And I'm proud of it. This will replace the old wildideas.net site, of which I wanted to change a bunch of things anyway.
It's still under construction: comments and criticisms are welcome.
Also: if you know how to write html code, can you riddle me this? Is there a code that can be inserted into a page which tells the browser to go look for code in a different file? The idea is that I'd like to have a standard header and footer, like the one you can already see on the site, the same for every page. But I'd like to be able to change that header and footer once in a while without having to copy and paste the code into every page on the whole site.
(Yes, you may infer from this that I still code html by hand.)
"We had an excellent, wonderful, delightful time; We are glad to be home now; and are now giving most of our time to looking for jobs."
Bren's readers: That's it?
Bren: Yes, that's it.
Bren's readers: What a bring-down.
Bren: I know. I apologise. I just feel a little at a loss for words. I already wrote a little bit earlier, here, while we were still on the road. I've also added some photos to my Facebook page (which you don't need a FB account to see).
But I do wish to thank, once again, the many wonderful and generous people we met along the way, especially (in geographic order) Susan Grant-Suttie (whose home was beautiful and whose conversation was enlightening), the people of Calgary who attended the pub night there, Erin and Jef Wood in Regina (by whose library we knew they are our kind of people!) and Susan Hurrell and Jacinthe Labbe (for the wonderful food, and the evening with the people of their book club, which still resonates with me even after more than a week.) We hope to see you again in the spring.
Actually, I should say a little something more about the meeting with the book club in Winnipeg. A lot of people had been studying my third book, The Other Side of Virtue, in great detail, paragraph by paragraph. I was asked some very specific, very intelligent questions about what certain arguments meant, why certain things were included in the way they were, and so on. To my knowledge, the book has not been studied with that level of close intensity by anyone else. This is exactly what I was hoping would happen with the book: it is, after all, a philosophical book, and no flash-in-the-night simple-minded, safe and inoffensive and dull Wicca 101 from Llewellyn! (I think I can say that much without sounding too egotistical). I felt enormously honoured as a writer that such a large group of people would give such a lot of their time to it.
In the meanwhile, a little while ago, I recorded an episode of God Box Cafe podcast, in which I talk about my forthcoming book, "Loneliness and Revelation" - even though it won't be available until October of next year. Yvonne (the hostess) and I also tackle the questions that we all confront at some point in our lives regarding the immensities of living as a corporal being, how we relate to the planet and each other, coping with death and committing to a standard of honor that makes looking back a reflection of a hero's journey.
Finally, I'll be attending the Montreal Yule Fair at le Melange Magique, on 5th December. Details here.
Not much else to say tonight. I'll get back to more interesting blogging in the next few days.
Many, many thanks to the wonderful people who helped us out on our way!
We are in Dryden Ontario now, which is between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg, Manitoba. We're still having a fabulous time!
As many of you know, I had planned a few "pub nights" along the way, to meet the local magical people, and raise money for our travel expenses by selling copies of my books. And as mentioned, we had a very good time in Calgary: and some of the debate we participated in there stimulated thoughts of our own in the hours and days that followed. Read some of Juni's thoughts here.
In Regina, we arrived rather later than we had originally hoped, since we estimated the driving time a little low, and I forgot to include the crossing of a time zone in the plan. Upon arriving at the pub, we found just one person there to meet us. We had a lovely conversation with him - after all, it's still a privilege when someone takes time from his day to come and hear what a writer has to say. We went to the home of Erin and Jef Woods, who were billeting us for the night, and there we found that the party had moved to their house! A room full of people had been waiting three hours, and some had already gone home before we arrived. I felt a little embarrassed. But we had a very invigorating conversation, and we are very much hoping to visit Regina again. Erin and Jef are definetly our kind of people, and we were sorry to have spent such a short amount of time there.
In Winnipeg, Juni and I visited The Forks National Historic Site, and absolutely loved it! This was an ancient meeting and trading place for people in this part of the world for many centuries. We felt the parkland and marketplace was very beautiful, and the whole area very welcoming. Later that day, we were treated to another room full of people; most of them the members of a book club which had been studying The Other Side of Virtue in great detail for quite some time. I was asked some very tough, very intelligent questions about various passages in the book. This is one of the things that I was hoping to accomplish with the book. And the room was crouded! We also recorded an episode of The Magical Earth podcast. We were enormously grateful for the hospitality shown to us by Jacinthe Labbe and Susan Hurrel, and all the people there - including the three people (one anonymous) who between them donated quite a bit of money to us to fuel up the van. Friends, the community is alive and well, and is full of generosity, in the very best of the pagan tradition. It's difficult for me to express how grateful we are.
Speaking of podcasts: here's the most recent episode of God Box Cafe, in which Yvonne and I talk about the spirituality of loneliness, conversations, dialogues, and relationships. I hope you enjoy it.
Back home in Ottawa in two or three days. See you then!
I arrived in Kamloops around 10am, and Juni arrived shortly after to meet me there. Our Great Canadian Magical Philosophical Raggle-Taggle Road Trip began right away!
I have visited BC only once before, and since that was a business trip I didn't stay long. So the journey through the mountains was still a rather new experience for me. Along the higway from Kamloops toward Calgary, we drove through some of the most scenic and astonishing landscape I have ever seen. Mountains! And wonderful little lakes, and mist-filled valleys, and islands in the lake that looked like a sleeping giant's head, and mountains! There was a mountain with four peaks that looked as if there was the face of a Grandmother or Grandfather in each one. And I saw my first glacier in one of the national parks we passed through. We stop every few hours to stretch our legs and walk the dog. It's good to touch the land once in a while, and thank it for being so beautiful.
Today we are in Cochrane, Alberta. Our host Susan Grant-Sutton has been enormously generous to us and we are very grateful. The view out the back windows overlooks the rolling fields of Alberta, all the way to the first range of mountains in the west. They look so close, it's as if we could walk to them. (Which of course is true - that is, if we want to take a week to do it.) It's an astonishing view.
Photos will eventually follow, although all through BC the battery on my camera was dead. I bought a new one in Canmore, so I'll have pictures of the rest of the trip.
Tonight we're in Calgary, meeting the local magical people in Tipperary's Pub, from around 6pm until whenever. Everyone is welcome!
I have decided that I will get the H1N1 inoculation. I have found most of the objections and criticisms of the mass inoculation rather spurious: for instance, Canada's supply is coming from a company in Australia, which is not owned by Donald Rumsfeld. And while it is certainly true that there are other more virulent diseases out there, such as AIDS, and while it is true that disease can be reduced by reducing poverty, or increasing the amount of green space in cities, nonetheless these are separate questions from the question of whether I myself should be inoculated. Sure, I want less poverty, and more parks, and so on, but I also want to be spared a deadly disease. And I certainly don't want to be responsible for transmitting it to anyone else, least of all the five new babies born to friends of mine in the last two years.
And sure, I want to see the corruption in our capitalist economy exposed and stopped, but if I refuse to take the H1N1 shot, I won't really do anything to further that goal. All it will do is make me more vulnerable to the disease, and make me a potential carrier who could infect other people. And the money the government already spent to prepare the shot for me will have been wasted. By contrast, by taking the shot, I reduce the risk to me and to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other people who might pick it up from me: on city buses, in shops or workplaces, and so on. And most importantly, I demonstrate my moral and political support for Canada's public health care system.
As it is, the public inoculation will likely spare 100,000 people an extended hospital visit, and prevent an estimated 10,000 deaths, and spare our public health care system the cost of caring for all of those people (a cost far greater than the cost of immunizing the whole country). That was the scenario described by Canada's chief of public health, a few days ago, of what would happen if we did not immunize the country. Furthermore, the number of people who get ill from the shot itself is likely to be only two or three dozen people (not hundreds), out of thirty million. The stories of people getting sick from the inoculation tend to spread fast, because it's exciting and scary news, and fits well into the world view of those already predisposed to distrust the government, or the drug companies, or various corporate interests. But I've never seen such a story coming from a clearly reputable source, such as a scientific report. I've only ever seen it come from scared individuals passing on chain email letters. That kind of source simply isn't good enough for me.
In the end, I suspect that those who don't want the shot are just people who don't trust the government in general, or the big drug companies, and therefore must invent reasons not to trust what those institutions do, even when it is in their own best interest to reason otherwise. Perhaps some people think that the goal of getting the government out of their lives is worth the risk of death by influenza. But I don't make my moral judgements in that utilitarian, radically individualist, and paranoid way.
Or, perhaps those who don't want the shot are just people who get squeamish around needles. Well I'm squeamish around needles too. But I can swallow that fear long enough to get the shot, and thus potentially save a few people from dying, possibly including myself.
Here's some information from much more reliable sources than chain-emails:
from CBC News
from Health Canada
Again, the idea is to eat drink and be merry, meet people, sell copies of my books to cover our travel costs, and have fun!
To raise money for food, gas, etc., I'll be doing a few "gigs" on the way.
The idea is to just hang out in a pub, talk to people about philosophy and spirituality, and sell a few copies of my books. No formal lecture, no schedule, no stress. After all, if Socrates could do philosophy at dinner parties and public marketplaces, why can't I?
For those in Calgary, Alberta: let's meet at Tipperary's Pub, 2002 16th Avenue NW, at or around 5pm, on Tuesday, 3rd November.
For those in Winnipeg, Manitoba and in Regina, Saskatchewan: a similar plan is in the works. I'll post more info here, if a time and place is arranged before I leave (and hence lose internet access for a while).
I'm also going to attend the Yule Fair at Melange Magique, in Montreal, Quebec, on the 5th and 6th of December. I think this is the third or maybe the fourth event I've attended in Montreal in the last two years. They're great people and I always enjoy visiting Montreal.
For those in The Maritime Provinces: we're tentatively planning to head down east in the spring, after winter.
I asked a Jewish scholar, who answered: My religion is what the prophet Isaiah taught: to deal bread to the hungry, find homes for the homeless, give clothes to the naked, and to let the oppressed be free.
I asked a Hindu yogi, and he taught me that his religion is seeing God within all things, and all things within God; to see God within himself, and to see himself within God.
I asked a Buddhist monk, and he told me that his religion flows from the Buddha nature within himself, which substitutes compassion for attachment.
I asked a Taoist master, What is your religion? He said, I am not sure I have a religion, but I have observed the gentlest thing in the world overcome the hardest, and so I blunt the sharpness, untie the knots, soften my glare, and settle my dust.
I asked a Muslim cleric, and he said that religion is submission to God, and submission to Peace: and I do this through guardianship, oneness, prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage, and my personal struggle against sin.
I asked an Aboriginal Elder, and he said that all things are home to the spirit, and therefore all things deserve profound respect.
I asked a Wiccan seeker, and she said her religion is perfect love and perfect trust.
I asked a Druid philosopher, and he spoke of three candles that illuminate every darkness: truth, nature, and knowledge.
And you, my friend, what is your religion?
Yes, driving. In Canada, in November! We plan to pass through Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, and Sudbury (or thereabouts) on the way. We may also finish in Montreal in time for the Yule Fair at Melange Magique. We might continue on to the Maritimes afterward, but that will depend on how much money we have left, and on winter road conditions.
Here's an idea: would you like us to visit you? If you are in or near one of those cities, and you are part of a pagan book club, pub moot, open circle, metaphysical store, or the like, or if you know someone who is, I will be happy to sign copies of my books, lead a workshop or lecture, or just join the local discussion group for an evening. I'll have copies of my books to sell, in order to help pay for the cost of the trip.
We are also looking for overnight accommodation for ourselves, and also a dog. (possibly two dogs.)
Please contact me by regular email: bmyers 33 (at) live (dot) ca* within the next few days.
The email address is spelled out like that to prevent spam bots from picking it up.
So here's a question: what would you like me to teach? I was thinking of a course on "philosophy for pagans", or something like it: starting with Plato and Aristotle, moving to Plotinus and the Neoplatonic tradition, and also Cicero and Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic tradition, and from there discussing some early Christian thought, some Renaissance humanism, and ending with Nietzshe and various other more recent philosophers who contemporary pagans find influential. But I am open to other suggestions. Indeed I may be able to teach more than one course at the same time.
The course will be offered in CHS' spring semester, which begins in January, and will cost $75 (+ $25 enrollment fee for non-matriculated students). It will not be necessary to be enrolled in a CHS program to take the course. You can enroll in the course itself, on its own.
It appears that the attendees were inside a sweatlodge-like structure, a low dome covered in blankets and tarpaulins. According to the event promoter's website, the attendees were promised "magnificent results, wealth, adventure, and fulfillment", and they paid $9695 to be there.
Now, I have once before attended a big motivational training event which billed itself rather similarly to James Ray's event. It took place in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and was attended by about 2,200 people. I won't say what it was called in case the company that hosted the event sues me. (They've sued other people into bankruptcy for criticising them before, even when excellent evidence was presented of psychological harms done.) I will say that it made heavy use of a psychological behaviour-modification device called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, as well as the repetition of self-help mantras, intense peer pressure, fear-mongering, scapegoating, suppression of rational criticism, and demands for obedience and submission to the leader. Indeed we were all told that we had to "switch off the left-side of the brain" in order to benefit from the training, and that this switching-off of the critical faculties constituted a form of "thinking outside the box of social conformity".
The vocabulary being employed in the training was the usual pop-psychology language of "light", "energy", "empowerment", "freedom", "colouring outside the lines", "I create my world", "the laws of the universe", "positive attitude", "unlimited potential", "growth", "change", "awareness", "purging negativity", and the like. This language is appealing because it appears to have an internal consistency, and helps some people feel good about themselves. And the end goal of the training, of course, was material gain -- attendees were promised that if they could learn to think they way the trainer wanted them to think, using this vocabulary, they would get rich. But this is a false promise. No one can get rich just by thinking about it, or wishing for it. And I have doubts about whether this language actually corresponds to real phenomena in the world. Indeed I suspect it may be an elaborate psychological projection, a fantasy world that enables people to think well of themselves and thus is preferable to the reality of being unemployed, disempowered, and perhaps physically unhealthy too, which is the reality for so many people who find this kind of talk appealing.
Also, it should be added, as a therapy device it doesn't work.
After the three days of intense psychological pressure to conform, for 14 hours each day, I felt as if my mind had been invaded. My body was shaking with symptoms of post-traumatic stress (which mostly disappeared after I let go of the relationship that brought me there). Every once in a while it still bothers me, even three years later.
All the evidence I've seen so far tells me that the "Spiritual Warrior Event", where the two people died, is broadly similar. Of course I would not have imagined that anyone would die at such an event. But even excepting these deaths and hospitalizations as accidental, I still think such events are severely morally harmful to the attendees. In my judgment, it is always morally wrong to usurp someone's autonomous reason by psychological manipulation, even if you think you are benefitting that person or promoting that person's interests. To be clear, it is never in anyone's interest to hijack their free minds, for any purpose, and no amount of Utilitarian ends-justify-the-means discussion will convince me otherwise. Your free mind is your heart and soul, your very self, and if you give that away, even freely, you will be lost.
Those of you who have criticised me in the past for being "too intellectual", or for criticizing the role of intuition in the spiritual life, need to understand how dangerous it is to suspend your capacity for reason. Your intelligent mind is your ability to systematically explore and understand reality, and it is your last and best line of defense against fear, conformity, and domination and other attacks on your freedom, from the small scale of office bullying, to the large scale of political oppression and totalitarianism. So, friends, please, avoid all "training" or "empowering" events which employ anti-rational psychological devices like NLP, whether at a pop psychology training weekend, or a religious ritual, or a political rally, or the like, whether the gathering is large or small. And please discourage people you know from attending them. You might think you are being given a healthy empowering spiritual gift, but in fact you are being given a drug, the psychological equivalent of heroine. It's just as pleasurable in the short term, but just as psychotropically addictive, and just as destructive in the long term to your life and the lives of others around you.
And let me add, as a final note, that you don't need to attend any of these quasi-new-age, pop psychology training weekends, and you don't need to pay anyone thousands of dollars, to learn about the warrior way. Why not buy my book instead, for 0.25% of the cost of attending his seminar? You'll learn the ethos of ancient warrior societies like the Celts, Vikings, Homeric Greeks, and others. You won't be subjected to NLP brainwashing. And you won't die as a result of reading it.
( Continued here... )
An Evening with John Michael Greer and Brendan Myers
Saturday, October 17 at 7:00 p.m.
At the Unitarian Fellowship of London
557 Clarke Rd., London, Ontario
Tickets available through archallem.org
$50.00 at the door
Meet John Michael Greer and Dr. Brendan Myers at a pre-lecture coffee. Many of their books will be available for purchase, and they will be available to autograph copies.
JM Greer is Grand Archdruid in the Ancient Order of Druids in America. His talk: "Magical Ecology". Click here for more information.
‘Hometown boy’ Brendan Myers - originally from Elora, recently from Hamilton and now residing in Ottawa - will be the ‘opening act’ for the evening. His talk: "Simple Revelations".
Chuch Strahl and Phil Fontaine didn't show - in fact they were not on the programme. Well, the schedule on which I saw their names was drawn up in April, and a lot happened since then. However, I met someone equally if not more prestigious: Grandfather William Commanda, of the Algonquin Nation, and perhaps one of the most well respected traditional Elders alive in Canada today. When I learned of his presence, I felt a little worried again: who am I, a little Irish-Canadian fellow, to talk about Aboriginal people's values in the presence of an Elder such as him?
As it happened, Grandfather Commanda didn't attend my talk, but one of his helpers did. Right about the time when I was taking a deep breath and building up some courage to introduce myself, she came over to me and said that she enjoyed my talk and wanted to introduce me to him. I was delighted. We spoke briefly, and he held my hand the whole while, and felt the great peace and spirit of his presence. His helper asked me to email a copy of my talk, so instead I gave her the printed copy that I brought with me.
I hope that some day my own community will have Elders of such dignity.
Although I enjoy public speaking and I do it all the time, I'm a little nervous about this event. The bill has some prestigious people on it, like Phil Fontaine (past Chief of the Assembly of First Nations) and Chuck Strahl (Federal Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs). Other speakers and attendees will be important people in government, police services, and Native community and culture.
My presentation is on Friday, but the forum begins tomorrow. So I have all day tomorrow to get over the trepidation of speaking for this audience, who I'm sure will be critical of my work, more so than any of the classes I've taught at university, and the academic forums I presented papers for, and the public groups for whom I've discussed the content of my books. Hence the nerves.
I'll tell you all about it on Saturday, perhaps. Right now I'm going to go to bed early, and try to sleep.
Let us suppose you are about to be married, and you and your partner are planning the ceremony. Let us also suppose you are going to write your own vows. These are serious oaths, as they are spoken in the presence of the sacred, perhaps as represented by the person of the officiant, or as represented by whatever sacred powers or gods are mentioned earlier in the ceremony. The plan of action described by the oath, of course, is to "love and honour" your partner, "in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health," or some variation of that theme, "until death do us part."
Some people prefer to insert an alternative time limit on the oath: "until love should end", or "for as long as you should want me as your partner". This is sometimes claimed to be more "realistic": it acknowledges the reality that relationships change. Marriage often involves problems, strains, difficulties, disagreements, arguments, and these can sometimes be hard to resolve. What if a problem arises which is unresolvable? What if the married couple no longer love each other? Perhaps it would be unjust to compel them to remain together. If one of the partners is abusive, the victim should not be locked by law into a relationship with the abuser. It's certainly a good thing that divorce is legal in this country, so that if love ends, or turns to abuse, people can escape the relationship. You could separate from a loveless partner, and live in a different town, but if you are married "until death" then the law would keep you legally attached to him or her. If you eventually start a new relationship with someone else, you couldn't marry again.
Yet I think that more confidence, commitment, and resolve is demonstrated with the traditional refrain of "till death do us part". There's no denial that marriage life will involve problems, but perhaps the "till death do us part" oath creates more incentive to solve such problems. I suspect that this part of the oath also impresses the seriousness of marriage a little more heavily on to someone contemplating proposing to his partner. If I propose marriage to someone, and my oath ends with "till death do us part", I really have the weight of the future on my shoulders. I can't (or shouldn't) think to myself that I can easily get rid of her the first time our marriage sails in stormy waters. And if I really do love her, perhaps I wouldn't (or shouldn't) prepare for a possible future in which I grow tired of her and leave. I suspect that the life-long oath displays more willpower, more confidence in the future, in one's partner, and maybe even more love for the partner.
I've been prepared to marry someone twice in my life so far, but I've never actually been married. I'm speaking from only partial experience here. So, perhaps I had best put the question to all of you: Which of these "time signatures" is better? If you are married now, or engaged, which "time signature" is (or was) in your vows? Why?
It is surprisingly difficult to make: if the ingredients are in the wrong proportions, or the heat of the oven not quite right, it comes out inedible. Thus it takes practice, care, talent to make. It can be made from numerous kinds of grain: wheat is only the most common kind in a supermarket today, but it can be made from coarser grains like rye, or it can be made from rice or even from acorns. Spices and other ingredients can be added to the dough, to change the flavour. And it can be kneaded into any kind of shape the baker wants. Thus artistic considerations are possible and necessary. It can be served as a delivery device for other foods, like cheese. It can be sweetened with sugars and chocolates and fruit and that way served on its own as a desert, called cake. Or we can serve it as a light snack, in the form of cookies, or as a cocktail party favour, in the form of crackers. And it comes in a liquid form, called beer!
Clearly, the ability to make bread separates the fully civilized human being from the uncouth animal.
I have been given a divine vision, in which the goddess told me that if humanity every lost the knowledge for making bread, the gods will visit armageddon upon us all. Well, actually, she really said that if that ever happened, we would have visited armageddon upon ourselves. Well, actually that's not quite what she said either. But the latter is much more theatrical, so that's what I say at fashionable parties. So go forth and bake bread, my friends, and help postpone the demise of the world! And bring comfort and joy to your palate as you do!
(Next week: why Cheese is the meaning of life...)
This is very close to the description that I provided to the publisher when they asked for a suggestion. I'm very happy with it.
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wisewomanjudith recently drew my attention to a post in Oenach, an LJ community which discusses Celtic spirituality. In this post, one of my favourite old Irish wisdom texts, The Instructions of King Cormac Mac Airt, was discussed. There is a chapter in that text which is highly mysogynist in nature, and nobody (including me) ever quotes it. I've acknowledge in my own published works the existence of that chapter (which other writers normally do not do) and tried to address what its presence in the corpus of Celtic literary history might mean.Here is a short excerpt from that notorious chapter:
'O grandson of Conn, O Cormac,' said Carbre, 'how do you distinguish women?'
'Not hard to tell,' said Cormac. 'I distinguish them, but I make no difference among them.'
They are crabbed as constant companions,
haughty when visited,
lewd when neglected,
sily counsellors,
greedy of increase,
they have tell-tale faces,
they are quarrelsome in company,
desirous of letting go,
greedy of gifts,
putting up with exaggeration,
hard and grasping,
steadfast in hate,
forgetful in love,
thirsting for lust,
anxious for alliance,
accustomed to slander,
dishonest in an assembly...
...and on and on like that for 122 lines. I don't think it's necessary to continue quoting it here.
As to whether it represents a Celtic iron-age attitude, or a new attitude that appeared in Celtic culture with the arrival of Christianity: I think that given the age of the text (early 9th century CE), and the fact that Christian references are very few and far between, and the consistency with other known early texts, it is safe to say it represents a pre-Christian Celtic point of view.
Those who find themselves drawn to a Celtic spirituality, especially to an early Celtic spirituality, are faced with an important and serious conundrum. They need to decide how to respond to expressions of social values found in the source texts, like misogyny, which are entirely morally repugnant to us today. Should we simply cherry-pick the sources for the parts we like, and ignore the parts we don't? Well, that would be one way to do it. Christians do it of the Bible all the time: for instance, adulterers are no longer punished with stoning. But one logical result of that strategy is that the more we modify, cherry-pick, and otherwise interpret the ancient sources in order to acommodate contemporary moral values, the less right we may have to claim to be practicing an 'authentically' Celtic spirituality. Well, then, perhaps 'authenticity' should not be one of our goals. But perhaps this defeats the purpose?
I have been thinking about this conundrum for many, many years. I believe it is unresolvable, and that investigating it further often results in heaping extraordinary disrespect upon the people of living Celtic cultures in Ireland and Britain and the diaspora today: the very culture in which I grew up. For those reasons, I'm no longer interested in strict "reconstructionism". I'm afraid I don't care enough about America's so-called "culture wars" to involve myself in the ugly and useless questions of whether Celtic culture is a culture, or just a language; or whether some particular practice is or is not "Celtic", having emerged from a theoretically pure pre-Christian time, or whether it was "contaminated" by influence from other cultures or religions. Really, I just don't care. The integrity of your character, the humanity in your relations with others, and the enchantment of your world matters more than the purity of your culture. I will never tire of repeating that simple proposition, because I think it is an honest one, and goes directly to the heart of what really matters.
For that reason, I'm happy to entirely ignore the mysogyny in texts like the Instructions of Cormac. And anyway, I'm the sort of fellow who can find philosophical insight in a recipe book, and in a technical manual on building log cabins. So I'm not at a loss for alternative inspiration.
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