Blessings Darlings!
In a Facebook group the other day (yes, one of the vile swamp of dysfunctional ones - those are where I get inspiration for many of my rants) someone was going on about doing a prosperity spell, but to be careful to 'not let the greedy'.
Someone with a home, not living on the street or in a shelter.
Someone with central heat and air conditioning
Someone with food security.
Someone with a phone or computer than had constant internet access.
Someone with electricity.
Someone with at LEAST a refrigerator/freezer.
Someone not living in Detroit or on Native American land, so had clean water and plenty of it.
Someone with a working water heater.
Someone with a working stove.
Someone with enough education to read and write.
And she was addressing others like herself.
People in the upper 15% of income worldwide.
Which is almost everyone in the US - my pitiful $5000 for 2016 put me in the top 25% of world-wide earners.
With my ACA benefits added, I was up to the upper 15% of income world wide.
I was a bit gobsmacked. And I made a mistake. I tried to point out to here that even the folks she would consider 'greedy' are the heros of their own story. They pretty much uniformly feel that all they do is Right and Just and Proper (okay, a few see themselves as the antihero of their own story, but by that they only mean that they are not a CONVENTIONAL hero - but they are a hero nevertheless.)
Back to my mistake - I forgot that in her story she was the hero. Pointing out that compared to the rest of the world, she's and probably everyone else in the group are exactly the greedy folks that she felt shouldn't use prosperity spells was, to say the least, at odds with her hero story. Because there will always be people making more than she makes ... and never mind that the same thought is in the mind of those 'real' greedy folks she was condemning.
Sometimes I'm an idiot. Most of those times it's when I expect average white pagan folks to not see themselves as being the most economically and socially and religiously oppressed folks on the planet.
Sigh.
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Monday, February 19, 2018
Thursday, October 21, 2010
aBinary
Blessings, Darlings!
Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Are you for us or against us? Is it good or is it evil? Is he gay or straight? Is that a man or a woman? It's us vs. them!
There's a lot of pressure to see everything through the lens of dualism.
To some extent doing so is probably hard-wired into us humans. We, as a species, seem to be 'categorizing animals', probably as a result of evolutionary pressure that started with "food or not-food" and went from there. Categorizing, even generalizing, are shortcuts to decision making in an environment that requires LOTS of decision making. It is a useful thing.
But - categories are mere representations of reality, and therefore by definition limited. For while categorizing is black/white, the universe is technicolor ... and has at least three dimensions. Never confuse the map with actual reality.
Apparently, some neopagans out there combine the concept of duality with the concepts of good and evil, to the point that they feel that the concept that good and evil forces must always be in balance. Which seems odd to me, since most neopagans also say that there is no God/dess of Evil a la Satan, no anthropomorphized or demonized Evil. Being the snarky judgmental Druid Bitch that I am, I assume that this is another way to shortcut making decisions and taking actions in life. If good and evil MUST balance, then you don't - maybe even SHOULDN'T - take action against evil being done, for you'd upset the balance. Throw in misunderstanding the Rede, and some can't stop those harming others because they might harm the perp.
For me, of course, I see myself as the Hands of the Gods on Earth, bitchslapping those the Gods would have bitchslapped. Which means self defense, which means throwing the occasional curse, etc.
I'm also not pre-occupied with balance. The universe isn't into balance, it's into entropy. Assuming we don't have the cyclic universe some theorize, then the universe will end, and end without even a whimper as energy and matter diffuse out to uselessness.
But that's the long, long, long term.
In the short term, we can look at our world, and see how human society has changed, and it doesn't show balance, either. A friend - Henry over there who commented about Hinduism in a previous post, in fact - who once made a great case on how we show all signs of coming OUT of the Kali Yuga not descent into it. Lifespans are growing longer, more humans have more rights than even, more children are surviving infancy, more people have at least some level of voting rights than ever, a smaller percentage of the human population is in slavery, etc, etc, etc. Is this evenly distributed, even in the US? Oh, heck no. Ask an African American who lived 100 years ago if there has been real progress, the answer will be yes. Ask a transexual woman, and she'll explain in detail how the answer is no.
I'm NOT saying that life is rainbows and unicorn farts.
Of COURSE there is still a long way to go to promote 'good' and reduce 'evil'/abuse of people. What I'm saying is the promoting good, making changes that increase the good and reduce the evil does NOT mean that evil is just going to break out elsewhere to 'balance' it.
For that matter, I suppose that some folks feel that all good in their lives must be balanced by evil in their own lives. It may bring some 'pie in the sky' solace to those who have survived abuse, but.... that good is not going to spontaneously arrive. Good CAN and WILL happen in lives, but working for it, demanding an end to evil and abuse, working for ending abuses and for good is going to get a whole lot more good in your life than passively sitting back and waiting for it to get dumped in your lap.
And those poor, scared, folks who think that all good that happens to them must be balanced by evil happening to them - that every moment of joy MUST be balance by moment of sadness, that every love must be balanced by hate! Life sometimes sucks. It does not HAVE to. Prepared for challenging times, but don't feel you MUST SUFFER because you are loving life at other times. It doesn't have to be that way.
Frondly, Fern
Are you a good witch or a bad witch? Are you for us or against us? Is it good or is it evil? Is he gay or straight? Is that a man or a woman? It's us vs. them!
There's a lot of pressure to see everything through the lens of dualism.
To some extent doing so is probably hard-wired into us humans. We, as a species, seem to be 'categorizing animals', probably as a result of evolutionary pressure that started with "food or not-food" and went from there. Categorizing, even generalizing, are shortcuts to decision making in an environment that requires LOTS of decision making. It is a useful thing.
But - categories are mere representations of reality, and therefore by definition limited. For while categorizing is black/white, the universe is technicolor ... and has at least three dimensions. Never confuse the map with actual reality.
Apparently, some neopagans out there combine the concept of duality with the concepts of good and evil, to the point that they feel that the concept that good and evil forces must always be in balance. Which seems odd to me, since most neopagans also say that there is no God/dess of Evil a la Satan, no anthropomorphized or demonized Evil. Being the snarky judgmental Druid Bitch that I am, I assume that this is another way to shortcut making decisions and taking actions in life. If good and evil MUST balance, then you don't - maybe even SHOULDN'T - take action against evil being done, for you'd upset the balance. Throw in misunderstanding the Rede, and some can't stop those harming others because they might harm the perp.
For me, of course, I see myself as the Hands of the Gods on Earth, bitchslapping those the Gods would have bitchslapped. Which means self defense, which means throwing the occasional curse, etc.
I'm also not pre-occupied with balance. The universe isn't into balance, it's into entropy. Assuming we don't have the cyclic universe some theorize, then the universe will end, and end without even a whimper as energy and matter diffuse out to uselessness.
But that's the long, long, long term.
In the short term, we can look at our world, and see how human society has changed, and it doesn't show balance, either. A friend - Henry over there who commented about Hinduism in a previous post, in fact - who once made a great case on how we show all signs of coming OUT of the Kali Yuga not descent into it. Lifespans are growing longer, more humans have more rights than even, more children are surviving infancy, more people have at least some level of voting rights than ever, a smaller percentage of the human population is in slavery, etc, etc, etc. Is this evenly distributed, even in the US? Oh, heck no. Ask an African American who lived 100 years ago if there has been real progress, the answer will be yes. Ask a transexual woman, and she'll explain in detail how the answer is no.
I'm NOT saying that life is rainbows and unicorn farts.
Of COURSE there is still a long way to go to promote 'good' and reduce 'evil'/abuse of people. What I'm saying is the promoting good, making changes that increase the good and reduce the evil does NOT mean that evil is just going to break out elsewhere to 'balance' it.
For that matter, I suppose that some folks feel that all good in their lives must be balanced by evil in their own lives. It may bring some 'pie in the sky' solace to those who have survived abuse, but.... that good is not going to spontaneously arrive. Good CAN and WILL happen in lives, but working for it, demanding an end to evil and abuse, working for ending abuses and for good is going to get a whole lot more good in your life than passively sitting back and waiting for it to get dumped in your lap.
And those poor, scared, folks who think that all good that happens to them must be balanced by evil happening to them - that every moment of joy MUST be balance by moment of sadness, that every love must be balanced by hate! Life sometimes sucks. It does not HAVE to. Prepared for challenging times, but don't feel you MUST SUFFER because you are loving life at other times. It doesn't have to be that way.
Frondly, Fern
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