My joy and pride in observing the rise of the Occupy-99% movement continues to bring a smile to my face. For this unexpected ray of hope in a time of such darkness and despair I do give heartfelt thanks! It has been sometime since I commented on anything distinctly Pagan, as I have been preoccupied with the cruel, brain-dead forces dominating our political life in recent months, but today I want to again speak of things Pagan and attempt to suggest some links to the Occupy movement.
Something I have observed and reflected on with growing concern for many years is a tendency in certain forms of modern-day Paganism to not merely value and seek to revive and revision religious traditions of the pre-Christian past, but to also idealize the social forms and norms of those past times. I am very comfortable with the religious motivation, but quite uncomfortable with the social agenda. Specifically, there is the idea, detectable in some forms of Asatru-Heathenry but also elsewhere, that the best thing for Pagans today is to return, to whatever degree possible, to the kind of tribal society of the medieval past or earlier. This society is romanticized as more heroic and more honorable than that of today, but is also valued, implicitly if not explicitly, for its more narrowly circumscribed ethnic horizons: "the good old days when we could be with people of our own kind." This often ties in with a sense of ethnic or ethno-national identity: "the religion (and society) of the Germans, the Swedes, the Russians, the _____ "(fill in the blank with ethnic or national group identity of your choice.)
What concerns me about this retro-tribalism is how well it lends itself to racial and ethnic exclusiveness, and ultimately, racial animosity. I know a good number of Astruar and other Pagans who do not see themselves as racist, who bear no particular grudge against people of other racial or ethnic backgrounds, who may be kind and warm with people of such backgrounds, but who fail, in my view, to grasp that despite their own good hearts and good intentions, their concern with ethnic identity and the tribal life of times past has a dangerous potential to function as a building block for the most hateful forms of racism, including such ugly developments as Nazism and neo-Nazism.
I have had repeated arguments with people from Asatru and other groups about this, and this posting will undoubtedly generate a few more, but I stand my ground. Anyone who reads late nineteenth century or early twentieth century texts like Vilhelm Gronbech's "Culture of the Teutons" which recount, and often romanticize, the myths and folklore of the Northmen/the Germans/the Scandinavians should be aware that certain lines of ethno-nationalistic thinking contained in such texts ultimately fed into Nazi beliefs about the master race and Nordic superiority. The extreme hatred for Jews, Roma, Slavs and others that fueled the Nazi death machine was predicated upon a sense that people of Germanic descent were fundamentally different from these others, fundamentally superior, and fundamentally in need of "lebensraum" or living space that would be cleansed of these unwanted others.
I have studied Old Norse. I have enjoyed and been inspired by the closest thing to sacred texts for Norse-Germanic Pagan traditions, the Eddas and the Sagas of Iceland. I have spent substantial time in Iceland, in fact, as well as other parts of Northern Europe, all of which are very dear to me. I have no problem with anyone wanting to rework the old religious traditions alluded to in those texts. I have made my own experiments in this area. Thus far I am on the same page as many other enthusiasts for recreating Germanic Paganism.
So what is my problem? It is my acute awareness that in today's multicultural, postcolonial, post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima society, our heritage can never just be that of some chosen or assumed mono-ethnic identity from the distant past. As much as we may love having ancestors from this or that part of Europe or any other region of the world, our heritage did not stop developing in the year 1200 or whatever convenient cut-off point one may want to use to distinguish the imagined world of his/her Pagan ancestors from the world we live in today. Our heritage as modern people also includes slavery, colonialism, genocide, mass hatred, mass killing, mass ecological destruction, and a mixing of peoples, traditions, races, identities that would have been unimaginable 800 or 1000 years ago. To idealize that past society, to yearn to again be in an ethnically defined, ethnically exclusionary tribe, is at best a kind of escapism from modern social complexity, at worst an implicit, even if unacknowledged and unintentional endorsement of the same kind of ethnic and racial separatism that drove the Nazis.
My problem is I don't want to be a Nazi, nor a neo-Nazi, nor a supporter of nor a participant in anything remotely related or conducive to such hateful ideologies. As a child of the 20th century now living in the 21st, I see it as my heritage and responsibility to seek a positive way forward in the ethnically mixed, socially diverse, globalized world I live in. Retreating into an imagined past of ethnic purity that ignores the current day strikes me as silly at best, repulsive at worst.
Do I deserve then to call myself a Pagan or participate in Paganism? I have pretty much parted ways with American Asatru, because I encountered great hostility and experienced precious little satisfaction in attempting to discuss the above issues. I still struggle with how to take inspiration from religious traditions of the past without falling into the potential racism of retro-tribal agendas. I believe the only solution is through dialogue with a wide variety of religious traditions, in keeping with the ethnically and religiously pluralistic character of our world today. We may prefer the gods, the poems, the folklore of this or that tradition from this or that part of the world, but let us never forget that the world has opened and mixed many times since those traditions were first developed. Let us celebrate whatever god or gods or goddesses we find most meaningful, but also strive to see the meaning others find in theirs. Perhaps in time we can develop shared ritual forms that celebrate more than one tradition, that reach across the ghostly barriers of tribal, ethnic and national identity and animosity to embrace common humanity. I do believe that this is what the highest spirituality of any and all traditions, Pagan or not, calls us to.
I am inspired on this account by the Occupy Wall Street movement, with its coming together of many people from different backgrounds to seek the common good. Perhaps in time the day will come to occupy Paganism with a similar spirit.
Modern-day Paganism or Neo-Paganism means working with traditions remaining from the past. It should not mean being limited by them. A realization of common humanity is something from contemporary human experience, something nicely highlighted by the Occupy protests and encampments, that should be factored into that reworking. I say, make all humanity your tribe, and celebrate the day you did this!
Showing posts with label Paganism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paganism. Show all posts
Global Warring vs. Global Warming
The recent experience of destructive winds and catastrophic flooding brought by Hurricane Irene on her steady march up the Atlantic coast of the United States, which has washed away roads and bridges, crippled highways and rail lines across the region, and destroyed homes and businesses across the region, with New Jersey, New York and Vermont getting the worst of it and looking ahead to months, if not years, of recovery. This kind of massive flooding is exactly what has been predicted would occur as Global Warming sets in. Irene's unwelcome visit came two days after the six year anniversary of the Hurricane Katrine disaster, another extreme weather event which may be attributable to Global Warming, and about a week before the ten year anniversary of the 9/11.01 attacks, which launched America into two seemingly unending wars halfway around the world, with conflict now spreading to Pakistan and Yemen. Two different types of destructive events...which should we pay more heed to? Herein lies a tale of two perspectives, each of which carries with it different priorities and responsibilities.
The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.
The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.
Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.
If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.
I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."
As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.
I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.
It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.
I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.
This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.
So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.
Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.
The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.
I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.
To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.
Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.
The 9/11 attacks were a horrible shock to the national psyche, literally blowing away many Americans' sense of their country being a safe land far away from the roiling tensions in other parts of the world. About three thousand Americans died on the day of the attacks, and thousands more, including rescuers and bystanders, would die in months and years to come from illnesses brought about by exposure to toxic substances in the World Trade Center. A small portion of New York City was devastated and soon rebuilt, as was the section of the Pentagon damaged by the plane that headed for the capital, but the more lasting damage was to American psychology. Many people became terrified about the possibility of other terrorist attacks, and many remain in a state of hyper-vigilance, supportive of ANY measures that the government might take that promise to increase security. There was also an understandable desire for pure REVENGE.
The results have ranged from the curtailment of civil liberties in the USA, the acceptance of increased surveillance by our government against its own citizens in violation of time-honored American traditions of privacy and freedom from government interference, the acceptance of torture as a tool of military interrogation, in violation of international treaties, and the transformation of Guantanamo Bay into a prison camp outside of international law. The government of President Bush furthermore committed America to the invasion and occupation of first Afghanistan, then Iraq, with further use of military force in several other countries, the resulting death of thousands of our own soldiers and the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. The hunting down of terrorists like Osama bin Laden was the original focus of our international interventions, but it seems that the killing of bin Laden has brought no peace to the American psyche. As far as I can tell, people feel just as frightened as ever, and it seems that the so-called "War of Terror," which is already the longest war in American history, may become a perpetual process of continuing death and destruction--theirs or ours, either way, the show will go on, and the budget of the military will remain larger than that of any other nation on earth, giving vast profits to companies like Halliburton that provide services to the military and defense contractors that reap wonderful profits developing weapon systems. Americans may not feel safer, but the war will continue.
Will Americans ever feel safe again? There will obviously always be a threat of terrorist attacks, no matter what we do. Even top military brass like General Petraeus have conceded that military force alone can never provide complete security. There has to be a "winning of hearts and minds," to recycle the old Vietnam trope, to convince those ready to take up bombs against America that violence is not the best way to resolve their grievances. The American military and its NATO allies have tried to play the compassionate "good cop" (building roads, schools, hospitals)as well as the aggressive and punitive "bad cop" (blowing up buildings, killing those suspected of terrorist involvement, and terrorizing families and communities by breaking down doors in the the middle of night to search homes under suspicion and interrogate and intimidate the residents, sometimes brutalizing or killing those who dare to resist these searches and interrogations.) Many Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis are understandably resentful of our occupation of their countries and violation of their homes and communities, and that resentment could fuel a desire for revenge against the USA just as intense as Americans' rage on 9/11. There could well be an endless cycle of violence and attacks and counterattacks.
If you like, you could say that OUR attacks and invasions are reasonable and justifiable, and THEIR attacks are wrong and deserving of punishment and endless years of military occupation, but the thing is, after a point, if it all becomes a tit-for-tat situation of "get revenge at any cost," "stand up for your people and kill the other guy," what difference does it make? More importantly, how can it ever end? Will there ever be enough people who want to end it, if vindictive, violent passions are continually stirred up on both sides? I am not sure, but I think that at least part of the answer will involve America withdrawing its military forces from the countries we now occupy and making an effort to treat Muslim countries as equals, rather than insulting them by making it extremely clear that we see them as deranged lunatics that we have the right to kill at will and invade and occupy as often as we like.
I know that some of my more conservative, pro-military readers will find my reasoning ridiculous. They will, I imagine, yell something like, "You are a crazy bleeding heart liberal idiot! We cannot just back off now, retreat without having established absolute victory, let those countries do what they want. Our only hope of security is to maintain control by force, and if that means decades more of occupation, so be it."
As my counter-argument, I would point to the case of Vietnam. During our lengthy and costly involvement in that seemingly endless conflict, the pro-military folks often said, "We can't quit, can't back down. That would give the Communists an unforgivable victory. There would be a "domino effect" and the whole of Southeast Asia might go Red* (meaning, younger readers, Communist not Republican, back in the 1960s-70s.)" Well, we did quit that war. We fought many hard battles, won some, lost some, and then we withdrew. None of the doomsday scenarios transpired. A Communist regime took power in all Vietnam, but it was no worse than many other governments in the region, and over time, it even helped to get rid of a REALLY nasty and horrific regime in Cambodia, that of the psychotic Khmer Rouge. By the 1990s, American was signing trade deals with Communist Vietnam, and we now engage in billions of dollars in trade on an annual basis, with the Vietnamese appearing to hold no grudge for the thousands of pounds of bombs we dropped on them and all the people that we killed, not only in Vietnam but in adjoining countries, none of whom ever attacked or invaded us. It is still not anyone's ideal of a democratic paradise, but the VN regime does seem to be moderating over time. Domino-doomsday never took place.
I would argue that the same could happen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us withdraw in an orderly manner, give economic and technical support to the new governments that develop there, if our help is wanted, and we can hope to have better relations over time, just as with Vietnam.
It also seems to me that we have gotten our money's worth out of these wars, and there is no need to drag things out ad infinitum, unless the military has become the only kind of government-funded jobs program that Americans are willing to support. (I suspect this may be so.) Al-Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, attacked us on one day in 2001. ONE day. In return, we have invaded for ten years. TEN years. We have killed many thousands, disrupted life, brutalized and terrorized many. What more do we want? Isn't that enough revenge? Or do you still want more? And, at what cost? In money, we have spent more than a trillion, I believe, money that could have been put to so many uses back at home. In lives, more Americans have now died fighting in these wars than were killed on 9/11. Will causing more deaths on both sides really make our world a better place? I worry we may be getting dragged down into a nether realm of nationalistic psychopathology (*see Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) where we just want to use force against others because it makes us feel good, not because it accomplishes anything of positive value.
I believe it is time to step back from Global Warring and consider other needs and priorities,such as Global Warming. I accept the view of climatologists and other scientists that the extreme weather events of recent years are being driven by a gradual increase in world temperature produced by greenhouse gasses accumulating in the atmosphere. What weather events, you ask? They constitute a vast and continually growing catalogue ranging from agriculture-limiting droughts and dryness-triggered wild fires in places like Australia, Africa and various regions of America to heavier-than-usual snowfalls in winter, wetter-than-usual summers, and increasingly intense storms in both winter and summer, with tornadoes in the USA occurring with increasing frequency in places like Connecticut, Massachusetts and even the urban borough of Queens, New York that have rarely if ever experienced such events before. The economic cost from our new-fangled, 21st century weather is in the billions, but there is much more than money at stake. Decreased crop yields have led to riots and instability in countries from Somalia to the Philippines. Low-lying countries like Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar) are at risk of vanishing under rising sea levels. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS TREND. If it gets worse, we are really going to be in trouble. We are going to have spend increasing amounts of money, worldwide recession or no, on feeding starving people, rebuilding flood,fire and tornado damaged regions, and dealing with mass migrations of displaced people, to just mention a few of the most alarming effects, WHICH ARE ALREADY BEGINNING TO HAPPEN.
This has all been known for years. Former Vice President Al Gore did a fine job of publicizing the issue and educating the public with his film "An Inconvenient Truth." Critics have pointed to several inaccuracies in the documentary, but his overall message, that we need to start cutting back on carbon use and greenhouse gases or we will turn the world into an increasingly harsh and inhospitable planet, really cannot be disputed, and is in fact NOT disputed by the vast majority of professional scientists who deal with climate issues. Yes, there are a few dissidents who can be found casting doubt on FOX news and other anti-environmentalist, pro-corporate media outlets, but they are a tiny, tiny, tiny group, and their viewpoint is especially suspect in that they are often paid to promote their anti-Global Warming ideas by oil and coal companies.
So what is a bigger threat to human life, the Al-Qaeda-type terrorist threat as observed on 9/11, or the increasingly destructive weather patterns resulting from climate change? Should we be more concerned with Global Warring or Global Warming? I have no doubt that the bigger threat is Global Warming.
Though America was rudely awakened out of a sweet but false dream of perfect security and safety on the awful morning of 9/11, the fact is, terrorism has always been around in some form or other,and always will be. There are always people around fired up either by extreme devotion to a political or religious cause or psychological instability who are willing to use violence to advance their cause or actualize their fantasies. Police, psychiatrists and other professionals can intervene to reduce the possibility of such individuals or groups acting out on their violent ambitions, but there is no way you can ever achieve total security, a completely risk-free world, as much as some try to sell this notion to a fearful and often gullible public (think: Giuliani & Associates). Other parts of the world, with either more experience or longer memories or less manipulative politicians know this, and they do not flip out and seek to invade a half-dozen countries every time a bomb goes off or a nut goes on a rampage. They make moderate, targeted responses, as opposed to seeking world domination. We Americans could learn a lot from them, except that many Americans don't like to learn from other countries, it seems.
The possibility of our environment becoming ever more unstable and self-destructive is something we must start thinking about. Perhaps the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irene will be a needed wake-up call. It should be noted that much of the worst damage was not caused by Irene alone, but by the combination of a wet summer of higher-than-average rainfall in the northeast followed by the additional heavy rains of Irene. If, as climate scientists seem to agree,we are going to be seeing more, not less, of such extreme weather events, we should start demanding that our politicians and media begin paying more attention to this and seeking out means to lessen the impact and slow the rate of change, rather than obsessing about how many suspected terrorists we can kill in Pakistan with our nifty drone bombers. The consensus among scientists is that we MUST start turning away from carbon fuels, because the more we burn them, the more we are going to suffer floods, droughts and fires. Sadly, the supposedly pro-environmental administration of President Obama has taken the first steps toward approving a huge, new, potentially highly polluting pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the oil refineries of Texas. Supposedly, it was the non-Obama candidates in 2008 who were in favor of "Drill, Baby, Drill" as the solution to our energy needs, but it looks like Obama is not so different after all.
I am proud to be involved with Paganism when I reflect that Pagan religions, with their nature gods and metaphors and joyful sense of sacredness in nature, collectively provide one of the best platforms around for cultivating reverence for the natural world. I encourage all Pagans to speak out on these issues in the grand struggle to turn the great dumb and easily distracted beast that is the American public away from post-9/11 terror, war and security obsessions to an understanding of the need to address our collective carbon addiction and protect our environment as the #1 issue of our time.
To my warrior-oriented Pagan friends, Asatru or other, let me suggest this: even if you are the most super-bad-assed, head-to-toe tattooed, multiple-gun-toting, spear-throwing, axe-tossing, sword-bearing, military-loving, tough-guy Pagan or a super-dangerous, ultra-gorgeous, Xena-like, Amazon-crossed-with-Valkyrie warrior princess with daggers in your hair and a grenade in your handbag next to your mini-AK, consider this: no more planet, no more battles, no more war, no more warriors, no more glory! No planet, no nothin;' it will just be Ragnarok without the happy ending of a miraculous renewal. Whether you are a wimpoid left-wing peacenik like me or a rough-and-ready, battle-hardened military enthusiast, this should be something we can get together on.
Mission One is not killing terrorists; it is saving our planet.
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The Response to Disorder in Britain: Punishment Uber Alles
The recent disorder in London and other English cities with massive looting, destruction and arson was indeed a frightening and disturbing phenomenon,and there is a need for us all to think about how and why this happened and to come up with new ideas of how to create a better society in the future that will not be ripped apart by such violent expressions of mass discontent and anger. I am however even more disturbed by the response of British authorities, particularly that of the British Prime Minister David Cameron, than I am by the violent disorder itself. The PM has made clear that his number one priority is to punish, as harshly as possible, as many of the participants as possible. His attitude suggests no attempt to reflect on why these riots took place, only to use force to beat down what he seems to perceive as an antisocial element in British society. His solution to social disorder is punishment and oppression, nothing else. What I find scary is how common this approach is in many places in the world, especially the USA. In fact, Cameron seems to want badly to bring in a former US police commissioner,of Boston, NYC and LA vintage, to apply American-style policing to Britain, which has typically had a more gentle and less aggressive approach.
Cameron seems to feel that once enough force has been used to beat down and imprison enough people, everything will be fine and the UK can return to business as usual. His demeanor is very much that of the privileged upper-class creature that he is, someone upset that the less privileged lower classes would dare to act up and disturb the happy existence of the "right kind of people" like himself who would never dream of smashing in a storefront to grab a television or fighting against the police, because they have plenty of money to buy anything they would like to own, and have never had a bad experience of the police because they live in nice,upper-class neighborhoods where the police are courteous and friendly.
Cameron has one very good and very big political reason to stick with this "punish the miscreants" approach and disdain any discussion of trying to understand the disorderly poor. During the little more than a year that he has been in office, the British government has slashed social services to the poor, increased college tuition costs almost threefold, and called for a turning away from large government programs to a more locally-oriented, volunteer-based approach to social ills in Britain. This British version of the "austerity" policy which is also being applied to Greece and now, one fears, America, has not produced the glowing economic and social results that were promised. British economic growth has been close to zero for the last year, unemployment remains very severe, and people have either lost or are fearful of soon losing government services that they have long depended on and which may be particularly critical in a time of such difficult economic conditions. Therefore, when British cities descend into fiery fury after one year of Cameron's policies, which have given little hope to those at the bottom of the society,the question naturally arises as to what extent the government's essentially anti-government, anti-helping-the-poor policies have contributed to the frustration and rage that erupted in the streets the first weekend of August. By focusing all attention on the "lawbreakers" and "thugs" involved in the disorder, Cameron clearly hopes to sidestep any discussion of whether his policies are the wrong response to the current stagnation affecting economy and society in Britain.
There is a huge imbalance here, and indeed a huge irony. The horrible economic conditions that we are all suffering under now, the very poor most of all, of course, were not created by government spending or social programs, which now are being cut cut cut in so many countries as a kind of mass human sacrifice that will steal the health, security and futures of many. The disastrous economic conditions and the social destruction that has followed in their wake were also not caused by rioting hoodlums stealing televisions or young people starting fires. They were brought about by the sociopathic greed of large banks and financial service companies, led by the kind of people who Cameron would no doubt love to share a bottle of fine wine with in a swank London dinner club, who played dangerous games with the world's finances, such as the bundling of mortgages and debt on the international financial market in a highly deceptive and irresponsible manner, that led to a near-collapse of the world financial system. THE PEOPLE WHO LED THESE COMPANIES ARE CRIMINALS, and so are many who worked under them and aided and abetted their shamefully profitable crimes. THESE PEOPLE HAVE CAUSED MORE HARM TO THE WORLD THAN EITHER THE MAFIA OR AL-QAEDA. EVEN SO, THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PUNISHED, except for Bernie Madoff. In fact, they received huge government assistance to repair their companies and restore them to super-profitable status. Meanwhile, millions of others lost their jobs, their homes, their retirements, their savings, their futures, with no help from the government to match that generously bestowed upon the financial services "nobility."
The message to the privileged members of the wealthy upper classes is: Don't worry. You can be a greedy, deceitful sociopath, you can play games with other peoples' life savings and investments and home ownership, you can cause massive destruction of people's lives, what amounts to a kind of financial mass-murder, AND YOU WILL NOT BE PUNISHED. YOU WILL BE CODDLED. YOU WILL BE PROTECTED. And then, as governments fall into financial difficulties due to the drop-off in revenues brought about by the financial meltdown, the response is NOT to ask the rich to contribute more to help government maintain services to those who now need them even more than before. No! Are you crazy? That would be ridiculous. The obvious, indeed the ONLY possible response is to strip down all government programs that help the poor, which are of no use to the privileged upper classes, and then, if the lower classes dare to rise up in anger, BEAT THEM DOWN with maximum force and THROW THEM IN JAIL. They are dangerous lawbreakers, even though the damage done by the looters and rioters is far less than what was done to the world economy by the the nicely-dressed, albeit sociopathic financiers, bankers and hedge fund managers in the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008.
The corporations and the super-rich are UNTOUCHABLE. It is only the poor that should be punished, and oh, how people like Cameron LOVE to punish the poor. Better than viagra, wot?
We have come to a point where many people, and I know this is true of many of the politically conservative college students that I teach in the USA, truly believe that the best way to respond to any kind of social unrest is through police suppression. Just beat them down and arrest them. The best state....is a police state?
The liberal-leftist alternative, to try to prevent social unrest by providing MORE, not less social services, and reducing the huge wealth gap that afflicts many societies by taxing the very rich to provide more services to the very poor, is seen as LAUGHABLE by many conservatives. The idea that the poor could be helped by government programs is seen as foolish. That includes a rejection of food programs to feed the poor, housing programs to shelter the poor, education programs to educate and elevate the poor, mass transportation programs to make it easier for people who cannot afford cars to get around, government support for rebuilding run-down neighborhoods, providing work-opportunities for socially useful things like infrastructure reconstruction and helping the poor start businesses. All this is seen as wasteful; spending money on more and more police and prisons, however, is seen as a good investment, a wise and prudent use of taxpayers' money.
This is the dilemma. I cannot speak for other countries or even for other parts of the USA, but I know that in my neck of the woods, many people no longer believe in using government power to help people, only to punish them. As long as that mindset remains popular, politicians like Cameron will be able to win election and preside over a transformation of our societies into police states, creating a kind of apartheid world where the people with wealth use massive force against the poor, who will increasingly rise up in violence and disorder out of their ever-growing despair and frustration. The poor are being put into a vise where their insides are being squeezed and crushed, with no hope of assistance from the government that is supposed to represent them. Can you blame them for rising up?
Cameron seems to feel that once enough force has been used to beat down and imprison enough people, everything will be fine and the UK can return to business as usual. His demeanor is very much that of the privileged upper-class creature that he is, someone upset that the less privileged lower classes would dare to act up and disturb the happy existence of the "right kind of people" like himself who would never dream of smashing in a storefront to grab a television or fighting against the police, because they have plenty of money to buy anything they would like to own, and have never had a bad experience of the police because they live in nice,upper-class neighborhoods where the police are courteous and friendly.
Cameron has one very good and very big political reason to stick with this "punish the miscreants" approach and disdain any discussion of trying to understand the disorderly poor. During the little more than a year that he has been in office, the British government has slashed social services to the poor, increased college tuition costs almost threefold, and called for a turning away from large government programs to a more locally-oriented, volunteer-based approach to social ills in Britain. This British version of the "austerity" policy which is also being applied to Greece and now, one fears, America, has not produced the glowing economic and social results that were promised. British economic growth has been close to zero for the last year, unemployment remains very severe, and people have either lost or are fearful of soon losing government services that they have long depended on and which may be particularly critical in a time of such difficult economic conditions. Therefore, when British cities descend into fiery fury after one year of Cameron's policies, which have given little hope to those at the bottom of the society,the question naturally arises as to what extent the government's essentially anti-government, anti-helping-the-poor policies have contributed to the frustration and rage that erupted in the streets the first weekend of August. By focusing all attention on the "lawbreakers" and "thugs" involved in the disorder, Cameron clearly hopes to sidestep any discussion of whether his policies are the wrong response to the current stagnation affecting economy and society in Britain.
There is a huge imbalance here, and indeed a huge irony. The horrible economic conditions that we are all suffering under now, the very poor most of all, of course, were not created by government spending or social programs, which now are being cut cut cut in so many countries as a kind of mass human sacrifice that will steal the health, security and futures of many. The disastrous economic conditions and the social destruction that has followed in their wake were also not caused by rioting hoodlums stealing televisions or young people starting fires. They were brought about by the sociopathic greed of large banks and financial service companies, led by the kind of people who Cameron would no doubt love to share a bottle of fine wine with in a swank London dinner club, who played dangerous games with the world's finances, such as the bundling of mortgages and debt on the international financial market in a highly deceptive and irresponsible manner, that led to a near-collapse of the world financial system. THE PEOPLE WHO LED THESE COMPANIES ARE CRIMINALS, and so are many who worked under them and aided and abetted their shamefully profitable crimes. THESE PEOPLE HAVE CAUSED MORE HARM TO THE WORLD THAN EITHER THE MAFIA OR AL-QAEDA. EVEN SO, THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PUNISHED, except for Bernie Madoff. In fact, they received huge government assistance to repair their companies and restore them to super-profitable status. Meanwhile, millions of others lost their jobs, their homes, their retirements, their savings, their futures, with no help from the government to match that generously bestowed upon the financial services "nobility."
The message to the privileged members of the wealthy upper classes is: Don't worry. You can be a greedy, deceitful sociopath, you can play games with other peoples' life savings and investments and home ownership, you can cause massive destruction of people's lives, what amounts to a kind of financial mass-murder, AND YOU WILL NOT BE PUNISHED. YOU WILL BE CODDLED. YOU WILL BE PROTECTED. And then, as governments fall into financial difficulties due to the drop-off in revenues brought about by the financial meltdown, the response is NOT to ask the rich to contribute more to help government maintain services to those who now need them even more than before. No! Are you crazy? That would be ridiculous. The obvious, indeed the ONLY possible response is to strip down all government programs that help the poor, which are of no use to the privileged upper classes, and then, if the lower classes dare to rise up in anger, BEAT THEM DOWN with maximum force and THROW THEM IN JAIL. They are dangerous lawbreakers, even though the damage done by the looters and rioters is far less than what was done to the world economy by the the nicely-dressed, albeit sociopathic financiers, bankers and hedge fund managers in the years leading up to the financial collapse of 2008.
The corporations and the super-rich are UNTOUCHABLE. It is only the poor that should be punished, and oh, how people like Cameron LOVE to punish the poor. Better than viagra, wot?
We have come to a point where many people, and I know this is true of many of the politically conservative college students that I teach in the USA, truly believe that the best way to respond to any kind of social unrest is through police suppression. Just beat them down and arrest them. The best state....is a police state?
The liberal-leftist alternative, to try to prevent social unrest by providing MORE, not less social services, and reducing the huge wealth gap that afflicts many societies by taxing the very rich to provide more services to the very poor, is seen as LAUGHABLE by many conservatives. The idea that the poor could be helped by government programs is seen as foolish. That includes a rejection of food programs to feed the poor, housing programs to shelter the poor, education programs to educate and elevate the poor, mass transportation programs to make it easier for people who cannot afford cars to get around, government support for rebuilding run-down neighborhoods, providing work-opportunities for socially useful things like infrastructure reconstruction and helping the poor start businesses. All this is seen as wasteful; spending money on more and more police and prisons, however, is seen as a good investment, a wise and prudent use of taxpayers' money.
This is the dilemma. I cannot speak for other countries or even for other parts of the USA, but I know that in my neck of the woods, many people no longer believe in using government power to help people, only to punish them. As long as that mindset remains popular, politicians like Cameron will be able to win election and preside over a transformation of our societies into police states, creating a kind of apartheid world where the people with wealth use massive force against the poor, who will increasingly rise up in violence and disorder out of their ever-growing despair and frustration. The poor are being put into a vise where their insides are being squeezed and crushed, with no hope of assistance from the government that is supposed to represent them. Can you blame them for rising up?
Labels:
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Why Conservatives Love Guns So Very, Very, VERY Much
For many years, I have pondered the question of why so many conservative Americans have such a strong attachment to guns and make such a huge issue out of gun rights and the Second Amendment, which sometimes seems like the only part of the U.S. Constitution that they care about. Today, I want to share my own theories about this.
I think the root causes for conservatives' intense gun-love are (1) overwhelming fear of the changing world of increasing cultural and ethnic diversity that we live in, and in response to this fear, (2) a desire to cling to an idealized past version of America that they find more reassuring. That is to say, conservatives are both very very scared and very very nostalgic.
For quite some time now, beginning with the defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, American conservatives have found society changing in ways they didn't like, and have had a keen sense of frustration that they were losing the battle of ideas in American culture. What exactly do they so object to about trends in modern American (and indeed world) society? I think the main issue is loss of white privilege in the movement toward a more open society that is more accepting of equality between various ethnic, racial and/or religious groups. Remember, it was fierce resistance to Reconstruction efforts to empower blacks that set off the ugly Jim Crow laws and the paramilitary terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan.
It was the mystical "power of the gun," as well as other forms of violence including bombs and lynchings, that made it possible for white southerners to terrorize blacks and keep African-Americans in a fearful, subordinate position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also the power of the gun that subdued the Native American "savages" so that the West could be won for white settlement, a display of race-based violence to be long celebrated in games of cowboys vs. Indians and Western films. The current "Cowboys and Aliens" film shows how our society has, to some extent, moved away from this viewpoint with a narrative that requires white cowboys and "red" Indians to work together for mutual survival.
Anyway, let's go back into the conservative dream-world of beautiful, blood-white-and-blue patriotic violence, a harmonious, segregated world intoxicatingly scented with freedom-loving gunpowder. Thanks to his trusty gun, the White Man was indeed king of the country in the late nineteenth century. King of violence and racism, I would say, though I am sure conservatives would say that this use of violence in defense of the (white) "American Way" was something entirely noble and necessary. In the twentieth century, the KKK would form chapters all across the country, even in supposedly liberal strongholds like New York State and Connecticut, demonstrating that the violent defense of white privilege was not limited to the Southern states alone.
When the Civil Right movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, it was countered by massive violence in the South, and the cry of "State's Rights!", reaching back to Confederate slogans of the Civil War period to justify the right of states like Alabama to refuse equal rights to blacks and other non-white Americans. It would seem that they preferred returning to the Civil War rather than risk the unspeakable horror of granting Civil Rights to non-white Americans, and one must wonder if some such sentiment is among the motivations that have made Civil War reenactment so popular in recent decades. It certainly factors into the love for the Confederate flag in the South.
When the Democratic Party became the champion of civil rights for minorities, many white Southern former members quit the party to become Republicans. In every Presidential election since the 1960s, the majority of white voters, especially in the South, have gone Republican. Where Democrats have scored a victory, as with Carter in 1976, Clinton in 1992, and Obama in 2008, the Democrats' margin of victory came from African-American voters. The same demographic dynamic applies to the Tea Party, which is an almost exclusively white movement. The Tea Party desire to limit and dismantle government obviously appeals to those who see the national government and the Democratic party as overly concerned with the civil rights of minorities and allowing the country to sink into a sewer of mixed-race multiculturalism. (Note the endless sneering and sniping in the conservative media about "political correctness;" so many are nostalgic for the day when they could feel free to make jokes about niggers and Jews and faggots and whoever else they enjoyed insulting "back in the good old days.")
The gun issue has developed into a great vote-winner for the Republican Party, which has positioned itself as the protector of the seemingly sacred "right to bear arms," in opposition to the Democratic Party, which used to advocate for gun control and careful restriction of gun rights, though it no longer seems to possess the moral or political courage to stand up for this anymore. Many Democrats lost their seats in Congress the last time there was gun-control legislation, back in 1994, largely thanks to the efforts of the NRA. If one asks gun-loving conservatives, why do people need or want so many guns, the two pat answers are "hunting" and "self-defense." When one points out that no gun control effort has ever attempted to abolish all hunting in the USA, but only to place certain reasonable restrictions to prevent potential harm or abuse, just as we do with driving or alcohol, gun-minded conservatives will commonly express disbelief that gun control is anything other than an evil plot to eliminate ALL gun use and gun ownership in the USA, or they will pivot to the second issue of self-defense. This is something that conservatives are often quite passionate about.
It is particularly in the self-defense argument that you can see the latent, even unconscious racism, blended with FEAR, like an emotional accelerant: fear that the minute they let down their guard someone is going to break into their home, rob all their possessions, kill everyone in the family, fuck their dog, cook it on the backyard grill, and then eat it. Who exactly is it that they are thinking of in these fearful fantasies? The history of Republican political advertising,such as the Willie Horton advertisement from 1988, shows that the typical fear is of blacks, particularly black men. More recently, Hispanic men, increasingly mythologized as super-violent Mexican drug-runners, have been added into the paranoid mind-mix.
Here is how I see the race-fear/gun-love matrix speaking: "See, if you got your gun, and those black or brown-skinned devils, those niggers, Mexicans, Muslims, whatever, come to your house, you can blow them all away and defend your sweet wife and angel-faced children against the inevitable evils that come from all this modern multi-culturalism and civil rights bullshit: the savage, violent blacks, browns, and others who don't know their place and need to be reminded of the one primary fact of life in these United States, that the White Man's got the gun."
In the nineteenth century so idealized by conservatives, the blessed age before horrible transgressions of the American spirit like Social Security and civil rights, the violence-enforced "proper" place for non-whites like African-Americans and Native Americans was either on plantations or reservations. Our twenty-first century equivalent is prison for the blacks, with an absolutely skyrocketing rate of incarceration for African American men, deportation for Latinos,which has actually increased under the not-really-so-liberal Obama, and the various wars against Muslim populations, another brown-hued people to be put in their place.
In recent decades, the conservatives have succeeded marvelously in their "law and order" agenda, with gun rights always available as a sure-fire way to fire up the conservative masses and distract them from thinking about anything else. Fear is now ruling the national soul, and guns and threats of violence are everywhere. Funding priorities have shifted from schools to prisons, education replaced by incarceration. National security has replaced human rights and civil rights and, it would seem, almost any kind of rights other than gun rights as the top national priority. Criminal justice is a booming major on college campuses, replacing the fading idea of social justice that was once a common phrase on the campuses of the past. Real law is CRIMINAL law, you see; real justice is PUNISHMENT and nothing else. Invading other countries and brutalizing other peoples has become commonplace, and with new technology evolving rapidly, we will soon be able to do this without risking harm to any human American soldiers. The twenty-first century Sinatra will just have to sing, "Send in the drones..." The drone is the ultimate wet-dream of irresponsible violence, sanctified by the cult of technology: the gun acting alone, as it were.
Make no mistake: The gun, and with it the conservatives, are winning the national debate, for now, anyway. Fear rules the country, and the gun is our national sweetheart; the big, hot, red-white-and-blue penis that everyone wants to stroke and suck. Why do you think there are so many cop shows on television, so many variations of CSI, Law and Order, on and on? What picture of society and human nature is reinforced by this repetition?
Public figures of all sorts from politicians to newscasters to comedians know they cannot advance any criticism of our gun-wielding enforcers, from police to soldiers. Watch for how such supposed liberal icons like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert slobber and coo when they have military guests on their shows. Discussion of what these wars are doing to the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else we are invading this week? Maybe raise a question about the killer drones in Pakistan? Question whether the wars are morally defensible? Ask your guest how many people he has killed? Forget it; that kind of discussion doesn't happen in today's militaristic America. All must bow before The Gun and He Who Wields the Gun (or the missile, or the drone, or any other new form of the gun.)
Contrast this to critiques of police brutality and protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Why was there no sustained outcry or movement for more restrictions on guns after the near-assassination of Gabrielle Giffords earlier in the year, or the Virginia Tech massacre a few years back, or any other such events in our sad history of national violence? Because the right has won; guns have become sacred.
This has its effect on American Paganism too. In some forms of Asatru or Heathenry, there is a great devotion to weapons. Where is that coming from, and where does it lead? These are two questions that have so disturbed me that I have taken my leave of American Asatru. Whatever spirituality is to be found through the barrel of a gun or the swing of an axe is not something that makes any sense to me.
Resist the gun.
Speak up for peace.
Fight the fear.
I believe that in the long run, the future belongs to diversity and pluralism. There really is no going back. Conservatives may want to retreat to some kind of racially, socially, and ethnically cleansed past, and may be dreaming, as Anders Behring Breivik did, of using violence to achieve or enforce that, but they will never succeed. Yes, the law-and-order, gun-obsessed, anti-diversity crowd is riding high right now, but I don't think the majority of Americans are really with them. Once the intentions of the most extreme conservatives become clear, America will reject this and return to the path it was traveling in the past that led us from the Constitution to Emancipation to Civil Rights.
And praise be to the people of Norway for not becoming fear-and-punishment obsessed in the light of their national tragedy, and for striving to maintain their very open, very supportive society. They are showing an emotional maturity and social wisdom that seems sadly lacking in the United States.
I think the root causes for conservatives' intense gun-love are (1) overwhelming fear of the changing world of increasing cultural and ethnic diversity that we live in, and in response to this fear, (2) a desire to cling to an idealized past version of America that they find more reassuring. That is to say, conservatives are both very very scared and very very nostalgic.
For quite some time now, beginning with the defeat of the pro-slavery Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War, American conservatives have found society changing in ways they didn't like, and have had a keen sense of frustration that they were losing the battle of ideas in American culture. What exactly do they so object to about trends in modern American (and indeed world) society? I think the main issue is loss of white privilege in the movement toward a more open society that is more accepting of equality between various ethnic, racial and/or religious groups. Remember, it was fierce resistance to Reconstruction efforts to empower blacks that set off the ugly Jim Crow laws and the paramilitary terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan.
It was the mystical "power of the gun," as well as other forms of violence including bombs and lynchings, that made it possible for white southerners to terrorize blacks and keep African-Americans in a fearful, subordinate position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was also the power of the gun that subdued the Native American "savages" so that the West could be won for white settlement, a display of race-based violence to be long celebrated in games of cowboys vs. Indians and Western films. The current "Cowboys and Aliens" film shows how our society has, to some extent, moved away from this viewpoint with a narrative that requires white cowboys and "red" Indians to work together for mutual survival.
Anyway, let's go back into the conservative dream-world of beautiful, blood-white-and-blue patriotic violence, a harmonious, segregated world intoxicatingly scented with freedom-loving gunpowder. Thanks to his trusty gun, the White Man was indeed king of the country in the late nineteenth century. King of violence and racism, I would say, though I am sure conservatives would say that this use of violence in defense of the (white) "American Way" was something entirely noble and necessary. In the twentieth century, the KKK would form chapters all across the country, even in supposedly liberal strongholds like New York State and Connecticut, demonstrating that the violent defense of white privilege was not limited to the Southern states alone.
When the Civil Right movement emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, it was countered by massive violence in the South, and the cry of "State's Rights!", reaching back to Confederate slogans of the Civil War period to justify the right of states like Alabama to refuse equal rights to blacks and other non-white Americans. It would seem that they preferred returning to the Civil War rather than risk the unspeakable horror of granting Civil Rights to non-white Americans, and one must wonder if some such sentiment is among the motivations that have made Civil War reenactment so popular in recent decades. It certainly factors into the love for the Confederate flag in the South.
When the Democratic Party became the champion of civil rights for minorities, many white Southern former members quit the party to become Republicans. In every Presidential election since the 1960s, the majority of white voters, especially in the South, have gone Republican. Where Democrats have scored a victory, as with Carter in 1976, Clinton in 1992, and Obama in 2008, the Democrats' margin of victory came from African-American voters. The same demographic dynamic applies to the Tea Party, which is an almost exclusively white movement. The Tea Party desire to limit and dismantle government obviously appeals to those who see the national government and the Democratic party as overly concerned with the civil rights of minorities and allowing the country to sink into a sewer of mixed-race multiculturalism. (Note the endless sneering and sniping in the conservative media about "political correctness;" so many are nostalgic for the day when they could feel free to make jokes about niggers and Jews and faggots and whoever else they enjoyed insulting "back in the good old days.")
The gun issue has developed into a great vote-winner for the Republican Party, which has positioned itself as the protector of the seemingly sacred "right to bear arms," in opposition to the Democratic Party, which used to advocate for gun control and careful restriction of gun rights, though it no longer seems to possess the moral or political courage to stand up for this anymore. Many Democrats lost their seats in Congress the last time there was gun-control legislation, back in 1994, largely thanks to the efforts of the NRA. If one asks gun-loving conservatives, why do people need or want so many guns, the two pat answers are "hunting" and "self-defense." When one points out that no gun control effort has ever attempted to abolish all hunting in the USA, but only to place certain reasonable restrictions to prevent potential harm or abuse, just as we do with driving or alcohol, gun-minded conservatives will commonly express disbelief that gun control is anything other than an evil plot to eliminate ALL gun use and gun ownership in the USA, or they will pivot to the second issue of self-defense. This is something that conservatives are often quite passionate about.
It is particularly in the self-defense argument that you can see the latent, even unconscious racism, blended with FEAR, like an emotional accelerant: fear that the minute they let down their guard someone is going to break into their home, rob all their possessions, kill everyone in the family, fuck their dog, cook it on the backyard grill, and then eat it. Who exactly is it that they are thinking of in these fearful fantasies? The history of Republican political advertising,such as the Willie Horton advertisement from 1988, shows that the typical fear is of blacks, particularly black men. More recently, Hispanic men, increasingly mythologized as super-violent Mexican drug-runners, have been added into the paranoid mind-mix.
Here is how I see the race-fear/gun-love matrix speaking: "See, if you got your gun, and those black or brown-skinned devils, those niggers, Mexicans, Muslims, whatever, come to your house, you can blow them all away and defend your sweet wife and angel-faced children against the inevitable evils that come from all this modern multi-culturalism and civil rights bullshit: the savage, violent blacks, browns, and others who don't know their place and need to be reminded of the one primary fact of life in these United States, that the White Man's got the gun."
In the nineteenth century so idealized by conservatives, the blessed age before horrible transgressions of the American spirit like Social Security and civil rights, the violence-enforced "proper" place for non-whites like African-Americans and Native Americans was either on plantations or reservations. Our twenty-first century equivalent is prison for the blacks, with an absolutely skyrocketing rate of incarceration for African American men, deportation for Latinos,which has actually increased under the not-really-so-liberal Obama, and the various wars against Muslim populations, another brown-hued people to be put in their place.
In recent decades, the conservatives have succeeded marvelously in their "law and order" agenda, with gun rights always available as a sure-fire way to fire up the conservative masses and distract them from thinking about anything else. Fear is now ruling the national soul, and guns and threats of violence are everywhere. Funding priorities have shifted from schools to prisons, education replaced by incarceration. National security has replaced human rights and civil rights and, it would seem, almost any kind of rights other than gun rights as the top national priority. Criminal justice is a booming major on college campuses, replacing the fading idea of social justice that was once a common phrase on the campuses of the past. Real law is CRIMINAL law, you see; real justice is PUNISHMENT and nothing else. Invading other countries and brutalizing other peoples has become commonplace, and with new technology evolving rapidly, we will soon be able to do this without risking harm to any human American soldiers. The twenty-first century Sinatra will just have to sing, "Send in the drones..." The drone is the ultimate wet-dream of irresponsible violence, sanctified by the cult of technology: the gun acting alone, as it were.
Make no mistake: The gun, and with it the conservatives, are winning the national debate, for now, anyway. Fear rules the country, and the gun is our national sweetheart; the big, hot, red-white-and-blue penis that everyone wants to stroke and suck. Why do you think there are so many cop shows on television, so many variations of CSI, Law and Order, on and on? What picture of society and human nature is reinforced by this repetition?
Public figures of all sorts from politicians to newscasters to comedians know they cannot advance any criticism of our gun-wielding enforcers, from police to soldiers. Watch for how such supposed liberal icons like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert slobber and coo when they have military guests on their shows. Discussion of what these wars are doing to the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else we are invading this week? Maybe raise a question about the killer drones in Pakistan? Question whether the wars are morally defensible? Ask your guest how many people he has killed? Forget it; that kind of discussion doesn't happen in today's militaristic America. All must bow before The Gun and He Who Wields the Gun (or the missile, or the drone, or any other new form of the gun.)
Contrast this to critiques of police brutality and protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Why was there no sustained outcry or movement for more restrictions on guns after the near-assassination of Gabrielle Giffords earlier in the year, or the Virginia Tech massacre a few years back, or any other such events in our sad history of national violence? Because the right has won; guns have become sacred.
This has its effect on American Paganism too. In some forms of Asatru or Heathenry, there is a great devotion to weapons. Where is that coming from, and where does it lead? These are two questions that have so disturbed me that I have taken my leave of American Asatru. Whatever spirituality is to be found through the barrel of a gun or the swing of an axe is not something that makes any sense to me.
Resist the gun.
Speak up for peace.
Fight the fear.
I believe that in the long run, the future belongs to diversity and pluralism. There really is no going back. Conservatives may want to retreat to some kind of racially, socially, and ethnically cleansed past, and may be dreaming, as Anders Behring Breivik did, of using violence to achieve or enforce that, but they will never succeed. Yes, the law-and-order, gun-obsessed, anti-diversity crowd is riding high right now, but I don't think the majority of Americans are really with them. Once the intentions of the most extreme conservatives become clear, America will reject this and return to the path it was traveling in the past that led us from the Constitution to Emancipation to Civil Rights.
And praise be to the people of Norway for not becoming fear-and-punishment obsessed in the light of their national tragedy, and for striving to maintain their very open, very supportive society. They are showing an emotional maturity and social wisdom that seems sadly lacking in the United States.
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Gloom and Doom in Historical Perspective
The problems in American society are deepening and multiplying. Saturday's New York Times observed, "Feeble Job Numbers Show Recovery Starting to Stall." Today's (Monday's) paper helpfully adds, "Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit Checks Run Out." That is to say, the economy is NOT reviving, jobs are NOT available for those seeking them, and those now depending on government assistance such as unemployment compensation are about to lose their last means of survival. Meanwhile, the President and congressional leaders are debating how much to cut back government spending and services, out of a belief that all that matters is the deficit: not people, not people going hungry, not people losing their jobs, not people losing their homes. Meanwhile, the wealthiest one percent of Americans are controlling more wealth than every before, and corporations are reporting record profits. Perhaps the wealthy and the corporations, patriotic citizens that they are, could be asked to contribute a bit more to help their fellow countrymen in their hour of need? Of course not--THIS IS AMERICA. Land of the greedy, death to the needy. And make no mistake: cuts in aid to the growing millions of desperate people will mean deaths, deaths from malnutrition, deaths from stress caused by financial anxiety, deaths from inability to pay for medical care, deaths from suicide, deaths from stress-provoked violence, deaths from blazing heat and freezing cold for the homeless, whose ranks are sure to grow, and also deaths from pollution-related illnesses should the Republicans succeed in blocking new regulations on toxic emissions.
It is a cruel and heartless horizon that we are facing. An influential chunk of Americans,including the President, are willing to allow these deaths to happen, rather than raise taxes even one cent on people who have much more wealth than they need. The ridiculous idea that the only way to help people is to pamper the super-wealthy in hopes that they will create good-paying jobs for the less fortunate, the old "trickle-down" theory, has now become sacred gospel among Republicans, despite little proof that it ever has worked, and the counter-evidence of times such as the Eisenhower presidency and the Clinton era that periods of higher taxation and higher government spending are times of greater prosperity. In our current sad state of decline, if government remains set on its current course of cutting back rather than creating jobs, as could be done with a massive, and much-needed, public infrastructure program, we are looking into the maw of a new Dust Bowl.
Obama has really broken my heart and caused me to lose hope for the future of this once-great nation. Instead of "hope and change," he has delivered compromise and cowardice, caving into the anti-government Republicans on almost every occasion. If he would just once FIGHT for something. Well, to be fair, he does fight, but for one thing only: COMPROMISE. He apparently wants to go down in history for two great accomplishments: being the country's first African-American President, and the winner of the "most eager to compromise and appear reasonable" award. And yet, when he came into the office, the country was READY for some bold and forceful leadership. He could have revived a liberal era of active government, but he chose to concentrate on being Mr. Reasonable and Rev. Compromise. I think he is now going to end up Dr. Death, and he will deserve that title if he sticks on his present course. He may manage to be reelected President, but to preside over what, exactly?
I take some weary comfort in the old, old message of many religions, from the Bible to the teachings of the Buddha to the myth of Ragnarok in the Eddas that our human world is essentially hopeless and corrupt, human beings fatally flawed with greed and blindness, more likely to die of gluttony than lift a finger to help others, more enthusiastic about war than anything else. It is a bit of a relief to ponder that the incredible, brain-hurting stupidity and short-sightedness of our current situation is nothing new. It is what the sages, prophets and poets of the past have always warned us against.
To take an example from Norse mythology, when Balder,the most gentle and beloved of the gods was killed, the word went out that if all would weep for him, he would be restored to life. This almost succeeded, as there was nearly universal love for this god, but there was one being who would not grieve, and so Balder was lost forever. There are always those with hardened hearts who justdo not give a damn for others. Many are now employed in our government and on Wall Street, which increasingly seems to be the REAL government of the United States. Presidents are just their errand boys, helping clean up their messes and then letting them get back to their important business of laying off millions and laying up billions.
So what to do? I think the power structure in America is beyond hope. I take refuge in the teachings of most religions of the world that we should practice kindness and compassion, without hope of reward, and understand that the powers of the world are against us. That is to say, the ultimate "Fuck You" is actually "Let me help you, you are my brother." There is nothing else that makes sense in a senseless and mendacious world. Create beauty and compassion where you can, even if no one seems to notice.
The world is wrong, so try to make yourself right.
It is a cruel and heartless horizon that we are facing. An influential chunk of Americans,including the President, are willing to allow these deaths to happen, rather than raise taxes even one cent on people who have much more wealth than they need. The ridiculous idea that the only way to help people is to pamper the super-wealthy in hopes that they will create good-paying jobs for the less fortunate, the old "trickle-down" theory, has now become sacred gospel among Republicans, despite little proof that it ever has worked, and the counter-evidence of times such as the Eisenhower presidency and the Clinton era that periods of higher taxation and higher government spending are times of greater prosperity. In our current sad state of decline, if government remains set on its current course of cutting back rather than creating jobs, as could be done with a massive, and much-needed, public infrastructure program, we are looking into the maw of a new Dust Bowl.
Obama has really broken my heart and caused me to lose hope for the future of this once-great nation. Instead of "hope and change," he has delivered compromise and cowardice, caving into the anti-government Republicans on almost every occasion. If he would just once FIGHT for something. Well, to be fair, he does fight, but for one thing only: COMPROMISE. He apparently wants to go down in history for two great accomplishments: being the country's first African-American President, and the winner of the "most eager to compromise and appear reasonable" award. And yet, when he came into the office, the country was READY for some bold and forceful leadership. He could have revived a liberal era of active government, but he chose to concentrate on being Mr. Reasonable and Rev. Compromise. I think he is now going to end up Dr. Death, and he will deserve that title if he sticks on his present course. He may manage to be reelected President, but to preside over what, exactly?
I take some weary comfort in the old, old message of many religions, from the Bible to the teachings of the Buddha to the myth of Ragnarok in the Eddas that our human world is essentially hopeless and corrupt, human beings fatally flawed with greed and blindness, more likely to die of gluttony than lift a finger to help others, more enthusiastic about war than anything else. It is a bit of a relief to ponder that the incredible, brain-hurting stupidity and short-sightedness of our current situation is nothing new. It is what the sages, prophets and poets of the past have always warned us against.
To take an example from Norse mythology, when Balder,the most gentle and beloved of the gods was killed, the word went out that if all would weep for him, he would be restored to life. This almost succeeded, as there was nearly universal love for this god, but there was one being who would not grieve, and so Balder was lost forever. There are always those with hardened hearts who justdo not give a damn for others. Many are now employed in our government and on Wall Street, which increasingly seems to be the REAL government of the United States. Presidents are just their errand boys, helping clean up their messes and then letting them get back to their important business of laying off millions and laying up billions.
So what to do? I think the power structure in America is beyond hope. I take refuge in the teachings of most religions of the world that we should practice kindness and compassion, without hope of reward, and understand that the powers of the world are against us. That is to say, the ultimate "Fuck You" is actually "Let me help you, you are my brother." There is nothing else that makes sense in a senseless and mendacious world. Create beauty and compassion where you can, even if no one seems to notice.
The world is wrong, so try to make yourself right.
Looking to the East
Friends, isn't it true that we are all divided beings? Don't we all have internal conflicts, mixed loyalties, inner contradictions? I have been reflecting on some of my own, and this is leading me to a new course of action. Over the last twenty or more years, I have been a student of Norse, Celtic and Baltic mythology, also of Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Born in the USA, I have lived in Iceland and Lithuania, and also in Japan. I see value in the nature-centered spirituality of the Western Pagan traditions, but I am also drawn to the search for higher levels of consciousness and a deeper understanding of the nature of reality in the Eastern traditions. Sometimes the pendulum swings one way for me, and sometimes it swings the other. Just now, the East is calling me.
This is partly because I have been feeling so disenchanted with what I know of American Asatru. I don't mean to stereotype or throw everyone into the same pot under the same lid, but my experiences have led me to believe that what most--not all, but most--American Asatru followers are most concerned and motivated about is preserving an idealized version of European ethnic heritage, reaching back to a fabled time when, in the Republican Senator Trent Lott's words, "we didn't have all these problems" about diversity, multiculturalism and the mixing of races. A nice white Viking society, pure as the driven snow in whichever Germanic country you prefer.
I have been feeling queasy for a long time about how this comes way too close to comfort to the very ugly tradition of racism and white supremacy. Now I just want to get away from this. It's not what I have known as Asatru in Iceland or Sweden or with German Heathens that I have met along the way. This is not to say that there are no racists in those lands, which would be a ridiculous statement, but simply that in those places, I have met a good number of Asatru followers with a clear, analytical, comprehensive understanding of the need to completely renounce anything that approaches racism. For knowing such people, I am grateful. I just wish there were more like them in the USA, but I think American Asatru is on a somewhat different track, certain clear-minded exceptions aside. And of course I don't like the implicit or explicit militarism in much American Asatru, the "worship of the war god" as discussed in past postings.
Celebrating ethnic heritage or playing GI Joe in Viking drag is not the primary thing that I want out of religion or spirituality. I want to feel close to nature and in touch with some kind of absolute reality. Recent contact with members of the Hare Krishna-Krishna Consciousness movement and a branch of Tibetan Buddhism known as Diamond Way have made me think seriously of how these traditions all use methods of mind-stimulation to reach higher states of consciousness where they experience Something that could be called Krishna, or Buddha, or Mind, or what not, but something that gives them peace, joy and clarity. I have always been a piss-poor failure at any kind of meditation, but now I am moved to try again.
Ultimately, I would like to somehow combine these different pathways, perhaps,to put it humorously, chanting "Hare Odin" or visualizing Thor's hammer as the thunderbolt that flashes enlightenment! Or, leaning to my Lithuanian side, maybe it will be "Hare Velnius" and Perkunas as the bringer of enlightenment. Now I am really going to be on the shit list of people who are committed purists, but you know what? I don't care. This kind of mixing and matching may not be to everyone's taste, but as a person torn between East and West, it makes perfect sense to my perfectly divided self. I also know that the past history of religions involves plenty of borrowing and blending, so it's not like I am in the first person in history to have these wicked thoughts and heretical urges.
I would be interested to hear of similar thoughts,experiences or experiments that others have had.
Happy Summer Solstice!
This is partly because I have been feeling so disenchanted with what I know of American Asatru. I don't mean to stereotype or throw everyone into the same pot under the same lid, but my experiences have led me to believe that what most--not all, but most--American Asatru followers are most concerned and motivated about is preserving an idealized version of European ethnic heritage, reaching back to a fabled time when, in the Republican Senator Trent Lott's words, "we didn't have all these problems" about diversity, multiculturalism and the mixing of races. A nice white Viking society, pure as the driven snow in whichever Germanic country you prefer.
I have been feeling queasy for a long time about how this comes way too close to comfort to the very ugly tradition of racism and white supremacy. Now I just want to get away from this. It's not what I have known as Asatru in Iceland or Sweden or with German Heathens that I have met along the way. This is not to say that there are no racists in those lands, which would be a ridiculous statement, but simply that in those places, I have met a good number of Asatru followers with a clear, analytical, comprehensive understanding of the need to completely renounce anything that approaches racism. For knowing such people, I am grateful. I just wish there were more like them in the USA, but I think American Asatru is on a somewhat different track, certain clear-minded exceptions aside. And of course I don't like the implicit or explicit militarism in much American Asatru, the "worship of the war god" as discussed in past postings.
Celebrating ethnic heritage or playing GI Joe in Viking drag is not the primary thing that I want out of religion or spirituality. I want to feel close to nature and in touch with some kind of absolute reality. Recent contact with members of the Hare Krishna-Krishna Consciousness movement and a branch of Tibetan Buddhism known as Diamond Way have made me think seriously of how these traditions all use methods of mind-stimulation to reach higher states of consciousness where they experience Something that could be called Krishna, or Buddha, or Mind, or what not, but something that gives them peace, joy and clarity. I have always been a piss-poor failure at any kind of meditation, but now I am moved to try again.
Ultimately, I would like to somehow combine these different pathways, perhaps,to put it humorously, chanting "Hare Odin" or visualizing Thor's hammer as the thunderbolt that flashes enlightenment! Or, leaning to my Lithuanian side, maybe it will be "Hare Velnius" and Perkunas as the bringer of enlightenment. Now I am really going to be on the shit list of people who are committed purists, but you know what? I don't care. This kind of mixing and matching may not be to everyone's taste, but as a person torn between East and West, it makes perfect sense to my perfectly divided self. I also know that the past history of religions involves plenty of borrowing and blending, so it's not like I am in the first person in history to have these wicked thoughts and heretical urges.
I would be interested to hear of similar thoughts,experiences or experiments that others have had.
Happy Summer Solstice!
Do the Gods of War Still Speak to Us?
Dear Readers, I apologize for a very long absence and silence. It has been a very busy semester, including a most wonderful trip to Poland in the last month. I still cannot find time for a proper essay here, so I thought instead I would pose a question that I hope will invite some interesting discussion from different points of view. As a semi-pacifistic liberal sort of Pagan, I am often at a loss of what to make of the worship of gods of war among the Pagans of the past. I wonder what relevance this aspect of the old religion holds today, with war a much different thing than it was in the past. I do not find war a praiseworthy thing in the modern world, but a horrible tragedy in almost all cases, and thus I cannot agree with those Pagans and Heathens who seem to glorify war and see this as the most important thing in ancient texts. The war aspect of the old religion is something that I feel is outdated and that needs to be left behind. I can only relate to gods of war and warrior figures as metaphors for the need to struggle and fight morally and mentally, not as a call to literal, physical fighting and killing. What say you? I would like to invite your comments and then return later to add some more thoughts of my own. Thanks.
First They Came for the Muslims...
Beginning with the controversy about the Islamic community center and mosque being planned several blocks away from the World Trade Center site in NYC, there seems to be a concerted, nationwide campaign underway to villify and persecute Muslims, mosques and any kind of Islamic activity across the country. Nine years AFTER 9/11, people seem to be going crazy with intense hatred of Muslims and anything to do with Islam. This is so disturbing on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin.
First of all, the fact that people across the nation are going on the warpath against mosques and Muslims demonstrates that this is NOT really about the mosque in NYC, which has anyway been in the works for a long time, and would not be major news if not for people like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich doing all they can to make this into an angry, divisive issue. This is one in a continuing series of efforts (remember the phony controversy over Death Panels?) to use lies and distortions to whip up a fearful and poorly-informed population into a mad mob frenzy for political purposes. The Republican Party and their Tea Party and FOX News divisions clearly want people to spend lots and lots of time talking about the "Muslim menace" supposedly demonstrated by Islamic groups doing horrible, heinous things like applying for construction permits.
Why do the Republicans want to push the panic button, if not the "Beat up on Muslims" button across the country? Because they know that the more that people get worked up over things like this, the less time and energy they will have to think seriously about issues like the Gulf oil catastrophe, the economy and the plight of the millions of unemployed, and the opposition of the Republican party to ANY government programs to help people or regulate corrupt and out-of-control corporations. The same applies to the news media, who get caught up in chasing these Republican Party-guided, FOX News-generated phantoms instead of attempting any thoughtful analysis or investigative reporting into matters of greater relevance to people's day-to-day lives. This kind of phony controversy plays perfectly to the Republicans' desire to portray themselves as the champions of patriotic, Christian, conservative white people--REAL Americans-- who desire protection, if not pogroms, against such horrible un-American entities as Hispanics, Muslims, gays, and liberals. In fact, you could almost say that the split in our politics today could be described as a divide between one party that proposes programs, and another that advocates pogroms.
But let's go back to the original topic. I noted that this is a phony controversy. It is important to understand the facts. (1) The proposed mosque and community center will NOT be at Ground Zero, but several blocks away, taking the place of a defunct clothing store, the Burlington Coat Factory. So all the noise you hear about the suppposed outrage of building a mosque on the hallowed ground of Ground Zero is hyperbole and crap. (2) The Muslims involved are peace-loving Sufis. They have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or any Islamic extremism or terrorism. (3) The intention of the Muslim group planning the construction is not to build some kind of anti-American, pro-9/11 Muslim victory monument, but to create an institution like the Jewish-run 92nd St. Y, where lectures, concerts and other events open to the public can be held, along with a swimming pool and yes, a mosque, one of more than 100 in the NYC area.
This may very well seem a completely different situation than what you may have been hearing or reading from journalists and politicians bent on stirring up anti-Muslim passions. If you doubt what I am describing, please take some time and check the facts from a reputable news source like Reuters, Associated Press or The New York Times.
Some readers of this Pagan-oriented blog may wonder why I am taking so much time on this Muslim matter. "None of our business; they're not us, so who cares?" you might say, but you would be wrong. Modern-day Pagan movements are only possible in the USA and other countries because of the increased respect for social and cultural diversity, including religious diversity, that has been part of American culture and to some extent world culture since the 1960s, building on our long-ignored, Constitional respect for freedom of religion. If we start going back to a witch-hunting, minority-persecuting mentality in this country, it will only be a matter of time before emboldened conservative Christians will undertake a crusade against Pagans and Heathens along with anyone else whose life does not revolve around Jesus and the Bible. Remember the 1950s and McCarthyism? To some, those were the "good old days."
If you don't want to see our country go backwards toward Christian conformity and open season on anyone defined as an "Un-Christian," or "Un-American" Other, STAND UP, SPEAK UP and FIGHT BACK against the persecution of Muslims, as well as the persecution of Hispanics going on with the anti-immigrant movement. If you hear someone in the supermarket, at your work place, or in your ritual circle spouting anti-Muslim nonsense based on misleading news sources, open your mouth and calmly set the person straight. Otherwise, we may all end up rephrasing that old poem about the advent of Nazism: "When they came for the Hispanic immigrants, I didn't say anything because I am not a Hispanic immigrant. When they came for the Muslims, I did not speak out because I am not a Muslim. When they came for the Pagans...."
First of all, the fact that people across the nation are going on the warpath against mosques and Muslims demonstrates that this is NOT really about the mosque in NYC, which has anyway been in the works for a long time, and would not be major news if not for people like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich doing all they can to make this into an angry, divisive issue. This is one in a continuing series of efforts (remember the phony controversy over Death Panels?) to use lies and distortions to whip up a fearful and poorly-informed population into a mad mob frenzy for political purposes. The Republican Party and their Tea Party and FOX News divisions clearly want people to spend lots and lots of time talking about the "Muslim menace" supposedly demonstrated by Islamic groups doing horrible, heinous things like applying for construction permits.
Why do the Republicans want to push the panic button, if not the "Beat up on Muslims" button across the country? Because they know that the more that people get worked up over things like this, the less time and energy they will have to think seriously about issues like the Gulf oil catastrophe, the economy and the plight of the millions of unemployed, and the opposition of the Republican party to ANY government programs to help people or regulate corrupt and out-of-control corporations. The same applies to the news media, who get caught up in chasing these Republican Party-guided, FOX News-generated phantoms instead of attempting any thoughtful analysis or investigative reporting into matters of greater relevance to people's day-to-day lives. This kind of phony controversy plays perfectly to the Republicans' desire to portray themselves as the champions of patriotic, Christian, conservative white people--REAL Americans-- who desire protection, if not pogroms, against such horrible un-American entities as Hispanics, Muslims, gays, and liberals. In fact, you could almost say that the split in our politics today could be described as a divide between one party that proposes programs, and another that advocates pogroms.
But let's go back to the original topic. I noted that this is a phony controversy. It is important to understand the facts. (1) The proposed mosque and community center will NOT be at Ground Zero, but several blocks away, taking the place of a defunct clothing store, the Burlington Coat Factory. So all the noise you hear about the suppposed outrage of building a mosque on the hallowed ground of Ground Zero is hyperbole and crap. (2) The Muslims involved are peace-loving Sufis. They have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or any Islamic extremism or terrorism. (3) The intention of the Muslim group planning the construction is not to build some kind of anti-American, pro-9/11 Muslim victory monument, but to create an institution like the Jewish-run 92nd St. Y, where lectures, concerts and other events open to the public can be held, along with a swimming pool and yes, a mosque, one of more than 100 in the NYC area.
This may very well seem a completely different situation than what you may have been hearing or reading from journalists and politicians bent on stirring up anti-Muslim passions. If you doubt what I am describing, please take some time and check the facts from a reputable news source like Reuters, Associated Press or The New York Times.
Some readers of this Pagan-oriented blog may wonder why I am taking so much time on this Muslim matter. "None of our business; they're not us, so who cares?" you might say, but you would be wrong. Modern-day Pagan movements are only possible in the USA and other countries because of the increased respect for social and cultural diversity, including religious diversity, that has been part of American culture and to some extent world culture since the 1960s, building on our long-ignored, Constitional respect for freedom of religion. If we start going back to a witch-hunting, minority-persecuting mentality in this country, it will only be a matter of time before emboldened conservative Christians will undertake a crusade against Pagans and Heathens along with anyone else whose life does not revolve around Jesus and the Bible. Remember the 1950s and McCarthyism? To some, those were the "good old days."
If you don't want to see our country go backwards toward Christian conformity and open season on anyone defined as an "Un-Christian," or "Un-American" Other, STAND UP, SPEAK UP and FIGHT BACK against the persecution of Muslims, as well as the persecution of Hispanics going on with the anti-immigrant movement. If you hear someone in the supermarket, at your work place, or in your ritual circle spouting anti-Muslim nonsense based on misleading news sources, open your mouth and calmly set the person straight. Otherwise, we may all end up rephrasing that old poem about the advent of Nazism: "When they came for the Hispanic immigrants, I didn't say anything because I am not a Hispanic immigrant. When they came for the Muslims, I did not speak out because I am not a Muslim. When they came for the Pagans...."
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The United States of Punishment
Readers, this is something I have been wanting to comment on for a long time: a growing spirit of meanness, even sadism, in the thought, behavior and culture that I feel is becoming stronger and stronger in the United States. This country has a lot of problems right now, but it seems to me that there are not a lot of people interested in actually THINKING about what our problems are and trying to solve them TOGETHER. No. What many, and I fear most Americans want, is just to beat up on someone. You can see it in reality television shows and on that internet voyeur known as You Tube, where the great fun is to watch some misguided average Joe or Jane humiliated and ridiculed. You can see it in our obsession with celebrity, in the delight that so many take in seeing the famous brought low.
You can see it in our criminal "justice" system, where there is much more support for punishing the people locked away, even for very minor offenses, than for rehabilitating them so that they will have a snowball's chance in hell of living a normal, productive life when they get out of prison. Why rehabilitate them? Better to let them remain criminals so that we can enjoy locking them up again and again and feeling superior to "those people."
You can see it in the anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic sentiment that seems to be growing in popularity. Look at that one more closely and you will find things like Hispanic people being beaten up and even killed, not in the Deep South, mind you, but on Long Island, just a few dozen miles from diversity central (NYC). You can see it in the popularity of police drama television shows, which give the people a steady dose of a very particular view of American society, in which there is no hope of improving society, only the adrenalin rush of hunting down criminals and locking them up. You can see the real-life ramifications of this media indoctrination in the way states like California have, for many years, been pumping much more money into prisons than schools. Did you know California used to have free university tuition? Not anymore, but plenty of free services for the thousands upon thousands in California prisons, a situation mirrored in states across the country. Priorities are clear! Why educate people when you can punish them? Is THIS the American dream? Most modern democratic countries have abolished the death penalty. Not here! It is a dear and cherished tradition!
You can see it in our national government's foreign policy spending priorities, in that the amount of money devoted to peaceful foreign projects is far dwarfed by what is spent on the military, not only our several ongoing wars that have ripped apart whole societies and left shattered cities, psyches and limbs in their wake that will take decades to heal, but also our "peaceful" military presence in so many countries around the world, which sends a clear message that we are ready to stomp on anyone who disagrees with us or fails to support our military objectives and corporate business interests. Remember that what kicked off both of our most recent wars was a desire to PUNISH: punish the Afghans for 9/11 (even though all or most of the terrorists were Saudis), punish Saddam and Iraq for anti-American weapon programs. Call it "war on terror," call it "nation-building," but I would argue that the root motive is punishment of dark-skinned, non-Christian, uncooperative foreigners.
You can see it in how every city and even very small towns in the USA always have military parades, which for some reason often feature police as well as soldiers, but nothing to honor artists, teachers, or people in non-punitive helping professions. It was a hard-fought battle in this country to establish Martin Luther King day as a national holiday, for the obvious reason that he was a man of peace, as well as an African-American, and in the view of many, THAT AIN'T AMERICAN!! Do you know which state held out for years on accepting the holiday? Same state (AZ) that is now set to implement a law that will give police carte blanche to harass and arrest Hispanics suspected of being illegal aliens. It is also the state with a cruel and humiliating prison system, in Maricopa County, that happens to be immensely popular with the general population, to the point where the head of this police state, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who his fans call "America's Toughest Sheriff," has his own reality television show.
I can't wait until someone finally puts on a show that will televise live executions. "Live from Death Row," sure to be a big hit in the near future! Fun for the whole family, taking America back to the days when people would bring picnic lunches to watch hangings and lynchings. I am not joking about that last point: executions and lynchings were popular entertainments in the not-too-distant American past.
We just love Love LOVE to have someone to beat up on, someone to bomb, someone to throw into prison, someone to hate. And, final irony, some of those on the right-wing side of the political spectrum seem to be gearing up and gunning up to take up arms against our democratically-elected government--and they think of themselves as patriots. The obsession with guns, the fear that you will need to defend yourself in a John Wayne movie always showing in the little cinema in the back of your mind, where does that come from? I suspect it goes back to the culture of the American frontier, when "the west was won" by white Americans shooting and killing Native Americans and taking their land. A great victory, right? Or maybe it was the time not long past in the Jim Crow South when the white man could shoot blacks with impunity? Maybe there is a bit of guilty conscience, fear of payback from people no longer cringing in fear?
What is it that many right-wingers and conservatives shout nowadays? "TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!" Back to what, exactly? They never say...Perhaps the good old days of white supremacy, the KKK, lynching of blacks and gays? I for one have no doubt that there is an ugly racial undercurrent running through the so-called Tea Party movement. First a black man is elected president, and then sales of guns and ammo shoot through the roof. What is that about? And what was it that made Bush so popular for several years post-9/11? His promise to "punish the evil-doers." I wonder, will Obama now be tempted to attack Iran to bolster his own popularity?
I am afraid. I fear that this country is becoming an increasingly harsh and brutal police state. I fear that young people today are being raised in a culture which values and validates violence and aggression over all things, that sees compassion, compromise, gentleness and intelligence as disgusting, undesirable, effeminate qualities. A culture that believes the ONLY solution to social problems is to beat people down, shut them up, lock them up. A mindset that has no doubt that the ONLY solution to international conflicts is to use force to beat and bomb foreign people into submission to our will. A mentality that asserts that the ONLY way to be a man is to be a tough-as-nails, ain't never backin'-down, fist-fightin' gun-totin,' brute (A REAL MAN!!) Women too are encouraged to be more aggressive, more selfish, more mean, maybe pack a gun in the purse along with the lipstick. Now there's some great feminism for you! Real gender equality, all through the magic of gun ownership! And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it is going to be easier and easier for every American to carry a gun wherever they want! Finally, we will all be SAFE. This is surely what the forefathers dreamed of when they set sail for America: a nation where guns will one day outnumber brains.
I don't believe that violence and aggression will make this world a better place. I think we are WAY off track and completely losing sight of the need for gentleness, calmness, compassion and civility. If it were not the fact that something deep in me resonates strongly with the gods and traditions of the European Pagan heritage, I would be very tempted to take up Buddhism. I greatly respect the Buddhist path of self-control, self-reflection and non-violence. I would like to believe they can also be found in Pagan tradition, but I know many disagree. In American Asatru, there are many who primarily relate to this tradition as a warrior path. I don't want to begrudge anyone the right to their own views and interpretations, particularly military veterans who have a need to validate their battlefield experiences, but I feel that there is just too much war-mongering going on, to the point where other priorities and possibilities are lost. I mean, come on! "Hail Thor, Hail War, Let's drink some beer then drink some more!" Wow, now THAT is really spiritual! Come on, please. Anyone who studies any Pagan tradition, whether Norse or Celtic or Slavic or what have you should realize that warrior machismo is not the only thing going on in these religions. There is so much about nature, about sensuality, about peace, about friendship, about art, about beauty. I fear that the warped priorities of modern American society are being read back into ancient Paganism, and then held up as Pagan virtues that all should honor and obey.
Well, I for one am NOT going to play along with this. I worship the sky, the earth, the trees, the ancestors, and I don't need guns or weapons or fantasies of violence to feel right with MY Paganism. I do NOT accept narrow definitions of "tribe" that would cause me to turn away from my brothers and sisters of all races and ethnic backgrounds. I do NOT see the military punishment of foreign populations and disruption of their societies as honorable or worth emulating. I believe that there are more pleasant and productive forms of travel than military invasion. My Paganism is wide and loving and embracing, not narrow and hateful and punishing. I want to see a Paganism that teaches peace and co-existence, not a glorification of war and aggression. Those things have their time and place, I don't doubt, but that place is not everywhere and the time should not be everyday and every minute.
What kind of world do YOU want to live in?
You can see it in our criminal "justice" system, where there is much more support for punishing the people locked away, even for very minor offenses, than for rehabilitating them so that they will have a snowball's chance in hell of living a normal, productive life when they get out of prison. Why rehabilitate them? Better to let them remain criminals so that we can enjoy locking them up again and again and feeling superior to "those people."
You can see it in the anti-immigrant, anti-Hispanic sentiment that seems to be growing in popularity. Look at that one more closely and you will find things like Hispanic people being beaten up and even killed, not in the Deep South, mind you, but on Long Island, just a few dozen miles from diversity central (NYC). You can see it in the popularity of police drama television shows, which give the people a steady dose of a very particular view of American society, in which there is no hope of improving society, only the adrenalin rush of hunting down criminals and locking them up. You can see the real-life ramifications of this media indoctrination in the way states like California have, for many years, been pumping much more money into prisons than schools. Did you know California used to have free university tuition? Not anymore, but plenty of free services for the thousands upon thousands in California prisons, a situation mirrored in states across the country. Priorities are clear! Why educate people when you can punish them? Is THIS the American dream? Most modern democratic countries have abolished the death penalty. Not here! It is a dear and cherished tradition!
You can see it in our national government's foreign policy spending priorities, in that the amount of money devoted to peaceful foreign projects is far dwarfed by what is spent on the military, not only our several ongoing wars that have ripped apart whole societies and left shattered cities, psyches and limbs in their wake that will take decades to heal, but also our "peaceful" military presence in so many countries around the world, which sends a clear message that we are ready to stomp on anyone who disagrees with us or fails to support our military objectives and corporate business interests. Remember that what kicked off both of our most recent wars was a desire to PUNISH: punish the Afghans for 9/11 (even though all or most of the terrorists were Saudis), punish Saddam and Iraq for anti-American weapon programs. Call it "war on terror," call it "nation-building," but I would argue that the root motive is punishment of dark-skinned, non-Christian, uncooperative foreigners.
You can see it in how every city and even very small towns in the USA always have military parades, which for some reason often feature police as well as soldiers, but nothing to honor artists, teachers, or people in non-punitive helping professions. It was a hard-fought battle in this country to establish Martin Luther King day as a national holiday, for the obvious reason that he was a man of peace, as well as an African-American, and in the view of many, THAT AIN'T AMERICAN!! Do you know which state held out for years on accepting the holiday? Same state (AZ) that is now set to implement a law that will give police carte blanche to harass and arrest Hispanics suspected of being illegal aliens. It is also the state with a cruel and humiliating prison system, in Maricopa County, that happens to be immensely popular with the general population, to the point where the head of this police state, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who his fans call "America's Toughest Sheriff," has his own reality television show.
I can't wait until someone finally puts on a show that will televise live executions. "Live from Death Row," sure to be a big hit in the near future! Fun for the whole family, taking America back to the days when people would bring picnic lunches to watch hangings and lynchings. I am not joking about that last point: executions and lynchings were popular entertainments in the not-too-distant American past.
We just love Love LOVE to have someone to beat up on, someone to bomb, someone to throw into prison, someone to hate. And, final irony, some of those on the right-wing side of the political spectrum seem to be gearing up and gunning up to take up arms against our democratically-elected government--and they think of themselves as patriots. The obsession with guns, the fear that you will need to defend yourself in a John Wayne movie always showing in the little cinema in the back of your mind, where does that come from? I suspect it goes back to the culture of the American frontier, when "the west was won" by white Americans shooting and killing Native Americans and taking their land. A great victory, right? Or maybe it was the time not long past in the Jim Crow South when the white man could shoot blacks with impunity? Maybe there is a bit of guilty conscience, fear of payback from people no longer cringing in fear?
What is it that many right-wingers and conservatives shout nowadays? "TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!" Back to what, exactly? They never say...Perhaps the good old days of white supremacy, the KKK, lynching of blacks and gays? I for one have no doubt that there is an ugly racial undercurrent running through the so-called Tea Party movement. First a black man is elected president, and then sales of guns and ammo shoot through the roof. What is that about? And what was it that made Bush so popular for several years post-9/11? His promise to "punish the evil-doers." I wonder, will Obama now be tempted to attack Iran to bolster his own popularity?
I am afraid. I fear that this country is becoming an increasingly harsh and brutal police state. I fear that young people today are being raised in a culture which values and validates violence and aggression over all things, that sees compassion, compromise, gentleness and intelligence as disgusting, undesirable, effeminate qualities. A culture that believes the ONLY solution to social problems is to beat people down, shut them up, lock them up. A mindset that has no doubt that the ONLY solution to international conflicts is to use force to beat and bomb foreign people into submission to our will. A mentality that asserts that the ONLY way to be a man is to be a tough-as-nails, ain't never backin'-down, fist-fightin' gun-totin,' brute (A REAL MAN!!) Women too are encouraged to be more aggressive, more selfish, more mean, maybe pack a gun in the purse along with the lipstick. Now there's some great feminism for you! Real gender equality, all through the magic of gun ownership! And now, thanks to the Supreme Court, it is going to be easier and easier for every American to carry a gun wherever they want! Finally, we will all be SAFE. This is surely what the forefathers dreamed of when they set sail for America: a nation where guns will one day outnumber brains.
I don't believe that violence and aggression will make this world a better place. I think we are WAY off track and completely losing sight of the need for gentleness, calmness, compassion and civility. If it were not the fact that something deep in me resonates strongly with the gods and traditions of the European Pagan heritage, I would be very tempted to take up Buddhism. I greatly respect the Buddhist path of self-control, self-reflection and non-violence. I would like to believe they can also be found in Pagan tradition, but I know many disagree. In American Asatru, there are many who primarily relate to this tradition as a warrior path. I don't want to begrudge anyone the right to their own views and interpretations, particularly military veterans who have a need to validate their battlefield experiences, but I feel that there is just too much war-mongering going on, to the point where other priorities and possibilities are lost. I mean, come on! "Hail Thor, Hail War, Let's drink some beer then drink some more!" Wow, now THAT is really spiritual! Come on, please. Anyone who studies any Pagan tradition, whether Norse or Celtic or Slavic or what have you should realize that warrior machismo is not the only thing going on in these religions. There is so much about nature, about sensuality, about peace, about friendship, about art, about beauty. I fear that the warped priorities of modern American society are being read back into ancient Paganism, and then held up as Pagan virtues that all should honor and obey.
Well, I for one am NOT going to play along with this. I worship the sky, the earth, the trees, the ancestors, and I don't need guns or weapons or fantasies of violence to feel right with MY Paganism. I do NOT accept narrow definitions of "tribe" that would cause me to turn away from my brothers and sisters of all races and ethnic backgrounds. I do NOT see the military punishment of foreign populations and disruption of their societies as honorable or worth emulating. I believe that there are more pleasant and productive forms of travel than military invasion. My Paganism is wide and loving and embracing, not narrow and hateful and punishing. I want to see a Paganism that teaches peace and co-existence, not a glorification of war and aggression. Those things have their time and place, I don't doubt, but that place is not everywhere and the time should not be everyday and every minute.
What kind of world do YOU want to live in?
Odin and the Buddha
Watching the fine documentary about the life of the Buddha that premiered Wednesday,7th April 2010,on Public Television (PBS.org) in the USA, I was moved by many elements of the Buddha's life story and message, but by one aspect above all: the emphasis on compassion in Buddhism. This is seen not simply as an ethical teaching--that it is nice to be nice to other people and living beings--but also as a crucial spiritual practice, that helps us to feel more connected to others in the world, and to the world in general, and to thus get beyond our egotistical selves. This spiritual dimension of connectedness and compassion is something that I find missing in most modern Norse Paganism, and I suspect that it is not well-developed in other forms of Paganism too. I see this as a failing both of Pagan spirituality and Pagan ethics, but I believe it can be remedied.
There is a lot of discussion of ethics in Norse Paganism or Asatru, but much of it revolves around the idea of warrior honor and loyalty to one's family and tribe. I don't doubt that these are good values, but I still see them as inadequate in comparison to the Buddhists' larger sense of connectedness and compassion, which is also echoed in other religious traditions, and might even be said to represent a universal human value.
Is there any basis in Norse Pagan lore for inferring anything like a concept of universal compassion? Certainly there is no direct statement of any such thing. On this basis, it might be deemed justifiable to reject this whole idea, and I don't doubt that some Norse Pagans might reach that conclusion on reading my words.
The closest direct parallel to a concept of compassion is the discussion of the importance of hospitality. There were a number of thoughtful essays on this topic in the latest issue of Idunna , the Troth.org publication. The viewpoints on hospitality in Idunna and elsewhere in modern Norse Paganism tend to emphasize being a good host to visitors and reciprocity ("a gift for a gift," as this is often expressed) in relation to others within one's own circle of close and trusted associates.
Since we live in a world where we must interact and share the common social space with many others, not only people who we know well or might identify as our "tribe," I find this interpretation of hospitality intriguing and illuminating of the original medieval context of Norse writings, but ultimately insufficient both as a moral guidepost and as a spiritual practice.
Let me therefore explain how I see other possibilities inherent in Norse Pagan lore and traditions.The Norse text that probably contains the most discussion of hospitality is the Eddic poem the Havamal. There is much here about how a person should should behave cautiously as a guest and graciously as a host. The text clearly speak to a medieval world of dangerous conditions where travelers were much at the mercy of those they encountered. The text repeatedly states how good it is to find a friend, to make a friend, to maintain friendship through mutual caring and sharing. Nowhere does this poem state that one should limit their friendships to those within one's own tribe, village or kingdom. In fact, the idea of travelers relying on hospitality suggests a larger view of human relations, with the expectation that one might easily find themselves in a larger social universe and needing to behave in that larger community in such a way as to merit respect and protection. The text also says much about the need to protect oneself in potentially dangerous situations, so this is not all sweetness and light, but the focus is on protecting oneself, not attacking or provoking others.
I would therefore argue that there are thus at least two ways to interpret this text as regards social relations and hospitality. One way, which I have found often expressed among today's Heathens, is a conservative, suspicious view of the social universe, stressing the need to be on guard, ready to defend one's property, honor and person, hand on the hilt, finger on the trigger. Hospitality in this perspective is to be limited to those who prove worthy of close companionship. My own, alternative way of interpreting the text is to see it as arguing for the benefits of securing an ever-wider circle of friendly relations through behaving graciously and honorably both as guest and as host, whether at home in one's own neighborhood, or anywhere else one might travel to.
Having lived in different countries and not always been sure where I stood with those I met or broke bread with, I can certainly vouch for the practical value of this viewpoint. Beyond that, though, I perceive in this the kernel of a notion of universal compassion and self-transcendence. We are all vulnerable creatures in need of others' help from time to time; and we all have the opportunity, if not indeed the obligation, to treat well, and if possible provide assistance to those whose paths cross our own, both for the practical fact that good relations may redound to our benefit in the future, but also because it is the right thing to do by any reasonable moral analysis of the human condition that goes beyond simple selfishness and greed. Considering our mutual vulnerability and dependence can help us develop compassion, not unlike that preached by the Buddha. And, just as compassion in Buddhism serves as both moral value and spiritual discipline, this expanded sense of hospitality can connect us to a larger world that brings us beyond our everyday, limited view of who we are and who we belong to or are obligated toward.
Of course, this is just one man's view of how Norse Pagan lore MIGHT be interpreted and its meaning expanded upon in a certain direction. I would never claim this is the only meaning or "the" true meaning. We must each make of these things what we will, and I do not scorn or blame those who disagree with my thinking or sit back, shake their heads and laugh at my words. As your host on this page, I encourage you to enjoy yourselves as you see fit. Have a laugh on me if you like.
I would however offer certain additional points in favor of my "Buddhistic" version of Norse Pagan morality. It seems to me that in the mythology of Odin, there are hints that can lead us to such a broader view of morality, self and universe.
Odin is first of all a constantly wandering god who acquires much of his wisdom and abilities through interaction with other beings in the universe. He does not stay at home, sitting on his throne, safely protected behind the walls of Asgard, and close off his relations to those outside his tribe or circle of trusted associates. He is always open, always voyaging, always learning. If we take this aspect of Odin as any kind of moral signpost, it is one which points us away from closed or narrow conceptions of our place in the world.
Then there is the myth of the death of Odin's son, Baldur. Without the warrior bravado that is indeed quite common in Norse mythology, this death is presented as a terrible tragedy that is an occasion for deep mourning. Indeed, the Prose Edda version of the myth tells us that if all living beings had shared in weeping for Baldur, he might have been saved from death, but a grim giantess, the trickster Loki in drag disguise, refused to cooperate, and so Baldur stayed among the dead in hell (Hel). What is this tale if not a provocative illustration of the need for universal compassion?
Of course, the narrow-minded could argue that the myth only tells us that the death of Baldur merited widespread tears; perhaps in the case of others, their suffering or death is of no concern, and we should all just take care of our own and to Hel with everybody else. This seems to me an extremely hard-hearted, if not thick-headed view of the text, and so I prefer the alternate view, seeing this incident as another possible Norse kernel of compassion.
My third example is of Odin's shamanistic self-torture on the tree of Yggdrasil, slashing and hanging himself in nine days and nights of agony in order to receive the magical wisdom of the runes. Why does he undergo such a wretched ordeal? To get the wisdom, of course, but what, and who is this wisdom for? It is to be shared with others, to help mankind and perhaps other beings as well. Killing and then reviving himself, he transcends himself, with the ultimate goal of aiding others. This parallels both Christ on the cross, as often noted, but also Buddha under the Bodhi tree.
Similarly, his position as the master of the warrior-hall of Valhalla is ultimately for the purpose of protecting mankind. Of course, the warriors there gathered are practicing the arts of war, not chanting Buddhist sutras, but the ultimate aim is to save the world, not to win glory or goods in war. As Odin has foreknowledge of the world's destiny, it would seem he knows that the whole enterprise is doomed to failure, Odin himself fated to fall against the Wolf, but he persists in preparing nonetheless. In this, he is like a Bodhisattva who undergoes self-sacrifice for the sake of others, even if the others may be deluded, unreasonable, or self-destructive.
And in the end, the world is miraculously renewed, but it is not restored by force of arms. The great battle is unsuccessful, the greatest warriors fail, but after all who fight have fallen and all seems lost, the world reemeerges, fresh and green. There is hope beyond war. I would argue that this sequence of events might even represent a critique of war, suggesting that war can destroy the world, for sure, but it cannot save it.
On this point, I would note that most people in the Viking period were not glorious warriors, but farmers, craftsmen and fishermen, who might well have dreaded rather than glorified war and violence. They might have enjoyed Viking war poems and myths in much the same way your average Joe today enjoys watching war movies and police programs, as colorful, larger-than-life entertainments, but not necessarily as a serious guide as to how to conduct themselves in daily life. I find it quite interesting that Thor, the most macho of Norse gods, the god who is famous for crushing giants' skulls with his hammer, is also the god who receives the most mocking and humorous treatment in such texts as the Thrymskvida . His hammer is oddly short in the handle, a little bit lacking in a way that Dr. Freud might find most interesting. Perhaps this also tells us something about alternate views of violence and war in the imagination of the authors and audiences of the Norse myths. Also, laughing is known to induce a sense of common human foibles and frailty, another step on the path to compassion.
These are just a few hints that I feel suggest the possibility of a moral system in Norse paganism that was, is and can be more than just tribal ethics or a code of warrior honor, as Norse Pagan morality is often taken to be, but include a vision of the world animated by a self-transcending sense of compassion, like other great religious traditions.
I would not deny at all that my interpretations here push Norse Paganism beyond what it is commonly thought to be. This is definitely not a strict and traditionalist reading, and I do not pretend that it is such. I believe this expansion and amplification of the meaning of Pagan tradition is, however, justifiable in light of a critical historical fact: that the natural development of Norse Paganism was interrupted at a rather early point by the rise to dominance of Christianity in Europe. I believe that the strongly martial character of many Norse texts may have more to do with the social conditions of the late Pagan age, when war with Christian forces was an overwhelming reality, than an essentially warlike cast to Norse Paganism. The points in the myths where war fails, where the war gods are ridiculous, where there is laughter and weeping, suggest something more to me. I furthermore would assert the view that if Norse Paganism had been able to survive the Christian onslaught and continue to develop in conditions of peace and tolerance, it would have taken on new forms and embraced a larger view of the world, a world beyond war and conflict, in which the more spiritual and compassionate sides would have been given greater play.
Today, we have the opportunity to undertake such further development, to start imagining further extensions and directions, including borrowing from other traditions and perspectives, possibly even Buddhism. Though the more traditional minded might find this heretical, I would point out that there is indeed precedence for such borrowing. The Germanic tribes and Vikings borrowed much from the Roman world, including the runes, which many scholars believe to have been modeled on the Roman alphabet. The gods' mighty fortress of Asgard may well have been modeled on the then-impregnable fortress of Constantinople, where King Harald served in the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor for a time. Most interestingly, a small Buddhist figurine was found in a Viking hoard in Sweden in the eighth century, no doubt acquired through Viking trading across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Though it was most likely simply collected as an exotic bauble, perhaps there was something more to it than that?
Make of it what you will.
Peace.
There is a lot of discussion of ethics in Norse Paganism or Asatru, but much of it revolves around the idea of warrior honor and loyalty to one's family and tribe. I don't doubt that these are good values, but I still see them as inadequate in comparison to the Buddhists' larger sense of connectedness and compassion, which is also echoed in other religious traditions, and might even be said to represent a universal human value.
Is there any basis in Norse Pagan lore for inferring anything like a concept of universal compassion? Certainly there is no direct statement of any such thing. On this basis, it might be deemed justifiable to reject this whole idea, and I don't doubt that some Norse Pagans might reach that conclusion on reading my words.
The closest direct parallel to a concept of compassion is the discussion of the importance of hospitality. There were a number of thoughtful essays on this topic in the latest issue of Idunna , the Troth.org publication. The viewpoints on hospitality in Idunna and elsewhere in modern Norse Paganism tend to emphasize being a good host to visitors and reciprocity ("a gift for a gift," as this is often expressed) in relation to others within one's own circle of close and trusted associates.
Since we live in a world where we must interact and share the common social space with many others, not only people who we know well or might identify as our "tribe," I find this interpretation of hospitality intriguing and illuminating of the original medieval context of Norse writings, but ultimately insufficient both as a moral guidepost and as a spiritual practice.
Let me therefore explain how I see other possibilities inherent in Norse Pagan lore and traditions.The Norse text that probably contains the most discussion of hospitality is the Eddic poem the Havamal. There is much here about how a person should should behave cautiously as a guest and graciously as a host. The text clearly speak to a medieval world of dangerous conditions where travelers were much at the mercy of those they encountered. The text repeatedly states how good it is to find a friend, to make a friend, to maintain friendship through mutual caring and sharing. Nowhere does this poem state that one should limit their friendships to those within one's own tribe, village or kingdom. In fact, the idea of travelers relying on hospitality suggests a larger view of human relations, with the expectation that one might easily find themselves in a larger social universe and needing to behave in that larger community in such a way as to merit respect and protection. The text also says much about the need to protect oneself in potentially dangerous situations, so this is not all sweetness and light, but the focus is on protecting oneself, not attacking or provoking others.
I would therefore argue that there are thus at least two ways to interpret this text as regards social relations and hospitality. One way, which I have found often expressed among today's Heathens, is a conservative, suspicious view of the social universe, stressing the need to be on guard, ready to defend one's property, honor and person, hand on the hilt, finger on the trigger. Hospitality in this perspective is to be limited to those who prove worthy of close companionship. My own, alternative way of interpreting the text is to see it as arguing for the benefits of securing an ever-wider circle of friendly relations through behaving graciously and honorably both as guest and as host, whether at home in one's own neighborhood, or anywhere else one might travel to.
Having lived in different countries and not always been sure where I stood with those I met or broke bread with, I can certainly vouch for the practical value of this viewpoint. Beyond that, though, I perceive in this the kernel of a notion of universal compassion and self-transcendence. We are all vulnerable creatures in need of others' help from time to time; and we all have the opportunity, if not indeed the obligation, to treat well, and if possible provide assistance to those whose paths cross our own, both for the practical fact that good relations may redound to our benefit in the future, but also because it is the right thing to do by any reasonable moral analysis of the human condition that goes beyond simple selfishness and greed. Considering our mutual vulnerability and dependence can help us develop compassion, not unlike that preached by the Buddha. And, just as compassion in Buddhism serves as both moral value and spiritual discipline, this expanded sense of hospitality can connect us to a larger world that brings us beyond our everyday, limited view of who we are and who we belong to or are obligated toward.
Of course, this is just one man's view of how Norse Pagan lore MIGHT be interpreted and its meaning expanded upon in a certain direction. I would never claim this is the only meaning or "the" true meaning. We must each make of these things what we will, and I do not scorn or blame those who disagree with my thinking or sit back, shake their heads and laugh at my words. As your host on this page, I encourage you to enjoy yourselves as you see fit. Have a laugh on me if you like.
I would however offer certain additional points in favor of my "Buddhistic" version of Norse Pagan morality. It seems to me that in the mythology of Odin, there are hints that can lead us to such a broader view of morality, self and universe.
Odin is first of all a constantly wandering god who acquires much of his wisdom and abilities through interaction with other beings in the universe. He does not stay at home, sitting on his throne, safely protected behind the walls of Asgard, and close off his relations to those outside his tribe or circle of trusted associates. He is always open, always voyaging, always learning. If we take this aspect of Odin as any kind of moral signpost, it is one which points us away from closed or narrow conceptions of our place in the world.
Then there is the myth of the death of Odin's son, Baldur. Without the warrior bravado that is indeed quite common in Norse mythology, this death is presented as a terrible tragedy that is an occasion for deep mourning. Indeed, the Prose Edda version of the myth tells us that if all living beings had shared in weeping for Baldur, he might have been saved from death, but a grim giantess, the trickster Loki in drag disguise, refused to cooperate, and so Baldur stayed among the dead in hell (Hel). What is this tale if not a provocative illustration of the need for universal compassion?
Of course, the narrow-minded could argue that the myth only tells us that the death of Baldur merited widespread tears; perhaps in the case of others, their suffering or death is of no concern, and we should all just take care of our own and to Hel with everybody else. This seems to me an extremely hard-hearted, if not thick-headed view of the text, and so I prefer the alternate view, seeing this incident as another possible Norse kernel of compassion.
My third example is of Odin's shamanistic self-torture on the tree of Yggdrasil, slashing and hanging himself in nine days and nights of agony in order to receive the magical wisdom of the runes. Why does he undergo such a wretched ordeal? To get the wisdom, of course, but what, and who is this wisdom for? It is to be shared with others, to help mankind and perhaps other beings as well. Killing and then reviving himself, he transcends himself, with the ultimate goal of aiding others. This parallels both Christ on the cross, as often noted, but also Buddha under the Bodhi tree.
Similarly, his position as the master of the warrior-hall of Valhalla is ultimately for the purpose of protecting mankind. Of course, the warriors there gathered are practicing the arts of war, not chanting Buddhist sutras, but the ultimate aim is to save the world, not to win glory or goods in war. As Odin has foreknowledge of the world's destiny, it would seem he knows that the whole enterprise is doomed to failure, Odin himself fated to fall against the Wolf, but he persists in preparing nonetheless. In this, he is like a Bodhisattva who undergoes self-sacrifice for the sake of others, even if the others may be deluded, unreasonable, or self-destructive.
And in the end, the world is miraculously renewed, but it is not restored by force of arms. The great battle is unsuccessful, the greatest warriors fail, but after all who fight have fallen and all seems lost, the world reemeerges, fresh and green. There is hope beyond war. I would argue that this sequence of events might even represent a critique of war, suggesting that war can destroy the world, for sure, but it cannot save it.
On this point, I would note that most people in the Viking period were not glorious warriors, but farmers, craftsmen and fishermen, who might well have dreaded rather than glorified war and violence. They might have enjoyed Viking war poems and myths in much the same way your average Joe today enjoys watching war movies and police programs, as colorful, larger-than-life entertainments, but not necessarily as a serious guide as to how to conduct themselves in daily life. I find it quite interesting that Thor, the most macho of Norse gods, the god who is famous for crushing giants' skulls with his hammer, is also the god who receives the most mocking and humorous treatment in such texts as the Thrymskvida . His hammer is oddly short in the handle, a little bit lacking in a way that Dr. Freud might find most interesting. Perhaps this also tells us something about alternate views of violence and war in the imagination of the authors and audiences of the Norse myths. Also, laughing is known to induce a sense of common human foibles and frailty, another step on the path to compassion.
These are just a few hints that I feel suggest the possibility of a moral system in Norse paganism that was, is and can be more than just tribal ethics or a code of warrior honor, as Norse Pagan morality is often taken to be, but include a vision of the world animated by a self-transcending sense of compassion, like other great religious traditions.
I would not deny at all that my interpretations here push Norse Paganism beyond what it is commonly thought to be. This is definitely not a strict and traditionalist reading, and I do not pretend that it is such. I believe this expansion and amplification of the meaning of Pagan tradition is, however, justifiable in light of a critical historical fact: that the natural development of Norse Paganism was interrupted at a rather early point by the rise to dominance of Christianity in Europe. I believe that the strongly martial character of many Norse texts may have more to do with the social conditions of the late Pagan age, when war with Christian forces was an overwhelming reality, than an essentially warlike cast to Norse Paganism. The points in the myths where war fails, where the war gods are ridiculous, where there is laughter and weeping, suggest something more to me. I furthermore would assert the view that if Norse Paganism had been able to survive the Christian onslaught and continue to develop in conditions of peace and tolerance, it would have taken on new forms and embraced a larger view of the world, a world beyond war and conflict, in which the more spiritual and compassionate sides would have been given greater play.
Today, we have the opportunity to undertake such further development, to start imagining further extensions and directions, including borrowing from other traditions and perspectives, possibly even Buddhism. Though the more traditional minded might find this heretical, I would point out that there is indeed precedence for such borrowing. The Germanic tribes and Vikings borrowed much from the Roman world, including the runes, which many scholars believe to have been modeled on the Roman alphabet. The gods' mighty fortress of Asgard may well have been modeled on the then-impregnable fortress of Constantinople, where King Harald served in the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor for a time. Most interestingly, a small Buddhist figurine was found in a Viking hoard in Sweden in the eighth century, no doubt acquired through Viking trading across Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Though it was most likely simply collected as an exotic bauble, perhaps there was something more to it than that?
Make of it what you will.
Peace.
Anger turns to Despair
The Political Pagan thanks his readers for their comments on the last post about Obama, and wishes to clarify a few points. First of all, PoP` (as the Political Pagan is sometimes referred to; not to be confused with "Pol Pot," though the pronunciation is indeed similar) is well aware that Obama never promised during his campaign or since to wind down the war in Afghanistan as he did with the American occupation of Iraq. However, PoPa did not think that Obama would follow quite so Bushian (or Cheney-esque) a path, or try so hard to be seen as John McCain's little brown brother, in making war his top priority.
Obama has refused to stand up and fight for important domestic initiatives like a public works-job creation program or a health insurance "public option," instead giving every indication that he is willing to bargain away 50-75% of anything that he believes or once believed in. On the health reform issue, he promised from an early point in the discussions that he would make sure that whatever reform emerged would be "revenue-neutral," a position that ensured we would end up with a watered-down, corporate-friendly piece of shit, which is what we are now left with, after months of fruitless negotiations conspicuously lacking in strong Presidential leadership.
If Obama had been willing to make a strong moral argument for national health care, for example, "As Americans, we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers, we have a moral responsibility to take care of each other, and so I am going to insist on a robust national health care policy that takes care of every American, whether powerful interests like the health insurance lobby like it or not," it would have been a much stronger case for serious health care reform. Instead, he let himself and his party get boxed into a fiscal cul-de-sac that cut off any serious hope of reform: "We will achieve health care reform as long as it does not cost anything." Well, you get what you pay for. Ever since that moment, the main point of opposition to any such reform has been that whatever plan is put forward will be "too expensive," will "bust the budget," etc. The same cost-conscious logic was allowed to strip last winter's economic stimulus plan of job-creating schemes, which might have given some real money and real hope to the growing hordes of unemployed, underemployed and foreclosed Americans.
This concern with so-called "fiscal responsibility" would be an easier pill to swallow if it were also applied to another major area of government expenditure, military spending. Here, however, cost is no object, and budget-busting is no crime. While every health care reform plan put forward has been run through the rigorous number-crunching mill of the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to have its future costs dissected, the costs of Obama's escalation of the war effort in Afghanistan have been strangely exempt from such cost-conscious critiques. The lesson the American public is taught is this: national health care and jobs creation programs cannot be allowed, because they are too expensive, but the war in Afghanistan, including its worrisome expansion into Pakistan via CIA and JSOC drone attacks, is worth every billion.
This is where Obama most infuriates and disappoints PoPa. I see a terrible imbalance in his priorities, giving half-hearted support and weak-kneed leadership for domestic programs, but going to the mat for unlimited war. If the President had been as definite and insistent about health care or job creation programs as he has been about expanding the war in Afghanistan, it might have helped sway the corporate ass-kissing democrats in Congress to support such initiatives rather than look for ways to undermine them while pretending to support them. Imagine if Obama had gone before Congress and said, "I will veto any health care plan that does not include a public option," with the kind of decisiveness he showed in defending his Afghan war policy at West Point and in Oslo.
In short, Obama's greater emphasis on military spending than domestic programs is NOT what he campaigned on. He gave every impression we were going to get something very different from Bush policies, and instead, what we are getting is Bush in blackface. Let's not forget that the corporate and financial bail-outs began under Bush, and have been continued without any great modification under Obama. After a year of horrible unemployment and unending foreclosures, Obama has not produced much in the way of new policies or programs dramatically different from those of his predecessor. As an educator, PoPa has very sadly conclused that their education policies are nearly indistinguishable, looking to increased standardized testing and charter schools as magic bullet solutions, rather than facing the larger issues of chronic underfunding of education across the country.
Both Presidents, as well as Clinton before them, have proven to be all too beholden to corporate interests, whether these be the corporate interests of Wall Street, or those of the military-industrial complex from Blackwater to Halliburton, and all too willing to reply to the problems of economically stressed Americans with flimsy promises and optimistic rhetoric divorced from concrete action. When Obama had his chat with the heads of the leading financial service and banking companies, and urged them to do more to lend to small businesses to create more jobs, I had a sickening sense of deja vu. This is just the kind of thing Bush used to do. It makes for nice public relations, but is there anything else to it?
PoPa also feels that Obama is sadly contradicting himself on his former desire to move American foreign policy into a more diplomatic and multilateral, less militaristic and unilateral direction. His insistence that Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran must do what America wants, and never mind their own political, economic and national security concerns and needs, is not exactly a shining example of multilateral diplomacy. Sure, he is doing some of that, but as long as he pursues a war-mongering policy in Afghanistan, his Nobel Peace Prize is going to become an increasingly ironic honor.
Obama and Bush, buddies in war. Eisenhower was right: "Beware the military industrial complex." I don't think we need to have elections anymore. Just have the Supreme Court appoint a President from the military, and a Vice-President from Wall Street, and the result will be much like what we now refer to as "democracy."
Obama has refused to stand up and fight for important domestic initiatives like a public works-job creation program or a health insurance "public option," instead giving every indication that he is willing to bargain away 50-75% of anything that he believes or once believed in. On the health reform issue, he promised from an early point in the discussions that he would make sure that whatever reform emerged would be "revenue-neutral," a position that ensured we would end up with a watered-down, corporate-friendly piece of shit, which is what we are now left with, after months of fruitless negotiations conspicuously lacking in strong Presidential leadership.
If Obama had been willing to make a strong moral argument for national health care, for example, "As Americans, we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers, we have a moral responsibility to take care of each other, and so I am going to insist on a robust national health care policy that takes care of every American, whether powerful interests like the health insurance lobby like it or not," it would have been a much stronger case for serious health care reform. Instead, he let himself and his party get boxed into a fiscal cul-de-sac that cut off any serious hope of reform: "We will achieve health care reform as long as it does not cost anything." Well, you get what you pay for. Ever since that moment, the main point of opposition to any such reform has been that whatever plan is put forward will be "too expensive," will "bust the budget," etc. The same cost-conscious logic was allowed to strip last winter's economic stimulus plan of job-creating schemes, which might have given some real money and real hope to the growing hordes of unemployed, underemployed and foreclosed Americans.
This concern with so-called "fiscal responsibility" would be an easier pill to swallow if it were also applied to another major area of government expenditure, military spending. Here, however, cost is no object, and budget-busting is no crime. While every health care reform plan put forward has been run through the rigorous number-crunching mill of the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to have its future costs dissected, the costs of Obama's escalation of the war effort in Afghanistan have been strangely exempt from such cost-conscious critiques. The lesson the American public is taught is this: national health care and jobs creation programs cannot be allowed, because they are too expensive, but the war in Afghanistan, including its worrisome expansion into Pakistan via CIA and JSOC drone attacks, is worth every billion.
This is where Obama most infuriates and disappoints PoPa. I see a terrible imbalance in his priorities, giving half-hearted support and weak-kneed leadership for domestic programs, but going to the mat for unlimited war. If the President had been as definite and insistent about health care or job creation programs as he has been about expanding the war in Afghanistan, it might have helped sway the corporate ass-kissing democrats in Congress to support such initiatives rather than look for ways to undermine them while pretending to support them. Imagine if Obama had gone before Congress and said, "I will veto any health care plan that does not include a public option," with the kind of decisiveness he showed in defending his Afghan war policy at West Point and in Oslo.
In short, Obama's greater emphasis on military spending than domestic programs is NOT what he campaigned on. He gave every impression we were going to get something very different from Bush policies, and instead, what we are getting is Bush in blackface. Let's not forget that the corporate and financial bail-outs began under Bush, and have been continued without any great modification under Obama. After a year of horrible unemployment and unending foreclosures, Obama has not produced much in the way of new policies or programs dramatically different from those of his predecessor. As an educator, PoPa has very sadly conclused that their education policies are nearly indistinguishable, looking to increased standardized testing and charter schools as magic bullet solutions, rather than facing the larger issues of chronic underfunding of education across the country.
Both Presidents, as well as Clinton before them, have proven to be all too beholden to corporate interests, whether these be the corporate interests of Wall Street, or those of the military-industrial complex from Blackwater to Halliburton, and all too willing to reply to the problems of economically stressed Americans with flimsy promises and optimistic rhetoric divorced from concrete action. When Obama had his chat with the heads of the leading financial service and banking companies, and urged them to do more to lend to small businesses to create more jobs, I had a sickening sense of deja vu. This is just the kind of thing Bush used to do. It makes for nice public relations, but is there anything else to it?
PoPa also feels that Obama is sadly contradicting himself on his former desire to move American foreign policy into a more diplomatic and multilateral, less militaristic and unilateral direction. His insistence that Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran must do what America wants, and never mind their own political, economic and national security concerns and needs, is not exactly a shining example of multilateral diplomacy. Sure, he is doing some of that, but as long as he pursues a war-mongering policy in Afghanistan, his Nobel Peace Prize is going to become an increasingly ironic honor.
Obama and Bush, buddies in war. Eisenhower was right: "Beware the military industrial complex." I don't think we need to have elections anymore. Just have the Supreme Court appoint a President from the military, and a Vice-President from Wall Street, and the result will be much like what we now refer to as "democracy."
Labels:
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Barack Obama,
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John McCain,
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Rejecting Racism and Tribalism
In an interview Tuesday night, 15th September 2009, on NBC news, former President Jimmy Carter gave a courageous political analysis in which he asserted that racism lay at the root of some of the most vociferous opposition to President Obama that has been erupting in recent months in strange,furious and feverish forms, like the notion of some that he is not really an American, has a phony birth certificate, is actually an African, or is actually a Muslim, etc. etc. I have long believed President Carter to be one of the most sincere, intelligent and far-sighted leaders America has ever had, as evidenced by his ability to guide peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt to a successful conclusion back in 1978, and his declaration of the need for America to radically rethink its approach to energy consumption in light of the energy crises of the 1970s. He put in place all manner of programs to promote alternative energy, wind power, solar power, and so forth, charting a course that could have led us to energy independence if such forward-looking programs had not been discontinued by Ronald Reagan and never fully revived by any subsequent president.
To come back to the present time, I think Carter has once again spoken out with characteristic intelligence and insight about a very troubling social problem that continues to plague America: the legacy of racism that never seems to completely disappear, only to go underground and mutate into new forms. Back when many white liberals like myself were jumping for joy that a black American could finally be accepted as a serious candidate for the presidency, many of my African-American friends and colleagues were concerned about what might happen if Obama were to actually succeed in becoming president. Their concerns ranged from fear that he would be assassinated to less clearly defined worries that there would be some kind of backlash against Barack Obama coming from angry white Americans experiencing "fear of a black planet." In the exhilaration of Obama's successful campaign and the afterglow that followed his election, I tended to dismiss their anxieties. Now I understand better what their antennae were picking up on.
As a Pagan, I want no part of this. My anger at these recent eruptions of racism puts steel in my spine to call for any and all Pagans who have an ounce of conscience and any capacity for empathy and self-reflection to take very seriously the dangerous potential for forms of Paganism derived from native European religious traditions to take on racist overtones and become vehicles for racism, even if--ESPECIALLY BECAUSE--this may happen unintentionally and unconsciously.
I am confident that the vast majority of Pagans I have known either in Norse or Baltic Pagan groups or other forms as well are not racists and bear no ill will toward people with non-European ethnic backgrounds. However, the problem of unintentional and unconscious racism arises when Pagan religious groups formally or informally define their religious communities in ways that exclude or discourage people from other ethnic backgrounds from joining in as full and equal members, even if the exclusion is unintentional or unconscious. I would argue that such exclusion includes NOT INVITING people of other backgrounds. In an often racially polarized world, some effort to reach out is necessary if you actually want to form relations across racial barriers and boundaries.
To my thinking, Asatru/Heathenry/Norse Paganism has a special responsibility in this area because the Norse Pagan tradition was--it cannot be denied--used by the Nazis in the past to support their cruel and vicious racial policies. It is true that this was a horrible twisting of Scandinavian and Germanic folklore and mythology, and I am working on a project to specifically denounce this kind of falsification and manipulation, but the fact is, the legacy was established, and now needs to be fully deconstructed and rejected at every opportunity. Assuming the Norse gods have any need at all for anything from humans, I think they would appreciate having their reputation defended more than almost any kind of offering that might be presented to them. This remains an urgent matter today because modern-day far right and neo-Nazi groups continue to make allusions to Norse gods and traditions, and to not fight back against that kind of appropriation could be perceived by the wider public as a tacit or indirect endorsement. I know some Heathens or Asatruar get sick of hearing about this issue, but I think this is truly a sacred duty, which we shirk at our peril.
Furthermore, I would argue that the idea among many Pagans, particularly though not only Heathens, that their project of reconstructing ancient, pre-Christian religious traditions should include some attempt at recreating the tribal society of ancient times, is a misguided and dangerous idea that plays right into the hands of hard right racism and neo-Nazism, like it or not. This passion for tribalism seems to be particularly strong in the USA, and I have been less aware of it in my discussions with Northern European Pagans, but I imagine it exists in other places as well. The argument is, the old religion was followed by people living in tribal communities, so we should do the same. Well, I would say, hold on a minute. The old religion was practiced by people who practiced human sacrifice, by people who had slaves, by people who followed a medieval lifestyle without electricity, without plumbing, without computers, electronic entertainment, or pizza, without any number of things that we take for granted, including the English language, and I do not see that it is necessary for us to completely recreate all of that lifestyle in order to participate in spiritual traditions laid out in ancient myths and other sources.
We no longer live in a closed, tribal world, and I believe that most people, including most Pagans, would agree that we are far the better off for it. Our range of social and cultural opportunities is infinitely rich and stimulating, and why would we want to purposely reject that and seek a more insular and limited way of life? What is the great attraction of tribalism? I fear that in some cases, it is....racism. Perhaps unconscious racism based simply on a discomfort with "different" people, but racism nonetheless. The desire to shut out diversity, to be only with "one's own kind," to conceive of and believe in gods that supposedly only care about people of "our" ethnic background.
As I understand old European myths, they are not racially oriented. They speak of cosmic realities, not tribal boundaries. In the Norse tradition, Yggdrasil is the "world tree," not the Norwegian or German tree. It shelters ALL beings, not just certain fair-skinned people with blond hair, blue eyes and a limitless hunger for herring. Odin is called the "All-father;" what is the "all" about? These are just two examples of how there are strands in Norse tradition, as in other European traditions, that suggest a movement toward very broad thinking and universalism even in ancient times.
However, I will acknowledge that it is certainly possible to interpret the old gods and religious traditions in a narrow, tribal way, with respect to the undeniable fact that these old traditions were often only followed within certain regions, among certain groups of people who shared a common language, who had often lived in the same villages for many generations. My feeling, though, is that an originally tribal, medieval religion transplanted to modern times need not remain tribal and medieval, but can and should be adapted to the conditions of modern society, which are globalized and multiethnic.
I know that some of my old Pagan friends and acquaintances may disagree with my desire for a multiethnic Paganism, and I accept their right to have that point of view, and to be as medieval and tribal as they please, but I hope they will listen to the more basic point that unless they are able to intelligently, convincingly and consistently reject racism and explain why their ethnically exclusive Paganism is not a form of racism, the more will they earn a reputation as either actual or at least unconscious racists. Again, I am NOT saying that these people are racists. I am saying that appearances are important, and that when we are called to account, we all need to be able to explain ourselves, and to act in ways that match our proclamations. Simply saying "We are not racists!" means little if it is not matched by actions that counter racism, or if it is obviously contradicted by actions that suggest racism.
I am however determined to develop a different Pagan path, and I am grateful that on this blog, I am meeting up with people who share a similar perspective. I pledge myself to the effort to move Beyond Tribalism and Toward Universalism. Can this be done with an originally European-based Paganism? Yes, I think so, and future entries will explore this, hopefully with the active input of blog readers.
To come back to the present time, I think Carter has once again spoken out with characteristic intelligence and insight about a very troubling social problem that continues to plague America: the legacy of racism that never seems to completely disappear, only to go underground and mutate into new forms. Back when many white liberals like myself were jumping for joy that a black American could finally be accepted as a serious candidate for the presidency, many of my African-American friends and colleagues were concerned about what might happen if Obama were to actually succeed in becoming president. Their concerns ranged from fear that he would be assassinated to less clearly defined worries that there would be some kind of backlash against Barack Obama coming from angry white Americans experiencing "fear of a black planet." In the exhilaration of Obama's successful campaign and the afterglow that followed his election, I tended to dismiss their anxieties. Now I understand better what their antennae were picking up on.
As a Pagan, I want no part of this. My anger at these recent eruptions of racism puts steel in my spine to call for any and all Pagans who have an ounce of conscience and any capacity for empathy and self-reflection to take very seriously the dangerous potential for forms of Paganism derived from native European religious traditions to take on racist overtones and become vehicles for racism, even if--ESPECIALLY BECAUSE--this may happen unintentionally and unconsciously.
I am confident that the vast majority of Pagans I have known either in Norse or Baltic Pagan groups or other forms as well are not racists and bear no ill will toward people with non-European ethnic backgrounds. However, the problem of unintentional and unconscious racism arises when Pagan religious groups formally or informally define their religious communities in ways that exclude or discourage people from other ethnic backgrounds from joining in as full and equal members, even if the exclusion is unintentional or unconscious. I would argue that such exclusion includes NOT INVITING people of other backgrounds. In an often racially polarized world, some effort to reach out is necessary if you actually want to form relations across racial barriers and boundaries.
To my thinking, Asatru/Heathenry/Norse Paganism has a special responsibility in this area because the Norse Pagan tradition was--it cannot be denied--used by the Nazis in the past to support their cruel and vicious racial policies. It is true that this was a horrible twisting of Scandinavian and Germanic folklore and mythology, and I am working on a project to specifically denounce this kind of falsification and manipulation, but the fact is, the legacy was established, and now needs to be fully deconstructed and rejected at every opportunity. Assuming the Norse gods have any need at all for anything from humans, I think they would appreciate having their reputation defended more than almost any kind of offering that might be presented to them. This remains an urgent matter today because modern-day far right and neo-Nazi groups continue to make allusions to Norse gods and traditions, and to not fight back against that kind of appropriation could be perceived by the wider public as a tacit or indirect endorsement. I know some Heathens or Asatruar get sick of hearing about this issue, but I think this is truly a sacred duty, which we shirk at our peril.
Furthermore, I would argue that the idea among many Pagans, particularly though not only Heathens, that their project of reconstructing ancient, pre-Christian religious traditions should include some attempt at recreating the tribal society of ancient times, is a misguided and dangerous idea that plays right into the hands of hard right racism and neo-Nazism, like it or not. This passion for tribalism seems to be particularly strong in the USA, and I have been less aware of it in my discussions with Northern European Pagans, but I imagine it exists in other places as well. The argument is, the old religion was followed by people living in tribal communities, so we should do the same. Well, I would say, hold on a minute. The old religion was practiced by people who practiced human sacrifice, by people who had slaves, by people who followed a medieval lifestyle without electricity, without plumbing, without computers, electronic entertainment, or pizza, without any number of things that we take for granted, including the English language, and I do not see that it is necessary for us to completely recreate all of that lifestyle in order to participate in spiritual traditions laid out in ancient myths and other sources.
We no longer live in a closed, tribal world, and I believe that most people, including most Pagans, would agree that we are far the better off for it. Our range of social and cultural opportunities is infinitely rich and stimulating, and why would we want to purposely reject that and seek a more insular and limited way of life? What is the great attraction of tribalism? I fear that in some cases, it is....racism. Perhaps unconscious racism based simply on a discomfort with "different" people, but racism nonetheless. The desire to shut out diversity, to be only with "one's own kind," to conceive of and believe in gods that supposedly only care about people of "our" ethnic background.
As I understand old European myths, they are not racially oriented. They speak of cosmic realities, not tribal boundaries. In the Norse tradition, Yggdrasil is the "world tree," not the Norwegian or German tree. It shelters ALL beings, not just certain fair-skinned people with blond hair, blue eyes and a limitless hunger for herring. Odin is called the "All-father;" what is the "all" about? These are just two examples of how there are strands in Norse tradition, as in other European traditions, that suggest a movement toward very broad thinking and universalism even in ancient times.
However, I will acknowledge that it is certainly possible to interpret the old gods and religious traditions in a narrow, tribal way, with respect to the undeniable fact that these old traditions were often only followed within certain regions, among certain groups of people who shared a common language, who had often lived in the same villages for many generations. My feeling, though, is that an originally tribal, medieval religion transplanted to modern times need not remain tribal and medieval, but can and should be adapted to the conditions of modern society, which are globalized and multiethnic.
I know that some of my old Pagan friends and acquaintances may disagree with my desire for a multiethnic Paganism, and I accept their right to have that point of view, and to be as medieval and tribal as they please, but I hope they will listen to the more basic point that unless they are able to intelligently, convincingly and consistently reject racism and explain why their ethnically exclusive Paganism is not a form of racism, the more will they earn a reputation as either actual or at least unconscious racists. Again, I am NOT saying that these people are racists. I am saying that appearances are important, and that when we are called to account, we all need to be able to explain ourselves, and to act in ways that match our proclamations. Simply saying "We are not racists!" means little if it is not matched by actions that counter racism, or if it is obviously contradicted by actions that suggest racism.
I am however determined to develop a different Pagan path, and I am grateful that on this blog, I am meeting up with people who share a similar perspective. I pledge myself to the effort to move Beyond Tribalism and Toward Universalism. Can this be done with an originally European-based Paganism? Yes, I think so, and future entries will explore this, hopefully with the active input of blog readers.
Labels:
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Asatru. Heathenry,
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