Against Worship

When I first began reading books on Neopaganism, interactions with deities being described with words such as "communing" turned me off. As far as I could tell, religion largely consists of the worship of deities. Deities are better than us, and we ask favors of them. This is true of religions all over the world, even so-called "atheist" religions like Buddhism. Thus, I thought Wiccan descriptions of communing with the God and Goddess just as silly as Christians who talk about having a "personal relationship" with Jesus, a historically anachronistic (and thus wrong, in my view) theology if there ever was one.

But what's so great about worship? I certainly don't think much of worship in any other context. Worship of political figures disgusts me; I have to bite my tongue when I see friends fawning over Obama (or Reagan for that matter, but that's not so common now). Worship of sports heroes or movie stars is simply bizarre. The number of famous people deserving of admiration is really quite small, and I have never found anyone I thought I could adore, fawn over, or worship.

I don't think worship is healthy in any form, however mild it may seem. I realize that many people are inspired by people who are great at what they do, and that this attitude often tends toward worship. So is worship in that context a good thing? No, I say, for two reasons:

1. Even if someone becomes a great pianist or scientist or writer because they are inspired by some great figure in that field, that doesn't mean that behavior is healthy. Need I remind everyone that the highly driven type A personalities who reach the top in their field often struggle with psychological problems and/or misuse and abuse their loved ones? They are often deeply unhappy despite the obsessions that make them great; in fact, the obsession that makes them great probably leads to their misery. They often cause great harm to others. So as much as I often respect the quality of the work produced by such people, I cannot say that it justifies the hero worship.
2. Being inspired by a great person is different from worshiping them. They are separable, at least in theory. I could be inspired by a great pianist to work hard and become a great pianist myself, even though I don't think much of that great pianist personally aside from their natural talent and work ethic.

When we do see people worshiping other people in a political context, it is never a good sign. Those who seek power are corrupt, and those who actually grasp it even more so. Power in whatever form corrupts even the best of people (see a previous post of mine on how this can happen in Pagan communities). On an even stronger note, I would add that to have a leader is to ask for problems, and for similar reasons. Power by itself tends to produce admiration and worship. That is no doubt why the Occupy movement has thus far eschewed electing leaders.

If I were still a Christian and believed that God demanded worship, I would probably attempt to find a way to justify it despite my misgivings about worship in any other context. Luckily, I am not; I'm just a Pagan, and now I'm beginning to rethink my relationship with the God and Goddess in light of this newfound attitude toward worship.

Religion as Power Worship

I spent a large part of my adult life as a Christian, where religious activity largely consists of "worship," which I have come to believe is one of the most pernicious activities ever engaged in by humankind. In this first post I will discuss the political implications of worship.

In Christianity, prayer and worship consist of debasing oneself before a superior being, of praising Him for his power and superiority, of thanking Him for His gifts and proclaiming oneself unworthy of them, and so on. This power worship is a feature of many religions, but is particularly pronounced in the Abrahamic traditions. God here is a despot; His rules are law that must be obeyed even when not fully understood; and most importantly: what He does, what He says, what he demands of you -- all must be qualified by the adjective "good."

Power worship is something that can only be done in the context of authoritarianism. If we were truly equals of God, we could have a conversation with Him. Instead, we must praise, thank, and beg from Him as we do of a monarch, since He is the one created us, could kill us at any moment, and will send many of us to hell.

Is it any coincidence that Christians, on the whole, tend toward right wing authoritarianism?

As a Christian, I could actually feel the gears clicking in my associative cortex. While raised in a democracy, I accepted that Christian cosmology was essentially authoritarian, which makes sense given the time and place in which it developed, and I tried to find some consistent way of being a modern who believed in democracy while accepting a traditional view of Christian theology, with all its implications for the natural order (including how we organize our power structures). Let me tell you, I had to ignore a lot of cognitive dissonance to make it work for myself.

The traditionalist Catholic or Orthodox Christian who believes that monarchy is the only God-ordained and approved form of government is crazy, but at least he or she is crazy in a consistent way. On the other hand, the orthodox Catholic, for example, tries to be faithful to two contradictory traditions: that before the Second Vatican Council, which was for the most part reactionary, and that afterward, which embraced many Enlightenment values.

Many intelligent people pull this off... but like any contradiction, it cannot be lived by the majority of people for long. Enlightenment values are so superior to, and so incompatible with, traditional Christian values that the former eventually triumph, and people in technologically advanced countries (where you don't have to pray to God for rain so your family won't die) abandon Christianity in ever greater numbers.

I think this internal contradiction is created, in large part, by the power worship inherent in Christianity, and I think power worship is so inseparable from Christianity that there truly exists a cultural war of sorts between traditional religion and modern democratic values. Thus, I no longer believe that it is reasonable or even possible to be a committed traditional Christian and a full member of democratic society (at least, not without a good dollop of self-deception). The siren's call of authoritarianism is too strong. As for liberal Christianity, that always was a stepping stone at best, and more and more people are abandoning it as its cultural value diminishes.

Pardon the Absence

I see that I have only published one post anything this month. There are two reasons for this: first, I have mostly been reading politics lately (radical left politics to be exact) and don't want this to become an exclusively political blog; and second, I have been extraordinarily busy. I have a post in mind that I will write in the next day or so. Next week my schedule should open up and I will have more time to devote to this blog.

To Be Spiritual Is To Act Spiritual

Due to some personal difficulties, my religious practice has waned a bit as of late, as one can see from my blog entries. I have been reading leftist literature, so my intellectual life hasn't quite dried up (I just started D'Amato's The Meaning of Marxism), but I haven't had the time or inclination to continue with what meager Wiccan practice I was doing in the first place.

I do think this is important. I suspect that many Pagans spend little of their time doing their religion. I don't actually have any evidence of this other than my online reading; I haven't really met many real-life Pagans yet. But a spirituality that isn't practiced never goes anywhere, never develops. I can call myself a Wiccan, but that won't mean anything if I don't do anything about it. Religion, like almost any aspect of life, is mostly in the doing. Can you imagine someone calling themselves a tennis player if almost all they did was occasionally watch tennis or read about it?

I've dropped the ball! I suspect some going back to some Wiccan ritual would particularly do me good right now; it is indeed a paradox that when we most need to do something is when we feel most averse to doing it!

Left vs. Right

This is one of the more perceptive remarks I've seen in Maass's The Case for Socialism:

If Barack Obama and Bill Clinton look better compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, it shouldn’t be forgotten that these latter-day Democrats are plainly more conservative than plenty of presidents who came before them—Republicans included. Thus, Republican president Richard Nixon launched more antidiscrimination and affirmative action programs than Bill Clinton. That’s not because Nixon was more liberal. On the contrary, he was a miserable right-winger. But Nixon was under pressure to act from the mass social movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, something that neither Clinton nor Obama have faced. (p. 102-3)

Since the shape of the U.S. government encourages a two-party system, there really isn't much room for ideological diversity, and the parties will tend to converge closer and closer together under the pressure of the electorate. Thus, while to the left of the Republicans, Obama the "socialist" is actually to the right both on the economic and authoritarian-libertarian scales according to the Political Compass. The solution, perhaps, is not to join third parties that are destined to fail in the U.S., but to turn to mass movements and more radical forms of democracy.

Against Identity Politics

NOTE: I am quite uncertain about the arguments I make below, so please take my conclusions with a grain of salt. I am rather up in the air about the case for making identity politics a significant part of leftist politics. Perhaps sometimes it has some value.

I am reading The Case for Socialism, by Alan Maass. In it, the author makes the case for making identity politics part of socialism because of racism (against blacks and immigrants) and sexism. At 180 pages, this book is closer to a manifesto than a political treatise, so I would not expect a carefully written argument here. As I mentioned before, I am no fan of identity politics, and Maass hasn't changed my mind.

Let me preface these remarks with a big complaint I have about Marxism. I think the reduction of all cultural and other issues to economics is one of the least plausible things about it. I hate reductionism and find it particularly worthless in the social sciences. As someone with Marxist and socialist sympathies, I certainly agree that economics underlies social issues to a much greater extent than normally recognized, but I don't buy that all political and social issues are really just economics in disguise.

Anyway, on to Ms. Maass's argument for identity politics.

First, he argues that racism is at heart an economic issue. He makes a good attempt, but I remain unconvinced that the current levels of poverty and crime among African Americans is due to racism via the economics of slavery. He cites statistics about income and incarceration rates, but does not thereby establish that current racism, much less economics, is the sole or even overriding reason for the plight of blacks in the U.S. That's sloppy reasoning.

This is not to say that racism does not play a major role in the problems among black communities in the U.S., but the author just assumes that this is the case, and further goes out on a Marxist limb by saying that it is economics that is the primary driver of this racism.

With regard to immigrants, I mostly agree with him. Capitalists need a cheap labor force, so they have a vested interest in keeping the borders open but keeping illegals illegal. Of course things got out of hand eventually, with anti-immigration rightwing politicians cracking down on immigration because of political pressure. That shows that economics is not the only driver of cultural activity, which the author admits grudgingly but does not seem to realize the full implications of: "This isn’t to say that economic interests alone shape the different systems of oppressions that operate under capitalism. On the contrary, forms of oppression take on a life of their own, which can sometimes obscure the underlying economic connection" (p. 49).

With regard to women, he has some good points regarding unpaid labor in the home by women. My complaint here is that he is speaking to the rhetoric of the socially conservative wing of the right, not things as they are for the vast majority of people today:

Women are primarily responsible for the raising of children and labor inside the family, placing a double burden on them of paid labor at work and unpaid labor at home. Woman and men alike are taught from an early age that this is natural—that women are drawn to the family, instinctively nurturing, deferential, and all the other traits summed up by the cliché “a woman’s place is in the home.” At the same time, women are taught something else entirely—that their worth depends on the “beauty,” their physical appearance, their sexual attractiveness to men (not to other women, of course!). (p. 50)

Does this paragraph strike anyone else as overstated? Perhaps it is because I live in liberal, secularized New England, but I don't think the plight of most women is anywhere near this bad. Yes, women are underpaid (though the gap is objectively speaking not nearly as bad as the raw numbers suggest) and still do more than their fair share of unpaid "homemaking" compared to their mates, but progress is being made -- an important point, as we shall see.

The author concludes:

The point of this is to show, first, that the prevailing ideas about women or Blacks or any other oppressed group are designed to bolster a system of oppression—and second, that various forms of oppression can be traced in critical ways to the underlying priorities of an economic system run in the interests of profit and power. If this is true, then the socialist project of creating a new world has to involve all the struggles against oppression in society, and those struggles have to be championed by everyone fighting for socialism. (p. 53)

This is to widen the definition of socialism to include not just economic but all causes against oppression.

On the one hand, I agree that racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice should be fought, whether or not their causes are economic. On the other hand, insofar as their causes are economic, shouldn't we root out the cause rather than the results? The author's logic makes no sense here. For example, if capitalism is the overriding cause of racism, then why not primarily fight capitalism? Why treat the symptom rather than the disease? Identity politics is just a bandaid.

Capitalism is, to a degree, to blame for all the working poor, not just poor African Americans. We should fight poverty regardless of race, and fight racism regardless of economic status. To tightly link the two, as the author would have us do, is to obscure the problem. If we could bring more African Americans out of poverty, we could eliminate that much racism, though by no means all. In other words, don't mix economic and racial policy, even if you are decide to fight on both fronts!

Yes, racism against latinos is directly connected with worries about "the brown horde," as a Mexican-born blogger I used to read put it, and that feeds into insane immigration policy. But the racism will persist however hard we work until we have solved the underlying economic and policy issues. Yes, fight the prejudice, but work harder on fixing immigration law!

And while I will not pretend that things are perfect for women, even here in the enlightened northeast U.S., the author's rhetoric seems completely over-the-top to me. Furthermore, things are getting continually better for women, whereas things are getting continually worse for the working class.

Let me repeat that: The key to helping the the oppressed is to take the class war seriously. Class trumps race, sex, and nation in traditional socialism. Identity politics is a horrible distraction. This is not to say that we should not fight racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice, but I strongly disagree that we should elevate these issues to the same level as class struggle.

A few months ago, the Center for American Progress posted an article about the dangers of menthol cigarettes, then immediately made it into an issue of identity politics because LGBTs are more likely to smoke menthols than regular cigarettes. Now let me ask you this: should we regulate or ban menthol cigarettes because they're worse than regular cigarettes and thus harm people, regardless or race, sex, or sexual orientation? Maybe? Fine. Should we be concerned because the poor smoke more menthols than regular smokes, since they are the ones who can least afford to be harmed by them? Maybe? Then I'm on your side. Should we be more inclined to regulate or ban menthols because the LGBT community smokes them more than regulars? If you think so, then you've lost me. There's no rationale behind that that isn't already covered in concerns about health and the poor.

Look, I am not indifferent to matters of race, culture, sex, etc. I have spent so much time among Chinese that I have absorbed big chunks of their culture. (A couple years ago someone called me "Chimerican.") I have seen racism against Asians and been the subject of racism from Chinese people as well. The oppression of people because of their race, gender, sexuality, or any other reason should be stamped out. What I disagree with is this indiscriminate, haphazard mixing of issues of prejudice with issues of economics, especially when you claim, as a socialist, that class comes first. If capitalism is the root cause of racism and sexism, then shouldn't you spend more energy on fighting the root cause?

Nihilism and the Benevolent Cosmos

I had a conversation with a friend the other night about philosophy and in particular nihilism. By nihilism I mean the belief that life is meaningless; that human reason is impotent; that there is no such thing as good or bad in an uncaring, hostile universe. As someone who studied philosophy intensively for a decade or so, I made the point that most philosophers nowadays are nihilists, though few admit it and many are inconsistent in their beliefs.

Then I really was struck by my friend's observation that many philosophers start with the conclusion that the universe is "malevolent" and then filter all the evidence to prove that. I found this a rather striking expression for him to use, since he is essentially secular in outlook, but it also reminded me of my recent reorientation to the universe as fundamentally filled with the divine. Yes, the universe is in many ways awful however you slice it; for example, our best case scenario for Earth is to be cooked in a billion years when the sun expands. On the other hand, life itself is extraordinary, and human sentience (and that of perhaps a few other animal species) even more so. Looking at the vast emptiness and violence of space, life can seem like more than the random collision of atoms, but even if it is built into the laws of physics (which I believe, of course), it is difficult not to feel awe at the universe that coughed us up.

A purely secular person can feel this same awe, but must bow to the fact that the cosmos is simply this way, that it is simply our limited perspective that makes it seem so remarkable. What of a Pagan? What of a Wiccan? Can we look at the world around us and say that it is not only the work of the laws of physics, but that underlying those laws is a force that is continuous with but not limited to the physical universe, one that made life, or made life possible, in order to express joy and love? Are the God and Goddess, whether sentient beings or manifestations of the cosmic polarity or something else, really guiding our existence in meaningful ways?