It has been a long time since I have come to put word to keyboard here, due to a busy fall semester and sheer exhaustion from trying to keep up with the endless barrage of dishonest statements, disheartening actions, and destructive policies coming out of the Trump White House. The new "tax reform" bill that will greatly enrich the already greatly rich and over time, bankrupt the government in order to destroy social programs that help the non-rich and the non-white is only the last in a long list of insults and atrocities. I am losing hope that much can be done anytime soon to block the triumphal march of idiocy and hatefulness that Trump is leading, with the docile support of a supine Republican majority, many of whose members may also revile The Donald but are willing to go along with him for the sake of right-wing treats like tax cuts and the weakening of regulations on banks, telecom companies and other powerful corporate interests. I take heart that opposition is rising, and that the election of the Democrat Doug Jones over the disgusting Bible-thumper, child humper Roy Moore in Alabama, coming after the trouncing of pro-Trump candidates.
The defeat of the Roy Moore candidacy had much to do with a highly energized African-American electorate in Alabama, with black women turning out in astounding numbers bespeaking iron determination. There was a definite Civil Rights angle to this situation. Roy Moore had made a shocking statement during the campaign suggesting that he saw the slavery period as one that was better for American families than the current day. Doug Jones, in contrast, had, as U.S Attorney for the northern district of Alabama in the late 1990s, successfully prosecuted two KKK members who had been involved in the racially-motivated terrorist bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist church in Birmingham on September, 15, 1963 that caused the deaths of four young African-American girls. This was remembered and was one of the reasons Jones got such strong African-American support. It is heartening that Jones had the courage to carry out these prosecutions, which resulted in the conviction of Thomas Edwin Blanton in 2001 and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002 http://www.history.com/news/how-doug-jones-brought-kkk-church-bombers-to-justice. It is equally impressive and inspiring that African-Americans, especially black women, had not forgotten this important history and were eager to elevate a Civil Rights champion over a Civil War apologist in the election.
Of course, another major factor in Moore's defeat were the revelations of his past pursuit of teenaged girls when he was a district attorney in his thirties, in the early 1980s. The women who came forward to speak of their painful experiences being pressured by Moore to go on dates with them and to then, in some cases, endure various degrees of molestation, were denounced by Moore and his most prominent supporter, President Trump, but a large enough segment of the Alabama electorate believed the women's stories, and this lessened white support for Moore, particularly among white women, enough so that the combination of lukewarm white support for Moore and red-hot black opposition made the difference. This came in the context of the flood of revelations of male sexual abuse of women in Hollywood, politics, and elsewhere that has ended the careers of powerful men from Bill O'Reilly to Harvey Weinstein to Matt Lauer to Al Franken. Social media played an important role, with many women using Twitter and the #MeToo hashtag to publicize their personal stories of abuse and pain.
Here, I want to suggest,from a more specifically Pagan angle, that the hashtag of #MeToo could be given an environmental equivalent, an #EarthToo campaign, that could be used to "out" egregious polluters and destroyers of the environment, past and present and to mobilize public sentiment against the devastation and desecration of our natural environment. When we think about the violation of women by men, we who are Pagans might take this a step further to confront the ugly practice of multinational corporations raping the earth for reasons of greed and lust for profit. I recall reading that in Lithuanian folklore, there was once a tradition of farmers asking the earth for forgiveness for causing it pain prior to forcibly opening the soil for tilling and sowing.
May this become a battle cry heard far and wide , so that corporate predators of Mother Earth will be treated to scorn and shame in 2018 as were sexual predators in 2017...#Earth Too! Stop Raping the Earth!
Showing posts with label sacred. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sacred. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Solstice Meditations on the Fragility of Nature
Today, the day of the summer solstice, is a time to celebrate the beauty and vitality of nature, to bask in the rays of light and warmth reaching out to us all around the earth. In the Lithuanian Pagan solstice observance known as Rasos or Jonines, paralleled in the Latvian holiday of Ligo, and other similar festivities across Eastern Europe, Russia and Scandinavia, the peak of the nightlong celebration is the setting on fire of wagon wheels coated in pitch, which are rolled down hills to mimic the rolling or turning of the sun across the seasons. As there is only a brief time of darkness on the night of the summer solstice, owing to the phenomenon of the White Nights in the Northern European summer, the lighting of the wheel is meant to re-awaken the sun when it seems to have disappeared, however briefly, threatening darkness, chaos and death. Happily, the sun is soon again shining, and the cycle is complete.
The lighting of the wheel is a reminder that the ancients understood nature to be not only sacred and vital, but also fragile, in perpetual risk of destruction or disappearance. Whether you go out today or tonight to celebrate the solstice, or stay home due to the endless round of task and obligations that consume our lives like the darkness that swallows the sun each night, say a prayer or take a moment to contemplate how our modern way of life has threatened the continued vitality of nature like never before in human history. Let's take a note from the wisdom of the ancients, and remember that life is not just a quest for material consumption and social status. Life is also to be lived in, and with, nature, and that imposes a sacred obligation on us to not allow nature to be destroyed. Not by choking our air with automobile exhaust, not by blowing up mountains to burn more coal, not by ripping open the depths of the earth and ruining the water supply to scrape out more oil and gas, not by mining uranium to fuel unsafe nuclear power plants, not by islands of plastic garbage stifling the sea, and not by mountains of discarded electronics that poor children in Africa and elsewhere burn to separate the valuable bits to make more electronics to be discarded next year.
There are so many problems to be addressed in our unhealthy use of nature's resources, but the sun, who we Pagans salute on the solstice, contains one key to our planet's survival. The sun offers boundless energy that we can tap without destroying or desecrating our environment. Solar power is not a panacea to all that ails the earth and our relationship to it, but it is at least a partial solution to one piece of our environmental dilemma. Let's embrace that full-force and encourage our politicians to do the same!
May all hail the beauty, warmth and power of the sun.....!
May all remember our dependence on, and the fragility, of nature.....!
May all find the wisdom in their hearts to respect true and enduring values....!
Peace and plenty to you and yours on the solstice!
The lighting of the wheel is a reminder that the ancients understood nature to be not only sacred and vital, but also fragile, in perpetual risk of destruction or disappearance. Whether you go out today or tonight to celebrate the solstice, or stay home due to the endless round of task and obligations that consume our lives like the darkness that swallows the sun each night, say a prayer or take a moment to contemplate how our modern way of life has threatened the continued vitality of nature like never before in human history. Let's take a note from the wisdom of the ancients, and remember that life is not just a quest for material consumption and social status. Life is also to be lived in, and with, nature, and that imposes a sacred obligation on us to not allow nature to be destroyed. Not by choking our air with automobile exhaust, not by blowing up mountains to burn more coal, not by ripping open the depths of the earth and ruining the water supply to scrape out more oil and gas, not by mining uranium to fuel unsafe nuclear power plants, not by islands of plastic garbage stifling the sea, and not by mountains of discarded electronics that poor children in Africa and elsewhere burn to separate the valuable bits to make more electronics to be discarded next year.
There are so many problems to be addressed in our unhealthy use of nature's resources, but the sun, who we Pagans salute on the solstice, contains one key to our planet's survival. The sun offers boundless energy that we can tap without destroying or desecrating our environment. Solar power is not a panacea to all that ails the earth and our relationship to it, but it is at least a partial solution to one piece of our environmental dilemma. Let's embrace that full-force and encourage our politicians to do the same!
May all hail the beauty, warmth and power of the sun.....!
May all remember our dependence on, and the fragility, of nature.....!
May all find the wisdom in their hearts to respect true and enduring values....!
Peace and plenty to you and yours on the solstice!
Saturday, January 19, 2013
The Gun Religion in America
The recent debate in America about possible new restrictions and regulations on gun use and ownership has demonstrated that there is a great deal of emotion and personal identity invested in guns in this country. It is indeed very difficult to have any kind of rational discussion on the gun topic because some of the people who are deeply involved in gun use react so extremely strongly whenever there is ANY discussion of putting ANY kind of restriction on gun access, ownership and use. They really, really, really feel an intense emotional bond with their firearms, and get really, really, really scared and angry, very very very fast, if ANYONE dares suggest possible limitations or restrictions on their ability to posses and make use of their guns. Many ask why such people have so much passion and intensity wrapped up in gunpowder and bullets.
As a religious studies scholar, it seems clear to me that what we are dealing with here is something more than a simple desire to enjoy the use of guns for target practice or hunting, or a wish to possess guns for self-defense in the case of a home invasion or some other encounter with a dangerous person. What we are dealing with is a valuing of guns to the point of conferring absolute sacredness upon them, that is to say, A GUN RELIGION. For those who follow this faith, a gun is not a simple weapon or mechanical device. A gun is SACRED. For those baptized in gunpowder (blessed be its name), any attempt by anyone to interfere with access to their holy of holies is a most horrible profanity and an unacceptable violation of their freedom of religion. Only by realizing that guns are sacred to gun-worshippers in the same way that a Torah is holy to Jews or a Qur'an to Muslims or the Virgin Mary to a Catholic can we begin to understand why guns are such an extremely emotional and, pardon the unintentional pun, explosive issue in American politics and in the American psyche.
We can even see something of a creation myth manifesting itself in the discourse of gun zealots in America. For the gun believer, the central moment in world history, a time of unparalleled sacredness, is the addition to the American Constitution of the Second Amendment, which speaks of the "right to bear arms and maintain a well-regulated militia." This is the moment when God revealed the key to salvation and the most important duty of any American citizen, which is to bear arms and love and honor guns above all else in existence, more than life, more than the government, more than patriotism. The Second Amendment itself, typically the only part of the U.S. Constitution or political tradition that gun advocates seem to find worthy of attention, could be seen as a kind of sacred scripture, to be enshrined in every heart and every home.
How and why the gun attained this sacred status is something I will leave aside at this time. All I know is that it certainly seems to be sacred to a substantial class of Americans, and approaching the controversy this way helps us to realize that this is an issue that must be dealt with with the greatest sensitivity, as what we are talking about here is not merely a lifestyle or hobby, but something deadly serious for those whose hearts have been touched and whose understanding of life has been formed or transformed by contact with this Sacred. This is why we find some individuals expressing their willingness, even eagerness, to die in defense of their most sacred of sacreds, most holy of holies. They see the gun as so existentially central and significant that they are ready to offer themselves up for martyrdom and to die holding onto --and firing-- their sacred objects.
How then can American society approach the issue of guns, how to balance the rights of gun-worshippers to have ritual contact with their sacred objects against the rights of non-gun-believers to be protected against the proliferation of something that they see as a menace to public well-being? I am not sure, but I would speculate that part of the solution might be for both sides to make more effort to acknowledge the other's perspective and values. Gun-believers need to realize that non-believers do not share their sense of the sacredness of guns, and have other concerns. Non-gun-believers need to understand that for the gun-faithful, the gun is much more than a mere weapon; it is absolutely central to the gun-believer's world-view and sense of self. I do believe that we need more restrictions and regulations on gun use and gun ownership in America, but to do this, the various congregations of gun-believers need to be reassured that they will retain their right to practice their religion and worship what is sacred to them. Since American society does function more or less successfully with a sense of respecting religious rights while also restricting the time and place of religious activity, I am hopeful that we will eventually be able to work this out.
Applying this line of thinking to Paganism, I see that I may have been unfair in my past judgments and criticisms of Asatru members and other Pagans who seemed to me overly involved with their swords, axes,guns and other weapons. Such things are not sacred to me, as my main association with such objects is violence, carnage and suffering, but I realize that to be fair, there is a need to understand that for some, these are truly holy things. For myself, I still wish to find fellowship with people who do not feel the need to bring weapons into sacred space and activities. I also still tend to think that the historical reasons for guns and other weapons coming to possess sacredness in America are not that pleasant to contemplate, but I will hold off from elaborating on that point today. The main thing is, weapons really are sacred to some people, and this does not mean that those people are deranged or malicious, only that this is the style of sacredness that they have arrived at, for whatever reasons. Provided that their worship of weapons causes no harm, I respect their right to practice such worship, though for myself, I take solace in the immortal words of Herman Melville's short story about Bartleby the Scrivener: "I would prefer not to."
As a religious studies scholar, it seems clear to me that what we are dealing with here is something more than a simple desire to enjoy the use of guns for target practice or hunting, or a wish to possess guns for self-defense in the case of a home invasion or some other encounter with a dangerous person. What we are dealing with is a valuing of guns to the point of conferring absolute sacredness upon them, that is to say, A GUN RELIGION. For those who follow this faith, a gun is not a simple weapon or mechanical device. A gun is SACRED. For those baptized in gunpowder (blessed be its name), any attempt by anyone to interfere with access to their holy of holies is a most horrible profanity and an unacceptable violation of their freedom of religion. Only by realizing that guns are sacred to gun-worshippers in the same way that a Torah is holy to Jews or a Qur'an to Muslims or the Virgin Mary to a Catholic can we begin to understand why guns are such an extremely emotional and, pardon the unintentional pun, explosive issue in American politics and in the American psyche.
We can even see something of a creation myth manifesting itself in the discourse of gun zealots in America. For the gun believer, the central moment in world history, a time of unparalleled sacredness, is the addition to the American Constitution of the Second Amendment, which speaks of the "right to bear arms and maintain a well-regulated militia." This is the moment when God revealed the key to salvation and the most important duty of any American citizen, which is to bear arms and love and honor guns above all else in existence, more than life, more than the government, more than patriotism. The Second Amendment itself, typically the only part of the U.S. Constitution or political tradition that gun advocates seem to find worthy of attention, could be seen as a kind of sacred scripture, to be enshrined in every heart and every home.
How and why the gun attained this sacred status is something I will leave aside at this time. All I know is that it certainly seems to be sacred to a substantial class of Americans, and approaching the controversy this way helps us to realize that this is an issue that must be dealt with with the greatest sensitivity, as what we are talking about here is not merely a lifestyle or hobby, but something deadly serious for those whose hearts have been touched and whose understanding of life has been formed or transformed by contact with this Sacred. This is why we find some individuals expressing their willingness, even eagerness, to die in defense of their most sacred of sacreds, most holy of holies. They see the gun as so existentially central and significant that they are ready to offer themselves up for martyrdom and to die holding onto --and firing-- their sacred objects.
How then can American society approach the issue of guns, how to balance the rights of gun-worshippers to have ritual contact with their sacred objects against the rights of non-gun-believers to be protected against the proliferation of something that they see as a menace to public well-being? I am not sure, but I would speculate that part of the solution might be for both sides to make more effort to acknowledge the other's perspective and values. Gun-believers need to realize that non-believers do not share their sense of the sacredness of guns, and have other concerns. Non-gun-believers need to understand that for the gun-faithful, the gun is much more than a mere weapon; it is absolutely central to the gun-believer's world-view and sense of self. I do believe that we need more restrictions and regulations on gun use and gun ownership in America, but to do this, the various congregations of gun-believers need to be reassured that they will retain their right to practice their religion and worship what is sacred to them. Since American society does function more or less successfully with a sense of respecting religious rights while also restricting the time and place of religious activity, I am hopeful that we will eventually be able to work this out.
Applying this line of thinking to Paganism, I see that I may have been unfair in my past judgments and criticisms of Asatru members and other Pagans who seemed to me overly involved with their swords, axes,guns and other weapons. Such things are not sacred to me, as my main association with such objects is violence, carnage and suffering, but I realize that to be fair, there is a need to understand that for some, these are truly holy things. For myself, I still wish to find fellowship with people who do not feel the need to bring weapons into sacred space and activities. I also still tend to think that the historical reasons for guns and other weapons coming to possess sacredness in America are not that pleasant to contemplate, but I will hold off from elaborating on that point today. The main thing is, weapons really are sacred to some people, and this does not mean that those people are deranged or malicious, only that this is the style of sacredness that they have arrived at, for whatever reasons. Provided that their worship of weapons causes no harm, I respect their right to practice such worship, though for myself, I take solace in the immortal words of Herman Melville's short story about Bartleby the Scrivener: "I would prefer not to."
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Pro Publica
There is a common attitude in America, with many echoes elsewhere, to be sure, that I find extremely worrisome and unfortunate. This is an outlook on the world that emphasizes individual rights and interests over all else, and sees any limitation of individual rights for the sake of shared common, public interests as absolutely unacceptable. Those who endorse this point of view may agree with the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who famously declared, "There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals." This line of thinking is reflected in the modern-day priorities of libertarians and the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, which strongly oppose most government spending on social programs that serve common human needs, like unemployment compensation funds to help the jobless and food stamps (SNAP) to feed the poor. In the most extreme right-wing thinking in the USA, talking of "common human needs" is in itself questionable, for "common" is all too reminiscent of "communism." What makes America great, in this view, is individual effort, not common structures or supports. This perspective is also bound up in the ferocious right-wing opposition to ANY kind of tax increase on wealthier Americans and/or powerful business corporations, which would be the most obvious ways to raise revenue to pay down the national debt and government operating deficit, as well as to provide for additional spending in needed areas like environmental protection and infrastructure repair. Since the individual is much more important than the government or the society, with the corporation often accorded the same respect as an individual person, a view endorsed by the current, conservative-leaning Supreme Court in the USA, taxes on individuals, whether persons or corporations, are seen as infringements on individual rights. By this understanding, individuals and corporations that amass large amounts of lucre should be allowed to keep it all for themselves, with any diminution of their treasure for public purposes viewed as misguided and even immoral infringements on the all-important shibboleth of individual rights.
I would argue that this way of thinking is wrong on multiple levels, from the political to the social to the natural to the spiritual, and actively harming the world that we live in. Let me start by repeating and enlarging upon that last phrase, "the world we live in." We live TOGETHER in a COMMON world. Without that world, and without our togetherness, our commonality, we cannot exist. We do not each possess our own private individual world that we can enjoy without any need for or interaction with others and their separate worlds. It is true that there has been a trend in the last 20-30 years for people with higher incomes to live in so-called "gated communities," which attempt to wall off the privileged few from the threat of the less wealthy and privileged, but their little neighborhood fortresses can provide little protection against more than burglars and door-to-door salesmen. We breathe COMMON air. We drink COMMON water, for even if you buy bottled water, that water ultimately comes from a common source, and were that source to be totally drowned in hazardous chemicals or nuclear waste, all the bottling companies in the world won't be of much use. We drive on COMMON streets and highways. We use COMMON electricity and railroads. We go to COMMON hospitals for care. We rely on COMMON courts and law and police. We speak a COMMON language or languages. We experience COMMON weather; good luck if you think you can purchase private protection to insulate you against raging blizzards, hurricanes, floods or tornadoes. We work in a COMMON economy, with massive disruptions in employment or lending rates or stock value affecting us all, whether directly or indirectly. We are all vulnerable little boats on a great common sea.
Most of the services we need to maintain all these common resources in good working order, from breathable air to drinkable water to drivable streets, to adequate emergency and health care services, to reliable banking and finance systems, depend on the government which depends in turn on taxation. All of these elements are linked together in a chain of absolute interdependence. The willingness of some current-day conservative and libertarian Americans, as well as their fellow travelers in other lands, to break this chain out of an anti-tax, anti-government fixation, supported by a misguided equation that less government equals more "freedom" and "liberty," is not merely regrettable, but actually reprehensible and even, in my opinion, criminal. Drastic cutting of governments budgets, the kind of "austerity" that is wrongly believed to cure societies of oversized governments and budgets and has been brutally imposed at horrendous human cost in European countries like Greece, Spain and Latvia, does not increase "freedom" or "liberty," unless you value the "freedom" to be unemployed, to starve, to lose your home, to have community services like streets, highways, bridges, water treatment plants and sewers fall to ruin, and the "liberty" to commit suicide or emigrate to another country that has hopefully not yet been exposed to the disease of austerity, which is what many Greeks, Spaniards and Latvians have been doing in recent years.
In America, the 30-year, post-Reagan political trend of not wanting to raise taxes for public services, out of a basic, widespread and in my view sadly misguided rejection of the usefulness of government, has resulted in a terrible crisis at the level of basic infrastructure. Highways, bridges, sewers, railroads, water delivery and many other systems, many of which were first established 50-100 years ago, are in terrible repair. A national engineering association gave America a D+ grade for the state of its infrastructure in 2009. Supposedly, nothing can be done about this because, again, supposedly, "There isn't any money." This despite America having the largest amount of accumulated wealth in the world. The top two percent have seen colossal growth in their income in the last several decades, and major corporations like the oil and gas companies, many of which pay very low or zero taxes due to loopholes in the tax system, have also seen booming profits. Believe me, there IS money, plenty of money. It is just not available for public use, being hoarded by the media-dominating dragons of private and corporate greed.
The basic problem is that there is insufficient determination by our political leaders to DEMAND that the wealthy and the corporations pay their fair share to maintain the systems that we all, even they, depend on. Most politicians are dependent on support from the super-wealthy and the massive corporations and are thus unwilling to ask the really tough questions about private greed versus public need. The right-wing opposition, often funded by the same super-wealthy persons and business interests that strongly supported the finance industry multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, have been able to block any attempt, such as President Obama's very reasonable proposal to create an infrastructure bank to provide funding for infrastructure maintenance and repair. (The Obama administration only got health care reform offering coverage to the tens of millions of previously uninsured in the USA approved by the Congress by creating a new system that guarantees massive profits for health insurance companies, which does not bode well for controlling or reducing health care costs, unfortunately. A fully public plan like single-payer Medicare would have allowed more hope for reducing costs, because we would have cut out the greedy corporate health insurance middleman.)
I believe that if there were more regard and more support for the COMMON good and the PUBLIC sphere, we would all be better off--even the super-wealthy and the ultra-libertarians. I am pretty sure they need clean air, water, and drivable roads too, and unless they really want internet companies like Google and Microsoft to take over public education and turn it into an internet commodity like Facebook,they and we are going to need public schools in the future, including decent buildings for our students and decent wages and benefits for our teachers. The public good, common welfare and government have been devalued and underrated for too long. Whatever abuses and mistakes government may commit, and there are many, it is still the only vehicle we have to ensure good basic services to support the interconnected world that we all live in.
I regret that a fair number of American Pagans seem to have drunk the anti-government, pro-individual rights, libertarian Kool-Aid. I think they are in unacknowledged contradiction of a basic Pagan value: love of and respect for nature. Unbridled private and corporate greed poses a huge threat to our natural environment. A strong government that protects natural resources is the best hope for saving our planet from corporate rape and ravage and massive pollution. I dare say the government fulfills a sacred duty when it protects our rivers, streams, mountains, forests and oceans. In that regard, the government should be seen as sacred by Pagans.
That may seem extreme or insane, to some, but consider this. In any Pagan mythology, there are gods that protect nature and the earth. Thor, for instance, is the protector of the earth, as the son of the earth, in Norse mythology. Well, who plays the part of Thor in protecting the earth in our modern world? Government more than anyone or anything else. I am proud to support various environmental organizations and do my little bit by recycling and driving a low-mileage car to reduce my share of pollution, but any really substantial progress will depend on government regulation of pollution and promotion of less polluting, more renewable and sustainable technologies.
So, to my fellow Pagans, I say, raise a glass to the government! And do not grumble when you pay your taxes. We need government. As little stewards of the earth, we can each play a part, but only a small part. We need government to be the big steward, the bureaucratic Thor, if you like. However, government does not always play this part as it should, so I urge you to occasionally contact your government officials to demand protection of our sacred earth. I believe this is part of our sacred duty as Pagans who embrace the sacredness of the earth and all its splendors.
This can also be noted in Paganism.
I would argue that this way of thinking is wrong on multiple levels, from the political to the social to the natural to the spiritual, and actively harming the world that we live in. Let me start by repeating and enlarging upon that last phrase, "the world we live in." We live TOGETHER in a COMMON world. Without that world, and without our togetherness, our commonality, we cannot exist. We do not each possess our own private individual world that we can enjoy without any need for or interaction with others and their separate worlds. It is true that there has been a trend in the last 20-30 years for people with higher incomes to live in so-called "gated communities," which attempt to wall off the privileged few from the threat of the less wealthy and privileged, but their little neighborhood fortresses can provide little protection against more than burglars and door-to-door salesmen. We breathe COMMON air. We drink COMMON water, for even if you buy bottled water, that water ultimately comes from a common source, and were that source to be totally drowned in hazardous chemicals or nuclear waste, all the bottling companies in the world won't be of much use. We drive on COMMON streets and highways. We use COMMON electricity and railroads. We go to COMMON hospitals for care. We rely on COMMON courts and law and police. We speak a COMMON language or languages. We experience COMMON weather; good luck if you think you can purchase private protection to insulate you against raging blizzards, hurricanes, floods or tornadoes. We work in a COMMON economy, with massive disruptions in employment or lending rates or stock value affecting us all, whether directly or indirectly. We are all vulnerable little boats on a great common sea.
Most of the services we need to maintain all these common resources in good working order, from breathable air to drinkable water to drivable streets, to adequate emergency and health care services, to reliable banking and finance systems, depend on the government which depends in turn on taxation. All of these elements are linked together in a chain of absolute interdependence. The willingness of some current-day conservative and libertarian Americans, as well as their fellow travelers in other lands, to break this chain out of an anti-tax, anti-government fixation, supported by a misguided equation that less government equals more "freedom" and "liberty," is not merely regrettable, but actually reprehensible and even, in my opinion, criminal. Drastic cutting of governments budgets, the kind of "austerity" that is wrongly believed to cure societies of oversized governments and budgets and has been brutally imposed at horrendous human cost in European countries like Greece, Spain and Latvia, does not increase "freedom" or "liberty," unless you value the "freedom" to be unemployed, to starve, to lose your home, to have community services like streets, highways, bridges, water treatment plants and sewers fall to ruin, and the "liberty" to commit suicide or emigrate to another country that has hopefully not yet been exposed to the disease of austerity, which is what many Greeks, Spaniards and Latvians have been doing in recent years.
In America, the 30-year, post-Reagan political trend of not wanting to raise taxes for public services, out of a basic, widespread and in my view sadly misguided rejection of the usefulness of government, has resulted in a terrible crisis at the level of basic infrastructure. Highways, bridges, sewers, railroads, water delivery and many other systems, many of which were first established 50-100 years ago, are in terrible repair. A national engineering association gave America a D+ grade for the state of its infrastructure in 2009. Supposedly, nothing can be done about this because, again, supposedly, "There isn't any money." This despite America having the largest amount of accumulated wealth in the world. The top two percent have seen colossal growth in their income in the last several decades, and major corporations like the oil and gas companies, many of which pay very low or zero taxes due to loopholes in the tax system, have also seen booming profits. Believe me, there IS money, plenty of money. It is just not available for public use, being hoarded by the media-dominating dragons of private and corporate greed.
The basic problem is that there is insufficient determination by our political leaders to DEMAND that the wealthy and the corporations pay their fair share to maintain the systems that we all, even they, depend on. Most politicians are dependent on support from the super-wealthy and the massive corporations and are thus unwilling to ask the really tough questions about private greed versus public need. The right-wing opposition, often funded by the same super-wealthy persons and business interests that strongly supported the finance industry multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, have been able to block any attempt, such as President Obama's very reasonable proposal to create an infrastructure bank to provide funding for infrastructure maintenance and repair. (The Obama administration only got health care reform offering coverage to the tens of millions of previously uninsured in the USA approved by the Congress by creating a new system that guarantees massive profits for health insurance companies, which does not bode well for controlling or reducing health care costs, unfortunately. A fully public plan like single-payer Medicare would have allowed more hope for reducing costs, because we would have cut out the greedy corporate health insurance middleman.)
I believe that if there were more regard and more support for the COMMON good and the PUBLIC sphere, we would all be better off--even the super-wealthy and the ultra-libertarians. I am pretty sure they need clean air, water, and drivable roads too, and unless they really want internet companies like Google and Microsoft to take over public education and turn it into an internet commodity like Facebook,they and we are going to need public schools in the future, including decent buildings for our students and decent wages and benefits for our teachers. The public good, common welfare and government have been devalued and underrated for too long. Whatever abuses and mistakes government may commit, and there are many, it is still the only vehicle we have to ensure good basic services to support the interconnected world that we all live in.
I regret that a fair number of American Pagans seem to have drunk the anti-government, pro-individual rights, libertarian Kool-Aid. I think they are in unacknowledged contradiction of a basic Pagan value: love of and respect for nature. Unbridled private and corporate greed poses a huge threat to our natural environment. A strong government that protects natural resources is the best hope for saving our planet from corporate rape and ravage and massive pollution. I dare say the government fulfills a sacred duty when it protects our rivers, streams, mountains, forests and oceans. In that regard, the government should be seen as sacred by Pagans.
That may seem extreme or insane, to some, but consider this. In any Pagan mythology, there are gods that protect nature and the earth. Thor, for instance, is the protector of the earth, as the son of the earth, in Norse mythology. Well, who plays the part of Thor in protecting the earth in our modern world? Government more than anyone or anything else. I am proud to support various environmental organizations and do my little bit by recycling and driving a low-mileage car to reduce my share of pollution, but any really substantial progress will depend on government regulation of pollution and promotion of less polluting, more renewable and sustainable technologies.
So, to my fellow Pagans, I say, raise a glass to the government! And do not grumble when you pay your taxes. We need government. As little stewards of the earth, we can each play a part, but only a small part. We need government to be the big steward, the bureaucratic Thor, if you like. However, government does not always play this part as it should, so I urge you to occasionally contact your government officials to demand protection of our sacred earth. I believe this is part of our sacred duty as Pagans who embrace the sacredness of the earth and all its splendors.
This can also be noted in Paganism.
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