Nimue Brown's Blog, page 349

New ways, old ways

If I invite you to picture a life where walking is transport, there’s no refrigeration in homes, food is cooked from scratch, washing is done by hand, you’ll probably be well on the way to picturing something Victorian, or earlier. Something tough, full of drudgery and misery. I want to suggest that we can go back to these lighter ways of living without being miserable, because of other technological advances.

We tend, as a culture, to focus on large, expensive pieces of technology. The car. The television, the fridge freezer, the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner and so forth. Modern life is defined by these ‘labour saving’ objects. They cost us a lot to run in terms of energy, and the resources it takes to make them, and we do a lot of paid work to earn the money to afford them, so the degree of ‘labour saving’ for the ordinary worker is open to question.

There are other technologies. Modern changes to clothing are vast – manmade fibres that wash and dry easily, that are genuinely waterproof. Walking boots. Walking for transport when you have the modern gear is a world away from some poor sod tramping through the rain in a Thomas Hardy novel. And washing and drying these things by hand, with hot running water, modern cleaning products (even the green ones) and a spin drier is a world away from the copper and the mangle.

Across all areas of human activity there are multiple technological developments at play. We’ve prioritised some, without really looking about what others can give us. Thanks to the rise of the car, we’ve never given cycling a proper go, or properly looked at motorcycles as an alternative. Walking and horse powered transport are much easier when you have surfaced roads – we can have surfaces without cars, and they tend to last longer.

Part of the problem is that our development of technology is driven by the desire to make profits. If we were doing this with the aim of getting the best quality of life in the most sustainable way, the whole history of the 19th and 20th centuries would look radically different. We aren’t labour saving, we’re moving the goalposts. Maybe you don’t have to spend hours at the sink scrubbing clothes. Instead you have to spend hours frustrated in traffic queues, or working a boring job, or a tiring or stressful one, to be spared the drudgery of cooking your own meals.

The good news is there’s a lot to be gained from exploring the lower profile, less expensive technology, and the opportunities it creates to live lightly, need less money, and work less.

Briefly luminous

I’m not generally one for titles, but there’s something rather charming about being made a luminary for a day, and then quietly putting that title down again. A more fluid relationship with titles makes room for recognition, but doesn’t tie identity to role, and I think that has a lot to offer.

This isn’t a hypothetical sort of blogpost. Today I am featured over at www.inspiremetoday.com which means that for a day they give me the title of ‘luminary’. It’s a nice word. I like luminous, with its implications of light giving and glowing. Today I am a shiny thing, but to be a luminary is to be one shiny thing amongst many, not an authority, not necessarily a standout.

I have not achieved this state by coming up with some world changing new insight or earth shattering revelation. I’ve talked briefly about giving yourself permission to fail, because in being willing to be less than perfect we give ourselves room to grow. Most of this week, I’ve been a long way short of perfect. I shall embrace my glow for a little bit, and then get back to the art of messing things up so that I can grow and change.

The site is full of people being briefly luminous, sharing their world view, their truth. It’s interesting to poke around in, so do swing over and have a read, and if you have a light to share, you can easily get involved.

Positive thinking for the slightly unhinged

In theory, positive thinking ought to be a good thing – by its very definition if you do it well, it’s got to be good. All too easily, it becomes a way to explain the people who aren’t winning, rather than looking at wider factors (poverty, access to resources, education, opportunity, disability, race, sheer bad luck and all other such things of that ilk). It can be a way of denying what’s going on.

I can track a process, where I fall into dark and destructive thinking. And then, as part of that process I notice what I’m doing, and I recognise that I’m on a real downer, pessimistic, defeatist, and the like. I can readily latch onto this as an explanation for why everything’s going awry. I am causing it to go awry (like attracts like, right?). The problem is that I’m not grateful enough, blind to the good stuff, looking the wrong way, focused on the wrong things.

And so my own lack of positivity becomes a stick to beat myself with. Because underneath it all is a self-destructive inclination that will use any weapon it can get its grubby hands on. And I can turn anything into that sort of weapon. I suppose that if your urge is to find a means to push away, or put down the inconvenient and the uncomfortable, then pointing at the lack of positivity is a comfortable solution, and so there can be a quiet complicity between those who wish to explain the damned and those who do not know how to do other than damn themselves.

I can only be genuinely positive if I start from where I am, in a state of honesty about how I feel and what I’ve got. From that honesty I can recognise the good bits, without getting mired in bitterness, resentment, or being too down to see anything good. When I recognise where I am, I have more scope to be hopeful about the room for productive change, and see the potential for good bits. I don’t convince myself that all will be well and glorious, but I can get a sane balance between the hope and the anxiety, and I can be passably functional.

If I try to make myself be positive about things where I don’t genuinely feel it, the results are generally messy. Fake positivity brings on the bitterness, the self-loathing, and a keen sense of futility. The attempt to seem, or to foster a sense of positivity can breed in me the most toxic reactions. ‘Fun’ can start to sound like a threat.

A measured, realistic kind of positivity makes it possible to appreciate the good bits, without going mad. As with most things, its about balance. For me its also about what’s socially acceptable, and it’s about putting down the weapons I’ve been using to hit myself with, and recognising that maybe I don’t have to keep beating myself up for not being cheerful and carefree enough.

The mechanics of panic

I have recently learned several things about the mechanics of panic, and thought I would share as they might be useful to others.

Fight or flight reactions are part of how we are wired up, and come from our entirely evolutionary history. Stressful situations get our bodies gearing up to fight or flight – for me it’s pretty much entirely a flight impulse. Suppressing those impulses to stay in a situation that does not feel safe, increases my risk of a panic attack. I am suspicious that panic attacks may to a very large degree be the result of not acting on my flight impulses.

If I am emotionally distressed, my automatic response is to try and hide that – the reasons are many, but the impact is that it puts extra stress on my body when my body is already in a state of distress. Physically shutting down my reactions and allowing no space for them in order to stay in a situation that I find distressing, and seem calm and tolerable to anyone distressing me, is perhaps not the cleverest way to go.

If I don’t deal with what’s actually happening, by leaving, by protecting myself, or by allowing my own emotional responses, things get worse for me. Massively worse. I’m starting to see a panic attack as a kind of violence, a reaction to what is suppressed from a body that simply cannot handle any more suppression. This is a backlash, I cannot deal with it or control it by trying to manage the symptoms. To avoid panic attacks, I need to look harder at what I do when I am distressed, or when my urge is to run away. Probably I need to start letting myself run away, or howl when I need to.

My priority has been to minimise the effect of my panic attacks on other people. To avoid being a nuisance. I pay for this. I pay for it in the shutting down of my overloaded body, and the days of feeling battered and dislocated that follow. Doing differently may make me very difficult to deal with, for other people. I may not be socially viable. I may be better off being more of a hermit, and more able to breathe, and concentrating on the spaces where I do feel safe.

Aspiration Druid

“Aspiration” is one of those magic buzzwords in politics right now. Politicians want to support ‘aspirational’ families. As far as I can make out, this means people intent on working longer hours, earning more money and owning more stuff. Aspiration is a good word though, and it needs reclaiming, because you can aspire to things aside from material wealth.

What are my aspirations? What do I want in my life and what do I want to achieve? Well, for a start I want to overcome depression and find enough inner peace and poise to be able to deal with life. It would help no end if politics wasn’t so bloody depressing right now, but I do what I can.

I aspire to improve my physical health. I aspire to being able to source more of my food locally, organically and sustainably. I also aspire to reducing my consumption and fuel use, to living more efficiently and effectively. I aspire to being happy.

I aspire to write to the very best of my ability and to create work that other people enjoy and appreciate, and get something meaningful from.

I’d like to live in a kinder, fairer world where sustainability informs choices, and where quality of life is the priority, not GDP. I aspire to live in a world where people are free to get on with their lives, so long as they aren’t causing any harm. Tolerance of religious difference. Tolerance of sexual difference and lifestyle difference. Respect for life and for the dignity of others. A desire for peace and equality informing what everyone does.

The future I want, the things I aspire to having in my life aren’t objects, and aren’t for sale. Most of it is about values, philosophy, choices. I don’t aspire to owning more stuff. I aspire to being a better person. It makes me queasy to listen to those in power obsessing over physical wealth and consumption when we’re already living at a level the planet can’t support. We need to find better, more viable things to aspire to.

 

(Or perhaps what they’re actually saying is ass-pyre, and it’s all about the burning of bottoms. Or it’s like respire for those who talk through their arses. Which makes about as much sense as anything else…)

John Clare Day

John Clare was born on the 13th July 1793, the son of a farm labourer, and an illiterate mother. Like his father, he worked on the land. His journey to adulthood came at the time of enclosures, and he is a voice for how impacts on the landscape become impacts on the inner landscapes of those living in a place. A poet who writes in detail about the land, loss, grief and beauty, he speaks to me. So much of what he had to say more than 200 years ago seems all too pertinent now.

In honour of Clare’s birthday, I have recorded one of his poems. You can watch here – although mostly it’s a ‘listen’ – nothing exciting visually happens in this film.

It’s been suggested that John Clare should have a place in English culture comparable to the place Robert Burns holds for the Scottish. As a peasant poet and voice for the land, I think John Clare is someone we could do with hearing. He’s not got the same cheerful, lecherous swing of Burns, he doesn’t fit into any stories the English might have or want about national identity, but that’s all the more reason to celebrate him. I’ll be up on a hill tonight with other likeminded people, sharing Clare’s poems, and then raising a glass to him in the pub.

Beloved of the Gods

Who would not choose to be loved by the divine? It’s the ultimate validation, the proof of worth that none can challenge, the proof of rightness and righteousness and whatever else you want it to be, to go forth into the world confident that a deity, or deities, love you.

There’s a vast array of perspectives within Paganism about what deities are, and how you might interact with them. How much scope to pick and choose the deity has can vary – in people’s minds at least. For some (based on what I’ve read) it’s enough to show up interested, your relationship with the divine will flow from this. This is often the Christian perspective – when they postulate their God as one of unconditional love, all you have to do is show up for Jesus and that love will flow towards you. My understanding is that when Christianity came along, this was one of its more unusual features and that historical Paganism viewed its deities as a fussier and more demanding lot.

In my teens I was drawn to the idea of deity for a while, and there were moments, but nothing clear aside from a couple of very intense dreams. In my twenties I lost all sense of divinity, and in my thirties, as part of a deliberate project (When a Pagan Prays) I set out to try and reconnect. The gods do not talk to me, I do not feel called to work for, or be lead by, or blessed by any deity in particular, and no matter what I do or how I do it, nothing much happens. And I know, because I’ve faced the sentiments repeatedly, how much of a validation it would be to be picked. Special. Chosen. Wanted by a deity for some purpose that I alone can serve. It’s not happening. My wanting it does not make it happen. Either what I’m doing is sufficient and requires no interference, or there’s nothing I could do, or I’m irrelevant or combinations thereof.

It raises some interesting questions about the idea of equality within spirituality. Are we all on an even footing, or are some of us more spiritually advanced than others? If you think we’re reincarnating towards perfection, then it’s a given that some are doing better at this than others. While there’s something tempting about the idea that we’re all good enough and loved by the gods, there’s also something bland and limiting about that idea. The heroic cultures of our ancestors were all about standing out, being memorable, and myth-worthy. But taken too far, the urge to specialness becomes a way to put down those you see as less special. To speak for the deity is to have power, importance and status. For fallible humans, there’s a lot of risk to your spiritual wellbeing involved in buying into the idea of your own importance. It’s so often the case in organised religion that worldly power becomes more important than personal spirituality. For some people people to be special, others of us have to get our heads round not being special, and I’m increasingly inclined to think that’s ok.

Perhaps the gods speak to me in ways that I remain too ignorant, fearful or closed to hear. Perhaps there are right things I could do that I’m not doing. Perhaps I’m not good enough. Perhaps it isn’t my path. On the whole though, it may be as well for me that I have nothing of this in my life. I watch the debates go by on blogs and social media about fashions in deities, and who really knows what, and who really is in a relationship with their god… and I am glad to have nothing to say. There’s a certain relief in having nothing to contribute. There’s nothing of mine that can be hurt by other people believing or not believing me. There’s nothing in my spiritual experience that gives me any entitlement to claim authority.

Of course there are times when the security of being loved by the divine would be a welcome, encouraging thing, a balm for my troubled soul perhaps. There is no one to do the work for me, and whatever is broken inside me is mine to fix, and only mine. On the plus side it makes me easier to be around for other people who do not get miracle cures, magical insights and demands for action. I think the days when I am jealous of those who have a personal experience of deity, is outweighed by the days when I’m glad of not having to deal with that, and not having to navigate my all too fragile ego through the many traps spiritual authority has to offer a person. I’m just a scruffy Druid, muddling along, and learning how to be ok with that has been an important part of my personal journey.

In defence of the fox

The British government wants to rethink fox hunting. To ‘control this pest’ they want to take the modern and efficient means of getting a lot of people to dress up in brightly coloured jackets and ride horses across the countryside, to facilitate a pack of dogs in catching the fox and tearing it to shreds. Although officially the dogs will be to flush out the fox so it can be shot, dogs trained to tear a fox apart aren’t going to stop doing that. Either they use the same dogs, and get the same results, or all fox hounds will need putting down so that a new generation not trained to destroy foxes, can replace them.

It’s odd, but when rats are a nuisance, you tend to get one modestly uniformed person with rat traps and poison, and no pageantry at all. But then there’s apparently no romance in rat hunting and people with money have never considered it much of a sport. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that fox hunting is a social activity for the hunters and what the government are really interested in is the tidy efficiency of the method.

I would like to defend the fox on the basis that it has a right to exist, and that the right of the fox to exist should not be about human utility. This is pointless, because the people who want to hunt foxes will not see a fox as anything other than a mix of annoyance, and source of entertainment. That the fox exists to serve them is a given, and as it can’t be eaten, it can provide the entertainment of a chase and the thrill of blood letting.

I want to attack this system that sets usefulness to humans as the only real measure of anything, and that exploits based on usefulness, amusement and profit, and because it can. I want to question the idea that we are entitled to use and destroy purely for our own gain or amusement. I might as well shout into the wind, because for people who believe in this human-centric way of getting things done, it’s evident that humans are the most important creatures in the mix by a very large margin. But not all humans. Not the poor, the sick or the disabled, and not the sort of humans who would stick up for foxes. Money and power are what entitles a human to use and abuse other humans, environments, creatures. For me, fox hunting is a clear manifestation of this, but by no means the worst.

The only way to argue with those who believe in using, is to argue on their own terms. So, the fox is a pest to control in the countryside? Foxes mostly eat rodents, and will eat rabbits. In terms of agriculture, rabbits and rodents are an issue, and unchecked populations can unbalance eco systems and farming alike. Real foxes are not like Fantastic Mr Fox and are far more trouble to people quietly keeping a few chickens than they are to anyone farming. Real conflicts between foxes and humans happen in urban areas, but there’s no talk of getting the jackets and horses and hounds into the middle of London to tackle urban fox problems. Because that, obviously, would be silly.

It’s a curious thing that fox hunting is traditionally a sport for the rich. Poor people follow along behind on foot. Fox hunting is not the only traditional blood sport in the UK. Dog fighting, cock fighting, and badger baiting have all been considered sports, and were not about feeding your family. (I consider hunting for the pot to be a whole other issue). Oddly, there is no talk of making legal again the kinds of animal cruelty that poor people traditionally find amusing. There’s constant talk of clamping down on dangerous dogs, and institutional disapproval of dog fighting, but of course getting one dog to tear another apart bears absolutely no resemblance to getting a bunch of dogs to tear a fox apart, so that’s obviously fine.

And while the government gets together to deploy valuable parliamentary time talking about whether to let their friends shred foxes for fun, wars continue, the refugee crisis from Syria grows, and on the domestic front, food bank use increases, but that clearly isn’t as important as whether you can wear a loud jacket and watch a wild animal die.

Doing the right things

Politicians like to tell us that we’d be fine if only we did the right things: work hard, save, live within your means. They don’t like to mention that accident and illness tends not to be a matter of personal choice, and that it benefits business to have a flexible (i.e. not universally employed) and negotiable (i.e. desperate and willing to tolerate any hours, pay and conditions) sort of workforce. Those may be issues for another day. I want to talk about doing the right things.

I’m a fine case in point for doing the right things. I work, and I’ve always worked. Granted, I don’t earn a great deal, but I live within my means. I’ve only ever borrowed money for mortgages and I’ve never got into a mortgage that it was going to be hard to keep up with. I do not buy on finance. I’ve never owned a car, I don’t do expensive sofas or widescreen TVs and I use things until they really aren’t usable anymore if at all possible. I have no expensive addictions, drink infrequently, do not gamble. As a consequence, I live cheaply, and I do not consume much.

Now, consider what would happen to the economy if everyone chose to do what I’m doing. Cars, fuel, tobacco, gambling, alcohol and new technology represent a lot of money moving about in the economy. A lot of jobs depend on a considerable collective appetite for cars, vices, and new gizmos. Rather a lot of the economy depends on personal debt. We create new money (and by we, I mean the banks, for private gain) by imagining money to lend as mortgages and other such loans. To service your debts and at least pay off the interest, you may need to work longer hours, or take a second job, which is shitty for you but great for the economy. Do it my way, and you don’t get growth.

What would happen if people only replaced things when they really needed to, shared tools and equipment, and gave away what they no longer need? That’s not going to fuel your economy either, is it? People might be better off in terms of quality of life, but the size of the economy would be bound to shrink if people on the whole lived carefully and wisely within their means, avoided debt and did not buy luxury things they don’t really need. And yet politicians are so keen to berate the poor for tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and buying luxury items and getting into debt, when that very behaviour is a big part of what keeps the economy as a whole moving.

And of course the hard work thing is a myth. If hard work really was what made you rich, then teachers and self employed people would be millionaires and gambling on the stock exchange would be about as much use as taking part in tombolas at the local village fete.

We can’t have it both ways. The whole approach to growth currently in favour depends on personal debt, living beyond your means and having more than you need. Do the right things for the economy, and you’ll also hear that you’re a terrible, irresponsible sort of person who should be punished should they fall on hard times. Save, keep a safety net, live lightly, minimise your costs, and you undermine the whole business. Our current crop of politicians want to have it both ways. Anyone interested in the quality of their own life needs to start questioning this.

To care, or not to care

All the way through my life there have been an abundance of people keen to tell me how difficult I am. Too sensitive. Too coldly logical. Too emotional. Too intense. I do too much and give too much and am just more than any reasonable person should be expected to cope with. Or I don’t do enough, am not patient and generous enough with them. I expect too much. They’re a regular feature and up until recently I’ve mostly agreed with them. I am difficult, and generally not worth the effort, and the only way to function is by hiding most of who and how I am, trying hard to fit in, and apologising for being as I am when I can’t hide it.

Back in March of this year, I started to realise that any kind of ‘belonging’ based on crushing my own nature was never going to let me feel like I truly belong. Since then I’ve been looking a lot harder at my network of relationships and thinking about what works for me and what doesn’t. Here are some things I have noticed.

One sided unconditional giving and loving can feel noble and heroic, but it does very little beyond that. As I get less interested in martyring myself for other people, I start to see the value of love reciprocated and returned. However stumbling and awkward it might be sometimes – because we’re all awkward and messy in our own ways – care returned is a precious thing. It’s possible to give far more to people who give back, the exchanges are meaningful. Unrequited attachments can be a strange form of self involvement, with ideas about the ‘beloved’ being held as more important than the unresponsive reality. It’s a silly game that allows me to stay warm and open to people who are only interested in using me.

Where there is real care, all manner of things are possible. Of course there are bumps, because life is challenging, people are imperfect communicators and we’re all dealing with our own fears and beliefs at the same time. But where there is care, overcoming those bumps is more important than pride and ego. Where the other person truly matters, working through the occasional issues also matters, and there can be no sweeping it under the carpet, demanding it be fine when it isn’t, or emotionally manipulating the other person into accepting their discomfort.

If someone else is suffering, I will try and alleviate that by whatever means make sense. That doesn’t oblige me to humour the people who like and manufacture drama. I don’t have to participate in other people’s dramas if I don’t want to. And mostly, I don’t want to.

I routinely under-estimate my own strength and resilience. I think about everything a lot, I can be really thrown by other people’s unconsidered actions, and I tend to take the things people do carelessly as a measure of where I am with them. There are two things I need to work on here. One is to recognise that everyone, me included, is fallible and that it’s ok for me and anyone else to get things wrong now and then, and that it does not necessarily mean anything much if that happens. However, people who keep getting the same things wrong it’s much more worth being wary about. I can be gentler with other people, and with myself if I recognise that messing up is not a measure of care. I also recognise that on the whole I do better with people who know themselves, act consciously and move deliberately through the world. People who know why they did and said whatever it was and can talk about it if needs be. Obliviousness is not a quality I find useful in other people.

I recognise that a lot of the ‘problems’ I have in relating to other people have a lot to do with how harshly I judge myself. The assumption that I don’t fit and won’t be accepted often colours how I interact with people. I’ve listened too much to the people who wanted to hurt me and put me down, and not enough to the kinder, friendlier voices, because that fitted my story about myself. I can change that. I can be more open to people I enjoy being around and walk away with a shrug and a sense of no great loss from anyone who finds me terribly difficult. I am not obliged to appease the people who don’t like me, and that’s a very liberating line of thought.