Recently in Social and Political Theory Category

This final section is where I think the bigger picture of how a Pagan perspective helps the modern world better address its problems comes together.  Look below the fold if you like political theory...

Liberals have often been accused of relying on an overly individualistic idea of who we are.  Liberals answer they are well aware we have social sides, but they (and their ritics) rarely question the nature of the individual self.  I think the Christian concept of a unitary self influenced by its environment but fundamentally distinct from it has colored and confused most all liberal thought.
         

The political posts that have often filled this blog have led me bit by bit into wondering how a Pagan perspective, taken seriously, changes the way we think about politics and society.  The more I delved into this, the more important the changes seemed to me.  My posts on Western irrationality and on conservatism were the first installments.  But liberalism also takes on a new look.      

The argument I am making about modernity's intimate connection to nihilism and irrationality is in many respects a classic conservative argument.  Yet conservatism is as infected with the virus of nihilism as the strains of modernity it perceptively criticizes.  (This is part of a project of mine investigating how a Pagan view of reality changes how we view the world - I will post another essay on liberalism soon.  I am an equal opportunity offender. )

 

UPDATE below.

Robert Mathiesen makes a very important point in his comment on my Fundamentalism and Irrationality post, one this blog might have failed to emphasize adequately because it's complex and because the 'Christian' Right is louder right now.  This mini-essay is an attempt to do the subject justice. 

The decline of confidence in reason and evidence as sources for eliminating error and approaching more reliable knowledge has not simply been among the religious right, though it is more visible there and more immediately threatening.   It is a core feature of secular modernity.  It is NOT confind to the religious right.  And it is coming to a worrisome fruition from many directions.

 

I just came across a fascinating anecdote that might shed light on something that has long fascinated and horrified me about my country.  At a recent town-hall meeting in Iowa a local weekly quizzed attendees as to whether or not...

As I promised, here is Part 2 of Robinson's post. In it she discusses what people can do in the short run to forestall things getting further out of hand than they are.  She promises a Part 3, that will...

UPDATE - links added.As often happens here, the issue I wanted to discuss has been all but lost from sight by issues my readers would rather discuss.  My argument as to why from a PAGAN perspective one should boycott Whole...

For most people the appeal of fascism is first and foremost to feel powerful, particularly to dominate those they blame for their sense of themselves being exploited.  But unlike many movements against oppression, fascist movements do not target those had...

Sebastopol had its annual fireworks show last night, on the 3rd.  (That way people can take in even more fireworks nearby, on July 4.)  Analy high school's athletic field and bleachers were filled by hordes of happy spectators celebrating our...

California is entering into a financial abyss, an abyss of its own creation.  The budgetary disaster that is eliminating health care and summer school for thousands of children, closing state parks, and leading to state workers and small businesses being...

I am amazed that I have heard so little as to why the purely private option no longer works for medical insurance and never will again.  The reason lies in the very logic of capitalism and the market.  While right...

Last week I went with a Pagan friend to the Marin Interfaith Council's meeting, to hear Barbara McGraw give a talk on church and state in America.  McGraw is author of Rediscovering America's Sacred Ground,  a very good discussion of...

I was intrigued with the finding in the Pew poll that those Americans who did NOT go to church were the most opposed to torture.  Over 60 percent of white evangelical Protestants supported torture, the highest percent of ll groups...

We now have quite strong statistical evidence that conservative Republicans are way out of step with the rest of the country with regard to how they see empathy as a virtue.  Daily Kos commissioned two polls, with fascinating findings, here ...

A few blog commentators have wondered whether I might be walking close to the line, or even stepping over it, in describing the enablers of murder as moral monsters who are committing treason against the United States.  I appreciate their...

When I first was made to know, in no uncertain terms, that the earth and everything in it was vastly more sentient than I had ever imagined, I looked long and hard for writings that could shed more light on...

The recent plethora of books by militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is beginning to generate a good deal of return fire from people writing within the Christian tradition, either as sophisticated adherents or writers...

I have been taken to task for my curt response to Mike who responded to my post on John Boehner and torture.  My reply has grown to being a small post of its own that I hope will interest a...

Trying to integrate spirituality and politics as this blog attempts gets frustrating.  Real frustrating.  Politics is a little context compared to spirit, but it can so easily come to dominate our attention.It's sort of like when I hit my thumb...

Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, and others like the are seeking to destroy the United States by replacing citizenship with tribalism.  I do not think most of them intend this consequence, but they are so intoxicated by their self-righteousness...

While I suspect Iowa's Supreme Court ruling went well beyond the current moral capacities of many of that state's citizens, their unanimous ruling establishing the right of gay marriage is a wonderful one.  And as usual, the culture warriors are...

The New York Times today has an article on how key members of the American Catholic hierarchy had been warned by their own experts as early as 1952 not to reinstate pedophile priests because they could not be cured, and...

Glen Greenwald over at Salon has an important post  for anyone interested in understanding our economic crisis, and the shortcomings even Democrats have in dealing with it.  George Bush treated this country like a banana republic.  But Argentina might be...

The latest scandal with AIG, the upcoming paying $165 million in bonuses to executives managing a company needing the largest taxpayer financed bailout in world history.  To make matters worse, some recipients of this money are in the very unit...

This is my first post on the issue of why I am very skeptical of having a Pagan clergy.  I will come at it on an angle.To have an official 'clergy' is to have some organizational structure with authority to...

Courtesy the Huffington Post, this piece by Frank Schaeffer is worth the read....

Because I was very critical of President Obama's  trying to defend some of the twisted logic and even more twisted morals of the Bush administration regarding the fate of innocent people tortured under American authority, I want to praise, praise....

I have long been perplexed, and more than perplexed, by the seeming contradiction between the more intelligent right wingers' stirring defenses of 'freedom,' 'the rule of law,' and 'small government' and their cheer-leading for George Bush, who under-mined these values...

Pantheacon coverage will return shortly - I gotta catch a plane.Markets are wonderful means by which people can make voluntary exchanges.  They are indispensable servants.  But when they become our masters all values are subordinated to enabling the most ruthless...

For me, one of the hardest things about being a Pagan is living in a society where nothing has value in itself.  Our world is believed to be made up of things - people occasionally exempted unless they are in...

I've been spending the weekend at a conference on spontaneous orders, also known as complex adaptive, emergent, or self-organizing systems.  In the human world what those terms, and some equivalent ones, point to is how certain kinds of order can...

There has been a lot of discussion as to whether newspapers as they currently exist can survive the age of the internet.  I want to suggest that no, they won't, and further, that this is a good thing.  A very...

One of my favorite blogs, Balloon Juice, brought my attention to an article reporting research demonstrating that a perception of personal powerlessness leads to a greater tendency towards superstition, conspiracy theories, and false conclusions.  I think this has enormous implications...

I have recently seen many discussions by conservatives, real and feigned, attempting to analyze the collapse of the Republican Party at the polls and the apparent repudiation of 'conservatism', with no sign of any improvement in the next elections in...

One reason I wanted this site was to serve as a place where much of my published work could be made easily available.  Some hacker removed it a while ago and left junk.  It has taken me a while to...

               All wars suffer casualties on both sides.  Worse, there is always substantial collateral damage.  The wars against liberal civilization, both hot and cold, that punctuated the Twentieth Century were no exception.  Liberalism emerged triumphant,...

George Bush has left a fearful wreckage behind him.  Most of those who will read this blog will think of our constitution, justice system, military, foreign policy, health policy, and environmental policy as examples, and you will not be wrong. ...

Friday July 25 I will be giving a talk at Many Rivers Books and Tea in Sebastopol. California. The talk is titled The Divine Feminine and the Crisis of Modernity. This talk interprets the contemporary political and social crisis in...

The following was on Atrios today. A Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted U.S. inmate cleared by DNA...

The Bush years have increasingly worried me that our political system has entered into terminal old age, where members of a self-perpetuating ruling elite become fixated on their perks and privileges while utterly losing touch with the rest of the...

Courtesy of Glenn Greenwald at Salon, we find that the corporate media has reported on the major issues facing Americans with the following emphasis: In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by...

I will appreciate it if anyone has thoughtful criticisms of the following. Ideologues unconcerned with actual events need not waste their (and my) time. We have seen that Wall Street has both helped itself to enormously disproportionate incomes due to...

One of the most important developments in the modern world is the rise of democracies to becoming the dominant part of the world's population, and economic and military power. The chief reason this unprecedented development is important is that only...

The Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation is seeking papers exploring the theme "ORDERS AND BORDERS" for its Second Conference on Emergent Order and Society Selected papers will be presented at a conference...

Some time ago The Pomegranate, a Pagan academic journal, printed an attack on Paganism and deep ecology by Bookchinite Peter Staudenmaier: "Fascist Ecology: The 'Green Wing" of the Nazi party and its Historical Antecedents." Staudenmaier's article appeared in issue No....

The photograph on the right is of a Moslem suicide bomber, holding a Koran. But the photograph on the left is of US soldiers holding a Bible. The similarity is not accidental. All see themselves as warriors for God....

The obvious failings of our court system have encouraged some free market theorists to support binding arbitration a more efficient alternative. In doing so many of the greates failings of classical liberal thought come to a head: its lack of...

While Huckabee and Romney are teaching religious bigotry, a more painful but also more hopeful story emerged from New York City, where some of their spiritual students attempted putting their attitudes into practice. Walter Adler was with his girlfriend...

Today I saw two related stories, one awful, but also inspiring, the other disgusting, but expected. I will make two separate posts from them, but they belong together The disgusting-but-expected one is the current dust up between Southern Baptist...

My post is short - but this link from Glenn Greenwald at Salon explains all that needs explaining. The mainstream corporate media is one of the greatest threats to the survival of American democracy. Every day its behavior demonstrates why...

Pop!Tech 2007, like Pop!Tech 2006, offered a wonderful array of creative people doing fascinating and vitally important work in that realm where society, culture, and technology come together. One of the most important at many levels was a talk...

http://www.peterkuper.com/stock_jpgs_j/images/dissent_j.jpg UPDATED 11/15, 11/29 I've been thinking about the following for some time. Not many links right now, but there likely will be. And as I do I will update and move this post forward. Historically governments generally lasted...

My favorite "hard science" blog, by physicist and science fiction writer David Brin, has the following questions anyone should ask conservatives who claim to love their country: "* WOULD YOUR HACKLES RAISE IF IT WERE DEMOCRATS WHO... "...insist that it...

All the blustering over Iran and the bomb encourages Americans to think that Iran's getting nuclear weapons is a disaster for the United States. The argument is not just wrong, it is stupidly wrong. First, there already is an Islamic...

The Washington Post has just reported the infant formula industry hired Republican lobbyists to dampen a federal government campaign to increase breast feeding in the US. Early breast feeding is connected with lower rates of asthma and diabetes, but also...

One of the most interesting things intellectually about the rise of the net is how the gift economy is pushing into turf long dominated by the commodity economy. See here and here. Today this is particularly the case with news,...

http://www.getcalhoun.com/news/ccgazette/ccgissue1/HoneyGoodForAllergies!.htm Last week I had the opportunity to taste three different local Sonoma County honeys. I was amazed at the differences between them. One even tasted strongly of butterscotch! Apparently honey is powerfully influenced by the nectar bees use in...

www.eggtempera.com/bergt/leda.html Update: Aug. 13. In the post below I suggested the key issue underlying the seeming confusions over what the political "Left" and political "Right" mean is their different evaluations of hierarchy. I became interested in this issue while...

(Update on Aug. 5) The terms "Left" and "Right" first arose during the French Revolution. At the time they had very distinct meanings as to political loyalties. Since then the terms have remained but their meanings have become progressively more...

Last October I heard Juan Enriquez give a stimulating talk on why national identity was a brand name loyalty to which could never taken for granted. I blogged about his talk here. The July/August issue of Orion has a...

The radical right rarely takes people on concerning the facts of an issue because so often the facts rebut their positions. Character assassination is so much more fun. The latest smear by those who thinking caring for the well...

Rachel Carson has never been forgiven by the chemical industry or the right wing for her efforts to educate the public on the downside of trying to solve pest problems with DDT. When I was invited to attend a...

A 3700 mile drive gives a person a lot of time to think without much interruption. And that's about the distance I drove from far upstate New York to my present landing in Sonoma County, California. Among all those...

For many of us who are deeply concerned with environmental issues the most frustrating part of our struggle is that while public opinion is largely in our favor, the modern world's basic institutions are biased against us. They dance...

Politically, perhaps the most important talk given at Pop!tech was Juan Enriquez on "Transformation in Power Systems." Enriquez is a businessman, academician, and best selling author. Curently he is chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy, a company researching and assisting...

The contemporary "conservative" right is an expression of pathological patriarchy. This movement makes the most extreme case for subordinating women and feminine values to their supposedly manly way of life. But, and in a grim sort of way this...

UPDATES BELOW. A California friend sent me the following post by Don Boudreaux, chair of the Dept. of Economics at Virginia's George Mason University. Boudreaux had sent it to the Washington Times, apparently in response to an editorial. Cool reception...

David Brin, my favorite militant secularist, has some wise words on politics today on his blog. (Other than his usual little poke at the spiritual. But that is another discussion.) Among them are: All you have to do is imagine...

My blog has been silent for a while. First was the end of the semester rush, as papers, exams, and deadline piled on. Winter break then took me to Maine and Quebec, where I learned to ski (barely) at a...

Stewart Brand is one of the most fascinating thinkers and doers to arise form the 60s. From his early involvement with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, here and here, to his editing the Whole Earth Catalog and Co-Evolution...

Over at Liberty and Power I've started a discussion as to whether there is such a thing as the democratic peace - that democracies are unique among forms of government in that they do not fight wars with one another....

One of the greatest losses to clear thinking in America has been the demonization of the term "liberal." All that is best in America is entirely the outcome of or compatible with liberal values and liberal political principles. The...

Many Pop!Tech participants found Thomas Barnett's presentation the most exciting of the conference. I am more critical for reasons to be explained below, but his was among the best overviews on America's future place in the world that I...

What follows is the basis of a talk I will give at a teach in here at St. Lawrence University Friday, Nov, 3, as a part of a Save Our Constitution gathering of students, faculty, and members of the...

Last week, from October 18 to 21, I was a participant at Pop!Tech's 10th annual meeting in Camden, Maine. For those who do not know, and most do not, Pop!Tech was initiated by Bob Metcalfe and John Sculley to...

Bad Judgment added to Bad theory Those seeking to remake the world need to be able to judge wisely. Unfortunately we are not blessed to have such leadership. Bill Kristol's judgment on matters of war and peace is akin to...

Societies cannot be simply rebuilt into the form we want. Democratic societies require a foundation of attitudes and beliefs that penetrate deeply into their culture. Even Thomas Jefferson, probably among the most enthusiastic of democrats, wrote soberly and perceptively of...

This is the first of a three part post on Neoconservatives, democracy, and war. Neoconservatives have gotten our country into unprecedented trouble, and seem intent on expanding the scope of their errors and crimes still further. In their vision of...

Recent years have seen the mainstream media's ability to serve the public by keeping tabs on Washington wither under the combination of corporate priorities, over paid and lazy talking heads, and sophisticated manipulation by the President's media managers. It had...

I plan to write several essays on how emergent order changes the context and character of liberal thought. These essays will not be scholarly in that they will not have footnotes and the like. Instead, here and in some posts...