The Serpent's Wisdom

I keep coming back to a definition of freedom offered by Marx and Engels: the ability to "contemplate oneself in a world one has created." In other words, one is not free if one merely has the ability to choose between life-options offered to her by society - one is free if she can live in the world she conceives and acts to bring about.

The riots in London (and in many other places around the world over the last couple of years) have been on my mind, because I dreamed I was involved in the destruction of a concrete park bench as an act of dissenting vandalism, and found myself in the custody of the Archons, one of whom, in the guise of an authoritative-looking man, held both my hands and interrogated me calmly but firmly. "What do you think it accomplished? What good did it bring about? How is the world a better place as a result?" He wanted clearly for me to feel that my participation had accomplished nothing positive, but also seemed genuinely to want to know my thoughts and feelings.

"People need more outlets," I said. Paraphrasing slightly the rest of my reply: "Okay, destroying the bench accomplished nothing good, but I wanted to express my dissent and that was 'the only train leaving the station.'"

Even my wording though demonstrates the enclosure of the word-fence. People need more than "more outlets" to express frustration. They need to be able to change those parts of the world that frustrate them. I believe that the average person is willing to expend honest effort for honest return. I also believe that most people want to feel as though the effort they expend is leading to something meaningful, some eventual good thing that is brought into the world as a result. How many of us get to feel that our daily work lends to some improvement to the human condition?

I propose, though the matter deserves further investigation, that all of us could select tasks that lend to improvement of the human condition, and live in prosperity. So I might turn the Archon's questions back on his own implicit support for the current financial-industrial order: what good does it bring about? How is the world a better place? We have to be free to ask the next question: can we do better? While humankind has achieved many improvements, it is worth asking whether we are getting less than we might be from our efforts. Why do we have a skewed system with endlessly deep pockets for making weapons, while bridges are collapsing from disrepair and schools are crumbling? Stock market tricks so arcane that even people with a Ph.D. in finance can't understand them reward investors with billions in profits while millions of people have no shelter or food security, and while illness is almost guaranteed to bankrupt a family.

As good as we have made things, we can do better. Silent complicity and empty dissent are not the only trains leaving the station. Every day brings anew the potential to reframe the debate.

Religion Survey, from gramina

1. Do you believe in God?

I find I can't answer this question with a yes or no. Belief plays a remarkably small role in my religious life. As far as doctrine is concerned, I'm critical of just about any and all of it.

There's a lot I could say here, but I'll start by saying I don't know how to believe in something or someone when I don't know who or what they are. I have some thoughts on this, but I consider them essentially fiction.

I am, though, a person of faith. Faith, in my opinion, is intransitive, and transcends religion. I can recognize another person of faith no matter what beliefs or doctrine they profess.


2. Define God.

I'm fond of "that which never acts yet leaves nothing undone." I gathered many of my thoughts on this quite some time ago, and I'm surprised to find today that my thoughts on this question have not much changed in 8 years.

That said, I have had a few encounters or hints during meditation or dreaming that I experienced as a divine presence. Was it God? I don't know.


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Wow, i haven't made a public post here in over two weeks.

I do have projects in the basement, though. A while back i wrote that i am not sure i have anything new to say about certain subjects - like religion. But what i've *already said*, especially about Gnosticism and early Christianity, deserves to be organized and presented.

For the longest time, i felt like i should organize it into a book. But this effort failed numerous times, for various reasons. First, i was never really sure how to structure it. No matter what point i picked as my starting point (which was always difficult), i had a hard time organizing it all into a straight line. Second, i had a lot of "mission creep" and self-doubt. I'd ask myself questions like, "Does the world really need another book about this?"

So i'm organizing the material on a wiki instead. That will solve the linearity problem, and will also solve the mission creep problem as well -- the wiki will be online no matter how "complete" it feels, or how much effort i feel like putting into it during any given month (if any), or whatever feels like the goal i want to accomplish with it at the time. Right now what i have over there is very sparse and rough, but it is starting to come into focus as i put more of the framework in place.

1. Why is there poverty and suffering in the world?
Alright, this is actually two questions, one with a very complex answer (suffice it to say that poverty is basically a form of slow-motion cannibalism) and one with a very simple answer (because we've evolved with the capacity for suffering, and we have lots of opportunity to do so). By combining these issues into one, i can only presume the asker is actually asking, "Why does god allow poverty and suffering to exist," but i don't have an answer for this question.

It is supposed to be some great knock against the idea of god that poverty and suffering exist. But i can very easily imagine a god who is not omni-benevolent, and so have most theists throughout human history. The only reason anyone asks a question like this, is because some hippies allegedly declared a couple of thousand years ago, in an utterly futile rebellion against reality, that god loves all people and wishes nothing but good things for everyone.


2. What is the relationship between science and religion?
They can theoretically work together, if more people were to practice the style of religion that allows for uncertainty.


3. Why are so many people depressed?
Because for so many people, life is awful, and they don't have the power to improve it.


4. What are we all so afraid of?
Death. Pain. Other people.


5. When is war justifiable?
Never. To accept that any war is ever justifiable, is to accept "the end justifies the means" reasoning. Now, when someone is directly attacked they pretty much have no choice but to fight back. But for the most part, war is not simply a game of one nation innocently minding its own business until "wham! attack!" War is a racket. Most commonly, the stage is set for war by people in the upper class of all involved societies; they make a lot of money off of it and don't face most of the risk.

The idea of "just war" would also require us to accept numerous "unspoken" fictions about statehood: the fiction that humans are inherently divided into tribes of "us and them," and the fiction that there are institutions or coalitions that have the authority to impose a monopoly on violence.

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The Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal is beautiful. I mean, breathtakingly, heartbreakingly beautiful.

It is dark as night inside. The neo-gothic ceiling is decorated in dark blue with gold stars and large rose windows. The balconies and columns are made of dark, rich wood intricately carved and decorated with gold leaf. If one turns around and peeks up, one can see a 7000-pipe organ over the back balcony. Despite all of this complex ornamentation the eye is drawn forward to the chancel and altar, which stands out of the darkness, shining and bright.

cowgrrl and i first arrived at the Basilica at 11:30 on Sunday -- so a morning Mass was underway. We were able to peek in for a few moments, and could hear the organ and accompanying choir. In those few moments i felt an immense sense of peace, of centeredness; i remembered a few things about religion and worship that, in my cynicism, i had forgotten.

cowgrrl described her reaction as "religion envy," since she was brought up without exposure to devout religious practices. And i began to feel like a refugee again, because this is a place to which i can never return.

I just can't set aside awareness of the many people i've known, including myself, who have been deeply damaged by people acting in the name of god and church. I cannot overlook the role of religious institutions in the stealth genocide.

For me the damage runs deeply enough that i doubt i will be able to sit peacefully in any sort of church ever again, feeling welcome and valued and loved. The closest i came was during my years of involvement with the UU church. And while during those years i encountered a number of people i feel very fondly towards even now, i am just too disillusioned by organized religion these days.

Once upon a time, i was a conservative Christian. I turned away from this during my early teens, when i began to realize that certain of my beliefs simply could not be reconciled with logic, science, reality, and my personal experience.

During my years as a non-Christian, as i explored many different approaches to spirituality i never stopped feeling like a spiritual refugee, and so when i learned about Gnostic and liberal Christianity i began to think maybe i had found a way to come home, spiritually speaking.

Liberal theology is rooted in an approach to scripture at odds with the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is literally true, infallible, and designed as a timeless guide to life, belief, and morality. It has nothing to do with liberal politics, though many liberal Christians are also liberal politically.

Finally, a kind of Christianity i could sink my teeth into!

But after years of exploration in the realm of liberal theology, i find i still cannot reconcile Christianity, this time with economics, ethics, philosophy, justice, and again my personal experience.

Christianity is based on the idea that humans are separated from God in some profound way. The conservative Christians talk about "original sin" and "sin nature" which passes from father to offspring. In the Calvinist formulation, people are inherently "totally depraved," utterly incapable of embracing good and worthy by default of eternal damnation.

The problem with this belief is that it is damagingly divisive. Someone who is "lost in sin" is too easy to see as less than fully human, less than fully capable, worthy of pity or rejection. It is too easy to justify to oneself participating in the mistreatment of people who are called by one's leaders less than fully human; and history bears out the problems this has allowed.

Liberal Christians understand how divisive this belief has been and rejects its overt forms. But most of the liberal theology i've encountered does not, in the end, truly reject it -- because they still rely on Christ for some sort of salvation.

Spong, for example, proposed we understand humanity as "incomplete," still a work in progress. Other liberal theologians describe us as in need of healing from without, in need of divine guidance or leadership.

In the past, i looked to the idea of soteria as "healing" or self-improvement in the hopes of understanding Christian doctrine in a non-divisive way. This approach can only work if and only if healing is seen as voluntary, as something we seek if we recognize a need for change in ourselves. It should never be seen as something which all of us must undertake -- because then it becomes, in turn, an "us vs. them," a question of "who is seeking healing and who isn't?"

But the idea of Christ as an envoy from God, or a reflection within humankind of the divine presence, makes it impossible to think of healing as something voluntary -- because Christ, as the perfect human, the ideal to which we are to aspire, is a yardstick by which we will always come up short.

The fundamentalists see Christ as God in human form. Liberal theologians are likely to see Christ as a metaphor for human potential, or the divine presence in an understandable form; or they see Jesus as an extraordinary person, someone of immense charisma who moved socio-political mountains and taught people a lot about tolerance and love and co-operation.

I was striken then very hard by the observation of Elisabeth Schuessler Fiorenza that perhaps the proper way to view the early Christian movement is not one that starts and ends with Jesus, a single extraordinary individual, a man who saves us all by leading the way to a bright new world, but as a broad and diverse social movement to which many people contributed with their bravery and their witness. In this view, Jesus is simply a person who became, for a time, the movement's chief galvanizer and spokesperson.

To take a galvanizing figure and make him a figure of worship or emulation and to make him the central focus of theological inquiry takes the emphasis from where it must be (justice and compassion). The idea of Christ is therefore misappropriation; it diverts inquiry from the hard questions of justice and ethics and spins us in a whirlpool of philosophical auto-eroticism. (ETA: Alright, i know that's harsh. But immersion in a quasi-Marxian-inspired point of view has made it difficult for me to see anything that does not immediately contribute to justice as a potential contributor to the status quo, by taking our energy away from the important areas of focus. I've always been accused of being too serious for my own good.)

Is there any way to preserve the idea of Christ and maintain a focus on justice and compassion? I eagerly sought one. The best i could come up with is the idea that Christ is something which those who follow the Christian path are called upon to become or to embody when we they confronted with a person in need or an ethical dilemma.

But if that's the way it works, then phrasing it in terms of "Christ" or "savior" is distraction -- or worse, because the loaded cultural values of these terms means that phrasing discourse about acting justly or compassionately in this way makes us forever in danger of being diverted away from ethics and onto the distraction of Christology. It's safer just to say, "We have to be just and compassionate with one another," than to bring a religious term into it that risks diversion.

This leads to another concern i had, which is that once you apply a word to something for ease of description, people take the word and run with it as a label, and use it in a normative way to distinguish between one thing and another. Similarly, any kind of organization formed by people of one generation to solve the problems they face becomes a rigidified edifice which tends to cause problems in future generations.

In other words, anything resembling "systematic" theology or philosophy -- the attempt to coalesce one's worldview into a concise set of concepts -- puts us in danger of creating fodder for the perpetuation or justification of injustice.

That's a damn drastic thing to say, i know: but i've expounded several times in recent months on why i have concluded that there is no way any ideology can be "the answer" to human ills. This is a thunderous insight that continues to reverberate throughout my brain and shake down wall after wall. It's a threatening idea to anyone who has a pet ideology, and i even sometimes find myself resisting it. But if there is anything that has been shown to be true by the witness of human experience, it is this.

No wonder i'm a sceptic, i'm basically a muggle.

When I was 13 or so, I was confirmed as a Catholic.

I want to get some kind of formal recognition that I have renounced my membership in the Catholic Church, does anyone have any info on how to do this or if there even is some formal means? I'm thinking of finding out from my parents what church this took place in (I lived in Austin, Texas at the time) so I can write to that church about this.

Edit. Thanks to google, I found it: St. Louis Catholic Church on Burnet Road.

Last night I asked lady_babalon if she thought it was okay for me to call myself a feminist. She said, "Uh, y...e...a...h..." in that why-the-heck-do-you-think-you-even-have-to-ask kind of tone.

Well, I do feel I have to ask, because when I first exposed myself to feminism, as a Women's Studies student 12 years ago, it was made clear to me, as someone born and raised a male, that I couldn't call myself a feminist. Men could possibly use the term "pro-feminist," but this could be revoked if they disagreed in any way with the party line.

And, I did disagree with the party line, on certain points, as it was presented to me in that environment. I did not agree with polarizing views of rape which were presented to me that make the abuse of men and boys invisible. I did not agree that pornography and the sex industry are inherently disempowering to women. I have always believed that there is some biological basis behind social differences between the genders. And, I did not agree that transsexuality is counter to the aims of feminism.

When I first went online, I communicated with a number of men who had had the same experiences as me in the academic realm. But it was only recently that I've learned that there are women, too -- many women -- who have been excluded (at least verbally) from feminism by the academic pundits.

So for me to say I am a feminist is a radical statement, because I throw it in the face of those who have tried to exclude me on the basis of those views which run counter to the academic party line -- and on the basis of my gender (both as a man and as a transwoman).

I state it because I believe that biological, statistical tendencies should not form the basis of unfair and arbitrary restrictions on the rights of any individual. I believe there is no reason why women should not have every right and every freedom and every responsibility that is afforded to men, by our legal, cultural, social, and religious structures. I believe each woman should retain full, total, and final say over what happens with her reproductive system. I believe that women have been unfairly targeted for exploitation and violence and have been raised to be compliant in the face of it -- and that this is a particularly dark stain on the face of humankind. And I believe that it falls to each of us, female, and especially male, and otherwise, to take an active role in stopping the perpetuation of sex-based exploitation.

Few of us allow ourselves to be dragged down the slippery slope of doubt. But I've come to see doubt as a healthy thing. First of all, the way I see it, anything that is absolutely true should be able to withstand any withering scrutiny to which we can subject it. From that perspective, it is our duty to question and examine claims of spiritual truth, because so many falsehoods are passed off as truth. A religion that cannot withstand doubt is like a temple built on a crumbling foundation.

Though it may not appear so, each of us is ultimately on our own when it comes down to the question of figuring out "the big picture." Certainly, we are shaped by the culture we live in, and we are heavily influenced by the teachings of others. But this does not prevent many (or all!) of us from questioning, at some time, the things we've been taught.

When it comes to the claims of religion and culture, I take a radically subjective and doubtful perspective, which I expressed a while ago in this important entry:

God did not hand me the Bible directly. People handed me the Bible and said it was from God. People printed the Bible, people packed it into boxes, shipped it to stores, unpacked it on bookstore shelves. People translated the Bible from ancient languages into modern ones. People copied the Bible from manuscripts handed to them. At some point, there were people who sat down and wrote the very first Biblical manuscripts.

Such is not in doubt.

What is in doubt is what it means to say that someone wrote down the very first Biblical manuscripts. What were their purposes? What were their inspirations? What views of "truth" did their culture have that may differ from -- or be the same as -- ours? Did these people know that their scribblings would be handled as sacred for thousands of years?

I am not sure what it means to say that God's commandments are captured in scripture. Does that mean God dictated it word for word? Did God provide wordless inspiration and allowed the scribes to express God's thoughts "in their own words"? Did God "phone it in" and allow the scribes liberal leeway? Was God a kind of vague presence by which the scribes wrote stuff they thought was good and holy?

On top of this, there is the question of linguistic and cultural shift -- how can we account for the changes in meaning and context over the millenia since scripture was written? At what point do we stop and say that we must simply renew?

I've taken to thinking of scripture and doctrine as an 'instance' of class "divine guidance."