Solidarity. The question is this (and I know that you will have something insightful to write): Now that the woke among us have revealed more than obviously that they are the Joe McCarthy, what do we do?
It all does seem to exist on a continuum, doesn't it?
It's like a reordering of civic life/international community with very vague memories of 20th century history, gleaned quickly from the Internet or movies, as a guide.
Love this invitation Rhyd. I’ll contribute with another invitation, evacuate immediately from all social media. Avoid any news reports that smell off. Do a deep dive into your own confirmation bias. Go into the woods if you can and watch moss grow. Read more poetry. Dance in the kitchen while you make dinner. Hug more people. Make more eye contact. Boycott screens and establish a rich inner life. Practice gratitude. Forgive yourself.
Make more eye contact. Make more eye contact. Make more eye contact. I write this from Italy, where eye contact is the national sport--and much fun. Eye contact is also how Italian women rule their space and how Italian men get across certain ideas--like the bancarella where I buy fruits and vegetables--where eye contact can mean, So that's one roasted beet and two broccoli...
I write this having come from the U S of A where, "s/he's looking at me" is a childhood complaint and where the distorting "theory" of the Male Gaze ("he's looking at me!") still has some purchase.
I'm in agreement about the economic sanctions. It only hurts those who don't have easy access to money. I wonder about where folks will place blame though - I feel like in Canada or the US, people would be more inclined to blame their own leadership rather than foreign leadership, but of course there's always divide.
I'm struggling with some of the undertones referring to the convoy and emergencies act - I know you've written about the convoy before. From where I'm sitting and the history behind the group that was leading the convoy, there was significant risk of a violent coup to justify action after weeks of inaction. Was it over the top? Yes, for sure. Was there other options? I'm not sure.
I'm also not one to follow "populist morality" especially when it comes to government restrictions, but when there's significant evidence to back the action that government it taking, would that action not be justified? Is opposition for the sake of opposition, especially in the case of public health, not a risk in itself?
Just some thoughts. Thanks as always for your perspective as it almost always unearths some re-evaluation of personal opinions ;)
I find it very helpful to look at these questions of government policy from their viewpoint and ask more questions from there.
So, for example with the COVID protests and mandates. Here in Europe, we saw very intense protests often ending in arrests and police violence. The country where I live now used water cannons on protesters for the first time in its history as a modern nation.
But in the last week, many of these countries have all announced an end to the restrictions, exactly what those protesters were demanding. No more masks here starting next week, no more digital vaccine passports, no more fines for having too many people in your house for a birthday party, etc.
Canada is doing something similar (many of the regional mandates are ending just this week, from what I understand).
So, if the government was already going to do this, why crackdown so hard on protesters there and over here?
From a State-view, the answer is obvious. Governments which give in to demand from below appear weak to their citizens, and those citizens will begin to exert more influence over the State. That's of course how democracy is supposed to work, but it actually cannot if States wish to accumulate and hold on to excess power.
So, governments had to crush the protests by whatever means necessary--even though they were going to implement the exact demands anyway--in order to hold on to their excess power.
In total agreement, I'm just not sure that's what happened in Ottawa. They let the protests go on for as long as possible until they were causing issues with day to day life for a good part of the province (blocking bridges, horns blaring all night). There action to dismantle the occupation/protest (because it was somewhere between these two things for most people involved) was mostly non-violent and they ended the emergencies act as soon as people were out of the downtown core.
I strongly believe in the right to protest. I am strongly against the use of force by the state to silence people. I am on board with you there. I worry because I see people jumping to conclusions and using comparison or metaphor to form opinions about what's happening in specific instances around the world.
I'm still sussing out a lot of thoughts around these topics but I'm starting to feel like it's important to call a spade a spade (speaking of metaphor) and not be too quick to sweep all instances into the same boat. Yes, let's condemn state violence. Yes, let's make sure that authority isn't restricting personal freedoms. But let's also recognize the nuance to each situation and not assume that all state violence and all restrictions are mirrors of each other.
I'm spitballing ideas that are just starting to form and appreciate a safe space in with to discuss them. Does that make any sense?
Yeah, absolutely. Again, this is a very big "elephant" and none of us can really accurately understand how everything is connected yet. The Canada situation may have been different, or may have not, or may even have been part of some other elephant in a different room that we don't even know exists yet. We won't really know for awhile, if we ever even know at all...
I see them all as fairly strongly connected. I think there are two big reasons for this:
1. Many of the protests of the last few years have been fairly misguided in my opinion. There has been very little effort expended on trying to persuade people outside of a fairly small echo chamber. When the state inevitably cracks down on the protest, you haven't created an environment where more people are sympathetic to the position and horrified when the state action starts.
2. Feelings of insecurity and anxiety are on the rise in many places. The 2008 financial crisis (and ongoing aftershocks), rising income inequality, the COVID pandemic... There are a ton of material conditions in recent history that one can point to which would make a person feel insecure even in wealthy countries. This is the sort of environment that can readily draw people towards authoritarian solutions.
I think from the state view things have gone pretty swimmingly; the protests haven't built sympathy and many people (who may already be inclined towards accepting authoritarian solutions already) look to the state to get rid of the protestors for them. And the state can happily oblige, reinforcing or expanding its power.
From a conversation with a psychic friend who recently dreamed about Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and the embodiment/goddess of the land, who is naked and trapped in Putin's house: the house is rickety, the electrical wiring is dangerous, Putin wants to have sex with her but he is scared and has erectile dysfunction. She both fears him and has compassion for him, because the electrical circuits could blow up the whole house and everyone in it, including Putin himself. We are on a knife's edge and we must try to hold the balance. Don't let it tip.
I do think we need to start using 'oligarcy' for the US as well as Russia. Speaking of which, did you hear about Elon Musk's Skype chat with Zelensky? The Ukrainian president literally contacting a 'foreign oligarch...'
I just looked up Musks conversation. Yeah that is contacting foreign oligarchs if anything is.
I agree about 'US oligarchs'. These are scary fucking times, but the time is also opportune to seeding that into the vocabulary. It sounds so natural, as if it's supposed to be there.
Funny, isn't it, how the Russians have 'oligarchs' but we in the West have - well, what do we have? Seems to me that the US has been run by oligarchs for a century or so. What are we calling Zuckerberg, Soros, Gates and CLinton these days?
This wasn't my dream or my interpretation, nor did it make any claim to be the whole picture. It is a piece of a tapestry, a small offering from a particular perspective that speaks from somewhere other than the usual left brain political punditry.
It speaks to the 'Putin is a madman whose actions are inspired by his personal neurosis and thus inexplicable' narrative that you find in any MSM publication and which is the opposite of reality.
Politics is left brain. These a ruthlessly intelligent, very rational people, whose actions aren't happening in a vacuum and aren't inexplicable at all if you're willing to use your own left brain. The psychic friend should read some leftist anti imperialist theory and her psychic dreams might be inspired by reality.
LOL, so if we read enough leftist anti-imperialist theory, our subconscious will be protected from uncomfortable dreams? Hmmm, I don't think that's how dreams work. :D
I think a lot about the issue of Sovereignty from a pagan perspective. Used to be the sovereigns were chosen by the land through the druids and priests, now they are elected by the people, but ultimately the land still has the final say on the fate of those rulers through manifestations of drought, storm, famine, etc.
very nice metaphor for what is happening. I agree with you. There is a powerful energy/force/event moving through the world's human population (and as well through all our kindred species). ALL of us feel it, how we respond to it differs depending on a great many factors, from where we live in the world to our individual characters to our particular cultural myths. We are like elephants feeling the tsunami coming and heading for higher ground. Only in our case we have no idea where higher ground is, so people seize on whatever they can that they feel will make them safe. They are looking to restore intelligible order to the world around them. And the fault for what is happening lies elsewhere of course, so if only THOSE people would change in THIS way, all would be find.
But it won't of course. Because the underlying foundation of human civilization has been undone. Earth is not an inexhaustible resource for extraction by unrestrained corporations. Nor is Earth an amusement park for our enjoyment. Earth is in fact a nonlinear, self-organizing, emergent life form which we destabilize at our peril. And we have destabilized it past the point of no return.
When any non-linear living system begins to destabilize (from planets, to local ecosystems, to individual organ systems, they send out a signal. And those signals are felt with a part of us far deeper than the rational mind. We still have that capacity, just as elephants and other life forms do. We FEEL the signal but it doesn't fit into either rationalist or monotheist myth structures. (Well, except for end time narratives as Pat Robertson recently reminded the world.)
We live in a time when the majority of people in the western world believe that it is possible to rationally control both nature and civilization, to rationally control and direct human behavior, including our own. But nature is not rational, nor is it irrational. It is nonrational. Rational behavior is based on a set of assumptions that are accepted as foundational. From there rational decisions are made. But IF those assumptions are inaccurate to the real world, that is the world that underlies the virtual world of our civilization, eventually rational behavior will destabilize the foundational, real world itself. What is built on top of that, that is, civilization, destabilizes and eventually collapses.
That is what is happening now. Earth ecosystems all over the world have passed tipping points. Some wiser part of us knows it, feels the signal being given off by Earth itself. And people panic because rationality is failing. The paradigm used for the past two thousands years (monotheistic/rational) is collapsing because it is not accurate to the real world. (Most people do not realize that rationalists and their priests, scientists, are the most powerful of all the protestant sects; there is little difference in their cosmology.) And as John Ralston Saul put it (in Voltaire's Bastards: The Tyranny of Reason in the West) when their belief system and patterns of behavior fail, in that system, the belief is that you simply did not apply it STRONGLY enough and so the interventions are escalated in an attempt to reassert control. All that does is escalate systemic collapse. The more technological and rationalist mechanisms are forced on nonlinear systems in collapse, the faster and more complex the collapse.
So, your metaphor here is absolutely perfect. Everyone of us is touching (or being touched by) the elephant and everyone of us is describing the territory we are experiencing. Some of us have a very wide gaze, some more narrow. Nonetheless, none are complete. Standing back, however, as you have done here, reveals that the underlying dynamic is identical no matter who is doing the describing or promoting any particular response to what they are perceiving.
We are in a time when old systems are collapsing. Nothing is going to stop that process. The people we have depended on to run things, to be good governors, have failed in their job; they have failed us and our children and their children. As Aldo Leopold once said, "The first step in intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts." But instead they dissected the world to make all the stuff in which we are drowning, most of it from hydrocarbon modification (plastics to pharmaceuticals to food). People have been urging a different course for centuries but have been denigrated for doing so (unscientific, unchristian, anti-progress, anthropomorphizers). But all their warnings are now manifest, we are surrounded by collapse everywhere we look.
Earth systems change from the bottom up, all the kindred species in ecosystems working to solve their part of the problem utilizing their own unique genius. And that is what we need now, for humans to do the same. People such as you who write this blog, people like Greta, Bill Mollison, Masanobu Fukuoka, and on and on and on. And slowly a new way will come into the world.
But it is not going to be easy or safe or fun. Grief will be our companion on the journey, it is not something we can deal with and move on (as Lesley Head put it). Still, there must be those among whom we can weep and still be counted as warriors (adrienne rich). We, as Bill Mollison once put it, are members of a community unbounded by geography or time . . . or species. I have hope, but no optimism (false hope). Hope is a faith that comes from life itself, in the emergence of new generations of all our kindred species. For life, as Jeff Goldblum once immortalized it, finds a way.
thank you, stephenharrodbuhner.com has a variety of articles, as health permits. Much of that is, as well, in my new book Earth Grief, just out. Again, your comments, deeply appreciated.
Many thanks for this link. I was delighted to see that Rosemary Gladstar has recommended a couple of your books. She was my teacher back in the day. :)
I love this too and agree mostly except I don't believe that we are "past the point of no return"....it may appear that way now, but as you mention-- the Earth is non-linear and emergent. There is always something new that can spring into awareness to change everything in a real way. Change can be tedious or quantum, but anything is still possible. Just as in a Jungian view of fairy tales where you are every character-- we are the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armor. We are also the fairy godmother, the magic potion and the surprise arrival of the cavalry. It's just not over until it's over....we are the problem and the solution. "We're not dead yet" is about the closest thing to a rallying cry that I've got these days, but I use it often....
This seems spot on in many ways, but I disagree that what you call 'monotheist myth structures' can't feel or understand the signals of the breakdown. Certainly traditional Christianity (which is to say not the Pat Robertson variety you have in America) is well versed in it and has long warned of it. This is pretty much the result of eating apples in gardens on a daily basis, and putting human will before the will of God. The conseqeunces of that have long been forseen, and prophesied, as they have by other cultures too. Here we are.
Of course you can't agree; you have subsumed yourself into their myth. And that I find deplorable. Your last few sentences are merely a mouthing of portions of that inaccurate and simplistic myth structure that has been forced on the world's people through conversion by the sword. Had that not occurred, christianity would remain, what it truly is, only an odd, rather violent sect with few followers. (And btw, It is your European christianity that killed millions, destroyed cultures, took children from their mothers and cultures, cut their hair, denied them their language, and sent its most virulent forms here to the U.S. where we still have to deal with it. Until your religion takes full responsibility for the evil it has caused and no longer insists that it is the only true religion, you have nothing to say to me or to anyone else working to rectify the wrongs it has caused.)
Actually, I have spent some five decades studying christianity -- in serious depth. All pagans should understand the waters they swim in - as well as the software that has been embedded in them from childhood. So, I do know quite a lot about it. I am pretty sure from your comments that you do not. And wow, it sounds like you have some issues with Americans; i mean we all do look alike, don't we? How's Margaret Thatcher's social programs and Boris' leadership doing by the way?
In any event, I have read your work in depth as well though i am pretty sure you have not given mine the same attention. And most assuredly, I don't agree with your current positions on a number of issues. But most of all I disagree with your current (new believer) insistence on absolving christianity of its crimes, which the entire world continues to have to live and deal with. (Btw, How's those Irish orphanages doing? They keep finding children's bodies I understand; the Canadians seem to have found several hundred as well. Only the tip of the iceberg you know, there will be more. A lot more. Just a bit of blowback to mop up, I guess.)
If you are going to insist you are christian, then you might begin working to understand the bloody history you take upon yourself along with it and then start taking some responsibility for it. (Few christians do this, they just want to go on to heaven and get out of here, leave the fallen state and world that they so dislike.) You are part of that tribe now, you are tainted with their brush, just as all christians are. So, once again, clean up your own house and understand that there are millions of us who do not particularly like or agree with your myth, fewer are willing to remain silent about the damage it has done to our world and its peoples, to all its life forms.
There are only 2.5 billion christians in the world now because most of their ancestors were forced into it by the sword. (Perhaps you might study some christian history? Especially within the European states? There is in fact a new book out, the Darkening Age: the Christian destruction of the Classical World. It's by a passionate christian, btw. You might start with that one.)
Most christians, to be sure, are social christians. It is not a "faith" for them but merely social background. Some are fairly sincere (as are some of the monks i have spent time with in monasteries). But many are rather rabid believers in the warrior sect from which it comes and which jesus was attempting to moderate with his teachings.
Funny, our "imperial culture wars." Talking about kettle and color! In any event, you might begin practicing that christian charity that is so popular with your sect. And as well, learn to hear, with both heart and mind, the people that your new religious fervor seems to have overlooked. The ones who actually understand what they are talking about and as well the ones that your colleagues have damaged and who now live with that damage every day of their lives.
You seem to be a very angry man. All that I know about you is that my (Sikh) wife is currently reading one of your plant books. She's enjoying it. So I don't have the same issues with you that you seem to have with me - or rather your imagined version of me. If I did, I wouldn't express them like this. It's why I deleted my previous comment. Arguing about religion on the Internet is futile at the best of times. Best of luck to you.
Oh, this isn't angry, this is rigorous intellectual debate. But I do admire your capacity for projection. You have put yourself out there as a spokesman for the environment and ecology for a very long time, as such you are a public figure and should be able to endure rigorous (and strongly non-compliant) intellectual responses to your statements and work.
Please be clear here, you responded to me and my comments here and began a conversation about christianity and the apple (an absurd metaphor/analogy) as if it had some relevance to my points, it did not. Your reasoning was neither clear nor well thought out. A behavior that seems to be continuing.
Oddly enough, among the left, one of the default responses when this kind of interaction occurs is to engage in some form of gaslighting or displacement. that is, turning the conversion into some aspect of the other person's psychological behavior. ("You seem to be a very angry man" is legion and enjoys a wide popularity no matter the target.) It is a cheap trick but much in vogue among the left. The purpose is to shift the conversation away from the point to something entirely unrelated. I actually would have thought that after all your years in the public eye, you would have worked this particular tendency through.
I am not anti-religious, i am anti-monotheism. I am in fact deeply religious though i think the operative word really should be spiritual, religion tends to be so dogmatic, don't you think? And compassion and tolerance, who told you about that, the abraham fairy? Not sure you learned the lesson, wherever you heard it.
Why should we be tolerant? Christians provided the justification for the burning and torturing of at least a hundred thousand women in Europe, for rhe genocide against the Native Americans, and for the enslavement of Africans. Why exactly should we be tolerant? I'm sure you think they weren't "real Christians" but that just falls into the no true Scotsman fallacy. "By there fruits ye shall know them. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit nor a good tree bad fruit." Quote attributed to Jesus. Look at Christianity and it's history- not the edited history of "real Christians" but the whole thing and tell me that is a good tree. Now I'll say, I'm pretty tolerant. I do a lot of business with the Amish and have a lot of respect for their way of life. But they are pacifists who don't vote and thus are not exercising any power over me. I can tolerate a Christianity that rejects power. But I gotta ask- does your church reject power? Does it uphold the equality of a female like myself? Or have you found a comfortable pew for your straight male butt and now you want to shame those of us who experience daily harassment justified and excused by the vast majority of Christians and Christian thought ever committed to paper? I'll shut up, I gotta go milk a goat. But maybe consider that those who are currently losing our human rights to "Christians" however that is defined have no need to tip toe around being tolerant. I'd be the first to oppose any actual harassment or discrimination against Christians but this persecution complex stuff over valid critiques of Christianity just says you don't want to think about the ongoing oppression of real humans based on Christian theology.
Let me try to parse a bit. I admire you both so maybe I can throw some water on the fire (maybe not). The book of Genesis states do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you do you will be cast out of Eden. That's exactly what Buddha said as well, in so many other words. Good and evil being illusory duality; good, bad, right, wrong, ugly, beautiful. All those things that bind and create conflict with ourselves and others. In many ways, they easily serve to pit us against each other and ourselves. In eating the apple, a rather strong metaphor that perhaps has been misinterpreted by 180 degrees, we've chosen to embrace the fruits of duality as well as all its built in psychoses; guilt, repression, shame, anxiety, greed, the rest of the seven deadly sins perhaps (no I'm not a Christian or a Buddhist). Let me propose, in order to build a bridge, that we're all addicted to the apple. In fact, that singular fruit is perhaps the cause of all human suffering. What if we spit it out? I wrote a play about the relationship between a war journalist and a young sniper holed up during a siege during a fictitious civil war here in the US of A, here's a quote; "I mean when you look at human nature and you see all the spite and the anger and the hatred... If you really looked at that and thought, where did that all come from... wouldn’t you just want to spit out that apple [from the tree of knowledge]? Thing is, people love war. They love it. Instead of doing what we’re hardwired to do, connect, when all that fear and anger bubbles up, fighting each other is always the right answer. We’d all rather fight some bullshit war than sit down and drink tea, find out how much we have in common with each other... You want me to be honest with you? Connection sucks. All it brings is pain. And I want to avoid that so here I am, looking for a story. I’d rather get beaten, maybe even killed, than confront what’s important, what’s meaningful. Then I can check out. Check the fuck out completely. I crave warfare in order to feel something about the experiences I have become completely hardened to in my real life. War is a game and I know how to play it really well." The character, Dante, is a man filled with demons, who experienced tons of trauma both in war and in his personal life. He's also an addict and does what all addicts do, avoids pain at all costs. Also, all addicts have trauma experiences. They are looking for comfort so it makes sense that they'd use. It's ridiculous to shame them because almost all of us have a relationship to avoiding pain. Our brains see no way out of this. So we support leaders who believe in endless war, the growing class divide, and the story of separation from our life source, the biosphere. It's time to look at who is actually speaking for life and who is perpetuating suffering, addiction and death. And it's time to realize that only we, with courage, are in a position to cause transformation. It starts by changing our minds about how we move through the world. It starts with realizing that the root of suffering isn't something manufactured for our distraction, it's happening all around us and we've become so myopic. In my healing practice the main intention I have for my clients is to reclaim feeling, reclaim essence (our authentic selves). I often explain how casemaking; judgement, analysis, comparison and interpretation; are uniquely human and often data misreads. Because without them we experience a direct connection with life. With these data errors we can easily create a story of separation and suffering. Once we reclaim a direct relationship with feeling, with essence, we can begin to rewrite our narratives, befriend our authentic selves, and fear begins to fall away, making room for freedom. Then something surprising happens, we reclaim our own power, and from this newfound place of power, we can take action. It all starts in the human brain, where else?
I'll close this parsing with a snippet of dialogue from my play:
DANTE (wheels spinning): Did you ever think what would have happened if Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the apple?
VIRGINIA: That’s just another fucking story.
DANTE: The apple from the tree of knowledge. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Ugly and beautiful. Well if they hadn’t eaten that apple, we’d still be in Eden. Paradise.
I appreciate the sentiment but your analogies don't work for me. I do understand them, i just find them overly simplistic and yes, i did believe and utilize them for many years when i was younger. I am panthiestic animist, an ecstatic, and a very deep ecologist. Those analogies don't fit within that frame, not at all. My books are the record of my slowly working through those analogies into something far more foundational and far less mental and either/or. I disavow the mind body split and I certainly do not ascribe to any kind of eating apple analogy, even as you have developed it. My statements re Kingsnorth and christianity stand. While i understand the need that some have for the exterior skeletal structure of christianity to give them boundaries and rules for behavior in order for them to feel safe and knowledgeable about the road they must travel, I find the choice merely one of cowardice, not bravery. christianity has much to answer for and THAT IS ITS ONLY JOB at this point in time. My point to them: Clear up the rot in your own house before you deign to speak to anyone about sin OR what moral behavior is or is not. (BTW: I have met a handful of people i consider true christians, that is, those who do their best to emulate christ in their daily life. They NEVER proselytize, never speak of their faith unless directly asked, never write about it. They simply do good works and carry what i would call christ consciousness in them as they walk. They do by example what christ himself, in their opinion did. They believe, rightly in my opinion, that that is the only true expression of what people call christianity. When all of christendom does this, perhaps it will have something to offer the world. Until then, forget it. I have seen their works and by those works they are known.) I don't have anything else to say on this topic.
I appreciate your clear response. There's an evolutionary journey at hand for all of us. I'm admittedly somewhere in the mid-range on the spectrum of mine. Clearing up the rot is certainly a strong metaphor and removing any reference to apples, I'd say I'm with you 100% on that intention. If you're interested, I've been investigating the expansion of "either/or" in a recent essay. I don't pretend to be any expert on anything, I'm simply a spelunker using the resources currently available in my limited field of awareness: https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/both-and/
you are kind and you did make me laugh. thank you for that. There is indeed a place beyond good/evil or either/or; what is found at the resolution of paradox is the path through our dilemma, movement outside the place we are pinned. It's the place where two join together to become one thing, inextricably intertangled. I look forward to reading your article. Green Blessings on your journey.
I find the story of the Fall fascinating. It will probably take me a lifetime to work through it.
Contrary to Stephen's views, I can only find one useful question to ask about Christianity or any other faith - or, come to that, a system like the Buddha Dharma. The question is, 'is this true?' Of course that's a matter of faith. I didn't expect to find Christianity true, but now I do and I have to find out why. Again, contrary to Stephen's projections here, I wouldn't seek to deny for a moment the horrors that have been carried out in its name in the past. But I can find similar horrors carried out in the name of many other things, from socialism to nationhood to Islam to nature.
Which I think brings us back to the apple. If Eden is our state of nature - creation, creator, creature, body, spirit, all as one - then the Fall is our choice to leave it. Knowledge is what we chose instead. I can't help but see the broken machine society we live in at present as the result of that daily choice. Ultimately it's the choice to live by our own will rather than the 'will of God', which is also the way of great nature; the Dao if you like. I've come to see this as the great choice we all make, whether we're Christian or not. Sacrifice, humility and smallness-in-nature, or arrogance, anger and domination. Both Christians and non-Christians choose both, but most of us choose the latter, even when we try not to. I suppose this is our tragedy. It's a daily struggle.
Thanks for your response, Paul. I've been asking myself this question a lot lately, "is it true?" It's a grounding question, a prompt for discovery. So often I discover whatever it is I may be holding onto as true, is revealed, with proper investigation, as its opposite. Not always, but often. I'd venture we can explore the choices we make in the same way. For example, the choices I've made as a younger man contrasted with choices I make now in my midlife, differ greatly. Sorry Stephen, but bringing this back to Christ, there's some evolution to awareness as portrayed in the stories associated with the journey toward Christ mind. Nikos Kazantzakis portrayed this fairly clearly in The Last Temptation of Christ. In other words, choices evolve, like awareness, and the menu broadens. I think what Stephen is getting at, and I'm attempting to express is it ultimately all falls away. And what's left? The tree, not the good, bad, ugly or beautiful tree. Tree, full on. Kazantzakis made a nice attempt at giving us a sense of not only what's left, but the extent of it too, when Zorba and Basil dance at the then of Zorba the Greek. I talk about that film, and the tao, in my essay, Both And (link in this thread somewhere). Not easy to write about, the tao! I'm a theater guy and I've embraced tragedy, maybe a bit too much. I just re-read Uncle Vanya which portrays the daily struggle as well as any play. As Sonya says in the final moments; "What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya."
I hear you about embracing tragedy ... maybe a bit too much. But what's more interesting - or real - to write about?
We certainly change and develop as we go though life of course. My younger self would be horrified by my Christianity! The interesting thing for me is that while I thought, when I was a Buddhist, that it would 'all fall away' it almost did the opposite: it concentrated, in the person of Christ; the incarnation, the historical Jesus, as a real and continually living presence; God both human and divine. As Seraphim Rose had it: I went looking for the truth, and discovered that the truth was a person. That's an uncomfortable discovery in many ways - mainly because then you have to live it ...
I find it fascinating how many cultural stories have trees at the centre of the world. Trees and tragedy ... but then, perhaps the possibility of redemption.
The NY Times had a good timely article today on Auden's incredible poem Musee Des Beaux Arts at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/06/books/auden-musee-des-beaux-arts.html. I, for one, often feel a strong disconnect as I go about my rather comfortable daily life and then come home to see pictures of children dead in the streets of Ukraine or more chaos in Afghanistan. I also know that staying connected and aware of all this suffering is vastly important. I weave between the two. Thank you for keeping this conversation going.
Oh yes, it's super difficult to hold all these things at once. We cannot, I think, which is why focusing on the material things in front of us (family, friends, relationships, land) is always the most important. Though that may seem to limit our ability to understand global issues, I think it actually gives us a better framework than being glued to screens trying to unravel what we see.
In a crisis, Americans seem to have a need to _do_ something — or be _seen_ to be doing something. This leads to busybody gestures with no foresight about their consequences.
I appreciate how you connect each of these things: the COVID response and Russian war response.
One part of the elephant seems to be the desire for control for safety's/happiness' sake - perhaps a safe, carbon neutral utopia where people can pursue whatever makes them happy (so long as it fits the accepted happiness narrative) with complete freedom. That may be the draw of the the Metaverse. Let us transcend our bodies and become gods, each one of us. The globe must come together on this - eradicate carbon emissions and hunger (and perhaps many good things that we can pretend to ignore). And we will all be "free."
Russia (and China) don't accept or fit this vision. Nationalists don't fit this vision.
The logical end of liberal humanism is at hand - I am my own god and I shall have no other god before me. Therefore, I will surround myself with like-minded gods who will not tread on my autonomy and will in fact enforce it on others.
Divisions in belief raise questions and discourage my god-ward trajectory - so all divisions must be stamped out, by whatever force necessary. And since this freedom will be "good" for all, anyone who stands in the way of it must be a monster. Silencing them, destroying them, is a gift to humanity.
These are the beginnings of my thoughts on a part of the elephant that I'm blindly feeling. I appreciate your thoughts!
Time is like an accordion for the heart...expanding and contracting with joy and pain. It all feels quite surreal, indeed. Memories of the pain of past wars on the faces of grandparents, uncles and fathers-- keep popping up for me these days. Thanks for the phrase "Intersectional Imperialism"-- it's spot on. Punishment for any divergence from or difference of opinion will be enforced no matter what. I can't help but feel like the Woke missed the chance to do their homework for humanity but the sane in-betweeners still haven't found their backbones again either. Who DESERVES punishment exactly? Who are we to say? This, that. Either, or. Wrong, right. It certainly feels like we've spent an eternity playing out that boring story.
I feel angry at leftists for focusing on Putin instead of NATO'S provocations that led to this war. Many leftists seem okay with ignoring the history of the proxy gov that was installed in 2014, the fascist elements that continued to grow, and the people who have died in Donbass, while virtue signaling their anti-war position. If leftists are truly anti-war, shouldn't they be holding NATO/US accountable? I think they should, and this is not what I am seeing. Putin demonization is everywhere.
Agreed. I don't know if you've seen this, but there's actually a move by some anarchists to claim that NATO is an essentially 'leftist' and "anti-imperialist" organization since it's "voluntary" and "mutual defense aid."
It's truly terrifying that people are contorting in every way possible to defend NATO this way...
Staggering, likewise to see the likes of Crimethinc revealing that they're really just hobbyists. John Zerzan excoriating antivaxxers. Chomsky in his dotage claiming if you refuse medical tyranny maybe you should also manage without food. I can only imagine, with dread, where these people will be in a year's time.
i'm starting to get some serious pre-WWI vibes from our all-panic-all-the-time zeitgeist. what is it about new centuries, do they not really get going until everyone picks a side and decides that mass hysteria and mass murder are just the thing to get the blood flowing? (in both senses)
how many pre-WWI intellectuals, artists, journalists etc thought a nice, quick and easy war would provide glory and "meaning" and re-energize their societies with all that rich martial anger and energy? it seems that humans are so desperate to attach themselves to a historical cause (what Ernest Becker called an "immortality project") that they'd rather watch the world burn than face their own ultimate irrelevance.
or maybe this is just how new worlds are born, atop a mountain of skulls and bones from the previous world?
Here in NZ we're still experiencing government mandates and other measures. There was a protest that grew into a freedom village camped on parliament grounds for 3 weeks until the police came in with riot gear and tear gas and cleared everybody out. About a week before that there'd been articles put out by law experts saying there was nothing legally keeping them from doing so, essentially softening up public awareness for when it happened.
I recently moved out of the house I'd been living in, the friend I was there with is still trying to find somewhere else. Things with the owners were just getting worse quite quickly. Someone I know was visiting family over the weekend, their step-dad came home drunk, started a fight and put my friend in hospital. All of which is to say that it feels like War - as an energy or a being - is entering the world more and more at this time.
Some friends of mine suffered a miscarriage earlier this year, a little girl who would have received so much love. And since then, and more and more with what's happening in Ukraine, I've been wondering what to do with it I guess, with the fact that we live in a world where these things happen, where this level of pain and suffering takes place. I don't feel like there's an answer, but I do feel like it's up to us (to those of us able to, ie living in relative health and safety) to find ways to thrive, to experience and bring more joy into the world, to live lives of beauty, in the midst of a world where these things happen.
I like - and am learning more about - what Bayo Akomolafe says about making sanctuary, finding places and ways to create mutual flourishing in the world. I also like what Gordon White says about praying peace, being peace in a sense first and then praying it / offering it to/ for the world. And what Connor Habib has to say about not allowing War into our field, denying its right to exist I think he says.
At any rate I feel like in the midst of all this pain taking place, even though seeing it causes us pain also, I feel like what we're called to do is to move through that pain back to heart coherence, back to peace and joy and to make the world a better place in the ways that we can, even if just by not allowing more War into our world.
The big issue of our generation is meaning. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Tarski's Indefinability Theorem proved that all systems of meaning are based on unproveable assumptions- base premises we can't prove without relation to other base premises.
This knowledge- that Truth is seated in the deep mind or the soul or instinct or experience- has not been made very public. Most are still taught that mathematics is a discipline of facts. 2+2=4. In mathematics, however, the statement 2+2=4 is begging the question. What is 2? What is plus? What is equals? What do they mean? And the most rigorous logic shows that the base concepts of numbers and sets and operations are somewhat beyond the scope of logic. There's a reason so many mathematicians go nuts- Godel starved himself, Kaczynski mailed bombs. True logic requires questioning everything.
I believe the fundamental point of religion and culture is to establish base premises for life. One thing I've learned as I've aged is that an abundance of choices makes people very upset. People want to choose between several good options: do you want your tooth pulled on Tuesday or Friday? People do not want to be faced with an open ended like "what appointment time would you like?" And that's a question that doesn't even call into question the meaning of time or day of the week. We need to limit the endless possibilities of every second to make sense of life. And religion and culture help us there. Logically consistent systems can be built on both the premise that everything is alive and that matter is not alive.
My point here is that almost every problem I see in society is surrounded by a crisis of meaning. Everyone who is thinking is totally confused as to what is Russian or Western propaganda. The convoy situation is similarly confusing. Vaccines can be a matter of public health or of bodily autonomy depending on viewpoint. The left is in a crisis over what it means to be a woman, or a trans person, or even homosexual (same sex or same gender attraction? Is asexual a sexuality in need of protection? Is self-id enough or does there need to be some criteria to be trans?)
Social media plays into this by creating accepted definitions. "A woman has two x chromosomes" becomes hate speech by declaring the definition of woman to be "anyone who identifies as a woman". Wokeness concentrates on language, but definitions are larger than language. Any word created to describe people with intellectual disabilities inevitably becomes a slur within a generation. Languages all around the world use different words with different backgrounds or connotations to denote feminine/ female humans, but they all know who cooks and changes diapers. A Spanish speaker and and English speaker can use different slurs for Native Americans or Blacks yet the oppression is one. I'm sure every European language has slurs for the Roma and the Jews but these are not separate oppressions born out of the oppressors language in each country but a general oppression of a group defined by something beyond language.
The effort to exterminate harmful language is a broader campaign against meanings that are deemed unacceptable. This is why I am so afraid of the Metaverse and its monopoly on meaning. In a few decisions, people are seen as "terrorists" or "freedom fighters".
Strange recommendation- the last book of the Eragon series- Inheritance. It's a young adult fantasy series but I would say the end is worthy philosophy for those interested in the power of meaning and the understanding of the body that negates (self-) deception.
I think those that have planned this little economic attack have forgotten warning of "Beware of unintended consequences." This will have consequences for decades or even generations to come.
Appreciate all the comments, including to get off social media. I do consult Twitter, but only scientific/medical Twitter by those ph.d.s & MDs who questioned the SARS-COV-2 narrative - who interestingly often also are questioning the Ukraine Russian narrative. At beginning of 2020 was reading Jordan Hall & others on how we are living through a collapse of sensemaking, and then I became very aware of the Western oligarchs (who the Right call globalists, who do seem as autocratic to me as Putin, they with their transhumanism, AI, digital identity, and 4th Industrial Rev.) who think they will control the future of the world. Gordon White talks about a "dominant of wider inclusion," as the antidote? or real place we're in, a concept from Charles Fort. Bayo Akomolafe says something like what if how we respond to the crisis is a part of the crisis? I understand people's aversion to Vladimir Putin, but I wish they'd see Victoria Nuland, Ihor Kolomoysky, and the US neocons as just as worthy of aversion, instead of ignoring or accepting them as necessary figures.
Yeah, I walk back the 'wokeism is harmless bullshit that will blow over'.
haha ouch. :(
Solidarity. The question is this (and I know that you will have something insightful to write): Now that the woke among us have revealed more than obviously that they are the Joe McCarthy, what do we do?
It all does seem to exist on a continuum, doesn't it?
It's like a reordering of civic life/international community with very vague memories of 20th century history, gleaned quickly from the Internet or movies, as a guide.
Reordering is definitely a good description, I think!
Love this invitation Rhyd. I’ll contribute with another invitation, evacuate immediately from all social media. Avoid any news reports that smell off. Do a deep dive into your own confirmation bias. Go into the woods if you can and watch moss grow. Read more poetry. Dance in the kitchen while you make dinner. Hug more people. Make more eye contact. Boycott screens and establish a rich inner life. Practice gratitude. Forgive yourself.
a great reminder for everyone!
Make more eye contact. Make more eye contact. Make more eye contact. I write this from Italy, where eye contact is the national sport--and much fun. Eye contact is also how Italian women rule their space and how Italian men get across certain ideas--like the bancarella where I buy fruits and vegetables--where eye contact can mean, So that's one roasted beet and two broccoli...
I write this having come from the U S of A where, "s/he's looking at me" is a childhood complaint and where the distorting "theory" of the Male Gaze ("he's looking at me!") still has some purchase.
Make more eye contact.
I never considered myself much of an athlete, but if the sport is eye-contact...GAME ON! Love it!!
I'm in agreement about the economic sanctions. It only hurts those who don't have easy access to money. I wonder about where folks will place blame though - I feel like in Canada or the US, people would be more inclined to blame their own leadership rather than foreign leadership, but of course there's always divide.
I'm struggling with some of the undertones referring to the convoy and emergencies act - I know you've written about the convoy before. From where I'm sitting and the history behind the group that was leading the convoy, there was significant risk of a violent coup to justify action after weeks of inaction. Was it over the top? Yes, for sure. Was there other options? I'm not sure.
I'm also not one to follow "populist morality" especially when it comes to government restrictions, but when there's significant evidence to back the action that government it taking, would that action not be justified? Is opposition for the sake of opposition, especially in the case of public health, not a risk in itself?
Just some thoughts. Thanks as always for your perspective as it almost always unearths some re-evaluation of personal opinions ;)
I find it very helpful to look at these questions of government policy from their viewpoint and ask more questions from there.
So, for example with the COVID protests and mandates. Here in Europe, we saw very intense protests often ending in arrests and police violence. The country where I live now used water cannons on protesters for the first time in its history as a modern nation.
But in the last week, many of these countries have all announced an end to the restrictions, exactly what those protesters were demanding. No more masks here starting next week, no more digital vaccine passports, no more fines for having too many people in your house for a birthday party, etc.
Canada is doing something similar (many of the regional mandates are ending just this week, from what I understand).
So, if the government was already going to do this, why crackdown so hard on protesters there and over here?
From a State-view, the answer is obvious. Governments which give in to demand from below appear weak to their citizens, and those citizens will begin to exert more influence over the State. That's of course how democracy is supposed to work, but it actually cannot if States wish to accumulate and hold on to excess power.
So, governments had to crush the protests by whatever means necessary--even though they were going to implement the exact demands anyway--in order to hold on to their excess power.
In total agreement, I'm just not sure that's what happened in Ottawa. They let the protests go on for as long as possible until they were causing issues with day to day life for a good part of the province (blocking bridges, horns blaring all night). There action to dismantle the occupation/protest (because it was somewhere between these two things for most people involved) was mostly non-violent and they ended the emergencies act as soon as people were out of the downtown core.
I strongly believe in the right to protest. I am strongly against the use of force by the state to silence people. I am on board with you there. I worry because I see people jumping to conclusions and using comparison or metaphor to form opinions about what's happening in specific instances around the world.
I'm still sussing out a lot of thoughts around these topics but I'm starting to feel like it's important to call a spade a spade (speaking of metaphor) and not be too quick to sweep all instances into the same boat. Yes, let's condemn state violence. Yes, let's make sure that authority isn't restricting personal freedoms. But let's also recognize the nuance to each situation and not assume that all state violence and all restrictions are mirrors of each other.
I'm spitballing ideas that are just starting to form and appreciate a safe space in with to discuss them. Does that make any sense?
Yeah, absolutely. Again, this is a very big "elephant" and none of us can really accurately understand how everything is connected yet. The Canada situation may have been different, or may have not, or may even have been part of some other elephant in a different room that we don't even know exists yet. We won't really know for awhile, if we ever even know at all...
I see them all as fairly strongly connected. I think there are two big reasons for this:
1. Many of the protests of the last few years have been fairly misguided in my opinion. There has been very little effort expended on trying to persuade people outside of a fairly small echo chamber. When the state inevitably cracks down on the protest, you haven't created an environment where more people are sympathetic to the position and horrified when the state action starts.
2. Feelings of insecurity and anxiety are on the rise in many places. The 2008 financial crisis (and ongoing aftershocks), rising income inequality, the COVID pandemic... There are a ton of material conditions in recent history that one can point to which would make a person feel insecure even in wealthy countries. This is the sort of environment that can readily draw people towards authoritarian solutions.
I think from the state view things have gone pretty swimmingly; the protests haven't built sympathy and many people (who may already be inclined towards accepting authoritarian solutions already) look to the state to get rid of the protestors for them. And the state can happily oblige, reinforcing or expanding its power.
From a conversation with a psychic friend who recently dreamed about Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and the embodiment/goddess of the land, who is naked and trapped in Putin's house: the house is rickety, the electrical wiring is dangerous, Putin wants to have sex with her but he is scared and has erectile dysfunction. She both fears him and has compassion for him, because the electrical circuits could blow up the whole house and everyone in it, including Putin himself. We are on a knife's edge and we must try to hold the balance. Don't let it tip.
Frankly, if someone is raping the goddess of the earth, first and foremost it is the US oligarchy.
I do think we need to start using 'oligarcy' for the US as well as Russia. Speaking of which, did you hear about Elon Musk's Skype chat with Zelensky? The Ukrainian president literally contacting a 'foreign oligarch...'
I just looked up Musks conversation. Yeah that is contacting foreign oligarchs if anything is.
I agree about 'US oligarchs'. These are scary fucking times, but the time is also opportune to seeding that into the vocabulary. It sounds so natural, as if it's supposed to be there.
Funny, isn't it, how the Russians have 'oligarchs' but we in the West have - well, what do we have? Seems to me that the US has been run by oligarchs for a century or so. What are we calling Zuckerberg, Soros, Gates and CLinton these days?
Ah yes! 'Philanthropists'!
This wasn't my dream or my interpretation, nor did it make any claim to be the whole picture. It is a piece of a tapestry, a small offering from a particular perspective that speaks from somewhere other than the usual left brain political punditry.
It speaks to the 'Putin is a madman whose actions are inspired by his personal neurosis and thus inexplicable' narrative that you find in any MSM publication and which is the opposite of reality.
Politics is left brain. These a ruthlessly intelligent, very rational people, whose actions aren't happening in a vacuum and aren't inexplicable at all if you're willing to use your own left brain. The psychic friend should read some leftist anti imperialist theory and her psychic dreams might be inspired by reality.
LOL, so if we read enough leftist anti-imperialist theory, our subconscious will be protected from uncomfortable dreams? Hmmm, I don't think that's how dreams work. :D
I think a lot about the issue of Sovereignty from a pagan perspective. Used to be the sovereigns were chosen by the land through the druids and priests, now they are elected by the people, but ultimately the land still has the final say on the fate of those rulers through manifestations of drought, storm, famine, etc.
very nice metaphor for what is happening. I agree with you. There is a powerful energy/force/event moving through the world's human population (and as well through all our kindred species). ALL of us feel it, how we respond to it differs depending on a great many factors, from where we live in the world to our individual characters to our particular cultural myths. We are like elephants feeling the tsunami coming and heading for higher ground. Only in our case we have no idea where higher ground is, so people seize on whatever they can that they feel will make them safe. They are looking to restore intelligible order to the world around them. And the fault for what is happening lies elsewhere of course, so if only THOSE people would change in THIS way, all would be find.
But it won't of course. Because the underlying foundation of human civilization has been undone. Earth is not an inexhaustible resource for extraction by unrestrained corporations. Nor is Earth an amusement park for our enjoyment. Earth is in fact a nonlinear, self-organizing, emergent life form which we destabilize at our peril. And we have destabilized it past the point of no return.
When any non-linear living system begins to destabilize (from planets, to local ecosystems, to individual organ systems, they send out a signal. And those signals are felt with a part of us far deeper than the rational mind. We still have that capacity, just as elephants and other life forms do. We FEEL the signal but it doesn't fit into either rationalist or monotheist myth structures. (Well, except for end time narratives as Pat Robertson recently reminded the world.)
We live in a time when the majority of people in the western world believe that it is possible to rationally control both nature and civilization, to rationally control and direct human behavior, including our own. But nature is not rational, nor is it irrational. It is nonrational. Rational behavior is based on a set of assumptions that are accepted as foundational. From there rational decisions are made. But IF those assumptions are inaccurate to the real world, that is the world that underlies the virtual world of our civilization, eventually rational behavior will destabilize the foundational, real world itself. What is built on top of that, that is, civilization, destabilizes and eventually collapses.
That is what is happening now. Earth ecosystems all over the world have passed tipping points. Some wiser part of us knows it, feels the signal being given off by Earth itself. And people panic because rationality is failing. The paradigm used for the past two thousands years (monotheistic/rational) is collapsing because it is not accurate to the real world. (Most people do not realize that rationalists and their priests, scientists, are the most powerful of all the protestant sects; there is little difference in their cosmology.) And as John Ralston Saul put it (in Voltaire's Bastards: The Tyranny of Reason in the West) when their belief system and patterns of behavior fail, in that system, the belief is that you simply did not apply it STRONGLY enough and so the interventions are escalated in an attempt to reassert control. All that does is escalate systemic collapse. The more technological and rationalist mechanisms are forced on nonlinear systems in collapse, the faster and more complex the collapse.
So, your metaphor here is absolutely perfect. Everyone of us is touching (or being touched by) the elephant and everyone of us is describing the territory we are experiencing. Some of us have a very wide gaze, some more narrow. Nonetheless, none are complete. Standing back, however, as you have done here, reveals that the underlying dynamic is identical no matter who is doing the describing or promoting any particular response to what they are perceiving.
We are in a time when old systems are collapsing. Nothing is going to stop that process. The people we have depended on to run things, to be good governors, have failed in their job; they have failed us and our children and their children. As Aldo Leopold once said, "The first step in intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts." But instead they dissected the world to make all the stuff in which we are drowning, most of it from hydrocarbon modification (plastics to pharmaceuticals to food). People have been urging a different course for centuries but have been denigrated for doing so (unscientific, unchristian, anti-progress, anthropomorphizers). But all their warnings are now manifest, we are surrounded by collapse everywhere we look.
Earth systems change from the bottom up, all the kindred species in ecosystems working to solve their part of the problem utilizing their own unique genius. And that is what we need now, for humans to do the same. People such as you who write this blog, people like Greta, Bill Mollison, Masanobu Fukuoka, and on and on and on. And slowly a new way will come into the world.
But it is not going to be easy or safe or fun. Grief will be our companion on the journey, it is not something we can deal with and move on (as Lesley Head put it). Still, there must be those among whom we can weep and still be counted as warriors (adrienne rich). We, as Bill Mollison once put it, are members of a community unbounded by geography or time . . . or species. I have hope, but no optimism (false hope). Hope is a faith that comes from life itself, in the emergence of new generations of all our kindred species. For life, as Jeff Goldblum once immortalized it, finds a way.
Wow this was gorgeous and delightful to read.
Are you writing on Substack or on a blog somewhere? I hope so, because good gods is this beautiful...
thank you, stephenharrodbuhner.com has a variety of articles, as health permits. Much of that is, as well, in my new book Earth Grief, just out. Again, your comments, deeply appreciated.
Many thanks for this link. I was delighted to see that Rosemary Gladstar has recommended a couple of your books. She was my teacher back in the day. :)
Rosemary has been a good friend for over 20 years now; one of the special ones who come among us from time to time.
I love this too and agree mostly except I don't believe that we are "past the point of no return"....it may appear that way now, but as you mention-- the Earth is non-linear and emergent. There is always something new that can spring into awareness to change everything in a real way. Change can be tedious or quantum, but anything is still possible. Just as in a Jungian view of fairy tales where you are every character-- we are the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armor. We are also the fairy godmother, the magic potion and the surprise arrival of the cavalry. It's just not over until it's over....we are the problem and the solution. "We're not dead yet" is about the closest thing to a rallying cry that I've got these days, but I use it often....
This seems spot on in many ways, but I disagree that what you call 'monotheist myth structures' can't feel or understand the signals of the breakdown. Certainly traditional Christianity (which is to say not the Pat Robertson variety you have in America) is well versed in it and has long warned of it. This is pretty much the result of eating apples in gardens on a daily basis, and putting human will before the will of God. The conseqeunces of that have long been forseen, and prophesied, as they have by other cultures too. Here we are.
Of course you can't agree; you have subsumed yourself into their myth. And that I find deplorable. Your last few sentences are merely a mouthing of portions of that inaccurate and simplistic myth structure that has been forced on the world's people through conversion by the sword. Had that not occurred, christianity would remain, what it truly is, only an odd, rather violent sect with few followers. (And btw, It is your European christianity that killed millions, destroyed cultures, took children from their mothers and cultures, cut their hair, denied them their language, and sent its most virulent forms here to the U.S. where we still have to deal with it. Until your religion takes full responsibility for the evil it has caused and no longer insists that it is the only true religion, you have nothing to say to me or to anyone else working to rectify the wrongs it has caused.)
Actually, I have spent some five decades studying christianity -- in serious depth. All pagans should understand the waters they swim in - as well as the software that has been embedded in them from childhood. So, I do know quite a lot about it. I am pretty sure from your comments that you do not. And wow, it sounds like you have some issues with Americans; i mean we all do look alike, don't we? How's Margaret Thatcher's social programs and Boris' leadership doing by the way?
In any event, I have read your work in depth as well though i am pretty sure you have not given mine the same attention. And most assuredly, I don't agree with your current positions on a number of issues. But most of all I disagree with your current (new believer) insistence on absolving christianity of its crimes, which the entire world continues to have to live and deal with. (Btw, How's those Irish orphanages doing? They keep finding children's bodies I understand; the Canadians seem to have found several hundred as well. Only the tip of the iceberg you know, there will be more. A lot more. Just a bit of blowback to mop up, I guess.)
If you are going to insist you are christian, then you might begin working to understand the bloody history you take upon yourself along with it and then start taking some responsibility for it. (Few christians do this, they just want to go on to heaven and get out of here, leave the fallen state and world that they so dislike.) You are part of that tribe now, you are tainted with their brush, just as all christians are. So, once again, clean up your own house and understand that there are millions of us who do not particularly like or agree with your myth, fewer are willing to remain silent about the damage it has done to our world and its peoples, to all its life forms.
There are only 2.5 billion christians in the world now because most of their ancestors were forced into it by the sword. (Perhaps you might study some christian history? Especially within the European states? There is in fact a new book out, the Darkening Age: the Christian destruction of the Classical World. It's by a passionate christian, btw. You might start with that one.)
Most christians, to be sure, are social christians. It is not a "faith" for them but merely social background. Some are fairly sincere (as are some of the monks i have spent time with in monasteries). But many are rather rabid believers in the warrior sect from which it comes and which jesus was attempting to moderate with his teachings.
Funny, our "imperial culture wars." Talking about kettle and color! In any event, you might begin practicing that christian charity that is so popular with your sect. And as well, learn to hear, with both heart and mind, the people that your new religious fervor seems to have overlooked. The ones who actually understand what they are talking about and as well the ones that your colleagues have damaged and who now live with that damage every day of their lives.
You seem to be a very angry man. All that I know about you is that my (Sikh) wife is currently reading one of your plant books. She's enjoying it. So I don't have the same issues with you that you seem to have with me - or rather your imagined version of me. If I did, I wouldn't express them like this. It's why I deleted my previous comment. Arguing about religion on the Internet is futile at the best of times. Best of luck to you.
Oh, this isn't angry, this is rigorous intellectual debate. But I do admire your capacity for projection. You have put yourself out there as a spokesman for the environment and ecology for a very long time, as such you are a public figure and should be able to endure rigorous (and strongly non-compliant) intellectual responses to your statements and work.
Please be clear here, you responded to me and my comments here and began a conversation about christianity and the apple (an absurd metaphor/analogy) as if it had some relevance to my points, it did not. Your reasoning was neither clear nor well thought out. A behavior that seems to be continuing.
Oddly enough, among the left, one of the default responses when this kind of interaction occurs is to engage in some form of gaslighting or displacement. that is, turning the conversion into some aspect of the other person's psychological behavior. ("You seem to be a very angry man" is legion and enjoys a wide popularity no matter the target.) It is a cheap trick but much in vogue among the left. The purpose is to shift the conversation away from the point to something entirely unrelated. I actually would have thought that after all your years in the public eye, you would have worked this particular tendency through.
What I like most about anti-religious people is their compassion and tolerance.
I am not anti-religious, i am anti-monotheism. I am in fact deeply religious though i think the operative word really should be spiritual, religion tends to be so dogmatic, don't you think? And compassion and tolerance, who told you about that, the abraham fairy? Not sure you learned the lesson, wherever you heard it.
Why should we be tolerant? Christians provided the justification for the burning and torturing of at least a hundred thousand women in Europe, for rhe genocide against the Native Americans, and for the enslavement of Africans. Why exactly should we be tolerant? I'm sure you think they weren't "real Christians" but that just falls into the no true Scotsman fallacy. "By there fruits ye shall know them. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit nor a good tree bad fruit." Quote attributed to Jesus. Look at Christianity and it's history- not the edited history of "real Christians" but the whole thing and tell me that is a good tree. Now I'll say, I'm pretty tolerant. I do a lot of business with the Amish and have a lot of respect for their way of life. But they are pacifists who don't vote and thus are not exercising any power over me. I can tolerate a Christianity that rejects power. But I gotta ask- does your church reject power? Does it uphold the equality of a female like myself? Or have you found a comfortable pew for your straight male butt and now you want to shame those of us who experience daily harassment justified and excused by the vast majority of Christians and Christian thought ever committed to paper? I'll shut up, I gotta go milk a goat. But maybe consider that those who are currently losing our human rights to "Christians" however that is defined have no need to tip toe around being tolerant. I'd be the first to oppose any actual harassment or discrimination against Christians but this persecution complex stuff over valid critiques of Christianity just says you don't want to think about the ongoing oppression of real humans based on Christian theology.
Let me try to parse a bit. I admire you both so maybe I can throw some water on the fire (maybe not). The book of Genesis states do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you do you will be cast out of Eden. That's exactly what Buddha said as well, in so many other words. Good and evil being illusory duality; good, bad, right, wrong, ugly, beautiful. All those things that bind and create conflict with ourselves and others. In many ways, they easily serve to pit us against each other and ourselves. In eating the apple, a rather strong metaphor that perhaps has been misinterpreted by 180 degrees, we've chosen to embrace the fruits of duality as well as all its built in psychoses; guilt, repression, shame, anxiety, greed, the rest of the seven deadly sins perhaps (no I'm not a Christian or a Buddhist). Let me propose, in order to build a bridge, that we're all addicted to the apple. In fact, that singular fruit is perhaps the cause of all human suffering. What if we spit it out? I wrote a play about the relationship between a war journalist and a young sniper holed up during a siege during a fictitious civil war here in the US of A, here's a quote; "I mean when you look at human nature and you see all the spite and the anger and the hatred... If you really looked at that and thought, where did that all come from... wouldn’t you just want to spit out that apple [from the tree of knowledge]? Thing is, people love war. They love it. Instead of doing what we’re hardwired to do, connect, when all that fear and anger bubbles up, fighting each other is always the right answer. We’d all rather fight some bullshit war than sit down and drink tea, find out how much we have in common with each other... You want me to be honest with you? Connection sucks. All it brings is pain. And I want to avoid that so here I am, looking for a story. I’d rather get beaten, maybe even killed, than confront what’s important, what’s meaningful. Then I can check out. Check the fuck out completely. I crave warfare in order to feel something about the experiences I have become completely hardened to in my real life. War is a game and I know how to play it really well." The character, Dante, is a man filled with demons, who experienced tons of trauma both in war and in his personal life. He's also an addict and does what all addicts do, avoids pain at all costs. Also, all addicts have trauma experiences. They are looking for comfort so it makes sense that they'd use. It's ridiculous to shame them because almost all of us have a relationship to avoiding pain. Our brains see no way out of this. So we support leaders who believe in endless war, the growing class divide, and the story of separation from our life source, the biosphere. It's time to look at who is actually speaking for life and who is perpetuating suffering, addiction and death. And it's time to realize that only we, with courage, are in a position to cause transformation. It starts by changing our minds about how we move through the world. It starts with realizing that the root of suffering isn't something manufactured for our distraction, it's happening all around us and we've become so myopic. In my healing practice the main intention I have for my clients is to reclaim feeling, reclaim essence (our authentic selves). I often explain how casemaking; judgement, analysis, comparison and interpretation; are uniquely human and often data misreads. Because without them we experience a direct connection with life. With these data errors we can easily create a story of separation and suffering. Once we reclaim a direct relationship with feeling, with essence, we can begin to rewrite our narratives, befriend our authentic selves, and fear begins to fall away, making room for freedom. Then something surprising happens, we reclaim our own power, and from this newfound place of power, we can take action. It all starts in the human brain, where else?
I'll close this parsing with a snippet of dialogue from my play:
DANTE (wheels spinning): Did you ever think what would have happened if Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the apple?
VIRGINIA: That’s just another fucking story.
DANTE: The apple from the tree of knowledge. Good and evil. Right and wrong. Ugly and beautiful. Well if they hadn’t eaten that apple, we’d still be in Eden. Paradise.
I appreciate the sentiment but your analogies don't work for me. I do understand them, i just find them overly simplistic and yes, i did believe and utilize them for many years when i was younger. I am panthiestic animist, an ecstatic, and a very deep ecologist. Those analogies don't fit within that frame, not at all. My books are the record of my slowly working through those analogies into something far more foundational and far less mental and either/or. I disavow the mind body split and I certainly do not ascribe to any kind of eating apple analogy, even as you have developed it. My statements re Kingsnorth and christianity stand. While i understand the need that some have for the exterior skeletal structure of christianity to give them boundaries and rules for behavior in order for them to feel safe and knowledgeable about the road they must travel, I find the choice merely one of cowardice, not bravery. christianity has much to answer for and THAT IS ITS ONLY JOB at this point in time. My point to them: Clear up the rot in your own house before you deign to speak to anyone about sin OR what moral behavior is or is not. (BTW: I have met a handful of people i consider true christians, that is, those who do their best to emulate christ in their daily life. They NEVER proselytize, never speak of their faith unless directly asked, never write about it. They simply do good works and carry what i would call christ consciousness in them as they walk. They do by example what christ himself, in their opinion did. They believe, rightly in my opinion, that that is the only true expression of what people call christianity. When all of christendom does this, perhaps it will have something to offer the world. Until then, forget it. I have seen their works and by those works they are known.) I don't have anything else to say on this topic.
I appreciate your clear response. There's an evolutionary journey at hand for all of us. I'm admittedly somewhere in the mid-range on the spectrum of mine. Clearing up the rot is certainly a strong metaphor and removing any reference to apples, I'd say I'm with you 100% on that intention. If you're interested, I've been investigating the expansion of "either/or" in a recent essay. I don't pretend to be any expert on anything, I'm simply a spelunker using the resources currently available in my limited field of awareness: https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/both-and/
you are kind and you did make me laugh. thank you for that. There is indeed a place beyond good/evil or either/or; what is found at the resolution of paradox is the path through our dilemma, movement outside the place we are pinned. It's the place where two join together to become one thing, inextricably intertangled. I look forward to reading your article. Green Blessings on your journey.
Well that’s something to celebrate! Green Blessings to you as well maestro!
I find the story of the Fall fascinating. It will probably take me a lifetime to work through it.
Contrary to Stephen's views, I can only find one useful question to ask about Christianity or any other faith - or, come to that, a system like the Buddha Dharma. The question is, 'is this true?' Of course that's a matter of faith. I didn't expect to find Christianity true, but now I do and I have to find out why. Again, contrary to Stephen's projections here, I wouldn't seek to deny for a moment the horrors that have been carried out in its name in the past. But I can find similar horrors carried out in the name of many other things, from socialism to nationhood to Islam to nature.
Which I think brings us back to the apple. If Eden is our state of nature - creation, creator, creature, body, spirit, all as one - then the Fall is our choice to leave it. Knowledge is what we chose instead. I can't help but see the broken machine society we live in at present as the result of that daily choice. Ultimately it's the choice to live by our own will rather than the 'will of God', which is also the way of great nature; the Dao if you like. I've come to see this as the great choice we all make, whether we're Christian or not. Sacrifice, humility and smallness-in-nature, or arrogance, anger and domination. Both Christians and non-Christians choose both, but most of us choose the latter, even when we try not to. I suppose this is our tragedy. It's a daily struggle.
Thanks for your response, Paul. I've been asking myself this question a lot lately, "is it true?" It's a grounding question, a prompt for discovery. So often I discover whatever it is I may be holding onto as true, is revealed, with proper investigation, as its opposite. Not always, but often. I'd venture we can explore the choices we make in the same way. For example, the choices I've made as a younger man contrasted with choices I make now in my midlife, differ greatly. Sorry Stephen, but bringing this back to Christ, there's some evolution to awareness as portrayed in the stories associated with the journey toward Christ mind. Nikos Kazantzakis portrayed this fairly clearly in The Last Temptation of Christ. In other words, choices evolve, like awareness, and the menu broadens. I think what Stephen is getting at, and I'm attempting to express is it ultimately all falls away. And what's left? The tree, not the good, bad, ugly or beautiful tree. Tree, full on. Kazantzakis made a nice attempt at giving us a sense of not only what's left, but the extent of it too, when Zorba and Basil dance at the then of Zorba the Greek. I talk about that film, and the tao, in my essay, Both And (link in this thread somewhere). Not easy to write about, the tao! I'm a theater guy and I've embraced tragedy, maybe a bit too much. I just re-read Uncle Vanya which portrays the daily struggle as well as any play. As Sonya says in the final moments; "What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya."
I hear you about embracing tragedy ... maybe a bit too much. But what's more interesting - or real - to write about?
We certainly change and develop as we go though life of course. My younger self would be horrified by my Christianity! The interesting thing for me is that while I thought, when I was a Buddhist, that it would 'all fall away' it almost did the opposite: it concentrated, in the person of Christ; the incarnation, the historical Jesus, as a real and continually living presence; God both human and divine. As Seraphim Rose had it: I went looking for the truth, and discovered that the truth was a person. That's an uncomfortable discovery in many ways - mainly because then you have to live it ...
I find it fascinating how many cultural stories have trees at the centre of the world. Trees and tragedy ... but then, perhaps the possibility of redemption.
The NY Times had a good timely article today on Auden's incredible poem Musee Des Beaux Arts at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/06/books/auden-musee-des-beaux-arts.html. I, for one, often feel a strong disconnect as I go about my rather comfortable daily life and then come home to see pictures of children dead in the streets of Ukraine or more chaos in Afghanistan. I also know that staying connected and aware of all this suffering is vastly important. I weave between the two. Thank you for keeping this conversation going.
Oh yes, it's super difficult to hold all these things at once. We cannot, I think, which is why focusing on the material things in front of us (family, friends, relationships, land) is always the most important. Though that may seem to limit our ability to understand global issues, I think it actually gives us a better framework than being glued to screens trying to unravel what we see.
In a crisis, Americans seem to have a need to _do_ something — or be _seen_ to be doing something. This leads to busybody gestures with no foresight about their consequences.
I appreciate how you connect each of these things: the COVID response and Russian war response.
One part of the elephant seems to be the desire for control for safety's/happiness' sake - perhaps a safe, carbon neutral utopia where people can pursue whatever makes them happy (so long as it fits the accepted happiness narrative) with complete freedom. That may be the draw of the the Metaverse. Let us transcend our bodies and become gods, each one of us. The globe must come together on this - eradicate carbon emissions and hunger (and perhaps many good things that we can pretend to ignore). And we will all be "free."
Russia (and China) don't accept or fit this vision. Nationalists don't fit this vision.
The logical end of liberal humanism is at hand - I am my own god and I shall have no other god before me. Therefore, I will surround myself with like-minded gods who will not tread on my autonomy and will in fact enforce it on others.
Divisions in belief raise questions and discourage my god-ward trajectory - so all divisions must be stamped out, by whatever force necessary. And since this freedom will be "good" for all, anyone who stands in the way of it must be a monster. Silencing them, destroying them, is a gift to humanity.
These are the beginnings of my thoughts on a part of the elephant that I'm blindly feeling. I appreciate your thoughts!
Time is like an accordion for the heart...expanding and contracting with joy and pain. It all feels quite surreal, indeed. Memories of the pain of past wars on the faces of grandparents, uncles and fathers-- keep popping up for me these days. Thanks for the phrase "Intersectional Imperialism"-- it's spot on. Punishment for any divergence from or difference of opinion will be enforced no matter what. I can't help but feel like the Woke missed the chance to do their homework for humanity but the sane in-betweeners still haven't found their backbones again either. Who DESERVES punishment exactly? Who are we to say? This, that. Either, or. Wrong, right. It certainly feels like we've spent an eternity playing out that boring story.
I feel angry at leftists for focusing on Putin instead of NATO'S provocations that led to this war. Many leftists seem okay with ignoring the history of the proxy gov that was installed in 2014, the fascist elements that continued to grow, and the people who have died in Donbass, while virtue signaling their anti-war position. If leftists are truly anti-war, shouldn't they be holding NATO/US accountable? I think they should, and this is not what I am seeing. Putin demonization is everywhere.
Agreed. I don't know if you've seen this, but there's actually a move by some anarchists to claim that NATO is an essentially 'leftist' and "anti-imperialist" organization since it's "voluntary" and "mutual defense aid."
It's truly terrifying that people are contorting in every way possible to defend NATO this way...
Staggering, likewise to see the likes of Crimethinc revealing that they're really just hobbyists. John Zerzan excoriating antivaxxers. Chomsky in his dotage claiming if you refuse medical tyranny maybe you should also manage without food. I can only imagine, with dread, where these people will be in a year's time.
i'm starting to get some serious pre-WWI vibes from our all-panic-all-the-time zeitgeist. what is it about new centuries, do they not really get going until everyone picks a side and decides that mass hysteria and mass murder are just the thing to get the blood flowing? (in both senses)
how many pre-WWI intellectuals, artists, journalists etc thought a nice, quick and easy war would provide glory and "meaning" and re-energize their societies with all that rich martial anger and energy? it seems that humans are so desperate to attach themselves to a historical cause (what Ernest Becker called an "immortality project") that they'd rather watch the world burn than face their own ultimate irrelevance.
or maybe this is just how new worlds are born, atop a mountain of skulls and bones from the previous world?
Here in NZ we're still experiencing government mandates and other measures. There was a protest that grew into a freedom village camped on parliament grounds for 3 weeks until the police came in with riot gear and tear gas and cleared everybody out. About a week before that there'd been articles put out by law experts saying there was nothing legally keeping them from doing so, essentially softening up public awareness for when it happened.
I recently moved out of the house I'd been living in, the friend I was there with is still trying to find somewhere else. Things with the owners were just getting worse quite quickly. Someone I know was visiting family over the weekend, their step-dad came home drunk, started a fight and put my friend in hospital. All of which is to say that it feels like War - as an energy or a being - is entering the world more and more at this time.
Some friends of mine suffered a miscarriage earlier this year, a little girl who would have received so much love. And since then, and more and more with what's happening in Ukraine, I've been wondering what to do with it I guess, with the fact that we live in a world where these things happen, where this level of pain and suffering takes place. I don't feel like there's an answer, but I do feel like it's up to us (to those of us able to, ie living in relative health and safety) to find ways to thrive, to experience and bring more joy into the world, to live lives of beauty, in the midst of a world where these things happen.
I like - and am learning more about - what Bayo Akomolafe says about making sanctuary, finding places and ways to create mutual flourishing in the world. I also like what Gordon White says about praying peace, being peace in a sense first and then praying it / offering it to/ for the world. And what Connor Habib has to say about not allowing War into our field, denying its right to exist I think he says.
At any rate I feel like in the midst of all this pain taking place, even though seeing it causes us pain also, I feel like what we're called to do is to move through that pain back to heart coherence, back to peace and joy and to make the world a better place in the ways that we can, even if just by not allowing more War into our world.
The big issue of our generation is meaning. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Tarski's Indefinability Theorem proved that all systems of meaning are based on unproveable assumptions- base premises we can't prove without relation to other base premises.
This knowledge- that Truth is seated in the deep mind or the soul or instinct or experience- has not been made very public. Most are still taught that mathematics is a discipline of facts. 2+2=4. In mathematics, however, the statement 2+2=4 is begging the question. What is 2? What is plus? What is equals? What do they mean? And the most rigorous logic shows that the base concepts of numbers and sets and operations are somewhat beyond the scope of logic. There's a reason so many mathematicians go nuts- Godel starved himself, Kaczynski mailed bombs. True logic requires questioning everything.
I believe the fundamental point of religion and culture is to establish base premises for life. One thing I've learned as I've aged is that an abundance of choices makes people very upset. People want to choose between several good options: do you want your tooth pulled on Tuesday or Friday? People do not want to be faced with an open ended like "what appointment time would you like?" And that's a question that doesn't even call into question the meaning of time or day of the week. We need to limit the endless possibilities of every second to make sense of life. And religion and culture help us there. Logically consistent systems can be built on both the premise that everything is alive and that matter is not alive.
My point here is that almost every problem I see in society is surrounded by a crisis of meaning. Everyone who is thinking is totally confused as to what is Russian or Western propaganda. The convoy situation is similarly confusing. Vaccines can be a matter of public health or of bodily autonomy depending on viewpoint. The left is in a crisis over what it means to be a woman, or a trans person, or even homosexual (same sex or same gender attraction? Is asexual a sexuality in need of protection? Is self-id enough or does there need to be some criteria to be trans?)
Social media plays into this by creating accepted definitions. "A woman has two x chromosomes" becomes hate speech by declaring the definition of woman to be "anyone who identifies as a woman". Wokeness concentrates on language, but definitions are larger than language. Any word created to describe people with intellectual disabilities inevitably becomes a slur within a generation. Languages all around the world use different words with different backgrounds or connotations to denote feminine/ female humans, but they all know who cooks and changes diapers. A Spanish speaker and and English speaker can use different slurs for Native Americans or Blacks yet the oppression is one. I'm sure every European language has slurs for the Roma and the Jews but these are not separate oppressions born out of the oppressors language in each country but a general oppression of a group defined by something beyond language.
The effort to exterminate harmful language is a broader campaign against meanings that are deemed unacceptable. This is why I am so afraid of the Metaverse and its monopoly on meaning. In a few decisions, people are seen as "terrorists" or "freedom fighters".
Strange recommendation- the last book of the Eragon series- Inheritance. It's a young adult fantasy series but I would say the end is worthy philosophy for those interested in the power of meaning and the understanding of the body that negates (self-) deception.
This (systems of meaning based on unproveable assumptions) reminds me of Ted Chiang's short story, "Division by Zero."
I think those that have planned this little economic attack have forgotten warning of "Beware of unintended consequences." This will have consequences for decades or even generations to come.
Appreciate all the comments, including to get off social media. I do consult Twitter, but only scientific/medical Twitter by those ph.d.s & MDs who questioned the SARS-COV-2 narrative - who interestingly often also are questioning the Ukraine Russian narrative. At beginning of 2020 was reading Jordan Hall & others on how we are living through a collapse of sensemaking, and then I became very aware of the Western oligarchs (who the Right call globalists, who do seem as autocratic to me as Putin, they with their transhumanism, AI, digital identity, and 4th Industrial Rev.) who think they will control the future of the world. Gordon White talks about a "dominant of wider inclusion," as the antidote? or real place we're in, a concept from Charles Fort. Bayo Akomolafe says something like what if how we respond to the crisis is a part of the crisis? I understand people's aversion to Vladimir Putin, but I wish they'd see Victoria Nuland, Ihor Kolomoysky, and the US neocons as just as worthy of aversion, instead of ignoring or accepting them as necessary figures.