Nimue Brown's Blog, page 115

Following a spiritual path

When I started out as a Druid, around twenty years ago, it was all about self improvement. I wanted to learn, and study and grow and be a better and wiser sort of person. I wanted to serve and be useful and for a while I had aspirations to lead and teach. 

When you start out on a path, there is of course a lot to learn. That learning process is going to give a person a lot of feelings. Once you’ve got the basics, there are questions about where to go next, how to dig deeper, or whether you move on to some other path in search of new insights and excitement. You go round the wheel of the year again, and again and the learning becomes less dramatic.

Increasingly for me, the idea of following a path is just about ambling around having experiences. I don’t feel like I’m going anywhere, and I’m fine with that. I might be wiser than twenty something me was, but not as bold in many ways. I was more on fire back then and I can’t work out whether this is a middle aged issue or something else. I miss being on fire. 

The trouble with being an important Druid is that it doesn’t leave you time for being a Druid. I stuck a toe in the water with that and I did not stay ambitious for very long. The person who leads and teaches and does media work and runs a big Druid order and all of that is at risk if being a full time performer and having very little quiet time for their own spiritual life. Leading a ritual is very different from being in ritual, and I’m not at all sure that’s for me. I also don’t think I’m the only person coming to this conclusion – I see Druid friends adopting parts of the job, but there aren’t any emerging leaders in the way that there used to be, and I suspect that’s a really good thing.

I may be on a journey, but I have no idea where I’m going, and I’m fine with that. I’m sharing things I think are important, but what anyone else does with that is up to them. I’m not claiming any special authority here.

Yesterday it was grey and misty in the hills. Today the sun is out. I show up. I am not called to do anything in particular, and I’m fine with that. I’m here to bring whatever joy, beauty, hope and humour I can, but that’s a considered position, not something I’m claiming divine inspiration for. It is gentler, just being my own small self and not trying to achieve anything specifically.

The limits of expertise

I’m very much in favour of listening to experts. If I want to understand something, I want to know what the best informed people have to say on the subject. There are, however, a number of issues around how we collectively handle the idea of experts and sometimes the experts themselves are complicit in these problems.

We’ve seen it a lot around covid – experts in another area who are non-experts for covid being invited to share their opinions. It can be interesting to get insights from people in related areas, but it can also be incredibly problematic. 

I remember many years ago there was an issue in the UK with an expert witness who didn’t think cot death would happen more than once in the same family. He said once was a tragedy, twice suspicious, three would be murder. Only it turns out that isn’t true. Roy Meadow was certainly an expert on child health, but he was operating outside his own expertise with assertions about statistics that led to unjust imprisonment. He was eventually struck off.

Journalists are increasingly unreliable around working out who can give us informed, and informative insight. This is an example of people we should be able to trust as experts failing to do their job. Ideally, what the expert journalist does is identifies the people who are qualified to inform us about things. Instead we’re seeing far too many people being invited to share their opinion because they are famous, not because they know anything. It distorts debate, and is profoundly unhelpful.

We need people who really are experts in some things to be quick to say when they’re being asked to comment on things they don’t personally have a handle on. 

We need to be clear about what expertise a person is bringing to the table and how that relates to the topic in hand.

We should be wary about the opinions of people who are discredited in their field. Yes, sometimes it’s the lone voice that turns out to be right all along – but not often. Being considered useless by your peers is not proof that you’re right. Especially in science, where peer review and being able to test each other’s results is rightfully key. 

We need to be alert to the difference between opinions and facts. An informed opinion is actually worth more than the opinion of someone who has no idea what they’re talking about. Speculation from people who know what they’re talking about is more likely to be relevant than speculation from people who don’t have that basis to work from.

That experts can get things wrong does not invalidate the idea of expertise. It’s also the case that if an apparent expert is wrong, the person most likely to spot that will also be an expert. The problems with Roy Meadows were identified by The Royal Statistical Society, as a case in point.

Debunking the lone genius

I’ve been talking recently about meritocracy. I feel strongly that for meritocracy to work, one of the things we would have to do is give up the story of the lone genius. It’s not a true story, but it is a story that feeds into the idea that some people are more entitled to lead than others. 

Historically the lone genius has often been a man. Presenting him as a lone genius disappears from the story the ways in which that wasn’t true. We’re hearing more of the real stories now. There are many examples, historical and contemporary. Over here there’s one about John Le Carre and his wife – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/13/my-father-was-famous-as-john-le-carre-my-mother-was-his-crucial-covert-collaborator

We might think about the way economist Adam Smith lived with his mum and completely ignored the role of unpaid labour (usually undertaken by women) in his economic models. Thoreau also left his mum’s critically important efforts out of his descriptions of living in a cabin and being a poet. 

No one is brilliant all by themselves. At the very least everyone is stood on the shoulders of the people who went before them in their field. We’re all shaped and influenced by the ideas, beliefs and actions of others. We overlook and downplay the role of supporting workers. But to clean the lab, or stop the scientist having a meltdown because they’ve not eaten properly, is also critically important. 

It’s important to name the team, and to acknowledge the community that makes anything possible. I’ve tried to be explicit about this around my own writing. I’m very aware of the people who make my work possible. The people who taught me as a younger human. The people who inspire me. The people who provide technical support, and practical support. 

Ideas, experts, creativity and all of that depend on community. When we put the community back into the story, then meritocracy will work in an entirely different way, I suspect.

Eat this for us – fiction

The Knight of April.

He lost his Queen and said

You eat this for our kingdom.

Eat the sins, that we may be free of them.

Eat up our shame. Take it deep into your body. Become our shame. Free us from the burden of it, that we may accuse you of making us do what we do.

Eat up the grief for us. We do not want to feel the grief that is rightfully ours. Spare us from regret. Bloat your stomach with it until it hurts so that we never need to think of the past with sorrow.

Eat up the awkward bits of our history. This you must do for your country. How can we be proud, otherwise? Eat up the things we do not wish to hear spoken of. Eat the stories we prefer to forget. We will be great! Stuff those truths into your mouth until you choke on them. We do not care if they cut your throat as you swallow. We do not mind at all if holding the truth in silence wounds your body. Eat the truth so that we can deny it.

Never ask why she is gone.

Never ask who she was.

We do not want to remember her truly. Eat up the past for us, eat up the regret so that in death she can be our perfect Queen forever. Eat our sins, so that it was not our fault.

(First text and image by Dr Abbey, second piece of text is mine. There hasn’t been much time for this over the last few months and I’ve missed it. Good to be back!)

Matriarchy? No Thanks

A while ago when I wrote about my understanding of what patriarchy is as a system, Mr Bish asked me what I thought matriarchy would look like. It’s interesting that replacing patriarchy with matriarchy seems like an obvious choice. It’s similar to the idea that wanting to take down capitalism means you must be a communist. The idea that there are only two options is in many ways part of the problem.

I’m not interested in the idea of replacing male dominance with female dominance. This is because I don’t think ‘male’ is the biggest problem here – dominance is the problem. Assuming that a group of people are automatically better than another group of people is the problem. It doesn’t matter much to me who the default people who should be in charge are, I’m not going to agree.

No system is ever going to be perfect. My ideals around politics involve including as many people and as many views as possible. I think we need people whose job it is to speak for the land, the water, the unborn future generations and so forth. I believe in holding power at the lowest levels possible and with as much participation as possible. I believe in cooperation and working towards consensus wherever possible. I am deeply averse to work-shy scroungers living off the rest of us – and by this I mean rich people. 

I’d like ways of doing things that aren’t so gender oriented. Call something a matriarchy and you’ve brought gender straight back into the equation. As someone who doesn’t really identify with gender I get pretty tired of the way gender is part of politics. The assumption that being born with a penis and being comfortable with that is the major qualifier for being in charge is nonsense. As one of my psychology lecturers said, many years ago, it wasn’t literally the case in the past, that you had to whack your dick out on the way into parliament, but it might as well have been.

The most useful measures of people are the hardest to take. We’d benefit a lot more from being led by people who know what they’re doing. People who understand stuff. Also people with wisdom, compassion, listening skills, long term thinking, imagination and problem solving skills. As a species we’ve become unreasonably attached to whatever we can measure most easily. Having the culture defined by a gender, or the dominance of a gender makes as much sense as putting the tallest people in charge, or the ones who have proven they can stuff the most eggs up their bottoms. Just because you can count it, doesn’t make it good!

Compassion and wisdom are hard to measure. Unlike other kinds of expertise, we don’t even have exams for them. Compassion is not a female trait and wisdom is not a male trait, and any human system that doesn’t involve compassion and wisdom is going to be problematic.

Being a krampus

This fantastic piece of headgear was crotcheted for me by Marieanne McAvoy. It was designed to cut down my peripheral vision, which may help me with not getting so stressed at events.

This is also part of an ongoing exploration for me around what makes me feel more comfortable. I’m definitely happier when what I’m wearing is outrageous. I don’t like presenting in sexualised ways, I don’t even like feeling as though I’m trying to be attractive or appealing any more. I like being a krampus. I’m going to be doing more exploring o a goblin aesthetic as well.

When self care doesn’t mean soothing

Most self care advice focuses on relaxing and reducing the amount of stressful stimulation you’re dealing with. For many people, screens and other stressors mean that looking after yourself requires finding ways to relax. However, it is also possible to need other kinds of self care that aren’t just about dialing everything down.

Intellectual self care. Do you need more ideas? Would reading an interesting article help? Do you need mental stimulation? Do you need the excitement of encountering something unfamiliar and fascinating?

Emotional self care. Do you need the space to express an emotion? That can be loud, messy and in the short term may be unpleasant. You can’t be calm if you can’t process complex feelings. Suppressing those feelings is not self care. 

Do you need something emotionally provocative? Not all of us thrive on being calm. Some of us crave intensity and powerful emotional experiences. Being able to manage that on your own can really help, and the arts can answer these needs. Finding people to share intense emotions with also really helps.

Bodily self care. This can take unusual forms, too. What kinds of sensations does your body need? Do you feel enough with your body, or too much? Self care for someone who is in pain can be all about minimising body awareness. For the person who needs a lot more sensory experience than they are getting, actively seeking tactile experiences may be really important.

Social self care. What kinds of contact do you need? Would you benefit from quiet, solitary time or do you need to jump about in a noisy space full of other people? Different people can have very different social needs.

People are very different, and what provides care for one person can cause painful frustration to another. We can all vary a lot from day to day, too. What helps at any point depends on spotting if you’re experiencing too much, or not enough of something. Not having enough of what you need is just as stressful as being overwhelmed by too much of something.

Making decisions

This week I learned that the majority of people do the majority of their decision-making in an unconscious way. I imagine this must save a lot of time and effort! I think it likely also explains why I am so often frustrated by the kinds of choices people make. For example, the people whose driving choices are about saving a few minutes of road time, but whose actions have the potential to cause accidents. That scenario makes a lot more sense if it isn’t something being consciously chosen.

At the same time, this terrifies me. Apparently there are a lot of people out there making potentially lethal decisions in an unconscious way. 

I’ve never learned to drive. The sheer amount of information involved and how quickly you have to process it to make decisions always seemed too much for me. I can just about manage the decisions involved in cycling, but that’s a lot slower and you have far fewer technical things to manage. It can even come up when I’m walking – usually only when I’m tired. If the terrain is tricky then the process of working out, step by step, where to put my feet is exhausting. In really bad conditions I can end up frozen, having no idea how to walk. 

I’ve learned a lot about my own brain recently, and about how my thinking processes relate to other people’s. It clarifies some things about stuff I struggle with and stuff other people do that I find confusing. 

Self-Diagnosis

The internet makes it very easy for a person to try and diagnose their own conditions. There are obvious risks – not having the tools, skills or knowledge to do that well, being misled by dodgy information on sites that are just trying to sell you stuff, not being honest with yourself, or wanting an explanation that isn’t about your own poor judgement.

It does have its uses. I visit the NHS website a lot. It’s helped me decide how to act, whether to call an ambulance, and it’s helped me manage a number of things on my own without needing help. For example, how to deal with heart palpitations, and hives and how to sort out mouth ulcers. It’s a good site, and by using it I don’t add pressure to the system. At this level, many of us can and should use the internet first.

There are many very good reasons not to seek diagnosis, and where you are in the world will likely impact on this. Not being able to access health care. Not being able to afford treatment, fear of impact on your job, or insurance. Fear of stigma. Belonging to a group with historical issues around diagnosis – eg autistic women. No treatment existing. Diagnosis likely to require resources you don’t have – money, ability to travel, time, energy, effort, emotion. Not being able to take time off work to sort things out. Having anxieties or triggers that make it too difficult. 

I’ve been going round this for some years now. There is a thing I appear to have where the evidence is straightforward but the diagnosis would be hard to get because it’s not a common problem so isn’t widely known. There are no other conditions that work the same way so there’s nothing to get crossed off the list although there could be other explanations for some of the issues but there is also no way to tell. There’s no treatment available and as I don’t want to stop working, not a lot to gain. But it might be useful for the longer term to establish what this is in case of future complications. I’m thinking about it.

My current thinking goes like this. If self diagnosis is your only realistic option you just have to make the best of things and that’s woefully unfair. The critical thing if you are going it alone isn’t the label you give yourself, but what it gives you in terms of management. If what you learn from the label enables you to be healthier and happier and more able to function, that’s great. Being able to manage better is a good outcome. If you have no means to help yourself based on this knowledge, you may not be right about what’s going on.

This is always going to be a gamble. There are always risks. There are always things a trained medical person might pick up that the lay person would miss. But there’s also the other side of it, that the person living with a thing can be much more aware of how that works than someone with only theoretical knowledge. Tread carefully.

It’s also possible to have a condition that hasn’t been named, or studied, or for which there are no diagnostic tools and no remedies. Having an ailment before that ailment officially exists is always going to be a nightmare.

Ghostwriting – things I have learned

Ouija boards are frustratingly slow.

Apparently the sprawling gothic castle does not come with the job.

Ectoplasm is a bugger to get out of the keyboard.

There is zero sympathy available if you start rattling your chains in the middle of the night.

There are whole new definitions available for the term ‘deadline’.

Wailing is not as cathartic or effective as you thought it was going to be.

Stained sheets are not a good look.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I wrote an 80k novel in six weeks. It nearly broke me. This time I’ve written a 50k novel in three weeks, managing to take weekends off and keep other things – like this blog – going. I’ve learned a lot since that first go at writing a novel to order. 

Without inspiration, I don’t tend to write. However, one of the things most likely to motivate and inspire me is someone needing me to do something. The things that made this book problematic and technically difficult were also the things that set my brain working and enabled me to find a way through this project.