Pagans Celebrate: Film at 11

It’s a mark that paganism is slowly coming of age in terms of acceptance and respectability that MSNBC ran this story about pagans celebrating the Solstice at Stonhenge this year and then linked to it off the front page.

As a communications person, I can say this marks some important progress because the story is matter-of-fact and not overly sensational. And, it certainly completely lacks any hints of “devil worshipers putting children at risk” angles that we might have seen even ten years ago.

I always say, you should celebrate every small victory: well, this is clearly a small victory. We should dance naked in the sun to celebrate!

Technically, it’s a revolution

Those who follow me on Twitter know that I’ve been watching and “retweeting” information about the upheaval in Iran this past week.

Even one who’s as naturally jaded as me can’t help but be moved by what’s going on there. I truly hope for success for them because I think it will have a beneficial and profound impact not just for them but for the entire world. Successful uprisings and revolutions of the people against tyranny always instill a certain hope and optimism that I think the world can use right now.

Another thing that has struck is how important a role Twitter and YouTube have played in this. I think it’s fair to say that without those tools, this uprising wouldn’t have gotten as far as it already has. While it’s easy to overstate things about technology being revolutionary (pun intended), I think there’s some merit here. These technologies have played a critical role in changing the shape of society and that change can’t be undone. They’ve provided a medium of expression that’s clearly nearly impossible to fully control.

In thinking about the impact of these technologies, it strikes me that we’ve actually been undergoing a major revolution for the past ten to fifteen years where technology has been changing and freeing society. It’s just this has been so subtle and quiet that we haven’t really stopped to notice it.

What I mean is that, as someone who’s come more and more into an identity that would’ve been considered “fringe” in the days before the Internet, it occurs to me just how critical a role the Internet has played in enabling both my growth and the growth of the community and others who identify in these groups. If you were kinky, poly, or a pagan, in the days before the Internet, you would have to find other people like yourself, likely engage in a long, slow process of making sure they were safe (and them you) and slowly become part of the community (if you were accepted) over time by going to events. This would take a long time, and you’ve have a small circle in most cases.

Today, you can jump start that process by joining online communities that connect you with others of similar interests all around the world. Instead of being part of a kink community of 100 people in Spokane, say, you can be part of a worldwide kink community of tens of thousands through fetlife.com. Where before you might have to be a solo practioner for sacred sexuality because you could trust no one in your small Ohio town to not persecute you, now you can learn from and trade information and practices with a woman who runs a Temple in Atlanta that you met through Yahoo Groups.

There is a certain overselling going on around “social networking” and so there’s also now a certain, expected backlash that discounts the importance of them. I think this risks failing to understand the profound depth of changes under way. While the Web 1.0 was revolutionary in terms of enabling the greater sharing of knowledge, knowledge is something we as humans simply hold. The Web 2.0 is revolutionay in terms of enabling social connections. And humans are fundamentally social animals. Because of this, Web 2.0 is slowly changing what we are, not just something that we simply hold.

What’s going on in Iran makes clear some of the depths of these changes. But I think if we pause and think about this more, we’ll realize we’ve already changed signifcantly in ways we just haven’t bothered to notice. If you want an exercise in understanding those changes, watch a TV show from the 1970’s and really think about the size, scope and structure of that world as people experienced it then.

I think you’ll find that it’s not just Iran but the world that is getting to be a lot more free and liberated.

And, of course, in my opinion, that’s only a good thing.

Our Lady of Perpetual Love and Suffering

Following on my posting about Inanna and Kushiel this week, I find myself turning over in my mind the ideas of Goddesses, Erotica, Kink, pain, and sex.

In thinking about these all, it occurs to me that if there is a patron Goddess for BDSM and Kink, it should by rights be Inanna because of how she unites both war and sex into her portfolio. That makes her ideally suited to appreciate the blessed suffering that one experiences in some good BDSM scenes.

At least, that’s my experience.

So, when next you go to beat your loved one to show them how truly deeply you love them, give thanks to blessed Inanna and offer their joyous suffering up to her.

If you support the Iranian protestors…

…then you just might be so very 2003. Which is to say you might a “neocon“. Or at least that’s the point that Daniel Finkelstein over at the Times of London made today in his very interesting take on what’s going on in Iran right now.

I find it an interesting and compelling argument myself. I am very open that I consider myself to be a classical liberal or sometimes I’ll say libertarian as that’s better known in the US (even if it’s not wholly accurate).

At the end of the day, I firmly believe that if people want to find the religion, lifestyle, sexual identity, and expression that is most genuine and authentic, it’s imperative that they be able to do so without overt or covert repression  from external institutions like governments and Churches. And so, in that regard, my politics are closely tied to the rest of me and my other beliefs.

We shouldn’t expect that the Iranians will replace their limited democracy with a truly liberal regime if this succeeds. But, one things is for sure, when you look at the pictures here you see the same brave hope for a better, freer future that you saw in Tiananmen in 1989, in eastern Europe and Russia in the early 1990’s and in Lebanon in 2005.

Here’s wishing them the best. Support your local Iranian protestor: Twitter information to enable the protestors to keep feeding information to the outside world.

Kushiel

I first heard of the Kushiel series by seeing some of my poly/sacred sexuality friends mention that they’re reading it through Twitter and Facebook. It didn’t register strongly at the time except to have the name “Kushiel” tagged in my head with these friends.

When I was at the airport last month flying out to see my fiancee in Florida I was killing time in the bookstore at SeaTac and I happened on the Kushiel section in the fantasy/SciFi aisle. I say “section” because there are enough books in the series now and they’re big enough that they took up a decent amount of shelf space. The tagging of the name “Kushiel” from before kicked in and so I paused and started reading the back cover.

It looked interesting but I passed on it then. I think I was worried that it was a bit too romance novel-y for me. I did read up on the series in Wikipedia later and I became concerned as well that while it seemed like it might be sex positive by being a positive story about a courtesan it sounded like it might have a fundamentally Christian basis.

That was that except I stumbled on the book a couple of times after that and found myself drawn to it, wondering. After all, my friends who have read it aren’t Christian at all. And, too, I thought, if it is sex positive, that alone should merit some degree of support, shouldn’t it?

So, two weeks ago I finally relented and decided that, even if I hate it and don’t finish it, it’s worth $8 to support something potentially sex positive.

I’ve started reading it this weekend and I can report so far, it’s rather interesting. It’s a bit like Guy Gavriel Key in that it’s a fantasized alternate history, centered mainly in pseudo-Medieval France. So far, too, it gets high marks for sex positivity and kink, by having the main character be a woman who naturally feels pleasure in pain who is training to be a courtesan. Most importantly, the elements that I thought were Christian really aren’t. If anything, the best analogy I can make is that it’s an interesting fusion of Christianity, Orphism and the cult of Sol Invictus of the later Empire. Of these, the Christianity is the smallest piece.

We shall see how it goes, but it’s at least more interesting so far than I had suspected.

Make Love AND War

I consider my paganism to definitely be eclectic. I don’t follow any one particular god or goddess nor do I follow one particular tradition. I look at all that’s out there and take the ones that speak to me, represent me, or provide a direction that I want to follow and incorporate it into my own personal practice.

At the end of the day, what I do is to live Nietzsche’s dictum that religion should ultimately be life-enhancing.

One of the Goddesses that speaks very deeply and directly to me is Inanna, the Sumerian Goddess of love and war and the first Goddess to establish a practice of sacred sexuality as part of her worship.

I found her as part of my pagan awakening in that most wonderful of pagan cities, San Francisco. I found her as the path of pagan and sexual awakening was began for me. One of my most treasured possessions still is a book of hymns to Inanna and myths about her (Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer).

My wife talks about how she dedicated herself to Dionysios at age 14. For myself, I dedicated myself to Inanna at age 30 and have been all the better for it. There’s something to be said for making love AND war!

The Coming, Quiet Social Revolution?

Despite all the hyperbole, I think it’s fair to say that the credit crisis represents the most serious loss of trust in the finance system since the Great Depression (and maybe even a more serious loss of trust than that).

It is a true “credit” crisis in that the word “credit” comes from the Latin verb “to believe” (credere). Another related word is credible, for instance. And the root of this all is that the system of transparency and oversight failed in regards to mortage backed securities. A whole system of financial checks and balances that exists to enable investors to intelligently manage risk failed to apply here. The net is that when everything unravelled, no one knew (or knows) who to believe and thus who to trust. No one is lending because no one trusts anyone.

As we get further along in this, though, businesses are starting to hobble through and figure out who they can trust “good enough” to get done things that must get done. It’s standard risk assessment: faced with a choice between certain bankruptcy due to no business activity or a gamble that lending money might actually not lose you money, the finance machine is starting to come down on the latter side of the equation.

That’s not all that surprising. It means that life is going to go on in some ways here soon.

But, the bigger loss of confidence has yet to be really remarked on. And that is the loss of confidence by the average investor. Those of us who have done all the things we’ve been told all our lives we should do: save money, put it away, invest it, plan for retirement and then, and only then, do you get to do what you want to do. We have seen years of  work evaporate over the course of a year and a half with no warning and no way of knowing it would happen. We followed the rules and lost for it, really.

Do people think that we will be returning to the status quo ante when things pick up again? Do people think we’ll rebuild the retirement savings machine now that we know that the system can take it all away with no warning and through no fault of our own?

I have my doubts. I know for myself I’ve decided to stop delaying gratification so much. I won’t blow all my money but I’m also not following an obsessive savings path trying to get to a magic number in the future either.

I tend to think that the finance system that comes out of this will be smaller. I also suspect that people will be working less obsessively. Maybe people will be working less and living more. Is that a bad thing? I remember the 1970’s as a time of horrible economics but also a time before the “your work is your life” movement of the 80’s reset the culture. If this is as big a time as the recession of the 70’s – 80’s was, then we should be starting to look for the social impact of this all.

De l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace

I have been absent from this space for a bit. A lot has been going on in my life with my personal life and day job that needed sorting out.

But now I find that much of that sorting is done and now it’s primarily a matter of putting those things into practice.

One of the important ways for me of putting things into practice is to start writing again. Writing a lot, really, or at least that’s the goal.

So, as a first step, this blog is coming back on line. This is intended to be my place for analysis and ruminations on more philosophical topics. I am considering writing on other topics like music. If I do, though, they will get their own space for thematic clarity.

In terms of outlook, I don’t think there will be a significant break with older posts, but that is possible. So, I would ask the reader to view this entry as a major chapter heading and be open to the possibility that what I wrote before might not always be what I think now.

The title of this post is from Georges Danton. It has been misattributed to Frederick the Great and Napoleon (including in the movie Patton). It means, “Audacity, and more audacity, and always audacity”. Out of my sorting of late this has emerged as a new ideal for me to strive for. Expect to see it’s results in future postings.

This just in: Evolve or die!

As I’ve noted before, I work in communications.

And working in communications for me means (among other things) that I work with press. I’m not a reporter myself, though I do non-fiction and article writing among other things.

One thing I’ve noticed over the past few years is the slow but significant impact that the Internet is having on press and journalism. Most folks outside this space aren’t seeing it or are even aware of it, but the world of press and journalism is not what it was ten years ago. At it’s simplest, much of the press that was there ten or twenty years ago is now gone. The Internet is slowly killing the business model that sustained journalism in the west through most of the twentieth century.

But, as I noted, this is happening slowly and quietly. You may not be aware, dear reader, of the layoffs, newsroom shutterings, changed priorities and pressures on those left behind.

Which is what makes today’s article on MSNBC by Michael Ventre about the demise of of that staple of accessible, friendly journalism: the film critic.

The situation, it’s causes and the likely effects of it are all familiar to those of us who have been tracking this for a while. Internet and online media combine with a culture of increasing democratization and short attention span to drive the paid experts who craft thoughtful work out of business. This leaves a gap to be filled with spotty quality blogs and Flash-animated short clips amongst other things that may satisfy the immediate need but lack the thought and depth that the old craftsmen and women brought to the trade.

Really, the only thing different here is that while most people don’t care about the impact this has on foreign events reporting, they do notice when that guy that wrote the funny movie reviews in the paper is gone.

I can say for myself I certainly see what’s happening and I agree with the views that we’re definitely losing something here. But, I also have to say that while change is always painful it’s also fruitful. The loss that we’re observing as the world convulses right now need not be permanent, especially if we note the risks and take steps to remedy them. And this change opens up all sorts of new opportunities that would not otherwise be there.

Of course, too, as someone that deals with press regularly, I do think that there’s an angle to this all that the press is understandably not covering. After all, since they’re writing about their own demise, they have no interest in calling out their own role in the current situation. That angle is the fact that for every good reporter who’s now out of work and whose fine work we’re losing there’s a hundred sloppy hacks also out of work.

Most coverage of this problem completely fails to look at the business reality that underpins this. Readers being happy to go to amateur, free sources like blogs means that those readers generally aren’t perceiving a loss in value compared to those professional sources. Of course, the press rail at those readers, saying that it’s due to them being stupid and failing to understand how much better the professional press are. And there is something to be said for the view that that some amateur work is to professional work as fast food is to fine cuisine. But it’s naive to think that’s the sole reason for this situation. There’s another part to this and that comes from the perceived arrogance of the press to their readers (helpfully on display in explaining the current situation no less), the way that press is out of touch with their customers (yes, they do have customers), and the fact that those customers don’t find the press’ product compelling when compared to other, free options.

I personally hope that good, thoughtful writers and journalists give this some real hard thought and work to build up a good business model or models so they can support their continued, ongoing, thoughtful work.

But, for the thousands of hacks who treat their readers like idiots, get their facts wrong and skew their story without acknowledging their bias who are hitting the real world at last: I don’t have a lot of sympathy.

In the end, it means the revolution in journalism won’t be televised. It’ll be blogged and posted on YouTube instead.

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Desperate Clinging

Dan Schnur worked as John McCain’s communications director in the 2000 campaign.

Given my own work and background, I have a soft spot for the communications folks: they often have the ability to elucidate what’s going on more effectively than others. This is due, in part, to the fact that to communicate something effectively, you have to understand it fully. And too, communications people often grasp the nuances of words and understand the importance of a single word.

Dan’s article in yesterday’s New York Times “Right Fight, Wrong Word” is precisely the sort of key insight that a thoughtful communications person can provide.

In his article, Schnur zeros in on the fact that the key to understanding the sentiment and tone in Obama’s recent comments about voters in Pennsylvania (and by extension presumably, the rest of the rust belt and Appalachia) is one word: “cling”.

 Schnur notes how this one word indicates a fundamental devaluing of the worldview, outlook, and conclusions the people Obama is speaking of hold.

Of course, we’re many days into this now and the question goes back and forth about whether the comments are elitist. Interestingly, I have a unique background for the matter and have my own views because of it. I grew up for thirteen years just across the Ohio River from western Pennsylvania and the panhandle of West Virginia. The jobs that he talks about disappearing 25 years ago: I remember those jobs. And, I eventually worked my way to San Francisco by way of a Liberal liberal arts school (Oberlin College). So, I know the culture and people Obama is talking about. I also know the culture and people he was talking to and who support him so strongly.

And, I can report to you, dear reader, that about the condescension and paternalism that people say is behind this remark:it’s really there. At Oberlin, I saw people who were self-avowed liberals who claimed to care about “the poor” treat the working-class staff at school with rudeness and condescension. The working-class folks around the college were “the help”, make no mistake about that.

It was always hard for me because I had a shared background with those folks….it’s just that I was able to try and move into what I’d been told was a better world: the world of those very people who were treating people I might have grown up with like sub-humans before my very eyes.

At the end of the day, there is no doubt that the comments are inappropriate. Abstract the circumstances and you have a classic situation I saw many of those same self-avowed liberals arguing about: how it was inappropriate for an outsider to presume to analyze and interpret the actions, thoughts and beliefs of a different culture and minimize or explain away something(s) which that culture holds dear.

Put it this way, if this were Huckabee explaining away the support for gay rights in San Francisco as being the sad consequence of that city not finding God, you can imagine the firestorm that would errupt over that. It would be wrong of Huckabee to do that. And, it’s wrong for Obama to do it here.

No, Schnur is right: the key to understanding is “cling”. And, unfortunately, this is another instance where we sadly find that those who extol the virtues of tolerance and diversity are, at heart, hypocrites who fail to truly live up to the ideals they claim as central. They are, disappointingly, like those they claim to be better than for the same faults they claim those others suffer from: intolerance and a lack of respect for diversity.

In the end, it’s clear, that it’s a very easy (and sad thing) that humans cling to old habits and patterns of thought.