Friday Cat Blogging

Miss Thing on the prowl.

Any Economic System That Fails To Benefit The Natural Communities Upon Which It Is Based Is Unsustainable, Immoral, And Really Stupid

Carolyn Baker has an amazing article posted at The American Muslim that deals with the coming global-climate-change-induced collapse of society. Whereas James Lovelock focuses on cushioning the crash, trying to arrange conditions so as to preserve as much of civilization as possible, Baker, in what seems to me to be a much more Pagan approach (and one that somehow smacks of Ursula LeGuin) to the situation, focuses on embracing the collapse, changing in ways demanded by the situation, and transforming ourselves in order to reap good from it. What she says is so important that I hope you'll indulge me if I quote her at length.

I occasionally receive hate email but more frequently receive ones like this: “I’ve just unsubscribed to your email list. Your website is filled with negative stories and articles, and I need to keep a positive attitude and do what I can to make my world better.” . . . I think that righteous is the word I would use to describe this reader’s perspective. [T]he problem with a righteous attitude is that it often leads to detachment from reality-not unlike Barbara Bush’s comment that she doesn’t want to trouble her “beautiful mind” with statistics about troop or civilian casualties in Iraq. It’s all so American/Judeo-Christian-and, of course, Dale Carnegie: keeping a positive attitude so that we never feel badly about what’s actually happening.

. . .

The addiction to a “positive attitude” in the face of the end of the world as we have known it is beyond irrational-even beyond insane. . . . Usually, having a “positive” attitude about collapse implies wanting it not to happen, believing that it may not happen, and doing everything in one’s power to convince oneself that it won’t happen.

. . .

Derrick Jensen in Endgame, Volume I, states that “The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of any economic system.” (127) He continues:

Any economic system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and really stupid.(128)

Explaining human disconnection from the rest of earth’s inhabitants, Jensen describes the various layers of resistance among humans to their innate animal essence. One of the deeper layers is our “fear and loathing of the body”, our instinctual wildness and therefore, our vulnerability to death which causes us to distance ourselves from the reality that we indeed are animals. In fact, this is one of civilization’s fundamental tasks. Have not all modern societies disowned and genocided the indigenous? And for what purpose? Not only for the purpose of stealing their land, eradicating their culture, and eliminating so-called barriers to “progress”, but because native peoples (you know, “savages") as a result of their intimate connection with nature, are such glaring reminders of humankind’s animal-ness. They are embarrassingly “un-civilized.” Thus, modernity must “civilize” the savage in order to excise the animal, inculcating in her a human-centric world view. For more on this last topic, see Barbara Ehrenreich's Dancing in the Streets.

The consequence has been not only the incessant destruction of earth and its plethora of life forms, but the murder of the human soul itself. Benjamin Franklin said it best after returning from living with the Iroquois: “No European who has tasted Savage life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.”

Any person who wants to “maintain a positive attitude” in this culture-the culture of civilization that is killing the planet-killing people and things that we all love-that person is not only irrational and deeply afflicted with denial, but he is exactly like a member of an abusive family system in which physical and sexual assault are occurring in the home on a daily basis, but that family member insists on “thinking good thoughts” and resents anyone and everyone who says what is so about the abusive system.

So let’s admit two things: 1) Humans are fundamentally animals. Yes, we are more than animals, but civilization with its contempt for the feral has inculcated us to own the “more than” and disown everything else. 2) The culture of civilization is inherently abusive, and it is abusive precisely because it has disowned the animal within the human. Indeed animals kill other animals for survival, but they do not conquer, rape, pillage, plunder, enslave, pollute, slash, burn, and poison their habitat-unlike those “more-than-animal” beings who seem incapable of not doing all of the above. Conversely, the “more-than-human” creatures respect their surroundings because they instinctively sense that their survival depends on doing so.

. . .

[A] British study at the University of St. Andrews confirmed that elephants keep track of up to 30 absent relatives by sniffing out their scent and building up a mental map of where they are, research suggests. Herd members use their good memory and keen sense of smell to stay in touch as they travel in large groups, according to a study of wild elephants in Kenya. Dr. Richard Byrne of St Andrews noted that elephants have two advantages over humans - their excellent sense of smell and, if their popular reputation is anything to go by, a good memory.

One may argue that an elephant could [not] design a computer, but I ask: What is more consequential, the ability to design a computer or the ability to protect, sustain, and nurture the planet on which one resides? Of what value is the computer if none of us is here to use it?

Civilization, which has never ceased soiling its nest since its inception, has also never understood its proper place on the earth: that of a guest, a neighbor, a fellow-member of the community of life. As a result, everything civilization has devised and which is “unsustainable, immoral, and stupid”, as Jensen names it, is now in the process of collapsing. I ask for an honest answer here: How can anyone tell me with a straight face (or a righteous attitude) that that reality is “negative”? Would the seagull on a Southern California beach with her feet entangled and bleeding in plastic netting left behind by “more-than-animal” life forms tell me that the collapse of what created her plight is “negative”? Would thousands of dead spruce trees in Colorado ravaged by beetles as a direct result of climate change tell me that collapse is a bad idea? Would the plankton and bleached coral at the bottom of the sea which are fading and dying with breathtaking rapidity as a result of global warming, tell me to keep a positive attitude and do everything in my power to stop the collapse of civilization? I think not.

Fundamentally, what all forms of positive thinking about collapse come down to is our own fear of death. Thanks to civilization’s Judeo-Christian tradition and its other handmaiden, corporate capitalism, humans have become estranged from the reality that death is a part of life. Human hubris gone berserk as a result of a tumescent ego, uncontained by natural intimacy with the more-than-human world, believes humanity to be omnipotent and entitled to invincibility. Therefore, from the human-centric perspective “collapse should be stopped” or “maybe it won’t happen” or “somehow humans will come to their senses”. Meanwhile, the drowning polar bears inwardly wail for the death of humanity as the skeletons of formerly chlorophyll-resplendent Colorado spruce shiver and sob in the icy December wind. Our moral, spiritual, and human obligation is to flush our positive attitude down the nearest toilet and start feeling their pain! Until we do, we remain human-centric and incapable of seizing the multitudinous opportunities that collapse offers for rebirth and transformation of this planet and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.

News flash: We are all going to die! Or as Derrick Jensen writes in Endgame:

The truth is that I’m going to die someday, whether or not I stock up on pills. That’s life. And if I die in the population reduction that takes place as a corrective to our having overshot carrying capacity, well, that’s life, too. Finally, if my death comes as part of something that serves the larger community, that helps stabilize and enrich the landbase of which I’m part, so much the better. (123)

Now, I hasten to add that I am not suggesting we select our most intense emotion about collapse, move in, redecorate, and take up residence there. Feel one’s feelings? Yes, and at the same time revel in those aspects of one’s life where one feels nourished, loved, supported, comforted, and in those people and activities that give one joy and meaning.

Had civilization not spent the last five thousand years attempting to murder the indigenous self inherent in all humans, we would not have to be told, as native peoples and the more-than- human world does not, that most of the time, life on this planet is challenging, painful, scary, sad, and sometimes enraging. What our indigenous ancestors had and still have to sustain them through the dark times was ritual and community. Our work is to embrace and refine both instead of intractably clinging to a “positive attitude” in the face of out-of-control, incalculable abuse and devastation.

. . .

Th[e coming collapse] now has a life of its own and is most likely, out of our control. Attempting to abort it or blame other humans is a waste of time and energy.

The question for humans is not: What do we do about collapse? but rather, What do we do with it? It holds inestimable opportunities for rebirth and intimacy with other humans and the more-than-human world, but only if we open to it. Opening to it means opening to our own mortality, which as Derrick Jensen insists, may be part of something that serves the larger community. Perhaps one opportunity collapse is putting in our faces is that of moving beyond our human-centric perspective-our hubris and addiction to invincibility, begging us to humble ourselves and crawl behind the eyes of the more-than-humans as Joanna Macy poignantly writes:

We hear you, fellow-creatures. We know we are wrecking the world and we are afraid. What we have unleashed has such momentum now; we don’t know how to turn it around. Don’t leave us alone; we need your help. You need us too for your own survival. Are there powers there you can share with us?

Indeed there are powers they can share with us, but not until we can let go of our current definition of “positive” and, feeling their pain, finally comprehend that the collapse of civilization may be the best thing that could happen to all of us.

The Judeo-Xian repudiation of our bodies included patriarchy's hatred for women's bodies, the notion that women, feelings, bodies, earth, matter, life on Earth, reality was degraded, while men, thought, souls, heaven, spirit, life after death, and theology was elevated. It was the rejection of precisely this patriarchal dualism that led to the re-energization of modern Paganism, especially the Dianic branch of Wicca.

It is a particularly witchy question to ask, not: What do we do about collapse? but rather, What do we do with it? At the heart of all magic is the ability to ask the important question, to name the actual issue, to face and reclaim the gift that lies in the Shadow. And the question: "What do we do with collapse?" does, as Baker suggests, hold inestimable opportunities for rebirth and intimacy with other humans and the more-than-human world, but only if we open to it. But Baker is also correct that, as in all magic, Opening to it means opening to our own mortality, Magic, it's said, is the ability to change consciousness at will. Occasionally, as my dear friend R. noted this morning, the universe helpfully provides our will with a "clue-by-four."

How can you dance with the coming collapse? What gold is waiting for you and for humanity in that coming Shadow? What would you do if you knew that you were going to die and you weren't afraid of being afraid?

Generosity

Namaste and many thanks to FourLegsGood from Austin, Texas for the amazing gift of a digital camera. FourLegs is a truly amazing photographer, and I'm honored to have FourLegs' camera! I'll be playing around with it this week, trying to figure out what I'm doing. If the pictures around here improve, you'll all have FourLegs to thank!

Here Comes The Sun And I Say, "It's Alright!"

Today, for the first time, it seems that I can actually sense the extra light. Here in Washington, D.C.,the sun rose two minutes earlier today than it did on the Solstice and sets three minutes later. Five extra minutes of light may not seem like much, but it's enough to boost my mood and convince me, even more so than the arrival of all the garden porn catalogues, that Spring really is coming. Miniver Cheevy, who posts too seldom these days, posts a gorgeous tale that explains why we keep watch on the Solstice.

Not that I'm immune to the garden porn. This will be a transitional year in the garden for me. By late summer I hope to have some landscape designers looking at the yard and giving me plans for a fairly complete rehaul of my yard. So I'm reluctant to plant too much beyond some annuals; the more that I put in the ground this Spring, the more I'll have to move, or lose, once the work on the yard gets going. And some things -- the deciduous magnolia in the front yard, the rosebushes along the side of the house, probably the rosebushes in back behind the porch, likely the hedge of undeterminate species at the end of the driveway -- will likely be having their final year. I'll probably try, AGAIN, to grow violas in the woodland garden in back. I want to grow a lot of marigolds for Day of the Dead. I might be unable to resist adding a few more toad lillies and jack-in-the-pulpits. There has to be some kind of basil that would grow well in my current (not sunny enough) shade garden. And this Fall, I planted bulbs for what's supposed to be a truly black hyacinth. I can't wait to see those in the Spring.

Go Experience Some Beauty

Bah! Humbug.

An interesting discussion over at Eschaton about the absolutely hysterical "gift item" that depicts Hillary Clinton as "nutcracker" has me considering the amazing notion that any woman who aspires to a position of power must be harmful to men's genitalia. As far as I know, Hillary's never expressed any desire to "crack" any man's "nuts." It's the simple fact that she wants to lead that makes it obvious, and obviously hysterical, that she's a danger to every man's cock.

And, I wonder what the converse would be. A toy Rudy Guliani that kicks women in the crotch? A "gift item" that depicts Huckabee cutting off women's breasts? A "novelty" Romney that rips off a woman's clitoris? A McCain doll that says, "I want to control women's wombs," whenever you press the button? Where's the Obama doll that depicts him fucking white men in the ass or whipping them and calling them "Toby"? If those items are "beyond the pale," how come the Hillary nutcracker is OK? How come the humor only goes one way?

Would those xmas gifts get the same grudging chuckle as the nutcracking Hillary? If not, why not? Because from where I sit, toys showing Republican men harming women's reproductive organs are far more spot on than a toy based on the notion that Hillary Clinton wants to do damage to men's penises.

And, Just Like That, The Light Returns

It's a cold, and it's a broken Hallelujah

The Terrible Twos

I started this blog two years ago today, mostly on a lark, but also to have someplace where I could say exactly what I wanted to say. It's been great fun, so far, and I'm looking forward to the coming year, especially as the election heats up. I've been blessed with really thoughtful readers and some delightful guestbloggers. Thanks for reading, commenting, and linking.

Pardon Me, Have You Seen My Payback?

[T]wo new groups have migrated to the Democratic Party -- and provided the basis for an enduring majority coalition.

First, there are women, who used to vote disproportionately Republican. (In 1960, for instance, women backed the Republican Richard M. Nixon, with his 5 o'clock shadow, over the dashing Democrat John F. Kennedy.) But in the 1990s, troubled by the Republicans' ardor for the religious right and opposition to social spending, they began voting disproportionately Democratic -- especially single women, working women and college-educated women. In the 2000 congressional elections, single women backed Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 63 percent to 35. Even better news for Democrats: Women are more likely to vote than men.

More here.

And, yet,

In 2007, 86 women serve in the U.S. Congress. Sixteen women serve in the Senate, and 70 women serve in the House. The number of women in statewide elective executive posts is 76, while the proportion of women in state legislatures is at 23.5 percent.

Congress: women hold 86, or 16.1%, of the 535 seats in the 110th US Congress — 16, or 16.0%, of the 100 seats in the Senate and 70, or 16.1%, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. In addition, three women serve as Delegates to the House from Guam, the Virgin Islands and Washington, DC.

Statewide Elective Executive: In 2007, 76 women hold statewide elective executive offices across the country; women hold 24.1% of the 315 available positions. Among these women, 45 are Democrats, 28 are Republicans, and 3 were elected in nonpartisan races.

State Legislature: In 2007, 1,735, or 23.5%, of the 7,382 state legislators in the United States are women. Women hold 425, or 21.6%, of the 1,971 state senate seats and 1,310, or 24.2%, of the 5,411 state house seats. More at the Center for American Women and Politics site. And, of course, there has never been a woman president or vice president.

What's wrong with this picture?

Witches

When An Old Northern Shaman Brings You A Message, You Should Read It

/Hat tip to Thinly Veiled

Alice Blue, Maybe; Nah, TR Was A Republican. Iris Blue Will Do.

Oh, I agree completely. 2008's gonna be a blue, blue, blue, blue year.

Take Off Your Gloves And Touch The Ice

I've posted this poem before, but I love it so much, and it's been on my mind today. So here it is again:

The Bear's Daughter
by Theodora Goss

She dreams of the south. Wandering through the silent castle,
Where snow has covered the parapets, and the windows
Are covered with frost, like panes of isinglass,
She dreams of pomegranates and olive trees.

But to be the bear's daughter is to be a daughter, as well,
Of the north. To have forgotten a time before
The tips of her fingers were blue, before her veins
Were blue like rivers flowing through fields of ice.

To have forgotten a time before her boots
Were elk-leather lined with ermine.

Somewhere in the silent castle, her mother is sleeping
In the bear's embrace, and breathing pomegranates
Into his fur. She is a daughter of the south,
With hair like honey and skin like orange-flowers.

She is a nightingale's song in the olive groves.

And her daughter, wandering through the empty garden,
Where the branches of yew trees rubbing against each other
Sound like broken violins,

Dreams of the south while a cold wind sways the privet,
Takes off her gloves, which are lined with ermine, and places
Her hands on the rim of the fountain, in which the sun
Has scattered its colors, like roses trapped in ice.

Blessed Yule

Light posting for the next couple of days, as I prepare for and celebrate the Winter Solstice with my wonderful circle of completely kick-ass witches and then gather with Son, DiL, G/Son, and a slew of others to eat, drink, open presents, lounge.

This time of year was once quite rough for me. Child of a dysfunctional family, I was often stung most bitterly at this season by the difference between the Happy Families (all the same, as Tolstoy famously noted) and my family, torn, in its own individual way, by pain and strife. No matter how I tried, even out on my own, a young wife and mother, I was never able to quite achieve that Martha-Stewart-Wonderland that America convinced me it was my job to achieve. And, I lost a sister on December 28 one year and a brother on December 24 some years later. It wasn't until I finally began to realize that this time of year is about the Dark, about going into the cold cave without enough food, about surviving -- by hook or crook or sheer, cussed refusal to die -- long enough for the sun to begin to linger longer in the Spring, that I became a fan of the last weeks of December. And, as Sia so beautifully puts it, I've also worked to take back this holiday, back from the xians who want so terribly to completely OWN this time of year and back from the corporatists who want so terribly to make me need to BUY THINGS in the vain hope that they will fill the dark hole of Winter.

Sia: I began to take back the things of the past many seasons ago. That tree for one thing, that World Tree, that's mine. And those bright, hopeful candles are mine again, as well. This is a festival of light, after all. That circle called a wreath is mine, so too, the holly bush. Before I became Pagan, I was always drawn to pictures of a stag standing alone in snow. I'd see this design in different forms over the years and it always spoke to me. Now I know why. And look at that old Shaman dressed in furs. He's mine now, too. He was lost for a time, selling sodas if you can believe it, but he's back again where he belongs. He still brings gifts, but the gifts he offers are very different than the ones I'd known before.

One of the things that age has taught me is: things change. The Wheel of the Year turns. What seems terrible beyond belief and insurmountable now will seem ok and manageable later. The frozen lake will thaw. The leafless forsythia bush will bud. The evil ruler will die and the good leader will emerge. A clueless people will wake up and live up to their potential. Peace will break out and nameless forces for the good will appear at the needed moment. Women will be happy and busy and children and gardens will flourish.

Whatever this time of year is like for you, right now, I wish for you: time for reflection, a willingness to dance in the dark and drink from glasses chipped from ice, a face-to-face sudden encounter with your Fear, time to hibernate, dream, and plan, and great, bracing draughts of crystal cold fresh air to breathe. And I hope that you can see the Sun rise on Sunday morning. I'll be out in the freezing cold with the witches, beating on pots and pans, blowing whistles, yelling, whooping, and shaking tambourines to wake her up from her sleep, to make sure that, one more time, as she has for all of my great, great, many-times-great grandmothers, she decides to linger longer and turn the Winter into Spring. A witch's job, after all, is to turn the Wheel, and round and round the Wheel does turn. If you yell loud enough, I just might hear you. If you listen carefully, you just may hear me beating on my soup pot with my wooden spoon.

Photo found here.

Flights of Fancy

Fifty years ago, I was two years old. The Soviet Union launched the "Space Age" by launching Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite. A month later Sputnik II carried a dog into orbit, making that dog the first living being to enter space. President Eisenhower announced the "Eisenhower Doctrine," pledging defense of Middle Eastern nations against communism. Federal troops were ordered to enforce integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Despite a record-setting filibuster by Sen. Strom Thurmond, Congress approved the first significant civil rights legislation since the Civil War. Nice Grand Marnier was bottled specifically with me and NTodd in mind.

A hundred years ago, Maria Montessori opened her first school in Rome. Finland, on my birthday, became the first European country to give women the right to vote. Hundreds were killed in mine explosions. Lots of lovely bungalows were built and filled with Stickley furniture. Nice Grand Marnier was bottled specifically with me and NTodd in mind.

A hundred and fifty years ago, in the Dred Scott Decision, the Supreme Court ruled that slaves cannot be citizens. (Better if they had ruled that citizens cannot be slaves.) Madame Bovary was published. Nice Grand Marnier was bottled specifically with me and NTodd in mind.

We drank to American Democracy. May we have it, one day.

Dinner With NTodd

Sounds Good To Me

Onward Xian Soldiers, Marching As To War

After a while, you run out of adjectives to use and new things to say about this sort of illegal, wrong, and immoral behavior.

A foundation that has sued the military alleging widespread violations of religious freedom said Tuesday that it has evidence showing that soldiers are pressured to adopt fundamentalist Christian beliefs.

. . .

The material was gathered from Fort Riley in Kansas, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Fort Jackson, S.C.

Examples at Fort Riley, where Hall is stationed, included a display outside his military police battalion's office with a quote from conservative writer Ann Coulter saying, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Another photo from Fort Riley shows the book "A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam" for sale at the post exchange.

. . .

Weinstein said materials for a Bible studies course from Military Ministry, part of Campus Crusade for Christ International, teach soldiers that the U.S. military and government are instruments to spread the word of God. The material was found at Fort Jackson, S.C., he said.

. . .

The lawsuit also alleges that Gates permits a military culture in which officers are encouraged to pressure soldiers to adopt and espouse fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and allows a culture that sanctions activities by Christian organizations.

It also says the military permits proselytizing by soldiers, tolerates anti-Semitism and the placing of religious symbols on military equipment, and allows the use of military e-mail accounts to send religious rhetoric.

It's not surprising; xianity has almost always associated itself with armies of the patriarchy and the list of wars fought "in Jesus' name" is a long one. The xian church and the armed forces are simply two branches of the patriarchy and it's not surprising to see them working together.

But it is illegal. It violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. It is wrong. It's wrong to use the government and the coercive power of the military to privilege one religious group over all others. It is immoral. It's immoral to force people to abandon their religious beliefs in order to serve their country in the military. And, you know, it just stinks to high heaven. Is this really the face that xians want to show to the world?

I know.

NTodd Talk. You Listen

Tell me what a patriot looks like. This is what a patriot looks like.

For Ryni

Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith by Mary Oliver

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear

anything, I can't see anything --
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker --
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing --
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet --
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.

From West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems, by Mary Oliver. Published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. Copyright 1997 by Mary Oliver.