People sometimes ask, since I am a philosophy professor, what do I teach?

Well there are several answers. One is that I teach logic, argumentation, and the history of ideas. Another is that I teach the skills that help people to question everything, stand up to authority, be creative and resourceful, to think clearly and carefully, to think for themselves, and to know who they are.

But as a philosopher and as something resembling a spiritual man, what do I teach?

Well in that sense of the question, I have no special teaching at all. I offer no new tables of the law; I make no demands; and I tell no one what to do.

Well then, if I do not teach such things, then what do I do?

I examine my situation, as a living human being, here at this place on earth, and at this time in history.

Things are so rarely what they appear to be on the surface. Everyone knows that; but few will tap upon the surfaces of things, to hear what realities from within echo back.

I find that I have these immensities before me: the earth beneath me, other people around me, my loneliness within me, and my death upon me.

And so I have these questions: how shall I dwell upon the earth? How shall I converse with my people? How shall I emerge from my loneliness? How shall I make peace with my mortality?

And to find answers, I have all my relations: my body, my landscape, my animals, my food, my family, my guests, my friends, my lovers, my elders, my hometown, my arts, my possessions, my heroes, my mind, my teachers, my storytellers, my leaders, my healers, and my gods.

I find that every one of us has these same realities, these same questions, and these same relations. In some sense, then, I find that we are one.

As I tap upon the surfaces of the immensities, I ask: which of my tuning-hammers makes music, and which ones only make noise? The best music, I have found, is made with humanity, integrity, and wonder.

And I have found that everyone has these instruments ready to hand. Everyone, I affirm, although I also find that only a few of us take them up and play.

And to understand me fully, think of the many meanings of the word ‘play’.

When I hear music, I share it; I hope that my people will listen with me. When I make music, I share it too; I hope that my people will celebrate with me and play along. When I make dissonant or offending sounds, I trust my people will warn me, so I can make amends as best as I can.

This I do, not simply as a philosopher or a spiritual man; this I do as a human being, alive on earth, at this place and time.

Nothing more, perhaps, could be asked of anyone. And, perhaps, nothing less.

As a writer, although I have the backing of an excellent international publisher, I still have to do most of my own publicity and marketing. I have two promotional “giveaways” already open (read about them here and here). Now let me tell you about a third.

Two years ago I recorded “The Island”, an album of 12 of my original songs. For a while, I was selling them on the internet for $10, but I took that down because, well to be honest, I ran out of CD’s. Not that I had made many in the first place.

Over the last few months I’ve received a lot of emails asking if the album will be made available again. So here’s what I propose: Instead of arranging to send me the $10, I will email you the album as a series of mp3′s, for free,

And in return, you will write a review of one of my books on that book’s Amazon page, and also on any social networking tools that you use (your blog, your FB or G+ page, your Twitter feed, etc.)

It would not have to be a lengthly review: even three or four sentences would be enough. As I must do most of my own publicity, I need as much help from others as I can. A positive review would be most welcome, of course, but an honest one is all I ask for. The album will be sent as soon as the review you write is visible on the net.

If interested, email me directly. And thanks for your help!

Interested in a free signed copy of “Circles of Meaning”, or “Fellwater”? Just click Like or Share on the book’s Facebook fan page. For every 1,000 “Likes” I will give away a copy of the book to someone selected at random from those who liked or shared it.

Fellwater:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fellwater/335085003202636

Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Circles-of-Meaning-Labyrinths-of-Fear/107651916030523

Spread the word!

Anyone heard of the “Eco-Handprint”? I was first directed to this idea by a colleague of mine at work, who pointed me to this blog post by Jing Gomez, “Handprints”, posted on 23rd March 2012. This blog post was cited in my college’s announcement of its new “Heritage Handprints” environmental awareness campaign.

The main expert mentioned in relation to the origin of the “Handprint” was Gregory Norris of the Harvard School of Public Health. As the blog post describes it:

In Norris’ study, he mentions that after learning to compute LCA (Life cycle assessments) for their total footprints, his students come to conclude that the earth would have been better off if they had not been born. Sadly, many subscribe to this.

This led Norris to invent a new economic indicator, the “Handprint”, the measure of how much human activity benefits the earth. But let’s look at the claim that students who performed this assessment concluded that “the earth would have been better off if they had not been born”. Now misanthropy is certainly a major moral problem. But misanthropy is not the problem here: the problems are pollution and global warming. And those who say that studying the “Footprint” produces misanthropy are simply wrong, as I shall explain.

The idea of the “Handprint” is given to us as a preferable alternative to the “Footprint”, the main economic indicator of environmental impact that has been used effectively by scientists since the 1990’s. Here’s what the blog post says a “Footprint” is.

Traditionally, talk centers on footprints – the sum total of the negative impact of pollution released and resources consumed by the products we use. It cannot but be depressing.

But this is wrong. Here’s how it is defined by Mathis Wackernagel, the man who invented the idea of the eco-footprint in the first place:

EP/ACC is a simple, yet comprehensive tool: it provides an accounting framework for the biophysical services that a given economy requires from nature. It is calculated by estimating the land area, in various categories, necessary to sustain the current level of consumption by the people in that economy, using prevailing technology. An economy’s full Ecological Footprint would include all the land whose services this economy appropriates from all over the globe to provide necessary resource inputs and to assimilate corresponding waste outputs. The EF/ACC concept thereby demonstrates the ecological dependence of economic systems. It is both an analytic and heuristic device for understanding the sustainability implications of different kinds of human activities, and serves as an awareness tool and an action-oriented planning tool for decision-making towards sustainability.

(M. Wackernagel, “Ecological Footprint and Appropriated Carrying Capacity: A Tool for Planning Toward Sustainability” Doctoral thesis accepted by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, October 1994).

A straw man fallacy can be found in the claim that an ecological footprint is the sum of all negative human impacts on the earth. But as you can see from the original definition, that’s simply not true. The ecological footprint is the sum of all human impact of any kind, positive or negative. It is the sum of how much physical land on the earth is needed to supply all of a given society’s material needs: food, building materials, energy, and the like. It is also a measure of how much land is needed to assimilate our waste: landfills, incinerators, and so on. The eco-footprint of London, England, for instance, is estimated at 50 million hectares, or approximately the land area of the rest of the United Kingdom.

Now when one looks at the actual impacts of human communities like that, it may appear as if they are all harmful to the earth. But that’s simply not true, because the EF/ACC measure is capable of incorporating the extent to which environmental exploitation is sustainable and renewable. In other words, it already does the job of measuring the positive impacts. And indeed its job is also to measure whether our impacts are harmful or not. Thus there is simply no need for a separate economic indicator to tell “the other half of the story”. Thus the characterization of the eco-footprint as a measure of the “negative” or “harmful” impacts is a straw man.

The blog post targets not the actual problem of global warming and climate change, but rather targets its effect on human emotions. It talks about how the study of humanity’s eco-footprint “cannot but be depressing”. It says that the study of humanity’s eco-footprint is the “ugly side” of the story. But these are all red herrings. Global warming and climate change is a fact, agreed upon by the vast overwhelming majority of serious scientific evidence discovered by competent scientists. Now some people may, indeed, feel profoundly personally troubled by this fact. But if we are good scientists and good critical thinkers, then we care more about reality and the truth than we do about our personal feelings. And if the facts of the case are unsettling or upsetting, our duty is not to tell ourselves a gratifying feel-good story about them. Rather, our duty is to do something about it.

But what should we do? The blog suggests that doing superficial things like printing computer documents on both sides of a page, or inflating car tires properly, will save the earth. Thus the illusion is created that leads people to believe, wrongly, that by doing such superficial things, they are fulfilling the moral duty to protect the environment from harm, including the kind of harm that can render the earth unliveable for human beings. But that is like re-arranging the furniture in a house that is on fire. And this is an appropriate analogy, given that one of the recent serious effects of global warming is an increase in the size and frequency of forest fires.

Indeed that very complacency and non-action is veritably encouraged by the author of the blog post, in his statement that we should “think beyond big changes”. There is no polite way for me to say what I’m about to say: but to “think beyond big changes” is to fail to criticize the economic and political forces which both created and also continually benefits from the continued destruction of the earth. A guilty conscience is soothed; a depressing reality ignored; and the corporate-funded destruction of the Earth is permitted to continue unabated. While we ordinary people recycle our plastic bottles and lower our thermostats in the evening, the big corporations build more offshore oil platforms, and more coal-fired power plants, and pumps more pollution into the atmosphere and the oceans we all breathe and drink.

In sum, the “handprint” is a deliberate attempt to prevent people understanding the problem of global warming properly. It’s not the hand that touches the earth and heals: rather, it is the hand that covers the eyes and the camera lens so you don’t see, covers the pages of your scientific journals so you don’t read, and plugs the ears with its fingers so you don’t hear the truth. And it’s the hand that holds down other people’s hands and prevents them from doing the most useful and effective kind of work.

Dr. Brendan Myers has a Ph.D in environmental ethics, and serves as professor of philosophy at Heritage College, Gatineau, Quebec.

Who Is Carlo DiAngelo?

If you can find out, you could win a copy of “Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear” by Brendan Myers!

“Carlo DiAngelo” is a character from Myers’ new novel, “Fellwater“. But like several characters in the story, there’s hints that he might actually be thousands of years old. Back then, Carlo lived in the Roman Empire, and he had another name.

If you can figure out what his original name was, I’ll put you in the draw for a free, signed copy of “Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear“! I’m putting three copies of “Circles of Meaning” up for three winners. So you have triple the chances of winning!

This draw will take place on Monday, 30th April 2012, and the winner will be announced on the Fellwater “fan” page on Facebook, here. Happy reading friends! And good luck!

If you’ve seen The Wicker Man (1973), and then go to see its successor film The Wicker Tree (2011), you will probably leave feeling that the 1973 original is the better of the two films. Yet now that it’s been about 12 hours since I’ve seen the new one, I have to admit the new one is growing on me.

The film starts with images of a group of pagan revelers, dancing around with firebrands. This scene, filmed in slow motion and partially out of focus, sets a dreamlike quality but also lets us know that eventually we’re going to see these people again. And since we have all seen the 1973 film we know they are celebrating someone’s death. Then we’re taken to Dallas, Texas, to meet our heroes: two young and innocent and starry-eyed and cute-as-can-be Christian evangelicals about to embark on missionary work in Scotland. One of them, Beth Boothby (Brittania Nicol), is a famous gospel singer, and so her arrival in Scotland is something of an event. But when she and her cowboy boyfriend Steve (Henry Garrett) go door to door delivering missionary pamphlets, all they get is rejection. Cue the entry of Sir Lachlan Morrison, played by silky-voiced Graham McTavish, who invites our heroes to try and evangelise the people of his village, Tressock. Wicker Man fans might enjoy the homage to the previous film in certain names. Morrison, here the name of the local lord, is possibly related to Rowan Morrison; and Nuada, the god of the sun worshipped on Summerisle in 1973, here serves as the name of the company that manages a nuclear power plant.

When we arrive in Tressock, signs of a flourishing pagan culture are evident immediately, from the icon of a pagan goddess on the hood of a car, to the apparent sexual licensiousness of nearly everybody: and this was a little disappointing. I would have liked that reveal to have been a little more subtle. But then again, we’ve all seen the 1973 original and we all know what to expect. The locals are polite to Beth and Steve, and even sing along to one of their Christian hymns at a prayer meeting. Then they invite our heroes to become the May Queen and the Laddie in an upcoming festival. And that’s when we as the audience are sure they’re doomed. What remains, then, is to see exactly how they meet their doom. In a way, the film is about the inexorability of fate: Lord Summerisle himself says as much in a cameo appearance. So the plot of the film is an unfolding of Beth and Steve’s fate. We as audience members know what is going to happen: all the mystery and surprise is in how it happens. In that sense the film is a bit like a prequel.

It is for this reason, perhaps, that some of the supporting characters can be quite casual, even clownish, about some very macabre activities. And through them the film attempts a kind of marriage between comedy and tragedy. I’m really not sure that this marriage worked.

At times the inexorability of the plot prompted in me a feeling of shadenfreude, as our pair of all-American poster children for virtue are so easily manipulated and deceived by the people of Tressock. But I also felt a lot of pity for them too. Their relationship with each other, and with themselves, really sustained the film. Like Seargeant Howie before them, they are religiously upright and committed, which gives their characters a solid basis. They are the two normal people in a world full of eccentrics. But unlike Howie, they are not fully pure. And the subtle struggle within each of them to live up to their new commitments interested me. Beth, for instance, secretly misses the career she had before becoming an evangelical. And Steve showed some genuine cognitive dissonance after an afternoon of infidelity with local nymphomaniac Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks). By the way, Lolly’s libido turns out to be driven not by hedonism, but by despair. If you can infer exactly what her despair springs from, I hope you will agree she has one of the finest emotional moments in the film. I’d best say no more about that, lest I spoil any more of the plot.

I must also say, there were some moments at the end I genuinely didn’t expect. Beth and Steve met their fate as we knew they would, but the shock you feel when director Robin Hardy’s thesis is revealed – the thesis that great evil can come when people’s beliefs in the rightness of their actions is strong enough – came from an unexpected direction. This too helped make up for the weaknesses of the film: the unstable union of comedy and tragedy, the wooden-ness (dare I say wicker-ness?) of some of the characters. I’d give the film three out of five stars, although somehow I feel as if I should be giving it more. There’s still lots of depth and richness to be explored in the world of the Wicker Man, and lots more terrors to be seen as well. Robin Hardy, if you’re reading this, I hereby volunteer to write the script for the third film.

Some links: Official web site (with trailer) / Wikipedia / IMDB

As of today, my credit card is totally paid off. My personal debt is now half of what it was yesterday. I will be completely debt-free by the middle of December. I can start putting the money that I used to put into debt-repayment into long term savings, retirement funds, and the like; and in about three or four years I will likely be able to buy a house. I have a good job, with excellent benefits. I rent an apartment in a clean and safe building, and the building is in a clean and safe neighbourhood. I’ve never had to accept social assistance, nor go on the dole, but during hard times I had to accept the generosity of some very good friends who housed me in their homes for a few months at a time, for very little rent. I am well fed, in good health, well educated, and financially secure. I can vote, sit on juries, run for political office, and even make attestations in law courts. If I am injured or if I develop a chronic disease, I will be cared for. If I am convicted of a crime and sent to jail, I will not be tortured. While I’m at it, I probably benefit from the invisible privileges of being a heterosexual white male, in ways that I do not see.

In short, I am among the most privileged people on the planet. But from that fact, it simply does not follow that I should not complain about my problems. It does not follow that I should not want to better my position, or that I should not want to better the position of others who have it worse than me.

I don’t know if I am one of the 99%, in the sense that most ‘occupiers’ appear to mean. I might be one of the top 40% in my society. But I do know that I am *not* among the top 1%. Because I make less than $300,000 a year. That’s the estimated threshold of entry to the 1% of the people in my society who own or control the vast majority of the wealth in my country. More than three-quarters of my income goes into my basic survival needs: rent, food, utilities, and hygene products. As a college professor at a provincially funded institution, I am a budget cut or two away from total unemployment again. I was reduced to part time status this fall for that very reason.. I don’t own any major national newspapers, television or radio stations, or popular web sites. I don’t manage a Fortune 500 company. I cannot outsource my workers to China. I do not travel in a private helicopter. If I contribute money to a politician’s campaign, I could never possibly contribute enough to influence that politician’s priorities. If I am ever brought to court and charged with a crime, the winning side would be the side with the best paid lawyers. Around four years ago, I owned a few thousand dollars of stock on the TSX. But my tiny investment could not possibly sway the policies of the companies I invested in. I have almost no influence at all upon the means of production, distribution, transport, and communication, and I personally wield almost no political power in my society.

But when I act in concert with others, it’s possible that I do wield rather a lot of political and economic influence. When I read that there are rather a lot of people in the same position as me, not because they were lazy but because they had their opportunities taken away from them, I cannot help but wonder what would happen if we all got together and demanded change, in a unified voice. It happened in 494 BC when the working classes of Rome staged a general strike against their Patrician masters. It happened in 1981 when something like one-third of the people of Poland joined Solidarity, and replaced the communist system with a democratic one. It happened again in East Germany when the Peaceful Revolution brought the communist system down. It began to happen again more recently, with the Anti-Globalization Movement of the 1990’s, and more recently than that with the Arab Spring of this year. And it’s happening right now, at this very moment, with the ‘occupy’ movement. I am writing these words less than a kilometer from where the occupiers of my city have set up their tents.

We see evidence of the scorn that the 1% hold for the 99% in various places. There’s Leona Helmsley’s famous 1989 claim that “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” We also see it in Carl Henrick-Svanberg’s shockingly patronizing 2010 statement “We care about the small people.”

I know that the people in the 1%, taken individually and personally, are probably not much different than anyone else. They can be as loving, or as hateful, as compassionate, or as callous, as anyone. The two examples of contempt for the poor, cited above, might not characterize all rich people everywhere. But when the rich act as a class, they only ever act in their own class interests, and never in the general public interest. Even when they make charitable endowments to environmental conservation projects or hospitals or the like, they do it for the tax write-off and the free publicity. Think of how many cultural installations, like concert halls, are named for the corporations that donated money to them. There is simply no such thing as a transnational corporation that cares more for the public good than it does for its own private profit.

I’m sure that no corporate executive ever in seriousness asked his fellow board members, “How can we screw the poor today?” But the overwhelming majority of the things that transnational corporations do has exactly that effect, whether in large ways or small. The wealthiest 1% will always work to preserve the status-quo, with themselves on the top of it, whatever that status-quo might be. They will prefer to preserve “stability” even if that stability includes disempowerment, dispossession, wage-slavery, or untimely death for the working classes and the poor.

I also know that the banks in my country did not engage in predatory lending, like the banks in America did. Sub-prime mortgage lending is illegal here, and the stock market is better regulated. The distance between the rich and the poor here is not as wide as it is in other countries. I have, at least twice to my knowledge, shared an elevator ride with a multi-millionaire. And my government is not about to go bankrupt, although it is up to is neck in debt, more than ever before. So I may have less to protest against than people in other countries.

But the disparity between the rich and the poor here is still enough to cause a lot of needless suffering in people’s lives. It leaves too many people hanging by a thread, even relatively comfortable people like myself. We live in an economic system that allows some individuals to keep for themselves, and not to share if they don’t want to, the wealth that could be used to entirely eradicate poverty from the face of the earth, forever. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s a fact. That feature of our system seems to me monstrously unjust. Yet if the wealthiest 1% did share enough of their wealth to eradicate poverty, they wouldn’t be much worse off than they are now. They would still have the wealth and power to buy politicians, bias the media in their favour, commute to the office and back by helicopter, and utter statements of contempt for the poor. Or if they could not do these things, they would be no worse off than me. And my situation, as I described earlier, is really not so bad. So, there’s no outstanding reason that I can see for why the rich refuse to share their wealth more justly, except for one: greed. Naked, plain, unaccountable greed.

So, I don’t know if I am one of the 99%. But I stand with them.

Here’s something I wanted to add to the last post, but I decided it deserves a little space of its own:

If you want to buy a book, don’t wait until you see the author at a festival or event before buying a book that you want. Buy them from bookstores and from online retailers that you trust. Doing so creates a small but measurable “up-tick” in the indicators of popularity that publishers and distributors notice. This goes a long way toward keeping a book in print. Buying a book direct from the author does not necessarily help support the author. When I attend a festival, I have to buy my books from my distributor, and then re-sell them for a small mark-up. If I do not sell enough, perhaps because I over-estimated how many I could sell, then I am left holding the bag for hundreds of dollars. If I am about to be late with the rent that month, that shortfall can really hurt. So, while I might make slightly more money per unit by selling books personally, my long-term interests as a writer are better served by people buying books in shops and through online retailers, or directly from the publisher.

This morning, I was asked to comment on this blog post by Raven Grimassi, concerning the pagan publishing industry.

The problem that Mr. Grimassi describes here, that the pagan book publishing market is flooded with silly, superficial, “101 level” books, has been a problem for over twenty years.

In all that time, the solution that people suggest is almost always the same: “we need more intelligent, serious, and deeper books to be published”. Yet in twenty years, it appears that little has changed: hence Grimassi’s complaint.

Grimassi’s explanation, or part of it anyway, is that some reviewers do not write meaningful reviews. They skim a book quickly and comment without a full understanding of what they have read. Prospective readers thus get turned off. But in my view, this factor is quite minor, compared to the next three:

- Too many publishers are not willing to publish the serious, intellectually rigorous books, because they believe they will not sell. Remember, a publishing company is a business. It is a business with an important place in culture and the intellectual and artistic character of a community, but it is a business nonetheless.

- Too many authors are not willing to write those more serious books because they believe they will not sell, or because they are simply not competent to write such books and, perhaps, do not know that they are not competent. I do not wish to name names nor point fingers here. This isn’t meant to attack anyone. But I’m sure you can think of a few examples. Think of the lead characters from “Dumb and Dumber”.

- And finally, too many readers are not willing to buy them because they find them intimidating, difficult, controversial, insufficiently gratifying, or too expensive.

I think the real solution, then, is somewhere between these factors. Publishers have to be willing to include a few serious and challenging books in their catalogue. But some publishers, such as my own, certainly are so willing. Thus, as far as I am concerned, this problem is now solved.

Writers have to be willing to write better books too – and willing to learn how to write them. But the advanced books do exist, and there are lots of good writers continuing to write them. So I think this problem is also essentially solved.

What remains are the problems related to publicity, marketing, and sales. Perhaps that is where Grimassi’s gripe about incompetent reviewers can come in. But it should also be pointed out that in the non-fiction publishing industry, writers are expected to do almost all of their own marketing. Well for my part, I think I know a thing or two about writing a book, but I certainly know almost nothing about promoting one. Most other writers I know are the same. It is extremely hard, time consuming, expensive, and stressful to promote a book, especially when I would rather be writing the next one. Hence why I run contests, submit review copies everywhere, try to get interviews on prominent podcasts and websites, attend events and do presentations, and the like. I do the best I can, but there is only so much I can do on my own.

Finally, given that we live in a capitalist market, the solution to the problem of the glut of superficial pagan books rests also in the hands of readers with money to spend on books. The market is saturated with superficial pagan books because people are buying them. Readers have to be willing to spend their money on books that will challenge them. If readers are not willing to change their purchasing habits, the problem will persist.

How to recognise a more advanced book:

- It poses serious problems, and asks tougher questions. It is concerned with what is true, what is real, what is right, or what is beautiful. It does not dismiss the seriousness of these themes under a morass of inoffensive relativism. It takes a stand on an issue that matters, and is unafraid of criticism or controversy. As Aristotle wrote, ‘the great soul cares more about the truth than about what people think.’

- It rejects as false the popular dichotomy between theory and practice.

- It is not primarily interested in ritual or spellcraft. There are already thousands of books that speak of nothing but spellcraft and ritual; there are also thousands of blogs and websites. I doubt that we need any more.

- Rather, it is primarily about a problem that matters – and not just to pagans, but to everyone in the author’s whole society, or to every human being on earth. Furthermore it identifies a problem that is a real source of suffering or pain in people’s lives.

- It does not settle for superficial or easy solutions to those problems. It builds arguments, considers counter-arguments, investigates alternatives, and provides answers together with reasons for why the answers are good answers. Further, it provides answers which can stand the test of a reviewer’s critical attention, and which lead to further good questions.

- It appeals to the reader’s intelligence, and does not try to manipulate or subvert the reader’s intelligence. It does not treat the reader like an ignorant child.

- The author makes no promses he or she cannot fulfill; nor does she claim to possess any knowledge or talent or prestige that she does not in fact possess.

- It opens the way for readers to pursue for themselves the evidence in favour of the author’s argument: the reader does not have to take the writer’s word for it. The author’s own experience of something, while relevant and important, is not the only thing that matters. The book asserts nothing on the basis of faith alone.

- Its theme is focused, specific, and timely; it does not try to do too much at once. It is generally better to do one or two things well, than to do seven or eight things poorly.

- Its author cares about ideas and cares about knowledge, cares about the community he or she is addressing, and cares about humanity and about life on earth. He or she cares more about these things than she does about her personal reputation.

- Its authors sees writing as a spiritual calling first; a source of monetary profit second. The publishing gurus who recommend that writers not start a book until they have a contract are simply wrong here. Writers who think of their books as products are living with divided minds. Writers who think of their books as living things that they are compelled by the spirit to create are writers who can captivate and change the world.

How to support an author who writes better books.

- Buy the books.

- Talk about them, review them, criticise them (constructively), practice or experiment with the ideas or practices that the books describe.

- Recommend them to your friends. Spread the word about the books that you think really are of good quality; ignore the rest.

- Start a book club, and read them with your friends.

- Share this blog post.

Happy Lughnasad to you all!

I have just learned that James Arthur Ray, the new-age motivational trainer who was brought to trial for the deaths of three people in his sweatlodge on Oct. 8, 2009, has been found guilty of three counts of negligent homicide.

Read some more about the verdict here. (With thanks to Jason for drawing my attention to it.)

I think that negligent homicide is the correct verdict in this case. I’m sure Mr. Ray did not intend that anyone should die. But it is clear to me that he did intend to create the physical conditions that caused the three deaths. It’s also clear that he did nothing to alter or alleviate those conditions when participants became violently ill, and he took no responsibility for the consequences of his actions, however unintended they might have been. This is a straightforward example of negligence. You really can do wrong, in law and in morality, by failing to act.

Some people, perhaps the sweatlodge participants themselves (prior to 8th October 2009, of course) might justify Ray’s “heat endurance test” for a reason like this one. Tough spiritual exercises are intended to help people “break out of their comfort zones” and find “their highest good” (phrases that new-age gurus often use), and do something amazing that they thought they could not do. Afterwards they could justifiably feel stronger and more confident, better able to handle other problems in their lives. Let us suppose we took that claim at face value. Is it justifiable to expose someone to potential death as a means to that end? The answer is no. It is simply false, in cases like this one, that the ends justify the means. And there are limits to what you can ask people to do.

As the prosecuting lawyer said, “We don’t quibble with the notion that Mr. Ray used death as a metaphor. But when you deliberately confuse a metaphor with reality, it is no longer a metaphor.”

In addition to the physical environment of the sweatlodge (i.e. the heat), let us look at the social and psychological environment that Mr. Ray created. The prosecuting lawyer’s closing remarks drew attention to this when she said: “Mr. Ray intentionally used heat to cause these extreme altered mental status changes in his participants.” Another way to put this is to say that Mr. Ray’s sweatlodge was a mind control device. Along with the heat, he also used shame, peer pressure, lack of privacy, interruption of normal routines, the nearly $10,000 price tag for the event (because the more money the participants invest, the higher their expectations and level of commitment), and various preparation exercises (such as getting participants to write obituaries for themselves), to secure the participants obedience. Thus he was able to keep people in the tent far longer than was healthy or sane, against what would have been their better judgment, had they been in their right minds.

Now it would be one thing to say that the participants should have known what they were getting into, or that they should not have let Mr. Ray have so much power over them. Some people did attempt to leave the tent (and were chastised my Mr. Ray for doing it). But a charismatic and confident leader really can undercut your reason and lead you to suspend your good sense, and a talented one can do this to you without your conscious awareness and consent. Mr. Ray was, on that day, just such a charismatic and confident leader. I think it would be wrong to say that the participants are at fault for consenting to the situation.

Again, let us ask the moral question: is it possible that a spiritual leader can justifiably undercut someone else’s reason in the service of a goal like spiritual empowerment? Again, the answer is no. It is never in anyone’s “highest good” to take away that person’s free mind, no matter what benefit is offered in return. In fact I shall be bold and say that there is no goal, no cause, and no ‘end’ which justifies the subversion of rationality as a ‘means’ to that end. Remember your Kant: your free rational mind is your most intimate and most important possession. Indeed it is not really a ‘possession’. It is who you are, it is your humanity, it is your very soul. A person whose mind is controlled by another is not empowered. Instead, he or she is effectively enslaved. And it is a slavery so subtle and so insidious that the slaves might believe themselves free.

Pagans should think carefully about the James Arthur Ray trial. For many pagan initiation ceremonies involve trust exercises, and difficult physical ordeals. But there really are limits to what an initiator can ask a postulant to do, both in terms of safety, and in terms of morality. And there really are certain lines that should not be crossed.

I’m aware that this conclusion may seem controversial. Many pagans like to believe that there is no such thing as a universal moral truth, and many recoil at the use of the word ‘should’. James Ray’s sweatlodge puts that kind of relativism to a life-and-death test.

As a final remark, my friends, may I say that you do not need to undergo a heat endurance test to the death in order to know that you are strong in spirit.

(Postscript: My books cost way less than $10,000, and reading them won’t kill you. Just saying.)