May 9, 2012

Beliefnet joins The Telegraph’s campaign against Paganism

Just over a week ago, I covered Cristina Odone’s vapid and inflammatory comment article in The Daily Telegraph on the decision to include Paganism as a possible topic of Religious Education classes in Cornish state schools by the county council. It was pretty well received by my fellow Pagans, but it was entirely ignored by Ms. Odone, despite my pestering her on twitter a little. So I headed off to my tribe’s Beltane celebration in Wiltshire, hoping that her silence indicated that the issue was ready to die quietly.

 

Beliefnet: A centre for seekers, but has Senior Editor Rob Kerby let it down?

When I returned, however, I discovered that the shit was very much still being stirred. Rob Kerby, Senior Editor at Beliefnet, one of the largest English language multifaith blogs, had written an article entitled “What can the Third World teach us about witchcraft?” Kerby’s answer to this question is never unambiguously stated, but it seems to fly in the direction of witchcraft being nothing more than a base superstition that, in Africa and the Islamic world at least, is used to justify persecution and violence. Quotes from Odone’s article sit pride of place, crystalising her point that Paganism is an illegitimate faith not worthy of respect by monotheists, and that the recent rights Pagans have gained are nothing more than a conspiracy by milquetoast liberals who want to destroy good Christian values. Kerby naturally goes further, hinting that this same belief in witchcraft could lead to child abuse and witch hunts.

 

Humbug: Christopher Howse is another Telegraph columnist who objects to Cornish educational policy.

 

At the same time, the Telegraph has vomited out another ill-informed and bigoted anti-Pagan article, this time by Christopher Howse. Howse re-articulates many of the points of the Kerby article, revisiting the Cornwall schools topic with typical Telegraph bluster.

 

Howse’s problem with Paganism being included in the syllabus is twofold. Firstly, he argues that “Just as French lessons and maths lessons do not merely teach about French and maths but train children to speak the language and add up, so religious education has its practical application.” Presumably, Howse is also against teaching History in schools, for fear that young children might end up becoming Vikings.

 

Secondly, Howse states, “The other problem is that if paganism is taught alongside the religion that children’s parents practice at home, it implies that paganism is a religion just as well-founded as Presbyterianism or Islam. It’s like teaching Esperanto alongside French.” This is a strange point to make, given the fact that there are a great many Pagans in Cornwall; there are certainly more Pagans than Muslims in the county, if the fact that the Islamic Community Centre in Truro boasts itself as “Cornwall’s only Mosque” is anything to go by (contrast with Boscastle’s famous Witchcraft Museum, the three Pagan Federation Moots in the county and the numerous witchcraft practitioners and groups in Penzance, Bodmin and elsewhere).

 

Howse frames these bad educational analogies with two broader themes – firstly, he echoes Kerby by saying that “It seems there are now two kinds of witchcraft: the bad kind that black people believe in, and the kind that should be celebrated because it is believed in by Cornish people.” He concludes by parroting the age-old favourite of the seasoned witch-burner – the affirmation that there is no historical continuity between contemporary and ancient Paganism. Howse relates this specifically to the issue of Cornwall’s stone circles, which have featured prominently in this debate so far, as justification for the importance of Paganism in Cornwall’s heritage. “But nobody knows what standing stones represent.” Howse protests. “The astronomical, social, ritual, pacific or bloody uses they might have had are lost in prehistory. They might have been linked with spring flowers or with human sacrifice. No one knows.”

 

Such grand pronouncements about the dangers of witchcraft beliefs, our ignorance of the religious practices of our far ancestors, and the absolute discontinuity of pre and post-Christian spirituality are proof positive, if ever it was needed, that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Both Howse and Kerby draw on academic literature selectively to bolster a shamelessly pro-Christian agenda. As an anthropologist I have studied each of these themes in quite a bit of depth – the fact that I am still a Pagan should say something about the validity of Howse and Kerby’s assessment.

Glamour: Modern usage of “witch” and “witchcraft” by occultists forms part of a programme of rehabilitation and renewal. Rather than deny magic utterly, contemporary pagans seek ways of addressing the underlying bigotry and fear that encourages witchcraft accusations.

Firstly – witchcraft. Witchcraft accusations are indeed a widespread cultural phenomenon, and serve, as such anthropologists as Evans-Pritchard, La Fontaine and MacFarlane have argued in the past, as both an explanation for misfortune and making such misfortune meaningful by relating it to social concerns about negative forces, such as jealousy or malice. But, as Jason Pitzl-Waters has pointed out over at Wild Hunt, witchcraft accusations, in Africa especially, have been pushed to further violent excesses by the actions of Christian evangelists – with Christian dualism reframing the personal grievance-fuelled workings of a curse-wielder into a moral assault of cosmic scope. The same can certainly be said of Medieval Europe – although witchcraft was very much part of pre-Christian Roman culture; fear of infernal maleficium only reached its overzealous peak under the authority of the Christian churches.

 

In addition, I feel that Kerby and Howse’s articles don’t just mistakenly apportion blame onto Pagan shoulders, they also fundamentally miss the point of why present-day pagan occultists use the terms “witch” and “witchcraft” at all. Unlike the thoughtful priests and Enlightenment philosophers who attempted to end the violence and terror of witch trials by denying the existence of magic entirely, present-day Pagans attempt to avoid purges by redeeming the individuals and practices that often empowered them. Reflecting the Jungian process of reclaiming the Shadow by accepting it and learning from it, the witch is transformed from poisoner to prophetess, from hexer to healer. If a person is so jealous, lonely and isolated that they are willing to harm their fellows, we need to think about why, rather than hanging first and asking questions later. Contemporary European witchcraft attempts to hamstring superstitious hysteria by inviting us to re-cognize, rather than demonize, the figure of the witch.

 

Many roots: Pagan continuity is not measured by confessions of faith or institutional survival, but through threads of tradition that have survived the Christian era and are being re-woven in new ways in the modern day.

As for Howse’s bold assertions concerning continuity, what this amounts to is little more than a piss-poor reading of the past fifty years of historical research into the origins of contemporary Paganism. It is not sufficient to simply hold up Murray as a straw man and knock her down without telling us whose gloves you are wearing when you do it. Ronald Hutton, a leading historian of British witchcraft and Paganism, was one of the major players in the systematic deconstruction of Murray’s claims, but as he points out in Triumph of the Moon, there are in fact four distinct streams linking ancient and modern Paganism – it’s just that an underground, organised witch cult is not one of them. Instead, high magic, folk magic, folk ritual and the love of classical art, poetry and philosophy have all contributed to the resurgence of Paganism in the modern age, and all have their roots in pre-Christian practices and beliefs. This does not constitute the sort of confessional or institutional continuity that Christianity and Islam can boast, but given the fact that Pagans tend to be wary of belief-related labels and formal institutions, it should be obvious that these things are not crucial articles of faith for us. Instead, it is the sort of loose, experientially motived tradition that you find in traditional religions the world over that characterizes both modern and ancient European Paganism, and links the two together. Paganism has not survived as a hidden form of “anti-Christianity” (as cool as that seems) into the modern age. It is its own kind of cultural assemblage, with its own lineage and patterns of authority that have to a great extent remained intact.

 

People of the Stones: Contemporary practice may not be entirely consistent with what was done in earlier centuries, but can any Christian church boast as much?

As for stone circles, we actually know a great deal about them, thanks to extensive archaeological research. We know they had astrological significance, being aligned to important points of the solar year, and that they were potentially used for rituals relating to the dead and possibly healing. If later European religious practices are anything to go by, they probably involved ritual processions and clockwise circumambulation. Steven Waller has suggested that the design of Stonehenge was inspired by interference patterns in sound. Regardless of their original function, subsequent generations to the builders have all placed their own interpretations on these ancient structures, and modern pagans are no different in this regard – much like early Christians building on pre-Christian religious sites. Exploring these shifting understandings and comparing them to contemporary archaeology would surely be an informative exercise for schoolchildren.

Howse, Odone, and Kerby all show an all-too widespread attitude amongst Christians; that denigrates anything that doesn’t fit within their own, narrow worldview. And because Christianity is so widespread, such odious opinions get far more airtime than they deserve, discouraging seekers and poisoning public sentiment. As a young person, I was put off pursuing my true spiritual calling because of angry old men like Howse telling everyone that Paganism was silly, even dangerous, superstitious nonsense. I fortunately have realized my mistake, but not after losing many years, trying to shoehorn my soul into a Christian mold. Although Christianity is a beautiful faith for many, it was profoundly incompatible with my own state of being, and left me closeted and self-hating. I feel it is up to Pagans and open-minded Christians to challenge individuals like Kerby, in order to make things that bit easier for people who are seeking the right spiritual path for themselves.

 

 

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April 16, 2012

More Beatitude than Platitude? An Open Letter to Cristina Odone

Cristina Odone believes it is ridiculous that Paganism be included in British RE lessons.

Dear Ms Odone.

You recently produced an article condemning the inclusion of Paganism and Druidry as part of the Religious Education syllabus in Cornish schools. You omit, though, that teaching about these faiths is not actually required, merely optional – what is required however, is that 60% of every RE course in this county must be concerned with your own faith of Christianity. It is therefore patently ridiculous for you to claim that our society believes that “one set of belief(sic.) is as good as another.” Christianity still is top dog, being the only faith that it is mandatory for schools to teach our children about.

Of course, the error at the heart of your article – you elide cultural and moral relativism and class this unwarranted merger as a “liberal fear of religious values” – is nothing new. The right wing press (including your erstwhile sparring partners over at The Daily Mail) regularly roll their eyes at any mention of Pagans or other minorities getting greater religious rights; considering such concessions to be the acts of timorous bureaucrats with no discernment when it comes to matters of religious validity.

Such journalists, as you have done, make the allegation that Paganism doesn’t have an ethical compass. Indeed, in reference to your encounter with Emma Restall-Orr on the BBC’s The Big Questions, you said much the same thing – dismissing the ethical teachings she shared on that show as “platitudes” and expressing high dudgeon that such a base occult person as a Druid should be permitted a platform in the high halls of public service broadcasting. Presumably, you believe the BBC’s function is to  “edify” (read “indoctrinate”) everybody in true, good religious values. The alternatives are wishy-washy relativism.

To be honest, I think you’ve fallen into the usual trap of Christians faced with people who aren’t, and assumed that just because we don’t have Abrahamic-style morality, we must not have any morality at all. This could not be further from the truth. We Pagans have very clear moral frameworks – they’re just not like yours.

Pagan ethical teaching, was, I felt, very clearly elucidated by Emma (a Druid, like myself) on The Big Questions, and in a very good book she wrote to answer the questions she received there. To use her words, Pagans believe that the good life is founded upon sustainable relationship. We must always, as moral beings, be sensitive to the needs and situation of all others – only in light of that sensitivity can ethics truly shine. Empathy – the same principle that underpins the Christian Golden Rule – is critical here. This is not simply a principle poached from Christian thought though; it has its origins in the work of Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, and beyond. Refusing the special pleading of humanism, modern Pagans attempt to apply empathy universally to create a fully heartfelt ecological perspective.

Despite this shared cornerstone of empathy, though, Pagan ethics are quite different from Christian ones. Christian ethics are heavily influenced by the political views of their day – most notably the Bronze-Age notions of sacral kingship it inherited from Judaism, and the Roman concept of Imperium. In both these political systems, the king-emperor is the absolute autocrat, whose word is law – never (in principle) to be questioned. Ultimate moral authority is therefore invested in the judgements of a single personality; one who is assumed to be uniquely elevated above all others.

All the Abrahamic faiths retain this concept – although, unlike the cultures from which they sprang, in them this role ceases to be filled by humans, and instead is filled by a transcendent god. The primary human role becomes that of the Prophet, the one into whose ear the absent Emperor whispers. The Pope still holds this role for Catholics such as yourself, as Christ’s representative on Earth. For Protestants, it is the Bible who holds such authority.

As a non-Abrahamic faith, modern-day Paganism has no such fondness for autocrats. We acknowledge the fact, as the ancient philosophers of Greece and India did, that true certainty is inaccessible for human minds. This doesn’t deny that the truth is out there (as relativism proper does), it just insists that the human capacity to know that truth is always provisional, no matter what title a person may have. In our view, the Pope, for all his learning and influence, has no greater claim to moral (or metaphysical) authority than you, regardless of which chair he might be sitting on at the time. The Bible might have been written mere decades after god himself (or one of them, anyway) walked the Earth – but that doesn’t guarantee its veracity.

This centralizing of doubt (the technical term is “skepticism”) in fact makes Paganism, Buddhism and other non-Abrahamic traditions far more like Western academia than they are like Christianity, Islam or Judaism, which place much greater stock in faith. This is always painted as faith in God, but it is really faith in whoever or whatever told you about God in the first place – be it man or book. It is an attitude that breeds hierarchy and autocracy.

Pagans believe that there is certainly a right and wrong course of action to take, in any situation. We reach, we fight, we strive to discern what is right, but, because we’re flawed beings, very often we fail. History more often than not reveals shortcomings in our own choices that we could never have imagined at the time of their making. Both our traditions accept this – but rather than give up, crying in the dust of our failures, and hope that some surrogate eternal parent will pick us up and make everything better as the Christians do; we pick ourselves up, and struggle on.  We don’t do this because we want to, often – we do so because it is right. It is necessary. It is ethical. It is, to point to a growing line of thought within Paganism, the heroic thing to do.

In a positive application of the Nietzschean critique of Christianity as the religion of slavery, we Pagans seek an emancipated morality that doesn’t sugar the pill of a life filled with difficult decisions, but treats us as spiritual adults and calls us to embrace responsibility for our mistakes. It allows for a plurality of views. Although there may be one reality behind the plurality of human experiences of it, it is impossible from our perspective that any one experience could grasp that reality completely. Therefore, it is up to us to come together, and discern the most moral course of action from our many insights. Christians do this too of course, but rather than bow and scrape around the supposed divine authority of Pope or Presbyter, we acknowledge the truth of what we are doing, and honour it for what it is – messy, difficult and ultimately finite.

So what? What do these fine words mean for my daily life?

I recycle. I’m kind to others. I’m seeking a job that doesn’t involve working for an organization that exploits or harms the planet. I don’t have a car, because I feel it’s unsustainable. I support democracy and civil liberties. I respect the autonomy of others. I accept the limitations of my own perspective, and despite my critical view of Christianity, I fully support it being taught in RE lessons. Because I know that I might be wrong.

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April 1, 2012

The stuff that gods are made of

Are God and Man closer than we think?

Debates about the existence of God have been going on for ages, and have gone nowhere interesting for almost as long. A regular dance now plays out – where believers and non-believers dodge and weave around the bones of old philosophers, their jousts and jibes predictably inconclusive. I think part of the problem is that what we have is a disagreement between apologists and critics – people who want to defend a particular theory, and those who wish to poke holes in it. What nobody ever seems to do in the debate is speculate – theorise openly about what sort of god, if any, the evidence might point to.

Atheists tend to merely claim that God is a “delusion” concerning a “supernatural being” or a “creative intelligence”. Monotheists tend to agree (apart from the delusion part), viewing these traits as the natural conclusion to draw from the various omnies  they attribute to Him – omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, omni-compassion, omni-justice etc. This view has a long (Christian and Islamic) philosophical provenance, and aside from being logically fraught, seems to say more about what Divinity does than what it is. Even labels like “supernatural” tell us nothing other than this being or quality doesn’t fit within our world. It doesn’t stipulate how its own world functions, or how we might identify its effects on this one.

In short, it seems to me that whole debate is badly posed, and badly understood – even by theists. They cling to one particular image of Divinity, rather than approach that image philosophically and critically. The reason for this is simple – the importance of upholding the right set of beliefs in Christianity has always been paramount, and is at the very least important in the other Abrahamic faiths. As such, rather than openly ask the question “What is this Divine thing anyway?”, theists have spent most of their time trying to justify other people’s answers (i.e. those of Biblical or Quranic prophets) to this basic question, while atheists have spent most of their time trying to torpedo those same answers. Nobody is doing any blue sky research. Or nobody participating in the debate is, at any rate.

My approach to these questions, though, has always been one of looking to the blue sky for answers; always one of trying to explain experiences I have, rather than attempting to defend a theory somebody else has provided for such experiences. For me, the Divine is as real as joy, power or the colour green – it is something I experience directly. So the question isn’t “does this exist?” but “how does this exist?” Is it mere imagination, or does it relate at all to the world around me in some way?

From a reductionist atheist perspective, the gods are just mere imagination – voices in the head, created by some quirk in the evolution of the brain. Primitive man, so the theory goes, personified natural phenomena – thunderstorms, dreams, spring, childbirth – in an attempt to better relate to them. Those who still express this trait are a throwback to this earlier time, before mankind developed reason as a better way of understand the world. In anthropology, this idea was championed by Edward Tylor, who believed that religion was a “survival” from a prior phase of human evolution. He was working in 19th century, and his ideas are now seen as highly antiquated by contemporary anthropologists of religion. But they still prove popular amongst certain atheists – particularly Richard Dawkins – because they serve the same purpose for which Tylor originally thought them up – to discredit religious beliefs.

The problem for reductionists is, of course, that lots of other things exist primarily as structures in the brain – not least consciousness itself. Physically speaking, the human self and the persona of my gods are composed of much the same stuff – neurological matter. My sense of “I” and my sense of “Sulis”, “Frey” or “Nodens” are basically the same mental function – the brain being able to create a particular sensation, in this case, one of persona and agency. This is a foundational adaptation, and is basically as much a “sense” with which the brain decodes the world as colour or temperature perception. This sense of “sociality” is carefully tuned to help human beings interact with other consciousnesses, by allowing the brain to construct models, using its own neurones, of the brains of other beings. Capable of being used on predators, prey and most importantly, other humans, this ability to give voice to others inside our own heads is vital for anticipating how those others will behave in any given situation.

Now, one conclusion that could be made on this basis is that people who sense gods are misapplying this ability to things that, fundamentally, do not have consciousness. But one might equally say that applying instrumental logic – another great human adaption, evolved for the purpose of manipulating inanimate objects – to human interactions, is a “misapplication”. But we all know that being logical in ones dealings with others is often useful, so long as it is tempered by a sense of their agency; I’d say much the same is true for the wider world. Including Nature in one’s social world is perfectly acceptable, so long as maintain a fundamental sense of the logically observable differences between one’s own condition and that of the thing you are attempting to relate to. We may use sociality to make sense of stones, so long as we do not forget they are still stones, and not humans. The presence of this consideration is the difference between anthropomorphism (which is foolish) and egomorphism (which is not). To apply one’s full cognitive powers to any given situation, so long as it is done with sufficient awareness of the limitations and strengths of those powers, seems eminently sensible, especially given the fact that the human’s social sense is so exceptionally powerful.

When you consider the implications of the idea that social knowledge consists of creating “models” based on diligent observation that work unconsciously, it actually seems even more sensible to use sociality to engage with non-conscious things. This could explain why many indigenous communities – who practice empathy for their surroundings untrammelled by dogma and hewn from direct experience – are able to show such incredible powers of perception and foresight when hunting, gathering, planning settlements or travelling. It isn’t because they are “close to nature” in some essentialist way, but simply because by living attentively in the world, they are able to use their unconscious social processing as well as logic to correctly anticipate the behaviour of complex systems, such as weather or geology. Even though this information is refracted through “social” metaphors, it nonetheless retains an accuracy that is decidedly useful. This would also explain why it has proved to be such a successful and enduring adaptation.

Of course, this is all conjecture. The mechanisms for consciousness are still barely understood, and there are plenty of philosophers, and even some biologists, who believe that consciousness is an inherent property of all matter, rather than merely a function of the brain. But at least this is doesn’t stoop to the “all-true or stupid” dichotomy that most debates about gods descend to. Even if one entertains a reductive view of spirituality, it still can’t necessarily be dismissed as mere delusion. Reason is not the only means by which humans usefully interpret the world, and even if gods are just “in our heads”, they would still be no more or less real than each and every one of us.

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March 14, 2012

Free Radicals: On the true spirit of the English

There'll always be an England - but is this what it should look like?

Patriotism is a dirty word these days. For all the diverse bluster of our politicians and right-wing journalists, nationalism exists in only two, rather flawed modes: the bland, teary-eyed flag waving of Britishness; inclusive to all and tied more to narrow political values of citizenship and democracy than any broader cultural vision, and the backward, small-town, conservative xenophobia of Englishness. Denuded of its once imperial pretentions, Britishness has become something of a civic duty – a demonstration of a willingness to participate in public life – and little more. Englishness, in most cases, seems to be merely an ideological deployment of Stuff White People Like (British Chapter), combined with a nastier element; a performance of the fears some have about how that might change in a global world. What’s worse, is that the two are frequently confused, Britishness being used to refer to Englishness being used to refer to Britishness… to almost infinite regress.

Confusions aside, I have no beef with the new vision of Britishness. All states have their theatrics of belonging, and the government at Westminster is no different. At least it is an open, inclusive vision of citizenship – a hell of a lot better than the restrictive, crypto-Metropolitanism that Britishness used to be; under whose auspices Welsh, Irish, Scottish and regional cultures were almost stamped out. A more pressing concern is the state of Englishness. Regardless of whether it is the middle class vision lampooned by Jam and Jerusalem or the more working class mixture of football and fame; both have an unnerving tendency towards a fear of “others” – foreigners, outsiders or dissenters – that betrays an ignorance of history. After all, the Cross of St George is the symbol of a Middle-Eastern Saint, adopted after the Crusades. Tea is imported from India. Jam started off in France. Looking to Christianity, St George and football to give us our sense of Englishness always seemed odd to me – all these tropes are world-covering in scope, and yet are frequently paraded about by bigots who tout them as symbols of the essence of one specific nation.

Of course, all this goes to show a basic truth that anthropologists have understood for decades – that all nations are imagined communities. Created on the basis of common destinies cooked up by intellectuals, artists and others with a platform and an agenda, pretty much any human community of any size is intentionally forged by some historical figure or other. Englishness is the way it is not because of any natural facts of blood and soil, but because persons or persons unknown decreed it so.

Norwegian nationalism was made by painters, writers and musicians

Some nations, such as Norway and Wales, arose as concepts more or less directly from the Romantic movement. 19th century Norwegian intellectuals and artists such as Asbjørnsen, Lindemen and Grieg set about recording the folk practices of their newly-born country (it had been a Danish province for some 400 years), and forged from both these records and their own genius something of a collective soul for the Norwegian people. Of course, England also had its own Romantic movement, but it seems to not have had anything like the same kind of impact on the nationalism that eventually took shape here. England was very much eclipsed by Britain as a favoured concept early on, and so it was eventually Britannia, not Ing, who prevailed as the favoured Genius Populi. With modernity’s vicious destruction of folk culture in the early half of the 20th century, the only ethnic identity people could turn back to once Britishness shed its ethnic associations was what they remained passionate about – sport, Christianity and popular culture.

As a result, the nostalgia of present day wannabe nation-builders is invested in the 50s (when Britishness involved a rolling-out of English culture, before the race-riots of the 60s), not pre-Industrial times as with other nationalisms. And given the short period of time between then and now, this supposed “happier time” is only too easy to pick holes in. 1950s Britain was oppressive, inane in its disrespect for the past and faith in the future, racist, sexist, homophobic, and imperialistic. It had yet to challenge the many grotesqueries of capitalism. So a collective imaginary rooted in such an era is bound to be negatively contaminated with such attitudes.

The Children of Robin Hood?

But within this rather sorry state of affairs, there lies an opportunity. With the hideousness of nationalism so closely bound-up with an obviously false essentialism and an oppressive cultural outlook, we have the chance to do away with it, and replace it with something more in tune with contemporary values. The same ingredients the early romantics of Norway used to produce a sense of collective culture – folkways – have in England been left mercifully untainted by the bad old days of ethnocentric nationalism. What’s more, during the 60s and 90s especially, English people have drawn on these traditions to support the various protest movements and rebellions of the 20th century. I see it as no coincidence that the Battle of Beanfield occurred just when Richard Carpenter’s mystical Robin of Sherwood was being broadcast on British television – they are both manifestations of the deeply spiritual and profoundly rebellious spirit of the English people.

To me, English folk culture is the missing ingredient in creating the right kind of English ethnicity for a pluralist society. It is local, it is assertive, it is historically (and mythically) rooted, and yet it isn’t intolerant or oppressive. In fact, it can easily be interpreted as quite the opposite. Whether we think of Wat Tyler or Robin Hood, The Levellers or The Travellers, there is a long and proud tradition of ordinary English people fighting for freedom and equality – precisely the things that identity politics and now the occupy movement are demanding. Folk culture has, and can provide a symbolic language to articulate this. This freedom-loving nature of course isn’t unique to the English, nor are the English “essentially” about freedom. The rise of Elgar-fuelled nationalist pomp is proof against that kind of naïveté. But given how all cultures are made, not born, surely we can re-make English culture out of these radical historical ingredients, and put it to work in leading the English to a better destiny? Perhaps now is the time we should see ourselves, as one of my favourite musicians Damh the Bard puts it, as the sons and daughters of Robin Hood.

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March 9, 2012

Paddy Power rides the White Horse

In a world full of pain, I often feel that “offense” is nothing to moan about. Yesterday, thousands died in Syria, millions more elsewhere in the world died due to a lack of fresh, clean drinking water. We still inhabit an economic system based on inequality, exploitation and greed. These practical matters are, perhaps, more deserving of our grief than mere acts of violence towards symbols – especially when those behind those acts did not intend to bring harm. Sometimes, I find it exasperating how whenever somebody even coughs in the direction of the Prophet Muhammed or the Qur’an, you get a screaming mob of Muslim fundamentalists burning American flags and baying for blood.

But what’s easy to miss, is when people complain of being offended, it’s rarely the specific act that’s causing the upset. Rather, it’s the fact that the act highlights a wider pattern, or attitude, in the world – in short, it strikes a nerve that is already raw. Afghans rioting in Kabul over Americans accidentally burning copies of their holy book are as much protesting about their hostility to a foreign presence, that, for all the freedoms it has brought, has had a heavy cost in what Americans euphemistically call “collateral damage”, and has yet to deal with institutional corruption or the insurgency. There are of course other motives – such as the frustrated belief that Islam should stand astride the world as a colossus; the validity of which is denied with every demonstration of Western military might. Looking at it like this, my exasperation is thoroughly misplaced; the anger rises not from a simple careless action, but from a catalogue of grievances and sorrows. The trigger merely picks at the scab of a wound that was already there.

The White Horse of Uffington: The Goddess Rhiannon and/or the Hound of Cunomaglus

So it is with this: yesterday’s usage by Irish bookmakers Paddy Power of the White Horse of Uffington in a publicity stunt. Over cover of darkness and without permission, a crack team of PR people sporting night-vision goggles laid out a canvas jocky-figure, riding the chalk image. The National Trust – the landowners – discovered the workers early in the morning, and told them to leave immediately. The site is still being inspected for damage to the figure, and the National Trust is still contemplating legal action.

Paddy Power: Guilty of an act of wanton disrespect.

Let’s not make any bones – the horrified local villagers are right; this is desecration. The White Horse is a depiction of the spirit of the Vale, of quite remarkable antiquity. It is thousands of years old, and was first made (potentially) by the Dobunni people, who dwelt in the Vale from before the Romans’ arrival. Some say it is Rhiannon, the White Horse of the chalk (interestingly, the West Berkshire Downs upon which the figure is carved are famed for their studs). Others suggest it is one of the white Cwn Annwn; hounds of the underworld, who hunted with the great Iron Age god Cunomaglus, or “Hound Lord”, whose cult centre was near to where the town of Swindon is now. It reflects the free, unbridled spirit of southern Britain’s high places, that assists humankind as we go out into the world, to hunt or travel. It is sacred, not just to the Vale’s permanent residents, but to those of us who travel there throughout the year to honour the landscape.

As a community, we believe the White Horse to be sacred.

Each Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain, my tribe travels to the Vale to celebrate these festivals – and the White Horse has become something of a guardian for us, watching over our festivities and representing the land in our rites. Therefore, for it to be used for some tawdry publicity campaign that promotes horse-racing is deeply disrespectful.

Horse racing: Cruel to an image of the goddess.

Why? Horse-racing, as practiced in the modern-day, is a billion-pound industry that is widely criticised by animal-rights campaigners for abusing horses. When I’ve come across racing horse-trainers in the past, they show little love and affection towards the animals they work with, teaching them to respond to harsh words and violence.

On a deeper level, to treat an image that is deeply connected to its place and context as “just another horse-picture” is profound. It reveals the sheer anomic, McDonaldised impersonalism of crass, mass modernity, and thus for those of us who reject that assemblage, to use one of our most beloved symbol to further its aims is totally galling. What’s more, this isn’t the first time that Britain’s ancient chalk figures have been targeted by people seeking a bit of free publicity. Fashion harridans Trinny and Susannah targeted the Long Man of Wilmington a couple of years ago, an action that was protested by local Druidic community.

So I hope Paddy Power gets taken to court. They may have donated money to the National Trust, but the fact they didn’t ask permission first (and didn’t on purpose because they knew they’d be denied it) shows the contempt with which they view the image, and their ignorance of what it stands for. And as such, I feel justified in feeling deeply saddened and angry about what they’ve done.

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March 4, 2012

Why Science isn’t enough

Bryan Appleyard: Calling neo-atheists to account... but is there a deeper issue in the New Atheism?

There is a foolish belief stalking the world at the moment. Okay, there are many foolish beliefs stalking the world at the moment – but there is one in particular I wish to talk about: namely, the idea that (in the well-meant words of Bill Nye) Science Rules. In short, this is the belief that the scientific method is the only means of accessing the truth, and that its established canon of assumptions is basically sound. All other knowledge systems – in particular, those of religion – are at best “merely subjective” and at worst, delusional.

In his recent article on Neo-atheism and how it is becoming as rabidly fundamentalist as any faith it seeks to criticise, Bryan Appleyard cited this unflinching faith in science as one of the key tenets of this new reformist movement. Molecular biologist Rupert Sheldrake has written extensively on this topic, and his recently publish book The Science Delusion is directly focused on the issue of how a series of largely un-tested assumptions lie at the heart of the contemporary scientific method’s dismissal of spiritual or “paranormal” phenomena. Personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy, and I’ll review it here when I’m done.

All this criticism is of course not remotely anti-science. All those sounding notes of caution, including myself, are firmly in favour in the importance of rigorous empirical analysis of the physical world. It’s just that true knowledge doesn’t stop there. There are a huge number of valid ways in which people can access truth; one doesn’t need to limit oneself to instrumentalist, reductionist reason and empiricism. And this is as true for atheists, as it is for anyone. The question of whether or not the gods exist is neither here nor there for this issue; it is simply a matter of acknowledging the fullness of human thought.

The problem is this: logical positivism (the idea that only rational thought founded on the scientific method yields true statements) denies any objective truth value to emotional/spiritual statements. However, it nonetheless honours their subjective truth value. This is nonsensical, as if the objective “material” world is the only thing that can properly indicate what is the case, then subjective statements based on personal views cannot by definition have any truth value at all.

A true rational materialist cannot, properly speaking, honestly make statements such as “I love you” or “I like this cake”, because those terms invoke such nebulous, ill-defined concepts (from the perspective of natural science) as “I”, “love”, “like” and “you”. A truly scientific approach to a question such as “Do I like this cake?” would be to conduct a complex series of scans and biopsies to assess whether or not neurological activity (both chemical and electrical) altered in any meaningful way when cake was being viewed, smelled, eaten and digested. How “you” feel isn’t really a scientific source for truth – it’s merely a feature of “naïve” experience, like the existence of gods or the sun appearing to go around the earth, and therefore fatuous with respect to science. What the new atheists need to recognise, is that the sentimentally-infused would of experience is where all reasoning begins; and therefore to say it is “less real” than a scientific abstract is just as occult and Gnostic as any spiritual discipline. If you deny that world, that not only will God be dead… mankind will be no more either.

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February 21, 2012

Coalition for Marriage: Religious Discrimination?

Lord Carey: Makes me want to bash the bishop, and not in a good way.

This week, in anticipation of an impending public consultation in Britain on marriage equality for same-sex couples, a group of influential voices, both secular and spiritual, have banded together to produce The Coalition for Marriage – an umbrella organisation for all those who aren’t keen on “gay marriage” becoming a thing. The most famous voice amongst this collection of bishops, MPs and peers is Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who has recently published an article in the Daily Mail about this topic.

Now, as a gay guy, I’m sure my feelings about this are obvious. But I’m not going to bother responding directly to the points made on The Coalition for Marriage website – that has already been done beautifully elsewhere by Martin Robbins of The Guardian. Instead, I’m going to talk about the two reasons why I think gay marriage is a good, nay, necessary thing.

Good in many cases, but should it be the ideal?

1) Gay romance needs to be celebrated: In Lord Carey’s article, he cites the definition for marriage lying in an “ideal” formula for childrearing – the heterosexual couple. This is a pretty straightforward attitude – marriage is about children, and children require two parents, of opposite gender, who love one another, and are married.

Now, this definition has all sorts of problems with it. Lots of straight marriages are childless, for starters, and I don’t see Lord Carey campaigning for them to be forced into having civil partnerships instead. And certainly when a couple announce their engagement, the immediate question isn’t “Oh great! When’s the baby due?” As for children needing straight parents to come out well-adjusted, there is simply no evidence for this. Children need parents; the idea that the genitals of those parents are of any remote significance after the act of conception borders on the ridiculous.

What marriage is certainly about is romantic love. To get married, one should have a deep romantic connection with the other person concerned; getting hitched, living together, and (potentially) having children subsequently are all framed in light of this devotional norm.

However, binding this romantic aspect, childrearing, and heterosexuality into an “ideal” causes real problems, and not just for gay people. By taking the stance of “if everything goes to plan, you’ll be married with kiddies eventually”, a huge number of people are instantly marginalised. Gay people, celibate people, asexual people, people who don’t have children. A lot of my female friends who are post-menopausal, single, and childless express a great deal of sorrow about their situation, and fear the future. The reason they feel so destitute is the same reason why I stayed in the closet for years as a teenager; attachment to idealised heterosexuality.

When I was a kid, I didn’t even know what being gay was. Despite having had a great number of gay crushes from an early age (Aladdin was a particular favourite), I just didn’t link those feelings to sexuality. Instead, I figured love would suddenly make sense and just happen when I was older. When I hit puberty and put two and two together, I immediately rejected the possibility of being gay out of hand: I wanted to get married and have kids. I’m a romantic. How could I be gay? Homosexuality, to my eyes, was something not quite as good as fitting the “ideal”.

I never feared that my parents would reject me. I knew I could rely on their love and support, no matter what. The homophobia I had to deal with was internalised; a gift from a society that touted fecund heterosexuality as the ideal, and anything else as a bit of a shame. Of course, I now know differently. Gay love is just as romantic as straight love. Heteros and homos can be just as slutty, just as devoted, as each other. It’s all about choice.

Now, you might ask how gay marriage would change this. Well, it would allow me to send a signal. To shine with the love I may one day have for another man, in such a way that kids going through what I went through might see that the breeder ideal is only one story about love that can be written.

Of course, other people may disagree. My pain, and the resonance it might have with secret pangs felt by those they love, might be immaterial before the decree of a patriarchal god, an essentialist goddess, or tradition, or whatever. That’s fine. In a liberal society, they have as much right to believe that as I do to disagree. But the law should not choose for us. And at the moment, it does. I cannot scream out the truth of my love, and honour that which I feel to be right, in the same way that they can. And this brings me to my second point:

Handfasting: Older than Christian marriages, as it happens, which only became the norm in 1215.

2) The law currently breaches religious freedoms: This might seem an odd thing to claim, given the fact that the major argument given by many anti-gay marriage campaigners is that their religious right to disapprove might be infringed upon, but there’s real sense to it. Let me explain:

I’m Pagan. Although I don’t like describing my path as a “religion”, it covers much the same territory as the social forms most usually assembled under that term. So I have a right to practice my faith as well as I like.

We Pagans believe in marriage. We believe that the gods honour the commitments lovers make to one another through the rite of handfasting; where one can bind oneself to another/s for a year and day, for a lifetime, or for all eternity. We also believe (by and large) that gay relationships can be honoured in this way, drawing inspiration from a piece of inspirational lore known as the Charge of the Goddess, that affirms that “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.” If a relationship is done in this spirit, it is sacred, and can be acknowledged as such in ritual space.

As the law stands, though, a Pagan handfasting of two men (say) cannot be legally binding in the same way as a Christian marriage. If I wanted to get married, even if I booked the handfasting at a registered wedding venue with a registered Pagan celebrant, I would nonetheless not be able to enter into a civil partnership at the same time, because according to the Civil Partnerships Act, there cannot be any religious activity of any kind during the process of registering the union. The same issue is proving problematic for gay Quakers and reform Jews; despite our religious communities believing gay unions to be as sacred as any, our beliefs and practices in this regard are not recognised, and are actively forbidden, because the law currently reflects the views of more powerful religious groups.

If there was any more blatant example of the infringement of religious rights, I’d like to hear it. And yet, we have bishops aplenty, bemoaning the potential ramifications for their homophobic, largely deserted sees if the law changes, despite the fact that current protections for freedom of religion would apply to any change in the laws on marriage. They can keep to their nasty, antediluvian principles – nobody is trying to stop them. They just need to stop standing in the way of the rest of us taking a different road.

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February 15, 2012

Dyspraxia: How to lose friends and alienate people

Dyspraxia can make you feel like an ugly duckling, even when everybody else has graduated to swan-hood.

 

I’ve just got back from a wonderful evening of poetry and panto, gathered under the banner of queerness. The poetry was incredible, filled with a mixture of fairytale, gritty honesty and a gleeful reclaiming of nature from essentialistic gender binaries. The panto was hilariously subversive, casting Baroness “Scratcher” as the evil, greedy stepmother, with Boris Johnson and David Cameron as her sexist and secretly BDSM-loving ugly sisters. The protagonist, a bisexual and newly assertive Cinders, scored with the secretly lesbian Princess Charlotte and ended up forming a blissful polyamorous union with her new beau and her panromantic, asexual partner Buttons. Incredible! Props to the Lashings of Ginger Beer team for an utterly stupendous performance.

But despite really enjoying myself, I noticed something a little disquieting; how uncomfortable I still occasionally feel in queer spaces. This isn’t because of any suppressed bigotry on my part or any of the usual political grievances that some queer writers complain of (too many male voices, too much emphasis on fitting in/not fitting in) though. I’m confident I’m not guilty of the former, and the evening was laudibly balanced and harmonious. No, it’s about something quite personal – my being dyspraxic.

In essence, queer spaces place a huge level of emphasis upon concern for others. New social rules – such as asking a person what pronouns they use to describe themselves before using any to refer to them – and a general push towards gentleness and care when dealing with others is part of what makes queer spaces so wonderful and welcoming. Indeed, all of this is entirely intentional. The problem is, that for a person who finds social interactions difficult (such as sufferers of autism, or dyspraxics like myself), this kind of environment can be counter-intuitively threatening. As most people come to these places as a refuge from an often hostile and unsympathetic world, barriers and defences are lowered, which makes the chance of a stray word or careless gesture causing genuine hurt or offense all the greater. Rules are put in place to prevent this from happening, but if picking up social rules doesn’t come naturally, it is only too easy to foul up without meaning to.

This Imbolc, during an encounter with the goddess Brigit, I suddenly realised how scared I am of such tenderness. My fear is not so much of being hurt, but of unintentionally hurting others. I noticed this fear again today in the swirl of neurosis that gripped me as I spoke to people. Would my usage of the word “dude” to refer to, well, everybody, be offensive here? Am I subconsciously reacting to anybody in a way that makes them uncomfortable? Am I using inaccurate pronouns without realising it?

All this came to a head when somebody candidly admitted to me, after having only met me seconds before, that they had suffered from an eating disorder, and that it was still affecting their health. My reaction, intended by me to show support, gave both them and the other person we were both speaking to the impression that I had as well. I haven’t. When I clarified, the familiar awkwardness that appears when you’ve broke an unspoken rule appeared – a kind of abject unravelling of sociality, when the spell of social confidence that you tirelessly weave shatters utterly, and people realise that you’re weird, or rude, or possibly both. The bystander almost cursorily claimed that I’d given them that impression too – which felt like an act of summarily-offered judgement on my social failing – and they both vanished soon after. Had I really offended them? I don’t know. It’s difficult for me to say. Once you fall into the pit, it’s very difficult to trust your own ability to gauge the social temperature of your interactions aymore. They might have just been swept away from me in the tumult of the meet and greet in the interval. Then again, they might not.

None of this is meant to be a criticism of queer or other loving spaces, of course. I’m not saying for a moment they should change, or that all the rules of courtesy they’ve created are unfair. Personally, I think something as simple as checking somebody’s pronouns should be a standard everybody should follow. But I just feel it’s worth remembering that discourtesy isn’t always due to bigotry or genuine hatred; sometimes, it is literally about people just not knowing the rules (yet). Those who suffer with ASDs face real challenges when it comes to the shifting towards a more respectful world. In a funny sort of way, being high-functioning makes matters worse, as people don’t realise how much effort you put in to being “normal”. They assume you’re just like everybody else, until you fuck up and say something out of turn.

So yeah, I’m a bit scared of other queer folk. Not because I don’t like them, but because I like them so much, I don’t want to unintentionally wound them in their trust.

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February 10, 2012

Review: The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender: Colourblind casting, worse-than-blind film-making

I’ll be honest, I’ve never had much investment in Nickelodian’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. By the time it screened on British TV I was too old for it, and so I never really watched it. But what I did know of this Asian-European fusion of an animated series; I liked. The concept was solid, the backstory seemed complex and well-constructed, and best of all, practically the entire cast of characters weren’t white. Culturally, linguistically and physically; the world of the Last Airbender is one in which Europeans do not feature.

 

As a European myself, I feel fully justified in saying how great this is. For too long, especially in America, white people and white cultural ideas have been given far too great a share of the limelight. When other ethnic communities are present, they are usually demoted to playing a very tokenish second fiddle. This applies both culturally and individually; if white folks or white culture is involved, it usually provides the perspective from which the story is told. The Last Airbender is a glorious exception to this rule. So when I found out that a bunch of white actors were playing lead roles in the upcoming film adaption, I decided to give it a miss.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, The Last Airbender was still lingering on my LoveFilm playlist. Therefore, it was to my utter dismay that last Wednesday I received a rented copy of Airbender in the post, along with the much more welcome, guilty-pleasure rom-dram Letters to Juliet. I treated myself to watching Letters to Juliet last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve just finished watching Airbender, and it was even worse that I thought it was going to be.

Not only were a crew of three white kids (Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone) tasked with saving a world filled with a far greater level of racial diversity (because that’s what we crackers do best), but yes – you guessed it – the two primary antagonists were played by brown-skinned Cliff Curtis (who is Maori) and Aasif Mandvi (Indian). Utterly lacklustre writing (“We must show the fire nation that we believe in our beliefs just as much as they believe in theirs”) fought to outcompete dangling plot threads (old people threateningly rounded up for no reason, a revolution that people eventually stop talking about because more interesting stuff happens) in the biggest toe-curler stakes. To top it off, the film just lacked spirit. It just seems as though all the life, verve and originality of the source material was sucked out, and replaced with nothing at all.

 

And who is to blame for all this? The roles of writer, director and producer are all filled by the same guy – M. Night. Shyamalan. That’s right. The Indo-American director who gave us such triumphs as The Sixth Sense and The Village. Not only does the overall poverty of the film fly in the face of his past successes, but the hideous whitewash of Sokka and Katara seems to be an incomprehensible step for an Asian director to take. What the hell is going on?

 

Spot the odd ones out.

Shyamalan has given reasons for his choices. But his defence of keeping things “racially diverse” by making the Water Tribes white rings hollow when you notice how the Southern Water Tribe are all played by Inuit actors, apart from Sokka, Katara and their grandmother (the only ones with lines, incidentally), who are white. Although Shyamalan is right to claim that there are a very large number of minority ethnic speaking parts in the film, most of these are minor characters. Having lots of brown faces in cinema doesn’t do anything to shake white privilege if they’re all standing at the back.

 

Personally, I find big-name filmmakers’ resolute refusal to cast artists of colour in leading roles to be not only unfair towards hard-working and talented non-white actors, but is highly insulting towards white people, too. By assuming that Europeans aren’t going to want to witness the trials and accomplishments of “brown people”, those same filmmakers are accusing us of being racist ourselves. I don’t need white actors prancing around to enjoy a good story. One day, I hope to show the world that the nobody else does, either.

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February 5, 2012

“I hate those Ferengi!” Racism in Speculative Fiction

Prominent ears and nose. Lust for money. Just a coincidence.

Prominent ears and nose. Lust for money. Just a coincidence.

TVTropes is an utterly fabulous website, that any aspiring writer must use. Untold hours of my life have been whiled away, as I’ve sat at my computer absorbing the detailed and accessibly-written discourses the contributors have posted up there, detailing every recurring theme and device in fiction.

One of the most important pages, I think, is that of the “Planet of the Hats” trope. It refers to a specific trope – odiously common in speculative fiction – wherein different sentient races are uniformly marked out by a single trait. You have the warrior race. The spiritual race. The savage race. And the race who all wear funny hats.

As TVTropes points out, this technique is all sorts of wrong. Not only is the idea of an entire planet, or nation for that matter, whose population are uniformly anything laughable, but is almost always based on existing, all-too-human stereotypes. Take this description of the goblin race from a World of Warcraft community site:

The cunning goblins are small, green creatures who roam the isle of Kezan, their love of money, explosives, and technology leaves them to be a very dangerous race, most goblins however have a neutral standpoint, preferring to sell their contraptions are knowledge to other races, for a price of course.

Sound familiar? It might help to point out that, like the Ferengi, goblins have big noses, large flappy ears, and (yes, as if it couldn’t get any worse), strong New Yoiker accents. Blizzard might have well inserted clips from Hippler’s The Eternal Jew into the goblin’s opening cinematic sequence.

The same principle can be seen at work in other races. The cannibalistic trolls practice “voodoo”, wear bones through their noses and live on a series of tropical islands. The dwarves live in the mountains, drink lots of beer and have (bad) Scottish accents. The cow-like Tauren live in teepees, carve totem poles and are dependent on a single herd species for survival. And the Undead? Well they all wear punkish hair, experiment with weird technology and have Teutonic-sounding surnames.

To be fair to Blizzard, this sort of thing isn’t all that uncommon, and it’s not as if any race is uniformly painted as “bad”. Much like in Star Trek, supporters have argued that Blizzard’s intent is not to use stereotypes to vilify, but rather to rehabilitate our differences.

Hm. To be honest, regardless of the intent behind all this, I still feel it’s bad anthropology. If my discipline has taught me anything, it’s that there is far more difference within any given society than between them. This somewhat counter-intuitive idea forms the basis of my three-point critique of the DnD-style racio-cultural theory:

  1. No bell-curve?: The biggest problem, as hinted at above, is that many “races” are all touted as having set traits; lawfulness, extreme emotions, interest in pointless badinage etc. In reality, nature doesn’t produce such monolithic qualities. Life exists in bell-curves. It may well be that Klingons are more aggressive on average than humans, but in reality there would be a wide range of aggression levels in both species – potentially so much so, that there would be a significant overlap.
  2. Events, dear boy: Bad world-builders don’t think about why their races are the way they are. So your dwarves love making things, live underground and hate orcs – why? What historical or biological processes caused their society to evolve in such a way? Do dwarves crave gold because of a famous king who loved the metal more than anything, who set the trend? What would their society need to be like for such a fashion to take root? Oftentimes, if the question “why” is asked, it usually comes down to a matter of “Because a god said so”. This is fair enough, but often divine will is used to paste over contradictory ideas.
  3. Where are all the Elven binmen?: Cultures are big, complicated things, with a huge range of tasks that need to be done. You can’t just have a gentry who live in the lap of luxury – you need somebody to plump all those silk cushions and scrub those marble floors. Most fantasy races seem to ignore at least one or two major industrial sectors (such as farming, or domestic service), without any corresponding absence of the goods and services those industries provide.

In all honesty, 1. and 2. are the real flaws, while 3. is more of a particularly common by-product. By not thinking in detail about the range of traits and needs that human societies express, and about the complex causes of such traits, you will end up making your speculative society look entirely 2 dimensional – with the neglect of practical needs being the most likely error. Not only does this process of reflection produce (ultimately) better stories, but it avoids the prospect of falling back on offensive stereotypes in order to provide a bit of colour.

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