among many online. By this evening, I hope to call him a "firl" (that's "friend in real life," for those unfamiliar with the latest interwebs lingo that I just made up). That certainly wasn't in any of my plans.

In fact, over the past several years, I've found myself shying further and further away from plans. All through my childhood and adolescence, I was painfully aware, as many people probably were, of how overly structured and future-focused my life always seemed. Do well in middle school so you got into the top track in high school. Do well in high school--AP courses, extracurriculars, top grades and enough diversity in hobbies and friends so that you didn't appear "one sided"--and you were on your way to an excellent college. Do well in college... well, that one's obvious. Or so I thought. Do well in college, and you'll get a good job or an acceptance letter into your top-pick of graduate school. Which is exactly what I did get. And I went for a semester, and found myself hating it. (Do well in grad school and pay through the nose so that, what? I can be pruned and indoctrinated for a job in academia that I don't really want to begin with? No thanks.) A few years later, and here I am, former valedictorian-distinguished-interdepartmental-honors girl, waiting tables part-time and swinging through my life day to day like some Jane in the jungle... and absolutely adoring it. To hell with plans.

Now, I don't mean to say that I don't have goals. Most certainly I have goals, which are distinctly different from plans. But my goals these days usually involve things like regular practice, patience, baby steps forward into the ever-fluidic future. A goal is a spot on the horizon towards which you travel, walking or running or dancing, however you feel like moving on any given day. A plan, that's something else. A plan is a moment-by-moment instruction, a list, a schematic. Those diagrams with monotone shoe-prints and numbered arrows that claim to show you how to waltz, now that's a plan. You can get places with plans, of course, but you might be too busy with your eyes on your feet to see where it is you're going.

So here I am, today. The past few days have been chockfull of plans. To keep myself from being nervous about this upcoming visit, I set myself a checklist of spring cleaning projects. Scrubbing down the bathroom, tearing apart the kitchen to clean every nook and cranny, even washing and polishing my hardwood floors. I went to the grocery store and the bank. I planted seeds (rosemary, lavender and chamomile). I finished up a few torn curtains that needed stitching. I dusted and refreshed all my various altars, shrines and home decor arrangements. I did as many loads of laundry as I could honestly justify being a single woman with a limited wardrobe (seven). Now, it's just past six-thirty in the evening, and I've run out of things to do. The past two days have been lost in a blur of work, planning and replanning, checking off lists and adding to them. The apartment is clean and smelling of cleansing incense. The laundry is finished and the towels and sheets are folded, the bed is made, the pillows in the living room are tastefully arranged.

I feel as though I've missed something.

Plans have excellent uses. It's hard not to make plans, to give in to that compulsion to organize and categorize, especially when you have something to look forward to. It's been a long time since I had something, some new unknown, to look forward to, to anticipate with a mix of excitement and bewilderment. Having exhausted every recourse to thoughtless busy-ness and work, I think now I will try something else: I will sit inside my anticipation, savoring the coming unknown. I will attend to this moment, right here, right now. I will cherish this bewilderment, this utter lack of preparation that I have cultivated with my willful distraction. I will live my life, just as is this very hour, and I will absolutely adore it.