Nimue Brown's Blog, page 223

Work, depression and self esteem

Here are some mechanics I have observed repeatedly in my own life, and am fairly sure I am seeing in the lives of various of my friends who suffer from depression.

Overworking → exhausted → depressed → feeling inadequate → unable to work → feeling even more inadequate → becoming even more depressed.

Or…

Overworking → exhausted → depressed → feeling inadequate → working harder → becoming even more exhausted → becoming more depressed.

When you look to work for validation, for a sense of self worth and achievement, and depression is gnawing away at your underpinnings, the odds are you aren’t going to win. But, if you don’t work (be that paid or unpaid), you get to feel even more useless. Depression is good at telling a person they are useless, worthless, unlovable, unacceptable.

Thus when depression kicks in, I turn towards work to try and feel validated. While resting might help my body, it can actually leave me more anxious and insecure than trying to crack on. Instead of turning to others around me for help and kindness, I dig in to the most utilitarian relationships. I focus on where I am most useful, not where most good flows towards me.

I’ve looked hard at the mechanics of this, as it happens in my own life and as I observe others on the same downward spirals. The conclusions I have come to are that it is very hard to get off this spiral on your own, and that once you are on it is not a good time to be dealing with the things that cause it. The real answer lies in what happens the rest of the time – how loved, supported, valued, resourced and welcome a person feels. The degree to which utility dominates relationships in the normal scheme of things. The amount of positive feedback and soul food.

This in turn leads me to thinking about how we normally treat each other. How transactional are our relationships? How much of a feeling of scarcity underpins how we treat each other? How much do we do to validate each other in the normal scheme of things? What do we do for the people around us if we suspect they aren’t ok? If we can support and validate each other on terms that are not primarily about usefulness, I suspect we can all help each other stay out of the awful downwards spirals.

There is a massive amount of power in telling someone you value them, and that their value is not conditional on what they do for you.

Metaphors for non-humans

Some observations on how we talk about the non-human. I confess to having watched a number of National Geographic videos on youtube recently, and while I enjoy the visuals, the narration has been less appealing. One of the things I noticed repeatedly was an urge in the script writer(s) to apply human metaphors to pretty much everything. The stand out awful one was describing a flying fox as being like Dracula leaving his lair.

Dracula of course is powered by imagery drawn from the natural world and from the (bizarre to me) idea that bats are somehow creepy and sinister. The bats are not like Dracula. Dracula is like the bats. However, when we turn ideas on their heads like this, there are some uneasy consequences.

If you have to recast the non-human world in terms of human metaphors to present it, you are sending people a message that they are separate from what they are seeing. Other living beings can only be understood on human terms. They are like commuters. They are like ballet dancers, leaping gracefully from rock to rock. They are like gymnasts. As if we can only understand other beings by saying how they are similar to us. As though the behaviour of other beings cannot be described purely on its own terms. We can’t look at goat-like creatures jumping about on rocks and say that they are agile. How are we supposed to empathise with an agile mammal on a rock? Most of us know little or nothing about ballet, yet the idea of unfamiliar mammals as ballet dancers clearly worked for someone.

When we do this, we normalise human activity and make the activity of other beings seem other. If it is only by reference to human culture that we can hope to understand them, we make human culture the key point of reference. Most of the examples I’ve described – and I don’t think this is a coincidence – are about forms of entertainment, too. We are encouraged to look at autonomous living beings as human entertainers. We are to see their utility, their benefit to us and not their individual experience of their own lives.

Metaphors and similes are a great way of creating feelings of connection. Used well, they can increase empathy and understanding. Used badly, they assert human dominance and superiority. If we see the world in terms of being like us, we reduce it.

Bird song and signs of spring

Over the last few weeks (pausing for snow) there’s been a notable increase in bird song. This is because birds are establishing and asserting territories and looking for mates, or pair bonding in established relationships. Any time I’ve been outside in the daylight, the increased sun has been apparent. It’s a reminder that, while it is still cold out there, the wheel of the year turns towards spring.

Much of winter is not spent sleeping and waiting. What the birds are doing now is part of the preparation for the nesting to come. Spring does not happen magically out of nowhere.

One of the surprise consequences of being alert to bird song, was stepping outside a few days ago and hearing a call I was pretty sure I’d never heard before. The light conditions were poor, and although I could see the three birds making the sounds, I could pick out no identifying features. Tom went online and described what we’d head ‘as if angry insects were making a dial tone’.

They were corncrakes. We’ve since listened to recordings online, and confirmed it. They aren’t supposed to be here this early in the year, but the friend who identified them has had multiple encounters with what are likely the same birds, just a few miles further away.

My first thought is that climate change is shifting patterns of weather and behaviour. A few years ago I had a very clear sighting of a flock of waxwings, only to be told on Twitter that it was far too late in the year and I couldn’t possibly have seen them… My second thought is that I doubt the research into the precise habits of birds is as detailed as it could be. Any pattern of behaviour will produce a set of averages, but how much we know about the less-average behaviour, I’m not sure.

There are also biases in how we collect data. For example, most of the material I’ve read on otters describes a large territory and a roaming pattern of feeding within it. This is actually the pattern for dog otters and it turns out we don’t know so much about what females, and females with cubs actually do.

This is one of the reasons it is so important to engage personally and directly with what’s around you. The notions about what a species does are general, not specific, and what happens where you live may buck the trend.

More about corncrakes – including a video of the insect telephone noise here – https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/corncrake/

Champion Peace Making

This is another blog post in which I consider ideas raised by Molly Scott Cato about how we defend democracy and resist fascism.

Peace is essential for the good functioning of a community, and for the safety of all its members. This does not mean freedom from conflict, it means having the mechanisms to resolve conflict without violence.

Too often, what we mean by peace, is only superficial. Apparent peace can mean the silencing of dissent, the disempowering of minorities and a lack of space for difference – this is not real peace. Peace-making is not the process of normalising us all to fit in small boxes, it is the process of learning to live with our differences.

Peace is not the tolerance of intolerance, either. Those who are invested in hatred and violence will try to manipulate others by demanding that they too should be shown tolerance. This simply doesn’t work, it creates situations in which peace is bound to break down.

Real peace is achieved through dialogue, real listening, respect and open-mindedness. It means recognising that difference and threat are not the same things. But then it raises the questions of what we do with the haters, and the people who delight in violence.

Education is key. If what people mostly hear are the voices of other haters and violence-pedlars, some will be persuaded that violence makes sense and hate is justified. The media is also key here. It is difficult to build peace when sections of your media are running an agenda of hatred. It is difficult to build peace when real fears, and real feelings of scarcity are harnessed to power that agenda. However, the more we can do to tackle inequality, poverty of opportunity, lack of hope, and lack of education about difference, the fewer people will find hate persuasive. There are no quick fixes here.

We have to call out those whose behaviour is unpeaceful. It may seem at odds with the work of creating peace, but it isn’t. Ignoring abuse, bullying, harassment, prejudice, and violence towards others does not lead to peace, it leads to conflict. To call out behaviour without resorting to the same methods isn’t easy, but it is possible. We have to let go of ideas of revenge, and point scoring, and focus on moving people forward.

We can support work of this nature by sharing stories of peace making, inclusion, and co-operation. We can call out hate where we see it, and gently disagree. (That may sound like a weak response, but trust me, if you want to impact on haters this is more effective than playing them at their own game). We can refuse to get into arguments with people who feed on arguing. We can avoid the behaviours that leave some people saying that all sides of the ‘debate’ are equally horrible and aggressive. We can resist violent solutions wherever they come up – both the real ones, and the ones we put in our fictions.

I think we also need to treat hate-driven behaviour as shameful. Perhaps the best way of tackling this, is with humour. Aggression simply fuels more aggression, but if your hate makes you the butt of jokes, responding with more of the same just proves the point. Laughter can be a powerful tool for deflating aggression and undermining feelings of entitlement. It does disempower people, and if the hate is coming from feelings of lack of power, that won’t help. But often it isn’t. The architects of hate in our society are people with plenty of power. By laughing at them, we can undermine that and make them less attractive. Satire, used well, can be a very effective tool for peace.

More about Molly Scott Cato’s work here – http://mollymep.org.uk/molly-at-work/campaigns/fight-fascism/

Druidry and relationship with space

Capitalism encourages us to think of places in terms of ownership. The laws of ‘the land’ also focus on the rights of the owner, not of the inhabitant. It’s worth noting that in most places, the ownership of land can be traced back to violence and conquest.

When I wrote recently about spirits of place, I touched on the idea of ownership. Having had time to think about this properly, I realise that when I wrote ‘ownership’ what I meant was belonging. Or a kind of ownership that also involved being owned. A depth of relationship with a specific place, or places, that binds you to that place, and that place to you.

If you do ritual regularly at a specific site, you may come to feel that sense of ownership/being owned, and that can make it hard to see other people doing ritual in the same space. This is one of the big problems with choosing to do ritual at famous sites. No one has the right to own Avebury, or Stonehenge, or anywhere else on that kind of scale. As with all relationships, our relationships with places are open to possessiveness and jealousy, and what we feel most keenly may not bring out the best in us.

If you want a relationship with place that is personal, where you own and feel owned – then small and local is the way to go. You probably won’t have to share your grove in the woods with any other ritualists.

To feel belonging is to feel part of a community of place. When we belong, we don’t have to feel rivalry with anything else that also belongs. That includes other people. Any number of beings – seen and unseen – can belong to a place. It’s a more spacious idea than ownership, which capitalism has taught us to see as individual. Belonging does not free us from conflict though – especially if others come in and act like they own the place when they have no real relationship with it.

Belonging takes time and the investment of care and attention. It means getting to know the space and the community of living beings already in it. It means recognising that you are not more important than the other beings that belong to the place. It means not giving yourself instant authority by imagining you know what the land or the spirits of place really want. To belong you have to be a bit more humble, and not invested in putting human activity centre stage. Belonging means not trying to use your relationship with the land and its community as a power base to further your own ends.

Belonging is a subtle, quiet process that takes time. It is not the same as the short term excitement of finding a place resonant or welcoming. It’s what you do in the years after that moment.

Making pledges to show the love

I’m a big fan of making pledges in rituals with other people. It’s a simple, powerful act to do it alone, but when you are witnessed by your community, it adds weight to the pledge. Humans are better at feedback than Gods. Also, hearing other people’s pledges is often inspiring, and being able to come back and say how those pledges are going, affirms the work undertaken and helps you keep going.

I’ve made space for pledge making in ritual circles, and have seen the process in action. People who are new to all this will pledge things like growing herbs, or being more diligent with the recycling. Those further along the path to living lightly make more radical pledges. Over a few seasons, the people who were aspiring to recycle will become more involved too.

It is a powerful thing to speak to whatever you hold sacred and make a promise. If you’ve been having trouble really making the effort with something, pledging as a sacred act can give you the focus to see it through. It’s one thing to let yourself off the hook for making small car journeys when you could have walked, and very different to have promised your Gods, your ancestors or the land that you would do this differently. It’s also different when your community of people has heard your pledge. We like to look good for each other. We get a lot of emotional rewards from the good opinion of others. Ritual with humans tends to make us want to offer more impressive pledges, and to see them through so that we can tell people we saw them through.

Radical green change to enable sustainable living can feel a bit hair-shirt. If we feel we’re suffering by sacrificing, there’s less incentive to keep going. Emotional rewards from your human community can really help offset this. If people are impressed by you, then what you’re doing becomes more meaningful. The trouble with being green is that we tend not to see any immediate consequences of it – because most of us don’t see landfill sites, or plastic islands in the ocean, and we have no personal measure of air pollution or carbon excess. And even if we did, our own bit would be hard to spot in the grand scheme of things. That our efforts are both tiny and important is hard to work with.

If you want to make sacrifices to your Gods, (or anything else you hold sacred) then your sustainable life choices are some of the most powerful things you can offer up right now. If the Gods can smell your incense, they can also smell the fumes from your car. If you recognise the Earth as a sacred being, or as a mother Goddess, then the landfill, the plastic and the air pollution are what we do to her sacred body. We honour her when we pledge not to harm her.

If you’re looking for inspiration, try the spinner on this website – https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/spin-the-love

If you don’t have a ritual space to share your pledges in, use the internet. Talk about what you are doing. Inspire other people through your action. Watch out for #showthelove during February.

Doughnut Economics – A Review

 

Kate Raworth’s book on economics is a very readable and useful text. The odds are, if you’re reading this blog that you are the sort of person to question conventional economics. You’ve likely noticed that the constant growth model doesn’t make any sense and that GDP doesn’t measure anything useful. But now what?

The Doughnut, is the safe space for humans that meets everyone’s basic needs without compromising the planet.

In Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth lays out the history of the subject, explaining how we got to this current set of beliefs about the role and functioning of money. There is nothing natural or inevitable about where we are and it is not underpinned by any real laws. What has happened, is that the people making policy and working with money have adopted the stories of economists and to some degree, made them true. That’s not the same as making them work. The exciting thing in all of this is that economic stories can change, which in turn would change our relationships with each other and the planet.

What’s particularly good about this book, is that it doesn’t just offer top-down solutions for fixing things. There’s a lot here we can take onboard as individuals and within small community groups. For anyone who wants to be part of changing our collective story about economics, there are tools here for your kit box.

This is an excellent book to read alongside Ecolinguists (which I reviewed here – ecolinguistcs-a-review ) because the stories we tell about money, finance, taxes, and the economy are both economics issues and ecolinguistic issues. How we are influenced by the language of these is really important. There is power in understanding that language – firstly the power to step out of the story and see yourself differently. Secondly we have the power to influence each other through the economic stories we tell and the language we use to tell them.

And if that doesn’t make your bardic heart beat a little faster, or swell with hope and possibility…

More about Doughnut Economics here – https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/

 

Video poetry and the open road

This is a video I made recently. On the whole, Stroud isn’t too bad for traffic, compared to cities. However, the tailbacks in rush hour are long – certainly no rushing occurs! Walking past crawling cars is a frequent feature of my life. I think I get the better deal. How many people in these cars could have walked, or cycled to their destination?

 

This video first went out a few weeks ago on Patreon. Supporters there regularly see work from me before anyone else, and get things that are otherwise unavailable. Being on Patreon has made a huge difference to me – it keeps me writing, and filming, and has stopped me giving up on creative work. If you like this blog and want to support me, please consider wandering over – https://www.patreon.com/NimueB

Or, if you’d like to make a one off donation rather than signing up to anything, I also have a kofi account – Ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T 

I want to keep making a lot of what I do freely available to people. I am aware that many people are struggling at the moment, and if that’s you, please know that I am deeply invested in giving you stuff at no cost.

If you are someone who can afford to support creators (me, or anyone else) please know that it always makes a difference to moral and viability. A small monthly sum on a site like Patreon can mean the difference between paying bills, and not paying bills. You are also helping supply people who cannot afford to pay for content, with things to read, study and be inspired by. That’s pretty awesome. Thank you.

Show the Love 2019

Every February brings the Show the Love campaign where we make and share green hearts and raise awareness of all the things we love that need protecting from climate change. You can get involved online by using #showthlove and find out more at https://www.theclimatecoalition.org/show-the-love/

I came to the Show The Love campaign through The Woodland Trust. I came to The Woodland Trust through my love for trees and my desire to help protect them. The Woodland trust campaigns to protect trees, plants trees and also buys areas of woodland to keep it safe from development.

I’ve made this year’s heart as a collage, and it’s more overtly Pagan than any of my previous hearts. Some of the images used here came from Woodland Trust material, some came from Spirit and Destiny’s zodiac signs, the labyrinth image also came from them. Other material came from magazine copy of The Shamanic Oracle deck.

During February I’ll be talking about what I love, and also about what we can do to protect what we love.

How to trust

I admit I am not naturally good at trusting people. As a consequence, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the terms on which I might be willing to trust. What qualities is it that make a person trustworthy? If my trust is going to be partial (it usually is) then to what degrees and in what ways does it make sense to trust people?

I think too often we go into situations assuming other people should trust us. The flip side of not trusting, is not expecting to be trusted and expecting to have to earn that.

Backing up words with actions. I don’t expect people to take me at my word until I’ve demonstrated that I can and will do what I said I’d do. However, I do get annoyed when I’ve repeatedly demonstrated I can do the things, and am still treated as untrustworthy in those areas. At that point, refusal to trust becomes a way of reducing and controlling a person.
New and different mistakes. We all make mistakes. I don’t find errors to be a barrier to trust unless a person keeps making the same mistakes after they’ve been flagged up. When someone persists in causing the same problem in the same way, it looks a lot like intention, not incompetence.
Thinking things through: I tend to trust people who demonstrate a willingness to work things through and reason things out. What I trust here is that this kind of process shows willingness to see things differently and to seek solutions rather than blame. I can trust the integrity of someone’s reasoning without needing them to agree with me or see things as I do.
Physical trust. This is a hard one for me – to trust another person both to be kind to my body if I get close, and to trust them not to have a problem with me. I’m an emotionally intense person, and it is hard to hide that when being hugged. Trusting people to accept me as I am and not to take physical advantage is hard. It takes time.
I do not trust people who don’t listen to me. I do not trust people who show signs of treating me like a resource they can use. I do not trust people who take me for granted, or people who treat any emotional expression from me as though I am a massive drama queen. It’s taken me a long time to trust that I’m not a massive drama queen and do not deserve to be dismissed at the first sign of emotional expression.
In terms of trying to earn trust, I offer honesty and clarity. At least with words. And enough honesty to make clear that I habitually lie with my body. I don’t express pain, depression, anxiety, or exhaustion if I can help it. I hide those things because this helps me function. But I will speak honestly. It means asking people to trust what I say, not what I look like. I am more inclined to trust in turn people who take me at my word rather than seeing how I present and how it doesn’t fit their expectations around what a person in pain should look like. In turn, I will trust people’s words. If someone tells me something, I will assume that is the more substantial truth than any appearances that seem to conflict with it. I can’t say this always goes well, but it is a deliberate choice to do for others what I am often asking for myself.

Trust is a process. It is something you have to build between people. Granted, most people are good and well meaning. The trouble is, that you cannot immediately see the ones who are narcissists, abusers, assaulters, rapists. They tend to be good at passing themselves off as ok, at least in the short term. It’s how they get to do their stuff. The percentage of people I’ve known who have turned out not to be good, or been thoroughly vile, is a small percentage, but they have had a large impact on me. As a consequence, I do not tend to trust the people who treat my innate lack of trust as a failing of some sort. My lack of trust is protective.