Religion and politics
I just got through another batch of scathing emails.
Even though I am deliberately not high profile as pagans go, I attract attention. Especially since my views are not always politically correct.
When I started blogging, I separated my political stuff from my pagan stuff. I did it after a lot of soul searching. It would have been so simple to wrap everything into a giant ball of victimhood and blame the world for my troubles. It would have saved me the hosting fees too. Two things stopped me.
Even then, I was beginning to despise the politics of victimhood. In 2005 I didn't have it completely worked out in my head, but I knew there were certain behaviors that annoyed me. I finally worked it out that the message of victimhood meant that the victim would have to stay a victim, no matter what. No tales of heroism, no adversity overcome, no triumph of wisdom and knowledge, just a victim.
Always a victim, always dependent on the guilty pity of others, always less than human.
The second thing was the hunch that politics usually corrupted things.
If every there was a group that should have known that from the beginning, it was pagans and particularly American pagans. We had seen firsthand exactly what it had done to the People of the Book when they tried to mix politics with religion. Why should it be different if we did it?
But, but the personal is political.
Codswallop.
Politics is about controlling other people. Not about influencing, not about changing their mind, but controlling.
As in if the other guy doesn't do what you say, he gets a gun pointed at his head and is told "…or else!!!"
It's a dirty rotten stinking business. I'm better at it than any amateur has a right to be. The only justification I can give is that my goal is that people choose for themselves.
Even if I don't like their choice.
And that brings us to the group of radical feminists that I've started calling FamousFeminists. Their goal is fame and control, in that order. They aren't women and they aren't True Ladies. They are females who claim victimhood in the freest nation in the World.
Mostly their victimhood is because the Patriarchal Conspiracy won't make men do what the FamousFeminists demand that they do.
None of this matters EXCEPT these misguided females demand I bow before their demands.
It's not going to happen, not even when they invoke the Sacred Cause of Pagan Unity.
I know my gods expect people to grow into individuality. I'm not going to sacrifice that.
Does that mean I am not a True Pagan™? Well, I have an earth-centered path. I celebrate the lunar and solar cycles. I have two gods of different sexes. I try to honor the plant and animal life around me.
But politics is not a part of that path. At least, unless someone tries to inflict it on me using religion as an excuse.
Then I tell people what I always do.
Religion is not the reason. Religion is the justification, not the reason.
Even though I am deliberately not high profile as pagans go, I attract attention. Especially since my views are not always politically correct.
When I started blogging, I separated my political stuff from my pagan stuff. I did it after a lot of soul searching. It would have been so simple to wrap everything into a giant ball of victimhood and blame the world for my troubles. It would have saved me the hosting fees too. Two things stopped me.
Even then, I was beginning to despise the politics of victimhood. In 2005 I didn't have it completely worked out in my head, but I knew there were certain behaviors that annoyed me. I finally worked it out that the message of victimhood meant that the victim would have to stay a victim, no matter what. No tales of heroism, no adversity overcome, no triumph of wisdom and knowledge, just a victim.
Always a victim, always dependent on the guilty pity of others, always less than human.
The second thing was the hunch that politics usually corrupted things.
If every there was a group that should have known that from the beginning, it was pagans and particularly American pagans. We had seen firsthand exactly what it had done to the People of the Book when they tried to mix politics with religion. Why should it be different if we did it?
But, but the personal is political.
Codswallop.
Politics is about controlling other people. Not about influencing, not about changing their mind, but controlling.
As in if the other guy doesn't do what you say, he gets a gun pointed at his head and is told "…or else!!!"
It's a dirty rotten stinking business. I'm better at it than any amateur has a right to be. The only justification I can give is that my goal is that people choose for themselves.
Even if I don't like their choice.
And that brings us to the group of radical feminists that I've started calling FamousFeminists. Their goal is fame and control, in that order. They aren't women and they aren't True Ladies. They are females who claim victimhood in the freest nation in the World.
Mostly their victimhood is because the Patriarchal Conspiracy won't make men do what the FamousFeminists demand that they do.
None of this matters EXCEPT these misguided females demand I bow before their demands.
It's not going to happen, not even when they invoke the Sacred Cause of Pagan Unity.
I know my gods expect people to grow into individuality. I'm not going to sacrifice that.
Does that mean I am not a True Pagan™? Well, I have an earth-centered path. I celebrate the lunar and solar cycles. I have two gods of different sexes. I try to honor the plant and animal life around me.
But politics is not a part of that path. At least, unless someone tries to inflict it on me using religion as an excuse.
Then I tell people what I always do.
Religion is not the reason. Religion is the justification, not the reason.
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