A few weeks ago I invented a new word for the manuscript of my next book (not the Loneliness book, but the next one after that, which (since it will be my sixth book), my girlfriend is calling it "Caprica Six".)

The word is "misercorpism" (also: misercorpic, misercorpist); and it designates any disparaging, denigratory, or disdainful attitudes regarding the body, and embodied life generally. I thought you might like to see what I've written.

( For more explanation, read on... )

A very merry and magical Midsummer to all of you!
Yesterday was drizzly and miserable here in Elora (so I feel less bad about missing WiccanFest) but today is gloriously shiny and clear and warm and wonderful. I really ought to be outside, beating the bounds in my forest instead of sitting inside, blogging. But here's a Q of the Week, for your consideration, after you return from beating the bounds in your own landscapes, of course.

Well June was Pagan Values Blogging Month, and as mentioned before I found myself a little disappointed by a lot of what I read. In her own contribution to the Pagan Values Blogging Month, Canadian Hedge Witch summed up exactly what I found so unsatisfying about so much of it:

The first thing I noticed reading all these blog posts, is a plethora of catch phrases and key words. Pagan values as pop culture?

Read the whole blog post here.

It seemed to me too that a lot of people's blog posts about values was little more than a repetition of various cliches.

Good readers, please don't get me wrong: I know and understand the value and the power of proverbs. I published 120 pagan wisdom-teachings in my fourth book, the result of an international folklore survey I conducted, along with philosophical commentary for most of them. Someone who offers advice using a traditional proverb brings to bear the whole power of his or her culture. And sometimes a cliche has its origins in an important insight. But that isn't true all the time. In fact it can often be counter-productive, or even patronising and demeaning, to offer a cliche to someone who has experienced a serious upheval in his or her life.

For example: an article in last week's Glob and Mule discusses the problems that can arise when offering a pop-culture cliche to someone who has just lost his job. It reads, in part:

Clichés – as frowned upon as they are – have become such fixtures in our everyday chatter that we fire them off without thinking. And that's a problem when it comes to serious matters such as unemployment, career experts say. Something else may indeed “come down the pipe,” as job hunters hear from well-meaning friends and family, but such stock reassurances are often unhelpful and misguided, and, frankly, seem like a snub.

Read the whole article here.

Might this be explained by a desire to avoid facing real problems? If someone has a serious dilemma, or a serious emotional and spiritual conflict, might the cliche reply be a way for people to protect themselves from addressing the seriousness of the problem? Might it even be the case that the use of superficial catch-phrases is a sign of a superficial spirituality? As I pose these questions, let it be understood that I'm not speaking of any particular path or tradition. In fact I started thinking about this question after reading a passage from D. J. Hall, "Confessing the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context", which I read on much_ado's LJ. Here's a quote:

We are trying to answer all of our problems without exposing ourselves to them as real problems. There is not one crisis on our horizon — whether this means vast social problems such as poverty, unemployment, and racism or intensely personal problems such as the search for meaning, vocation, or personal integrity — that can be resolved unless we are prepared to go much further into the depths of the question than we are apparently able or willing to do... In other words, our optimism is defensive, and what it seeks to defend us from is truth.

A longer quote can be found here.

Well, friends, what do you think? Has religion and spirituality grown too superficial? Do we prefer to take an easy, sunny, uncontentious path, in order to avoid having to think seriously and deeply about things, and avoid facing serious and deep problems? I know there can be something profound in the thought that "we are children of the Goddess" (an idea which also appears in the Bible: see Romans 8:16 for instance) But I'm tired of hearing people tell me that when I describe certain problems in my life.

Or, are there any pop-culture cliches and catch-phrases which you think really are philosophically powerful, and are not given their proper due? Which ones? And can you explain what they really mean, without falling back on more cliches?

A lot of people have written to me privately over the last few weeks to ask if I was planning to contribute to something called Pagan Values Blogging Month.

I thought this a curious question, since I blog about values all the time. I've also published a book about ethics and values, and my work has been quoted by numerous other writers (see the entry on Wikipedia for the list) and most recently my work was featured on the OBOD website, among the Mount Haemus Lectures and in an article on Ethics and Values in Druidry. Perhaps the reason I was asked if I would contribute to the blogging effort is because this is the kind of research I specialise in.

(Apologies for all that blowing of my own horn there...)

I first noticed the "Pagan Values Blogging Month" on alfrecht 's blog, and I have enjoyed his work so far. As I googled around a bit, I found that the idea seems to have originated here, on a blog written by someone called "Chrysalis". I searched around Google and found lots of other contributions. I'm sorry to say I liked very few of them. But instead of complaining about them, let me offer my own contribution. Here's a short passage from the manuscript of "Book the Fifth", which I have been writing for the last few months.

( Showing here. )

This is only the “short form” of what I would like to say about some of the matters that arose in the comments section of my blog this week. As long as I continued to think about it, the logic of the problem led to wider and larger questions concerning community. Is the pagan movement a community? What would it mean if we are? What would it mean if we are not? As I see it, the question is not as simple as a matter of whether a public speaker or a ritual performer should be paid in money.

Certainly there are precedents in ancient societies for the idea that people who contribute to their communities in certain specialized ways should be supported by the community. One need look no further than the Druids for an example: they were fed, clothed, and housed at public expense. But we do not live in a pre-literate Iron-age society. In fact I have serious doubts about whether the pagan movement is a community. Chas Clifton observed that we are not a community because it is possible for someone to leave the movement with few difficulties and consequences. I find this argument very convincing.

However, I hope that the movement could become a community, a real and live one, in my lifetime. Here I shall propose for all of you one way which I think may make this happen.

( the Clann-maker )
So there you have it.
As some of you may have already guessed, much of this text was copied from the book that I’m currently writing. It’s still in progress, so I will be reading all comments and criticisms carefully. If you like this idea, I will refine this into a proper essay, and get it published in PanGaia or some other appropriate organ.

Bren

I'd like to draw attention to this post by erynn999 concerning an Aboriginal community which, due to a collapse in their fishery this year, has not enough money to buy heating oil. In the winter. In Alaska.

Some of the comments she read in response included statements that the people should just move, or they should get off welfare.

In response to such comments, Erynn wrote this post, which was angry -- and I think righteously so.

Self-reliance may well be a heroic virtue -- but poor bashing is not. Generosity and hospitality are the Celtic values that should be applicable here. Self reliance as a virtue has nothing to do with blaming the poor for their situation, nor with leaving them alone to die in the winter.

Self reliance cannot be practiced by those who lack the material means to do so, and certainly cannot be practiced by those who have had their livelihood taken away from them, whether by fate (the collapse of a fishery) or by colonial conquest (as in the case of almost all Aboriginal people on this continent).

But those who cannot be self-reliant for lack of the material means are not therefore un-virtuous, nor deserving of scorn. They are un-fortunate, in the sense of one whose fortune turned out for the worse: and they are deserving of our generosity. What miserly and cold hearted people would we be, if we withheld that generosity!

CRs, druids, and celts of this day and age need to find new ways to be heroic. Perhaps one way to do this would be to expand the cirlce of honour: where once the values of generosity and hospitality were intended for one's family and tribe, and the occasional stranger who happens upon your door, now it should be extended to the whole of humanity. Might this be the new heroic?

Let not rich gifts or great treasures blind you to the poor in their suffering.
-- The Testament of Morann.

Do not refuse to share your meat; do not have a niggard [greedy person] for a friend.
-- Fionn MacCumhall.

It is riches you love,
Not men; as for us, when we lived,
It was men we loved.
-- The Lament of the Old Woman of Baere.

I was going through my hard drive, in search of a newspaper article I thought I had saved a few weeks ago, and found a paragraph of text that was cut from the manuscript of "The Other Side of Virtue".

Just for the fun of it, I'll post it here for all to see (and be amused by!)

...

Consider, as another example of modern myth-making and virtue-teaching, the Star Wars series of films by George Lucas. I am old enough to remember when the first one was released, back in 1978, and I remember being inspired to become an astronaut. (And where am I now!) As I see it now, Luke Skywalker’s courage, called forth from him when even he didn’t know he had it (wasn’t he dreaming of leaving the farm, and then reluctant to do so when the chance came?) is fairly sound moral teaching. It shows people how to take initiative when opportunities arise. When I saw The Empire Strikes Back for the first time, I was frightened by Luke’s journey in the cave on Dagobah. Now I see that scene as the most important moment in the whole series. It is the occasion where Luke finally understands that he must ‘conquer himself’. That is, he must let go of hatred, fear, and self-doubt, and trust in the Force (the stand-in for Fate) to succeed. Joseph Campbell, the famous scholar of mythology, had nothing but praise for the original film, and discussed it at length in a series of interviews called The Power of Myth. He saw how the pattern of Luke’s story fitted the general pattern of Heroic mythology, in which a problem of some kind calls for an adventure to put things right. All I wish to add is that the adventure itself calls for special qualities of character to be developed, and this is as much a part of the victory as is the rescue of any princess or the downfall of any empire.

All,
I do the lecture on the importance and the power of reason in every undergraduate course I teach at every university where I've been retained as a lecturer. So this isn't a new debate to me, and to be honest, there was not one comment or criticism raised here in this blog that I haven't seen before. I would like to put it to bed and move on. But since so many commentators either didn't understand what I was saying, or else so earnestly wanted to protect the idea that their intuition can be a source of knowledge, then I'll just wrap it up as follows.

JM Greer thought I was asking for positivist standards of proof when it comes to spiritual or religious knowledge. Someone like Richard Dawkins probably would ask for such proof. While I'm generally in favour of the work he does debunking the nonsense people believe in the name of religion, I might point out the small, barely noticeable fact that I am not Richard Dawkins, and that I have different purposes than he. For my complaint is against the categorical rejection of any attempt to examine the sacred by means of reason, tout court .

But a few people read that point and thought I was telling them they can't use their feelings or emotions at all, or that I was demanding positivist proofs for religious claims as one might require positivist proofs of scientific experiment results, or solutions to engineering problems. Not so at all -- and thus those who complained about that were in fact committing the logical fallacy of attacking a straw man.

Even Wittgenstein, the arch-logician, enjoyed reading The Golden Bough, and had a few things to say about the wrongness of analyzing religious claims the same way one analyzes ordinary truth claims.

In my view, intuition isn't good enough to establish the truth of some claim: and I thank jdhobbes for pointing out the problems that arise therein. But I have never said that the emotions have no place in the spiritual life. Indeed, I've recently been investigating the role that aesthetics may have in the ethical life: and this question was the topic of my Mt Haemus paper.

A few of you did understand what I was on about: notably Meg, who cast it in terms of Aristotle's doctrine of the Mean. A mention of Aristotle, being one of my all-time favourite philosophers, is a sure way to get my attention. :-) For those who did understand what I was on about, as Meg did: please accept my thanks and gratitude.

I am very sure that when my interlocutor back in September told me that I am "insufficiently spiritual" because I don't do much ritual anymore, that the speaker was expressing an anti-intellectual prejudice. The same can be said of those who categorically excluded the very possibility of rational discourse on things spiritual. I am sure that nearly everyone reading these words is agreed on that point. That anti-intellectual prejudice, my friends, has got to stop.

But I am also very sure that poetry, songs, stories, symbols, metaphors, and the like, is a means of speaking of the sacred, and that it would be a mistake to examine that language using the same standards of rationality as one might examine a scientific theory or an engineering problem. I might add only that apophatic communication (to use JM Greer's term) is a language, and can thus be rationally examined to see whether it makes sense, and that such an examination can also uplift and enrich people's lives. On such basis, it might be possible to undertake a pagan theology (that is, a logos of the theos, an "account" of "God") in a systematic and enlightening way.

My own views on the matter are on record in various places. In this blog, I described Reason as a spiritual thing; I did the same in ch.95 of OSV (although rather briefly). I also described my views on the matter in a public talk I delivered in Calgary last September, some of which was filmed. (My thanks to sexycanadiangrl for filming it.) A more extensive discussion of "the Word", and its corresponding "Song", can be found in ch.12 of "A Pagan Testament".

My purpose is to do philosophy in service to the world. It is to investigate "all things in the sky and below the earth", as Socrates said, in pursuit of a worthwhile and flourishing life for myself and all my relations. I wish to encourage others to do the same, as I believe Socrates was absolutely correct when he told the jurors at his trial that "the unexamined life is not worth living". So when I hear of people deliberately cutting out of their lives the instrument that is perhaps most useful for the purpose, not only in terms of its results but also in terms of the pleasure and satisfaction involved in its exercise - well, I'd like to say something about that.

Okay, I hope we're done now.
Anyway, I've got to get off the computer and shovel the snow.

Some of you may have noted that Deo's Shadow Podcast, once the most popular pagan podcast on the entire internet, has been discontinued by its hosts. Deo presents his reasons here.

( And I present my thoughts here. )

Inspired by the episode of "Black Adder" in which our hero attempts to write a new dictionary, and by the music of "Mythodea" by Vangelis, and "Adeimus" by Karl Jenkins, and other choral musics that are sung in invented languages.

( behind the cut )

In response to a note by bluewavedruid, which you can read here:
http://bluewavedruid.livejournal.com/76373.html

which was a response to a note of mine, which you can read here:
http://northwestpass.livejournal.com/64833.html

I present a further response.
( Behind the cut )

It's a saturday night in Da Hammer, and if I was a normal hetero male of my generation, I'd be out bar-hopping right now. But I'm evidently not, since I'm at home trying to write a book about environmental philosophy. And I suddenly remembered a discussion I had with absinthehearts  a while ago, concerning some of the criticisms of Relativism which appear in The Other Side of Virtue.

(Which, as a short Google search revealed, seems to be getting good reviews.)

So, by request, here is a short discussion on why I think Relativism, as an ethical idea, is inadequate.



We should therefore reject relativism because, as here explained, it is an inadequate moral theory. But most of all, we should be able to offer each other something better. We should be able to articulate a sound and strong ethical world-view which does not slide into the emptiness of relativism, nor into the alternative trap, the kind of absolutism that ethical relativists appear to be worried about. We should be able to offer people something which separates the good from the bad without logically contradicting itself in the ways here described. But more importantly than that, our ethical paradigm should inspire people, lift them up, enrich their lives, and spiritually transform them into better people. Relativism simply cannot do that job. But there are other models of ethics which can.

And as you know, I’m writing books about them even as we speak.