About two weeks ago, I caught a plagiarism case in two papers submitted to me by two students, in which it large portions of the text of their papers were identical to each other. (I caught it “old school”, by the way: without using Google or Turnitin or any of those things.) Later it occurred to me that some of what counts as plagiarism in the academy might count as collaboration when students go to work in the “real world”. It made me wonder if we’re sending our students mixed messages, or even the wrong message, about how to gather and use information.
Around the same time, a friend of mine forwarded to me a news article describing a UCLA biology professor who allowed his students to “cheat”. (Read it here.). He gave his students a difficult exam question but allowed them to copy their answer from any source they wanted, including from each other; the idea was to encourage them to collaborate to discover for the best answer instead of compete for the highest grade. It was a risky move: group-work assignments often make it possible for freeloaders to contribute little or nothing and yet receive the same grade as others in their group who worked hard. But the UCLA prof found that incidents of freeloading tended to be minimal, because students were not ‘fixed’ in their groups. They could join or leave any group they wanted; and they didn’t have to join a group and work collaboratively if they thought they could work better on their own.
I was also reminded of the physics professor who put a computer in a slum in Delhi, India, just to see what would happen. (Link here). Within hours, local children were using it to surf the internet and teach themselves to speak English. I was also curious if I could create a learning experience in which students were given a problem, and they had to solve it mostly on their own. We learn best by doing, after all. There are probably many topics which are best taught, and perhaps can only be taught, in the traditional “lecture and exam” style; but skills and talents can’t really be taught that way. Besides, I’m a big fan of the education theories of Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire, who asserts that people learn best when they all teach things to each other, and that the usual teacher/student distinction may actually be a form of political oppression. Various college-level and provincial-level policies require me to give “formative” evaluations, but no one has ever explained to me what that means. In the past I’ve invented strategy games (like this one) to meet that requirement, but they require small groups to succeed. And I teach between 30 and 40 students in each class, on average. More, if there’s been a budget cut. So this week, I decided to try something new.
This week, I decided to do something similar for my Nursing students. These are students who, in their careers, will have to collaborate a lot to do their jobs. Leadership and teamwork are essential for medical professionals; without it, patients almost always stay sick longer, and don’t get the care they need. And as their ethics professor it seemed to me that an assignment that required them to use (not merely write about) the ethics theories discussed in class might be helpful for them.
My usual procedure for a test is to give students a study guide about a week in advance of any test, so students know what lectures and textbook readings are relevant for a given test. This time, instead of posting a study guide, I posted a “clue”, and the students had to figure out what it was. (In this way my experiment was different from that which was conducted by the UCLA prof.) And then the students had to research whatever ethical and moral issues are associated with the “theme” or the “concept” represented by the clue. It was up to them to figure out what the clue was, and up to them to decide what research sources, and what research topics, were relevant. They got very little guidance from me at this point. But they were allowed to collaborate with each other, to figure it out.
In this sense, the test began the moment the clue was revealed. The students had to figure out what the thing was, and then they had to figure out for themselves how to find out about any and all ethical issues related to it. And the test involved a little bit of game theory (in the sense of the word as used by mathematicians). Would the students who figured out the clue quickly share their knowledge with those who didn’t? Or would they hoard their discoveries? Strictly self-interested players of such a game have an incentive to hoard their knowledge instead of share it, because that way they’re more likely to get a higher grade. But in fact most students did share their knowledge of what the clue was, and I later learned that a few small groups of students – not the whole class, but many of them – discussed among themselves what they thought the clue might mean, in terms of what the test question was likely to be.
Education is not the kind of game in which someone must lose for someone else to win. In fact it’s not a game at all, however much the final grades make it look like one. And although we do praise those who are good at this thing (by giving them honour roll credits, and diplomas, etc.) and shame those who are bad at this thing (by assigning failing grades), in actuality education is the sort of endeavour in which everybody wins or nobody wins. That is to say, education succeeds when society as a whole maximizes the intellectual, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual level at which the majority of its members operate. It benefits everyone to belong to a society in which as many people as possible are highly knowledgeable and highly skilled. And besides that: wherever you go in life, and whatever you do, you have to deal with people. So it seems to me that a pedagogical style which teaches, encourages, and rewards people-skills is probably better than one which doesn’t. How to do that? Well, “group work” is one way, but it has its problems as already discussed.
The test itself came a week later. I told students that they would be given two hours to write an answer to one question, though it would be the most difficult question I had ever laid before them. But I also told them that they could collaborate to answer it. Just this once, two or more students submitting a word-for-word identical essay would not be hauled before the department head, accused of plagiarism. I also told the students they could bring to the test any research resources they wanted: not just our textbook, but any notes they made and anything they discovered in the library or on the internet that they guessed might be relevant. I also told them I would provide a few research resources during the test itself, although it would be up to them to decide how relevant they were, and what to do with them.
I also clownishly played-up the idea that the test question they would have to answer would be the most mind-bogglingly, heart-breakingly, difficult question ever. A few were genuinely worried, but it was the 14th week of the semester and by now most students had realized that I can be a bit of a comedian in my class once in a while. (As one former student told me, I’ve a reputation as “the fun prof who doesn’t put up with anybody’s shit.”)
The test day was this afternoon. Unlike the UCLA professor, I did not allow my students to use the internet during the test itself. My presumption was that they already had a week to do research on the internet, and they had to come to the test prepared in advance. And they did! Admirably so! In fact most students had already formed the groups they wanted to work with, and they came to class with arms full of notes and photocopied pages.
I’d say this experiment worked very, very well. I’ve very rarely seen a group of teenagers so single-mindedly committed to solving an academic problem to the best of their ability. And although I did spot a few of them distracting themselves with Facebook on their phones, for the most part they worked a solid hour-and-a-half on this assignment without demanding a break. Not only that: they actually enjoyed it. The room was full of brainstorming, experimentation, back-and-forth debate, and even laughter – something almost never seen in a test situation! Some of them actually thanked me – and nobody thanks a prof for a test! I stood nearby to clarify things once in a while, and to drop hints, and every group asked for my assistance at least once, but they got back to work quickly. They knew what they wanted to do. And there did not appear to be any freeloaders: it seems that by letting students choose their own group, they organically went to work with those who they already trusted. And as I sort through the papers they gave me here at home, I’m finding myself really impressed by the quality and insightfulness of what they gave me.
So: as far as I’m concerned, this experiment was a success, and I’m going to do it again in all of my classes from now on.
PS: this is the clue I gave them (PDF link). Without looking at the filename, do you know what it is? Want to guess what my test question was?
Within twenty minutes of my tweeting this link about putting an end to “boob armour” in fantasy game development, I got three private messages in my twitter inbox about how it’s all just fantasy and it doesn’t matter, so I should leave it alone.
That’s three complaints, within twenty minutes. And with only 307 Twitter followers (as of the time of writing), I’m not broadcasting to the whole world here. Think about that for a minute.
This is only a tiny, tiny, infinitesimally tiny fraction of what women themselves deal with when they assert their wish to be represented in fantasy fiction as real human beings and not as mere tropes. Consider, as an example, the astonishing and ugly misogyny faced by Anita Sarkeesian, who ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to produce a series of videos about misogyny in video games. (Here’s where you can hear her story.) My three complaints were mostly polite; Sarkeesian’s complaints included death threats. There’s a real problem here.
So here’s my overall reply.
Yes, it’s fantasy, but still, it matters. The question that needs to be asked here is: What kind of fantasy do you want? Do you want female characters who are only “girl-toys” for the male characters? Or do you want female characters who are independent, autonomous, free-willed, and accomplished human beings, with any number of merits and flaws like any male characters may have?
To me, the latter are much more interesting. Most of the female characters in my novels are sexual beings but their sexuality runs on a spectrum: from one character who uses sex as a tool for social manipulation, to others (several in fact) who aren’t interested in sex at all. I admit that several of my female characters wear heels sometimes, because I happen to find them sexy. But none of them are walking “girl-toys” for the male characters. They have wants and plans, they have problems, they have strengths and weaknesses, and they have histories and identities. And so do the male characters. That’s what makes them interesting. If a female character is only a “girl toy” for the male characters, then she’s not really a person; she’s a piece of furniture. And so she’s not really interesting.
To which a critic might reply by saying, “But it’s only fantasy”, or “But it’s my fantasy”, or “But no one is harmed by my fantasy”. Well, it is fantasy – but I say again, it still matters. Fantasy fiction, like any fiction, is a way we reflect, contemplate, experiment with, explore, criticize, and sometimes escape from reality. But it always exists in some complicated relationship to reality. So behind that fantasy of a girl-toy, there’s a real human being somewhere in the world, with real feelings and real thoughts and real problems. Behind that fantasy is a woman in your family, your workplace, your neighbourhood, your school, your church, or any other social group that you belong to. How do you think she feels when you show your interest in a girl-toy fantasy character? Did you even ask?
The point of objecting to the “boob armour” (the thing that got me started here in the first place) is that it represents an unjust power-dynamic between men and women. In this unjust power dynamic, women have to appear as if they are perpetually available for sex. They do not normally act from their own initiative: for the most part, they only respond to others and serve others.
Now in the real world, if a woman wants sex, she might say or do something so that the man who interests her will know it. But even if she doesn’t do anything to demonstrate her sexual desire, it’s not right for a man to demand that women present themselves as if they’re available for sex all the time. She might not want sex all the time. Or, she might not want sex with You. And to assume that she does – and to demand that she should – is to disrespect her humanity. And guys – if we are honest with ourselves – neither do we want it all the time either. So there’s a justice issue here: it’s unjust to make others keep to a standard that we ourselves are not willing to keep.
I think our fantasy stories, whether in fiction or television or film or video games, should reflect reality in a more critical, more experimental, less escapist way. It should expose and question social injustices, rather than systematically presuppose them as given truths of reality. It should do this by portraying all its characters, whatever their gender, orientation, ethnicity, age, education, wealth, poverty, or whatever, as interesting human beings, and not as furniture. This really isn’t too much to ask. (And if you think it is too much to ask, then I think something might be very seriously wrong with you.)
Therefore, in keeping with the Bechdel Test, I’d like to propose a “Lunsford Test”, named in honour of Michael Lee Lunsford, the artist who created this series of images of popular fantasy heroines in sensible dress. Let’s say that a film, TV show, video game, or whatever, passes the Lunsford Test if:
1. The lead and supporting female characters choose their own clothing,
2. The clothing they choose is appropriate for whatever they are doing, and
3. The clothing they choose portrays them as human beings with a distinct and interesting identity.
Notice that the characters in Lunsford’s gallery are dressed for adventure, action, and initiative, like a hero (or a villain!) of a fantasy story should. And they’re kind of sexy; the Lunsford Test as I propose it here does not rule out sexiness. Curiously it might rule out women who wear a uniform of some kind, except insofar as she chose the career which requires the uniform, and the career allows her some meaningful autonomy (career army officers, maybe? Airline pilots?). But the important thing is that it rules out costumes which do nothing more than demonstrate sexual availability. And that matters.
On a train, back in February, the fellow sitting next to me complained that the train had slowed down when it entered Toronto. “All the other trains should just get out of our way,” he said. When I replied that there are other people on those trains too, he said, “Yeah, but do you know any of them? Fuck them.”
A few weeks before that, a friend of mine was nearly run off the road, twice, by a sixteen-wheeler truck, as the truck tried to merge into the lane on the highway 401, in which my friend was driving. When the police questioned him about this, the truck driver said, “He should have known to get out of my way.”
These are unrelated incidents, of course – but are they? Have you a story about someone who was not just indifferent, but actively hostile to the idea that other people have needs and rights? Do you think our society is getting a little colder, a little more aggressive, a little less compassionate, a little less empathetic?
Consider this a work in progress.
Democracy:
- The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
- Then we all vote on who gets to be in charge of the pile.
- Those who want to be in charge describe what they’ll do with it.
- If they get elected, sometimes they do what they promise, sometimes they don’t do what they promise, and sometimes they can’t do what they promise.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, then they vote for someone else to be in charge of the pile.
Aristocracy
- The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
- A group of rich male landowners, who inherited their lands and wealth from their male ancestors, decide what to do with the pile.
- The rich male landowners sometimes do and sometimes don’t use the pile to benefit the people, but they always use it to benefit themselves.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or die.
Theocracy
- A church takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
- A group of priests, bishops, rabbis, imams, monks, or whatever, decide what to do with the pile.
- The religious leaders sometimes do and sometimes don’t use the pile to benefit the people, but they always use it to benefit themselves.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or burn in hell forever.
Mercantilism
- The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
- The businessmen tell everyone that they put the largest share of the money into the pile (whether that’s true or not) and therefore say that they should decide what to do with the pile.
- The government uses the pile to give the businessmen exclusive monopolies on the trade of certain strategically important commodities.
- The businessmen sometimes do and sometimes don’t use their monopolies to benefit the people, but they always use it to benefit themselves.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or go live somewhere else. Or die.
Soviet Communism
- The government takes almost all of everyone’s stuff and puts it in a great big pile.
- The government then re-distributes the pile to everyone in accord with how enthusiastically each person acted like a cheerleader for the Soviet system.
- The people also vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile, but the only people allowed to run are the cheerleaders.
- And only the cheerleaders get to vote for the Head Of All Cheerleaders.
- If the people don’t like what the cheerleaders do with the pile, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or go to “political re-education”. In a work camp. In Siberia.
North Korean Communism
- The government takes almost all of everyone’s stuff and puts it in a great big pile.
- The people vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile, but the only person allowed to run is Kim Il-sung. Yes, I know he’s dead. You can vote for his grandson instead.
Ideal Marxism
- The government takes a lot of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
- The government then re-distributes the pile to everyone in proportion to each person’s actual contributions and actual needs.
- The people also vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile, although people who believe in a political ideology other than ideal communism are normally not allowed to run.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, then they vote for someone else.
- Those who say “this is all well and good in theory but it will never work in practice” are told that it’s never been tried in practice so therefore nobody knows whether it will work in theory.
Democratic Socialism
- The government takes some of your money (more than in regular democracy, but less than in communism) and puts it in a great big pile.
- The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile.
- Constitutional laws are enacted to ensure that the people in charge of the pile use that pile for the benefit of the people.
- If the people in charge of the pile break those laws, then the Supreme Court and/or the Head of State stops them from doing it. And the people vote for someone else.
- Those who say “this is all well and good in theory but it will never work in practice” enjoy their free public education and health care.
Democratic Capitalism
- The government takes some of your money (usually less than in regular democracy) and puts it in a great big pile.
- The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile.
- Anyone can run to be in charge of the pile. But those who are cheerleaders for big corporations are much more likely to win.
- The big corporations tell everyone that what benefits them also somehow benefits everyone (whether it’s true or not), and therefore their voice influences the people in charge of the pile the most.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, they vote for someone else.
- If the people don’t like what is done by the big corporations, they can spend their money on the products of some other big corporation. If they have any money to spend.
Fascism
- The government takes some of your money and puts it in a great big pile.
- The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile. But those who are racist, sexist, class-ist, war-mongering, scapegoating, half-paranoid, violence-obsessed thugs are much more likely to win.
- The people in charge of the pile then hand the pile over to the thugs anyway, and those thugs use the pile to benefit mostly themselves.
- But to be fair, the thugs also build some big and awesome-looking monuments.
- If the people don’t like what the thugs do, that’s too bad for the people. Their only real choice is to grin and bear it, or go have a shower. In Auschwitz.
Classical Libertarianism
- The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a big pile, but the government is careful to take as little as possible.
- The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile.
- The government then spends the pile on a small number of social necessities. If the people have problems or needs they can’t handle on their own, the government offers them a little bit of help, but not much, because the people are expected to be as self-reliant as possible.
- The government also works to stop people whose personal piles are really big from exploiting or oppressing people whose personal piles are really small.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, they vote for someone else.
Ayn Rand Libertarianism
- Some of the people voluntarily take some of their own money, as much or as little as they wish, and put it in a little pile.
- The people then vote for who gets to be in charge of the pile. Anyone can run, but it really helps if your personal pile is bigger than most other people’s personal piles.
- The government then spends the pile on a small number of social necessities. If the people have problems or needs they can’t handle on their own, that’s too damn bad.
- Those whose personal piles are biggest are allowed to use their personal piles to exploit, manipulate, control, lie to, steal from, and pretty much oppress anyone with a smaller pile, in any way short of outright slavery: this is somehow called “freedom”.
- If the people don’t like what is done by those in charge of the pile, they had better get a damn good lawyer.
- And if the people don’t like what is done by those who’s personal pile is bigger than theirs, it’s their own fault.
Westeros Feudalism
- The government takes some of everyone’s money and puts it in a great big pile.
- Anyone who wants to be in charge of the pile declares himself king, and tries to kill anyone else who wants to be in charge of the pile.
- If the people — wait a minute. The people? Who are they?
I used to go walking in the Gatineau Hills National Park almost every day, in the summer and fall. Since the snow fell, and since I was raised to full-time at the college again, I haven’t been in it much. But it’s March Break, so I took an afternoon off my writing and my course prep to follow my “traditional” hiking path. It’s about 12 kilometers in all, perhaps more: and it takes me to Pink Lake and back. In the winter it’s much more difficult, as some of it has snow up to my waist and I don’t have snowshoes to stop me from sinking into it. I got my cardiovascular workout today!
Back when I was walking it more regularly, I gave names to some of the landmarks on the way: “the First Hill”, “the Shining Ridge”, “the Black Water”, “the Rock of Ages”, “the Three Brothers and the Motherstone”, and “Cyrodill” – the latter is actually named for a fictitious landscape in a video game which resembles an area which I regularly pass through. I also like to give myself “missions” of a sort, as if I’m one of those Celtic heroes on an eachtra (adventure, exploration). Sometimes the mission is to climb one of the rock formations. Sometimes it’s to leave an apple as an offering to Herself somewhere. Sometimes it’s to go a little further than I went before, or explore a new side-path. Sometimes it’s to shoot a photo of a certain landmark. And sometimes it’s to hike the route while avoiding people as much as possible. Thus does a landscape become one’s own. Some might say I’m too old to be making up names and stories for such places, but my pet dragon says those people are idiots anyway.
I thought you might like to see some before-and-after photos of a few spots on the trail.
Finally, the place on the shore of Pink Lake where I shot the front cover of Hallowstone…
…now looks like this!
Happy springtime everyone!
Back in 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb. In a chapter called “A Dying Planet” he listed a number of threats to the stability and diversity of global ecosystems, and then concluded that:
the causal chain of the deterioration is easily followed to its source. Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticide, multiplying contrails [from aircraft], inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide – all can be traced easily to too many people.
Then in 1986 Arne Naess and George Sessions published their eight “Platform Principles” of Deep Ecology, the fourth of which says: “The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.”
And in 1991, Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First!, wrote sixteen principles of ecological activism which included statements like these: “A placing of Earth first in all decisions, even ahead of human welfare if necessary”, “An enthusiastic embracing of the philosophy of Deep Ecology or biocentrism”, and “A recognition that there are far too many human beings on earth.”
These are not the only examples, of course; but they are the examples which stand out in my mind. And I have heard them repeated by lots of well-meaning, serious people who care about the environment, as much as I do. But it’s nothing but misanthropy.
Now it’s certainly true that the human population is growing. A prediction made in 2005 said that there will be 8.9 billion of us by the year 2050, and most of this population growth will be in the world’s poorest countries. (1) A report issued by the World Wildlife Federation in 2002 suggested that by 2050 the world’s ecosystems will no longer be able to support this population growth. (2) But the idea that curbing or reversing population growth, is all we have to do to fix global warming, species extinction, and climate change, is pure misanthropy. It is as if we don’t want to think about the serious subtleties and complexities of a problem as big as global warming, and the “prisoner’s dilemma” forces at work within economics which created it. It’s as if we don’t want to fix our system: we just want to kill or sterilize lots of other people to make the problem go away, and thus other people will have fixed our problem for us.
In the argument that population growth is the source of our environmental crisis, the doubts about the value of civilization which began with writers like Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, had blossomed into undisguised misanthropy. But who shall we sterilize in order to prevent humanity from growing? Poor people in poor countries, where the population growth is predicted to be highest? And who shall decide who to sterilize? The governments of rich countries? There is a hidden element of race and class privilege inherent in this kind of thinking, and I don’t like it.
Moreover, the problem with population as it is normally described assumes that every human being consumes the same volume of resources and energy, but that assumption is simply false. Our situation is such that one country, the United States, with 10% of the world’s population, consumes around 25% of all the world’s available energy. Another block of countries with around the same fraction of the world’s population, the European Union, consumes around 20% of all the world’s energy. So the problem is not how many of us there are; the problem is the way consumer demand is unjustly distributed. Thus if the world’s population was much smaller, but there were a few countries whose demand for consumer goods was very high, then we could have a worse environmental problem, not a solved problem. The real problem with pollution and resource depletion is the nature and the distribution of economic demand. To reduce it down to the stupidly simplistic problem of population is to dress up a hatred of humanity in the fine clothes of environmental care.
For the sake of the earth, and for the sake of the flourishing of human life and culture too, we should do better.
.
Notes
1. “40% rise in world population by 2050” Associated Press 25 February 2005.
2. Mark Townsend and Jason Burke, “Earth will expire by 2050” The Observer 7 July 2002.
This morning, the news broke that Pope Benedict XIV is resigning, due to old age and poor health. Fair play to him for resolving what was, I am sure, a difficult decision.
After I heard the news, I posted the following on my Twitter feed, just for a laugh:
The College of Cardinals can vote for any baptized man to be the next #Pope. Therefore, I hereby announce my candidacy. #PopeResigns
Followed a short while later by this bit of improbable silliness:
Dear #CatholicChurch: If you would like me to renounce the Goddess and return to the Church, please elect me the next #Pope.
This prompted my good friend J.D. Hobbes, who for several years now has jokingly referred to himself as the Pagan Pope, to post this:
Hobbes @jdhobbes
What the Vatican needs is a person who understands diversity and common sense. Vote for me: the Pagan Pope. #PutAPaganInThePapacy
Well I just loved the hashtag. And so whenever I had a spare minute or two during the work day, I posted some silly campaign tweets. Much to my surprise, they got a lot of attention, some of which from “interesting” directions. And so, in case you missed them, here they are:
Mead & steak instead of bread and wine! Saint Sophia & Mother Mary the equals of Christ! Evolution taught in schools!
Original blessing instead of original sin! Personal empowerment instead of perpetual penance! Love your gay neighbour!
A campaign to name & shame the privileged of the world, when they “grind the faces of the poor” (Isaiah 3:15)
Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila made official Second Christs! Westboro Baptist Church named official idiots!
By this time they were being spread on Twitter and FB rather more widely than my stuff normally gets spread. By chance I noticed an article on io9.com in which scientists observed flying squid, so I posted this tweet:
Scientists find squids can fly. Therefore, maybe I have a chance to be elected #Pope after all!
One mustn’t pass over such a thing in silence, you know.
At about this time, the comments included offers to design campaign badges for me, and some said they would wear those badges at Pantheacon. And my friend Celeste created this campaign poster for me:
And the campaign was in full swing!
And feeling emboldened, I started to deliberately include some barely veiled political commentary (as if I hadn’t been doing that all along)
Want female priests? Women’s reproductive rights affirmed? More comfortable benches in your church? Vote for me and #PutAPaganInThePapacy
Want a Church whose chief weapons are fear? Surprise? Ruthless efficiency? An almost fanatical devotion to-nevermind.
Drinking horns instead of brass chalices! The Bible in Theban Script! #PutAPaganInThePapacy and let’s build creepy gothic cathedrals again.
Doreen Valiente canonized a saint! Pascal’s Wager applied to hundreds of gods! Vote Brendan for the new #Pope, and #PutAPaganInThePapacy
Heal the sick. Feed the hungry. Shelter the poor. Love the earth. Dance the music! #PutAPaganInThePapacy Isaiah 58:6-8, Matt 25:34-40
Made in the Image of God (Genesis 1:26) Thou art God! Thou Art Goddess! (PaganTestament §63) Vote for me for #Pope and #PutAPaganInThePapacy
Let’s build a church across the road from the NYSE to remind them that usury and bearing false witness are still sins.
A tree in every garden! A chicken in every pot! A Buddy Jesus statue in every church! #PutAPaganInThePapacy, let’s make it happen!
When I am elected #Pope of the #CatholicChurch, I will hire Omnia to play at the inaguration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKwVGqXM8u4
Yes, Jesus loves you. But Aphrodite loves you the way you really want to be loved.
I don’t seriously expected to be elected Pope. I would be hugely surprised if an actual Vatican official even noticed these at all. I am only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all. But if anyone more important than me did happen to notice them, I hope he or she would join in the fun. Cheers!
Let’s look upon the world with new eyes. Let’s listen to things with different ears. Let’s ask some unquestions and dig for nonanswers. We have learned that the worship of the gods is not what matters. But why did we go looking for the gods in the first place? Who were we hoping to meet? What were we hoping to learn? What treasures did we hope to find in the earth, and what mana did we hope to receive from heaven? And what offerings did we give, and what rituals did we enact, in the hope of buying such boons?
To put my question more precisely: why do so many sober and sensible people believe in magic, the gods, the afterlife, and so on? Why do such ideas continue to hold us? Well, they might hold us because they might be true. But the question is pressing because we now possess a veritable mountain of sound and solid ways to explain the world without recourse to the supernatural. In almost every historical disagreement between science and religion, science eventually won. But religion did not crawl away defeated. And that is what prompts my question.
Back in 2008 I published a book called “A Pagan Testament” which included a collection of wisdom teachings, which I gathered from an informal folklore survey that I conducted in the previous year. (And by the way, it’s still the largest collection of wisdom teachings in print, to this day.) Some of the wisdom teachings seemed to me to ‘hang together’ in a kind of extended discourse, like a ‘Charge’ in the style of the Charge of the Goddess. Here is one of them, having to do with the laws of magic:
§ 92. Knowledge is power.
§ 93. As above, so below.
§ 94. As within, so without.
§ 95. All things return to their source.
§ 96. For good or ill, all things return in threes.
§ 97. Like attracts like.
§ 98. All things entail their own opposite.
§ 99. Once connected, always connected.
§ 100. To name something is to know it, and to have power over it.
§ 101. Whatever is willed, will be.
§ 102. If it works, us it; if it works, it is true.
And here is another having to do with “The Mystery”
§ 63. Thou Art Goddess! Thou Art God!
§ 72. What a great miracle is Man!
§ 77. As man is now, so the gods once were. As the gods are now, so man may some day become.
§ 78. There is no part of you that is not of the gods
§ 84. If that which you seek, you find not within, you will never find it without.
§ 137. Goddess is alive! Magick is afoot!
§ 162. I am the Earth, and the Earth is Me.
And here’s one having to do with “The Path”:
§ 142. The path is not meant to be easy; the path is not for everyone; the path is for the few.
§ 143. Treat all experiences of hardship, frustration, and suffering as learning experiences. Learning is a form of healing.
§ 144. The path is a learning path, a healing path, and a magical path.
§ 145. The path is not a religion. It is a way of life.
§ 146. The path is the same for all, but each must walk it in her own way.
§ 147. There are many paths, but they all lead to the same destination.
§ 148. Pass on what you have learned; but always in accord with each person’s ability to understand.
§ 149. You can’t pour anything into a cup that is already full.
§ 150. Do not serve your best wine to drunkards.
§ 151. The Craft is a tough weed that will grow many strange flowers and bear strange fruits, so we must try and tolerate different ways of practicing it. Learn from what we see and if we cannot use it, let the others try, even if they eat bad fruit and go balls up! (Victor Anderson)
§ 152. The path is a style of love that demands treading very, very softly and kindly through life, because life is a precious, short, amazing gift. (Monica Becker)
The § numbers, by the way, refer to a referencing system I used in the book. I was rather hoping the system would become a kind of standard for other researchers besides myself, but the idea seems not to have caught on. Oh well.
Now what do these teachings really mean? Of course, on the surface, they mean exactly what they say they mean. Basic propositions can always be taken at face value. But to what world-view do they belong? What must one presuppose in order to find them acceptable? What more and what else might follow from those presuppositions? And does the world view they proclaim make sense? And if yes, then why? And if not, then why not?
Here’s the possibility which, this evening as I contemplate it, I find the most reasonable. In various ways, each of these teachings asserts the will to dwell in an enchanted world.
I’ll have to leave to another day a discussion of what I think it means to dwell in an enchanted world – tonight’s blog post is long enough. But I’m also curious to see whether others might reach a similar conclusion – or a different one. And I’m curious to see what the idea of an enchanted world might mean to others. Let’s start a dialogue about the things that truly matter, beyond the relativism of the pagan party line. Leave your comments in the space below, or on your own blog, or your favourite social network, and let’s talk!
“The sacred, I shall say, is that which acts as your partner in the search for the highest and deepest things: the real, the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
– Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear
I don’t normally see omens or other messages from the gods in the way many other pagans say they do. I’m not especially interested in ritual or magic or spellcraft. I do not sense auras, I do not feel the energies, I do not read tarot cards or cast the runes. In fact, around ten years ago or so, I hit upon one of the most liberating and life-changing propositions ever to have entered my mind, which is that the worship of the gods is not what matters. What, then, am I still doing in the pagan community? And if the worship of the gods isn’t what matters, then what does?
People and relationships matter. The earth matters. Life, yours and mine, matters. Art, music, culture, science, justice, knowledge, history, peace, and any other similar thing which enriches your relationships with the world and with people, also matter. The extent to which life is worth living matters. Death, yours and mine, matters. And thinking about these things is what matters too.
My path is the path of a philosopher, and it is a spiritual path. It’s about finding answers to the highest and deepest questions that face humankind, and finding those answers by means of my own intelligence. It’s about not waiting for the word to come down from anyone else, not society, not parents, not politicians or governments, not teachers, not religion, not even the gods. In that sense it is a humanist activity, but it is an activity which elevates ones humanity to the highest sphere. That is what matters. This was the path of all the greatest philosophers through history. It was the path of the great pagan predecessors like Hypatia and Diotima and Plato; and also the path of more recent predecessors like James Frazer and Robert Graves. This is the path of knowledge; and knowledge is enlightenment, and knowledge is power.
Some people, and some religious groups, might see that as hubris. But I see it as humanity’s true calling. I’ve been working for decades to create a philosophical world view which is rigorously rational but at the same time recognizably spiritual, uplifting, accessible to anyone, and genuinely helpful. If I have crafted it well, it will be my legacy. (Although I also want to buy land on which to build a temple. But that’s another story.)
This shouldn’t be controversial, but it is. Last year, a number of individuals made a very uncharitable interpretation of a throwaway comment of mine, and concluded that I was somehow disparaging them personally. Some even demanded my forcible removal from the pagan community. So let’s look again at the statement “the worship of the gods is not what matters”. It is not the same as the statement “the gods do not exist”. It says that whether the gods exist or do not exist, I shall have other primary concerns. For there are other things that matter too – and some of those other things matter more. And some of those other things which matter more are sacred things. And some of those sacred things which matter more are things to do with the human realm: such as friendship, justice, and integrity. Thus the path is a humanist path, yet also a spiritual path.
Suppose the gods do exist. Then relate to them the same way you might relate to anybody else. There’s a form of meditation that I still do once in a while, perhaps not often enough, in which I contemplate a certain Celtic goddess whom I shall not name here. My view of Herself is strongly pantheist, and as I see it speaking of Herself and speaking of the earth is almost the same thing. She also personifies certain moral values and certain relationships that I think are important. There’s a bowl on top of one of my bookshelves into which I pour an offering to Herself every time I have beer or wine in the house. And in turn, I like to imagine that She looks after me. But if you think about it, that’s a very minimalist kind of religious practice. There’s no casting of circles, no raising of energies, no chanting and no invocations. There’s just me, doing my thing, and talking to Herself once in a while.
But in my relationship with Herself, I do not bow. I do not obey. I do not ‘worship’. Perhaps this is one of the last remaining strands of my Catholic upbringing, but to me the word ‘worship’ means absolute unquestioning affirmation of the authority of the deity. I’ll not have that in my life. If you are wise, neither will you. The gods, if they exist, are just the people who happen to live on the other side. And they shall be friends to me, or strangers to me, the same as any of you.
I was initiated into the 1st degree of a certain lineage of Alexandrian Wicca. I’ve also followed the Druidic path, co-founded a Druidic community called The Order of the White Oak, and in 2001 I even followed the Druidic path back to Ireland. I have been a member of the pagan community for more than twenty years. So I’m not coming to this as a dilettante, or a dabbler. I was once offered my second degree but we never could find a time to do the ritual, and noting came of it. But that’s okay. Now all I really want to do in the pagan community is write books, talk about the ideas in them, play guitar, help out at events, and “dance sing feast make music and love” with good people. I want to help create a spiritual culture that is intellectually inquiring, artistically flourishing, environmentally aware, and socially just.
And that, also, is what matters.
It is not the first time in my life that someone important to me has died. But for some reason, the news of the death of my friend Jane Estelle Tromblay is affecting me very deeply. Jane and I were lovers for a long time. We shared the healthiest, most empowering, fulfilling, fun, and most loving relationship of my life. It ended when I moved to Ottawa in 2009, in pursuit of a job opportunity (which turned out not to be real). She eventually married another man, and shortly after their wedding she was diagnosed with cancer. It occurred to me this year, not long after she told me about her cancer, that I was pulled away so that her husband could arrive – he is a medical professional with the Canadian Forces and therefore much better able to care for her than I could have been. I am sure he is feeling the loss much worse than I am. But Jane and I remained close and saw each other as often as we could. When she died, she was at home, with people who loved her nearby.
In one of the conversations we had this summer, she was describing another friend of hers who died around that time from a similar kind of cancer, and how much she did not want to hear the phrase “Your friend is in a better place now”. Paraphrasing from memory, this is what she said:
I hate it when people say “She’s in a better place now”. Because this world is the better place! Not some other world. This world, with is flowers and trees and mountains and things. This world, with all its people, living their lives, sharing friendship and love and happiness together. This is the world I want to live in! Not some abstract heaven. This world!”
I think some part of her soul was telling me how I should think of her now that she is dead. And, I think some part of Herself was telling me a home truth about what really matters.
Friends, go right now to the people you love and tell them you love them. Don’t wait until you are home from work. Get on the phone, get in your car, or board a bus or a train or whatever it takes. Don’t wait until the person you love most is buried and gone. That could happen as soon as tomorrow. So go and tell your friends and lovers what wonderful people they are, and do some work of generosity for them. Do it today. Do it now.
Photo: Myself and Jane at the Hamilton PPD after-party, 2008.