Dreamer Easy

Weddings legalised for Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in New Zealand (ABC, 1 March 2016) These guys aren't just in danger of becoming an actual religion - they already are one! Check back in twenty years and see if there hasn't been at least factional in-fighting.

.. always full of interest, particularly when it comes to what we may reasonably call my religion, which is Eclectic Wiccan with a Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian influences and a large dose of Zen Buddhism. I like to observe my spontaneous responses to religious and philosophical questions raised by the letter writers.

Quoth one in the 24 May 2014 edition: "religion instils a fear that god is watching everything we do". Wicca doesn't really have a concept of sin or damnation - although I did apologise for throwing out some takeaway containers this evening instead of recycling them, as if doing so guiltily under a disapproving supernatural eye. Perhaps I've absorbed that idea from the surrounding culture, just as much of my swearing is filthily Christian.

Here's another, about "the use of unclaimed bodies for medical science... One would have to look long and hard to find a more straightforward and sensible use of an unclaimed dead body, yet here [in an article in a previous issue] we have an educated person who takes issue with this practice since, rather obviously, there has been no informed consent." Now there are various counter-arguments, such as the idea that the body is property, and the possibility of the body's being claimed by grieving relatives too late.

But the thought popped straight into my head: the body is sacred. That's a very basic idea in Wicca, and in Neo-Paganism generally. In a previous posting I talked about "the well-being of bodies"; imagine living in a culture which held that as its highest goal, one which above all valued safe water and good nutrition, adequate medical care, and freedom from violence for everyone. (Imagine living in a culture where the use of the hand or the penis to cause harm is seen as a desecration of the perpetrator's body!) Out of these values arise the idea that a corpse is not a natural resource, like a tree or a coal vein, but part of a person. For the letter-writer, corpses are presumably a massive scientific resource only going to waste because loved ones and indeed the dying themselves are blocking their use.

The question now becomes: is this my thinking because it arises from Wiccan ideas, or is it just a a gut reaction to what seems like a heartless attitude, and I've rationalised it with Wiccan ideas ex post facto?

ETA: Three images just came into my mind. One, from the South Korean movie Brotherhood of War; at the beginning, remains are being excavated from a Korean War battlefield, and in a brief shot we see that at the site of each discovered body is laid a white chrysanthemum. Two, also from SK, but from the news: the recovery of hundreds of bodies, most of them teenagers, from the sunken ferry the MV Sewol. Each body was placed in a coffin, draped in a flag, and saluted. These gestures of caring and respect remind me of my paternal grandparents' Catholic funerals, at which the grandchildren were invited to place an object atop the closed coffin. I remember placing my hand atop my grandfather's coffin for a moment, too. Clearly, for very many people, even a stranger's corpse is more than just a convenient collection of organs.

The introduction to Melissa Raphael's 2000 book Introducting Thealogy naturally talks a lot about the body and the embodiment of experience, by contrast with the disembodied abstractions of traditional religions for which the body and especially the female body are profane: "the female body is sacred; it incarnates the Goddess to such a degree that sacred space is simply that which the body's being-there sacralizes"; it can be "celebrated and revered" "as a part of that divine female body which is the earth or nature itself".

These are familiar ideas, but the sentence that struck me hard was this: "The well-being of bodies becomes a sign of the health of their spiritual, political and ecological environment."

Imagine a world based on that value system - one where the well-being of bodies (and minds, as Raphael makes clear) is the goal and the measure of a culture or society. The more you think about it, the more staggering it becomes, the more institutions it consumes - pollution, bombs, detention centres, hospital queues, addiction, clean water, guns, homelessness, even junk food - the list just goes on and on. This could not be a world in which society decries sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, and simultaneously tolerates them.

I am powerfully reminded that, despite criticism that Goddess feminism is a distraction from "real" politics, it is in fact profoundly political.

While sitting around in the ER a few weeks ago, waiting for my swollen tootsies to be triaged (a harmless if alarming medication side effect, as it turned out), I did a little triage of my own – reading some of Kitsch (edited by Gillo Dorfles - translated from the Italian by person or persons unknown). Skip it? Keep it? Extract its knowledgy goodness and pass it on?

In the process I came across several interesting points. The editor argues that, up until very recently, there could be no such thing as "bad taste" when it came to art:

"In ages other than our own, particularly in antiquity, art had a completely different function compared to modern times; it was connected with religious, ethical or political subject matter, which made it in a way 'absolute', unchanging, eternal (always of course within a given cultural milieu)."

Defining kitsch, Dorfles remarks, "it is a problem of individuals who believe that art should only produce pleasant, sugary feelings... in no case should it be a serious matter, a tiring exercise, an involved and critical activity..." Kitsch-lovers he adds, "will judge Raphael as if he were a painter of picture postcards". Kitsch is inferior imitation of art which substitutes sentiment for emotion.

Well, the idea of kitsch as comfortable cutesiness wasn't new to me, and it's easy to sniff at others' taste (the whole book is, inevitably, full of snobbery). What struck me was Dorfles' assertion about "the kitsch aspect in works of today or yesterday which not only clash with our own alleged good taste, but which represent a basically false interpretation of the aesthetic trends of their age". If you will, kitsch is that which aims for art, and misses.

The book covers multiple areas in which kitschy art is liable to be found, including sex, death, and religion. (I turned a page while reading on the bus and was aghast to find myself facing several awful examples of pornokitsch.) "The image of death needs vigor and severity," writes Dorfles, "innocence and putrefaction, blacks and whites; it certainly needs no half tints, sky blues, pinks, angels' wings, frilly chapels or sterilized technology devoid of any real ethical meaning."

In his chapter on Christian kitsch, Karl Pawek remarks, "There has been an enormous loss of substance in Christianity... It is the result of a centuries-old watering-down of the current theological spirit and consciousness. It would not have been possible at the time of the consciousness of mystery which prevailed during the first centuries of the Christian era..." This watering-down resulted in "the substitution of something sweet and nice for something extremely powerful, of secondary for primary, of the psychic and moral Christian event for the objective, ontological event." Now if I'm understanding what this guy is saying, for the earliest Christians, the reality of the divine and its intervention on Earth was profound and immediate, and that's been lost – inevitably? – over so many centuries. (I remember a Catholic friend telling me the Omen movies spooked him because they made it all seem real.) Perhaps the New Age movement is the kitsch version of Neo-Paganism – though gods know we produce plenty of kitsch ourselves.

"The second criterion of a carpet's beauty is as elusive and whimsical as the first is concrete. Once a dealer is done scratching and mauling the carpet to determine the density of its weave, he will flip it over and inspect the pile itself. He will not be appraising the elegance of the design. No. He will be looking for proof of human fallibility, the prized idiosyncrasies that make each rug impossible to replicate, unique. He will be looking for mistakes. A devout Muslim will tie a few errant knots on purpose, for a flawless design would challenge the perfection of God."

— Anna Badkhen, The World is a Carpet

When I read this, I thought of the tiny flaws in the fabric of space and time, the quantum irregularities in the Big Bang, the "galaxy seeds" without which the universe would be empty and boring. Maybe it isn't possible to have a Creation without those "errant knots".

These links dumps tend to be pretty grouchy, so let me kick off with some great news: despite initial reports, the manuscripts of Timbuktu were not destroyed during the militants' occupation. :D

Divisive asylum debate will return for election year. *bangs head on desk* FIX THE PROBLEM, JULIA. Instead of another race to the bottom, process the refugees stuck in Indonesia and Malaysia, and bring them here - thus defusing the whole thing as an election issue. Perhaps in the meantime the UN's scathing report on conditions at Manus Island (in which 34 children now live) might force some changes... but don't hold your breath. (But do let the Minister for Immigration know what you think.) The boys are being held behind chicken wire in Tasmania are arguably better off. (btw, the Refugee Council of Australia has a ton of info.)

As horrible as all that is, we're having an election late this year, and the Opposition propose to help the Sri Lankan government stop refugees from escaping.

10 Pro-Gun Myths, Shot Down. The graphics'll mess with you.

Texans support assault weapons ban. (In other US news that may surprise you, I stumbled across a blog entry from last year about evangelical Christians supporting contraception as a way to reduce abortion.)

From last year, here's ann_leckie summarising the entire spectrum of unwanted sexual behaviour in a sentence: "I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU WANT AS LONG AS I GET WHAT I'M AFTER."

I don't suffer from writers' block, and am in fact suspicious of the whole concept, but if so many great writers have good advice on dealing with it, maybe it's for real.

Obama announces widest gun control measures in 18 years. Oh yes, it's on for young and old. The plan includes fixing the holes in the background checks system and reinstating the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines - and also, incredibly, permitting research on gun violence by agencies like the Centers for Disease Control. I am a little wary of the mental health component of the plan, since sane people are also spree killers; but if it really does provide sorely lacking mental health services, what the hell.

Religious organisations, which include some of Australia's largest employers will be able to continue discriminating against gays, transgender and intersex people, and other sinners. (This guy, however, is just fine. ETA: He has subsequently been removed.) Although these organisations rely on government funding, the discriminatees will still have to pay the same tax as everyone else. Here's a cracking response from Joumanah El Matrah, who points out that the "right" to discriminate just shores up the power of an increasingly irrelevant conservative minority and their obsessions, ultimate reducing religion to "a collection of petty bigotries". "I believe in Australia's commitment to diversity and human dignity," she writes, "and I do not want any tear in that fabric in my name as a person of faith." (Both the Uniting Church and the charity Anglicare reject religious discrimination.)

Mum punches student, threatens staff over 'bullied' daughter. I'm keen to know whether the daughter was in fact the target of racist bullying - and why the school suspended her after she complained about it. Alas, none of these details are present in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal judgment.

The slashed single parent payment has some Australian mothers turning to sex work.

Cats in the news: Orlando beats professional wealth managers with his stock picks. | Brazilian prison inmates trained a stray cat to smuggle in escape tools. The cat, which was caught with small saws, drills, a cell phone, etc, taped to its body, was placed into the care of vets. Authorities wittily remarked that they didn't know which prisoners were responsible as the cat wasn't talking.* | In a not entirely dissimilar story, a Japanese hacker taunted police with clues attached to a cat's collar. (I found footage: the collar was removed, and the feral cat, unimpressed with the entire business, ran away.)

Science! Fisher-Price Synesthesia: as well as the magic brain wiring which makes us colour-grapheme synaesthetes superior to you mere humans, there's evidence for a learned component. (My own colours don't match the Fisher-Price letters, nor the Gattengo chart which was present in my primary school.)

* No, I can't read Portuguese! But Google Translate will give you the gist. "The cat, considered by management of the prison as the most innocent of history, was referred to the Center for Zoonoses the city, where it will be held, not in prison, but to receive the veterinary care."

I keep chucking things in the unsorted links dump, but then adding comments, which probably means they belong in an actual posting, eg:

The case against legalising same-sex marriage

A useful summary. It becomes ever clearer that the issue, at base, is not sexuality but gender.

Speaking of which, I don't understand this case at all. Why would any boxer suspected of taking steroids be allowed to go ahead and fight? (I suspect that, as so often with the press, there's a ton of context missing.)

Moreover:

It's out with the old as Christian values fall away

An interesting argument: if care of the elderly is a Judaeo-Christian thing, and Australians are becoming both older and less Christian, what will this mean for older Australians in the future? I do think one of the best aspects of Christianity are its radical egalitarian teachings; and as a Pagan I entirely grasp the value that the concept of sacredness confers, whether on individual human beings or nature as a whole - a value which, obviously, only spirituality can bestow.

Nonetheless, I don't entirely buy John Dickson's argument. The widow and the orphan are such conspicuous concerns for non-Abrahamic ancient societies such as the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians. And the UDHR (in particular, Article 25) already provides the non-religious "solid intellectual ground" for care of the elderly. Frustratingly, I know too little about Ancient Greece or Rome to assess Dickson's characterisation of their treatment of the aged.

None of which is getting the filing sorted out.

ETA: Despite which, here, have some more related links:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/using-birth-control-will-cut-deaths-study-finds-20120710-21tuq.html Y'think?

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/beliefs-must-be-tempered-by-facts-20120617-20i3t.html - "But we now know, or have increasingly strong reasons to believe, that people are born gay or lesbian. Far from this being unnatural for them, it is an example of God's creative handiwork."

http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-teen-pregnancy-rate-falls-to-lowest-level-in-decades-20120411-1ws5t.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/19/myths-about-rape-conviction-rates

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/apr/05/us-sexual-humiliation-political-control

"‘The one true Christian doctrine is original sin,’ he says. ‘The fact that we are screwed-up creatures. We are neither completely animals nor are we completely mature minds — we are the strange dual creature which is why we are capable of terrible kindness and terrible evil.'" - former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, interviewed in The Spectator

It's the basic question any religion has got to tackle - why is everything so screwed up? Why are we so screwed up? (Holloway also discusses literal truth, the business of fundamentalists and atheists, and the more "muddled" truth of metaphor and narrative, comparing the truths of Christianity to Greek myth.)

Clearing out a few bookmarks:

An Australian poll held in December last year gives a picture of our faith today: "God is not dead in Australia. Rumours of his failing powers are exaggerated. Disbelief is growing, but God thrives. The default setting of this country is faith. We are not the rational country we thought we were. More Australians believe in miracles, angels, heaven and ESP than in Darwin's theory of evolution." Plus some analysis.

In the meantime, though, new UK research shows significant decline in institutional Christianity - you can find the full report at the British Social Attitudes survey site.