Comments on: Witch-burning

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:18:12 +0000

Thanks. Looks extensive. I appreciate the tip.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:19:14 +0000

I don’t know. Do you ever look at Dave Pollard’s blog, How to Save the World? He answers — or attempts to answer — these kinds of questions far better than I could.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:43:37 +0000

So how, and I don’t mean to belabor the issue, is “culture” to find some sort of healing after the bloated excesses it’s been used to? Maybe it can’t…but it has struck me for awhile now that the involuntary renunciation of all those magical fetishes can engender a more real way of being, for more people. I don’t think it can be called renewal because I don’t think “we” have ever really been there. Maybe no large-scale epiphany is even possible. but the sorcerers and their playthings have surely not been restorative at all.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:36:06 +0000

Exactly. A lot of our thinking about consumer goods and machines strikes me as magical, too. They are fetish objects that will make their owners young, sexy, etc.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:06:38 +0000

I’ll check out that post. I suppose you could see this country’s financial wizards of disaster as sorcerers of a sort, too. A lot of magical thinking of a very profoundly deceptive nature going on there.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:09:06 +0000

Oh, I just meant that the sorcerors of our time are those who use our own favorite technologies for ill. Didn't have anything too profound in mind there. As for religion, if healing is about making whole, than all religions can be said to have a profound impact on health. Though many times I think they just reinforce unhealthy views -- for example by fostering artificial conflicts between male and female or between humans and nature. So I guess I was speaking fairly figuratively in both instances. My friend Dale, a Vajrayana Buddhist, has a good post on religion vs. belief the other day.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:19:08 +0000

I agree with you about religion needing to be more about healing than belief. I am not a big believer in belief. Shamanism seems to offer that healing much more than traditional Western religion does, though there are healing components to more mainstream religions, too, I suppose. And yeah, shamanic traditions doubtless have their manipulators and grabbers of power. as to their running the show, maybe you could say more about that sometime. That remark has my curiosity piqued. Thanks.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:10:06 +0000

Thanks for the heart-felt response. Yes, it’s difficult to know how to respond to things like this without lapsing into over-generalizations based on cultural assumptions that may or may not apply. And I think we do have to be careful not to idealize shamanic traditions, though some of Via Negativa’s readers back in 2004 and 2005 probably felt I was guilty of that on occasion. Ultimately, I feel religion is — or ought to be — more about healing than about belief, and I feel that modern healers — doctors and therapists — would do well to study to study the kind of psychological dramaturgy that shamans and folk healers so often employ to good effect. We do have our sorcerors, too, though. In fact, I’d argue they’re running the show. But that’s a discussion for another time, perhaps.

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:13:30 +0000

This fucking breaks my heart. It’s another example of how humans set themselves (ourselves) up against a template of the Other. demonizing what, who we fear. and it strikes me as particularly infuriating and tragic that in alternative ways of apprehending the world there seems to lie a great deal of potential for healing. Shamanic and earth-based traditions seem so necessary to me right now. but what hurts most in reading this is thinking of the pain those poor people felt. it’s easy to generalize but that distances us from being right up there in the face of what’s happening. Sometimes stepping back to see a bigger picture fogs things up for me. but I don’t think I could have watched that video, either.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:42:06 +0000

Amen, Clive! :) I think it’ll be a little while longer before openly gay couples enjoy that kind of acceptance everywhere here, though the examples of “married” gay celebrities are changing a lot of minds, I think, and Americans’ basic sense of fairness will probably eventually prevail against religious dogmatism. Even many younger evangelicals and Mormons are beginning to break with their elders over gay marriage, I hear. What will take much longer is acceptance of those who can’t be assimilated to existing models of behavior, such as the transgendered or those practicing polyfidelity. And yeah, you’re right about the hateful rhetoric of those African bishops – that’s scarey even for those of us who aren’t directly targeted.