Democratic Forest Trusts (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.Democratic trusts with leadership elected by citizen-members promise to solve many of the problems afflicting both traditional government and corporate ownership of forestlands. This article explores these issues in some depth.Complexity and the Dream of Human Control of Eco-Systems (PDF)in Watson, Alan; Dean, Liese; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2006. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Eighth World Wilderness Congress Symposium; 2005 September 30-October 6; Anchorage, AK.The title captures it. I then explore the kinds of institutions compatible with both nature and the modern world that are implied from this analysis.Rethinking the Obvious: Modernity and Living Respectfully With Nature (PDF)The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Winter, 1997.Modernity is usually considered a wrong turn in terms of respect for and sustaining the environment. I argue the reality is more complex, for modernity has freed us from personal dependence on agriculture, ended the economic value of children, radically reduced the likelihood of large scale wat, and shifted much production to intellectual rather than material capital. This partially decouples society from nature, which gives us important opportunities as well as problems.Towards an Ecocentric Political Economy (PDF)The Trumpeter, Fall, 1996.This paper begins my effort at showing how liberal modernity can be harmonized with an ecocentric perspective on our relationship with the natural world. It is a corrective to much “free market environmental” literature that sacrifices Nature to money as well as to anti-liberal attacks by well-meaning but economically naïve environmentalists.Unexpected Harmonies: Self-Organization in Liberal Modernity and Ecology (PDF)The Trumpeter, Journal of Ecosophy, 10:1, Winter 1993This is my initial paper exploring how what I term ‘evolutionary liberal’ thought can be an important means by which society and nature can be brought into greater harmony. The other Trumpeter papers build on it.Deep Ecology and Liberalism: The Greener Implications of Evolutionary Liberalism (PDF)Review of Politics, Fall, 1996.Liberal thought and deep ecology are usually regarded as mutually exclusive. But the “evolutionary” tradition offers a way to integrate the two through commonalties in the work of David Hume, Michael Polanyi, Arne Naess, and Aldo Leopold, providing a stronger foundation for liberalism while strengthening the case for an ecocentric ethic.(Related subjects: Ecology)Saving Western Towns: A Jeffersonian Green Proposal (PDF)in Writers on the Range, Karl Hess and John Baden, eds., University Press of Colorado, 1998.Developmental pressures in the rural and small town West involve three groups: long term residents, new arrivals, and environmentalists. Today their interests often conflict. This conflict is in part the outcome of institutions which prevent harmonizing competing interests. The concept of developmental trusts, both for rural regions and for small communities offers a means whereby these interests can be harmonized for the benefit of all concerned.(Related subjects: Politics)Social Ecology, Deep Ecology, and Liberalism (PDF)Critical Review, 6: 2-3, 1992.Murray Bookchin is considered a leading radical environmental theorist. However, his analysis is incapable of leading humankind towards a more respectful and sustainable relationship with the natural world. Criticisms of Bookchin from both the deep ecology and evolutionary liberal perspective complement one another, pointing the way towards a better understanding of how modernity relates to the environment.The paper as a whole offers an early discussion of issues that are more clearly addressed in later papers, particularly Deep Ecology and Liberalism (1996) and the three Trumpeter articles in 1997, 1996, and 1993. However, there are other ideas in the article which have not been developed more thoroughly elsewhere.
The abortion and the Bible thread has high lighted two issues where I think we Pagans have valuable insights for the spiritual community as a whole. These are how we determine spiritual authority, and the issue of death. This post offers some ruminations on the first issue, and another will discuss death.
Pagan spirituality long preceded written texts, sacred or otherwise.
Early Pagan traditions were oral. Even when they became literate, societies such as the Celts refused to write down sacred teachings. Some scholars claim writing down the Odyssey helped kill the power of myths for the Greeks. Taken literally the stories depicted Gods who were anything but divine in their behavior. But they were never meant to be taken literally. Transferring oral stories to written words took the life from them, and opened them to misinterpretation.
Two Greeks famous for their writings are important here. Plato, one of Greece’s greatest writers, was himself very skeptical of its value for truly important issues. In the Phaedrus Plato gives an account where the deity Toth offers the Egyptian King Thamus the gift of writing for his people. The king gave many reasons why he thought it a bad idea, concluding “you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”
Unlike a teacher, the written word simply repeats itself when questioned what it means. A person who did that would not understand what he said. It is our ability to rephrase what we know in other ways that indicates we really understand what we are talking about.
Significantly, on two occasions Plato indicated that he never wrote down his most important teachings. Those who say they know what he was teaching often argue among themselves, but how could they know? Nor did Aristotle ever describe what he meant by what he regarded as our highest, semi-divine capacity: contemplation. A hint that he knew words could not do it justice was when he wrote it characterized the awareness of the Gods.
For six years I studied intensely with a Brazilian shaman. Those years were as demanding, maybe more so, than the years I spent getting a Ph.D. at Berkeley. He told us he could tell us everything he knew that could be communicated in words in a weekend. He also said it would be useless information. He was right. (I say this without implying I now know what he knew.)
I’ve seen some pretty passionate posts discussing abortion and the Bible by people who are 100% sure they know the meaning of a text they have never read in the original. (Neither have I.) There is nothing wrong with reading and learning from translations, or from texts we do not really understand. I do it all the time. In fact my definition of “a classic” is a text whose author gets smarter each time I read it.
But there is a world of difference between wrestling with a sacred book, learning from it, and applying it to my life, and assuming after I have read it that I know its real meaning. This claim would be absurd with any complex text, let alone a when reading from a translation of something written thousands of years ago for readers in many respects quite unlike us . To claim we understand THAT with certainty is Arrogance and Pride with capital letters. And yet they have done so, the evidence being they ignored the passage I emphasized in the post to which they responded.
So what do we Pagans have as an alternative?
Fundamentally we are an oral and experiential tradition. We Wiccans have Books of Shadows, but they are more like ritual cookbooks that sacred texts along Biblical or even theological lines. Similar texts dominate in Brazil among the African Diasporic traditions. Dogma is not particularly important, compared to ritual and experience. This also appears to have been the case in Rome.
Wiccans and Pagans in general do not look to revelations of other people’s experiences with the sacred, especially revelations of long ago, we look primarily to our own experience in ritual, on vision quests, or through other practices. We also depend on the accumulated knowledge of our own spiritual communities to help us put what we have experienced into context. This means that we can never be completely confident of our understanding. What we know is ALWAYS provisional, it is ALWAYS open to revision. Pagan practice, wherever and whenever it has existed, changes, and that is OK.
She changes everything She touches
And everything She touches, changes.
This is a feature, not a flaw.
This is also true when reading a sacred text, but in that case its desirability is usually denied. As soon as I explain a text in my own words, I interpret it. To understand something is to make it yours, but as you are unique, so to some degree will be your understanding. So long as you do not understand, you repeat the formula, the quote. To simply apply a directive need not involve understanding. But as soon as you do understand you go to some degree some place different. The author might think that by doing so you have successfully internalized its lesson, or not. But interpretation and understanding are inseparable.
I am not attacking sacred texts. I am saying they are dangerous to read because when read carelessly or superficially. they can give their reader the impression he or she knows the Word of God when they really have only made contact with their own fantasies, confusions, and compulsions.
We Pagans can be as mistaken as anyone when interpreting our encounters with the sacred, but whether we get it right or not, we usually do not demand others fall in line with quite the same assurance. Partly that is because we emphasize practice and ritual over dogma, but partly it’s also because of the way texts are. We know our experiences are beyond our power to do justice in words, but sacred texts, read superficially, are words claiming to have done the subject justice.
There is something about texts that leads us away from the humility we need to even begin to understand the sacred. Often I read something with only my ‘rational’ mind, even though experience of the sacred always extends beyond what we can describe in words. Everything seems to be there in black and white. It’s meaning can seem ‘obvious,’ even though others reading the same passages will find alternative interpretations equally ‘obvious.’ And so the over confident reader risks the worst kind of idolatry, to mistake his or her understanding with the wisdom of Sacred.
Perhaps that is why Fundamentalist approaches so often focus on what they take to be divine commands. Commands are reasonably obvious. But as I think I demonstrated with my Bible and Abortion quote, even commands are not really so obvious once we try and apply them outside the confines of where and when they were made.
Giving us cautions about texts and greater confidence in our own experience are two of the gifts a Pagan approach to spirituality can give modern Americans.
posted February 9, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Interesting that you bring up experience. I was actually somewhat avoiding bringing that in to the discussion on the other topic. I’ve seen it shut down reasonable discussions before, and didn’t want to do that.
One of the ways I know what the Bible means, is direct revelation from God. I can read a passage of scripture and just not get what it means, but then I ask God what it means, and a bit later I get it. Thus, just like with your shaman, there is a two way communication. And it’s pretty awesome to know that I can talk with the Creator of the Universe!
In comparison to your study with the Shaman, I have practically grown up under the tutelage of God. Before I was thirteen, I just did the Christian thing because of my parents. But then I had a experience where I decided for myself that I would truly seek out God. And for the past ten years I have done so, and I have found Him, and I have found His Bible to be consistent.
Oral versus text, oral is definitely more dynamic. And I agree that we have lost so much of that tradition with the proliferation of text. But the reason that text overtook oral is that text is much more accurate. Yes, there were, and apparently are, some amazing people with really good memories, but even they must make mistakes when memorizing something sometimes. Text doesn’t. When it is something as important as life and death, heaven or hell, I want as much accuracy as possible.
posted February 9, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Ah, the romanticizing of oral culture over the banal and unexciting written word.
The problem is that oral culture suffers from the same major issue as text – interpretation. When you factor in personal and cultural bias as well as the difficulty in verifying that the oral teachings are complete or even real, text wins.
The REAL danger of ‘sacred texts’ to the modern NeoPagan hoopla is not the creation of a Fundamentalist NeoPagan Church, its the reality that the modern NeoPagan movement is full of people who are NeoPagan in name only and far too many of the “leaders” are frauds. Thus the cry of “diversity” and “self – definition” ring out from the crowd to maintain the self – deception.
posted February 10, 2009 at 12:16 am
Greetings Jerrod! I know the touch of the Divine Presence very well and so I am sure do most of my Brothers and Sisters who post here. I felt it when I several hundred Lutheran youth and I gave each other the Eucharist when I was 17 and I felt it when my Priestess and I closed the Circle and invoked the Lady and Lord when we were honored to join two dear friends in a Handfasting. It was the same Presence. I know this goes against what you have been told, but it is true none the less. One of the first things that God said to me was that (S)He doesn’t care what you call Him/Her. All that matters is that you call.
I speak only for myself. Even the members of my Circle differ with me on some particulars…and it does not matter.
posted February 10, 2009 at 6:04 am
A Mullah Nasrudin story:
In those days, villages would invite preachers to their village and feed them and look after them and in return he would give the Friday (the Muslim Sabbath) sermon. So the elders of this village invited Mullah Nasrudin and they really looked after him and gave him the best foods.
Come Friday, the Mullah went to the mosque and after the prayers went up the pulpit and asked the eager populous, “People, do you know what I’m going to tell you?”
And all gathered in the mosque shook their heads in unison and shouted back, “No wise mullah, we don;t.”
To which Nasrudin replied, “Then how can I talk to you ignorant people?” And down he came from the top of the pulpit and off he went leaving the bewildered villagers.
So the villagers had to look after Mullah Nasrudin for another week and as you all know, he has a great and growing appetite….
Come Friday, the Mullah went up the pulpit and asked the same question, “People, do you know what I’m going to tell you?”
This time the people thought they were wise to him and they shook their heads up and down and eagerly replied, “Oh wise, Mullah, yes we know.”
Nasrudin smiled at them and as he decended the pulpit stairs said, “In that case I don’t need to tell you what you already know.”
So one more week the grumbling villagers fed Nasrudin but this time they were determined not to let the Mullah to get better of them. Anyway, they were running out of spare food and pateince. So Thursday evening they got together and devised a plan.
So the next day when Mullah Nsrudin asked from the top of the pulpit, “People, do you know what I’m going to tell you?”
Half of them shook their heads in affirmative saying, “Yes, of course we know.” And the other half shook their heads to indicate no and said, “No we don’t.”
The Mullah said nothing as he came down from the top of the pulpit and walked to the door of the mosque. As he left he said, “In that case let those who know, tell those who don’t know!”
The mystic inside is fed the best foods of experience, and like Nasrudin is asked to address the interpreting rational aspect. But direct experience confounds the interpreter who while desirous of the experience cannot but interpret. As in a Zen koan it is the frustration of the intellect that enables enlightenment to come. This is the problem with words. They have utility in spiritual practice, but silence has greater use, and it is that silence that as Shakespeare said:
“Silence is the perfectest heralder of joy;
I were but little happy if I could say how much.”
And there it is, the quote like a Zen koan subverts itself, whereas the state it has the potential to unveil inside the listener is the payload. This is the difficulty, and it is at the core of the Nasrudin story.
Experience is the point. It trumps words.
posted February 10, 2009 at 8:29 am
“But the reason that text overtook oral is that text is much more accurate. Yes, there were, and apparently are, some amazing people with really good memories, but even they must make mistakes when memorizing something sometimes. Text doesn’t. When it is something as important as life and death, heaven or hell, I want as much accuracy as possible.”
Actually, this is not at all true. In written traditions, mistakes creep in and, because no one has the texts memorized, those mistakes are far less likely to be caught and far more likely to be perpetuated. There are only a couple of written sacred texts that have shown high fidelity, the Vedas and the Hebrew Bible come to mind, but these have only been maintained because they are still transmitted as oral traditions. The writing is secondary.
posted February 10, 2009 at 9:48 am
It’s about balance, and I respectfully submit that certain details are being missed here.
Oral traditions carried an immensely strong emphasis on perfect memorization. This emphasis was an aspect of the oral tradition, not just a consequence. In that light, oral traditions were more reliable in carrying the exact words forward through time. Of course, there are instances where a person in the chain deliberately makes a change, but within oral culture that was rare.
There is a distinction between revealed and acquired (as I like to phrase it). Jerrac provides an example of how both are necessary. Jerrac, it’s not that pagans depend solely on the experiential. It’s that by comparison to holy-text based religions we consciously acknowledge it. I hasten to add that our lack of holy text also means we are imbalanced in the other direction.
posted February 10, 2009 at 10:03 am
“Jerrac, it’s not that pagans depend solely on the experiential. It’s that by comparison to holy-text based religions we consciously acknowledge it. I hasten to add that our lack of holy text also means we are imbalanced in the other direction.”
Even here, however, care has to be taken to to overgeneralize. Some pagan and heathen traditions do have sacred texts, or at least historically important sacred narratives against which they can measure and compare experiential inputs. Asatru, for instance, has a vast collection of sacred narratives that inform and temper other forms of learning about the divine. This provides considreable balance to the tradition overall, even though there are those who take rather extreme views on both sides of the equation.
posted February 10, 2009 at 10:10 am
ContraryCrow, the fact is that oral-type errors creep into written texts when they are translated from an original language.
The biblical commandment commonly rendered as “Thou shalt not kill” was originally written as “Murder shall not be done,” but badly translated. Murder is a narrow subset of killing in a society with constant wars and death penalties. The two gospels that deal with the birth of Jesus give different genealogies for his earthly father Joseph. Both have him descended from King David, but along different lines. This may be a trivial inconsistency for us, but it must have been significant to the people who wrote it or they wouldn’t have included it.
posted February 10, 2009 at 10:25 am
Tyrsson, excellent point. I would add that the term “narrative” can be construed as a written record of an oral tradition. Its value is in its (often inadequate, q.e.d.) replacement of oral transmission, especially when that oral tradition has weakened or disappeared. A document lives on despite the lack of people to be the conveyance.
posted February 10, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Rather than using a contrast of “oral” vs. “written text” in thinking about spiritual authority, maybe it’d be more useful to contrast “modern” vs. “post-modern” notions of understanding communications and content.
Those who hold that some communications modalities and content have no noise associated would probably look at oral messages from their deity in the same way that they regard text transcriptions from that deity.
Many Pagans hold to a much more relativistic and condidtional sense of communications and content, realizing that noise sometimes swamps intelligible content and that culture and chaos do play a part in the communications process.
As for not transcribing “secret” messages into text, the trend, thanks to portable communications technology, goes the other way. More “seret” stuff of all sorts is being turned into text or photos or videos. And distributed widely for the entertainment of all.
posted February 10, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Sacred texts have existed within some Pagan traditions, but none are like the Christian Bible in claims to importance and authority. This is why those traditions have been less filled with conflict. Myths serve some of the same purposes but, as Sallustius for one emphasized, they are complex, hard to interpret, and definitely not just stories. The Hindu texts are probably the closest analogues in a broad Pagan tradition, but are saved from some of the nasty effects of sacred texts because they do not enjoin turning other people into Hindus. The texts of Hermes Trismigestus might also be included here, with a similar caveat.
While the oral traditions placed great emphasis on remembering extraordinary material (this was also one of Thamuz’s objections to literacy: that it would undermine this capacity), paradoxically they are also more adaptable than written texts.
I give two examples. First a personal one. From time to time I have visited a Crow Sun Dance Priest on the Crow Indian reservation in southern Montana. He and I were talking one day and he said something like, “Gus, if I teach you to conduct sweat lodges, someday you will change them.”
I waited for the criticism to follow. It never came. Instead he said “And that’s just fine once you do them long enough to really understand them. That’s how you make it yours.”
In his book ‘Seeing Like a State,’ anthropologist James C. Scott writes that there are ‘age old’ African myths about the spirit of maize. But maize came to Africa after Columbus. Oral traditions appear static but are actually more fluid that written ones because they are more deeply rooted in experience, and in the time and place of their telling. They shift so the tradition is always that culture’s, as the sweat would have shifted were I to learn to conduct it. (I didn’t.)
The fluidity of modern Paganism is partly the result of our newness as a significant spiritual tradition. Sort of like when a new technology first arrives, there will be many attempts to adopt it. Over time the viable products narrow – but always remain adaptable and changing.
Something like this seems characteristic of Pagan spirituality. Anyone can start a ‘tradition.’ (This was also the case in the ancient world.) There is nothing preventing traditions from arising that claim to have sacred literature that is always 100% reliable, but they will quickly fragment into many different schools of interpretation – and while the old guard won’t like it, more broadly it is not a problem.
In Christianity for 2000 years it has ALWAYS been a problem.
A written text standardizes, and seeks to freeze a message at the time it is first given. But life, particularly spiritual life, is always changing, even if certain themes like love, death, and falling short of the ideal, are eternal.
Again, I am not criticizing sacred texts as a bad idea, I am emphasizing they are a dangerous tool. I am criticizing naive attempts to read them as providing objectively infallible transmissions. I think it is very significant that many of those who emphasized this reduce their spirituality to following rules. Those are by comparison to more complex things, reasonably easy to apply without judging their appropriateness to the occasion.
Whether that is wise spirituality is another matter.
So I for one am glad we do not have sacred texts of the sort the Abrahamic traditions have. They are happy with them. Fine. I am happy without them.