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.
This blog is an active
participant in the Culture War being waged in the US. But I often find myself in a strange position, as many other
Pagans likely do. I frequently
seem to shift sides. I want to
describe how I see what I am doing in this respect, and then recommend a book
written by an undercover atheist about Evangelicals as promoting a better and
hopefully more compassionate view of one another.
On the one hand we have no choice
but to push back on the attempts by many Evangelicals and conservative Christians to demonize us, and entrench their demonization
into the law, Whether in the schools or the prisons
or the military, even a single victory to the haters will give them a precedent
to push further because there are no logical limits to their creed’s hold over
people until it has come to dominate all of society. It is fundamentally totalitarian in this respect. The Enlightenment brought this
totalitarian urge under control.
But…
But on the other hand, the
secular scientistic world view that sees religion as a atavistic holdover from
an earlier time is simply wrong.
It’s not even close to the truth. I see modern secularism as itself
deeply myopic, and when its internal implications have come to fruit, as they
are doing today, tending in most of its forms towards nihilism and the worship
of power. In this conclusion I
find I am often at one with the conservative Christians who denounce us!
Yet conservative Christian
leaders claim to have the only answer to modernity’s crisis, and argue other ways
should be eliminated. Including
ours. This is so even though this
crisis grew, historically, from abuses of power in which the Christian Church
had for so long indulged. In other
words, a narrowly Christian response will not solve the problem with modernity
that they have correctly identified because their own excesses helped create it.
To continue with the inner
tensions to which I try and give fair treatment in this blog…
On the one hand, through science
secular modernity has expanded our knowledge of the physical world far beyond
anything existing prior to it. And
through the establishment of relatively free institutions has done wonders in
lifting people from the mire of poverty and oppression that characterized the
lot of most for thousands of years.
We are all, every one of us, the deep beneficiaries of science and the
rest of secular modernity.
On the other hand, by increasing
our power over nature without an increase in wisdom to match that power, we are
heading pell mell towards ecological problems that may well be catastrophic.
The scientists who have enabled us to use that power lack the ability to
convince many of the power besotted that they need to use it wisely. The power drunk love science when it
increases their power and loath it when it urges restraint and wisdom.
On the one hand, modern
technology has created unparalleled means by which people can cooperate for the
general good. Communication is
easier and faster than ever before, such that a guy sitting in his apartment in
Sebastopol can make his thought available to anyone around the world, and
neither of us pays more than the time we take to write them, or read them.
On the other, this technology has
devised methods of social control that can challenge the very free institutions
that enabled modernity to flower.
The very speed of modern life makes it harder to see larger contexts,
and our constant immersion in stimulation impedes our personal experience of
the solitude from which genuine wisdom can grow. The ease with which we can select the points of view we want to encounter enables us to live in worlds ever more separated from people different from us.
The world of Spirit tells us, and
I am in complete agreement, that we will never devise a good society that
relies on the “invisible hand” or impersonal principles or the rule of law
alone to create a good world, or even to safeguard the world we have. We need to choose and act within a
bigger context of value and meaning, one that comes primarily from our hearts,
and as such is available to all.
The heart offers a corrective and guide that limits the errors we commit
through ignorance. Spirit helps
many of us in this respect, but atheists can have hearts as generous as those
of many people of Spirit.
My position in the culture war is
a middle one. On the one hand I argue for respecting science and scientists, on
the other I argue for respecting spirituality and the many ways it manifests
and is celebrated in people’s lives.
In this I think I am in harmony with the basic thrust of Pagan
spirituality.
The separation of church and
state is vital because not doing so infects the churches with the spirit of
domination as some succumb to the lure of power. In addition, a religiously complex world
does a better job of celebrating the different ways Spirit manifests in this
world. Finslly, the separation
of church and state serves to protect religious organizations from the influence of
politicians who would seek to wrap their personal ambitions in the camouflage
of sanctity.
So I think we Pagans occupy an
important middle ground between the two contending sides of secular modernity
and conservative religion. We can help blur dichotomies that are
ripping our society apart. I think
that is important, because war depends on maintaining dichotomies. That is why the Republican Right is so
focused on it. I think this is why it is so vital to undermine that effort
wherever possible.
It is easy for those of us
wrapped up in this struggle to demonize the other side, based on the lies and
excesses of their leaders. Even
some of these leaders may otherwise be decent people who have become so blinded by
their theories that they fail to see evidence that does not fit their
preconceptions. Some of what to us
are lies may simply be theologically distorted perceptions. Sadly, this tendency is a threat for
Pagans as much as for anyone else.
Perhaps even more importantly, in the midst of these struggles many
people who are not leaders pick sides based on personal friendships, family,
community, and ignorance of the other side. The result is conflict serving no positive end, and I think
our country is threatened by it.
I think a book I have just
discovered discussed in Huffingtonpost may be an important source of understanding
of “the other side.” It is Gina Welch’s In the Land of Believers: An Outsider’s
Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church. She spent a year “undercover” deep
within an Evangelical Christian community. Not every Evangelical thinks she described them free from
outside stereotypes, because there is variety among Evangelicals as there is
everywhere else. But they
generally seem convinced they were treated fairly. Those of us who practice interfaith work, or who
simply desire to know more about the goodness in people who both misunderstand
and loathe our own faith, would likely benefit from reading it. I plan to do so.
posted March 11, 2010 at 4:01 pm
That is why I tell people to read: “New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought” by Wouter J. Hanegraaff.
“All New Age religion is characterized by a criticism of dualistic and reductionistic tendencies in (modern) western culture, as exemplified by (what is emically perceived as) dogmatic Christianity, on the one hand, and rationalistic/scientistic ideologies, on the other. It believes that there is a “third option” which rejects neither religion and spirituality nor science and rationality, but combines them in a higher synthesis. It claims that the two trends which have hitherto dominated western culture (dogmatic Christianity and an equally dogmatic rational/scientistic ideology) have been responsible for the current world crisis, and that the latter will only be resolved if and when this third option becomes dominant in society.”
posted March 11, 2010 at 11:03 pm
Please read this book!: http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Online-Finding-Faith-Internet/dp/0415970229
posted March 12, 2010 at 5:42 am
“through science secular modernity has expanded our knowledge of the physical world far beyond anything existing prior to it. And through the establishment of relatively free institutions has done wonders in lifting people from the mire of poverty and oppression that characterized the lot of most for thousands of years. ”
The two effects of secular modernity, (i) science and technology, and (ii) “liberal”/Englightenment politics, are not necessarily linked. Also, neither are unambiguously good.
Technology: Authors like John Zerzan and Kirkpatrick Sale argue that technology is, on the whole, a bad thing. They also argue that Europe was much more technophile than other cultures, even more sophisticated ones like China, as early as the 1300s. I can’t make up my mind about this sort of thing.
Enlightenment politics: Basically, I agree that these are good. However, I do think something is lost by rejection of ideas of noblesse oblige. Look at the Jacobite Revolts; the reason why people get so obsessed with that era of history is that they stood for clan loyalty and sacral kingship, in contrast with the more Enlightenment values of the Hanoverians.
Another point, that I don’t think gets stressed enough, is that science, and indeed the whole Western-materialist worldview, is not entirely opposed to Christianity, but in fact grew out of Christianity, especially Protestantism. The principal early ideologue of this perspective was Francis Bacon, and his justification was explicitly Christian. It is Christianity that desacralised the material world, and thus made it fit for unlimited analysis and manipulation, without concern about hubris. This also links with DesCartes’ teachings about animals being unconscious. In “Religion and the Decline of Magic” and “Man and Nature: ENgland 1500 to 1800″, the author explores the ways that mediaeval Pagan-ish Christianity was replaced with modern full Christianity. That was also the peak period for witch trials, which may be related – recent authors like Thomas DuBois, “Introduction to Shamanism”, are now tending back to the Margaret-Murray-ish view that early-modern witches were shamans.
Finally, it’s worth poiting out that technology has in other cultures developed without the accompanying Western-scientism. In China, for example, fairly sophisticated technology developed within the context of an animist-Taoist perspective (see Joseph Needham’s “Science and Civilisation in China”). There were also tribal peoples that had specific technologies that were highly sophisticated. For example, the Polynesians could sail faster than any Western ships until the advent of steam. My point here is that technology is not necessarily dependent on an analytical approach.
posted March 12, 2010 at 7:05 am
If you are willing to buy real estate, you will have to receive the mortgage loans. Moreover, my sister all the time uses a credit loan, which supposes to be really useful.
posted March 12, 2010 at 11:05 am
Rombald- You raise some interesting points about science and Christianity that I think I’ll explore in a separate post. But if you read carefully what I wrote, the point is that everything on both sides is ambiguous, hence the importance of a Pagan position that ca look at both in ways sympathetic and critical.
posted March 12, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Dear Gus:
There is one aspect of scientific culture that disturbs me and that I’ve never encountered an adequate discussion of. That is the seemingly compulsive nature of scientific research. I mean compulsive in the sense that scientists will investigate and experiment regardless of the consequences of the research. And for the most part, if the consequences are negative, they disown responsibility for those consequences, even when they can be foreseen.
The strongest example of this consists of the numerous scientists who have been, and are currently, engaged in refining weapons of mass destruction. This is a large segment of the scientific community. It baffles me that a human being would spend their energy, their time, their life, engaged in such a pursuit. The only explanation I can think of is that research in and of itself is considered to be some kind of ultimate value. But in truth, such an impulse is so alien to me I have difficulty empathizing.
This, of course, isn’t the whole of scientific culture. But it is an aspect that, I think, needs to be taken into account in these kinds of discussions.
Best wishes,
Jim
posted March 12, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Gus, in the hope that it would garner a wider audience, I passed this thread along to your fellow Bnet blogger Rod Dreher. He just posted about it at http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/03/a-pagan-an-undercover-atheist-and-common-ground.html
If I have time (I expect to be working this weekend), I’ll return with my comments. Be well.
posted March 13, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Thank you Franklin, and my thanks also to Rod Dreher.
I only wish my editing had caught various typos and similar errors I just saw as I read through it. I think I’ll do a few edits, but nothing that influences the contents. When I write an article for a journal or such, I usually have to go through 5 to 10 edits before it’s ready, and with my blog, I go through two. Ah, well, it’s the message that matters most.
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