June at From the Forests of Arduinna

A new monthly digest

I’ve been writing a lot more frequently lately, and both a close friend and my husband mentioned it’s a bit difficult to keep up with everything I write. I imagine it’s even more so like that for the rest of you all, so I’ve decided to start a monthly feature here where I summarize everything I’ve published for you. I’ll also throw in some recommendations for other reading and other things, and at the end of each of these monthly summaries I’ll also post a poll for readers.

Here’s the first of such summaries, for June, 2022.

What I wrote at From The Forests of Arduinna

I wrote nine pieces this month, three of which were for paid supporters.

2 June, 2022 (Paid): “Masses & Murder,” an essay reflecting on the role of mass society and the spectacle in the way we look at mass shooting incidents.

None of these explanations suffice to explain the situation, but taken together they paint a larger narrative of fractiousness and societal instability for which none of the ideological conclusions can account. More importantly, however, mass shootings become themselves the moments such ideologies contest with each other, increasing the spectacle nature of the such events beyond their larger context of overall murders.

8 June, 2022 (Free): “In Defense of Difference” examines the way cultural difference works in Europe and how our current conceptions of the General and the Universal are skewed by modern identity politics.

This is the deep usefulness of generalizations and cultural analysis that has been lost within progressive, liberal, and Woke frameworks. Completely rejecting generalizations or conflating generalizations with universalizing makes it impossible to talk about actual human differences without resorting to meaningless abstractions like “structures” or “systems.” Race theory is a universalization that must absolutely be avoided (in both its right-wing and Woke forms), because race is a ridiculous and baseless grand narrative that attempted not just to universalize differences, but to impose them.

9 June, 2022 (Free): “Permanent Pandemics and American Imperialism” was the first of what I intend to be a recurring series in which I discuss essays by others I think will interest you. In this one I discuss an essays related to COVID, to gay Pride, and to a journalist’s exposed plot to smear the left wing anti-imperalist site The Grayzone.

12 June, 2022 (Free): On this day I published an essay written as a response to a reader’s question, entitled “So What?” The reader had asked me how I was able to write without fear of reprisal, and my answer reframes the question a bit.

That’s my answer to the reader’s question. That’s how I write so freely regardless of judgment from others. Sure, there are people who hate my writing, who find me dangerous, and who will write overwrought accusations and smears about me for their own primitive social capital accumulation. But being categorized as a “fascist” by an American anarchist for likes and retweets is about as meaningful as being called a “faggot” by an American dude trying to look cool in front of his friends—which is to say, not meaningful at all.

Categories and accusations are never meaningful unless you let them be. To let others define who you are is a deep betrayal of your own soul and your own agency in the world. To try to prove them otherwise is just as much a betrayal, and is the most inauthentic thing a person could ever do.

14 June, 2022 (Free): Much More Violent, Much More Unkind discusses the problem of “progressive” drug policy and especially how anarchist-influenced narratives only make any real efforts to help drug addicts impossible:

Though a person addicted to drugs may appear only to be harming themselves, the effects of their actions are almost never isolated. We recognize this more easily in the alcoholic parent or the Adderall-addicted co-worker than we do the meth- or opiate-addicted stranger, but harming yourself rarely ever only harms yourself. Societies have deep interest in reducing such harm specifically because the effects cannot always be traced. Highly controlling the proliferation of such drugs and severely punishing those who profit from the addiction of others—whether that be a pharmaceutical company or a street-level fentanyl dealer—is much more compassionate in the long run than trying to treat all the tertiary victims of those drugs.

This can be done without a violent and authoritarian state, but it cannot be done without some degree of authority nor without some degree of violence. As long as there is profit to be gained through the exploitation of others, humans will do it. And some humans will always choose to destroy themselves without any regard to who else they are destroying as well. Taking away the profit is one solution, punishing those who profit is another. Societies have done both, but in America neither of these things are done with any real effort and across all parts of society.

16 June 2022 (Paid): “It’s Your Fault I Am Unhappy” is an essay about the scourge of ressentiment in leftist politics, a major theme in my upcoming book and also one in many of my essays. It begins with a discussion of a recent essay at the Intercept about organizations imploding due to internal strife, which I then relate to my own experiences.

Until a leftist movement can admit the problem of ressentiment and develop a strategy for countering it, the left will continue to fail miserably. I doubt this article in The Intercept will help, but at the very least it cites one piece of advice any group should take seriously: “stop hiring activists, and start hiring people who want to do the work.” That directive, incidentally, came from Bernie Sanders, whose campaign towards the end became crippled not just by external sabotage from the Democratic National Committee but by internal sabotage from ressentiment-soaked activists who demanded he first fully sign on to Woke Ideology before doing what they were being paid to do.

21 June, 2022 (Free): Digitally Seeking Solace, my solstice letter, continues the theme of ressentiment but relates it instead to a larger problem, that of the absent sacred in any modern leftist discourse. There is also a re-introduction to new readers at the end of the essay.

The shrine is likely at least a hundred years old, possibly older. The massive oak in front of which it was built is at least 500 years old but maybe much older still. It’s hard to be certain, but from the patterns of its branches it may have once been struck by lightning: such oaks were sacred both to the Franks and the Celts who lived here in the Ardennes and used as sites of reverence to gods of lightning. Later, Catholics built shrines in front of (and sometimes inside of) such trees to the virgin so that offerings and prayers could still be made at the tree, just in someone else’s name.

Years ago, in all my fervor, I thought it mattered whose name those prayers were being made in. The local priest still believes as I once did, and bristles greatly at the obvious pagan continuities in such places despite admitting their existence.

From the very same perspective which looks at the miserable material conditions of many of my Woke former friends, whom these people are actually praying to doesn’t really matter. People are walking to an ancient tree, crying for their sick and pained loved ones, asking for a miracle. They pray now to the virgin at the tree, they prayed before to a god at the tree, but regardless they prayed at the tree.

23 June, 2022 (Free): The Mirror in the Abyss is a deeply personal essay. I usually put this sort behind a paywall; however, this one seemed too important. It’s about my how I learned to reclaim my own agency and to move away from the ressentiment I mention in previous essays.

The political problem here, which is also a social and cultural problem, is that we have stifled our ability to talk about personal agency in favor of a cult of victimhood and an esoteric belief in structural injustice. We can only ever see causation occurring in one direction, and seethe with righteous fury when anyone dares suggest a person might be able to affect their own circumstances.

27 June, 2022 (Paid): "The Sacred and the Symptom" is about abortion, but not really. It’s actually about how we’ve forgotten what a politics of human thriving can look like because we’ve forbidden ourselves from ever speaking about anything as sacred.

Abortion has become a poor replacement for an actual politics of human thriving. It’s always happened and it will always happen, but it’s also always been quite rare until the last few decades. People have always tried to stop it, but it cannot be stopped. Witch hunts didn’t stop it, the end of Roe vs. Wade won’t stop it either. But this is all beside the point: it’s a shitty and unfortunate solution to a symptom, not the disease itself.

What if we again saw motherhood as truly sacred? I don’t mean this in the faux American Christian way, but rather in the pagan and animist sense. What if motherhood was so sacred that society saw itself obligated to support it? What if not just the act of conceiving and giving birth but continuously mothering a child was seen as such a holy thing that we acknowledged a duty to make sure women who chose to do so never lacked for anything?

Other things I’m Doing and Have Done

I’ve been very, very slowly making my way through Gordon White’s excellent book, Ani.Mystic. It’s not actually because the reading itself is slow, but rather because I very frequently have to put the book down and think a lot. One of his points is that ideas are seen as beings in animist frameworks, and opening those pages is really like finding a lot of unexpected guests at your door eager for conversation.

A few days ago I went to Köln, Germany. It’s a damn gorgeous place for reasons you wouldn’t expect. Most of the city was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in an incredibly haphazard way, so that looking at the city itself you might find it quite ugly. The thing is, walking through it you constantly feel you just don’t fucking care about that at all because the spirit of the place itself is so vibrant. I need to go there again.

I just finished publishing a book by Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue and am finishing up a first round of edits on a book by Melinda Redinger. In the meantime, I’m expecting edits on my own manuscript and I’m sure that will take some significant time to work on. I’m waiting for that to be complete before seriously sitting down for the work on an old novel manuscript of mine, something that I expect will be ideal for an autumn project.

Also, I was invited to participate in “Substack Grow,” which is an educational program Substack offers for writers. The first two hour session was great and not as weird or corporate as I had feared. There are a lot of really fascinating people writing this way now, and there’s a lot of work put into keeping this platform from becoming a nightmare like social media platforms. Once it’s done, I’m happy to share any tricks or insights I learn with any of you fellow Substack writers who are interested.

This month’s question

Speaking of insights: one of the first things discussed was the importance of understanding “who” your readers are. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot, and much before joining that program.

I’ve been writing “online” now for about ten years. I started a Wordpress blog about 8 years ago, then became a writer for a group blog on a corporate Pagan writing site. Not long after that, I got my first paid writing position: a monthly column at the once interesting Wild Hunt. I started Gods&Radicals Press not long after (a reader gave me 1000 dollars to start it), and then have wrote regularly there after getting fired from the Wild Hunt for being too radical (long story).

Anyway, when I started writing my audience was mostly close friends, and then later a larger subset of a very tiny subculture. Then, anarchists found my writing and decided I was pretty cool, until of course I stopped defending the shitty things they were doing.

I’m quite certain I never would have imagined ten years ago that I’d be writing for such a broad and disparate readership as I’ve got now. It’s really awesome, but I also don’t know you all as well as I wish I did. So, this month’s survey is about that.

In particular, though most of my writing over ten years has been written with a pagan-identified readership in mind, I know I have a much broader religious readership now. So, if you don’t mind, could you tell me which of these best describes your religious beliefs?

Thanks!

—Rhyd Wildermuth