Oh fuck, thanks for the medicine. I'm a poet and a practising druid but also very alienated most of the time. I can't quite chime with the way things are (to your previous essay's point) so I tried hard to make my own rhyme - literally and metaphorically. Trouble is I'm addicted to taking things personally so really suffer needlessly a lot.
I guess I need to pick and choose as to what I let sit in my head - maybe practice makes perfect?
Anyway, thanks for your writing. It makes a difference.
Tom Holland's Dominion has been getting some attention recently. He argues that modern values such as human rights are deeply rooted in Christianity. I would be interested in your perspective on this Rhyd, and more broadly how you see pagan ethics. A criticism of paganism I sometimes see is that it lacks a basis for social service such as helping the poor or providing community functions like a church does.
Wow!! I sometimes vehamently disagree with you, and sometimes you downright piss me off LOL. But, this essay is brilliant!! It's perhaps the first, and certainly among the best, times I've heard political struggle articulated in metaphysical terms without it devolving into language of spiritual warfare! There are some things I wish you'd expanded on, though, and hope you might in future. In particular, the challenge of worlding when you lack the material means to build that world except in the most contingent, precarious way, easily destroyed by state and corporate violence. And Secondly, I wish you had expanded further on your observation that this recognition that phenomena exist regardless of our belief in them runs opposite to how much of the Left has been operating. Like, with the guy you dated who identified as a bat, were you saying he's wrong because there are real, material bats out there and he clearly isn't one? Or, were you, in fact, saying the exact opposite, that his spiritual affinity with bats has a reality even though, according to Western, "objective" measures, it's not materially true? I couldn't tell.
I think what’s happened with the “therians” (people who believe they are also an animal or sometimes a fictional being) is definitely a spiritual crisis, but most of it is because they’re afraid of their own bodies.
A wonderful read, thank you.
Oh fuck, thanks for the medicine. I'm a poet and a practising druid but also very alienated most of the time. I can't quite chime with the way things are (to your previous essay's point) so I tried hard to make my own rhyme - literally and metaphorically. Trouble is I'm addicted to taking things personally so really suffer needlessly a lot.
I guess I need to pick and choose as to what I let sit in my head - maybe practice makes perfect?
Anyway, thanks for your writing. It makes a difference.
Very excited for all of the fiction you're publishing!
Tom Holland's Dominion has been getting some attention recently. He argues that modern values such as human rights are deeply rooted in Christianity. I would be interested in your perspective on this Rhyd, and more broadly how you see pagan ethics. A criticism of paganism I sometimes see is that it lacks a basis for social service such as helping the poor or providing community functions like a church does.
Who gets to say what the “main stream” is? Everything exciting happens outside of someone else’s main stream.
And I would say that of you pay attention place is central to the wording of your life and is about the best way to form a cohesive function <1
Wow!! I sometimes vehamently disagree with you, and sometimes you downright piss me off LOL. But, this essay is brilliant!! It's perhaps the first, and certainly among the best, times I've heard political struggle articulated in metaphysical terms without it devolving into language of spiritual warfare! There are some things I wish you'd expanded on, though, and hope you might in future. In particular, the challenge of worlding when you lack the material means to build that world except in the most contingent, precarious way, easily destroyed by state and corporate violence. And Secondly, I wish you had expanded further on your observation that this recognition that phenomena exist regardless of our belief in them runs opposite to how much of the Left has been operating. Like, with the guy you dated who identified as a bat, were you saying he's wrong because there are real, material bats out there and he clearly isn't one? Or, were you, in fact, saying the exact opposite, that his spiritual affinity with bats has a reality even though, according to Western, "objective" measures, it's not materially true? I couldn't tell.
He was most definitely not a bat.
I think what’s happened with the “therians” (people who believe they are also an animal or sometimes a fictional being) is definitely a spiritual crisis, but most of it is because they’re afraid of their own bodies.
So can I expect a reply from you Rhyd? ;)