Ever since the lockdown started, I’ve been neglecting my Rabbit Rabbit posts. (The last is from March 2nd, and it looks like before that I struggled with consistency, too.) I’d picked up the phrase from a tumblr blog doing its best to spread good luck and blessings, and frankly my skimping out just won’t do, not in times like this.
It’s been stressful, and frankly I spent a lot of the past few months wondering why I’m getting punished, why my coworkers get treated a lot better than I do. The truth is the system is inherently rigged and I was set back by an alcoholic father, who refuses to make amends for what he did to my starting financial situation (or anything else, for that matter). So I’ve been increasingly advocating for burning the whole thing down and starting over.
I think Americans need to stop worrying about money as the only value of the human experience. Republicans especially will whine about “the economy” whenever someone wants to pass a safety net bill, but money is not the value by which life is judged. In fact, wanting money to have money is a bad thing. The average person doesn’t want a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars or whatever. They want what that can give them in the moment in a capitalistic society. Food, shelter, money toward their medical bills and other debts, travel, and so on, generally in that order. We want to be able to meet our needs, and I’ve come to believe we should do something about the middle man in that equation.
Maybe moving beyond money is ridiculous, so let’s change the way we look at it. Us Americans have a saying, “The Almighty Dollar”. (And, coincidentally, a pastor named Dollar, who is a televangelist.) Idea time: consider money as a means to an end, instead of the end itself. I kind of think this is part of the idea behind Medicare For All, which also dovetails with concepts like sovereignty and obligation.
For the novel I’ve been working on, one of the alien cultures believes, “Those who can, take care of those who cannot”. It’s baked into their society even if their current struggle is over who “counts” as a member, despite the existence of their empire. Children are in the legal care of nearby adults. Health care, food, shelter, and so on are not treated as “rights of the people” but as obligations of “those who can”. A clan elder is responsible for those his or her junior, just as an officer is responsible for those in their command. This responsibility is pounded in as something one expects when one gets older and starts their own career. And here’s the kicker: money is a recent invention for them. They don’t understand all the peculiarities that make currency and economy tick. And this has caused them problems.
The reason I write science fiction is because I want to present what I think we should be more like. I want to show people what’s possible, because it can be dreamed, even if it’s by that one radical you knew as a mousy little twerp in middle school.
For the past couple of months, I’ve been watching the world spiral out of control. Between the pandemic (and the economic strain it places especially on “essential” (read: poor) workers) and news of a host of other disasters, it was hard to think otherwise. And then a man was killed by cops, sparking protests and any and all efforts to shut those protests down.
I won’t write one of “those” posts (whatever you think “those” posts are). You can find much better elsewhere online. But I will say that I have been thinking about (and writing, and worldbuilding) the fact that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Why do we need cops? What are those shifty bastards good for that we can’t manage by ourselves? (And furthermore, why aren’t we managing those things ourselves? Why aren’t we protecting our children? Why aren’t we helping people out? Why did we decide this was OK?)
The more this goes on, the more I think it’s perfectly OK to collectively shame people into proper behavior. Not outmoded standards about how women should behave, of course. That’s bullshit. But the basics that we can all agree on, like “murder is bad” and “everyone is equal so treat them that way” and “don’t diddle kids” (yes, that last one needs to be stated). I know not everyone agrees on all of those, but plenty of decent people do. Hopefully critical mass.
We express the ideas we think about, and how we regard them, in fiction. This is the principle behind storytelling “karma”, that authors will punish specific actions to show their readers that a thing is not OK. Or do the reverse and reward some actions to provide a role model of sorts. This is where the “evil slutty woman” trope comes from, among a ton of others. And I think that principle can be put to good use. If the things we used to write as good were written as bad, and vice versa, and if we wrote those books and published those books, we could reach a few people. One or two of us might be bestsellers, or hit an equally big potential audience piggybacking off of something else. And there go the dominoes.
Write the book about someone outside “the box” (you know the one, labeled “Blank Slate” in big red Sharpie). Those things you see demonized elsewhere? Show they’re good. I know this has been said a LOT, a ridiculous amount, and it won’t directly counter the tide of every other bad message elsewhere in the world, but it’s a good place to start, and there needs to be a lot more books like it. And, if you have to, stand by your authorial choices. Don’t change your protagonist because the agent doesn’t like it.
As we know, this is a peculiar time to be alive. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find myself thinking things like “This must’ve been what it was like to live through the Black Death” or “…the Spanish Flu.” There’s a group of pagans, bloggers and otherwise, who have sensed for years the coming of dark times and Otherworldly beings. One suggests the latter at least is a cycle.
It’s as good a time as any to talk about cycles, I think.
According to the Llewellyn 2020 Sabbats Almanac, under the Cosmic Sway section for Ostara:
A new thirty-two year cycle started on January 12, 2020, with Saturn conjunct Pluto. Jupiter joins the fray on December 21, 2020. The Great Conjunction, as it is named, is associated with huge shakeups, politically and planetarily, literally and metaphorically. Nine US presidents have been killed, died of illness, or experienced an assassination attempt during a Great Conjunction. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are also more common. The Great conjunction is all about destruction. To add more misery, the weather predictions for the winter this year are heavy snows brought on by a strong La Niña depression off the coast of Central and South Americas. The time for preparation is in the spring and summer. Prepare for a lack of food, water, and electricity during the winter months. Sow heavily in the garden this year, and sow often, taking advantage of the planting days. Can and dry and pickle and ferment; save all of the food if possible in case of a long, difficult winter. Stock up on firewood if that is an option, otherwise prepare for long power outages and lack of heat. Water is always the most important emergency provision, so store water, as well as gasoline for a generator. Don’t forget blankets, candles, and matches.
pg. 132
The Almanac was released in late 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak, during which many are already experiencing some of the things listed above (namely food shortages), and plenty not listed (shortages of things like cleaning supplies and toilet paper). If this winter is as bad as all that, then we should expect plenty of hoarding behavior then, as well.
I don’t understand astrology very well, I’ll be the first to admit, so I had to google “Saturn conjunct Pluto” to work out what that means. The most I’m able to parse out from the vague word salad of astrology-speak is that something big has begun either earlier this year or late last year, and will persist for quite a while. It would be easy to say that astrology predicted the coronavirus, but I won’t, because I’m probably wrong.
But this isn’t about coronavirus, at least, not entirely.
There’s something else at work here, and I think I’m finally beginning to see it (took me a while, eh?).
This brings me to the real reason for all this pondering.
Search “otherworld” on John Beckett’s blog (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett) and you will find posts about the glowing green bird and his theory that the Otherworld’s “proximity” (for want of a better word) to our world waxes and wanes throughout truly epic scales of time. I’m sure that’s possible, as everything else in nature works in cycles, from the movements of the planets down to a day, a year on Earth.
And speaking of Earth, I bring you Milankovitch Cycles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles). These are a collection of long-range cycles the Earth goes through and what that means for the climate. For example, eccentricity (how close or far the Earth’s orbit is from “circular”) is, at last Wikipedia update, .017 and decreasing. This means seasonal changes are getting milder*. Axial tilt also changes, and is currently at 23.44 degrees. (I seriously hope you don’t need me to tell you how this affects Earth’s climate.)
*I will not be taking comments from people who want to use this to day humans didn’t affect the climate at all ever and therefore should let it work itself out.
Eccentricity runs on a roughly 100,000 year cycle that we seem to be roughly in the middle of. Axial tilt was max 8700 years ago and will be at its minimum 9800 years from now. We can speculate that “the time of gods walking among men” and other such things ended at roughly the dawn of human civilization (more or less, and accounting for regional variations), which was maybe sometime between these last two end points.
Now, cycles move independently of one another and sometimes line up with other cycles in interesting combinations. For example, the eccentricity cycle is an order of magnitude longer than the axial tilt cycle. Mercury retrograde happens at least once a year (and boy do I hear about it). The Saturn Return is roughly once every 30 years. Sometimes, statistically, two or more of these happen at the same time.
Now let’s return to our Saturn conjunct Pluto. It happened to occur in the earliest days of the outbreak, and also in the midst of the Otherworldly changes going on. AND ALSO, for an election year. And, for Yule this year we get the Great Conjunction (just what I always wanted!), which may or may not be a portent of doom. So, that will just so happen to occur following the results of the November election, and hopefully once we’ve got this outbreak under control. And we will probably still be in the middle of whatever the Otherworld is doing.
I’m not the greatest at suspecting the Otherworld is doing much of anything. But, people whose work I respect have noticed, so I feel fairly confident taking them at their word.
What a lovely month it’s shaped up to be. Coronavirus has swept the globe, going from a faint abstraction a month ago to literally the next county over as of last week. If you aren’t under a shelter-in-place order, all the public spaces are closed, which is basically the same. Gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, Lysol spray. It’s. Everywhere.
And people did as people do: panic, and behave strangely (the hoarding of toilet paper, of all things), or pretend it’s all a government hoax caused by the Democrats because “they couldn’t impeach Trump” (even though last I checked that was held up due to the fact that Republicans refused to cooperate with Democrats under any circumstances but the ones that would allow them to throw out the evidence).
We’re still out of toilet paper, by the way. Distilleries are making hand sanitizer. People I work with are still trying to downplay the very serious pandemic going on all around us. One day I was deeply overcome with anxiety over the whole situation. Ever since, I’ve put more feeling into appealing to the Gods for health.
Thankfully, I haven’t had a crisis of faith yet. Those all seemed to happen before I knew who the Gods were, the ones I’m specifically talking to and praying to right now, and who are also making sure I eat something resembling health food every morning. I’m not sure if They saw all this coming, or if this is part of everything else which is going on, between the election (#hidinbiden) and the environment and who knows what else. Perhaps They did, and They know that small routines are good for times like these. Where would I be otherwise?
But, I don’t think about it tremendously much. I try not to panic. I avoid the news. I wait it out. I read other things, on other topics. I’ve been keeping myself sane for the most part. And, I’ve noticed very little change in my actual habits. I’m an introvert, after all. It just feels weird that the rest of the world is with me on that. (And, in the mean time, my Christmas decorations are still up, and a little off-season Holly Jolly never killed anyone, far as we know.)
I’m still not done with that book. My parents still make weak attempts to contact me. My dad especially continues to be a disappointment. I even told him what she did to me and he doesn’t care. I’m about ready to walk away from him entirely.
Of course, I don’t think the police are willing to do anything since he’s “cleaned up his act” by quitting alcohol.
That’s the trouble. No one’s ever been willing to protect me. Not parents from bullies, not Dad from Mom, not boyfriends from parents or anyone else really. Except that time the child pornographer started issuing threats. But he was a child pornographer. That doesn’t count.
So here I am, wondering what I do with myself and feeling set back by the very people who should have propped me up and done right by me. I feel like I’ll be trapped forever in a tiny apartment, at a dead end job, with nothing to show for my life when I inevitably have enough of it.
I’m considering officially hopping on the Bernie train, since that looks like the best way out of this right now. Imagine what I could accomplish if I didn’t have to worry about things like health insurance (or any kind of insurance), or getting my bills paid. Ideally I’d want my job to be automated, freeing me up to do something I actually care about. Anything I actually care about. If we’re being really optimistic, I’m looking forward to a post-scarcity future where no one has to worry about money and we can all do whatever it is that makes us happy. I’d wax poetic about “the good old days but with indoor plumbing”, but see my last post. (And I’m still not sure how I feel about living in a commune. That sounds like a fast track to a cult if we’re not careful.)
And, in the mean time, maybe when the boomers die off we’ll have solved most of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
I’ve found a group of fellow pagans who want to start a farm commune of their own, away from wider society. While I understand that sentiment, absolutely, I grew up in a rural ranching/farming community. I learned, through it and growing up listening to country music (written by and large from people from those same communities, so it’s a bit of a theme), that not every year is a good one. You can want to sustain yourself and then sell your goods to try and stay afloat. But one year you might not even have enough to feed everyone. (And then there’s the questionable matter of whether you will be strong-armed into selling your farm to some large company or another but I know we’re all trying to avoid that.)
The trouble is, I don’t see much besides optimism for the project, despite my above reservations. I don’t feel comfortable stating these anywhere related to the project, but they’ve got me thinking. Do we want to go back to a sort of “pre-Depression” lifestyle, living on a homestead in some unforgiving country trying to make ends meet with all generations in one home? Much as I dislike living in society, considering my “station” (and the fact that my dad drunk me into it), I don’t think I want to leave it. I certainly don’t want to go “back in time” to shitting in outhouses on the regular and wondering if it will rain enough or if the crop will get flooded out. (I don’t exactly have green thumbs.)
Maybe the answer isn’t to divide ourselves from society. Maybe the answer is to introduce a new way of living. I know, I know, sounds cheesy and over done by everyone from contactees to fake Tibetan monks to plastic shamans. However, one does not solve one’s problems by running away from them (unless those problems are abusive persons. In that case, run as far and as fast as you can). This is why people who say they aren’t going to vote catch a lot of flak.
We cannot try to create an Arcadia-like ideal little section of Earth where everything is perfect and everyone is happy. It’s naive, based in a poor understanding of how it was back then, and it solves little.
(And, I seem to recall learning quite a bit about communities in the early 1800s, during the Second Great Awakening: Groups followed preachers to some wilderness and built communes and other types of communities. Very few of those groups have survived to the present, Mormonism among them.)
Mesperyian is an original creation by a high school student and posted to Booksie in 2009. The story has it that she was imagined into existence by Hades because he was depressed that Persephone was topside for a bit and he really wanted a child with her but couldn’t have them. But, Mesperyian came into being nonetheless and (perhaps because she’s a project of imagination) word of her striking beauty reached Mount Olympus. Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, grew jealous and burned Mesperyian’s face. So changed, she asked Hephaestus for a mask of intimidation and became vengeful, a goddess of torture and punishment.
A 2015 Tumblr post got to the question of what to do when asked which Greek goddess is the most beautiful. One user offered to name Persephone, and another said to name Mesperyian.
And, this triggered some backlash. Mesperyian is not attested in ancient sources and some pagans (and possibly others) disagreed with even the concept of worshipping her, because she is not “real”.
That’s not a question this post will get into. In part because I’m not sure how much it all matters (and let’s be clear, I think, at one point, all the gods become entities one can interact with, completely independent of whatever spawned them–and still powerful for it, too).
The matter is: Tumblr especially thought that Mesperyian was real. They believed it. Some people asked about, and possibly began, worshipping her. People looked her up to try and find or deepen a connection. In short, they treated her as if she were an extant goddess. Her attestation in ancient myth didn’t matter, at least, not initially.
And it was all very believable. We all know someone who wants to have children, and many of us probably know someone who struggles in that regard. We’ve all heard (perhaps simplified) myths of Aphrodite being jealous of the beauty of others, especially when it prompts the worship of the other beautiful person over Aphrodite (which may, at that point, be a matter of enforcing the “rules” for dealing with the divine).
I haven’t read the short story, and I’m sure it has that vibe of “OC Do Not Steal”. However, what matters here is what the story has grown beyond. It isn’t a short story by a high school student who hasn’t thought about their characters and motivations. It became a fledgling myth. People took it seriously for quite a while.
Then they walked away.
There’s a bias in our society toward “older” things. There always has been, and it goes back to forever. People have said their ideas or practices are “ancient” or “given by the gods” for ages. They care about “older” because “older” = “authentic” in their minds. And this isn’t always true. The humors theory, for example, has been completely debunked, but it’s old as the day is long. The earliest theories of psychology developed by Dr. Sigmund Freud are also complete bunk, and we rightly discount them.
Yet, when it comes to religion, people want “older”. For a while Wicca sold itself as “the old ways” to gain members. Reconstruction religions gain steam by trying to put together the ways ancient people worshipped (with varying regard for the way we live now vs. the way they lived then). Naturally a new goddess is anathema to all of that. People want “real” Greek myth, with all that entails, and want it to never change (and usually, they want the Greek myth they learned in middle school, which doesn’t account for the complexity, layered meaning, metaphor, or polytheist lens the myths originally had). Humans think of mythology as like an ancient source material, something to draw on and work with but never, under any circumstances, add to. If GRRM dies before finishing A Song of Ice and Fire (which is likely), then his books will be given this treatment, too. I seem to recall that the fans of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo had some pretty serious problems with The Girl in the Spider’s Web because it was written after Larsson’s passing (honestly Spider’s Web is terrible compared to its predecessors, but that’s because Larsson was not around to actually write it).
In a word, humans want “old”, which they equate with “real”. “Old” varies on a case-by-case basis, but this rule generally holds for all things but the field of science (where seminal works are respected but new research valued more).
It’s a strange thing, because looking back over the incident, Mesperyian was simply treated as an obscure goddess no one had ever heard of. I’m not sure how the idea got started off of one short story, but it did. When I consider it today, at this point in my journey into polytheism and paganism, I realized: we almost made a new goddess. And that would’ve been a really good thing for the world. It’s an instance of living mythology, of living polytheism, and it petered out because of the value we place on the old.
This article is already generating quite a bit of chatter in the Paganosphere, through which it has crossed my radar. Now, when I first read the title, I thought “this is gonna be a 700 Club story, isn’t it”. Commentary suggests otherwise but I thought it would be fun to go through this one bit by bit as a live reaction of sorts.
Intro
It’s the new year. I could have given up booze and bacon, or embarked on a punishing new fitness regime. But these seemed too harsh for the drab days of January and besides, I had more ambitious plans for personal transformation. Namely, to turn myself into a witch.
Ceri Radford
That’s it. That’s the opening paragraph. I was right, “Whew Lads” indeed.
At this opening of a scary new decade, we’re in the midst of a resurgent interest in all things mystic, superstitious or more than a little bit woo.
Pretty sure there’s a reason for that, but we’ll deal with that some other time. This is where I start picking up on the cynical tone detected by other reviewers, as clearly to Radford, this is just a cultural trend driven by market forces, and nothing more. (My Gods would like a word with you, Ms. Radford.)
“astrology is currently enjoying a broad cultural acceptance that hasn’t been seen since the 1970s”. And its cousin in dogged resistance to logic, specifically witchcraft, is also having something of a moment
The quote is from The New Yorker, but her tag at the end, “its cousin in dogged resistance to logic”. I…I can’t even. Behold as I am unable to even. I must, I must.
I picked up a copy of the newly published The Modern Witch’s Guide to Happiness by Luna Bailey and set my cynical self a New Year, New Me challenge.
A’s for honesty, I suppose. Though I’ll be honest that book sounds tempting. (I must not, my pocketbook is counting on me.)
Monday
Right. This witching business. One of the things I need, along with a suspension of belief in the scientific underpinnings of the universe, is an altar.
Off to a banging start, I see. (In seriousness, I’m not sure how well people who believe science and magic are incompatible fully understand either science, magic, or the universe, because I’m not well versed in The Science, but the lack of understanding in the universe is there 100%.)
By the end of the day, though, [my altar] has been joined by a light smattering of cat hair and my four-year-old’s lego T rex. Is the universe trying to tell me something?
The sarcasm has come on thick.
Tuesday
Crystal-shopping time: no self-respecting witch in this new age of Aquarius would be without these ubiquitous lumps of pretty rock. I take myself to a gift shop. The book informs me that I should allow myself to be drawn to the crystal that has meaning for me. I position myself in front of a stand of crystal bracelets. Will it be the pastel-pink rose quartz, with qualities of “love, peace and tenderness” apparently laced into its silicon and oxygen atoms; or the “playful” inky-black bornite? I close my eyes, then open them. I found myself uncannily drawn to something, after all. It’s the price tag. Ten quid! I am propelled out of the shop by unseen forces.
Crystals are not absolutely necessary. Helpful, but not necessary. Which you would have picked up on, I suppose, by reading the book as anything other than a Wine Aunt.
Wednesday (Oh Gods!)
Finally, some advice I can wholeheartedly embrace: five tips for making simple connections with nature, from touching leaves to noticing sights and sounds.
This is it. This is paganism (basically).
We’re not going to be able to keep this, are we?
I don’t believe it offered me protection through the winter months, as the book claims; I just like the feel of it.
Ahh, good, something DOES make her happy.
I suspect a large part of the appeal of witchcraft today is the emphasis it places on slowing down, switching off from your phone and taking notice of the natural world.
Once again she’s onto something. This is like the only “day” of hers where I don’t feel like I’m suffering through consumerist nonsense and like she has a modicum of understanding.
We’re not going to be able to hang onto this, are we?
Thursday
Magic. Here we go. (So far, I want to note, no mention of the divine, not even in the above nature section. Though nature is shockingly close to godliness.)
None of the “magick” incantations listed involve putting a pox on my enemies, which will be a relief to the landlord who has failed to fix my broken boiler; they’re all perky personal growth exercises.
Oof.
“Pesky personal growth exercises.” I have once again lost the ability to even.
Next to “tax return” I put “knee-jerk scoffing cynicism”. I would have set it on fire but I was too cynical to waste a match.
We almost had her!
Friday
Tarot. We are going. To read tarot. Something tells me a complicated system like that is not for someone who is not only an obvious beginner, but also a careless individual who doesn’t REALLY feel the call or believe in any of this other than as a commercial fad. I wonder how this will go.
I don’t have an actual set of cards, but witchcraft has a relaxed, homespun kind of vibe so I improvise. I raid my daughter’s toy drawer, find a set of sea-creature playing cards, and get reading.
Playing cards. Just use. A fucking. Deck. Of playing cards.
As a personal aside I have serious problems with parents going through their kids things for personal gain. Children have every right to privacy as adults do, and that doesn’t go away because of the blood connection. I’m sorry you’re such a shit mom, Ceri Radford.
And there we have it: confirmation bias. You go looking for a pattern, and you will find it, even in a pack of deeply non-mystic marine-animal cards bought to entertain a small child on a rainy holiday in France.
I take it that’s how messages from the Divine work, too, huh, Radford? All confirmation bias, all the time. I don’t usually hex but I am oh, so tempted.
It’s part of the reason we’re all such credulous suckers, still seduced by superstition at a time when we have the technology to make a space probe orbit Saturn.
Saturn. Screams.
Don’t believe me?
There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Saturday and Sunday
it’s hard not to snort coffee through your nostrils when you read that water that has had rose quartz soaking in it can be given to soothe traumatised animals.
Um, what the fuck?
witchcraft is no less irrational than any other religion and many of its practices are in fact a fairly reasonable response to the major challenges of our time. Rediscovering nature, reclaiming the sexist trope of the witch as a symbol of female empowerment, switching off from the constant thrum of social media and consumerism: what’s not to like?
A) Witchcraft is a practice, not a religion. B) That isn’t all there is to it. Talk to actual practitioners, if they’ll even listen to you at this juncture, and you’ll see. C) The only thing you’re onto is turning off your hot-damn twitter feed.
(Gods this is painful.)
No matter how many spells we cast to ask the universe for help, the universe isn’t listening.
MY GODS WOULD LIKE A WORD WITH YOU RADFORD!
the recent zest for the mystic is part of a worrying backlash against the enlightenment values that have driven human progress.
I long for release in the sweet embrace of death.
Bet she doesn’t think climate change is real, either.
Conclusion
That hurt. That physically hurt. Was it a bad idea to read it right before going to work? Well, worse things have happened to me.
The chief problem is Radford didn’t take it seriously from the get-go. She admitted her cynicism and went ahead anyway, and didn’t actually suspend that cynicism during the course of the challenge. Which maybe counts as cheating. The only thing she seemed to get was spending time in nature, which is how one generally reaches the Otherworldly. If she did more of that, maybe she would understand.
It’s 2020. Trump is up for re-election. I can feel the mass panic coming from here, and so I’ve elected to stay off Tumblr. And most of Twitter. And a host of other things because I’m not interested in wild speculation about how bad it’s going to be (and I wasn’t interested in 2016, either, though they almost had me).
Let me be clear: I think his impeachment is a good thing. It demonstrates, as it always has, that no one is above the law. This is an important principle to remind us of (in ancient Egypt, it was the Pharaoh’s job to facilitate and be in line with Ma’at, the principle and goddess of universal order and justice. The Divine Right of Kings and the Mandate of Heaven both meant that if the land failed in some way, it was the king’s fault, and in the Western world that’s where we get the Fisher King idea).
But at the same time, I have a lot of thoughts, many of them angry.
I Don’t Take Complaints
This is the big one: if you tell me there’s something wrong in society, and you leave it at that, not only will I not believe you (because you failed to supply evidence, and in turn demanded evidence of me when I contradicted you), I will think you’re just here to whine and make other people do the work for you. And that negatively impacts my opinion of you and your cause. And something tells me that’s the last thing you want.
So, if you tell me there’s something wrong, you better have an idea how to fix it. It doesn’t have to be a perfect idea or even a fully baked one, but something. And yelling “Just DO SOMETHING!” into the void until something is done will only result in a hastily-cobbled-together solution that reveals that the policy maker in question did not, and cannot, read your mind.
But, if you get in touch with your congressperson (and you definitely should about something you care about), the easiest thing to do, because you will likely be talking to one of their very busy aides, is provide a draft bill. Not many people know this, which is kind of shocking, but there are resources on how to write one. In a short search, I found this and several others: https://hsldaaction.org/GenJ/docs/default-source/public/iGovern/how-to-write-a-bill, including a properly formatted word document, edit as needed: https://1.cdn.edl.io/tnpC1wYRTtphjY7OsApg8YMnJ60bfbFouGibAfYsgzjpqWvh.doc . Make good use of these; and whatever else you may find googling things like “bill draft guide” and “sample bill congress”. When you give them something to work with, they can build on it. Everyone wins (ideally).
Maybe You Hate Society
Not my problem. This is what we have and this is what we have to work with. It isn’t ideal, but this is what we’re opening with. Don’t trust politicians? Protest (I disagree with rioting and think you shouldn’t expect people to like you when you impede their morning commute, but you do you, boo). Maybe you think someone else should be in office instead. Vote for that person, when the time comes. People forget that there are options.
My Work Is Not Your Work
This is something more subtle I’ve been noticing, but one should not expect another person to join them in all the marches, all the rallies, all the protests, all the everything, and then call that person an asshole when they refuse (often for medical or expense-related reasons, because We Live In A Society and the cost of shit is too damn high, but also for spoons-related reasons). I often refuse because of compassion fatigue. I’m used to a huge pile of things people expect me to do and support and care about. I had to care that Dad was a drunkard, and what Mom expected of me, and whether or not Dad made “enough money”. Later I had to be glad that he was getting sober (he isn’t technically but let’s table that one). Then I get to college and I have to care about all the social issues, and the orange man who is bad. I’ve got little opinion on the man, because I’m poor and it all looks the same from this vantage point.
When I moved out, I never got a television. I don’t subscribe to news streaming services. I don’t even read the news app that came with my phone. Every so often I’ll read a news story of interest to me (lately a local matter of a man who got pulled over, cited for brand inspection violations, and is now trying to argue the law under which he was cited is unconstitutional–this one I find completely hilarious, and it reminds me of a case way back when a sheriff misappropriated funds and went to Las Vegas, I think). I generally get my news from gossip from the customers. That was how I learned of the impeachment, and the Roosevelt Fire, and that Baby Yoda trended more in the last weeks of 2019 than any Democratic presidential candidate (#babyyoda2020). Of course, that was how I KNEW there were Democratic candidates in the first place. Trump would obviously run for a second term; that’s what Presidents usually do.
But, the lack of news has greatly benefitted my overall mental health, and I can be correct in attributing at least some of my alleviating depression to not watching news period (not “cable news”, not “alternative news”, just skipping news altogether most days).
I’m saying all this to say that, in all likelihood, politics isn’t my business. It never has been. I was called specifically to tell Andred’s story and the story of my continued contact with her and what I’m learning along the way. This is my way of giving back to the universe for Paul Huson. And I have learned, from the works of men and women wiser than I and more observant than I, that the problems people sense are a lot more than merely political. Fight political battles, but this is not the one thing that everyone should do and once the right policies are enacted all will be well. If you believe that you don’t believe in an interconnected world, or you do and…you aren’t paying attention.
But Seriously–Don’t Overwork Yourselves
Sometimes the best thing you can do for your cause is get some sleep. I manage the living daylights out of my sleep schedule, because I need to if I’m going to be in any way competent at my job or my calling. I’ve read in at least two places that if you expect to be of any use, take care of yourself. Look after your medical, mental health, physical, and other needs.
I see a therapist twice a month, and I pray every morning without fail (except for that one time I was really late to work). I also make sure I have plenty of time before work to wake up slowly (and, this time of year, defrost my car). Another thing was recently asked of me, and so I found a place for it. I can do this because I take great care not to give my life to my job (no matter how much overtime that brings in).
These are just examples. You may structure your life differently based on what you prioritize (and what your environment dictates; a lot of people live in cities and the term “rush hour” is a misnomer to put it lightly). But there’s a pressure, I’m not sure the origin of it, which goes something like “I need to rally/work magic/be at the office CONSTANTLY or my life isn’t worth living”. First of all, incorrect. Burn out does not make you effective at any of your pursuits. Like I said, get some sleep–at least eight hours but you may go up to ten or twelve or more if it’s really bad. Spend time with yourself, and with the Gods if you acknowledge them (or God, singular, if you lean that way). Seek help if you need it (too many people don’t do this, but there is a “worried well” contingent of any therapist’s office, people who want to maximize their efficacy and things like that; if you’re in a bad situation you’ll likely get a reduced rate or no rate at all).
Or, “If Nixon Did It Today, He’d Get Away With It.”
Let’s define terms.
In short, “feels before reals” on a large scale.
As with “On ‘Admitting’“, this post popped into my head when I was doing something else, this time my day job. I received the title and little else, and I started wondering, “Do I know a single soul who would argue that their gods care more about emotional arguments than the facts of the case?” I don’t think I’ve encountered such a thing in my ventures into the Pagan internet. I know of plenty of people who care more about feels than reals, to put it colloquially, but no gods. (Or in one specific case, the words were put into the divine being’s mouth and I’m sure He’s a bit salty about it. I would be if I were used to make a political point I might not agree with, especially without prior consultation.)
Further, I have a Christian friend, and she is liberal-minded but still a Christian. And given my (admittedly limited) understanding of her god, I don’t think He is a “feels before reals” type, either. So, I think it is common of divine beings to say “cut the crap, and get to work”.
Which brings me to, I suppose, a question. Or perhaps just a thought, or observation: humans can operate in a post-truth society, but Gods and other such beings cannot or do not. (The Fae, as a very noteworthy example, cannot or will not lie for unknown reasons.) I’m not sure why this is but I think it has to do with perspective. They can see farther out than we can, and on at least some level see through us (though they very rarely feel the need to, at least, not enough to do it constantly as I was once taught). They know enough to know when we’re lying to ourselves, to others, and to them personally. Therefore they know all the tricks, they can pick them apart with ease, and are quite done with it all.
Plus, it could have to do with perspective in another sense: they understand more of the world than we do and have more concerns than mere humans. The Gods don’t seem to trouble Themselves with the “feels before reals” shenanigans engaged in by petty people trying to make short-lived arguments (I’ve noticed this is something engaged in by people on both sides of the aisle, not exclusive to one group or another, but that doesn’t make a feels before reals position any more valid). They have things that need to get done, and would rather you buckled down and did the work.
Chràbhaidh a Andred 