The Third Time is the Charm
8 months ago
Undermining the Patriarchy Every Chance I Get -- And I Get a Lot of Chances Please find me at my new blog: hecatedemeter.wordpress.com
I stopped being a vegetarian after that tree sit because I connected with that tree so intensely . . . it has really changed my whole reality. Now I'm thinking of beings not as conscious creatures, but as life-force. There's a really strong life-force in all of us, and in this forest in these trees. Connecting to the tree [is like just being,] it's not like you talk to the tree, because it can't hear, but there's this feeling. I don't know how to describe it, [it is], like a deep rootedness, very powerful, not superior to us, but certainly not inferior to us and more primitive or less evolved than us.
Because I just started to appreciate the incredible life-force in plants . . . and the line between animal and plants blurred. It's all just different forms of life-force.
[Larson, a] member of the Wiccan branch of paganism, . . .
Larson said the reality is that paganism has nothing to do with Satan worship and that the pagan tent is large enough to include people who do identify as witches (although not the green-faced, wart-laden stereotypes) and people like Larson, a Chicago attorney who has a doctorate in psychology and who's on the faculty of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.I'm not sure how one identifies as Wiccan but differentiates oneself from Witches (nor, as a lawyer and a Witch, how those two terms are mutually exclusive), but I'm willing to accept those notions. But I'm not willing to accept having Pagans reinforce the framing of the dominant paradigm concerning our religion.
Democrats aren't going to be losing seats in a few weeks because liberals haven't internalized being nice to the rich. They're going to be losing seats because THIS ECONOMY BLOWS and there's no real sign of it not blowing because of anything Democrats are willing to say they've done. They're going to be losing seats because there are no jobs. They're going to be losing seats because they didn't fix enough about how busted health care is. They're going to be losing seats because college still costs too much, elementary schools have holes in the roof, and the universal response to hard times in any town in this country is shutting down the library and firing the cops and the guys who fix the sewers.
They're going to be losing seats not because they didn't think or feel the right things but because they didn't DO the right things. Because everybody's tired, and everybody's scared, and everybody's tired of being scared. Tired of worrying about savings. Tired of worrying about debt. Tired of worrying about saving to pay off debt. There never seems to be enough money and every time the phone rings it's $600, and the message from Washington is some incoherent combo of "it's already okay, so your desperation is all in your head" and "don't blame me, man, I was never even HERE."
Yet pricks like Sullivan think it's about what narratives we've internalized.
The early farmers moving into Central Europe were sophisticated compared with these children of nature. The farmers wore different clothing, prayed to other idols and spoke a different language.
The farmers even protected their livestock from outside influences, determined to prevent the wild oxen known as aurochs from breeding with their Middle Eastern cows. They feared that such hybrids would only introduce a new wild element into the domesticated breeds.
Their breeding precautions were completely understandable. The revolutionary idea that man could subjugate plants and animals went hand in hand with enormous efforts, patience and ingenuity. The process took thousands of years.
. Çatalhöyük, known as "man's first metropolis," had about 5,000 inhabitants, who lived in mud huts packed tightly together. They worshipped an obese mother goddess, depicted in statues as a figure sitting on a throne decorated with the heads of carnivores.
The settlers, wielding their sickles, kept moving farther and farther north, right into the territory of backward peoples. The newcomers were industrious and used to working hard in the fields.
By comparison, the more primitive existing inhabitants of the continent wore animal hides and lived in spartan huts. They looked on in bewilderment as the newcomers deforested their hunting grounds, tilled the soil and planted seeds. This apparently upset them and motivated them to resist the intruders.